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# Louisville Urban League Sports & Learning Campus

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- [DOJ investigation into Louisville police: What happens now with a consent decree](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/09/doj-investigation-into-louisville-police-what-happens-now-with-a-consent-decree/) - The settlement in principle to negotiate a consent decree announced Wednesday between the U.S. Department of Justice and the city of Louisville could put LMPD under a microscope for years to come. The agreement comes after the Department of Justice released its investigative report, finding reasonable cause to believe the city and Louisville police "engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law."In Seattle, where a consent decree was issued in 2012 after a Native American wood carver was shot to death by police when crossing the street in front of a cruiser, the court-enforced accord is still in force 13 years later. And it has cost taxpayers $100 million.The first step in Louisville will be for the city to finalize its agreement on police reforms with DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said Thursday. He and Justice Department officials said they will continue to seek recommendations from residents and police. When it is finalized, the consent decree will be submitted to a federal judge for enforcement. More:What to know about the 7 DOJ findings in Louisville police investigationThe court will select a monitor — usually a lawyer or a retired police official from another jurisdiction ― to report on the city’s progress, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said. The monitor, who will issue periodic reports to the court and the public, could recommend the end of federal government supervision when the city is in compliance. The DOJ’s report, which found LMPD uses excessive force and discrimination against Black residents and the mentally ill, among other problems, recommended 36 remedial measures, which suggests it will take time for the city to achieve compliance.If Seattle, where 500 officers left the department in the years after its consent decree went into effect, is any guide, the agreement in Louisville is likely to generate opposition and resistance among rank-and-file officers. The DOJ's Civil Rights Division has conducted hundreds of preliminary inquiries into police departments and at least 73 formal investigations since 1994, when Congress gave it that authority. Targets have included police departments from Buffalo to Beverly Hills, including those with as few as six officers and as many as 1,700. Conservatives and police have attacked the decrees. Then-President Donald Trump called them a “war on cops,” and his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, said they were a “dangerous ... exercise of raw power” and an “end run around the democratic process.”But policing experts last year told The Courier Journal they are the most powerful tool for police reform in the United States. They cited empirical evidence that they work, resulting in fewer police-officer caused fatalities, less use of force and fewer civil rights suits filed against departments and officers.'It's heartbreaking':Breonna Taylor's mother says DOJ report shows what we already knewThe Center for American Progress, an independent, nonpartisan policy institute, found last year that in all 10 departments it analyzed, violent crime rates declined in the years after they fulfilled reform agreements and were released from consent decrees.In Seattle, serious use-of-force incidents declined 63% eight years after it began functioning under a consent decree, according to a 2019 report from the mayor’s office. But officials there and elsewhere caution that decrees are just one tool not, not a cure-all. Seattle Council member Lisa Herbold, who chairs the department's public safety committee, noted that per capita, Native Americans in 2021 were stopped nearly nine times as frequently as white people, and Black people were stopped over five times as frequently as white people. And she said despite the consent decree, police shootings of people experiencing mental health crises and armed only with knives had continued.
- [What is a consent decree? This agreement will shape Louisville, LMPD response to Department of Justice report](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/09/what-is-a-consent-decree-this-agreement-will-shape-louisville-lmpd-response-to-department-of-justice-report/) - The U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday morning the results of its nearly two-year "pattern or practice" investigation into excessive force and discriminatory policing violations by Louisville Metro Police.U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland came to Louisville to discuss the investigation's findings, which started just over a year after the 2020 police killing of Breonna Taylor.One key takeaway is that Louisville Metro and the city's police department agreed in principle to negotiate a consent decree with the Department of Justice.What is a federal consent decree?A consent decree is a legal negotiation between the Department of Justice and the police department of the city in which it's being instituted. It's a federal court-approved settlement noting steps that will be taken by the department to improve, with a monitor who will report progress to the court.Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said it would be "a court-enforceable consent decree to ensure sustainable, constitutional and effective public safety and emergency response services in Louisville."Related:What they said: Notable quotes on Louisville police investigationWho decides what's in the consent decree?Gupta said the agreement in principle between Louisville Metro, LMPD and the Department of Justice is just a framework that will be used to negotiate the final consent decree.In Louisville's case, Gupta said the Department of Justice will meet with members of the community and law enforcement officials to ask what they want to see from LMPD. Participation from the community and law enforcement should be continuous to enact "real and lasting change in Louisville."The consent decree, she said, is a commitment to "ensure sustainable, constitutional and effective public safety and emergency response services in Louisville."How long will the consent decree last?There is no set time for how long a consent decree lasts. A department will only be released from a consent decree if it meets its goals and the court finds it in compliance.What is an example of a consent decree?A consent decree between the City of Seattle and the Department of Justice requiring Seattle to implement police reforms "with the goal of ensuring that police services are delivered to the people of Seattle in a manner that full complies with the Constitution and laws of the United States, effectively ensures public trust and officer safety, and promotes public confidence…" was entered into in 2012. That decree is being overseen by a district court judge and is still ongoing.Who's makes sure the consent decree is implemented?An independent monitor will be appointed to oversee the consent decree. Garland said in Louisville's case, the person will be an "expert in this field" and will be approved by the judge in charge of the consent decree. Gupta added that they are committed to "selecting a third-party independent monitor who will assist the court and parties in determining whether the consent decree is being implemented." More:DOJ's report into Louisville police: How people are responding on social mediaMore:Read full US Department of Justice report on Louisville police violations and recommended reformWhat's the history of consent decrees?Consent decrees were enacted in a 1994 law after Rodney King was beaten by officers with Los Angeles Police. With it, a U.S. attorney general can order an investigation on whether a police department has exhibited “pattern or practice” of misconduct, such as using excessive force or discriminatory stops or arrests. Consent decrees have been used in other cities, like Baltimore, Cleveland and New Orleans and have proven effective. In the New Orleans, residents' approval rating of the police department grew from 33% in 2009 to 57% in 2020.Gupta said the city did not wait until the results of the investigation to enact changes, including a $12 million settlement with Taylor's family. She said, "The agreement in principle only represents a framework and in the coming months we will use the framework to negotiate a comprehensive consent decree with the city that will be filed in federal court."Reach Ana Rocío Álvarez Bríñez at abrinez@gannett.com; follow her on Twitter at @SoyAnaAlvarez
- [DOJ investigation into Louisville police: What happens now](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/09/doj-investigation-into-louisville-police-what-happens-now/) - The settlement in principle announced Wednesday between the U.S. Department of Justice and the city of Louisville could put the city’s police department under federal control for years to come. In Seattle, where a consent decree was issued in 2012 after a Native American wood carver was shot to death by police when crossing the street in front of a cruiser, the court-enforced accord is still in force 13 years later. And it has cost taxpayers $100 million.The first step in Louisville will be for the city to finalize its agreement on police reforms with DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said Thursday. He and Justice Department officials said they will continue to seek recommendations from residents and police. When it is finalized, the consent decree will be submitted to a federal judge for enforcement. More:What to know about the 7 DOJ findings in Louisville police investigationThe court will select a monitor — usually a lawyer or a retired police official from another jurisdiction ― to report on the city’s progress, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said. The monitor, who will issue periodic reports to the court and the public, could recommend the end of federal government supervision when the city is in compliance. The DOJ’s report, which found LMPD uses excessive force and discrimination against Black residents and the mentally ill, among other problems, recommended 36 remedial measures, which suggests it will take time for the city to achieve compliance.If Seattle, where 500 officers left the department in the years after its consent decree went into effect, is any guide, the agreement in Louisville is likely to generate opposition and resistance among rank-and-file officers. The DOJ's Civil Rights Division has conducted hundreds of preliminary inquiries into police departments and at least 73 formal investigations since 1994, when Congress gave it that authority. Targets have included police departments from Buffalo to Beverly Hills, including those with as few as six officers and as many as 1,700. Conservatives and police have attacked the decrees. Then-President Donald Trump called them a “war on cops,” and his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, said they were a “dangerous ... exercise of raw power” and an “end run around the democratic process.”But policing experts last year told The Courier Journal they are the most powerful tool for police reform in the United States. They cited empirical evidence that they work, resulting in fewer police-officer caused fatalities, less use of force and fewer civil rights suits filed against departments and officers.'It's heartbreaking':Breonna Taylor's mother says DOJ report shows what we already knewThe Center for American Progress, an independent, nonpartisan policy institute, found last year that in all 10 departments it analyzed, violent crime rates declined in the years after they fulfilled reform agreements and were released from consent decrees.In Seattle, serious use-of-force incidents declined 63% eight years after it began functioning under a consent decree, according to a 2019 report from the mayor’s office. But officials there and elsewhere caution that decrees are just one tool not, not a cure-all. Seattle Council member Lisa Herbold, who chairs the department's public safety committee, noted that per capita, Native Americans in 2021 were stopped nearly nine times as frequently as white people, and Black people were stopped over five times as frequently as white people. And she said despite the consent decree, police shootings of people experiencing mental health crises and armed only with knives had continued.
- [The Debate Over Covid’s Origin](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/09/the-debate-over-covids-origin/) - Both U.S. political parties are now open to the idea that Covid may have come from a lab in China.A new House committee investigating the origins of Covid opened its first public hearing yesterday with plenty of political theater. Republicans accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of covering up the virus’s origins, and Democrats criticized those claims as biased and unsubstantiated. But lawmakers displayed bipartisan agreement on one point: The virus really may have come from a laboratory in China.“Whether it was a lab leak or infection through animals, I think we’ve got to pursue both of those paths if we are ever to get the truth,” Representative Kweisi Mfume, Democrat of Maryland, said.Such agreement might have been surprising not long ago. From the start of the pandemic, the idea of a lab leak was fraught. Some scientists treated it as an outright conspiracy theory. Many Democratic politicians, journalists and others instead embraced the explanation that the virus jumped from animals to humans.Now, the F.B.I. and the Energy Department, which employ leading U.S. scientists, say a lab is the likely origin. But they remain uncertain, and four other U.S. intelligence agencies say, with low confidence, that it more likely originated in animals.Today’s newsletter will explain the debate over the theory and why it matters.What’s the lab leak theory?There are actually multiple lab leak theories.The most plausible is that the virus accidentally leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, where scientists may have been studying it, and possibly engineered it, for research and medical purposes.That theory differs from the claim that lab scientists created Covid as a bioweapon or that China intentionally leaked the virus. Neither experts nor U.S. officials take that assertion seriously. “It is an important distinction,” said my colleague Sheryl Gay Stolberg, who covers health policy.What is the case for each explanation?The natural origin theory: Animal-to-human transmission is the predominant origin of viral diseases, including other coronaviruses and bird flus. Many of the first confirmed Covid cases were linked to an animal market in Wuhan, and live mammals there are known to spread viruses.The lab leak theory: Wuhan is home to an advanced virus-research lab and the Chinese C.D.C. — ties that lend credence to the idea of a lab leak, much as the animal market’s presence does for the natural origin theory. Chinese officials’ apparent destruction of evidence adds to the suspicions of a lab leak. Biological labs around the world also have a history of accidental leaks.Even many officials and others who lean toward one of the two theories remain uncertain. U.S. officials are divided and acknowledge they are working with imperfect information, largely because China has not allowed an independent investigation within its borders.Why does this debate matter?For many, determining the cause of a pandemic that has killed nearly seven million people worldwide, including 1.1 million in the U.S., is important regardless of broader implications. Basically, the truth matters for its own sake.The Wuhan Institute of Virology.Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLearning the origins of Covid could help save lives, too. If the virus came from an animal, then studying and tracking the spread of viruses in nature could be crucial to preventing the next pandemic. If it originated in a lab, then improving the security and safety of virology labs might be more important.And if both theories seem plausible, that is a case for doing more to prevent animal-to-human transmission and future lab leaks. “Some scientists argue there’s more to be done on both fronts,” said my colleague Benjamin Mueller, who covers health and science.Why the lab leak skepticism?Some scientists who initially dismissed the lab leak based their views on earlier, incomplete evidence. At first, experts embraced the animal market explanation because some of the first confirmed cases, from December 2019, were linked to the market. But researchers later discovered that the virus may have been spreading weeks earlier, and it is not clear that those cases were linked to the market.Typical human bias probably played a role in the skepticism, too. “Scientists are human, and science has become a vested-interest industry,” Tim Trevan, founder of the safety consulting company Chrome Biorisk Management, wrote in The Wall Street Journal.Early in the pandemic, the lab leak theory became politicized when Donald Trump and his allies began promoting it. Many experts took sides, as did much of the public. Some may have also feared that blaming scientists for Covid could have vilified their industry and hurt the funding they rely on. The dynamic is a reminder that experts are also susceptible to biases and self-interest like the rest of us.Will we ever know the origin?Probably not. Pinning down the origin of a virus is inherently difficult. China has made the task harder, blocking outside investigations and refusing to share data on the virus’s spread.But the investigations, including the House’s, have already spurred discussion and debate about better tracking of animal viruses and improving lab security. Those steps could help save lives even if we never know what really caused the Covid pandemic.For more: “Assigning blame is not going to bring back seven million people” The hearing showed the difficulty of uncovering conclusive evidence about Covid’s origin.THE LATEST NEWSPoliticsMitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, was hospitalized after tripping at a Washington hotel.“I hate him passionately”: Tucker Carlson’s texts show contempt for Trump. Read the messages.Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat, criticized the Biden administration for refusing to show Congress classified documents found at the homes of Biden, Trump and Mike Pence.A former New York City Hall insider has found lucrative work with real estate companies, worrying critics about his influence on Mayor Eric Adams.An Arizona county gave a Republican election skeptic the power to oversee voting. The state’s Democratic attorney general is suing.More Black women are running for office, confronting racism and sexism. A Black woman has never been a governor, and only two have been senators.InternationalAn armed guard in Dhangri village.Atul Loke for The New York TimesIndia is arming villagers in part of Kashmir, one of the world’s most militarized places, after attacks against Hindus.Russia launched missiles at residential areas in Ukraine this morning, killing at least nine people.After street protests, Georgian lawmakers dropped a law that critics said was inspired by Russia and would have been used to clamp down on dissent.Recent kidnappings in Mexico have brought attention to the medical tourism industry.Other Big StoriesA memorial to Breonna Taylor, whom the police shot to death in 2020.Xavier Burrell for The New York TimesThe police in Louisville, Ky., disproportionately pulled over Black drivers and used racist epithets as part of a pattern of discrimination, the Justice Department found.California is bracing for more heavy rain and snow.Scientists announced a breakthrough in superconductors, which could someday transform the way electrical devices work.The murder conviction for the lawyer Alex Murdaugh unraveled his family’s century of influence in South Carolina.The director of the Whitney Museum in New York will step down after 20 years. OpinionsEnglish majors are disappearing, partly because of the miserable way K-12 schools teach it, Pamela Paul writes.The Supreme Court isn’t just scrutinizing Biden’s student debt program. It’s also confronting the ways presidents have abused emergency powers since Sept. 11, says Christopher Caldwell.Jennifer Finney Boylan was a Rockefeller Republican at the start of Jimmy Carter’s presidency. His triumphs — and failures — turned her into a progressive, she writes.MORNING READSKate DehlerCluttercore: Your bedroom isn’t messy — it’s trendy.High-altitude treks: Nepal will ban solo hikers in its national parks.Restaurant review: Soupless ramen in a stressless setting.A morning listen: Imagining life with the men of their dreams.Advice from Wirecutter: How to clean your Birkenstocks.Lives Lived: Topol, an Israeli actor, took on the role of Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof” in his late 20s and reprised the role for decades. He died at 87.SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETICJim BoeheimChris Carlson/Associated PressA titan: Syracuse basketball coach Jim Boeheim said he would retire after 47 seasons coaching the Orange. He leaves with the second-most wins in N.C.A.A. history.NDA challenge: Erica Herman, Tiger Woods’s former girlfriend, asked a court to release her from a nondisclosure agreement that she says Woods made her sign in 2017.Staying a Yankee: The story of how Aaron Judge turned down more than $40 million extra from the San Diego Padres.ARTS AND IDEAS To glove or not to glove?Chris Ratcliffe/Getty ImagesThe cotton menacePicture a museum worker holding up a centuries-old book. Is the person wearing white gloves? “The glove thing,” one museum director said, wearily, to The Times’s Jennifer Schuessler. “It just won’t die.”People who work with rare books say the conventional wisdom is wrong: Delicate manuscripts should not be handled with gloves — which make fingers clumsy and actually attract dirt — but with clean, bare hands. Barbara Heritage, a curator at the University of Virginia, acknowledged it could be “shocking” to see precious books handled with bare hands. “But that’s how these books were read, and how they were made,” she said.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookLinda Xiao for The New York TimesSteam, roast or pan-grill this salmon in aluminum foil.What to ReadPatricia Highsmith was excellent at creating psychopathic antiheroes. Browse a guide to her best books.The OscarsWatch scenes from eight of the Best Picture nominees, narrated by their directors.Late NightThe hosts can’t believe Tucker Carlson’s texts about Trump.Now Time to PlayThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was embankment. Here is today’s puzzle.Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Let the spirit move you? (three letters).And here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.P.S. “A pro in every aspect of crossword making”: Lynn Lempel published her 100th puzzle in The Times this week.Here’s today’s front page.“The Daily” is about migrant children.Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
- [The Racist and Illegal Things the DOJ Says Louisville Cops Have Done](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/09/the-racist-and-illegal-things-the-doj-says-louisville-cops-have-done/) - Three years after Breonna Taylor’s death, the DOJ released a scathing report about the racism and discrimination present among Louisville police.
- [After Breonna Taylor death, feds find police discrimination - The Denver Post](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/09/after-breonna-taylor-death-feds-find-police-discrimination-the-denver-post/) - By DYLAN LOVAN (Associated Press)LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department found Louisville police have engaged in a pattern of violating constitutional rights and discrimination against the Black community following an investigation prompted by the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor. Attorney General Merrick Garland made the announcement Wednesday. A Justice Department report found the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government and Louisville Metro Police Department “engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law.” The report said the Louisville police department “discriminates against Black people in its enforcement activities,” uses excessive force and conducts searches based on invalid warrants. It also said the department violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech, like the street protests in the city in the summer of 2020 after Taylor’s death. Garland said some officers have assaulted people with disabilities and called Black people disparaging names. “This conduct is unacceptable, it is heartbreaking,” Garland said. “It erodes the community trust necessary for effective policing and it is an affront to the vast majority of officers who put their lives on the line every day to serve Louisville with honor.” The sweeping probe announced in April 2021 is known as a “pattern or practice” investigation — examining whether there is a pattern of unconstitutional or unlawful policing inside the department. The city will sign a negotiated agreement with the Justice Department and a federal officer will monitor the progress. Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, said Wednesday that she remains upset that it took so long to feel some vindication. “It’s heartbreaking to know that everything you’ve been saying from day one has to be said again,” Palmer said. One of Palmer’s attorneys, Lonita Baker, said she was encouraged by the Justice Department’s findings, but it’s “unfortunate that it took the murder of Breonna Taylor and protest after protest after protest through 2020 to come to this point.” Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said the city “has wounds that are not yet healed.” “We have to come to terms with where we’ve been, so we can get to where we want to be,” Greenberg said. Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was roused from her bed by police who came through the door using a battering ram after midnight on March 13, 2020. Three officers fired shots after Taylor’s boyfriend, fearing an intruder, shot an officer in the leg. Taylor was struck several times and died at the scene. The warrant used to enter her home is now part of a separate federal criminal investigation, and one former Louisville officer has already pleaded guilty to helping falsify information on the warrant. No drugs were found in Taylor’s home. Two more officers are charged in the warrant probe, and a third, Brett Hankison, is charged with endangering Taylor and her neighbors with his shots into her apartment. The report said Black motorists were more likely to be searched during traffic stops, and officers used neck restraints, police dogs and Tasers against people who posed no imminent threat. Garland cited one incident where two officers threw drinks at pedestrians and recorded the encounters. Those incidents happened in 2018 and 2019. Both officers are facing federal charges. NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson applauded the Justice Department findings but said federal lawmakers have yet to step up and enact wider police reforms. “While Congress continues to fail our country with police reform, at least the Department of Justice is taking their jobs seriously. Today marks a meaningful step toward police accountability and — should Congress now decide to step up — police reform,” Johnson’s statement said. He added that the group lauded Garland and the Department of Justice for continuing a “pursuit of justice” and added, “Congress should take a page from their book, do their jobs, and pass the legislation necessary to save innocent lives.” Louisville police have undergone five leadership changes since the Taylor shooting, and new Mayor Craig Greenberg is interviewing candidates for the next chief. The city has settled a number of lawsuits related to the incident, including a $12 million payment to Taylor’s family that ended a wrongful death lawsuit. Garland also mentioned some reforms the city has undergone since Taylor’s death, including a city law banning the use of “no-knock” warrants in 2020. The warrants are typically used in surprise drug raids. The city also started a pilot program that aims to send behavioral health professionals to some 911 calls, expanded community violence prevention efforts and sought to support health and wellness for officers, the report said. Also Wednesday, the Justice Department announced it will review the Memphis Police Department policies on the use of force, de-escalation strategies and specialized units in response to the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols during an arrest. The 29-year-old motorist died Jan. 10, three days after his violent arrest.
- [After Breonna Taylor death, feds find police discrimination - Middletown Press](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/after-breonna-taylor-death-feds-find-police-discrimination-middletown-press/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department found Louisville police have engaged in a pattern of violating constitutional rights and discrimination against the Black community following an investigation prompted by the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor.Attorney General Merrick Garland made the announcement Wednesday. A Justice Department report found the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government and Louisville Metro Police Department “engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law.” The report said the Louisville police department “discriminates against Black people in its enforcement activities,” uses excessive force and conducts searches based on invalid warrants. It also said the department violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech, like the street protests in the city in the summer of 2020 after Taylor's death. Garland said some officers have assaulted people with disabilities and called Black people disparaging names.
- [Breonna Taylor's mother describes 'heartbreaking' feeling as DOJ validates her criticisms of ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/09/breonna-taylors-mother-describes-heartbreaking-feeling-as-doj-validates-her-criticisms-of/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Tamika Palmer, whose daughter, Breonna Taylor, was shot and killed by Louisville Metro Police detectives in a case that directly led to a U.S. Department of Justice investigation, said federal investigators' findings announced Wednesday amounted to "heartbreak all over again."Palmer has long beat the drum against LMPD practices in the wake of Taylor's death, a seminal moment for the police department that resonated nationally and sparked weeks of city-wide protests. "It's heartbreaking to know that everything you've been saying from day one has to be said again to through this manner, that it took this to even have somebody look into this department," Palmer said Wednesday.Speaking in Louisville on Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and his investigators said federal and local officials have agreed in principle to enter a court-enforceable consent decree as the department makes agreed-upon changes to policing practices. The announcement was the result of a wide-ranging civil rights review that began nearly two years ago, promising to look at LMPD's use of force, including against people participating in First Amendment-protected activities.Attorney Sam Aguiar, who helped represent Palmer in a wrongful death lawsuit against Louisville Metro, said one critique of the DOJ report is nothing mentioned about going back and punishing officers for some of the misconduct mentioned within it."I don't think enough is being done," he said Wednesday. "Until the old guard of power" is out, major change is unlikely."Surprise, surprise: We have one of the worst police departments in the United States of America."Below is a list of responses from activists, community members, politicians and more after the DOJ announcement came down. They're presented in alphabetical order:Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear"Today's findings by the Department of Justice are concerning. My hope is that everyone in Louisville will come together and see the findings of this report as an urgent opportunity to take intentional steps for positive, lasting change. I believe the DOJ findings can help achieve the goal of ensuring public safety and protecting everyone's rights"Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron"The vast majority of Kentucky's law enforcement community protects and serves the Commonwealth with dignity and honor, and I am thankful to these brave men and women who put their lives on the line day in and day out to keep our communities safe."We hope that the U.S. Department of Justice's work with Louisville Metro and city officials will help address lingering concerns and better allow law enforcement to keep people safe."Ben Crump"The family of Breonna Taylor is encouraged by the findings released today by Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division revealing a pattern of biased policing and a long list of constitutional violations by the Louisville Metro Police Department."These findings, and LMPD's expected cooperation with the DOJ's recommended remedial measures, will help protect the citizens of Louisville and shape its culture of policing. It's steps like these, and involvement of the Attorney General and the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, that will move our nation forward and prevent future tragedies like the one that took the life of Breonna Taylor and the countless others who have been killed unnecessarily by law enforcement."Rev. Tim Findley Jr."Somber but vindication. I think, locally, community members who got out in the street have talked about this for a very long time. And today, on a national scale with the attorney general here, there was an acknowledgment that those things were right and that LMPD for so many years has terrorized black people."I had several conversations with the DOJ, and that's one thing that I really commend about the DOJ. They did get out and talked to people. So I was happy to participate."What I heard today was the acknowledgment that LMPD has operated in a corrupt, terroristic sort of fashion from the way that Black people are arrested, the way that we are dealt with, the way that we are pulled over.""Today was, again, not a celebration but really an acknowledgment what was said, and it gives some much credence to 2020."I'm here. I am here as so many others to bring accountability, to hold the accountability of our new mayor of the eventual new police chief, whoever that will be. We want to make sure that what we heard today, that there is real growth, real progress after."It's a very difficult thing to hear. And I'm also interested in hearing what the FOP has to say, because they spend so much time denying these things. But there's no way around this, that this is, again, it's vindication."Former Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer"First, I again extend my deepest condolences and apologies to Tamika Palmer and all the family and friends of Breonna Taylor for the tragedy that resulted in her death in March of 2020.Today is another important inflection point to honor the pain of 2020 by further acknowledging – and continuing to act on – the fact that our community deserves a new era of public safety. This era requires the leadership of the many good officers who have dedicated their lives to keep us safe and are committed to working in partnership with the community to develop a new form of constitutionally sound policing embraced by all our city's residents.Since the summer of 2020, I have emphasized that public safety in Louisville and across America is at an inflection point. Without fundamental and widespread changes in police culture, resources, resident involvement and resulting police-community legitimacy, our city and nation will continue to needlessly endure tragedy after tragedy. National events since the summer of 2020 bear witness to this conclusion.Today's findings – paired with those from the independent audit by Hillard Heintze that I initiated in 2020 – presents Louisville with an opportunity to be a national leader and a model in building a truly just public safety system. I believe good police officers will welcome this report as an opportunity to more easily meet the oath they swore to protect and serve our community and improve their daily job performance and profession.The Hillard Heintze report identified multiple challenges and opportunities for improvement – many of which are echoed in the DOJ report. It's important to note that LMPD and my administration cooperated with the DOJ, mindful that a partnership approach should hasten public safety improvements. I appreciate Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta acknowledging our "proactive leadership." We did not wait for this report to expedite accountability and improvement opportunities and we efficiently implemented or started 150 different initiatives by the end of 2022 as part of our Reimagining Public Safety mission. The work that will emanate from the DOJ report is not new to LMPD. And as shown by the improvements since 2020, our officers have the ability to see it through, with focus, dedication, resources and in partnership with the community.Again, I extend my appreciation to the dedicated officers, community leaders and the new administration who remain actively engaged in the work of reimagining public safety – learning from our past to heal and transform LMPD into the police department Louisville residents need and deserve."Kentucky U.S. Congressman Morgan McGarvey"Like many people across Louisville, my heart breaks for Breonna Taylor and her family all over again. Just a few days short of the third anniversary of Breonna Taylor's inexcusable killing by police, the Department of Justice confirmed what we already knew: the Louisville Metro Police Department consistently violated people's constitutional and civil rights. The investigation found that Louisville Metro police officers have engaged in the use of excessive force, unlawful execution of search warrants, and discriminatory practices against Black communities."I fully support the Department of Justice's consent decree to collaboratively work with Louisville Metro, Louisville Metro Police Department, and the community to begin righting these harmful wrongs. Excessive use of force and racial profiling in the Louisville Metro Police Department will continue to plague our community until we take decisive action to create true, lasting change. We simply cannot afford to wait."There's so much we can do. We stand ready as a partner with local community organizations and officials to move forward together. We can pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to address excessive use of force and nationally ban no-knock warrants. We can pass the Mental Health Justice Act to ensure trained mental health professionals respond to crises. We can and must prevent more needless and tragic deaths from happening."Today's report is a long overdue step in the right direction to hold our law enforcement accountable, but it does nothing to undo the centuries of systemic injustice Black communities have endured. We must commit to change, accountability, and justice for Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tyre Nichols, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, and the far too many others who were killed by police."Shameka Parrish-Wright"There's a lot of mixed feelings, but I think that this means something to them and the order of how things and people are reprimanded, how the police are dealt with and held accountable. This is a step in the right direction for that, and if you have your boss' boss, the biggest boss, the top of policing come down and say that you have been guilty of violating the rights of Louisvillians, that means a great deal."Metro Councilman Anthony Piagentini"The fact that they are not being held accountable, the fact that they were even mentioned in a remotely positive light was galling to me. And frankly, I don't know why the Department of Justice is not looking at criminal violations against our former mayor and our former police chief. This is a pattern of practice investigation. Those individuals, those officers that broke the law, most of them have or will be held accountable. There are laws to holding them accountable. Who's holding the mayor accountable who created the circumstances of which this department has now been indicted? Who's holding the chief accountable for his role in what happened here? And I think it's disgusting that individual people and the citizens of this community have suffered from a poorly led police department that the two people that were the most responsible that are just riding off into the sunset collecting their pensions and nothing's gonna happen to them. I think that's disgusting and I don't know why the DOJ and others aren't looking at some level of accountability for them."The taxpayers here are going to completely take it in the gut in all kinds of ways. It's not just money. I come back to the people of the public who have suffered under bad police policies and I reject wholeheartedly people that look to the rank and file for being accountable to that. The rank and file do what they're ordered to do, what they're trained to do, what the policies tell them to do. And if those policies, training and funding failed, then that comes back to the administration and Greg Fischer."Related Stories:Copyright 2023 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
- [Breonna Taylor's mother feels reaffirmed after DOJ findings, but says more needs to change](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/breonna-taylors-mother-feels-reaffirmed-after-doj-findings-but-says-more-needs-to-change/) - THE POLICE DEPARTMENT, SERVES EVERYONE IN OUR COMMUNITY. BREONNA TAYLOR’S FAMILY AND THEIR ATTORNEYS TELL US THAT THEY’RE NOT SURPRISED BY THE DOJ’S FINDINGS. LIKEWISE, ALEXIS MATTHEWS IS LIVE FOR US OUTSIDE THE LAW OFFICE, WHERE THE NEWS CONFERENCE WAS HELD JUST A FEW HOURS AGO. ALEXIS. WELL, VICKY RIGG, TAMIKA PALMER, BREONNA TAYLOR’S MOTHER, CALLING THE 86 PAGE REPORT HARD BREAKING. MEANWHILE, ATTORNEYS SAY THEY’RE ENCOURAGED BY THE FINDINGS. BUT BOTH AGREE THAT IT SHOULD NOT HAVE TAKEN THE DEATH OF TAYLOR TO GET TO THIS POINT. NOW, BREONNA TAYLOR WAS SHOT AND KILLED BY LMPD IN 2020 DURING A RAID OF HER APARTMENT. THAT HAPPENED AS A RESULT OF A NO KNOCK SEARCH WARRANT THAT WAS OBTAINED WITH FALSE INFORMATION. THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE REPORT HIGHLIGHTED THAT IN OTHER INSTANCES OF UNLAWFUL AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL CONDUCT BY LAPD AS IT RELATES TO SEARCH WARRANTS. NOW, PALMER SAYS THE INFORMATION IN THE REPORT SHE KNEW ALL ALONG, AND IT’S UNFORTUNATE THAT IT TOOK A TWO YEAR INVESTIGATION BY FEDERAL AUTHORITIES TO BRING IT TO LIGHT. HEARTBREAK ALL OVER AGAIN BECAUSE I KNEW THAT TO BEGIN WITH. I SAID THAT FROM THE VERY BEGINNING. THE ONLY POSITIVE THING THAT COULD COME FROM LOSING HER DAUGHTER IS THAT SHE PREVENTS OTHER PEOPLE FROM THAT SAME FATE. AND I THINK THAT TODAY IS INDICATIVE OF THAT. I THINK WHEN THE OFFICERS THAT HAVE BEEN INDICTED WERE INDICTED, THAT’S INDICATIVE OF THAT. BUT ONLY WHEN WE SEE TRUE CHAIN CHANGE, I THINK AT THE END OF THE DAY THAT THIS REPORT SOLIDIFIED WHAT TO MAKE A NEW IS THAT SHE SHOULD BE ABLE TO PICK UP THE PHONE TODAY AND CALL BRIANA. NOW, THE ATTORNEYS POINT OUT THAT ALTHOUGH THIS INVESTIGATION WAS FOR LMPD AND METRO GOVERNMENT, THEY SAY IT SHOULD BE A WAKE UP CALL FOR LOUISVILLE’S ENTIRE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM TO DO BETTER MOVING FORWARD TO ACHIEVE TRUE CHANGE AND REFORM. BUT I’M GOING TO CHALLENGE JUDGES TO LOOK CLOSER AT SEARCH WARRANTS. IF YOU KEEP SEEING THE SAME LANGUAGE OVER AND OVER, YOU HAVE TO DIG MORE. POLICE OFFICERS AREN’T ALLOWED TO GET TO THAT POINT. IF YOU CHALLENGE THEM WHEN THEY COME TO YOU FOR YOUR SIGNATURE, WE’VE BEEN HEARING THIS STUFF FOR YEARS. SO I THINK THE TRUE MEASURE OF WHERE WE’RE GOING TO GO AS A CITY AND THE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE POLICE IS WHERE WE STAND OVER THE NEXT COUPLE OF YEARS AND WHAT IS GOING TO BE DONE TO FIX IT. NOW, MONDAY MARKS THREE YEARS SINCE TAYLOR’S DEATH, AND AT TODAY’S PRESS CONFERENCE, THE ROOM WAS FULL OF HER SUPPORTERS, INCLUDING LOVED ONES AND THOSE WHO PROTESTED FOR HER JUSTICE. NOW, THIS REPORT COMES NEARLY SEVEN MONTHS AFTER LAPD OFFICERS WERE FEDERALLY CHARGED IN CONNECTION TO THAT DEADLY RAID. LIVE FOR YOU IN LOUISVILLE
- [Breonna Taylor shooting probe finds Louisville PD 'discriminate against black people'](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/breonna-taylor-shooting-probe-finds-louisville-pd-discriminate-against-black-people/) - The US Justice Department has found Louisville police have engaged in a pattern of violating constitutional rights following an investigation prompted by the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor. The announcement was made Wednesday by Attorney Merrick Garland. A Justice Department report found the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government and Louisville Metro Police Department “engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law.” The report said Louisville police “discriminate against Black people in its enforcement activities,” use excessive force and conduct searches based on invalid warrants. It also said the department violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech, like the street protests in the city in the summer of 2020. “This conduct is unacceptable, it is heartbreaking,” Garland said. US Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that a Justice Department probe found that the Louisville/Jefferson County Police Department had a pattern of violating people’s constitutional rights. AFP via Getty Images The sweeping probe announced in April 2021 is known as a “pattern or practice” investigation — examining whether there is a pattern of unconstitutional or unlawful policing inside the department. Taylor, a 26-year-old black woman, was roused from her bed by police who came through the door using a battering ram after midnight on March 13, 2020. Three officers fired shots after Taylor’s boyfriend, fearing an intruder, shot an officer in the leg. Taylor was struck several times and died at the scene. The probe was launched following the police killing of Breonna Taylor. AP The warrant used to enter her home is now part of a separate federal criminal investigation, and one former Louisville officer has already pleaded guilty to helping falsify information on the warrant. No drugs were found in Taylor’s home. Louisville police have undergone five leadership changes since the Taylor shooting, and new Mayor Craig Greenberg is interviewing candidates for the next chief. The city has settled a number of lawsuits related to the incident, including a $12 million payment to Taylor’s family that ended a wrongful death lawsuit. Since 2020, the city has banned no-knock warrants, started a program that aims to send behavioral health professionals to some 911 calls, expanded community violence prevention efforts and sought to support health and wellness for officers, the report said.
- [After Breonna Taylor death, feds find police discrimination | News | tribdem.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/after-breonna-taylor-death-feds-find-police-discrimination-news-tribdem-com/) - #inform-video-player-1 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; } #inform-video-player-2 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; } LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The U.S. Justice Department found Louisville police have engaged in a pattern of violating constitutional rights and discrimination against the Black community following an investigation prompted by the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor.Attorney General Merrick Garland made the announcement Wednesday. A Justice Department report found the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government and Louisville Metro Police Department “engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law.”The report said the Louisville police department “discriminates against Black people in its enforcement activities,” uses excessive force and conducts searches based on invalid warrants. It also said the department violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech, such as the street protests in the city in the summer of 2020 after Taylor’s death. Garland said some officers have assaulted people with disabilities and called Black people disparaging names. “This conduct is unacceptable, it is heartbreaking,” Garland said. “It erodes the community trust necessary for effective policing and it is an affront to the vast majority of officers who put their lives on the line every day to serve Louisville with honor.”The sweeping probe announced in April 2021 is known as a “pattern or practice” investigation – examining whether there is a pattern of unconstitutional or unlawful policing inside the department. The city will sign a negotiated agreement with the Justice Department and a federal officer will monitor the progress.Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, said Wednesday that she remains upset that it took so long to feel some vindication.“It’s heartbreaking to know that everything you’ve been saying from day one has to be said again,” Palmer said.One of Palmer’s attorneys, Lonita Baker, said she was encouraged by the Justice Department’s findings, but it’s “unfortunate that it took the murder of Breonna Taylor and protest after protest after protest through 2020 to come to this point.”Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said the city “has wounds that are not yet healed.”“We have to come to terms with where we’ve been, so we can get to where we want to be,” Greenberg said. Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was roused from her bed by police who came through the door using a battering ram after midnight on March 13, 2020. Three officers fired shots after Taylor’s boyfriend, fearing an intruder, shot an officer in the leg.Taylor was struck several times and died at the scene.The warrant used to enter her home is now part of a separate federal criminal investigation, and one former Louisville officer has already pleaded guilty to helping falsify information on the warrant. No drugs were found in Taylor’s home. Two more officers are charged in the warrant probe, and a third, Brett Hankison, is charged with endangering Taylor and her neighbors with his shots into her apartment.The report said Black motorists were more likely to be searched during traffic stops, and officers used neck restraints, police dogs and Tasers against people who posed no imminent threat. Garland cited one incident where two officers threw drinks at pedestrians and recorded the encounters. Those incidents happened in 2018 and 2019. Both officers are facing federal charges.NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson applauded the Justice Department findings but said federal lawmakers have yet to step up and enact wider police reforms.“While Congress continues to fail our country with police reform, at least the Department of Justice is taking their jobs seriously. Today marks a meaningful step toward police accountability and – should Congress now decide to step up – police reform,” Johnson’s statement said.He added that the group lauded Garland and the Department of Justice for continuing a “pursuit of justice” and added, “Congress should take a page from their book, do their jobs, and pass the legislation necessary to save innocent lives.”Louisville police have undergone five leadership changes since the Taylor shooting, and new Mayor Craig Greenberg is interviewing candidates for the next chief. The city has settled a number of lawsuits related to the incident, including a $12 million payment to Taylor’s family that ended a wrongful death lawsuit.Garland also mentioned some reforms the city has undergone since Taylor’s death, including a city law banning the use of “no-knock” warrants in 2020. The warrants are typically used in surprise drug raids. The city also started a pilot program that aims to send behavioral health professionals to some 911 calls, expanded community violence prevention efforts and sought to support health and wellness for officers, the report said.Also Wednesday, the Justice Department announced it will review the Memphis Police Department policies on the use of force, de-escalation strategies and specialized units in response to the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols during an arrest. The 29-year-old motorist died Jan. 10, three days after his violent arrest. #inform-video-player-3 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; }
- [After Breonna Taylor's killing, feds find pattern of discrimination by Louisville police](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/after-breonna-taylors-killing-feds-find-pattern-of-discrimination-by-louisville-police/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The U.S. Justice Department found Louisville police have engaged in a pattern of violating constitutional rights and discrimination against the Black community after an investigation prompted by the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor.Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland made the announcement Wednesday. A Justice Department report found the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government and Louisville Metro Police Department “engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law.”The report said the Police Department “discriminates against Black people in its enforcement activities,” uses excessive force and conducts searches based on invalid warrants. It also said the department violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech, such as during the street protests in the summer of 2020 after Taylor’s death. Garland said some officers have assaulted people with disabilities and called Black people disparaging names.“This conduct is unacceptable, it is heartbreaking,” Garland said. “It erodes the community trust necessary for effective policing, and it is an affront to the vast majority of officers who put their lives on the line every day to serve Louisville with honor.”The sweeping probe announced in April 2021 is known as a “pattern or practice” investigation — examining whether there is a pattern of unconstitutional or unlawful policing inside the department. The city will sign a negotiated agreement with the Justice Department and a federal officer will monitor the progress.Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, said Wednesday that she remains upset that it took so long to feel some vindication.“It’s heartbreaking to know that everything you’ve been saying from Day One has to be said again,” Palmer said.One of Palmer’s attorneys, Lonita Baker, said she was encouraged by the Justice Department’s findings, but it’s “unfortunate that it took the murder of Breonna Taylor and protest after protest after protest through 2020 to come to this point.”Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said the city “has wounds that are not yet healed.”“We have to come to terms with where we’ve been, so we can get to where we want to be,” Greenberg said.Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was roused from her bed by police who came through the door using a battering ram after midnight on March 13, 2020. Three officers fired shots after Taylor’s boyfriend, fearing an intruder, shot an officer in the leg. Taylor was struck several times and died at the scene.The warrant used to enter her home is now part of a separate federal criminal investigation, and one former Louisville officer has already pleaded guilty to helping falsify information on the warrant. No drugs were found in Taylor’s home. Two more officers are charged in the warrant probe, and a third, Brett Hankison, is charged with endangering Taylor and her neighbors with his shots into her apartment.The Justice Department report said Black motorists were more likely to be searched during traffic stops, and officers used neck restraints, police dogs and Tasers against people who posed no imminent threat. Garland cited incidents in 2018 and 2019 in which two officers threw drinks at pedestrians and recorded the encounters. Both officers pleaded guilty to federal charges.NAACP President and Chief Executive Derrick Johnson applauded the findings but said federal lawmakers have yet to step up and enact wider police reforms.“While Congress continues to fail our country with police reform, at least the Department of Justice is taking their jobs seriously. Today marks a meaningful step toward police accountability and — should Congress now decide to step up — police reform,” Johnson’s statement said.He added that the group lauded Garland and the Justice Department for continuing a “pursuit of justice” and added, “Congress should take a page from their book, do their jobs, and pass the legislation necessary to save innocent lives.”Louisville police have undergone five leadership changes since the Taylor shooting, and Greenberg is interviewing candidates for the next chief. The city has settled a number of lawsuits related to the incident, including a $12-million payment to Taylor’s family that ended a wrongful-death lawsuit.Garland also mentioned some reforms the city has undergone since Taylor’s death, including a city law banning the use of “no-knock” warrants in 2020. The warrants are typically used in surprise drug raids. The city also started a pilot program that aims to send behavioral health professionals to some 911 calls, expanded community violence prevention efforts and sought to support health and wellness for officers, the report said.Also Wednesday, the Justice Department announced it will review the Memphis Police Department’s policies on the use of force, de-escalation strategies and specialized units in response to the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols during an arrest. The 29-year-old motorist died Jan. 10, three days after his violent arrest.
- [Louisville mayor, officials, Breonna Taylor's lawyer all react to DOJ civil rights violation report](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/louisville-mayor-officials-breonna-taylors-lawyer-all-react-to-doj-civil-rights-violation-report/) - Mayor Craig Greenberg spoke during the Department of Justice's press conference Wednesday afternoon announcing civil rights violations by the Louisville Metro Police Department and city government.U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland led the announcements enumerating what they said were several civil rights violations. You can read about that here. "Our city has wounds that have not yet healed and that is why this report and this moment are so important,” said Greenberg, standing with LMPD Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel.Watch Greenberg's full remarks below:He said he and the chief "will do everything possible" to heal those wounds.A major part of that will be Louisville's work with the DOJ on implementing 36 remedial improvements made in the report, which you can read in its entirety here.Pledging reform, Greenberg said, "To those people who were harmed, I'm sorry. We can and will do better."Gwinn-Villaroel also pledged to enact reforms in the LMPD.Several community members and protesters were outside for the media-only announcement. Many were those at the forefront of 2020 protests and calling for LMPD reform way before then. Other Kentucky leaders and parties involved spoke out too. U.S. Congressman Morgan McGarvey (D-KY) said, "I fully support the Department of Justice’s consent decree to collaboratively work with Louisville Metro, Louisville Metro Police Department, and the community to begin righting these harmful wrongs. Excessive use of force and racial profiling in the Louisville Metro Police Department will continue to plague our community until we take decisive action to create true, lasting change. We simply cannot afford to wait."Former Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer released a statement too. He said, in part, "Today is another important inflection point to honor the pain of 2020 by further acknowledging, and continuing to act on, the fact that our community deserves a new era of public safety. This era requires the leadership of the many good officers who have dedicated their lives to keep us safe and are committed to working in partnership with the community to develop a new form of constitutionally sound policing embraced by all our city’s residents."Today’s findings, paired with those from the independent audit by Hillard Heintze that I initiated in 2020, presents Louisville with an opportunity to be a national leader and a model in building a truly just public safety system," Fischer said. "I believe good police officers will welcome this report as an opportunity to more easily meet the oath they swore to protect and serve our community and improve their daily job performance and profession."Attorney for Breonna Taylor's family, Ben Crump, released the following statement. "The family of Breonna Taylor is encouraged by the findings released today by Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division revealing a pattern of biased policing and a long list of constitutional violations by the Louisville Metro Police Department," he said."These findings, and LMPD’s expected cooperation with the DOJ’s recommended remedial measures, will help protect the citizens of Louisville and shape its culture of policing," said Crump. "It’s steps like these, and involvement of the Attorney General and the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, that will move our nation forward and prevent future tragedies like the one that took the life of Breonna Taylor and the countless others who have been killed unnecessarily by law enforcement."Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron release the following:"My statement regarding the results of DOJ's investigation into Louisville Metro: The vast majority of Kentucky’s law enforcement community protects & serves the Commonwealth with dignity & honor, & I am thankful to these brave men & women who put their lives on the line day in & day out to keep our communities safe. We hope that the U.S. Department of Justice’s work with Louisville Metro and city officials will help address lingering concerns & better allow law enforcement to keep people safe."Gov. Andy Beshear also responded to the reports, saying:"Today's findings by the Department of Justice are concerning. My Hope is that everyone in Louisville will come together and see the findings of this report as an urgent opportunity to take intentional steps for positive, lasting change. I believe the DOJ findings can help achieve the goal of ensuring public safety and protecting everyone's rights." LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Mayor Craig Greenberg spoke during the Department of Justice's press conference Wednesday afternoon announcing civil rights violations by the Louisville Metro Police Department and city government.U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland led the announcements enumerating what they said were several civil rights violations. You can read about that here.
- [After killing of Breonna Taylor, feds find police discrimination | National | yaktrinews.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/after-killing-of-breonna-taylor-feds-find-police-discrimination-national-yaktrinews-com/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The U.S. Justice Department found Louisville police have engaged in a pattern of violating constitutional rights and discrimination against the Black community following an investigation prompted by the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor.Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the findings Wednesday, the same day the Justice Department announced it will review the Memphis Police Department policies on the use of force, de-escalation strategies and specialized units in response to the police beating death of Tyre Nichols. The 29-year-old motorist died Jan. 10, three days after his violent arrest. Tyre Nichols leans against a car Jan. 7 after a brutal attack by five Memphis Police officers in Memphis. City of Memphis via AP A ground mural depicts a portrait of Breonna Taylor on July 6, 2020, at Chambers Park in Annapolis, Md. Julio Cortez, Associated Press U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks during a news conference Wednesday at Louisville Metro Hall in Louisville, Ky. Timothy D. Easley, Associated Press Photos: One year of demonstrations in honor of Breonna Taylor APTOPIX Racial Injustice Taylor Mural Updated 10 hrs ago A ground mural depicting a portrait of Breonna Taylor is seen at Chambers Park, Monday, July 6, 2020, in Annapolis, Md. The mural honors Taylor, a 26-year old Black woman who was fatally shot by police in her Louisville, Ky., apartment. The artwork was a team effort by the Banneker-Douglass Museum, the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture, and Future History Now, a youth organization that focuses on mural projects. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez) Julio Cortez Storm Mystics Basketball Updated 10 hrs ago Members of the Seattle Storm stand in front of a photo of Breonna Taylor before a WNBA basketball game against the Washington Mystics Thursday, July 30, 2020, in Bradenton, Fla. Taylor was killed in her home by police officers. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara) Chris O'Meara Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago A billboard sponsored by O, The Oprah Magazine, is on display with with a photo of Breonna Taylor, Friday, Aug. 7, 2020 in Louisville, KY. Twenty-six billboards are going up across Louisville, demanding that the police officers involved in Taylor's death be arrested and charged. Taylor was shot multiple times March 13 when police officers burst into her Louisville apartment using a no-knock warrant during a narcotics investigation. No drugs were found. (AP Photo/Dylan T. Lovan) Dylan T. Lovan Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago A billboard sponsored by O, The Oprah Magazine, is on display with with a photo of Breonna Taylor, Friday, Aug. 7, 2020 in Louisville, KY. Twenty-six billboards are going up across Louisville, demanding that the police officers involved in Taylor's death be arrested and charged. Taylor was shot multiple times March 13 when police officers burst into her Louisville apartment using a no-knock warrant during a narcotics investigation. No drugs were found. (AP Photo/Dylan T. Lovan) Dylan T. Lovan Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago Black Lives Matter protesters march, Friday, Sept. 25, 2020, in Louisville. Breonna Taylor's family demanded Friday that Kentucky authorities release all body camera footage, police files and the transcripts of the grand jury hearings that led to no charges against police officers who killed the Black woman during a March drug raid at her apartment. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) Darron Cummings Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago FILE - In this Sept. 23, 2020, file photo, protesters speak in Louisville, Ky. Hours of material in the grand jury proceedings for Taylor’s fatal shooting by police have been made public on Friday, Oct. 2. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File) John Minchillo Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago FILE - In this Sept. 25, 2020, file photo,Breonna Taylor family attorney Ben Crump, center speaks during a news conference in Louisville, Ky. Hours of material in the grand jury proceedings for Taylor’s fatal shooting by police have been made public on Friday, Oct. 2. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings, File) Darron Cummings Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago Protesters speak, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. A grand jury has indicted one officer on criminal charges six months after Breonna Taylor was fatally shot by police in Kentucky. The jury presented its decision against fired officer Brett Hankison Wednesday to a judge in Louisville, where the shooting took place.(AP Photo/Darron Cummings) Darron Cummings APTOPIX Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago A woman speaks during a protest, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. A grand jury has indicted one officer on criminal charges six months after Breonna Taylor was fatally shot by police in Kentucky. The jury presented its decision against fired officer Brett Hankison Wednesday to a judge in Louisville, where the shooting took place. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) John Minchillo Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago A protester speaks, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. A grand jury has indicted one officer on criminal charges six months after Breonna Taylor was fatally shot by police in Kentucky. The jury presented its decision against fired officer Brett Hankison Wednesday to a judge in Louisville, where the shooting took place. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) Darron Cummings Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago Protesters react to gunfire, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. A police officer was shot in the evening. A grand jury has indicted one officer on criminal charges six months after Breonna Taylor was fatally shot by police in Kentucky. The jury presented its decision against fired officer Brett Hankison Wednesday to a judge in Louisville, where the shooting took place. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) John Minchillo Breonna Taylor-NYC Protest Updated 10 hrs ago Demonstrators march during a protest, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in New York, following a Kentucky grand jury's decision not to indict any police officers for the killing of Breonna Taylor. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez) Eduardo Munoz Alvarez Breonna Taylor-NYC Protest Updated 10 hrs ago Demonstrators march on the Williamsburg Bridge during a protest, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in New York, following a Kentucky grand jury's decision not to indict any police officers for the killing of Breonna Taylor. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez) Eduardo Munoz Alvarez Breonna Taylor Protests NYC Updated 10 hrs ago A woman carries a boy and a sign which reads, "Please don't make me a Breonna Taylor," as they watch protesters gather, late Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in the Brooklyn borough of New York, following a Kentucky grand jury's decision not to indict any police officers for the killing of Breonna Taylor. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E) Wong Maye-E APTOPIX Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago An armed counter-protester speaks with Black Lives Matter demonstrators, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. Authorities pleaded for calm while activists vowed to fight on Thursday in Kentucky's largest city, where a gunman wounded two police officers during anguished protests following the decision not to charge officers for killing Breonna Taylor. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) John Minchillo Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago A protester stands in Jefferson Square, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. Authorities pleaded for calm while activists vowed to fight on Thursday in Kentucky's largest city, where a gunman wounded two police officers during anguished protests following the decision not to charge officers for killing Breonna Taylor. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) John Minchillo Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago Rev. Dr. Charles Elliott Jr., speaks with demonstrators, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. Authorities pleaded for calm while activists vowed to fight on Thursday in Kentucky's largest city, where a gunman wounded two police officers during anguished protests following the decision not to charge officers for killing Breonna Taylor. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) John Minchillo Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago Protesters march over a barricade, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. Authorities pleaded for calm while activists vowed to fight on Thursday in Kentucky's largest city, where a gunman wounded two police officers during anguished protests following the decision not to charge officers for killing Breonna Taylor. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) John Minchillo Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago Protesters march, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. Authorities pleaded for calm while activists vowed to fight on Thursday in Kentucky's largest city, where a gunman wounded two police officers during anguished protests following the decision not to charge officers for killing Breonna Taylor. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) John Minchillo APTOPIX Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, right, listens to a news conference, Friday, Sept. 25, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. Family attorney Ben Crump is calling for the Kentucky attorney general to release the transcripts from the grand jury that decided not to charge any of the officers involved in the Black woman's death. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) Darron Cummings Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, marches with Black Lives Matter protesters, Friday, Sept. 25, 2020, in Louisville. Breonna Taylor's family demanded Friday that Kentucky authorities release all body camera footage, police files and the transcripts of the grand jury hearings that led to no charges against police officers who killed the Black woman during a March drug raid at her apartment. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) Darron Cummings Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago Black Lives Matter protesters march, Friday, Sept. 25, 2020, in Louisville. Breonna Taylor's family demanded Friday that Kentucky authorities release all body camera footage, police files and the transcripts of the grand jury hearings that led to no charges against police officers who killed the Black woman during a March drug raid at her apartment. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) Darron Cummings Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago People in cars speak to protesters, Friday, Sept. 25, 2020, in Louisville. Breonna Taylor's family demanded Friday that Kentucky authorities release all body camera footage, police files and the transcripts of the grand jury hearings that led to no charges against police officers who killed the Black woman during a March drug raid at her apartment. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) Darron Cummings APTOPIX Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago A woman reacts to news in the Breonna Taylor shooting, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. A grand jury has indicted one officer on criminal charges six months after Taylor was fatally shot by police in Kentucky. The jury presented its decision against fired officer Brett Hankison Wednesday to a judge in Louisville, where the shooting took place. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) Darron Cummings APTOPIX Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago A woman reacts to news in the Breonna Taylor shooting, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. A grand jury has indicted one officer on criminal charges six months after Taylor was fatally shot by police in Kentucky. The jury presented its decision against fired officer Brett Hankison Wednesday to a judge in Louisville, where the shooting took place. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) Darron Cummings Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago People gather in Jefferson Square awaiting word on charges against police officers, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. A grand jury has indicted one officer on criminal charges six months after Breonna Taylor was fatally shot by police in Kentucky. The jury presented its decision against fired officer Brett Hankison Wednesday to a judge in Louisville, where the shooting took place.(AP Photo/John Minchillo) John Minchillo APTOPIX Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago Louisville police detain a man after a group marched in protest over a lack of charges against Louisville police in Breonna Taylor's death, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. A grand jury indicted one officer on criminal charges six months after Taylor was fatally shot by police in Kentucky. Prosecutors said two officers who fired their weapons at Taylor were justified in using force to protect themselves after they faced gunfire from her boyfriend. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) John Minchillo APTOPIX Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago Police and protesters converge during a demonstration, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. A grand jury has indicted one officer on criminal charges six months after Breonna Taylor was fatally shot by police in Kentucky. The jury presented its decision against fired officer Brett Hankison Wednesday to a judge in Louisville, where the shooting took place. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) John Minchillo Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago Police detain protesters, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. A grand jury has indicted one officer on criminal charges six months after Breonna Taylor was fatally shot by police in Kentucky. The jury presented its decision against fired officer Brett Hankison Wednesday to a judge in Louisville, where the shooting took place. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) John Minchillo Racial Injustice Breonna Taylor Updated 10 hrs ago Protesters chant, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. A grand jury has indicted one officer on criminal charges six months after Breonna Taylor was fatally shot by police in Kentucky. The jury presented its decision against fired officer Brett Hankison Wednesday to a judge in Louisville, where the shooting took place. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) Darron Cummings
- [Louisville police use excessive force, invalid warrants and discriminatory stops, DOJ review finds](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/louisville-police-use-excessive-force-invalid-warrants-and-discriminatory-stops-doj-review-finds/) - WASHINGTON — The Louisville Metro Police Department and the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro government engaged in a pattern of unconstitutional behavior by routinely using excessive force, conducting searches based on invalid warrants and unlawfully discriminating against Black people in enforcement activities, a wide-ranging federal investigation found.Breonna Taylor.Family photoThe review, conducted by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, also found that police violate the rights of those "engaged in protected speech critical of policing" and that some officers used racial slurs about Black citizens. The city has reached an agreement in principle to resolve the constitutional violations found by federal investigators, the Justice Department said.The report is similar to those issued in several other cities, including Ferguson, Missouri, after the death of Michael Brown in 2014. The Trump administration backed away from federal investigations into unconstitutional policing, and the investigation into Louisville was announced early in the Biden administration, in 2021.The Louisville investigation came in the aftermath of the botched police raid that led to the death of Breonna Taylor in March 2020. Four Louisville officers were federally charged in August in connection with Taylor's death. DOJ's pattern-and-practice investigation was not a criminal probe, but rather looked at broader, systemic issues in the police department."Breonna Taylor was a symptom of problems that we have had for years," one Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) leader told federal investigators. The report said that police officers' actions "do not happen in a vacuum" and noted that "segregation, poverty, and violence" affected policing in the racially segregated city. The police department, which is 81% white, was charged with patrolling neighborhoods that were predominately Black.March 8, 202302:10The report notes that officers "have difficult jobs" and said that the LMPD and Louisville/Jefferson County Metro government "have not given officers and other employees the support and resources they need to do their jobs effectively and lawfully," and that they had "deficient training, substandard facilities and equipment, and inadequate support for mental health and wellness.""For years, LMPD has practiced an aggressive style of policing that it deploys selectively, especially against Black people, but also against vulnerable people throughout the city," the report states. "LMPD cites people for minor offenses, like wide turns and broken taillights, while serious crimes like sexual assault and homicide go unsolved.""Some officers demonstrate disrespect for the people they are sworn to protect," the report continues. "Some officers have videotaped themselves throwing drinks at pedestrians from their cars; insulted people with disabilities; and called Black people 'monkeys,' 'animal,' and 'boy.' This conduct erodes community trust, and the unlawful practices of LMPD and Louisville Metro undermine public safety."Political bias was baked into LMPD, the report found. One July 2018 department document said the extremist Three Percenters group “believe law enforcement has been handcuffed by politics and want to help us do what they think is right,” and adopted the Three Percenters' description of themselves as “patriotic citizens who love their country, their freedoms, and their liberty.”In a press conference Wednesday morning, Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said he and Louisville Metro Police interim Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel "are taking action to reform and improve how our police department operates."“The U.S. Department of Justice is demanding that we take action. The people of Louisville are demanding that we take action," said Greenberg, who along with Gwinn-Villaroel was sworn-in in January 2023.Aug. 5, 202205:07Gwinn-Villaroel said the LMPD are committed to working "collaboratively and earnestly with all necessary parties" to find solutions., saying, "This is a challenging and pivotal point for our city, our department, and our officers."Kentucky state Rep. Keturah Herron, a Democrat who pushed for Breonna’s Law, which restricts the use of no-knock warrants in the state said a review of Louisville police practices was a long time coming.“The things that are found in this investigation are things that the community has been saying not since Breonna Taylor, but for decades in Louisville,” Herron said. “To be able to finally get some type of acknowledgment that LMPD has been terrorizing the black community specifically but then also those with disabilities … it’s a relief. But this is really now where the work starts over again.”
- [Family of Breonna Taylor react to Department of Justice's findings in LMPD investigation](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/family-of-breonna-taylor-react-to-department-of-justices-findings-in-lmpd-investigation/) - The family of Breonna Taylor is reacting to the news of what federal officials uncovered just days before the three-year anniversary of her death. LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Two years after a federal civil rights probe into the patterns and practices of Louisville Metro Police was launched, reaction has been swift from the community. The family of Breonna Taylor is reacting to the news just days before the three-year anniversary of her death. This investigation is separate from the Department of Justice’s investigation into Taylor’s death, but she was still on the minds of many Wednesday. Attorney General Merrick Garland mentioned Taylor’s name during his appearance in Louisville saying they were told by a Metro Police officials that her death was a symptom of bigger problems within the department. Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, said while Wednesday marked a big day, it is not a vindication. She said the community will not know for sure if changes have truly been made until further down the road. “It's easy to say it. Until we actually start using those policies and procedures it'll just keep repeating itself,” she said. “The only thing that comes from losing her daughter is that it could prevent others from the same fate," Attorney Lonita Baker said. "This solidified today. She should be able to pick up the phone today and call Breonna.” The family’s attorney also noted the report showed what they already believed – that Louisville Metro Police allows bad behavior to go on without recourse. They pointed again to the fact this was a patterns and practices investigation, not a look at one incident. "This didn't start with Tae-Ahn Lea or Breonna Taylor," Baker said. "These types of things don't happen unless it's absolutely systemic," attorney Sam Aguiar said. "We're not talking about a few rotten apples in a police department, we're talking about a culture of cover up and collusion. And finally the Department of Justice puts together this report." Attorney said they are encouraged to see the Department of Justice stepping in, and will be watching closely as next steps are implemented. "I'm glad for one that the Department of Justice is going to be here, that there is going to be a consent decree, that there are going to be monitors making sure we're not just talking lip service about reform, but that we actually get reform," Baker said. Tae-Ahn Lea, who was involved in a traffic stop with LMPD in 2018, also spoke out Wednesday. A judge ruled in 2022 that LMPD violated Lea's rights, after pulling him over for making an improper wide turn. "I'm glad the DOJ spoke up and said what we've all been saying for years," he said. "Everything the community knew, finally someone investigated and exposed it all." "To finally have that behind you, I'd like to see what the future looks like for Louisville," Lea added. Monday is the three-year anniversary of Taylor's death. Palmer said she always knew her daughter would be great, but that it shouldn't have come to this. "I don't even know what to say to that. I don't even know what to think to know this thing should have never happened and it took three years for anybody else to say that it shouldn't have," she said. Reporters also asked the family's attorneys if there is a prospect of federal prosecutions against additional officers in the Breonna Taylor case. They said it isn't likely, but prosecutions could happen at the state and local level. ►Make it easy to keep up-to-date with more stories like this. Download the WHAS11 News app now. For Apple or Android users. Have a news tip? Email assign@whas11.com, or visit our Facebook page or Twitter feed. [embedded content]
- [DOJ announces finding of civil rights probe after Breonna Taylor's killing - ABC News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/doj-announces-finding-of-civil-rights-probe-after-breonna-taylors-killing-abc-news/) - A nearly two-year civil rights investigation into the Louisville, Kentucky, police department and Louisville Metro Government, touched off by the killing of Breonna Taylor, found the city and law enforcement engaged in a pattern of unlawful and discriminatory conduct, depriving people of their constitutional liberties, the Department of Justice announced on Wednesday."This conduct is unacceptable and it is heartbreaking," Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a press conference, outlining a damning portrait of the Louisville police as he announced the findings of the civil rights investigation."It erodes the community trust necessary for effective policing. It is an affront to the vast majority of officers who put their lives on the line every day to serve Louisville with honor and it is an affront to the people of Louisville who deserve better," Garland said.He said that Louisville has signed an agreement in principle with the DOJ to negotiate toward a legally binding consent decree that will include the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee a series of reforms to address the problems that investigators uncovered.The DOJ plans to hold a virtual community meeting on Wednesday night to discuss their findings with Louisville residents.The department launched its pattern or practice investigation into the Louisville police in April 2021, more than a year after the botched raid that resulted in Taylor's shooting death in her home, which spurred nationwide protests along with the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota.According to the DOJ's report released Wednesday, one police leader told investigators that Taylor's death "was a symptom of problems that we have had for years."The DOJ's review, based on hundreds of interviews, thousands of documents and thousands of hours of body-worn camera footage, found Louisville officers routinely used excessive force in arrests, including unjustified neck restraints and wrongful use of police dogs and tasers.The police department also conducted searches based on "invalid warrants," the review found, and officers unlawfully executed search warrants without knocking and announcing.A photo of Breonna Taylor is seen among other photos of women who have lost their lives as a result of violence during the 2nd Annual Defend Black Women March in Black Lives Matter Plaza, July 30, 2022, in Washington, D.C.Leigh Vogel/Getty Images, FILE"For years, [the Louisville police department] has practiced an aggressive style of policing that it deploys selectively, especially against Black people, but also against vulnerable people throughout the city," the report stated. "Some officers have videotaped themselves throwing drinks at pedestrians from their cars; insulted people with disabilities; and called Black people 'monkeys,' 'animal,' and 'boy.'"The federal review found police officers conducted unlawful stops and arrests of suspects and that the department routinely discriminated against Black people in their enforcement actions. The department and city also were found to have discriminated against people who had behavioral health disabilities when they were in crisis, the report stated.Investigators singled out members of a specialized group in the department that was once called the "Viper Unit." Those officers were found to have routinely made dubious traffic stops in Black neighborhoods and violated residents' Fourth Amendment rights, according to the report."The unit's activities were part of an overall enforcement approach that resulted in significant and unlawful racial disparities," Garland said at the press conference.The DOJ investigation further found that Louisville police leaders "endorsed and defended" unlawful conduct by their officers, with some supervisors accused of defending instances of obviously excessive force or search warrants that lacked probable cause.Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks during a press conference on the Justice Departments findings of the civil rights investigation into the Louisville Metro Police Department and Louisville Metro Government, March 8, 2023, in Louisville, Ky.Luke Sharrett/AFP via Getty ImagesLast August, Garland announced civil rights charges against four Louisville police officers for a range of alleged offenses in connection with Taylor's death, including unlawful conspiracies, unconstitutional use of force and obstruction.One of those officers, former Louisville Detective Kelly Goodlett, has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to violate Taylor's civil rights while the others, Sgt. Kyle Meany and Joshua Jaynes and Brett Hankison, both former detectives, have pleaded not guilty.The DOJ's Civil Rights Division head, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, said at Wednesday's press conference that their investigation found disturbing disparities in how Black residents were treated by police in comparison with white residents.Black drivers were nearly four times as likely as white drivers to be cited for improperly tinted windows and nearly five times as likely as white drivers to be cited for improper tags, with Black drivers almost 50% more likely to be searched when stopped by police in their cars than white people, Clarke said.Louisville police brought charges against Black people at higher rates than white people for the same misdemeanor offenses, she said."For example, [the Louisville police department] charges Black people for loitering more than four times the rate of white people, for disorderly conduct two-and-a-half times the rate of white people and for littering at three times the rate of white people," Clarke said. "This pattern of racial discrimination fuels distrust and impedes the community's confidence in the [police] and their law enforcement operations."The DOJ expects to continue working with Louisville police and the city government on a host of reforms to their law enforcement practices, including some that have already been implemented in the years following Taylor's killing.The newly released report outlines more than 30 recommendations for the department and city to implement, including structural changes to its use-of-force policies and reporting and an overhaul of their training protocols.
- [After Breonna Taylor shooting, Justice Dept. finds pattern of violations - KWTX](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/after-breonna-taylor-shooting-justice-dept-finds-pattern-of-violations-kwtx/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department found Louisville police have engaged in a pattern of violating constitutional rights and discrimination against the Black community following an investigation prompted by the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor.Attorney General Merrick Garland made the announcement Wednesday. A Justice Department report found the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government and Louisville Metro Police Department “engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law.”The report said the Louisville police department “discriminates against Black people in its enforcement activities,” uses excessive force and conducts searches based on invalid warrants. It also said the department violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech, like the street protests in the city in the summer of 2020 after Taylor’s death. Garland said some officers have assaulted people with disabilities and called Black people disparaging names.“This conduct is unacceptable, it is heartbreaking,” Garland said. “It erodes the community trust necessary for effective policing and it is an affront to the vast majority of officers who put their lives on the line every day to serve Louisville with honor.”The sweeping probe announced in April 2021 is known as a “pattern or practice” investigation — examining whether there is a pattern of unconstitutional or unlawful policing inside the department. The city will sign a negotiated agreement with the Justice Department and a federal officer will monitor the progress.FILE - A ground mural depicting a portrait of Breonna Taylor is seen at Chambers Park in Annapolis, Md., July 6, 2020. The U.S. Justice Department has found Louisville police have engaged in a pattern of violating constitutional rights following an investigation prompted by the fatal police shooting of Taylor. The announcement was made Wednesday, March 8, 2023, by Attorney General Merrick Garland. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)(AP)Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, said Wednesday that she remains upset that it took so long to feel some vindication.“It’s heartbreaking to know that everything you’ve been saying from day one has to be said again,” Palmer said.One of Palmer’s attorneys, Lonita Baker, said she was encouraged by the Justice Department’s findings, but it’s “unfortunate that it took the murder of Breonna Taylor and protest after protest after protest through 2020 to come to this point.”Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said the city “has wounds that are not yet healed.”“We have to come to terms with where we’ve been, so we can get to where we want to be,” Greenberg said.Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was roused from her bed by police who came through the door using a battering ram after midnight on March 13, 2020. Three officers fired shots after Taylor’s boyfriend, fearing an intruder, shot an officer in the leg. Taylor was struck several times and died at the scene.The warrant used to enter her home is now part of a separate federal criminal investigation, and one former Louisville officer has already pleaded guilty to helping falsify information on the warrant. No drugs were found in Taylor’s home. Two more officers are charged in the warrant probe, and a third, Brett Hankison, is charged with endangering Taylor and her neighbors with his shots into her apartment.The report said Black motorists were more likely to be searched during traffic stops, and officers used neck restraints, police dogs and Tasers against people who posed no imminent threat. Garland cited one incident where two officers threw drinks at pedestrians and recorded the encounters. Those incidents happened in 2018 and 2019. Both officers are facing federal charges.NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson applauded the Justice Department findings but said federal lawmakers have yet to step up and enact wider police reforms.“While Congress continues to fail our country with police reform, at least the Department of Justice is taking their jobs seriously. Today marks a meaningful step toward police accountability and — should Congress now decide to step up — police reform,” Johnson’s statement said.He added that the group lauded Garland and the Department of Justice for continuing a “pursuit of justice” and added, “Congress should take a page from their book, do their jobs, and pass the legislation necessary to save innocent lives.”Louisville police have undergone five leadership changes since the Taylor shooting, and new Mayor Craig Greenberg is interviewing candidates for the next chief. The city has settled a number of lawsuits related to the incident, including a $12 million payment to Taylor’s family that ended a wrongful death lawsuit.Garland also mentioned some reforms the city has undergone since Taylor’s death, including a city law banning the use of “no-knock” warrants in 2020. The warrants are typically used in surprise drug raids. The city also started a pilot program that aims to send behavioral health professionals to some 911 calls, expanded community violence prevention efforts and sought to support health and wellness for officers, the report said.Also Wednesday, the Justice Department announced it will review the Memphis Police Department policies on the use of force, de-escalation strategies and specialized units in response to the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols during an arrest. The 29-year-old motorist died Jan. 10, three days after his violent arrest.Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
- [Louisville police department 'discriminates against Black people,' Breonna Taylor probe finds](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/louisville-police-department-discriminates-against-black-people-breonna-taylor-probe-finds/) - The U.S. Justice Department has found Louisville police have engaged in a pattern of violating constitutional rights following an investigation prompted by the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor.The announcement was made Wednesday by Attorney General Merrick Garland. A Justice Department report found the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government and Louisville Metro Police Department “engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law.”The report said the Louisville police department “discriminates against Black people in its enforcement activities,” uses excessive force and conducts searches based on invalid warrants. It also said the department violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech, like the street protests in the city in the summer of 2020.“This conduct is unacceptable, it is heartbreaking,” Garland said.The sweeping probe announced in April 2021 is known as a “pattern or practice” investigation — examining whether there is a pattern of unconstitutional or unlawful policing inside the department.Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was roused from her bed by police who came through the door using a battering ram after midnight on March 13, 2020. Three officers fired shots after Taylor’s boyfriend, fearing an intruder, shot an officer in the leg. Taylor was struck several times and died at the scene.The warrant used to enter her home is now part of a separate federal criminal investigation, and one former Louisville officer has already pleaded guilty to helping falsify information on the warrant. No drugs were found in Taylor’s home.Louisville police have undergone five leadership changes since the Taylor shooting, and new Mayor Craig Greenberg is interviewing candidates for the next chief. The city has settled a number of lawsuits related to the incident, including a $12 million payment to Taylor’s family that ended a wrongful death lawsuit.Since 2020 the city has banned no-knock warrants, started a program that aims to send behavioral health professionals to some 911 calls, expanded community violence prevention efforts and sought to support health and wellness for officers, the report said.
- [The Police Force That Killed Breonna Taylor Routinely Violated Rights Of Citizens, The ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/the-police-force-that-killed-breonna-taylor-routinely-violated-rights-of-citizens-the/) - For years, members of the Louisville Metro Police Department violated the rights of the public and discriminated against Black people, according to a federal investigation that was launched after officers fatally shot Breonna Taylor in her home, sparking widespread demonstrations and protests.The investigation, the results of which were announced by the Justice Department on Wednesday, found that Louisville police subjected people to unlawful tasings, beatings, and dog bites; sought unjustified search warrants and conducted no-knock warrants illegally; violated the rights of protesters; unlawfully searched and detained people; and discriminated against Black people and others with disabilities.Police "engaged in a pattern or practice of conduct" that violated the Constitution and federal law, the Department of Justice said in a report that details the findings of a nearly two-year investigation into the LMPD and the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government."Our investigation found that the police department and city government failed to adequately protect and serve the people of Louisville, breached the public's trust, and discriminated against Black people," Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said at a news conference.The Department of Justice also found failures in the LMPD's response to domestic violence and sexual assault cases, including when the officers themselves faced allegations of sexual misconduct or domestic abuse.The LMPD first came under national scrutiny in March 2020 after officers shot and killed Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, while executing a no-knock search warrant at her home in the middle of the night. Her death, along with George Floyd's murder by Minneapolis police two months later, sparked an international reckoning on racism and police brutality.The Department of Justice launched a probe into the LMPD and Louisville Metro Government in April 2021. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the conclusions in the report prove that Taylor's killing was a "symptom" of problems in the LMPD.In a statement through their attorney, Ben Crump, Taylor's family said they were "encouraged" by the findings that revealed "a pattern of biased policing and a long list of constitutional violations" by the LMPD.Among the Justice Department's findings: that the LMPD frequently used the pretense of minor traffic stops in Black neighborhoods to investigate other crimes, and that officers treated people with disdain and disrespect."Some have videotaped themselves throwing drinks at pedestrians from their cars, insulted people with disabilities, and call Black people 'monkeys,' 'animal,' and 'boy,'" Garland said. "This conduct is unacceptable."The investigation found that officers stopped and cited Black drivers for minor traffic offenses at far higher rates than white drivers. Black people were also charged with misdemeanors more often than white people, according to the report.One Black resident with a behavioral health disability had more than 25 police encounters in less than two years, Clarke said. Police needlessly escalated the situation in those encounters, used unreasonable force when dealing with him, and even mocked him."The man ultimately died in a Louisville Metro detention center after he had once again been arrested by LMPD," Clarke said.Often, the LMPD "responds aggressively to people criticizing the police," both in daily encounters and during lawful demonstrations — even prior to the racial justice protests in 2020, the Department of Justice said.Crucially, the city noted that it does not acknowledge that there is a pattern of constitutional violations in police conduct. However, in an effort to address the issues, the LMPD and Department of Justice have reached an agreement in principle, which is typically the precursor to a legally binding contract."The agreement in principle only represents a framework and in the coming months we will use the framework to negotiate a comprehensive consent decree with the city that will be filed in federal court," Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said.The Justice Department said it will be looking into each incident uncovered in the probe; some are known to authorities and have been investigated, and some may not have. (The four former officers who conducted the raid on Taylor's apartment are charged with federal crimes in a separate case.)“This investigation did not involve criminal inquiry into any individual officers. We want to underscore that this investigation did not focus on isolated incidents. It was focused on uncovering systems that were broken and patterns of misconduct,” Clarke said.LMPD Police Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel said the Justice Department's findings marked an "extremely challenging and pivotal point" for the city."We are committed to ensuring police practices not only reflect constitutional principles, but the values of the communities served by LMPD," she said, before closing out with a Martin Luther King Jr. quote.
- [DOJ Breonna Taylor investigation reveals Louisville police had 'pattern of violating rights'](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/09/doj-breonna-taylor-investigation-reveals-louisville-police-had-pattern-of-violating-rights/) - Department of Justice Breonna Taylor investigation reveals Louisville police had 'pattern of violating rights' Skip to content ✕ × Close Ad
- [After Breonna Taylor fatal shooting, Justice Department finds Louisville police have pattern ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/09/after-breonna-taylor-fatal-shooting-justice-department-finds-louisville-police-have-pattern/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The U.S. Justice Department found Louisville police have engaged in a pattern of violating constitutional rights and discrimination against the Black community following an investigation prompted by the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor.Attorney General Merrick Garland made the announcement Wednesday. A Justice Department report found the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government and Louisville Metro Police Department “engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law.”AdvertisementThe report said the Louisville police department “discriminates against Black people in its enforcement activities,” uses excessive force and conducts searches based on invalid warrants. It also said the department violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech, like the street protests in the city in the summer of 2020 after Taylor’s death. Garland said some officers have assaulted people with disabilities and called Black people disparaging names.“This conduct is unacceptable, it is heartbreaking,” Garland said. “It erodes the community trust necessary for effective policing and it is an affront to the vast majority of officers who put their lives on the line every day to serve Louisville with honor.”AdvertisementThe sweeping probe announced in April 2021 is known as a “pattern or practice” investigation — examining whether there is a pattern of unconstitutional or unlawful policing inside the department. The city will sign a negotiated agreement with the Justice Department and a federal officer will monitor the progress.Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, said Wednesday that she remains upset that it took so long to feel some vindication.“It’s heartbreaking to know that everything you’ve been saying from day one has to be said again,” Palmer said.One of Palmer’s attorneys, Lonita Baker, said she was encouraged by the Justice Department’s findings, but it’s “unfortunate that it took the murder of Breonna Taylor and protest after protest after protest through 2020 to come to this point.”Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said the city “has wounds that are not yet healed.”“We have to come to terms with where we’ve been, so we can get to where we want to be,” Greenberg said.Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was roused from her bed by police who came through the door using a battering ram after midnight on March 13, 2020. Three officers fired shots after Taylor’s boyfriend, fearing an intruder, shot an officer in the leg. Taylor was struck several times and died at the scene.The warrant used to enter her home is now part of a separate federal criminal investigation, and one former Louisville officer has already pleaded guilty to helping falsify information on the warrant. No drugs were found in Taylor’s home. Two more officers are charged in the warrant probe, and a third, Brett Hankison, is charged with endangering Taylor and her neighbors with his shots into her apartment.AdvertisementThe report said Black motorists were more likely to be searched during traffic stops, and officers used neck restraints, police dogs and Tasers against people who posed no imminent threat. Garland cited one incident where two officers threw drinks at pedestrians and recorded the encounters. Those incidents happened in 2018 and 2019. Both officers are facing federal charges.NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson applauded the Justice Department findings but said federal lawmakers have yet to step up and enact wider police reforms.“While Congress continues to fail our country with police reform, at least the Department of Justice is taking their jobs seriously. Today marks a meaningful step toward police accountability and — should Congress now decide to step up — police reform,” Johnson’s statement said.He added that the group lauded Garland and the Department of Justice for continuing a “pursuit of justice” and added, “Congress should take a page from their book, do their jobs, and pass the legislation necessary to save innocent lives.”Louisville police have undergone five leadership changes since the Taylor shooting, and new Mayor Craig Greenberg is interviewing candidates for the next chief. The city has settled a number of lawsuits related to the incident, including a $12 million payment to Taylor’s family that ended a wrongful death lawsuit.Garland also mentioned some reforms the city has undergone since Taylor’s death, including a city law banning the use of “no-knock” warrants in 2020. The warrants are typically used in surprise drug raids. The city also started a pilot program that aims to send behavioral health professionals to some 911 calls, expanded community violence prevention efforts and sought to support health and wellness for officers, the report said.AdvertisementAlso Wednesday, the Justice Department announced it will review the Memphis Police Department policies on the use of force, de-escalation strategies and specialized units in response to the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols during an arrest. The 29-year-old motorist died Jan. 10, three days after his violent arrest.
- [DOJ Probe Sparked by Breonna Taylor's Death Faults Louisville for Illegal Policing - WSJ](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/09/doj-probe-sparked-by-breonna-taylors-death-faults-louisville-for-illegal-policing-wsj/) - .css-j6808u{margin-left:10px;margin-right:10px;}.css-1elqs3z-Box{margin-bottom:var(--spacing-spacer-4);display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-1xk85qb-BreadcrumbsWrapper{font-size:var(--typography-summary-font-size-s);font-family:var(--font-font-stack-retina-narrow);font-weight:var(--typography-summary-standard-s-font-weight);text-transform:uppercase;}@media print{.css-1xk85qb-BreadcrumbsWrapper nav ul{margin-left:0px;}.css-1xk85qb-BreadcrumbsWrapper nav li{font-size:var(--typography-summary-font-size-s);padding-left:0px;color:var(--secondary-text-color);}.css-1xk85qb-BreadcrumbsWrapper nav li a:after{content:'';}.css-1xk85qb-BreadcrumbsWrapper a{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;color:var(--color-black);border-bottom:none;}.css-1xk85qb-BreadcrumbsWrapper nav li a{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;content:'';}}.css-fuc15b-List{list-style-type:none;margin:0;padding:0;}.css-6yyv02-Breadcrumb{display:inline;color:var(--interactive-text-color);}.css-e8qa5r-Link{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;color:inherit;}.css-e8qa5r-Link:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}U.S..css-bsrkcm-Box{margin-bottom:var(--spacing-spacer-8);}.css-1lvqw7f-StyledHeadline{margin:0px;font-size:var(--typography-headline-standard-xxl-font-size);line-height:var(--typography-headline-standard-xxl-line-height);font-family:var(--typography-headline-standard-xxl-font-family);font-weight:var(--typography-headline-standard-xxl-font-weight);color:var(--headline-font-color);}.css-1lvqw7f-StyledHeadline a{color:inherit;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1lvqw7f-StyledHeadline a:hover{color:var(--headline-link-hover-color);}.css-mosdo-Dek-Dek{margin:0px;color:var(--secondary-text-color);font-size:var(--typography-subheading-standard-m-font-size);line-height:var(--typography-subheading-standard-m-line-height);font-family:var(--typography-subheading-standard-m-font-family);font-weight:var(--typography-subheading-standard-m-font-weight);}Findings in review launched after 2020 killing come as federal investigation begins into Tyre Nichols’s death in Memphis
- [Justice Department Announces 'Pattern' of Civil Rights Violations by Louisville Police](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/09/justice-department-announces-pattern-of-civil-rights-violations-by-louisville-police/) - 'Unconstitutional' Investigation spurred by Breonna Taylor's death finds police violated constitutional rights including "using excessive force, unlawfully discriminating against Black people, conducting searches based on invalid warrants" The U.S. Justice Department announced Wednesday that the Louisville police engaged in “a pattern” of civil rights violations following an investigation into the police department in the aftermath of the shooting death of Breonna Taylor. Among the Justice Department’s findings were that the Louisville Metro Police Department used “excessive force, including unjustified neck restraints and the unreasonable use of police dogs and tasers,” conducted searches based on invalid warrants, and executed no-knock warrants (both of which ultimately resulted in Taylor’s death), and unlawfully discriminated against Black people. “The Justice Department has concluded that there is reasonable cause to believe that Louisville Metro and LMPD engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the constitutional rights of the residents of Louisville — including by using excessive force, unlawfully discriminating against Black people, conducting searches based on invalid warrants, and violating the rights of those engaged in protected speech critical of policing,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement Wednesday. “This unacceptable and unconstitutional conduct erodes the community trust necessary for effective policing. It is also an affront to the vast majority of officers who put their lives on the line to serve Louisville with honor. And it is an affront to the people of Louisville who deserve better. The Justice Department will work closely with Louisville Metro and LMPD to negotiate toward a consent decree and durable reforms that protect both the safety and civil rights of Louisville’s residents.” The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division opened its investigation on April 26, 2021, 13 months after Taylor was killed; Police fatally shot Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room technician and Black woman, while she was asleep in bed during the March 13, 2020 raid. Her killing sparked nationwide protests. Trending The Justice Department’s investigation into the Louisville police department is separate from the federal case against four now-former cops involved in Taylor’s death. In addition to the law banning no-knock warrants named after Taylor, the Justice Department identified other “remedial measures that the department believes are necessary to fully address its findings,” and has “entered into an agreement in principle with Louisville Metro and LMPD, which have committed to resolving the department’s findings through a court-enforceable consent decree with an independent monitor, rather than contested litigation.”
- [Louisville police failed to protect Black people, inquiry launched after Breonna Taylor death finds](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/09/louisville-police-failed-to-protect-black-people-inquiry-launched-after-breonna-taylor-death-finds/) - Louisville police failed to protect Black people, inquiry launched after Breonna Taylor death findsMerrick Garland condemns ‘unacceptable’ police conduct after review concludes officers violated residents’ civil rightsLouisville police engaged in unlawful practices that violated residents’ civil rights and discriminated against Black people and people with behavioral health deficiencies, the US justice department concluded on Wednesday following an investigation prompted by the killing of Breonna Taylor in a botched police raid in 2020.The city of Louisville agreed to a consent decree to reform policing practices.In March 2020, Taylor, 26 and an emergency medical technician studying to become a nurse, was roused from sleep by police who entered her apartment using a battering ram. Thinking it was a home invasion, Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired a gun once. Police opened fire, killing Taylor.One in 20 US homicides are committed by police – and the numbers aren’t fallingRead moreThe no-knock warrant was part of a narcotics investigation. No drugs were found. A grand jury declined to charge officers. Civil rights charges were brought against four. The city agreed to pay $2m to settle suits brought by Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker.Coming shortly before the killing of George Floyd by officers in Minneapolis, Taylor’s death fueled protests against police brutality and for systemic reform.The justice department’s civil rights division has now concluded that Louisville police and city government “failed to adequately protect and serve and discriminated against Black people” and deployed “unjustified neck restraints” and “unreasonable use of police dogs and Tasers”.Announcing the findings, the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, said officers had “demonstrated disrespect for the people they were sworn to protect”, some videotaping themselves “throwing drinks at pedestrians from their cars, insulting people with disabilities, and calling Black people, ‘monkeys, animal and boy’.“This conduct is unacceptable. It’s heartbreaking,” Garland said, in Louisville. “It erodes the community trust necessary for effective policing … it is an affront to the people of Louisville who deserve better.”Police routinely engaged in “unjustified” no-knock warrants that defied federal law and put “ordinary citizens in harm’s way”, said Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for civil rights, adding that officers also sought “overly broad” warrants that swept up people with remote connections to suspected criminal activity.Louisville police disproportionately stopped Black drivers for minor traffic offenses. Black drivers were twice as likely to be cited for having a taillight out as white drivers, four times as likely to be cited for improperly tinted windows and nearly five times as likely to be cited for improper tags.Black drivers were also 50% more likely to be searched when stopped. Louisville police charged Black drivers at higher rates.Disparate policing also influenced who was cited for non-violent offenses. Black residents were charged at higher rates than white people for the same misdemeanor offenses, Clarke said. The report noted that Black residents were four times as likely to be charged with loitering as white residents and roughly three times as likely to be cited for disorderly conduct and littering.Clarke said police often responded “aggressively to people criticizing the police, both in routine encounters and during lawful demonstrations” before and after Taylor’s death.“The findings are deeply troubling and sobering,” said Vanita Gupta, US associate attorney general. “We are committed to working with Louisville on a path forward to constitutional policing and stronger police community trust.”The city and police agreed to 36 remedial measures, building on reform efforts after Taylor’s death. The city has prohibited no-knock warrants and dispatched behavioral health specialists to scenes involving mental health episodes. Officer training and wellness support have been revamped.The Louisville mayor, Craig Greenberg, sworn in two months ago, apologized to residents for an “unacceptable and a betrayal of the public’s trust”.“Today marks a new day for the people of Louisville,” he said.She asked the police to help her husband. They killed him insteadRead moreClarke noted that unlawful practices were permitted because of a “lack of effective management, training, and accountability”, adding that a “pattern of racial discrimination fuels distrust”.The civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents the family of Breonna Taylor and others affected by police brutality, said Taylor’s family was “encouraged” by the justice department report.“These findings, and LMPD’s expected cooperation with … recommended remedial measures, will help protect the citizens of Louisville and shape its culture of policing,” Crump said.“It’s steps like these, and involvement of the attorney general and the DoJ’s civil rights division, that will move our nation forward and prevent future tragedies like the one that took the life of Breonna Taylor and the countless others who have been killed unnecessarily by law enforcement.”The justice department also announced a review of “certain policies and practices” of the Memphis police department, in the wake of the beating death earlier this year of Tyre Nichols at the hands of officers.The review came at the request of the mayor, Jim Strickland, and police chief, Cerelyn J Davis. It will focus on “policies, practices, training, data and processes related to MPD’s use of force, de-escalation and specialized units”, the justice department said.In the Nichols case, five Black officers have been charged with murder and other charges. Four fire department employees were also charged, NBC News reported. On Tuesday, Memphis’s chief legal officer told city councilors more than a dozen fire and police department employees had been fired. Officials said they would release 20 hours of additional video and audio.The justice department will review the use of specialized police units across the US, an issue civil rights advocates have called for since Nichols’s death.Officers involved in Nichols’s death were members of a now disbanded Scorpion unit, whose aim was to target violent offenders in areas beset by crime.In Louisville, Garland said, members of a Viper unit tasked with tackling violent crime “frequently made pretextual traffic stops in Black neighborhoods”. State and federal courts found that officers in the unit violated residents’ constitutional rights.“The unit’s activities were part of an overall enforcement approach that resulted in significant and unlawful racial disparities,” Garland said. “LMPD’s conduct has undermined its public safety mission and strained its relationship with the community it’s meant to protect and serve.”TopicsBreonna TaylorUS policingKentuckynewsReuse this content
- [Justice Dept. Says Louisville PD Had Misconduct For Years Before Breonna Taylor Killing](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/09/justice-dept-says-louisville-pd-had-misconduct-for-years-before-breonna-taylor-killing/) - UPDATE 1:30 PM PT -- Breonna Taylor's mom weighed in after the DOJ released its findings of misconduct within the Louisville Police Department ... adding it's heartbreaking it took years after her daughter's death to acknowledge what she's been saying all along. UPDATE Play video content WDRB News The Justice Department has released its findings
- [After Breonna Taylor shooting, Justice Department finds a pattern of violations in Louisville](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/09/after-breonna-taylor-shooting-justice-department-finds-a-pattern-of-violations-in-louisville/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department has found Louisville police have engaged in a pattern of violating constitutional rights following an investigation prompted by the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor.The announcement was made Wednesday by Attorney General Merrick Garland. A Justice Department report found the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government and Louisville Metro Police Department “engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law.”The report said the Louisville police department “discriminates against Black people in its enforcement activities,” uses excessive force and conducts searches based on invalid warrants. It also said the department violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech, like the street protests in the city in the summer of 2020. People are also reading… FILE - A ground mural depicting a portrait of Breonna Taylor is seen at Chambers Park in Annapolis, Md., July 6, 2020. The U.S. Justice Department has found Louisville police have engaged in a pattern of violating constitutional rights following an investigation prompted by the fatal police shooting of Taylor. The announcement was made Wednesday, March 8, 2023, by Attorney Merrick Garland. Julio Cortez - staff, AP “This conduct is unacceptable, it is heartbreaking,” Garland said.The sweeping probe announced in April 2021 is known as a “pattern or practice” investigation — examining whether there is a pattern of unconstitutional or unlawful policing inside the department.Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was roused from her bed by police who came through the door using a battering ram after midnight on March 13, 2020. Three officers fired shots after Taylor’s boyfriend, fearing an intruder, shot an officer in the leg. Taylor was struck several times and died at the scene.The warrant used to enter her home is now part of a separate federal criminal investigation, and one former Louisville officer has already pleaded guilty to helping falsify information on the warrant. No drugs were found in Taylor’s home.Louisville police have undergone five leadership changes since the Taylor shooting, and new Mayor Craig Greenberg is interviewing candidates for the next chief. The city has settled a number of lawsuits related to the incident, including a $12 million payment to Taylor’s family that ended a wrongful death lawsuit.Since 2020 the city has banned no-knock warrants, started a program that aims to send behavioral health professionals to some 911 calls, expanded community violence prevention efforts and sought to support health and wellness for officers, the report said. Photos: One year of demonstrations in honor of Breonna Taylor A ground mural depicting a portrait of Breonna Taylor is seen at Chambers Park, Monday, July 6, 2020, in Annapolis, Md. The mural honors Taylor, a 26-year old Black woman who was fatally shot by police in her Louisville, Ky., apartment. The artwork was a team effort by the Banneker-Douglass Museum, the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture, and Future History Now, a youth organization that focuses on mural projects. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez) Julio Cortez Members of the Seattle Storm stand in front of a photo of Breonna Taylor before a WNBA basketball game against the Washington Mystics Thursday, July 30, 2020, in Bradenton, Fla. Taylor was killed in her home by police officers. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara) Chris O'Meara A billboard sponsored by O, The Oprah Magazine, is on display with with a photo of Breonna Taylor, Friday, Aug. 7, 2020 in Louisville, KY. Twenty-six billboards are going up across Louisville, demanding that the police officers involved in Taylor's death be arrested and charged. Taylor was shot multiple times March 13 when police officers burst into her Louisville apartment using a no-knock warrant during a narcotics investigation. No drugs were found. (AP Photo/Dylan T. Lovan) Dylan T. Lovan A billboard sponsored by O, The Oprah Magazine, is on display with with a photo of Breonna Taylor, Friday, Aug. 7, 2020 in Louisville, KY. Twenty-six billboards are going up across Louisville, demanding that the police officers involved in Taylor's death be arrested and charged. Taylor was shot multiple times March 13 when police officers burst into her Louisville apartment using a no-knock warrant during a narcotics investigation. No drugs were found. (AP Photo/Dylan T. Lovan) Dylan T. Lovan Black Lives Matter protesters march, Friday, Sept. 25, 2020, in Louisville. Breonna Taylor's family demanded Friday that Kentucky authorities release all body camera footage, police files and the transcripts of the grand jury hearings that led to no charges against police officers who killed the Black woman during a March drug raid at her apartment. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) Darron Cummings FILE - In this Sept. 23, 2020, file photo, protesters speak in Louisville, Ky. Hours of material in the grand jury proceedings for Taylor’s fatal shooting by police have been made public on Friday, Oct. 2. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File) John Minchillo FILE - In this Sept. 25, 2020, file photo,Breonna Taylor family attorney Ben Crump, center speaks during a news conference in Louisville, Ky. Hours of material in the grand jury proceedings for Taylor’s fatal shooting by police have been made public on Friday, Oct. 2. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings, File) Darron Cummings Protesters speak, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. A grand jury has indicted one officer on criminal charges six months after Breonna Taylor was fatally shot by police in Kentucky. The jury presented its decision against fired officer Brett Hankison Wednesday to a judge in Louisville, where the shooting took place.(AP Photo/Darron Cummings) Darron Cummings A woman speaks during a protest, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. A grand jury has indicted one officer on criminal charges six months after Breonna Taylor was fatally shot by police in Kentucky. The jury presented its decision against fired officer Brett Hankison Wednesday to a judge in Louisville, where the shooting took place. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) John Minchillo A protester speaks, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. A grand jury has indicted one officer on criminal charges six months after Breonna Taylor was fatally shot by police in Kentucky. The jury presented its decision against fired officer Brett Hankison Wednesday to a judge in Louisville, where the shooting took place. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) Darron Cummings Protesters react to gunfire, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. A police officer was shot in the evening. A grand jury has indicted one officer on criminal charges six months after Breonna Taylor was fatally shot by police in Kentucky. The jury presented its decision against fired officer Brett Hankison Wednesday to a judge in Louisville, where the shooting took place. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) John Minchillo Demonstrators march during a protest, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in New York, following a Kentucky grand jury's decision not to indict any police officers for the killing of Breonna Taylor. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez) Eduardo Munoz Alvarez Demonstrators march on the Williamsburg Bridge during a protest, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in New York, following a Kentucky grand jury's decision not to indict any police officers for the killing of Breonna Taylor. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez) Eduardo Munoz Alvarez A woman carries a boy and a sign which reads, "Please don't make me a Breonna Taylor," as they watch protesters gather, late Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in the Brooklyn borough of New York, following a Kentucky grand jury's decision not to indict any police officers for the killing of Breonna Taylor. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E) Wong Maye-E An armed counter-protester speaks with Black Lives Matter demonstrators, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. Authorities pleaded for calm while activists vowed to fight on Thursday in Kentucky's largest city, where a gunman wounded two police officers during anguished protests following the decision not to charge officers for killing Breonna Taylor. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) John Minchillo A protester stands in Jefferson Square, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. Authorities pleaded for calm while activists vowed to fight on Thursday in Kentucky's largest city, where a gunman wounded two police officers during anguished protests following the decision not to charge officers for killing Breonna Taylor. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) John Minchillo Rev. Dr. Charles Elliott Jr., speaks with demonstrators, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. Authorities pleaded for calm while activists vowed to fight on Thursday in Kentucky's largest city, where a gunman wounded two police officers during anguished protests following the decision not to charge officers for killing Breonna Taylor. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) John Minchillo Protesters march over a barricade, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. Authorities pleaded for calm while activists vowed to fight on Thursday in Kentucky's largest city, where a gunman wounded two police officers during anguished protests following the decision not to charge officers for killing Breonna Taylor. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) John Minchillo Protesters march, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. Authorities pleaded for calm while activists vowed to fight on Thursday in Kentucky's largest city, where a gunman wounded two police officers during anguished protests following the decision not to charge officers for killing Breonna Taylor. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) John Minchillo Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, right, listens to a news conference, Friday, Sept. 25, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. Family attorney Ben Crump is calling for the Kentucky attorney general to release the transcripts from the grand jury that decided not to charge any of the officers involved in the Black woman's death. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) Darron Cummings Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, marches with Black Lives Matter protesters, Friday, Sept. 25, 2020, in Louisville. Breonna Taylor's family demanded Friday that Kentucky authorities release all body camera footage, police files and the transcripts of the grand jury hearings that led to no charges against police officers who killed the Black woman during a March drug raid at her apartment. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) Darron Cummings Black Lives Matter protesters march, Friday, Sept. 25, 2020, in Louisville. Breonna Taylor's family demanded Friday that Kentucky authorities release all body camera footage, police files and the transcripts of the grand jury hearings that led to no charges against police officers who killed the Black woman during a March drug raid at her apartment. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) Darron Cummings People in cars speak to protesters, Friday, Sept. 25, 2020, in Louisville. Breonna Taylor's family demanded Friday that Kentucky authorities release all body camera footage, police files and the transcripts of the grand jury hearings that led to no charges against police officers who killed the Black woman during a March drug raid at her apartment. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) Darron Cummings A woman reacts to news in the Breonna Taylor shooting, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. A grand jury has indicted one officer on criminal charges six months after Taylor was fatally shot by police in Kentucky. The jury presented its decision against fired officer Brett Hankison Wednesday to a judge in Louisville, where the shooting took place. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) Darron Cummings A woman reacts to news in the Breonna Taylor shooting, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. A grand jury has indicted one officer on criminal charges six months after Taylor was fatally shot by police in Kentucky. The jury presented its decision against fired officer Brett Hankison Wednesday to a judge in Louisville, where the shooting took place. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) Darron Cummings People gather in Jefferson Square awaiting word on charges against police officers, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. A grand jury has indicted one officer on criminal charges six months after Breonna Taylor was fatally shot by police in Kentucky. The jury presented its decision against fired officer Brett Hankison Wednesday to a judge in Louisville, where the shooting took place.(AP Photo/John Minchillo) John Minchillo Louisville police detain a man after a group marched in protest over a lack of charges against Louisville police in Breonna Taylor's death, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. A grand jury indicted one officer on criminal charges six months after Taylor was fatally shot by police in Kentucky. Prosecutors said two officers who fired their weapons at Taylor were justified in using force to protect themselves after they faced gunfire from her boyfriend. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) John Minchillo Police and protesters converge during a demonstration, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. A grand jury has indicted one officer on criminal charges six months after Breonna Taylor was fatally shot by police in Kentucky. The jury presented its decision against fired officer Brett Hankison Wednesday to a judge in Louisville, where the shooting took place. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) John Minchillo Police detain protesters, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. A grand jury has indicted one officer on criminal charges six months after Breonna Taylor was fatally shot by police in Kentucky. The jury presented its decision against fired officer Brett Hankison Wednesday to a judge in Louisville, where the shooting took place. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) John Minchillo Protesters chant, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. A grand jury has indicted one officer on criminal charges six months after Breonna Taylor was fatally shot by police in Kentucky. The jury presented its decision against fired officer Brett Hankison Wednesday to a judge in Louisville, where the shooting took place. 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- [Seeing vindication in DOJ report, community calls for transparency in reform work ahead](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/seeing-vindication-in-doj-report-community-calls-for-transparency-in-reform-work-ahead/) - Vindication and validation.To many community members, the findings detailed in the U.S. Department of Justice report on the Louisville Police Department were confirmation of what they’ve long known to be true.“It is what we said it was and worse,” said Sadiqa Reynolds, former president and CEO of the Louisville Urban League. “There is a pattern and practice of unlawful behavior, and it has been reinforced by a pattern and practice of silence, often due to the fear of retaliation. We must get it right. Our very lives depend on it.”The 90-page report from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division released Wednesday outlined multiple critiques of the police department, finding it discriminates against Black residents.“Locally, what people have been saying for years has now been elevated on a national stage,” said Pastor Tim Findley Jr., who leads Kingdom Fellowship Christian Life Center.He was gripped by the report’s specific language around the treatment of Black citizens.“Black people were targeted and terrorized,” he said. “And that is a huge, huge reality that leadership, that the (Fraternal Order of Police) must deal with, that Black people have been terrorized in Louisville for a very long time.”Louisville attorney Ted Shouse, who represented several individuals charged while protesting the police killing of 2020 Breonna Taylor, noted the movement’s role in bringing about the federal investigation."In one word, this report is, in fact, vindication," he said. "It is only through the recognition of these facts that we can hope to have any path forward."Louisville protests and criminal chargesWhy charges will not be dropped against hundreds of Breonna Taylor protesters in KentuckyChris Will, a lead protester in the Louisville social justice protests of 2020, said while the report called out the police department for violating constitutional rights of Black citizens, he wished there were more direct repercussions for officer conduct during the protests.“Something I know is not going to happen is a complete (overhaul) of this whole thing,” he said. “Greenberg is going to have to be like King Arthur with Excalibur to solve all of this … if he’s not going to fix it, if he’s not going to stand up to LMPD and the (police union) and do something, then he’s got to go, too … We just want to see results. That’s it.”Calls for transparencyInclusion of the community and transparency in the work ahead emerged as a key point for many as the city tackles the 36 recommendations detailed in the report.The 490 Project, an activist group against police violence, reiterated its calls for transparency in upcoming collective bargaining agreement negotiations between the police union and the city as a meaningful first step toward change.“Community involvement in any agreement involving the FOP, whether it be a consent decree or the CBA process, requires community input to be transparent and bring real, needed change to Louisville,” the organization said in a statement.More on negotiations:Louisville police contract negotiations won't be made public. Why some want to change thatThe River City Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 614 did not immediately issue a response Wednesday afternoon to the federal findings but planned on doing so later in the day.The Louisville branch of the NAACP implored city leadership, the Metro Council and the police department to ensure transparency in the next steps toward reform.It called for detailed and regular reporting on improvements, public police contract negotiations and strengthening oversight powers of the city’s new Inspector General.Others expressed doubt that the institution of policing could be fixed.Hannah Drake, Louisville writer and activist, said reform is only as good as the people executing it.“So, here’s my question that I really want to know … how many of those same officers are still employed at LMPD? What changes?” she said. "You’re working with the same ingredients. You’re going to bake the same cake."Councilman Jecorey Arthur, D-4th, said the findings “should be no surprise to Metro Council” but hopes it will push the body to act, though he called the institution of policing “a failed project.”The path to enacting changeChanging pattern and practice speaks to cultural overhaul, said state Senate Minority Leader Gerald Neal, of Louisville. The self-described optimist said while this is a tall task, he sees real opportunity for lasting change.“The community needs the police, and the police need the community,” Neal said. “And the situation that’s here that has existed historically cannot be tolerated a day longer. So, it’s going to take everybody of good will and responsibility to carry this out without favor.”Louisville Metro Council members expressed a commitment to supporting reform work.Metro Council President Markus Winkler, D-17th, said the report hit on challenges with oversight and leadership that the council has voiced in recent years.“I think it's critically important that we put these practices in place and make sure that we are policing constitutionally and fairly for citizens across our community,” Winkler said.Key takeaways:What to know about the 7 DOJ findings in Louisville police investigationHe noted Metro Council’s oversight role of the executive branch of local government, as well as its power to fund possible initiatives that come out of the consent decree process.Minority caucus chair, Councilman Anthony Piagentini, D-19th, said the caucus believes the city is moving in the right direction, and the council is focused on improving training, policies and support for the police department.“We must simultaneously ensure full compliance with the Constitution and all state and federal laws while reducing homicides and violent crime,” he said in a statement.Minutes after federal authorities stood in the Mayor’s Gallery downtown and unveiled their findings Wednesday, Mayor Craig Greenberg said he was committed to enacting reforms. “This report paints a painful picture of LMPD’s past,” he said. “But it helps point us in the right direction for our future and to the next phase in the process of police reform in Louisville.”
- ['It's heartbreaking': Breonna Taylor's mother says DOJ report shows what we already knew](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/its-heartbreaking-breonna-taylors-mother-says-doj-report-shows-what-we-already-knew/) - Tamika Palmer stood in a nurse's uniform behind a podium Wednesday, unsure what to say about a U.S. Department of Justice investigation released almost three years to the day after her daughter, Breonna Taylor, was shot and killed by Louisville police."It's heartbreaking to know that everything you've been saying since Day One has to be said again, through this manner. That it took this to even have somebody look into this department," she said, trailing off.Earlier that day, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the findings of a nearly two-year investigation into the Louisville Metro Police Department, spotlighting how the agency violated citizens' constitutional rights by systematically discriminating against Black people and mentally unstable residents.US DOJ's report:Read the violations and recommended reformThe Department of Justice began the investigation in April 2021 in response to Taylor's death.Taylor, 26, was shot and killed by officers serving a "no-knock" search warrant in a drug investigation at her home on March 13, 2020.Lonita Baker, a Louisville attorney representing Taylor's family, said she is encouraged by the DOJ's findings."However, it is unfortunate it took the murder of Breonna Taylor and protest after protest after protest in 2020 to get to this point,” she said.More:What to know about the 7 DOJ findings in Louisville police investigationBaker added the investigation would not have occurred without thousands of people marching in the streets daily for nearly six months.“Louisville Metro has known about these problems for a very long time," she said, "but they chose to do nothing for a very long time because the heat wasn’t there.”Standing alongside Baker and Palmer was Tae-Ahn Lea, a Black Louisville resident whose high-profile traffic stop in 2018 led to some policy reforms and whose story was included in the DOJ report.In September, a federal judge ruled officers had violated his constitutional rights.“I’m glad that the DOJ spoke up and finally said what we’ve been saying for years,” Lea said. “I’d like to see what the future looks like now.”Across town, several key players in the 2020 protests spoke about the investigation at Jefferson Square Park, a central location during the demonstrations which was given the moniker "Injustice Square Park" by those in attendance that summer.Shameka Parrish-Wright, director of VOCAL-KY and an outspoken member of the protests, called the consent decree "a step in the right direction," and said there was some relief for those who had faced consequences during the demonstrations that LMPD would face some accountability.The findings, though, aren't the final step. Khalilah Collins, director of DOVE Delegates (which aims to pursue an alternative model to policing in Louisville), said the answer isn't giving LMPD more money – instead, she pushed for the department and city government to be more transparent moving forward and to give the community a voice during conversations about reform."The findings of the DOJ investigation confirmed the long-ignored outcry of the community," Collins said. "To rectify these violations of our civil rights and our humanity, the community does not just need to be fully represented at every table where decisions regarding reform or accountability are made – they need to lead these conversations."In October 2020, Taylor's family received a $12 million settlement with the city. And Palmer said Wednesday the family is "still going back and forth" with some of the reforms included in the agreement.In regard to the DOJ's recommendations for LMPD, going forward: "It's easy to say it, but until we actually start using those policies and procedures, it will just be repeating itself."Reporter Lucas Aulbach contributed. Reach reporter Bailey Loosemore at bloosemore@courier-journal.com, 502-582-4646 or on Twitter @bloosemore.
- [Breonna Taylor's mom, Tamika Palmer, talks after the DOJ released their finding on LMPD](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/breonna-taylors-mom-tamika-palmer-talks-after-the-doj-released-their-finding-on-lmpd/)
- [Live updates: Louisville police has pattern of violating constitutional rights, DOJ finds](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/live-updates-louisville-police-has-pattern-of-violating-constitutional-rights-doj-finds/) - The U.S. Department of Justice announced the findings of a sweeping investigation of Louisville Metro and Louisville's police department Wednesday, the result of a nearly two-year probe following the killing of Breonna Taylor.The investigation, announced in April 2021 after nearly a year of protests over Taylor's killing at the hands of LMPD officers, aimed to assess "all types of force" used by local police, including potential violations of the First Amendment, whether the department engages in discriminatory policing and whether it worked in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.Here is the latest on the report and reactions to the findings:READ THE REPORT:US Department of Justice release on Louisville police violations and recommended reform'The time for terrorizing the Black community with no repercussions is over.'Reactions to the DOJ report are coming from all over including officials, community leaders and the family of Breonna Taylor.We collected some key moments and quotes from the Wednesday press conference and from community members about the findings.More:'The time for terrorizing the Black community with no repercussions is over.' Reactions to LMPD investigationThe findings of the Department of Justice's investigationAt the press conference, Garland said the U.S. Department of Justice and the city of Louisville had agreed to negotiate a consent decree to establish a reform.The report laid out violations that had been found in the department during the 2020 protests and during unrelated events, including traffic stops that disproportionately targeted Black residents to training sessions that exhibited racial bias.Here's a more thorough look at what was included in the report.Updates from Wednesday's press conference
- [US DOJ's report on Louisville police: Read the violations and recommended reform](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/us-dojs-report-on-louisville-police-read-the-violations-and-recommended-reform/) - Nearly two years after announcing plans to investigate Louisville Metro and LMPD in the aftermath of the killing of Breonna Taylor, the U.S. Department of Justice released its scathing report Wednesday.The report is 90 pages long, with a lengthy list of reported violations. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland was set to discuss the release at a press conference Wednesday in downtown Louisville.The report includes 36 recommended remedial measures as well, closing by noting the department "has reasonable cause to believe that Louisville Metro and LMPD engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law. Louisville Metro’s and LMPD’s unlawful practices harm community members and undermine public safety.""We look forward to working with city and police leaders, officers, and the broader Louisville community to stop the unlawful practices, build trust, and ensure that Louisville Metro and LMPD serve and protect the people of Louisville," it concludes.Check out the full report here.View in new tab
- [What to know about the 7 DOJ findings in Louisville police investigation](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/what-to-know-about-the-7-doj-findings-in-louisville-police-investigation/) - The U.S. Department of Justice revealed its investigative report into the Louisville Police Department Wednesday, which found reasonable cause to believe city government and the department "engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law."What are the main seven findings of the DOJ report into Louisville police?LMPD uses excessive force, including unjustified neck restraints and the unreasonable use of police dogs and tasers.LMPD conducts searches based on invalid warrants.LMPD unlawfully executes search warrants without knocking and announcing.LMPD unlawfully stops, searches, detains, and arrests people during street enforcement activities, including traffic and pedestrian stops.LMPD unlawfully discriminates against Black people in its enforcement activities.LMPD violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech critical of policing.Louisville Metro and LMPD discriminate against people with behavioral health disabilities when responding to them in crisisHere are more details from those seven findings:'LMPD uses excessive force, including unjustified neck restraints and the unreasonable use of police dogs and tasers'The DOJ found LMPD officers use "excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment" and "routinely use force disproportionate to the threat or resistance posed."The report also found a lack of clear policy or property oversight in cases of excessive force, as "in the majority of the problematic incidents we evaluated, supervisors reviewed the conduct at issue but failed to identify the misconduct."Specific incidents in the report included dangerous neck restraints, police dogs against people who pose nothreat, with dogs continuing to bite people after they surrender.More:DOJ's report into Louisville police: How people are responding on social mediaThe report also details "unreasonable and unsafe" use of tasers, the use of "takedowns, strikes, and other bodily force in ways that are unnecessary and unlawful" and "escalating behavior that startles, confuses, or angers theindividuals they encounter."'LMPD conducts searches based on invalid warrants'The report found that LMPD "engages in a pattern or practice of seeking search warrants in ways that deprive individuals of their rights under the Fourth Amendment."It added that "a significant number" of the department's search warrant applications "fail to satisfy theconstitutional requirement of being supported by 'probable cause.'"The report detailed specific examples of how these applications "frequently lack the specificity and detail necessary to establish probable cause for the search, are typically overly broad in scope, and fail to establish probable cause for searching everything and everyone listed in the warrant."'LMPD unlawfully executes search warrants without knocking and announcing'The report found that when executing search warrants on private homes, LMPD officers "regularly fail to knock and announce their presence," adding "these unlawful practices endanger both officers and members of the public."A review of warrants executed on residences from 2016 through 2021 found LMPD rarely (only 2.5% of the time) requested judicial authorization to execute a warrant without knocking and announcing, but they "still entered homes without knocking and announcing in more than half of the warrant executions we reviewed."The report found those unlawful warrant executions "are the result of poor planning, supervision, andoversight," with the "routine failure to hold officers accountable for failing to complete risk matricesputs officers and the public in needlessly dangerous situations."More:What they said: Notable quotes on Louisville police investigation'LMPD unlawfully stops, searches, detains, and arrests people during street enforcement activities, including traffic and pedestrian stops'The DOJ found LMPD officers "unlawfully stop, frisk, detain, search, and arrest people during street enforcement activities, such as traffic and pedestrian stops," with these "intrusive encounters" violating the rights of people throughout the city.Documenting different incidents of "unlawful street encounters," the report added that they "are more than mere inconveniences — they can be invasive and humiliating" and "undermine public safety by poisoning the relationship between the police and community."Related:Louisville police promised reforms on traffic stops. Is profiling still happening?'LMPD unlawfully discriminates against Black people in its enforcement activities'The DOJ found reasonable cause to believe LMPD "engages in racial discrimination in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Safe Streets Act," as Black people "disproportionately experience" the conduct criticized throughout the report.This includes officers disproportionately stopping Black drivers for minor traffic offenses and conducting searches, as well as prolonged detentions and arrests for marijuana possession and other minor misdemeanors.The report noted one case where an officer described a Black teenager as a “wild animal that needs to be put down.""In sum, LMPD’s inadequate and dismissive response to racial bias signals that discrimination is tolerated," stated the report. "LMPD’s tolerance of explicit racial bias within its ranks is further evidence of unlawful discrimination."'LMPD violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech critical of policing'The report found LMPD "often responds aggressively to police-related speech, including by taking actions that could deter a person from criticizing police or assembling in a group to do so."While protests about policing can "pose unique challenges for law enforcement," the report adds that "these factors do not make police protests so inherently violent, lawless, or dangerous as to be entitled less First Amendment protection."'Louisville Metro and LMPD discriminate against people with behavioral health disabilities when responding to them in crisis'The report found LMPD violates the Americans with Disabilities Act by their responses to people with behavioral health disabilities."LMPD fails to reasonably accommodate individuals with behavioral health disabilities during encounters, leading to needless escalation, use of force, avoidable arrest, and serious injury," the report stated. "This discrimination can be avoided through expansion of current Louisville Metro programs, and reasonable modifications of LMPD’s and MetroSafe’s policies and practices."Reach reporter Joe Sonka at jsonka@courierjournal.com and follow him on Twitter at @joesonka.
- ['The time for terrorizing the Black community with no repercussions is over.' Reactions to LMPD investigation](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/the-time-for-terrorizing-the-black-community-with-no-repercussions-is-over-reactions-to-lmpd-investigation/) - U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland spoke Wednesday alongside several officials from Louisville and the Department of Justice to reveal findings from a nearly two-year investigation into the city's government and police department.The 90-page report details issues and violations the department found in its review of Louisville Metro Police, along with recommendations for moving forward.Live updates:Findings of federal investigation into LMPD after Breonna Taylor's killingMore reactions:DOJ's report into Louisville police: How people are responding on social mediaHere are some key moments and quotes from the Wednesday press conference and from community members about the findings.Merrick Garland, US attorney general“This conduct is unacceptable. It is heartbreaking. It erodes the community trust necessary for effective policing, and it is an affront to the vas majority of officers who put their lives on the line every day to serve with honor – and it is an affront to the people of Louisville.”"To the officers of LMPD: The Justice Department is acutely aware of the integral role that law enforcement officers play in our society and the dangers you face to keep your community safe – so it is imperative that your police department sets you up for success."Vanita Gupta, associate attorney general"LMPD’s ability to serve and protect the people of Louisville has been compromised and the findings are deeply troubling and sobering. So we are committed to working with Louisville on a path forward to constitutional policing and stronger police-community trust."Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general"These findings are not based on any one incident or event. They turn on evidence showing long-standing dysfunction at LMPD. The pattern or practice of unlawful conduct compromises LMPD’s ability to serve and protect safely, constitutionally and effectively. Instead, LMPD has practiced an extreme, misdirected and counterproductive style of policing.""Our efforts were exhaustive. We talked to hundreds of people across the city. We rode with officers in their cars on patrol. We spoke with city and union officials, judges and attorneys, advocacy groups, religious leaders and community members from different walks of life. And along with our experts, we've reviewed thousands of documents regarding LMPD’s enforcement activities, and we watch thousands of hours of body-worn camera footage."Craig Greenberg, Louisville mayor"I know some people are surprised and horrified to hear stories about certain officers operating in ways that are so counter to our values as a community. All of this is really hard to hear and hard to accept. It's infuriating. I understand that."I also know there are people who are not surprised to hear the findings in this report, because they see this report as confirmation of complaints they've made about their own interactions with law enforcement, sometimes for years. Many of those spoke out and felt dismissed or devalued. Now, the United States Department of Justice is essentially saying 'Yes, in many cases, you were right. And you deserve better.' That's a powerful thing. I understand that, too."And I know there are people who will look at this report, and they'll be eager to find some way to minimize it. or dismiss it. They'll say it's all politics, or that you could find examples like this in any city. No – this is not about politics or other places. This is about Louisville. This is about our city, our neighbors and how we serve them."Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel, interim LMPD chief"This is an extremely challenging and pivotal point for our city, our department and for our officers. Now that the DOJ has concluded their investigation and presented their findings, we will continue our efforts in improving public safety in this beautiful city called Louisville and making LMPD the premier police department in the country."Tamika Palmer, mother of Breonna Taylor"What was confirmed today is that I should still be able to to pick up the phone and reach my oldest daughter Breonna. It took us having to fight day in and day out for years simply because I deserved justice for my daughter’s murder to kickstart this investigation, but today’s findings are an indicator that Breonna’s death is not vain. Our fight will protect future potential victims from LMPD’s racist tactics and behavior. The time for terrorizing the Black community with no repercussions is over."Ben Crump, civil rights attorney who represented Breonna Taylor“The family of Breonna Taylor is encouraged by the findings released today by Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division revealing a pattern of biased policing and a long list of constitutional violations by the Louisville Metro Police Department.“These findings, and LMPD’s expected cooperation with the DOJ’s recommended remedial measures, will help protect the citizens of Louisville and shape its culture of policing. It’s steps like these, and involvement of the Attorney General and the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, that will move our nation forward and prevent future tragedies like the one that took the life of Breonna Taylor and the countless others who have been killed unnecessarily by law enforcement.”Greg Fischer, former Louisville mayor (2011-2022)"Today is another important inflection point to honor the pain of 2020 by further acknowledging – and continuing to act on – the fact that our community deserves a new era of public safety. This era requires the leadership of the many good officers who have dedicated their lives to keep us safe and are committed to working in partnership with the community to develop a new form of constitutionally sound policing embraced by all our city’s residents."Since the summer of 2020, I have emphasized that public safety in Louisville and across America is at an inflection point. Without fundamental and widespread changes in police culture, resources, resident involvement and resulting police-community legitimacy, our city and nation will continue to needlessly endure tragedy after tragedy. National events since the summer of 2020 bear witness to this conclusion."Hannah Drake, Louisville poet and activist"The reform is only as good as the people executing them. So here’s my question that I really want to know. ... how many of those same officers are still employed at LMPD? What changes? Are those people going to magically go home and say you know what, let’s stop calling Black people monkeys and animals."Tim Findley Jr., pastor at Kingdom Fellowship Christian Life Center“Locally, what people have been saying for years has now been elevated on a national stage." “What I found most interesting was that they talked about Black people. They didn't say Black and brown. They didn't say other communities. Black people were targeted and terrorized. And that is a huge, huge reality that leadership, that the FOP must deal with, that Black people have been terrorized in Louisville for a very long time.”Sadiqa Reynolds, former CEO of the Louisville Urban League"It is what we said it was and worse. We know every officer is not corrupt but we recognize that the system is, so even the good ones do harm in their attempts to stand behind the shield in silence. The system does not allow for the humanization of Black people. There is nowhere in this city where we can be safe, not even in our homes. Policing itself is flawed but this department worked hard to go backward over the past several years. It works against Black residents, and authorizes and condones our abuse. There have been no significant consequences and no real accountability. There can never be justice without truth. And for many of us, the unrest has settled into our souls because we could not get anyone to give us the full truth. There must be some sort of racial reckoning for the Black community in Louisville. We deserve acknowledgment and accountability from the leaders in this city. I think I speak for many Louisvillians when I say, I am thankful for this thorough investigation and report. Now, I look forward to the hard work of change."Ted Shouse, Louisville attorney"Systemic racial discrimination by LMPD is recognized and proven in this report. Many of us had known this for years and today that knowledge is validated and respected. ... It is only through the recognition of these facts, that we can hope to have any path forward."Morgan McGarvey, U.S. congressman for Louisville“Excessive use of force and racial profiling in the Louisville Metro Police Department will continue to plague our community until we take decisive action to create true, lasting change. We simply cannot afford to wait."“Today’s report is a long overdue step in the right direction to hold our law enforcement accountable, but it does nothing to undo the centuries of systemic injustice Black communities have endured. We must commit to change, accountability, and justice for Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tyre Nichols, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, and the far too many others who were killed by police.”
- [What to know about the 7 Department of Justice findings in Louisville police investigation](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/what-to-know-about-the-7-department-of-justice-findings-in-louisville-police-investigation/) - The U.S. Department of Justice revealed its investigative report into the Louisville Metro Police Department Wednesday, which found reasonable cause to believe city government and the department "engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law."What are the main seven findings of the DOJ report into Louisville police?LMPD uses excessive force, including unjustified neck restraints and the unreasonable use of police dogs and tasers.LMPD conducts searches based on invalid warrants.LMPD unlawfully executes search warrants without knocking and announcing.LMPD unlawfully stops, searches, detains, and arrests people during street enforcement activities, including traffic and pedestrian stops.LMPD unlawfully discriminates against Black people in its enforcement activities.LMPD violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech critical of policing.Louisville Metro and LMPD discriminate against people with behavioral health disabilities when responding to them in crisisHere are more details from those seven findings:'LMPD uses excessive force, including unjustified neck restraints and the unreasonable use of police dogs and tasers'The DOJ found that LMPD officers use "excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment" and "routinely use force disproportionate to the threat or resistance posed."The report also found a lack of clear policy or property oversight in cases of excessive force, as "in the majority of the problematic incidents we evaluated, supervisors reviewed the conduct at issue but failed to identify the misconduct."Specific incidents in the report included dangerous neck restraints, police dogs against people who pose nothreat, with dogs continuing to bite people after they surrender.More:DOJ's report into Louisville police: How people are responding on social mediaThe report also details "unreasonable and unsafe" use of tasers, the use of "takedowns, strikes, and other bodily force in ways that are unnecessary and unlawful" and "escalating behavior that startles, confuses, or angers theindividuals they encounter."'LMPD conducts searches based on invalid warrants'The report found that LMPS "engages in a pattern or practice of seeking search warrants in ways that deprive individuals of their rights under the Fourth Amendment."It added that "a significant number" of the department's search warrant applications "fail to satisfy theconstitutional requirement of being supported by 'probable cause.'"The report detailed specific examples of how these applications "frequently lack the specificity and detail necessary to establish probable cause for the search, are typically overly broad in scope, and fail to establish probable cause for searching everything and everyone listed in the warrant."'LMPD unlawfully executes search warrants without knocking and announcing'The report found that when executing search warrants on private homes, LMPD officers "regularly fail to knock and announce their presence," adding that "these unlawful practices endanger both officers and members of the public."A review of warrants executed on residences from 2016 through 2021 found that LMPD rarely (only 2.5% of the time) requested judicial authorization to execute a warrant without knocking and announcing, but they "still entered homes without knocking and announcing in more than half of the warrant executions we reviewed."The report found that unlawful warrant executions "are the result of poor planning, supervision, andoversight," with the "routine failure to hold officers accountable for failing to complete risk matricesputs officers and the public in needlessly dangerous situations."More:What they said: Notable quotes on Louisville police investigation'LMPD unlawfully stops, searches, detains, and arrests people during street enforcement activities, including traffic and pedestrian stops'The DOJ found that LMPD officers "unlawfully stop, frisk, detain, search, and arrest people during street enforcement activities, such as traffic and pedestrian stops," with these "intrusive encounters" violating the rights of people throughout the city.Documenting different incidents of "unlawful street encounters," the report added that they "are more than mere inconveniences — they can be invasive and humiliating" and "undermine public safety by poisoning the relationship between the police and community."Related:Louisville police promised reforms on traffic stops. Is profiling still happening?'LMPD unlawfully discriminates against Black people in its enforcement activities'The DOJ found reasonable cause to believe LMPD "engages in racial discrimination in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Safe Streets Act," as Black people "disproportionately experience" the conduct criticized throughout the report.This includes officers disproportionately stopping Black drivers for minor traffic offenses and conducting searches, as well as prolonged detentions and arrests for marijuana possession and other minor misdemeanors.The report noted one case where an officer described a Black teenager as a “wild animal that needs to be put down.""In sum, LMPD’s inadequate and dismissive response to racial bias signals that discrimination is tolerated," stated the report. "LMPD’s tolerance of explicit racial bias within its ranks is further evidence of unlawful discrimination."'LMPD violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech critical of policing'The report found that LMPD "often responds aggressively to police-related speech, including by taking actions that could deter a person from criticizing police or assembling in a group to do so."While protests about policing can "pose unique challenges for law enforcement," the report adds that "these factors do not make police protests so inherently violent, lawless, or dangerous as to be entitled less First Amendment protection."'Louisville Metro and LMPD discriminate against people with behavioral health disabilities when responding to them in crisis'The report found LMPD violates the Americans with Disabilities Act by their responses to people with behavioral health disabilities."LMPD fails to reasonably accommodate individuals with behavioral health disabilities during encounters, leading to needless escalation, use of force, avoidable arrest, and serious injury," the report stated. "This discrimination can be avoided through expansion of current Louisville Metro programs, and reasonable modifications of LMPD’s and MetroSafe’s policies and practices."Reach reporter Joe Sonka at jsonka@courierjournal.com and follow him on Twitter at @joesonka.
- [DOJ issues scathing rebuke of Louisville police in report launched after Breonna Taylor killing](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/doj-issues-scathing-rebuke-of-louisville-police-in-report-launched-after-breonna-taylor-killing/) - A report released by the Justice Department shows how an anti-crime unit created by Louisville Metro Police Department in 2012 that became known for its "aggressive tactics" later rebranded in the face of intense community scrutiny. But the unit continued engaging in unlawful policing activities under its new banner, according to the report, underscoring how the department for years avoided implementing meaningful reforms."The Violent Incident Prevention, Enforcement and Response (VIPER) Unit focused its enforcement on 'hot spots' of violent crime, including by stopping people in certain neighborhoods for minor traffic infractions and other low-level offenses," the report said.Residents "called VIPER officers 'jump out boys' for their aggressive tactics, and protesters demonstrated in front of police headquarters to demand an end to the unit," the report added.The department rebranded VIPER as the Ninth Mobile Division in 2015, according to the report, and pulled most of its members from VIPER.The result, according to the Justice Department, was that the new unit committed similar abuses to the ones that happened under the VIPER banner."Despite VIPER's failures, LMPD leaders again failed to monitor Ninth Mobile. Neither Chief (Steve) Conrad nor Ninth Mobile's leader analyzed enforcement activities for signs of discrimination. Federal and state courts found that Ninth Mobile officers violated residents' Fourth Amendment rights, and we reviewed incidents in which Ninth Mobile and other patrol officers engaged in unlawful street enforcement activities," the report said in part.Similar units have come under fire in recent months, including one in Memphis, Tennessee, after five of its members were charged in connection with the January death of Tyre Nichols, whose brutal beating after a police traffic stop was seen on video. The five officers pleaded not guilty last month.
- [What they said: Notable quotes from press conference on Louisville police investigation](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/what-they-said-notable-quotes-from-press-conference-on-louisville-police-investigation/) - U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland spoke Wednesday alongside several officials from Louisville and the Department of Justice to reveal findings from a nearly two-year investigation into the city's government and police department.The 90-page report details issues and violations the department found in its review of Louisville Metro Police, along with recommendations for moving forward.Live updates:Findings of federal investigation into LMPD after Breonna Taylor's killingMore reactions:DOJ's report into Louisville police: How people are responding on social mediaHere are some key moments and quotes from the Wednesday press conference and from community members about the findings.Merrick Garland, US attorney general“This conduct is unacceptable. It is heartbreaking. It erodes the community trust necessary for effective policing, and it is an affront to the vas majority of officers who put their lives on the line every day to serve with honor – and it is an affront to the people of Louisville.”"To the officers of LMPD: The Justice Department is acutely aware of the integral role that law enforcement officers play in our society and the dangers you face to keep your community safe – so it is imperative that your police department sets you up for success."Vanita Gupta, associate attorney general"LMPD’s ability to serve and protect the people of Louisville has been compromised and the findings are deeply troubling and sobering. So we are committed to working with Louisville on a path forward to constitutional policing and stronger police-community trust."Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general"These findings are not based on any one incident or event. They turn on evidence showing long-standing dysfunction at LMPD. The pattern or practice of unlawful conduct compromises LMPD’s ability to serve and protect safely, constitutionally and effectively. Instead, LMPD has practiced an extreme, misdirected and counterproductive style of policing.""Our efforts were exhaustive. We talked to hundreds of people across the city. We rode with officers in their cars on patrol. We spoke with city and union officials, judges and attorneys, advocacy groups, religious leaders and community members from different walks of life. And along with our experts, we've reviewed thousands of documents regarding LMPD’s enforcement activities, and we watch thousands of hours of body-worn camera footage."Craig Greenberg, Louisville mayor"I know some people are surprised and horrified to hear stories about certain officers operating in ways that are so counter to our values as a community. All of this is really hard to hear and hard to accept. It's infuriating. I understand that."I also know there are people who are not surprised to hear the findings in this report, because they see this report as confirmation of complaints they've made about their own interactions with law enforcement, sometimes for years. Many of those spoke out and felt dismissed or devalued. Now, the United States Department of Justice is essentially saying 'Yes, in many cases, you were right. And you deserve better.' That's a powerful thing. I understand that, too."And I know there are people who will look at this report, and they'll be eager to find some way to minimize it. or dismiss it. They'll say it's all politics, or that you could find examples like this in any city. No – this is not about politics or other places. This is about Louisville. This is about our city, our neighbors and how we serve them."Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel, interim LMPD chief"This is an extremely challenging and pivotal point for our city, our department and for our officers. Now that the DOJ has concluded their investigation and presented their findings, we will continue our efforts in improving public safety in this beautiful city called Louisville and making LMPD the premier police department in the country."Tamika Palmer, mother of Breonna Taylor"What was confirmed today is that I should still be able to to pick up the phone and reach my oldest daughter Breonna. It took us having to fight day in and day out for years simply because I deserved justice for my daughter’s murder to kickstart this investigation, but today’s findings are an indicator that Breonna’s death is not vain. Our fight will protect future potential victims from LMPD’s racist tactics and behavior. The time for terrorizing the Black community with no repercussions is over."Ben Crump, civil rights attorney who represented Breonna Taylor“The family of Breonna Taylor is encouraged by the findings released today by Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division revealing a pattern of biased policing and a long list of constitutional violations by the Louisville Metro Police Department.“These findings, and LMPD’s expected cooperation with the DOJ’s recommended remedial measures, will help protect the citizens of Louisville and shape its culture of policing. It’s steps like these, and involvement of the Attorney General and the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, that will move our nation forward and prevent future tragedies like the one that took the life of Breonna Taylor and the countless others who have been killed unnecessarily by law enforcement.”Greg Fischer, former Louisville mayor (2011-2022)"Today is another important inflection point to honor the pain of 2020 by further acknowledging – and continuing to act on – the fact that our community deserves a new era of public safety. This era requires the leadership of the many good officers who have dedicated their lives to keep us safe and are committed to working in partnership with the community to develop a new form of constitutionally sound policing embraced by all our city’s residents."Since the summer of 2020, I have emphasized that public safety in Louisville and across America is at an inflection point. Without fundamental and widespread changes in police culture, resources, resident involvement and resulting police-community legitimacy, our city and nation will continue to needlessly endure tragedy after tragedy. National events since the summer of 2020 bear witness to this conclusion."Hannah Drake, Louisville poet and activist"The reform is only as good as the people executing them. So here’s my question that I really want to know. ... how many of those same officers are still employed at LMPD? What changes? Are those people going to magically go home and say you know what, let’s stop calling Black people monkeys and animals."Tim Findley Jr., pastor at Kingdom Fellowship Christian Life Center“Locally, what people have been saying for years has now been elevated on a national stage." “What I found most interesting was that they talked about Black people. They didn't say Black and brown. They didn't say other communities. Black people were targeted and terrorized. And that is a huge, huge reality that leadership, that the FOP must deal with, that Black people have been terrorized in Louisville for a very long time.”Sadiqa Reynolds, former CEO of the Louisville Urban League"It is what we said it was and worse. We know every officer is not corrupt but we recognize that the system is, so even the good ones do harm in their attempts to stand behind the shield in silence. The system does not allow for the humanization of Black people. There is nowhere in this city where we can be safe, not even in our homes. Policing itself is flawed but this department worked hard to go backward over the past several years. It works against Black residents, and authorizes and condones our abuse. There have been no significant consequences and no real accountability. There can never be justice without truth. And for many of us, the unrest has settled into our souls because we could not get anyone to give us the full truth. There must be some sort of racial reckoning for the Black community in Louisville. We deserve acknowledgment and accountability from the leaders in this city. I think I speak for many Louisvillians when I say, I am thankful for this thorough investigation and report. Now, I look forward to the hard work of change."Ted Shouse, Louisville attorney"Systemic racial discrimination by LMPD is recognized and proven in this report. Many of us had known this for years and today that knowledge is validated and respected. ... It is only through the recognition of these facts, that we can hope to have any path forward."Morgan McGarvey, U.S. congressman for Louisville“Excessive use of force and racial profiling in the Louisville Metro Police Department will continue to plague our community until we take decisive action to create true, lasting change. We simply cannot afford to wait."“Today’s report is a long overdue step in the right direction to hold our law enforcement accountable, but it does nothing to undo the centuries of systemic injustice Black communities have endured. We must commit to change, accountability, and justice for Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tyre Nichols, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, and the far too many others who were killed by police.”
- ['Disrespect for the people': Merrick Garland issues scathing report into LMPD practices](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/disrespect-for-the-people-merrick-garland-issues-scathing-report-into-lmpd-practices/) - The U.S. Department of Justice released scathing findings from its "pattern-or-practice” investigation into Louisville Metro Police on Wednesday.The department, for years, "has practiced an aggressive style of policing that it deploys selectively, especially against Black people, but also against vulnerable people throughout the city," U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said during a press conference from Metro Hall on Wednesday morning. "LMPD cites people for minor offenses, like wide turns and broken taillights, while serious crimes like sexual assault and homicide go unsolved."Some officers demonstrate disrespect for the people they are sworn to protect."The 90-page report found the department:Uses excessive force, including unjustified neck restraints and unreasonable use of police dogs and tasersConducts searches based on invalid warrants.Unlawfully executes warrants without knocking and announcing.Unlawfully stops, searches, detains and arrests people during traffic and pedestrian stops.Violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech critical of policing.Discriminates against people with behavioral health disabilities while responding to crises.Garland said the Justice Department, Louisville Metro Government and Metro Police have agreed in principle to negotiate a consent decree.The Justice Department has proposed 36 remedial measures LMPD can take.The probe began after Breonna Taylor’s death and accusations of unconstitutional behavior and discrimination. Garland announced in April 2021 that police departments in Louisville and Minneapolis would face federal investigations. Both cities saw mass protests in 2020 as news of the police killings of two Black residents – Taylor in Louisville and George Floyd in Minneapolis − reverberated around the world. While Garland said the Minneapolis probe was prompted by Floyd’s May 2020 death in which an officer kneeled on his neck for over nine minutes, he did not indicate then whether Louisville's investigation was prompted by the shooting of Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room technician who was killed during a March 2020 narcotics raid at her apartment that turned up no drugs or money. DOJ indictments in Breonna Taylor case:Experts predict who has the edge, the feds or the charged officersThe FBI also has been investigating Taylor’s killing separately. The DOJ also has charged several Louisville officers in separate cases since 2020, including four former LMPD personnel in early August on charges either of lying on the warrant obtained to search Taylor’s home, obstructing investigators or — in the case of ex-Detective Brett Hankison — firing bullets that entered a neighboring apartment. Various local officials, including former Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer and former LMPD Chief Erika Shields, who took over as leader of the department in January 2021 but resigned at the start of 2023 as new Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg took office, had said they welcomed the DOJ probe as part of the city’s push to improve its police department and relationships with residents. (Greenberg picked Deputy Chief Jackie Gwinn-Villaroel to serve as his interim LMPD chief as he takes office and searches for a permanent chief.)In early September, Fischer and Shields both said the city has "not waited" in implementing various reforms.DOJ police department investigations:Are Department of Justice investigations a path to police reform or 'a war on cops'?Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, previously tweeted that “I can’t wait for the world to see Louisville Police Department for what it really is,” in response to the DOJ’s announced investigation. No officers were directly indicted and prosecuted by Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s office for Taylor’s death, though several were later fired or submitted resignations. Hankison was charged at the state level in 2020 with wanton endangerment for firing bullets that went into an apartment neighboring Taylor's that was occupied by three people, and a jury acquitted him in March. What happened to Breonna Taylor?Breonna Taylor died after several LMPD officers forced their way into her southwest Louisville apartment with a battering ram around 12:40 a.m. March 13, 2020, with a search warrant to look for drugs and cash as part of a larger narcotics investigation connected to her ex-boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover. Breonna Taylor fact check:Separating the rumors from the factsTaylor’s boyfriend at the time of her death, Kenneth Walker, fired a single shot from his legally owned handgun at the door as officers busted it down, telling investigators later that he feared intruders, not police, were breaking in. Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly was hit by Walker’s shot and fired six rounds in response. Detective Myles Cosgrove fired 16 shots, and Hankison fired 10 shots. Six of those bullets struck Taylor, with Cosgrove firing the fatal shot, the FBI concluded. What has happened since Breonna Taylor's death?The case led cities and states to pass laws banning or limiting no-knock search warrants, and it resulted in various changes and reforms, some still pending, at LMPD following a $12 million settlement the city reached with the Taylor family. In November, the city also settled with Walker for $2 million after he sued Louisville and several of the officers who were part of the 2020 raid.LMPD and Metro Government leaders said the city has made changes and reforms since 2020, including fixes in response to a review of the police department from Chicago-based consulting firm Hillard Heintze.The 2021 report from Hillard Heintze made 102 recommendations to turn around a department it found had failed to establish mutual trust and provide equitable treatment across Louisville's neighborhoods.A dashboard on LMPD's website most recently showed that 37% of the Hillard Heintze recommendations had been "implemented" and 47% were "in process," with others still under review.Breonna Taylor shootingA 2-year timeline shows how her death has changed usCity officials estimated in 2021 that reforms at LMPD prompted by the DOJ investigation could cost Louisville up to $10 million annually, and the city directed some federal American Rescue Plan funds to that area. The changes have already included a new Accountability and Improvement Bureau at LMPD and launch of an early warning system for officers after years of delays.This story will be updated.
- [Louisville Metro Police Department uses 'excessive force' and 'unlawfully discriminates against Black people,' DOJ report says](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/louisville-metro-police-department-uses-excessive-force-and-unlawfully-discriminates-against-black-people-doj-report-says/) - Washington CNN — The Louisville Metro Police Department routinely uses excessive force and practices “an aggressive style of policing” against Black people, the Justice Department said Wednesday after an investigation launched following the botched raid that killed Breonna Taylor. The scathing assessment paints a shocking portrait of racist and abusive conduct in the Louisville police that harkens to practices more commonly seen in some southern cities during the civil rights era. Investigators identified a pattern of police leaders in recent years commissioning reports that documented disproportionate violence directed toward African Americans and ignoring the findings or burying the internal reports. The abuses extended to the treatment of the disabled and even sex assault victims. “For years, LMPD has practiced an aggressive style of policing that it deploys selectively, especially against Black people, but also against vulnerable people throughout the city,” the report said. “LMPD cites people for minor offenses, like wide turns and broken taillights, while serious crimes like sexual assault and homicide go unsolved,” the report added. “Some officers demonstrate disrespect for the people they are sworn to protect. Some officers have videotaped themselves throwing drinks at pedestrians from their cars; insulted people with disabilities; and called Black people ‘monkeys,’ ‘animal,’ and ‘boy.’” Louisville police use “unreasonable tactics” including unjustified neck restraints, police dogs and tasers, DOJ found. The report also found that the police department executes search warrants without knocking and announcing. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the results of the investigation Wednesday. “This conduct is unacceptable. It is heartbreaking. It erodes the community trust necessary for effective policing and it is an affront to the vast majority of officers who put their lives on the line every day to serve Louisville with honor,” Garland said at a news conference. “And it is an affront to the people of Louisville who deserve better.”
- [DOJ announces it will review Memphis Police Department following Tyre Nichols' death as more video will be released](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/doj-announces-it-will-review-memphis-police-department-following-tyre-nichols-death-as-more-video-will-be-released/) - CNN — [Breaking news update, published at 1:09 p.m. ET] The release of additional audio and video in the police beating death of Tyre Nichols in Memphis will be delayed amid a legal challenge, according to a court order. A hearing on the issue is set for Wednesday afternoon after a motion was filed by an attorney for one of the former officers charged in Nichols’ death, Allison Fouche, spokesperson for the Memphis mayor’s office, told CNN. The order comes in response to a motion filed by Blake Ballin, an attorney for Desmond Mills Jr. [Previous story, published at 12:43 p.m. ET] The planned release of hours of additional video from the traffic stop that led to the deadly police beating of Tyre Nichols is on hold amid a legal challenge from one of the former officers charged in Nichols’ death. A hearing on the issue is set to take place Wednesday afternoon after a motion was filed by the ex-officer’s attorney, Allison Fouche, a spokesperson for the Memphis mayor’s office, told CNN. Officials were expected to release Wednesday about 20 more hours of footage from the night of the beating in early January, along with some records from the city’s now-finished internal probe into 13 police officers and four fire department personnel, a Memphis official said. The official revealed Tuesday that a seventh police officer has been fired and others were suspended or left the force after the brutal encounter in the western Tennessee city. Previously, authorities said six officers were fired, five of whom have been criminally charged. The city’s internal investigations into the beatings have finished, so the city intends to release the additional video footage Wednesday afternoon, Memphis Chief Legal Officer Jennifer Sink told a city council committee Tuesday morning. The unreleased footage most notably will include audio of what was said after the beating and after an ambulance took Nichols to a hospital, and it could play an investigative role as his office contemplates additional charges, the county prosecutor previously told CNN. News of the defense attorney’s legal challenge Wednesday came soon after the Department of Justice announced it will perform a review of the Memphis Police Department in the wake of Nichols’ death. The review, requested by the mayor of Memphis, Tennessee, and the city’s police chief, will cover “policies, practices, training, data, and processes related to MPD’s use-of-force, de-escalation, and specialized units,” according to a news release from the department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. A public report outlining the office’s findings and recommendations will be made public at the end of the review, the release states. The announcement Memphis came shortly before the DOJ issued a scathing critique of the Louisville Metro Police Department following a separate two-year review of that agency after the botched raid that killed Breonna Taylor. Footage release earlier contradicted police statements Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, was repeatedly punched and kicked by Memphis police officers following a traffic stop and brief pursuit on foot on January 7. Nichols was hospitalized after the beating and died three days later. Five police officers, who are also Black, were fired following an internal investigation and were indicted on criminal charges January 26. Body camera videos and surveillance footage from the arrest were released on January 27, showing the severity of the beating to the public and drawing widespread condemnation from residents and police officials alike. The video shook a nation long accustomed to videos of police brutality – especially against people of color – and spurred protests and vigils in Memphis and other major US cities. The video released in January contradicted what officers said happened in the initial police report filed after Nichols’ beating, the county prosecutor said, and prompted renewed national debate on justice in policing and reform. The Memphis City Council on Tuesday passed several public safety ordinances related to policing. Among them was one that established an “annual independent review” of the police department’s training academy, and another that established an independent review process for use of force incidents, as well as the deaths or serious injury of people in custody. In early February Shelby County prosecutor Steven Mulroy told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer the video released in January shows “the relevant parts” of the initial stop and the beating after the foot chase, but the yet-to-be-released footage could play a role in investigations. Potential charges of “false reporting” related to the initial police report were being investigated, Erica Williams, a spokesperson for Mulroy’s office, told CNN around the same time. When asked whether anyone new will face criminal charges now that the city’s investigation is finished, Williams said Tuesday: “Not at this time.” Mulroy’s office previously told CNN it would wait for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to conclude an investigation before deciding on more charges. A 7th officer was fired, and one who retired likely would have been, too, city attorney says The city will also release Wednesday some records related to the internal probes of the 13 police officers and four fire department personnel, including documents indicating what they were being investigated for, Sink said. Other investigative files have information that needs to be redacted, and will be posted online when that is completed, she added without giving a timeline. But Sink already announced the bottom line on Tuesday: Seven police officers were fired, three were suspended, one retired and two had their investigations dropped as result of the probes, she said. That was the first time the city announced a seventh officer was fired. That person’s name, and details about what the officer is accused of doing, weren’t immediately released. Also, the officer who retired likely would have been terminated, Sink said without elaborating about what that officer was accused of doing. The city has previously said that three Memphis fire department personnel who responded to the scene – two emergency medical technicians and a fire lieutenant – were fired, though none was criminally charged. On Tuesday, Sink said a fourth fire department worker was suspended. Sink did not elaborate. The two fired EMTs did not conduct a primary examination of Nichols for the first 19 minutes they were on scene, and the lieutenant stayed in a fire truck, according to a state emergency medical services board. A council member asked Sink whether anyone who struck Nichols was still part of either the police department or fire department. “No. All of those officers … have been charged criminally,” Sink said. Those five former Memphis police officers indicted in January were arraigned February 17 on criminal charges. Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin III and Desmond Mills Jr. each face charges of second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression. Second-degree murder in Tennessee is considered a Class A felony punishable by 15 to 60 years in prison. Their attorneys entered not guilty pleas on their behalf. They are due back in court on May 1. The five charged officers were part of the department’s specialized SCORPION unit, which was launched in 2021 to take on a rise in violent crime in Memphis. Memphis police announced the unit would be permanently deactivated shortly after video of Nichols’ arrest was released in January, and the DOJ said Wednesday it would separately review specialized units across the US and create a guide for their use in addition to its review of the Memphis Police Department. Shortly after video of Nichols’ arrest was released in January, Memphis police announced the unit would be permanently deactivated as a sign the department was taking “proactive steps in the healing process for all impacted.” Police in February identified a sixth officer who was fired. Preston Hemphill, who is White, saying he was accused of violating departmental policies including those covering personal conduct and truthfulness. Seven officers – beyond the six who’d been fired at the time – were facing disciplinary action for policy violations, Sink said February 7. Tuesday’s announcement covers the discipline decisions for all 13. In addition, two Shelby County Sheriff’s Office deputies who were at the scene were suspended for five days each without pay for their parts in the case, according to a sheriff’s office news release obtained by CNN affiliate WHBQ. CNN’s Pamela Kirkland, Shimon Prokupecz and Nick Valencia contributed to this report.
- [Read full US Department of Justice report on Louisville police violations and recommended reform](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/read-full-us-department-of-justice-report-on-louisville-police-violations-and-recommended-reform/) - Nearly two years after announcing plans to investigate Louisville Metro and the city's police department in the aftermath of the killing of Breonna Taylor, the U.S. Department of Justice released its scathing report Wednesday.The report is 90 pages long, with a lengthy list of reported violations. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland was set to discuss the release at a press conference Wednesday in downtown Louisville.The report includes 36 recommended remedial measures as well, closing by noting the department "has reasonable cause to believe that Louisville Metro and LMPD engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law. Louisville Metro’s and LMPD’s unlawful practices harm community members and undermine public safety.""We look forward to working with city and police leaders, officers, and the broader Louisville community to stop the unlawful practices, build trust, and ensure that Louisville Metro and LMPD serve and protect the people of Louisville," it concludes.Updating:Findings of federal investigation into LMPD after Breonna Taylor's killing coming WednesdayCheck out the full report here.View in new tab
- [DOJ's report into Louisville police: How people are responding on social media](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/dojs-report-into-louisville-police-how-people-are-responding-on-social-media/) - U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the findings of a sweeping investigation of Louisville's police department on Wednesday, the result of a nearly two-year probe following the killing of Breonna Taylor.The investigation, announced in April 2021 after nearly a year of protests over Taylor's killing at the hands of LMPD officers, aimed to assess "all types of force" used by local police, including potential violations of the First Amendment, whether the department engages in discriminatory policing and whether it worked in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.Live updates:Findings of federal investigation into LMPD after Breonna Taylor's killing coming WednesdayTwitter reaction to LMPD, Breonna Taylor findings
- ['Disrespect for the people.' Garland issues scathing report into LMPD practices](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/disrespect-for-the-people-garland-issues-scathing-report-into-lmpd-practices/) - The U.S. Department of Justice released scathing findings Wednesday from its "pattern-or-practice” investigation into Louisville Metro Police on Wednesday.The department, for years, "has practiced an aggressive style of policing that it deploys selectively, especially against Black people, but also against vulnerable people throughout the city," U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said during a press conference from Metro Hall on Wednesday morning. "LMPD cites people for minor offenses, like wide turns and broken taillights, while serious crimes like sexual assault and homicide go unsolved."Some officers demonstrate disrespect for the people they are sworn to protect."The 90-page report found the department:Uses excessive force, including unjustified neck restraints and unreasonable use of police dogs and tasersConducts searches based on invalid warrants.Unlawfully executes warrants without knocking and announcing.Unlawfully stops, searches, detains and arrests people during traffic and pedestrian stops.Violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech critical of policing.Discriminates against people with behavioral health disabilities while responding to crises.Garland said the Justice Department, Louisville Metro Government and Metro Police have agreed in principle to negotiate a consent decree.The Justice Department has proposed 36 remedial measures LMPD can take.The probe began after Breonna Taylor’s death and accusations of unconstitutional behavior and discrimination. Garland announced in April 2021 that police departments in Louisville and Minneapolis would face federal investigations. Both cities saw mass protests in 2020 as news of the police killings of two Black residents – Taylor in Louisville and George Floyd in Minneapolis − reverberated around the world. While Garland said the Minneapolis probe was prompted by Floyd’s May 2020 death in which an officer kneeled on his neck for over nine minutes, he did not indicate then whether Louisville's investigation was prompted by the shooting of Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room technician who was killed during a March 2020 narcotics raid at her apartment that turned up no drugs or money. DOJ indictments in Breonna Taylor case:Experts predict who has the edge, the feds or the charged officersThe FBI also has been investigating Taylor’s killing separately. The DOJ also has charged several Louisville officers in separate cases since 2020, including four former LMPD personnel in early August on charges either of lying on the warrant obtained to search Taylor’s home, obstructing investigators or — in the case of ex-Detective Brett Hankison — firing bullets that entered a neighboring apartment. Various local officials, including former Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer and former LMPD Chief Erika Shields, who took over as leader of the department in January 2021 but resigned at the start of 2023 as new Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg took office, had said they welcomed the DOJ probe as part of the city’s push to improve its police department and relationships with residents. (Greenberg picked Deputy Chief Jackie Gwinn-Villaroel to serve as his interim LMPD chief as he takes office and searches for a permanent chief.)In early September, Fischer and Shields both said the city has "not waited" in implementing various reforms.DOJ police department investigations:Are Department of Justice investigations a path to police reform or 'a war on cops'?Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, previously tweeted that “I can’t wait for the world to see Louisville Police Department for what it really is,” in response to the DOJ’s announced investigation. No officers were directly indicted and prosecuted by Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s office for Taylor’s death, though several were later fired or submitted resignations. Hankison was charged at the state level in 2020 with wanton endangerment for firing bullets that went into an apartment neighboring Taylor's that was occupied by three people, and a jury acquitted him in March. What happened to Breonna Taylor?Breonna Taylor died after several LMPD officers forced their way into her southwest Louisville apartment with a battering ram around 12:40 a.m. March 13, 2020, with a search warrant to look for drugs and cash as part of a larger narcotics investigation connected to her ex-boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover. Breonna Taylor fact check:Separating the rumors from the factsTaylor’s boyfriend at the time of her death, Kenneth Walker, fired a single shot from his legally owned handgun at the door as officers busted it down, telling investigators later that he feared intruders, not police, were breaking in. Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly was hit by Walker’s shot and fired six rounds in response. Detective Myles Cosgrove fired 16 shots, and Hankison fired 10 shots. Six of those bullets struck Taylor, with Cosgrove firing the fatal shot, the FBI concluded. What has happened since Breonna Taylor's death?The case led cities and states to pass laws banning or limiting no-knock search warrants, and it resulted in various changes and reforms, some still pending, at LMPD following a $12 million settlement the city reached with the Taylor family. In November, the city also settled with Walker for $2 million after he sued Louisville and several of the officers who were part of the 2020 raid.LMPD and Metro Government leaders said the city has made changes and reforms since 2020, including fixes in response to a review of the police department from Chicago-based consulting firm Hillard Heintze.The 2021 report from Hillard Heintze made 102 recommendations to turn around a department it found had failed to establish mutual trust and provide equitable treatment across Louisville's neighborhoods.A dashboard on LMPD's website most recently showed that 37% of the Hillard Heintze recommendations had been "implemented" and 47% were "in process," with others still under review.Breonna Taylor shootingA 2-year timeline shows how her death has changed usCity officials estimated in 2021 that reforms at LMPD prompted by the DOJ investigation could cost Louisville up to $10 million annually, and the city directed some federal American Rescue Plan funds to that area. The changes have already included a new Accountability and Improvement Bureau at LMPD and launch of an early warning system for officers after years of delays.This story will be updated.
- [Live updates: Findings of federal investigation into LMPD after Breonna Taylor's killing revealed](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/live-updates-findings-of-federal-investigation-into-lmpd-after-breonna-taylors-killing-revealed/) - The Courier Journal has learned that the U.S. Department of Justice is set to announce the findings of a sweeping investigation of Louisville Metro and the city's police department on Wednesday, the result of a nearly two-year probe following the killing of Breonna Taylor.The investigation, announced in April 2021 after nearly a year of protests over Taylor's killing at the hands of LMPD officers, aimed to assess "all types of force" used by local police, including potential violations of the First Amendment, whether the department engages in discriminatory policing and whether it worked in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.READ THE REPORT:US Department of Justice release on Louisville police violations and recommended reform"The investigation will include a comprehensive review of LMPD policies, training, and supervision, as well as LMPD’s systems of accountability, including misconduct complaint intake, investigation, review, disposition, and discipline," the department's announcement on April 26, 2021, said.U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland met with city officials in the morning before a planned press conference at 11 a.m. in downtown Louisville. Garland was set to speak alongside Assistant Attorneys General Vanita Gupta and Kristen Clarke along with Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg and Louisville Metro Police interim Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel.Updates from Wednesday's press conferenceAt the press conference, Garland said the U.S. Department of Justice and city of Louisville had agreed to negotiate a consent decree to establish a reform.The 90-page report released includes 36 recommended remedial measures and a lengthy list of reported violations by the department, including discriminatory policing and use of excessive force.Violations, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said, include a pattern of practice thta did not comply with the Constitution and federal law, including excessive force such as unjustified neck restraints and use of police dogs and tasers against people who posed no imminent threat, searches through invalid warrants that were executed without officers announcing their presence. Officers routinely discriminated against Black people and violated the rights of people engaged in protected speech, she said, and "disproportionately subjecting Black residents to unlawful policing."“This conduct is unacceptable. It is heartbreaking. It erodes the community trust necessary for effective policing, and it is an affront to the vast majority of officers who put their lives on the line every day to serve with honor – and it is an affront to the people of Louisville," Garland said.Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg, who said the report "paints a painful picture about LMPD's past," said some people will be "surprised or horrified" by the findings, while others will not be surprised "because they see this report is confirmation of complaints they've made about their own interactions with law enforcement, sometimes for years." Others, he said "will look at this report and they'll be eager to find some way to minimize it or dismiss it.""They'll say it's all politics, or that you could find examples like this in any city," Greenberg said. "No – this is not about politics or other places. This is about Louisville., This is about our city, our neighbors and how we serve them."Community meeting Wednesday nightGreenberg said Louisville plans to host a virtual community meeting at 7 p.m. Wednesday night to discuss the findings.Department of Justice releases investigation on LMPD, Louisville MetroThe full investigation is 90 pages long and outlines violations in the department along with recommended changes.Check out the full release from the U.S. Department of Justice here.What happened in the Breonna Taylor caseTaylor, a 26-year-old emergency room technician in Louisville, was shot and killed by LMPD officers serving a no-knock warrant at her apartment in the early-morning hours of March 13, 2020. Her death was a key factor behind national protests that summer over police killings of Black Americans and was at the center of months of demonstrations in Louisville, and Wednesday's announcement comes nearly three years after the fatal shooting.After Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron and his team of prosecutors presented the shooting to a grand jury, just one officer who fired their weapon that night was indicted locally – Brett Hankison, on wanton endangerment charges stemming from rounds he fired that entered a neighbor's apartment. He was acquitted in March 2022.In August 2022, however, four former officers were indicted by a federal grand jury – Hankison, on excessive force charges, along with Joshua Jaynes, Kelly Ann Goodlett and Kyle Meany, who were accused of taking steps to falsify the warrant used in the raid at Taylor's apartment. Goodlett later pleaded guilty, while charges against the other former officers are still pending.Steve Conrad, who was LMPD's chief at the time of Taylor's death, was fired in June 2020 after local barbecue stand owner David McAtee was shot and killed by law enforcement officials breaking up a crowd near his business on an early night of the protests. He was fired by then-Mayor Greg Fischer after it was determined officers were not wearing operational body cameras at the time of that shooting. Fischer faced intense pressure to step down amid the 2020 protests but remained in office until his third and final term expired at the end of 2022.The city of Louisville later settled with Taylor's family for $12 million and agreed to a number of police reforms.Reach The Courier Journal's breaking news team at lounews@courier-journal.com.
- [Justice Dept. Finds Pattern of ‘Discriminatory’ Policing in Louisville](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/justice-dept-finds-pattern-of-discriminatory-policing-in-louisville/) - The review, undertaken after a specialized unit killed Breonna Taylor in a botched raid in 2020, paints a damning portrait of a department in crisis.WASHINGTON — The police department in Louisville, Ky., engaged in a yearslong pattern of discriminatory law enforcement practices, the Justice Department said on Wednesday after conducting a two-year investigation prompted by the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor by the police in 2020.Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, appearing in Louisville alongside the city’s mayor and acting police chief, announced an agreement to overhaul policing practices he said had led to systemic discrimination against Black people, including Ms. Taylor. Ms. Taylor, a Black medical worker, was shot and killed by police officers assigned to a drug enforcement unit in March 2020 during a botched raid of her apartment.In a damning 90-page report, investigators painted a grim portrait of the Louisville Metro Police Department, detailing a variety of serious abuses, including excessive force; searches based on invalid and so-called no-knock warrants; unlawful car stops, detentions and harassment of people during street sweeps; and broad patterns of discrimination against Black people and people with behavioral health problems.“The L.M.P.D.’s conduct has undermined its public safety mission and strained its relationship with the community it is meant to protect and serve,” Mr. Garland said.The Justice Department’s findings, he said, were succinctly captured by an unnamed Louisville police leader interviewed during the investigation:“Breonna Taylor was a symptom of problems we have had for years.”Justice Department investigators also found widespread problems in the way the police handled investigations of domestic violence and sexual assault cases, including allegations of sexual misconduct or domestic violence against law enforcement officers.Mr. Garland said that his investigators also uncovered instances of blatant racism against Black Louisville residents, including the disproportionate use of traffic stops in Black neighborhoods — and even the use of racist epithets like “monkey,” “animal” and “boy.”Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, said that the targeting of Black people for traffic stops and searches turned conventional law enforcement practices into “weapons of oppression, submission and fear.”The Louisville investigation is one of several so-called pattern or practice investigations into potentially discriminatory policing around the country that have been opened under Mr. Garland.The investigation and report, which are likely to lead to a consent decree by both parties, are separate from the federal criminal investigation into the conduct of the members of a drug enforcement unit who broke down the door to Ms. Taylor’s apartment, killing her as they engaged in a shootout with her boyfriend.Some of the reforms outlined by Mr. Garland have already been undertaken. After Ms. Taylor’s death, the department banned “no-knock” warrants, which allowed officers to break into a residence without warning. Officials have also expanded their use of counseling and training for officers and appointed an inspector general to review the department’s practices.“We will not make excuses, we will make changes,” said Mayor Craig Greenberg of Louisville, a Democrat who took office in January.Mr. Greenberg vowed to embrace an overhaul of the department’s practices.He called the abuses outlined in the report “a betrayal of the integrity and professionalism that the overwhelming majority of our officers bring to their job every day and every night.”
- [The Boogaloo Bois Are Plotting a Bloody Comeback: ‘We Will Go to War’](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/the-boogaloo-bois-are-plotting-a-bloody-comeback-we-will-go-to-war/) - Dozens of arrests fueled speculation that the Hawaiian shirt-wearing, gun-loving anti-government group was done for. But it seems they’d merely gone underground and appear to be angrier than ever.
- [Live updates: Findings of federal investigation into LMPD after Breonna Taylor's killing coming Wednesday](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/live-updates-findings-of-federal-investigation-into-lmpd-after-breonna-taylors-killing-coming-wednesday/) - The Courier Journal has learned that the U.S. Department of Justice is set to announce the findings of a sweeping investigation of Louisville Metro and the city's police department on Wednesday, the result of a nearly two-year probe following the killing of Breonna Taylor.The investigation, announced in April 2021 after nearly a year of protests over Taylor's killing at the hands of LMPD officers, aimed to assess "all types of force" used by local police, including potential violations of the First Amendment, whether the department engages in discriminatory policing and whether it worked in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.Recent headlines:Louisville police contract negotiations won't be made public. Why some want to change that"The investigation will include a comprehensive review of LMPD policies, training, and supervision, as well as LMPD’s systems of accountability, including misconduct complaint intake, investigation, review, disposition, and discipline," the department's announcement on April 26, 2021, said.What happened in the Breonna Taylor caseTaylor, a 26-year-old emergency room technician in Louisville, was shot and killed by LMPD officers serving a no-knock warrant at her apartment in the early-morning hours of March 13, 2020. Her death was a key factor behind national protests that summer over police killings of Black Americans and was at the center of months of demonstrations in Louisville, and Wednesday's announcement comes nearly three years after the fatal shooting.After Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron and his team of prosecutors presented the shooting to a grand jury, just one officer who fired their weapon that night was indicted locally – Brett Hankison, on wanton endangerment charges stemming from rounds he fired that entered a neighbor's apartment. He was acquitted in March 2022.In August 2022, however, four former officers were indicted by a federal grand jury – Hankison, on excessive force charges, along with Joshua Jaynes, Kelly Ann Goodlett and Kyle Meany, who were accused of taking steps to falsify the warrant used in the raid at Taylor's apartment. Goodlett later pleaded guilty, while charges against the other former officers are still pending.Steve Conrad, who was LMPD's chief at the time of Taylor's death, was fired in June 2020 after local barbecue stand owner David McAtee was shot and killed by law enforcement officials breaking up a crowd near his business on an early night of the protests. He was fired by then-Mayor Greg Fischer after it was determined officers were not wearing operational body cameras at the time of that shooting. Fischer faced intense pressure to step down amid the 2020 protests but remained in office until his third and final term expired at the end of 2022.The city of Louisville later settled with Taylor's family for $12 million and agreed to a number of police reforms.Reach The Courier Journal's breaking news team at lounews@courier-journal.com.
- [ACC Tournament: Kenny Payne's first Louisville basketball season ends - Courier-Journal](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/08/acc-tournament-kenny-paynes-first-louisville-basketball-season-ends-courier-journal/) - GREENSBORO, N.C. — The worst Louisville men's basketball season ever is over. Year 1 of the Kenny Payne era ended with a program-record 28th loss — the Cardinals' 19th by double digits — to No. 10-seeded Boston College in the first round of the ACC Tournament on Tuesday evening at Greensboro Coliseum. Payne has asked for patience at every step thus far on his quest to restore his alma mater to national prominence. His manta has been, "Win or learn," rather than win or lose. So, when he addressed his players in the locker room after their season came to an end, he said he told the guys he "couldn't care less" about the record that will forever be attached to their legacies at a program he holds so dear. "I'm in charge of making sure that these young men are loved," Payne said. "... Now, I have to take the next few days and gather my thoughts and see, 'How do I do this in a way that I bring back Louisville to where it needs to be?'"ACC Tournament:Here's the bracket and how to watch every game in GreensboroNo. 15-seeded U of L (4-28, 2-19 ACC) clawed its way back from a 10-point deficit to lead 34-31 at halftime. The game was tied at 45 apiece with 15:30 to play in regulation, but the Eagles (16-16, 10-11) outscored the Cardinals 35-17 the rest of the way en route to an 80-62 victory. "They were the aggressor for most of the second half," Payne said. "They put us on our heels and made us look bad, because they played with more fire, more toughness, more fight than we did."Louisville athletics director Josh Heird said in January, when the team was 2-16 and winless in ACC play, that he will support Payne in his rebuilding efforts 110% "until he does something that says, 'Hey, I don't think he should be our basketball coach.'""He hasn't done one thing that has shown me that he shouldn't be our basketball coach," Heird said at the time. "Now, does that mean that any of us are satisfied with two wins? Absolutely not. Like I said, it is extremely frustrating. And I can assure you, it's frustrating. I know it's frustrating to Kenny. It's frustrating to staff, and it's frustrating to our student-athletes."When asked after the season-ending loss if he's had any conversations with Heird during the stretch run of the year about his and the program's future, the head coach said he hadn't. "I don't know if there's a reason to have a conversation with Josh Heird about my future," Payne said. "I go to work every day. I love Josh. Josh says he loves me. There's nothing to talk about. I've got a job to do."El Ellis:Louisville basketball star wants to leave 'as a winner.' Here's how losses shaped him'I don't know what the future holds'Payne's job may soon get busier with the arrival of the offseason. On March 13, players can begin entering their names into the NCAA transfer portal. Some will likely be leaving Louisville after postseason debriefs with the coach. "However that goes, I'm ready," said JJ Traynor, a junior forward from Bardstown, Kentucky, with two years of eligibility remaining, whose father played at U of L from 1993-95. After adding just two players — sophomore forward Brandon Huntley-Hatfield and walk-on guard Hercy Miller — and missing out on several others through the portal heading into Year 1, Payne needs to make a splash when it reopens. He described the qualities he's looking for in potential acquisitions just days before the ACC Tournament. "This is why teams try and get older players out of the portal and elsewhere," Payne said after a loss to Virginia in the regular-season finale. "So that you have guys who can fight, guys who understand fighting and playing together and mental toughness."The player on Payne's inaugural roster with the biggest decision to make, however, has said he isn't considering the transfer portal. That would be El Ellis, who in what could have been his last game donning a Louisville uniform tied Boston College's Makai Ashton-Langford with a game-high 16 points despite a 17-minute scoreless stretch to start the first half. When Payne took Ellis out of the game with 34 seconds to play, the Durham, North Carolina, native yanked off his headband, pulled his jersey up toward his eyes and with his head hung low walked away from the court toward one of the tunnels inside Greensboro Coliseum before returning to congratulate the Eagles on their win."I don't know what the future holds right now," said Ellis, who plans to test the professional waters before deciding whether or not to use an extra year of eligibility, granted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, for a final season at U of L. "I feel like I gave everything this season, and things just didn't go as planned."Louisville basketball recruiting:These players have signed to the Cardinals' 2023 class'What is there to evaluate?'Payne was also asked after the loss about his plans for evaluating his staff's performance in Year 1, which ended with the Cardinals sitting at 292nd out of 363 Division I teams on statistician Ken Pomeroy's efficiency rankings. His response: "What is there to evaluate?""I have one of the best staffs in college basketball," Payne said. "I can tell you that they're unique individuals that have had so much success in this game. I can't believe you just asked that question, because you're looking at guys who have accomplished more in their life as players — forget coaching. Their experience in life is why I hired them. They are great coaches, and they gave these kids love every day."I asked them to love the young men. That's why I hired them," he added. "To adopt their dreams, that's why I hired them. Nothing else. They did their jobs. They did a great job. I love my staff."Road to recovery:Louisville's Mike James spent year getting basketball ready. Here's what fueled his returnThe players have said they've felt the love. Ellis specifically credited the staff with helping him reach "a different spirit, a different energy" while shouldering a heavy burden as the team's floor general. Both Traynor and redshirt freshman Mike James showed signs of growth as the season of, "Win or learn" unfolded. "The only people you really got are the people in this locker room," Traynor said. "Everybody was talking about us this year and the season we had, but (I know) moving forward that we're really a family, and we're really all we got."There remains, however, a lot to learn. "Every second, every minute matters — in practice, in film, weights — everything matters," James said when asked for his biggest takeaway from the year. "Every second on the court matters; every possession on the court matters. "Everything matters in college basketball. I just hope that we learn from that and we get better."Reach Louisville men's basketball reporter Brooks Holton at bholton@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter at @brooksHolton.
- [Gaia's reverses fortunes as COVID-era trends fade - BizWest](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/07/gaias-reverses-fortunes-as-covid-era-trends-fade-bizwest/) - LOUISVILLE — When the world shut down in the early portion of the COVID-19 pandemic, streaming video providers such as Louisville’s Gaia Inc. (Nasdaq: GAIA) were major beneficiaries. But as normalcy has crept back into daily life, membership is decreasing, and profits are turning to losses. Gaia, which said in its annual report this week
- [Choreographer's Multimedia 'Extravaganza' at Blaffer Unites, Celebrates Different Art Forms ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/07/choreographers-multimedia-extravaganza-at-blaffer-unites-celebrates-different-art-forms/) - THIS SATURDAY AT the Blaffer Museum, Houston award-winning, queer contemporary choreographer and community leader Rivkah French presents Twisting Through Secrets, a cross-disciplinary, multimedia extravaganza featuring a variety of dance, drag, spoken word, and ukulele-playing performers. Twisting Through Secrets takes its inspiration from two current Blaffer exhibits: Dallas-based painter Leslie Martinez’s new painting series The Secrecy of Water and video artist Jacolby Statterwhite’s 3D animated epic We Are In Hell When We Hurt Each Other. Beginning at 7pm, the Blaffer space will be activated by live music and dance theater from Angie Uhegwu (a.k.a. S.O.U.L.A.S.P.H.E.R.E); neo-futurist dance by French with Margo Smolik; spoken-word poetry by Ayokunle Falomo; contemporary movement combined with martial arts, and breaking by Persi Mey and guests; and what is described as “a sickening blend of drag glamour, drama, and camp” by bearded beauty and OutSmart magazine fave drag emcee Blackberri. Martinez’s large-scale, tactile paintings, which incorporate rocks, scraps, and recycled materials, speak to the artist’s trans, non-binary identity, as well as their childhood experiences traveling from the Rio Grande Valley of the South Texas-Mexico border to Dallas, and crossing one of most dangerous Customs and Border Patrol checkpoints in the United States. Satterwhite’s video transforms the artist’s dance movements — evoking ballroom culture and vogueing — through digital bodysuits into animated Black fembot forms and other avatars and concludes with a tribute by a cadre of fierce femme warriors to Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old ER technician murdered by Louisville Police in March 2020. Preceding the Twisting Through Secrets performance are two community workshops. At 5pm, French leads a 30-minute meditation on the Blaffer exhibitions and performance themes. At 5:30, Mey leads a beginner-friendly, open-to-all “Weightshare Workshop” that will explore how to move (i.e. dance) as a group through queer-positive, non-gender specific partnering. Participants will learn how partnered dancers safely give and receive weight while remaining connected in performance. Visual artists are invited to bring drawing and painting supplies to either or both workshops and join in the creativity. From Your Site ArticlesRelated Articles Around the Web
- [Kevin Robinson has 1 edge in Phoenix District 6 race – and it's an important one](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/07/kevin-robinson-has-1-edge-in-phoenix-district-6-race-and-its-an-important-one/) - In his pitch to Phoenix City Council District 6 voters for the March 14 runoff election, political newcomer Kevin Robinson plays up a) his longtime experience in law enforcement and b) that he’s a centrist who can bridge differences.The latter remains to be seen. There’s little history to assess his political leanings or beliefs.Robinson’s sometimes tentative and perfunctory answers in debates – “I can promise that voters will always get a call back from me” – reflect that lack of knowledge of city hall inner workings.What does give him a leg up against Sam Stone, a former chief of staff for term-limited City Councilman Sal DiCiccio, is his insight on police issues. Some of those issues are front and center for the Phoenix City Council and may just propel Robinson into office.Robinson is actually a police reformerCritics dismiss Robinson as a status quo or “pro-police” candidate – a similar descriptor is assigned to attorney Kesha Hodge Washington, who’s challenging incumbent Carlos Garcia, a community activist, in the District 8 runoff – because he’s backed by law enforcement groups.But that’s selling him short.In the law-enforcement arena, Robinson is really a centrist – perhaps even progressive – reformer. A couple of instances highlight his work for change.More from Kwok:Could Sam Stone beat the odds and win?Robinson was part of a task force commissioned by the Arizona Supreme Court to reevaluate unannounced search warrants, or so-called “no-knock” warrants, following the 2020 police killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky., during a forced entry drug investigation.The task force recommended changes to the process, including a list of factors that a magistrate should weigh before granting “no-knock” and nighttime search warrants. That includes the presence of weapons or hostages or known violence from occupants at the location.The task force also recommended that a police supervisor’s approval of the search warrant be taken into consideration by the magistrate.Presiding judges and the Arizona Judicial Council, which have the authority to fashion the rules, went further and made the supervisor approval a requirement – which Robinson favored and said was a best practice during the time he oversaw the SWAT unit.He supported Phoenix's civilian review boardThe second occurred in spring 2020 when the mayor and council first tackled the idea of a civilian review board on police misconduct. Robinson backed Carlos Garcia’s proposal that, on a narrow 5-4 vote, created a civilian office with investigative powers.At the time, he called it a needed response to lost public confidence in law enforcement and said that police should welcome citizen oversight, not fear it.'180 degrees different':Robinson, Stone square off in debateThe Legislature has since enacted a law that prevents a civilian-led entity from investigating police misconduct. Phoenix's Office of Accountability and Transparency has, as a result, been relegated largely to a role of keeping watch on internal police investigations.Nevertheless, Robinson maintains that police officers “should not be afraid of accountability” from citizen oversight.By comparison, Stone derides the civilian office as “a jobs program for people who have made a living protesting cops” and bristles at the notion that the system for investigating and punishing bad police behavior needs reform.His public safety experience gives him an edgeThe issue of law enforcement looms large in Phoenix not just because of perennial concerns over crime and police staffing but also because of an ongoing Department of Justice investigation into Phoenix Police over claims of civil rights violation, including excessive use of force and discrimination.Phoenix Police are expected to initiate some reforms on their own even before the DOJ probe finishes, as it has begun to do with a proposed update to their Use of Force policy.Robinson could influence changes there, having chaired Phoenix Police’s disciplinary review board for more than a decade and headed the department’s use of force board for three years.He serves on AZPOST, which investigates law enforcement misconduct and disciplines officers, up to revocation of the officer's certification.Robinson stands to be a strong ally of the mayor to guide the city in the aftermath of the DOJ investigation.He also could act as a foil to police critic Carlos Garcia should Garcia win reelection. Who knows, the two might even find common ground to strike a compromise.On myriad issues, Stone’s experience as Sal DiCiccio’s right-hand person trumps Robinson. On public safety, Robinson has a clear edge.Reach Abe Kwok at akwok@azcentral.com. On Twitter: @abekwok.
- [Series on racial equity aims to fill gaps in health equity education - VCU Health](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/06/series-on-racial-equity-aims-to-fill-gaps-in-health-equity-education-vcu-health/) - The series is open for members of the public and VCU community to explore VCU Health’s history and efforts to make healthcare more equitable. March 06, 2023 By Jayla ParkerVirginia Commonwealth University’s Office of Health Equity is excited to launch the History and Health; Racial Equity Series. This education module gives the VCU and VCU Health community opportunities for in-depth engagement and dialogue about our institutional history, reflection of how that history has influenced and shaped us and examination of the resulting impact on current health disparities.“As an academic health center that cares for a large constituency of Black and Brown patients, we have a unique responsibility to address legacies of bias and discriminatory practices, ” said Logan Vetrovec, director of education and research in the Office of Health Equity. What inspired VCU and VCU Health to create this series? The Office of Health Equity at VCU, started in 2021, aims to develop initiatives that introduce the principles of health equity into education, training, research and patient services.The creation of the History and Health; Racial Equity Series was essentially inspired by the protests against racism and police brutality towards African Americans in summer of 2020, following the murders of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky.Slavery, segregation and race-based discrimination are topics often excluded from lessons taught on the history of medicine and healthcare, but the VCU Office of Health Equity recognizes how ignoring these parts of the past is a disservice to our future progress as a community. The purpose of this uncommon educational program Increasing awareness, supporting conversations that some may find “uncomfortable” and providing a safe space for everyone to be heard are all motives behind creating this series.The Office of Health Equity describes this program as an intentional approach to address substantial knowledge gaps in understanding the academic health center’s history and to facilitate an effective interface between diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and the burgeoning engagement of VCU’s past.“The series content was created by faculty and team members across the university and health system, drawing on the wealth of existing knowledge and expertise of partners at VCU Libraries, the East Marshall Street Well Project, the Humanities Research Center and others,” said Anne Massey, director of patient and community services in the Office of Health Equity. The History and Health; Racial Equity series has 11 topics with event recordings and learning modules: Fundamentals of Race & Racism Race, Space & Power in Richmond Virginia Medical Research and the First Heart Transplant in the South Coughing and Scoffing: Inequities in the Time of COVID-19 Assessing Structural Racism by Understanding St. Philip Hospital and School of Nursing Medical Dissection and the East Marshall Street Well Housing, History, and Health Structural Racism and the Food Environment The Roots of Institutional Racism: Medical College of Virginia Medical Racism Then & Now: When You Know Better, You Do Better - Racial Equity Symposium Mothers of Gynecology - Racial Equity Symposium This program gives all VCU and VCU Health employees as well as students and community members the opportunity to earn a History and Health; Racial Equity digital badge for participating. In addition, participants can satisfy annual VCU Health System DEI learning requirements and receive VCU Health continuing education credit by completing online learning modules.All of these free materials are available online at the VCU Office of Health Equity website.
- [Feed Louisville partners with local restaurants for fundraiser to reach more people in need](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/06/feed-louisville-partners-with-local-restaurants-for-fundraiser-to-reach-more-people-in-need/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A local nonprofit is encouraging Louisville restaurant customers to share a meal.Feed Louisville is hosting a fundraiser in celebration of its third birthday.The nonprofit is asking for a donation of $3.25 so it can cook and deliver hot meals for the homeless. Feed Louisville has distributed these cards to restaurants across Louisville encouraging donations to expand its outreach. (Feed Louisville photo) While all donations are accepted, Feed Louisville is encouraging people to give more where they can. A $10 donation will provide three hot meals, a $30 donation will feed a houseless person for a week, and $100 will provide a month's worth of food for one person, the organization said.More than a dozen restaurants are coming together to support the mission by accepting donations. Below is a full list of participating restaurants, provided by Feed Louisville:Bandido’s - University of Louisville: 423 University BoulevardBandido’s - Westport: 2901 Goose Creek RoadBlue Dog Bakery: 2868 Frankfort AvenueButchertown Grocery Bakery: 743 East Main StreetFord Employee Café: 11200 Westport RoadGeorgia’s Sweet Potato Pie Company: 1559 Bardstown RoadHammerheads: 921 Swan StreetLogan Street Market: 1001 Logan StreetMayan Café: 813 East Market StreetRamsi’s Café on the World: 1293 Bardstown RoadWest Sixth Brewery: 817 East Market StreetWiltshire Pantry Bakery & Café: 901 Barret AvenueWiltshire Pantry Bakery & Café: 605 West Main StreetFeed Louisville was founded by local Chef Rhona Kamar and outreach worker Donny Greene at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic three years ago with the goal of "meeting the daily basic human needs of Louisville's houseless community while working to remove the barriers to permanent housing." The nonprofit has a "street outreach team" that takes hot food, water and supplies directly to those living in encampments and on the streets.Since its inception, Feed Louisville has prepared more than 300,000 meals for those in need. Right now, its team of chefs make and distribute up to 800 meals daily. In the last three years it has also helped more than 60 people move into more permanent housing.For more information about the nonprofit, volunteering or donating, click here.Copyright 2023 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
- [Louisville police release body camera footage of officers 'unintentionally' shooting 2 teenagers](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/05/louisville-police-release-body-camera-footage-of-officers-unintentionally-shooting-2-teenagers/) - Kentucky police released officer body camera video on Friday showing a Louisville Metropolitan Police officer shooting at two teenagers during a trespassing call.In the footage, released more than a week after the 20 February incident, officer Brendan Kaiser can be seen approaching the garage of a vacant property in Chicasaw with his gun drawn.“They could hear movement inside of the garage and had drawn their weapon because they did not know who was inside, how many people were inside, and whether the individuals were armed,” the department said in a news release accompanying the video.He realises there are people inside the building, and calls for an additional officer to arrive to the scene."They just tried to get out,” the officer says on his radio. “We’re going to have multiple people. I just shut the garage door on them. I got them trapped in. I think they’re probably trying to get out the window.”Suddenly, the doors of the garage fly open, and two teens begin to run away. As officer Kaiser approaches the pair, his gun goes off.The two youths at the scene say they were injured in the shooting and checked in at local hospitals. The LMPD, meanwhile, said there is reason to doubt this claim.Neither the officers nor the individual detained were hurt during the incident,” the agency said. “Also there were no evidence present at the scene that would’ve indicted that anyone had been injured.”Mr Kaiser, hired in 2016, is on administrative leave while the LMPD conducts an investigation of the incidentAttorneys for the injured teens say the officer has a long history of excessive uses of force."This officer has a history of red flag behavior," attorney Sam Aguiar told the Louisville Courier-Journal. "The department needs to explain immediately why his prior incidents didn’t prompt corrective action and training."In 2018, Mr Kaiser was exonerated for fatally shooting a man who, according to the LMPD, threw a knife at the officer, according to the paper.He was also admonished multiple times, including a brief suspension, for violating department policies are de-escalation and “innappropriate force” on a juvenile.In 2021, the Department of Justice announced an investigation into the Louisville police department, following outrage at the 2020 shooting of Breonna Taylor, who was fatally shot during a no-knock police raid.
- [Louisville Police Release Body Camera Footage Of Officers Shooting 2 Teenagers](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/05/louisville-police-release-body-camera-footage-of-officers-shooting-2-teenagers/) - On Friday, Kentucky police showed a video from an officer’s body camera that showed a Louisville Metropolitan Police officer shooting at two teens during a trespassing call. Officer Brendan Kaiser can be seen with his gun drawn as he walks up to the garage of a vacant house in Chicasaw in the video, which was
- [17 FEMALE ACTIVISTS WE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT - Her Campus](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/03/17-female-activists-we-should-know-about-her-campus/) - The opinions expressed in this article are the writer’s own and do not reflect the views of Her Campus. When considering the concept of activism, I believe it is something that only works when activists have a platform for their voice. Therefore, it was such a powerful moment when Lizzo, at the People’s Choice awards back in December 2022, accepted her ‘People’s Champion’ award by bringing out 17 female activists to celebrate them, their voices, and their work. Lizzo wanted to use her platform to ‘amplify marginalised voices’, admitting that she didn’t believe she deserved a trophy for championing people. Instead, she believes, ‘these are all activists and people that deserve this spotlight’, before shouting ‘I’m gonna say all of their names!’: Amariyanna “Mari” Copeny– ‘better known as Little Miss Flint, she spent the past eight years fighting to ensure everyone in Flint and in communities across the nation has access to safe drinking water, she’s only 15 years old.’ Following the Flint water crisis of 2014 (in which the city’s drinking water was contaminated with lead and potentially deadly bacteria), Mari sent a letter to President Obama that prompted him to visit the city and ultimately approve $100 million dollars in relief. She made a significant impact on the dialogue around environmental racism, due to Flint being a predominantly Black area, and has since continued her activism through many projects such as: Raising over $600,000 for her Flint Kids projects that includes giving out school supplies and Christmas presents to children in the area. Becoming a national youth ambassador to the Woman’s March. Partnering with company Hydroviv to produce her own water filter that can be shipped all over the country to help those with toxic drinking water. Shirley Raines– ‘through her organisation Beauty 2 the Streetz, she makes the human connection with the unhoused people of Los Angeles, and makes them feel loved, and love what they see in the mirror.’ Beauty 2 the Streetz services Skid Row, Los Angeles (a neighbourhood containing roughly 9,200-15,000 homeless people, one of the largest populations in the US) by providing not only hot food but, makeup, showers, hair washes, colour, and wigs for homeless people. Shirley documents her work to her over 100k Twitter followers to bring awareness to the epidemic of homelessness, but most importantly to demonstrate the valuable human connection that can be made with everyone regardless of circumstance as, after all, Shirley reminds us that ‘the people of Skid Row are just like everyone else, they are people who have fallen on hard times who didn’t have that lifeline to pull them out’. Yasmine Aker– ‘she’s an Iranian-American grassroots activist, she is a voice for the voiceless and works with various organisations supporting the Iranian women, and people’s fight for freedom and democracy.’ Yasmine is an actress and alongside her activism for the Iranian people she has also spoke openly about her struggles with poverty, homelessness, childhood trauma and sexual assault and about struggling to find her ‘value’ as a result of this. She writes on her Instagram: “I need to find a way to be able to say that I am proud of who I am. I don’t want to have any more shame left to hide. I am a bisexual woman from the Middle East, and was born without a citizenship, but I am not unwanted. I am not landless. I am a citizen of this world. And I am going to find my worth and unearth my value”. Emiliana Guereca– ‘if you’ve been to a woman’s march, she’s probably behind it, as the founder of the Women’s March foundation, she helps amplify our voices.’ Emiliana devotes most of her time to women’s rights advocacy, Latino education and gender equality. She has also worked on the Feminist Street Initiative that endeavours to rename streets across the US (a country in which 5,000 streets are named after George Washington alone) after women who have ‘paved the way and earned their place in history’. Esther Young Lim– ‘she’s the author of the booklet How to Report a Hate Crime, and seeks to eradicate barriers and empower the Asian-American and Pacific Islander community.’ Esther is a second-generation Korean American who witnessed ‘blatant Anti-Asian racism’ following the classification of Covid-19 as a pandemic along with microaggressions that ‘made [her] feel uneasy to be in [her] own skin’. She also noticed that the lack of resources in native Asian languages meant that it may be hard for some people of the Asian community to report hate crimes, so she created booklets in 13 languages (originally distributed to her local Los Angeles communities but now available as e-books across the country) that trained her community on how to recognize & report these crimes. Felicia “Fe” Montes– ‘she’s a Chicana indigenous artist and activist, co-founder of the groundbreaking women’s collective Mujeres de Maiz. She has created a safe platform for indigenous women of colour to express themselves.’ Mujeres de Maiz works with artists, performers, educators and organizers to create community spaces with the overall goal of bringing together and empowering diverse women and girls and promoting the importance and value of multicultural communities in society. Jayla Rose Sullivan– ‘a professionally trained dancer who is making sure there is space for transgender and non-binary performers in the dance community, watch out for that big girl!’ Jayla is a trans woman who competed on Lizzo’s Emmy-winning reality competition series Lizzo’s Watch Out For the Big Grrrls and advocates for more inclusivity in performing and dance- fields that are typically very body-image focused. Kara Roselle Smith– ‘a member of the Chappaquiddick Wampanoag Tribe, she works tirelessly to seek justice for Black and indigenous communities and is fighting for Land Back and reparations.’ Land Back is an organisation that aims to return ‘Indigenous Lands back into Indigenous Hands’. For example, places like Mount Rushmore, carved with the faces of four US presidents that is therefore ‘an international symbol of white supremacy and colonization’, is actually located in the heart of the Black Hills, a sacred place for Indigenous people. Maggie Mireles– ‘her sister Eva Mireles was a teacher and a hero who lost her life protecting her students during the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Maggie is continuing her fight against senseless and despicable gun violence that has become far too common.’ In a year where America had a record high 300 shootings on school grounds with over 6000 children killed by gun violence, the Ulvade school shooting on the 24th May 2022 killed 19 children and 2 adults, one of them Eva Mireles. Her sister Maggie Mireles has been campaigning since, for example by giving a talk at the March For Our Lives rally, to end gun violence in America. Amelia Bonow– ‘co-founder of Shout Your Abortion, who is working to normalise abortion and increase awareness of abortion pills and motivate people to work and support abortion access in their communities.’ Following the U.S. Congress’s 2015 efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, Amelia shared her unapologetic personal abortion story that led to a viral outpouring of other stories on social media via the hashtag #ShoutYourAbortion. This hashtag was first developed into an organisation and then into a book of the same name made up of other people’s stories that aimed to present abortion in a more positive light. These were types of conversations that have never happened before on this scale and, according to the SYA website, following the overturning of Roe vs Wade are now ‘needed more urgently than ever before’. Odilia Romero– ‘an advocate and translator for the Indigenous peoples from Mexico and Central America who are now living in the United States. Her women led organisation CIELO brings daily relief to her community in Los Angeles.’ Odilia is the co-founder/ executive director of Comunidades Indigenas en Liderazgo (CIELO) and has over 10 years’ experience in organising and helping Indigenous migrant communities. Her work and knowledge have led to multiple academic publications, awards, and lectures in universities across the United States. Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh– ‘she is committed to building a bridge between Jewish people of all colours and backgrounds, and as an Iranian-American she is fighting to amplify to plight of the Iranian people.’ Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh is the director of student life at The University of California, Los Angeles and is the Vice President of Jewish Engagement who aims to ‘engage and educate a diverse group of students on a Jewish journey’. Sahar Pirzada– ‘who is working on behalf of Muslim women here in America to advance reproductive justice and protect the community from gendered violence and oppressive systems.’ Sahar passionately believes that Islam is a sex positive religion that supports healthy sexual relationships and therefore works with Heart To Grow where she ‘explores the intersections of homophobia and gender based violence and supports survivors of sexual assault in the Muslim community’. Chandi Moore– ‘who works as a community health educator at Children’s Health Hospital in Los Angeles, giving trans and gender non-conforming youth the tools they need to live their lives as their authentic selves.’ Chandi is a HIV and trans rights activist who works at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Center for Trans Youth and Development with years of counselling experience. She also advocates for those in her community to get tested for HIV and to know their status. Crystal Echo Hawk– ‘a member of the Pawnee nation of Oklahoma who seeks to amplify native voices through her organisation IllumiNative. She disrupts the invisibility of Native peoples here in America.’ Crystal founded IllumiNative, an organisation that investigates public opinion research on Native Americans. This data concluded ‘that pop culture, media and K-12 education drive and perpetuate the negative stereotypes and myths and has led to the erasure of Native peoples’. Therefore, theirmission is to tackle this erasure by amplifying Native voices through re-education in America which should ‘mobilise support for key native issues’. Reshma Saujani– ‘who is advocating for the moms as a founder of the Marshall Plan for Moms, she fights for paid family leave, affordable childcare and equal pay for all.’ Marshall Plan for Moms aims to support all moms by creating ‘sweeping cultural change to value women’s unseen and unpaid work and rebuild our broken system to make it possible for women to work and have kids’. Tamika Palmer– ‘she fights in honour of the memory of her daughter Breonna Taylor- say her name! – who was killed in an act of police violence. The Breonna Taylor Foundation has and will continue to focus on pursuing justice for Breonna.’ On the 13th March 2020, Breonna Taylor, who was an award-winning EMT and first responder in Louisville Kentucky working on the front lines of the pandemic, was killed by police who shot 20 rounds at her house, shooting her 8 times while she slept- despite the person they were actually looking for already being held in police custody. The Breonna Taylor Foundation therefore continues to fight for justice for Breonna from the Louisville Metro Police who have not taken any accountability for her murder. Lizzo concluded her speech with the powerful instruction ‘Give them their flowers!’, urging everyone to ‘follow and support’ these women, as well as reminding us all that any platform, big or small, can be used as an opportunity to support and amplify other valuable voices. See the full speech here: [embedded content]
- [Meet D'Corey Johnson: 'Old soul' Louisville 10-year-old with a big voice and bright future](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/03/meet-dcorey-johnson-old-soul-louisville-10-year-old-with-a-big-voice-and-bright-future-2/) - D'Corey Johnson believes he has talent that can take him far. Now, he's taking steps to get there.The 10-year-old has performed the national anthem at NFL games. His song "Breonna Taylor," about a fellow Louisville native, is on streaming services, and you can see him on the stage this spring in a musical touring the country before he pursues a professional career.Before the world heard his voice, though, D'Corey — who also goes by D.C. — was just another 4-year-old singing in his church choir in Louisville, where his talent first stood out. He can remember testing his range, he said, and realizing he had the potential to go places."I was like 'Oh my Jesus, did I just really hit that high note?'" he said, looking back on his time in the choir. "I was like 'Yeah, I believe that I'm going to be a star.'"'Our park':For 100 years, this Olmsted park fostered generations of Black LouisvilliansD'Corey's mother enrolled him in theater classes at the Louisville Central Community Center, a West End organization that helps people develop skills in fields including arts and academia. He earned a place in the program after performing "Who's Loving You" by the Jackson 5 for LCCC President and CEO Kevin Fields, who said the then-6-year-old's audition "knocked my socks off" and earned a standing ovation.The LCCC founded the Tiny Tykes, a performing arts program for preteens, to support D'Corey, who was too young to join other groups, and before long he was playing roles locally in musicals like "Aladdin," "Cats" and "Annie." Erica Denise Bledsaw, the LCCC's manager of youth education and fine arts between 2014 and 2019, said when she heard him sing, she saw the "old soul" shine."He sang with so much passion, so much conviction, like he'd been here before," she said. "And I had never seen anything like it in such a small body and in such a small package."His first big break came during morning announcements at Bates Elementary. The principal of his school asked him to sing the national anthem on the intercom for the school one day and posted the video online with his mother's permission.The clip went viral, and soon, pro teams and others came calling. He sang the anthem at Nissan Stadium in Nashville before a 2022 game between the Tennessee Titans and the New York Giants, for instance, and performed "Lift Every Voice And Sing" in honor of Black History Month at state Capitol last year. He got a legislative citation by Sen. Gerald Neal when he sang in the Kentucky Senate."It is overwhelming, but it's fun. It's exciting. It's new," Nakia Johnson, his mother, said. "D'Corey, once he sung at school and he went viral, we haven't been on a slowdown since. He's been in great demand."Fields said D'Corey is "probably larger than life" and expects to see him on the big stage someday. He's already had a few brushes with fame, meeting Mario Lopez at a boxing match in 2021 and meeting Nick Cannon the same year at Globe Life Field in Texas.His chance could be coming soon, with a key role this spring in Hits! The Musical, which features music from different eras with Dionne Warwick as executive producer. He'll be back in his hometown on April 8 for a show at the Brown Theatre along with fellow Louisville native Karsen Taylor, who also has a role in the show.Plan ahead:Sewer work will close several road blocks by NuLu and downtown Louisville until summerD'Corey has big plans for his future. He said after the tour his family is planning to move to California, where he hopes his budding career takes off. Someday, he wants to perform on Broadway and in movies for platforms like Disney+ and Netflix."He's always been hungry for entertainment and for performing," Bledsaw said. "And so as long as he stays focused, and continues to get the training, necessary to hone his craft, and continues to work hard at it, the sky's the limit for D.C."And through enrolling him in classes to moving to Los Angeles for movie and TV auditions, his mother said she's committed to helping him reach that potential. His voice, she said, is "always for all people.""D.C. is always for all people. And when he open up his voice, you see no color. D.C. brings everybody together," Johnson said. "You have a 10-year-old child they can make grown men cry, and this says a lot."Reach Ana Rocío Álvarez Bríñez at abrinez@gannett.com; follow her on Twitter at @SoyAnaAlvarez.
- [Customs agents seize $1M foreign Viagra shipment in Louisville - The Center Square](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/03/customs-agents-seize-1m-foreign-viagra-shipment-in-louisville-the-center-square/) - (The Center Square) – Federal customs officials confiscated more than $1 million worth of pills labeled as Viagra that arrived in Louisville from Hong Kong.In a statement from Customs and Border Protection, in a search Wednesday night, agents noticed labels on the 500 bottles of the prescription drug in the package indicated the medication was manufactured in the U.S. even though it was shipped from the Chinese administrative region.“CBP will continue to investigate and take action against counterfeit and misclassified goods that post a threat to our economy and our citizens,” Louisville Port Director Thomas Mahn said.The purported erectile dysfunction pills were addressed to an individual in Brooklyn, New York. The bottles contained a total of 15,000 pills.According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the value of counterfeit pharmaceuticals traded globally was $4.4 billion in 2016, and the number of bogus drug shipments discovered more than doubled from 2014 to 2018.And that was before the COVID-19 pandemic that led to an explosion in online sales.However, CBP notes the concerns about counterfeit drugs extend beyond economics. Just 3% of online pharmacies reviewed by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy comply with federal laws and practice standards.Any prescription drug sold in the U.S. needs to meet Food and Drug Administration standards. CBP agents work with the FDA and other federal agencies to keep counterfeit drugs from entering the countryLaFonda D. Sutton-Burke, CBP’s director of field operations for the Chicago office, said that means individuals play a “dangerous game” when they seek prescription drugs online.“Consumers are purchasing these prescription medications from other countries thinking they are getting them at a discount, when in fact they are purchasing an inferior product with unregulated ingredients,” Sutton-Burke said.Customs agents in Louisville, where the UPS global air hub is located, seized more than $265 million in counterfeit products, including clothing, jewelry and other items, during the 2022 fiscal year. Officials also prevented more than 21,000 pounds of illegal narcotics from entering the country.
- [Louisville Metro Council to hire outside attorney to investigate councilman's actions | News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/03/louisville-metro-council-to-hire-outside-attorney-to-investigate-councilmans-actions-news/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Louisville Metro Council plans to hire an outside attorney rather than use its own Ethics Commission to review the actions of one of their own.At issue is a $40 million grant from the city to the Louisville Healthcare CEO Council. Metro Councilman Anthony Piagentini, R-19, initially sponsored the measure. Louisville Public Media reported that Piagentini removed himself ahead of the vote, only to later be hired as a consultant by the group that got the money.The same week LPM's report came out, Metro Council filed an emergency resolution asking the Ethics Commission to look into Piagentini's involvement with the grant. A process already launched by the councilman himself."I think solving the issue expeditiously is of the most importance," said Metro Council President Markus Winkler, D-17, said.However, the Ethic Commission replied by saying they are empowered to do "two things: (1) issue advisory opinions to Metro Officers regarding contemplated future actions; and (2) investigate adjudicate complaints regarding completed alleged actions of Metro Officers."The Ethics Commission could have given an opinion on the matter beforehand but was not asked. Now, it won't investigate without a formal complaint."It is a sworn complaint that I believe this individual has violated the law," Winkler. "I think that's an extremely tall bar."At this point, no one has filed a complaint.It's frustrating for people like Kevin Fields, the CEO of Louisville Central Community Centers, who applied for money from the round of COVID-19 funding, a request that was denied."Nobody likes red tape. But we do like justice," Fields said.There was a resolution on Thursday evening's Metro Council meeting agenda directing Winkler to take all of the steps needed to initiate a complaint, but it was never called."It reeks of potential cover-up if there was some misgivings," said Fields.But Winkler said "that's absolutely not the case," adding that an outside attorney would be hired next week to help with the review."I think this is the legal remedy to get the people the answer that they want," he said.That's all Fields wants — answers amid the disappointment of not receiving the grant he said Louisville Central Community Centers needs.Meanwhile, Winkler said he doesn't believe Piagentini broke the law, and he will not submit an official complaint.Democratic Caucus Chair Paula McCraney told WDRB News she was disappointed Winkler didn't sign the complaint. She says she hopes that someone will file an official complaint with the Ethics Commission to trigger the investigation.Piagentini included the following statement regarding the issue in his Feb. 17 newsletter:"There have recently been media reports questioning my role in a vote that was taken in December of 2022. As a result, I decided to ask the Ethics Commission to review my actions, which included abstaining from a vote on this particular budget amendment on December 1st of 2022. Although I believe my abstention and actions were in line with our ethics ordinance, I look forward to a review by the Ethics Commission and I am committed to fully complying with their review.During last nights Metro Council meeting a Resolution was passed that mirrored my call for an official ethics opinion. This Resolution supports my efforts to seek a quick and clear opinion to this matter. I am hopeful this process will be completed quickly and will refrain from making additional comments at this time."Thursday, he told WDRB News he can't comment on the review at this time.Related StoriesCopyright 2023 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.Piagentini
- [Meet D'Corey Johnson: 'Old soul' Louisville 10-year-old with a big voice and bright future](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/03/meet-dcorey-johnson-old-soul-louisville-10-year-old-with-a-big-voice-and-bright-future/) - D'Corey Johnson believes he has talent that can take him far. Now, he's taking steps to get there.The 10-year-old has performed the national anthem at NFL games. His song "Breonna Taylor," about a fellow Louisville native, is on streaming services, and you can see him on the stage this spring in a musical touring the country before he pursues a professional career.Before the world heard his voice, though, D'Corey — who also goes by D.C. — was just another 4-year-old singing in his church choir in Louisville, where his talent first stood out. He can remember testing his range, he said, and realizing he had the potential to go places."I was like 'Oh my Jesus, did I just really hit that high note?'" he said, looking back on his time in the choir. "I was like 'Yeah, I believe that I'm going to be a star.'"'Our park':For 100 years, this Olmsted park fostered generations of Black LouisvilliansD'Corey's mother enrolled him in theater classes at the Louisville Central Community Center, a West End organization that helps people develop skills in fields including arts and academia. He earned a place in the program after performing "Who's Loving You" by the Jackson 5 for LCCC President and CEO Kevin Fields, who said the then-6-year-old's audition "knocked my socks off" and earned a standing ovation.The LCCC founded the Tiny Tykes, a performing arts program for preteens, to support D'Corey, who was too young to join other groups, and before long he was playing roles locally in musicals like "Aladdin," "Cats" and "Annie." Erica Denise Bledsaw, the LCCC's manager of youth education and fine arts between 2014 and 2019, said when she heard him sing, she saw the "old soul" shine."He sang with so much passion, so much conviction, like he'd been here before," she said. "And I had never seen anything like it in such a small body and in such a small package."His first big break came during morning announcements at Bates Elementary. The principal of his school asked him to sing the national anthem on the intercom for the school one day and posted the video online with his mother's permission.The clip went viral, and soon, pro teams and others came calling. He sang the anthem at Nissan Stadium in Nashville before a 2022 game between the Tennessee Titans and the New York Giants, for instance, and performed "Lift Every Voice And Sing" in honor of Black History Month at state Capitol last year. He got a legislative citation by Sen. Gerald Neal when he sang in the Kentucky Senate."It is overwhelming, but it's fun. It's exciting. It's new," Nakia Johnson, his mother, said. "D'Corey, once he sung at school and he went viral, we haven't been on a slowdown since. He's been in great demand."Fields said D'Corey is "probably larger than life" and expects to see him on the big stage someday. He's already had a few brushes with fame, meeting Mario Lopez at a boxing match in 2021 and meeting Nick Cannon the same year at Globe Life Field in Texas.His chance could be coming soon, with a key role this spring in Hits! The Musical, which features music from different eras with Dionne Warwick as executive producer. He'll be back in his hometown on April 8 for a show at the Brown Theatre along with fellow Louisville native Karsen Taylor, who also has a role in the show.Plan ahead:Sewer work will close several road blocks by NuLu and downtown Louisville until summerD'Corey has big plans for his future. He said after the tour his family is planning to move to California, where he hopes his budding career takes off. Someday, he wants to perform on Broadway and in movies for platforms like Disney+ and Netflix."He's always been hungry for entertainment and for performing," Bledsaw said. "And so as long as he stays focused, and continues to get the training, necessary to hone his craft, and continues to work hard at it, the sky's the limit for D.C."And through enrolling him in classes to moving to Los Angeles for movie and TV auditions, his mother said she's committed to helping him reach that potential. His voice, she said, is "always for all people.""D.C. is always for all people. And when he open up his voice, you see no color. D.C. brings everybody together," Johnson said. "You have a 10-year-old child they can make grown men cry, and this says a lot."Reach Ana Rocío Álvarez Bríñez at abrinez@gannett.com; follow her on Twitter at @SoyAnaAlvarez.
- [No. 13 Virginia aims to pick up steam vs. Louisville - Sportsnaut](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/02/no-13-virginia-aims-to-pick-up-steam-vs-louisville-sportsnaut/) - Credit: Jamie Rhodes-USA TODAY Sports The COVID-19 pandemic not only forced the cancellation of the NCAA Tournament in 2020, it also threw a monkey wrench into another hallowed college basketball tradition: Senior Day. With the NCAA granting athletes an extra year of eligibility because of the pandemic, there now are two types of seniors: those
- [Mayor Greenberg: City 'evaluating' policy for officer-involved shootings amid multiple investigations](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/02/mayor-greenberg-city-evaluating-policy-for-officer-involved-shootings-amid-multiple-investigations/) - The community is awaiting the release of body camera footage, after LMPD says an officer "unintentionally" discharged his gun -- one bullet hitting two teenagers. LOUISVILLE, Ky. — An issue currently garnering some of the most attention from the Louisville community is the shooting of two teenagers in the Chickasaw neighborhood from last week. The community is awaiting the release of body camera footage, after Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) says an officer "unintentionally" discharged his gun -- one bullet hitting both the teens. The shooting happened on Feb. 20 around 6 p.m., but details from police into what happened weren't revealed until the following day just after 3 p.m. The now 9-day wait for body camera footage has left many in the community frustrated. WHAS11 asked both Mayor Craig Greenberg and Interim Police Chief Jackie Gwinn-Villaroel about this during a news conference on Thursday, when they revealed new investments into the police department. At one point during former Mayor Greg Fischer's administration, prior to the death of Breonna Taylor, it was common practice for LMPD to release body camera video within 24 hours, so WHAS11 asked them to explain to the public why that's no longer the case in situations where the department has opted to investigate its own officer-involved shootings -- most notably the one from Chickasaw and another at Shawnee Park in July 2022, which also took multiple days for the video to be released. "Let me put emphasis on [the fact that] that was the previous administration. Now, we have this administration," Gwinn-Villaroel said. "We want to make sure that we have received all significant actuarial statements from officers being involved in that incident." Greenberg went a step further. "The chief and I -- and other members of her team, of my administration -- we've already had conversations about evaluating this policy. We're evaluating the policy for how we move forward in the future," he said. The mayor said the release of body camera footage in the Chickasaw neighborhood shooting is expected to be released on Friday. A Fischer administration policy instituted back in 2020 set a precedent where LMPD would ask Kentucky State Police (KSP) to investigate all LMPD officer-involved shootings where someone is hurt, with goals of increasing accountability and transparency. WHAS11 asked KSP if a backlog in cases across the state has forced them to deny requests for certain investigations out of Louisville. This is the response WHAS11 received on Monday: KSP cannot direct a local law enforcement agency on any matters. KSP spoke with LMPD shortly after the shooting occurred on Monday. Based on the preliminary details presented by LMPD to KSP it was mutually agreed upon that LMPD would handle the investigation. KSP works with local law enforcement departments to provide assistance when requested. A decision is made after a discussion between the two agencies and based on many factors including the details surrounding the incident, the number of open cases currently being investigated by CIRT or the local post, personnel availability, and services being requested. [embedded content] Make it easy to keep up-to-date with more stories like this. Download the WHAS11 News app now. For Apple or Android users. Have a news tip? Email assign@whas11.com, visit our Facebook page or Twitter feed.
- [Democracy expert cites concerns after election denier tapped for House GOP campaign panel](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/01/democracy-expert-cites-concerns-after-election-denier-tapped-for-house-gop-campaign-panel/) - A state GOP legislator who attended the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and pushes the lie that the 2020 election was stolen is now helping lead the Michigan House Republicans’ campaign committee, raising concerns from a democracy expert who called the appointment “a warning bell” for Michigan voters. State Rep. Angela Rigas (R-Caledonia) is one of the GOP lawmakers appointed to be an executive member of the campaign committee, the caucus’ leadership panel that works to elect and reelect Republicans to the chamber, House Minority Leader Matt Hall (R-Richland Twp.) announced Feb. 21. Rep. Angela Rigas | Michigan House photo Rigas is an election denier and was in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, in support of former President Donald Trump, who lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden. Rigas — who was endorsed by Trump in her campaign for the 79th House District — has admitted to participating in the rally and claims she was tear-gassed within the Capitol grounds. The riot left five people dead and more than 140 police officers injured. Disproven claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election incited the armed, far-right mob of Trump supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol building two years ago. “In both the 2020 and 2022 elections, Michiganders rejected politicians who denied lawful election results or who distorted facts for political gain,” said Matt Patton, Michigan policy advocate for Protect Democracy. “Appointments like this should be a warning bell for Michigan voters who believe facts matter and that acknowledging clear winners and losers of elections is the bedrock of democracy itself.” Rigas has said that she considers being called an “insurrectionist” and “terrorist” a “compliment,” and believes participants in the insurrection were “exercising their God-given Constitutional rights.” She has also espoused anti-vaccine rhetoric, was involved in rallies protesting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s COVID-19 health orders and is a member of the Michigan House Freedom Caucus that has been combative with new Democratic leadership. House Republicans spokesperson Gus Portela did not respond to an inquiry regarding the optics of having a January 6 participant in the panel’s leadership team. Rigas said in a statement Friday that she is “excited to start my new role as Executive Board member of the House Republican Campaign Committee.” “I’m honored to work with many other great Representatives around the state to make Michigan red in 2024 and ensure we gain a Republican majority and the People’s Chamber,”she added. State Rep. Andrew Beeler (R-Port Huron) was tapped by Hall to lead the HRCC. “We’re going to stop the radical Democrat agenda that seeks to tax families and small businesses into oblivion,” Beeler said Tuesday. Half of incoming Michigan GOP lawmakers are election deniers More members of the HRCC leadership team include state Rep. Bill G. Schuette (R-Midland) in the vice chair role; state Rep. Mike Harris (R-Clarkston) as recruitment chair; state Rep. Jaime Greene (R-Richmond) as recruitment vice chair; state Rep. Graham Filler (R-St. Johns) as finance chair and state Rep. Tom Kunse (R-Clare) as finance vice chair. Rigas is joined by fellow state Reps. Bryan Posthumus (R-Cannon Twp.), Phil Green (R-Millington), Luke Meerman (R-Coopersville), Pat Outman (R-Six Lakes), John Roth (R-Traverse City), Mark Tisdel (R-Rochester Hills), Matthew Bierlein (R-Vassar), Nancy De Boer (R-Holland), Gina Johnsen (R-Lake Odessa), Thomas Kuhn (R-Troy) and Kathy Schmaltz (R-Jackson) as executive members on the committee. Beeler, Posthumus, Meerman, Outman and Roth have also, in various ways, denied the results of the 2020 election, as the Advance previously reported. SUPPORT NEWS YOU TRUST. DONATE
- [New study suggests the 2020 election increased alcohol use and decreased sleep](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/01/new-study-suggests-the-2020-election-increased-alcohol-use-and-decreased-sleep/) - People experienced reduced sleep quantity and efficiency coupled with heightened stress, negative mood, and alcohol use in the period surrounding the 2020 election, according to new research published in the journal Sleep Health.“Anecdotally, my experience of politics is that they have become increasingly divisive over the last 10-15 years, and really across my lifetime as a whole. As such, I was personally curious as to whether and how this increased divisiveness affects our emotional well-being and sleep,” said study author Tony Cunningham, a member of the faculty and the director of the Center for Sleep and Cognition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School.“From a scientific perspective, the effect of major socio-political events on aspects of mental health and well-being is one of those things that you would think is well researched but when I looked into the literature it had really only been explored by a few pioneering studies, and ours is the first to associate changes in emotional well-being on Election Day with changes in sleep later on Election Night.”“Finally, the potential for global effects really interested us,” the researcher explained. “As globalization has increased and we have become more and more connected via the internet, we were wondering if the lines between communities and nations may be blurring with regard to the effects of these major event.”The study was conducted as part of a larger investigation into the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic that collected data during a period before and after the 2020 U.S. election. The study included both U.S. and non-U.S. residents, with a total of 543 participants ranging in age from 18 to 90.The participants received daily surveys during a period prior to the election (October 1-13) and the days surrounding the election (October 30-November 12). The surveys, which were delivered in the morning, asked the participants to assess their previous night’s sleep by recording their bedtimes, time required to fall asleep, number of awakenings through the night, morning wake time and time spent napping during the day. They also reported the previous night’s alcohol consumption. Mood was assessed using a validated questionnaire as well as questions from a standard depression screening tool.The researchers found that stress levels were consistent for both U.S. and non-U.S. participants during October but increased sharply leading up to and on Election Day, with U.S. participants reporting higher levels of stress than non-U.S. participants. Among U.S. participants, alcohol consumption increased significantly on three specific days: Halloween, Election Day, and November 7. Among non-U.S. participants who drank, in contrast, there was no change in alcohol consumption during November.In addition to increased alcohol use, Election Day also evoked heightened stress and negative affect among U.S. participants, which in turn was associated with reduced sleep amount and efficiency.“The most relatable point might be the association between daytime mood and subsequent sleep,” Cunningham told PsyPost. “We found that worsened mood and emotional well-being during the day correlated with poorer sleep later that evening. While it was associated with the election in this case, this is likely true on a daily basis – when we have bad days we may have poorer sleep at night, though this should be validated with further research.“With regards to future elections though, I think this study speaks to the need to have an awareness of how we and others may be affected during these highly stressful events. While we may feel compelled to stay tuned into all of the news, it may be in the best interest of our sleep and mental health to take a break and engage in some self-care.”The researchers found that stress levels dropped once the election was officially called November 7, among both U.S. participants and non-U.S. participants > However, the changes in stress levels were significantly greater in U.S. participants.“The most surprising thing to me was that this data was part of a larger study investigating the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on sleep and emotional well-being,” Cunningham said. “While we definitely saw movement in these measures over the course of the pandemic, at no point in our COVID-19 data collection did we see any changes nearly as dramatic as what we saw in the weeks surrounding the election.”“I think this largely speaks to how we perceived the two events: stress related to the pandemic was much more chronic without a clear end in sight (even today), while stress surrounding the election was much more acute.”The results are in line with previous research, which has found that people in the United States tended to report higher levels of depressive symptoms and anxiety in the lead up to the 2020 election. Similar findings have been observed for the 2016 election.But the study, like all research, includes some caveats.“Far and away the biggest limitation of the study is the lack of diversity of the sample,” Cunningham explained. “While we were able to recruit both a U.S. and international sample, a vast majority of the sample was comprised of white, liberal females from the northeastern United States. This study should be conducted with a focus on recruiting a much more diverse sample racially, ethnically, by sex and gender, and across the political spectrum.”“Other questions worth following up on is if sleep behavior leading up to Election Day has an effect on Election Day mood and stress as the relationship between these are thought to be reciprocal. Also this was an investigation on just one major sociopolitical event. It would be interesting to learn more about what features of an event are capable of generating this kind of an effect, especially of global magnitude (e.g., number of people involved, tone, potential implications, etc.)”“The data collection associated with this study also occurred with the backdrop pre-vaccine COVID-19,” Cunningham added. “In line with what we mentioned above, it was actually surprising to see as much movement in these measures as we did given the simultaneous chronic stress we were all experiencing at the time associated with the early days of the pandemic. Future research should definitely follow up to determine how much the context of the pandemic may have affected our results.”The study, “How the 2020 US Presidential election impacted sleep and its relationship to public mood and alcohol consumption“, was authored by Tony J. Cunningham, Eric C. Fields, Dan Denis, PhD, Ryan Bottary, Robert Stickgold, and Elizabeth A. Kensinger.
- [Anti-Abortion Activists Are Fighting to Change Election Law - ProPublica](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/01/anti-abortion-activists-are-fighting-to-change-election-law-propublica/) - ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.
- [Schumer, Jeffries pressure Murdoch, Fox News over Trump's false election fraud claims](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/01/schumer-jeffries-pressure-murdoch-fox-news-over-trumps-false-election-fraud-claims/) - Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries are calling foul on Rupert Murdoch. The top Democrats in Congress sent a letter to Murdoch, urging Fox News leadership "to stop spreading false election narratives." Court papers revealed that Murdoch said some of the anchors on Fox News parroted false election fraud claims in the months after the 2020 election. Members of Rise and Resist participate in their weekly "Truth Tuesday" protest at News Corp headquarters on February 21, 2023 in New York City. Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images Two top Democrats in Congress are calling on Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch and the leadership of Fox News "to stop spreading false election narratives and admit on the air that they were wrong to engage in such negligent behavior." Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both Democrats from New York, sent a letter this week to Murdoch and Fox News leadership. The letter comes days after further revelations in Dominion Voting Systems' $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox Corp. and its TV networks. "As noted in your deposition released yesterday Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and other Fox News personalities knowingly, repeatedly, and dangerously endorsed and promoted the Big Lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election," the lawmakers wrote in the letter, which was released Wednesday. Trump has repeatedly spread false claims that the election was stolen from him. His attempts to pressure a top official in Georgia to "find" votes for him are the subject of a criminal probe in that state, which Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden. Earlier this week, Dominion filed court papers that revealed parts of the testimony from Murdoch and other top Fox Corp. leadership. In his deposition, Murdoch acknowledged that some of Fox's top TV hosts endorsed false election fraud claims. When Murdoch was asked if he was "now aware that Fox endorsed at times this false notion of a stolen election," Murdoch responded, "Not Fox, no. Not Fox. But maybe Lou Dobbs, maybe Maria [Bartiromo] as commentators," according to court papers. "Some of our commentators were endorsing it," Murdoch said in his responses regarding election fraud during the deposition. "They endorsed." Murdoch and other top Fox executives also remained close to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott during the election coverage, according to the court papers. A representative for Fox didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. On Monday, when the court papers were filed, a Fox News representative said in a statement that Dominion mischaracterized the facts by cherry-picking soundbites, "When Dominion is not mischaracterizing the law, it is mischaracterizing the facts." Dominion sued the right-wing cable networks, Fox News and Fox Business, and their parent company, arguing the networks and their top anchors made false claims that Dominion's voting machines rigged the results of the 2020 election. Fox News has consistently denied that it knowingly made false claims about the election. In court papers filed in February, the parent company said that the past year of discovery has shown Fox Corp. played "no role in the creation and publication of the challenged statements – all of which aired on either Fox Business Network or Fox News Channel." Murdoch and his son Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch, in addition to Fox's chief legal and policy officer, Viet Dinh, and Paul Ryan, the former Republican speaker of the House and a Fox board member, have all been questioned in recent months. The revelations that have come out in court papers in recent weeks stem from months of discovery and depositions. Top Fox TV personalities, including Carlson and Hannity, also faced questioning. The faces of Fox News and Fox Business also expressed disbelief in Sidney Powell, a pro-Trump attorney who aggressively promoted claims of election fraud at the time, according to court papers. Ryan said that "these conspiracy theories were baseless," and that the network "should labor to dispel conspiracy theories if and when they pop up." The lawsuit has been closely watched by First Amendment watchdogs and experts. Libel lawsuits typically focus on one falsehood, but in this case Dominion cites a lengthy list of examples of Fox TV hosts making false claims even after they were proven to be untrue. Media companies are often broadly protected by the First Amendment. Fox News has said in earlier statements, "the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech." A status conference is slated for next week, while the trial is set to begin in mid-April. Read the letter below: Dear Mr. Rupert Murdoch et al: As noted in your deposition released yesterday Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and other Fox News personalities knowingly, repeatedly, and dangerously endorsed and promoted the Big Lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election. Though you have acknowledged your regret in allowing this grave propaganda to take place, your network hosts continue to promote, spew, and perpetuate election conspiracy theories to this day. The leadership of your company was aware of the dangers of broadcasting these outlandish claims. By your own account, Donald Trump's election lies were "damaging" and "really crazy stuff." Despite that shocking admission, Fox News hosts have continued to peddle election denialism to the American people. This sets a dangerous precedent that ignores basic journalistic fact-checking principles and public accountability. This is even more alarming after Speaker McCarthy is reportedly allowing Tucker Carlson to review highly sensitive security camera footage of the events surrounding the violent January 6 insurrection. We demand that you direct Tucker Carlson and other hosts on your network to stop spreading false election narratives and admit on the air that they were wrong to engage in such negligent behavior. As evidenced by the January 6 insurrection, spreading this false propaganda could not only embolden supporters of the Big Lie to engage in further acts of political violence, but also deeply and broadly weakens faith in our democracy and hurts our country in countless other ways. Fox News executives and all other hosts on your network have a clear choice. You can continue a pattern of lying to your viewers and risking democracy or move beyond this damaging chapter in your company's history by siding with the truth and reporting the facts. We ask that you make sure Fox News ceases disseminating the Big Lie and other election conspiracy theories on your network. WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP
- [Dominion Lawsuit: Fox News Murdoch Advisor Said Booze Had Got to Rudy Giuliani](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/01/dominion-lawsuit-fox-news-murdoch-advisor-said-booze-had-got-to-rudy-giuliani/) - Rudy Giuliani speaks to the media at a press conference held in the back parking lot of landscaping company on November 7, 2020 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Chris McGrath/Getty Images Redeem now Rupert Murdoch and a top lieutenant privately disparaged Rudy Giuliani, court documents say. Col Allan, a former New York Post editor, said of Giuliani: "I think the booze has got to him." They described Giuliani's election fraud claims as "deranged," yet Fox News broadcast them anyway. Top editors give you the stories you want — delivered right to your inbox each weekday. Loading Something is loading. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. download the app Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. .inline-newsletter-signup.loading { width: 100%; max-width: 640px; margin: 0 auto; visibility: hidden; } Fox News billionaire, Rupert Murdoch, and one of his top executives privately disparaged Rudy Giuliani as he pushed conspiracy theories about voter fraud in the 2020 election, court documents show. The legal documents, filed as part of a defamation lawsuit against Fox News by election machines company Dominion, suggest Murdoch and his top advisors privately believed the election fraud claims to be false, yet continued to promote them.The documents contain an exchange between Murdoch and Col Allan, a former editor in chief of the New York Post, in which they discuss speeches by Giuliani about the 2020 election results. "Rupert told Allan, 'Just saw a bit of Rudy ranting. A terrible influence on Donald.' Allan agreed, responding that Giuliani was 'unhinged. Has been for a while. I think booze has got him.'" Murdoch and Allan appeared to be discussing a bizarre press conference Giuliani held on November 7, 2020, at the Four Seasons garden center outside Philadelphia, which had apparently been mistakenly booked in a mixup with the Four Seasons hotel in the city. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and Trump attorney, played a leading role in pushing false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. "Rupert told the New York Post's Col Allan that "[w]ith several states now disappointingly favoring Biden hard to claim foul everywhere"—and that half of what Trump was saying was "bullshit and damaging.", the documents say."Allan responded that they would prepare "an editorial admiring Trump's achievements in office but urging him to consider the nation and his own legacy as it becomes increasingly clear he has lost office. It is time for acceptance and dignity." Rupert: "That's great. Thanks." Claims have long circulated that Giuliani drinks excessively, with Trump aide Jason Miller claiming to the Jan. 6 committee that on Election Night 2020 he appeared visibly drunk as he urged Trump to refuse to concede his defeat. Giuliani has denied claims he has a drinking problem, and has also denied claims he was drunk on Election Night, 2020. Insider has contacted his attorney for comment. Giuliani spearheaded legal efforts to overturn Trump's which were all defeated in court. He is facing a separate lawsuit from Dominion over his promotion of election fraud claims about the company, and has had his New York legal license revoked. Despite the misgivings by Murdoch and his top lieutenants, Giuliani continued to appear on Fox News where he pushed the baseless election fraud claims. Fox News has disputed the Dominion lawsuit, saying that its right to discuss Trump's election fraud claims because it is protected under the First Amendment. "Dominion's lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny," it said in a statement. "Their summary judgment motion took an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting and their efforts to publicly smear Fox for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting President of the United States should be recognized for what it is: a blatant violation of the First Amendment." .content-lock-lock .hidden { display: none; } Sign up for notifications from Insider! Stay up to date with what you want to know. Subscribe to push notifications Close icon Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.
- [Murdoch: Hannity was 'privately disgusted' with Trump after 2020 election | The Hill](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/01/murdoch-hannity-was-privately-disgusted-with-trump-after-2020-election-the-hill/) - Murdoch: Hannity was ‘privately disgusted’ with Trump after 2020 election | The Hill Skip to content Fox News host Sean Hannity was “privately disgusted” with former President Trump’s actions following his loss in the 2020 election, despite showing steadfast support on air, according to statements made by the network’s owner revealed in a new court
- [Notes on the State of Politics: March 1, 2023 – Sabato's Crystal Ball](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/01/notes-on-the-state-of-politics-march-1-2023-sabatos-crystal-ball/) - Dear Readers: This is the latest edition of Notes on the State of Politics, which features short updates on elections and politics. — The Editors How likely is an Electoral College tie? The 2020 election came fairly close to ending in an Electoral College tie. While Joe Biden won the national popular vote by about 4.5 points, his margins in several key states were much narrower. Specifically, Biden’s 3 closest wins were by 11,779 votes (or .24 percentage points) in Georgia, 10,457 in Arizona (.31 points), and 20,682 (.63 points) in Wisconsin. Had these states voted for Donald Trump and everything else had been the same, the Electoral College would have produced a 269-269 tie, leaving both candidates short of the magic number of 270 electoral votes. If this ever happens, the U.S. House of Representatives would have to decide the election — we’ll have more about how this would work in tomorrow’s Crystal Ball. But before we do that, we wanted to look at whether there are plausible paths to 269-269 in 2024. Changes to the electoral vote allocations as a result of the 2020 census have altered the overall math slightly. Using the new allocation based on the 2020 results, the election would have been slightly closer: 303-235 Biden, instead of the 306-232 edge he enjoyed in reality. The 2020 map with the new Electoral College totals is shown in Map 1. Map 1: 2020 presidential election with new electoral vote apportionment This also would have changed what would have happened had Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin voted for Trump. Under the new allocation, that map would produce a 272-266 Republican victory as opposed to a 269-269 tie. So the new apportionment of electoral votes alters the potential Electoral College tie scenarios and, as we assess the map, makes such a scenario less likely, because the specific pathway apparent back in 2020 is now closed. But a tie is still possible, even if one restricts hypothetical Electoral College scenarios to only include changes to the states that were the closest in the 2020 election. In other words, one doesn’t have to go to absurd lengths — such as a blue Wyoming or a red Massachusetts — to come up with a tie. Using 270toWin — our go-to site for Electoral College strategizing — we played around with realistic scenarios for an Electoral College tie. We locked most of the 2020 Electoral College results into place, not altering any states beyond the 7 from 2020 that were decided by less than 3 points (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin). As part of this scenario, we also locked in the 2020 electoral vote allocations from Maine and Nebraska, the only 2 states that award electoral votes by congressional district. Both states split in 2020, and under the new district lines, Donald Trump would have carried Maine’s 2nd District by about 6 points, with Joe Biden carrying Nebraska’s 2nd District by about the same margin. So that set a baseline electoral vote floor for each side at 226-219 Democratic, with 93 electoral votes from the 7 most competitive states outstanding. Using these Electoral College puzzle pieces, we came up with 3 scenarios, although scenarios 2 and 3 are very similar. Map 2: Hypothetical Electoral College tie, scenario 1 Map 2 shows the first tie scenario. This one would effectively be a realigning map, where Democrats lose the old “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — states that Donald Trump won in 2016 but not 2020 — as well as Nevada, a state that Trump never carried but where Democrats only won by a little under 2.5 points in both 2016 and 2020. Meanwhile, Democrats would hang onto Arizona and Georgia and also flip North Carolina, which was Trump’s closest win in 2020. We don’t find this scenario that plausible because we don’t envision a world in which Democrats are winning Arizona but not its usually bluer northwestern neighbor, Nevada. Nor do we see North Carolina — clearly, to us, the reddest of these 7 states and the only one that backed Trump in both 2016 and 2020 — going blue while 4 of the others go red. The Tar Heel State also is the only one of these 7 states where Democrats had no statewide success in 2022, losing both an open-seat Senate contest and a pair of high-profile state Supreme Court races, making it even harder to imagine it voting Democratic while any of the others are going Republican. Map 3: Hypothetical Electoral College tie, scenario 2 Map 3 shows another scenario — and this one seems a bit more plausible. Democrats again hang onto Arizona and Georgia. They also keep Nevada and lose North Carolina. All of those states would be replicating how they voted in 2020. Meanwhile, Republicans claw back Michigan and Pennsylvania, but Democrats hold Wisconsin. While this doesn’t require North Carolina to vote blue, it does require Michigan and Pennsylvania to both vote more Republican than Wisconsin, which neither did in 2016 or 2020 (although Pennsylvania and Wisconsin had almost identical margins in 2016). Wisconsin still seems the shakiest for Democrats of these 3 states — Republicans did, after all, defend Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) there last cycle and kept the gubernatorial race much more competitive than in Michigan or Pennsylvania, and Biden’s margin was under a point there in 2020. But these states still vote similarly enough that scenario 2 is not out of the question. Map 4: Hypothetical Electoral College tie, scenario 3 Finally, Map 4 is identical to Map 3, except North Carolina votes blue while Georgia votes red. This one seems less likely than the second scenario, as Georgia has pretty clearly trended blue in recent years while North Carolina has not. Overall, an Electoral College tie remains unlikely — landing on a specific 269-269 outcome is something we would not rule out, but we wouldn’t bet on it, either, without getting great odds. Again, we’ll have more to say about how an Electoral College tie would be decided in tomorrow’s Crystal Ball. But we first just wanted to say that, yes, it’s possible, even under the new Electoral College allocation and even if you just focus on the states that were most competitive in 2020. Slotkin enters Michigan Senate race In January, the first Democratic Senate retirement of the cycle came in a light blue state. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, who has held elected office in the state since the 1970s, announced that she would not seek a 5th term. Though Stabenow’s retirement announcement was, in some reporting, considered to be an ominous sign for her party’s prospects, it came at a time of triumph for Michigan Democrats: They had a nearly perfect 2022 cycle. Democrats won most of the marginal House districts, flipped the legislature, and won each of the state’s 3 statewide races with comfortable majorities — their biggest disappointment was the Macomb County-centric 10th District narrowly slipping away. Surely, with the Michigan Democrats’ large bench, there would be a flurry of candidates ready to get into the open-seat Senate race, right? Instead, the past several weeks were relatively quiet on that front. If anything, the Democratic “shadow primary” seemed defined by the process of elimination. Almost immediately, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who was just reelected to a second term, ruled out a run. Other prominent Democrats followed, with the more notable exceptions of 7th District Rep. Elissa Slotkin and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. Though Benson and a few other notable Democrats are still considering the race, Slotkin announced her campaign on Monday. The Republican field, meanwhile, remains in flux, although Rep. John James (R, MI-10) — the party’s nominee in the 2018 and 2020 Senate races — recently filed for reelection to the House. While that deprives Senate Republicans of a potential recruit, it does give House Republicans an incumbent to seek reelection in a swingy seat next year. Slotkin, who was first elected amid the 2018 blue wave that crashed in the House, ran after serving in the Obama administration and has a background in the U.S. Intelligence Community. In the House, she has been part of a bloc of center-left Democrats that have taken an interest in national security issues — other examples from the 2018 class include Reps. Abigail Spanberger (D, VA-7) and Mikie Sherrill (D, NJ-11), both of whom could also be future statewide candidates. Slotkin’s district, which is essentially the successor to a seat that Stabenow held in the late 1990s, is centered on Lansing but extends into the Detroit metro area. Numbered MI-8 last decade, Slotkin flipped the seat by 4 points in 2018 after it gave Donald Trump a 7-point margin 2 years earlier. As Trump carried the district again in 2020, Slotkin replicated her 2018 margin, making her one of only 7 “crossover seat” Democrats that year. For 2022, redistricting turned Slotkin’s seat into a Biden-won seat, although his margin there was narrow (he would have carried it by less than a percentage point) and it would have narrowly voted against Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) in 2020. Though the district was a bit friendlier to Democrats, Republican state Sen. Tom Barrett represented much of the area that was new to Slotkin, making him almost a co-incumbent in the race. Overall, the MI-7 contest turned into 2022’s most expensive House race. But as Map 5 shows, the result was a clear win for the (actual) incumbent: Slotkin won a third term by just over 5 points. Map 5: MI-7 in 2022 Note: Map 5 uses unofficial data, but the official result was almost identical Source: Jackson Franks Barrett is running again, and his candidacy could deter other GOP entrants (he was unopposed for the nomination in 2022). Democrats have several prospects for the seat, but it seems possible that whomever they nominate will have a home base in Lansing’s Ingham County — the blue bastion of the district, it gave Slotkin over two-thirds of the vote each time she was on the general election ballot. Aside from running up the score in Ingham County, one of the keys to Slotkin’s electoral success has been keeping Livingston, the district’s second-largest county and the one directly east of Ingham, relatively close. Livingston County essentially consists of the exurban communities between Detroit and Lansing, and Slotkin has held the GOP margin there to under 20 points. The Crystal Ball is starting the open MI-7 race as a Toss-up. The last time Michigan saw an open-seat Senate contest, in 2014, now-Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) had no opposition to succeed the late Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI). A competitive primary may force Democratic contenders to better establish themselves with Black voters, although any statewide Democratic campaign in Michigan worth its salt should emphasize outreach to minorities. At the time of his election to the Senate, Peters was in the odd position of being a white member who represented a Black-majority House district — the credibility that he established with the Black community likely helped him in 2014 and 2020. Slotkin’s district is only about 7% Black by composition, a number half the statewide 14%, so look for her campaign to aggressively court that key demographic. McClellan enjoys broad-based overperformance Speaking of majority-minority districts, let’s take a quick detour to our home state. Last week, we wrote about the special election in the 4th District, a heavily Black seat that elected Rep.-elect Jennifer McClellan (D), who will be leaving the state Senate to enter the U.S. House. McClellan’s victory was not a surprise but her margin was — her roughly 3-to-1 edge was notably better than what most Democrats get in the district. Turnout dynamics often are different in special elections than typical general elections, which sometimes accounts for odd partisan results. In one fairly recent example, Louisiana had a special election for state treasurer in 2017. The treasurer runoff election was held concurrently with a mayoral runoff in heavily Democratic New Orleans. With the mayoral election on the ballot, Orleans Parish cast close to a quarter of the votes in the statewide treasurer’s race (the parish usually casts more like 10% of the state’s votes). With New Orleans exerting a disproportionate influence, the Democratic nominee for treasurer, Derrick Edwards, took close to 45% against now-Treasurer John Schroder (R). Considering the lean of the state and his lack of funding, Edwards’s showing was respectable. But when the office was up again, in the regularly-scheduled 2019 election, things looked more typical — Schroder was reelected by 25 points. Along those lines, we wondered if McClellan’s margin was padded by a disproportionately strong showing in her home area, Richmond. As it turns out, that wasn’t really the case. Richmond City and neighboring Henrico County are 2 of the largest, and bluest, localities in the district. Last week, the pair cast exactly half the total vote in the election — that was up only slightly from the 49% they accounted for in 2022. So McClellan’s showing was more of a broad-based overperformance than anything else. As a bit of a thought experiment, we took the 2022 result from the 4th District and applied a uniform swing. In other words, last year, the late Donald McEachin (D) was reelected by 30.1 points; last week, McClellan did 18.9 points better, winning by 49%. How would an across the board 18.9% swing towards Democrats compare the actual result? Table 1 considers this. Table 1: 2022 uniform swing vs actual 2023 result in VA-4 As it turned out, McClellan ran slightly behind “expectations” in both Richmond and Henrico, although she obviously carried them overwhelmingly. Her biggest overperformance was actually from another locality that she currently represents in the state Senate: Charles City. One of the smaller counties in the district (it only has 3 voting precincts), it was the commonwealth’s most Democratic county in 1990s-era presidential elections, but its blue lean has eroded in recent years. McClellan’s 44-point margin there was 33 points better than what McEachin earned, and 14 points more than what a uniform swing would suggest. McClellan ran ahead of expectations in several rural Southside counties, one of which was Surry. Just south of Charles City County, Surry County has been undergoing similar larger-scale trends. In 2021, now-Gov. Glenn Youngkin became the first modern GOP nominee for governor to carry this historically deep blue locality (although he did so by just 12 votes). When McClellan is next on the ballot, in 2024, it seems likely that she’ll have a more “typical” Democratic coalition. Next year, a much larger presidential electorate may be in a more straight-ticket mood. The 110,000 votes that were cast in last week’s election represent just a quarter of the nearly 400,000 ballots the district would have cast in the 2020 election. Still, we’ll be watching to see how McClellan’s initial rural appeal translates with an election held under more “normal” circumstances.
- [Rupert Murdoch admits some Fox News hosts endorsed false narrative of a stolen 2020 election](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/01/rupert-murdoch-admits-some-fox-news-hosts-endorsed-false-narrative-of-a-stolen-2020-election/) - IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.UP NEXTArrest warrants issued for Jalen Carter, top NFL prospect, linked to deadly car crash01:26Composer John Williams reflects on Oscar nomination for Spielberg’s ‘The Fabelmans’03:26Colorectal cancer rates in younger Americans on the rise01:50Eli Lilly announces insulin price cut01:49Growing concern over Ohio train derailment hazardous material shipments01:45Dozens killed in train collision in Greece01:16
- [Trump EXPLODES at Rupert Murdoch Over Admitting 2020 Election Lies - YouTube](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/01/trump-explodes-at-rupert-murdoch-over-admitting-2020-election-lies-youtube/) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H4vf6FO0hw
- [Top Democrats push Fox News to stop promoting "propaganda" about 2020 election](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/01/top-democrats-push-fox-news-to-stop-promoting-propaganda-about-2020-election/) - Washington — The Democratic leaders in the House and Senate are urging top executives at Fox Corp. and Fox News to direct the network's hosts to stop pushing baseless claims and "grave propaganda" about the 2020 presidential election, warning that continuing to spread these narratives is harmful to the nation.The letter from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries comes after excerpts of a deposition from Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch were made public Monday as part of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed against the cable news giant by Dominion Voting Systems.In the unsealed documents, which included excerpts from the deposition, Murdoch acknowledged that Fox News commentators endorsed false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, and he did not intervene to stop them from amplifying the allegations. "The leadership of your company was aware of the dangers of broadcasting these outlandish claims. By your own account, Donald Trump's election lies were 'damaging' and 'really crazy stuff.' Despite that shocking admission, Fox News hosts have continued to peddle election denialism to the American people," Schumer and Jeffries wrote.They continued: "This sets a dangerous precedent that ignores basic journalistic fact-checking principles and public accountability." The two Democrats said the actions of Fox News hosts are "even more alarming" given that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy agreed to give primetime host Tucker Carlson access to a trove of 41,000 hours of Capitol and police surveillance video from the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.GOP Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia told CBS News on Tuesday that Carlson's staff was allowed to view but not record portions of the footage from the attack, and the Fox team can request copies of clips they may need. "We demand that you direct Tucker Carlson and other hosts on your network to stop spreading false election narratives and admit on the air that they were wrong to engage in such negligent behavior," Schumer and Jeffries wrote.Spreading false information about the 2020 election, they said, "could not only embolden supporters of the Big Lie to engage in further acts of political violence, but also deeply and broadly weakens faith in our democracy and hurts our country in countless other ways." "Fox News executives and all other hosts on your network have a clear choice," Schumer and Jeffries wrote. "You can continue a pattern of lying to your viewers and risking democracy or move beyond this damaging chapter in your company's history by siding with the truth and reporting the facts."The letter was addressed to Murdoch; his son Lachlan Murdoch, the executive chairman and CEO of Fox Corp.; Suzanne Scott, CEO of Fox News Media; and Jay Wallace, president and executive editor of Fox News Media.Murdoch's deposition is the latest filing from Dominion that has pulled back the curtain on how Fox responded to Trump's loss and his unfounded allegations that the 2020 election was rigged against him.In text messages made public in an earlier document, some of Fox's top hosts, including Carlson, raised concerns about the claims of voter fraud being spread by Trump's allies on its airwaves, but were worried about its audience turning away from the network and tuning in to its competitors after Fox said Mr. Biden had won Arizona, a call that angered Trump and his backers. Delaware-based Dominion Voting Systems, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, was at the center of election lies spread by Trump and his allies, including false accusations that its machines switched votes from Trump to Mr. Biden during the election.In response to the filings, lawyers for Fox Corp. have accused Dominion of citing a "handful of selective quotes" that don't have anything to do with the alleged defamatory statements. "Dominion's lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny, as illustrated by them now being forced to slash their fanciful damages demand by more than half a billion dollars after their own expert debunked its implausible claims," Fox News said in a statement about the suit. "Their summary judgment motion took an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting and their efforts to publicly smear FOX for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting President of the United States should be recognized for what it is: a blatant violation of the First Amendment." Nikole Killion contributed to this report.
- [Pricetag on Assembly Republicans' investigation into the 2020 presidential election nears $2.5M](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/01/pricetag-on-assembly-republicans-investigation-into-the-2020-presidential-election-nears-2-5m/) - A court judgment against Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, has added another $135,000 to the cost of the Assembly Republicans’ investigation into the 2020 presidential election.The ruling brings the total price tag attached to that investigation to almost $2.5 million in taxpayer dollars, according to a review by WisPolitics. Dane County Circuit Court Judge Diane Schlipper ordered Vos to pay $135,574 in legal fees to American Oversight, a Washington, D.C.-based liberal group that filed lawsuits related to the handling of documents in the investigation by former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman. Schlipper cited a state statute finding that the government is responsible for attorney fees when it loses a public records case. Vos had argued that the state should not be responsible for covering a nonprofit’s fees, citing laws in Illinois and Ohio. "Wisconsin’s public records law is not ambiguous and its interpretation requires no assistance from Illinois or Ohio courts," Schlipper wrote. "I award American Oversight its reasonable fees." Schlipper also found that the Legislature may owe an additional $7,637, but that Vos has seven days to file objections. Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Vos said he’d likely appeal this judgment and suggested that a "liberal Dane County judge" may have had political motivations.
- [Rupert Murdoch Colluded With Jared Kushner to Try to Throw the 2020 Election to Trump ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/01/rupert-murdoch-colluded-with-jared-kushner-to-try-to-throw-the-2020-election-to-trump/) - According to a new court filing, the Fox News owner passed “confidential information” about Joe Biden’s campaign to the then first son-in-law and presidential adviser.By Bess LevinFebruary 28, 2023
- [Virginia men get year in prison for carrying guns to 2020 election counting](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/01/virginia-men-get-year-in-prison-for-carrying-guns-to-2020-election-counting/) - Two Virginia men who were arrested carrying guns outside a 2020 presidential election counting location in Philadelphia were sentenced Wednesday to almost a year in prison.A Philadelphia judge sentenced Antonio Lamotta, 63, a resident of Chesapeake, to a minimum of 11 months and 15 days and no more than 23 months in prison. Joshua Macias, 44, a resident of Virginia Beach, received the same sentence. The two men were found guilty of carrying firearms without a license, a third-degree felony punishable by up to seven years in prison. Macias FACEBOOK Antonio LaMotta (left) was seen at the state Capitol in 2020 alongside state Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield. 2020, BOB BROWN/TIMES-DISPATCH
- [Democrats Ask Fox Not to Push 'Propaganda' on 2020 Election - USNews.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/01/democrats-ask-fox-not-to-push-propaganda-on-2020-election-usnews-com/)
- [Former Arizona AG Found No Evidence of 2020 Election Fraud. He Kept Quiet.](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/01/former-arizona-ag-found-no-evidence-of-2020-election-fraud-he-kept-quiet/) - Former Republican Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich declined to publish investigative findings by his office that disproved 2020 election fraud claims, according to documents released February 22 by his Democratic successor, Attorney General Kris Mayes. Mayes, who assumed office in January, released three documents: a previously unreleased "interim findings summary," a draft with staff comments of a published "interim report," and a September memo summarizing the investigation's conclusions. Brnovich's team did not draft a final report, a Mayes spokesperson told The Washington Post. According to the memo written by Reginald Grigsby, a senior agent in the Arizona attorney general's office, Brnovich's investigators assessed 638 complaints, opened 438 investigations, and as of September 2022, submitted 22 cases for prosecution. Though his team identified supposed structural and operational flaws in the state's election procedures (outlined in the interim report), its unpublished findings debunked each theory that alleged significant—let alone potentially outcome-shifting—election-fraud theories tied to the state's 2020 presidential election. "Agents and support staff have spent more than 10,000 hours investigating allegations of voting irregularities and reviewing alleged instances of illegal voting submitted to our office by private parties.…In each instance and in each matter, [Cyber Ninjas Incorporated, True the Vote (TTV), Verity Vote, and elected officials] did not provide any evidence to support their allegations," reads the memo. "The information that was provided was speculative in many instances and when investigated by our agents and support staff, was found to be inaccurate." State lawmakers who had publicly alleged fraud recanted when questioned by investigators. "In interviews with the various media outlets, Arizona State Senator Sonny Borrelli alleged there was a cover-up with regards to election irregularities," reads Grigsby's memo, which also adds that "In an interview with agents, he did not repeat that allegation." Similarly, the memo says, then State Representative Mark Finchem publicly alleged more than 30,000 fraudulent votes. Speaking to Brnovich's office, however, Finchem said "he did not have any evidence of fraud and he did not wish to take up our (investigators') time." The memo also targets supposed proofs of fraud supplied by private entities Cyber Ninjas and TTV (the latter's "evidence" was central to Dinesh D'Souza's debunked documentary, 2000 Mules). "Our comprehensive review of CNI's audit showed they did not provide any evidence to support their allegations of widespread fraud or ballot manipulation," the memo reports. "Based upon our review of CNI's audit, we identified 1 instance of deceased voting, which was not prosecuted as it was accidental. There were 2 instances of double voting that were submitted for prosecution." Instead, Cyber Ninjas' allegations relied on inaccurate databases, fabulist interpretations of routine events, and baseless accusations, Brnovich's office found. TTV simply declined repeatedly to provide to investigators its purportedly conclusive evidence of fraud—despite myriad promises to do so. Further, at various intervals, TTV asserted that it had already disclosed the evidence to Brnovich's team or to the FBI, claims Grigsby disputes. "TTV says they gave the information to the FBI's Phoenix office, while also saying they were informants for the FBI office," he wrote. Having never provided the information to us as promised, TTV said we should contact the FBI to obtain copies of the information they had provided to them. Checking with the Phoenix FBI office, they tell us they met with TTV but they never received any such information from TTV. TTV also reported giving the information to the San Antonio office of the FBI; we have not been able to verify this assertion. The Phoenix office says (TTV representatives) Ms. (Catherine) Engelbrecht and Mr. (Gregg) Phillips are not informants for the FBI; they also said they were told by both of them they had provided the information to our office. This is patently false. Here is Grigsby's account of investigators' attempts to obtain that evidence: Immediately after Election Day, 2020, Brnovich forcefully and publicly rejected allegations of election fraud. "It does appear that Joe Biden will win Arizona," he told Fox Business host Neil Cavuto in an interview on November 11, 2020. "There is no evidence, there are no facts that would lead anyone to believe that the election results will change." Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbes has advocated an ethics investigation into Brnovich's conduct, The Post reported Saturday.
- [Democrats ask Fox not to push 'propaganda' on 2020 election | Raleigh News & Observer](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/01/democrats-ask-fox-not-to-push-propaganda-on-2020-election-raleigh-news-observer/)
- [LexArts unveils sculpture honoring Breonna Taylor - Lexington - WTVQ](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/01/lexarts-unveils-sculpture-honoring-breonna-taylor-lexington-wtvq/) - February 28, 2023 LEXINGTON, Ky. (WTVQ) — LexArts unveiled a sculpture Tuesday honoring Breonna Taylor by artist Kiptoo Tarus. The sculpture, at The MET in Lexington, is called At The Clearing and serves as a “visual celebration of life.” Tarus says he based the piece off of Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved and was created for people to remember and reflect on the loss of Breonna Taylor who was shot and killed in her home by Louisville police nearly three years ago. “I’m really excited about it. You know there is more light with it and it was designed to be outside and so it is finally at home,” Tarus said. “It’s really magnificent. I want people to come down and look at it up close and touch that old wood and see what it stirs in their heart because it is really wonderful,” said Lexington Mayor Linda Gorton. You can view Tarus’ artwork at The MET in Lexington on the corner of Midland Avenue and East Third Street.
- [Louisville Police Contract Negotiations Will Again Keep Out The Press And The ... - LEO Weekly](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/01/louisville-police-contract-negotiations-will-again-keep-out-the-press-and-the-leo-weekly/) - Despite calls for more transparency from activists, upcoming contract negotiations between Louisville Metro Government and the union representing police officers will again be closed to the press and public, LEO Weekly has learned. A gag order will also bar the parties from talking to the media about the negotiations. A list of ‘ground rules’ for the contract talks, signed by chief negotiators for Louisville Metro Government and the River City Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 614 over the weekend, declared that “all negotiation sessions shall be closed to the press and public” and that “there shall be no discussion of the proposals negotiated between the parties with any member of the media, unless an impasse is reached.” The list of ground rules is nearly identical to the one used the last time the city negotiated with the police union in 2021, even though activists and community members have repeatedly pushed for public access to the negotiations. The signing of the ground rules also comes after Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg entered office with a message championing greater transparency in city government. Kish Cumi Price, president and CEO of the Louisville Urban League, described the decision to exclude the public as “tone-deaf,” following calls by the Urban League and others for more transparency in the contract negotiation process. “In 13 days, it will be three years since Breonna Taylor was murdered. And we still have yet to hear from the mayor and others about how they plan to incorporate community and keep us in a place where we don’t feel like the same thing could happen again,” she told LEO on Tuesday. “In my estimation, this was one of the first steps that the mayor could have made to ensure us that this was going to be a concerted effort to do things differently.” The ground rules document was forwarded to LEO Weekly by The 490 Project, a local activist group advocating for police reform, along with an audio recording of a meeting between activists and city officials discussing upcoming negotiations with the police union. Before LEO received the document, the Mayor’s Office confirmed that members of the public would be excluded from the talks, with Press Secretary Kevin Trager defending the decision in a statement to LEO. “We negotiate contracts with 21 different unions representing Metro Government employees. While those negotiations historically have not been open to the public, we always welcome community input on best practices for labor negotiations,” he said in an emailed statement on Monday. “Additionally, once a proposed [contract] is submitted to the Metro Council there will be opportunities for public comment before the council takes it up for consideration.” Following up with LEO briefly by phone, Trager said negotiations would “definitely” begin within two months and could begin within the next month. The contract between the city and police union is set to expire on June 30. Representatives of the River City Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 614 did not respond to requests for comment. NEW ADMINISTRATION, SAME PROBLEMS, ACTIVISTS SAY The 490 Project spearheaded efforts for public access to negotiations with the police union in 2021, but was rebuffed by the administration of then-Mayor Greg Fischer. On the heels of the Fischer administration that was frequently criticized for its opaqueness and silence in the face of scandals and crises, Greenberg made transparency a cornerstone of his campaign, raising hopes that his administration would do things differently. However, to those pushing for access to the contract negotiations, the barring of the press and the public is just more of the same. “From what we can tell, from what we can see from the actions that the mayor’s administration is showing us, we don’t have any hope. There’s been no trust rebuilt at this point with this new administration, to think that what comes out of the negotiations will be any better than any previous times,” said Cara Tobe, an organizer with The 490 Project, which derives its name from subtracting 12 (a slang term for police) from Louisville’s area code, 502. Beyond gaining public access to the negotiations, The 490 Project also wants their recommended changes to the contract to be taken into consideration. Chief among them, Tobe said, is removing language that allows officers to be suspended with pay when under investigation for misconduct, other than in extraordinary circumstances. That provision has seen officers who were found to have violated policies remain on the force while collecting a paycheck for a year or more before ultimately being fired. Tobe said The 490 Project instead wants officers to go on unpaid suspension and receive back pay only if they are cleared by investigation. The 490 Project additionally requested that the city’s negotiation team include a member of the community, but that request was shot down by the city. (In both the audio recording provided to LEO and in a conversation LEO had with Greenberg’s press secretary, city officials pushed back against the notion that there was a negotiation team, asserting that there was a chief negotiator who had the sole ability to bargain. Last May, however, a campaign spokesman told LEO that Greenberg had supported allowing a community member on the negotiating team, something The 490 Project says Greenberg also told one of their organizers.) The Louisville Urban League has also been encouraging the Greenberg administration to open negotiations up to the public, tweeting on Monday that members of the public should call his office.
- [Judge Upholds Firing Of Police Officer Who Shot Breonna Taylor | News - BET](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/01/judge-upholds-firing-of-police-officer-who-shot-breonna-taylor-news-bet/) - Former Louisville Metro Police officer Myles Cosgrove will remain terminated, according to a Jefferson County Circuit Court.According to WDRB, Judge Melissa Bellows agreed with Cosgrove’s termination, which was upheld by the Louisville Police Merit Board in December 2021 with a 5-2 vote. Bellows ruled the board had "substantial evidence" to fire Cosgrove and said in a statement, "Even normal citizens must exercise the 'highest degree of care' in ascertaining whether they are shooting at a legitimate target. Cosgrove seems to be arguing that he should be held to a less stringent standard than an ordinary Kentucky resident, despite having considerably more legal privileges. A normal citizen who violated these principles could be subject to criminal liability."Taylor and her boyfriend Kenneth Walker were in bed when they were startled by a banging on her apartment door around midnight on March 13, 2020. Police, holding a drug warrant, used a battering ram to break down the door. Taylor was killed when Mattingly and two other officers opened fire. Cosgrove reportedly fired 16 shots into Taylor’s apartment.Last year, the U.S. Justice Department prosecutors charged three Louisville cops of conspiring to falsify the Taylor warrant earlier this year. Kelly Goodlett, one of the former officers, pleaded guilty and admitted to aiding in fabricating a false connection between Taylor and a wanted drug dealer. Two other former officers involved in the warrant, Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany, are scheduled to go on trial in federal court this year.
- [Before Murdaugh jurors visited Moselle, O.J. Simpson's jury went to Brentwood](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/01/before-murdaugh-jurors-visited-moselle-o-j-simpsons-jury-went-to-brentwood/) - Before closing arguments got underway on Wednesday in the murder trial of Alex Murdaugh, jurors visited the sprawling hunting estate where the disbarred South Carolina attorney found his wife and son dead in June 2021. The field trip to Moselle became the latest in a series of rare but high-profile instances where jurors are taken out of the courtroom and to the scene of a crime.Last year, jurors in the trial of a former Louisville police officer involved in the 2020 raid and fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor visited her apartment before Brett Hankison was acquitted of wanton endangerment. Months later, the jury in the sentencing trial for Nikolas Cruz, the gunman who was sentenced to life in prison for the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., toured Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School years after 17 people, including 14 students, were killed.But in the months since the Murdaugh murder trial has become the center of worldwide media coverage, including docuseries on Netflix and HBO Max and being carried live on cable news, the proceedings have drawn comparisons to another murder trial with high public interest nearly three decades ago that brought its jurors to the location of the killings: that of O.J. Simpson.On Feb. 12, 1995, Simpson, along with 12 jurors, nine alternates, Judge Lance A. Ito and the attorneys in the case, made the roughly 15-mile trip from Los Angeles County Superior Court to 879 S. Bundy Dr., the location of Nicole Brown Simpson’s condominium in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. The jury’s field trip to the estate took place eight months to the day after his ex-wife and her friend Ronald Goldman were found fatally stabbed outside the residence.Their killings led to O.J. Simpson’s arrest after he attempted to evade police in a white Ford Bronco in a televised chase that became one of the most publicized events in U.S. history. The murder trial would become one of the most memorable and covered legal proceedings of the era. Simpson would be acquitted in the trial, but was later found liable for the two deaths in a civil lawsuit.While lead prosecutor Marcia Clark argued at the time that the trip to the Brentwood residence showed jurors how there could have only been room for one killer in the cramped area by Brown Simpson’s gate on June 12, 1994, Johnnie Cochran, Simpson’s chief trial attorney, claimed that the small space worked in his client’s favor.“How do you have a life-and-death fight in an area that small and not have bruises?” Cochran told reporters at the time.The jury in the Murdaugh trial arrived at Moselle at around 9:45 a.m. Wednesday. Video from NewsNation reporter Brian Entin shows jurors and law enforcement driven onto the 1,772-acre property in at least six vehicles for what’s described as a “jury view” of Moselle. Closing arguments began Wednesday morning as the trial moves toward a conclusion, possibly in the coming days. If convicted, Murdaugh, 54, could face life in prison.Circuit Court Judge Clifton Newman ruled in favor of Murdaugh’s defense team this week and granted its request to have the jury travel to Moselle so that they can better visualize the testimony and visit the site where Murdaugh’s wife, Maggie, 52, and son Paul, 22, were found dead June 7, 2021.“You can’t really appreciate the spatial issues without actually seeing them,” defense attorney Richard “Dick” Harpootlian told the court.What to know about Moselle, the scene of the killings in Alex Murdaugh’s trialAfter lead prosecutor Creighton Waters objected to the request and argued that the property looks different now than it did the night of the killings, Harpootlian told Newman this week that he did not want the jury to be “influenced by crazy paparazzi” after reports of intruders at the sprawling estate.Moselle was publicly posted for sale by the Crosby Land Co. of Colleton County on Feb. 14, 2022 — roughly four months before Murdaugh was indicted by a grand jury on murder charges. Moselle, which includes a four-bedroom, 5,275-square-foot house, a farm, two miles of river for fishing and kayaking, and dog kennels, has been under contract from an undisclosed buyer for $3.9 million since June 6, 2022, according to the listing — almost a year to the day of the killings.Netflix’s Murdaugh documentary series: 4 takeawaysAs the murder trial has gained more attention, some have pointed to similarities between the cases of Murdaugh and Simpson, including how their stories have been consumed as wildly popular docuseries. An expert in crime-scene reconstruction and blood-spatter analysis who was called by Murdaugh’s defense team testified this week that evidence from Moselle suggests that the killings of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were carried out by two shooters. Some pundits have noted that the defense team’s strategy echoed the focus from Simpson’s attorneys in 1995, when Cochran argued that the “real killer(s)” DNA had vanished from evidence samples in an investigation that was “compromised, contaminated, corrupted.”But 28 years before the Murdaugh jury went to Moselle, Simpson’s jurors did the same in Brentwood.It was around 9 a.m. on a Sunday when the Simpson jurors were escorted by motorcycle police officers who shut down freeway on-ramps. When they exited a sheriff’s department bus — with steel bars over tinted windows — they walked into Brown Simpson’s Brentwood residence and retraced the gruesome details that had been presented to them in court.“It’s very helpful to a jury listening to a witness to a crime scene if they look at it themselves,” F. Lee Bailey, one of Simpson’s attorneys, said in court that day, according to UPI. “I’ve long been in favor of jury views.”[embedded content]The trip to Brentwood was not just for the jury but also for the attorneys, the judge and even Simpson. Even though Brown Simpson’s family objected to Simpson being allowed to return to the home, Ito allowed it. Simpson ended up waiving his right to visit the crime scene, instead choosing to stay in an unmarked police car around the corner as jurors went inside four or five at a time.When the jurors were touring the location, Ito expressed his concern with jurors being out in public as part of a trial that had garnered worldwide attention. Brentwood residents were spotted on the day of the visit carrying signs such as “O.J.'s Guilty” and “Free O.J,” according to the Los Angeles Times.“The problem is we will be out, literally out in Brentwood,” Ito said at the time.Both the prosecution and defense teams in the Simpson trial used the visit to Brentwood to strengthen their arguments. Prosecutors emphasized how small the area was where the slayings unfolded in an attempt to upend the defense’s argument that the killings were committed by more than one person.“It will go to the reason why one person could accomplish this,” Clark told reporters.Added prosecutor Christopher A. Darden, “I think that Ronald Goldman, having confronted a suspect with a knife, was essentially caged.”Bailey claimed to reporters, however, that the small space at Brown Simpson’s would not sway the jury.“They are a very impassive group,” Bailey said of the jury, reported the Los Angeles Times. “What we’re banking on is that they’ll understand the evidence better having been to the places where the evidence grew out of last June.”About eight months after the jury’s visit to the crime scene, Simpson was acquitted. If Murdaugh is acquitted, it could be in as little as a day or two after the jury’s visit to Moselle.
- [Louisville doubles for NYC in new indie thriller 'What We Do Next.' How to watch the film](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/01/louisville-doubles-for-nyc-in-new-indie-thriller-what-we-do-next-how-to-watch-the-film/) - What We Do Next - Official Trailer | IMDbDoes Louisville look like New York City? In the new indie thriller "What We Do Next," Bourbon City doubles for the Big Apple.Filmed in Kentucky at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, "What We Do Next" premieres Friday in Los Angels, New York, and Louisville after a string of success on the international film festival circuit."Although the film is set in New York City, it was shot entirely in Louisville with a lot of Kentucky crew," said Louisville-based Merry-Kay Poe, who produced "What We Do Next" along with Max Neace and Chris Mangano of Small Batch Studio Entertainment.Written and directed by Stephen Belber, the film stars Corey Stoll, Karen Pittman, and Michelle Veintimilla."What We Do Next" tells the story of Elsa Mercado, played by Veintimilla ("The Good Wife"), who has been released from prison after serving 16 years for killing her father. New York City Councilwoman Sandy James (Pittman, from "The Morning Show") and corporate attorney Paul Jenkins (Stoll, from "Billions" and "House of Cards"), are forced to grapple with their involvement in the original crime. Power constantly shifts among the three characters throughout the film as they fight for their version of the truth.You may like:The Kentucky Derby Museum Hat Show is back. Here's your complete guide to the 2023 event"This was the perfect script to produce during the pandemic," Poe told the Courier Journal. "The story requires intense dialogue with a small cast and limited sets. Because the brilliantly-written script attracted equally brilliant actors, we were able to film the entire movie in seven days. Including on-site prep and wrap, we were confined for only three weeks. "Because business people were working remotely during the filming of "What We Do Next," in October 2020, the production crew had no trouble securing a vacant office suite that had plenty of separate rooms for sound, private dressing rooms and interior sets.Substituting Louisville for New York City was never an issue during production since most of the action takes place inside buildings."Windows were blurred so that the skyline wasn't seen, which added to the aesthetic of the shots," said Poe. "The only exterior we cheated shows Elsa walking the streets of Washington Heights. She is actually on the Second Street bridge underpass. I doubt that any Louisvillian would have caught that if we didn’t just tell them."You may like:Churchill Downs names 3 Featured Milliners for Kentucky Derby 2023. Meet the hat makersPoe says the film could have included more Louisville exteriors simulating New York City but restrictions during COVID-19 prohibited some movement of the crew. She said Belber and a camera operator did spend one day filming exterior establishing shots in New York City but other than those scenes, everything else took place in Kentucky.The winner of Best Drama at the San Diego International Film Festival, "What We Do Next" will premiere Friday at 7:15 p.m. at Baxter Ave Theatres, 1250 Bardstown Road. Those interested in learning more about the film's production can stick around after the screening when members of the film crew will conduct a Q&A session.For further information, visit village8.com.Reach Features reporter Kirby Adams at kadams@courier-journal.com.
- [Werner Ladder, Hebei Wuxing, Louisville Ladder, Zarges Gmbh, Little Giant - Digital Journal](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/28/werner-ladder-hebei-wuxing-louisville-ladder-zarges-gmbh-little-giant-digital-journal/) - PRESS RELEASEPublished February 28, 2023A latest Report by Report Consultant encompasses information about the Global Fiberglass Ladder Market. This comprehensive report offers insights into the market, models, and drivers of business growth. It also includes Fiberglass Ladder market share, sales volume, and education charts. Research analysts have combined important and additional information, such as commitments from market leaders, into a well-designed report. This report is an essential view of strategies and information and is mainly designed for business leaders. The primary objective of this Fiberglass Ladder report is to provide industry knowledge and help our clients achieve natural growth in their respective fields. The Fiberglass Ladder report also shows a new uptrend which includes market conditions and market forecast 2023-2030.Get a PDF Sample Copy of this Report at: https://www.reportconsultant.com/request_sample.php?id=157592 Some of the Key Players Operating in the Global Fiberglass Ladder Market include: Werner Ladder, Hebei Wuxing, Louisville Ladder, Zarges Gmbh, Little Giant, Hasegawa, CARBIS, Bauer Ladder, Lyte Ladders＆Towers, Jinmao, Aopeng, Twin Engineers, PICA Corp, Aeron Composite, Silkeborg Stigefabrik A / S, Stradbally Ladders, LFI Ladders, Sintex, A Bratt＆Son Ltd, Michigan Ladder The competitive landscape of the market study contains a broader analysis on the regions including North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, The Middle East and Africa, Latin America which are expected to capture the core essence of the market in its widest category. The list covers significant players that manage the industry based on overall system production capabilities, environmental contributions, appropriate channels, and territorial nearness through a system of primary and secondary research methodologies further followed by an in-house analytical model. Furthermore, income generated and a generalized market share for the market is showcased with the help of charts, graphs, and tables. In addition, the report also contains major collaborations, mergers and acquisitions, leading market trends, and business policies are evaluated. The study contains primary and secondary information that pertains to the Fiberglass Ladder market in terms of global status, market size, growth forecasts, trends, segments and a detailed forecast. Key Insights of the Report: The report provides key statistics on the market status of the Fiberglass Ladder manufacturers and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the industry. The report provides a basic overview of the industry including its definition, applications and manufacturing technology. The report presents the company profile, product specifications, capacity, production value, and 2023-2030 market shares for key vendors. The total market is further divided by company, by country, and by application/type for the competitive landscape analysis. The report estimates 2023-2030 market development trends of Fiberglass Ladder industry. Analysis of upstream raw materials, downstream demand, and current market dynamics is also carried out. The report makes some important proposals for a new project of Fiberglass Ladder Industry before evaluating its feasibility. If You Have Any Query/Inquiry, Ask Our Expert: https://www.reportconsultant.com/enquiry_before_buying.php?id=157592 Cumulative Impact Covid-19: This study presents insights on COVID-19 in consumer behavior and shifts in demand, purchasing patterns, supply chain reorganization, market forces dynamics and substantial government involvement. The new research provides insights, analyses, estimates and forecasts in view of COVID-19’s effect on the markets. The Fiberglass Ladder market report delivers a solid watch on the prominent players in terms of strategic analysis, micro and macro market trends and opportunities, pricing trends and a generalized overview of the market. The Fiberglass Ladder market is a detailed study packed with primary and secondary market drivers, market share, leading segments, and an apt geographical analysis. Key Questions Answered in this Report: What will be the size of the market and the pace of growth in 2030? What are the primary drivers of the worldwide market? What are the main market trends that have an impact on global market growth? Which are the market growth challenges? Who are the main global market suppliers? What are the worldwide market opportunities and challenges for sellers? What are the primary results of the global Fiberglass Ladder Market five-point analysis? Request for discount on this Premium Report: https://www.reportconsultant.com/ask_for_discount.php?id=157592 About us: Report Consultant – A global leader in analytics, research and advisory that can assist you to renovate your business and modify your approach. With us, you will learn to take decisions intrepidly. We make sense of drawbacks, opportunities, circumstances, estimations and information using our experienced skills and verified methodologies. Our research reports will give you an exceptional experience of innovative solutions and outcomes. We have effectively steered businesses all over the world with our market research reports and are outstandingly positioned to lead digital transformations. Thus, we craft greater value for clients by presenting advanced opportunities in the global market. Contact Us: Company: Report Consultant Contact Name : Rebecca Parker Email Id: [email protected] Phone: +1 970-200-2429 Address: Play house plaza 640 East Colorada Boulverad,Pasadena,CA,91101 Website: www.reportconsultant.com Industry Global News 24
- [Alex Murdaugh Murder Jurors to Visit ‘Moselle’ Crime Scene](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/01/alex-murdaugh-murder-jurors-to-visit-moselle-crime-scene/) - It is rare for jurors to visit crime scenes, and doing so can be a risk for both the prosecution and defense. Closing arguments were scheduled for later on Wednesday.ISLANDTON, S.C. — The vast estate is as idyllic as it is secluded, its fishing pond, expansive farmland and four-bedroom home shrouded by trees and a winding driveway that keep it all out of view from the highway.On Wednesday, jurors weighing the fate of Alex Murdaugh, the prominent South Carolina lawyer charged with murdering his wife and son, were traveling beyond the property’s metal gate and “no trespassing” sign to see where the double murder took place, one of the last stages of the trial before they begin trying to reach a verdict.Testimony concluded on Tuesday after more than 75 witnesses took the stand over about five weeks. Jurors have heard evidence about Mr. Murdaugh, 54, his family’s legal influence in the region and the fatal shootings in June 2021 that left his wife, Maggie Murdaugh, 52, and their younger son, Paul Murdaugh, 22, dead near the property’s dog kennels. Prosecutors say Mr. Murdaugh carried out the crime in a failed effort to conceal his longtime embezzlement of millions of dollars.The jury visit on Wednesday morning was to be followed by closing arguments from the prosecution and defense, after which 12 jurors will begin deliberations.It is rare for jurors to visit crime scenes, and experts said bringing the jurors out of the tightly controlled courtroom environment and into the real world could carry significant risks for both the prosecution and defense.“There are a lot of dangers with this,” said Nancy S. Marder, a law professor and jury expert at the Chicago-Kent College of Law who remembers sitting at a Starbucks in Los Angeles when a bus full of jurors in the O.J. Simpson trial passed by during their visit to the crime scene.For example, experts said, lawyers are not allowed to point things out or speak with the jurors. “You don’t know what jurors will see when they get to the place,” Ms. Marder said. “They might focus on very different things.”Understand the ‘Murdaugh Murders’Card 1 of 6A South Carolina mystery.
- [Donald Trump Is Trapped by His Own Strategy. That Doesn’t Mean It Won’t Work.](https://slc.lul.org/2023/03/01/donald-trump-is-trapped-by-his-own-strategy-that-doesnt-mean-it-wont-work/) - In his effort to outflank Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida — his most potent challenger-in-waiting for the Republican presidential nomination — Donald Trump goes only in one direction: hard right.At the start of this year, Trump announced his education agenda, declaring that he would issue mandates to “keep men out of women’s sports,” end teacher tenure and cut federal aid to any school system that teaches “critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto our children.”“As the saying goes,” Trump declared, “personnel is policy and at the end of the day if we have pink-haired communists teaching our kids we have a major problem.”Later in January, Trump revealed his “Plan to Protect Children from Left-Wing Gender Insanity,” in which he promised to bring a halt to “gender-affirming care,” to punish doctors who provide gender-affirming care to minors, and to pass legislation declaring that “the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female and they are assigned at birth.”“No serious country should be telling its children that they were born with the wrong gender,” Trump declared. “Under my leadership, this madness will end.”At one level, these pronouncements reflect Trump’s determination to prevent DeSantis from outflanking him. On a larger scale, they reveal a predicament facing not only the former president as he seeks renomination in 2024, but the conservative movement in general, including white evangelicals, the Republican Party and Fox News.Trump’s strategy requires him to continue his equivocation on white supremacism and his antisemitic supporters and to adopt increasingly extreme positions, including the “termination” of the Constitution in order to retroactively award him victory in the 2020 election. The more he attempts to enrage and invigorate his MAGA base in the Republican primaries, the more he forces his fellow partisans and conservatives to follow suit, threatening Republican prospects in the coming general election, as demonstrated by the poor showing of Trump clones in the 2022 midterm contests.Questions about the pandemicCard 1 of 4When will the pandemic end?
- [Murdoch says some Fox hosts 'endorsed' false election claims](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/murdoch-says-some-fox-hosts-endorsed-false-election-claims/) - By RANDALL CHASE DOVER, Del. (AP) — Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch acknowledged that some Fox News commentators endorsed the false allegations by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that he didn't step in to stop them from promoting the claims, according to excerpts of a deposition unsealed Monday. The claims and the company's handling of them are at the heart of a defamation lawsuit against the cable news giant by Dominion Voting Systems. The recently unsealed documents include excerpts from a deposition in which Murdoch was asked about whether he was aware that some of the network’s commentators — Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity — at times endorsed the false election claims. Murdoch replied, “Yes. They endorsed." The Murdoch deposition is the latest filing in the defamation case to reveal concerns at the top-rated network over how it was handling Trump’s claims as its ratings plummeted after the network called Arizona for Joe Biden, angering Trump and his supporters. An earlier filing showed a gulf between the stolen election narrative the network was airing in primetime and doubts about the claims raised by its stars behind the scenes. In one text, from Nov. 16, 2020, Fox News host Tucker Carlson said "Sidney Powell is lying” about having evidence for election fraud, referring to one of Trump's lawyers. The Dominion case is the latest example showing that those who were spreading false information about the 2020 election knew there was no evidence to support it. The now-disbanded House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol disclosed that many of Trump’s top advisers repeatedly warned him that the allegations he was making about fraud were false — and yet the president continued making the claims. Murdoch urged in September 2020, weeks before the election, that Dobbs be fired because he was “an extremist,” according to Dominion's court filing. Murdoch also said he thought it was “really bad” for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani to be advising Trump because Giuliani’s “judgment was bad” and he was “an extreme partisan,” according to a deposition excerpt. Murdoch was asked whether he could have requested that Powell and Giuliani not be put on the air: “ I could have. But I didn't,” he replied. Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, is suing both Fox News Network and parent company Fox Corp. for defamation. Dominion contends that some Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims by supporters of Trump that Dominion machines had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements about the company. Dominion attorneys contend that executives in the “chain of command” at both Fox News and Fox Corp. knew the network was broadcasting “known lies, had the power to stop it, but chose to let it continue. That was wrong, and for that, FC and FNN are both liable.” Attorneys for Fox Corp. note in their filing that Murdoch also testified that he never discussed Dominion or voter fraud with any of the accused Fox News hosts. They say Dominion has produced “zero evidentiary support” for the claim that high-level executives at Fox Corp. had any role in creating or publishing the statements at issue. Dominion’s contention that the company should be held liable because Murdoch might have had the power to step in and prevent the challenged statements from being aired, they said, “has no basis in defamation law, would obliterate the distinction between corporate parents and subsidiaries, and finds no support in the evidence.” The “handful of selective quotes” cited by Dominion have nothing to do with the statements that Dominion has challenged as defamatory, according to Fox Corp. attorneys. “Dominion repeatedly asked Fox News executives, hosts, and staff whether Fox Corporation employees played a role in the publication of the statements it challenges,” they wrote. “The answer — every single time, for every single witness — was no.” Meanwhile, Fox News attorneys note that when voting-technology companies denied the allegations being made by Trump and his surrogates, Fox News aired those denials, while some Fox News hosts offered protected opinion commentary about Trump’s allegations.
- [Rupert Murdoch acknowledged that Fox News hosts endorsed stolen election claims](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/rupert-murdoch-acknowledged-that-fox-news-hosts-endorsed-stolen-election-claims/) - Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox Corporation, acknowledged in a deposition taken by Dominion Voting Systems that some Fox News hosts endorsed false claims the 2020 election was stolen. Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/Getty Images (CNN) — Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox Corporation, acknowledged in a deposition taken by Dominion Voting Systems that some Fox News hosts endorsed false claims the 2020 election was stolen.Murdoch's remarks in a deposition were made public in a legal filing as part of Dominion Voting Systems' $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News. "Some of our commentators were endorsing it," Murdoch said, singling out Fox hosts Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro as Fox hosts who promoted the false stolen election claims on air, according to a transcript of his deposition. Murdoch acknowledged the hosts frequently invited guests who made similar claims.But Murdoch pushed back against Dominion's lawyers who claimed that Fox was endorsing "this false notion of a stolen election?""Not Fox. But maybe Lou Dobbs, maybe Maria, as commentators," Murdoch said in his deposition.In another filing made public earlier this month, a trove of messages and emails from the most prominent stars and highest-ranking executives at Fox News showed they had privately ridiculed claims of election fraud in the 2020 election, despite the right-wing channel promoting lies about the presidential contest on its air.The messages showed that Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham brutally mocked lies being pushed by former President Donald Trump's camp asserting that the election was rigged.The court filings have offered the most vivid picture to date of the chaos that transpired behind the scenes at Fox News after Trump lost the election and viewers rebelled against the right-wing channel for accurately calling the contest in Biden's favor.Fox News has not only vigorously denied Dominion's claims, it has insisted it is "proud" of its 2020 election coverage.The network argued that the court filing contained cherry-picked quotes lacking context."There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan," Fox News said in a statement.Below is the transcript of the relevant part of Murdoch's deposition:Q. You are aware now that Fox did more than simply host these guests and give them a platform; correct?A. I think you've shown me some material in support of that.Q. In fact, you are now aware that Fox endorsed at times this false notion of a stolen election? A. Not Fox, No. Not Fox. But maybe Lou Dobbs, maybe Maria, as commentators.Q. We went through Fox hosts Maria Bartiromo, yes?A. Yes. C'monQ. Fox host Jeanine Pirro?A. I think so.Q. Fox Business host Lou Dobbs?A. Oh, a lot.Q. Fox host Sean Hannity?A. A bit.Q. All were in that document; correct?A. Yes, they were.Q. About Fox endorsing the narrative of a stolen election; correct?A. No. Some of our commentators were endorsing it.Q. About their endorsement of a stolen election?A. Yes. They endorsed.
- [Murdoch acknowledged that some Fox hosts 'endorsed' false election claims, court documents say](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/murdoch-acknowledged-that-some-fox-hosts-endorsed-false-election-claims-court-documents-say/) - Video above: Election leaders declare no widespread fraud in 2022 racesFox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch acknowledged that some Fox News commentators endorsed the false allegations by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that he didn't step in to stop them from promoting the claims, according to excerpts of a deposition unsealed Monday.The claims and the company's handling of them are at the heart of a defamation lawsuit against the cable news giant by Dominion Voting Systems. The recently unsealed documents include excerpts from a deposition in which Murdoch was asked about whether he was aware that some of the network's commentators — Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity — at times endorsed the false election claims. Murdoch replied, "Yes. They endorsed."The Murdoch deposition is the latest filing in the defamation case to reveal concerns at the top-rated network over how it was handling Trump's claims as its ratings plummeted after the network called Arizona for Joe Biden, angering Trump and his supporters.An earlier filing showed a gulf between the stolen election narrative the network was airing in primetime and doubts about the claims raised by its stars behind the scenes. In one text, from Nov. 16, 2020, Fox News host Tucker Carlson said "Sidney Powell is lying" about having evidence for election fraud, referring to one of Trump's lawyers.The Dominion case is the latest example showing that those who were spreading false information about the 2020 election knew there was no evidence to support it. The now-disbanded House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol disclosed that many of Trump's top advisers repeatedly warned him that the allegations he was making about fraud were false — and yet the president continued making the claims.Murdoch urged in September 2020, weeks before the election, that Dobbs be fired because he was "an extremist," according to Dominion's court filing. Murdoch also said he thought it was "really bad" for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani to be advising Trump because Giuliani's "judgment was bad" and he was "an extreme partisan," according to a deposition excerpt.Murdoch was asked whether he could have requested that Powell and Giuliani not be put on the air: " I could have. But I didn't," he replied.Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, is suing both Fox News Network and parent company Fox Corp. for defamation. Dominion contends that some Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims by supporters of Trump that Dominion machines had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements about the company.Dominion attorneys contend that executives in the "chain of command" at both Fox News and Fox Corp. knew the network was broadcasting "known lies, had the power to stop it, but chose to let it continue. That was wrong, and for that, FC and FNN are both liable."Attorneys for Fox Corp. note in their filing that Murdoch also testified that he never discussed Dominion or voter fraud with any of the accused Fox News hosts. They say Dominion has produced "zero evidentiary support" for the claim that high-level executives at Fox Corp. had any role in creating or publishing the statements at issue.They say Dominion's contention that the company should be held liable because Murdoch might have had the power to step in and prevent the challenged statements from being aired "has no basis in defamation law, would obliterate the distinction between corporate parents and subsidiaries, and finds no support in the evidence."The "handful of selective quotes" cited by Dominion have nothing to do with the statements that Dominion has challenged as defamatory, Fox's attorney said: "Dominion repeatedly asked Fox News executives, hosts, and staff whether Fox Corporation employees played a role in the publication of the statements it challenges," they wrote. "The answer — every single time, for every single witness — was no."Meanwhile, Fox News attorneys note that when voting-technology companies denied the allegations being made by Trump and his surrogates, Fox News aired those denials, while some Fox News hosts offered protected opinion commentary about Trump's allegations. DOVER, Del. — Video above: Election leaders declare no widespread fraud in 2022 racesFox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch acknowledged that some Fox News commentators endorsed the false allegations by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that he didn't step in to stop them from promoting the claims, according to excerpts of a deposition unsealed Monday.
- [Rupert Murdoch Trashed Rudy Giuliani but Hosts Kept Having Him on - Business Insider](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/rupert-murdoch-trashed-rudy-giuliani-but-hosts-kept-having-him-on-business-insider/) - Rudy Giuliani. Jacquelyn Martin/AP Redeem now Dominion's lawsuit revealed comments Fox News hosts and execs made about Rudy Giuliani in 2020. Ingraham called Giuliani "such an idiot" and Hannity said he was "acting like an insane person." Dominion is suing Fox for defamation related to unfounded election fraud claims about the company. Top editors give you the stories you want — delivered right to your inbox each weekday. Loading Something is loading. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. download the app Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. .inline-newsletter-signup.loading { width: 100%; max-width: 640px; margin: 0 auto; visibility: hidden; } In the wake of the 2020 election, Rudy Giuliani made several appearances on Fox News to push false claims about widespread election fraud on behalf of President Donald Trump — even as the man in charge of the network and some of its most popular hosts privately denounced the president's lawyer as "insane" and "such an idiot."The comments about Giuliani were outlined in newly released court documents from a defamation lawsuit filed in 2021 by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox. The documents, including some released Monday as well as earlier this month, show higher-ups at Fox News repeatedly doubting Giuliani's credibility.At the time, the former New York mayor was pushing unfounded claims that Dominion's voting machines were switching votes from Trump to Joe Biden, among other outrageous assertions, often alongside another now-former Trump lawyer, Sidney Powell.Rupert MurdochRupert Murdoch, the founder and chairman of Fox News, made several claims disparaging Giuliani and doubting the veracity of his claims. According to court documents released Monday, on November 7, 2020, Murdoch told Col Allan, former editor-in-chief of The New York Post, which is owned by Murdoch: "Just saw a bit of Rudy ranting. A terrible influence on Donald." Two days later Murdoch told a friend, General Jack Keane, a Fox News security analyst, that he thought some of the claims about the election could be true but that Trump "needs better lawyers than Rudy, who is past his prime," the documents said.Around November 16, Murdoch said in an email to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott that he thought Trump would "concede eventually," adding "we should concentrate on Georgia, helping any way we can" in an apparent reference to the Senate runoff election.Murdoch added "We don't want to antagonize Trump further" and that Giuliani should be "taken with a large grain of salt," according to the documents.After Giuliani and Powell held a press conference on November 19, Murdoch told Scott: "Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear. Probably hurting us too." Scott agreed, according to the court documents, and added "yes Sean and even Pirro agrees," in a possible reference to Fox hosts Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro. He also sent an email to Robert Thomson, CEO of News Corp — which is also run by Murdoch — with a subject line that read: "Watching Giuliani!" according to the documents. The email said: "Really crazy stuff. And damaging." News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch. Drew Angerer/Getty Images Sean HannityOn November 11, 2020, Fox News host Sean Hannity said, "Rudy is acting like an insane person," according to the court documents. On December 22, also said "F'ing lunatics" in reference to Giuliani, the documents said.Laura IngrahamOn January 12, 2021, Fox News Host Laura Ingraham said, "Rudy is such an idiot," the documents said.In a statement provided to Insider, a Fox News spokesperson said: "Dominion's lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny, as illustrated by them now being forced to slash their fanciful damages demand by more than half a billion dollars after their own expert debunked its implausible claims. Their summary judgment motion took an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting and their efforts to publicly smear FOX for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting President of the United States should be recognized for what it is: a blatant violation of the First Amendment." Giuliani did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. .content-lock-lock .hidden { display: none; } Sign up for notifications from Insider! Stay up to date with what you want to know. Subscribe to push notifications Close icon Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.
- [Murdoch says some Fox hosts 'endorsed' false election claims - WRAL](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/murdoch-says-some-fox-hosts-endorsed-false-election-claims-wral/) - DOVER, DEL. — DOVER, Del. (AP) — Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch acknowledged that some Fox News commentators endorsed the false allegations by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that he didn't step in to stop them from promoting the claims, according to excerpts of a deposition unsealed Monday.The claims and the company's handling of them are at the heart of a defamation lawsuit against the cable news giant by Dominion Voting Systems.The recently unsealed documents include excerpts from a deposition in which Murdoch was asked about whether he was aware that some of the network’s commentators — Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity — at times endorsed the false election claims. Murdoch replied, “Yes. They endorsed."The Murdoch deposition is the latest filing in the defamation case to reveal concerns at the top-rated network over how it was handling Trump’s claims as its ratings plummeted after the network called Arizona for Joe Biden, angering Trump and his supporters.An earlier filing showed a gulf between the stolen election narrative the network was airing in primetime and doubts about the claims raised by its stars behind the scenes. In one text, from Nov. 16, 2020, Fox News host Tucker Carlson said "Sidney Powell is lying” about having evidence for election fraud, referring to one of Trump's lawyers.The Dominion case is the latest example showing that those who were spreading false information about the 2020 election knew there was no evidence to support it. The now-disbanded House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol disclosed that many of Trump’s top advisers repeatedly warned him that the allegations he was making about fraud were false — and yet the president continued making the claims.Murdoch urged in September 2020, weeks before the election, that Dobbs be fired because he was “an extremist,” according to Dominion's court filing. Murdoch also said he thought it was “really bad” for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani to be advising Trump because Giuliani’s “judgment was bad” and he was “an extreme partisan,” according to a deposition excerpt.Murdoch was asked whether he could have requested that Powell and Giuliani not be put on the air: “I could have. But I didn't,” he replied.Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, is suing both Fox News Network and parent company Fox Corp. for defamation. Dominion contends that some Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims by supporters of Trump that Dominion machines had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements about the company.Dominion attorneys contend that executives in the “chain of command” at both Fox News and Fox Corp. knew the network was broadcasting “known lies, had the power to stop it, but chose to let it continue. That was wrong, and for that, FC and FNN are both liable.”Attorneys for Fox Corp. note in their filing that Murdoch also testified that he never discussed Dominion or voter fraud with any of the accused Fox News hosts. They say Dominion has produced “zero evidentiary support” for the claim that high-level executives at Fox Corp. had any role in creating or publishing the statements at issue.Dominion’s contention that the company should be held liable because Murdoch might have had the power to step in and prevent the challenged statements from being aired, they said, “has no basis in defamation law, would obliterate the distinction between corporate parents and subsidiaries, and finds no support in the evidence.”The “handful of selective quotes” cited by Dominion have nothing to do with the statements that Dominion has challenged as defamatory, according to Fox Corp. attorneys. “Dominion repeatedly asked Fox News executives, hosts, and staff whether Fox Corporation employees played a role in the publication of the statements it challenges,” they wrote. “The answer — every single time, for every single witness — was no.”Meanwhile, Fox News attorneys note that when voting-technology companies denied the allegations being made by Trump and his surrogates, Fox News aired those denials, while some Fox News hosts offered protected opinion commentary about Trump’s allegations.
- [‘Nobody Wants to Be the World’s Villain’](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/28/nobody-wants-to-be-the-worlds-villain/) - Listen to This ArticleAudio Recording by AudmTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.Col. Paul Humphrey moved into the Louisville Metro Police Department’s training headquarters last March, unpacking in a first-floor office with harsh fluorescent lights and an old heater vent rattling above. A sheet of plexiglass covered the room’s lone window, a precaution taken during the long summer of 2020, when protesters gathered in the streets for more than 100 days in a row to denounce the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. They had marched outside the building, rearranging letters on a welcome sign to read, “I SEE MURDERERS.” Now Humphrey filled his new office with policing books as he began working to fix one of the country’s most hated police departments.Humphrey, who is 39, joined the agency at 22, full of ambitions to protect the community he grew up in. He spent a couple of years on patrol before becoming, at 5-foot-9 and 155 pounds, one of the smallest members of the SWAT team. Since then, he rose rapidly through the ranks, partly because of his abilities, but also because an exodus of officers left a leadership vacuum, resulting in a notably young department. He is one of the few high-ranking Black officers on Louisville’s police force, an agency that is 17 percent Black, in a community that is 24 percent Black. “You hear these stories about cops who do heroic things, and they say, ‘I didn’t sign up to be a hero,’” Humphrey told me. “No, I’m sorry. I signed up to be a hero. The vast majority of cops signed up to be somebody’s hero.”Humphrey is deputy chief of police and head of the city’s new Accountability and Improvement Bureau, whose primary task is to rehabilitate the city’s Police Department. In Humphrey’s office over the past year, there has been talk about mission and purpose, technical discussions about audits and body cameras and rumination over the mistakes the department has made — over where policing has gone wrong. “Nobody wants to be the world’s villain,” Humphrey said. “When you signed up to do good and people are telling you what you’re actually doing is harmful, it does cause you to do some soul searching, and probably you should do some soul searching.”In recent years, even as police misconduct has been exposed across the country, the behavior of Louisville officers has stood out. In 2017, it was revealed that two officers for years had been molesting teenagers in the department’s youth Explorer program. In 2018 and 2019, detectives on a violent-crime unit bought drinks from gas stations, announced on the police radio that “someone was thirsty” and hurled the beverages at their targets. Dozens of these attacks were recorded to be shared with their squad. Then there were the many wrongful traffic stops, including one that circulated widely in 2018, during which officers pulled over a Black former homecoming king, an honors graduate, and handcuffed him while a drug dog sniffed his mother’s Dodge Charger. By the time officers slammed a battering ram into Breonna Taylor’s door on March 13, 2020, the city’s Black community had long been dealing with a majority-white police force that was halfheartedly trained, poorly supervised and laxly disciplined.Humphrey sometimes shook his head at the shameful litany. Is every police department this screwed up? he wondered. Sometimes he would read about a bad officer someplace else — like the one in California who exposed himself during a victim interview — and think with relief, At least that wasn’t us. In Louisville, hundreds of officers have resigned or retired in recent years, leaving the force short by 300 people.Alec Soth/Magnum, for The New York TimesIf they’re being honest, Humphrey says, most cops — and most people — have done or said things they regret. Including him. During the unrest of 2020, a member of the National Guard fatally shot a beloved Louisville BBQ stand owner during a clash as officers tried to clear a parking lot. When Humphrey arrived, not yet fully aware of what happened, he asked other National Guard soldiers how they were doing, then added, “I’m glad we could get you onto a little something.” The comment, recorded on his body camera, made the news. Humphrey told me that it was a clumsy attempt to break the tension of a stressful situation but that it came off as callous. Fixing a police department, Humphrey says, is like trying to fix a lumbering machine of countless parts. One of the biggest challenges is persuading police officers — headstrong, critical and often beleaguered — to be enthusiastic about another makeover. “Police officers hate two things,” Humphrey told me. “Change and the way things are.”But change is coming to this agency of 1,000 officers. In 2021, the Department of Justice resurrected its “pattern or practice” investigations after a period of dormancy under former President Donald Trump, probing Minneapolis, where Officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd, and Louisville, where officers shot and killed Breonna Taylor. After nearly two years of investigating, the Department of Justice is expected to release a scathing report on the Louisville department, cataloging use-of-force issues, biased policing practices and sexual misconduct by officers. Commanders anticipate that the process will result in a federal consent decree that would mandate widespread changes to policing practices in the coming years.The profession, Humphrey and other Louisville officers agree, is in the midst of a historic identity crisis. A policing career used to offer good health insurance, a solid pension and some degree of respect. Nearly all of those benefits have been eroded. Officers have come to question whether the long hours at relatively low pay, working a sometimes dangerous job that could at any moment thrust them onto the nightly news, is worth it. For many, the answer has been no. In Louisville, hundreds of officers have resigned or retired in recent years, leaving the force short by 300 people. The Police Department has had four leadership changes since mid-2020, swearing in the latest interim chief, Jackie Gwinn-Villaroel, in January. Police recruiters, who used to draw hundreds of applicants for each academy class, have struggled to fill their funded 48 slots with qualified candidates; one recent class had only 15 students. In a 2021 survey, 75 percent of responding L.M.P.D. personnel said they would leave the force if they could.Interim Chief Jackie Gwinn-Villaroel, who took over L.M.P.D. in January. The department has had four leadership changes since mid-2020.Alec Soth/Magnum, for The New York TimesIn the meantime, Louisville is experiencing record crime. Criminal homicides have increased drastically, from 89 in 2019 to 161 in 2020, the highest annual number in city history. The next year was even worse, with 177. In 2022, the total went down to 160, but by mid-February this year, there had already been 23 homicides — on pace to be another dismal year. Gun violence has risen sharply, disproportionately impacting Black men. In the first few weeks of this year, preliminary data showed that 71 percent of victims involved in the city’s nonfatal shootings were Black.Many of the several dozen current and former Louisville police officers I spoke with over the past 15 months said they have come around to the idea that years of institutional arrogance, defensiveness and misguided policing strategies have caused a loss of public trust. “We had it coming,” said Adam Sears, a former Army staff sergeant who joined the force in 2007 and now works in the department’s training unit. “People question our legitimacy,” Sears continued. “And you know what? They’re not wrong.”I have conducted hundreds of interviews with police officers in my two decades as a reporter. Even as the ubiquity of cameras further exposed the failures of American policing, showing us the dying moments of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile and others since 2014, few of the officers I spoke with believed that the rising criticism of their profession was warranted. More often they blamed the outrage on a misinformed public and an untrustworthy news media. But after the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in 2020, and the historic protests they sparked, I began to perceive a shift. There was growing recognition that policing needed to change.Plenty of officers still believe that the public remains naïvely unaware of the difficulty of their jobs, and of the violence, death and disagreeable human behavior that they face. Many think the videos have misrepresented the scope of the problem, pointing out that officers have millions of interactions with the public annually and that only a tiny fraction turn fatal. But the deaths of Taylor and Floyd made it difficult for officers to hold tight to the old defenses, and many no longer are. I went to Louisville to report on what was happening there — how the police were thinking about their jobs during this period of change.On a cold night in February, a Black 48-year-old sergeant named Jeryl Tyson prepared for another late watch patrol in the city’s Second Division. At 6-foot-5 and 340 pounds, Tyson, a former college defensive lineman, has a presence that encourages compliance; he has never fired his gun on duty in his 16 years on the force. Tyson began his shift in the station’s briefing room, finishing a Subway sandwich. All week he had been keeping up with the latest news about Tyre Nichols, the Black man who died after being beaten by officers in Memphis. Tyson had seen the hospital photograph of Nichols, his face battered and swollen, a breathing tube in his mouth. He told me his first thought had been, Not again. As he heard further details about the case, he became frustrated, then angry. After learning that five officers would be charged with Nichols’s murder, he thought, I’m good with that.Tyson climbed into his black Tahoe just after 8 p.m. to begin his 12-hour shift. The Second Division, one of the city’s eight policing districts, borders part of what was long ago known as Louisville’s Harlem, a once-thriving area of Black businesses, theaters and nightclubs, which has since been suffocated by economic neglect. Now the Second Division is a collection of largely poor neighborhoods with few grocery stores and some of the city’s highest murder rates. Police officers sometimes call it the Wild West. Tyson helped supervise 13 officers on his shift, and his job was to make sure they followed policy, respected residents and did not get themselves or anyone else killed. Tyson’s father, uncles and great-uncles were cops. As a child, Tyson preferred police cars to Tonka trucks. He grew up watching “CHiPs” and “T.J. Hooker.” All he ever wanted to do was be a police officer. In recent years, though, Tyson, like many of his colleagues, has questioned whether he wanted to continue working in law enforcement. He told me this hit him hard in 2020. He initially gave his fellow officers the benefit of the doubt in Taylor’s death, but troubling accusations kept surfacing: that one officer had fired recklessly into an occupied apartment complex, that investigators had lied on a search-warrant affidavit and then met secretly in an officer’s garage to get their stories straight. Tyson told me he had something like an emotional breakdown, uncertain whether he could keep wearing the uniform. He looked over retirement paperwork but decided to stay, because he didn’t want to be the guy who ran away when things grew hard.As Tyson drove, he kept his windows down, listening to the streets outside, his face reflected in the glow of the computer dispatch screen. He passed liquor stores and a Family Dollar. He saw a man he knew and rolled his window down farther for a friendly exchange. He told me later that the man was married to a “good woman” who had lost two sons to gun violence, kids who “had good hearts” but “didn’t always make the right decisions.” Down the road, he told me about another mother who had lost three sons, one of whom Tyson watched grow up, a funny, polite child who said, “Yes, sir,” then got shot in a dispute over a game of dice. Many of the people in the Second Division, some of whom he’s known since he was a rookie in 2007, want the police in their communities, Tyson told me. They also want to be respected. Sgt. Jeryl Tyson, a 16-year veteran of the Louisville Metro Police Department, during his 12-hour patrol shift in the Second Division, which has some of the city’s highest murder rates.Alec Soth/Magnum, for The New York TimesTurning down Hemlock Street, Tyson saw a man at the entrance to a convenience store. As the man stepped inside, he raised his hand and gave Tyson his middle finger. Tyson told me that when he started out 16 years ago, that man’s gesture would have been a “point of contact” — a reason to get out of the car. “There were things you didn’t let go unchecked,” he told me. Now Tyson counsels his rookies to view such moments as “bait” — the start of a series of bad decisions that might lead to their national-news debut. He tells them that they are expected to have emotional intelligence and accept that the police have earned some of those middle fingers.Midnight approached, and Tyson was still driving around. Every so often a piece of equipment in his car beeped. It was an automated reader taking pictures of license plates, alerting him when one came up listed as stolen. On one residential street, he got a hit on a parked car with Florida plates, reported stolen from a rental company a few weeks earlier. He radioed another patrol car. They would summon a tow truck and get the car back to the company. These days, finding stolen cars, particularly unoccupied ones, seemed like a good night’s work.Tyson was far from the only officer whose perspective on the job was changing. When I spoke with Sears, the former Army staff sergeant, he was teaching a jiu jitsu class, which is becoming popular in law enforcement because of its emphasis on using the least amount of force necessary, relying on techniques like locks and holds rather than punches. Sears, a white officer who works in the department’s training unit, became a cop at 27 after tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He graduated from the police academy in 2008, believing, as many cops did then, that drugs were the root of most crime. The best way to help struggling neighborhoods, he thought, was to “go find drugs and lock guys up.” Sears worked in an area that included public-housing projects plagued by shootings, crack-cocaine use, armed robberies and murders. Over time, he told me, it was hard for cops not to see the projects as “target rich” environments. It was a big deal to arrest someone for their first felony, he said, because people who have been convicted of a felony can’t legally purchase or carry guns.In the 14 years since, Sears had his own struggles, at one point fighting depression and gaining 30 pounds. He encountered drug addiction in an unexpected place: A good friend couldn’t meet for a fishing trip because he was on house arrest; he confessed to having an opioid problem. Sears, now 41, knows that life is more complicated than his rookie self realized.A couple of years ago, Sears saw a news story about how many felons lived in the neighborhood he once policed. It now seemed clear to him that chasing after male residents and branding them felons hadn’t made the neighborhood better or safer, at least not over the long term. What Sears didn’t realize back then, he told me, is the cascade of negative effects that their methods caused — families torn apart, fathers in jail, people who couldn’t get jobs because of criminal records. The community had wanted good policing, Sears said, but too many people had been caught in the department’s wide net.“We were so focused on trying to police our way through much bigger issues that we didn’t think of the long-term consequences,” Sears told me. He felt uncertain about the part he played, and wondered if he did more harm than good.Many Louisville police officers began a period of soul searching during the summer of 2020, after spending night after night sweating in riot gear, dodging rocks, frozen water bottles and the occasional bullet, realizing how profoundly they’d lost the respect of their community.The circumstances that led to Taylor’s death followed one of law enforcement’s chronic patterns. First came a surge in violent crime. Police commanders then created a series of specialized units to target guns and drugs in “hot spots.” In Louisville, one of those units was known as Place-Based Investigations (P.B.I.). In late 2019, P.B.I. detectives homed in on their first target, Jamarcus Glover, a 29-year-old they suspected of selling crack and other drugs in the city’s West End. The police claimed that his operation was growing; they watched as Glover broadcast live on Facebook, smoking blunts and waving around large wads of cash. On March 12, 2020, police assembled a team of several dozen officers to serve five search warrants related to Glover’s operation. One of those locations was Taylor’s apartment, which they included because she once dated Glover. They said they suspected that she might be holding packages or drug money, claims that were never substantiated. After midnight, Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, rose from bed when they heard a loud banging. After the police broke the door off its hinges, Walker fired his gun, striking an officer in the thigh. The police returned fire, killing Taylor.A mural with an image of Breonna Taylor, a victim of police violence, by the local artist Damon Thompson, in the city’s downtown First Division.Alec Soth/Magnum, for The New York TimesIn the days after officers shot Taylor during the raid, many within the department wondered how much bad publicity her death might attract. It was something all police officers worried about, whether a questionable shooting would turn their city into the next Ferguson, Mo., where unrest followed Michael Brown’s killing in 2014. Two officers told me they were somewhat relieved when the national focus turned to George Floyd’s death two months after Taylor’s, believing that the case was so egregious it would take the heat off Louisville.But instead of eclipsing Taylor’s death, Floyd’s amplified it. On May 28, 2020, almost 11 weeks after Taylor’s death, the local newspaper, The Courier-Journal, published a copy of the 911 call that Taylor’s boyfriend made from the apartment. For many, the call dispelled any notion that Taylor’s boyfriend had intentionally shot at the cops. He told a dispatcher, “Somebody kicked in the door and shot my girlfriend.” Hearing the emotional call, people got into their cars and drove downtown. Once there, some began livestreaming on Facebook, urging others to join, and the crowd grew from a couple of dozen to several hundred. For the first time in its history, the Police Department issued an emergency “all call,” summoning every officer for immediate duty. Lt. Mindy Vance, a white, 41-year-old acting major in the Fourth Division, wasn’t usually on the front lines of police work, but seniority meant little during the months of unrest. “The message was: ‘Get your gear, and get your ass up there on the line! Now!’” Vance said. She drove to a staging area in a parking lot near downtown and reached into her trunk for riot gear, stored in a utility bag with other department-issued tools she had never used before. Her helmet was still wrapped in plastic. “I never in a million years thought I’d be using riot gear,” Vance told me later. “I’m thinking, How the hell do I put this stuff on?” As Vance lined up with colleagues, they could hear echoing noise downtown, rising and falling in waves, almost as if they were outside a sports arena. As they marched forward, Vance thought, Oh, God, we’re doing this. For Paul Paris, a Black officer who joined the department in 2010, going into the streets every night felt like being loaded into one of those amusement-park slingshot rides, where people passed out from being hurled into the air at dizzying speeds, uncertain whether they would return safely to ground. He told me that working the unrest was the most humbling experience of his career. When Paris looked into the crowd, he saw a nurse in scrubs, a U.P.S. deliveryman, a teenager in a red Chick-fil-A shirt. It was not a small group of activists; it was everybody. “You thought every single person in the city was against you,” Paris said.When Paris’s father joined the city police force in 1968, he was the only Black officer in his academy class. The department, which later merged with the county police to form Louisville Metro, had become more diverse since then, but Black officers still were underrepresented; it wasn’t unusual for Paris to be the only Black officer on a particular squad. He says he didn’t see many overt acts of racism on the force, but he sensed a more subtle form of othering, like the way some white officers referred to Black men as “Jay” (a slang term for a street thug) and Black women as “Quita” (a slang term for a Black single mother). It was surprising to Paris how comfortable officers were using these terms around him, because they seemed like racial slurs.Paul Paris, who joined the department in 2010 but has left for another local agency, at home with his son. Paris’s father joined the city police force in 1968 and was the only Black member of his academy class. Alec Soth/Magnum, for The New York TimesLike many colleagues, Paris was dismissive of Black Lives Matter at first, but over time, he saw videos that he found appalling and felt himself growing more frustrated with his profession. Paris felt it was a problem that many agencies churned out young white men from their academies, gave them badges and guns and promptly sent them into poor Black neighborhoods. For many of these officers, it was their first significant interaction with Black people. They would deal with a small percentage of criminals and “begin to assume that is the reality of Black people,” Paris said. During the 2020 unrest, some protesters reserved special scorn for Black officers, and after a while, their words got into Paris’s head. “When 500 people are telling you the same thing, you start to think, Oh, [expletive], am I an Uncle Tom?” (Paris has since left the force for another police department and is suing the L.M.P.D. for retaliation after he reported sexual harassment of a teenager in its Explorer program.)As protests continued nightly, anti-police sentiment seemed to spread across all quarters of the city. Beth Ruoff, a white officer who was born in Louisville and had always worn her uniform proudly around town, noticed Back the Blue signs disappearing from front yards, even in mostly white neighborhoods that were long friendly to police. One of Ruoff’s neighbors explained that she still supported the police but as a small-business owner, she had to be careful. Many of Ruoff’s colleagues peeled the pro-police stickers off their family cars. One of them told Ruoff that her daughter had come home from elementary school upset because the other kids found out her parents were cops. Ruoff, now a missing-persons detective, used to drive straight to her daughter’s soccer games, cheering from the sidelines in her police uniform. Now she felt self-conscious, uncertain of what the other parents would think. She kept extra clothes in her car and changed when she went off duty. “I had never looked at myself the way I saw people looking at me,” Ruoff told me.Studies would later categorize the 2020 protests as overwhelmingly peaceful, based on the relatively low numbers of injuries and property damage. But many officers did not experience them as peaceful, largely because of the number of guns in the crowd and the level of verbal vitriol directed at the police line. Occasionally the anger spilled over — one Louisville officer’s uniform caught fire from a blaze started by a Molotov cocktail, and two other officers were shot in the street, taken to the hospital with wounds to the hip and abdomen. Several officers later would be charged with using excessive force during the protests. One was Cory Evans, a white Army veteran and National Guard member who was diagnosed with anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms after tours in Afghanistan and Eastern Europe — facts he did not disclose in his police application. Evans, 35, joined the department in 2014 and over the years, while working in some of the city’s busiest and most violent neighborhoods, became irritable and angry, says his wife, Jenna, a nurse practitioner. Evans was involved in two dozen use-of-force incidents from 2015 to 2020.The protests of 2020, Evans told me, were more stressful than his deployment to Afghanistan. On the first night, he was tasked with driving a police booking van, usually a mundane job, but the crowd surrounded the van and tried to flip it over, he said. Evans jumped out, leaving his shield and gas mask behind, and sprinted toward the police line. Shortly after, shots rang out as an unknown gunman fired into the crowd, wounding seven people. He helped a protester who had been shot by packing the wound with QuikClot trauma gauze. On the fourth night of the protests, Evans and a group of cops were pursuing a rowdy crowd flouting the city’s curfew. He would say later that he was exhausted, hungry, thirsty and angry that he had been working 16-hour days, spending his wedding anniversary away from his wife and two young kids, chasing people who were burning trash cans, breaking windows, shooting at cops, all for $28 an hour. Evans approached a white college student, who was kneeling in the street with his arms raised in surrender. He later pleaded guilty to striking the man with his 36-inch baton, opening a gash on his head that required three staples to close. In October, I went to see Evans at a U.S. penitentiary in Illinois, where he’d begun serving a two-year sentence. Wearing an army-green prison jumpsuit, Evans no longer resembled the muscular cop in his Police Department photograph; he’d lost 30 pounds. Evans told me he has many complicated feelings about what happened. On the one hand, he feels as if he did the best he could in a hard situation, and in return he was “sacrificed to the woke gods.” On the other, Evans said he wishes he had been less “gung ho” in his policing, both during the unrest and throughout his career. If he had, Evans told me, he might be home with his wife helping raise their boys, now 5 and 7, who believe that their dad is in “time out for grown ups.” Instead, Evans spent his days among inmates who call him “Captain Caveman,” on account of the long beard he’s grown, and working out with old gym weights alongside his closest friend inside, a former drug dealer from St. Louis.In emails exchanged over recent months, Evans told me that like many cops, he began his policing career with a romanticized view of the job, imagining himself helping old ladies across the street, catching bank robbers. But over time, the daily realities of policing, the things he saw, began to take a toll and slowly changed who he was. “There is so much more evil that goes on in the world that the lay person never sees,” Evans wrote. “They never hear about it, and if they do it is on some Netflix docudrama that doesn’t seem real. They have never gone into a house covered in urine and fecal matter. Infested with bed bugs and roaches where a baby is crying with a diaper full of [expletive] with its bottom raw. The mother and father passed out high again.”Evans told me he once arrested a kid who he suspected had stolen a car, and after getting to know him and his single mother, he gave them his Briggs & Stratton mower. He told me he hoped the boy could make money cutting grass and showed him how to clean it out with a hose, how to fit it in the trunk of his mom’s car. A couple of months later, Evans told me, he saw the kid back on the streets, and when he asked about the mower, he said he’d pawned it for $20. “The job,” Evans told me, “will break a man over time.”The 2020 protests seemed to break many cops. After months on the protest line, Louisville police officers began dropping off their equipment. They were resigning faster than the department could store their gear, which spilled off a table inside training headquarters. Erika Shields took over as the Louisville police chief in January 2021. Many chiefs enjoy a honeymoon, if brief, with their new communities, but Shields, a white woman, was controversial from the start. Shields resigned as the Atlanta police chief in 2020 after one of her officers killed a Black man, Rayshard Brooks, outside a Wendy’s. Some activists called her hiring “tone deaf” and a “slap in the face.” She soon angered the officers under her command too. During her first news conference in Louisville, Shields invoked race as part of the reason for Taylor’s death. “This doesn’t happen to white people,” Shields said. “And don’t tell me that it’s because the Black people are where the crime is, Black people are where the violence is. That’s crap.” The comments did not go over well with her department, which is around 80 percent white. Erika Shields took over the Louisville Metro Police Department in January 2021. She recently resigned.Alec Soth/Magnum, for The New York TimesWhen she arrived, Shields told me, the department was in worse shape than she imagined. There were dozens of internal-affairs files backed up on her desk, some dating back years, some with disturbing complaints about current officers. The department had no official disciplinary matrix, Shields said. She found inadequate facilities, “embarrassing” lesson plans at the academy, no regular audits of body-camera footage to identify officer misconduct and a continuing exodus, in part because the city had underpaid officers for years, even requiring them to buy their own guns. Some of the department’s most important units, notably the special victims unit, were rife with internal sexual affairs that affected their productivity. As the city logged record homicides, Shields was troubled to learn that her detectives had an abysmal 32 percent clearance rate, well below the national average of about 60 percent at the time. She learned that they had been trying to solve cases without DNA because the state lab system, woefully underfunded, took more than a year to return test results. After Shields allowed the homicide unit to contract with a private lab, the clearance rate rose to 52 percent.Shields came into the job ready to aggressively tackle violent crime but realized she had a more immediate problem: the mental health of her officers. After months of protests, a pandemic and a continued rise in shootings, Shields believed much of the force was suffering from PTSD. What she needed most, Shields thought, was a good shrink. The department had a counselor on staff, but Shields wanted a trained doctor who could supervise two or three therapists. She didn’t feel confident in her officers’ mind-sets, their training or their decision making. They often seemed reluctant to do their jobs. One night in April 2021, Shields told me, a couple of dozen protesters took over an intersection in the Highlands, a mostly white neighborhood. The group was protesting the police killing of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man who was fatally shot in Minnesota by an officer who said she’d meant to deploy her Taser but instead drew her gun. They were refusing to let cars pass. Business owners called 911, asking why police were letting protesters shut down their restaurants, already hit hard by the pandemic.Shields was wondering the same thing. As she followed along with supervisors’ group texts, she kept waiting to hear that officers were taking action, but a half-hour passed, then another. After protesters dragged a picnic table and patio chairs into the intersection, Shields began blowing up the phones of her commanders, asking why they were allowing such lawlessness. Once protesters slowly dispersed after midnight, officers quietly moved the furniture back to the sidewalks. The next day Shields called a meeting with unit supervisors, who explained that their officers were afraid to take action, worried that no one would have their backs if something went wrong. “It was really eye opening,” she told me. “It wasn’t that these folks didn’t want to work. They didn’t dare to work.” It drove home that she would need to move carefully. “I realized, there’s no way in heck we can go out and just be tackling violent crime, because if one thing goes wrong, this whole thing is going to blow.” I first met Shields in late 2021 as she sat at a conference table in her office, surrounded by half-packed boxes. In what seemed too obvious a metaphor, the police headquarters building had been largely evacuated because of a long list of violations, including sewage leaking from ceiling tiles. That week had been busy for Shields. There had been a triple shooting, a Buick stolen with a 6-year-old boy inside and a news conference announcing the arrest of two teenagers for killing another student in a drive-by shooting at a school-bus stop. At a public meeting, a Black councilwoman had nearly burst into tears, pleading with Shields to fix the department because “we can’t take any more.” People living in the midst of violence want more police presence, Shields told me, but they don’t want heavy-handed tactics.The next day, Shields sat at the head of a table looking out over the command staff at the department’s weekly meeting to discuss crime levels in the city. About 30 minutes passed before she offered anything that sounded like a correction. “I have a question,” she said to Maj. David Allen, who was giving a rundown of car thefts. “Just help educate me. You’ve got 66 traffic stops but only 30 traffic citations, which seems like quite a difference.” Shields asked about the gender and racial breakdown of the stops in order to determine whether certain groups were receiving preferential treatment.“I haven’t heard anybody talking about that,” Allen replied. “I just assumed — ”“Don’t ever just assume,” Shields said. She looked around the room and added: “Please, guys. That’s what got us here.”Shields asked the major to go through the data and detail who was ticketed and who was released. “You’ve got to stop believing that we’re just doing the right thing,” Shields said. As Shields neared the end of her second year in Louisville, she felt as if she was making progress — violent crime was down 17 percent — but she faced growing criticism for not being visible enough in the community. For not being transparent enough with department records. She wasn’t working hard enough, people said, to repair trust. Shields told me that in January, the city’s new mayor, Craig Greenberg, pressured her to resign, saying he wanted to move in a “new direction.” Shields defended her record: She said that her community outreach had been hampered by Covid, that her control over records had been limited, particularly after another city department took over public-information requests, and that she also had her hands full fixing internal problems. “There were so many things that were so, so broken.” Lt. Donny Burbrink’s phone buzzed around 6 p.m. on a Monday night in January. He finished a slice of leftover pizza, kissed his wife and kids goodbye and climbed into his black Ford Explorer. He was headed to the scene of the city’s 15th homicide of 2023. This one was in the Fifth Division, an area with affluent neighborhoods east of downtown. There would probably be reporters here, which irritated Burbrink, because that didn’t happen in the city’s poorer West End, where his detectives spent most of their time, as Black men died by the dozens.Burbrink, a white 43-year-old former Marine, has spent the past couple of years traveling the city at all hours, called to a new homicide scene about every two days. He shows up in his camel-hair coat, a Diet Mountain Dew in his hand. He’s been a cop for 21 years, following the path of his father, a cop for 40.Lt. Donny Burbrink, who commands the homicide unit, surrounded by the department’s many cold-case files.Alec Soth/Magnum, for The New York TimesBurbrink supervises four sergeants and 16 detectives working new murder cases in a cubicle-filled space they call the Dungeon. As the number of annual homicides started spiking, people wanted to know why. Burbrink would tell them he didn’t have a clue. If pressed, he would suggest the perfect storm of 2020 — a global pandemic, historic social unrest and a dramatic retreat by America’s police officers.Burbrink keeps hearing people talk about the need for the police to “rebuild” trust, but he doesn’t like that word, because it assumes it was once there and then lost. In his two decades of policing, there has always been a lack of trust between the police and Black communities, in Louisville, Baltimore, New York and most every other part of urban America. “You overpoliced areas, saturated them with young officers trying to make stats and you disrupted trust,” Burbrink told me, “instead of us doing stuff early on to work with the community and fix problems.”He added, “You can’t throw a net over an entire area and hope you catch that big fish every now and again.” Broad-brush policing strategies, including an overreliance on pretext stops, stop-and-frisk and small-time drug arrests, have fallen out of favor across the country, for good reason, Burbrink says. Now police commanders are struggling to figure out what to do instead. When society isn’t working, when policing is ineffective, it shows up in Burbrink’s unit, in the form of bodies. He knows that policing needs to reform, and he wishes experts and academics and police chiefs and activists would figure out what to do already. “I can’t get into the whole ‘reimagining policing’ thing,” Burbrink told me. “That is so far above my pay grade. Nor is that a problem I want to have to tackle. Your job is to implement policies, practices and procedures, and my job is to follow them. I’m good with that.”Burbrink is in favor of anything that the mayor or the police chief or the Justice Department can think of to make policing better and people safer. But he’s not sure anyone, particularly the federal government, can fix humanity’s dark heart. This year, his unit was summoned to a house to investigate a dismembered body, finding a man’s head in a suitcase, his arms and legs in trash cans out back. What his detectives can do, Burbrink says, is try to solve cases. He believes that his division is vital to establishing trust with the community. Many of the city’s murder victims are Black men or boys — 776 of 1,293 since 2011, Burbrink told me. If the police can’t deliver justice to those families, they assume officers don’t care. Criminal homicides have increased dramatically in Louisville, from 89 in 2019 to 177 in 2021, the highest annual number in city history. By mid-February this year, there have been 23 homicides.Alec Soth/Magnum, for The New York TimesThat night, Burbrink walked down a narrow alley in the dark, back to a patio full of blood smears, a chunk of flesh on the porch. He stepped inside a small kitchen, a Bud Light sitting on the table next to a revolver, a bullet on the floor. The case would be assigned to one of Burbrink’s detectives, most of whom average about 10 new homicides a year, far above the recommended three to five. When he was sure his detectives had the scene under control, Burbrink walked out of the house, careful not to step in the blood. One of his daughters was texting, wondering if he’d have time to stop by the grocery store. Burbrink didn’t know how long he would be. He headed back to the office, hoping the next emergency call wouldn’t come until morning. Every Friday, Bishop Dennis Lyons convenes a community breakfast with police officers at the Gospel Missionary Church in Louisville’s West End. Lyons, who is Black, started holding these breakfasts in early 2020 to give community members — grandmothers, ex-convicts, teachers, politicians, nonprofit leaders — a chance to talk to their neighborhood officers, to share a meal and get to know one another. On a recent morning, a couple of dozen people sat together around a few tables eating sausage, eggs and grits, drinking coffee and talking. Several officers took turns with a microphone.Bishop Dennis Lyons and Assistant Chief Steve Healey in February at a weekly community breakfast at Gospel Missionary Church, where the goal is for Louisville residents to get to know their neighborhood officers.Alec Soth/Magnum, for The New York TimesCharles Bradley, a Black officer who works in the community-engagement unit, reminded residents about his upcoming bowling event for the Police Activities League. He told those gathered that he hadn’t been seeing many “Black and brown kids who look like me” at previous events and asked residents to spread the word. Todd Hollis, a white lieutenant who works in the Second Division, mentioned the latest homicide near Cane Run Road, where a 61-year-old Black man was found shot dead in a van. Then came Assistant Chief Steve Healey, a stocky white guy with a buzz cut, who encouraged people to use the department’s anonymous tip line. “Don’t look at it as you’re calling to help us. You’re calling to help the victims and the victims’ families to get closure, and to help the neighborhoods to get these trigger pullers and shot callers off the street.”Not everyone has been happy about Lyons’s relationship with the cops. After he marched alongside members of the Fraternal Order of Police many years ago, protesters gathered outside his church, calling him a sellout, an Uncle Tom. “My own people marched against me,” he said. Lyons didn’t like it, but he understood. There had been so many promises broken, so much harm done. But Lyons saw no other choice. “Until we live in a world without evil,” he said, “we need police.”Jamie Thompson is a writer in Maryland and the author of “Standoff: Race, Policing and a Deadly Assault That Gripped a Nation.” Alec Soth is a photographer in Minneapolis. He has published more than 25 books, including “A Pound of Pictures” in 2022. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.
- [Supreme Court makes final decision on election lawsuit aiming to oust Biden, Harris](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/supreme-court-makes-final-decision-on-election-lawsuit-aiming-to-oust-biden-harris/) - A lawsuit surrounding the 2020 presidential election was fast-tracked to the Supreme Court in January because of its impact on national security. The case, Brunson v. Adams, was brought against 388 federal officers, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Mike Pence for failing to evaluate states’ warnings about illegal votes. The plaintiff, Raland J. Brunson of Utah, argues that these federal officials violated their oath to defend the Constitution by certifying the 2020 election without any investigation after receiving valid requests. The question before the court is not whether the election was valid, but that by violating their oath to defend the Constitution and investigate possible interference, they invalidated themselves from holding public office. SEE ALSO: SCOTUS considers lawsuit surrounding 2020 election that could oust Biden & Harris The Supreme Court initially rejected hearing the case after a meeting on Jan. 6. However, the plaintiff filed a petition for a rehearing, arguing that there must be a penalty for violating oaths of office or else they are "not binding." In the 10-page petition, Brunson compares a rigged election to war, since both “put into power” a “victor.” He adds that “when members of Congress become aware of such allegations an investigation into these allegations is required or they become violators of their Oath of Office.” Last Tuesday the Supreme Court shot down the case for a second time. A vote tally of the nine justices was not made public and no explanation for the two rejections was provided. “Moving on to plan C,” Brunson wrote on Facebook after the rejection announcement. “We understand this to be a possible long but worthy goal. The result is that everyone in this nation will have the peace of mind that comes from knowing that the candidate of their choice will be bound by their oath to protect the rights and freedom of the people they represent.” He added that more details on his next course of action will be shared in the coming days. Join the movement seeking to restore the federal government to its original purpose. Sign the Convention of States petition below.
- [Rupert Murdoch admits some Fox News hosts endorsed false notion of 2020 election fraud](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/28/rupert-murdoch-admits-some-fox-news-hosts-endorsed-false-notion-of-2020-election-fraud/) - Dover, Del. — Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch acknowledged that some Fox News commentators endorsed the false allegations by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that he didn't step in to stop them from promoting the claims, according to excerpts of a deposition unsealed Monday.The claims and the company's handling of them are at the heart of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the cable news giant by Dominion Voting Systems. The recently unsealed documents include excerpts from a deposition in which Murdoch was asked about whether he was aware that some of the network's commentators - Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity - at times endorsed the false election claims. Murdoch replied, "Yes. They endorsed." The Murdoch deposition is the latest filing in the defamation case to reveal concerns at the top-rated network over how it was handling Trump's claims as its ratings plummeted after the network called Arizona for Joe Biden, angering Trump and his supporters. An earlier filing showed a gulf between the stolen election narrative the network was airing in primetime and doubts about the claims raised by its stars behind the scenes. In one text, from Nov. 16, 2020, Fox News host Tucker Carlson said "Sidney Powell is lying" about having evidence for election fraud, referring to one of Trump's lawyers. The Dominion case is the latest example showing that those who were spreading false information about the 2020 election knew there was no evidence to support it. The now-disbanded House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol disclosed that many of Trump's top advisers repeatedly warned him that the allegations he was making about fraud were false - and yet the president continued making the claims. Murdoch urged in September 2020, weeks before the election, that Dobbs be fired because he was "an extremist," according to Dominion's court filing. Murdoch also said he thought it was "really bad" for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani to be advising Trump because Giuliani's "judgment was bad" and he was "an extreme partisan," according to a deposition excerpt. Murdoch was asked whether he could have requested that Powell and Giuliani not be put on the air: "I could have. But I didn't," he replied.After the Jan. 6 rioting at the Capitol, former House Speaker Paul Ryan, who sits on the board of Fox News Corporation, had an email exchange with Murdoch. He told the Fox News chairman he believed that "some high percentage of Americans" thought the election was stolen "because they got a diet of information telling them the election was stolen from what they believe were credible sources." Murdoch responded to Ryan's email with a note saying, "Thanks Paul. Wake-up call for Hannity, who has been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was scared to lose viewers." Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, is suing both Fox News Network and parent company Fox Corp. for defamation. Dominion contends that some Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims by supporters of Trump that Dominion machines had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements about the company. Dominion attorneys contend that executives in the "chain of command" at both Fox News and Fox Corp. knew the network was broadcasting "known lies, had the power to stop it, but chose to let it continue. That was wrong, and for that, FC and FNN are both liable." Attorneys for Fox Corp. note in their filing that Murdoch also testified that he never discussed Dominion or voter fraud with any of the accused Fox News hosts. They say Dominion has produced "zero evidentiary support" for the claim that high-level executives at Fox Corp. had any role in creating or publishing the statements at issue. Dominion's contention that the company should be held liable because Murdoch might have had the power to step in and prevent the challenged statements from being aired, they said, "has no basis in defamation law, would obliterate the distinction between corporate parents and subsidiaries, and finds no support in the evidence." The "handful of selective quotes" cited by Dominion have nothing to do with the statements that Dominion has challenged as defamatory, according to Fox Corp. attorneys. "Dominion repeatedly asked Fox News executives, hosts, and staff whether Fox Corporation employees played a role in the publication of the statements it challenges," they wrote. "The answer - every single time, for every single witness - was no." Meanwhile, Fox News attorneys note that when voting-technology companies denied the allegations being made by Trump and his surrogates, Fox News aired those denials, while some Fox News hosts offered protected opinion commentary about Trump's allegations.
- [Murdoch Testified Fox Commentators 'Endorsed' Trump's 2020 Election Lie - Bloomberg](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/murdoch-testified-fox-commentators-endorsed-trumps-2020-election-lie-bloomberg/)
- [Rupert Murdoch admits some Fox News hosts 'endorsed' false election fraud claims](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/rupert-murdoch-admits-some-fox-news-hosts-endorsed-false-election-fraud-claims/) - News Corp. Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch declined to rein in Fox News hosts who spread false claims of widespread voter fraud in the days after the 2020 election despite privately expressing that he had seen little evidence for then-President Donald Trump’s claims and that he found half of them “bulls--- and damaging,” according to court documents unsealed Monday.Fox News was “trying to straddle the line between spewing conspiracy theories on one hand, yet calling out the fact that they are actually false on the other,” Murdoch said in testimony released in the court documents.Murdoch acknowledged in testimony that some of those hosts, including Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo, had done more than just give a platform to baseless claims of voter fraud.“Yes,” Murdoch said, according to the documents. “They endorsed.”The filing adds to a growing collection of documents and testimony, some of it from many other top Fox News and Fox Corp. executives, that detail how the cable channel reacted in the hours, days and weeks after the 2020 election — and how those reactions opened the door for baseless claims of election fraud to become a consistent talking point. The testimony from executives highlights how Fox News' calling Arizona for Joe Biden late on election night sparked a viewer backlash that resonated among the company’s executives and high-profile hosts, sparking concerns about what it would mean for its business.Murdoch, asked why he continued to allow MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to make election fraud claims on Fox News, said it was a business decision. “It is not red or blue, it is green,” Murdoch said, according to the court documents.Murdoch testified in an ongoing lawsuit against Fox News filed by the voting machine maker Dominion Voting Systems. The new documents were unsealed less than two weeks after an unsealed court filing exposed the communications of many Fox News executives, hosts and producers who saw claims about Dominion to be without merit. They included host Tucker Carlson's saying Sidney Powell was “lying” about voter fraud docs, Rupert Murdoch's calling statements by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani “crazy stuff” and “damaging” and Hannity’s saying he “did not believe it for one second.”Murdoch also confirmed that he could have exerted some control over the network, most notably by telling Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott to stop putting Giuliani on the air.“I could have,” Murdoch said in the court documents. “But I didn’t.” Feb. 19, 202301:27Dominion first sued Fox News in March 2021, seeking $1.6 billion for what it alleged were lies that “deeply damaged Dominion’s once-thriving business.” Fox News has defended its coverage and called the lawsuit “baseless.” On Monday, the company said in a statement: “Dominion’s lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny, as illustrated by them now being forced to slash their fanciful damages demand by more than half a billion dollars after their own expert debunked its implausible claims. Their summary judgment motion took an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting and their efforts to publicly smear FOX for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting President of the United States should be recognized for what it is: a blatant violation of the First Amendment.”Dominion noted in the court documents that it tried to get Fox News shows hosted by Dobbs, Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro to book its spokesperson, Michael Steel, to counter election fraud claims but that its efforts were unsuccessful. A search of the Fox News website shows Steel did appear on at least one Fox News program: "America's News Headquarters." The documents also show other executives at Fox News growing increasingly concerned about the channel’s handling of election fraud claims in the days after the election.“Hannity is getting awfully close to the line with his commentary and guests tonight,” Viet Dinh, Fox Corp.’s chief legal and policy officer, told Fox News and Fox Corp. executives on Nov. 5, 2020.The filing also offered new insight into the relationship between Murdoch and Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, asserting that Murdoch provided Kushner with "Fox confidential information" about Joe Biden's ads, as well as debate strategy. However, Murdoch did not help him on election night.When Fox News determined that Biden had won Arizona, Murdoch testified, Kushner called him to protest.“My friend Jared Kushner called me saying, ‘This is terrible,’ and I could hear Trump’s voice in the background shouting," Murdoch testified, according to the filing. “And I said, ‘Well, the numbers are the numbers.’” Lawsuits like Dominion's rarely succeed, as the First Amendment broadly protects publishers. Plaintiffs must also prove “actual malice,” a term that means statements were made with knowledge that they were false or were made with reckless disregard of whether they were false or not.Jeff Kosseff, a law professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and former practicing First Amendment lawyer, said in an interview that Murdoch’s testimony suggests Dominion has “a really strong case.”“I can’t recall the last time that I’ve seen so much evidence of actual malice just piled on top of each other,” Kosseff said.“That’s not to say they definitely will win, but I’d much rather be in the plaintiff's lawyers' shoes,” he said.The filing shows that as various Fox News shows, hosts and guests continued to push voter fraud claims, Murdoch fielded messages from other media executives, some from within Fox Corp., who tried to persuade him to change course.Murdoch even spoke to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott on Jan. 5, 2021, the day before Trump supporters would storm the Capitol, about whether to push Hannity, Carlson and Laura Ingraham to say something to effect of "The election is over and Joe Biden won," according to the filing. According to the filing, Scott told Murdoch that “privately they [the hosts] are all there” but “we need to be careful about using the shows and pissing off the viewers.” No statement was made.
- [In Deposition, Rupert Murdoch Says Fox News Hosts Endorsed False 2020 Election Claims](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/in-deposition-rupert-murdoch-says-fox-news-hosts-endorsed-false-2020-election-claims/) - .css-j6808u{margin-left:10px;margin-right:10px;}.css-1elqs3z-Box{margin-bottom:var(--spacing-spacer-4);display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-1xk85qb-BreadcrumbsWrapper{font-size:var(--typography-summary-font-size-s);font-family:var(--font-font-stack-retina-narrow);font-weight:var(--typography-summary-standard-s-font-weight);text-transform:uppercase;}@media print{.css-1xk85qb-BreadcrumbsWrapper nav ul{margin-left:0px;}.css-1xk85qb-BreadcrumbsWrapper nav li{font-size:var(--typography-summary-font-size-s);padding-left:0px;color:var(--secondary-text-color);}.css-1xk85qb-BreadcrumbsWrapper nav li a:after{content:'';}.css-1xk85qb-BreadcrumbsWrapper a{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;color:var(--color-black);border-bottom:none;}.css-1xk85qb-BreadcrumbsWrapper nav li a{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;content:'';}}.css-fuc15b-List{list-style-type:none;margin:0;padding:0;}.css-6yyv02-Breadcrumb{display:inline;color:var(--interactive-text-color);}.css-12fqrno-Link-Link{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;color:inherit;}.css-12fqrno-Link-Link:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}@media only screen and (min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 639px){.css-12fqrno-Link-Link{display:none;}}Business.css-ngkunw-Breadcrumb-Breadcrumb-Breadcrumb-Breadcrumb{display:inline;color:var(--interactive-text-color);}@media only screen and (min-width: 640px) and (max-width: 979px){.css-ngkunw-Breadcrumb-Breadcrumb-Breadcrumb-Breadcrumb:before{color:var(--secondary-text-color);content:'|';margin:0 4px;}}@media only screen and (min-width: 980px) and (max-width: 1299px){.css-ngkunw-Breadcrumb-Breadcrumb-Breadcrumb-Breadcrumb:before{color:var(--secondary-text-color);content:'|';margin:0 4px;}}@media only screen and (min-width: 1300px){.css-ngkunw-Breadcrumb-Breadcrumb-Breadcrumb-Breadcrumb:before{color:var(--secondary-text-color);content:'|';margin:0 4px;}}.css-e8qa5r-Link{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;color:inherit;}.css-e8qa5r-Link:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}Media & Marketing.css-bsrkcm-Box{margin-bottom:var(--spacing-spacer-8);}.css-1lvqw7f-StyledHeadline{margin:0px;font-size:var(--typography-headline-standard-xxl-font-size);line-height:var(--typography-headline-standard-xxl-line-height);font-family:var(--typography-headline-standard-xxl-font-family);font-weight:var(--typography-headline-standard-xxl-font-weight);color:var(--headline-font-color);}.css-1lvqw7f-StyledHeadline a{color:inherit;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1lvqw7f-StyledHeadline a:hover{color:var(--headline-link-hover-color);}.css-mosdo-Dek-Dek{margin:0px;color:var(--secondary-text-color);font-size:var(--typography-subheading-standard-m-font-size);line-height:var(--typography-subheading-standard-m-line-height);font-family:var(--typography-subheading-standard-m-font-family);font-weight:var(--typography-subheading-standard-m-font-weight);}New details emerge in defamation case brought by voting-machine company Dominion Voting Systems
- [Murdoch acknowledges Fox News hosts endorsed election fraud falsehoods - Star Tribune](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/28/murdoch-acknowledges-fox-news-hosts-endorsed-election-fraud-falsehoods-star-tribune/) - Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the conservative media empire that owns Fox News, acknowledged in a deposition that several hosts for his networks promoted the false narrative that the election in 2020 was stolen from former President Donald J. Trump, court documents released on Monday showed. "They endorsed," Murdoch said under oath in response to direct questions about the hosts Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo, a legal filing by Dominion Voting Systems said. "I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight." Murdoch's remarks, which he made last month as part of the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox by Dominion, added to the evidence that Dominion has accumulated in an attempt to prove its central allegation: The people running the country's most popular news network knew Trump's claims of voter fraud during the 2020 election were false but broadcast them anyway. The new documents and a similar batch released this month revealed that top executives and on-air hosts reacted with incredulity bordering on contempt to the various fictitious allegations about Dominion, including that a secret algorithm in its machines allowed votes to be switched from one candidate to another and that the company was founded in Venezuela to help that country's longtime leader, Hugo Chávez, fix elections. Dominion's latest filing also described how Paul Ryan, a former Republican speaker of the House and current member of the Fox Corporation board of directors, said in his deposition that he had told Murdoch and Murdoch's son Lachlan, the chief executive officer, "Fox News should not be spreading conspiracy theories." Ryan suggested that the network pivot and "move on from Donald Trump and stop spouting election lies." The filing casts Murdoch as a chairman who was both deeply engaged with his senior leadership about coverage of the election and operating at somewhat of a remove, unwilling to interfere. Asked by Dominion's lawyer, Justin Nelson, whether he could have ordered Fox News to keep Trump lawyers like Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani off the air, Murdoch responded: "I could have. But I didn't." The filing helps fill in the broader case against Fox News and its corporate parent, Fox Corporation, that Dominion lawyers hope to present to a jury in April, when a Delaware judge has scheduled the trial to begin. A Fox News spokeswoman said on Monday in response to the filing that Dominion's view of defamation law took "an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting." Since Dominion sued in early 2021, it has argued that Fox chose ratings and profit over its journalistic obligation to tell viewers the truth. Using text messages and emails sent by Fox employees and prominent hosts like Hannity and Tucker Carlson in the weeks after the election, Dominion has pieced together a dramatic account from inside the network, depicting a frantic scramble to woo back viewers after ratings collapsed. On election night, Fox News was the first news outlet to declare Joe Biden the winner of Arizona — effectively projecting that he would become the next president. With Trump refusing to concede that he had lost, he and his supporters turned against Fox, and the network's ratings fell. Soon, many of the most popular hosts and shows on Fox began promoting the outlandish claims that Dominion machines were an integral part of a far-reaching voter fraud conspiracy to deny Trump a second term. The filing on Monday also included a deposition by Viet Dinh, Fox's chief legal officer. After Hannity told his audience on Nov. 5, 2020, that it would be "impossible to ever know the true, fair, accurate election results," Dinh said, he remarked to Lachlan Murdoch; the chief executive of Fox News Media, Suzanne Scott; and Fox's top communications officer, Irena Briganti: "Hannity is getting awfully close to the line with his commentary and guests tonight." In his deposition, Dinh, when asked if Fox executives had an obligation to stop hosts of shows from broadcasting lies, said: "Yes, to prevent and correct known falsehoods." Lawyers for Fox, which filed its response to Dominion in court on Monday, have argued that its broadcasts after the election did not amount to defamation because they were protected under the First Amendment. In court filings, Fox has defended its commentary and reporting as the kind of work that any journalistic outfit would do by covering events and newsmakers that are indisputably newsworthy. "A reasonable viewer would have readily understood that hosts were not espousing the President's allegations themselves, but were providing a forum for the principal architects of those legal challenges," Fox lawyers said in a brief filed this month. If its broadcasts did not present any of the fraud allegations as true, the network has argued, "there is no potential for defamation at all." Ultimately, the case is likely to revolve around questions about the intent of Fox hosts when they gave pro-Trump election deniers like Powell and Giuliani a platform and, in many cases, mustered no pushback as their guests falsely and repeatedly implicated Dominion in a plot to disenfranchise tens of millions of Trump voters. Fox lawyers have pointed to instances on the air when hosts did challenge these claims and pressed Powell and Giuliani to present evidence that never materialized. At other times, Fox has argued, the hosts were plainly expressing their opinions, or used language that was "loose" and "figurative" and therefore protected under the First Amendment. But Dominion has said the actions of Fox hosts including Carlson, Hannity, Bartiromo and Dobbs — and the producers and executives overseeing their programs — were anything but a dispassionate recitation of newsworthy claims of fraud. Rather, Dominion has argued, the internal communications it has uncovered point to how Fox employees behaved with "actual malice" — the legal standard required to prove defamation. There are two ways to meet that high legal bar, by showing that defendants either knew what they were saying was false or acted with such haste and disregard for the truth that they overlooked obvious facts to the contrary. In a brief filed in court this month, Dominion lawyers revealed private text messages and emails that showed hosts including Carlson repeatedly insulting and mocking Trump advisers like Powell. "Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It's insane," Carlson wrote on Nov. 18, 2020, to Laura Ingraham, who hosts the prime-time Fox News show that airs after his. Ingraham responded: "Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy." Carlson continued, "Our viewers are good people and they believe it," making it clear that he did not.
- [Fox chief Rupert Murdoch said network aired 2020 election conspiracies for the money](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/fox-chief-rupert-murdoch-said-network-aired-2020-election-conspiracies-for-the-money/)
- [Murdoch Gave Kushner 'Confidential Information' About Biden: Dominion - Business Insider](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/murdoch-gave-kushner-confidential-information-about-biden-dominion-business-insider/) - News Corp. founder Rupert Murdoch. Drew Angerer-Pool/Getty Images Redeem now Dominion Voting Systems made new claims about Fox News' workings around the 2020 election. In its defamation suit against Fox, Dominion claimed that Rupert Murdoch shared confidential info. Jared Kushner was provided early access to Biden's 2020 election ads, per the filing. Top editors give you the stories you want — delivered right to your inbox each weekday. Loading Something is loading. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. download the app Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. .inline-newsletter-signup.loading { width: 100%; max-width: 640px; margin: 0 auto; visibility: hidden; } A new filing in Dominion's mammoth defamation lawsuit against Fox News includes claims that network chief Rupert Murdoch gave former Trump advisor Jared Kushner confidential information about Joe Biden's strategic moves in the lead-up to the 2020 election.Dominion Voting Systems opposed Fox News' move to throw out the lawsuit in a new filing on Monday, in a high-stakes case set for an April trial. The voting company alleged through depositions, and internal texts and emails, that Murdoch provided Jared Kushner with advance knowledge of then-candidate Joe Biden's political ads and debate preparations."During Trump's campaign, Rupert provided Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, with Fox confidential information about Biden's ads, along with debate strategy (providing Kushner a preview of Biden's ads before they were public)," Dominion's lawyers wrote in the filing.Murdoch is also quoted from his depositions in the case, agreeing that he "seriously doubted" any claims of widespread election fraud pushed by the Trump camp. In response to Insider's request for comment, a Fox News spokesperson said, in part, that Dominion was "mischaracterizing the facts.""Dominion cherry-picks any soundbite it can find from any corner of the Fox organization even though it admits in its brief — 117 pages later — that most of that evidence is utterly irrelevant to the legal issues in this case. Dominion's focus on such irrelevant evidence demonstrates that it is more interested in headlines than law or fact." On March 26, 2021, Dominion filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News seeking $1.6 billion in damages, claiming that the network gave prominence to the election-fraud claims as a tactic to revive viewership as ratings dropped after President Donald Trump's loss.Dominion manufactures and sells electronic voting hardware, software, and voting machines, and was repeatedly targeted with conspiracies in the wake of the 2020 election. And in the company's lawsuit, Dominion claimed that Fox News "sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes, severely injuring Dominion in the process."Two months later, Fox News filed to dismiss the motion, and by December 2021, a judge had rejected Fox's motion. .content-lock-lock .hidden { display: none; } Sign up for notifications from Insider! Stay up to date with what you want to know. Subscribe to push notifications Close icon Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.
- [Murdoch says some Fox hosts 'endorsed' false election claims - St. Louis Post-Dispatch](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/murdoch-says-some-fox-hosts-endorsed-false-election-claims-st-louis-post-dispatch/) - RANDALL CHASE Associated Press DOVER, Del. — Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch acknowledged that some Fox News commentators endorsed the false allegations by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that he didn't step in to stop them from promoting the claims, according to excerpts of a deposition unsealed Monday.The claims and the company's handling of them are at the heart of a defamation lawsuit against the cable news giant by Dominion Voting Systems.The recently unsealed documents include excerpts from a deposition in which Murdoch was asked about whether he was aware that some of the network's commentators — Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity — at times endorsed the false election claims. Murdoch replied, "Yes. They endorsed."The Murdoch deposition is the latest filing in the defamation case to reveal concerns at the top-rated network over how it handled Trump's claims as its ratings plummeted after the network called Arizona for Joe Biden, angering Trump and his supporters. People are also reading… An earlier filing showed a gulf between the stolen election narrative the network was airing in primetime and doubts about the claims raised by its stars behind the scenes. In one text, from Nov. 16, 2020, Fox News host Tucker Carlson said "Sidney Powell is lying" about having evidence for election fraud, referring to one of Trump's lawyers.The Dominion case is the latest example showing that those who spread false information about the 2020 election knew there was no evidence to support it.The now-disbanded House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol disclosed that many of Trump's top advisers repeatedly warned him that the allegations he was making about fraud were false — and yet the president continued making the claims.Murdoch urged in September 2020, weeks before the election, that Dobbs be fired because he was "an extremist," according to Dominion's court filing. Murdoch also said he thought it was "really bad" for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani to be advising Trump because Giuliani's "judgment was bad" and he was "an extreme partisan," according to a deposition excerpt.Murdoch was asked whether he could have requested that Powell and Giuliani not be put on the air: "I could have. But I didn't," he replied.Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, sued both Fox News Network and parent company Fox Corp. for defamation. Dominion contends that some Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims by supporters of Trump that Dominion machines had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements about the company.Dominion attorneys contend that executives in the "chain of command" at both Fox News and Fox Corp. knew the network was broadcasting "known lies, had the power to stop it, but chose to let it continue. That was wrong, and for that, FC and FNN are both liable." 0 Comments #lee-rev-content { margin:0 -5px; } #lee-rev-content h3 { font-family: inherit!important; font-weight: 700!important; border-left: 8px solid var(--lee-blox-link-color); text-indent: 7px; font-size: 24px!important; line-height: 24px; } #lee-rev-content .rc-provider { font-family: inherit!important; } #lee-rev-content h4 { line-height: 24px!important; font-family: "serif-ds",Times,"Times New Roman",serif!important; margin-top: 10px!important; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #lee-rev-content h3 { font-size: 18px!important; line-height: 18px; } } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article { clear: both; background-color: #fff; color: #222; background-position: bottom; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding: 15px 0 20px; margin-bottom: 40px; border-top: 4px solid rgba(0,0,0,.8); border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(0,0,0,.2); display: none; } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article, #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article p { font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article h2 { font-size: 24px; margin: 15px 0 5px 0; font-family: "serif-ds", Times, "Times New Roman", serif; } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article .lead { margin-bottom: 5px; } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article .email-desc { font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 5px; opacity: 0.7; } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article form { padding: 10px 30px 5px 30px; } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article .disclaimer { opacity: 0.5; margin-bottom: 0; line-height: 100%; } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article .disclaimer a { color: #222; text-decoration: underline; } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article .email-hammer { border-bottom: 3px solid #222; opacity: .5; display: inline-block; padding: 0 10px 5px 10px; margin-bottom: -5px; font-size: 16px; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article form { padding: 10px 0 5px 0; } } Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox!
- [Rupert Murdoch testified Fox News 'endorsed' Donald Trump's 2020 election lie](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/rupert-murdoch-testified-fox-news-endorsed-donald-trumps-2020-election-lie/)
- [Rupert Murdoch acknowledged that Fox News hosts endorsed false stolen election claims - WRAL](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/rupert-murdoch-acknowledged-that-fox-news-hosts-endorsed-false-stolen-election-claims-wral/) - CNN — Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox Corporation, acknowledged in a deposition taken by Dominion Voting Systems that some Fox News hosts endorsed false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.Murdoch's remarks in a deposition were made public in a legal filing as part of Dominion Voting Systems' $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News."Some of our commentators were endorsing it," Murdoch said, singling out Fox hosts Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro as Fox hosts who promoted the false stolen election claims on air, according to a transcript of his deposition. Murdoch acknowledged the hosts frequently invited guests who made similar claims.But Murdoch pushed back against Dominion's lawyers who claimed that Fox was endorsing "this false notion of a stolen election?""Not Fox. But maybe Lou Dobbs, maybe Maria, as commentators," Murdoch said in his deposition.In another filing made public earlier this month, a trove of messages and emails from the most prominent stars and highest-ranking executives at Fox News showed they had privately ridiculed claims of election fraud in the 2020 election, despite the right-wing channel promoting lies about the presidential contest on its air.The messages showed that Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham brutally mocked lies being pushed by former President Donald Trump's camp asserting that the election was rigged.The court filings have offered the most vivid picture to date of the chaos that transpired behind the scenes at Fox News after Trump lost the election and viewers rebelled against the right-wing channel for accurately calling the contest in Biden's favor.Fox News has not only vigorously denied Dominion's claims, it has insisted it is "proud" of its 2020 election coverage.The network argued that the court filing contained cherry-picked quotes lacking context."There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan," Fox News said in a statement.- This is breaking news and will be updated.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
- ['Not Red Or Blue, It Is Green': Murdoch Admits Fox News Hosts Pushed False Election Fraud Claims](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/not-red-or-blue-it-is-green-murdoch-admits-fox-news-hosts-pushed-false-election-fraud-claims/) - ToplineBillionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch acknowledged in a deposition that several Fox News anchors “endorsed” former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election, as the Murdoch-led Fox Corporation looks to fend off a $1.6 billion lawsuit from a voting machine company that argues the false claims amounted to defamation. Key Facts Murdoch said in the deposition—which took place last month, but snippets of which became public in a Delaware court filing by Dominion Voting Systems Monday—that he believes Fox executives should have taken a bigger role in toning down the claims frequently presented on primetime Fox News programs following the 2020 election, saying: “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight.” Dominion Voting Systems filed a $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News over the claims, stating the actions of Fox News anchors and executives at the Fox Corporation—where Murdoch serves as chairman—amounted to “actual malice” that harmed the company, which endured baseless allegations that its voting machines were used to rig the 2020 election in Joe Biden’s favor. Fox lawyers have pushed back on the assertion, arguing anchors like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson were doing their jobs as journalists by investigating the election fraud claims, which was their right under the First Amendment. The Fox chairman argued in his deposition that the company didn’t endorse stolen election claims, but “some of our commentators were endorsing it,” listing hosts Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, former host Lou Dobbs and Hannity “a bit.” Murdoch also told a Dominion attorney he had the power to keep election deniers—like Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Mike Lindell—off Fox News, but chose not to. At one point, Murdoch explained the decision to let Lindell run ads for his company, MyPillow, as a strictly financial—rather than political—move, saying: “It is not red or blue, it is green,” according to Monday’s court filing. Fox News in a statement blasted Dominion for what it calls an “extreme” view of making “the press is liable for reporting newsworthy allegations made by the sitting President of the United States even if the press makes clear that the allegations are unproven.” Crucial Quote “Dominion’s lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny,” Fox News said. Key Background Dominion’s filing argues Fox News anchors and executives knowingly pushed claims they knew were false to boost ratings after former President Donald Trump lambasted the conservative network for its election night coverage, specifically Fox’s decision to call Arizona for President Joe Biden before other major media outlets. It cites numerous emails to back up its claims, including several exchanges between Murdoch and former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), who urged him to clamp down on the election fraud claims. Murdoch in one email to Ryan–who is a Fox Corporation board member–shortly after the January 6 storming of the Capitol described the rioting as a “Wake-up call for Hannity, who has been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was scared to lose viewers.” Fox News has been the most-watched cable news network for more than 20 years. Surprising Fact A separate Dominion court filing earlier this month included text messages from Hannity, Ingraham and Carlson and other anchors apparently acknowledging they knew the election fraud claims were not true. “No serious lawyer could believe what they were saying,” Ingraham said of Giuliani and Powell’s appearances, calling Giuliani “such an idiot” and Powell a “complete nut.” What To Watch For A five-week defamation trial in the Dominion case is scheduled to start on April 17, while Fox News is also fighting against a defamation suit from voting machine company Smartmatic. Dominion and Smartmatic have also taken legal action against hard-right networks like Newsmax and One America News Network, along with Trump’s former legal advisors, among others. Both sides have asked the court to accept separate motions to resolve the case via pre-trial summary judgment, Forbes Valuation We estimate Murdoch, 91, and his family to be worth $17.8 billion through their media empire, which controls Fox broadcasting products, the Wall Street Journal, New York Post and many other brands. Tangent Trump’s attacks on Fox News now focus on what he believes is the network propping up Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) against him in a potential 2024 Republican primary battle. Trump claimed Monday on his Truth Social platform that Fox is “promoting Ron [DeSantis] so hard and so much there’s not much time for Real News.” Further Reading Fox News Sued By Dominion Voting For Defamation Over Election Conspiracy (Forbes) ‘Mind Blowingly Nuts’: Fox News Hosts And Execs Repeatedly Denounced 2020 Election Fraud Off-Air—Here Are Their Most Scathing Comments (Forbes) Court Lets Lawsuit Against Fox News Move Forward—Here’s Where Dominion And Smartmatic’s Defamation Suits Stand Now (Forbes) Trump Blasts Fox News—Again—For Promoting DeSantis ‘So Hard And So Much’ (Forbes)
- [Tampa man who was first to face trial for Florida voter fraud in 2020 election gets probation](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/tampa-man-who-was-first-to-face-trial-for-florida-voter-fraud-in-2020-election-gets-probation/) - A Hillsborough County man who was the first person in Florida to face trial on charges of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election was sentenced Monday to two years of probation.Nathan Hart, 49, was arrested in August as part of a sweep announced by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in which about 20 people were arrested on voter fraud charges related to the 2020 election.Hart rejected plea deals and instead headed to trial earlier this month. A jury returned with a split verdict, finding him guilty of false affirmation, but not guilty of voting as an unqualified elector. Both are third-degree felonies that carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison.After the jury’s verdict, prosecutors asked that Hart receive five years of probation, while the defense asked that his only punishment be the time he served in jail after his arrest. Jail records show there were about 13 hours between the time Hart was booked and he was released on bail.In court Monday, Judge Laura Ward denied a motion from the defense for a new trial and said she believed that some level of supervision was appropriate for Hart. The defense again asked for Hart to be sentenced to only time served.“The state at some point before trial ... they were offering six months’ probation, after trial they had requested I think five years’ probation, today they want some jail time followed by probation,” Ward said. “And quite frankly, I’d be more than willing to work with the state on that, had the jury come back guilty to both counts.”Ward also said: “Quite frankly, Mr. Hart, if the jury had returned a guilty verdict as to both charges, I think jail time would be more than appropriate in this case.”Hart had voted in the 2020 election despite a previous felony conviction in relation to a charge of lewd or lascivious molestation, which made him ineligible to vote.During the trial, Hart took the stand and explained that he was approached by a man outside a Hillsborough County driver’s license office in 2020. Hart said the man told him he would be able to vote after Amendment 4, a 2018 constitutional amendment approved by voters, restored that right to felons. Hart said he didn’t think he was eligible to vote, but the man said if he received a voter ID, he would be able to. So he did.DeSantis had established a unit to investigate voter fraud after the 2020 election despite little evidence that widespread fraud had been occurring in Florida.Body cam video from several of the arrests made last year show confusion among the people being taken into custody and among officers making the arrests, some of whom were apologetic.Ward also sentenced Hart to complete 100 hours of community service and to pay court costs.“Obviously no voting,” Ward added. Hart has 30 days to appeal the sentence.
- [Rupert Murdoch: Some Fox News anchors 'endorsed' false election fraud claims - CNBC](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/rupert-murdoch-some-fox-news-anchors-endorsed-false-election-fraud-claims-cnbc/) - Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch said some anchors of the company's TV networks parroted false fraud claims in the months following the 2020 election. In new filings as part of Dominion Voting Systems' $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox and its networks, Murdoch said he doubted the claims being aired on Fox News and Fox Business Network. Monday's court filings show Murdoch and other Fox executives remained close to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott during the election coverage. Members of Rise and Resist participate in their weekly "Truth Tuesday" protest at News Corp headquarters on February 21, 2023 in New York City. Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch said some anchors of the company's TV networks parroted false fraud claims in the months following the 2020 election, according to new court papers out Monday. In new filings as part of Dominion Voting Systems' $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox and its networks, Murdoch said he doubted the election fraud claims being aired on Fox News and Fox Business Network. Murdoch also acknowledged that Fox's TV hosts endorsed the false election fraud claims. In unveiled question and answers from Murdoch's deposition, when Murdoch was asked if he was "now aware that Fox endorsed at times this false notion of a stolen election," Murdoch responded, "Not Fox, no. Not Fox. But maybe Lou Dobbs, maybe Maria [Bartiromo] as commentators." "Some of our commentators were endorsing it," Murdoch said in his responses during the deposition. "They endorsed." Dominion sued Fox and its right-wing cable networks, Fox News and Fox Business, arguing the networks and its personalities made false claims that its voting machines rigged the results of the 2020 election. Fox News has consistently denied that it knowingly made false claims about the election, and has said "the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech." In earlier court papers, Fox said that the past year of discovery has shown the company played "no role in the creation and publication of the challenged statements -- all of which aired on either Fox Business Network or Fox News Channel." Murdoch and his son, Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch, as well as Fox's chief legal and policy officer Viet Dinh, were questioned in connection with the lawsuit in recent months. Earlier in February court papers were released that showed snippets of the evidence Dominion gathered through the months-long process of discovery and depositions, which also included Fox TV personalities. Text messages and testimony have shown Fox executives and Fox's TV anchors were skeptical about claims that the election between Joe Biden, a Democrat, and Trump, a Republican, was rigged. Dominion said in court papers filed Monday that Fox's defense that the statements made were opinion "goes nowhere." "Even if some of Fox's hosts' statements could qualify as 'opinions,' they are still actionable if—as here—they are based on false or undisclosed facts," Dominion said. A representative for Fox News reiterated in a statement on Monday that Dominion mischaracterized the facts by cherry-picking soundbites: "When Dominion is not mischaracterizing the law, it is mischaracterizing the facts." Fox has also targeted Dominion's private-equity owner in court papers regarding Dominion's request for $1.6 billion in damages, saying the firm "paid a small fraction of that amount" to buy Dominion. Fox has also said in court papers the $1.6 billion figure has no connection to Dominion's financial value. "Dominion's lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny, as illustrated by them now being forced to slash their fanciful damages demand by more than half a billion dollars after their own expert debunked its implausible claims," said a Fox spokesperson in a statement Monday. "Their summary judgment motion took an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting and their efforts to publicly smear FOX for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting President of the United States should be recognized for what it is: a blatant violation of the First Amendment." A Dominion spokesperson said Monday, "The damages claim remains. As Fox well knows, our damages exceed $1.6 billion." Dominion brought its lawsuit not only against the TV networks, but parent company Fox Corp., arguing the parent company and its top executives played a role in the spread of misinformation about voter fraud by Fox's personalities. A Delaware judge had ruled Dominion's case could be expanded beyond the networks to include Fox Corp. Monday's court filings show Murdoch and other Fox executives remained closed to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott during the election coverage. "I'm a journalist at heart. I like to be involved in these things," Murdoch said during his deposition testimony, according to court papers. Tucker Carlson, host of "Tucker Carlson Tonight," poses for photos in a Fox News Channel studio, in New York. Richard Drew | AP Earlier court papers have shown top anchors including Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham expressed disbelief in Sidney Powell, a pro-Trump attorney who aggressively promoted claims of election fraud, at the time. Paul Ryan, the former Republican speaker of the House and a Fox board member, also sat for questioning as part of the lawsuit. Court papers out Monday show Ryan said that "these conspiracy theories were baseless," and that the network "should labor to dispel conspiracy theories if and when they pop up." Ryan also told both Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch "that Fox News should not be spreading conspiracy theories," according to the filings. Dominion alleges that Fox News anchors were feeling pressure from the audience and related to rival right-wing networks like Newsmax, fueling on-air fraud claims. The court papers have also shown other glimpses of the network's internal response to the events that occurred on Jan. 6, 2021, the day a violent mob breached the U.S. Capitol in support of then-President Donald Trump. Fox executives shut down Trump's attempt to appear on the network's air that evening, after he dialed into on-air personality Lou Dobbs' show in the afternoon, court filings show. That same evening, Carlson texted his producer calling Trump "a demonic force. A destroyer. But he's not going to destroy us," referring to Fox's network and its audience, court papers show. Meanwhile, the night before Jan. 6, court papers showed, Murdoch told Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, "it's been suggested our prime time three should independently or together say something like 'the election is over and Joe Biden won.'" The lawsuit is being closely monitored by First Amendment watchdogs and experts. Libel lawsuits are typically focused on one falsehood, but in this case Dominion cites a lengthy list of examples of Fox TV hosts making false claims even after they were proven to be untrue. Media companies are often broadly protected by the First Amendment. A status conference in the case is slated for next week, and the trial is set to begin in mid-April. WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP
- [Murdoch says some Fox hosts 'endorsed' false election claims - Cleveland 19](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/murdoch-says-some-fox-hosts-endorsed-false-election-claims-cleveland-19/) - DOVER, Del. (AP) - Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch acknowledged that some Fox News commentators endorsed the false allegations by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that he didn’t step in to stop them from promoting the claims, according to excerpts of a deposition unsealed Monday.The claims and the company’s handling of them are at the heart of a defamation lawsuit against the cable news giant by Dominion Voting Systems.The recently unsealed documents include excerpts from a deposition in which Murdoch was asked about whether he was aware that some of the network’s commentators — Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity — at times endorsed the false election claims. Murdoch replied, “Yes. They endorsed.”The Murdoch deposition is the latest filing in the defamation case to reveal concerns at the top-rated network over how it was handling Trump’s claims as its ratings plummeted after the network called Arizona for Joe Biden, angering Trump and his supporters.An earlier filing showed a gulf between the stolen election narrative the network was airing in primetime and doubts about the claims raised by its stars behind the scenes. In one text, from Nov. 16, 2020, Fox News host Tucker Carlson said “Sidney Powell is lying” about having evidence for election fraud, referring to one of Trump’s lawyers.The Dominion case is the latest example showing that those who were spreading false information about the 2020 election knew there was no evidence to support it. The now-disbanded House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol disclosed that many of Trump’s top advisers repeatedly warned him that the allegations he was making about fraud were false — and yet the president continued making the claims.Murdoch urged in September 2020, weeks before the election, that Dobbs be fired because he was “an extremist,” according to Dominion’s court filing. Murdoch also said he thought it was “really bad” for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani to be advising Trump because Giuliani’s “judgment was bad” and he was “an extreme partisan,” according to a deposition excerpt.Murdoch was asked whether he could have requested that Powell and Giuliani not be put on the air: “I could have. But I didn’t,” he replied.Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, is suing both Fox News Network and parent company Fox Corp. for defamation. Dominion contends that some Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims by supporters of Trump that Dominion machines had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements about the company.Dominion attorneys contend that executives in the “chain of command” at both Fox News and Fox Corp. knew the network was broadcasting “known lies, had the power to stop it, but chose to let it continue. That was wrong, and for that, FC and FNN are both liable.”Attorneys for Fox Corp. note in their filing that Murdoch also testified that he never discussed Dominion or voter fraud with any of the accused Fox News hosts. They say Dominion has produced “zero evidentiary support” for the claim that high-level executives at Fox Corp. had any role in creating or publishing the statements at issue.Dominion’s contention that the company should be held liable because Murdoch might have had the power to step in and prevent the challenged statements from being aired, they said, “has no basis in defamation law, would obliterate the distinction between corporate parents and subsidiaries, and finds no support in the evidence.”The “handful of selective quotes” cited by Dominion have nothing to do with the statements that Dominion has challenged as defamatory, according to Fox Corp. attorneys. “Dominion repeatedly asked Fox News executives, hosts, and staff whether Fox Corporation employees played a role in the publication of the statements it challenges,” they wrote. “The answer — every single time, for every single witness — was no.”Meanwhile, Fox News attorneys note that when voting-technology companies denied the allegations being made by Trump and his surrogates, Fox News aired those denials, while some Fox News hosts offered protected opinion commentary about Trump’s allegations.Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
- [Murdoch and other Fox execs agreed 2020 election was fair but feared losing viewers ... - Politico](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/murdoch-and-other-fox-execs-agreed-2020-election-was-fair-but-feared-losing-viewers-politico/) - “Some of our commentators were endorsing it,” Rupert Murdoch conceded during his sworn deposition, appearing to insist that Fox hosts did not speak for the network. “Yes. They endorsed,” he said. | Julio Cortez/AP Fox News executive chair Rupert Murdoch admitted in a deposition that some Fox News hosts endorsed President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, potentially undermining the network’s assertion that it was neutrally relaying dubious arguments from Trump and his allies, a court filing released Monday said. The admission from Murdoch came in a libel suit voting equipment maker that Dominion Voting Systems is pressing against the TV network over its coverage of the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. However, the ongoing lawsuit is also opening a unique window into Fox’s internal deliberations, particularly in the tense period after Election Day, as the network struggled to hang on to a viewer base heavily invested in Trump’s claims of victory even as senior Fox officials were privately convinced Trump’s claims were bogus and he had lost. Dominion’s court filing released Monday, a response to Fox’s own recent submission in the case, portrays senior executives at the network as widely in agreement that their network shouldn’t help Trump spread the false narrative. Yet, they repeatedly wrestled with how firmly to disavow it without risking their Trump-friendly audience. “Some of our commentators were endorsing it,” Murdoch conceded during his sworn deposition, appearing to insist that Fox hosts did not speak for the network. “Yes. They endorsed,” he said. “It is fair to say you seriously doubted any claim of massive election fraud?” a Dominion lawyer asked the broadcasting mogul. “Oh, yes,” Murdoch replied. “And you seriously doubted it from the very beginning?” the attorney asked. “Yes. I mean, we thought everything was on the up-and-up,” Murdoch said. But as time passed, the network agreed to air Trump’s claims because of their inherent newsworthiness, executives said, while suggesting their hosts would challenge or push back on the false claims. Dominion said that pushback was tepid at best and drowned out by louder and larger embraces of Trump’s claims. The filing also underscored the extraordinary linkages between Trump’s White House, his campaign and the network, whose top executives and programmers were regularly in contact about editorial decisions and issues related to political strategy. A series of episodes detailed in the submission suggest not only that the network and its leaders were actively aiding Trump’s re-election bid, but that Trump sometimes took direction from Fox. Murdoch, according to Dominion’s filing, said in his deposition that he “provided Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, with Fox’s confidential information about Biden’s ads, along with debate strategy. According to the filing, Trump’s decision to drop controversial lawyer Sidney Powell from his legal team was driven by criticism from Fox. “Fox was instrumental in maneuvering Powell both into the Trump campaign and then out of it,” Dominion’s lawyers wrote. However, Dominion notes that Fox shows continued to have Powell on as a guest even after Trump disavowed her. The voting machine maker says that her continued presence undermines Fox’s claim in the litigation that it was just relaying newsworthy statements by Trump attorneys and advisers about their thoroughly unsuccessful efforts to challenge the 2020 election results. In the immediate aftermath of the election, Murdoch emailed with other Fox executives to underscore this point, specifically worrying that some of the network’s primetime hosts might fail to get the desired message: that the vote was not tainted with fraud. In a statement Monday, a Fox spokesperson said much of the evidence Dominion cited wasn’t relevant to the legal issues in the case. “Their summary judgment motion took an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting and their efforts to publicly smear FOX for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting President of the United States should be recognized for what it is: a blatant violation of the First Amendment,” the Fox statement said. “Dominion’s lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny,” the statement also declared. According to the evidence described by Dominion, Murdoch called Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell right after the election and urged him to tell other Republican leaders not to embrace Trump’s false fraud claims. Former House Speaker Paul Ryan, a member of Fox’s corporate board, repeatedly pressed internally to steer the network away from “conspiracy theories.” After Jan. 6, Ryan pressed his view even more forcefully inside Fox. “Ryan believed that some high percentage of Americans thought the election was stolen because they got a diet of information telling them the election was stolen from what they believed were credible sources,” Dominion’s brief says. “Rupert responded to Ryan’s email: ‘Thanks Paul. Wake-up call for Hannity, who has been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was scared to lose viewers.’” But time and again, the executives were confronted with evidence that the network was experiencing a backlash from viewers who felt Fox wasn’t sufficiently supportive of Trump’s claims, a potential threat to the network’s viewer base. Dominion’s lawyers argue that Fox officials soft-pedaled their efforts to rein in such statements by their own hosts because Fox leaders remained acutely concerned that their viewers would migrate to platforms that were enthusiastically trumpeting Trump’s claims, like Newsmax and One America News (OAN). Fox has sought to assert a “neutral reportage” privilege to argue that it should not be held liable for the accuracy of statements that it attributed to others, like Trump and his attorneys. Dominion says Fox’s hosts failed to challenge those assertions even when Fox officials knew or strongly suspected they were untrue. However, Fox’s lawyers argue that the fact that someone at the network regarded particular claims as untrue does not establish that the people uttering them on air knew that. Fox’s defense also appears to contend that the views of corporate level executives — including Murdoch — about the election fraud issues aren’t relevant to Fox’s liability for allegedly defaming Dominion “Dominion barely tries to demonstrate that the specific person(s) at Fox News responsible for any of the statements it challenges subjectively knew or harbored serious doubts about the truth of that statement when it was published,” Fox’s attorneys wrote in their own lengthy court filing. “Instead, it lards up its brief with any cherry-picked statement it can muster from any corner of Fox News to try to demonstrate that ‘Fox’ writ large — not the specific persons at Fox News responsible for any given statement — ’knew’ that the allegations against Dominion were false.” While the case is pending in a state court in Delaware, a judge said in a preliminary ruling last year that New York law appeared to apply and that state did not recognize the neutral reportage privilege, only a similar protection for statements that are actually uttered in official government proceedings. The court filings released Monday contained only excerpts of the statements from various depositions, so the full context of all the statements was not always apparent.
- [Murdoch Acknowledges Fox News Hosts Endorsed Election Fraud Falsehoods](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/murdoch-acknowledges-fox-news-hosts-endorsed-election-fraud-falsehoods/) - Rupert Murdoch, the conservative media mogul, spoke under oath last month in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox by Dominion Voting Systems.Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the conservative media empire that owns Fox News, acknowledged in a deposition that several hosts for his networks promoted the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald J. Trump, and that he could have stopped them but didn’t, court documents released on Monday showed.“They endorsed,” Mr. Murdoch said under oath in response to direct questions about the Fox hosts Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo, according to a legal filing by Dominion Voting Systems. “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight,” he added, while also disclosing that he was always dubious of Mr. Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud.Asked whether he doubted Mr. Trump, Mr. Murdoch responded: “Yes. I mean, we thought everything was on the up-and-up.” At the same time, he rejected the accusation that Fox News as a whole had endorsed the stolen election narrative. “Not Fox,” he said. “No. Not Fox.”Mr. Murdoch’s remarks, which he made last month as part of Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox, added to the evidence that Dominion has accumulated as it tries to prove its central allegation: The people running the country’s most popular news network knew Mr. Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election were false but broadcast them anyway in a reckless pursuit of ratings and profit.Proof to that effect would help Dominion clear the high legal bar set by the Supreme Court for defamation cases. To prevail, Dominion must show not only that Fox broadcast false information, but that it did so knowingly. A judge in Delaware state court has scheduled a monthlong trial beginning in April.The new documents and a similar batch released this month provide a dramatic account from inside the network, depicting a frantic scramble as Fox tried to woo back its large conservative audience after ratings collapsed in the wake of Mr. Trump’s loss. Fox had been the first network to call Arizona for Joseph R. Biden on election night — essentially declaring him the next president. When Mr. Trump refused to concede and started attacking Fox as disloyal and dishonest, viewers began to change the channel.The filings also revealed that top executives and on-air hosts had reacted with incredulity bordering on contempt to various fictitious allegations about Dominion. These included unsubstantiated rumors — repeatedly uttered by guests and hosts of Fox programs — that its voting machines could run a secret algorithm that switched votes from one candidate to another, and that the company was founded in Venezuela to help that country’s longtime leader, Hugo Chávez, fix elections.Read What Murdoch Said in His Deposition in the Fox-Dominion CaseRupert Murdoch made his remarks last month as part of the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems.Read DocumentDespite those misgivings, little changed about the content on shows like Mr. Dobbs’s and Ms. Bartiromo’s. For weeks after the election, viewers of Fox News and Fox Business heard a far different story from the one that Fox executives privately conceded was real.Lawyers for Fox News, which filed a response to Dominion in court on Monday, argued that its commentary and reporting after the election did not amount to defamation because its hosts had not endorsed the falsehoods about Dominion, even if Mr. Murdoch stated otherwise in his deposition. As such, the network’s lawyers argued, Fox’s coverage was protected under the First Amendment.Fox News v. Dominion Voter SystemsA $1.6 Billion Suit: A defamation lawsuit by the voting machine maker Dominion seeks to hold Fox News responsible for false claims after the 2020 election. Here’s what to know about the case so far.Rupert Murdoch’s Deposition: The conservative media mogul acknowledged under oath that several Fox hosts promoted the false narrative that the election was stolen. Read his deposition.Privately Expressing Disbelief: Dozens of text messages released in the lawsuit show how Fox hosts went from privately criticizing election fraud claims to giving them significant airtime.“Far from reporting the allegations as true, hosts informed their audiences at every turn that the allegations were just allegations that would need to be proven in court in short order if they were going to impact the outcome of the election,” Fox lawyers said in their filing. “And to the extent some hosts commented on the allegations, that commentary is independently protected opinion.”A Fox News spokeswoman said on Monday in response to the filing that Dominion’s case “has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal scrutiny.” She added that the company had taken “an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting.”In certain instances, Fox hosts did present the allegations as unproven and offered their opinions. And Fox lawyers have pointed to exchanges on the air when hosts challenged these claims and pressed Mr. Trump’s lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani to present evidence that never materialized.But the case is also likely to revolve around questions about what people with the power to shape Fox’s on-air content knew about the validity of the fraud allegations as they gave pro-Trump election deniers a platform — often in front of hosts who mustered no pushback.“There appears to be a pretty good argument that Fox endorsed the accuracy of what was being said,” said Lee Levine, a veteran First Amendment lawyer who has defended major media organizations in defamation cases. He added that Fox’s arguments were stronger against some of Dominion’s claims than others. But based on what he has seen of the case so far, Mr. Levine said, “I’d much rather be in Dominion’s shoes than Fox’s right now.”Dominion’s filing casts Mr. Murdoch as a chairman who was both deeply engaged with his senior leadership about coverage of the election and operating at somewhat of a remove, unwilling to interfere. Asked by Dominion’s lawyer, Justin Nelson, whether he could have ordered Fox News to keep Trump lawyers like Ms. Powell and Mr. Giuliani off the air, Mr. Murdoch responded: “I could have. But I didn’t.”The document also described how Paul D. Ryan, a former Republican speaker of the House and current member of the Fox Corporation board of directors, said in his deposition that he had implored Mr. Murdoch and his son Lachlan, the chief executive officer, “that Fox News should not be spreading conspiracy theories.” Mr. Ryan suggested instead that the network pivot and “move on from Donald Trump and stop spouting election lies.”There was some discussion at the highest levels of the company about how to make that pivot, Dominion said.On Jan. 5, 2021, the day before the attack at the Capitol, Mr. Murdoch and Suzanne Scott, the chief executive of Fox News Media, talked about whether Mr. Hannity and his fellow prime-time hosts, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, should make it clear to viewers that Mr. Biden had won the election. Mr. Murdoch said in his deposition that he had hoped such a statement “would go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election was stolen.”According to the filing, Ms. Scott said of the hosts, “Privately they are all there,” but “we need to be careful about using the shows and pissing off the viewers.” No statement of that kind was made on the air.Dominion details the close relationship that Fox hosts and executives enjoyed with senior Republican Party officials and members of the Trump inner circle, revealing how at times Fox was shaping the very story it was covering. It describes how Mr. Murdoch placed a call to the Republican leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, immediately after the election. In his deposition, Mr. Murdoch testified that during that call he likely urged Mr. McConnell to “ask other senior Republicans to refuse to endorse Mr. Trump’s conspiracy theories and baseless claims of fraud.”Dominion also describes how Mr. Murdoch provided Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, with confidential information about ads that the Biden campaign would be running on Fox.At one point, Dominion’s lawyers accuse Ms. Pirro, who hosted a Saturday evening talk show, of “laundering her own conspiracy theories through Powell.” The filing goes on to say Ms. Pirro bragged to her friends “that she was the source for Powell’s claims.” Dominion notes that this was “something she never shared with her audience.”The filing on Monday included a deposition by Viet Dinh, Fox Corporation’s chief legal officer, who was one of the many senior executive cautioning about the content of Fox’s coverage. After Mr. Hannity told his audience on Nov. 5, 2020, that it would be “impossible to ever know the true, fair, accurate election results,” Mr. Dinh told a group of senior executives including Lachlan Murdoch and Ms. Scott: “Hannity is getting awfully close to the line with his commentary and guests tonight.”When asked in his deposition if Fox executives had an obligation to stop hosts of shows from broadcasting lies, Mr. Dinh said: “Yes, to prevent and correct known falsehoods.”In their filing on Monday, Fox’s lawyers accused Dominion of cherry-picking evidence that some at Fox News knew the allegations against Dominion were not true and, therefore, acted out of actual malice, the legal standard required to prove defamation. “The vast majority of Dominion’s evidence comes from individuals who had zero responsibility for the statements Dominion challenges,” the lawyers said.
- [Rupert Murdoch testified that Fox News hosts 'endorsed' stolen election narrative](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/rupert-murdoch-testified-that-fox-news-hosts-endorsed-stolen-election-narrative/) - Rupert Murdoch testified that Fox News hosts ‘endorsed’ stolen election narrativeNetwork owner also admitted in $1.6bn defamation lawsuit deposition that Trump’s claims were ‘damaging to everybody’Newly released court documents reveal that Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire owner of Fox News, acknowledged under oath that several Fox News hosts endorsed Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.The mogul made the admission during a deposition in the $1.6bn defamation lawsuit brought against the network by the voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems, which has accused Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corporation, of maligning its reputation. In his deposition, Murdoch said that the hosts Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro “endorsed” the false narrative promoted by Trump.Will a $1.6bn defamation lawsuit finally stop Fox News from spreading lies? | Margaret SullivanRead more“I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight,” Murdoch said in the deposition, the New York Times reported on Monday.In previous court filings, attorneys for Dominion have argued that Fox News hosts ridiculed Trump’s false claims of a “stolen election” while promoting those lies on television. While Sean Hannity pushed that narrative on his prime-time show, he allegedly wrote that Trump was “acting like an insane person”.Even Murdoch himself dismissed Trump’s claims, describing the former president’s obsession with proving the election was stolen as “terrible stuff damaging everybody”.Murdoch acknowledged in his deposition that he could have ordered the network not to platform Trump lawyers such as Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani on its programs: “I could have. But I didn’t,” he said.Dominion’s defamation case is being described as a “landmark”. A Harvard law professor recently told the Guardian he had “never seen a defamation case with such overwhelming proof that the defendant admitted in writing that it was making up fake information in order to increase its viewership and its revenues”.How Dominion Voting Systems filing proves Fox News was ‘deliberately lying’Read moreThe Fox hosts were also privately critical of members of Trump’s team, including Sidney Powell, an attorney who claimed that Dominion’s machines had changed votes cast for Trump to Joe Biden. In a deposition, Hannity said: “That whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second”.Still, the network continued to give coverage to proponents of the election fraud narrative as it feared upsetting its viewers. In a conversation about the network’s coverage of the issue on 5 January 2020 – a day before rioters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to stop the election from being certified - Suzanne Scott, the Fox News media chief executive, and Murdoch debated whether Fox hosts should acknowledge Trump’s defeat and admit that Biden won. “We need to be careful about using the shows and pissing off the viewers,” Scott told Murdoch.Dominion sued Fox News and parent company Fox Corporation in March 2021 and November 2021 in Delaware superior court, alleging the cable TV network amplified false claims that Dominion voting machines were used to rig the 2020 election against Trump, a Republican who lost to Democratic rival Biden. Dominion’s motion for summary judgment was replete with emails and statements in which Murdoch and other top Fox executives say the claims made about Dominion on air were false – part of the voting machine company’s effort to prove the network either knew the statements it aired were false or recklessly disregarded their accuracy.In its own filing made public on Monday, Fox argued that its coverage of statements by Trump and his lawyers were inherently newsworthy and that Dominion’s “extreme” interpretation of defamation law would “stop the media in its tracks”.Reuters reported that a Fox spokesperson said that Dominion’s view of defamation law “would prevent journalists from basic reporting”.A trial is scheduled to begin in mid-April.Reuters contributed reportingTopicsRupert MurdochFox NewsUS elections 2020Donald TrumpUS politicsTV newsTelevision industrynewsReuse this content
- [Louisville pulled together for COVID protection but not for young Black men being murdered](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/louisville-pulled-together-for-covid-protection-but-not-for-young-black-men-being-murdered/) - For a week I have been reflecting on my church sermon from this past Sunday. The story has stuck with me as I have navigated personal changes and challenges as well as the challenges of loved ones.The sermon was on Deuteronomy 34, speaking about the death of Moses and how there was a time to grieve, and then time to work in the spirit of what he had passed on to Joshua.Now, in this same week, I went to the Greater Louisville Project release of their Safer City By Design Report which did an in depth (and staggering) review of Louisville in comparison to its peer cities in the area of youth violence.Read, learn and then take actionThis is not my report, and I hope all due respect is given to those within GLP who worked hard to compile this data and then distill it down to a palatable format so that we can discern the magnitude of what they studied. I hope everyone goes to look at the work they did, and I further hope you are then moved to action.While I won’t go into all of the data, there were parts that really hit me and are worth highlighting. The fact that since the pandemic began 1 out of 294 Louisville residents died from COVID-19, and in 2021, 1 out of every 252 young Black men in Louisville were murdered—well that one hurt. A lot. As we socially distanced and masked up, what did we do to protect young Black men from the even larger pandemic they were facing?More:Juvenile justice bill to reopen Louisville detention center clears House committeeThe data represents our murdered neighbors, not just numbersThe report went on to show that of the 60 young people killed, 55 of the 60 were Black with 48 being young Black men. As birthdays pile on, I don’t think I fit into this demo any longer, but I surely identify with it. We all should. Because these are our neighbors, these are our friends and family.These are not numbers. It is hard to conceptualize just how bleak this feels from our perspective but let me say this—it’s terrifying. Remember when we closed public spaces and completely modified the way of life for millions to slow the spread? How do we slow this spread because, to be completely honest, I’m scared. Apathy is easier when it seems the system wants you to fail. To drive home that point, Louisville also ranked the worst among its peers for Black disconnected youth, the CDC term for those not working and not in school.The report's release felt grim. It stung. For a lot of us, however, it was nothing new. It was just a recitation of what we have been seeing and saying for years. But for many in the room, it was a shock, and it was painful.For Subscribers:By the numbers: Who are the Kentucky kids in juvenile detention and how did they get there?We can mourn but we must also take actionNow, this is where the sermon kept playing in my mind. I view this report as a catalyst, much like the death of Moses. Yes, we mourn it. And after we mourn, we get to work and address the issues highlighted in this report.GLP (and seriously thank all of them) did the legwork to identify key issues and explained in significant detail the intricacies of the problems. Now we need to galvanize leaders to take that and run with it.So many people feel they are helpless in this fight, but you aren’t. I promise you. It only takes one person to start an initiative and when someone else joins it becomes a movement. The marching orders are there, and there are plenty of people on the ground who can help connect those with resources and the will to help with the needs they see as vital. It just takes the doing-it part.My hope is that people take these data points and the stories behind them and get to know the communities impacted. Not just the numbers on a page, but the faces and families they can represent. It is a great starting point to have the information and the feelings they evoke—but the best churches don’t just preach a good word and send you home, they preach a good word and commit good works within the communities they serve. Then, and only then, are the churches ingrained into the fiber of the community.This report (seriously go read it) highlighted the worst of us, but not the whole of us. It was a sad day for the city in its release, but now is the time to move past mourning and towards a better tomorrow.Terrance Sullivan is the former Executive Director of the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights (KCHR). KCHR is the state agency charged with enforcing the Kentucky Civil Rights Act. He is employed by the US House of Representatives. Terrance is also a member of The Courier Journal's Advisory Board.
- [FDA approves first at-home test for both flu, COVID-19 | Coronavirus - wdrb.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/fda-approves-first-at-home-test-for-both-flu-covid-19-coronavirus-wdrb-com/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first at-home flu and COVID-19 test.The test is able to identify a positive result for the flu with more than 90% accuracy. It is also able to identify positive results for COVID with over 88% accuracy."If you have this test and you're able to say OK, this is flue, then you can get appropriate treatment for flu or you can spread the flu, as opposed to if it is COVID you can get appropriate treatment for COVID and go into quarantine or isolation," said Dr. Chris T. Pernell with American College of Preventive Medicine.The price and release date for the test hasn't been announced. Officials said those who have flu or COVID-like symptoms, but test negative may have a different respiratory infection and should seek care.Copyright 2023 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
- [Pandemic may be over, but demand for food assistance still growing in Louisville - WLKY](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/pandemic-may-be-over-but-demand-for-food-assistance-still-growing-in-louisville-wlky/) - For many, the expiration this week of COVID-19-era federal food assistance in some states serves as one more sign the pandemic is over.However, at the Sister Visitor Center food pantry in Louisville, demand for food assistance is greater than ever. "I'm struggling one dime to another dime," said Mary Whitten, a pantry customer who was stocking up on food Monday. "They help me a lot."Like many other clients, Whitten has seen inflation stretch her limited finances like never before.The Sister Visitor Center saw demand at its food pantry jump in 2021, from 500 visits per month to 1,400. But 2022 did not see a reversal in that trend – instead, demand continued to grow to 2,000 visits per month as of January.Laura Williams has been the pantry manager for eight months and noticed a change during her tenure there. "We're seeing people come back more on a weekly basis," she said. "Just not only their monthly shop, they're coming back weekly to get their bread, to get their produce, to get additional type canned goods to assist them to get us through the rest of the month."The pantry customers have many different stories and varying reasons for coming, although many mention inflation at the grocery store, Williams said. There could be another reason demand at pantries has continued to grow, said Jessican Klein, a policy association at the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy. Kentucky's Republican state lawmakers voted last year to withdraw from the supplemental food assistance, ending the extra payments through SNAP benefits in April 2022.That cost the average SNAP recipient an extra $100 per month and cost the state $558 million, Klein said."So that's really what we're seeing, an increase in people needing emergency assistance, like a food bank or a food pantry," she said.As the remain states drop off the program, the U.S. Senate is debating whether to extend some extra SNAP benefits as it debates the five-year Farm Bill.Advocates like Klein hope they will at least drop the work requirement and offer waivers to groups such as college students, although some Republicans have said they would like to see a smaller SNAP program, not a larger one.In the meantime, many food pantries are prepared for demand to keep growing. LOUISVILLE, Ky. — For many, the expiration this week of COVID-19-era federal food assistance in some states serves as one more sign the pandemic is over.However, at the Sister Visitor Center food pantry in Louisville, demand for food assistance is greater than ever.
- [Court upholds termination decision for former LMPD detective Myles Cosgrove - WAVE 3](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/court-upholds-termination-decision-for-former-lmpd-detective-myles-cosgrove-wave-3/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - A former Louisville Metro Police detective who has been fighting to get his job back following the death of Breonna Taylor during an attempted raid on her home has lost another appeal.Myles Cosgrove was fired in Jan. 2021 for use of excessive force after firing 16 shots into Taylor’s apartment in March 2020. Police said Cosgrove failed to identify a target during the incident, which led to one of Cosgrove’s rounds hitting and killing Taylor during the raid.LMPD’s Merit Board upheld the decision to fire Cosgrove in Dec. 2021.On Friday, Judge Melissa Logan Bellows in Jefferson Circuit Court issued the order stating the decision by LMPD’s Merit Board was justified and that Cosgrove’s appeal was denied.“Given the evidence presented in the record, the Court must find that the Police Merit Board had substantial evidence upon which to base their decision, were thus not arbitrary in their decision, and as such must be affirmed,” the court document reads.The judge said the principles of target identification and isolation are not just part of police training but part of self-defense law, and that even normal citizens should be upheld by those standards.According to court documents, Cosgrove argued “that he should be held to a less stringent standard than an ordinary Kentucky resident, despite having considerably more legal privileges.”In November, the Kentucky Law Enforcement Council voted not to revoke Cosgrove’s state peace officer certification, which is required for him to be a police officer within the commonwealth.Copyright 2023 WAVE. All rights reserved.
- [Court upholds firing of Louisville police officer who fatally shot Breonna Taylor](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/court-upholds-firing-of-louisville-police-officer-who-fatally-shot-breonna-taylor/) - A Jefferson County Circuit Court judge on Monday upheld the firing of Louisville Metro Police Officer Myles Cosgrove, who federalinvestigators determined fired the bullets that killed Breonna Taylor in March of 2020.Cosgrove was fired from the department in January 2021 for failing to properly identify a threat before firing 16 rounds into Taylor’s apartment. He unsuccessfully appealed his termination to the Police Merit Board later that year, arguing that the “shadowy figure” and “flashes of light” Cosgrove said he was firing at were enough to justify the use of deadly force. After a four-day hearing, the board voted 5-2 to keep Cosgrove from returning to LMPD. Attorneys representing Cosgrove then appealed that decision last April.On Monday, Circuit Court Judge Melissa Logan Bellows ruled against Cosgrove, upholding the Merit Board’s decision.“The principles of target identification and isolation are not simply part of police training, but part of the law of self-defense itself,” Bellows wrote. “Even normal citizens must exercise the ‘highest degree of care’ in ascertaining whether they are shooting at a legitimate target.”Bellows wrote that Cosgrove’s attorneys appeared to be arguing that he shouldbe "held to a less stringent standard than an ordinary Kentucky resident, despite having considerably more legal privileges."During his appeal to the Merit Board, Cosgrove also argued that his firing waspolitically motivated. Former Deputy Police Chief LaVita Chavous testified that she overheard Mayor Greg Fischer say he wished he could fire the officers involved in Taylor’s killing during a meeting in 2020.But Bellows said Monday that there was no evidence suggesting Fischer unduly pressured LMPD leaders or the Merit Board to fire Cosgrove.“Put simply, while Cosgrove has provided certain evidence that his firing could have been politically motivated, he has not provided sufficient evidence to prove that it was, especially in an appellate setting,” shesaid.Cosgrove is one of the only officers involved in the 2020 raid on Taylor’s apartment not to face additional criminal charges for his actions, despite an FBI ballistics report claiming he fired the fatal shots.Former officers Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany are currently facing four federal charges,including obstruction and civil rights violations. Both were involved in securing the search warrant for Taylor’s apartment, which federal prosecutors say included statements the officers knew were false.Former Detective Brett Hankison, who was present at the raid, has also been charged with civil rights violations for firing through a covered window as police attempted to enter Taylor’s apartment in the middle of the night. All three officers have pleaded not guilty and their trials are expected to take place later this year.Last November, the Kentucky Law Enforcement Council voted not to revoke Cosgrove’s police officer certification, meaning he could get a job elsewhere in the state.
- [Judge upholds termination of former LMPD detective who fired fatal shot in Breonna Taylor raid](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/judge-upholds-termination-of-former-lmpd-detective-who-fired-fatal-shot-in-breonna-taylor-raid/) - Myles Cosgrove was fired in January 2021 for use of excessive force after he fired 16 shots into Breonna Taylor's apartment in March 2020. LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A former Louisville Metro Police Department detective has been fighting to get his job back after he was involved in the raid which led to Breonna Taylor's death. A judge recently ruled against Myles Cosgrove's appeal. Cosgrove was fired in January 2021 for use of excessive force after he fired 16 shots into Breonna Taylor's apartment, including the shot that killed Taylor, during a botched raid in March 2020. Police said Cosgrove failed to identify a target during the incident, which led to one of Cosgrove’s rounds fatally wounding Taylor. LMPD’s Merit Board upheld the decision to terminate Cosgrove with a 5-2 vote in December 2021. On Feb. 24, Judge Melissa Logan Bellows in Jefferson Circuit Court issued an order stating the decision by LMPD’s Merit Board was justified, denying Cosgrove’s appeal. [embedded content] The judge said the principles of "target identification" and "target isolation" are not just an expectation for police, but even normal citizens should exercise the "highest degree of care" in determining whether or not they are shooting at a legitimate target. In his termination letter, former Interim LMPD Chief Yvette Gentry said Cosgrove did not properly identify a target when he fired over a dozen times into Taylor's Louisville apartment. In violation of standard operating procedure, Cosgrove also failed to activate his body camera prior to executing the search warrant. Cosgrove said that "he should be held to a less stringent standard than an ordinary Kentucky resident, despite having considerably more legal privileges," according to court documents. In November, the Kentucky Law Enforcement Council voted not to revoke Cosgrove’s state peace officer certification, which means he could get a job in another agency in the Commonwealth. Make it easy to keep up-to-date with more stories like this. Download the WHAS11 News app now. For Apple or Android users. Have a news tip? Email assign@whas11.com, visit our Facebook page or Twitter feed.
- [Myles Cosgrove: Court upholds firing of LMPD officer whose shot killed Breonna Taylor](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/myles-cosgrove-court-upholds-firing-of-lmpd-officer-whose-shot-killed-breonna-taylor/) - A court has ruled that the ex-Louisville Metro officer who shot and killed Breonna Taylor in the botched 2020 raid was justly fired, meaning he won't be getting his job back.Myles Cosgrove was one of three officers who fired their guns that night in March as LMPD was serving a no-knock warrant.He was fired in 2021 by then-interim Chief Yvette Gentry for violating department policies that night.Investigators said he fired 16 rounds that night. Previous: Merit Board upholds firing of Myles CosgroveLast April, he filed a lawsuit against LMPD, its merit board and the city, saying his firing was unconstitutional. He sued to be reinstated and get back pay and benefits.A Jefferson County Circuit Court recently found the merit board had "substantial evidence upon which to base their decision" and upheld his firing.Read the entire ruling here. As for the other officers involved, Jonathan Mattingly, who was shot that night, ended up retiring from the force. Brett Hankison, who faced three wanton endangerment charges, was acquitted.He then was charged federally for use of excessive force. The trial is expected to happen in October. LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A court has ruled that the ex-Louisville Metro officer who shot and killed Breonna Taylor in the botched 2020 raid was justly fired, meaning he won't be getting his job back.Myles Cosgrove was one of three officers who fired their guns that night in March as LMPD was serving a no-knock warrant.
- [Court upholds termination of former Louisville detective Myles Cosgrove - Spectrum News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/court-upholds-termination-of-former-louisville-detective-myles-cosgrove-spectrum-news/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Myles Cosgrove, the former Louisville detective who was fired in 2021 for violating LMPD's policy on the use of deadly force, will not get his job back, a circuit court judge ruled Monday. What You Need To Know A Jefferson County judge ruled Monday that Myles Cosgrove won't get his job back at LMPD Judge Melissa Logan Bellows upheld the LMPD Merit Board's decision to terminate Cosgrove after he sued in April 2022 Cosgrove fired the fatal shot during the botched no-knock raid on Breonna Taylor's apartment Cosgrove was one of three cops involved in the deadly no-knock drug raid on Breonna Taylor's apartment. Cosgrove fired the shot that killed the 26-year-old Black woman after returning fire from her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker. Judge Melissa Logan Bellows upheld the decision of LMPD and its Police Merit Board to terminate Cosgrove in early 2021 in a ruling nearly one year after Cosgrove appealed his firing. The merit board upheld Cosgrove's firing in December 2021 by a 5-2 vote, and his attempts to appeal that were denied. In the 11-page lawsuit, Cosgrove's attorneys decried the board's decision as "arbitrary" and "unlawful" several times, accusing the board of violating his due process. Taylor's death after the botched no-knock raid partly sparked the widespread racial justice protests seen in more than 2,000 U.S. cities over the summer of 2020, alongside the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Former LMPD officer Kelly Goodlett admitted in federal court that she and another officer falsified information in the warrant used to justify the raid. That confirmed to many, including U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, that Taylor never should have been visited by armed officers on March 13, 2020. Related Stories
- [Judge upholds termination of Louisville detective who fired fatal shot in Breonna Taylor raid](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/judge-upholds-termination-of-louisville-detective-who-fired-fatal-shot-in-breonna-taylor-raid/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A Jefferson Circuit Court judge upheld the termination of former Louisville Metro Police Detective Myles Cosgrove, who was fired for violating the department's use of force policy when he fatally shot Breonna Taylor.Judge Melissa Bellows ruled Friday that the Louisville Police Merit Board had "substantial evidence" on which to uphold the firing of Cosgrove, who fired 16 shots into Taylor's apartment during a March 13, 2020, police raid.In December 2021, the board upheld LMPD's termination of Cosgrove with a 5-2 vote.Former chief Yvette Gentry fired Cosgrove in January 2021 for failing to properly "identify a target," violating the department's use of force policy and failing to use a body camera. Gentry testified in front of the board that in three different interviews with investigators, Cosgrove could not articulate a reason for the number of shots fired or justify that he saw a threat where deadly force was necessary, given he never saw a gun, heard a shot and only saw a shadowy figure."You fire 16 rounds, and they go in three different directions, and you say you don't hear and you're not seeing" a specific threat, Gentry told the merit board. "I didn't have the confidence" to keep him.Bellows ruled LMPD and the merit board had enough evidence to justify the firing. "Even normal citizens must exercise the 'highest degree of care' in ascertaining whether they are shooting at a legitimate target," Bellows wrote. "Cosgrove seems to be arguing that he should be held to a less stringent standard than an ordinary Kentucky resident, despite having considerable more legal privileges. A normal citizen who violated these principles could be subject to criminal liability."Cosgrove was not among four former officers charged in the Taylor raid.Attorney Scott Miller, who represents Cosgrove, told the board that the former detective saw a muzzle flash, former Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly fall to the ground and a figure in the hallway. He had to make a split-second, life-or-death decision, Miller said."He reasonably believed there was a threat," Miller told the seven-member board during its hearing. "He reasonably believed there was a target."Cosgrove told the merit board, "I did what I thought was right that evening I was addressing the deadly threat that was in front of me."Kenneth Walker, Taylor's boyfriend, fired a shot at police, hitting Mattingly. Walker said he believed police were intruders breaking into the apartment before 1 a.m.Police shot and killed Taylor, 26, in the hallway of her apartment during an undercover raid on her home on Springfield Drive as part of a series of raids elsewhere that targeted narcotics trafficking.No drugs or money were found in her home.Former Louisville police Col. LaVita Chavous testified that the initial belief of investigating officers indicated that Cosgrove's firing was politically motivated after protests began in the months following Taylor's death.As protests engulfed the city in early summer 2020, Chavous told board members she overheard former Mayor Greg Fischer said he wanted to find a way to fire key officers involved in the raid and shooting of Taylor.She believes Fischer was referring to Cosgrove, Sgt. Mattingly, Detective Brett Hankison and Detective Joshua Jaynes.But in her ruling, Bellows found "there is no direct evidence that Mayor Fischer or anyone else improperly influenced the proceedings to ensure Cosgrove was fired. Simply put, while Cosgrove has provided certain evidence that his firing could have been politically motivated, he has not provided sufficient evidence to prove that it was."Fischer has testified he never gave an opinion on whether the police officers involved in the raid should be fired before the investigative process was completed.The FBI determined Cosgrove fired the shot that killed Taylor.This story may be updated.Copyright 2023 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
- [Fox News media analyst says network won't let him cover Dominion lawsuit](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/fox-news-media-analyst-says-network-wont-let-him-cover-dominion-lawsuit/) - Fox News host Howard Kurtz, who anchors a weekly show on the media industry, said he has been told not to cover the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed against Fox by Dominion Voting Systems.Kurtz revealed the prohibition during Sunday’s episode of “MediaBuzz” after he received criticism for not covering revelations about the network that came out of a recent filing by Dominion.“Some of you have been asking why I’m not covering the Dominion voting machines lawsuit against Fox involving the unproven claims of election fraud in 2020, and it’s absolutely a fair question,” he said midway through Sunday morning’s program. “I believe I should be covering it. It’s a major media story, given my role here at Fox. But the company has decided that as part of the organization being sued, I can’t talk about it or write about it, at least for now.”Kurtz, who formerly covered media for The Washington Post and hosted CNN’s “Reliable Sources” program, voiced opposition to Fox’s decision, a rare showing of internal protest on the network’s airwaves.“I strongly disagree with that decision, but as an employee, I have to abide by it,” the 69-year-old said. “And if that changes, I’ll let you know.”On Feb. 16, a Dominion filing made public by a Delaware court provided evidence that many of Fox News’s prominent hosts and executives doubted the veracity of fraud claims made on Fox programs by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, two lawyers affiliated with President Donald Trump, regarding Dominion Voting Systems and the 2020 election.The document — which contained private text messages and emails from Fox hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, as well as top executives Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch — made waves in the media industry but has received sparse coverage on Fox.Fox News hosts, execs privately doubted 2020 conspiracy claims shared on airSoon after Dominion’s lawsuit, Fox filed a counterclaim, alleging that Dominion can’t prove its damages and claiming that it had filed the lawsuit to create headlines and discourage free speech.Kurtz and a Fox News spokesperson didn’t respond to requests for comment Sunday night. In previous remarks to The Post, Fox dismissed the relevance of Dominion’s filing, saying it contained “cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context.”“There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners,” a spokesperson said this month, “but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan.”‘Incredibly damning’: Fox News documents stun some legal expertsKurtz has been previously criticized by some Fox viewers for reporting facts about the 2020 election. But he has said that journalists have an obligation to push back against unsubstantiated claims, noting in a February 2021 article that “when Trump is claiming the election is rigged, anchors have a responsibility at the very least to ask skeptical questions.” Later that year, Kurtz wrote on Twitter that Trump supporters criticized him after he covered election review results that confirmed Trump lost to Joe Biden in an Arizona county.Dominion is arguing that Fox and some of its hosts publicly backed baseless claims about the voting company rigging the 2020 election in a way that ensured Trump’s defeat. The firm alleges that Fox purposely aired misinformation to boost ratings.
- [Top Fox News Anchor Says He Can't Cover Dominion Lawsuit Messages - Business Insider](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/26/top-fox-news-anchor-says-he-cant-cover-dominion-lawsuit-messages-business-insider/) - Fox News host Howard Kurtz at The Hill, Extra And The Embassy Of Canada Celebrate The White House Correspondents' Dinner Weekend at the Embassy of Canada on April 24, 2015 in Washington, DC. Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images Redeem now Internal messages show how Fox News anchors privately mocked 2020 election conspiracy theories. Fox News' Howard Kurtz said on Sunday that the company has barred coverage of the messages. As of Sunday, there were zero stories on Fox News' website covering the messages. Top editors give you the stories you want — delivered right to your inbox each weekday. Loading Something is loading. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. download the app Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. .inline-newsletter-signup.loading { width: 100%; max-width: 640px; margin: 0 auto; visibility: hidden; } A top Fox News anchor said his company has barred coverage of the Dominion lawsuit, which recently received renewed attention after a 200-page motion showed private texts between Fox stars and executives dismissing the 2020 election conspiracy theories peddled by Donald Trump and his supporters.During his Sunday segment on MediaBuzz, host Howard Kurtz acknowledged viewers who were wondering why Fox had not covered the ongoing lawsuit."Some of you have been asking why I'm not covering the Dominion Voting Machines lawsuit against Fox involving the unproven claims of election fraud in 2020, and it's absolutely a fair question," he said. "I believe I should be covering it. It's a major media story, given my role here at Fox. But the company has decided that, as part of the organization being sued, I can't talk about it or write about it — at least for now. I strongly disagree with that decision, but as an employee, I have to abide by it. And if that changes, I'll let you know."—PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) February 26, 2023Dominion, an elections technology company, filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News in March 2021, accusing the media company of spreading conspiracy theories that claimed Dominion helped rig the 2020 election results. The result of those theories cost the elections technology company $600 million in potential profits in addition to $1 billion in potential value, Dominion wrote in its filing. The company also said employees' lives were threatened."As a result of the false accusations broadcast by Fox into millions of American homes, Dominion has suffered unprecedented harm and its employees' lives have been put in danger," Dominion's attorneys wrote in the lawsuit.The company is seeking $1.6 billion in damages.Last week, a 200-page motion filed by Dominion was made public and contained a cache of internal communications between some of Fox News' top brass, including Fox Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch, host Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, and Carlson's producer Alex Pfeiffer, among others. "[T]he software shit is absurd," Carlson said in a text on November 7, 2020."It's dangerously insane these conspiracy theories," Fox reporter Lucas Tomlinson said to Bret Baier, host of Special Report.The network has largely been silent about the internal messages. A search through FoxNews.com turns up zero recent stories regarding the Dominion lawsuit. Most stories date back to 2020 and are related to the claims against Dominion or Dominion's response to the allegations.Fox previously said in a statement that Dominion had "cherry-pick[ed]" quotes and taken them out of context. "There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan," the statement said.—Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) February 19, 2023Though Kurtz suggested the reason why he is not discussing the Dominion lawsuit is that the network is a defendant in an ongoing legal battle, this has not stopped other Fox anchors from disparaging electronic voting machines or mentioning Dominion.On the night of the 2022 midterm elections, more than a year since Dominion filed its lawsuit, Carlson mentioned claims about electronic voting machines not allowing people to vote in Maricopa County of Arizona, a state that has continued to fuel Trump's false election fraud claims."That is an actual threat to democracy and it points up the core problem which is we're not really very serious about democracy if we're using electronic voting machines," Carlson said. —John Whitehouse+ (@existentialfish) February 26, 2023A Fox News Media spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. .content-lock-lock .hidden { display: none; } Sign up for notifications from Insider! 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- [Georgia election chief blasts county for taking $2M in Zuckerbucks, suggests legislative remedy](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/26/georgia-election-chief-blasts-county-for-taking-2m-in-zuckerbucks-suggests-legislative-remedy/) - Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) slammed DeKalb County for accepting $2 million in private money for election administration — or "Zuckerbucks" — in "violation" of state law while suggesting a legislative remedy to prevent counties from directly receiving such funds.The DeKalb County Board of Voter Registration & Elections accepted $2 million from a nonprofit linked to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. DeKalb's acceptance of the private funds "is a violation of S.B. 202," Raffensperger told Just the News on Thursday, referring to Georgia's 2021 election reform law. "The legislative intent of S.B. 202 was to preclude any outside organizations from sending, directly, money to counties for election purposes," the state's top election official said, noting "the wording of S.B. 202 is the money should be sent to the secretary of state's office," then dispensed to the counties. The rationale for dispensing the funds this way was so that "every county was treated uniformly throughout the state," benefiting smaller counties as well as larger counties, he explained. The county was awarded the funds under the Centers for Election Excellence program of the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, a project of the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL). CTCL poured nearly $350 million into local elections offices managing the 2020 election, with most of the funds donated to the nonprofit by Zuckerberg. CTCL has claimed its 2020 election grants — colloquially known as "Zuckerbucks" — were allocated without partisan preference to make voting safer amid the pandemic. Critics of the unprecedented level of private funding injected into election administration offices in 2020 argue the grants were awarded disproportionately to boost voter participation in swing state Democratic strongholds. A House Republican investigation found that less than 1% of the funds were spent on personal protective equipment. In 2021, Georgia enacted Senate Bill 202, an election integrity bill which explicitly prohibits private funding of elections, stipulating: "No superintendent shall take or accept any funding, grants, or gifts from any source other than from the governing authority of the county or municipality, the State of Georgia, or the federal government." DeKalb County Board of Elections Chair Dele Lowman Smith told local Georgia news outlet Decaturish.com last month that because election offices are prohibited from directly receiving grants, the county's finance department applied for the grant. Former Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R) called for investigation into DeKalb, saying the county "is blatantly skirting that law to get the same money, while undermining trust and fairness in our electoral process." In response to Loeffler's comment, Lowman Smith said in a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the former senator's "baldly partisan accusations do not reflect an accurate reading of state law and undermine the work of already overburdened, underpaid public servants." Lowman Smith later added, "The DeKalb County Finance Department applied for the grant in accordance with state law, and our county attorneys conducted a diligent review to ensure the grant award met the letter of the law. "While the General Assembly has a lot to say about how counties should run elections, they provide no funding to us to meet these legislative burdens," she continued. "To then try and restrict counties from pursuing the funding necessary to meet our legal obligations — a longstanding practice for many government services besides elections — is a slap in the face and seems to indicate that their intention is to hamstring election administration entirely." Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE) filed a legal complaint with the Georgia State Election Board against DeKalb, saying the county "was willing to violate state law to secure millions from a progressive dark money organization." According to CTCL's 2020 Form 990 report, DeKalb County received $9,625,041 in grants from the nonprofit during the presidential election year. Meanwhile, Early County, Ga., received $37,109. DeKalb's population was 762,009 in 2020, meaning that CTCL awarded the county $12.63 per capita. However, Early, with a population of 10,037 at the time, received only $3.70 per capita from CTCL. DeKalb voted for Biden 83.1% to Trump's 15.7% in 2020, whereas Early voted for Trump 52.2% to Biden's 47.2%. While acknowledging that DeKalb has a "different reading of SB 202," Raffensperger said the state's General Assembly can ensure "that there's no question about what legislative intent was" by adopting a "legislative remedy" in the current legislative session. Such a remedy would require that outside funds be channeled through the secretary of state's office to either distribute on a per capita basis or parcel out evenly among the state's 159 counties. There are "several election bills" that have been filed, read, and/or assigned to committees, he noted. On Thursday, the Senate Ethics Committee debated Senate Bill 222, which would tighten the restrictions on private funds going to election administration. Specifically, the bill would "provide that all costs and expenses relating to election administration are paid for with lawfully appropriate public funds" and "prohibit certain local governments and persons from soliciting or accepting donations or other things of value to support the performance of election administration." "We have to ensure the funding of our elections comes from lawfully appropriated public funds," said Senate Ethics Chairman Max Burns (R), according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "The intent is to prohibit third parties' selective funding of elections." Despite the legislative remedy, Raffensperger praised S.B. 202 for how it standardized voter ID across all forms of voting in the state and added early voting days and allowed people to vote on Saturday. He noted that the state had "record registration" and "record turnout" in its midterm elections last year. When S.B. 202 was enacted, Major League Baseball moved its All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver, citing President Biden's claim that the law would "restrict voting access for residents of the state." Biden blasted the law as an "atrocity," likening it to "Jim Crow in the 21st century," as corporations such as Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines publicly decried the law despite its broad support among Georgia voters. DeKalb County didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
- [Arizona governor seeks ethics review of former attorney general - Election Law Blog](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/27/arizona-governor-seeks-ethics-review-of-former-attorney-general-election-law-blog/) - WaPo: Arizona’s Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, is seeking a review of what her office alleges was “likely unethical conduct” by the state’s former attorney general, Mark Brnovich. A letter sent Friday from the governor’s office to the State Bar of Arizona follows the disclosure on Wednesday of records showing that Brnovich, a Republican, withheld findings by his own investigators refuting claims of fraud in the 2020 election and mischaracterized his office’s probe of voting in the state’s largest county. The letter, signed by Hobbs’s general counsel, Bo Dul, calls the conduct “harmful to our democracy, our State, and the legal profession itself.” Brnovich dismissed the allegations. “Katie Hobbs is wrong,” he said in a statement. “This is another misguided attempt by her to defame and cancel a political opponent instead of addressing the serious issues facing our state.” The former attorney general did not respond to earlier questions from The Washington Post about the records but released a statement to local media saying he was “proud” of his office’s work on “election integrity.” “While subjected to severe criticism from all sides of the political spectrum during the course of our investigations, we did our due diligence to run all complaints to ground,” Brnovich said in that statement. “Where we were able to debunk rumors and conspiracies, we did so. Nevertheless, we also identified areas we believe the legislature and county officials should address to ensure confidence in future elections.” Share this:
- [Other View / Fox in the news house: Legal filings expose profits were sought over truth](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/26/other-view-fox-in-the-news-house-legal-filings-expose-profits-were-sought-over-truth/) - The evidence in a recent 159-page filing by Dominion Voting Systems in its lawsuit against Fox News for its role in 2020 election disinformation is so voluminous and blatant that Fox will have a tough time defending itself from a judgment, where Dominion is seeking a payment of $1.6 billion. Yet whether or not it loses, this case is beyond the point.Even if Fox had not defamed anyone who could turn around and sue, and it had simply engaged in First Amendment-protected speech repeating more broad stolen election falsities, it must be held accountable for the damage it caused in undermining a free and fair national vote and stoking an insurrection that sacked the Capitol on Jan. 6. It’s not about having a conservative or liberal bent, but subverting democracy itself.Messages, internal conversations, and depositions obtained from Fox in discovery make clear that executives and high-profile hosts were fully aware that people like President Donald Trump attorney Sidney Powell were fabulists engaged in a dangerous effort to sow distrust in and overturn the 2020 election — an effort whose success would literally mean the death of American democracy — and chose to give them megaphones and stop their own reporters from fact-checking them.We’re not talking about eye roll-worthy but ultimately largely harmless hand-wringing about wokeness in M&Ms here. This was a moment at which the survival of the American project of peaceful representative governance hung in the balance, and an organization that bills itself as a news network acted in furtherance of its own business interests and against the preservation of democracy, all in the fear that “our side,” as one Tucker Carlson producer put it, would stop watching or turn to harder-right rival channel Newsmax.Make up all the stuff you want about conspiracies involving chocolate candies, but don’t spin lies that put the fate of the country at risk. Viewers, advertisers and profits are all fine objectives, but the Constitution protects the right of the free press for what we would think is a higher calling: the truth. ADVERTISEMENT — New York Daily News Editorial Board ( nydailynews.com )
- [With Trump running, nearly all Republican senators say no to a presidential bid - NBC News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/26/with-trump-running-nearly-all-republican-senators-say-no-to-a-presidential-bid-nbc-news/) - WASHINGTON — There’s an old joke that senators look in the mirror and see a president. These days, a whole lot of mirrors in the chamber seem to be broken.Republicans have an open presidential primary in 2024, and the Senate is packed with hyper-ambitious and self-confident politicians, many with national followings and barely concealed presidential aspirations. Yet nearly all of them are taking a pass at a White House bid next year after former President Donald Trump launched his attempted comeback campaign in November.“This cycle is shaping up to be very different from every cycle since 2000, where it seemed half the Senate was campaigning for president,” said Alex Conant, who worked for Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida in his Senate office and then his 2016 presidential campaign.That year, the GOP field was so crowded with senators — Rubio, Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — that Conant recalled a candidate forum in New Hampshire where a crop of candidates took part from a Capitol Hill studio. None of them have expressed interest in running this cycle.Feb. 1, 202304:40Now, a newer group of Republican senators rumored to have higher aspirations — Rick Scott of Florida, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Joni Ernst of Iowa — are also bowing out or sitting on the sidelines.“Every senator has a different reason,” Conant said. “A lot of them are young and have the luxury to wait. In 2024, you’re running against an incumbent president and a former president, so historically it’s a big hill to climb. This isn’t like 2016 when there was an open White House and wide-open GOP race.”Cruz, Hawley and Rick Scott, whose seats are up in 2024, have chosen to seek re-election rather than roll the dice on a White House run.“I’ve never said I was going to run for president,” said Hawley, 43, who has been steadily raising his national profile with foreign policy speeches and headline-grabbing legislation. “I have not visited Iowa or any of those places. So I hope to run for re-election” in the Senate, he said.Rick Scott said simply, “I’m running for the Senate.” When asked if that means he’s definitely not running for another office in 2024, he replied, “Right.”One exception to the Senate trend is Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who is inching toward a 2024 presidential run but hasn’t announced a final decision yet.Cruz, the runner-up to Trump in the 2016 contest, crisscrossed the country during the 2022 midterm election cycle, stumping for fellow Republicans and building up chits. But in recent weeks, he has made clear he plans to run for another term in the Senate and help his party win back control of the chamber. “It’ll be an interesting year. I suspect it’s going to be a wild and wooly race,” Cruz, 52, said when asked about former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley jumping into the race. “I look forward to supporting the Republican nominee.”Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who unsuccessfully ran for president in 2008 and 2012, has no plans to run again.Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images fileBack in 2016, Cruz, Paul and Rubio were freshman senators. Today all three have fancier titles as the ranking members on important committees — Cruz on the Commerce Committee, Paul on the Homeland Security Committee and Rubio on the Intelligence Committee. Graham, who won a fourth term in 2020, is the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee.And the sting of getting clobbered by Trump that year lingers. Despite losing re-election in 2020 and stirring up the mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump retains a passionate following on the right, leads the field in most GOP polls and is racking up endorsements in Congress. “President Trump is the undisputed leader of the Republican Party and uniquely positioned to defeat Joe Biden, so it only makes sense that so many Senators are backing his campaign rather than running themselves,” Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller said. “We expect the impressive list of senators endorsing President Trump to grow in the coming weeks and we’re thankful for their support.”On the Democratic side, senators are also taking a pass on 2024. Just four years ago, seven sitting senators ran for president. All of them lost to a former senator and one of them became his vice president. With President Joe Biden all but certain to run again, his former Senate rivals are backing his re-election.Republican elites who want a viable alternative to Trump have largely looked outside Washington to his protégé, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who many believe will run for president.Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to challenge former President Donald Trump in 2024.Joe Raedle / Getty ImagesOther big names with access to deep-pocketed donors, like former Vice President Mike Pence and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, also appear to be gearing up for a launch.“Everybody has to have a lane. In the primary, if you can’t find your lane, then you can’t find your path to get there. Because everybody’s got to separate themselves but also get a bloc of voters,” said freshman Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., who has endorsed Trump.“His voters are his voters — they are going to stay there. They are not gonna move," Mullin said. "So I just don’t see where anybody else’s path to get there is.”Not everyone subscribes to that view. In Iowa on Wednesday, Tim Scott gave a preview of what his potential presidential campaign might look like, making a "Faith in America" listening tour stop at Drake University and delivering a keynote address at the Polk County GOP’s Lincoln Dinner.Tim Scott, the Senate’s sole Black Republican, outlined what he called Democrats’ “blueprint to ruin America” — out-of-control spending and inflation, open borders, an opioid epidemic, and critical race theory in schools — but he also spoke at length about his family’s inspiring story “from cotton to Congress.”“I’m here because my family chose faith over anger, responsibility over resentment, and patriotism over pity. My granddaddy taught me I could be bitter or better. Not both. My mom said we could be victims or victors. She chose victorious. I am living proof that our Founding Fathers were geniuses we should celebrate, not cancel,” Tim Scott said at Drake University in Des Moines.Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., recently went to Iowa ahead of a possible presidential run.Win McNamee / Getty Images file“We are indeed the land of opportunity, not a land of oppression. This is just my American story.”Like Mullin, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., has thrown his support behind Trump; he was expected to play golf with the former president at Mar-a-Lago this week. The former Auburn University football coach said the way for the GOP to develop a deep bench of leaders is for younger candidates to run and gain experience. “It’s called perseverance. Before I became a head coach, I kept interviewing and interviewing, finally worked my way in. That’s how you do it — just jumping in there,” Tuberville said.But he added that it’d be “a grind” for some of his Senate colleagues to run this cycle and be away from their young families, especially with Trump, and possibly DeSantis, dominating the field. One senator who knows something about the demands of a presidential campaign is Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who ran for the White House in 2008 and became the GOP nominee in 2012.“It is enormously energy consuming, financially consuming, but it’s a great thrill. You come away more optimistic about the country because you meet people who are not making the news but the people who are making lives and driving our economy,” Romney said in an interview. “If you get the chance to run for president, make sure you do it.”Asked if he had any plans to run for president a third time, Romney replied with a one-word answer: “Nope.”
- [Trump Attorneys Push Theory That Georgia Election Investigation Is 'Compromised' - Yahoo](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/26/trump-attorneys-push-theory-that-georgia-election-investigation-is-compromised-yahoo/) - US-POLITICS-TRUMP-TRANSPORT-ACCIDENT-VISIT - Credit: AFP via Getty ImagesAttorneys representing former President Donald Trump claimed that the Georgia investigation into his attempts to overturn the 2020 election has been “compromised” and that any indictments stemming from it would likely be “faulty” due to recent remarks made by a member of the special grand jury in the case.“We absolutely do not believe that our client did anything wrong, and if any indictments were to come down, those are faulty indictments. We will absolutely fight anything tooth and nail,” Trump attorney Jennifer Little said in an interview with Robert Costa that aired on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. The former president is being investigated for trying to pressure then-Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to “find” votes for Trump after the 2020 election had concluded.More from Rolling StoneThe lawyers pointed to recent comments to multiple media outlets by the foreperson on the special grand jury probe, Emily Kohrs, who hinted that Trump and a dozen of his allies were recommended for indictments. A special purpose grand jury can only recommend indictments, but its recommendations can lead to a criminal grand jury, which could issue indictments. So far, Fulton County Prosecutor Fani T. Willis has not moved to charge Trump.Attorney Drew Findling, who is also on Trump’s defense team, said the team has “lost 100 percent confidence in this process” and feels the process “has been compromised.” Kohrs’ remarks, Findling claimed, “made us aware that every suspicion we had as to this questionable process was in fact a reality.”Costas noted, however, that by the time Kohrs spoke to the media, the grand jury process had ended, and that she did not break any rules. Findling responded that when Kohrs used the word “we” in her remarks about the process, he believes that indicates “they lost perspective over keeping separation between prosecuting attorneys and members of the grand jury.”“When the foreperson uses the word ‘we,’ that lets you know there was a relationship there,” the lawyer said (although it seems plausible Kohrs’ “we” was referring to herself and the other grand jury members).Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special grand jury, said that jurors could not discuss deliberations publicly, but they could speak about the final report the grand jury issued. “What witnesses said, what you put in your report, those are not off-limits,” McBurney said to CNN.Legal experts have also said that Korhs’ comments are unlikely to affect the prosecution. “Emily Kohrs’s pursuit of her fifteen minutes is not likely to preclude anyone indicted and convicted from serving their term of years,” MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin tweeted.Former federal prosecutor Amy Lee Copeland also doubted Kohrs’ interviews would interfere with prosecutors, though her comments may be inconvenient for them. “Is this a headache that is grinding the machine to a halt? It’s not. It’s just one of the many frustrations that attends the practice of law,” Copeland told the AP.Best of Rolling StoneClick here to read the full article.
- [Fox News' Howard Kurtz says company won't let him cover Dominion voting case | The Hill](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/26/fox-news-howard-kurtz-says-company-wont-let-him-cover-dominion-voting-case-the-hill/) - Fox News’ Howard Kurtz says company won’t let him cover Dominion voting case | The Hill Skip to content Fox News host Howard Kurtz said on Sunday that the network will not allow him to cover the defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox. Kurtz said on his “MediaBuzz” show on Sunday that
- [Tabulator ban, closed primaries voted down as election bills pile up - Independent Record](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/26/tabulator-ban-closed-primaries-voted-down-as-election-bills-pile-up-independent-record/) - Sam Wilson Three controversial proposals backed by right-wing “election integrity” groups were summarily tabled by Montana lawmakers following committee hearings that stretched through Saturday.The bills, all sponsored by Sen. Theresa Manzella, R-Hamilton, would have banned machine-counting of ballots, required votes be counted at the county precincts they were cast in and moved Montana to closed primary elections.As a crucial legislative deadline nears, the bills to drastically change the way elections are conducted in Montana surfaced in the midst of a procedural bottleneck. The approaching transmittal deadline prompted the Senate State Administration Committee to hold an unusual Saturday meeting to consider them alongside a half-dozen other bills.The committee chair, Sen. Mike Cuffe, R-Eureka, acknowledged the time crunch, caused in part by a bill-drafting process that has stretched longer into the session than it typically does. People are also reading… “We worked hard to keep this committee on schedule as we were moving along,” Cuffe said at one point. “And all of a sudden, right at the end … we wound up with a number of last-second bills.”General policy bills must clear the chamber they originated in by March 3.Hand-counting ballotsThe committee heard about an hour of testimony on Senate Bill 435, which would have eliminated the use of tabulators in Montana, and would require all counties to hand-count every selection on every ballot. Arguments to return to hand-counting have gained popularity in right-wing circles across the country, with many who dispute the results of the 2020 presidential election suggesting the ballot-counting machines were hacked.But studies have repeatedly found that hand-counting produces less accurate results, and election experts note that partisan shenanigans, from outright fraud to mass disqualification of ballots, were far more prevalent in the days before machines came into play for the purpose of counting ballots.Manzella and people who testified in support of her bill referred to high-profile hacking incidents to suggest the machines are vulnerable, including the 2015 breach of the federal Office of Personnel Management and the 2020 cyber-attack conducted through Solar Winds software.“I’m concerned that we are not going to be able to stay in front of technology,” Manzella said. “As we move forward at this amazingly rapid rate of speed with which technology is coming online, we now have concerns about artificial intelligence injected into our elections." Sen. Theresa Manzella on SB 435. While some IT experts acknowledge the potential for security vulnerabilities in ballot-counting machines, they also argue that random-sample audits of the results are the best guarantee against manipulation. Montana requires audits for all federal elections that use tabulators to count votes.Several opponents also noted that state law already allows each county to determine whether it will use tabulators or hand-count ballots. Currently 10 of Montana’s less populated counties still hand-count their ballots, and counties can opt out of using tabulators if they choose.Proponents of eliminating tabulators have never identified an instance of the machines misidentifying a vote in an election, aside from mistakes that were due to human error. Despite two years of investigations around the country, no evidence has emerged of a ballot-counting machine being hacked during an election.Likewise, no evidence has emerged of votes being switched, nor has evidence emerged of any of the other suggestions of large-scale coordinated voter fraud.After fellow Republicans on the panel indicated they would not support the measure, Manzella made a motion to table the bill. The motion passed unanimously.Counting ballots at precinctsSenate Bill 433, also introduced by Manzella, would require ballots to be counted at the precinct where they were cast, prior to being transported to the county’s centralized location for counting ballots.Under current practice, election officials count the number of ballots at each precinct polling place — but not the intensive process of tallying up each vote on each ballot — before sealing them up and transporting them to the central location. Two election officials must accompany the ballots any time they’re moved, part of Montana’s “chain-of-custody” requirements.Manzella said her bill would expand that to require all of the votes on those ballots to be counted in the place they were cast.“If there was a count that could be documented and posted, then at least we would have something to refer back to, for the purpose of confirming that there was nothing nefarious that happened between when the ballots left the polling place and when they arrived at the central counting place,” Manzella told the committee.But county officials opposed the bill, saying existing security measures already ensure the ballots aren’t tampered with. And the proposal could be expensive, potentially requiring the purchase of new tabulators for every precinct in order to count up the ballots. The alternative would be to hand-count them, a time-intensive process more prone to inaccuracies.The bill would also require video and audio recording off all vote-counting activities. Those processes are already required to be open to the public, but “election integrity” groups in Montana have alleged foul play in the absence of recorded evidence to the contrary.“That is a huge ask of the counties,” said Regina Plettenberg, with the Montana Association of Clerk and Recorders. “... Installing, maintaining and affording this equipment would be very difficult.”The bill failed to pass on a 3-7 bipartisan vote.Closed primariesAnother bill offered by Manzella would have required Montanans to declare a party affiliation in order to vote in the state’s primary elections. That would be a switch from Montana’s current “open primary” system, in which voters don’t register with a party and are free to vote in a party primary of their choosing. Unaffiliated voters wouldn’t be able to vote in any primary races.Manzella framed her proposal in the parlance of the state’s top two college sports teams.“Should the Bobcats be able to choose the quarterback for the Grizzlies?” she asked.Ravalli County resident Alan Lackey testified in support of the bill, saying the current system doesn’t work.“That means the other side can affect and influence what happens in our party,” said Lackey, who lost a 2022 primary race for a legislative seat.Opponents argued that since the state foots the bill for primary elections, locking independent voters out of those primaries would amount to a denial of their voting rights.The last vote of the day, Manzella offered a motion to table her bill before any debate began in the committee. It was tabled unanimously.Cast vote recordsLawmakers also discussed a pair of measures that emerged from the Legislature’s special Joint Select Committee on Election Integrity. That committee, dominated by Republican lawmakers, was formed at the beginning of the session after right-wing legislators spent more than a year demanding the body investigate Montana’s election security.Senate Bill 481 would require each county that uses machine tabulators to count ballots to generate a “cast vote record,” essentially a digital summary of each ballot scanned by the tabulator.Cast vote records were central to a wave of public-record requests submitted to election officials in Montana last summer. Across the country, the requests appeared to spike after Mike Lindell, a nationally prominent election conspiracy theorist, instructed his followers to request the records from the local election administrators.Clerk and recorders across Montana were subsequently barraged with duplicative requests, despite few, if any, counties in the state having the ability to generate those reports.Sen. Carl Glimm, R-Kila, chairs the special election committee and sponsored the bill. He said in order to get bipartisan support to advance the bill to a regular committee, he opted to make cast vote records non-public. Like official ballots, they would be retained by the county but could only be accessed by obtaining a judge’s order.Several proponents testified in support of the bill, but suggested the reports should be readily accessible to the public.Eric Bryson, speaking on behalf of the Montana Association of Counties, opposed the legislation on the grounds that it would require hundreds of thousands of dollars in technology expenses to comply. The software needed to generate those reports would incur a $5,000 per year cost to each county using tabulators, Bryson said. And at least 17 counties that use tabulators but don’t already have “hardened laptops” with special security protocols would need to pay about $10,000 apiece for those, he added, urging the committee to appropriate money to cover the costs.“If you’re going to improve processes or redefine the way we’re doing elections in Montana from the state, pay for it,” Bryson said.The proposal was endorsed by Missoula County, despite the added cost.“If adding this requirement, however, increases the confidence in our election process, then we’re pleased to support,” Jennifer Hensley, a lobbyist representing the county, told the committee.Hash validation testsSenate Bill 482 would require counties to run a “hash validation test” during their post-election audits. A hash is a code generated by an algorithm, and can be used to check whether the source code of a tabulator or other election system has been altered.The bill would require counties with election systems capable of generating the hash to check it against the “trusted hash” generated by the Election Assistance Commission when the system was initially certified for use. If no tampering has occurred, the hashes should be identical.Glimm said it was an example of best practices recommended by Election Systems & Software, the sole company that manufacturers tabulators used in Montana.Bryson said his organization doesn’t object to the process, but again opposes the bill for cost reasons. The hash test would require two high-security laptops to perform, he said, so each county that already has one would need to purchase another, and the others would have to buy two. He estimated counties would need another 66 of the laptops, at a cost of $10,000 apiece.Committee votes on SB 482 and SB 481 were pushed back to the following week. 0 Comments #lee-rev-content { margin:0 -5px; } #lee-rev-content h3 { font-family: inherit!important; font-weight: 700!important; border-left: 8px solid var(--lee-blox-link-color); text-indent: 7px; font-size: 24px!important; line-height: 24px; } #lee-rev-content .rc-provider { font-family: inherit!important; } #lee-rev-content h4 { line-height: 24px!important; font-family: "serif-ds",Times,"Times New Roman",serif!important; margin-top: 10px!important; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #lee-rev-content h3 { font-size: 18px!important; line-height: 18px; } } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article { clear: both; background-color: #fff; color: #222; background-position: bottom; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding: 15px 0 20px; margin-bottom: 40px; border-top: 4px solid rgba(0,0,0,.8); border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(0,0,0,.2); display: none; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article, #pu-email-form-politics-email-article p { font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article h2 { font-size: 24px; margin: 15px 0 5px 0; font-family: "serif-ds", Times, "Times New Roman", serif; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .lead { margin-bottom: 5px; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .email-desc { font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 5px; opacity: 0.7; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article form { padding: 10px 30px 5px 30px; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .disclaimer { opacity: 0.5; margin-bottom: 0; line-height: 100%; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .disclaimer a { color: #222; text-decoration: underline; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .email-hammer { border-bottom: 3px solid #222; opacity: .5; display: inline-block; padding: 0 10px 5px 10px; margin-bottom: -5px; font-size: 16px; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #pu-email-form-politics-email-article form { padding: 10px 0 5px 0; } } Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! 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- [Biden visits Kyiv, GOP 2024 race takes shape: week in politics - USA Today](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/26/biden-visits-kyiv-gop-2024-race-takes-shape-week-in-politics-usa-today/) - This week saw the one-year-mark since Russia invaded Ukraine, with President Joe Biden making a surprise visit in Kyiv and later stopping in Warsaw to recognize the anniversary and reiterate U.S. support for Ukraine.The anniversary comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the country would be pulling back from New START, a nuclear arms reduction treaty between the U.S. and Russia. The White House also announced that the U.S. will be imposing a sweeping set of new sanctions against Moscow.Back at home, the Republican field for the 2024 presidential race is slowly but surely heating up. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley made the rounds in Iowa, a key early voting state, after a few campaign stops in New Hampshire. Her fellow South Carolinian, Republican Sen. Tim Scott, who is mulling a presidential bid of his own, also made a visit to the Hawkeye State.What happened this week in politics?Biden made a surprise visit to Kyiv, meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his first visit to Ukraine since Russia launched its war.Democrats breathed a sigh of relief when Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., announced he will be running for reelection ahead of a tough 2024 Senate map for Democrats.In other election news, California Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee jumped in a soon-to-be fierce primary fight for retiring Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat.The foreperson of the Georgia grand jury investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election went public in a series of media interviews, revealing provocative details about the now concluded investigation – and possibly undermining public confidence in the case.Facing GOP blowback for the disastrous toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, the White House fired back, blaming former President Donald Trump’s administration for rolling back Obama-era rail safety measures.Stay in the conversation on politics:Sign up for the OnPolitics newsletterBiden pledges continued support for UkraineBiden made a surprise visit to Kyiv ahead of a scheduled trip to Warsaw to commemorate the one-year-anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It was his first trip to the war-torn country since Russia launched its war and there is little record of other U.S. presidents visiting an active war zone with no U.S. troop presence.The meeting between Biden and Zelenskyy was symbolic, with Ukraine intensely lobbying the U.S. and the west for additional military aid. While in Kyiv, Biden announced the U.S. would be providing an additional $500 million in weaponry for Ukraine.'We need to keep living':What life is like for Ukrainians a year into Russia's invasionIn Warsaw, Biden reiterated the west’s continued support for Ukraine as it fends off Russia. He also made clear the U.S.’s continued commitment to bolstering the NATO alliance, calling it “more unified than ever” in the face of Russian aggression on Tuesday.“(Putin) doubts whether NATO can remain unified,” Biden said. “ But there should be no doubt: Our support for Ukraine will not waver, NATO will not be divided, and we will not tire.”Haley continues the rounds as GOP 2024 race takes shapeThe 2024 field for the GOP nomination for president is slowly shaping up. Haley continued her campaign in the crucial early voting state of Iowa after a trip to New Hampshire, another key primary state.In Iowa, Haley made a direct appeal to GOP voters who might be considering Trump over her, telling them “we’ve got to look forward,” in Urbandale on Monday.Who can beat Trump?:Republicans want to dump Trump. Will they rally behind a 2024 alternative fast enough?“President Trump is my friend. I think he was the right president at the right time,” Haley said. “He came in. He broke the things that needed to be broken, and he fixed them. And I was proud to serve in his cabinet. But as dire of a situation as this is, as much as all the media and everybody wants to talk about the past, we need to leave the status quo in the past. We've got work to do. We've got to look forward.”Republican South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who is reportedly considering a presidential campaign in 2024, also made a stop in Iowa on Wednesday, delivering remarks at an event at Drake University in Des Moines and also speaking at the Republican Party of Polk County Lincoln dinner.Tester announces reelection bid, Democrats breathe a sigh of reliefIn other 2024 news, Democratic Sen. Jon Tester delivered good news for national Democrats on Wednesday when he announced his reelection bid for Senate in his home state of Montana.Senate Democrats are looking at a tough map for 2024. Of the 34 seats up for reelection, Democrats will be defending 23 of them. Tester, a rare Democrat representing the deep-red red-leaning state of Montana, will be in the crosshairs of Republicans hoping to take the Senate.More elections:In historic first, Jennifer McClellan just won election to Congress. Black women say it's not enoughIn California, Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee announced she will be running to replace retiring Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Lee enters an intensely competitive primary with Democratic Reps. Katie Porter and Adam Schiff already in the mix.The seat, which lies in deep-blue California, is expected to remain in Democratic hands, meaning whoever comes out on top of the Democratic primary will likely win the general election as well.Georgia grand jury foreperson goes public on a media tourThe foreperson of the Georgia grand jury investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election went public this week, making the rounds with multiple media interviews.Emily Kohrs gave provocative details about what is to come from the now concluded investigation, telling the New York Times that the grand jury recommended indictments against multiple people on various charges.“It’s not a short list,” Kohrs told the New York Times. While declining to give details on who specifically is in that list, Kohrs said “You’re not going to be shocked. It’s not rocket science.”While her public comments were highly unusual for any grand jury inquiry, legal experts told USA TODAY that her comments had no real legal implications but they could undermine public confidence in the process.Related:Georgia grand jury foreperson's unusual media tour likely heartburn for Trump inquiryButtigieg visits East Palestine after train derailment disasterTransportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg visited East Palestine, Ohio on Thursday to assess damages after a toxic trail derailment that released hazardous chemicals into the town's ground, air and water.Republicans have been attacking the White House, specifically targeting Buttigieg over the derailment, arguing Buttigieg was too slow to respond to the disaster. Buttigieg acknowledged at a news conference that he regretted not coming sooner, saying he was attempting to balance his role as transportation secretary while also not overstepping on the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation into the derailment.Related:In another train derailment, 31 Union Pacific cars carrying coal derail in NebraskaBut Buttigieg argued that Republicans were playing “political games” over the disaster, pushing back against GOP lawmakers who were in favor of scaling back government rail regulations.The White House also fired back at Republicans over the toxic train derailment in East Palestine Ohio, blaming the derailment on the Trump administration for rolling back Obama-era safety regulations that were implemented to avert such disasters.
- [Failing at polls, election deniers focus on state GOP posts - Orlando Sentinel](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/26/failing-at-polls-election-deniers-focus-on-state-gop-posts-orlando-sentinel/) - In a basement event space in the Denver suburb of Parker, Tina Peters surveyed a crowd of Colorado Republicans last week and made an unusual pitch for why she should become chair of their beleaguered party: “There’s no way a jury of 12 people is going to put me in prison.”Peters was referring to her upcoming trial on seven felony charges related to her role in allegedly accessing confidential voting machine data while she was clerk in western Colorado’s Mesa County. The incident made her a hero to election conspiracy theorists but unpopular with all but her party’s hardest-core voters.AdvertisementPeters, who condemns the charges as politically motivated, finished second in last year’s GOP primary for secretary of state, Colorado’s top elections position.Now Peters has become part of a wave of election deniers who, unable to succeed at the polls, have targeted the one post — state party chair — that depends entirely on those hardest-core Republicans.AdvertisementEmbracing election conspiracy theories was a political albatross for Republicans in states that weren’t completely red last year, with deniers losing every statewide bid in the swing states of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But the movement has focused on GOP state party chairs — positions that usually are selected by only dedicated activists and have the power to influence the party’s presidential nominating contest and some aspects of election operations, such as recruiting poll watchers.“The rise of this dangerous ideology nationwide and the rise within party machinery are ominous,” said Norm Eisen, a prominent Washington lawyer and former ambassador who is executive chair of States United Democracy Center, which tracks election deniers. “It’s an outrageous phenomenon.”Kristina Karamo, a former community college instructor who lost her bid last fall to become Michigan’s secretary of state by 14 percentage points, won the chair of the Michigan Republican Party a week ago. She beat a fellow election denier, failed attorney general candidate Matthew DePerno.In Kansas, Mike Brown, a conspiracy theorist who lost his primary bid for secretary of state, was named chair of the state party.Peters is just one of multiple candidates for the Colorado position who have repeated former President Donald Trump’s lies that President Joe Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election.“We can’t just say, ‘Oh, it’s time to get over 2020 and be done with that,’” said Aaron Wood, a self-described Christian conservative father also running for Colorado GOP chair, who organized a slate of candidates to take over the party’s top posts. “Until I have 100% confidence that the election has integrity, I will not be done with that.”The wave of election deniers follows a push by Trump during his administration to stock the roster of party chairs with loyalists, several of whom supported his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and remain in the White House. Of those, Kelli Ward, the chair of the Arizona GOP, did not run again and was replaced by another Trump loyalist, former state Treasurer Jeff DeWitt. In Georgia, chairman David Shafer has announced he won’t seek another term this June, amid scrutiny over whether he could be indicted for efforts to help Trump overturn the 2020 election.As in most states, the new Georgia party head will be selected by leaders of local county parties. Many of those are Trump loyalists who also backed Shafer’s bid to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss in the state. But Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who defied Trump’s request and easily beat a primary challenger last year backed by Shafer, has marginalized the state party, creating a parallel structure to raise money and turn out voters.AdvertisementThat’s an example of how the once powerful post of state party chair has changed.“It used to be adjacent to public service, to be the state party chair, and now it’s something where you get to dunk on Democrats on Twitter,” said Robert Jones, a Republican pollster in Idaho.In that state, Dorothy Moon, an election denier and former state representative who made an unsuccessful primary run for secretary of state, became the Idaho GOP chair last year.Still, Eisen noted that state parties have important roles in appointing poll workers and poll watchers in many states. A perennial fear has been that conspiracists could fill those positions and disrupt elections, though that did not happen in 2022 despite a prominent conservative effort to find more poll watchers.“Maybe the Karamos and the Browns and the Moons will implode,” Eisen said. “There is a kind of incompetence that goes with this ideology. But it’s a concerning trend given the power these state parties have.”Parties also have a major role in structuring their primaries. In Michigan, the party apparatus that Karamo now leads has the power to move its nominating contest to a closed convention, where activists select the winner.Advertisement“Donald Trump would love there to be a convention for Michigan’s delegates,” Jason Roe, the former executive director of the state party, said in an interview.Ironically, Trump had endorsed DePerno, a lawyer who unsuccessfully sued to force a new count in 2020. Instead, Karamo, whom the former president had supported in her secretary of state race, won. She has described abortion as “child sacrifice” and Democrats as having a “Satanic agenda.”Last wek, on the podcast of Trump adviser Steve Bannon last week, Karamo said Michigan was “ground zero for the globalist takeover of the United States of America.”In Colorado, many Republican strategists say they are prepared for Peters or another election denier to win the party chair position next month.“People seem almost resigned that the party is going to fall into the hands of this crowd for the next two years,” said Sage Naumann, one of the operatives, who said usually a chair’s impact on elections is “neutral,” but that could change.“If they’re constantly making controversial statements, then they can be detrimental,” Naumann said.AdvertisementThe insurgent candidates running for Colorado’s chair argue things can’t get worse for the GOP in the state. Republicans lost every statewide race by double digits in November and have their smallest share of seats in the Legislature in state history.The candidates for party chair claim the Colorado GOP has been too timid and needs to be more outspoken and conservative — a risky bid in a state that has been rapidly moving to the left. As part of that, they seek to restrict the primary to only registered Republicans, shutting out voters not affiliated with any party who have been eligible to participate. That would require overturning a voter-approved ballot measure, which activists failed to do in a lawsuit last year. They hope to have a better shot with the party chair’s support.At the debate last week in Parker, former state Rep. Dave Williams said: “It’s time we had a warlike leader who is going to go toe-to-toe” with Democrats.Williams later added: “Joe Biden is not a legitimate president.”Breaking NewsAs it happensBe the first to know with email alerts on important breaking stories from the Orlando Sentinel newsroom.Only one candidate, Erik Aadland, a military veteran who unsuccessfully ran for Congress last year, cautioned about the election denier rhetoric. He noted that Democrats effectively used a tape of him questioning the validity of the 2020 election against him in his race. In an interview, he said specifically that he worried about Peters’ candidacy.“It’s not healthy, the words we’re using, the rhetoric we’ve been using,” Aadland said. And, he added, “I don’t think it’d be healthy to have a chairwoman under seven indictments.”AdvertisementPeters, however, reveled in her national profile. She noted that she had just started a podcast that had 60,000 downloads on its first day and that she raised $250,000 to fund a recount in three days after the 2022 primary —a recount that confirmed her loss.During a separate debate Saturday, she demonstrated the appeal of her message to voters whose beliefs are increasingly unpopular in a liberal state.“It’s not your fault that we lost this election in 2022. It’s not my fault that we lost this election in 2022,” she told another crowd of Republican voters at a suburban pizzeria. “It’s because of the machines.”___This story has been corrected to reflect that Tina Peters finished second, not third, in last year’s Republican primary for Colorado secretary of state.
- [Failing at polls, election deniers focus on state GOP posts - NewsTimes](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/26/failing-at-polls-election-deniers-focus-on-state-gop-posts-newstimes/) - PARKER, Colo (AP) — In a basement event space in the Denver suburb of Parker, Tina Peters surveyed a crowd of Colorado Republicans last week and made an unusual pitch for why she should become chair of their beleaguered party: “There's no way a jury of 12 people is going to put me in prison.”Peters was referring to her upcoming trial on seven felony charges related to her role in allegedly accessing confidential voting machine data while she was clerk in western Colorado's Mesa County. The incident made her a hero to election conspiracy theorists but unpopular with all but her party's hardest-core voters. Peters, who condemns the charges as politically motivated, finished second in last year's GOP primary for secretary of state, Colorado's top elections position.
- [2 contested races for Sharyland school board election | MyRGV.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/26/2-contested-races-for-sharyland-school-board-election-myrgv-com/) - Voters in Sharyland ISD will see two contested elections on their ballots in May. Two newcomers will vie for the place 1 seat on the board. Sergio Saenz, a self-employed Mission resident, will run against Meagan Sullivan, a Mission educational diagnostician. Longtime place 1 incumbent Ricky Longoria announced earlier this month that he would not seek reelection for his spot on the board. Voters will see a rematch in the race for Place 2. Incumbent Alejandro Rodrigurez, a criminal investigator from Mission, will seek to defend his seat against Julio Cerda, a Mission engineer. Rodriguez successfully ousted Cerda from the Place 2 spot in the 2020 election.
- [Letter: "Report: Ex-Arizona AG withheld evidence 2020 election was fair"](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/26/letter-report-ex-arizona-ag-withheld-evidence-2020-election-was-fair/) - Re: the Feb. 23 article "Report: Ex-AZ AG withheld evidence 2020 election was fair."How wrong that the former Attorney General knew the 2020 election was fair with no discernible fraud and then kept that secret. Wrong that public information was concealed and wrong that it purposely fueled thoughts and conspiracy theories he knew were unfounded.Those theories gave tax funded Ninjas who came in and hand counted ballots for months and increasing Joe Biden's Arizona win. Theories that allowed County Supervisors to justify not counting votes that actually supported their candidates' win in Cochise County. All of that based on false information and wrong theories known to be false. All of that allowed people to say there were "doubts" and "irregularities" when in fact there were none.We must move on. We must start by telling the truth. People are also reading… John YoakumDisclaimer: As submitted to the Arizona Daily Star. Follow these steps to easily submit a letter to the editor or guest opinion to the Arizona Daily Star. Arizona Daily Star View Comments #lee-rev-content { margin:0 -5px; } #lee-rev-content h3 { font-family: inherit!important; font-weight: 700!important; border-left: 8px solid var(--lee-blox-link-color); text-indent: 7px; font-size: 24px!important; line-height: 24px; } #lee-rev-content .rc-provider { font-family: inherit!important; } #lee-rev-content h4 { line-height: 24px!important; font-family: "serif-ds",Times,"Times New Roman",serif!important; margin-top: 10px!important; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #lee-rev-content h3 { font-size: 18px!important; line-height: 18px; } } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article { clear: both; background-color: #fff; color: #222; background-position: bottom; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding: 15px 0 20px; margin-bottom: 40px; border-top: 4px solid rgba(0,0,0,.8); border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(0,0,0,.2); display: none; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article, #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article p { font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article h2 { font-size: 24px; margin: 15px 0 5px 0; font-family: "serif-ds", Times, "Times New Roman", serif; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article .lead { margin-bottom: 5px; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article .email-desc { font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 5px; opacity: 0.7; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article form { padding: 10px 30px 5px 30px; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article .disclaimer { opacity: 0.5; margin-bottom: 0; line-height: 100%; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article .disclaimer a { color: #222; text-decoration: underline; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article .email-hammer { border-bottom: 3px solid #222; opacity: .5; display: inline-block; padding: 0 10px 5px 10px; margin-bottom: -5px; font-size: 16px; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article form { padding: 10px 0 5px 0; } } Catch the latest in Opinion Get opinion pieces, letters and editorials sent directly to your inbox weekly!
- [Election deniers who lost secretary of state races now run several state GOP operations](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/26/election-deniers-who-lost-secretary-of-state-races-now-run-several-state-gop-operations-4/) - Many of the election deniers who ran last year for positions that would have given them control over state elections systems lost their races. But several have found a new path to exert influence: as chair of their state Republican Party. Kristina Karamo, an activist who rose to prominence for her efforts to overturn Michigan’s 2020 presidential results, was elected chair of the Michigan GOP Feb. 18 at the party’s convention. A week earlier, Mike Brown, a former county commissioner who has stoked fears that the 2020 election was stolen, won the same job at Kansas’ convention. And in July, Idaho Republicans chose Dorothy Moon, a former state legislator who has said there was a “big problem” with the 2020 vote and made unfounded claims about illegal voting, as their leader. Meanwhile, Tina Peters announced last week that she’s running for state GOP chair in Colorado. A former county election clerk, Peters is facing felony charges in connection with an alleged scheme to breach secure voting equipment in order to show that her state’s 2020 vote was rigged. All four Republicans ran unsuccessfully last year for secretary of state, which would have made them their state’s chief election official. Karamo won the Republican nomination, then was defeated in the general election by Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat. Brown, Moon, and Peters all lost in the GOP primaries. Spokespeople for the Kansas and Idaho Republican parties said the chair position is unsalaried. The Michigan party did not immediately respond to an inquiry. A new platform The emerging trend of election deniers running for secretary of state before going on to lead their state party gives deniers yet another platform from which to exert influence, by stoking unfounded fears about election systems and pushing for restrictive voting policies. Already, hundreds of deniers are in office across the country. A Brookings Institution study found that 226 out of 345 candidates who ran for congressional, state legislative, or statewide positions — 66% — won their races. And, as States Newsroom recently reported, at least five states have deniers running their election systems as secretary of state. “State party chairs have tremendous power in our two-party system: to appoint poll workers and poll watchers, to influence who makes it on the ballot,” said Norman Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who co-authored the study of election-denier candidates. “They can direct funding and support to these individuals. They shape the national Republican Party platform and operation. State parties have a lot of power and that means state party chairs have a lot of power.” That could offer a valuable boost to former President Donald Trump in these states — though none of the three chairs has yet endorsed a GOP presidential candidate. The trend also highlights how, despite some high-profile defeats last year, denialism and extremism maintain a hold on many rank-and-file Republican activists and voters. Karamo has said the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection was a false-flag operation. “I believe this is completely Antifa posing as Trump supporters,” she said the following day, referring to left-wing anti-fascist activists. And she never conceded her 14-point loss to Benson in November. “Why would I concede to a fraudulent process?” she asked, according to the Detroit Free Press. In winning the party chair post, Karamo defeated another election denier, Matthew DePerno, who lost his race last year for attorney general. As a legislator, Moon worked to tighten Idaho’s voting rules, introducing a bill that would have banned the use of student IDs to vote, eliminated the use of affidavits for voters without proper ID, and ended same-day voter registration. Arguing for the measure, which ultimately did not pass, Moon spread stories about people crossing into Idaho from Canada to vote illegally. The secretary of state’s office said that wasn’t happening. Mike Brown, who lost a Republican primary for Kansas secretary of state in 2022, was elected chairman of the state party over Helen Van Etten by a vote of 90-88. (Photo by Tim Carpenter/Kansas Reflector) Campaigning last year for secretary of state, Brown raised unfounded fears about the security of Kansas’ elections and questioned the 2020 presidential results. After the incumbent secretary of state, Scott Schwab, said there were no major problems with the state’s voting, The Associated Press reported, Brown responded: “Because he said so? Or because he can prove it?” “His answer is, ‘There is nothing to see here, keep moving,’” Brown added. “You should start looking and you should stop moving.” Eisen warned that, despite the losses last year by several prominent election deniers, the ascension of deniers to state chair posts underscores the threat that the ideology continues to pose. “When you combine that with the fact that election deniers have taken control in other places, it represents a clear and present danger,” Eisen said. “We must celebrate the successes we had, but keep our guard up, remain at high alert, and redouble efforts to prevent this election denial philosophy from destroying American democracy.”
- [Opinion: Fox News broadcast voting fraud allegations it knew was false - Asheville Citizen-Times](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/26/opinion-fox-news-broadcast-voting-fraud-allegations-it-knew-was-false-asheville-citizen-times/) - I did an interview with Dan Rather in 2008 shortly after I resigned as chief prosecutor at Guantanamo. At the end of the interview, we went out on the street in Washington to shoot some footage of us walking together. As soon as we stepped outside, people recognized Mr. Rather. A group of foreign businessmen rushed up and asked if they could take a group photo with him. He said he would be happy to do it. He chatted with them for several minutes and shook each one’s hand before we returned to the task of filming our stroll. Most in his position would have ignored the passersby, but Mr. Rather seemed to genuinely enjoy the interaction.Dan Rather anchored the CBS Evening News for 24 years. He left the anchor chair in 2005 following a "60 Minutes" piece he did in 2004 on then presidential candidate George Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard. The story alleged that Bush received preferential treatment to get into the Guard and was a goof-off during the time he served. Almost immediately, some questioned the authenticity of the documents the story was based on. CBS appointed a panel led by Dick Thornburgh, who was attorney general under President George H.W. Bush, and Louis Boccardi, former president of the Associated Press, to look into the "60 Minutes" piece. The panel issued a 224-page report and found that those involved in the Bush story failed to properly authenticate and corroborate the documents. As a result, four producers and executives were fired, and Dan Rather’s contract was not renewed in 2006, ending his 44-year career at CBS.Back then, heads rolled, not because those at CBS deliberately broadcast information they knew was false, but because they broadcast information without taking adequate steps to ensure it was true. If that standard applied today, the Fox News headquarters in New York would be empty.Recent reporting on the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit Dominion Voting Systems filed against Fox News shows that everyone from owner Rupert Murdoch to on-air talking heads Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity knew the “Big Lie” was a big lie. But the “Big Lie” was what viewers wanted, and Fox News obliged.Occasional Asheville resident Sidney Powell – who was served with a $1.3 billion lawsuit by Dominion at her home in Biltmore Forest in January 2021 – had a lead role in crafting the Big Lie, and she peddled it regularly on Fox News. She claimed voting machine software flipped votes from Trump to Biden and was created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez. In a Nov. 18, 2020, message to fellow host Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson said, “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. Caught her. It’s insane.” Ingraham responded, “Sidney is a complete nut.” Ms. Powell admitted in a March 2021 court filing that her statements about Dominion’s voting machines were spurious, saying “no reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact.” Think about that for a moment. In essence, Powell is saying, “Well sure, I said it, but no sane human being would believe me.”The Fox News crew had the same opinion about Ms. Powell’s “Big Lie” partner, Rudy Giuliani. Rupert Murdoch called the voting fraud claims Powell and Giuliani concocted “really crazy stuff.” Sean Hannity wrote that Giuliani was “acting like an insane person,” and Ingraham responded saying Giuliani is “such an idiot.”When a Fox News journalist tweeted that there was no evidence any voting system lost or changed votes, Carlson texted Hannity, “Please get her fired. ... It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down.” Hannity elevated the matter to a Fox News executive who said the reporter “has serious nerve doing this” and noted that it could drive viewers away from Fox News and to Newsmax and OAN.Hannity wanted to stop the exodus of disgruntled viewers. “Respecting this audience whether we agree with it or not is critical,” he said. But there is nothing respectful about knowingly peddling lies and pretending they are true. Respecting your audience means telling them the truth, even if some of them can’t handle the truth.Shortly after the 2020 election, Fox News adopted the motto “Standing Up for What’s Right” to promote its primetime programming. The internal communications show the motto was a joke. The only thing those at Fox News stood up for was fat profits and fat paychecks. What’s right didn’t matter.Dominion Voting Systems is seeking $1.6 billion for the damage it suffered because of the lies Fox News chose to broadcast. The damage Fox News has inflicted on America is incalculable.Moe Davis is a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel, attorney, educator, politician, former administrative law judge and former N.C. 11th Congressional candidate
- [Election deniers who lost secretary of state races now run several state GOP operations](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/26/election-deniers-who-lost-secretary-of-state-races-now-run-several-state-gop-operations-3/) - Republican Kristina Karamo campaigns in Lansing, Michigan, on Aug. 27, 2022. Karamo, an activist who rose to prominence for her efforts to overturn Michigan’s 2020 presidential results, was recently elected chair of the Michigan GOP at the party’s convention. (Photo by Allison R. Donahue/Michigan Advance)Many of the election deniers who ran last year for positions that would have given them control over state elections systems lost their races. But several have found a new path to exert influence: as chair of their state Republican Party.Kristina Karamo, an activist who rose to prominence for her efforts to overturn Michigan’s 2020 presidential results, was elected chair of the Michigan GOP Feb. 18 at the party’s convention.A week earlier, Mike Brown, a former county commissioner who has stoked fears that the 2020 election was stolen, won the same job at Kansas’ convention.And in July, Idaho Republicans chose Dorothy Moon, a former state legislator who has said there was a “big problem” with the 2020 vote and made unfounded claims about illegal voting, as their leader.Meanwhile, Tina Peters announced last week that she’s running for state GOP chair in Colorado. A former county election clerk, Peters is facing felony charges in connection with an alleged scheme to breach secure voting equipment in order to show that her state’s 2020 vote was rigged.All four Republicans ran unsuccessfully last year for secretary of state, which would have made them their state’s chief election official. Karamo won the Republican nomination, then was defeated in the general election by Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat. Brown, Moon, and Peters all lost in the GOP primaries.Spokespeople for the Kansas and Idaho Republican parties said the chair position is unsalaried. The Michigan party did not immediately respond to an inquiry.A new platformThe emerging trend of election deniers running for secretary of state before going on to lead their state party gives deniers yet another platform from which to exert influence, by stoking unfounded fears about election systems and pushing for restrictive voting policies.Already, hundreds of deniers are in office across the country. A Brookings Institution study found that 226 out of 345 candidates who ran for congressional, state legislative, or statewide positions — 66% — won their races. And, as States Newsroom recently reported, at least five states have deniers running their election systems as secretary of state.“State party chairs have tremendous power in our two-party system: to appoint poll workers and poll watchers, to influence who makes it on the ballot,” said Norman Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who co-authored the study of election-denier candidates. “They can direct funding and support to these individuals. They shape the national Republican Party platform and operation. State parties have a lot of power and that means state party chairs have a lot of power.”That could offer a valuable boost to former President Donald Trump in these states — though none of the three chairs has yet endorsed a GOP presidential candidate.The trend also highlights how, despite some high-profile defeats last year, denialism and extremism maintain a hold on many rank-and-file Republican activists and voters.Karamo has said the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection was a false-flag operation. “I believe this is completely Antifa posing as Trump supporters,” she said the following day, referring to left-wing anti-fascist activists.And she never conceded her 14-point loss to Benson in November. “Why would I concede to a fraudulent process?” she asked, according to the Detroit Free Press. In winning the party chair post, Karamo defeated another election denier, Matthew DePerno, who lost his race last year for attorney general.As a legislator, Moon worked to tighten Idaho’s voting rules, introducing a bill that would have banned the use of student IDs to vote, eliminated the use of affidavits for voters without proper ID, and ended same-day voter registration.Arguing for the measure, which ultimately did not pass, Moon spread stories about people crossing into Idaho from Canada to vote illegally. The secretary of state’s office said that wasn’t happening.Mike Brown, who lost a Republican primary for Kansas secretary of state in 2022, was elected chairman of the state party over Helen Van Etten by a vote of 90-88. (Photo by Tim Carpenter/Kansas Reflector)Campaigning last year for secretary of state, Brown raised unfounded fears about the security of Kansas’ elections and questioned the 2020 presidential results. After the incumbent secretary of state, Scott Schwab, said there were no major problems with the state’s voting, The Associated Press reported, Brown responded: “Because he said so? Or because he can prove it?”“His answer is, ‘There is nothing to see here, keep moving,’” Brown added. “You should start looking and you should stop moving.”Eisen warned that, despite the losses last year by several prominent election deniers, the ascension of deniers to state chair posts underscores the threat that the ideology continues to pose.“When you combine that with the fact that election deniers have taken control in other places, it represents a clear and present danger,” Eisen said. “We must celebrate the successes we had, but keep our guard up, remain at high alert, and redouble efforts to prevent this election denial philosophy from destroying American democracy.”The post Election deniers who lost secretary of state races now run several state GOP operations appeared first on Iowa Capital Dispatch.
- [Trump Attorneys Push Theory That Georgia Election Investigation Is 'Compromised'](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/26/trump-attorneys-push-theory-that-georgia-election-investigation-is-compromised/) - Attorneys representing former President Donald Trump claimed that the Georgia investigation into his attempts to overturn the 2020 election has been “compromised” and that any indictments stemming from it would likely be “faulty” due to recent remarks made by a member of the special grand jury in the case. “We absolutely do not believe that our client did anything wrong, and if any indictments were to come down, those are faulty indictments. We will absolutely fight anything tooth and nail,” Trump attorney Jennifer Little said in an interview with Robert Costa that aired on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. The former president is being investigated for trying to pressure then-Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to “find” votes for Trump after the 2020 election had concluded. Defense attorneys for former Pres. Trump claim they will fight "tooth and nail" if District Attorney Willis charges Trump in the Fulton Co., Georgia investigation:"If any indictments were to come down, those are faulty indictments," Jennifer Little tells @costareports. pic.twitter.com/lr7NnsMSss— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) February 26, 2023 The lawyers pointed to recent comments to multiple media outlets by the foreperson on the special grand jury probe, Emily Kohrs, who hinted that Trump and a dozen of his allies were recommended for indictments. A special purpose grand jury can only recommend indictments, but its recommendations can lead to a criminal grand jury, which could issue indictments. So far, Fulton County Prosecutor Fani T. Willis has not moved to charge Trump. Attorney Drew Findling, who is also on Trump’s defense team, said the team has “lost 100 percent confidence in this process” and feels the process “has been compromised.” Kohrs’ remarks, Findling claimed, “made us aware that every suspicion we had as to this questionable process was in fact a reality.” Costas noted, however, that by the time Kohrs spoke to the media, the grand jury process had ended, and that she did not break any rules. Findling responded that when Kohrs used the word “we” in her remarks about the process, he believes that indicates “they lost perspective over keeping separation between prosecuting attorneys and members of the grand jury.” “When the foreperson uses the word ‘we,’ that lets you know there was a relationship there,” the lawyer said (although it seems plausible Kohrs’ “we” was referring to herself and the other grand jury members). Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special grand jury, said that jurors could not discuss deliberations publicly, but they could speak about the final report the grand jury issued. “What witnesses said, what you put in your report, those are not off-limits,” McBurney said to CNN. Legal experts have also said that Korhs’ comments are unlikely to affect the prosecution. “Emily Kohrs’s pursuit of her fifteen minutes is not likely to preclude anyone indicted and convicted from serving their term of years,” MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin tweeted. Trending Former federal prosecutor Amy Lee Copeland also doubted Kohrs’ interviews would interfere with prosecutors, though her comments may be inconvenient for them. “Is this a headache that is grinding the machine to a halt? It’s not. It’s just one of the many frustrations that attends the practice of law,” Copeland told the AP.
- [Election deniers turn their focus to state GOP posts after failing at polls - PBS](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/26/election-deniers-turn-their-focus-to-state-gop-posts-after-failing-at-polls-pbs/) - PARKER, Colo (AP) — In a basement event space in the Denver suburb of Parker, Tina Peters surveyed a crowd of Colorado Republicans last week and made an unusual pitch for why she should become chair of their beleaguered party: “There’s no way a jury of 12 people is going to put me in prison.” Peters was referring to her upcoming trial on seven felony charges related to her role in allegedly accessing confidential voting machine data while she was clerk in western Colorado’s Mesa County. The incident made her a hero to election conspiracy theorists but unpopular with all but her party’s hardest-core voters. Peters, who condemns the charges as politically motivated, finished second in last year’s GOP primary for secretary of state, Colorado’s top elections position. Now Peters has become part of a wave of election deniers who, unable to succeed at the polls, have targeted the one post — state party chair — that depends entirely on those hardest-core Republicans. Embracing election conspiracy theories was a political albatross for Republicans in states that weren’t completely red last year, with deniers losing every statewide bid in the swing states of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But the movement has focused on GOP state party chairs — positions that usually are selected by only dedicated activists and have the power to influence the party’s presidential nominating contest and some aspects of election operations, such as recruiting poll watchers. “The rise of this dangerous ideology nationwide and the rise within party machinery are ominous,” said Norm Eisen, a prominent Washington lawyer and former ambassador who is executive chair of States United Democracy Center, which tracks election deniers. “It’s an outrageous phenomenon.” Kristina Karamo, a former community college instructor who lost her bid last fall to become Michigan’s secretary of state by 14 percentage points, won the chair of the Michigan Republican Party a week ago. She beat a fellow election denier, failed attorney general candidate Matthew DePerno. In Kansas, Mike Brown, a conspiracy theorist who lost his primary bid for secretary of state, was named chair of the state party. Peters is just one of multiple candidates for the Colorado position who have repeated former President Donald Trump’s lies that President Joe Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election. WATCH: How powerful conservatives pushed the ‘Big Lie’ that the 2020 election was fraudulent “We can’t just say, ‘Oh, it’s time to get over 2020 and be done with that,’” said Aaron Wood, a self-described Christian conservative father also running for Colorado GOP chair, who organized a slate of candidates to take over the party’s top posts. “Until I have 100 percent confidence that the election has integrity, I will not be done with that.” The wave of election deniers follows a push by Trump during his administration to stock the roster of party chairs with loyalists, several of whom supported his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and remain in the White House. Of those, Kelli Ward, the chair of the Arizona GOP, did not run again and was replaced by another Trump loyalist, former state Treasurer Jeff DeWitt. In Georgia, chairman David Shafer has announced he won’t seek another term this June, amid scrutiny over whether he could be indicted for efforts to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. As in most states, the new Georgia party head will be selected by leaders of local county parties. Many of those are Trump loyalists who also backed Shafer’s bid to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss in the state. But Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who defied Trump’s request and easily beat a primary challenger last year backed by Shafer, has marginalized the state party, creating a parallel structure to raise money and turn out voters. That’s an example of how the once powerful post of state party chair has changed. “It used to be adjacent to public service, to be the state party chair, and now it’s something where you get to dunk on Democrats on Twitter,” said Robert Jones, a Republican pollster in Idaho. In that state, Dorothy Moon, an election denier and former state representative who made an unsuccessful primary run for secretary of state, became the Idaho GOP chair last year. Still, Eisen noted that state parties have important roles in appointing poll workers and poll watchers in many states. A perennial fear has been that conspiracists could fill those positions and disrupt elections, though that did not happen in 2022 despite a prominent conservative effort to find more poll watchers. “Maybe the Karamos and the Browns and the Moons will implode,” Eisen said. “There is a kind of incompetence that goes with this ideology. But it’s a concerning trend given the power these state parties have.” Parties also have a major role in structuring their primaries. In Michigan, the party apparatus that Karamo now leads has the power to move its nominating contest to a closed convention, where activists select the winner. WATCH: Election deniers hold critical positions in Republican politics despite national rejection “Donald Trump would love there to be a convention for Michigan’s delegates,” Jason Roe, the former executive director of the state party, said in an interview. Ironically, Trump had endorsed DePerno, a lawyer who unsuccessfully sued to force a new count in 2020. Instead, Karamo, whom the former president had supported in her secretary of state race, won. She has described abortion as “child sacrifice” and Democrats as having a “Satanic agenda.” Kristina Karamo, a candidate for the Michigan Republican Party’s state party chair, speaks to delegates ahead of their vote on the key party leadership position, in Lansing, Michigan, Feb. 18, 2023. Photo by Nathan Layne/REUTERS Last week, on the podcast of Trump adviser Steve Bannon last week, Karamo said Michigan was “ground zero for the globalist takeover of the United States of America.” In Colorado, many Republican strategists say they are prepared for Peters or another election denier to win the party chair position next month. “People seem almost resigned that the party is going to fall into the hands of this crowd for the next two years,” said Sage Naumann, one of the operatives, who said usually a chair’s impact on elections is “neutral,” but that could change. “If they’re constantly making controversial statements, then they can be detrimental,” Naumann said. The insurgent candidates running for Colorado’s chair argue things can’t get worse for the GOP in the state. Republicans lost every statewide race by double digits in November and have their smallest share of seats in the Legislature in state history. The candidates for party chair claim the Colorado GOP has been too timid and needs to be more outspoken and conservative — a risky bid in a state that has been rapidly moving to the left. As part of that, they seek to restrict the primary to only registered Republicans, shutting out voters not affiliated with any party who have been eligible to participate. That would require overturning a voter-approved ballot measure, which activists failed to do in a lawsuit last year. They hope to have a better shot with the party chair’s support. At the debate last week in Parker, former state Rep. Dave Williams said: “It’s time we had a warlike leader who is going to go toe-to-toe” with Democrats. Williams later added: “Joe Biden is not a legitimate president.” Only one candidate, Erik Aadland, a military veteran who unsuccessfully ran for Congress last year, cautioned about the election denier rhetoric. He noted that Democrats effectively used a tape of him questioning the validity of the 2020 election against him in his race. In an interview, he said specifically that he worried about Peters’ candidacy. “It’s not healthy, the words we’re using, the rhetoric we’ve been using,” Aadland said. And, he added, “I don’t think it’d be healthy to have a chairwoman under seven indictments.” Peters, however, reveled in her national profile. She noted that she had just started a podcast that had 60,000 downloads on its first day and that she raised $250,000 to fund a recount in three days after the 2022 primary —a recount that confirmed her loss. During a separate debate Saturday, she demonstrated the appeal of her message to voters whose beliefs are increasingly unpopular in a liberal state. “It’s not your fault that we lost this election in 2022. It’s not my fault that we lost this election in 2022,” she told another crowd of Republican voters at a suburban pizzeria. “It’s because of the machines.” Cappelletti reported from Lansing, Michigan. Associated Press writers Jeff Amy in Atlanta and John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.
- [Arizona governor orders ethics probe into former Republican AG over handling of 2020 ... - Fox News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/26/arizona-governor-orders-ethics-probe-into-former-republican-ag-over-handling-of-2020-fox-news/) - Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, reportedly ordered an ethics probe into the state’s former Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich into his handling of 2020 election fraud allegations. "Recent reporting and documents released by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office has exposed what is likely unethical conduct by former Attorney General Mark Brnovich," Hobbs’ general counsel, Bo Dul, wrote to Chief Bar Counsel Maret Vessella in a letter Friday obtained by The Washington Post. "This conduct – which is harmful to our democracy, our State, and the legal profession itself – appears to have coincided with the time in which Mr. Brnovich and other attorneys in his Office were actively negotiating and then participating in a diversion agreement with the State Bar in regard to File No. 20-2188 and related matters," the letter says. Dul urges the State Bar to "carefully review" files published on the state attorney general’s website and "take any appropriate action." On Wednesday, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat who narrowly defeated Republican Abraham Hamadeh after a recount of votes in December in one of the closest elections in state history, released documents related to the investigations into the handling of the 2020 election.ARIZONA RANCHER GEORGE ALAN KELLY POSTS $1 MILLION BOND, RELEASED FROM CUSTODY Former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich has defended his office's handling of 2020 election fraud allegations. (AP Photo/Bob Christie, File)"The results of this exhaustive and extensive investigation show what we have suspected for over two years – the 2020 election in Arizona was conducted fairly and accurately by elections officials," Attorney Mayes said in a statement. "The ten thousand plus hours spent diligently investigating every conspiracy theory under the sun distracted this office from its core mission of protecting the people of Arizona from real crime and fraud."The Post reported that such documents showed Brnovich kept a March 2022 report stating that "virtually all claims of error and malfeasance were unfounded" private. Then in April, while running in the GOP primary for a U.S. Senate seat, he released an interim report claiming his office discovered "serious vulnerabilities," allegedly leaving out edits from his own investigators refuting those claims. "Katie Hobbs is wrong," Brnovich said in a statement, dismissing the allegations. "This is another misguided attempt by her to defame and cancel a political opponent instead of addressing the serious issues facing our state." Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs' general counsel sent a letter to the State Bar asking for an ethics review into former Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich. (Rob Schumacher/The Arizona Republic via AP, Pool)Mayes said despite her office spending over 10,000 hours investigating voting irregularities and "alleged instances of illegal voting by high-profile election deniers," a September 2022 summary prepared by the Arizona Attorney General Office (AAGO) Special Investigations Section stated: "In each instance and in each matter, the aforementioned parties did not provide any evidence to support their allegations. The information that was provided was speculative in many instances and when investigated by our agents and support staff, was found to be inaccurate."Mayes said complaints and allegations submitted to the Arizona Attorney General’s office by members of the public "were also largely unsupported by factual evidence or found to be mischaracterizations when researched by agents and support staff." Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes released documents alleging her Republican predecessor sat on a report debunking 2020 election fraud claims. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)"These allegations included the counting of duplicate votes, satellites controlled by the Italian military changing votes to favor President Biden, bamboo ballots, and dead people voting in numbers that affected the outcome of the election, among others," her office said. "And while a small number of cases were submitted for prosecution review due to these investigations, these numbers align with historical trends. They do not indicate widespread fraud or conspiracy related to the 2020 election." CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP"Voter fraud is rare, and instances should be handled according to applicable laws when they do occur," Mayes added Wednesday. "But it is time to work together to defend American democracy and uphold the rule of law. It’s time for the divisiveness to stop, and it’s time for our country to heal."The Post reported that the state bar, which has the power to reprimand or disbar its lawyers, received at least eight complaints about Brnovich regarding his office’s investigation into the 2020 election.
- [Trump defense attorneys: Georgia 2020 election probe has been "compromised" - Axios](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/26/trump-defense-attorneys-georgia-2020-election-probe-has-been-compromised-axios/)
- [Welcome to the Predator State - TomDispatch.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/26/welcome-to-the-predator-state-tomdispatch-com/) - Where the Scorpions on the Corner Just Might Kill You To residents of Memphis’s resource-poor, predominantly nonwhite neighborhoods, the Scorpions were easy to spot. The plainclothes patrols were known for driving their unmarked Dodge Chargers through the streets, often all too recklessly, sowing fear as they went, spitting venom from their windows, jumping out with guns drawn at the slightest sign of an infraction.On the night of January 7th, Tyre Nichols was two minutes from home when members of that squad pulled him over. Probable cause: reckless driving (if you believe the official story). Five Scorpions, all of them trained use-of-force specialists, proceeded to take turns hitting him with everything they had, including boots, fists, and telescopic batons. The 29-year-old photographer died three days later. Cause of death? “Excessive bleeding due to severe beating.” A body-cam snuff film of sorts was later released, showing some of Nichols’s last moments. The video transcripts speak for themselves. Officer to Tyre:“You’re gonna get your ass blown the fuck up. Oh, I’m gonna knock your ass the fuck out!” Tyre to officers:“OK. You guys are really doing a lot right now…” — “Lay down!”— “Stop! I’m just trying to go home.”— “Spray him! Spray him!”— “Stop! I’m not doing anything.”— “Tase him! Tase him!” Tyre cries out:“Mom! Mom!” Officer to Tyre:“Watch out! I’m gonna baton the fuck out of you!” — “Dude, hit him!”— “Hit him!”— “Hit him!”— “Mom…” Plainclothes Paramilitaries Welcome to America’s emerging predator state. Memphis is anything but an outlier. There are thousands of “elite” teams like that city’s Scorpion unit and they come in all calibers, shapes, and sizes. They range from specially trained teams in small-town police departments to sprawling “anti-crime” squads in big cities like Atlanta and New York, not to mention federal tactical units like the Border Patrol’s BORTAC and counter-terrorism task forces like the one that killed Manuel Terán in Georgia last month. Beyond the scary names, such specialized units tend to share some other characteristics. In their warlike tactics, their strategic outlook, and their often-violent subculture — if not always in their uniforms — they are virtually indistinguishable from their counterparts in the military. In their “wars” on crime, drugs, and terror, they work with a similar playbook imported from U.S. combat missions overseas but seemingly stripped of any reference to the rules of war. They conduct themselves, in other words, as plainclothes paramilitaries in America’s urban war zones (or what they like to call “hot spots”). Like Army Special Operations forces, they are regularly charged with the execution of “time-sensitive,” “clandestine,” and often “unilateral” missions — with or without the support of the local population — using “assurance, deterrence, and coercion” to fight the enemies of the state and exert control over “hostile, denied, or politically sensitive environments.” What’s more, these units operate with a legal guarantee of “qualified immunity” for violence against civilians. In other words, despite the recent Memphis exception, they normally have near-total impunity when it comes to violent offenses which, had they been committed in another country, might be classified as war crimes, crimes of aggression, or even crimes against humanity. For offenses of this nature, the United States is itself an international hot spot. In the course of a given year, according to one recent study, our law enforcement agencies were responsible for 13% of all fatalities caused by the police globally, even though Americans make up just 4% of the world’s population. And as investigative journalism has revealed, specialized units like the Scorpions are responsible for a wildly disproportionate share of those deaths. Take the New York City Police Department. Since 2000, its own use-of-force reports show that nearly one in three police killings have been by non-uniformed officers, especially “anti-crime” plainclothes units with paramilitary training and a long-standing reputation for terrorizing communities of color. Nearly a decade before the slaying of Tyre Nichols, there was, for instance, the murder of Eric Garner, a 43-year-old street vendor, “neighborhood peacekeeper,” and father of six. His life was snuffed out thanks to a police chokehold after he was stopped for selling “loosies,” unlicensed cigarettes, on a Staten Island street corner in the summer of 2014. (In the end, the only person to serve jail time in Garner’s death was the young filmmaker of color who had the courage to record the encounter.) Like the officers in the South Bronx who gunned down Amadou Diallo outside his home as he reached for his wallet, the ones in Queens who sprayed Sean Bell with 50 bullets on his wedding day, and the ones in Brooklyn who opened fire on a mentally ill man named Saheed Vassell in 2018, those responsible for Garner’s murder were members of the infamous “anti-crime” units whose work would become a blueprint for Scorpion-style policing. The force’s predatory philosophy is often summed up in a single sentence lifted from Ernest Hemingway’s 1936 (satirical) short story, “On the Blue Water.” Officers of the peace have been known to quote it, to wear it to work, and to plaster it on the walls of their precincts: “There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.” In the words of one New Yorker, a nurse from Crown Heights who witnessed the killing of Vassell, “The undercovers think they have the authority to do anything they want. They hunt [people] — like us black people — down… They act tough… like they’re from a gang. But they’re only like that because they have a badge.” A History of Violence Against Women In December 2019, the city of Louisville, Kentucky, rolled out its version of the Scorpion unit. It was labeled the Place-Based Investigations Squad (PBI) and put under the aegis of its police department’s Criminal Interdiction Division. Following paid consultations with “problem-oriented” academics and police executives from other cities, the Louisville Metropolitan department implemented a then-little-known practice called “Place-Based Investigations of Violent Offender Territories,” or PIVOT. In the end, this would prove but a variation on an already all-too-familiar theme of hot-spot policing first pioneered by “police scientists” in Minneapolis some 30 years before George Floyd’s murder. (In fact, the use of the term “hot spots” can be traced back to the early years of World War II.) Under this model, police assets were to be specially directed toward a handful of hot spots or “chronically violent urban locations.” That such places were home to populations of disproportionately Black, Indigenous, and immigrant Americans will no longer shock anyone; nor that they overlapped strikingly with areas of concentrated impoverishment and “planned abandonment”; nor that an influx of heavily armed strangers was undoubtedly the last thing such communities needed from the government. All of this was beside the point. The “marginal deterrent effect” — the minimal difference such hot-spot policing purportedly made in the calculations of would-be criminals — was enough to keep most critics quiet. Three months after the rollout, the Place-Based Investigations Squad would play an integral part in the police raid that took the life of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman and emergency-room technician at the University of Louisville, accused of no crime, but executed anyway by three Louisville police officers standing in the hallway of her own home. Officers from the PBI Squad had requested and obtained five search warrants with “no-knock” clauses, including one for Ms. Taylor, acting on what one would later call a “gut feeling.” Within moments of the officers’ arrival at her apartment on the night of March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor lay dying, felled by six of 32 shots fired into her home. It would be 20 minutes before she even received medical attention — 15 minutes too late to save her life. Although four officers have now been federally charged for civil rights violations, and three stand accused of lying on the affidavit they used to secure the warrants, a grand jury ultimately failed to return a single indictment for the officers who opened fire. That night in 2020, Ms. Taylor joined a long litany of Black women, robbed of their lives while simply trying to live them by those supposedly tasked with their protection. According to the latest count, some 280 women have been slain in encounters with law enforcement over just the past five years. Researchers have found that women made up nearly half of all police-initiated contacts and Black women were three times more likely than white ones to experience the use of force during a police-initiated stop. “Elite” police units have played an outsized role in such state-sanctioned femicides. Take the case of India Kager, 27, a Navy vet killed by a tactical team in Virginia Beach in 2015, as she sat in her car with her four-month-old baby in the back. Or consider Atlanta’s RED DOG (short for “Run Every Drug Dealer Out of Georgia”) Unit. On November 21, 2006, plainclothes officers from that narcotics squad — having lied under oath to obtain a no-knock warrant — barged into the home of Kathryn Johnston, a 92-year-old grandmother, and promptly gunned her down. Drugs were then planted near her body in a sorry attempt at a cover-up. Disbanded or Rebranded? We’ve been here before: Officers are charged with second-degree murder. Sweeping reforms are promised. Controversial units are “deactivated,” their officers reassigned to other bureaus. We saw this with the Amadou Diallo protests and the New York Police Department’s Street Crimes Unit in the early 2000s. We saw it with Atlanta’s RED DOGs after the killing of Kathryn Johnston. We saw it with Louisville’s PBI Squad in the months following the murder of Breonna Taylor — and we’re seeing it now in the aftermath of the assault on Tyre Nichols. Count on this, however: as time passes and attention subsides, reforms are abandoned, charges are dropped, or the defendants found not guilty by juries of their peers. And special ops teams are rebranded and brought back to life under different names. Today, Atlanta’s “Titans” have replaced the “RED DOGs” of old, while the very police executive who ran the old unit, Cerelyn “CJ” Davis, was made commissioner of the Memphis police department. The city of Memphis has also sought guidance from Ray Kelly, who was New York police commissioner during a particularly trigger-happy period in that department’s history (including the deaths of Sean Bell, Ousmane Zongo, Timothy Stansbury, Ramarley Graham, and Kimani Gray). Meanwhile, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, himself a veteran of a plainclothes police unit, is touting his “Neighborhood Safety Teams” (along with another elite strike force inherited from his predecessors, the “Strategic Response Group”) as the basis for a whole new approach to policing. In truth, they are simply picking up where the Street Crimes Unit left off. The only real differences: longer guns, modified uniforms, and body cameras that can be turned on or off at will. The names change, but the strategy (such as it is) remains the same and the body counts only climb higher. “Collateral Damage” and the War at Home Yet such police killings are not truly local matters. The final piece of the puzzle is the national security state, itself a predatory entity and the source of much of the surplus that supplies the police with significant military-grade weaponry and the bipartisan consensus that keeps the dollars flowing. Local police agencies would not have anything like the arsenals they have today — ones that would be the envy of many of the world’s militaries — without the largesse of the Pentagon’s popular 1033 program. For years, it has been arming police departments around the country in a distinctly military fashion, sometimes even with weapons directly off the battlefields of this country’s distant wars. Thanks to that program, the Memphis police department has managed to obtain a significant stockpile of high-powered rifles and multiple armored personnel carriers, while the State of Tennessee alone has received $131 million worth of weaponry from the Department of Defense. Meanwhile, paving new ground, the Special Operations Bureau of the San Francisco Police Department has procured unmanned, remotely piloted killer robots with names like TALON and DRAGON RUNNER. It is now advertising its intent to use them as a “deadly force option” in criminal apprehensions and other incidents like “riots, insurrection, or potentially violent demonstrations.” None of this would be possible without the support of politicians from both parties. The 2023 budget agreed upon by both parties, for instance, promises $37 billion in new spending on law enforcement — with double-digit percentage increases in discretionary funding for local police departments, above and beyond the nearly $1 trillion for the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security. As a “moral statement,” that document bears a striking resemblance to its predecessors, backing the blue with billions of public tax dollars, while bearing witness to the priorities of a government on the warpath against enemies domestic and foreign. Zooming out, we can see this kind of predatory policing for the national crisis it really is. In recent decades, according to a definitive study published in the British medical journal The Lancet, more than 30,000 American civilians have lost their lives in encounters with law enforcement, a figure perhaps best compared to the rates of “collateral damage” in war-torn places like Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen, or the Sahel. And whatever we call them, “elite” units like the Scorpions have played a leading role in that carnage. From their basic training to their advanced technology and heavy weaponry, they are increasingly cast as the protagonists in what has become America’s homeland theater of war, producing content of spectacular violence as this country’s war machine turns inward. At a time when significant crossover can be seen between law enforcement and the white nationalist militia movement, it should be obvious that police departments are, among other things, playing a dangerous game with democracy. With Donald Trump and his crew still going full Blue Lives Matter and the Biden administration failing to pass meaningful police reform, count on another bloody harvest of police violence in 2023 and 2024. In the event of sustained civil conflict, there is little mystery about which side some elite police units would choose to fight on or who would find themselves in the scopes of their semi-automatic rifles. Still, the predator state is not invincible, nor is its ascendancy inevitable. After all, the claims of police departments to legitimacy rest upon the support of elected officials who remain vulnerable to popular pressure, while the very existence of such paramilitary units depends on their access to the public purse. In a very real sense, then, they can still be fired, or at least defunded. For now, in the absence of consequences, the hunt for humans goes on uninterrupted and that’s likely to continue as long as so many Americans remain willing to put up with it. Copyright 2023 Michael Gould-Wartofsky Featured image: Bradley Manning rally [14] by Ben Schumin is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 / Flickr Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands (the final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, and Ann Jones’s They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America’s Wars: The Untold Story.
- [A hospital bed is seen.jpg - Louisville - wdrb.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/26/a-hospital-bed-is-seen-jpg-louisville-wdrb-com/) - FILE - A hospital bed is seen in a COVID-19 unit at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in the Mission Hills section of Los Angeles, Nov. 19, 2020. Roughly 84 million people are covered by Medicaid, the government-sponsored program that's grown by 20 million people since January 2020, just before the coronavirus pandemic hit. Now, as states begin checking everyone’s eligibility for Medicaid for the first time in three years, as many as 14 million people could lose access to that coverage. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
- [What's a special grand jury and how does it work? - Baltimore Sun](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/25/whats-a-special-grand-jury-and-how-does-it-work-baltimore-sun/) - The foreperson of a special grand jury that investigated whether former President Donald Trump and his allies illegally interfered in the 2020 election in Georgia raised some eyebrows this week when she gave interviews about a process that is typically cloaked in secrecy.But a special grand jury is different from a regular grand jury, and it’s an investigative tool that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis chose to help evaluate the facts in the case.AdvertisementA special grand jury, or special purpose grand jury, is impaneled specifically to investigate any alleged violation of the laws of the state of Georgia.A regular grand jury in Georgia is seated for a limited duration, one term of court — in Fulton County that’s two months. Grand jurors hear everything from felony shoplifting to murder cases and then decide whether to issue an indictment.AdvertisementA special grand jury has no set term and focuses on a single topic. Unlike a regular grand jury, a special grand jury can subpoena the target of an investigation to appear before it, former Gwinnett County district attorney Danny Porter said. When the investigation is done, a special grand jury produces a report on its findings but can’t issue an indictment.Special grand juries are used for an expansive topic that takes longer than a single term of court to investigate and often has to do with public corruption, Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia executive director Pete Skandalakis said.“It’s usually because it’s a very labor-intensive investigation that’s going to take a while to do,” he said, adding the investigation could involve calling witnesses, poring over documents and consulting experts.“The election case would be an ideal case for a special purpose grand jury,” Porter said.That’s because it’s likely a complex case with a lot of witnesses and potential logistical concerns that will take more time and focus than a regular grand jury is able to spend, he said.An elected public official in a county or a municipality within a county can ask the chief judge of the superior court in that county to impanel a special grand jury. It’s generally requested by a district attorney.After receiving the request, the chief judge submits it to the judges of the superior court for a vote. If a majority of the judges vote in favor, the special grand jury is seated. It is made up of between 16 and 23 people who are summoned from the county master jury list.Breaking News AlertsAs it happensBe informed of breaking news as it happens and notified about other don't-miss content with our free news alerts.A special grand jury can compel evidence and subpoena witnesses for questioning. It can inspect records, documents and correspondence of state or local government officials and their offices, and can require any person or company to produce records, documents or correspondence related to the subject it is investigating.AdvertisementWhen the special grand jury finished its investigation, it issued a final report of its findings and also recommended action. The judge has said the report includes “a roster of who should (or should not) be indicted, and for what, in relation to the conduct (and aftermath) of the 2020 general election in Georgia.” But it’s up to the district attorney to decide whether to pursue an indictment. If the district attorney wants to seek an indictment, the case must be presented to a regular grand jury.No. Skandalakis said there have probably only been a handful of special grand juries used in the entire state of Georgia in recent decades and it’s “very uncommon” for a district attorney to ask that one be impaneled.What did the foreperson reveal about the process?Emily Kohrs, a 30-year-old Fulton County resident, described some of what happened behind the closed doors of the jury room — including how some witnesses behaved, how prosecutors interacted with witnesses and how some witnesses invoked their rights not to answer certain questions.She told The Associated Press that prosecutors told the grand jurors they could read and watch the news but urged them to keep an open mind.The judge overseeing the special grand jury, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, told the grand jurors they could discuss what witnesses said and what is in the report but could not talk about deliberations.
- [Will Lou Dobbs Cost Fox News Cash with Election Fraud Lies? - WLS-AM](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/25/will-lou-dobbs-cost-fox-news-cash-with-election-fraud-lies-wls-am/) - With Lou Dobbs’ 2020 election fraud lies coming to light, he may cost Fox News a lot of cash. It seems like this could help Dominion Voting’s lawsuit against the company. John Howell is joined by Jacob Sullum, Senior editor at Reason Magazine, to discuss.
- [Calls come to disbar former AG Brnovich after he concealed records debunking 2020 ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/25/calls-come-to-disbar-former-ag-brnovich-after-he-concealed-records-debunking-2020/) - Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, Ky.KWC drops heartbreaker at buzzerFeb. 26—Jordan Roland recorded a game-best 26 points, eight rebounds and eight assists to lead a furious comeback for the Kentucky Wesleyan College men's basketball team, but Grant Whisman's tip-in at the buzzer lifted Cedarville to a 77-76 win over the Panthers in their regular-season finale Saturday in Cedarville, Ohio. Wesleyan (15-13, 11-9 G-MAC), which trailed 41-28 at intermission, ...
- [Election code update passes Senate | NM Political Report](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/26/election-code-update-passes-senate-nm-political-report/) - The state Senate approved a bill seeking to update the state election code on a 23-13, party-line vote.SB 180 seeks to update the state’s Election Code including, but not limited to, specifying when the Inspection of Public Records Act, or IPRA, can be used in election-based disclosures, allowing electronic nominating petition signatures, creating an election security program, requiring training for election challengers and watchers, revising requirements for the impoundment of ballots, audits, voting machine rechecks and recounts, revising election-related crimes and authorizing taxpayer information to be revealed to the secretary of state for purposes of maintaining voter registration records.“This is a bill that should look very familiar to this body because we’ve seen it for three years now,” Duhigg said. “SB180 is simply a pared down version of last year’s rendition, which was SB 6, which passed this body unanimously… But all of the changes that are in this bill, are borne from actual experiences that our election administrators have been navigating. Many of them have already been bug tested.”Many of the bill’s provisions were activated on a temporary basis during the 2020 election due to the COVID-19 public health crisis.“The changes that are in SB 180 are really needs not wants,” Duhigg said. “These are technical, nonpartisan changes to our election code that provide needed clarity for our election administrator so that they can efficiently and uniformly administer our publicly funded elections here in New Mexico.”Sen. Cliff Pirtle, R-Roswell, submitted an amendment that sought to add verbiage to the line: “The county clerk shall only accept applications for a mailed ballot made through the official web portal operated by the secretary of state or submitted on the official form” that the form came from the county clerk’s office.Pirtle’s amendment failed on a 13-23 vote.Another amendment was submitted by Sen. William Sharer, R-Farmington, that would have required photo identification for votes.The amendment failed on the same 13-23 vote.One of the votes against SB 180 was Sen. Mark Moores, R-Albuquerque, who stated his disillusionment that the bill was not done this year in the spirit of bipartisanship that it was last year.“Last year we had a bipartisan bill. We worked in good faith because our republic needed (it)…. There’s been a trying couple years and I made a personal commitment to the Secretary of State and the sponsor of legislation last year that I wanted to work together on election bill because our republic needed that, and I took a lot of heat from my party and a lot of the advocates on our side of the aisle for working with your party, for coming to a bill that I thought was a pretty good bill,” Moores said.Moores said that he said he “made a commitment” to the Secretary of State to support the bill this year.However, because of the two amendments, which he described as minor changes, not passing, Moores said he could not support the bill.The bill was approved with amendments in the Senate Rules Committee on a party line 7-3 vote while it was approved unanimously by the Senate Judiciary Committee.Amendments from SRC included adding a section allowing the Secretary of State to adopt rules allowing public officials to make their home addresses confidential in election and financial disclosures, remove language in the proposed bill that requires election board members to be registered to vote, require replacement ballots be mailed no less than seven days before election day unless the voter’s address is confidential, allows the SOS to adopt rules when two or more candidates running for the same office in the same election have names that are so similar that it could cause confusion and, for local elections, require candidacy declarations have a nominating petition with the legally required number of signatures for the specific office.
- [Former Arizona AG Brnovich faces ethics complaints following 2020 election reports](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/26/former-arizona-ag-brnovich-faces-ethics-complaints-following-2020-election-reports/) - What did Arizona's former attorney general know about the 2020 election and when did he know it? Reports from Mark Brnovich's former office were made public and they show there was no election fraud in Arizona. According to the current AG, Kris Mayes, Bronovich knew about it for months, but instead of going public, he stayed quiet. Now, Brnovich is facing at least eight ethics complaints at the Arizona Bar which oversees lawyers in the state.
- [What's a special grand jury and how does it work? | USA | EL PAÍS English Edition](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/25/whats-a-special-grand-jury-and-how-does-it-work-usa-el-pais-english-edition/) - The foreperson of a special grand jury that investigated whether former President Donald Trump and his allies illegally interfered in the 2020 election in Georgia raised some eyebrows this week when she gave interviews about a process that is typically cloaked in secrecy. But a special grand jury is different from a regular grand jury, and it’s an investigative tool that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis chose to help evaluate the facts in the case.A special grand jury, or special purpose grand jury, is impaneled specifically to investigate any alleged violation of the laws of the state of Georgia.A regular grand jury in Georgia is seated for a limited duration, one term of court — in Fulton County that’s two months. Grand jurors hear everything from felony shoplifting to murder cases and then decide whether to issue an indictment.A special grand jury has no set term and focuses on a single topic. Unlike a regular grand jury, a special grand jury can subpoena the target of an investigation to appear before it, former Gwinnett County district attorney Danny Porter said. When the investigation is done, a special grand jury produces a report on its findings but can’t issue an indictment.Special grand juries are used for an expansive topic that takes longer than a single term of court to investigate and often has to do with public corruption, Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia executive director Pete Skandalakis said.“It’s usually because it’s a very labor-intensive investigation that’s going to take a while to do,” he said, adding the investigation could involve calling witnesses, poring over documents and consulting experts.“The election case would be an ideal case for a special purpose grand jury,” Porter said.That’s because it’s likely a complex case with a lot of witnesses and potential logistical concerns that will take more time and focus than a regular grand jury is able to spend, he said.An elected public official in a county or a municipality within a county can ask the chief judge of the superior court in that county to impanel a special grand jury. It’s generally requested by a district attorney.After receiving the request, the chief judge submits it to the judges of the superior court for a vote. If a majority of the judges vote in favor, the special grand jury is seated. It is made up of between 16 and 23 people who are summoned from the county master jury list.A special grand jury can compel evidence and subpoena witnesses for questioning. It can inspect records, documents and correspondence of state or local government officials and their offices, and can require any person or company to produce records, documents or correspondence related to the subject it is investigating.When the special grand jury finished its investigation, it issued a final report of its findings and also recommended action. The judge has said the report includes “a roster of who should (or should not) be indicted, and for what, in relation to the conduct (and aftermath) of the 2020 general election in Georgia.” But it’s up to the district attorney to decide whether to pursue an indictment. If the district attorney wants to seek an indictment, the case must be presented to a regular grand jury.Skandalakis said there have probably only been a handful of special grand juries used in the entire state of Georgia in recent decades and it’s “very uncommon” for a district attorney to ask that one be impaneled.Emily Kohrs, a 30-year-old Fulton County resident, described some of what happened behind the closed doors of the jury room — including how some witnesses behaved, how prosecutors interacted with witnesses and how some witnesses invoked their rights not to answer certain questions.She told The Associated Press that prosecutors told the grand jurors they could read and watch the news but urged them to keep an open mind.The judge overseeing the special grand jury, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, told the grand jurors they could discuss what witnesses said and what is in the report but could not talk about deliberations.Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition
- [Kentucky Secretary of State marks 307,000 inactive voters removed from voter rolls since ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/25/kentucky-secretary-of-state-marks-307000-inactive-voters-removed-from-voter-rolls-since/) - The Kentucky Secretary of State’s office reported more than 307,000 inactive individuals have been removed from the voter rolls since January 2020, including more than 150,000 deceased voters. In January, more deceased voters were removed — 5,970 — than new voters were added. “Kentuckians trust our election process because they see us take election integrity seriously,” said Secretary of State Michael Adams. “Cleaning up our voter rolls is top priority, and we are proud of these results.” Overall, 5,154 voters were added in January, while 7,059 were removed — 5,970 deceased voters, 742 voters convicted of felonies, 284 voters who moved out of state, 42 voters judged mentally incompetent, and 21 voluntarily unregistered. Republican registration held steady at 45.5 percent of the electorate, with 1,635,385 voters. Republican registration decreased by 553 voters, a .03 percent decrease. Democratic registration held steady at 44.5 percent of the electorate, with 1,598,473 voters. Democratic registration decreased by 1,993 voters, a .13 percent decrease. There are 358,977 voters registered under other political parties, 10 percent of the electorate. “Other” registration increased by 641 voters, a .18 percent increase. January voter registration numbers do not include the 127,436 inactive voters removed on February 10. Statistics including those recent removals will be announced at a later date. Secretary of State’s Office
- [The Grand Jury Foreperson for the 2020 Election Probe in GA Said the Quiet Part Out Loud](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/25/the-grand-jury-foreperson-for-the-2020-election-probe-in-ga-said-the-quiet-part-out-loud/) - If there’s one woman who might have torpedoed the 2020 election interference probe in Georgia, look no further than its foreperson, Emily Kohrs. Given how nothing is shocking anymore, I’m glad I wasn’t the only person who came away thinking I was on crazy pills watching this woman spill critical details about the case. From ice cream parties with Georgia prosecutors to admissions that members of the grand jury were ignorant or dismissive of one invoking their constitutional right against self-incrimination. Kohrs’ media tour was so outrageous that even CNN was aghast about what this woman said on live television. Host Anderson Cooper was dumbfounded, with legal analysts torching Kohrs’ reckless behavior. Even apolitical figures within the media, like Willie Geist, were not receptive to Kohrs’ all but botching this investigation, despite it being a clown town from the outset. To make matters worse, Kohrs did this media blitz when it was announced that the grand jury had recommended numerous people be indicted. That next step, legitimate or not, might not be possible given this public relations fiasco (via Fox News):WATCH: The Trump grand jury forewoman is loving her 15 minutes of fame.Emily Kohrs is talking to networks about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, subpoenas, and sketches of Sen. Lindsey Graham:https://t.co/mPbMJw55km pic.twitter.com/Y5eKp7YEYZ— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) February 24, 2023Georgia grand jury foreperson: "I will be sad" if the DA decides against bringing charges against Trump ... I will be frustrated if nothing happens." pic.twitter.com/9RfusUCjUX— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 22, 2023The foreperson, Emily Kohrs, then continued her media tour on MSNBC, joking about how "awesome" it would be to personally subpoena Trump. pic.twitter.com/x36YqWWD59— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 22, 2023Emily Kohrs made national headlines this week for offering insight into jury deliberations and whether it recommended charges against Trump and other Republicans in their role in attempting to reverse the Peach State's 2020 election results. Clips from her sit-downs with CNN and NBC quickly went viral, particularly for her bizarre enthusiasm and giggly demeanor, something even Trump foes fear could aid his defense team's effort to dismiss the case entirely. Shortly after her interview with CNN's Kate Bolduan on Tuesday, her colleagues Anderson Cooper and Elie Honig reacted in astonishment. "First of all, why this person is talking on TV, I do not understand," a shocked Cooper said. "She's clearly enjoying herself. But, I mean, is this responsible? She was the foreperson of this grand jury!" "This is a horrible idea," said Honig, a CNN legal analyst. "And I guarantee you that prosecutors are wincing, watching her go on this-" "I was wincing just watching her eagerness to like, you know, hint at stuff," Cooper exclaimed. "There’s no reason for her to be out talking." "No. It’s a prosecutor’s nightmare," Honig told Cooper. "Mark my words, Donald Trump’s team is going to make a motion if there’s an indictment to dismiss that indictment based on grand jury impropriety."CNN political analyst Maggie Haberman offered a similar sentiment on "CNN This Morning.""If I’m the prosecutor, I’m not sure that I want this media tour taking place because I’m confident that Donald Trump’s lawyers are going to use this, just based on what I was hearing last night from people, to try to argue that this is prejudicial in terms of what she is saying," said Haberman, a New York Times correspondent. Recommended What a bizarre saga, but let’s not forget that while the liberal media is outraged—it’s for entirely different reasons: she said the quiet part out loud. They’re mad because she set ablaze another attempt to humiliate Donald Trump. Second, why are you outraged? You had this woman on your network. If anything, should no indictments occur, thanks to Ms. Kohrs, the liberal media shares the blame in shaping the conditions that led to that determination.
- [Trump, 'election integrity' remain Colorado GOP focus as chairperson selection nears](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/25/trump-election-integrity-remain-colorado-gop-focus-as-chairperson-selection-nears/) - If there is one thing the people vying to be the next leader of the Colorado Republican Party can generally agree on, it’s that the party is in need of a marketing and communications overhaul if they are to attract new voters into their fold and have a chance of reclaiming political power in the state. “The real problem we have is we’ve got to identify what it means to be a Republican. We have a good national platform, but we really don’t have anything to go on at the state level,” former state Sen. Kevin Lundberg said at a candidate forum hosted by the Republican Women of Weld on Saturday afternoon. “We needed that. It needs to be clear, it needs to be worked through in a very careful fashion so everyone can buy into it.” Finding and communicating that platform was a common talking point during the forum at a pizza restaurant in Weld County that featured all six candidates. It was moderated by Jesse Paul of The Colorado Sun and Ernest Luning of Colorado Politics. GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX SUBSCRIBE “We’ve got to articulate our message in a way that Coloradans believe in, understand and want to get behind. That’s going to take tremendous work, coming together and presenting a unified front that wins elections,” said Erik Aadland, a former congressional candidate who lost a bid for the 7th Congressional District seat to Rep. Brittany Pettersen last year. Colorado Republicans will choose their next chair at a party reorganization meeting on March 11. Current Republican state chair Kristi Burton Brown announced in December that she is not seeking a second term. The leadership shakeup comes a few months after a blistering loss for the party during the 2022 midterms, when Democrats secured every statewide office, won the state’s new congressional seat and expanded their majorities in the state Legislature. “We are in a hole, and we need to start digging ourselves out of it,” said Casper Stockham, who has led multiple unsuccessful congressional campaigns and also ran for state party chair in 2021. Lundbert, Aadland and Stockham are joined in the race by former state Rep. Dave Williams, indicted former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, and conservative Christian activist Aaron Wood. Other common ground between the candidates include a support for the return to closed primary elections and disdain for the petition process for candidates to get on the primary ballot. Analysis of 2022 losses The candidates offered various reasons for why Republicans in Colorado lost so badly in November, from a weak slate of candidates to unreliable voting machines. “We put unprincipled, weak candidates forward in top, key positions. We’re losing trust with real conservative voices throughout the state because of the people who go through our process and circumvent the assembly and caucus and petition only onto the ballot and don’t stand up for key issues,” Wood said. We need to not be afraid of people calling us … election deniers. Trump won, plain and simple. Nobody wanted Joe Biden as president ... I am unashamed to say that. – Aaron Wood, candidate for Colorado GOP chair That was one of many digs between the candidates towards former Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joe O’Dea, who made it on the primary ballot by gathering enough voter signatures instead of the internal assembly process. He went on to lose to Sen. Michael Bennet in the general election. “(O’Dea) is a good example of how the party will fall apart if we don’t understand what the party stands for,” Lundberg said. Williams argued that Republicans failed to provide a compelling contrast to Democratic candidates in the election. “We had a U.S. Senate candidate who said he would vote to codify Roe v. Wade,” he said, referring to the Supreme Court decision guaranteeing abortion rights that conservative justices overturned last year. “Why in the hell would any swing voter want to vote for the Republican party when they are just getting more of the same? If we want to win, we have to boldly articulate who we are and we should be unafraid and unashamed of it.” For Tina Peters, the crushing midterm losses were not the Republican leadership’s fault. Peters is set to begin a criminal trial this summer over her involvement in a security breach in her county during an attempt to prove fraud in Colorado’s voting machines and election process. She has pleaded not guilty to felony charges in that case and continues to be a national figurehead in the so-called “election integrity” movement. “It’s because of the machines,” she said of midterm results. “It’s not your fault.” Trump in 2020, 2024 None of the six candidates would say that President Joe Biden was legitimately elected in 2020. Claims that the 2020 election was compromised have been rejected by experts, courts and former President Donald Trump’s own campaign and administration officials. Biden won Colorado with 55.4% of the vote in the state. “We need to not be afraid of people calling us … election deniers. Trump won, plain and simple. Nobody wanted Joe Biden as president,” Wood said. “I am unashamed to say that.” Aadland instead urged people to look to future elections, which is a similar strategy he used during the congressional race when asked about the 2020 election. He was the only candidate to say that Biden won, though he did not say the sitting president legitimately won his election. “Clearly, Biden won. Whether by hook or by crook, he is sitting in the Oval Office. But this rehashing 2020 is not serving Republicans,” he said. “Whether fraud dictated an outcome in 2020 — sadly, we’ll never know. We need to be looking forward, doing everything we can to make sure our elections are transparent and every voter has confidence.” “A lot of Republicans have checked out of this conversation because of the way we’re talking about it,” he said on the issue of election integrity in the state. Stockham said he agreed with Aadland. Aadland said that as chair, he would champion ballot initiatives to clean voter rolls, strengthen voter identification laws and ensure an auditable process. While most of the candidates pledged official neutrality in the 2024 presidential primary process if selected as chair, they mostly expressed personal support for Trump as the potential nominee next year. The entire candidate forum is available to watch on the Women of Weld’s Facebook page. The Colorado Democratic Party is also selecting a new chair during its April 1 reorganization meeting, as current chair Morgan Carroll is not seeking reelection. Current First Vice Chairman Howard Chou, Democratic strategist Shad Murib and party volunteer Tim Kubik are seeking that position. SUPPORT NEWS YOU TRUST. DONATE
- [Trump investigation: Over 2000 files withheld by Republican court fight](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/25/trump-investigation-over-2000-files-withheld-by-republican-court-fight/) - A Republican congressman's court battle to protect his cell phone records has prevented federal investigators from reviewing over 2,200 documents in their investigation of former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the result of the 2020 election, the Washington Post reported on Saturday.The newspaper published links to previously sealed opinions by US District Judge Beryl Howell, chief judge for the District of Columbia, which found that "powerful public interest" outweighed Republican Representative Scott Perry's asserted need for secrecy under the US Constitution.Scott Perry's actionsPerry - a Trump ally who helped spread false claims that the 2020 election was stolen through widespread voting fraud - has sought to prevent the Justice Department from reviewing the contents of his cellphone since it was seized last summer.The lawmaker maintains that his cellphone's contents are shielded from disclosure under a constitutional provision that gives members of Congress immunity from civil litigation or criminal prosecution for actions arising in the course of their legislative duties.Perry's conduct is under scrutiny by Special Counsel Jack Smith's office because of the prominent role Perry played in the lead-up to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by thousands of Trump supporters trying to block Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden's election victory.US Representative Scott Perry (R-PA) receives a tour of FEMA's National Response Coordination Center from FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate (credit: PAUL LUKE)An investigation by the US House of Representatives' January 6 committee last year revealed Perry was in frequent contact with Trump White House officials in the weeks before the attack.On Thursday, an attorney for Perry asked an appellate court to reverse Howell's lower court ruling that his communications were not within a "legitimate legislative sphere." A Justice Department attorney urged the judicial panel not to block his cell phone from investigators.Howell had ordered Perry to turn over 2,055 SMS text messages, emails and attachments out of 2,219 documents contained on his phone, after concluding that they were only incidentally related to his status as a lawmaker and not central to that role as a member of Congress.She said Perry had sought to protect "random musings with private individuals" as well as "political discussions with attorneys from a presidential campaign" and "state legislators concerning hearings before them about possible local election fraud," according to the Post.
- [Gov. Hobbs pushes for ethics review of former Attorney General Mark Brnovich](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/25/gov-hobbs-pushes-for-ethics-review-of-former-attorney-general-mark-brnovich/) - The governor's office alleges that "likely unethical conduct" took place during Brnovich's 2020 investigation into election fraud claims. PHOENIX — > >Editor's note: The above video is from a previously aired broadcast. Gov. Katie Hobbs is calling on the Arizona State Bar to investigate former Attorney General Mark Brnovich over "likely unethical conduct," after documents from his election-fraud review showed he concealed significant findings. A letter to the State Bar from Hobbs' general counsel, Bo Dul, included a link to investigative documents from Brnovich's election review. The documents were released Wednesday by Brnovich's Democratic successor, Kris Mayes. "I urge the State Bar to review these files and take any appropriate action," according to Dul's letter. The Washington Post was the first media organization to report on the letter, on Saturday. 12News obtained the letter through a public records request to the governor's office. Already, eight Bar charges have been filed against Brnovich since the documents' release by Mayes. "The State Bar has received charges against Mark Brnovich related to the election audit issue. The charges are in the prescreening process. There is no further public information available," Bar spokesman Joe Hengemuehler said in a prepared statement. A Bar charge is the first step in investigating potential violations of Arizona's Rules of Professional Conduct for attorneys. A Bar charge could lead to a formal complaint against the state's former top prosecutor and possible discipline by the State Bar. Whatever the outcome, the process could take many months. In a statement to the Washington Post, Brnovich dismissed Hobbs' letter. “This is another misguided attempt by her to defame and cancel a political opponent instead of addressing the serious issues facing our state,” Brnovich said. The two-term Republican left office in early January. Brnovich has previously said that he was proud of his office's work on election integrity. Dul's letter to the State Bar noted that Brnovich's election review appears to have overlapped with his office's negotiations with the State Bar over separate allegations of ethics violations. > > Live, local, breaking. Download the 12News app Here are the three big takeaways from the documents Mayes released: 1. In March 2022, Brnovich's Special Investigations Section submitted a report debunking virtually all claims of wrongdoing in Maricopa County's conduct of the 2020 election. That report was never made public. 2. In April 2022, an email from chief special agent Reginald Grigsby was forwarded to Brnovich's chief of staff. The email included several refutations of claims in a draft "interim report" that Brnovich was preparing for Republican Senate President Karen Fann. Fann had authorized the Senate's partisan election review of the 2020 results. The investigators' refutations weren't included in the final report to Fann later in the month. That report cited "serious concerns" with the 2020 election. 3. In September 2022, Grigsby authored an "Election Review Summary" that was sent to the chief lawyer for the AG office's Criminal Division. The summary covered 430 investigations that entailed more than 10,000 hours of work. The memo debunked the "high-profile matters," such as allegations resulting from the Cyber Ninjas election review. You can read the full letter from the governor's office below: Arizona Politics [embedded content] Get the latest Arizona political news on our 12News YouTube playlist here.
- [Mark Brnovich faces ethics review amid allegations he hid evidence disproving election fraud](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/25/mark-brnovich-faces-ethics-review-amid-allegations-he-hid-evidence-disproving-election-fraud/) - Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) is seeking an ethics review into former state Attorney General Mark Brnovich amid allegations he buried findings from his office’s investigation into the 2020 election that showed there was no evidence of widespread fraud or misconduct. In a letter sent to the Arizona State Board on Thursday, Hobbs requested state officials to investigate Brnovich, accusing him of “likely unethical conduct.” The request comes after it was reported earlier this week that Brnovich had withheld findings from his office’s investigation that showed there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud affecting the outcome of the 2020 election. EX-ARIZONA ATTORNEY GENERAL MARK BRNOVICH BURIED INVESTIGATION FINDINGS DISPROVING ELECTION FRAUD: REPORT “This conduct — which is harmful to our democracy, our State, and legal profession itself — appears to have coincided with the time in which Mr. Brnovich and other attorneys in his Office were actively negotiating and then participating in a diversion agreement with the State Bar,” Hobbs wrote. “I urge the State Bar to carefully review … and take any appropriate action.” Brnovich pushed back against Hobbs’s request, dismissing the allegations as irrelevant. “Katie Hobbs is wrong,” Brnovich told the Washington Examiner in a statement. “This is another misguided attempt by her to defame and cancel a political opponent instead of addressing the serious issues facing our state.” Almost a year after the 2020 election, Brnovich and his staff launched an investigation into Maricopa County’s election administration amid claims it was riddled with fraud that led to former President Donald Trump’s loss. After more than 10,000 hours of work, investigators concluded that virtually all those claims were unfounded — but Brnovich declined to release that information to the public, according to internal documents obtained by the Washington Post. Investigators prepared a final report in March 2022 that found all claims of error were unsubstantiated, according to the documents. One month later, Brnovich, who was running for a Senate seat in Arizona at the time, released an “Interim Report” of the investigation that indicated his office discovered “serious vulnerabilities” with the 2020 election. However, that version did not include edits from his investigators that disputed claims of election fraud, according to the outlet. Brnovich’s office later compiled a final “Election Review Summary” in September that rejected claims of widespread voter fraud, citing that no group had evidence to back their allegations, according to the internal documents. The former attorney general never released the summary before leaving office last month. The previously unreported details were revealed in documents that were given to the Washington Post by Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes, who was elected as Brnovich’s successor in November. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER Brnovich denied allegations that he intentionally withheld his office's investigative findings, citing policies that advise his team not to publish information about ongoing inquiries. Brnovich's investigation was never fully completed before he left office, as the former attorney general handed it to Mayes once she was sworn in. Mayes later closed that investigation upon taking office, according to the Washington Post. "I am proud of the work our office did with the election integrity unit that was created by the state legislature," Brnovich told the Washington Examiner earlier this week. "While subjected to severe criticism from all sides of the political spectrum during the course of our investigations, we did our due diligence to run all complaints to the ground. Where we were able to debunk rumors and conspiracies, we did so. Nevertheless, we also identified areas we believe the legislature and county officials should address to ensure confidence in future elections."
- [Farmers plant rice at thte Mansa Co op.jpg - Louisville - wdrb.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/25/farmers-plant-rice-at-thte-mansa-co-op-jpg-louisville-wdrb-com/) - FILE - Farmers plant rice at the Namsa Co-op Farm of Rangnang District in Pyongyang, North Korea, on May 25, 2021. There’s little doubt that North Korea’s chronic food shortages worsened due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and speculation about the country’s chronic food insecurity has flared as its top leaders prepare to discuss the "very important and urgent task" of formulating a correct agricultural policy. (AP Photo/Jon Chol Jin, File)
- [Perry court fight keeping over 2000 records from Trump investigators, Washington Post reports](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/25/perry-court-fight-keeping-over-2000-records-from-trump-investigators-washington-post-reports/) - WASHINGTON, Feb 25 (Reuters) - A Republican congressman's court battle to protect his cellphone records has prevented federal investigators from reviewing over 2,200 documents in their investigation of then-President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the result of the 2020 election, according to newly unsealed court documents.Judge Beryl Howell, chief judge for the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, unsealed four opinions in which she found that "powerful public interest" outweighed Republican Representative Scott Perry's asserted need for secrecy under the U.S. Constitution. The documents were released late on Friday.Perry - a Trump ally who helped spread false claims that the 2020 election was stolen through widespread voting fraud - has sought to prevent the Justice Department from reviewing the contents of his cellphone since it was seized last summer.The lawmaker maintains that his cellphone's contents are shielded from disclosure under a constitutional provision that gives members of Congress immunity from civil litigation or criminal prosecution for actions arising in the course of their legislative duties.Latest UpdatesView 2 more stories
- [Calls come to disbar Brnovich after concealing records debunking election fraud - ABC15 Arizona](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/25/calls-come-to-disbar-brnovich-after-concealing-records-debunking-election-fraud-abc15-arizona/) - PHOENIX — The Arizona Bar says eight complaints were filed against former Attorney General Mark Brnovich. The Bar won't confirm what the allegations against Brnovich are, only saying they're related to his concealing records debunking 2020 election fraud cases.On October 31, eight days before Arizona's November election, former Attorney General Mark Brnovich appeared on Apple TV's "The Problem with Jon Stewart." During the interview Stewart asked, "when you're ready to release the report, when will that be?" Brnovich answered, "sooner rather than later I hope." Stewart then followed up asking "will you go out and vehemently debunk all those issues as vehemently as needed?" Brnovich replied "Absolutely!"According to records released Wednesday by Attorney General Kris Mayes, at the time of the interview Brnovich already knew for months the contents of his office's election investigation. It included disproving all the major findings of the Cyber Ninja audit. Every claim dead people voted. Investigators found no manipulation of election machines. There were several dozen confirmed cases of election fraud. Most of the cases were forwarded to the Attorney General from the Secretary of State and County elections officials. The report also revealed that elected state lawmakers who made claims of election fraud either refused to repeat the claims under oath or offered little evidence to support what they were saying publicly. "He is dishonorable and disgusting," Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said the day the reports were released. "The negative impact that had on Arizonans lives and the way some folks have had to suffer because of this." The Secretary of State believes Brnovich should be disbarred. At the time of the former Attorney General's investigation, county and elections officials, as well as election workers across the state, were under siege. Since 2020, 16 elections officials from 10 Arizona counties resigned or retired because of threats or harassment from people blaming them for a stolen election. Friday on KTAR's Mike Broomhead Show, Maricopa County Board Chairman Clint Hickman said, "I am absolutely disgusted. Now I'm getting questions 'Hey, what does the board want to do about disbarment?'"For now, the State Bar will deal with the eight complaints against Brnovich it has. The first step is a preliminary review to determine if the charges warrant the filing of a formal complaint.
- [Arizona governor seeks ethics review of former attorney general - The Washington Post](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/25/arizona-governor-seeks-ethics-review-of-former-attorney-general-the-washington-post/) - PHOENIX — Arizona’s Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, is seeking a review of what her office alleges was “likely unethical conduct” by the state’s former attorney general, Mark Brnovich.A letter sent Friday from the governor’s office to the State Bar of Arizona follows the disclosure on Wednesday of records showing that Brnovich, a Republican, withheld findings by his own investigators refuting claims of fraud in the 2020 election and mischaracterized his office’s probe of voting in the state’s largest county.The letter, signed by Hobbs’s general counsel, Bo Dul, calls the conduct “harmful to our democracy, our State, and the legal profession itself.”Brnovich dismissed the allegations. “Katie Hobbs is wrong,” he said in a statement. “This is another misguided attempt by her to defame and cancel a political opponent instead of addressing the serious issues facing our state.”The former attorney general did not respond to earlier questions from The Washington Post about the records but released a statement to local media saying he was “proud” of his office’s work on “election integrity.”“While subjected to severe criticism from all sides of the political spectrum during the course of our investigations, we did our due diligence to run all complaints to ground,” Brnovich said in that statement. “Where we were able to debunk rumors and conspiracies, we did so. Nevertheless, we also identified areas we believe the legislature and county officials should address to ensure confidence in future elections.”The state bar has received at least eight complaints against Brnovich related to his office’s probe of the 2020 election, said a spokesman for the association, which regulates the professional conduct of lawyers and has the power to reprimand or disbar its members.Brnovich’s Democratic successor, Kris Mayes, released the documents to The Post after numerous requests, lodged initially while Brnovich was in office.The records released by Mayes reveal that Brnovich’s team brushed off edits made by investigators when he released an “Interim Report” last year warning of “serious vulnerabilities” with voting in Maricopa County. Memos and other documents also show that the then-attorney general sat on more conclusive reports that systematically debunked fraud claims leveled by state lawmakers and self-styled “election integrity” groups.Brnovich marshaled the resources of his office to investigate those claims while he was competing with MAGA-aligned candidates in a GOP primary for U.S. Senate. He lost that primary in August and left the attorney general’s office in January.“The people of Arizona had a right to know this information before the 2022 election," Mayes said in an interview with The Post earlier this week. "Maricopa County election officials had a right to know that they were cleared of wrongdoing. And every American had a right to know that the 2020 election in Arizona, which in part decided the presidency, was conducted accurately and fairly,”The letter from Hobbs’s office to the state bar argues that the news reports and documents “exposed what is likely unethical conduct” by Brnovich. It also notes that the conduct “appears to have coincided” with the period in which Brnovich and other attorneys in his office were negotiating and then operating under what’s called a “diversion agreement,” an alternative to disciplinary sanction that might otherwise result from bar complaints and instead often involves training and other types of remediation.Those complaints alleged that Brnovich shirked his responsibilities as the state’s top law enforcement officer to represent two state agencies, the secretary of state’s office and the Arizona Board of Regents, the governing body of Arizona’s public university system. Hobbs was Arizona’s secretary of state at the time of the complaints and the diversion agreements, which were revealed in early 2022.The letter from Hobbs’s office asks the state bar to review the files released this week and “take any appropriate action.”Stanley-Becker reported from Washington.
- [Zuckerberg-funded group violated Georgia law with $2M for elections board: watchdog](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/25/zuckerberg-funded-group-violated-georgia-law-with-2m-for-elections-board-watchdog/) - FIRST ON FOX: A Georgia elections board may have violated state law when it accepted $2 million from a Mark Zuckerberg-linked group, a watchdog group claimed in a letter obtained by Fox News Digital. The Honest Elections Project is calling for an investigation into the DeKalb County Board of Registration and Elections for a “flagrant and egregious” violation of a state ban on private funding that was put in place after accusations that donors used money to push left-wing influence ahead of the 2020 elections. The funding in question originated from the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, the project said in a letter last week calling for a probe by the state attorney general, secretary of state and state elections board. “We’re now fairly well convinced this is an attempt to do two things,” Honest Elections Project Executive Director Jason Snead told Fox News Digital. “To get around those bans on private funding by doing either what they did in DeKalb County, by looking for loopholes and end-a rounds, doing what they can to get money into these offices; or by doing what I think they feel is even more important work, which is to pump influence into these offices.” MARK ZUCKERBERG HIT WITH LEGAL COMPLAINTS OVER ALLEGED ATTEMPT TO INFLUENCE 2020 ELECTION The letter outlines how in the lead-up to the 2020 election, the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) received a $250 million donation from Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan for programs to provide grants to local election boards across the country. That funding came with the stated goal of helping jurisdictions deal with the coronavirus pandemic by providing ballot drop boxes, voting equipment, additional manpower, protective gear for poll workers and public education campaigns on new voting methods, among other expenses. “This massive influx of funding – which ultimately topped $400 million – was met with heavy criticism driven by post-election analysis that revealed the money was overwhelmingly funneled to Democrat-leaning jurisdictions,” the letter stated. “Criticism that CTCL does not deny.” Georgia was one of dozens of states that sought to ban outside groups from funneling money to election boards and possibly peddling influence. Part of Georgia’s 2021 reform law “banned election offices from receiving funding from outside groups.” POLL SHOWS 0% OF BLACK VOTERS HAD ‘POOR’ VOTING EXPERIENCE IN NOVEMBER DESPITE BIDEN CLAIM OF ‘JIM CROW 2.0’ “No superintendent shall take or accept any funding, grants, or gifts from any source other than from the governing authority of the county or municipality, the State of Georgia, or the federal government,” the law states. A spokesperson for Zuckerberg said in 2022 that the Facebook founder didn’t have plans on injecting cash into future elections – calling the grant a “one-time donation given the unprecedented nature of the crisis.” However, the Honest Elections Project released a report earlier this year that described the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, the CTCL coalition that funneled the money to DeKalb County, as “merely a continuation” of CTCL’s so-called “Zuck Bucks scheme,” a term critics use to describe the private funding of elections by left-wing donors in 2020. “They are trying to gather data and reshape the way these offices function so that they essentially become left-wing outposts for progressive voting reform,” Snead told Fox News Digital. “All of what they do is a ruse in order to get into these offices and accomplish that goal.” GEORGIA ELECTION OFFICIAL ASKS BIDEN, ABRAMS HOW MANY RECORDS THEY NEED TO BREAK TO GET APOLOGY DeKalb County officials and supporters of the funding argue that the money was accepted by the county government as opposed to the elections board. When criticized earlier this month by former Georgia Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s group, Greater Georgia, a state election official responded by saying that “partisan accusations do not reflect an accurate reading of state law and undermine the work of already overburdened, underpaid public servants.” “The DeKalb County Finance Department applied for the grant in accordance with state law, and our county attorneys conducted a diligent review to ensure the grant award met the letter of the law,” DeKalb Elections Board Chairwoman Dele Lowman Smith, a Democrat, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. TOP GA OFFICIAL SAYS ‘COORDINATED EFFORT’ BETWEEN DOJ AND ‘LIBERAL ACTIVISTS’ TO ‘SCAPEGOAT’ VOTING LAW Lowman Smith did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital regarding the Honest Elections Project letter. “Clearly, what the Georgia legislature did when they passed the law that we’re talking about was an attempt to restrict counties from getting involved with private funders of elections and here we’ve got one that was clearly doing that,” Snead said. The DeKalb County Finance Office made the application to join the U.S. Election Alliance “early last year,” Snead said. This showed that “even before the alliance was online” the county had “already figured out” that if there was going to be an opportunity to continue receiving funds from progressive groups, they already knew how to “get around the law.” “This is what we think we need investigations for,” Snead said. “As the Election Board has recognized, ‘fair, legal, and orderly elections’ are the touchstone to America’s democratic process,” the letter from Honest Elections Project concludes. “Those responsible for administering elections should zealously guard these principles. That is what makes DeKalb County’s brazen disregard for Georgia’s election laws so troubling. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP “The Election Board has a duty to investigate and correct these actions and demonstrate its commitment to preserving ‘the highest standards of integrity’ in ‘all matters related to the election process.'” The Georgia Attorney General’s Office told Fox News Digital that it does not have the authority to investigate alleged violations of Georgia’s elections code and that the Georgia Secretary of State or the Georgia Bureau of Investigations handle those matters. A bill, S.B. 222, was introduced in the Georgia General Assembly earlier this week aimed at closing any loopholes that could be exploiting gaps in the Georgia law. “What’s happening right now in Georgia is crystal clear: ideological groups and certain counties are testing our resolve to enforce state law, while attempting to influence local elections,” Loeffler said in a statement. “Thankfully, Lt. Governor Burt Jones and our lawmakers have taken swift action to fortify existing laws that ban outside funding for local boards of election through SB 202, which will ensure that our elections are never bought and paid for by special or partisan interests,” the statement said. “Greater Georgia is proud to endorse the legislation, and calls for its urgent passage by members of the Georgia General Assembly.” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in a statement to Fox News Digital that he has asked the legislature to close the loophole and suggested S.B. 202 would do just that. “It was the will of the General Assembly that if outside organizations wanted to help supply funding for counties, it would actually be channeled through the state election board so that it could then disburse the funds on an equitable basis,” Raffensperger said. “It would be a legislative remedy. We are in session now, so it is something they can address pretty quickly.” A spokesperson for Raffensperger’s office also told Fox News Digital on Thursday afternoon that there is “an active investigation at the direction of the State Elections Board.” The Georgia State Election Board also confirmed that an investigator has been assigned to two different complaints but could not comment further since the investigation is pending.
- [Rep. Scott Perry was 'persistent' in contacting executive branch around 2020 election, court ... - KESQ](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/25/rep-scott-perry-was-persistent-in-contacting-executive-branch-around-2020-election-court-kesq/) - By Katelyn Polantz, CNN Reporter, Crime and Justice The seized cell phone of Rep. Scott Perry contained 930 records where the Pennsylvania Republican often tried to cajole executive branch officials around the 2020 presidential election, according to newly released court papers in the fight over his cell phone data. “Rep. Perry’s communications with Executive Branch officials, as reflected in the responsive records, demonstrate that he welcomed, rather than resisted, and indeed often initiated these communication [redacted],” Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the DC District Court wrote in one of four unsealed opinions, after she had reviewed the records and decided to release them. Around the 2020 election, the Pennsylvania lawmaker had been in touch with President Donald Trump and powerful Trump backers, including White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and others who pushed false claims of election fraud. His communications with the executive branch, she wrote, were “proactive, persistent and protracted.” The newly available court records provide more insight into the scope of the ongoing fight over Perry’s phone, which is part of special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal investigation around January 6, 2021. In total, Howell on Friday unsealed four opinions with redactions that she wrote related to the Justice Department’s ability to access more than 2,200 records on the congressman’s cell phone, after the FBI seized the device last year. Howell also called Perry’s phone compendium a “multi-pronged push for Executive Branch officials to take more aggressive action,” likely in response to suspicions of election fraud, and deemed those cell phone records not covered by congressional protection. In another part of her rulings, Howell wrote how Perry’s communications with private individuals shouldn’t stay secret, either — including almost 700 records showing his interest in election security and electors as well as contact with Trump campaign attorneys. “What is plain is that the Clause does not shield Rep. Perry’s random musings with private individuals touting an expertise in cybersecurity or political discussions with attorneys from a presidential campaign, or with state legislators concerning hearings before them about possible local election fraud or actions they could take to challenge election results in Pennsylvania,” Howell wrote. Unsealings Friday While Howell ultimately let Perry keep about 161 of his records from investigators under the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause — a provision that shields legislators from certain law enforcement actions targeting conduct related to their legislative duties — she ordered that the 2,000 other records be given to Justice Department investigators. The inquiry is now part of special counsel Smith’s January 6 investigation. Perry has appealed her ruling, managing to keep secret all 2,000 records for almost seven months since his phone’s seizure, and the DC Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in the case on Thursday. Because some of those arguments were public, Howell released redacted versions of her opinions and orders in the case Friday night. She largely rejected Perry’s arguments for privacy, calling his approach to the case an “astonishing view of the scope of the legislative privilege” that would “truly cloak Members of Congress with a powerful dual non-disclosure and immunity shield for virtually any of their activities that could be deemed information gathering about any matter which might engage legislative attention.” 44 days The unsealed court orders also provided more insight into the search itself, and how the case came to be. After Perry’s phone was seized and copied by FBI agents on August 9, the Justice Department returned to court for a warrant to review the contents of his phone. Nine days later, Howell approved the warrant, “finding probable cause that a crime was committed” and that evidence of the crime would be found on Perry’s phone, according to the unsealed opinions. Perry had 44 days to argue to the court his Speech or Debate privileges as a member of Congress, which could protect records of legitimate legislative activity from the federal investigation. He told the court his phone contained “communications with his staff, members of Congress, and others” — then logged records on his phone, including “Notes,” by date, recipient, sender and subject matter for a judge to consider. Howell then went through those records. Perry has not been charged with a crime. Accusations of slow-walking Howell last November showed concern that Perry’s team was trying to “unilaterally delay” the criminal investigation. The court fight itself has put on hold DOJ’s ability to access the content of Perry’s phone. And, Howell accused Perry’s team of slow-walking the work on the case, as their review of the contents of the phone last fall went slowly as the litigation moved forward. His team was reviewing his phone records for possible privilege assertions at a rate of 265 documents a day, the Justice Department told the judge, while the court had ordered them to review records at a rate of 800 a day, according to one of the opinions released Friday. “If Rep. Perry has indeed significantly deviated from the pace required under the Perry Privilege Log Order, and he continues to slow-walk producing privilege logs to the government … he risks forfeiting his right to assert his privilege,” she wrote in November. “Rep. Perry is now on notice to speed up his review.” The timing of his documents review didn’t arise again in Howell’s future opinions, according to the redacted now-released court records. The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
- [What Fox News Hosts Said Privately vs. Publicly About Voter Fraud - The New York Times](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/25/what-fox-news-hosts-said-privately-vs-publicly-about-voter-fraud-the-new-york-times/) - Two days after the 2020 election, Tucker Carlson was furious. Fox News viewers were abandoning the network for Newsmax and One America News, two conservative rivals, after Fox declared that Joseph R. Biden Jr. won Arizona, a crucial swing state. In a text message with his producer, Alex Pfeiffer, Mr. Carlson appeared livid that viewers
- [Tucker Carlson Calls 2020 Election 'Sketchy' Amid Fox News Defamation Case - MSN](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/25/tucker-carlson-calls-2020-election-sketchy-amid-fox-news-defamation-case-msn/)
- [Trump investigation: Could Georgia grand juror's words tank charges? - WABE](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/24/trump-investigation-could-georgia-grand-jurors-words-tank-charges-wabe/) - Almost as soon as the foreperson of the special grand jury in the Georgia election meddling investigation went public this week, speculation began about whether her unusually candid revelations could jeopardize any possible prosecution of former President Donald Trump or others. Emily Kohrs first spoke out in an interview published Tuesday by The Associated Press, a story that was followed by interviews in other print and television news outlets. In detailed commentary, she described some of what happened behind the closed doors of the jury room — how witnesses behaved, how prosecutors interacted with them, how some invoked their constitutional right not to answer certain questions. Lawyers for Trump say the revelations offered by Kohrs shattered the credibility of the entire special grand jury investigation, though they had not filed any legal challenge based on that by late Thursday. People hoping to see the former president indicted worried on social media that Kohrs may have tanked a case against the former president. But experts said that while Kohrs’ chattiness in news interviews probably aggravated Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who’s leading the investigation, they were not legally damaging. Willis likely “wishes that this woman hadn’t gone on the worldwide tour that she did,” said Amy Lee Copeland, a former federal prosecutor and criminal defense attorney in Georgia who’s not involved in the case. “But is this a headache that is grinding the machine to a halt? It’s not. It’s just one of the many frustrations that attends the practice of law.” Trump’s attorneys in Georgia, however, are jumping on the interviews. Drew Findling and Jennifer Little, who represent Trump in the Fulton County case, said they’ve had concerns about the panel’s proceedings from the start but have kept quiet out of respect for the grand jury process. After Kohrs’ interviews, they don’t feel that restraint. “The end product is, the reliability of anything that has taken place in there is completely tainted and called into question,” Findling said. But he also said he wasn’t attacking “a 30-year-old foreperson.” “She’s a product of a circus that cloaked itself as a special purpose grand jury,” he said. As for possible legal challenges, Findling said he and Little are “resolute” as to Trump’s innocence and keeping their options open. “We’re considering everything and anything to look after the interests of our client,” he said. The special grand jury was impaneled at the request of Willis, who is investigating whether Trump and his Republican allies committed crimes as they tried to overturn his narrow 2020 election loss in the state to Democrat Joe Biden. The panel didn’t have the power to indict but instead offered recommendations for Willis, a Democrat, who will ultimately decide whether to seek charges from a regular grand jury. In the federal system, grand jurors are prohibited from talking about what witnesses say or anything that happens in the room. But the Georgia special grand jury oath says only that they cannot talk about their deliberations. Willis’ office has declined to comment on Kohrs’ media appearances, other than to say they weren’t aware ahead of time that she planned to give interviews. Spokesperson Jeff DiSantis also declined Thursday to comment on the statements from Trump’s attorneys. The former president’s lawyers expressed concern that the special grand jury had been allowed to watch and read news coverage of the case and was aware of some witnesses’ efforts not to testify. Kohrs said prosecutors told the jurors they could read and watch the news but urged them to keep open minds. Kohrs also shared numerous anecdotes from the proceedings that she found amusing and was very expressive in television interviews, sometimes laughing or making faces. “It’s not a joking matter,” Findling said. “It’s not a matter for giggles. It’s not a matter for smiles.” Findling and Little said the district attorney’s office, which advised the special grand jury, should have better educated the grand jurors about the solemnity of the process and the rules and limitations. “That tone and that rhetoric begins from the top down, and that was set by the district attorney’s office,” Little said. Trump himself criticized the process in a post on his social media network Wednesday, calling the Georgia investigation “ridiculous, a strictly political continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt of all time.” He expressed dismay at Kohrs “going around and doing a Media Tour revealing, incredibly, the Grand Jury’s inner workings & thoughts.” Though Kohrs did not publicly name anyone the special grand jury recommended for possible indictment, Trump’s lawyers said she seemed to implicate him in response to questions. They also said the judge overseeing the special grand jury could have instructed or strongly suggested that the grand jurors not speak publicly until the panel’s full final report was made public. Several parts of the report were released last week, but Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said any section that recommended specific charges for specific people would remain secret for now. During a hearing last month, a lawyer for a coalition of news outlets, including the AP, urged the immediate release of the full report. The special grand jury was dissolved Jan. 9, and Judge McBurney told the AP that he later met with grand jurors to discuss where things stood. He said he provided them with the “rules of the road” of what they were legally allowed and not allowed to discuss publicly. He said they could discuss what witnesses said and what is in the report but could not talk about deliberations because that’s what their oath said. Trump lawyer Little said she believes some of what Kohrs discussed in interviews was in fact part of deliberations, including when she talked about the credibility of some witnesses, decisions to recommend multiple indictments and the reasons why the grand jurors did not seek to bring Trump in to testify. Copeland, the former federal prosecutor and criminal defense attorney, noted that Kohrs was cautious — consulting a notebook where she’d written the judge’s instructions before answering some questions — and didn’t describe the discussion and debate that led to the special grand jury’s outcomes. “I wish she really hadn’t talked about anything,” Copeland added. “But she doesn’t talk about the deliberations. She doesn’t talk about the votes. She simply talks about other things that were happening in the grand jury session.” University of Georgia law professor emeritus Ron Carlson said that if Kohrs had revealed the names of anyone for whom the special grand jury recommended charges, it’s possible those people could try to use that as grounds to dismiss an indictment. But he wasn’t optimistic about the chances for success. “I think that any kind of motion to dismiss an indictment based on her comments would have an uphill battle,” Carlson said.
- [Colorado discipline office moves toward ethics complaint against ex-Trump attorney for ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/24/colorado-discipline-office-moves-toward-ethics-complaint-against-ex-trump-attorney-for/) - By Tierney Sneed, CNN The disciplinary office that regulates attorney conduct in Colorado is taking steps toward potentially bringing an ethics complaint against Jenna Ellis, the lawyer who played a prominent role in former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Colorado’s Attorney Regulation Counsel, an independent office in the state, indicated last week that it had been authorized to prepare and file a formal complaint against Ellis, according to a February 17 email provided to CNN by Project 65, a group of bipartisan lawyers that is asking for disciplinary action against Ellis and other pro-Trump attorneys who tried to overturn and undermine the 2020 election. “We expect the Complaint will be filed within the next month or so,” said the email, which was sent to the head of a group that asked the disciplinary office to investigate Ellis. Under Colorado attorney disciplinary rules, the office still has the option to reach a settlement or stipulation with Ellis at this point in the process, so it’s not guaranteed that an ethics complaint will ultimately be filed against her. Jessica Yates, who runs the disciplinary office, told CNN that the office cannot comment on specific cases. The email was sent to Michael Teter, the managing director of the 65 Project. Ellis did not respond to CNN’s attempts to reach her for comment. When the 65 Project asked for the ethics investigation into Ellis last March, she told CNN that she would not be “intimidated by this dirty political maneuver to undermine the legal profession.” Teter told CNN that the recent move by the disciplinary office “demonstrates the seriousness of her misconduct in her attempt to overturn the 2020 election by abusing the court system and making fraudulent, baseless allegations.” Ellis was the public face of many of Trump’s election-reversal gambits, working on Trump’s legal efforts as well as the failed bid to convince state legislatures to nullify President Joe Biden’s win. Several other Trump-aligned lawyers have faced potential professional consequences — including the possibility of suspension or disbarment — for their post-election legal conduct. However, some of the bids to discipline those attorneys have run into roadblocks. The disciplinary action that was brought against Sidney Powell, who put forward some of the most outlandish false claims about the presidential vote, was thrown out by a Texas judge on Thursday. But an attorney disciplinary committee in DC made the preliminary finding last year that former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani violated ethics rules for his work on a Trump lawsuit that tried to throw out hundreds of thousands of votes in Pennsylvania. There will be more rounds of appeal before that finding is finalized and a punishment is handed down, but the DC Bar’s disciplinary counsel has asked for Giuliani to be disbarred. And Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department lawyer who tried unsuccessfully to get the department to validate Trump’s false voter fraud claims, is also facing attorney ethics proceedings in DC. If the attorney regulation counsel in Colorado moves forward with a complaint against Ellis, and there isn’t a settlement, the matter will be go through rounds of proceedings in front of a disciplinary judge, including a potential trial-like hearing before a panel made up of the judge and two other volunteers. The decision by that panel can then be appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court. The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
- [Media outlets ask Georgia Supreme Court to release full grand jury report on Trump 2020 ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/24/media-outlets-ask-georgia-supreme-court-to-release-full-grand-jury-report-on-trump-2020/) - A coalition of media outlets is asking the Georgia Supreme Court to reconsider a decision that blocked the full release of a Fulton County special grand jury report, which includes recommendations for whether former President Donald Trump or any of his associates should face criminal charges for their efforts to undermine the 2020 election.A lower court order blocking most of the report's release "prevented the public and press from reading the full Report even though it addresses a subject of paramount public concern to this state and nation: possible wrongdoing in connection with the US Presidential election of 2020, including possible wrongdoing by the then sitting US President," the media coalition, which includes CNN, argued Friday in a court filing. Recommended for you
- [Rep. Scott Perry was 'persistent' in contacting executive branch around 2020 election, court ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/24/rep-scott-perry-was-persistent-in-contacting-executive-branch-around-2020-election-court/) - The seized cell phone of Rep. Scott Perry contained 930 records where the Pennsylvania Republican often tried to cajole executive branch officials around the 2020 presidential election, according to newly released court papers in the fight over his cell phone data."Rep. Perry's communications with Executive Branch officials, as reflected in the responsive records, demonstrate that he welcomed, rather than resisted, and indeed often initiated these communication [redacted]," Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the DC District Court wrote in one of four unsealed opinions, after she had reviewed the records and decided to release them.
- [Pursuing power with propaganda: The ties that bind Brnovich and Fox News - Arizona Mirror](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/24/pursuing-power-with-propaganda-the-ties-that-bind-brnovich-and-fox-news-arizona-mirror/) - Maybe Mark Brnovich should get a job hosting a show on Fox News. It’s clear that Arizona’s former attorney general and the propaganda channel’s premier hosts share the same instinct for lying to their followers about invented election fraud claims for purely selfish reasons. On Wednesday, the world learned that Brnovich both hid the results of his office’s thorough — and resource-intensive — investigation into the 2020 election fraud conspiracies that have become orthodoxy in the modern conservative movement. And what little he did say, in a highly unusual “interim report” released last spring, was full of half-truths and prevarications that his staff told him were wrong. Brnovich’s moves are strikingly similar to how Fox News’ top primetime hosts and company leaders behaved in the wake of the 2020 election. Their off-camera opinions were made public last week in a devastating filing by election equipment company Dominion Voting Systems as part of the firm’s defamation suit against the conservative cable outlet. GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX SUBSCRIBE Fox’s top hosts and network executives were texting each other and noting that the election conspiracy theories were entirely bogus. But while hosts like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham privately bashed the claims of ex-President Donald Trump — and those put forward by surrogates like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani — Fox’s talking heads were undeterred in presenting those lies to their viewers. And they tried to get the company’s actual journalists fired for fact-checking those lies. Fox News executives were willing to turn a blind eye to the obvious falsehoods they were airing on a daily basis — all because they were afraid that their viewer base would defect and instead change the channel to upstart rivals like Newsmax, which were fully invested in the conspiracy theories. One Fox reporter who fact-checked a false claim was told she “needed to do a better job of respecting our audience,” while CEO Suzanne Scott wrote to Lachlan Murdoch (the son of Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch) that, to maintain the “trust” of viewers, the network had to let them know “we hear them and respect them” by airing support of the Trump-fueled conspiracy theories. The idea that “respecting” people is best done by lying to them is a twisted justification for acting in a purely self-interested way. But Brnovich knew firsthand the consequences of telling the truth to a Republican electorate that has been conditioned for decades — first by right-wing talk radio, then by Fox News, and now by an entire online conservative media ecosystem that creates an alternate reality for its consumers — to believe Democrats are out to destroy America and accept any and every lie from Trump and his comrades on the right. In the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election, Brnovich went on Fox and threw cold water on the nascent election denialism movement, telling the audience that the “reality” was that Joe Biden won the election and there was no apparent evidence of any fraud that swung the election. Doing so arguably sunk his bid for the U.S. Senate months before it actually began. Brnovich had not only enraged the burgeoning “Stop the Steal” movement, but he outraged Trump, who took any and every opportunity to savage him both before and after he jumped into the Senate race. Back then, Brnovich was a straight-shooter who wasn’t shy about challenging the status quo within his own party. But he abandoned all of that in a quixotic attempt to win the love of the MAGA faithful who were essential to winning an election. He pivoted hard to questioning the election to curry favor with Republicans, but only in vague terms and with no commitment that he would do the “perp walks” demanded by misinformation vectors like state Sen. Wendy Rogers and then Rep. Mark Finchem. Along the way, he advanced widely debunked conspiracy theories, spread fear about elections that undercut faith in our democratic process and hid the results of an investigation by his own office, which found there was no proof — not a single shred — that 2020 was affected by fraud of any kind. But Brnovich couldn’t go full Big Lie. The only major candidate in the race who didn’t offer a full-throated endorsement of the “2020 was rigged” conspiracy, GOP voters rejected him for it. Telling the truth to Arizonans, and to America, about the 2020 election wouldn’t have changed Bronvich’s fate in 2022. But it would have been significant to have the state’s top law enforcement officer tell people the truth they need to hear, even if they disregard it: Our elections are safe, secure and reflect the will of voters. Instead, Brnovich showed that he cared more about pandering to the anti-American forces that dominate his party in his raw pursuit of political power. He’ll fit in perfectly on Fox News. SUPPORT NEWS YOU TRUST. DONATE
- [Trump Ally Scores a Victory in 2020 Election Fight - Newsweek](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/24/trump-ally-scores-a-victory-in-2020-election-fight-newsweek/) - Sidney Powell, an ally of former President Donald Trump, recently secured a victory in the fight against the results of the 2020 presidential election.On Wednesday, Texas' 471st District Court Judge Andrea Bouressa dismissed a petition filed by the State Bar of Texas' Commission for Lawyer Discipline accusing Powell of misconduct and violating ethics following her attempts and legal work to have the results of the 2020 election overturned.In her decision, Bouressa said that the Commission for Lawyer Discipline had "numerous defects" in its exhibit filings against Powell."The court did not consider any document identified by the Commission that the Commission failed to cite or attach. Similarly, the Court did not consider any document attached by the Commission that the Commission failed to cite or identify," the judge wrote in the decision.The decision this week comes after the Commission for Lawyer Discipline first filed the petition against Powell last March. In its petition, the commission cited several lawsuits that Powell filed following the 2020 presidential election, claiming election fraud. Sidney Powell, a former attorney for President Donald Trump, concludes a news conference at the Republican National Committee on lawsuits regarding the outcome of the 2020 presidential election on November 19, 2020. This week, a judge in Texas dismissed a petition filed against Powell by the State Bar of Texas' Commission for Lawyer Discipline. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty "Respondent had no reasonable basis to believe the lawsuits she filed were not frivolous," the petition said.The petition went on to cite different disciplinary rules that Powell had allegedly violated, including one that stated: "A lawyer shall not bring or defend a proceeding, or assert or controvert an issue therein, unless the lawyer reasonably believes that there is a basis for doing so that is not frivolous."Following the decision, Powell told Newsweek that "the Bar had a year, all the depositions it wanted, more than 55,000 pages of discovery, and it had NO evidence I violated any rule. It's a good day for the Rule of Law thanks to a smart, hardworking, courageous judge who did not let political pressure or the press control her decision—despite their best efforts to do so."The state bar's chief disciplinary counsel's office also told Newsweek in a statement that it is currently reviewing the decision. "We will be meeting with the Commission for Lawyer Discipline to discuss what our next steps in this case will be," the counsel's office told Newsweek.Rudy Giuliani, who previously served as an attorney for Trump, has also faced disciplinary hearings by the Washington, D.C., Bar's disciplinary office, following his efforts to help Trump allegedly overturn the 2020 election results.
- [Brnovich faces 8 Bar complaints over his handling of 2020 election investigation - AZCentral](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/24/brnovich-faces-8-bar-complaints-over-his-handling-of-2020-election-investigation-azcentral/)
- [Judge rejects media outlet requests to unseal Trump Jan. 6 probe documents - NBC News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/24/judge-rejects-media-outlet-requests-to-unseal-trump-jan-6-probe-documents-nbc-news/) - A federal judge in Washington on Thursday denied a request from news outlets to release court records related to former President Donald Trump's efforts to stop ex-aides from testifying before a grand jury about efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.The New York Times and Politico had asked the judge in October to release documents related to the scope of Trump's efforts to stop former aides from testifying about their communications with him. The outlets had argued the public interest in the grand jury investigation outweighed the need for secrecy, but the Justice Department opposed their bid to unseal the court filings amid its ongoing investigation into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell wrote in her 32-page opinion that the filings the media outlets had requested were central to the grand jury’s ongoing investigation and that legal precedent forbade their release “at least for now and perhaps forever.”"The pending matter highlights the tension that lies between the important policies underlying grand jury secrecy ... and 'the always strong presumption in favor of public access to judicial proceedings,'" Howell wrote.Special counsel Jack Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November to oversee the criminal investigation into efforts to interfere with the results of the 2020 election, and claims of executive privilege have become a key issue in the probe. The investigation is multi-pronged, looking into the creation of alternative slates of pro-Trump electors who could be used to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential victory as well as the events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Former Vice President Mike Pence has recently been subpoenaed by the special counsel, and lawyers for Trump are expected to fight Pence's subpoena on executive privilege grounds.Several ex-Trump White House aides have also been subpoenaed in the probe, including Pat Cipollone, the former White House counsel, and Marc Short, Pence’s chief of staff, who appeared before the federal grand jury in July — the highest-ranking former administration official known to have testified in the case. Short and Greg Jacob, Pence’s counsel, were with the then-vice president at the U.S. Capitol on the day it was attacked by Trump supporters, and later testified before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, as did Cipollone. The news organizations had specifically sought materials related to two grand jury subpoenas for testimony and to Howell’s decision-making on the scope of Trump’s executive privilege, among other documents.The Justice Department has opposed the release of sealed documents, arguing that the government had not confirmed the existence of the probe when proceedings began and that parties and witnesses had not publicly acknowledged the grand jury proceedings.Both news outlets indicated they might appeal Howell's ruling. Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokesperson for the Times, said in a statement that the outlet is "disappointed" in the ruling. "We will make a decision about whether to pursue further legal steps once we’ve had time to process the opinion that sets forth the rationale for the decision," she said. In a statement, Politico spokesperson Brad Dayspring said the news outlet is "committed to the principle that a government of, for and by the people is transparent with the people on such an important matter. We are reviewing the decision and evaluating next steps.”
- [Arizona GOP legislators continue to give oxygen to disproven election conspiracies](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/24/arizona-gop-legislators-continue-to-give-oxygen-to-disproven-election-conspiracies/) - Arizona legislative Republicans are continuing their parade of ever-more dubious election conspiracy theorists spreading unproven claims in legislative hearings, even after a report from the Republican former Attorney General’s office showed that all of the 2020 election fraud theories it investigated were baseless. Since early January, the Republican-controlled elections committees in both the state House of Representatives and Senate, headed by Rep. Jacqueline Parker of Mesa and Sen. Wendy Rogers of Flagstaff, respectively, have forwarded a slew of election reform bills that would make using any kind of technology to vote illegal, force hand counts of all ballots, severely restrict voting by mail and early voting, and dump everyone from the voters rolls once per decade, among many other proposed changes to the state’s election system. But in addition to approving sometimes conflicting election bills, the committees have also sought to legitimize numerous election conspiracy theorists and purveyors of the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump by scheduling time for them to brief lawmakers on their election theories. GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX SUBSCRIBE In perhaps the most bizarre presentation given to the committee so far this year, Gilbert insurance agent Jacqueline Breger accused Gov. Katie Hobbs, several of the Maricopa County Supervisors, 12 Maricopa County Superior Court judges and the mayor of Mesa of taking bribes from the Sinaloa drug cartel in the form of money laundered through a housing deed scam. She also accused the legislators themselves of being on the take. She said in her Feb. 23 presentation to a joint meeting of the House and Senate elections committees that the bribery scheme also included election fraud in Maricopa County. Breger did not provide any evidence to back up her claims, except to point to a book soon to be released by John Thaler, a Valley attorney and her boyfriend. During the committee meeting, Breger repeatedly mentioned a woman who had tipped Thaler off to the supposed racketeering scheme, but she failed to mention that woman was Thaler’s ex-wife, who he claims kidnapped their son. At one point during Breger’s presentation, Republican Sen. Ken Bennett of Prescott told her that she had gone too far, and Rogers added that Breger needed to stay on the topic of the election. Breger told the committee that Thaler had delivered his findings about the alleged bribery to then-Gov. Doug Ducey in May 2022. If Ducey received that information, he and his administration did not act on it. Jacquline Breger accuses multiple state and local officials of being in the pocket of the Sinaloa drug cartel during a meeting of the Arizona State Senate and House elections committees on Feb. 23. Screenshot via Arizona Legislature/azleg.gov Breger also failed to mention that Thaler had filed multiple suits against his ex, as well as multiple city of Mesa officials and that in those suits he accused the city officials of being involved in racketeering, taking bribes and election fraud. A judge dismissed all the claims that Thaler made in the suits in the U.S. District Court of Arizona, according to court documents. “Mr. Thaler’s complaint weaves a delusional and fantastical narrative that does not comport with federal pleading standards,” the court said in one of its rulings. Lawsuits he’s filed in state courts have also been rejected for similar reasons. Breger was invited to speak before the committee by Chandler Republican Rep. Liz Harris, a QAnon promoter who runs a website devoted to baseless 2020 election fraud conspiracies. At the end of Breger’s presentation, both rogers and Rep. Rachel Jones, R-Tucson, called Breger brave for what she had shared. But Bennett told the Arizona Mirror that he felt the people that Breger accused of committing crimes should have gotten a chance to defend themselves, instead of being called out during a public meeting. “We were hearing a whole bunch of information about a whole bunch of illegal stuff when we were supposed to be talking about elections,” Bennett said. “It felt very disconnected from what the meeting was supposed to be about.” Breger’s presentation came just a day after Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes released documents showing that her Republican predecessor had devoted 60 staffers and 10,000 hours to investigating the 2020 election, but had found no evidence of fraud. Many of those claims stemmed from the Arizona Senate’s partisan “audit” of the 2020 election, which was helmed by Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based company led by a Donald Trump-loving election conspiracy theorist. “In each instance, the information provided by [Cyber Ninjas] was inaccurate and false,” investigators concluded. The Attorney General’s Office disproved claims that hundreds of dead people voted in the 2020 election, that thousands of illegal votes were added to the totals and that people who weren’t registered voted in the election. Out of 638 complaints, which generated 430 investigations, just 22 cases were submitted to be reviewed by prosecutors, and only two so far have resulted in convictions. Both of those were men who failed to list their felon status on their voter registration and voted in the 2020 election while they were inmates in the Pima County jail. Democratic members of the elections committees, who had thus far participated in the committees’ regular meetings, refused to take part in the full-day of election conspiracy theory presentations that the committee heard Feb. 23. “The House Democratic members of the Municipal Oversight and Elections Committee will not attend today’s seven-hour circus of debunked election conspiracies,” the House Democrats said in a Feb. 23 statement. “We were given less than 24 hours’ notice and not consulted on the list of speakers or topics. If we had been, we would have suggested the Committee instead examine the stunning report released Wednesday by Attorney General Kris Mayes that showed in exhaustive detail how her Republican predecessor’s attorneys spent more than 10,000 hours investigating claims of fraud in the 2020 election and found nothing.” In addition to Breger’s presentation, the committees also heard from several so-called election “experts” that seemed unfamiliar with the specifics of Arizona election law. John Mills, a retired U.S. Army colonel who previously worked in cybersecurity for the Secretary of Defense, told the committee that Arizona should move to all paper ballots. All Arizona voters already use paper ballots, unless they have a disability and need to use a special device. Mills also claimed that allowing people to register to vote when they get a new driver’s license is a problem, because you don’t have to prove your citizenship to get a driver’s license. But in Arizona, people are required to prove their legal status in the country to get a driver’s license, and those who don’t submit proof of citizenship are only allowed to vote in federal elections. Also testifying before the committees was Seth Keshel, one of the originators of the Big Lie. Keshel, a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst, shared his theory that something was off about the 2020 presidential election in Arizona because hundreds of thousands more Democrats than he expected voted in that election. Keshel’s theory is based on voting trends in Arizona over the past 75 years, during most of which the state was solidly red. But suspicion that too many Democrats turned out in that election to be plausible ignores the fervor ahead of the election that drew large numbers of both Republicans and Democrats to the voting booths that year, with record turnouts, as well as the changing demographics of Arizona. Democrats on the legislature’s elections committees weren’t the only ones with criticisms for the committee and its continued fealty to election conspiracies. “That hearing was an embarrassment and a waste of time,” Josselyn Berry, a spokesperson for the Governor’s Office, told the Arizona Mirror. “We would love to see them expend the same amount of energy to real issues rooted in reality, like our water crisis or affordable housing issue. The Governor is focused on delivering real results for Arizonans. She didn’t waste a single minute of her day on that committee hearing and isn’t going to waste one now by responding to the latest baseless conspiracy theory.” ***UPDATE: This story was updated to include comments from Sen. Ken Bennett. SUPPORT NEWS YOU TRUST. DONATE
- [Kentucky removes over 150000 dead voters from voting rolls as 'top priority' - FOX 17](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/24/kentucky-removes-over-150000-dead-voters-from-voting-rolls-as-top-priority-fox-17/)
- [Biden Decision in Apple Watch Patent Dispute Could Benefit His Megadonor - Sludge](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/24/biden-decision-in-apple-watch-patent-dispute-could-benefit-his-megadonor-sludge/) - In upholding a federal agency’s ruling in a dispute between Apple and medical device company AliveCor, President Biden has also boosted the patent case of one of his 2020 campaign’s largest donors and fundraisers. The megadonor is Joe Kiani, founder and CEO of medical technology company Masimo, which like AliveCor is battling Apple over patents underlying sensor features of the Apple Watch. Kiani and his company have donated millions of dollars to pro-Biden super PACs and the Biden Inaugural Committee, as well as hosting in-person and online fundraisers for Biden as a presidential candidate. This week, Silicon Valley startup AliveCor announced that the Biden administration informed it that it had decided not to veto a U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) ruling from December that Apple Watch devices’ electrocardiogram (ECG) function infringes on its patents. The ITC ruling concluded that imports of Apple Watches with the ECG feature should be banned, among other remediation, but it also stated that enforcement of an import ban import should be held off while AliveCor’s patents were being reviewed by a separate agency, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Presidential vetoes of ITC rulings are a rare occurrence, although President Obama did step in in 2013 to veto a ban on iPhones and other Apple products after an ITC decision in a patent battle with Samsung. Apple says it plans to appeal the ITC ruling. In siding with AliveCor, President Biden is keeping alive the possibility of an Apple Watch import ban, which is precisely what Kiani’s company is seeking in a separate suit. Masimo has launched similar patent challenges against versions of Apple Watches, seeking to have their importation to the U.S. banned. Masimo first sued Apple in 2020, and filed an ITC complaint in 2021, over what it argued was infringement of five pulse oximeter patents used for sensing blood oxygen levels. Last month, an ITC judge ruled that one of Masimo’s patents had been infringed by Apple in the devices, setting up the case for a full commission review. Masimo hailed the ruling as a win for intellectual property rights, and Kiani made a CNBC appearance to tout his company’s case against the tech giant. A decision in that case on whether to ban certain Apple Watch imports is expected from the ITC in May. Masimo has requested that an import ban on infringing Apple Watches go into effect, which was supported by the initial ruling from ITC administrative law Judge Monica Bhattacharyya. The appeals process in the two cases is expected to take more than a year, and the AliveCor dispute will also wend its way through the Patent Office’s Trial and Appeal Board. Tech industry observers at The Verge suggested that the case could result in hefty licensing fees from Apple for AliveCor and Masimo over the technologies. Bloomberg Law estimated that annual royalties of up to $300 million a year could be on the table for Masimo. Biden Fundraiser Host At a crucial point in the 2020 presidential nomination contest, Joe Kiani and his wife Sarah Kiani stepped up as major fundraisers supporting Biden’s campaign. The businessman Kiani already had a relationship with the former vice president: in 2017, the Masimo Foundation was listed as a $1 million donor to the Biden Foundation. The following year, Biden recognized Kiani as “one of his closest friends” in remarks given at a health care conference on the search for a cure for cancer. The foundation, which supported programs in areas like gay rights and college affordability, and in so doing provided salaries to some in Biden’s orbit of political staffers, was shuttered as Biden readied to enter the presidential race. Kiani, whose fortune is estimated by Forbes to be $1.2 billion, contributed $1 million to the pro-Biden super PAC Unite the Country during the 2020 election cycle: $250,000 in December 2019 and $750,000 in January 2020, just a few weeks before the Iowa caucus. In giving at least $1 million to the lobbyist-led super PAC supporting Biden’s bid for the White House, Kiani vaulted himself into the company of an elite group of Biden megadonors including Karla Jurvetson, Reid Hoffman, Michael Bloomberg, and investment banker Richard C. Blum, husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein. During the pivotal month of January in the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, the Kianis hosted a fundraiser for Biden at their Irvine, California home. At a time when candidates were still neck-and-neck in polls, the fundraiser was led by Rep. Lou Correa (D-Calif.) of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition, a caucus whose legislative actions often align with their big business donors. The event’s co-hosts also included former Sen. Barbara Boxer, who had just joined a lobbying firm, and Bilal Muhsin, COO of Masimo and previously the company’s executive vice president of engineering, marketing, and regulatory affairs. The million-dollar contribution to the Biden outside spending group was by far Kiani’s largest ever political donation. In the 2016 and 2018 cycles, Joe and Sarah Kiani’s donations to federal candidates for office totaled a bit above $465,00 and $362,000, according to FEC data. But in the 2020 cycle, the Kianis’ political donations total leapt to more than $3.8 million, with hundreds of thousands of dollars combined given to the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), and state Democratic parties, in addition to the donations backing Biden. After Biden clinched the 2020 nomination, Kiani made further large donations to pro-Biden groups, including $725,000 to the joint fundraising committee Biden Victory Fund and $500,000 to super PAC Priorities USA Action. In April 2020, Kiani hosted a virtual fundraiser for Biden, according to an invitation posted on Twitter. A few days before the 2020 election, the Biden campaign included Kiani on a list of 820 bundlers who had raised at least $100,000 for the campaign. Craig Reynolds, a medical device executive and member of Masimo’s board of directors, also made donations to support Biden’s bid for the White House, giving $25,000 to the pro-Biden super PAC Unite the Country in January 2020 and $120,000 to the Biden Victory Fund joint fundraising committee in August and September 2020. While the new Biden administration did not initially release a list of its inaugural sponsors, an FEC disclosure released in April 2021 shows that the Masimo Corporation gave $1 million to the Biden Inaugural Committee. In September 2021, Kiani was named one of 30 members of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, an outside body that makes science and technology recommendations to the White House. The appointment—and Masimo being awarded nearly $3 million in federal contracts—drew fire from House Republicans on the Committee on Oversight and Reform. In the 2022 midterms, the Kianis donated nearly $1.5 million to recipients including the DNC, the DCCC, and a joint fundraising committee led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi that received $250,000. Masimo’s lobbying at the federal level has been on the rise over the past few years, topping $440,000 in 2022 and touching on issues of patent reform and “anti-competitive behavior in the medical device supply chain,” among other health care topics. A Masimo spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on Kiani’s large donations behind Biden’s presidential run and the administration’s upholding of the ruling in the Apple Watch case. Real quick… We’re one of the only outlets with a dogged focus on following the money, but we need your help to keep going. Please become a member to help sustain Sludge’s work. We’re independent, ad-free, and reader-supported, so we count on your small donations. Please join Sludge as a $5-a-month member today. Read more:
- [Guardrails Are Needed to Help Protect the Integrity of the Post-Election Presidency](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/24/guardrails-are-needed-to-help-protect-the-integrity-of-the-post-election-presidency/) - Revelations of presidential initiatives to undermine the result of the 2020 election are worrisome because this could happen again, absent clear and immediate restrictions to prevent the risks to national security and proper order associated with this type of behavior in the post-election period. Perhaps the need for such guardrails was never anticipated and reliance on the presence of individuals of high character in positions of authority was good enough. Sadly, it’s not any more.The type of behavior that must be prevented is characterized by the efforts made in the 2020 post-election period to appoint a compliant acting attorney general. If successful, this would have facilitated the attempt to undermine the result of the presidential election. Absent the integrity of key officials at the Justice Department, the appointment and its consequences might have been achieved. It is also of note that acting officials were appointed at other executive branch agencies with critical national security missions, such as the Defense Department, who were similarly positioned to take consequential actions if they were to have succumbed to inappropriate presidential direction and pressure.Steps to address this predicament should include the institution of new restrictions that would prevent an aggrieved lame duck president from hijacking the function of the executive branch. This includes, but is not limited to, forestalling the appointment of officials to do the president’s will at the expense of the safety and security of the nation. These prohibitions would become effective from the date of the presidential election through either the date of Electoral College certification (in the case of certification of a second term) or Inauguration Day (when there is a change in administration).In effect, a reelected president would simply have slightly more than a one-month pause in certain activities. A lame duck president would be stopped from that point until the end of his or her term. An incumbent president who is not running for reelection would be exempt from these prohibitions.Prohibited actions would include the following: Political appointments; Changes to succession plans; Political to career conversions; and, Issuance of presidential directives, executive orders or other forms of communications requiring actions related to the election. Additional actions should be identified and considered “conditionally prohibited actions” that could be taken only with congressional or Senate approval.Further, to eliminate the possibility of circumventing the prohibition on political appointments in the post-election period, the tenure of previously appointed acting political officials would end on Election Day. During the period of prohibition, responsibilities associated with emerging vacant positions would be handled by following untampered normal succession plans or assignment to appropriate career officials, similar to protocols followed in presidential transitions.Since the January 6th Committee issued its report, many commentators have referenced the Vacancies Act as ripe for revision. Along with the Presidential Transition Act, these acts would be logical and efficient vehicles for achieving the needed reforms.There would likely be resistance to instituting even these limited, temporary constraints. However, it is not without precedent to sacrifice a measure of efficiency to prevent political abuse. Federal officials operate under extensive laws that protect the integrity of functions that have historically been subject to unscrupulous political influence, such as hiring and procurement. The commonsense prohibitions suggested above are demonstrably justified by considering what they would have prevented had they been in place prior to the 2020 presidential election.The January 6th Committee did outstanding work in many respects, but its final report was light on recommendations—only three pages out of an 845-page report and very little that was expressly preventative. Adding non-partisan, good government recommendations like those suggested here can build on the committee’s work and help to safeguard the presidency and the country in the future. Let’s hope there are advocates for doing so.Linda M. Springer is a former director of the Office of Personnel Management and a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
- [Yet Another Election Denier Needs To Be Held to Account - The Bulwark](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/24/yet-another-election-denier-needs-to-be-held-to-account-the-bulwark/) - Before this week, former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich was best known as the named party in a 2020 Supreme Court voting rights decision. On Wednesday, however, the Washington Post revealed that there will be another entry on his Wikipedia page: He was for election denialism before he was against it. Here’s what happened. While running for the Republican Senate nomination in 2022, Brnovich had his office spend 10,000 hours investigating claims of fraud and supposed 2020 election irregularities in Maricopa County. Brnovich systematically misrepresented what his investigators found. And then he compounded the misrepresentations by hiding their findings. Plainly, he did so because his office’s findings disproved the election denialist claims that he was running on in his (failed) Senate primary campaign against Blake Masters. In April 2022, for example, one month after the investigators concluded that “virtually all claims of error and malfeasance” in the county’s electoral system were unfounded,” Brnovich issued an “interim report” saying his office had uncovered “serious vulnerabilities.” Such Alice-in-Wonderland logic is as serious a danger to democracy as election denialism itself, especially when the cover-up is carried out by a state’s chief law enforcement official. Brnovich also raised suspicions by writing that Maricopa County had not always timely and fully responded to his office’s requests for records. This was contrary to, as the Post reported, the “collective opinion of . . . investigators” in Brnovich’s office that Maricopa County “was cooperative and responsive to our requests.” Brnovich clearly understood that if his office was seen as disproving the stolen election lie, then his campaign would be DOA. He chose dishonor. And in the end, he got defeat too. Yet even after his cover up was disclosed, all Brnovich said was that he is “proud of the work” his office did. “We did our due diligence to run all complaints to ground. . . . Where we were able to debunk rumors and conspiracies, we did so.” Which sounds reasonable until it’s reported that after his employees debunked the rumors and conspiracies, Brnovich hid their work from the public. Arizona’s new Attorney General Kris Mayes took an important step when she released the evidence that her predecessor concealed so that the people would know the truth. But more needs to be done to hold Brnovich accountable. From 2020 to the present, Arizona has been a hotbed of election denialism, not just by ordinary citizens and media figures, but by major party political candidates. This conspiracy-mongering has corroded public trust. We now know that Brnovich bears some share of responsibility for this corrosion as well. Here are his investigators’ findings that, according to the Post, he never shared with the public: The office found an “absence of any basis for claims of systematic fraud.” Notwithstanding allegations of massive voting by “dead people,” the attorney general’s office found only a single—one—instance where a vote had been cast in the name of someone who was deceased. “No improper Election Procedures were discovered during the Signature Verification review.” The Post also notes that “it was only in the final days before the November 2022 midterm election, several months after Brnovich had lost his Senate primary, that he began to denounce politicians who continued to propound the Big Lie, calling them ‘clowns’ engaged in a ‘giant grift.’” Which is true. But it is also true that when Brnovich was running for office, he was part of it. For this, there should be consequences. Arizona bar legal authorities should investigate and determine whether he should keep his license to practice law. It appears that bar authorities in New York, D.C., and California are moving to bring accountability to Trump lawyers such as Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark. State bar rules of professional responsibility expose any lawyer who engages in dishonest conduct to discipline, including suspension or disbarment. Brnovich should face the same consequences so that in the future, lawyers whom the people choose to serve them will understand that they do not have the option of serving themselves by hiding politically unpalatable findings. The public trust that is invested in our elected officials is democracy’s most sacred asset. An assault upon it ought never be tolerated or ignored. As Thomas Jefferson once put it, such abuse is the “rock on which good governments, and the people’s rights, have been so often wrecked.” Accountability is the antidote to ensure their future.
- [Judge rejected Perry's bid to shield thousands of emails from Jan. 6 investigators - Politico](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/24/judge-rejected-perrys-bid-to-shield-thousands-of-emails-from-jan-6-investigators-politico/) - Rep. Scott Perry, a Republican lawmaker from Pennsylvania, had urged Howell to block the Justice Department from accessing 2,219 documents stored on his phone. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images The chief judge of the federal district court in Washington, D.C., secretly rejected Rep. Scott Perry’s bid to shield more than 2,000 messages relevant to Justice Department investigators probing efforts by Donald Trump to subvert the 2020 election, according to newly unsealed court filings. U.S. District Court Chief Judge Beryl Howell unsealed her extraordinary Dec. 28 decision on Friday evening, determining that the “powerful public interest” in seeing the previously secret opinion outweighed the need for continued secrecy. Perry, a Republican lawmaker from Pennsylvania, had urged Howell to block the Justice Department from accessing 2,219 documents stored on his phone, which was seized and imaged by the FBI last August as part of the 2020 election investigation. He claimed that the records reflected his efforts to research potential legislative decisions — like whether to vote to challenge election results on Jan. 6, 2021 — and therefore should be protected from disclosure by the Constitution’s speech or debate clause, a provision meant to safeguard lawmakers from pressure or intimidation by the executive branch. But Howell said Perry had taken an “astonishing view” of his immunity that would effectively put members of Congress above the law and free of political consequences for their actions. She ordered him to disclose 2,055 of the documents he sought to withhold — including all 960 of his contacts with members of the executive branch, which she said are entitled to no constitutional protection at all. Some 161 items, she said, were proper to withhold. “What is plain is the clause does not shield Rep. Perry’s random musings with private individuals touting an expertise in cybersecurity or political discussions with attorneys from a presidential campaign, or with state legislators concerning hearings before them about possible local election fraud or actions they could take to challenge election results in Pennsylvania,” Howell wrote in her 51-page December opinion. Investigators have long scrutinized Perry’s contacts with Trump, as well as with Jeff Clark, a top Justice Department aide who Perry pushed Trump to install as attorney general in the waning weeks of his administration. Clark was seen by Trump and his allies as sympathetic to his bid to overturn the 2020 election results. The Jan. 6 select committee subpoenaed Perry to testify about his efforts but he refused to appear before the panel. Prosecutors homed in on Perry last year, seeking his contacts with top figures connected to Trump, including Clark and attorney John Eastman, an architect of Trump’s last-ditch bid to remain in power despite losing reelection. And in August, Perry’s phone was seized by FBI agents while he was traveling with family. Thus far, however, investigators have not had access to any of the records because, last month, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to stay Howell’s ruling. On Thursday, those judges heard both public and private arguments about the dispute. The stay remains in place as the appeals court considers whether to leave Howell’s ruling in place, set it aside or modify it in some way. The judges — Karen Henderson, Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao — appeared skeptical of the Justice Department’s position and the breadth of Howell’s ruling, although they discussed her stance only in broad strokes and the details of her opinions remained under seal until Friday. But the appeals panel’s ultimate leanings remained unclear at the conclusion of the public argument session Thursday. The appeals judges seemed most concerned by Howell’s determination that Perry’s outreach about Jan. 6 was not protected by the speech or debate clause because he was not acting with formal House approval. That determination was a centerpiece of Howell’s ruling, which she said was rooted in longstanding precedent. “No matter the vigor with which Rep. Perry pursued his wide-ranging interest in bolstering his belief that the results of the 2020 election were somehow incorrect — even in the face of his own reelection — his informal inquiries into the legitimacy of those election results are closer to the activities described as purely personal or political,” Howell said. Perry’s communications with the White House and the Justice Department appear to be at the center of one of the investigations now being headed by special counsel Jack Smith, who has been probing the pressure put on DOJ officials to express public concern about unsubstantiated election fraud claims in the 2020 election. That pressure culminated in an effort to have Trump dismiss acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and install Clark, then the assistant attorney general for environment and natural resources, as acting attorney general. However, after almost every senior Justice Department official threatened to resign, Trump abandoned the plan. Howell, an appointee of President Barack Obama, said Perry’s claim that his communications with the executive branch should be off limits to investigators to protect legislative branch confidentiality made little sense. “The entire premise of Rep. Perry’s claim for privilege over these communications would turn the Clause’s foundational purpose on its head,” wrote Howell, who is set to turn over the chief judge’s position to a colleague next month. “Given the Clause’s purpose to protect Congressional members from untoward interference from the Executive Branch with legislative matters, Rep. Perry’s reliance on the Clause to shield his multi-pronged push for Executive Branch officials to take more aggressive action is not only ironic but also must fail as beyond the scope of the Clause.” The dispute over access to Perry’s cell phone has drawn the House itself into the fray. Lawyers for Speaker Kevin McCarthy — authorized by a bipartisan vote of House leaders — weighed in earlier this month with a 6,000-word brief that remains sealed. Howell noted in her unsealed filings Friday that the chamber weighed in “at Perry’s request.” Howell also dinged Perry for what she described in another unsealed filing — this one in November— for appearing to “slow-walk” his review of the items on some 10,000 documents contained on the phone FBI agents seized. She ordered him to pick up the pace of his review from about 250 documents per day to 800. The three-judge appeals court panel decision on Perry’s bid for speech-or-debate protection for his communications may not be the final word. Either the Justice Department or Perry could ask the full bench of the D.C. Circuit to take up the issue or seek to get the Supreme Court to intervene. What documents would be protected — and what wouldn’t be Howell analyzed batches of documents that Perry sought to withhold and broke them down into categories: — Contacts with members of Congress and aides about legislation and votes would be protected from review by investigators, since they’re integral to his legislative responsibilities. — Communications with colleagues and staff about internal House Freedom Caucus business would also be protected, since it’s a group of lawmakers focused on the House agenda. — Internal House GOP leadership newsletters would not be protected, Howell said, because they were almost entirely political in nature, offering talking points or describing upcoming events, not things central to the legislative process. — Communications about Perry’s press coverage or media strategy are not protected, Howell determined, because they’re primarily political. — Contacts with fellow members of Congress and aides about 2020 election fraud and legal challenges to the vote are not protected because they’re “purely political,” Howell ruled.
- [Tucker Carlson says the “sketchy” 2020 election has led to a tenuous legitimacy of American ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/24/tucker-carlson-says-the-sketchy-2020-election-has-led-to-a-tenuous-legitimacy-of-american/) - Citation From the February 24, 2023, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): It is galling to be lectured about democracy by a man who took power in an election so sketchy that many Americans don't believe it was even real. Joe Biden has never had the majority of American support for a single day of the Ukraine war. In fact, Joe Biden is far less popular in the United States than Vladimir Putin is in Russia. That is not an endorsement of Putin -- it's just true. And it says everything about Joe Biden's tenuous legitimacy. Democracy? Please. We're adults. Stop lying to us.
- [We don't owe field officers used for 2020 elections – EC - GhanaWeb](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/24/we-dont-owe-field-officers-used-for-2020-elections-ec-ghanaweb/)
- [Classic Downtown Louisville restaurant closes - Boulder Daily Camera](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/24/classic-downtown-louisville-restaurant-closes-boulder-daily-camera/) - Old Town Louisville’s skyline will change as the sign for The Empire Lounge and Restaurant comes down after nearly 15 years in business.The Empire announced on social media that the restaurant will close and its last day would be Saturday. Jim Cohen and his daughter, Lexi Scott, opened The Empire in 2008, and Jeff Osaka became a partial owner in 2019 with Ken Wolf. Osaka stepped away from the business partnership in late 2022, and a local chef was going to partner with Wolf. However, Osaka said that “the cards were already dealt against them” as keeping the restaurant running was tough. The Empire Lounge, which opened its doors in Downtown Louisville in 2008, is closing on Saturday. (Cliff Grassmick/Staff Photographer) “I was only in charge for a few years, but The Empire has a soft spot in my heart. You know, I love Louisville,” Osaka said. The Empire served “elevated American classics,” according to front of house manager Emma Hempen, who has been working at the restaurant for more than a year. Hempen said that The Empire is like eating at a nice American diner in New York during the 1980s. The restaurant had American classics, from a steak and frites meal to a traditional Coloradan Coors Light beer. Osaka described the restaurant as “Americana” and the go-to place for many Louisville residents. Osaka said that he has been receiving many messages from Louisville residents saying that they will miss The Empire. He said that The Empire hosted many graduation parties, bridal showers and other celebrations and the restaurant will live on in those happy memories. He added that he has even received messages from people who no longer live in the area, thanking the restaurant for their happy moments and saying goodbye. Hempen said that since the closure announcement, many residents have been coming in to get their last moment in the restaurant. She also said that the approximately 25 staff members are keeping their heads up despite the closure. “We’re in a place where we are sad, but really proud of the work that we did,” Hempen said. Hempen said that she watched the restaurant go “from a very dark place to a brighter place,” through surviving pandemic lockdowns and a temporary closure due to the Marshall Fire. Osaka said that maintaining the restaurant became difficult after the two events. Hempen said that despite the restaurants best efforts, business became unpredictable during the COVID-19 pandemic. Osaka said that the restaurant had to close for a few months because of the pandemic but slowly reopened following city-mandated, social-distancing restrictions. He said that business was good once restrictions were being lifted slowly and 2021 was a good year. However, The Empire had to close for almost two weeks due to the Marshall Fire. Osaka said that any business that had to use water had to close as the city had to make sure the water was not contaminated after the fire. Osaka said that the restaurant still had a lot of food in the restaurant during that closure and did not want it to go to waste, so the restaurant had a soup kitchen. The Empire gave out soups, stews and bread for fire survivors and the community. He said that while the closure hurt the restaurant, The Empire staff were happy to help the community. Osaka said that the restaurant being dealt those blows took its toll. He also said that The Empire is one of the largest restaurant’s in Louisville at 5,000 square feet with a huge basement as well. He said that the big space meant a lot of moving parts. Hempen said that recently there was a silent disco dance party at The Empire that she really enjoyed. She said that the party gave staff headphones to join in on the silent disco. She said that the staff was able to get together and dance their hearts out one last time. “Anytime, that we as the staff, were able to spend time with each other was super, super special,” Hempen said. Osaka said that Saturday evening, he will thank all the staff for their hard work and turn off the lights one last time at The Empire Lounge and Restaurant.
- [#SayTheirNames. Three years after Breonna Taylor, what has Kentucky learned? | Opinion](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/24/saytheirnames-three-years-after-breonna-taylor-what-has-kentucky-learned-opinion/) - Linda BlackfordFebruary 24, 2023, 8:28 AMEvery second Saturday, poet and activist Hannah Drake stands on the muddy banks of the Ohio River under the columns of Interstate 64 and recites people’s names.Aggie and Dan and Maria and Sam are just a few of the enslaved people who lived and worked in bondage in Louisville just across the broad river from freedom, people hidden, forgotten and unknown.“Slavery is the story of America,” Drake said. “It’s the story of America that we don’t want to talk about.”The names that Drake and her partner, Josh Miller, at the nonprofit Ideas xLab have found, are emblazoned on the two benches that overlook the Ohio, harnessed to the ground with the kind of chains used to bind humans together as they made their way to the slave market at Second and Main. Cement footsteps point toward Indiana, with loose buttons, which the enslaved would leave behind at markets as a reminder.Before this small corner of riverbank was a reality, Drake wrote the poem “Finding Me:”Can I find pieces of your memory in cotton fields and red mud?Scattered bones in unmarked graves that attempt to erase you from historyBut you were here. You were always here.You existed. Unknown no longer. I found your name ... I found youAnd in finding you, I found me.These days, people bring Drake the names. They say ‘my family enslaved people and here are some of the names,’ they have on pieces of paper or old ledgers,” Drake said. “People held on to the information because they’re ashamed.”One woman emailed her a copy of a ledger from her family, showing they had owned 50 people, a huge number for the non-plantation slave economy of Kentucky.“I say ‘you don’t have to carry that shame but you’re holding onto it because you are ashamed.’ The truth sets people free, not your shame.”Drake takes a more pragmatic approach to historical guilt, one that might be more acceptable to many. Think of our racial past like breast cancer or diabetes, she says. “Talking about cancer does not cause cancer, but it might cause someone to get a checkup. It’s education and learning and growth.”The doctor doesn’t hate you, the doctor is interested in your past, what you ate, what your risk factors are. The doctor wants to heal you and he can’t do that until he understands what’s wrong.That’s why Drake writes and speaks these names. Why, when we learned about how Breonna Taylor was killed in March 2020, she spoke her name over and over again in poems and speeches and protests. Breonna was killed in March, but as Drake points out, her name was hidden until May, when an explosive racial reckoning began in Kentucky and across the country.Hannah Drake is photographed by her (Un)Known Project installation near the Ohio River in downtown Louisville.Black historyThe (Un)known Project is an interesting one to ponder in the waning days of Black History Month, three years and less than a mile away from the Breonna Taylor protests in Jefferson Square Park. We know more than we ever have about Kentucky’s history of enslavement — such as a new book on our beloved state song that peels back some unsavory truths, or new scholarship of the lives of the enslaved in a state that didn’t talk much about it. As UK historian Gerald Smith wrote in a new book he edited, “Slavery and Freedom in the Bluegrass State: Revisiting My Old Kentucky Home: “Like much of the state’s racial past, the search is ongoing for truth and reconciliation. The killing of Breonna Taylor was an awakening for a state that had been lulled to sleep for generations by the melody of ‘My Old Kentucky Home.’ But now is the time to keep revisiting that past to better understand the present and to build and reshape our interpretation of Kentucky history.”Sometimes, though, it seems as though only small circles of activists, artists, and academics are willing to do that. These days, people are more interested in complaining about “wokeness” than police brutality, more concerned with banning the books and hiding the history that is, as Drake says, so central to our past.Three years after Breonna Taylor, where are we? In the midst of another legislative session and a GOP gubernatorial primary where Taylor’s name is conspicuously absent. Instead we have bills that try to ban books about the civil rights movement, or govern what “controversies” teachers can teach. In Frankfort the prevailing narrative is that the Breonna Taylor protests, “riots” is the word you hear more, practically destroyed Louisville, a concept that might surprise the tourists who filled Main Street on a recent Saturday afternoon. Just last year, Sen. Danny Carroll filed legislation, not to address police brutality, but to allow police to arrest anyone who called them mean names.The legislature banned some use of no knock warrants statewide. Its main answer to the racial justice protests was the West End TIF, a sprawling, amorphous economic development tool that works poorly at the best of times, and in this case, would have all safeguards taken away.Attorney General Daniel Cameron could not convince a grand jury to indict any Louisville police in Breonna Taylor’s death, (just for firing into a neighbor’s apartment). A year later, federal authorities charged four of them. Cameron is now the front-runner in the GOP primary with a campaign that stresses law and justice. He is the first Black candidate elected to statewide office and the first to run for governor but shows little interest in the issues that affect most Black people in the state. His website currently boasts that he led the fight against Critical Race Theory.One reason the GOP political majority in this state doesn’t talk about these issues is because they don’t have to. The Black population is just 8 percent, mostly found in cities like Lexington and Louisville. Thanks to gerrymandering, those representatives are largely outnumbered. As Democrats used to do when they were the majority, Republicans have largely ignored the current minority, choosing to sideline their bills by not even assigning them to committees.Kentucky state Rep. Keturah Herron, D-Lousivlle, is photographed at Jefferson Square Park in downtown Louisville.Little changeOne of the newest members of that minority, Rep. Keturah Herron, D-Louisville, says life for many in Louisville is largely unchanged three years later.“People in the West End (of Louisville) are still facing food insecurity, housing insecurity,” she said. “It’s hard, I don’t know what the tangible things are that have changed.”We met in Jefferson Square Park, sometimes known as Injustice Square Park, which now has a historical marker for the 2020 Racial Justice Protests. Herron said she’s seen more tangible change from the protests in Lexington, where Black women swept county offices in 2022, including County Attorney, Commonwealth Attorney, and three Black women now serving on the Fayette Urban County Council. In particular County Attorney Angela Evans crushed incumbent Larry Roberts who refused to drop charges against Black Lives Matter protesters.She sees Kentucky’s history, like America’s, as cyclical. We move forward, we go back. As an example, Herron is working on the same kinds of gun violence programs that one of her predecessors, Rep. Eleanor Jordan worked on in 1996.“When you look at the history, we want to talk about the issues, but people don’t want to hear Breonna Taylor’s name anymore,” she said. “Kentuckians have always want to deny their role in racism and slavery and the plight of Black Kentuckians. And poor white Kentuckians.”As a new lawmaker, Herron is trying to be pragmatic in working with Republican counterparts, learning to understand the byzantine state budget system, and trying to get more federal dollars to flow for projects like violence reduction.“There’s so much work to do and we just have to keep doing it,” she said.That’s also the consensus of Rev. L. Clark Williams in Lexington, who worked with the Black Faith Leaders coalition to ban no knock warrants in Lexington. He also chairs The People’s Campaign, which tries to get people across the state more engaged with electoral politics.“Whenever you have the kind of majority Republicans have in the Legislature, you see clearly that they have the ability to do whatever they want to do,” Williams said. “The onus on those of us who see that as problematic is to look at ways to put some kind of checks and balances.”The electorate did that last fall when they rejected an amendment to give the legislature more power. Whether the electorate will feel that checks and balances should be maintained with a Democratic governor and a Republican legislature will be seen. But those who feel disenfranchised right now have to put in the work.“The key to continued progress is around building strong organizations that can sustain the work,” Williams said. “The opportunities that arise out of tragedies are just that for moments in time — those will not sustain progress. The way to sustain progress is commitment to the work to get changes that we’re seeking.”The (Un)Known Project installation near the Ohio River in downtown Louisville, Ky., includes benches with the names of enslaved Kentuckians.Doing the workDrake and Miller would like to see the (Un)Known Project expand to other states, where people are anxious to uncover more names and more stories about our ignored past and present. Someone who heard about the project recently connected Drake to her one of her own ancestors, an enslaved woman in South Carolina, through paperwork and DNA research. She had not been able to trace her family back more than two generations. It’s hard and meticulous work to find people who were hidden because it didn’t fit our national narratives about the land of the free.America can only get healthy, Drake believes, when it faces the facts about its past. Then we can all do the work to get better, even in Kentucky. When we face the facts about slavery and its legacy in poverty, criminal justice, inequality, then maybe we can move forward.But “until Ky faces itself we will be here again and again and again,” she said. “And I hate to say that, but it’s just the truth. we continue to go around the same mountain. We have a time to get something right, to do something different.“We are supposed to be learning something and we keep missing it.”
- [Trump's lawyers blast Georgia election probe after grand juror's interviews - FOX 5 Atlanta](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/trumps-lawyers-blast-georgia-election-probe-after-grand-jurors-interviews-fox-5-atlanta/) - Parts of Fulton County special grand jury report released Parts of the Fulton County special grand jury's nearly year-long investigation into Former President Donald Trump and his allies following Georgia's 2020 election has been released. FOX 5 I-Team reporter Dale Russell has closely followed every step of the investigation and he shares the new information
- [Election deniers who lost secretary of state races now run several state GOP operations](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/election-deniers-who-lost-secretary-of-state-races-now-run-several-state-gop-operations-2/) - Zachary Roth: Many of the election deniers who ran last year for positions that would have given them control over state elections systems lost their races. But several have found a new path to exert influence: as chair of their state Republican Party. On Saturday, Kristina Karamo, an activist who rose to prominence for her efforts to overturn Michigan’s 2020 presidential results, was elected chair of the Michigan GOP at the party’s convention. A week earlier, Mike Brown, a former county commissioner who has stoked fears that the 2020 election was stolen, won the same job at Kansas’ convention. And in July, Idaho Republicans chose Dorothy Moon, a former state legislator who has said there was a “big problem” with the 2020 vote and made unfounded claims about illegal voting, as their leader. Meanwhile, Tina Peters announced last week that she’s running for state GOP chair in Colorado. A former county election clerk, Peters is facing felony charges in connection with an alleged scheme to breach secure voting equipment in order to show that her state’s 2020 vote was rigged. All four Republicans ran unsuccessfully last year for secretary of state, which would have made them their state’s chief election official. Karamo won the Republican nomination, then was defeated in the general election by Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat. Brown, Moon, and Peters all lost in the GOP primaries. Share this:
- [Election Integrity Unit's pivot has both sides questioning whether it should exist at all](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/election-integrity-units-pivot-has-both-sides-questioning-whether-it-should-exist-at-all/) - Every year since 2019, Arizona lawmakers have instructed the state’s attorney general to spend a half-million dollars to staff an “election fraud unit,” with no further instructions. Democrats accused former Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, of using the unit for whatever was politically expedient, such as launching an investigation into Maricopa County’s 2020 election without ever making any final conclusions. Brnovich then hid findings that debunked claims of widespread fraud, according to documents first published Feb. 22 by the Washington Post. Now, Republicans are making a similar complaint, after new Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, announced she will use the unit to combat voter suppression, to protect election officials from harassment, and even to protect vote-by-mail. Without a script for what it’s supposed to do, the Election Integrity Unit is at the whim of the politician who runs it. And given that the attorney general already has the power and resources to investigate criminal voter fraud and voter intimidation even without the unit, both sides have questioned whether it should exist at all. Even Mayes has questioned it. The funding for the unit comes not from taxes but from legal settlements from consumer protection and consumer fraud cases, and Mayes said during her campaign that this money should be used to protect consumers from fraudulent schemes, even calling for Brnovich to resign for spending it on election-related investigations. “He should not be misusing the AG’s office and the people’s money to climb the political ladder,” Mayes said at the time. She told Votebeat in an emailed statement last week that it’s the Attorney General’s job to “protect the rights of Arizonans, including their right to vote.” “Under my administration, the election integrity unit will work to ensure every eligible Arizonan can exercise their right to vote without interference – including casting their vote by mail, upholding and enforcing our state’s voting statutes, and protecting our state’s elections workers from threats of violence and intimidation,” she wrote. Republican state Rep. Alexander Kolodin, vice chair of the House elections committee, says that mission equates to “prosecuting conservatives for engaging in constitutionally protected First Amendment activities,” such as questioning election officials and procedures. The funding for the unit remains in the initial budgets proposed by Republican lawmakers and by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs. But Kolodin said he is trying to gather support to eliminate the unit. Asked recently if Arizona needs the unit, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said, “Frankly, no.” Then, when told what Mayes is going to do with the unit, he said that he was supportive of it. He said he has been calling for threats to voters and election officials to be investigated in a more robust way for years. Original intent was to ‘shoot down’ fraud allegations When lawmakers originally funded the Election Integrity Unit in 2019, in the form of a budget line item, there were a few ideas about what it was supposed to be doing. Brnovich brought the idea to the Legislature, his spokesperson Ryan Anderson told reporters at the time, to disprove the notion of pervasive voter fraud by investigating claims. “We’re not starting from the premise that there is fraud,” said Anderson. “We’re saying, if there is fraud, let’s devote the resources to look at it, expose it, and prosecute as proper. If there’s not fraud … let’s look into the allegations and shoot down allegations if the proof is just not there.” Separately, some lawmakers were looking to provide state oversight to county-run elections. Administrative problems had plagued Maricopa County’s elections for years, such as long waits at polling places in 2016 and late openings in 2018. Former state Sen. Kelly Townsend, chair of the elections committee at the time, said that there needed to be some outside oversight of election procedures that would also help the Legislature learn what improvements to make. Her original intent, she says now, was to give that authority to the state Auditor General. “If the goal is to restore the elections process to a point where the public could be confident that they are run well, that’s what would do well,” she said. “The Legislature needed to be educated, and our auditor general is under our wheelhouse.” Her bill proposed to set up a bipartisan commission for election oversight. That bill got stuck in committee, and Townsend said Republican colleagues then asked her to support the unit in the Attorney General’s Office. “It was, That’s your offer, take it or leave it,” Townsend said. Townsend said she was reluctant to support the idea, because she didn’t believe Brnovich would do much with the office. “I thought he was trying to stay out of controversial issues,” she said. “He wouldn’t touch anything that was political.” Brnovich did not respond to an email or social media message seeking comment for this story. Unit undermined by politics The unit’s work was criticized from the start, in part because Brnovich hired Jennifer Wright as an assistant attorney general to oversee it. Years before Brnovich hired her, Wright had worked alongside True the Vote, a Texas-based nonprofit organization known for making unfounded allegations of voter fraud, to train poll watchers in Arizona and Texas. Democrats said that effort targeted Hispanic and Black areas in an attempt to disenfranchise voters. Wright said those claims were false and she never disenfranchised anyone. Wright told Votebeat in a recent interview that the immediate politicization of her role made it difficult to do what she wanted to accomplish. In part, Wright said had been hoping to use the office to educate the public about election myths, but the office became “very very cautious of me, and my position,” because of the negative public perception of her past work. For example, she said when “Sharpiegate” began on Election Day in November 2020 — the false claim that poll workers were purposefully giving Republicans Sharpie pens so that ink would bleed through ballot paper and invalidate their votes — she had already researched the topic during the primary election and knew that it was false. The office confirmed shortly after the election that the use of Sharpies “did not result in disenfranchisement,” in a letter to the county. But Wright said the office decided it wouldn’t make sense for her to speak publicly further about the topic. “How could I go out and dispel myths and rumors when they have already branded me?” she said. It’s unclear whether having a specialized unit with four employees actually changed the AG office’s investigation directions and prosecution priorities. The unit comprised Wright, a criminal attorney, a special agent, and an administrative staffer. Even before the Election Integrity Unit’s creation, the Attorney General — the chief legal officer in the state — prosecuted provable cases of criminal voter fraud. And its civil rights division investigates voting discrimination under the Arizona Civil Rights Act, such as denying someone the opportunity to register to vote or to cast a ballot. In a November 2020 presentation to state lawmakers, Deputy Attorney General Josh Kredit rattled off what the unit saw as accomplishments, including Wright’s work reviewing the 2019 changes then-Secretary of State Hobbs wanted to make to the Election Procedures Manual, a document that further outlines state law and has the force of law. The office made 100 revisions, including ensuring uniform security measures for drop boxes and preventing Hobbs from allowing all-mail elections, Kredit said at the time. Two other accomplishments were filing an injunction to block Fontes from sending out a mail-in ballot to all of Maricopa County’s Democratic voters in the presidential primary election, and defending in the U.S. Supreme Court the state’s decision to enact a law limiting how people can collect and cast others’ ballots and the state’s procedure for rejecting ballots cast out of precinct. During that same presentation, Wright spoke about the more than 2,000 complaints of election fraud that were submitted to the office after the 2020 election. After spending months and 10,000 hours of staff time— and millions of dollars and hundreds of hours in Maricopa County resources — investigating Maricopa County’s handling of the 2020 election, Brnovich released in April 2022 what he called an “interim report” of its findings, which raised even more suspicions about the county’s election but did not offer any conclusions. That interim report hid broad conclusions from his investigators that there was no merit to the claims — including allegations of duplicate votes, satellites changing votes to favor President Biden, bamboo ballots — according to internal documents never released by Brnovich, but released by Mayes on Wednesday. “The ten thousand plus hours spent diligently investigating every conspiracy theory under the sun distracted this office from its core mission of protecting the people of Arizona from real crime and fraud,” Mayes said in the news release Wednesday. County officials, mostly Republicans, said the report was “full of false innuendo and misrepresentations” about the 2020 election and was shocked Brnovich would release it. Brnovich was running for U.S. Senate at the time, and he was accused of releasing it to appease Donald Trump and his supporters. He never issued a final report. “Attorney General Brnovich shifted one direction to another depending on which way the political winds were blowing,” Fontes said in January. Wright said she was focused on civil violations of election laws, not criminal violations. But the office rarely went to court for civil violations. Wright said part of her difficulty was she didn’t have the power to fully investigate and prosecute civil cases, such as when a county didn’t follow procedures under state law. The Attorney General’s Office power is limited, dictated by the Legislature. Unit faced limits to its powers Wright asked lawmakers during the November 2020 presentation for civil subpoena power, which she believed would allow her to better gather evidence of violations of criminal election law, rather than waiting for information from records requests that were at the whim of the government agencies she was investigating. During the next legislative session, in February 2021, lawmakers proposed giving the unit the subpoena power. Townsend said she filed a bill on the matter. An example of this, Townsend said, would be Maricopa County failing to follow law for how to track duplicated ballots. “If we aren’t going to enforce those laws, why are they on the books in the first place?” Townsend said. But there was bipartisan opposition to the idea, with some Republicans saying that it would give the unit too much unyielded power and voting rights organizations saying the unit shouldn’t exist at all. State Rep. Kelli Butler, a Democrat, asked what was to stop the attorney general from saying his or her own election wasn’t fair, and issuing subpoenas to investigate. “How disruptive and chaotic would that be?” she said. The proposal failed. Wright said that and the separation of duties between the criminal and civil side of the office made her work difficult. Asked in a recent interview what the original mission of the unit was and if she accomplished it, Wright paused. “That’s a hard question,” she said. “My overall mission was … transparency and accountability in election administration. I don’t think we ended up with either. And that’s unfortunate.” Wright said that a government body isn’t the right place for the unit. “I wonder if having it in the state office is the right place,” she said. “It would be nice to have a bipartisan nonprofit of some sort that really focused on these issues, especially on the civil side.” Wright left the office shortly before Mayes was sworn in. Mayes wants to investigate election threats Even before the election was officially called for Mayes, she made clear her plans to change the unit’s mission. She cited the people who watched voters drop off ballots at drop boxes as an example of the voter intimidation she would attempt to combat. “I think we saw something this year that was really frightening and really unacceptable, which is that we had people going to the polls with guns, with body armor, with face masks, essentially trying to intimidate and threaten voters,” she said, according to the Arizona Republic. “When I’m attorney general, we will not put up with that.” Asked last week how she felt her new mission for the office fit with what the attorney general was tasked with, Mayes said protecting voters and election officials was within her duties. “As Attorney General, I will not allow threats and intimidation to go unchallenged,” she wrote. “And I will not stand by while hardworking public servants who serve as cornerstones of our democracy are driven from office for simply doing their jobs.” She wrote that the office also has a role to play in prosecuting the rare cases of voter fraud, but it should be done in the way it has been historically, through referrals from county recorders or the Secretary of State’s Office. “Not by politicizing the office and chasing down every conspiracy theory under the sun,” she wrote. Former Attorney General Terry Goddard, a Democrat, said he doesn’t believe Mayes has the independent authority to pursue election lawsuits, outside of protecting civil rights, unless given that authority by the Legislature. Goddard said that if Mayes wants to take on investigating election official intimidation, she could get that through an agreement with county attorneys stipulating that she will take the lead on related criminal cases, or by asking the Legislature for that power. She could also work jointly with Fontes in the Secretary of State’s Office, he said, in which that office brings a lawsuit and the Attorney General’s Office serves as the office’s attorney. Kolodin, the state representative, said he believes it would be wrong for Mayes to use the office to go after people who are watching drop boxes or county officials who refuse to certify their elections when they have questions about them. He sees Fontes’ letters to Mayes asking for her to investigate the public release of voter signatures as an example of how the power could be abused. State Sen. Ken Bennett, a Republican and former secretary of state who is now vice chair of the elections committee, said there are more effective ways of building trust in elections than through a unit in the Attorney General’s Office. He said the state needs to “get beyond the partisan aspects of elections and establish laws and procedures that make sense whether the leaders are Republicans or Democrats.” “We just have to focus on what’s good public policy no matter what the letter is behind their name, and what do the people deserve as far as transparent and verifiable elections,” Bennett said. “That’s where our focus should be.” ***CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified former state Rep. Kelli Butler as a Republican, not a Democrat.
- [Dominion voting case exposes post-election fear at Fox News - WVUA 23](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/dominion-voting-case-exposes-post-election-fear-at-fox-news-wvua-23/) - February 23, 2023 dominion votingThe Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) – A court filing in the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News lays bare fear at the network that it had alienated viewers and damaged its brand by not lining up with President Donald Trump’s false 2020 election claims. The networks’ accuser, Dominion Voting Systems, says the worry played a key role in Fox not setting the record straight about unfounded fraud claims. Fox says Dominion has cherry-picked quotes to use against the network and will give a full answer to the accusations against it later this month. Dominion was the company falsely accused by Trump allies of doctoring voting machine results in the election. Read the full story on AP News right here. (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.) 2/23/2023 3:42:39 PM (GMT -6:00)
- [Former Arizona AG sat on records refuting election fraud | National News | postregister.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/former-arizona-ag-sat-on-records-refuting-election-fraud-national-news-postregister-com/) - PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona’s former attorney general suppressed findings by his investigators who concluded there was no basis for allegations that the 2020 election was marred by widespread fraud, according to documents released Wednesday by his successor.Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes, who took office last month, said the records show the 2020 election “was conducted fairly and accurately by election officials.”
- [Dairy Del in Louisville reopens next month, and it's bringing back the walk-up window](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/24/dairy-del-in-louisville-reopens-next-month-and-its-bringing-back-the-walk-up-window/) - Yeah.
- [Catholic fish fries across Louisville are critical to the church and community - wdrb.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/24/catholic-fish-fries-across-louisville-are-critical-to-the-church-and-community-wdrb-com/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- On the first Friday of Lent, the smell of fried fish and hush puppies filled cafeterias and gymnasiums of Catholic parishes across Louisville.Fish is served on Fridays during Lent, the Christian season of repentance, and many churches embrace the fish fries to help raise money to support their missions."After a fish fry, we typically will make over $40,000," said Mary Beth Porter, chairperson of the Holy Family fish fry.Many parishes rely on their popular fish fries to fund a large portion of the budget. It helps keep the church and its services operating, leaders said. The COVID-19 pandemic, which canceled the tradition for at least a year, proved to be a setback for the next years when the fish cooking resumed.This year, it feels like everything is the way it used to be."We rely on the funds that this generates in order to meet our budget every year," said Rev. Mike Tobin at St. Rita. "That's why we were so eager to return after COVID to having not only dinner, but lunch, because that's a moneymaker: the lunch."The fish fries are a massive production. It takes hundreds of volunteers to pump out the meals for anyone who wants to eat.Why do they volunteer? One word: community."What's special about our fish fry is community," Porter said. "People like to come here and catch up with old friends that they haven't seen since last fish fry.""The fish is great, but it's a sense of they're supporting a parish community," Tobin added.Following several years that saw Catholic fish fries across the city depleted or restricted, things have finally come back, and so have the crowds.The Lenten .esson is less about the fish and more about the people."Things have rebounded," Tobin said. "People are so hungry for community."Fish fries continue through the month of March. To find a guide to Louisville-area churches' Lenten fish fries, click here. Related Stories:Copyright 2023 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
- [Churchill Downs saw increase in revenue last year due to Kentucky Derby - WHAS11](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/24/churchill-downs-saw-increase-in-revenue-last-year-due-to-kentucky-derby-whas11/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Churchill Downs is much larger than it's famous Louisville racetrack home to the fastest two minutes in sports. It also has other operations in other states. The company just announced it's total profit last year was nearly $500 million. The Louisville company says its also having great success with its growing historical horse racing locations. Another interesting point from the earning report was that the company's betting app, Twin Spires, saw a drop in revenue by $16 million because a large number of people returned to the actual race tracks. The famed Louisville racetrack saw a $77 million increase in revenue because of the 2022 Kentucky Derby had no COVID-19 capacity restrictions. The running of the 149th Kentucky Derby will take place later this May. Make it easy to keep up-to-date with more stories like this. Download the WHAS11 News app now. For Apple or Android users.
- [These 6 states will determine the 2024 presidential election | The Hill](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/24/these-6-states-will-determine-the-2024-presidential-election-the-hill/) - These 6 states will determine the 2024 presidential election | The Hill Skip to content Opinion>Campaign The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill The question Republicans are asking is: Can Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) win the White House in 2024? A better, more precise question is: Can
- [Trump lawyers criticize Georgia election probe after grand juror speaks | PBS NewsHour](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/trump-lawyers-criticize-georgia-election-probe-after-grand-juror-speaks-pbs-newshour/) - ATLANTA (AP) — Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers in Georgia are criticizing the Fulton County investigation into potential illegal election meddling after the foreperson of the special grand jury seated to help the probe went public this week. Emily Kohrs first spoke out in an interview published Tuesday by The Associated Press, a story that was followed by interviews in other print and television news outlets. She described some of what happened behind the closed doors of the jury room — including how some witnesses behaved, how prosecutors interacted with witnesses and how some witnesses invoked their rights not to answer certain questions. READ MORE: As 2024 GOP Iowa caucus gets underway, Donald Trump is notably absent Trump attorneys Drew Findling and Jennifer Little said that despite having concerns about the panel’s proceedings from the start, they kept quiet out of respect for the grand jury process. But they said revelations offered by Kohrs this week compelled them to speak up. “The end product is the reliability of anything that has taken place in there is completely tainted and called into question,” Findling said in an interview with the AP on Wednesday evening. He said he held “no chagrin for a 30-year-old foreperson” who was part of “a failed system.” “She’s a product of a circus that cloaked itself as a special purpose grand jury,” he said. Findling and Little said they are on top of all the legal issues in the case and are keeping their options open. They had not filed anything by Thursday morning. The special grand jury was impaneled at the request of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is investigating whether Trump and his Republican allies committed any crimes as they tried to overturn his narrow 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden in Georgia. The panel did not have the power to indict but instead could offer recommendations for Willis, a Democrat who will ultimately decide whether to seek indictments from a regular grand jury. Willis’ office has declined to comment on Kohrs’ media appearances, other than to say they weren’t aware ahead of time that she planned to give interviews. Spokesperson Jeff DiSantis also declined Thursday to comment on Findling’s and Little’s comments. Findling and Little expressed concern that the special grand jury, which they said was supposed to base its recommendations to the district attorney on evidence and testimony presented in the jury room, was allowed to watch and read news coverage of the case and was aware of some witnesses’ efforts not to testify. Kohrs said prosecutors told the jurors they could read and watch the news but urged them to keep an open mind. Kohrs also shared numerous anecdotes from the proceedings that she found amusing and was very expressive in television interviews, sometimes laughing or making faces. Findling and Little said the district attorney’s office, which was advising the special grand jury, should have done a better job of educating the grand jurors about the solemnity of the process and the rules and limitations. “It’s not a joking matter,” Findling said. “It’s not a matter for giggles. It’s not a matter for smiles.” Trump himself lashed out in a post on his social media network Wednesday, calling the Georgia investigation “ridiculous, a strictly political continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt of all time.” He expressed dismay at Kohrs “going around and doing a Media Tour revealing, incredibly, the Grand Jury’s inner workings & thoughts.” Though Kohrs did not publicly name any individuals the special grand jury recommended for possible indictment, Findling and Little claimed she seemed to implicate Trump in response to media questions about indictments. That’s a problem, Findling said, because they have examined the evidence and remain convinced that “our client did not break any law at all.” The Trump lawyers also said that this situation could have been avoided if the judge had instructed special grand jury members not to speak to news outlets until after the panel’s full final report is made public. Several parts of the report were released last week, but Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said any section that recommended specific charges for specific people would remain secret fornow. READ MORE: Read released portions of the report by the special grand jury investigating Trump in Georgia During a hearing last month, a lawyer for a coalition of news outlets, including the AP, had urged the immediate release of the full report. In the federal system, grand jurors are prohibited from talking about what witnesses said or anything that happened in the room. But the oath taken by grand jurors in Georgia only says they cannot talk about their deliberations. The grand jury was dissolved on Jan. 9, and McBurney told the AP that he later met with grand jurors to discuss where things stood. He said he provided them with the “rules of the road” of what they were legally allowed and not allowed to discuss publicly. He said they could discuss what witnesses said and what is in the report but could not talk about deliberations because that’s what their oath said. Little said she believes some of the things Kohrs discussed in interviews were part of deliberations, including when she talked about decisions to recommend multiple indictments and the reasons why the grand jurors did not seek to bring Trump in to testify. Willis has said since the beginning of the investigation two years ago that she was interested in a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call in which Trump suggested to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, that he could “find” the votes needed to overturn Trump’s loss to Biden in the state. “All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said during that call. Over the more than two years since Willis’ investigation began, it has become clear that her investigation has expanded to other areas, including a slate of fake Republican electors who swore that Trump had won the state and a breach of election equipment in a rural south Georgia county.
- [Powell Beats Disciplinary Suit Over 2020 Election Litigation - Law360](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/powell-beats-disciplinary-suit-over-2020-election-litigation-law360/) - By Lauren Berg (February 23, 2023, 11:25 PM EST) -- A Texas judge has thrown out a professional misconduct lawsuit against embattled attorney Sidney Powell over her efforts to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election, finding "numerous defects" in evidence presented by the State Bar of Texas' disciplinary arm....
- [Remembering Ahmaud Arbery Three Years Later: The Murder In Broad Daylight That ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/remembering-ahmaud-arbery-three-years-later-the-murder-in-broad-daylight-that/) - Cellphone video footage of a Black man being hunted and killed by three white men in south Georgia in 2020 was a catalyst that led to a racial awakening that evoked change and trigged white guilt in America. Ahmaud Arbery fought for his life on Feb. 23, 2020, after being cornered by father and son Gregory and Travis McMichael and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan. However, his years of athletic training did not prepare him for the power of Travis’ shotgun. BRUNSWICK, GA – NOVEMBER 24: A woman carries a portrait of Ahmaud Arbery outside the Glynn County Courthouse as the jury deliberates in the trial of the killers of Ahmaud Arbery on November 24, 2021, in Brunswick, Georgia. Greg McMichael, his son Travis McMichael, and a neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan were found guilty in the February 2020 fatal shooting of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images) The specter of white men chasing a young Black man in pickup trucks permeated the minds of Americans and fueled impending civil unrest of historic magnitude. It led to significant changes in policy written into law when scenes of racial killings of Black people were more familiar in the South. Georgia NAACP president Gerald Griggs said Arbery’s murder was a “modern-day lynching” that built up to the global outrage over George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police. Video of Arbery’s killing surfaced online on May 3, 2020, a little more than three weeks before Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck. A Black woman, Breonna Taylor, was also killed in Louisville, Kentucky, in a botched narcotics raid in March 2020. The string of deaths sparked peaceful protests and riots starting in Minnesota to as far as the capital city of Australia. “We were inside during the pandemic, and we all saw the video, and it was the impetus for people to go outside,” Griggs told Atlanta Black Star. “So, I think that it was the impetus similar to the Emmett Till case for the rebirth of the social justice movement, just as Emmett’s case was the impetus for the birth of the civil rights movement.” Two white men admitted to torturing and killing 14-year-old Emmett in Mississippi in 1955. The boy’s mother, Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley, made it a point to showcase his battered body at his funeral to expose the world to racial violence. Till-Mobley’s stance has been credited as a turning point in the civil rights movement of the late 1950s and 60s. Sixty-five years later and multiple decades after the Civil Rights Act of 1965, the McMichaels chased Arbery in the Brunswick, Georgia, neighborhood. They believed the former high school football player was behind a series of burglaries after he was spotted near a home under construction. Williams recorded the event on his cellphone. The father-son duo trailed Arbery as he jogged away from their neighbor’s unoccupied house. After catching up with the Black man, Travis fought off Arbery’s hold on the barrel of his shotgun and fired the fatal shots. Gregory McMichael, who had a long history in law enforcement, argued that the men were attempting to make a citizen’s arrest. The video’s release spurred outrage from local, state and national leaders. Georgia General Christopher Carr requested the FBI’s involvement just days after its release. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle moved to repeal the 1863 law in May 2021. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp was a strong proponent of the measure, which made it illegal for private citizens to arrest others. The bill was stripped, leaving the right to retail business owners, restaurant owners in certain situations and weight inspectors, licensed private security guards, and private investigators while on duty. Law enforcement officers can still detain citizens outside of their jurisdiction. Georgians can still detain someone in cases of self-defense or to protect their property, but the new law restricts the use of deadly force in those situations. The previous version of the law allowed a civilian to arrest someone if they witnessed a crime or had “immediate knowledge” the offender committed one. If that crime was a felony and the suspect attempted to escape, the law also allowed a person to detain a suspect. “Ahmaud was the victim of vigilante-style violence that has no place in our country or in our state,” Kemp said during a bill signing ceremony on May 10, 2021. “It quickly became clear to me and many other state leaders that we needed to act.” BRUNSWICK, GA – NOVEMBER 23: Wanda Cooper-Jones, mother of Ahmaud Arbery, leaves the Glynn County Courthouse as jury deliberations begin in the trial of the killers of her son on November 23, 2021, in Brunswick, Georgia. Greg McMichael, his son Travis McMichael, and a neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan are charged with the February 2020 fatal shooting of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images) While the elder McMichael sought to justify the shooting with the state law signed during the Civil War era, court proceedings revealed he called his ex-boss, former Brunswick District Attorney Jackie Johnson, hours after the crime for advice. Johnson reportedly connected McMichael to an attorney who later arranged for the video footage to be leaked to the public. After the release, McMichael referred to the move as “interference” in a voice message to his former prosecutor boss. The three men were later arrested and found guilty of state and federal offenses. Their federal convictions were the first for federal hate crimes in Georgia. “In the aftermath of the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, Georgians and citizens across the country sought answers, justice, and a better way forward,” Kemp spokesperson Garrison Douglas told Atlanta Black Star. Arbery’s death also pushed the Georgia Legislature to pass its first hate crime law that enhances sentencing for crimes motivated by bias. State lawmakers passed hate crime legislation in 2000, but the Georgia Supreme Court struck it down four years later because the measure did not specify what actions would be penalized. In 2019, a year before Arbery’s death, the House passed the current measure, but it had been stalled until after the jogger’s death. “Ahmaud Arbery should still be with us today, and that is why Governor Kemp signed the state’s first hate crimes legislation into law and the repeal of the citizen’s arrest provisions,” Garrison said in an email statement. “Though these important measures could never bring back Ahmaud for his loved ones, they were historic steps of progress.” Griggs, however, said local prosecutors need to be more proactive in using the hate crime statute. More importantly, the scales of justice have not been thoroughly weighed in the case, he added. The attorney and civil rights advocate is calling for Johnson, the former Brunswick district attorney charged with meddling in the police investigation into Arbery’s killing, to be convicted and sentenced. He also wants Waycross Judicial Circuit District Attorney George Barnhill, who declined to prosecute the men, citing self-defense, to face charges for allegedly conspiring with Johnson. Johnson’s involvement in the case led to her being voted out of office. In January 2022, Barnhill announced that he would not seek re-election. Arbery’s death also has been attributed to subsequent changes in Brunswick’s city council and Glynn County Police Department.
- [Texas bar loses bid to sanction Trump lawyer over 2020 election denial | | dentonrc.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/texas-bar-loses-bid-to-sanction-trump-lawyer-over-2020-election-denial-dentonrc-com/) - WASHINGTON — A state district judge has dismissed a Texas state bar disciplinary case against Dallas attorney Sidney Powell for her role in disputing the 2020 election results as a lawyer for former President Donald Trump.The State Bar of Texas filed a petition last March accusing Powell of professional misconduct by filing “frivolous” voter fraud lawsuits in four states, making false statements to a court and knowingly presenting false evidence. Powell filed lawsuits in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona accusing election companies of vote manipulation.#placement_594923_0_i{width:100%;margin:0 auto;}
- [Former Arizona AG sat on records refuting election fraud - NY1](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/former-arizona-ag-sat-on-records-refuting-election-fraud-ny1/) - Arizona's former attorney general suppressed findings by his investigators who concluded there was no basis for allegations that the 2020 election was marred by widespread fraud, according to documents released Wednesday by his successor. What You Need To Know Arizona's former attorney general suppressed findings by his investigators who concluded there was no basis for allegations that the 2020 election was marred by widespread fraud That's according to documents released Wednesday by his successor, Democrat Kris Mayes Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich never released a March 2022 summary of investigative findings, which ruled out most of the fraud claims spread by allies and supporters of former President Donald Trump Yet a month later, he released an "interim report" that claimed his investigation "revealed serious vulnerabilities that must be addressed and raises questions about the 2020 election in Arizona" Brnovich also did not release a September memo that systematically refuted a bevy of election conspiracies Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes, who took office last month, said the records show the 2020 election "was conducted fairly and accurately by election officials." Previous Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, never released a March 2022 summary of investigative findings, which ruled out most of the fraud claims spread by allies and supporters of former President Donald Trump. Yet a month later, he released an "interim report" that claimed his investigation "revealed serious vulnerabilities that must be addressed and raises questions about the 2020 election in Arizona." He released his April report despite pushback from his investigators who said some of its claims were refuted by their probe. Brnovich was at the time in the midst of a Republican Party primary for U.S. Senate and facing fierce criticism from Trump, who claimed he wasn't doing enough to prosecute election fraud. Brnovich, whose primary bid was unsuccessful, also did not release a September memo that systematically refuted a bevy of election conspiracies that have taken root on the right, including allegations of dead or duplicate voters, pre-marked ballots flown in from Asia, election servers connected to the internet and even manipulation by satellites controlled by the Italian military. "In each instance and in each matter, the aforementioned parties did not provide any evidence to support their allegations," the September memo read. "The information that was provided was speculative in many instances and when investigated by our agents and support staff, was found to be inaccurate." The September memo, which was among the documents released Wednesday, describes an all-encompassing probe that became the top priority for the attorney general's investigators, who spent more than 10,000 hours looking into 638 complaints. They opened 430 investigations and referred 22 cases for prosecution. President Joe Biden won Arizona by a little over 10,000 votes. Mayes said the fraud claims were a waste. "The ten thousand plus hours spent diligently investigating every conspiracy theory under the sun distracted this office from its core mission of protecting the people of Arizona from real crime and fraud," Mayes said in a statement. Attempts to reach Brnovich for comment were unsuccessful. Brnovich's "interim report" claimed that election officials worked too quickly in verifying voter signatures and pointed to a drop in the number of ballots with rejected signatures between 2016 and 2018 and again in 2020. He also claimed that Maricopa County was slow in responding to requests for information. He made those claims even after investigators who reviewed a draft pushed back, publishing his report largely unchanged following their feedback. The investigative staff concluded that the county recorder's office "followed its policy/procedures as they relate to signature verification; we did not uncover any criminality or fraud having been committed in this area during the 2020 general election," investigators wrote. They also said they found the county "was cooperative and responsive to our requests." Arizona became the epicenter of efforts by Trump allies to cast doubt on Biden's victory. Republican leaders of the state Senate subpoenaed election records and equipment and hired a Florida firm led by a Trump supporter, Cyber Ninjas Inc., to conduct an unprecedented review of the election in Maricopa County. The Cyber Ninjas review gave Biden more votes than the official count but claimed that their work raised serious questions about the conduct of the election in Maricopa County, home to metro Phoenix and the majority of Arizona's voters. The investigation by the attorney general's office found the allegations did not stand up to scrutiny. "Our comprehensive review of CNI's audit showed they did not provide any evidence to support their allegations of widespread fraud or ballot manipulation," Brnovich's investigators wrote. Thursday's release is the latest confirmation that there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election and that Biden won the presidency legitimately. Trump continues to repeat his lie that the election was stolen from him as he mounts his third bid for the White House, despite reviews and audits saying otherwise in the battleground states he contested and his own administration officials debunking his claims. Officials in Maricopa County, where nearly all the officials overseeing elections are Republicans, say they endured death threats and verbal abuse due to the suggestions of malfeasance in the Cyber Ninjas review and Brnovich's "interim report." "This was a gross misuse of his elected office and an appalling waste of taxpayer dollars, as well as a waste of the time and effort of professional investigators," Clint Hickman, the Republican chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors said in a statement. Brnovich's investigators did conclude that Maricopa County officials did not uniformly follow state election procedures when filling out forms to document the pickup and transport of mail ballots. But they said the errors were procedural and that "investigators did not find anything that would (have) compromised the integrity of the ballots or the final ballot count." Investigators interviewed two Republican state lawmakers who publicly claimed they knew of fraud in the election, but wrote that neither Rep. Mark Finchem nor Sen. Sonny Borrelli repeated their claims to investigators — when they could have been subject to criminal charges for false reporting to law enforcement. The investigators said a third lawmaker, Republican state Sen. Wendy Rogers, declined to speak with them.
- [Ex-Arizona AG withheld evidence debunking 2020 election fraud claims](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/ex-arizona-ag-withheld-evidence-debunking-2020-election-fraud-claims/) - The 2020 election was conducted fairly — and former Attorney General Mark Brnovich knew it despite publicly claiming there were “instances of fraud,” his successor reported Wednesday.“The results of (the state’s) exhaustive and extensive investigation show what we have suspected for over two years: The 2020 election in Arizona was conducted fairly and accurately by election officials,’’ said Attorney General Kris Mayes.But that information was wrongly withheld by Brnovich, she told Capitol Media Services.In releasing documents prepared last year that Brnovich had kept secret, Mayes said this is about more than putting to bed unfounded allegations the 2020 election was rigged.Had the reports been released last year, they could have made a difference in the “dark cloud’’ that was cast over the 2022 election, she said. People are also reading… “The insane conspiracy theories perpetrated by high-profile election deniers could have and should have been stopped, especially as it relates to Maricopa County and its elections officials,’’ said Mayes, a Democrat who succeeded Republican Brnovich in January.“Every American had a right to know that the 2020 election in Arizona, which, in part, decided the presidency, was conducted accurately and fairly,’’ Mayes said, adding:“I think the people of Arizona had a right before the 2022 election, and Maricopa County elections officials had a right to know that they were cleared of any wrongdoing. And that obviously didn’t happen.’’Mayes, who edged out Republican Abe Hamadeh in the 2022 election for attorney general, also said there’s an important goal accomplished in finally making public all of the information that Brnovich had in his hands last year.“It’s time for us to move forward and it’s time for our state and our country to heal,’’ she said. “And I’m hoping that this information will help in that regard.’’Mayes said she could not say whether Brnovich, who was running last year for U.S. Senate, purposely withheld the information.Brnovich: ‘We did our due diligence’Brnovich, in a statement to Capitol Media Services, did not respond to the question of why he had not released the reports before he left office at the end of 2022.But he defended conducting the inquiry, even if it did not result in verifying the claims by some of widespread fraud in the 2020 race.“While subjected to severe criticism from all sides of the political spectrum during the course of our investigations, we did our due diligence to run all complaints to ground,’’ he said. “Where we were able to debunk rumors and conspiracies, we did so.’’Brnovich said his report did identify changes the Legislature and county officials should address “to ensure confidence in future elections.’’ Those included instituting new procedures to verify the people using mail-in ballots are who they say are; requiring the state auditor general to review future elections; and spelling out in law the procedures for transporting ballots from drop boxes.The documents released by Mayes on Wednesday are at odds with some of the claims made by Brnovich in an “interim report’’ in April 2022, as he was in the running for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, that investigators had “uncovered instances of election fraud by individuals who have been or will be prosecuted for various election crimes.’’He also claimed at the time that Maricopa County was using artificial intelligence to verify signatures on early ballots, a claim county officials disputed. And Brnovich, in his report to then-Senate President Karen Fann, reported “there are problematic systemwide issues that related to early ballot handling and verification.”Withheld key information But the documents Mayes released showed that even as he released that interim report in April 2022, Brnovich had reason to believe there was little basis for many of his statements. A month before, his own staffers made notes to Brnovich’s top aide, Joe Kanefield, on what was then a draft.For example, staffers said their investigators concluded the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office followed its policies and procedures as they related to signature verification.“We did not uncover any criminality of fraud having been committed in this area during the 2020 general election,’’ the staff notes say.None of that was made public in Brnovich’s April interim report.Brnovich also claimed in that April report that procedures used in the county could result in election officials approving ballots that should not be otherwise approved without further investigation.But the staffers said investigators learned that the Recorder’s Office had provided training by a handwriting expert to signature verifiers, used a multi-step process to review questionable signatures, and had hired additional staff due to the sheer volume of ballots to be processed.This, too, was not in Brnovich’s interim report.Also missing from what was released in April were other staff notes disagreeing with Brnovich’s report.In addition, Mayes said, a September memo from the attorney general’s Special Investigations Section was withheld from the public.It said agents and support staff had spent more than 10,000 hours investigating and reviewing alleged instances of illegal voting submitted by various private parties. Those parties included Cyber Ninjas, the private firm without any election auditing experience hired by Fann, and True the Vote, a group at the forefront of denying the results of the 2020 election.“In each instance and in each matter, the aforementioned parties did not provide any evidence to support their allegations,’’ the September memo stated. “The information that was provided was speculated in many instances and when investigated by our agents and support staff, was found to be inaccurate.’’Elected officials tightlipped in probeMoreover, the investigators said elected officials had made public statements asserting that voting fraud had occurred and that fraud was a factor in the outcome of the 2020 election.Yet when questioned by investigators under circumstances where they could be prosecuted for making false reports to law enforcement agencies, “the elected officials did not repeat or make such assertions.’’They included then-Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley, who had publicly stated he had a source reporting that more than 30,000 fraudulent or fictitious votes were registered in Pima County during the 2020 general election. Investigators then requested to speak with him.“During that meeting, Mr. Finchem did not repeat those allegations, specifically stating he did not have any evidence of fraud and he did not wish to take up our time,’’ the investigators reported.What he did provide were four ballots he said were evidence of a flawed process for mailing and counting ballots.The investigators, however, said they found the ballots had been mailed to prior residents of the address on file, the residents had moved, the ballots could not be forwarded, and they were unopened and not counted.They also said a claim by Sen. Sonny Borrelli, R-Lake Havasu City, that someone who had voted was deceased also proved false. “The actual voter in this state was alive and had lawfully voted,’’ the report said.And they said Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, who had alleged widespread fraud in the 2020 election, “refused to meet with us, saying she was waiting to see the ‘perp walk’ of those who committed fraud during the election.’’Other allegations that investigators said were unfounded in the report not released until Wednesday included:That subjects dropped off large numbers of ballots at local post offices;That paper ballots were filled out by machines;That tabulators connected to the internet, allowing votes to be switched;That election officials deleted information and overwrote hard drives containing voter information.That satellites “under the control of the Italian military changed the votes recorded in tabulators in favor of Joe Biden.’’Brnovich changed tuneBrnovich had come under fire in 2022, as he was running for Senate, from some members of his own Republican Party for not accepting their arguments that the 2020 election has been fraudulently conducted and that Donald Trump actually won the popular vote in Arizona.In fact, Brnovich was one of the first elected GOP officials in Arizona to declare after the 2020 vote that Democrat Joe Biden apparently had won the race. And Brnovich, right after the election, rejected as baseless claims of election fraud by Democrats, pointing out that, aside from Trump and U.S. Sen. Martha McSally, who lost her race, Republicans fared well in down-ballot races.He also pointed out that Democratic Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes, whose office jointly oversaw the vote counting in the state’s most populous county, was going down to defeat.“If indeed there was some great conspiracy, it apparently didn’t work, since the county election official who’s a Democrat lost and other Republicans won,’’ Brnovich said then.But in early 2022, as he was campaigning, Brnovich found himself being blasted by other Republicans also seeking the nomination for U.S. Senate. And Trump released a statement saying “people want to know whether or not Attorney General Brnovich is doing the right thing, or is it just politics as usual.’’Clint Hickman, who chairs the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, issued a statement Wednesday saying he was “absolutely disgusted’’ by revelations that Brnovich “failed to do his job as a public servant’’ and concealed reports that showed the election was conducted fairly, lawfully and accurately.He blasted Brnovich for “”never correcting the record and blatantly not sharing the team’s final report with the public.”“This was a gross misuse of his elected office and an appalling waste of taxpayer dollars, as well as a waste of time and effort of professional investigators,’’ Hickman said. Get your morning recap of today's local news and read the full stories here: tucne.ws/morning Howard Fischer is a veteran journalist who has been reporting since 1970 and covering state politics and the Legislature since 1982. Follow him on Twitter at @azcapmedia or email
- [No stolen election. And no apologies from Wendy Rogers and the conspiracy squad](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/no-stolen-election-and-no-apologies-from-wendy-rogers-and-the-conspiracy-squad/) - The truth is out and we now know that Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s year-long investigation turned up no evidence of a stolen election in Arizona in 2020.I can only imagine the relief felt by some of the state’s leading election deniers.The politicians and self-proclaimed “experts,” people who have spent well over two years howling at the moon about a stolen election and the need to restore “election integrity.”Legislative leaders who have spent millions in public funds hoping to uncover fraud – Republicans who are now working on dozens of bills to “reform” our elections and boost the voter confidence that they worked daily to undermine.The secret is out. The Attorney General’s Office spent more than 10,000 hours investigating hundreds upon hundreds of complaints and the result?“No evidence of election fraud, manipulation of the election process, or any instances of organized/coordinated fraud,” according to a September report from the AG’s chief investigator – the second of two reports kept hidden from the public until this week.Not a peep from Sen. Wendy RogersWell, I’m sure you can imagine the reaction of all those who have spent the last two-plus years slandering state and county elections workers and trying to invalidate Arizona’s vote.Let’s hear from a few of them.We’ll start with the queen of election denial.Expect vetoes:Yet Rogers, others still push controversial proposalsSen. Wendy Rogers spent two years calling for decertification of the 2020 election and “perp walks” of the (supposed) criminals who denied Donald Trump his due. She quickly became a rock star on the right, raising millions in campaign donations and scoring the chairmanship of this year’s Senate Elections Committee.Here’s what Rogers had to say after Wednesday’s release of the AG’s findings:Nothing.Meanwhile on Thursday, Rogers was hosting an all-day joint meeting of the House and Senate election committees to explore various schemes to gain control after our supposedly stolen elections, including the nutty notion that the Legislature can overturn a presidential vote.Or, as I like to call it, Conspiracy Fest 2023.It's crickets from Mark Finchem, as wellLet us turn now to former Rep. Mark Finchem, one of the state’s earliest and loudest of the Stop the Steal shriekers.Finchem leveraged his outrage to land the GOP nomination for the state’s No. 2 job in 2022 – in part by publicly claiming to have evidence of 30,000 fraudulent votes in Pima County.Yet in a meeting with the AG’s investigators, “Finchem did not repeat those allegations, specifically stating he did not have any evidence of fraud and he did not wish to take up our time.”Finchem actually tried to decertify the 2020 election, so I can only imagine how chastened he must now feel. Here’s his reaction to the AG report:Nothing.Karen Fann ignores the September reportFormer Senate President Karen Fann in September 2021 asked Brnovich to investigate after receiving the results of her Cyber Ninjas audit, noting, among her concerns, statements that Maricopa County hid data from her auditors.The AG’s investigation turned up no evidence of that, though they left the finding in their initial March 2022 report as “undetermined” pending a review of archived records.Fann’s response on Wednesday was to retweet a post that jumped on that initial finding, ignoring the investigators’ later September 2022 report. The one that provided a scathing analysis of the Cyber Ninja audit, saying “in eachinstance, the information provided by CNI (Cyber Ninjas Inc.) was inaccurate and false.”Kari Lake still thinks there's conspiracy afootKari Lake built an entire political campaign around her belief that the election was stolen. Her “war room” campaign's Twitter account glommed onto several instances in which investigators, in that earlier March 2022 report, noted no findings pending a review of archived records.Naturally, Lake thinks there’s a conspiracy afoot, courtesy of Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes, to hide the fraud.“As @JenWEsq points out this 'debunking' of election fraud @krismayes put out is incomplete Why? Because Maricopa County refused to cooperate with ANY investigation They are celebrating being ‘vindicated’ because they successfully ran out the clock on @GeneralBrnovich’s tenure,” Kari Lake War Room tweeted.Sonny Borrelli clings to dead voter claimSen. Sonny Borrelli was quick to claim a coverup in 2020 and in 2021 and in 2022. Just last week, he was pushing a bill to cancel everybody’s voter registration, noting the legion of dead voters who cast ballots in our state.But when it came time to offer up proof?“Senator Borrelli provided the name of a deceased voter whom he said he personally checked and the information was valid,” the AG investigators noted. “When we looked further into that particular voter, it was learned Mr. Borrelli was incorrect.”Borrelli retweeted the Kari Lake War Room’s insinuations that something nefarious is still afoot.Warren Petersen says not a wordSenate President Warren Petersen was a driving force behind the scenes in pushing for the Cyber Ninjas audit.He appointed Wendy Rogers as the Republicans’ point person on election bills this year and proceeded to contract with Gina Swoboda to assist her.Swoboda, who is big in election denial circles and has ties to both the Trump and Lake campaigns, is being paid $15,000 a month to act as a senior policy adviser to Rogers’ Elections Committee, according to records unearthed by reporter Dillon Rosenblatt on his Fourth Estate 48 Substack.Petersen’s response to the AG’s findings?Nothing.Would an apology be too much to ask?How about a few of our fake electors, state Sens. Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern and former state GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward – extremists who blatantly schemed up a plan to rob us of our vote?Nope, nothing.Finally, let’s cut to U.S. Reps. Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs and Debbie Lesko, who actually voted on Jan. 6, 2021, to reject Arizona’s presidential election results.Alas, they, too, are silent.Curiously, outrageously silent about the AG’s investigation that debunked the bunk they have been force-feeding us for far, far too long. Astonishing silent about the frightening fact that they staged an assault on democracy.Oh, I know. It would be too much to ask for perp walks.But how about a few apologies?Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.Support local journalism: Subscribe to azcentral.com today.
- [Trump 2020 Fraud Backer Sidney Powell's Texas Ethics Case Tossed - Yahoo News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/trump-2020-fraud-backer-sidney-powells-texas-ethics-case-tossed-yahoo-news/) - (Bloomberg) -- A Texas judge has tossed out a disciplinary case against attorney Sidney Powell finding state bar regulators failed to present enough evidence to keep alive claims that she violated ethics rules by filing frivolous post-election lawsuits.Most Read from BloombergPowell, a staunch ally of former President Donald Trump following the 2020 presidential election, lead a series of unsuccessful legal efforts to contest President Joe Biden’s wins in battleground states. She also promoted false conspiracy theories of widespread election fraud, including that voting machine software had flipped votes for Trump to Biden and had its origins in election-rigging efforts in Venezuela.The Texas Commission for Lawyer Discipline filed a case against Powell last March in state district court in Dallas County, accusing her of professional misconduct. Bar regulators won an earlier round, with Judge Andrea Bouressa denying Powell’s motion to dismiss the case last summer.But in a four-page order entered on Wednesday, Bouressa, a Republican appointee of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, found that the commission failed to meet its burden on several claims it had lodged against Powell and simply failed to respond to Powell’s challenges to others.The judge identified “numerous defects” with the commission’s court filings, noting that exhibits were mislabeled or not cited in its briefs. She wrote that she “alerted the parties to difficulty locating materials cited in the Commission’s brief, but the Commission responded that no corrective action was necessary.”Bouressa wrote that because of these problems, she considered just two exhibits the commission had presented — copies of court documents from a post-election case that Powell filed in Georgia.Bouressa agreed with Powell that evidence wasn’t enough for the commission to meet its burden in the case, and fully granted Powell’s motion for summary judgment. The commission could now appeal the ruling.Powell’s attorney, Robert Holmes, and Claire Reynolds, a spokesperson for the Office of the Chief Disciplinary Counsel, declined to comment. Powell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The Texas bar commission has a separate disciplinary case related to the 2020 election pending against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Other Trump allies involved in post-election legal challenges are facing disciplinary action in other jurisdictions — Rudy Giuliani in Washington and New York; former senior Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark also in Washington, and conservative attorney John Eastman in California.The case is Commission for Lawyer Discipline v. Sidney Powell, Dallas County District Court, DC-22-02562.Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek©2023 Bloomberg L.P.
- [Election deniers who lost secretary of state races now run several state GOP operations](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/election-deniers-who-lost-secretary-of-state-races-now-run-several-state-gop-operations/) - Many of the election deniers who ran last year for positions that would have given them control over state elections systems lost their races. But several have found a new path to exert influence: as chair of their state Republican Party. On Saturday, Kristina Karamo, an activist who rose to prominence for her efforts to overturn Michigan’s 2020 presidential results, was elected chair of the Michigan GOP at the party’s convention. A week earlier, Mike Brown, a former county commissioner who has stoked fears that the 2020 election was stolen, won the same job at Kansas’ convention. And in July, Idaho Republicans chose Dorothy Moon, a former state legislator who has said there was a “big problem” with the 2020 vote and made unfounded claims about illegal voting, as their leader. GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX SUBSCRIBE Meanwhile, Tina Peters announced last week that she’s running for state GOP chair in Colorado. A former county election clerk, Peters is facing felony charges in connection with an alleged scheme to breach secure voting equipment in order to show that her state’s 2020 vote was rigged. All four Republicans ran unsuccessfully last year for secretary of state, which would have made them their state’s chief election official. Karamo won the Republican nomination, then was defeated in the general election by Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat. Brown, Moon, and Peters all lost in the GOP primaries. Spokespeople for the Kansas and Idaho Republican parties said the chair position is unsalaried. The Michigan party did not immediately respond to an inquiry. A new platform The emerging trend of election deniers running for secretary of state before going on to lead their state party gives deniers yet another platform from which to exert influence, by stoking unfounded fears about election systems and pushing for restrictive voting policies. Already, hundreds of deniers are in office across the country. A Brookings Institution study found that 226 out of 345 candidates who ran for congressional, state legislative, or statewide positions — 66% — won their races. And, as States Newsroom recently reported, at least five states have deniers running their election systems as secretary of state. “State party chairs have tremendous power in our two-party system: to appoint poll workers and poll watchers, to influence who makes it on the ballot,” said Norman Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who co-authored the study of election-denier candidates. “They can direct funding and support to these individuals. They shape the national Republican Party platform and operation. State parties have a lot of power and that means state party chairs have a lot of power.” That could offer a valuable boost to former President Donald Trump in these states — though none of the three chairs has yet endorsed a GOP presidential candidate. Mike Lindell, left, stands alongside Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters as she addresses a crowd gathered on the steps of the Colorado Capitol for the “Election Truth Rally,” which was organized by individuals who question the results of the 2020 presidential election, in Denver, April 5, 2022. (Kevin Mohatt for Colorado Newsline) The trend also highlights how, despite some high-profile defeats last year, denialism and extremism maintain a hold on many rank-and-file Republican activists and voters. Karamo has said the January 6, 2021, insurrection was a false-flag operation. “I believe this is completely Antifa posing as Trump supporters,” she said the following day, referring to left-wing anti-fascist activists. And she never conceded her 14-point loss to Benson in November. “Why would I concede to a fraudulent process?” she asked, according to the Detroit Free Press. In winning the party chair post, Karamo defeated another election denier, Matthew DePerno, who lost his race last year for attorney general. As a legislator, Moon worked to tighten Idaho’s voting rules, introducing a bill that would have banned the use of student IDs to vote, eliminated the use of affidavits for voters without proper ID, and ended same-day voter registration. Arguing for the measure, which ultimately did not pass, Moon spread stories about people crossing into Idaho from Canada to vote illegally. The secretary of state’s office said that wasn’t happening. Campaigning last year for secretary of state, Brown raised unfounded fears about the security of Kansas’ elections and questioned the 2020 presidential results. After the incumbent secretary of state, Scott Schwab, said there were no major problems with the state’s voting, The Associated Press reported, Brown responded: “Because he said so? Or because he can prove it?” “His answer is, ‘There is nothing to see here, keep moving,’” Brown added. “You should start looking and you should stop moving.” Eisen warned that, despite the losses last year by several prominent election deniers, the ascension of deniers to state chair posts underscores the threat that the ideology continues to pose. “When you combine that with the fact that election deniers have taken control in other places, it represents a clear and present danger,” Eisen said. “We must celebrate the successes we had, but keep our guard up, remain at high alert, and redouble efforts to prevent this election denial philosophy from destroying American democracy.” SUPPORT NEWS YOU TRUST. DONATE
- [Georgia grand jury probe of Trump bid to overturn vote recommended charges - media](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/georgia-grand-jury-probe-of-trump-bid-to-overturn-vote-recommended-charges-media/) - WASHINGTON, Feb 21 (Reuters) - (This Feb. 21 story has been refiled to add dropped word ‘recommended’ in paragraph 2)The foreperson of a Georgia grand jury that investigated former U.S. President Donald Trump's attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the state told media on Tuesday that the panel recommended multiple criminal indictments.The foreperson of the recently concluded Fulton County, Georgia, special grand jury, Emily Kohrs, did not discuss specific charges that the grand jury recommended in interviews with outlets including CNN and the New York Times."There may be some names on that list that you wouldn't expect. But the big name that everyone keeps asking me about – I don't think you will be shocked," Kohrs told CNN.Reuters was not immediately able to reach Kohrs.A Georgia judge last week ordered the release of some excerpts of the special grand jury's final report, which concluded that some witnesses may have lied under oath and delivered recommendations to prosecutors on possible indictments for election interference, the document showed.Latest UpdatesView 2 more stories
- [No, President Joe Biden didn't admit the 2020 presidential election was stolen - PolitiFact](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/no-president-joe-biden-didnt-admit-the-2020-presidential-election-was-stolen-politifact/) - PolitiFact | No, President Joe Biden didn’t admit the 2020 presidential election was stolen Stand up for the facts! Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy. We need your help. More Info I would like to contribute “President Joe Biden admits to faking the election.” No, President Joe Biden didn’t admit the 2020 presidential election was stolen If Your Time is short This audio clip isn’t an authentic recording of the president. President Joe Biden legally won his White House seat and has criticized detractors "seeking to steal the 2020 election from the people," so it would be quite the shock to discover that he also "admits to faking the election." That’s what a Feb. 22 Instagram post claims, sharing audio purported to be Biden saying "OK, they election might have been fake, but the perk wasn’t. I’m wired as a motherf-----, don’t start trying to play with me… I’m really about that action. Biden out." This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.) RELATED VIDEO [embedded content] This audio is, of course, not authentic. There’s no evidence Biden said anything remotely like this. But such fake audio clips of the president are becoming more common. We’ve fact-checked some, such as claims that Biden said he was going to change the name of Black History Month and an alleged leaked voicemail from Biden about classified documents. "Lately virtual Biden has been spouting off — rather fluently — on a number of topics about which the president wouldn’t and/or shouldn’t have strong opinions," Rolling Stone said. "It’s all thanks to the advent of powerful AI tools for voice cloning." We rate claims that this is an authentic clip of Biden saying he cheated in the 2020 presidential election False. Instagram post, Feb. 22, 2023 Rolling Stone, Fake Biden Speeches Are the Hottest Trend in AI Voice Tech, Feb. 22, 2023 The White House, Remarks by President Biden on Protecting the Right to Vote, Jan. 11, 2022 PolitiFact, Claims that the 2020 election was stolen are still false, May 4, 2022 In a world of wild talk and fake news, help us stand up for the facts. Sign me up
- [House January 6 investigator says it's 'likely' 2020 election subversion probes will produce ... - WRAL](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/house-january-6-investigator-says-its-likely-2020-election-subversion-probes-will-produce-wral/) - CNN — The top investigator on the House committee that probed the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack said Wednesday it is "likely" that the Georgia and federal investigations into efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election will produce indictments.Timothy Heaphy told CNN's Kate Bolduan on "Erin Burnett OutFront" that "unless there is information inconsistent, which I don't expect, I think there will likely be indictments both in Georgia and at the federal level."In Georgia, the foreperson of the Atlanta-based grand jury that investigated former President Donald Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election told CNN on Tuesday that the panel is recommending multiple indictments and suggested "the big name" may be on the list.The grand jury met for about seven months in Atlanta and heard testimony from 75 witnesses, including some of Trump's closest advisers from his final weeks in the White House.Now that the grand jury is finished, it's up to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to review the recommendations and make charging decisions. Willis' decisions in this case will reverberate in the 2024 presidential campaign and beyond.Trump, who has launched his 2024 campaign for the White House, denies any criminal wrongdoing.At the federal level, special counsel Jack Smith is overseeing parts of the criminal investigation into the Capitol attack and has subpoenaed members of Trump's inner circle. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that Smith had subpoenaed the former president's daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner for testimony."I think it could be very important," Heaphy said of the pair's potential testimony."They were present for really significant events. The special counsel will want to hear about the president's understanding of the election results and also what happened on January 6. And they both had direct communications with him about the events preceding the riot at the Capitol," he said.The special counsel has a massive amount of evidence already in-hand that it now needs to comb through, including evidence recently turned over by the House January 6 committee, subpoena documents provided by local officials in key states and discovery collected from lawyers for Trump allies late last year in a flurry of activity, at least some of which had not been reviewed as of early January, sources familiar with the investigation told CNN at the time."He will not stop because of a family relationship, because of purported executive privilege," Heaphy said of Smith. "He believes that the law entitles him to all of that information, and he's determined to get it."Ivanka Trump and Kushner previously testified to the House select committee, which expired in January after Republicans took control of the House. The panel had referred the former president to the Justice Department on four criminal charges in December, and while largely symbolic in nature, committee members stressed those referrals served as a way to document their views given that Congress cannot bring charges.This story has been updated with additional information Wednesday.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
- [Georgia Grand Jury Forewoman Causing a Headache for Prosecutors - Business Insider](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/georgia-grand-jury-forewoman-causing-a-headache-for-prosecutors-business-insider/) - Emily Kohrs, the foreperson on the special grand jury empaneled in the investigation into Donald Trump's bid to overturn the 2020 election, discusses the case in an MSNBC interview on February 22, 2023. MSNBC Redeem now The foreperson in the special grand jury in Georgia investigating Trump has given a media tour. She confirmed that the panel recommended indictments. Republicans have since used her comments to discredit the investigation. Top editors give you the stories you want — delivered right to your inbox each weekday. Loading Something is loading. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. download the app Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. .inline-newsletter-signup.loading { width: 100%; max-width: 640px; margin: 0 auto; visibility: hidden; } A media tour by the foreperson of a special grand jury investigating Donald Trump's efforts to overturn Georgia's 2020 election results is causing a headache for prosecutors. Emily Kohrs, the foreperson in the grand jury, has in recent days given candid interviews about the panel's work to outlets including CNN, MSNBC, and The New York Times. Kohrs was authorized to speak to the media but not to discuss details of the special grand jury's findings, which included charging recommendations. Prosecutors may now refer the report to an ordinary grand jury to bring criminal charges.Without naming anyone, Kohrs said the special grand jury had recommended indictments for several of the people accused of helping Trump as he sought to reverse his defeat to Joe Biden in the state. —Andy Ostroy (@AndyOstroy) February 22, 2023In one interview, she said: "You're not going to be shocked. It's not rocket science."Although the special grand jury ultimately decided not to subpoena Trump, Kohrs said she thought it would have been "really cool" because she would have been the one swearing him in and would have liked to meet him.Republican critics say the interviews show the investigation is riddled with anti-Trump bias.CBS News reported that lawyers for witnesses in the investigation, which is being conducted by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, would seek to overturn potential indictments on the basis of Kohrs' comments. Legal experts told the Washington Post that Kohr's comments on evaluating witnesses, on jurors fraternizing with prosecutors, and her hopes the investigation would result in charges, all gave cause for concern. However some legal experts said Kohrs did not break any laws in the interviews, so has not compromised the investigation.—Lisa Rubin (@lawofruby) February 22, 2023"Emily Kohrs's pursuit of her fifteen minutes is not likely to preclude anyone indicted and convicted from serving their term of years," tweeted MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin. Insider has contacted the Fulton County DA's office for comment. Excerpts from the grand jury's report, released earlier in February, revealed few details but found that the 2020 election in Georgia had not been marred by widespread fraud, as Trump has repeatedly claimed. Willis announced the investigation into Trump in February 2021. The probe is looking into whether Trump and his allies may have violated state laws in seeking to persuade officials to appoint an alternative set of electors to the Electoral College, ignoring Biden's victory.Trump is alleged to have personally pressured state officials not to certify Biden's win as part of a campaign waged on several fronts to cling to power.Correction: February 23, 2023 — An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the investigation was opened by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in 2020. She announced the investigation in February 2021. .content-lock-lock .hidden { display: none; } Sign up for notifications from Insider! Stay up to date with what you want to know. Subscribe to push notifications Close icon Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.
- [Trump May Take Legal Action In Georgia Election Case After Forewoman Talks To Media ... - Forbes](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/trump-may-take-legal-action-in-georgia-election-case-after-forewoman-talks-to-media-forbes/) - ToplinePresident Donald Trump’s attorneys are weighing legal action after the forewoman of a grand jury probing his attempts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia gave media interviews about its work, they told multiple outlets late Wednesday, as the ex-president faces potential criminal charges in the Fulton County district attorney’s investigation—which could be imminent. Key Facts Trump attorneys Drew Findling and Jennifer Little told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and New York Times they were considering filing unspecified motions in court in response to grand jury forewoman Emily Kohrs, who gave multiple media interviews this week that elaborated on the grand jury’s work and said the panel had recommended multiple people to be indicted. Kohrs, who did not explicitly say Trump would be indicted but hinted the grand jury report “might” recommend charges, undermined the investigation, Trump’s attorneys argued, calling her media interviews a “carnival, clown-like atmosphere” that “takes away from the complete sanctity and the integrity and, for that matter, the reliability” of the investigation. The attorneys did not say what specific legal actions they planned to take, but said they were “considering a wide variety of potential motions,” and previous reports have suggested targets of the investigation intend to use Kohrs’ comments to try to quash indictments against them. Little alleged to the Journal-Constitution that Kohrs acted illegally by commenting on grand jury deliberations in her comments to the media, though legal experts have separately said they do not believe her comments were legally objectionable. The Trump attorneys also complained about the actions of Fulton County DA Fani Willis, alleging she also undermined the probe by giving media interviews, tweeting a political cartoon of herself and investigation witness Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and having a conflict of interest involving a target in the investigation. The attorneys’ comments marked their first time speaking out about the investigation, and came after Trump had blasted the forewoman’s actions on Truth Social Wednesday, calling the investigation an “illegal kangaroo court.” Crucial Quote “We’re on top of every conceivable legal issue that’s involved in this case … Everything’s up for consideration right now,” Findling told the Journal-Constitution about their potential legal action, adding the attorneys “think it could be a travesty for there to be criminal charges in this case, because we are resolute in the fact that our client is completely innocent.” Contra The judge overseeing the grand jury’s work, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, told the Journal-Constitution that the scope of what members of the grand jury legally can’t share about their work is pretty narrow. McBurney said he told the jurors they can’t talk about their internal deliberations—when it was just them in a room and they were “discussing what do we do with what we’ve learned”—but they can comment on anything that happened when an assistant DA or witness was in the room with them, or any of their findings that were in their final report. Legal experts have said that while they may disagree with Kohrs speaking to the media, they don’t believe anything she said rose to the level of being illegal. “Ms Kohrs has been very openly trying to operate within the parameters that the judge apparently gave on what is and is not allowed, and so far I don’t think she’s exceeded them,” attorney Norm Eisen told the Independent. What To Watch For Willis said in January that decisions on indictments would come “imminently,” so it’s expected that charges will be filed in the investigation soon. Neither the portions of the grand jury report that have been publicly released or Kohrs’ comments have suggested who specifically could be indicted, though the forewoman told NBC News the jury had recommended more than a dozen people be indicted. “It’s not a short list,” she said. In addition to Trump, far-right attorney Rudy Giuliani has also been named as a target of the investigation, along with GOP officials who submitted a false slate of electors to Congress claiming Trump had won Georgia. Publicly released portions of the grand jury report also reveal the panel believed some of the 75 witnesses interviewed may have committed perjury by lying to the grand jury during their testimony, and have likely been recommended to be indicted as well. As a special grand jury, the group could not actually issue indictments itself, and it will be up to Willis to decide whether to take the grand jury’s recommendations or not. Key Background Willis has been investigating Trump and his allies’ efforts to overturn the 2020 election since February 2021, particularly Trump’s phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump told him to “find” enough votes to overturn President Joe Biden’s win. The special grand jury was convened in May 2022 before dissolving in January, and its final report detailing its finding has been a major source of scrutiny since its work wrapped up. Only the introduction, conclusion and one section of the grand jury report were released to the public, as Willis and McBurney argued the sections detailing specific people who may have committed crimes should remain private for now, given that they haven’t been formally indicted yet. Surprising Fact Trump’s criticism of the grand jury comes after he previously thanked the jurors for their work and claimed the public portions of its report were “total exoneration”—even though one of the only things the report revealed was that the grand jury unanimously found there was no widespread voter fraud as Trump claimed. Further Reading Trump Calls Georgia Criminal Investigation 'Kangaroo Court' After Juror Gives Interview About Forthcoming Indictments (Forbes) Georgia Trump Probe: Grand Jury Recommends Perjury Indictments — But Hasn’t Yet Said Who Could Be Charged (Forbes) Trump Claims ‘Total Exoneration’ In Georgia Election Probe: Here’s Why That’s Not True—And He Could Still Be Indicted Soon (Forbes) Trump attorneys: Special grand jury probe ‘a clown show’ (Atlanta Journal-Constitution) Georgia Trump Probe: Grand Jury Reportedly Recommends Multiple Indictments (Forbes)
- [Trump lawyers blast election probe after grand juror speaks - WABE](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/trump-lawyers-blast-election-probe-after-grand-juror-speaks-wabe/) - Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers in Georgia are criticizing the Fulton County investigation into potential illegal election meddling after the foreperson of the special grand jury seated to help the probe went public this week. Emily Kohrs first spoke out in an interview published Tuesday by The Associated Press, a story that was followed by interviews in other print and television news outlets. She described some of what happened behind the closed doors of the jury room — including how some witnesses behaved, how prosecutors interacted with witnesses and how some witnesses invoked their rights not to answer certain questions. Trump attorneys Drew Findling and Jennifer Little said that despite having concerns about the panel’s proceedings from the start, they kept quiet out of respect for the grand jury process. But they said revelations offered by Kohrs this week compelled them to speak up. “The end product is the reliability of anything that has taken place in there is completely tainted and called into question,” Findling said in an interview with the AP on Wednesday evening. He said he held “no chagrin for a 30-year-old foreperson” who was part of “a failed system.” “She’s a product of a circus that cloaked itself as a special purpose grand jury,” he said. The special grand jury was impaneled at the request of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is investigating whether Trump and his Republican allies committed any crimes as they tried to overturn his narrow 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden in Georgia. The panel did not have the power to indict but instead could offer recommendations for Willis, a Democrat who will ultimately decide whether to seek indictments from a regular grand jury. Findling and Little expressed concern that the special grand jury, which they said should be basing its recommendations to the district attorney on evidence and testimony presented in the jury room, was allowed to watch and read news coverage of the case and was aware of some witnesses’ efforts not to testify. Kohrs said prosecutors told the jurors they could read and watch the news but urged them to keep an open mind. Kohrs also shared numerous anecdotes from the proceedings that she found amusing and was very expressive in television interviews, sometimes laughing or making faces. Findling and Little said the district attorney’s office, which was advising the special grand jury, should have done a better job of educating the grand jurors about the solemnity of the process and the rules and limitations. “It’s not a joking matter,” Findling said. “It’s not a matter for giggles. It’s not a matter for smiles.” Willis’ office has declined to comment on Kohrs’ media appearances. The Trump lawyers also said that this situation could have been avoided if the judge had instructed special grand jury members not to speak to news outlets until after the panel’s full final report is made public. Several parts of the report were released last week, but Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said any section that recommended specific charges for specific people would remain secret for now. In the federal system, grand jurors are prohibited from talking about what witnesses said or anything that happened in the room. But the oath taken by grand jurors in Georgia only says they cannot talk about their deliberations. The grand jury was dissolved on Jan. 9, and McBurney told the AP that he later met with grand jurors to discuss where things stood. He said he provided them a “road map” of what they were legally allowed and not allowed to discuss publicly. He said they could discuss what witnesses said and what is in the report but could not talk about deliberations because that’s what their oath said. Willis has said since the beginning of the investigation two years ago that she was interested in a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call in which Trump suggested to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, that he could “find” the votes needed to overturn Trump’s loss to Biden in the state. “All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said during that call.
- [Former Arizona AG withheld findings showing there was no fraud in 2020 election](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/former-arizona-ag-withheld-findings-showing-there-was-no-fraud-in-2020-election/) - PHOENIX — Arizona’s former attorney general suppressed findings by his investigators who concluded there was no basis for allegations that the 2020 election was marred by widespread fraud, according to documents released Wednesday by his successor.Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes, who took office last month, said the records show the 2020 election “was conducted fairly and accurately by election officials.”
- [Georgia jury forewoman throws Trump investigation into chaos after admitting it would have ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/georgia-jury-forewoman-throws-trump-investigation-into-chaos-after-admitting-it-would-have/) - Emily Kohrs, the foreperson on the special grand jury empaneled in the investigation into Donald Trump's bid to overturn the 2020 election, discusses the case in an MSNBC interview on February 22, 2023.MSNBCThe foreperson in the special grand jury in Georgia investigating Trump has given a media tour.She confirmed that the panel recommended indictments.Republicans have since used her comments to discredit the investigation.A media tour by the foreperson of a special grand jury investigating Donald Trump's efforts to overturn Georgia's 2020 election results is causing a headache for prosecutors.Emily Kohrs, the foreperson in the grand jury, has in recent days given candid interviews about the panel's work to outlets including CNN, MSNBC, and The New York Times.Kohrs was authorized to speak to the media but not to discuss details of the special grand jury's findings, which included charging recommendations. Prosecutors may now refer the report to an ordinary grand jury to bring criminal charges.Without naming anyone, Kohrs said the special grand jury had recommended indictments for several of the people accused of helping Trump as he sought to reverse his defeat to Joe Biden in the state.In one interview, she said: "You're not going to be shocked. It's not rocket science."Although the special grand jury ultimately decided not to subpoena Trump, Kohrs said she thought it would have been "really cool" because she would have been the one swearing him in and would have liked to meet him.Republican critics say the interviews show the investigation is riddled with anti-Trump bias.CBS News reported that lawyers for witnesses in the investigation, which is being conducted by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, would seek to overturn potential indictments on the basis of Kohrs' comments.Legal experts told the Washington Post that Kohr's comments on evaluating witnesses, on jurors fraternizing with prosecutors, and her hopes the investigation would result in charges, all gave cause for concern.However some legal experts said Kohrs did not break any laws in the interviews, so has not compromised the investigation."Emily Kohrs's pursuit of her fifteen minutes is not likely to preclude anyone indicted and convicted from serving their term of years," tweeted MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin.Insider has contacted the Fulton County DA's office for comment.Excerpts from the grand jury's report, released earlier in February, revealed few details but found that the 2020 election in Georgia had not been marred by widespread fraud, as Trump has repeatedly claimed.Willis announced the investigation into Trump in February 2021. The probe is looking into whether Trump and his allies may have violated state laws in seeking to persuade officials to appoint an alternative set of electors to the Electoral College, ignoring Biden's victory.Trump is alleged to have personally pressured state officials not to certify Biden's win as part of a campaign waged on several fronts to cling to power.Correction: February 23, 2023 — An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the investigation was opened by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in 2020. She announced the investigation in February 2021.Read the original article on Business Insider
- [Scott Perry battles DoJ over work with Trump allies to overturn 2020 election - The Guardian](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/scott-perry-battles-doj-over-work-with-trump-allies-to-overturn-2020-election-the-guardian/) - Scott Perry battles DoJ over work with Trump allies to overturn 2020 electionThe far-right congressman is invoking a constitutional clause that allows him to block access to his phoneScott Perry, the far-right House Freedom Caucus chairman, is in a legal battle with the justice department for his work with Donald Trump allies to overturn the 2020 election results.Perry, a congressman from Pennsylvania whose belated vote and those of caucus allies helped elect Kevin McCarthy as speaker, has been waging a legal fight for months to block the Department of Justice (DoJ) from accessing his cellphone, which was seized last August as part of the DoJ’s sprawling January 6 inquiry and Trump’s efforts to thwart Joe Biden’s election with false fraud claims. A federal appeals court in DC is slated to hear arguments about accessing Perry’s phone on Thursday.The legal dustup between Perry and the DoJ involves the US constitution’s speech or debate clause, which Perry has cited to stop the department from accessing his phone. The clause typically protects members’ legislative work from legal scrutiny, but does not protect potential criminal actions involving non-legislative matters, say ex-prosecutors.Congressman and Trump ally Scott Perry says FBI seized his cellphoneRead morePerry, whose lawyer has said the DoJ informed Perry he was not a target after his phone was seized, was perhaps Trump’s most zealous House ally when he sought to overturn his loss with baseless charges that the election was rigged.The justice department’s efforts to gain access to Perry’s cellphone stem partly from Perry’s role introducing Trump to Jeffrey Clark, a former senior DoJ environmental lawyer who plotted with Trump to make Clark the acting attorney general in an abortive scheme to help Trump push election fraud myths in Georgia and other key states.Federal agents seized Perry’s cellphone after other agents raided Clark’s Virginia home last June and took his cellphone as part of the DoJ inquiry.Perry also exchanged at least 62 emails with Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, including some about election conspiracies such as “Italygate”, a wacky fantasy about how an Italian defense contractor worked with top CIA officials to use military satellites to switch votes from Trump to Biden.Meadows was reportedly subpoenaed in January by a grand jury in DC as part of the special counsel’s probe into January 6 and Trump’s efforts to stay in power despite losing the election.Former prosecutors say Thursday’s hearing could lead to a ruling that allows investigators some access to communications on Perry’s cellphone that involve potential criminal conduct.“A member of Congress has a legitimate privilege under the speech or debate clause, which prevents a member from being questioned about legislative matters,” former US attorney for eastern Michigan Barbara McQuade told the Guardian.“That extends to measures stored on their phones. But that does not mean that a member of Congress can never be questioned or investigated. Text messages on the cellphone could provide evidence of criminal intent in efforts to thwart the outcome of the election.”Perry’s attorney John Irving declined to comment for this piece.When Perry’s phone was seized while he was on vacation last August, the congressman said he was “outraged, though not surprised that the FBI would seize the phone of a sitting member of Congress”.Perry’s legal skirmish with the DoJ widened when a five-person House panel –including McCarthy and Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries – voted last month to intervene and support Perry’s stance invoking the speech or debate clause.On another front, Perry was one of four members, including McCarthy who refused to cooperate with the House select committee on January 6, prompting the panel to refer them to the House ethics committee for scrutiny.To be sure, the House January 6 panel and other records reveal that Perry was deeply involved with Clark and Meadows in plans to help Trump stay in office by promoting false charges of fraud.On 21 December 2020, Perry and about ten other members met with Trump, Meadows and Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to discuss ways to thwart Biden’s win. Perry has said that the next day he “obliged” Trump by introducing him to Clark at a White House meeting after touting him as a DoJ ally.Trump briefly tried to make Clark the acting attorney general to push phony election fraud claims in key states until Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general, and other top DoJ and White House lawyers told Trump on 3 January that such a move would spur mass resignations at the justice department.Further, the House January 6 panel hearings last year revealed text messages between Perry and Meadows on 31 December 2020 that included a YouTube video about their pet Italygate conspiracy. In the video, Perry said: “Why can’t we just work with the Italian government?”Perry also urged the acting attorney general Rosen to investigate Italygate. “I told him this whole thing about Italy had been debunked,” Rosen said last June at a committee hearing.US investigators were allowed access to Trump allies’ emailsRead moreGiven Perry’s multiple efforts to help Trump stay in office, the information on his cellphone involving his contacts with Clark and Meadows is seen by the justice department as potential criminal evidence about key Trump allies.Former prosecutors and other experts say Perry’s legal strategy of invoking the speech or debate clause as his defense has limits.McQuade said the 23 February court hearing could lead to DoJ investigators gaining access to some of Perry’s cellphone communications that were outside his legislative duties.“A likely scenario is that a judge would order a filter team to review the content of the phone first to find and set aside any material that might arguably be covered by the speech or debate clause, and then allow the parties to litigate whether the privilege should apply as to each item. The FBI would be entitled to review everything else.”Other ex-prosecutors foresee similar scenarios.“While the speech or debate clause does have limitations, courts so far have been reluctant to narrowly define those limitations and, as such, its constitutional parameters have been construed very broadly,” Paul Pelletier, a former acting chief of the DoJ’s fraud section, told the Guardian.“While this could severely limit the government’s access to the information contained within Perry’s phone, common sense would dictate that communications plainly divorced from Perry’s legislative duties should be available to prosecutors.”Speaking generally about the speech or debate clause’s legal protections for members, the former deputy attorney general Donald Ayer, who served in the George HW Bush administration, said: “If it’s taking place outside of Congress, unrelated to any legislative functions, and is potentially criminal action involving overturning the election, it would not be protected by the speech or debate clause.”Likewise, former Republican Charlie Dent stressed that “there are limits to the speech or debate clause as it relates to alleged criminal activity”.The hearing on 23 February, some of which will be public, will be before the three-judge DC court of appeals and court documents released on 15 February suggest that arguments will focus on whether the clause protects members from scrutiny of their “informal” legislative efforts.These documents also suggest that Perry’s lawyer could challenge the DoJ by arguing that members’ communications with officials in the executive branch and private parties can be kept secret.The three-judge panel, all of whom were Republican appointees, earlier this year stayed a ruling by the lower court judge Beryl Howell of the DC district court in December that investigators could obtain some of Perry’s cellphone communications.Last year, Howell released redacted copies of two attorney confidentiality decisions she made that gave prosecutors access to some of Perry’s emails before January 6 with Clark, John Eastman, a key Trump lawyer, and Ken Klukowski, a DoJ lawyer who worked briefly with Clark at the justice department.While the outcome of the 23 February hearing is uncertain, McQuade suggests that the DoJ may ultimately prevail in obtaining some communications from Perry’s phone that federal investigators want to see.“Plotting to subvert an election would fall outside of a member’s legislative responsibilities,” McQuade said.TopicsUS politicsJanuary 6 hearingsRepublicansnewsReuse this content
- [Arizona attorney general suppressed his agents' reports refuting “stolen election” claims](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/arizona-attorney-general-suppressed-his-agents-reports-refuting-stolen-election-claims/) - During his final year as Arizona’s attorney general, Republican Mark Brnovich suppressed the results of an investigation by his own agency that dispelled claims of widespread vote fraud or election manipulation in the 2020 presidential election, it was reported Wednesday. These actions contributed to the growth of the fascistic right in Arizona, which now effectively controls the Republican Party.Former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich speaks at a news conference in Phoenix, on January. 7, 2020. According to documents released Wednesday, February 22, 2023, by his successor, Kris Mayes, Brnovich suppressed findings by his investigators who concluded there was no basis for allegations that the 2020 election was marred by widespread fraud. [AP Photo/Bob Christie, File]Both the Washington Post and the Arizona Republic published extensive accounts of Brnovich’s efforts to curry favor with the fascist right while he was seeking the Republican nomination for US Senate in 2022, based on documents now made public by the new state attorney general, Democrat Kris Mayes.Brnovich lost the primary contest for the Republican Senate nomination to the election denier Blake Masters, who went on to lose the general election to incumbent Democrat Mark Kelly. Brnovich had alienated Trump and his most hysterical supporters by acknowledging in November 2020 that Democrat Joe Biden had won the state’s electoral votes and opposing unsupported challenges to the validity of the result.Republicans in the Arizona state Senate commissioned a “forensic” examination of the votes cast in Maricopa County, where a majority of the state’s voters live. This was conducted by the Trump-linked Florida firm Cyber Ninjas and paid for by contributions from pro-Trump foundations and wealthy donors. It became widely ridiculed as reports emerged of improper handling of the ballots by Cyber Ninjas and other apparent indications of incompetence in a group which had never before audited the results of an election.In the end, this “recount” actually resulted in a slight increase in Biden’s margin of just over 10,000 votes out of 3.4 million cast, although the group claimed to have found numerous improprieties in the conduct of the election. The state Senate then sought a further review of the election by Attorney General Brnovich’s office.The attorney general threw the full resources of his agency into an attempt to provide factual substantiation of the dozens of claims of improper actions by state and county election officials, appearing on social media and voiced by Republican state legislators. .modal.ReactModal__Overlay { opacity: 0; transition: opacity 0.2s ease-in-out; } .modal.ReactModal__Overlay--after-open { opacity: 1; } .modal.ReactModal__Content { opacity: 0; transform: translateZ(0); transition: opacity 0.2s ease-in-out, transform 0.2s ease-in-out; transition-delay: 0.2s; transform: scale(0.9); } .modal.ReactModal__Content--after-open { opacity: 1; transform: scale(1.0); } Every one of the 60 investigators employed by the state attorney general’s office took part in the probe at one point or another. A command center was set up to spearhead the probe, and according to one internal report: “the review of the audit was made a singular, high-level priority; all hands were assigned to work exclusively on reviewing the audit with other matters being placed on hold unless a matter required immediate action on our part.”Unlike the Republican Party officials and Trump operatives, however, the investigative staff of the attorney general’s office apparently took the issue of factual proof seriously. They looked into both wild and completely groundless allegations circulating on the internet, and the findings of the biased and incompetent 2021 investigation by the Cyber Ninjas outfit, and found that not a single allegation could be verified as credible, let alone significant enough to cast doubt on Biden’s victory.In March 2022, the attorney general’s investigators had completed their review, and concluded, in a 24-page memorandum to Brnovich, that there was no basis for challenging the outcome of the 2020 vote. The document, posted on the website of the Arizona Republic, makes for devastating reading.A few highlights (or lowlights):Cyber Ninjas claimed that 182 votes were cast in Maricopa County by dead people. The investigators found 181 of these voters alive and well, while in the case of the deceased, his wife had marked his ballot, wrote deceased across it in capital letters, and mailed it in.Cyber Ninjas claimed that the Maricopa Election Management System was connected to the internet although county election officials said it was air-gapped and never able to access the internet. Among the “proofs” offered by Cyber Ninjas were records of internet access which turned out to be failed attempts to access the internet by system users unfamiliar with the air-gap security.Pro-Trump election monitors claimed that Maricopa County failed to maintain the “chain of custody” for transporting ballots from drop boxes to the central counting location, clearly implying that there was ample opportunity to introduce thousands of bogus ballots into the system. These violations turned out to be infrequent failures of the two transporters (always one Republican and one Democrat or independent) to sign their logs. Out of nearly 1,900 drop boxes, there were 12 such cases, as well as 15 where the receiver of the ballots at the counting center did not sign the form. These minor paperwork errors were not an indication of ballot-stuffing, but of the huge volume of election-day activity.Arizona state legislator Mark Finchem claimed he had been informed by a “source” that the Democratic Party in Pima County (Tucson) had organized to add 35,000 votes to the totals of every Democratic candidate on the ballot in the county. The source turned out to be an anonymous email from an address no longer valid, and the two people who could be linked to that address forensically denied having sent the email. Finchem himself did not repeat the claim when asked to give sworn testimony to investigators. Finchem was the Republican candidate for Arizona’s secretary of state and if he had won—he lost by 120,000 votes, about 4.8 percent—would have been in charge of the state’s election machinery in the 2024 election.The memo also summed up the scale of the resources employed on the all-encompassing probe that became the top priority for the agency. Investigators spent more than 10,000 hours looking into 638 complaints. They opened 430 investigations and referred 22 cases for prosecution, most of them for minor individual missteps such as two felons who cast ballots when they were not eligible.Donate to the WSWS 25 Year FundWatch David North’s remarks commemorating 25 years of the World Socialist Web Site and donate today.Donate todayBrnovich did not make this memorandum public or even inform the public of its existence. A month later, however, he release an “interim report” in which he claimed that his office’s investigator had “revealed serious vulnerabilities that must be addressed and raises questions about the 2020 election in Arizona.” He suggested that county officials were not cooperating with the probe and darkly hinted that this stonewalling must be to cover up major problems in the vote counting.His own staff sought to correct this utterly false account and get their own findings onto the record, but Brnovich persisted, rejecting suggested changes in the “interim report” while he ordered the investigation into allegations of election improprieties to continue. They had concluded that the county staff “followed its policy/procedures as they relate to signature verification; we did not uncover any criminality or fraud having been committed in this area during the 2020 general election.” They said they found the county “was cooperative and responsive to our requests.”At that time the campaign for the August Republican primary was in full swing, and Brnovich was seeking to avoid being outflanked on the right by Masters, who combined a libertarian-style denunciation of state and federal spending with an embrace of the “stolen election” conspiracy theories of Trump and his closest supporters.A further memorandum from Brnovich’s investigators, sent to him in September, refuted the ever more bizarre theories of Masters, gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, and others on the fascist right, including the claim that thousands of pre-marked ballots were flown in from Asia, the use of Italian satellites to manipulate vote tabulation, and election servers being connected to the internet where they could be hacked and vote totals changed.“In each instance and in each matter, the aforementioned parties did not provide any evidence to support their allegations,” the September memo read. “The information that was provided was speculative in many instances and when investigated by our agents and support staff, was found to be inaccurate.”Like the March memo, the September memo was also not released to the public, despite repeated requests from the press, until after Brnovich left office.Join the Socialist Equality Party! 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- [Brnovich withheld reports on investigation that debunked 2020 election fraud claims](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/brnovich-withheld-reports-on-investigation-that-debunked-2020-election-fraud-claims/) - The Arizona Attorney General's Office concluded months ago there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election results in Maricopa County ― but the state's top prosecutor sat on the information and suppressed mitigating details, newly released records show.An investigative report and two internal memos from 2022 indicate then-Attorney General Mark Brnovich was aware his investigators "did not uncover any criminality or fraud" in the 2020 election weeks before Brnovich reported the county's election system was vulnerable and the process for verification and handling of early ballots was broken.The three documents were made public Wednesday by newly elected Attorney General Kris Mayes, who described them as "deeply unsettling and unacceptable."Mayes told The Arizona Republic on Wednesday the public was misled and that never should have happened."First and foremost, the people of Arizona had a right to know this before the 2022 election," she said. "This office has a solemn duty to be transparent and honest with the people of Arizona."The office could have put an end to many conspiracies surrounding the 2020 election results more than a year ago. Instead, Brnovich fueled concerns about systemwide problems. Mayes said resources could have been spent elsewhere protecting the people of Arizona."At some point, nearly every single agent in the office was pulled into investigating the 2020 election," Mayes said.An earlier release of the documents could have answered continued questions from Arizona Senate Republicans, who had launched an election review over concerns whether Joe Biden was rightly elected president. It also could have debunked allegations by a host of Arizona candidates running in 2022 on claims of election irregularities.Of particular concern to Mayes was the initial report released publicly by Brnovich in April 2022 suggesting the county's election system could not be completely trusted.According to one of the internal memos, investigators' annotations on the initial report showed their concerns with some of Brnovich's major claims."Most of the investigators' comments refute the main points of the report," Mayes said. "It is unsettling to learn those findings were not released in that report."Brnovich, a Republican, did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.Mayes, a Democrat, stopped short of saying whether there was any action or recourse the office could take against Brnovich."The most important thing now is getting this information out," she said, promising more documents would be forthcoming, including a 500-page attachment to the reports that is still being reviewed.View in new tabNewly released reports undermine Brnovich's claimsDocuments released Wednesday show the Attorney General's Office had summarized its findings in March 2022, a month before Brnovich released the initial report.A 24-page report on the investigation by an assistant chief special agent of the criminal division detailed an exhaustive process that examined 638 separate complaints of alleged fraud, including those made by elected officials, that prompted 438 investigations and took more than 10,000 hours to complete.The report concluded, in case after case, that the allegations were unfounded.Brnovich in April 2022:Report on election in Maricopa County questions procedures, doesn't allege wrongdoingBrnovich said in April 2022 the initial investigation "revealed serious vulnerabilities that must be addressed and raises questions about the 2020 election in Arizona." Brnovich, who was running in a competitive GOP primary for the U.S. Senate, maintained that his office would continue its probe.The new documents show that Brnovich's investigators sought to edit the interim report and temper conclusions to reflect the actual findings. Brnovich did not include them in his report.For instance, when Brnovich said the election system was broken, an investigator wrote in a note that the Maricopa County Recorder's Office followed procedures. "Investigators examined the policy and procedures followed by the MCRO relative to signature verification ... we did not uncover any criminality or fraud having beencommitted in this area during the 2020 general election," the note said.Where Brnovich sought to call into question the signature verification of early ballots, investigators suggested changing the report to include language about the steps county elections officials took to train workers. "Investigators learned that the MCRO hired additional staff to work on signature verification due to the sheer volume of ballots to be processed," the note said.Where Brnovich suggested the signature review process was not as vigorous as it was in 2018, an investigator wrote, "Investigators did not compare the 2020 general election ballot rejection rate to any election in 2018."Where Brnovich said there were no uniform procedures in place to ensure ballot procedures were being processed correctly in all counties, an investigator wrote the office "has not conducted a comparativeanalysis of signature verification processes for other counties."And where Brnovich wrote that Maricopa County election officials were at times combative and litigious, an investigator wrote of the Maricopa County Recorder's Office: "It is the collective opinion ... based upon our experiences ― that MCRO, who was represented by counsel, was cooperative and responsive to our requests in light of the fact they did not have the staffing numbers they did during the 2020 general election and the office was running elections for various other governing bodies."County officials were notified by Mayes' office that they no longer were under investigation.Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer said he was glad that investigators recognized the office's cooperation."It’s nice to know that somebody in the office — whoever wrote the comments in 'track changes' that were then deleted — had a problem with just flat lying about our level of cooperation," Richer told The Republic.Richer said he is still "very confused" as to how the interim report concluded his office was uncooperative. He also said he had never heard of a prosecutor's office filing an interim report on an ongoing investigation."We cooperated at all stages," he said. "We spent countless hours answering the emails of their investigators, gathering information, inviting them to our facilities, showing them our technology infrastructure, walking them through or processes."Clint Hickman, chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, issued a statement that said in part, "I would like our Maricopa County residents to know that I am absolutely disgusted by the revelations that former Attorney General Mark Brnovich failed to do his job as a public servant representing the highest law enforcement elected position in the state. He and his leadership team concealed a report that proved the November 2020 election was conducted fairly, lawfully, and accurately. "Not only did he ignore his own investigators in issuing a different, 'interim report,' he falsely suggested wrongdoing by Maricopa County, never correcting the record and blatantly never sharing the team’s final report with the public. This was a gross misuse of his elected office and an appalling waste of taxpayer dollars, as well as a waste of the time and effort of professional investigators."The Republic for months sought copies of a final report and filed multiple public records requests for material related to the findings, including draft reports. Brnovich's office said in December there were no records available."No final report was issued, therefore there are no responsive documents to the attached request," his office said in a Dec. 2 email. It ignored follow-up requests.View in new tabAttorney general's investigation came at Senate's requestBrnovich launched the investigation after the Arizona Senate's discredited review of 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County's 2020 election to determine if the election had been rigged against former President Donald Trump.Former Senate President Karen Fann, who authorized the so-called "audit," asked Brnovich to investigate the findings of its lead audit contractor, Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based cybersecurity firm, which has since gone out of business.Cyber Ninjas and its subcontractors were paid millions by nonprofits set up by Trump allies and prominent figures in the “Stop the Steal” movement.Cyber Ninjas' CEO Doug Logan in a September 2021 report to the Senate confirmed the ballot review showed Trump lost the election. But his report minimized the ballot counts and instead raised questions about the county's election process and voter integrity that were later repudiated by election officials.View in new tabIn the second internal memo released Wednesday ― a Sept. 19, 2022, summary of the election investigation ― Chief Special Agent Reginald Grigsby again reported the Attorney General's Office had found no fraud. And again, Brnovich did not make the report public.Attorney general's investigators interviewed lawmakers such as then-state Rep. Mark Finchem and state Sens. Sonny Borelli and Wendy Rogers, all of whom had publicly claimed widespread fraud and election irregularities. None provided any actual evidence to investigators."While a significant majority of the complaints alleged irregularities with the election process, no evidence of election fraud, manipulation of the election process, or any instances of organized/coordinated fraud was provided by any of the complaining parties," Grigsby wrote.Robert Anglen is an investigative reporter for The Republic. Reach him at robert.anglen@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8694. Follow him on Twitter @robertanglen.Help us fight for you and support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.
- [Former Arizona attorney general withheld report showing no widespread voter fraud in 2020](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/former-arizona-attorney-general-withheld-report-showing-no-widespread-voter-fraud-in-2020/) - Arizona's former attorney general suppressed findings by his investigators who concluded there was no basis for allegations that the 2020 election was marred by widespread fraud, according to documents released Wednesday by his successor.Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes, who took office last month, said the records show the 2020 election "was conducted fairly and accurately by election officials."Previous Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, never released a March 2022 summary of investigative findings, which ruled out most of the fraud claims spread by allies and supporters of former President Donald Trump. Yet a month later, he released an "interim report" that claimed his investigation "revealed serious vulnerabilities that must be addressed and raises questions about the 2020 election in Arizona." He released his April report despite pushback from his investigators who said some of its claims were refuted by their probe. Brnovich was at the time in the midst of a Republican Party primary for U.S. Senate and facing fierce criticism from Trump, who claimed he wasn't doing enough to prosecute election fraud.Brnovich, whose primary bid was unsuccessful, also did not release a September memo that systematically refuted a bevy of election conspiracies that have taken root on the right, including allegations of dead or duplicate voters, pre-marked ballots flown in from Asia, election servers connected to the internet and even manipulation by satellites controlled by the Italian military. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich speaks at a news conference in Phoenix, on Jan. 7, 2020. Bob Christie / AP "In each instance and in each matter, the aforementioned parties did not provide any evidence to support their allegations," the September memo read. "The information that was provided was speculative in many instances and when investigated by our agents and support staff, was found to be inaccurate." The September memo, which was among the documents released Wednesday, describes an all-encompassing probe that became the top priority for the attorney general's investigators, who spent more than 10,000 hours looking into 638 complaints. They opened 430 investigations and referred 22 cases for prosecution. President Joe Biden won Arizona by a little over 10,000 votes.Mayes said the fraud claims were a waste."The ten thousand plus hours spent diligently investigating every conspiracy theory under the sun distracted this office from its core mission of protecting the people of Arizona from real crime and fraud," Mayes said in a statement. Kris Mayes smiles before a debate on Sept. 28, 2022. Ross D. Franklin / AP Attempts by The Associated Press to reach Brnovich for comment were unsuccessful. In a statement to CBS affiliate KPHO-TV, Brnovich said that he was "proud" of his office's work. "We did our due diligence to run all complaints to ground," Brnovich said, according to KPHO. "Where we were able to debunk rumors and conspiracies, we did so." He added his office identified problem areas that the state Legislature and Maricopa County officials should address."Brnovich's "interim report" claimed that election officials worked too quickly in verifying voter signatures and pointed to a drop in the number of ballots with rejected signatures between 2016 and 2018 and again in 2020. He also claimed that Maricopa County was slow in responding to requests for information.He made those claims even after investigators who reviewed a draft pushed back, publishing his report largely unchanged following their feedback.The investigative staff concluded that the county recorder's office "followed its policy/procedures as they relate to signature verification; we did not uncover any criminality or fraud having been committed in this area during the 2020 general election," investigators wrote. They also said they found the county "was cooperative and responsive to our requests."Arizona became the epicenter of efforts by Trump allies to cast doubt on Biden's victory. Republican leaders of the state Senate subpoenaed election records and equipment and hired a Florida firm led by a Trump supporter, Cyber Ninjas Inc., to conduct an unprecedented review of the election in Maricopa County.The Cyber Ninjas review gave Biden more votes than the official count but claimed that their work raised serious questions about the conduct of the election in Maricopa County, home to metro Phoenix and the majority of Arizona's voters. The investigation by the attorney general's office found the allegations did not stand up to scrutiny. "Our comprehensive review of CNI's audit showed they did not provide any evidence to support their allegations of widespread fraud or ballot manipulation," Brnovich's investigators wrote.Thursday's release is the latest confirmation that there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election and that Biden won the presidency legitimately. Trump continues to repeat his lie that the election was stolen from him as he mounts his third bid for the White House, despite reviews and audits saying otherwise in the battleground states he contested and his own administration officials debunking his claims.Officials in Maricopa County, where nearly all the officials overseeing elections are Republicans, say they endured death threats and verbal abuse due to the suggestions of malfeasance in the Cyber Ninjas review and Brnovich's "interim report.""This was a gross misuse of his elected office and an appalling waste of taxpayer dollars, as well as a waste of the time and effort of professional investigators," Clint Hickman, the Republican chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors said in a statement.Brnovich's investigators did conclude that Maricopa County officials did not uniformly follow state election procedures when filling out forms to document the pickup and transport of mail ballots. But they said the errors were procedural and that "investigators did not find anything that would (have) compromised the integrity of the ballots or the final ballot count."Investigators interviewed two Republican state lawmakers who publicly claimed they knew of fraud in the election, but wrote that neither Rep. Mark Finchem nor Sen. Sonny Borrelli repeated their claims to investigators — when they could have been subject to criminal charges for false reporting to law enforcement. The investigators said a third lawmaker, Republican state Sen. Wendy Rogers, declined to speak with them.
- [Appeals court questions access that prosecutors can have to a GOP lawmaker's phone ... - ABC 57](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/appeals-court-questions-access-that-prosecutors-can-have-to-a-gop-lawmakers-phone-abc-57/) - By Tierney Sneed and Katelyn Polantz, CNN (CNN) -- A federal appeals court on Thursday questioned the access that Justice Department prosecutors can have to a GOP lawmaker's phone seized as part of the special counsel investigation into 2020 election subversion.At a partially public hearing Thursday, the US DC Circuit Court of Appeals grappled with the scope of a constitutional provision that shields legislators from certain law enforcement actions and had tough questions for both the attorney representing Republican Rep. Scott Perry, whose phone was seized by the FBI in August, and for the Justice Department attorney arguing in favor of prosecutors being able to obtain communications from the device.Many details of the dispute remain shrouded in secrecy, including an underlying district court opinion that Perry appealed to the circuit court.An attorney for Perry said Thursday that the files in question pertained to the discussions the Pennsylvania congressman was having about two legislative matters: a election rules reform bill Congress was considering in early 2021 and Perry's vote on the January 6, 2021, certification of the presidential election results.A lawyer for the special counsel's office did not provide that level of detail about what's at issue in the case, argued that the Justice Department should be able to access a member of Congress' cell phone records if they were making calls as informal research before a possible legislative vote.The key issue in the case is whether the Constitution's so-called Speech or Debate Clause -- which says legislators cannot be questioned on "any Speech or Debate" in Congress -- applies to a lawmaker's "informal fact finding" that was not formally authorized by Congress.Two judges on the circuit panel -- Circuit Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, both Trump appointees -- zeroed in on this issue in their questions for DOJ attorney John Pellettieri. They seemed to balk at the hard line he drew that those kinds of informal communications were not protected by the clause. The judges, however, also grilled Rowley on whether he was pushing a virtually limitless interpretation of the Clause that would shield all sort of communications lawmakers had, including with individuals not in Congress."Shouldn't we put weight on the fact that what we're talking about here seems far afield from Speech or Debate?" Katsas asked Rowley.How the DC Circuit views the 17-word constitutional provision could have implications not just for how the Trump investigations proceed, but what sort of immunity legislators have in all sorts of court proceedings going forward -- particularly if the conduct is not clearly part of their formal activities in Congress."We want members of Congress to be able to do their jobs without constantly being hauled into court," said Elliot Williams, a former Justice Department official who also worked for the Senate Judiciary Committee. "But it defies logic and probably the Constitution for Congress to think it can wave a wand and call everything it touches quote 'informal legislative fact-finding.'"Perry was identified by the House January 6 committee as a player in Trump's efforts to weaponize the Justice Department. Perry did not comply with a subpoena from the committee for his testimony.After the FBI seized Perry's phone access, he filed a public lawsuit challenging investigators' access to its contents. However, the wrangling between him and the Justice Department has played out in private court proceedings.Only the first hours or so of the roughly 90 minute hearing played out in open court, with the latter part of the proceedings taking place under seal.No 'get out of jail free card' The Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause says that "for any Speech or Debate in either House," lawmakers "shall not be questioned in any other Place." It functions as a separation-of-powers provision that prevents legislators from being arrested or being forced to participate in court proceedings for their legislative conduct on the congressional floor.Courts have also said the clause extends to lawmaker conduct in congressional committee proceedings and that it also can cover congressional staff.The Speech of Debate Clause is "not a get out of jail free card," Thomas Spulak, who served as general counsel to the House of Representatives in the 1990s, told CNN this week."It only protects them from questioning, being subpoenaed or anything else for any legislative acts," Spulak said. "What we're seeing today is a judicial analysis of what defines a legislative act."In the judges' questions for the DOJ Thursday, the DC Circuit panel appeared sympathetic to Perry's position that informal discussions that legislators have with outside parties can amount to the type of legislative activity covered by the clause."Suppose a member is deliberating how to vote. They do a series of calls to key stakeholders and records the calls. You think you can get that?" Katsas asked Pellettieri.Rao asked the DOJ lawyer: "Why is an individual's fact finding not a precursor to legislative proceeding?"Already, the Speech or Debate clause has been invoked in disputes arising from investigations into 2020 election subversion, including when South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham tried to resist a testimonial subpoena issued in the Fulton County grand jury probe.Rowley, at Thursday's hearing, pointed to the Graham case and other decisions as supporting Perry's arguments. He offered the recent trail derailment in Ohio as an example of the type of matter a lawmaker would do his own research on for potential legislation even though Congress had not yet set up a formal investigation.Still, the judges hinted their wariness of interpreting the provision too broadly"I am wondering what you think might be the limits of such a non-disclosure privilege," Rao asked Rowley.What kind of "informal" fact-finding amounts to covered legislative activity? In seeking to block DOJ's access to Perry's phone, his lawyers have pointed specifically to a 2007 ruling concerning an FBI search of then-Rep. William Jefferson's congressional office in a bribery probe. The DC Circuit said that the Justice Department ran afoul of the constitutional clause by sorting through the Louisiana Democrat's files without his consent.Chief Judge Beryl Howell, however, ruled under seal that in Perry's case, some of the communications on Perry's phones wouldn't fall under his legislative work because they weren't sanctioned by any legislative authority. She said that investigators could access certain materials on Perry's phone that his lawyers had argued should be withheld. Howell's ruling did, however, allow Perry to protect some of his phone contents under the Speech or Debate Clause, a source familiar with the investigation told CNN.To make her decision, Howell confidentially reviewed details about the information that was on Perry's phone that the Justice Department sought, the source said. Prosecutors still haven't gotten access to the more than 2,000 records they seek.The DC Circuit Court of Appeals above Howell has put on hold her rulings, including investigators' ability to access Perry's phone records, as it hears arguments in the case on a much-quicker-than-usual timeline.On Thursday, Perry's attorney said that his circumstances were parallel to the 2007 case, with the difference being this search is of a cell phone instead of an office.The judges, however, asked Rowley whether the immunity applies once a lawmaker speaks to parties outside of Congress -- and questioned whether that could theoretically cover all kinds of communications of a member of Congress using a cell phone."It's not the cell phone that makes this odd, it's that the communication can be to anyone in the universe," Katsas told Rowley.Circuit Judge Karen Henderson, the third member of the panel, participated in Thursday's hearing remotely. Henderson, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, was on the circuit panel in the William Jefferson case and wrote a concurrence that took a much narrower view of the Speech or Debate Clause than the one embraced by the other judges on that decision.The DC Circuit is also considering whether it has the authority to intervene at this point, but the judges asked the parties to focus on the other legal questions in the case when arguing on Thursday.The House -- with the approval of both majority and minority leadership -- has sought to weigh in on the case, in a sign of how the Perry litigation could set the rules for how the immunity applies to all sorts of lawmaker activity going forward. The House's filings, however, are not public.Spulak noted that, practically speaking, the role of a congressperson has become "pretty broad" over time and that their legislative duties can go beyond talking about a specific piece of legislation, "since oversight is fundamental to the legislative process."In the Graham case, the US Supreme Court refused to block the Fulton County grand jury's subpoena for his testimony. The justices stressed that the lower courts that ordered his appearance had said that the Speech or Debate Clause precluded him from question about the "informal investigative fact finding" that was part of his legislative activity.The DC Circuit's consideration of the Perry case could flesh out what kind of informal fact-finding amounts to protected legislative activity."Depending on how broad you read what a legislative act is, it could permit members of Congress to really cover lots of their conduct within the speech or Debate Clause that I think we would generally not think would be covered," said Neil Eggleston, a former White House counsel under President Barack Obama.This story has been updated with additional developments Thursday.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved. Share this article:
- [Fox News election outtakes are 'nightmare': Jeff Kosseff - Law & Crime](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/fox-news-election-outtakes-are-nightmare-jeff-kosseff-law-crime/) - Lou Dobbs interviews Sidney Powell on Fox Business on Dec. 10, 2020 (via Khalil v. Fox, et. al. lawsuit) Listen to the full episode on Apple, Spotify or wherever else you get your podcasts and subscribe. Top Fox News executives, right up to News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, were quoted deriding the same 2020 election conspiracy theories some in their network pushed, in an explosive new legal brief unsealed last week. Those revelations could prove damaging to Fox in defending a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion, one of the two voting machine companies scapegoated to explain Donald Trump’s defeat in the last presidential race. On the latest episode of Law&Crime’s podcast “Objections: with Adam Klasfeld,” Professor Jeff Kosseff — a prominent First Amendment and cybersecurity scholar and the author of the soon-to-be-released book “Liar in a Crowded Theater” — unpacks why the messages quoted in Dominion’s brief might be the stuff of nightmares for Fox. “My immediate reaction is this is just my worst nightmare come to life as a media defense lawyer,” Kosseff said on the show. In the unsealed filing, Murdoch can be seen describing Giuliani’s wild news conference with Sidney Powell announcing their election litigation as “really crazy stuff.” Fox nonetheless decided to air the conference in its entirety — and lashed out at their then-White House correspondent Kristen Fisher for daring to fact-check it, according to Dominion’s latest filing. “Fisher received a call from her boss, Bryan Boughton, immediately after in which he ’emphasized that higher-ups at Fox News were also unhappy with it,’ and that Fisher ‘needed to do a better job of — this is a quote — ‘respecting our audience,'” the filing states. Dominion says that Fisher texted that she was “punished for doing my job.” The blistering 178-page filing includes scores of quotations like that from the likes of host Tucker Carlson to Fox News president Jay Wallace. In their private moments, Carlson trashed conspiracy theorist lawyer Sidney Powell as a liar and that Wallace unfavorably compared Lou Dobbs to North Korean propaganda, Dominion claims. In the public sphere, Carlson allegedly discouraged fact-checking election lies and asked to fire a reporter who tweeted a debunking of conspiracy theories about Dominion voting machines. Dominion says it found Carlson telling Sean Hannity that those tweets were hurting Fox’s bottom line. “It needs to stop immediately, like tonight,” one of the messages states. “It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.” Related Coverage: Floored by such messages, Kosseff said: “I’ve never seen anything like it before.” Kosseff said that such messages can help Dominion meet the high bar of proving actual malice, the standard in defamation law established by the watershed precedent New York Times v. Sullivan. “You need to show either that […] the defendant knew that they were publishing is false — or at the very least entertained serious doubts as to the statements,” Kosseff said. For Kosseff, one of the most notable aspects of Dominion’s filing is that it is a motion for summary judgment. “Usually, it’s the defendant in a defamation case moving for summary judgment, saying there’s no issue of material fact,” the professor noted. Dominion’s gambit suggests that they believe the evidence that they obtained is so airtight as to not require a trial. That may be optimistic on the voting machine company’s part — unlikely, but not out of the question, the professor says. Another aspect of the filing that surprised Kosseff was just how much Fox executives seemed to put in writing. “When I would do newsroom trainings, I would tell editors and reporters or TV producers, ‘You know, it’s really best if you’re having concerns about coverage […] have the conversation in person or over the phone,” Kosseff said. “Try not to do it via email.” He added that reading the legal brief “left me a little baffled as to why [and] how all of this ended up there.” Fox News claims Dominion “mischaracterized the record, cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context, and spilled considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law.” The network’s reply is expected to be filed in court later this month. For Kosseff, one of the ironies of this development is that it comes at a time when many conservatives are seeking to weaken press freedom protections for defamation law by attacking the actual malice standard. At least two Supreme Court Justices, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, have said that they wanted to revisit it, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) recently proposed a law that would chip away at it as a defense. “The irony in all of this is that the defendants that those changes would hurt the most would be Fox and Newsmax and One America,” Kosseff noted. All three networks have been sued by Dominion and fellow voting machine company Smartmatic. Listen to the podcast below: Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
- [Arizona Attorney General Mayes: 2020 election conducted fairly, accurately](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/arizona-attorney-general-mayes-2020-election-conducted-fairly-accurately/) - PHOENIX — The 2020 election was conducted fairly — and former Attorney General Mark Brnovich knew it — despite his claims last year that there were “instances of fraud,’’ his successor said Wednesday.“The results of this exhaustive and extensive investigation show what we have suspected for over two years: the 2020 election in Arizona was conducted fairly and accurately by election officials,’’ said Kris Mayes. Only thing is, she told Capitol Media Services, that information was wrongfully withheld by her predecessor.
- [Ex-Attorney General in Arizona Buried Report Refuting Voter Fraud Claims](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/ex-attorney-general-in-arizona-buried-report-refuting-voter-fraud-claims/) - Under Mark Brnovich, a Republican who left office in January, a 10,000-hour review did not see the light of day. His Democratic successor, Kris Mayes, released investigators’ findings.Mark Brnovich, a Republican who served as Arizona’s attorney general until January, buried the findings of a 10,000-hour review by his office that found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, newly released documents reveal.The documents were released on Wednesday by Mr. Brnovich’s successor, Kris Mayes, a Democrat who took office last month as the top law enforcement official in the battleground state, which remains at the forefront of the election denial movement.The sweeping review was completed last year after politicians and other conspiracy theorists aligned with former President Donald J. Trump inundated Mr. Brnovich’s office with election falsehoods. They claimed baselessly that large numbers of people had voted twice; that ballots had been sent to dead people; and that ballots with traces of bamboo had been flown in from Korea and filled out in advance for Joseph R. Biden Jr., who won Arizona by a little over 10,000 votes.But investigators discredited these claims, according to a report on their findings that was withheld by Mr. Brnovich. (The Washington Post reported earlier on the findings.)“These allegations were not supported by any factual evidence when researched by our office,” Reginald Grigsby, chief special agent in the office’s special investigation’s section, wrote in a summary of the findings on Sept. 19 of last year.The summary was part of documents and internal communications that were made public on Wednesday by Ms. Mayes, who narrowly won an open-seat race in November to become attorney general.“The results of this exhaustive and extensive investigation show what we have suspected for over two years — the 2020 election in Arizona was conducted fairly and accurately by elections officials,” Ms. Mayes said in a statement. “The 10,000-plus hours spent diligently investigating every conspiracy theory under the sun distracted this office from its core mission of protecting the people of Arizona from real crime and fraud.”Efforts to reach Mr. Brnovich, who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate last year, were not immediately successful.His former chief of staff, Joseph Kanefield, who was also Mr. Brnovich’s chief deputy, did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.In the eight-page summary of investigators’ findings, Mr. Grigsby wrote that the attorney general’s office had interviewed and tried to collect evidence from Cyber Ninjas, a Florida firm that conducted a heavily criticized review of the 2020 election results in Arizona’s most populous county, Maricopa, at the direction of the Republican-controlled State Senate.Investigators also made several attempts to gather information from True the Vote, a nonprofit group founded by Catherine Engelbrecht, a prominent election denier, the summary stated..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% - 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(--color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(--color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(--color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(--color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“In each instance and in each matter, the aforementioned parties did not provide any evidence to support their allegations,” Mr. Grigsby wrote. “The information that was provided was speculative in many instances and when investigated by our agents and support staff, was found to be inaccurate.”When investigators tried to speak to Wendy Rogers, an election-denying Republican state lawmaker, they said in the summary that she refused to cooperate and told them she was waiting to see the “perp walk” of those who had committed election fraud.Ms. Rogers, who was censured by the State Senate in March 2022 after giving a speech at a white nationalist gathering, declined to comment on Thursday.In a series of emails exchanged by Mr. Brnovich’s staff members last April, Mr. Grigsby appeared to object several times to the language in a letter drafted on behalf of Mr. Brnovich that explained investigators’ findings. Its intended recipient was Karen Fann, a Republican who was the State Senate’s president and was a catalyst for the Cyber Ninjas review in Arizona.One of the statements that Mr. Grigsby highlighted as problematic centered on election integrity in Maricopa County.“Our overall assessment is that the current election system in Maricopa County involving the verification and handling of early ballots is broke,” Mr. Brnovich’s draft letter stated.But Mr. Grigsby appeared to reach an opposite interpretation, writing that investigators had concluded that the county followed its procedures for verifying signatures on early ballots.“We did not uncover any criminality or fraud having been committed in this area during the 2020 general election,” a suggested edit was written beneath the proposed language.Ms. Fann did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.In his role in Arizona, Mr. Brnovich was something of an enigma. He defended the state’s vote count after the 2020 presidential election, drawing the ire of Mr. Trump. The former president sharply criticized Mr. Brnovich in June and endorsed his Republican opponent, Blake Masters, who won the Senate primary but lost in the general election.But Mr. Brnovich has also suggested that the 2020 election revealed “serious vulnerabilities” in the electoral system and said cryptically on the former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon’s podcast last spring, “I think we all know what happened in 2020.”In January, as one of Ms. Mayes’s first acts in office, she redirected an election integrity unit that Mr. Brnovich had created, focusing its work instead on addressing voter suppression.The unit’s former leader, Jennifer Wright, meanwhile, joined a legal effort to invalidate Ms. Mayes’s narrow victory in November.Ms. Mayes has said that she did not share the priorities of Mr. Brnovich, whom she previously described as being preoccupied with voter fraud despite isolated cases. The office has five pending voter fraud investigations.
- [Texas bar loses bid to sanction Trump lawyer over 2020 election denial](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/texas-bar-loses-bid-to-sanction-trump-lawyer-over-2020-election-denial/) - WASHINGTON — A state district judge dismissed a Texas state bar disciplinary case against Sidney Powell for her role in disputing the 2020 election results as a lawyer for former president Donald Trump.The State Bar of Texas filed a petition last March accusing Powell of professional misconduct by filing “frivolous” voter fraud lawsuits in four states, making false statements to a court and knowingly presenting false evidence. Powell filed lawsuits in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona accusing election companies of vote manipulation.The petition asked the court to decide the appropriate sanction, which could have ranged from reprimand to disbarment.In the decision signed Wednesday, Andrea Bouressa, a Collin County district judge who heard the case filed in Dallas County, found “defects” with filings from Powell’s accuser, the Commission for Lawyer Discipline.The commission, she ruled, mislabeled exhibits of evidence and failed to correct the errors when pointed out. That left two exhibits and those failed to meet the burden of the case, the judge said in granting Powell’s motion to dismiss the complaint .The bar declined to comment on the ruling.Claire Reynolds, public affairs counsel to the disciplinary office, said the Commission for Lawyer Discipline will review the decision.Powell’s legal team, led by Robert Holmes, also declined to comment on the ruling.Powell has been licensed to practice law in Texas since 1978 and has remained a prominent figure in the aftermath of the 2020 elections. The House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol used clips of her deposition testimony during public hearings.The hearings revealed that Powell met with Trump and others in his circle to discuss “dramatic steps” that might be taken to overturn his defeat. Ideas included rerunning the election and having the military seize voting machines. It was also revealed that Trump considered naming Powell as special counsel overseeing an investigation of voter fraud, an idea vehemently opposed by several of his advisers. Although the Texas court handed Powell a victory, her reputation continues to take a beating as evidence emerges in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News from Dominion Voting Systems.Last week, the company revealed that Powell’s “evidence” for allegations of fraud in the 2020 presidential election stemmed from a bizarre email by an unidentified author who attributed her insight to an ability to “time travel in a semi-conscious state.”Dominion alleges Fox executives harmed its business by knowingly allowing hosts and guests to voice baseless and false assertions linking it to nonexistent vote fraud.In depositions, Fox host Maria Bartiromo called the email that Powell had provided “nonsense,” according to Dominion’s filing.And David Clark, then Fox’s senior executive over weekend shows, said that — had he known that Powell’s “crazy” theories were based on that email — he “would not have allowed that claim to be aired.”In a statement Thursday night, Fox News asserted that “Dominion has mischaracterized the record [and] cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context,” and that its lawsuit rests on a misreading of defamation law.Dominion is seeking $1.3 billion in damages in a separate defamation suit against Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and My Pillow Inc. CEO Mike Lindell, accusing them of pushing false vote fraud claims that hurt its business.Powell sent Bartiromo the email at issue ahead of an appearance on Sunday Morning Futures five days after Election Day — the morning after President Joe Biden was declared the winner.“Who am I? And how do I know all of this?...I’ve had the strangest dreams since I was a little girl...I was internally decapitated, and yet, I live....The Wind tells me I’m a ghost, but I don’t believe it,” the writer says.On the show, Powell asserted a “massive and coordinated effort” to “steal” the 2020 election.Neither she nor Bartiromo mentioned the email from the decapitated time traveler.“The full force of the email’s lunacy comes across by reading it in its entirety,” Dominion stated in its legal brief, released last week by a Delaware court.
- [Former Arizona AG sat on records refuting election fraud - Boston 25 News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/former-arizona-ag-sat-on-records-refuting-election-fraud-boston-25-news/) - PHOENIX — (AP) — Arizona's former attorney general suppressed findings by his investigators who concluded there was no basis for allegations that the 2020 election was marred by widespread fraud, according to documents released Wednesday by his successor.Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes, who took office last month, said the records show the 2020 election “was conducted fairly and accurately by election officials.”Previous Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, never released a March 2022 summary of investigative findings, which ruled out most of the fraud claims spread by allies and supporters of former President Donald Trump. Yet a month later, he released an "interim report" that claimed his investigation "revealed serious vulnerabilities that must be addressed and raises questions about the 2020 election in Arizona."He released his April report despite pushback from his investigators who said some of its claims were refuted by their probe. Brnovich was at the time in the midst of a Republican Party primary for U.S. Senate and facing fierce criticism from Trump, who claimed he wasn't doing enough to prosecute election fraud.Brnovich, whose primary bid was unsuccessful, also did not release a September memo that systematically refuted a bevy of election conspiracies that have taken root on the right, including allegations of dead or duplicate voters, pre-marked ballots flown in from Asia, election servers connected to the internet and even manipulation by satellites controlled by the Italian military.“In each instance and in each matter, the aforementioned parties did not provide any evidence to support their allegations,” the September memo read. “The information that was provided was speculative in many instances and when investigated by our agents and support staff, was found to be inaccurate.”The September memo, which was among the documents released Wednesday, describes an all-encompassing probe that became the top priority for the attorney general's investigators, who spent more than 10,000 hours looking into 638 complaints. They opened 430 investigations and referred 22 cases for prosecution. President Joe Biden won Arizona by a little over 10,000 votes.Mayes said the fraud claims were a waste.“The ten thousand plus hours spent diligently investigating every conspiracy theory under the sun distracted this office from its core mission of protecting the people of Arizona from real crime and fraud," Mayes said in a statement.Attempts to reach Brnovich for comment were unsuccessful.Brnovich's “interim report” claimed that election officials worked too quickly in verifying voter signatures and pointed to a drop in the number of ballots with rejected signatures between 2016 and 2018 and again in 2020. He also claimed that Maricopa County was slow in responding to requests for information.He made those claims even after investigators who reviewed a draft pushed back, publishing his report largely unchanged following their feedback.The investigative staff concluded that the county recorder's office “followed its policy/procedures as they relate to signature verification; we did not uncover any criminality or fraud having been committed in this area during the 2020 general election," investigators wrote. They also said they found the county “was cooperative and responsive to our requests.”Arizona became the epicenter of efforts by Trump allies to cast doubt on Biden's victory. Republican leaders of the state Senate subpoenaed election records and equipment and hired a Florida firm led by a Trump supporter, Cyber Ninjas Inc., to conduct an unprecedented review of the election in Maricopa County.The Cyber Ninjas review gave Biden more votes than the official count but claimed that their work raised serious questions about the conduct of the election in Maricopa County, home to metro Phoenix and the majority of Arizona's voters. The investigation by the attorney general's office found the allegations did not stand up to scrutiny.“Our comprehensive review of CNI’s audit showed they did not provide any evidence to support their allegations of widespread fraud or ballot manipulation,” Brnovich's investigators wrote.Thursday's release is the latest confirmation that there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election and that Biden won the presidency legitimately. Trump continues to repeat his lie that the election was stolen from him as he mounts his third bid for the White House, despite reviews and audits saying otherwise in the battleground states he contested and his own administration officials debunking his claims.Officials in Maricopa County, where nearly all the officials overseeing elections are Republicans, say they endured death threats and verbal abuse due to the suggestions of malfeasance in the Cyber Ninjas review and Brnovich's "interim report."“This was a gross misuse of his elected office and an appalling waste of taxpayer dollars, as well as a waste of the time and effort of professional investigators,” Clint Hickman, the Republican chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors said in a statement.Brnovich's investigators did conclude that Maricopa County officials did not uniformly follow state election procedures when filling out forms to document the pickup and transport of mail ballots. But they said the errors were procedural and that “investigators did not find anything that would (have) compromised the integrity of the ballots or the final ballot count.”Investigators interviewed two Republican state lawmakers who publicly claimed they knew of fraud in the election, but wrote that neither Rep. Mark Finchem nor Sen. Sonny Borrelli repeated their claims to investigators — when they could have been subject to criminal charges for false reporting to law enforcement. The investigators said a third lawmaker, Republican state Sen. Wendy Rogers, declined to speak with them.Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
- [Updates from Georgia's 2020 election grand jury and President Carter - YouTube](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/updates-from-georgias-2020-election-grand-jury-and-president-carter-youtube/) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLEBQxcS48o
- [Lou Dobbs' 2020 election fraud lies could help Dominion Voting's lawsuit against Fox](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/lou-dobbs-2020-election-fraud-lies-could-help-dominion-votings-lawsuit-against-fox/) - After the 2020 presidential election, Fox News helped promote what Rupert Murdoch, chairman of its parent company, privately called “really crazy stuff.” It was a baroque conspiracy theory that claimed Joe Biden had stolen the election through a “massive fraud” involving Dominion Voting Systems, tricky Smartmatic software, phony ballots, election officials across the country, George Soros, the Clinton Foundation and “communist money through Venezuela, Cuba, and likely China.”In dueling summary-judgment briefs published last week, Dominion argues that Fox defamed it, while Fox argues that it merely reported what then-President Donald Trump and his representatives were saying. The main obstacle to Fox’s defense can be summed up in two words: Lou Dobbs.Other Fox hosts conducted softball interviews with Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, allowing them to lay out their unsubstantiated election-fraud claims and sometimes lending credence to them. But the host of the Fox Business show “Lou Dobbs Tonight” stood out as a champion of the view that “the election was stolen,” a position he maintains to this day.During a Nov. 12, 2020 interview with Giuliani, Dobbs described the alleged election conspiracy as “the end game to a four-and-a-half-year-long effort to overthrow the president of the United States.” Dobbs repeatedly reiterated that allegation on his show the next day.If you “read all about Dominion and Smartmatic voting companies,” Dobbs declared in a Nov. 14 tweet, “you’ll soon understand how pervasive this Democrat electoral fraud is, and why there’s no way in the world the 2020 presidential election was either free or fair.” During his Nov. 16 show, Dobbs referred to “what the Trump legal team and others are discovering about Dominion,” which he said provided “probable cause for a complete and thorough investigation.”Two days later, Dobbs again endorsed what he described as “President Trump’s fight for a free and fair election.” When Giuliani repeated his baseless charges against Dominion and Smartmatic, Dobbs agreed that “it’s outrageous.”On Nov. 19, the day that Giuliani and Powell held a bizarre press conference in which they laid out their claims, Dobbs described their presentation as “powerful” and an affidavit they cited as “stunning.” He said Powell would be “providing more details on how Dominion vote machines and Smartmatic software were used to help Joe Biden.”During a Nov. 24 interview with Powell, Dobbs referred matter-of-factly to “the electoral fraud that’s been perpetrated this year.” He worried that “Americans have given no thought to electoral fraud that would be perpetrated through electronic voting,” which he said involved Dominion, “at least in the suspicions of a lot of Americans.”In a Dec. 10 tweet promoting another Powell appearance, Dobbs echoed her claim that “the 2020 Election is a cyber Pearl Harbor.” During that interview, Dobbs told Powell, “we will gladly put forward your evidence that supports your claim that this was a Cyber Pearl Harbor,” adding that “we have tremendous evidence already.” Afterward, Dobbs said Powell had presented “groundbreaking new evidence indicating our presidential election came under massive cyber-attack orchestrated with the help of Dominion, Smartmatic and foreign adversaries.”In reality, Powell had no such evidence, as Fox News reporters and Fox News host Tucker Carlson had pointed out. While Fox presents those objections as evidence that it was appropriately skeptical of Powell’s tall tale, they should have given Dobbs pause.So should the conclusions of Republican election officials and Trump’s own attorney general — not to mention the text conversations in which John Fawcett, one of Dobbs’ producers, described Powell’s election lawsuits as “complete bs” and speculated that she “could be losing her mind.” Noting that Powell’s story “doesn’t make sense,” Fawcett warned that “I just don’t think she is verifying anything she is saying.”Dominion has to prove by “clear and convincing evidence” that Fox either knowingly or recklessly accused the company of participating in election fraud. That’s a high bar, but Dominion may be able to clear it with a strong assist from Dobbs.Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine. Follow him on Twitter: @JacobSullum.The Sun-Times welcomes letters to the editor and op-eds. See our guidelines.
- [Arizona AG: No evidence of widespread voter fraud found in 2020 election - FOX 10 Phoenix](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/arizona-ag-no-evidence-of-widespread-voter-fraud-found-in-2020-election-fox-10-phoenix/) - Nearly 640 complaints filed against the 2020 Arizona election, still no widespread voter fraud found PHOENIX - The Arizona Attorney General's Office on Wednesday released documents pertaining to the investigation of the 2020 election in Arizona – an investigation that lasted for 10,000 hours. The Attorney General's Office Special Investigations Section, under former AG Mark
- [Trump Calls Fox News 'The RINO Network' Over DeSantis Coverage And 2020 Election Revelations](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/trump-calls-fox-news-the-rino-network-over-desantis-coverage-and-2020-election-revelations/)
- [Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump Subpoenaed in Jan. 6 Criminal Investigation](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/jared-kushner-ivanka-trump-subpoenaed-in-jan-6-criminal-investigation/) - Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner arrive for the funeral of Ivana Trump, Wednesday, July 20, 2022, in New York. AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson Redeem now Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury. The special counsel overseeing the investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election issued the subpoenas. Mike Pence, the former vice president, was recently subpoenaed as part of the probe. Top editors give you the stories you want — delivered right to your inbox each weekday. Loading Something is loading. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. download the app Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. .inline-newsletter-signup.loading { width: 100%; max-width: 640px; margin: 0 auto; visibility: hidden; } The special counsel overseeing the investigation into former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot has subpoenaed Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka Trump to testify before a grand jury, The New York Times reported Wednesday.The subpoenas, issued by special counsel Jack Smith, come as part of the far-reaching criminal probe into Trump's attempt to stay in power after President Joe Biden defeated him in the 2020 election, The Times reported.Smith was appointed in November by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee the investigation into illegal interference with the peaceful transfer of power following the 2020 election, as well as the investigation into Trump's handling of classified documents after he left office. In the 2020 election probe, Smith recently subpoenaed former Vice President Mike Pence to testify before the grand jury. Pence has said he intends to resist the subpoena. Kushner and Ivanka served as Trump's White House senior advisors during his term. Both had reportedly sought to get Trump to urge the rioters to leave the Capitol on January 6. Ivanka was the White House as the riot erupted; Kushner came to the White House later in the afternoon, flying back from a trip to the Middle East. The two were high-profile witnesses who testified before the now-dissolved House select committee investigating the January 6 attack. During her testimony, Ivanka questioned Trump's false claims about the 2020 election, which the former president lashed out at. Ivanka also acknowledged then-Attorney General Bill Barr's assessment that there was no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.Since leaving the White House, the couple has reportedly distanced themselves from Trump as he continues to insist the 2020 election was stolen and pursues his 2024 presidential campaign bid. .content-lock-lock .hidden { display: none; } Sign up for notifications from Insider! Stay up to date with what you want to know. Subscribe to push notifications Close icon Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.
- [When his office debunked election fraud claims, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/when-his-office-debunked-election-fraud-claims-arizona-attorney-general-mark-brnovich/) - Howard Fischer/Capitol Media ServicesMark Brnovich Last year, as former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich released a report casting doubt on the 2020 election, his own staff was busy debunking claims of voting irregularities and fraud.But Brnovich never released the results of their labors.Instead, the Republican — and at the time, candidate for U.S. Senate — adopted a flawed “interim report” recapping six months of investigations that he claimed raised concerns about “serious vulnerabilities” with the 2020 vote in Maricopa County.→ More Arizona politics newsRecords released Wednesday by Arizona’s newly elected Democratic attorney general, Kris Mayes, reveal Brnovich ignored the advice and edits of his own staff by releasing the interim report, which was widely criticized at the time as a misleading and inaccurate account of the 2020 election.As first reported by The Washington Post, Brnovich also withheld two separate reports, prepared while he was still in office, that dismissed claims of voter fraud. Both reports said the claims lacked evidence, were speculative, or in some cases were simply “found to be inaccurate.”That includes allegations of duplicate votes, bamboo ballots, and even satellites controlled by the Italian military changing votes.“The results of this exhaustive and extensive investigation show what we have suspected for over two years — the 2020 election in Arizona was conducted fairly and accurately by elections officials,” Mayes said in a statement.Mayes, who since her election has sought to reorient the office — shifting from investigating claims of fraud to defending voting rights — criticized the work of her predecessor as an unnecessary diversion.“The ten thousand plus hours spent diligently investigating every conspiracy theory under the sun distracted this office from its core mission of protecting the people of Arizona from real crime and fraud,” Mayes said.Brnovich, who went on to lose the GOP primary to election denier Blake Masters, could not immediately be reached for comment.In light of the new records, some Maricopa County officials were furious with Brnovich over his handling of the investigation and the information he chose to release, and more importantly, did not disclose.“This is outrageous,” Maricopa County Supervisor Thomas Galvin, a Republican, tweeted. “The sham interim report was a political tool. It resulted in death threats on my colleagues. As a lawyer, I’m dismayed that officers of the court were so callous (with) the truth.”Maricopa County Board Chairman Clint Hickman, also Republican, said he was “absolutely disgusted by the revelation that former Attorney General Mark Bnrovich failed to do his job.”“This was a gross misuse of his elected office and an appalling waste of taxpayer dollars, as well as a well as a waste of the time and effort of professional investigators,” Hickman said.More stories from KJZZ
- [Former attorney general in key state withheld evidence debunking 2020 election fraud](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/former-attorney-general-in-key-state-withheld-evidence-debunking-2020-election-fraud/) - Former attorney general in key state withheld evidence debunking 2020 election fraudRepublican Mark Brnovich’s successor releases reports that debunked claims of fraud in Maricopa county in 2020 electionThe former attorney general of Arizona, Mark Brnovich, failed to release documents that showed his office’s investigation into the 2020 election did not find evidence of widespread fraud in the state’s most populous county.The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Brnovich would not turn over public records that detailed his investigators’ findings. His successor, the Democratic attorney general Kris Mayes, released the records, which showed several reports that debunked rampant claims of election problems in Maricopa county.Revealed: Trump secretly donated $1m to discredited Arizona election ‘audit’ Read moreBrnovich, a Republican, was running for US Senate in 2022 while his office oversaw an investigation into the 2020 election. He released two reports related to the work – one that showed just one example of a dead person voting and one “interim report” that made nebulous, unfounded criticisms of the county’s elections.But the unreleased reports show Brnovich’s investigators did not agree with some assertions he made publicly, such as that the county did not follow proper signature verification procedures or that the county had not been responsive to his requests for information.In an interview with the Guardian on Wednesday, Mayes said her office discovered a bunch of unfulfilled records requests upon taking over in January. She also wanted to find any potential final report for the 2020 investigation, which was not found.Her office released two additional interim reports and an investigative summary, which are all publicly posted on the attorney general’s website now.“This office has a solemn duty to be honest and transparent with the people of Arizona,” Mayes said. “The dark cloud cast over the 2020 and 2022 elections because of the insane conspiracy theories perpetrated by high-profile election deniers could have and should have been stopped, especially as it related to Maricopa county and its elections officials. I believe the people of Arizona had a right to know this information before the 2022 election. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.”The investigation is considered closed, though there are hundreds more documents going through the redaction process that will be released once the office has completed that process.The office under Brnovich spent about 10,000 hours on the investigation and each of its 60 investigators spent at least some time on it, the Post reported.Mayes said it is hard to put a dollar figure on how much that cost the state or taxpayers, but the whole effort was clearly a “distraction from the core mission of this office”.“But I also want to say I’m incredibly proud of the work the agents and support staff who worked on these investigations did. They did so diligently, thoroughly and professionally, as they do all of their work here,” she said.Mayes said she did not get any insight into why Brnovich did not release the information while he was in charge, saying Brnovich would need to answer that for himself. Brnovich did not respond to a request for comment.“This kind of failure to release information to the people of Arizona is not how this office will operate moving forward under my leadership,” Mayes said. “My administration will be truthful and transparent.”The Post report compelled elections officials throughout the state to comment on the revelations, especially those who Brnovich had previously criticized publicly.Clint Hickman, the chairman of the Maricopa county board of supervisors, said he was “absolutely disgusted” that Brnovich concealed reports on the 2020 election and applauded Mayes for finally releasing the documents. He implored people who care about elections to read the reports.“This was a gross misuse of his elected office and an appalling waste of taxpayer dollars, as well as a waste of the time and effort of professional investigators,” Hickman said in a statement.He pointed to the onslaught of threats and harassment the board, elections officials and election workers have faced while false claims of impropriety in the 2020 election lingered for years.“For three years, my colleagues have been called traitors, cheaters, and liars … and those are just the names I can print,” Hickman said. “It has been absolute hell on all of us, but I would do it again in a second and I believe that every member of this board would do it again because all of us stayed within the law.”Stephen Richer, the county’s Republican recorder, noted two elements of the reports where investigators contradicted Brnovich’s interim report by saying the county had been responsive and followed signature verification procedures. Those notes from investigators “distinctly show the ways in which our office cooperated with and supported the attorney general’s office in the development of last year’s interim report,” Richer said.Arizona’s Secretary of state Adrian Fontes, a Democrat who in 2020 was the Maricopa county recorder, said he was “deeply disappointed by the wasteful and pointless actions by a top law enforcement official who diverted thousands of hours of staff time to pursue unfounded allegations of election fraud”.TopicsArizonaThe fight for democracyUS politicsUS elections 2020RepublicansnewsReuse this content
- [Ex-Proud Boy testifies: 'Desperation' as 2020 election options waned - USA Today](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/ex-proud-boy-testifies-desperation-as-2020-election-options-waned-usa-today/) - As efforts to prove the 2020 election was stolen repeatedly failed and it became more and more apparent that Donald Trump would not remain president, the Proud Boys were overcome with a sense of desperation."We pretty much knew it was over," Jeremy Bertino, an ex-member of the right-wing extremist group, told a jury in the trial of five Proud Boys Wednesday. "We were desperate at this point for anything else that could have changed the outcome of the election."Prosecutors allege that the Proud Boys on trial, fueled by that desperation to keep Trump in office, conspired to stop the certification of the 2020 election by weaponizing an already-inflamed pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021 against the Capitol.Bertino is the only Proud Boy who has pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy, a Civil War-era offense sparingly charged and even more rarely convicted. He faces up to 20 years in prison for that charge alone.In testimony Wednesday and Thursday, Bertino said that the Proud Boys viewed themselves as leaders among the political right and were motivated to "save the country" after Joe Biden was named winner of the 2020 presidential race.“I believed that we were supposed to be the leaders of the country, of the right wing," he said. "The tip of the spear.”Jeremy Bertino:Former Proud Boys leader pleads guilty to seditious conspiracy in Jan. 6 Capitol attackLeaders in a post-2020 election worldIn the Proud Boys' view, there were two kinds of right-wingers, Bertino said: members of the group and "normies."Normies were anyone who supported Trump or fell right of center politically, but were not affiliated with the Proud Boys, he said. To the normies, the Proud Boys were "superstars" or "superheroes," according to Bertino. And to the Proud Boys, the normies were "good allies.""If the Proud Boys are the tip of the spear, then we’d be looking at the normies as the people behind us," Bertino said. Proud Boys trial:Proud Boys on trial for charges stemming from Jan. 6 Capitol riot. What we knowOn Jan. 6, 2021, that's exactly where the normies were, the government alleges. Prosecutors say that members of the Proud Boys, including those on trial now, were “a part of every critical breach" that day, and behind them were thousands of pro-Trump rioters who followed in their footsteps.In messages shown to the jury, members of the Proud Boys questioned whether normies would "push through police lines," "storm the Capitol building" and "burn (D.C.) to ash."They were like a "pack of wild dogs," one Proud Boy wrote in messages. "F--- it, let them loose," Bertino replied back at the time.Views of law enforcement souredThe Proud Boys attended the Dec. 12, 2020 Million MAGA March in D.C., and later that evening, Bertino was stabbed in a physical confrontation with "antifa." His stabbing was an inflection point for the group, prosecutors have argued.Bertino said that after his stabbing, he and other members of the group began to view law enforcement as “the enemy at that point."“I felt like they were not on our side anymore,” he testified. “And basically if you were not with us, you were against us.”His feelings toward law enforcement were compounded with his and other Proud Boys' growing frustration about the 2020 election, which they believed to be fraudulent. "I felt that if the election had been done right, we wouldn't have even had to be there, and if we didn't have to be there, I wouldn't have been stabbed," Bertino said.As 2020 election options dwindled, Proud Boys grew 'desperate'Bertino testified that an 11th-hour bid to subvert Biden's win — a lawsuit brought by Texas, with Trump's blessing, against Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan, claiming fraud — was the group's "last hope."When the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, "desperation" set in, Bertino said."We would have to take the reins, lead the people to freedom," Bertino said. "And freedom was an opposition of a tyrannical government that we felt was being installed as opposed to voted in."Longtime Proud Boys chairman Henry "Enrique" Tarrio, one of the defendants on trial, felt the same way, Bertino said – that "time was running out to save the country."'The revolution had failed'When rioters began to clear out of the Capitol on Jan. 6 and House members planned to reconvene, the Proud Boys expressed disappointment in private chats.Bertino told other Proud Boys in messages that day they had "failed" because the House was meeting again, lamenting that rioter Ashli Babbit, who was shot attempting to breach the House chamber that day, had "died for nothing."In court Thursday, he expanded on those messages: "The revolution had failed," Bertino testified.Bertino's Jan. 6 roleBertino joined a North Carolina chapter of the Proud Boys in 2018 and for a time served as vice president of a chapter in South Carolina.Bertino was not in D.C. on Jan. 6, recovering from the stabbing, but he monitored the day’s events on social media and posted encouraging words in the Proud Boys' chats, telling those on the ground to “form a spear” and continue the fight, according to trial evidence.In addition to a maximum 20 years in prison for sedition, Bertino also faces up to 10 years in prison for a firearms charge brought after authorities recovered six unlawfully possessed guns while searching his home in March. Dig deeper:
- [House January 6 investigator says it's 'likely' 2020 election su - Erie News Now](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/house-january-6-investigator-says-its-likely-2020-election-su-erie-news-now/) - Erie News Now: Coverage You Can Count On
- [REPORT: Former AG concealed records disproving 2020 election fraud claims - ABC15 Arizona](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/report-former-ag-concealed-records-disproving-2020-election-fraud-claims-abc15-arizona/) - PHOENIX — The fallout from Arizona's 2020 Presidential Election continues into 2023. With candidates and elected officials promoting the conspiracy theory that the election was stolen from Donald Trump, voters believe it to be true. A stolen election was the battle cry for Arizona Republican candidates of the 2022 election, Kari Lake for Arizona governor, Abe Hamadeh for Attorney General, and Mark Finchem for Secretary of State. They all claimed the election was stolen and they were going to fix it. "It is absolutely unconscionable that he would hide the truth from Arizonans," Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said, reacting to reports former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich intentionally concealed records debunking election fraud claims. "Perpetuating what he knew to be a lie and then lie about what he eventually knew would come out," Fontes stated.The Attorney General's Office released three reports dealing with the investigation of Arizona's 2020 Presidential Election. A total of 60 investigators and staff were assigned and more than 10,000 hours were invested. The complete report was ready prior to the 2022 election, but Brnovich opted to release an interim report in the weeks leading up to the election saying his office discovered "serious vulnerabilities." Brnovich chose to leave out edits from his investigators refuting the premise. "It was a failure to pour cold water on the flames of conspiracy that were growing during the election," said Attorney General Kris Mayes, who released the report.The three reports released Wednesday disproved all the major findings of the Cyber Ninja audit: claims that dead people voted, claims every elected official who made public claims of voter fraud refused to repeat those claims under oaths, and all but one claim, out of hundreds, of people voting twice.The report also discussed several cases of ballot harvesting. Nearly all the cases of voter fraud reported to the Attorney General came from the Secretary of State or local elections officials. "The people of Arizona had a right to know that investigators in this office, the 60 investigators in this office, and lawyers had concluded that Maricopa County didn't do anything wrong. That our elections are free, fair, and safe," Mayes said.Yet, Brnovich kept it all quiet and Fontes says it puts lives at risk. "He is dishonorable and disgusting. The negative impact that had on Arizonans' lives and the way some folks had to suffer because of this," Fontes said.Since the 2020 election, 16 election officials from 10 Arizona counties either retired or resigned from their jobs. Many sighted threats and harassment from people who do not believe Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.In a statement provided to ABC15, former Attorney General Brnovich stated:I am proud of the work our office did with the election integrity unit that was created by the Arizona legislature. While subjected to severe criticism from all sides of the political spectrum during the course of our investigations, we did our due diligence to run all complaints to the ground. Where we were able to debunk rumors and conspiracies we did so. Nevertheless, we also identified areas we believe the legislature and county officials should address to ensure confidence in future elections.
- [Mark Brnovich hid the truth from you about Arizona's 2020 election - AZCentral](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/mark-brnovich-hid-the-truth-from-you-about-arizonas-2020-election-azcentral/) - At long last, the cover-up surrounding Arizona’s 2020 election has been unveiled. And it was, indeed, a conspiracy.A conspiracy of silence, that is. An outrageous cover-up of the truth.It seems investigators with the Arizona Attorney General’s Office reported beginning in March 2022 that they could find no evidence of any widespread fraud in the 2020 election.Then-AG Mark Brnovich, who was at the time courting the Republican vote for the U.S. Senate, kept the results of the investigation private.Instead, he released an interim report the following month, insinuating that something nefarious was afoot ― a report that Trump and the conspiracy crowd within the Republican Party used to further promote their claim that Arizona’s election was dirty.Investigators found no widespread conspiracyThe Washington Post first reported on the previously unreleased records of Brnovich’s yearlong investigation after Attorney General Kris Mayes vowed to make the findings public on Wednesday.Bottom line: After more than 10,000 hours spent on investigating 430 reports of fraud and suspicious activity, the attorney general’s team of investigators turned up no evidence of any widespread conspiracy.No bamboo ballots.No tabulators connected to the internet wherein the vote could be hacked and the results changed.No evidence of ballot mules moving forth to stuff drop boxes and steal the election from Donald Trump.Messages reveal:Cyber Ninjas' ties to Trump during election 'audit'And all those grifters and groups that publicly claimed to have proof of the many supposed ways in which the election was stolen? Nope.“Some of the more high-profile matters involved Cyber Ninjas Incorporated, True the Vote, Verity Vote, and elected officials,” according to a second previously unreleased report summarizing investigators findings in September, a month after Brnovich lost the election but three months before he left office.“In each instance and in each matter, the aforementioned parties did not provide any evidence to support their allegations. The information that was provided was speculative in many instances and when investigated by our agents and support staff, was found to be inaccurate.”Rogers, Finchem could provide no proofAs for politicians like Sen. Wendy Rogers and Rep. Mark Finchem, who loudly claimed to have evidence of fraud and decried the stolen election? The ones who capitalized on their fake evidence to raise millions of dollars in donations?They were silent when the time came to provide their proof to investigators, probably because it’s a crime to make a false report to a law enforcement agency.“Arizona State Representative Finchem publicly stated he had a source reporting that more than30,000 fraudulent/fictitious votes were registered in Pima County during the general election,” the report said.“Agents requested to meet with Mr. Finchem to discuss his allegations. During that meeting, Mr. Finchem did not repeat those allegations, specifically stating he did not have any evidence of fraud and he did not wish to take up our time.”“We requested a meeting with Arizona State Senator Wendy Rogers based upon her assertion therewas widespread fraud in the 2020 General Election,” the report said.“Ms. Rogers refused to meet with us, saying she was waiting to see the ‘perp walk’ of those who committed fraud during the election.”Brnovich knew claims were unfoundedBrnovich, in a statement to ABC15, said he was proud of the work done by his investigators, noting they identified several areas that could be improved to "ensure confidence in future elections.""While subjected to severe criticism from all sides of the political spectrum during the course of our investigations, we did our due diligence to run all complaints to ground," he said. "Where we were able to debunk rumors and conspiracies we did so."You just didn't tell anybody about it.Brnovich didn’t explain why he never released his investigators’ March 2022 findings. Or why, despite those findings, he continued to insinuate there was a problem with the 2020 election during his Senate campaign. Or why he never came clean even after his defeat in the August primary.But then, really, what could he say?On April 6, 2022, Brnovich released an interim report, claiming the investigation had found “serious vulnerabilities” in Arizona’s electoral process."We have reached the conclusion that the 2020 election in Maricopa County revealed serious vulnerabilities that must be addressed and raises questions about the 2020 election in Arizona," he wrote, in a letter to then-Senate President Karen Fann.“It is frustrating. It’s frustrating to all of us," he said a day or so later on Steve Bannon’s podcast. “Because I think we all know what happened in 2020.”He certainly knew.A month earlier, on March 8, 2022, his investigators prepared a 24-page report stating that virtually all claims of error and malfeasance were unfounded.He falsely suggested wrongdoingBrnovich did finally admit, a day before the August primary, that claims by the Cyber Ninjas and others that hundreds of dead voters had cast ballots in Arizona’s election were bogus.But as to all the other claims ― the ones used by the election denial crowd to soak up donations from outraged voters ― Brnovich remained silent.As state and county election officials received death threats from across the country, Brnovich remained silent.Even after he lost the primary, he remained silent about the findings of his investigators.Count Maricopa County's elected officials among the disgusted, as they and their elections workers remain under attack.“(Brnovich) and his leadership team concealed a report that proved the November 2020 election was conducted fairly, lawfully and accurately,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Clint Hickman said, in a statement on Wednesday. “Not only did he ignore his own investigators in issuing a different ‘interim report,’ he falsely suggested wrongdoing by Maricopa County, never correcting the record and blatantly never sharing the team’s final report with the public.”What a disgusting end to Brnovich's careerWhat a disgusting and disappointing end to the political career of a man who, once upon a time, was probably the Republicans’ best hope of defeating Sen. Mark Kelly.Brnovich, after all, was the first statewide official to declare that Joe Biden legitimately won Arizona.“It came down to: People split their ticket,” a matter-of-fact Brnovich told Fox Business’ Neil Cavuto on Nov. 11, 2020, as Arizona politicians all around him were diving for cover. “People voted for Republicans down ballot, and they didn’t vote for President Trump or Martha McSally. So, that’s the reality.”Then Brnovich decided to run for the Senate and, apparently, from the truth.Now we know the truth.Out of the hundreds of complaints and allegations about voter fraud, the AG’s office prosecuted precisely five people for individual instances of wrongdoing.So, this should end the conspiracy, right?The report found no graveyard full of dead voters. No double voting. No mules lugging large numbers of bogus ballots to the Post Office or drop boxes, though they did find instances in which Maricopa County failed to properly record retrieval times from drop boxes.No computer hackers swapping votes from Trump to Biden. No improper procedures employed in Maricopa County's validation of early ballot signatures. No information deleted by county elections officials and hidden from the Cyber Ninjas.No “kinetic artifacts” showing that ballots were bogus. No satellites under the control of the Italian military, employed to throw the race to Biden.“These allegations were not supported by any factual evidence when researched by our office,” the lead investigator wrote, in a Sept. 19 report summarizing the investigation.A report that was never released to the public.So that’s the end of it, right?This report should, once and for all, put an end to the shrieking voices of Arizona’s many opportunistic politicians the ones who have spent more than two years charging that corrupt election officials denied their beloved president his due. The ones who have collected millions upon millions of dollars on the false claim that we have no "election integrity."Rogers and Finchem, Kari Lake and Kelli Ward and Sonny Borrelli and the whole sad stable of elections deniers will be, forthwith, issuing apologies for their outrageous slander of the state and its elections workers, right?This really should put an end to it, right?Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.Support local journalism: Subscribe to azcentral.com today.
- [Arizona's top prosecutor kept private records that debunked election fraud - The Washington Post](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/arizonas-top-prosecutor-kept-private-records-that-debunked-election-fraud-the-washington-post/) - PHOENIX — Nearly a year after the 2020 election, Arizona’s then-attorney general, Mark Brnovich, launched an investigation into voting in the state’s largest county that quickly consumed more than 10,000 hours of his staff’s time.Investigators prepared a report in March 2022 stating that virtually all claims of error and malfeasance were unfounded, according to internal documents reviewed by The Washington Post. Brnovich, a Republican, kept it private.In April, the attorney general — who was running in the GOP primary for a U.S. Senate seat — released an “Interim Report” claiming that his office had discovered “serious vulnerabilities.” He left out edits from his own investigators refuting his assertions.His office then compiled an “Election Review Summary” in September that systematically refuted accusations of widespread fraud and made clear that none of the complaining parties — from state lawmakers to self-styled “election integrity” groups — had presented any evidence to support their claims. Brnovich left office last month without releasing the summary.That timeline emerges from documents released to The Post this week by Brnovich’s successor, Kris Mayes, a Democrat. She said she considered the taxpayer-funded investigation closed and, earlier this month, notified leaders on Maricopa County’s governing board that they were no longer in the state’s crosshairs.The records show how Brnovich used his office to further claims about voting in Maricopa County that his own staff considered inaccurate. They suggest that his team privately disregarded fact checks provided by state investigators while publicly promoting incomplete accounts of the office’s work. The innuendo and inaccuracies, circulated not just in the far reaches of the internet but with the imprimatur of the state’s attorney general, helped make Arizona an epicenter of distrust in the democratic process, eroding confidence in the 2020 vote as well as in subsequent elections.Brnovich did not respond to questions about his conduct of the probe, his decision not to release additional documents, or differences between his public statements and his office’s private findings.The documents — two investigative summaries and a draft letter with edits, totaling 41 pages — are far from an exhaustive record of Brnovich’s investigation. But they fill in details about the sometimes-enigmatic actions of the state’s former top law enforcement officer.Brnovich quickly affirmed then-President Donald Trump’s loss in Arizona in November 2020, angering fellow Republicans. And he went on to resist Trump’s efforts to overturn the vote. Yet he flirted with claims of fraud as he courted GOP support over the subsequent two years, trumpeting his interim report on a far-right radio show and saying, “It’s frustrating for all of us, because I think we all know what happened in 2020.” It was only in the final days before this past November’s midterm election, several months after Brnovich had lost his Senate primary, that he began to denounce politicians who denied Trump’s defeat, calling them “clowns” engaged in a “giant grift.”In releasing materials that Brnovich’s office had kept from public view, Mayes said she was reorienting the work of the attorney general’s office — away from pursuing conspiratorial claims of fraud and toward protecting the right to vote, investigating the few cases of wrongdoing that typically occur every election, and preventing threats against election workers.“The people of Arizona had a right to know this information before the 2022 election,” Mayes said in an interview. “Maricopa County election officials had a right to know that they were cleared of wrongdoing. And every American had a right to know that the 2020 election in Arizona, which in part decided the presidency, was conducted accurately and fairly.”The records released this week represent a fraction of the thousands of pages produced by investigators and attorneys during the investigation, including additional material from drafts of reports and interviews and correspondence with witnesses and election officials. Mayes’s staff is reviewing those documents and is redacting sensitive information before making them public in the coming months, said Richie Taylor, her spokesperson.Brnovich did not release the investigative summaries, which The Post requested under Arizona’s public records law before he left office in January. Brnovich and his staff said repeatedly throughout the investigation that they were limited in what they could disclose since the probe was ongoing.But his office did on occasion make public some aspects of its findings. On Aug. 1, the day before the state’s primary election, Brnovich said his office had finished its investigation of allegations that hundreds of votes had been cast in the name of deceased people. His office found one instance. In December, as Brnovich was preparing to leave office, an executive assistant wrote in an email to The Post that “regardless of transition, we will continue processing and will release when completed.”The 2020 election in Maricopa County drew intense scrutiny because it’s the state’s largest voting jurisdiction, home to more than half of voters, and helped swing Arizona to Joe Biden and deliver him the presidency. Brnovich launched the investigation shortly after Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based firm hired by the GOP-led state Senate, ended its own review of the election in September 2021. The months-long legislative review, which was roundly criticized by election experts, affirmed Trump’s loss in the state. Brnovich was competing at the time in the Senate primary contest against Trump-aligned candidates who said they would have taken steps following the 2020 election to thwart certification of Biden’s victory.More than six months after the 2020 presidential election, Arizona Senate Republicans are leading an audit of the 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County. (Video: Erin Patrick O'Connor/The Washington Post)The attorney general’s probe stretched through 2022, as Brnovich’s office spent more than 10,000 hours examining claims of irregularities, malfeasance and fraud, records show. At one point, the office set up a command center, and “the review of the audit was made a singular, high-level priority; all hands were assigned to work exclusively on reviewing the audit with other matters being placed on hold unless a matter required immediate action on our part,” a report said. Mayes said the office has about 60 investigators, all of whom participated in the probe at some point, along with lawyers and support staff.By September 2022, a year into the inquiry, the special investigations section had received 638 election-related complaints and deemed 430 of them worthy of investigation. Of those, just 22 cases were submitted for prosecutorial review; two cases involving felons who illegally sought to vote were prosecuted, leading to convictions.Brnovich never broadcast the full findings, declining to close the books on suspicions raised by an interim report with characterizations directly rebutted by his own office.The interim report, delivered in the form of a letter to Karen Fann, then the Republican president of the state Senate, was met by Trump allies as confirmation that voting in Maricopa County was corrupted. The letter, sent on April 6, highlighted management of early voting, saying, “We can report that there are problematic system-wide issues that relate to early ballot handling and verification.”But Brnovich’s staff took issue with his criticism of the handling and verification of ballots, writing in a draft of the letter, “We did not uncover any criminality or fraud having been committed in this area during the 2020 general election.”The staff comments were made in blue type, below disputed statements highlighted in yellow, and included in a document sent by a chief special agent in the criminal division to several others in the office on April 1. That document was forwarded to Brnovich’s top aide. The subject line was “Additional Considerations for Draft Interim Report.” It’s not clear who else reviewed the document.The considerations were largely not reflected in Brnovich’s final version.Brnovich speculated that a large number of early ballots in the 2020 contest may have prevented county officials from properly verifying signatures on the ballots, even though his staff advised him that the county had rigorous training and processes, as well as additional staff, to ensure proper verification.Brnovich went ahead with his claim that “Maricopa County had not always timely and fully responded to our requests for records,” even though staff advised in the draft document that it was the “collective opinion of … investigators” that the county “was cooperative and responsive to our requests.”When Brnovich released his interim report, it was not accompanied by a fuller “Investigation Summary,” prepared by the assistant chief special agent and dated March 8. The 24-page summary described a range of allegations probed by the attorney general’s office, including improper signature verification, misuse of drop boxes and incomplete access to records for the state Senate’s audit. That report was also shared with Brnovich’s top aide, Taylor said.Virtually all allegations had been deemed unfounded, according to the summary. Several issues were listed as undetermined, including a claim by Cyber Ninjas that certain files had been deleted by the county; investigators had yet to review all archived data.The summary revealed that there had been procedural violations in one instance — involving the retrieval of ballots from drop boxes. The state did not find that the county had mishandled ballots, according to the summary, but that it had not always properly recorded certain details, such as the time of retrieval.Regarding signature verification, the issue highlighted in Brnovich’s interim report, the prepared summary said, “No improper Election Procedures were discovered during the Signature Verification review.”Later last year, Brnovich’s office came to further conclusions about the absence of any basis for claims of systematic fraud, but it kept those findings private as well.On Sept. 19, about a month after Brnovich had lost the GOP nomination for Senate to a MAGA-aligned candidate who insisted that “Trump won in 2020,” a memo summarized the work of investigators. The memo, drawn up by a chief special agent in anticipation of a final report, was not shared with office leadership since no such final report was ever drafted or requested, Taylor said.The memo, titled “Election Review Summary,” emphasized that “no evidence of election fraud, manipulation of the election process, or any instances of organized/coordinated fraud was provided by any of the complaining parties.”Of the more conspicuous claims examined by investigators — including those circulated by Cyber Ninjas, Texas-based True the Vote and others — the groups “did not provide any evidence to support their allegations,” the memo concluded. The information they did provide “was speculative in many instances and when investigated by our agents and support staff, was found to be inaccurate.”The memo also reported that some high-profile Republican officials — who had publicly made fantastical claims of fraud — did not reiterate those assertions under questioning by agents, when they were subject to a state law prohibiting false reporting to law enforcement.Mark Finchem, then a state representative who later ran unsuccessfully for secretary of state, had repeatedly claimed that a “source” told him that more than 30,000 fictitious votes had appeared during the general election in a county south of Phoenix. But when questioned by agents, he did not repeat the claim, “specifically stating he did not have any evidence of fraud and that he did not wish to take up our time.” Finchem provided four ballots that he said reflected a flawed voting process, but those ballots had not been counted and were unopened.Sonny Borrelli, a GOP state senator who had alleged a coverup of election irregularities, did not repeat those claims during an interview but did provide what he said was the name of a deceased voter, the memo stated. Investigators learned that the allegedly deceased voter was alive, had not voted and was not a resident of Arizona.Investigators sought a meeting with Wendy Rogers, a Republican state senator and vocal election denier who now chairs the chamber’s elections committee. But Rogers refused to meet, the report said, “saying she was waiting to see the ‘perp walk’ of those who committed fraud during the election.”No perp walk resulted from allegations presented to the unit, including that aerial objects flipped votes; that election workers scrubbed hard drives; and that satellites under the control of the Italian military penetrated vote-counting machines.
- [Arizona Attorney General's Office Releases Documents Related to 2020 Election Investigations](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/arizona-attorney-generals-office-releases-documents-related-to-2020-election-investigations/) - PHOENIX – Today, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes released documents related to the investigations into the handling of the 2020 election in Arizona. Despite Arizona Attorney General Office (AAGO) agents and support staff spending over 10,000 hours investigating voting irregularities and alleged instances of illegal voting by high-profile election deniers, a September 2022 summary prepared by AAGO's Special Investigations Section stated:In each instance and in each matter, the aforementioned parties did not provide any evidence to support their allegations. The information that was provided was speculative in many instances and when investigated by our agents and support staff, was found to be inaccurate. Complaints and allegations submitted to the Arizona Attorney General’s office by members of the public were also largely unsupported by factual evidence or found to be mischaracterizations when researched by agents and support staff. These allegations included the counting of duplicate votes, satellites controlled by the Italian military changing votes to favor President Biden, bamboo ballots, and dead people voting in numbers that affected the outcome of the election, among others.“The results of this exhaustive and extensive investigation show what we have suspected for over two years – the 2020 election in Arizona was conducted fairly and accurately by elections officials,” said Attorney General Kris Mayes. “The ten thousand plus hours spent diligently investigating every conspiracy theory under the sun distracted this office from its core mission of protecting the people of Arizona from real crime and fraud.” And while a small number of cases were submitted for prosecution review due to these investigations, these numbers align with historical trends. They do not indicate widespread fraud or conspiracy related to the 2020 election. “Voter fraud is rare, and instances should be handled according to applicable laws when they do occur,” continued Attorney General Mayes. “But it is time to work together to defend American democracy and uphold the rule of law. It’s time for the divisiveness to stop, and it’s time for our country to heal.” Documents:March 8, 2022 Previously Unreleased Interim Findings SummaryApril 1, 2022 Draft of Interim Report with edits and suggestions made by AAGO agentsSeptember 19, 2022 Previously Unreleased Investigative Summary
- [Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump Subpoenaed in Jan. 6 Investigation - The New York Times](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/23/jared-kushner-and-ivanka-trump-subpoenaed-in-jan-6-investigation-the-new-york-times/) - The special counsel overseeing the inquiry into Donald Trump’s efforts to retain power after the 2020 election wants the former president’s daughter and son-in-law to testify to a grand jury.Former President Donald J. Trump’s daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have been subpoenaed by the special counsel to testify before a federal grand jury about Mr. Trump’s efforts to stay in power after he lost the 2020 election and his role in a pro-Trump mob’s attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to two people briefed on the matter.The decision by the special counsel, Jack Smith, to subpoena Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner underscores how deeply into Mr. Trump’s inner circle Mr. Smith is reaching, and is the latest sign that no potential high-level witness is off limits.The disclosure about the subpoena comes two weeks after it was revealed that Mr. Smith had subpoenaed former Vice President Mike Pence to testify before the grand jury. Mr. Pence plans to fight the subpoena, invoking his role as the president of the Senate to argue that it violates the “speech or debate” clause of the Constitution.It is unclear whether Mr. Trump will seek to block Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner from testifying on the grounds of executive privilege, as he has tried with some other witnesses. Both of them served as White House officials in the Trump administration. Mr. Trump declined to try to stop them from testifying before the House special committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack and what led to it.An aide to Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner did not respond to a request for comment. Josh Stueve, a spokesman for Mr. Smith, declined to comment. Aides to Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment.Understand the Events on Jan. 6Timeline: On Jan. 6, 2021, 64 days after Election Day 2020, a mob of supporters of President Donald J. Trump raided the Capitol. Here is a close look at how the attack unfolded.A Day of Rage: Using thousands of videos and police radio communications, a Times investigation reconstructed in detail what happened — and why.Lost Lives: A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died in connection with the attack.Jan. 6 Attendees: To many of those who attended the Trump rally but never breached the Capitol, that date wasn’t a dark day for the nation. It was a new start.Ms. Trump was in the Oval Office on Jan. 6 as her father placed a late-morning call to Mr. Pence to pressure him to block or delay congressional certification of the Electoral College results documenting Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. As president of the Senate, Mr. Pence, who rejected Mr. Trump’s demands, was to serve in a ceremonial role overseeing the process that day.Ms. Trump also accompanied her father to the rally of his supporters at the Ellipse near the White House. Hundreds of his supporters moved from there to the Capitol, where they attacked the building, some chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!” for his refusal to do what Mr. Trump wished..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% - 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(--color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(--color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(--color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(--color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Mr. Kushner returned from the Middle East that day, ultimately going to the White House after the pro-Trump mob had been rioting for hours. Both he and his wife were involved in efforts to get Mr. Trump to tell the rioters to go home, and then to commit to a peaceful transfer of power to Mr. Biden.Both testified before the Jan. 6 House select committee, appearing for videotaped interviews in which both provided memories about the day. The committee, in turn, repeatedly played clips of their testimony at some of its public hearings.One clip that got considerable attention showed Ms. Trump making clear that she accepted Attorney General William P. Barr’s declaration that there was no evidence of widespread fraud in the election, despite Mr. Trump’s repeated claims otherwise.Mr. Trump was infuriated by the clips and what was said in them, according to people in contact with him.Since then, Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump, who relocated with their three children to Florida after they left the White House, have maintained family contact with the former president. But while Mr. Kushner appeared at Mr. Trump’s campaign kickoff in November, Ms. Trump declined to and put out a statement saying she would not be involved in her father’s campaign this time.Both were intimately involved in his 2016 race before going to work at the White House.In December, Mr. Trump posted on his social media site, Truth Social, that he did not want them to be involved in his third campaign.“Contrary to Fake News reporting, I never asked Jared or Ivanka to be part of the 2024 campaign for president and, in fact, specifically asked them not to do it,” Mr. Trump wrote, going on to say the campaign would be “too mean and nasty.”“There has never been anything like this ‘ride’ before, and they should not be further subjected to it,” he added.
- [Softball Gloves & Mitts Market In-Depth Analysis | Louisville Slugger, VINCI, Marucci](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/22/softball-gloves-mitts-market-in-depth-analysis-louisville-slugger-vinci-marucci/) - Softball Gloves & Mitts Market research report including customer preference analysis, market dynamics (drivers, restraints, opportunities) segmentations like Types, Applications, Regions (United States, Europe, China, Japan, India, Southeast Asia, Latin America, Middle East and Africa) and Manufactures. “Final Report will add the analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on this industry.” Global “Softball Gloves & Mitts Market” 2022-2030 research report focuses on the product overview, scope, market upstream and downstream analysis, players profiles, market landscape by player, sales, revenue, price trend, market forecast, market drivers analysis, restraints and challenges, opportunities analysis, size, segmentations (mainly covering product type, application, and geography), competitor landscape, recent status, and development trends. Furthermore, the report provides strategies for companies to overcome threats posed by COVID-19 containing 150 numbers of pages, tables, figures and charts. Get a Sample PDF of the Report – marketreports.info/sample/54995/Softball-Gloves-&-Mitts Market Analysis and Insights: Global Softball Gloves & Mitts Market The Softball Gloves & Mitts market has witnessed a growth from xx USD million to xx USD million from 2014 to 2022. With a CAGR of xx%, this market is estimated to reach xx USD million in 2030. The major players covered in the Softball Gloves & Mitts market report are:Louisville Slugger, VINCI, Marucci, Nike, Easton, Wilson, Midwest, Franklin, Akadema, Steelo, Nokona, Adidas, Mizuno, Rawlings Get a Sample Copy of the Softball Gloves & Mitts Market Report 2022 : marketreports.info/sample/54995/Softball-Gloves-&-Mitts Most important types of Softball Gloves & Mitts products covered in this report are:Right HandLeft HandMost widely used downstream fields of Softball Gloves & Mitts market covered in this report are:Adults (Ages 13+)Children (Ages 7-12)T-Ball (Ages 4-6) Major Regions or countries covered in this report: United StatesEuropeChinaJapanIndiaSoutheast AsiaLatin AmericaMiddle East and AfricaOthersYears considered for this report: Historical Years: 2014-2021Base Year: 2021Estimated Year: 2022Forecast Period: 2022-2030 The Study Objectives of this report are: To analysis the worldwide Softball Gloves & Mitts market size by product types, applications and regions.To comprehend the design of Softball Gloves & Mitts market by recognizing its different sub-fragments.To study Softball Gloves & Mitts by individual manufactures growth, future trends.To study Product Overview and Scope of Softball Gloves & Mitts market segment, Revenue Sales Status and OutlookTo study Manufacturing Cost Structure of Softball Gloves & Mitts marketTo understand market Upstream and Downstream analysisTo understand Market Competitive Situation and TrendsTo understand market Drivers, Restraints, Opportunities, Challenges faced by Softball Gloves & Mitts marketTo analysis new product and new technology releaseAnalysis of Industry Development Trends under COVID-19 Outbreak Purchase this Report – marketreports.info/checkout?buynow=54995/Softball-Gloves-&-Mitts About Us: Marketreports.info is the Credible Source for Gaining the Market Reports that will provide you with the Lead Your Business Needs. The market is changing rapidly with the ongoing expansion of the industry. Advancement in technology has provided today’s businesses with multifaceted advantages resulting in daily economic shifts. Thus, it is very important for a company to comprehend the patterns of the market movements in order to strategize better. An efficient strategy offers the companies a head start in planning and an edge over the competitors. Contact Us Market Reports Phone (UK): +44 141 628 5998 Email: sales@marketreports.info Web: https://www.marketreports.info
- [Why a Louisville-area company implemented a 4-day workweek - WLKY](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/22/why-a-louisville-area-company-implemented-a-4-day-workweek-wlky/) - Advertisement Why a Louisville-area company implemented a 4-day workweek Updated: 10:11 PM EST Feb 22, 2023 Louisville Business First A Louisville-area company has made the leap to a four-day workweek as it reaches its 25th year in business, according to Louisville Business First.NCL Services, a full-service provider for the freight industry, is based in New
- ['I am my ancestors' dream' | Norton Healthcare Louisville, Ky.](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/22/i-am-my-ancestors-dream-norton-healthcare-louisville-ky/) - Katina Griffith, R.T., a respiratory care coordinator at Norton Children’s Hospital, makes her impact helping sick kids recover in the pediatric intensive care unit and Jennifer Lawrence Cardiac Intensive Care Unit. As a registered respiratory therapist, she’s been a vital part of helping the hospital respond to surges of COVID-19, flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). In March, Katina celebrates her 25-year service anniversary as a member of the Norton Healthcare family. In her current role, she collaborates with providers on details of patients’ care, educates other staff and works with children receiving treatment in an intensive care unit (ICU). “My favorite thing is seeing patients get better, move out of the ICU, feel well enough to start smiling and playing, and then hearing parents say, ‘This is my child,’” Katina said. A 12-year breast cancer survivor, Katina graciously offers support to young patients processing all that accompanies their own breast cancer diagnosis. She regularly volunteers with the American Cancer Society to mentor these patients, sharing encouragement and advice from her own experience to provide comfort and companionship. Katina views Black History Month as an opportunity to showcase the many great contributions African Americans have made in our country. For Katina, Black history’s relevance is not limited to a February commemoration, but she does appreciate the time to remember that many of the things we use in everyday life, such as traffic lights and automatic elevator doors, were patented by African Americans. A student of history, Katina loves reading to learn more about trailblazers. During February she might share Black history facts on social media or wear Black history-themed T-shirts throughout the month, viewing both these approaches as opportunities to spread awareness and education. Lived experience is often the greatest teacher, and Katina greatly appreciates the wealth of knowledge that is her 93-year-old grandmother. Together they attend Fifth Street Baptist Church, one of the oldest churches in Kentucky. Katina is proud to share how her grandmother was in attendance when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. visited the church to speak. Katina also appreciates the congregation’s rich history in leading civil rights rallies. “Knowing these people marched and sacrificed for me to have my birthright and to make sure every American was treated equally, no matter the color of your skin — to make sure we got our equal due in education, in the workplace and in all parts of society — I feel that I am my ancestors’ dream,” Katina said. When asked to name inspirational role models, Katina lists aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, along with specific ways each shaped who she is today. Throughout Katina’s family tree, education has been a consistent value. Older generations share how they had to fight tenaciously for the opportunity to receive quality education, and they want Katina and the next generation to take advantage of the doors education can open. Katina shares that her grandfather lived in Calhoun, Kentucky, during the Great Depression. When times were particularly tough, he ran out of toilet paper and had to use tobacco leaves. It was then that her grandfather made a promise that once he had a family, he would never let them be without. For the rest of his life, he kept a pantry in his house stuffed to the brim with toilet paper, a symbol of that promise. For Katina, February is a time to appreciate how far we’ve come but also to remember how far we still have to go. “We’re all in this world together. We should put colorism behind us and see each person as a loving individual who contributes to society,” Katina said.
- [Unequal election policies disenfranchised Pennsylvania voters in 2022 - Spotlight PA](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/21/unequal-election-policies-disenfranchised-pennsylvania-voters-in-2022-spotlight-pa/) - This article is made possible through Spotlight PA’s collaboration with Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting. This article is available for reprint under the terms of Votebeat’s republishing policy.HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania voters did not have equal opportunities to cast or correct their ballots during the November 2022 election, the latter producing a disparity that disenfranchised hundreds of voters, a Spotlight PA and Votebeat analysis has found.As part of a first-of-its-kind review, the news organizations contacted election officials in all 67 counties about policies regarding drop boxes and mail ballots that had disqualifying technical errors. The outlets focused on how counties treat mail ballots, as state law is silent on logistical details that directly impact how Pennsylvanians can vote and whether a person’s vote counts.Spotlight PA and Votebeat also sought to understand the access voters have to physical polling places and to minutes of meetings held by county election boards that make critical policy decisions such as which ballots get counted and who gets a chance to fix their ballot.The review found:At least a dozen counties gave voters the opportunity to fix flawed mail ballots after they were turned in, a process known as ballot curing.At least nine counties specifically forbade voters from coming into a county election office to fix a disqualifying error on a mail ballot like a missing date or signature on the outer envelope. Nearly a million registered voters live in those nine counties, and at least 1,599 mail ballots were rejected there for reasons including a missing date or signature, according to data from the Pennsylvania Department of State.At least eight counties proactively reached out to voters to tell them about fatal defects with their mail ballots, while six published lists of voters that needed to cure their ballots.Twenty-seven counties gave voters access to at least one round-the-clock drop box for mail ballots, while 40 — primarily in rural areas — required voters to either mail such a ballot or turn it in during daytime hours to an election office.Sixty-two counties exceeded a state recommendation on how many voters can be assigned to a precinct. The cap aims to ensure voters do not have prohibitively long wait times to cast a ballot.Nearly 40 county election offices do not make meeting minutes accessible online. Among those, four make the minutes available upon request or in person at the county election office.Forty-six counties did not respond to the survey. Spotlight PA and Votebeat turned to publicly available data on the number of drop boxes, voters, and voting precincts in each county to supplement their review.But information on ballot curing was often unavailable online, meaning the true number of people who weren’t allowed to fix their flawed mail ballots is likely higher than the news organizations could determine.In Pennsylvania, the governor and legislature broadly set election rules. The last major overhaul of state law came in 2019 when former Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf signed Act 77, which created no-excuse mail voting.The law, however, does not outline major aspects of mail voting such as drop boxes and ballot curing, a gap that has presented problems for the county officials who create policies and the election workers who must carry them out.Local election officials have asked the governor and legislature to clarify the law for years. But while Wolf and the formerly GOP-controlled legislature agreed on proposals like allowing pre-canvassing — a policy in which election officials process mail ballots ahead of Election Day — they deadlocked on more contentious issues like expanding voter ID.Ideally, Pennsylvania counties should make it as easy as possible to vote, said Khalif Ali, executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, a group that advocates for expanding public participation in the government and protecting voting rights.“It’s the beauty and the pain that’s associated with the commonwealth,” Ali said. “We have essentially a number of fiefdoms and each of them has their own budgets, their own way of looking at the law, and applying that law on the ground level.”Click here if you have trouble loading this dialogA patchwork of policiesTake Sadsbury Township, Lancaster County, for example. Voters there were not allowed to fix errors on mail ballots such as missing dates, nor could they place those ballots in a drop box.But their neighbors just over the county line in West Sadsbury Township, Chester County, were allowed to cure their ballots and had access to 13 drop boxes.The differences in election administration often come down to the makeup of the boards of election. In most cases, those boards are partisan and populated by the county’s elected commissioners. In Lancaster County, the board is majority-Republican and has two members who have consistently questioned the security of drop boxes. Chester County’s board is majority-Democrat.Overall, 1.7% of mail ballots cast in Lancaster County were rejected because they were mailed without a secrecy envelope, incorrectly dated, or missing a signature or date. In Chester County, that number was 1%.(Those numbers were provided by the Department of State, whose data may be incomplete.)Though the legislature acted with wide bipartisan support to allow no-excuse mail voting, some Republican lawmakers have since sought to curtail or eliminate the practice, a push in part due to baseless claims of election fraud spread by former President Donald Trump.That conflict, as well as gray areas in state law, have resulted in lawsuits over the past two years that target mail voting.In one, settled just a week before the November 2022 election, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered counties not to count mail ballots with incorrectly dated or undated outer envelopes. Months later, in February, the high court reaffirmed that undated mail ballots should not be counted but left it up to individual counties to determine exactly what an incorrect date is.The state Supreme Court last year was also asked to wade into the question of whether ballot curing should be allowed. An October decision permitted the practice but did not mandate it.At least a dozen counties went ahead and allowed voters to cure ballots for reasons including a missing signature or date. Some went even further and tried to make voters aware of issues with their ballots.Six counties — Allegheny, Chester, Erie, Northhampton, Philadelphia, and Potter — published lists that named voters whose ballots had errors. These lists were also passed to third-party organizations, such as good-government groups or local political parties, so they could reach out to those voters independently.Seven counties, including Chester, personally contacted voters with flawed ballots to direct them to their county election office.“It is heartbreaking when you are canvassing mail-in votes and you can’t count them when there are so many steps to complete and [the voters] mess up one thing and their vote can’t be counted,” Chester County Solicitor Colleen Frens said.The counties that did not allow voters to cure ballots provided a range of reasons for doing so, from not having enough staff to handle the extra work to believing the state Election Code does not allow for ballot curing.The availability of drop boxes also varied widely across the state last fall.Drop boxes were not available in 40 counties, where over 2.8 million registered voters live. Most of these counties are in rural areas where residents already must drive farther to reach a county election office.Twenty-seven counties did offer drop boxes, though 15 of them only had only one drop box available. The counties that had multiple drop boxes tended to be in more populated areas, such as Philadelphia and its collar counties.Lisa Schaefer, executive director of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania, said that while all counties run elections that are consistent with state law, different interpretations of the Election Code and court decisions can lead to a wide array of practices.“As we’ve seen, everything is kind of subject to interpretation, so the counties are doing their absolute best with what they have, but if we had some help from the state to fix some of these issues that would certainly be helpful,” she said.In-person accessAccess disparities also existed for people who chose to cast their ballot in person last November.Pennsylvania does not collect data on the amount of time that people have to wait in line to vote. Without that data, voting advocates told Spotlight PA and Votebeat to examine the number of voters assigned to different precincts as a way to gauge possible overcrowding.Pennsylvania’s Election Code states that each precinct should have between 100 to 1,200 people, though it does not specify how a county should determine the exact number. In practice, election directors told Spotlight PA they have the leeway to make their own choices.In total, just under a quarter of the 9,155 precincts in Pennsylvania have over 1,200 voters assigned to them and 33.5% have over 2,400, according to a Spotlight PA and Votebeat analysis. Another 57 precincts have over 3,600.Looking at how many voters are assigned to a precinct isn’t a perfect measure. Some election directors who spoke to Spotlight PA noted that staffing levels vary between precincts to deal with a higher volume of voters.Pike County, a sprawling northeastern county with relatively few voters, had the highest median of voters per precinct, with over double the recommended number. But Valerie Barbin, a voter and poll watcher for the past two cycles in the county’s most populous precinct, said she hasn’t seen it cause any wait-time issues. That could be because less than 800 of the precinct’s more than 4,700 assigned voters cast a ballot last November.“What’s also critical to the success of the precinct is that the counties are providing the appropriate resources,” said Jeff Greenburg, senior advisor on election administration to the good-government group Committee of Seventy and a former election director himself.As part of the review, Spotlight PA and Votebeat also looked at how easy it was to access each county’s board of elections meeting minutes. Those minutes summarize what was discussed by county election officials during public meetings and can include information on contracts with companies to deliver mail ballots, and plans for the number and locations of drop boxes in a county.Most counties don’t make these minutes easily accessible. Forty do not make them available online, though four of those counties responded in the survey that meeting minutes were available upon request or in person at a county election office.Changes on the horizon?Ali of Common Cause said that the different practices across the state favor some voters over others based on where they live. He argued that it violates the spirit of the Pennsylvania Constitution, which states “elections shall be free and equal.”He emphasized that inconsistencies can discourage voters from participating in the process.“We need to be able to share information and tell people exactly what’s going on,” Ali said.Exactly how to change Pennsylvania’s election law to make it fairer has been debated over the past few years.The Election Law Advisory Board, a group of county commissioners, state lawmakers, and advocates that studies election policies at the behest of the legislature, recently said in a report that “absolute uniformity across all counties would be difficult to achieve and maintain.”Instead, it recommended that the General Assembly establish minimum requirements for counties that use drop boxes but not mandate their use statewide.“The goal of this provision is to give counties the flexibility to have drop boxes but at the same time to have them as consistently administered as possible,” the report said.The report also recommended that the legislature simplify the mail voting process by making secrecy envelopes optional and clarifying that failure to date the ballot should not be the sole reason one is thrown out.Pennsylvania now has a new governor, Democrat Josh Shapiro, and the legislature is split between Democratic control in the state House and Republican control in the state Senate.The executive and legislative branches would have to work together to stitch together the patchwork of election policies, but so far they have not committed to any particular actions.Schaefer said her members are “very eager” for resolution on issues like ballot signatures, drop boxes, and pre-canvassing, and have been since shortly after the 2020 election.“Unfortunately, I think that the spotlight that is on Pennsylvania because of the narrow distance between our political parties and how close our votes get, that puts a greater scrutiny, I think, on our operation,” she said. “These are things we’d love to be able to address so that every county could feel confident that they are interpreting the law the same way, and that the state would help to provide that clarity to us in the law.”WHILE YOU’RE HERE… If you learned something from this story, pay it forward and become a member of Spotlight PA so someone else can in the future at spotlightpa.org/donate. Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results.
- [Lawyers get more time in Breonna Taylor warrant case | Michigan Lawyers Weekly](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/22/lawyers-get-more-time-in-breonna-taylor-warrant-case-michigan-lawyers-weekly/) - Lawyers for two former Kentucky police officers charged with conspiring to falsify the Breonna Taylor search warrant were granted more time to review the case’s massive trove of evidence. U.S. District Judge Charles Simpson agreed to reconvene the attorneys in May with a status hearing. Former Louisville officers Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany are charged with criminal civil rights violations that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison. Federal prosecutors have said Jaynes inserted false information into the warrant used to knock down Taylor’s door before she was shot to death by officers on March 13, 2020. Meany and another former officer, Kelly Goodlett, also knew the warrant had bad information, federal prosecutors have said. Goodlett pleaded guilty and is expected to testify at Jaynes’ and Meany’s trial. Brett Hankison, the only former officer facing charges who was involved in the raid, has a federal trial date set for Oct. 30. Prosecutors said during a Feb. 21 telephone conference with Judge Simpson that they have turned over a million pages of evidence and documents to defense attorneys in the case.
- [Kentucky Democrat wins special election to fill seat in state's GOP-dominated Senate](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/22/kentucky-democrat-wins-special-election-to-fill-seat-in-states-gop-dominated-senate/) - Democrat Cassie Chambers Armstrong has won a special election for a seat in the Republican-dominated Kentucky Senate, where she'll succeed the state's newest member of Congress.Armstrong, a Louisville Metro councilwoman, won with 77% of the vote in Tuesday's election, defeating Republican Misty Glin, media outlets reported.She will succeed Morgan McGarvey, who was elected to Congress last November. McGarvey served 10 years in the state Senate, including four as the chamber's top-ranking Democrat.LAWYERS FOR 2 KENTUCKY OFFICERS CHARGED IN BREONNA TAYLOR WARRANT CASE GRANTED MORE TIME Democrat Cassie Chambers has been elected to fill the empty seat in Kentucky's state Senate.
- [Live Results: Virginia U.S. House Special Election, Wisconsin Supreme Court Primary and More](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/21/live-results-virginia-u-s-house-special-election-wisconsin-supreme-court-primary-and-more/) - Tuesday brings a wide variety of elections, some scheduled, some special. Highlights include a congressional special election in Virginia and a regular primary for a seat on the closely-divided Wisconsin Supreme Court. U.S. House Special Election Virginia Congressional District 4 The only vacancy in the U.S. House will be filled via this special election. Republicans currently hold a 222-212 partisan edge. Select the 'Current House' button on the 2024 House election map to see that breakdown. This district includes the state capital, Richmond, and runs southward to the North Carolina border. Democrat Donald McEachin died in late November, after having been easily reelected to a fourth term. The Democratic nominee is state Sen. Jennifer McClellan. She is heavily favored against her Republican opponent, pastor Leon Benjamin. This will be Benjamin's third try at winning this seat; he was the party's nominee in both 2020 and 2022. Polls close at 7:00 PM Eastern Time. While this election will bring the House to full strength, that will only be the case for a few months at most. Earlier Tuesday, Rhode Island Democratic Rep. David Cicilline announced he will resign June 1 to head a nonprofit foundation. Judicial Wisconsin Supreme Court (Primary) Conservative Justice Patience Roggensack is retiring, leaving a 3-3 ideological split across the remaining six members. As a result, this election, for a ten-year term, will determine the balance of power between conservative and liberal justices for at least the next two years. As such, it is extremely consequential for issues from abortion to voting rights. There are two conservatives and two liberals on the nonpartisan primary ballot, with the top two advancing to the April 4 general election. The conservatives are County Court Judge Jennifer Dorow and Daniel Kelly, who previously served on the Supreme Court from 2016-2020. The liberals are County Court Judges Everett Mitchell and Janet Protasiewicz. For more, see this overview from The New York Times. Polls close at 9:00 PM Eastern Time. State Legislative Special Elections Kentucky State Senate District 19 Republicans dominate the Kentucky State Senate, holding 30 of 38 seats. There are six Democrats along with vacancies in Districts 19 and 28. Members serve four-year staggered terms, with half the seats up in 2024. The District 28 opening will be filled on May 16. Republican Ralph Alvarado resigned in January. District 19 is located southeast of Louisville. Democratic Senate Minority Leader Morgan McGarvey resigned after being elected to Congress (KY-03). On the ballot are Democrat Cassie Chambers Armstrong and Republican Misty Glin. Polls close at 6:00 PM Eastern Time. New Hampshire State House District Strafford 8 The New Hampshire House of Representatives is the largest legislative body in the country. At full strength, the chamber has 400 members. Currently, there are 201 Republicans and 196 Democrats. Three seats are vacant. Members serve two-year terms, with the next elections in 2024. District Strafford 8 is centered in Rochester, close to the border with Maine. Democrat Donna Ellis did not seek reelection in 2022 and left office in early December. The November general election between Democrat Chuck Grassie and Republican David Walker ended in a TIE, with each candidate receiving 970 votes. As a result, the two will meet again in this special election. Polls close at 7:00 PM Eastern Time. Wisconsin State Senate District 8 (Primary) Republicans hold a 21-11 advantage over Democrats in the Wisconsin State Senate. Members serve four-year staggered terms, with half the seats up for election in 2024. District 8, north of Milwaukee, is the only vacancy. Republican Alberta Darling retired in December, after serving 30 years in the State Senate. In 2020, Darling was reelected by 54% to 46%, a relatively close margin considering she had been unopposed the prior two cycles. Three Republicans are vying for their party's nomination. Jodi Sinykin is unopposed in the Democratic primary. The general election is April 4. Polls close at 9:00 PM Eastern Time. Mayoral Madison, Wisconsin (Primary) The Wisconsin capital is the nation's 81st largest city with a population of about 270,000.1 The mayor is Democrat Satya Rhodes-Conway, who is completing her first term. In 2019, she defeated long-time incumbent Democrat Paul Soglin by 62% to 38%. Both had advanced from the top-two nonpartisan primary. This year's primary features the incumbent mayor and two challengers. There is also a registered write-in candidate. The top two finishers will meet in the April 4 general election. Polls close at 9:00 PM Eastern Time. Upcoming Special Elections February 28 Connecticut State House Districts 6, 100, 148 Georgia State House District 119 (Runoff) March 7 Florida State House District 24 (Primary) March 14 Tennessee State House District 86 March 21 Georgia State House District 75 (April 18 runoff, if necessary) March 28 New Hampshire State House District Hillsborough 3 (Primary) April 4 Wisconsin State Senate District 8 Upcoming Mayoral Elections February 28 Chicago, Illinois (April 4 runoff if necessary) March 7 Tampa, Florida (April 25 runoff, if necessary) March 21 Jacksonville, Florida (May 16 runoff, if necessary) April 4 Colorado Springs, Colorado (May 16 runoff, if necessary) Denver, Colorado (June 6 runoff, if necessary) Kansas City, Missouri (Primary) Lincoln, Nebraska (Primary) Madison, Wisconsin
- [Trump ally advances in Wisconsin state Supreme Court race - NBC News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/21/trump-ally-advances-in-wisconsin-state-supreme-court-race-nbc-news/) - A Donald Trump ally who advised Republicans on legal efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential race has advanced to the Wisconsin Supreme Court general election, putting him one step closer to a seat on the powerful bench. Daniel Kelly is a former state Supreme Court justice with connections to a plan hatched by the former president's allies to reverse the 2020 election results in Wisconsin through the use of “fake electors.” He was one of two candidates to advance in Tuesday’s Supreme Court primary, according to projections by The Associated Press.The other to move forward was liberal candidate Janet Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee County circuit judge who was endorsed by the Democratic abortion rights group Emily’s List.Protasiewicz and Kelly will face off in an April 4 general election that will determine political control of the court — and, with it, the future of many pivotal issues the court is likely to decide in the coming years, including abortion rights, elections and gerrymandering. The winner is elected to a 10-year term.Although the court and its members are technically nonpartisan, conservatives hold a 4-3 majority. But with conservative Justice Patience Roggensack retiring, that majority hangs in the balance. There has not been a liberal majority on the court in 15 years, and Democrats see the election as a prime opportunity to shift the balance.Kelly was one of two conservative candidates in the primary election; the other, Jennifer Dorow, is a Waukesha County circuit judge best known in the state for having presiding over the criminal trial of Darrell Brooks, who was convicted last year of killing six people at a Waukesha Christmas parade in 2021 when he crashed his SUV into the crowd. Feb. 21, 202303:05Protasiewicz won about 46% of the vote Tuesday, a commanding victory based on Democratic turnout, particularly in Milwaukee and Dane counties, that was especially high for an off-year, down-ballot, winter primary election.The two liberal candidates in the race together won 54% of the vote, compared to about 46% for the two conservative candidates combined.Kelly only narrowly bested Dorow for a second-place finish, with the two basically splitting the support of voters who turned out for a conservative candidate. Kelly outperformed Dorow in rural counties, while Dorow outdid Kelly in the heavily Republican suburban counties surrounding Milwaukee.Kelly is a former state Supreme Court justice who lost his seat in a 2020 election to liberal Jill Karofsky. He was appointed to the seat in 2016 by former Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican. He has remained tied to Trump allies through a plan that was intended to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state with the use of “fake electors.”In a deposition to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, former Wisconsin GOP chairman Andrew Hitt said he and Kelly had “pretty extensive conversations” about the plan, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported last week that the Republican Party at the state and national levels had paid Kelly $120,000 to advise it on “election integrity” issues.A spokesperson for Kelly's campaign did not respond to questions about his involvement in those efforts. Kelly spokesperson Jim Dick told the Journal Sentinel that Kelly "believes Joe Biden is the duly elected president of the United States." Dick also suggested to the newspaper that Kelly's beliefs about the election were not necessarily aligned with what his clients believed, saying, "It is a maxim in the legal profession that the views of clients are not attributable to their attorneys."Kelly based much of his campaign on heavy criticism of Protasiewicz for having openly suggested how she would rule on pivotal cases likely to come before the court involving hot-button issues with national ramifications, like abortion rights, elections and gerrymandering.Protasiewicz, one of two liberal candidates in the race (the other was Everett Mitchell, a Dane County circuit judge), focused her campaign heavily on her support for abortion rights. Her television advertisements, for example, emphasized that support: One featured her talking directly to the camera, saying, “I believe in a woman’s freedom to make her own decision on abortion,” while a second featured several women touting that support and slamming “extremists” on the other side of the argument. The issue has taken center stage in the race. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, an 1849 state law banning abortion in almost all cases snapped back into effect. Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul, both Democrats, have said they will not enforce the law, and Kaul has filed a lawsuit alleging that it is unenforceable. The suit is expected to eventually make its way before the state Supreme Court, most likely giving the court the power to decide on abortion rights in Wisconsin.Kelly, who has refrained from saying how he would rule in such a case, was endorsed by three groups that oppose abortion rights.The court is also very likely to hear various challenges to existing election laws, as well as cases that might relate to recounts, absentee ballots and other facets of election administration that could have material impacts on the outcomes of close elections in the perpetual battleground — including the 2024 presidential election.For example, in a 4-3 decision last year, the state Supreme Court deemed all ballot drop boxes outside election clerks’ offices illegal — a setback for Democrats, who had advocated to preserve one of the more lenient rules about the boxes that arose during the coronavirus pandemic. Two years earlier, the court, in another 4-3 vote, narrowly upheld the 2020 election results in the state. Court watchers predict similar cases in the future.Other issues that could make it before the court in the coming years include challenges to Act 10, a law enacted by then-Republican Gov. Scott Walker that eliminated collective bargaining for most public workers. It could also hear cases about redrawn legislative maps (the current map, which experts have said is one of the most gerrymandered in the country, was approved by the current state Supreme Court last year). As is the case in many states, in Wisconsin, if the governor and the Legislature cannot agree on legislative maps, the issue falls to the state Supreme Court.The general election is on pace to be the most expensive Supreme Court race in Wisconsin history. Candidates and outside groups have already spent more than $9.2 million, an amount that, through the general election, will clearly exceed the record $10 million spent in 2020.
- [Supreme Court Rejects Request to Hear Case Seeking to Overturn 2020 Election](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/21/supreme-court-rejects-request-to-hear-case-seeking-to-overturn-2020-election/) - The Supreme Court on Feb. 21 rejected a case that was seeking to overturn the 2020 election. Justices turned down a request for rehearing by Raland Brunson, a Utah man who brought the case. Justices did not explain their decision and a vote tally was not made available. The court periodically releases lists of orders, and the Feb. 21 list included the decision on Brunson v. Alma Adams. Brunson and his brothers filed the case in Utah in 2021, arguing that members of Congress violated their oath of office by failing to investigate evidence of 2020 election fraud and certifying the electoral votes for President Joe Biden. That amounted to a rigged election, which achieves the same result as war, the Brunsons argued. The case was moved to federal court, where the brothers asked the judiciary to remove Biden from office. If carried out, that would mean swearing in former President Donald Trump as president, according to court filings. The Supreme Court turned down the case in January after considering whether to take it during a Jan. 6 conference. The reasoning for initially rejecting the case was also not made public. Brunson filed a petition for rehearing, or a request for the court to reconsider their initial decision. In a 10-page petition, Brunson said that the court should take up the case because, in part, no courts have ruled that failure to comply with the Oath of Office results in being penalized. The filing also said that the allegedly rigged election resulted in a national security breach that needs repairing. “When a case like this one comes forward under a petition for writ of certiorari claiming that there exists a serious national security breach, and that this breach is an act of war, and that it requires an act on an emergency level to repair this breach immediately—to stop this war, and that those perpetrators of this breach are the respondents, doesn’t this Court have the power to adjudicate these serious claims and to immediately end the conflict and fix the national security breach?” the petition asked. Deron Brunson, Raland Brunson’s brother, had told The Epoch Times he was confident the petition would work. Steve Vladeck, the Charles Alan Wright Chair In Federal Courts at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, had predicted justices would reject the petition. “To the surprise of exactly no one who understands what they’re talking about, the frivolous rehearing petition from SCOTUS’s denial of the frivolous cert. petition trying to ‘reinstate’ President Trump was denied this morning without comment,” Vladeck wrote on Twitter. The Brunson brothers have not yet reacted to the news of a second rejection. In a statement on Monday, they said: “As we observe Presidents’ Day this year, there is much turmoil in our great country. However, we are inspired and hopeful as we await future decisions on our case efforts. As we continue our fight for the good of America, we are reminded of all of the incredible men who have served as President, and are anxiously looking forward to the day greatness returns to the Office of the President.”
- [Inside the Trump grand jury: A member describes the secretive process of investigating ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/21/inside-the-trump-grand-jury-a-member-describes-the-secretive-process-of-investigating/) - ATLANTA (AP) — They were led down a staircase into a garage beneath a downtown Atlanta courthouse, where officers with big guns were waiting. From there, they were ushered into vans with heavily tinted windows and driven to their cars under police escort.For Emily Kohrs, these were the moments last May when she realized she wasn't participating in just any grand jury. FILE - Former President Donald Trump speaks during the New Hampshire Republican State Committee 2023 annual meeting, Jan. 28, 2023, in Salem, N.H. AP Photo/Reba Saldanha, File FILE - Portions of a report issued by a special grand jury looking into possible meddling in the 2020 election in Georgia are shown after being released on Feb. 16, 2023, in Atlanta. AP Photo/John Bazemore, File FILE - Rudy Giuliani arrives at the Fulton County Courthouse as a special grand jury looking into possible meddling in the 2020 election in Georgia continues on Aug. 17, 2022, in Atlanta. AP Photo/John Bazemore, File FILE - Roads around the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta are closed May 2, 2022, before the beginning of jury selection to seat a special purpose grand jury to look into possible meddling in the 2020 election in Georgia. AP Photo/Ben Gray, File FILE - Fulton County, Ga., Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney instructs potential jurors during proceedings to seat a special purpose grand jury on May 2, 2022, in Atlanta. AP Photo/Ben Gray, File
- [Ex-member: Proud Boys were 'tip of the spear' after election - WAVY.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/21/ex-member-proud-boys-were-tip-of-the-spear-after-election-wavy-com/) - Ex-member: Proud Boys were ‘tip of the spear’ after election – WAVY.com Skip to content ✕ × Close Ad
- [Future of abortion access, voting rights faces critical test in 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court primary](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/22/future-of-abortion-access-voting-rights-faces-critical-test-in-2023-wisconsin-supreme-court-primary/) - Amna Nawaz:Voters in the battleground state of Wisconsin will head to the polls tomorrow for a crucial primary race.Geoff Bennett took a closer look earlier today. Geoff Bennett:Amna, what would normally be a little noticed judicial election in Wisconsin is now a high-stakes battle for control of the state Supreme Court, a race that's expected to shape abortion rights in Wisconsin and could help decide the outcome of the 2024 presidential election in one of the nation's most closely divided battlegrounds. Zac Schultz is a reporter for PBS Wisconsin and is following this race. So, Zac, first, help us understand why this Wisconsin Supreme Court race is so critical. Why does it matter on a national level? Zac Schultz, PBS Wisconsin:Well, right now, the court is — have a 4-3 majority for the conservatives, more of the Republican-leaning members of the court. And they're — this could flip it the other way. If one of the liberal candidates running wins, then, for the first time ever, Democratic supporters feel they would have a good shot at winning some cases. But why it may matter nationally and in 2024 has to do with 2020, as a lot of things point back to. Wisconsin was one of the states where Donald Trump's campaign filed lawsuits to try and essentially overturn the results of the election. They tried to throw out tens of thousands of absentee ballots from Dane and Milwaukee counties, two Democratic strongholds. And if the Supreme Court at that time had decided to take that case and rule in his favor, then it likely would have flipped the outcome of Wisconsin, which was decided just by around 20,000 votes total. So the court watchers are always looking at, what's the makeup of the court, how conservative are these justices, and what might happen down the road with some of these big issues? Geoff Bennett:Tomorrow's primary will feature to conservatives and to liberals, as you well know, running for the seat of a retiring conservative justice. And this race is nonpartisan, but the candidates have really staked out clear ideological positions, some of which they expressed in interviews with you. Judge Janet Protasiewicz, candidate For Wisconsin Supreme Court:Obviously, I have to follow the law. But people are very, very concerned about a wide variety of issues. They're concerned about women's right to choose. They're concerned about fair maps. They're concerned about community safety. They're concerned about clean water. They're concerned about marriage equality. Former Justice Daniel Kelly, candidate For Wisconsin Supreme Court:If you think as a candidate that you should be virtue-signaling to attract the votes of a certain body of Wisconsinites, what you're telling them is that you are not — you are not committed to the constitutional order. And you're telling them that the politics should have a role in the court. Geoff Bennett:Zac Schultz, tell us more about these candidates and what you learned from your interviews with them. Zac Schultz:Well, there are two liberal-aligned candidates and two conservative-aligned candidates in this race. And 15 years ago, they were a little more cautious and running for the court about being public about where they would stand. And now we're pretty much nonpartisan in name only. The parties are heavily involved in these races. So, on the liberal side, we heard from Janet Protasiewicz, who is one of the liberals. She's from Milwaukee County. She's been very open talking about that Wisconsin's legislative maps are gerrymandered. Conservatives say she's actively calling for that case to come to the court if she wins. There's also Judge Everett Mitchell, who is from Dane County. He's running on more of a social justice platform, trying to gain attention. He hasn't raised as much money, so his profile is not nearly as high outside of his home area. On the conservative side, we heard from Daniel Kelly, who is actually a former justice on the court. He was appointed and then lost his reelection bid in 2020. And he says that had to do more with Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders being on the same ballot the same day for the Democratic primary in the 2020 presidential race. And then, finally, Jennifer Dorow is another conservative, and she gained a lot of attention by presiding over a very high-profile court case recently of a man who drove a car through the Waukesha Christmas parade a couple of years ago. And so she gained a lot of notoriety from that. So that's our four. Geoff Bennett:One indication of how much is at stake is the outside money, the millions upon millions of dollars being spent. And is it right that there is more outside money being spent in this race than the candidates are spending themselves? Zac Schultz:By the end, that will certainly be the case. Right now, there's still Wisconsin money that's been in play early on. But Daniel Kelly, who we heard from, one of the conservatives, already has said that he's got more than $20 million in outside special interest funding lined up ready to be in play for him if he makes it through this primary. We have seen heavy fund-raising by both the Democratic Party, which they expect to spend, and some other liberal line groups that they will be putting in play. And, yes, some of the candidates are raising $20,000 at a pop from out-of-state people that, once they learn about this race, they're deciding this is where they want to invest their money this spring. Geoff Bennett:The two top finishers will advance to the general election in April. What's the level of awareness? What's the level of enthusiasm among Wisconsin voters right now for this race in particular? Zac Schultz:Well, for this race, it's starting to heat up. Of course, for people that actually follow politics closely in Wisconsin, this has been on the radar, actually, for a couple of years. For us political junkies, we have known this race was coming and that it had the ideological balance of the court hanging. And it's been waking up everyone else. But it's starting to become more aware as you travel around the state to areas that kind of like to turn off once the presidential or the gubernatorial elections are done in the fall. They're becoming aware. The level of money from the outside is penetrating down to them through radio ads that they're not expecting to hear this time of year. Television ads are starting to go. So we're not sure. This won't be high-profile, especially for a February primary. But, by April, we're expecting pretty good turnout, especially for a Supreme Court race. Geoff Bennett:Zac, is there a sense of who is leading this race? Zac Schultz:Well, we can look at the dollars and we can say that Janet Protasiewicz, who is on the liberal side, is definitely way ahead. She's been fund-raising. She was first on the air. And for a low-profile race like that, that's very important. She's already lined up a lot of key Democratic Party endorsements. On the conservative side, there's been a little bit of a battle between the two, with Daniel Kelly actually accusing Jennifer Dorow of not being conservative enough or saying that she could not be aligned with the full conservative interests if she made it to the court. So there's been a lot of inner party fighting, which has made more Republicans aware, because talk radio in Wisconsin's gotten heavily invested in the outcome on that end. Geoff Bennett:Zac Schultz with PBS Wisconsin. Zac, thanks for sharing your reporting with us. Zac Schultz:My pleasure. Thank you.
- [Ex-member: Proud Boys were 'tip of the spear' after election | Federal News Network](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/22/ex-member-proud-boys-were-tip-of-the-spear-after-election-federal-news-network/) - WASHINGTON (AP) — A former Proud Boys member who pleaded guilty to plotting with group leaders to violently stop the transfer of presidential power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden told jurors Tuesday that he viewed their far-right extremist organization as “the tip of the spear” after the 2020 election. Jeremy Bertino, who is testifying against former Proud Boys national leader Enrique Tarrio and four lieutenants as part of a cooperation deal with federal prosecutors,...READ MOREWASHINGTON (AP) — A former Proud Boys member who pleaded guilty to plotting with group leaders to violently stop the transfer of presidential power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden told jurors Tuesday that he viewed their far-right extremist organization as “the tip of the spear” after the 2020 election. Jeremy Bertino, who is testifying against former Proud Boys national leader Enrique Tarrio and four lieutenants as part of a cooperation deal with federal prosecutors, recalled feeling stunned and then excited when Trump told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during his first debate with Biden. After the election, Bertino viewed the Proud Boys as leaders of the conservative movement, a perspective fueled by his regular viewership of the conspiracy theory-promoting Infowars website. “I believed we were supposed to be the leaders of the country, of the right wing,” Bertino said. “The tip of the spear.” Bertino, 43, of North Carolina, is the only member of the far-right extremist group who has pleaded guilty to a seditious conspiracy charge stemming from a mob’s attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The five Proud Boys associates on trial are charged with the same felony count, a Civil War-era offense punishable by a maximum of 20 years in prison. The trial is scheduled to resume Wednesday with more testimony by Bertino. The trial recessed Tuesday before a prosecutor began questioning Bertino about the Jan. 6 attack. Bertino is the second former Proud Boys member to testify at the trial. The first, Matthew Greene, testified in January that group members were growing increasingly angry about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and were expecting a “civil war.” Jurors have heard over a month of testimony by government witnesses in the trial of Tarrio, a Miami resident, and co-defendants Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola. Nordean, of Auburn, Washington, was a Proud Boys chapter president and a member of the group’s national “Elders Council.” Biggs, of Ormond Beach, Florida, was a self-described Proud Boys organizer. Rehl was president of a Proud Boys chapter in Philadelphia. Pezzola was a Proud Boys member from Rochester, New York. Bertino said he believed the election had been stolen from Trump and was hoping the U.S. Supreme Court would overturn the election results. He wasn’t in Washington when the Capitol riot erupted. He was stabbed during an altercation in downtown Washington after a Proud Boys march on Dec. 12, 2021, and was still recovering from his injuries on Jan. 6. Bertino said he became increasingly angry after hearing that his alleged assailant had been freed on bail. He directed much of his anger at police, feeling they had “abandoned” the Proud Boys. “I felt like they were not on our side anymore,” he testified. “And basically if you were not with us, you were against us.” Bertino said Tarrio, Nordean and Biggs shared his anger toward police after his stabbing. Bertino added that many Proud Boys began referring to police as “coptifa,” a twist on the term “antifa,” which refers to antifascist activists. The indictment in Tarrio’s case alleges that the Proud Boys held meetings and communicated over encrypted messages to plan for an attack in the days leading up to Jan. 6. On the day of the riot, Proud Boys dismantled metal barricades set up to protect the Capitol and mobilized, directed and led members of the crowd into the building, according to prosecutors. Tarrio wasn’t in Washington on Jan. 6, either. Police arrested him in Washington two days before the Capitol riot and charged him with vandalizing a Black Lives Matter banner at a historic Black church during a December 2020 protest. Tarrio heeded a judge’s order to leave the city after his arrest. Bertino joined the Proud Boys’ Charlotte chapter in 2018 after seeing videos of group members fighting with antifascist activists. He said he enjoyed the comradery with men who shared his right-wing political views. He viewed their enemy as “pretty much anybody who didn’t vote the same way we did.” Bertino said he became “very close” to Tarrio and was friendly with Biggs, Nordean and Rehl, but he only recalls meeting Pezzola once. He met Tarrio in person at a Proud Boys convention in Las Vegas and later at a January 2020 gun rights rally in Virginia, where he said they bonded over their escape from a confrontation with “armed opposition.” Proud Boys members describe their group as a politically incorrect men’s club for “Western chauvinists.” Bertino said there was tension within the Proud Boys ranks between “rally boys” who relished fighting with antifa in public forums and “party boys” who preferred to drink together. Bertino recalled his growing anger in the summer of 2020, as protests erupted across the country in response to George Floyd’s killing in police custody. He blamed violence and rioting on antifa, calling them the “foot soldiers of the left wing.” “I thought we should have gone out there and stopped them, to restore order,” he said. Bertino pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy in October 2022 and agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department’s investigation of the role that Proud Boys leaders played in the mob’s attack on the Capitol. He hasn’t been sentenced yet. The House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 insurrection featured video testimony by Bertino at its first hearing last year. The committee showed a clip of Bertino saying that the group’s membership probably tripled after then-President Trump’s comment during a debate with Biden that the Proud Boys should “stand back and stand by.” In his trial testimony, Bertino recalled feeling stunned and then excited by Trump’s remark. “I just couldn’t believe the president was talking about our club,” he said. “I thought it was going to grow the club exponentially at that point.” Bertino joined Tarrio at a bar in Washington on the night of the 2020 presidential election. He said he became a “fourth-degree” member of the Proud Boys — the group’s highest rank — after intervening in a bloody altercation that night. Jurors saw text messages that Bertino and Tarrio exchanged four days after the election, as news outlets declared a victory for Biden. “They called it. Now we have to mobilize. Should we roll out to the state houses?” Bertino asked. “Yes,” Tarrio responded. ___ For full coverage of the Capitol riot, go to https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege Copyright © 2023 . All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.
- [Lawyers for 2 Kentucky officers charged in Breonna Taylor warrant case granted more time](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/21/lawyers-for-2-kentucky-officers-charged-in-breonna-taylor-warrant-case-granted-more-time/) - Lawyers for two former Kentucky police officers charged with conspiring to falsify the Breonna Taylor search warrant were granted more time Tuesday to review the case’s massive trove of evidence. U.S. District Judge Charles Simpson agreed to reconvene the attorneys in May with a status hearing. Former Louisville officers Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany are charged with criminal civil rights violations that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison. Federal prosecutors have said Jaynes inserted false information into the warrant used to knock down Taylor’s door before she was shot to death by officers on March 13, 2020. Meany and another former officer, Kelly Goodlett, also knew the warrant had bad information, federal prosecutors have said. ASBURY REVIVAL: PROFESSOR CALLS FOR END TO ‘PUBLIC PHASE’ AS SCHOOL SCRAMBLES TO ADDRESS OVERCROWDING Lawyers for the two officers involved in the Breonna Taylor warrant case were granted more time to review the case’s evidence. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Goodlett pleaded guilty and is expected to testify at Jaynes’ and Meany’s trial. Brett Hankison, the only former officer facing charges who was involved in the raid, has a federal trial date set for Oct. 30. Prosecutors said during a telephone conference with Judge Simpson Tuesday that they have turned over a million pages of evidence and documents to defense attorneys in the case.
- [What decision was made in the Breonna Taylor case? | The US Sun](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/21/what-decision-was-made-in-the-breonna-taylor-case-the-us-sun/) - BREONNA Taylor was shot dead by police at her home in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 13, 2020.The 26-year-old frontline medic, who worked for two local hospitals, had no criminal history, which led to protests and a demand for justice. 2Breonna Taylor was shot and killed in her apartment on March 13, 2020Credit: AP What decision was made in the Breonna Taylor case? On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor was shot in her apartment during a botched drug raid. At the time, cops were looking for Jamarcus Glover, who allegedly dated Taylor two years ago, but he had previously been arrested in a separate raid ten miles away on the same night officers broke into her apartment. As cops entered the home, Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker - who was not the man wanted by cops - fired one shot with his legally held weapon. Walker said he thought the offices were burglars. Her death ultimately played a large role in the Black Lives Matter movement, which later led to several more protests following to May 2020 death of George Floyd. At first, the officers involved were cleared by a grand jury, but then in August 2022, a federal grand jury returned two indictments on former Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) Detective Joshua Jaynes, LMPD Sergeant Kyle Meany, and LMPD Detective Brett Hankison. Janes and Meany were charged with federal civil rights and obstruction offenses for their roles in preparing and approving a false search warrant affidavit and Hankison was charged with civil rights offenses for firing his weapon into her apartment through a window and door, according to a Department of Justice press release. Former LMPD Detective Kelly Goodlett was also charged with conspiring with Jaynes to falsify the search warrant and attempting to cover it up following her death. Most read in The US Sun “On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor should have awakened in her home as usual, but tragically she did not,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a statement. “Since the founding of our nation, the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution has guaranteed that all people have a right to be secure in their homes, free from false warrants, unreasonable searches and the use of unjustifiable and excessive force by the police. "These indictments reflect the Justice Department’s commitment to preserving the integrity of the criminal justice system and to protecting the constitutional rights of every American.” 2Officer Kelly Hanna Goodlett pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy in August 2022Credit: Louisville Metro Police Department Where are the former officers now? Shortly after the grand jury indictment, Goodlett pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of conspiracy, according to The New York Times. At the time, she said that she knew there wasn't enough evidence to support the warrant but did not object when her former colleague falsified the report, The New York Times notes. She is expected to be sentenced at a later date but will remain out on bond until then. She faces a maximum prison term of five years. As for Jaynes and Meany, they ultimately pleaded not guilty to their charges and are expected to face trial at a later date. Their trial was originally scheduled for October 11, 2022, but Judge Charles Simpson pushed it back, saying that the timeline wasn't feasible given the amount of evidence the defense attorneys have to go through, according to ABC affiliate WHAS11. Hankison, who was previously found not guilty on three counts of felony wanton endangerment in relation to Taylor's death, is also expected to face trial on October 30, 2023, according to ABC News.
- [Lawyers get more time in Breonna Taylor warrant case - Spectrum News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/21/lawyers-get-more-time-in-breonna-taylor-warrant-case-spectrum-news/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Lawyers for two former Kentucky police officers charged with conspiring to falsify the Breonna Taylor search warrant were granted more time Tuesday to review the case's massive trove of evidence. What You Need To Know Lawyers for Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany have more time to go through case evidence The group will reconvene in May for a status hearing The pair are charged with criminal civil rights violations The maximum penalty is life in prison U.S. District Judge Charles Simpson agreed to reconvene the attorneys in May with a status hearing. Former Louisville officers Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany are charged with criminal civil rights violations that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison. Federal prosecutors have said Jaynes inserted false information into the warrant used to knock down Taylor’s door before she was shot to death by officers on March 13, 2020. Meany and another former officer, Kelly Goodlett, also knew the warrant had bad information, federal prosecutors have said. Goodlett pleaded guilty and is expected to testify at Jaynes’ and Meany’s trial. Brett Hankison, the only former officer facing charges who was involved in the raid, has a federal trial date set for Oct. 30. Prosecutors said during a telephone conference with Judge Simpson Tuesday that they have turned over a million pages of evidence and documents to defense attorneys in the case.
- [Defense attorneys in Breonna Taylor case gets extension | whas11.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/22/defense-attorneys-in-breonna-taylor-case-gets-extension-whas11-com/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The Breonna Taylor civil rights case against two former Louisville police officers was back in court. Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany are accused of falsifying a search warrant which led to Taylor’s death in March 2020. Federal Judge Charles Simpson agreed during Tuesday’s status conference to give defense attorneys another 90 days to comb through what he referred to as a “massive amount of discovery.” Prosecutors said they provided three more evidentiary rounds of documents last week which now total more than one million pages. Attorney Thomas Clay, who represents Jaynes, said he has never had a case with more than a million pages. Another status conference has been set for May 24. ►Make it easy to keep up-to-date with more stories like this. Download the WHAS11 News app now. For Apple or Android users.
- [Trump Could Face Multiple Charges In 2020 Election Case: Jury Forewoman - Benzinga](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/22/trump-could-face-multiple-charges-in-2020-election-case-jury-forewoman-benzinga/) - The forewoman of the Georgia Grand Jury looking into Donald Trump’s alleged election interference in 2020 said the former president and his allies are staring at multiple indictments.What Happened: Emily Kohrs, the 30-year-old forewoman, said it was not a “short list” referring to indictments made for Trump and other persons by the jury, reported The New York Times.“You’re not going to be shocked. It’s not rocket science,” said Kohrs on whether the jurors had recommended that the former president be indicted.Kohrs said the jury’s final report was not “going to be some giant plot twist” and that “You probably have a fair idea of what may be in there. I’m trying very hard to say that delicately,” according to the report.Why It Matters: Kohrs said the jury first dealt with the phone call Trump made on Jan. 2, 2021, to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which he asked the Republican official to recalculate the results and “find” 11,780 votes or enough to overturn results in the state, reported the Times.Kohrs characterized Raffensperger as a “really geeky kind of funny,” reported Associated Press.The forewoman said, “Trump was not a battle we picked to fight.” She reportedly didn’t vote in the election but tends to be more in agreement with Democrats event though she doesn’t identify with any political party. “If I chose a political party, it would be the not-crazy party,” said Kohrs, according to the Press.Read Next: Trump Touts 'Very Good Relationship' With Putin As Biden Tours War-Torn Ukraine
- [Georgia Grand Juror Says Panel Recommended Multiple Indictments in 2020 Election Case](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/22/georgia-grand-juror-says-panel-recommended-multiple-indictments-in-2020-election-case/) - The forewoman of a special grand jury convened to investigate President Trump and his allies’ attempts to subvert the election in that state in 2020 told reporters Tuesday that the panel recommended a number of indictments in the case and hinted that Mr. Trump may be on that list. Speaking to the New York Times, the juror — Emily Kohrs — said the list of people it recommended be charged “is not a short list,” but declined to name any of the people on it. Asked whether the jurors had recommended indicting Mr. Trump, Ms. Kohrs would say only that, “You’re not going to be shocked. It’s not rocket science,” adding “you won’t be too surprised.” In a separate interview with the Associated Press, Ms. Kohrs described the months-long investigation that has emerged as one of Mr. Trump’s most glaring legal vulnerabilities as he mounts a third presidential campaign, in part because he was recorded asking state election officials to “find 11,780 votes” for him. The jurors, Ms. Kohrs said, were led down a staircase into a garage beneath a downtown Atlanta courthouse, where officers with big guns were waiting. From there, they were ushered into vans with heavily tinted windows and driven to their cars under police escort. For Ms. Kohrs, these were the moments last May when she realized she wasn’t participating in just any grand jury. “That was the first indication that this was a big freaking deal,” Ms. Kohrs told the AP. The 30-year-old Fulton County resident who was between jobs suddenly found herself at the center of one of the nation’s most significant legal proceedings. She would become foreperson of the special grand jury selected to investigate whether President Trump and his Republican associates illegally meddled in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election. For the next eight months, Ms. Kohrs and her fellow jurors would hear testimony from 75 witnesses, ranging from some of Mr. Trump’s most prominent allies to local election workers. Portions of the panel’s final report released last Thursday said jurors believed that “one or more witnesses” committed perjury and urged local prosecutors to bring charges. The report’s recommendations for charges on other issues, including potential attempts to influence the election, remain secret for now. The AP identified Ms. Kohrs after her name was included on subpoenas obtained through open records requests. A Fulton County Superior Court judge, Robert McBurney, advised Ms. Kohrs and other jurors on what they could and could not share publicly, including in interviews with the news media. During a lengthy recent interview, Ms. Kohrs complied with the judge’s instructions not to discuss details related to the jury’s deliberations. She also declined to talk about unpublished portions of the panel’s final report. But her general characterizations provided unusual insight into a process that is typically cloaked in secrecy. Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, who was on the receiving end of Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign, was “a really geeky kind of funny,” she said. The State House speaker, David Ralston, who died in November, was hilarious and had the room in stitches. And Governor Kemp, who succeeded in delaying his appearance until after his reelection in November, seemed unhappy to be there. Ms. Kohrs was fascinated by an explainer on Georgia’s voting machines offered by a former Dominion Voting Systems executive. She also enjoyed learning about the inner workings of the White House from Cassidy Hutchinson, who Ms. Kohrs said was much more forthcoming than her old boss, the former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Ms. Kohrs sketched witnesses in her notebook as they spoke and was tickled when the former U.S. attorney for Georgia’s Southern District, Bobby Christine, complimented her “remarkable talent.” When the jurors’ notes were taken for shredding after their work was done, she managed to salvage two sketches — Senator Graham and the chief of staff to Vice President Pence, Marc Short — because there were no notes on those pages. After Mr. Graham tried so hard to avoid testifying — taking his fight all the way to the Supreme Court — Ms. Kohrs was surprised when he politely answered questions and even joked with jurors. The former New York mayor and lawyer for Mr. Trump, Rudy Giuliani, was funny and invoked privilege to avoid answering many questions but “genuinely seemed to consider” whether it was merited before declining to answer, she said. When witnesses refused to answer almost every question, the lawyers would engage in what Ms. Kohrs came to think of as “show and tell.” The lawyers would show video of the person appearing on television or testifying before the House committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, periodically asking the witness to confirm certain things. Then the scratching of pens on paper could be heard as jurors tallied how many times the person invoked the Fifth Amendment. At least one person who resisted answering questions became much more cooperative when prosecutors offered him immunity in front of the jurors, Ms. Kohrs said. Other witnesses came in with immunity deals already in place. Mr. Trump’s attorneys have said he was never asked to testify. Ms. Kohrs said the grand jury wanted to hear from the former president but didn’t have any real expectation that he would offer meaningful testimony. “Trump was not a battle we picked to fight,” she said. Ms. Kohrs didn’t vote in 2020 and was only vaguely aware of controversy swirling in the wake of the election. She didn’t know the specifics of Mr. Trump’s allegations of widespread election fraud or his efforts to reverse his loss. When prosecutors played the then-president’s phone call with Mr. Raffensperger on the first day the jurors met to consider evidence, it was the first time Ms. Kohrs had heard it. “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Mr. Trump said on the call. Though Ms. Kohrs said she tends to agree more with Democrats, Ms. Kohrs said she doesn’t identify with any political party and prefers to listen to all opinions. “If I chose a political party, it would be the not-crazy party,” she said. Ms. Kohrs called herself a “geek about the justice system” and noted the challenges some jurors faced balancing their responsibilities on the panel with outside duties. When she eagerly volunteered to be foreperson, she met no resistance from her fellow jurors, who were less enthusiastic about the time-consuming obligation stretching before them, she said. One of her first duties as foreperson was to sign a big stack of subpoenas. As the proceedings played out, one of her fellow jurors brought the newspaper every day and pointed out stories about the investigation. Prosecutors, Ms. Kohrs said, told jurors they could consume news coverage related to the case but urged them to keep an open mind. Ms. Kohrs said she mostly avoided stories related to the proceedings to avoid forming an opinion. “I didn’t want to characterize anyone before they walked in the room,” she said. “I felt they all deserved an impartial listener.” Of the 26 people on the panel — 23 jurors and three alternates — 16 had to be present for a quorum. There was a core group of between 12 and 16 who showed up almost every day they were in session, Ms. Kohrs said. She could recall only one day when they couldn’t proceed because not enough seats were filled. The most they ever had in the room was 22 — on the day Mr. Giuliani testified. As the months passed, the grand jurors grew more comfortable with each other and with the four lawyers, on the team of the Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, who led the proceedings. But they’re not all best friends now that it’s over. “We are not meeting up now. We don’t have a group chat,” Ms. Kohrs said. While the jurors asked to hear from certain witnesses, most witnesses were decided upon by the district attorney’s office. But Ms. Kohrs said she didn’t feel as though prosecutors were trying to influence the jurors’ final report. “I fully stand by our report as our decision and our conclusion,” she said.
- [Georgia Grand Jury Recommended Indictments in 2020 Election Probe: Forewoman | National News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/22/georgia-grand-jury-recommended-indictments-in-2020-election-probe-forewoman-national-news/)
- [US grand jury to recommend charges in Trump 2020 election probe | Al Arabiya English](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/22/us-grand-jury-to-recommend-charges-in-trump-2020-election-probe-al-arabiya-english/) - A US grand jury probing interference by Donald Trump’s campaign in the 2020 election has recommended multiple indictments, the forewoman revealed Tuesday, the strongest signal yet of potential legal jeopardy the ex-president faces as he seeks another term.Emily Kohrs offered local and national media an insight into the findings of the Georgia grand jury, which has been looking for seven months at whether Trump broke the law -- although she didn’t name targets.AdvertisementFor all the latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the app.“It is not a short list,” Kohrs told several outlets of the people and crimes referenced in the jury’s final report. She told MSNBC more than a dozen people were in the crosshairs.“There are certainly names that you would recognize, yes,” she added. “There are names also that you might not recognize.”Prosecutors have spent two years looking into whether Trump and his allies committed crimes in a bid to overturn his defeat in Georgia to Joe Biden by fewer than 12,000 votes.The known targets include Trump’s former attorney Rudy Giuliani and 16 Republican activists who posed as presidential “electors” to sign certificates falsely claiming the 76-year-old Republican had won the Peach State.Kohrs would not reveal if Trump -- who has announced a third run at the White House for 2024 -- was among those recommended for indictment.But she told The New York Times it was “not going to be shocked” by the jury’s finding. “It’s not rocket science,” she said.The investigative panel of 23 jurors took testimony from 75 witnesses, including Trump’s fourth chief of staff, Mark Meadows, Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham and Giuliani.A Georgia judge allowed the release last week of three redacted sections from the grand jury’s report, revealing that members found no evidence of widespread voter fraud, undercutting Trump’s claim that he had been robbed of the election.The released sections did not include specific charging recommendations but revealed that the jury believed witnesses may have lied under oath.“I will tell you that if the judge releases the recommendations, it is not going to be some giant plot twist,” Kohrs told the Times.“You probably have a fair idea of what may be on there. I’m trying very hard to say that delicately.”Democratic District Attorney Fani Willis will make the ultimate charging decision after presenting the panel’s findings to one of the criminal grand juries regularly empaneled in Georgia’s Fulton County, a process that may already have started.The investigation was touched off by Trump’s January 2, 2021, phone call with Georgia election officials whom he infamously asked to “find” the 11,780 votes that would put him one vote ahead of Biden in the state.It is one of multiple probes into alleged criminal actions by the former president and his lieutenants, who are accused of involvement in a multi-step scheme to cling to power despite Trump’s election loss.Read more:Nikki Haley plans to challenge Donald Trump with 2024 White House bidTrump team handed over more classified documents, laptop from Mar-a-LagoFBI searches former US President Trump’s Florida home as part of records probe
- [Two Starkly Different Judges Advance in Wisconsin Supreme Court Election](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/22/two-starkly-different-judges-advance-in-wisconsin-supreme-court-election/) - Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal, and Daniel Kelly, a conservative, will face off on April 4 in a race that could tilt the balance of the court, with abortion rights, gerrymandered maps and more in the balance.MILWAUKEE — The general election for the swing seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, a momentous contest that will determine whether Republicans maintain or lose their iron grip on the state’s politics, will feature a liberal Milwaukee County judge against a conservative former justice of the state’s high court.Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal from the Milwaukee suburbs, and Daniel Kelly, a former Supreme Court justice who lost his seat in a 2020 election, advanced in a Tuesday primary to the April 4 general election, according to The Associated Press. The winner of the race, the most consequential American election on the 2023 calendar, will serve a 10-year term.While Judge Protasiewicz (pronounced pro-tuh-SAY-witz) sailed to a first-place finish in the officially nonpartisan primary, Justice Kelly placed second, ahead of Jennifer Dorow, a Waukesha County judge known for presiding over the trial last fall of a man who killed six people by driving through a 2021 Christmas parade. Late Tuesday, Judge Protasiewicz had about 46 percent of the vote, Justice Kelly had 24 percent and Judge Dorow had 22 percent.If Judge Protasiewicz prevails in six weeks, it would tip the balance of the state’s seven-member Supreme Court, which has been controlled by conservatives since 2008.The court would have a four-member liberal majority that would be likely to overturn the state’s 1849 law forbidding abortion in nearly all cases, redraw Wisconsin’s heavily gerrymandered legislative and congressional maps, and influence how the state’s 10 electoral votes are awarded after the 2024 presidential election.“Everything we care about is going to be determined by who wins this election,” Judge Protasiewicz told supporters in a victory speech Tuesday night.If Justice Kelly wins, abortion is certain to remain illegal in nearly all cases. He also said in an interview on Monday that he had no intention in revisiting the maps adopted by Republican legislators.“When a map gets challenged in court, the responsibility of the court is to fix the legal defects, not the political defects,” he said in Sheboygan. “Our courts are not built to decide political issues, just legal issues.”Daniel Kelly, a former Supreme Court justice who lost his seat in a 2020 election, giving his victory speech on Tuesday night in Okauchee Lake, Wis.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesJustice Kelly has condemned Judge Protasiewicz for telegraphing how she would rule in key cases expected to come before the court on abortion and gerrymandering. But he has hardly been shy about signaling his own politics. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported last week that Justice Kelly had since 2020 been on the payroll of the Republican National Committee to work on “election integrity issues.”During his victory remarks Tuesday, Justice Kelly said Judge Protasiewicz represented an “assault on our Constitution and our liberties.” If she wins, he said, “we will lose the rule of law and find ourselves saddled with the rule of Janet.”Influential Democrats in Wisconsin coalesced long ago behind Judge Protasiewicz, who has endorsements from a range of top party officials and de facto support from many others. The other liberal candidate in the race, Everett Mitchell, a judge in Dane County, which includes Madison, lagged far behind the other three major candidates in fund-raising.Republicans split between Justice Kelly, who lost a 2020 election for a full term after being appointed in 2016 by Gov. Scott Walker, and Judge Dorow, whom Mr. Walker appointed to the Waukesha court.The fight for conservative votes grew increasingly bitter in the closing days before Tuesday’s primary election. Justice Kelly said in interviews on conservative talk radio and at campaign stops that he would not commit to endorsing Judge Dorow if she advanced to the general election, while Judge Dorow’s supporters argued that Justice Kelly was unelectable based on his performance in 2020, when he lost by 10 percentage points.About two-tenths of a mile separated the election night parties for Justice Kelly and Judge Dorow in Waukesha County.At the Smoke on the Water tavern, Justice Kelly mingled with supporters starting well before polls closed, shaking hands, exchanging hugs and looking relaxed as snow fell on Okauchee Lake, visible out the window.Judge Dorow briefly appeared at her campaign party after polls closed, then disappeared from view before returning to deliver a concession speech. “I came up a little short,” she told supporters. “I’m disappointed but I’m really happy that I get to support a conservative candidate going forward.”The race is all but certain to become the most expensive judicial election in American history, topping the $15 million spent on a 2004 race for the Illinois Supreme Court. Already, more than $8.7 million has been spent on television and digital advertising in the Wisconsin contest, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm.Officials in both parties expect tens of millions more to be spent by each side during the six-week general election.Justice Kelly, whose campaign did not spend any money on television advertising during the primary campaign, has used his deep-pocketed supporters as a reason to vote for him. He told conservatives gathered at a Republican Party dinner this month in Sawyer County that they should back him because he had the support of the billionaire Uihlein family, whose super PAC has spent $2.8 million to back him so far and pledged to spend millions more on his behalf. The state’s Democrats and Judge Protasiewicz’s campaign believed Judge Dorow would be a stronger opponent in the general election. A Better Wisconsin Together, a Democratic super PAC, spent more than $2 million on television ads before the primary attacking Judge Dorow. The Uihleins’ super PAC, Fair Courts America, spent $2.7 million backing Mr. Kelly and attacking Judge Protasiewicz.Dan Simmons
- [Southern Baptists Expel Saddleback Church Over Female Pastor](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/21/southern-baptists-expel-saddleback-church-over-female-pastor/) - The nation’s largest Protestant denomination has grappled with issues around gender, sexuality and politics. The Southern Baptist Convention on Tuesday decided to expel one of its largest and most prominent churches, Saddleback Church in Southern California, over the church’s installment of a woman as pastor.The move is largely symbolic: Saddleback still operates as a church, and its members will not be overtly impacted. But the Southern Baptist leadership’s ejection of such a high-profile member church underlines the denomination’s internal struggles with gender, sexuality, abuse, politics and race, including criticisms from an energetic right flank that the group is drifting to the “woke” left. The convention also removed several other churches over their placement of women in certain leadership roles, as well as a Florida church over its handling of a sex abuse case.The convention, with 13 million members and 47,000 churches, has long served as a bellwether for American evangelicalism. Saddleback was founded in 1980 by pastor Rick Warren, who built a national profile thanks in part to the church’s then-innovative posture as “seeker-sensitive,” attuned to the questions and preferences of those unfamiliar with or wary of traditional church experiences. Saddleback grew quickly during the 1980s and ’90s, and Mr. Warren also wrote one of the best-selling books of all time, “The Purpose Driven Life.”More on CaliforniaA Settlement: San Mateo County has agreed to pay $4.5 million to the family of a Black man who died in 2018 after a deputy used a Taser on him during a struggle that began when officers saw him jaywalking.Covid State of Emergency: The state’s coronavirus emergency declaration, which gave Gov. Gavin Newsom broad powers to slow the spread of the virus, is set to expire on Feb. 28.In the Wake of Tragedy: California is reeling after back-to-back mass shootings in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay.Medical Misinformation: A federal judge has temporarily blocked enforcement of a new law allowing regulators to punish doctors for spreading false or misleading information about Covid-19.Mr. Warren announced in 2021 that he was retiring from the pulpit at Saddleback after more than 40 years. He handed the church’s leadership to Andy and Stacie Wood, introducing them last summer as “the couple that will lead Saddleback into our future.”The choice was immediately controversial in Southern Baptist circles.While Mr. Wood heads the church, his wife, Stacie Wood, serves as a “teaching pastor,” a role that includes preaching, and that many see as a violation of the Southern Baptist Convention’s statement of beliefs.The statement says, “While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”Southern Baptist leaders determined five churches, including Saddleback, “to be not in friendly cooperation with the Convention due to the churches continuing to have a female functioning in the office of pastor,” the convention’s executive committee chairman, Jared Wellman, said in a statement on Tuesday. The other four ejected churches in which women serve as lead or senior pastors are: Calvary Baptist Church in Jackson, Miss.; Fern Creek Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky.; New Faith Mission Ministry in Griffin, Ga., and St. Timothy’s Christian Baptist Church in Baltimore.“These churches have been valued, cooperating churches for many years, and this decision was not made lightly,” Mr. Wellman said in the statement. “However, we remain committed to upholding the theological convictions of the S.B.C. and maintaining unity among its cooperating churches.”Though Saddleback was affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, the church did not use the word Baptist in its name or foreground any connection to the denomination. Mr. Warren rarely attended denominational meetings.Pastor Andy Wood gave a sermon last year at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif.Allison Dinner/Associated PressSaddleback’s website lists Mr. Wood as the only lead pastor, but refers to “pastors Andy and Stacie Wood.” Ms. Wood has preached at the church as recently as Jan. 22, when she delivered a sermon on “how our inner thoughts can propel our growth instead of hinder it.” The church did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday afternoon. Saddleback has been a focus of previous scrutiny over the ordination issue, starting when the church ordained three women as ministers in 2021, an event the church called historic at the time. The role of minister or pastor can have many meanings in different Christian settings; children’s ministers, for example, are often women even in theologically conservative churches. The 19 “campus pastors” currently listed on Saddleback’s website are all men.The Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee includes about 30 staff members and a board of 86 elected representatives, comprising men and women. The group is meeting this week in Nashville. At the convention’s larger meeting in 2022, Southern Baptists debated whether to oust Saddleback. Mr. Warren spoke from the floor, delivering a valedictory “love letter” to the denomination but seeming to stand by his church’s approach. “We have to decide,” he said, “if we will treat each other as allies or adversaries.”Saddleback and the other churches will have an opportunity to appeal the committee’s decision this summer at the next annual gathering, which takes place in New Orleans.
- [Michigan election denier who has yet to concede her 2022 loss will chair state GOP - KESQ](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/20/michigan-election-denier-who-has-yet-to-concede-her-2022-loss-will-chair-state-gop-kesq/) - By Jack Forrest, CNN Michigan Republicans have chosen Kristina Karamo, who has yet to concede last year’s secretary of state race, as their next chair, putting an election denier at the head of the party in a crucial battleground state. Karamo tweeted Sunday that she was “honored to lead the Michigan Republican Party.” On the heels of the GOP’s midterm losses in Michigan last year, the state party backed Karamo at its Saturday night convention over Matthew DePerno, who had former President Donald Trump’s backing in the race. DePerno ran unsuccessfully for attorney general last year. Trump congratulated Karamo on Truth Social Sunday, calling her a “a powerful and fearless Election Denier, in winning the Chair of the GOP in Michigan.” “If Republicans (and others!) would speak the truth about the Rigged Presidential Election of 2020, like FoxNews should, but doesn’t, they would be far better off,” he said. Karamo, a former community college professor, rose to prominence in Michigan after the 2020 election when she alleged to have witnessed fraud as a poll challenger during the state’s count of absentee ballots. She has falsely claimed Trump was the true victor in Michigan in 2020 and has spread the conspiracy theory that left-wing anarchists were behind the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. Trump had backed Karamo in the 2022 secretary of state race, which she lost by 14 points to incumbent Democrat Jocelyn Benson. A CNN review in November 2021 of Karamo’s podcast and writings on her now defunct personal website revealed her declaring herself an “anti-vaxxer” in 2020 even before the Covid-19 vaccine became a political flashpoint. She opposed teaching evolution and called public schools “government indoctrination camps.” CNN’s KFile reported last year that Karamo called abortion “child sacrifice” and a “satanic practice.” The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved. CNN’s Jeremy Herb, Sara Murray, Em Steck and Andrew Kaczynski contributed to this report.
- [Five election deniers who are controlling state voting systems - Source New Mexico](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/20/five-election-deniers-who-are-controlling-state-voting-systems-source-new-mexico/) - Americans concerned about the health of democracy breathed a sigh of relief when a pack of election deniers in 2022 lost their attempts to control voting in key battleground states — making it unlikely that a rogue state election official could subvert the 2024 presidential election. Candidates for secretary of state who denied the result of the 2020 presidential race were defeated in all three swing states where they were on the ballot — Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada. And in Pennsylvania, where the governor appoints the chief election official, an election-denier gubernatorial candidate also lost. But while battleground states may have dodged a bullet in their secretary of state races, Alabama, Indiana, South Dakota, and Wyoming all elected deniers — defined as officials who refused to publicly acknowledge the legitimacy of President Joe Biden’s victory or backed court cases that could overturn the election. And the governor of Florida, the nation’s third-largest state, appointed a secretary of state who has refused, when asked, to say Biden won the election. The two people behind the election denial movement in New Mexico The danger to democracy posed by election deniers shouldn’t be viewed in isolation, democracy advocates say. Numerous election deniers, they note, also were elected to Congress, statewide offices, statehouses, and local election posts around the country — meaning these secretaries of state are part of a network of denialism that last year’s elections failed to extinguish. “Election-denier secretaries of state absolutely present a risk of election subversion that the public still needs to be aware of and responding to,” said Rachel Homer, counsel for the nonpartisan advocacy organization Protect Democracy. “The risk that the will of the people might not translate into who was actually elected — that’s a threat to democracy.” Early developments None of the newly elected secretaries of state appears close to getting passed into law the kind of major voting overhaul that several campaigned on. But even beyond legislation, the secretaries of state, who in all five states serve as their state’s chief elections officer, can affect access to the ballot and the overall efficiency of the election system. And they have used their short time in office so far to continue baselessly stoking distrust in elections, to hire political allies, and to advance measures that further tighten the rules around voting. Among the troubling early developments: Senior staff with years of election administration experience have resigned or been let go from secretary of state offices in South Dakota and Wyoming. In the former state, a combative “America First” political activist who attended the Jan. 6 protests has been hired. Alabama’s new secretary of state abruptly withdrew from a well-regarded interstate compact for sharing voter registration information, and says it’s not his job to make voting easier. Indiana’s secretary of state wants to further tighten the rules for mail voting, which has expanded in popularity since the pandemic. Florida’s secretary of state, an appointee of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, is pushing to expand a controversial “election integrity” unit. With the possible exception of Florida, these five states likely aren’t competitive enough to have a chance of tipping a presidential contest. But democracy advocates warn that having state election systems serving around 35 million people in the hands of officials who won’t acknowledge Biden’s win raises a far broader set of dangers: that election outcomes will be subverted, thwarting the will of voters; that denialism is being mainstreamed as a governing ideology, at least in some states; that crucial norms of independence and neutrality for election officials are being eroded; and that new attempts to tighten voting rules, driven by false claims about widespread fraud, will further restrict access to the ballot, especially for minority communities. Experts alarmed by GOP secretary of state candidate’s conspiracy theorizing in NM Joanna Lydgate, the CEO of States United Action, which works to protect fair elections, raised yet more dangers. “The undermining of public confidence, and the attempts to confuse voters, have a huge impact,” said Lydgate. “Democracy relies on public confidence, it relies on participation, it relies on people believing in the system. And when you have people in elected office who are continuing to spread lies and conspiracy theories, that runs a risk of confusing voters and deterring people from participating in the system. So the threat is alive and well.” Here’s a closer look at the five secretaries of state: Monae Johnson, South Dakota Johnson, a former staffer in the secretary of state’s office, was elected in November after winning the GOP nomination over the incumbent at last year’s convention. Johnson disputes the denier label, but asked by South Dakota Searchlight during the campaign whether the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, she said: “I’m going to leave that question up to those people that are actually in the fight for it.” Asked in a different interview whether Biden won legitimately, she said: “I’m not going to acknowledge that.” Johnson has said she doesn’t plan to propose any of her own bills this session, but has promised to fight any measure to allow voters to register online — a popular reform that all but 11 states now offer. Personnel changes in the office have drawn attention. Johnson removed a number of staff, including the state’s well-regarded elections director, Kia Warne, who had been with the office since 1993. Warne’s replacement, Elaine Jensen, who served as a county elections auditor for 17 years before coming to the secretary of state’s office, also left in January after just a few weeks on the job, said Rachel Soulek, the office’s elections director and spokesperson. Fact-checking the Clements’ stolen election allegations “You learn who’s your friend and who’s not your friend when you do things like this,” Johnson told an interviewer when asked about the turnover. “You learn who you can trust and who you can’t.” Meanwhile, Johnson has hired as a federal and state elections coordinator Logan Manhart, a 24-year-old “America First” political activist and former Trump campaign staffer who attended the Jan. 6, 2021 protests in Washington, D.C., and later defended attendees as “protesting for a cause we believed in.” (On the evening of Jan. 6, Manhart, who has not been connected with the attack on the Capitol, called the day’s events “disgusting,” adding: “Millions of patriots peaceably assembled, and it was tainted by a reckless few.”) Manhart ran last year as a Republican for the state legislature, but dropped out after Democrats charged that he was violating South Dakota election law, which requires officeholders to have lived in the state for at least the previous two years. On Twitter, Manhart has praised “2,000 Mules,” a debunked conspiracist film alleging that the 2020 election was stolen through mass stuffing of vote-by-mail drop boxes. After States Newsroom asked Johnson’s office about Manhart’s tweets, they were set to private. Berk Ehrmantraut, the executive director of the South Dakota Democratic Party, called Manhart’s intensely partisan public comments “not appropriate for someone who needs to be impartially conducting elections.” “Logan has shown nothing but professionalism since joining the office and has assisted every individual who he has worked with,” Soulek told States Newsroom. Wes Allen, Alabama Allen, a Republican who took office in January, has said that in 2020, “the election process did not work.” And, as a state lawmaker, he supported Texas’ effort to have the U.S. Supreme Court overturn Biden’s victories in four pivotal states. Many election officials aim to encourage voting while also keeping elections secure, but Allen has said it isn’t his job to try to get more people to vote. Alabama’s voting rate in 2022 ranked 46th among states, according to estimates by the U.S. Elections Project. “Our job is to help give (local election staff and law enforcement) the resources they need to make sure our elections are run in the most safe, secure, and transparent way possible,” Allen told a conservative radio host last month. “Our job is not to turn people out. That is the job of the candidates — to make people excited to go to the polls.” That philosophy appears to have informed the highest-profile action Allen has taken in office so far: A day after being sworn in, he withdrew Alabama from the Electronic Registration Information Center, known as ERIC, a 32-state data-sharing partnership that has won praise from election-management experts for helping states keep clean and accurate voter rolls. Explaining the move, Allen cited privacy concerns, but he also said he opposed ERIC because it requires the secretary of state’s office to contact eligible but unregistered voters and urge them to register. During the campaign, Allen called ERIC a “Soros-funded, leftist group” — a reference to George Soros, the billionaire funder of liberal causes and a frequent Republican target. Allen’s predecessor in office, John Merrill, a conservative Republican, has said he disagrees about ERIC and has tried to ensure that Allen is “properly educated” on the subject. Allen has said he wants to see legislation to restrict “ballot harvesting,” in which people collect absentee ballots from multiple voters and deliver them to drop boxes or election offices — sometimes in return for payment. Though ballot harvesting has in a few cases been linked to genuine fraud or illegal voting, Arizona’s anti-ballot-harvesting law was used to jail a local Democratic volunteer and former mayor for collecting and delivering four ballots from community members. Rodreshia Russaw, the executive director of The Ordinary People Society, an Alabama-based nonprofit that works with formerly incarcerated people, including helping them register to vote, told States Newsroom she’s concerned that such a law could disenfranchise large numbers of Black voters, by deterring this kind of work. “If this type of law is passed, it’s going to count thousands of voters out,” Russaw said. A spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office did not respond to a request for comment about Allen’s record so far and plans for the future. Cord Byrd, Florida Byrd, a former state legislator, was appointed secretary of state by DeSantis in May. Unlike some other chief election officials, he hasn’t sought to make an issue of the 2020 contest. But, asked soon after taking office whether Biden won the election, he refused to say, pointing to “irregularities in certain states.” The Tampa Bay Times reported that Byrd, when asked, repeatedly said Biden was certified for the office by Congress, “but when pressed about whether Biden won the election, Byrd pointed to issues with voting in several other states.” Byrd runs Florida’s election integrity unit, created last year by DeSantis to crack down on illegal voting. The unit fields reports of voter fraud. A separate team within the Florida Department of Law Enforcement conducts actual criminal investigations. Despite the high-profile announcement last summer of 20 arrests, including one man arrested at gunpoint, there have been only two convictions so far, and neither appears to involve serious wrongdoing. (The cases are not brought by the election integrity unit, but instead by local prosecutors — though this week state lawmakers passed a bill that would see them handled by a statewide prosecutors office.) One conviction came through a plea deal that involved no punishment, and in the other, the defendant is awaiting sentencing after rejecting a deal that would have involved no punishment beyond time served. Many of those charged have said they thought they were eligible to vote under Florida’s 2018 rights-restoration measure, and were sent a voter registration card by the state. Voting advocates say the arrests could scare eligible voters out of getting their rights restored. Still, Byrd told lawmakers at a hearing last month that fully staffing the controversial unit, including hiring a new director, is a top priority. His budget request would more than double the unit’s funding, allowing it to grow from 15 to 27 employees. “I think for some amount of time the laws went unenforced,” Byrd said at the hearing. “And when people know the laws aren’t going to be enforced, they engage in different behavior.” In January, the unit hired as its assistant director Brooke Renney, an experienced GOP political operative who worked on the election campaign of former Gov. Rick Scott, among other Republicans. “I will never tell you I know everything about election integrity or administration and what does or doesn’t happen in an election,” Renney acknowledged in a podcast episode she hosted last year called “Operative Life.” Asked by a Florida news station about Renney’s qualifications for the role, a spokesman for the Department of State called the question a “smear,” adding: “Her experience in the field, including helping Floridians who were victimized by election crimes, gives her valuable insight into the operations of elections and combatting election crimes.” Byrd also wants to add new rules for mail-in voting, which was used by over a third of all Florida voters last year. A 60-page report on mail-in voting prepared by Byrd’s office for lawmakers recommended requiring that county election supervisors verify the signature of any voter requesting a mail ballot, and barring voters from requesting a mail ballot by phone. Voting rights advocates have called the ideas “asinine.” A spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office did not respond to a request for comment about Byrd’s record so far and plans for the future. Chuck Gray, Wyoming Gray won a competitive race for the Republican nomination, then was unopposed in the general election. He has called the 2020 presidential election “clearly rigged,” and has hosted screenings of “2,000 Mules” at campaign events. Gray campaigned on a pledge to “expose voter fraud” and “stop cheaters from trying to steal our elections.” He has zeroed in on banning ballot drop boxes, which he has said, with little evidence, pose a security risk. In February, Gray went before lawmakers to oppose a Republican bill that would have tightened the rules around the use of drop boxes, without eliminating them. “A key priority of mine is to end the use of ballot drop boxes,” Gray said, “a position which is only strengthened by the increased security risk posed by ballot drop boxes around the country.” Among Gray’s other priorities, he has said, are tightening the state’s voter ID law, banning “ballot harvesting,” and banning private funding of elections offices As his chief policy officer and general counsel, Gray hired Joe Rubino, who graduated from law school in 2021 and is the nephew of U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, the Trump-endorsed Republican who beat former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney last year. Rubino replaced Monique Meese, who had announced her exit in August, citing Gray’s questioning of the integrity of the election system. Meese is one of 13 staffers who have resigned from the office since Gray’s primary victory, including four out of five executive-level staffers. A spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office did not respond to a request for comment about Gray’s record so far and plans for the future. Diego Morales, Indiana Morales defeated incumbent Holli Sullivan for the GOP nomination at the party convention, before being elected in November. He was the only successful candidate who was part of the “America First” coalition, which was founded by former Nevada state lawmaker Jim Marchant, a leading election denier. In an op-ed last year, Morales wrote that he and others had “deep skepticism regarding the accuracy of the 2020 presidential election,” calling the contest “a sham.” In an interview later in the campaign, Morales called Biden “the legitimate president,” without acknowledging that his stance had changed. During the campaign, Morales called for a slew of far-reaching new voting restrictions, including cutting the early voting period in half, tightening the rules on who can vote by mail, requiring proof of citizenship during registration, and creating an “election task force” to probe illegal voting. Since taking office, Morales hasn’t pushed for any of those measures, and his budget request to lawmakers didn’t include funds for the task force. But he said in a January interview that he plans to introduce a bill to require people who vote by mail to include a government-issued photo ID. A similar requirement in Florida was unanimously criticized by county election directors as potentially disenfranchising for large numbers of voters. “My priority is to make Indiana a national model for election confidence and integrity,” Morales said in an inaugural speech in January. The secretary of state’s office did not respond to a request for comment about Morales’ record so far and plans for the future.
- [Michigan election denier who has yet to concede her 2022 loss will chair state GOP - Erie News Now](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/20/michigan-election-denier-who-has-yet-to-concede-her-2022-loss-will-chair-state-gop-erie-news-now/) - Karamo, a former community college professor, rose to prominence in Michigan after the 2020 election when she alleged to have witnessed fraud as a poll challenger during the state's count of absentee ballots. She has falsely claimed Trump was the true victor in Michigan in 2020 and has spread the conspiracy theory that left-wing anarchists were behind the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
- [Elements of Truth – behind the scenes of Jami-Lee Ross' 2020 election campaign | The Spinoff](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/21/elements-of-truth-behind-the-scenes-of-jami-lee-ross-2020-election-campaign-the-spinoff/) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbLkSi082V8
- [How the US right got trapped in lies about the 2020 election - The National](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/21/how-the-us-right-got-trapped-in-lies-about-the-2020-election-the-national/) - Since the rise of Donald Trump, there has been a mystery about how and why so many otherwise respectable, seemingly intelligent and well-informed, Republicans could embrace his preposterous fabrications. A new trove of emails reflecting top-level behind-the-scenes conversations at Fox News Channel, the highest-rated US public affairs network, illustrates in vivid and deeply disturbing detail the process that produces a deliberate embrace of falsehood over basic and objectively verifiable truth. Now we know.The lessons go far beyond Fox. It is an excellent roadmap of the process through which most Republican leaders refused to challenge the worst of these falsehoods, especially the "big lie" that the 2020 election was somehow "stolen" from Mr Trump. The cynicism and corrupted groupthink at Fox News has reflected in Congress and state houses around the country. It has left most of the US right detached from reality and beholden to a preposterous fairytale that is highly damaging to the country and corrosive to democracy.The emails exposing the systematic dishonesty at Fox were obtained by Dominion Voting Systems, which makes the voting machines used in much of the country. Dominion is suing Fox for defamation because of the barrage of false accusations made by guests and hosts on the company’s flagship programmes. To this day, Fox's most significant shows – Fox and Friends in the morning and the evening primetime troika of Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram and Tucker Carlson – routinely promote a wide range of conspiracy theories, often targeting Dominion, purporting to explain that Mr Trump won the election.But what the company, which has probably become nonviable because of this crude defamation, has already achieved through its $1.6 billion lawsuit is: irrefutably establishing that the Fox hosts and officials knew perfectly well that such claims were ridiculous and privately disparaged many of the regular guests as lying. But at the same time, they insisted that the network must "respect" the audience by telling it what it wants to hear rather than what the organisation knows full well to be true. That is much closer to disdain than respect.Hosts and guests on the network routinely claimed that Dominion was founded or controlled by Venezuela and Cuba, and that its machines could be "hacked" and "rigged" to "flip" vast numbers of votes from Mr Trump to US President Joe Biden. None of this is true, or even possible.How could Biden and so many Republicans be elected on the same ballots if they were fraudulent?In the White House then-attorney general William Barr, among many other officials, strongly warned Mr Trump these claims are outlandish. He later testified that he worried that, because he seemed to take such interest in them, the former president was losing touch with reality.Even more significant, though, are the insights into why a self-described "news” network would base so much of its programming on incendiary untruths. The emails demonstrate that the Fox News anchors and executives were fixated on ratings (and thus advertising revenue), and virtually panicked when large chunks of the Trump-adoring fan base began turning the channel after it correctly predicted Mr Biden's victory in Arizona.As Fox's ratings dropped and its tiny but even more extreme and Trump-obsessed competitors, Newsmax and One American News, rose, emails between the network’s stars and executives show they quickly concluded that their all-important audience was not interested in verifiable truth, but was actively seeking comforting, reassuring and reinforcing falsehoods, especially denying or at least casting doubt on the fact that Mr Biden soundly defeated Mr Trump.And they noted that the more they focused on conspiracy theories about the election, the more their audience returned to them. So, they decided to provide the audience what they crave, no matter how absurd. It is the antithesis of news and a quintessence of propaganda.Donald Trump listens as Michigan Republican Secretary of State candidate Kristina Karamo speaks during a rally in Warren, Michigan, on October 1, 2022. She was elected as state party leader over the weekend. AP Moreover, the emails demonstrate that Fox News's movers and shakers were actually afraid of their audience. And undoubtedly the same calculation was obvious to Republican officials and candidates in Congress and state houses around the country. A few may be fanatical, conspiratorial or just plain gullible to believe such absurdities. How could Mr Biden wrongly and so many Republicans rightly be elected on the same ballots if they were fraudulent? Why would Democrats cheat to secure the White House but not give themselves a majority in the Senate? In the main, they appear to have followed the same logic about their voters as Fox officials did about their viewers.Some Republican voters believe the "stolen election" mythology because they heard it from Mr Trump, from Fox News and the others, and from their own elected officials (who, at the very least, did not try to disabuse them of this delusion). Mr Trump and his allies moved quickly to make election denial a litmus test to distinguish "real Republicans" from "Republicans in name only" (the detested "Rinos"). And they demonstrated during the midterm election that they can still decide most Republican primaries although, with a few scattered and rare exceptions, purveyors of the big lie lost in the general elections.More from Hussein IbishNow it has become a self-reinforcing mythology of totemic proportions. Over the weekend, Republican voters in Michigan – where Democrats secured complete control of the state for the first time in many decades in the midterms – doubled down on the outlandish by selecting Kristina Karamo, one of the US's most vociferous election deniers to be their state party leader. She defeated a slightly less enthusiastic election denier who was endorsed by Mr Trump and the party leadership.Allowing for scatterings of oddballs and conspiracy theorists, there is no doubt that Republican officials and leaders followed the same path into absolute dishonesty that the Dominion lawsuit email trove demonstrates Fox leaders did.Most alarming is the spread and casual acceptance of a complete fabrication. It is one of the surest signs of the emergence of authoritarian political systems whether of the left or the right. But the Fox email trove demonstrates exactly how and why the US political right has become a solar system guided by one gigantic lie and orbited by countless smaller ones. That's a catastrophe not just for the Republican Party, but for the whole country.Published: February 21, 2023, 7:00 AM
- [This New Bedford Website Accurately Predicted the 2020 Election Way Back in 2006](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/20/this-new-bedford-website-accurately-predicted-the-2020-election-way-back-in-2006/) - Back in the early 2000s, the internet was a brave new world, especially here on the SouthCoast.One New Bedford-based website made a mark after the turn of the millennium but faded away before the decade was up – but not before it managed to accurately predict the 2020 presidential election all the way back in 2006.SouthCoast247.com was a website that was part of SouthCoast Media Group, which also published the Standard-Times. The S-T had always been ahead of the curve digitally, as it was one of the first newspapers to launch its own website in the early 1990s.However, the newspaper wasn’t hitting the younger demographic, so SouthCoast247.com was created to serve the 18-to-34-year-olds in the greater New Bedford and Fall River area.SouthCoast247.com launched on October 4, 2004, covering the local music, arts and theater scene, along with articles on technology, sports, advice columns, dating columns, astrology and more. A slew of great writers, photographers and editors made the site something special, but by July 2009, SouthCoast247.com was no more.I was recently telling a coworker about SouthCoast247.com, and they had no idea that the site had even existed. I started sending her links to the site on the Internet Wayback Machine at archive.org, which logs websites from various moments in time.She began diving into all that great content (the links to download .mp3s from all the local bands of the time still work!) when she sent me a photo that really caught me off guard.In the photo, which was published as part of the “Random Photos” section, we see two young men wearing aviator sunglasses, along with the caption, “In the year 2020, all will have to wear aviators to protect themselves against Republicans.”SouthCoast247.com via archive.org's Wayback MachineSouthCoast247.com via archive.org's Wayback Machineloading...Now, considering this photo was published in 2006, I’d say it was oddly prescient of what would happen in the 2020 presidential election. As you recall, that was the year Democrat Joe Biden – aviator sunglasses and all – toppled incumbent Republican President Donald Trump.You couldn’t even say it was an educated guess, either; in 2006, Joe Biden was just a longtime senator from Delaware who hadn’t even served as vice president yet. He had run for president in 1988, but nobody in 2006 was thinking he might be doing so again decades later.The aviator sunglasses hadn’t even become his trademark yet.Courtesy Jamie SilvaCourtesy Jamie Silvaloading...We reached out to Jamie (Depres) Silva, who had served as the editor for SouthCoast247.com, and she offered some insight into how that oddly correct prediction came to be.“That photo is really funny,” she said. “It’s of my cousin Trevor and my friend Jarrett.”Silva just that just a few weeks prior, she and Trevor had been invited to a friend’s party where the theme was “In the Year 2020.”“We had forgotten that we were supposed to dress up, so we just grabbed a couple of pairs of aviators and made up a completely random joke that ‘In the year 2020, we’ll need to wear aviators to protect ourselves from Republicans,’” she said.Silva said it was just a goof, and wasn’t any kind of commentary.“It was all in good fun and no real political motivation behind it at the time,” she said. “I took the pic in Providence at Jarrett’s kickball game when I found the glasses randomly in my bag.”So there you have it, SouthCoast247.com predicting the Joe Biden presidency appears to be nothing more than coincidence. After all, Biden himself probably thinks all that psychic stuff is just a bunch of malarkey."Hail To The Chief" With These 10 Presidents' Day CardsWish that special American in your life a Happy Presidents' Day with these 10 Commanders In Chief.Who are the Richest Presidents in Today's Dollars?
- [Deric Lostutter Uses Activism to Impact Societal and Environmental Change - Digital Journal](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/20/deric-lostutter-uses-activism-to-impact-societal-and-environmental-change-digital-journal/) - PRESS RELEASEPublished February 20, 2023Knox County, Kentucky - On November 25, 2022, Deric Lostutter, a well-known activist and volunteer, hosted a fundraiser at the Icehouse Bar & Grill in Corbin, Kentucky, to raise money for the victims of the recent Club Q shooting in Colorado. The event featured Lostutter as the DJ, spinning tunes for a cause, and all proceeds went to the funeral expenses of Raymond Green Vance, who was the boyfriend of Kassandra Fierro. Fierro is the daughter of Richard M. Fierro, who disarmed the Club Q shooter and saved countless lives. This isn't the first time Lostutter has used his DJ skills to raise money for charity. In 2016, he was the DJ for a charity car show in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, which raised money for a local children's hospital. He also participated in the Walk of Dimes in Winston-Salem that same year, raising awareness about critical issues affecting moms and babies, from prematurity and health equity to maternal and infant mortality and morbidity. In 2016, Lostutter volunteered at God's Closet in Manchester, Kent providing clothing and other essentials to needy families. He also handed out school supplies and backpacks to underprivileged children at Shady Grove Wesleyan Church in Walkertown, North Carolina, and volunteered at the Clark County Homeless Coalition Homeless Shelter in Winchester, Clark County, Kentucky, in 2022. On November 5, 2015, Lostutter organized Lexington, Kentucky’s Million Mask March, a unanimous march that takes place all over the world to raise awareness of societal issues. The issue that Deric Lostutter chose to raise awareness for during the Lexington Million Mask March was police brutality on the impoverished citizens in Kentucky and unarmed people of color—an event that was a precursor to the Black Lives Matter movement and the Louisville, Kentucky Protests surrounding the murder of Breonna Taylor. Breonna Taylor’s death sparked worldwide outrage when police officers used a no-knock warrant to enter her home, shooting and killing Breonna Taylor. 4 former Louisville Police Officers are facing federal charges for falsifying a search warrant and writing a false report in the case, and one former Louisville Police Officer, Kelly Goodlett, has pled guilty and is awaiting federal sentencing. Lostutter's activism and volunteer experience date back even further, to 2014, when he worked as a photo and event coordinator for the Louisville, Kentucky Color Run, which raised money for charity and volunteered at various urban creek and stream cleanup events in Lexington, Fayette County, Kentucky to help impact environmental change in 2014. When asked what inspired him to be so active in the community, Deric Lostutter replied, “We have to set an example for our children and leave them a better world for them to inherit.” Lostutter’s activism began at an early age, cleaning up trash along roadsides in King, North Carolina while attending West Stokes High School, and creating a group of friends that stood up to bullies who were bullying other classmates. Lostutter's dedication to making a difference in his community is admirable, and his efforts to raise money for the victims of the Club Q shooting are just the latest example of his commitment to helping others. His past experiences with volunteering and activism show that he is a passionate and dedicated individual who is always looking for ways to make a positive impact on the world around him.Media ContactCompany Name: Deric LostutterContact Person: Media RelationsEmail: Send EmailCountry: United StatesWebsite: https://www.dericlostutter.com
- [North Dakota House passes bill to ensure physical polling places](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/20/north-dakota-house-passes-bill-to-ensure-physical-polling-places/) - BISMARCK — The North Dakota House of Representatives on Monday passed a bill to ensure physical polling places, similar to legislation that failed in 2021, brought in the wake of North Dakota's all-mail June 2020 election.House Bill 1167, by Rep. Steve Vetter, R-Grand Forks, passed unanimously and now goes to the Senate.The bill states: "The governor may not issue an executive order that suspends or amends a provision in a statute, order, or rule relating to a state or local requirement regarding minimum number of physical polling places."Rep. Claire Cory, R-Grand Forks, said the bill guarantees a physical polling place in every county and would ban an all-mail election."This is an important election integrity bill for those constituents who like to vote in person," Cory told the House. ADVERTISEMENT Gov. Doug Burgum in 2020 signed an executive order waiving the requirement that counties provide at least one physical polling site for the June 2020 election, due to the coronavirus pandemic.The House and Senate in 2021 had passed the previous bill, but the Senate reconsidered it and it failed by a single vote.House Bill 1167 is among a flurry of election-related bills filed by supermajority North Dakota Republican lawmakers, continuing a trend from 2021. The Legislature that year handled more than 40 election-related bills in the wake of the 2020 presidential election and former President Donald Trump's baseless claims of election fraud.
- [Five election deniers who are controlling state voting systems - Florida Phoenix](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/20/five-election-deniers-who-are-controlling-state-voting-systems-florida-phoenix/) - Americans concerned about the health of democracy breathed a sigh of relief when a pack of election deniers in 2022 lost their attempts to control voting in key battleground states — making it unlikely that a rogue state election official could subvert the 2024 presidential election. Protesters gather outside the Maricopa County, Arizona, Elections Department on Nov. 4, 2020, demanding that all ballots for Donald Trump be counted. (Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy | Arizona Mirror) Candidates for secretary of state who denied the result of the 2020 presidential race were defeated in all three swing states where they were on the ballot — Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada. And in Pennsylvania, where the governor appoints the chief election official, an election-denier gubernatorial candidate also lost. But while battleground states may have dodged a bullet in their secretary of state races, Alabama, Indiana, South Dakota, and Wyoming all elected deniers — defined as officials who refused to publicly acknowledge the legitimacy of President Joe Biden’s victory or backed court cases that could overturn the election. And the governor of Florida, the nation’s third-largest state, appointed a secretary of state who has refused, when asked, to say Biden won the election. The danger to democracy posed by election deniers shouldn’t be viewed in isolation, democracy advocates say. Numerous election deniers, they note, also were elected to Congress, statewide offices, statehouses, and local election posts around the country — meaning these secretaries of state are part of a network of denialism that last year’s elections failed to extinguish. “Election-denier secretaries of state absolutely present a risk of election subversion that the public still needs to be aware of and responding to,” said Rachel Homer, counsel for the nonpartisan advocacy organization Protect Democracy. “The risk that the will of the people might not translate into who was actually elected — that’s a threat to democracy.” Early developments None of the newly elected secretaries of state appears close to getting passed into law the kind of major voting overhaul that several campaigned on. But even beyond legislation, the secretaries of state, who in all five states serve as their state’s chief elections officer, can affect access to the ballot and the overall efficiency of the election system. And they have used their short time in office so far to continue baselessly stoking distrust in elections, to hire political allies, and to advance measures that further tighten the rules around voting. Among the troubling early developments: Senior staff with years of election administration experience have resigned or been let go from secretary of state offices in South Dakota and Wyoming. In the former state, a combative “America First” political activist who attended the Jan. 6 protests has been hired. Alabama’s new secretary of state abruptly withdrew from a well-regarded interstate compact for sharing voter registration information, and says it’s not his job to make voting easier. Indiana’s secretary of state wants to further tighten the rules for mail voting, which has expanded in popularity since the pandemic. Florida’s secretary of state, an appointee of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, is pushing to expand a controversial “election integrity” unit. With the possible exception of Florida, these five states likely aren’t competitive enough to have a chance of tipping a presidential contest. At the Leon County Courthouse, 2020 voters could vote early in person or by dropping their ballots in a drop box. Credit: Diane Rado But democracy advocates warn that having state election systems serving around 35 million people in the hands of officials who won’t acknowledge Biden’s win raises a far broader set of dangers: that election outcomes will be subverted, thwarting the will of voters; that denialism is being mainstreamed as a governing ideology, at least in some states; that crucial norms of independence and neutrality for election officials are being eroded; and that new attempts to tighten voting rules, driven by false claims about widespread fraud, will further restrict access to the ballot, especially for minority communities. Joanna Lydgate, the CEO of States United Action, which works to protect fair elections, raised yet more dangers. “The undermining of public confidence, and the attempts to confuse voters, have a huge impact,” said Lydgate. “Democracy relies on public confidence, it relies on participation, it relies on people believing in the system. And when you have people in elected office who are continuing to spread lies and conspiracy theories, that runs a risk of confusing voters and deterring people from participating in the system. So the threat is alive and well.” Here’s a closer look at the five secretaries of state: Monae Johnson, South Dakota Johnson, a former staffer in the secretary of state’s office, was elected in November after winning the GOP nomination over the incumbent at last year’s convention. Secretary State Monae Johnson of South Dakota. Credit: South Dakota Secretary of State website. Johnson disputes the denier label, but asked by South Dakota Searchlight during the campaign whether the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, she said: “I’m going to leave that question up to those people that are actually in the fight for it.” Asked in a different interview whether Biden won legitimately, she said: “I’m not going to acknowledge that.” Johnson has said she doesn’t plan to propose any of her own bills this session, but has promised to fight any measure to allow voters to register online — a popular reform that all but 11 states now offer. Personnel changes in the office have drawn attention. Johnson removed a number of staff, including the state’s well-regarded elections director, Kia Warne, who had been with the office since 1993. Warne’s replacement, Elaine Jensen, who served as a county elections auditor for 17 years before coming to the secretary of state’s office, also left in January after just a few weeks on the job, said Rachel Soulek, the office’s elections director and spokesperson. “You learn who’s your friend and who’s not your friend when you do things like this,” Johnson told an interviewer when asked about the turnover. “You learn who you can trust and who you can’t.” Meanwhile, Johnson has hired as a federal and state elections coordinator Logan Manhart, a 24-year-old “America First” political activist and former Trump campaign staffer who attended the Jan. 6, 2021 protests in Washington, D.C., and later defended attendees as “protesting for a cause we believed in.” (On the evening of Jan. 6, Manhart, who has not been connected with the attack on the Capitol, called the day’s events “disgusting,” adding: “Millions of patriots peaceably assembled, and it was tainted by a reckless few.”) Manhart ran last year as a Republican for the state legislature, but dropped out after Democrats charged that he was violating South Dakota election law, which requires officeholders to have lived in the state for at least the previous two years. On Twitter, Manhart has praised “2,000 Mules,” a debunked conspiracist film alleging that the 2020 election was stolen through mass stuffing of vote-by-mail drop boxes. After States Newsroom asked Johnson’s office about Manhart’s tweets, they were set to private. Berk Ehrmantraut, the executive director of the South Dakota Democratic Party, called Manhart’s intensely partisan public comments “not appropriate for someone who needs to be impartially conducting elections.” “Logan has shown nothing but professionalism since joining the office and has assisted every individual who he has worked with,” Soulek told States Newsroom. Wes Allen, Alabama Allen, a Republican who took office in January, has said that in 2020, “the election process did not work.” And, as a state lawmaker, he supported Texas’ effort to have the U.S. Supreme Court overturn Biden’s victories in four pivotal states. Many election officials aim to encourage voting while also keeping elections secure, but Allen has said it isn’t his job to try to get more people to vote. Alabama’s voting rate in 2022 ranked 46th among states, according to estimates by the U.S. Elections Project. Secretary of State Wes Allen, of Alabama. Credit: SOS website. “Our job is to help give (local election staff and law enforcement) the resources they need to make sure our elections are run in the most safe, secure, and transparent way possible,” Allen told a conservative radio host last month. “Our job is not to turn people out. That is the job of the candidates — to make people excited to go to the polls.” That philosophy appears to have informed the highest-profile action Allen has taken in office so far: A day after being sworn in, he withdrew Alabama from the Electronic Registration Information Center, known as ERIC, a 32-state data-sharing partnership that has won praise from election-management experts for helping states keep clean and accurate voter rolls. Explaining the move, Allen cited privacy concerns, but he also said he opposed ERIC because it requires the secretary of state’s office to contact eligible but unregistered voters and urge them to register. During the campaign, Allen called ERIC a “Soros-funded, leftist group” — a reference to George Soros, the billionaire funder of liberal causes and a frequent Republican target. Allen’s predecessor in office, John Merrill, a conservative Republican, has said he disagrees about ERIC and has tried to ensure that Allen is “properly educated” on the subject. Allen has said he wants to see legislation to restrict “ballot harvesting,” in which people collect absentee ballots from multiple voters and deliver them to drop boxes or election offices — sometimes in return for payment. Though ballot harvesting has in a few cases been linked to genuine fraud or illegal voting, Arizona’s anti-ballot-harvesting law was used to jail a local Democratic volunteer and former mayor for collecting and delivering four ballots from community members. Rodreshia Russaw, the executive director of The Ordinary People Society, an Alabama-based nonprofit that works with formerly incarcerated people, including helping them register to vote, told States Newsroom she’s concerned that such a law could disenfranchise large numbers of Black voters, by deterring this kind of work. “If this type of law is passed, it’s going to count thousands of voters out,” Russaw said. A spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office did not respond to a request for comment about Allen’s record so far and plans for the future. Cord Byrd, Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd on Jan 18, 2023. Credit: Florida Channel. Byrd, a former state legislator, was appointed secretary of state by DeSantis in May. Unlike some other chief election officials, he hasn’t sought to make an issue of the 2020 contest. But, asked soon after taking office whether Biden won the election, he refused to say, pointing to “irregularities in certain states.” The Tampa Bay Times reported that Byrd, when asked, repeatedly said Biden was certified for the office by Congress, “but when pressed about whether Biden won the election, Byrd pointed to issues with voting in several other states.” Byrd runs Florida’s election integrity unit, created last year by DeSantis to crack down on illegal voting. The unit fields reports of voter fraud. A separate team within the Florida Department of Law Enforcement conducts actual criminal investigations. Despite the high-profile announcement last summer of 20 arrests, including one man arrested at gunpoint, there have been only two convictions so far, and neither appears to involve serious wrongdoing. (The cases are not brought by the election integrity unit, but instead by local prosecutors — though last week state lawmakers passed a bill that would see them handled by a statewide prosecutors office.) One conviction came through a plea deal that involved no punishment, and in the other, the defendant is awaiting sentencing after rejecting a deal that would have involved no punishment beyond time served. Many of those charged have said they thought they were eligible to vote under Florida’s 2018 rights-restoration measure, and were sent a voter registration card by the state. Voting advocates say the arrests could scare eligible voters out of getting their rights restored. Still, Byrd told lawmakers at a hearing last month that fully staffing the controversial unit, including hiring a new director, is a top priority. His budget request would more than double the unit’s funding, allowing it to grow from 15 to 27 employees. “I think for some amount of time the laws went unenforced,” Byrd said at the hearing. “And when people know the laws aren’t going to be enforced, they engage in different behavior.” In January, the unit hired as its assistant director Brooke Renney, an experienced GOP political operative who worked on the election campaign of former Gov. Rick Scott, among other Republicans. “I will never tell you I know everything about election integrity or administration and what does or doesn’t happen in an election,” Renney acknowledged in a podcast episode she hosted last year called “Operative Life.” Asked by a Florida news station about Renney’s qualifications for the role, a spokesman for the Department of State called the question a “smear,” adding: “Her experience in the field, including helping Floridians who were victimized by election crimes, gives her valuable insight into the operations of elections and combatting election crimes.” Byrd also wants to add new rules for mail-in voting, which was used by over a third of all Florida voters last year. A 60-page report on mail-in voting prepared by Byrd’s office for lawmakers recommended requiring that county election supervisors verify the signature of any voter requesting a mail ballot, and barring voters from requesting a mail ballot by phone. Voting rights advocates have called the ideas “asinine.” A spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office did not respond to a request for comment about Byrd’s record so far and plans for the future. Chuck Gray, Wyoming Gray won a competitive race for the Republican nomination, then was unopposed in the general election. He has called the 2020 presidential election “clearly rigged,” and has hosted screenings of “2,000 Mules” at campaign events. Secretary of State Chuck Gray of Wyoming. Credit: Ballotpedia Gray campaigned on a pledge to “expose voter fraud” and “stop cheaters from trying to steal our elections.” He has zeroed in on banning ballot drop boxes, which he has said, with little evidence, pose a security risk. In February, Gray went before lawmakers to oppose a Republican bill that would have tightened the rules around the use of drop boxes, without eliminating them. “A key priority of mine is to end the use of ballot drop boxes,” Gray said, “a position which is only strengthened by the increased security risk posed by ballot drop boxes around the country.” Among Gray’s other priorities, he has said, are tightening the state’s voter ID law, banning “ballot harvesting,” and banning private funding of elections offices As his chief policy officer and general counsel, Gray hired Joe Rubino, who graduated from law school in 2021 and is the nephew of U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, the Trump-endorsed Republican who beat former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney last year. Rubino replaced Monique Meese, who had announced her exit in August, citing Gray’s questioning of the integrity of the election system. Meese is one of 13 staffers who have resigned from the office since Gray’s primary victory, including four out of five executive-level staffers. A spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office did not respond to a request for comment about Gray’s record so far and plans for the future. Diego Morales, Indiana Morales defeated incumbent Holli Sullivan for the GOP nomination at the party convention, before being elected in November. He was the only successful candidate who was part of the “America First” coalition, which was founded by former Nevada state lawmaker Jim Marchant, a leading election denier. Secretary of State Diego Morales of Indiana. Credit: SOS website. In an op-ed last year, Morales wrote that he and others had “deep skepticism regarding the accuracy of the 2020 presidential election,” calling the contest “a sham.” In an interview later in the campaign, Morales called Biden “the legitimate president,” without acknowledging that his stance had changed. During the campaign, Morales called for a slew of far-reaching new voting restrictions, including cutting the early voting period in half, tightening the rules on who can vote by mail, requiring proof of citizenship during registration, and creating an “election task force” to probe illegal voting. Since taking office, Morales hasn’t pushed for any of those measures, and his budget request to lawmakers didn’t include funds for the task force. But he said in a January interview that he plans to introduce a bill to require people who vote by mail to include a government-issued photo ID. A similar requirement in Florida was unanimously criticized by county election directors as potentially disenfranchising for large numbers of voters. “My priority is to make Indiana a national model for election confidence and integrity,” Morales said in an inaugural speech in January. The secretary of state’s office did not respond to a request for comment about Morales’ record so far and plans for the future.
- [Benson works on national voting reforms, including big penalties for threatening election workers](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/20/benson-works-on-national-voting-reforms-including-big-penalties-for-threatening-election-workers/) - Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson has participated in a national effort to improve the election system. NewDEAL Forum, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit, has released a set of recommendations for state and local leaders “to preserve and strengthen our democracy,” according to the organization. The Democracy Playbook contains more than 40 steps. The working group is co-chaired by Benson; Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes; Montgomery County, Pa., Commissioner Ken Lawrence; and Nevada Assembly Majority Leader Sandra Jauregui. All are Democrats. “We share this playbook to identify the policies and best practices that leaders across the nation can advocate for and adopt to prepare for the coming attacks, protect voters, and ensure America’s democracy expands and flourishes,” said Benson. The recommendations, focusing on election integrity, voting access and civic engagement, include best practices drawn from cities and states across the nation that can and should be replicated more broadly. They include: Enacting significant penalties for threats against election workers, including elected officials and poll workers Increasing transparency by publicly testing voting machines Enacting reforms to enable election officials to count ballots more quickly, such as pre-canvassing Increasing access to voter registration through automatic voter registration and allowing citizens to register to vote up to and on Election Day Increasing access to voting through enabling no-excuse absentee voting and embracing a robust early voting period Working with civic and business groups to foster civic engagement and build a sense of community “Preserving our democracy requires urgent attention,” said Debbie Cox Bultan, NewDEAL Forum CEO. “The January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol following the 2020 election still casts a long shadow over our nation, and we cannot allow such an event to happen again. People of good faith who believe in freedom and democracy – no matter their political party – must stand up against malignant forces that seek to undermine our nation. This playbook will provide state and local officials with best practices to ensure our democracy stands strong.” GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX SUBSCRIBE
- [Why Biden is the Democrats' best hope of winning the 2024 election - The Conversation](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/20/why-biden-is-the-democrats-best-hope-of-winning-the-2024-election-the-conversation/) - The 2024 US presidential election race is already under way. In recent polls, President Joe Biden is the clear favourite among Democrats for the 2024 nomination. No one else comes close, with Vice-President Kamala Harris a distant second, some twenty points behind. Biden is the only candidate who would preserve the coalition that he built during the last two and a half years. He has managed to construct a base support of young voters, suburban voters, as well as maintaining the share of Hillary Clinton’s support among Black and Hispanic voters. With his recent announcement that he will veto any legislation that attempts to end social security or Medicare, Biden has made himself a champion of senior voters. This influential voting block has over recent years, been a cornerstone of the Republican base. If Biden can gain votes from senior voters, he will establish a bipartisan coalition that would be difficult to beat. The Republican party race is wide open. Former president Donald Trump has already announced his bid to be the Republican party’s presidential nominee for the third time in 2024. Speculation has already begun as to who might oppose Trump for the Republican candidacy. Many pundits have tipped Florida governor Ron DeSantis to be Trump’s main opponent in the primaries next year. In their latest head-to-head figures, polling organisation, FiveThirtyEight, gives Biden an even chance against DeSantis, and gives Biden a three-point lead against Trump. With inflation on the decline in the US, and the jobs market booming, those ratings should become more favourable for Biden. Polls show concerns about Biden’s age. One suggested that just 23% of Democrats under the age of 45 want Biden to run for a second term at 82. However, only 462 Democrats were surveyed, and the poll was conducted before Biden’s well-received State of the Union address, although his popularity has reportedly failed to gain a bump in the polls. Other reports suggest that there is a split between the opinions of rank-and-file Democrats and party leaders over Biden. Yet, according to one analyst, data indicates that it is in the Democrats best interests to support Biden. The Democrats long-term influence, according to Allan J. Lichtman’s Thirteen Keys to the White House theory, depends on Biden running for a second term. Lichtman’s 13 keys are a checklist of true or false statements of which only five can be false if Biden wants to be re-elected. In the current climate, four of Lichman’s keys could be argued to be false - midterm gains in Congress, no scandal (classified documents have been found in Biden’s home in Wilmington), foreign or military success (not looking likely in Ukraine) and a charismatic incumbent. After Republican gains in the midterms, the developing Chinese spy balloon crisis, no victory likely in Ukraine, and negative opinion polls for Biden (which some might see as evidence of a lack of charisma). Democrats can only afford one more false statement - either an economy in decline for Biden to not run again, according to Litchman. If Democrats have any intention of pushing forward with progressive domestic legislation, then it is more likely to be passed in a president’s second term than first. Research has indicated that presidents are less effective with foreign policy in their second term because their diplomatic promises have less weight, and so focus tends to revert to domestic issues. Domestic policies affect the electorate directly and so can have a detrimental effect on potential re-election. As no third term is available because of the 22nd amendment, presidents are more willing to address domestic issues during their second term. After outperforming expectations in last November’s midterms, Democrats will be hopeful of regaining a majority in the House and establishing a clear majority in the Senate. Biden has had a strong focus on foreign policy during his first term as president. GeopixAlamy Such a situation would allow the liberal wing of the Democrats to push forward socially progressive bills that promote a green agenda, protect reproductive rights and voting rights, and counter the threat of a conservative supreme court. Even without a clear majority in both the House and Senate, a second Biden term could benefit the US. The partisan divide has hamstrung US politics in recent years and instances of bipartisan collaboration have been few and far between. Read more: State of the Union: What experts have said about Biden's proposed reforms on policing, guns and taxes – 8 essential reads Of all the contenders for the White House, none of the others has the experience or capability to reach across the political divide as effectively as Biden. Before the 2020 Democratic nomination campaign, Biden was criticised by Democrats for his willingness to put political differences aside to get work done in Congress. Of course, the bipartisan legislature requires the Republicans to work with Biden. He stated in the State of the Union address that his presidency illustrated the benefits of cross-party partnerships. Biden claimed that 300 laws he had signed were the result of bipartisan efforts. “If we could work together in the last Congress, there is no reason we can’t work together in this new Congress,” he told Republicans. A second Biden term might lead to increased bipartisan cooperation and close some of the nation’s political divide, at least in Congress. But to do this, Biden’s presidency would not be the exception and not the norm. Political scientist Stephen Skowronek’s work shows how long-term political changes in the US are based on shared beliefs that weaken over time and are then replaced by new political cycles. In Skowronek’s theory, presidents including Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan created a new political cycle, one that changes attitudes and policies for a generation. Big achievements happen in two terms At the start of his first term, commentator Michelle Goldberg believed that Biden might be the first president since Reagan to be able to lead a new cycle. Before the 2020 election, Skowronek thought that Biden was too moderate to be a president that had long-term influence and create that kind of significant change. But the COVID and economic crises , racial division, and major political shifts – indicated by recent electoral success of policies that build toward a more equitable economy and social democracy – have provided Biden with an opportunity to create a new political cycle, one could heavily influence those who come after him. If he can gain bipartisan support, in the same way that Franklin D. Roosevelt did in creating the New Deal era of the 1930s, Biden can make significant changes that will have long term implications beyond his second term.
- [Opinion | Court races hijacked by dark money | Guest Columns | captimes.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/20/opinion-court-races-hijacked-by-dark-money-guest-columns-captimes-com/) - This spring, all eyes are on Wisconsin as voters decide who will fill an empty seat on our state Supreme Court. The stakes could not be higher as we can expect the justices to hear cases about voting rights, abortion access and the purity of our water within the next term.But dark money, or campaign funding from undisclosed donors, complicates this role. Leading up to the primary, big-dollar, out-of-state interest groups are already working overtime to politicize our judges and purchase influence, attempting to block out the voice of Wisconsin voters.If there is one thing this sort of spending makes clear, it’s that Wisconsinites need to show up to vote so we can decide, for ourselves, who sits on our court. Recently, reports show that a single PAC donation has exceeded the donations of all four candidates combined. It certainly doesn’t seem fair that a single, out-of-state donor can outspend and effectively out-influence the average Wisconsinite.When public officials become more loyal to campaign donors than their own constituents and our state Constitution, the issues that matter most to our communities suddenly stop receiving attention. That’s why we need to care about dark, hard-to-trace money flooding into our judicial elections.In Wisconsin, Supreme Court elections have gone from being low-budget affairs to big-money contests between powerful groups. The last Wisconsin Supreme Court election in 2020 was the most expensive in the state in more than a decade, while more recent lower court elections in 2021 saw tens of thousands in out-of-state spending. Organizations, which serve as conduits for dark money, dropped money bombs across our state in the days leading up to key judicial elections.This year will be no exception. The few weeks leading up to the April 4 election will probably break all spending records. The reality today is that partisan groups representing both liberal and conservative interests believe that their money is always welcome in our state, and that’s bad news for Wisconsinites.Our state courts matter. They’re the last line of defense for the rights of all Wisconsinites of every color, creed, background and zip code. Our judges should guarantee that everyone in our state plays by the same rules and that all our voices are heard.The primary election for the state supreme court is tomorrow, Feb. 21; the top-two vote-getters from the primary election will face off in a general election on April 4.To learn more about the candidates, find out whether you’re registered to vote, and much more, take a look at VOTE411.org.
- [Michigan election denier who has yet to concede her 2022 loss will chair state GOP](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/20/michigan-election-denier-who-has-yet-to-concede-her-2022-loss-will-chair-state-gop/) - By Jack Forrest, CNN (CNN) -- Michigan Republicans have chosen Kristina Karamo, who has yet to concede last year's secretary of state race, as their next chair, putting an election denier at the head of the party in a crucial battleground state.Karamo tweeted Sunday that she was "honored to lead the Michigan Republican Party."On the heels of the GOP's midterm losses in Michigan last year, the state party backed Karamo at its Saturday night convention over Matthew DePerno, who had former President Donald Trump's backing in the race. DePerno ran unsuccessfully for attorney general last year.Trump congratulated Karamo on Truth Social Sunday, calling her a "a powerful and fearless Election Denier, in winning the Chair of the GOP in Michigan.""If Republicans (and others!) would speak the truth about the Rigged Presidential Election of 2020, like FoxNews should, but doesn't, they would be far better off," he said.Karamo, a former community college professor, rose to prominence in Michigan after the 2020 election when she alleged to have witnessed fraud as a poll challenger during the state's count of absentee ballots. She has falsely claimed Trump was the true victor in Michigan in 2020 and has spread the conspiracy theory that left-wing anarchists were behind the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.Trump had backed Karamo in the 2022 secretary of state race, which she lost by 14 points to incumbent Democrat Jocelyn Benson.A CNN review in November 2021 of Karamo's podcast and writings on her now defunct personal website revealed her declaring herself an "anti-vaxxer" in 2020 even before the Covid-19 vaccine became a political flashpoint. She opposed teaching evolution and called public schools "government indoctrination camps."CNN's KFile reported last year that Karamo called abortion "child sacrifice" and a "satanic practice."The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved. Share this article:
- [Republicans pushing a plan to remove you (yes, you too) from Arizona's voter rolls](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/20/republicans-pushing-a-plan-to-remove-you-yes-you-too-from-arizonas-voter-rolls/) - In August, the attorney general of Arizona wrapped up his investigation into the Cyber Ninjas’ claim that hundreds of dead voters cast ballots in the 2020 election.To the surprise of absolutely no one, braindead or alive, Attorney General Mark Brnovich concluded that the Senate’s vaunted auditors didn’t know what they were talking about. There was no vast graveyard full of dead voters determined to deny Donald Trump his due.Not even so much as a small crypt of conspiracy.So naturally, there’s a bill in the Arizona Legislature to take care of this nonexistent problem … by cancelling your voter registration.I am not making this up.Senate Bill 1566 would wipe Arizona’s voter rolls clean every 10 years, requiring millions of Arizonans to re-register to vote.It is but one of the dozens of kooky bills born of MAGA zealots and their absolute refusal to consider the fact that maybe they are losing statewide races because their candidates just aren’t acceptable to a statewide electorate.Both the Senate and House education committees are chaired by election deniers.The chairwoman of the Senate Elections Committee is Sen. Wendy Rogers of Flagstaff, who wanted to decertify the 2020 election and regularly calls for the arrest of elections officials. After being tapped by Senate President Warren Petersen to run point on election bills this year, Rogers vowed to engineer a do-over of Maricopa County’s 2022 election, though it seems more like a fundraising gimmick than an actual plan.The chairwoman of the House Municipal Oversight and Elections Committee is Rep. Jacqueline Parker of Mesa, who, like Rogers, was a co-sponsor of then-Rep. Mark Finchem’s 2022 proposal to decertify Arizona’s 2020 presidential election. Her panel is packed with election deniers.Every week, we are treated to veritable buffet of bad bills designed to fix problems that exist only in their fevered imaginations.There’s a bill to do away with early ballots, the voting method of choice by 8 in 10 voters.There’s a bill to ban ballot tabulators, never mind that hand counts are considered less accurate and more expensive. Or that a hand count of up to 70 races on 3 million or more ballots is likely to last until Christmas. There‘s a bill to ban unmonitored ballot drop boxes out of some undocumented fear that Eeyore is lurking about and another to return to voting in precincts, never mind it leads to more voters being disenfranchised when they show up to the wrong place to vote.There’s a bill that would require elections officials to post online the name, year of birth and address of every voter and another that would allow representatives of the Republican and Democratic parties to challenge your signature on an early ballot.Then there is SB 1566, requiring you to reregister every 10 years if you want to continue exercising your constitutional right to vote.In pushing the bill, Sen. Sonny Borrelli, R-Lake Havasu City, noted that he decided to look into the issue after the Attorney General’s Office spent “thousands of hours” investigating claims of dead voters.“So I had my audit team go through voter registrations on dead voters and bounced that against the people that voted,” he recently told the Senate Elections Committee. “They looked at 30 ballot envelopes. Within 45 minutes they found 17 people that somehow voted after they died.”Fifty-six percent? Clearly, our elections are being determined by those whose forwarding address lies somewhere near the Pearly Gates … or perhaps a good ways south of there.Curiously, Borrelli didn’t mention the findings of the Attorney General’s Office after all those hours of investigation.The ninjas, as part of their five-month audit of Maricopa County’s election, reported that 282 dead voters cast ballots in the November 2020 election. The AG’s Office then said it spent hundreds of hours investigating those claims.The conclusion: 281 of those 282 voters were alive and kicking when they cast ballots.“Our agents investigated all individuals that Cyber Ninas reported as dead, and many were very surprised to learn they were allegedly deceased,” Attorney General Brnovich wrote in an August letter to then-Senate President Karen Fann.AG investigators also checked out four other reports of up to 6,500 supposedly dead people who either cast ballots or were on the voter registration rolls. They came up with “only a handful of potential cases,” all of them isolated instances.Yet another conspiracy gone kaput – consigned to the graveyard of crazy to rest in peace alongside Sharpies, green buttons, bamboo ballots, hacked machinery and all the other supposedly nefarious ways in which Arizona’s 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.Only to rise again in the Senate Elections Committee, and to heck with federal law.The National Voter Registration Act outlines how and when a person’s name can be removed from the voter rolls, for example if he or she requests it or moves or dies.The act also requires states to make “a reasonable effort to remove ineligible persons by reason of the person’s death, or a change in the residence of the registrant outside of the jurisdiction.”I’m guessing a wholesale wipeout of every Arizonan’s registration every 10 years might be considered a tad, I don’t know, unreasonable?“It violates federal law,” Jen Marson, of the Arizona Association of Counties, warned the committee. "It’s totally in conflict with NVRA.”Even some Republicans were queasy about the proposal. Sen. T.J. Shope, R-Coolidge said he doesn’t view the bill as legitimate. Sens. Ken Bennett, R-Prescott, and John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, agreed.Then all three voted yes and the bill passed on a party line 5-3 vote.Voters may not be dead but when it comes to the state Capitol, common sense is a goner.Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.Support local journalism: Subscribe to azcentral.com today.
- [Robbins: Court docs spotlight Fox's embrace of lies for $$ - Boston Herald](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/20/robbins-court-docs-spotlight-foxs-embrace-of-lies-for-boston-herald/) - When Dominion Voting Systems filed its $1.6 billion (that’s with a “b”) lawsuit against Fox News Network two years ago, it alleged that Fox had intentionally and recklessly defamed it by publishing and re-publishing false claims that Dominion had rigged the 2020 presidential election, manipulated vote counts and paid kickbacks to government officials. News Alert: Fox is in trouble.Last week, after using the judicial process to disgorge internal Fox documents and take the sworn testimony of Fox producers, executives and television hosts, Dominion’s lawyers filed hundreds of pages of materials strongly indicating that it has the proverbial receipts. The conservative media powerhouse will be fortunate to avoid a jury’s verdict that it lied about Dominion, that it knew it was lying, and that among its principal motivations for promoting lies was its perceived need to pander to the most untethered of its viewership, which keeps Fox’s bank books fat and Rupert Murdoch happy. To put it succinctly: Dominion’s court filings show that Fox is perfectly happy to traffic in falsehoods in order to preserve its cash flow. For weeks following the 2020 election, Fox hosts hawked Donald Trump’s snake oil, fostering and repeating the fraudulent claim that Trump, not Joe Biden, had won the election. They endorsed, regurgitated and recycled the hogwash spewed by Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, and pillow salesman Mike Lindell, that Dominion had cooked the election in Biden’s favor using “software” and “algorithms,” changing Trump votes to Biden votes. It was garbage, of course – and Fox knew it, as a ton of evidence from Fox’s own internal files makes quite clear. Fox host and money-machine Tucker Carlson admitted to his producer “Sidney Powell is lying,” acknowledging that what she was selling on Fox “news shows” was “ludicrous,” “totally off the rails” and “shockingly reckless.” One Fox reporter admitted to Fox’s chief political correspondent “It’s dangerously insane these conspiracy theories.” A Fox producer called the accusations against Dominion “complete BS.” The company’s senior vice president warned that this stuff was “mind-blowingly nuts”. Fox’s internal fact-checker stated simply that the allegations against Dominion were “incorrect.” Asked under oath about the claims published on Fox, the network’s own political editor replied “No reasonable person would have thought that.” But that didn’t stop Fox from continuing its barrage of trash – because it concluded that if it didn’t, it would lose viewers, and revenue, to Newsmax, the fledgling ultra-conservative network that makes Fox look like the house organ of the Democratic National Committee. When Fox called the Arizona election for Biden on election night, the full fury of Trump World was unleashed on Fox, and Fox management panicked that its base would turn to Newsmax. “Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience?” an alarmed Carlson texted his producer. “We’re playing with fire for real…an alternative like Newsmax could be devastating to us.” When a Fox reporter tweeted “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised,” Carlson was furious. “Please get her fired. Seriously.” he texted colleague Sean Hannity. “It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.” A Fox executive agreed. “She has serious nerve doing this,” he responded about the reporter-gone-rogue, “and if this gets picked up, viewers are going to be further disgusted.” The next day, the reporter deleted her tweet. “We can’t make people think we’ve turned against Trump,” one Fox executive admonished. Carlson’s producer made the same point, only slightly differently. “Many viewers were upset tonight that we didn’t cover election fraud,” he warned. “It’s all our viewers care about right now.” Turns out that the only fraud was that which Fox was promoting — for profit. Jeff Robbins is a Boston lawyer and former U.S. delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
- [How Dominion Voting Systems filing proves Fox News was 'deliberately lying'](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/20/how-dominion-voting-systems-filing-proves-fox-news-was-deliberately-lying/) - AnalysisHow Dominion Voting Systems filing proves Fox News was ‘deliberately lying’Charles Kaiser in New YorkDocument makes clear senior Fox News figures knew after 2020 election voter fraud claims were false – and it’s likely a landmark caseThe Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe said Dominion Voting Systems’ brief requesting summary judgment against Fox News for defamation – and $1.6bn – is “likely to succeed and likely to be a landmark” in the history of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.Fox News hosts thought Trump’s election fraud claims were ‘total BS’, court filings showRead more“I have never seen a defamation case with such overwhelming proof that the defendant admitted in writing that it was making up fake information in order to increase its viewership and its revenues,” Tribe told the Guardian. “Fox and its producers and performers were lying as part of their business model.”The case concerns Fox News’s repetition of Donald Trump’s lie that his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud, including claims about Dominion voting machines.Tribe said the filing “establishes that Fox was not only reckless” but also that producers, owners and personalities were “deliberately lying and knew they were lying about the nature of Dominion’s machines and the supposed way they could be manipulated”.Filed last week, the 192-page document makes it clear that senior figures at Fox News from Rupert Murdoch down knew immediately after the election that claims of voter fraud, in particular those aimed at Dominion, were false.Tucker Carlson called the charges “ludicrous” and “off the rails”. Sean Hannity texted about “F’ing lunatics”. A senior network vice-president called one of the stories “MIND BLOWINGLY NUTS”.But none of this knowledge prevented hosts from repeating lies about everything from imaginary algorithms shaving votes from Dominion machines to non-existent ties between the company and Venezuela.Tribe was one of several first amendment experts to call the filing nearly unprecedented.“This is the most remarkable discovery filing I’ve ever read in a commercial litigation,” said Scott Horton, a Columbia Law School lecturer, Harper’s Magazine contributing editor and litigator with clients including CBS and the Associated Press.“A summary judgment motion by a plaintiff in this kind of case is almost unheard of. These suits usually fail because you can’t prove the company you’re suing knew they were spreading falsehoods. That you would have evidence they knew it was a lie is almost unheard of … in this case the sheer volume of all the email and text messages is staggering.”Horton said Dominion’s case gets “huge benefit” from the way Fox employees “express themselves with a huge measure of hyperbole about absolutely everything”.Tribe agreed: “This is one of the first defamation cases in which it is possible to rule for the plaintiff on summary judgment. This is not a request to go to trial. There is no genuinely disputed fact. The defendants were deliberately lying in a manner that was per se libelous and they clearly knew it.”When the Dominion filing was first reported, Fox News said it “mischaracterized the record, cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context and spilled considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law”.Lawyers for Fox News claim everything their anchors said was protected by the first amendment.Other lawyers are skeptical.“You may have a first amendment right to report on what the president said but you have no right to validate a statement that you know to be false,” said Steven Shapiro, former legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union and counsel or co-counsel on more than 200 supreme court briefs.David Korzenik is a leading libel lawyer whose clients include the Guardian. He said the Dominion case shows it “possible to prove actual malice. If particular people are shown to have believed something to be false, or to have been highly aware of its probable falsehood, and at the same time they made statements endorsing it on air, they are in play.“You’re allowed to be biased … you’re allowed to try to make money. And people should be able to disagree with each other in a newsroom. But if Fox anchors say they don’t believe X and then turn around and endorse X on air after expressing manifest disbelief in it, they have a real problem.“The actual malice standard is very high and it’s supposed to be … it’s a burden that can be overcome in limited but appropriate circumstances.”The biggest irony revealed by the Dominion filing is that Carlson and colleagues quickly decided the greatest threat to their network was one of the only times it reported an accurate scoop: that Arizona had gone for Biden, at 11.20pm on election night.Four days later, another Murdoch property, the New York Post, asked Trump to stop the stolen election claim. Rupert Murdoch thanked the Fox News chief executive, Suzanne Scott, for making sure the editorial got wide distribution, according to the Dominion filing.But later that day, as Fox executives realized they were losing viewers, the tide began to shift.“Getting creamed by CNN!” Murdoch messaged Scott.In a message to his producer, Carlson sounded terrified: “Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience? We’re playing with fire, for real an alternative like Newsmax could be devastating to us.”And so on 8 November Maria Bartiromo featured the Trump adviser Sidney Powell and said: “I know that there were voting irregularities. Tell me about that.”That alternate reality would be repeated for months. Perhaps most devastating of all is Dominion’s account of what happened on 12 November, after the reporter Jaqui Heinrich “correctly factchecked [a Trump] tweet, pointing out that top election infrastructure officials said that there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”Carlson was incensed. He messaged Hannity: “Please get her fired. Seriously what the fuck? Actually shocked. It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down.”Hannity complained to Scott, who said Heinrich had “serious nerve doing this and if this gets picked up, viewers are going to be further disgusted”.By the next morning, Heinrich had deleted her tweet.TopicsFox NewsUS elections 2020Donald TrumpUS politicsUS televisionUS television industryTV newsanalysisReuse this content
- [Red & Blue Special Edition: Focus Group about Election Integrity - CBS News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/20/red-blue-special-edition-focus-group-about-election-integrity-cbs-news/) - Red & Blue Special Edition: Focus Group about Election Integrity - CBS News
- [Dominion Lawsuit: Undoing Fox News Damage to GOP 'Could Take Decade' - Business Insider](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/20/dominion-lawsuit-undoing-fox-news-damage-to-gop-could-take-decade-business-insider/) - A sign held up at the "Fox can't handle the truth" protest outside Fox News headquarters on June 14, 2022 in New York City. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images Redeem now Georgia's former Lt. gov., Geoff Duncan, discussed Dominion's Fox News lawsuit. He accused the network of pushing election fraud claims that had damaged the GOP. Dominion's Fox News lawsuit alleges the network made claims that its executives knew were false. Top editors give you the stories you want — delivered right to your inbox each weekday. Loading Something is loading. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. download the app Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. .inline-newsletter-signup.loading { width: 100%; max-width: 640px; margin: 0 auto; visibility: hidden; } Republican former Lt. gov. of Georgia Geoff Duncan said it would take a decade to undo the damage to the GOP caused by Fox News in allegedly promoting conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.Speaking on CNN's 'State of the Union' Sunday, Duncan, who is an analyst on the network, addressed claims in a lawsuit released last week by election machines company Dominion.Dominion is suing Fox News for $1.6 billion, arguing it promoted baseless claims that the company was involved in a vast conspiracy to deprive Donald Trump of victory in the 2020 presidential election. —State of the Union (@CNNSotu) February 19, 2023A group of conservative campaigners last year claimed Dominion had changed its voting machines to deny re-election to Trump. There has been no evidence for voting fraud in the presidential election. The lawsuit claims that top network hosts and executives believed the claims to be be false, and in some cases privately mocked them, yet promoted them anyway in an apparent bid to retain the loyalty of its large audience of Trump supporters.Duncan said that in pushing the false narrative, Fox News was pandering to its audience's prejudices for the sake of the bottom line. "What happened on Fox News was hard for the Republican party, right?" said Duncan. "It allowed, it might take a decade to unwind some of those, the fanning of the flames of all these conspiracy theories, and it was painful to watch and listen to."He said that the news media must find a better balance between the for-profit business model and news that's in the public interest. Dominion claims the weight of evidence it has compiled is so great that it should be awarded a summary judgement before the case even goes to to trial.The network in a statement said that its right to broadcast the information was protected by the First Amendment. "There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion," said a spokesperson, "but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution.""Dominion has mischaracterized the record, cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context, and spilled considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law." Duncan served under Republican Georgia Gov Brian Kemp, who was attacked by Trump and his allies for refusing to back their bid to overturn the 2020 election. Duncan has previously criticised Trump and his allies for promoting false election fraud claims. .content-lock-lock .hidden { display: none; } Sign up for notifications from Insider! Stay up to date with what you want to know. Subscribe to push notifications Close icon Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.
- [The 'wackadoodle' foundation of Fox News' election-fraud claims - NPR](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/20/the-wackadoodle-foundation-of-fox-news-election-fraud-claims-npr/) - Enlarge this image Fox News host Maria Bartiromo invited Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell on her show to discuss allegations of election fraud based on an email laying out claims even the writer called "pretty wackadoodle." Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images A woman who says the wind talks to her and put forth claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential race that she admitted were "pretty wackadoodle" turns out to be a key source of allegations that Fox News presented, night after night, to millions of viewers late that fall. Joe Biden's victory caused Fox News personalities to all but melt down on the air. Off the air, a sense of crisis pervaded the private conversations of the network's executives and stars. Viewers who supported then-President Donald Trump abandoned Fox in droves after its Election Night team became the first in the nation to project that Biden would win the pivotal state of Arizona. Desperate to win back the Trump supporters, Fox News and the Fox Business Network turned at least a dozen times to a pro-Trump attorney named Sidney Powell who, when pressed for evidence, forwarded a memo entitled "Election Fraud Info" to Fox anchor Maria Bartiromo. Bartiromo hosted Powell on her Fox News show the day after receiving it. 'Like time travel in a semi-conscious state' The author of the memo in which Powell and Bartiromo put so much stock offered detailed and utterly false claims of how Dominion Voting Systems helped rig the election for Biden. She also shared a bit about herself, writing that she gains insights from experiencing something "like time-travel in a semi-conscious state." The existence of the memo, its enigmatic author, and her role in Fox's broadcasts surfaced in a devastating 178-page legal brief filed by Dominion Voting Systems and made public last week by a Delaware court. The election-tech company has sued Fox News for $1.6 billion for defamation over the airing of false claims that it engaged in election fraud.
- [Election deniers hold critical positions in Republican politics despite national rejection - PBS](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/20/election-deniers-hold-critical-positions-in-republican-politics-despite-national-rejection-pbs/) - Lisa Desjardins: Let's take you through the map.And these — each of these candidates is a little bit different, now party chairmen.First, Kristina Karamo, as you said, in Michigan. This was Saturday night that she was elected in a contentious election in Michigan. But then, after that, let's look at Kansas. There, a man Mike Brown is the new party chairman. He was elected a week ago. He ran ads last year in his secretary of state bid questioning the 2020 election and raising that debunked Dominion Voting idea. That was part of his failed campaign for secretary of state, now the party chairman in Kansas.Then let's go to two others who are not outright deniers, but someone — these are folks who have raised doubts or allowed these doubts to fester. There, you see in Florida the new Florida Republican chairman, Christian Ziegler. He is someone who says he wants to move forward, move past 2020. He was at the January 6 rally in Washington, but he condemned the actions that day later on.Then in Arizona, another swing state, Jeff DeWit, similarly a former top Trump official, he was elected party chairman there three weeks ago. He beat an outright election denier. So, in some places, this is a question of how far right you are. But he is someone who overtly has gone out of his way to not answer questions about whether 2020 election was legitimate or not.
- [Nonprofit sheds light on financial insecurity with survey - Spectrum News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/20/nonprofit-sheds-light-on-financial-insecurity-with-survey-spectrum-news/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Temporary Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits brought on by the pandemic ended in April 2022 for several states, including Kentucky. The extra SNAP monies end for the remaining 32 states next month.But a new survey shows how serious food insecurity levels are as prices rise and more pandemic related benefits are ending. What You Need To Know ParentsTogether Action is a nonprofit comprising over 3 million parents The nonprofit conducted a 2023 survey on low- and middle-income families in terms of their financial insecurity It found that 64% of respondents said their family finds it hard to make ends meet right now Paying for essentials like diapers, formula and feminine hygiene products accounted for 60% of respondents’ biggest challenge The survey conducted by the national nonprofit ParentsTogether Action asked over 550 primarily low- and middle-income families about their state of financial insecurity. Taken the first week of February this year, it found that 64% of respondents said their family finds it hard to make ends meet right now—with the biggest challenge being food. Paying for essentials like diapers, formula and feminine hygiene products accounted for 60% of respondents’ biggest challenge. Additionally, 57% of respondents saying their biggest challenge was paying for utilities. Ailen Arreaza serves as the executive director of ParentsTogether Action, says the program works for families who may be struggling. “This is a program that worked, right? Families were getting extra help, and they were able to afford extra food to feed their families. Why are we getting rid of it?” Arreaza asked. “If we have a solution that works and that families are benefiting from, kids are being able to be fed to thrive, it doesn’t really make sense for us to get rid of something that’s helping families.” Arreaza says the nonprofit currently has a membership of just over 3 million parents. The group says they’ll continue to advocate for families on Capitol Hill, where they fear some politicians will continue to make cuts to federal food assistance as a part of debt ceiling negotiations. The extra SNAP benefits were a temporary measure authorized by Congress to help people cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, but a 2023 law passed by Congress makes those extra funds expire by March 2023.
- [5 reasons to subscribe to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Courier Journal](https://slc.lul.org/2021/03/04/5-reasons-to-subscribe-to-the-pulitzer-prize-winning-courier-journal/) - You can play a vital role in supporting local journalism that you can trust.With a subscription, you can help our journalists hold those in power accountable.Here's a look at what you'll get: 1. AppsThe Courier Journal offers several apps that can be personalized to your liking.The Courier Journal app allows you to download articles for offline reading, choose your own article display option, and set news alerts.Are you a Cards or Cats fan? There's an app just for you. Cards HQ and Cats HQ gives you news about your team — and your team only. Love our print edition? The Courier Journal Print Edition app allows for easy and quick viewing of the e-Edition, the digital replica of the print edition, each day.SPECIAL OFFER: Check out our latest subscription deal2. News alerts for what matters to youThrough the Courier Journal app, you can personalize notifications so you can know the news right when it happens. You can select alerts for breaking news, news, sports, entertainment, weather, traffic and business. Quiet times for your alerts can be set within the app.3. Unlimited access Great stories don’t stop with great writing. With your subscription, you’ll have unlimited access to our videos, photo galleries, and interactive data visuals. Explore Louisville's secret tunnels or go on a journey to Puerto Rico.You may like:Courier Journal earns 34 Kentucky Press Association awards. Check out our prize-winning work4. NewslettersTo keep our subscribers informed, we offer a suite of newsletters to keep you up-to-date on the top news, sports, business and things to do stories each week. You can receive the top 5 articles to your inbox each day in the form of the Daily Briefing newsletter, complete with photos and article summaries.We also offer in-depth newsletters on two of the biggest stories in Louisville: the COVID-19 pandemic and the Breonna Taylor case.Subscribers can click through to the full articles straight from the email. 5. E-Edition: A digital replica of the Courier Journal You can access the print edition daily on your computer, mobile device, or tablet by accessing the e-Edition, a digital replica of the print edition. The e-Edition can be accessed on our website or through the Courier Journal Print Edition app.Meet our new leader:Veteran journalist Mary Irby-Jones named top editor of Courier JournalHow do I sign up?Right now, we have a special offer for first-time subscribers. Visit our subscription page to take advantage of this limited-time offer. Check out our great journalism An arduous & tragic journey:Louisville community reflects on the pandemic and year to comeSo long, farewell:These 7 restaurants have closed in Louisville so far this yearSports:How Ole Miss loss revealed the last tweak Kentucky basketball can hope salvages seasonExclusive:Watch Ethan the rescue dog reunite with the family that helped save his lifeSee it:This 105-year-old Louisville man just got his second COVID-19 shot
- [John Oliver Blasts Fox News Channel After Court Filing Shows Hosts Didn't Believe 2020 ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/20/john-oliver-blasts-fox-news-channel-after-court-filing-shows-hosts-didnt-believe-2020/) - John Oliver took Fox News Channel to the mat on Sunday night during the 10th-season premiere of Last Week Tonight.At the top of his HBO talk show, which has been on hiatus since November, Oliver brought up the court filings that were made public last week in a 1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News related to the 2020 election fraud claims.Dominion Voting Systems, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, is suing Fox News and parent company Fox Corporation, claiming some Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims that Dominion had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements.The court filings claim that Fox News hosts had serious concerns about allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election being made by guests who were allies of former President Donald Trump.“Sidney Powell is lying,” about having evidence for election fraud,
- [John Oliver Rips Fox News for 2020 Election Fraud Claims - The Hollywood Reporter](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/19/john-oliver-rips-fox-news-for-2020-election-fraud-claims-the-hollywood-reporter/) - John Oliver took Fox News Channel to the mat on Sunday night during the 10th-season premiere of Last Week Tonight. At the top of his HBO talk show, which has been on hiatus since November, Oliver brought up the court filings that were made public last week in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News related to the 2020 election fraud claims. Dominion Voting Systems, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, is suing Fox News and parent company Fox Corporation, claiming some Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims that Dominion had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements. Related Stories The court filings claim that Fox News hosts had serious concerns about allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election being made by guests who were allies of former President Donald Trump. “Sidney Powell is lying,” about having evidence for election fraud, Tucker Carlson told a producer about the attorney on Nov. 16, 2020, according to an excerpt from an exhibit that remains under seal. Carlson also referred to Powell in a text as an “unguided missile,” and “dangerous as hell.” Laura Ingraham, meanwhile, told Carlson that Powell is “a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy,” referring to former New York mayor and Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani. And Sean Hannity said in a deposition “that whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second,” according to Dominion’s filing. Oliver started off his Last Week Tonight segment by quipping that Fox News’ “very name is a lie in that it provides neither news nor, indeed, foxes.” Oliver showed a CNN report of hosts including Ingraham noting that “disturbing irregularities have been found and must be investigated to the fullest.” Said Oliver: “Wow, if I were a Fox viewer, I’d feel pretty betrayed by that. It’s like finding out that Big Bird regularly texts Elmo, ‘Fuck them kids,’ and Elmo agrees.” Back to the Fox News hosts, Oliver noted that the court filing shows “the extent to which Fox News hosts did not believe the shit that they were selling, which is completely fine if you work for QVC and you have to fill an hour on why a bejeweled Squatty Potty will save your life, but it’s a bit more concerning when you pretend to be the news.” Oliver also pointed to claims in the court filing where Fox News hosts are accused of being concerned about losing viewers to right-wing channels like Newsmax, with internal communication between Hannity and a producer noting that their “best minutes” being on the “voting irregularities.” Oliver then said he sympathized with the need to keep viewers, noting he and his Last Week Tonight team also face pressure to keep people tuning in. The difference? “We do it the old-fashioned way, by having integrity, self-respect and the blind fortune of airing right after hit prestige dramas that people actually want to watch. It’s not difficult,” he quipped, as the title cards from HBO’s Game of Thrones, Succession and The Last of Us were displayed onscreen — all shows that Last Week Tonight airs or has aired after. “Multiple Fox hosts seem to see telling the truth as a potentially existential threat,” Oliver said. He then showed a clip of a CNN report saying that Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich had fact-checked a Trump tweet about votes being destroyed, after which Carlson texted colleagues: “Please get her fired. Seriously….What the F***?… It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down.” Said Oliver: “As egregious as that is, it does definitely track, as the list of fireable offenses at Fox News seems to be ‘making stock price go down’ or ‘being a sexual monster for decades (but only if people outside the company find out about it).'” Fox News attorneys have argued in a counterclaim that the lawsuit is an assault on the First Amendment. They said Dominion has advanced “novel defamation theories” and is seeking a “staggering” damage figure aimed at generating headlines, chilling protected speech and enriching Dominion’s private equity owner, Staple Street Capital Partners. Fox attorneys also said in their own summary judgment brief that Carlson repeatedly questioned Powell’s claims in his broadcasts. They also wrote that when voting-technology companies denied the allegations being made by Trump and his surrogates, Fox News aired those denials, while some Fox News hosts offered protected opinion commentary about Trump’s allegations. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
- [Wisconsin Supreme Court race holds high stakes for abortion rights and the 2024 election](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/19/wisconsin-supreme-court-race-holds-high-stakes-for-abortion-rights-and-the-2024-election/) - What's typically an under-the-radar judicial election in Wisconsin has turned into a high-stakes and expensive fight for control of the state's Supreme Court -- with the future of abortion, voting rights and redistricting in this battleground state hanging in the balance.The video featured is from a previous report.Millions of dollars in advertising have been reserved ahead of Tuesday's primary election -- the first of two rounds that will determine who replaces a retiring conservative justice, potentially shifting the balance on Wisconsin's seven-judge high court. While the election is nonpartisan, each of the four contenders is squarely in the liberal or conservative camps."This seat is crucial to the balance of the court, and the court is crucial to the balance of the state," said Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of its Elections Research Center.In a state where Democrats control the governor's office and Republicans hold sway in the legislature, the Wisconsin Supreme Court could become the final arbiter on an array of consequential issues, including the fate of the state's prohibition on abortion in nearly all cases -- enacted in 1849. The US Supreme Court's decision last summer ending federal legal protections for the procedure has super-charged the rhetoric -- and spending -- around abortion in the Wisconsin race.RELATED: Wisconsin governor, attorney general file lawsuit challenging state's pre-Roe abortion banThe state Supreme Court could also play a crucial role in the 2024 election. Wisconsin was a key location of former President Donald Trump's attempts to overturn his 2020 loss, and the refusal of a conservative justice on the state Supreme Court to go along with an effort that year to toss out ballots in two heavily Democratic counties looms large in the rivalry between the two right-leaning candidates in this year's race."The Wisconsin Supreme Court race is the most important election in the country this year to set the stage for 2024," Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, told CNN.The executive director of the Wisconsin GOP, Mark Jefferson, described the contest as one with "every significant issue of the last generation on the ballot."Early voting in the primary is already underway, with the final day of balloting Tuesday. The top two finishers will advance to the general election on April 4.Conservative majority on the lineWisconsin is one of 38 states that use some form of elections to select their Supreme Court judges, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's law school. In many cases, those are retention elections in which previously appointed justices run unopposed.Currently, conservatives hold a 4-3 majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court and have voted in recent years to prohibit ballot drop boxes and have selected maps that cemented Republicans' solid majority in the state legislature. This year, the departure of a conservative justice, Patience Roggensack, gives liberals an opportunity to seize the majority. The side that prevails in the election this spring is expected to control the court through the 2024 presidential election.The candidates hoping to advance to the April general election are liberals Janet Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee County circuit court judge, and Everett Mitchell, a circuit judge in Dane County; and conservatives Daniel Kelly, a former state Supreme Court justice, and Jennifer Dorow, a judge perhaps best known for presiding over the trial of a man convicted of killing six and injuring scores more in a 2021 attack on a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin.Outside money has flooded the race, surpassing candidate spending. As of Thursday afternoon, orders for TV and radio ads focused on the race had hit $7 million, according to advertising tracked by Kantar Media/CMAG for the Brennan Center. Experts say the spending on the race could smash the previous record -- $15.2 million spent on a 2004 Illinois Supreme Court race, according to the Brennan Center -- for the most expensive campaign for a single state Supreme Court seat.If a liberal and conservative emerge as the top two vote-getters Tuesday, this "will unquestionably be the most expensive (Supreme Court) race in Wisconsin history and quite possibly the most expensive race in the nation," said Doug Keith, a Brennan Center counsel who works on judiciary issues.Abortion at the forefrontProtasiewicz has led the field in fundraising and ad spending, according to the latest data. In a sign of the potency of the abortion issue in the contest, she has run television spots that put her support for abortion rights front and center.Outside groups on both sides of the issue are participating in this race in ways that go beyond their prior involvement in similar elections."We just know that the outcome of this race has serious implications for abortion rights in the years to come," Tiffany Wynn, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, told CNN. Justices on Wisconsin's high court serve ten-year terms.The US Supreme Court in its Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision last June overturned the Roe v. Wade precedent that said that the US Constitution protected abortion rights. Since then, state courts have become ground zero in the legal fights over abortions access."These races are more important, for obvious reasons, than ever after Dobbs," said Kelsey Pritchard, a spokesperson for the state affairs team at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which supports anti-abortion candidates. She pointed to a recent ruling by the South Carolina Supreme Court striking down a six-week abortion ban on state constitutional grounds and said that the anti-abortion movement is at risk of "mini-Roe decisions all across the country."Abortion rights advocates feel bolstered by last year's midterm elections -- particularly how they played out in Wisconsin, with Democratic incumbents, Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul, winning reelection after campaigns highlighting their commitment to abortion rights. Anti-abortion advocates, meanwhile, recognize that their messaging fell short in the fall, and they're adjusting their strategy for driving like-minded voters to the polls."We have a great base, but this far, in the majority of conversations we have had with them, many are not even aware that abortion is going to be the fundamental issue for this race," Gracie Skogman, political action committee director for the anti-abortion group Wisconsin Right to Life, told CNN. "They're not aware that the fate of our current law rests in the hands of the court, depending on this election. And so that's the case we're doing the best to make."While Protasiewicz has pushed an unabashed abortion rights message in her campaign, the other candidates have found other ways to explicitly or implicitly signal how they'd approach the issue.Like Protasiewicz, Everett has been openly critical of the Dobbs ruling. He told CNN that "you can criticize that and still say, 'I am going to be a judge who looks at the facts, looks at the law, and we go from there.'"The two conservative candidates have vowed to honor the US Supreme Court's Dobbs decision and have stressed that they would not legislate from the bench -- rhetoric that has been interpreted to mean that they would let the state's law, enacted before women in the country gained the right to vote, stand.In a statement to CNN, the Kelly campaign singled out Protasiewicz, saying that she sees legal disputes "not as matters to be resolved according to the law, but as opportunities to enact her personal values."Protasiewicz defended her upfront approach to abortion, which made her a target of a complaint alleging that she violated a judicial code of conduct that bars judges from committing to how they will vote on issues that may come before them. Her team has cast the complaint as politically motivated."I really think the electorate deserves to know the values of the people that are running for office," Protasiewicz told CNN. "We have this kind of fake, little smokescreen, where certain people think justices should just say that 'I'm going to follow the law,' and that doesn't tell you very much about the person at all."Kelly, who is seeking a comeback after losing his high court seat in 2020, has been endorsed by the largest anti-abortion organizations in the state, and he recently picked up the support of the national Susan B. Anthony group. With that endorsement comes a six-figure mail, phone and text message campaign on his behalf.A looming presidential raceThis spring's Supreme Court race is expected to set the stage for the 2024 election, as the Wisconsin high court is likely to be asked to weigh in on the ground rules for next year's contest."Even a tiny shift in voting rules can affect the outcome of a presidential election," said Wikler, the state Democratic Party chair. "So, what happens in Wisconsin on April 4 will have a direct impact on who gets sworn into the next term as president of the United States."Last year, the court's conservative majority barred the use of most ballot drop boxes and prohibited local election officials from filling in missing information on absentee ballot return envelopes. Republicans see the state's voter ID law as on the line in the race, with the state GOP's Jefferson accusing Democrats of trying to use the courts to "strike down any ballot security measure they can."It is also not lost on those involved in this election that the Wisconsin Supreme Court played a pivotal role in 2020, by rebuffing Trump's efforts to throw out ballots in Democratic-leaning counties."Because Wisconsin sits at the apex of a lot of national conversations -- whether it's the Senate race or presidential -- I think Wisconsin, at this moment, may end up deciding bigger things like the presidential election, like it did 2020," Everett, one of the two liberal candidates, told CNN. "I think the implications of that decision that was made in 2020 is the reason why people are paying attention at such a greater detail."Brian Hagedorn, the right-leaning justice who sided with the liberals in the Trump case -- and who also ruled with the liberals to uphold Covid-19 restrictions -- has been invoked by Kelly as a cudgel against his conservative rival Dorow. Kelly has pointed to his 2020 endorsement of Hagedorn to explain why he won't commit to endorsing Dorow should she prevail over him Tuesday, implying that she can't be depended on to rule conservatively from the bench.ALSO SEE: Planned Parenthood of Illinois, Wisconsin to ensure abortion clinic access, care in partnership"I think it's just terribly presumptuous to say that I have to endorse her blind," Kelly said of Dorow during a recent appearance on conservative Milwaukee broadcaster Mark Belling's radio show. "And, especially after Brian Hagedorn, I'm just not doing blind endorsements."Dorow's campaign did not make her available for an interview for this story.Kelly's role in advising the state Republican officials in the 2020 election, including as it relates to an alternate elector scheme, has recently come under scrutiny. But he has also expressed skepticism of the legal case Trump brought, and a campaign spokesman told CNN that "the views of clients are not attributable to their attorneys."Prominent groups that are backing Kelly tout him as the candidate with a proven record that can be trusted on the right. Among them is a group called Fair Courts America, linked to Republican megadonor and packaging magnate Richard Uihlein. State records show Uihlein donated $1.5 million to the group last month. A recent TV ad lauds Kelly's 2020 vote on the court to rein in government health orders during the pandemic.In a statement, Fair Courts America spokesman Dan Curry said the group is seeking to make the case that Kelly "is the clear choice ... for those who want a restrained and Constitution-based Supreme Court."Revisiting redistrictingWith the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, progressives finally see an opportunity to break up the state's heavily gerrymandered map, which has allowed Republicans to win some 65% of state legislative seats even in years when Democrats have narrowly won statewide contests.The conservative majority on the state's high court approved the current legislative lines, drawn by state Republican lawmakers, after the US Supreme Court tossed out another map that would have required the addition of a new majority-Black state Assembly district.A 2019 US Supreme Court case, known as Rucho v. Common Cause, said that the federal judiciary has no role to play in policing partisan gerrymanders -- meaning that state courts are one of the few tools that redistricting reformers have to combat aggressively partisan maps.If a liberal flips the court's open seat, progressive groups will attempt to relitigate the issue and urge the new majority to strike down the current map, Jay Heck, the executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin, told CNN.Heck and other voter advocates objected to the court's conservative majority deciding to use maps drawn by Republicans in 2011 as the foundation for the maps it considered following the 2020 census.Protasiewicz, who has called the state's legislative maps "rigged," has also criticized the conservative justices' "least change" approach from the 2011 maps, saying it has "no basis" in state law or the state constitution."They made it up to get to a preordained result," she said. (The-CNN-Wire
- [Biden Drawing Up a 2024 Playbook That Looks a Lot Like 2020's - The New York Times](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/19/biden-drawing-up-a-2024-playbook-that-looks-a-lot-like-2020s-the-new-york-times/) - President Biden’s strategy is to frame the race as a contest between a seasoned leader and a conspiracy-minded opposition, while batting away concerns about his age.WASHINGTON — Forget the Wilmington basement. This time he will have a Rose Garden. And Air Force One and a big white mansion and all the other advantages of incumbency in a year when he is not forced by a pandemic to stick to streaming from downstairs.But as President Biden prepares to run for a second term, his team is mapping out a strategy for 2024 that in many other ways resembles that of 2020. Whether he ultimately faces Donald J. Trump again or another Republican trying to be like Mr. Trump, the president plans a campaign message that still boils down to three words: Competent beats crazy.Whether he can sell that theme again represents a singular challenge given surveys showing that the public has not exactly rallied behind him and harbors deep doubts about his age. When Mr. Biden kicks off his re-election campaign this spring, as is widely expected, he will be the oldest president in history but one of the lowest-rated in the modern period, presiding over an economy that is improving but unsettled and leading a party publicly behind him but privately angst-ridden. And rather than Mr. Trump, he may yet face a Republican challenger closer to the age of his son.The goal, according to interviews with White House officials, outside advisers, key allies and party strategists, is to frame the race as a contest, not a referendum on Mr. Biden. On one side, in this narrative, will be a mature, seasoned leader with a raft of legislation on his record aimed at winning back working-class Democrats. On the other will be an ideologically driven, conspiracy-minded opposition consumed by its own internal power struggles and tethered to a leader facing multiple investigations for trying to overturn a democratic election.“It’s incumbent on the president and his team to make sure the election is a choice,” said Lis Smith, a senior adviser to Pete Buttigieg during the 2020 Democratic primary campaign. “It’s not going to be Joe Biden versus some mythical Democratic candidate. It’s going to be between Joe Biden and whoever the Republican nominee is.”Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster, said a rematch between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump would be the best scenario for the president. “At this point, President Biden just needs to seem like he is still very much with it and able to do the job and at that point his fate is largely out of his hands,” Mr. Ayres said. “He’s got to pray the Republicans blow themselves up again.”Lis Smith, a senior adviser to Pete Buttigieg during the 2020 Democratic primary campaign, in Keene, N.H., in 2019.Elizabeth Frantz for The New York TimesMr. Biden previewed his approach in his State of the Union address this month when he baited Republicans into a debate over Social Security and Medicare, then pressed his argument during appearances in Wisconsin and Florida. He used the nationally televised speech before Congress to highlight his legislative successes while focusing on pocketbook issues to reach out to voters upset at him over inflation.The trips that followed illustrated one important difference from 2020. No longer tied to the basement of his home in Delaware, the way he was by Covid-19 in 2020, Mr. Biden will travel frequently this year to deliver his message, aides said. As projects from the 2021 infrastructure package break ground, the president intends to cut a lot of ribbons around the country to take credit.Republican strategists are gambling that the physical toll of a full-scale, nonpandemic campaign effort will wear on an 80-year-old president. They plan to portray him as an aging, failed leader and a big-spending captive of the political left who drove up inflation and did little to defend the border against a record wave of illegal immigration.Which Republicans Are Eyeing the 2024 Presidential Election?Card 1 of 6The G.O.P. primary begins.
- [Kristina Karamo chosen as the next leader of MI GOP | WKZO | Everything Kalamazoo](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/19/kristina-karamo-chosen-as-the-next-leader-of-mi-gop-wkzo-everything-kalamazoo/) - LANSING, MI (WKZO AM/FM) — Secretary of State candidate Kristina Karamo, who was defeated by current Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson in the 2022 Election, was chosen by fellow Republicans on Saturday, February 18, over Kalamazoo attorney Matt DePerno as the next leader of the Michigan Republican Party.Karamo will be the first black women to lead the Michigan GOP and will serve with co-chair Malinda Pego for the next two years.She beat out Trump-endorsed failed Attorney General DePerno who had been expected to win. He is currently under investigation for allegedly tampering with voting machines used in the 2020 election, which has been part of a larger effort led by election deniers looking for proof that the election had been stolen from former president Donald Trump.Both Karamo and DePerno have denied the results of the 2020 election, with Karamo becoming more widely known for spreading COVID conspiracy theories and denying election results, including her own.Michigan Republicans are coming off years of losses, not only losing the state’s top leadership positions, but the majority in the legislature, handing Democrats full power for the first time in forty years.
- [Will Democratic Ad Boost Election Denier Brandtjen? - Urban Milwaukee](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/19/will-democratic-ad-boost-election-denier-brandtjen-urban-milwaukee/) - Get a daily rundown of the top stories on Urban Milwaukee Janel Brandtjen. Photo from the State of Wisconsin Blue Book 2015-16. Democrats are using a risky strategy — spending money in the Republican primary to boost an election denier’s candidacy — in the competitive race for Wisconsin’s 8th Senate District seat. Mailers paid for by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and a TV ad paid for by the campaign of Democratic candidate Jodi Habush Sinykin focus heavily on Republican candidate Rep. Janel Brandtjen (R-Menomonee Falls), who is known for her support of false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, while choosing not to name either of the other Republican candidates. “Janel Brandtjen is the most conservative you can be when it comes to abortion,” a woman says in a TV ad paid for by Democrat Jodi Habush Sinykin’s campaign. Brandtjen faces Rep. Dan Knodl (R-Germantown) and Thiensville Village President Van Mobley next week in the race for the GOP nomination. The winner will face Habush Sinykin in the April general election. The race for this traditionally Republican seat, which represents the suburbs north of Milwaukee, will determine whether Republicans regain a supermajority in the state Senate. By holding 22 of 33 seats in the state Senate, Republicans could speed up legislation and remove elected officials without Democrats’ input. The same strategy of Democratic support for far-right candidates was used, somewhat successfully, across the country during the 2022 midterm elections in races for the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives and for governor in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Maryland and Illinois. The idea is that far-right, election denier candidates could win Republican voters in the primary, but would be easier to beat than moderate Republican candidates in general elections. Brandtjen and Knodl both supported false claims about the 2020 elections, however, Knodl is viewed as having broader appeal. Knodl, like Brandtjen, signed a letter asking former Vice President Mike Pence to not certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. Brandtjen, however, is seen as the more extreme of the two, having publicly promoted legally impossible attempts to decertify Wisconsin’s 2020 election results and having used her former position as chair of the Assembly campaigns and elections committee to bolster false claims about the 2020 election. Habush Sinykin’s TV ad showcases several other women who describe Brandtjen as “too conservative,” then follow up with how Habush Sinykin would fight for reproductive rights. While the ad running in the leadup to the primary is ostensibly airing criticism of Brandtjen, conservative voters opposed to abortion could be attracted to vote for her by the ad. “Our campaign is using Rep. Brandtjen to highlight the very dangerous views of all the Republicans running in this race,” Habush Sinykin’s campaign said in a statement to the Wisconsin Examiner. “We look forward to continuing to show that contrast to voters in the General Election, regardless of who wins the Republican primary.” A mailer — paid for by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin — highlights Brandtjen’s stances on abortion, showcasing that she was named “Pro-life Legislator of the year” by the group Pro-Life Wisconsin. Another mailer highlights former President Donald Trump’s support of Brandtjen with a quote from him: “‘The people of Wisconsin are lucky to have a strong and great leader like Representative Janel Brandtjen.’” Trump endorsed Brandtjen during her 2022 Assembly reelection campaign. Brandtjen told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that she isn’t paying “much attention to whatever strategy the Democrats may or may not be utilizing. I’ve been out knocking doors, talking to the people of the 8th district and hearing their concerns. That’s really all I care about at this time.” Republican groups have been working to stop Brandtjen from winning the nomination, saying she is divisive and could lose the seat for Republicans. An anti-Trump Republican group called Americans for Country First is spending upwards of $55,000 on ads urging people to vote against Brandtjen in the upcoming primary. Citing previous statements by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, the online ad calls Brandtjen “inept,” “unqualified” and says that she “spends her time tearing others down and dividing the state.” Democrats spend money in competitive Republican Senate primary was originally published by the Wisconsin Examiner.
- [Michigan GOP selects 2020 election denier as party leader - Axios](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/19/michigan-gop-selects-2020-election-denier-as-party-leader-axios/)
- [Big news in Dominion lawsuit: why Fox News kept up the Big Lie - The Colorado Sun](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/19/big-news-in-dominion-lawsuit-why-fox-news-kept-up-the-big-lie-the-colorado-sun/) - That the Big Lie took another Big Hit in Dominion Voting System’s defamation filing against Fox News should come as no surprise, no matter how many Republicans — it’s still apparently more than half, according to the polls — actually believe that the 2020 presidential election was somehow rigged. The question is how big a hit Fox will take, now that texts and deposition testimony from the network’s major hosts and executives — from Rupert Murdoch and Sean Hannity on down — show that they were fully aware that Donald Trump’s Big Lie was fake news even as they continued pushing the lie of a rigged election on their viewers. If you haven’t seen them already — and you probably have — I have some highlights, according to Dominion’s filing. Hannity on Rudy Giuliani: “acting like an insane person.” Tucker Carlson, who, to his credit, had pushed Sidney Powell — one of Trump’s crazier attorneys — hard on his show: “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane.” Laura Ingraham in reply: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.” Want early access to Mike’s columns? Subscribe to get an exclusive first look at his columns twice a week. Murdoch: “Trump will concede eventually, and we should concentrate on Georgia, helping any way we can.” By helping, Murdoch presumably means in the Georgia Senate runoff races that Republicans eventually lost, giving Democrats control of the U.S. Senate. Carlson to Hannity after Fox White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich fact-checked a tweet from Trump on Dominion: “Please get her fired. Seriously….What the f***? I’m actually shocked…It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.” I’m not a law professor — although my daughter is, and that should count for something — so you shouldn’t expect any detailed analysis here on how the case might turn out. But I know, because of that pesky First Amendment, that there’s a very high standard for winning a defamation suit against a media organization. In New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court ruled in 1964 that an organization has to be reckless and acting with, as they say, “actual malice.” Fortunately for the news business, the present court hasn’t — yet — overturned that precedent. But if not a law professor, I am a columnist, and so I’m always ready to make a semi-educated guess. I mean, it’s my job. Here goes: At some point, Fox will have to settle. Because how could they not? As the Washington Post headline on a Philip Bump analysis of the situation reads: “A cascade of mistakes and falsehoods leaves Fox on the brink.” Do you have to ask on the brink of what? Win or lose, Fox has already lost bigly, having risked whatever reputation for journalism it has left, just as Trump lost bigly in 2020. And while it’s never a smart move to write Trump off — and I won’t here — I have a vision of a Republican debate down the line in which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, assuming he runs, and Trump have a major throwdown on the Big Lie. I can’t see clearly enough to know who might win or lose that throwdown, but is it possible that neither would win? To this point, DeSantis has refused to comment on the Big Lie, one way or the other. Eventually, he’ll have to, and then how would the GOP base — which Trump and DeSantis would be fighting over — react? As of now, here’s where we stand on the Big Lie, which has just had its worst week since the January 6 committee report was released. You may remember the report’s clear, and you’d think inarguable, contention that Trump not only lost in 2020, but that he knew he lost, that everyone in the inner circle — from his attorney general, Bill Barr, to his adviser/ daughter, Ivanka — had told him he had lost, and that the Big Lie is not some Big Misunderstanding but a Huge Lie and one that led directly to the January 6 assault on the Capitol. Let’s start with the Georgia judge who just released limited parts of the special-purpose grand jury report on possible criminal influence in the 2020 election. As you might expect, the jury decided unanimously that no widespread voter fraud had taken place, and certainly not enough to overturn an election. And then there was this: A majority of the Fulton County grand jury also said it believes one or more of the witnesses (read: Trump toadies) may have committed perjury when testifying, and it suggests the district attorney might look into possible indictments. No names were named, but a decision on indictments is expected soon. In any case, the legal heat on Trump, now coming from so many directions, just got that much hotter. But Dominion’s lawsuit is another matter. The special grand jury heard only the prosecutor’s side of the story. In Dominion’s lawsuit, we see what Dominion says are direct quotes from Trump’s biggest backers admitting that they knew Trump and his team were lying and that they nonetheless pushed the lies. Furthermore, they objected to any real-time fact checking by Fox News reporters and were most concerned — and this is truly rich — their all-too-gullible audience would switch to, say, Newsmax if they didn’t keep up the lies. Of course, Fox has to settle. Can you imagine seeing Carlson on the witness stand having to defend his and Fox’s indefensible behavior? I’d love to see Hannity testifying as to rigged machines, suitcases full of fake ballots, CIA-directed Italian satellites. Imagine Murdoch having to defend Trump’s repeated prediction — often heard on Fox in the run-up to the election — that the only way he could lose in November was if Joe Biden stole it. And maybe the most damaging part of the quotes cited by Dominion have to do with Fox’s motive in lying, which wasn’t so much to help Trump — although, yes, they were there to help — as it was the fear of losing its audience to the even-further-right reaches of, say, Newsmax. For Fox, the trouble began when its forecasters predicted that Biden would win Arizona and, therefore, the election. The forecast was early and it was bold and, eventually of course, it was proved right. But Trump came hard after Fox, and so did, well, you know, Trump’s defenders on Fox. Here’s Carlson texting his producer on the prediction: “Do the (Fox) executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience? We’re playing with fire, for real … an alternative like [N]ewsmax could be devastating to us.” Dana Perino texting on what she called the “RAGING issue” of losing viewers to Newsmax: “[T]his day of reckoning was going to come at some point … where the embrace of Trump became an albatross we can’t shake right away if ever.” And Murdoch on Trump and Newsmax: “Everything is at stake here.” As it turns out, Murdoch was right. Everything is at stake — even, or maybe especially, the actual truth. Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow.
- [Hogan: Conservative leaders would privately agree election wasn't stolen, but 'go out and ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/19/hogan-conservative-leaders-would-privately-agree-election-wasnt-stolen-but-go-out-and/) - Hogan: Conservative leaders would privately agree election wasn’t stolen, but ‘go out and say complete opposite’ | The Hill Skip to content Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Sunday said he knew conservative leaders who would privately agree the 2020 election wasn’t stolen but publicly say otherwise. Hogan made the comments on NBC’s “Meet
- [Election denier Kristina Karamo chosen to lead Michigan Republican party - The Guardian](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/19/election-denier-kristina-karamo-chosen-to-lead-michigan-republican-party-the-guardian/) - Election denier Kristina Karamo chosen to lead Michigan Republican partyKaramo lost secretary of state race in 2022 after mounting a campaign in support of Trump’s lie about electoral fraud The election conspiracist Kristina Karamo, overwhelmingly defeated last year in her bid to become Michigan secretary of state, was chosen on Saturday to lead the state Republican party for the next two years.Karamo defeated a 10-candidate field dominated by far-right candidates to win the position after a party convention that lasted nearly 11 hours.The latest threat to democracy? A Trump-backed candidate willing to ‘find extra votes’Read moreIn 2022, the former community college professor lost her secretary of state race by 14 points after mounting a campaign in support of Donald Trump’s lie that his 2020 election defeat was the result of electoral fraud.Karamo inherits a state party torn by infighting and millions in debt. She will be tasked with helping win back the legislature and flipping one of the most competitive US Senate seats, while helping a presidential candidate win the battleground state.Addressing delegates, Karamo said “our party is dying” and needs to be rebuilt into “a political machine that strikes fear in the heart of Democrats”.Karamo rose to prominence following the 2020 election when she began appearing on conservative talk shows claiming that as a poll challenger in Detroit, she saw “ballots being dropped off in the middle of the night, thousands of them”.The decision to elect Karamo, who will lead through the 2024 elections, solidifies the hold far-right activists have on the state party after sweeping losses last year.It took three rounds of voting at the convention in Lansing for delegates to pick Karamo over the former attorney general candidate Matthew DePerno, who was endorsed by Trump.Contemplating a field dominated by grassroots activists running on far-right messaging, the former Republican congressman Fred Upton said: “We lost the entire statehouse for the first time in 40 years, in large part, because of the top of the ticket. All deniers. It turned off a lot of voters.”The party may take “a cycle or two to correct itself and to get out of the ditch that we’ve been in for the last couple of years”, Upton said.The Michigan Republican party has been led by figures including the former education secretary Betsy DeVos and the current national Republican chair, Ronna McDaniel.Trump won Michigan in 2016 but Democrats now control all levels of power for the first time since the 1980s. In 2022 they won both houses of the legislature and defeated Republicans by significant margins for governor, attorney general and secretary of state.Longtime donors withheld millions as Republicans grew increasingly loyal to Trump. Tudor Dixon, a Trump loyalist who lost for governor to Gretchen Whitmer, said her campaign was hurt by the state party not having as much money as in the past.TopicsMichiganRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content
- [Partial grand jury report on Trump election interference released - Weatherford Democrat](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/19/partial-grand-jury-report-on-trump-election-interference-released-weatherford-democrat/) - #inform-video-player-1 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; } #inform-video-player-2 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; } ATLANTA — A special grand jury of 26 Fulton County residents recommended Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis seek indictments against witnesses who they believe lied during testimony on 2020 election interference.The special purpose grand jury was selected in May 2022 to investigate the possibility of criminal interference in the 2020 general election by former President Donald Trump who lost his reelection to President Joe Biden.Evidence from or involving 75 witnesses was heard or reviewed during the seven-month investigation, according to the report.{p class=”p1”}”The majority of the grand jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses before it,” the report states, and recommended that Willis “seek appropriate indictments for such where evidence is compelling.” The report said the grand jury heard extensive testimony on the subject of alleged election fraud from poll workers, investigators, technical experts, state employees and officials and by unanimous vote found no widespread election fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election.Fulton Court Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney on Feb. 13 ordered that only parts of the report could be released to the public. That included the introduction and conclusion, and the section of the report in which the jury discusses its concerns that some witnesses (not identified in the report) may have lied under oath during their testimony to the grand jury.Other parts of the report not disclosed to the public recommends indictments for election crimes. “We set forth for the court our recommendations on indictments and relevant statutes, including the votes by the grand jurors,” the report states. “… If this report fails to include any potential violations of referenced statutes that were shown in the investigation, we acknowledge the discretion of the district attorney to seek indictments where she finds sufficient cause.”McBurney limited the public records that could be released to those three sections of the report because of limited due process involved in the jury’s investigations and hearings, and because such documents are part of criminal investigative process — not particularly court proceedings.The report noted that no election law experts or criminal lawyers were part of the jury. The jury was tasked with providing Willis with a list of who should be indicted and for what, in relation to the conduct (and aftermath) of the 2020 general election in Georgia to inform her decision-making process.According to revelations made after the November 2020 elections, Trump, on a recorded phone call, pressed Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,870 votes, which would have given him the victory in Georgia, surpassing Biden’s total.Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows called Raffensperger’s office at least 18 times to set up the call, according to information revealed at a June hearing by the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, which stemmed from Trump and his allies’s claims of election fraud. #inform-video-player-3 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; }
- [Fox anchors' public & private positions on 2020 election outcome are 'concerning': Hogan](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/19/fox-anchors-public-private-positions-on-2020-election-outcome-are-concerning-hogan/) - IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.Blinken: China is 'strongly considering providing lethal assistance to Russia'02:33Hogan: If my campaign would help Trump, ‘that’d be a pretty good reason to consider not running’01:17Hogan: GOP rhetoric on education ‘sounds like big government’01:07Now PlayingFox anchors’ public & private positions on 2020 election outcome are ‘concerning': Hogan01:27UP NEXTMTP Minute: Eleanor McGovern on mental health and Thomas Eagleton01:29Full Hogan interview: 2024 decision will come in 'short period of time'06:43
- [Fox anchors' public & private positions on 2020 election outcome are 'concerning': Hogan - NBC](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/19/fox-anchors-public-private-positions-on-2020-election-outcome-are-concerning-hogan-nbc/) - We and our partners use cookies on this site to improve our service, perform analytics, personalize advertising, measure advertising performance, and remember website preferences. By using the site, you consent to these cookies. For more information on cookies including how to manage your consent visit our
- [Why Did Fox News Lie to Its Viewers? - The Atlantic](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/19/why-did-fox-news-lie-to-its-viewers-the-atlantic/) - Fox News lies to its viewers. Its most prominent personalities, among the most influential in the industry, tell their viewers things they know not to be true. This is not accusation, allegation, or supposition. Today, we know it to be fact.Early in the Trump era, news organizations were torn over whether to refer to Donald Trump’s false statements as lies, because it is difficult to know an individual’s state of mind, to know what they know. In the throes of insecurity, ideological conviction, or carelessness, people can make statements that are false without malicious intent. The argument over what a person knows to be true or false can take on a metaphysical aspect.Sometimes, though, you have proof that someone knew one thing and said another. With Fox News, examples of the network’s commitment to knowingly misleading its viewers abound. There was the irresponsible hyping of anti-vaccine propaganda even as it imposed a vaccine mandate on its employees. There were the text messages from Fox hosts released by the January 6 committee showing that they saw Trump as responsible for inspiring the mob that sacked the Capitol, even as they defended him on air and downplayed the significance of the event.Sometimes, defending itself in court, the network will argue that a reasonable person would not assume that everything its on-air personalities say are true. In 2020, the network successfully beat a defamation lawsuit by arguing that Tucker Carlson is “not ‘stating actual facts’ about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in ‘exaggeration’ and ‘non-literal commentary.’”The most compelling example of Fox News consciously lying to its viewers, however, arrived yesterday with the evidence in the defamation lawsuits filed by the voting-machine company Dominion, over claims aired on Fox News echoing Trump’s lie that the 2020 election had been fixed by compromised voting machines. Dominion’s latest filing argues that privately, Fox News hosts admitted that the allegations of election fraud being floated by Trump allies were baseless, but they kept airing them, in part because they feared another right-wing network, Newsmax, was stealing their audience. The filing shows that when Fox News reporters shot down the allegations publicly, the network’s big personalities were livid, complaining internally that telling their viewers the truth was hurting the network’s brand.“It’s remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things,” the Fox News executive Bill Sammon wrote to a colleague about the network’s coverage of the “fraud” conspiracy.Fox News’s lawyers have responded by arguing that they were merely covering newsworthy allegations, with a spokesperson dismissing the revelations in the Dominion filing as “cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context” to the New York Times. “Freedom of speech and freedom of the press would be illusory if the prevailing side in a public controversy could sue the press for giving a forum to the losing side,” they said in a filing.This is true, as far as it goes. But internally, the messages in Dominion’s filing suggest that network officials knew they were exercising editorial judgment that would lead their audience to see the fictitious election-fraud allegations not simply as newsworthy, but legitimate, which they properly understood to be irresponsible.The Dominion filing drives home a few points. One is that there is a Fox News propaganda feedback loop: The network inflames right-wing conspiracism, but it also bows to it out of partisan commitment and commercial incentive. Another is that despite the long-standing right-wing argument that conservatives distrust mainstream media outlets because they do not tell the truth, Fox News executives and personalities understand that their own network loses traction with its audience when it fails to tell the lies that the audience wishes to hear. There are infinite examples of the mainstream press making errors of omission, fact, or framing. But as the private communications in the Dominion filing show, the mainstream media’s unforgivable sin with this constituency is not lying, but failing to consistently lie the way conservative audiences want them to.Looking at these internal messages however, the confident, implacable cynicism on the right about how mainstream media outlets work is easier to understand. It is a reflection of how some of their own media institutions function, combined with an assumption that everyone else operates in a similarly amoral way.Internally, Carlson referred to Sidney Powell, the attorney who was spreading the false fraud allegations, as a “complete nut,” while the Fox News host Sean Hannity said in a deposition that the “whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second.” But Carlson and Hannity also demanded that the Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich be fired after she fact-checked one of Trump’s tweets spreading the false election-fraud claims about Dominion, with one Fox executive fretting that viewers would be “disgusted.” The offending tweet was deleted. In another email, a different Fox executive feared that what he called “conspiratorial reporting” at Newsmax “might be exactly what the disgruntled FNC viewer is looking for,” later warning, “Do not ever give viewers a reason to turn us off. Every topic and guest must perform.”There is also a story here about how social media and analytics can compel even powerful media institutions to meet a strong demand for falsehoods. Fox News executives understood the election-fraud allegations were nonsense, and they also understood their audience wanted to hear them. Misinformation and propaganda are not novel problems, but modern technology renders the incentives to lie to an audience particularly clear, and the means to reach that audience particularly easy to access. There will always be a potentially profitable demand for self-flattering lies; ethical people and institutions resist supplying them. The ability of individual hustlers to amass an audience of sycophants by feeding them conspiracies puts pressure on more mainstream outlets to gently appease conspiracism, if not to fully capitulate to it.Finally, if Fox News beats this lawsuit, it will be because of the very free-speech protections that the conservative movement has spent years railing against. The appropriately high “actual malice” legal standard, which holds that only statements about public figures that are knowingly false or show a reckless disregard for the truth are actionable, has protected public criticism of powerful figures for decades. Right-wing legal elites, including several Supreme Court justices, would like to destroy this standard, which would enable the rich and powerful to more easily silence criticism of their conduct.The network may ultimately prevail; that’s what all those fancy lawyers get paid for. But if consciously lying to your audience about election fraud in order to keep them watching your network doesn’t meet the standard for actual malice, it’s difficult to imagine what a powerful media company could do that would. And even if Fox News ultimately loses the Dominion lawsuit, I would not expect its audience to abandon it. After all, the network remains willing to tell them what they know to be true—even if it isn’t.
- [When is the next presidential election? What to know about 2024 race - USA Today](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/19/when-is-the-next-presidential-election-what-to-know-about-2024-race-usa-today/) - There is seldom a stronger civic tradition in the United States than filling out a ballot every four years to elect a president. The next presidential election will mark America's 60th presidential contest.What will it look like? The details remain to be seen. Only one major candidate has announced plans to run, and dynamics in each of the country's two major political parties continue to evolve. Amid the uncertainty surrounding the next presidential election, one thing is for sure – on the first Tuesday of November 2024 the public will once again face a choice: who best represents the country? Here's what you should know: Voting rights in the United States:A state-by-state analysisUSA TODAY Voting Rights Project:How we did itWhen is the next presidential election?Nov. 5, 2024. Presidential elections are held in the United States every four years. The last one was in 2020, so the next contest for the highest office in the nation will be in 2024. U.S. legal code dictates that federal elections be held "the Tuesday next after the 1st Monday in November." Presidential elections and congressional midterm elections are always held in even numbered years (e.g. 2016, 2018, 2020.) Who is running for president in 2024?Two Republicans – former President Donald Trump and ex-South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley – already have announced. Biden is expected to run for reelection as well.While predictions abound, it is not yet clear who the other contenders will be in the 2024 presidential contest though the GOP field is expected to get fairly crowded. .Former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis are also expected to throw their hat in the Republican ring.Stay up to date on political news:Sign up for our OnPolitics newsletterIs Trump running in 2024? Yes. In an event at his Mar-A-Lago beach club on Nov. 15, the former president announced his plans to run. His campaign has filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission confirming those plans. 2024 presidential race has a new player:A special counsel investigating Donald TrumpWhen did Biden take office?Biden was sworn into office Jan. 20, 2021.The date of the inauguration is the same with each presidential election, taking place the 20th of January – as required by the U.S. Constitution which set the date in 1933. When was Joe Biden elected? The last presidential election was Nov. 3, 2020.While this was ultimately the election that made Joe Biden president, his win was not confirmed by most mainstream media outlets until Nov. 7, after four days of vote counting. How often is there a vote for a new president?Americans vote for a new president every four years, as outlined in the U.S. Constitution. That vote does not always result in a ''new'' president, of course. There have been many presidents who served more than one four-year term. In fact, before presidents were limited to eight years in office, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected four times. He served three consecutive terms in the White House before dying on April 12, 1945, in the middle of his fourth. What are the requirements to be president?The Constitution spells out just three requirements to hold the presidency. To become president, you must:Be at least 35 years oldHave been born in the United StatesHave lived in the U.S. for at least fourteen years Just Curious?:Your everyday questions, answered.
- [Rudy Giuliani's Past Explains His More Recent Behavior With Trump, Documentary Argues](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/19/rudy-giulianis-past-explains-his-more-recent-behavior-with-trump-documentary-argues/) - More than two decades ago, he was hailed as “Mayor of the World.” Now Rudy Guiliani’s image is entwined with Donald Trump’s presidency, particularly his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The transformation can seem jarring to those who first became aware of Giuliani as New York City’s sober leader in the wake of the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001. But Giuliani’s actions as a federal prosecutor in the 1980s and in New York mayoral politics in the 1990s show traces of the same tactics he used to help Trump spread lies about fraud in the 2020 election, according to a TIME Studios documentary airing on MSNBC on Sunday. Giuliani has “used demagoguery, half-truths and provocations all of his career,” the Rev. Al Sharpton, the long-time civil rights activist and the founder of the National Action Network, says in the documentary. “The way you do politics is find an enemy, beat up on them, play on people’s fears and prejudices. He needs an enemy.” Giuliani was at the forefront of Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. While votes were still being counted on election night in 2020, Giuliani told President Trump to “go and say that we won,” according to testimony to the House Jan. 6 Committee by senior Trump campaign advisor Jason Miller. Trump did just that, saying “frankly, we did win this election” early in the morning of Nov. 4, before the election had been called. For the next two months, Giuliani played a public and central role in spreading false claims of election fraud. Speaking at the Stop the Steal rally on the Ellipse in front of the White House on Jan. 6, Giuliani told the crowd of Trump supporters, “Let’s have trial by combat.” In a court filing in May 2021, Giuliani said he was speaking “hyperbolically” at the Jan. 6 rally. About his repeated claims of election fraud, Giuliani told the DC Bar’s board on professional responsibility in December, “I was responsibly alleging, based on the things that were told to me by other people. I wasn’t proving – I had a long way to go to prove,” according to CNN. In the early 1980s, when Giuliani was appointed by Ronald Reagan as associate attorney general in the headquarters of the Justice Department in Washington, that enemy was Haitian refugees seeking protection in the United States. Giuliani gave interviews at the time defending the mass detention of Haitian immigrants who had arrived in Florida and were being held in a detention center outside Miami at the edge of the Everglades. “Any one of those persons that is in detention is not in jail because any one of them can easily leave and go back to Haiti,” Rudy said in interview footage at the time. Peter Noel, Author of Why Blacks Fear ‘America’s Mayor’, says that Rudy’s actions in the Justice Department were early echoes of his roll out of harsh New York City policing tactics in the 1990s that disproportionately targeted Black and brown citizens. “He saw Black people as offenders. His attitude toward the Haitians, what he did to them, people remember. The whole idea of corralling people, putting them together in the Krome Detention Center down in the Florida Everglades,” Noel says. Giuliani brought to his public life a nostalgia for an earlier time. It was a rhetorical device he used as recently as last year, while he was stumping for his son Andrew’s failed bid to be New York State Governor in 2022. “Andrew Giuliani is the guy to vote for if you want to see the kind of changes that Donald Trump brought about for the country, that I brought about for the City of New York and that Ronald Reagan, who was my boss, brought about for the country,” Giuliani said during a campaign stop for Andrew. “Like it used to be. I remember because I was part of that.” Norman Siegel, a civil rights attorney who attended New York University School of Law with Giuliani in the late 1960s, says the tumult of that decade was transformative for many, but not for Giuliani. “I changed because America is going through a transformation to create inclusion, equality, freedom, justice for all,” Siegel said. “But I don’t think Rudy changed very much during those three years. And when I look back on it, that was a missed opportunity.” During Giuliani’s first, unsuccessful run for mayor in the 1990s, he brought in the mud-slinging Republican campaign Roger Ailes who would later go on to run Fox News. Ailes designed campaign ads that ramped up fears of street crime and violence to try to turn voters against the Democratic in the race, David Dinkins. “Roger Ailes was brought in at the middle of the campaign when we were floundering, we had no messaging, we weren’t doing much TV advertising if any,” said Charlie Perkins, former Giuliani press secretary. “At first I think there was a horror among those on the campaign.” Dinkins went on to win the race and become the first Black mayor of New York City. But Giuliani embraced that divisive approach as he became a vocal critic of Dinkins during his term, siding with white police officers who violently protested Dinkins’s efforts to bring more accountability to the New York Police Department. “The reason the morale of the police department of the city of New York is so low is one reason and one reason alone, David Dinkins,” Giuliani said at the time. Giuliani would end up defeating Dinkins in 1993 and becoming mayor. “If you’re surprised by the decline and fall—or really crash and burn—of Rudy Giuliani,” says Kevin Baker, author of America the Ingenious: How a Nation of Dreamers, Immigrants, and Tinkerers Changed the World, ”you haven’t been paying attention.” When Truth Isn’t Truth: The Rudy Giuliani Story is a new four-part series from TIME Studios and MSNBC Films. The series explores the former prosecutor and mayor’s rise to power, his fall from grace, and how little he changed in between. Watch Sunday, February 19th at 10 pm ET on MSNBC and streaming on Peacock TV. More Must-Reads From TIME The AI Arms Race Is Changing Everything An Entire Ukrainian Village Spent a Harrowing Month in Captivity in a School Basement James Cameron Is Reconsidering a Few Things How a Feminist Law Went Awry in Spain Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Proves Michelle Yeoh Has Always Been Criminally Underrated Why Rock Climbing Is Such a Good Workout The Parent Files: New York Governor Kathy Hochul on Being a 'Good Enough' Mom Credit Card Debt Just Hit An All-Time High. Here’s How You Can Pay It Down A Student Who Lived Through Two Mass Shootings Opens Up About Gun Violence
- [What Happened to 70 Cops Involved in Notorious Killings - Business Insider](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/19/what-happened-to-70-cops-involved-in-notorious-killings-business-insider/) - Redeem now The police killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee last month resulted in five officers involved being charged with murder and fired from the Memphis Police Department. Nichols's killing was notable for its apparent cruelty: Officers pepper sprayed, kicked, and punched an unarmed man to death. Footage from a nearby pole camera captured much of the assault, as well as officers standing around Nichols as he lay grievously injured. One detective took a photo and texted it to at least five others. The Nichols case was unusual for the speed at which the officers involved were fired and charged, but the incident itself shared many similarities to other instances of egregious police violence that have risen to national attention in past decades. These killings often draw intense public scrutiny, in some cases prompting departments to shut down elite "street crime" squads like Memphis's Scorpion unit or forcing lawmakers to question police budgets and tactics. The victims in these cases become nationally known and their names — George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Amadou Diallo — rallying cries against police abuses.Police officers involved in the deaths have become an intense focus of investigation, protest, and media coverage. Ultimately, though, most of those officers fall out of public consciousness. Despite being at the heart of some of the most defining incidents in modern policing, most of the officers involved continue to live their lives under the radar. Insider's review of 72 cops involved in two dozen of the most notorious police killings of the past 30 years shows the many different paths officers have taken. Some dwindled into obscurity after resigning or being fired. Others stayed on the force and even received promotions. A few became pro-police rallying points, while others ended up incarcerated for their crimes — an extreme rarity for police who kill people on the job. Fewer than 2% of police officers who shoot and kill people while on duty are charged with murder or manslaughter, and fewer still are convicted, according to data collected by Philip Stinson, a professor at Bowling Green State University who studies police shootings. Despite nationwide protests demanding greater police accountability, that figure hasn't changed markedly since 2005, the first year Stinson began collecting data."Every time there's a big case, we think, 'maybe this is the case where something changes,'" he said. "But it doesn't." Prosecutors in most states still face steep obstacles to building criminal cases against officers. More departments have adopted body-worn cameras, but officers often fail to use them appropriately. Officers and police unions continue to close ranks around their colleagues who have been accused of using excessive force.There's no nationwide view into what happens to officers involved in egregious incidents of violence. A 2021 bill, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, would have created a nationwide database of police misconduct, but that legislation stalled and withered in a Republican-controlled Senate. Insider attempted to contact the officers named in this article, but did not receive any replies to requests for comment. Multiple officers could also not be reached for comment.The incidents that Insider reviewed, focusing on those that rose to national media and received mention in thousands of news clips, are not representative of officer-involved killings as a whole. Instead, these cases show how officers involved in high-profile killings like the one in Memphis last month can end up anywhere from behind bars to back on the force. The cops who left the forceMany of the officers involved in high profile police killings resigned under public pressure or were fired by their departments following the incidents, but either never faced charges or were acquitted of criminal wrongdoing. These former cops are a grab bag of outcomes. Some fought unsuccessfully to be reinstated, while others drifted into different lines of work — sometimes with their past following them to their new professions.Two of the four officers who fired their weapons in the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo, who was unarmed when police shot him 41 times in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment building, joined the New York City Fire Department. Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy were acquitted of all charges in Diallo's death and months later successfully applied to become firefighters, prompting a wave of media coverage and criticism. Diallo's father, along with representatives from the Islamic Society of Fire Department Personnel and the Vulcan Society fraternal order of Black firefighters all condemned the hirings."If a Black man had ever murdered somebody and went to trial for murder, no matter what the circumstances, that man would not be allowed to be a firefighter," Paul Washington, then-president of the Vulcan Society, said at the time. Two Black firefighters transferred to different firehouses after McMellon was assigned to their engine company. (The FDNY denied at the time that the transfers were related to McMellon.)McMellon is still an active member of the FDNY, the department confirmed to Insider, while Murphy is retired. People gather to protest against the police killing of Tyre Nichols at Times Square in New York on January 28, 2023. Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Meanwhile, several officers in high-profile killings complained in the following years that they became pariahs and found it difficult to restart their lives. Darren Wilson, the officer who in 2014 shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, claimed a year after the incident that he faced death threats, was forced to move neighborhoods and was denied rejoining the police force after his acquittal. Wilson, who became a right-wing rallying point with supporters raising almost five hundred thousand dollars for him after the incident, told The New Yorker that he had quit a retail job stocking shoes after two weeks when reporters started calling the store.A similar infamy dogged one of the officers who beat and injured Rodney King. Timothy Wind, one of the officers who repeatedly struck King, was acquitted of criminal charges but fired by the LAPD. He drew protests after being hired as an unarmed community service officer in Culver City, California in 1994. Wind eventually moved to small town Indiana to avoid scrutiny, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2012, but maintained he did nothing wrong and attended law school with the intent on pursuing a career in criminal justice. The AP reported in 2021 that he had moved to Kansas. Calls placed to numbers listed under his name didn't go through or weren't answered.Other officers have retired with pensions or quietly found other careers. Michael Oliver, one of the NYPD officers involved in the fatal shooting of Sean Bell in 2006, was forced to resign but allowed to collect $40,000 in pension benefits, according to the New York Post. He later became a salesman at a New Jersey BMW dealership. In rare cases, cops involved in these killings have tried to publicly rehabilitate their image rather than seek out anonymity. At least two officers in the cases that Insider reviewed wrote books about their experiences, most recently one of the three Louisville Metro Police officers involved in the botched raid that killed 26-year-old Breonna Taylor.Jonathan Mattingly, who did not face any charges for his role in the raid, retired in 2021 and quickly wrote a tell-all book about the incident. Published through right-wing outlet The Daily Wire's imprint DW Books, Mattingly's book frames himself as a good cop unjustly vilified by "the media and the woke mob." He repeatedly blames Taylor's boyfriend Kenneth Walker, who shot and wounded Mattingly after police broke down the door while executing a warrant late at night, for provoking officers to kill Taylor. (Attorneys for Walker in his civil suit against the Louisville Department assert the book "perpetuates a lie" that their client knew it was police officers knocking down the door.) Mattingly also devotes part of the book to his past assignments in an "alpha male" street crime unit and suggests celebrities such as LeBron James and Oprah Winfrey spread lies about the raid. In one section, he claims that defense attorneys refused to take him on as a client — something he suggests was discrimination due to his "race and profession." "I guess Oprah was wrong. My whiteness didn't give me that unfair advantage or even a fair playing field. I'm simply a white guy in a WOKE world," Mattingly writes. A Republican gubernatorial candidate canceled his appearance at a fundraiser last month after learning Mattingly would also be a speaker. The cops who stayedPolice officers back their own. Even officers accused of severe misconduct often keep working as cops – including in cases where police departments shell out millions to settle civil lawsuits."There's that thin blue line where officers are not just reluctant to, but don't report on one another. It's such a pervasive problem," said Mari Newman, a civil rights attorney in Colorado who has sued police departments. "Officers don't just stick together, but cover up each other's wrongdoing." Three officers who in 2020 placed a "spit hood" over the head of Daniel Prude, then pushed his face into the ground, suffocating him to death, were working for the Rochester, New York police department as recently as last year, city records show. The city paid $12 million to Prude's family; the officers were not charged. The two officers who shot Stephon Clark seven times in his grandmother's backyard still work for the Sacramento Police Department; that city has paid more than $4 million to Clark's family. The officers were not charged.Involvement in notorious police killings hasn't stopped some officers from receiving promotions and honors.In Seattle, the two officers who killed Charleena Lyles in her apartment in front of her children in 2017 are still on the force, according to city records. Six officers charged and acquitted in the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore in 2015 still work for the police department; one has been promoted to lieutenant. The officers who killed Lyles weren't charged. In New York City, Kenneth Boss, one of the officers who fired shots in the killing of Diallo in 1999, stayed on the force for nearly 20 more years after being acquitted of murder charges. Boss received a promotion in 2015, and one year later a New York police union named him a "Sergeant of the Year" for rescuing a couple stranded on an island in Jamaica Bay. An image of George Floyd is seen at a memorial in San Diego for Black Americans who have lost their lives due to systemic racism and racial injustice. Mario Tama/Getty Images It can also take so long to build a criminal case against police that even officers who do get prosecuted can stay on the force for years before charges are brought. Elijah McClain, 23, died in August 2019 after three police officers in Aurora, Colorado, slammed him into a wall, held him to the ground, and put him in a chokehold. Paramedics arriving on the scene diagnosed the by-then unconscious McClain with "excited delirium" and injected him with ketamine; he suffered a heart attack on the way to the hospital. An autopsy report found the cause of death to be "complications of ketamine administration following forcible restraint."McClain, who had a blood circulation disorder that caused him to get cold easily, had been wearing a ski mask while walking through the Denver suburb. A resident called 911 to report a "sketchy" person.Initially, the officers were cleared of wrongdoing. The local district attorney, acting on information collected by the police department, declined to prosecute. The department's internal investigation was "cursory and summary at best," independent investigators later found.All three officers went back to work.One of them, Randy Roedema, was involved in another excessive force case the very next year. Another, Jason Rosenblatt, responded "ha ha" when a colleague texted him making fun of McClain's death; he was fired over that incident.Two years after McClain's death a state-appointed special investigator brought charges against the three officers. The new investigation had been spurred by massive racial justice protests in the summer of 2020."Make no mistake, we recognize that this case will be difficult to prosecute," Colorado attorney general Phil Weiser said in a news conference at the time. "These types of cases always are." Prosecutors who want to bring charges against officers who kill face a myriad of challenges. There is a standard requiring them to prove that the officer acted unreasonably, a high legal bar. Other officers in a department may stonewall attempts to gain information, and body camera footage from the incidents can be incomplete or nonexistent. Police unions can also be quick to defend their members against any punitive measures for their actions on the job. Even after the charges, the Aurora police union insisted that the officers "did nothing wrong" and that McClain's death was related to his decision to "violently resist arrest." "The hysterical overreaction to this case has severely damaged the police department," the union said in a statement issued at the time of the charges.Officers sometimes leave the department where the incident occurred, transferring townships or jurisdictions. The NYPD reassigned one of the other officers involved in the Diallo killing to a unit at a sleepy airfield in southern Brooklyn where the department conducts helicopter operations. Two of the three officers charged with murdering George Robinson in 2019 left the Jackson, Mississippi police department after Robinson's death, for the nearby city of Clinton's police department. "We don't want anything to do with a bad cop and if I thought these guys were bad cops, we wouldn't have hired them," Clinton's police chief Ford Hayman told local news in 2020. Hayman and Clinton Mayor Phil Fisher attended the officers' arraignment for moral support. Fisher has implied the criminal charges may be politically motivated and called on the media to "spend as much time in the exoneration process as they have in the accusing process." One of the officers Clinton hired was later convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to five years in prison. Police killings have sparked widespread protest movements demanding increased accountability and an end to discriminatory policing. Jon Cherry/Getty Images In rare instances, officers are too politically toxic to keep on staff. After killing 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014, Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann has applied for at least two other policing jobs but withdrew his applications after his hiring sparked community furor. Loehmann was not charged in Rice's death, but was fired from the Cleveland police department in 2017 for lying on his employment application. Last year, Loehmann was briefly hired to be the sole cop in the tiny town of Tioga, Pennsylvania, before protest prompted the city to reverse its decision. Tioga's mayor told local news that Rice's death never came up in the interview process."I found it strange that someone would move here all the way from Cleveland, Ohio, for $18 an hour," mayor Dave Wilcox told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. "But I heard that he wanted to get away from it all and come here to hunt and fish." The cops who were convictedIn the past 18 years, 172 police have been charged with murder or manslaughter for an on-duty shooting, according to Stinson, the professor at Bowling Green State University, and 55 of them have been convicted of some crime. That data doesn't include cases that didn't involve a gun, like the killings of George Floyd or Tyre Nichols.Out of the 72 officers that Insider researched, 16 of them were convicted or pleaded guilty.Some convicted officers received long sentences, like Derek Chauvin, who killed Floyd and is set to remain in prison until 2038. Amber Guyger, the Texas officer convicted of murdering her upstairs neighbor Botham Jean after allegedly mistaking his apartment for her own, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, though she will be eligible for parole starting in September 2024.In some cases, officers found support from police unions while awaiting trial. Gescard Insora, an NYPD detective who was the first to open fire on Sean Bell in 2006, was acquitted of criminal charges but fired and reported by the New York Post in 2013 to have gotten a job with the Detectives Endowment Association. Jason Van Dyke, the Chicago cop convicted of killing Laquan McDonald, worked as a janitor for a Chicago police union while his case was pending.Van Dyke, who was released from prison in 2022, now works in construction and still lives with his family in the Chicago area, according to his lawyer Dan Herbert. "He's doing okay," Herbert said. "It took a lot out of him." Jason Van Dyke, was convicted of killing Laquan McDonald. He served less than half of his seven year sentence and was released in 2022. Brian Jackson/Sun-Times via AP Others spend little or no time behind bars. Johannes Mehserle, a transit cop who shot Oscar Grant in Oakland, California, served 11 months in prison after he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Peter Liang, a rookie NYPD officer who fired a round into a dark stairwell that ricocheted and killed Akai Gurley, was sentenced to five years of probation. Insider couldn't find current contact information for Mehserle and a voicemail left for his father didn't receive a response. One of Liang's lawyers agreed to pass on a reporter's contact info, but no response was received.In Memphis, some hope that the indictment of the five officers who killed Tyre Nichols proves to be a break with the past. Steve Nelson, the Shelby County district attorney, took office last year after beating prosecutor Amy Weirich, who faced allegations of prosecutorial misconduct and a track record of not charging cops, according to the Huffington Post. But the outcome of any case of officer-involved killings or police abuse always carries a level of uncertainty. Policing is fragmented across nearly 18,000 jurisdictions, said Justin Nix, a criminology professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha who has studied the effect of racial justice protests on police departments. That means 18,000 different approaches to holding officers accountable for violence."For every example of accountability, it's easy to pick an example of an officer who skirted consequences for misconduct," Nix said. .content-lock-lock .hidden { display: none; }
- [Compare the election-fraud claims Fox News aired with what its stars knew](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/18/compare-the-election-fraud-claims-fox-news-aired-with-what-its-stars-knew/) - Election officials and major news channels reported there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election — to the fury of then-President Donald Trump. In the weeks following the election, Trump and his lawyers demanded recounts, refusing to accept his loss and claiming the election was stolen. That message spread far and wide thanks to right-wing news outlets, including the longtime cable-news leader Fox News. Fox News hosts repeatedly singled out the election-tech company Dominion Voting Systems for "rigging" the election and "flipping" votes from Trump to Democratic nominee Joe Biden without evidence to back up the claims. Yet internal communications and private messages show the network's talent and executives agreed that claims were "ludicrous" and "bs." Dominion is now suing the network for defamation and seeking $1.6 billion. Fox News stars and executives' disdain for the claims of fraud and the people who peddled them on air is clear in court documents filed by Dominion, which became public this week. Below is a comparison of some of the claims Fox News allowed on its top-rated shows and what was said behind the scenes, according to those legal documents. Fox, in its defense, says Dominion has cherry-picked quotes and taken them out of context. It argues that the company is trying to punish it for covering the news of fraud allegations put forth by the then-sitting president. Nov. 8, 2020: Trump ally and lawyer Sidney Powell blasts Dominion to Fox News host Maria Bartiromo What Fox News aired: BARTIROMO: "Sidney, we talked about the Dominion software. I know that there were voting irregularities. Tell me about that." POWELL: "That's to put it mildly. The computer glitches could not and should not have happened at all. That is where the fraud took place, where they were flipping votes in the computer system or adding votes that did not exist." What Fox News knew: The source of Powell's election fraud claim was "nonsense," Bartiromo told lawyers under oath. The day before Powell appeared on the show, she sent Bartiromo and other Fox News hosts an email entitled "Election Fraud Info" from a source — a self-described "wackadoodle" — alleging that Dominion was the "one common thread" among "voting irregularities in a number of states." Bartiromo later admitted that email was "not evidence" of claims of election fraud. Nov. 12, 2020: Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani furthers the plot on Lou Dobbs Tonight What Fox News aired: DOBBS: "How important do you believe are the concerns being expressed in a number of states about the ability of these [Dominion Voting Systems] machines not to be hacked?" GIULIANI: "The machines can be hacked. There's no question about that. Their machines can be hacked. But it's far worse than that, Lou. Dominion is a company that is owned by another company called Smartmatic ... It was formed really by three Venezuelans who were very close to the dictator Chavez of Venezuela and it was formed in order to fix elections." What Fox News knew: On that day, Dominion sent Fox News emails entitled "Setting the Record Straight" with links to information debunking the claims its shows had aired about the company. It stated that it had no ties to the voting-tech company Smartmatic, or Venezuela. It included a link to federal election authorities' statement that the 2020 election had been the most secure in American history. Under oath, Dobbs admitted he had seen that statement on Nov. 12. A senior producer, also under oath, said the show's producers had discussed the statement. Nov. 14, 2020: Fox News' Jeanine Pirro lets Powell discuss the baseless Venezuela conspiracy What Fox News aired: POWELL: "The money creating [Dominion] came out of Venezuela and Cuba...It is one huge, huge criminal conspiracy that should be investigated by military intelligence." PIRRO: "Yes, and hopefully the Department of Justice, but who knows anymore." What Fox News knew: Earlier this same day, a Fox executive warned host Jeanine Pirro that she "should be VERY careful w" allegations relating to Dominion's ownership and election fraud. Pirro's show did not air in the days after the election. Fox executives had arranged that because they knew her election coverage was "irresponsible," according to Dominion's legal brief. At the time, however, the network had said it bumped the show in favor of ongoing election coverage. Nov. 30, 2020: Fox star Sean Hannity hosts a "F'ing lunatic" What Fox News aired: HANNITY: "Let me ask you...I've gone over everything I've been able to find out. Nobody liked Dominion Voting Systems. Nobody. ... Why would we use a system that everybody agreed sucked or had problems is beyond me. And I asked you today, you said to me there were people watching an Internet connection in real time, but they can't speak publicly and haven't signed affidavits to that. Why?" POWELL (claiming that some witnesses of fraud can't come forward because they lack government protections): "That's something that the government really needs to give them if they want to get to the truth of all the matters with which we're gathering more evidence every day." What Fox News knew: At this point, Hannity believed that it was "obvious" Powell's allegations were false, according to the legal brief. In the weeks after the election and leading up to this broadcast, Hannity's team monitored for evidence to support Powell's claims but saw none. In a text, Hannity called Powell a "F'ing lunatic." Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
- [On air vs. off air: How Fox News lied about the 2020 election - YouTube](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/18/on-air-vs-off-air-how-fox-news-lied-about-the-2020-election-youtube/) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djudifSTEbM
- [Dominion lawsuit claims Fox News viewers thought Trump loss bad for ratings - Fortune](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/18/dominion-lawsuit-claims-fox-news-viewers-thought-trump-loss-bad-for-ratings-fortune/) - That worry — a real one, judging by Fox’s ratings in the election’s aftermath — played a key role in Fox not setting the record straight about unfounded fraud claims, the network’s accuser contends. “It’s remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things,” the filing quotes Fox Washington news executive Bill Sammon as saying. The details were included in a trove of private communications unearthed by lawyers and contained in a redacted brief filed Thursday by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion claims in a $1.6 billion lawsuit that Fox aired allegations that Dominion had doctored the vote against Trump, even as it knew that was untrue. Fox says it was doing its job as journalists by airing the accusations made by Trump and his allies. Fox’s internal troubles began with a correct call: Declaring on election night 2020 that Democrat Joe Biden had beaten Trump in Arizona. The declaration, coming ahead of other news organizations, infuriated the president and his fans. The backlash was noted in internal emails. “Holy cow, our audience is mad at the network,” said one, quoted by Dominion. “They’re FURIOUS,” said another. Five days after the election, Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch communicated to Suzanne Scott, Fox News CEO, that the channel was “getting creamed by CNN. Guess our viewers don’t want to watch it,” according to court papers. Fox News tumbled from first to third in the news network ratings between the Nov. 3, 2020 election and Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021, according to the Nielsen company. Meanwhile, thousands of Fox viewers flocked to the more conservative Newsmax, where prime-time viewership shot from 58,000 the week before the election to 568,000 the week after. The change shook the foundations of a network that had consistently led in the news ratings for the better part of two decades. Fox roared back into the lead by tacking more sharply to the right after Biden took office. But in the immediate aftermath of the election, there was genuine worry at its New York headquarters. Almost immediately, the network went on “war footing,” Dominion said, quoting a Fox executive. “Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience?” Fox prime-time star Tucker Carlson wrote to his producer, according to Dominion’s brief. “We’re playing with fire, for real … an alternative like newsmax could be devastating to us.” Dominion contends that Fox executives made the decision to push false narratives to entice their audience back, and points to claims made by Trump allies like attorney Sidney Powell on programs hosted by Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs. On Nov. 9, Fox News Channel’s Neil Cavuto cut away from a news conference held by Trump aide Kayleigh McEnaney when she began to air unsubstantiated allegations. A Fox executive complained in the aftermath that Cavuto was damaging the network’s brand. The court filings also detailed two instances where Fox News reporters were attacked internally for tweeting fact checks. In one, reporter Jacqui Heinrich tweeted that there was no evidence any voting system deleted, lost or changed votes. “Please get her fired,” Carlson messaged fellow anchor Sean Hannity, saying Heinrich was hurting the company, according to Dominion’s filing. Heinrich’s tweet was later deleted, the court papers said. Carlson himself tried to “thread the needle,” Dominion said. It noted how he publicly stated that Powell had never provided evidence to back up her claims of fraud. “On the other hand, he did not say what he believed privately — that she was lying,” Dominion said. Fox said many of its specific responses will come in a document that Superior Court Judge Eric Davis in Delaware ordered sealed until Feb. 27. Fox said Dominion had mischaracterized the record and cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context. “There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan,” Fox said. If either side can persuade Davis to grant summary judgment in its favor, the case will end without a jury trial. If not, the trial is scheduled to begin in mid-April. As a result of Sullivan and cases that followed, such defamation cases against journalists are usually very hard to prove, and Fox is also arguing that Dominion is grossly overestimating any economic damage to the company. Ultimately, though, the case is pulling back the curtain on what happened at the nation’s largest media outlet that appeals to conservative viewers at a pivotal time at the network’s, and the nation’s history. “Privately, Fox hosts and executives knew that Donald Trump lost the election and that he needed to concede,” Dominion argued in the papers released Thursday. “But Fox viewers heard a different story — repeatedly.”Learn how to navigate and strengthen trust in your business with The Trust Factor, a weekly newsletter examining what leaders need to succeed. Sign up here.
- [DOJ special counsel subpoenas Arizona lawmakers in 2020 election investigation](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/18/doj-special-counsel-subpoenas-arizona-lawmakers-in-2020-election-investigation/) - Legislative leaders in Arizona have received subpoenas from the special counsel investigating interference with the peaceful transition of power after the 2020 presidential election.House Speaker Ben Toma, R-Glendale, and Senate President Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, confirmed receipt of the subpoenas and offered some detail late Friday about the demand from U.S. Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith.The subpoenas were first reported by the Arizona Mirror."It's mostly just a request for any communications between us and a list of people," Petersen told The Arizona Republic. "I only recognized one person on the list: Rudy Giuliani."He said he would cooperate with the investigation."Of course I will comply. Why wouldn't I?" Petersen said.Toma, who was out of state and was advised of the subpoena by the attorney for the House of Representatives, said the federal investigators want his cellphone and are arranging an interview in Phoenix mid-March. He said he will fully comply."I don't know what they're looking for exactly yet," he said, adding there was a request for some keywords. He did not elaborate.The Arizona Mirror also reported that state Sen. Sonny Borelli, R-Lake Havasu City, and former state Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita were also issued subpoenas. Neither returned requests for comment Friday evening.Borrelli is a staunch Trump advocate and currently Senate majority leader. Ugenti-Rita led the Senate committee that handled election matters in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, but stepped down in September 2021.The Mirror reported it had obtained a copy of the subpoena on the condition that it not be published. The news outlet reported that the subpoena demanded documents provided to the Jan. 6 Commission and to "any other state or federal inquiry related to the 2020 presidential election." It also sought communications with former President Donald Trump or with his campaign.Last December, Maricopa County officials received similar subpoenas and vowed to comply. Former Vice President Mike Pence received a subpoena from the special counsel earlier this month, though he has said he will fight it.Leaders unsure why they received subpoenasToma said he isn't certain why he received a subpoena, although as the No. 2 leader in the House of Representatives in 2021, he was involved in conversations about what actions, if any, the Legislature could take regarding the results of the presidential election.His position was that the Legislature could do nothing retroactively, Toma added. Some House members, most notably former Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley, argued the Legislature had the power to replace the presidential electors chosen by the voters with those of the Legislature's choosing. Those efforts did not succeed.Petersen speculated that the subpoena request might stem from a meeting with Giuliani in the Senate majority room to discuss his concerns about the election. Giuliani was acting as Trump's attorney at the time. All Republican senators were invited, Petersen said."I think those that attended got a subpoena," Petersen said. "Not certain.”Asked about the subpoenas sent to the legislative leaders, former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers on Friday evening said he was advised to not comment on the matter.Bowers, a Mesa Republican, resisted demands from Trump and his allies to have the Legislature overturn the results of the 2020 election. Bowers demanded Giuliani provide proof to back up his claim that the Legislature could change the the slate of electors. He has said it never arrived.Karen Fann, who was Senate president when Giuliani met with lawmakers, said she has heard nothing from federal officials since they demanded records last June from her and state Sen. Kelly Townsend, R-Mesa, about efforts to interfere in the election results.Fann said she supplied those records and has not had further contact.Reach the reporter at maryjo.pitzl@arizonarepublic.com and follow her on Twitter @maryjpitzl. Ray Stern is at ray.stern@arizonarepublic.com and on Twitter @raysternSupport local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today
- [Off camera, Fox hosts doubted 2020 election fraud claims - Los Angeles Times](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/18/off-camera-fox-hosts-doubted-2020-election-fraud-claims-los-angeles-times/) - WILMINGTON, Del. — To millions of viewers, Fox News hosts gave allies of then-President Trump a platform to champion false claims that he lost the 2020 election because of voter fraud. To one another, they expressed doubts about the claims and mocked the people making them.Private exchanges between Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, and other network bigwigs — including the chairman of Fox Corp., Rupert Murdoch — show a wide chasm between what the network promoted in prime time and the doubts that its stars held behind the camera, according to new court filings in a defamation lawsuit being waged by a company whose voting systems were regularly maligned on air.“Sidney Powell is lying” about having evidence for fraud, Carlson said via text on Nov. 16, 2020, to a Fox News producer, referring to one of Trump’s lawyers.Ingraham texted Carlson that Powell is “a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy,” referring to the former New York mayor and Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani.These and other communications were included in a redacted brief filed Thursday by attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems, which is suing Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp., for $1.6 billion.In a deposition, host Sean Hannity said “that whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second,” according to Dominion’s filing.Murdoch, meanwhile, in a Nov. 19 email, described what he saw at a news conference that day featuring Giuliani and Powell as “really crazy stuff. And damaging.”Dominion’s legal case rests on its belief that Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims that the company had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements.Attorneys for Fox argued in a counterclaim unsealed Thursday that the lawsuit is an assault on the 1st Amendment. They said Dominion has advanced “novel defamation theories” and is seeking a “staggering” damage figure aimed at generating headlines, chilling protected speech and enriching Dominion’s private equity owner, Staple Street Capital Partners.“Dominion brought this lawsuit to punish FNN for reporting on one of the biggest stories of the day — allegations by the sitting president of the United States and his surrogates that the 2020 election was affected by fraud,” the counterclaim states. “The very fact of those allegations was newsworthy.”Fox attorneys have noted that Carlson repeatedly questioned Powell’s claims in his broadcasts. “When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her,” Carlson told viewers Nov. 19, 2020.Fox attorneys say Dominion’s own public relations firm expressed skepticism in December 2020 as to whether the network’s coverage was defamatory. They also point to an email from Oct. 30, 2020, just days before the election, in which Dominion’s director of product strategy and security complained that the company’s products were “just riddled with bugs.”In their counterclaim, Fox attorneys wrote that when voting-technology companies denied the allegations being made by Trump and his surrogates, Fox News aired those denials, while some Fox News hosts offered protected opinion commentary about Trump’s allegations.“Freedom of speech and freedom of the press would be illusory if the prevailing side in a public controversy could sue the press for giving a forum to the losing side,” Fox attorneys wrote.Fox attorneys warn that threatening the company with a $1.6-billion judgment will cause other media outlets to think twice about what they report.Responses by both sides to the briefs made public Thursday remain under seal. Fox has said that Dominion’s filing includes “cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context,” and that it has refused to allow Fox to make its response to Dominion’s brief public. Attorneys for Fox and Dominion told the Associated Press on Friday that responses to the briefs will remain under seal until Feb. 27.Dominion on Friday filed its own challenge to the redactions in the briefs, including its own. “Dominion’s position is that nothing in these three briefs warrants confidential treatment,” attorneys for the company wrote, adding that all redactions were done at Fox’s request.If either side can persuade Superior Court Judge Eric Davis to grant summary judgment in its favor, the case will end without a jury trial. If not, the trial is scheduled to begin in mid-April.In its 192-page brief, Dominion said the judge should rule in its favor because “no reasonable juror could find in Fox’s favor on each element of Dominion’s defamation claim.” Dominion attorneys also assert that no reasonable juror could find in favor of Fox’s “neutral reportage” and “fair report” defenses.“Recounts and audits conducted by election officials across the U.S. repeatedly confirmed the election’s outcome, including specifically that Dominion’s ma-chines accurately counted votes,” Dominion’s filing states.Fox News attorneys argue that the network’s coverage and commentary are not defamatory and that there is no evidence the hosts had any malicious intent behind what they said about Dominion — an important legal standard in 1st Amendment cases.Davis ruled last month that, for the purposes of the defamation claims, he will consider Dominion to be a public figure. That means Dominion must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the Fox defendants acted with actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth.
- [Fox News hosts privately shot down Trump's election fraud claims: 5 Things podcast](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/18/fox-news-hosts-privately-shot-down-trumps-election-fraud-claims-5-things-podcast/) - On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: According to a court filing, top executives and Several Fox News hosts privately shot down Trump's election fraud claims, even as they gave airtime to those same claims. Fox News stars aren't the only ones in the spotlight, Don Lemon is facing backlash after a comment he made this week about Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley. USA TODAY Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page talks about the issue of age for female politicians. And a Mississippi shooting caps off a violent week of gun violence. The U.S. has ended the search for objects shot down over Alaska and Lake Huron, while recovering parts of the Chinese spy balloon. And finally, USA TODAY Health Reporter Karen Weintraub looks into whether any amount of alcohol is safe.Podcasts:True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts, right here.Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Taylor Wilson:Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and this is 5 Things you need to know Saturday, the 18th of February 2023. Today, stars at Fox News privately shot down Trump's election fraud claims, plus a conversation on age and female politicians, and we'll try to find out what amount of alcohol is safe.Top executives and news hosts at Fox News privately shared that they did not buy into then President Donald Trump's allegations of 2020 election fraud, despite giving airtime to many of those false claims. That's according to a court filing in Dominion Voting System's defamation lawsuit against the news network. Anchor Tucker Carlson said in November of 2020, that Trump ally, Sidney Powell, was lying about election fraud, according to the filing. In a deposition, host Sean Hannity said he didn't believe Powell's election fraud narrative, and host Lauren Ingram apparently told Carlson that Powell is a "complete nut".For his part, Carlson said he found Powell's lies about the election to be offensive, because Fox viewers are good people and believe it. He also texted his producer that Trump is a demonic force, and it wasn't just on air personalities. Fox Corporation Chair, Rupert Murdoch, hold the false voter fraud claims "really crazy stuff".Dominion voting system sells electronic voting hardware and software. The company, in March of 2021, filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corporation, for allegedly spreading false claims about Dominion and the 2020 election. A Fox spokesperson said that press freedom and freedom of speech are at the core of the Dominion case. Fox also says, "Dominion cherry picked quotes without context."Fox News Stars aren't the only hosts in the spotlight. Don Lemon, co-host of CNN's This Morning, has been the subject of much conversation the last few days, and not in a good way. For more, I'm now joined by USA Today's Washington Bureau Chief, Susan Page. Susan, welcome back to the podcast.Susan Page:Hey, it's great to be with you.Taylor Wilson:Great to have you. So, what happened here with Don Lemon?Susan Page:Well, he just wandered into a firestorm. He was speculating a little about Nikki Haley on the day she was announcing formally her presidential bid, and he said she was not in her prime. And then, when Poppy Harlow, his co-anchor pushed back a little bit on what he was talking about, he doubled down on it to his regret, I think.Taylor Wilson:All right, let's play a clip of lemon's comments.Don Lemon:She says, "People, politicians, or something, are not in their prime." Nikki Haley isn't in her prime, sorry, when a woman is considered being her prime in her 20s and 30s, and maybe 40s. That's not according to me.Nikki Haley:Prime for what?Taylor Wilson:So, what does this incident tell you about women who are trying to make it in politics?Susan Page:It's not just politics. It's in all kinds of fields, where women feel they face bigger hurdles as they age than men do. And that is certainly true in politics where women, despite the progress that's been made in electing women to office, women face a lot more scrutiny on how they look, and they face a lot more skepticism as they get a little older.Taylor Wilson:You always have great polling data for us, Susan. So I'm wondering, what does the polling tell us on how Americans feel about the ideal age for a president, and do Americans' thoughts here change based on gender?Susan Page:It's so interesting. We did actually a poll, a USA Today Suffolk poll, that asked about what are the characteristics of an ideal president? And we found that half of Americans say an ideal president should be 50 to 60 years old, that middle-aged period, and another quarter think they should be a little bit younger, 35 to 50. So definitely, some sense that people want a president who is not too old. And that's interesting, because it's in great contrast to our last two presidents, to Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who are both considerably older than that.Taylor Wilson:And do you foresee age being a huge issue for the 2024 campaigns?Susan Page:Yes. I think we're seeing that already. Joe Biden's age, he's just turned 80 is an issue, and something that he'll have to keep dealing with. And Donald Trump is 76, so they're both men of a certain age who will be seeking what is a really demanding job.Taylor Wilson:All right, Susan Page, is USA Today's Washington Bureau Chief. Thanks so much as always, really appreciate it.Susan Page:It's my pleasure.Taylor Wilson:Six people were killed in a rural Mississippi shooting yesterday. Officials described a series of shootings in Arkabutla, Mississippi, a small unincorporated community about 20 miles south of the Tennessee State line. Shooting victims were found at four different locations, including outside a store and inside a home. The six dead in Mississippi cap off an especially deadly week of shootings in America. That includes the violence at Michigan State University, where three students were killed and five hospitalized with critical injuries. A survivor of that shooting, Professor Marco Diaz-Munoz, wants action.Prof. Marco Diaz-Munoz:If our lawmakers, if members of Congress, really saw what I saw instead of one more statistic, three more people dead, two more people here, 12 there. If they actually saw, or that they experienced that in their own personal lives, the laws of this country would change, and gun restriction laws would be passed immediately. And not this, let's be levelheaded, let's not rush to make a decisions, let's be rational. That is BC. No, something needs to be done in this country, and it needs to be based on our humanity.Taylor Wilson:Thanks to our colleagues with the Detroit Free Press for their reporting. He can read more about the Mississippi shooting and this deadly week of gun violence on usatoday.com, and across the USA Today network.The US military has ended its search for airborne objects that it shot down over Alaska and Lake Huron last week. A statement out late last night came just hours after the US finished recovering the suspected Chinese spy balloon, that the US previously shot down off the coast of South Carolina earlier this month. Officials have said, the other unidentified objects likely did not pose any risk to national security. As for the Chinese balloon, most of it fell into about 50 feet of ocean, and parts were recovered from the surface and on the ocean floor. But key questions about the device remain, including what if any, intelligence it was able to collect as it flew over military sites in the US.Is any amount of alcohol safe? That's a big question, but who better to tackle it than USA Today Health reporter, Karen Weintraub. Karen, welcome back to 5 Things.Karen Weintraub:Thanks so much for having me.Taylor Wilson:So, you wrote about how much alcohol is safe, that is a big question. So, let's start with what the science says on this.Karen Weintraub:Great. It's a big question, unfortunately without a clear answer because it depends on individual factors. So, if you want to be a 100% safe, maybe don't drink, but then you miss out on what might be some advantages to drinking. So, it's a factor of genetics, willingness to accept risk, your cancer risk in some cases, and some other things. So, it's complicated.Taylor Wilson:So let's talk through some of the specific health problems that heavy drinking can cause.Karen Weintraub:All the scientists agree that heavy drinking is bad for you. It can cause a whole host of health problems, from liver disease to brain issues, to cardiac issues. It's not a good idea to drink heavily. The question is, what's a healthy amount to drink? Is there any amount that can promote health? And how much might that be? The USDA's guidelines say it's okay for women to drink one drink a day, and men up to two, and that's averaged over the course of a week, but it doesn't mean you can have seven on Friday. That's a terrible idea. But other people I spoke with said that, from their assessment, probably one drink a day for both is the max that people should have.Taylor Wilson:You mentioned genetics. What do experts say about the role of genetics when it comes to drinking?Karen Weintraub:So, some of us have protective genetics. Genetics that will make us less likely to become alcoholics. I don't do well on alcohol. I get boring and fall asleep. And so, I am less likely to become alcoholic than somebody who is the life of the party when they drink. So, that's a challenge that people have to know their individual risk. Also, if you have a family member, particularly if you're a man whose father had a drinking problem, your genetic risk is much higher than the average person's. The safest bet is to stay away from all alcohol if you're in that condition.Taylor Wilson:What are some guidelines you can give on trying to find out how much is appropriate for an individual person?Karen Weintraub:So, if you have a problem with drinking, if you drink one glass, you want seven, then you should stay away from drinking. If you feel better when you have a glass of wine with dinner, it's probably fine. Again, as long as it's one glass and not six. And again, if you're particularly high risk for cancer, breast cancer for instance, there's an association, the more you drink, the higher your risk for breast cancer. Liver disease and cardiac symptoms, probably over a glass a day, you're increasing your risk substantially. A glass a day or less, probably not. So, you have to figure that out for yourself.And there are some benefits that have been shown to drinking. Some of this research has been debunked. Other people still stand by it. But alcohol does reduce your blood's ability to clot. So, if you nick yourself shaving on the morning after drinking, you might notice that you bleed a little bit more. That's because the alcohol blocks platelet aggregation, and makes it easier for your blood to keep flowing. So, that can be a good thing for your heart. And alcohol can also help slightly reduce your diabetes risk. Now, don't drink to promote your health. You're better off exercising than drinking, but know that you're not doing something terrible to yourself if you have a drink with dinner a couple nights a week.Taylor Wilson:All right, Karen Weintraub, always great insight from the World of Health. Thanks so much.Karen Weintraub:Thank you.Taylor Wilson:Thanks for listening to Five Things. Today's show was produced by James Brown and Shannon Green. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. And special thanks to Cherise Saunders and Alexis Gustin, for their great work on the show. James is back with the Sunday edition tomorrow, and I'll see you Monday with more of 5 Things from USA Today.
- [Compare the election-fraud claims Fox News aired with what its stars knew - NPR](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/18/compare-the-election-fraud-claims-fox-news-aired-with-what-its-stars-knew-npr/) - Enlarge this image A security guard looks out of the News Corp. headquarters in New York on April 19, 2017. Mary Altaffer/AP Mary Altaffer/AP Election officials and major news channels reported there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election — to the fury of then-President Donald Trump. In the weeks following the election, Trump and his lawyers demanded recounts, refusing to accept his loss and claiming the election was stolen. That message spread far and wide thanks to right-wing news outlets, including the longtime cable-news leader Fox News.
- [Emails and Texts Show What Fox News Hosts Really Thought About 'Rigged' Election](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/18/emails-and-texts-show-what-fox-news-hosts-really-thought-about-rigged-election/) - Fox News needs to present a specific face to its audience. It’s one of grievance and hurt, of a changing world that is changing too damn fast. Though all too often, the entire network strays into the absurd, whether it’
- [Two 2020 Election Deniers Are Top Candidates to Lead Michigan GOP - Business Insider](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/18/two-2020-election-deniers-are-top-candidates-to-lead-michigan-gop-business-insider/) - Kristina Karamo could be the next chair of the Michigan Republican Party. Emily Elconin/Getty Images Redeem now Two 2020 election deniers are the top candidates to lead the Michigan GOP headed into 2024. Matt DePerno and Kristina Karamo lost races for AG and secretary of state, respectively, in 2022. The party has over $2.3 million in outstanding debts in its state campaign coffers, per Bridge Michigan. Top editors give you the stories you want — delivered right to your inbox each weekday. Loading Something is loading. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. download the app Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. .inline-newsletter-signup.loading { width: 100%; max-width: 640px; margin: 0 auto; visibility: hidden; } The November 2022 midterms were not kind to Michigan Republicans.Not only was Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer reelected in a landslide over Republican Tudor Dixon, but state Attorney General Dana Nessel soundly defeated GOP opponent Matt DePerno and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson easily dispatched Republican Kristina Karamo. And Democrats reclaimed control of both houses of the state legislature, with the state Senate in Democratic hands for the first time since 1984.But DePerno and Karamo, who repeatedly questioned the integrity of the 2020 presidential election, are seen as the frontrunners to lead the Michigan Republican Party, according to Bridge Michigan.The state party on Saturday will decide on a leader to replace outgoing chair Ron Weiser. Weiser, a prominent real estate developer, gave the party over $3.2 million in personal contributions for the 2022 election cycle, per Bridge Michigan. But the outlet also reported that the state GOP had over $2.3 million in outstanding debts in its main state campaign account.DePerno and Karamo, who were both backed by former President Donald Trump in their respective campaigns last year, sought to funnel GOP outrage over the 2020 election into statewide victories, but they fell far short of that goal; DePerno lost to Nessel by nearly 9 points, while Karamo lost to Benson by 14 points. Former President Trump is backing Matthew DePerno to lead the Michigan Republican Party. Emily Elconin/Getty Images And Trump, who continues to wield enormous influence among grassroots activists as he begins to ramp up his third presidential campaign, last month threw his support behind DePerno."Republicans in Michigan must unite and work together if they want to save Michigan," the former president said in a statement at the time. "We must start by supporting Matt DePerno for chairman of the Michigan Republican Party. He is the only candidate running who can get the job done!" Both DePerno and Karamo are seeking to more closely tie grassroots conservatives to its GOP donor base.On Monday, Trump rallied for DePerno virtually and stressed the importance of Michigan, a swing state that in 2016 narrowly supported him over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before now-President Joe Biden flipped it back to the Democrats in 2020."Michigan will be a key battleground center for the action," Trump said of the presidential election next year. "Victory in Michigan will be the difference in winning the election or not."Key to Biden's victory in Michigan was his strength not only in cities like Detroit, Ann Arbor, Lansing, and Grand Rapids, but the margins that he amassed in suburban communities in Southeast Michigan. .content-lock-lock .hidden { display: none; } Sign up for notifications from Insider! Stay up to date with what you want to know. Subscribe to push notifications Close icon Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.
- [Fox News feared losing viewers by airing truth about election, documents show](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/18/fox-news-feared-losing-viewers-by-airing-truth-about-election-documents-show/) - In the weeks after the 2020 election, Fox News faced an existential crisis. The top-rated cable news network had alienated its Donald Trump-loving viewers with an accurate election night prediction for Joe Biden and was facing a terrifying ratings slide, not to mention the ire of a once-loyal president.Concern came from the very top: “Everything at stake here,” Rupert Murdoch messaged Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott.The billionaire founder was eager to see the Republican candidate prevail in the coming Senate runoff in Georgia — “helping any way we can,” he wrote. But he also advised Scott to keep an eye on the uptick in ratings for a smaller, more conservative channel whose election skepticism suddenly seemed to be resonating with pro-Trump viewers.Newly released messages show Fox executives fretting that month over an uncomfortable revelation: that if they told their audience the truth about the election, it could destroy their business model.“Getting creamed by CNN!” Murdoch wrote to Scott on Nov. 8, a day after most news organizations declared that Biden had won. “Guess our viewers don’t want to watch it.”What Fox’s loyal viewers wanted to watch — and what Fox News was willing to do to keep them — emerged this week as a central question in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit brought against the network by Dominion Voting Systems.Fox News was unequivocal on Nov. 7 about President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, but some hosts and guests were eager to spin it. (Video: JM Rieger/The Washington Post)A stunning cache of internal correspondence and deposition testimony obtained by the software company and made public on Thursday in a Delaware court filing showed high-level Fox executives and on-air stars privately agonizing over the wild and false claims of a stolen election that Trump allies promoted on Fox airwaves in the weeks after the 2020 election. “Sidney Powell is lying,” prime-time star Tucker Carlson wrote to his producer about a Trump lawyer who had appeared on Fox and spewed baseless accusations. “There is NO evidence of fraud,” anchor Bret Baier wrote to one of his bosses.The plaintiff’s lawyers argue that such messages prove Fox brass knew the claims that Dominion had “flipped” votes from Trump to Biden were untrue — but “spread and endorsed” them anyway.Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox News for $1.6 billion on March 26, 2021, for repeated false claims about election fraud made by the network’s hosts and guests. (Video: JM Rieger/The Washington Post)But the Dominion filing also lends ammunition to their long-held argument: that Fox allowed the false claims to air because it was fearful of losing viewers to Newsmax, an ever more pro-Trump news channel.“The texts and emails support [Dominion’s] claim that Fox was more concerned about its audience and market share than the truth concerning the 2020 presidential election,” said Timothy Zick, a professor at William & Mary Law School who specializes in the First Amendment and called the breadth of the internal communications “extraordinary.”In a statement, a Fox spokesperson said: “There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan.”Some exchanges showed Fox executives raising an alarm when journalists attempted to counter false claims from the Trump team.On a Nov. 9 broadcast, news anchor Neil Cavuto cut away from a live briefing by White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, warning viewers that she was making unsubstantiated claims of fraud. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said on air. “Unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue to show this.”Executives took notice: Cavuto’s actions were communicated to senior leadership at parent company Fox Corp. as a “Brand Threat.”Meanwhile, they kept a close eye on ratings.“The Newsmax surge is a bit troubling — truly is an alternative universe when you watch, but it can’t be ignored,” one message from Fox News President Jay Wallace to his CEO read. “Trying to get everyone to comprehend we are on war footing.”Later that month, Fox broadcast the entirety of a news conference featuring Powell and fellow Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani outlining their unsubstantiated case for election fraud — a performance that Murdoch dubbed “really crazy stuff,” in an email, “and damaging.”But when Fox host Dana Perino speculated that such claims could draw a lawsuit from Dominion, Scott expressed concern in an email, saying on-air personalities couldn’t afford to “give the crazies an inch right now … they are looking for and blowing up all appearances of disrespect to the audience.”In another message, Scott noted, “The audience feels like we crapped on [them] and we have damaged their trust and belief in us … We can fix this but we cannot smirk at our viewers any longer.”The ratings concerns turned out to be warranted. In January 2021, for the first time in 20 years, the cable network reported monthly ratings that fell behind both of its main cable news competitors, CNN and MSNBC.As Trump refused to let up on his election fraud claims, Murdoch suggested that Fox might have the clout to push back. In early January 2021, he relayed in a message to Scott a suggestion that their three biggest prime-time stars — Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham — “should independently or together say something like ‘the election is over and Joe Biden won.’” Murdoch passed on the suggestion that such a move “would go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election stolen.”But such a coordinated announcement never came. In forwarding his email to her staff, Scott added, “we need to be careful about using the shows and p---ing off the viewers.”Within Fox, the messages show, many worried that the network had been hurt by two key incidents: a debate in which some conservatives believed Fox anchor Chris Wallace lobbed unfair questions to Trump; and Fox’s election night prediction that Biden would win the hotly contested state of Arizona.Hannity wrote to Carlson and Ingraham on Nov. 12 that the combination “destroyed a brand that took 25 years to build and the damage is incalculable.”“It’s vandalism,” Carlson responded.In a message to a colleague, Scott complained that Bill Sammon, then the head of the network’s Washington bureau, did not understand “the impact to the brand and the arrogance in calling AZ.” In a separate message, to Fox Corp. executive chair and CEO Lachlan Murdoch, she wrote that: “Viewers going through the 5 stages of grief. It’s a question of trust — the AZ [call] was damaging but we will highlight our stars and plant flags letting the viewers know we hear them and respect them.”“Yes,” Murdoch replied. “But needs constant rebuilding without any missteps.”In another message, Ron Mitchell, the network executive in charge of prime-time programming and analytics, warned that Newsmax’s brand of “conspiratorial reporting might be exactly what the disgruntled [Fox News Channel] viewer is looking for.” As a result, he added, Fox should not “ever give viewers a reason to turn us off. Every topic and guest must perform.”Mitchell continued: “‘No unforced errors’ in content — example: Abruptly turning away from a Trump campaign news conference.”Rachel Weiner contributed to this report.
- [Dominion voting case exposes post-election fear at Fox News - The Detroit News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/18/dominion-voting-case-exposes-post-election-fear-at-fox-news-the-detroit-news/) - New York — A court filing in a lawsuit against Fox News lays bare a panic at the network that it had alienated its viewers and damaged its brand by not lining up with President Donald Trump's false claims that he had won the 2020 presidential election.That worry — a real one, judging by Fox's ratings in the election's aftermath — played a key role in Fox not setting the record straight about unfounded fraud claims, the network's accuser contends.“It's remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things,” the filing quotes Fox Washington news executive Bill Sammon as saying.The details were included in a trove of private communications unearthed by lawyers and contained in a redacted brief filed Thursday by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion claims in a $1.6 billion lawsuit that Fox aired allegations that Dominion had doctored the vote against Trump, even as it knew that was untrue. Fox says it was doing its job as journalists by airing the accusations made by Trump and his allies.Fox's internal troubles began with a correct call: Declaring on election night 2020 that Democrat Joe Biden had beaten Trump in Arizona. The declaration, coming ahead of other news organizations, infuriated the president and his fans.The backlash was noted in internal emails. “Holy cow, our audience is mad at the network,” said one, quoted by Dominion. “They're FURIOUS,” said another.Five days after the election, Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch communicated to Suzanne Scott, Fox News CEO, that the channel was “getting creamed by CNN. Guess our viewers don't want to watch it,” according to court papers.Fox News tumbled from first to third in the news network ratings between the Nov. 3, 2020 election and Biden's inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021, according to the Nielsen company. Meanwhile, thousands of Fox viewers flocked to the more conservative Newsmax, where prime-time viewership shot from 58,000 the week before the election to 568,000 the week after.The change shook the foundations of a network that had consistently led in the news ratings for the better part of two decades.Fox roared back into the lead by tacking more sharply to the right after Biden took office. But in the immediate aftermath of the election, there was genuine worry at its New York headquarters.Almost immediately, the network went on “war footing,” Dominion said, quoting a Fox executive.“Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we've lost with our audience?” Fox prime-time star Tucker Carlson wrote to his producer, according to Dominion's brief. “We're playing with fire, for real … an alternative like newsmax could be devastating to us.”Dominion contends that Fox executives made the decision to push false narratives to entice their audience back, and points to claims made by Trump allies like attorney Sidney Powell on programs hosted by Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs.On Nov. 9, Fox News Channel's Neil Cavuto cut away from a news conference held by Trump aide Kayleigh McEnaney when she began to air unsubstantiated allegations. A Fox executive complained in the aftermath that Cavuto was damaging the network's brand.The court filings also detailed two instances where Fox News reporters were attacked internally for tweeting fact checks. In one, reporter Jacqui Heinrich tweeted that there was no evidence any voting system deleted, lost or changed votes.“Please get her fired,” Carlson messaged fellow anchor Sean Hannity, saying Heinrich was hurting the company, according to Dominion's filing. Heinrich's tweet was later deleted, the court papers said.Carlson himself tried to “thread the needle,” Dominion said. It noted how he publicly stated that Powell had never provided evidence to back up her claims of fraud. “On the other hand, he did not say what he believed privately — that she was lying,” Dominion said.Fox said many of its specific responses will come in a document that Superior Court Judge Eric Davis in Delaware ordered sealed until Feb. 27. Fox said Dominion had mischaracterized the record and cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context.“There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan,” Fox said.If either side can persuade Davis to grant summary judgment in its favor, the case will end without a jury trial. If not, the trial is scheduled to begin in mid-April.As a result of Sullivan and cases that followed, such defamation cases against journalists are usually very hard to prove, and Fox is also arguing that Dominion is grossly overestimating any economic damage to the company.Ultimately, though, the case is pulling back the curtain on what happened at the nation's largest media outlet that appeals to conservative viewers at a pivotal time at the network's, and the nation's history.“Privately, Fox hosts and executives knew that Donald Trump lost the election and that he needed to concede,” Dominion argued in the papers released Thursday. “But Fox viewers heard a different story — repeatedly.”
- [Louisville metro council member under review for potential violation of ethics code - WLKY](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/18/louisville-metro-council-member-under-review-for-potential-violation-of-ethics-code-wlky/) - CLASSES IN PROTEST. A METRO COUNCIL MEMBERS ACTIONS ARE UNDER REVIEW TONIGHT FOR A POSSIBLE VIOLATION OF THE LOUISVILLE METRO ETHICS CODE. COUNCIL MEMBERS PASSED AN EMERGENCY RESOLUTION THURSDAY ASKING FOR A REVIEW OF REPUBLICAN COUNCILMAN ANTHONY ARGENTINO. LAST YEAR, HE CO-SPONSORED AN ORDINANCE ALLOCATING $40 MILLION IN COVID RELIEF FUNDS TO THE NONPROFIT THE LOUISVILLE HEALTH CARE CEO COUNCIL. PADGETT, CITING A POSSIBLE CONFLICT OF INTEREST, WITHDREW HIS SPONSORSHIP AND DIDN’T VOTE AND LATER TOOK A JOB WITH A GROUP. EARLIER THIS WEEK, AFTER REPORTS SURFACED, HE ASKED THE ETHICS COMMISSION TO REVIEW HIS ACTIONS. LOOKING FORWARD TO THE RESULTS FROM THE ETHICS COMMISSION AND MOVING FORWARD WITH ANY WITH COMPLYING WITH THEIR DIRECTION AND COMPLYING WITH THE ETHICS LAW MOVING FORWARD? NO WORD ON JUST HOW SOON THE COMMISSION WILL RELEASE A SUBPOENA, AND OTHER COUNCIL MEMBERS URGED TH
- [Bluegrass State blues: Louisville, UK putting state of Kentucky through rare down season in ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/18/bluegrass-state-blues-louisville-uk-putting-state-of-kentucky-through-rare-down-season-in/) - Getty Images / USATSI Kentucky is one of the most-populated states in the country without a team in one of the nation's four major professional sports leagues. But what the Bluegrass State lacks in terms of MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL visibility it makes up for with some of the nation's best college basketball. Well, historically anyway. As Kentucky and Louisville -- winners of 11 combined NCAA Tournaments -- each limp through another substandard season, an unprecedentedly long drought of college basketball success is coming into focus for a basketball-crazed state. Both schools spent time at No. 1 in the 2019-20 season and were destined for favorable NCAA Tournament seedings before the season's cancellation amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, it's been rough for both. Barring a miraculous run through the ACC Tournament, Louisville is destined to miss its third straight NCAA Tournament, and this will mark five straight tournaments in which the Cardinals have not won a game. By the time the 2024 NCAA Tournament rolls around, seven years will have elapsed since Louisville won a game in the Big Dance. Louisville has been among the worst teams in Division I in Kenny Payne's first season. Getty Images Things aren't much better at Kentucky, as the Wildcats claw for a spot in this year's 68-team field. If UK fails to make the tournament or makes it and fails to advance, this will mark three straight NCAA Tournaments without advancement for UK. Even proud programs like Murray State and Western Kentucky are having only average seasons compared to their historical standards. The Hilltoppers are below .500 in Conference USA play while Murray State is loitering in the middle of the Missouri Valley Conference during its first season in the league. At this rate, someone from the group of Eastern Kentucky (ASUN), Morehead State (Ohio Valley) and Northern Kentucky (Horizon) will be the state of Kentucky's best hope for NCAA Tournament representation if the Wildcats don't finish strong. State of despair How Division I teams in Kentucky have fared this season. TeamOverallConferenceNET rankingsKentucky17-98-5 SEC (T-4th)39Eastern Kentucky18-1011-4 ASUN (3rd)166Western Kentucky14-126-9 C-USA (T7th)173Northern Kentucky16-1111-5 Horizon (T3rd)198Murray State14-13 9-8 MVC (7th)212Morehead State17-1010-4 OVC (1st)234 Bellarmine12-167-8 ASUN (T-7th)261Louisville3-231-14 ACC (15th)324The state's proud basketball scene has been through droughts in the past and has always bounced back. Here is a ranking of the worst collective seasons of Kentucky basketball history since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985. 1. 2020-21: UK's disaster season NCAA Tournament teams: 1 (Morehead State lost in first round) It wasn't quite as bad as what Louisville has gone through this season, but Kentucky's 2020-21 campaign was one of the worst by winning percentage in nearly a century for UK. The Wildcats finished 9-16 after starting at No. 10 in the AP Top 25 as a team full of newcomers struggled to gel coming out of the COIVD-19 pandemic. Kentucky started 1-6 and never recovered. Louisville finished 13-7 but narrowly missed the NCAA Tournament in coach Chris Mack's second season. At one point, Louisville was 9-1 and ranked No. 16 nationally, but the Cardinals wound up as one of the last cuts from the final bracket. Aside from 1991, the 2021 season marks the only year in the modern era of the NCAA Tournament that both Kentucky and Louisville missed the field. The 2021-22 season also marked a rare down year for Murray State as the Racers finished 13-13 following the departure of superstar Ja Morant. WKU, EKU and NKU each finished above .500 but Morehead State was the only team from the state to make the Big Dance as the No. 14 seed Eagles fell in the first round. 2. 1986-87: Louisville misses dance, Cats struggleNCAA Tournament teams: 2 (Kentucky lost in first round, Western Kentucky lost in second round) One season after winning the 1986 national title with a team that featured Milt Wagner, who is the grandfather of current five-star Kentucky commitment DJ Wagner, Louisville missed the Big Dance. The Cardinals finished 18-14 in 1987 while Kentucky was bounced in the first round by Ohio State as a No. 8 seed. The Wildcats had finished 32-4 and reached the Elite Eight in 1986 during coach Eddie Sutton's first season but lost stars Winston Bennett and Kenny Walker from that team and struggled to replace their production. Similarly, the Cardinals could not recover from the departures of key players like Wagner, Billy Thompson and Jeff Hall. Current Louisville coach Kenny Payne was a freshman and role player on the 1986 title team and played mostly off the bench for the disappointing 1987 team. Ultimately, he became a starter in his final two seasons and helped lead the Cardinals back to national prominence in 1988 and 1989. The best team in Kentucky during the 1986-87 season turned out to be Western Kentucky. Though the Hilltoppers lost 60-58 to Louisville during non conference play, they went on to reach the second round of the NCAA Tournament with a final record of 29-9 under first-year coach Murray Arnold. 3. 2021-22: Murray State sets the paceNCAA Tournament teams: 2 (Kentucky lost in first round, Murray State lost in second round) Louisville fired Chris Mack after following a 6-8 start and messy offseason extortion scandal involving former assistant Dino Gaudio. The Cardinals proceeded to finish 13-19 for the program's worst winning percentage since 1998 — until this season. Kentucky, on the other hand, put the misery of the 2020-21 season behind it as West Virginia transfer Oscar Tshiebwe burst onto the scene alongside star freshman guard TyTY Washington and Georgia transfer Sahvir Wheeler. UK spent the entire season in the top 20 and never lost consecutive games…….until it mattered most. The Wildcats bowed out of the SEC Tournament with a semifinal loss to Tennessee and then suffered a historic loss to No. 15 seed Saint Peter's in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. The stunning ending negated the joy of a great regular season for the Wildcats. Thankfully for the state of Kentucky, Murray State enjoyed a banner year, finishing 31-3 after reaching the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Bellarmine, Morehead State and Northern Kentucky didn't make the tournament but were 20-win teams, and Bellarmine would have made it if not for the NCAA-mandated waiting period for programs transitioning to Division I. 4. 1990-91: Cats on probationNCAA Tournament teams: 1 (Murray State lost in first round) Kentucky finished 22-6 (14-4 SEC) in Rick Pitino's second season as coach but was unable to participate in the NCAA Tournament because of violations committed during Eddie Sutton's coaching tenure. Meanwhile, Louisville struggled to a 14-16 mark in the program's first losing season under legendary coach Denny Crum. Western Kentucky finished just 14-14, leaving Murray State as the only team from the state to reach the NCAA Tournament. The Racers finished 24-9 and earned a No. 13 seed before falling to Alabama in the first round. Better days returned the following season as the Cardinals made the NCAA Tournament in 1992. Kentucky returned to postseason eligibility with a bang, finishing 29-7 with a 104-103 overtime loss to Duke in the Elite Eight. 5. 2022-23: UL sinks, jury out on UKNCAA Tournament teams: TBD The ship has sailed on Louisville, which fell to 3-23 with a loss to Virginia on Wednesday night. This will be the program's worst season since it combined to go 4-42 from 1939 to 1941. The Cardinals have simply been non-competitive in Kenny Payne's first season as coach, and the struggles are only exacerbated by the program's recent run of misfortune. Louisville fans haven't tasted substantive success in a while, and there has been little indication that patience with a new regime will be rewarded anytime soon. As for Kentucky, the Wildcats have a chance to flip this season's narrative on its head. After a gritty road win at Mississippi State on Wednesday, UK is 18-8 and finally has a second Quad 1 victory. The Wildcats are still a bubble team, but a strong finish and a few NCAA Tournament wins will forgive a multitude of sins. However, if things go the opposite direction, UK will be staring down a daunting reality. Without an NCAA Tournament victory this season, five years will have elapsed between Big Dance wins for the program by the time the event rolls around again in 2024. With a poor finish from Kentucky, this season could go down among the worst in state history. But the ball is in the Wildcats' court as they prepare to host No. 10 Tennessee on Saturday in another huge game.
- [The Georgia Grand Jury on Trump and the 2020 Election | The Brian Lehrer Show - WNYC](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/18/the-georgia-grand-jury-on-trump-and-the-2020-election-the-brian-lehrer-show-wnyc/)
- [Off camera, Fox hosts doubted 2020 election fraud claims | TribLIVE.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/18/off-camera-fox-hosts-doubted-2020-election-fraud-claims-triblive-com/) - WILMINGTON, Del. — To millions of viewers, Fox News hosts gave allies of former President Donald Trump a platform to champion false claims that he lost the 2020 election because of voter fraud. To one another, they expressed doubts about the claims and mocked the people making them. Private exchanges between Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, and other network bigwigs — including the chairman of Fox Corp., Rupert Murdoch — show a wide chasm between what the network promoted in primetime and the doubts that its stars held behind the camera, according to new court filings in a defamation lawsuit being waged by a company whose voting systems were regularly maligned on air. “Sidney Powell is lying” about having evidence for election fraud, Carlson said via text on Nov. 16, 2020, to a Fox News producer, referring to one of Trump’s lawyers. Ingraham texted Carlson that Powell is “a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy,” referring to the former New York mayor and Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani. These and other internal communications were included in a redacted brief filed Thursday by attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems, which is suing Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp., for $1.6 billion. In a deposition, host Sean Hannity said “that whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second,” according to Dominion’s filing. Murdoch, meanwhile, in a Nov. 19 email, described what he saw in a press conference that day featuring Giuliani and Powell as “Really crazy stuff. And damaging.” Dominion’s legal case rests on its belief that Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims that the company had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements. Attorneys for Fox argued in a counterclaim unsealed Thursday that the lawsuit is an assault on the First Amendment. They said Dominion has advanced “novel defamation theories” and is seeking a “staggering” damage figure aimed at generating headlines, chilling protected speech and enriching Dominion’s private equity owner, Staple Street Capital Partners. “Dominion brought this lawsuit to punish FNN for reporting on one of the biggest stories of the day — allegations by the sitting President of the United States and his surrogates that the 2020 election was affected by fraud,” the counterclaim states. “The very fact of those allegations was newsworthy.” Fox attorneys have noted that Carlson repeatedly questioned Powell’s claims in his broadcasts. “When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her,” Carlson told viewers on Nov. 19, 2020. Fox attorneys say Dominion’s own public relations firm expressed skepticism in December 2020 as to whether the network’s coverage was defamatory. They also point to an email from Oct. 30, 2020, just days before the election, in which Dominion’s director of product strategy and security complained that the company’s products were “just riddled with bugs.” In their counterclaim, Fox attorneys wrote that when voting-technology companies denied the allegations being made by Trump and his surrogates, Fox News aired those denials, while some Fox News hosts offered protected opinion commentary about Trump’s allegations. “Freedom of speech and freedom of the press would be illusory if the prevailing side in a public controversy could sue the press for giving a forum to the losing side,” Fox attorneys wrote. Fox attorneys warn that threatening the company with a $1.6 billion judgment will cause other media outlets to think twice about what they report. Responses by both sides to the briefs made public on Thursday remain under seal. Fox has said Dominion’s filing includes “cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context,” and that it has refused to allow Fox to make its response to Dominion’s brief public. Attorneys for Fox and Dominion told The Associated Press on Friday that responses to the briefs will remain under seal until Feb. 27. Dominion on Friday filed its own challenge to the redactions in the briefs, including its own. “Dominion’s position is that nothing in these three briefs warrants confidential treatment,” attorneys for the company wrote, adding that all redactions were done at Fox’s request. If either side can persuade Superior Court Judge Eric Davis to grant summary judgment in its favor, the case will end without a jury trial. If not, the trial is scheduled to begin in mid-April. In its 192-page brief, Dominion said the judge should rule in its favor because “no reasonable juror could find in Fox’s favor on each element of Dominion’s defamation claim.” Dominion attorneys also assert that no reasonable juror could find in favor of Fox’s “neutral reportage” and “fair report” defenses. “Recounts and audits conducted by election officials across the U.S. repeatedly confirmed the election’s outcome, including specifically that Dominion’s machines accurately counted votes,” Dominion’s filing states. Fox News attorneys argue the network’s coverage and commentary are not defamatory and that there is no evidence the hosts had any malicious intent behind what they said about Dominion — an important legal standard in First Amendment cases. Davis ruled last month that, for the purposes of the defamation claims, he will consider Dominion to be a public figure. That means Dominion must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the Fox defendants acted with actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth.
- [Brian Stelter: I Never Truly Understood Fox News Until Now - The Atlantic](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/18/brian-stelter-i-never-truly-understood-fox-news-until-now-the-atlantic/) - The basic story of Fox News and the 2020 election is well understood. Fox’s relatively small news operation covered the vote count accurately; this coverage infuriated President Donald Trump, the MAGA base, and Fox’s opinion stars; some viewers temporarily flipped to further-right outlets, such as Newsmax; and Fox panicked.But thanks to Dominion Voting Systems, which is pursuing a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox, we now know that the network’s sense of crisis was even more intense than it appeared from outside. With the case careening toward trial, a court filing yesterday revealed some of what Dominion found during the discovery process, including eye-popping messages from Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Fox’s senior management. “Getting creamed by CNN!” Fox’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, wrote to its top executive after seeing the overnight ratings on November 8. “Guess our viewers don’t want to watch it.”He was right. Some of Fox’s top shows began broadcasting a better story, one that its viewers did want to watch: a conspiracy-laden tale about crooked Democrats stealing an election. Dominion is arguing that Fox knew full well that Trumpworld’s voter-fraud allegations were bunk but promoted the lies anyway. Whether or not Dominion prevails in court, and many experts believe it will, the lawsuit is already forcing an ethical reckoning over Fox’s disrespect of its audience. Hour after hour, day after day, Fox stars kept signaling to viewers that Trump might still win the election not because they thought he would, but because they were worried about their ratings. And we all witnessed the consequences on January 6.On November 12, 2020, nearly a week after Joe Biden clinched the presidency, Trump sought refuge in Fox’s alternative reality—and, as always, the network delivered.At the top of the 9 p.m. hour, Trump’s friend Hannity pretended that the outcome was still in doubt. He said the election was not fair. He cited “outstanding votes that have yet to be counted” and “more reports of dead people voting from beyond the grave.” And, crucially, he talked at length about Dominion.Trump was furious with the small number of journalists at Fox who kept calling Biden the winner of the election, but Hannity was still on his good side. So, in typical Trump fashion, he flip-flopped. Twelve hours after tweeting his revulsion with the network, Trump tweeted, “Must see @seanhannity takedown of the horrible, inaccurate and anything but secure Dominion Voting System which is used in States where tens of thousands of votes were stolen from us and given to Biden. Likewise, the Great @LouDobbs has a confirming and powerful piece!”Now it was nearly 11 p.m. eastern time. The Fox News correspondent Jacqui Heinrich saw Trump’s election-denying post and had the audacity to tweet the truth. She wrote that “top election infrastructure officials”—including some in Trump’s administration—had issued a statement saying “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”Heinrich, a talented young correspondent at Fox, was a minnow, and the prime-time sharks were hungry. The three hosts—Hannity, Carlson, and Laura Ingraham—were in a text chain together, where they had been commiserating about the madness of the postelection period. Carlson flagged Heinrich’s tweet and told Hannity, “Please get her fired.” Why? Because her minor Twitter fact-check of an out-of-control president was exactly the sort of thing that Fox’s fan base could not stand to see.“It needs to stop immediately, like tonight,” Carlson wrote. “It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”Hannity replied and said he had already sent the accurate and thus offending tweet to Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott.“Sean texted me,” Scott wrote to two colleagues. Apparently, Hannity had threatened to tweet back at Heinrich. “He’s standing down on responding,” Scott wrote, “but not happy about this and doesn’t understand how this is allowed to happen from anyone in news.” Scott was bothered too. She worried that reporters at other outlets would notice Heinrich’s tweet: “She has serious nerve doing this and if this gets picked up, viewers are going to be further disgusted.”Disgusted by what? By a reporter fact-checking Trump’s fictions.This extreme tension between the newsroom and the much larger opinion operation came up in almost every interview I conducted for Hoax, my book about the disturbing relationship between Fox and Trump. One Wednesday morning in late 2019, I turned on Fox & Friends, pressed the “Mute” button, and dialed up a producer who used to work on the show. It was clear from the tone of his voice that he had profound regrets about his time working on the morning show, and that’s why he wanted to be a confidential source.The former producer said he sensed himself being brainwashed while consuming all of the right-wing content from the Fox & Friends hosts and guests. He felt himself transforming into one of the millions of Fox addicts across America. “People don’t care if it’s right; they just want their side to win. That’s who this show is for,” he said. “It’s sad.”It may be sad, but it is also enormously lucrative. Other sources at Fox told me to think of it not as a network per se, but as a profit machine. They feared doing anything that would disrupt the machine. “I feel like Fox is being held hostage by its audience,” a veteran staffer told me, perhaps justifying his own participation by portraying himself as a victim.When I printed these confessions in Hoax, I wrote that everyone at Fox was “profoundly afraid of losing the audience and the resulting piles of cash.” I cited the former morning-show producer, who told me, “We were deathly afraid of our audience leaving, deathly afraid of pissing them off.”These quotes were evocative, I thought, but they suffered from all the limitations that come with anonymity. And the quotes had not come from Fox’s top tier of millionaire stars and executives. That’s why the new legal filing by Dominion is such a showstopper. We can read exactly what the leaders and stars of Fox News really think. This is my biggest takeaway: In the days after Biden won the election, while Trump tried to start the steal by shouting “Stop the Steal,” the most powerful people at Fox News were not concerned about the health of U.S. democracy. They were concerned about Fox’s brand and their own bottom line.On November 7, Fox had fallen in line with the other major networks and called the election for Biden. There were spontaneous celebrations in major cities and long faces across Fox’s airwaves. The consensus view both inside and outside the network was that Fox’s acknowledgment of reality—and specifically its early projection that Biden had won Arizona—had turned the audience against the network.I was working at CNN at the time, so I studied the ratings spreadsheets that arrived in the late afternoon. Newsmax, a tiny Fox wannabe, was suddenly surging by catering to MAGA viewers and refusing to call Biden the president-elect. On November 8, I interviewed Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy and aired clips of election deniers speaking on his network. “Your commentators are promoting bogus voter-fraud lies,” I said. He tried to turn the interview into a sales pitch. “Don’t believe you, don’t believe me, just watch Newsmax,” he said, “and make your own judgment about how fair we are.”Ruddy, in other words, was capitalizing on the business opportunity before him. He was welcoming viewers to Newsmax with a pledge to tell them what they wanted to hear. Fox’s top talent knew it—and freaked out. According to the Dominion filing, Carlson texted his producer that weekend and said, “Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience? We're playing with fire, for real....an alternative like newsmax could be devastating to us.”On November 9, Carlson wrote to Scott, “I’ve never seen a reaction like this, to any media company. Kills me to watch it.” Scott shared the message with Rupert’s son Lachlan, the CEO of the Fox Corporation and a Carlson ally. On that day, Dominion alleges, “Fox executives made an explicit decision to push narratives to entice their audience back.” One snippet of texts shows Scott telling Lachlan that viewers were “going through the 5 stages of grief.” Angling to impress her boss, she said that the Arizona projection was damaging, “but we will highlight our stars and plant flags letting the viewers know we hear them and respect them.”What a curious word—respect. Journalists are taught that to respect the audience means to report the truth clearly and carefully. But inside Fox, which is first and foremost a provider of entertainment, respect meant something else. Reading the texts and emails, I was reminded of another thing the Fox & Friends producer had said. “We were deathly afraid” of the audience, he admitted, “but we also laughed at them. We disrespected them. We weren’t practicing what we preached.”That’s what Dominion is arguing in the legal realm—that Fox’s leaders were saying one thing privately and another thing publicly.Lachlan Murdoch affirmed Scott’s plan to “respect” the audience and said that the network’s relationship with its viewers “needs constant rebuilding without any missteps.” Soon, messages were going back and forth about threats to the “brand.” Accurate reporting by Fox journalists, such as Heinrich’s tweet, was one of those perceived threats. Carlson texted his fellow hosts that he “went crazy on Meade over it,” meaning that he had lashed out at Meade Cooper, Fox’s executive vice president of prime-time programming, who reported to Scott. By the next morning, Heinrich’s tweet was gone, as Dominion’s filing notes.The Trump tweet Heinrich referenced included both Hannity and Dobbs by name, so by fact-checking it, she had technically run afoul of a company policy against intramural warfare, I learned through my reporting. “No shooting in the tent,” the former Fox executive Roger Ailes used to say, although the policy was unevenly enforced. So Heinrich took down her first tweet but quickly posted a new one on November 13, also fact-checking Trump and noting a complete dearth of evidence for the anti-Dominion conspiracy theories that were airing all across right-wing TV.Hannity’s election-doubting monologue, meanwhile, remained online. Fox’s website bills it as “a deep dive into the voting machines at center of controversy.” And Carlson was right about the stock price that November day—Fox Corporation dropped 2.6 percent. While the rest of us were worrying about how Trump’s antidemocratic conduct was going to undermine our democracy, he was worried about his bank account.The other crucial metric Fox leaders were watching, of course, was the Nielsen ratings chart. The Dominion filing contains snippets of conversations from later in November that showcase Hannity’s alarm. “The network is being rejected,” he texted Carlson and Ingraham, to which Carlson responded, “I’ve heard from angry viewers every hour of the day all weekend, including at dinner tonight.” So they each found ways to wink and nod to voting irregularities and unfair systems—showing “respect” to viewers by actively misinforming them.In a separate thread, on November 24, one of Hannity’s producers cited minute-by-minute ratings from the prior week’s episodes and said, “Our best minutes from last week were on the voting irregularities.” The conspiracy-laden segments continued on Fox through December, the ratings improved, and the country’s political divide deepened.Not long after the election and the insurrection, I went back to sources at Fox to hear about the aftermath, gathering mere scraps in comparison to Dominion’s discovery-aided buffet. Sources told me that the pressure from the audience was debilitating in the postelection period. A senior staffer at Fox railed against the network’s journalists and math wizards who had called Arizona for Biden, calling them “arrogant fucks” who “are rubbing it in our viewers’ faces.”Rubbing what? “Biden. They're rubbing Biden in our faces.”I never fully understood that objection until I read the new Dominion filing. Somewhere around page 157, it clicked. Inside Fox, the prime-time stars and senior executives raged against the network’s reporters not because they doubted that Biden had won, but because the truth was too disturbing to the audience that had made them rich. Fox’s postelection strategy, the texts and emails suggest, was to stop rubbing Biden in its viewers’ faces. But in their effort to show their viewers “respect,” they ultimately disrespected both their audience and the American experiment they claim to protect.
- [On air vs. off air: How Fox News lied about the 2020 election](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/18/on-air-vs-off-air-how-fox-news-lied-about-the-2020-election/) - IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.Rick Scott pivots on Social Security Medicare after bipartisan backlash08:34Now PlayingOn air vs. off air: How Fox News lied about the 2020 election05:10UP NEXTMehdi: Bombshell text evidence confirms Fox 'is not a news channel'06:06Nikki Haley stumbles over federal abortion ban issue05:07Fetterman checks into hospital to seek treatment for clinical depression07:22Rep. Goldman: Pence is trying Trump's delay strategy in subpoena fight06:33Raskin calls for investigation into Kushner’s $2 billion Saudi deal07:53Trump attacks Nikki Haley from the left on Social Security, Medicare05:54Report: Mark Meadows subpoenaed by DOJ special counsel in Jan. 6 probe05:26Maxwell Frost: Gen Z is the 'mass shooting generation’ 06:31Republicans use Ohio train disaster to pursue culture wars, ignore solutions13:02Ohio train derailment prompts evacuations, uncertainty 06:21New details on how Trump, Kushner continue to profit off Saudi ties10:52Plaskett: GOP using ‘weaponization’ panel to air conspiracy theories ahead of 202405:00Chris Hayes: The real reason behind the Republican Party infighting09:08Schiff: No excuse for Pence to do anything but cooperate with DOJ subpoena06:04Big GOP donors plot to replace Trump in 202410:32‘He’s going to lose this’: Mike Pence’s chance of challenging DOJ subpoena09:41Hayes: LeBron’s mental fortitude is just as remarkable as his game04:07Yes, Republicans have called for cuts to Social Security and Medicare.06:2505:10Share this -To understand the depths of Fox's hypocrisy, "you really need to hear what the stars of Fox were saying on TV versus what they were telling each other behind the scenes,” says Mehdi Hasan.Feb. 18, 2023Read
- [Fulton grand jury report on Trump 2020 election finds basis for perjury charges, no hint of voter fraud](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/18/fulton-grand-jury-report-on-trump-2020-election-finds-basis-for-perjury-charges-no-hint-of-voter-fraud/) - by Stanley Dunlap, Georgia Recorder [This article first appeared in the Georgia Recorder, republished with permission] February 16, 2023 A Fulton County special grand jury is recommending that the district attorney pursue charges against witnesses in the investigation into efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn his Georgia 2020 election loss. The first portions of the grand jury’s final report made public on Thursday states that a majority of jurors believe at least one of the 75 witnesses perjured themselves while testifying about President Joe Biden’s narrow election win as it met from June to December. A preview of the 23-member panel’s final report was released Thursday by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, providing the public with its first glimpse into the panel’s findings after months of testimony behind closed courtroom doors. Advertisement The documents made public do not mention any names or if there were any other crimes that the panel believes were committed. The 23 jurors heard testimony from a wide range of witnesses, including people with direct connections to Trump, election experts, poll workers, elected officials and state employees and sent a final report to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Dec. 22. Earlier this week, McBurney the report’s introduction, conclusion, as well as a segment in which grand jurors discussed their concern that some witnesses may have lied under oath during their testimony, would be released. McBurney said the panel’s recommendations on who should be charged with state crimes would remain under seal until Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis decides whether to charge those people. At the Jan. 24 court hearing, Willis said her decision on whether to pursue charges was “imminent,” and Brookings Institute Report and political experts with Defend Our Democracy have predicted that multiple people, including possibly Trump, will be indicted for charges that could include conspiracy to commit election fraud and other offenses. The investigation was initiated by Willis in February 2021 as Trump and many of his supporters, including White House staff, Congressmen, attorneys, and other members of his inner circle, attempted to sow seeds of doubt by disputing the election results in Georgia as well as several other states where he lost to Democrats. The Fulton probe kicked into high gear after the January 2021 public release of a recorded phone call in which Trump pressed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough ballots to overcome Biden’s victory. In Georgia, a tally of just under 12,000 votes separated Biden from Trump in an election with a record-breaking turnout of 7 million voters. The special grand jury does not have the power to indict like a regular grand jury but has the ability to meet over a longer period of time. At the end of the process, a report was written that provided recommendations for who the prosecutor should indict and what kind of crime they might have committed. The Fulton special grand jury’s report says the panel unanimously agreed that there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, and former Trump attorney Rudolph Giuliani were among the notable witnesses called by Willis who had publicly claimed that the election had been rigged. Testimony was given by Georgia Republicans Gov. Brian Kemp and Raffensperger, who both rejected attempts by the former president to overturn the election results. Another witness was Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer, who served as one of the 16 fake electors who turned in fraudulent documents certifying Trump’s victory. Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and Twitter. Advertisement
- [Fox News Hosts Didn't Believe 2020 Election Fraud Claims - Esquire](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/17/fox-news-hosts-didnt-believe-2020-election-fraud-claims-esquire/) - From the network that brought you Any Reasonable Viewer Can See Tucker Carlson Isn't Stating Actual Facts comes another hit show, We Disdain Our Viewers and Feed Them Slop We Don't Believe. Yes, it's another lawsuit against Fox News in which the resulting court case has been highly revelatory.In the Carlson case, which was decided back in September 2020, Fox lawyers argued he's not presenting factual claims about the world but "exaggeration" and "non-literal commentary" in order to defeat a defamation suit. (The federal judge who agreed with them also suggested the programming could be characterized as "simply bloviating for his audience.") In the ongoing Dominion Voting Systems suit against Fox News, once again alleging defamation, we learn from a court filing on Thursday that Carlson, fellow primetime infotainment stars Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, and network executives all knew Trump's claims that the 2020 election was stolen were lies. They just allowed these claims to cook on their airwaves anyway.Related StoriesAround the time that Trump and his merry band of loony toons were banging on about a stolen election in November and December 2020, here's some of what the Fox News luminaries were saying off-air. Fox, for its part, says these quotes were taken out of context:Ingraham told Hannity and Carlson that Trump election conspiracy lawyer Sidney Powell was "a bit nuts" and told Carlson "Sidney is a complete nut," adding "No one will work with her, and Ditto with Rudy [Giuliani]."Ingraham's producer, Tommy Firth, investigated the Dominion claims and quickly found they were false. "This dominion shit is going to give me a fucking aneurysm," he said at the time.On November 16, Carlson wrote to his producer that "Sidney Powell is lying" about having evidence of fraud. On November 21, Carlson texted that it was "shockingly reckless" to claim Dominion rigged the election. One of the network's "straight news" stars, Bret Baier, texted that "there is NO evidence of fraud. None. Allegations stories. Twitter Bullshit."Dana Perino, another on-air talent on the reasonable end of the Fox spectrum, said in contemporaneous communications that the claims were "total bs," "insane," and "nonsense." On November 6, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott told Fox head honcho Rupert Murdoch that "if Trump becomes a sore loser, we should watch Sean [Hannity] especially."On November 19, Rupert Murdoch told Scott in an email that Giuliani's fraud claims were "terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear." Scott responded: "yes Sean [Hannity] and even [Jeanine] Pirro agrees."Speaking of which, Pirro and Hannity were two on-air personalities that executives openly discussed as nutso—or otherwise unreliable as sources of information. Fox executive Gary Schreier said Maria Bartiromo was a conduit for conspiracy theorists. Pirro's boss, weekend programming chief Jerry Andrews, said on November 22 that "Jeanine is just as nuts." A Fox Corporation SVP said Hannity is "out there." And Fox President Jay Wallace wrote in September 2020 that "the North Koreans do a more nuanced show" than Lou Dobbs.And yet they aired the fraud claims anyway. "That whole narrative that Sidney was pushing," Hannity has testified in the Dominion suit, "I did not believe it for one second." On November 30, 2020, he hosted Powell on his show to talk about the fraud conspiracies. For its part, Dominion presents an argument that Fox disregarded the truth value of these claims because they were losing viewers to Newsmax at the time, an upstart conservative network that was willing to go all-in on Trump's bullshit. The picture Dominion paints is of the biggest network in cable news tearing at the fabric of American democracy to protect its market share. Fox lawyers are now arguing the network was within its rights to talk about Trump's allegations as they had inherent news value.Fox News: Democracy 2020.Robert Nickelsberg//Getty ImagesBut the filing also presents substantial evidence that Fox News retaliated against its own employees who made the mistake of telling the truth. It's public record that Chris Stirewalt, who oversaw the elections desk that called Arizona for Biden early, was forced out thereafter. Bill Sammon, the network's Washington Managing Editor, was also forced out after CEO Suzanne Scott wrote that he didn't grasp "the impact to the brand and the arrogance" in calling Arizona for Biden, saying it was his job "to protect the brand." When none other than Rupert Murdoch suggested the primetime stars—Carlson, Hannity, Ingraham—come out on January 5 and admit Trump lost, Scott told a colleague that "we need to be careful about using the shows and pissing off the viewers." The come-to-reality moment never happened. Instead, the primetime stars continued, in private, to both admit the fraud claims were false and denounce colleagues who said so on-air. When Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich fact-checked this crapola on Twitter, Carlson told Hannity: "Please get her fired. Seriously......What the fuck? I'm actually shocked...It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It's measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down." Nothing says "populist truth-teller fighting the elites" like "stop telling the truth, the stock is down."We should note that Carlson (along with Murdoch) was one of the only people who had flashes of responsible behavior. On November 9, Carlson acknowledged on-air that "false claims of fraud can be every bit as destructive as the fraud itself...the fraud that we can confirm does not seem to be enough to alter the election results. We should be honest and tell you that." He also demanded evidence from Sidney Powell on-air. But having texted on November 21 about how reckless it was to claim Dominion rigged the election, by January 26 he was hosting MyPillow Guy Mike Lindell to...make the familiar claims about Dominion voting machines. Maybe he thought enough time had passed since Trump's superfans attacked the national legislature based on these kinds of claims to bring them back responsibly. It had, after all, been nearly three weeks. What else would you expect from a guy who texted his producer on January 6 telling him that Trump is "a demonic force, a destroyer. But he's not going to destroy us."Update (3:41 p.m.): After publication, a spokesperson for Fox News reached out to Esquire to offer a statement: "There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan."Senior Staff WriterJack Holmes is a senior staff writer at Esquire, where he covers politics and sports. He also hosts Useful Context, a video series.
- [Fox News hosts doubted 2020 election fraud claims: Court filing - NewsNation](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/17/fox-news-hosts-doubted-2020-election-fraud-claims-court-filing-newsnation/) - (NewsNation) — Although they acted differently on air, some prominent Fox News hosts actually doubted some of former President Trump’s 2020 election fraud claims, according to court documents. According to court filings made public Thursday by Dominion Voting Systems, which is suing Fox News and its parent company for $1.6 billion, private exchanges between Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and others, such as Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox Corporation, shows doubts they had about what Trump and his supporters were saying. Murdoch, Dominion said in its brief, internally described election fraud claims as “really crazy” and “damaging,” but did not use his power to stop them, according to Reuters. Dominion is suing because it alleges Fox News deliberately amplified false claims that the company had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that the cable news channel had provided a platform for guests to make these kinds of defamatory statements. In one text from the Thursday court filing, Carlson wrote to a Fox News producer in November 2020, that “Sidney Powell is lying” about having evidence for election fraud. Powell, Trump’s lawyer at the time, was also called “a complete nut” by Ingraham. “No one will work with her. Ditto with (former New York City Mayor) Rudy (Giuliani),” Ingraham said. Ohio Train Derailment: What is vinyl chloride? Dominion wrote that the cable news channel knew the things it was saying on air were “total bs.” “Yet despite knowing the truth — or, at minimum, recklessly disregarding that truth — Fox spread and endorsed these ‘outlandish voter fraud claims’ about Dominion even as it internally recognized the lies as ‘crazy,’ ‘absurd,’ and ‘shockingly reckless,” the company wrote, citing a sealed exhibit. The filing shows Carlson was concerned that Fox News’ decision to call the state of Arizona for Joe Biden on election night could end the network, according to Business Insider. Trump, Carlson said, is good at “destroying things.” “He’s the undisputed world champion of that,” Carlson wrote in the filing, per Business Insider. “He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.” Study ranks how ‘tax-friendly’ every state is That same day, Carlson texted someone else that “we’ve got to be incredibly careful right now,” and expressed fear that “we could get hurt.” Carlson’s concerns for the network extended to the actions of other Fox News employees as well. After reporter Jacqui Heinrich posted a tweet disputing Trump’s views of voter fraud and Dominion, NewsNation partner the Hill wrote, Carlson sent fellow Fox host Sean Hannity a text asking to “get her fired.” “It needs to stop immediately, like tonight,” Carlson wrote at the time. “It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.” Dominion wrote, in the court filing, that although Fox knew the truth, or “recklessly” disregarded it, it endorsed and even spread voter fraud claims as rival networks, such as Newsmax, started gaining popularity by promoting what Trump said. “The consequences to Dominion and to democracy did not matter,” Dominion wrote. FILE – This combination of photo shows, from left, Tucker Carlson, host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Laura Ingraham, host of “The Ingraham Angle,” and Sean Hannity, host of “Hannity” on Fox News. (AP Photo) Not only did Fox defame Dominion once, the company argued, but over a “months-long time frame.” In a statement, a Fox spokeswoman said, “Dominion has mischaracterized the record, cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context and spilled considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law,” the New York Times wrote. Responses to the briefs, by both Fox and Dominion, remain under seal. Dominion filed a challenge to the redactions, saying that “nothing” in them warrants confidential treatment. Attorneys for Fox and Dominion told The Associated Press on Friday that responses to the briefs will remain under seal until Feb. 27. The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
- [Former KY officer's trial date postponed in Breonna Taylor case - WFIN Local News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/17/former-ky-officers-trial-date-postponed-in-breonna-taylor-case-wfin-local-news/) - ​ The large volume of evidence collected in the Breonna Taylor case prompted a judge on Wednesday to push back the trial date for a former Kentucky police officer who fired blindly into Taylor’s apartment during the deadly no-knock raid on her apartment in 2020. The trial will mark a second attempt by prosecutors to convict Brett Hankison for his actions on the night Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was shot to death by police in Louisville. Taylor, who worked as an emergency medical technician, was shot multiple times during the raid. The warrant for the raid was later found to be flawed. U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings moved the trial back about two months to Oct. 30, after Hankison’s lawyers asked for more time to process massive amounts of evidence turned over by federal prosecutors. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT CHARGES 4 LOUISVILLE POLICE OFFICERS IN BREONNA TAYLOR INVESTIGATION Hankison was indicted by the U.S. Justice Department last year along with three other officers, one of whom has pleaded guilty to helping falsify the warrant used to enter Taylor’s apartment on March 13, 2020. Taylor was killed in her hallway after officers broke down the door and Taylor’s boyfriend fired a shot that struck a police sergeant. None of Hankison’s shots hit Taylor. Her killing along with George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minnesota police in 2020 ignited protests that summer around the country over racial injustice. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the federal indictments in the Taylor case in August, remarking that Taylor “should be alive today.” Hankison is the only officer who fired shots during the raid who has been charged in any court. Prosecutors determined that two other officers who fired and struck Taylor were justified in shooting back after Taylor’s boyfriend fired at them. Hankison attorney Jack Byrd also told Jennings Wednesday that his team needs time to meet with use-of-force and crime scene experts to go over evidence. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Hankison, 46, was acquitted in March of charges brought by state prosecutors for endangering Taylor’s next-door neighbors with shots he fired into Taylor’s apartment that went through her walls. Hankison retreated from the open doorway and fired 10 bullets into a sliding door and window on the side of Taylor’s apartment. The more recent federal charges accuse him of endangering neighbors along with Taylor and her boyfriend. Another former officer, Kelly Goodlett, has pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge, and is expected to testify in the cases against two more officers who were involved in crafting the Taylor warrant. Former detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sgt. Kyle Meany are charged with conspiring to deprive Taylor of her civil rights. Jaynes and Meany are set to be tried together on Oct. 25. Goodlett’s guilty plea was moved from last year to Dec. 13, presumably after Jaynes and Meany’s cases are finished.
- [Memphis police due in court to issue pleas in death of Tyre Nichols | 1330 & 101.5 WHBL](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/17/memphis-police-due-in-court-to-issue-pleas-in-death-of-tyre-nichols-1330-101-5-whbl/) - By Maria Alejandra CardonaMEMPHIS, Tenn. (Reuters) – Five fired Memphis police officers are due in court on Friday to enter their pleas against second-degree murder charges stemming from the beating of Tyre Nichols, a Black man who died three days later.Police video captured images of the officers beating and kicking Nichols, hitting him with a baton, spraying him with pepper spray and firing a stun gun at him on Jan. 7 following a traffic stop, sparking outrage and renewing the national conversation about race relations and police brutality.The five officers, all out on bail, are expected to plead not guilty to charges of second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression in the arraignment hearing set for 9 a.m. CST (1500 GMT) at Shelby County Criminal Court.All five officers – Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmit Martin, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith – are Black. They have been fired from the police force and the special unit they were a member of has been disbanded.A sixth, white officer has also been fired, as have three fire department emergency medical technicians who arrived after Nichols was beaten. Two Shelby County sheriff’s deputies who responded to the scene were suspended five days without pay.Nichols, 29, a father, avid skateboarder and student of photography, attempted to converse with police as they shouted orders and threatened him with violence during the ordeal.“You guys are really doing a lot right now. I’m just trying to go home,” Nichols said at one point, sitting on the street as police tried to subdue him.“Stop. I’m not doing anything,” Nichols said, just before breaking free and running.When police caught up to him, he was beaten while restrained, clubbed with a baton, and kicked while on the ground.Less than 100 yards (meters) from home, he called out for his mother several times.Officers on the video said Nichols had swerved through traffic dangerously, and one said Nichols attempted to grab his gun during the scrum.After the hearing, civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents Nichols’ family, is scheduled to address the media.Crump has represented victims’ families in some of America’s highest profile cases where African Americans have died at the hands of police. Crump helped the families of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor win multimillion-dollar settlements from the cities of Minneapolis and Louisville, respectively.(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Stephen Coates)
- [Lodi councilman arrested in connection with voter fraud during 2020 election - KRON4](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/17/lodi-councilman-arrested-in-connection-with-voter-fraud-during-2020-election-kron4/) - Lodi councilman arrested in connection with voter fraud during 2020 election Skip to content ✕ × Close Ad
- [In Text Messages, Tucker Carlson Called Trump 'Demonic Force' - People.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/17/in-text-messages-tucker-carlson-called-trump-demonic-force-people-com/) - A court filing made public this week reveals that Fox News hosts including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham were privately critical of Donald Trump's claims that the 2020 election was stolen, with Carlson going so far as to call the former president "demonic." Publicly, however, the network continued to offer a platform to Trump loyalists who amplified the false claims.
- [Alaska's new elections director, a Trump donor, stays quiet on 2020 election fairness nationally](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/17/alaskas-new-elections-director-a-trump-donor-stays-quiet-on-2020-election-fairness-nationally/) - In her initial interview with Alaska reporters, the new director of the state Division of Elections declined to say whether President Joe Biden was fairly elected in 2020. Carol Beecher, a registered Republican and donor to Trump’s 2016 election campaign, was appointed by Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom on Wednesday. “I can’t speak to what happened
- [Off camera, Fox hosts doubted 2020 election fraud claims - WXYZ](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/17/off-camera-fox-hosts-doubted-2020-election-fraud-claims-wxyz/) - WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — To millions of viewers, Fox News hosts gave allies of former President Donald Trump a platform to champion false claims that he lost the 2020 election because of voter fraud. To one another, they expressed doubts about the claims and mocked the people making them. Private exchanges between Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, and other network bigwigs — including Fox Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch — show a wide chasm between what the network promoted in primetime and the doubts that its stars held behind the camera. That's according to new court filings in a defamation lawsuit being waged by a company whose voting systems were regularly maligned on air.
- [Fox hosts didn't believe 2020 election fraud claims - The Denver Post](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/17/fox-hosts-didnt-believe-2020-election-fraud-claims-the-denver-post/) - By RANDALL CHASEWILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Hosts at Fox News had serious concerns about allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election being made by guests who were allies of former President Donald Trump, according to court filings in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network. “Sidney Powell is lying,” about having evidence for election fraud, Tucker Carlson told a producer about the attorney on Nov. 16, 2020, according to an excerpt from an exhibit that remains under seal. The internal communication was included in a redacted summary judgment brief filed Thursday by attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems. Carlson also referred to Powell in a text as an “unguided missile,” and “dangerous as hell.” Fellow host Laura Ingraham, meanwhile, told Carlson that Powell is “a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy,” referring to former New York mayor and Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani. Sean Hannity, meanwhile, said in a deposition “that whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second,” according to Dominion’s filing. Denver-based Dominion, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, is suing both Fox News and parent company Fox Corporation. Dominion said some Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims that Dominion had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements. Attorneys for the cable news giant argued in a counterclaim unsealed Thursday that the lawsuit is an assault on the First Amendment. They said Dominion has advanced “novel defamation theories” and is seeking a “staggering” damage figure aimed at generating headlines, chilling protected speech and enriching Dominion’s private equity owner, Staple Street Capital Partners. “Dominion brought this lawsuit to punish FNN for reporting on one of the biggest stories of the day— allegations by the sitting President of the United States and his surrogates that the 2020 election was affected by fraud,” the counterclaim states. “The very fact of those allegations was newsworthy.” Fox attorneys also said in their own summary judgment brief that Carlson repeatedly questioned Powell’s claims in his broadcasts. “When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her,” Carlson told viewers on Nov. 19, 2020. Fox attorneys say Dominion’s own public relations firm expressed skepticism in December 2020 as to whether the network’s coverage was defamatory. They also point to an email from Oct. 30, 2020, just days before the election, in which Dominion’s director of product strategy and security complained that the company’s products were “just riddled with bugs.” In their counterclaim, Fox attorneys wrote that when voting-technology companies denied the allegations being made by Trump and his surrogates, Fox News aired those denials, while some Fox News hosts offered protected opinion commentary about Trump’s allegations. Fox’s counterclaim is based on New York’s “anti-SLAAP” law. Such laws are aimed at protecting people trying to exercise their First Amendment rights from being intimidated by “strategic lawsuits against public participation,” or SLAPPs. “According to Dominion, FNN had a duty not to truthfully report the President’s allegations but to suppress them or denounce them as false,” Fox attorneys wrote. “Dominion is fundamentally mistaken. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press would be illusory if the prevailing side in a public controversy could sue the press for giving a forum to the losing side.” Fox attorneys warn that threatening the company with a $1.6 billion judgment will cause other media outlets to think twice about what they report. They also say documents produced in the lawsuit show that Dominion has not suffered any economic harm and do not indicate that it lost any customers as the result of Fox’s election coverage. Superior Court Judge Eric Davis is scheduled to preside over a trial beginning in mid-April, but granting summary judgment to either side would obviate the need for a jury trial that could stretch over five weeks. In its 192-page brief, Dominion said the judge should rule in its favor because “no reasonable juror could find in Fox’s favor on each element of Dominion’s defamation claim.” Dominion attorneys also assert that no reasonable juror could find in favor of Fox’s “neutral reportage” and “fair report” defenses. “Recounts and audits conducted by election officials across the U.S. repeatedly confirmed the election’s outcome, including specifically that Dominion’s machines accurately counted votes,” Dominion’s filing states. “That evidence alone more than suffices for summary judgment on the falsity of the claims that Dominion rigged the election and its software manipulated vote counts.” Fox News attorneys argue the network’s coverage and commentary are not defamatory. “Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that Dominion could point to any statement that could be actionable defamation, this court should grant Fox News’ summary judgment motion for the independent reason that Dominion lacks clear and convincing evidence that the relevant individuals at Fox News made or published any statement with actual malice,” the attorneys wrote. Davis ruled last month that, for the purposes of the defamation claims, he will consider Dominion to be a public figure. That means Dominion must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the Fox defendants acted with actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth. Attorneys for Fox Corp. joined in the brief filed by Fox News, while also asserting that the parent company is independently entitled to summary judgment because Dominion has not produced any evidence needed to hold it liable.
- [Court filing: Fox News employees privately questioned 2020 election fraud claims - NBC News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/17/court-filing-fox-news-employees-privately-questioned-2020-election-fraud-claims-nbc-news/) - IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.UP NEXTRepublicans plan to question Gen. Milley if they gain control of the House02:23Discovering family roots dating back to slavery09:35DOJ requests stay of judge's order on seized Mar-a-Lago documents02:19Why California's power grid is on the brink of blackouts01:09Apple unveils new iphone featuring satellite communications, dynamic island 01:15Memphis jogger murder suspect denied bond during second court appearance02:27
- [Fox News hosts didn't believe 2020 election fraud claims: Court filing - syracuse.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/17/fox-news-hosts-didnt-believe-2020-election-fraud-claims-court-filing-syracuse-com/) - WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Hosts at Fox News had serious concerns about allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election being made by guests who were allies of former President Donald Trump, according to court filings in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network.“Sidney Powell is lying,” about having evidence for election fraud, Tucker Carlson told a producer about the attorney on Nov. 16, 2020, according to an excerpt from an exhibit that remains under seal.The internal communication was included in a redacted summary judgment brief filed Thursday by attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems.Carlson also referred to Powell in a text as an “unguided missile,” and “dangerous as hell.” Fellow host Laura Ingraham, meanwhile, told Carlson that Powell is “a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy,” referring to former New York mayor and Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani.Sean Hannity, meanwhile, said in a deposition “that whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second,” according to Dominion’s filing.Denver-based Dominion, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, is suing both Fox News and parent company Fox Corporation. Dominion said some Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims that Dominion had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements.Attorneys for the cable news giant argued in a counterclaim unsealed Thursday that the lawsuit is an assault on the First Amendment. They said Dominion has advanced “novel defamation theories” and is seeking a “staggering” damage figure aimed at generating headlines, chilling protected speech and enriching Dominion’s private equity owner, Staple Street Capital Partners.“Dominion brought this lawsuit to punish FNN for reporting on one of the biggest stories of the day— allegations by the sitting President of the United States and his surrogates that the 2020 election was affected by fraud,” the counterclaim states. “The very fact of those allegations was newsworthy.”Fox attorneys also said in their own summary judgment brief that Carlson repeatedly questioned Powell’s claims in his broadcasts. “When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her,” Carlson told viewers on Nov. 19, 2020.Fox attorneys say Dominion’s own public relations firm expressed skepticism in December 2020 as to whether the network’s coverage was defamatory. They also point to an email from Oct. 30, 2020, just days before the election, in which Dominion’s director of product strategy and security complained that the company’s products were “just riddled with bugs.”In their counterclaim, Fox attorneys wrote that when voting-technology companies denied the allegations being made by Trump and his surrogates, Fox News aired those denials, while some Fox News hosts offered protected opinion commentary about Trump’s allegations.Fox’s counterclaim is based on New York’s “anti-SLAAP” law. Such laws are aimed at protecting people trying to exercise their First Amendment rights from being intimidated by “strategic lawsuits against public participation,” or SLAPPs.“According to Dominion, FNN had a duty not to truthfully report the President’s allegations but to suppress them or denounce them as false,” Fox attorneys wrote. “Dominion is fundamentally mistaken. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press would be illusory if the prevailing side in a public controversy could sue the press for giving a forum to the losing side.”Fox attorneys warn that threatening the company with a $1.6 billion judgment will cause other media outlets to think twice about what they report. They also say documents produced in the lawsuit show that Dominion has not suffered any economic harm and do not indicate that it lost any customers as the result of Fox’s election coverage.Superior Court Judge Eric Davis is scheduled to preside over a trial beginning in mid-April, but granting summary judgment to either side would obviate the need for a jury trial that could stretch over five weeks.In its 192-page brief, Dominion said the judge should rule in its favor because “no reasonable juror could find in Fox’s favor on each element of Dominion’s defamation claim.” Dominion attorneys also assert that no reasonable juror could find in favor of Fox’s “neutral reportage” and “fair report” defenses.“Recounts and audits conducted by election officials across the U.S. repeatedly confirmed the election’s outcome, including specifically that Dominion’s machines accurately counted votes,” Dominion’s filing states. “That evidence alone more than suffices for summary judgment on the falsity of the claims that Dominion rigged the election and its software manipulated vote counts.”Fox News attorneys argue the network’s coverage and commentary are not defamatory.“Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that Dominion could point to any statement that could be actionable defamation, this court should grant Fox News’ summary judgment motion for the independent reason that Dominion lacks clear and convincing evidence that the relevant individuals at Fox News made or published any statement with actual malice,” the attorneys wrote.Davis ruled last month that, for the purposes of the defamation claims, he will consider Dominion to be a public figure. That means Dominion must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the Fox defendants acted with actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth.Attorneys for Fox Corp. joined in the brief filed by Fox News, while also asserting that the parent company is independently entitled to summary judgment because Dominion has not produced any evidence needed to hold it liable.
- [Off camera, Fox hosts doubted 2020 election fraud claims - Journal Review](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/17/off-camera-fox-hosts-doubted-2020-election-fraud-claims-journal-review/) - By RANDALL CHASE WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — To millions of viewers, Fox News hosts gave allies of former President Donald Trump a platform to champion false claims that he lost the 2020 election because of voter fraud. To one another, they expressed doubts about the claims and mocked the people making them. Private exchanges between Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, and other network bigwigs — including the chairman of Fox Corporation, Rupert Murdoch — show a wide chasm between what the network promoted in primetime and the doubts that its stars held behind the camera, according to new court filings in a defamation lawsuit being waged by a company whose voting systems were regularly maligned on air. “Sidney Powell is lying” about having evidence for election fraud, Carlson said via text on Nov. 16, 2020 to a Fox News producer, referring to one of Trump’s lawyers. Ingraham texted Carlson that Powell is “a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy,” referring to the former New York mayor and Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani. These and other internal communications were included in a redacted brief filed Thursday by attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems, which is suing Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corporation, for $1.6 billion. In a deposition, host Sean Hannity said “that whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second,” according to Dominion’s filing. Murdoch, meanwhile, in a Nov. 19 email, described what he saw in a press conference that day featuring Giuliani and Powell as “Really crazy stuff. And damaging.” Dominion's legal case rests on its belief that Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims that the company had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements. Attorneys for Fox argued in a counterclaim unsealed Thursday that the lawsuit is an assault on the First Amendment. They said Dominion has advanced “novel defamation theories” and is seeking a “staggering” damage figure aimed at generating headlines, chilling protected speech and enriching Dominion’s private equity owner, Staple Street Capital Partners. “Dominion brought this lawsuit to punish FNN for reporting on one of the biggest stories of the day — allegations by the sitting President of the United States and his surrogates that the 2020 election was affected by fraud,” the counterclaim states. “The very fact of those allegations was newsworthy.” Fox attorneys have noted that Carlson repeatedly questioned Powell’s claims in his broadcasts. “When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her,” Carlson told viewers on Nov. 19, 2020. Fox attorneys say Dominion’s own public relations firm expressed skepticism in December 2020 as to whether the network’s coverage was defamatory. They also point to an email from Oct. 30, 2020, just days before the election, in which Dominion’s director of product strategy and security complained that the company’s products were “just riddled with bugs.” In their counterclaim, Fox attorneys wrote that when voting-technology companies denied the allegations being made by Trump and his surrogates, Fox News aired those denials, while some Fox News hosts offered protected opinion commentary about Trump’s allegations. “Freedom of speech and freedom of the press would be illusory if the prevailing side in a public controversy could sue the press for giving a forum to the losing side," Fox attorneys wrote. Fox attorneys warn that threatening the company with a $1.6 billion judgment will cause other media outlets to think twice about what they report. Responses by both sides to the briefs made public on Thursday remain under seal. Fox has said Dominion's filing includes “cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context,” and that it has refused to allow Fox to make its response to Dominion's brief public. Attorneys for Fox and Dominion told The Associated Press on Friday that responses to the briefs will remain under seal until Feb. 27. Dominion on Friday filed its own challenge to the redactions in the briefs, including its own. “Dominion’s position is that nothing in these three briefs warrants confidential treatment,” attorneys for the company wrote, adding that all redactions were done at Fox's request. If either side can persuade Superior Court Judge Eric Davis to grant summary judgment in its favor, the case will end without a jury trial. If not, the trial is scheduled to begin in mid-April. In its 192-page brief, Dominion said the judge should rule in its favor because “no reasonable juror could find in Fox’s favor on each element of Dominion’s defamation claim.” Dominion attorneys also assert that no reasonable juror could find in favor of Fox’s “neutral reportage” and “fair report” defenses. “Recounts and audits conducted by election officials across the U.S. repeatedly confirmed the election’s outcome, including specifically that Dominion’s machines accurately counted votes,” Dominion’s filing states. Fox News attorneys argue the network’s coverage and commentary are not defamatory and that there is no evidence the hosts had any malicious intent behind what they said about Dominion — an important legal standard in First Amendment cases. Davis ruled last month that, for the purposes of the defamation claims, he will consider Dominion to be a public figure. That means Dominion must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the Fox defendants acted with actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth.
- [Top Fox News hosts didn't believe 2020 election fraud claims - USA Today](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/17/top-fox-news-hosts-didnt-believe-2020-election-fraud-claims-usa-today/) - Top executives and news hosts at Fox News privately shared they did not buy into then-President Donald Trump’s allegations of 2020 election fraud, despite giving airtime to many of those same false claims, according to a court filing in Dominion Voting Systems' defamation lawsuit against the news network."Privately, Fox's hosts and executives knew that Donald Trump lost the election and that he needed to concede," the filing reads. "But Fox viewers heard a different story — repeatedly."A Fox spokesperson said Dominion mischaracterized the record and "cherry-picked" quotes from "key context." Dominion lawsuit:Dominion Voting sues Fox for $1.6 billion over false 2020 election fraud claimsTop Fox hosts didn't believe election fraud claimsHost Tucker Carlson said as early as Nov. 16, 2020, that Trump ally Sidney Powell was "lying" about election fraud, according to the filing. He texted an individual whose name was redacted that her claims, made without evidence, were "shockingly reckless."In a deposition, host Sean Hannity said of Powell’s election fraud narrative that he “did not believe it for one second,” according to the filing. But in the meantime, he told his audience that "it will be impossible to ever know the true, fair, accurate election results, that's a fact," the filing says.Host Laura Ingraham told Carlson that Powell is “a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy,” referring to former New York mayor and Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani. Carlson replied that he found Powell's lies "unbelievably offensive" because their "viewers are good people and they believe it," according to the filing.Carlson: Trump a 'demonic force'On Jan. 6, 2021, the day the U.S. Capitol was stormed by a pro-Trump mob as Congress sought to certify the results of the 2020 election, Carlson texted his producer that Trump is "a demonic force, a destroyer. But he's not going to destroy us."Executives didn't believe claims either Fox Corporation chair Rupert Murdoch called the false voter fraud claims “really crazy stuff” and “damaging” in a text following a press conference by Powell and Giuliani in November 2020, according to the filing.Murdoch also told Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott: "It's been suggested our prime time three should independently or together say something like 'the election is over and Joe Biden won,'" and that such a statement "would go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election stolen,” the filing says.Read the filingView in new tabWhat Dominion saysDominion Voting Systems, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, in March 2021, filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corporation, for allegedly deliberately making and amplifying false claims about Dominion and the 2020 election.The company, which makes election software, asserts that the “lies were good for Fox's business,” and that legal action followed repeated demands for retractions."The disinformation campaign waged against our company has caused us severe damage and undermined trust in American democratic institutions," Dominion CEO John Poulos said at the time the lawsuit was filed. "These lies also have threatened the personal safety of our employees and customers. No amount of money will repair the damage done."What Fox News saysIn a statement to USA TODAY, the Fox spokesperson said press freedom and freedom of speech are at the core of the Dominion case.“There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan," the spokesperson said. In a counterclaim unsealed Thursday, Fox’s attorneys argued that the lawsuit and its “novel defamation theories” are an assault on the First Amendment. They called the $1.6 billion damage figure “staggering” and aimed at generating headlines.“Dominion brought this lawsuit to punish FNN (Fox News Network) for reporting on one of the biggest stories of the day — allegations by the sitting President of the United States and his surrogates that the 2020 election was affected by fraud,” the counterclaim reads. “The very fact of those allegations was newsworthy.”Dig deeper:Contributing: Associated Press
- [Off Camera, Fox Hosts Doubted 2020 Election Fraud Claims - USNews.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/17/off-camera-fox-hosts-doubted-2020-election-fraud-claims-usnews-com/)
- [Video Fox News anchors privately refuted 2020 election claims: Filing - ABC News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/17/video-fox-news-anchors-privately-refuted-2020-election-claims-filing-abc-news/)
- [Fox News Hosts, Executives Raised Concerns About 2020 Election-Fraud Claims Made on ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/17/fox-news-hosts-executives-raised-concerns-about-2020-election-fraud-claims-made-on/) - .css-j6808u{margin-left:10px;margin-right:10px;}.css-1elqs3z-Box{margin-bottom:var(--spacing-spacer-4);display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-1xk85qb-BreadcrumbsWrapper{font-size:var(--typography-summary-font-size-s);font-family:var(--font-font-stack-retina-narrow);font-weight:var(--typography-summary-standard-s-font-weight);text-transform:uppercase;}@media print{.css-1xk85qb-BreadcrumbsWrapper nav ul{margin-left:0px;}.css-1xk85qb-BreadcrumbsWrapper nav li{font-size:var(--typography-summary-font-size-s);padding-left:0px;color:var(--secondary-text-color);}.css-1xk85qb-BreadcrumbsWrapper nav li a:after{content:'';}.css-1xk85qb-BreadcrumbsWrapper a{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;color:var(--color-black);border-bottom:none;}.css-1xk85qb-BreadcrumbsWrapper nav li a{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;content:'';}}.css-fuc15b-List{list-style-type:none;margin:0;padding:0;}.css-6yyv02-Breadcrumb{display:inline;color:var(--interactive-text-color);}.css-12fqrno-Link-Link{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;color:inherit;}.css-12fqrno-Link-Link:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}@media only screen and (min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 639px){.css-12fqrno-Link-Link{display:none;}}Business.css-ngkunw-Breadcrumb-Breadcrumb-Breadcrumb-Breadcrumb{display:inline;color:var(--interactive-text-color);}@media only screen and (min-width: 640px) and (max-width: 979px){.css-ngkunw-Breadcrumb-Breadcrumb-Breadcrumb-Breadcrumb:before{color:var(--secondary-text-color);content:'|';margin:0 4px;}}@media only screen and (min-width: 980px) and (max-width: 1299px){.css-ngkunw-Breadcrumb-Breadcrumb-Breadcrumb-Breadcrumb:before{color:var(--secondary-text-color);content:'|';margin:0 4px;}}@media only screen and (min-width: 1300px){.css-ngkunw-Breadcrumb-Breadcrumb-Breadcrumb-Breadcrumb:before{color:var(--secondary-text-color);content:'|';margin:0 4px;}}.css-e8qa5r-Link{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;color:inherit;}.css-e8qa5r-Link:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}Media & Marketing.css-bsrkcm-Box{margin-bottom:var(--spacing-spacer-8);}.css-1lvqw7f-StyledHeadline{margin:0px;font-size:var(--typography-headline-standard-xxl-font-size);line-height:var(--typography-headline-standard-xxl-line-height);font-family:var(--typography-headline-standard-xxl-font-family);font-weight:var(--typography-headline-standard-xxl-font-weight);color:var(--headline-font-color);}.css-1lvqw7f-StyledHeadline a{color:inherit;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1lvqw7f-StyledHeadline a:hover{color:var(--headline-link-hover-color);}.css-mosdo-Dek-Dek{margin:0px;color:var(--secondary-text-color);font-size:var(--typography-subheading-standard-m-font-size);line-height:var(--typography-subheading-standard-m-line-height);font-family:var(--typography-subheading-standard-m-font-family);font-weight:var(--typography-subheading-standard-m-font-weight);}Communications from top Fox anchors and executives were made public as part of Dominion lawsuit
- [Fox News hosts didn't believe 2020 election fraud claims, $1.6 billion Dominion defamation ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/17/fox-news-hosts-didnt-believe-2020-election-fraud-claims-1-6-billion-dominion-defamation/) - Wilmington, Del. — Hosts at Fox News had serious concerns about allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election being made by guests who were allies of former President Donald Trump, according to court filings in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network."Sidney Powell is lying," about having evidence for election fraud, Tucker Carlson told a producer about the attorney on Nov. 16, 2020, according to an excerpt from an exhibit that remains under seal. The internal communication was included in a redacted summary judgment brief filed Thursday by attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems. Carlson also referred to Powell in a text as an "unguided missile," and "dangerous as hell." Fellow host Laura Ingraham, meanwhile, told Carlson that Powell is "a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy," referring to former New York mayor and Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani. Sean Hannity, meanwhile, said in a deposition "that whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second," according to Dominion's filing. Denver-based Dominion, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, is suing both Fox News and parent company Fox Corporation. Dominion said some Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims that Dominion had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements. Attorneys for the cable news giant argued in a counterclaim unsealed Thursday that the lawsuit is an assault on the First Amendment. They said Dominion has advanced "novel defamation theories" and is seeking a "staggering" damage figure aimed at generating headlines, chilling protected speech and enriching Dominion's private equity owner, Staple Street Capital Partners. "Dominion brought this lawsuit to punish FNN for reporting on one of the biggest stories of the day- allegations by the sitting President of the United States and his surrogates that the 2020 election was affected by fraud," the counterclaim states. "The very fact of those allegations was newsworthy." Fox attorneys also said in their own summary judgment brief that Carlson repeatedly questioned Powell's claims in his broadcasts. "When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her," Carlson told viewers on Nov. 19, 2020. Fox attorneys say Dominion's own public relations firm expressed skepticism in December 2020 as to whether the network's coverage was defamatory. They also point to an email from Oct. 30, 2020, just days before the election, in which Dominion's director of product strategy and security complained that the company's products were "just riddled with bugs." In their counterclaim, Fox attorneys wrote that when voting-technology companies denied the allegations being made by Trump and his surrogates, Fox News aired those denials, while some Fox News hosts offered protected opinion commentary about Trump's allegations. Fox's counterclaim is based on New York's "anti-SLAAP" law. Such laws are aimed at protecting people trying to exercise their First Amendment rights from being intimidated by "strategic lawsuits against public participation," or SLAPPs. "According to Dominion, FNN had a duty not to truthfully report the President's allegations but to suppress them or denounce them as false," Fox attorneys wrote. "Dominion is fundamentally mistaken. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press would be illusory if the prevailing side in a public controversy could sue the press for giving a forum to the losing side." Fox attorneys warn that threatening the company with a $1.6 billion judgment will cause other media outlets to think twice about what they report. They also say documents produced in the lawsuit show that Dominion has not suffered any economic harm and do not indicate that it lost any customers as the result of Fox's election coverage. Superior Court Judge Eric Davis is scheduled to preside over a trial beginning in mid-April, but granting summary judgment to either side would obviate the need for a jury trial that could stretch over five weeks. In its 192-page brief, Dominion said the judge should rule in its favor because "no reasonable juror could find in Fox's favor on each element of Dominion's defamation claim." Dominion attorneys also assert that no reasonable juror could find in favor of Fox's "neutral reportage" and "fair report" defenses. "Recounts and audits conducted by election officials across the U.S. repeatedly confirmed the election's outcome, including specifically that Dominion's machines accurately counted votes," Dominion's filing states. "That evidence alone more than suffices for summary judgment on the falsity of the claims that Dominion rigged the election and its software manipulated vote counts." Fox News attorneys argue the network's coverage and commentary were not defamatory. "Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that Dominion could point to any statement that could be actionable defamation, this court should grant Fox News' summary judgment motion for the independent reason that Dominion lacks clear and convincing evidence that the relevant individuals at Fox News made or published any statement with actual malice," the attorneys wrote. Davis ruled last month that, for the purposes of the defamation claims, he will consider Dominion to be a public figure. That means Dominion must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the Fox defendants acted with actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth. Attorneys for Fox Corp. joined in the brief filed by Fox News, while also asserting that the parent company is independently entitled to summary judgment because Dominion has not produced any evidence needed to hold it liable.
- ['Mind Blowingly Nuts': Fox News Hosts And Execs Repeatedly Denounced 2020 Election ... - Forbes](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/17/mind-blowingly-nuts-fox-news-hosts-and-execs-repeatedly-denounced-2020-election-forbes/) - ToplineFox News personalities and executives privately made clear they didn’t believe falsehoods being peddled by former President Donald Trump and his allies about fraud in the 2020 election despite pushing them on-air, a new court filing by Dominion Voting Systems alleges, part of a billion-dollar defamation suit the voting company is waging to hold Fox liable for its on-air claims. Key Facts Dominion filed a motion for summary judgment with the court as part of its long-running defamation suit against Fox News, which included significant evidence that had previously not been made public in the case—most notably Fox officials allegedly denying the far-right conspiracy theory linking Dominion voting machines to election fraud. Host Tucker Carlson said in text messages that far-right attorney Sidney Powell “is lying” and called her claims “insane” and “absurd,” saying it was “shockingly reckless” to push the Dominion fraud claims and Powell was “poison,” an “unguided missile” and “dangerous as hell” and he “hope[s] she’s punished.” Carlson also wrote after the January 6 attack that Trump is “a demonic force, a destroyer,” and told host Laura Ingraham he “had to make” the Trump White House “disavow” Powell’s comments, calling her a “nut.” Host Sean Hannity testified he “did not believe … for one second” that Powell’s voter fraud claims were true and it was “obvious” Powell’s allegations were false when she appeared on his program, also saying far-right attorney Rudy Giuliani was “acting like an insane person” and calling the lawyers “f’ing lunatics.” Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott also testified she “had a number of conversations with [Hannity] where he wanted the President to accept the results” and said he had believed President Joe Biden had lawfully won the election “for some time.” Ingraham called Powell a “complete nut” and added “ditto with Rudy [Giuliani] ,” telling Carlson that “no serious lawyer could believe what they were saying” and calling Giuliani “such an idiot.” Fox host Lou Dobbs, who repeatedly hosted Powell on his program, agreed under oath that it was “false” to say that Powell revealed evidence of voter fraud on his show, and Dominion alleges that no Fox witness has testified there’s any evidence of voter fraud involving Dominion machines. Powell’s evidence for her voter fraud claims was based on an email from someone who claimed to be “internally decapitated” and said, “the wind tells me I’m a ghost, but I don’t believe it”—a message that Fox host Maria Bartiromo acknowledged under oath was “nonsense” and “kooky,” but she still put Powell and her claims on her program anyway. Fox Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch called Giuliani’s allegations “really crazy stuff” and “damaging,” said he should be taken “with a large grain of salt” and called the fact he was advising Trump “really bad.” Fox Corporation Executive Raj Shah called the voter fraud claims “mind blowingly nuts” and said in a text message to Carlson’s producer Alex Pfeiffer, “So many people openly denying the obvious that Powell is clearly full of it,” to which Pfeiffer responded that Powell is a “f–king nutcase.” Fox host Dana Perino described the Dominion fraud allegations in texts and emails as “total bs,” “insane” and “nonsense,” writing, “Where the hell did they even get this Venezuela tie to Dominion? I mean wtf.” Fox host Brett Baier said on November 5, “There is NO evidence of fraud. None.” Crucial Quote “Fox witness after witness has admitted under oath that they have not seen evidence proving Dominion stole the 2020 Presidential Election or that they do not believe Dominion did,” Dominion alleged in its filing. “Not a single Fox witness has presented evidence that Dominion rigged the 2020 election because no evidence, documentary or otherwise, suggests it.” Chief Critic “There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan,” Fox said in a statement in response to the court filing Thursday. A spokesperson for the network further argued the filing “takes an extreme and unsupported view of defamation law” and accused the voting company of “mischaracteriz[ing] the record, cherry-pick[ing] quotes stripped of key context, and spill[ing] considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law.” What To Watch For Both Dominion and Fox News have filed motions for summary judgment that ask the court to make a ruling in the case without it going to trial, which the court will now consider. The case had been scheduled to go to trial in April in Delaware, which it will if their motions fail. Dominion is asking Fox to pay $1.6 billion in damages if the state court rules in the voting company’s favor. Contra Fox News’ own motion for summary judgment defends the company’s airing of the Dominion fraud claims, alleging the company was justified in airing the fraud allegations because they were newsworthy and the comments made on the network are protected First Amendment speech. “Fox News did exactly what the First Amendment protects: It ensured that the public had access to newsmakers and newsworthy information that would help foster ‘uninhibited, robust, and wide-open’ debate on rapidly developing events of unparalleled importance,” the motion alleged. Key Background Dominion’s lawsuit against Fox News is one of more than a dozen defamation challenges that the company and competitor Smartmatic have filed in the wake of the 2020 election, after the allegations linking their voting machines to fraud gained widespread traction on the right. Dominion is also suing Powell and Giuliani directly, along with MyPillow and its CEO Mike Lindell; right-wing networks One America News and Newsmax and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, and Smartmatic is suing all of the same defendants except for Byrne. Dominion is also separately suing Fox Corporation in addition to the Fox News lawsuit, seeking to hold Fox executives including Murdoch and his son Lachlan liable for the fraud claims after they tried to evade responsibility in the Fox News suit. None of the defamation lawsuits have yet been resolved in court, but Dominion and Smartmatic’s cases have so far kept moving forward as courts have largely rejected motions to dismiss the litigation. The Fox News case may be the first to reach a conclusion, as the April trial date is sooner than other cases are expected to be heard. Further Reading Murdoch Deposed: Here’s What Fox Is Accused Of Lying About In Defamation Lawsuit Over 2020 Election (Forbes) Court Lets Lawsuit Against Fox News Move Forward—Here’s Where Dominion And Smartmatic’s Defamation Suits Stand Now (Forbes)
- [Fox News hosts didn't believe guests' 2020 election fraud claims, court filing says - Delaware Online](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/17/fox-news-hosts-didnt-believe-guests-2020-election-fraud-claims-court-filing-says-delaware-online/) - WILMINGTON, Del. — Hosts at Fox News had serious concerns about allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election being made by guests who were allies of former President Donald Trump, according to court filings in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network."Sidney Powell is lying," about having evidence for election fraud, Tucker Carlson told a producer about the attorney on Nov. 16, 2020, according to an excerpt from an exhibit that remains under seal.The internal communication was included in a redacted summary judgment brief filed Thursday by attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems.Carlson also referred to Powell in a text as an "unguided missile," and "dangerous as hell." Fellow host Laura Ingraham, meanwhile, told Carlson that Powell is "a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy," referring to former New York mayor and Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani.Sean Hannity, meanwhile, said in a deposition "that whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second," according to Dominion's filing.More:On 2024 trail, Nikki Haley says DeSantis 'Don't Say Gay' bill didn't go far enough: Live political updatesDenver-based Dominion, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, is suing both Fox News and parent company Fox Corporation. Dominion said some Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims that Dominion had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements.Attorneys for the cable news giant argued in a counterclaim unsealed Thursday that the lawsuit is an assault on the First Amendment. They said Dominion has advanced "novel defamation theories" and is seeking a "staggering" damage figure aimed at generating headlines, chilling protected speech and enriching Dominion's private equity owner, Staple Street Capital Partners."Dominion brought this lawsuit to punish FNN for reporting on one of the biggest stories of the day— allegations by the sitting President of the United States and his surrogates that the 2020 election was affected by fraud," the counterclaim states. "The very fact of those allegations was newsworthy."Fox attorneys also said in their own summary judgment brief that Carlson repeatedly questioned Powell's claims in his broadcasts. "When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her," Carlson told viewers on Nov. 19, 2020.Fox attorneys say Dominion's own public relations firm expressed skepticism in December 2020 as to whether the network's coverage was defamatory. They also point to an email from Oct. 30, 2020, just days before the election, in which Dominion's director of product strategy and security complained that the company's products were "just riddled with bugs."In their counterclaim, Fox attorneys wrote that when voting-technology companies denied the allegations being made by Trump and his surrogates, Fox News aired those denials, while some Fox News hosts offered protected opinion commentary about Trump's allegations.Fox's counterclaim is based on New York's "anti-SLAAP" law. Such laws are aimed at protecting people trying to exercise their First Amendment rights from being intimidated by "strategic lawsuits against public participation," or SLAPPs.More:'They knew the truth': Dominion Voting CEO says conservative networks knew they were airing misinformation"According to Dominion, FNN had a duty not to truthfully report the President's allegations but to suppress them or denounce them as false," Fox attorneys wrote. "Dominion is fundamentally mistaken. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press would be illusory if the prevailing side in a public controversy could sue the press for giving a forum to the losing side."Fox attorneys warn that threatening the company with a $1.6 billion judgment will cause other media outlets to think twice about what they report. They also say documents produced in the lawsuit show that Dominion has not suffered any economic harm and do not indicate that it lost any customers as the result of Fox's election coverage.Superior Court Judge Eric Davis is scheduled to preside over a trial beginning in mid-April, but granting summary judgment to either side would obviate the need for a jury trial that could stretch over five weeks.In its 192-page brief, Dominion said the judge should rule in its favor because "no reasonable juror could find in Fox's favor on each element of Dominion's defamation claim." Dominion attorneys also assert that no reasonable juror could find in favor of Fox's "neutral reportage" and "fair report" defenses."Recounts and audits conducted by election officials across the U.S. repeatedly confirmed the election's outcome, including specifically that Dominion's machines accurately counted votes," Dominion's filing states. "That evidence alone more than suffices for summary judgment on the falsity of the claims that Dominion rigged the election and its software manipulated vote counts."Fox News attorneys argue the network's coverage and commentary are not defamatory."Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that Dominion could point to any statement that could be actionable defamation, this court should grant Fox News' summary judgment motion for the independent reason that Dominion lacks clear and convincing evidence that the relevant individuals at Fox News made or published any statement with actual malice," the attorneys wrote.Davis ruled last month that, for the purposes of the defamation claims, he will consider Dominion to be a public figure. That means Dominion must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the Fox defendants acted with actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth.Attorneys for Fox Corp. joined in the brief filed by Fox News, while also asserting that the parent company is independently entitled to summary judgment because Dominion has not produced any evidence needed to hold it liable.
- [Fox News hosts, execs privately doubted 2020 conspiracy claims shared on air](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/17/fox-news-hosts-execs-privately-doubted-2020-conspiracy-claims-shared-on-air/) - Fox News’s most prominent hosts and top executives agonized behind the scenes in the weeks following the 2020 election as they watched allies of Donald Trump appear on their own airwaves promoting false conspiracy theories about a stolen election, according to internal emails, text messages and depositions excerpted in a new court filing.“Sidney Powell is lying,” Tucker Carlson wrote to a producer about the Trump lawyer, who once claimed in a guest spot that voting technology companies “flipped” Trump votes to Biden.“Terrible stuff damaging everybody,” wrote company founder Rupert Murdoch, about wild claims raised by Powell and fellow Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani. The recipient of his note, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, agreed. In another message, Murdoch referred to the claims as “really crazy stuff” and said that it was “very hard to credibly claim foul everywhere.”And of Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, Fox’s prime-time roster seemed to share a common opinion during these fraught weeks.He’s “acting like an insane person,” wrote Sean Hannity, star of the network’s 9 p.m. show, while his 10 p.m. colleague Laura Ingraham concurred: “Such an idiot.”The messages are part of a cache of internal correspondence and deposition testimony released Thursday in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network filed by Dominion Voting Systems, one of the two election software companies at the center of the conspiracy theories.Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox News for $1.6 billion on March 26 for repeated false claims about election fraud that the network’s hosts and guests made. (Video: JM Rieger/The Washington Post)The documents provide a rare window into the inner workings of the cable news network and show how publicly Trump-friendly personalities were privately repulsed by the president’s post-election actions, with Carlson referring to Trump as a “demonic force,” according to the filings.READ the full court filing from Dominion's motion for summary judgment in Fox caseThe filing in Delaware Superior Court ahead of an April trial is meant to bolster Dominion’s argument that Fox’s leadership was aware that the claims of election fraud were untrue but nonetheless “spread and endorsed” them, the company argued.“Not a single Fox witness testified that they believe any of the allegations about Dominion are true,” Dominion argued in the filing. “Indeed, Fox witness after Fox witness declined to assert the allegations’ truth or actually stated they do not believe them, and Fox witnesses repeatedly testified that they have not seen credible evidence to support them.”Fox’s news staff was just as loud in raising internal concerns as the star pundits and executives, the filings show. In one message, Fox correspondent Lucas Tomlinson wrote to news anchor Bret Baier referring to “dangerously insane” election claims. Baier, in turn, wrote that “there is NO evidence of fraud” and told Bill Sammon, then the network’s Washington bureau chief, that their team must “prevent this stuff,” meaning the spread of misinformation.In a statement, Fox News downplayed the revelations from the correspondence, saying it was filled with “cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context.”“There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners,” a spokesperson said, “but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan.”In a separate counterclaim filing also made public Thursday, Fox alleged that Dominion’s $1.6 billion demand “has no factual support,” arguing that — far from having its value destroyed by Powell and Giuliani’s false claims of fraud — the company is actually “in a solid financial position.”While much of the correspondence aired by Dominion shows Fox officials agonizing over false information on its airwaves, some of the behind-the-scenes torment was about a story the network got right — an election-night projection that Joe Biden would win the hotly contested state of Arizona.Fox’s decision-desk analysts were days ahead of other news outlets in making the controversial call, which infuriated Trump and his supporters — including many Fox viewers.“Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience?” Carlson wrote in a text message to his producer. “We’re playing with fire, for real.”Scott, who forwarded Carlson’s concerns about the Arizona call to Fox Corp. CEO and executive chairman Lachlan Murdoch, was quoted as saying that Fox’s “brand” was impacted by the “arrogance” of the early — but accurate — call.Dominion is using such messages to make the argument that Fox was motivated by competitive pressures from smaller pro-Trump cable stations like Newsmax that threatened to lure away its viewers. Carlson, in his message, specifically warned that Newsmax “could be devastating to us.”Fox News president Jay Wallace acknowledged in a text message to Scott that it was “a bit troubling” to see Newsmax pick up Fox viewers — an ultimately short-lived gain — adding that the rival network offered “an alternate universe” but that “it can’t be ignored.”Newsmax “should be watched, if skeptically,” Rupert Murdoch told Scott in a Nov. 16, 2020 email, adding that he doesn’t “want to antagonize Trump further.”And Scott and Lachlan Murdoch commiserated over how their pro-Trump viewers were “going through the 5 stages of grief,” as Scott put it, promising her corporate boss that Fox would “plant flags letting the viewers know we hear them and respect them.” Her boss agreed that a “constant rebuilding without any missteps” was needed after the Arizona call.“We can fix this,” Scott wrote, “but we cannot smirk at our viewers any longer.”Dominion’s filings also suggest that Fox brass bristled when its own reporters attempted to push back on election conspiracies on the air. “If this gets picked up, viewers are going to be further disgusted,” Scott wrote in a message after reporter Jacqui Heinrich fact-checked a Trump tweet containing misinformation about Dominion. In a text message, Carlson suggested to Hannity that Heinrich should be fired. Kristin Fisher, then a White House reporter for Fox who has since moved to CNN, testified that her then-boss told her higher-ups were “unhappy” with her own fact-checking segment.In Fox’s own brief requesting the judge rule in its favor, attorneys argue that Fox showed no “actual malice” — the high standard required in defamation cases — because all of the hosts who allowed false claims to be aired honestly believed there was a chance the election might have been stolen using Dominion’s machines.“It is hardly unusual that some people in a newsroom (with the diverse political viewpoints one would expect) will disbelieve the allegations and hope that they ultimately prove false,” Fox’s lawyers wrote, “while others will keep an open mind in hopes that they prove true.”But Hannity, for one, said in a deposition quoted in the Dominion filing that he never believed Powell’s claims. “Nobody ever convinced me that their argument was anywhere near accurate or true.”correctionA previous version of this article incorrectly spelled Kristin Fisher's first name as Kristen. This version has been corrected.
- [Georgia Grand Jury on Trump and the 2020 Election; The Many Creators of American English](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/georgia-grand-jury-on-trump-and-the-2020-election-the-many-creators-of-american-english/)
- [Fox hosts didn't believe 2020 election fraud claims | WRIC ABC 8News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/17/fox-hosts-didnt-believe-2020-election-fraud-claims-wric-abc-8news/) - Fox hosts didn’t believe 2020 election fraud claims | WRIC ABC 8News Skip to content ✕ × Close Ad
- [Fox hosts didn't believe 2020 election fraud claims - WHIO-TV](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/fox-hosts-didnt-believe-2020-election-fraud-claims-whio-tv/) - WILMINGTON, Del. — (AP) — Hosts at Fox News had serious concerns about allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election being made by guests who were allies of former President Donald Trump, according to court filings in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network.“Sidney Powell is lying,” about having evidence for election fraud, Tucker Carlson told a producer about the attorney on Nov. 16, 2020, according to an excerpt from an exhibit that remains under seal.The internal communication was included in a redacted summary judgment brief filed Thursday by attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems.Carlson also referred to Powell in a text as an “unguided missile,” and “dangerous as hell.” Fellow host Laura Ingraham, meanwhile, told Carlson that Powell is “a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy,” referring to former New York mayor and Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani.Sean Hannity, meanwhile, said in a deposition “that whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second," according to Dominion's filing.Denver-based Dominion, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, is suing both Fox News and parent company Fox Corporation. Dominion said some Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims that Dominion had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements.Attorneys for the cable news giant argued in a counterclaim unsealed Thursday that the lawsuit is an assault on the First Amendment. They said Dominion has advanced “novel defamation theories” and is seeking a “staggering” damage figure aimed at generating headlines, chilling protected speech and enriching Dominion’s private equity owner, Staple Street Capital Partners.“Dominion brought this lawsuit to punish FNN for reporting on one of the biggest stories of the day— allegations by the sitting President of the United States and his surrogates that the 2020 election was affected by fraud,” the counterclaim states. “The very fact of those allegations was newsworthy.”Fox attorneys also said in their own summary judgment brief that Carlson repeatedly questioned Powell’s claims in his broadcasts. “When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her,” Carlson told viewers on Nov. 19, 2020.Fox attorneys say Dominion’s own public relations firm expressed skepticism in December 2020 as to whether the network's coverage was defamatory. They also point to an email from Oct. 30, 2020, just days before the election, in which Dominion's director of product strategy and security complained that the company's products were “just riddled with bugs.”In their counterclaim, Fox attorneys wrote that when voting-technology companies denied the allegations being made by Trump and his surrogates, Fox News aired those denials, while some Fox News hosts offered protected opinion commentary about Trump’s allegations.Fox’s counterclaim is based on New York’s “anti-SLAAP” law. Such laws are aimed at protecting people trying to exercise their First Amendment rights from being intimidated by “strategic lawsuits against public participation,” or SLAPPs.“According to Dominion, FNN had a duty not to truthfully report the President’s allegations but to suppress them or denounce them as false,” Fox attorneys wrote. “Dominion is fundamentally mistaken. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press would be illusory if the prevailing side in a public controversy could sue the press for giving a forum to the losing side.”Fox attorneys warn that threatening the company with a $1.6 billion judgment will cause other media outlets to think twice about what they report. They also say documents produced in the lawsuit show that Dominion has not suffered any economic harm and do not indicate that it lost any customers as the result of Fox’s election coverage.Superior Court Judge Eric Davis is scheduled to preside over a trial beginning in mid-April, but granting summary judgment to either side would obviate the need for a jury trial that could stretch over five weeks.In its 192-page brief, Dominion said the judge should rule in its favor because “no reasonable juror could find in Fox’s favor on each element of Dominion’s defamation claim.” Dominion attorneys also assert that no reasonable juror could find in favor of Fox’s “neutral reportage” and “fair report” defenses.“Recounts and audits conducted by election officials across the U.S. repeatedly confirmed the election’s outcome, including specifically that Dominion’s machines accurately counted votes," Dominion's filing states. “That evidence alone more than suffices for summary judgment on the falsity of the claims that Dominion rigged the election and its software manipulated vote counts.”Fox News attorneys argue the network's coverage and commentary are not defamatory."Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that Dominion could point to any statement that could be actionable defamation, this court should grant Fox News’ summary judgment motion for the independent reason that Dominion lacks clear and convincing evidence that the relevant individuals at Fox News made or published any statement with actual malice," the attorneys wrote.Davis ruled last month that, for the purposes of the defamation claims, he will consider Dominion to be a public figure. That means Dominion must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the Fox defendants acted with actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth.Attorneys for Fox Corp. joined in the brief filed by Fox News, while also asserting that the parent company is independently entitled to summary judgment because Dominion has not produced any evidence needed to hold it liable.Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
- [Parts of Georgia Grand Jury Report Released on Donald Trump, 2020 Election - KTVN](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/17/parts-of-georgia-grand-jury-report-released-on-donald-trump-2020-election-ktvn/) - A special grand jury that investigated efforts by then-President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn his election loss in Georgia says it believes some witnesses committed perjury, and it recommends that prosecutors seek charges.The panel recommended that the district attorney “seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling.” In addition to the section on perjury, the report's introduction and conclusion were released Thursday. But any recommendations on potential criminal charges for specific people will remain under wraps for now.While the report is silent on key details, including who the panel believes committed perjury and whether other indictments should be pursued, it marks the first time the grand jurors' recommendations for criminal charges tied to the case have been made public. The investigation is one of several that could have serious legal consequences for the former president as he ramps up his third bid for the presidency.Despite Trump's persistent contentions, the grand jurors found “by a unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning the election."The partial release was ordered Monday by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special grand jury. During a hearing last month, prosecutors urged him not to release the report until they decide on charges, while a coalition of media organizations, including The Associated Press, pushed for the entire report to be made public immediately.McBurney wrote in his order that it's not appropriate to release the full report now because it's important to protect the due process rights of people for whom the grand jury recommended charges.The special grand jury, which was requested by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to aid her investigation, did not have the power to issue indictments. Instead, its report contains recommendations for Willis, who will ultimately decide whether to seek one or more indictments from a regular grand jury.Over the course of about seven months, the grand jurors heard from 75 witnesses, among them Trump allies including former New York mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Top Georgia officials, such as Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp, also appeared before the panel.The grand jurors were seated in May, began receiving evidence in June and submitted their report to McBurney on Dec. 15. The report's introduction says an “overwhelming majority” of the information that the grand jury received “was delivered in person under oath.”Trump, who publicly refused to accept that Joe Biden won the November 2020 election, has seemed particularly bothered by his loss in Georgia and what he saw as a failure of Republican state elected officials to fight for him. Georgia tipped to Biden by about 12,000 votes, making him the first Democratic presidential candidate to win there since 1992.Trump and his allies have made unproven claims of widespread voter fraud and have repeatedly berated Raffensperger and Kemp for not acting to overturn his loss. State and federal officials, including Trump’s attorney general, have consistently said the election was secure and there was no evidence of significant fraud.Willis has said since the beginning of the investigation two years ago that she was interested in a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call in which Trump suggested to Raffensperger that he could “find” the votes needed to overturn his loss in the state.“All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said during that call. “Because we won the state.”Trump has said repeatedly that his call with Raffensperger was “perfect,” and he told the AP last month that he felt “very confident” that he would not be indicted.Based on witnesses called to testify before the special grand jury, it is clear that Willis is focusing on several areas. Those include:— Phone calls by Trump and others to Georgia officials in the wake of the 2020 election.— A group of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate in December 2020 falsely stating that Trump had won the state and that they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.— False allegations of election fraud made during meetings of state legislators at the Georgia Capitol in December 2020.— The copying of data and software from election equipment in rural Coffee County by a computer forensics team hired by Trump allies.— Alleged attempts to pressure Fulton County elections worker Ruby Freeman into falsely confessing to election fraud.— The abrupt resignation of the U.S. attorney in Atlanta in January 2021.Willis last summer sent letters informing some people, including Giuliani and the state's 16 fake electors, that they could face criminal charges.(Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.)
- [US Judge Releases Parts Of Report On Donald Trump's 2020 Election Probe - YouTube](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/17/us-judge-releases-parts-of-report-on-donald-trumps-2020-election-probe-youtube/) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4JBdwWvrAM
- [Trump election probe grand jury believes some witnesses lied - Oregon Public Broadcasting](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/trump-election-probe-grand-jury-believes-some-witnesses-lied-oregon-public-broadcasting/) - A special grand jury that investigated efforts by then-President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn his election loss in Georgia says it believes some witnesses committed perjury, and it recommends that prosecutors seek charges.Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney speaks during a hearing to decide if the final report by a special grand jury looking into possible interference in the 2020 presidential election can be released Jan. 24, 2023, in Atlanta. The special grand jury is expressing concerns that some of the witnesses called to testify may have lied under oath.John Bazemore / APTHANKS TO OUR SPONSOR:The panel recommended that the district attorney “seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling.” In addition to the section on perjury, the report's introduction and conclusion were released Thursday. But any recommendations on potential criminal charges for specific people will remain under wraps for now.While the report is silent on key details, including who the panel believes committed perjury and whether other indictments should be pursued, it marks the first time the grand jurors' recommendations for criminal charges tied to the case have been made public. The investigation is one of several that could have serious legal consequences for the former president as he ramps up his third bid for the presidency.Despite Trump's persistent contentions, the grand jurors found “by a unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning the election."The partial release was ordered Monday by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special grand jury. During a hearing last month, prosecutors urged him not to release the report until they decide on charges, while a coalition of media organizations, including The Associated Press, pushed for the entire report to be made public immediately.McBurney wrote in his order that it's not appropriate to release the full report now because it's important to protect the due process rights of people for whom the grand jury recommended charges.The special grand jury, which was requested by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to aid her investigation, did not have the power to issue indictments. Instead, its report contains recommendations for Willis, who will ultimately decide whether to seek one or more indictments from a regular grand jury.Over the course of about seven months, the grand jurors heard from 75 witnesses, among them Trump allies including former New York mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Top Georgia officials, such as Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp, also appeared before the panel.The grand jurors were seated in May, began receiving evidence in June and submitted their report to McBurney on Dec. 15. The report's introduction says an “overwhelming majority” of the information that the grand jury received “was delivered in person under oath.”THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR:Trump, who publicly refused to accept that Joe Biden won the November 2020 election, has seemed particularly bothered by his loss in Georgia and what he saw as a failure of Republican state elected officials to fight for him. Georgia tipped to Biden by about 12,000 votes, making him the first Democratic presidential candidate to win there since 1992.Trump and his allies have made unproven claims of widespread voter fraud and have repeatedly berated Raffensperger and Kemp for not acting to overturn his loss. State and federal officials, including Trump’s attorney general, have consistently said the election was secure and there was no evidence of significant fraud.Willis has said since the beginning of the investigation two years ago that she was interested in a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call in which Trump suggested to Raffensperger that he could "find" the votes needed to overturn his loss in the state.“All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said during that call. “Because we won the state.”Trump has said repeatedly that his call with Raffensperger was “perfect,” and he told the AP last month that he felt “very confident” that he would not be indicted.Based on witnesses called to testify before the special grand jury, it is clear that Willis is focusing on several areas. Those include:— Phone calls by Trump and others to Georgia officials in the wake of the 2020 election.— A group of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate in December 2020 falsely stating that Trump had won the state and that they were the state's "duly elected and qualified" electors.— False allegations of election fraud made during meetings of state legislators at the Georgia Capitol in December 2020.— The copying of data and software from election equipment in rural Coffee County by a computer forensics team hired by Trump allies.— Alleged attempts to pressure Fulton County elections worker Ruby Freeman into falsely confessing to election fraud.— The abrupt resignation of the U.S. attorney in Atlanta in January 2021.Willis last summer sent letters informing some people, including Giuliani and the state’s 16 fake electors, that they could face criminal charges.THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR:
- [Court filings: Fox hosts didn't believe 2020 election fraud claims - KKTV](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/court-filings-fox-hosts-didnt-believe-2020-election-fraud-claims-kktv/) - WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Hosts at Fox News had serious concerns about allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election being made by guests who were allies of former President Donald Trump, according to court filings in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network.“Sidney Powell is lying,” about having evidence for election fraud, Tucker Carlson told a producer about the attorney on Nov. 16, 2020, according to an excerpt from an exhibit that remains under seal.The internal communication was included in a redacted summary judgment brief filed Thursday by attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems.Carlson also referred to Powell in a text as an “unguided missile,” and “dangerous as hell.” Fellow host Laura Ingraham, meanwhile, told Carlson that Powell is “a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy,” referring to former New York mayor and Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani.Sean Hannity, meanwhile, said in a deposition “that whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second,” according to Dominion’s filing.Denver-based Dominion, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, is suing both Fox News and parent company Fox Corporation. Dominion said some Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims that Dominion had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements.Attorneys for the cable news giant argued in a counterclaim unsealed Thursday that the lawsuit is an assault on the First Amendment. They said Dominion has advanced “novel defamation theories” and is seeking a “staggering” damage figure aimed at generating headlines, chilling protected speech and enriching Dominion’s private equity owner, Staple Street Capital Partners.“Dominion brought this lawsuit to punish FNN for reporting on one of the biggest stories of the day— allegations by the sitting President of the United States and his surrogates that the 2020 election was affected by fraud,” the counterclaim states. “The very fact of those allegations was newsworthy.”Fox attorneys also said in their own summary judgment brief that Carlson repeatedly questioned Powell’s claims in his broadcasts. “When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her,” Carlson told viewers on Nov. 19, 2020.Fox attorneys say Dominion’s own public relations firm expressed skepticism in December 2020 as to whether the network’s coverage was defamatory. They also point to an email from Oct. 30, 2020, just days before the election, in which Dominion’s director of product strategy and security complained that the company’s products were “just riddled with bugs.”In their counterclaim, Fox attorneys wrote that when voting-technology companies denied the allegations being made by Trump and his surrogates, Fox News aired those denials, while some Fox News hosts offered protected opinion commentary about Trump’s allegations.Fox’s counterclaim is based on New York’s “anti-SLAAP” law. Such laws are aimed at protecting people trying to exercise their First Amendment rights from being intimidated by “strategic lawsuits against public participation,” or SLAPPs.“According to Dominion, FNN had a duty not to truthfully report the President’s allegations but to suppress them or denounce them as false,” Fox attorneys wrote. “Dominion is fundamentally mistaken. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press would be illusory if the prevailing side in a public controversy could sue the press for giving a forum to the losing side.”Fox attorneys warn that threatening the company with a $1.6 billion judgment will cause other media outlets to think twice about what they report. They also say documents produced in the lawsuit show that Dominion has not suffered any economic harm and do not indicate that it lost any customers as the result of Fox’s election coverage.Superior Court Judge Eric Davis is scheduled to preside over a trial beginning in mid-April, but granting summary judgment to either side would obviate the need for a jury trial that could stretch over five weeks.In its 192-page brief, Dominion said the judge should rule in its favor because “no reasonable juror could find in Fox’s favor on each element of Dominion’s defamation claim.” Dominion attorneys also assert that no reasonable juror could find in favor of Fox’s “neutral reportage” and “fair report” defenses.“Recounts and audits conducted by election officials across the U.S. repeatedly confirmed the election’s outcome, including specifically that Dominion’s machines accurately counted votes,” Dominion’s filing states. “That evidence alone more than suffices for summary judgment on the falsity of the claims that Dominion rigged the election and its software manipulated vote counts.”Fox News attorneys argue the network’s coverage and commentary are not defamatory.“Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that Dominion could point to any statement that could be actionable defamation, this court should grant Fox News’ summary judgment motion for the independent reason that Dominion lacks clear and convincing evidence that the relevant individuals at Fox News made or published any statement with actual malice,” the attorneys wrote.Davis ruled last month that, for the purposes of the defamation claims, he will consider Dominion to be a public figure. That means Dominion must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the Fox defendants acted with actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth.Attorneys for Fox Corp. joined in the brief filed by Fox News, while also asserting that the parent company is independently entitled to summary judgment because Dominion has not produced any evidence needed to hold it liable.Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
- [Fox hosts didn't believe 2020 election fraud claims - TheHour](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/fox-hosts-didnt-believe-2020-election-fraud-claims-thehour/) - WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Hosts at Fox News had serious concerns about allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election being made by guests who were allies of former President Donald Trump, according to court filings in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network.“Sidney Powell is lying,” about having evidence for election fraud, Tucker Carlson told a producer about the attorney on Nov. 16, 2020, according to an excerpt from an exhibit that remains under seal. The internal communication was included in a redacted summary judgment brief filed Thursday by attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems.
- ['A complete nut': Fox News hosts didn't believe 2020 election fraud claims - MarketWatch](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/a-complete-nut-fox-news-hosts-didnt-believe-2020-election-fraud-claims-marketwatch/) - WILMINGTON, Del. — Hosts at Fox News had serious concerns about allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election being made by guests who were allies of former President Donald Trump, according to court filings in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network. “Sidney Powell is lying,” about having evidence for election fraud, Tucker Carlson told a producer about the attorney on Nov. 16, 2020, according to an excerpt from an exhibit that remains under seal. The internal communication was included in a redacted summary judgment brief filed Thursday by attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems. Carlson also referred to Powell in a text as an “unguided missile,” and “dangerous as hell.” Fellow host Laura Ingraham, meanwhile, told Carlson that Powell is “a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy,” referring to former New York mayor and Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani. Sean Hannity, meanwhile, said in a deposition “that whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second,” according to Dominion’s filing. Denver-based Dominion, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, is suing both Fox News and parent company Fox Corporation FOX, -1.08%. Dominion said some Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims that Dominion had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements. Attorneys for the cable news giant argued in a counterclaim unsealed Thursday that the lawsuit is an assault on the First Amendment. They said Dominion has advanced “novel defamation theories” and is seeking a “staggering” damage figure aimed at generating headlines, chilling protected speech and enriching Dominion’s private equity owner, Staple Street Capital Partners. “Dominion brought this lawsuit to punish FNN for reporting on one of the biggest stories of the day— allegations by the sitting President of the United States and his surrogates that the 2020 election was affected by fraud,” the counterclaim states. “The very fact of those allegations was newsworthy.” Fox attorneys also said in their own summary judgment brief that Carlson repeatedly questioned Powell’s claims in his broadcasts. “When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her,” Carlson told viewers on Nov. 19, 2020. Fox attorneys say Dominion’s own public relations firm expressed skepticism in December 2020 as to whether the network’s coverage was defamatory. They also point to an email from Oct. 30, 2020, just days before the election, in which Dominion’s director of product strategy and security complained that the company’s products were “just riddled with bugs.” In their counterclaim, Fox attorneys wrote that when voting-technology companies denied the allegations being made by Trump and his surrogates, Fox News aired those denials, while some Fox News hosts offered protected opinion commentary about Trump’s allegations. Fox’s counterclaim is based on New York’s “anti-SLAAP” law. Such laws are aimed at protecting people trying to exercise their First Amendment rights from being intimidated by “strategic lawsuits against public participation,” or SLAPPs. “According to Dominion, FNN had a duty not to truthfully report the President’s allegations but to suppress them or denounce them as false,” Fox attorneys wrote. “Dominion is fundamentally mistaken. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press would be illusory if the prevailing side in a public controversy could sue the press for giving a forum to the losing side.” Fox attorneys warn that threatening the company with a $1.6 billion judgment will cause other media outlets to think twice about what they report. They also say documents produced in the lawsuit show that Dominion has not suffered any economic harm and do not indicate that it lost any customers as the result of Fox’s election coverage. Superior Court Judge Eric Davis is scheduled to preside over a trial beginning in mid-April, but granting summary judgment to either side would obviate the need for a jury trial that could stretch over five weeks. In its 192-page brief, Dominion said the judge should rule in its favor because “no reasonable juror could find in Fox’s favor on each element of Dominion’s defamation claim.” Dominion attorneys also assert that no reasonable juror could find in favor of Fox’s “neutral reportage” and “fair report” defenses. “Recounts and audits conducted by election officials across the U.S. repeatedly confirmed the election’s outcome, including specifically that Dominion’s machines accurately counted votes,” Dominion’s filing states. “That evidence alone more than suffices for summary judgment on the falsity of the claims that Dominion rigged the election and its software manipulated vote counts.” Fox News attorneys argue the network’s coverage and commentary are not defamatory. “Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that Dominion could point to any statement that could be actionable defamation, this court should grant Fox News’ summary judgment motion for the independent reason that Dominion lacks clear and convincing evidence that the relevant individuals at Fox News made or published any statement with actual malice,” the attorneys wrote. Davis ruled last month that, for the purposes of the defamation claims, he will consider Dominion to be a public figure. That means Dominion must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the Fox defendants acted with actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth. Attorneys for Fox Corp. joined in the brief filed by Fox News, while also asserting that the parent company is independently entitled to summary judgment because Dominion has not produced any evidence needed to hold it liable. Fox Corp. and MarketWatch parent News Corp share common ownership.
- [Fox hosts didn't believe 2020 election fraud claims - Tulsa World](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/fox-hosts-didnt-believe-2020-election-fraud-claims-tulsa-world/) - By RANDALL CHASE - Associated Press WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Hosts at Fox News had serious concerns about allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election being made by guests who were allies of former President Donald Trump, according to court filings in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network.“Sidney Powell is lying,” about having evidence for election fraud, Tucker Carlson told a producer about the attorney on Nov. 16, 2020, according to an excerpt from an exhibit that remains under seal.The internal communication was included in a redacted summary judgment brief filed Thursday by attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems.Carlson also referred to Powell in a text as an “unguided missile,” and “dangerous as hell.” Fellow host Laura Ingraham, meanwhile, told Carlson that Powell is “a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy,” referring to former New York mayor and Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani. People are also reading… Sean Hannity, meanwhile, said in a deposition “that whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second," according to Dominion's filing.Denver-based Dominion, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, is suing both Fox News and parent company Fox Corporation. Dominion said some Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims that Dominion had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements.Attorneys for the cable news giant argued in a counterclaim unsealed Thursday that the lawsuit is an assault on the First Amendment. They said Dominion has advanced “novel defamation theories” and is seeking a “staggering” damage figure aimed at generating headlines, chilling protected speech and enriching Dominion’s private equity owner, Staple Street Capital Partners.“Dominion brought this lawsuit to punish FNN for reporting on one of the biggest stories of the day— allegations by the sitting President of the United States and his surrogates that the 2020 election was affected by fraud,” the counterclaim states. “The very fact of those allegations was newsworthy.”Fox attorneys also said in their own summary judgment brief that Carlson repeatedly questioned Powell’s claims in his broadcasts. “When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her,” Carlson told viewers on Nov. 19, 2020.Fox attorneys say Dominion’s own public relations firm expressed skepticism in December 2020 as to whether the network's coverage was defamatory. They also point to an email from Oct. 30, 2020, just days before the election, in which Dominion's director of product strategy and security complained that the company's products were “just riddled with bugs.”In their counterclaim, Fox attorneys wrote that when voting-technology companies denied the allegations being made by Trump and his surrogates, Fox News aired those denials, while some Fox News hosts offered protected opinion commentary about Trump’s allegations.Fox’s counterclaim is based on New York’s “anti-SLAAP” law. Such laws are aimed at protecting people trying to exercise their First Amendment rights from being intimidated by “strategic lawsuits against public participation,” or SLAPPs.“According to Dominion, FNN had a duty not to truthfully report the President’s allegations but to suppress them or denounce them as false,” Fox attorneys wrote. “Dominion is fundamentally mistaken. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press would be illusory if the prevailing side in a public controversy could sue the press for giving a forum to the losing side.”Fox attorneys warn that threatening the company with a $1.6 billion judgment will cause other media outlets to think twice about what they report. They also say documents produced in the lawsuit show that Dominion has not suffered any economic harm and do not indicate that it lost any customers as the result of Fox’s election coverage.Superior Court Judge Eric Davis is scheduled to preside over a trial beginning in mid-April, but granting summary judgment to either side would obviate the need for a jury trial that could stretch over five weeks.In its 192-page brief, Dominion said the judge should rule in its favor because “no reasonable juror could find in Fox’s favor on each element of Dominion’s defamation claim.” Dominion attorneys also assert that no reasonable juror could find in favor of Fox’s “neutral reportage” and “fair report” defenses.“Recounts and audits conducted by election officials across the U.S. repeatedly confirmed the election’s outcome, including specifically that Dominion’s machines accurately counted votes," Dominion's filing states. “That evidence alone more than suffices for summary judgment on the falsity of the claims that Dominion rigged the election and its software manipulated vote counts.”Fox News attorneys argue the network's coverage and commentary are not defamatory."Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that Dominion could point to any statement that could be actionable defamation, this court should grant Fox News’ summary judgment motion for the independent reason that Dominion lacks clear and convincing evidence that the relevant individuals at Fox News made or published any statement with actual malice," the attorneys wrote.Davis ruled last month that, for the purposes of the defamation claims, he will consider Dominion to be a public figure. That means Dominion must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the Fox defendants acted with actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth.Attorneys for Fox Corp. joined in the brief filed by Fox News, while also asserting that the parent company is independently entitled to summary judgment because Dominion has not produced any evidence needed to hold it liable. Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. 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- [Tucker Carlson Calls Trump 'Demonic Force' in New Legal Filing - Rolling Stone](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/tucker-carlson-calls-trump-demonic-force-in-new-legal-filing-rolling-stone/) - Fox news hosts and producers privately shared misgivings about former President Donald Trump’s false claims of fraud in the 2020 election despite their networks promoting his claims, Dominion Voting Systems, an election technology company, claimed in a new court filing, the NYT reports. The newly disclosed messages are part of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the media giant; Dominion Voting Systems is seeking damages from Fox News over its coverage in the aftermath of the election. Hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham, as well as others, disparage Trump henchmen, including Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani in messages — casting doubt on claims that Dominion’s voting machines had rigged the presidential election in Joe Biden’s favor, according to the legal filing made public on Thursday. The company also alleges that Fox News hosts Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, and Sean Hannity gave Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani a platform to lie about the voting process. “Fox knew,” the Dominion filing states, which cited excerpts from evidence collected in the suit. “From the top down, Fox knew ‘the Dominion stuff’ was ‘total BS.’ The filing includes text messages, internal emails, and depositions Dominion gathered via discovery from Fox News over the past few months. On Nov. 13, per the document, Carlson texted one of his producers that Trump needed to concede “that there wasn’t enough fraud to change the outcome” of the election, and later texted that Sidney Powell, one of Trump’s lawyers, was “lying” about having evidence for election fraud. Months later, on Jan. 6, Carlson messaged the same producer, and called Trump “a demonic force, a destroyer, adding, “But he’s not going to destroy us.” In another text exchange a few days later, as stated in the legal filing, Carlson repeated his concerns to Ingraham, writing that “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane.” Ms. Ingraham replied, “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.” Carlson responded, “It’s unbelievably offensive to me. Our viewers are good people and they believe it.” Editor’s picks The filing also alleges that Powell told Fox employees and Maria Bartiromo that she relied on sources that made her unreliable. The suit states that before Powell’s Nov. 8 appearance on Bartiromo’s Sunday Morning Futures show, the “evidence” Powell provided to back her false accusations that the voting company manipulated the election was from an individual who described herself as “internally decapitated” and capable of “time travel in a semi-conscious state.” Fox, in a statement to ABC News, wrote, “There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan.” Trending In its motion for summary judgment filed Thursday, per ABC, Fox claimed that “statements Dominion challenges are not actionable defamation because Fox News’ coverage and commentary are not only not defamatory, but also protected by the First Amendment and New York doctrines emanating from it.” By Nov. 12, the consequences of the accusations of the voter fraud narrative sunk in. In a message that day to Carlson and Ingraham, per the filing, Hannity wrote, “In one week and one debate they destroyed a brand that took 25 years to build and the damage is incalculable.”
- [Fox hosts didn't believe 2020 election fraud claims - YourValley.net](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/fox-hosts-didnt-believe-2020-election-fraud-claims-yourvalley-net/) - By RANDALL CHASE WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Hosts at Fox News had serious concerns about allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election being made by guests who were allies of former President Donald Trump, according to court filings in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network. “Sidney Powell is lying,” about having evidence for election fraud, Tucker Carlson told a producer about the attorney on Nov. 16, 2020, according to an excerpt from an exhibit that remains under seal. The internal communication was included in a redacted summary judgment brief filed Thursday by attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems. Carlson also referred to Powell in a text as an “unguided missile,” and “dangerous as hell.” Fellow host Laura Ingraham, meanwhile, told Carlson that Powell is “a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy,” referring to former New York mayor and Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani. Sean Hannity, meanwhile, said in a deposition “that whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second," according to Dominion's filing. Denver-based Dominion, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, is suing both Fox News and parent company Fox Corporation. Dominion said some Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims that Dominion had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements. Attorneys for the cable news giant argued in a counterclaim unsealed Thursday that the lawsuit is an assault on the First Amendment. They said Dominion has advanced “novel defamation theories” and is seeking a “staggering” damage figure aimed at generating headlines, chilling protected speech and enriching Dominion’s private equity owner, Staple Street Capital Partners. “Dominion brought this lawsuit to punish FNN for reporting on one of the biggest stories of the day— allegations by the sitting President of the United States and his surrogates that the 2020 election was affected by fraud,” the counterclaim states. “The very fact of those allegations was newsworthy.” Fox attorneys also said in their own summary judgment brief that Carlson repeatedly questioned Powell’s claims in his broadcasts. “When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her,” Carlson told viewers on Nov. 19, 2020. Fox attorneys say Dominion’s own public relations firm expressed skepticism in December 2020 as to whether the network's coverage was defamatory. They also point to an email from Oct. 30, 2020, just days before the election, in which Dominion's director of product strategy and security complained that the company's products were “just riddled with bugs.”
- [House Republicans are trying to construct a 2020 conspiracy theory - The Washington Post](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/house-republicans-are-trying-to-construct-a-2020-conspiracy-theory-the-washington-post/) - Even as voters went to the polls in November 2016, there was strong evidence that Russia or Russian actors were hoping to influence the outcome.In June of that year, The Washington Post reported on the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, an act attributed to Russian actors and which resulted in the leak of stolen documents the following month aimed at disrupting the Democratic convention. In August, the Daily Beast reported on a social media effort conducted by Russians that aimed to boost Donald Trump’s candidacy. Then, in October, a new set of leaks of material stolen from a top adviser to Hillary Clinton — a theft attributed to Russian hackers at the time.Sign up for How To Read This Chart, a weekly data newsletter from Philip BumpInside the government, the effort was recognized for what it was (though its efforts to halt the interference fell obviously short). For its part, the public only gained a sense of the full scale of the attempt to influence the election after it was over. Investigations, including that of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, clearly connected the hacks to Russian intelligence. Social media companies like Twitter and Facebook produced examples of accounts and posts that had been part of the Russian influence effort.Mueller’s probe also fleshed out details on the social media push. It was a function of the “Internet Research Agency,” a group funded by Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin (whom American intelligence had identified as explicitly authorizing the effort to interfere in the election). Prigozhin was indicted along with a number of employees for their efforts to create the social media content that had embarrassed Twitter and Facebook more than it had influenced voting.Speaking to reporters in November, Prigozhin admitted his role in the effort.“We interfered. We are interfering and we will interfere,” he said. “Carefully, precisely, surgically and in our own way, as we know how to do.”“Are interfering” — as in, he and his team were attempting to influence the 2022 midterms, too. This was, at least per his self-interested presentation, an ongoing effort.After that 2016 black eye, the social media companies had announced various tools for uprooting foreign influence efforts. In 2020 and 2022, they announced the cancellation of accounts believed to be linked to Russian interference efforts. Meanwhile the federal government, eager to prevent Russia from repeating its 2016 successes, worked with the companies to share information about what it was seeing.That contributed to one of the most infamous moments of the 2020 election. In October of that year, the New York Post ran a story on material it claimed had been recovered from a laptop belonging to Joe Biden’s son Hunter. Even at the Post, the story raised eyebrows. Fox News reportedly passed on it. The conduit for the information was Rudy Giuliani, an attorney for Donald Trump who had no qualms about sharing dubiously sourced material, including from Russian actors. The FBI had been warning social media companies about 2016-style efforts to inject stolen information into the election; the laptop story very much carried that aroma. Twitter and Facebook briefly limited the story’s reach or its ability to be shared.The effect was negligible. Trump was unpopular and lost to Biden handily in the presidential election. But then Trump decided to deny his loss, first on the grounds that the election had been stolen through fraud (which it demonstrably wasn’t) and, later, that it had been stolen through nefarious influence. This latter framing had the advantage of being unfalsifiable, so Trump’s allies ran with it.An opportunity presented itself. Republicans who’d fostered hostility toward social media (in keeping with a liberal-elites-fighting-humble-American-patriots narrative) could try to argue that Twitter’s response to the laptop story had cost Trump the election. Such ideas have the effect of dropping a crystal into the supersaturated solution that is right-wing media so, in short order, a full conspiracy was built out around it. The right’s skepticism of the FBI (stoked by Trump, coincidentally, in an effort to downplay questions about his campaign’s connections to Russia) blended with cherry-picked documents released after Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter to create a narrative about the FBI intentionally encouraging social media companies to silence Americans — or even paying them to do so, which they didn’t.On Wednesday night, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) hyped this line of rhetoric in an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity.“The most important right we have as American citizens under the First Amendment is our right to speak, our right to communicate in a political fashion and not be attacked, harassed for doing so,” Jordan said, which of course isn’t what the First Amendment allows at all. But, he argued, this is what he suggested had happened: “We believe all of these big tech companies were working with big government to suppress free speech, to suppress Americans’ right to communicate on these platforms, which are now, in essence, the public square.”A lot has been written about the difference between the government preventing people from speaking (a violation of the First Amendment) and Twitter’s preventing people from posting (a decision within the rights of a private business) so there’s little point rehashing it. But notice that the claim itself is unsupported. The FBI didn’t work to “suppress free speech,” it and other law enforcement organizations provided information to tech companies about potential foreign threats in an effort to prevent a repeat of 2016. And they were doing this at a time when Russia was actively trying to repeat what it did in 2016, as Prigozhin admitted. (His November comments were first reported in the United States this week.)Where’s Jordan’s evidence for his presentation of events? Well, he doesn’t have any.“That’s what we believe happened,” he told Hannity. “We’re looking for the, uh — looking for the evidence.”A bit later, he offered more in support of why he purports to believe this is what happened.“It wasn’t just the FBI. It was several government agencies, part of this Foreign Intelligence Task Force who were meeting not just with Twitter, but with all these platforms,” he explained. “And they met weekly in the run-up to the 2020 election. And they’ve continued to meet in the run-up to the 2022 midterms.”You have to be pretty distant from reality to see this as supporting your conspiracy theory rather than undercutting it. The FBI was out to get Trump so … they met with social media companies in 2022? Which makes more sense: that the FBI and other agencies wanted to undercut Republican politicians so they had regular, reported meetings with Twitter and Facebook to plan how to do that — or that they were working together in an effort to limit the ability of foreign actors to influence elections, which the foreign actors had demonstrably done and have since admitted to continuing to try to do?For Jordan, a lot of this is a game. He’s gained a lot of power by playing along with Trump even when Trump didn’t uphold his end of the bargain. Jordan’s a regular in right-wing media, where he makes sweeping pronouncements of nefariousness that don’t hold up.The reality is simple and unexciting. Russia has tried to influence our elections, including through social media. The government and social media companies, caught flat-footed in 2016, worked together to fight the effort.And Donald Trump lost in 2020 because he was less popular than Joe Biden.
- [Parts of Georgia grand jury's Trump report released, possible criminal charge ... - PBS](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/parts-of-georgia-grand-jurys-trump-report-released-possible-criminal-charge-pbs/) - ATLANTA (AP) — Parts of a report by a special grand jury that investigated whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies committed any crimes while trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia have been made public. WATCH: Pence subpoenaed by special counsel investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn election The report’s introduction and conclusion, along with a section in which the grand jurors expressed concerns that some witnesses may have lied under oath were released Thursday. But any recommendations on potential criminal charges will remain under wraps for now. The partial release was ordered Monday by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special grand jury. During a hearing last month, prosecutors urged him not to release the report until they decide on charges, while a coalition of media organizations, including The Associated Press, pushed for the entire report to be made public immediately. McBurney wrote in his order that it’s not appropriate to release the full report now because it’s important to protect the due process rights of people for whom the grand jury recommended charges. The investigation is one of several that could have serious legal consequences for the former president as he tries to persuade voters to return him to the White House in 2024. The special grand jury, which was requested by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to aid her investigation, did not have the power to issue indictments. Instead, its report contains recommendations for Willis, who will ultimately decide whether to seek one or more indictments from a regular grand jury. Over the course of about seven months, the grand jurors heard from 75 witnesses, among them Trump allies including former New York mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Top Georgia officials, such as Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp, also appeared before the panel. Trump, who has publicly refused to accept that Joe Biden won the November 2020 election, has seemed particularly bothered by his loss in Georgia and what he saw as a failure of Republican state elected officials to fight for him. Georgia tipped to Biden by about 12,000 votes, making him the first Democratic presidential candidate to win there since 1992. Trump and his allies have made unproven claims of widespread voter fraud and have repeatedly berated Raffensperger and Kemp for not acting to overturn his loss. State and federal officials, including Trump’s attorney general, have consistently said the election was secure and there was no evidence of significant fraud. READ MORE: Jan. 6 committee alleges funds raised by Trump to overturn 2020 election used to sway witness testimonies Willis has said since the beginning of the investigation two years ago that she was interested in a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call in which Trump suggested to Raffensperger that he could “find” the votes needed to overturn his loss in the state. “All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said during that call. “Because we won the state.” Trump has said repeatedly that his call with Raffensperger was “perfect,” and he told the AP last month that he felt “very confident” that he would not be indicted. Based on witnesses called to testify before the special grand jury, it is clear that Willis is focusing on several areas. Those include: Phone calls by Trump and others to Georgia officials in the wake of the 2020 election. A group of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate in December 2020 falsely stating that Trump had won the state and that they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors. False allegations of election fraud made during meetings of state legislators at the Georgia Capitol in December 2020. The copying of data and software from election equipment in rural Coffee County by a computer forensics team hired by Trump allies. Alleged attempts to pressure Fulton County elections worker Ruby Freeman into falsely confessing to election fraud. The abrupt resignation of the U.S. attorney in Atlanta in January 2021. Willis last summer sent letters informing some people, including Giuliani and the state’s 16 fake electors, that they could face criminal charges.
- [Breonna Taylor shooting: Kentucky ex-cop Brett Hankison now faces federal charges over ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/breonna-taylor-shooting-kentucky-ex-cop-brett-hankison-now-faces-federal-charges-over/) - LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY: Prosecutors to conduct retrial in a former Kentucky cop's controversial fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor during a March 13, 2020, apartment raid. Brett Hankison, a Louisville, Kentucky police was sacked and arrested for firing 10 rounds of bullets while executing a "no-knock" search warrant.ADVERTISEMENT Hankison was charged with wanton endangerment after firing shots through an adjacent apartment endangering a pregnant neighbor, her young child, and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker. An August 21, trial date has been set for the ex-officer facing federal charges. Previously, a jury had cleared him of all state charges in early 2022 while the federal charges include the endangerment of neighbors, the victim, and her boyfriend. If convicted, Hankison faces maximum life in prison sentence over the deadly police raid. RELATED ARTICLES Breonna Taylor's boyfriend Kenneth Walker III settles 'unlawful raid' lawsuit with Louisville for $2M Breonna Taylor: Brett Hankinson found NOT GUILTY of shooting during raid at Black EMT's house What really happened? Alongside Hankison, three other cops were fired and face federal charges after they allegedly gave false information to obtain a search warrant for Taylor's apartment, reported The Sun. Charges against Hankison and ex-cops Joshua Jaynes, Kyle Meany, and Kelly Hanna Goodlett include civil rights violations, conspiracy, use of excessive force offenses, and obstruction. On the night of the fatal shooting, the four Louisville police officers claimed the search was part of a drug investigation, however, no drugs were found at the crime scene.ADVERTISEMENT Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room aide was sleeping with her boyfriend when the officers tried to break into her apartment using a ram to gain entry. Although the police claim they announced themselves several times, things swiftly turned awry after Walker fired a single round of shots at the officers, prompting them to fire back, which killed Taylor. Whilst the other officers fired a single shot, Hankison fired additional 10 rounds saying he did so to save his fellow officers. He is the only officer charged with her fatal shooting after Taylor was shot six times. 'Unlawful conduct!' The three officers came under scrutiny after they tried to cover up their "unlawful conduct" and "conspired to mislead federal, state, and local authorities who were investigating the incident." Jayne who filed for the false warrant allegedly lied in the affidavit and was fired from duty on January 2021. Meany, the sergeant in charge of Goodlett and Jaynes’ team was responsible for overseeing the investigation. However, all three were charged with violating Taylor's Fourth Amendment rights, due to their roles in writing and submitting a false affidavit to secure a search warrant.
- [A major Breonna Taylor update as former Kentucky police officer Brett Hankison ... - Techno Trenz](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/a-major-breonna-taylor-update-as-former-kentucky-police-officer-brett-hankison-techno-trenz/) - Ads An ex-Kentucky police officer who fired into Breonna Taylor’s apartment blindly on the night of the deadly raid in 2020 will once more face prosecution by prosecutors. Brett Hankison, a fired Louisville police officer who was arrested in August of last year on federal charges, now has a trial date of August 21. Continue checking Sun Online for updates on this story. The-sun.com is your go-to source for the most up-to-date celebrity news, sports news, real-life stories, jaw-dropping pictures, and must-see videos. Follow us from our primary Twitter account at www.twitter.com/TheSunUS and like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TheSunUS.@TheUSSun. Ads
- [WKYT Investigates | Diagnosis & denial: Guardmembers, first responders with PTSD face ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/wkyt-investigates-diagnosis-denial-guardmembers-first-responders-with-ptsd-face/) - LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) - It was always his desire to serve.“I feel like God calls certain people to do certain things,” he said. “That was my calling.”He signed with the Kentucky Army National Guard as a teenager. He was once even named “Soldier of the Year.”But he never imagined that fulfilling his dream would end in a nightmare - with a discharge, post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis and multiple denials when he applied for help, exposing the numerous obstacles - on multiple fronts - that continue to block benefits for first responders and other service members in their own times of need.His journey exemplifies a battle for benefits that can be particularly fraught for Guard members, who, in their dual mission for federal government and state government, can find themselves in a gray area between the two, with help coming from neither.“At one point, I had it made,” he told WKYT’s Garrett Wymer, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the stigma that still surrounds PTSD and because he fears the diagnosis could hinder future opportunities. “Now I struggle to even speak.”RELATED COVERAGE:For two years now the former soldier - who will go by “Jason” for the purposes of this story - has been trying to build back a life that nearly crumbled to pieces.Jason was one of 500 National Guard members ordered by Gov. Andy Beshear to assist the Louisville Metro Police Department in September 2020, as the city braced for more unrest following Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s announcement that no officers would be charged in the death of Breonna Taylor. (One officer was charged with wanton endangerment in connection with the raid. The handling of the case before a grand jury has come under scrutiny.)“I’d say within a few months of being there,” Jason said of his service on the streets of Louisville, “it’s all I thought about.”Jason says he screened positive for PTSD at a periodic health assessment (PHA) the following January - a result he says he was not aware of at the time.But his symptoms began to worsen, and he started acting out of character, leaving him unable to continue running his own business or to keep employment elsewhere, he said. His wife filed for divorce, but did not go through with it.Jason was initially diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but in a follow-up visit with Behavioral Health was then diagnosed with PTSD, he said.By the time he received the PTSD diagnosis, he said he was relieved at least to have an answer. But when he tried to access the benefits he believed he was owed, the letters in return brought denial after denial from workers’ compensation, the V.A. and Social Security Disability.According to denial letters reviewed by WKYT Investigates:SSDI determined the effects of PTSD were “not severe enough to keep [him] from working.”Jason was denied by the V.A. and V.A. healthcare because the National Guard was on state active duty orders instead of federal active duty orders.And he is not eligible for workers’ compensation because Kentucky state law requires a “psychological, psychiatric or stress-related change” to be a “direct result of a physical injury” in order for it to be covered.Advocates see the workers’ compensation law as containing an outdated definition or inadequate understanding of the full scope and severity of the problem - a flaw in state statute that continues to allow a growing number of first responders and service members to fall through the cracks, as WKYT’s Garrett Wymer first reported last year in an in-depth look at the obstacles blocking benefits for first responders and the difficulty of proving a PTSD diagnosis.“That’s a huge slap in the face for our community,” said Jeremy Harrell, founder and CEO of Veteran’s Club Inc. “They’re serving honorably - in our home state. And if the federal government won’t take care of them, then I think Kentucky needs to.”Harrell’s Louisville-based non-profit offers services and programs to help those who wore the uniform. They work directly with 7,000 veterans around the region.Harrell knows the impact PTSD can have. Accessing benefits, he said, should not be that hard.“It needs to be addressed,” he said. “We have to take care of the people who take care of us. You can’t ask people to go into harm’s way and just disregard the needs that they have once they complete that.”State lawmakers have it in their power to fix part of the problem, yet to this point they have largely remained silent.House Bill 219, filed last week in the General Assembly, would make first responders, frontline staff and National Guard members on state active duty eligible for workers’ compensation if diagnosed with PTSD, even without a physical injury.Language in the newly-filed bill, sponsored by Rep. Rebecca Raymer, R-Morgantown, has been the focal point of a growing grassroots effort to lobby for change. Family members of first responders diagnosed with PTSD - including the Treadways, featured in the WKYT Investigates report on the issue from March 2022 - have contacted legislator after legislator looking for lawmakers willing to support the legislation.[Follow the bill’s progress here.]However, a similar bill filed last year - House Bill 356, which did not include National Guard members like Jason - went nowhere. It was never even assigned to a committee.Advocates have vowed to push lawmakers to act, saying politicians need to ‘walk the walk.’“We can’t just talk about it at a big round table or in front of an audience,” Harrell said. “We must put in place the proper rules and policy changes that help the people.”As for Jason, his desire to serve remains strong.“The hardest thing about being in the National Guard is taking that uniform off and coming back home,” he said.As his struggle has become more known in his community, he says other soldiers have opened up to him about going through struggles themselves.“They talk to me,” he said. “Some of them have been through absolute hell. And there’s no help for them.”It is one reason he hopes to be a voice for change, even as he tries to figure out his own future.“What’s next for me?” he asked. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”Copyright 2023 WKYT. All rights reserved.
- [Q&A with new Louisville Metro Council District 6 member Phillip Baker - Courier-Journal](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/qa-with-new-louisville-metro-council-district-6-member-phillip-baker-courier-journal/) - The life of one of the newest Louisville Metro Council members, as he puts it, has "always been about competition."Whether competing on the wrestling mat and gridiron, serving as a law office "runner" and then also running for political office, or working to ensure students in Louisville have their basic needs met, Phillip Baker is often on the move.His latest endeavor is serving on Metro Council as the recently appointed member for District 6, which covers part of downtown and surrounding neighborhoods such as Limerick, Old Louisville, Park Hill, Shelby Park, Smoketown and Russell.Sitting members of Louisville's legislative body picked Baker earlier in February to serve out the rest of David James' term, after the ex-Metro Council president joined Mayor Craig Greenberg's administration.As Baker gets settled into the new role, he spoke with The Courier Journal about his family, background and priorities while in office. Some answers have been edited for length and clarity.The other new Metro Council member:A teacher and mentor to Louisville kidsWhat was your childhood like? It sounds like service to the community is a theme in your family.Baker: "I'm from Winchester, Kentucky, and grew up there until 9th grade. I'm the grandson of the Rev. Henry Edward Baker, one of the first Kentucky Human Rights Commission Civil Rights Hall of Fame inductees. My father is a local pastor here at Christ Way Missionary Baptist Church. My mom is a lawyer. My sister, Dr. Jeronda Majors, will be the principal of the new West End middle school and has been the principal of Knight Middle School. My sister and brother were arrested during the Breonna Taylor protests. I went to Central High School. I took second in state in wrestling and played football. I went to Tennessee State University and played center (on the football team). I earned a degree in communication. Today, my wife and I have three kids, all boys — Phillip Jr., 13, Preston Henry Edward, 9, and Peyton Lee, 4. My wife, Tiffiny, is a teacher at Mill Creek Elementary School. We live in Old Louisville.In high school, I was a 'runner' for Wyatt Tarrant and Combs. I later got my insurance license and am a multiple line agent for State Farm. I thought I would never be like my dad, but he is also a State Farm agent (laughs)."Background:Louisville Metro Council picks 2 JCPS employees to fill its vacant seatsWhy did you seek this Metro Council seat?Baker: "My passion is to serve. That's all we knew. I'm a Family Resource Coordinator for Jefferson County Public Schools (at Coleridge-Taylor Montessori Elementary). My FRC position is everything I want to do. I'm feeding people. We're getting kids on buses, meeting parents, knocking on doors for truancies. I'm able to speak to someone if, for example, this person has an LG&E issue, helping them if they ask, 'How does LIHEAP work?' (Baker, among other positions, also serves on the Kentucky Derby Festival Board.)My first campaign was for (Kentucky House) District 41 in 2016 against Tom Riner and Attica Scott. (Scott won.) I ran for House District 43 in 2018. (Charles Booker won that Democratic primary and general election.) We started the Greater Louisville Association of Democrats to support Black political participation.I run to fulfill that need for service. I also coach in the Louisville Youth Football League with the Shively Seminoles."What are your top few priorities to tackle while in office?Baker: "Where I live has shaped my priorities. Public safety is key, but a true passion of mine is improving the health and wellness of seniors and youth. If you go down Fourth Street, you have Treyton Oaks, Puritan, Hillebrand House ... when you go in to visit these seniors ... we need to do better. The facilities, the upkeep, making sure they have dignity. They deserve it.Improving parks, like Ben Washer Park at Fifth and Kentucky streets. I want interconnectivity with other districts, like the neighboring 3rd District and the parks there. I want to make sure we are connecting residents and providing a level of customer service."Kentucky coal mining:Did mining play a role in 2022 Kentucky flood deaths? Group wants feds to investigateWill you run again in November and in 2024?Baker: "Absolutely. I'm going to seek the Democratic nomination. I have every intention of running. On the 2024 ballot, you will see Phillip Thomas Baker, unless something drastic happens."What do you and your family like to do together?Baker: "We love sporting events, basketball, football, soccer. We're always at a local game. We love the outdoors, maybe a byproduct of the pandemic. You'll see my big old butt hiking or kayaking at Tioga Falls or Beckley Creek Park. We go to church together. We're always serving and giving food out."Reach Billy Kobin at bkobin@courierjournal.com
- [Atlanta grand jury recommends perjury charges in Trump 2020 election probe - Axios](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/atlanta-grand-jury-recommends-perjury-charges-in-trump-2020-election-probe-axios/)
- [A Grand Jury Believes “One Or More” Witnesses May Have Lied During Inquiry Into Trump's ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/a-grand-jury-believes-one-or-more-witnesses-may-have-lied-during-inquiry-into-trumps/) - “One or more” witnesses in Georgia’s inquiry into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election may have lied under oath, the special grand jury in the case revealed in a brief report released Thursday.The grand jury recommended charging any witnesses who may have perjured themselves.“A majority of the grand jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it,” the report read. “The grand jury recommends that the district attorney seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling.”The five-page report, released by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, is excerpted from a longer report by the grand jury. The released section includes the introduction, the conclusion, and a section in which the jury addressed the possibility of perjury.The special grand jury was examining efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which Trump has claimed without evidence was stolen via voter fraud. In its report, the grand jury reaffirmed there was no voter fraud, noting that it had heard “extensive testimony” from poll workers, investigators, state employees, and more.“We find by a unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election,” the report read.Over seven months, the grand jury heard testimony from 75 witnesses, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Georgia Republican Party chair David Shafer. Notably, the special grand jury’s report does not name who may have committed perjury or opine about whether other laws may have been broken. While a special grand jury can recommend charges, indictments are ultimately up to the discretion of prosecutors.At the heart of the investigation, which began in February 2021, is an hourlong phone call in January 2021 between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which Trump instructed Raffensperger to “find” nearly 12,000 votes he needed to win the state in the 2020 election.“All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state,” Trump continued in the call. President Joe Biden had won Georgia with 11,779 votes.Investigators also reviewed evidence of potential criminal activity and conspiracy to overturn the election, including false election fraud claims, unauthorized access to voting machines, and threats and harassment against election workers.Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has indicated she may bring charges following the grand jury’s report. Last month at a hearing in Atlanta she told the presiding judge that the decision whether to bring charges was “imminent.” The grand jury’s recommendations on criminal charges remain sealed as of Feb. 16.
- [John Yoo: This could 'close the book' on the Georgia 2020 election fraud claims - Fox News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/john-yoo-this-could-close-the-book-on-the-georgia-2020-election-fraud-claims-fox-news/)
- [Biden says 'aerial objects' not looming threat; Georgia Trump grand jury excerpts released](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/biden-says-aerial-objects-not-looming-threat-georgia-trump-grand-jury-excerpts-released/) - President Joe Biden said Thursday the administration continues to study a series of unidentified flying objects shot down in recent days but that intelligence officials increasingly believe they were benign balloons used for research or commercial purposes.Biden said the intelligence community's current assessment is that three objects shot down over North American airspace were "most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions." That does not include the Chinese spy balloon the U.S military shot down in early February.Also, parts of the long-awaited report by a Georgia grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump and his allies were released Thursday. The grand jury recommended some witnesses should face perjury charges for lying and found there was no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.Here's what else is happening in politics:Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has been subpoenaed by the Justice Department's special counsel investigating Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to media reports. Haley in New Hampshire: Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley holds two events in the Granite State this week after officially launching her 2024 White House campaign.A presidential physical: President Joe Biden had a routine medical checkup as he eyes a second term as president. Debt ceiling needs to be raised by summer, CBO says: The Congressional Budget Office said the U.S. Treasury will run out of money as soon as July as the president and House Speaker McCarthy continue to spar over the debt ceiling and federal spending. Haley in N.H.: Chinese spy balloon a 'massive national embarrassment'Republican presidential hopeful and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley appeared to criticize President Joe Biden over the Chinese spy balloon saga while on the campaign trail in New Hampshire Thursday.“The idea that Americans will look to the sky and see a Chinese spy balloon flying over us is nothing more than a massive national embarrassment,” Haley said, to raucous applause during a town hall event in Exeter.“The number one threat we have is China,” continued Haley, to more cheers.– Ken TranGOP 2024 race:For Nikki Haley, New Hampshire presents challenges and opportunities Biden’s neurological exam shows no brain disorders, motor weaknessAs part of his physical, Biden underwent an “extremely detailed” neurological exam that Kevin O’Connor, the president’s doctor, said uncovered no findings consistent with a brain or central neurological disorder, such as a stroke, multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s Disease.The exam did show a “mild peripheral neuropathy” in both feet, O’Connor said. Biden did not demonstrate any motor weakness, the physician said, but showed a subtle difference in heat/cold sensation. O’Connor stressed that Biden’s symptoms haven’t progressed and have actually improved since his last exam.From the time Biden campaigned for the presidency in 2020, Republican critics including former President Donald Trump have demanded that Biden take a cognitive test to demonstrate his mental fitness.– Joey Garrison and Michael Collins Biden remains ‘healthy, vigorous 80-year-old,’ White House doctor says after physicalPresident Joe Biden remains a "healthy, vigorous 80-year-old male who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency," the White House physician said Thursday after the president received his first physical in a year and a half.One small lesion, however, was removed from the president's chest during the examination and will be sent for a traditional biopsy, Biden's physician, Kevin O'Connor, said in a letter that otherwise mostly reflected his last medical checkup from November 2021.Biden's routine physical has taken on extra scrutiny as the octogenarian is widely expected to announce a reelection bid in the coming weeks or months. Already the oldest person to assume the presidency, Biden would be 86 at the end of a second term.O’Connor observed that Biden’s gait remains stiff but has not worsened in the past year. He also has occasional bouts of gastroesophageal reflux, which cause him to clear his throat often and may contribute to occasional cough and sinus congestion, the report said.Biden weighs 178 pounds and had a blood pressure rate of 128/76 and pulse rate of 69, the physician’s report said. That's six pounds less than the 184 pounds he weighed in 2021.– Joey Garrison and Michael CollinsBiden health update:President remains 'healthy, vigorous 80-year-old,' White House doctor saysSen. Fetterman checks into hospital for 'severe depression'Sen. John Fetterman, D-Penn., was checked into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for clinical depression, according to his office.“While John has experience depression off and on throughout his life, it only became severe in recent weeks,” Adam Jentleson, his chief of staff, said in a statement Thursday.The Pennsylvania Democrat, who suffered a stroke during the 2022 campaign, was discharged from another hospital earlier this month after reportedly feeling lightheaded during a Democratic retreat.Fetterman’s office said he did not suffer from another stroke.– Phillip M. Bailey Biden says unidentified objects likely not related to China or foreign surveillancePresident Joe Biden said the three unidentified objects shot down over North American airspace were likely not related to China’s balloon surveillance program, but likely tied to either “private companies, recreation or research institutions.”“We don’t yet know exactly what these three objects were but nothing right now suggests they were related to China’s spy balloon program or that they were surveillance vehicles from another country,” Biden said in remarks on the takedowns that occurred over the last weekend.“The intelligence community's current assessment is that these three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research,” said Biden. – Ken Tran Supreme Court removes Title 42 immigration case from its calendar The Supreme Court on Thursday removed from its calendar a major case involving a pandemic-era policy that allows for the rapid removal of migrants, known as Title 42. The high court took the unusual step without explanation, though the Biden administration argued in a brief this month that the case might become moot given that it intends to cancel emergency declarations tied to COVID-19 the program relies on. The justices had been set to hear arguments in the case March 1. The administration intends to end the pandemic-era policy that allows for the rapid removal of migrants. And in November, a federal court required the administration to stop those removals. But a group of conservative state officials who say their states would be adversely affected want to step into the case and defend the use of Title 42. – John Fritze McConnell: Balloon briefings lack 'any useful information'Ahead of President Biden’s remarks on the unknown objects being shot down over the U.S. in recent days, the Senate’s top Republican said Thursday the closed-door intelligence briefings from the administration have been rather useless.“It’s perplexing,” Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on Fox News.“We’ve been in these briefings," he said. "But they don’t seem to know anything.”McConnell ramping up the criticism on Biden, a longtime friend, comes as Republican and Democratic officials have said the White House needs to provide more information.“I’ve never been in briefings where I’ve learned so little,” he said.– Phillip M. Bailey President Biden to give speech on balloon, flying objects shot downPresident Joe Biden will deliver remarks Thursday on a series of unidentified flying objects shot down in recent days that intelligence officials increasingly believe were benign balloons used for research or commercial purposes.The White House said Biden’s remarks on "the United States' response to recent aerial objects" will take place at 2 p.m. E.T. at the White House.It will mark Biden’s first major address on the Chinese spy balloon shot down in the Atlantic Ocean and three subsequent objects shot down over North American airspace. Biden has faced bipartisan pressure from lawmakers to give a national address on the objects, which he has only sparingly discussed when asked by reporters.– Joey Garrison Georgia grand jury finds no evidence of election fraudLittle information was revealed Thursday in a much-abbreviated disclosure of a Georgia grand jury examination of election fraud in the 2020 election, though the panel found no evidence of election fraud.“We find by unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result' in overturning that election,” the panel concluded in perhaps the only notable conclusion contained in the nine-page release.– Kevin JohnsonMore about the investigation:New details of Georgia Trump investigation to be revealed Thursday. What we know. Trump has slight edge on DeSantis among voters, national poll findsAmong a field of 14 Republicans considered as potential GOP presidential nominees, a new poll finds former President Donald Trump lands top of the group with Republican voters – edging out Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is seen as the top competitor for Trump.Trump received 42% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters while DeSantis received 36%, according to a new Quinnipiac University national poll released Thursday. However, Trump’s lead over DeSantis erodes slightly with a smaller candidate pool.With only four potentially candidates to pick from, including former Vice President Mike Pence and former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, Trump only leads DeSantis by 2 percentage points, 43%-41% – a lead that falls within the poll's margin of error.– Sarah Elbeshbishi Georgia grand jury recommends perjury charges against witnesses who appeared to lie in testimonyThe section of the Georgia grand jury report released Thursday dealing with alleged lies from witnesses recommended perjury charges against unnamed witnesses.In its entirety, it says: “A majority of the Grand Jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it. The Grand Jury recommends that the District Attorney seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling.”The witnesses were not named. Legal experts say perjury is rarely charged because it is difficult to prove, but that perjury charges could be used to build a larger case of conspiracy.– Bart JansenWitnesses in Georgia Trump probe suspected lying:Raising more questions in closely watched inquiry Georgia grand jury heard from 75 witnessesThe Georgia grand jury tasked with investigating former President Donald Trump’s attempts to interfere in the 2020 election was presented evidence from or involving 75 witnesses, according to a part of the grand jury’s final report released Thursday. The grand jury was empaneled on May 2 and heard evidence from June to December. – Ella Lee Read the partial Georgia grand jury report about the Trump investigationView in new tab Part of Georgia Trump grand jury report releasedA Georgia grand jury’s report examining former President Donald Trump’s attempts to interfere in the 2020 election was partially released Thursday.USA TODAY reporters are reading through the report, and updates will follow shortly.– Ella Lee Trump lawyer Eastman asks to delay California bar charge proceedingsJohn Eastman – the lawyer who spearheaded an effort to use slates of fake electors in battleground states to overturn the 2020 election in favor of former President Donald Trump – asked the state bar of California to delay any proceedings against him until he is no longer at risk of criminal investigation so that he would not have to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination. “To the extent Respondent is under threat of criminal prosecution, implicating his Fifth Amendment rights, abatement of the disciplinary proceeding is arguably necessary to protect his rights and is within the Bar Court's discretion to order,” Eastman’s attorneys wrote in a filing Wednesday.California’s state bar in January said it would seek to revoke Eastman’s law license for violating his duty to uphold the U.S. and California state constitutions in an attempt to “usurp the will of the American people and overturn election results for the highest office in the land.”Eastman holds law licenses from both D.C. and California.– Ella Lee Deputy AG announces 'strike force' to combat foreign technology threatsA new initiative between the Justice and Commerce departments will combat threats to national security posed by the use of “disruptive technologies” by foreign adversaries.The Disruptive Technology Strike Force, announced Thursday by Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, will use intelligence and data analytics to “target illicit actors, enhance public-private partnerships to harden supply chains.” It will also work to catch early warning signs of threats to critical assets like semiconductors.The announcement comes as the Biden administration looks to answer GOP calls to crack down on growing threats from China.“Our goal is simple but essential – to strike back against adversaries trying to siphon our best technology,” Monaco said. – Ella Lee DOJ special counsel issues subpoena to ex-Trump chief Mark MeadowsFormer White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has been subpoenaed by the Justice Department's special counsel investigating Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to media reports. The summons for Meadows, a central figure in Trump's campaign to cling to power, was disclosed as former Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday that he would challenge a separate subpoena from special counsel Jack Smith seeking his testimony in the Jan. 6 inquiry.The Meadows' subpoena was first reported by CNN.The Justice Department declined comment. Meadows and his lawyers also did not respond to requests for comment.– Kevin JohnsonVoter fraud case:State A.G.: Meadows, former Trump chief of staff, won’t face voter fraud charges in North Carolina House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to travel to U.S.-Mexico borderHouse Speaker Kevin McCarthy is expected to travel to Arizona Thursday in his first visit to the U.S.-Mexico border since his January election as speaker in the newly Republican-led lower chamber.Four GOP freshman lawmakers are set to accompany him: Reps. Juan Ciscomani, of Arizona, Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon, Jen Kiggans of Virginia and Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin.The visit will include a briefing with agents from the U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson sector, which covers most of Arizona's border with Mexico, as well as an aerial tour of the border in Cochise County, according to Ciscomani’s district director, C.J. Karamargin.– Rafael Carranza, Arizona Republic; Ella LeeMore:House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to visit Arizona borderFEC complaint: George Santos staffer posed as McCarthy aide to raise moneyWASHINGTON— A staffer from George Santos' campaign posed as a top aide to House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy to raise campaign funds — and kept up the front over the course of two campaign cycles, according to a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission Wednesday. The complaint, filed by liberal political action committee End Citizens United, alleges McCarthy's office was aware since 2021 the campaign staffer was impersonating the then-minority leader's chief of staff.The new complaint is the latest sign of trouble for the freshman Republican from New York, who has stepped down from his committee assignments, but has doubled down on his refusal to leave Congress despite calls for his resignation.– Rachel LookerCampaign allegation:FEC Complaint: New York GOP Rep. George Santos staffer posed as McCarthy aide to raise money Proud Boys trial evidence: D.C. police lieutenant warned group’s leader ahead of pre-Jan. 6 arrestA Washington, D.C., police lieutenant warned Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio that a warrant for his arrest for setting fire to a Black Lives Matter banner had been signed ahead of his arrest, according to evidence presented in federal court Wednesday during the sedition trial of five Proud Boys.Prosecutors in the high-profile trial showed messages between Tarrio, one of the five defendants, and Metropolitan Police Lt. Shane Lamond, suggesting Lamond kept Tarrio in the loop about the police department’s investigations into him and other Proud Boys. The Proud Boys on trial are charged with sedition and other alleged crimes in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.– Ella LeeTipster case:D.C. police lieutenant warned Proud Boys leader ahead of pre-Jan. 6 arrest: trial evidenceIn Iowa, Mike Pence vows to resist special counsel's 'unconstitutional' subpoenaFormer Vice President Mike Pence vowed Wednesday to resist special counsel Jack Smith’s decision to subpoena his testimony in his investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election, calling the move “unprecedented and unconstitutional.”“We'll stand on that principle, and we'll take that case as far as it needs to go — if need be to the Supreme Court of the United States,” Pence said at an event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “Because to me, it's an issue of the separation of powers." Pence argued he is shielded by the Constitution’s “speech or debate clause,” which protects members of Congress from law enforcement scrutiny over their speech and debate in the chamber. The clause says they “shall not be questioned in any other place.”– Brianne PfannenstielMore:In Iowa, Mike Pence vows to resist special counsel's subpoena in Trump 2020 investigationBiden, McCarthy spar over debt after CBO releases new projectionsPresident Joe Biden on Wednesday accused Republicans of supporting tax cuts for the wealthy and other policies that would add $3 trillion to the national debt, pushing back on their demands for spending cuts as part of raising the debt ceiling.Biden, speaking at an electrical workers union hall in Lanham Md., singled out Republican efforts to extend expiring Trump-era tax cuts for high-income earners and corporations, which would add a projected $2.7 trillion in debt. “It would explode the deficit and leave the American taxpayer holding the bag,” he said.His remarks came after the Congressional Budget Office released an updated budget outlook that projects the U.S. will add more than $19 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, $3 trillion more than was projected last year.House Speaker Kevin McCarthy fired back in a tweet, saying Biden’s policies have led to $13 trillion in new spending and renewing his call to “negotiate a responsible debt limit increase that gets our fiscal house back in order.”“Democrats' reckless spending is plunging our country into deeper debt & jeopardizing our economy,” McCarthy said. “A blank check for more spending will destroy our country.”– Joey GarrisonDebt ceiling debate:Debt limit forecast says US could be in default by summer. Here's how that could impact youNot just Haley: South Carolina's Tim Scott is also mulling presidential bidNikki Haley might not be the only politician from South Carolina to run for president in 2024.Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., the Senate's only Black Republican, has hired new political aides and is planning a trip to Iowa, all stoking speculation that he may also jump into next year's Republican race.Scott allies are mum on whether he will take the plunge.“These next few weeks Senator Scott will not just talk about his faith, but also why he has faith in America," said Jennifer DeCasper, a senior adviser to the South Carolina senator. "He is excited to share his vision of hope and opportunity and hear the American people’s response.”Asked about Scott's campaign-like activity, aides stayed mum.– David JacksonSusan Page:How do you challenge Trump for the nomination? With Nikki Haley in, let's count the ways.As nation reels from Michigan shooting, courts wrestle with access to gunsShould the government be able to take guns from Americans who smoke marijuana? What about people who are the subject of domestic violence protective orders?A federal appeals court in Philadelphia grappled Wednesday with a case that questions whether Americans who have committed nonviolent felonies can be denied access to guns. It’s one of several such cases questioning who can be denied access to weapons that are percolating in federal courts in the wake of a landmark Supreme Court ruling last year on the Second Amendment.The case in Philadelphia, which deals with a man who has been denied access to guns after making false statements to boost his food stamp assistance nearly three decades ago, comes as the nation is reeling from another mass shooting. Three Michigan State University students were killed and five others were wounded in a shooting Monday night.– John FritzeGun access:As nation reels from Michigan State shooting, courts wrestle with access to guns Georgia grand jury concerned witnesses lied in Trump investigationA Georgia grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump will release parts of a long-awaited report Thursday, including a section mentioning concerns that some witnesses appeared to lie during the investigation.Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ordered the release of parts of the report and said it “discusses the concern that some witnesses may have lied under oath during their testimony to the grand jury.” But he said the witnesses wouldn’t be named.Even so, legal experts said the section on alleged lies on could allow prosecutors to pursue perjury charges against the witnesses and potentially broaden the investigation. “That expands the scope of potential defendants quite a bit,” said Clark Cunningham, a law professor at Georgia State University.– Bart Jansen Parts of Georgia grand jury report to be made public ThursdayA Georgia judge is set to provide a first – albeit abbreviated – look Thursday at a grand jury's examination of former President Donald Trump's attempts to interfere in the 2020 election.Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled earlier this week that three sections of the panel's report would be made public Thursday, including a passage expressing concerns that some witnesses may have lied under oath.Yet much of the panel's work, including specific charging recommendations and names of the witnesses suspected of lying, will remain under seal as Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis continues an inquiry launched two years ago.Willis opened the investigation shortly after Donald Trump's extraordinary Jan. 2, 2021 conversation with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger went viral, later expanding the inquiry into a far-reaching criminal examination into election fraud and impaneling a special grand jury in May. – Kevin Johnson
- [Georgia grand jury recommends perjury indictments in 2020 election probe, report shows](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/georgia-grand-jury-recommends-perjury-indictments-in-2020-election-probe-report-shows/) - The Fulton County court in Atlanta on Feb. 13, where a judge has ordered the partial release of a special grand jury's report on efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to undermine the 2020 presidential elections. (Dustin Chambers/Bloomberg via Getty Images)The partial release of a Georgia special grand jury report provides a forceful new sign that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ investigation into the 2020 election is further along than any of the multiple criminal probes targeting Donald Trump.Willis and a small team of Fulton County prosecutors are now actively poring over the voluminous evidence compiled by the special grand jury with the goal of bringing charges within the next few months, possibly by May, according to multiple sources familiar with the probe.Willis has yet to reach any final conclusions about what she will do. But lawyers say the four pages of the report disclosed this week, scant on details as they were, increase the likelihood that Willis, widely known as a hard-nosed prosecutor, will end up indicting multiple players who sought to reverse Georgia’s 2020 vote, including the former president himself.Fulton County, Ga., Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney instructs potential jurors during proceedings to seat a special purpose grand jury, May 2, 2022, in Atlanta. (Ben Gray/AP Photo)“There’s no chance that she goes with no indictment of Trump,” said Don Samuel, a prominent Atlanta defense lawyer who has represented the Georgia General Assembly in the case.Gwen Keyes Fleming, the former district attorney in neighboring DeKalb County, agreed that the released portions of the report — combined with evidence that is already public — suggest that an indictment of Trump may be forthcoming. “It seems unlikely she would indict others for tangential crimes and not reach the president,” she said.And if she does, it could result “in the most politically charged criminal case in American history,” said Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor in Southern California. Not only would Willis be the first local district attorney to charge a former president with a crime, she would also be indicting a current top presidential contender in 2024, turning a prospective trial into a political circus that will hang over the presidential election and could pose potential security risks in downtown Atlanta.“A lot of his supporters will see it as politically motivated, no matter what evidence she presents,” Rahmani said. “They’ll call it the 'weaponization' of government. Trump is not the mob or the cartel, but he inspires people on the political fringes who do crazy things. Right-wing protesters will show up outside the Fulton County DA’s Office if Trump is charged, that’s a given.”A spokesman for Trump released a statement Thursday dismissing the idea that the former president is in legal jeopardy. The released sections of the report “have nothing to do with the president, because President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong,” the spokesman said.Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis at a hearing in Atlanta on Jan. 24 held to determine whether the final report by the special grand jury looking into possible interference in the 2020 presidential election could be released to the public. (John Bazemore/AP Photo)Willis’s investigation is not the only potential criminal probe confronting the former president. Just this week, special counsel Jack Smith — appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November — was reported to have subpoenaed former Vice President Mike Pence, a sign that his investigation into Trump’s role in the events of Jan. 6, 2021, is still very much active.Meanwhile, Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, has reportedly begun presenting evidence to a New York grand jury about Trump’s payments of alleged hush money to the former porn star Stormy Daniels, on the grounds that it might have violated state law.But Willis’s investigation has long been viewed as the most serious threat to Trump, because it began with a powerful piece of evidence: a tape of Trump’s phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021, in which he repeatedly urged the state’s top election official to “find” the necessary votes to flip the election results in that state and appeared to be threatening him with the prospect of criminal prosecution if he did not.A recent report by the Brookings Institution asserted that Trump’s phone call alone could subject him to prosecution under a Georgia statute for criminal solicitation to commit election fraud, a felony that carries a penalty of one to three years in prison. (On his Truth Social platform, Trump recently claimed that his phone call with Raffensperger was “perfect,” and he has repeatedly denounced Willis as a “radical leftist” prosecutor out to get him.)Majority counsel Norm Eisen at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on Dec. 4, 2019, in Washington, D.C. (Drew Angerer/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)But as Yahoo News and other outlets have reported, Willis is also exploring bringing broader conspiracy charges under Georgia’s expansive Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act that would encompass other conduct during Trump’s two-month-long pressure campaign to throw out the Georgia election results. Among those actions: potential false statements by Trump’s chief lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to Georgia legislative committees, and Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer’s secret designation of so-called “fake electors” pledged to Trump that were then presented to Congress and the National Archives.The released portions of the grand jury report shed little light on Willis's intentions. The big headlines off the Thursday release were the special grand jury’s conclusion that “one or more” of the 75 witnesses whom they had heard from had lied under oath and its recommendation that Willis seek indictments where the evidence is “compelling.”Former President Donald Trump addresses the New Hampshire Republican State Committee's Annual Meeting on Jan. 28 in Salem, N.H. (Scott Eisen/Getty Images)But the fine print in the report clearly points to recommendations that go further than simply perjury. In the introduction, the grand jurors state that the report sets forth “our recommendations on indictments and relevant statutes, including votes by the Grand Jurors.” Notably, this refers to both indictments and statutes in the plural.The report also summarily rejected Trump’s core claim that the 2020 election in Georgia was stolen from him by fraud. “We find by a unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election,” the grand jurors declared.
- [Georgia grand jury recommends perjury indictments in Trump election meddling probe](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/georgia-grand-jury-recommends-perjury-indictments-in-trump-election-meddling-probe/) - A Georgia grand jury said one or more witnesses in a criminal probe of former President Donald Trump may have lied under oath while testifying. The panel recommeded that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis pursue indictments for perjury in those cases. The grand jury, which investigated Trump for possibly illegal meddling in the state's 2020 presidential election, said it found no significant fraud in that race, which President Joe Biden won. The section of the report that will reveal if the panel believes that Trump, his lawyers or political allies should be indicted remains under seal. Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign stop to unveil his leadership team, at the South Carolina State House in Columbia, South Carolina, U.S., January 28, 2023. Shannon Stapleton | Reuters A Georgia grand jury looking into possible election meddling by former President Donald Trump said "one or more witnesses" may have lied under oath and urged prosecutors to pursue criminal indictments in those cases. The special grand jury also found no significant fraud in Georgia's 2020 presidential election won by President Joe Biden, according to portions of the final report on its monthslong investigation unsealed Thursday. The grand jury was impaneled in May to investigate whether Trump, his lawyers and political allies committed any crimes in pressuring state officials to overturn the election in his favor, but Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney withheld those conclusions until prosecutors are ready to release the full report at a later time. The panel was looking at, among other things, a Jan. 2, 2021, call in which Trump asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find 11,780 votes," which is what the former president would have needed to win the state and its 16 Electoral College votes. Raffensperger refused to comply with Trump's request. Trump's campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, said in a statement to NBC News that the former president "did absolutely nothing wrong." He added, "The President participated in two perfect phone calls regarding election integrity in Georgia, which he is entitled to do." Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will determine whether to charge Trump or anyone else in the case. "A majority of the Grand Jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it," the report said. "The Grand Jury recommends that the District Attorney seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling." The grand jury voted unanimously in concluding that "no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election," according to the report. In the few pages that were unsealed Thursday, the grand jury said it received evidence involving more than 75 witnesses, most of which was delivered in person and under oath. The report noted that the panel's extensive witness list included poll workers, investigators, technical experts and state officials, as well as "persons still claiming that such fraud took place." One of those witnesses, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told NBC later Thursday that he is "very confident" in the testimony he provided to the grand jury. Graham's calls to top election officials in Georgia after the 2020 election became an area of interest in Willis' probe. "I have no idea what they're going to do, I'll just leave it up to them," Graham said, adding that he is confident he did not perjure himself. The grand jury had 23 members and three alternates. The Fulton County court in Atlanta, Georgia, US, on Monday, Feb. 13, 2023. Dustin Chambers | Bloomberg | Getty Images McBurney on Monday approved the disclosure of three portions of the final report because they do not identify any witnesses. But he decided that disclosure of the entire report "at this time is not proper," citing due process concerns. Georgia was one of several key swing states that gave Democratic nominee Biden his margin of victory in the Electoral College over Republican Trump. Trump after Election Day falsely claimed that he had won the popular election both nationally and in the swing states, arguing that he was denied victory in the Electoral College because of widespread ballot fraud. He said the election had been "rigged" against him, citing a plethora of unfounded conspiracy theories. Multiple lawsuits filed in late 2020 by Trump's campaign seeking to overturn state election results were almost entirely rejected in the courts. After Raffensperger, who is Georgia's top election official, refused Trump's request to find him enough votes to reverse his loss, the stage was set for Congress to confirm the results of the Electoral College on Jan. 6, 2021. But on that day, a violent crowd of Trump's supporters, spurred by his false election claims, invaded the U.S. Capitol, causing lawmakers to flee for safety. Hours later, after the mob left the complex, a joint session of Congress confirmed Biden's victory in the election. Trump was impeached in the House on a charge of fomenting the riot, but later was acquitted in the Senate. Willis, the Fulton County DA, in February 2021 opened a criminal investigation into Trump's call to Raffensperger. CNBC Politics Read more of CNBC's politics coverage: WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP
- [Judge releases part of Georgia grand jury report on alleged 2020 election tampering - Yahoo News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/judge-releases-part-of-georgia-grand-jury-report-on-alleged-2020-election-tampering-yahoo-news/) - A Georgia grand jury believes at least one witness may have lied under oath as it pursued an investigation into Donald Trump's efforts to subvert the 2020 election, according to excerpts of the panel's final report released Thursday.The handful of pages that a state judge ordered released do not identify precisely whom the panel recommended for prosecution, but the excerpts do reveal that the entire special grand jury rejected Trump’s repeated claims that extensive fraud tainted Joe Biden’s win in the state.“We find by unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election,” the grand jury’s report says, describing its conclusions that detailed testimony from experts disproved such allegations.The bulk of the report, including recommendations about potential criminal charges for Trump and his allies, remains under seal.Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who opposed release of any portion of the report at this time, said during a court hearing about three weeks ago that her decisions about potential prosecutions were “imminent.” She has not provided a further update.Trump, who has denounced the investigation as a political vendetta, claimed on Thursday that the release of the report excerpts exonerated him by omitting any mention of him — even though a judge ruled that all references to individuals in the report be withheld from the public for now."Thank you to the Special Grand Jury in the Great State of Georgia for your Patriotism & Courage. Total exoneration. The USA is very proud of you!!!" Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social.The report underscores the extensive investigation that Willis undertook, noting that the panel heard from 75 witnesses, as well as investigators who helped them comb through voluminous documents related to the probe.The partial release also makes clear that many grand jurors believe that some of the testimony they heard from witnesses subpoenaed to discuss election-related issues and incidents was false.“A majority of the grand jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it,” the report says. “ The Grand Jury recommends that the district attorney seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling.”Willis has spent the last year investigating Trump and his allies’ bid to reverse the election results in Georgia, despite losing the state by 11,000 votes. Willis’ probe focused on Trump’s Jan. 2 phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, asking him to “find” just enough votes to put Trump ahead of Joe Biden in the state.Raffensperger declined the request and told Trump that investigators found his claims of fraud to be baseless.Trump on Thursday defended that call as "perfect" and stressed that there were "many officials and attorneys on the line, including the Secretary of State of Georgia, and no one objected, even slightly protested, or hung up.”The report underscores the wide-ranging investigation that Willis undertook, noting that the panel heard from 75 witnesses, as well as investigators who helped them comb through voluminous documents related to the probe.Willis has also pursued evidence about Trump’s broader national effort to subvert the election, calling before the special grand jury top aides like his White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, attorney John Eastman and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).Those issues are also the subject of an ongoing federal investigation based in Washington now being headed by special counsel Jack Smith. No charges have yet been brought in that probe.Under Georgia law, the special grand jury which was sworn in last May could subpoena witnesses and documents, but could not return indictments. Willis would have to seek such charges another, regular grand jury, but can present the evidence and testimony gathered by the special panel.Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said in a ruling Monday that state law compelled him to publicly release the special grand jury’s findings, although he agreed to defer publishing portions of the report that discuss potential charges against individuals. The special grand jurors had urged the court to make their findings public.The special grand jury also seemed in its report to seek to assert some independence from Willis’ prosecutors. “That Office had nothing to do with the recommendations contained herein,” the report says, signed by the foreperson and deputy foreperson. The signatures and names of the jury’s leaders were redacted from the excerpts released Thursday.
- [Georgia grand jury recommends perjury indictments in Trump election probe, finds no ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/georgia-grand-jury-recommends-perjury-indictments-in-trump-election-probe-finds-no/) - The DA leading the case said last month that charging decisions were "imminent." 2 hours ago ABC NEWS—The Fulton County, Georgia, grand jury investigating efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election has recommended to prosecutors that they seek indictments against witnesses who they believe may have lied during their testimony, according to excerpts of the grand jury’s report released Thursday. “A majority of the grand jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it,” the grand jury wrote in the report. “The Grand Jury recommends that the District Attorney seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling.” The excerpt from the report does not list any names of those who grand jury members believe may have committed perjury. Separately, the grand jury also found “by a unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election.” Outside of this, in the few paragraphs that were released of the report’s introduction, conclusion, and section on perjury, there were no details revealed regarding whether or not the grand jury recommended changes for anyone related to efforts to overturn the election. The report does not name any potential targets for indictment, nor does it offer any rationale for its allegations of perjury. It does not mention Trump by name, nor any of the 75 witnesses interviewed as part of their probe. In a statement, a spokesperson for Trump said, “The long awaited important sections of the Georgia report, which do not even mention President Trump’s name, have nothing to do with the President because President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong. The President participated in two perfect phone calls regarding election integrity in Georgia, which he is entitled to do — in fact, as President, it was President Trump’s Constitutional duty to ensure election safety, security, and integrity.” Excerpts from the report were released following an order earlier this week from the Georgia judge overseeing the case. The majority of the long-anticipated report — the final product of a monthslong grand jury investigation into potential 2020 election interference in the state — remains sealed on order of Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney. McBurney’s ruling came after he heard arguments last month over whether or not to publicly release the report. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis argued for the report to remain sealed, saying that it was important to “be mindful of protecting future defendants’ rights.” Willis also said during the hearing that charging decisions were “imminent.” Thomas Clyde, a lawyer representing a coalition of media outlets that includes ABC News, urged McBurney to order the release of the report based on existing case law and “a genuine public interest in what these jurors found.” Though the special grand jury does not have the power to bring indictments, it has the power to make recommendations regarding potential charges. It would then be up to the district attorney to determine whether or not to pursue them. According to the order from the judge, the full report provided just that: “a roster of who should (or should not) be indicted, and for what, in relation to the conduct (and aftermath) of the 2020 general election in Georgia,” McBurney wrote. Those recommendations, however, are “for the District Attorney’s eyes only — for now,” McBurney ordered. Willis on Monday told Atlanta ABC News affiliate WSB that she was “very pleased” with the order. Ambassador Norman Eisen (ret.), a senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institute who served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2020, told ABC News that despite the judge shielding most of the report, “it’s clear from the judge’s order that the grand jury recommended charges.” “The question is: I don’t think that if people are being charged, Trump can logically be left out, because he was the ringleader,” Eisen told ABC News. “He was the mastermind of the plots.” Eisen pointed to McBurney’s note that the report gave recommendations regarding “who should (or should not) be indicted, and for what.” “Really, if no one was being indicted, there would be no need to say, ‘for what,'” Eisen said. “That second clause only makes sense if someone is getting indicted.” In a statement before last month’s hearing to determine the report’s release, attorneys representing Trump in the matter said they did not expect to see charges recommended for the former president. “The grand jury compelled the testimony of dozens of other, often high-ranking, officials during the investigation, but never found it important to speak with the President,” Trump’s attorneys said in a statement. “He was never subpoenaed nor asked to come in voluntarily by this grand jury or anyone in the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office.” Therefore, the attorneys said, they “assume that the grand jury did their job and looked at the facts and the law, as we have, and concluded there were no violations of the law by President Trump” — although there’s no indication if that’s true or not. Attorneys representing Trump did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment ahead of the report’s release. Regarding the grand jury’s concerns that some witnesses may have lied under oath during their testimony, Eisen said the district attorney could further pursue those witnesses. “I don’t think Fani Willis is going to let witnesses get away with perjury before her grand jury,” Eisen said. “She can use that to coerce the liars to tell the truth and cooperate. By lying they’ve given her leverage over them.” The special grand jury, which was seated in May 2022, was composed of 26 members of the public who heard testimony from over 75 witnesses, prosecutors said. Those who were subpoenaed and appeared before the grand jury included some of Trump’s closest allies and supporters, including attorneys Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, who unsuccessfully fought his subpoena up to the United State Supreme Court. Giuliani, along with 16 so-called “fake electors” who allegedly participated in a scheme to overturn the state’s election results, were notified last year that they were considered “targets” of the investigation. Responding to the notification of his status as a target of the probe, Giuliani said, “I appeared in Georgia as attorney for Donald J. Trump — so I’m going to be prosecuted for what I did as an attorney?” The Justice Department is also examining the allegations involving fake electors as part of its own separate investigation, sources have told ABC News. Attorneys for the electors have denied any wrongdoing in their actions. “They cannot have and did not commit any crime as a matter of fact and law,” attorney Holly Pierson, who represents 11 of the alleged fake electors, wrote in a court filing. The jury was seated last May as part of Willis’ criminal probe into allegations of election interference, which was launched in February 2021. The investigation was sparked in part by the now-infamous Jan. 2, 2021, phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump pleaded with Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes,” the exact number Trump needed to win Georgia. Trump has repeatedly defended his call to Raffensperger, calling it “perfect.”
- [Georgia Special Grand Jury Believes Some Witnesses Committed Perjury - Business Insider](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/georgia-special-grand-jury-believes-some-witnesses-committed-perjury-business-insider/) - Former President Donald Trump. Brandon Bell/Getty Images Redeem now A special grand jury in Georgia found that "one or more witnesses" who appeared before it may have committed perjury. The jury investigated Trump's efforts to overturn Georgia's 2020 election results. Jurors also concluded that no widespread fraud took place in the election. Top editors give you the stories you want — delivered right to your inbox each weekday. Loading Something is loading. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. download the app Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. .inline-newsletter-signup.loading { width: 100%; max-width: 640px; margin: 0 auto; visibility: hidden; } A special grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia found that some witnesses who testified may have committed perjury, jurors wrote in a portion of its report unsealed Thursday."A majority of the Grand Jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it," the report reads. "The Grand Jury recommends that the District Attorney seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling."Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis empaneled the grand jury in May 2022 in Atlanta. In January, it completed its report, which says jurors heard testimony from 75 witnesses throughout its tenure.The jurors investigated Trump's efforts to overturn election results, as well as a plot to send fake electors to Congress on January 6, 2021, and vote in Trump's favor even though he lost the state to now-President Joe Biden. Jurors also concluded that, contrary to Trump and his allies' repeated claims, there was no widespread voter fraud on a level that could have tilted the 2020 presidential race in Georgia in Trump's favor."The Grand Jury heard extensive testimony on the subject of alleged election fraud from poll workers, investigators, technical experts, and State of Georgia employees and officials, as well as from persons still claiming that such fraud took place," the report said. "We find by a unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election."Willis must now decide whether to bring indictmentsWhile the special grand jury had vast investigative powers, it didn't have the ability to bring indictments.Willis is now tasked with reviewing the special grand jury's report and deciding whether to bring it in front of an ordinary grand jury, which may decide whether to issue criminal charges. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ordered the release of segments of the report on Monday but decided to keep the vast majority of it under seal — at least until Willis makes charging decisions in her investigation.McBurney made public a short paragraph where the jurors say they believe witnesses may have lied, as well as an introduction laying out the scope of the investigation and a conclusion praising members of the Fulton County district attorney's office.According to McBurney's Monday order, the full report includes "a roster of who should (or should not) be indicted, and for what, in relation to the conduct (and aftermath) of the 2020 general election in Georgia."The decision to release portions of the report came after media organizations fought a court battle to make the entire document public, arguing it should be treated no differently than any other court document. Willis, in an extraordinary hearing in January, argued that it should remain under lock and key while she continued to deliberate charging decisions. Releasing it prematurely, she said, would unduly prejudice targets of her investigation.Willis declined, however, to appeal McBurney's decision to publish the short sections of the report made public today.In her two-year investigation, Willis has successfully subpoenaed high-profile figures who were close to Trump at the time as he attempted to overturn the state's 2020 election results, as well as individuals embedded in the Georgia Republican party.She fought court battles forcing Mark Meadows, Trump's chief-of-staff at the end of his presidency; Gov. Brian Kemp; Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger; the state's Republican Party chairman, David Shafer; Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina; and more than a dozen others to testify in front of the special grand jury. .content-lock-lock .hidden { display: none; } Sign up for notifications from Insider! Stay up to date with what you want to know. Subscribe to push notifications Close icon Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.
- [Georgia judge to release portions of grand jury report on Trump election probe - CNBC](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/georgia-judge-to-release-portions-of-grand-jury-report-on-trump-election-probe-cnbc/) - Portions of a Georgia special grand jury's final report on its investigation into possible election interference by former President Donald Trump and his allies are set to be made public. The report's introduction and conclusion, as well as a section detailing jurors' concerns that some witnesses may have lied under oath during their testimony, are set to be released Thursday. The full report will include recommendations on whether anyone should face criminal charges related to Georgia's 2020 election. A judge in Georgia is set to publicly disclose on Thursday portions of a special grand jury's final report on its investigation into possible election interference by former President Donald Trump and his allies. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney earlier this week ordered the release of the report's introduction and conclusion, as well as a section detailing jurors' concerns that some witnesses may have lied under oath. Those sections "are ripe for publication" because they don't identify any witnesses, McBurney said in an order Monday. He delayed their release until Thursday in order to give the parties involved time to discuss possible redactions. The full report will include recommendations on whether anyone should face criminal charges related to the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. But that portion won't be released publicly — at least not yet, McBurney said. He has directed the office of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to provide periodic updates about the status of its probe so he can reassess if other parts of the final report "can be properly disclosed." The decision on whether or not to issue indictments falls to Willis, whose investigation is ongoing. The special grand jury was seated last May to investigate possible efforts to disrupt the 2020 elections in Georgia and to recommend whether anyone should be criminally prosecuted. After sifting through evidence and hearing testimony from dozens of witnesses — including multiple Trump allies, such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. — the grand jury in December submitted its final report, recommending that it be published. "Having reviewed the final report, the undersigned concludes that the special purpose grand jury did not exceed the scope of its prescribed mission," McBurney wrote in Monday's order. "Indeed it provided the District Attorney's office with exactly what she requested: a roster of who should (or should not) be indicted, and for what, in relation to the conduct (and aftermath) of the 2020 general election in Georgia." But he decided that disclosure of the entire report "at this time is not proper," citing due process concerns. Georgia was one of several key swing states that narrowly voted for President Joe Biden, then the Democratic nominee, over Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Trump falsely claimed he won the election and asserted that the outcome had been "rigged" against him, citing a plethora of unfounded conspiracy theories about widespread electoral fraud. Trump, his allies and his legal team sought to overturn his loss to Biden in the general election by challenging the results in Georgia and other key states. A flurry of lawsuits filed in late 2020 by Trump's campaign were almost entirely rejected in the courts. In early January 2021, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, and urged him to "find" enough votes in Trump's favor to reverse his loss in the Peach State. Raffensperger refused, and the state's electoral votes ultimately went to Biden — after a violent mob of Trump's supporters, spurred by his false election claims, had been cleared from the U.S. Capitol. Trump was impeached in the House on a charge of fomenting the riot, then acquitted in the Senate. In February 2021, Willis opened an investigation into Trump's call to Raffensperger. This is developing news. Please check back for updates. WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP
- [Fox News hosts called 2020 election fraud 'total BS' in private, new Dominion court filing says](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/fox-news-hosts-called-2020-election-fraud-total-bs-in-private-new-dominion-court-filing-says-2/) - Fox News anchors and producers privately acknowledged that former President Donald Trump and his allies' allegations of election fraud in the aftermath of the 2020 election were false despite their network's promotion of those claims, according to a new court filing by Dominion Voting Systems.In a nearly 200-page document filed as part of its billion-dollar defamation suit against the network, Dominion Voting Systems shared emails, texts, testimony, and other private communications from Fox News personnel that cast doubt on claims that Dominion's voting machines had somehow rigged the presidential election in Joe Biden's favor.The voting company is suing Fox News for $1.6 billion for allegedly defaming the company in the aftermath of the 2020 election."Fox knew," according to the filing, which cited excerpts of evidence gathered as part of the suit. "From the top down, Fox knew 'the Dominion stuff' was 'total BS.' Yet despite knowing the truth -- or at minimum, recklessly disregarding that truth -- Fox spread and endorsed these 'outlandish voter fraud claims' about Dominion even as it internally recognized the lies as 'crazy,' 'absurd,' and 'shockingly reckless.'"Fox News, in a statement, said, "There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan."In its motion for summary judgment filed Thursday, Fox wrote that "statements Dominion challenges are not actionable defamation because Fox News' coverage and commentary are not only not defamatory, but also protected by the First Amendment and New York doctrines emanating from it.""Dominion has come nowhere close to producing the 'clear and convincing' evidence that the relevant individuals at Fox News made or published any challenged statement with actual malice," the Fox motion said.In this Nov. 28, 2018 file photo a headline about President Donald Trump is shown outside Fox News studios in New York.Mark Lennihan/AP, FILEIn an amended counter claim, Fox News also called into question Dominion's damage claim, writing that "even under the most optimistic projections, Staple Street has never estimated Dominion’s value as a business to be anywhere near $1.6 billion." Staple street is the majority owner of Dominion.Dominion's Thursday filing lays out its top evidence against Fox News, which Dominion claims pushed false accusations that the voting company had rigged the 2020 election, in order for the news channel to boost its rating and make a profit. The filing contains material Dominion has obtained via discovery from Fox News over the past few months, including text messages, internal emails, and depositions.The court documents cite some of the network's top anchors and hosts, many of whom quietly shared misgivings about claims of election fraud and discussed how to address them on-air.In mid-November 2020, host Tucker Carlson texted one of his producers that "there wasn't enough fraud to change the outcome" of the election, and later said that Sidney Powell, one of Trump's attorneys and a vocal promulgator of election denialism, "is lying."Months later, on Jan. 6, Carlson called Trump "a demonic force, a destroyer," in a text message to the same producer.Dana Perino, an anchor, called allegations of voter fraud against Dominion "total bs," "insane," and "nonsense."In some cases, Fox News personnel raised red flags internally about their own colleagues. After host Maria Bartiromo tweeted about election fraud on Nov. 5, anchor Bret Baier pleaded to a network executive, "We have to prevent this stuff ... We need to fact check."The Fox suit is one of several lawsuits launched by the Denver-based voting company after it became the center of far-reaching false conspiracy theories surrounding its involvement in the 2020 election, fueled largely by right-wing figures close to then-President Trump as part of the effort to overturn the results of the election.Among the Fox News hosts who were scheduled to be deposed in the suit were Carlson, Sean Hannity and Jeannine Pirro, as well as former Fox Business host Lou Dobbs."The critical issue here is the state of mind of Fox and those individual people," Floyd Abrams, one of the country's leading experts on First Amendment law, told ABC News last summer. "What did they say about Dominion, and did they believe it?""In order for Dominion to win, it has to show that what was said was not just false, but that it was known or suspected to be false," Abrams said.In a statement issued in response to the suit, Fox News officials said, "FOX News Media is proud of our 2020 election coverage, which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism, and will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit in court."
- [Georgia grand jury report on 2020 election probe says witnesses may have committed perjury](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/georgia-grand-jury-report-on-2020-election-probe-says-witnesses-may-have-committed-perjury/) - IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.UP NEXTRepublicans plan to question Gen. Milley if they gain control of the House02:23Discovering family roots dating back to slavery09:35DOJ requests stay of judge's order on seized Mar-a-Lago documents02:19Why California's power grid is on the brink of blackouts01:09Apple unveils new iphone featuring satellite communications, dynamic island 01:15Memphis jogger murder suspect denied bond during second court appearance02:27
- [Off the air, Fox News stars blasted the election fraud claims they peddled - NPR](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/off-the-air-fox-news-stars-blasted-the-election-fraud-claims-they-peddled-npr/) - Enlarge this image Dominion Voting System's legal filings reveal behind-the-scenes machinations involving Fox News hosts Jeanine Pirro, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Maria Bartiromo and Laura Ingraham and former host Lou Dobbs. They are shown clockwise from the upper left. Jason Koerner/Getty Images; Jason Koerner/Getty Images; Carolyn Kaster/AP; Alex Brandon/AP; Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images; Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images Jason Koerner/Getty Images; Jason Koerner/Getty Images; Carolyn Kaster/AP; Alex Brandon/AP; Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images; Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images In the days and weeks after the 2020 elections, the Fox News Channel repeatedly broadcast false claims that then-President Donald Trump had been cheated of victory. Off the air, the network's stars, producers and executives expressed contempt for those same conspiracies, calling them "mind-blowingly nuts," "totally off the rails" and "completely bs" - often in far earthier terms. The network's top primetime stars - Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity - texted contemptuously of the claims in group chats, but also denounced colleagues pointing that out publicly or on television. Ingraham called Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell "a bit nuts." Carlson, who famously demanded evidence from Powell on the air, privately used a vulgar epithet for women to describe her. A top network programming executive wrote privately that he did not believe the shows of Carlson, Hannity and Jeanine Pirro were credible sources of news.
- [Fox News hosts called 2020 election fraud 'total BS' in private, new Dominion court filing says](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/fox-news-hosts-called-2020-election-fraud-total-bs-in-private-new-dominion-court-filing-says/) - Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images (NEW YORK) — Fox News anchors and producers privately acknowledged that former President Donald Trump and his allies’ allegations of election fraud in the aftermath of the 2020 election were false despite their network’s promotion of those claims, according to a new court filing by Dominion Voting Systems. In a nearly 200-page document filed as part of its billion-dollar defamation suit against the network, Dominion Voting Systems shared emails, texts, testimony, and other private communications from Fox News personnel that cast doubt on claims that Dominion’s voting machines had somehow rigged the presidential election in Joe Biden’s favor. The voting company is suing Fox News for $1.6 billion for allegedly defaming the company in the aftermath of the 2020 election. “Fox knew,” according to the filing, which cited excerpts of evidence gathered as part of the suit. “From the top down, Fox knew ‘the Dominion stuff’ was ‘total BS.’ Yet despite knowing the truth — or at minimum, recklessly disregarding that truth — Fox spread and endorsed these ‘outlandish voter fraud claims’ about Dominion even as it internally recognized the lies as ‘crazy,’ ‘absurd,’ and ‘shockingly reckless.” Fox News, in a statement, said, “There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan. Thursday’s filing lays out the Dominion’s company’s top evidence against Fox News, which Dominion claims pushed false accusations that the voting company had rigged the 2020 election in order for the news channel to boost its rating and make a profit. The filing contains material Dominion has obtained via discovery from Fox News over the past few months, including text messages, internal emails, and depositions. The Fox suit is one of several lawsuits launched by the Denver-based voting company after it became the center of far-reaching false conspiracy theories surrounding its involvement in the 2020 election, fueled largely by right-wing figures close to then-President Donald Trump as part of the effort to overturn the results of the election. Among the Fox News hosts who were scheduled to be deposed in the suit were Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Jeannine Pirro, as well as former Fox Business host Lou Dobbs. “The critical issue here is the state of mind of Fox and those individual people,” Floyd Abrams, one of the country’s leading experts on First Amendment law, told ABC News last summer. “What did they say about Dominion, and did they believe it?” “In order for Dominion to win, it has to show that what was said was not just false, but that it was known or suspected to be false,” Abrams said. In a statement issued in response to the suit, Fox News officials said, “FOX News Media is proud of our 2020 election coverage, which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism, and will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit in court.” Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
- [Louisville Metro Council seeks ethics opinion on Anthony Piagentini - Courier-Journal](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/louisville-metro-council-seeks-ethics-opinion-on-anthony-piagentini-courier-journal/) - Louisville Metro Council voted Thursday to ask the city's Ethics Commission to examine whether member Anthony Piagentini violated its code by initially sponsoring a measure to allot $40 million in COVID-19 relief funds to a health care coalition and then landing a consulting job with the group behind the project.Piagentini, R-19th District, said he also requested an opinion on his conduct from the commission this week."This resolution was aligned with what I have asked for from the Ethics Commission," he told The Courier Journal. "I am happy to and will comply with the process in every possible way."Thursday's emergency resolution came after the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting published a story Wednesday saying Piagentini started consulting for the Louisville Healthcare CEO Council — which pushed for the health care innovation project — a day after Metro Council approved the $40 million allocation.He noted he had withdrawn his sponsorship and then abstained from the December vote to approve directing $40 million in American Rescue Plan funds to supporting a "Healthcare Workforce Innovation Coalition."The resolution, sponsored by Councilwoman Cindi Fowler, D-14th, and council President Markus Winkler, D-17th, asks the "commission to review this situation as expeditiously as possible."Piagentini, who has worked in health care and real estate, including the last seven years as senior director of provider relations for WellCare of Kentucky, abstained from Thursday's vote.By the numbers:Who are the Kentucky kids in juvenile detention and how did they get there?Tammy York Day, president of the Louisville Healthcare CEO Council, or CEOc, which several health care executives formed in 2017 to lobby for their industry, told the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting she did not view Piagentini having any conflict of interest because he did not consult on the ARP-funded project and his consulting work is focused on state government affairs.Can Metro Council members remove their peers from office?Council rules state members can remove their colleagues from office over "misconduct, incapacity, or willful neglect in the performance of the official duties."At least five Metro Council members must swear under oath a colleague has engaged in that behavior to initiate removal proceedings, and a two-thirds majority of the 26-member council must vote to oust a member.Any members removed from council can appeal the decision in Jefferson Circuit Court.The last time a member was removed was in 2017 when Democrat Dan Johnson was accused of sexual harassment.What is the Louisville Healthcare Workforce Innovation Coalition?Kentucky basketball...and politics:Citing Coach John Calipari, legislator wants to ban lifetime contractsThe three priorities of the Louisville Healthcare Workforce Innovation Coalition are to:Create a strategy that "increases and diversifies the healthcare talent pipeline for jobs at all levels by mitigating barriers to training and employment";Increase "the region's capacity of workforce innovation for a stronger and more equitable health economy"; andSupport the initiative "via the development of a state-of-the art tech and learning center in Russell Station that prioritizes hiring current Russell residents at all levels."Reach Billy Kobin at bkobin@courierjournal.com
- [Art therapy helping young Louisville hospital patients diagnosed with an eating disorder find ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/art-therapy-helping-young-louisville-hospital-patients-diagnosed-with-an-eating-disorder-find/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Art and medicine come together in a therapy to help young patients who have been hospitalized after being diagnosed with an eating disorder.Norton Children's Hospital has some of that art on display in a special exhibition called "What's Eating Me?" Art therapy is being used to help young eating disorder patients at Norton Children's Hospital in Louisville, Ky. The art is now part of an exhibition. (WDRB Image) Feb. 16, 2023 Over the past two years, the hospital has treated more patients with eating disorders of all types. In the past six years, the hospital has treated more than 350 patients for anorexia, bulimia and other eating disorders.The vast majority of the patients — nearly 84% — are females between the ages of 13 and 17. But at least one doctor said she's treated a patient as young as 8 years old for an eating disorder at Norton Children's Hospital. "You can't blame a child for having this type of illness, and I think that's a very common misconception among the general public, that a child that has an eating disorder is somehow choosing this," said Dr. Andrea Krause with Norton Children's Hospital. "When, really, it's an illness that's affecting them. And really, they suffer from it."Krause serves as the clinical program lead for the eating disorder program."Each child is unique, and it can be a lot to try and identify what might motivate a child here to get better," she said.Through this art exhibit, doctors, patients and the community can better understand how patients view their eating disorder."It lets us know where this person is in relationship with this eating disorder," said Elizabeth Martin, an expressive art therapist who worked with patients on this project. "Do they see it as their best friend that rewards them and benefits them and builds them up? If that's the case, then we need to find something else that rewards them and benefits them and not the eating disorder."Martin said while some of the clay creations look friendly, others do not."If we see it more as a horrific creature, it lets us know they see the seriousness of this and the harm," Martin said. "So it might be actually easier for them to fight in some way, because they do see the harm in it and don't want that. When the eating disorder creature looks like a best friend, that can even be harder sometimes, because they don't want to let it go."According to Norton Children's Hospital, during the COVID-19 pandemic, fear of the virus and the isolation complicated these issues for kids and teens. "The pandemic brought social isolation, and this is definitely an illness that thrives in the setting of isolation," Krause said.Krause said she also believes social media has played a role. "These children were comparing themselves to people that weren't real and that became their reality," Martin said. Art therapy is being used to help young eating disorder patients at Norton Children's Hospital in Louisville, Ky. The art is now part of an exhibition. (WDRB Image) Feb. 16, 2023 Norton Children's Hospital is utilizing expressive art therapy to reach these patients. By using a variety of art materials, patients explore who they are and express their emotions. "The art gives them a voice," Martin said. "It gives them a way to express themselves and it gives them a way to find themselves by separating."Eating disorders affect at least 9% of people worldwide. They will affect nearly 30 million Americans in their lifetimes and cause about 10,000 U.S. deaths each year, according to data cited by the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders.According to Norton Children's Hospital, here is the data on eating disorder cases from the past several years:2017: 39 cases, 33 unique patients2018: 37 cases, 32 unique patients2019: 49 cases, 41 unique patients2020: 75 cases, 60 unique patients2021: 117 cases, 103 unique patients2022: 136 cases, 117 unique patientsTotal: 453 cases, 356 patientsAt this point, data for 2023 is trending in the same upward direction. "I wouldn't be surprised, just with how the numbers have steadily increased each year, if, unfortunately, we hit some higher numbers this year as well, although, I, of course, hope not," said Kayla LaRosa, a pediatric psychologist at Norton Children's.Krause said there is hope for patients to overcome eating disorders, but she's also pushing for more resources to be available in Kentucky. She said patients at Norton Children's come from across the region. "Kentucky is, unfortunately, unique in the sense that we do not have a free-standing residential care program for eating disorders in the entire state," Krause said. "We have some outpatient centers and even a couple of partial hospitalization programs in the city here. But when you're talking about the whole state of Kentucky, there is a huge lack of resources there, especially when you're talking about more rural places in the state." She said early intervention is key. The art exhibit will remain on display inside the Noltemeyer Excellence in Education Center in the lobby of Norton Children's Hospital until late-February. For information on eating disorders from Norton Children's Hospital, click here.Copyright 2023 WDRB Media. The Associated Press contributed to this report. All Rights Reserved.
- [Where people in Louisville are looking to buy homes | Around the State - The Messenger](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/where-people-in-louisville-are-looking-to-buy-homes-around-the-state-the-messenger/) - The Covid-19 pandemic ushered in a period of frantic, domestic migration that saw Americans moving farther away from established urban centers.The number of homes sold every month has slowed as interest rates have risen, cooling some of those pandemic trends. But many Americans are still choosing to move long distances, and the vast majority of U.S. homebuyers—97%—utilize online sites when looking for their next home, according to a 2021 report from the National Association of Realtors.Stacker compiled statistics about where people in Louisville are looking to buy homes using cross-market demand and monthly inventory data from Realtor.com. Data is based on micropolitan and metropolitan areas, which include cities as well as surrounding towns and suburbs. Cross-market demand statistics are as of Q4 2022. Monthly inventory data is as of January 2023.Continue reading to see where people in Louisville are shopping for their next house.
- [Peyton Siva on 2013 Louisville basketball reunion and playing for 'The Ville' with ex-Cards](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/peyton-siva-on-2013-louisville-basketball-reunion-and-playing-for-the-ville-with-ex-cards/) - Like an actor taking the stage for opening night on Broadway, Peyton Siva said a "fourth wall" went up when he stepped onto the court in front of more than 74,000 fans packed inside the Georgia Dome for the2013national championship game."You don't see faces," the former Louisville men's basketball guard told The Courier Journal. "You don't see people. It was all a blur in the background."The disorientation intensified, Siva said, when the confetti started to fall on the Cardinals following their 82-76 victory over Michigan to claim the program's third NCAA title. The locker room celebration, the joyous welcome home, the media appearances and the parade — all of those moments blurred together, too.But, if you were among the thousands who turned out to show your appreciation to Siva and his teammates, know that he still feels the love 10 years later."There's no better fans," said Siva, who recently returned to Louisville after a stint playing professionally in Australia. "They hold a special place in my heart." NCAA be damned:Louisville basketball players will still celebrate the 2013 titleThat sentiment was the driving force in Siva's decision to suit up for "The Ville," a team comprised of former U of L players that will compete against 64 others for $1 million in The Basketball Tournament beginning in July. Thus far, the roster also includes: Dillon Avare, Rakeem Buckles, Steven Enoch and Kyle Kuric. Earlier this month, Freedom Hall was named a TBT regional host site, giving Siva and the ex-Cards a chance to return to their roots by playing in front of the fanbase they hold dearest at a venue that means so much to the program's history. Tickets go on sale April 1. With Louisville sitting at 3-23 (1-14 ACC) in Year 1 of the Kenny Payne era, those clinging to memories like Kuric going nuclear in the Freedom Hall finale back on March 6, 2010, will soon be able to watch them come to life. "Hopefully, we can bring some exciting basketball," Siva said. "Being able to compete and try to win $1 million is awesome, but I think the fact that it's gonna be in Louisville, where a lot of (former players) live, in front of their families and in front of the home fans, I think that was a major key for a lot of guys committing early to play."A 'special night':Ten years later, Kyle Kuric reflects on a game to remember in Freedom Hall finaleThis isn’t U of L's first brush with TBT. In 2020, Ryan McMahon came two victories away from the $1 million prize playing alongside primarily ex-Dayton Flyers under strict COVID-19 precautions in Columbus, Ohio. A year later, former walk-on grad transfer Keith Oddo tried to put together a team called 3-Time Champs with the Most Outstanding Player of the 2013 Final Four, Luke Hancock, as an assistant coach. The roster included the likes of Chane Behanan, Wayne Blackshear, Lamarr "Fresh" Kimble, Preston Knowles and Samardo Samuels, but Oddo said TBT turned them down. "The administrator said that the team was talented enough to make the tournament," Oddo wrote in a tweet at the time, "but they wanted the first Louisville team to have more brand-named Cardinal players."Hancock will assume the role of The Ville's general manager. Siva said he was hoping his former teammate would join him on the court and joked that they'll save his sharpshooting in the event an opponent hits them with a 2-3 zone. Rounding out the staff are Collegiate head coach Mark Lieberman and Lexington Catholic assistant Jordan Sucher, both of whom spent time working under Rick Pitino at Louisville. Their challenge will be cultivating chemistry among players who share the same alma mater but in some cases didn’t run the court together back in the day. Rick Pitino:What ex-Louisville coach said about IARP's ruling, vacated championship and Tom Jurich"It’s gonna be tough," Siva said. "We’ve just got to figure out each other’s games again and go from there."Before he turns his attention toward TBT preparations, Siva will be reminded yet again of the admiration Louisville fans have for the 2013 squad when he and 12 of his former teammates are honored at halftime of Saturday night's game between the Cardinals and Clemson. Those who will be in attendance include: Hancock, Blackshear, Mike Baffour, Logan Baumann, Jordan Bond, Gorgui Dieng, Montrezl Harrell, Tim Henderson, Mike Marra, Zach Price, Stephan Van Treese and Kevin Ware."A lot of us have different lives; we're playing in different countries, so our schedules don't always line up to each others', so it'll be good to see everybody again in one spot — hang out, talk to them," Siva said. "And for me, the big thing is for my teammates to see how much they are loved in the city of Louisville. For the guys who do live in different states and different countries, I think it'll be perfect to see the love the fans are going to shower them with."Ten-year anniversary:Banner honoring 2013 Louisville basketball team will go up. It may not say what you thinkThere will be no mention of the championship the group won after it and 123 wins between 2010-14 were vacated in June 2017 due to a scandal involving payments made to strippers and prostitutes to dance for, and have sex with, former players and recruits. A banner will be raised, however, commemorating U of L finishing No. 1 in the final coaches poll of the season — a gesture signifying progress after the program last fall avoided a postseason ban and other major punishments stemming from another NCAA investigation into alleged violations during the head-coaching tenures of Pitino and Chris Mack."I was just happy for the university and happy for the players and the coaches and fans, most importantly,” Siva said of the ruling. “It was tough living with that cloud over your head, living with the unknown of the future. I was happy for them the most just to move on past it all. It was great to see. Hopefully, the university and the program can just move forward and get back to where it used to be, and I'm looking forward to watching that process." When the party's over Saturday, Siva will get back to work. If he and the members of "The Ville" are able to recapture the magic of what the Cardinals used to be when TBT tips off at Freedom Hall, a championship could be in its future.Reach Louisville men's basketball reporter Brooks Holton at bholton@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter at @brooksHolton.
- [Feds preparing for trials in Breonna Taylor police killing - AOL](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/feds-preparing-for-trials-in-breonna-taylor-police-killing-aol/) - DYLAN LOVANFebruary 15, 2023, 5:09 PMFeds preparing for trials in Breonna Taylor police killingLOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Lawyers are set to discuss the federal case against a former Kentucky police officer who fired blindly into Breonna Taylor's apartment on the night of the deadly raid that left her dead.It will be the second attempt by prosecutors to convict Brett Hankison for his actions on the night Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was shot to death by police. Attorneys will meet to discuss the case at a status conference in a Louisville federal courtroom Wednesday.Hankison was indicted by the U.S. Justice Department last year along with three other officers, one of whom has pleaded guilty to helping falsify the warrant used to enter Taylor's apartment on March 13, 2020. Taylor was killed in her hallway after officers broke down the door and Taylor's boyfriend fired a shot that struck a police sergeant.Taylor's killing along with George Floyd's death at the hands of Minnesota police in 2020 ignited protests that summer around the country over racial injustice. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the federal indictments in the Taylor case in August, remarking that Taylor “should be alive today.”Hankison is the only officer who fired shots during the raid who has been charged in any court. Prosecutors determined that two other officers who fired and struck Taylor were justified in shooting back after Taylor's boyfriend fired at them.Hankison, 46, was acquitted in Former detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sgt. Kyle Meany March of charges brought by state prosecutors for endangering Taylor's next-door neighbors with shots he fired into Taylor's apartment that went through her walls. Hankison retreated from the open doorway and fired 10 bullets into a sliding door and window on the side of Taylor’s apartment. The more recent federal charges accuse him of endangering neighbors along with Taylor and her boyfriend.Hankison’s trial is set for Aug. 21 in Louisville before U.S. District Judge Rebecca Jennings Grady. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted.Another former officer, Kelly Goodlett, has already pleaded guilty to a federal charge, and is expected to testify in the cases against two more officers who were involved in crafting the Taylor warrant. Former detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sgt. Kyle Meany are charged with conspiring to deprive Taylor of her civil rights. Jaynes and Meany are set to be tried together on Oct. 25.Goodlett's guilty plea was moved from last year to Dec. 13, presumably after Jaynes and Meany's cases are finished.
- [Ex-officer's trial date postponed in Breonna Taylor case - KESQ](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/ex-officers-trial-date-postponed-in-breonna-taylor-case-kesq/) - By DYLAN LOVANAssociated Press LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The large volume of evidence collected in the Breonna Taylor case prompted a judge to push back the trial date for a former Kentucky police officer who fired into Taylor’s apartment during a deadly no-knock raid in 2020. Brett Hankison’s federal court trial will be a second
- [Parts of Georgia special grand jury report to be released - WAVY.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/parts-of-georgia-special-grand-jury-report-to-be-released-wavy-com/) - Parts of Georgia special grand jury report to be released – WAVY.com Skip to content ✕ × Close Ad
- [Parts of Georgia special grand jury report to be released - KOB.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/parts-of-georgia-special-grand-jury-report-to-be-released-kob-com/) - ATLANTA (AP) — The public on Thursday will see portions of a report by a special grand jury that investigated whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies committed any crimes while trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. The report’s introduction and conclusion, along with a section in which the grand jurors expressed concerns that some witnesses may have lied under oath are to be released. But any recommendations on potential criminal charges will remain under wraps for now.The partial release was ordered Monday by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special grand jury. During a hearing last month, prosecutors urged him not to release the report until they decide on charges, while a coalition of media organizations, including The Associated Press, pushed for the entire report to be made public immediately.McBurney wrote in his order that it’s not appropriate to release the full report now because it’s important to protect the due process rights of people for whom the grand jury recommended charges.The investigation is one of several that could have serious legal consequences for the former president as he tries to persuade voters to return him to the White House in 2024.The special grand jury, which was requested by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to aid her investigation, did not have the power to issue indictments. Instead, its report contains recommendations for Willis, who will ultimately decide whether to seek one or more indictments from a regular grand jury.Over the course of about seven months, the grand jurors heard from 75 witnesses, among them high-profile Trump allies former New York mayor and attorney Rudy Giuliani and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Top Georgia officials, such as Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp, also appeared before the panel.Trump, who generally refused to accept that Joe Biden won the November 2020 election, seemed particularly bothered by his loss in Georgia and what he saw as a failure of Republican state elected officials to fight for him. Long a reliably Republican-voting state, Georgia tipped to Biden by a margin of about 12,000 votes, making him the first Democratic presidential candidate to win there since 1992.Trump and his allies made unproven claims of widespread voter fraud and repeatedly berated Raffensperger and Kemp for not acting to overturn his loss. State and federal officials, including Trump’s own attorney general, have consistently said the election was secure and that there is no evidence of widespread fraud.Willis has said since the beginning of the investigation two years ago that she was interested in a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call in which Trump suggested to Raffensperger that he could “find” the votes needed to overturn his loss in the state.“All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said during that call. “Because we won the state.”Trump has said repeatedly that his call with Raffensperger was “perfect,” and he told the AP last month that he felt “very confident” that he would not be indicted.Based on witnesses called to testify before the special grand jury, it is clear that Willis is also focusing on several other areas. Those included:— Phone calls by Trump and others to Georgia officials in the wake of the 2020 election.— A group of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate in December 2020 falsely stating that Trump had won the state and that they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.— False allegations of election fraud made during meetings of state legislators at the Georgia Capitol in December 2020.— The copying of data and software from election equipment in rural Coffee County by a computer forensics team hired by Trump allies.— Alleged attempts to pressure Fulton County elections worker Ruby Freeman into falsely confessing to election fraud.— The abrupt resignation of the U.S. attorney in Atlanta in January 2021.Willis last summer sent letters informing some people, including Giuliani and the state’s 16 fake electors, that they could face criminal charges.Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
- [Parts of Georgia special grand jury report to be released - Laredo Morning Times](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/parts-of-georgia-special-grand-jury-report-to-be-released-laredo-morning-times/) - ATLANTA (AP) — The public on Thursday will see portions of a report by a special grand jury that investigated whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies committed any crimes while trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.The report’s introduction and conclusion, along with a section in which the grand jurors expressed concerns that some witnesses may have lied under oath are to be released. But any recommendations on potential criminal charges will remain under wraps for now. The partial release was ordered Monday by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special grand jury. During a hearing last month, prosecutors urged him not to release the report until they decide on charges, while a coalition of media organizations, including The Associated Press, pushed for the entire report to be made public immediately.
- [Pence to fight special counsel subpoena on 2020 election | news - Indiana Public Media](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/pence-to-fight-special-counsel-subpoena-on-2020-election-news-indiana-public-media/) - Indiana Public Media News { "banners": { "tv" : [ {"url" : "https://indianapublicmedia.secureallegiance.com/wtiu/WebModule/Donate.aspx?P=WTIUMCBNR&PAGETYPE=PLG&CHECK=2T6mTyo6yYuMn%2bAFYFwp%2bq1gzMC6uhq5nDjkJobrCdg%3d", "img" : "https://indianapublicmedia.org/images/banner-images/12-17-22-wtiu-bnr.jpg", "startingDate" : "1671253200000", "endingDate" : "1671598740000"} , {"url" : "https://indianapublicmedia.secureallegiance.com/wtiu/WebModule/Donate.aspx?P=WTIUMCBNR&PAGETYPE=PLG&CHECK=2T6mTyo6yYuMn%2bAFYFwp%2bq1gzMC6uhq5nDjkJobrCdg%3d", "img" : "https://indianapublicmedia.org/images/banner-images/12-21-22-wtiu-bnr.jpg", "startingDate" : "1671598800000", "endingDate" : "1672117140000"} , {"url" : "https://indianapublicmedia.secureallegiance.com/wtiu/WebModule/Donate.aspx?P=WTIUMCBNR&PAGETYPE=PLG&CHECK=2T6mTyo6yYuMn%2bAFYFwp%2bq1gzMC6uhq5nDjkJobrCdg%3d", "img" : "https://indianapublicmedia.org/images/banner-images/12-27-22-wtiu-bnr.jpg", "startingDate" : "1672117200000", "endingDate" : "1672289940000"} , {"url" : "https://indianapublicmedia.secureallegiance.com/wtiu/WebModule/Donate.aspx?P=WTIUMCBNR&PAGETYPE=PLG&CHECK=2T6mTyo6yYuMn%2bAFYFwp%2bq1gzMC6uhq5nDjkJobrCdg%3d", "img" : "https://indianapublicmedia.org/images/banner-images/12-29-22-wtiu-bnr.jpg",
- [In Iowa, Mike Pence vows to resist 'unconstitutional' subpoena in Trump investigation](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/in-iowa-mike-pence-vows-to-resist-unconstitutional-subpoena-in-trump-investigation/) - CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Former Vice President Mike Pence vowed Wednesday to resist special counsel Jack Smith’s decision to subpoena his testimony in his investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election, calling the move “unprecedented and unconstitutional.”“We'll stand on that principle, and we'll take that case as far as it needs to go — if need be to the Supreme Court of the United States,” Pence said at an event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “Because to me, it's an issue of the separation of powers. “More:Mike Pence subpoenaed by Justice Department special counsel in Trump investigationsPence argued he is shielded by the Constitution’s “speech or debate clause,” which protects members of Congress from law enforcement scrutiny over their speech and debate in the chamber. The clause says they “shall not be questioned in any other place.”“On the day of Jan. 6, I was acting as President of the Senate, presiding over a joint session described in the Constitution itself,” he told reporters. “And so I believe that that Speech and Debate Clause of the Constitution actually prohibits the executive branch from compelling me to appear in a court, as the Constitution says, or in 'any other place.'”It’s not clear whether Pence’s legal argument will be persuasive. That clause of the Constitution has typically been applied directly to members of Congress or their staffers.Pence said he’s aware that Trump will bring a claim of executive privilege, calling that “his fight.” “My fight is on the principle of separation of powers in the Constitution of the United States,” he said.The issue arises as Pence explores a 2024 White House run against his former running mate, Trump. Trump has already announced his campaign.More:As GOP starting gate for 2024 presidential race, Iowa sees surge of announced and potential candidatesPence has been a regular presence in Iowa, which will kick off the Republicans’ 2024 primary process with its first-in-the-nation caucuses early next year.Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who formally launched her presidential bid Wednesday, is scheduled to campaign in Iowa next week.Asked about her entry into the race, Pence wished her well.“She may have more company soon in the race for president,” he said. “And I promise folks here in Iowa and all of you I'll keep you posted.”Brianne Pfannenstiel is the chief politics reporter for the Register. Reach her at bpfann@dmreg.com or 515-284-8244. Follow her on Twitter at @brianneDMR.
- [New details of Georgia Trump investigation to be revealed Thursday. What we know.](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/new-details-of-georgia-trump-investigation-to-be-revealed-thursday-what-we-know/) - A Georgia judge is set to provide a first – albeit abbreviated – look Thursday at a grand jury's examination of former President Donald Trump's attempts to interfere in the 2020 election.Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled earlier this week that three sections of the panel's report would be made public Thursday, including a passage expressing concerns that some witnesses may have lied under oath.Yet much of the panel's work, including specific charging recommendations and names of the witnesses suspected of lying, will remain under seal as Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis continues an inquiry launched two years ago.Willis opened the investigation shortly after Trump's extraordinary Jan. 2, 2021 conversation with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger went viral, later expanding the inquiry into a far-reaching criminal examination into election fraud.Witness accused of lying in Trump probe:Witnesses in Georgia Trump probe suspected of lying, raising more questions in closely watched inquiryWhere the inquiry stands:McBurney ordered the disclosure of three sections of the special grand jury's report, the introduction, conclusion and the section referencing concerns over some of the witness' testimony.Last month, Willis told McBurney that charging decisions were "imminent," while arguing against the full public release of the grand jury's report.Trumpattorney Rudy Giuliani, designated as a target in the inquiry, headlined a list of former aides and allies of the former president who were summoned to testify before the panel. The special investigative panel, which completed its work last month, provided a report of its work, as it is not authorized to issue indictments. Judge orders partial report be released:Georgia judge orders partial release of Trump grand jury report ThursdayGeorgia special grand jury ends probe:Georgia special grand jury wraps up investigation of Trump, alliesTrump call to Raffensperger led to wider investigationWhile the inquiry started with Trump's call to Raffensperger, in which the former president urged Georgia's top election official to "find 11,780 votes" to tilt the 2020 statewide election in his favor, Willis has said authorities have been investigating possible election fraud, conspiracy, oath of office violations, racketeering and election-related violence.In addition to Guiliani, prosecutors have designated nearly two-dozen others, including a group of Republican electors who falsely certified that Trump had won the election, as potential targets.What we know:Charging decisions on Trump now loom large in Georgia after grand jury completes its workWitnesses include Trump allies Lindsey Graham, Michael Flynn and John EastmanThe list of grand jury witnesses included current and former public officials, many who have been part of Trump's inner-circle.Among them:Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who was summoned for questions about his contacts with Georgia election officials.Former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, a vocal proponent of false claims of election fraud.Trump lawyer John Eastman, who helped develop Trump’s strategy to overturn Biden's presidential election victory.Other prominent witnesses have included Raffensperger and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, both of whom resisted Trump's pressure campaign to overturn Biden's statewide victory.The Jan. 6 no-shows:Jan. 6 committee never got McCarthy, key Trump aides to testify. Here's who they are.Jan. 6 Capitol attack 2 years later:Trump still plagued by multiple investigationsWhat could Fani Willis do?Willis is not obligated to act on the grand jury's recommendations. If she does elect to proceed, the prosecutor would likely present a case to one of the county's two regular grand juries to seek indictments.The district attorney had expected to make decisions on possible charges before the end of 2022, but a number of legal challenges pressed by key grand jury witnesses pushed late into the year.A Brookings Institution analysis of the Willis investigation, co-authored by Norm Eisen, a special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during Trump's first impeachment, concluded that the inquiry represents perhaps the most serious threat to Trump."We conclude that Trump is at substantial risk of criminal prosecution in Fulton County (Georgia)," the report found.Trump's legal troubles:'Not above the law': Why Trump's decision to run for president won't change his legal woes
- [Portions of Georgia grand jury report on Trump's 2020 election efforts set for release](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/portions-of-georgia-grand-jury-report-on-trumps-2020-election-efforts-set-for-release/) - Portions of a report submitted by the Georgia grand jury investigating efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election are set to be released Thursday, following an order earlier this week from a Georgia judge overseeing the case.The majority of the long-anticipated report -- the final product of a monthslong grand jury investigation into potential 2020 election interference in the state -- will remain sealed, according to Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney's order. This includes the jury's ultimate recommendations on whether or not anyone should face criminal charges.But the sections that McBurney said are "ripe for release" on Thursday will include the report's introduction, its conclusion, and a section "in which the special purpose grand jury discusses its concern that some witnesses may have lied under oath during their testimony to the grand jury," the judge said.That section "does not identify those witnesses," according to the court order.McBurney's ruling came after he heard arguments last month over whether or not to publicly release the report. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis argued for the report to remain sealed, saying that it was important to "be mindful of protecting future defendants' rights."Willis also said during the hearing that charging decisions were "imminent."Thomas Clyde, a lawyer representing a coalition of media outlets that includes ABC News, urged McBurney to order the release of the report based on existing case law and "a genuine public interest in what these jurors found."Though the special grand jury does not have the power to bring indictments, it has the power to make recommendations regarding potential charges. It would then be up to the district attorney to determine whether or not to pursue them.Fulton County Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis in her office in Atlanta, Jan. 4, 2022.Ben Gray/AP, FILEAccording to the order from the judge, the report provided just that: "a roster of who should (or should not) be indicted, and for what, in relation to the conduct (and aftermath) of the 2020 general election in Georgia," McBurney wrote.Those recommendations, however, are "for the District Attorney's eyes only -- for now," McBurney ordered.Willis on Monday told Atlanta ABC News affiliate WSB that she was "very pleased" with the order.Ambassador Norman Eisen (ret.), a senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institute who served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2020, told ABC News that despite the judge shielding most of the report, "it's clear from the judge's order that the grand jury recommended charges.""The question is: I don't think that if people are being charged, Trump can logically be left out, because he was the ringleader," Eisen told ABC News. "He was the mastermind of the plots."Eisen pointed to McBurney's note that the report gave recommendations regarding "who should (or should not) be indicted, and for what.""Really, if no one was being indicted, there would be no need to say, 'for what,'" Eisen said. "That second clause only makes sense if someone is getting indicted."In a statement before last month's hearing to determine the report's release, attorneys representing Trump in the matter said they did not expect to see charges recommended for the former president."The grand jury compelled the testimony of dozens of other, often high-ranking, officials during the investigation, but never found it important to speak with the President," Trump's attorneys said in a statement. "He was never subpoenaed nor asked to come in voluntarily by this grand jury or anyone in the Fulton County District Attorney's Office."Therefore, the attorneys said, they "assume that the grand jury did their job and looked at the facts and the law, as we have, and concluded there were no violations of the law by President Trump" -- although there's no indication if that's true or not.Attorneys representing Trump did not respond to ABC News' request for comment ahead of the report's release.Regarding the grand jury's concerns that some witnesses may have lied under oath during their testimony, Eisen said the district attorney could further pursue those witnesses.Former President Donald Trump addresses the crowd during a 2024 election campaign event in Columbia, S.C., on Jan. 28, 2023.Logan Cyrus/AFP via Getty Images, FILE"I don't think Fani Willis is going to let witnesses get away with perjury before her grand jury," Eisen said. "She can use that to coerce the liars to tell the truth and cooperate. By lying they've given her leverage over them."The special grand jury, which was seated in May 2022, was composed of 26 members of the public who heard testimony from over 75 witnesses, prosecutors said.Those who were subpoenaed and appeared before the grand jury included some of Trump's closest allies and supporters, including attorneys Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, who unsuccessfully fought his subpoena up to the United State Supreme Court.Giuliani, along with 16 so-called "fake electors" who allegedly participated in a scheme to overturn the state's election results, were notified last year that they were considered "targets" of the investigation.Responding to the notification of his status as a target of the probe, Giuliani said, "I appeared in Georgia as attorney for Donald J. Trump -- so I'm going to be prosecuted for what I did as an attorney?"The Justice Department is also examining the allegations involving fake electors as part of its own separate investigation, sources have told ABC News.Attorneys for the electors have denied any wrongdoing in their actions."They cannot have and did not commit any crime as a matter of fact and law," attorney Holly Pierson, who represents 11 of the alleged fake electors, wrote in a court filing.The jury was seated last May as part of Willis' criminal probe into allegations of election interference, which was launched in February 2021. The investigation was sparked in part by the now-infamous Jan. 2, 2021, phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump pleaded with Raffensperger to "find 11,780 votes," the exact number Trump needed to win Georgia.Trump has repeatedly defended his call to Raffensperger, calling it "perfect."
- [Georgia Judge to Release Grand Jury Findings in Trump Election Inquiry](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/georgia-judge-to-release-grand-jury-findings-in-trump-election-inquiry/) - The judge ordered the report’s introduction and conclusion to be made public, along with a section detailing the special grand jury’s concerns about witnesses lying under oath.A judge in Atlanta is expected to release portions of a report on Thursday detailing the findings of a special purpose grand jury that examined whether former President Donald J. Trump and some of his allies violated Georgia law in their efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s 2020 election loss in the state.Special grand juries cannot issue indictments, but they can recommend whether criminal charges should be sought. Earlier this week, Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court ruled that much of the jury’s final report should not be disclosed until after Fani T. Willis, the local district attorney, makes her own charging decisions.Still, he ordered the report’s introduction and conclusion to be made public, along with a section detailing the special grand jury’s concerns about witnesses lying under oath. Judge McBurney wrote that revealing the grand jury’s specific recommendations now would create “due process deficiencies” that would be unfair to anyone who might be “named as indictment-worthy in the final report.” But legal experts say the judge’s decision to keep much of the report secret strongly suggests that the special grand jury determined that someone deserves to be indicted.“We’re at the cusp of something consequential, I think,” said Clark D. Cunningham, a professor at Georgia State University College of Law, who has been following the case closely.Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.Lori Lightfoot: As the mayor of Chicago seeks a second term at City Hall, her administration is overseeing the largest experiment in guaranteed basic income in the nation.Union Support: In places like West Virginia, money from three major laws passed by Congress is pouring into the alternative energy industry and other projects. Democrats hope it will lead to increased union strength.A Chaotic Majority: The defining dynamic for House Republicans, who have a slim majority, may be the push and pull between the far right and the rest of the conference. Here is a closer look at the fractious caucus.A New Kind of Welfare: In a post-Roe world, some conservative thinkers are pushing Republicans to move on from Reagan-era family policy and send cash to families. A few lawmakers are listening.Ms. Willis’s office has been conducting the investigation for the last two years. Much of it — including interviews with dozens of witnesses — was conducted before the special grand jury, which under Georgia law had to issue a final report on its findings.Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, told a judge that her office had concluded that there was “a reasonable probability” that the state’s administration of the 2020 election “was subject to possible criminal disruptions.”Audra Melton for The New York TimesRudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, and David Shafer, the head of the Georgia Republican Party, are among those who were told that they were targets of the inquiry who could face criminal charges. Other witnesses who appeared before the special grand jury include Senator Lindsey Graham and Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp.In his ruling earlier this week, Judge McBurney said the special grand jury raised concerns in its report “that some witnesses may have lied under oath during their testimony.” While his eight-page ruling included few other revelations, it did indicate that the special grand jury’s findings are serious. The report includes “a roster of who should (or should not) be indicted, and for what, in relation to the conduct (and aftermath) of the 2020 general election in Georgia,” Judge McBurney wrote.The seriousness of the investigation has been clear for some time. Last January, in seeking a special grand jury, Ms. Willis told a judge that her office had concluded that there was “a reasonable probability” that the state’s administration of the 2020 election “was subject to possible criminal disruptions.”The catalyst for the investigation was a phone call Mr. Trump made to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, on Jan. 2, 2021, asking him to recalculate the election results and “find” the nearly 12,000 votes Mr. Trump would have needed to win the state’s electoral votes. Mr. Trump also suggested that failing to act on the fraud he falsely claimed had occurred could constitute “a criminal offense.”The catalyst for the investigation was a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call Mr. Trump made to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, asking him to recalculate the vote and “find” the nearly 12,000 votes he would have needed to win the state’s electoral votes.Pool photo by Alex Wong/ReutersMr. Raffensperger, in a book later that year, wrote, “For the office of the secretary of state to ‘recalculate’ would mean we would somehow have to fudge the numbers. The president was asking me to do something that I knew was wrong, and I was not going to do that.”Another area of scrutiny is a strategy the Trump team devised to have Trump supporters in states that the president lost act as if they were official Electoral College delegates, an attempt to circumvent voters. Evidence has emerged, including from the recent report by the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, suggesting that Mr. Trump was not on the periphery of the plan, but at the center of it.Court records show that the special grand jury scrutinized other actions taken by Trump supporters in Georgia after the election, including an alleged plot to pressure an election worker in Fulton County to falsely admit that she committed fraud and an election data breach in rural Coffee County, Ga., carried out by a separate group of Trump allies.
- [From college football to a JCPS job: Q&A with a new Metro Council member](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/from-college-football-to-a-jcps-job-qa-with-a-new-metro-council-member/) - The life of one of the newest Louisville Metro Council members, as he puts it, has "always been about competition."Whether competing on the wrestling mat and gridiron, serving as a law office "runner" and then also running for political office, or working to ensure students in Louisville have their basic needs met, Phillip Baker is often on the move.His latest endeavor is serving on Metro Council as the recently appointed member for District 6, which covers part of downtown and surrounding neighborhoods such as Limerick, Old Louisville, Park Hill, Shelby Park, Smoketown and Russell.Sitting members of Louisville's legislative body picked Baker earlier in February to serve out the rest of David James' term, after the ex-Metro Council president joined Mayor Craig Greenberg's administration.As Baker gets settled into the new role, he spoke with The Courier Journal about his family, background and priorities while in office. Some answers have been edited for length and clarity.What was your childhood like? It sounds like service to the community is a theme in your family.Baker: "I'm from Winchester, Kentucky, and grew up there until 9th grade. I'm the grandson of the Rev. Henry Edward Baker, one of the first Kentucky Human Rights Commission Civil Rights Hall of Fame inductees. My father is a local pastor here at Christ Way Missionary Baptist Church. My mom is a lawyer. My sister, Dr. Jeronda Majors, will be the principal of the new West End middle school and has been the principal of Knight Middle School. My sister and brother were arrested during the Breonna Taylor protests. I went to Central High School. I took second in state in wrestling and played football. I went to Tennessee State University and played center (on the football team). I earned a degree in communication. Today, my wife and I have three kids, all boys — Phillip Jr., 13, Preston Henry Edward, 9, and Peyton Lee, 4. My wife, Tiffiny, is a teacher at Mill Creek Elementary School. We live in Old Louisville.In high school, I was a 'runner' for Wyatt Tarrant and Combs. I later got my insurance license and am a multiple line agent for State Farm. I thought I would never be like my dad, but he is also a State Farm agent (laughs)."Background:Louisville Metro Council picks 2 JCPS employees to fill its vacant seatsWhy did you seek this Metro Council seat?Baker: "My passion is to serve. That's all we knew. I'm a Family Resource Coordinator for Jefferson County Public Schools (at Coleridge-Taylor Montessori Elementary). My FRC position is everything I want to do. I'm feeding people. We're getting kids on buses, meeting parents, knocking on doors for truancies. I'm able to speak to someone if, for example, this person has an LG&E issue, helping them if they ask, 'How does LIHEAP work?' (Baker, among other positions, also serves on the Kentucky Derby Festival Board.)My first campaign was for (Kentucky House) District 41 in 2016 against Tom Riner and Attica Scott. (Scott won.) I ran for House District 43 in 2018. (Charles Booker won that Democratic primary and general election.) We started the Greater Louisville Association of Democrats to support Black political participation.I run to fulfill that need for service. I also coach in the Louisville Youth Football League with the Shively Seminoles."What are your top few priorities to tackle while in office?Baker: "Where I live has shaped my priorities. Public safety is key, but a true passion of mine is improving the health and wellness of seniors and youth. If you go down Fourth Street, you have Treyton Oaks, Puritan, Hillebrand House ... when you go in to visit these seniors ... we need to do better. The facilities, the upkeep, making sure they have dignity. They deserve it.Improving parks, like Ben Washer Park at Fifth and Kentucky streets. I want interconnectivity with other districts, like the neighboring 3rd District and the parks there. I want to make sure we are connecting residents and providing a level of customer service."Kentucky coal mining:Did mining play a role in 2022 Kentucky flood deaths? Group wants feds to investigateWill you run again in November and in 2024?Baker: "Absolutely. I'm going to seek the Democratic nomination. I have every intention of running. On the 2024 ballot, you will see Phillip Thomas Baker, unless something drastic happens."What do you and your family like to do together?Baker: "We love sporting events, basketball, football, soccer. We're always at a local game. We love the outdoors, maybe a byproduct of the pandemic. You'll see my big old butt hiking or kayaking at Tioga Falls or Beckley Creek Park. We go to church together. We're always serving and giving food out."Reach Billy Kobin at bkobin@courierjournal.com
- [Louisville Zoo, others taking precautions after tiger in New York contracts COVID-19](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/louisville-zoo-others-taking-precautions-after-tiger-in-new-york-contracts-covid-19/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- It’s strangely quiet, but behind the closed gates of the Louisville Zoo, work continues.As the deadly COVID-19 pandemic spreads, zookeepers such as senior staff veterinarian Dr. Zoli Gyimesi have divided into two teams and are subject to daily temperature checks.“We’re taking many common sense precautions here at the zoo," Gyimesi said.But, now they’re taking new precautions after a tiger at the Bronx Zoo, in New York, tested positive for COVID-19 this past weekend.“And that’s the first documented case in the United States where an animal is infected with the novel coronavirus that causes, you know, COVID-19," the veterinarian said. The Louisville Zoo is taking extra precautions to protect its animal collection during the COVID-19 outbreak. (WDRB Photo) Zookeepers were already wearing face masks around gorillas and other animals, but now they’ll do so around the lions, tigers and other zoo cats.“When they have to be within 6 feet of a cat, when they’re training, feeding, shifting a cat, or if they have to enter the cat’s enclosure for cleaning, or if they’re working with the cat’s food or preparing enrichment," Gyimesi said.Ultimately, he said, the precautions are necessary because scientists are still learning about how the virus spreads between humans and animals.“There’s a lot we don’t know," Gyimesi said. A resident chimpanzee at the Primate Rescue Center in Nicholasville, Ky. (Courtesy: Primate Rescue Center) The Primate Rescue Center outside Lexington, which rescues monkeys and apes, is dealing with that same uncertainty with similar precautions.Executive Director Eileen Dunnington said center volunteers are staying home, and just a couple staff members are caring for the rescues. They might be susceptible to COVID-19, she said, because they're genetically similar to humans.“We don’t want to know how this affects chimpanzees and monkeys. We don’t want to find that out," she said.What about domestic pets like dogs and cats?Even though the government has no reports of pets becoming sick with the virus in the U.S., Gyimesi and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that people sick with COVID-19 limit contact with their pets.“You know, not sharing food and letting a pet kiss or lick your face or, you know, that sort of thing," Gyimesi said.The federal government also says there’s no evidence that any animals, including pets, can spread COVID-19 infection to people.Click here for more information from the federal government.Copyright 2020 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
- [Ex-officer's trial date postponed in Breonna Taylor case | News | messenger-inquirer.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/ex-officers-trial-date-postponed-in-breonna-taylor-case-news-messenger-inquirer-com/) - #inform-video-player-1 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; } #inform-video-player-2 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; } LOUISVILLE — The large volume of evidence collected in the Breonna Taylor case prompted a judge on Wednesday to push back the trial date for a former Kentucky police officer who fired blindly into Taylor's apartment during the deadly no-knock raid on her apartment in 2020.The trial will mark a second attempt by prosecutors to convict Brett Hankison for his actions on the night Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was shot to death by police in Louisville. Taylor, who worked as an emergency medical technician, was shot multiple times during the raid. The warrant for the raid was later found to be flawed. More from this section #inform-video-player-3 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; }
- [A timeline of Nikki Haley's past Trump statements - NBC News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/a-timeline-of-nikki-haleys-past-trump-statements-nbc-news/) - Feb. 14, 2023, 2:42 PM UTC / Updated
- [Parts of Georgia special grand jury report to be released - Seattle PI](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/16/parts-of-georgia-special-grand-jury-report-to-be-released-seattle-pi/) - FILE - Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney speaks during a hearing to decide if the final report by a special grand jury looking into possible interference in the 2020 presidential election can be released Jan. 24, 2023, in Atlanta. The public on Feb. 15, will see portions of a report by a special grand jury that investigated whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies committed any crimes while trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.John Bazemore/APATLANTA (AP) — The public on Thursday will see portions of a report by a special grand jury that investigated whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies committed any crimes while trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.AdvertisementArticle continues below this adThe report’s introduction and conclusion, along with a section in which the grand jurors expressed concerns that some witnesses may have lied under oath are to be released. But any recommendations on potential criminal charges will remain under wraps for now.The partial release was ordered Monday by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special grand jury. During a hearing last month, prosecutors urged him not to release the report until they decide on charges, while a coalition of media organizations, including The Associated Press, pushed for the entire report to be made public immediately.McBurney wrote in his order that it's not appropriate to release the full report now because it's important to protect the due process rights of people for whom the grand jury recommended charges.AdvertisementArticle continues below this adThe investigation is one of several that could have serious legal consequences for the former president as he tries to persuade voters to return him to the White House in 2024.The special grand jury, which was requested by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to aid her investigation, did not have the power to issue indictments. Instead, its report contains recommendations for Willis, who will ultimately decide whether to seek one or more indictments from a regular grand jury.Over the course of about seven months, the grand jurors heard from 75 witnesses, among them high-profile Trump allies former New York mayor and attorney Rudy Giuliani and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Top Georgia officials, such as Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp, also appeared before the panel.Trump, who generally refused to accept that Joe Biden won the November 2020 election, seemed particularly bothered by his loss in Georgia and what he saw as a failure of Republican state elected officials to fight for him. Long a reliably Republican-voting state, Georgia tipped to Biden by a margin of about 12,000 votes, making him the first Democratic presidential candidate to win there since 1992.AdvertisementArticle continues below this adTrump and his allies made unproven claims of widespread voter fraud and repeatedly berated Raffensperger and Kemp for not acting to overturn his loss. State and federal officials, including Trump’s own attorney general, have consistently said the election was secure and that there is no evidence of widespread fraud.Willis has said since the beginning of the investigation two years ago that she was interested in a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call in which Trump suggested to Raffensperger that he could “find” the votes needed to overturn his loss in the state.“All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said during that call. “Because we won the state.”Trump has said repeatedly that his call with Raffensperger was “perfect,” and he told the AP last month that he felt “very confident” that he would not be indicted.AdvertisementArticle continues below this adBased on witnesses called to testify before the special grand jury, it is clear that Willis is also focusing on several other areas. Those included:— Phone calls by Trump and others to Georgia officials in the wake of the 2020 election.— A group of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate in December 2020 falsely stating that Trump had won the state and that they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.— False allegations of election fraud made during meetings of state legislators at the Georgia Capitol in December 2020.AdvertisementArticle continues below this ad— The copying of data and software from election equipment in rural Coffee County by a computer forensics team hired by Trump allies.— Alleged attempts to pressure Fulton County elections worker Ruby Freeman into falsely confessing to election fraud.— The abrupt resignation of the U.S. attorney in Atlanta in January 2021.Willis last summer sent letters informing some people, including Giuliani and the state's 16 fake electors, that they could face criminal charges.
- [Feds preparing for trials in Breonna Taylor police killing | WRIC ABC 8News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/feds-preparing-for-trials-in-breonna-taylor-police-killing-wric-abc-8news/) - Feds preparing for trials in Breonna Taylor police killing | WRIC ABC 8News Skip to content ✕ × Close Ad
- [Ex-officer's trial date postponed in Breonna Taylor case - WRAL](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/ex-officers-trial-date-postponed-in-breonna-taylor-case-wral/) - LOUISVILLE, KY. — The large volume of evidence collected in the Breonna Taylor case prompted a judge on Wednesday to push back the trial date for a former Kentucky police officer who fired blindly into Taylor's apartment during the deadly no-knock raid on her apartment in 2020.The trial will mark a second attempt by prosecutors to convict Brett Hankison for his actions on the night Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was shot to death by police in Louisville. Taylor, who worked as an emergency medical technician, was shot multiple times during the raid. The warrant for the raid was later found to be flawed.U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings moved the trial back about two months to Oct. 30, after Hankison's lawyers asked for more time to process massive amounts of evidence turned over by federal prosecutors.Hankison was indicted by the U.S. Justice Department last year along with three other officers, one of whom has pleaded guilty to helping falsify the warrant used to enter Taylor's apartment on March 13, 2020. Taylor was killed in her hallway after officers broke down the door and Taylor's boyfriend fired a shot that struck a police sergeant. None of Hankison's shots hit Taylor.Her killing along with George Floyd's death at the hands of Minnesota police in 2020 ignited protests that summer around the country over racial injustice. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the federal indictments in the Taylor case in August, remarking that Taylor “should be alive today.”Hankison is the only officer who fired shots during the raid who has been charged in any court. Prosecutors determined that two other officers who fired and struck Taylor were justified in shooting back after Taylor's boyfriend fired at them.Hankison attorney Jack Byrd also told Jennings Wednesday that his team needs time to meet with use-of-force and crime scene experts to go over evidence.Hankison, 46, was acquitted in March of charges brought by state prosecutors for endangering Taylor's next-door neighbors with shots he fired into Taylor's apartment that went through her walls. Hankison retreated from the open doorway and fired 10 bullets into a sliding door and window on the side of Taylor’s apartment. The more recent federal charges accuse him of endangering neighbors along with Taylor and her boyfriend.Another former officer, Kelly Goodlett, has pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge, and is expected to testify in the cases against two more officers who were involved in crafting the Taylor warrant. Former detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sgt. Kyle Meany are charged with conspiring to deprive Taylor of her civil rights. Jaynes and Meany are set to be tried together on Oct. 25.Goodlett's guilty plea was moved from last year to Dec. 13, presumably after Jaynes and Meany's cases are finished.
- [Feds preparing for trials in Breonna Taylor police killing | News Channel 3-12 - KEYT](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/feds-preparing-for-trials-in-breonna-taylor-police-killing-news-channel-3-12-keyt/) - By DYLAN LOVANAssociated Press LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Lawyers are set to discuss the federal case against a former Kentucky police officer who fired blindly into Breonna Taylor’s apartment the night she was killed. Prosecutors are trying for a second time to convict Brett Hankison for his actions during the 2020 search warrant raid. Attorneys
- [Feds preparing for trials in Breonna Taylor police killing - San Antonio Express-News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/feds-preparing-for-trials-in-breonna-taylor-police-killing-san-antonio-express-news/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The large volume of evidence collected in the Breonna Taylor case prompted a judge on Wednesday to push back the trial date for a former Kentucky police officer who fired blindly into Taylor's apartment during the deadly no-knock raid on her apartment in 2020.The trial will mark a second attempt by prosecutors to convict Brett Hankison for his actions on the night Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was shot to death by police in Louisville. Taylor, who worked as an emergency medical technician, was shot multiple times during the raid. The warrant for the raid was later found to be flawed. U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings moved the trial back about two months to Oct. 30, after Hankison's lawyers asked for more time to process massive amounts of evidence turned over by federal prosecutors. Hankison was indicted by the U.S. Justice Department last year along with three other officers, one of whom has pleaded guilty to helping falsify the warrant used to enter Taylor's apartment on March 13, 2020. Taylor was killed in her hallway after officers broke down the door and Taylor's boyfriend fired a shot that struck a police sergeant. None of Hankison's shots hit Taylor. Her killing along with George Floyd's death at the hands of Minnesota police in 2020 ignited protests that summer around the country over racial injustice. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the federal indictments in the Taylor case in August, remarking that Taylor “should be alive today.” Hankison is the only officer who fired shots during the raid who has been charged in any court. Prosecutors determined that two other officers who fired and struck Taylor were justified in shooting back after Taylor's boyfriend fired at them.
- [Ex-officer's trial date postponed in Breonna Taylor case - Plainview Herald](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/ex-officers-trial-date-postponed-in-breonna-taylor-case-plainview-herald/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The large volume of evidence collected in the Breonna Taylor case prompted a judge on Wednesday to push back the trial date for a former Kentucky police officer who fired blindly into Taylor's apartment during the deadly no-knock raid on her apartment in 2020.The trial will mark a second attempt by prosecutors to convict Brett Hankison for his actions on the night Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was shot to death by police in Louisville. Taylor, who worked as an emergency medical technician, was shot multiple times during the raid. The warrant for the raid was later found to be flawed. U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings moved the trial back about two months to Oct. 30, after Hankison's lawyers asked for more time to process massive amounts of evidence turned over by federal prosecutors.
- [Ex-officer's trial date postponed in Breonna Taylor case - Manistee News Advocate](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/ex-officers-trial-date-postponed-in-breonna-taylor-case-manistee-news-advocate/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The large volume of evidence collected in the Breonna Taylor case prompted a judge on Wednesday to push back the trial date for a former Kentucky police officer who fired blindly into Taylor's apartment during the deadly no-knock raid on her apartment in 2020.The trial will mark a second attempt by prosecutors to convict Brett Hankison for his actions on the night Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was shot to death by police in Louisville. Taylor, who worked as an emergency medical technician, was shot multiple times during the raid. The warrant for the raid was later found to be flawed. U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings moved the trial back about two months to Oct. 30, after Hankison's lawyers asked for more time to process massive amounts of evidence turned over by federal prosecutors.
- [Ex-officer's trial date postponed in Breonna Taylor case - WHAS11](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/ex-officers-trial-date-postponed-in-breonna-taylor-case-whas11/) - Prosecutors are trying for a second time to convict Brett Hankison for his actions during the 2020 search warrant raid. LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The large volume of evidence collected in the Breonna Taylor case prompted a judge on Wednesday to push back the trial date for a former Kentucky police officer who fired blindly into Taylor's apartment during the deadly no-knock raid on her apartment in 2020. It will be the second attempt by prosecutors to convict Brett Hankison for his actions on the night Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was shot to death by police. Attorneys will meet to discuss the case at a status conference in a Louisville federal courtroom Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings moved the trial back about two months to Oct. 30, after Hankison's lawyers asked for more time to process massive amounts of evidence turned over by federal prosecutors. Hankison was indicted by the U.S. Justice Department last year along with three other officers, one of whom has pleaded guilty to helping falsify the warrant used to enter Taylor's apartment on March 13, 2020. Taylor was killed in her hallway after officers broke down the door and Taylor's boyfriend fired a shot that struck a police sergeant. Taylor's killing along with George Floyd's death at the hands of Minnesota police in 2020 ignited protests that summer around the country over racial injustice. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the federal indictments in the Taylor case in August, remarking that Taylor "should be alive today." Hankison is the only officer who fired shots during the raid who has been charged in any court. Prosecutors determined that two other officers who fired and struck Taylor were justified in shooting back after Taylor's boyfriend fired at them. [embedded content] Hankison, 46, was acquitted in Former detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sgt. Kyle Meany March of charges brought by state prosecutors for endangering Taylor's next-door neighbors with shots he fired into Taylor's apartment that went through her walls. Hankison retreated from the open doorway and fired 10 bullets into a sliding door and window on the side of Taylor's apartment. The more recent federal charges accuse him of endangering neighbors along with Taylor and her boyfriend. Hankison's trial is set for Aug. 21 in Louisville before U.S. District Judge Rebecca Jennings Grady. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted. Another former officer, Kelly Goodlett, has already pleaded guilty to a federal charge, and is expected to testify in the cases against two more officers who were involved in crafting the Taylor warrant. Former detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sgt. Kyle Meany are charged with conspiring to deprive Taylor of her civil rights. Jaynes and Meany are set to be tried together on Oct. 25. Goodlett's guilty plea was moved from last year to Dec. 13, presumably after Jaynes and Meany's cases are finished. Make it easy to keep up-to-date with more stories like this. Download the WHAS11 News app now. For Apple or Android users. Have a news tip? Email assign@whas11.com, visit our Facebook page or Twitter feed.
- [Ex-officer's trial date postponed in Breonna Taylor case - WTOP News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/ex-officers-trial-date-postponed-in-breonna-taylor-case-wtop-news/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The large volume of evidence collected in the Breonna Taylor case prompted a judge on Wednesday to push back the trial date for a former Kentucky police officer who fired blindly into Taylor’s apartment during the deadly no-knock raid on her apartment in 2020. The trial will mark a second attempt by prosecutors to convict Brett Hankison for his actions on the night Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was shot to death by police in Louisville. Taylor, who worked as an emergency medical technician, was shot multiple times during the raid. The warrant for the raid was later found to be flawed. U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings moved the trial back about two months to Oct. 30, after Hankison’s lawyers asked for more time to process massive amounts of evidence turned over by federal prosecutors. Hankison was indicted by the U.S. Justice Department last year along with three other officers, one of whom has pleaded guilty to helping falsify the warrant used to enter Taylor’s apartment on March 13, 2020. Taylor was killed in her hallway after officers broke down the door and Taylor’s boyfriend fired a shot that struck a police sergeant. None of Hankison’s shots hit Taylor. Her killing along with George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minnesota police in 2020 ignited protests that summer around the country over racial injustice. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the federal indictments in the Taylor case in August, remarking that Taylor “should be alive today.” Hankison is the only officer who fired shots during the raid who has been charged in any court. Prosecutors determined that two other officers who fired and struck Taylor were justified in shooting back after Taylor’s boyfriend fired at them. Hankison attorney Jack Byrd also told Jennings Wednesday that his team needs time to meet with use-of-force and crime scene experts to go over evidence. Hankison, 46, was acquitted in March of charges brought by state prosecutors for endangering Taylor’s next-door neighbors with shots he fired into Taylor’s apartment that went through her walls. Hankison retreated from the open doorway and fired 10 bullets into a sliding door and window on the side of Taylor’s apartment. The more recent federal charges accuse him of endangering neighbors along with Taylor and her boyfriend. Another former officer, Kelly Goodlett, has pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge, and is expected to testify in the cases against two more officers who were involved in crafting the Taylor warrant. Former detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sgt. Kyle Meany are charged with conspiring to deprive Taylor of her civil rights. Jaynes and Meany are set to be tried together on Oct. 25. Goodlett’s guilty plea was moved from last year to Dec. 13, presumably after Jaynes and Meany’s cases are finished. Copyright © 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.
- [Trial for former LMPD officer charged in Breonna Taylor raid delayed | News - wdrb.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/trial-for-former-lmpd-officer-charged-in-breonna-taylor-raid-delayed-news-wdrb-com/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The scheduled August trial of a former Louisville police officer charged with federal crimes in connection with the fatal raid on Breonna Taylor's home in 2020 has been delayed until Oct. 30.An attorney for Brett Hankison told U.S. District Court Judge Regina Edwards on Wednesday that prosecutors had turned over an "immense volume" of evidence and it would be "practically impossible" for the defense to be ready by this summer.Attorney Jack Byrd said prosecutors have turned over more than 1 million items of evidence."Obviously, it’s going to take awhile to go through that amount" and obtain the necessary experts and witnesses, Bryd said during a pre-trial conference hearing.Byrd suggested a trial date for spring 2024, but the prosecution objected, arguing the defense now has all of the evidence and a more modest delay should work.Edwards set the new trial date for Oct. 30. It is expected to last three weeks, with prosecutors saying they will use about two of those weeks to put on their case.Hankison is due back in federal court on May 17 for a status conference.Hankison was indicted in August on two charges of deprivation of rights for firing into a bedroom window in Taylor's apartment that was covered with blinds and a blackout curtain after "there was no longer a lawful objective justifying the use of deadly force," according to the indictment.He also faces charges for shooting through a wall of Taylor's apartment and into a neighboring unit, endangering three people, including a then-3-year-old boy.In a similar case, a jury in a state criminal case found Hankison not guilty on three counts of wanton endangerment last March stemming from the botched raid of Taylor's home.Three other former officers have also been federally charged for their involvement in the Taylor case: Kyle Meany, Kelly Goodlett and Joshua Jaynes.Jaynes, Meany and Hankison face a maximum sentence of life in prison. Goodlett has already pleaded guilty to conspiracy for knowingly including false information in the search warrant affidavit and then conspiring with Jaynes to cover it up.U.S. attorneys had already filed more than 300,000 pages of documents, dozens of video recordings and data from cellphones and GPS trackers, according to court documents. The prosecution told the judge Thursday that three more rounds of evidence have been provided more recently. Meany and Jaynes have hearings scheduled for next week. The two do not currently have trial dates scheduled. The officers face charges that include civil rights offenses, unlawful conspiracies, unconstitutional use of force and obstruction.The charges resulted from a federal investigation that, in part, looked at how police obtained the search warrant for Taylor's apartment, something a prior state investigation by Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron's office did not pursue. Cameron has said that aspect was part of the Justice Department's work.Jaynes and Meany are accused of drafting and approving "what they knew was a false affidavit to support a search warrant for Ms. Taylor's home," Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kristen Clarke has said. "That false affidavit set in motion events that led to Ms. Taylor's death when other LMPD officers executed that warrant."Taylor was inside the apartment with her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, when police burst in early in the morning on March 13, 2020.Police were looking for money or drugs involving Jamarcus Glover, who was at the center of a narcotics probe by Louisville police. The warrant for Taylor's home was executed around the same time that police served other warrants on suspected drug houses in the city's west end — some 10 miles away.LMPD has claimed that while Jaynes obtained a "no-knock" warrant, police repeatedly knocked on Taylor's door and announced themselves before knocking it in.Walker has said he never heard police announce themselves and believed the couple was being robbed. He fired a shot, hitting former officer John Mattingly in the leg.Police responded with 32 shots, hitting Taylor six times. The 26-year-old died at the scene.No drugs were found in her home.The former detectives who fired the shots that struck Taylor — Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove — were not charged because they didn't know about the false information in the search warrant.Copyright 2023 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
- [Former LMPD officer charged in death of Breonna Taylor has trial delayed - WLKY](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/former-lmpd-officer-charged-in-death-of-breonna-taylor-has-trial-delayed-wlky/) - ALSO NEW TONIGHT, THE TRIAL DATE WAS PUSHED BACK FOR ONE OF THE FORMER LAPD DETECTIVES CHARGED IN CONNECTION WITH THE DEATH OF BREONNA TAYLOR. BRETT HANKISON IS ACCUSED OF USING EXCESSIVE FORCE WHEN HE FIRED INTO TAYLOR’S APARTMENT ON THE NIGHT OF THE DEADLY RAID IN 2020. TODAY, IN COURT, THE DEFENSE ASKED TO DELAY THE TRIAL BECAUSE OF ALL THE EVIDENCE TO GO THROUGH. THE JUDGE AGREED AND MOVED IT FROM AUGUST UNTIL OCTOBER. TH
- [Ex-officer's trial date postponed in Breonna Taylor case - ABC News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/ex-officers-trial-date-postponed-in-breonna-taylor-case-abc-news/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- The large volume of evidence collected in the Breonna Taylor case prompted a judge on Wednesday to push back the trial date for a former Kentucky police officer who fired blindly into Taylor's apartment during the deadly no-knock raid on her apartment in 2020.The trial will mark a second attempt by prosecutors to convict Brett Hankison for his actions on the night Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was shot to death by police in Louisville. Taylor, who worked as an emergency medical technician, was shot multiple times during the raid. The warrant for the raid was later found to be flawed.U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings moved the trial back about two months to Oct. 30, after Hankison's lawyers asked for more time to process massive amounts of evidence turned over by federal prosecutors.Hankison was indicted by the U.S. Justice Department last year along with three other officers, one of whom has pleaded guilty to helping falsify the warrant used to enter Taylor's apartment on March 13, 2020. Taylor was killed in her hallway after officers broke down the door and Taylor's boyfriend fired a shot that struck a police sergeant. None of Hankison's shots hit Taylor.Her killing along with George Floyd's death at the hands of Minnesota police in 2020 ignited protests that summer around the country over racial injustice. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the federal indictments in the Taylor case in August, remarking that Taylor “should be alive today.”Hankison is the only officer who fired shots during the raid who has been charged in any court. Prosecutors determined that two other officers who fired and struck Taylor were justified in shooting back after Taylor's boyfriend fired at them. Hankison attorney Jack Byrd also told Jennings Wednesday that his team needs time to meet with use-of-force and crime scene experts to go over evidence.Hankison, 46, was acquitted in March of charges brought by state prosecutors for endangering Taylor's next-door neighbors with shots he fired into Taylor's apartment that went through her walls. Hankison retreated from the open doorway and fired 10 bullets into a sliding door and window on the side of Taylor’s apartment. The more recent federal charges accuse him of endangering neighbors along with Taylor and her boyfriend. Another former officer, Kelly Goodlett, has pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge, and is expected to testify in the cases against two more officers who were involved in crafting the Taylor warrant. Former detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sgt. Kyle Meany are charged with conspiring to deprive Taylor of her civil rights. Jaynes and Meany are set to be tried together on Oct. 25.Goodlett's guilty plea was moved from last year to Dec. 13, presumably after Jaynes and Meany's cases are finished.
- [Feds preparing for trials in Breonna Taylor police killing - FOX21 News Colorado](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/feds-preparing-for-trials-in-breonna-taylor-police-killing-fox21-news-colorado/) - Feds preparing for trials in Breonna Taylor police killing – FOX21 News Colorado Skip to content ✕ × Close Ad
- [Ex-officer's trial date postponed in Breonna Taylor case | FOX 28 Spokane](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/ex-officers-trial-date-postponed-in-breonna-taylor-case-fox-28-spokane/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The large volume of evidence collected in the Breonna Taylor case prompted a judge to push back the trial date for a former Kentucky police officer who fired into Taylor’s apartment during a deadly no-knock raid in 2020. Brett Hankison’s federal court trial will be a second attempt by prosecutors to convict Hankison for endangering Taylor and her next-door neighbors. U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings moved Hankison’s trial back about two months to Oct. 30. Hankison’s attorneys said they need more time to process all the evidence. Hankison was indicted on federal charges in August. FOX28 Spokane©
- [Breonna Taylor case: Brett Hankison federal civil rights trial - Courier-Journal](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/breonna-taylor-case-brett-hankison-federal-civil-rights-trial-courier-journal/) - The trial of ex-Louisville police Detective Brett Hankison on charges that he violated the civil rights of Breonna Taylor and four others the night when she was killed by another officer during a raid gone bad has been pushed back two additional months.Expected to last three weeks, the trial was to begin Aug. 21, but on a defense motion, U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings Wednesday reset it for Oct. 30.Hankison appeared with new counsel − Jack Byrd of Nashville, Tennessee, and Ibrahim A. Farag of Louisville. The defense told Jennings the government has turned over more than one million pages of evidence and it couldn't process them by August.More:Government demands defense keep some evidence secret in Breonna Taylor civil rights trialsByrd asked Jennings to postpone it until next spring but she said that was too far out.Hankison is charged with using excessive force by firing blindly into Taylor’s apartment on March 13, 2020, through a sliding glass door and a window covered by curtains. He was acquitted on state charges of wanton endangerment but charged federally last August.He is accused of violating the civil rights of Taylor, her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker along with three neighbors, including a pregnant woman and 5-year-old child.What you should know:Which officers face federal charges in the Breonna Taylor caseMore:Ex-LMPD detective has wanton endangerment record expunged in Breonna Taylor caseHankison was fired in 2020 when then-interim Louisville Metro Police Chief Robert Schroeder called the rounds he fired "a shock to the conscience." Hankison testified in Jefferson Circuit Court he was trying to protect two fellow detectives at the apartment’s front door, including Sgt. John Mattingly, who was shot in the leg by Walker who has said he thought the couple was being robbed. Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove returned fire and a bullet from Cosgrove’s gun hit Taylor, killing her.Also charged with federal civil rights charges were Sgt. Kyle Meany and Detectives Joshua Jaynes and Kelly Goodlett, for allegedly fabricating a warrant for the search of Taylor's apartment and other offensesGoodlett pleaded guilty and resigned while Meany, Jaynes and Hankison were fired. Goodlett is expected to testify for the government against her former colleagues.No date has been set yet for their trial but U.S. Senior Judge Charles R. Simpson III has set a pretrial conference for Tuesday.Breonna Taylor shooting: An 11-month timeline shows how her death changed Louisville
- [Luzerne County, PA plagued by election issues - Spotlight PA](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/luzerne-county-pa-plagued-by-election-issues-spotlight-pa/) - This article is made possible through Spotlight PA’s collaboration with Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting. This article is available for reprint under the terms of Votebeat’s republishing policy.She may not have known it, but on Nov. 8, Beth Gilbert McBride was experiencing a Luzerne County election tradition. Or perhaps a curse.Gilbert McBride, who had become acting director of elections just three months earlier, started hearing a trickle of reports in the morning about precincts running out of ballot paper. As the day dragged on, dozens of precincts would report a shortage. Some said they had to turn voters away for lack of paper to use in Luzerne’s ballot-on-demand printers.Gilbert McBride and her election staff tried to keep track of the affected locations on a movable whiteboard as she rushed around the office trying to deal with the crisis. The county scrambled to order paper from a supplier, and reams piled up next to the office Pepsi machine, awaiting delivery to the triaged list of 44 precincts. As the situation worsened, a local judge stepped in to order that polls stay open two hours late.By the end of the day, Luzerne would be singled out by the Department of State as the only county with significant voting problems during an otherwise smooth midterm Election Day for Pennsylvania.The exact cause of the paper shortage has yet to be disclosed. The local district attorney is investigating but has yet to release his findings, and neither Gilbert McBride nor the County Board of Elections has offered detailed explanations to the many residents who have demanded answers.Gilbert McBride declined to be interviewed for this story.What is clear is that the incident was not Luzerne’s first problem during an election and Gilbert McBride is not the first election director to oversee voting there with no prior experience.Luzerne has cycled through election directors and other staff over the past several years, leading to an immense loss of institutional knowledge and making it an outlier even in an industry that has seen accelerating turnover.This loss of knowledge, say current and former county officials and longtime election observers, resulted in another Luzerne election debacle. The deeper cause, they tell Votebeat and Spotlight PA, is the county’s unique government structure, low pay, and the stress on election workers.“A lot of these [problems] are attributable to human error — in fact all these things in one form or another,” said Bob Morgan, who served as election director for eight months in 2021. “But part of it is exacerbated by people just leaving and the next person just kind has to figure things out by themselves and there is no formal training program.”Gilbert McBride, who is also a member of Wilkes-Barre City Council, was brand new to the election office when she started as deputy director in July. One month later, her boss was out the door, having served only eight months himself. With the midterms just around the corner, Gilbert McBride was temporarily promoted.Last week, however, the County Council announced one change it hopes will put county elections back on track: another new elections director, with Gilbert McBride returning to the deputy position.Turnover and trip-upsLuzerne’s high turnover in elections leadership began in 2019 when Marisa Crispell, who had previously worked for the department and had experience running elections elsewhere, resigned amid ethics questions. Crispell did not return a call seeking comment.Since then, the county has had a succession of four elections directors, plus acting director Gilbert McBride. Since the August 2020 resignation of longtime deputy director Mary-Beth Steininger, the county has also had three deputy directors.One of those deputies, Gilbert McBride’s immediate predecessor, was Eryn Harvey, who resigned after less than a year to run unsuccessfully for state representative — and now is Luzerne’s new hire for the top elections job. Harvey did not respond to a request for comment.An analysis of data provided by the county shows the precipitous loss of experience. During the 2016 through 2019 elections, staff in the department had a median of 17 to 22 years of service. That number fell to roughly one year of median experience in 2020 and in 2021, when the November election was administered without a formal director in place.The November midterm election was run by a staff with a median of 1.5 years experience.On top of the turnover in the elections department itself, the county has also gone through a number of county managers, who help oversee the department. The latest county manager, Randy Robertson, resigned in November after just six months on the job.The turnover has led to problems.During the 2020 election, a worker in Luzerne improperly threw out nine ballots, an incident then-President Donald Trump seized upon to sow doubt in mail voting. The U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania later said there was no criminal intent, and the Pennsylvania Department of State said the mistake was due to poor training.The director had less than a year of experience at the time.Then, during the May 2021 primary, Republican ballots displayed on voting machine screens were mistakenly labeled as Democratic. A new director and deputy director had just been hired.In the November election that year, which was run without a director in place, there were errors in printed ballots that had not been caught, two flash drives with votes on them were not uploaded in a timely manner, and mail ballots were sent out very late.In April 2022, more than 300 ballots were delivered late during a special election, though the Department of State took the blame for that error.Robertson did not return a call seeking comment, but in a December interview with a local newspaper he repeated his desire for the county to study the “root cause” of election office turnover, which he suggested in July could be due to pay.Luzerne’s last four directors have been paid $64,500, which is the lowest salary compared to peers in similarly sized counties in the U.S., according to a 2022 survey of local elections officials by Democracy Fund and the Elections and Voting Information Center at Reed College.Robertson also noted that the home rule structure has caused issues.Fred Adams / For Spotlight PABob Morgan served as election director for eight months in 2021.A tug-of-war over electionsIn most Pennsylvania counties, elected commissioners also sit on county election boards that set rules for elections, such as whether to use drop boxes. But Luzerne is different.In 2010, the county opted for a form of government few other counties have chosen, home rule. The option allows counties to write their own charter instead of following the state’s established rules for how counties are to organize their government.This can mean elections are overseen by two masters. One is the county board of elections, whose four members — always two Democrats and two Republicans — are appointed by the county council. Those four members then elect a fifth resident as chair.But it is the county council which controls the election department’s budget and hires the county manager, who hires and supervises the election director.This has often led to disputes between the two bodies, including a fracas over control in 2021, when two Republican election board members attempted to elect a chairman who was also a Republican county council member. The county’s charter expressly prohibits elected county officials from serving on the elections board, and the attempt resulted in the two board members being removed.More recently, the council proposed prohibiting county employees or funds from being used to place drop boxes in an effort to stop their use, despite the elections board’s decision to continue using drop boxes.“The difficulty [election directors in Luzerne] have is the council thinks you should take your direction from them, and the election board thinks you should take your direction from them, and you’re pretty much certain to make everyone unhappy at some point,” said Morgan, the former election director.Morgan said he thinks council members feel “they get the blame” when things go wrong and so they face pressure to act, even though they don’t have the same authority their colleagues in non-home rule counties might have.Election directors in Luzerne have sometimes had a very contentious relationship with members of the bodies overseeing them. Shelby Watchilla, a former elections director who oversaw the 2020 election and resigned shortly after it, sued the county and a council member for defamation over comments they made about her handling of the department. The case is ongoing, and the council member at the heart of the dispute resigned in January 2022 to take office as county controller.“Number one, the pay is not worth what is demanded [and] I think that it is a hostile work environment,” said Alisha Hoffman-Mirilovich, executive director of the local progressive group Action Together NEPA.‘Continual negative feedback loop’Denise Williams, a Democrat who has been chair of the elections board since 2021, agreed that the high turnover has led to election problems, but disagreed that the county’s structure is to blame.Moving election oversight in 2010 from elected officials into the hands of volunteer, non-elected citizens, unlike in other counties, was the right move, she said. However, there could be better coordination between the different entities on issues like equipment purchases, she said.Asked whether this structure is causing more stress on the directors and discouraging experienced election workers from applying, Williams said elections everywhere are now under a microscope, and it is making the job more stressful.“Is it specific to Luzerne County because of the dynamic of the elections? I don’t know — that could be a part of it,” she said. “There’s been a high turnover rate and a loss of a lot of knowledge, and when you come in and you are new and the people above you are new, that is very, very challenging.”But, she added, “that’s the setup of the government, so anyone who applies knows what they’re getting into.”John Lombardo, vice chair of the Luzerne County Council, also disagreed that the home rule charter was a cause of turnover but acknowledged that turnover needs to be addressed.“I think [the cause of the turnover is] definitely because the culture in that department has become unstable, and once that happens, it is hard to right that ship,” he said. “It just continually creates this negative feedback loop.”Lombardo, a Republican, said the council needs to have more of a say in overseeing the elections since they provided funding. He favors an amendment to the county charter to allow a council member to serve as board chair, which isn’t currently allowed in Luzerne. These types of appointments have not been an issue in non-home rule counties, where commissioners serve on the board, he said.Fred Adams / For Spotlight PABob Morgan said his version of onboarding was his boss handing him a copy of the ballot for the upcoming election and saying, “Proof this.”Citizens have hard time trusting local governmentConservative activists allege that the county’s history with corruption has made it difficult for residents to trust local officials’ explanations for recent election errors.Ben Herring, an activist with a local right-wing group the Citizens Advisory of Pennsylvania — which formed in 2021 to influence school board elections and “keep Critical Race Theory out of schools” — specifically mentioned one of the state’s most infamous scandals, known as “Kids for Cash,” in which two Luzerne County judges in 2008 took kickbacks from child detention centers for sentencing children to those centers.The incident made Luzerne synonymous with corruption for some, and residents like Herring have not forgotten. Now some residents are suspicious when things go wrong with the county’s elections, he said.“I think if we didn’t have this history we would sway more toward this being a mistake,” he said of the Election Day paper shortage. But without answers to their questions, he said, they’re forced to wonder, “Is this some underground thing that we don’t know about or are we overthinking it?”Herring said he believed the issues with the department go deeper than a lack of institutional knowledge, insisting there must be some type of manual or written guidance for elections’ employees to follow.Morgan said there isn’t any such manual, but residents shouldn’t be surprised that one doesn’t exist. Morgan likened the extra work of creating a manual to firemen shining the firetruck when there are fires going on, saying that there are more urgent things to be done in administering elections.His version of onboarding was his boss handing him a copy of the ballot for the upcoming election and saying, “Proof this.” Similarly, Morgan left little in the way of instructions for his successor, Michael Susek, the director who left when Gilbert McBride was barely 30 days into her job as deputy.For his part, Morgan said he understands why “Kids for Cash” bred distrust. But what, he asked, could possibly be gained from a paper shortage? And how would such a conspiracy be organized? Residents need to understand that the explanations are more mundane than they imagine, he said.While working for a member of Congress, Morgan often heard from constituents who thought the federal government was conspiring against them when errors with their paperwork occurred. It often resulted from misunderstanding how government works — and an almost comical overestimation of government’s ability to orchestrate complicated efforts.“I’d say, ‘Let me remind you of something, we are required by law to conspire to deliver the mail, and how are we doing?’ " he said.Of course, so far, no one has explained exactly what led to the paper shortages.District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce told Votebeat and Spotlight PA that the “bulk of the legwork” of his investigation into the paper shortage had been completed and he expected to have a report soon, though he did not offer a timeframe. When asked, he said it “will be determined by the results” of the investigation whether the cause of the paper shortage was human error.Now that the county has hired a new election director, Lombardo would like to bring in an outside consultant, perhaps from the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania, to study the department.“Hopefully,” he said, “that will give us the secret sauce to make changes and have progress there.”Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.WHILE YOU’RE HERE… If you learned something from this story, pay it forward and become a member of Spotlight PA so someone else can in the future at spotlightpa.org/donate. Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results.
- [Pence Vows to Resist Subpoena to US Supreme Court If Necessary - Bloomberg Law News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/pence-vows-to-resist-subpoena-to-us-supreme-court-if-necessary-bloomberg-law-news/) - US Law Week
- [Kansas GOP selects 2020 election conspiracy theorist to serve as chairman - KAKE](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/kansas-gop-selects-2020-election-conspiracy-theorist-to-serve-as-chairman-kake/) - The contest over who would serve in the party’s top administrative job offered a fresh illustration of GOP infighting despite calls by Brown and Helen Van Etten to seek unity if chosen to replace chairman Mike Kuckelman, an attorney who served four years as chairman. In advance of the party meeting, Kuckelman accused Brown of being insufficiently conservative on abortion and gun rights. During his nomination speech, Brown fired back by declaring himself “pro-life” and “pro-2A.” Van Etten’s base in the 2nd and 4th congressional districts was pitted against dominance of Brown in the 3rd District in the Kansas City area. In a packed convention hall, it took a minimum of 90 votes from the 179 credentialed delegates to prevail. Hand counting of ballots settled the issue: Brown, 90; Van Etten, 88. One ballot was declared “spoiled,” because someone apparently voted for both nominees. Brown, an Overland Park construction contractor, lost a reelection campaign for Johnson County Commission in 2020 and fell short in the Republican primary for Kansas secretary of state in 2022. He rebounded by surviving one of the closest races for party chairman in state history. “As Republicans,” Brown said, “we are not the party of equity and entitlement. We are the party of excellence and hard work.” He urged GOP delegates to get behind his candidacy and work to overhaul the organization to make Republicans more competitive, especially in the 3rd District. His quest is to end the career of Democratic U.S. Rep. Sharice Davis, who is serving her third term representing the Kansas City area. He also wants to flip the governor’s office in 2026 after back-to-back victories by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly over Republicans Kris Kobach and Derek Schmidt. “We simply cannot continue to keep doing the same things over and over and believe that somehow it’s going to turn out differently,” Brown said. “We’re going to get the governor’s seat back. We’re going to get CD3 back. We’re going to get control of this mess.” Lynn Rogers, a former Democratic lieutenant governor and state treasurer, said election of Brown meant the Kansas GOP “made their bed and must lie down in the conspiracy-laden nightmare of their own making.” Brown has called for RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel to resign. In public appearances, Brown said there shouldn’t be room in the state’s Republican Party for RINOSs or what he described as “milquetoast, Republican-in-name-only, lousy Republicans.” He also has a record of promoting election conspiracy theories alleging President Donald Trump had reelection stolen from him in 2020 because of fraudulent activity. After Brown took his position on the stage, GOP delegates debated but tabled a resolution calling for impeachment of President Joe Biden. The request centered on concern about Biden’s purported approval of social media companies censoring commentary by conservatives about COVID-19 and vaccines to counter the pandemic. Brown, who was endorsed by former U.S. Rep. Tim Huelskamp, said the Kansas GOP would be a fundraising machine, become more unified and develop databases to help candidates win. He would expand the state party’s role in elections by reaching down to local school board races and city council campaigns. It was essential to expand the Republican supermajorities in the Kansas House and Kansas Senate, he said. Brown was nominated for chairman by Calvin Hayden, the Johnson County sheriff. Hayden complained that he’d never received financial support from the state party in his campaigns for sheriff. “That can’t happen,” Hayden said. “We need to help our people at the grassroots level. We need to fight. We need to make sure that we get people with conservative values.”
- [Pence to fight special counsel subpoena on 2020 election - Alabama Daily News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/pence-to-fight-special-counsel-subpoena-on-2020-election-alabama-daily-news/) - WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Vice President Mike Pence is planning to fight a subpoena by the special counsel overseeing investigations into efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to people familiar with his thinking. Pence and his attorneys are planning to cite constitutional grounds as they prepare to resist special counsel Jack Smith’s efforts to compel his testimony before a grand jury. They argue that because Pence was serving in his role as president of the Senate on Jan. 6, 2021 as he presided over a joint session of Congress to certify the election results, he is protected from being forced to address his actions under the Constitution’s “speech-or-debate” clause that shields members of Congress. “I think he views it as essential protection of his Constitutional role,” said Marc Short, a close adviser to Pence who served as his White House chief of staff. Short compared Pence’s position to the one he took on Jan. 6 when he refused to go along with Trump’s unconstitutional scheme to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as well as Pence’s rejection of using the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office in the aftermath. “The vice president of the United State is the president of the Senate and the fact is the functions of Jan. 6 were specific to that role,” he said of Pence, who has been laying the groundwork for a likely presidential campaign that would put him in direct competition against his former boss. Whether Pence’s arguments will succeed in limiting or altogether avoiding grand jury testimony is unclear, but the Justice Department is expected to oppose those efforts and to make the case that the former vice president’s cooperation is essential for a probe focused on Trump’s actions. The decision to try to fight the subpoena, which was first reported by Politico, marks a change in posture from Pence, who has cooperated with the Justice Department as it investigates how documents with classified markings ended up at his Indiana home after the end of the Trump administration. He permitted the FBI to search the property last week. Even if his objection is ultimately rebuffed from the courts, an antagonistic posture could allow Pence to argue that he tried to fight the Justice Department — a potentially useful position in a GOP primary, as many in the Republican base have grown distrustful of federal law enforcement, in part due to Trump’s drumbeat of criticism. And it could delay the special counsel probe, which Smith is working to rapidly advance. Pence has spoken extensively about Trump’s pressure campaign urging him to reject President Joe Biden’s victory in the days leading up to Jan. 6, including in his book, “So Help Me God.” Pence, as vice president, had a ceremonial role overseeing the counting of the Electoral College vote, but did not have the power to impact the results. Pence’s decision to resist the subpoena also came after extensive back-and-forth between his lawyers and the special counsel’s office, according to a person familiar with the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations. The Justice Department declined to comment Tuesday on Pence’s plans. Pence is expected to address the issue in more detail during a visit to Iowa Wednesday as he inches closer to a likely presidential run. Richard Levy, a constitutional law professor at the University of Kansas, said it is true that the vice president is in a unique position as the technical presiding officer of the Senate, making the officeholder in some respects a member of the chamber. But he said that not everything a member does is protected by the speech-or-debate clause and it is debatable whether the vice president’s role in certifying the election, which involves a mix of constitutional and senatorial functions, would be protected. In any event, Pence’s argument would likely serve to limit the scope of his testimony rather than to block it altogether, he said. “I don’t think the speech or debate clause would be a basis for quashing the subpoena altogether. It would be a basis for objecting to particular questions,” he said. The subpoena has been an aggressive step from Smith as he continues to investigate efforts by Trump and his allies to remain in power, including the storming of the Capitol building on Jan. 6. Trump supporters, driven by the lie that the election was stolen, brutally pushed past the police and smashed through the windows and doors while Pence was presiding over the certification of Biden’s victory. The vice president was steered to safety with his staff and family as some in the mob chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!” While the mob was in the Capitol, Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.” A House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack recommended that the Justice Department bring criminal charges against Trump and others over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
- [What Nikki Haley Can Teach Us About the Republican Party - The New York Times](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/what-nikki-haley-can-teach-us-about-the-republican-party-the-new-york-times/) - A presidential bid and a measure of how far Reaganism has fallen.Nikki Haley during the Republican National Convention in 2020. She has supported and criticized Donald J. Trump. Pete Marovich for The New York TimesRonald Reagan’s brand of neoconservative foreign policy, free-market economics and social conservatism dominated the Republican Party for nearly 40 years.Then came Donald J. Trump.Today, everyone would agree that Reagan-era conservatism is no longer the dominant force in the Republican Party. But what force Reaganism does possess, if any, is a much more open question.Is it as spent as the ideas of earlier conservative leaders like Barry Goldwater or Robert Taft? Or is it an important if diminished faction that might be poised to resurrect itself with the former president now diminished himself?Nikki Haley, who announced her presidential bid on Tuesday, is one of several Republicans who will help test whether a revitalized Reaganism still has a pulse in today’s Republican Party. Of all the candidates, she might be the likeliest to run back the Gipper’s Greatest Hits and, in doing so, teach us a thing or two about whether they still resonate among today’s Republican voters.Ms. Haley, a former Rubio ’16 supporter and the child of Indian immigrants, is a darling of neoconservatives and a defender of Reagan’s continued relevance. Her announcement featured many of the old Reagan-Bush classics, if slightly remixed for today’s challenges. She pointed out she had “seen evil” on the world stage and supported tax cuts, and she defended America as the “freest and greatest” country in the world.Which Republicans Are Eyeing the 2024 Presidential Election?Card 1 of 6The G.O.P. primary begins.
- [Every Arizona voter would be purged every decade under GOP proposal](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/every-arizona-voter-would-be-purged-every-decade-under-gop-proposal/) - Every Arizona voter would be purged from the rolls once a decade and have to re-register under a proposal Republicans in the state Senate advanced this week. The move not only flies in the face of democracy, but it is a blatant violation of federal law, critics told GOP state senators, some of whom agreed but still ignored their pleadings. GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX SUBSCRIBE The measure from Sun City Republican Sen. Frank Carroll, Senate Bill 1566, would cancel every voter registration in the Grand Canyon State on April 2 of 2031 and every 10 years after that, forcing all voters to re-register each decade. Jen Marson, executive director of the Arizona Association of Counties, told the Senate Elections Committee on Monday that her organization opposes the bill simply because it violates the National Voter Registration Act, which limits the reasons for which a person can be removed from a state’s voter rolls to a voter’s death, if they move outside of the jurisdiction or if the voter requests to be removed. That federal law also specifies that a voter must be informed prior to being removed from the voter rolls, not afterward, as is outlined in the proposed law. Carroll didn’t attend the meeting to explain or defend his bill, but Senate Majority Leader Sonny Borrelli, R-Lake Havasu City, said that the voter rolls needed to be cleaned up, repeating the debunked claim that workers during Senate’s partisan review of the 2020 election found numerous instances of ballots cast in the name of voters who died prior to the election. Last August, then-Attorney General Mark Brnovich informed the Senate in a letter that, out of 282 allegations of deceased voters casting a ballot in the 2020 general election, only one claim was found to be valid. This is probably the most insulting bill we’ve entertained this session. – Sen. Juan Mendez, D-Tempe Ben Scheel, executive director of the left-leaning nonprofit Opportunity Arizona, called the proposal “illegal and entirely unworkable” for county election departments, which would collectively have to re-register millions of voters every 10 years. As of January, there were nearly 4.2 million registered voters in Arizona. “This bill flies in the face of American democracy by simply removing voters for no stated reason,” Scheel said. Other Republicans on the Elections Committee, including Sens. John Kavanagh of Fountain Hills and Ken Bennett of Prescott, also criticized the bill, with Sen. T.J. Shope, R-Coolidge, admitting that he didn’t view the legislation as “legitimate.” But they all voted for the bill anyway, and it passed through the committee along party lines. Democratic Sen. Juan Mendez of Tempe said that cleaning up the voter rolls is not the same as kicking everyone off of them. “This is probably the most insulting bill we’ve entertained this session,” Mendez said. The measure is one in a slew of Republican-backed election reform bills that are all but certain to be met with a swift veto from Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs if they make it past the full legislature. Since the start of the legislative session last month, the Senate Election Committee, headed by prominent election conspiracy theorist Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, has invited in a parade of election-deniers and believers that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump to give presentations on their view of the failings of elections in Arizona, with a focus on Maricopa County. Many of the proposed bills the committee has forwarded so far this year aim to fix alleged issues detailed by these speakers, including unproven claims of election tampering or fraud. Another proposal that won the approval of the Senate Elections Committee on Feb. 13 was Senate Bill 1140, which would ban the state from using voting centers where anyone in a county can vote and force counties to return to a precinct voting model, where voters are required to show up at a specified voting site that serves a small, set population. Supporters say doing so would get rid of issues with lines and problems with ballot-on-demand printers that caused uproar and delays in Maricopa County’s November election. But detractors say precinct voting is less convenient because voters are stuck with one location and can’t choose to vote near their work or school. It also leads to fewer votes being counted: Voters who show up at the wrong polling site can cast a provisional ballot, the vast majority of which end up being rejected because if a voter shows up at the wrong precinct, their vote can’t be counted. The bill would also require public schools to allow counties to set up polling places in their gymnasiums, unless they provide a written statement detailing that they don’t have enough space or believe that hosting a polling place would put student safety at risk. The committee also forwarded bills that would: Put new drafts of the Secretary of State’s elections manual before Joint Legislative Audit Committee for review Publish a list of registered voters, along with their birth year and precinct, ahead of each election, as well as a list of voters and images of all ballots after the election And push up the deadline to drop off an early ballot ahead of an election, in an effort to speed up tabulation SUPPORT NEWS YOU TRUST. DONATE
- [Bill making intimidation of election officials a felony moves to Senate floor | NM Political Report](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/bill-making-intimidation-of-election-officials-a-felony-moves-to-senate-floor-nm-political-report/) - The Senate Finance Committee approved a bill on Tuesday that makes it a fourth degree felony to intimidate election workers at all levels.SB 43 amends the state Election Code to include making intimidating election officials a fourth degree felony.The bill passed unanimously on a 7-0 vote.Voters, election watchers and election challengers are already covered by the state Election Code, SB 43 would expand that to include election administrators including poll workers.“Unfortunately, since the 2020 election, there has been a sharp uptick in threats against election administrators and we want to make sure that they have the same protections that voters do,” bill sponsor Sen. Katy Duhigg, D-Albuquerque, said.The bill now goes to the Senate floor.
- [Pence vows to fight subpoena on 2020 election as far as Supreme Court - syracuse.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/pence-vows-to-fight-subpoena-on-2020-election-as-far-as-supreme-court-syracuse-com/) - Cedar Rapids, Iowa — Former Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday that he will challenge a subpoena by the special counsel overseeing Trump investigations to compel his testimony before a grand jury — pursuing it to the Supreme Court if necessary.Special counsel Jack Smith, appointed by the Justice Department, is investigating efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Trump spent the days before Jan. 6, 2021, aggressively pressuring Pence to reject the outcome, even though Pence had no power to do so. Pence was at the U.S. Capitol presiding over a joint session of Congress as Trump’s supporters violently stormed the building that day.“Let me first be clear: I’m going to fight the Biden DOJ subpoena for me to appear before the grand jury because I believe it’s unconstitutional and it’s unprecedented,” Pence told reporters in Iowa, the state that will hold the first contest of the 2024 nominating sequence.“Never before in American history has a vice president been summoned to appear in court to testify against the president with whom they serve,” he said.Pence said he was prepared to take the case “as far as it needs to go, if needs be to the Supreme Court of the United States.”The posture marks an aggressive turn for Pence, who has been laying the groundwork for a likely presidential run. While it remains unclear whether Pence will succeed in delaying or limiting the scope of his testimony, the posture gives the former vice president a new opening to attack the Justice Department, which has become increasingly unpopular among conservatives, in part due to Trump’s constant attacks.Indeed, Pence repeatedly criticized the department Wednesday, complaining of a “two-tiered justice system that Republicans have been dealing with throughout the Biden administration.”The Associated Press previously reported that Pence was ready to contest Smith’s demand for his appearance on constitutional grounds. He argues that because he was serving in his role as president of the Senate on Jan. 6, he is protected under the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause from being forced to testify. That provision is intended to protect members of Congress from questioning about official legislative acts.A spokesman for Smith declined to comment. The Justice Department, which had earlier declined to comment on Pence’s subpoena, is expected to oppose the former vice president’s efforts and make the case that his cooperation is essential.Pence noted during an earlier stop in Minneapolis that he had written and spoken extensively about Trump’s efforts to pressure him to overturn the results of the election — something he did not have power to do — and has repeatedly denounced Trump’s efforts as “reckless” and “dangerous.”“I have nothing to hide and I’m proud of what we accomplished. But for me, this is a moment where you have to decide where you stand, and I stand on the Constitution of the United States,” he said.He added that he expects Trump to try to assert executive privilege to block his own testimony. “That’s not my fight. My fight is on the separation of powers,” Pence said.Pence made his remarks after headlining events in Minneapolis and Cedar Rapids aimed at rallying conservative parents opposed to transgender-affirming policies in public schools. The events came as a federal appeals court was expected to hear oral arguments in St. Paul, Minnesota, in a case brought last summer by a national group representing parents of students in Linn-Mar Community School District in Marion, Iowa, near Cedar Rapids.Parents Defending Education is trying to overturn a policy adopted by the school board last year allowing transgender students to request a gender support plan to begin socially transitioning at school without the permission of their parents. Pence’s advocacy group, Advancing American Freedom, has filed an amicus brief in the case, as have dozens of mostly conservative groups and several conservative states.“Across the country, parents’ rights are being trampled by a politically correct nanny state that’s ruining our schools and telling our parents that they have no role in their children’s most important decisions,” Pence said in Minneapolis, where he argued that parents must be informed of such decisions. “You do not craft a gender transition plan for my child without my knowledge or consent,” he said.Though Pence says he has yet to make a decision about 2024, he has visited leadoff Iowa several times since the 2020 election. And his Wednesday event had the look and feel of a campaign stop, held in a pizza restaurant where candidates commonly hold court with voters.Pence is hoping to draw the support of social and religious conservatives in what could be a crowded primary contest that already includes Trump and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who formally launched her campaign Wednesday.To that end, Pence’s advocacy group launched a new campaign last week on the schools issue, a flashpoint for many on the right, as Haley and other presidential prospects, including South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, prepare for their own visits to the state this month.
- [Court Lets Lawsuit Against Fox News Move Forward—Here's Where Dominion And ... - Forbes](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/court-lets-lawsuit-against-fox-news-move-forward-heres-where-dominion-and-forbes/) - ToplineVoting company Smartmatic’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News and several of its anchors can move forward, a judge ruled Tuesday, also reinstating some claims against attorney Rudy Giuliani, as Smartmatic and rival company Dominion Voting Systems pursue a dozen defamation lawsuits over baseless election fraud claims about their voting machines. Key Facts Fox News (Smartmatic): Smartmatic sued Fox News and its anchors Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo in February 2021, alleging they “engaged in a conspiracy to spread disinformation about Smartmatic,” and after a New York state judge ruled in March that the $2.7 billion lawsuit could move forward against those defendants but not against anchor Jeanine Pirro, an appeals judge ruled Tuesday that the case can move forward against everyone named in the suit, denying Fox’s motion to dismiss. Fox News (Dominion): Dominion sued Fox News in March 2021 alleging the network had knowingly spread false news about its machines to improve failing ratings, and Delaware state Judge Eric M. Davis denied Fox’s motion to dismiss the case in December. Rudy Giuliani (Smartmatic): Smartmatic named Giuliani as a defendant in the first lawsuit it filed in April 2021; a New York state judge allowed some of its claims to move forward against him but not others before an appeals judge reinstated those claims on Tuesday, and Giuliani has countersued Smartmatic in an effort to reclaim his attorneys fees in the case. Rudy Giuliani (Dominion): A federal judge has allowed Dominion’s case against Giuliani to move forward, declining to throw out the defamation lawsuit on technical procedural grounds as Giuliani had asked after the voting machine company sued him in January 2021, alleging he “enriche[d] himself by falsely claiming that Dominion fixed the election.” Sidney Powell (Dominion): Dominion filed its first lawsuit in January 2021 against far-right attorney Powell, who has been the most prominent person spreading fraud claims involving the companies’ voting machines, seeking $1.3 billion in damages, and U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols denied Powell’s motion to dismiss the case in August 2021. Sidney Powell (Smartmatic): Smartmatic named Powell as a defendant in a lawsuit in state court in April 2021, and while a judge ruled that case couldn’t move forward against her, the company has separately sued her in federal court, which remains pending. OANN (Dominion): U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols ruled November 7 that Dominion’s lawsuit against OANN can move forward, finding Dominion has jurisdiction to bring the case, after the voting company sued One America News Network (OANN) in August 2021, alleging the far-right network promoted fraud allegations despite knowing they were false and “​​helped create and cultivate an alternate reality where ... Dominion engaged in a colossal fraud.” OANN (Smartmatic): Smartmatic separately sued OANN in federal court in November 2021, alleging the network “reported a lie” and spread fraud claims about the company—whose machines were only used in California in 2020—knowing they were false; Nichols similarly ruled that case can move forward in June. Mike Lindell (Smartmatic): U.S. District Judge Wilhelmina Wright denied MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s motion to dismiss Smartmatic’s case against him in September, after Smartmatic sued MyPillow and Lindell in January for defamation and deceptive trade practices, alleging the CEO spread “lies” about the company and “intentionally stoked the fires of xenophobia and party-divide for the noble purpose of selling his pillows.” Mike Lindell (Dominion): Denver-based Dominion separately sued Lindell and MyPillow for defamation in federal court, which a judge allowed to move forward in August 2021, with Dominion alleging the CEO “sells the lie” about the company’s voting machines “because the lie sells pillows.” Fox Corporation (Dominion): Dominion separately sued Fox Corporation—including executives Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch—in November, alleging the Murdochs were responsible for Fox News’ false fraud claims involving Dominion machines; a judge has allowed that case to move forward, though he dismissed allegations against Fox Broadcasting Company over fraud claims made on Fox.com. Newsmax (Dominion): Dominion sued Newsmax in Delaware state court in August 2021, and Davis denied a motion to dismiss the suit in June, finding the news network likely knew its allegations against Dominion were “probably false” and its reporting may have intentionally left out evidence showing Dominion wasn’t involved with election fraud. Newsmax (Smartmatic): Smartmatic sued Newsmax in Delaware state court in November, alleging it spread false claims against the voting company, and Newsmax has countersued Smartmatic because it alleges the company is trying to censor the network’s First Amendment-protected speech. Patrick Byrne (Dominion): Dominion sued former Overstock CEO Byrne in August 2021, alleging the businessman “manufactured and promoted fake evidence to convince the world that the 2020 election had been stolen” using Dominion voting machines, and U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols denied Byrne’s motion to dismiss the case in April, ruling “a reasonable jury could find Byrne acted with actual malice” in spreading provably false assertions about Dominion. What To Watch For Dominion’s lawsuits against Powell, Lindell and Giuliani aren’t likely to go to trial until late 2023 or early 2024, based on a schedule the judge set, and the exact trial date won’t be known until at least July. Dominion’s lawsuit against Fox News will go to trial in April 2023, and Nichols set a scheduling order in Smartmatic’s OANN lawsuit suggesting it won’t go to trial until at least fall 2024. It’s still unclear when the other defamation cases will move forward to a trial. Big Number $1.6 billion. That’s approximately how much Dominion is asking for in damages against OANN, Byrne, Newsmax, Fox News and Fox Corp. Its lawsuits against Powell, Giuliani and Lindell are each seeking $1.3 billion in damages. Smartmatic’s Fox News lawsuit is seeking $2.7 billion in damages, but its OANN, Newsmax and Lindell complaints do not specify exact figures. Chief Critics The parties who have been sued have largely remained defiant, and Lindell has continued to push false claims of election fraud despite the multiple defamation suits against him. Fox News said in a statement Tuesday it believes it will prevail against Smartmatic, saying, “Freedom of the press is foundational to our democracy and must be protected, in addition to the damages claims being outrageous, unsupported, and not rooted in sound financial analysis.” Giuliani has called the lawsuit against him “another act of intimidation by the hate-filled left-wing,” and Newsmax called Dominion’s lawsuit “a clear attempt to squelch such reporting and undermine a free press.” OANN has also moved to dismiss the cases against them, and Nichols is now deliberating on whether to throw out the case. Key Background The companies’ voting machines are at the heart of a right-wing conspiracy theory alleging they were used to fraudulently flip votes from Trump to Joe Biden, which is not substantiated by evidence. Dominion says that the claims have substantially hurt its business and put its employees in danger. The voting company controls about 30% of the U.S. market, according to data cited by ProPublica in 2019—making it the second-largest business of its kind in the country—and said in its Fox News lawsuit that it has contracts with 28 states. Business analytics firm Dun & Bradstreet estimated the company’s 2021 annual revenue will be $40.15 million, though the company alleges it has lost out on state contracts over the fraud claims, including a $10 million contract in Stark County, Ohio, and a $100 million contract in Louisiana. London-based Smartmatic’s machines were only used in Los Angeles County in the 2020 election, though CEO told Antonio Mugica told Forbes the company has ambitions to expand further in the U.S. The company alleged in its complaints the fraud claims have caused Smartmatic to lose more than $2 billion in valuation since the 2020 election, going from more than $3 billion to less than $1 billion, though Forbes has independently valued Smartmatic at an estimated $730 million. Further Reading The Exclusive Inside Story Of The Fall Of Overstock’s Mad King, Patrick Byrne (Forbes) Voting Company Smartmatic Sues MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell For Defamation (Forbes) Voting Company Smartmatic Sues One America News And Newsmax For Defamation Over Election Fraud Claims (Forbes) Dominion Sues Newsmax, OANN And Ex-Overstock CEO Byrne In New Defamation Suits Over Election Conspiracy Theory (Forbes) Dominion Voting Sues Sidney Powell For Defamation Over Election Conspiracy—And Others May Be Next (Forbes) Dominion Voting Sues Rudy Giuliani For $1.3 Billion Over Election Conspiracy (Forbes) Dominion Voting Sues MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell For Defamation Over Election Conspiracy (Forbes)
- [Election deniers face a nationwide wave of pushbacks - The Washington Post](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/election-deniers-face-a-nationwide-wave-of-pushbacks-the-washington-post/) - When the new Arizona attorney general took office last month, she repurposed a unit once exclusively devoted to rooting out election fraud to focus on voting rights and ballot access.In North Carolina on Tuesday, the State Board of Elections began proceedings that could end with the removal of a county election officer who had refused to certify the 2022 results even as he acknowledged the lack of evidence of irregularities.And later this week, a group of secretaries of state will showcase a “Democracy Playbook” that includes stronger protections for election workers and penalties for those who spread misinformation.Republican election denier candidates lost key statewide races in the 2022 midterm elections, even as denier ranks swelled in Congress. (Video: JM Rieger/The Washington Post)These actions and others reflect a growing effort among state election officials, lawmakers and private-sector advocates — most of them Democrats — to push back against the wave of misinformation and mistrust of elections that sprang from former president Donald Trump’s false claim that his 2020 defeat was rigged.Since that vote more than two years ago, election administrators have regularly found themselves fending off false accusations, baseless lawsuits and violent threats. They have fielded demands that go beyond their official powers — to stop using electronic voting equipment, to hand-count all ballots, to end mail voting or to refuse to certify results. Hundreds have resigned or retired as a result of the pressure and abuse, with some states, including Colorado, reporting that a majority of their county election clerks have turned over since 2018.Election administrators and their advocates say they are motivated to take action because election denialism does not appear to be going away, even as the evidence has grown — in public polling as well as in the midterm election results — that most Americans have grown tired of it.Many of those pushing for change are Democrats emboldened by their victories against Republican election deniers in last year’s elections — yet still concerned that false fraud claims continue to dominate within GOP ranks. The unofficial start of the 2024 campaign adds to their urgency, with only a limited window to make changes before the next election cycle begins in earnest.Tracking which election deniers won, lost in the midterms“We want to protect the people who protect democracy,” said Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D), who is working with state lawmakers in Lansing to toughen penalties for threatening election officials or releasing private information about them. Benson is also drafting legislation that would make it a crime to knowingly spread misinformation about elections. Later this week, at a conference of secretaries of state in Washington, she and her counterparts from Minnesota and Arizona will promote those ideas among officials from other states.“Clearly the laws on the books are not serving as a sufficient deterrent,” Benson said in an interview.Benson was one of several statewide candidates in key battlegrounds who handily defeated election-denying nominees in November’s midterm elections. She is working with a legislature that flipped to the Democrats, improving prospects for her proposals.Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) would have a harder time ushering such laws through her state’s GOP-controlled legislature. But she did seize on an opportunity for internal reforms after replacing Republican Mark Brnovich, who commissioned an investigation into unproven claims of widespread fraud after the 2020 election. As part of that probe, the office’s election-fraud unit sought evidence from a group known for spreading misinformation.Mayes is now retooling that internal unit to fight threats against election officials and the intimidation of voters, she told The Washington Post in a recent interview. The unit will continue to investigate instances of election fraud, which she said number about half a dozen each cycle in Arizona, far fewer than Trump and his allies have claimed.“We’re going to be going back to a time when the attorney general’s office didn’t waste taxpayer dollars on chasing conspiracy theories,” Mayes said. “We’re facing a new world in which elections officials are experiencing death threats, in which voters are being intimidated by people showing up at the ballot box, at voting centers, wearing body armor and carrying guns, and in which the Republican Party is trying to undermine vote-by-mail. Those are all things that I think this unit can and should now be focused on.”Mayes said she has also talked to the Maricopa County sheriff about collaborating to protect polling places and election workers from threats after bands of activists, inspired by Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud, staked out drop boxes in 2022 to photograph and record voters dropping off ballots. She is one of several state law enforcement leaders nationally — Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) is another — who have opened investigations into the Trump campaign’s recruitment of alternate electors in the fall of 2020 to try to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.“There has to be a deterrent to this happening again,” Mayes said.Advocates say more pushback is crucial because so many leading election deniers appear undaunted by their defeats in November. Arizona’s Kari Lake, despite losing the governor’s race last year with a campaign message focused heavily on false claims of election fraud, is considering a bid for the U.S. Senate next year. In two political speeches in Iowa last week, Lake continued to full-throatedly embrace those claims.In Michigan later this week, leading election denier Matthew DePerno, who lost his bid for state attorney general last year in a landslide, is running for state GOP chairman — with Trump’s endorsement. “No one is more courageous as a defender of election integrity,” Trump told DePerno supporters at a tele-rally this week. “The fake news likes to say, ‘Oh, the election, you have to look forward, not past.’ No.”Even instances in which election deniers have become violent have failed to check the rhetoric. In New Mexico, a state legislative candidate and fervent proponent of baseless election fraud allegations who lost his own race by more than 50 points was charged with orchestrating shooting attacks at the homes of four Albuquerque Democrats who refused to entertain his demands that his defeat be reversed. After the shootings, Republicans downplayed the idea that stolen-election rhetoric had helped instigate the violence.The heightened pushback has not come only from public officials. In North Carolina, the State Board of Elections began considering removal of a local election board member after he refused to certify the November 2022 results. The proceeding originated with a complaint from the longtime leader of government watchdog Democracy North Carolina.Bob Hall sought the removal of two members of the Surry County Board of Elections who together wrote a letter questioning the legitimacy of state election law. One of them, Jerry Forestieri, also refused to join other board members in signing the county’s official results — an act the complaint said amounted to a violation of his oath of office. Forestieri did not cite fraud or irregularities in Surry County but rather his view that a court decision striking down the state’s voter ID law has enabled fraud and undercut confidence in the process.Trump won rural Surry County in 2020 with more than 75 percent of the vote. Forestieri could not be reached for comment.The new pushback campaign includes an effort to combat the misinformation that some officials say is at the root of the mistrust and threats.In Wisconsin, the state’s bipartisan elections commission last year started applying sanctions for what it deemed to be frivolous complaints. In one instance, the commission levied $2,400 in fines against a man who has made a series of false accusations against election officials.Ann Jacobs, a Democrat who sits on the commission, said she and her colleagues were willing to consider complaints from the public, even ones that sounded far-fetched. But when the volume of complaints grew, many of them from the same individuals and replete with misinformation, the commission concluded that they were being filed in bad faith.“In those situations — and it’s just been a handful — it was to send a message to the serial offenders that that sort of abuse of process isn’t going to be tolerated,” Jacobs said.Benson, Michigan’s secretary of state, acknowledged in an interview that penalties for those who spread false election claims could run counter to First Amendment protections. But she compared the legislation she is working on to laws barring deceptive marketing practices.“Individuals who intentionally spread misinformation that then leads to threats or worse targeting election officials are just as culpable and should be held culpable just as those who are actually exercising the threats themselves,” she said.Michael Siegrist (D), the township clerk in Canton, Mich., said beleaguered election officials want to see action against those spreading lies.“Someone’s going to have to bring some charges against some folks,” he said. “This notion of, ‘I’m going to come in and try to re-litigate an election afterwards in the court of public opinion,’ especially if it relates to a scheme to overturn the validity of an election — that stuff just needs to have consequences.”Isaac Arnsdorf contributed to this report.
- [SCOTUS Will Decide Whether to Take up a 2020 'Rigged Election' Case on Friday](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/scotus-will-decide-whether-to-take-up-a-2020-rigged-election-case-on-friday/) - On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) will consider for a second time whether to hear Raland J. Brunson v. Alma S. Adams, a case that alleges Congress had a duty to investigate claims of fraud and impropriety in the 2020 national election, and that member votes against doing so amounted to treason. While some of the reasoning and suggested remedies in the complaint seem hyperbolic, it is aimed at accountability for those in leadership positions who are derelict in their duty to protect the American electoral system from manipulation. On the matter of authorities taking a serious look at election fraud, we’re all well past our willingness to play Charlie Brown while Lucy holds a football for us to kick. Still, it’s intriguing that this case has made it as far as it has. Related: Here Are Over 1,400 Proven Cases of Election Fraud, and That’s Just the Beginning Only the most willfully blind can believe that the entire 2020 “most secure election ever!” was above board. The idea that an addled basement gimp racked up 81 million votes — more than any U.S. presidential candidate in history — defies belief. And the massive discrepancies and irregularities in crucial swing states have never been seriously looked into or satisfactorily explained. Yet no judge, no legislator, nor any executive agency dared instigate any serious examination of what happened. I have yet to find a graphic or phrase that better explains the frustrating problem of a disinterested law enforcement apparatus when it comes to election shenanigans than this one (source unknown): It’s difficult to get a grasp on such a slippery cycle of denial in order to force accountability, but the Brunson case may just have found a way to do it. Just The News reports: The Supreme Court is set to reconsider whether to hear a lawsuit alleging President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, former Vice President Mike Pence, 291 House members, and 94 senators violated their oaths of office by refusing to investigate evidence of fraud in the 2020 election before certifying Biden as the victor on Jan. 6, 2021, allowing for Biden and Harris to be “fraudulently” inaugurated. The plaintiff’s suggested remedy — that the named defendants are removed from office — sounds extreme at first blush. But the focus of the suit isn’t on whether or not the election actually was “rigged” or “stolen” — that’s irrelevant to the argument. Rather, the suit claims the defendants were delinquent in their duty to investigate, and have thus broken their oaths of office. Biden and Harris may or may not be in office legitimately, but Congress has no way of knowing without taking a serious look into the matter. The man whose name the suit bears, Raland J. Brunson, is one of four largely self-taught legally literate and patriotically determined brothers who have been working non-stop to address the threats to election integrity they witnessed in 2020. The brothers have a website devoted to the cause, on which they explain: Loy, Raland, Deron and Gaynor Brunson (the brothers) witnessed the 2020 election along with claims from members of congress that the election was rigged. What got their attention was when the proposition to investigate those claims was presented to Congress and put to a vote. What came as a shock to the four brothers is when they discovered that 387 members of Congress along with VP Mike Pence actually voted against the proposed investigation, thus thwarting the investigation. Whether the election was rigged or not was no longer their main concern. What now became the concern was when those members of Congress violated their sworn oath by voting to thwart the investigation. Raland J. Brunson v. Alma S. Adams is one of two cases the brothers have been simultaneously working through the courts. Through some impressive legal maneuvering, they brought Raland all the way to the Supreme Court last fall, and the case was considered in January. “The 9 Justices will meet January 6, 2023 to discuss the case and decide (by vote) if they want to move it to a hearing, where they will [officially] judge the case and decide (by vote) if defendants should be removed from office” the brothers reported. But on Jan. 9, “Without explanation, The Justices voted to not hear the case.” However, the Brunson boys had a backup plan and filed a petition asking the justices to reconsider. SCOTUS agreed to re-examine the issue and set a date for this Friday, Feb. 17. There’s no point in getting our hopes up that anything will come of the Brunson brothers’ attempts to force Congress to prioritize America’s laws and citizens’ rights, but we can always hope. And we can be cheered that these four men have honed their technique to petition the courts for relief from Big Left’s anti-American, anti-rule of law machinations. May they be a thorn in the side of America’s enemies for decades to come.
- [Meet the judge deciding the $1.6 billion defamation case against Fox News - NPR](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/meet-the-judge-deciding-the-1-6-billion-defamation-case-against-fox-news-npr/) - Enlarge this image Fox News and its parent company are being sued for defamation over false claims of election fraud following the 2020 election. Above, logos for Fox News Media's growing portfolio of brands adorn its corporate headquarters in New York City. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images The fate of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News lies, for the moment, in the hands of a plainspoken judge known for his unflinching poker face. Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis, a 12-year veteran of the state's bench and former corporate attorney, has often sought to temper emotions in the contentious proceedings between the broadcasting giant and Dominion Voting Systems, a voting-technology company. Each side repeatedly has accused the other of acting in bad faith. "If he were to be given a name in culture, it would be Cool Hand Luke," says Joseph Hurley, a criminal defense attorney based in Wilmington who has argued before Davis but has no involvement with the case. "In court, he never shows any emotion, and I mean that in a good way." Dominion sued Fox for airing false claims that it helped cheat then-President Donald Trump of a win in the 2020 elections. Both sides just filed motions asking Davis to grant them victory ahead of the jury trial scheduled to start in April. The motions are under seal, meaning they have not been made public.
- [New York rejects Fox News' bid to end voting firm's lawsuit - The Guardian](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/new-york-rejects-fox-news-bid-to-end-voting-firms-lawsuit-the-guardian/) - New York rejects Fox News’ bid to end voting firm’s lawsuitDefamation lawsuit accuses network of spreading lies that voting technology company helped ‘steal’ 2020 election from Trump Fox News lost an attempt on Tuesday to shut down a multibillion-dollar defamation lawsuit that accuses the network of spreading lies that a voting technology company helped “steal” the 2020 election from Donald Trump.New York’s supreme court appellate division, a mid-level appeals court, ruled against the network, which wanted judges to dismiss the $2.7bn case.Nikki Haley: video shows presidential candidate saying states can secedeRead moreThe company that brought the case, Smartmatic, has said it played a valid and small role in the election. It hailed the ruling as a step toward holding Fox News accountable for amplifying unsupported and damaging claims from Trump’s lawyers.Fox News cast the case as an attempt to chill journalism, expressing confidence it would prevail.The decision means Smartmatic’s suit continues against Fox News, hosts Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, former host Lou Dobbs and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. A claim against the Trump lawyer Sidney Powell was dismissed earlier because she doesn’t have ties to New York, where the case was filed.The five-judge ruling concluded there were “significant allegations” that Giuliani and Powell defamed the company.“The complaint alleges in detailed fashion that in their coverage and commentary, Fox News, Dobbs and Bartiromo effectively endorsed and participated in the statements with reckless disregard for, or serious doubts about” whether there was any reliable evidence for them, five judges wrote in a unanimous opinion.Citing “the same reasoning”, they also reinstated Smartmatic’s claims against Pirro, which a lower court threw out.Federal and state election officials, exhaustive reviews in battleground states and Trump’s own attorney general found no widespread fraud that could have changed the outcome of the 2020 election. Nor did they uncover any credible evidence the vote was tainted. Trump’s allegations of fraud were rejected by dozens of courts, including by judges he appointed.Fox News is fighting a separate, $1.6bn defamation lawsuit from Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, with a trial in April. The network also is fighting a lawsuit from a Venezuelan businessman who said he was wrongly accused of trying to corrupt the election.Florida-based Smartmatic said that in the 2020 election, its technology and software were used only in Los Angeles county. The Democratic bastion went, as expected, for the Democrat, Joe Biden.But Smartmatic says Fox News and the three hosts repeatedly allowed Trump lawyers to falsely portray Smartmatic as a foreign company involved in a sprawling, multi-state operation to “flip” votes to Biden.Giuliani claimed the company was “formed in order to fix elections”. Powell called it a “huge criminal conspiracy” and both claimed proof would be forthcoming.After Smartmatic’s lawyers demanded a retraction, Fox News aired an interview with an election technology expert who said there was no evidence the company’s technology monkeyed with the election results. He refuted claims made by Giuliani and Powell.“Fox News, its news anchors and guests knowingly and falsely published lies,” Smartmatic lawyer J Erik Connolly said on Tuesday. The company maintains the network cannot claim free speech protections.Fox News argues it can, saying it was informing the public about newsworthy if controversial claims from an important figure about a matter of public concern.“There is nothing more newsworthy than covering the president of the United States and his lawyers making allegations of voter fraud,” it said, adding it was confident it would be vindicated.Fox News called the damages claim “outrageous” and “nothing more than a flagrant attempt to deter our journalists from doing their jobs”.A message seeking comment was sent to Giuliani’s lawyers. They have said Giuliani’s statements were protected by the first amendment and other laws and principles.TopicsFox NewsNew YorkLaw (US)Donald TrumpRudy GiulianinewsReuse this content
- [Fox News loses appeal of Smartmatic lawsuit on 2020 election - Law & Crime](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/fox-news-loses-appeal-of-smartmatic-lawsuit-on-2020-election-law-crime/) - Rudy Giuliani (Image via Fox News Screengrab) Fox News lost its appeal of Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion lawsuit for broadcasting conspiracy theories about voting machines in the 2020 presidential election. An intermediate appellate court in New York also revived claims against former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Fox personality Jeanine Pirro. A five-judge panel unanimously found that Smartmatic adequately alleged that Fox News, Giuliani, Pirro and Maria Bartiromo either knew that the voting machine conspiracy theories were false — or had serious doubts about their veracity — when they aired. Under the actual malice standard, it isn’t defamation if the network, its hosts, and its guest “merely report the newsworthy fact that the President’s campaign lawyers were recklessly making statements conveying false information,” the ruling notes. But that isn’t what Fox News and its co-defendants are accused of doing. “Rather, the complaint alleges in detailed fashion that in their coverage and commentary, Fox News, Dobbs, and Bartiromo effectively endorsed and participated in the statements with reckless disregard for, or serious doubts about, whether the assertions or implications that plaintiffs had participated in election fraud had any basis in truth or were supported by any reliable evidence,” the ruling states. Former President Donald Trump and his boosters falsely claimed that there was a massive conspiracy to rig Dominion and Smartmatic voting machines to flip votes to Joe Biden. There is no evidence to support the allegations against either company, but the theory as to Smartmatic is even more fantastical. In the 2020 election, Smartmatic machines were only used in Los Angeles County, a deep blue jurisdiction where Biden’s victory was never in doubt. “In fact, according to the allegations in the complaint, Fox News, Dobbs, and Bartiromo stated that Smartmatic’s election technology and software were widely used in the 2020 election and in Dominion machines to switch votes, when they actually knew, or easily could have known had they not purposefully avoided publicly available knowledge, that in 2020, the Smartmatic technology was used only in Los Angeles County and that the vote switching claims otherwise had no support,” the ruling notes. “Based on the same reasoning, the claims against Pirro, which are based on similar allegations of defamatory statements made with actual malice, must be reinstated.” For the same reason, the judges found, certain claims against Giuliani must be reinstated. In November, the trial judge revived one of the claims against Giuliani — and the appellate court added two more. The network did notch a smaller victory in the appellate court finding that allegations against parent company Fox Corporation should have been dismissed, with leave to replead. “With respect to Fox Corporation, which is a corporate entity separate from Fox News, the complaint does not adequately allege that any Fox Corporation employee played an affirmative role in the publication of the challenged defamatory statements,” the ruling states. Related Coverage: Media lawyer Mitchell Epner, a partner at Rottenberg Lipman Rich PC, said that the ruling is a “very bad day for Fox News and their personnel.” “Pirro thought she was out of the case,” Epner noted. “She isn’t. The cases are going forward against all of the rest of the defendants against Fox Corporation, the parent.” Smartmatic can replead those allegations, and only Trump-backing lawyer Sidney Powell, who was a guest, has remained out of the case. Epner added that the ruling also “means the plaintiffs will not be liable for legal fees under New York’s anti-SLAPP law, even if they lose this case.” He added that the final line of the ruling is even worse for Fox. “We decline to find that plaintiffs should be deemed limited purpose public figures required to allege facts that, if true, would ‘clearly and convincingly’ show defamation with actual malice,” the ruling reads. That would represent a far lower burden of proof for Smartmatic at trial. In a press release, Smartmatic noted that the court remarked upon the company’s “meticulously drafted complaint.” “As detailed in our complaint, Fox News, its news anchors and guests knowingly and falsely published lies that Smartmatic’s election technology and software was widely used in the 2020 election to switch votes — when they knew that Smartmatic’s technology was used only in Los Angeles County and there was no support for making their outrageous claims,” the company’s lawyer Erik Connelly wrote in a statement. “Smartmatic has been severely injured and has sued to recover for this harm.” Fox News stood by their broadcasts in their statement. “There is nothing more newsworthy than covering the president of the United States and his lawyers making allegations of voter fraud,” the network’s spokesperson said. “We are confident we will prevail as freedom of the press is foundational to our democracy and must be protected, in addition to the damages claims being outrageous, unsupported, and not rooted in sound financial analysis, serving as nothing more than a flagrant attempt to deter our journalists from doing their jobs.” Representatives for Dobbs, Giuliani, Pirro and Bartiromo did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 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- [Built on History - Jeffersontown - Towne Post Network](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/built-on-history-jeffersontown-towne-post-network/) - Post Views: 142 Louisville Tourism Continues to Boom Writer / Julie YatesPhotography Provided Louisville has accomplished an enviable feat; it has become a brand that represents a vibrant and multifaceted city. Its journey to be recognized as more than the site of the Kentucky Derby or the home of the Louisville Slugger Factory is aided by a rich history, unique geographic location and friendly hospitality. In recent years, the city has increasingly become known as a place that offers attractions for multiple types of visitors. As Bourbon City, it appeals to couples and individuals who come for the Urban Bourbon Trail. It also attracts families who visit Museum Row, the Louisville Zoo or Kentucky Kingdom and Hurricane Bay. The brand logo is its name and the fleur-de-lis centered in the middle is a nod to King Louis XVI of France, Louisville’s namesake. The city, founded by Revolutionary War hero George Rogers Clark, began in the late 1770s as a settlement on the Ohio River, close to the Falls of the Ohio. Since there were dangerous rapids, it was necessary to unload cargo before boats reached the falls. The result was the development of a major shipping port which continues today. This area was also the meeting place of Clark’s younger brother, William Clark, and Meriwether Lewis. After recruiting local men, they began their famous exploration of the Louisiana Purchase. Later, in 1875, the Kentucky Derby was begun by Lewis Clark, who was George Rogers Clark’s great nephew. The location has the distinction of being within a day’s drive of 60% of the continental United States. Post the Covid-19, Louisville Tourism has reached out to these areas to promote all the city has to offer. Michael Fetter, the organization’s Director of Marketing, has been with the organization for five years. “It’s been a wild ride. We had a record year for tourism in 2019,” Fetter says. “Then the pandemic hit. We had to push on the breaks and really rethink what we were doing. We had been promoting Louisville as a place to fly into to experience Bourbon Country, much like people fly into San Francisco to visit Napa Valley. Instead of targeting places like Los Angeles, we had to recalculate.” “The question was- how can we continue safety while respecting peoples safety,” he says. “We started up again, then stopped and rethought, then started again. Now the focus is on bringing awareness of Louisville as a travel destination to markets such as Indianapolis and other sites within a four to five or even six-hour drive of us. It is the long weekend.” Louisville’ bourbon connection is undoubtably a huge asset for tourism. Most of the world’s bourbon is produced in Kentucky and the state’s history is woven throughout the industry. Louisville’s Urban Bourbon Trail consists of establishments dedicated to sharing stories and lore while educating participants on the facts behind bourbon production. “Bourbon tourism has been a thing for a while. The Evan Williams Distillery Experience began in 2013 but even before that, in 2006, the brand ‘Come to Kentucky for Bourbon Country’ was launched. Now we promote Louisville as Bourbon City. The Urban Bourbon Trail started with about eight to 10 bars and restaurants that focused on bourbon. Now there are 40 on the trail. Ten distillery experiences have re-opened since COVID-19, and each tour ends with an expansive tasting session. Reservations are needed as the facilities definitely get booked out,” Fetter says. Another facet to Louisville is that it is a great destination for a fun family weekend. Kids don’t realize they are getting a history lesson when they experience cruising down the Ohio River on a steamboat via the Mary M. Miller or Belle of Louisville riverboats. Sports lovers and boxing enthusiasts will enjoy learning about how determination enabled a local legend to triumph at the Muhammad Ali Center. Across from the downtown center is the expansive Waterfront Park where events, concerts and festivals are scheduled throughout the warm weather months. “The biggest surprise people have when they come to Louisville is how much the city has to offer. There are lots of tidbits about the area people don’t know,” Fetter says. “We have a walkable downtown with so many things to do and great parks. Museum Row on Main Street has seven attractions within close proximity to each other. The Old Louisville area has the largest collection of both shotgun houses and restored Victorian homes in the country. We also have the second most cast-iron facades outside of Soho in New York.” Besides Kentucky fried chicken, Louisville is known for unique dishes that a visitors love to sample. The ‘hot brown’ originated at the Brown Hotel and while it might be classified as an open-faced sandwich, it’s a meal. Slices of ham, turkey and bacon atop toast are smothered in gravy and baked, making it a substantial lunch or dinner. Burgoo stew is another tradition, and dates to pre- civil was times. Like the hot brown, it includes several different meats but also vegetables. No one should leave the city without having a slice of rich chocolate derby pie. There are many versions to be had around town, but the original recipe was developed in 1954 by the Kern family for their restaurant, Kern’s Kitchen. The eatery has trademarked the name and the recipe is kept top secret. Fetter shares that 90% to 95% of visitors who participate in surveys say they would come back. Louisville Tourism’s job is to get them to initially come to the city, and he is quick to point out that the organization doesn’t do it alone. The word gets out through connections with both social media digital business and local travel-based entities. Building partnerships with neighborhood associations, restaurants, hotels, venues and attractions is key. Large travel sites such as Expedia, Priceline and Trip Advisor offer information to travelers that can point them in directions that will make the most of their visit. In addition, Louisville Tourism maintains close ties with groups such as Louisville Forward, an economic development organization and Greater Louisville, Inc., GLI, the metro area’s chamber of commerce. The most visited page of Louisville Tourism’s website is the Calendar of Events. Anyone with an upcoming event or activity can submit to it. It is a great resource in communicating happenings around the city especially during the holiday season. “The future is very bright. There are new hotels and restaurants popping up in downtown and neighborhoods such as the east market district of downtown, NuLu (New Louisville), as well as places like St. Matthews,” Fetter says. “Tourism is important to the city for the business it bring and it’s the people of Louisville that sell it. Louisville has its own southern hospitality. It’s not considered to be part of Midwest but not the true deep South either. Louisville is the front porch of the south,” Fetter says. You can visit the Louisville Tourism website at GoToLouisville.com or by calling 1.888.568.4784. Louisville Tourism is on Instagram as @gotolouisville and on Facebook as Louisville Tourism.
- [Federal civil rights trial of ex-LMPD Detective Brett Hankison in Breonna Taylor case is delayed further](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/federal-civil-rights-trial-of-ex-lmpd-detective-brett-hankison-in-breonna-taylor-case-is-delayed-further/) - The trial of ex-Louisville police Detective Brett Hankison on charges that he violated the civil rights of Breonna Taylor and four others the night when she was killed by another officer during a raid gone bad has been pushed back two additional months.Expected to last three weeks, the trial was to begin Aug. 21, but on a defense motion, U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings Wednesday reset it for Oct. 30.Hankison appeared with new counsel − Jack Byrd of Nashville, Tennessee, and Ibrahim A. Farag of Louisville. The defense told Jennings the government has turned over more than one million pages of evidence and it couldn't process them by August.More:Government demands defense keep some evidence secret in Breonna Taylor civil rights trialsByrd asked Jennings to postpone it until next spring but she said that was too far out.Hankison is charged with using excessive force by firing blindly into Taylor’s apartment on March 13, 2020, through a sliding glass door and a window covered by curtains. He was acquitted on state charges of wanton endangerment but charged federally last August.He is accused of violating the civil rights of Taylor, her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker along with three neighbors, including a pregnant woman and 5-year-old child.What you should know:Which officers face federal charges in the Breonna Taylor caseMore:Ex-LMPD detective has wanton endangerment record expunged in Breonna Taylor caseHankison was fired in 2020 when then-interim Louisville Metro Police Chief Robert Schroeder called the rounds he fired "a shock to the conscience." Hankison testified in Jefferson Circuit Court he was trying to protect two fellow detectives at the apartment’s front door, including Sgt. John Mattingly, who was shot in the leg by Walker who has said he thought the couple was being robbed. Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove returned fire and a bullet from Cosgrove’s gun hit Taylor, killing her.Also charged with federal civil rights charges were Sgt. Kyle Meany and Detectives Joshua Jaynes and Kelly Goodlett, for allegedly fabricating a warrant for the search of Taylor's apartment and other offensesGoodlett pleaded guilty and resigned while Meany, Jaynes and Hankison were fired. Goodlett is expected to testify for the government against her former colleagues.No date has been set yet for their trial but U.S. Senior Judge Charles R. Simpson III has set a pretrial conference for Tuesday.Breonna Taylor shooting: An 11-month timeline shows how her death changed Louisville
- [Pence to fight special counsel subpoena on 2020 election - Spectrum News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/14/pence-to-fight-special-counsel-subpoena-on-2020-election-spectrum-news/) - Former Vice President Mike Pence is planning to fight a subpoena by the special counsel overseeing investigations into efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to people familiar with his thinking. What You Need To Know Former Vice President Mike Pence is planning to fight a subpoena by the special counsel overseeing investigations into efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election Pence and his attorneys are planning to cite constitutional grounds as they prepare to resist special counsel Jack Smith's efforts to compel his testimony before a grand jury They argue that Pence is protected from being forced to address his actions under the Constitution's “speech-or-debate” clause that shields members of Congress Whether Pence's arguments will succeed in limiting or altogether avoiding grand jury testimony is unclear, but the Justice Department is expected to oppose those efforts and to make the case that the former vice president's cooperation is essential for a probe focused on Trump's actions Pence and his attorneys are planning to cite constitutional grounds as they prepare to resist special counsel Jack Smith's efforts to compel his testimony before a grand jury. They argue that because Pence was serving in his role as president of the Senate on Jan. 6, 2021 as he presided over a joint session of Congress to certify the election results, he is protected from being forced to address his actions under the Constitution's “speech-or-debate” clause that shields members of Congress. “I think he views it as essential protection of his Constitutional role," said Marc Short, a close adviser to Pence who served as his White House chief of staff. Short compared Pence’s position to the one he took on Jan. 6 when he refused to go along with Trump’s unconstitutional scheme to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as well as Pence's rejection of using the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office in the aftermath. “The vice president of the United State is the president of the Senate and the fact is the functions of Jan. 6 were specific to that role," he said of Pence, who has been laying the groundwork for a likely presidential campaign that would put him in direct competition against his former boss. Whether Pence's arguments will succeed in limiting or altogether avoiding grand jury testimony is unclear, but the Justice Department is expected to oppose those efforts and to make the case that the former vice president's cooperation is essential for a probe focused on Trump's actions. The decision to try to fight the subpoena, which was first reported by Politico, marks a change in posture from Pence, who has cooperated with the Justice Department as it investigates how documents with classified markings ended up at his Indiana home after the end of the Trump administration. He permitted the FBI to search the property last week. Even if his objection is ultimately rebuffed from the courts, an antagonistic posture could allow Pence to argue that he tried to fight the Justice Department — a potentially useful position in a GOP primary, as many in the Republican base have grown distrustful of federal law enforcement, in part due to Trump's drumbeat of criticism. And it could delay the special counsel probe, which Smith is working to rapidly advance. Pence has spoken extensively about Trump’s pressure campaign urging him to reject President Joe Biden's victory in the days leading up to Jan. 6, including in his book, “So Help Me God.” Pence, as vice president, had a ceremonial role overseeing the counting of the Electoral College vote, but did not have the power to impact the results. Pence's decision to resist the subpoena also came after extensive back-and-forth between his lawyers and the special counsel's office, according to a person familiar with the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations. The Justice Department declined to comment Tuesday on Pence's plans. Pence is expected to address the issue in more detail during a visit to Iowa Wednesday as he inches closer to a likely presidential run. Richard Levy, a constitutional law professor at the University of Kansas, said it is true that the vice president is in a unique position as the technical presiding officer of the Senate, making the officeholder in some respects a member of the chamber. But he said that not everything a member does is protected by the speech-or-debate clause and it is debatable whether the vice president’s role in certifying the election, which involves a mix of constitutional and senatorial functions, would be protected. In any event, Pence’s argument would likely serve to limit the scope of his testimony rather than to block it altogether, he said. “I don’t think the speech or debate clause would be a basis for quashing the subpoena altogether. It would be a basis for objecting to particular questions,” he said. The subpoena has been an aggressive step from Smith as he continues to investigate efforts by Trump and his allies to remain in power, including the storming of the Capitol building on Jan. 6. Trump supporters, driven by the lie that the election was stolen, brutally pushed past the police and smashed through the windows and doors while Pence was presiding over the certification of Biden’s victory. The vice president was steered to safety with his staff and family as some in the mob chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!” While the mob was in the Capitol, Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.” A House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack recommended that the Justice Department bring criminal charges against Trump and others over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
- [Pence to fight subpoena in probe of Trump's 2020 election denial - source - Nasdaq](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/14/pence-to-fight-subpoena-in-probe-of-trumps-2020-election-denial-source-nasdaq/)
- [Pence to fight special counsel subpoena on Trump's 2020 election denial](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/14/pence-to-fight-special-counsel-subpoena-on-trumps-2020-election-denial/) - Politico: Mike Pence is preparing to resist a grand jury subpoena for testimony about former President Donald Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election, according to two people familiar with the former vice president’s thinking. Pence’s decision to challenge Special Counsel Jack Smith’s request has little to do with executive privilege, the people said. Rather, Pence is set to argue that his former role as president of the Senate — therefore a member of the legislative branch — shields him from certain Justice Department demands. Pence allies say he is covered by the constitutional provision that protects congressional officials from legal proceedings related to their work — language known as the “speech or debate” clause. The clause, Pence allies say, legally binds federal prosecutors from compelling Pence to testify about the central components of Smith’s investigation. If Pence testifies, they say, it could jeopardize the separation of powers that the Constitution seeks to safeguard. “He thinks that the ‘speech or debate’ clause is a core protection for Article I, for the legislature,” said one of the two people familiar with Pence’s thinking, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss his legal strategy. “He feels it really goes to the heart of some separation of powers issues. He feels duty-bound to maintain that protection, even if it means litigating it.” Share this:
- [Pence to fight special counsel subpoena on 2020 election - WVUA 23](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/14/pence-to-fight-special-counsel-subpoena-on-2020-election-wvua-23/) - 17 hours ago The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) – Former Vice President Mike Pence is planning to fight a subpoena by the special counsel overseeing investigations into efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election. That’s according to people familiar with his thinking. Pence and his attorneys are planning to cite constitutional grounds as they prepare to resist the grand jury subpoena issued by special counsel Jack Smith. They argue that because Pence was serving in his role as president of the Senate on Jan. 6, 2021 as he presided over a joint session of Congress to certify the election results, he is protected from being forced to address his actions under the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause. Read the full story on AP News right here. (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.) 2/14/2023 1:23:40 PM (GMT -6:00)
- [Pence to fight subpoena in probe of Trump's 2020 election denial | Courts | unionleader.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/14/pence-to-fight-subpoena-in-probe-of-trumps-2020-election-denial-courts-unionleader-com/) - Former Vice President Mike Pence, a Republican, is preparing to resist a grand jury subpoena for testimony about efforts to overturn then-President Donald Trump's 2020 reelection loss, a source familiar with his plans said on Tuesday.Pence will argue that his role as president of the Senate -- making him a member of the legislative branch -- shields him from certain Justice Department demands, rather than cite executive privilege as then-vice president, the source said.
- [Pence to fight special counsel subpoena on 2020 election - WPLG Local 10](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/14/pence-to-fight-special-counsel-subpoena-on-2020-election-wplg-local-10/) - WASHINGTON – Former Vice President Mike Pence is planning to fight a subpoena by the special counsel overseeing investigations into efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to people familiar with his thinking.Pence and his attorneys are planning to cite constitutional grounds as they prepare to resist special counsel Jack Smith's efforts to compel his testimony before a grand jury. They argue that because Pence was serving in his role as president of the Senate on Jan. 6, 2021 as he presided over a joint session of Congress to certify the election results, he is protected from being forced to address his actions under the Constitution's “speech-or-debate” clause that shields members of Congress.“I think he views it as essential protection of his Constitutional role," said Marc Short, a close adviser to Pence who served as his White House chief of staff. Short compared Pence’s position to the one he took on Jan. 6 when he refused to go along with Trump’s unconstitutional scheme to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as well as Pence's rejection of using the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office in the aftermath.“The vice president of the United State is the president of the Senate and the fact is the functions of Jan. 6 were specific to that role," he said of Pence, who has been laying the groundwork for a likely presidential campaign that would put him in direct competition against his former boss. Whether Pence's arguments will succeed in limiting or altogether avoiding grand jury testimony is unclear, but the Justice Department is expected to oppose those efforts and to make the case that the former vice president's cooperation is essential for a probe focused on Trump's actions.The decision to try to fight the subpoena, which was first reported by Politico, marks a change in posture from Pence, who has cooperated with the Justice Department as it investigates how documents with classified markings ended up at his Indiana home after the end of the Trump administration. He permitted the FBI to search the property last week.Even if his objection is ultimately rebuffed from the courts, an antagonistic posture could allow Pence to argue that he tried to fight the Justice Department — a potentially useful position in a GOP primary, as many in the Republican base have grown distrustful of federal law enforcement, in part due to Trump's drumbeat of criticism. And it could delay the special counsel probe, which Smith is working to rapidly advance.Pence has spoken extensively about Trump’s pressure campaign urging him to reject President Joe Biden's victory in the days leading up to Jan. 6, including in his book, “So Help Me God.” Pence, as vice president, had a ceremonial role overseeing the counting of the Electoral College vote, but did not have the power to impact the results.Pence's decision to resist the subpoena also came after extensive back-and-forth between his lawyers and the special counsel's office, according to a person familiar with the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations.The Justice Department declined to comment Tuesday on Pence's plans.Pence is expected to address the issue in more detail during a visit to Iowa Wednesday as he inches closer to a likely presidential run.Richard Levy, a constitutional law professor at the University of Kansas, said it is true that the vice president is in a unique position as the technical presiding officer of the Senate, making the officeholder in some respects a member of the chamber.But he said that not everything a member does is protected by the speech-or-debate clause and it is debatable whether the vice president’s role in certifying the election, which involves a mix of constitutional and senatorial functions, would be protected.In any event, Pence’s argument would likely serve to limit the scope of his testimony rather than to block it altogether, he said.“I don’t think the speech or debate clause would be a basis for quashing the subpoena altogether. It would be a basis for objecting to particular questions,” he said.The subpoena has been an aggressive step from Smith as he continues to investigate efforts by Trump and his allies to remain in power, including the storming of the Capitol building on Jan. 6.Trump supporters, driven by the lie that the election was stolen, brutally pushed past the police and smashed through the windows and doors while Pence was presiding over the certification of Biden’s victory. The vice president was steered to safety with his staff and family as some in the mob chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!”While the mob was in the Capitol, Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”A House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack recommended that the Justice Department bring criminal charges against Trump and others over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
- [Judge to release partial Fulton grand jury report on Trump allies' 2020 election interference](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/14/judge-to-release-partial-fulton-grand-jury-report-on-trump-allies-2020-election-interference-2/) - Subscribe to our free newsletters and have the latest stories from The Current delivered directly to your inbox. The first details of a Fulton County special grand jury’s report on attempts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to interfere in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election are set to be released to the public Thursday. Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said in a court order on Monday that he will unseal three sections of the grand jury’s final report following a lengthy investigation in which the panel was tasked with recommending whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should pursue criminal charges against the former president, Trump’s inner circle and other supporters. The three sections of the report coming out on Thursday include the introduction, conclusion and a portion in which the jurors discuss witnesses they believe committed perjury. Those witnesses are not identified in that section of the report.
- [Pence planning to challenge special counsel subpoena on 2020 election | WPBN](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/14/pence-planning-to-challenge-special-counsel-subpoena-on-2020-election-wpbn/)
- [Pence to fight subpoena in probe of Trump's 2020 election denial -source | Reuters](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/14/pence-to-fight-subpoena-in-probe-of-trumps-2020-election-denial-source-reuters/) - Feb 14 (Reuters) - Republican former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence is preparing to resist a grand jury subpoena for testimony about efforts to overturn then-President Donald Trump's 2020 reelection loss, a source familiar with his plans said on Tuesday.Pence will argue that his role as president of the Senate - making him a member of the legislative branch - shields him from certain Justice Department demands, rather than cite executive privilege as then-vice president, the source said.An attorney for Pence did not respond to a request for comment on his decision to challenge Special Counsel Jack Smith's request, first reported by Politico. Smith's office declined to comment.Smith, a political independent and former war crimes prosecutor, is investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election that included Trump supporters' deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol as Congress met to certify Democrat Joe Biden's victory.Latest UpdatesView 2 more stories
- [How Black people shaped Louisville's history. Here are 6 stories you should know](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/how-black-people-shaped-louisvilles-history-here-are-6-stories-you-should-know/) - Louisville wouldn't be what it is today without Black people who established some of the city's most historic neighborhoods, fought for equal rights alongside prominent national figures and contributed to the community's deep-rooted culture.Below are six stories of people and moments that shaped Louisville's history.To explore more, visit the University of Louisville Oral History Center, the Filson Historical Society, Roots 101 African-American Museum, the Kentucky Center for African American Heritage and the Muhammad Ali Center.More:Celebrate Black History Month by looking back on Kentucky history makersTwo enslaved Black men present at Louisville's foundingCato Watts, a fiddler, and Caesar, a carpenter, were two enslaved men brought to Louisville by early settlers in the 1770s, according to the Encyclopedia of Louisville.By 1810, enslaved African Americans made up 36% of the city's population, according to University of Louisville research. And by the 1840s, domestic slave trading thrived along the Ohio River, with slave pens located in the old downtown area of the city.After the Civil War, freed Black residents established several communities that remain an important piece of Louisville's fabric today, including Smoketown, Limerick, Petersburg and Berrytown.Read more:More:The traffic signal and corded bed: 8 Black inventors you didn't know were from KentuckyBlack jockey rides first Kentucky Derby winner across finish lineIn 1875, Oliver Lewis, a Black man born into slavery, rode Aristides to victory in what would become known as the Kentucky Derby.Lewis is one of several prominent Black jockeys who participated in the early years of the race. (Of the first 28 winning jockeys in the Derby, 15 were Black.)But by the early 1900s, those same Black equestrians were forced out of racing by Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation. More than 100 years later, Black jockeys remain a rarity in the sport.Read more:Martin Luther King Jr. part of local civil rights fightIn the 1950s and '60s, Martin Luther King Jr. visited Louisville several times to encourage voting and advocate for policies that would end segregation.In 1964, he and Jackie Robinson led a march of 10,000 people to the state Capitol in Frankfort, following the 1963 March on Washington.In 1965, his brother, A.D. Williams King, moved to Louisville as a minister at Zion Baptist Church. And in 1967, the siblings led protests against unfair housing practices that culminated in a boycott of the Kentucky Derby.That same year, King met Louisville native Muhammad Ali publicly for the first and only time. Though both men were influential in fighting human rights battles, they disagreed on some key issues and had a complex relationship.Read more:More:The first time I met Martin Luther King Jr., I knew I could follow him anywhereHigh school students help force integration at Louisville businessesIn 1961, Black students from Central and Male high schools organized months of pickets and sit-ins at downtown businesses that refused to let them eat, try on clothes or watch moves alongside white customers.The teens' actions led nearly 200 businesses to integrate within six months. And in 1963, the city's mayor signed an ordinance granting equal access to all public accommodations — a year before federal protections were put in place."It was pretty exciting, that's the way I remember it," said Beverly Neal Watkins, who participated in the protests. "You felt like you were doing something good."'Black Six' put on trial for 1968 rebellionIn 1968, Louisville officials accused six Black people of orchestrating a racial uprising in the Parkland neighborhood, during which dozens of businesses were burglarized and set aflame.The defendants — known as the Black Six — each were charged with conspiring to destroy private and public property. And for two years, their lives were in limbo as they awaited trial.In summer 1970, a judge threw the case out of court. But by then, it had already left a permanent mark on Louisville's history, a reminder of the ways the city repeatedly fought to quiet Black dissent.Read more:Breonna Taylor protests draw international outrageIn March 2020, Louisville police officers fatally shot Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, while serving a "no-knock" search warrant at her apartment as part of a narcotics investigation.After audio of a 911 call made by Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, on the night of her death was released, thousands took to Louisville's streets in protest, demanding officers involved in the shooting be fired and arrested.Daily marches and demonstrations continued for more than four months, with protesters using Jefferson Square Park downtown as a home base.Protesters globally invoked Taylor's name, along with George Floyd's, while marching in other cities through the summer. And in Louisville, demonstrators added two more names to their chants after restaurant owner David McAtee and photographer Tyler Gerth were killed.Read more:Still want to dive deeper? Here are more stories and videos to bookmark:Hayes Gardner and Savannah Eadens contributed to this report.Reach reporter Bailey Loosemore at bloosemore@courier-journal.com, 502-582-4646 or on Twitter @bloosemore. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: https://www.courier-journal.com/baileyl.
- [Pence to Fight Special Counsel Subpoena on 2020 Election - USNews.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/14/pence-to-fight-special-counsel-subpoena-on-2020-election-usnews-com/)
- [Pence to fight special counsel subpoena on 2020 election - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/14/pence-to-fight-special-counsel-subpoena-on-2020-election-pittsburgh-post-gazette/) - MENU ACCOUNT SECTIONS OTHER CLASSIFIEDS CONTACT US / FAQ
- [This report makes Trump's 2020 fundraising scam even clearer - MSNBC News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/14/this-report-makes-trumps-2020-fundraising-scam-even-clearer-msnbc-news/) - Former President Donald Trump is a man who has been sued dozens of times for allegedly refusing to pay his bills in full. So he must have really hated that his campaign spent over $600,000 to be told he was wrong.According to The Washington Post, the Trump campaign commissioned an outside firm to try to substantiate the claims of widespread fraud Trump was peddling. Employees of Berkeley Research Group, you may be shocked to learn, discovered no irregularities that would have swung the election.It’s honestly incredible that over two years later we’re still learning the myriad ways Trump and his advisers were aware that his claims of fraud were fabricated.The research got shoved into a drawer rather than released, either to the public or in court filings, including the campaign’s last-ditch bid to the Supreme Court. That fits neatly with how much Trump had already gained at that point from insisting that the election had been stolen. But unfortunately for him and his enablers, their continued efforts to defraud the American people makes criminal charges all the more likely.In late November 2020, Berkeley Research Group was brought in “to study 2020 election results in six states, looking for fraud and irregularities to highlight in public and in the courts,” the Post reported. “Among the areas examined were voter machine malfunctions, instances of dead people voting and any evidence that could help Trump show he won.” The findings from the roughly dozen researchers were reportedly shared with Trump, then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and others in a December 2020 conference call. Rather than bow to the evidence, Meadows “showed skepticism” of the firm’s conclusions, the Post reported, and Trump and his team did nothing to slow their deluge of efforts to overturn the election. In the process, the Berkeley subsidiary contracted for the project got paid over $600,000 for its work, labeled “recount: legal consulting” in related Federal Election Commission filings. That’s a lot of money — but a drop in the bucket compared to how much Trump had already made pushing the lie to his supporters. The blitz of fundraising appeals that went out in the month after Election Day drew in $207.5 million from donors. His leadership PAC alone raked in around $31 million from Nov. 24 to Dec. 31. Feb. 13, 202310:22It’s honestly incredible that over two years later we’re still learning the myriad ways Trump and his advisers were aware that his claims of fraud were fabricated. Just this month, The Associated Press published tapes of Trump campaign staffers in Wisconsin acknowledging defeat but still preparing, in the words of Trump’s lead operative in the state, to “fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election.”And last year, the House Jan. 6 committee presented testimony from multiple witnesses documenting times they had told Trump — or had been told by Trump — that he’d lost. Yet the fundraising appeals flowed via emails and text messages and Facebook posts, and the cash flowed back to the campaign.The big question that remains is how much of that cash grab was fully aboveboard. A former FEC lawyer told NPR last year that there’s not necessarily anything illegal about campaign donations’ going to some political activity other than the one disclosed to donors. But last summer, in its second public hearing, the Jan. 6 committee revealed that the “legal defense fund” donors were supposedly donating to never actually existed. That opens the door to a potential charge of wire fraud, according to some legal experts, including fellow MSNBC columnist Barb McQuade.While the committee opted to focus on Trump himself in the bulk of its final report, its so-called Green Team tracking the money provided its findings in the report’s third appendix. The massive influx of money to Trump’s PAC, in particular, resulted in some very questionable spending documented in the appendix’s pages. And evidence continues to mount that the Trump campaign was well aware of the deception it was undertaking.The biggest potential layup for special counsel Jack Smith continues to be charges related to the classified documents discovered at Mar-a-Lago and the subsequent lies and obstruction Trump undertook to cover up his hoarding. But the Berkeley Research Group’s report could show the intent required to prosecute Trump, his campaign staff or both for ripping off the American people. Like many of the charges Smith could bring, it would be nearly unprecedented, especially against a former president and current candidate — but just because it would be a heavy lift doesn’t mean he shouldn’t try.
- [Pence will fight subpoena in special counsel probe of Trump's attempt to overturn 2020 election](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/14/pence-will-fight-subpoena-in-special-counsel-probe-of-trumps-attempt-to-overturn-2020-election/) - Former Vice President Mike Pence is planning to challenge a subpoena issued to him by the special counsel investigating ex-President Donald Trump. Pence will argue that his former role in government protects him from having to comply with special counsel Jack Smith's subpoena for his testimony. Pence, who is considered a likely 2024 presidential contender, is expected to address the subpoena while visiting the key primary state of Iowa. Former Vice President Mike Pence answers questions from the press during a visit to Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, Florida, as part of the book tour for his New York Times bestselling book, So Help Me God, on Friday, Jan. 27, 2023. Scott McIntyre | The Washington Post | Getty Images Former Vice President Mike Pence is planning to challenge a subpoena issued to him by the special counsel investigating ex-President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC on Tuesday. Pence will argue that his former role in government protects him from having to comply with special counsel Jack Smith's subpoena for his testimony, according to the person, who confirmed Politico's reporting on the ex-vice president's legal strategy. Under the U.S. Constitution, the vice president is also the president of the Senate. Pence, who served in that role under Trump, will argue that he is therefore covered by the constitutional protections given to members of the legislative branch — including a clause that protects them from legal threats stemming from their legislative work. A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment. Pence, who is considered a likely 2024 presidential contender, is expected to discuss the subpoena while visiting the key primary state of Iowa on Wednesday. Smith was appointed special counsel in November to head a criminal investigation into whether Trump unlawfully interfered with the transfer of power after losing to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election. As part of a multi-pronged effort to overturn his loss, Trump had pressured Pence to reject key Electoral College votes when he presided over a joint session of Congress to confirm Biden's victory on Jan. 6, 2021. After Pence refused, a mob of Trump's supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, forcing the vice president and members of Congress to flee their chambers. Trump, who never conceded defeat and has continued to spread false claims of election fraud even after leaving the White House, has repeatedly attacked Pence for lacking the "courage" to defy his obligation to confirm Biden's electoral victory. The subpoena to a high-profile official like Pence, which was first reported last week, could suggest that Smith's investigation is nearing its conclusion, Politico reported. But Pence's forthcoming challenge to the subpoena could prolong the special counsel's efforts, because his legal argument is largely unsettled in the courts. News of Pence's legal plans came ahead of his widely anticipated White House bid, which could pit him directly against his former boss in the Republican primary arena. Trump, who remains a de facto leader in the Republican Party, has for months been the only major 2024 candidate in the race — until Tuesday morning, when former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley threw her hat in the ring. Smith is also investigating the hundreds of classified documents that were shipped to Trump's Palm Beach, Fla., resort home Mar-a-Lago, where he has lived since his leaving the presidency. The FBI raided Trump's home last year. In recent months, Pence and Biden have both found materials with classified markings in their personal residences. WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP
- [Giving voice to the murdered - Daily Advocate & Early Bird News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/15/giving-voice-to-the-murdered-daily-advocate-early-bird-news/) - Rebecca Spencer By Vivian Blevins Contributing Columnist Perhaps Black History Month is a time for remembering when it is so easy or necessary or convenient to forget. Authors are essential as they use their talents to capture the shock, the pain, the disillusionment, the anger we feel when we are bombarded with the news of senseless deaths at the hands of some law enforcement personnel. Author Rebecca May Willison Spencer of Ludlow Falls, is committed to giving voice to the deceased, modeled after the verses of American poet Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, written over 100 years ago. In his poetry, Masters details the accounts of the lives of the deceased in a mythical Ohio town-or was it mythical? He allows them to speak from their graves and tell the truth of their lives, the truth as Masters understood it as observer. A 2021 graduate of Edison State Community College and employed by Private Autobiography, Spencer says, “I grew up sheltered, unaware of the inequities in the world, wasn’t taught about them in school at Milton-Union. My peer group was largely white and conservative, and we just didn’t talk about race, inequities.” She indicates that in the past she had compassion but “didn’t dig any deeper than that.” In regard to the murders by some law enforcement personnel, she believes that “a lot of people try to rationalize the murders because it makes them feel better to blame the victim as they don’t have to face the awful reality of what’s going on, and I’m ashamed to say that I did a little of that in my past.” The turning point for Spencer was May 25, 2020, when George Floyd was killed by police officers in Minneapolis for passing a counterfeit bill: “When George Floyd was killed, it was different for me- maybe it was because it was videotaped. And I saw the arrogance of those who participated.” Of her poem about Floyd entitled “I Didn’t Know,” she writes, “I didn’t know I would be someone’s hero/ That I would make an impact/I didn’t know that my not mattering to some/ would make me matter to many… .” Spencer says that she uses her poetry as a way of “expressing my thoughts, my feelings, what’s important to me, things on my mind and in my heart.” Breonna Taylor was shot to death on March 13, 2020, in Louisville, Ky., by police as they served a no-knock warrant. In “Say My Name,” Spencer writes, “I have a name./My name is Breonna Taylor./ Do you see me? Do you know me? /I have a voice./ Do you hear me? Toward the end of this poem, Spencer has Taylor saying from the grave, “You can knock…and knock…and knock again, but I will not answer./ The voice is yours now. Use it for me. Give me a voice.” And Spencer is using her abilities to give voice. On the evening of Feb. 22, 2023, Destined Dewberry, an eighth grader at Piqua Junior High School, will be reading “Just a Boy,” Spencer’s sense of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old who was killed by a police officer in Cleveland, Ohio, on Nov.22, 2014: “bang bang/ I run and play./I’m pretending to be a police officer./Mama says I’m a good kid. I used to like to play Legos, but I’m kind of outgrowing/them. I like to play video games now. I’ll be a teenager next year.” Spencer will be reading “Four and Twenty” at that same event, a poem she read at the Hayner Cultural Center when she was one of the featured 12 poets last year in the annual Mosaic event. “Four and Twenty” gives voice to Staphon Clark, of Cleveland, Ohio, as he stood in his grandparents’ backyard on March 18, 2018: “Four seconds./ My life amounted to four seconds./Four seconds of warning./Four seconds to decide to kill me/For talking on my phone/in my grandparents’ backyard./ Is that a crime?/ It is for a 22-year-old Black man.” Spencer approaches a poem by researching the lives of African Americans who die by police violence to gain a sense of them as individuals and then finds a focus to give voice to them, to, as she says, “see them as individuals with stories and not as statistics, numbers, news stories.” She is currently working on a poem to give voice to Tyre Nichols with a working title of “Trying to Go Home.” Of Nichols, she says, “Maybe his cries for his mother pierced my heart because I am a mother. Something has changed for me: Not only do I hurt for him and his family, I am also angry.” She continues, “What I do is a small thing in the grand scheme, but it’s an honor to give voice to these victims. I wish there were no more victims. Sadly, that is not the reality. In conclusion, Spencer says, “Initially, these poems were an assignment in a creative writing class at Edison. But now… .”
- [Denver7 viewers help make rebuilding a reality for Louisville nurse, her family](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/14/denver7-viewers-help-make-rebuilding-a-reality-for-louisville-nurse-her-family/) - LOUISVILLE, Colo. — Neighborhoods in Louisville and Superior are starting a new chapter with many new builds cropping up in empty lots more than a year after the Marshall Fire. The Christensen family is one of the many embarking on the rebuilding process. Denver7 first met Kim Christensen early last year, when her neighborhood was covered in rubble. “The first year, it felt like it was more of a blur, but it does feel like a very long time waiting," Christensen said. “It's like you're waiting for Christmas."Monday afternoon, Christensen and her family broke ground on the construction of their new home on their old lot. Crews break ground on Louisville nurse's new home following Marshall Fire “It'll still be our home, but not exactly the same," Christensen said. “It will look different, but the same people will be here. So we'll be back in the neighborhood again, and we'll have our house going up soon.”From their lot, Christensen can see Centura Avista Adventist Hospital, where she has worked for nearly two decades. She worked on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic before losing her home in the Marshall Fire. Denver7 viewers stepped up to help, and through Denver7 Gives, the Christensen family's mortgage was paid for 10 months, allowing her to focus on the future. “We're able to put money towards something else instead of having to pay this constant mortgage to something that's not here," Christensen said. “Many neighbors are not rebuilding. And so it has been tremendously helpful. Every little bit helps, but that's a huge chunk of help. So thank you.”The home is being built by Ascent Builders, which hopes to have the family in their new home in time for Christmas. “We can only move forward, right?" Christensen said. "Can't go backwards.” Click here to go directly to the Denver7 Gives donation form then choose a campaign Denver7 features the stories of people who need help and now you can help them with a cash donation through Denver7 Gives. One hundred percent of contributions to the fund will be used to help people in our local community.Want more stories of hope and ways to help in your inbox? Sign up to get the weekly Denver7 Gives Email Newsletter 💌
- [Frisch's in St. Matthews is closing its doors - Louisville - WLKY](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/14/frischs-in-st-matthews-is-closing-its-doors-louisville-wlky/) - YEAR. WHILE A LONG TIME CASUAL, FAMILY FRIENDLY RESTAURANT IN ST MATTHEWS CLOSED ITS DOORS FOR GOOD THIS AFTERNOON. TODAY WAS THE LAST DAY FOR THE FRESHIES BIG BOY ON SHELBYVILLE ROAD ROAD. THE LOCATION NEAR THE MALL HAS BEEN THERE FOR DECADES, EATING THERE SEVERAL TIMES WITH THIS CLOSING THE ONLY LOCAL FRESH RESTAURANTS ARE ON POPLAR LEVEL ROAD IN SHEPHERDSVILLE AND IN NEW ALBANY. THE CINCINNATI BASED CHAIN HAS OTHER LOCATIONS ACROSS KENTUCK
- [City leaders discuss latest report showing youth impacted by violence - WAVE 3](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/14/city-leaders-discuss-latest-report-showing-youth-impacted-by-violence-wave-3/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - City leaders gathered Tuesday to come up with solutions to the city’s violence and discuss data revealed in a new, 2023 report from Greater Louisville Project’s Safer City.Data showed that the city’s youth are disproportionately impacted by the violence and makeup 50% of individuals who commit homicide.Youth homicides rose from 20 in 2018 to 60 in 2021. Of those 60 victims, 48 were young Black men, according to the report.Mayor Craig Greenberg said this is his administration’s top priority.“We need more programming for our kids, so we don’t lose them to a life of crime,” Greenberg said. “Right here in Louisville, last night, a 15-year-old child was shot in the head. I know it’s graphic. But we need to deal with the reality and these real stories.”Louisville ranked 14th among its 16 peer cities with the highest number of youth homicides, making Louisville the second-largest increase in young deaths since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.Data Scientist Harrison Kirby pointed out how policy, family, peers, and schools all play a role in violence.Louisville has the highest rate among its peers of Black residents between ages 15 and 24 who are not employed and not in school, the report said.“We must address a major issue, which is poverty,” JCPS Superintendent Dr. Marty Polio said. “We must look at poverty as the issue here.”Polio highlighted seven out of 10 students are on free and reduced lunch. Nearly half of the students are chronically absent.According to the report, Louisville has seen a decline in investment in youth-focused departments through the metro government, from a peak of $46 million in 2011 to a low of $22 million in 2021.The question left on the floor was how leaders plan to fund change once federal funding is used up in 2024.“You can’t look at their map and go well that only happens over there,” Deputy Mayor David James said. “So that is not my problem. And so if we don’t believe that it’s our problem as a city, then we don’t have a city.”Greenberg said he plans to roll out detailed steps on how he will invest in youth violence prevention programming and crack down on illegal guns in the coming weeks.To view the full report, click or tap here.Copyright 2023 WAVE. All rights reserved.
- [A judge blocks the release of most of a grand jury report in Georgia election probe | South ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/13/a-judge-blocks-the-release-of-most-of-a-grand-jury-report-in-georgia-election-probe-south/) - Updated February 13, 2023 at 10:47 AM ET The final recommendations of a special grand jury investigating attempts to overturn Georgia's 2020 presidential election will largely be kept under wraps, a judge has ruled. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney wrote in an eight-page order released Monday that there are due process concerns for people that the report names as likely violators of state laws, but he found that three sections that do not mention specifics can be released later this week, on Thursday. "These three portions include the introduction and conclusion to the final report, as well as Section VIII, in which the special purpose grand jury discusses its concern that some witnesses may have lied under oath during their testimony to the grand jury," McBurney wrote. "Because the grand jury does not identify those witnesses, that conclusion may be publicly disclosed at this time." The decision Monday comes after a Jan. 24 hearing where District Attorney Fani Willis' office argued against publishing the report and a consortium of media outlets said it should be published with no redactions. McBurney's order is a slight compromise, writing that certain parts of the report should be shared with the public while others merit secrecy until further action by prosecutors. "Having reviewed the final report, the undersigned concludes that the special purpose grand jury did not exceed the scope of its prescribed mission," the order reads. "Indeed, it provided the District Attorney with exactly what she requested: a roster of who should (or should not) be indicted, and for what, in relation to the conduct (and aftermath) of the 2020 general election in Georgia." A special purpose grand jury was empaneled last year to investigate potential crimes stemming from former President Donald Trump and his allies' failed efforts to reverse his 2020 election defeat in Georgia. Unlike regular grand juries, which meet for a much more limited time and consider multiple cases, this rarely used body spent roughly eight months interviewing more than 70 witnesses and gathering evidence, though it did not have the power to issue indictments. Instead, the special grand jury wrote a final report with recommendations for the district attorney's office about how to proceed, including potential violations of state law — though Willis does not have to follow those suggestions if she decides to seek indictments from a regular grand jury. Jurors voted to have that report made public, but the judge had questions about the applicability of prior precedents that have generally barred such reports from outlining alleged crimes without an indictment. McBurney found that the uniqueness of the special purpose grand jury left him with a decision that "is not that simple," calling the investigation "entirely appropriately a one-sided exploration" that means it would not be fair to have that exploration made public outside of a court setting if and when indictments are issued. In the Jan. 24 hearing, Willis and her staff argued against releasing the report at this time to protect the rights of those who might be indicted later. "We have to be mindful of protecting future defendants' rights," Willis said. "We want to make sure that everyone is treated fairly, and we think for future defendants to be treated fairly, it's not appropriate at this time to have this report released." Though the work of the special grand jury was largely conducted behind closed doors, relevant public court filings have given clues as to potential targets of the investigation who might have broken laws. Those details include: Several phone calls to top Georgia officials, including Trump's infamous call to Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger seeking to "find" votes to change the results. A pair of unofficial legislative hearings where members of Trump's campaign legal team, led by Rudy Giuliani, told Georgia lawmakers they could select an "alternate" slate of presidential electors by highlighting numerous false claims of election fraud. Efforts to recruit and execute an "alternate" slate of Republican presidential electors who met in the state capitol and sent documents falsely claiming to be official electors to Washington, D.C., including the role of Georgia GOP Chair David Shafer. Willis so far has remained tight-lipped about potential indictments, other than telling the court that "decisions are imminent." At least 17 people were notified they may be considered targets of the investigation, including Giuliani, Shafer and the rest of the fake electors, though the DA was disqualified from investigating new Lt. Gov. Burt Jones by Judge McBurney because of a conflict of interest. It is not clear what role, if any, Trump himself will play in the report or in potential indictments. The former president was not asked to voluntarily testify before the special purpose grand jury nor issued a subpoena, and his Georgia-based attorneys issued a statement before the hearing suggesting that the lack of those requests made them assume the grand jury found no wrongdoing. Even if the special grand jury did not weigh in on any potential legal violations by the former president, and even if Willis declines to pursue charges, there are still multiple other inquiries Trump is facing as he begins his third run for the White House, including federal probes into mishandling of classified documents, investigations into the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot and a pair of New York probes into his business empire. Copyright 2023 Georgia Public Broadcasting
- [GOP launches probe into COVID-19 origins with letter to Fauci - WAVE 3](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/13/gop-launches-probe-into-covid-19-origins-with-letter-to-fauci-wave-3/) - WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans kicked off an investigation Monday into the origins of COVID-19 by issuing a series of letters to current and former Biden administration officials for documents and testimony.The Republican chairmen of the House Oversight Committee and the subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic requested information from several people, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, surrounding the hypothesis that the coronavirus leaked accidentally from a Chinese lab.“This investigation must begin with where and how this virus came about so that we can attempt to predict, prepare or prevent it from happening again,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, chair of the virus subcommittee, said in a statement.Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the oversight committee, added that Republicans will “follow the facts” and “hold U.S. government officials that took part in any sort of cover-up accountable.”The letters to Fauci, National Intelligence Director Avril Haines, Health Secretary Xavier Beccera and others are the latest effort by the new Republican majority to make good on promises made during the 2022 midterms campaign.Wenstrup, who is also a longtime member of the House Intelligence Committee, has accused U.S. intelligence of withholding key facts about its investigation into the coronavirus. Republicans on the committee last year issued a staff report arguing that there are “indications” that the virus may have been developed as a bioweapon inside the China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.That would contradict a U.S. intelligence community assessment released in unclassified form in August 2021 that said analysts do not believe the virus was a bioweapon, though it may have leaked in a lab accident.The letters sent Monday do not require the cooperation of recipients. But in announcing the Republican staff report in December, Wenstrup said that lawmakers would issue subpoenas if potential witnesses didn’t cooperate.It is extremely difficult for scientists to establish definitively how diseases emerge, but studies by experts around the world have determined that COVID-19 most likely emerged from a live animal market in Wuhan, China.Initially dismissed by most public health experts and government officials, the hypothesis that COVID-19 originated from an accidental lab leak began to receive scrutiny after President Joe Biden ordered an investigation into the matter in May 2021.The 90-day review was meant to push American intelligence agencies to collect more information and review what they already had. Former State Department officials under President Donald Trump had publicly pushed for further investigation into virus origins, as had scientists and the World Health Organization. But the review proved to be inconclusive, with intelligence agencies saying that barring an unforeseen breakthrough, they wouldn’t be able to conclude the origin either way.Many scientists, including Fauci, who until December served as Biden’s chief medical adviser, say they still believe the virus most likely emerged in nature and jumped from animals to humans, a well-documented phenomenon known as a spillover event. Virus researchers have not publicly identified any key new scientific evidence that might make the lab-leak hypothesis more likely.But Republicans have accused Fauci of lying to Congress when he denied in May that the National Institutes of Health funded “gain of function” research — the practice of enhancing a virus in a lab to study its potential impact in the real world — at a virology lab in Wuhan. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, even urged Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Fauci’s statements.Fauci, who served as the country’s top infectious disease expert under both Republican and Democratic presidents, has called the GOP criticism nonsense.Cruz and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., have previously said that an October 2021 letter from NIH to Congress contradicts Fauci. But no clear evidence or scientific consensus exists that “gain of function” research was funded by NIH, and there is no link between U.S.-funded research to the emergence of COVID-19. NIH has repeatedly maintained that its funding did not go to such research involving boosting the infectivity and lethality of a pathogen.Nonetheless, Fauci indicated in November that he would “cooperate fully and testify” if Republicans followed through with their plans to investigate COVID’s origin.“I have no trouble testifying — we can defend and explain everything that we’ve said,” he told reporters during a White House briefing last year.___This story has been corrected to show that Rep. James Comer is from Kentucky, not Tennessee.Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
- [Portions of Georgia grand jury report in 2020 election probe to be released this week, judge rules](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/13/portions-of-georgia-grand-jury-report-in-2020-election-probe-to-be-released-this-week-judge-rules/) - Creativeye99/Getty Images (NEW YORK) — Portions of a report submitted by the Georgia grand jury investigating efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election will be released later this week, a Georgia judge ruled Monday. The majority of the long-anticipated report, however, will remain sealed, Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney ordered. Portions of the report are set to be released this Thursday, according to the order, including a section “in which the special purpose grand jury discusses its concern that some witnesses may have lied under oath during their testimony to the grand jury.” The ruling comes after McBurney heard arguments last month regarding the public release of the confidential report, which the grand jury submitted earlier this month after probing the matter for months. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had argued for the report to remain sealed, saying that it was important to “be mindful of protecting future defendants’ rights.” Willis also said during the hearing that charging decisions were “imminent.” That section, though, “does not identify those witnesses,” according to the order. Willis officially launched the probe in February 2021, sparked in part by the now-infamous Jan. 2, 2021, phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump pleaded with Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes,” the exact number Trump needed to win Georgia. Though the grand jury does not have the ability to return an indictment, it can make recommendations concerning criminal prosecution. Another grand jury would bring any possible charges, should they be recommended. Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
- [Fulton judge blocks release of most of grand jury's report on Trump's role in 2020 election |](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/13/fulton-judge-blocks-release-of-most-of-grand-jurys-report-on-trumps-role-in-2020-election/) - Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ATLANTA – Only portions of a grand jury’s final report on then-President Donald Trump’s alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia will be released to the public, a Fulton County judge ruled Monday. In an eight-page order, Fulton Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney declared that the nature of the special grand jury investigation raised due process issues for those among Trump and his associates who might be indicted following the conclusion of the probe. There were no lawyers advocating for any targets of the investigation,” McBurney wrote. “Potential future defendants were not able to present evidence outside the scope of what the district attorney asked them. “They could not call their own witnesses who might rebut what other state’s witnesses had said and they had no ability to present mitigating evidence. Put differently, there was very limited due process in this process for those who might now be named as indictment worthy in the final report.” Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis empaneled the special purpose grand jury early last year to investigate whether Trump and/or others unlawfully interfered in Georgia’s election results. A widely publicized aspect of those efforts was a phone call Republican Trump placed to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in January 2021 urging him to “find” 11,780 votes, the margin Trump needed to carry Georgia’s 16 electoral votes. Raffensperger refused to cooperate, and Congress certified Democrat Joe Biden the winner in Georgia a few days later. Willis will use the special purpose grand jury’s findings to inform her decision whether to empanel a grand jury to consider whether to indict the former president and/or any of his associates on criminal charges. Lawyers for a coalition of media outlets filed a motion asking for the entire final report to be released. A hearing was held last month, during which Willis sought to keep the report private in order not to jeopardize the rights of potential future defendants to a fair trial. While McBurney’s ruling Monday will keep most of the report under wraps for now, the judge ruled that three portions of the document may be released later this week. “These three portions include the introduction and conclusion to the final report, as well as Section VIII, in which the special purpose grand jury discusses its concern that some witnesses may have lied under oath during their testimony to the grand jury,” he wrote. “Because the grand jury does not identify those witnesses, that conclusion may be publicly disclosed at this time.” McBurney ruled that the material he is allowing to be made public will be released on Thursday. This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
- [Atlanta judge orders partial release of Trump 2020 election investigation report - Axios](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/13/atlanta-judge-orders-partial-release-of-trump-2020-election-investigation-report-axios/)
- [Georgia judge orders partial release of Trump grand jury report Thursday - USA Today](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/13/georgia-judge-orders-partial-release-of-trump-grand-jury-report-thursday-usa-today/) - A Georgia judge Monday ordered a partial public release of a grand jury's investigative report on former President Donald Trump's attempts to interfere in the 2020 election.Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said three portions of the panel's report will be released Thursday, including a section expressing concerns that some witnesses may have lied under oath, although the names of those witnesses will not be made public.McBurney also ordered the release of the grand jury's conclusions as part of a ruling that represented a partial concession to District Attorney Fani Willis who argued last month that disclosure of the panel's findings would damage an ongoing investigation.DOJ special counsel probe heats up:Mike Pence's relationship with Donald Trump gets even more complicated with subpoenaJudge: Grand jury provided roster of who should or should not be indictedWhile the judge rejected arguments from a media consortium, which called for immediate and full disclosure of the report as a "court record," he also noted the "compelling public interest in the proceedings and the unquestionable value and importance of transparency" as prompting the partial release."Indeed it (the grand jury) provided the district attorney with exactly what she requested: a roster of who should (or should not) be indicted and for what in relation to the conduct (and aftermath) of the 2020 general election in Georgia," McBurney wrote, adding that the panel had done its work "by the book."The district attorney agreed with the ruling.“I believe Judge McBurney’s order is legally sound and consistent with my request. I have no plans to appeal today’s order," Wills said Monday.Charging decisions in Georgia loom for Trump:Charging decisions on Trump now loom large in Georgia after grand jury completes its workDA Willis said last month that charging decisions were 'imminent'At last month's hearing, Willis acknowledged the intense public interest in the inquiry but requested the report remain sealed to protect "future defendants' rights."At that time, Willis told the judge that decisions on possible charges were "imminent."During that January hearing, prosecutors signaled that the grand jury's findings were so sensitive that they should not be disclosed while the investigation is ongoing.Fulton County prosecutor Donald Wakeford said there had been "no opportunity" to assess how the grand jury's findings could assist prosecutors in deciding whether criminal charges should be brought since the report was delivered two weeks ago."It's dangerous," Wakeford argued.Report not released at January hearing:Decisions in Trump Georgia election probe are 'imminent', but no report yetMedia organizations want the whole report releasedProsecutors strongly opposed efforts by a consortium of media organizations, citing an "extraordinary" public interest in the inquiry that has featured testimony from 75 witnesses, including some of Trump's closest former aides and advisers.Thomas Clyde, an attorney representing the media group, including USA TODAY, argued that "public faith" in the court system is at stake in the document's prompt disclosure, asserting that prosecutors had not made the case for continuing secrecy."We believe the report should be released now and in its entirety," Clyde told McBurney. "There hasn't been any suggestion, evidence, or demonstration that there should be a sealing in this case."Presidents and classified documents:After Pence, Biden, Trump revelations, Archives asks ex-presidents to check for classified documentsTrump urging GA secretary of state to 'find' votes in phone call prompted investigationWillis launched the inquiry shortly after Trump's Jan. 2, 2021, conversation with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which the former president urged Georgia's top election official to "find 11,780 votes" to tilt the 2020 statewide election in his favor.The inquiry subsequently expanded to include a wide-ranging examination of election fraud. Willis has said authorities also have been investigating possible conspiracy, oath of office violations, racketeering and election-related violence.Rudy Giuliani, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Newt Gingrich are among the 75 witnessesSome of Trump's most senior advisers, including personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and former House speaker Newt Gingrich, have been among the 75 witnesses to be summoned before the special grand jury.As part of the inquiry, prosecutors have been examining the submission of an alternate slate of electors by Republicans in Georgia, one of seven states in which officials allegedly sought to reverse Trump's defeat.Giuliani a 'target':Rudy Giuliani now a 'target' in Georgia election interference investigation
- [Parts of Georgia grand jury report into Trump to be released - Law & Crime](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/13/parts-of-georgia-grand-jury-report-into-trump-to-be-released-law-crime/) - Donald Trump and Fulton County DA Fani Willis (Photo of Trump via Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images/ Photo of Willis via screenshot of video on DA’s website) A Georgia judge ordered the partial release of a special grand jury report into former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Those portions will be released on Thursday. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) had urged Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney to hold off on releasing the special grand jury’s report, telling him at a hearing last month that “decisions are imminent” as to whom to indict. She said that she needs to protect the due-process rights of the accused. In an eight-page ruling, McBurney found some substance to that argument. “This special purpose grand jury investigation was, appropriately, largely controlled by the District Attorney,” the judge noted. “She and her team decided who would be subpoenaed, when they would appear, what questions would be asked, and what aspects of the general election would be explored. The grand jurors were, of course, able to question the witnesses as well, but the process was essentially an investigative tool designed to enable the District Attorney to gather more information about what actually happened in the days following the general election in Fulton County (and elsewhere) so that she could make a more informed decision on whether Georgia law was violated and whether anyone should be charged for doing so. It was — again , entirely appropriately — a one-sided exploration.” Though McBurney emphasized that this was not a criticism of the probe, he added that it affected whether the report could be released. “That does not mean that the District Attorney’s investigative process was flawed or improper or in any way unconstitutional,” he said. “By all appearances, the special purpose grand jury did its work by the book.” McBurney indicated that he does not intend to forever seal the portions of the report that will not be released later this week. “The consequence of these due process deficiencies is not that the special purpose grand jury’s final report is forever suppressed or that its recommendations for or against indictment are in any way flawed or suspect,” the judge wrote. “Rather, the consequence is that those recommendations are for the District Attorney’s eyes only — for now.” Related Coverage: The logic of nondisclosure doesn’t hold in three portions of the report, the judge said. “There are, however, three parts of the final report that are ripe for publication,” McBurney said. Despite noting that “publication may not be convenient for the pacing of the District Attorney’s investigation,” the judge found that “the compelling public interest in these proceedings and the unquestionable value and importance of transparency require their release.” “These three portions include the introduction and conclusion to the final report, as well as Section VIII, in which the special purpose grand jury discusses its concern that some witnesses may have lied under oath during their testimony to the grand jury,” the ruling states. “Because the grand jury does not identify those witnesses, that conclusion may be publicly disclosed at this time.” By design, a special grand jury cannot issue indictments, but it can make recommendations that could be relevant to a separate grand jury. McBurney said that the special grand jury fulfilled that mission. “Indeed, it provided the District Attorney with exactly what she requested: a roster of who should (or should not) be indicted, and for what, in relation to the conduct (and aftermath) of the 2020 general election in Georgia,” the ruling states. After losing the 2020 election, Trump embarked on a quest to overturn the results in several states. In Georgia, Trump made an infamous phone call urging Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to “find 11,780 votes” — the precise margin needed to reverse President Joe Biden’s victory there — or potentially face criminal exposure. Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
- [Judge to release partial Fulton grand jury report on Trump allies' 2020 election interference](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/13/judge-to-release-partial-fulton-grand-jury-report-on-trump-allies-2020-election-interference/) - The first details of a Fulton County special grand jury’s report on attempts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to interfere in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election are set to be released to the public Thursday. Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said in a court order on Monday that he will unseal three sections of the grand jury’s final report following a lengthy investigation in which the panel was tasked with recommending whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should pursue criminal charges against the former president, Trump’s inner circle and other supporters. The three sections of the report coming out on Thursday include the introduction, conclusion and a portion in which the jurors discuss witnesses they believe committed perjury. Those witnesses are not identified in that section of the report. In January, several media organizations requested that McBurney publicly release the jury’s final report on a historic investigation, arguing it has significant national public interest. Nevertheless, McBurney on Monday disagreed with the attorneys representing the media groups that the entire December report should be made public as a court record. In a January 24 hearing, Willis said she was concerned that releasing the full report would hinder the chances of potential defendants getting a fair trial. She said at that hearing decisions were imminent on indictments based on the special grand jury’s findings. McBurney wrote the report was ultimately only intended for Willis, who would use it to decide whether to pursue grand jury indictments. “There were no lawyers advocating for any targets of the investigation,” McBurney said in the order. “Potential future defendants were not able to present evidence outside the scope of what the district attorney asked them.” McBurney wrote that he will continue to assess whether other parts of the report should be publicly disclosed as he receives updates on the case from prosecutors. Last year, Fulton’s circuit court judges granted Willis’ request for a panel that could meet for a year in order to handle more complex cases. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney served as the supervising judge over the special grand jury that heard testimony from dozens of witnesses as part of the 2020 presidential election interference probe. Stanley Dunlap/Georgia Recorder (file photo) “The consequences of the due process deficiencies is not that a special purpose grand jury’s final report is forever suppressed or that its recommendation for or against incidents are in any way flawed or suspect,” McBurney said. “Rather, the consequence is that those recommendations are for the District Attorney’s eyes only – for now.” Willis launched the investigation in early 2022 after the public release of a recording of a phone conversation in which Trump asked Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find enough votes to declare him the winner of Georgia. Raffensperger refused Trump’s overtures as Biden won the closely contested race by nearly 12,000 votes over the Republican incumbent. Immediately after the Georgia election, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, held court before state Senate and House legislators at committee hearings where he and others spread wild conspiracy theories of widespread election fraud, urging lawmakers to intervene to stop Biden from winning. Among the 75 witnesses to appear before the Fulton panel was Giuliani former chief of staff Mark Meadows and U.S. Sen Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina. Among the other witnesses were fake Republican electors who cast their votes for an alternate slate of electors in support of Trump while the official Democratic electoral votes for Biden were being cast. Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Raffensperger, whose refusals to overturn the election angered Trump, also testified. In Georgia and several other battleground states, claims of stolen elections fueled the U.S. Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, as members of congress were set to count the electoral votes in the presidential election. A separate investigation conducted by the Jan. 6 House special committee played out on national TV, backed by public documents. The committee’s December report concludes Trump incited the Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol insurrection. A U.S. Justice Department investigation continues into whether Trump, his inner circle or other supporters broke any laws. GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX SUBSCRIBE
- [Judge to Release Parts of Georgia Special Grand Jury Report](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/13/judge-to-release-parts-of-georgia-special-grand-jury-report/) - Atlanta, Georgia — A Georgia judge on Monday ordered the partial release later this week of a special grand jury report into efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election loss. The report's introduction and conclusion, as well as a section in which the grand jurors expressed concerns that some witnesses may have lied under oath, will be released on Thursday, said Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney. Any recommendations on who should or should not be prosecuted will remain secret for now to protect their due process rights, McBurney wrote. McBurney's order came three weeks after hearing arguments from prosecutors, who urged the report be kept secret until they decide on charges, and a coalition of media organizations, which pressed for its release. The release is a significant development in one of several cases that threaten legal jeopardy for the former president as he ramps up a 2024 White House campaign. The special grand jury spent about seven months hearing testimony from witnesses including high-profile Trump allies, such as attorney Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and high-ranking Georgia officials, such as Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp. McBurney wrote that the report includes recommendations for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, including "a roster of who should [or should not] be indicted, and for what, in relation to the conduct [and aftermath] of the 2020 general election in Georgia." The special grand jury did not have the power to issue indictments, and it will ultimately be up to Willis to decide whether to seek indictments from a regular grand jury. The special grand jury's final report was requested by Willis and is meant to inform her investigative decision-making process, McBurney wrote, adding that the panel's investigation was largely controlled by the district attorney and her team and was "a one-sided exploration." There was "very limited due process" for people for whom the grand jurors recommended charges, McBurney wrote. Some may not have had the opportunity to appear before the panel, and those who did appear did not have the right to have their lawyers present or to offer any rebuttal. For that reason, the judge concluded, it is not appropriate to release the full report at this time. It is not clear if or when Willis will present the case to a regular grand jury with the purpose of getting one or more indictments. At a Jan. 24 hearing, she said decisions are "imminent" but did not elaborate. Trump told The Associated Press last month that he did "absolutely nothing wrong." He said he felt "very confident" that he wouldn't be indicted. At the January hearing, Willis had argued against the immediate release of the report, saying it could violate the rights of potential defendants and negatively affect the ability to prosecute those who may be charged with crimes. "We want to make sure that everyone is treated fairly and we think for future defendants to be treated fairly, it is not appropriate at this time to have this report released," Willis said during the hearing. A group of news organizations, including the AP, argued in favor of releasing the report immediately in full, saying that public interest in the report is "extraordinary." "The discomfort of the prosecuting authority in disclosing court records isn't enough to make them sealed," said attorney Tom Clyde, representing the media. "It has to be significant, identifiable evidence that's going to cause a problem." FILE - Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis, center, and her team, during proceedings to seat a special purpose grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, on May 2, 2022, to look into the actions of former President Donald Trump and his supporters. Willis said in an emailed statement Monday that she believes McBurney's order is "legally sound and consistent with my request" and that she has no plans to appeal. Clyde declined to comment. Willis and her team began investigating two years ago, shortly after the release of a recording of a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. In that conversation, the then-president suggested that Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, could "find" the votes needed to overturn Trump's narrow election loss in the state to Biden, a Democrat. "All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have," Trump said on the call. Since then, the investigation's scope has broadened considerably. The special grand jury operated behind closed doors, as required by law, but public court filings and hearings related to its work provided a window into some of the topics Willis was exploring. Those included: — Phone calls by Trump and others to Georgia officials in the wake of the 2020 election. — A group of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate in December 2020 falsely stating that Trump had won the state and that they were the state's "duly elected and qualified" electors. — False allegations of election fraud made during meetings of state legislators at the Georgia Capitol in December 2020. — The copying of data and software from election equipment in rural Coffee County by a computer forensics team hired by Trump allies. — Alleged attempts to pressure Fulton County elections worker Ruby Freeman into falsely confessing to election fraud. — The abrupt resignation of the U.S. attorney in Atlanta in January 2021.
- [Georgia grand jury report on Trump election pressure to be partially released | US politics](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/13/georgia-grand-jury-report-on-trump-election-pressure-to-be-partially-released-us-politics/) - Georgia grand jury report on Trump election pressure to be partially releasedJudge ruled certain sections will be made public this week, including one involving witnesses who may have lied under oath Portions of a Georgia grand jury’s report on whether Donald Trump and allies committed crimes when they tried to overturn the 2020 election will be made public this week, but the entirety of the report will remain secret until the Fulton county prosecutor decides whether to bring charges, a judge ruled on Monday.The sections that will be made public are the report’s introduction, conclusion and a section discussing whether some of the witnesses who testified before the special purpose grand jury lied under oath. The section does not identify which witnesses may have lied.Those sections will be made public on the court docket on 16 February, Robert McBurney, a Fulton county judge ruled on Monday.The decision is the latest development in a closely watched investigation opened by Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, into efforts to overturn the results of the November 2020 election. Last month, Willis appeared in court to say she opposed releasing the report in full until she decided whether to file criminal charges, a decision she said at the time was “imminent”.Untouchable review: Trump as ‘lawless Houdini’ above US justiceRead moreTrump – who infamously pressed Georgia’s top election official to “find 11,780 votes” to overturn the election – and allies could face a range of criminal charges under Georgia law. It is a state crime to intentionally try to get someone to commit election fraud or to interfere with an official who is carrying out election duties. Willis is also reportedly considering bringing Rico racketeering charges against Trump.In an eight-page ruling, McBurney said he had reviewed the report and that the grand jury had fulfilled its purpose. But releasing the entirety of the report before Willis makes a decision on criminal charges could violate the due process rights of those named in the report, he wrote.“By all appearances, the special purpose grand jury did its work by the book. The problem here, in discussing public disclosure, is that that book’s rules do not allow for the objects of the District Attorney’s attention to be heard in the manner we require in a court of law,” he wrote.Trump was issued subpoena for folder marked ‘Classified Evening Briefing’ discovered at Mar-a-LagoRead more“The consequence of these due process deficiencies is not that the special purpose grand jury’s final report is forever suppressed or that its recommendations for or against indictment are in any way flawed or suspect. Rather, the consequence is that those recommendations are for the District Attorney’s eyes only – for now.”TopicsUS politicsDonald TrumpGeorgiaUS elections 2020newsReuse this content
- [Nevada election laws, and what to do moving forward](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/13/nevada-election-laws-and-what-to-do-moving-forward/) - This opinion column was submitted by Danny Tarkanian, who represents District 1 on the Board of County Commissioners for Douglas County.Many Republicans have spent the past two years complaining about voter fraud without any proof to support their allegations. Making these allegations without proof undermines the credibility of the Republican Party. Worse yet, making allegations that are easily disproved eliminates any credibility.That is exactly what the leaders of the Nevada Republican Party did. At numerous press conferences and party events they claimed that thousands of dead people voted in the 2020 elections and thousands more voted twice. There is no gray area here; either it is true, or it is not. On multiple occasions, I requested that the names of these people be released publicly so we could prove voter fraud happened but each time the state party refused. The reason the names were never released is because it didn’t happen.However, as with most controversial issues, it isn’t one-sided. The Democrats, under the guise of COVID, passed sweeping elections laws that fail to protect the integrity of the ballot. Ballot-harvesting (the practice of picking up ballots from voters and dropping them off at the election department) was a felony in Nevada. It still is in most states. In 2020, Nevada Democrats made it legal.It is ironic and hypocritical that state law prevents a person from waving a campaign sign or wearing a campaign T-shirt 100 feet from a polling place because it might influence someone’s vote, but it is all right to go over a person’s house, watch them, even instruct them, to fill out their ballot, and then drop the ballot off at the polling place.Mailing a ballot to every voter without the voter requesting one — another law passed by Nevada Democrats in 2020 — results in thousands of unaccounted ballots permeating through society. If there is going to be universal mail-in ballots, there must be strict signature verification.In Clark County, the exact opposite has been implemented. The registrar of voters, a Democrat, lowered the signature verification level to the lowest recommended by the software manufacturer — and if a signature somehow was flagged by this low threshold, a majority of three people, two from different parties and the Democrat registrar of voters had to agree the signatures didn’t match, or the ballot was counted.Victor Joecks from the Las Vegas Review Journal tested the accuracy of this process. In the 2020 elections, nine voters submitted their ballots with their name signed by Joecks. Eight were accepted. In 2022, 11 voters submitted their ballot with Joecks’ signature. Six were accepted. Joecks’ tests prove the signature verification process used in Clark County does not identify even half of the fraudulent signatures submitted.This practice is extremely dangerous because there is no way to prove voter fraud after the fact because the envelope which contained the signature that is matched against the signature on file with the Secretary of State’s office is discarded when the vote is counted.The Republican Party would have been better-served bringing to light these valid concerns and fighting for more stringent signature verification requirements than peddling false claims.Moving forward, what should be done? Universal mail-in ballots are here to stay in Nevada. The law will be overturned only if the Republicans take control of the Assembly, Senate and the governor’s office, which has occurred only once in the last 50 years.Unfortunately, ballot-harvesting is also probably here to stay. Despite its potential for catastrophic abuse and no ways to monitor it, don’t expect the Democrats to repeal it. It gives the Culinary Union a powerful weapon.As much as Republicans may not like it, they must embrace both. Stop discouraging members from voting by mail. In fact, create a robust, well-funded, effective campaign for both mail-in ballots and ballot harvesting.In the 2022 elections, more than 155,000, registered Republicans in Nevada did not vote. Every statewide race was close, except for attorney general. If the Republican Party had spent one-tenth the time on mail-in ballots and ballot harvesting as they did making false claims of election fraud, they finally would have earned success after years of failure.The rules have changed, not necessarily for the best, but they are the rules. Either the Republican Party will adjust, or it will fade off as a distant memory.Danny Tarkanian represents District 1 on the Board of County Commissioners for Douglas County.Have your say:How to submit an opinion column or letter to the editor
- [Trump Dismissed Research He Paid for After It Debunked Election Fraud Claims - Truthout](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/13/trump-dismissed-research-he-paid-for-after-it-debunked-election-fraud-claims-truthout/) - Trump has continued to push claims of election fraud, even after a report he commissioned revealed they were bogus. In the weeks after his 2020 election loss, former President Donald Trump and his campaign team commissioned a research group to investigate allegations of election fraud. When the group reported that the claims were not based in reality, however, Trump’s campaign dismissed the findings and continued to push lies about election fraud anyway. According to four sources who spoke to The Washington Post, the Trump campaign tasked the Berkeley Research Group (BRG) with investigating claims about election fraud in the 2020 presidential election. The campaign asked BRG to examine alleged machine malfunctions that had supposedly increased Biden’s vote totals, as well as claims of deceased people voting for Biden. The research delved into numerous allegations of voter fraud, according to the sources, who spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from Trump or his loyalists. “They looked at everything: change of addresses, illegal immigrants, ballot harvesting, people voting twice, machines being tampered with, ballots that were sent to vacant addresses that were returned and voted,” one of the sources said. “Literally anything you could think of. … If there was anything under the sun that could be thought of, they looked at it.” But within the six states that BRG investigated — Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania — there was no evidence that widespread fraud had affected the election’s outcome. Though a small number of voting anomalies were discovered, the organization noted, there was nothing sizable enough to warrant the claims that Trump and others were making. Related Story The former head of Trump’s 2020 campaign in Wisconsin acknowledged that Democrats did a better job turning out the vote. “Just like any election, there are always errors, omissions and irregularities,” a source with knowledge of the report’s findings said. “It was nowhere close enough to what they wanted to prove, and it actually went in both directions.” BRG presented its findings in a conference call with Trump and his advisers, including then-chief of staff Mark Meadows. As BRG began to disprove each of the claims Trump had been pushing about election fraud, the call grew contentious, the Post reported, with the former president and his advisers rejecting the findings. The report wasn’t cited in any of the court cases that Trump or his loyalists brought forward seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election. BRG itself never released the report, as it goes against company policy to discuss assignments requested by clients. The reporting from the Post is the latest example of Trump and his advisers refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the 2020 election in spite of overwhelming evidence disproving their claims of election fraud. In a public hearing in June, the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol noted that numerous White House advisers had repeatedly told Trump that there hadn’t been widespread election fraud. “The election fraud claims were false. Mr. Trump’s closest advisers knew it. Mr. Trump knew it,” January 6 committee member Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-California) said, adding that Trump still urged his supporters to “fight like hell” and descend on the Capitol during the certification of the Electoral College. Audio recordings made public earlier this month showcase that Trump campaign officials at the state level were also aware that the fraud claims were lies. Andrew Iverson, then the head of the Trump campaign in Wisconsin, acknowledged Trump’s loss in the state but told his staff they’d push fraud claims if asked to do so. “Comms is going to continue to fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election. We’ll do whatever they need,” Iverson said in the recordings. “Just be on standby if there’s any stunts we need to pull.” A quick message before you keep reading We’re proud to publish real news 365 days of the year, completely free of charge to our readers. But producing high-quality, independent work is not cost-free – we rely heavily on your support. If you found the piece above useful, informative, or inspiring, please consider supporting Truthout with a tax-deductible donation. A gift of any size makes a difference and helps keep this unique platform alive. This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.
- [Trump hired researchers to try to prove election fraud claims: report](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/13/trump-hired-researchers-to-try-to-prove-election-fraud-claims-report/) - Former President Donald Trump’s campaign hired a research firm in 2020 in an attempt to prove claims of election fraud and never released the group’s findings when the results failed to validate the former commander-in-chief’s allegations, according to a report. The Trump campaign commissioned Berkeley Research Group in the final weeks of 2020 to conduct the study into alleged electoral fraud in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada, according to the Washington Post. Researchers looked into claims of malfunctioning voting machines, dead people voting, illegal immigrants voting, people voting twice – anything that could prove Trump should have won the 2020 election. “If there was anything under the sun that could be thought of, they looked at it,” a person familiar with the study told the Washington Post. The study, done through a Berkeley Research Group subsidiary, cost the campaign more than $600,000, according to the report. Researchers hired by Trump looked into claims of widespread voting by dead people and illegal immigrants, among other electoral fraud allegations.AP Researchers briefed Trump, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and others on their findings in December of 2020, explaining to them they did not believe the anomalies discovered were significant enough to make a difference in the outcome of the election. Also, no evidence was found to support Trump’s claims of rigged voting machines and large numbers of dead people voting. “Just like any election, there are always errors, omissions and irregularities. It was nowhere close enough to what they wanted to prove, and it actually went in both directions,” a person familiar with the study told the outlet. Meadows was reportedly skeptical of the group’s findings and Trump also continued to maintain that he won the election during the call, which was described as “contentious.” The Trump campaign reportedly spent more than $600,000 to try and prove the former president’s claims of electoral fraud in 2020.Bloomberg via Getty Images Some Trump advisers hoped that the Berkeley Research Group might suppress false claims of election malfeasance, but the then-president and several of his associates continued to peddle false theories even after the report’s findings were revealed. The report was never made public or used in Trump’s court battles over the 2020 election results. The 76-year-old former president’s in under federal investigation for his alleged attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Trump is also being investigated in Georgia for alleged attempts to interfere with the results of the 2020 presidential election in the Peach State.
- [Louisville Passed 'Breonna's Law' — And 3 Weeks Later, Louisville Metro Police ... - LEO Weekly](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/13/louisville-passed-breonnas-law-and-3-weeks-later-louisville-metro-police-leo-weekly/) - On June 11, 2020, it felt like change might finally be coming to Louisville. Hundreds of people gathered in front of Metro Hall, their fists in the air as votes from city council members were broadcast over speakers, unanimously banning “no-knock” warrants in Louisville following the police killing of Breonna Taylor three months earlier and two weeks of protests. Under the ordinance, dubbed Breonna’s Law, officers executing search warrants must knock and clearly announce that they are law enforcement. They also have to have a body-worn camera on and start recording five minutes before the execution of the warrant. Signed into law the next day, the legislation would spark similar efforts nationwide as the country grappled with the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other Black Americans killed by police. “All Breonna wanted to do was save lives,” said Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, addressing Louisville’s Metro Council ahead of the vote. “So it’s important this law passes because with that, she’ll get to continue to do that, even in her death.” A little more than three weeks after Breonna’s Law passed, four Louisville Metro Police Department officers were stacking up outside an apartment in Old Louisville in the middle of the night for a no-warrant raid. Officers Brooklyn Sharpey, left, Carina Ansaldo, right, and Anthony Miller talk with one another at a stabbing scene in Old Louisville on July 5, 2020. Police showed up to the apartment after bystanders at the scene of a stabbing told them a woman who matched the loose description given by the victim lived in their neighborhood. They provided officers with a first name, Lynn, which one officer recognized as the middle name of a woman in the area that she knew. Neither bystander described seeing the assault and later, the LMPD officer who first made contact with them would say he did not believe they saw the stabbing and did not know how they came up with the name they passed along. Despite lacking probable cause — and the microscope on LMPD raids at the time as a result of the killing of Breonna Taylor— no officer present pumped the brakes on the raid. The officers knocked, but did not announce themselves as police. The officer in the front was armed with a rifle, while at least one other officer had already drawn their pistol from its holster. Unlike other raids that typically see officers line up like this, they did not have a judge-signed warrant. When the door was opened, the officer in the lead aimed his rifle at a Black woman sleeping on a couch. She was visible from the door as he and fellow officers entered, shouting conflicting commands. The officers went into the home even though department policy holds that officers can only enter a premises without a warrant in extremely limited circumstances, including when they are in pursuit of a suspect or matters of life and death. The woman was handcuffed and detained on the building’s front porch for nearly two hours — even as gunfire erupted nearby. LMPD policy says people cannot be detained without arrest except in very limited circumstances. The woman was never charged with a crime. In a written complaint about the raid the woman submitted to LMPD’s Professional Standards Unit ten days later, she would say she couldn’t sleep, that all she saw when she closed her eyes was the rifle in her face. An internal breach of policy investigation that followed found the four officers involved did not have probable cause to conduct the raid or detain the woman. As a result, on Dec. 29, 2021, former LMPD Chief Erika Shields issued a one-day suspension to each officer. It’s not clear how many raids like this one Louisville police officers have conducted since the passage of Breonna’s Law. LMPD declined to answer a question from LEO Weekly about the frequency of similar raids, and the July 5, 2020 raid has not been reported on until now. “For someone who worked very tirelessly and hard on getting Breonna’s Law passed, it’s very unfortunate a couple years later to hear that just right after it passed, that it wasn’t followed,” said State Rep. Keturah Herron, a former policy strategist with the ACLU of Kentucky advocating for warrant reform in the wake of Taylor’s killing in 2020. “I believe it’s those things that the community is concerned about and the reason why that trust is not there.” LEO Weekly first learned of the raid through an open records request for police discipline documents that the city responded to last June. In December, nearly six months later, LEO received more than six hours of heavily redacted video footage of the incident, providing a more complete window into what happened. This story is pieced together based on analysis of that body camera footage as well as 177 pages of documents from the police department’s internal breach of policy investigation. The incident provides a cautionary tale about the potentially blunted impact of in-the-moment police reforms that Louisville and other cities across the country saw during and after 2020. The revelations about the incident also come as Louisville continues to await the results of a wide-ranging Department of Justice probe into its police department — an investigation that, among other things, is looking into whether the force “conducts unreasonable stops, searches, seizures, and arrests, both during patrol activities and in obtaining and executing search warrants for private homes.” Peter Kraska, a criminal justice professor at Eastern Kentucky University and an expert on the militarization of police forces in America, said practices such as warrantless raids are commonplace in American policing and that reform is not easy. “The cultural momentum in a department is not going to shift just because of something like Breonna Taylor and the city council’s actions took place,” he said. THE STABBING On July 5, 2020, just after 12:35 a.m., LMPD officers and paramedics were called to a stabbing on Woodbine Avenue near the I-65 underpass in Old Louisville. Arriving, they found a white man wearing a blue shirt and blue bandana bleeding profusely from his upper right thigh, which was tied with a makeshift tourniquet. “They was saying I was wearing the wrong colors,” the victim said. The man described his assailant as a 5’2” or 5’3” Black woman with short black hair wearing “black on black tights.” As the victim provided the description, bystanders started speaking to Officer Anthony Elliott. One of them, a Black man, described a woman with “nappy hair” who lived around the corner, four houses down, who matched that description. He did not describe witnessing the stabbing. Another person on the scene, a woman who called 911 to report coming across the bleeding victim in front of her house, provided a name for the woman who lived around the corner: Lynn. In the 911 call, the woman said she did not know who stabbed the man. Asked directly by Elliott if she saw the stabbing, the woman said she did not, that she only saw the wounded victim. More than six months later, Elliott would tell investigators: “I don’t know how they knew it was her but I believe they did not see it.” As the victim again described his attacker, adding the details that she smoked a lot of cigarettes and that he could recognize her if he saw her, Elliott interjected, saying: “Her name is Lynn — is her name Lynn?” before concluding “her name is Lynn.” The victim did not seem to acknowledge the name. A few minutes later, after the man was loaded onto a stretcher by EMS, Officer Brooklyn Sharpey walked over to where Elliott was speaking to the bystanders. “Where she stay at?” Sharpey asked about the woman. “About four houses around the corner, that way,” the man said, pointing and adding that the woman is “always acting like a junkie.” “Hey — hey,” Sharpey said, tapping Elliot’s shoulder. “You know who I think — I know she stays up there with a Black guy. The top floor. Remember? You might not have been with me. We’ll show you the house, I’ll show you the house.” Elliott asked if she’d been there on a “domestic” run and Sharpey said she had. Then, standing in the street and joined by Officer Carina Ansaldo, Sharpey said: “We’re going to go to — I think I know who did it. She stays right around the corner.” Later, speaking to investigators, Sharpey would say she recognized Lynn as the middle name of the person she knew in the area who matched the description given by the stabbing victim. Sharpey would also tell investigators — and mention to a fellow officer on body camera footage in the moments after the raid — that she showed a picture of the woman to bystanders on the scene, and that they confirmed it was the person they were talking about. However, in body camera footage seen by LEO Weekly, no officer is seen showing a photograph to bystanders. In LMPD’s internal investigation, the force’s Professional Standards Unit acknowledges the lack of body cam footage as well, with an investigator writing that the display of the photograph “was not captured on [body cam]; however, Officer Sharpey references her action when speaking when speaking to Officer Ansaldo at 06:10 of Officer Sharpey’s [body cam].” The officers packed up and got ready to move. Nobody questioned what they were doing. [embedded content] Video footage of warrantless raid. THE RAID After they left the scene of the stabbing, the four officers — Sharpey, Elliott, Ansaldo and Donald Miller — drove the short distance to the target residence in three vehicles. In Sharpey’s body camera footage, Elliott can be seen popping his squad car’s trunk when he arrives, presumably to retrieve a patrol rifle, which he was not armed with when he responded to the stabbing. Officer Anthony Elliott, armed with a patrol rifle, speaks on the phone with Detective Adam Lady after the July 5, 2020 warrantless raid in Old Louisville. While a bystander told officers the woman he was talking about stayed in a building “about four houses around the corner,” the building officers went to is further down the street. The officers started trying to gain entry to the building, an old Victorian structure which, like many in Old Louisville, has been subdivided into apartments. They knocked on the front door and then took an alley to the rear, at one point climbing a back set of stairs so rickety they expressed fear it would collapse under their weight. Failing to find a way into the building, they returned to the front, where a man inside unlocked the door and quickly retreated into a ground-floor apartment. The officers climbed the stairs and gathered outside their target’s door in a stack — a single-file tactical formation used to enter through a doorway where a threat may be located. Elliott, armed with a rifle, was in the front. The body camera footage provided to LEO Weekly was blurred in its entirety when officers are inside the building, making it difficult to decipher. In its response to LEO Weekly’s open records request, Louisville Metro Government said all redactions made to body camera footage were “pursuant to personal privacy.” However, a review of body camera footage included in the LMPD Professional Standards Unit investigation reported at least one other officer, Ansaldo, had her handgun drawn as officers knocked on the door. Officers knocked, but did not announce they were police. When a Black man opened the door, Elliott immediately raised his rifle at the woman lying down on a couch visible from the doorway. “Hands up — back up, back up, back up,” Elliott said as he stepped into the apartment aiming his rifle. “Get up. Get up, get up, get up. Get on the ground,” he ordered the woman, throwing back what appears to be a blanket or large pillow covering her. “Stand up,” said Ansaldo as she moved towards the couch. “What did I do?” the woman asked repeatedly. “I was asleep.” In heavily blurred body camera footage provided to LEO Weekly, Officer Anthony Elliott is seen aiming his patrol rifle at a woman during a warrantless raid in Old Louisville. Ansaldo handcuffed the woman, searched her and eventually led her out of the apartment and downstairs to the building’s porch, where she would sit, handcuffed, for nearly two hours while waiting for a detective to show up. While it is impossible to tell from the blurred body camera footage whether other officers had their guns drawn before the door was opened, according to the Professional Standards Unit body cam logs, both Miller and Sharpey were observed with their pistols out in the seconds after the door opened. After the woman was detained, officers asked the man present, whom the woman later identified as her ex-boyfriend, how long she had been in the apartment. He said she had been there “since yesterday” and hadn’t left. He told officers that he had been out of the apartment and returned an hour ago — before the officers responded to the stabbing — and that she had been present in the apartment. Officers thanked him, but did not ask follow-up questions. Stepping out of the building’s foyer into the hot summer night, one of the officers removed an item they were using to prop the door open, locking them out. “I wish we could take her over there and be like, ‘Hey, is that her?’” Sharpey mused to Miller as the woman was being read her rights on the front porch. “I showed them a picture and they said, ‘That’s her.’” THE WAIT With the woman handcuffed and sitting on the front porch, the officers settled in for a wait for a detective that would last nearly two hours. Not long after the woman was detained, Elliott spoke with Detective Adam Lady by phone, telling him a suspect was in custody. “The witnesses said it was her, she always like hangs around this area,” Elliott told the detective. According to Elliott, Lady told officers to wait with the woman until he arrived unless she admitted to involvement in the stabbing. Soon after she was detained, the woman started complaining that the handcuffs were too tight. “Alright my man, I’ll loosen it up,” said Officer Ansaldo, moving towards the woman.
- [Trump Campaign Paid Researchers to Investigate 2020 Election, Got Mad When They ... - Mediaite](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/13/trump-campaign-paid-researchers-to-investigate-2020-election-got-mad-when-they-mediaite/) - AP Photo/Andrew Harnik A new report from the Washington Post details a previously-unknown element of former President Donald Trump’s 2020 redux obsessions, describing a comprehensive research project he commissioned to develop proof of election fraud — and his response when the consultants failed to find the smoking gun he so fervently desired. Trump has made no secret of his desire to throw out the results of the 2020 election and declare himself the winner. He’s never wavered from his baseless claims of election fraud, throws his endorsement support almost exclusively behind other candidates who indulge his election denialism, and has gone so far as to call for the “termination” of the U.S. Constitution (not to mention his role in inspiring the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters). According to the Post’s Josh Dawsey, the Trump campaign paid research company Berkeley Research Group through a subsidiary called East Bay Dispute and Advisory consulting fees that totaled “more than $600,000 in the final weeks of 2020.” There may have been even more spent; the Post’s sources said other outside researchers were also hired. So what did Trump get for his hundreds of thousand of dollars? Sources familiar with Berkeley’s work for the campaign say that around “a dozen” researchers were involved, including “econonmetricians” who used “statistics to model and predict outcomes,” digging into “at least a dozen hypotheses.” The research work included Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada, searching for possible voter machines malfunctions, evidence of dead people’s names being used to vote, and other inquiries attempting to prove that the votes in these states should have gone to Trump instead of Joe Biden. (Each of these states, except Nevada, voted Trump in 2016 and flipped blue in 2020.) As one source described the research: “They looked at everything: change of addresses, illegal immigrants, ballot harvesting, people voting twice, machines being tampered with, ballots that were sent to vacant addresses that were returned and voted,” said a person familiar with the work who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private research and meetings. “Literally anything you could think of. Voter turnout anomalies, date of birth anomalies, whether dead people voted. If there was anything under the sun that could be thought of, they looked at it.” The ex-president infamously lost over 60 court cases, in both state and federal courts — many of which were decided by Republican-appointed or even Trump-appointed judges. But Berkeley’s research never made it into any of these court files. “None of the findings were presented to the public or in court,” wrote Dawsey, and that was for a very obvious reason: they didn’t really find anything. The sources told the Post that researchers found issues typical of elections: some “voting anomalies,” “unusual data patterns,” and “some instances in which laws may have been skirted,” but none of it was evaluated as being “significant enough to make a difference in who won the election.” The research also reportedly debunked some of Trump’s conspiracy theories he was peddling about the election, including claims about rigged voting machines and mass voting by dead people. Berkeley’s senior officials provided a briefing for Trump, his chief of staff Mark Meadows, and several other top advisers in a Dec. 2020 conference call, according to the Post, and it did not go well: Meadows showed skepticism of the findings and continued to maintain that Trump won. Trump also continued to say he won the election. The call grew contentious, people with knowledge of the meeting said. Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com
- [Parts of Trump Georgia grand jury report on election meddling to be released this week](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/13/parts-of-trump-georgia-grand-jury-report-on-election-meddling-to-be-released-this-week/) - Georgia this week is set to release portions of a special grand jury's final report on its investigation into possible criminal interference in the state's 2020 general election. The grand jury's investigation included looking at the actions of former President Donald Trump and his allies. Three sections of the report "are ripe for publication," a Fulton County judge wrote. A transcript of a phone call between former U.S. President Donald Trump and Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Secretary of State, appears on a video screen during the fourth hearing on the January 6th investigation in the Cannon House Office Building on June 21, 2022 in Washington, DC. Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images Georgia this week is set to release portions of a special grand jury's final report on its investigation into possible criminal interference in the state's 2020 general election, including by former President Donald Trump and his allies. Three sections of the report — the introduction and conclusion, as well as a section discussing concerns about whether any witnesses lied under oath — "are ripe for publication," Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled Monday morning. Those portions will be made public Thursday, giving the parties involved in the matter time to discuss possible redactions, McBurney wrote in his order. The Fulton County court in Atlanta, Georgia, US, on Monday, Feb. 13, 2023. Dustin Chambers | Bloomberg | Getty Images "The compelling public interest in these proceedings and the unquestionable value and importance of transparency require their release," McBurney said, even if that is not "convenient for the pacing" of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' ongoing investigation. But disclosure of the rest of the report "at this time is not proper," McBurney wrote, citing due process concerns. The judge did, however, confirm that the full report will include "a roster of who should (or should not) be indicted, and for what, in relation to the conduct (and aftermath) of the 2020 general election in Georgia." It's unclear when that portion of the report will be made public. The judge directed the DA's office to provide periodic updates about the status of its probe so he can reassess if other parts of the final report "can be properly disclosed." Willis, in a hearing last month, had asked the judge to temporarily keep the report sealed, citing the rights and fair treatment of "future defendants." Decisions on that matter "are imminent," she said at the time. In a statement Monday afternoon, Willis told NBC News, "I believe Judge McBurney's order is legally sound and consistent with my request. I have no plans to appeal today's order." The special grand jury was seated last May to conduct an investigation into possible efforts to disrupt the 2020 elections in Georgia, and to recommend whether anyone should be criminally prosecuted. CNBC Politics Read more of CNBC's politics coverage: White House defends shooting down three aerial objects, despite not knowing who launched them or why Parts of Georgia grand jury report on election meddling to be released this week U.S. sanctions six Chinese tech companies for supporting spy balloon programs Democrat and Republican attorneys general square off over lawsuit seeking to pull abortion pill from U.S. U.S. shoots down second 'high altitude object' days after downing Chinese spy balloon FBI finds another classified document in search of Mike Pence's home, his spokesman says National Archives sued for telling visitors to remove 'pro-life' clothing SEC weighs making 'adjustments' to controversial climate risk disclosure rule, Chairman Gensler says Angry senators grill Pentagon officials over Chinese spy balloon response U.S. may target Chinese entities linked to spy balloon FBI investigating Chinese spy balloon, but much of the evidence is still under water Democratic Rep. Angie Craig assaulted in apartment building elevator, her office says GOP voters pick DeSantis over Trump in hypothetical head-to-head matchup for 2024 presidential nomination, new poll shows Biden's billionaire tax is 'dead on arrival' in Congress, top Wall Street backers and Democratic strategists say Chinese spy balloon carried ‘multiple antennas’ for collecting signals intelligence, State Dept. says Watch live: Senate holds first hearing on the suspected Chinese spy balloon Watch live: Senate Foreign Affairs Committee holds a hearing on U.S.-China policy and competition Biden proposal to cap all insulin prices at $35 a month has little chance of passing Congress Biden's State of the Union may not help potential 2024 election bid against Trump, experts say U.S. explores working with India to increase economic competition against China, says Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo Spy balloon confirms 'pattern of Chinese behavior' that poses threat to NATO members, Stoltenberg says After sifting through evidence and hearing testimony from dozens of witnesses — including multiple Trump allies, such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. — the grand jury in December submitted its final report, recommending that it be published. Georgia was one of several key swing states that narrowly voted for President Joe Biden, then the Democratic nominee, over Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Trump, his allies and his legal team sought to overturn his loss to Biden in the general election by challenging the results in Georgia and other key states. A flurry of lawsuits filed in late 2020 by Trump's campaign were almost entirely rejected in the courts. In early January 2021, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, and urged him to "find" enough votes in his favor to reverse his loss in the Peach State. Raffensperger refused. WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP
- [UK queen consort tests positive for COVID-19 - Louisville - wdrb.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/13/uk-queen-consort-tests-positive-for-covid-19-louisville-wdrb-com/) - LONDON (AP) — Buckingham Palace says Camilla, Britain’s queen consort, has tested positive for Covid-19 after suffering from cold symptoms. The palace says the wife of King Charles III cancelled all her engagements this week “and sends her sincere apologies to those who had been due to attend them.″ Camilla, 75, also tested positive last year. Both she and the king have been vaccinated. Charles, 74, previously contracted the coronavirus in March 2020, during the first wave of the pandemic.
- [Woman jailed for collecting 4 ballots in Arizona sparks fear of voting in majority Latino city](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/13/woman-jailed-for-collecting-4-ballots-in-arizona-sparks-fear-of-voting-in-majority-latino-city-2/) - This story was produced in partnership with Type Investigations, with support from the Fund for Constitutional Government. SAN LUIS, ARIZONA – The small city of San Luis is tucked away in the far corner of Arizona, closer to Mexico than to any major U.S. city. The community is nearly 95% Latino and tight-knit — the type of place where you know your neighbors and their parents and cousins. It’s not uncommon here for residents to frequently cross the border into Mexico to go shopping or see a dentist, as the vast majority of residents are U.S. citizens who can go back and forth freely. And they do not take their right to vote in the U.S. for granted. Election Days in San Luis were typically joyous occasions, with music and celebrations in the streets. Luis Marquez, the president of the local school district and a community leader in San Luis, said they felt “like a state fair.” “Everybody would get involved, people would have their carne asada and music and it was just something very active,” he said. But election celebrations have stopped here in recent years. A 2016 law pushed by state Republicans made it a felony punishable by prison time to collect a voter’s ballot unless the collector is their relative, household member, or caregiver. Since then, the excitement and joy surrounding voting have been replaced with fear. “Now, it’s been really quiet,” Marquez said. “There’s no action.” In some states, there’s no prohibition on collecting ballots from other community members, a common occurrence in places where residents have limited access to polls. But Arizona is one of more than 30 states that restrict or ban the practice. The law was signed in 2016 and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2021 after it was challenged in the lower courts. Since then, the Arizona attorney general’s office has prosecuted four community members, including the city’s former mayor, Guillermina Fuentes, who was jailed for 30 days, for alleged unlawful ballot collection. Allies of former President Donald Trump say these arrests are indicative of the type of voter fraud that cost him the 2020 election. But democracy advocates say prosecuting these cases suppresses the right to vote. “This is what opponents of the ballot collection law always feared – the arbitrary enforcement of the law against people of color, women of color, without any kind of evidence of any type of fraud or intent to do wrongdoing,” said Darrell Hill, policy director for the ACLU of Arizona. “These are people who are just helping their neighbors, helping their community, and are now facing serious charges.” On Oct. 13, Fuentes, a 66-year-old grandmother, former farmworker, school board member, and local Democratic leader, was sentenced to one month in jail and two years of probation for collecting four completed mail ballots that belonged to community members during the August 2020 primary. Fuentes and her neighbor, Alma Juarez, were the first people prosecuted under the state’s ballot collection law. Her prosecution by the office of former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who was running for U.S. Senate throughout much of the legal proceeding, became fodder for conspiracy theorists and the right-wing elections group True The Vote, which publicized the case nationally. In an interview after she was released from jail, Fuentes described the initial shock of her indictment. At the time of her offense, Brnovich’s office had petitioned the Supreme Court to hear a case focused on the law, and there were legal questions about whether it was constitutional. “When I was about to go to jail, I was so sad and frustrated, and I couldn’t believe that I was going, because I see it like a witch hunt,” she said. Brnovich, who is no longer in office, could not be reached for comment and Todd Lawson, the prosecutor with the attorney general’s office who worked on the case, did not respond to a request for comment. On Oct. 19, Brnovich announced two more indictments against women in the Democratic-leaning town within a county that voted for Trump by 6 points in 2020. The attorney general’s office alleges that the women collected eight ballots between them. Fuentes’ daughter, Lizette Esparza, said she wakes up each morning in fear of how conspiracy theorists will talk about her family on social media. “We’re living in a nightmare right now,” said Esparza, who serves as the superintendent of the local elementary school district. She also worries about how her mom’s ordeal will affect the community. “They’re not going to want to go to vote, especially now because now they’re scared.” Casting ballots in San Luis Like a town square, the San Luis post office is a major hub of this border community. During business hours, cars steadily stream through the parking lot as residents, on their way to or from work or school pick-up, run inside to check their P.O. boxes. San Luis doesn’t have home mail delivery. The city spans roughly 34 square miles, and it’s not uncommon for people to pick up mail for friends and neighbors, who may share P.O. boxes. The community is poor, with an average per capita income of just over $15,000. Many residents don’t have their own vehicles and there’s very limited public transportation. Casting a ballot in-person can be difficult for people in San Luis. Like Fuentes, who dropped out of high school after 10th grade to join her parents and siblings planting and harvesting lettuce crops in Arizona and California, many San Luis residents are farmworkers who speak little English and spend long hours in the fields. “They leave at 5 in the morning and come back at 7 or 8 at night,” Esparza explained. “When in the day are they going to have to go and vote?” Arizona has permitted no-excuse voting by mail for more than 30 years. And before the ballot collection law was passed, it was not uncommon for residents of San Luis to rely on friends, neighbors, or volunteers to help bring their ballots to the post office or to help return them to a voting center or dropbox. San Luis residents interviewed explained that they consider many in the community who are not blood relatives, like neighbors and close friends, their family. Limiting ballot collection to just family members, household members, and caregivers doesn’t make sense, they said. “People who enacted this law are people who don’t want people in San Luis and Native communities to vote,” said Anne Chapman, Fuentes’ attorney. “That’s what this is about.” GOP restrictions on voting The Republican Party’s effort to restrict certain groups of people from voting has taken many forms over the last decade since the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. One of them is placing limits on ballot collection, or as Republican lawmakers pejoratively call it, “ballot harvesting.” Republican officials justify the laws by claiming that an individual or organization could pressure a voter to vote in a certain way if they return a ballot on their behalf. “The intent behind the bill is to make sure that we have integrity in our electoral process, that there is a chain of custody when it comes to mail-in ballots,” said then-state Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, who sponsored Arizona’s law when she was a state representative. Ballot collection, she said, “is ripe for a lot of things to go wrong.” Arizona’s law, passed by the legislature in 2016, faced a lengthy legal challenge. Democratic groups sued, and in 2018, a federal district court sided with Arizona after a trial. But Democrats appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which struck the law down, finding that it violates the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against minority voters. Republican lawmakers, the court found, passed it with the intention of suppressing the votes of Native American, Hispanic and Black voters, who often face issues with mail service and access to transportation and who are more likely to rely on the assistance of third parties to return their ballots. Brnovich appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the law in a 6-3 ruling in July 2021 that had major implications for voting rights across the country. In a dissent, Justice Elena Kagan lamented how the majority opinion further weakens the Voting Rights Act. “What is tragic here is that the Court has (yet again) rewritten — in order to weaken — a statute that stands as a monument to America’s greatness, and protects against its basest impulses,” she wrote. “What is tragic is that the Court has damaged a statute designed to bring about ‘the end of discrimination in voting.’” On Aug. 4, 2020, the day of Arizona’s primary election, the law was still relatively new and was still being litigated in the courts. Fuentes was stationed outside a local cultural center to support city council candidates and hand out campaign literature. At one point during the day, Fuentes’ neighbor, Juarez, approached her and handed her a ballot. What Fuentes didn’t realize was that Gary Snyder, a local Republican, was recording cell phone video outside the polling place. In the 2020 primary, Snyder was running for city council as a write-in candidate and in 2022 he would run for state Senate. Both attempts were unsuccessful. He shared the footage with David Lara, another local Republican who had unsuccessfully run for office numerous times in San Luis. In an interview, Lara and Snyder said the footage showed the type of voter fraud that has swung elections in San Luis for decades. “If there would have been 10 Gary Snyders with cameras, we would have caught many people doing the same thing all throughout the day,” Lara said. “Out of 10 elections in San Luis, eight or nine have been won because of fraud,” he added. In the video recorded by Snyder, Fuentes appears to write something on the ballot and then hands Juarez a stack of ballots to bring into the polling place. The interaction was the type of voter assistance Fuentes had provided for countless other community members. Yuma County officials later verified that the voters signed their own ballot envelopes, and the ballots were counted. The Yuma County Sheriff’s Office and the state attorney general’s office eventually learned of the footage, and Brnovich’s Election Integrity Unit launched an investigation. People in San Luis reported that uniformed sheriff’s deputies knocked on their doors early in the morning to ask about their voting history, which alarmed many residents, according to a brief filed by Arizona voting rights groups in the Supreme Court case. Prosecutors charged Fuentes with conspiracy, forgery, and two counts of ballot abuse. In court documents, the state said Fuentes “appears to have been caught on video running a modern-day political machine seeking to influence the outcome of the municipal election in San Luis, collecting votes through illegal methods, and then using another person to bring the ballots the last few yards into the ballot box.” She pleaded guilty to one count of ballot abuse, a felony, and the state dropped the more serious charges. Lara and Snyder said that Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips, the leaders of True the Vote — a far-right group that has promoted conspiracy theories about voter fraud — reached out to them. The claims of ballot harvesting in San Luis became a crucial component of “2000 Mules,” a documentary directed by right-wing filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza in May 2022 which falsely claimed that voter fraud, specifically a significant amount of ballot harvesting by so-called “ballot mules,” swung the results of the 2020 election. “They’re the ones that actually helped us to make this problem national,” Lara said in an interview. But many in San Luis said they don’t trust Lara and Snyder, whom they described as disgruntled former candidates for office who are trying to discredit Democrats. Yuma County Supervisor Lynne Pancrazi said she is upset by the national reputation they’ve attached to San Luis. They “are giving such a bad name to this community,” she said. Fuentes jailed, held in isolation Across San Luis in mid-October, people who know Fuentes appeared shocked that their friend and former mayor was two dozen miles away in Yuma, Arizona, jailed and held in isolation for a month either because of her age and health or her position as a public figure. Chapman said the jail has given different explanations for why she was held in a cell alone. Soaking in the October sun outside the San Luis library, Pancrazi, who served as a character witness at a hearing prior to Fuentes’ sentencing, described Fuentes’ quiet but caring demeanor. “She’s not a criminal,” Pancrazi said. “She’s someone who was helping her community just like she’s done her entire life.” Manuel Castro, a pastor at the Gethsemane Baptist Church in San Luis, agreed. “It’s too much punishment for people doing a little mistake,” he said. “In my opinion, it’s a little mistake.” The harsh sentence will also help conservatives “further the narrative that there is actual fraud in our elections, which there was no evidence of here,” said Andy Gaona, a Phoenix-based election lawyer who represented Fuentes in a special action petition with a state appeals court. San Luis residents also lamented the inequities in voter fraud prosecution. Brnovich’s office requested a year in prison for Fuentes, and while the judge only sentenced her to a month in jail plus two years’ probation, even that is inconsistent with the sentences others have received for similar crimes. Chapman commissioned a report from Rich Robertson, a legal investigator and former journalist, to put the state’s recommended sentence into perspective. Robertson’s report detailed 79 prosecutions for voting crimes in Arizona between 2005 and August 2022. In general, he found that, other than Fuentes, people without a prior criminal history or who are not already imprisoned do not receive jail or prison time for voting crimes. “Nobody goes to jail or prison for this stuff, unless they’ve already had some kind of priors,” Robertson said. He found two exceptions: One person who received a suspended sentence, and another was also convicted of influencing a witness and not just a voting crime. In one notable example included in Robertson’s report, Brnovich’s office requested a lighter sentence for Tracey Kay McKee, a 64-year-old Republican white woman in the more affluent city of Scottsdale, Arizona, who pleaded guilty to casting a ballot in her dead mother’s name. She was sentenced in April to two years of probation and no jail time. Juarez, who carried the voted ballots into the polling place, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and was sentenced to one year of probation and no jail time. Robertson said he believes there were “a lot of political aspects” to this prosecution and that Fuentes was given a harsher sentence because of the national attention and her prominence as a target in the far-right “Stop the Steal” campaign. “There was a lot of political pressure being exerted all over the place to make an example out of this particular defendant,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for the national spotlight being on Yuma County and Ms. Fuentes, I don’t think this outcome would have been the same.” Norm Eisen, a longtime election lawyer who advised the Obama White House on ethics and government reform, called Fuentes’ sentence an “outrageous miscarriage of justice.” “The relatively narrow conduct that formed the basis of the sentencing should not result in jail time and indeed in the vast majority of the United States, would not do so,” he said. He called Brnovich’s sentencing request “a tragic and a cruel posture,” especially in “a smaller community where this kind of a sentencing has a chilling effect, even on legal behavior.” At a hearing in October, Fuentes’ attorneys presented a number of character witnesses who spoke about her childhood, her work growing a business, and her position as a leader in the community. But at Fuentes’ sentencing hearing, Yuma County Superior Court Judge Roger Nelson said he does not believe she accepted responsibility for her crime and that her role as a community leader, although admirable, actually works against her. “Many of the things that were put forward as mitigating factors, I think they’re also aggravating factors,” he said. “You have been a leader in the San Luis community for a long time. People look up to you, people respect you, and they look to what you do.” Life after jail Fuentes was released from jail in November and is now back in the community on probation, coming to terms with having lost her voting rights for the next two years because of her felony conviction. She said she already knows of San Luis residents who have stopped voting after seeing what she went through. “I say don’t be afraid,” she said, explaining what she tells her friends and neighbors in San Luis. “And they say, because you weren’t afraid, you were in jail, Guilla.” Fuentes said that the San Luis community stood behind her throughout the legal process, showing up to support her and her family when she was at her lowest. The day she was released from jail, her family and friends gathered at her mom’s house. She walked in and saw the large crowd holding signs and two big pots of menudo, a traditional Mexican soup, that she had requested as her first meal back. It was just what she needed — to be around friends and a home cooked meal after spending a month in isolation. “I lost 10 pounds in jail and I gained them back the day I left,” she said. When Brnovich announced indictments of two more women — San Luis City Council Member Gloria Torres and Nadia Lizarraga-Mayorquin — in October for allegedly collecting other people’s ballots, Marquez said he feared that more people would face jail time. A representative for Kris Mayes, Arizona’s newly elected Democratic attorney general, said the office is still undecided on how it will handle their prosecutions, but Mayes has said she will transition the office’s Election Integrity Unit from prosecuting voter fraud to protecting voting rights. Democrats in the Arizona House introduced a bill this session to repeal the ballot collection ban, but it’s unlikely to move forward given the Republican majority. “It’s starting again for other people,” Castro said. “It never ends. It’s never finished. It’s so hard for the community, really. It’s so hard.” GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX SUBSCRIBE SUPPORT NEWS YOU TRUST. DONATE
- [Massachusetts judge 'publicly reprimanded' for his Facebook posts about the 2020 election](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/13/massachusetts-judge-publicly-reprimanded-for-his-facebook-posts-about-the-2020-election/) - A Massachusetts judge has been “publicly reprimanded” by the Supreme Judicial Court for his Facebook posts about the 2020 presidential election.Housing Court Judge Joseph Michaud — a former Dartmouth selectman and Republican candidate for state rep. who was sworn in by Gov. Charlie Baker in 2018 — violated the Massachusetts Code of Judicial Conduct when he made those social media posts in 2020, the state’s Commission on Judicial Conduct has announced. Michaud, who took home $195,472.70 as a judge last year, made those Facebook posts leading up to and following the 2020 presidential election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. His social media posts were about political figures, political events, and politicized public events. In its order, the Supreme Judicial Court adopted the Commission on Judicial Conduct’s recommendation that Michaud get publicly reprimanded for that social media activity. “The Court accepts the recommendation of the Commission that the Judge be publicly reprimanded for his misconduct,” the Supreme Judicial Court wrote. “Public confidence in the judiciary is undermined when a judge’s social media activity casts reasonable doubt on the judge’s capacity to act impartially even if the judge is in fact impartial.” His Facebook account is now deleted. When the Herald reached Michaud by phone on Sunday, the judge declined to comment. “The Judge has acknowledged that he erred by sharing these types of posts that undermine public confidence in the judiciary,” the Supreme Judicial Court wrote. “Contrary to the Judge’s belief that the postings were only visible to his Facebook ‘friends,’ the postings, relating to political figures, political events, and politicized public events, were publicly visible. “Accordingly, Judge Joseph L. Michaud is hereby publicly reprimanded for the conduct described in the Stipulation of Facts, namely, his making posts on social media that expressed views on political candidates, political figures and issues, and posts that could create the appearance of bias based on gender, ethnicity, or immigration status,” the court added. The Supreme Judicial Court also ordered that Michaud stay away from trying to identify, retaliate against, or influence any person who has — or who he believes — cooperated with the Commission on Judicial Conduct’s investigation into his judicial conduct. In 2018, the governor swore in Michaud as an associate justice to the Massachusetts Housing Court, Metro South Division. A decorated member of the U.S. Army, Michaud had served on active duty intermittently for the previous 30 years as a lieutenant colonel in the Judge Advocates General Corps. He had his own practice, the Law Offices of Joseph L. Michaud, where he specialized in residential and commercial real estate transactions and landlord-tenant matters. Michaud is a former selectman in Dartmouth, and he ran for state representative in the 9th Bristol District in 2010. He didn’t face any opponents in the Republican primary, and then he lost the general election to the Democratic candidate.
- [Column: In Arizona, a crackpot gets promoted and underscores the danger to democracy](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/13/column-in-arizona-a-crackpot-gets-promoted-and-underscores-the-danger-to-democracy/) - Meet Wendy Rogers.Her political credentials include antisemitism, a hyperactive promotion of outlandish conspiracy theories, a fondness for the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy and Vladimir Putin, and consorting with the outspoken racist and white nationalist Nick Fuentes.In a well-earned rebuke, Rogers was censured by colleagues in Arizona’s state Senate last year after calling for her political foes to be hanged. The vote was bipartisan and overwhelming.Despite all that, or maybe because of it, the Republican now heads the state Senate’s Elections Committee.You can always count on Arizona for crazy.The state, an emergent presidential battleground, has become a political fun house, a carnival of continuing election denialism where clownish politicians and grifters proudly parade. (Often, they’re one and the same.)You may recall that zany audit — quote, unquote — of presidential ballots in Maricopa County, which included an eagle-eyed examination for traces of bamboo — evidence, it was said, of Chinese meddling in the 2020 election. The result not only confirmed Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump but added a few votes to the Democrat’s winning total. Politics Is Arizona really becoming more purple? What the 2024 Senate race could tell us Rep. Ruben Gallego has entered the Arizona Senate race, raising the possibility of a three-way contest among him, the GOP nominee and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. Or you may recollect that slate of election deniers — candidates for U.S. Senate and Arizona’s governor, attorney general and secretary of state — who bid for a top-down takeover of the state and its election process.The quartet met with deserved defeat in November, and the refusal of several of them to admit they lost has turned them into walking punchlines. (“Kari Lake Furious After Arizona Awards Her Participation Trophy,” the New Yorker satirist Andy Borowitz gibed in a poke at the sore-losing gubernatorial hopeful.)It would be funny, in a sort of all’s-well-that-ends-well fashion, if it wasn’t so serious. Clearly the threat to our democracy, and its nemeses, haven’t gone away.In November, the voters of Arizona spoke loudly and clearly about driving out the lunacy-mongers in their midst, casting their ballots for sanity and the sanctity of our election process. But the president of the state Senate, Warren Petersen, chose to ignore that.Petersen, an ally of Rogers, appointed her to lead the Elections Committee after she backed his elevation to the leadership post. He was one of two lawmakers who signed subpoenas that led to the farcical audit of the 2020 election.Fortunately, Arizona has a new Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, and her veto power ensures that none of Rogers’ nutty ideas will be enacted into law. That’s not to say, however, the senator can’t — or won’t — do harm.Chairing a recent hearing, the election-denying, conspiracy-spreading Rogers admonished witnesses not to use the phrase “election denial,” deeming it a partisan epithet, and cautioned lawmakers against using the words “conspiracy theory.”So much for truth.Rogers then turned the hearing into a showcase of fakery and tinfoil-hat testimony about alleged fraud, centered this time on the 2022 gubernatorial race. Lake echoed those phony claims in a subsequent podcast interview with Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump strategist, accused swindler (let off the hook by a presidential pardon) and super-spreader of political misinformation.Thus churns the conspiracy mill. Politics Column: The abortion issue hurt Republicans in 2022. So why would they double down in 2024? The reversal of Roe vs. Wade pushed abortion to the forefront of politics in 2022, to the detriment of Republicans. Many in the GOP want to “go on offense” in 2024. It’s easy and tempting, once more, to laugh it off.Rogers, for her part, is chortling all the way to her campaign treasurer’s office. Having built a national following after hitching herself to Trump and his donor-milking machine, she reported raising nearly $2.5 million last year, which evidently set a new legislative record for Arizona — topping the mark she established in 2020.But the seriousness and authority conferred on someone as reckless and delusional as Rogers shouldn’t be tolerated, or ignored.There is a weight that comes with a formal legislative hearing. The solemnity of the setting, never mind the testimony itself, lends the proceedings a certain credence. If a state Senate committee sees fit to take up a matter, some may suppose, there has to be at least some grounding in fact. A gavel confers gravitas, whether the person wielding it is deserving of respect or not.The bigoted, racist and just plain nutty will always be among us. But crackpots like Rogers shouldn’t be elevated and given the power and platform to legitimize their hateful and crazy beliefs.There must be a broom closet somewhere in Arizona’s Capitol to lock her away.
- [Court won't force state to release 2020 voter details - Williamsport Sun-Gazette](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/13/court-wont-force-state-to-release-2020-voter-details-williamsport-sun-gazette/) - (Editor’s note: Spotlight PA is an independent, non-partisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media.) A Pennsylvania appellate court won’t force the Department of State to release private voter information to state Senate Republicans as part of their long-running attempt to investigate the 2020 election.
- [Earlier party primaries, DNC convention could put Georgia center stage in 2024 presidential ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/13/earlier-party-primaries-dnc-convention-could-put-georgia-center-stage-in-2024-presidential/) - Georgia Gov. Zell Miller in 1992 shrewdly used some of his power to maneuver the state towards the front of the pack of the presidential primary in order to boost the candidacy of his friend and fellow southerner Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. The influence Georgia had on politics would diminish over the next two decades as the former Democratic stronghold evolved into reliable Republican territory. Meanwhile, Miller’s own support for a future two-term president waned. By the beginning of the 21st century, many of Georgia’s elected officials supported Republican policies. GOP candidates went on to dominate statewide elections for two decades. In 2020, Georgia regained the nation’s attention as a battleground state, albeit partly because of unfounded conspiracy theories about stolen elections, fueled by former President Donald Trump and his allies. When Democratic candidate Joe Biden won the state’s 16 presidential electoral votes and Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff won runoffs over incumbent opponents for the U.S. Senate, Georgia’s transformation from blue to red to purple state continued. Now, Georgia is a near lock to play an important role in determining who will be selected as the next president of the country in 2024. As a nod to Georgia’s growing influence in the country’s political landscape, the national Democratic Party and Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State are endorsing the state moving up the presidential primary calendar – just not on the same timetable. A plan approved by the Democratic National Committee this month calls for Georgia to join the early presidential primary calendar on Feb. 13, 2024, just two weeks before South Carolina would hold its primaries. The Georgia Democratic Party has until June to demonstrate that it is capable of adhering to the party’s timeline. Meanwhile, as first reported by the Associated Press, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger endorsed Georgia moving up on the 2028 presidential primary calendar, a nod to Georgia’s increasing influence in the national political landscape. At a Jan. 24, Rotary Club of Atlanta meeting, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger defended the integrity of Georgia’s elections and his refusal to overturn 2020 election results. Stanley Dunlap/Georgia Recorder “It has a good cross-section of engaged voters from both parties, and, as everyone seems to now recognize, we run great elections,” Raffensperger said. Georgia held its 2022 midterm elections primary May 24. The state’s 2020 presidential primary was delayed until June 9 after the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic scrambled plans to hold the elections earlier. Early primary states Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire have long grabbed the spotlight as election season unfolded, with the results of those elections and caucuses not only determining early favorites but also causing some candidates to drop out of the field. University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock, said that if Georgia moved up into the first several weeks of party primaries when voters pick their favored candidates to run for president, it could be a coup for the Peach State. “This means our voters will have a bigger impact on who becomes a future president,” Bullock said. “If Georgia adopts this plan, we will have a full range of candidates because we know that very early on some candidates begin to drop off.” The Republican National Committee did not respond to an email from the Georgia Recorder regarding the state’s role in the primary election Bullock said that if Georgia is moved up earlier by the 2024 primary, it could benefit Republican candidates who have strong support in the state rather than Biden seeking his second term. Georgia’s advantage as a battleground in the next couple of election cycles would boost the economy as more political ads, campaign visits, and other resources are poured into the state. The accelerated timeline would also benefit Georgia candidates regardless of their political affiliation, Bullock said. “If there is a Georgia candidate like a (Sen.) Raphael Warnock or a Brian Kemp or somebody else who was running for the president that particular year, it would be very beneficial for them to be able to have a big send off here in Georgia if Georgia was say in the third week of the sweepstakes,” Bullock said. Raffensperger’s position highlights the Democrats’ challenge in reordering their nominating calendar to elevate racially diverse electorates and de-emphasize Iowa and New Hampshire. Those predominantly white states have opened the nominating process for both major parties for decades and still lead Republicans’ 2024 calendar as it’s currently set — with national GOP officials showing little interest in reconsidering their slate. The question is whether Democrats can find momentum among the Republicans who control the Georgia statehouse and with the national GOP forces necessary to make such a change. The state’s growing swing state prominence could get a boost even if the primary calendar remains unchanged. Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens expresses growing optimism that the Capital city will host the Democratic National Convention for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination. The difference in where Georgia falls on the primary calendar requires both parties to agree to any changes, while a single party committee decides which city its convention will take place.
- [Will 2024 election be fraud free? - Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/12/will-2024-election-be-fraud-free-waterloo-cedar-falls-courier/) - Are you ready for some perspective on the 2020 election? Many are still scratching their heads. How did the Democrats do it? How did they pull off a win in the White House when Donald Trump had such a massive voter base and such tremendous success during his presidency?Americans were encouraged to bypass the post office and submit their ballots using special drop boxes that happened to be erected only in Democratic neighborhoods. Democrats infiltrated key battleground states to taint the election. All the while Republicans did what they always do: played by the old rules, pushing for in-person voting and relying on the electoral system to screen out illegal ballots.After seeing two plus years of Biden administration policies, many are saying how they regret having voted for Biden. Thankful there was not so much fraud in the 2022 election, but will the next presidential election be fraud free? People are also reading… Dave Smith, Waterloo 0 Comments #lee-rev-content { margin:0 -5px; } #lee-rev-content h3 { font-family: inherit!important; font-weight: 700!important; border-left: 8px solid var(--lee-blox-link-color); text-indent: 7px; font-size: 24px!important; line-height: 24px; } #lee-rev-content .rc-provider { font-family: inherit!important; } #lee-rev-content h4 { line-height: 24px!important; font-family: "serif-ds",Times,"Times New Roman",serif!important; margin-top: 10px!important; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #lee-rev-content h3 { font-size: 18px!important; line-height: 18px; } } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article { clear: both; background-color: #fff; color: #222; background-position: bottom; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding: 15px 0 20px; margin-bottom: 40px; border-top: 4px solid rgba(0,0,0,.8); border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(0,0,0,.2); display: none; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article, #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article p { font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article h2 { font-size: 24px; margin: 15px 0 5px 0; font-family: "serif-ds", Times, "Times New Roman", serif; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article .lead { margin-bottom: 5px; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article .email-desc { font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 5px; opacity: 0.7; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article form { padding: 10px 30px 5px 30px; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article .disclaimer { opacity: 0.5; margin-bottom: 0; line-height: 100%; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article .disclaimer a { color: #222; text-decoration: underline; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article .email-hammer { border-bottom: 3px solid #222; opacity: .5; display: inline-block; padding: 0 10px 5px 10px; margin-bottom: -5px; font-size: 16px; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article form { padding: 10px 0 5px 0; } } Catch the latest in Opinion Get opinion pieces, letters and editorials sent directly to your inbox weekly!
- [Columnist John Sheirer: Lies, damned lies, and Republican lies - Daily Hampshire Gazette](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/12/columnist-john-sheirer-lies-damned-lies-and-republican-lies-daily-hampshire-gazette/) - Columnist John Sheirer: Lies, damned lies, and Republican lies
- [Column: I almost wrote off Joe Biden in 2020. Boy, was I wrong then. What about now?](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/12/column-i-almost-wrote-off-joe-biden-in-2020-boy-was-i-wrong-then-what-about-now/) - Was I the only journalist in America who thought President Biden’s State of the Union speech Tuesday was hard to watch? At least until he departed from his script and began sparring with the nation’s rudest Republicans?Sometimes when Biden starts to speak, I involuntarily hold my breath, waiting for him to stumble over his words, or slur them or otherwise mangle his text in a way that will show up in clips on Fox News or MAGA Twitter. See, he’s incompetent! Worrying about this detracts from the pleasure of having a solid Democratic president after four years of Trumpian chaos and bluster. Biden’s halting delivery may be in part due to his lifelong stutter, but it’s more likely due to his advanced age.At 80, after all, he’s our oldest president, a fact that Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the country’s youngest governor, callowly pointed out in her bizarre State of the Union rebuttal. Opinion Columnist Robin Abcarian Read more from Robin Abcarian Three years ago, when Biden was vying for the Democratic presidential nomination against Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris et al, I stood in a jam-packed high school gym in Des Moines, surrounded by a who’s who of American political journalists, watching what many of us believed was the swan song of the well-regarded former vice president.It was kind of sad, but hey, he’d had a good long run, and who could begrudge him one last romp on the trail?I had last seen him campaigning in person in 2007, when he was running against Barack Obama. I roamed around Iowa with him then, and he was garrulous, to say the least. I did not know about his childhood stutter, and I never saw evidence of it.In 2020, it seemed as if Biden’s years playing second fiddle to Obama for two terms, during which he suffered the loss of his elder son, Beau, to cancer, had taken their toll. Biden gets do-over 20 years later After dropping a bid for the White House in ’87, the senator says he’s learned his lessons. “Watching him onstage was jarring,” I wrote at the beginning of that primary season. “He was not the smooth orator of the past. He relied on notes, hesitated and often raised his voice to a shout, as if mistaking volume for passion.”Biden finished a dismal fourth in the 2020 Iowa caucuses. Many of us were ready to write him off as yesterday’s news. All the cool Ray-Ban aviators in the world were not going to help.And then came South Carolina, where his status as second-in-command to the country’s first Black president persuaded Black voters to revive his campaign. He swamped the competition, won his very first presidential primary and headed into Super Tuesday with money in his coffers and the wind at his back. His campaign message — the election was a battle for the soul of America — resonated with Democratic and independent voters who had watched President Trump court and compliment white nationalists and call African nations “shithole countries.”When it came right down to it, voters in 2020 didn’t seem to care about his age. After all, American politics is possibly the only arena where senescence is not an impediment to success.I mean, the former House speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), just stepped down from her leadership role at 82. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell clocks in at 80. California’s senior senator, Dianne Feinstein, will celebrate her 90th birthday later this year, God willing. She also happens to be the oldest sitting U.S. senator. (Will I make a joke about how she is sitting rather than standing? I will not.) Opinion Calmes: Biden has the best legislation record of any president since LBJ. Why can’t voters see it? President Biden has accomplished more in two years than any president since LBJ, but voters don’t see it that way And now here we are on the verge of another presidential campaign that, at least at this point, may pit Biden against the former guy, despite a majority of Democrats telling pollsters they think he’s too old to run.By most measures, Biden has been a successful president. As my colleague Jackie Calmes noted last week, many historians and nonpartisan analysts say he has achieved more legislatively in his first two years “than any president since Lyndon B. Johnson.”Running against Trump again would be a Democratic dream come true. Can we even imagine a scenario where the 7 million-plus voters who gave Biden his very comfortable margin of success over Trump would change their minds?He may not always sound sharp, but Biden proved Tuesday that he hasn’t lost his edge. He accused “some Republicans” of wanting to use Social Security and Medicare as negotiating points in discussions about raising the debt ceiling. Politics Analysis: Why Biden’s big speech may boost his reelection prospects Biden’s State of the Union address doubled as the launch of his reelection campaign. The speech aimed to sell voters on his accomplishments and his stamina. From the incredulous expressions and boos of so many on the right side of the chamber, you would have thought that Biden had accused them of drowning puppies when, in fact, it’s a cherished tenet of Republican ideology that so-called “entitlements” are out of control and need to be ratcheted back — by raising age limits, by reducing benefits or, worse, by privatization.The president was fast on his feet. Sensing an opportunity to extemporize, he looked around the chamber, pleased.“So folks, as we all apparently agree, Social Security and Medicare is off the books now, right?” he said. “We’ve got unanimity. So tonight … let’s stand up for seniors. Stand up and show them we will not cut Social Security. We will not cut Medicare.”OK, yes, Biden should have said “off the table” not “off the books.” It was a slip of the tongue.But we all knew exactly what he meant.And so did the Republicans he so cleverly backed into a corner.Is Biden too old to run again? Hardly. Like whiskey, wine and cast-iron skillets, some things just get better with age.@AbcarianLAT
- [California 2024 US Senate Contest Kicks Off at Furious Pace](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/12/california-2024-us-senate-contest-kicks-off-at-furious-pace/) - Los Angeles — California's U.S. Senate race is unfolding at a furious pace, with candidates reporting seven-figure fundraising and holding competing rallies and campaign events more than a year before the 2024 primary election. The fight for the safely Democratic seat held by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who at 89 is the oldest member of Congress, is shaping up as a marquee match-up between nationally known rivals and is likely to become one of the most expensive Senate races in the country next year. On Saturday, Democratic U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, who rose to prominence as the lead prosecutor in former President Donald Trump's first impeachment trial, gathered hundreds of supporters in a union hall parking lot for a rally in his hometown of Burbank, California, where he implored the cheering crowd, "Let's go win this thing." Schiff, who announced his candidacy last month, said he was running for Senate after two decades in Congress "to build an economy that works for everyone, a democracy that will last for all time and a planet that doesn't melt beneath our feet." A day earlier, Democratic U.S. Rep. Katie Porter brought her Senate campaign to Los Angeles, where she met with local leaders to discuss pollution in lower-income neighborhoods. She said such areas are often overlooked in Washington and Sacramento, where residents' complaints about unhealthy conditions go unheard. Porter, a leader in Congress' progressive wing, built a reputation for her tough questioning of CEOs and other witnesses at congressional hearings — often using a whiteboard to break down information. FILE - Rep. Katie Porter speaks during a House Oversight Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 7, 2023. Other potential contenders for the seat include Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee, a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. If she runs and is elected, Lee would be the only Black woman in the Senate. Feinstein has yet to say if she will seek a seventh term. In recent years, questions have arisen about her cognitive health and memory, though she has defended her effectiveness. However, her reticence about her future has created a publicly awkward dynamic — the race to replace her is rapidly taking shape, even as the senator remains unclear about her intentions. Schiff's rally, held on a nippy, mostly overcast morning, marked the start of a two-week statewide tour, with stops to include San Diego, Sacramento, Fresno and San Francisco. He was joined by his wife, Eve, one of his two children, Alexa, and David McMillan, whom the congressman mentored as a youth and considers part of his family. After recounting his career as a federal prosecutor, state legislator and member of Congress, Schiff made clear he would anchor his campaign to his role as impeachment manager and Trump's chief antagonist in Congress. He has been a frequent target of conservatives — Trump in particular — since the then-GOP-led House Intelligence Committee he served on started investigating Trump's ties to Russia in the 2016 election. FILE - Rep. Adam Schiff is seen during a House select committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 27, 2021. He mentioned "democracy" more than a half-dozen times in the speech. He's selling T-shirts and coffee mugs on his campaign website, with the slogan "Democracy Matters." He called Trump, who has announced his 2024 campaign for the presidency, "a demagogue bent on destroying our democracy." "We investigated Trump. We impeached him. We held him accountable and then we defeated him at the ballot box," Schiff said to cheers. "And we will defeat him again, if the GOP is foolish enough to nominate him. He will never see the inside of the Oval Office, never again." Trump was impeached in December 2019 on charges he abused the power of the presidency to investigate rival Joe Biden and obstructed Congress' investigation. The Republican-led Senate acquitted Trump of both charges. In 2021, he became the first president in U.S. history to be impeached twice, this time for inciting the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol after he lost the 2020 election. He was again acquitted by the Senate. Schiff's other foundational issues include fighting climate change and improving the economy. "Too many people are working multiple jobs but cannot pay the rent, afford groceries or pay for lifesaving medication," he said. "Too many children are growing up in poverty and hungry." Schiff and Porter, both prolific small-dollar fundraisers, already are dueling over campaign dollars and endorsements. Former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco is backing Schiff, providing Feinstein retires, and Porter is supported by Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Democrats are expected to dominate the contest in the famously liberal state — a Republican hasn't won a statewide race in California since 2006, and the past two Senate elections had only Democrats on the November ballot.
- [Jack Smith, Special Counsel for Trump Inquiries, Steps Up the Pace - The New York Times](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/12/jack-smith-special-counsel-for-trump-inquiries-steps-up-the-pace-the-new-york-times/) - Named less than three months ago to oversee investigations into Donald J. Trump’s efforts to hold onto power and his handling of classified documents, the special counsel is moving aggressively.Did former President Donald J. Trump consume detailed information about foreign countries while in office? How extensively did he seek information about whether voting machines had been tampered with? Did he indicate he knew he was leaving when his term ended?Those are among the questions that Justice Department investigators have been directing at witnesses as the special counsel, Jack Smith, takes control of the federal investigations into Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss and his handling of classified documents found in his possession after he left office.Through witness interviews, subpoenas and other steps, Mr. Smith has been moving aggressively since being named to take over the inquiries nearly three months ago, seeking to make good on his goal of resolving as quickly as possible whether Mr. Trump, still a leading contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, should face charges.Last week, he issued a subpoena to former Vice President Mike Pence, a potentially vital witness to Mr. Trump’s actions and state of mind in the days before the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.His prosecutors have brought a member of Mr. Trump’s legal team, M. Evan Corcoran, before a federal grand jury investigating why Mr. Trump did not return classified information kept at his Mar-a-Lago residence and private club in Florida. Justice Department officials have interviewed at least one other Trump lawyer in connection with the documents case.Since returning to Washington from The Hague, where he had been a war crimes prosecutor, Mr. Smith has set up shop across town from the Justice Department’s headquarters, and has built out a team. His operation’s structure seems to closely resemble the organization he oversaw when he ran the Justice Department’s public integrity unit from 2010 to 2015.Three of his first hires — J.P. Cooney, Raymond Hulser and David Harbach — were trusted colleagues during Mr. Smith’s earlier stints in the department. Thomas P. Windom, a former federal prosecutor in Maryland who had been tapped in late 2021 by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland’s aides to oversee major elements of the Jan. 6 inquiry, remains part of the leadership team, according to several people familiar with the situation.In addition to the documents and Jan. 6 investigations, Mr. Smith appears to be pursuing an offshoot of the Jan. 6 case, examining Save America, a pro-Trump political action committee, through which Mr. Trump raised millions of dollars with his false claims of election fraud. That investigation includes looking into how and why the committee’s vendors were paid.M. Evan Corcoran has represented Donald J. Trump in the case related to his handling of classified material for many months.Alex Kent/Getty ImagesInterviews with current and former officials, lawyers and other people who have insight into Mr. Smith’s actions and thinking provide an early portrait of how he is managing investigations that are as sprawling as they are politically explosive, with much at stake for Mr. Trump and the Justice Department.Current and former officials say Mr. Smith appears to see the various strands of his investigations as being of a single piece, with interconnected elements, players and themes — even if they produce divergent outcomes.Mr. Smith has kept a low profile, making no public appearances and sticking to a long pattern of empowering subordinates rather than interposing himself directly in investigations. It is a chain-of-command style honed during stints as a war crimes prosecutor in The Hague, a federal prosecutor in Tennessee and, most of all, during his tenure running the Justice Department’s public integrity unit, which investigates elected officials.A spokesman for Mr. Smith had no comment.But various developments that have surfaced publicly in recent days show his team taking steps on multiple fronts, illustrating how he is wrestling with multiple and sometimes conflicting imperatives of conducting an exhaustive investigation on a strictly circumscribed timetable.The intensified pace of activity speaks to his goal of finishing up before the 2024 campaign gets going in earnest, probably by summer. At the same time, the sheer scale and complexity and the topics he is focused on — and the potential for the legal process to drag on, for example in a likely battle over whether any testimony by Mr. Pence would be subject to executive privilege — suggest that coming to firm conclusions within a matter of months could be a stretch.“The impulse to thoroughly investigate Trump’s possibly illegal actions and the impulse to complete the investigation as soon as possible, because of presidential election season, are at war with one another,” said Jack Goldsmith, a former assistant attorney general and current Harvard Law professor. “One impulse will likely have to yield to the other.”In looking into Mr. Trump’s efforts to hold onto power after his election loss and how they led to the Jan. 6 riot, Mr. Smith is overseeing a number of investigative strands. The subpoena to Mr. Pence indicates that he is seeking testimony that would go straight to the question of Mr. Trump’s role in trying to prevent certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the election and the steps Mr. Trump took in drawing a crowd of supporters to Washington and inciting them.His team is sifting through mountains of testimony provided by the House Jan. 6 committee, including focusing on the so-called fake electors scheme in which some of Mr. Trump’s advisers and some campaign officials assembled alternate slates of Trump electors from contested states that he had lost..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% - 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(--color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(--color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(--color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(--color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.More recently his team has been asking witnesses about research the Trump campaign commissioned by an outside vendor shortly after the election that was intended to come up with evidence of election fraud. The existence of that research was reported earlier by The Washington Post.The apparently related investigation into the activities of Mr. Trump’s main fund-raising arm, the Save America PAC in Florida, was emerging even before Mr. Smith arrived in Washington around Christmas from The Hague.A vast array of Trump vendors have been subpoenaed. Investigators have been posing questions related to how money was paid to other vendors, indicating that they are interested in whether some entities were used to mask who was being paid or if the payments were for genuine services rendered.In the investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified information, and whether he obstructed justice when the government sought the return of material he had taken from the White House, investigators are casting a wide net. They appear to be seeking to recreate not only what took place once Mr. Trump had departed the White House with hundreds of sensitive documents, but also how he approached classified material and presidential records long before that, according to multiple people briefed on the matter.Mr. Smith’s team is seeking interviews with a number of people who worked in the Trump White House and who had familiarity with either how he consumed classified information, or how he dealt with paper that he routinely carted with him in cardboard boxes, during much of the span of his presidency.Such interviews could help Mr. Smith establish patterns of behavior by Mr. Trump over time, such as how he handled secret information he was provided about foreign countries and how he treated presidential documents generally.Alina Habba is another of Mr. Trump’s lawyers.Jefferson Siegel for The New York TimesMr. Trump was known to rip up pieces of paper, and to bring documents up to the White House residence. Notes taken by aides in 2018 show that Mr. Trump’s advisers appeared to be contending with tracking documents he had brought with him to his club in Bedminster, N.J., where he stayed over weekends during the warmer months of the year.In some cases, Mr. Trump tore up documents and threw them in toilets in the White House. Aides would periodically retrieve what was not flushed down and let it dry, then tape it back together and pass the documents on to the staff secretary, whose office managed presidential paper flow, according to two people familiar with what took place.In the documents investigation, Mr. Smith has the challenge of interviewing several unreliable narrators who may have an interest in protecting Mr. Trump.Several of Mr. Trump’s advisers have been interviewed by the Justice Department. Some have gone before the grand jury, including Mr. Corcoran, who has represented Mr. Trump in the case related to his handling of classified material for many months and had a central role in dealing with the government’s efforts to retrieve the documents, according to two people briefed on his appearance.Another aide to Mr. Trump, Christina Bobb, served as the custodian of the records the Justice Department was interested in. She signed an attestation in June claiming that a “diligent search” had been conducted of Mar-a-Lago in response to a grand jury subpoena. She asserted that the remaining documents turned over in June were all that remained.Ms. Bobb has appeared twice before the Justice Department and has told people that Mr. Corcoran drafted the statement she signed; The Wall Street Journal reported that one visit was before the grand jury. She has also said she was connected with Mr. Corcoran by Boris Epshteyn, another Trump lawyer and adviser who brought Mr. Corcoran into Mr. Trump’s circle and, empowered by Mr. Trump, for months played a lead role coordinating lawyers in some of the investigations.The Justice Department contacted another of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Alina Habba, late last year about an appearance. Ms. Habba does not represent Mr. Trump in the documents case, but she spoke about it on television. She also signed an affidavit in another case saying she had searched Mr. Trump’s office and residence in May, meaning investigators may be interested in whether she saw government documents there.The Justice Department is also seeking to question a former Trump lawyer, Alex Cannon, who people briefed on the matter said repeatedly urged Mr. Trump to turn over the boxes of material that the National Archives was seeking.Mr. Trump’s disclosure of newly located documents has been ongoing. Lawyers for the former president notified prosecutors recently about a potential witness they might want to speak with: a relatively junior former staff member to Mr. Trump who had uploaded classified material onto a laptop and discovered it only after the fact, according to a different person familiar with the incident.The discovery occurred when the staff member was placing a large trove of Mr. Trump’s daily White House schedules on the computer and realized that a small amount of classified material had been included in the schedules, the person said.In an interview with CNN on Sunday, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Tim Parlatore, said the Justice Department had issued a subpoena for a manila folder marked “classified evening summary” after Mr. Trump’s aides provided the department with reports on materials they had found after their own searches. He said it was not actually a classified marking, contained nothing and was being used by Mr. Trump to dim a blue light on his bedside phone at Mar-a-Lago that “keeps him up at night.”“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Chuck Rosenberg, a former federal prosecutor and former F.B.I. official, said of the cascade of Trump aides and lawyers becoming drawn into investigations. “It’s just a whirling dust cloud, and everyone who gets near it gets covered in grime.”While Mr. Smith did not ask Mr. Garland’s permission to subpoena Mr. Pence, one of the most extraordinary developments of his short time as special counsel, he almost certainly consulted him about it: Under the regulations, special counsels are expected to report major developments to the attorney general.The Justice Department is also seeking to question Alex Cannon, a former Trump lawyer.Pool photo by Andrew HarnikBut many legal observers see the current situation — with two likely 2024 presidential rivals, Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, facing separate special counsel investigations — as evidence that the special counsel mechanism is being used far beyond its intended, limited purpose.“The special counsel regulations were an effort to give the attorney general some independence in a conflict-of-interest situation,” Mr. Goldsmith added, “but it was never intended to carry the burdens that are being imposed on it now. It is a problem, these political investigations, that our constitutional system is not equipped to handle.”Ben Protess
- [Review of 2020 Election Continues as Texas, Pennsylvania Counties Find Ballot Total Discrepancies](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/12/review-of-2020-election-continues-as-texas-pennsylvania-counties-find-ballot-total-discrepancies/) - by Natalia Mittelstadt An audit of the 2020 election found a discrepancy of nearly 600 absentee votes in a Texas county, while a hand recount in a Pennsylvania county found a far smaller disparity, as more states seek to implement election reviews. In Smith County, Texas, an audit of the 2020 election showed 584 more absentee voters than absentee ballots, according to KLTV, a local ABC News affiliate. Seven county races were within the 584-vote margin of error, including council races and propositional elections. The audit also found five different totals for absentee ballots. There were also roughly 700 limited and provisional ballots that were either incorrectly logged or were missing logs, the Tyler Morning Telegraph reported.In 2020, President Donald Trump won the county with 69% of the vote. The audit, which began in May, was conducted by Grassroots America — We the People and Texas Voter Verification. After interviewing voters and reviewing results and records, the audit found absentee ballot chain of custody issues, inaccurate or missing logs, and improper procedures, Grassroots America Executive Director JoAnne Fleming told Smith County Commissioners Court on Tuesday, according to the the Telegraph. The audit focused on absentee ballots and voters because the paper records were available for examination, unlike the machine records for in-person voters, which were either not auditable or unavailable. Michelle Allcon, hired as Smith County elections administrator in 2021, said the new employees that have been hired since the 2020 election are very “attention detailed” and have rectified most of the issues from the audit with procedure changes, according to the Telegraph. Allcon said that while she doesn’t know for sure since she wasn’t in the elections office at that time, she believes that the ballots that appeared to go uncounted were actually counted, but not logged, “which means the voter has no way of knowing that their vote got counted,” the local news outlet reported. “The underlying issue with what we saw really appeared to be lack of interest on the part of the staff,” Allcon said. “It’s like they didn’t care.” Fleming praised Allcon for how she has since established accountability and transparency in the elections office. Meanwhile, in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, a hand recount of the 2020 presidential vote found a 26-vote discrepancy between the electronic tabulation and the hand recount. More than 59,000 votes were cast in the race. Trump’s hand count total dropped to 41,455 votes from the electronic tabulation of 41,462 votes. President Biden’s hand count total, 16,956 votes, was 15 fewer than the official 2020 count. Libertarian presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen gained four votes, increasing her total to 825. Trump won the county in 2020 with about 70% of the vote. Elections Director Forrest K. Lehman explained that the vote count discrepancy was due to human error and the interpretation of marks on the ballot, according to PennLive. Karen DiSalvo, an attorney who is part of the organization Audit the Vote PA, said that her request to see the tally sheets from the hand recount has been denied and she hasn’t received a response to her right-to-know request. If, however, the reported results of the hand count are accurate, then “it confirms our position that hand counts can be done quickly and economically and should be a part of every election going forward,” DiSalvo said, according to Votebeat. The recent audit and hand counts of the 2020 election have been completed as lawmakers in some states have sought to implement automatic hand counts and audits for elections. In Arizona, Republican state legislators have proposed a bill to hand count elections within the state and to ban the use of electronic tabulators. During the 2022 general election, at least 70 vote centers in Maricopa County had issues with ballot tabulation machines scanning ballots. In a lawsuit challenging the results of the state’s 2022 gubernatorial race, GOP candidate Kari Lake claims that the issues effectively disenfranchised thousands of disproportionately Republican Election Day voters, contributing to her defeat by a margin of under 0.7%. Meanwhile, in Utah, a bill that passed the state House and is heading to the state Senate seeks to implement a “comprehensive performance” audit of elections every other year. – – – Natalia Mittelstadt is a reporter at Just the News. Mittelstadt graduated from Regent University with Bachelor of Arts degrees in Communication Studies and Government.Photo “View of the Voting Office During Ballots Counting” by MONUSCO Photos. CC BY-SA 2.0.
- [“Trump campaign paid researchers to prove 2020 fraud but kept findings secret” - Election Law Blog](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/12/trump-campaign-paid-researchers-to-prove-2020-fraud-but-kept-findings-secret-election-law-blog/) - WaPo: Former president Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign commissioned an outside research firm in a bid to prove electoral-fraud claims but never released the findings because the firm disputed many of his theories and could not offer any proof that he was the rightful winner of the election, according to four people familiar with the matter. The campaign paid researchers from Berkeley Research Group, the people said, to study 2020 election results in six states, looking for fraud and irregularities to highlight in public and in the courts. Among the areas examined were voter machine malfunctions, instances of dead people voting and any evidence that could help Trump show he won, the people said. None of the findings were presented to the public or in court. About a dozen people at the firm worked on the report, including econometricians, who use statistics to model and predict outcomes, the people said. The work was carried out in the final weeks of 2020, before the Jan. 6 riot of Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol. Share this:
- [Voices to silence? GOP election tactics no surprise to Wisconsin's Black voters](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/12/voices-to-silence-gop-election-tactics-no-surprise-to-wisconsins-black-voters/) - HARM VENHUIZEN Associated Press MILWAUKEE — Recent revelations about Republican election strategies targeting minority communities in Wisconsin's biggest city came as no surprise to many Black voters.A Wisconsin election commissioner bragged about low turnout in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods during last year’s elections. Weeks later, an audio recording surfaced in which then-President Donald Trump’s Wisconsin campaign team laughed behind closed doors about efforts to reach Black voters in 2020. A new year brings fresh political fights. After a bitter election year in 2022, the people you elected start at the Wisconsin Capitol on Tuesday, Jan. 3. Many people who voted this past week in the state's primary election said they had long felt targeted by Republicans. The difference now is the public display of strategies that at best ignore the priorities of Black voters and at worst actively look to keep them from voting. People are also reading… “It’s a plan that they devised and carried out with quite a lot of precision,” said lifelong Milwaukee resident Dewayne Walls, 63. “It’s a repeatable pattern that’s going to continue to happen over and over as long as they have that plausible deniability and as long as they have the power in Madison,” the state capital.Walls and other Black voters said they are tired of the countless hurdles that disproportionately try to keep them from being heard at the ballot box. Voters said their experiences with the GOP have been as voices to silence, not to win over.“The Republican Party needs a lot of work. All of them need to actually step into our shoes, go in our neighborhoods, work our jobs, do the things that we’re doing on a daily basis and see how they feel about what’s going on once they experience it,” said Valeria Gray, 59.She described the relationship between Milwaukee and much of the rest of the state as one divided by race."It doesn’t look like it’s gonna ever go anywhere,” she said.Voting rights advocates for years have accused Wisconsin Republicans of pushing policies to suppress voters of color and lower-income voters. Many such policies centered on the Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee, home to nearly 70% of Wisconsin’s Black population.Those claims were reinforced by an email sent to about 1,700 people in December from Bob Spindell, a Republican member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission. He said Republicans “can be especially proud” of depressed midterm voter turnout in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods in Milwaukee, a heavily Democratic city.Spindell later said his email was meant to convey the steps Republicans took to counter Democratic messaging in the city.The Associated Press then obtained an audio recording of a meeting in which the head of Trump’s 2020 Wisconsin campaign team talked with staff about their efforts to reach Black voters: "We ever talk to Black people before? I don’t think so,” the campaign official said to laughter.Dwayne Morgan, 59, called it “the same old, same old” for the GOP in Milwaukee. “They’re trying to get us not to vote. They’re trying to wipe away the history,” he said.Republican-drawn legislative maps adopted last year dilute Milwaukee’s influence and nearly guarantee a Republican majority in the Legislature. That's despite statewide races routinely being decided by narrow margins and Democrats winning the major statewide offices, including for governor, attorney general and secretary of state.The Republican-controlled Legislature enacted strict voter ID laws in 2011 under then-Republican Gov. Scott Walker. Since his first term began in 2019, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has vetoed more than a dozen GOP-backed bills that would make it harder to vote. Those include ID requirements for older and disabled voters who are indefinitely confined, limits on when and where absentee ballots could be collected, and prohibiting election officials from filling out missing voter information. Dwayne Morgan leaves a polling station in Milwaukee Thursday after casting an early ballot. For years, voting rights advocates have accused Wisconsin Republicans of pushing policies to suppress voters of color and lower-income voters. Morgan called it “the same old, same old” for the GOP in Milwaukee. “They’re trying to get us not to vote. They’re trying to wipe away the history,” he said. MORRY GASH, ASSOCIATED PRESS Nonetheless, Republicans have prevailed in the courts, using lawsuits to outlaw ballot drop boxes and deny election clerks the ability to fill in missing information on the envelopes containing mail ballots. The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s conservative majority, which is at stake in this year's election, has routinely ruled in favor of Republicans on consequential voting decisions.That adds to a host of reasons Black voters in Milwaukee have increasingly felt as if their votes don’t matter. The city has some of the worst racial disparities nationwide in health care, education, wealth and incarceration.'Suppression'Low-income residents, who are disproportionately Black, already struggle to meet basic needs. Confusion over new election rules or limited options for when and where they can vote further discourage voting, said the Rev. Greg Lewis, founder of Souls to the Polls Milwaukee.“Suppression is not just a few things,” he said. “It’s not just, not being able to vote without IDs. It’s not just, not being able to take your ballots to the drop box. It’s not just language barriers. It’s all those things together.”For Barbara Bryant, 76, “all the extra steps” were the biggest barrier to voting. But she wasn’t going to be deterred from participating in this month's primary. This past week, amid a snowstorm, a poll worker helped her from her car and into an early voting location.Bryant said she has preferred voting early in recent years so poll workers have time to explain any new rules, but she has seen inaccessible voting sites and the removal of drop boxes discourage other older adults from voting. Andre Childs talks about voting after casting an early ballot at a polling station Thursday, Feb. 9, 2023, in Milwaukee. Recent revelations about Republican election strategies targeting minority communities in Wisconsin’s biggest city came as no surprise to many Black voters. For years, voting rights advocates have accused Wisconsin Republicans of pushing policies to suppress voters of color and lower-income voters. Many of those policies centered on the Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash) Morry Gash GOP in MilwaukeeWisconsin Republicans told the AP they have been trying for a decade to make inroads with Black and Latino voters in Milwaukee.The state party opened its first office in downtown Milwaukee in 2019, specifically with the goal of reaching out to Black voters. The focus is on engaging them in conversation, rather than meeting typical campaign metrics such as knocking on a certain number of doors, said Mark Jefferson, the state GOP executive director.He said the party is not trying to suppress votes, but to chip away at the support for Democrats in those communities.“People are listening when they haven’t before,” Jefferson said. “I think we’ve learned a lot. I think we are cutting into Democrats’ margins, albeit faster currently in the Latino community and the Hispanic communities. But we’re also cutting into margins on the north side of Milwaukee, as well. And that’s because we are more in touch than we were.”Angela Lang, executive director of Milwaukee-based Black Leaders Organizing Communities, wasn’t worried about Republicans gaining a foothold with Black voters. She said the GOP’s priorities are fundamentally at odds with what most Black voters in Milwaukee want. A voter casts an early ballot at a polling station Thursday, Feb. 9, 2023, in Milwaukee. Recent revelations about Republican election strategies targeting minority communities in Wisconsin’s biggest city came as no surprise to many Black voters. For years, voting rights advocates have accused Wisconsin Republicans of pushing policies to suppress voters of color and lower-income voters. Many of those policies centered on the Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash) Morry Gash But Lang said she was concerned about the precedent that could be set by Republicans so openly talking about strategies to lower turnout.“It’s incredibly dangerous, because when one starts, then people just feel more emboldened,” she said.Several Black voters interviewed at the polls said they had seen little activity from Republicans in the city and described the GOP outreach center as more of a showpiece for the party.“I don’t think they ever come down here to try to reach us at all," said voter Damario Wright, 36. “I mean, you barely see a Republican in Milwaukee — come on, now.”Associated Press writer Scott Bauer contributed to this report. “Suppression is not just a few things,” he said. “It’s not just, not being able to vote without IDs. It’s not just, not being able to take your ballots to the drop box. It’s not just language barriers. It’s all those things together.”Rev. Greg Lewis, Souls to the Polls Milwaukee #lee-rev-content { margin:0 -5px; } #lee-rev-content h3 { font-family: inherit!important; font-weight: 700!important; border-left: 8px solid var(--lee-blox-link-color); text-indent: 7px; font-size: 24px!important; line-height: 24px; } #lee-rev-content .rc-provider { font-family: inherit!important; } #lee-rev-content h4 { line-height: 24px!important; font-family: "serif-ds",Times,"Times New Roman",serif!important; margin-top: 10px!important; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #lee-rev-content h3 { font-size: 18px!important; line-height: 18px; } } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article { clear: both; background-color: #fff; color: #222; background-position: bottom; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding: 15px 0 20px; margin-bottom: 40px; border-top: 4px solid rgba(0,0,0,.8); border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(0,0,0,.2); display: none; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article, #pu-email-form-politics-email-article p { font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article h2 { font-size: 24px; margin: 15px 0 5px 0; font-family: "serif-ds", Times, "Times New Roman", serif; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .lead { margin-bottom: 5px; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .email-desc { font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 5px; opacity: 0.7; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article form { padding: 10px 30px 5px 30px; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .disclaimer { opacity: 0.5; margin-bottom: 0; line-height: 100%; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .disclaimer a { color: #222; text-decoration: underline; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .email-hammer { border-bottom: 3px solid #222; opacity: .5; display: inline-block; padding: 0 10px 5px 10px; margin-bottom: -5px; font-size: 16px; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #pu-email-form-politics-email-article form { padding: 10px 0 5px 0; } } Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! 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- [The election is over. But Arizona's ballot drop box monitors are still in court - AZCentral](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/12/the-election-is-over-but-arizonas-ballot-drop-box-monitors-are-still-in-court-azcentral/) - When U.S. District Judge Michael Liburdi granted an emergency order placing new restrictions on Arizona's ballot drop box monitors about a week before Election Day, he temporarily limited observers' search for ballot "mules" and voting scofflaws.Nevertheless, the monitors — with lawn chairs, pizza, video cameras and sometimes firearms — were a defining image of the 2022 midterms in Arizona.Inspired by the debunked film "2,000 Mules," which states without proof that widespread ballot harvesting occurred during the 2020 presidential election, the observers took shifts dutifully photographing vehicles and people near the ballot boxes.Occasionally, they argued with voters. And they drew attention from local and national media outlets, although they rarely answered questions from journalists about their activities.Although Election Day has long since passed, the legal drama that the monitors' activities sparked remains active in court, with big potential ramifications for the next time Arizonans head to the polls.The case, attorneys say, is essentially a battle between constitutional First Amendment rights and federal voting rights laws designed to prevent intimidation and discrimination.At its heart, it asks whether the courts should limit drop box observers' freedoms of assembly and expression to protect voters from behavior that drew several intimidation complaints to the Arizona Secretary of State's Office.Politics:State of the Union takeaways: Blue-collar Joe, GOP boos and a 2024 previewUntil there's an answer to that question, the issue remains in legal limbo. And it's a very tough legal dilemma for any judge to navigate, said Stefanie Lindquist, a constitutional law expert and a professor at Arizona State University's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law."Voting and free speech are sort of two sides of the same coin, in the sense that they really can't survive without each other," Lindquist said. "They're really, really important and integral to democracy. It's hard to say in any circumstance whether one should trump the other."Wait a minute ... what case is this?As reports of people staking out ballot drop boxes began to emerge in Maricopa County, so, too, did complaints of voter intimidation — about 20 of them over a three-week period."It's a personal attack," wrote one complainant who encountered "camo clad" people while dropping off a ballot outside the county's main election center. "They basically said they're taking pictures looking for some fantasy BS on the voting citizenry."Those complaints sparked two lawsuits. One came from the Arizona Alliance of Retired Americans, a progressive grassroots organization that supports seniors' issues, and Voto Latino, a nonprofit focused on getting out the young Latino vote. Another was brought by Protect Democracy on behalf of the League of Women Voters of Arizona, an organization formed from the movement that secured the right to vote for women.Liburdi ruled against the Arizona Alliance of Retired Americans and Voto Latino, saying the injunction they requested was too broad and would trample the observers' rights to speech and assembly. He also consolidated both lawsuits into one case.Attorneys for the Arizona Alliance of Retired Americans and Voto Latino appealed Liburdi's decision to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court ultimately found that appeal moot, effectively erasing Liburdi's decision to not issue an emergency injunction.But the League of Women Voters of Arizona won an emergency order from Liburdi, who said their argument offered the opportunity for a limited set of restrictions that balanced the right to vote safely with freedom of expression. The lawsuit remains active in court today."We've heard evidence of individuals being harassed and intimidated," Liburdi said as he handed down the order from the bench. "I think the evidence was much stronger in this case, and I think it justifies this narrowly tailored form of relief."In his temporary order, Liburdi banned ballot box observers affiliated with conservative group Clean Elections USA and its founder, Melody Jennings, from taking photos of voters within 75 feet of a ballot box or openly carrying guns within 250 feet of the boxes.Nation:NY Rep.-elect Santos at Capitol amid controversyThe order also prohibited observers associated with the group, which organized at least some of the drop box surveillance in the Phoenix area, from posting identifying images or information about voters online and making false statements about election laws until the end of the voting period.The restrictions helped stem the tide of voter intimidation complaints, although some still came to election officials in the days after Liburdi's order took effect.But once Election Day came and went, restrictions on the group ceased. And in a Jan. 27 hearing, Liburdi declined a suggested preliminary injunction from lawyers with Protect Democracy, saying he viewed it as a far-reaching order when First Amendment rights were at play.He ordered both parties in the case to return to the table for mediation.First Amendment vs. voting rightsThe parties to the lawsuit have interpreted Liburdi's refusal of the preliminary injunction in different ways.Attorney Alexander Kolodin, who is representing the drop box monitors, told The Arizona Republic that he views Liburdi's decision as a victory."Enjoining a specific group of people with a specific ideology from filming something that Arizona law says can be filmed ... is a terrible First Amendment violation," he said. "So I'm very glad that the judge realized that these issues were weighty, because they are important."Elections:What can Congress do about Rep.-elect George Santos, who lied ahead of winning his election?The state Legislature, he said, could opt to place rules around behavior at ballot drop boxes if lawmakers felt it was appropriate. Kolodin himself is a Republican lawmaker from Scottsdale but was speaking to The Republic as a lawyer on the case."The Legislature has not seen fit to do that for drop boxes," he said. "And that's fundamentally a role for the state Legislature. It's not a role for a federal court to make those kinds of rules."But Orion Danjuma, an attorney with Protect Democracy, noted that Liburdi left the door open for the League of Women Voters of Arizona to file for another temporary emergency order against Clean Elections USA and Jennings. That gives him and other attorneys the ability to act swiftly to prevent voter intimidation as long as the case continues to be litigated."I think the fact that there is a pending lawsuit against this individual will have some deterrent effects in and of itself," Danjuma said. "And I hope that some of the most extreme unlawful abuses that we saw in the past will not occur partly because this individual and entity remains in active litigation over the conduct at issue."Both parties are currently returning to settlement negotiations, which began after the election. But Danjuma said he and others with Protect Democracy won't accept a settlement agreement that doesn't do something to prevent or restrict further drop box monitoring."The defendant stated directly that they want to engage in this conduct again, and we've made that very clear to the court (that) until we have a final judgment from the court or a settlement with the parties where the defendants agree to stop engaging in unlawful conduct, we are going to continue to litigate the case to ensure that voters are protected," Danjuma said."At present, there is a concern that issues like this could recur in the future, and that's why we're continuing to litigate the case."Kolodin wouldn't comment on whether his clients might accept a settlement that restricts their ability to watch over the drop boxes in the future. Still, he noted that rights enshrined in the Constitution trump federal statutes such as voter intimidation laws."These people are to some extent making a display and showing, 'We really don't like these drop boxes. We don't trust them. We are present to monitor what we view as something that's very prejudicial to the proper administration of elections,'" Kolodin said. "And that sends a message. I mean, you got the message. Everybody understood the message."While statutes always fall to constitutional provisions, Lindquist said free speech is intended to bolster democracy. The fact that some observers were dressed in tactical gear, she said, also changes the tone of the case."The statute is there to protect the right to vote, but the statute must bow to a constitutional right like the First Amendment," she said. "I can't tell you, quite honestly, whether one is more important than the other."Sasha Hupka covers Maricopa County and regional issues for The Arizona Republic with a focus on voting and democracy. Do you have a tip about elections or a question about voting? Reach her at sasha.hupka@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter: @SashaHupka.
- [Letter to the Editor: Victor Varela issues apology for actions during 2020 elections - Arizona Daily Sun](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/12/letter-to-the-editor-victor-varela-issues-apology-for-actions-during-2020-elections-arizona-daily-sun/) - My name is Victor Varela and I am writing a second apology letter to the residents of Flagstaff. Back in 2020 I tried to get on the ballot for mayor of our city. As I was collecting signatures the pandemic closed our city, therefore I was unable to gather enough signatures.After I called everyone about the risk of me going door to door using the same pen and I decided to just put random names and false addresses, not to get on the ballot, but only to get in front of a judge. Big mistake on my part, and a humbling experience for me and my family. I never lied to anyone about what I did. I ask for your forgiveness and I hope the integrity of our voting system was not lost by my actions. Thank you.VICTOR VARELA 0 Comments #lee-rev-content { margin:0 -5px; } #lee-rev-content h3 { font-family: inherit!important; font-weight: 700!important; border-left: 8px solid var(--lee-blox-link-color); text-indent: 7px; font-size: 24px!important; line-height: 24px; } #lee-rev-content .rc-provider { font-family: inherit!important; } #lee-rev-content h4 { line-height: 24px!important; font-family: "serif-ds",Times,"Times New Roman",serif!important; margin-top: 10px!important; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #lee-rev-content h3 { font-size: 18px!important; line-height: 18px; } } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article { clear: both; background-color: #fff; color: #222; background-position: bottom; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding: 15px 0 20px; margin-bottom: 40px; border-top: 4px solid rgba(0,0,0,.8); border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(0,0,0,.2); display: none; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article, #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article p { font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article h2 { font-size: 24px; margin: 15px 0 5px 0; font-family: "serif-ds", Times, "Times New Roman", serif; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article .lead { margin-bottom: 5px; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article .email-desc { font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 5px; opacity: 0.7; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article form { padding: 10px 30px 5px 30px; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article .disclaimer { opacity: 0.5; margin-bottom: 0; line-height: 100%; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article .disclaimer a { color: #222; text-decoration: underline; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article .email-hammer { border-bottom: 3px solid #222; opacity: .5; display: inline-block; padding: 0 10px 5px 10px; margin-bottom: -5px; font-size: 16px; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article form { padding: 10px 0 5px 0; } } Catch the latest in Opinion Get opinion pieces, letters and editorials sent directly to your inbox weekly!
- [Report: Trump campaign commissioned research that failed to prove 2020 election fraud claims](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/12/report-trump-campaign-commissioned-research-that-failed-to-prove-2020-election-fraud-claims/)
- [Court won't force Pa. to release voter info for 2020 election inquiry. That doesn't mean it's over.](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/12/court-wont-force-pa-to-release-voter-info-for-2020-election-inquiry-that-doesnt-mean-its-over/) - This article is made possible through Spotlight PA’s collaboration with Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting. This article is available for reprint under the terms of Votebeat’s republishing policy.A Pennsylvania appellate court won’t force the Department of State to release private voter information to state Senate Republicans as part of their long-running attempt to investigate the 2020 election.But the court also left the door open for the GOP to continue seeking voters’ partial Social Security numbers and more.In a decision Thursday, Commonwealth Court ruled that the state Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee had other tools at its disposal to compel the department to comply with its subpoenas and thus did not need the court to do so.“The Senate Committee has express constitutional authority to enforce its subpoena,” the opinion read. “It may enforce its subpoena in accordance with the contempt statutes.”It’s uncertain where the decision leaves the state Senate GOP’s 2020 election review, which has languished for much of the past year while the subpoena dispute has moved through the courts.As the state Senate majority, Republicans still control the committee, though they have not made any apparent moves this session to continue the inquiry. The current chair, state Sen. Jarrett Coleman (R., Bucks), declined to comment and directed questions to the state Senate Republicans’ general counsel’s office, which did not immediately respond.In 2021, motivated by reaction to former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims of fraud, the committee began subpoenaing documentation such as communications with counties, audit reports, and also partial Social Security and driver’s license numbers for voters from the Department of State.While the department provided some information, it argued that other information the committee was seeking contained sensitive private information about voters, which the state’s constitution prohibited the department from releasing.This prompted the committee to sue the department, seeking to have the courts compel the department to release the records.The court declined to provide that type of “extraordinary remedy” the committee sought because the committee has authority under the state’s constitution to enforce its subpoena. The court specifically mentioned the state Senate’s power to hold individuals in contempt.“As I read it, it’s sort of saying, we’re not going to weigh in to enforce it, we’re not going to knock it down, you have your own constitutional authority,” said Adam Bonin, a Philadelphia-based attorney who regularly works on election law issues for Democratic candidates.Commonwealth Court also dismissed the Department of State’s December motion to render the case moot, since the court’s decision addresses the underlying arguments of the case. The Department of State has argued that the subpoenas had effectively expired at the end of the last legislative session.The Department of State did not respond to a request for comment. State Sen. Cris Dush (R., Jefferson), who was chair of the Intergovernmental Operations Committee when the case began, also did not respond to a request for comment.Clifford Levine, a Pittsburgh lawyer who represented state Senate Democrats in the case, said the caucus was pleased “that the privacy interests of 9 million voters will be preserved.” Levine said since the subpoenas were issued last legislative session — before the state Senate could move to hold anyone in contempt — the committee would need to issue new subpoenas in the current session.“The question is will the new Senate want to continue the Arizona-style audit that we saw in 2021,” he said. “We would be hopeful that this would be put to rest.”The subpoenas were issued as part of a Republican inquiry which began in July 2021 when state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R., Franklin), acting as chair of the committee at the time, took up Trump’s call for a “forensic audit” of the 2020 election and sent letters to three counties requesting election materials from them for auditing purposes.Earlier in the summer, Dush and Mastriano had visited Maricopa County, Arizona, to tour an election review that legislative Republicans were conducting there.Dush took over the investigation shortly after, and the committee’s focus turned to the Department of State. In September 2021, it issued a subpoena to the agency requesting the names, addresses, driver’s licenses, and partial Social Security numbers of all Pennsylvania voters, as well as all communications between state elections officials and elections officials in all 67 counties.The request for voters’ private information drew strong rebuke from state Senate Democrats, the Department of State, the attorney general’s office, and nonprofits. They collectively sued in Commonwealth Court to block it, arguing it violated the Pennsylvania Constitution’s provision on a citizen’s right to privacy, among other things.The inquiry mostly stalled as the case wound its way through the court over the next year, eventually resulting in oral arguments before a three-judge panel this past September.It’s unclear if state Senate Republicans will appeal the ruling to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court or issue new subpoenas. Matt Haverstick, an attorney who represented the Republicans on the committee in the case, also did not respond to a request for comment.WHILE YOU’RE HERE... If you learned something from this story, pay it forward and become a member of Spotlight PA so someone else can in the future at spotlightpa.org/donate. Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results. Get Our Free Newsletters Never miss a headline with NorthcentralPa.com newsletters. Sign Up Today! Morning Headlines: Would you like to receive our daily morning newsletter? Afternoon Update: What's happening today? Here's your update! Daily Obits: Get a daily list straight to your email inbox. Keep your news localAccess to independent, local news is important, do you agree? We work hard to deliver timely, relevant news, for free. 100% of your contribution to NorthcentralPa.com goes directly to helping us cover news and events in the region. Thank you for saying that local news matters! Donate Today
- [Firm Paid by Trump Campaign to Prove Election Claims Came up Empty - Business Insider](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/12/firm-paid-by-trump-campaign-to-prove-election-claims-came-up-empty-business-insider/) - Former President Donald Trump. Brandon Bell/Getty Images Redeem now The Trump campaign commissioned a firm to probe the 2020 election, but researchers came up empty, per The WaPo. Roughly a dozen people at the Berkeley Research Group were part of a team analyzing Trump's claims. The research didn't deliver what the Trump campaign sought and the findings were kept undisclosed. Top editors give you the stories you want — delivered right to your inbox each weekday. Loading Something is loading. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. download the app Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. .inline-newsletter-signup.loading { width: 100%; max-width: 640px; margin: 0 auto; visibility: hidden; } A research firm hired by former President Donald Trump's 2020 campaign to validate the former president's claims of election fraud instead was unable to find evidence to support his theories, nor were the findings released to the public, according to The Washington Post.The Berkeley Research Group was commissioned by the Trump campaign to analyze the voting data from six states to probe whether voter fraud or any irregularities had occurred during the 2020 election. Areas of focus for the probe were voter machine malfunctions, allegations that a mass of deceased individuals had voted in the election, and other evidence that could point to a Trump victory, per the report.The Trump campaign envisioned using evidence from the report to bolster the then-president's claims in the public arena and in court.But individuals with knowledge of the situation told The Post that the results didn't line up with what the Trump team had sought, and the research group's findings were subsequently not disclosed to the public. Roughly a dozen people at the Berkeley Research Group were part of a team analyzing the Trump campaign's claims, per the report, which included econometricians, who utilize mathematics and statistics to model outcomes.The work was completed after the November 2020 election, during the remaining weeks of that year, and right before the January 6, 2021, riot at the United States Capitol.Since his loss to President Joe Biden, Trump has continued to insist that he was the true victor in the contest, despite the lack of evidence of any widespread fraud.Biden won the key swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — which were part of the Berkeley analysis — but all were long deemed to be highly competitive during that presidential cycle. "They looked at everything: change of addresses, illegal immigrants, ballot harvesting, people voting twice, machines being tampered with, ballots that were sent to vacant addresses that were returned and voted," said an individual familiar with the research who spoke with The Post."Literally anything you could think of. Voter turnout anomalies, date of birth anomalies, whether dead people voted. If there was anything under the sun that could be thought of, they looked at it," the individual added.According to four individuals who spoke with the newspaper, the findings were not what Trump officials were expecting from the analysis. The researchers felt that there were some voting anomalies in several of the states and pointed to particular laws which may have been sidestepped, but they didn't feel as though it was enough to change the outcome of the election. An individual with knowledge of the findings told The Post that the Trump team pushed for at least a dozen hypotheses to be tested."None of these were significant enough," the individual told the newspaper. "Just like any election, there are always errors, omissions and irregularities. It was nowhere close enough to what they wanted to prove, and it actually went in both directions."A spokesperson for Berkeley Research Group told The Post: "Our experts provide independent and objective factual analysis and as a matter of firm policy, we do not comment on client engagements or on privileged and confidential matters."After the November 2022 midterms, which saw many pro-Trump election deniers stumble at the ballot box, the former president proceeded to launch his 2024 campaign. Trump is so far the only declared major Republican in the contest. But it won't be for long, as former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is expected to join the GOP field on Wednesday at a campaign launch in Charleston. .content-lock-lock .hidden { display: none; } Sign up for notifications from Insider! Stay up to date with what you want to know. Subscribe to push notifications Close icon Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.
- [GOP election tactics no surprise to Wisconsin's Black voters - ABC News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/12/gop-election-tactics-no-surprise-to-wisconsins-black-voters-abc-news/) - MILWAUKEE -- Recent revelations about Republican election strategies targeting minority communities in Wisconsin's biggest city came as no surprise to many Black voters.A Wisconsin election commissioner bragged about low turnout in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods during last year’s elections. Weeks later, an audio recording surfaced that showed then-President Donald Trump’s Wisconsin campaign team laughing behind closed doors about efforts to reach Black voters in 2020.Many people who voted this past week in the state's primary election said they had long felt targeted by Republicans. The difference now is the public display of strategies that at best ignore the priorities of Black voters and at worst actively look to keep them from voting.“It’s a plan that they devised and carried out with quite a lot of precision,” said lifelong Milwaukee resident Dewayne Walls, 63. “It’s a repeatable pattern that’s going to continue to happen over and over as long as they have that plausible deniability and as long as they have the power in Madison” — the state capital.Walls and other Black voters said they are tired of the countless hurdles that disproportionately try to keep them from being heard at the ballot box. Voters said their experiences with the GOP have been as voices to silence, not to win over.“The Republican Party needs a lot of work. All of them need to actually step into our shoes, go in our neighborhoods, work our jobs, do the things that we’re doing on a daily basis and see how they feel about what’s going on once they experience it,” said Valeria Gray, 59.She described the relationship between Milwaukee and much of the rest of the state as one divided by race."It doesn’t look like it’s gonna ever go anywhere,” she said.Voting rights advocates for years have accused Wisconsin Republicans of pushing policies to suppress voters of color and lower-income voters. Many such policies centered on the Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee, home to nearly 70% of Wisconsin’s Black population.Those claims were reinforced by an email sent to about 1,700 people in December from Bob Spindell, a Republican member of the Wisconsin Election Commission. He said Republicans “can be especially proud” of depressed midterm voter turnout in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods in Milwaukee, a heavily Democratic city.Spindell later said his email was meant to convey the steps Republicans took to counter Democratic messaging in the city.The Associated Press then obtained an audio recording of a meeting in which the head of Trump’s 2020 Wisconsin campaign team talked with staff about their efforts to reach Black voters: "We ever talk to Black people before? I don’t think so,” the campaign official said to laughter.Dwayne Morgan, 59, called it “the same old, same old” for the GOP in Milwaukee. “They’re trying to get us not to vote. They’re trying to wipe away the history,” he said.Republican-drawn legislative maps adopted last year dilute Milwaukee’s influence and nearly guarantee a Republican majority in the Legislature. That's despite statewide races routinely being decided by narrow margins and Democrats winning the major statewide offices, including for governor, attorney general and secretary of state.The Republican-controlled Legislature enacted strict voter ID laws in 2011 under then-Republican Gov. Scott Walker. Since his first term began in 2019, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has vetoed more than a dozen GOP-backed bills that would make it harder to vote. Those include ID requirements for older and disabled voters who are indefinitely confined, limits on when and where absentee ballots could be collected, and prohibiting election officials from filling out missing voter information.Nonetheless, Republicans have prevailed in the courts, using lawsuits to outlaw ballot drop boxes and deny election clerks the ability to fill in missing information on the envelopes containing mail ballots. The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s conservative majority, which is at stake in this year's election, has routinely ruled in favor of Republicans on consequential voting decisions.That adds to a host of reasons Black voters in Milwaukee have increasingly felt as if their votes don’t matter. The city has some of the worst racial disparities nationwide in health care, education, wealth and incarceration.Low-income residents, who are disproportionately Black, already struggle to meet basic needs. Confusion over new election rules or limited options for when and where they can vote further discourage voting, said the Rev. Greg Lewis, founder of Souls to the Polls Milwaukee.“Suppression is not just a few things,” he said. “It’s not just, not being able to vote without IDs. It’s not just, not being able to take your ballots to the drop box. It’s not just language barriers. It’s all those things together.”For Barbara Bryant, 76, “all the extra steps” were the biggest barrier to voting. But she wasn’t going to be deterred from participating in this month's primary. This past week, amid a snowstorm, a poll worker helped her from her car and into an early voting location.Bryant said she has preferred voting early in recent years so poll workers have time to explain any new rules, but she has seen inaccessible voting sites and the removal of drop boxes discourage other older adults from voting.Wisconsin Republicans told the AP they have been trying for a decade to make inroads with Black and Latino voters in Milwaukee.The state party opened its first office in downtown Milwaukee in 2019, specifically with the goal of reaching out to Black voters. The focus is on engaging them in conversation, rather than meeting typical campaign metrics such as knocking on a certain number of doors, said Mark Jefferson, the state GOP executive director.He said the party is not trying to suppress votes, but to chip away at the support for Democrats in those communities.“People are listening when they haven’t before,” Jefferson said. “I think we’ve learned a lot. I think we are cutting into Democrats’ margins, albeit faster currently in the Latino community and the Hispanic communities. But we’re also cutting into margins on the north side of Milwaukee, as well. And that’s because we are more in touch than we were.”Angela Lang, executive director of Milwaukee-based Black Leaders Organizing Communities, wasn’t worried about Republicans gaining a foothold with Black voters. She said the GOP’s priorities are fundamentally at odds with what most Black voters in Milwaukee want.But Lang said she was concerned about the precedent that could be set by Republicans so openly talking about strategies to lower turnout.“It’s incredibly dangerous, because when one starts, then people just feel more emboldened,” she said.Several Black votes interviewed at the polls said they had seen little activity from Republicans in the city and described the GOP outreach center as more of a showpiece for the party.“I don’t think they ever come down here to try to reach us at all," said voter Damario Wright, 36. “I mean, you barely see a Republican in Milwaukee — come on, now.”___Associated Press writer Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed to this report.___Associated Press coverage of race and voting receives support from the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.___Harm Venhuizen is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow him on Twitter.
- [Washington Post: Trump campaign commissioned research that failed to prove 2020 ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/12/washington-post-trump-campaign-commissioned-research-that-failed-to-prove-2020/) - (CNN) — A research firm commissioned by former President Donald Trump‘s 2020 campaign team to prove his electoral fraud claims instead failed to substantiate his theories, the Washington Post reported Saturday. The Berkeley Research Group was commissioned to look into voting data from six states, according to the Post, and a source told the publication that the campaign team wanted about a dozen claims tested. People familiar with the matter told the publication that the findings did not match what the team had hoped for, and the findings were never released. While some anomalies and “unusual data patterns” were found, the Post reported, they wouldn’t have made a difference to President Joe Biden’s victory. The firm’s findings also refuted some of Trump’s voting conspiracies, including the identities of dead people used to vote and Dominion voting systems used to manipulate the outcome, the paper reported. The research was conducted in the last weeks of 2020 and before the January 6 US Capitol attack, according to the Post. Two sources told CNN that the House January 6 committee looking into the role Trump played in inciting the insurrection did not know about the firm’s work.Trump has continued to repeat his election lies as he focuses on his 2024 White House bid. CNN previously reported that following two years of advice from allies and advisers to stop exhaustively relitigating the 2020 election, his first rally late last month showed an attempted forward-driven message of what he would aim to accomplish with a second term. The former president has often pushed back on that advice, arguing that his message is strong enough as it is, and one source close to him told CNN his proclivity for focusing on the 2020 election will be tough to break because he still regularly hears from members of his base who believe so-called election integrity is an important talking point as he seeks reelection. Another adviser said that despite the defeat of several Trump-backed midterm candidates who denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election, Trump has said he does not believe their losses were tied to their election lies.
- [GOP election tactics no surprise to Wisconsin's Black voters - Los Angeles Times](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/12/gop-election-tactics-no-surprise-to-wisconsins-black-voters-los-angeles-times/) - MILWAUKEE — Recent revelations about Republican election strategies targeting minority communities in Wisconsin’s biggest city came as no surprise to many Black voters.A Wisconsin election commissioner bragged about low turnout in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods during last year’s elections. Weeks later, an audio recording surfaced that showed then-President Trump’s Wisconsin campaign team laughing behind closed doors about efforts to reach Black voters in 2020.Many people who voted this past week in the state’s primary election said they had long felt targeted by Republicans. The difference now is the public display of strategies that at best ignore the priorities of Black voters and at worst actively look to keep them from voting.“It’s a plan that they devised and carried out with quite a lot of precision,” said lifelong Milwaukee resident Dewayne Walls, 63. “It’s a repeatable pattern that’s going to continue to happen over and over as long as they have that plausible deniability and as long as they have the power in Madison” — the state capital. World & Nation Los Angeles County search-and-rescue team combs through wreckage in the Turkey earthquake zone In the days since the magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Turkey, search-and-rescue teams, including one from Los Angeles County, have been a ubiquitous presence. Walls and other Black voters said they are tired of the countless hurdles that disproportionately try to keep them from being heard at the ballot box. Voters said their experiences with the GOP have been as voices to silence, not to win over.“The Republican Party needs a lot of work. All of them need to actually step into our shoes, go in our neighborhoods, work our jobs, do the things that we’re doing on a daily basis and see how they feel about what’s going on once they experience it,” said Valeria Gray, 59.She described the relationship between Milwaukee and much of the rest of the state as one divided by race.“It doesn’t look like it’s gonna ever go anywhere,” she said.Voting rights advocates for years have accused Wisconsin Republicans of pushing policies to suppress voters of color and lower-income voters. Many such policies centered on the Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee, home to nearly 70% of Wisconsin’s Black population.Those claims were reinforced by an email sent to about 1,700 people in December from Bob Spindell, a Republican member of the Wisconsin Election Commission. He said Republicans “can be especially proud” of depressed midterm voter turnout in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods in Milwaukee, a heavily Democratic city.Spindell later said his email was meant to convey the steps Republicans took to counter Democratic messaging in the city.The Associated Press then obtained an audio recording of a meeting in which the head of Trump’s 2020 Wisconsin campaign team talked with staff about their efforts to reach Black voters: “We ever talk to Black people before? I don’t think so,” the campaign official said to laughter.Dwayne Morgan, 59, called it “the same old, same old” for the GOP in Milwaukee. “They’re trying to get us not to vote. They’re trying to wipe away the history,” he said.Republican-drawn legislative maps adopted last year dilute Milwaukee’s influence and nearly guarantee a Republican majority in the Legislature. That’s despite statewide races routinely being decided by narrow margins and Democrats winning the major statewide offices, including for governor, attorney general and secretary of state.The Republican-controlled Legislature enacted strict voter ID laws in 2011 under then-Republican Gov. Scott Walker. Since his first term began in 2019, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has vetoed more than a dozen GOP-backed bills that would make it harder to vote. Those include ID requirements for older and disabled voters who are indefinitely confined, limits on when and where absentee ballots could be collected, and prohibiting election officials from filling out missing voter information.Nonetheless, Republicans have prevailed in the courts, using lawsuits to outlaw ballot drop boxes and deny election clerks the ability to fill in missing information on the envelopes containing mail ballots. The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s conservative majority, which is at stake in this year’s election, has routinely ruled in favor of Republicans on consequential voting decisions.That adds to a host of reasons Black voters in Milwaukee have increasingly felt as if their votes don’t matter. The city has some of the worst racial disparities nationwide in healthcare, education, wealth and incarceration.Low-income residents, who are disproportionately Black, already struggle to meet basic needs. Confusion over new election rules or limited options for when and where they can vote further discourage voting, said the Rev. Greg Lewis, founder of Souls to the Polls Milwaukee.“Suppression is not just a few things,” he said. “It’s not just, not being able to vote without IDs. It’s not just, not being able to take your ballots to the drop box. It’s not just language barriers. It’s all those things together.”For Barbara Bryant, 76, “all the extra steps” were the biggest barrier to voting. But she wasn’t going to be deterred from participating in this month’s primary. This past week, amid a snowstorm, a poll worker helped her from her car and into an early voting location.Bryant said she has preferred voting early in recent years so poll workers have time to explain any new rules, but she has seen inaccessible voting sites and the removal of drop boxes discourage other older adults from voting.Wisconsin Republicans told the AP they have been trying for a decade to make inroads with Black and Latino voters in Milwaukee.The state party opened its first office in downtown Milwaukee in 2019, specifically with the goal of reaching out to Black voters. The focus is on engaging them in conversation, rather than meeting typical campaign metrics such as knocking on a certain number of doors, said Mark Jefferson, the state GOP executive director.He said the party is not trying to suppress votes, but to chip away at the support for Democrats in those communities.“People are listening when they haven’t before,” Jefferson said. “I think we’ve learned a lot. I think we are cutting into Democrats’ margins, albeit faster currently in the Latino community and the Hispanic communities. But we’re also cutting into margins on the north side of Milwaukee, as well. And that’s because we are more in touch than we were.”Angela Lang, executive director of Milwaukee-based Black Leaders Organizing Communities, wasn’t worried about Republicans gaining a foothold with Black voters. She said the GOP’s priorities are fundamentally at odds with what most Black voters in Milwaukee want.But Lang said she was concerned about the precedent that could be set by Republicans so openly talking about strategies to lower turnout.“It’s incredibly dangerous, because when one starts, then people just feel more emboldened,” she said.Several Black votes interviewed at the polls said they had seen little activity from Republicans in the city and described the GOP outreach center as more of a showpiece for the party.“I don’t think they ever come down here to try to reach us at all,” said voter Damario Wright, 36. “I mean, you barely see a Republican in Milwaukee — come on, now.”
- [Panel scolds Wisconsin justice for remarks in Trump case - WGAU](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/panel-scolds-wisconsin-justice-for-remarks-in-trump-case-wgau/) - MADISON, Wis. — (AP) — A judicial oversight commission has dismissed a complaint against a liberal-leaning Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who accused an attorney for former President Donald Trump of making racist contentions and trying to protect his "king" in a case challenging the 2020 election results in the battleground state.Judicial complaints are confidential under Wisconsin law but Justice Jill Karofsky released documents to The Associated Press on Saturday that show a retired attorney in Maryland filed one against her with the Wisconsin Judicial Commission two years ago. The commission decided in November 2022 not to discipline her but warned her to remain neutral and avoid making sarcastic remarks from the bench.Karofsky's attorney remained defiant, telling the commission in a letter Tuesday that Karofsky was trying to save the U.S. government and accusing the panel of allowing itself to become a political weapon.“The Judicial Code (sic) requires judges to act with impartiality towards the parties, but it does not require a judge to turn a blind-eye to dangerous, bad-faith conduct by a lawyer or litigant,” Karofsky said in an email to the AP, quoting a passage from one of her attorney's responses to the commission. “It is beyond reason to read the Code to require judges to be mouse-like quiet when parties are arguing in favor of a slow-motion coup.”Trump filed suit in Wisconsin in December 2020 after a recount confirmed Democrat Joe Biden had won the state by about 21,000 votes. The filing was one of scores of lawsuits Trump filed across multiple states in an unsuccessful attempt to overturn the election results and remain in office.The Wisconsin lawsuit asked the state Supreme Court to toss out about 171,000 absentee ballots cast in Dane and Milwaukee counties. The conservative-leaning court ultimately rejected the lawsuit by a 4-3 vote, with swing Justice Brian Hagedorn casting the deciding vote to uphold Biden's victory in the battleground state.Maryland attorney Fletcher Thompson filed a complaint against Karofsky in January 2021 accusing her of being hostile toward Trump attorney Jim Troupis. He noted that during oral arguments Karofsky told Troupis that the lawsuit “smacks of racism” because it sought to toss out absentee ballots in Wisconsin's two most diverse counties.Thompson added that Karofsky later told Troupis that he wanted the court to overturn the election results "so that your king can stay in power" and said that suggesting the election was marred by fraud was "nothing short of shameful."Thompson accused Karofsky of being discourteous and inappropriately launching personal attacks against Troupis. He said her remarks revealed a political and racial bias. He noted that Trump endorsed Karofsky's opponent, Daniel Kelly, during their race in spring 2020.Karofsky attorney Stacie Rosenzweig admonished the judicial commission in her Feb. 7 letter for letting partisan actors “hijack the (judicial) disciplinary system, in an attempt to silence a justice who rightfully tried to stop frivolous and dangerous arguments that undermined our democracy.”“We believe the Commission risks setting a dangerous precedent,” Rosenzweig wrote. “By allowing the Commission to be weaponized in this fashion, the Commission became a pawn of those determined to undermine an independent judiciary.”Thompson said in a telephone interview on Saturday that he wasn't aware the commission had decided not to discipline Karfosky. He said he wished the commission had taken action against her, but he wasn't disappointed with the outcome since he didn't expect the commission would even investigate when he filed his complaint.But he said he was stunned that Rosenzweig accused the panel of being a political pawn. He said he's just a retired attorney who watched the oral arguments on YouTube and he has no ties to Trump or Trump's campaign.Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
- [The Pence subpoena could set up a showdown over executive privilege](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/12/the-pence-subpoena-could-set-up-a-showdown-over-executive-privilege-2/) - The subpoena of former Vice President Mike Pence by the Department of Justice could set up a showdown over executive privilege. Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly invoked the legal protection to block testimony of his allies and subpoenas related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He may do so again in response to Pence's subpoena. Pence's role in presiding over the electoral certification process made him a central figure in the Jan. 6 proceedings. In the days and hours before the mob attacked the Capitol, Trump subjected his vice president to intense pressure to overturn the 2020 election results. Pence was also present during several critical meetings with Trump and his allies ahead of Jan. 6. There are not many details known about the subpoena issued to Pence by Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed late last year by Attorney General Merrick Garland. Smith is investigating Trump's role in the Jan. 6 attack, as well as a probe into the former president's handling of classified documents. What is executive privilege? Executive privilege is a legal protection for the president of the United States that allows them to shield some of their private communications from Congress and courts. "At its core, it's the idea that some documents and some information — if it were disclosed — would damage, harm the public interest or harm the country in some way," explained Jonathan Shaub, a former Justice Department official who is now a professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law. In theory, the protection allows a president's advisers to give candid advice free from fear of public disclosure, making the president's deliberations more productive, legal experts explained. Executive privilege isn't explicitly stated in the Constitution. Instead, it implicitly stems from Article II, outlining the power of the executive branch, and the separation of powers. The idea dates to the Nixon administration, when a special prosecutor leading the investigation of the Watergate break-in subpoenaed President Richard Nixon for tapes and transcripts of conversations related to the burglary. Nixon refused, and the case went to the Supreme Court. Ultimately, Nixon lost and was forced to hand over the tapes (after which he resigned). What are the limits of executive privilege? Although the court ruled against Nixon, it ultimately found that there is confidentiality interest in communications between a president and their senior-most advisers. But, the court specified, there's one very clear limit — executive privilege does not apply when the communications are relevant to a criminal investigation. For example, in Nixon's case, the Supreme Court found a compelling interest in the criminal case against the Watergate burglars, since there was a "demonstrated, specific need for evidence in a pending criminal trial." Otherwise, the limits of the doctrine are very much a live debate, legal experts said. "Executive privilege, when it exists, is not absolute. It's always weighed by courts against the interests served by disclosing the information to the authorities who are seeking it," Jessica Roth, a professor of law at Yeshiva University, told NPR last year. It's also not clear the extent to which a former president can claim it. After Nixon left office, Congress tried to compel him to turn over his presidential records, which he refused to do, citing executive privilege. That case also went to the Supreme Court, which again ruled against him — but left some ambiguity over whether former presidents could assert the privilege in the future. Practically speaking, most disputes over executive privilege have been resolved through compromise between those asking for the documents or testimony, and those providing, legal experts said. How has it come up in regards to Jan. 6? Trump has argued many times before that his communications related to Jan. 6 are privileged. Those claims have not always been successful. The issue arose repeatedly during the House committee's investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The committee subpoenaed numerous Trump aides and advisers, several of whom refused to testify on the basis of executive privilege. (The DOJ brought criminal charges for two of those advisers: One, Steve Bannon, was found guilty of contempt of Congress after his refusal to testify. The contempt case against another, Peter Navarro, is expected sometime this year.) Trump also tried to sue the heads of the House select committee and the National Archives to block the release of Jan. 6-related documents, but a court ruled against him last year. The former president has also tried to use executive privilege to block testimony to a federal grand jury, but those efforts have been less successful, the New York Times has reported. A subpoena issued by the Department of Justice is harder to ignore, said Victoria Nourse, a former DOJ official who also served as chief counsel to the vice president of the United States under then-Vice President Joe Biden. Congressional subpoenas can lack teeth because the process to get a judge to enforce them can be slow, she explained. What might happen next? As the former vice president, Pence himself cannot assert executive privilege. That power lies with the executive — in other words, Trump. That's noteworthy, as the two men have not had the smoothest of relationships when it comes to the events of Jan. 6. "Usually a vice president will ask the president to give him executive privilege and to announce that," said Nourse, who is now a professor at Georgetown Law. "In this case, that would be a question in and of itself: whether Trump will do that for Pence." If Trump does decide to assert executive privilege, then a battle in court might follow. "There is no executive privilege for a crime. So the question is how far they want to take this and if they want a judge to adjudicate it," she said. Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
- [Guest column: The state of America now could learn a lot from Abraham Lincoln](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/12/guest-column-the-state-of-america-now-could-learn-a-lot-from-abraham-lincoln/) - If there is an important conflict in American politics, there should be compelling evidence to justify each side. In Abraham Lincoln’s political experience, desperate positions on a major issue produced firmly entrenched opposing advocates. One issue had caused the other: the clash between pro-slavery and anti-slavery supporters had forced the question of whether or not to maintain the union of our then 34 states.The January 6, 2021, invasion of our Capitol described a contemporary schism that put in danger a bedrock issue of the American republic: one of our most fundamental principles — the rule of law. In obedience to the Constitution, Congress was in the process of assembling to count the electoral votes from the previous presidential election. Because the invading mob did not like the results, and because they had been persuaded by the losing candidate that the election had been stolen, they resorted to violence in an attempt to overturn it. In both cases, the Constitution and law were being violated: there is no provision for secession in the Constitution and invasion of the Capitol is obviously a crime. Yet, both the Southern states in 1860 and a significant number of our citizens in 2021 believed events demanded their taking matters into their own hands. How could this happen in a nation of law? The two matters are dissimilar in many respects, but in one characteristic they are identical — in the perpetrators minds, their issues superseded the Constitution and the law. I believe we can profit by comparing the two matters. Concerning the earlier one, Lincoln had a deep-seated opposition to slavery. He hated it and longed to eliminate it — said it was “a cancer on the body politic.” However, in order to preserve the union, he and other political leaders endorsed Congressional compromises concerning slavery, from the admission of Missouri as a slave state in 1821 to the admission of California as a free state in 1850. Preserving the union was the governing factor. But because Lincoln’s sentiments were well-known in the slave states, by the time of his election as president in 1860 and before his taking office on March 4, 1861, nine of the Southern slave states had voted to secede and two more were soon to follow. In our immediate situation, friction still exists between citizens who believe the 2020 election was stolen and those who are convinced it was legitimate. The negative argument is fueled by certain TV cable channels as well as social media platforms which spread rumors that the 2020 voting was fraudulent. It has become a given to a significant proportion of our population, because certain media are constantly stoking the fires of doubt, that there is disbelief in the legitimacy of the voting. As proof of this, 140 Republican members of the House of Representatives and nine Republican senators voted not to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election of Joe Biden.Today, as the 2022 Congressional election has given Republicans a majority in the House of Representatives, some of the most adamant election repudiators have been given important committee assignments. For instance, a prominent election denier is now chairman of the important Judiciary Committee. So far in the 118th Congress, the Republican majority in the House is indicating a plan to concentrate on holding investigations, especially of the president and his family, rather than working with Democrats on legislation beneficial to all Americans — the purpose of Congress.While partisan politics is nothing new, there appears to be a sense of retribution now on the part of many rather than an atmosphere of healing. Though the stakes now are not as high as they were in 1861, we should hope that both Congress and the American public would take inspiration from Lincoln. Although his attempts to prevent war were unsuccessful, his thoughtful effort at reconciliation should be our guide. Let us honor Lincoln on his birthday by harkening to the sentiments of his first inaugural address and putting them into practice: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.” Aren’t we are all Americans?Ed Jones is a former member of the Thousand Oaks City Council.
- [The Pence subpoena could set up a showdown over executive privilege - NPR](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/12/the-pence-subpoena-could-set-up-a-showdown-over-executive-privilege-npr/) - Enlarge this image Then-President Donald Trump and then-Vice President Mike Pence are pictured in 2020. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images The subpoena of former Vice President Mike Pence by the Department of Justice could set up a showdown over executive privilege. Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly invoked the legal protection to block testimony of his allies and subpoenas related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He may do so again in response to Pence's subpoena. Pence's role in presiding over the electoral certification process made him a central figure in the Jan. 6 proceedings. In the days and hours before the mob attacked the Capitol, Trump subjected his vice president to intense pressure to overturn the 2020 election results. Pence was also present during several critical meetings with Trump and his allies ahead of Jan. 6. There are not many details known about the subpoena issued to Pence by Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed late last year by Attorney General Merrick Garland. Smith is investigating Trump's role in the Jan. 6 attack, as well as a probe into the former president's handling of classified documents.
- [Trump campaign kept its internal 2020 election inquiry under wraps: Report](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/12/trump-campaign-kept-its-internal-2020-election-inquiry-under-wraps-report/) - In the aftermath of the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump's campaign reportedly tapped a research firm to search for fraud and other anomalies. After chasing down various leads and accusations, the team of roughly a dozen researchers from Berkeley Research Group failed to unearth mass irregularities that could have tipped the election, seemingly prompting the Trump campaign to keep its findings under wraps, the Washington Post reported. TRUMP LAWYERS REPORTEDLY SET TO APPEAL PENCE SUBPOENA ON EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE GROUNDS Researchers at the firm combed through allegations of dead people voting, voter machine malfunctions, and other potential forms of malfeasance in six states. Still, the findings were never shown to a court or the public, according to the report. "They looked at everything: change of addresses, illegal immigrants, ballot harvesting, people voting twice, machines being tampered with, ballots that were sent to vacant addresses that were returned and voted," a source told the Washington Post. "Literally anything you could think of." Some team members reportedly included econometricians who used predictive models to study the election. All of this work was conducted in the twilight weeks of 2020, before the events that took place at the Capitol on Jan. 6, per the report. Researchers reportedly concluded that there were likely some anomalies in the election, but not enough to affect the outcome. The states they examined included Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada, the Washington Post reported. "None of these were significant enough," a source told the Washington Post. "Just like any election, there are always errors, omissions, and irregularities. It was nowhere close enough to what they wanted to prove, and it actually went in both directions." Upon the conclusion of the review, officials from Berkeley Research Group reportedly debriefed Trump's team about their findings. Some of Trump's allies, such as then-chief of staff Mark Meadows, voiced skepticism of their findings, per the report. Berkeley Research Group's research was reportedly conducted by a subsidiary company named East Bay Dispute and Advisory, which Trump's campaign paid over $600,000 during the waning weeks of 2020, according to the report. CLICK HERE FOR MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER Trump continues to contend that the 2020 election was "rigged" or "stolen" from him, despite losing the Electoral College 232 to President Joe Biden's 306. Trump debuted his campaign for the 2024 election last November.
- [Panel scolds Wisconsin justice for remarks in Trump case - Metro US](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/panel-scolds-wisconsin-justice-for-remarks-in-trump-case-metro-us/) - MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A judicial oversight commission has dismissed a complaint against a liberal-leaning Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who accused an attorney for former President Donald Trump of making racist contentions and trying to protect his “king” in a case challenging the 2020 election results in the battleground state.Judicial complaints are confidential under Wisconsin law but Justice Jill Karofsky released documents to The Associated Press on Saturday that show a retired attorney in Maryland filed one against her with the Wisconsin Judicial Commission two years ago. The commission decided in November 2022 not to discipline her but warned her to remain neutral and avoid making sarcastic remarks from the bench. Karofsky’s attorney remained defiant, telling the commission in a letter Tuesday that Karofsky was trying to save the U.S. government and accusing the panel of allowing itself to become a political weapon. “The Judicial Code (sic) requires judges to act with impartiality towards the parties, but it does not require a judge to turn a blind-eye to dangerous, bad-faith conduct by a lawyer or litigant,” Karofsky said in an email to the AP, quoting a passage from one of her attorney’s responses to the commission. “It is beyond reason to read the Code to require judges to be mouse-like quiet when parties are arguing in favor of a slow-motion coup.” Trump filed suit in Wisconsin in December 2020 after a recount confirmed Democrat Joe Biden had won the state by about 21,000 votes. The filing was one of scores of lawsuits Trump filed across multiple states in an unsuccessful attempt to overturn the election results and remain in office. The Wisconsin lawsuit asked the state Supreme Court to toss out about 171,000 absentee ballots cast in Dane and Milwaukee counties. The conservative-leaning court ultimately rejected the lawsuit by a 4-3 vote, with swing Justice Brian Hagedorn casting the deciding vote to uphold Biden’s victory in the battleground state. Maryland attorney Fletcher Thompson filed a complaint against Karofsky in January 2021 accusing her of being hostile toward Trump attorney Jim Troupis. He noted that during oral arguments Karofsky told Troupis that the lawsuit “smacks of racism” because it sought to toss out absentee ballots in Wisconsin’s two most diverse counties. Thompson added that Karofsky later told Troupis that he wanted the court to overturn the election results “so that your king can stay in power” and said that suggesting the election was marred by fraud was “nothing short of shameful.” Thompson accused Karofsky of being discourteous and inappropriately launching personal attacks against Troupis. He said her remarks revealed a political and racial bias. He noted that Trump endorsed Karofsky’s opponent, Daniel Kelly, during their race in spring 2020. Karofsky attorney Stacie Rosenzweig admonished the judicial commission in her Feb. 7 letter for letting partisan actors “hijack the (judicial) disciplinary system, in an attempt to silence a justice who rightfully tried to stop frivolous and dangerous arguments that undermined our democracy.” “We believe the Commission risks setting a dangerous precedent,” Rosenzweig wrote. “By allowing the Commission to be weaponized in this fashion, the Commission became a pawn of those determined to undermine an independent judiciary.” Thompson said in a telephone interview on Saturday that he wasn’t aware the commission had decided not to discipline Karfosky. He said he wished the commission had taken action against her, but he wasn’t disappointed with the outcome since he didn’t expect the commission would even investigate when he filed his complaint. But he said he was stunned that Rosenzweig accused the panel of being a political pawn. He said he’s just a retired attorney who watched the oral arguments on YouTube and he has no ties to Trump or Trump’s campaign.
- [Kansas Republicans select 2020 election conspiracy theorist to serve as party chairman](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/12/kansas-republicans-select-2020-election-conspiracy-theorist-to-serve-as-party-chairman-2/) - TOPEKA — Former Johnson County commissioner and 2020 election conspiracy theorist Mike Brown narrowly defeated Saturday a former Republican national committeewoman to earn a two-year term as the state GOP’s chairman. The contest over who would serve in the party’s top administrative job offered a fresh illustration of GOP infighting despite calls by Brown and Helen Van Etten to seek unity if chosen to replace chairman Mike Kuckelman, an attorney who served four years as chairman. In advance of the party meeting, Kuckelman accused Brown of being insufficiently conservative on abortion and gun rights. During his nomination speech, Brown fired back by declaring himself “pro-life” and “pro-2A.” Van Etten’s base in the 2nd and 4th congressional districts was pitted against dominance of Brown in the 3rd District in the Kansas City area. In a packed convention hall, it took a minimum of 90 votes from the 179 credentialed delegates to prevail. Hand counting of ballots settled the issue: Brown, 90; Van Etten, 88. One ballot was declared “spoiled,” because someone apparently voted for both nominees. Brown, an Overland Park construction contractor, lost a reelection campaign for Johnson County Commission in 2020 and fell short in the Republican primary for Kansas secretary of state in 2022. He rebounded by surviving one of the closest races for party chairman in state history. “As Republicans,” Brown said, “we are not the party of equity and entitlement. We are the party of excellence and hard work.” He urged GOP delegates to get behind his candidacy and work to overhaul the organization to make Republicans more competitive, especially in the 3rd District. His quest is to end the career of Democratic U.S. Rep. Sharice Davis, who is serving her third term representing the Kansas City area. He also wants to flip the governor’s office in 2026 after back-to-back victories by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly over Republicans Kris Kobach and Derek Schmidt. “We simply cannot continue to keep doing the same things over and over and believe that somehow it’s going to turn out differently,” Brown said. “We’re going to get the governor’s seat back. We’re going to get CD3 back. We’re going to get control of this mess.” Lynn Rogers, a former Democratic lieutenant governor and state treasurer, said election of Brown meant the Kansas GOP “made their bed and must lie down in the conspiracy-laden nightmare of their own making.” Brown has called for RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel to resign. In public appearances, Brown said there shouldn’t be room in the state’s Republican Party for RINOSs or what he described as “milquetoast, Republican-in-name-only, lousy Republicans.” He also has a record of promoting election conspiracy theories alleging President Donald Trump had reelection stolen from him in 2020 because of fraudulent activity. After Brown took his position on the stage, GOP delegates debated but tabled a resolution calling for impeachment of President Joe Biden. The request centered on concern about Biden’s purported approval of social media companies censoring commentary by conservatives. Brown, who was endorsed by former U.S. Rep. Tim Huelskamp, said the Kansas GOP would be a fundraising machine, become more unified and develop databases to help candidates win. He would expand the state party’s role in elections by reaching down to local school board races and city council campaigns. It was essential to expand the Republican supermajorities in the Kansas House and Kansas Senate, he said. Brown was nominated for chairman by Calvin Hayden, the Johnson County sheriff. Hayden complained that he’d never received financial support from the state party in his campaigns for sheriff. “That can’t happen,” Hayden said. “We need to help our people at the grassroots level. We need to fight. We need to make sure that we get people with conservative values.” Helen Van Etten, a former national committeewoman for the Kansas Republican Party from Topeka, lost on a vote of 90-88 her campaign to be appointed chairwoman of the state GOP. She lost to former Johnson County Commission member Mike Brown. (Tim Carpenter/Kansas Reflector)Second place Van Etten, who has never held elective political office and immigrated to the United States from Taiwan, was the state party’s national Republican committeewoman from 2008 to 2020. In a speech, Van Etten vowed to strengthen the Republican Party by emphasizing fundraising, county-level training and recruitment of activists. “As a long-time conservative activist, I have fought for decades in the trenches,” she said. “Our fight is for the values and the freedoms that we hold dear. I have a track record of standing for conservative principles and working with all Republicans to get things done. I will be nobody’s rubber stamp. Neither will I be a carbon copy of any previous or current leadership.” Van Etten is a retired audiologist with the Topeka school district and served from 2013 to 2021 on the Kansas Board of Regents as an appointee of Gov. Sam Brownback. Michael Austin, a Trump administration appointee as adviser to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, nominated Van Etten for the post. He said he appreciated Brown’s zeal and passion for conservatism, but indicated that wasn’t enough in these times. “We need experience,” he said. “We need connections. We are the calvary. We are the boots on the ground. I trust doctor Helen Van Etten to give us the tools and the resources we need to win the fight and make this state great again.” An exit speech Before the agenda turned to voting on two candidates for chairman, Kuckelman encouraged the audience to be respectful of anyone expressing contrasting views. He said he’d not thrown anyone out of state party meeting before, but appeared to leave open that possibility. “I know there’s a lot of emotion. We’ll run this meeting with decorum and respect,” Kuckelman said. “We are all Republicans. All of us in this room are unified on the Republican principles on the platform.” Kuckelman sought after the November election to punish GOP officials who supported independent gubernatorial candidate Dennis Pyle. He said the next chairman had to build ties within the party, advance platform principles and build support for GOP nominees. He said the Kansas GOP had to remain dedicated to expanding voter registration among Republicans and strive to get more conservatives to vote, he said. Another task was to maintain the Republican two-thirds supermajorities in the Kansas House and Kansas Senate, keep both U.S. Senate seats in GOP hands, win the 3rd District congressional seat and reclaim the governor’s office. In addition, he said the state party had to reach out to minority voters and to the 500,000 unaffiliated registered voters in Kansas. He said Democrats in Kansas led independent voters astray in the latest election by distorted information on the issues. “They incited the left with the wrong messages,” Kuckelman said. Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.
- [In Iowa, Arizona Republican Kari Lake says election integrity should be key caucus issue](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/in-iowa-arizona-republican-kari-lake-says-election-integrity-should-be-key-caucus-issue/) - ANKENY — Arizona Republican Kari Lake said Saturday she isn’t in Iowa running for president or trying to raise her profile to become vice president — but she didn’t completely shut the door on being Donald Trump’s running mate if he asks.“I really believe his policies are the ones that can help save this country, truly,” she told the Des Moines Register in an interview. “And so I'm going to do whatever I can. If he wants me to help him in any way, shape or form, I will do that. I will campaign for him. I'll do whatever I need to. But I'm not running for VP. I'm not running for president. I am just running to save America, if there's such a thing. I just want to save America.”Lake, who grew up in Iowa, said the primary goal of her visit was to see her family in the Quad Cities, and she laughed at the idea she couldn't visit the first-in-the-nation GOP caucus state without raising speculation about her potential political ambitions.But while she's here, she said, she might as well talk to Iowa caucusgoers, who hold an extraordinary amount of power in presidential politics.“Iowans have so much power when choosing who's going to lead this country,” she said on stage to a packed house at an event in Ankeny. “And we need to ensure when people come here ... we need to ask them where they stand on stolen elections.”More:What to know about former Arizona governor candidate Kari Lake's ties to IowaLake narrowly lost her 2022 campaign for governor to Democrat Katie Hobbs, the former Arizona secretary of state who certified President Joe Biden's win in the key state. The margin between Hobbs and Lake was thin, with Lake falling short by about 0.7 percentage points — roughly 17,000 votes.Lake filed a lawsuit in December alleging "intentional misconduct," but a judge dismissed it following a two-day trial, finding that there was no evidence to support her claims of election misconduct. She is appealing that loss in the state Court of Appeals.Lake has been among the most prominent politicians supporting Trump’s unfounded claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him, and she made the issue central to her gubernatorial campaign.More:Rage politics: Kari Lake's anger-fueled, Trump-inspired bid for Arizona governorThough that focus on the 2020 election earned her Trump’s endorsement in a crowded primary, the message appears not to have resonated with a majority of voters, who elected Hobbs as the first Democrat to hold the governor's office since 2009.Now, much like Trump, she is taking those claims on the road to litigate her loss in the court of public opinion as well as the courts.On stage, she acknowledged some of the criticism she’s faced.“It’s not looking backward,” she said. “It’s called fixing the problem so we can move forward.”In the interview with the Register, she didn’t say what action she would take if the courts ultimately decide against her.“I expect that we'll get a good verdict,” she said.More:Here are key facts and additional information behind the claims in Kari Lake's election challengeLake stayed after the conclusion of her speech Saturday to shake hands and take photos with everyone who wanted to meet her, waiting to leave until the event space was empty. Her aides finally ushered her away to a private event nearby with former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad and others.Saturday's public event, which organizers estimated drew about 200 people, was hosted by the Dallas County Republicans. It followed a previous public event Friday in Bettendorf in her native Quad Cities.“I watched her as a newscaster for 11 years,” said Bill Coburn, a 79-year-old Waukee resident who previously lived in Arizona and attended Saturday’s event. “She was very professional. She knew her facts.”Coburn said that's what drew him to come see her Saturday. He said he thinks Lake and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds should team up and run for president and vice president. It doesn’t matter who’s in what role, he said.Gary Leffler, a West Des Moines Republican who ran unsuccessfully for the 3rd Congressional District's 2022 Republican nomination, said he thinks a lot of people talking about election fraud are just expressing “sour grapes.” But he said he thinks Lake has legitimate concerns, and he’d like to see her have a role as someone’s running mate.“Let's put it this way,” he said. “I would love to see her and (Democratic Vice President) Kamala (Harris) in a debate.”Brianne Pfannenstiel is the chief politics reporter for the Register. Reach her at bpfann@dmreg.com or 515-284-8244. Follow her on Twitter at @brianneDMR.
- [Panel scolds Wisconsin justice for remarks in Trump case | AM 870 The ANSWER](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/panel-scolds-wisconsin-justice-for-remarks-in-trump-case-am-870-the-answer/) - MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A judicial oversight commission has dismissed a complaint against a liberal-leaning Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who accused an attorney for former President Donald Trump of making racist contentions and trying to protect his “king” in a case challenging the 2020 election results in the battleground state.Judicial complaints are confidential under Wisconsin law but Justice Jill Karofsky released documents to The Associated Press on Saturday that show a retired attorney in Maryland filed one against her with the Wisconsin Judicial Commission two years ago. The commission decided in November 2022 not to discipline her but warned her to remain neutral and avoid making sarcastic remarks from the bench. Karofsky's attorney remained defiant, telling the commission in a letter Tuesday that Karofsky was trying to save the U.S. government and accusing the panel of allowing itself to become a political weapon. “The Judicial Code (sic) requires judges to act with impartiality towards the parties, but it does not require a judge to turn a blind-eye to dangerous, bad-faith conduct by a lawyer or litigant,” Karofsky said in an email to the AP, quoting a passage from one of her attorney's responses to the commission. “It is beyond reason to read the Code to require judges to be mouse-like quiet when parties are arguing in favor of a slow-motion coup.”Trump filed suit in Wisconsin in December 2020 after a recount confirmed Democrat Joe Biden had won the state by about 21,000 votes. The filing was one of scores of lawsuits Trump filed across multiple states in an unsuccessful attempt to overturn the election results and remain in office.The Wisconsin lawsuit asked the state Supreme Court to toss out about 171,000 absentee ballots cast in Dane and Milwaukee counties. The conservative-leaning court ultimately rejected the lawsuit by a 4-3 vote, with swing Justice Brian Hagedorn casting the deciding vote to uphold Biden's victory in the battleground state. Maryland attorney Fletcher Thompson filed a complaint against Karofsky in January 2021 accusing her of being hostile toward Trump attorney Jim Troupis. He noted that during oral arguments Karofsky told Troupis that the lawsuit “smacks of racism” because it sought to toss out absentee ballots in Wisconsin's two most diverse counties. Thompson added that Karofsky later told Troupis that he wanted the court to overturn the election results “so that your king can stay in power” and said that suggesting the election was marred by fraud was “nothing short of shameful."Thompson accused Karofsky of being discourteous and inappropriately launching personal attacks against Troupis. He said her remarks revealed a political and racial bias. He noted that Trump endorsed Karofsky's opponent, Daniel Kelly, during their race in spring 2020. Karofsky attorney Stacie Rosenzweig admonished the judicial commission in her Feb. 7 letter for letting partisan actors “hijack the (judicial) disciplinary system, in an attempt to silence a justice who rightfully tried to stop frivolous and dangerous arguments that undermined our democracy.”“We believe the Commission risks setting a dangerous precedent,” Rosenzweig wrote. “By allowing the Commission to be weaponized in this fashion, the Commission became a pawn of those determined to undermine an independent judiciary.”Thompson said in a telephone interview on Saturday that he wasn't aware the commission had decided not to discipline Karfosky. He said he wished the commission had taken action against her, but he wasn't disappointed with the outcome since he didn't expect the commission would even investigate when he filed his complaint. But he said he was stunned that Rosenzweig accused the panel of being a political pawn. He said he's just a retired attorney who watched the oral arguments on YouTube and he has no ties to Trump or Trump's campaign.
- [Revealed: Trump campaign buried research about 2020 election outcome when it didn't fit the script](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/revealed-trump-campaign-buried-research-about-2020-election-outcome-when-it-didnt-fit-the-script/) - Brown, an Overland Park construction contractor, lost a reelection campaign for Johnson County Commission in 2020 and fell short in the Republican primary for Kansas secretary of state in 2022. He rebounded by surviving one of the closest races for party chairman in state history. “As Republicans,” Brown said, “we are not the party of equity and entitlement. We are the party of excellence and hard work.” He urged GOP delegates to get behind his candidacy and work to overhaul the organization to make Republicans more competitive, especially in the 3rd District. His quest is to end the career of Democratic U.S. Rep. Sharice Davis, who is serving her third term representing the Kansas City area. He also wants to flip the governor’s office in 2026 after back-to-back victories by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly over Republicans Kris Kobach and Derek Schmidt. “We simply cannot continue to keep doing the same things over and over and believe that somehow it’s going to turn out differently,” Brown said. “We’re going to get the governor’s seat back. We’re going to get CD3 back. We’re going to get control of this mess.” Lynn Rogers, a former Democratic lieutenant governor and state treasurer, said election of Brown meant the Kansas GOP “made their bed and must lie down in the conspiracy-laden nightmare of their own making.” Brown has called for RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel to resign. In public appearances, Brown said there shouldn’t be room in the state’s Republican Party for RINOSs or what he described as “milquetoast, Republican-in-name-only, lousy Republicans.” He also has a record of promoting election conspiracy theories alleging President Donald Trump had reelection stolen from him in 2020 because of fraudulent activity. After Brown took his position on the stage, GOP delegates debated but tabled a resolution calling for impeachment of President Joe Biden. The request centered on concern about Biden’s purported approval of social media companies censoring commentary by conservatives. Brown, who was endorsed by former U.S. Rep. Tim Huelskamp, said the Kansas GOP would be a fundraising machine, become more unified and develop databases to help candidates win. He would expand the state party’s role in elections by reaching down to local school board races and city council campaigns. It was essential to expand the Republican supermajorities in the Kansas House and Kansas Senate, he said. Brown was nominated for chairman by Calvin Hayden, the Johnson County sheriff. Hayden complained that he’d never received financial support from the state party in his campaigns for sheriff. “That can’t happen,” Hayden said. “We need to help our people at the grassroots level. We need to fight. We need to make sure that we get people with conservative values.” Helen Van Etten, a former national committeewoman for the Kansas Republican Party from Topeka, lost on a vote of 90-88 her campaign to be appointed chairwoman of the state GOP. She lost to former Johnson County Commission member Mike Brown. (Tim Carpenter/Kansas Reflector)Second place Van Etten, who has never held elective political office and immigrated to the United States from Taiwan, was the state party’s national Republican committeewoman from 2008 to 2020. In a speech, Van Etten vowed to strengthen the Republican Party by emphasizing fundraising, county-level training and recruitment of activists. “As a long-time conservative activist, I have fought for decades in the trenches,” she said. “Our fight is for the values and the freedoms that we hold dear. I have a track record of standing for conservative principles and working with all Republicans to get things done. I will be nobody’s rubber stamp. Neither will I be a carbon copy of any previous or current leadership.” Van Etten is a retired audiologist with the Topeka school district and served from 2013 to 2021 on the Kansas Board of Regents as an appointee of Gov. Sam Brownback. Michael Austin, a Trump administration appointee as adviser to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, nominated Van Etten for the post. He said he appreciated Brown’s zeal and passion for conservatism, but indicated that wasn’t enough in these times. “We need experience,” he said. “We need connections. We are the calvary. We are the boots on the ground. I trust doctor Helen Van Etten to give us the tools and the resources we need to win the fight and make this state great again.” An exit speech Before the agenda turned to voting on two candidates for chairman, Kuckelman encouraged the audience to be respectful of anyone expressing contrasting views. He said he’d not thrown anyone out of state party meeting before, but appeared to leave open that possibility. “I know there’s a lot of emotion. We’ll run this meeting with decorum and respect,” Kuckelman said. “We are all Republicans. All of us in this room are unified on the Republican principles on the platform.” Kuckelman sought after the November election to punish GOP officials who supported independent gubernatorial candidate Dennis Pyle. He said the next chairman had to build ties within the party, advance platform principles and build support for GOP nominees. He said the Kansas GOP had to remain dedicated to expanding voter registration among Republicans and strive to get more conservatives to vote, he said. Another task was to maintain the Republican two-thirds supermajorities in the Kansas House and Kansas Senate, keep both U.S. Senate seats in GOP hands, win the 3rd District congressional seat and reclaim the governor’s office. In addition, he said the state party had to reach out to minority voters and to the 500,000 unaffiliated registered voters in Kansas. He said Democrats in Kansas led independent voters astray in the latest election by distorted information on the issues. “They incited the left with the wrong messages,” Kuckelman said. Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.
- [Washington Post: Trump campaign commissioned research that failed to prove ... - ABC17NEWS](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/washington-post-trump-campaign-commissioned-research-that-failed-to-prove-abc17news/) - By Kaanita Iyer, Jamie Gangel and Zachary Cohen, CNN A research firm commissioned by former President Donald Trump‘s 2020 campaign team to prove his electoral fraud claims instead failed to substantiate his theories, the Washington Post reported Saturday. The Berkeley Research Group was commissioned to look into voting data from six states, according to the Post, and a source told the publication that the campaign team wanted about a dozen claims tested. People familiar with the matter told the publication that the findings did not match what the team had hoped for, and the findings were never released. While some anomalies and “unusual data patterns” were found, the Post reported, they wouldn’t have made a difference to President Joe Biden’s victory. The firm’s findings also refuted some of Trump’s voting conspiracies, including the identities of dead people used to vote and Dominion voting systems used to manipulate the outcome, the paper reported. The research was conducted in the last weeks of 2020 and before the January 6 US Capitol attack, according to the Post. Two sources told CNN that the House January 6 committee looking into the role Trump played in inciting the insurrection did not know about the firm’s work. Trump has continued to repeat his election lies as he focuses on his 2024 White House bid. CNN previously reported that following two years of advice from allies and advisers to stop exhaustively relitigating the 2020 election, his first rally late last month showed an attempted forward-driven message of what he would aim to accomplish with a second term. The former president has often pushed back on that advice, arguing that his message is strong enough as it is, and one source close to him told CNN his proclivity for focusing on the 2020 election will be tough to break because he still regularly hears from members of his base who believe so-called election integrity is an important talking point as he seeks reelection. Another adviser said that despite the defeat of several Trump-backed midterm candidates who denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election, Trump has said he does not believe their losses were tied to their election lies. The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved. CNN’s Gabby Orr, Kristen Holmes, Kaitlan Collins and Kate Sullivan contributed to this report.
- [Kansas Republicans select 2020 election conspiracy theorist to serve as party chairman](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/kansas-republicans-select-2020-election-conspiracy-theorist-to-serve-as-party-chairman/) - TOPEKA — Former Johnson County commissioner and 2020 election conspiracy theorist Mike Brown narrowly defeated Saturday a former Republican national committeewoman to earn a two-year term as the state GOP’s chairman. The contest over who would serve in the party’s top administrative job offered a fresh illustration of GOP infighting despite calls by Brown and Helen Van Etten to seek unity if chosen to replace chairman Mike Kuckelman, an attorney who served four years as chairman. In advance of the party meeting, Kuckelman accused Brown of being insufficiently conservative on abortion and gun rights. During his nomination speech, Brown fired back by declaring himself “pro-life” and “pro-2A.” Van Etten’s base in the 2nd and 4th congressional districts was pitted against dominance of Brown in the 3rd District in the Kansas City area. In a packed convention hall, it took a minimum of 90 votes from the 179 credentialed delegates to prevail. Hand counting of ballots settled the issue: Brown, 90; Van Etten, 88. One ballot was declared “spoiled,” because someone apparently voted for both nominees. Brown, an Overland Park construction contractor, lost a reelection campaign for Johnson County Commission in 2020 and fell short in the Republican primary for Kansas secretary of state in 2022. He rebounded by surviving one of the closest races for party chairman in state history. “As Republicans,” Brown said, “we are not the party of equity and entitlement. We are the party of excellence and hard work.” He urged GOP delegates to get behind his candidacy and work to overhaul the organization to make Republicans more competitive, especially in the 3rd District. His quest is to end the career of Democratic U.S. Rep. Sharice Davis, who is serving her third term representing the Kansas City area. He also wants to flip the governor’s office in 2026 after back-to-back victories by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly over Republicans Kris Kobach and Derek Schmidt. “We simply cannot continue to keep doing the same things over and over and believe that somehow it’s going to turn out differently,” Brown said. “We’re going to get the governor’s seat back. We’re going to get CD3 back. We’re going to get control of this mess.” Lynn Rogers, a former Democratic lieutenant governor and state treasurer, said election of Brown meant the Kansas GOP “made their bed and must lie down in the conspiracy-laden nightmare of their own making.” Brown has called for RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel to resign. In public appearances, Brown said there shouldn’t be room in the state’s Republican Party for RINOSs or what he described as “milquetoast, Republican-in-name-only, lousy Republicans.” He also has a record of promoting election conspiracy theories alleging President Donald Trump had reelection stolen from him in 2020 because of fraudulent activity. After Brown took his position on the stage, GOP delegates debated but tabled a resolution calling for impeachment of President Joe Biden. The request centered on concern about Biden’s purported approval of social media companies censoring commentary by conservatives. Brown, who was endorsed by former U.S. Rep. Tim Huelskamp, said the Kansas GOP would be a fundraising machine, become more unified and develop databases to help candidates win. He would expand the state party’s role in elections by reaching down to local school board races and city council campaigns. It was essential to expand the Republican supermajorities in the Kansas House and Kansas Senate, he said. Brown was nominated for chairman by Calvin Hayden, the Johnson County sheriff. Hayden complained that he’d never received financial support from the state party in his campaigns for sheriff. “That can’t happen,” Hayden said. “We need to help our people at the grassroots level. We need to fight. We need to make sure that we get people with conservative values.” Helen Van Etten, a former national committeewoman for the Kansas Republican Party from Topeka, lost on a vote of 90-88 her campaign to be appointed chairwoman of the state GOP. She lost to former Johnson County Commission member Mike Brown. (Tim Carpenter/Kansas Reflector) Second place Van Etten, who has never held elective political office and immigrated to the United States from Taiwan, was the state party’s national Republican committeewoman from 2008 to 2020. In a speech, Van Etten vowed to strengthen the Republican Party by emphasizing fundraising, county-level training and recruitment of activists. “As a long-time conservative activist, I have fought for decades in the trenches,” she said. “Our fight is for the values and the freedoms that we hold dear. I have a track record of standing for conservative principles and working with all Republicans to get things done. I will be nobody’s rubber stamp. Neither will I be a carbon copy of any previous or current leadership.” Van Etten is a retired audiologist with the Topeka school district and served from 2013 to 2021 on the Kansas Board of Regents as an appointee of Gov. Sam Brownback. Michael Austin, a Trump administration appointee as adviser to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, nominated Van Etten for the post. He said he appreciated Brown’s zeal and passion for conservatism, but indicated that wasn’t enough in these times. “We need experience,” he said. “We need connections. We are the calvary. We are the boots on the ground. I trust doctor Helen Van Etten to give us the tools and the resources we need to win the fight and make this state great again.” An exit speech Before the agenda turned to voting on two candidates for chairman, Kuckelman encouraged the audience to be respectful of anyone expressing contrasting views. He said he’d not thrown anyone out of state party meeting before, but appeared to leave open that possibility. “I know there’s a lot of emotion. We’ll run this meeting with decorum and respect,” Kuckelman said. “We are all Republicans. All of us in this room are unified on the Republican principles on the platform.” Kuckelman sought after the November election to punish GOP officials who supported independent gubernatorial candidate Dennis Pyle. He said the next chairman had to build ties within the party, advance platform principles and build support for GOP nominees. He said the Kansas GOP had to remain dedicated to expanding voter registration among Republicans and strive to get more conservatives to vote, he said. Another task was to maintain the Republican two-thirds supermajorities in the Kansas House and Kansas Senate, keep both U.S. Senate seats in GOP hands, win the 3rd District congressional seat and reclaim the governor’s office. In addition, he said the state party had to reach out to minority voters and to the 500,000 unaffiliated registered voters in Kansas. He said Democrats in Kansas led independent voters astray in the latest election by distorted information on the issues. “They incited the left with the wrong messages,” Kuckelman said.
- [Research Firm Hired By Trump To Prove 2020 Election Fraud Came Up Empty: Report](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/research-firm-hired-by-trump-to-prove-2020-election-fraud-came-up-empty-report/) - A research firm investigated Donald Trump’s assertion that the presidential election was fraudulent, but its findings were suppressed because they found nothing to support his claims, The Washington Post reported citing four sources familiar with the matter.The Berkeley Research Group, hired by the former president’s 2020 campaign, gathered a team of around a dozen people to look into alleged voter fraud and irregularities in six states, according to the Post.The team reportedly briefed Trump, his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and others on a conference call held in the last days of 2020 — before Trump held a rally urging his supporters to march on the Capitol preceding the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection. The call reportedly became contentious.But the researchers had looked at “everything,” one source told the Post.“Literally anything you could think of. Voter turnout anomalies, date of birth anomalies, whether dead people voted. If there was anything under the sun that could be thought of, they looked at it,” the source said.As recently as Saturday morning, Trump has claimed that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” or “stolen” from him, pushing various conspiracy theories about voting machines and election workers.He has made these claims even as dozens of lawsuits filed by Trump’s campaign or his allies were tossed out for lack of evidence in the weeks after President Joe Biden’s victory.Trump continued to make his claims throughout the House select committee’s monthslong investigation, which revealed that people close to Trump repeatedly tried to tell him there was no evidence of fraud.And apparently, he made them despite knowing that a team of professional researchers he paid to try and find evidence of fraud came up empty-handed.The Post’s source added: “Just like any election, there are always errors, omissions and irregularities.” But the person stressed that they were not nearly enough to sway the election.“It was nowhere close enough to what they wanted to prove,” the source said, “and it actually went in both directions.”For more, head to The Washington Post.Related...
- [Research Firm Hired By Trump To Prove 2020 Election Fraud Came Up Empty: Report - HuffPost](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/research-firm-hired-by-trump-to-prove-2020-election-fraud-came-up-empty-report-huffpost/) - A research firm investigated Donald Trump’s assertion that the presidential election was fraudulent, but its findings were suppressed because they found nothing to support his claims, The Washington Post reported citing four sources familiar with the matter. The Berkeley Research Group, hired by the former president’s 2020 campaign, gathered a team of around a dozen people to look into alleged voter fraud and irregularities in six states, according to the Post.Advertisement The team reportedly briefed Trump, his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and others on a conference call held in the last days of 2020 — before Trump held a rally urging his supporters to march on the Capitol preceding the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection. The call reportedly became contentious. But the researchers had looked at “everything,” one source told the Post. “Literally anything you could think of. Voter turnout anomalies, date of birth anomalies, whether dead people voted. If there was anything under the sun that could be thought of, they looked at it,” the source said. As recently as Saturday morning, Trump has claimed that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” or “stolen” from him, pushing various conspiracy theories about voting machines and election workers. He has made these claims even as dozens of lawsuits filed by Trump’s campaign or his allies were tossed out for lack of evidence in the weeks after President Joe Biden’s victory. Advertisement Trump continued to make his claims throughout the House select committee’s monthslong investigation, which revealed that people close to Trump repeatedly tried to tell him there was no evidence of fraud. And apparently, he made them despite knowing that a team of professional researchers he paid to try and find evidence of fraud came up empty-handed. The Post’s source added: “Just like any election, there are always errors, omissions and irregularities.” But the person stressed that they were not nearly enough to sway the election.“It was nowhere close enough to what they wanted to prove,” the source said, “and it actually went in both directions.”For more, head to The Washington Post.RelatedDonald Trump2020 electionBiden's Pre-Super Bowl Interview With Fox Is Off AgainCorporations Gave Election Deniers A Last-Minute Surge Of Campaign CashWhite House Asked Twitter To Delete Chrissy Teigen Post Calling Trump ‘P***y Ass B***h’Ron DeSantis Wanted Guns Banned At Election Party But Didn't Want To Be Blamed: Report Go To Homepage
- [The Pence subpoena could set up a showdown over executive privilege](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/the-pence-subpoena-could-set-up-a-showdown-over-executive-privilege/) - The subpoena of former Vice President Mike Pence by the Department of Justice could set up a showdown over executive privilege. Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly invoked the legal protection to block testimony of his allies and subpoenas related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He may do so again in response to Pence's subpoena. Pence's role in presiding over the electoral certification process made him a central figure in the Jan. 6 proceedings. In the days and hours before the mob attacked the Capitol, Trump subjected his vice president to intense pressure to overturn the 2020 election results. Pence was also present during several critical meetings with Trump and his allies ahead of Jan. 6. There are not many details known about the subpoena issued to Pence by Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed late last year by Attorney General Merrick Garland. Smith is investigating Trump's role in the Jan. 6 attack, as well as a probe into the former president's handling of classified documents. What is executive privilege? Executive privilege is a legal protection for the president of the United States that allows them to shield some of their private communications from Congress and courts. "At its core, it's the idea that some documents and some information — if it were disclosed — would damage, harm the public interest or harm the country in some way," explained Jonathan Shaub, a former Justice Department official who is now a professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law. In theory, the protection allows a president's advisers to give candid advice free from fear of public disclosure, making the president's deliberations more productive, legal experts explained. Executive privilege isn't explicitly stated in the Constitution. Instead, it implicitly stems from Article II, outlining the power of the executive branch, and the separation of powers. The idea dates to the Nixon administration, when a special prosecutor leading the investigation of the Watergate break-in subpoenaed President Richard Nixon for tapes and transcripts of conversations related to the burglary. Nixon refused, and the case went to the Supreme Court. Ultimately, Nixon lost and was forced to hand over the tapes (after which he resigned). What are the limits of executive privilege? Although the court ruled against Nixon, it ultimately found that there is confidentiality interest in communications between a president and their senior-most advisers. But, the court specified, there's one very clear limit — executive privilege does not apply when the communications are relevant to a criminal investigation. For example, in Nixon's case, the Supreme Court found a compelling interest in the criminal case against the Watergate burglars, since there was a "demonstrated, specific need for evidence in a pending criminal trial." Otherwise, the limits of the doctrine are very much a live debate, legal experts said. "Executive privilege, when it exists, is not absolute. It's always weighed by courts against the interests served by disclosing the information to the authorities who are seeking it," Jessica Roth, a professor of law at Yeshiva University, told NPR last year. It's also not clear the extent to which a former president can claim it. After Nixon left office, Congress tried to compel him to turn over his presidential records, which he refused to do, citing executive privilege. That case also went to the Supreme Court, which again ruled against him — but left some ambiguity over whether former presidents could assert the privilege in the future. Practically speaking, most disputes over executive privilege have been resolved through compromise between those asking for the documents or testimony, and those providing, legal experts said. How has it come up in regards to Jan. 6? Trump has argued many times before that his communications related to Jan. 6 are privileged. Those claims have not always been successful. The issue arose repeatedly during the House committee's investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The committee subpoenaed numerous Trump aides and advisers, several of whom refused to testify on the basis of executive privilege. (The DOJ brought criminal charges for two of those advisers: One, Steve Bannon, was found guilty of contempt of Congress after his refusal to testify. The contempt case against another, Peter Navarro, is expected sometime this year.) Trump also tried to sue the heads of the House select committee and the National Archives to block the release of Jan. 6-related documents, but a court ruled against him last year. The former president has also tried to use executive privilege to block testimony to a federal grand jury, but those efforts have been less successful, the New York Times has reported. A subpoena issued by the Department of Justice is harder to ignore, said Victoria Nourse, a former DOJ official who also served as chief counsel to the vice president of the United States under then-Vice President Joe Biden. Congressional subpoenas can lack teeth because the process to get a judge to enforce them can be slow, she explained. What might happen next? As the former vice president, Pence himself cannot assert executive privilege. That power lies with the executive — in other words, Trump. That's noteworthy, as the two men have not had the smoothest of relationships when it comes to the events of Jan. 6. "Usually a vice president will ask the president to give him executive privilege and to announce that," said Nourse, who is now a professor at Georgetown Law. "In this case, that would be a question in and of itself: whether Trump will do that for Pence." If Trump does decide to assert executive privilege, then a battle in court might follow. "There is no executive privilege for a crime. So the question is how far they want to take this and if they want a judge to adjudicate it," she said. Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
- [Trump campaign paid researchers to prove 2020 fraud but kept findings secret - WVNews](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/trump-campaign-paid-researchers-to-prove-2020-fraud-but-kept-findings-secret-wvnews/) - WASHINGTON - Former president Trump's 2020 campaign commissioned an outside research firm in a bid to prove electoral fraud claims but never released the findings because the firm disputed many of his theories and could not offer any proof that he was the rightful winner of the election, according to four people familiar with the matter.The campaign paid researchers from Berkeley Research Group, the people said, to study 2020 election results in six states, looking for fraud and irregularities to highlight in public and in the courts. Among the areas examined were voter machine malfunctions, instances of dead people voting and any evidence that could help Trump show he won, the people said. None of the findings were presented to the public or in court.
- [Pennsylvania Court Won't Force Release of Voter Info for GOP-Led 2020 Election Probe](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/pennsylvania-court-wont-force-release-of-voter-info-for-gop-led-2020-election-probe/) - An appeals court in Pennsylvania has refused to force the Department of State to release personal voter information to Senate Republicans for their ongoing investigation into the 2020 election, but it left the door open for the probe to continue by saying they have the power to enforce the subpoena themselves. In its long-running probe into the 2020 election, the GOP-led Pennsylvania Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee issued a subpoena in September 2021 (pdf) requesting that the Department of State release guidelines, communications, and a variety of voter information. Pennsylvania Democrat senators sued to block enforcement of the subpoena, prompting a countersuit by Republicans demanding that the court force compliance with the subpoena. The court ruled on Feb. 9 not to enforce the subpoena and compel the Department of State to provide the committee with the personal information of voters. In an opinion (pdf), President Judge Emerita Mary Hannah Leavitt denied the Republican-led committee’s petition to force compliance with their subpoena. At the same time, Leavitt wrote that the subpoena can be enforced by the legislature itself and that its constitutional power to do so doesn’t need any “augmentation in the form of a common law writ of mandamus.” “The Senate Committee has express constitutional authority to enforce its subpoena,” she wrote. “It may enforce its subpoena in accordance with the contempt statutes.” A writ of mandamus is a court order compelling the performance of a public duty. It is unclear what impact the court’s decision will have on the Republican-led committee’s election review, which has been largely dormant for the past year as the dispute over the subpoena has gone through the court process. The Election Probe Inspired by former President Donald Trump’s claims of widespread election fraud and calls for a “forensic audit,” Pennsylvania Senate Republicans launched their probe in 2021. “For nearly a year, our Commonwealth has been tied in knots by doubts surrounding recent elections,” Pennsylvania state Sen. Jake Corman said in an Aug. 23, 2021, statement calling for an investigation. “No matter whether you supported Donald Trump or Joe Biden in the 2020 election, everyone should have confidence in the results of that election. That is the only way our system works. Unfortunately, that is not the case in Pennsylvania,” Corman added. Corman said the goal of the probe wasn’t to do a rerun of the election or carry out a recount, but to find flaws in the system “that could be exploited by bad actors” and recommend systemic fixes. “Our goal should be to proceed carefully, thoughtfully and transparently,” Corman continued. “We need to follow the evidence wherever it leads and get real results to make our election system stronger and more secure. That is the only way we can restore faith in our voting process and give all Pennsylvanians the peace of mind to know that future elections will be both fair and honest.” On Sept. 15, 2021, the committee issued a subpoena to the Pennsylvania Department of State for various forms of information, including voter data like driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. The department released some information but refused to disclose some voter data it deemed sensitive, arguing that the state constitution prohibits its release, while the state’s attorney general said the subpoena would compromise the privacy rights of Pennsylvanians. State Sen. Cris Dush, a Republican who chairs the committee, responded to these claims in a statement on Oct. 1, 2021, that labeled the concerns as unfounded. “The politicians who are telling these tall tales know there is a better chance of a Pennsylvanian being struck by a meteor than having their personal information compromised by our election investigation,” Dush wrote. “Unfortunately, many members of the media have bought into their false narrative and created doubts in the minds of good, honest citizens.” Democrat state senators sued to block the subpoena, prompting the legal battle whose latest major development was the Feb. 8, 2023, ruling refusing to force the Department of State to comply with the subpoena. According to Pennsylvania’s certified election results, Biden beat Trump by over 80,000 votes.
- [Legislation will give Florida's statewide prosecutor more power to investigate voter fraud](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/legislation-will-give-floridas-statewide-prosecutor-more-power-to-investigate-voter-fraud/) - Refueling a debate about alleged voter fraud, Florida lawmakers Friday gave final approval to a bill that will help the statewide prosecutor investigate potential election crimes. The Republican-controlled House voted 77-33 along party lines to pass the measure (SB 4-B), which was approved Wednesday by the Senate. The bill now goes to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is expected to sign it. The bill seeks to ensure that the statewide prosecutor, who is part of the attorney general’s office, has wide jurisdiction in investigating allegations of election wrongdoing. But it led to a renewed debate about measures that Democrats contend are aimed at suppressing voting — and Republicans contend are designed to prevent fraud. “We have scared thousands of people around the state from exercising their God-given right to have a voice in their government,” Rep. Dianne Hart, D-Tampa, said. “This is a fear tactic, and it’s voter suppression, plain and simple.” But House sponsor Juan Alfonso Fernandez-Barquin, R-Miami-Dade County, said the bill “further protects the integrity of our most sacred right, the right to vote.” “This ensures fraud will be investigated and prosecuted to the full extent of the law, the way it should,” Fernandez-Barquin said. The bill, which was included in a special legislative session that ended Friday, came after a series of events that began in August with the high-profile arrests of 20 people on allegations that they cast ballots while ineligible to vote because of previous felony convictions. DeSantis touted the arrests as part of an effort to crack down on fraud, an issue that has energized Republicans across the country since former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden. The statewide prosecutor charged the defendants, but judges dismissed three of the cases because they said the statewide prosecutor did not have jurisdiction. The judges ruled that the alleged crimes each occurred in only one judicial circuit, rather than multiple judicial circuits as required by a law about the statewide prosecutor’s jurisdiction. The bill that passed Friday would allow the statewide prosecutor to investigate election cases that have “affected” two or more judicial circuits, an easier requirement to meet than the current standard. For example, Senate sponsor Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers, said voters casting ballots in statewide races would affect two or more judicial circuits, allowing jurisdiction by the statewide prosecutor. Also, Fernandez-Barquin said transmitting voter applications to the state Division of Elections in Tallahassee from other parts of Florida would affect more than one judicial circuit. During a debate Thursday, Rep. Angie Nixon, D-Jacksonville, questioned why local state attorneys should not be allowed to decide whether to prosecute alleged voting crimes. “Why are we overreaching and removing those powers from them and putting it in this statewide unelected position?” Nixon asked. “Representative, I would say that this is a matter of checks and balances and additional supervision when it comes to who can prosecute these crimes and to ensure that crimes are in fact prosecuted in case that there is a state attorney who decides not to prosecute,” Fernandez-Barquin replied. Copyright 2023 WUSF 89.7. To see more, visit WUSF 89.7.
- [Panel scolds Wisconsin justice for remarks in Trump case - CBS News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/panel-scolds-wisconsin-justice-for-remarks-in-trump-case-cbs-news/) - MADISON, Wis. — A judicial oversight commission has dismissed a complaint against a liberal-leaning Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who accused an attorney for former President Donald Trump of making racist contentions and trying to protect his "king" in a case challenging the 2020 election results in the battleground state.Judicial complaints are confidential under Wisconsin law but Justice Jill Karofsky released documents to The Associated Press on Saturday that show a retired attorney in Maryland filed one against her with the Wisconsin Judicial Commission two years ago. The commission decided in November 2022 not to discipline her but warned her to remain neutral and avoid making sarcastic remarks from the bench.Karofsky's attorney remained defiant, telling the commission in a letter Tuesday that Karofsky was trying to save the U.S. government and accusing the panel of allowing itself to become a political weapon."The Judicial Code (sic) requires judges to act with impartiality towards the parties, but it does not require a judge to turn a blind-eye to dangerous, bad-faith conduct by a lawyer or litigant," Karofsky said in an email to the AP, quoting a passage from one of her attorney's responses to the commission. "It is beyond reason to read the Code to require judges to be mouse-like quiet when parties are arguing in favor of a slow-motion coup."Trump filed suit in Wisconsin in December 2020 after a recount confirmed Democrat Joe Biden had won the state by about 21,000 votes. The filing was one of scores of lawsuits Trump filed across multiple states in an unsuccessful attempt to overturn the election results and remain in office. The Wisconsin lawsuit asked the state Supreme Court to toss out about 171,000 absentee ballots cast in Dane and Milwaukee counties. The conservative-leaning court ultimately rejected the lawsuit by a 4-3 vote, with swing Justice Brian Hagedorn casting the deciding vote to uphold Biden's victory in the battleground state.Maryland attorney Fletcher Thompson filed a complaint against Karofsky in January 2021 accusing her of being hostile toward Trump attorney Jim Troupis. He noted that during oral arguments Karofsky told Troupis that the lawsuit "smacks of racism" because it sought to toss out absentee ballots in Wisconsin's two most diverse counties.Thompson added that Karofsky later told Troupis that he wanted the court to overturn the election results "so that your king can stay in power" and said that suggesting the election was marred by fraud was "nothing short of shameful."Thompson accused Karofsky of being discourteous and inappropriately launching personal attacks against Troupis. He said her remarks revealed a political and racial bias. He noted that Trump endorsed Karofsky's opponent, Daniel Kelly, during their race in spring 2020. Karofsky attorney Stacie Rosenzweig admonished the judicial commission in her Feb. 7 letter for letting partisan actors "hijack the (judicial) disciplinary system, in an attempt to silence a justice who rightfully tried to stop frivolous and dangerous arguments that undermined our democracy.""We believe the Commission risks setting a dangerous precedent," Rosenzweig wrote. "By allowing the Commission to be weaponized in this fashion, the Commission became a pawn of those determined to undermine an independent judiciary."
- [Panel scolds Wisconsin justice for remarks in Trump case - KRMG](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/panel-scolds-wisconsin-justice-for-remarks-in-trump-case-krmg/) - MADISON, Wis. — (AP) — A judicial oversight commission has dismissed a complaint against a liberal-leaning Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who accused an attorney for former President Donald Trump of making racist contentions and trying to protect his "king" in a case challenging the 2020 election results in the battleground state.Judicial complaints are confidential under Wisconsin law but Justice Jill Karofsky released documents to The Associated Press on Saturday that show a retired attorney in Maryland filed one against her with the Wisconsin Judicial Commission two years ago. The commission decided in November 2022 not to discipline her but warned her to remain neutral and avoid making sarcastic remarks from the bench.Karofsky's attorney remained defiant, telling the commission in a letter Tuesday that Karofsky was trying to save the U.S. government and accusing the panel of allowing itself to become a political weapon.“The Judicial Code (sic) requires judges to act with impartiality towards the parties, but it does not require a judge to turn a blind-eye to dangerous, bad-faith conduct by a lawyer or litigant,” Karofsky said in an email to the AP, quoting a passage from one of her attorney's responses to the commission. “It is beyond reason to read the Code to require judges to be mouse-like quiet when parties are arguing in favor of a slow-motion coup.”Trump filed suit in Wisconsin in December 2020 after a recount confirmed Democrat Joe Biden had won the state by about 21,000 votes. The filing was one of scores of lawsuits Trump filed across multiple states in an unsuccessful attempt to overturn the election results and remain in office.The Wisconsin lawsuit asked the state Supreme Court to toss out about 171,000 absentee ballots cast in Dane and Milwaukee counties. The conservative-leaning court ultimately rejected the lawsuit by a 4-3 vote, with swing Justice Brian Hagedorn casting the deciding vote to uphold Biden's victory in the battleground state.Maryland attorney Fletcher Thompson filed a complaint against Karofsky in January 2021 accusing her of being hostile toward Trump attorney Jim Troupis. He noted that during oral arguments Karofsky told Troupis that the lawsuit “smacks of racism” because it sought to toss out absentee ballots in Wisconsin's two most diverse counties.Thompson added that Karofsky later told Troupis that he wanted the court to overturn the election results "so that your king can stay in power" and said that suggesting the election was marred by fraud was "nothing short of shameful."Thompson accused Karofsky of being discourteous and inappropriately launching personal attacks against Troupis. He said her remarks revealed a political and racial bias. He noted that Trump endorsed Karofsky's opponent, Daniel Kelly, during their race in spring 2020.Karofsky attorney Stacie Rosenzweig admonished the judicial commission in her Feb. 7 letter for letting partisan actors “hijack the (judicial) disciplinary system, in an attempt to silence a justice who rightfully tried to stop frivolous and dangerous arguments that undermined our democracy.”“We believe the Commission risks setting a dangerous precedent,” Rosenzweig wrote. “By allowing the Commission to be weaponized in this fashion, the Commission became a pawn of those determined to undermine an independent judiciary.”Thompson said in a telephone interview on Saturday that he wasn't aware the commission had decided not to discipline Karfosky. He said he wished the commission had taken action against her, but he wasn't disappointed with the outcome since he didn't expect the commission would even investigate when he filed his complaint.But he said he was stunned that Rosenzweig accused the panel of being a political pawn. He said he's just a retired attorney who watched the oral arguments on YouTube and he has no ties to Trump or Trump's campaign.Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
- [Trump shares video saying suppression of Hunter Biden cost him 2020 election](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/trump-shares-video-saying-suppression-of-hunter-biden-cost-him-2020-election/) - Former President Trump shared a video insisting that he would have won the 2020 election had The Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden not been suppressed by social media and falsely discredited by the mainstream press. Trump shared the footage of New York GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik — a known favorite — on his Truth Social media platform Saturday morning. “According to polling, of the people who were made aware of the Hunter Biden laptop story, 53% would have changed their vote…this is the definition of election meddling…it’s collusion, it’s corruption, and it’s unconstitutional,” Stefanik said in the clip. The House GOP Conference chairwoman made the remarks during a Thursday hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. The video depicted New York GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik — a known favorite — on Trump’s Truth Social media platform Saturday morning. According to Stefanic, 53% of the people who were made aware of the Hunter Biden laptop story would have changed their vote. “So, the ELECTION WAS RIGGED!,’ Trump added in his post sharing the footage.
- [Woman jailed for collecting 4 ballots in Arizona sparks fear of voting in majority Latino city](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/woman-jailed-for-collecting-4-ballots-in-arizona-sparks-fear-of-voting-in-majority-latino-city/) - This story was produced in partnership with Type Investigations, with support from the Fund for Constitutional Government. SAN LUIS, Arizona – The small city of San Luis is tucked away in the far corner of Arizona, closer to Mexico than to any major U.S. city. The community is nearly 95% Latino and tight-knit — the type of place where you know your neighbors and their parents and cousins. It’s not uncommon here for residents to frequently cross the border into Mexico to go shopping or see a dentist, as the vast majority of residents are U.S. citizens who can go back and forth freely. And they do not take their right to vote in the U.S. for granted. Election Days in San Luis were typically joyous occasions, with music and celebrations in the streets. Luis Marquez, the president of the local school district and a community leader in San Luis, said they felt “like a state fair.” “Everybody would get involved, people would have their carne asada and music and it was just something very active,” he said. But election celebrations have stopped here in recent years. A 2016 law pushed by state Republicans made it a felony punishable by prison time to collect a voter’s ballot unless the collector is their relative, household member, or caregiver. Since then, the excitement and joy surrounding voting have been replaced with fear. “Now, it’s been really quiet,” Marquez said. “There’s no action.” In some states, there’s no prohibition on collecting ballots from other community members, a common occurrence in places where residents have limited access to polls. But Arizona is one of more than 30 states, including Iowa, that restrict or ban the practice. The law was signed in 2016 and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2021 after it was challenged in the lower courts. Since then, the Arizona attorney general’s office has prosecuted four community members, including the city’s former mayor, Guillermina Fuentes, who was jailed for 30 days, for alleged unlawful ballot collection. Allies of former President Donald Trump say these arrests are indicative of the type of voter fraud that cost him the 2020 election. But democracy advocates say prosecuting these cases suppresses the right to vote. “This is what opponents of the ballot collection law always feared – the arbitrary enforcement of the law against people of color, women of color, without any kind of evidence of any type of fraud or intent to do wrongdoing,” said Darrell Hill, policy director for the ACLU of Arizona. “These are people who are just helping their neighbors, helping their community, and are now facing serious charges.” On Oct. 13, Fuentes, a 66-year-old grandmother, former farmworker, school board member, and local Democratic leader, was sentenced to one month in jail and two years of probation for collecting four completed mail ballots that belonged to community members during the August 2020 primary. Fuentes and her neighbor, Alma Juarez, were the first people prosecuted under the state’s ballot collection law. Her prosecution by the office of former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who was running for U.S. Senate throughout much of the legal proceeding, became fodder for conspiracy theorists and the right-wing elections group True The Vote, which publicized the case nationally. In an interview after she was released from jail, Fuentes described the initial shock of her indictment. At the time of her offense, Brnovich’s office had petitioned the Supreme Court to hear a case focused on the law, and there were legal questions about whether it was constitutional. “When I was about to go to jail, I was so sad and frustrated, and I couldn’t believe that I was going, because I see it like a witch hunt,” she said. Brnovich, who is no longer in office, could not be reached for comment and Todd Lawson, the prosecutor with the attorney general’s office who worked on the case, did not respond to a request for comment. On Oct. 19, Brnovich announced two more indictments against women in the Democratic-leaning town within a county that voted for Trump by 6 points in 2020. The attorney general’s office alleges that the women collected eight ballots between them. Fuentes’ daughter, Lizette Esparza, said she wakes up each morning in fear of how conspiracy theorists will talk about her family on social media. “We’re living in a nightmare right now,” said Esparza, who serves as the superintendent of the local elementary school district. She also worries about how her mom’s ordeal will affect the community. “They’re not going to want to go to vote, especially now because now they’re scared.” Casting ballots in San Luis Like a town square, the San Luis post office is a major hub of this border community. During business hours, cars steadily stream through the parking lot as residents, on their way to or from work or school pick-up, run inside to check their P.O. boxes. San Luis doesn’t have home mail delivery. The city spans roughly 34 square miles, and it’s not uncommon for people to pick up mail for friends and neighbors, who may share P.O. boxes. The community is poor, with an average per capita income of just over $15,000. Many residents don’t have their own vehicles and there’s very limited public transportation. Casting a ballot in-person can be difficult for people in San Luis. Like Fuentes, who dropped out of high school after 10th grade to join her parents and siblings planting and harvesting lettuce crops in Arizona and California, many San Luis residents are farmworkers who speak little English and spend long hours in the fields. “They leave at 5 in the morning and come back at 7 or 8 at night,” Esparza explained. “When in the day are they going to have to go and vote?” Arizona has permitted no-excuse voting by mail for more than 30 years. And before the ballot collection law was passed, it was not uncommon for residents of San Luis to rely on friends, neighbors, or volunteers to help bring their ballots to the post office or to help return them to a voting center or dropbox. San Luis residents interviewed explained that they consider many in the community who are not blood relatives, like neighbors and close friends, their family. Limiting ballot collection to just family members, household members, and caregivers doesn’t make sense, they said. “People who enacted this law are people who don’t want people in San Luis and Native communities to vote,” said Anne Chapman, Fuentes’ attorney. “That’s what this is about.” GOP restrictions on voting The Republican Party’s effort to restrict certain groups of people from voting has taken many forms over the last decade since the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. One of them is placing limits on ballot collection, or as Republican lawmakers pejoratively call it, “ballot harvesting.” Republican officials justify the laws by claiming that an individual or organization could pressure a voter to vote in a certain way if they return a ballot on their behalf. “The intent behind the bill is to make sure that we have integrity in our electoral process, that there is a chain of custody when it comes to mail-in ballots,” said then-state Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, who sponsored Arizona’s law when she was a state representative. Ballot collection, she said, “is ripe for a lot of things to go wrong.” Arizona’s law, passed by the legislature in 2016, faced a lengthy legal challenge. Democratic groups sued, and in 2018, a federal district court sided with Arizona after a trial. But Democrats appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which struck the law down, finding that it violates the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against minority voters. Republican lawmakers, the court found, passed it with the intention of suppressing the votes of Native American, Hispanic and Black voters, who often face issues with mail service and access to transportation and who are more likely to rely on the assistance of third parties to return their ballots. Brnovich appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the law in a 6-3 ruling in July 2021 that had major implications for voting rights across the country. In a dissent, Justice Elena Kagan lamented how the majority opinion further weakens the Voting Rights Act. “What is tragic here is that the Court has (yet again) rewritten — in order to weaken — a statute that stands as a monument to America’s greatness, and protects against its basest impulses,” she wrote. “What is tragic is that the Court has damaged a statute designed to bring about ‘the end of discrimination in voting.’” On Aug. 4, 2020, the day of Arizona’s primary election, the law was still relatively new and was still being litigated in the courts. Fuentes was stationed outside a local cultural center to support city council candidates and hand out campaign literature. At one point during the day, Fuentes’ neighbor, Juarez, approached her and handed her a ballot. A campaign sign in San Luis, Arizona, for local Republican Gary Snyder. (Photo by Kira Lerner/States Newsroom) What Fuentes didn’t realize was that Gary Snyder, a local Republican, was recording cell phone video outside the polling place. In the 2020 primary, Snyder was running for city council as a write-in candidate and in 2022 he would run for state Senate. Both attempts were unsuccessful. He shared the footage with David Lara, another local Republican who had unsuccessfully run for office numerous times in San Luis. In an interview, Lara and Snyder said the footage showed the type of voter fraud that has swung elections in San Luis for decades. “If there would have been 10 Gary Snyders with cameras, we would have caught many people doing the same thing all throughout the day,” Lara said. “Out of 10 elections in San Luis, eight or nine have been won because of fraud,” he added. In the video recorded by Snyder, Fuentes appears to write something on the ballot and then hands Juarez a stack of ballots to bring into the polling place. The interaction was the type of voter assistance Fuentes had provided for countless other community members. Yuma County officials later verified that the voters signed their own ballot envelopes, and the ballots were counted. The Yuma County Sheriff’s Office and the state attorney general’s office eventually learned of the footage, and Brnovich’s Election Integrity Unit launched an investigation. People in San Luis reported that uniformed sheriff’s deputies knocked on their doors early in the morning to ask about their voting history, which alarmed many residents, according to a brief filed by Arizona voting rights groups in the Supreme Court case. Prosecutors charged Fuentes with conspiracy, forgery, and two counts of ballot abuse. In court documents, the state said Fuentes “appears to have been caught on video running a modern-day political machine seeking to influence the outcome of the municipal election in San Luis, collecting votes through illegal methods, and then using another person to bring the ballots the last few yards into the ballot box.” She pleaded guilty to one count of ballot abuse, a felony, and the state dropped the more serious charges. Lara and Snyder said that Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips, the leaders of True the Vote — a far-right group that has promoted conspiracy theories about voter fraud — reached out to them. The claims of ballot harvesting in San Luis became a crucial component of “2000 Mules,” a documentary directed by right-wing filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza in May 2022 which falsely claimed that voter fraud, specifically a significant amount of ballot harvesting by so-called “ballot mules,” swung the results of the 2020 election. “They’re the ones that actually helped us to make this problem national,” Lara said in an interview. But many in San Luis said they don’t trust Lara and Snyder, whom they described as disgruntled former candidates for office who are trying to discredit Democrats. Yuma County Supervisor Lynne Pancrazi said she is upset by the national reputation they’ve attached to San Luis. They “are giving such a bad name to this community,” she said. Fuentes jailed, held in isolation Across San Luis in mid-October, people who know Fuentes appeared shocked that their friend and former mayor was two dozen miles away in Yuma, Arizona, jailed and held in isolation for a month either because of her age and health or her position as a public figure. Chapman said the jail has given different explanations for why she was held in a cell alone. Yuma County Supervisor Lynne Pancrazi. (Photo by Kira Lerner/States Newsroom) Soaking in the October sun outside the San Luis library, Pancrazi, who served as a character witness at a hearing prior to Fuentes’ sentencing, described Fuentes’ quiet but caring demeanor. “She’s not a criminal,” Pancrazi said. “She’s someone who was helping her community just like she’s done her entire life.” Manuel Castro, a pastor at the Gethsemane Baptist Church in San Luis, agreed. “It’s too much punishment for people doing a little mistake,” he said. “In my opinion, it’s a little mistake.” The harsh sentence will also help conservatives “further the narrative that there is actual fraud in our elections, which there was no evidence of here,” said Andy Gaona, a Phoenix-based election lawyer who represented Fuentes in a special action petition with a state appeals court. San Luis residents also lamented the inequities in voter fraud prosecution. Brnovich’s office requested a year in prison for Fuentes, and while the judge only sentenced her to a month in jail plus two years’ probation, even that is inconsistent with the sentences others have received for similar crimes. Chapman commissioned a report from Rich Robertson, a legal investigator and former journalist, to put the state’s recommended sentence into perspective. Robertson’s report detailed 79 prosecutions for voting crimes in Arizona between 2005 and August 2022. In general, he found that, other than Fuentes, people without a prior criminal history or who are not already imprisoned do not receive jail or prison time for voting crimes. “Nobody goes to jail or prison for this stuff, unless they’ve already had some kind of priors,” Robertson said. He found two exceptions: One person who received a suspended sentence, and another was also convicted of influencing a witness and not just a voting crime. In one notable example included in Robertson’s report, Brnovich’s office requested a lighter sentence for Tracey Kay McKee, a 64-year-old Republican white woman in the more affluent city of Scottsdale, Arizona, who pleaded guilty to casting a ballot in her dead mother’s name. She was sentenced in April to two years of probation and no jail time. Juarez, who carried the voted ballots into the polling place, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and was sentenced to one year of probation and no jail time. Robertson said he believes there were “a lot of political aspects” to this prosecution and that Fuentes was given a harsher sentence because of the national attention and her prominence as a target in the far-right “Stop the Steal” campaign. “There was a lot of political pressure being exerted all over the place to make an example out of this particular defendant,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for the national spotlight being on Yuma County and Ms. Fuentes, I don’t think this outcome would have been the same.” Norm Eisen, a longtime election lawyer who advised the Obama White House on ethics and government reform, called Fuentes’ sentence an “outrageous miscarriage of justice.” “The relatively narrow conduct that formed the basis of the sentencing should not result in jail time and indeed in the vast majority of the United States, would not do so,” he said. He called Brnovich’s sentencing request “a tragic and a cruel posture,” especially in “a smaller community where this kind of a sentencing has a chilling effect, even on legal behavior.” At a hearing in October, Fuentes’ attorneys presented a number of character witnesses who spoke about her childhood, her work growing a business, and her position as a leader in the community. But at Fuentes’ sentencing hearing, Yuma County Superior Court Judge Roger Nelson said he does not believe she accepted responsibility for her crime and that her role as a community leader, although admirable, actually works against her. “Many of the things that were put forward as mitigating factors, I think they’re also aggravating factors,” he said. “You have been a leader in the San Luis community for a long time. People look up to you, people respect you, and they look to what you do.” Life after jail Fuentes was released from jail in November and is now back in the community on probation, coming to terms with having lost her voting rights for the next two years because of her felony conviction. She said she already knows of San Luis residents who have stopped voting after seeing what she went through. From left to right: Luis Marquez, Manuel Castro and Guillermina Fuentes after Fuentes was released from jail. (Photo by Luis Marquez) “I say don’t be afraid,” she said, explaining what she tells her friends and neighbors in San Luis. “And they say, because you weren’t afraid, you were in jail, Guilla.” Fuentes said that the San Luis community stood behind her throughout the legal process, showing up to support her and her family when she was at her lowest. The day she was released from jail, her family and friends gathered at her mom’s house. She walked in and saw the large crowd holding signs and two big pots of menudo, a traditional Mexican soup, that she had requested as her first meal back. It was just what she needed — to be around friends and a home cooked meal after spending a month in isolation. “I lost 10 pounds in jail and I gained them back the day I left,” she said. When Brnovich announced indictments of two more women — San Luis City Council Member Gloria Torres and Nadia Lizarraga-Mayorquin — in October for allegedly collecting other people’s ballots, Marquez said he feared that more people would face jail time. A representative for Kris Mayes, Arizona’s newly elected Democratic attorney general, said the office is still undecided on how it will handle their prosecutions, but Mayes has said she will transition the office’s Election Integrity Unit from prosecuting voter fraud to protecting voting rights. Democrats in the Arizona House introduced a bill this session to repeal the ballot collection ban, but it’s unlikely to move forward given the Republican majority. “It’s starting again for other people,” Castro said. “It never ends. It’s never finished. It’s so hard for the community, really. It’s so hard.”
- [Greene County Clerk Shane Schoeller is running for Missouri Secretary of State](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/greene-county-clerk-shane-schoeller-is-running-for-missouri-secretary-of-state/) - Shane Schoeller, the Republican clerk for Greene County, is running for Missouri Secretary of StateSchoeller formally announced his candidacy Friday evening at the Republican Party's annual Lincoln Days event, after his campaign filing with the ethics commission was updated Thursday to reflect the new campaign.It is Schoeller's second run for Secretary of State, which serves as the lead elections official for Missouri. He ran and won the Republican nomination for the office in 2012 but was defeated in the general election. Schoeller was elected county clerk in Greene County in 2014 and has served in the role since then."I want to make sure that every election you cast your vote and it's secure, accurate and fair," Schoeller said in his announcement speech. "And you know that when you cast that ballot, it has been accurately counted, and that's what I will be fighting for every step of the way in this campaign."The current Secretary of State is Jay Ashcroft, who is widely viewed as a likely contender to run for governor in 2024.In his opening speech and later remarks to reporters, Schoeller honed in on the security of elections and transparency between officials and the public. He pointed to his office pursuing a single case of voter fraud in 2015, and to his support of photo ID requirements and other recent changes to Missouri voting laws."I think there's a much greater focus on election integrity since I ran in 2012," Schoeller said to reporters. "Back in 2012 ... there wasn't a whole lot of talk except for voter ID. Now there's a lot more issues on the table that matter, and we want to make sure that we restore that trust that people have lost."More:Greene County Clerk asks judge to rule on release of data sought by 2020 election deniersHis early remarks indicated he planned to use his experience at the county clerk level to show voters his knowledge of the election process and desire to include citizens in that process; in previous interviews with the News-Leader during election season, he has encouraged those that express doubt about the legitimacy of recent elections to come volunteer at a polling place or speak to his office. Ashcroft has said that both the 2020 and 2022 elections were conducted securely and without major issues in Missouri.Prior to serving as county clerk, Schoeller was a member of the Missouri House, representing Springfield and northern Greene County. He served as Speaker Pro Tem and later briefly served as interim Speaker of the House in 2011 following the resignation of former Speaker Steve Tilley.After his defeat to Democrat Jason Kander in the 2012 race, Schoeller served as executive director for the Missouri Republican Party.He is a Branson native and graduate of Southwest Baptist University. His early roles in government include working for then-U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt, who also served as Greene County Clerk before being elected Secretary of State and later serving in Congress.Schoeller is the first candidate to officially announce for the office in the 2024 cycle, though it is likely to attract other candidates if Ashcroft announces a run for governor. The weekend's festivities in Springfield present a prime opportunity for candidates to begin their 2024 campaigns and seek support within the party.Galen Bacharier covers Missouri politics & government for the News-Leader. Contact him at gbacharier@news-leader.com or on Twitter @galenbacharier.
- [Panel dismisses complaint for Trump attorney against liberal-leaning Wisconsin ... - Kenosha News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/panel-dismisses-complaint-for-trump-attorney-against-liberal-leaning-wisconsin-kenosha-news/) - TODD RICHMOND Associated Press A judicial oversight commission has dismissed a complaint against a liberal-leaning Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who accused an attorney for former President Donald Trump of making racist contentions and trying to protect his "king" in a case challenging the 2020 election results in the battleground state.Judicial complaints are confidential under Wisconsin law but Justice Jill Karofsky released documents to The Associated Press on Saturday that show a retired attorney in Maryland filed one against her with the Wisconsin Judicial Commission two years ago. The commission decided in November 2022 not to discipline her but warned her to remain neutral and avoid making sarcastic remarks from the bench. People are also reading… The Jan. 6 committee is preparing to highlight the way violent far-right extremists answered Donald Trump's "siren call" to come to Washington for a big rally, as some now face rare sedition charges over the deadly U.S. Capitol attack and effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Karofsky's attorney remained defiant, telling the commission in a letter Tuesday that Karofsky was trying to save the U.S. government and accusing the panel of allowing itself to become a political weapon."The Judicial Code (sic) requires judges to act with impartiality towards the parties, but it does not require a judge to turn a blind-eye to dangerous, bad-faith conduct by a lawyer or litigant," Karofsky said in an email to the AP, quoting a passage from one of her attorney's responses to the commission. "It is beyond reason to read the Code to require judges to be mouse-like quiet when parties are arguing in favor of a slow-motion coup."Trump filed suit in Wisconsin in December 2020 after a recount confirmed Democrat Joe Biden had won the state by about 21,000 votes. The filing was one of scores of lawsuits Trump filed across multiple states in an unsuccessful attempt to overturn the election results and remain in office.The Wisconsin lawsuit asked the state Supreme Court to toss out about 171,000 absentee ballots cast in Dane and Milwaukee counties. The conservative-leaning court ultimately rejected the lawsuit by a 4-3 vote, with swing Justice Brian Hagedorn casting the deciding vote to uphold Biden's victory in the battleground state.Maryland attorney Fletcher Thompson filed a complaint against Karofsky in January 2021 accusing her of being hostile toward Trump attorney Jim Troupis. He noted that during oral arguments Karofsky told Troupis that the lawsuit "smacks of racism" because it sought to toss out absentee ballots in Wisconsin's two most diverse counties.Thompson added that Karofsky later told Troupis that he wanted the court to overturn the election results "so that your king can stay in power" and said that suggesting the election was marred by fraud was "nothing short of shameful."Thompson accused Karofsky of being discourteous and inappropriately launching personal attacks against Troupis. He said her remarks revealed a political and racial bias. He noted that Trump endorsed Karofsky's opponent, Daniel Kelly, during their race in spring 2020.Karofsky attorney Stacie Rosenzweig admonished the judicial commission in her Feb. 7 letter for letting partisan actors "hijack the (judicial) disciplinary system, in an attempt to silence a justice who rightfully tried to stop frivolous and dangerous arguments that undermined our democracy." FILE - Trump campaign attorney Jim Troupis speaks during a Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee hearing to discuss election security and the 2020 election process on Dec. 16, 2020, on Capitol Hill in Washington. A judicial oversight commission has dismissed a complaint against a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who accused Troupis of making racist contentions and trying to protect his “king” in a case challenging the 2020 election results, according to documents released to The Associated Press on Saturday, Feb. 11,2023. (Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool via AP, File) Jim Lo Scalzo "We believe the Commission risks setting a dangerous precedent," Rosenzweig wrote. "By allowing the Commission to be weaponized in this fashion, the Commission became a pawn of those determined to undermine an independent judiciary."Thompson said in a telephone interview on Saturday that he wasn't aware the commission had decided not to discipline Karfosky. He said he wished the commission had taken action against her, but he wasn't disappointed with the outcome since he didn't expect the commission would even investigate when he filed his complaint.But he said he was stunned that Rosenzweig accused the panel of being a political pawn. He said he's just a retired attorney who watched the oral arguments on YouTube and he has no ties to Trump or Trump's campaign. The 2020 election is over. Here’s what happened (and what didn’t) The 2020 election was “the most secure in American history,” according to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which coordinates the nation’s election infrastructure.While a handful of voters risked going to prison by attempting to vote twice or in the name of a dead relative, as happens in any election, no evidence of widespread fraud has ever been produced in Wisconsin or elsewhere.Yet, many continue to question some of the practices clerks relied on to encourage eligible voters to cast ballots and make sure their votes were counted amid the first election in more than 100 years held during a pandemic.The Wisconsin State Journal has covered every twist and turn of this debate in scores of stories. But here are a few that offered some broader context about what happened, and didn't happen, in the election of 2020. The state has multiple, overlapping safeguards aimed at preventing ineligible voters from casting ballots, tampering with the ballots or altering vote totals. Nothing in the emails suggests there were problems with the election that contributed in any meaningful way to Trump's 20,682-vote loss to Joe Biden. "Despite concerns with statewide elections procedures, this audit showed us that the election was largely safe and secure," Sen. Rob Cowles said Friday. The grants were provided to every Wisconsin municipality that asked for them, and in the amounts they asked for. "Application of the U.S. Department of Justice guidance among the clerks in Wisconsin is not uniform," the memo says. “To put it simply, we did not break the law,” the chair of the Elections Commission said. The memo states that state law gives the Audit Bureau complete access to all records during an audit investigation and federal law and guidance does not prohibit an election official from handing over election records. Drop boxes were used throughout Wisconsin, including in areas where Trump won the vast majority of counties. Thousands of ballot certifications examined from Madison are a window onto how elections officials handled a pandemic and a divided and unhelpful state government. "I don't think that you instill confidence in a process by kind of blindly assuming there's nothing to see here," WILL president and general counsel Rick Esenberg said. The Associated Press reviewed every potential case of voter fraud in six battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvan… The report is the latest to show that there was not widespread fraud in Wisconsin. The clear insinuation was that someone not qualified to conduct an election improperly influenced these vulnerable voters. But the Wisconsin State Journal could not confirm the data. The turnout at nursing homes in Brown, Kenosha, Milwaukee and Racine counties in 2020 was not much different from the turnout in 2016. #lee-rev-content { margin:0 -5px; } #lee-rev-content h3 { font-family: inherit!important; font-weight: 700!important; border-left: 8px solid var(--lee-blox-link-color); text-indent: 7px; font-size: 24px!important; line-height: 24px; } #lee-rev-content .rc-provider { font-family: inherit!important; } #lee-rev-content h4 { line-height: 24px!important; font-family: "serif-ds",Times,"Times New Roman",serif!important; margin-top: 10px!important; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #lee-rev-content h3 { font-size: 18px!important; line-height: 18px; } } #pu-email-form-crime-email-article { clear: both; background-color: #fff; color: #222; background-position: bottom; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding: 15px 0 20px; margin-bottom: 40px; border-top: 4px solid rgba(0,0,0,.8); border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(0,0,0,.2); display: none; } #pu-email-form-crime-email-article, #pu-email-form-crime-email-article p { font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; } #pu-email-form-crime-email-article h2 { font-size: 24px; margin: 15px 0 5px 0; font-family: "serif-ds", Times, "Times New Roman", serif; } #pu-email-form-crime-email-article .lead { margin-bottom: 5px; } #pu-email-form-crime-email-article .email-desc { font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 5px; opacity: 0.7; } #pu-email-form-crime-email-article form { padding: 10px 30px 5px 30px; } #pu-email-form-crime-email-article .disclaimer { opacity: 0.5; margin-bottom: 0; line-height: 100%; } #pu-email-form-crime-email-article .disclaimer a { color: #222; text-decoration: underline; } #pu-email-form-crime-email-article .email-hammer { border-bottom: 3px solid #222; opacity: .5; display: inline-block; padding: 0 10px 5px 10px; margin-bottom: -5px; font-size: 16px; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #pu-email-form-crime-email-article form { padding: 10px 0 5px 0; } } Sign up for our Crime & Courts newsletter Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email.
- [Election 2020 Wisconsin Judicial Complaint | Region | clintonherald.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/election-2020-wisconsin-judicial-complaint-region-clintonherald-com/) - FILE - Trump campaign attorney Jim Troupis speaks during a Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee hearing to discuss election security and the 2020 election process on Dec. 16, 2020, on Capitol Hill in Washington. A judicial oversight commission has dismissed a complaint against a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who accused Troupis of making racist contentions and trying to protect his “king” in a case challenging the 2020 election results, according to documents released to The Associated Press on Saturday, Feb. 11,2023.
- [Court won't make Pa. release voter info for 2020 audit | 90.5 WESA](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/court-wont-make-pa-release-voter-info-for-2020-audit-90-5-wesa/) - A Pennsylvania appellate court won’t force the Department of State to release private voter information to state Senate Republicans as part of their long-running attempt to investigate the 2020 election.But the court also left the door open for the GOP to continue seeking voters’ partial Social Security numbers and more.In a decision Thursday, Commonwealth Court ruled that the state Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee had other tools at its disposal to compel the department to comply with its subpoenas and thus did not need the court to do so.“The Senate Committee has express constitutional authority to enforce its subpoena,” the opinion read. “It may enforce its subpoena in accordance with the contempt statutes.” It’s uncertain where the decision leaves the state Senate GOP’s 2020 election review, which has languished for much of the past year while the subpoena dispute has moved through the courts.As the state Senate majority, Republicans still control the committee, though they have not made any apparent moves this session to continue the inquiry. The current chair, state Sen. Jarrett Coleman (R., Bucks), declined to comment and directed questions to the state Senate Republicans’ general counsel’s office, which did not immediately respond.In 2021, motivated by reaction to former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims of fraud, the committee began subpoenaing documentation such as communications with counties, audit reports, and also partial Social Security and driver’s license numbers for voters from the Department of State.While the department provided some information, it argued that other information the committee was seeking contained sensitive private information about voters, which the state’s constitution prohibited the department from releasing.This prompted the committee to sue the department, seeking to have the courts compel the department to release the records.The court declined to provide that type of “extraordinary remedy” the committee sought because the committee has authority under the state’s constitution to enforce its subpoena. The court specifically mentioned the state Senate’s power to hold individuals in contempt.“As I read it, it’s sort of saying, we’re not going to weigh in to enforce it, we’re not going to knock it down, you have your own constitutional authority,” said Adam Bonin, a Philadelphia-based attorney who regularly works on election law issues for Democratic candidates.Commonwealth Court also dismissed the Department of State’s December motion to render the case moot, since the court’s decision addresses the underlying arguments of the case. The Department of State has argued that the subpoenas had effectively expired at the end of the last legislative session.The Department of State did not respond to a request for comment. State Sen. Cris Dush (R., Jefferson), who was chair of the Intergovernmental Operations Committee when the case began, also did not respond to a request for comment. Clifford Levine, a Pittsburgh lawyer who represented state Senate Democrats in the case, said the caucus was pleased “that the privacy interests of 9 million voters will be preserved.” Levine said since the subpoenas were issued last legislative session — before the state Senate could move to hold anyone in contempt — the committee would need to issue new subpoenas in the current session.“The question is will the new Senate want to continue the Arizona-style audit that we saw in 2021,” he said. “We would be hopeful that this would be put to rest.”The subpoenas were issued as part of a Republican inquiry which began in July 2021 when state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R., Franklin), acting as chair of the committee at the time, took up Trump’s call for a “forensic audit” of the 2020 election and sent letters to three counties requesting election materials from them for auditing purposes.Earlier in the summer, Dush and Mastriano had visited Maricopa County, Arizona, to tour an election review that legislative Republicans were conducting there.Dush took over the investigation shortly after, and the committee’s focus turned to the Department of State. In September 2021, it issued a subpoena to the agency requesting the names, addresses, driver’s licenses, and partial Social Security numbers of all Pennsylvania voters, as well as all communications between state elections officials and elections officials in all 67 counties.The request for voters’ private information drew strong rebuke from state Senate Democrats, the Department of State, the attorney general’s office, and nonprofits. They collectively sued in Commonwealth Court to block it, arguing it violated the Pennsylvania Constitution’s provision on a citizen’s right to privacy, among other things.The inquiry mostly stalled as the case wound its way through the court over the next year, eventually resulting in oral arguments before a three-judge panel this past September.It’s unclear if state Senate Republicans will appeal the ruling to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court or issue new subpoenas. Matt Haverstick, an attorney who represented the Republicans on the committee in the case, also did not respond to a request for comment.90.5 WESA partners with Spotlight PA, a collaborative, reader-funded newsroom producing accountability journalism for all of Pennsylvania. More at spotlightpa.org.
- [Panel scolds Wisconsin justice for remarks in Trump case - NY1](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/panel-scolds-wisconsin-justice-for-remarks-in-trump-case-ny1/) - MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A judicial oversight commission has dismissed a complaint against a liberal-leaning Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who accused an attorney for former President Donald Trump of making racist contentions and trying to protect his “king” in a case challenging the 2020 election results in the battleground state.Judicial complaints are confidential under Wisconsin law but Justice Jill Karofsky released documents to The Associated Press on Saturday that show a retired attorney in Maryland filed one against her with the Wisconsin Judicial Commission two years ago. The commission in November 2022 did not discipline her but warned her to remain neutral and avoid making sarcastic remarks from the bench. Karofsky's attorney remained defiant, telling the commission in a letter Tuesday that Karofsky was trying to save the U.S. government and accusing the panel of allowing itself to become a political weapon. “The Judicial Code (sic) requires judges to act with impartiality towards the parties, but it does not require a judge to turn a blind-eye to dangerous, bad-faith conduct by a lawyer or litigant,” Karofsky said in an email to the AP, quoting a passage from one of her attorney's responses to the commission. “It is beyond reason to read the Code to require judges to be mouse-like quiet when parties are arguing in favor of a slow-motion coup.” Trump filed suit in Wisconsin in December 2020 after a recount confirmed Democrat Joe Biden had won the state by about 21,000 votes. The filing was one of scores of lawsuits Trump filed across multiple states in an unsuccessful attempt to overturn the election results and remain in office. The Wisconsin lawsuit asked the state Supreme Court to toss out about 171,000 absentee ballots cast in Dane and Milwaukee counties. The conservative-leaning court ultimately rejected the lawsuit by a 4-3 vote, with swing Justice Brian Hagedorn casting the deciding vote to uphold Biden's victory in the battleground state. Maryland attorney Fletcher Thompson filed a complaint against Karofsky in January 2021 accusing her of being hostile toward Trump attorney Jim Troupis. He noted that during oral arguments Karofsky told Troupis that the lawsuit “smacks of racism” because it sought to toss out absentee ballots in Wisconsin's two most diverse counties. Thompson added that Karofsky later told Troupis that he wanted the court to overturn the election results “so that your king can stay in power” and said that suggesting the election was marred by fraud was “nothing short of shameful." Thompson accused Karofsky of being discourteous and inappropriately launching personal attacks against Troupis. He said her remarks revealed a political and racial bias. He noted that Trump endorsed Karofsky's opponent, Daniel Kelly, during their race in spring 2020. Karofsky attorney Stacie Rosenzweig admonished the judicial commission in her Feb. 7 letter for letting partisan actors “hijack the (judicial) disciplinary system, in an attempt to silence a justice who rightfully tried to stop frivolous and dangerous arguments that undermined our democracy.” “We believe the Commission risks setting a dangerous precedent,” Rosenzweig wrote. “By allowing the Commission to be weaponized in this fashion, the Commission became a pawn of those determined to undermine an independent judiciary.”Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
- [Panel scolds Wisconsin justice for remarks in Trump case - WAVY.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/panel-scolds-wisconsin-justice-for-remarks-in-trump-case-wavy-com/) - Panel scolds Wisconsin justice for remarks in Trump case – WAVY.com Skip to content ✕ × Close Ad
- [The 2020 Election Case Still Reverberating in Wisconsin](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/the-2020-election-case-still-reverberating-in-wisconsin/) - Listen & Subscribe Choose your preferred player: For questions about subscriptions or your Slate Plus feed, check our FAQ. Please enable javascript to get your Slate Plus feeds. Get Your Slate Plus Podcast If you can't access your feeds, please contact customer support. Thanks! Check your phone for a link to finish setting up your feed. Please enter a 10-digit phone number. Listen on your phone:RECOMMENDED Enter your phone number and we'll text you a link to set up the podcast in your app: Text me the link! We'll only text you about setting up this podcast, no spam. Listen on your computer: Apple Podcasts will only work on MacOS operating systems since Catalina. We do not support Android apps on desktop at this time. Listen on your device:RECOMMENDED These links will only work if you're on the device you listen to podcasts on. We do not support Stitcher at this time. We are showing you options for a computer but if you're on a phone or tablet We are showing you options for a phone or a tablet but if you're on a computer, click here. If you still have questions about subscriptions or your Slate Plus Feed, check our FAQ. Loading... We're sorry, but something went wrong while fetching your podcast feeds. Please contact us at plus@slate.com for help. Episode Notes Wisconsin’s State Supreme Court heard one of the landmark cases of the 2020 presidential election. During oral arguments in Trump v Biden in December 2020, Justice Jill J Karofsky participated in proceedings via Zoom from her office inside the state capitol in Madison. Outside her office window, she could see armed protesters gathered in what she later viewed as a dry run for January 6th. In a 4-3 decision, with one Republican justice siding against Trump, the Wisconsin Supreme Court voted to uphold Biden’s victory in the state. On this week’s Amicus, Justice Karofsky speaks for the first time about the fallout from that case: Fallout in her personal life, for herself and loved ones. Fallout in her professional life, with an investigation and the threat of sanction for her line of questioning in oral argument. And beyond all that, the fallout for democracy—and for the role of jurists within that democracy. In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern to discuss the originalist Second Amendment ruling that puts women’s lives at risk, the looming prospect of a potential nationwide ban on a widely used, FDA-approved, abortion pill, and how the future of jurisprudence appears to be competing time machines. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. https://books.supportingcast.fm/lady-justice Picture courtesy of Penguin Random House Dahlia Lithwick, one of the nation’s foremost legal commentators, tells the gripping and heroic story of the women lawyers who fought the racism, sexism, and xenophobia of Donald Trump’s presidency—and won
- [New classified document found in FBI search of Pence home - WABI](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/new-classified-document-found-in-fbi-search-of-pence-home-wabi/) - WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI discovered an additional document with classified markings at former Vice President Mike Pence ‘s Indiana home during a search Friday, following the discovery by his lawyers last month of sensitive government documents there.Pence adviser Devin O’Malley said the Department of Justice completed “a thorough and unrestricted search of five hours” and removed “one document with classified markings and six additional pages without such markings that were not discovered in the initial review by the vice president’s counsel.”The search, described as consensual after negotiations between Pence’s representatives and the Justice Department, comes after he was subpoenaed in a separate investigation into efforts by former President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election and as Pence contemplates a Republican bid for the White House in 2024.Pence is now the third current or former top U.S. official, joining Trump and President Joe Biden, to have their homes scoured by FBI agents for classified records. The willingness of Pence and Biden to permit the FBI to search their homes, and to present themselves as fully cooperative, reflects a desire by both to avoid the drama that enveloped Trump last year and resulted in the Justice Department having to get a warrant to inspect his Florida property.Police blocked the road outside Pence’s neighborhood in Carmel, just north of Indianapolis, on Friday afternoon as the FBI was inside the home. They were seen leaving shortly after 2 p.m. Pence and his wife were out of state, visiting family on the West Coast following the birth of their second and third grandchildren.A member of Pence’s legal team was at the home during the search and the FBI was given what was described as unrestricted access to search for documents with classified markings, documents that could be classified but without markings and any other documents subject to the Presidential Records Act.O’Malley said Pence has directed his legal team to continue to cooperate with the DOJ and “to be fully transparent through the conclusion of this matter.”The FBI had already taken possession of what Pence’s lawyer previously described as a “small number of documents” that had been “inadvertently boxed and transported” to Pence’s Indiana home at the end of the Trump administration.The Justice Department did not immediately return a call seeking comment.Separate special counsels have been investigating the discovery of documents with classification markings at Biden’s home in Delaware and his former Washington office, as well as Trump’s Florida estate. Officials are trying to determine whether Trump or anyone on his team criminally obstructed the probe in refusing to turn over the documents before the FBI seizure. The FBI recovered more than 100 documents marked classified while serving a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago last August.In yet another document development, emails released late Friday revealed that after the National Archives became aware of the discovery of the classified papers at Biden’s former Washington office, Archives officials requested and received papers that had been shipped to a law office in Boston by the president’s personal attorney.No classified documents were believed to be in the Boston documents.The circumstances of the Biden and Pence cases are markedly different from that of Trump.Pence, according to his lawyer Greg Jacob, had requested a review by his attorneys of records stored at his home “out of an abundance of caution” during the uproar over the discovery of classified documents at Biden’s home and former private office. When the Pence documents were discovered on Jan. 16 among four boxes that had ben transferred to Pence’s home during the transition, Jacob said, they were secured in a locked safe and reported to the National Archives. FBI agents then collected them.Material found in the boxes came mostly from the Naval Observatory residence where Pence lived while he was vice president. Other material came from a West Wing office drawer.Pence has said he was unaware the documents had been in his possession.“Let me be clear: Those classified documents should not have been in my personal residence,” Pence said recently at Florida International University. “Mistakes were made, and I take full responsibility.”“We acted above politics and put national interests first,” he said.The National Archives last month asked former U.S. presidents and vice president s to recheck their personal records for any classified documents following news of the Biden and Pence discoveries.The Presidential Records Act states that any records created or received by the president while in office are the property of the U.S. government and will be managed by the Archives at the end of an administration.___Colvin reported from New York. Associated Press writer Tom Davies in Carmel, Ind., contributed to this report.Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
- [Pence spokesperson: DOJ finds additional document with classified markings at former vice ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/10/pence-spokesperson-doj-finds-additional-document-with-classified-markings-at-former-vice/) - WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI discovered an additional document with classified markings at former Vice President Mike Pence ‘s Indiana home during a search Friday, following the discovery by his lawyers last month of sensitive government documents there.Pence adviser Devin O’Malley said the Department of Justice completed “a thorough and unrestricted search of five hours” and removed “one document with classified markings and six additional pages without such markings that were not discovered in the initial review by the vice president’s counsel.”The search, described as consensual after negotiations between Pence’s representatives and the Justice Department, comes after he was subpoenaed in a separate investigation into efforts by former President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election and as Pence contemplates a Republican bid for the White House in 2024.Pence is now the third current or former top U.S. official, joining Trump and President Joe Biden, to have their homes scoured by FBI agents for classified records. The willingness of Pence and Biden to permit the FBI to search their homes, and to present themselves as fully cooperative, reflects a desire by both to avoid the drama that enveloped Trump last year and resulted in the Justice Department having to get a warrant to inspect his Florida property.Police blocked the road outside Pence’s neighborhood in Carmel, just north of Indianapolis, on Friday afternoon as the FBI was inside the home. They were seen leaving shortly after 2 p.m. Pence and his wife were out of state, visiting family on the West Coast following the birth of their second and third grandchildren.A member of Pence’s legal team was at the home during the search and the FBI was given what was described as unrestricted access to search for documents with classified markings, documents that could be classified but without markings and any other documents subject to the Presidential Records Act.O’Malley said Pence has directed his legal team to continue to cooperate with the DOJ and “to be fully transparent through the conclusion of this matter.”The FBI had already taken possession of what Pence’s lawyer previously described as a “small number of documents” that had been “inadvertently boxed and transported” to Pence’s Indiana home at the end of the Trump administration.The Justice Department did not immediately return a call seeking comment.Separate special counsels have been investigating the discovery of documents with classification markings at Biden’s home in Delaware and his former Washington office, as well as Trump’s Florida estate. Officials are trying to determine whether Trump or anyone on his team criminally obstructed the probe in refusing to turn over the documents before the FBI seizure. The FBI recovered more than 100 documents marked classified while serving a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago last August.In yet another document development, emails released late Friday revealed that after the National Archives became aware of the discovery of the classified papers at Biden’s former Washington office, Archives officials requested and received papers that had been shipped to a law office in Boston by the president’s personal attorney.No classified documents were believed to be in the Boston documents.The circumstances of the Biden and Pence cases are markedly different from that of Trump.Pence, according to his lawyer Greg Jacob, had requested a review by his attorneys of records stored at his home “out of an abundance of caution” during the uproar over the discovery of classified documents at Biden’s home and former private office. When the Pence documents were discovered on Jan. 16 among four boxes that had ben transferred to Pence’s home during the transition, Jacob said, they were secured in a locked safe and reported to the National Archives. FBI agents then collected them.Material found in the boxes came mostly from the Naval Observatory residence where Pence lived while he was vice president. Other material came from a West Wing office drawer.Pence has said he was unaware the documents had been in his possession.“Let me be clear: Those classified documents should not have been in my personal residence,” Pence said recently at Florida International University. “Mistakes were made, and I take full responsibility.”“We acted above politics and put national interests first,” he said.The National Archives last month asked former U.S. presidents and vice president s to recheck their personal records for any classified documents following news of the Biden and Pence discoveries.The Presidential Records Act states that any records created or received by the president while in office are the property of the U.S. government and will be managed by the Archives at the end of an administration.___Colvin reported from New York. Associated Press writer Tom Davies in Carmel, Ind., contributed to this report.Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
- [Interior Department Welcomes New Biden-Harris Appointees - DOI Gov](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/10/interior-department-welcomes-new-biden-harris-appointees-doi-gov/) - Date: Friday, February 10, 2023Contact: Interior_Press@ios.doi.govWASHINGTON — The Department of the Interior today announced additional Biden-Harris administration appointees who will join agency leadership to help create jobs in the clean energy economy, steward America’s public lands and waters, pursue environmental justice and honor our nation-to-nation relationship with Tribes. “Two years into the Biden-Harris administration, the Interior Department is making steady progress to strengthen Indian Country, create a clean energy future with climate-resilient infrastructure, address long-standing environmental injustices, and protect our lands and waters for the benefit of current and future generations,” said Chief of Staff Rachael Taylor. “Our new team members will play key roles as we continue our progress in the years to come.” The new appointees are listed below in alphabetical order: Sara Cawley, Advisor, Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement Lily Greenberg Call, Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff Justin Horn, Press Assistant Lynn Trujillo, Senior Counselor to the Secretary Sara Cawley, Advisor, Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement Sara most recently worked for Earthjustice as the senior legislative representative covering federal oil and gas policy. Sara’s prior experience includes positions at the Western Organization of Resource Councils and the National Wildlife Federation. Originally from northeastern Pennsylvania, Sara earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science and environmental studies from Gettysburg College, and a Master of Science in environmental policy from the University of Michigan. Between earning her degrees, Sara spent a year in Denmark on a Fulbright grant, studying collaborative natural resource management, and a year with AmeriCorps Cape Cod, completing hands-on environmental restoration and education projects. Lily Greenberg Call, Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff Lily Greenberg Call joins the Interior Department after working as a paralegal at Terris, Pravlik, and Millian LLP, a public interest litigation firm in Washington, D.C. During the 2020 election cycle, Lily was a field organizer in Tucson, Arizona for the Arizona Coordinated Campaign and in Waterloo, Iowa for Kamala Harris’ primary race. Originally from San Diego, Lily studied political science and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. During her undergraduate years, Lily worked on international human rights investigations and humanitarian relief in Greece. Justin Horn, Press Assistant Justin Horn most recently served as a special assistant on the White House Infrastructure Implementation Team. Prior to this role, he served as a special assistant to the Director of the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships. He served on the Biden for President campaign during the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primary and general election, first as a correspondence fellow and later as a field organizer in Philadelphia. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Justin graduated Summa Cum Laude in 2020 from the University of Pennsylvania. Lynn Trujillo, Senior Counselor to the Secretary Lynn Trujillo most recently served on Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s Cabinet as Secretary of the New Mexico Indian Affairs Department. Prior to that role, Lynn worked with Native American Tribes and organizations across the country as a national Native American coordinator for USDA Rural Development programs. Her past experiences include organizing in Tribal communities and practicing Indian Law in Washington D.C. and New Mexico. Lynn holds a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College and a J.D. from the University of New Mexico School of Law. She is a member of Sandia Pueblo and is also part Acoma and Taos Pueblos. ###
- [Former Vice President Mike Pence subpoenaed in probe of Trump's efforts to overturn 2020 election](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/10/former-vice-president-mike-pence-subpoenaed-in-probe-of-trumps-efforts-to-overturn-2020-election/) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkwc_aQhnNo
- [Councilman Robert Gallegos to run for mayor of Houston - ABC13](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/10/councilman-robert-gallegos-to-run-for-mayor-of-houston-abc13/) - HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- Houston City Councilman Robert Gallegos, who represents the greater East End, is the latest candidate to make his bid for mayor.According to our partners at the Houston Chronicle, Gallegos filed the paperwork on Thursday to begin raising campaign funds.Gallegos is currently the only Latino member of city council and would be the city's first Latino mayor if elected.In 2013, he was elected to represent District 1, which includes downtown, east downtown, Clinton Park, parts of northeast Houston, the greater East End, and the Houston Ship Channel, as well as communities along I-45 south from downtown to Hobby Airport.Gallegos is far from the only person looking to take over from Sylvester Turner as the leader of the nation's fourth-largest city this year.In late November 2022, State Sen. John Whitmire (D-Houston), formally launched his mayoral bid. Whitmire has served in the Senate over the last 39 years.Also in the mayoral race are former Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins and Houston attorney Amanda Edwards.Hollins helped run the 2020 election, setting up drive-thru and overnight voting systems that were later outlawed at the state level.This is the first time Hollins is running for a city or countywide position.Edwards served as an at-large city councilmember from 2016 to 2020 and ran unsuccessfully against Sen. John Cornyn in 2020.Edwards, a Houston native, attended Eisenhower High School.At last check, local businessman Lee Kaplan is also running. According to Kaplan's website, he also grew up in Houston, going on to become a lawyer before launching his own firm.Election day is Nov. 7.For news updates, follow Chaz Miller on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.Copyright © 2023 KTRK-TV. All Rights Reserved.
- [Corporations Gave Election Deniers A Last-Minute Surge Of Campaign Cash - Yahoo News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/10/corporations-gave-election-deniers-a-last-minute-surge-of-campaign-cash-yahoo-news/) - Sens. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), left, and Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C).Sens. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), left, and Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C).The 170-plus Republican election deniers who were just elected to Congress had some crucial last-minute help, according to a new analysis of corporate political donations.Large corporations and industry trade associations furnished them with more than $165,000 in the final few weeks of the 2022 midterm elections, the corporate influence watchdog Accountable.US found, showing that the corporate taboo against donating to politicians who embrace the “big lie” that the 2020 election was fraudulent has all but evaporated.Roughly $113,000 flowed to Ted Budd (R-N.C.) and Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), two victorious Senate candidates who have refused to acknowledge that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential race. Mullin also accused Democrats of trying to steal the 2022 midterms. Together, they received dozens of corporate campaign donations from food and beverage conglomerates, finance and fossil fuel companies.The scale of the funding marks a clear reestablishment of corporate favor-seeking. In the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, many corporate political action committees suspended donations to Republicans who egged on the mob and voted against certifying the 2020 election.This latest analysis covers only contributions made in the final three weeks of the midterms, which did not have to be disclosed before the election, per federal reporting guidelines. Among the top givers were FedEx, Walmart, U.S. Bancorp and Lowe’s.The total amount that corporate America has donated to Republicans who support the big lie is far larger: some $67 million since the violent insurrection at the Capitol, Accountable.US previously estimated. The top overall recipients were new Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Reps. Steve Scalise (La.), Sam Graves (Mo.), Jason Smith (Mo.) and Blaine Luetkemeyer (Mo.).A separate analysis by OpenSecrets determined the top donors to election deniers were the National Association of Realtors, the National Beer Wholesalers Association, the National Auto Dealers Association, the American Bankers Association and American Crystal Sugar.
- [Minnesota Democrats Pass Voting Rights Bill in Committee - Sludge](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/10/minnesota-democrats-pass-voting-rights-bill-in-committee-sludge/) - The day after the Jan. 6, 2021 riots at the Capitol in D.C., Minnesota legislators in the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party introduced legislation to address a host of election issues, from expanding voter registration to reforming campaign finance laws. With the state House of Representatives then under Republican control, the legislative package on elections stalled in committee. But in the 2022 midterm elections, Minnesota Democrats won a trifecta in state government, flipping control of the House. This week, three committees of the Minnesota legislature advanced a bill that supporters say would increase voting access, combat dark money spending in elections, and more. Titled the Democracy for the People Act, the bill was among the first legislative items introduced by Minnesota Democrats this year, a sign of its priority. The Senate Committee on Elections passed the bill on Feb. 7, with the House Committee on Elections and Senate Transportation Committee passing it the next day. The bill will be heard next week in the House Transportation, Finance, and Policy Committee before it can receive a vote by the full body. Democratic Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who after the midterm election called to set up a “firewall” for free and fair elections in the state, said recently he would sign bills passed by the legislature that “protect the right to vote.” The Democracy for the People Act would create automatic voter registration, restore the right to vote for people convicted of felonies who are no longer incarcerated, allow voters to permanently opt-in to receive an absentee ballot for every election, enable 16- and 17-year olds to pre-register to vote, and increase penalties for voter intimidation, among other things. The bill would also increase disclosure of “dark money” by requiring all groups that spend money on legislative or statewide elections to disclose all donations above $200, and all groups that spend money on ballot questions to disclose donations of more than $500. It would prohibit foreign-influenced corporations—defined as those where a foreign owner holds more than one percent of total equity, among other conditions—from spending on behalf of state candidates or ballot measures. Unidos leader Lupe Tejada Diaz speaks at the “Democracy Day” event at the Minnesota state capitol, Jan. 17, 2023.We Choose Us MN The legislative package comes as many other states are passing bills to make voting access more restrictive. Since the 2020 elections, according to the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, 20 states have enacted 33 laws that limit voting access, and last year seven states enacted laws that allow for partisan interference in the election process. Minnesota Rep. Emma Greenman (D), author of the House version of the Democracy for the People Act and a former voting rights attorney, told Sludge, “The bill is a response to the urgent and overdue need to invest in, strengthen, and protect democracy. For the past few years, we’ve seen the need to respond and ensure that democracy is rooted in the communities of Minnesota and the voices of the voters.” Greenman was first elected in 2020, and she related that one of her first days as a lawmaker coincided with the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol, underscoring the challenges facing elections. Greenman sees the bill’s voting access provisions as a response to the controversy surrounding the 2020 presidential election results. “Last year, democracy was on the ballot in Minnesota,” Greenman said. “One in four members running for the legislatures questioned the outcome of the 2020 election or were outright election deniers.” Greenman mentioned the Secretary of State race—which pitted Democratic candidate Steve Simon, who supports expanded voter registration, against Republican Kim Crockett, who disputed the 2020 presidential election outcome—as presenting “a contrast: a vision of democracy that’s inclusive and accessible, or one rooted in conspiracy theories and a restrictive vision of who should be able to participate.” Simon won the contest by more than nine points, with over 54% of the vote in the midterm election. Greenman said that in the lead-up to the November election where Democrats won a state trifecta, democracy was one of the main issues about which people in Minnesota were talking. “What we heard on the doors is that people really care that we have an inclusive multiracial democracy, they really want us to do the work to be sure that their voices are the ones that are driving policy decisions and politics,” she said. Brian Fullman, lead organizer of partner organization Barbershop and Black Congregation Cooperative (BBCC), speaks at Democracy Day.We Choose Us MN Greenman said that the Democracy for the People Act’s money in politics provisions aim to “put Minnesota voters, not corporations or wealthy interests, at the center of decision-making.” In the previous legislative session, she said, the bill had been scrutinized by six committees and during at least 10 hours of testimony in the Minnesota House over the past two years. “It’s important that voters know who is spending money to influence their votes and make choices based on that,” Greenman said. “Current disclosure laws don’t provide anywhere near sufficient transparency around independent spending.” The Democracy for the People Act has been buoyed by We Choose Us, a coalition of grassroots organizations, unions, and advocacy groups in Minnesota, and its provisions align with the coalition’s Expanding Democracy Agenda. Lilly Sasse, the campaign director, told Sludge, “Coming out of the 2020 election, and 2016, and the rise of authoritarianism nationally, it caused us in Minnesota to have to make a choice between realizing a multiracial democracy and an authoritarian way of governing. To do that, we agreed we had to have an on-offense strategy, calling for what multiracial democracy looks like and who was included, rather than just defending against the negative.” Sasse said, “In talking to different organizations who have been leading the work for decades in our state and new groups that haven’t been on the policy wonk side but have been in the practice of building of multiracial democracy—immigration groups, racial justice, reproductive freedom organizations—we tried to get a sense from people of what it could look like to crush these silos and form a coalition.” Groups that became coalition partners include the League of Women Voters of Minnesota, racial and economic justice group Unidos MN, Clean Water Action, Planned Parenthood Minnesota, and climate group Minnesota Interfaith Power & Light. We Choose Us coalition members at the Minnesota state capitolWe Choose Us MN “The original Democracy for the People Act was introduced in 2021, and we used that as a launchpad, getting to the point where the coalition launched in June 2022 with events in Duluth and Rochester, a statewide effort that reflected the geography across the state. We Choose Us launched with 22 coalition partners, and engaged in democracy summits and public feedback forums,” Sasse continued. “In a post-election poll on voters’ feelings around democracy, behind the top issues of inflation and rising prices, money in politics was a unifying force among Democrats, Republicans, and independents,” Sasse said. The Democracy for the People Act originally would have also broadened a Minnesota program called the political contribution refund (PCR), where voters can get up to $50 per year in contributions to qualified candidates or parties reimbursed by the state. The bill, as introduced, proposed moving the PCR program forward by issuing “democracy dollar” vouchers to all registered voters as two coupons valued at $25 apiece, redeemable for campaign funding from the state. However, after the Senate’s committee hearing last week, the democracy dollars provisions were stripped from the omnibus. According to Sasse, the democracy dollars program will be introduced as a standalone bill and campaigned for by We Choose Us. Sasse said that the PCR system has been underutilized in the state and could do more to encourage small-dollar donations to Minnesota candidates. “The incentive for folks to use the PCR is low, because campaigns have to send a receipt to a donor, who can go months without that $50 in their bank account,” Sasse said. “We wanted to have a system that modernized our PCR and turned it into what it’s truly meant to do, which is give everyone an opportunity to contribute to candidates and causes they believe in.” The We Choose Us coalition held a launch event for the Expanding Democracy Agenda on Jan. 17 at the state capitol, where organizations met with legislators and 300 members of the partner groups participated in a multiracial and multigenerational rally to advocate for their legislative priorities. Coalition members broke off into constituent groups for about 40 conversations with their legislators, where Sasse said they tied the issue of an inclusive democracy to their work in areas like addressing climate challenges. The coalition’s testifier program gathered more stories for individuals to present at hearings for legislators. Speakers at the Democracy Day event, coming out to show support for the omnibus bill, included Minnesota Secretary of State Steven Simon, Attorney General Keith Ellison, Speaker of the House Melissa Hortman, and Senate Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic, along with coalition group leaders. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison addresses the Democracy Day rally.We Choose Us MN “The transparency and foreign influence provisions are responses to people seeing the Citizens United decision and feeling that corporations and wealthy special interests have too much power in decision making,” Sasse said. Outside spending to influence voters by groups whose funding sources are often opaque has been rampant in Minnesota. A study released in March 2021 by the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs found that in the 2020 cycle, independent expenditures made up the majority of spending on state House races. The authors of the study also found that campaign donors in the 2018 Minnesota elections were invited to testify to legislators in favor of bills they favored and against bills they did not. If the standalone bill for “democracy dollars” advances, Minnesota could be the first state to pick up vouchers as a tool to boost public campaign financing. The democracy voucher model first adopted by Seattle in 2015 has grown in use there over the past three municipal election cycles, and was recently adopted by Oakland voters. 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- [Former VP Pence, ex-Trump official subpoenaed in special counsel probes - reports](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/10/former-vp-pence-ex-trump-official-subpoenaed-in-special-counsel-probes-reports/) - WASHINGTON, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and former national security adviser Robert O'Brien have been subpoenaed by the special counsel leading probes into classified documents found at former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence and efforts to overturn the 2020 election result, according to media reports on Thursday.Pence was issued a subpoena by special counsel Jack Smith, though the nature of the request was not immediately known, ABC News reported, citing sources. The action follows months of negotiations involving federal prosecutors and Pence's lawyers.O’Brien has been asserting executive privilege in declining to provide some of the information that prosecutors are seeking from him, according to CNN.Pence's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Smith's office declined to comment on both reports from CNN and ABC.Trump's former acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf was interviewed by Justice Department lawyers in recent weeks as part of the ongoing special counsel investigation related to 2020 election interference, the report added, citing sources.Latest UpdatesView 2 more stories
- [Texas must update voting machines with technology that doesn't exist](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/10/texas-must-update-voting-machines-with-technology-that-doesnt-exist/) - Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. When state lawmakers passed a sweeping and controversial new election law in 2021, they quietly included a provision that drew little notice or debate. But election administration experts say the measure is unprecedented, it mandates the purchase of voting technology that doesn’t currently exist — and it’s on the verge of costing taxpayers more than $100 million. Sponsors of the provision said they aimed to prevent cheating in elections by prohibiting the use of modern technology to count votes and store cast-ballot data. It passed without debate on a voice vote and goes into effect just before the November 2026 general election. When it does, millions of dollars’ worth of voting equipment will immediately be prohibited by the new law, a situation that could force at least some counties to hand-count ballots for lack of a legal alternative. Election officials across the state are worried they’ll be left without the tools necessary to safely deliver accurate and timely election results. “Humans make mistakes. I’m very worried about the accuracy of our elections if we have to rely on a hand tally of votes,” said Chambers County Clerk Heather Hawthorne said. “The inaccuracies would be huge, and our state would be in trouble.” Election security experts are also concerned. “You may be able to conduct an election, but it would not be accurate, it would not be secure and would not be timely,” said Ryan Macias, an election administration, security and technology expert and founder of the elections consulting company RSM Election Solutions. “With how complicated U.S. elections are, this is inconceivable.” Here’s how it works now: With permission from the Texas secretary of state, election officials use media storage devices such as USB flash drives — provided by state-certified voting machine vendors — to collect data from ballot scanners used at precincts and voting centers on Election Day. Those drives are how officials easily and safely take that data on cast ballots to a central counting station, where they’re inserted into a tabulating computer to quickly gather results. The equipment involved is expensive, and elections officials reuse it each time there is an election, writing over the previous data with the new election data. But the provision — proposed by state Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, and supported by the bill’s primary author, Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola — prohibits the use of this exact kind of data storage device that can be reused, including the ballot scanners and the tabulating machines. Experts say that in order to fully comply with the new law, counties would have to buy entirely new voting systems each election cycle. State Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, on the Senate floor on Aug. 11, 2021. Credit: Sophie Park/The Texas Tribune Lawmakers knew that, or should have known — the secretary of state’s office provided cost estimates before the bill passed. According to those estimates, it will cost taxpayers more than $116 million to replace the eliminated equipment. Because any new machines cannot be reused — the data can only be “written once” — counties would be forced to continue buying new equipment. The secretary of state’s office estimates that this ongoing cost would be more than $37 million every two years. And that’s if counties can even find compliant voting technology to buy. The Texas secretary of state’s office says the two Texas-certified voting machine vendors, Hart InterCivic and Election Systems & Software do not currently build such machines. In fact, no machine matching the specifications has been invented by any company operating in the United States. Nonetheless, Hall’s provision requires states to purchase and implement the technology by Sept. 1, 2026. Hall did not respond to multiple requests for an interview, nor did Hughes. In an emailed statement to Votebeat, Hall insisted his intention was “to provide an additional measure of security” and that the technology would ensure that final counts represent voter intent. Asked how he’d achieve additional security by requiring counties to buy nonexistent machines, he did not respond. Asked to offer his thoughts on the total cost to taxpayers, he did not respond. Hall said much the same in 2021. The provision would, he said, prevent votes from being “manipulated” between the precincts or vote centers and the central counting station. Hall provided no evidence of any instances of manipulation at the time, nor did he do so for this story. He also did not respond to questions about the practical application of the law. The bill requires that all cast-ballot data be stored in such a way that “once written, [they] cannot be modified.” The technology is often referred to as “WORM,” which stands for “write once, read many,” and nearly always refers to CD or DVD drives and their associated discs. The $100 million price tag is only the beginning Without a voting system that is certified to comply with the provision of the law, the secretary of state’s office will have to work closely with county election officials to provide guidance on how to implement an alternate counting procedure, Sam Taylor, a spokesperson for the secretary of state, said in a statement. Some counties could be forced to hand-count election results, which multiple studies and experts have said comes with a higher risk of fraud and inaccuracies; could result in legal challenges; and will take more time, staffing and money to get done. A review of 2020 election results Arizona’s Maricopa County took months and more than 100 people, and cost taxpayers more than $1 million to recount more than 2 million ballots. “We’d have to provide extensive training, but ultimately [counties] would have to handle the logistics,” Taylor said. Election officials who violate a provision of the state Election Code, such as by using equipment that isn’t certified by the state, could face civil penalties or legal challenges or could lose their jobs. The eye-popping costs are particularly frustrating for election officials, many of whom just bought new equipment to comply with a different law passed in 2021 that required a “paper audit trail” by 2026. More than 230 counties out of the 254 counties in the state have already complied with that law. Many were already using equipment that produced a paper trail in the form of a printed ballot. Others purchased all new equipment or modified their existing machines with printers. Harris County was the last major county to recently make the switch, Taylor said. Ballot scanning devices — which scan information in voted paper ballots and convert it into electronic data — cost anywhere from $5,000 to $100,000, election officials told Votebeat. Counties, depending on their size and the number of precincts and voting centers they operate, will purchase a dozen or hundreds of those. The USB drives — which come with permissions that allow them to be opened only on specific hardware, a security measure — cost between $50 and $70 each. Counties often buy hundreds. During the November election, Harris County used more than 3,000 such drives. In smaller counties, large purchases such as these are simply not in the budget. Cynthia Lum, Houston County’s elections administrator, said the county of about 13,000 purchased new voting equipment in 2021. The county transports vote totals to a central tabulation room on USB drives, as do most counties in the state. It uses one central count ballot scanner. “If it has to be replaced, our county does not have that kind of funds to just scrap it and start fresh,” she said. Hawthorne, the Chambers County clerk, was also confident her county can’t afford it. “To throw away those tax dollars is ridiciculous and it’s concerning. I trust our equipment, we test it for accuracy, and what [Hall] wants doesn’t exist,” she said. “So this dream [Hall] has that this is the technology that should be used, I’m worried because how does he know that it’s safe and it works if it doesn’t even exist?” Chambers County, southeast of Houston, has 35,000 registered voters and uses Hart InterCivic voting equipment. Hawthorne said the county uses 20 ballot scanners at polling locations and two tabulation scanners at the central counting station. Given the law’s language, the county will be prohibited from using all that technology, along with 100 USB drives used to gather voters’ cast ballots and election results. Security measures already in place Counties big and small already have security measures in place that election workers follow to protect voters’ cast ballots, both electronic and physical. Election officials follow a state-mandated chain-of-custody tracking procedure for their equipment. The equipment is labeled and sealed to ensure nothing is tampered with, and representatives from both parties are present when votes are counted. As part of Texas’ new election law, poll watchers are now allowed to see every part of the election process and follow election workers who take the ballots and USBs from the polling place to the central counting station. The law also requires election departments in counties with more than 100,000 residents to use 24-hour video surveillance of the vote-counting process. Additionally, both voting machine vendors have to pass strict security checks and testing to obtain federal and state certification. “And yet there is still this level of scrutiny from our legislators that are sending the message even back to their own districts that ‘we don’t trust you as elections officials,’” Hawthorne said. Hall offered the provision as a Senate floor amendment to the GOP’s first version of a restrictive voting bill authored by Hughes in March 2021 during the regular 87th legislative session. Hughes lauded the proposal. “I think it’s a great amendment,” Hughes said. “This amendment would make sure that the media they use cannot be written over, it’s just making sure that they can’t cheat. No Republican, Democrat or independent can cheat between the polling place and when the votes get into central count.” Neither Hall’s nor Hughes’ advocacy on these issues was a surprise to election officials. Hall is known to be among the most conservative GOP members of the Senate and has a record of introducing pieces of legislation based on conspiracy theories. He has made “election integrity” one of his policy priorities and even appeared as a featured speaker at an event streamed and promoted online by The America Project — an organization led by former President Donald Trump ally Michael Flynn and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, both well known for spreading election fraud conspiracy theories. State Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, at a committee hearing at the Texas Capitol on Aug. 10, 2021. Credit: Sophie Park/The Texas Tribune At the event, which happened at the beginning of this legislative session at the Texas Capitol, he decried “the lack of accuracy, transparency and accountability in the current Texas election process.” No lawmakers on either side of the aisle questioned the amendment’s exact meaning or its implications, but some House Democrats in the summer of 2021 broke quorum and left the state to prevent the bill as a whole from moving forward. The debates were mostly focused around issues such as ID requirements and mail-in ballot restrictions, 24-hour and curbside voting, increasing penalties for voting illegally, and how much access poll watchers could have at the polls and at vote-counting stations. Although that bill, Senate Bill 7, ultimately didn’t pass, it became a blueprint for the bill now known as Senate Bill 1, also authored by Hughes. SB 1 passed during a second special session that summer. That’s the law that ultimately included Hall’s provision. That legislative session was the first in Texas since Trump had spread lies about the outcome of the 2020 election. Nearly 500 election-related bills were filed in Texas then. Daniel Griffith, senior director of policy at Secure Democracy USA, said 2021 was the first time lawmakers started seeing such a high number of bills focused on election administration and the use of equipment. A provision like this one, in SB 1, a bill packed with controversial provisions, wasn’t top of mind for lawmakers. “[Lawmakers] had a lot of other things that were distracting them, and there was no legislative session last year,” he said. “So this is the first chance people will have to really take a look at [the provision]. Now that some of those distractions are out of the way, hopefully they’ll be able to take it out and take care of it.” At the time, election officials also had to be selective about which pieces of legislation to prioritize and provide their input on, said Chris Davis, Williamson County elections administrator. They were focused on provisions they’d have to implement more quickly, by the following primary election. But election officials are now devoting all of their attention to the implications these requirements will have on counties and on election officials. “These last three sessions were just kind of like playing whack-a-mole,” Davis said, adding that lawmakers should give other parts of SB 1 a chance to address their concerns related to election security. “Give the video surveillance a chance. Give the part of the bill that’s giving poll watchers more authority to observe things a couple of election cycles to see if their concerns are being addressed. Because right now it seems like they’re throwing everything against the wall.” Texas Tribune reporter Pooja Salhotra contributed to this story. Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org. Disclosure: Secure Democracy and the Texas secretary of state has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
- [Ex-national security adviser Robert O'Brien is subpoenaed by special counsel in Trump probes](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/10/ex-national-security-adviser-robert-obrien-is-subpoenaed-by-special-counsel-in-trump-probes/) - Special counsel Jack Smith has subpoenaed former Trump national security adviser Robert O'Brien as part of his probes into the former president's handling of classified documents and efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, a person familiar with the matter confirmed to NBC News.The move comes as Smith — who was appointed special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland — appears to have reached a new phase in the investigation. Former Vice President Mike Pence has also been subpoenaed by Smith for information about former President Donald Trump's effort to stay in office after the 2020 election and his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. O'Brien, who declined comment, was Trump’s fourth and final national security adviser, serving from September 2019 until the end of the administration on Jan. 20, 2021. He had been among a small group of Trump’s top officials to acknowledge Joe Biden’s election victory, saying in November 2020 that the National Security Council was preparing for “a very professional transition.”O’Brien sat for an interview with the House committee that was investigating the Jan. 6 riot last year. His former deputy, Matthew Pottinger, testified before the panel at a public hearing that he resigned because of the riot but stayed on overnight at O’Brien’s urging because O’Brien was returning from a trip.The O’Brien subpoena was first reported by CNN.
- [Pence subpoenaed by special counsel probing Trump - Central Oregon Daily](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/10/pence-subpoenaed-by-special-counsel-probing-trump-central-oregon-daily/) - Former Vice President Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by the special counsel overseeing investigations into efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to a person with direct knowledge of the event. The subpoena to Pence as part of the investigation by special counsel Jack Smith was served in recent days, according to the person, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Thursday to discuss a sensitive issue. The extraordinary scenario of a former vice president potentially testifying against his former boss in a criminal investigation comes as Pence considers launching a 2024 Republican presidential bid against Trump. The two have been estranged since a mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to stop Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. The subpoena is an aggressive step from a prosecutor who for years led the Justice Department’s public corruption section and who oversaw indictments against major political figures. The move sets the stage for a likely executive privilege fight, given Pence’s close proximity to Trump for four years as major decisions were being contemplated and planned. It is unclear whether efforts to secure voluntary testimony from Pence stalled before the subpoena was issued. Spokespeople for Pence and Smith declined to comment on the issuance of the subpoena, which was first reported by ABC News. Pence was a central figure in Trump’s efforts to stay in power after losing the 2020 election. Trump falsely insisted that his vice president, who had a ceremonial role in overseeing the certification of the election, could simply reject the results and send them back to the battleground states he contested. On Jan. 6, Trump supporters, driven by the lie that the election was stolen, marched to the Capitol building, brutally pushed past the police and smashed through the windows and doors while Pence was presiding over the certification of Biden’s victory. The vice president was steered to safety with his staff and family as some in the mob chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!” While the mob was in the Capitol, Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.” Smith, who was named special counsel in November by Attorney General Merrick Garland, has been tasked with overseeing investigations into Trump’s attempts to subvert his defeat, his actions leading up to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and his possession of top-secret government documents at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago. Federal prosecutors have been especially focused on a scheme by Trump allies to elevate fake presidential electors in key battleground states won by Biden as a way to subvert the vote, issuing subpoenas to multiple state Republican party chairs. Federal prosecutors have brought multiple Trump administration officials before the grand jury for questioning, including former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Pence’s own former chief of staff, Marc Short. In a sign of the expanding nature of the investigation, election officials in multiple states whose results were disputed by Trump have received subpoenas asking for communications with or involving Trump and his campaign aides. A House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack recommended that the Justice Department bring criminal charges against Trump and associates who helped him launch a pressure campaign to try to overturn his 2020 election loss.
- [Former VP Pence subpoenaed by special counsel overseeing Trump probes - ABC News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/former-vp-pence-subpoenaed-by-special-counsel-overseeing-trump-probes-abc-news/) - Former VP Pence subpoenaed by special counsel overseeing Trump probesSources told ABC News that the subpoena from special counsel Jack Smith requests documents and testimony related to the failed attempt by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election.February 10, 2023
- [Minister wants 2020 rally charges dropped - Burlington Times-News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/minister-wants-2020-rally-charges-dropped-burlington-times-news/) - GRAHAM - Prosecutors should drop all charges against those who were pepper-sprayed and arrested at a rally days before the 2020 election, one of the rally's organizers and his lawyer said.The Rev. Greg Drumwright was the first of those arrested to go to trial, and he was acquitted earlier this week. Speaking at a press conference Thursday afternoon in front of the courthouse in Graham, he said his acquittal shows that the charges leveled after the Oct. 31, 2020, March to the Polls early voting rally were unjustified.“The charges I was cleared of were pinned on others, and, Alamance County, you must drop all the charges,” he said as the crowd of supporters and other defendants behind him began to chant, “Drop the charges.”The 2020 rally made national headlines because officers sprayed tear gas and pepper spray directly in the faces of protesters.“Those protesters and these defendants are my heroes,” Drumwright said.Prosecutors dropped the charges against most of the others after Drumwright's acquittal, but two still have charges pending.One of Drumwright’s attorneys, Jason Keith, said that all who were arrested were merely “peacefully exercising their right to vote.”“We want accountability for what happened on October 31, 2020, and we need to keep moving and keep fighting,” he said.Drumwright also spoke on House Bill 40, which would increase the penalties for rioting or inciting a riot.Because inciting a riot is vaguely worded in state law, critics say the bill would create the risk that people could be arrested merely for attending a protest that results in violence that they took no part in. The bill recently passed the House by a veto-proof majority.Drumwright called the bill “infringement on civil rights and protesting.”
- [Judge orders Ramona Unified to pay $878K in plaintiff attorney fees in election suit](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/judge-orders-ramona-unified-to-pay-878k-in-plaintiff-attorney-fees-in-election-suit/) - A judge has ruled that Ramona Unified School District must pay $878,849 in plaintiffs fees, following his earlier decision that the district violated the California Voting Rights Act when it held an at-large school board election in November 2020.The Jan. 25 decision by San Diego Superior Court Judge John S. Meyer follows a request by attorney Kevin Shenkman for the district to pay attorney fees for plaintiffs Southwest Voter Registration and Terry Maxson and Janie Ramos, both of Ramona, in his lawsuit against the district.“Plaintiffs achieved their litigation objectives, succeeded on a practical level, and furthered the purpose of the CVRA (California Voting Rights Act),” Meyer wrote in his order. “Thus, as stated in both the statement of decision and final judgment, plaintiffs are the prevailing parties.”Ramona Unified Superintendent Brian Thurman said Wednesday that the district will appeal the ruling. The district is not responsible for paying the fees before the appeal.“The amount of money being demanded from our school district is a concern, especially since there was no change in circumstances or actions as a result of the case,” said Thurman, who was not superintendent at the time the lawsuit was filed. “The district is hopeful that the Court of Appeal will reverse the decision to award the lawyer attorney’s fees and costs.”Shenkman said the attorney fees didn’t have to be so high for the district.“Every step of the way the district had an opportunity and was invited, indeed begged, by me not to go down this path,” Shenkman said. “All along the way, a motion to dismiss denied, summary judgment denied. By the time it got to the trial they should have seen the writing on the wall.”“If they appeal the amount is going to go up,” he added.In the lawsuit filed against the district in October 2020, Shenkman alleged that the upcoming Nov. 3 at-large election violated the voting rights act and discriminated against Latinos by diluting their votes. He asked that a special election be held.The election was supposed to be the first for Ramona Unified with the district split into five areas, so voters could elect trustees in their own geographic region.But the election was changed over the summer because of procedural errors by both the district and the San Diego County Office of Education. Instead, voters had at-large ballots for the two incumbents, Daryn Drum and Dawn Perfect, and two challengers, John Rajcic and Joe Stupar. Drum and Perfect won the election.While Meyer agreed with Shenkman in his May 4, 2022 ruling that the at-large election violated the voting rights act, he said the district’s mistake was unintentional and that officials made an appropriate remedy by moving forward with plans for a trustee-area election in November 2022, when three seats were open.Theresa Grace, who was superintendent at the time the lawsuit was filed, said after the May ruling that the district had worked to ensure that future board elections are by district trustee areas.The board approved Trustee Area 1, identified on a map as Main Street Ramona and the Old Julian Highway area, in which 52 percent of eligible voters are Latino, in February 2022.When the board had to fill an open seat after longtime board member Kim Lasley died in January, the candidates were from District 1. On March 21, the board appointed Maya Phillips to fill Lasley’s remaining term.In the Nov. 8 election — the first with the trustee-area districts, Phillips won the Trustee Area 1 seat, incumbent Rodger Dohm the Area 5 seat and Dan Summers was uncontested for the Area 2 seat.The district’s problems began after administrators failed to submit a waiver to the state Board of Education — a requirement to hold a trustee-area election — after the county’s approval. Grace said that getting the waiver through to the state board “fell through the cracks.” The district was coping with COVID-19 and preparing to reopen schools, she said.District officials were notified in July 2020 by the county Office of Education that the state did not have Ramona Unified listed for trustee-area elections that year. By that time, four months before the election, it was too late to take the waiver matter before the state board, and the district had to revert to an at-large election, Grace said.The county dropped the ball as well, officials said, by not following up on Ramona’s waiver status.Shenkman got the trustee-area election process started in April 2018 by sending the district a letter demanding they comply with the California Voting Rights Act, which requires maintaining a fair election system that does not dilute the votes of minorities.During a series of special meetings that began in September 2018, trustees of the 5,300-student district started to consider moving from an at-large to trustee-area style of election. Although some board members expressed frustration at making the change, they said at the time their hands were tied by the private law firm’s pending litigation.
- [A Close Look at the Chaotic House Republican Majority - The New York Times](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/11/a-close-look-at-the-chaotic-house-republican-majority-the-new-york-times/) - C-SPAN video of the House speaker election in January. The tumult that broke out last month during the election of Kevin McCarthy for speaker illustrated the potential for profound dysfunction in the new House Republican majority. And the spectacle created by Republican lawmakers at the State of the Union address showed the unruly behavior of
- [Without a police brutality bill, Floyd and Nichols died in vain - Las Vegas Sun Newspaper](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/10/without-a-police-brutality-bill-floyd-and-nichols-died-in-vain-las-vegas-sun-newspaper/) - By Leonard Greene Friday, Feb. 10, 2023 | 2 a.m. You would think that after what happened in Memphis, Tenn., legislators would be tripping over themselves to get to the House floor to pass a new law that promises real police reform. Let’s recap: A motorist was brutally beaten to death last month by a group of rogue cops who blatantly abandoned their pledge to protect and serve. They punched Tyre Nichols. They kicked him. They shot Tasers at him. They pumped pepper spray in his face, and they cursed him. They had body cameras on, and didn’t stop. They stood under a marked surveillance camera, and took turns slugging him in the face while he begged them to stop, and called out for his mother. And when they were done kicking and punching, and pepper spraying and cursing, they dragged Nichols along the cold, hard sidewalk, propped him against a parked car, and did nothing to ease his pain. That’s what Congress is doing right now. Every day that goes by without passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act is like having members of Congress shamelessly standing under the clearly marked surveillance camera at Castlegate Lane and doing nothing. “We need to take some action because there should be no other child that should suffer the way my son did and all the other parents here who’ve lost their children,” Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, said at her son’s funeral last week. “We need to get that bill passed because if we don’t, that blood — the next child that dies — that blood is going to be on their hands.” The bill, which addresses racial profiling and use of deadly police force, was passed by the Democrat-controlled House in 2021 but stalled in the Senate over the issue of qualified immunity for cops, as if the general public doesn’t qualify for being immune from being abused by police officers. The proposed law would also ban no-knock warrants in federal drug cases. Police used a no-knock warrant in 2020 when they forced their way into a home in Louisville, Ky., and killed Breonna Taylor. “We demand that Congress pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act,” Vice President Kamala Harris said at Nichols’ funeral. “Joe Biden will sign it. We should not delay, and we shall not be denied. It is nonnegotiable.” President Biden met with members of the Congressional Black Caucus to assure them he hasn’t given up on the fight. To illustrate his commitment, Biden invited Nichols’ mother and stepfather to Washington, D.C. for his State of the Union speech Tuesday. The president said his hope was that “this dark memory spurs some action that we’ve all been fighting for.” But some legislators aren’t so optimistic. “I think the president is missing the opportunity to be a historic president when it comes to the social issues that continue to plague our country,” said Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y. “That’s what we need.” “The solution,” Bowman said, is not “thoughts and prayers, come to the State of the Union after your kid gets killed.” The whole point of naming the bill after George Floyd, who mercilessly died under the knee of a Minnesota cop in 2020, sparking a social justice reckoning across America, was so that Floyd’s death would not be in vain. So far, it has been. Leonard Greene is a columnist for the New York Daily News.
- [Court won't force Pa. to release voter info for 2020 election inquiry. That doesn't mean it's over. | WITF](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/10/court-wont-force-pa-to-release-voter-info-for-2020-election-inquiry-that-doesnt-mean-its-over-witf/) - February 10, 2023 | 9:13 AM It’s uncertain where the decision leaves the state Senate GOP’s 2020 election review, which has languished for much of the past year while the subpoena dispute has moved through the courts.
- [Corporate Interests Gave $36.3M+ to Election Objectors Since the Jan. 6 Insurrection](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/10/corporate-interests-gave-36-3m-to-election-objectors-since-the-jan-6-insurrection/) - WASHINGTON, DC — Following the final year-end FEC filing deadline for the 2022 election cycle, government watchdog Accountable.US released an updated analysis showing Fortune 500 companies and industry trade groups gave over $36.3 million to election objectors in Congress since the January 6th insurrection. The latest filings show that since Election Day, Fortune 500 companies such as Charter Communications, Marathon Petroleum, and FedEx gave at least $164,095 to members of Congress that voted to throw out the 2020 election results in service of the ‘Big Lie’. Accountable.US’ analysis also revealed that over two-thirds of the final batch of donations — $113,500 — went to Senators Ted Budd and Markwayne Mullin, newly elected U.S. Senators who objected to certifying the 2020 presidential election during their time in the House.
- [Open Discourse Coalition appoints 2020 election denier to fellowship - The Bucknellian](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/10/open-discourse-coalition-appoints-2020-election-denier-to-fellowship-the-bucknellian/) - A local freedom of speech nonprofit has announced that a former member of Congress will fill an advisory position within the organization.The Open Discourse Coalition has named former U.S. Rep. Fred Keller, a Republican from Pennsylvania who voted to overturn the certification of the state’s electoral college votes in 2020, as its public policy fellow. “What I’m bringing to this is the experience of somebody who worked in the private sector, somebody that was in Harrisburg, and the General Assembly and somebody that served in Congress,” Keller said to The Bucknellian. “I’m excited to be able to be part of helping lineup topics, and individuals to come in and have the dialogue and really discuss the issues that are before us.” Keller was elected to represent Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District in a special election in 2019 and was reelected in 2020. After redistricting split his district in 2022, Keller did not seek reelection. Keller was one of 147 Republicans that voted to reject the 2020 presidential election results. “I’m gonna focus on making sure that we have dialogue that brings all the perspectives to the table, and it’s civil. And that’s who I am,” Keller said, responding to a question about student and faculty perceptions of his 2020 election vote. “So I would say that we should look at the fact that here’s an organization that wants to present all sides of an issue,” he continued. “And have good dialogue, and try to understand the issue from other people’s perspectives.” The Open Discourse Coalition is formally unaffiliated with Bucknell University, but according to their website, the group “…supports people and organizations in the Bucknell community who share our values.” Also, a number of members on their advisory board are alumni and donors to the university. When asked if hiring Keller means that the Open Discourse Coalition supports the false election denier theories, Executive Director Dawn Toguchi said the organization does not take positions on “political beliefs, personal beliefs or economic beliefs.” “Whether it’s members of Congress or your classmates, there’s still a lot of disagreement in our country, around that,” Toguchi said. “Our position is that open discourse is best and that more viewpoints are better than less.” The organization also announced that state Rep. Jared Solomon, a Democrat from Philadelphia County, will take over as its Bipartisan Fellow. Solomon will speak in a panel discussion about bipartisanship reform on March 23 called “Progress over Party.” Attempts to speak with Solomon for comment were unsuccessful. Jack Strauss ’24, secretary for the Bucknell Conservative Club, said that the club supports both appointments made by the Open Discourse Coalition. “Our support comes as both representatives have done great work for Pennsylvania and are highly qualified for their new positions,” Strauss said, in an emailed statement. “Representative Keller’s views and position on the 2020 election results do not affect the conservative clubs’ support in his posting as a new fellow. Representative Keller is extremely qualified to be the Public Policy fellow at the ODC, as while he was in office, he was a part of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, the House Education and Labor Committee, and the House Energy Action Team.” A representative for the Bucknell University Democratic Socialists could not be reached for comment in time for publication. (Visited 127 times, 127 visits today)
- [Did Wisconsin US Rep. Scott Fitzgerald vote against certifying 2020 election results?](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/10/did-wisconsin-us-rep-scott-fitzgerald-vote-against-certifying-2020-election-results/) - Reading Time: < 1 minute Wisconsin Watch, a nonprofit newsroom, is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Sign up for our newsletter for more stories straight to your inbox. Yes. Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, a Republican who represents Milwaukee suburbs including Waukesha, West Bend and Brookfield, objected to certifying the 2020 election results in two states. Joined by Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany, who represents a majority of northern Wisconsin, the two representatives objected to certifying vote counts for Arizona and Pennsylvania. Get Wisconsin news you need straight to your inbox. Sign up for our free story updates and Friday news roundups. To be considered, objections need support from at least one representative and one senator. From there, the House and Senate must vote on the objection. The objections on the Arizona and Pennsylvania elections — voted on just hours after pro-Trump protesters overran the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021— ultimately were unsuccessful. Still, 147 Republicans voted to decertify the result of one or both state’s elections. The rest of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation, Republican and Democrat, voted against decertification. Vice President Mike Pence declared Joe Biden the official winner of the 2020 election on Jan. 7, 2021. This Fact Brief is responsive to conversations such as this one. Sources AP News: GOP Reps. Tiffany, Fitzgerald object to certifying Biden win USA Today: The members of Congress who objected to Joe Biden’s Electoral College win amid Capitol riot Vox: 147 Republican lawmakers still objected to the election results after the Capitol attack Our fact briefs are free to read but not to produce. Wisconsin Watch puts $100 of resources into every fact brief. Help us preserve democracy, combat misinformation and create an informed electorate today. Republish This Story
- [Former US Vice President Mike Pence subpoenaed by special counsel investigating ... - Jurist.org](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/10/former-us-vice-president-mike-pence-subpoenaed-by-special-counsel-investigating-jurist-org/) - Former US Vice President Mike Pence was subpoenaed by the special counsel tasked with investigating attempts to overturn the 2020 US election, ABC News reported Thursday. This subpoena, from special counsel Jack Smith, reportedly requests documents and testimony from the former vice president.This move marks an escalation of the counsel’s investigation into the efforts of former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results. It also coincides with Smith’s ongoing investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents. Although the subpoena has been issued to aid the investigation, Pence may attempt to invoke executive privilege, which could shield him from the summons.This subpoena is likely to increase political tensions that have existed since the January 6th attack on the US Capitol, the congressional investigation into which has resulted in criminal referrals issued to the Department of Justice (DOJ). The original January 6th committee faced similar tensions when they issued a subpoena to ex-president Donald Trump, to which he responded with a lawsuit. Despite this, criminal investigations are still ongoing two years after the attack. The US House Select Committee investigating January 6th released their final report in December 2022, which includes details of Pence’s involvement. Opinions expressed in JURIST Commentary are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JURIST's editors, staff, donors or the University of Pittsburgh.
- [Court won't force Pennsylvania to release election records | News | tribdem.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/10/court-wont-force-pennsylvania-to-release-election-records-news-tribdem-com/) - #inform-video-player-1 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; } #inform-video-player-2 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; } HARRISBURG, Pa. – A Pennsylvania appellate court said Thursday that it will not order Gov. Josh Shapiro's administration to produce records on voters and election systems sought by Republican lawmakers in a quest inspired by former President Donald Trump’s claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election.The decision by the Commonwealth Court came a year-and-a-half after a Republican-controlled state Senate Committee voted to issue a subpoena seeking detailed state election records.Those records include information that Democratic lawmakers and the state attorney general's office said were protected by privacy laws, including the driver’s license numbers and last four digits of their Social Security number of 9 million registered voters, as well as details about election systems. The court said that the Senate committee voted to issue the subpoena under its own internal rules and can enforce it under the state's contempt laws. But that process, it said, does not involve seeking a court order to enforce it.“The Senate Committee has chosen to seek the election-related materials by legislative subpoena, and it is bound by that choice," Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt wrote in the 21-page decision.The idea of election audits or investigations were propelled by Trump’s most ardent supporters in battleground states, including Pennsylvania, where Trump lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden. Republicans have since spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal bills and an election contractor that has yet to produce any sort of report on findings.Senate Republican officials had no immediate comment Thursday on whether the committee would continue to pursue the records.An Associated Press investigation into potential cases of voter fraud in Pennsylvania and the five other battleground states where Trump disputed his loss to Biden in 2020 found a minuscule number of cases.Election officials in 11 of the state’s 67 counties identified a total of 26 possible cases of voter fraud, representing 0.03% of Biden’s margin of victory. He defeated Trump in Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes, according to the state’s certified results.Follow Marc Levy on Twitter: http://twitter.com/timelywriter #inform-video-player-3 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; }
- [Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger visits campus - Yale Daily News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/10/georgia-secretary-of-state-brad-raffensperger-visits-campus-yale-daily-news/) - Raffensperger fielded question from students and staff about the future of the US, Georgia and the Republican Party.
- [Mike Pence subpoenaed by special counsel overseeing Trump probes - ABC News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/10/mike-pence-subpoenaed-by-special-counsel-overseeing-trump-probes-abc-news/) - Former Vice President Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by the special counsel overseeing probes into former President Donald Trump, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.Sources told ABC News that the subpoena from special counsel Jack Smith requests documents and testimony related to the failed attempt by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election, which culminated in the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.The subpoena follows months of negotiations between federal prosecutors and Pence's legal team.Smith was appointed in November to oversee the investigation into Trump's potential mishandling of classified documents after leaving the presidency and obstructing the government's efforts to retrieve them -- as well as a separate probe into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The move will be seen as a major escalation of Smith's probe into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the election, and suggests that Smith's investigation has entered a more advanced stage.It's not immediately clear to what extent the former vice president might seek to invoke claims of executive privilege over the information sought by Smith, which could set up a potentially lengthy and contentious legal battle with no clear modern precedent.Former Vice President Mike Pence speaks to guests at the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Meeting, Nov. 18, 2022, in Las Vegas.Scott Olson/Getty ImagesA spokesperson for Pence did not respond to a request for comment by ABC News. The special counsel's office declined to comment.A spokesperson for Trump also did not immediately respond.
- [Pence subpoenaed by special counsel probing Trump's involvement in 2020 election - PBS](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/10/pence-subpoenaed-by-special-counsel-probing-trumps-involvement-in-2020-election-pbs/) - Former Vice President Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by the special counsel overseeing investigations into efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to a person with direct knowledge of the event. The subpoena to Pence as part of the investigation by special counsel Jack Smith was served in recent days, according to the person, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Thursday to discuss a sensitive issue. The extraordinary scenario of a former vice president potentially testifying against his former boss in a criminal investigation comes as Pence considers launching a 2024 Republican presidential bid against Trump. The two have been estranged since a mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to stop Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. The subpoena is an aggressive step from a prosecutor who for years led the Justice Department’s public corruption section and who oversaw indictments against major political figures. The move sets the stage for a likely executive privilege fight, given Pence’s close proximity to Trump for four years as major decisions were being contemplated and planned. It is unclear whether efforts to secure voluntary testimony from Pence stalled before the subpoena was issued. Spokespeople for Pence and Smith declined to comment on the issuance of the subpoena, which was first reported by ABC News. Pence was a central figure in Trump’s efforts to stay in power after losing the 2020 election. Trump falsely insisted that his vice president, who had a ceremonial role in overseeing the certification of the election, could simply reject the results and send them back to the battleground states he contested. On Jan. 6, Trump supporters, driven by the lie that the election was stolen, marched to the Capitol building, brutally pushed past the police and smashed through the windows and doors while Pence was presiding over the certification of Biden’s victory. The vice president was steered to safety with his staff and family as some in the mob chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!” While the mob was in the Capitol, Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.” Smith, who was named special counsel in November by Attorney General Merrick Garland, has been tasked with overseeing investigations into Trump’s attempts to subvert his defeat, his actions leading up to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and his possession of top-secret government documents at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago. Federal prosecutors have been especially focused on a scheme by Trump allies to elevate fake presidential electors in key battleground states won by Biden as a way to subvert the vote, issuing subpoenas to multiple state Republican party chairs. Federal prosecutors have brought multiple Trump administration officials before the grand jury for questioning, including former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Pence’s own former chief of staff, Marc Short. In a sign of the expanding nature of the investigation, election officials in multiple states whose results were disputed by Trump have received subpoenas asking for communications with or involving Trump and his campaign aides. A House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack recommended that the Justice Department bring criminal charges against Trump and associates who helped him launch a pressure campaign to try to overturn his 2020 election loss.
- [State's top prosecutor in the clear from 2020 campaign ad | North Carolina | thecentersquare.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/10/states-top-prosecutor-in-the-clear-from-2020-campaign-ad-north-carolina-thecentersquare-com/) - (The Center Square) – The Wake County district attorney has closed an investigation into Attorney General Josh Stein’s alleged 2020 campaign violations, citing a recent injunction and statute of limitations.Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman issued a release about the decision on Thursday.“In an opinion issued yesterday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit granted a preliminary injunction that had been sought by Stein and other named plaintiffs,” Freeman wrote. “This decision prevents the State from moving forward within the prescribed statutory statute of limitations for the case.”Stein, a Democrat, has already announced candidacy for governor in 2024.The appellate ruling stems from Stein challenging a 1931 North Carolina statute that makes it a misdemeanor for candidates to circulate derogatory reports they know to be false in an attempt to boost their chances for election.A grand jury asked the Wake County district attorney to present indictments against Stein, chief of staff Seth Dearmin, and 2020 campaign manager Eric Stern for violating the 1931 law during the 2020 election. The ad criticized his opponent, Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O'Neill, over untested rape kits.O'Neill argued he had no authority as district attorney to force law enforcement agencies to send the kits to the State Crime Lab, and filed a complaint with election officials.Stein – who defeated O'Neill by fewer than 14,000 votes out of more than 5 million cast – filed a federal lawsuit in July claiming the law violates the First Amendment, and he appealed to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after a district court denied a preliminary injunction.“Understanding that the case was one of intense public interest, it has been assigned prosecutor’s intent to exercise due diligence and to evaluate the evidence and apply the law without partiality from the beginning of this matter,” Freeman said. “As prosecutors, we respect the role of the court in determining the constitutionality of a duly enacted state law.”Freeman noted that the case centers on the handling of sexual assault kits, which continues to be a problem despite a Survivor’s Act approved by the General Assembly in 2019 that called for the submission of previously untested kits from across the state.“Every day law enforcement and prosecutors across this state work tirelessly to seek justice for sexual assault victims," Freeman said. "Following the enactment of the Survivor’s Act, they identified and prepared for submission untested kits as directed by the law. Many of those kits continue to go untested because of significant backlogs at the State Crime Lab. As recently as the end of this past year, the time from submission to final analysis of a sexual assault kit was 19 months.“It would be my hope that the General Assembly and the attorney general would take steps to fix these delays so that the promises of the Survivor’s Act become a reality.”
- [Commonwealth Court won't force Pennsylvania to release 2020 election records](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/10/commonwealth-court-wont-force-pennsylvania-to-release-2020-election-records/) - CBS News Live CBS News Pittsburgh Live HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A Pennsylvania appellate court said Thursday that it will not order Gov. Josh Shapiro's administration to produce records on voters and election systems sought by Republican lawmakers in a quest inspired by former President Donald Trump's baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election.The decision by the Commonwealth Court came a year-and-a-half after a Republican-controlled state Senate Committee voted to issue a subpoena seeking detailed state election records.Those records include information that Democratic lawmakers and the state attorney general's office said were protected by privacy laws, including the driver's license numbers and last four digits of their Social Security number of 9 million registered voters, as well as details about election systems.The court said that the Senate committee voted to issue the subpoena under its own internal rules and can enforce it under the state's contempt laws. But that process, it said, does not involve seeking a court order to enforce it."The Senate Committee has chosen to seek the election-related materials by legislative subpoena, and it is bound by that choice," Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt wrote in the 21-page decision. The idea of election audits or investigations were propelled by Trump's most ardent supporters in battleground states, including Pennsylvania, where Trump lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden.Republicans have since spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal bills and an election contractor that has yet to produce any sort of report on findings.Senate Republican officials had no immediate comment Thursday on whether the committee would continue to pursue the records.An Associated Press investigation into potential cases of voter fraud in Pennsylvania and the five other battleground states where Trump disputed his loss to Biden in 2020 found a minuscule number of cases. Election officials in 11 of the state's 67 counties identified a total of 26 possible cases of voter fraud, representing 0.03% of Biden's margin of victory. He defeated Trump in Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes, according to the state's certified results.
- [Mike Pence Subpoenaed by Special Counsel in Trump Investigation - The New York Times](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/10/mike-pence-subpoenaed-by-special-counsel-in-trump-investigation-the-new-york-times/) - The move by Jack Smith, the special counsel, is one of the most aggressive in his investigation of Donald Trump’s efforts to stay in power and is likely to lead to a battle over executive privilege.Former Vice President Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by the special counsel investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to cling to office after he lost his bid for re-election, a person familiar with the matter said on Thursday.The move by the Justice Department sets up a likely clash over executive privilege, which Mr. Trump has previously used to try to slow, delay and block testimony from former administration officials in various investigations into his conduct.The existence of the subpoena was reported earlier by ABC News.It was not immediately clear when the special counsel, Jack Smith, sought Mr. Pence’s testimony. The move is among the most aggressive yet by Mr. Smith in his wide-ranging investigation into Mr. Trump’s role in seeking to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election. He is also overseeing a parallel inquiry into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents.The New York Times previously reported that the Justice Department was seeking to question Mr. Pence in connection with the investigation into Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in power after he lost the 2020 election and had reached out to his team.Mr. Pence is potentially a key witness because he is one of the people best positioned to provide information about Mr. Trump’s state of mind at the time, even though his relationship with Mr. Trump reached the breaking point in the days leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, legal experts said.Understand the Events on Jan. 6Timeline: On Jan. 6, 2021, 64 days after Election Day 2020, a mob of supporters of President Donald J. Trump raided the Capitol. Here is a close look at how the attack unfolded.A Day of Rage: Using thousands of videos and police radio communications, a Times investigation reconstructed in detail what happened — and why.Lost Lives: A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died in connection with the attack.Jan. 6 Attendees: To many of those who attended the Trump rally but never breached the Capitol, that date wasn’t a dark day for the nation. It was a new start.Mr. Pence’s team held discussions with the Justice Department about a voluntary interview, according to the person familiar with the matter, but those talks were at an impasse, leading Mr. Smith to seek the subpoena.An aide to Mr. Pence declined to confirm the existence of the subpoena. A Justice Department official did not respond to a request for comment.It is not clear whether investigators will also seek to question Mr. Pence in the matter of Mr. Trump’s handling of classified material, or what he could have to share that would be relevant. Mr. Pence’s advisers recently alerted the Justice Department that he had found some documents with classified markings at his home in Indiana, after conducting a search following the discovery of classified documents at President Biden’s home in Delaware and at a think tank office he used in Washington.Justice Department officials have signaled that they plan a more thorough search of Mr. Pence’s home.The subpoena from Mr. Smith comes at a moment of rising tension between the Pence team and the Justice Department over the discussions about searching the former vice president’s home..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% - 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(--color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(--color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(--color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(--color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Lawyers with the department’s national security division have been discussing the details of a possible agreement to search Mr. Pence’s house in Indiana for additional government documents on a parallel track; Mr. Pence’s advisers were incensed by the disclosure of a pending search last week and blamed the department for leaking details to pressure them.Another former Trump administration official, the final national security adviser, Robert C. O’Brien, has received a subpoena in connection with the handling of the documents found to be in Mr. Trump’s possession, according to a person familiar with the matter.But Mr. Pence figures most centrally in the inquiry into Mr. Trump’s efforts to use the government to remain in power. Mr. Trump seized on Mr. Pence’s ceremonial role in overseeing the congressional certification of the Electoral College results to try to press his vice president into blocking or delaying the outcome on Jan. 6.Mr. Pence refused, a fact highlighted publicly by Mr. Trump as he stirred up a crowd of supporters that day before they marched to the Capitol and breached it. Some of the rioters chanted, “Hang Mike Pence.”Mr. Pence described some of his ordeal in his recently published book, “So Help Me God.”Mr. Trump has frequently tried to assert executive privilege when officials have sought testimony from people who worked for him in the White House. He has generally been unsuccessful, but those battles over which matters privilege covers have slowed some of the investigations.That included when two top aides to Mr. Pence — his former chief of staff, Marc Short, and his former counsel, Greg Jacob — were subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury.Mr. Pence is being represented by Emmet T. Flood, a veteran lawyer who was the lead official in the White House Counsel’s Office under Mr. Trump dealing with the special counsel investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign conspired with Russian officials, and whether the former president obstructed justice.Mr. Pence is a potential rival to Mr. Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Mr. Trump is so far the only declared candidate in that race. And Mr. Biden, who is also the subject of a recently named special counsel looking into the documents found at his home and the Penn Biden Center, is widely expected to declare another presidential campaign for a second term.Mr. Smith has vowed to expedite the investigation into Mr. Trump, and has moved to consolidate and focus what was seen inside the department as a sprawling inquiry into Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election and the Jan. 6 attack, according to people familiar with the situation.That has intensified in recent weeks, as Mr. Smith’s staff — led by Thomas Windom, a veteran prosecutor who had been working out of the office of the U.S. attorney in Washington — has pored through hundreds of witness transcripts turned over by the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack.
- [Nationally Recognized Businesswoman, Attorney, and Social Justice Advocate, Sadiqa N ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/09/nationally-recognized-businesswoman-attorney-and-social-justice-advocate-sadiqa-n/) - Reynolds will focus on expanding Perception Institute's cutting-edge research and advancing real solutions to reduce bias and discrimination and promote belonging where needed most.NEW YORK, Feb. 8, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Perception Institute announced the appointment of Sadiqa N. Reynolds as CEO to lead its consortium of researchers and strategists to implement mind science solutions in sectors where bias does the most harm, such as schools, workplaces, hospitals, the justice system and the media. Perception uses data to translate its findings into practical interventions and develop strategies to disrupt the cycle of bias and harm.Sadiqa Reynolds, new CEO of Perception InstituteReynolds is known for building and scaling. She plans to use her talents and expertise to test solutions to seemingly intractable problems and bring them to scale. The results will transform the lives of those most affected by bias more efficiently.Reynolds most recently served as the CEO for the Urban League in Louisville, Kentucky, making her the first woman to hold that title in the affiliate's 102-year history. During her leadership, she built partnerships with a diverse group of stakeholders, increased the budget from $2 million to $17 million and became recognized as a national civil rights leader. Reynolds was a prominent leader on the front lines in her community following the largely publicized killing of Breonna Taylor."In the systems that matter so much to people's lives — education, justice, health, housing markets, and the media — Perception has been developing interventions that can result in real change. This is the time to bring Perception's work to scale, and Sadiqa brings unparalleled leadership skills and institution-building capacity to make that happen," shares Rachel Godsil, co-founder and interim director of Perception Institute.Since its inception, Perception Institute has been a leading force in translating complex research on identity differences to design workshops and cultural products that advocate for systemic and societal remedies to discrimination. Reynolds, a former criminal defense attorney and judge, has seen firsthand the injustices and inequities that predominantly impact people of color."My career has been built on work that centers and addresses the social injustices and racial inequities that plague our country. I've been both in the boardroom leading initiatives that positively impact communities of color as well as in the streets protesting the senseless murders of innocent Black lives at the hands of law enforcement," said Reynolds. "I'm excited to continue this work at an organization that firmly embodies a strong approach to shifting mindsets and uncovering solutions that will create the change this country so direly needs."Reynolds has assumed the CEO role as the Perception Institute underscores the essential role research has on addressing topics of social equity and purpose."Sadiqa Reynolds is a rare talent, and the Institute is fortunate to have her on board," said Board Chair john a. powell. "She has a proven track record of scaling impactful work and advancing systems change on behalf of those who need it most. Given the needs at the national and global level for the critical research and change work the Institute performs, we welcome the scale and possibility offered by her leadership."To learn more about Reynolds, visit the Perception website.About Perception InstitutePerception Institute is a consortium of researchers, advocates and strategists who translate cutting-edge mind science research on race, gender, ethnic and other identities into solutions that reduce bias and discrimination and promote belonging. CisionView original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nationally-recognized-businesswoman-attorney-and-social-justice-advocate-sadiqa-n-reynolds-new-ceo-of-perception-institute-301742378.htmlSOURCE Perception Institute
- [Memphis's Elite Scorpion Unit Killed Tyre Nichols. There Are Dozens More Like ... - Business Insider](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/10/memphiss-elite-scorpion-unit-killed-tyre-nichols-there-are-dozens-more-like-business-insider/) - Redeem now They went by different names.Red Dog. CRASH. The Gun Trace Task Force. Street Crime Unit. The Special Operations Section. The "Death Squad." The Place-Based Investigations Unit.Scorpion. But the specialized "street crime" squads, created in police departments around the country in response to rising rates of homicide and drug- and gun-related crimes, share a pattern of abuse.The outgrowth of decades of popular policing theories that advocate concentrating attention on high-crime areas, "street crime" squads in practice tend to focus on drugs, guns, or gangs – typically in lower-income neighborhoods with fewer white residents. Their aggressive tactics are so notorious – and so similar – that in many cities they're known as "jump-out boys" for the way officers spill out of their cars to accost people during stops. In Chicago, such units have contributed to residents seeing the police as "an occupying force" that make some neighborhoods feel like "an open-air prison," the Department of Justice found in 2017."They patrol our streets like they are the dog catchers and we are the dogs," one Chicago resident told investigators.The proliferation of these "street crime" squads is under renewed scrutiny after five members of Memphis's Scorpion unit were charged earlier this year with beating 29-year-old Tyre Nichols to death in what should have been a routine traffic stop."What we've seen this month in Memphis and for many years in many places, is that the behavior of these units can morph into 'wolf pack' misconduct," Ben Crump, an attorney for Nichols' family, which is suing the city, wrote in an open letter to the city of Memphis last month. "The 'why' of Tyre Nichols's death is found in this policing culture itself."Insider's review of nearly two dozen units established to target neighborhoods police viewed as high-crime zones found repeated complaints of abuse, discrimination, criminal violence, and corruption. Oftentimes, these units have been disbanded after egregious incidents, including the use of deadly force, only to be reconstituted months or years later under a different name when they become politically popular again. Specialized units have been connected to some of the most high-profile and flagrant cases of police brutality of the last 30 years, including the killings of Breonna Taylor, Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, and Eric Garner. "There are umpteen examples of this turning into a nightmare. These elite units are going off the rails," said Peter Kraska, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University who has written extensively about police militarization. "It happens so often that you have to conclude this is a flawed model." A woman leaves a flower during a vigil on the day of the release of a video showing the Memphis police beating of Tyre Nichols. Brian Snyder/Reuters Tyre Nichols and the Memphis Scorpion unit On the evening of January 7, members of the Memphis police department stopped Tyre Nichols in the middle of a six-lane road on the outskirts of the city for what they alleged was reckless driving. It was dark. A group of officers, screaming obscenities, yanked him from his car and forced him to lay on the ground. One member of the unit used pepper spray, hitting Nichols and some of the other officers. Nichols broke free and ran down a nearby street."I hope they stomp his ass," one of the pepper-sprayed officers, who stayed behind at the scene of the stop, is heard saying on body-camera footage.About eight minutes later, officers found Nichols a half-mile away. Officers shook him, sprayed him with pepper spray, and kicked him in the head, footage released by the city shows. As Nichols staggered, moaning incoherently, some officers held him upright while others punched him in the head.After several minutes, officers handcuffed Nichols and leaned him against a car. In the roughly 20 minutes before he was loaded into an ambulance, Nichols was mostly silent and motionless. Nichols, who family members described as a free spirit skateboarder and photographer with his mom's name tattooed on his arm, died three days later. State police investigators said he died from injuries sustained during the "use-of-force incident with officers." Memphis police officers Demetrius Haley, Tadarrius Dean, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin., and Desmond Mills Jr. are now facing murder charges. Memphis Police Department Memphis launched Scorpion in fall 2021, with four teams of 10 officers each directed to focus on violent crime. Memphis clocked more than 300 murders that year and 290 in 2020, far more than in the years before the pandemic. Only a few months after forming Scorpion, Mayor Jim Strickland was already boasting that the unit was helping turn the tide."Since its inception last October through January 23, 2022, the Scorpion Unit has had a total of 566 arrests — 390 of them felony arrests," he said. "They have seized over $103,000 in cash, 270 vehicles, and 253 weapons."Memphis police chief Cerelyn Davis disbanded the unit in the wake of Nichols' homicide.The contours of Nichols's death resonate with New Yorkers who recall the era of stop-and-frisk, with Atlantans who remember the heyday of the Red Dog unit, with Baltimore residents scarred by the abuses of the Gun Trace Task Force – and with residents of dozens of other major cities that have established elite, aggressive units dedicated to targeting specific neighborhoods where police believe crime proliferates.An elite squad's mistakes led to Breonna Taylor's deathLouisville, Kentucky's Place-Based Investigations unit was supposed to help police eliminate some of the most persistent violent crime in the city. Tasked with going after drugs and guns, the unit, founded in 2019, was disbanded fewer than six months later after a botched police raid killed 26-year-old emergency medical technician Breonna Taylor. The unit's very first mission was targeting suspected drug dealing on Elliott Avenue, miles from Taylor's home. But the scope of its investigation rapidly broadened to include Taylor, who police erroneously suspected of holding drugs on behalf of her ex-boyfriend. Plainclothes officers, acting on false information from the Place-Based Investigations Unit, broke into Taylor's home with a battering ram, failing to knock and announce their presence as their warrant required. Inside, Taylor's boyfriend, who later told police he thought an intruder was trying to break in, shot one officer in the thigh. Police opened fire on the couple, killing Taylor.Later, in a plea agreement, one of the members of the Place-Based Investigations unit would admit that she and other officers based the justification for the warrant to search Taylor's home not on evidence, but on a "gut belief." Taylor's death helped spur the swell of nationwide protests against police brutality in the summer of 2020.The story behind the creation of the Place-Based Investigations Unit shows how well-intentioned academic researchers and ties to other police officers can help such squads proliferate around the country, Kraska, the Eastern Kentucky University professor, said. Investigation of the Chicago Police Department. United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney's Office Northern District of Illinois. January 13, 2017 United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney’s Office Northern District of Illinois The Louisville department had consulted with Tamara Herold, a former Cincinnati police officer turned University of Nevada Las Vegas criminologist, about a study that seemed to show that focusing an increased police presence on geographic areas with high levels of crime could lead to sustained crime reductions. Two years after Taylor's death, nine other cities had adopted the model, the Washington Post reported. Herold, who has said Taylor's death was a "horrific tragedy" but is "not a defining feature of this initiative," is still pitching it to police departments. "Hot-spots policing can be very effective. Cops count. When police are present, we can have a significant deterrent effect," Herold told the Police 1 podcast last month, acknowledging that if done poorly, the model can "strain police-community relationships." Herold did not respond to a request for comment. Memphis's Scorpion unit emerged a few years after a regional anti-crime group consulted with former New York City Police Department commissioner Ray Kelly on a strategy for tackling gang violence. Kelly is the architect of some of New York's most controversial policing strategies, including the creation of anti-crime units, and is a vocal advocate for stop-and-frisk.Reports from the private investigations firm K2 Intelligence, where Kelly then worked, recommended Memphis increase staffing levels in specialized units to fight street crime. By 2019, according to the Marshall Project, the city had done so. The New York Police Department directed officers to aggressively target suspicious activity in neighborhoods they viewed as high-crime areas. Here, officers frisk and arrest men in Harlem in 1995. Jon Naso/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images Memphis police chief Davis also has prior experience with special street crime units. Davis, who took the reins of the Memphis PD in 2021, previously led the force in Durham, North Carolina. Before that, she rose through the ranks in Atlanta, including a stint leading a unit of the so-called Red Dogs, an Atlanta street-crime squad that was disbanded in the face of abuse allegations and lawsuits.Elite police units are magnets for scandal Virtually every big city has had an elite unit that's been broken up after leaders concluded that it went too far. Atlanta public safety commissioner George Napper created the Red Dog unit in 1987, at a time when Atlanta was dealing with a surge in crack cocaine use. Its name comes from a football play, but was later claimed to be an acronym for "Run Every Drug Dealer Out of Georgia." An article in the Atlanta Constitution from its first year describes how the team would descend on reports of drug activity, make arrests, and seize drugs and cash."When the squad sweeps an area, anyone moving, especially young, black males, is told to hit the ground, hands behind his head, face down," the newspaper said. "Police officials admit the squad does little to reduce the flow of drugs into the city or the demand for them, but Mr. Napper said even what little the squad can do is important."Two decades later, though, the concerns about the unit's methods and effectiveness that had been raised from the start came to a head. The unit was abolished in 2011 after a raid on the Eagle, a gay bar, whose patrons and employees filed lawsuits claiming that police illegally detained them and used homophobic slurs while they lay handcuffed on the barroom floor. The city ended up paying more than $1 million in settlements. Investigation of the Chicago Police Department. United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney's Office Northern District of Illinois. January 13, 2017 United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney’s Office Northern District of Illinois Decades before Atlanta ended its elite unit operations, Detroit scrapped its "Stress" anti-robbery squad in the 1970s after its members shot dozens of rounds into an apartment where off-duty Wayne County deputies were playing poker, killing two. Chicago disbanded its Special Operations Section in 2007 amid a wide-ranging corruption scandal. Prosecutors ultimately charged 13 of its members with breaking into homes to rob residents and conducting illegal traffic stops to shake down drivers. Eleven pleaded guilty and two went to prison, including one who admitted to ordering a hit on a fellow officer he believed was collaborating with the federal investigation. The Los Angeles Police Department's robbery-focused Special Investigations Section was embroiled in so many shootouts that it was branded the "death squad." And its CRASH team was broken up in 2000 after a member — who had been caught stealing cocaine from the evidence locker and replacing it with Bisquick pancake mix — flipped on his colleagues in what became known as the Rampart scandal.More recently, in Baltimore, all eight members of the Gun Trace Task Force were charged in 2017 and convicted of crimes including robbing drug dealers, stealing cash and filing bogus overtime claims. And in 2021, Springfield, Massachusetts responded to a Justice Department report about abuses by its narcotics bureau by shifting the team's focus to firearms.Police chiefs say elite teams are popular and effectiveMany police leaders and criminologists say specialized units do work that other officers can't. Uniformed officers conducting patrols or responding to 911 calls don't have the time or tools to surveil gangs and gather information on the flow of drugs and guns, they say, and it takes dedicated officers to take criminal networks down. Tyre Nichols's death is far from the only instance where what should have been a routine traffic stop turned violent. In May 2020, Atlanta police threatened college student Messiah Young with a handgun before arresting Young and his passenger. The officers were fired. This photo is a still pulled from body camera footage. Associated Press The units can also be politically popular. "Police departments say these units are created in response to community demand for specialized policing," said Jorge Camacho, a former New York prosecutor now with Yale Law School.The Los Angeles Police Department's robbery-focused Special Investigations Section was embroiled in so many shootouts that it was branded the "death squad." And its CRASH team was broken up in 2000 after a member — who had been caught stealing cocaine from the evidence locker and replacing it with Bisquick pancake mix — flipped on his colleagues in what became known as the Rampart scandal.Meanwhile, police chiefs contend they are essential to fighting crime."It works. They make a lot of good cases, a lot of good arrests. Put a lot of bad people away to help solve the issue," Florida's Orange County Sheriff John W. Mina, who previously led the Orlando Police Department, told CNN last year. Street crime squads are popular among politicians who say only aggressive policing will reduce violent crime. New York Mayor Eric Adams reintroduced the city's controversial street crime units last year. Here, Adams points to a chart of gun violence he said shows his policies are working. Spencer Platt/Getty Images The popularity of these units among some elected officials, criminologists, and law enforcement can sometimes shield them from scrutiny, allowing abusive practices and corruption to fester. Police leaders had been receiving complaints about the Gun Trace Task Force for years before it was disbanded in 2017, The Baltimore Sun reported, including a 2015 tip from a local reporter that the task force's leader, Wayne Jenkins, was robbing people. Until his arrest on racketeering charges in 2017, Jenkins was widely considered "a rising talent," the Sun wrote, "with an uncanny knack for delivering the goods."There's not a clear explanation for why so many elite units go bad. In interviews with Insider, experts suggested that a confluence of mission overreach, militarized training, inadequate supervision, racism, and other factors could be to blame. Investigation of the Baltimore City Police Department. U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. August 10, 2016 U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division A recent report from the Police Executive Research Forum, a law enforcement think tank, castigated U.S. police academies' "paramilitary approach" to training for prompting police officers to view community members "as the enemy." Geoff Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina, said lowering the ratio of officers to supervisors within elite units could begin to address some of their issues."When you have these young, aggressive, proactive cops all together, with no controls, what do you think is going to happen?" Alpert said. "These units need more supervision, more control."Camacho said that part of the problem is that when all police have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."You have a bunch of officers with a mandate to look at homicide," he said, prompting them to be "hyper-vigilant." "They view anything as an indicator of violent crime," he added, "and respond accordingly.""There is no hunting like the hunting of man"Even after decades of elite units being shut down over abuses, cities have continually found ways to resurrect them. In New York, one notorious police unit has twice been disbanded only to come back from the dead.The cyclical saga of the Street Crime Unit is a prime example of how even after egregious incidents, such squads are often reconstituted under a different name, even as their mission and tactics remain the same.Established in 1971, by the late 1990s, the NYPD's Street Crime Unit was "known as the commandos" of the department, "an elite squad of nearly 400 officers," a New York Times reporter wrote in 1999, "dispatched into menacing neighborhoods each night to chase down rapists, muggers and dangerous fugitives, and above all, to get illegal guns off the streets."They wore t-shirts with a Hemingway quote: "Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter." Former NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly, shown here leaving a press conference after a federal judge ruled the department's use of stop-and-frisk unconstitutional, later consulted on the formation of Memphis's Scorpion squad. Andrew Burton/Getty Images The unit made up less than 2% of the force but seized 40% of the illegal guns confiscated by the NYPD. In the late 1990s, the Street Crime Unit tripled in size, amid a panic over a rising number of homicides. Then-mayor Rudy Giuliani preached a "broken windows" policing doctrine that advocated zero tolerance toward even minor offenses.In a city grappling with violent crime, authorities touted the Street Crime Unit as a bright spot. "I wish I could bottle their enthusiasm and make everyone take a drink of it," then-NYPD commissioner Howard Safir told the New York Daily News in 1998. But on February 4, 1999, four members of the Street Crime Unit fired 41 bullets at 23-year-old Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo while he was standing in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment building, after the officers said he reached into his pocket as if to draw a firearm. Diallo was unarmed and reaching for his wallet, multiple investigations into his killing later found. The officers were acquitted of criminal charges and temporarily reassigned to desk duty.The police killing sparked a maelstrom of accusations that the Street Crime Unit's pervasive violence, particularly against poor, Black and brown New Yorkers, had gone ignored for years. Investigation of the Springfield, Massachusetts Police Department's Narcotics Bureau. United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney's Office District of Massachusetts. July 8, 2020 United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney’s Office District of Massachusetts Uproar over Diallo's death — and a class-action lawsuit challenging the department's use of stop-and-frisks, which plaintiffs said was a form of illegal racial profiling — forced the NYPD to disband the Street Crime Unit in 2002.In spirit, though, the Street Crime Unit continued. Many of its officers were absorbed into new plainclothes units, called anti-crime units, that were charged with the same mission of preventing violent crime. And their tactics spread: NYPD officers made more stop-and-frisks in the early 2000s than they had in the 1990s, a second class-action lawsuit, filed in 2008, alleged. The ranks of anti-crime units grew to nearly 600 officers by 2020. "The problem on a most basic, fundamental level is that the leadership of most departments does not want to deal with the Constitution," New York civil rights attorney Jonathan Moore, who sued the city over stop-and-frisk, told Insider.The purpose of stopping so many New Yorkers for patdowns was explicitly racial, then-state senator Eric Adams testified in federal court in 2013. An analysis by The Intercept found that plainclothes officers, including members of the anti-crime units, were responsible for or involved in 31% of police shootings since 2000, despite composing only 2% of the police force. The anti-crime units were involved in notorious police killings, including the fatal 2018 shooting of Saheed Vassell, a mentally ill man, in Brooklyn; the fatal 2006 shooting of Sean Bell; and, in 2014, the death by suffocation of Eric Garner, whose last words, "I can't breathe," have become an emblem of protests against police brutality. Amid the racial justice protests in the summer of 2020, another police commissioner decided to shut down the units. The NYPD "can move away from brute force," then-commissioner Dermot Shea said at the time.But less than two years later, now-Mayor Adams brought back the controversial squads, this time rebranded Neighborhood Safety Teams, amid a panic over rising crime rates and a deadly attack in 2022 on two police officers. A member of Chicago's Special Operations Squad making an arrest in 2005, two years before the unit was broken up amid allegations of corruption. Ralf-Finn Hestoft/Corbis via Getty Images Adams promised not to repeat the mistakes of the past. But he also said the squads were necessary in order to disrupt "the flow of guns in our cities."Their early record has not been promising. Most of the arrests made by the Neighborhood Safety Teams have nothing to do with guns, City & State reported. The most frequent type of arrest their officers have made is for possession of a fake ID.Elite police squads get rebranded after controversies New York is far from the only place where notorious squads have been disbanded and reformed. The New Haven Police Department dissolved its Street Interdiction Squad in 2007 amid a theft and bribery scandal, then reconstituted it two years later. Miami resurrected its Street Narcotics Unit under a new moniker, but was forced to dissolve it in 2013 under fire from the Department of Justice, which partially blamed it for a spate of police shootings. Experts say cities that stand up street crimes units risk replacing one kind of violence with another. Such units bring "a new level of aggression and threat to the community," said Maurice Hobson, a professor at Georgia State University who has written a book about Atlanta's Red Dog unit. After Atlanta shut the unit down, the city also created a new specialist team to take its place: the APEX unit. (In 2021, the unit was rebranded as the Titan unit.) "From people in the community, the only change when the APEX unit came out was they changed their uniforms," said Tiffany Roberts, the policy director for the Southern Center for Human Rights. The death of Tyre Nichols has prompted others to come forward with claims of mistreatment at the hands of the Scorpion unit. Maurice Chalmers-Stokes, 19, told Memphis media that he was thrown into a fence last fall by a group of officers, including one of the cops accused of killing Nichols. He is suing the city, and fighting charges for possessing a stolen gun that police say they found on him in that interaction.NPR reported that four of the five officers charged in Nichols's death, who had two to six years of experience, had been disciplined by the Memphis police. One of the officers, Demetrius Haley, was disciplined in 2021 for not reporting an incident where a colleague — who resigned — yanked a woman from a car and dislocated her shoulder.Haley was also named in a 2016 lawsuit filed by a plaintiff who said that Haley was one of the corrections officers who abused him at a Shelby County jail. The case was dismissed. Moore, who worked on the New York City stop-and-frisk case, said part of the issue with elite units is that some of them are stretched too thin. But he said no matter how many supervisors are on the job, street-crime teams often do what politicians and policymakers want them to do."Leadership does not want these officers to have their hands tied," he said. "They want them to go out and be aggressive." .content-lock-lock .hidden { display: none; }
- [How this west Louisville florist creates more than floral arrangements alongside his mom](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/09/how-this-west-louisville-florist-creates-more-than-floral-arrangements-alongside-his-mom/) - It's hard to have a bad day when you're surrounded by flowers.No matter what's going on in his life, a shift at the florist shop always helps settle Davin Anderson's mind."I didn't realize how much plants and roses and flowers can change your mindset," he said. "The aroma can make your day a little better. Sometimes I'd come in here sleepy or stressed about getting things done, and by the time I leave, I've forgotten all about it."After his mother's flower shop was forced to leave its previous space at the Gene Snyder Federal Building due to increased rent, Anderson helped her find a new location at 2001 W. Broadway five years ago. Now, he owns and operates DN Surprise Florist in the Russell neighborhood and its decorating and catering offshoots while he continues to learn flower arranging from his mother, Sherrell.And while it's just the two of them operating the business, Anderson has big goals for DN Surprise's future.DN Surprise — named for Davin and his brother Nicholas — sells a little bit of everything, from roses and lilies to hydrangeas and other flowers, in both real and silk flowers. Flowers are available for any type of occasion: birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, funerals and even "because it's Wednesday."You may like:What Louisville restaurants are open on Valentine's Day? 18+ dine-in and to-go optionsAnderson said along with "thank you" and "get well soon," he's seen people get more creative in recent years, sending flowers for all kinds of reasons, including "Hey, I might not make it to dinner tonight, but I'll see you at home.""COVID-19 taught people they have to be creative," he said. "Instead of calling to say I can't make it, someone would send some roses and say 'hey, at least I can put a smile on your face.'"The busiest holidays for Anderson are exactly what you'd expect: Valentine's Day and Mother's Day, followed by Memorial Day and Teacher's Appreciation Day."Valentine's Day is not just one day, it's more like Valentine's week," Anderson said. "It's high-intensity because people wait until the last minute to order. During Valentine's week, we get here at 7 or 8 a.m. to prepare the flowers, clean them, cut them, put them in fresh water, check online orders and phone orders. Then we have to make sure delivery orders have the right zip codes...then we send them out."You may like:An insider's guide to 20+ nice restaurants in Louisville for Valentine's DayAnderson said he does about a quarter of the arrangements and Sherrell does the rest. It's a lot more complex than it seems: there are a hundred kinds of roses alone, plus dozens of kinds of greenery and fillers for arrangements and color theory that works differently than it does with clothes."You really should order flowers for Valentine's Day two or three days in advance so we can have it ready," Anderson said."For Valentine's Day?" His mother chimed in. "It's better to order a week or two in advance. A lot of people forget and call on the same day. If you call same-day, you have about 50 people ahead of you. We try to get everything done as fast as we can."DN Surprise mainly sells roses for Valentine's Day and offers one dozen for $50, two dozen for $90 and a florist's choice for $45. The shop offers arrangements at a variety of prices and colors as well as a "Florist's Choice" arrangement if you don't know what you want.
- [Max Wise's bill to curb 'woke agenda' sparks plea for compassion from Senate colleague](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/09/max-wises-bill-to-curb-woke-agenda-sparks-plea-for-compassion-from-senate-colleague/) - FRANKFORT, Ky. — Republican Kelly Craft’s running mate in the Kentucky governor’s race took her anti-woke crusade to the Senate floor Wednesday, drawing a plea from a colleague to “avoid politicizing issues that are literally killing our children.” Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, begged her colleagues to think about “who you’re putting in the center of this fight.” Berg’s son, who was transgender, committed suicide in December. Berg spoke after Wise, R-Campbellsville, criticized what he called the “woke agenda” in the Kentucky Department of Education and its recent guidance on how to support LGBTQI+ students and their families. His remarks garnered some applause. Wise introduced Senate Bill 150 which, among other things, would ban any Education Department guidance on students’ preferred names. A news release from the Senate majority office said SB 150 “provides staff and students First Amendment protections by ensuring nobody is compelled or required to use pronouns that do not conform to a student’s biological sex.” On the Senate floor, Wise said, “Now these may seem like very simple ideas, but in a day and age where our own commissioner of education says that a teacher can be fired for not referring to a student as a furry, it’s much needed legislation in today’s time.” Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, comments on a COVID-19 issue before the General Assembly in February 2022. (Legislative Research Commission photo) Questioned later by reporters, Wise said he had been speaking hypothetically and had no knowledge of Education Commissioner Jason E. Glass ever saying anything about a furry. According to Wikipedia, furry fandom is a subculture interested in anthropomorphic animal characters. Glass issued a statement later Wednesday, saying: “Sen. Wise’s statement is false and ridiculous. It is hurtful statements like these that have a negative impact on not just our students, but our educator workforce. Putting forth policies aimed at cruelty and harm toward marginalized groups has no place in our democracy.” If passed into law, Wise’s bill would prohibit the Department of Education and state Board of Education from “recommending or requiring policies to keep minor students’ information confidential from their parents,” the Senate majority news release said. A school district would have to notify parents about the health and mental health services students are offered or seek at school. School districts would also be required to give parents a two-week notice about instruction or school courses on human sexuality as well as an opportunity to review accompanying materials. If parents disapprove of an assignment, the bill would require that an alternative assignment be given to the student. Berg asserted that teachers would be uncomfortable telling parents a child is gay or trans if the parents were unaware, in part because of concerns for the child’s safety. She suggested that disrespecting students’ name preferences could be a form of bullying and warned against “putting children in the middle of a political fight between some ostensible right and some ostensible woke culture when most of us are simply trying to do the best for the most.” Sen. Max Wise, R-Campbellsville, speaks to the Senate in January 2022. (Legislative Research Commission photo) Berg’s son, Henry Berg-Bousseau, 24, died by suicide in December. He had recently been promoted at the Human Rights Campaign, a nationwide LGBTQ advocacy and lobbying organization, and worked with the statewide LGBTQ rights advocacy group Fairness Campaign as a high school student. At the time, Sen. Berg issued a statement saying, in part, “As a mother of a transgender son, I gave my whole heart trying to protect my child from a world where some people and especially some politicians intentionally continued to believe that marginalizing my child was OK simply because of who he was.” Wise, who was chairman of the Senate Education Committee from 2019 until recently, told reporters that the bill is not targeting a certain lifestyle but is about “empowering parents.” “Our schools should be focused on teaching students math, science, history, life skills, and leave it to the parents to engage their children with deeply personal discussions about their lives, but do it at home,” said Wise. Wise’s bill and remarks come days after gubernatorial candidate Craft vowed to dismantle the Department of Education and the Kentucky Board of Education. In a statement, she accused both of “pushing woke agendas in our schools.” Kentucky Department of Education spokesperson Toni Konz Tatman in an email said: “In Commissioner’s Glass’ testimony to the House Education Committee on Tuesday, he stated if a teacher could not follow a district’s guidelines, they should find employment elsewhere. This is the same advice that applies to any employee in any industry. “The Kentucky Department of Education does not have authority to set curriculum, select instructional materials or mandate guidelines for how districts respond to students who are LGBTQI+, but we are aware that these are situations facing schools and educators on a daily basis. “It is necessary that the department be able to provide ongoing support and guidance to all Kentucky school districts as they face situations that are unique to their local context. “The guidance produced by KDE gives administrators and educators information to consider when a district is devising its own policy, but this is guidance only. KDE’s guidance on this issue is rooted in evidence-based best practices, which are cited directly in the document and is designed to promote the health and safety of all students.” Tatman provide a link to the KDE guidance. Liam Niemeyer contributed to this report. This article is republished under a Creative Commons license from Kentucky Lantern, which is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: info@kentuckylantern.com. Follow Kentucky Lantern on Facebook and Twitter.
- [Tarrant County officials announce efforts to fight voter fraud, even as election crimes remain rare](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/08/tarrant-county-officials-announce-efforts-to-fight-voter-fraud-even-as-election-crimes-remain-rare/) - Three top Tarrant County officials say they want to make it easier for the public to report voter fraud, although such fraud is rare, and the local elections office has been praised by the state for its quality and transparency.County Judge Tim O’Hare, District Attorney Phil Sorrells and Sheriff Bill Waybourn, all Republicans, announced the creation of the Election Integrity Task Force on Wednesday afternoon in the sheriff’s downtown Fort Worth office.This effort will not require any new hires and will have “little to no budgetary impact,” according to a press release. The task force will be made up of existing staff who will not work on voter fraud cases full time. They'll still have other investigative duties.Waybourn declined to share the number of investigators who will be assigned to the task force. The difference is that they'll be directed to prioritize voter fraud cases when they come in, he said.“We’re out to find the truth. And if that clears people, we want to clear them as well,” Waybourn said.A state audit of the 2020 election in Tarrant County found that the local elections office runs a “quality, transparent election.” There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Tarrant County or elsewhere in the country, but conspiracy theories about voting and elections remain persistent, particularly among Republicans.The task force isn’t born from any concern that past elections were invalid, said Tarrant County District Attorney Phil Sorrells."There are quite a few people that have some concerns, and we want to prove them either right or wrong," Sorrells said.There are four voting-related cases pending in Tarrant County, Sorrells said. Those are all from 2018. There are no cases related to the 2020 or 2022 elections, he said.Voter fraud cases used to get kicked up to the state attorney general’s office, Waybourn said. But the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled in September that Attorney General Ken Paxton doesn’t have full authority over election crimes, directing the responsibility back to county DAs, the Texas Tribune reported.There will also be a hotline and email that voters can contact directly with election integrity issues, the officials said. The phone number provided on a press release, 817-884-1213, is the same one listed online as the non-emergency line for the whole sheriff’s department.This announcement is an effort to deter voter fraud, even if it’s rare, O’Hare said."I don't think any of us are sitting here telling you that we know we're going to get thousands of arrests and indictments and convictions,” he said. “There has not really been in the past a central place for people to go or they didn't know where to go."A notable absence from the press conference: Heider Garcia, the person in charge of running Tarrant County elections. Waybourn, Sorrells and O’Hare said they did not consult with Garcia or any other officials about the election integrity task force.As elections administrator, Garcia has endured death threats and racist attacks as far-right news outlets peddled conspiracy theories about him and the elections process in Tarrant County. He wrote in to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in 2022, asking for better protections for election workers across the country. He shared screenshots of some of the threats he and his family received after former president Donald Trump lost Tarrant County during the 2020 presidential election.“Go find this guy, he needs some new teeth,” one social media poster said about him.“[Expletive] needs a traditional Irish dirt nap,” said another.Someone else shared Garcia’s home address on Twitter.The threat level was still high as of last year, Garcia wrote in his letter.“We have spent 18 months turning this office inside out, sharing public records, welcoming watchers, participating in public events, and providing answers to the public,” Garcia wrote. “Still, there are those who prefer to believe that ‘there has to be something wrong.’”While he was receiving death threats, the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office “was fantastic at coordinating support and patrol around our neighborhood,” Garcia wrote.KERA reached out to Garcia for comment but did not hear back by this story’s deadline.When asked if the election integrity task force, and the act of soliciting reports from the public, might contribute to the attacks and scrutiny on election workers, O’Hare said everyone should have an interest in free and fair elections."The idea that this somehow is voter intimidation, who would we be intimidating? People that are cheating? People that are committing crimes?” O’Hare said. “Well, we want to intimidate them, and we want to find them, prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law, and let them know that that's not going to happen here in Tarrant County.”O’Hare ran for office on a promise to prioritize election integrity, but on Wednesday he walked back the original proposal he set forward in his campaign. He originally wanted to create the position of an “election integrity officer,” who would be “responsible for overseeing election processes” and uncovering election fraud. This task force will perform the same responsibilities as an election integrity officer, O'Hare said. To combat Election Fraud in Tarrant County, I’ve proposed a new position: Election Integrity Officer. This person will report to the Sheriff, County Judge and a County Commissioner. They will review election processes, make recommendations and seek to find Voter Fraud. pic.twitter.com/PL936bOys1— Tim O'Hare (@TimothyOHare) October 25, 2021 People in Tarrant County have been prosecuted for election-related crimes before. In 2018, Justice of the Peace Russ Casey pleaded guilty to tampering with a government record after he faked signatures on his petition to get on the ballot, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.Crystal Mason was convicted of illegal voting and sentenced to five years in prison. She submitted a provisional ballot in the 2016 election, while she was on supervised release for a federal crime, according to the Texas Tribune. Her controversial case has gained national attention, because Mason maintains she did not know she was ineligible to vote, and a poll worker told her to fill out that provisional ballot. The highest criminal court in the state ruled last year that her conviction must be reconsidered.Got a tip? Email Miranda Suarez at msuarez@kera.org. You can follow Miranda on Twitter @MirandaRSuarez.KERA News is made possible through the generosity of our members. If you find this reporting valuable, consider making a tax-deductible gift today. Thank you.
- [Charges against Trump in Georgia over 2020 election could lead to bigger federal case](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/08/charges-against-trump-in-georgia-over-2020-election-could-lead-to-bigger-federal-case/) - WASHINGTON — The first major criminal charges that Donald Trump could face for interfering in the 2020 election might come from Atlanta — and what happens in Georgia isn’t expected to stay in Georgia. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said her decision is “imminent” on whether to indict the former president, which would make him the first U.S. president charged with a crime. That… Premium Content is available to subscribers only. Please login here to access content or go here to purchase a subscription.
- [Black volunteers passing out water at 2020 Albany voting site cleared of wrongdoing](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/08/black-volunteers-passing-out-water-at-2020-albany-voting-site-cleared-of-wrongdoing/) - Black volunteers passing out water at 2020 Albany voting site cleared of wrongdoing | Georgia Public Broadcasting
- [Audit finds 584 absentee ballots were not recorded in 2020 election in Smith County - KLTV](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/09/audit-finds-584-absentee-ballots-were-not-recorded-in-2020-election-in-smith-county-kltv/) - TYLER, Texas (KLTV) - A review of the 2020 General Election in Smith County reveals 584 absentee ballots were not counted. On Tuesday, the Smith County Commissioners Court heard from Grassroots America: We The People PAC, which launched the audit along with Texas Voter Verification.“Smith County has a slogan of striving for excellence. This was not excellent,” said JoAnn Fleming, executive director of Grassroots America: We The People.Speaking before the court, Fleming said the review found “numerous election integrity issues” under the county’s previous elections administrator. While Fleming’s group is a constitutional conservative organization, she said the audit was non-partisan and did not consider voters’ political affiliations.Among the most notable issues found in their review:Voters list errors and incorrect ballots due to erroneous GIS coding for some votersAbsentee ballot handling and storage problemsMissing control logs“Sloppy” election record filing and storage problemsIssues raised in post-election voters canvassingVote and voter count discrepanciesThe review focused on absentee records, which were made available to their team. In-person records were not available, according to Fleming.Among the things they found: five different totals for absentee ballots.The audit revealed varying absentee ballot counts.(KLTV)“That wide range of vote totals would cause a reasonable person to ask a simple question,” Fleming said. “Why?”Further analysis revealed there were 584 more absentee voters than ballots accounted for. The report states approximately 6.6% of all absentee voters were likely disenfranchised.“That should appall and even make everyone in this room angry,” Fleming said.The audit found there were 584 more absentee voters than ballots.(KLTV)The audit shows seven Smith County races were within the 584-vote margin of error. They include council races in Overton and Tyler and propositional elections in Lindale and Troup.Elections within the 584-vote margin of error in Smith County.(Blake Holland/KLTV)The report also reveals the discovery of four “questionable” manual ballot envelopes, which the group believes were processed and fraudulently counted.In addition to the report, the PAC also aimed to show the human impact through testimonials from people like Donna Ziober, whose late husband filled out an absentee ballot from a nursing home.“I went inside the post office,” she said. “I dropped it in the slot and said a prayer. I said ‘oh, please get there.’”Ziober said voter records did not reflect her husband’s vote.“When I left his room that day, he said, ‘oh, honey, please make my vote count.’ It didn’t count.”Since 2020, Smith County has hired Michelle Allcon as elections administrator. While addressing the court on Tuesday morning, Allcon said changes had already been made to correct the previous administration’s problems before this review was conducted.“The underlying issue with what we saw really appeared to be a lack of interest on the part of the staff,” Allcon said. “It’s like they didn’t care.”Allcon said election workers employed during the 2020 election are no longer with her office. She also expressed intent to request two additional employees for her office.“If there was fraud and disenfranchisement, then you should know immediately,” Allcon said. “And if there wasn’t, the appearance of the same is just as bad to an election and the belief on the voter’s competence of the election and of the county. That’s just as bad of a result.”A similar audit is expected to be conducted for the 2022 November election to see if things have improved.“Someone said earlier that this is not a partisan issue. I think they’re right,” said John Moore, Pct. 2 commissioner. “This is one of the few things that’s not a partisan issue. We all want and have to have our votes counted.”Copyright 2023 KLTV. All rights reserved.
- [Trump Charges in GA Over 2020 Election Could Lead to Bigger Fed Case - Bloomberg](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/09/trump-charges-in-ga-over-2020-election-could-lead-to-bigger-fed-case-bloomberg/)
- [Commissioners court hears concerns regarding integrity of 2020 presidential election](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/09/commissioners-court-hears-concerns-regarding-integrity-of-2020-presidential-election/) - Concerned citizens appeared before Smith County’s Commissioners Court on Tuesday morning to express their feelings about what they allege was a lack of voter integrity regarding the 2020 presidential election.“There was a lot of inconsistency,” said JoAnne Fleming, executive director of Grassroots America We The People.Fleming cited issues that were found after an extensive investigation launched in May by Grassroots and Texas Voter Verification. After interviewing voters in the county and reviewing results and records, findings revealed chain of command issues, inaccurate or missing logs, and improper procedures. #placement_588494_0_i{width:100%;margin:0 auto;}“You know and I know that there’s been a lot of ridicule levied against people who question election results,” Fleming said. “Well, it is unfair. It is a low point of intellectual integrity to make comments on something about which you don’t know the facts.”Fleming said the investigation was a fact-finding mission to help the county, and noted that the county had ‘numerous issues with elections’ prior to Michelle Allcon coming on board as election administrator in June 2021. She thanked Allcon for her work in establishing accountability and transparency in the elections office during her tenure so far.“I will say we are happy with the progress that has been made,” she said. “However, it does not in any way… excuse the mistakes, the slipshod way in which elections have been handled in this county in the past.”Fleming said this is not a partisan issue.“I don’t care if someone is a member of the Democrat party, the Republican Party, the Green Party, [or] the Neptune Party. If you are legal, if you are an American citizen and you are legally eligible to vote in these United States, your vote should count,” Fleming said. She asked how many votes it would take to take away that right: “Just one.”Fleming summarized the issues with records management and chain of control of the 2020 election process in the county, stating that the review showed provisional ballots, military overseas ballots logs were missing, incomplete, missing and inaccurate.“The record boxes were an embarrassment,” she said. “Smith County has a slogan striving for excellence. This was not excellent.”Based on the investigation by the election integrity team, the county had 584 more absentee voters than absentee ballots.“That should appall, and even make angry, everyone in this room,” Fleming said to those gathered in the commissioners courtroom. “But it should compel us to make sure this never happens again.”Fleming said the team focused on absentee voters because of the physical paper records to audit. Fleming said the same problems existed with in-person voters, but the machine records were either unavailable or not auditable. ”Who knows the magnitude of those problems?” she said.Fleming said Smith County is not unique in seeing these discrepancies, but the county is in fact unique in one way: the government’s willingness to answer questions and cooperate amid the investigation. She said Grassroots and a statewide team are working with the legislature to fix these problems. She said the goal is to get the state to issue standardization for the election process for all 254 counties. Allcon said in May, Grassroots America and Texas Voter Verification informed Smith County of their intentions to review the 2020 presidential election on suspicions that votes were allegedly not counted.According to Allcon, Grassroots America interviewed hundreds of voters of different parties throughout the county then requested access to voter records, election records to confirm or discount the interviews conducted.“The records that were not sealed for preservation were reviewed in July, then the ones that were sealed for preservation were reviewed in September,” Allcon said.Allcon stated the review team found issues to residency, district assignments and “sloppy election record,” filing and storage, as well as missing records.Multiple residents spoke at the meeting to discuss how the review determined their votes did not count. Although she was not in the elections office at that time to know for a fact, Allcon said she believes it’s likely these ballots were counted, but not logged, “which means the voter has no way of knowing that their vote got counted.“According to Allcon, there were several issues that stemmed from the pandemic that changed the way people were voting during the 2020 presidential election, such as extended early voting and being able to drop off absentee ballots throughout the entirety of the election rather than on a single day.“All of that made an impact on what should have been procedures that the county implemented,” Allcon said. “But it doesn’t appear that the procedures were actually followed consistently.”There were also logistical issues such as where the mail ballots were accepted in a separate building than where they were actually processed, Allcon said. The uploads to the state do not appear to be made in a consistent or timely manner, Allcon added.Limited and provisional ballots were either logged incorrectly or logs are missing, creating inaccuracies in the report of roughly 700 when it comes to the tally of total ballots. This is a major issue in itself because the list of voters who voted versus total number of ballots counted, she said. Some absentee ballots could have been miscategorized as early voting or Election Day ballots instead, Allcon said according to the team’s review. She also stated the review team opened ballot boxes as part of the investigation and found some boxes were inaccurately labeled in regards to their contents. One team member reported, “it looked like things were just dumped in” the boxes, Allcon said. Allcon, who was not in her current position during the 2020 election, said she believes these issues can be attributed to a few factors. Of those, lack of organization and detail management on the staff at the time; jot enough staff members to handle an election of that size; ”The underlying issue with what we saw really appeared to be lack of interest on the part of the staff. It’s like they didn’t care,” Allcon said.The entire elections office staff is new, Allcon said, since 2020, and the new employees are very “attention detailed” and most of the issues cited in the review have already been rectified with procedure changes. However, she said it is a continual effort to ensure voter integrity and voter confidence is protected. After this review, the elections office has already implemented some changes including targeted training for election workers and part-time staff in regards to the limited and provisional ballots and record-keeping of those. “Record keeping ... is a continual change in my office,” Allcon said. Grassroots and Texas Voter Verification have requested a similar review of the 2022 gubernatorial election to see if changes implemented reflect positive change on the elections process. Allcon said her team is open to this in order to ensure all voters in Smith County understand the office is working hard to make sure the elections process is fair and operates as it is intended to. It would also help verify if changes made since the 2020 election have been effective. In other matters, the court approved to conduct various elections throughout Smith County for the following political subdivisions:Smith County Emergency Services District 1City of BullardCity of LindaleArp ISDTroup ISDWhitehouse ISDWinona ISD“These are just the start,” Allcon said. “These are the contracts we’ve gotten so far. We still have some outstanding contracts.”According to Allcon, the subdivisions have already ordered their elections and signed an agreement with Allcon to run their respective elections, which could be anything from a special election to a trustee election to city council members election.In mid-February, the filing period for the candidates will end and the political subdivisions will know for sure as to whether elections will actually be held, Allcon said.“We will have to start moving quickly to get everything on ballots.”The process of preparing for the elections will include formatting the ballots then laid out and proofed in enough time to produce sample ballots for the elections.Recent Stories You Might Have Missed
- [McCarthy, Scalise take on U.S. Chamber after group backed Democrats - CNBC](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/09/mccarthy-scalise-take-on-u-s-chamber-after-group-backed-democrats-cnbc/) - House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said they will refuse to meet with the Chamber of Commerce after it previously endorsed Democrats running for office. Denying the Chamber access could also prompt other House Republicans to block the nation's largest business organization. The Chamber has continued to actively lobby Capitol Hill despite the ongoing battle with top Republicans. The group spent just under $21 million on lobbying in the fourth quarter of last year alone, according to its latest disclosure report. U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) holds a news conference in Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, February 2, 2023. Jonathan Ernst | Reuters The two highest-ranking Republican leaders in the House of Representatives are going to war with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as the new Congress takes shape. Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise are both refusing to meet with the the Chamber after the lobbying group endorsed a handful of Democrats in the past two elections, clearly making an enemy of the powerful congressional leaders. "The priorities of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have not aligned with the priorities of House Republicans or the interests of their own members, and they should not expect a meeting with Speaker McCarthy as long as that's the case," Mark Bednar, a chief spokesman for McCarthy, told CNBC in a statement. Scalise also won't meet with the Chamber, according to spokeswoman Lauren Fine. "Washington has radically shifted away from the pro-business philosophy of most local Chambers across America," she said. Fine also took aim at the Chamber's move to endorse Democrats running for House seats and said that "unless the Chamber gets back to their traditional pro-business roots, they should not expect to have any engagement with Majority Leader Scalise's office." Denying the Chamber access could also prompt other House Republicans to block the nation's largest business organization. The Chamber has continued to actively lobby Capitol Hill despite the ongoing battle with top Republicans. The group spent just under $21 million on lobbying in the fourth quarter of last year alone, according to its latest disclosure report. The form shows they lobbied lawmakers in the House and Senate, as well as Biden White House officials, on a wide variety of bills, including new tax proposals as well as U.S. aid to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. McCarthy's refusal to meet with the Chamber is the latest strike in an ongoing feud between some House Republican members and the national business group. The Intercept reported that House Republicans plan to investigate the Chamber as GOP lawmakers take on anyone who supports President Joe Biden's push for more environmental, social, and governance (ESG) regulations. Elsewhere, The Daily Caller reported that the Chamber plans to sue the Securities and Exchange Commission if it goes forward with a climate change-related disclosure rule. Republican House lawmakers are drafting questions to send to the Chamber in the coming weeks, asking about its stance on ESG issues as well as questioning some of the group's own conduct, including reportedly allowing former Chamber CEO Thomas Donohue to use the organization's corporate jet for personal trips, according to lawmakers and advisors aiming to probe the organization. These people declined to be named in order to speak freely about private discussions. Tim Doyle, a spokesman for the Chamber, told CNBC in a statement that the group's policies are more in line with House Republicans than Democrats. "The Chamber's priorities include lower taxes, reduced spending, fighting overregulation and numerous other issues, and we are aligned with House Republicans on many of the issues that are important to American businesses of all sizes," Doyle said. "We do disagree with those who believe the Chamber should become a single-party partisan organization and we recognize that difference has created some tension. We will continue, however, to do what we have done for over 110 years and that is advance the free-market priorities of the American business community." Representatives for House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., and Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Ala., did not return requests for comment. McCarthy's ire against the Chamber started after the group endorsed 23 House Democrats in the 2020 election cycle when Republicans failed to regain the majority. The Chamber reportedly endorsed 23 House Republican candidates and four Democrats during the 2022 election fight. McCarthy told Breitbart News last year before the recent November elections that "the Chamber left the party a long time ago" and criticized the organization for endorsing Democrats. " I just assume they have as much influence in the future as they do now — none," McCarthy said at the time. Axios reported that McCarthy has privately discussed with Chamber of Commerce board members and state leaders the idea of replacing current president and CEO Suzanne Clark. The Chamber's CEO was recently approved for a new five-year term, according to a memo sent to the board of directors by Mark Ordan, the chair of the board. The memo was sent to members of the board on Monday. While McCarthy takes aim at the Chamber, the business lobbying juggernaut continues its business as usual. Neil Bradley, a former deputy chief of staff to McCarthy and the current executive vice president and chief policy officer at the Chamber, recently said its "team engages leadership and chairmen and rank-and-file members on a daily and weekly basis. That's always been the case and hasn't changed in the past year." The Chamber's latest public tax documents from 2021 show that the organization raised just over $197 million that year, and it raised $218 million in 2020. More than $105 million of its budget in 2021 went toward salaries and employee benefits, the forms show. Donohue, who stepped down as CEO from the Chamber in 2021, still picked up $9.2 million in total compensation that year. Donohue's compensation in 2021 included $8.95 million in bonus and incentive pay, according to the forms. "The compensation for Mr. Donohue included his bonus payment for 2020 activities and a prorated portion of his bonus payment for 2021 activities, both of which were paid to him in 2021," the filing says. Clark saw a total compensation of $5.1 million in 2021, according to the forms. That includes a bonus and incentive package of $3.75 million. WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP
- [Minister acquitted on charges from 2020 election rally - Yahoo](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/09/minister-acquitted-on-charges-from-2020-election-rally-yahoo/) - Feb. 7—TRIAD — A minister with ties to High Point has been acquitted of criminal charges stemming from a 2020 confrontation in Alamance County during which people at an early voting rally were doused with pepper spray by law enforcement officers.Days before the 2020 election, the Graham Police Department and Alamance County Sheriff's Department made national headlines when officers sprayed tear gas and pepper spray directly in the faces of people at the rally, and others, including the family of George Floyd. Sheriff Terry Johnson ordered the crowd to disperse and soon began arresting people.Police said the crowd was blocking the right of way on a street. Rally organizers said they weren't trying to disrupt traffic and the officers overreacted.Among those arrested was the Rev. Greg Drumwright, one of the leaders of the rally. Drumwright now lives in Greensboro but previously has served as an associate pastor at a High Point church, taught at High Point University, in 2018 was a candidate for a Guilford County Board of Education seat representing parts of High Point, and last year narrowly lost his Democratic primary bid for the at-large seat for the Guilford County Board of Commissioners.Drumwright was charged with assault with physical injury on a law enforcement officer, obstruction of justice, obstructing and delaying an officer and misdemeanor failure to disperse on command.In a prepared statement after the jury's verdict, Drumwright's organization, Justice 4 the Next Generation, noted that the court ruled there was insufficient evidence to show Drumwright and those with him were engaged in unruly or illegal conduct at the time of the dispersal command."This means Sheriff Johnson's commands to disperse were unlawful. We hope Drumwright's case will serve as a guide for law enforcement to consider as it encounters other peaceful demonstrations," it said. "Today's verdict, in addition to the three related civil cases where Alamance County has already reached settlements with March demonstrators, delivers another striking blow to Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson and Graham Police Chief Kristy Cole for the brutal force their departments used against peaceful voters and other J4tNG's March to the Polls supporters."The statement said that minorities in Alamance County face disproportionate criminal charges and it called for the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate.
- [Pennsylvania voting officials are still fighting election deniers](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/09/pennsylvania-voting-officials-are-still-fighting-election-deniers/) - Updated February 9, 2023 at 7:05 AM ET It's been 27 months since President Biden won the 2020 election. But that election continues to haunt officials in the Philadelphia suburb of Delaware County, Pa., who are still dealing with lawsuits alleging election fraud, despite no substantial evidence, and ongoing criticism from some local residents during public meetings. For William Martin, the county's solicitor, the level of frustration hit a breaking point last month during a county council meeting. "I am profoundly offended to listen to baseless allegations of fraud against me and against other county workers," Martin said after sitting through another round of public comments. "It's time to put up or shut up. If you think there is fraud, sue me. Sue me! Sue me personally. Because then when it gets thrown out, I'll sue you for abuse of process. Sue me!" It's time to put up or shut up. If you think there is fraud, sue me. Sue me! Sue me personally. Many other local officials in Pennsylvania are still grappling with the aftermath of the 2020 election. More recent political contests in that swing state have become a hotbed for election deniers and misinformation. And election watchers are concerned about how that could spill over into upcoming elections, including next year's presidential race. A few weeks ago, about three hours away from Delaware County in central Pennsylvania, officials in Lycoming County urged residents to be respectful during a meeting about the results of a controversial hand recount conducted in January for ballots cast more than two years ago in the 2020 election. "If you're here to get in anyone's face or intimidate someone, you're in the wrong room. You might as well leave right now," said Scott Metzger, a Republican county commissioner, who noted discussions about the recount had become "very heated." Lycoming County election officials said they found no significant difference between the recount and their original tallies from November 2020. The results, the county's board of elections said in a statement, "confirm that the vote totals were not inaccurate by thousands of votes as was claimed." Still, many election watchers are bracing for more misinformation from election deniers. "Those counties are dealing with people who, over and over, no matter how many times they've seen the evidence of the integrity of the election, continue to come and yell and be insulting," says Lisa Schaefer, who's the executive director of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania. Tensions may have cooled somewhat recently, during this break from major elections, but Schaefer says "those pressures are absolutely still there." The reach election deniers have through social media, Schaefer adds, has made it especially hard to fight off misinformation. 'We have potential dangers ahead' A lot of the confusion is centered around a Pennsylvania state law that started allowing all voters in Pennsylvania to vote by mail in time for the 2020 election. Nationally, some leading figures in the Republican Party, most notably former President Donald Trump, have railed against mail voting. And in the state, many Republicans have been attacking a way of voting that they once supported, turning mail-in voting into a partisan flashpoint. "We're a purple state, so it makes for a bit of a contentious conversation at times around democracy," says Khalif Ali, executive director of the advocacy group Common Cause Pennsylvania. After last year's midterm elections, there was a sign of hope, according to Susan Gobreski, who chairs the government policy committee of the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania: The state's most high-profile election denier, who was the Trump-backed Republican candidate for governor, lost. "People are looking for our democracy to be preserved and for their participation to be valued and for voters to be making decisions and for votes to count," Gobreski says. "I think people reacted to the misinformation that was out there by showing up. I think that's a really good sign." Still, Gobreski sees Pennsylvania walking on a balance beam right now. "It could tip in either direction if we don't watch for efforts to undermine confidence, if we don't watch out for efforts to interfere with voters," Gobreski adds. "We have potential dangers ahead." Many county officials and election watchers are looking toward potential legislative reforms to Pennsylvania's election system that could help fend off any disruptions in 2024. One notable concern is that current state law does not allow election officials to prepare mail-in ballots for counting — a process known as "pre-canvassing" — before the last day of voting. That has frustrated many officials, given increasing pressure to report results as soon as possible and the potential festering of misinformation as people wait for tallies in close races. But for Martin, the Delaware County solicitor, the key to defusing the ongoing election turmoil in Pennsylvania lies in how Republicans in the state talk about voting by mail going forward. "I'm not sure that I see any significant break point or change that's likely to occur in the next several years — with the possible exception of a recognition by the Republicans that they're doing themselves a disservice by disparaging mail-in votes," Martin says. Edited by: Benjamin Swasey Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
- [Tarrant leaders form election-fraud unit despite no substantiated cases in 2020 or 2022](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/09/tarrant-leaders-form-election-fraud-unit-despite-no-substantiated-cases-in-2020-or-2022/) - Three Tarrant County leaders announced the formation of a new unit dedicated to investigating and prosecuting allegations of election fraud on Wednesday, even though complaints of fraud in the most recent elections held in the county have not been substantiated.The new unit was born from a partnership between three Republicans — Sheriff Bill Waybourn, County Judge Tim O’Hare and District Attorney Phil Sorrells — though Waybourn insisted the law would be applied in a nonpartisan manner.“We’re going to do the right thing every time,” Waybourn said. “And this is not a Democrat or Republican thing, it is making sure all the good citizens are served well in Tarrant County.”But local Democrats described the formation of the unit as a “stunt” meant to suppress votes from progressives and people of color.“Just like Republicans nationally have done, they are seeking to create an atmosphere of distrust and create the illusion that voting is a privilege rather than a right,” county Democratic Party Chairwoman Allison Campolo said in a written statement, calling the unit an attempt “to prepare to explain future Republican losses.”In a Facebook post following the announcement, Tarrant County GOP Chairman Rick Barnes said “When you put great conservatives in office, great things can come from it.”Related:Dallas County Republicans question voting machines, lobby for paper ballotsThe formation of the task force comes as Republicans across the state — and country — continue to foment doubt about the security and sanctity of elections following Donald Trump’s 2020 loss to President Joe Biden. On Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called for Harris County to redo its November 2022 election based on unsubstantiated claims that voters were turned away because of a ballot shortage, the Houston Chronicle reported.In Arizona, a similar election-integrity unit found few cases of fraud — 20 cases prosecuted over three years in a state of 4 million voters — but also served to sow deep distrust among voters who doubted the legitimacy of Biden’s win in 2020, a Washington Post review found.Though a few isolated cases of alleged fraud — such as felons casting votes even though their rights have not been restored and people casting ballots for recently deceased relatives — have been reported, elections nationwide, including in Tarrant County, have consistently been found to have been fair and secure.A report by released by the Texas Secretary of State in December declared that Tarrant County “administers a quality, transparent election.”Heider Garcia, the elections administrator in Tarrant County who faced a deluge of threats stemming from baseless accusations of voter fraud during the 2020 election, was not involved in the creation of the task force, though O’Hare, the county judge, said he “fully expect[s] him to cooperate with it.” Garcia and a spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.Related:Fraud fears lead to sharp drop in use of mail-in ballots for Texas midterm electionsThe unit is intended to serve as a centralized hub for people with concerns about election processes to file complaints for investigators to review, Waybourn said. The unit would be staffed by investigators in already existing units who would add the new duties to their workload, he said. Waybourn said he didn’t have an immediate figure on how many investigators would be assigned to the unit.O’Hare said the unit would not have an effect on the county budget. He said he heard concerns from people “all across the county” about election fraud during his 18-month campaign for the position, adding he thinks “we owe it to our citizens to make sure that they know their vote counts, and that the election are secure and that they are fair.”Neither O’Hare nor Sorrells, the district attorney, were able to say how many complaints the county has received about the 2022 or 2020 elections. In 2018, a Tarrant County justice pleaded guilty to tampering with a government document, admitting he forged more than 100 signatures on his own nominating petition. Russ Casey stepped down from his position and was sentenced to five years of probation.But in the last two elections, no allegations of fraud have been substantiated, the county officials said. Four cases remain open with the district attorney’s office, but Sorrells and Waybourn did not discuss what the cases entailed, citing the pending investigations.Related:Texas audit of 2020 election finds 188 ‘phantom voters’ in Dallas CountyO’Hare said the task force should serve as an encouragement for voters to turn out. But Ashley Harris, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said it will do the opposite.“This so-called election integrity unit is just political posturing meant to sow confusion among voters and criminalize voting,” Harris said. “I think Tarrant County would be better served focusing its resources on making elections more accessible to voters and providing open lines to voters to help with any problems they may face, but this so called election integrity unit is not going to accomplish that.”Residents can submit tips or leads to the unit by calling 817-884-1213.Related Stories
- [Former Twitter executives deny being pressured by Democrats to block Hunter Biden story](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/09/former-twitter-executives-deny-being-pressured-by-democrats-to-block-hunter-biden-story/) - WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Twitter executives conceded Wednesday they made a mistake by blocking a story about Hunter Biden, the president’s son, from the social media platform in the run-up to the 2020 election, but adamantly denied Republican assertions they were pressured by Democrats and law enforcement to suppress the story. “The decisions here aren’t straightforward, and hindsight is 20/20,” Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, testified to Congress. “It isn’t obvious what the right response is to a suspected, but not confirmed, cyberattack by another government on a presidential election.” He added, “Twitter erred in this case because we wanted to avoid repeating the mistakes of 2016.” The three former executives appeared before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee to testify for the first time about the company’s decision to initially block from Twitter a New York Post article in October 2020 about the contents of a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden. Emboldened by Twitter’s new leadership in billionaire Elon Musk — whom they see as more sympathetic to conservatives than the company’s previous administration — Republicans used the hearing to push a long-standing and unproven theory that social media companies including Twitter are biased against them. Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer said the hearing is the panel’s “first step in examining the coordination between the federal government and Big Tech to restrict protected speech and interfere in the democratic process.” READ MORE: Musk’s Twitter changes put ‘rocket boosters’ on climate change misinformation The hearing continues a years-long trend of GOP leaders calling tech company leaders to testify about alleged political bias. Democrats, meanwhile, have pressed the companies on the spread of hate speech and misinformation on their platforms. The witnesses Republicans subpoenaed were Roth, Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former chief legal officer, and James Baker, the company’s former deputy general counsel. Democrats brought a witness of their own, Anika Collier Navaroli, a former employee with Twitter’s content moderation team. She testified last year to the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 Capitol riot about Twitter’s preferential treatment of Donald Trump until it banned the then-president from the site two years ago. The White House criticized congressional Republicans for staging “a bizarre political stunt,” hours after Biden’s State of the Union address where he detailed bipartisan progress in his first two years in office. “This appears to be the latest effort by the House Republican majority’s most extreme MAGA members to question and relitigate the outcome of the 2020 election,” White House spokesperson Ian Sams said in a statement Wednesday. “This is not what the American people want their leaders to work on.” The New York Post reported weeks before the 2020 presidential election that it had received from Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, a copy of a hard drive from a laptop that Hunter Biden had dropped off 18 months earlier at a Delaware computer repair shop and never retrieved. Twitter blocked people from sharing links to the story for several days. “You exercised an amazing amount of clout and power over the entire American electorate by even holding (this story) hostage for 24 hours and then reversing your policy,” Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., said to the panel of witnesses. Months later, Twitter’s then-CEO, Jack Dorsey, called the company’s communications around the Post article “not great.” He added that blocking the article’s URL with “zero context” around why it was blocked was “unacceptable.” READ MORE: Musk’s Twitter dissolves Trust and Safety advisory group The newspaper story was greeted at the time with skepticism due to questions about the laptop’s origins, including Giuliani’s involvement, and because top officials in the Trump administration had already warned that Russia was working to denigrate Joe Biden before the White House election. The Kremlin interfered in the 2016 race by hacking Democratic emails that were subsequently leaked, and fears that Russia would meddle again in the 2020 race were widespread across Washington. Just last week, lawyers for the younger Biden asked the Justice Department to investigate people who say they accessed his personal data. But they did not acknowledge that the data came from a laptop Hunter Biden is purported to have dropped off at a computer repair shop. The issue was also reignited recently after Musk took over Twitter as CEO and began to release a slew of company information to independent journalists, what he has called the “Twitter Files.” The documents and data largely show internal debates among employees over the decision to temporarily censor links to the Hunter Biden story. The tweet threads lacked substantial evidence of a targeted influence campaign from Democrats or the FBI, which has denied any involvement in Twitter’s decision-making. Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., called the hearing a “fishing expedition” seeking to reheat bogus allegations claiming Biden somehow influenced his son’s business dealings in Ukraine. Nonetheless, Republicans including Comer, R-Ky., have used the Post story, which has not been independently verified by The Associated Press, as the basis for what they claim is another example of the Biden family’s “influence peddling.” One of Wednesday’s witnesses, Baker, has been a frequent target of Republican scrutiny. Baker was the FBI’s general counsel during the opening of two of the bureau’s most consequential investigations in history: the Hillary Clinton investigation and a separate inquiry into potential coordination between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Republicans have long criticized the FBI’s handling of both investigations. Baker denied any wrongdoing during his two years at Twitter and said that despite disagreeing with the decision to block links to the Post story, “I believe that the public record reveals that my client acted in a manner that was fully consistent with the First Amendment.” There has been no evidence that Twitter’s platform is biased against conservatives; studies have found the opposite when it comes to conservative media in particular. But the issue continues to preoccupy GOP members of congress. And some experts said questions around government influence on Big Tech’s content moderation are legitimate. “Despite how I would change how some of the members ask their questions, there should be more insight into this stuff. There should be more transparency,” said Katie Harbath, a fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center who served as Facebook’s former public policy director. She added, “There’s still a lot more hearings and sides to the story that we need to hear from, particularly the government and the FBI.” Ortutay reported from Oakland, Calif. Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Frank Bajak contributed to this report.
- [Pennsylvania voting officials are still fighting election deniers - NPR](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/09/pennsylvania-voting-officials-are-still-fighting-election-deniers-npr/) - Enlarge this image A voter lines up in a polling place to cast a ballot for the 2020 general election in Springfield, Pa., which is located in the Philadelphia suburb of Delaware County. Matt Slocum/AP Matt Slocum/AP It's been 27 months since President Biden won the 2020 election. But that election continues to haunt officials in the Philadelphia suburb of Delaware County, Pa., who are still dealing with lawsuits alleging election fraud, despite no substantial evidence, and ongoing criticism from some local residents during public meetings. For William Martin, the county's solicitor, the level of frustration hit a breaking point last month during a county council meeting. "I am profoundly offended to listen to baseless allegations of fraud against me and against other county workers," Martin said after sitting through another round of public comments. "It's time to put up or shut up. If you think there is fraud, sue me. Sue me! Sue me personally. Because then when it gets thrown out, I'll sue you for abuse of process. Sue me!" It's time to put up or shut up. If you think there is fraud, sue me. Sue me! Sue me personally.
- [Rep. Pat Fallon: Twitter altered the 2020 election | Fox News Video](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/09/rep-pat-fallon-twitter-altered-the-2020-election-fox-news-video/)
- [Gallatin County Commission approves disposal of 2020 election records despite pushback](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/09/gallatin-county-commission-approves-disposal-of-2020-election-records-despite-pushback/) - The Gallatin County Commission approved the disposal of 2020 General Election records, despite protests against the move during the commission’s Tuesday meeting.Election materials, like voted ballots, unvoted ballots, unused ballots and other records gathered during an election are allowed to be disposed of under state law.Eric Semerad, Gallatin County clerk and recorder, said during the meeting that the standard retention period for a presidential election is 22 months, which expired in September. .apg-support-local-wrapper { border-radius: 5px; background-color: #E6E6E6; padding: 10px; } .apg-support-local-wrapper p { padding: 5px; font-weight:bold; /* override other site style */ margin: 0 !important; font-size: 2rem; } .apg-support-local-wrapper h1 { text-align: center; /* override other site styles */ margin: 0 !important; } .apg-support-local-wrapper a { font-family: verdana; font-weight: 900; font-size: 25px; line-height: 20px; color: white; background-color: #FF6600; padding: 10px; border-radius: 15px; box-shadow: 2px 3px 5px #888888; text-decoration: none; display: table-cell; } Get any of our free daily email newsletters — news headlines, opinion, e-edition, obituaries and more.
- [Louisville Baseball: Projecting the depth chart for the Cardinals - 247 Sports](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/08/louisville-baseball-projecting-the-depth-chart-for-the-cardinals-247-sports/) - The University of Louisville baseball program has been one of the best in the country in recent years.The Cardinals are coming off a 42-21-1 season and have won 45 or more games in eight of the past 10 seasons that didn't end early as the 2020 season did because of Covid-19. And in six of those 10 seasons, the Cardinals won 50 or more games during the season.U of L has made it to the College World Series seven times since head coach Dan McDonnell arrived in 2007. And the Cardinals have won five ACC Atlantic Division titles in the first seven full seasons in the league.Now, it's time for McDonnell's 17th season at the helm.The Cardinals are ranked in multiple national polls among the top 10 teams in the country, checking in as high as No. 5. U of L is the pick to win the ACC Atlantic Division championship - again - and the overall ACC title this season.After missing the NCAA Tournament two years ago in 2021, U of L won the ACC division title, won 42 games, and made an appearance in the College Station Super Regional against Texas A&M last season. The Cardinals return four starting position players - including preseason All-Americans Jack Payton and Christian Knapczyk - and they also return 11 pitchers who saw action in at least 10 innings last season.McDonnell said he was pleased the Cardinals are getting preseason expectations but noted it doesn't mean much."I always say it’s 50 percent the history and you give a lot of credit to the former players and the success that they have had,” McDonnell said. “Combined with the 50 percent of you have a lot of talented players on campus and that’s how you get into the preseason rankings. You have to be professional and take it for what it is.”U of L opens the season on Feb. 18 with a three-game series against Bucknell at Jim Patterson Stadium.Here's a crack at Cardinal Authority projecting the Louisville lineup:
- [Photos Show Behind-The-Scenes Look At Life As A Touring Band During COVID](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/08/photos-show-behind-the-scenes-look-at-life-as-a-touring-band-during-covid/) - Jake Gunter and Josh Dawn of the country band Jake Gunter and Josh Dawn of the country band "Big 50" tune their instruments before a show in Nashville, Tennessee.It’s no secret that COVID-19 (along with its variants) changed our world as we knew it, and asall businesses have been forced to adapt, the music industry has been no exception: fromsuperstars selling out stadiums to newcomers grinding to build a grassroots career path,musicians as a whole have been forced to navigate a time where playing live was not an optionand where success is measured in views on social media instead of bodies in crowds.New forms of exposure, like TikTok and Instagram, became the only option for exposure, andeven as live music has returned, a fraction of pre-pandemic venues remain, with rising fuel andhealth safety costs have far outweighed the value of a gig.Tour packages and traveling musicians have been forced to reduce their scope, stripping downproduction (and even band members) to keep costs at a minimum and keep touring viable. Fora while, the days of a musician being able to earn a living seemed as though they had passed.Dawn smokes a cigarette before a show in Nashville at Springwater bar, the oldest operating bar in Tennessee.Dawn smokes a cigarette before a show in Nashville at Springwater bar, the oldest operating bar in Tennessee.Dawn (left) and Andrew Gaultier talk together after a show at The Basement in Nashville.Dawn (left) and Andrew Gaultier talk together after a show at The Basement in Nashville.Prior to COVID, musicians and bands would find themselves traveling the world over to builda name for themselves, finding their start playing in small clubs in different cities in an attempt togrow an organic fan base and, for bands with the right work ethic and sound, this route couldprove successful. Fast forward to our post-pandemic world, a large majority of small,independent venues that welcomed new artists with open arms have shut their doors due to theloss of income when live music was out of the question. These closures have left few viableoptions for independent artists to perform in public, and the venues left standing are oftenunable to provide the payouts that once allowed a band to tour profitably.As our world began to spend more time at home (and on our phones), musicians have found anew form of semi-organic exposure through TikTok and other forms of visual social media.Similar to how TV killed the radio star, modern musicians are forced to conform to newshort-form video standards, writing songs around a hook as opposed to writing for radio or liveplay, and while this has proven a fruitful endeavor for more social media-savvy artists, thelearning curve has been insurmountable for many musicians who got their start by hitting theroad to build an organic grassroots fan base. For many, finding an algorithm-friendly sound hasled to frustration and outright disenchantment with the music industry.Gunter plays his guitar during a show in Nashville.Gunter plays his guitar during a show in Nashville.Austin Wright puts his drum kit away after a show at The Basement.Austin Wright puts his drum kit away after a show at The Basement.The “TikTok Success Story” is one that we’ve all heard, and while the explosive popularity of anovernight viral sensation is often an extraordinary moment for artists, it’s been proven time andtime again that these “successes” do not provide a fan base with the same long-lastingfoundation that organic, steady growth has provided to musicians in the past: simply put, thealgorithm can’t replace the power of a meaningful performance and genuine connection to fans.Now, almost three years later, artists are finally seeing the return of the days of viable touring.With TikTok usage on the decline, it is carving the route for musicians to get back to what theylove: writing great music, traveling the world, meeting new fans, and creating long-lastingrelationships with the fans who support them. With any luck, musicians can now look into 2023and beyond as a time for touring, and social media can return to its rightful place, not as areplacement, but as another tool in a kit that allows extracurricular connection with fans.See more photos of “Big 50” by Seth Herald below. Dawn plays his guitar during a show at The 5 Spot in Nashville.Dawn plays his guitar during a show at The 5 Spot in Nashville.Gunter (right) and Gaultier cross the street to public radio station WUTC 88.1 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to perform a live session.Gunter (right) and Gaultier cross the street to public radio station WUTC 88.1 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to perform a live session.Gunter (left) and Gaultier perform during a live session at WUTC 88.1.Gunter (left) and Gaultier perform during a live session at WUTC 88.1.Dawn relaxing during the van ride from Chattanooga to Nashville.Dawn relaxing during the van ride from Chattanooga to Nashville.Gaultier (center) and Dawn enter an elevator in Chattanooga.Gaultier (center) and Dawn enter an elevator in Chattanooga.Dawn puts on his cowboy hat before a show in Louisville, Kentucky.Dawn puts on his cowboy hat before a show in Louisville, Kentucky.Gaultier changes strings on his guitar before a show at Gerstles in Louisville.Gaultier changes strings on his guitar before a show at Gerstles in Louisville.People dance as the band performs at Gerstles in Louisville. People dance as the band performs at Gerstles in Louisville.Gunter after a show in Louisville.Gunter after a show in Louisville.Related...
- [Are metal detectors coming to Louisville schools? Most JCPS board members hope so](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/08/are-metal-detectors-coming-to-louisville-schools-most-jcps-board-members-hope-so/) - Two weeks after a gun ended up on the floor of the cafeteria at Eastern High School, a push for metal detectors at most of the district's schools was an unexpected but widely supported idea brought up during Tuesday's Jefferson County Board of Education meeting.After members of the Moms Demand Action organization gave a planned presentation on how the district can work to educate parents on secure firearm storage, District 6's board member Corrie Shull said JCPS should take a bigger step by creating a plan by the April board meeting to have metal detectors in every middle and high school. Shull also recommended Superintendent Marty Pollio "immediately" create a school safety task force.More:What happens when a student brings a gun to school in JCPS?The purpose, Shull said, is not to criminalize kids who bring guns to school, but to "keep guns out of our schools."Carrying a firearm on a school campus is a Class D felony and district policy is that each student caught doing so is cited, JCPS spokesperson Carolyn Callahan said after the incident at Eastern High. The citation either comes from outside law enforcement such as Louisville Metro Police or from one of the district’s sworn law enforcement officers on their in-house security team, Callahan said.All but one of Shull's fellow board members voted in support of the plan and Pollio briefly explained what aspects of the proposal will be complicated.District 2's Chris Kolb was the sole dissident in supporting metal detectors in the district's schools, saying the detectors are unlikely to increase school safety but would definitely contribute to the criminalization of Black students. Additionally, Kolb questioned whether guns are the most urgent safety issue facing children in schools.More education news:A silent disco shows how kids at a Louisville school advocate for peers with disabilitiesPointing to the number of students who have died in school shootings versus the number of students who have died due to COVID-19, Kolb said, "There are far more threats that are more pressing to kids at school that we've done nothing about."When it comes to conversations about school safety, Kolb said, "I don't want to hear anything from anyone who voted against a mask mandate or opposed a mask mandate in schools."District 5's board member Linda Duncan supported Shull's suggestion, but questioned his claim that the detectors wouldn't lead to the criminalization of students and suggested the district take action now, rather than waiting on metal detectors."To me, bringing a gun on school property is a crime and we have to deal with it like that," she said.When it comes to installing metal detectors, Duncan said, "I don't even want to wait that long. I'm concerned about backpacks. ... I think backpacks need to be in a locker and put away with coats."More:Beshear makes more Kentucky juvenile detention center changes, including worker raises"I think we need to think immediately about what we can do now, as well as long term," she continued.After each board member responded to Shull's recommendation, Pollio expressed frustration that as a board of education, their focus was on guns rather than about learning and teaching.Rather than decreasing the proliferation of guns in schools, Pollio pointed out, there is a legislative bill "to add guns to our schools, not take them away."The discussion, he said, "Reminds me of what we had to do during COVID, which was to be health officials."Installing the metal detectors isn't an issue of cost, he said, but rather personnel. Based on research his team has already started, each high school will need between five to 10 detectors and each middle will need three to five, which will cost about $5 million."We can implement it with the finances that we currently have," he said, but several trained personnel would be needed to monitor the detectors at each school. Plus, trained officers would need to be present to conduct searches when a detector alerts that a weapon is on a student, he said."It will be a major challenge with the staffing crisis we are in right now," Pollio said.With a 6-1 vote, Pollio is set to bring more information to the board about this plan by April 25.
- [Jeffrey Epstein: Palm Beach Post won't have to pay Aronberg's lawyer](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/08/jeffrey-epstein-palm-beach-post-wont-have-to-pay-aronbergs-lawyer/) - A circuit judge won’t level sanctions against The Palm Beach Post for naming State Attorney Dave Aronberg in its lawsuit to obtain secret grand jury testimony that could show why state prosecutors soft-pedaled the initial case against serial sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.Aronberg opposed the release of the Epstein grand jury transcripts before reversing course and adopting a neutral position while seeking more than $71,000 in legal fees. It dropped Aronberg once he changed his position on The Post obtaining the transcripts.But Aronberg is hardly conceding after last week’s ruling on sanctions. Within hours of the judge's Jan. 31 order, Aronberg asked him to essentially consider the matter again.Post 2019 investigation:Jeffrey Epstein case, the first failure: To the first prosecutors, Epstein's victims were prostitutesMore:Dave Aronberg: Post's suit to unseal Jeffrey Epstein documents meant only to humiliate meWhy The Post sued:The Palm Beach Post sued to find out why Jeffrey Epstein wasn't stopped 15 years agoCircuit Judge Luis Delgado found Aronberg's testimony “reliable and credible” but denied the motion because Aronberg failed to provide The Post a required 21-day notice to resolve the issue before filing for sanctions against its lawyers.The state attorney testified in September that he was trying to save taxpayers' money by seeking sanctions against the newspaper but then he acknowledged that his lawyer won’t get paid unless the judge ordered it.“We are pleased with the judge’s ruling,” said Marc Freeman, spokesman for Aronberg’s office. “He denied our sanctions motion only on procedural grounds, which we believe will be corrected through our next motion.” Jeffrey Epstein 2006 grand jury: Post investigation learns of questionable moves behind closed doorsThe Post, in seeking the grand jury testimony, wants to know the exact nature of how then-State Attorney Barry Krischer’s office presented its case before the grand jury.The Post filed suit to obtain the testimony and documents after its 2019 investigation, Jeffrey Epstein: The First Failure, discovered that Krischer undermined his own case in front of the grand jury. The only charge against Epstein that emerged was soliciting a prostitute.Palm Beach police in their investigation identified five underage girls, among several others under age 18, who gave nearly identical accounts of how the financier abused them. The age of consent in Florida at that time was 16.But Krischer’s office called only one 14-year-old girl to testify in front of the grand jury, sources told The Post. Authorities would find as many as 150 victims over the years and suspect there were even more.Sources told The Post that one of Krischer's prosecutors undermined the case by questioning the girl about her social media pages, which showed her talking about drinking and sex.Epstein in 2008 pleaded guilty to state charges — procuring a child for prostitution, added to the solicitation of prostitution charge. Both were felonies. He was required to register as a sex offender.Legal and public records experts said that Aronberg’s efforts are not about legal fees They said it is designed to deter newspapers from holding elected officials accountable.“He definitely wants to chill First Amendment rights, " said Michael Barfield, director of public access for the Florida Center for Government Accountability.Epstein was found hanged in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 after New York prosecutors brought child sex trafficking charges against him. In 2021, his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, was convicted of sex trafficking for procuring underage girls for Epstein to abuse and sentenced to 20 years in prison.Even though the grand jury proceeding occurred under Krischer’s tenure, Aronberg has remained close to his predecessor, allowing him in the past to work as a volunteer in his office. Circuit Judge Donald Hafele in December 2021 denied The Post’s efforts to make the transcripts public, saying the newspaper had “strong arguments” but that he was bound by state law to keep the proceeding secret. The ruling is being appealed.Grand jury proceedings not always kept secret: The case of Breonna TayloirGrand jury testimony has long been seen as locked in a vault from the public and the media. But there have been exceptions.A Kentucky judge released audio recordings of grand jury proceedings into the 2020 fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor in her home by Louisville police while they executed a search warrant.The Legal Defense Fund reviewed the grand jury materials and found the attorney general presented a biased view of the case that favored law enforcement.The Post in its suit to obtain the Epstein grand jury transcript originally named Aronberg and Sharon Bock, then the clerk of court.The clerk's office holds the documents.Aronberg then sought fees in July 2020 for the private attorney hired to defend the State Attorney's Office in the matter. Aronberg amended his motion in November of that year.Under Florida law, a court may award reasonable legal fees if it finds the losing party’s legal representation knew or should have known a claim was not supported by law.Aronberg took the witness stand in September in a hearing over the legal fees and testified that the newspaper has a vendetta against him. “I have had numerous battles over the years, usually one-sided, where The Palm Beach Post for the past 12 years has attacked me, written many misleading articles,” he said.Post Executive Editor Rick Christie has called Aronberg's claims "ludicrous."Delgado inherited the case from Hafele. Delgado's order on the amended motion denied awarding the fees on procedural grounds because Aronberg did not comply with the strict 21-day “safe harbor” notice provision in state law. The provision allows the claim to be withdrawn before sanctions are sought.After Delgado's ruling last week, Aronberg immediately filed a motion for Delgado to rule on the initial motion made in July 2020, which his attorney said was never heard by the court.“We are optimistic that we will prevail because the facts and the law are on our side, " Freeman said.Besides the state attorney, the county’s current Clerk of Courts Joseph Abruzzo is also seeking legal fees for his office being named in The Post’s lawsuit. That motion is still pending.Expert: Aronberg could be trying to only increase costs for The PostRobert Jarvis, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University, said Aronberg appears to want to force The Post to have to pay its attorneys to defend the sanctions all over again."Aronberg wants to tie up The Post, waste The Post’s time, waste The Post’s resources and make The Post have to pay their attorneys more money,” he said.He went on to say that the taxpayers are ill-served by Aronberg even if his lawyer never gets paid.“Any time that is taken away from Aronberg or Aronberg’s staff, where they can't devote themselves to things they really should be focused on, is a misuse of the taxpayers' money,” he said.Barfield, though, described Aronberg seeking sanctions against The Post as essentially a SLAPP suit, which stands for strategic lawsuit against public participation. Such actions are designed to censor, intimidate or silence critics through the burden of a costly legal defense.“I think it is an effort to intimidate the media,” he said. “If he is vindicated in a case that ends up keeping information of what Mr. Krischer’s office did years ago in covering up the Epstein case, it's just wrong. It is morally wrong. It is ethically wrong.”
- [Ex-Louisville officer gets probation for using excessive force during Breonna Taylor protest](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/06/ex-louisville-officer-gets-probation-for-using-excessive-force-during-breonna-taylor-protest/) - Related News and Opinion February 6, 2023 February 6, 2023 February 6, 2023 February 3, 2023 February 2, 2023 IL file photo A former Louisville, Kentucky, police officer who pleaded guilty last fall to a misdemeanor charge of using excessive force in 2020 has been sentenced to two years of probation, 200 hours of community service and a $5,000 fine. Katie R. Crews, 29, of Jeffersonville, Indiana, was sentenced last week in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky. Crews’ sentence was less than the maximum penalty she could have received, but more than her attorneys and prosecutors had asked for. The maximum penalty associated with the charge is one year in prison and a $100,000 fine, but attorneys for both sides had asked the judge for one year of probation. U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Beaton said he “reluctantly” agreed to a sentence that did not include prison time for Crews, calling the case “extremely difficult,” according to a report from Louisville news station WDRB. Crews had been indicted in March 2022 on a felony charge of using excessive force — a charge that carried a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. She ended up pleading guilty to a misdemeanor. According to her October 2022 plea agreement, Crews had been working as a Louisville Metro Police Department officer on June 1, 2020, when she, along with other Louisville officers and National Guard members, were sent to break up a crowd at a gas station. Crews then approached a nearby barbecue restaurant and began firing nonlethal pepper balls, the agreement says. Crews intentionally fired a pepper ball at someone who was standing in the doorway of the restaurant, hitting that person in the shoulder, the agreement says. That person, identified in the plea agreement as M.M., was not behaving aggressively and did not pose a threat to Crews or to others, the agreement says. Per Louisville Metro Police policy, officers should only shoot pepper balls at a person if that person is actively aggressive, the agreement says. According to an Associated Press report on Crews’ October 2022 plea hearing, after M.M. was shot with the pepper ball, her uncle David McAtee — the barbecue restaurant’s owner — took out a gun and fired out the restaurant’s door. Crews, who is white, and other officers then switched to live ammunition and McAtee, who was Black, was fatally shot in the chest by a National Guard officer. The episode happened on a night when protesters were gathering in Louisville’s streets to protest the death of Breonna Taylor, a Black EMT who was killed by police executing a drug search warrant at her home. As part of her plea agreement, Crews no longer works as a Louisville Metro Police officer and has forfeited her Kentucky law enforcement certification. Crews also agreed not to work in any law enforcement job, including as a civilian or military police officer, sheriff’s deputy, jailer or correctional officer. “This former Louisville police officer abused her authority as a law enforcement officer and violated the victim’s civil rights,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a news release issued Jan. 30. “This sentence makes clear that law enforcement officials are not above the law.” Clarke works for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Louisville officers and two National Guard officers were later cleared in a criminal probe into McAtee’s death. That probe found that the officers were justified in their use of deadly force because McAtee had fired at them first, the Associated Press story said. Please enable JavaScript to view this content.
- [Tear gas must never again be used on crowds of people like LMPD did in 2020 protests](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/07/tear-gas-must-never-again-be-used-on-crowds-of-people-like-lmpd-did-in-2020-protests/) - It’s been two and a half years since the height of the 2020 protests. For over 100 days in 2020, thousands of protestors took to the streets to demand justice for Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old woman murdered in her own home by the Louisville Metro Police Department—and countless others who have suffered at the hands of LMPD. Instead of seeing us as a community seeking accountability, LMPD treated us like a threat. They tear gassed us, exploded flash bangs in our faces and fired pepper balls into our chests, our heads. Night after night, officers surrounded us, assaulted us, and placed us in handcuffs. All to keep hiding the truth about Breonna Taylor: that LMPD killed her while executing a warrant based on a lie.Mayor Fischer talked a lot about supporting the protestors, but when it came time for action, he was nowhere to be found. He knew we were getting tear gassed and shot at by LMPD officers in the streets.More:Louisville police under Shields: How the department is different & what is still the sameMore:Breonna Taylor shooting: A 2-year timeline shows how her death has changed usWe experienced LMPD's chemical weapons a few times during the protests at Jefferson Square Park, also known as Injustice Square, in response to Breonna Taylor’s murder. The Louisville Metro Police were dressed in riot gear and had sticks. They marched toward us, unprovoked and well before curfew or even dusk. One of them pushed Rep. Attica Scott down as we were standing there. As she went to get medical care, they started to fire chemical weapons directly at us.We saw people hit in the face and upper body. Our fellow peaceful protesters fell to the ground, and as pepper balls hit us they burst to create more chemicals. We choked and our eyes watered. It was terrifying. It was like a war zone.Our story is far from unique. In fact, a group of people sued the City of Louisville over LMPD’s use of tear gas in July 2020. The mayor even apologized for doing it. But then when it came time to do something about it, he refused. LMPD still has the same tear gas supplies that they used that summer. And despite a few changes to its Standard Operating Procedures, LMPD still has far too much freedom to use tear gas on whole crowds of people.Editorial:Hiring a new police chief must be a transparent process and include the communityIt’s not that Louisville needs these kinds of weapons to prevent violence at protests. Thousands of people protested during the Occupy movement in 2010. Countless people protested against ICE. The Women’s March drew many of us out into the streets. But those people were never tear-gassed. They were never beaten with batons, or shot with pepper balls.A disregard for Louisville’s Black and brown residentsWe all know why that is, even if it’s uncomfortable to say: Black people, and allies of Black people, are always treated as more of a risk. This type of targeted violence shows a disregard for Louisville’s Black and brown residents, and a culture of animosity toward the communities LMPD has pledged to serve.Louisville is increasingly out of step with other cities. Although numerous other jurisdictions – including Indianapolis, Indiana, St. Louis, Missouri, Charlotte, North Carolina and Columbus, Ohio – banned tear gas or other so-called “crowd-control” weapons following their use during the 2020 protests, Louisville continues to resist change. And that’s even after Louisville has been sued multiple times—including in a class action lawsuit—for violating our constitutional rights by assaulting demonstrators with tear gas, flash bangs and pepper balls.For Subscribers:Louisville mayor, Metro Council held secret calls on pandemic, Breonna Taylor protestsMayor Greenberg's promisesLouisville can be different. Mayor Craig Greenberg has promised that his administration shares our frustrations with some of LMPD’s operations and lack of transparency. And he’s acknowledged that we need to immediately address these long-standing problems, building trust with the community that LMPD serves and making sure that our voices are heard.We have demanded, time and again, that the Louisville Metro Government respect our right to take to the streets in protest and that LMPD must be banned from using chemical munitions and military tactics against those they have pledged to protect. Mayor Greenberg, you say you want to improve our trust in LMPD and in your administration. Now is the time. You cannot say you value us but allow your police department to tear gas us for demanding justice. You cannot say you want us to trust the LMPD but allow them to shoot us, blind us, or terrorize us for no reason.Mayor Greenberg, your administration stands at a precipice: you can make the right choice for the sake of public safety and accountability, and begin to fulfil your promise to address Louisvillians’ concerns about the indiscriminate and unchecked violence of LMPD. Chemical munitions can be banned from use on community members, as they should always have been.Or you can continue your predecessor’s shameful legacy and cement the fact that the City of Louisville refuses to hold LMPD accountable and refuses to account for the violence it inflicted on residents in 2020 and beyond.One way or another, we will know where you stand.Khalilah Collins is an adjunct professor with Jefferson Community & Technical College and the University of Louisville, Kent School of Social Work. She is committed to developing students who will become active citizens that understand the value of community engagement.Shameka Parrish-Wright is a long-time community organizer, successful project and campaign manager and social justice activist. She is formerly homeless, formerly incarcerated, and was the child of an incarcerated person.
- [Fortenberry and Sasse headline unusual year-end campaign finance reports](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/06/fortenberry-and-sasse-headline-unusual-year-end-campaign-finance-reports/) - OMAHA — The departures of a congressman and a U.S. senator spiced up the final campaign finance reports for Nebraska’s congressional races in 2022. State Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks of Lincoln, left, and U.S. Rep. Mike Flood, R-Neb., competed in 2022 in the 1st Congressional District. (Aaron Sanderford/Nebraska Examiner) In eastern Nebraska’s 1st Congressional District, U.S. Rep. Mike Flood, R-Neb., defeated Democratic State Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks in a rare special election. The seat opened when Rep. Jeff Fortenberry resigned after being convicted of three federal felonies, related to illegal foreign campaign funds raised for one of his previous bids. Flood, who challenged Fortenberry in the Republican primary, raised $2.2 million and spent $2.1 million in the primary, special and general elections combined. Pansing Brooks raised and spent $1.8 million over the same span. Fortenberry who is appealing his convictions, paid $783,000 in legal fees from his House campaign account in 2021 and 2022. He folded up his federal campaign committee in October, having spent $1.68 million in his final two years, primarily on legal fees, campaign consultants and advertising. Political observers have speculated that Fortenberry might run again for his old seat if he is successful on appeal. U.S. Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., at left, and State Sen. Tony Vargas of Omaha competed the 2nd District seat in the Omaha area. (Photos/House of Representatives and Unicameral Information Office) In the Omaha-based 2nd District, Nebraska’s most competitive, Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., outraised his Democratic opponent, State Sen. Tony Vargas. Bacon raised and spent about $4 million. Vargas raised and spent $3.4 million, the second highest of any Democratic candidate in the district over the years. He trailed only Kara Eastman, who raised and spent $4.5 million in 2020. But like Eastman, Vargas faced an onslaught of outside spending, $5.2 million, according to OpenSecrets.org, which tracks congressional campaign spending by race. Outside groups spent $3.5 million against Bacon. Bacon also benefited from outside groups spending $2.1 million to support him. By contrast, outside groups spent $101,872 backing Vargas. Rep. Adrian Smith, who serves Nebraska’s largely rural 3rd District, raised $1.7 million and spent $1.9 million – most of that in supporting other House Republicans. He spent about $70,000 on his own race, most of that for political and fundraising consultants. His challenger, Democrat David Else of Overton, didn’t raise or spend the $5,000 minimum that triggers the obligation to file a report. Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., questions William Burns, nominee for Central Intelligence Agency director, during his Senate Select Intelligence Committee confirmation hearing. (Tom Williams-Pool/Getty Images) U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., left the Senate in January for the University of Florida’s presidency with $2.7 million left in his campaign coffers, which he could use in Florida. He had raised nearly $2 million since his 2020 election, almost all before he announced in late 2022 that he was a finalist for the academic job. Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen appointed former Gov. Pete Ricketts to replace Sasse. Ricketts recently spun up a new Senate campaign committee but has not yet reported raising money. Ricketts has said that he will run in 2024 to fill out the final two years of Sasse’s term and that, if successful, he will run in 2026 for a full six-year term. Former Nebraska gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster has been considering running against him. GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX SUBSCRIBE
- [Kentucky Rep. James Comer to lead House hearing this week about Hunter Biden's laptop](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/06/kentucky-rep-james-comer-to-lead-house-hearing-this-week-about-hunter-bidens-laptop/) - WASHINGTON – Kentucky Rep. James Comer will lead the charge, in his new role as the head of an influential congressional committee, when the curtain goes up this week on House Republican investigations into President Joe Biden and his family − starting with a hearing Wednesday about how Twitter blocked messages about Hunter Biden’s laptop.The House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing will open the panel’s door on investigations into Hunter Biden and potential attempts to influence his father’s politics through business deals in Ukraine or China, or through high-price sales of his own paintings.Comer became Oversight chairman after his party won control of the House in November's election, “We’re going to start with the hard drive because there’s a lot of evidence on the hard drive that suggests Joe Biden knew very well what his family was involved in," he told reporters last month. "We want to make sure that our national security isn’t compromised because China is an adversary right now."More:Who is James Comer? What to know about 2023's House Oversight Committee chairJoe Biden has denied discussing business or benefiting from his son’s deals. Hunter Biden's lawyers have asked the Justice Department and Delaware attorney general to investigate the distribution of information from the laptop for possible criminal prosecution.The Oversight hearing, coming the day after Biden’s State of the Union speech, offers a showcase of Republican investigations into the Democratic president. But Democratic lawmakers blasted the inquiry as “hyper-partisan” conspiracy theories that have been debunked.Here’s what we know about the committee investigation so far:Hunter Biden's laptop: What does it have to do with Trump, Giuliani and the 2020 election?The laptop has become a focal point of Republican investigations because it contains a trove of documents and pictures of Hunter Biden.A computer repairman, John Paul Mac Isaac, gave the laptop information to the FBI after Hunter Biden failed to pick up the MacBook Pro following repairs in April 2019. Mac Isaac later gave the laptop to former President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani gave the laptop to local police and shared the contents with reporters.The New York Post reported in October 2020 – weeks before the presidential election – on emails about Hunter Biden's business dealings in Ukraine and possible links to his father.The story described 2015 emails indicating then-Vice President Joe Biden met with a high-ranking official at Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company whose board employed Hunter Biden. The meeting would have come at a time when Biden was pressuring Ukraine to fire its prosecutor general, who was investigating the company Trump has criticized.But Biden’s campaign said, “No meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.”When Trump raised questions about the laptop at a presidential debate, Biden replied that it was Russian disinformation. The laptop’s legitimacy has since been confirmed by CBS News, but the contents remain under investigation.More:Biden family hearings to begin Feb. 8 as House GOP probes Twitter, Hunter Biden laptopHunter Biden asks DOJ, Delaware attorney general to investigate distribution of laptop informationHunter Biden’s lawyers sent letters Wednesday asking the Justice Department and Delaware’s attorney general to investigate who accessed, copied and disseminated information from the laptop.Abbe Lowell, one of Hunter Biden’s lawyers, said the actions taken with the laptop “more than merit a full investigation and, depending on the resulting facts, may merit prosecution under various statutes.”The committee seeks Treasury documents about 'suspicious' Hunter Biden banking transactionsThe committee asked the Treasury Department for documents about 150 alerts from U.S. banks about suspicious transactions involving Hunter Biden and James Biden, the president's brother. The committee also asked the Prewitt Mahler Tucker Private Wealth Management Group about its management of Hunter Biden’s finances including “questionable business dealings.”The suspicious transaction reports don’t necessarily flag wrongdoing because they generally cover transactions greater than $5,000 and the department received 3.6 million reports last year.Comer said documents suggest Hunter Biden was paid $80,000 per month by Burisma and benefitted from a $5 million deal in China, which was wire-transferred through corporate intermediaries. Comer said he would like to find out what Hunter Biden provided in exchange.Comer argued the payments were "influence peddling," and acknowledged there might be nothing to the suspicious reports, but he wants to review them.Ian Sams, a White House spokesperson for oversight, called the request for banking records a political stunt driven by the most extreme members of the Republican conference.More:'The Joe Biden investigation': What to expect from Jamie Comer as House Oversight chairJoe Biden denies profiting from sonJoe Biden denied repeatedly he received any benefit from his son’s business deals. Republicans questioned his truthfulness.“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” Biden said in 2019.But Comer labeled the claim “false” because of documentation of meetings from Hunter Biden’s personal calendar and White House visitor records.Joe Biden earlier denied receiving foreign payments during a 2020 presidential debate.“I have not taken a penny from any foreign source at any point in my life,” Biden said.The former vice president denied accusations from Trump about a secret bank account in China.“He’s talking about me taking money from China?” Biden said of Trump. “I’ve not taken a penny from any country. Ever. Ever. Ever.”What do the Secret Service and FBI know?The committee is also investigating how federal agencies such as the Secret Service and the FBI have dealt with Hunter Biden.The panel asked who had access to Joe Biden’s former office and his home, where classified documents from his time as vice president were discovered in November and December.Ron Klain, Biden’s chief of staff, told the panel the White House doesn’t maintain visitor logs for the house. But the Secret Service generates law enforcement records for people who visit, so Comer asked the agency for those records from when Biden left the Obama administration in January 2017.The committee asked the FBI for information about Hunter Biden's relationship with JiaQi "Jackie" Bao, whom lawmakers identified as having ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Bao helped Hunter Biden broker a 2017 deal for a U.S. purchase of liquefied natural gas through CEFC China Energy, according to the committee.But the deal collapsed in 2019 when CEFC's leaders were arrested in the U.S. and charged with corruption for projects in Africa, according to the committee.Previous Senate investigation found no evidence of wrongdoingRepublicans on a pair of Senate committees investigated the laptop and found in September 2020 no evidence of wrongdoing or corrupt actions by Joe Biden in connection with his son’s dealings in Ukraine.The 87-page report found Hunter Biden’s role at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma “problematic” but said it was “unclear” whether he influenced U.S. foreign policy while Joe Biden was vice president.But Republicans serving in the minoritydidn’t have the authority to subpoena witnesses, which Comer now has.Who is testifying from Twitter?Republicans have accused social media companies such as Twitter of suppressing information about Hunter Biden’s laptop in the weeks before the 2020 election.Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO at the time, said later that blocking the article with “zero context” was “unacceptable.”The committee called former Twitter executives as witnesses for the hearing: Yoel Roth, former global head of trust and safety; Vijaya Gadde, former chief legal officer and James Baker, former general counsel.Baker is a former general counsel for the FBI, an agency lawmakers accused of encouraging social media companies to suppress stories before the election because of concerns about hacking. Gadde explained at the time how Twitter revised its policy allowing tweets about the laptop after suppressing them for days.Courier Journal reporter Morgan Watkins contributed to this article.
- [Key Republican wants Ga. as early primary state — in 2028 | Georgia Public Broadcasting](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/06/key-republican-wants-ga-as-early-primary-state-in-2028-georgia-public-broadcasting/) - Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger wants his state to become an early presidential primary host — just not in 2024, as President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party are pushing. The Republican election chief, who garnered attention for rebuffing then-President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 loss in Georgia, told The Associated Press he'd back an early primary in 2028. It's the first time Raffensperger, who sets Georgia's primary election dates, has endorsed the idea of Georgia as an early nominating state, though not as soon as the Democratic National Committee and the White House want. "Georgia would be a great early primary state in 2028," Raffensperger told the AP. "It has a good cross-section of engaged voters from both parties, and, as everyone seems to now recognize, we run great elections," the secretary added in a dig at Democrats' assertions that he and Republican Gov. Brian Kemp have worked to limit ballot access. Raffensperger's position highlights the Democrats' challenge in reordering their nominating calendar to elevate racially diverse electorates and de-emphasize Iowa and New Hampshire. Those overwhelmingly white states have opened the nominating process for both major parties for decades and still lead Republicans' 2024 calendar as it's currently set — with national GOP officials showing little interest in reconsidering their slate. The secretary's announcement nonetheless shows Democrats aren't alone in wanting Georgia, now a premier general election battleground, to expand its burgeoning influence into presidential nominating politics. The question is whether Democrats can find momentum among the Republicans who control the Georgia statehouse and with the national GOP forces necessary to make such a change. That's decidedly harder than Atlanta's push to win the 2024 Democratic convention, a decision that will be made entirely within the party. Top Georgia Democrats including Sen. Raphael Warnock and U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams of Atlanta support a presidential primary move, and the state party's former executive director, Scott Hogan, has taken on the role of the top unofficial lobbyist for the idea, reaching out to Republicans and the business community. "This isn't just a political conversation. This is very much an economic conversation," said Williams, who is also the state Democratic chairwoman. "It's a benefit across the board, whether Republicans or Democrats." Audrey Haynes, a University of Georgia professor tracking the debate, cited studies showing how much more influential an average American voter becomes when they live in an early nominating state. The economic boon, she added, ranges from candidates' television advertising to a year's worth of tourism and consumer spending by traveling national media and the top campaigns' permanent field staffers. "There's just all this spending to go along with the attention on voters and on local elected officials," Haynes said. Under the Democratic National Committee plan approved Saturday, the party's 2024 presidential primaries would begin Feb. 3 in South Carolina, the state that propelled Biden's campaign in 2020. That primary would be followed by Nevada and New Hampshire on Feb. 6, Georgia on Feb. 13 and Michigan on Feb. 27. The national party has given Georgia Democrats until June to show they can comply with that calendar, though deadline could be extended.Raffensperger noted the Republican National Committee has locked in its 2024 calendar, with the usual opening slate of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. The GOP also plans to limit convention delegates from states that move up to disrupt that traditional quartet. "This type of move would need to be equitable, take place on the same day, and ensure that no one loses delegates," Raffensperger said, offering no indications that he'd try to persuade the RNC to reconsider. Jordan Fuchs, Raffensperger's deputy, said calendar reshuffles must "at the start" be a "bipartisan decision," a tacit acknowledgement that Biden being the genesis of Democrats' plan does it no favors in Georgia. "Just because one party is pushing it doesn't mean it has bipartisan support," she said. Kemp, meanwhile, has given no public sign that he wants a change ahead of 2024. Additionally, Kemp's advisers have noted he has no official role in setting the primary dates. That said, Kemp is at the apex of his influence as a second-term, battleground governor who won reelection by nearly 8 percentage points; he defeated Democratic power player Stacey Abrams for a second time after dominating a Republican primary challenger who had Trump's backing. So he would be key in any eventual shift. A top Kemp adviser, who wasn't authorized to speak on the record about an issue the governor isn't actively pursuing and requested anonymity, said Kemp and his inner circle do not dispute the long-term benefits Georgia would accrue as an early state. Yet the considerations for the GOP aren't as straightforward as for Democrats. Multiple recent presidential cycles — Barack Obama's nomination in 2008, Hillary Clinton's in 2016 and Biden's in 2020 — have highlighted the power Black voters in the South already have in Democratic politics. Biden's path was especially emphatic, as he stormed to the nomination in a matter of weeks after finishing fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire, effectively highlighting their shortcomings as Democratic bellwethers. Those two states, though, still reflect the Republican Party's overwhelmingly white base, giving the GOP little incentive to depose them. National Democrats, meanwhile, have made clear they want their early nominating window to be stacked with November battlegrounds; that would give their eventual nominee early exposure in key Electoral College states. Georgia Republicans, conversely, are still adjusting to their state's tossup status after dominating at all levels of government for decades before 2020, when Georgia opted narrowly for Biden and two Democratic senators. "I certainly believe it's a two-party state," said Chip Lake, a veteran GOP campaign operative. "But the conversations among Democrats on what all this means at the presidential level is just more advanced than it is for Republicans right now," Lake said. And, he added, Kemp's previous statements have effectively cut off any bipartisan movement on primaries. "No one," Lake said, "wants to get out in front of the governor."
- [Trump campaign staff on 2020 election lies: 'Fan the flame' - Wisconsin Watch](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/06/trump-campaign-staff-on-2020-election-lies-fan-the-flame-wisconsin-watch/) - Reading Time: 3 minutes Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press. A newly released audio recording offers a behind-the-scenes look at how former President Donald Trump’s campaign team in a pivotal battleground state knew they had been outflanked by Democrats in the 2020 presidential election. But even as they acknowledged defeat, they pivoted to allegations of widespread fraud that were ultimately debunked — repeatedly — by elections officials and the courts. The audio from Nov. 5, 2020, two days after the election, is surfacing as Trump again seeks the White House while continuing to lie about the legitimacy of the outcome and Democrat Joe Biden’s win. The Wisconsin political operatives in the strategy session even praised Democratic turnout efforts in the state’s largest counties and appeared to joke about their efforts to engage Black voters, according to the recording obtained Thursday by The Associated Press. The audio centers on Andrew Iverson, who was the head of Trump’s campaign in the state. “Here’s the drill: Comms is going to continue to fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election. We’ll do whatever they need (inaudible) help with. Just be on standby in case there’s any stunts we need to pull,” Iverson said. Iverson is now the Midwest regional director for the Republican National Committee. He deferred questions about the meeting to the RNC, whose spokesperson, Keith Schipper, declined comment because he had not heard the recording. Get Wisconsin news you need straight to your inbox. Sign up for our free story updates and Friday news roundups. The former campaign official and Republican operative who provided a copy of the recording to the AP was in the meeting and recorded it. The operative is not authorized to speak publicly about what was discussed and did not want to be identified out of concern for personal and professional retaliation, but said they came forward because Trump is mounting a third attempt for the White House. In response to questions about the audio, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said: “The 2024 campaign is focused on competing in every state and winning in a dominating fashion. That is why President Trump is leading by wide margins in poll after poll.” Wisconsin was a big part of Trump’s victory in 2016, when he smashed through the Democrats’ so-called “Blue Wall” in the upper Midwest, and his campaign fought hard to keep the swing state in his column four years later before his loss to Biden. Biden defeated Trump by nearly 21,000 votes in Wisconsin in 2020, a result that has withstood independent and partisan audits and reviews, as well as lawsuits and recounts in the state’s two largest and Democratic-leaning counties. Yet, two days after the election, there was no discussion of Trump having won the state during the meeting of Republican campaign operatives. Support a free and independent press. If you value news from Wisconsin Watch, make a tax-deductible donation today so we can continue doing statewide investigations that matter to you. Instead, parts of the meeting focus on discussions about packing up campaign offices and writing final reports about how the campaign unfolded. At one point on the recording, Iverson is heard praising the GOP’s efforts while admitting the margin of Trump’s defeat in the state. “At the end of the day, this operation received more votes than any other Republican in Wisconsin history,” Iverson said. “Say what you want, our operation turned out Republican or DJT supporters. Democrats just got 20,000 more than us, out of Dane County and other shenanigans in Milwaukee, Green Bay and Dane. There’s a lot that people can learn from this campaign.” The meeting showcases another juxtaposition of what Republican officials knew about the election results and what Trump and his closest allies were saying publicly as they pushed the lie of a stolen election. Trump was told by his own attorney general there was no sign of widespread fraud, and many within his own administration told the former president there was no substance to various claims of fraud or manipulation — advice Trump repeatedly ignored. In the weeks after the election, Trump and his allies would file dozens of lawsuits, convene fake electors and pressure election officials in an attempt to overturn the will of the voters and keep Trump in office. It’s unclear whether the staff in Wisconsin coordinated their message directly with campaign officials in Washington. Parts of the Nov. 5 meeting also center on Republican outreach efforts to the state’s Black community. At one point, the operatives laugh over needing “more Black voices for Trump.” Iverson also references their efforts to engage with Black voters. “We ever talk to Black people before? I don’t think so,” he said, eliciting laughter from others in the room. Another speaker on the recording with Iverson is identified by the source as GOP operative Clayton Henson. At the time, Henson was a regional director for the RNC in charge of Wisconsin and other Midwestern states. They give a postmortem of sorts on the election, praising Republican turnout and campaign efforts while acknowledging the Democrats’ robust turn-out-the-vote campaign. Henson specifically references Democratic turnout in Dane County, which includes Madison, the state capital, and is a liberal stronghold in the state. A record-high 80% of the voting-age population cast ballots in 2020 in the county, which Biden won with 76% of the vote. “Hats off to them for what they did in Dane County. You gotta respect that,” Henson said. “There’s going to be another election in a couple years. So remember the lessons you learned and be ready to punch back.” Henson, reached by phone Thursday, said, “No thank you” when asked to comment about the meeting.
- [Taking Aim at Trump, Koch Network Will Back G.O.P. Primary Candidates](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/06/taking-aim-at-trump-koch-network-will-back-g-o-p-primary-candidates/) - The move by the alliance of conservative donors could provide an enormous boost to a Republican alternative to the former president.The donor network created by the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch is preparing to get involved in the presidential primaries in 2024, with the aim of turning “the page on the past” in a thinly veiled rebuke of former President Donald J. Trump, according to an internal memo.The network, comprising an array of political and advocacy groups that have been backed by hundreds of ultrawealthy conservatives, has been among the most influential forces in American politics over the past 15 years, spending nearly $500 million supporting Republican candidates and conservative policies in the 2020 election cycle alone. But it has never before supported candidates in presidential primaries.The potential move against Mr. Trump could motivate donors to line up behind another prospective candidate. Thus far, only the former president has entered the race.The memo went out to the affiliated activists and donors after a weekend conference in Palm Springs, Calif., where the network’s leaders laid out their goals for the next presidential election cycle. At various sessions, they made clear they planned to get involved in primaries for various offices, and early.“The Republican Party is nominating bad candidates who are advocating for things that go against core American principles,” the memo declares. “And the American people are rejecting them.” It asserts that Democrats are responding with “policies that also go against our core American principles.”The memo’s author is Emily Seidel, chief executive of the lead nonprofit group in the network, Americans for Prosperity, and an adviser to an affiliated super PAC. But the principles sketched out in the memo are expected to apply to some other groups in the network, which is now known as Stand Together.Americans for Prosperity’s super PAC spent nearly $80 million during the 2022 midterm elections, but that is likely just a fraction of the network’s overall spending, much of which was undertaken by nonprofit groups that will not be required to reveal their finances until this fall.One of the lessons learned from primary campaigns in the 2022 midterm election cycle, the memo says, in boldface, “is that the loudest voice in each political party sets the tone for the entire election. In a presidential year, that’s the presidential candidate.”The decision to get involved in the Republican presidential primaries is being viewed as a rebuke to Donald Trump.Doug Mills/The New York TimesIt continues, “And to write a new chapter for our country, we need to turn the page on the past. So the best thing for the country would be to have a president in 2025 who represents a new chapter. The American people have shown that they’re ready to move on, and so A.F.P. will help them do that.”Though the memo did not mention Mr. Trump’s name, leaving open the possibility that the network could fall in behind him if he won the Republican nomination, its references to a “new chapter” and leaving the past behind were unmistakable.The Run-Up to the 2024 ElectionThe jockeying for the next presidential race is already underway.Taking Aim at Trump: The Koch brothers’ donor network is preparing to get involved in the Republican primaries, with the aim of turning “the page on the past” — a thinly veiled rebuke of Donald J. Trump.Trump’s Support: Is Mr. Trump the front-runner to win the Republican nomination? Or is he an underdog against Ron DeSantis? The polls are divided, but higher-quality surveys point to an answer.Falling in Line: With the vulnerabilities of Mr. Trump’s campaign becoming evident, the bickering among Democrats about President Biden’s potential bid for re-election has subsided.Democrats’ Primary Calendar: Upending decades of political tradition, members of the Democratic National Committee voted to approve a sweeping overhaul of the party’s primary process.Mr. Trump’s early entry into the race, in November, has largely frozen the field. The only other candidate expected to get into the race soon is Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, whose allies, despite her work as the U.N. ambassador under Mr. Trump, have cast her as a change from the past.Mr. Trump’s early campaign has not shown the financial dominance he did as a nominee, and a number of major donors have made clear they are not inclined to support him over other candidates. The Club for Growth, the anti-tax group that was once aligned with Mr. Trump, has split with him and is said to be interested in opposing his candidacy..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% - 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(--color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(--color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(--color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(--color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.It remains to be seen how successful the Koch group will be marshaling resources behind a single candidate, or if Charles Koch will donate significantly himself. But at minimum, the development is the latest indication that traditional aspects of the Republican ecosystem are less fearful of Mr. Trump than they had been.The Koch network publicly opposed some of Mr. Trump’s policies, including tariffs he imposed as president, though it worked with his administration on an overhaul of the criminal justice system that slashed some sentences.If the network were to unite behind an alternative to Mr. Trump, it could give that candidate a tremendous boost, given the resources at its disposal, which at times have rivaled — and even surpassed — those of the Republican National Committee.It would also be a stark departure for the Koch network, which was begun by the Koch brothers during former President George W. Bush’s administration as an effort to reorient the Republican Party and American politics around their libertarian-infused conservatism.A number of the party’s most prolific donors have remained on the sidelines, with a Republican primary field that has yet to take shape.The network has had ties to former Vice President Mike Pence, who is taking steps that could lead to a presidential campaign. And some major donors have expressed interest in Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is also weighing a potential campaign. But if Mr. DeSantis enters the race, he is likely months away from doing so, according to people familiar with his thinking.A number of big donors who backed Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2020 have yet to say they will do so again. Other groups of donors, such as those belonging to the hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer’s American Opportunity Alliance, which overlaps with the Koch network, are also largely on the sidelines so far.It may be easier for the Koch network to decide to oppose Mr. Trump than to agree on an alternative.In past election cycles, the ideological diversity of the network’s donors, as well as the Kochs’ commitment to their own ideology, have been impediments to uniting behind a single presidential candidate.While Charles Koch is the most prominent figure in the network — his brother David began stepping back from it before his death in 2019 — it draws its influence partly from its ability to pool resources from an array of major donors who represent sometimes divergent wings of the Republican Party, including noninterventionists, foreign policy hawks and religious conservatives.Perhaps the closest the network came to wading into a Republican presidential nominating contest was in 2016, when it was pressured by some donors and operatives to back an opponent of Mr. Trump, who was seen as anathema to the Kochs’ limited government, free-trade instincts.But the network wavered. And one of its top operatives, Marc Short, decamped for the presidential campaign of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who was viewed by many Koch-aligned donors as having the best chance to defeat Mr. Trump, but whose hawkish instincts ran afoul of the Kochs.The network remained largely on the sidelines of the 2016 presidential race after Mr. Trump won the Republican nomination: Charles Koch at one point compared having to decide whether to support Mr. Trump or Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, to being asked to choose between cancer or a heart attack.It continued to sit out presidential politics in 2020, when Mr. Koch expressed regret over the network’s financial backing of Republicans and proclaimed that it had “abandoned partisanship” in favor of bipartisan efforts like overhauling the criminal justice system.While the network has cast itself as motivated by issues, not partisanship, and has expressed willingness to support Democrats who align with it on some policies, its federal election spending has almost exclusively gone toward Republicans.Ms. Seidel wrote in the memo that “it looks like the Democrats have already chosen their path for the presidential — so there’s no opportunity to have a positive impact there.” Americans for Prosperity’s super PAC, she added, “is prepared to support a candidate in the Republican presidential primary who can lead our country forward, and who can win.”Ms. Seidel also rejected the idea that the network had retreated from politics, noting in the memo that Americans for Prosperity engaged in more primary elections last year — about 200 at the state and federal level — than ever before, and that the candidates it supported won in more than 80 percent of those races.
- [Georgia election official Raffensperger backs early primary in 2028 - USA Today](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/06/georgia-election-official-raffensperger-backs-early-primary-in-2028-usa-today/) - ATLANTA – Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger wants his state to become an early presidential primary host – just not in 2024, as President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party are pushing.The Republican election chief, who garnered attention for rebuffing then-President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 loss in Georgia, told The Associated Press he’d back an early primary in 2028.It’s the first time Raffensperger, who sets Georgia’s primary election dates, has endorsed the idea of Georgia as an early nominating state, though not as soon as the Democratic National Committee and the White House want.“Georgia would be a great early primary state in 2028,” Raffensperger told the AP.“It has a good cross-section of engaged voters from both parties, and, as everyone seems to now recognize, we run great elections,” the secretary added in a dig at Democrats’ assertions that he and Republican Gov. Brian Kemp have worked to limit ballot access.Raffensperger’s position highlights the Democrats’ challenge in reordering their nominating calendar to elevate racially diverse electorates and de-emphasize Iowa and New Hampshire. Those overwhelmingly white states have opened the nominating process for both major parties for decades and still lead Republicans’ 2024 calendar as it’s set – with national GOP officials showing little interest in reconsidering their slate.The secretary’s announcement nonetheless shows Democrats aren’t alone in wanting Georgia, now a premier general election battleground, to expand its burgeoning influence into presidential nominating politics.The question is whether Democrats can find momentum among the Republicans who control the Georgia statehouse and with the national GOP forces necessary to make such a change. That’s decidedly harder than Atlanta’s push to win the 2024 Democratic convention, a decision that will be made entirely within the party.Live updates:Biden State of the Union address clouded by spy balloon criticism, House GOP investigations ramp upTop Georgia Democrats including Sen. Raphael Warnock and U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams of Atlanta support a presidential primary move, and the state party’s former executive director, Scott Hogan, has taken on the role of the top unofficial lobbyist for the idea, reaching out to Republicans and the business community.“This isn’t just a political conversation. This is very much an economic conversation,” said Williams, who is also the state Democratic chairwoman. “It’s a benefit across the board, whether Republicans or Democrats.”Audrey Haynes, a University of Georgia professor tracking the debate, cited studies showing how much more influential an average American voter becomes when they live in an early nominating state. The economic boon, she added, ranges from candidates’ television advertising to a year’s worth of tourism and consumer spending by traveling national media and the top campaigns’ permanent field staffers.“There’s just all this spending to go along with the attention on voters and on local elected officials,” Haynes said.Under the Democratic National Committee plan approved Saturday, the party’s 2024 presidential primaries would begin Feb. 3 in South Carolina, the state that propelled Biden’s campaign in 2020. That primary would be followed by Nevada and New Hampshire on Feb. 6, Georgia on Feb. 13 and Michigan on Feb. 27.The national party has given Georgia Democrats until June to show they can comply with that calendar, though the deadline could be extended.Raffensperger noted the Republican National Committee has locked in its 2024 calendar, with the usual opening slate of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. The GOP also plans to limit convention delegates from states that move up to disrupt that traditional quartet.“This type of move would need to be equitable, take place on the same day, and ensure that no one loses delegates,” Raffensperger said, offering no indications that he’d try to persuade the RNC to reconsider.Jordan Fuchs, Raffensperger’s deputy, said calendar reshuffles must “at the start” be a “bipartisan decision,” a tacit acknowledgment that Biden being the genesis of Democrats’ plan does it no favors in Georgia.Multiple recent presidential cycles – Barack Obama’s nomination in 2008, Hillary Clinton’s in 2016 and Biden’s in 2020 – have highlighted the power Black voters in the South already have in Democratic politics. Biden’s path was especially emphatic, as he stormed to the nomination in a matter of weeks after finishing fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire, effectively highlighting their shortcomings as Democratic bellwethers. Those two states, though, still reflect the Republican Party’s overwhelmingly white base, giving the GOP little incentive to depose them.National Democrats, meanwhile, have made clear they want their early nominating window to be stacked with November battlegrounds; that would give their eventual nominee early exposure in key Electoral College states. Georgia Republicans, conversely, are still adjusting to their state’s tossup status after dominating at all levels of government for decades before 2020, when Georgia opted narrowly for Biden and two Democratic senators.“I certainly believe it’s a two-party state,” said Chip Lake, a veteran GOP campaign operative. “But the conversations among Democrats on what all this means at the presidential level is just more advanced than it is for Republicans right now,” Lake said.And, he added, Kemp’s previous statements have effectively cut off any bipartisan movement on primaries.“No one,” Lake said, “wants to get out in front of the governor.”
- [Op/Ed When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail - Law Enforcement Today](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/05/op-ed-when-all-you-have-is-a-hammer-everything-looks-like-a-nail-law-enforcement-today/) - When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The following article has been written by Mike Simonelli. It includes editorial content which is the opinion of the writer. Before the four videos capturing the deadly beat down of Tyre Nichols at the hands of five former Memphis police officers (POs) were released to the public, Memphis Police Chief, Cerelyn Davis warned they were “about the same if not worse’’ than the video showing four white Los Angeles POs beat Rodney King on a California street back in 1991. Nichols family attorney, Mr. Benjamin Crump concurred, stating “It is going to remind many people of Rodney King.” CNN political commentator Van Jones spoke about how the Rodney King incident inspired him to be an activist attorney. Seal of the Memphis Tn. Police Department Despite the fact that all five of the officers involved in not only beating but killing Nichols are black, the usual suspects are intent on using his death as yet another excuse to label policing as systemically and institutionally racist. For those people, the saying that “If your only tool is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail” is apropos. They see everything involving the police and blacks as racist. Op/Ed: Police Are Not Brutal Racists In their tainted view, none of it ever has to do with a violent criminal making the officer fear for their life as Michael Brown did to Ferguson PO Darren Wilson, an otherwise good officer making an honest mistake during a split second life or death scenario as Brooklyn Center PO Kim Potter had with Daunte Wright, or on a very rare occasion such as this one – rogue officers betraying the badge. Echoing then President Obama’s inflammatory comments regarding the 2016 justified deadly shooting of Alton Sterling, President Biden said of Nichols death, “We also cannot ignore the fact that fatal encounters with law enforcement have disparately impacted Black and Brown people.” Feguson Missouri Police Patch The president’s attempt to portray five black officers brutally beating a black man to death as an example of racism exposes the myth that has been repeatedly pushed in the war on police. Oddly though, this hyper focus on racism only applies one way, as evidenced in the 2017 deadly police shooting of Justine Damond. The sole talk of racism in that case was concerns that Minneapolis PO Mohamed Noor wouldn’t receive a fair trial because he was black. More recently there have been no allegations of racism when an unarmed white Daniel Vallee was shot by two black Louisiana deputies, nor when unarmed 12-year-old Thomas Siderio was shot in the back by a Latino Philadelphia PO. With zero evidence race was involved in Nichols death nor the other incidents politicized to paint the police as racist merely because the subject killed was black – such allegations should be considered lies and the incidents reexamined. But instead of focusing on them through a racial lens as was originally done, they should be viewed through the perspective of a trained officer. He resisted arrest, grabbed at an officer’s duty belt, then (unsuccessfully) sued hoping for a $1M payout Starting with the atrocity at hand, any officer examining all four videos undoubtedly keyed in on the fact that what those five thugs did to Tyre Nichols is not taught in any police academy or training manual. From the way they first approached Nichols’ vehicle to their field goal kicks to his head as he was held down and the haymakers to his face as he was being held up – those were not the actions of trained police professionals. Officers are taught: to immediately gain control over the subjects’ hands; use the minimum amount of force necessary to effect the arrest; to escalate up the use of force continuum according to the perceived threat; deescalate the situation as soon as appropriate; and the golden rule – the fight is over once the handcuffs are on. Every one of those rules were broken as the officers appeared more intent on using Nichols as a punching bag then handcuffing him. copyright free stock photo By contrast, look at how officers followed their training in these incidents that were manipulated to incite dangerous anti-police rhetoric: Eric Garner – In 2014 when told by NYPD officers he was under arrest for selling loose cigarettes, Garner refused to comply. PO Pantaleo used a department authorized takedown to bring the larger 6’3” 350 pound man to the ground. As Garner continued to resist, PO Pantaleo used a compliance hold on him as a black supervisor looked on. Garner was not beaten, Tased, pepper-sprayed, nor hit with an asp. Tragically, with his multitude of health problems (heart disease, severe asthma, diabetes, and obesity) Garner suffered a heart attack afterward in the ambulance and died soon later. Alton Sterling – In 2016 two Baton Rouge POs confronted Alton Sterling after he threatened a passerby with a gun. Sterling refused to be arrested, fought off the officers’ attempts to handcuff him and was unaffected by the Taser. After the officers wrestled Sterling to the ground, only when Sterling physically tried to access the gun seen outlined in his pocket did PO Salamoni use deadly force. Louisville police move to fire two more officers in Breonna Taylor case – even though they’re not charged with a crime Breonna Taylor – In 2020 Louisville POs conducted a “knock and announce” warrant at her residence. They used no force until after being shot at by Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend. Sgt. Mattingly sustained a gunshot wound to his leg which he nearly bled to death from. Reasonably fearing for their lives, the officer’s returned fire in the direction of the gunfire. Sadly, Breonna Taylor was fatally hit. The officers in these incidents used the least amount of force possible and only escalated that force indirect response to the actions of the subjects they were dealing with during the lawful performance of their duties. Police critics have to go back to 1991 to find a suitable comparison to Nichols because since then there has been a massive improvement in policing directed at treating people of all races with courtesy, professionalism and respect. And the results speak for themselves – an average law abiding American of any color is substantially more likely to be struck by lightning than unjustifiably killed by a law enforcement officer. Tyre Nichols was one such person because he wasn’t dealing with officers, he was struck down by five perps with badges. About the author:Mike Simonelli is a retired US Army officer with 30 years of military service who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan; an active police officer in New York for 23 years; the Suffolk County PBA Sgt-at-Arms and holds a master’s degree in National Security Studies from American Military University. His book on policing can be found at www.jdfinformation.com.
- [‘Bad Apples’ or Systemic Issues?](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/05/bad-apples-or-systemic-issues/) - On Wednesday, the city of Memphis remembered the life of Tyre Nichols, a young man who was beaten by at least five Memphis police officers and died three days later. Stories like this are terrible, they’re relentless, and they renew one of the most contentious debates in the nation: Are there deep and systemic problems with the American police?How we answer that question isn’t based solely on personal experience or even available data. It often reflects a massive partisan divide, one that reveals how we understand our relationships with the institutions we prize the most — and the least.Every year Gallup releases a survey that measures public confidence in a variety of American institutions, including the police. In 2022, no institution (aside from the presidency) reflected a greater partisan trust gap than the police. A full 67 percent of Republicans expressed confidence in the police, versus only 28 percent of Democrats.Why is that gap so large? While I try to avoid simple explanations for complex social phenomena, there is one part of the answer that I believe receives insufficient attention: Our partisanship tends to affect our reasoning, influencing our assessments of institutions regardless of the specifics of any particular case.Here’s what I mean. The instant that a person or an institution becomes closely identified with one political “tribe,” members of that tribe become reflexively protective and are inclined to write off scandals as “isolated” or the work of “a few bad apples.”Conversely, the instant an institution is perceived as part of an opposing political tribe, the opposite instinct kicks in: We’re far more likely to see each individual scandal as evidence of systemic malice or corruption, further proof that the other side is just as bad as we already believed.Before I go further, let me put my own partisan cards on the table. I’m a conservative independent. I left the Republican Party in 2016, not because I abandoned my conservatism but rather because I applied it. A party helmed by Donald Trump no longer reflected either the character or the ideology of the conservatism I believed in, and when push came to shove, I was more conservative than I was Republican.But my declaration of independence wasn’t just about Trump. In 2007 I deployed, relatively late in life, to Iraq as a U.S. Army judge advocate general, or JAG. Ever since I returned from my deployment, I’ve been gradually shedding my partisanship.The savagery of the sectarian infighting I saw in Iraq shocked me. I witnessed where mutual hatred leads, and when I came home I saw that the seeds of political violence were being planted here at home — seeds that started to sprout in the riots of summer 2020 and in the Trump insurrection of 2021.As American polarization deepens, I’ve noticed unmistakable ways in which committed partisans mirror one another, especially at the far edges. There’s even a term for the phenomenon: horseshoe theory, the idea that as left and right grow more extreme they grow more alike. When it comes to the partisan reflex — the defense of “my people” and “my institutions” — extreme partisans behave very much like their polar opposites.And make no mistake, respect for police officers has long been vital to the very identity of conservative Americans. Men and women in uniform are ours. They’re part of our community, and — as the Blue Lives Matter flags in my suburban Nashville neighborhood demonstrate — we’ve got their backs. (Mostly, anyway. Lately, the Capitol Police and the F.B.I. do not feel that same support.)There are good reasons for respecting and admiring police officers. A functioning police force is an indispensable element of civil society. Crime can deprive citizens of property, hope and even life. It is necessary to protect people from predation, and a lack of policing creates its own forms of injustice.But our admiration has darker elements. It causes too many of us — again, particularly in my tribe — to reflexively question, for example, the testimony of our Black friends and neighbors who can tell very different stories about their encounters with police officers. Sometimes citizens don’t really care if other communities routinely experience no-knock raids and other manifestations of aggression as long as they consider their own communities to be safe.Shell casings are marked at the front door of the apartment of Breonna Taylor, who was fatally shot during a no-knock raid by police officers in Louisville, Ky., in 2020.Louisville Metro Police Department, via Associated PressAt this point you might be asking: When is the left reflexively defensive? What institutions does it guard as jealously as conservatives guard the police?Consider academia. Just as there is a massive partisan gap in views of the police, there is a similar gap in views of higher education. According to a 2022 New America Survey, 73 percent of Democrats believe universities have a “positive effect” on the country, while only 37 percent of Republicans have the same view.Yes, this is in part a consequence of anti-intellectual strains on the right and among right-wing media. And this conservative mistrust of higher education (and secondary education) is causing it to turn its back on free speech and instead resort to punitive legislation, such as Florida’s recently passed “Stop Woke Act,” which a federal court called “positively dystopian” and unconstitutionally “bans professors from expressing disfavored viewpoints in university classrooms while permitting unfettered expression of the opposite viewpoints.”But that’s not the whole story. The nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression — of which, full disclosure, I was once president — has tracked over 900 incidents since 2001 where scholars were targeted for termination or other penalties for speech that was protected by the First Amendment or by conventional principles of academic freedom. In 2021 alone there were 111 attempts to penalize professors for their speech, and almost 70 percent of those attacks came from the left.I spent years litigating campus free speech in court. It was frustrating to file successful case after successful case — often challenging policies that existed in campuses across the country — only to be told time and again that there was no systemic problem with free expression on campus, that these were merely isolated incidents or a product of youthful overenthusiasm, of kids being kids.No one should pretend for a moment that there is any kind of moral equivalence between university censorship and fatal police violence. The stakes on the streets are infinitely higher than the stakes in the classroom. But there is still a common problem: Our repeated assumptions that those on our team might make mistakes or overstep, but those on the other team are deliberately malevolent.I should know. I used to fit that partisan mold. As a conservative, I could clearly see the problems in American universities. After all, it was my tribe that disproportionately faced penalties and discipline. When it came to the police, however, I was skeptical. I knew there were some bad apples. But was there a systemic problem? I was doubtful.I have since changed my mind, but it took shedding my partisanship and applying my principles to allow me to see more clearly. Fundamental to my worldview is the belief that human beings possess incalculable worth, but that we are also deeply flawed. No person or institution can be completely trusted.Thus powerful people and powerful institutions must be held accountable. If you combine authority with impunity, then corruption and injustice will be the inevitable result. If I could see this reality clearly in institutions on the left, why couldn’t I see it on the right?The police, after all, possess immense power in American streets, often wielded at the point of a gun. Yet the law systematically shields them from accountability. Collective bargaining agreements and state statutes provide police officers with greater protections from discipline than almost any other class of civil servant — despite the fact that the consequences of misconduct can be unimaginably worse. A judge-made doctrine called qualified immunity provides powerful protections against liability, even when officers violate citizens’ civil rights. Systemic police corruption and systemic abuse should not have been a surprise.The Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin subdues George Floyd during an attempted arrest in 2020.Darnella Frazier/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHow do we fight past our partisanship to become truly curious about the truth? For me, the answer started with the first principle of my conservatism: Human beings possess incalculable worth. If that is true, and my neighbors and fellow citizens are crying out about injustice, I should hear their voices and carefully consider their claims.My initial inability to see the truth is related to the second principle, that human beings are deeply flawed. I had no trouble applying that principle to my opponents. But it also applies to those I generally admire. It applies to police officers. It applies to me.The lesson I’ve taken has been clear: Any time my tribe or my allies are under fire, before I yield to the temptation of a reflexive defense, I should apply my principles and carefully consider the most uncomfortable of thoughts: My opponents might be right, my allies might be wrong and justice may require that I change my mind. And it may, in all likelihood, require that I do this again and again.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
- [JCPS students get caught up on vaccinations at Newcomer Academy - WLKY](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/05/jcps-students-get-caught-up-on-vaccinations-at-newcomer-academy-wlky/) - Jefferson County Public Schools students got another chance to get up-to-date on their vaccinations.The district held another vaccine clinic Saturday at Newcomer Academy.Students received MMR, COVID-19, and flu vaccines while JCPS staff were offered COVID-19 shots.The recent clinics are in response to a measles outbreak in Columbus, Ohio, as well as to increase health care access for students and their families."Vaccines save children. The outbreak in Columbus, over 40 % of all the kids infected had to be hospitalized so that's a pretty big deal. Measles is very, very infectious so from the turnout today we know parents want their kids to be healthy and well. And we need to make sure they have access to do that," said nurse practitioner Eva Stone, JCPS.The first 500 students who got their vaccinations were given a $20 gift card. LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Jefferson County Public Schools students got another chance to get up-to-date on their vaccinations.The district held another vaccine clinic Saturday at Newcomer Academy.
- [Across America | | phillytrib.com - The Philadelphia Tribune](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/04/across-america-phillytrib-com-the-philadelphia-tribune/) - Ex-officer involved in 2020 protest shooting avoids prisonLOUISVILLE, Ky. — A former Louisville police officer blamed for instigating a deadly shooting during the 2020 protests over the death of Breonna Taylor was sentenced Monday to two years of probation.Katie R. Crews, 30, pleaded guilty last year to one count of using excessive force during a curfew crackdown in 2020 that ended with the fatal shooting of restaurant owner David McAtee. U.S. District Judge Benjamin Beaton called Crews' actions "incredibly dangerous" and doubled a one-year recommended probation period to two years.Beaton said he was reluctant to allow Crews to avoid prison time, but was told that McAtee's family had given their blessing to the recommended sentence."None of us should minimize this," Beaton said during the hourlong hearing Jan. 30. Crews was also ordered to perform 200 hours of community service, and she can no longer work in law enforcement.Also Monday, lawyers for McAtee's family announced the settlement of a wrongful death lawsuit. The suit filed against Louisville Police, two National Guard members and Crews was settled for $725,000, said attorney Steve Romines.The Associated PressSt. Louis to pay $5.2 million after 2017 mass arrestsST. LOUIS — The city of St. Louis will pay nearly $5.2 million to settle claims by people who were arrested during a protest in 2017 over the acquittal of a police officer in the shooting death of a Black man, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.According to a proposed class action settlement filed last week, the city agreed to pay $4.91 million, or about $58,500 per person, to 84 people who were protesting in downtown St. Louis.The lawsuit claimed the protesters' rights were violated when they were caught in a police "kettle" as officers surrounded and arrested everyone in the area. Three people who filed individual lawsuits settled from $85,000 each.They were protesting after former St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley was acquitted in the Dec. 20, 2011, shooting death of Anthony Lamar Smith.Protesters said police surrounded more than 120 people who officers said did not follow dispersal orders. Several people claimed police used excessive force and indiscriminate pepper spray, including against bystanders who were not protesting.The city denied any wrongdoing as part of last week's settlement. A city spokesman declined comment.The Associated PressWhite supremacists who attacked Black DJ sentencedSEATTLE — Four white men with white supremacist ties were sentenced in federal court in Seattle for a 2018 assault on a Black DJ at a bar in the suburb of Lynnwood. Judge Richard Jones sentenced the men to varying prison terms, the Daily Herald reported in late January.Jason DeSimas, of Tacoma, will serve four years. Under a plea agreement, prosecutors and the defense recommended just over three years. Jason Stanley, of Boise, Idaho, had the same plea deal. Jones sentenced him to four years, as well.Randy Smith, of Eugene, Oregon, got 3½ years in prison. And Daniel Dorson, of Corvallis Oregon, got 2⅓ years.All four were previously convicted of committing a hate crime and making false statements. The man they attacked, Tyrone Smith, said outside the courthouse that his life is forever changed.The judge also ordered the defendants to pay nearly $171,000 in restitution to cover lost wages and medical bills. He called the attack that of a "modern day unhooded KKK."Smith said the defendants' actions changed him from an outgoing person who DJ'ed for his friends for fun, to someone who struggles with anxiety and uses a cane.On Dec. 7, 2018, DeSimas and others traveled to Lynnwood on the way to visiting the site of a Whidbey Island cabin where Robert Jay Mathews, the neo-Nazi leader of the violent hate group The Order, died in a gunfight with federal agents on Dec. 8, 1984. It has become a far-right holiday, known as Martyr's Day."As we can all see, it's been a long road for me," Smith said. "But I had enough courage to come down and make sure this process was handled and justice was actually served."On Dec. 7, 2018, DeSimas and others traveled to Lynnwood on the way to visiting the site of a Whidbey Island cabin where Robert Jay Mathews, the neo-Nazi leader of the violent hate group The Order, died in a gunfight with federal agents on Dec. 8, 1984. It has become a far-right holiday, known as Martyr's Day.That night, DeSimas attended a gathering with other white supremacist sympathizers, prosecutors said. Shortly after midnight, about a dozen of them went to the Rec Room Bar and Grill. Some wore jackets with patches indicating their white supremacist beliefs and some had similar tattoos, including some depicting swastikas, prosecutors said.At some point, Stanley messed with Smith's DJ equipment. Smith pushed him away. In response, DeSimas and others surrounded Smith, using racist slurs while kicking, punching and stomping on Smith, prosecutors said. Witnesses who tried to intervene were also attacked.The men then left the bar and went to Whidbey Island, where they attended the Martyr's Day event.Federal prosecutors indicted the men in December 2020. Citing insufficient evidence, Snohomish County prosecutors declined to charge six other men who were at the tavern the night of the attack.DeSimas wrote in a letter to the judge that he was "ashamed" of his actions, saying he no longer shared the views he previously held.Dorson wrote in a similar letter that he was "disgusted by the fear I took part in creating."Nick Brown, the U.S. Attorney for Western Washington, said seeking consequences for the attack was a high priority for the Justice Department and the FBI.Rick Collodi, the FBI's special agent in charge of Seattle's field office, said the defendants tried to conceal their actions, but the truth came out."The four defendants admitted to being members of a white supremacist group," Collodi said. "While they have the right to believe what they want, they do not have the right to commit a crime."
- [Trump campaign vowed to 'fan the flame' of 2020 election lie: Audio | Al Mayadeen English](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/04/trump-campaign-vowed-to-fan-the-flame-of-2020-election-lie-audio-al-mayadeen-english/) - After Trump failed in Wisconsin, his team vowed to 'fan the flames' of false accusations of election fraud, new audio reveals. Trump in Kenosha, Wisconsin just before the election in November 2020 (Reuters) A newly released audio recording provides a behind-the-scenes look at how former US President Donald Trump's campaign team realized that they had been beaten by Democrats in the 2020 presidential race in a key battleground state. Even after they admitted defeat, they still decided to "fan the flames" of allegations of extensive fraud that supposedly cost Trump the election in that state, which were eventually discredited - again - by election authorities and the courts. The recording from November 5, 2020, two days after the election, is flaring up as Trump eyes the presidency once more while continuing to lie about the legitimacy of the outcome and Democrat Joe Biden's 2020 victory. According to the audio acquired by the Associated Press on Thursday, Wisconsin political operatives in the planning session even praised Democratic turnout efforts in the state's major counties and appeared to laugh about their efforts to reach Black voters. It is worth noting that the recording focuses on Andrew Iverson, the state director of Trump's campaign. “Here’s the deal: comms is going to continue to fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election. We’ll do whatever they need. Just be on standby if there’s any stunts we need to pull,” Iverson said. Iverson occupies the position of midwest regional director for the Republican National Committee. The former campaign official and Republican operative who provided the AP with a copy of the video was present and recorded the meeting. The operative was not permitted to speak publicly about what was discussed, but he did so because Trump is running for the presidency again. Commenting on the audio, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said, “The 2024 campaign is focused on competing in every state and winning in a dominating fashion. That is why President Trump is leading by wide margins in poll after poll.” Wisconsin was a key part of Trump's 2016 triumph, and his campaign worked hard to preserve the swing state in 2020, but Biden defeated Trump by roughly 21,000 votes. The outcome has stood up to independent and partisan audits and reviews, as well as lawsuits and recounts in the state's two most populous and Democratic-leaning counties. Instead, portions of the conference are devoted to discussions about closing campaign offices. Iverson can be heard applauding the GOP's efforts while recognizing Trump's loss in the state. The discussion demonstrates yet another contrast between what Republican leaders understood about the election results and what Trump and his closest friends were publicly stating as they promoted the "Big Lie" myth of a stolen election. Trump's own attorney general informed him there was no evidence of widespread fraud, and many in his own staff advised him that there was little substance to numerous charges of fraud or manipulation - advice Trump frequently rejected. In the weeks following the election, Trump and his supporters would file hundreds of lawsuits, summon phony electors, and put pressure on election authorities in an attempt to retain Trump in office. Read next: Trump planned 2020 victory speech regardless of loss: Jan 6 probe
- [Democrats set to make SC first primary voting state - Live 5 News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/04/democrats-set-to-make-sc-first-primary-voting-state-live-5-news/) - PHILADELPHIA (WCSC/AP) — The Democratic Party on Saturday approved the reordering of its 2024 presidential primary, replacing Iowa with South Carolina in the leadoff spot as part of a major shake-up meant to empower Black and other minority voters critical to its base of support.Although changes are still possible throughout the summer and beyond, the formal endorsement by the Democratic National Committee during its meeting in Philadelphia is an acknowledgement that the start of the 2024 primary will look very different from the one in 2020.“This is a huge weekend for the state of South Carolina going to likely become the first vote in the nation when it comes to 2024, at least on the Democratic side,” Gray Washington Correspondent Peter Zampa said ahead of Saturday morning’s vote.The Democratic National Committee has worked for months to revamp the start of its voting calendar. States with early contests have a major influence in determining the nominee because White House hopefuls struggling to raise money or gain political traction often drop out before visiting states outside the first five.The new plan has been championed by President Joe Biden, who is expected to formally announce his reelection campaign in the coming months.South Carolina will now hold its primary on Feb. 3, 2024. Nevada and New Hampshire would follow on Feb. 6 and Georgia would hold theirs one week later on Feb. 13. Michigan’s primary would then be fifth on Feb. 27.Much of the rest of the nation would be set to vote on Super Tuesday in early March.“This isn’t just about us,” Trav Robertson, chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, told a gathering of the DNC Southern caucus earlier this week. “This is a regional thing, and it’s making us all look good.”The move marks a major shift from the current calendar, which had started with Iowa’s caucuses for the last five decades, followed by New Hampshire’s primary and subsequent contests in Nevada and South Carolina.DNC chair Jaime Harrison, a former Senate candidate from South Carolina, said the new schedule “allows the South to stand up, for our voices to be heard.”Zampa reported that people in Iowa and New Hampshire are not happy about the potential plan, calling it a blow to their respective regions, the midwest and the northeast.“They say there’s no justification for this,” Zampa said. “But when it comes down to it, South Carolina helped deliver Joe Biden a huge primary when turning the tide for him in 2020. Democrats at large were saying that South Carolina and other states like Nevada are more representative of the party as a whole.Biden won the South Carolina Democratic Primary in 2020 after dismal finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire and a distant second-place finish in Nevada.“For all of those of you who’ve been knocked down, counted out and left behind, this is your campaign,” he said after winning in the Palmetto State.Four of the five states that will start Democrats’ new primary schedule are presidential battlegrounds, meaning the eventual party winner can lay groundwork in important general election locales. Michigan and Georgia both voted for Donald Trump in 2016 before flipping to Biden in 2020.The exception is South Carolina, which hasn’t backed a Democrat in a presidential race since 1976, leading some to argue that the party shouldn’t be concentrating so many early primary resources there. But the state’s population is nearly 27% Black, and African American voters represent Democrats’ most consistent base of support. The change means many will have an earlier impact on the Democratic primary than ever before.The revamped Democratic calendar could be largely meaningless for 2024 since Biden is expected to seek reelection with no major primary challenge — and the DNC has already pledged to revisit the voting calendar before the 2028 presidential election.Still, this year’s changes could establish precedent, just as a new lineup that moved Nevada and South Carolina into early voting states did when the DNC approved a new primary lineup before the 2008 presidential election.Saturday’s vote doesn’t mean the new calendar is locked. South Carolina, Nevada and Michigan have met party requirements to join the party’s new top five. But in Georgia, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has said he’d be unwilling to change his state’s Democratic presidential primary without the GOP moving its primary, which hasn’t yet happened.A DNC rules committee first approved the Biden-endorsed new lineup during its meeting in December, setting up this weekend’s vote. Sixteen states and Puerto Rico made presentations before the rules committee last summer on why they should be allowed to go first — or at least join the new top five.The proposed changes haven’t come without divisions.New Hampshire state law mandates that it hold the nation’s first presidential primary, which Iowa had circumvented since 1972 by holding a caucus. New Hampshire Democrats have joined with top state Republicans in vowing to go forward with the nation’s first presidential primary next year regardless of the DNC calendar.New Democratic rules include penalties for states that attempt to jump ahead of others, including losing delegates to the national convention.Top New Hampshire Democrats have warned that another Democrat could run in an unsanctioned state primary and, if Biden skips it in accordance with party rules, could win and embarrass the president — prolonging a primary process that wasn’t supposed to be competitive.That hasn’t deterred Biden, who wrote to the DNC rules committee in December that, “for decades, Black voters in particular have been the backbone of the Democratic Party but have been pushed to the back of the early primary process.”“We rely on these voters in elections but have not recognized their importance in our nominating calendar,” Biden said. “It is time to stop taking these voters for granted.”Copyright 2023 WCSC. The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved.
- [Kansas Republicans say “Election Day” should mean Election Day. Is that possible?](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/04/kansas-republicans-say-election-day-should-mean-election-day-is-that-possible/) - #inform-video-player-1 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; } #inform-video-player-2 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; } KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Kansas Republicans have repeatedly said they want “Election Day” to mean Election Day as they weigh new rules to restrict mail-in ballots and drop boxes.The phrase is a callback to the 2020 election when ballots counted after election night secured President Joe Biden’s victory in the Electoral College over former President Donald Trump. #inform-video-player-3 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; }
- [Electronic pollbook security raises concerns going into 2024 - Beaumont Enterprise](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/04/electronic-pollbook-security-raises-concerns-going-into-2024-beaumont-enterprise/) - ATLANTA (AP) — They were blamed for long lines in Los Angeles during California’s 2020 presidential primary, triggered check-in delays in Columbus, Ohio, a few months later and were at the center of former President Donald Trump’s call for supporters to protest in Detroit during last November's midterms.High-profile problems involving electronic pollbooks have opened the door for those peddling election conspiracies and underscore the critical role the technology plays in whether voting runs smoothly. Russia and Iran already have demonstrated interest in accessing the systems. Despite their importance and potential vulnerabilities, national standards for the security and reliability of electronic pollbooks do not exist and efforts underway to develop them may not be ready or widely adopted in time for the 2024 presidential election.
- [Electronic pollbook security raises concerns going into 2024 - NewsTimes](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/04/electronic-pollbook-security-raises-concerns-going-into-2024-newstimes/) - ATLANTA (AP) — They were blamed for long lines in Los Angeles during California’s 2020 presidential primary, triggered check-in delays in Columbus, Ohio, a few months later and were at the center of former President Donald Trump’s call for supporters to protest in Detroit during last November's midterms.High-profile problems involving electronic pollbooks have opened the door for those peddling election conspiracies and underscore the critical role the technology plays in whether voting runs smoothly. Russia and Iran already have demonstrated interest in accessing the systems. Despite their importance and potential vulnerabilities, national standards for the security and reliability of electronic pollbooks do not exist and efforts underway to develop them may not be ready or widely adopted in time for the 2024 presidential election.
- [Trump Aides Planned to Whip up Election Lies While Admitting Biden Won: Audio Leak](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/04/trump-aides-planned-to-whip-up-election-lies-while-admitting-biden-won-audio-leak/) - Residents wait in line to vote at a shuttered Sears store in the Janesville Mall on November 03, 2020 in Janesville, Wisconsin. Scott Olson/Getty Images The Associated Press obtained audio of Donald Trump's aides discussing the aftermath of the 2020 election. The Wisconsin aides planned to "fan the flame" about baseless election fraud claims, despite admitting Trump lost. "Just be on standby in case there's any stunts we need to pull," one aide says in the recording. Top editors give you the stories you want — delivered right to your inbox each weekday. Loading Something is loading. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. download the app Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. .inline-newsletter-signup.loading { width: 100%; max-width: 640px; margin: 0 auto; visibility: hidden; } In a newly released audio recording, former Donald Trump campaign staff can be heard planning to "fan the flame" by promoting election fraud claims in Wisconsin following the 2020 presidential election, despite acknowledging defeat.In the audio from November 5, 2020, obtained by the Associated Press, Andrew Iverson, the head of Trump's campaign in the state, can be heard speaking to other GOP operatives in a meeting."Here's the drill: Comms is going to continue to fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election. We'll do whatever they need our help with. Just be on standby in case there's any stunts we need to pull," Iverson says in the recording.Iverson talks about promoting baseless election fraud conspiracy theories despite admitting in another part of the recording that Trump had lost the key battleground state. "At the end of the day, this operation received more votes than any other Republican in Wisconsin history. And it wasn't even close," Iverson says."Say what you want, our operation turned out Republican or DJT supporters. Democrats just got 20,000 more than us, out of Dane County and other shenanigans in Milwaukee, Green Bay, and Dane. There's a lot that people can learn from this campaign."Trump won Wisconsin in 2016, but Joe Biden beat him in 2020 by nearly 21,000 votes. Nonpartisan audits and reviews have since confirmed the results.The audio provides insight into the inner workings of the Trump campaign and the disconnect between their private conversations about the election and public allegations about election fraud. The audio was given to AP by a former campaign official and GOP operative who attended the meeting and recorded it. They have remained anonymous out of fear of retaliation but said they had chosen to share it because of Trump's third presidential run.When asked by AP about the recording, Iverson, now the Midwest regional director for the Republican National Committee, referred the outlet to RNC spokesperson Keith Schipper. Schipper declined to comment, claiming he had not listened to the clip.Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung responded to AP: "The 2024 campaign is focused on competing in every state and winning in a dominating fashion. That is why President Trump is leading by wide margins in poll after poll."At another point in the recorded meeting, the group discusses and laughs about GOP outreach efforts to Black voters in the state and needing "more Black voices for Trump." "We ever talk to Black people before? I don't think so," Iverson says, sparking laughter from others, according to AP.Meanwhile, GOP operative Clayton Henson praises the Democratic campaign for high voter turnout in Dane County, a liberal stronghold in the state."Hats off to them for what they did in Dane County. You gotta respect that," Henson says, per AP. "There's going to be another election in a couple years. So remember the lessons you learned and be ready to punch back."Henson also declined to comment on the meeting to AP. .content-lock-lock .hidden { display: none; } Sign up for notifications from Insider! Stay up to date with what you want to know. Subscribe to push notifications Close icon Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.
- [Students, staff turn out for community-wide JCPS vaccination clinic | News - wdrb.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/04/students-staff-turn-out-for-community-wide-jcps-vaccination-clinic-news-wdrb-com/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- JCPS held a community-wide vaccination clinic on Saturday.The clinic was held at Newcomer Academy and was open to all students and staff with Jefferson County Public Schools.Students were able to get vaccinated against measles, COVID-19, and the flu, and staff members were able to get COVID-19 boosters.A spokesperson for JCPS says the district had its highest turnout ever for the clinic, with hundreds of people rolling up their sleeves."It has been a wonderful thing," said Eva Stone, a nurse practitioner and manager for JCPS district health. "Parents are really responding and I think it speaks to the need. We have nearly 12,000 students in JCPS who show they're not current on measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. A lot of those are children living in poverty and children of color. And so we know we have a lot of immigrant and refugee families living in the city. There is an access issue for many families to get vaccines for their children."The first 500 students to get a vaccine also got a $20 gift card from the Kentucky Association of Health Plans.Copyright 2022 by WDRB Media. All rights reserved.
- [Writers festival: Conductor Teddy Abrams discusses creativity at Rancho Mirage event](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/04/writers-festival-conductor-teddy-abrams-discusses-creativity-at-rancho-mirage-event/) - When a talk is titled "Rock Star Conductor," the bar's already been set quite high. But the Friday morning conversation between music critic Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim and Louisville Orchestra and Britt Festival Orchestra music director Teddy Abrams at the Rancho Mirage Writers Festival couldn't have been titled more appropriately.Abrams, a 35-year-old Bay Area native who began playing piano at age 4 and then clarinet in elementary school, studied conducting under San Francisco Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas at 12, attended Laney College and Foothill College during his teens and graduated with a Bachelor of Art from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music at 18.Fonseca-Wollheim started the conversation asking about a musical he's creating based on a 2017 composition inspired by the legendary boxer Muhammad Ali. Abrams said his interest in musical art is "exploring as much as possible" without adhering to the expectations of the labels such as conductor, composer and instrumentalist."I've always felt passionate about composing because it's the ultimate exercise in exploring your own creativity. I wouldn't trust a conductor that's never composed anything," Abrams said. "If you've never been through the process of trying to translate the sounds you hear onto a page, then I don't think you're getting the full experience when you go and engineer that process as a conductor."He described himself as a "byproduct of a very Western European hierarchy of art" and challenged the indoctrination in music education presenting composers such as Bach, Beethoven and Mozart as top-tier. He labeled these famed composers as "standards" because that's what most aspiring classical composers look to when starting out, however, he doesn't think old-school figures like Bach should get in the way of modern composers' creativity. "It's hard to nurture what your own voice might be," Abrams said. "Other genres of art suffer from this too, but our brethren in the pop music world are less bound by this. There's more of an expectation in that world that each generation gets to express something new or isn't necessarily compared in opposition to what came before. It's allowed to be a new way of creating music during each decade and moment."Abrams highlighted the vibrant history of the Louisville Orchestra going back to its founding in 1937 by composer Robert Whitney and former Louisville mayor Charles Farnsley to be the "most important commissioning orchestra in the world" and a $5 million donation by the Rockefeller Foundation led to 160 albums by "standard" composers and others discovered in South America and the U.S."It's such a beautiful image of what American cities can do and be," Abrams said. "One of the reasons I work in Louisville is because it can matter what you do to people there. We've tried to create the same inspiration for that plan back in the '40s to be the center of new music, but do it in a way that makes sense for the 21st century."As Louisville suffered through the COVID-19 pandemic, Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was killed by police when they raided her home with a 'no knock' warrant in 2020. Abrams said the city was "torn apart in so many ways.""I have always suggested that artists are some of the most capable people in healing," Abrams said. "They're the best people to hold up mirrors and say 'Here's a reflection of who we are" and 'But here is a dream of what we could be.' If you have a city without artists like that, it's soulless. I thought it was an amazing opportunity to attract those people. Our city has been through the ringer, we've had our challenges, but if we're to be better and find ways of connecting and caring about each other, we need to attract artists there because they start the process and inspire others to do it."But what impact do an orchestra's donors have on the decisions on the creative direction and what music is included in an annual program? Abrams said putting a city's name in an organization means providing a service to that community but added 95% of orchestras aren't selecting music based on donors making specific requests."When I'm talking to a person that can give money to a medical or educational cost or give money to the arts, I am trying to express a vision where the orchestra matters in our community," Abrams said.Desert Sun reporter Brian Blueskye covers arts and entertainment. He can be reached at brian.blueskye@desertsun.com or on Twitter at @bblueskye.
- [Norton reinstates mask mandate on same day UofL Health drops it: - WLKY](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/04/norton-reinstates-mask-mandate-on-same-day-uofl-health-drops-it-wlky/) - BACK ON TRACK. AND THIS WEEK, UNIVERSAL HEALTH IS EXPECTED TO LIFT THEIR UNIVERSAL MASKING REQUIREMENT. THAT MEANS MASKS WILL NOT HAVE TO BE WORN BY TEAM MEMBERS, PATIENTS OR VISITORS. AND ALSO THE MANDATORY COVID TESTING FOR ADMISSION AND PROCEDURES THAT’S GOING TO END. TESTING WILL ONLY NEED TO BE DONE FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE SHOWING ACTUAL COVID SYMPTOMS. AND OF COURSE, IF YOU WANT TO WEAR A MASK, YOU STILL CAN. BUT THE SAME CAN’T BE SAID FOR NORTON HEALTHCARE, WHICH HAS MADE THE DECISION TO REINSTATE THEIR MASKING POLICIES IN LOCAL HOSPITALS. THAT MEANS ALL EMPLOYEES, PATIENTS AND VISITORS WILL BE REQUIRED TO WEAR A MASK STARTING TOMORROW. NORTON IS CONTINUING TO EVALUATE LOCAL AND NATIONAL DATA FOR COVID CASES. RIGHT NO
- [LeBron James Keeps the World Watching](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/04/lebron-james-keeps-the-world-watching/) - LeBron James sat in the visitors locker room at Madison Square Garden with ice on his 38-year-old knees and 28 more points to his name after his Los Angeles Lakers beat the Knicks in overtime. James’s teammate Anthony Davis teased him about how close he was to breaking Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s N.B.A. career scoring record, then about 90 points away.Suddenly, James remembered something. His mother, Gloria James, was set to go on vacation soon. She might miss his record-breaking game.He called her on speakerphone, with a dozen attentive reporters close by. He asked when she was leaving, reminding her every once in a while, lest she disclose too much, that reporters could hear the conversation. Eventually, he looked around, sheepishly, and said he would call her later.“I love you,” he said. Then, just before he ended the call, he added: “I love you more.”It was typical James: He brings you along for the ride, but on his terms, revealing what he wants to reveal and no more. It is perhaps the only way someone who has been so famous for most of his life could survive the machine of modern celebrity.As he has closed in on Abdul-Jabbar’s record of 38,387 points, the very idea of what it means to be a star has shifted since James scored his first two points on Oct. 29, 2003. And James has helped define that shift. He has risen above the din of social media celebrities and 24-hour news cycles, buoyed by the basketball fans who love him or love to hate him.James, at age 38, is closing in on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s N.B.A. career scoring record while playing with the energy of a much younger version of himself.Ashley Landis/Associated PressHe has been a selfie-snapping tour guide for this journey, with a portfolio that now extends well beyond the court. He has a production company and a show on HBO. He’s acted in a few movies and received some good reviews. His foundation has helped hundreds of students in his hometown Akron, Ohio, and a public school the foundation helps run there, the I Promise School, focuses on children who struggle academically. His opinions are covered as news, given far more weight than those of almost any other athlete.“Hopefully I made an impact enough so people appreciate what I did, and still appreciate what I did off the floor as well, even when I’m done,” James said in an interview. “But I don’t live for that. I live for my family, for my friends and my community that needs that voice.”Basketball Is the ‘Main Thing’In early 2002, James was a high school junior and on the cover of Sports Illustrated. News didn’t travel as quickly as it does now. Not everyone had cellphones, and the ones they had couldn’t livestream videos of whatever anyone did. Social media meant chat rooms on AOL or Yahoo. Facebook had yet to launch, and the deluge of social networking apps was years away.“Thank God I didn’t have social media; that’s all I can say,” James said in October when asked to reflect on his entry into the league.As a teenage star, he was spared the incessant gaze of social media and the bullying and harsh criticism that most likely would have come with it.But social media, in its many changing forms, has also helped people express their personalities and share their lives with others. It lets them define themselves — something particularly useful for public figures whose stories get told one way or another.James began thinking about that early in his career.His media and production firm, now called the SpringHill Company, made a documentary about James and his high school teammates titled “More Than a Game” in 2008. It also developed “The Shop,” an HBO show James sometimes appears on with celebrity guests, including former President Barack Obama and the rapper Travis Scott, talking like friends in a barbershop.James has built a portfolio of movies and television shows that have expanded his influence beyond basketball.Coley Brown for The New York TimesJames likes to say that he always keeps “the main thing the main thing” — meaning that no matter what else is happening in his life, he prioritizes basketball. He honors the thing that created his fame.He led his teams to the N.B.A. finals in eight consecutive years and won championships with three different franchises. He was chosen for the league’s Most Valuable Player Award four times, and he has dished the fourth-most assists in N.B.A. history.James’s talent meant it didn’t take long for him to become the face of the N.B.A. He has mostly embraced that, capitalizing on an era when sports fandom was no longer about sitting down to watch a game so much as it was about catching small bites of the most compelling moments.“People’s interest in athletes moves very quickly, especially with the N.B.A. season,” said Omar Raja, who in 2014 founded House of Highlights, an Instagram account for viral sports moments, because he wanted to share clips of the Miami Heat during James’s time playing there with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.“LeBron’s Instagram stories would do as well as his poster dunks, and you were like, ‘This is crazy,’” Raja said.House of Highlights reposted two videos from James’s Instagram stories in May 2019. One showed James and a former teammate dancing in a yard. Another showed James and friends, including Russell Westbrook, smoking cigars. Both videos outperformed anything that happened in the playoffs.‘I Wish I Could Do Normal Things’James has used his fame to further business opportunities and build his financial portfolio. He has used it to both shield his children and prepare them for growing up in his shadow.He has used it for social activism, most notably in speaking about Black civil rights and racism. That began in 2012, when he and his Heat teammates wore hooded sweatshirts and posted a group photo on social media after the death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager who was wearing a hoodie when he was shot and killed in Florida. The Heat decided to transfer some of their spotlight to the national conversation about racism that emerged.James wearing Eric Garner’s words “I Can’t Breathe” at a pregame warm up in 2014. Garner, a Black man, died after the police in New York put him a chokehold.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesBlack N.B.A. players have a long history of speaking out or demonstrating against racism and discrimination: Abdul-Jabbar and the Boston Celtics’ Bill Russell were vocal about the racist dangers they faced in the 1960s and ’70s. But what made the actions of James and his teammates stand out was that the superstar athletes of the ’90s and early 2000s — Michael Jordan, most notably — had often shied away from overt activism.What James chooses to talk about (or not talk about) draws notice.In 2019, when a Houston Rockets executive angered the Chinese government by expressing support for Hong Kong, James was criticized for not speaking out against China’s human rights abuses. James said he did not know enough to talk about them, but some skeptics accused him of avoiding the subject to protect his financial interests in China.And in 2020, when protests swept the country after the police killed George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, both of whom were Black, the N.B.A. made social justice part of its ethos. James used many of his news conferences that season to discuss racism and police violence against Black people.The attention to James’s words separates him from others, as does the attention to his life.“I don’t want to say it ever becomes too much, but there are times when I wish I could do normal things,” James said Thursday while standing in an arena hallway in Indianapolis about an hour after the Lakers beat the Pacers there. A member of a camera crew that has been following him for the past few years filmed him as he spoke.“I wish I could just walk outside,” James said. “I wish I could just, like, walk into a movie theater and sit down and go to the concession stand and get popcorn. I wish I could just go to an amusement park just like regular people. I wish I could go to Target sometimes and walk into Starbucks and have my name on the cup just like regular people.”He added: “I’m not sitting here complaining about it, of course not. But it can be challenging at times.”James grew up without stable housing or much money, but his life now is not like most people’s because of the money he has made through basketball and business (he’s estimated to be worth more than $1 billion), and because of the extraordinary athletic feats he makes look so easy. Once in a while, as when he’s on the phone with his mother, he manages to come off like just another guy.James speaks at the opening ceremony for the I Promise School in Akron, Ohio, in 2018.Phil Long/Associated PressAnother example: In October 2018, during his first Lakers training camp, James gave up wine as part of a preseason diet regimen. He was asked if abstaining had affected his body.“Yeah, it made me want wine more,” James said, relatably. “But I feel great. I feel great. I did a two-week cleanse and gave up a lot of things for 14 days.”James had also quit gluten, dairy, artificial sugars and all alcohol for those two weeks, he said.What was left?“In life?” James said. “Air.”There to See HimThe past few seasons have been challenging for James on the court. He is playing as well as he ever has, but the Lakers have struggled since winning a championship in 2020.They missed the playoffs last season and are in 12th place in the Western Conference, though they have played better recently. James, his coaches and his teammates all insist that he spends more time thinking about how to get the Lakers into the playoffs than about breaking the scoring record.Still, Madison Square Garden, one of his favorite arenas, buzzed on Tuesday night. Because of him.Celebrities, fans and media came to watch him, just as they did when he was a constant in the N.B.A. finals.He taped a pregame interview with Michael Strahan courtside. Then he went through his pregame warm-up, shooting from different spots on the court, working against an assistant coach, who tried to defend him. He took a few seconds to dance near the 3-point line as he waited for someone to pass the ball back to him.He was in what he’s made into a comfortable place: the center of the basketball universe.
- [Bernice King urges KSU audience to keep working toward MLK's dream of harmony](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/03/bernice-king-urges-ksu-audience-to-keep-working-toward-mlks-dream-of-harmony/) - Bernice King was only 5 years old when her father, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated in Memphis.So it's only natural that the three pieces of parental advice she remembers most from growing up in a family at the forefront of the civil rights movement came from her mother, Coretta Scott King, she told a Kent State University audience Thursday.The first was to always arrive at a course of action with a clear head — "never make a decision when you're angry."The second was to be herself — a task that could be difficult for her because of her parents' outsized legacy."She would always say to me, 'look, I want you all to know that you don't have to be me, you don't have to be your father, but whatever you do in this life be your best self,'" King said.Her mother's third entreaty was to "cut off the chain of violence." Kids naturally get into fights with their siblings, she said, and the King household was no exception. The difference is that she wasn't ever told that she should meet the others' aggression with hostility of her own.About 700 people gathered in the KSU Student Center ballroom to hear King relating her experiences at the keynote event for the university’s 53rd annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration.Professor Uma Krishnan, the English department's associate writing program coordinator, moderated the discussion as King explained how nonviolent resistance was a way for her father to channel negative emotions — hurt, frustration and pain — into constructive efforts for change during the civil-rights movement of the 1960."There is a way to address violence," King said, "but I don't have to feed into the violence."Each generation is called to push for change, Bernice King explainsDuring the hourlong conversation, Krishnan prompted King to talk about what it means to be Black in America — and when she expects to see her father's hopes for racial harmony come to fruition.In answer to the last question, King said she was reminded of something her mother told her."She said the struggle is a never-ending process," King said. Her mother told her each generation is called to contribute to the struggle — each working with the next to take a bite out of the problem.King urged younger generations to find small victories in the larger fight. Trying to get everything all at once will only burn you out, she said, citing the current effort to address unfair policing in America in one go, a problem so large and multifaceted that she describes it as a "monster." She said she admires the effort that people have put in to the problem, she wouldn't focus all her efforts there because of how much of an exhausting uphill battle it is.Energy, she said, should be directed as well at crafting federal legislation to address the problem, but that the quest for a solution doesn't end with one law."We've got to look at some of the other things that feed into this kind of stuff," King said. "That's why the education system is so important... we've got to really fight hard to make sure that people are being raised in a way that they have all of the truth, and not one perspective."When Krishnan asked King how she keeps herself composed, King said that she knows if she lets her emotions run away with her she turns into a "character" that she doesn't like. When the going gets tough, she takes a few breaths and visualizes the outcome she desires.As an example, she talked about her experiences with the ongoing issue of police brutality.The way that American police (not all police, she added) interact with Black communities frustrates her, she said, citing George Floyd's murder at the hands of Minneapolis police, Breonna Taylor's death during a no-knock raid on her home is Louisville, and the more recent killing of Tyre Nichols by Memphis officers."It'll get deep down underneath everything and make you want to do more than holler," King said. She sets parameters for herself though to keep those impulses in check, and urges others to do the same."If you know you're not strong enough emotionally, certain things you shouldn't take in, you shouldn't absorb. You have got to manage what comes into your eyes and your ears — you have to because you're going to be a mess if not," said King.Bernice King has two distinct ways to describe being Black in AmericaTo Krishnan's question about the Black experience in America, King said she had two answers based on who is asking.If the inquisitor is not Black, she tells them, "It's hell being Black in America."King said that when she's going about her day, she's hyperaware of her surroundings — especially in predominantly white environments.During her time in college she found herself in a class where she was one of two Black students in a room of close to 100 students."I felt like I was carrying the weight of the Black community on my shoulders, because as a Black person when I mess up, all Black people [mess up]," she said to applause and murmurs of agreement from the crowd.When driving through the South, she finds herself praying that she doesn't get pulled over and worrying about what could go wrong."It doesn't matter what class you are, doesn't matter what celebrity status you might be, you're still Black," King said.If the question of the Black experience comes up from a fellow Black person, however, King has a different answer prepared."I sum it up this way: 'America is because we are,'" King said. She said that she'd seen a post on social media inviting readers to imagine a world without all of the things that were invented by Black people."There is so much that Black America has contributed to this nation that it blows your mind," King said. "Almost everything that's been significant in our society, and yet most people don't know about."Audience draws inspiration from Bernice King's experiencesAfter King finished speaking, she ascended to the ballroom balcony to sign books for audience members.In line was Kent State graduate student, military veteran, and Akron resident Deonte Carter.Carter said that hearing King speak about America's policing situation and how she has dealt with it herself was "sadly reaffirming." Carter had a fearful interaction with the state highway patrol in 2017."I got pulled over at a Circle K at the corner of Archwood and Arlington," Carter said. "I didn't see the flashing lights and I was getting ready to get out of the car, this cop had his weapon drawn." The officer told him to get back into the car and began asking Carter "dehumanizing" questions, insinuating that the car was stolen, that Carter was drunk.After the interaction, Carter said he was left feeling afraid to even leave the house even to get the necessities for himself and his children."To be constantly on guard, as Dr. Bernice King had mentioned, that's how I feel sometimes," Carter said. "My head is constantly on a swivel, figuratively speaking. Is there a police officer that's going to stop me, is this my last days in society?"Carter said he came away from the event with the urge to continue advocating for underserved communities, and to continue taking a stand against those in society who think being racist is acceptable or normal. It reaffirmed his desire, he said, to be an agent of change in the world.Kristal J. Moseley, a KSU student and member of Black United Students, said the presentation filled her with hope for herself and her organization .She said Black students on campus could be "stronger in terms of the community being unified and showing up for each other.""Trying to figure out how to do that ourselves is kind of hard because we're students and this is a learning process for us," Moseley said. "So hearing someone who has been through, and still living through, the fight for civil rights and the fight for equality and justice, and getting the Black community more unified, it was encouraging to hear her speak."Contact reporter Derek Kreider at DKreider@Gannett.com
- [Family of Amir Locke files wrongful-death lawsuit in Minneapolis | Reuters](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/04/family-of-amir-locke-files-wrongful-death-lawsuit-in-minneapolis-reuters/) - Feb 3 (Reuters) - The family of Amir Locke, a Black man who was killed by Minneapolis police during a no-knock raid on an apartment last year, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city and the officer who fired the fatal gunshots.The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for Minnesota on behalf of the parents of the 22-year-old Locke, was announced on Friday by civil rights attorney Ben Crump and other lawyers representing the family.It accuses the officer, Mark Hanneman, of violating Locke's rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth amendments of the U.S. Constitution, among other claims. The family is seeking compensatory, special and punitive damages in an amount to be determined by a jury, according to the complaint."Our hearts are broken, and there is nothing in the world that will make that better," his parents, Karen Wells and Andre Locke, said in a statement. "We now fight for justice in his name and hope meaningful change will be his legacy."Latest UpdatesView 2 more stories
- [In Their Opinion: Rooting out bad apples in law enforcement - The Sun Chronicle](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/04/in-their-opinion-rooting-out-bad-apples-in-law-enforcement-the-sun-chronicle/) - #inform-video-player-1 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; } #inform-video-player-2 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; } Even before the city of Memphis released video of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols’ brutal beating during a traffic stop, the five city police officers involved were given a familiar moniker: bad apples.So it was in Baltimore following the in-custody death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray in 2015, and in Cleveland after an officer there shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014, and in Louisville, Kentucky, following the 2020 shooting death of 25-year-old Breonna Taylor during a “no knock” police raid, and even in Los Angeles when video showed officers beating Rodney King in 1991.It’s always the bad apples. So many bad apples. The full metaphor is “One bad apple spoils the barrel.” A moldy fruit infects its companions. The rot only worsens until the whole bunch is a loss.That risk should be sufficient incentive to root out the bad apples quickly, lest the whole barrel be spoiled. Yet, as the nation has seen time and time again in these excessive force cases, the “bad apples” in American police departments are not removed, not drummed out of service, but allowed to inflict their brutality on more civilians each year.Black and brown people frequently suffer disproportionately as a result, but they aren’t the only victims.White people aren’t immune to police violence and the communities where these officers serve face a profound loss of public trust when incidents such as in Memphis occur.Everyone has a vested interest in getting problematic police officers off the street, no more so than the men and women who wear the badge. They know, better than others, how an extrajudicial killing or other form of unjustified police violence diminishes their profession, erodes trust with their communities and ultimately makes their jobs more difficult.That is why, before Memphis released the Nichols footage, police chiefs across the country moved to separate their departments from the actions of those officers. Virginia Beach Chief Paul Neudigate released a statement saying he was “outraged, heartbroken and disappointed” and that “the actions of those involved are not representative of the policing profession.” Other area chiefs expressed similar sentiments.Neudigate is correct that the vast majority of those who serve in law enforcement do so with good intentions and sincere commitment to the public’s safety.But, as in every workplace, those who bend, and break, the rules are known to their colleagues. Officers are aware which of their coworkers are problematic. They know who the bad apples are.Rooting them out is a different matter entirely. Oftentimes high-ranking officials, front-line officers and unions fiercely resist efforts at reform, such as independent oversight boards, even when they would be helpful in separating the dedicated and faithful from those who are unfit to serve.That’s not to say that all reform efforts lack support among those in uniform. Many departments have embraced deescalation training and other strategies to resolve incidents without violence, and nearly everyone in blue agrees that better salaries would attract a higher caliber of recruits.There is too permissive an attitude toward those who aren’t worthy of the uniform. But the risk of inaction contributes to a larger crisis: the erosion of the trust between a community and its law enforcement, which is necessary to effective policing and improved public safety.Police officials routinely say they are asked to do too much, and communities should assist their work by narrowing their scope of responsibilities. Adding mental health teams to respond to people in crisis is one way to do so, but there are countless more.Communities, including those in Hampton Roads, need officers themselves to be proponents of reform, to change the culture of policing and to turn their outrage over what happened in Memphis and too many other places into action. To do nothing — to let despicable, malevolent violence like this to stand without self-introspection and concrete proposals to improve — is to condemn the “good apples” to rot alongside the bad.— The Virginian-Pilot #inform-video-player-3 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; }
- [Louisville's mayor answers questions about first month in office - WHAS11](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/04/louisvilles-mayor-answers-questions-about-first-month-in-office-whas11/) - Mayor Craig Greenberg talks about one of his campaign promises and how he is waiting for the DOJ investigation "like everybody else." LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Despite being just a month into the job, the stakes are high for Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg as he's leading a city on the cusp of a decision that could radically impact the future of its police department and its people. In a one-on-one interview, WHAS11 asked about the pending federal investigation, campaign promises and the moment almost a year ago when his life was put in danger. We started with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) report, where the community awaits the findings to be released from a patterns or practices investigation into the city and Louisville Metro Police (LMPD) in the wake of Breonna Taylor's death. [embedded content] WHAS11: "When's the last time you've talked to the feds? Have they voiced any intentions of giving you a few months in office first before dropping the report?" Greenberg: "I don't know when the DOJ report will be issued, I'm waiting like everybody else. "What I can tell you is that Chief Villaroel and myself are actively working every day to make reforms and to lead a transparent, accountable and well-performing organization -- regardless of when the DOJ report comes out." WHAS11: "When's the last time you and the [Interim Police Chief] spoke with DOJ officials, because there has to be some level of you guys being prepared for when the report comes down, right?" Greenberg: "I have not spoken, nor has the chief spoken with anyone from [the] DOJ in weeks." WHAS11: "Is there a reason for that, particularly?" Greenberg: "No, I mean they are going about doing their investigation. I don't know if they are done with all their interviews [or with] city investigatory work. I hope they are because I want to get the report, so we can move forward as a community. We'll know hopefully in the near future, we'll know when you know." [embedded content] One of Greenberg's top public safety plans introduced during his campaign is a proposal where LMPD would be required to disable confiscated guns before sending them over to Kentucky State Police (KSP), where they're frequently put up for auction. The Mayor met with both Democrats and Republicans in Frankfort this week for an introductory conversation. WHAS11: "Have you made any headway, have you introduced that proposal to them?" Greenberg: "We are working on it. The state of Kentucky has some very unique and stringent laws when it comes to anything involving firearms, so we're working through that. It's unfortunately more complicated and more difficult than I thought, but we're working through that. We're going to have some announcements in the near future." It was just three nights ago, when Mayor Greenberg was face-to-face with mothers grieving the loss of their children to gun violence. WHAS11: "How often when you're comforting mothers like that, do you think back to the moment you were put in danger at the campaign office that day [almost a year ago]?" Greenberg: "Every time, just thinking about how fortunate I am to have survived and to still be here." Make it easy to keep up-to-date with more stories like this. Download the WHAS11 News app now. For Apple or Android users. Have a news tip? Email assign@whas11.com, visit our Facebook page or Twitter feed.
- [Rooting out bad apples](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/04/rooting-out-bad-apples/) - Even before the city of Memphis released video of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols’ brutal beating during a traffic stop, the five city police officers involved were given a familiar moniker: bad apples. So it was in Baltimore following the in-custody death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray in 2015, and in Cleveland after an officer there shot and
- [Election 2020 Wisconsin Republicans | News | thedailyreview.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/02/election-2020-wisconsin-republicans-news-thedailyreview-com/) - FILE - A voter casts her ballot on Election Day, on Nov. 3, 2020, at the Marshall High School in Milwaukee. An audio recording of a strategy meeting obtained Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023, by The Associated Press shows, that the leaders of then-President Donald Trump's reelection campaign in battleground Wisconsin conceded privately the day after the 2020 election that he had lost, praising Democratic turnout efforts and focusing instead on spreading the lie that Democrats had stolen the election.
- [Norton Healthcare to reinstate mask mandate in Louisville hospitals - Spectrum News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/02/norton-healthcare-to-reinstate-mask-mandate-in-louisville-hospitals-spectrum-news/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Norton Healthcare said it's reinstating the mask mandate in its Louisville-area hospitals starting Friday. Norton Healthcare said all employees, patients and visitors must wear one, regardless of their vaccination status. The mandate will stay in effect until further notice. The decision was made following the latest update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which shows the City of Louisville to have a "high" transmission level for COVID-19. As of Thursday, Jefferson County remains in the low transmission level. "The safety of our patients, staff and community remains a top priority," the health system said in a press release. While Norton Healthcare is reinstating the mask mandate, UofL Health announced it will be lifting the mandate starting Monday. Related Stories
- [Decisions loom for pandemic-era Medicaid enrollees in KY | whas11.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/03/decisions-loom-for-pandemic-era-medicaid-enrollees-in-ky-whas11-com/) - Gov. Andy Beshear says Kentuckians who signed up for Medicaid during the COVID-19 pandemic will soon need to shop around to maintain health coverage. FRANKFORT, Ky. — Some Kentuckians who signed up for Medicaid during the COVID-19 pandemic will soon have to shop around to maintain health insurance coverage, Gov. Andy Beshear said Thursday. The Democratic governor said his administration intends to help people through the transition. “This is a big job," Beshear said at his weekly news conference. "And it’s one we’ve been planning on for many months and it’s one that we will continue to refine our planning.” During the global health crisis, about a quarter-million Kentuckians signed up for pandemic Medicaid, the governor estimated. Medicaid a joint federal and state health care program for poor and disabled people. The surge in sign-ups reflected a nationwide trend. Medicaid enrollment ballooned during the pandemic, in part because the federal government prohibited states from removing people from the program during the public health emergency once they had enrolled. Now, with President Joe Biden’s administration saying it plans to end the national emergencies for addressing COVID-19, changes are coming. It means pandemic-era enrollees in Medicaid will need to have their eligibility redetermined, the governor said. And for many, it means health coverage decisions are looming in the coming months. Late last year, Congress told states they could start removing ineligible people in April. The governor on Thursday predicted that some affected Kentuckians will continue qualifying for Medicaid. Others will be able to switch to Medicare coverage, while others can transition to insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act’s private marketplace. The Department for Medicaid Services and managed care organizations will reach out with more information for people faced with making the transition, the governor's office said. Kentuckians also can seek help through the state-run web portal known as kynect, the health insurance exchange where Kentuckians can shop and sign up for health coverage and find out whether they qualify for subsidies to help afford coverage. “We want to ensure all the Kentuckians impacted — every single one of them — are transitioned to one of the new plans,” Beshear said. “There’s much more information to come, but we want to let people know about these changes very early.” Beshear commonly refers to health care as a “basic human right.” Last year, the governor extended Medicaid coverage for dental, vision and hearing care to hundreds of thousands of Kentucky adults. His father, Steve Beshear, championed the state’s Medicaid expansion when he was governor. More than 400,000 people were added to the Medicaid rolls when Steve Beshear expanded the program to cover able-bodied adults. For many Kentuckians, it was their first time having health coverage. [embedded content] Make it easy to keep up-to-date with more stories like this. Download the WHAS11 News app now. For Apple or Android users. Have a news tip? Email assign@whas11.com, visit our Facebook page or Twitter feed.
- [Louisville hospital systems consider different metrics when deciding whether to mask or not](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/03/louisville-hospital-systems-consider-different-metrics-when-deciding-whether-to-mask-or-not/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, hospital systems are still considering whether to mask up or take them off.Starting next week, masking will no longer be required at UofL Health. "It wasn't a 'We're going to do this,' it's been a long process for us," Dr. Jason Smith, with UofL Health, said.Dr. Smith says they consistently monitor state and county COVID numbers, as well as their own. Since Thanksgiving, Smith says their COVID patient numbers have remained low, around 40.Cases within their workface have been in the single digits. The COVID-19 community levels in Kentucky. (Source: CDC) "So with all of those factors that we kind of looked at, we decided that we had met the criteria that we had set forward for being able to get rid of the mask mandates within our healthcare system," Dr. Smith said.Meanwhile, Norton Healthcare is reinstating its masking policy starting Friday. They based the decision on the county's current transmission rate, which the latest CDC Community Transmission map shows is high."Things have changed throughout COVID," Renee Murphy, Norton Healthcare Senior VP of Communications, said. "It's always been a very fluid situation so we'll continue to stay in contact, take a looking at the transmission rates and take it from there."Baptist Health is masking currently, also basing its policy on the high transmission rate throughout the county."We do have patients that don't have an immune system, we do take care of other patients, so it's our responsibility to take acre of them as well," Dr. Karan Shah, with Baptist Health, said.CDC's COVID Community Map shows Jefferson County in the green. It considers number of new COVID cases as well as hospitalizations. But the transmission map, which shows Jefferson County in the red, is based on the number of new cases and positive tests, according to Dr. Shah. A map of community transmission of COVID-19, which shows Jefferson County in the red. (Source: CDC) "I just want the public to know that 'Hey, there is a rhyme and reason for the way these decision are made,'" Dr. Shah said. "And there are two different maps even though they're called very similar things. There's a difference."According to Dr. Smith, community transmission may show an elevated number since at-home negative tests aren't reported."The transmission levels have still been high. They were hovering right around 12 and a half to 12.7% right around Christmas time. But that has dropped consistently every week since Christmas up until now," Dr. Smith said. "I think right now we're sitting at right around like 10.05% or 10.1%, somewhere around those lines. So you've seen almost a 2% drop and community transmission levels." UofL Health will continue to monitor COVID levels in the community."It's a period of time we're going to drop masking but it doesn't mean it may not have to come back again and people need to be prepared for that," Dr. Smith said.Dr. Shah says while there's been an "overall downtrend" in COVID, it's hasn't gone completely away. He encourages people to get vaccinated if they haven't done so and consider masking when in big crowds."You never know who it's going to protect so it is important that (people remember) COVID is not gone," said Dr. Shah.Related StoriesCopyright 2023 by WDRB Media. All rights reserved.
- [Decisions loom for pandemic-era Medicaid enrollees in Kentucky - Spectrum News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/03/decisions-loom-for-pandemic-era-medicaid-enrollees-in-kentucky-spectrum-news/) - FRANKFORT, Ky. — Some Kentuckians who signed up for Medicaid during the COVID-19 pandemic will soon have to shop around to maintain health insurance coverage, Gov. Andy Beshear said Thursday. What You Need To Know Gov. Andy Beshear says Kentuckians who signed up for Medicaid during the COVID-19 pandemic will soon need to shop around to maintain health coverage He said Thursday that his administration will help people through the transition Beshear estimates that during the global health crisis, about a quarter-million Kentuckians enrolled in Medicaid, a federal and state health care program for poor and disabled people Last year, Congress told states they could start removing ineligible people in April The Democratic governor said his administration intends to help people through the transition. “This is a big job," Beshear said at his weekly news conference. "And it’s one we’ve been planning on for many months and it’s one that we will continue to refine our planning.” During the global health crisis, about a quarter-million Kentuckians signed up for pandemic Medicaid, the governor estimated. Medicaid a joint federal and state health care program for poor and disabled people. The surge in sign-ups reflected a nationwide trend. Medicaid enrollment ballooned during the pandemic, in part because the federal government prohibited states from removing people from the program during the public health emergency once they had enrolled. Now, with President Joe Biden’s administration saying it plans to end the national emergencies for addressing COVID-19, changes are coming. It means pandemic-era enrollees in Medicaid will need to have their eligibility redetermined, the governor said. And for many, it means health coverage decisions are looming in the coming months. Late last year, Congress told states they could start removing ineligible people in April. The governor on Thursday predicted that some affected Kentuckians will continue qualifying for Medicaid. Others will be able to switch to Medicare coverage, while others can transition to insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act’s private marketplace. The Department for Medicaid Services and managed care organizations will reach out with more information for people faced with making the transition, the governor's office said. Kentuckians also can seek help through the state-run web portal known as kynect, the health insurance exchange where Kentuckians can shop and sign up for health coverage and find out whether they qualify for subsidies to help afford coverage. “We want to ensure all the Kentuckians impacted — every single one of them — are transitioned to one of the new plans,” Beshear said. “There’s much more information to come, but we want to let people know about these changes very early.” Beshear commonly refers to health care as a “basic human right.” Last year, the governor extended Medicaid coverage for dental, vision and hearing care to hundreds of thousands of Kentucky adults. His father, Steve Beshear, championed the state’s Medicaid expansion when he was governor. More than 400,000 people were added to the Medicaid rolls when Steve Beshear expanded the program to cover able-bodied adults. For many Kentuckians, it was their first time having health coverage.
- [Trump campaign staff on 2020 election lies: 'fan the flame' - MyNorthwest.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/03/trump-campaign-staff-on-2020-election-lies-fan-the-flame-mynorthwest-com/) - MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A newly released audio recording offers a behind-the-scenes look at how former President Donald Trump’s campaign team in a pivotal battleground state knew they had been outflanked by Democrats in the 2020 presidential election. But even as they acknowledged defeat, they pivoted to allegations of widespread fraud that were ultimately debunked — repeatedly — by elections officials and the courts. The audio from Nov. 5, 2020, two days after the election, is surfacing as Trump again seeks the White House while continuing to lie about the legitimacy of the outcome and Democrat Joe Biden’s win. The Wisconsin political operatives in the strategy session even praised Democratic turnout efforts in the state’s largest counties and appeared to joke about their efforts to engage Black voters, according to the recording obtained Thursday by The Associated Press. The audio centers on Andrew Iverson, who was the head of Trump’s campaign in the state. “Here’s the drill: Comms is going to continue to fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election. We’ll do whatever they need (inaudible) help with. Just be on standby in case there’s any stunts we need to pull,” Iverson said. Iverson is now the Midwest regional director for the Republican National Committee. He deferred questions about the meeting to the RNC, whose spokesperson, Keith Schipper, declined comment because he had not heard the recording. The former campaign official and Republican operative who provided a copy of the recording to the AP was in the meeting and recorded it. The operative is not authorized to speak publicly about what was discussed and did not want to be identified out of concern for personal and professional retaliation, but said they came forward because Trump is mounting a third attempt for the White House. In response to questions about the audio, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said: “The 2024 campaign is focused on competing in every state and winning in a dominating fashion. That is why President Trump is leading by wide margins in poll after poll.” Wisconsin was a big part of Trump’s victory in 2016, when he smashed through the Democrats’ so-called “Blue Wall” in the upper Midwest, and his campaign fought hard to keep the swing state in his column four years later before his loss to Biden. Biden defeated Trump by nearly 21,000 votes in Wisconsin in 2020, a result that has withstood independent and partisan audits and reviews, as well as lawsuits and recounts in the state’s two largest and Democratic-leaning counties. Yet, two days after the election, there was no discussion of Trump having won the state during the meeting of Republican campaign operatives. Instead, parts of the meeting focus on discussions about packing up campaign offices and writing final reports about how the campaign unfolded. At one point on the recording, Iverson is heard praising the GOP’s efforts while admitting the margin of Trump’s defeat in the state. “At the end of the day, this operation received more votes than any other Republican in Wisconsin history,” Iverson said. “Say what you want, our operation turned out Republican or DJT supporters. Democrats just got 20,000 more than us, out of Dane County and other shenanigans in Milwaukee, Green Bay and Dane. There’s a lot that people can learn from this campaign.” The meeting showcases another juxtaposition of what Republican officials knew about the election results and what Trump and his closest allies were saying publicly as they pushed the lie of a stolen election. Trump was told by his own attorney general there was no sign of widespread fraud, and many within his own administration told the former president there was no substance to various claims of fraud or manipulation — advice Trump repeatedly ignored. In the weeks after the election, Trump and his allies would file dozens of lawsuits, convene fake electors and pressure election officials in an attempt to overturn the will of the voters and keep Trump in office. It’s unclear whether the staff in Wisconsin coordinated their message directly with campaign officials in Washington. Parts of the Nov. 5 meeting also center on Republican outreach efforts to the state’s Black community. At one point, the operatives laugh over needing “more Black voices for Trump.” Iverson also references their efforts to engage with Black voters. “We ever talk to Black people before? I don’t think so,” he said, eliciting laughter from others in the room. Another speaker on the recording with Iverson is identified by the source as GOP operative Clayton Henson. At the time, Henson was a regional director for the RNC in charge of Wisconsin and other Midwestern states. They give a postmortem of sorts on the election, praising Republican turnout and campaign efforts while acknowledging the Democrats’ robust turn-out-the-vote campaign. Henson specifically references Democratic turnout in Dane County, which includes Madison, the state capital, and is a liberal stronghold in the state. A record-high 80% of the voting-age population cast ballots in 2020 in the county, which Biden won with 76% of the vote. “Hats off to them for what they did in Dane County. You gotta respect that,” Henson said. “There’s going to be another election in a couple years. So remember the lessons you learned and be ready to punch back.” Henson, reached by phone Thursday, said, “No thank you” when asked to comment about the meeting. ___ This story has been corrected to show Iverson said “drill,” not “deal.” Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
- [Trump campaign staff on 2020 election lies: 'fan the flame' - Alton Telegraph](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/03/trump-campaign-staff-on-2020-election-lies-fan-the-flame-alton-telegraph/) - MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A newly released audio recording offers a behind-the-scenes look at how former President Donald Trump’s campaign team in a pivotal battleground state knew they had been outflanked by Democrats in the 2020 presidential election. But even as they acknowledged defeat, they pivoted to allegations of widespread fraud that were ultimately debunked — repeatedly — by elections officials and the courts.The audio from Nov. 5, 2020, two days after the election, is surfacing as Trump again seeks the White House while continuing to lie about the legitimacy of the outcome and Democrat Joe Biden's win. The Wisconsin political operatives in the strategy session even praised Democratic turnout efforts in the state's largest counties and appeared to joke about their efforts to engage Black voters, according to the recording obtained Thursday by The Associated Press. The audio centers on Andrew Iverson, who was the head of Trump's campaign in the state.
- [Trump campaign staff on 2020 election lies: 'fan the flame' - Tulsa World](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/03/trump-campaign-staff-on-2020-election-lies-fan-the-flame-tulsa-world/) - By SCOTT BAUER - Associated Press MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A newly released audio recording offers a behind-the-scenes look at how former President Donald Trump’s campaign team in a pivotal battleground state knew they had been outflanked by Democrats in the 2020 presidential election. But even as they acknowledged defeat, they pivoted to allegations of widespread fraud that were ultimately debunked — repeatedly — by elections officials and the courts.The audio from Nov. 5, 2020, two days after the election, is surfacing as Trump again seeks the White House while continuing to lie about the legitimacy of the outcome and Democrat Joe Biden's win.The Wisconsin political operatives in the strategy session even praised Democratic turnout efforts in the state's largest counties and appeared to joke about their efforts to engage Black voters, according to the recording obtained Thursday by The Associated Press. The audio centers on Andrew Iverson, who was the head of Trump's campaign in the state. People are also reading… “Here’s the drill: Comms is going to continue to fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election. We’ll do whatever they need (inaudible) help with. Just be on standby in case there’s any stunts we need to pull,” Iverson said.Iverson is now the Midwest regional director for the Republican National Committee. He deferred questions about the meeting to the RNC, whose spokesperson, Keith Schipper, declined comment because he had not heard the recording.The former campaign official and Republican operative who provided a copy of the recording to the AP was in the meeting and recorded it. The operative is not authorized to speak publicly about what was discussed and did not want to be identified out of concern for personal and professional retaliation, but said they came forward because Trump is mounting a third attempt for the White House.In response to questions about the audio, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said: “The 2024 campaign is focused on competing in every state and winning in a dominating fashion. That is why President Trump is leading by wide margins in poll after poll.”Wisconsin was a big part of Trump's victory in 2016, when he smashed through the Democrats' so-called “Blue Wall” in the upper Midwest, and his campaign fought hard to keep the swing state in his column four years later before his loss to Biden.Biden defeated Trump by nearly 21,000 votes in Wisconsin in 2020, a result that has withstood independent and partisan audits and reviews, as well as lawsuits and recounts in the state's two largest and Democratic-leaning counties.Yet, two days after the election, there was no discussion of Trump having won the state during the meeting of Republican campaign operatives.Instead, parts of the meeting focus on discussions about packing up campaign offices and writing final reports about how the campaign unfolded. At one point on the recording, Iverson is heard praising the GOP's efforts while admitting the margin of Trump's defeat in the state.“At the end of the day, this operation received more votes than any other Republican in Wisconsin history,” Iverson said. “Say what you want, our operation turned out Republican or DJT supporters. Democrats just got 20,000 more than us, out of Dane County and other shenanigans in Milwaukee, Green Bay and Dane. There’s a lot that people can learn from this campaign.”The meeting showcases another juxtaposition of what Republican officials knew about the election results and what Trump and his closest allies were saying publicly as they pushed the lie of a stolen election. Trump was told by his own attorney general there was no sign of widespread fraud, and many within his own administration told the former president there was no substance to various claims of fraud or manipulation — advice Trump repeatedly ignored.In the weeks after the election, Trump and his allies would file dozens of lawsuits, convene fake electors and pressure election officials in an attempt to overturn the will of the voters and keep Trump in office.It’s unclear whether the staff in Wisconsin coordinated their message directly with campaign officials in Washington.Parts of the Nov. 5 meeting also center on Republican outreach efforts to the state's Black community.At one point, the operatives laugh over needing “more Black voices for Trump.” Iverson also references their efforts to engage with Black voters.“We ever talk to Black people before? I don’t think so,” he said, eliciting laughter from others in the room.Another speaker on the recording with Iverson is identified by the source as GOP operative Clayton Henson. At the time, Henson was a regional director for the RNC in charge of Wisconsin and other Midwestern states. They give a postmortem of sorts on the election, praising Republican turnout and campaign efforts while acknowledging the Democrats' robust turn-out-the-vote campaign.Henson specifically references Democratic turnout in Dane County, which includes Madison, the state capital, and is a liberal stronghold in the state. A record-high 80% of the voting-age population cast ballots in 2020 in the county, which Biden won with 76% of the vote.“Hats off to them for what they did in Dane County. You gotta respect that,” Henson said. “There's going to be another election in a couple years. So remember the lessons you learned and be ready to punch back.”Henson, reached by phone Thursday, said, “No thank you” when asked to comment about the meeting.This story has been corrected to show Iverson said “drill,” not “deal.” Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. 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- [How 2024's presidential election timeline compares to 2020 and 2016 - Ballotpedia News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/03/how-2024s-presidential-election-timeline-compares-to-2020-and-2016-ballotpedia-news/) - Here’s what’s in store for you as you start your day: How 2024’s presidential election timeline compares to 2020 and 2016President Joe Biden ends January with a 43% approval rating, unchanged from last month#FridayTrivia: How many governors have delivered State of the State addresses so far? Have a minute and an opinion? Take our 2023 reader survey! How 2024’s presidential election timeline compares to 2020 and 2016 On Jan. 31, The Post and Courier’s Schuyler Kopf reported that former South Carolina Governor and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley (R) is expected to announce her presidential campaign on Feb. 15. If Haley does, she’d join former President Donald Trump (R)—who announced his candidacy last November—as the second noteworthy candidate in the Republican primary field. On the Democratic side, President Joe Biden (D) has not yet announced whether he intends to run for a second term. If history is any indication, the bulk of 2024 announcements will likely occur in the next few months. In the 2020 cycle, 87% (27) of the noteworthy candidates announced their campaigns by June 2019. And in the 2016 cycle, 77% (17) had by that time in 2015. We define noteworthy candidates as: Current or former elected officials at the federal or state level or mayor of a city with a population of 100,000 or more;Those who meet either the fundraising or polling thresholds used to determine debate participation; or,Those who have qualified for the ballot in at least 15 states. Looking back at the 2020 election cycle, by Feb. 3, 2019, ten noteworthy candidates had announced their campaigns. U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D) and Bernie Sanders (I) would join the field in the following weeks. Joe Biden (D) didn’t announce his candidacy until April 25. In the 2016 election cycle, no noteworthy candidates had announced their campaigns by Feb. 3, 2015. Unlike the 2020 cycle, then-incumbent President Barack Obama (D) was term-limited and could not run for re-election. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R) was the first noteworthy candidate to announce his campaign in the 2016 cycle, doing so on March 23, 2015. The eventual Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton (D), announced her campaign on April 12, 2015. Trump, the eventual Republican nominee, announced his on June 16, 2015. Keep reading President Joe Biden ends January with a 43% approval rating, unchanged from last month At the end of January, approval polling averages showed President Joe Biden (D) with a 43% approval rating. Fifty-two percent of voters disapproved of his performance. Biden’s approval rating at the end of January remains unchanged from December. Throughout January, Biden’s rating fluctuated between 43 and 44%. Biden’s lowest approval rating was 38% on July 27, 2022. His highest was 55% on May 26, 2021. January also marks the end of the new 118th Congress’ first month. As of Jan. 31, Congressional approval was at 27%, with 58% disapproving. The highest approval rating for the 117th Congress was 36% on July 16, 2021, and the lowest was 14% on Jan. 26, 2022. Compared to this point in former President Donald Trump’s (R) term in office (Jan. 31, 2019), presidential approval was two points lower at 41%, and congressional approval was nine points lower at 18%. We calculate these approval figures every weekday by taking an average of polls conducted over the preceding 30 days. In addition to the average, we show every poll included in our calculations side-by-side to paint a clearer picture of public opinion than one individual poll can provide. Keep reading #FridayTrivia: How many governors have delivered State of the State addresses so far? In Wednesday’s Brew, we brought you an update on this year’s round of State of the State addresses. Every state constitution requires that the governor give an annual (or regular) report to the legislature on the state’s condition. This is typically in the form of a State of the State address, where the governor delivers the update to all legislators at the state capitol. As of Jan. 29, how many governors have delivered State of the State addresses? 23463930 Learn More
- [Trump campaign staff on 2020 election lies: 'fan the flame' - WVUA 23](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/03/trump-campaign-staff-on-2020-election-lies-fan-the-flame-wvua-23/) - 6 hours ago trumpThe Associated Press MADISON, Wis. (AP) – A newly released audio recording offers a behind-the-scenes look at how former President Donald Trump’s campaign team in a pivotal battleground state knew they had been outflanked by Democrats in the 2020 presidential election. But even as they acknowledged defeat, they pivoted to allegations of widespread fraud that were ultimately debunked – repeatedly – by elections officials and the courts. The audio from Nov. 5, 2020, two days after the election, is surfacing as Trump again seeks the White House while continuing to lie about the legitimacy of the outcome and Democrat Joe Biden’s win. Read the full story on AP News right here. (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.) 2/3/2023 9:49:53 AM (GMT -6:00)
- [Trump campaign staff on 2020 election lies: 'Fan the flame' - WAFF 48](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/03/trump-campaign-staff-on-2020-election-lies-fan-the-flame-waff-48/) - MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A newly released audio recording offers a behind-the-scenes look at how former President Donald Trump’s campaign team in a pivotal battleground state knew they had been outflanked by Democrats in the 2020 presidential election. But even as they acknowledged defeat, they pivoted to allegations of widespread fraud that were ultimately debunked — repeatedly — by elections officials and the courts.The audio from Nov. 5, 2020, two days after the election, is surfacing as Trump again seeks the White House while continuing to lie about the legitimacy of the outcome and Democrat Joe Biden’s win.The Wisconsin political operatives in the strategy session even praised Democratic turnout efforts in the state’s largest counties and appeared to joke about their efforts to engage Black voters, according to the recording obtained Thursday by The Associated Press. The audio centers on Andrew Iverson, who was the head of Trump’s campaign in the state.“Here’s the drill: Comms is going to continue to fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election. We’ll do whatever they need (inaudible) help with. Just be on standby in case there’s any stunts we need to pull,” Iverson said.Iverson is now the Midwest regional director for the Republican National Committee. He deferred questions about the meeting to the RNC, whose spokesperson, Keith Schipper, declined comment because he had not heard the recording.The former campaign official and Republican operative who provided a copy of the recording to the AP was in the meeting and recorded it. The operative is not authorized to speak publicly about what was discussed and did not want to be identified out of concern for personal and professional retaliation, but said they came forward because Trump is mounting a third attempt for the White House.In response to questions about the audio, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said: “The 2024 campaign is focused on competing in every state and winning in a dominating fashion. That is why President Trump is leading by wide margins in poll after poll.”Wisconsin was a big part of Trump’s victory in 2016, when he smashed through the Democrats’ so-called “Blue Wall” in the upper Midwest, and his campaign fought hard to keep the swing state in his column four years later before his loss to Biden.Biden defeated Trump by nearly 21,000 votes in Wisconsin in 2020, a result that has withstood independent and partisan audits and reviews, as well as lawsuits and recounts in the state’s two largest and Democratic-leaning counties.Yet, two days after the election, there was no discussion of Trump having won the state during the meeting of Republican campaign operatives.Instead, parts of the meeting focus on discussions about packing up campaign offices and writing final reports about how the campaign unfolded. At one point on the recording, Iverson is heard praising the GOP’s efforts while admitting the margin of Trump’s defeat in the state.“At the end of the day, this operation received more votes than any other Republican in Wisconsin history,” Iverson said. “Say what you want, our operation turned out Republican or DJT supporters. Democrats just got 20,000 more than us, out of Dane County and other shenanigans in Milwaukee, Green Bay and Dane. There’s a lot that people can learn from this campaign.”The meeting showcases another juxtaposition of what Republican officials knew about the election results and what Trump and his closest allies were saying publicly as they pushed the lie of a stolen election. Trump was told by his own attorney general there was no sign of widespread fraud, and many within his own administration told the former president there was no substance to various claims of fraud or manipulation — advice Trump repeatedly ignored.In the weeks after the election, Trump and his allies would file dozens of lawsuits, convene fake electors and pressure election officials in an attempt to overturn the will of the voters and keep Trump in office.It’s unclear whether the staff in Wisconsin coordinated their message directly with campaign officials in Washington.Parts of the Nov. 5 meeting also center on Republican outreach efforts to the state’s Black community.At one point, the operatives laugh over needing “more Black voices for Trump.” Iverson also references their efforts to engage with Black voters.“We ever talk to Black people before? I don’t think so,” he said, eliciting laughter from others in the room.Another speaker on the recording with Iverson is identified by the source as GOP operative Clayton Henson. At the time, Henson was a regional director for the RNC in charge of Wisconsin and other Midwestern states. They give a postmortem of sorts on the election, praising Republican turnout and campaign efforts while acknowledging the Democrats’ robust turn-out-the-vote campaign.Henson specifically references Democratic turnout in Dane County, which includes Madison, the state capital, and is a liberal stronghold in the state. A record-high 80% of the voting-age population cast ballots in 2020 in the county, which Biden won with 76% of the vote.“Hats off to them for what they did in Dane County. You gotta respect that,” Henson said. “There’s going to be another election in a couple years. So remember the lessons you learned and be ready to punch back.”Henson, reached by phone Thursday, said, “No thank you” when asked to comment about the meeting.___This story has been corrected to show Iverson said “drill,” not “deal.”Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
- [Trump campaign staff on 2020 election lies: 'fan the flame' | National & World - kxly.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/03/trump-campaign-staff-on-2020-election-lies-fan-the-flame-national-world-kxly-com/) - MADISON, Wis. — A newly released audio recording offers a behind-the-scenes look at how former President Donald Trump's campaign team in a pivotal battleground state knew they had been outflanked by Democrats in the 2020 presidential election. But even as they acknowledged defeat, they pivoted to allegations of widespread fraud that were ultimately debunked — repeatedly — by elections officials and the courts.The audio from Nov. 5, 2020, two days after the election, surfaced as Trump again seeks the White House while continuing to lie about the legitimacy of the outcome and Democrat Joe Biden's win. Voters wait in line outside a pavilion at Center Street Park shortly before the polling site opened on Election Day, Nov. 3, 2020, in Milwaukee. Rich Rovito, Associated Press
- [Trump Wisconsin campaign staff on 2020 election lies: 'fan the flame' - Madison.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/03/trump-wisconsin-campaign-staff-on-2020-election-lies-fan-the-flame-madison-com/) - A newly released audio recording offers a behind-the-scenes look at how former President Donald Trump’s campaign team in a pivotal battleground state knew they had been outflanked by Democrats in the 2020 presidential election. But even as they acknowledged defeat, they pivoted to allegations of widespread fraud that were ultimately debunked — repeatedly — by elections officials and the courts.The audio from Nov. 5, 2020, two days after the election, is surfacing as Trump again seeks the White House while continuing to lie about the legitimacy of the outcome and Democrat Joe Biden's win.The Wisconsin political operatives in the strategy session even praised Democratic turnout efforts in the state's largest counties and appeared to joke about their efforts to engage Black voters, according to the recording obtained Thursday by The Associated Press. The audio centers on Andrew Iverson, who was the head of Trump's campaign in the state. People are also reading… “Here’s the drill: Comms is going to continue to fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election. We’ll do whatever they need (inaudible) help with. Just be on standby in case there’s any stunts we need to pull,” Iverson said. FILE - A voter casts her ballot on Election Day, on Nov. 3, 2020, at the Marshall High School in Milwaukee. An audio recording of a strategy meeting obtained Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023, by The Associated Press shows, that the leaders of then-President Donald Trump's reelection campaign in battleground Wisconsin conceded privately the day after the 2020 election that he had lost, praising Democratic turnout efforts and focusing instead on spreading the lie that Democrats had stolen the election. (AP Photo/Morry Gash, File) Morry Gash Iverson is now the Midwest regional director for the Republican National Committee. He deferred questions about the meeting to the RNC, whose spokesperson, Keith Schipper, declined comment because he had not heard the recording.The former campaign official and Republican operative who provided a copy of the recording to the AP was in the meeting and recorded it. The operative is not authorized to speak publicly about what was discussed and did not want to be identified out of concern for personal and professional retaliation, but said they came forward because Trump is mounting a third attempt for the White House.In response to questions about the audio, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said: “The 2024 campaign is focused on competing in every state and winning in a dominating fashion. That is why President Trump is leading by wide margins in poll after poll.”Wisconsin was a big part of Trump's victory in 2016, when he smashed through the Democrats' so-called “Blue Wall” in the upper Midwest, and his campaign fought hard to keep the swing state in his column four years later before his loss to Biden.Biden defeated Trump by nearly 21,000 votes in Wisconsin in 2020, a result that has withstood independent and partisan audits and reviews, as well as lawsuits and recounts in the state's two largest and Democratic-leaning counties.Yet, two days after the election, there was no discussion of Trump having won the state during the meeting of Republican campaign operatives. FILE - People vote at the Milwaukee County Sports Complex, on Nov. 3, 2020, in Franklin, Wis. An audio recording of a strategy meeting obtained Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023, by The Associated Press shows, that the leaders of then-President Donald Trump's reelection campaign in battleground Wisconsin conceded privately the day after the 2020 election that he had lost, praising Democratic turnout efforts and focusing instead on spreading the lie that Democrats had stolen the election. (AP Photo/Morry Gash, File) Morry Gash Instead, parts of the meeting focus on discussions about packing up campaign offices and writing final reports about how the campaign unfolded. At one point on the recording, Iverson is heard praising the GOP's efforts while admitting the margin of Trump's defeat in the state.“At the end of the day, this operation received more votes than any other Republican in Wisconsin history,” Iverson said. “Say what you want, our operation turned out Republican or DJT supporters. Democrats just got 20,000 more than us, out of Dane County and other shenanigans in Milwaukee, Green Bay and Dane. There’s a lot that people can learn from this campaign.”The meeting showcases another juxtaposition of what Republican officials knew about the election results and what Trump and his closest allies were saying publicly as they pushed the lie of a stolen election. Trump was told by his own attorney general there was no sign of widespread fraud, and many within his own administration told the former president there was no substance to various claims of fraud or manipulation — advice Trump repeatedly ignored.In the weeks after the election, Trump and his allies would file dozens of lawsuits, convene fake electors and pressure election officials in an attempt to overturn the will of the voters and keep Trump in office.It’s unclear whether the staff in Wisconsin coordinated their message directly with campaign officials in Washington.Parts of the Nov. 5 meeting also center on Republican outreach efforts to the state's Black community.At one point, the operatives laugh over needing “more Black voices for Trump.” Iverson also references their efforts to engage with Black voters.“We ever talk to Black people before? I don’t think so,” he said, eliciting laughter from others in the room. FILE - Voters wait in line outside a pavilion at Center Street Park shortly before the polling site opened on Election Day, Nov. 3, 2020, in Milwaukee. An audio recording of a strategy meeting obtained Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023, by The Associated Press shows, that the leaders of then-President Donald Trump's reelection campaign in battleground Wisconsin conceded privately the day after the 2020 election that he had lost, praising Democratic turnout efforts and focusing instead on spreading the lie that Democrats had stolen the election. (AP Photo/Rich Rovito, File) Rich Rovito Another speaker on the recording with Iverson is identified by the source as GOP operative Clayton Henson. At the time, Henson was a regional director for the RNC in charge of Wisconsin and other Midwestern states. They give a postmortem of sorts on the election, praising Republican turnout and campaign efforts while acknowledging the Democrats' robust turn-out-the-vote campaign.Henson specifically references Democratic turnout in Dane County, which includes Madison, the state capital, and is a liberal stronghold in the state. A record-high 80% of the voting-age population cast ballots in 2020 in the county, which Biden won with 76% of the vote.“Hats off to them for what they did in Dane County. You gotta respect that,” Henson said. “There's going to be another election in a couple years. So remember the lessons you learned and be ready to punch back.”Henson, reached by phone Thursday, said, “No thank you” when asked to comment about the meeting. The 2020 election is over. Here’s what happened (and what didn’t) The 2020 election was “the most secure in American history,” according to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which coordinates the nation’s election infrastructure.While a handful of voters risked going to prison by attempting to vote twice or in the name of a dead relative, as happens in any election, no evidence of widespread fraud has ever been produced in Wisconsin or elsewhere.Yet, many continue to question some of the practices clerks relied on to encourage eligible voters to cast ballots and make sure their votes were counted amid the first election in more than 100 years held during a pandemic.The Wisconsin State Journal has covered every twist and turn of this debate in scores of stories. But here are a few that offered some broader context about what happened, and didn't happen, in the election of 2020. The state has multiple, overlapping safeguards aimed at preventing ineligible voters from casting ballots, tampering with the ballots or altering vote totals. Nothing in the emails suggests there were problems with the election that contributed in any meaningful way to Trump's 20,682-vote loss to Joe Biden. "Despite concerns with statewide elections procedures, this audit showed us that the election was largely safe and secure," Sen. Rob Cowles said Friday. The grants were provided to every Wisconsin municipality that asked for them, and in the amounts they asked for. "Application of the U.S. Department of Justice guidance among the clerks in Wisconsin is not uniform," the memo says. YORKVILLE — The Racine County Sheriff’s Office announced in a Thursday morning news conference that it has identified eight cases of what it believes to be election fraud at a Mount Pleasant nursing home. The memo states that state law gives the Audit Bureau complete access to all records during an audit investigation and federal law and guidance does not prohibit an election official from handing over election records. Drop boxes were used throughout Wisconsin, including in areas where Trump won the vast majority of counties. Thousands of ballot certifications examined from Madison are a window onto how elections officials handled a pandemic and a divided and unhelpful state government. "I don't think that you instill confidence in a process by kind of blindly assuming there's nothing to see here," WILL president and general counsel Rick Esenberg said. The Associated Press reviewed every potential case of voter fraud in six battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvan… The report is the latest to show that there was not widespread fraud in Wisconsin. The clear insinuation was that someone not qualified to conduct an election improperly influenced these vulnerable voters. But the Wisconsin State Journal could not confirm the data. The turnout at nursing homes in Brown, Kenosha, Milwaukee and Racine counties in 2020 was not much different from the turnout in 2016. #lee-rev-content { margin:0 -5px; } #lee-rev-content h3 { font-family: inherit!important; font-weight: 700!important; border-left: 8px solid var(--lee-blox-link-color); text-indent: 7px; font-size: 24px!important; line-height: 24px; } #lee-rev-content .rc-provider { font-family: inherit!important; } #lee-rev-content h4 { line-height: 24px!important; font-family: "serif-ds",Times,"Times New Roman",serif!important; margin-top: 10px!important; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #lee-rev-content h3 { font-size: 18px!important; line-height: 18px; } } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article { clear: both; background-color: #fff; color: #222; background-position: bottom; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding: 15px 0 20px; margin-bottom: 40px; border-top: 4px solid rgba(0,0,0,.8); border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(0,0,0,.2); display: none; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article, #pu-email-form-politics-email-article p { font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article h2 { font-size: 24px; margin: 15px 0 5px 0; font-family: "serif-ds", Times, "Times New Roman", serif; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .lead { margin-bottom: 5px; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .email-desc { font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 5px; opacity: 0.7; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article form { padding: 10px 30px 5px 30px; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .disclaimer { opacity: 0.5; margin-bottom: 0; line-height: 100%; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .disclaimer a { color: #222; text-decoration: underline; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .email-hammer { border-bottom: 3px solid #222; opacity: .5; display: inline-block; padding: 0 10px 5px 10px; margin-bottom: -5px; font-size: 16px; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #pu-email-form-politics-email-article form { padding: 10px 0 5px 0; } } Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! 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- [Trump campaign promised to 'fan the flame' of 2020 election lie, audio reveals – as it happened](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/03/trump-campaign-promised-to-fan-the-flame-of-2020-election-lie-audio-reveals-as-it-happened/) - A senior member of Trump’s re-election campaign said that campaigners were going to “fan the flame” and spread the false claim that Democrats were “trying to steal this election” in a leaked November 2020 audio clip, the Associated Press first reported.In the obtained audio recording, Andrew Iverson discussed the communications strategy for Trump’s reelection in Wisconsin, as Democrats outflanked Republicans in the region.At the time, Iverson led reelection efforts in Wisconsin, a key battleground state which Biden eventually won by over 20,000 votes in 2020.“Here’s the deal: comms is going to continue to fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election. We’ll do whatever they need. Just be on standby if there’s any stunts we need to pull,” said Iverson.The audio was given to the Associated Press by a former Trump operative, who withheld their name fearing political and personal retaliation. The unnamed operative was motivated as Trump prepares for a third reelection campaign for the US presidency.Iverson, who is now the midwest regional director for the Republican National Committee (RNC), has deferred questions from the Associated Press to RNC spokesperson Keith Schipper.Schipper declined to comment, saying that he has not heard the audio.That’s it for the US politics live blog! Here is a summary of what happened today: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris traveled to Philadelphia today and announced $500m that will be used to upgrade water pipes in the region. “Water ought to be something that’s just guaranteed,” said Biden, noting that the US is the richest country in the world. The Indiana Republican Victoria Spartz said today she will not run for an open Senate seat in 2024 and will also retire from her seat in the US House. Biden boasted about the better-than-expected latest jobs figures. “Today, I am happy to report that the state of our union and the state of our economy is strong,” said Biden, referring to the over 500,000 jobs that were created in January. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will postpone a scheduled trip to China after yesterday’s discovery of what is believed to be a Chinese spy balloon over the US, sailing above the US and within peering distance of a nuclear weapons installation. A senior member of Donald Trump’s Wisconsin 2020 election campaign said their team should “fan the flame” of denial about Trump’s key loss in Wisconsin to Biden and and spread the false claim that Democrats were “trying to steal this election”, according to a leaked November 5, 2020 audio clip. Thank you for reading; have a great weekend!The Democratic National Convention will vote on a committee recommendation to alter the presidential primary calendar in 2024 during their upcoming Saturday meeting, reported the Hill.Biden previously ordered Democrats to change the primary calendar to better support non-white voters.Here’s more information on Biden’s request from the Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt: .css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Democrats are poised to shake up the way in which they nominate presidential candidates, after Joe Biden said the primary process should better represent the party’s non-white voters. Biden has reportedly told Democrats that Iowa, the state that has led off the Democratic voting calendar since 1976, should be moved down the calendar, with South Carolina instead going first. The move would see New Hampshire, which has technically held the nation’s first primary since 1920 (Iowa uses a slightly different system of caucuses, or in-person voting), shunted down the calendar. Both Iowa and New Hampshire are predominantly white states. Clamor has been growing inside and outside the Democratic party for a different state, with a population more representative of the US as a whole, to be given the first go.Read the full article here.Biden tells Democrats to revise primary calendar to boost Black voters’ voicesRead moreDuring his remarks, Biden noted the importance of ensuring that all Americans have access to clean water.“Water ought to be something that’s just guaranteed,” said Biden, noting that the US is the richest country in the world.Biden said that the problem of older pipes leading to lead exposure and poisoning is an issue across America.“It’s especially bad in older cities, in the midwest and the northeast,” said Biden.“No amount of lead in water is safe. None,” Biden added.Before beginning his remarks, Biden joked about having to support the Philadelphia Eagles before their Super Bowl appearance next Sunday as his wife, Jill Biden, is from the city.From Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Jonathan Tamari:Joe Biden in Philly:"Fly Eagles Fly. I happen to mean it, but even if I didn't, I'd say it. Otherwise, I'd be sleeping alone" he says, referring to Jill Biden— Jonathan Tamari (@JonathanTamari) February 3, 2023 Harris is currently speaking in Philadelphia in joint remarks with Joe Biden about infrastructure investment that will upgrade clean water systems.Harris is speaking about the importance of clean drinking water, as Harris and Biden announce $500m that Philadelphia will use to address lead pipes throughout the city.“No child in America should ever have to endure that kind of experience. No parent in America should ever have that experience,” said Harris, recalling a 2 year-old child who was hospitalized for lead poisoning after drinking water out of the tap.Just three days after disgraced New York representative George Santos withdrew from House committee assignments, House Republicans have encouraged Twitter users to follow him on social media.The House Republican tagged George Santos’ official account with the hashtag “FollowFriday”, encouraging users to follow the congressman’s account.From the House Republicans Twitter account:#FollowFriday @RepSantosNY03 from #NY03! pic.twitter.com/qWn3riPcYu— House Republicans (@HouseGOP) February 3, 2023 The New York Republican congressman remains under investigation for several lies he listed on his résumé and current campaign finance filings.A former Manhattan prosecutor wrote in a new book that he almost pursued a racketeering charge against Donald Trump, reports the New York Times.Mark F Pomerantz resigned in protest from the Manhattan district attorney’s office last year after the office’s newly elected DA, Alvin Bragg, declined to pursue an indictment against Trump.In a forthcoming book entitled “People vs. Donald Trump”, Pomerantz says that the Manhattan district attorney’s office mapped out charges to bring against Trump under the state’s racketeering law.More from the Times:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Mr. Pomerantz and his colleagues cast a wide net, examining a host of Trump enterprises — including Trump University, his for-profit real estate education venture, and his family charitable foundation. “He demanded absolute loyalty and would go after anyone who crossed him. He seemed always to stay one step ahead of the law,” Mr. Pomerantz, a prominent litigator who has prosecuted and defended organized crime cases, writes of Mr. Trump. “In my career as a lawyer, I had encountered only one other person who touched all of these bases: John Gotti, the head of the Gambino organized crime family.” A lawyer for Mr. Trump recently sent Mr. Pomerantz a letter threatening that, “If you publish such a book and continue making defamatory statements against my clients, my office will aggressively pursue all legal remedies.”Read the full article here (paywall).Our columnist Moustafa Bayoumi has filed on the Republican move to expel Ilhan Omar from the foreign affairs committee, ostensibly over her allegedly antisemitic remarks about Israel, and what it says about the GOP’s own problems with antisemitism…Who remembers how, in 2018 and just days before the deadliest attack on Jewish people in US history, a prominent US politician tweeted: “We cannot allow Soros, Steyer, and Bloomberg to BUY this election!”?The tweet was widely – and correctly – understood as dangerously antisemitic, particularly heinous in a period of rising anti-Jewish hatred. And whose tweet was this? If you thought the answer was Minnesota’s Democratic representative Ilhan Omar then, well, you’d be wrong. The author was none other than the House majority leader at the time, Republican Kevin McCarthy.And who can forget when Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has tweeted that “Joe Biden is Hitler”, speculated that the wildfires in California were caused by a beam from “space solar generators” linked to “Rothschild, Inc.”, a clear wink to bizarre antisemitic conspiracy theories. Incidentally, Greene, who has a long record of antisemitic and anti-Muslim statements, has been recently appointed, by the same Kevin McCarthy, now speaker of the House, to the homeland security committee.Then there’s former president Donald Trump, who dines with Holocaust deniers like Nick Fuentes and antisemites like Ye. In stereotypically anti-Jewish moves, Trump has repeatedly called the loyalty of Jewish Americans into question. Just this past October, he wrote that “US Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel – Before it is too late!”In case it’s not obvious, let me state it plainly. Today’s Republican party has a serious antisemitism problem. The easy acceptance and amplification of all sorts of anti-Jewish hate that party leaders engage in emboldens all the worst bigots, raving racists, and far-right extremists across the globe, all the while threatening Jewish people here and everywhere.So it is more than a little rich that House Republicans voted on Thursday to remove Omar from the foreign affairs committee, where she’s served since 2019, because, they say, of her antisemitic views.Read on:Republicans have a serious antisemitism problem. It isn’t Ilhan Omar | Moustafa BayoumiRead moreAfter less than seven minutes, Jean-Pierre’s gaggle has come to an end as the press secretary told reporters that passengers were being instructed to sit down due to turbulence.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is currently in a gaggle aboard Air Force 1, on route to Philadelphia where Harris and Biden will give remarks on the city’s upgraded water systems.Jean-Pierre answered several questions on the status of the Chinese spy balloon that was reported above the US.“The president was briefed on this on Tuesday,” adding that Biden has continued to receive updates on the spy balloon.The recommendation from US military officials was not to take “kinetic action” due to safety risks for people on the ground.Jean-Pierre did not answer questions on if the US will attempt to capture the balloon, but added that the Pentagon is “keeping a close eye on it” and will continue to monitor it.The Indiana Republican Victoria Spartz said today she will not run for an open Senate seat in 2024 and will also retire from her seat in the US House.The decision ends speculation which mounted when the 44-year-old refused to back Kevin McCarthy during last month’s 15-vote marathon for House speaker, voting “present” instead of backing any of the rightwing figures put up against McCarthy by a group of far-right rebels.She told reporters: “My concern is that … we didn’t come together yet. So, we have to go back … as a group of people, and figure it out.”Some observers, however, suggested that Spartz might be hedging her bets ahead of a Senate run.Seems not. In a statement on Friday, the Ukraine-born Spartz said: “It’s been my honor representing Hoosiers in the Indiana state senate and US Congress and I appreciate the strong support on the ground. 2024 will mark seven years of holding elected office and over a decade in Republican politics.“I won a lot of tough battles for the people and will work hard to win a few more in the next two years. However, being a working mom is tough and I need to spend more time with my two high-school girls back home, so I will not run for any office in 2024.”Jim Banks, a prominent hardliner in the US House, is the favourite to win the Republican primary to replace the retiring Mike Braun in the US Senate. Donald Trump has endorsed Banks.Texts sent by Alex Jones show the rightwing media figure repeatedly texted with members of the Proud Boys in 2020.Jones conversed with Gavin McInnes, the founder of Proud Boys, and Jason Biggs, who is on trial for seditious conspiracy in connection with the Capitol attack of 6 January 2021, an attempt to keep Donald Trump in office despite his election loss to Joe Biden.Some 22,000 of Jones’ texts, spanning August 2019 to 15 May 2020, were reviewed by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch reporting team.Jones also frequently texted with Roger Stone, the rightwing political fixer sentenced to 40 months in prison in 2020 over his attempts to sabotage a congressional investigation that posed a political threat to Trump. Jones was pardoned by Trump in December 2020.Hatewatch found that despite Jones using his Infowars broadcaststo rail against pornography as a plot to “end the family”, he repeatedly texted links to pornographic videos.The messages also offer a glimpse into Jones’ state of mind as he was being sued by multiple parents of victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting, after he repeatedly said the shooting was a hoax.In one message, Jones told his wife “I am in hell”. A message to his father described his situation as like “a black hole”.Hatewatch obtained the messages from Mark Bankston, an attorney who represented Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of Jesse Lewis, who was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. Heslin and Lewis sued Jones for defamation, and were awarded $49m.Bankston received the messages from Jones’ lawyers, after they mistakenly sent their legal opponent 22,000 of Jones’ texts.Hello again, live blog readers, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are heading to Philadelphia this afternoon to talk about the economy and we’ll have that news for you as it happens, so do stick around.It’s been a morning of mixed politics developments, here’s where things stand so far: Biden and Harris are due to speak in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at 3.15pm ET, with remarks on the economy. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will “gaggle” with accompanying reporters aboard Air Force One en route to the city, available on audio via the White House Live link, expected around 1.40pm ET. The US president tooted his horn over the better-than-expected latest jobs figures. “Today, I am happy to report that the state of our union and the state of our economy is strong,” said Biden, referring to the over 500,000 jobs that were created in January. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will postpone a scheduled trip to China after yesterday’s discovery of what is believed to be a Chinese spy balloon over the US, sailing above Montana within peering distance of a nuclear weapons installation. A senior member of Donald Trump’s Wisconsin 2020 election campaign said their team should “fan the flame” of denial about Trump’s key loss there to Biden and and spread the false claim that Democrats were “trying to steal this election” in a leaked November 5, 2020 audio clip. The guy on tape is still a senior RNC figure. Indiana representative Victoria Spartz announced in a statement today that she will not be seeking reelection or running for the US Senate.“I will not run for any office in 2024,” said Spartz, who is Republican, in a statement.Rep. Victoria Spartz announces that she's not running for Senate in 2024 -- or for reelection #IN05 pic.twitter.com/V1ZQlmE1A7— Erin Covey (@ercovey) February 3, 2023 The announcement comes as rumors circulated around a potential Senate run from Spartz given an open seat.Spartz received wide attention for voting ‘present’ during House speaker elections, where House Speaker Kevin McCarthy required 15 votes to secure the position.
- [Trump campaign staff pushed 2020 election lies in newly released audio | PBS NewsHour](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/03/trump-campaign-staff-pushed-2020-election-lies-in-newly-released-audio-pbs-newshour/) - MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A newly released audio recording offers a behind-the-scenes look at how former President Donald Trump’s campaign team in a pivotal battleground state knew they had been outflanked by Democrats in the 2020 presidential election. But even as they acknowledged defeat, they pivoted to allegations of widespread fraud that were ultimately debunked — repeatedly — by elections officials and the courts. The audio from Nov. 5, 2020, two days after the election, is surfacing as Trump again seeks the White House while continuing to lie about the legitimacy of the outcome and Democrat Joe Biden’s win. WATCH: Trump pleads the 5th in deposition for New York attorney general’s office The Wisconsin political operatives in the strategy session even praised Democratic turnout efforts in the state’s largest counties and appeared to joke about their efforts to engage Black voters, according to the recording obtained Thursday by The Associated Press. The audio centers on Andrew Iverson, who was the head of Trump’s campaign in the state. “Here’s the drill: Comms is going to continue to fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election. We’ll do whatever they need (inaudible) help with. Just be on standby in case there’s any stunts we need to pull,” Iverson said. Iverson is now the Midwest regional director for the Republican National Committee. He deferred questions about the meeting to the RNC, whose spokesperson, Keith Schipper, declined comment because he had not heard the recording. The former campaign official and Republican operative who provided a copy of the recording to the AP was in the meeting and recorded it. The operative is not authorized to speak publicly about what was discussed and did not want to be identified out of concern for personal and professional retaliation, but said they came forward because Trump is mounting a third attempt for the White House. In response to questions about the audio, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said: “The 2024 campaign is focused on competing in every state and winning in a dominating fashion. That is why President Trump is leading by wide margins in poll after poll.” Wisconsin was a big part of Trump’s victory in 2016, when he smashed through the Democrats’ so-called “Blue Wall” in the upper Midwest, and his campaign fought hard to keep the swing state in his column four years later before his loss to Biden. Biden defeated Trump by nearly 21,000 votes in Wisconsin in 2020, a result that has withstood independent and partisan audits and reviews, as well as lawsuits and recounts in the state’s two largest and Democratic-leaning counties. Yet, two days after the election, there was no discussion of Trump having won the state during the meeting of Republican campaign operatives. Instead, parts of the meeting focus on discussions about packing up campaign offices and writing final reports about how the campaign unfolded. At one point on the recording, Iverson is heard praising the GOP’s efforts while admitting the margin of Trump’s defeat in the state. “At the end of the day, this operation received more votes than any other Republican in Wisconsin history,” Iverson said. “Say what you want, our operation turned out Republican or DJT supporters. Democrats just got 20,000 more than us, out of Dane County and other shenanigans in Milwaukee, Green Bay and Dane. There’s a lot that people can learn from this campaign.” The meeting showcases another juxtaposition of what Republican officials knew about the election results and what Trump and his closest allies were saying publicly as they pushed the lie of a stolen election. Trump was told by his own attorney general there was no sign of widespread fraud, and many within his own administration told the former president there was no substance to various claims of fraud or manipulation — advice Trump repeatedly ignored. In the weeks after the election, Trump and his allies would file dozens of lawsuits, convene fake electors and pressure election officials in an attempt to overturn the will of the voters and keep Trump in office. It’s unclear whether the staff in Wisconsin coordinated their message directly with campaign officials in Washington. Parts of the Nov. 5 meeting also center on Republican outreach efforts to the state’s Black community.At one point, the operatives laugh over needing “more Black voices for Trump.” Iverson also references their efforts to engage with Black voters. “We ever talk to Black people before? I don’t think so,” he said, eliciting laughter from others in the room. Another speaker on the recording with Iverson is identified by the source as GOP operative Clayton Henson. At the time, Henson was a regional director for the RNC in charge of Wisconsin and other Midwestern states. They give a postmortem of sorts on the election, praising Republican turnout and campaign efforts while acknowledging the Democrats’ robust turn-out-the-vote campaign. Henson specifically references Democratic turnout in Dane County, which includes Madison, the state capital, and is a liberal stronghold in the state. A record-high 80% of the voting-age population cast ballots in 2020 in the county, which Biden won with 76% of the vote. “Hats off to them for what they did in Dane County. You gotta respect that,” Henson said. “There’s going to be another election in a couple years. So remember the lessons you learned and be ready to punch back.” Henson, reached by phone Thursday, said, “No thank you” when asked to comment about the meeting.___This story has been corrected to show Iverson said “drill,” not “deal.”
- [Conservative activist who advised Trump on 2020 election appears in court - YouTube](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/03/conservative-activist-who-advised-trump-on-2020-election-appears-in-court-youtube/) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhCPjPhsj0o
- [AUDIO: Trump campaign staff on 2020 election lies: 'fan the flame' - NBC15](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/03/audio-trump-campaign-staff-on-2020-election-lies-fan-the-flame-nbc15/)
- [Tyre Nichols family lawyer Benjamin Crump set on saving Black lives - USA Today](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/02/tyre-nichols-family-lawyer-benjamin-crump-set-on-saving-black-lives-usa-today/) - Sheree R. CurryTyre Nichols family the latest to tap ‘Black America’s attorney general’ Benjamin Crump for counsel.Ben Crump says civil rights cases make up less than 3% of his revenue but most of his time in media.He hopes that the financial consequences for institutions lead to policies that save Black lives.Civil rights attorney Ben Crump is a key voice many Black Americans have come to rely on far beyond police brutality cases – from racial discrimination class-action lawsuits against Google and Wells Fargo to cases arguing that Johnson & Johnson knew its talcum powder caused ovarian cancer and that rapper Travis Scott and Astroworld festival organizer Live Nation are liable for a concert stampede that killed 10 and injured hundreds in Houston in 2021.In the past few years, he also has taken on the U.S. government on behalf of Marines who developed breast cancer linked to toxic tap water at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, as well as a Florida amusement park ride operator after 14-year-old Tyre Sampson slipped from his seat and fell to his death from a 400-foot-tall ride. Crump and his co-counsel also won a $411 million verdict on behalf of a motorcycle rider left partially paralyzed after crashing into a truck that had its lights off while stopped on a Florida highway.Still, most Americans who recognize Crump, 53, likely know him for his work on cases involving excessive use of force by police officers or vigilantes claiming “stand-your-ground” defenses. He’s advocated for the families of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Andre Hill, Breonna Taylor, Daunte Wright, Joshua Wright and others he said suffered wrongful deaths.Most recently, Crump made national headlines standing alongside the grieving mother of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man who died last month after a ruthless beating by Memphis police. Standing alongside:Tyre Nichols' family, lawyer Ben Crump speak after seeing 'appalling' footage from arrestLaid to rest:VP Kamala Harris speaks at Tyre Nichols' funeralCrump said such cases make up less than 5% of his workload and less than 3% of his firm’s revenue, but they account for the majority of his appearances in the news media.Crump, dubbed “Black America’s attorney general” by the Rev. Al Sharpton, said his goal with the civil lawsuits is to hold cities and police departments accountable until the senseless killings of Black Americans end.“I wake up every morning knowing my mission in life is to be an unapologetic defender of Black life, Black liberty and Black humanity,” said Crump, who was named by TIME as one of 2021’s most influential people. “I don’t care how unpopular it becomes, we can never be ashamed or afraid to stand up for our people.”Tyre Nichols' family lawyer on growing up BlackCrump’s values and positions were shaped by his environment.“We didn’t see the police being very friendly to us when we were growing up,” he said. “They were people who would harass Black people on a regular basis.” As an example, he recalls an incident when he was 10 years old and living in North Carolina, when he said police decided to teach one of his uncles a lesson.“(My uncle) was one of the first ones in my little hometown to get a scholarship to go to a predominantly white university – Wake Forest University,” he said. “When my uncle came home from college, (the) police were going to show him that even though he went to college, he was still a Negro like the rest of us. We watched them beat him up right there in the parking lot of the projects. It left an indelible impact on my mind.” “I thought that when I grow up, I don’t want to feel helpless like we all felt watching my uncle be brutalized, literally," he said. "I remember that a lot when we work on these cases – how helpless Black people feel in the face of these injustices, and that’s why I fight so hard.”Crump said his law firm receives about 500 requests a day seeking representation. He crisscrosses the country, partnering with other firms, to handle the cases he can. He used to work primarily in Florida, where his practice is based. But that was before Crump became almost synonymous with “Say his name,” the refrain often yelled by protesters when police kill an unarmed Black man.Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd: cases show incremental progressCrump rose to national prominence while representing the family of Trayvon Martin. The 17-year-old was chased and fatally shot in February 2012 by a neighborhood watch participant in Sanford, Florida, as the teen was walking home from a convenience store. Crump said he made a point of publicizing that Martin had gone to the store to buy Skittles and a can of Arizona iced tea because it was important for the public to see the youth as just that – a typical teen.“To have a chance at justice, you have to be able to humanize Black people and marginalized people of color. If you can’t humanize them, then it would demonstrate to society that these Black people are not worthy of your respect, or your consideration or your professionalism – and worst of all, that they are not worthy of your humanity,” he said.Martin’s killer was acquitted of a second-degree murder charge after claiming self-defense. He said he confronted the teen for looking “suspicious.” The homeowners association in the neighborhood agreed to settle a wrongful death claim with Martin’s parents for more than $1 million.Martin’s death and the acquittal of his killer sparked the Black Lives Matter movement, and Crump became the go-to attorney in dozens of wrongful death lawsuits around the country. Many of the high-profile cases he and his co-counsel negotiate are settled without trials.Michael Brown:It's been 5 years since Ferguson. Are racial tensions even worse now?Andre Hill:Columbus agrees to pay $10M to family of Andre Hill, an unarmed Black man killed by policeBreonna Taylor:Feds charge 4 Louisville police officers in Breonna Taylor shootingGeorge Floyd:Former Minneapolis police officer pleads guilty to manslaughter in George Floyd’s deathTyre Nichols:Case reignites conversations among lawmakers on federal police legislationMichael Brown’s family received a $1.5 million settlement from the city of Ferguson, Missouri, after the 18-year-old was shot six times by a police officer; Hill’s family settled for $10 million with the city of Columbus, Ohio, after the unarmed 47-year-old was shot four times by an officer outside a garage with only a cellphone in his hand; Taylor’s family received $12 million from the city of Louisville, Kentucky, after a no-knock warrant resulted in the 26-year-old’s fatal shooting. And the family of Floyd received a $27 million settlement from the city of Minneapolis. Crump said each case represents incremental progress. He hopes financial consequences for governments and agencies lead to policies that save Black lives and hold police accountable.Black life lessons on education and workAs a Black man born in North Carolina, with bachelor’s and law degrees from Florida State University, Crump recognizes that the violence and sorrow experienced by the victims and families he has served could have just as easily happened to him. Or to the nephews he and his wife, Genae, helped raise. Or to his preteen daughter, Brooklyn, who must share her father with families across the nation.He recalls life lessons his mother, Helen, taught him at a similar age. “She said, ‘Life ain’t fair. Life is hard; you make it fair by what you bring to the table, and if you don’t bring anything to the table, don’t expect anybody to let you sit down at a table,’” he said.Crump credits his mother and grandmother, Mittie Cordell, for giving him direction. His work ethic, he said, comes in part from his mom. When he was growing up, she worked at a hotel in the morning, cleaning bathrooms and washing laundry. She had a second-shift job at a shoe factory.“Like most Black women, she was able to keep food on the table, a roof over our heads and hope in our hearts,” he said. A message instilled during his upbringing was “to work hard to be able to have an impact on your life, in your family and in your community.”But he said his grandmother was his true inspiration. “She was just a brilliant woman, even though she only had an eighth-grade education. She had that common sense many of our ancestors employed to deal with life. I remember her taking out the subscription to the local newspaper and me being seven or eight years old trying to read the newspaper with her. We would be sounding out words and putting them in context. She was not only teaching me the value of education and intelligence, but she was showing me that there was a bigger world outside of North Carolina.”Ben Crump on the 'constant struggle to give value to Black life'A member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity, Crump said that it “was the highlight of (his) life” for his grandmother to see him graduate from law school and open his law practice before she passed away in 1997 at the age of 86. He adds that he has known since the fourth grade that he wanted to be a lawyer.He often retells the story of how it was in fourth grade that, due to desegregation, he had to start taking the bus to school in the white part of town. His mother explained how Thurgood Marshall litigated the Brown v. Board of Education case that made it possible for Black and white children to attend school together. Crump wanted to be like Marshall and make a difference.Jeff Storms, a Minneapolis attorney who has worked with Crump and attorney Anthony Romanucci on three pivotal Minneapolis civil rights cases, said Crump really cares about the families he represents. Together, they represented the families of Floyd and Daunte Wright, who was killed by a police officer in suburban Minneapolis in 2021, as well as the family of Amir Locke, another victim of a fatal shooting resulting from a no-knock warrant.Daunte Wright:Former Minnesota police officer Kim Potter sentenced to 2 years in Daunte Wright's deathAhmaud Arbery:Georgia dad, son sentenced to life for hate crimes in Ahmaud Arbery death“Ben has a blend of talents that very few people in a generation cumulatively possess,” Storms said. “My continued working relationship with Ben proved what I always hoped could be true: that there are key people leading important causes who value kindness, empathy... coupled with determination and hard work.”Though he refers to this type of work as “a constant struggle to give value to Black life,” Crump perseveres with hope. “You know how we chipped away at slavery, how we chipped away at segregation? We will overcome this, too," he said. “The enemies of equality won’t win.”
- [Mother of Breonna Taylor reacts to death of Tyre Nichols from funeral service - wdrb.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/02/mother-of-breonna-taylor-reacts-to-death-of-tyre-nichols-from-funeral-service-wdrb-com/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The mother of Breonna Taylor says she's shocked officers are still putting black people in harm's way after everything the country has seen in the past two years."With everything that's going on, I can't believe officers are still choosing to behave in this manner," Tamika Palmer, Taylor's mother, told reporters Wednesday. "I think with everything that's happened, you would want to be on your best behavior and make sure everyone around you is doing the same thing."Palmer was invited to attend the funeral for Tyre Nichols. She says the whole incident brings back a lot of emotions for her, especially because Nichols and Taylor were the same age and suffered the same fate.Nichols died after five Memphis police officers beat him after pulling him over for a traffic stop at the beginning of the month.Taylor was shot six times by Louisville Metro Police on March 13, 2020. Police raided the 26-year-old's apartment on Springfield Drive near Pleasure Ridge Park while serving a warrant in pursuit of money and drugs involving Jamarcus Glover, who was at the center of a narcotics probe. When police knocked down the door of the apartment, Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired a shot, hitting former LMPD officer Jonathan Mattingly in the leg. Police responded with 32 shots, and Taylor died at the scene. Copyright 2023 by WDRB Media. All rights reserved.
- [Discrepancy between police accounts, evidence in Tyre Nichols case revealed - KSRO](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/02/discrepancy-between-police-accounts-evidence-in-tyre-nichols-case-revealed-ksro/) - Thinkstock Images/Getty Images (MEMPHIS, Tenn.) — The police traffic stop that led to Tyre Nichols’ death was detailed in an incident report obtained by ABC News, as well as a Memphis Police statement, but the written statements provide a different account from what the body camera footage of the disturbing encounter has revealed. Nichols, a 19-year-old Black man, died after a confrontation with police in which he was beaten following a traffic stop. The footage shows officers beating Nichols and targeting him with pepper spray as he begins yelling for his mother, who lived near the site of the encounter. In body camera footage, officers can be seen standing over Nichols while he’s on the ground. As two officers hold him down, a third kicks him. A fourth officer comes over with a baton and the officers pick up Nichols from the ground and hold him up while officers appear to strike him in the face and torso. The officers yell multiple times at Nichols to “give me your hands.” The officer with the baton can be heard saying, “I’ma baton the f— out of you” – then appears to strike him on the upper body three times. Officers pull Nichols to a stand, then appear to punch and slap him. The official incident report does not mention that Nichols was kicked and punched by the officers. It also claims that Nichols started to fight with officers, reached for their guns, pulled on their duty belts and grabbed at least one officer by his vest. This cannot be seen in body camera footage. Officers can be heard in the aftermath claiming that Nichols reached for their guns. “Suspect Tyre Nichols was refusing a lawful detention by law enforcement officers and he started to fight with detectives,” the report reads. It says Nichols was “sweating profusely” and “irate” when he exited the vehicle. The report also claims Nichols “began actively resisting by pulling duty belts and grabbing Officer Smith by the vest.” It describes the use of chemical agents and the use of the baton to strike Nichols. The report says the Memphis Police Department officer responded to an “aggravated assault” and that former MPD Officer Martin had observed Nichols’ vehicle “driving recklessly at a high rate of speed” and “into oncoming traffic.” The initial statement from the Memphis Police Department failed to mention the details of the physical altercations. It’s not the only example in recent years of police reports or statements not aligning with details seen in body camera footage or other evidence. Some law enforcement experts and lawyers argue that when people are in fast-paced, high-intensity situations, they may not be equipped to “record” key details the way a body camera can. “There’s no training that any human being can go through that is going to teach them how to record an event like a machine,” said Michael Rains, a California attorney who has represented law enforcement in civil and criminal litigation. Two former law enforcement officers told ABC News that every person’s recollection of an event can differ. “We learned to not say that eyewitness testimony is the only thing,” TJ Kennedy, a public safety and de-escalation expert, told ABC News. “You have to put it all together.” However, “It’s not to say that an officer wouldn’t lie or try to lie because we all know that that can happen,” Rains adds. Some officers get a chance to look at body camera footage before submitting their report, while others may not be allowed to because of local legal restrictions, according to ABC News contributor and former San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan. It’s an ongoing debate in the industry, he said. Does it help officers recollect the events? Or does it cause officers to change their narrative based on what they saw in the footage? “Now we have that conflict between what is the officer perceiving versus what the actual camera is showing,” said Burguan in an interview with ABC News. Discrepancies in police reports, official statements and official documents have been seen in several recent police brutality cases. George Floyd incident The Minneapolis Police Department also has been criticized over its initial statement detailing the murder of George Floyd by then-MPD Police Officer Derek Chauvin. “After he got out, he physically resisted officers. Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance,” read the May 26, 2020, statement. The report fails to mention that Chauvin held his knee on the back of Floyd’s neck for more than 9 minutes, a moment captured on cellphone video by bystanders. The video prompted protests worldwide against police brutality. Floyd, who was handcuffed and in a prone position on the pavement, repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe before falling unconscious and losing a pulse, according to evidence presented at Chauvin’s state trial. Floyd was later pronounced dead at a hospital. Chauvin was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. He pleaded guilty to violating Floyd’s civil rights. Breonna Taylor Breonna Taylor was shot and killed in March 2020 by Louisville, Kentucky, police officers executing a no-knock search warrant on her home. Her death became one of several that year that prompted global protests. Details concerning the legitimacy of the search warrant unveiled by the Department of Justice in August 2022 prompted more ire. The DOJ charged Detective Joshua Jaynes, former Louisville Detective Kelly Goodlett and Sgt. Kyle Meany for allegedly violating Taylor’s Fourth Amendment rights when they sought a warrant to search Taylor’s home while knowing they lacked “probable cause.” The DOJ alleged that the officers knew their affidavit supporting the warrant contained false and misleading information and it omitted other material information, resulting in her death. “Among other things, the affidavit falsely claimed that officers had verified that the target of the alleged drug trafficking operation had received packages at Ms. Taylor’s address. In fact, defendants Jaynes and Goodlett knew that was not true,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said during a press conference on the charges. Garland also alleged that Jaynes and Goodlett knew armed officers would be carrying out the raid at Taylor’s home, and that conducting the search could create “a dangerous situation for anyone who happened to be in Ms. Taylor’s home.” Goodlett pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to violate the civil rights of Taylor. Jaynes and Meany have both pleaded not guilty. The next status hearing for the trial is scheduled for Feb. 21. Casey Goodson Casey Goodson, 23, was shot and killed by Franklin County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Jason Meade while Goodson entered his home on Dec. 4, 2020, in Columbus, Ohio. However, the details of the fatal incident from authorities and Goodson’s family don’t match up. Goodson’s family said he was returning from a dentist appointment and had a Subway sandwich in his hand, according to family co-counsel Sean L. Walton. “Casey had the screen door open and his keys in the door, and Deputy Jason Meade fired shots at Casey,” Walton told ABC News. “He fell into the house, where he lay in his kitchen.” Meade, who had been taking part in an unsuccessful search for a fugitive along with the U.S. Marshals Service, said Goodson — who was not the target of the search — waved a gun at him when he drove by in his police car. Meade confronted Goodson outside his home, and Goodson allegedly refused to drop his gun, U.S. Marshal Peter Tobin said at a press conference. Tobin later withdrew those remarks about Goodson waving a gun. Meade is charged with murder and pleaded not guilty. Meade’s attorney, Mark C. Collins, has said in a December 2021 statement that his client “acted within his lawful duties as an officer of the law when he pursued Mr. Goodson,” and said Meade fired his weapon at Goodson in “fear for his life as well as those inside the house.” Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
- [Opinion: Rooting out bad apples in law enforcement | Chattanooga Times Free Press](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/03/opinion-rooting-out-bad-apples-in-law-enforcement-chattanooga-times-free-press/) - Even before the city of Memphis released video of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols' brutal beating during a traffic stop, the five city police officers involved were given a familiar moniker: bad apples.So it was in Baltimore following the in-custody death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray in 2015, and in Cleveland after an officer there shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014, and in Louisville, Kentucky, following the 2020 shooting death of 25-year-old Breonna Taylor during a "no knock" police raid, and even in Los Angeles when video showed officers beating Rodney King in 1991.It's always the bad apples. So many bad apples.The full metaphor is "One bad apple spoils the barrel." A moldy fruit infects its companions. The rot only worsens until the whole bunch is a loss.That risk should be sufficient incentive to root out the bad apples quickly, lest the whole barrel be spoiled. Yet, as the nation has seen time and time again in these excessive force cases, the "bad apples" in American police departments are not removed, not drummed out of service, but allowed to inflict their brutality on more civilians each year.Everyone has a vested interest in getting problematic police officers off the street, no more so than the men and women who wear the badge. They know, better than others, how an extrajudicial killing or other form of unjustified police violence diminishes their profession, erodes trust with their communities and ultimately makes their jobs more difficult.That is why, before Memphis released the Nichols footage, police chiefs moved to separate their departments from the actions of those officers. Virginia Beach Chief Paul Neudigate released a statement on Friday sayin that "the actions of those involved are not representative of the policing profession." Other area chiefs expressed similar sentiments.The vast majority of those who serve in law enforcement do so with good intentions and sincere commitment to the public's safety. But, as in every workplace, those who bend, and break, the rules are known to their colleagues. Officers know who the bad apples are.Rooting them out is a different matter entirely. Oftentimes high-ranking officials, front-line officers and unions fiercely resist efforts at reform even when they would be helpful in separating the dedicated and faithful from those who are unfit to serve.That's not to say that all reform efforts lack support among those in uniform. Many departments have embraced deescalation training and other strategies to resolve incidents without violence, and nearly everyone in blue agrees that better salaries would attract a higher caliber of recruits.There is too permissive an attitude toward those who aren't worthy of the uniform. But the risk of inaction contributes to a larger crisis: the erosion of the trust between a community and its law enforcement, which is necessary to effective policing and improved public safety.Police officials routinely say they are asked to do too much, and communities should assist their work by narrowing their scope of responsibilities. Adding mental health teams to respond to people in crisis is one way to do so, but there are countless more.Communities need officers themselves to be proponents of reform, to change the culture of policing and to turn their outrage over what happened in Memphis and too many other places into action. To do nothing -- to let despicable, malevolent violence like this to stand without self-introspection and concrete proposals to improve -- is to condemn the "good apples" to rot alongside the bad.The Virginian-Pilot
- [Tyler Childers models a more inclusive vision of heritage - U.S. Catholic](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/03/tyler-childers-models-a-more-inclusive-vision-of-heritage-u-s-catholic/) - Author Wendell Berry famously lives in Henry County, Kentucky, which went for presidential nominee Donald Trump by a 46 percent margin in 2020. Still, Berry says, he maintains friendly relations with his Trumpist neighbors when they meet at the farm supply store. In his most recent book, The Need to Be Whole (Shoemaker), he writes that this is a necessity of rural life: “If two neighbors know that they may seriously disagree, but that either of them, given even a small change of circumstances, may desperately need the other, should they not keep between them a sort of pre-paid forgiveness? They ought to keep it ready to hand, like a fire extinguisher.” Berry’s fellow Kentuckian, the country singer-songwriter Tyler Childers, is also very much a product of his place. Childers writes songs about contemporary rural life with melodies that sound 300 years old. He regularly sells out arenas. His most popular songs get Spotify streams in the hundreds of millions. He’s rich. He could live anywhere, but he’s stayed on his native soil in Appalachian Lawrence County (which Trump carried by 63 points in 2020). In fact, as Childers’ fame and fortune have grown, he has actually become more locally rooted. His first two studio albums, Country Squire and Purgatory, were recorded in Nashville with session players. But the next one, his pandemic album Long Violent History, was a lo-fi collection mostly of traditional fiddle tunes recorded at his homeplace with local musicians. But, as Berry often does in his writing, Childers used this deep dive into his roots to set the context for a message he knew some of his audience wouldn’t like. The album came out in September 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd summer, and in the title track Childers asks his white, rural listeners to consider how they would react if their relatives and friends were regularly shot “full of holes, cuffed and [laid] in the street.” The message to his people was even more pointed in a six-minute video released with the album. There he spun out analogies rich in regional detail to show his audience that, rather than “being taken aback” at Black Lives Matter protests, they should empathize with them and even support them. What, he asked, would his audience think if they were confronted with a headline stating: “Ashland Community and Technical College Nursing Student Shot in Her Sleep”? Well, Childers said, that’s what happened in Louisville to “Breonna Taylor, a Kentuckian like me.”Advertisement He also addressed the “heritage, not hate” defense of the Confederate flag commonly heard in the white South. That flag, he said, has a “history steeped in racism and treason.” He recommended that his people instead affirm their heritage by doing “things like hewing a log . . . learning a fiddle tune, growing a garden, raising some animals . . . sewing a quilt.” Childers’ current release, Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven? extends this “yes, but” relationship with his place and people. Recorded with his band, The Food Stamps, in Huntington, West Virginia, it’s a gospel album, that oldest of country music traditions. Every country star makes one eventually, and Childers’ cover of “Old Country Church” and originals such as the title track and “Way of the Triune God” fit the traditional mold. However, this is a country music star’s gospel album that comes with a quote from the Hindu scriptures on the cover and features a third disc that is a remix of songs from the first two. There’s also an original song called “Angel Band” (title cribbed from a gospel standard) that envisions a heaven with “Hindus, Jews, and Muslims / and Baptists of all kinds.” Once again Childers affirms the culture and traditions of his people and audience, but he nudges them toward a more inclusive version of the tradition. He’s also been doing something like that with his live shows lately. At a Lexington benefit concert for victims of the Eastern Kentucky floods, Childers stepped aside in the middle of his set and gave the microphone to S. G. Goodman. A self-described queer singer-songwriter, Goodman grew up as a Western Kentucky farm girl and has made her home in the nearby town of Murray, deliberately choosing to maintain bonds even with family and neighbors who might dislike aspects of who she is. Goodman is also opening several of the shows on Childers’ current tour. Floating in and out of the music on the Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven? remix disc is archival audio from, among other things, Holiness church services and the Andy Griffith Show. On the last track, as the music fades, the disc closes with a clip of adopted Kentuckian Thomas Merton, saying, “So I will disappear from view, and we can all have a Coke or something.” That was Merton’s last public utterance, at the end of a talk on monasticism in Thailand. The Merton clip didn’t really surprise me. Ever since I heard “Universal Sound” on Childers’ Purgatory album, I’ve thought of him as a natural mystic. There he sings, “I focus on my breathing and the universal sound / I let it take me over from the toenails to the crown.” And in the last verse, “I’ve been up on the mountain, and I’ve seen His wondrous grace / I’ve sat there on a bar stool, and I’ve looked Him in the face.”Advertisement
- [Discrepancy between police accounts, evidence in Tyre Nichols case revealed - ABC News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/03/discrepancy-between-police-accounts-evidence-in-tyre-nichols-case-revealed-abc-news/) - The police traffic stop that led to Tyre Nichols’ death was detailed in an incident report obtained by ABC News, as well as a Memphis Police statement, but the written statements provide a different account from what the body camera footage of the disturbing encounter has revealed.Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, died after a confrontation with police in which he was beaten following a traffic stop.The footage shows officers beating Nichols and targeting him with pepper spray as he begins yelling for his mother, who lived near the site of the encounter.In body camera footage, officers can be seen standing over Nichols while he's on the ground. As two officers hold him down, a third kicks him. A fourth officer comes over with a baton and the officers pick up Nichols from the ground and hold him up while officers appear to strike him in the face and torso.The officers yell multiple times at Nichols to "give me your hands." The officer with the baton can be heard saying, "I'ma baton the f--- out of you" - then appears to strike him on the upper body three times. Officers pull Nichols to a stand, then appear to punch and slap him.The official incident report does not mention that Nichols was kicked and punched by the officers. It also claims that Nichols started to fight with officers, reached for their guns, pulled on their duty belts and grabbed at least one officer by his vest. This cannot be seen in body camera footage.Officers can be heard in the aftermath claiming that Nichols reached for their guns.This still image from a Memphis Police Department body-cam video released on January 27, 2023, shows a police officer aiming a tazer towards Tyre Nichols, in Memphis, Tennessee.Memphis Police Department/AFP via Getty Images"Suspect Tyre Nichols was refusing a lawful detention by law enforcement officers and he started to fight with detectives," the report reads. It says Nichols was "sweating profusely" and "irate" when he exited the vehicle.The report also claims Nichols “began actively resisting by pulling duty belts and grabbing Officer Smith by the vest.”It describes the use of chemical agents and the use of the baton to strike Nichols.The report says the Memphis Police Department officer responded to an "aggravated assault" and that former MPD Officer Martin had observed Nichols' vehicle "driving recklessly at a high rate of speed" and "into oncoming traffic."The initial statement from the Memphis Police Department failed to mention the details of the physical altercations.It’s not the only example in recent years of police reports or statements not aligning with details seen in body camera footage or other evidence.Some law enforcement experts and lawyers argue that when people are in fast-paced, high-intensity situations, they may not be equipped to "record" key details the way a body camera can.“There's no training that any human being can go through that is going to teach them how to record an event like a machine,” said Michael Rains, a California attorney who has represented law enforcement in civil and criminal litigation.Two former law enforcement officers told ABC News that every person's recollection of an event can differ.“We learned to not say that eyewitness testimony is the only thing,” TJ Kennedy, a public safety and de-escalation expert, told ABC News. “You have to put it all together.”However, “It's not to say that an officer wouldn't lie or try to lie because we all know that that can happen,” Rains adds.Some officers get a chance to look at body camera footage before submitting their report, while others may not be allowed to because of local legal restrictions, according to ABC News contributor and former San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan.It’s an ongoing debate in the industry, he said. Does it help officers recollect the events? Or does it cause officers to change their narrative based on what they saw in the footage?“Now we have that conflict between what is the officer perceiving versus what the actual camera is showing,” said Burguan in an interview with ABC News.Discrepancies in police reports, official statements and official documents have been seen in several recent police brutality cases.George Floyd incidentThe Minneapolis Police Department also has been criticized over its initial statement detailing the murder of George Floyd by then-MPD Police Officer Derek Chauvin.“After he got out, he physically resisted officers. Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance,” read the May 26, 2020, statement.The report fails to mention that Chauvin held his knee on the back of Floyd's neck for more than 9 minutes, a moment captured on cellphone video by bystanders. The video prompted protests worldwide against police brutality.Floyd, who was handcuffed and in a prone position on the pavement, repeatedly said he couldn't breathe before falling unconscious and losing a pulse, according to evidence presented at Chauvin's state trial.Floyd was later pronounced dead at a hospital. Chauvin was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. He pleaded guilty to violating Floyd's civil rights.Breonna TaylorThis is a screen grab from police body cam footage from when Breonna Taylor was shot and killed.Louisville Metro Police DepartmentBreonna Taylor was shot and killed in March 2020 by Louisville, Kentucky, police officers executing a no-knock search warrant on her home.Her death became one of several that year that prompted global protests.Details concerning the legitimacy of the search warrant unveiled by the Department of Justice in August 2022 prompted more ire.The DOJ charged Detective Joshua Jaynes, former Louisville Detective Kelly Goodlett and Sgt. Kyle Meany for allegedly violating Taylor's Fourth Amendment rights when they sought a warrant to search Taylor's home while knowing they lacked “probable cause.”The DOJ alleged that the officers knew their affidavit supporting the warrant contained false and misleading information and it omitted other material information, resulting in her death."Among other things, the affidavit falsely claimed that officers had verified that the target of the alleged drug trafficking operation had received packages at Ms. Taylor's address. In fact, defendants Jaynes and Goodlett knew that was not true," Attorney General Merrick Garland said during a press conference on the charges.Garland also alleged that Jaynes and Goodlett knew armed officers would be carrying out the raid at Taylor's home, and that conducting the search could create "a dangerous situation for anyone who happened to be in Ms. Taylor's home."Goodlett pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to violate the civil rights of Taylor. Jaynes and Meany have both pleaded not guilty. The next status hearing for the trial is scheduled for Feb. 21.Casey GoodsonCasey Goodson, 23, was shot and killed by Franklin County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Jason Meade while Goodson entered his home on Dec. 4, 2020, in Columbus, Ohio.However, the details of the fatal incident from authorities and Goodson's family don't match up.Goodson's family said he was returning from a dentist appointment and had a Subway sandwich in his hand, according to family co-counsel Sean L. Walton."Casey had the screen door open and his keys in the door, and Deputy Jason Meade fired shots at Casey," Walton told ABC News. "He fell into the house, where he lay in his kitchen."Meade, who had been taking part in an unsuccessful search for a fugitive along with the U.S. Marshals Service, said Goodson -- who was not the target of the search -- waved a gun at him when he drove by in his police car.Meade confronted Goodson outside his home, and Goodson allegedly refused to drop his gun, U.S. Marshal Peter Tobin said at a press conference. Tobin later withdrew those remarks about Goodson waving a gun, saying they were based on "insufficient information," according to The Associated Press.Meade is charged with murder and pleaded not guilty.Meade's attorney, Mark C. Collins, has said in a December 2021 statement that his client "acted within his lawful duties as an officer of the law when he pursued Mr. Goodson," and said Meade fired his weapon at Goodson in "fear for his life as well as those inside the house."ABC News' Stephanie Wash and Armando Garcia contributed to this report.
- [Miami Is Celebrating Black History Month With a New Cop Car](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/03/miami-is-celebrating-black-history-month-with-a-new-cop-car/) - Miami-Dade police kicked off Black history Month by unveiling a police cruiser that had been painted with images of raised fists and a map of Africa.
- [In Photos: Tyre Nichols Funeral Draws Rev. Al Sharpton, Kamala Harris And Families Of ... - Forbes](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/01/in-photos-tyre-nichols-funeral-draws-rev-al-sharpton-kamala-harris-and-families-of-forbes/) - ToplineVice President Kamala Harris and the families of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd—whose deaths at the hands of police sparked nationwide protests in 2020—attended Tyre Nichols’ funeral in Memphis on Wednesday, five days after the release of graphic body-camera and surveillance video of his arrest sparked nationwide protests. Key Facts President Joe Biden was not in attendance, although White House aides Keisha Lance Bottoms and Tara Murray, as well as Biden’s senior advisor Mitch Landrieu and White House Director of African American Media Erica Loewe, traveled to Memphis for the funeral. Philonise Floyd, the brother of George Floyd—who was killed by police in Minneapolis when an officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes after a store clerk accused him of using counterfeit money—as well as Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, who was fatally shot when police raided her apartment in Louisville, Kentucky, were also there, multiple outlets reported. Harris, who in a statement last week called for an end to “the persistent issue of police misconduct and use of excessive force” and reportedly spoke to Nichols’ mother on the phone, was in attendance, according to a White House official, speaking to CNN. Rev. Al Sharpton is set to deliver a eulogy at the funeral, which began at 2 p.m., before Nichols’ family lays Nichols to rest. RowVaughn Wells stops in front of the casket of her son Tyre Nichols.USA TODAY NETWORKMourners arrive to the funeral service for Tyre Nichols on Wednesday.Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. Attorney Benjamin Crump, who represents Nichols' family, arrives to his funeral service.Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.RowVaughn Wells (left) listens as Rev. Al Sharpton speaks at a news conference at Mason Temple.AFP via Getty ImagesRev. Dr. J. Lawrence Turner speaks during the funeral service for Tyre Nichols.USA TODAY NETWORKRev. Al Sharpton at the funeral service.USA TODAY NETWORKVice President Kamala Harris with RowVaughn Wells and Rodney Wells.Getty Images Key Background Five officers in the Memphis Police Department pulled over Nichols’ car on the night of January 7 for what they claimed was a routine traffic stop, although body camera and surveillance footage released last Friday revealed police used pepper spray and threw kicks and punches at Nichols as he lay on the ground. He died three days after the arrest. In the weeks that followed, all five officers involved were released from the police department, and charged with second-degree murder. The SCORPION unit they belonged to—a specialty unit tasked with addressing crime—was also disbanded, following questions as to why the specialty unit was involved in the first place. Another member of the Memphis Police Department was later relieved of duty, although his involvement in the arrest was not disclosed. Crucial Quote Speaking on the altar, Harris called Nichols’ death an “act of violence at the hands and the feet of people who had been charged with keeping them safe,” saying the “violent act was not in pursuit of public safety.” She also urged lawmakers to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which was reintroduced earlier this week after Senate Republicans blocked the bill last year over concerns it would limit qualified immunity, which protects law enforcement officers from misconduct lawsuits. Tangent Nichols’ death also sparked protests in Memphis, New York City and Los Angeles, and prompted lawmakers to renew a push for law enforcement reforms—although the reforms face opposition in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Speaking at the Mason Temple in Memphis this week, where Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 delivered his famous “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech, Sharpton pledged to “continue in Tyre’s name to head up to Martin’s mountaintop,” saying, “there’s nothing that you can say that can explain what we saw on that videotape.” Further Reading Tyre Nichols’ Death: Footage Of Nichols’ Fatal Beating Sparks Protests Nationwide (Forbes) Tyre Nichols Video: Here Are The Key Questions After Shocking Footage Released (Forbes) Lawmakers Will Renew Police Reform Push After Tyre Nichols Killing—Here’s Why Negotiations Stalled In The Previous Congress (Forbes) Tyre Nichols Death: What To Know About The Now-Disbanded ‘SCORPION’ Police Unit That Pulled Him Over (Forbes)
- [Mask requirement lifted at UofL Health - Louisville - WHAS11](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/01/mask-requirement-lifted-at-uofl-health-louisville-whas11/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The universal mask requirement at UofL Health will be lifted on Monday. "While masks will no longer be required for team members, patients and visitors after that date, we will not discourage anyone from wearing a mask if they wish," Jason Smith, chief medical officer at UofL Health, said. Smith urged the public to continue practicing good hand hygiene and to keep following UofL Health – Employee Health’s recommendations if you are sick or showing signs of illness. He says the hospital will also end mandatory COVID-19 testing of admissions/procedures and only start testing people who are "symptomatic on presentation." "COVID-19 has certainly tested all of us and our organization. I’m beyond proud of where we are today," Smith said. "Thank you all for your continued work to support our mission and for your dedication to our patients." Make it easy to keep up-to-date with more stories like this. Download the WHAS11 News app now. For Apple or Android users.
- [Norton Healthcare reinstating mask requirements - WAVE 3](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/02/norton-healthcare-reinstating-mask-requirements-wave-3/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - Norton Healthcare has reinstated mask requirement for its Louisville-area hospitals Wednesday evening.According to the release, DNV, Norton’s accrediting agency has recommended all employees, patients and visitors to wear masks in areas of the hospitals where patients may be present. Vaccination status doesn’t play a role in exemption. Norton Healthcare will implement these changes on Friday. Jefferson County has experienced continued community transmission of COVID-19 and the CDC lists Louisville as being at a “high” level of transmission at this time. Norton Healthcare will update these procedures as community transmission levels decrease. Copyright 2023 WAVE. All rights reserved.
- [Norton Healthcare reinstates mask requirements in Louisville | whas11.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/02/norton-healthcare-reinstates-mask-requirements-in-louisville-whas11-com/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Norton Healthcare is reinstating its masking requirements for its Louisville-area hospitals on Friday. According to a statement from the hospital, they said the safety of their patients remains their top priority. They say their health care accrediting agency tracked data in Jefferson County and recommended all employees, patients and visitors wear masks regardless of vaccination status. "Jefferson County has experienced continued community transmission of COVID-19 as detailed in the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) COVID Data Tracker that lists Louisville as being at a "high" level of transmission," they said in the statement. There is no timeline for when the mandate could be lifted again. Make it easy to keep up-to-date with more stories like this. Download the WHAS11 News app now. For Apple or Android users.
- [Norton Healthcare reinstates mask mandate to Louisville hospitals | News - wdrb.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/02/norton-healthcare-reinstates-mask-mandate-to-louisville-hospitals-news-wdrb-com/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Norton Healthcare announced it is restoring the mask requirements for Louisville-area hospitals starting on Friday, Feb. 3. A Norton Healthcare spokesperson said Norton Healthcare monitors the "transmission rate" of Covid-19 and not the "incident rate."They recommend all Norton Healthcare employees, patients and visitors wear masks, regardless of vaccination status. WDRB reported on Feb. 1, 2023 that UofL Health is ending its mask requirement on Monday, Feb. 6. UofL Health also announced they are ending mandatory COVID-19 testing prior to admission. Copyright 2023. WDRB Media. All rights reserved.
- [A micro wedding was a 'blessing in disguise' for this Louisville couple. Here's why - Courier-Journal](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/02/a-micro-wedding-was-a-blessing-in-disguise-for-this-louisville-couple-heres-why-courier-journal/) - The COVID-19 pandemic put a hard stop on the large-scale wedding Lindsey Kleyer and her fiancé Junseong Choi had planned for June 27, 2020. But rather than allowing the shutdown of large gatherings to crush their dream, the young couple, like thousands of others around the world, revamped their expectations and went ahead with a micro wedding."Our small wedding turned out to be a gift in ways we never would have expected," Lindsey Kleyer Choi told the Courier Journal. "I was worried a very small wedding would be awkward or it wouldn't feel special but the opposite happened. We look back on the day and say we wouldn't have wanted it any other way."Three years later, even though the pandemic has started to slow down, micro weddings are turning out to be more than just a fad. On Tuesday, Feb. 14, Whitehall, a historic mansion at 3110 Lexington Road, will hold a series of six micro weddings similar to the ceremony the Chois experienced in 2020.The cost for February's Whitehall micro weddings is $500 per ceremony. Like a traditional larger marriage ceremony, each wedding will include an officiant, cake and champagne, and a complimentary wedding portrait with the option to purchase additional photos. Up to 20 guests may attend. Couples may also choose to renew their vowsYou may like:'I love it.' How one man creates magic with liquid nitrogen ice cream and cocktail company"We sold out all six-time slots within a couple of hours," said Whitehall Executive Director Kristen Lutes. "Based on the popularity, we will be offering another series of micro weddings in May and we'll see where it goes from there."One positive outcome of the pandemic is that it has given couples permission to choose the size of wedding that feels the best for them and fits their values, lifestyle, and budget.There were more than 1.9 million traditional weddings held in 2022. According to The Wedding Report, an industry research company, the average cost for each wedding was $27,063.A significantly reduced price tag was a fringe benefit of Lindsey and Jun Seong Choi's scaled-back affair but in their case, the cost wasn't the catalyst. Social distancing to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus was the primary reason for their smaller, yet elegant ceremony and reception."The pandemic made it impossible for some of our guests to travel so there were only 18 people including our bridesmaids and groomsmen," said Choi. "Everyone still dressed up. I wore my wedding dress, and the bridesmaids were in their gowns and the grooms in suits."You may like:'We have come quite a ways': A Louisville couple finds 1894 Courier Journal behind mantelLike the wedding attire, the couple decided to keep the marriage ceremony similar to what they had planned for their larger wedding. Members of the wedding party read passages of scripture and the pastor delivered a short sermon prior to the vows.They said the music during their marriage ceremony turned out to be the icing on the cake during their intimate gathering."Junseong and I both sing, we met through a vocal group. Since our wedding was so small, we decided to provide the music ourselves at our own ceremony," Lindsey Choi said. "Junseong played the guitar and I sang and we printed out the words so the guests could sing along, too. It was very special, very sweet, but I don't think it would have felt that intimate at a larger wedding."While traditional weddings aren't going away, small, intimate wedding celebrations, the type the Chois experienced in 2020, are having a moment."So many people told me before our wedding that the day itself would be a blur because of the number of things that needed to be done," Choi said. "However, since the wedding was smaller, I could really live in the moment that day. I was able to enjoy talking with my family and friends and enjoy my reception dinner."You may like:What's a food club? 6 ideas to help you plan your own elevated foodie experienceAfter their garden ceremony at Whitehall's historic mansion, the Chois and their guests proceeded to a private room at a nearby restaurant. Nearly everything aspect of their wedding day was dictated by safety concerns due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but Lindsey and Jun Seong Choi said the changes to their original plans turned out to be a sweet blessing in disguise."The memories from our day are very special," she said. "Because there were fewer people, I had much less to worry about and I could really focus on the reason we were there. The day didn't feel stressful like I had anticipated. It was sweet and intimate and turned out to be an unexpected surprise we will treasure for the rest of our lives."Reach features reporter Kirby Adams at kadams@courier-journal.com.
- [Tyre Nichols funeral draws civil rights leaders, U.S. vice president | The Mighty 790 KFGO](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/01/tyre-nichols-funeral-draws-civil-rights-leaders-u-s-vice-president-the-mighty-790-kfgo/) - By Alyssa PorterMEMPHIS, Tenn. (Reuters) – Family and friends of Tyre Nichols will pay their final respects on Wednesday to the Black 29-year-old father whose fatal encounter with Memphis police last month transformed him into the new face of the U.S. racial justice movement.The Rev. Al Sharpton will eulogize Nichols, and another prominent civil rights leader, attorney Ben Crump, will deliver a “call to action” during a funeral at the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Nichols’ adopted hometown of Memphis.Among those planning to join the mourners was U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Crump said the Nichols family invited. Harris spoke with Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, in a private telephone call on Tuesday, he said.Relatives of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, two other African Americans whose deaths in 2020 at the hands of police in Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis, became rallying cries for the Black Lives Matter movement, were also invited to attend.Nichols, a FedEx worker who skateboarded and studied photography, died on Jan. 10 while hospitalized for injuries he sustained three days earlier when beaten by Memphis police who pulled him over on his way home, an incident that Crump has branded a “police lynching.”The Memphis Police Department subsequently fired five of the officers, who also are Black, and prosecutors charged them last week with second-degree murder, assault, kidnapping, official misconduct and oppression.Two other officers implicated in the events leading to Nichols’ death have been relieved of duty – effectively suspended – and are under investigation. Two paramedics and their on-scene supervisor were dismissed on Monday from the city fire department, while two Shelby County sheriff’s deputies have been suspended.Police video of the confrontation released by the city on Friday showed officers dousing Nichols with pepper spray and pummeling him with punches, kicks and baton blows as he cried out for his mother. One officer was seen firing a Taser stun gun at Nichols when he attempted to flee.The footage ends showing Nichols was left handcuffed, bloodied and slumped against the side of a police vehicle for nearly a quarter-hour before receiving medical attention.‘DISGRACE TO THIS COUNTRY’The chief of police, Cerelyn Davis, has called the conduct seen in the video “inhumane” and said investigators have not substantiated that Nichols was driving recklessly when he was pulled over, as arresting officers asserted at the time.Civil rights advocates and lawyers for Nichols’ family have condemned the beating as the latest case of an African American brutalized by a racially biased law enforcement system that disproportionately targets people of color, even when officers involved are non-white.Protests stemming from Nichols’ death have been peaceful and relatively restrained in Memphis, a majority-Black city on the Mississippi River whose racial history was indelibly marked by the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during his visit there to support a local garbage workers’ strike.Sharpton paid tribute to Nichols during a Tuesday night news conference – a kind of preamble to the funeral – at the historic Mason Temple church in Memphis where King delivered his famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech on the eve of his murder.“What happened to Tyre Nichols here is a disgrace to this country,” Sharpton told reporters, flanked by Nichols’ mother and his stepfather, Rodney Wells. “People from around the world watched the videotape of a man, unarmed, unprovoked, being beaten to death by officers of the law.”Crump initially praised the city and local authorities for swift action in investigating the Nichols beating and bringing criminal charges, but in recent days suggested police had been less than candid with Nichols’ mother.Nichols, who grew up in Sacramento, California, and moved to Memphis early in the COVID pandemic in 2020, was remembered by friends and family as an affable, free-spirited guy who loved skateboarding and recently enrolled in a photography class.He had a 4-year-old son and took a daily supper break from his FedEx job to join his stepfather and co-worker for meals prepared by his mother at home, where he lived.Antonio Romanucci, another lawyer for his family, has said Nichols also was a strong supporter of Black Lives Matter, a cause for which he gave his life, “and essentially what that makes him is a martyr.”(Reporting by Alyssa Porter in Memphis; Additional reporting by Tyler Clifford, Jonathan Allen, Rich McKay and Brendan O’Brien; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
- [Harris, Breonna Taylor's mother and George Floyd's brother expected at Tyre Nichols funeral](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/01/harris-breonna-taylors-mother-and-george-floyds-brother-expected-at-tyre-nichols-funeral/) - Harris, Breonna Taylor’s mother and George Floyd’s brother expected at Tyre Nichols funeral | The Hill Skip to content Vice President Harris, Breonna Taylor’s mother and George Floyd’s brother are expected to attend the funeral of Tyre Nichols on Wednesday in Memphis, Tenn. Nichols died earlier this month after being beaten by police officers at
- [Anna's Greek Cuisine criticized, mistaken for Kentucky restaurant - The Columbus Dispatch](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/01/annas-greek-cuisine-criticized-mistaken-for-kentucky-restaurant-the-columbus-dispatch/) - A Dublin restaurant says it's been on the receiving end of negative reviews and "life-threatening" emails ever since a restaurant in Kentucky with a similar name became the site of protests.The owner of Anna's Greek Cuisine on Sawmill Road, said Tuesday on Facebook that her restaurant is being mistaken for Anna's Greek Restaurant in Bowling Green, Kentucky and is in no way related to or affiliated with it."The recent erroneous reviews posted by individuals who were offended by the event in Kentucky do not apply to the on-going service and business conducted at Anna's Greek Cuisine located in Ohio," she said.The upscale restaurant in Bowling Green last month received criticism for hosting an event organized by the Republican Women's Club of South Central Kentucky.Jonathan Mattingly, a former Louisville police officer involved in the 2020 raid on Breonna Taylor's apartment, was invited by the group to promote his new book, which discusses the botched raid that left Taylor dead and the aftermath of the incident.At one point on the evening of Jan. 17, a video presentation with audio of gunshots was played. While the private event with about 80 guests took place on the second floor of Anna's Greek Restaurant, a patron told the Courier Journal that audio from the event could be heard throughout the restaurant because organizers used a loud speaker.Mattingly and the restaurant's owners later apologized for allowing the video to be played. Mattingly said in a video on Facebook it should have been shown at a "totally secure location."The dinner was initially scheduled to take place at the Bowling Green Country Club alongside state Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles, a gubernatorial candidate in the Republican primary, but both parties backed out after news of Mattingly's presence sparked a backlash, the Courier Journal reported.In his video, Mattingly said the audio of gunshots in the footage that aired that night was not taken during the raid at Taylor's apartment, as no video footage of the incident exists. Instead, he said, the footage used video and audio of subsequent protests, including a shooting that left seven people injured on the first night of the demonstrations and a shooting that injured two officers after Attorney General Daniel Cameron announced just one LMPD officer, Brett Hankison, would face charges over the raid.In a separate statement published on its website, Anna's Greek Restaurant in Bowling Green said the accommodation for the group was made on a notice of two hours and owners were "unaware of the content to be presented.""We now have recognized the need to be exceedingly diligent in reviewing any content to be presented when blending restaurant patrons with private events," the restaurant's statement said. "... It is our deepest desire to meet the needs of all people who visit our restaurant, regardless of race, religion, culture, and opinions.Protestors last weekend held a demonstration in front of Anna's Greek Restaurant, expressing their anger over the event.Monroe Trombly covers breaking and trending news.mtrombly@dispatch.com@monroetrombly
- [What If January 6 Had Worked? A Comic Explores That Disturbing Premise. - Washingtonian](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/01/what-if-january-6-had-worked-a-comic-explores-that-disturbing-premise-washingtonian/) - Comic-book Illustration by Will Rosado and Gan Golan. A statue of the “QAnon Shaman” and others entering the Capitol adorns the Mall. Proud Boys and Oath Keepers patrol DC. Confederate flags flutter all over town, including behind the statue in the Lincoln Memorial. This is the world of 1/6, a four-part comic-book series that imagines a world in which the assault on the US Capitol succeeded in overturning the 2020 election. Harvard Law professor Alan Jenkins (pictured below) created 1/6 with activist Gan Golan and artist Will Rosado. We talked to Jenkins about the project, which kicks off this month. Can you describe the universe of this comic? What’s going on? We find our main characters about nine months after the successful insurrection, so fall of 2021. We see a raid on news operations that have been dubbed enemies of the people. We see armed militias and white-supremacist organizations roaming the streets. One of the things that we learned in the trial of the Oath Keepers is that they were hoping and apparently asking President Trump to deputize them under the Insurrection Act, so they would have become federal troops or federal officers. How does their coup succeed when the real-life insurrection failed? You know the point at which officer Eugene Goodman led the mob away from the Senate chamber? In our universe, the mob turns right instead of left and they enter the Senate chamber. The point is, only a few things had to happen differently in order for their efforts to be successful. In the best tradition of speculative fiction, we just tweak a few things. Photograph of Jenkins by Jessica Scranton. How different is life in this book from what Washingtonians experienced during the Trump administration? [His supporters] were significantly in control at that point, but they were not fully in control. The protections and guardrails of our democracy stayed in place, but they were almost broken. The more research I’ve done in cowriting this graphic novel, the more chilling it’s become. We still have 40 percent of Americans wrongly believing that the 2020 election was stolen. Hate crimes are on the rise, anti-Semitism is on the rise, transphobia, attacks on Asian Americans and people of color. And those are all of a piece. That kind of bigotry, in my experience, is a multi­-headed beast. And it leads back to the same monster. You usually write in regular prose. What was it like to write this book, then see your ideas represented visually? We’ve picked an artist we admire and trust. We give him our ideas, and they come back in ways that are true to our vision but also that we could not have imagined. It’s a wonderful experience—even when the images themselves are super-chilling. This article appears in the February 2023 issue of Washingtonian. #vid-container1 {display: none !important;}
- [A Brief Republican Autopsy of the 2022 Midterms - Campaigns & Elections](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/01/a-brief-republican-autopsy-of-the-2022-midterms-campaigns-elections/) - Gas prices hitting record-breaking highs, inflation breaking 40-year records, the sitting president’s approval rating at 39 percent, and one-party control of both chambers of Congress. This perfect storm signaled that the 2022 midterm election would provide the minority party a once-in-a-decade opportunity to make substantial gains nationwide. Many Republican consultants, operatives, and pollsters coined 2022
- [US Voting Patterns Are Shifting. But It's Not Simply “Class Dealignment.” - Jacobin](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/01/us-voting-patterns-are-shifting-but-its-not-simply-class-dealignment-jacobin/) - By the time he published his classic book Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics in 1960, the political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset was no longer a socialist. Even so, Lipset’s work often bore the unmistakable stamp of his youthful membership in the Young People’s Socialist League during the Great Depression. In Political Man, Lipset
- [Lawmakers want to audit Utah's elections, but not to examine whether the results are accurate](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/01/lawmakers-want-to-audit-utahs-elections-but-not-to-examine-whether-the-results-are-accurate/) - For nearly two years, believers in Donald Trump’s false claims of widespread election fraud have been clamoring for an audit of elections in the Beehive State. Under a bill winding its way through the Utah Legislature, that may happen — just not entirely in the way they want.The House Government Operations Committee unanimously approved HB269 on Tuesday afternoon, which mandates a performance audit of Utah’s elections in even-numbered years. Legislative auditors are tasked to review almost every aspect of the primary and general elections, from candidate selection to counting ballots.The bill from House Majority Leader Rep. Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, springboards from a year-long probe of Utah’s elections instigated by Schultz in late 2021. He explained he was motivated not by unfounded fraud claims but by a desire to build confidence in Utah’s elections.“Even though that was well after the 2020 election, everyone thought it was partisan and I was questioning the results of that election. I can’t count how many reporters asked if this was about Trump. That was ridiculous,” Schultz said.That audit did not find any evidence of fraud but highlighted some areas for improvement. Auditors found a patchwork of election procedures that vary from county to county across the state, which includes how often voter registration records are updated and procedures for counting ballots.(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) House Majority Leader Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, after presenting his first substitute HB269 before the House Government Operations Committee in the House Building, Jan. 31, 2023.Absent from the bill is a mechanism for verifying the accuracy of election results. State law requires county clerks to conduct a post-election audit to determine whether vote-counting machines are operating correctly. Legislative auditors recommended a pilot program to audit a certain percentage of ballots after the election to help ensure the results are accurate.That absence is notable after the legislative audit discovered slight discrepancies between the number of voters and the number of ballots cast in the 2022 primary elections. Auditors concluded the difference, encompassing fewer than 2,000 ballots statewide, was likely due to clerical errors or how counties reconcile ballots during the counting process.Schultz’s bill was met with broad support during Tuesday’s committee hearing. Ryan Cowley, Utah’s Director of Elections, welcomed increased scrutiny on how the state conducts voting.“We truly have nothing to hide in Utah. Our elections are some of the best in the country. This gives us a good framework to work with,” Cowley said.[Get the latest Utah political news in the new Daily Buzz email newsletter. Sign up here.]The legislation would also give broad discretion to legislative auditors, including the ability to unseal ballots for a limited time following an election. Currently, Utah law says all election materials must be sealed after an election is certified, then destroyed after 22 months.Instead of having the Legislature audit Utah’s elections, Rep. Phil Lyman, R-Blanding, wants to farm that task out to an independent auditor.Among other things, Lyman’s HB155 would require an independent audit of Utah’s elections for president, U.S. Senate, Congress and governor. The proposal still is waiting for a committee hearing.Lyman has been one of the loudest voices in the Capitol to allege issues with the state’s elections. Last year his bill to eliminate Utah’s vote-by-mail system was killed by a House committee. In June, Lyman spoke at a Colorado election conspiracy theory event headlined by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.Lyman and former Utah lawmaker Steve Christiansen attended an August 2021 cyber symposium in South Dakota put on by My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell. That fall, both also spoke about election fraud at a conspiracy-fueled conference in Salt Lake City.
- [Republicans aim to oust Rep. Ilhan Omar from Foreign Affairs panel | PBS NewsHour](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/02/republicans-aim-to-oust-rep-ilhan-omar-from-foreign-affairs-panel-pbs-newshour/) - WASHINGTON (AP) — Newly empowered House Republicans are preparing to oust Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Somali-born Muslim lawmaker, from the House Foreign Affairs Committee over her past comments critical of Israel — and as payback after Democrats booted far-right GOP lawmakers from committees for their incendiary, violent remarks. A procedural vote Wednesday showed unified Republican support for moving against Omar, who has apologized for comments that she has said she came to understand were viewed as antisemitic. It was approved on party lines, with all Democrats opposed. A final vote was expected Thursday. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has been eager to flex Republican power to remove the Minnesota Democrat after he blocked Rep. Adam Schiff and Rep. Eric Swalwell, both California Democrats, from rejoining the House Intelligence Committee once the GOP took control of the chamber in January. Unlike most committees, appointments to the Intelligence Committee are the prerogative of the speaker. “This is about vengeance. This is about spite. This is about politics,” said Rep. James McGovern of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee, as Republicans called a hurried meeting late Tuesday to consider the move against Omar. READ MORE: Republicans who deny 2020 election results lead key oversight committees McGovern argued that Democrats had removed Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., from committees for remarks that were far more extreme and violent against fellow lawmakers than those for which Omar had apologized. Republicans said they were waiting for Democrats to formally nominate Omar to the committee, which she served on during the last Congress. Once the committee roster is approved by the House, then Republicans would move to strip her of the seat. Democrats have little recourse at this point and are planning to formally submit their lineup for a vote. “We are united that she should be seated on the committee, said Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the ranking Democrat on the committee. The resolution proposed by Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, a former official in the Trump administration, says “Omar’s comments have brought dishonor to the House of Representatives.” Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, the committee chairman, argued against her inclusion on the committee in a recent closed-door meeting with fellow Republicans. “It’s just that her worldview of Israel is so diametrically opposed to the committee’s,” McCaul said. “I don’t mind having differences of opinion, but this goes beyond that.” Having her on the committee, he said, “creates dysfunction.” WATCH: House Republicans prepare to kick off investigations into Biden White House Omar said the issues Republicans have cited in opposing her are a pretext to justify their actions. In reality, “it is about revenge. It’s about appeasing the former president,” Omar said a recent news conference at the Capitol, referring to Donald Trump. Omar said that she, along with Schiff and Swalwell, who were House managers in Trump’s impeachment trials, “have been a thorn in the back of the previous, disgraced president.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said Omar brings a “powerful perspective” to the committee, and she accused Republicans of engaging in a “disgusting form of targeting.” McCarthy, R-Calif., has strained to ensure he has enough support from his Republican ranks to oust Omar. Republicans command a slim majority and several GOP lawmakers have been reluctant to engage in tit-for-tat retribution against colleagues. But GOP leaders are moving ahead after several holdouts signaled their support. The drive against Omar comes as embattled Republican Rep. George Santos said he would step aside from his own committee assignments as the House Ethics Committee investigates his actions. The New York Republican has acknowledged embellishments and even lies about his education, work experience and other aspects of his personal and professional life. Several Republicans have been wary of taking action against Omar while they are also having to answer for the many questions emerging about Santos.
- [Election officials ready themselves for the next wave of Trump followers - POLITICO](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/02/election-officials-ready-themselves-for-the-next-wave-of-trump-followers-politico/) - Hundreds of local election officials across the country are about to confront a political challenge putting their management skills and their campaign chops to the test: Administering the 2024 presidential vote while running for reelection themselves. Donald Trump acolytes galvanized by the former president’s false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen from him piled into last year’s campaigns for state election officer positions. And although Democrats and mainstream Republicans defeated all of those candidates in key battleground states like Michigan, Arizona and elsewhere, far more races for local election positions there and in other states will be up for grabs next year. The slate of below-the-radar campaigns will test how much money and attention will be available for these critical roles in the midst of a presidential race. “The concerns about being primaried is absolutely on the mind of very dedicated and very middle-of-the-road, nonpartisan-functioning” election officials in Florida, said Mark Earley, the election supervisor in Leon County, Fla., a blue-leaning county in the state’s deep-red Panhandle. One of the biggest flashpoints ahead may emerge in one of the biggest counties in the country: Maricopa County, Ariz., where a handful of election administration roles are up in 2024. The swing county is dominated by the GOP at the local level — the recorder and four of the five members of its board of supervisors are all Republican. But it has been in the center of an elections administration maelstrom since President Joe Biden narrowly won the county and Arizona in 2020. Local and state-level Republican party committees have repeatedly targeted Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer and the GOP board members after they resisted an amateurish election review pushed by Republican state lawmakers and defended their own oversight of the 2022 election. The Maricopa County GOP committee voted overwhelmingly to censure all five of them last month, ending the measure by encouraging “all registered Republicans to expel them permanently from office.” Maricopa is just one county out of the hundreds if not thousands of jurisdictions that will elect election administrators over the next couple years and give the country a taste for how much more drama voters should expect over their ballots. Earley, a Democrat and the president of his state’s association of local election officials, said in an interview that the hotter political environment is “built into the fabric” of races for election administrator positions now. The threats posed by having a local election clerk swept up in conspiracy theories are not far-fetched, because we’ve already seen them come to life. Tina Peters, once the clerk in Mesa County, Colo., was indicted last year after allegedly helping orchestrate a breach of election equipment in the county. Local election officials elsewhere have also assisted unauthorized reviews of election equipment. Peters, who unsuccessfully ran for the GOP nomination for Colorado secretary of state last year, has pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from the alleged breach. The scope of local election officials’ jobs are also wildly different from that of secretaries of state, which hadn’t garnered much attention themselves until the most recent election cycle. County and municipal election officials serve anywhere from millions of voters to just a few hundred. Some are appointed to their positions, while others are elected. And the financial and logistical challenges of mounting a serious campaign on the local level are far smaller than running for secretary of state. Republican Jodi Fetting — the clerk of Tuscola County, Mich., a red-leaning area in the state’s “thumb” — said she expects her 2024 race to look “a little bit differently than it did” when she was last on the ballot in 2020. “We definitely have people that believe the 2020 election was stolen,” she said. Fetting said she and other county clerks in the state will likely face questions about election procedures once they are on the ballot themselves. While she welcomes those questions, she said, it is a “daunting task when you know that you’re not going to change that person’s mind.” Other local election officials are anticipating a wave of Trump supporters running for local election offices, especially challenging Republican incumbents who have not supported Trump’s stolen election mythology. Many GOP election officials didn’t respond to requests for interviews, but Dane County, Wis., Clerk Scott McDonell, a Democrat, said that some of his Republican colleagues are preparing for primary challenges from people who have pushed narratives of fraud in public meetings and advocated for policies like the hand counting of ballots — a slower and less accurate way of counting votes that has nevertheless gained a following on the right. There is expected to be a more intentional recruiting effort from national organizations focused on election clerks and other similar positions this cycle, in an effort to counter a potential wave of MAGA-like candidates running for those under-the-radar positions. Run for Something, a liberal organization founded after Trump’s election focused on lining up candidates to run for office across the ballot, launched “Clerk Work” last year to recruit candidates for local positions in the election process. It covers everything from county clerks to boards of supervisors. The group had a hand in recruiting more than 220 candidates in the midterms for voting-related positions, Run for Something co-founder Ross Morales Rocketto said in an interview. That included 32 top-tier candidates, with a focus on county clerk positions in states like Colorado and California and county commissioners in Nevada. The group said 20 of them won their contests, including 10 of the 13 who were running against candidates Run for Something identified as an “election denier.” “The thing that keeps me up at night isn’t whether we can beat most of these folks — I think we can beat them in most places — it’s actually whether we get people on the ballot to run against them,” Morales Rocketto said. “And that to me is actually the harder challenge in all of this.” Over the next two years, the group is focusing in on a handful of states — including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Texas and Michigan — as top priorities to recruit election officials. Keep Country First Policy Action, a group founded by allies of former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), also launched an effort last year to recruit “pro-freedom, pro-democracy” candidates for office, with a focus on local election positions. In interviews, local officials who will be on the ballot in 2024 said they expected it to be a challenging election, with the added attention on both the official side of the job, as they prepare their offices for a busy presidential election year, and on their own individual campaigns. “Being on the ballot and running the election, it just adds to the stress,” said Ingham County, Mich., Clerk Barb Byrum, a Democrat. “You’re working day and night to make sure every qualified registered voter exercises their right to vote. And then when you’re not working your job, you’re out campaigning for yourself.” Officials were quick to note that their offices had safeguards in place to prevent clerks from influencing their own elections, from handing over certain duties to staff members and recusing themselves from some decisions in the office while they’re running. Those contests also come amid concerns of a persistent brain drain in the sector, as a number of local local election officials retired following the 2020 election. And while the decentralized nature of America’s election system makes retirements hard to track, experienced local officials pointed in interviews to a number of their colleagues leaving, with fears that that could continue ahead of the 2024 election. A recent survey from the Democracy Fund/Elections & Voting Information Center at Reed College of local election officials found as many as 18 percent planned to either retire or otherwise leave their position within the next two years. That is a bit lower than the 21 percent who indicated as much on a similar survey around the 2020 election. “I think there’s going to be a surprising number [of supervisors] that decide not to run again,” Earley, of Florida, said. “And it’s already happening in staff too. It’s not just the elected officials.”
- [Elections Stayed Secure in 2022, but Trouble Could Return in 2024](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/02/elections-stayed-secure-in-2022-but-trouble-could-return-in-2024/) - Elections Stayed Secure in 2022, but Trouble Could Return in 2024
- [Kansas ballot drop boxes need to be more secure, lawmaker says, comparing issue to 9/11](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/02/kansas-ballot-drop-boxes-need-to-be-more-secure-lawmaker-says-comparing-issue-to-9-11/) - TOPEKA — Election officials debunked ideas of so-called ballot mules stuffing dozens of votes into drop boxes, reassuring lawmakers Tuesday that the boxes are already secure during a hearing fraught with election security concerns and misinformation. During a House Elections Committee hearing, House Bill 2057 was opposed by a slew of election officers and voting rights advocacy groups questioned the need for the legislation. They included Loud Light, the Disability Rights Center of Kansas and the Kansas African American Affairs Commission. Drop box security The legislation would impose strict regulations on remote ballot boxes. County election offices with populations of less than 30,000 would be allowed to use only one remote ballot box per election. For county election offices in areas with more than 30,000 people, another box would be granted for each additional group of 30,000. The remote box would have to be under continual observation by an employee or via video, and closed when the election office is closed. The video recording would have to be situated so the faces of people dropping off the ballots into the box would be recorded, and the recording would be kept for a year, available for public record, among other stipulations. Critics of the bill say it’s unnecessary, would block Kansans from their democratic right to vote and would prove costly for local election offices, which pay for elections. Mike Taylor, who spoke on behalf of the Kansas County Commissioners Association, which represents the elected commissioners in all 105 counties, said the organization opposed the legislation on many grounds and felt it would harm voter privacy. “We are opposing this bill because we think it’s going to disenfranchise many, many voters who depend on easy access to those drop boxes,” Taylor said. “We also think it’s going to add a lot of unneeded expense to the counties and taxpayers.” The only person who spoke in favor of the bill during the meeting was an out-of-state speaker, Madeline Malisa from the Opportunity Solutions Project. When asked if there was any evidence of ballot box tampering in the state, Malisa said she hadn’t heard of anything in Kansas but thought the lack of evidence could be due to the lack of ballot box video surveillance. Rep. Kenneth Collins, R-Mulberry, asked county election officials if they had heard of any “mules” harassing people trying to drop off votes. Committee Vice Chair Rep. Paul Waggoner, a Hutchinson Republican, also brought up mules, a conservative term for people who are paid to cast illegal ballots. “I think part of the concern that’s kind of driven bills like this has been partly the whole notion of what are called mules, as far as that somehow somebody’s going to stuff a ballot box akin to, you know, there was a documentary called ‘2,000 Mules’ that came out a year ago,” Waggoner said. “2,000 Mules,” a debunked film from right-wing commentator Dinesh D’Souza, falsely claims there was significant voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election. The movie’s makers have been sued for defamation. Election officials said they weren’t aware of any issues with drop boxes during the 2020 and 2022 elections, in terms of people trying to tamper with boxes or in terms of ballot security. Rep. Cindy Neighbor, D-Shawnee, questioned the need for additional ballot box security measures. “From our secretary of state, it doesn’t appear that we’ve had a problem with them,” Neighbor said. “And the ones we are seeing are extremely secure. And that’s why I wanted clarity on how this was happening in Kansas.” Other voting legislation Stacey Knoell, executive director of the Kansas African American Affairs Commission, said she was one of 14,917 people who voted by drop box in Johnson County during the 2021 election. Knoell said she objected to the bill and other recently introduced legislation, such as House Bill 2056, which would require all advance ballots to be returned by 7 p.m. on Election Day, eliminating the three-day window currently in place. “I think it is part of the government’s job to make voting as accessible and as equitable as we can for people who need to vote,” Knoell said. “I want to reiterate what another conferee said: If we take this bill in conjunction with other bills, we’re just making it more difficult to vote for various reasons. We’re not having a three-day extended period. I just oppose these upon the moral stance that we need to make it more easy for people to vote in this country.” HB 2056 was voted on during the meeting and garnered enough votes to pass favorably out of the committee, despite some objections from lawmakers. Neighbor said she believed the bill would harm overseas soldiers who didn’t get their ballots sent back on time, through no fault of their own, and felt it harmed constitutional rights. Another bill considered during the hearing was better received. House Bill 2053 would authorize the secretary of state to adopt rules and regulations for returning advance voting ballots to remote ballot boxes. The secretary of state would use existing resources to provide procedure training for county election officials, work with the public to ensure knowledge of remote ballot box requirements, and include dates, times and locations for drop-box protocol. The legislation was supported by Secretary of State Scott Schwab’s office, with staffer Clay Barker saying regulations would provide physical security standards for drop boxes, chain of custody, disability access and would protect county election officers by ensuring they have met the proper standards for drop-off ballot procedures. Election officials and a spokeswoman from the League of Women Voters of Kansas said they also supported the bill, as it would clear up confusion and provide better guidelines. Barker said the regulations would also hopefully alleviate election security concerns. “There is concern out there about drop boxes, ‘2,000 Mules,’ ballot harvesting, and this is a way to respond to it,” Barker said. The Big Lie Many Republicans at the national and local level have denied the results of the 2020 election, casting doubt on election security. Schwab has bucked this trend by repeatedly underscoring the security of Kansas elections, including in the 2022 midterms. Other Kansas Republicans have called for more stringent voting security measures despite a lack of evidence for widespread voter fraud. Proposed voting restrictions have drawn criticism from groups who say many of the new bills would disenfranchise voters. When asked if he was concerned about voters’ rights, committee chairman Pat Proctor, a Leavenworth Republican, said he was trying to walk the line between addressing vulnerabilities in the system and making the voting process more difficult. Proctor also said that lawmakers needed to find new ways of inspiring election deniers to trust the system again. When asked why additional ballot box security was needed, he compared the issue to 9/11 and said there is nothing to prevent people from throwing chains around drop boxes and dragging them off with trucks. “Well, you know, on Sept. 11, 2001, I bet people really wished they had locked the cabins on airplanes on Sept. 10, but it was too late,” Proctor said. “If we’ve identified vulnerabilities, it’s ridiculous that we would not try to address those vulnerabilities until we’ve got evidence that they’ve been exploited in the election.”
- [Jones Day Won't Advise Trump in 2024 White House Campaign - Bloomberg Law News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/02/jones-day-wont-advise-trump-in-2024-white-house-campaign-bloomberg-law-news/) - Jones Day, the powerful law firm that’s been a close ally to Donald Trump, will not be advising the ex-president on his bid to return to the White House. The law firm is not working on Trump’s 2024 campaign and does not plan to provide legal services related to the run, according to a source familiar with the situation. Jones Day lawyers are winding down “legacy matters” for committees affiliated with Trump’s previous campaigns, the person said.Jones Day representatives declined to comment. The Trump campaign did not respond to comment requests.The move marks a striking departure for the century-old law firm whose prominence in Republican circles crescendoed as Trump became the face of the party. It comes as Washington lawyer Greg Shumaker last month took over as Jones Day’s chairman, replacing Stephen Brogan after two decades at the helm.Jones Day advised Trump on both of his previous presidential campaigns. The firm also sent a wave of partners to key government roles after Trump won the 2016 election, including White House Counsel Don McGahn and Solicitor General Noel Francisco.Jones Day was not among the lawyers and law firms listed as receiving payment from the Trump campaign in a federal disclosure filed Tuesday. Trump, who announced his 2024 run in mid-November, has so far relied on the law firm of former White House ethics lawyer Scott Gast, the year-end filing shows.Trump’s campaign in the final six weeks of 2022 paid just over $20,000 to Compass Legal Group, where Gast, a former White House deputy counsel, serves as chief counsel, according to the Federal Election Commission filing. The campaign also paid $30,000 to a firm run by Trump 2020 election adviser Boris Epshteyn for “communications and legal consulting,” the filing shows. The House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack at the US Capitol spotlighted Epshteyn in its final report as a member of a core group promoting baseless fraud claims after the election. Gast did not respond to requests for comment. Epshteyn declined to comment. Trump TiesJones Day earned nearly $14 million from the Trump campaign from 2015 to 2020, according to FEC records. McGahn, now back at Jones Day as a partner, served as a top lawyer for the 2016 campaign. He later became one of more than a dozen attorneys from the firm to join the high ranks of the Trump administration.Jones Day’s work on Trump-aligned court fights sparked discord within the firm following the 2020 presidential election. The firm said in a public statement at the time that it did not represent Trump, his campaign or any affiliates in litigation alleging voter fraud. Instead, it’s lawyers represented the Pennsylvania Republican Party in litigation challenging state rules on counting mail-in ballots. White House Counsel Don McGahn (R) attends a cabinet meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Cabinet Room at the White House October 17, 2018 in Washington, DC. Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Former Trump Attorney General William Barr turned to the firm in closed-door depositions with the House Jan. 6 panel. Francisco, who now leads the firm’s Washington office, was among those representing Barr in his dealings with the committee. In addition to McGahn and Francisco, Jones Day partners Eric Dreiband and John Gore worked in the Trump Justice Department before returning to the firm. Jones Day’s profits from campaign-related work is modest compared to its other practices. The firm, whose corporate clients include Chevron and Walmart, earned nearly $2.5 billion in gross revenue in 2021, according to the American Lawyer.Jones Day continued handling certain Trump-related matters before the FEC and federal courts in the years after the 2020 election. The Trump-aligned Make America Great Again political action committee paid the firm more than $180,000 in 2022 for “legal consulting.” That included a $25,000 payment to the firm in December, according to a Tuesday FEC filing, indicating work has not totally dried up. The firm’s lawyers have also continued to handle work for a range of Republican groups and candidates, including the Republican National Committee, which has paid Jones Day more than $1.2 million over the past two years, per FEC disclosures.
- [Jimmy Kimmel Puts Mike Lindell Inside a Claw Machine - The New York Times](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/02/jimmy-kimmel-puts-mike-lindell-inside-a-claw-machine-the-new-york-times/) - The MyPillow founder and election denier wanted to appear on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” again, but the host had one condition.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.The Man in the MachineMike Lindell, the MyPillow founder, who is known for his elaborate conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, returned to “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Tuesday, complying with Kimmel’s one condition: that he appear inside a claw machine at an arcade.In his monologue, Kimmel joked that the mustachioed Lindell was “here to finally answer the question: ‘What if Ted Lasso was on the F.B.I. watch list?’”“I do want to make something clear. I did not insist that Mike be in a claw machine because he’s not vaccinated; I insisted he be in a claw machine because it’s hilarious. This isn’t a political statement — this is just for fun.” — JIMMY KIMMELKimmel asked Lindell about his recent failed campaign for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee. But Lindell kept bringing the conversation back to his insistence that machines had rigged the 2020 election.“First question, Mike, is why do you think people don’t take you seriously?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Mike, I know that you’re distrustful of machines. Now that you’re inside one, do you feel differently?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine, they’re cool, right?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“You know, one of the differences between you and the claw machine is claw machines let go. And you will not let go of this voting thing, will you?” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (That’s a Wrap Edition)“President Biden informed Congress yesterday that he will officially end the coronavirus pandemic emergency declaration in May, which means that everyone can finally stop wearing their mask a year ago.” — SETH MEYERS“The timing makes sense. Might as well squeeze in one more spring break public health emergency for old time’s sake.” — JAMES CORDEN“Take that, Covid, we beat you. Shove that up your nose and rotate it five times!” — STEPHEN COLBERT“This has been a long time coming. I wish you could see the smiles on the faces in my audience. And I wish I could, too, because they’re still wearing masks.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I’m pretty sure the public ended the health emergency a while ago. Today, I saw a guy open a Starbucks bathroom with his tongue.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingThe “Daily Show” correspondent Jordan Klepper spoke with superfans of Donald Trump in South Carolina, some of whom insist he is still in office.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightThe newly minted Oscar nominee Jenny Slate will appear on Wednesday’s “Late Late Show with James Corden.”Also, Check This OutBonnie Raitt has won 10 Grammys since 1979. She’s up for four awards on Sunday, including song of the year.Peter Fisher for The New York TimesBonnie Raitt has been nominated for four Grammys this year, including her first for songwriting.
- [Election Deniers Can't Escape Voter Intimidation Suit - Law360](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/02/election-deniers-cant-escape-voter-intimidation-suit-law360/) - By Daniel Ducassi (February 1, 2023, 9:02 PM EST) -- A trio of voting rights organizations can advance their suit accusing 2020 election deniers of illegal voter intimidation, a Colorado federal judge has ruled, finding that the organizations can sue the individual election deniers under the Voting Rights Act but not the group they belong to. ...
- [Berks hires election leaders from within county government - Reading Eagle](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/berks-hires-election-leaders-from-within-county-government-reading-eagle/) - Berks County has tapped two of its own to take over leadership of the elections office, selecting a pair of experienced hands to run the department.The county announced Tuesday that Anne Norton will be promoted to fill the vacant elections director position and Stephanie Weaver will be the new assistant director. The appointments are pending a final vote of approval from the county commissioners, which is expected to happen at Thursday’s board meeting. Norton and Weaver have quite a bit of familiarity with running elections for the county. Norton, who currently serves as election operations and systems manager for the department, joined the office in 2020 after previously working with the Berks County Area Agency on Aging. Before joining the county, she worked as an accountant for several companies including Exide and worked as a substitute teacher. During her time in the elections office, she led the expanded poll worker training classes and heightened testing of the election system that occurred this past summer and fall, while helping to oversee overall department functions in the absence of a director. R.F. Shoup of Elections USA, Quakertown, right, examines a voting results report with Anne Norton, Berks County elections operations/systems manager, during voting machine logic and accuracy testing at the county’s south campus warehouse in Mohnton on Oct. 3. (BILL UHRICH – READING EAGLE) “Running an election is always a team effort, and I’m looking forward to building off of what our team accomplished last fall,” Norton said. “It’s certainly a challenging role, but I feel we have the right team in place to continue to be successful.” Commissioners Chairman Christian Leinbach said he has full faith in Norton. “Anne Norton has proven herself and earned the opportunity to lead our election department,” he said in a press release announcing her appointment. “Her work ethic, attention to detail and commitment to the integrity of our elections are clear.” The department has been without a director since July when Paige Riegner resigned from the post a little more than five months after she took over the position. Riegner’s resignation was the latest in a string of departures by individuals tasked with leading the county’s election office. She took over for Ronald Rutkowski who resigned in September after serving as election director for only about 10 months. Prior to that, longtime elections director Deborah Olivieri left the job a few weeks before the November 2020 election. Weaver became the county’s first public relations officer in June 2020. She previously worked as the communications manager for the Berks County Bar Association and was a reporter for the Reading Eagle for seven years. County officials said she will use her public relations background to help bolster voter education efforts, media relations and online presence. She will also oversee the voting by mail process. “Stephanie Weaver has been a key player in our elections department over the past two years, providing her with the experience and record necessary to lead in the assistant director role,” Leinbach said. “With the addition of a new administrative assistant position, the office of election services stands ready for the 2023 election cycle.” Commissioner Michael Rivera, who serves as chairman of the elections board, said the county is excited to have Norton and Weaver as part of the elections team in their new roles. “They were instrumental in ensuring a successful election in November 2022 in Berks, where we recognized their efforts and leadership,” he said in the press release. “I am confident they will be able to continue to ensure election integrity in Berks County.” Officials said they are looking to hire replacements for Norton and Weaver as they move to their new positions.
- [In Iowa, potential 2024 GOP Trump challengers quiet for now | Federal News Network](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/in-iowa-potential-2024-gop-trump-challengers-quiet-for-now-federal-news-network/) - DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — By this time four years ago, at least a dozen Democratic presidential hopefuls eager to make their case against Donald Trump had either visited Iowa or announced plans to soon visit the leadoff voting state ahead of the 2020 election. Iowa’s campaign landscape is markedly different this year, with a Republican field seemingly frozen by Trump’s early announcement of a 2024 campaign. So far, only former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson...READ MOREDES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — By this time four years ago, at least a dozen Democratic presidential hopefuls eager to make their case against Donald Trump had either visited Iowa or announced plans to soon visit the leadoff voting state ahead of the 2020 election. Iowa’s campaign landscape is markedly different this year, with a Republican field seemingly frozen by Trump’s early announcement of a 2024 campaign. So far, only former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson has visited this year, and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina is making plans to stop by in the next few weeks. Even Trump, the only declared candidate in the 2024 race right now, has been absent from Iowa, choosing instead to kickstart his campaign last weekend in New Hampshire and South Carolina, two other early voting states. With Iowa’s first-in-the-nation GOP caucuses just a year off, the field of would-be White House candidates has largely been content to steer clear of bone-chilling Iowa — and, perhaps more importantly, avoid being the first candidate to announce a bid against the former president. “No one wants to be on a limb by themselves against Trump,” said Alan Ostergren, a Republican lawyer in Des Moines who is involved in GOP politics. “They’ll all break at some point. But no one wants to go first.” For now, the quiet in Iowa gives other contenders weighing campaigns — among them former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, all of whom campaigned in Iowa last year for GOP candidates — time to talk to potential donors, promote their new books and summon the mettle to take on Trump. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a leading GOP presidential prospect coming off a blowout reelection victory, is not expected to make any 2024 moves until the spring, after the Florida Legislature adjourns and he completes a national book tour. As a warning to other potential competitors, Trump and his team have been lashing out at would-be rivals. The former president has dubbed DeSantis “Ron DeSanctimonious” and said that a DeSantis challenge for the 2024 GOP nomination would be “a great act of disloyalty.” Trump’s universal name recognition gives him space to stay away from Iowa for now, GOP operatives say, as his team charts a strategy that’s expected to be more organized than his freewheeling 2016 campaign, which resulted in a second-place finish in the state’s caucuses. Although he remains deeply popular within a core of the Republican Party, Trump is facing a number of investigations that could complicate his third bid for the White House. Among them are a criminal investigation over top-secret documents found at his Florida estate, a probe in Washington into his efforts to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election, an investigation in Georgia into his efforts to remain in the presidency after losing reelection, and more probes in New York. “He’s not looked at as someone who should automatically get the nomination. He’s no longer in office, and two years have gone by,” said Steve Scheffler, Iowa’s Republican National committeeman, who has pledged to remain publicly neutral. “Even though the base loves him and his policies, he may have to do more of what others have to do. I definitely think he’s more vulnerable.” So far, Trump is the lone 2024 Republican with a paid presence in Iowa. Alex Latcham, the former regional political director for the Iowa Republican Party, now works for Trump’s national team but still lives in Iowa. He is helping recruit an Iowa campaign director for Trump. Unlike four years ago, around the time then-California Sen. Kamala Harris, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and then-South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, among others, were visiting Iowa, Democrats this year are standing to the side with the expectation that President Joe Biden will seek a second term. In any case, the Democratic National Committee is expected to strip Iowa of its leadoff voting status for the 2024 presidential nominating calendar, though Republicans plan to keep Iowa as its first-voting state. Despite the relative quiet in Iowa so far this year, potential Republican candidates are still finding ways to make inroads with GOP activists in the state without setting foot there. At the GOP legislative breakfast on Jan. 9, legislators and party officials flipped through a printed program that included full-page ads from Trump, Pompeo and Scott. That’s in addition to the tens of thousands of dollars that they and others, including Haley and Pence, contributed to Iowa Republican candidates from their political fundraising organizations for their 2022 midterm election campaigns. Without setting foot in Iowa, DeSantis, too, worked to sow goodwill last year with Republican Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds by inviting her to meet in Florida. Several would-be presidential candidates are expected to attend an annual spring fundraiser for the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, a Christian conservative group, on April 22. Hutchinson, the only 2024 GOP candidate to visit Iowa this year, made a low-profile visit to Iowa early this month, holding private meetings and speaking to a GOP state legislative breakfast. Scott is scheduled to speak at the Polk County GOP annual fundraising dinner on Feb. 22. Gloria Mazza, chair of the Polk County Republican Party, said it’s only a matter of time before the behind-the-scenes maneuvering by potential GOP Trump rivals spills out into the open. “It’s going to pop, but it’s hard to tell when. It’s like a game of chess,” Mazza said. “Who is going to make the first move on him?” Copyright © 2023 . All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.
- [Your Wednesday Evening Briefing](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/01/your-wednesday-evening-briefing/) - Here’s what you need to know at the end of the day.(Want to get this newsletter in your inbox? Here’s the sign-up.)Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Wednesday.Recent signs of slowing inflation were “early stage,” Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, said. Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times1. The Fed slowed its rate increase but said that ongoing jumps were warranted.Policymakers raised rates by a quarter of a point today, the smallest increase since March 2022 when the central bank began its aggressive campaign to tame rising prices. But officials said it was far too early to declare victory in their campaign against inflation.“We’re talking about a couple more rate hikes,” Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, said. He added, “I just don’t see us cutting rates this year.”On Wall Street, analysts are optimistic that the Fed’s rate increases will end sooner rather than later. For the rest of us, the continued increases have two immediate effects: Savers earn higher yields and borrowers pay more.Gov. Ron DeSantis said earlier this week that he would eliminate what he called “ideological conformity” in Florida’s higher education system.Mike Lang/USA TODAY NETWORK2. Under pressure, the College Board stripped down its A.P. African American Studies course.After criticism from Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the College Board removed from the course much of the subject matter that had angered the governor and conservatives.The College Board purged the names of several Black writers and scholars associated with critical race theory, the queer experience and Black feminism. It also made the study of contemporary topics, like Black Lives Matter, optional. And it added something new: “Black conservatism” is now available as an idea for a research project.The changes came after DeSantis, a Republican who is expected to run for president, announced he would ban the curriculum in his state, citing the draft version that leaked online. The College Board said that the changes were all made for pedagogical reasons, not to bow to political pressure.Remnants of a family clinic, after it was hit by rockets in Eastern Ukraine.Lynsey Addario for The New York Times3. Russia may be mounting a new onslaught on Ukraine.Russia has stepped up artillery attacks to a rate not seen since September and dispatched tens of thousands of troops to Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine described these as the opening moves of a new Russian offensive to capture territory in the country’s east. “I think it has started,” Zelensky said.Ukrainian intelligence estimates that Russia now has more than 320,000 soldiers in the country — roughly twice the size of Moscow’s initial invasion force. Russia’s plans are a matter of speculation, but a Ukrainian official said he expected the fighting to intensify in February and March.In other news of the war, Ukrainian authorities carried out more searches related to corruption allegations.The casket of Tyre Nichols being lifted into a hearse in Memphis on Wednesday.Desiree Rios/The New York Times4. Tyre Nichols is laid to rest.The circumstances of Nichols’s death — three days after he was pummeled and pepper-sprayed by Memphis police officers — spurred sorrow and anger across the country, which escalated after video footage of the violence was released. His service today at the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis brought an outpouring of grief and calls for justice.Vice President Kamala Harris spoke and called on Congress to pass legislation to curb police violence. The eulogy was delivered by the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has spoken at the funerals of other Black victims of police violence, and it acknowledged relatives of George Floyd, Eric Garner and Breonna Taylor who were in the audience. “They know what it is like to sit at a funeral like this,” he said.The F.B.I. appeared to be blinded by a lack of imagination.Alex Edelman/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images5. An F.B.I. team tried to game out the worst possible outcomes of a disputed 2020 election. They never envisioned what transpired on Jan. 6, 2021.The bureau was blinded by a narrow focus on “lone wolf” offenders and harbored a misguided belief that the threat from the far left was as great as that from the far right. It was unprepared to prevent the violent mob that mobilized in support of Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the election, new congressional documents show.Agents also ignored warning signs flashing on social media and relied on confidential sources who failed to sound the alarm. The documents are just the latest example of how the F.B.I. was unable to predict the chaos that erupted on Jan. 6.Separately, the F.B.I. searched Biden’s family vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., and found no classified documents, according to the president’s personal lawyer.The Serum Institute of India’s lab in Pune, India, where coronavirus vaccines are manufactured.Atul Loke for The New York Times6. Vaccine makers kept $1.4 billion in prepayments for canceled Covid shots meant for the world’s poor.As global demand for Covid vaccines dries up, the program responsible for vaccinating the world’s poor has been urgently negotiating to try to get out of its deals with pharmaceutical companies for shots it no longer needs.But drug companies have so far declined to refund $1.4 billion in advance payments for the now-canceled doses, according to confidential documents obtained by The Times. Under the contracts, manufacturers are not required to refund the prepayments, though some have still reached settlements to return partial amounts. The money the vaccine manufacturers have kept, one expert said, could fund other large global health programs.Tom Brady won his first six Super Bowls with the New England Patriots.Doug Mills/The New York Times7. Tom Brady said he was retiring — for real this time.Brady, the 45-year-old quarterback widely regarded as the greatest player in N.F.L. history, won seven Super Bowls over 23 seasons and broke virtually every career passing record.In a video he posted to social media this morning, Brady told his fans, “I’m retiring. For good.” It was an apparent nod to a retirement announcement he made last year, which he reversed less than six weeks later. Brady, who is set to join Fox Sports as an analyst, was the oldest active player in the N.F.L. this season, but still led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to an NFC South title.Our sports columnist thinks that Brady’s departure will be a good thing for football.Martín Gonzalez Gómez/The New York Times8. Dissecting Elon Musk’s tweets.In order to assess how Twitter may evolve under Musk’s watch, The Times reviewed nearly 20,000 of his public tweets and the relatively small number of users that he follows.Of the 178 accounts that Musk follows, most are related to his businesses. The list is also heavily male: Only two dozen accounts that are not institutional or organizational belong to women. He has liberally posted memes, rants and combative responses, and about topics that are popular among political fringes. And for someone who has said he is fighting for free speech, Musk’s feed is often an echo chamber.ABC, via Everett Collection9. After 50 years, “Schoolhouse Rock” still has Gen Xers singing about conjunctions.The cartoon’s catchy lyrics and colorful animations helped a generation of children in the 1970s learn about topics like multiplication, grammar and history. Tonight, ABC will tap into that nostalgic spirit with a prime time “50th-Anniversary Singalong,” featuring the Black Eyed Peas, the Muppets, Shaquille O’Neal and others.Our television critic said that rewatching “Schoolhouse Rock” brought with it a note of wistfulness. “It’s a reminder of a time when network TV gave us a common culture, language and lyrics, before we were sliced into subcultures and demographics,” he wrote.Dallas Zoo10. And finally, missing monkeys.Two emperor tamarin monkeys were taken from the Dallas Zoo this week and found yesterday inside a closet at a home about 15 miles south of the zoo. The police said that they located the monkeys after receiving a tip, but that “the home was empty” when they arrived and so they made no arrests in the case.The monkeys — small animals with mustachelike whiskers native to parts of the Amazon — were only the latest bizarre incident involving breached enclosures at the zoo. Others involved a missing clouded leopard that was recovered after a suspicious tear was discovered in the animal’s enclosure, and an endangered vulture that died under unusual circumstances.The police said that an investigation into the monkeys was ongoing.Have a mysterious night.James Gregg compiled photos for this briefing. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern.Want to catch up on past briefings? You can browse them here.What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes.com.Here are today’s Mini Crossword, Spelling Bee and Wordle. If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.
- [Memphis to Gather in Grief at Tyre Nichols’s Funeral](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/01/memphis-to-gather-in-grief-at-tyre-nicholss-funeral/) - His death after he was beaten by the police inspired anger and sorrow across the country. His family remembers him as a “beautiful soul.”MEMPHIS — For days, the circumstances in which Tyre Nichols died — after he was pummeled and kicked and pepper-sprayed by Memphis police officers — have spurred sorrow and anger across the country.But on Wednesday, as Mr. Nichols’s family and the broader community gather for his funeral, the attention will shift to his life, to celebrating who he was, and to embracing his mother’s belief that all that pain will be channeled into something productive.His mother, RowVaughn Wells, has wondered whether her son was on a divine mission — “sent here on assignment from God” — to be a force to change policing in Memphis and elsewhere.“His assignment was over, and he was sent back home,” Ms. Wells told reporters the day after five officers were charged with second-degree murder and other felonies in the death of her 29-year-old son. “So when this is all over, it’s going to be some good and some positive because my son was a good and positive person.”It could be a moment for healing for Memphis, said the Rev. Dr. J. Lawrence Turner, the pastor of Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church, where the funeral is scheduled to be held at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday.More on the Death of Tyre NicholsPolice Report: An official account written up hours after the beating of Tyre Nichols is the latest instance in which video evidence offered a starkly different account of police violence than what officers had reported.The Officers: Five Memphis police officers were fired and charged with murder in connection with Mr. Nichols’s death. The Police Department later confirmed that two additional officers had been taken off duty.Scorpion Unit: Leaders in Memphis had praised this specialized police group as a key strategy for fighting crime. Now, as the unit is disbanded, they are trying to assess whether it was flawed from the start.Medical Response: The video footage has also turned public attention to the emergency medical workers at the scene, raising questions of whether they should or could have done more to help Mr. Nichols.“It is good for us to be together in the same space,” Pastor Turner said, “and, yes, cry with each other and also find hope that will drive us to hopefully dismantle this culture that normalizes this kind of violence.”In a sign of how Mr. Nichols’s death has reverberated far beyond Memphis, the Rev. Al Sharpton is scheduled to deliver a eulogy, and Vice President Kamala Harris will be in attendance. Philonise Floyd, the brother of George Floyd, and Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, are also expected to attend — an indication that Mr. Nichols has been added to a roster of Black men and women who inspired activism after they were killed by the police.“You thought no one would care,” Mr. Sharpton said at a news conference on Tuesday night, addressing Mr. Nichols’s family. “Well, tomorrow, the vice president of the United States is coming to his funeral. And people are coming from all over the world. And we’re coming because we’re all Tyre now.”He continued: “We’re all going to stand up with this family. They will never ever recover from the loss.”Mr. Sharpton has delivered remarks at the funerals of Mr. Floyd, whose 2020 death after an officer in Minneapolis kept his knee on the prone man’s neck for more than eight minutes sparked national protests; Daunte Wright, who was shot by a police officer who mistook her gun for her Taser during a traffic stop outside Minneapolis in 2021; Alton Sterling, who was shot by the police in Baton Rouge, La., in 2016; and others dating back decades, including the 1997 death of William J. Whitfield, an unarmed man fatally shot on Christmas Day in Brooklyn.Mr. Nichols died on Jan. 10, three days after a traffic stop that turned into a brutal beating at the hands of Memphis police officers who were part of a specialized unit formed to help halt a surge of violence in the city.In response to his death, police officials announced on Saturday that the unit had been disbanded. Jim Strickland, the mayor of Memphis, has also called for an extensive review of the Police Department. Two other police officers who were on the scene have been suspended pending the results of an investigation into their actions, as have two deputies from the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department. Two medics and a lieutenant from the Memphis Fire Department who responded to the scene have also been fired, officials said.Video from the officers’ body cameras and a stationary surveillance camera that was released last week showed the assault and Mr. Nichols begging for his life. The encounter began as officers approached his vehicle — they claimed he had been driving erratically, although the city’s police chief has said no evidence of that has emerged — with guns drawn and pulled him from his car. The officers shouted often contradictory orders before using pepper spray on Mr. Nichols, who ran off.But officers soon caught up with Mr. Nichols and severely beat him, with one officer delivering a series of blows to Mr. Nichols’s head while two other officers held his hands behind his back.Mr. Nichols called out for his mother during the assault, which took place not far from her home.Before the stop, his mother said, he had been on his way home from Shelby Farms, a sprawling public park just outside Memphis. He went there often to photograph the sunset. His photographs will be shown during the funeral.“We get so zeroed in on how he died, we don’t get a chance to recognize that he lived before that moment,” Pastor Turner said.The funeral, he said, will be an opportunity to focus on that instead.Mr. Nichols had moved to Memphis in 2020 to be closer to his mother, coming from California. He had a 4-year-old son and was working with his stepfather on the second shift at a FedEx facility in Memphis. He kept up a passion for skateboarding he’d had since he was 6, even if his stepfather thought he should have outgrown it.“I had just told him recently, I said, ‘Son, you’ve got to put that skateboard down,’” Rodney Wells, his stepfather, said recently. “You’re too old! You’ve got a full-time job now. You’ve got to come to work now every day.”It didn’t stop him.He had always been a free spirit. When he was a child, his mother offered to buy him Jordans, sneakers many young people coveted. He said no. His mother also took particular pride in his decision to tattoo her name on his arm. “Most kids don’t put their mom’s name,” Ms. Wells recalled. “My son was a beautiful soul.”The plan on Wednesday is to share some of those memories.There will also be music: African drums will be played, and with this being Memphis, so will soul. A choir will sing “Fight On,” and Pastor Turner recited lyrics that had been sung by Sam Cooke and will be performed again on Wednesday:It’s been a longa long time coming, but I knowA change gon’ come.Randy Pennell
- [Policing the Wrong Way](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/01/policing-the-wrong-way/) - Memphis’s Scorpion is the latest special police unit to come under scrutiny.The Memphis police officers charged in the death of Tyre Nichols were part of an elite unit known as Scorpion that was set up to crack down on high-crime neighborhoods. The officers’ actions as they stopped and beat Nichols show how the squad’s work could, and did, go very wrong.Stories of botched work by special law enforcement units are notably common in the U.S. In Baltimore, members of a gun-tracing task force robbed residents of cash, drugs and jewelry. By the time federal officials investigated the New Orleans Police Department in 2010, residents perceived its special units as corrupt and brutal. In Los Angeles, a “special investigation section” in the 1990s was involved in multiple deadly shootouts. There are many more examples.Police departments establish these squads with a good intention: addressing a genuine crime problem. But they fall short in the implementation — tainted by poor leadership, the wrong benchmarks or a culture of impunity.Today’s newsletter will explain how Scorpion, which officials in Memphis disbanded last week, fit into a broader pattern in American law enforcement of well-intentioned efforts to fight crime instead leading to abuses.A sound ideaThe Memphis Police Department founded the Scorpion unit in late 2021 to do what officials call “hot-spot” policing.For regular readers of this newsletter, the term may sound familiar. The idea is to focus police resources on high-crime neighborhoods or city blocks or even people (such as repeat offenders). They can also zero in on specific crimes, like shootings or drug trafficking.The term is broad, and over time just about every big-city police department in the U.S. has said it is focusing on hot spots in some way. When done correctly, the strategy reduces crime without simply displacing it to other areas, studies have found.But those three words are the catch: when done correctly. “When people use the term ‘hot-spot policing,’ that could mean lots of different things,” said Anna Harvey, a public safety researcher at New York University.Many departments ignore important tenets of the concept, sometimes resulting in abuses. For example, the Louisville, Ky., police unit that investigated Breonna Taylor’s ex-boyfriend was also following a hot-spot model. (Officers shot Taylor to death in her home in 2020.)In some hot-spot efforts, police officers merely try to make their presence known — to produce a kind of scarecrow effect, as people are less likely to commit crimes in front of an officer. In others, officers aggressively enforce the law with as many stops and arrests as possible. Exemplary hot-spot policing demands a balancing act between maximizing the deterrence of officers’ presence and minimizing the social costs of hassling, stopping and arresting more people.“You can do hot-spot policing in a way that’s super aggressive, or you can do it in a way that’s more respectful,” said Neil Gross, a sociologist at Colby College who studies the police.Flawed implementationSo what went wrong in Memphis? Officials appeared to emphasize the wrong things, experts said.Police officials deployed Scorpion to the city’s most volatile neighborhoods — “hot spots” — to crack down on all sorts of crimes, like reckless driving or shootings, with punitive tactics even against minor offenses.City officials praised Scorpion for high arrest numbers, effectively encouraging aggressive tactics. Chief Cerelyn Davis lauded the approach, advocating “being tough on tough people.” (Officials could have emphasized other goals, like reductions in crime rates in specific neighborhoods, to help focus officers on results instead of antagonistic methods, experts said.)“It’s the command staff implementing a version of hot-spot policing that is not consistent with what the research evidence says is best,” Harvey said.The unit also seemed captured by a culture of impunity. Consider that at least some of the officers who beat Nichols were wearing cameras that were recording their actions. The fact that they punched and kicked Nichols anyway suggests that they thought they were above the law and could get away with it, said Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.It is a common phenomenon among American police departments: Evidence-based policies can fall apart in their implementation. Researchers can call for law enforcement strategies that focus on specific places and people and try to minimize the social costs. But if those ideas are filtered through a culture or leadership style that prizes toughness and aggressive action, they can lead to abuse.More Tyre Nichols newsFour officers charged in Nichols’s death had been disciplined before, including two who hadn’t reported using force during arrests, records show.Nichols’s family and the broader community will mourn him at his funeral today.THE LATEST NEWSPoliticsFlorida’s governor, Ron DeSantis.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesGov. Ron DeSantis proposed to overhaul Florida’s higher education system. His plans would eliminate diversity programs and reduce tenure protections.Republicans won’t say which spending cuts they want in the debt ceiling showdown. President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy are meeting about it today.Bias and human error played a role in the F.B.I.’s failure to predict — or prevent — the Capitol riot, new documents suggest.Representative George Santos, whose résumé was full of fabrications, said he would temporarily recuse himself from his congressional committees.InternationalReviewing drone videos near Bakhmut, Ukraine.Nicole Tung for The New York TimesRussia is sending large numbers of soldiers into Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine that has become an epicenter of fighting.This week’s attack on a mosque in Pakistan that killed more than 100 people has raised fears of a new wave of militancy.Italy’s older population is growing, and its birthrate is plummeting, making it the West’s fastest-shrinking nation.The Justice Department charged four men in the U.S. with involvement in the 2021 assassination of Haiti’s president.Other Big StoriesChief Justice John Roberts’s wife has made millions recruiting lawyers, some with business before the court. Her ties have raised ethics questions.The case against a former N.Y.P.D. detective accused of faking evidence was dismissed after prosecutors withheld evidence.Many Black families say they are leaving New York because raising children there has become too expensive.Black taxpayers are at least three times as likely to be audited by the I.R.S., a study found.The Federal Reserve is having its first meeting of 2023 today and is expected to raise interest rates by a quarter point.Two monkeys that went missing from the Dallas Zoo were found inside a closet at an empty home nearby.OpinionsBanning TikTok would enrage its fans and invite retaliation from China. Pass a law to protect Americans’ online data instead, says Glenn Gerstell.The failures of America’s organ recovery system are killing patients, Kendall Ciesemier says.MORNING READSThe Navy’s Marine Mammal Program in San Diego.Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York TimesMine hunters: These Navy dolphins may be geriatric, but they still have a lot to teach us.Memes, rants, private parts: Dissecting Elon Musk’s tweets.The last Boeing 747: The “Queen of the Skies” has left the factory.Bog bodies: Ancient remains reveal an often-violent burial ritual.Advice from Wirecutter: Weatherize your home.Lives Lived: Harold Brown was one of the last surviving Black pilots of the Tuskegee Airmen and faced a lynch mob of villagers in Austria after his plane was downed in 1945. He died at 98. SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETICHires: Sean Payton, arguably the best coaching candidate on the market, is the new head coach in Denver. The Texans hired another hot name: the 49ers defensive coordinator DeMeco Ryans.A unique call: North Carolina’s new women’s field hockey coach is Erin Matson, a 22-year-old former star player.ARTS AND IDEAS Salman Rushdie in 2015.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA resilient author’s returnSalman Rushdie, the author and free speech icon, was stabbed onstage last summer after years of living under the threat of a fatwa. Though the attack left him blind in one eye, he pushed ahead with releasing a new novel. “Victory City,” out next week, is the story of a long-lost empire, told as a translation of a fictitious Sanskrit epic.Fellow writers are seizing the moment to turn attention back to Rushdie’s fiction. “In the face of danger, even in the face of death, he manages to say that storytelling is one currency we all have,” the novelist Colum McCann said.The Times review: “Blindness is foretold in the novel’s very first sentence,” Michael Gorra writes. “In its haunting, uncanny, predictive power ‘Victory City’ shows once again why his work will always matter.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookArmando Rafael for The New York TimesRotisserie chicken makes for a nourishing pasta sauce.What to ReadThe novel “Stolen,” by Ann-Helén Laestadius, reflects the culture of an Indigenous people living near the Arctic Circle to a broad audience.What to Watch“Pamela, a Love Story” powerfully rewinds Pamela Anderson’s life and fame.Late NightMike Lindell, the MyPillow founder, appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Now Time to PlayThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was pinewood. Here is today’s puzzle.Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: In good shape (five letters).And here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — GermanP.S. Sia Michel, an innovative journalist who has edited Pulitzer Prize-winning criticism, is The Times’s new Culture editor. Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about the U.S. economy.Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
- [Kamala Harris to attend Tyre Nichols' funeral as prosecutors consider further charges](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/01/kamala-harris-to-attend-tyre-nichols-funeral-as-prosecutors-consider-further-charges/) - US vice-president Kamala Harris will attend Wednesday’s funeral of Tyre Nichols, the black man who died three days after Memphis police officers savagely beat him following a traffic stop earlier this month, the White House said on Tuesday.Nichols will be eulogised by the Reverend Al Sharpton at a service at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis on Wednesday morning. Family members of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, who were killed by police in Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis in 2020, will also attend.Meanwhile, Shelby County district attorney Steve Mulroy said on Tuesday that prosecutors could bring more criminal charges against police officers and others in connection with Nichols’ death, after mounting criticism over how Mr Mulroy’s office and the Memphis Police Department have handled the case.Five officers, all black, were charged last week with second-degree murder and dismissed from the force. The department confirmed on Monday that a sixth officer, Preston Hemphill, had been suspended from duty soon after the January 7th attack but has not been criminally charged.After video footage of the deadly encounter with police was made public on Friday, calls have grown louder for local police officials and prosecutors to be more transparent about the circumstances of the incident, given that the initial police reports do not match what was seen on the videos.The family’s attorney Ben Crump on Tuesday said that police had not been candid with Nichols’ mother about the incident, which he referred to as a “police lynching”.“She thought it was a conspiracy to cover it up from the beginning,” Mr Crump said on CNN.In a statement on Twitter, district attorney Mr Mulroy said other officers, fire department personnel and others who prepared documentation of the incident may also face criminal charges as more information becomes available.“We are looking at all individuals involved in the events leading up to, during, and after the beating of Tyre Nichols,” his office said, adding that the investigation is incomplete.[ Tyre Nichols killing: Anger and outrage leads to calls for policing reform in US ]In an apparent reference to Hemphill, the office said an officer present during the initial encounter with Nichols may also face charges. Hemphill, who is white, wore the body camera that captured the first of four videos released by authorities of the traffic stop and violent confrontation that followed, according to his attorney, Lee Gerald.In the video, it is Hemphill who appears to fire a stun gun at Nichols after Nichols is dragged from his car, forced to the ground and doused with pepper spray before he breaks free and runs away. The five officers who were later dismissed chased him.A seventh officer who was not immediately identified was also relieved of duty without pay, the department said on Monday, and that officer has not been charged. His role in the incident has not been disclosed.Three members of the Memphis Fire Department who responded to the altercation were dismissed on Monday after investigators found Nichols was left handcuffed on the ground without medical attention for nearly 15 minutes after the beating.Police chief Cerelyn Davis has said an unspecified number of officers besides the five initially charged remain under investigation for policy infractions stemming from Nichols’ arrest. – Reuters
- [Kamala Harris to attend Tyre Nichols' funeral in Memphis - The Guardian](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/01/kamala-harris-to-attend-tyre-nichols-funeral-in-memphis-the-guardian/) - Kamala Harris to attend Tyre Nichols’ funeral in MemphisUS vice-president invited to funeral by family of black man who died after being beaten by police officers Kamala Harris, the US vice-president, will attend the funeral of Tyre Nichols, the black man who died three days after Memphis police officers savagely beat him following a traffic stop earlier this month, the White House has said.Nichols will be eulogised by the Rev Al Sharpton at a service at Mississippi Boulevard christian church in Memphis on Wednesday morning. Family members of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, who were killed in 2020 by police in Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis, will also attend.Meanwhile, the Shelby County district attorney, Steve Mulroy, said on Tuesday that prosecutors could bring further criminal charges against police officers and others in connection with Nichols’ fatal beating, after mounting criticism over how Mulroy’s office and the Memphis police department have handled the case.Tyre Nichols death: white officer’s belated suspension raises questionsRead moreFive officers, all black, were charged last week with second-degree murder and dismissed from the force. The department confirmed on Monday that a sixth officer, Preston Hemphill, who is white, had been suspended from duty soon after the attack on 7 January but has not been criminally charged.After video footage of the deadly encounter with police was made public on Friday, calls have grown for local police officials and prosecutors to be more transparent about the circumstances of the incident, given that the initial police reports did not match what was seen on the videos.The family’s attorney, Ben Crump, said on Tuesday that police had not been candid with Nichols’ mother about the incident, which he referred to as a “police lynching”.“She thought it was a conspiracy to cover it up from the beginning,” Crump said on CNN.The family gathered on Tuesday evening with Sharpton at the Mason Temple Church of God in Christ in Memphis – where the Rev Martin Luther King Jr delivered his final speech the night before he was assassinated in 1968 – to speak about Nichols and the latest developments in the case.Sharpton said he wanted the family to stand where King stood before they lay Nichols to rest. “They’re standing on that ground because we will continue in Tyre’s name to head up to Martin’s mountaintop,” he said. “That’s why we wanted to start this right on this sacred ground. This is holy ground. And this family now is ours and they’re in the hands of history.”The White House said Harris was invited by Nichols’ mother and stepfather, RowVaughn Wells and Rodney Wells. The vice-president spoke by phone with the Wells family on Tuesday, expressing her condolences and offering support. The president, Joe Biden, spoke by phone to Nichols’ family last week.Harris will be joined by the former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, a senior adviser to the president for public engagement, and Mitch Landrieu, a White House senior adviser and infrastructure implementation coordinator, who is a former mayor of New Orleans, said Harris’s press secretary, Kirsten Allen.After Sharpton delivers the eulogy on Wednesday, Crump will issue a call to action.Nichols’ death was the latest incident in which early accounts by police about their use of force were later shown to have minimised or omitted violent and sometimes deadly encounters.Memphis police department officers used a stun gun, a baton and their fists as they pummelled Nichols during the night-time arrest. Video footage shows Nichols running away from officers toward his house after he was pulled over on suspicion of reckless driving.Nichols’ older brother, Jamal Dupree, said on Tuesday he regretted he was not there to save his brother from the attack he suffered at the fists and feet of the five officers, who have been charged with second-degree murder and other offences.“I’ve been fighting my whole life and the one fight I needed to be here for, I wasn’t here,” said Dupree, adding that violence was against his brother’s nature.“My brother was the most peaceful person I’ve ever met in life,” he said. “If my brother was here today and he had to say something, he’d tell us to do this peacefully.”Nichols’ mother and stepfather have accepted an invitation to attend Biden’s state of the union address next week at the Capitol. They will attend with Rep Steven Horsford, a Nevada Democrat and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, according to Vincent Evans, a spokesperson for the caucus.TopicsTyre NicholsMemphisUS policingRaceKamala HarrisnewsReuse this content
- [Louisville football adds grad transfer Allan Houston III - 247 Sports](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/01/louisville-football-adds-grad-transfer-allan-houston-iii-247-sports/) - Louisville is adding Brown University wide receiver Allan Houston III to its roster. Yes, the 6-foot, 190-pound grad transfer is the son of Louisville native and former NBA star Allan Houston.Houston joins Louisville as an invited walk-on. He has two seasons of eligibility remaining.Houston spent four seasons at Brown, totaling 39 receptions for 259 yards and a touchdown. An injury sidelined him for much of his freshman, while his second year was cancelled when the Ivy League chose to not play the 2020 season due to COVID-19 concerns. This season, he finished with 18 catches for 120 yards and a score.Per his profile on the Brown football roster, Houston, a native of Greenwich, Conn., attended high school at Rye Country Day where he garnered first Team All-State honors and was an All-League selection in football and basketball. Also a standout on the track, Houston was a 2019 FAA and NYSAIS Boys track & field champion.His grandfather, Wade Houston, was a long-time assistant for Hall of Fame coach Denny Crum at Louisville from 1976-1989.His father was a first-round pick by the Detroit Pistons, where he spent three seasons before signing a free agent deal with the New York Knicks. He played nine seasons with the Knicks. He was also a gold medal winner with USA basketball in the 2000 Summer Olympics.[embedded content]********247Sports text alerts are now available for you to get in on. You can sign up to receive text alerts for breaking news and exclusive news from Cardinal Authority.Please subscribe here: https://247sports.com/college/louisville/my/settings/alertsText alerts will be used for breaking and exclusive content only.Click the following link to learn how to sign up: LINKIf something happens regarding U of L athletics that is a major news development, we will be on top of it and you will be the first to get that news.
- [Tyre Nichols' life to be celebrated in Memphis funeral service](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/01/tyre-nichols-life-to-be-celebrated-in-memphis-funeral-service/) - CNN — Tyre Nichols, whose death at the hands of police in Memphis led to second-degree murder charges against five officers, will be remembered at a funeral service on Wednesday for the life he lived. Nichols, 29, who was Black, was subdued yet continuously beaten after a traffic stop by Memphis police on January 7. He died three days later. Mourners at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis are expected to celebrate Nichols’ life rather than focus on the heart-wrenching footage of the beating that left him in a hospital bed for days with his face badly swollen and bruised before his death, sparking protests across the country. Representing other Black people killed by police, Tamika Palmer – whose daughter Breonna Taylor was fatally shot in her Louisville, Kentucky, home by police during a botched raid in March 2020 – is expected to attend the service. Also expected is Philonise Floyd, the younger brother of George Floyd, whose name reverberated across the nation following his May 2020 death after an ex-cop Minneapolis cop knelt on his neck and back for more than 9 minutes. Vice President Kamala Harris also will attend the funeral, according to a White House official, joining other senior level Biden administration officials including White House Director for the Office of Public Engagement Keisha Lance Bottoms and Senior Advisor to the President Mitch Landrieu. The service begins 10:30 a.m. local time. The Rev. Al Sharpton, in a painfully familiar role, will deliver a eulogy that will pay tribute to Nichols’ life and serve as a clarion call for justice. On Tuesday, Sharpton and Nichols’ family gathered at the Mason Temple Church of God In Christ headquarters in Memphis – where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famed “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech the night before he was killed. “We will continue in Tyre’s name to head up to Martin’s mountaintop,” Sharpton said from the “sacred ground” MLK delivered his speech on 55 years ago. Sharpton said Nichols’ fatal police beating “is a disgrace to this country.” “People from around the world watched the videotape of a man – unarmed, unprovoked – being beat to death by officers of the law,” Sharpton said. “You thought that no one would respond. You thought no one would care. Well, tomorrow the Vice President of the United States is coming to his funeral,” Sharpton said. Sharpton reflected on the family’s loss as their son’s name joins a list of other Black men who died after encounters with police. “They will never ever recover from the loss. Every holiday, there’ll be a missing chair at their table. Every day this mother and father and brothers and sisters will have to remember he’s gone,” Sharpton said. “But we will never leave them.” Nichols’ brother, Jamal Dupree, said his brother would have wanted peace as the fight for justice continues. “My brother was the most peaceful person you ever met. He’s never lifted a finger to nobody. Never raised his voice to nobody,” Dupree said. “If my brother was here today and he had to say something, he would tell us to do this peacefully.” Nichols has been described as a devoted son who had tattooed his mother’s name on his arm, a loving father to a 4-year-old boy, and a free spirit with a passion for skateboarding and capturing sunsets on his camera. Public outrage over the disturbing arrest video led to firings or disciplinary action against other public servants who were at the scene, including the firings of three Memphis Fire Department personnel. Two sheriff’s deputies have been put on leave. Additionally, two more police officers have been placed on leave. Nichols’ funeral service will take place less than a week after Friday evening’s public release of footage of the attack on Nichols shook a nation long accustomed to videos of police brutality, especially against people of color. The five officers charged with Nichols’ death are Black. The brutal attack sparked largely peaceful protests from New York to Los Angeles as well as renewed calls for police reform and scrutiny of specialized police units that target guns in high crime areas. Nichols was the baby of his family, the youngest of four children, according to his mother, RowVaughn Wells, who has said he usually spent Sundays doing laundry and preparing for the week. He moved to Memphis from California right before the Covid-19 pandemic and remained there after the mandatory lock downs prompted by the health crisis, his mother has said. Nichols was a regular at a Germantown, Tennessee, Starbucks where he befriended a group of people who regularly set aside their cellphone at a table and talked mostly about sports, particularly his beloved San Franscisco 49ers, according to friend Nate Spates Jr. His visits to Starbucks were typically followed by a nap before heading to a his job at FedEx. His mother recalled that he would would come home for dinner during his break. His favorite dish: her homemade sesame chicken. Nichols was also a regular among the skateboarders at Shelby Farms Park, where he photographed memorable sunsets, according to his mother. In fact, taking pictures served as a form of self-expression that writing could never capture for Nichols, who had written on his photography website that it helped him look “at the world in a more creative way.” He preferred capturing landscapes. “I hope to one day let people see what i see and to hopefully admire my work based on the quality and ideals of my work,” he wrote. Before moving to Memphis, Nichols lived in Sacramento, California, where a friend recalled “skating gave him wings.” CNN’s Christina Zdanowicz, Jaide Timm-Garcia and Nouran Salahieh contributed to this report.
- [VP Harris to attend Nichols funeral as prosecutors weigh more charges - Union Leader](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/vp-harris-to-attend-nichols-funeral-as-prosecutors-weigh-more-charges-union-leader/) - MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Vice President Kamala Harris will attend Wednesday’s funeral of Tyre Nichols, the Black man who died three days after Memphis police officers beat him following a traffic stop earlier this month, the White House said on Tuesday.Nichols will be eulogized by the Rev. Al Sharpton at a service at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis on Wednesday morning. Family members of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, who were killed by police in Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2020, will also attend.
- [Former Louisville officer gets probation for using excessive force on night David McAtee was killed](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/01/former-louisville-officer-gets-probation-for-using-excessive-force-on-night-david-mcatee-was-killed/) - LOUISVILLE, KY., (WDRB) -- A federal judge "reluctantly" agreed Monday on a sentence of no prison time for a former Louisville Metro Police officer convicted of using excessive force during the Breonna Taylor protests.But U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Beaton issued a stiffer sentence than what prosecutors had recommended for Katie Crews, calling her actions "extremely dangerous." Crews, who pleaded guilty to using excessive force the night David McAtee was killed in 2020, was sentenced Monday to two years of probation, 200 hours of community service and a $5,000 fine.Crews was initially charged with a felony and was facing up to 10 years in prison for shooting pepper balls at McAtee's niece, Machelle McAtee, on June 1, 2020, striking her once in the shoulder, as the woman was standing on private property and not a threat to officers.Prosecutors agreed to reduce the charge to a misdemeanor, carrying a maximum sentence of one year behind bars. Both sides recommended a sentence of one year of probation. U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Beaton said "it was an extremely difficult case" and "the level of danger was extreme," but "the best of our bad options is to reluctantly approve" the probation deal.Beaton, however, doubled the amount of time on probation and community service and added the fine.Crews did not speak during her sentencing. Attorneys for McAtee’s family have said, "Ms. Crews accepted responsibility for her role in this and the family feels that sending her to prison would only make it worse when it is the LMPD as a whole that inadequately trained her and sent her there that night that deserves the lion's share of blame."The incident and subsequent death of McAtee, killed by a Kentucky National Guard soldier, occurred after Louisville police and guard members arrived at Dino’s Food Mart at 26th Street and Broadway in the Russell neighborhood to disperse a crowd in violation of the then-citywide curfew in response to protests over the death of Breonna Taylor.Crews told investigators she shot at Machelle McAtee because she "didn't comply" with orders. Machelle McAtee was standing in the doorway of a private business.Video shows that as Machelle McAtee is pulled inside by David McAtee, he leans out the door and fires a bullet. When he reaches out and fires again seconds later, Crews, LMPD Officer Allen Austin and two members of the National Guard returned fire, 18 shots in total.An unidentified guardsman fired the only bullet that struck and killed McAtee, 53. He was shot once in the chest.Federal prosecutors argued, in part, Crews was fairly new on the force and “clearly could not have foreseen the tragic outcome of her actions in this case,” according to a sentencing memorandum. Said defense attorney Steve Schroering, in court records: "The force was excessive and inconsistent with training. But Crews’ actions carried no evil or malicious intent. Her intent was to enforce the mayor’s curfew as she understood it .... In her short time as an officer neither Crews nor her supervisors had been asked or expected to enforce a curfew. She had never been issued or handled a pepperball launcher while on duty. The actual hands-on training with the tool was minimal."And while a pepper ball gun is considered a dangerous weapon under sentencing guidelines, prosecutors wrote that many officers perceive them as “minimal force” and similar to paintball guns.“In using a weapon that most LMPD officers equate with a 'paintball gun,' Defendant Crews likely did not foresee the likelihood of injury," prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney's office wrote in the sentencing recommendation.Under terms of the sentence, Crews is not allowed to seek a job in law enforcement again.Crews was also likely acting on high emotions from previous days of city-wide protests revolving around the Breonna Taylor slaying on March 13, 2020, according to the prosecution.While working downtown on May 28, Crews was “accosted by a female protestor,” according to the filing. A picture of this encounter was published in The Courier-Journal, and Crews, prosecutors said, posted a comment on Facebook that “expresses delight at the prospect of a pepperball gun being used to cause pain to this particular prosecutor.”The picture appears to show a female protester handing Crews a flower, but Crews wrote that the woman "was saying and doing a lot more than 'offering flowers' to me."P.S. I hope the pepper balls that she got lit up with a little hurt," she wrote on Facebook. "Come back and get you some tonight ole girl, I'll be on the line again tonight."The prosecution argued that Crews’ actions “were likely motivated, at least in part, by these emotions. However, (the prosecution) did not identify any uses of excessive force by Defendant Crews predating the incident.”And since the incident, Crews has maintained employment and is a contributing member to society, according to the sentencing recommendation. She works as a K-9 handler, though not with law enforcement, according to the sentencing filing.“Given the circumstances, a sentence of probation is sufficient to protect the public from further crimes of the defendant," the U.S. Attorney's office concluded.Copyright 2023 Media. All Rights Reserved.
- [Family of Tyre Nichols prepares to lay him to rest - Beaumont Enterprise](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/01/family-of-tyre-nichols-prepares-to-lay-him-to-rest-beaumont-enterprise/) - MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — The family of Tyre Nichols planned to lay him to rest on Wednesday, three weeks after he was beaten to death by Memphis police after a traffic stop.In those three weeks, five police officers have been fired and charged with murder, and their specialized unit was disbanded. Two more officers have been suspended. Also fired: two Memphis Fire Department emergency medical workers and a lieutenant. And more discipline could be coming. But Wednesday will be about Nichols, 29-year-old skateboarder and amateur photographer who worked making boxes at FedEx, made friends during morning visits to Starbucks, and always greeted his mother and step-father when he returned home with a sunny, “Hello, parents!”
- [Family of Tyre Nichols prepares to lay him to rest - WCVB](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/01/family-of-tyre-nichols-prepares-to-lay-him-to-rest-wcvb/) - THIS IS KCRA 3 AT 4:00. LISA: TOMORROW, FAMILY AND FRIENDS WILL GATHER TO REMEMBER TYRE NICHOLS. NICHOLS, WHO HAS DEEP TIES TO THE SACRAMENTO AREA, WAS BEATEN BY MEMPHIS POLICE DURING A TRAFFIC STOP ARREST. TY: HE DIED THREE DAYS LATER FROM HIS INJURIES. LISA: HIS FUNERAL WILL BE HELD IN MEMPHIS TOMORROW. AT THE REQUEST OF THE FAMILY, VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS WILL ATTEND THE FUNERAL. VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS SPOKE WITH NICHOLS’ MOTHER AND STEP FATHER FOR 30 MINUTES THIS MORNING. TY: ON FRIDAY, PRESIDENT BIDE The family of Tyre Nichols planned to lay him to rest on Wednesday, three weeks after he was beaten to death by Memphis police after a traffic stop.In those three weeks, five police officers have been fired and charged with murder, and their specialized unit was disbanded. Two more officers have been suspended. Also fired: two Memphis Fire Department emergency medical workers and a lieutenant. And more discipline could be coming.But Wednesday will be about Nichols, a 29-year-old skateboarder and amateur photographer who worked making boxes at FedEx, made friends during morning visits to Starbucks, and always greeted his mother and step-father when he returned home with a sunny, "Hello, parents!"Nichols was the baby of their family, born 12 years after his closest siblings. He had a 4-year-old son and worked hard to better himself as a father, his family said.Nichols grew up in Sacramento, California, and loved the San Francisco 49ers. He came to Memphis just before the coronavirus pandemic and got stuck. But he was fine with it because he was with his mother, RowVaughn Wells, and they were incredibly close, she said. He even had her name tattooed on his arm.Friends at a memorial service last week described him as joyful and kind, quick with a smile, often silly."This man walked into a room, and everyone loved him," said Angelina Paxton, a friend who traveled to Memphis from California for the memorial service. Nichols' funeral will be held at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church, beginning at 10:30 a.m. CST. The Rev. Al Sharpton, founder and president of the National Action Network, will deliver the eulogy. Ben Crump, a national civil rights attorney who represents the Nichols family, will deliver a call to action.Sharpton gathered Nichols' family and local activists on Tuesday evening at Mason Temple Church of God in Christ in Memphis. The historic landmark is where the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his final speech the night before he was assassinated nearly 55 years ago.Sharpton said the family intended to have a "dignified funeral service, not a marathon.""This is not about politics, it's about justice," the reverend said. "People are coming from all over the world, and we are coming because we're all Tyre, now."Those expected to be in attendance include Vice President Kamala Harris; Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor; and Philonise Floyd, the brother of George Floyd.The deaths of Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, and Floyd in Minneapolis, at the hands of police sparked protests across the nation about racial injustice. MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The family of Tyre Nichols planned to lay him to rest on Wednesday, three weeks after he was beaten to death by Memphis police after a traffic stop.In those three weeks, five police officers have been fired and charged with murder, and their specialized unit was disbanded. Two more officers have been suspended. Also fired: two Memphis Fire Department emergency medical workers and a lieutenant. And more discipline could be coming.
- [Family of Tyre Nichols prepares to lay him to rest - CBS 8](https://slc.lul.org/2023/02/01/family-of-tyre-nichols-prepares-to-lay-him-to-rest-cbs-8/) - Expected to be in attendance are Vice President Kamala Harris; Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor; and Philonise Floyd, the brother of George Floyd. MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The family of Tyre Nichols planned to lay him to rest on Wednesday, three weeks after he was beaten to death by Memphis police after a traffic stop. In those three weeks, five police officers have been fired and charged with murder, and their specialized unit was disbanded. Two more officers have been suspended. Also fired: two Memphis Fire Department emergency medical workers and a lieutenant. And more discipline could be coming. But Wednesday will be about Nichols, 29-year-old skateboarder and amateur photographer who worked making boxes at FedEx, made friends during morning visits to Starbucks, and always greeted his mother and step-father when he returned home with a sunny, “Hello, parents!” Nichols was the baby of their family, born 12 years after his closest siblings. He had a 4-year-old son and worked hard to better himself as a father, his family said. Nichols grew up in Sacramento, California, and loved the San Francisco 49ers. He came to Memphis just before the coronavirus pandemic and got stuck. But he was fine with it because he was with his mother, RowVaughn Wells, and they were incredibly close, she said. He even had her name tattooed on his arm. Friends at a memorial service last week described him as joyful and kind, quick with a smile, often silly. “This man walked into a room, and everyone loved him,” said Angelina Paxton, a friend who traveled to Memphis from California for the memorial service. Nichols’ funeral will be held at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church, beginning at 10:30 a.m. CST. The Rev. Al Sharpton, founder and president of the National Action Network, will deliver the eulogy. Ben Crump, a national civil rights attorney who represents the Nichols family, will deliver a call to action. Sharpton gathered Nichols' family and local activists on Tuesday evening at Mason Temple Church of God in Christ in Memphis. The historic landmark is where the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his final speech the night before he was assassinated nearly 55 years ago. Sharpton said the family intended to have a “dignified funeral service, not a marathon.” “This is not about politics, it’s about justice,” the reverend said. “People are coming from all over the world, and we are coming because we’re all Tyre, now.” Those expected to be in attendance include Vice President Kamala Harris; Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor; and Philonise Floyd, the brother of George Floyd. The deaths of Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, and Floyd in Minneapolis, at the hands of police sparked protests across the nation about racial injustice. [embedded content]
- [Kentucky COVID-19 community levels by county 1-27-23.jpg | | wdrb.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/kentucky-covid-19-community-levels-by-county-1-27-23-jpg-wdrb-com/) - Louisville, KY (40203) Today High clouds giving us filtered sun. Cold. Tonight Brief, light wintry mix in Kentucky Updated: February 1, 2023 @ 1:40 am
- ['It can be scary': how corporate America is hitting back against unions - The Guardian](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/it-can-be-scary-how-corporate-america-is-hitting-back-against-unions-the-guardian/) - ‘It can be scary’: how corporate America is hitting back against unionsEmployers are using heavy-handed tactics to prevent workers from organizing, and US labor union density is falling as a result Workers at a Trader Joe’s store in Louisville, Kentucky, are now pushing to become the third store at the trendy US supermarket chain to unionize since 2022.US Starbucks workers to begin three-day strike in push for unionizingRead moreTopicsUS unionsWorkers' rightsKentuckyAppleStarbucksfeaturesReuse this content
- [Kentuckiana doctors say COVID-19 cases trending down is 'encouraging' - wdrb.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/kentuckiana-doctors-say-covid-19-cases-trending-down-is-encouraging-wdrb-com/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- While most of Kentucky and Indiana are in the low-risk category when it comes to COVID-19 levels, some areas are still seeing higher levels.Local doctors say it's encouraging to see where things stand nearly three years into the pandemic.There's still a variety in case levels depending on the area, though. Nearly 50 of Kentucky's 120 counties are at medium risk, with five eastern counties at high risk levels. Kentucky's COVID-19 Community Levels by County map, last updated Jan. 27, 2023. (Kentucky Public Health) Indiana is seeing similar numbers, with most counties seeing a seven-day average of 10 or less active cases of COVID-19. Thirteen counties of Indiana's 92 counties have 11 or more cases, with Marion County — where Indianapolis is — at 65 active cases. Lake County, near Chicago, is at 47, according to the state health department.Doctors are seeing a decrease in the number of people going to the emergency room for COVID-19 and other illnesses like the flu and RSV.Because many people are testing at home, the health department isn't necessarily always notified of a positive case. Doctors say as far as precautions go, to use your own judgement to figure out what's best for you and your family."I think it's clear that, in general, the worry is decreased and the risk is less for the general population," said Dr. Emily Volk, chief medical officer at Baptist Health Floyd. "I think you need to do an analysis, an assessment of your own health risks, and if you are immunosuppressed or you're around a loved one who is immunosuppressed, you may want to wear a mask when you're in public, or in a crowded space or not a well ventilated space."Volk said it's still always a good idea to get the most recent booster shot for COVID-19. She anticipates it turning into a seasonal vaccination similar to the flu shot.For information about getting a COVID-19 vaccine in Kentucky, click here. For information about getting vaccinated in Indiana, click here.To look at Kentucky's COVID-19 dashboard, which provides data about current cases, click here.To look at Indiana's COVID-19 dashboard, click here.Related StoriesCopyright 2023 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
- [Tyre Nichols' family grieves 'on sacred ground' in Memphis - WRAL](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/tyre-nichols-family-grieves-on-sacred-ground-in-memphis-wral/) - MEMPHIS, TENN. — On the eve of the funeral for Tyre Nichols, who died days after a brutal beating by Memphis police officers just minutes from his home, his family was sharing remembrances and expressing grief.Nichols’ older brother, Jamal Dupree, lamented he was not there to save his brother from the attack he suffered at the fists and feet of the five officers, who have been charged with second-degree murder and other offenses.“I’ve been fighting my whole life and the one fight I needed to be here for, I wasn't here," said Dupree, adding that violence was against his brother's nature.“My brother was the most peaceful person I've ever met in life,” he said. “If my brother was here today and he had to say something, he'd tell us to do this peacefully.”The family gathered Tuesday evening with the Rev. Al Sharpton at the historic Mason Temple Church of God in Christ in Memphis — where the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his final speech the night before he was assassinated — to speak about Nichols and the latest developments in the case. Sharpton, who will eulogize Nichols at the funeral Wednesday morning, said he wanted the family to stand where King stood before they lay Nichols to rest.“They’re standing on that ground because we will continue in Tyre's name to head up to Martin’s mountaintop. That’s why we wanted to start this right on this sacred ground. This is holy ground. And this family now is ours and they're in the hands of history,” Sharpton said.Among those expected in attendance Wednesday is Vice President Kamala Harris, who the White House said was invited by Nichols’ mother and stepfather, RowVaughn Wells and Rodney Wells. Harris spoke by phone with the Wells family on Tuesday, expressing her condolences and offering her support. President Joe Biden spoke by phone to Nichols’ family last week.Harris will be joined by former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, a senior adviser to the president for public engagement, and Mitch Landrieu, a White House senior advisor and infrastructure implementation coordinator, who is a former mayor of New Orleans, said Harris’s press secretary, Kirsten Allen.Five Black officers have been fired and charged in Nichols’ Jan. 7 beating and subsequent death. Video of the beating, which was released publicly last week, shows that many more people failed to help Nichols, who was also Black, beyond the five officers charged in his death.Two more Memphis police officers have been disciplined and three emergency responders fired in connection with Nichols’ death, officials said Monday. Officer Preston Hemphill, who is white, and another officer whose name wasn’t released, have been suspended, police said.Six of the officers involved were part of the so-called Scorpion unit, which targeted violent criminals in high-crime areas. Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis said after the video's release that the unit has been disbanded.“It’s a step in the right direction, but due to the severity of the situation it’s not enough,” Damion Carrick said as he participated in a protest Monday evening at Shelby Farms Park. “You got a man dragged out of his car, beaten senseless, to a pulp and nobody doing nothing about it. It’s heartbreaking.”Nichols’ death was the latest in a string of early accounts by police about their use of force that were later shown to have minimized or omitted violent and sometimes deadly encounters.Memphis Police Department officers used a stun gun, a baton and their fists as they pummeled Nichols during the nighttime arrest. Video shows Nichols running away from officers toward his house after he was pulled over on suspicion of reckless driving. The video footage released Friday shows the 29-year-old father calling for his mother and struggling with his injuries as he sits helpless on the pavement.The five officers chatted and milled about for several minutes as Nichols remained on the ground, but other authorities were on the scene. Two Shelby County sheriff’s deputies also have been suspended without pay while their conduct is investigated.Nichols' sister, Keyana Dixon, was among more than 100 friends, family and supporters who gathered for a candlelight vigil Monday night at a skate park in Sacramento, where Nichols grew up, The Sacramento Bee reported.“This was his favorite place to skate,” she said at the vigil. “I just want to thank all of you for your continued support for our family, and making sure his name is never forgotten.”A childhood friend, Ryan Wilson, said he met Nichols at a skate park when he was 12 and they became fast friends, sharing their dreams for the future. Nichols had some struggles while young, but he focused on making others happy, Wilson said.“I just feel like all he wanted to do was find his place in this world, and he just wanted to be happy," Wilson said.Nichols' mother and step father have accepted an invitation to attend Biden’s State of the Union address next week at the Capitol. They will attend with Rep. Steven Horsford, a Nevada Democrat and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, according to Vincent Evans, a spokesperson for the caucus.Nichols' funeral will be held at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis. After Sharpton's delivers the eulogy, Nichols' family attorney Ben Crump will issue a call to action. Others expected to be in attendance include Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, and Philonise Floyd, the brother of George Floyd.The deaths of Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, and Floyd in Minneapolis, at the hands of police sparked protests across the nation about racial injustice.___Associated Press journalists Gary Fields in Memphis; Darlene Superville in Washington; and Rebecca Reynolds in Louisville, Kentucky, contributed to this report. For more coverage of the Tyre Nichols case, go to https://apnews.com/hub/tyre-nichols.
- [Plea deal offered to Md. officer who fatally shot handcuffed man 6 times - The Washington Post](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/plea-deal-offered-to-md-officer-who-fatally-shot-handcuffed-man-6-times-the-washington-post/) - Prosecutors have offered a plea deal to a Maryland police officer who fatally shot a handcuffed man six times, an arrangement that could reduce the officer’s charges from second-degree murder to voluntary manslaughter and dramatically cut back a potential punishment, according to the victim’s family.The proposal to Prince George’s County Cpl. Michael A. Owen Jr. — who had been the subject of multiple use-of-force investigations prior to the killing — was made days before he was set to go to trial in the 2020 killing of William Green. The potential plea agreement, which county prosecutors would not comment on and is not official unless accepted by a judge, has angered Green’s family and comes as the nation is roiling from the police killing of a Black man in Memphis.Green’s family, who met with prosecutors on the anniversary of the date Owen was first charged to discuss the plea offer, said they are concerned that the lesser charge could make the police officer eligible for parole within a few years.Prince George’s officer charged in fatal shooting of handcuffed man“We wanted to go to court, and we still want to go to court,” said Brenda Green, William Green’s mother. “How could they do that when he actually killed my son? How could they do that?”Owen’s attorney, Thomas Mooney, did not respond to a request for comment.The police killing of Green, a father of two and Megabus luggage loader whose family called him “Boo Boo,” came just months before the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. As Americans across the country took to the streets to demand police accountability in the name of Floyd and Breonna Taylor, who was killed by Louisville police during a no-knock raid, people in majority-Black Prince George’s called for justice for Green. Three years later, the same tensions around race and policing have reignited in the killing of Tyre Nichols in Tennessee, whom officers beat and Tasered following a traffic stop in Memphis.Black Memphis police spark dialogue on systemic racism in the U.S.Nikki Owens, William Green’s cousin, said it has pained her family to see this play out around the third anniversary of Green’s death. The family has watched as the Memphis officers who beat Nichols were arrested and criminally charged with second-degree murder — the same initial charge against Owen in Prince George’s.“I want the people in Memphis to know that just because they are arrested, that doesn’t mean they will pay for their crime,” Owens said.On Jan. 27, 2020, police received a 911 call about a man driving a Buick that had struck several vehicles. Authorities eventually found the car in Temple Hills. Green was asleep inside.Owen removed Green from the car, cuffed his hands behind his back and placed him in the front seat of a Prince George’s police cruiser to wait for a drug recognition expert, according to police records and interviews. A few minutes later, authorities said, Owen shot at Green seven times, with six shots hitting the man. The wounds, Green’s family said, were on both sides of his torso.Family of man slain by Prince George’s police officer reaches $20 million settlement with countyThe day after the shooting, Owen was charged in Green’s death — the first county officer charged with murder in connection with actions taken while on duty, officials said at the time. Nine months later, County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks (D) would join Green’s family and their civil attorneys, Billy Murphy and Malcolm Ruff, for a news conference to announce a $20 million settlement in their case against the county — at the time one of the largest police misconduct payouts in the nation.“Police are given by this community an awesome and tremendously difficult responsibility of protecting life,” Alsobrooks said at the September 2020 news conference. “They are also likewise given an authority that is not shared by anyone else in this community, and that is the authority to take life. . . . When that trust is abused, it is necessary to take swift and decisive action.”Owen was not wearing a police-issued body camera at the time of the shooting, authorities said. Afterward, Owen said that Green had reached for the officer’s firearm and that he feared for his life. Prosecutors said then that there was no evidence Green had posed a serious threat.But during their meeting with the state’s attorney’s office Saturday — in which top prosecutor Aisha Braveboy was not present — Green’s family said, they were told that the decision to reduce the charges had come after the discovery of new evidence, including Owen’s testimony.Mooney, Owen’s attorney, has said in the past that authorities pressed the second-degree murder charge after a “rushed” investigation.Green’s family said they felt hurt and frustrated that the decision was made without their consultation, and baffled that Braveboy — who campaigned on police accountability and whose office has tried nearly a dozen police misconduct cases during her tenure — would forgo a trial in one of the most high-profile police shooting cases in the county’s history.“We expected him to come up with a defense,” said Owens, Green’s cousin. “We didn’t expect them to believe his defense so much that they are going to lower the charges.”“I feel like, again, another state, the state of Maryland, is telling us that the life of a Black man doesn’t matter,” she said. “If my cousin was White, do I think this would be happening? Absolutely not. This is a slap in the face to us.”More than 1,100 people have been shot and killed by police in the past 12 monthsNews of the possible plea deal comes one week after the state’s attorney’s office dropped charges against 14 different Prince George’s County police officers who were accused of participating in a double-dipping scheme and whose indictments were announced in a highly publicized news conference last year.Since they received the $20 million settlement, Owens has said that no amount of money will bring her family justice. If they had to choose between the money and a public criminal trial, Owens and her aunt said, they would let the case play out in court.“At no point did I try to mesh the civil and criminal cases,” Owens said. “They are separate things.”The family said they were told that Owen could serve 20 years for the reduced charges, with 10 years suspended, and that he could be eligible for parole after five years. Owen has been behind bars for three years while awaiting trial.After his arrest, the police department suspended Owen without pay. When asked for comment Tuesday, the police department said it is awaiting the outcome of criminal proceedings before moving forward its internal investigations and directed inquires about the plea deal to prosecutors.In a 2020 investigation into Owen’s history with the department, where he had been an officer for 10 years, The Washington Post found that the department had missed opportunities to steer a struggling and errant officer back on course long before Green’s killing.Owen had triggered the agency’s early-warning system by using force twice in quick succession the previous summer. It took months for the system, which relied on information being compiled by hand and entered into a database, to create the flag, police officials said. Owen’s supervisors weren’t formally notified until the month he killed Green, and they had not taken action.In two other 2019 incidents, videos showed Owen with his hands on the necks of people he arrested. One of those incidents came less than a month before Green’s death.Other Prince George’s residents who encountered Owen over the years also had accused him of brutality and a lack of professionalism. Several who were arrested by Owen, and who were accused of aggressive behavior toward him, had charges dropped because the officer did not show up for court proceedings — another sign of trouble.Months before Cpl. Michael A. Owen Jr. fatally shot a man in handcuffs, an early-warning system flagged himExperts who spoke to The Post said the sluggish pace of the early-warning system jeopardized officers as well as civilians like Green. Former Prince George’s County police chief Hank Stawinski — who ordered Owen arrested after the shooting — told The Post that he understood that the system was too slow and had been working to upgrade it.Owen’s supervisors also were unaware he had sought workers’ compensation for psychological difficulties stemming from a fatal shooting early in his career, department officials said, even though Owen was supposed to notify them. This meant that while some parts of the county bureaucracy were aware of the claim, Owen’s supervisors — according to the department — were not.Owen and the county are the subjects of a separate federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Murphy and Ruff on behalf of four people alleging that Owen abused them while working for the police department.In 2021, Owen was also indicted in a federal criminal case alongside five other police officers for allegedly orchestrating false thefts of their debit cards or vehicles, then reporting those concocted thefts to authorities and their banks and insurance companies.
- [KY voter registration for independents, others breaks double digits for first time - LEX18](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/ky-voter-registration-for-independents-others-breaks-double-digits-for-first-time-lex18/) - FRANKFORT, Ky. (LEX 18) — Ten percent of Kentucky voters are now registered as something other than Republican or Democrat, according to Secretary of State Michael Adams. He says in December, Kentucky voter registration for independents and other political affiliations broke double digits for the first time. The increase is part of a trend seen in the state's voter registration data for months now."Each month is a pretty significant bump in the number of independent voters or voters registered with other parties," said Adams."That's the fastest-growing voter bloc in Kentucky today," he added.According to state numbers, Republicans account for 45.5% of the electorate with 1,635,938 voters. Democrats account for 44.5% of the electorate with 1,600,466 voters. Voters registered as Independent or with other affiliations account for 10% of the electorate with 358,336 voters.So, Republicans and Democrats still make up 90% of Kentucky's voters. However, numbers on increase in registration show Independents/Others are growing at a faster rate.In December, Republican registration increased by 0.13%, Democratic registration dropped by 0.18%, and other registration increased by 0.38%, according to registration data. In November, Republican registration increased by 0.28%, Democratic registration dropped by 0.24%, and other registration increased by 0.94%. The same trend can be found in other months' data as well.“Candidates for statewide office should take notice: to win a general election, they must reach out beyond their base and court the fastest-growing bloc of the electorate,” said Adams.Who is part of this voter bloc? According to Adams, it's mostly young voters who are registering to vote for the first time."There are some people who are Republicans or Democrats who are changing to Independent because they don't like the direction they see their party going - whether it's nationally or at the state level. There's some of that," said Adams. "But this is driven primarily by young voters. The big question is are they going to vote or not?"Adams says in last November's election, less than half of Kentucky's Independents voted. He points out that there could be various reasons for that. However, he says election turnout among Independents tends to be lower than among Republicans and Democrats. So, his message to Independents is simple: if you want to make an impact, you need to vote."The impetus is on them to be relevant because if they don't vote, they're not relevant."
- [GRAPHIC: Tyre Nichols' family to address additional police discipline; Harris to attend funeral - KKTV](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/graphic-tyre-nichols-family-to-address-additional-police-discipline-harris-to-attend-funeral-kktv/) - MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris plans to attend the funeral of Tyre Nichols, who died three days after he was beaten by Memphis police officers just minutes from his home, the White House said Tuesday.Harris was invited to attend Wednesday’s funeral services by Nichols’ mother and stepfather, RowVaughn Wells and Rodney Wells, according to Harris’s press secretary, Kirsten Allen. Harris spoke by phone with the Wells family on Tuesday, expressing her condolences and offering her support. President Joe Biden spoke by phone to Nichols’ family last week.Harris will be joined by former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, a senior adviser to the president for public engagement, and Mitch Landrieu, a White House senior advisor and infrastructure implementation coordinator, who is a former mayor of New Orleans, Allen said.Five Black officers have been fired and charged with second-degree murder and other offenses in Nichols’ Jan. 7 beating and subsequent death. Video of the beating, which was released publicly last week, shows that many more people failed to help Nichols, who was also Black, beyond the five officers charged in his death.Two more Memphis police officers have been disciplined and three emergency responders fired in connection with Nichols’ death, officials said Monday. Officer Preston Hemphill, who is white, and another officer whose name wasn’t released, have been suspended, police said.Late Tuesday, some Memphis media outlets reported that four of the five officers charged with murder in the case had previous infractions on their records, according to personnel files obtained through records requests. Most involved procedural violations, car accidents and equipment. Two of the officers, Demetrius Haley and Desmond Mills Jr., received reprimands for failing to file “response to resistance” forms after incidents involving women they arrested, according to the files.Nichols’ family, the Rev. Al Sharpton and attorney Ben Crump planned to gather Tuesday evening at the historic Mason Temple in Memphis — where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his final speech the night before he was assassinated — to speak about the latest developments in the case. Bad weather caused some confusion about whether the event would be held, but Terence Cullen, a spokesman for Sharpton’s organization, said Sharpton and others were still planning to go.WARNING: The video contains graphic content. Viewer discretion is advised.GRAPHIC WARNING: Seven police officers have been disciplined in the case. (CNN, MEMPHIS POLICE DEPT, CITY OF MEMPHIS, SHELBY COUNTY JAIL, ABC'S "THE VIEW")Six of the officers involved were part of the so-called Scorpion unit, which targeted violent criminals in high-crime areas. Other Memphis residents who say they also were “brutalized” by officers in the unit will also speak at Mason Temple, according to a statement from Crump.Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis said after the video’s release that the unit has been disbanded.“It’s a step in the right direction, but due to the severity of the situation it’s not enough,” Damion Carrick said as he participated in a protest Monday evening at Shelby Farms Park. “You got a man dragged out of his car, beaten senseless, to a pulp and nobody doing nothing about it. It’s heartbreaking.”Nichols’ death was the latest in a string of early accounts by police about their use of force that were later shown to have minimized or omitted violent and sometimes deadly encounters.Memphis Police Department officers used a stun gun, a baton and their fists as they pummeled Nichols during the nighttime arrest. Video shows Nichols running away from officers toward his house after he was pulled over on suspicion of reckless driving. The video footage released Friday shows the 29-year-old father calling for his mother and struggling with his injuries as he sits helpless on the pavement.The five officers chatted and milled about for several minutes as Nichols remained on the ground, but other authorities were on the scene. Two Shelby County sheriff’s deputies also have been suspended without pay while their conduct is investigated.Nichols’ older brother, Jamal Dupree, told CNN’s Don Lemon on Tuesday that he feels guilty because he wasn’t there to protect his younger sibling.“I’m 99% sure that my brother has never gotten into a fight before. And the one time he got into an altercation with other humans, we wasn’t there to protect him. My brother was trying to cooperate with them,” Dupree, who lives in California, said of the Memphis officers.Dupree said he hasn’t watched the police video.“I already knew how they treated him because I’ve seen it all over the world,” Dupree said. “Police brutality is nothing new. I already knew they treated my brother like an animal. They treated him like he was nothing. I don’t have to watch the video to know that.”He said he has seen reports about his brother and thinks other people are learning about who he was as a person.“I think people really know my brother did not deserve this,” he told CNN. “He was not that type of person. Yeah, he was just a good guy around the board. ... We want justice.”Nichols’ sister, Keyana Dixon, was among more than 100 friends, family and supporters who gathered for a candlelight vigil Monday night at a skate park in Sacramento, where Nichols grew up, The Sacramento Bee reported.“This was his favorite place to skate,” she said at the vigil. “I just want to thank all of you for your continued support for our family, and making sure his name is never forgotten.”A childhood friend, Ryan Wilson, said he met Nichols at a skate park when he was 12 and they became fast friends, sharing their dreams for the future. Nichols had some struggles while young, but he focused on making others happy, Wilson said.“I just feel like all he wanted to do was find his place in this world, and he just wanted to be happy,” Wilson said.RowVaughn and Rodney Wells have accepted an invitation to attend President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address next week at the Capitol. They will attend with Rep. Steven Horsford, a Nevada Democrat and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, according to Vincent Evans, a spokesperson for the caucus.Nichols’ funeral is set for Wednesday at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis. Sharpton will give the eulogy and Crump will speak immediately after the funeral. Those expected to be in attendance include Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, and Philonise Floyd, the brother of George Floyd.The deaths of Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, and Floyd in Minneapolis, at the hands of police sparked protests across the nation about racial injustice.___Associated Press journalists Gary Fields in Memphis; Darlene Superville in Washington; and Rebecca Reynolds in Louisville, Kentucky, contributed to this report. For more coverage of the Tyre Nichols case, go to https://apnews.com/hub/tyre-nichols.Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
- [A Painful Reminder: Breonna Taylor's Mother Discovered Her Daughter And Tyre Nichols ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/a-painful-reminder-breonna-taylors-mother-discovered-her-daughter-and-tyre-nichols/) - Breonna Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, shared on Instagram that her daughter and recent police brutality victim, Tyre Nichols, share the same birthday. “Tyre Nichols 6/5/93, Breonna Taylor 6/5/93,” the post read, adding in the caption, “My heart is breaking all over again.” Palmer lost her daughter on March 13, 2020, after Louisville police barged into Taylor’s home without a legal warrant. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired at the officers under the assumption that they were intruders. In response, officers were unnecessarily fired numerous times, ultimately killing Taylor, who became a staple in the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement. Activist Tamika Mallory took to Instagram to explain how difficult it was for Palmer to deal with the discovery of her late daughter sharing the same birthday as Nichols. “Yesterday, I spent 30 horrible minutes trying to calm down Breonna Taylor’s mother and my friend, @tamikalpalmer,” Mallory wrote. “She was hysterical after learning her daughter and Tyre share the same exact birthday to the year.” Mallory continued, “She was damn near inconsolable and the only thing that broke her mourning was me saying “sis, you are going to get sick. Please stop before you get sick.” Then I cracked a personal joke and we were able to shift the conversation. We started cussing and talking about the war to stop this shit. So many emotions in 30 minutes.” She wrote, “This s**t is traumatizing” five times, ending it with, “It’s not ok. I’m not ok!” Palmer thanked Mallory in the comments section. Nichols died on Jan. 10 after five Memphis police officers beat him nearly to death after stopping him for allegedly driving recklessly on Jan. 7. Nichols was placed on life support and died three days after being hospitalized. Those five officers were fired.
- [Ex-Louisville officer involved in fatal David McAtee raid gets probation - WKU Public Radio](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/ex-louisville-officer-involved-in-fatal-david-mcatee-raid-gets-probation-wku-public-radio/) - Former Louisville Metro Police Department officer Katie Crews was sentenced to two years of probation Monday for her actions leading up to the death of local restaurant owner David “YaYa” McAtee in June 2020.Crews pleaded guilty last year to misdemeanor excessive use of force after prosecutors alleged she used a pepper ball gun against McAtee’s niece, Machelle McAtee, who was on private property and posed no threat. In exchange for avoiding jail time, Crews also agreed to give up her law enforcement certification and to never pursue a job in policing again.At the hearing inside Louisville’s downtown federal courthouse, District Court Judge Benjamin Beaton struggled with whether to accept the proposed plea agreement, calling the case “incredibly difficult.”“We’ve had a lot of cases from 2020 come through this courtroom and we’ve remarked how fortunate things went for the city and residents. It could have been much worse. Things did go quite badly in this instance,” Beaton said, referring to McAtee’s death and its impact on his friends and family.Early on June 1, 2020, Crews and several other officers and National Guard members arrived at 26th and Broadway to break up a social gathering. It was the first weekend of protests responding to the police killing of Breonna Taylor and a city-wide curfew was in place.The party in the parking lot of YaYa’s BBQ that law enforcement interrupted was peaceful and blocks away from any protests. Crews fired pepper balls at Machelle anyway, in an attempt to break up the crowd.When Machelle ran into her uncle’s restaurant, David McAtee stepped out of the front door and fired two shots. LMPD officers and Kentucky National Guard members returned fire. A state investigation concluded that the fatal bullet was shot by a guard member.McAtee was a well-liked food vendor in Louisville’s Russell neighborhood and was known for giving away free food, including to police officers.Beaton asked federal prosecutors and Crews’ defense attorney, Steve Schroering, to make their “best arguments” for why Crews should avoid jail time. The sentencing report from the U.S. Probation Office recommended Crews serve one year in jail, the maximum sentence for the misdemeanor charge.Prosecutors and Schroering argued Crews had not been the subject of any disciplinary action during the two years she was a patrol officer for LMPD or during her time with the Kentucky National Guard between 2011 and 2022. Crews was fired from LMPD last February.Schoering said body camera footage collected from the night of McAtee’s death showed she was “courteous and professional.”“In all of that body camera footage, there’s not one instance in which Katie acts in a malicious way,” he said.Schoering added that LMPD officers were asked to work exhaustingly long shifts during the 2020 racial justice protests, which he called “unexpected and unprecedented.”Beaton returned, however, to a Facebook post and text messages collected from Crews’ phone.Prior to the raid at YaYa’s BBQ, Crews mocked a protester in a Facebook post, writing, "I hope the pepper balls that she got lit up with a little later on hurt. Come back and get ya some more ole girl, I’ll be on the line again tonight.”Beaton and prosecutors read text messages aloud during the hearing, which Beaton said provided insight into Crews’ state of mind while working the protests.In an exchange with her wife regarding a protest outside of the Louisville jail, Crews wrote: “Lighting them up with pepper balls lol.” In another text message, Crews said officers were “chomping at the bit, just waiting to get our hands on people.”Ultimately, Beaton decided to approve the plea agreement, but he doubled the length of Crews’ probation and community service hours. Along with two years of probation, Crews is required to serve 200 hours of community service and pay a fine of $5,000.Steve Romines, one of the attorneys representing the McAtee family, provided a statement Monday agreeing with the sentence.“Crews accepted responsibility for her role in this and the family feels that sending her to prison would only make it worse when it is the LMPD as a whole that inadequately trained her and sent her there that night that deserves the lion’s share of the blame,” he said.Romines also said a wrongful death lawsuit brought by McAtee’s mother against Louisville Metro and the Kentucky National Guard was settled for $750,000. A jury trial in the civil case had been scheduled to start in April.
- [Kamala Harris to attend Tyre Nichols funeral in Memphis Wednesday - NBC News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/kamala-harris-to-attend-tyre-nichols-funeral-in-memphis-wednesday-nbc-news/) - Vice President Kamala Harris will attend Tyre Nichols' funeral in Memphis on Wednesday, her office said Tuesday.A lawyer for Nichols’ family said Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, and stepfather Rodney Wells extended the invitation to Harris during a phone call Tuesday morning. The lawyer, Ben Crump, said he joined the parents in speaking with Harris for more than 30 minutes.“Vice President Harris and Ms. Wells spoke exclusively, and during this emotional time, the Vice President was able to console Ms. Wells and even help her smile,” Crump said in a statement.Nichols' family also confirmed that Tamika Taylor, the mother of Breonna Taylor, who was killed three years ago by Louisville police in her Kentucky home, and Philonise Floyd, the brother of George Floyd, would also be attending the funeral at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis.The Rev. Al Sharpton, who leads the National Action Network civil rights group, will deliver the eulogy, according to a news release about the funeral services.Details of the funeral arrangements come days after Memphis officials released videos of the brutal police beating of Nichols, 29, during a traffic stop on Jan. 7.Vice President Kamala Harris speaks after paying tribute to the victims of the mass shooting in Monterey Park, Calif., Jan. 25, 2022.Patrick T. Fallon / AFP - Getty ImagesIn a statement following the release of the videos, Harris said the footage and images “will forever be seared in our memories, and they open wounds that will never full heal.” She also said persistent police misconduct and excessive force in America “must end now.”Biden last week extended his condolences to Nichols’ family in a phone call, and called for protests to be peaceful in response to his death.The videos have renewed calls on Capitol Hill for police reform legislation, which has been backed by both Harris and President Joe Biden.A police reform bill emerged after Floyd's murder but did not make it through Congress after bipartisan talks fell apart. Although senators are now seeking to revisit talks on police reform, prospects of passage appear slim, and a new Republican-led House has shown less of an appetite to take up the issue.The Memphis Police Department has relieved seven police officers tied to the violent encounter that led to Nichols' hospitalization and death three days later.Three EMTs who responded at the scene were fired Monday after an internal investigation.Zoë RichardsZoë Richards is the evening politics reporter for NBC News.Priscilla Thompson
- [Memphis Police Unit That Beat Tyre Nichols Cost $28 Million - The Intercept](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/memphis-police-unit-that-beat-tyre-nichols-cost-28-million-the-intercept/) - The Memphis Police Department unit that beat 29-year-old Tyre Nichols during a January 7 traffic stop was part of a division that operated with an annual budget of more than $28 million a year from the time of its creation in 2021 until it was disbanded over the weekend. The department shut down the unit the day after police released body-camera footage of members of the unit beating Nichols to near the point of death. The father, skateboarder, and photographer died three days later in the hospital from injuries inflicted by the police. The Memphis police unit, Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods, or SCORPION, is part of a trend in policing in which highly armed groups of police are dispatched to “high-crime” areas that tend to be home to Black and brown residents.The specialized units have been popping up all over the country, proposed in response to reports of rising violent crime. Some of the anti-crime units have been accused of excessive force; in the killing of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor by Louisville, Kentucky, police in 2020, that force was deadly. In addition, the units, as in the case of SCORPION in Memphis, are expensive to maintain, rekindling a national debate about the funding of police departments. “The SCORPION unit is what ‘fund the police’ rhetoric looks like in reality,” Working Families Party National Director Maurice Mitchell said in a statement to The Intercept. “Instead of pouring more money into militarized forces that brutalize, terrorize, and even murder, we should fund libraries, after-school programs, good jobs, and other investments proven to keep us safe.”“The SCORPION unit is what ‘fund the police’ rhetoric looks like in reality.”Memphis spends more on policing than almost any other service provided by the city. In 2022, the department’s budget was $275.7 million, or 39 percent of the city’s total that year. Of that sum, $28.3 million was allocated to a division for special operations that includes the organized crime unit, which houses the SCORPION unit that stopped Nichols, along with air support, a canine unit, mounted patrol, traffic, and other teams. In a May city council meeting on the department’s 2023 budget outlook, Police Chief Cerelyn Davis discussed some of the department’s highlights for the year, including the creation of crime-targeting units like SCORPION, which Davis said “have been very effective.” The Memphis Police Department’s proposed budget for 2023 is $284.75 million, an increase of just under $10 million. The Memphis Police Department’s newly formed SCORPION Unit prepare to patrol for the first time on Nov. 12, 2021. Photo: MPDMemphis launched the SCORPION unit in October 2021 as part of Mayor Jim Strickland’s strategy to fight crime and gun violence after a record number of homicides that year. Part of the organized crime division, the unit was composed of 40 officers and used crime data to determine where it would conduct enforcement activities.
- [Tyre Nichols' death is just latest instance of video contradicting police accounts - kxly.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/tyre-nichols-death-is-just-latest-instance-of-video-contradicting-police-accounts-kxly-com/) - The initial Memphis police statement on the events of January 7 was vague.There had been a "confrontation" between officers and a driver suspected of reckless driving, police said. The suspect fled the scene on foot, and another "confrontation occurred" as officers tried to take him into custody, the statement said."Afterward, the suspect complained of having a shortness of breath, at which time an ambulance was called to the scene," police said. He was in critical condition, police said, and died three days later.Videos of the arrest show what that second "confrontation" actually entailed: Officers with the police department's specialized SCORPION team punched, kicked, pepper-sprayed and used a baton on Tyre Nichols while he was restrained.After the beating, as Nichols lay slumped and motionless against a car, officers walked around the scene ignoring him, according to the videos. About 23 minutes passed from the time Nichols appeared to be subdued until a stretcher arrives on scene, the videos show.Further, an initial police report from the hours after his stop suggested Nichols was violent, made no mention of the officers punching and kicking him, and alleged other claims of Nichols' actions contradicted by the videos.Five officers have now been fired and indicted on charges of second-degree murder in Nichols' death. Several other police and first-responders have been relieved of duty as the investigation progresses.The contrast between the initial account and the videos in Nichols' death is just the latest arrest of a Black person in which the police version was undermined or contradicted by video or witness accounts. Some of these instances, including former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin's fatal restraint of George Floyd, have led to murder convictions against the officers involved."It is a very problematic situation, and this goes back to what we saw with the Derek Chauvin case," said Justin Hansford, a law professor and the executive director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard University. "Once again we have a huge gap between what was in the police report and the facts that later came out. This issue of believing police reports on their face as they are immediately released is something that we need to reconsider."Here are some of the recent cases in which initial police reports and public statements were shown to be incomplete or misleading.Ronald GreeneThe family of Ronald Greene, a 49-year-old Black man, said they were told by Louisiana State Police that he died in a car crash.Troopers said Greene's death was "caused by crash-related blunt force chest trauma that resulted in a fractured sternum and ruptured aorta" and said they used force "for their own personal safety and for the safety of the public," according to court documents.But videos from police body camera and dash camera told a different story of what happened on the night of May 10, 2019, near the city of Monroe. The footage, obtained by the Associated Press in 2021, shows officers after the crash kicking, tasing and restraining Greene.Audio from one trooper's body camera includes a telephone exchange inside his patrol vehicle as he's leaving the scene. He says Greene was drunk."And I beat the ever-living f*** out of him, choked him and everything else trying to get him under control and we finally got him in handcuffs," trooper Chris Hollingsworth said in the video. He added Greene "was still fighting and we was still wrestling with him trying to hold him down because he was spitting blood everywhere."Hollingsworth died in a car crash in September 2020. In December 2022, five law enforcement officers involved in the arrest were indicted on state charges ranging from negligent homicide to malfeasance in office and obstruction of justice.George FloydThe initial police news release documenting the arrest of George Floyd in May 2020 simply stated: "Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance. The subject, an adult male believed to be in his 40s, was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center where he was pronounced dead."The release also noted that no weapons were used by anyone involved.The report made no mention of Floyd being held down with a knee on his neck for more than 9 minutes.It wasn't until cell phone video captured by bystanders was posted that the world heard Floyd crying out that he couldn't breathe as former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pinned him down.The footage went viral, sparking a summer of national protests over policing and racial bias.One bystander who took video, Darnella Frazier, testified during Chauvin's trial. "I heard George Floyd saying — I can't breathe. Please. Get off me. I can't breathe," she testified. "He cried for his mom... It seemed like he knew — seemed like he knew it was over for him."Several other bystanders also captured video of the encounter, including another high school student, an off-duty firefighter and an employee at the Speedway across the street.Chauvin was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the death of Floyd. His sentencing is set for June 25.Chauvin could face up to 40 years in prison for second-degree murder, up to 25 years for third-degree murder and up to 10 years for manslaughter. Chauvin has no prior criminal record, so Minnesota's sentencing guidelines recommend about 12 and a half years in prison for each murder charge and about four years for the manslaughter charge.But the judge in the case recently ruled Floyd's murder had four aggravating factors, which paves the way for him to sentence Chauvin to longer than the recommended 12 and a half years.Breonna TaylorThe incident report for the botched police raid that led to the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black EMT, said that there was no forced entry when in fact Taylor was killed when officers forced their way into her home on March 13, 2020, in Louisville, Kentucky.Taylor was struck by bullets six times after her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired one shot at officers serving a warrant. Walker later said he believed the officers to be intruders.A preliminary Louisville Metro Police Department internal report prepared on the raid that led to Taylor's death suggested that officers violated department rules by opening fire, even after an officer was hit.The officers, the investigator wrote, "took a total of thirty-two shots, when the provided circumstances made it unsafe to take a single shot. This is how the wrong person was shot and killed."No officers involved in the raid were charged directly in Taylor's death.One of the officers at the scene, Brett Hankison, is expected to stand trial in 2022 on charges of wanton endangerment for allegedly firing into an adjacent occupied apartment, according to the state attorney general. Hankison, who was fired in June 2020, pleaded not guilty.Two other detectives connected to the incident, Myles Cosgrove and Joshua Jaynes, were fired in January.Walter ScottIn 2015, Walter Scott, 50, was pulled over for a broken taillight by former South Carolina police officer Michael Slager.According to a police report, Slager engaged in a foot pursuit and used his stun gun before shooting Scott.Slager fired eight shots, five of which struck Scott. He was pronounced dead at the scene.Slager claimed he shot Scott because he feared for his life after Scott grabbed his Taser.But cellphone video taken by a bystander captured Slager chasing Scott. Prosecutors say not only did that video show Slager firing at Scott's back from 17 feet away, but that it showed him dropping his Taser by Scott's body.In court two years later, Slager admitted to using excessive force, acknowledged that he didn't shoot Scott in self-defense and said his use of force was unreasonable. He pleaded guilty to depriving Scott of his civil rights under the color of law.In exchange for the 2017 plea, state murder charges, as well as two other federal charges, were dismissed.He is now serving a 20-year prison sentence.Laquan McDonaldIn the wake of Laquan McDonald's 2014 fatal shooting by a police officer, 11 Chicago police officers were accused of making false statements to exaggerate the threat he posed. And a former lieutenant who led the shooting investigation allegedly destroyed handwritten notes from witness interviews, the investigative report from Inspector General Joseph Ferguson revealed in 2019.Police initially said McDonald, a Black teenager, approached officers while armed with a knife and refused verbal commands to drop it, prompting Jason Van Dyke to open fire six seconds after getting out of his squad car. He shot McDonald 16 times in October 2014.Thirteen months later, a judge ordered the release of the grainy dashboard police camera footage of the shooting, and the fallout was immediate. The footage showed McDonald walking away from officers, rather than charging at them.Van Dyke was convicted of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm and was sentenced to 81 months in prison. Four officers were fired and three others were found not guilty on charges of covering up details from the killing.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.THE-CNN-WIRE (TM) & © 2023 CABLE NEWS NETWORK, INC., A TIME WARNER COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
- [Ex-Kentucky cop gets 2 years probation in case tied to killing of Black chef - TheGrio](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/ex-kentucky-cop-gets-2-years-probation-in-case-tied-to-killing-of-black-chef-thegrio/) - Loading the player... A former Louisville Metro Police Officer received two years of probation instead of a prison sentence in a case connected to the 2020 killing of a beloved Black barbecue chef. Katie Crews, 30, was accused of employing excessive force in the moments leading up to the death of David “YaYa” McAtee just
- [VP Harris to attend Nichols funeral as prosecutors weigh more charges - Reuters](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/vp-harris-to-attend-nichols-funeral-as-prosecutors-weigh-more-charges-reuters/) - MEMPHIS, Tenn., Jan 31 (Reuters) - Vice President Kamala Harris will attend Wednesday's funeral of Tyre Nichols, the Black man who died three days after Memphis police officers savagely beat him following a traffic stop earlier this month, the White House said on Tuesday.Nichols will be eulogized by the Reverend Al Sharpton at a service at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis on Wednesday morning. Family members of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, who were killed by police in Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis in 2020, will also attend.Meanwhile, Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said on Tuesday that prosecutors could bring more criminal charges against police officers and others in connection with Nichols' fatal beating, after mounting criticism over how Mulroy's office and the Memphis Police Department have handled the case.Five officers, all Black, were charged last week with second-degree murder and dismissed from the force. The department confirmed on Monday that a sixth officer, Preston Hemphill, had been suspended from duty soon after the Jan. 7 attack but has not been criminally charged.Latest UpdatesView 2 more stories
- ['New Years Revolution': What the Proud Boys said on Parler ahead of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/new-years-revolution-what-the-proud-boys-said-on-parler-ahead-of-the-jan-6-capitol-riot/) - In the months leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, members of the Proud Boys took to Parler, the far-right alternative social media platform, to espouse frustrations over what they perceived to be a stolen election and to plan to take action.The Parler posts were presented as evidence this week in federal court where five Proud Boys, including longtime national chairman Henry "Enrique" Tarrio, face trial for sedition and other charges tied to the riot.Prosecutors are using the posts to show the defendants intended to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election. But in cross-examination of the witness who presented the Parler evidence, Proud Boy Joseph Biggs' attorney, Norm Pattis, argued that the messages show no such thing. "(You have) no idea whether it was hyperbole or reflects an intent to commit violence," Pattis said of one of the messages. Here's what we know about the Proud Boys' Parler messages ahead of Jan. 6, 2021. Proud Boys discussed 'stolen' electionWhile votes were still being counted in the days after the 2020 election, members of the Proud Boys expressed fear the election was being stolen, echoing former President Donald Trump's unfounded claims. "The left doesn't realize they are radicalizing people by stealing this election," defendant Joseph Biggs wrote in a Nov. 4, 2020 message. "They are gonna create their own worst enemy from this."The next day, Biggs said it was time to "storm into these election areas where they are counting ballots" and "take action. Peacefully." But just four hours later, he raised a different plan: "It's time for ... War if they steal this ..."In a Nov. 27, 2020 message, defendant Zachary Rehl raised similar hopes."Hopefully the firing squads are for the traitors that are trying to steal the election from the American people," he said, linking to a Microsoft News article about the Trump administration's efforts to bring firing squads and electrocutions back for federal executions. Nick Quested:Documentarian embedded with Proud Boys ahead of Jan. 6 testifies at trial'Standby order’ rescindedIn the days after the 2020 presidential election, as it became clear Joe Biden would win the race over Trump, Tarrio, the Proud Boys leader, issued a command: “Standby order has been rescinded.”The right-wing extremist group’s longtime national chairman was calling back to comments made by Trump, prosecutors alleged. During a September 2020 debate, when Trump was asked to condemn white supremacist groups, he said: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.” Tarrio replied on Parler shortly after: “Standing by, sir.”
- [How Oklahoma lawmakers are seeking to change elections and ballot initiatives | KOSU](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/how-oklahoma-lawmakers-are-seeking-to-change-elections-and-ballot-initiatives-kosu/) - With the 2024 presidential election cycle on the horizon, Oklahoma lawmakers have introduced more than 90 election and voting bills ahead of the upcoming legislative session.About one-fifth of these proposals are shell bills titled “Oklahoma Elections Reform Act of 2023.” Lawmakers will be tasked with adding more substantive language before the bills are considered.Legislative committees will begin taking up bills after Feb. 6, when the session begins. Bills face a March 2 deadline to advance out committee in their chamber of origin.Here are some questions and answers regarding the election bills and how similar proposals fared in recent legislative sessions.What Election-Related Bills Have Republicans Filed? Republicans, who hold a supermajority in both the House and Senate, have introduced at least 80 election-related bills.Approximately a dozen measures propose additional requirements or restrictions, including eliminating no-excuse absentee voting and forbidding the State Election Board from joining multistate voter-list maintenance organizations.Another category of proposals seeks to exempt the state from following federal election laws in non-federal elections and mandate state officials to report any election or voting-related contact from the U.S. Department of Justice.Two bills seek to increase pay and strengthen legal protections for precinct officials. Senate Bill 290 by Warren Hamilton, R-McCurtain, would increase daily compensation for clerks and judges from $100 to $200 per day. Inspectors, who act as the lead official at their precinct, would receive $225 per day, up from $110.Senate Bill 481 by Dave Rader, R-Tulsa, would classify intimidating or threatening an election official as a felony offense.Tulsa County Election Board Secretary Gwen Freeman said she has noticed an increase in precinct officials’ complaints of bullying and harassment, with some opting to resign. She said conversations with lawmakers give her hope they will work to support local election officials.“These people donate their time and their energy to making elections successful, and if they don’t feel safe at their precincts, it becomes necessary for us to take measures to make them feel safe,” Freeman said. What about Democrats? House and Senate Democrats have proposed eliminating the state’s straight-party voting option, expanding early voting hours and setting an end-of-year deadline for the state to launch online voter registration fully.The proposals face steep odds in the Republican-controlled Legislature. Just a dozen bills with Democrats as the original lead author were signed into law last year. None were related to elections or voting.Rep. Andy Fugate, D-Oklahoma City, introduced five election bills before the Jan. 19 filing deadline. Among them are measures requiring political parties who hold closed primaries to reimburse the state for election costs and subject unopposed state lawmakers to a retention election, similar to what state Supreme Court justices face every six years, with a yes-no vote. Nearly 70% of state House and Senate races up for re-election in 2022 were decided ahead of the November midterm election.Fugate, who himself ran unopposed for House District 94 last year, said he hopes to spark a conversation on democracy issues.“I continue to see people, not just in my district but in other places where I talk about these challenges, who are nodding their heads,” said Fugate, who serves as House Democratic Floor Leader. “I’m convinced whether it’s this year or next year or 10 years from now long after I’m out of the Legislature, people will see the light and think differently.”How Could Oklahoma’s Initiative Petition Process Change?At least five Republican-led joint resolutions propose adding additional restrictions or requirements for citizen initiative petitions to reach the ballot or increasing the margin necessary for an initiative to pass. Examples include:Raising the threshold for state questions to pass from a simple majority to 66%, and limiting state questions to odd-numbered years. (Senate Joint Resolution 5 by Sen. Warren Hamilton, R-McCurtain) Requiring initiative petitions to receive a percentage of signatures from citizens in every county in the state. (House Joint Resolution 1027 by Rep. David Hardin, R-Stilwell) Requiring state questions that propose an increase in state government expenditures to receive at least 60% of votes to pass. (House Joint Resolution 1031 by Rep. Chad Caldwell, R-Enid) Because these measures seek to modify the state Constitution, they would require a majority approval from voters upon clearing the Legislature to take effect.Initiative petition organizers have opposed similar efforts in recent years, saying the state’s signature collection requirement is already among the nation’s most stringent and additional restrictions would stop all but the most well-funded groups from getting a question on the ballot.Caldwell, who introduced similar legislation in 2021, said the narrow passage of the Medicaid expansion question in 2020 and constituent concerns prompted him to file HJR 1031. He said the proposal would align state questions with school bond proposals, which require at least 60% approval from voters to pass.“Just a few votes, relatively speaking, here or there can totally and drastically change the direction of the state’s budget,” said Caldwell, who was first elected in 2014 and received 70.8% of votes in 2022. “I think that should be left up to the people to get to decide that this is so much of a priority that we want to redirect resources from pot A to pot B or understand an outcome might be an increase in taxes. But that message becomes a lot clearer when you increase that threshold.”Caldwell said he could be open to changing parts of the bill, such as including a minimum dollar threshold or modifying the 60% vote requirement.Hardin, whose district covers a stretch of far northeast Oklahoma along the Arkansas border, said he introduced HJR 1031 to give rural Oklahomans a better understanding and greater input on what reaches the ballot. He said petition organizers have approached him outside of retailers in Oklahoma City but never in his hometown of Stilwell.“It would put a lot more effort into a state question, but it’s something I think rural people would definitely benefit from,” said Hardin, who was elected to House District 86 in 2018 and ran uncontested in 2022. “And hopefully it could get people more interested in what’s going on with their local state government.” Whitney Bryen / Oklahoma WatchArcadia resident Curtis Roberts, 88, oversees the polling station at St. James AME Church on June 28, 2022. Senate Bill 481 by Dave Rader, R-Tulsa, would classify threatening or intimidating a poll worker as a felony offense. What Election Laws Have Oklahoma Lawmakers Passed in Recent Years?Unlike Republican-led states such as Texas, Georgia and Iowa, Oklahoma lawmakers have not enacted sweeping voting restrictions in recent years.The Legislature in 2021 passed a bipartisan bill adding an additional early in-person voting day on the Wednesday preceding a general election. Last year, 14 election-related bills, including measures restricting the use of private funds in elections and authorizing criminal investigations of residences where 10 or more registered voters reside, were signed into law.The Voting Rights Lab, a nonprofit organization that tracks election legislation nationwide, rated Oklahoma’s actions on voter access bills in 2022 as mixed.Stephanie Henson, vice president of the League of Women Voters of Oklahoma, said the organization is working to engage with lawmakers about the benefits and importance of expanding voting accessibility. She said the organization hopes the Legislature will expedite the launch of online voter registration and lawmakers and strike down proposals to restrict the citizen initiative process.“More restrictive stuff can only hurt our voter engagement,” Henson said. “And if you look at the 2020 election, we were already ranked 50th.”What Election Security Measures are Currently in Place? The Oklahoma State Election Board points to numerous safeguards, including a uniform paper-based voting system and a secure network for transmitting results, as beneficial in maintaining a secure election system.State election officials completed their first post-election audit last summer following the June 28 primary election. The audit found no discrepancy between the certified election results. A review of the November general election results found only two instances where the audit totals slightly differed from the certified results.“Oklahoma has one of the most accurate and secure voting systems in the entire world,” State Election Board Secretary Paul Ziriax said in a press conference last November. Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.
- [Judge says Texas Attorney General Paxton must face ethics lawsuit - Reuters](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/judge-says-texas-attorney-general-paxton-must-face-ethics-lawsuit-reuters/) - Jan 30 (Reuters) - Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton must face an ethics lawsuit by state attorney regulators over a case he brought challenging results of the 2020 election, according to a court ruling posted on Monday.Judge Casey Blair on Friday denied Paxton's bid to dismiss the case on jurisdictional grounds. Blair said he was not ruling on the merits of the case.Paxton's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Texas bar authorities declined to comment.The ruling is a setback for Paxton, who had argued that his work as the top Texas state lawyer was beyond the reach of Texas attorney ethics regulators. Potential penalties if the case succeeds could include suspension or disbarment.The Texas State Bar, an agency that oversees licensed attorneys in the state, filed the lawsuit against Paxton in state court in Dallas last May. The complaint said Paxton made "dishonest" statements in a lawsuit that sought to toss 2020 election votes in four states.Latest UpdatesView 2 more stories
- [Donald Trump Is Boring Now | The New Republic](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/donald-trump-is-boring-now-the-new-republic/) - Last Saturday, Donald Trump stood before a crowd and said a bunch of Donald Trumpy things. Flanked by South Carolina’s senior senator, Lindsey Graham, and its governor, Henry McMaster, Trump railed against RINOs, transgender rights, electric cars, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (he is still trying to make “Ron DeSanctimonious” happen), President Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and the cancellation of gas stoves. It was not a rally—it was his second small event of the day, the first being an address to New Hampshire’s Republican Party. Nevertheless, it was of a familiar vintage—new material mixed in with some old hits. It’s hard to believe that not long ago any reasonably long rant from Trump would have made immediate headlines, in some cases lead the news for days. This most recent appearance received some coverage—most of it revolving around the budding war between Trump and DeSantis, which outlets expect will dominate the Republican primary to come. But Trump’s comments were largely relegated to short write-ups, far from front pages and home pages alike. Perhaps it’s just a matter of timing: We are still a year away from primary voters casting ballots, and Trump’s entry into the race is early even by the demented standards of recent American elections. (I share my colleague Walter Shapiro’s appreciation for the quiet start of this year’s presidential cycle.) But there are bigger changes afoot. From 2015 to 2020, many news outlets essentially allowed Trump to serve as their assigning editor. Denizens of newsrooms across the country kept a watchful eye for his tweets; his every word was potential fodder for extensive coverage. But the wild rumpus came to an end around the time Trump helped orchestrate an attack on the U.S. Capitol. Now the former president is being treated for the most part as what he is: a crank. A powerful and influential crank, let’s allow, but a crank nonetheless. That the media seem to have found a way to sober up from their ribald days of peak Trump coverage is also good news when you consider Trump’s impending return to Facebook. Ever since Trump got booted from most social media platforms—a situation that necessitated the creation of Truth Social, Trump’s own incredibly desolate and janky Twitter imitation—there has been much hand-wringing and consternation surrounding his potential return. Twitter and Facebook were powerful megaphones—and fundraising platforms—for Trump. They allowed him to poison discourse and dictate news coverage simultaneously. Trump famously rode hundreds of millions in free media to the White House in 2016—could he do it again in 2024? Elon Musk welcomed Trump back to Twitter late last year after conducting a dubious poll of the site’s users. Trump hasn’t posted, due to an exclusive deal with Truth Social, which needs the former president’s presence to stay afloat. (Trump is reportedly trying to get out of the deal so he can go back to his first love.) Now his return to Facebook and Instagram appears imminent. As Meta’s Nick Clegg announced last week: “We’ll be reinstating Mr. Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks with new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses.” But don’t expect a return to the former president’s halcyon days. Trump in 2023 is diminished in many key respects. Whereas once his finely attuned sense of personal grievance could also mirror that of his supporters, he’s become myopic in his outlook and prone to raving about a series of slights so personal and so opaque that they fail to register. His obsession with the 2020 election, while deranged, has become oddly dull—increasingly reminiscent of someone talking your ear off for the hundredth time about the night they saw a UFO. Where his sheer unpredictability once made him a news-generating machine, he is now repetitive and boring; his Saturday speeches were rote and predictable, and they received the exact amount of coverage that normal political speeches get, which is to say, perfunctory. His ability to raise money from platforms such as Facebook is likely also diminished. As Politico’s Zach Montellaro wrote last week, “Republicans say investments in Facebook no longer translate to small-dollar donors as they once did.” The social network has “restricted ad targeting for political clients,” while Apple’s changes to its privacy features have also made tracking much harder. Trump’s triumphant return to mainstream social media platforms will be dampened by the severe limitations on his political and financial reach.It’s possible that sometime between now and the end of the year, something might change, allowing Trump to work his brand of social media alchemy and return to the dizzying heights of media manipulation that he once commanded. Primary season has barely begun. Once it does—and an all-out, multifront war between Trump, DeSantis, and a host of red shirts begins—the attendant hype might enable Trump to regain his superpower: the ability to generate days of news coverage with 280-character outbursts. But there are heartening signs that his one formidable ability to shape the daily discourse now eludes him and that it will take more than being replatformed on Facebook to take it back.
- [Arizona elections chief seeks investigation into Kari Lake tweet - MSNBC News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/arizona-elections-chief-seeks-investigation-into-kari-lake-tweet-msnbc-news/) - Arizona’s failed Republican candidate for governor, Kari Lake, ran a campaign founded on former President Donald Trump’s lies about election fraud. Even before Election Day, Lake refused to say whether she would accept the legitimacy of the vote if she lost. Since her loss in November, she has blasted her baseless claims about the election through her social media channels and to anyone within earshot, and that may have just landed her in some trouble. On Monday, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes sent a letter urging state Attorney General Kris Mayes to investigate a Jan. 23 tweet from Lake that appears to show images of signatures from Arizona election ballots. Citing Arizona law, Fontes’ letter notes a provision stating that “records containing a voter’s signature … shall not be accessible or reproduced by any other person other than the voter.”“Therefore, the Secretary of State’s Office is referring this matter to you for further investigation and possible prosecution,” the letter reads. Lake did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment.Lake’s tweet suggested the signatures were fraudulent and claimed “Senate testimony” out of Arizona had “confirmed” that nearly 40,000 ballots were counted illegally. Lake also wrote: “I think all the ‘Election Deniers’ out there deserve an apology.”Garrett Archer, a data analyst with the local ABC affiliate in Phoenix who previously served as senior elections analyst at the Arizona secretary of state’s office, tweeted that the signatures — which were from 2020 — didn’t confirm anything nefarious. He pointed out that officials verify signatures in more than one way.As The Arizona Republic noted, the Senate testimony Lake mentioned came from an activist who works with a right-wing group called We the People AZ Alliance. The group fiercely backed the phony election “audit” that Republicans held in Arizona after the 2020 election, and it’s closely linked to election-denying conspiracy theorists like Trump crony Mike Lindell.According to reporting by the Arizona Mirror, the activist, Shelby Busch, used her testimony to raise conspiratorial claims that Lake has already seen batted down by courts, including that tens of thousands of Republican voters were disenfranchised because of systemic issues on Election Day. Lake may think her tweet’s content warrants an apology. Fontes is asking whether it warrants an indictment.
- [Arizona's top election official seeks investigation into Republican Kari Lake - The Guardian](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/arizonas-top-election-official-seeks-investigation-into-republican-kari-lake-the-guardian/) - Arizona’s top election official seeks investigation into Republican Kari LakeLosing gubernatorial candidate may have violated a state law that protects voter’s signatures, Democrat Adrian Fontes says The Arizona secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, asked the state attorney general Monday to investigate and potentially charge the losing Republican candidate for governor with a felony for sharing images of voters’ signatures online.Fontes, a Democrat, said GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake may have violated a state law that protects a voter’s signature from being accessed or shared by anyone other than the voter or an “authorized government official in the scope of the official’s duties”. Violations of this law carry a class six felony charge, the lowest-level felony in Arizona.Revealed: Trump secretly donated $1m to discredited Arizona election ‘audit’ Read moreLake posted the voters’ signatures on Twitter on 23 January, claiming they were part of a “bombshell” that showed mismatching signatures that shouldn’t have been counted, a frequently repeated claim after Republican losses in 2020 and 2022. The signatures she posted were from 2020 ballots.In his letter to the Democratic attorney general, Kris Mayes, Fontes asked that Mayes “investigate and take appropriate enforcement action against Kari Lake”. Mayes’ office confirmed receipt of the referral but said it wouldn’t have further comment on the matter at this time.Despite her loss, Lake has continued to fundraise based on the false premise that she actually won the governor’s race and that the election results will be overturned. Lake’s run for governor focused heavily on the false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen. She held a rally in Scottsdale on Sunday when Donald Trump appeared by phone and said Lake will be “victorious” in her effort to overturn the 2022 election.Since Fontes’ referral became public, Lake has retweeted several accounts who called Fontes’ election into question and who have said the referral was proof that Lake was correct in her claims of a stolen election.Lake wasn’t the first to share voters’ signatures to make claims about their validity. The signatures have been shared by state lawmakers and election-denial groups in presentations at the state legislature, Votebeat’s Jen Fifield pointed out on Twitter, though it’s not clear how the confidentiality of the signatures was originally breached.TopicsArizonaThe fight for democracyUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content
- [Texas attorney general to face ethics lawsuit over 2020 election challenge: Judge](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/texas-attorney-general-to-face-ethics-lawsuit-over-2020-election-challenge-judge/) - Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) will be required to go through an ethics litigation battle by the state bar due to a lawsuit he brought challenging the 2020 election results in multiple battleground states, a judge ordered on Friday. Through a court ruling made visible on Monday, it was revealed Judge Casey Blair denied Paxton's efforts to dismiss his case on jurisdictional grounds last week. The judge said his ruling was not based on the merits of the case. TEXAS AG BLOCKS STAFF LAWYERS FROM SPEAKING AT STATE BAR EVENTS: REPORT Blair's ruling marks a legal setback for Paxton, who had argued state attorney ethics regulators' complaint violated the state constitution's separation of powers provisions. The Texas State Bar filed the lawsuit against Paxton in state court last May, though Paxton revealed in March that he was expecting the complaint ahead of its filing. The lawsuit argues Paxton made "dishonest" statements in a sweeping lawsuit that sought to challenge the 2020 general election votes in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, center, makes comments during a news conference. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez) The complaint stems from a group of more than a dozen lawyers and Lawyers Defending American Democracy, a nonprofit organization. Punishments if the complaint succeeds may include suspension or disbarment. In 2020, Paxton's election challenge was thrown out by the Supreme Court, writing that "Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections." Paxton's attorneys maintain the state bar's lawsuit is tied to his "performance of his official duties" and that seeking to punish him "is tantamount to a judicial veto over the exercise of executive discretion." Last year, he alleged the timing of the lawsuit was strategic given his primary election contest against George P. Bush. "They've intentionally waited a year and a half after my Supreme Court challenge — right in the middle of an election — to do it," Paxton said in a statement. Paxton's disputes with the state bar became even more inflamed after reports emerged that he was barring his staffers from speaking at events hosted by state attorney regulators. In a separate lawsuit, a Texas judge dismissed a similar ethics complaint against Paxton aide Brent Webster last year, who was also accused of making "dishonest" statements in challenging the 2020 election results. An appeal is pending in that case. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER Paxton previously said he "completely" stands by the failed challenge to the 2020 election results. The Washington Examiner contacted the Texas State Bar and Paxton's office.
- [Kevin McCarthy Is Stacking the Ethics Committee With Election Deniers - Rolling Stone](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/kevin-mccarthy-is-stacking-the-ethics-committee-with-election-deniers-rolling-stone/) - Tip The Scales Three of the five House Republicans that will serve on the committee, including Chair Michael Guest, voted against certifying the 2020 election House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has announced his picks to lead and serve on the House Ethics Committee. Three of the five, including incoming Chair Michael Guest (R-Miss.), voted against the certification of the 2020 election results. McCarthy previously announced a proposed set of rules for the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent body tasked with reviewing and submitting complaints to the committee. The new rules would severely impact the bipartisan nature of the office, and undercut its independent function and investigative abilities. Guest, the committee’s incoming chair, was one of the 147 Republican lawmakers who voted against the certification of Joe Biden as president-elect on Jan. 6, 2021. Guest was also part of a coalition of 126 GOP legislators who signed their support for Texas v. Pennsylvania, a Supreme Court lawsuit that sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Committee members John Rutherford (R-Fla.) and Michelle Fischbach (R-Minn.) also voted against Biden’s certification. In addition to denying the legitimacy of the election, Rutherford was investigated last year by the committee after the Office of Congressional Ethics flagged Rutherford on suspected repeat violations of the Congressional STOCK Act. Rutherford had reportedly failed to comply with stock market reporting requirements for lawmakers, constituting a total of up to $3.5 million in improperly disclosed trades. Fischbach publicly cast doubt on the integrity of the election and encouraged her Twitter followers to donate to former President Trump’s “election defense fund.” On Jan. 6, Fischbach issued a press release stating that she intended to vote against the certification of Electoral College votes from several states. “This election was shrouded in allegations of irregularities and fraud too voluminous to ignore,” wrote Fischbach. Trending No evidence of significant fraud or irregularities have been uncovered. The Ethics Committee was given several referrals by the Jan. 6 committee regarding the actions of several House members in the planning of the attack on the Capitol and the efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including Speaker McCarthy himself. With the committee now being run by election deniers, it is unlikely that any members of the House will be taken to task for their efforts to subvert the democratic process.
- [Tyre Nichols' death is just latest instance of video contradicting police accounts](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/tyre-nichols-death-is-just-latest-instance-of-video-contradicting-police-accounts/) - CNN — The initial Memphis police statement on the events of January 7 was vague. There had been a “confrontation” between officers and a driver suspected of reckless driving, police said. The suspect fled the scene on foot, and another “confrontation occurred” as officers tried to take him into custody, the statement said. “Afterward, the suspect complained of having a shortness of breath, at which time an ambulance was called to the scene,” police said. He was in critical condition, police said, and died three days later. Videos of the arrest show what that second “confrontation” actually entailed: Officers with the police department’s specialized SCORPION team punched, kicked, pepper-sprayed and used a baton on Tyre Nichols while he was restrained. After the beating, as Nichols lay slumped and motionless against a car, officers walked around the scene ignoring him, according to the videos. About 23 minutes passed from the time Nichols appeared to be subdued until a stretcher arrives on scene, the videos show. Further, an initial police report from the hours after his stop suggested Nichols was violent, made no mention of the officers punching and kicking him, and alleged other claims of Nichols’ actions contradicted by the videos. Five officers have now been fired and indicted on charges of second-degree murder in Nichols’ death. Several other police and first-responders have been relieved of duty as the investigation progresses. The contrast between the initial account and the videos in Nichols’ death is just the latest arrest of a Black person in which the police version was undermined or contradicted by video or witness accounts. Some of these instances, including former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s fatal restraint of George Floyd, have led to murder convictions against the officers involved. “It is a very problematic situation, and this goes back to what we saw with the Derek Chauvin case,” said Justin Hansford, a law professor and the executive director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard University. “Once again we have a huge gap between what was in the police report and the facts that later came out. This issue of believing police reports on their face as they are immediately released is something that we need to reconsider.” Here are some of the recent cases in which initial police reports and public statements were shown to be incomplete or misleading. Ronald Greene The family of Ronald Greene, a 49-year-old Black man, said they were told by Louisiana State Police that he died in a car crash. Troopers said Greene’s death was “caused by crash-related blunt force chest trauma that resulted in a fractured sternum and ruptured aorta” and said they used force “for their own personal safety and for the safety of the public,” according to court documents. But videos from police body camera and dash camera told a different story of what happened on the night of May 10, 2019, near the city of Monroe. The footage, obtained by the Associated Press in 2021, shows officers after the crash kicking, tasing and restraining Greene. Audio from one trooper’s body camera includes a telephone exchange inside his patrol vehicle as he’s leaving the scene. He says Greene was drunk. “And I beat the ever-living f*** out of him, choked him and everything else trying to get him under control and we finally got him in handcuffs,” trooper Chris Hollingsworth said in the video. He added Greene “was still fighting and we was still wrestling with him trying to hold him down because he was spitting blood everywhere.” Hollingsworth died in a car crash in September 2020. In December 2022, five law enforcement officers involved in the arrest were indicted on state charges ranging from negligent homicide to malfeasance in office and obstruction of justice. George Floyd The initial police news release documenting the arrest of George Floyd in May 2020 simply stated: “Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance. The subject, an adult male believed to be in his 40s, was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.” The release also noted that no weapons were used by anyone involved. The report made no mention of Floyd being held down with a knee on his neck for more than 9 minutes. It wasn’t until cell phone video captured by bystanders was posted that the world heard Floyd crying out that he couldn’t breathe as former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pinned him down. The footage went viral, sparking a summer of national protests over policing and racial bias. One bystander who took video, Darnella Frazier, testified during Chauvin’s trial. “I heard George Floyd saying — I can’t breathe. Please. Get off me. I can’t breathe,” she testified. “He cried for his mom… It seemed like he knew — seemed like he knew it was over for him.” Several other bystanders also captured video of the encounter, including another high school student, an off-duty firefighter and an employee at the Speedway across the street. Chauvin was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the death of Floyd. His sentencing is set for June 25. Chauvin could face up to 40 years in prison for second-degree murder, up to 25 years for third-degree murder and up to 10 years for manslaughter. Chauvin has no prior criminal record, so Minnesota’s sentencing guidelines recommend about 12 and a half years in prison for each murder charge and about four years for the manslaughter charge. But the judge in the case recently ruled Floyd’s murder had four aggravating factors, which paves the way for him to sentence Chauvin to longer than the recommended 12 and a half years. Breonna Taylor The incident report for the botched police raid that led to the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black EMT, said that there was no forced entry when in fact Taylor was killed when officers forced their way into her home on March 13, 2020, in Louisville, Kentucky. Taylor was struck by bullets six times after her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired one shot at officers serving a warrant. Walker later said he believed the officers to be intruders. A preliminary Louisville Metro Police Department internal report prepared on the raid that led to Taylor’s death suggested that officers violated department rules by opening fire, even after an officer was hit. The officers, the investigator wrote, “took a total of thirty-two shots, when the provided circumstances made it unsafe to take a single shot. This is how the wrong person was shot and killed.” No officers involved in the raid were charged directly in Taylor’s death. One of the officers at the scene, Brett Hankison, is expected to stand trial in 2022 on charges of wanton endangerment for allegedly firing into an adjacent occupied apartment, according to the state attorney general. Hankison, who was fired in June 2020, pleaded not guilty. Two other detectives connected to the incident, Myles Cosgrove and Joshua Jaynes, were fired in January. Walter Scott In 2015, Walter Scott, 50, was pulled over for a broken taillight by former South Carolina police officer Michael Slager. According to a police report, Slager engaged in a foot pursuit and used his stun gun before shooting Scott. Slager fired eight shots, five of which struck Scott. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Slager claimed he shot Scott because he feared for his life after Scott grabbed his Taser. But cellphone video taken by a bystander captured Slager chasing Scott. Prosecutors say not only did that video show Slager firing at Scott’s back from 17 feet away, but that it showed him dropping his Taser by Scott’s body. In court two years later, Slager admitted to using excessive force, acknowledged that he didn’t shoot Scott in self-defense and said his use of force was unreasonable. He pleaded guilty to depriving Scott of his civil rights under the color of law. In exchange for the 2017 plea, state murder charges, as well as two other federal charges, were dismissed. He is now serving a 20-year prison sentence. Laquan McDonald In the wake of Laquan McDonald’s 2014 fatal shooting by a police officer, 11 Chicago police officers were accused of making false statements to exaggerate the threat he posed. And a former lieutenant who led the shooting investigation allegedly destroyed handwritten notes from witness interviews, the investigative report from Inspector General Joseph Ferguson revealed in 2019. Police initially said McDonald, a Black teenager, approached officers while armed with a knife and refused verbal commands to drop it, prompting Jason Van Dyke to open fire six seconds after getting out of his squad car. He shot McDonald 16 times in October 2014. Thirteen months later, a judge ordered the release of the grainy dashboard police camera footage of the shooting, and the fallout was immediate. The footage showed McDonald walking away from officers, rather than charging at them. Van Dyke was convicted of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm and was sentenced to 81 months in prison. Four officers were fired and three others were found not guilty on charges of covering up details from the killing. CNN’s Nick Valencia contributed to this report.
- [For Trump, Georgia election case just one of many legal woes - Rome Sentinel](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/for-trump-georgia-election-case-just-one-of-many-legal-woes-rome-sentinel/) - Associated Press An investigation in Georgia on efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election defeat is one of a number of cases that pose legal problems for the former president. A judge in Atlanta is weighing arguments on whether to release a special grand jury's report expected to include recommendations for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on possible criminal prosecution. Trump faces myriad inquiries as he campaigns for another term in 2024, including a criminal investigation over top secret documents found at his Florida estate, a probe in Washington into his efforts to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election, and more probes in New York. Trump, a Republican, has denied any wrongdoing and says he is being targeted by Democrats trying to keep him from reclaiming the White House. Here’s a look at the probes underway in different states and venues: MAR-A-LAGO The Justice Department is investigating the retention of top secret government documents at Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, and potential efforts to obstruct that probe. As part of that inquiry, agents and prosecutors have spent months interviewing multiple people close to Trump, including an aide who was seen on surveillance video moving boxes of documents at the property. A grand jury in Washington has been hearing evidence in the investigation. Prosecutors last year granted limited immunity to one close Trump ally to secure his testimony. Attorney General Merrick Garland in November named Jack Smith, a veteran war crimes prosecutor who previously led the Justice Department’s public integrity section, to serve as special counsel over the Mar-a-Lago investigation and key aspects of a separate probe into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. 2020 ELECTION AND CAPITOL RIOT The Justice Department is investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and efforts to overturn the election Trump falsely claimed was stolen. Federal prosecutors have been especially focused on a scheme by Trump allies to elevate fake presidential electors in key battleground states won by President Joe Biden as a way to subvert the vote, issuing subpoenas to multiple state Republican party chairmen. Federal prosecutors have brought multiple Trump administration officials before the grand jury for questioning, including the former Trump White House counsel and a top aide to Vice President Mike Pence. In a sign of the expanding nature of the investigation, election officials in multiple states whose results were disputed by Trump have received subpoenas asking for communications with or involving Trump and his campaign aides. A House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack recommended that the Justice Department bring criminal charges against Trump and associates who helped him launch a wide-ranging pressure campaign to try to overturn his 2020 election loss. Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. GEORGIA After his 2020 election loss, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and urged him to “find 11,780 votes” — just enough to overtake Democrat Joe Biden and overturn Trump's narrow loss in the state. That Jan. 2 phone call was part of a monthslong investigation by a special grand jury in Atlanta investigating whether crimes were committed as part of the pressure campaign to overturn Trump's defeat. Among those who were questioned by the special grand jury are Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and Trump lawyer; Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina; and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. Prosecutors have advised Giuliani and Georgia Republicans who served as fake electors that they are at risk of being indicted. The fake electors signed a certificate asserting Trump had won the election and declaring themselves the state’s electors, even though Biden had won the state and a slate of Democratic electors had already been certified. Trump and his allies have denied any wrongdoing, and he has repeatedly described his phone call to Raffensperger as “perfect.” NEW YORK New York Attorney General Letitia James has sued Trump and the Trump Organization, saying it misled banks and tax authorities about the value of assets like golf courses and skyscrapers to get loans and tax benefits. That lawsuit, which is pending, could lead to civil penalties against the company if the Democratic attorney general prevails. She wants $250 million and a ban on Trump doing business in New York. In the meantime, a judge has appointed an independent monitor to watch the company. The Manhattan district attorney’s office says it is continuing to pursue a parallel criminal investigation into Trump’s business dealings. District Attorney Alvin Bragg recently named a new senior prosecutor to oversee that probe, which had appeared to be heading toward a possible Trump indictment when the Democrat slowed things down after taking office a year ago. Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen said he met Jan. 17 with Manhattan prosecutors who have revived a years-old investigation into payments made to a porn star to keep her quiet about an alleged extramarital tryst with Trump. In another case, the Trump Organization was convicted of tax fraud in December for helping executives dodge taxes on extravagant perks such as Manhattan apartments and luxury cars. Trump himself was not on trial. The company was fined $1.6 million.
- [Money for 2020 attack ads traces to Florida Chamber-linked group, FDLE probe finds](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/money-for-2020-attack-ads-traces-to-florida-chamber-linked-group-fdle-probe-finds/) - An affiliate of the Florida Chamber of Commerce indirectly provided the funding for a secretive political committee that didn’t disclose its donors and spent more than $160,000 on mail ads in a competitive Central Florida state Senate race in 2020, according to Florida Department of Law Enforcement records released this week.The revelation was disclosed in records sent by FDLE to 18th Circuit State Attorney Phil Archer’s office, which declined to file charges against anyone involved in running Floridians for Equality and Justice, a committee covertly run by a Republican political operative whose name didn’t appear on any of the group’s publicly disclosed filings.AdvertisementThe FDLE was investigating the group alongside its ongoing probe into Florida’s “ghost candidate” scandal, which has led to criminal charges against five people, including two independent candidates who filed to run in competitive state Senate races in 2020 but did not campaign for the seats.Those candidates include Jestine Iannotti, who filed to run in Central Florida’s Senate District 9, the same district targeted by Floridians for Equality and Justice’s ads.AdvertisementA spokesperson for the Florida Chamber could not be reached for comment Monday about the affiliated group’s contribution.Archer cited “legal impediments,” in a press release explaining his decision not to pursue charges against Floridians for Equality and Justice, though he added that “our campaign laws should mandate complete transparency and accountability” and urged lawmakers to address the issue.“State regulators and the public should be able to identify the movement of every dollar influencing any aspect of our elections,” Archer said, according to the press release. “That disclosure must come within days of the donation, not weeks or months after the election has concluded.”Central Florida voters inundated by the group’s ads waited more than two years to learn where Floridians for Equality and Justice received its funding. Instead of itemizing its contributions, the committee reported only a “starting balance” of $249,925 when it was established in July 2020.It spent more than $160,000 on ads attacking Democrat Patricia Sigman, the frontrunner for the party’s nomination in Senate District 9, and urging voters to cast ballots for one of her primary opponents, Rick Ashby. Sigman won the primary but lost in the general election to Republican Jason Brodeur, who was backed by the Florida Chamber and was working as the Seminole County Chamber’s CEO at the time of the election.The newly released records show the money behind the Floridians for Equality and Justice ads came indirectly from a nonprofit associated with the Florida Chamber, which transferred $1 million on July 8, 2020, to Foundation for a Safe Environment, run by consultant Stafford Jones. The next day, Foundation for a Safe Environment transferred $250,000 to the bank account for Floridians for Equality and Justice, a nonprofit also run by Jones.Later that month, Jones established a political committee with the same name, reporting the “starting balance” instead of listing individual contributions. His son’s name appeared on the committee documents.Though political committees are typically required to report their contributions and expenditures, Archer’s office determined Floridians for Equality and Justice was not required to report its transactions outside of the time period when the committee was active, starting in late July.AdvertisementHowever, Chief Assistant State Attorney Stacey Straub Salmons wrote that “the creative formation and management of political committees in this state creates a loophole” that allows operatives to bypass campaign finance laws.“This practice divests our electorate of the opportunity to be well-informed and it creates an environment where special interests are permitted to cloak, in secrecy, their financial contributions to support or oppose candidates and issues in our Florida elections,” Straub Salmons wrote. “Floridians deserve to know whether special interests are at play in their elections. Floridians deserve better.”FDLE investigators also noted that Floridians for Equality and Justice’s transaction records didn’t show any expenditures related to ‘social welfare,’” a requirement by the Internal Revenue Service to retain its status as a 501(c)4 tax-exempt organization. Instead, the law enforcement agency noted, “the vast majority of expenditures in 2020 were for a political purpose to influence the State Senate District 9 primary race.”Reached on Monday, Jones said the organization “engaged nearly 100% in issue education, another legitimate function and quite common purpose” of 501(c)4 nonprofits. The ads described Sigman, the frontrunner, as the party establishment’s favorite and urged voters to back “justice warrior” Rick Ashby instead.Floridians for Equality and Justice sent mailers slamming Democrat Patricia Sigman in the weeks leading up to the August 2020 primary election. Sigman won the primary but lost in the general election to Republican Jason Brodeur. Publicly available records for Floridians for Equality and Justice show the organization paid $163,500 to an entity called Victory Blue Group. The FDLE reports show that an LLC called Victory Blue used Jones’ personal bank account and Floridians for Equality and Justice transferred $163,500 to that account in four installments in late July and early August.Though Jones controlled Floridians for Equality and Justice, no publicly available documents linked him to the group. The committee submitted documents to the Florida Division of Elections that listed the name Stephen Jones, who the Orlando Sentinel identified in a 2021 report as Stafford Jones’ son.AdvertisementFDLE determined the younger Jones was paid about $1,400 via CashApp in several transactions during July and August 2020.The committee listed a Miami UPS store box as its main address. The FDLE investigation found that a friend of an intern of attorney Juan-Carlos Planas set up the box in her name. The friend told investigators she never checked the box but was paid $200 by Planas to renew its lease in December 2020.Planas, a former Republican member of the Florida House, told the Sentinel Monday he arranged to lease the box as a “favor” to Public Concepts, a Republican consulting firm he was working with at the time. Planas said he did not know how the firm intended to use the mailbox. The same firm printed the mailers promoting Ashby, the FDLE probe found.Planas said Stafford Jones paid him to set up the box, along with other work he had done for Public Concepts. He said he didn’t question why Jones had paid him for that work because they both were working on campaigns for Republican state lawmakers.The source of the funding for Floridians for Equality and Justice has been an ongoing mystery in state politics.The Florida Elections Commission resolved a complaint in November 2021 that alleged several violations by the committee with a settlement agreement that included a $250 fine for breaking a law that involved information missing from one of its initial registration forms.AdvertisementThe settlement agreement said an apparent legal loophole allowed the group to avoid disclosing its donors because it began engaging in election-related activities far enough in advance of the August primary election that it did not have to report its finances to the state.Former state Sen. Annette Taddeo, a South Florida Democrat, also filed a suit against the group in an attempt to force it to reveal its donors. She withdrew her complaint in December.Brodeur, who won re-election last November, is a favorite of the Florida Chamber, receiving a perfect 100 out of 100 score from the organization on its 2021 and 2022 legislative report cards. The organization’s political committee contributed $36,000 to Brodeur’s committee during the 2020 election cycle.The committee receives much of its funding from big business interests like Florida Power & Light, which was working with the consultants who funded ads backing the “ghost” candidates who ran for competitive state Senate seats in 2020.Brodeur has supported legislation championed by FPL, including a proposal in 2021 that made solar facilities a permitted use of agricultural land. Brodeur sponsored that bill, which ultimately passed and was signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.Nobody working for FPL has been accused of wrongdoing and the utility’s executives have denied having any involvement in the scheme, though the toll of “media allegations” about its political activities was cited as a factor in CEO Eric Silagy’s decision to retire, announced last week.AdvertisementFive people have been charged. One, former candidate Alex Rodriguez, has pleaded guilty to charges he took nearly $45,000 to enter a Miami race. The man accused of bribing Rodriguez, former lawmaker Frank Artiles, has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.Another, former Seminole County GOP Chair Ben Paris, was found guilty of a misdemeanor charge that he caused his cousin’s name to appear falsely on Iannotti’s campaign finance reports. Paris was working for Brodeur as a vice president at the Seminole County Chamber at the time of the election.anmartin@orlandosentinel.com
- [Folding Ladders Market Size, Share, Growth Statistics By Top Key Players - Digital Journal](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/31/folding-ladders-market-size-share-growth-statistics-by-top-key-players-digital-journal/) - PRESS RELEASEPublished January 30, 2023The global Folding Ladders market size was valued at USD 1457.0 million in 2021 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 3.0% during the forecast period, reaching USD 1740.0 million by 2027.Final Report will add the analysis of the impact of Russia-Ukraine War and COVID-19 on this Folding Ladders Industry. "Folding Ladders Market" Insights 2022 - By Applications (Home Use, Commercial Use, Industrial Use, Construction Use, Others), By Types (Aluminum Material, Iron Material, Fiberglass Material, Other Materials), By Segmentation analysis, Regions and Forecast to 2028. The Global Folding Ladders market Report provides In-depth analysis on the market status of the Folding Ladders Top manufacturers with best facts and figures, meaning, Definition, SWOT analysis, PESTAL analysis, expert opinions and the latest developments across the globe., the Folding Ladders Market Report contains Full TOC, Tables and Figures, and Chart with Key Analysis, Pre and Post COVID-19 Market Outbreak Impact Analysis and Situation by Regions. Browse Detailed TOC, Tables and Figures with Charts which is spread across 113 Pages that provides exclusive data, information, vital statistics, trends, and competitive landscape details in this niche sector. Client Focus1. Does this report consider the impact of COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war on the Folding Ladders market? Yes. As the COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war are profoundly affecting the global supply chain relationship and raw material price system, we have definitely taken them into consideration throughout the research, and in Chapters 1.7, 2.7, 4.1, 7.5, 8.7, we elaborate at full length on the impact of the pandemic and the war on the Folding Ladders Industry TO KNOW HOW COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND RUSSIA UKRAINE WAR WILL IMPACT THIS MARKET - REQUEST SAMPLE This research report is the result of an extensive primary and secondary research effort into the Folding Ladders market. It provides a thorough overview of the market's current and future objectives, along with a competitive analysis of the industry, broken down by application, type and regional trends.It also provides a dashboard overview of the past and present performance of leading companies. A variety of methodologies and analyses are used in the research to ensure accurate and comprehensive information about the Folding Ladders Market. Get a Sample PDF of report -https://www.360researchreports.com/enquiry/request-sample/21769678 Folding Ladders Market - Competitive and Segmentation Analysis: 2. How do you determine the list of the key players included in the report? With the aim of clearly revealing the competitive situation of the industry, we concretely analyze not only the leading enterprises that have a voice on a global scale, but also the regional small and medium-sized companies that play key roles and have plenty of potential growth. Key players in the global Folding Ladders market are covered in Chapter 9: Louisville Ladder Altrex Little Giant Ladders Bauer Corporation EVERLAST Zhongchuang Werner Zhejiang Youmay Sanma Tubesca Ruiju HUGO BRENNENSTUHL Hasegawa ZARGES Friend Gorilla Ladders Aopeng Jinmao Short Description About Folding Ladders Market: The Global Folding Ladders market is anticipated to rise at a considerable rate during the forecast period, between 2022 and 2028. In 2021, the market is growing at a steady rate and with the rising adoption of strategies by key players, the market is expected to rise over the projected horizon. The global Folding Ladders market size was valued at USD 1457.0 million in 2021 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 3.0% during the forecast period, reaching USD 1740.0 million by 2027. The report combines extensive quantitative analysis and exhaustive qualitative analysis, ranges from a macro overview of the total market size, industry chain, and market dynamics to micro details of segment markets by type, application and region, and, as a result, provides a holistic view of, as well as a deep insight into the Folding Ladders market covering all its essential aspects. For the competitive landscape, the report also introduces players in the industry from the perspective of the market share, concentration ratio, etc., and describes the leading companies in detail, with which the readers can get a better idea of their competitors and acquire an in-depth understanding of the competitive situation. Further, mergers and acquisitions, emerging market trends, the impact of COVID-19, and regional conflicts will all be considered. In a nutshell, this report is a must-read for industry players, investors, researchers, consultants, business strategists, and all those who have any kind of stake or are planning to foray into the market in any manner. Get a Sample Copy of the Folding Ladders Report 2022 3. What are your main data sources?Both Primary and Secondary data sources are being used while compiling the report.Primary sources include extensive interviews of key opinion leaders and industry experts (such as experienced front-line staff, directors, CEOs, and marketing executives), downstream distributors, as well as end-users.Secondary sources include the research of the annual and financial reports of the top companies, public files, new journals, etc. We also cooperate with some third-party databases.Please find a more complete list of data sources in Chapters 11.2.1 and 11.2.2. Geographically, the detailed analysis of consumption, revenue, market share and growth rate, historical data and forecast (2017-2027) of the following regions are covered in Chapter 4 and Chapter 7: North America (United States, Canada and Mexico) Europe (Germany, UK, France, Italy, Russia and Turkey etc.) Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India, Australia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam) South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.) Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa) This Folding Ladders Market Research/Analysis Report Contains Answers to your following Questions What are the global trends in the Folding Ladders market? Would the market witness an increase or decline in the demand in the coming years? What is the estimated demand for different types of products in Folding Ladders? What are the upcoming industry applications and trends for Folding Ladders market? What Are Projections of Global Folding Ladders Industry Considering Capacity, Production and Production Value? What Will Be the Estimation of Cost and Profit? What Will Be Market Share, Supply and Consumption? What about Import and Export? Where will the strategic developments take the industry in the mid to long-term? What are the factors contributing to the final price of Folding Ladders? What are the raw materials used for Folding Ladders manufacturing? How big is the opportunity for the Folding Ladders market? How will the increasing adoption of Folding Ladders for mining impact the growth rate of the overall market? How much is the global Folding Ladders market worth? What was the value of the market In 2020? Who are the major players operating in the Folding Ladders market? Which companies are the front runners? Which are the recent industry trends that can be implemented to generate additional revenue streams? What Should Be Entry Strategies, Countermeasures to Economic Impact, and Marketing Channels for Folding Ladders Industry? Customization of the Report 4. Can I modify the scope of the report and customize it to suit my requirements? Yes. Customized requirements of multi-dimensional, deep-level and high-quality can help our customers precisely grasp market opportunities, effortlessly confront market challenges, properly formulate market strategies and act promptly, thus to win them sufficient time and space for market competition. Inquire more and share questions if any before the purchase on this report at -https://www.360researchreports.com/enquiry/pre-order-enquiry/21769678 Detailed TOC of Global Folding Ladders Market Insights and Forecast to 2028 Table of Content1 Folding Ladders Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Folding Ladders Market1.2 Folding Ladders Market Segment by Type1.2.1 Global Folding Ladders Market Sales Volume and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (2017-2027)1.3 Global Folding Ladders Market Segment by Application1.3.1 Folding Ladders Market Consumption (Sales Volume) Comparison by Application (2017-2027)1.4 Global Folding Ladders Market, Region Wise (2017-2027)1.4.1 Global Folding Ladders Market Size (Revenue) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2017-2027)1.4.2 United States Folding Ladders Market Status and Prospect (2017-2027)1.4.3 Europe Folding Ladders Market Status and Prospect (2017-2027)1.4.4 China Folding Ladders Market Status and Prospect (2017-2027)1.4.5 Japan Folding Ladders Market Status and Prospect (2017-2027)1.4.6 India Folding Ladders Market Status and Prospect (2017-2027)1.4.7 Southeast Asia Folding Ladders Market Status and Prospect (2017-2027)1.4.8 Latin America Folding Ladders Market Status and Prospect (2017-2027)1.4.9 Middle East and Africa Folding Ladders Market Status and Prospect (2017-2027)1.5 Global Market Size of Folding Ladders (2017-2027)1.5.1 Global Folding Ladders Market Revenue Status and Outlook (2017-2027)1.5.2 Global Folding Ladders Market Sales Volume Status and Outlook (2017-2027)1.6 Global Macroeconomic Analysis1.7 The impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on the Folding Ladders Market2 Industry Outlook2.1 Folding Ladders Industry Technology Status and Trends2.2 Industry Entry Barriers2.2.1 Analysis of Financial Barriers2.2.2 Analysis of Technical Barriers2.2.3 Analysis of Talent Barriers2.2.4 Analysis of Brand Barrier2.3 Folding Ladders Market Drivers Analysis2.4 Folding Ladders Market Challenges Analysis2.5 Emerging Market Trends2.6 Consumer Preference Analysis2.7 Folding Ladders Industry Development Trends under COVID-19 Outbreak2.7.1 Global COVID-19 Status Overview2.7.2 Influence of COVID-19 Outbreak on Folding Ladders Industry Development3 Global Folding Ladders Market Landscape by Player3.1 Global Folding Ladders Sales Volume and Share by Player (2017-2022)3.2 Global Folding Ladders Revenue and Market Share by Player (2017-2022)3.3 Global Folding Ladders Average Price by Player (2017-2022)3.4 Global Folding Ladders Gross Margin by Player (2017-2022)3.5 Folding Ladders Market Competitive Situation and Trends3.5.1 Folding Ladders Market Concentration Rate3.5.2 Folding Ladders Market Share of Top 3 and Top 6 Players3.5.3 Mergers and Acquisitions, Expansion4 Global Folding Ladders Sales Volume and Revenue Region Wise (2017-2022)4.1 Global Folding Ladders Sales Volume and Market Share, Region Wise (2017-2022)4.2 Global Folding Ladders Revenue and Market Share, Region Wise (2017-2022)4.3 Global Folding Ladders Sales Volume, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2017-2022)4.4 United States Folding Ladders Sales Volume, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2017-2022)4.4.1 United States Folding Ladders Market Under COVID-194.5 Europe Folding Ladders Sales Volume, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2017-2022)4.5.1 Europe Folding Ladders Market Under COVID-194.6 China Folding Ladders Sales Volume, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2017-2022)4.6.1 China Folding Ladders Market Under COVID-194.7 Japan Folding Ladders Sales Volume, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2017-2022)4.7.1 Japan Folding Ladders Market Under COVID-194.8 India Folding Ladders Sales Volume, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2017-2022)4.8.1 India Folding Ladders Market Under COVID-194.9 Southeast Asia Folding Ladders Sales Volume, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2017-2022)4.9.1 Southeast Asia Folding Ladders Market Under COVID-194.10 Latin America Folding Ladders Sales Volume, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2017-2022)4.10.1 Latin America Folding Ladders Market Under COVID-194.11 Middle East and Africa Folding Ladders Sales Volume, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2017-2022)4.11.1 Middle East and Africa Folding Ladders Market Under COVID-195 Global Folding Ladders Sales Volume, Revenue, Price Trend by Type5.1 Global Folding Ladders Sales Volume and Market Share by Type (2017-2022)5.2 Global Folding Ladders Revenue and Market Share by Type (2017-2022)5.3 Global Folding Ladders Price by Type (2017-2022)5.4 Global Folding Ladders Sales Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate by Type (2017-2022)5.4.1 Global Folding Ladders Sales Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate of Aluminum Material (2017-2022)5.4.2 Global Folding Ladders Sales Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate of Iron Material (2017-2022)5.4.3 Global Folding Ladders Sales Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate of Fiberglass Material (2017-2022)5.4.4 Global Folding Ladders Sales Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate of Other Materials (2017-2022)6 Global Folding Ladders Market Analysis by Application6.1 Global Folding Ladders Consumption and Market Share by Application (2017-2022)6.2 Global Folding Ladders Consumption Revenue and Market Share by Application (2017-2022)6.3 Global Folding Ladders Consumption and Growth Rate by Application (2017-2022)6.3.1 Global Folding Ladders Consumption and Growth Rate of Home Use (2017-2022)6.3.2 Global Folding Ladders Consumption and Growth Rate of Commercial Use (2017-2022)6.3.3 Global Folding Ladders Consumption and Growth Rate of Industrial Use (2017-2022)6.3.4 Global Folding Ladders Consumption and Growth Rate of Construction Use (2017-2022)6.3.5 Global Folding Ladders Consumption and Growth Rate of Others (2017-2022)7 Global Folding Ladders Market Forecast (2022-2027)7.1 Global Folding Ladders Sales Volume, Revenue Forecast (2022-2027)7.1.1 Global Folding Ladders Sales Volume and Growth Rate Forecast (2022-2027)7.1.2 Global Folding Ladders Revenue and Growth Rate Forecast (2022-2027)7.1.3 Global Folding Ladders Price and Trend Forecast (2022-2027)7.2 Global Folding Ladders Sales Volume and Revenue Forecast, Region Wise (2022-2027)7.2.1 United States Folding Ladders Sales Volume and Revenue Forecast (2022-2027)7.2.2 Europe Folding Ladders Sales Volume and Revenue Forecast (2022-2027)7.2.3 China Folding Ladders Sales Volume and Revenue Forecast (2022-2027)7.2.4 Japan Folding Ladders Sales Volume and Revenue Forecast (2022-2027)7.2.5 India Folding Ladders Sales Volume and Revenue Forecast (2022-2027)7.2.6 Southeast Asia Folding Ladders Sales Volume and Revenue Forecast (2022-2027)7.2.7 Latin America Folding Ladders Sales Volume and Revenue Forecast (2022-2027)7.2.8 Middle East and Africa Folding Ladders Sales Volume and Revenue Forecast (2022-2027)7.3 Global Folding Ladders Sales Volume, Revenue and Price Forecast by Type (2022-2027)7.3.1 Global Folding Ladders Revenue and Growth Rate of Aluminum Material (2022-2027)7.3.2 Global Folding Ladders Revenue and Growth Rate of Iron Material (2022-2027)7.3.3 Global Folding Ladders Revenue and Growth Rate of Fiberglass Material (2022-2027)7.3.4 Global Folding Ladders Revenue and Growth Rate of Other Materials (2022-2027)7.4 Global Folding Ladders Consumption Forecast by Application (2022-2027)7.4.1 Global Folding Ladders Consumption Value and Growth Rate of Home Use(2022-2027)7.4.2 Global Folding Ladders Consumption Value and Growth Rate of Commercial Use(2022-2027)7.4.3 Global Folding Ladders Consumption Value and Growth Rate of Industrial Use(2022-2027)7.4.4 Global Folding Ladders Consumption Value and Growth Rate of Construction Use(2022-2027)7.4.5 Global Folding Ladders Consumption Value and Growth Rate of Others(2022-2027)7.5 Folding Ladders Market Forecast Under COVID-198 Folding Ladders Market Upstream and Downstream Analysis8.1 Folding Ladders Industrial Chain Analysis8.2 Key Raw Materials Suppliers and Price Analysis8.3 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis8.3.1 Labor Cost Analysis8.3.2 Energy Costs Analysis8.3.3 RandD Costs Analysis8.4 Alternative Product Analysis8.5 Major Distributors of Folding Ladders Analysis8.6 Major Downstream Buyers of Folding Ladders Analysis8.7 Impact of COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war on the Upstream and Downstream in the Folding Ladders Industry9 Players Profiles9.1 Louisville Ladder9.1.1 Louisville Ladder Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Region and Competitors9.1.2 Folding Ladders Product Profiles, Application and Specification9.1.3 Louisville Ladder Market Performance (2017-2022)9.1.4 Recent Development9.1.5 SWOT Analysis9.2 Altrex9.2.1 Altrex Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Region and Competitors9.2.2 Folding Ladders Product Profiles, Application and Specification9.2.3 Altrex Market Performance (2017-2022)9.2.4 Recent Development9.2.5 SWOT Analysis9.3 Little Giant Ladders9.3.1 Little Giant Ladders Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Region and Competitors9.3.2 Folding Ladders Product Profiles, Application and Specification9.3.3 Little Giant Ladders Market Performance (2017-2022)9.3.4 Recent Development9.3.5 SWOT Analysis9.4 Bauer Corporation9.4.1 Bauer Corporation Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Region and Competitors9.4.2 Folding Ladders Product Profiles, Application and Specification9.4.3 Bauer Corporation Market Performance (2017-2022)9.4.4 Recent Development9.4.5 SWOT Analysis9.5 EVERLAST9.5.1 EVERLAST Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Region and Competitors9.5.2 Folding Ladders Product Profiles, Application and Specification9.5.3 EVERLAST Market Performance (2017-2022)9.5.4 Recent Development9.5.5 SWOT Analysis9.6 Zhongchuang9.6.1 Zhongchuang Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Region and Competitors9.6.2 Folding Ladders Product Profiles, Application and Specification9.6.3 Zhongchuang Market Performance (2017-2022)9.6.4 Recent Development9.6.5 SWOT Analysis9.7 Werner9.7.1 Werner Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Region and Competitors9.7.2 Folding Ladders Product Profiles, Application and Specification9.7.3 Werner Market Performance (2017-2022)9.7.4 Recent Development9.7.5 SWOT Analysis9.8 Zhejiang Youmay9.8.1 Zhejiang Youmay Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Region and Competitors9.8.2 Folding Ladders Product Profiles, Application and Specification9.8.3 Zhejiang Youmay Market Performance (2017-2022)9.8.4 Recent Development9.8.5 SWOT Analysis9.9 Sanma9.9.1 Sanma Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Region and Competitors9.9.2 Folding Ladders Product Profiles, Application and Specification9.9.3 Sanma Market Performance (2017-2022)9.9.4 Recent Development9.9.5 SWOT Analysis9.10 Tubesca9.10.1 Tubesca Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Region and Competitors9.10.2 Folding Ladders Product Profiles, Application and Specification9.10.3 Tubesca Market Performance (2017-2022)9.10.4 Recent Development9.10.5 SWOT Analysis9.11 Ruiju9.11.1 Ruiju Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Region and Competitors9.11.2 Folding Ladders Product Profiles, Application and Specification9.11.3 Ruiju Market Performance (2017-2022)9.11.4 Recent Development9.11.5 SWOT Analysis9.12 HUGO BRENNENSTUHL9.12.1 HUGO BRENNENSTUHL Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Region and Competitors9.12.2 Folding Ladders Product Profiles, Application and Specification9.12.3 HUGO BRENNENSTUHL Market Performance (2017-2022)9.12.4 Recent Development9.12.5 SWOT Analysis9.13 Hasegawa9.13.1 Hasegawa Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Region and Competitors9.13.2 Folding Ladders Product Profiles, Application and Specification9.13.3 Hasegawa Market Performance (2017-2022)9.13.4 Recent Development9.13.5 SWOT Analysis9.14 ZARGES9.14.1 ZARGES Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Region and Competitors9.14.2 Folding Ladders Product Profiles, Application and Specification9.14.3 ZARGES Market Performance (2017-2022)9.14.4 Recent Development9.14.5 SWOT Analysis9.15 Friend9.15.1 Friend Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Region and Competitors9.15.2 Folding Ladders Product Profiles, Application and Specification9.15.3 Friend Market Performance (2017-2022)9.15.4 Recent Development9.15.5 SWOT Analysis9.16 Gorilla Ladders9.16.1 Gorilla Ladders Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Region and Competitors9.16.2 Folding Ladders Product Profiles, Application and Specification9.16.3 Gorilla Ladders Market Performance (2017-2022)9.16.4 Recent Development9.16.5 SWOT Analysis9.17 Aopeng9.17.1 Aopeng Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Region and Competitors9.17.2 Folding Ladders Product Profiles, Application and Specification9.17.3 Aopeng Market Performance (2017-2022)9.17.4 Recent Development9.17.5 SWOT Analysis9.18 Jinmao9.18.1 Jinmao Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Region and Competitors9.18.2 Folding Ladders Product Profiles, Application and Specification9.18.3 Jinmao Market Performance (2017-2022)9.18.4 Recent Development9.18.5 SWOT Analysis10 Research Findings and Conclusion11 Appendix11.1 Methodology11.2 Research Data Source Purchase this report (Price 3250 USD for a single-user license) -https://www.360researchreports.com/purchase/21769678 About Us: 360 Research Reports is the credible source for gaining the market reports that will provide you with the lead your business needs. 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For More Related Reports Click Here : 3D-Print-Service-Bureau-Market K-12-Technology-Training-for-Teachers-Market YIG-Magneto-Optical-Material-Market Construction-And-Architecture-Software-Market Stone-Plastic-Composite-(SPC)-Flooring-Market Long-Steel-Market Oil-and-Gas-Training-Software-Market Logistics-Automation-System-Market Gypsum-Board-Suspended-Ceiling-Market Human-Normal-Immunoglobulin-Market Virtual-PBX-Market Wood-Carving-Tools-Market Digital-Certificate-Management-and-Digital-signature-Market Conversion-Optimization-Market K-12-Blended-E-Learning-MarketPress Release Distributed by The Express Wire To view the original version on The Express Wire visit Folding Ladders Market Size, Share, Growth Statistics By Top Key Players | Louisville Ladder, Altrex, Little Giant LaddersWRITTEN BYTheExpressWire
- [For Trump, Georgia election case just one of many legal woes - Court TV](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/for-trump-georgia-election-case-just-one-of-many-legal-woes-court-tv/) - By The Associated Press An investigation in Georgia on efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election defeat is one of a number of cases that pose legal problems for the former president. A judge in Atlanta is weighing arguments on whether to release a special grand jury’s report expected to include recommendations for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on possible criminal prosecution. FILE – Former President Donald Trump speaks as he announces a third run for president, at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Nov. 15, 2022. The special grand jury investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies committed any crimes while trying to overturn his defeat has finished its work. The judge overseeing the panel issued an order Monday dissolving the special grand jury. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File) Trump faces myriad inquiries as he campaigns for another term in 2024, including a criminal investigation over top secret documents found at his Florida estate, a probe in Washington into his efforts to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election, and more probes in New York. Trump, a Republican, has denied any wrongdoing and says he is being targeted by Democrats trying to keep him from reclaiming the White House. Here’s a look at the probes underway in different states and venues: MAR-A-LAGO The Justice Department is investigating the retention of top secret government documents at Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, and potential efforts to obstruct that probe. As part of that inquiry, agents and prosecutors have spent months interviewing multiple people close to Trump, including an aide who was seen on surveillance video moving boxes of documents at the property. A grand jury in Washington has been hearing evidence in the investigation. Prosecutors last year granted limited immunity to one close Trump ally to secure his testimony. Attorney General Merrick Garland in November named Jack Smith, a veteran war crimes prosecutor who previously led the Justice Department’s public integrity section, to serve as special counsel over the Mar-a-Lago investigation and key aspects of a separate probe into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. 2020 ELECTION AND CAPITOL RIOT The Justice Department is investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and efforts to overturn the election Trump falsely claimed was stolen. Federal prosecutors have been especially focused on a scheme by Trump allies to elevate fake presidential electors in key battleground states won by President Joe Biden as a way to subvert the vote, issuing subpoenas to multiple state Republican party chairmen. Federal prosecutors have brought multiple Trump administration officials before the grand jury for questioning, including the former Trump White House counsel and a top aide to Vice President Mike Pence. In a sign of the expanding nature of the investigation, election officials in multiple states whose results were disputed by Trump have received subpoenas asking for communications with or involving Trump and his campaign aides. A House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack recommended that the Justice Department bring criminal charges against Trump and associates who helped him launch a wide-ranging pressure campaign to try to overturn his 2020 election loss. Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. GEORGIA After his 2020 election loss, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and urged him to “find 11,780 votes” — just enough to overtake Democrat Joe Biden and overturn Trump’s narrow loss in the state. That Jan. 2 phone call was part of a monthslong investigation by a special grand jury in Atlanta investigating whether crimes were committed as part of the pressure campaign to overturn Trump’s defeat. Among those who were questioned by the special grand jury are Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and Trump lawyer; Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina; and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. Prosecutors have advised Giuliani and Georgia Republicans who served as fake electors that they are at risk of being indicted. The fake electors signed a certificate asserting Trump had won the election and declaring themselves the state’s electors, even though Biden had won the state and a slate of Democratic electors had already been certified. Trump and his allies have denied any wrongdoing, and he has repeatedly described his phone call to Raffensperger as “perfect.” NEW YORK New York Attorney General Letitia James has sued Trump and the Trump Organization, saying it misled banks and tax authorities about the value of assets like golf courses and skyscrapers to get loans and tax benefits. That lawsuit, which is pending, could lead to civil penalties against the company if the Democratic attorney general prevails. She wants $250 million and a ban on Trump doing business in New York. In the meantime, a judge has appointed an independent monitor to watch the company. The Manhattan district attorney’s office says it is continuing to pursue a parallel criminal investigation into Trump’s business dealings. District Attorney Alvin Bragg recently named a new senior prosecutor to oversee that probe, which had appeared to be heading toward a possible Trump indictment when the Democrat slowed things down after taking office a year ago. Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen said he met Jan. 17 with Manhattan prosecutors who have revived a years-old investigation into payments made to a porn star to keep her quiet about an alleged extramarital tryst with Trump. In another case, the Trump Organization was convicted of tax fraud in December for helping executives dodge taxes on extravagant perks such as Manhattan apartments and luxury cars. Trump himself was not on trial. The company was fined $1.6 million.
- [Letters to the Editor: Tyre Nichols and the deadly subculture within policing](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/letters-to-the-editor-tyre-nichols-and-the-deadly-subculture-within-policing/) - To the editor: I’m at a complete loss as to what, if anything, the Memphis cops who mercilessly beat Tyre Nichols to death learned from the Minneapolis cops who murdered George Floyd, the Louisville cops who killed Breonna Taylor, the Chicago cops who shot Michael Elam, or the L.A. cops who tasered Keenan Anderson to death. Society must finally recognize that too many police officers constitute a law enforcement subculture, where those who hide behind badges and guns inflict brutality with impunity. Only then might lasting reform and accountability take root. Just how much more of this barbarity in blue must we put up with?Tom Stapleton, Glendale..To the editor: This murder in Memphis illustrates what many people have been saying for a long time now. Yes, racist cops do exist, but there is a fundamental problem with policing.What is the character of people hired as officers? Why are so many cops unable to show respect? Why do they think themselves better than the people they interact with? Why can’t they empathize with the human being being placed under arrest? And where is their self-control? Why can’t they control their anger, their misogyny or their racism? What kind of people are they? Cheryl Younger, Los Angeles..To the editor: Am I missing something here regarding the Memphis paramedics who responded to Nichols’ beating?I certainly agree with the decision to fire then arrest the officers, but what about the nonchalance shown by those summoned to treat Nichols? It seems the only immediate action paramedics took was to re-prop Nichols against a car. I believe these “first responders” should also be prosecuted for their inaction.Would immediate care have saved Nichols’ life? We’ll never know.Joanne Berg, La Cañada Flintridge..To the editor: Many heinous police beatings begin with a traffic stop, so let’s take our police off the traffic beat and create a team of friendly, unarmed traffic enforcers on motorcycles clad in yellow vests and armed only with cameras. Taking our armed police off the traffic beat would save money and allow them to focus on serious crimes while avoiding violent confrontations with innocent motorists. Drivers would be more inclined to cooperate with unarmed traffic enforcers, and if they did evade these enforcers, they’d be recorded and police could be dispatched. We did this with parking enforcement decades ago; now it’s time to do the same with traffic enforcement.Rob Jacobs, Los Angeles..To the editor: I watched the sickening video of thugs in police uniforms mercilessly beating Nichols for no reason other than they believed they had the right to do so.Enough with the empty promises to reform police procedures and tactics. The only thing that will put a serious damper on the abusive conduct of police is to charge, convict and imprison officers every time they engage in such criminal conduct.M. L. Goodman, Long Beach
- [4th resident of The Villages admits to voting twice in the 2020 election - Click Orlando](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/4th-resident-of-the-villages-admits-to-voting-twice-in-the-2020-election-click-orlando/) - THE VILLAGES, Fla. – All four residents of The Villages charged with voting twice in the 2020 election have now admitted to the crime, court records show.John Rider, 62, recently entered into a pre-trial intervention program that will allow him to avoid potential prison time if he successfully completes court-ordered requirements and refrains from violating the law.[TRENDING: Man injured when car crashes into pond at Alafaya Trail, SR-408 in Orange County | Newborn found abandoned in Florida | Become a News 6 Insider]Rider acknowledged his guilt as part of the agreement with prosecutors.“The Parties agree that the first step in rehabilitation is to the admission of his wrongdoing,” the contract states.Rider indicated in court papers that he plans to “buy out” his requirement of completing 50 hours of community service at a cost of $10 per hour.Three other residents of The Villages accused of voting twice signed similar pretrial intervention contracts last year.All four were facing a maximum of five years in prison if a jury convicted them of a third-degree felony.As part of their agreements with the state, Joan Halstead, Charles Barnes and Jay Ketcik were required to complete a 12-week adult civics class based on the textbook “We the People; the Citizen and the Constitution.”Under the pretrial intervention contracts, prosecution of the defendants will be deferred for a period of 18 months, with the possibility that it will be permanently deferred if they successfully complete the court-ordered requirements.Florida’s secretary of state first learned about three of the alleged double voting cases after receiving anonymous emails from a self-described “citizen election integrity analyst.”That anonymous tipster, who uses the pseudonym “Totes Legit Votes”, provided Florida elections officials with 282 examples of potential double voting, a News 6 investigation uncovered. Get today’s headlines in minutes with Your Florida Daily:
- [GOP lawmakers pushing “election integrity” bills - Arizona's Family](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/gop-lawmakers-pushing-election-integrity-bills-arizonas-family/) - PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) - There are 10 bills being heard today regarding “election integrity”, as presented by the GOP. Gov. Katie Hobbs said she’ll veto any legislation created from baseless election claims, but Republicans continue undeterred. Arizona Senators Wendy Rogers, one of the loudest election deniers, and Ken Bennett, the face of the discredited 2020 election audit, serve together in the State Senate. The two and others listened to a pair of election deniers testify under oath. After their presentation, the GOP-led committee heard a variety of election-related bills that, if passed, would make it harder for voters to cast early ballots. A large majority of Arizona voters still get their ballots by mail.Senator Juan Mendez said he believes very little of these bills would be signed by Gov. Hobbs. “These bills are really a continuation of 2020, still chasing after that big lie and propping up those conspiracies,” the senator said. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes was seen speaking with Senate President Pro Tempore T.J. Shope before the hearing. He said he believes there’s time for compromise. “This is a process that’s just starting at the Capitol,” Secretary of State Fontes said. “We’re not going to fierclfiercelye any of these bills, although behind the scenes we’re making some suggestions for improvements.” The bills will have a long way to go before passing through the legislature to arrive on the governor’s desk. Copyright 2023 KTVK/KPHO. All rights reserved.
- [For Trump, Georgia election case just one of many legal woes - WAVY.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/for-trump-georgia-election-case-just-one-of-many-legal-woes-wavy-com/) - For Trump, Georgia election case just one of many legal woes – WAVY.com Skip to content ✕ × Close Ad
- [Trust, perception and Montana elections](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/trust-perception-and-montana-elections/) - Thank you for supporting Montana Free Press and being a part of our community. Your membership makes this and all our other local reporting possible. Support news by Montanans for Montanans. Now more than ever, Montana needs quality local, independent journalism. You can help. Never miss Montana’s biggest stories and breaking news. Sign up to get our reporting sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Earlier this month, lawmakers on the Legislature’s House State Administration Committee took one of their first deep dives into the hot-button issue of how Montana runs its elections. The bill in question, House Bill 172, would give county commissioners the option of adding a countywide race to their post-election audit. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. David Bedey, R-Hamilton, framed the proposal as an extra quality-control measure for counties that conduct their elections with electronic vote tabulators. And he made the motivation behind the measure abundantly clear. “I think Montana has a sound, well-functioning, well-managed election system. I also believe that it’s secure,” he told fellow legislators Jan. 12. “On the other hand, we should never rest on our laurels in this particular arena.” HB 172 is among a slate of bills Bedey is gradually rolling out this session aimed at ensuring that Montana elections are, as he put it during HB 172’s initial hearing, “widely understood to be fair, accurate and not manipulated.” How wide that understanding currently is, though, remains a topic of debate. As committee members probed the proposal, Vice-chair Rep. Bob Phalen, R-Lindsay, focused his inquiries on a question that has generated widespread skepticism among certain conservatives nationally. What guarantee, he asked Ravalli County Clerk and Recorder Regina Plettenberg, could she offer that vote tabulators do not contain modems susceptible to remote tampering? “Ravalli County bought the first ES&S machines back in 1984,” Plettenberg replied, explaining her trust in the company that supplies tabulators in Montana. “It was my husband’s grandma. She was the clerk and recorder, so she remembers buying the machine. This is a longtime partnership we’ve had with this vendor, and I’ve never had an issue with them.” Election Director Dana Corson with the Montana secretary of state’s office also attempted to reassure the committee that there’s no evidence to suggest Montana’s tabulators contain a modem or any other such device. Further, Corson said, any manipulation of a machine’s count would be detected in the post-election audit process. Despite bipartisan support among House lawmakers and favorable testimony from county and state election officials, HB 172 failed to win a yes vote from Phalen when it passed out of committee. Neither did House Bill 173, Bedey’s proposal requiring modem-free certification from tabulator manufacturers and assigning criminal liability if a modem or other unauthorized device is discovered. Prior to the committee’s vote on the latter, Phalen once more pressed his fellow legislators as to what proof they would have that the certification was genuine, arguing that “you’re just taking their word.” The back-and-forth about modems speaks to the undercurrent of suspicion now fueling a push-pull over election administration policy in the Capitol. A string of proposals from Bedey and others aim to build on an election system that their sponsors and supporters agree is already fair, accurate and secure. But other bills have sprung from an unshakeable belief that the state’s election systems are vulnerable to fraud and wrongdoing, and may have been compromised already. As Rep. Mike Yakawich, R-Billings, deftly suggested in a recent hearing on just such a measure, the question at the heart of Montana’s 2023 election policy debate centers on trust — namely, “whether trust has been broken or not.” ‘TRUST’ VERSUS ‘TRUSTWORTHY’ When it comes to trust in the electoral process, political scientist Charles Stewart III immediately splits the conversation into two camps. On one hand is what he calls “trust in elections,” and on the other is the question of “trustworthy elections.” It’s a distinction Stewart considered in detail last fall in the academic journal Daedalus, and he revisited it in a recent phone interview with Montana Free Press about the current tenor of the nation’s election administration debate. “Trust in elections is the psychological construct … you know, how do you get people to have psychological trust that the elections are done right?” said Stewart, the founder and executive director of MIT’s Election Data and Science Lab. “Then you have trustworthy, and to make an election trustworthy, you ask, ‘What are the steps that would convince somebody who’s willing to be convinced that the results are the correct ones?’” In Montana, those steps are marked out in a months-long electoral calendar that includes the certification of tabulators by the secretary of state, localized testing of machines on the eve of an election, and a comprehensive post-election audit and canvass process culminating in a final stamp of approval from the state. Staff from Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen’s office, along with Plettenberg and other county election officials, have walked lawmakers through the various checks and balances repeatedly this session. In fact, the Joint Select Committee on Election Security established by legislative leadership dedicated its first three weeks of meetings to exhaustive presentations from Plettenberg and SOS Elections Manager Stuart Fuller. “I think the state and state leaders, responsible ones, need to really make sure that the system is locked down and is highly reliable and auditable and verifiable,” MIT’s Stewart said. “Because if there are holes, if the state’s not doing best practices and something erroneous shows up, then it’s just going to be throwing gasoline on the fire.” That’s where the trust factor comes in. Post-election suspicion within the electorate is hardly new. Florida’s infamous 2000 presidential recount and Russia’s interference in the 2016 election both triggered national outrage among certain blocs of voters. But following his loss in 2020, Stewart said, President Donald Trump’s legal challenges in battleground states and false assertions about widespread voter fraud “kind of metastasized” into a social movement. Despite regular efforts by Stewart and other prominent political researchers to disprove them, election-challenging theories promulgated by MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, Ohio math teacher Doug Frank and other prominent figures in the so-called Stop the Steal movement have continued to influence grassroots activists across the country. In short, Stewart said, when it comes to trustworthiness, “I think there’s a core of people who will not be convinced.” What else you need to know: 01.30.202301.30.2023 01.30.202301.30.2023 01.27.202301.30.2023 As Fuller and others suggested during a Jan. 26 hearing of the Joint Select Committee on Election Security, that immovable disbelief informs the atmosphere in which the state’s recent elections have been conducted, and in which incremental changes to Montana’s election process are now being debated. Three members of the six-member committee hail from a group of Republican lawmakers that, during the past interim, joined forces as a self-titled ad hoc election integrity committee. Phalen is among them, as is Sen. Theresa Manzella, R-Hamilton, who facilitated a meeting in November 2020 between Lindell and Attorney General Austin Knudsen’s office. Manzella told MTFP that December that the meeting’s goal was to get Knudsen to sign on to a lawsuit Lindell intended to file with the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election. She also said Doug Frank was among the attendees. Trust is a central component in Bedey’s election proposals this session. In an interview with MTFP, he said he sees HB 172 and the rest of his election administration bills as a way to “improve upon an already excellent system.” As strong as that system is, Bedey continued, it’s important to remain on “the cutting edge” of election security and reassure the public that Montana is being proactive in addressing any threats that system might face. “Our citizens’ trust in our election system is absolutely essential,” Bedey said. “If people don’t believe in our election process, I see that as a rending of our social fabric.” Other lawmakers within Bedey’s party remain less convinced regarding Montana’s current state of election security. Manzella said during a recent interview with MTFP that she continues to harbor concerns about areas of “weakness and vulnerability” that she believes call for swift and decisive response from the Legislature. The list of policy goals she identified includes implementing best practices for the handling of unused ballots, enhancing security at polling places and verifying that registered voters are U.S. citizens. Asked how she responds to critics who question her motives in barking up this particular tree, Manzella replied that constituents are demanding that lawmakers turn attention to such issues, and it’s those constituents who “need to be satisfied that the process is safe.” “The only way that I see to repair [trust] is to shine a light on it and give everybody the opportunity to see it transparently and allow them the opportunity to ask their questions and have their questions and concerns satisfied,” Manzella said. “A person’s perception of reality is their reality.” THE POLICY DEBATE A week after its Jan. 12 hearing on HB 172, the House State Administration Committee took up yet another election-centric proposal, this one focused on a foundational component of the democratic process: ballot counting. House Bill 196, if passed, would require county election offices to conduct their counts to completion “without adjournment.” Rep. Lyn Hellegaard, R-Missoula, said she introduced the bill at the request of citizens “involved with voter integrity projects” across the state. Those exact words — “without adjournment” — were struck from state law in 2019 as part of a Republican-sponsored bill enabling election officials to prepare and count absentee ballots one day before an election. “Since this language was removed, the voters having [trust] in the integrity and security of our elections has eroded,” Hellegaard said. “I ask a do-pass [on HB 196] in an effort to start restoring voter trust.” County election officials balked at the change proposed in HB 196. Flathead County Clerk and Recorder Debbie Pierson testified that prior to 2019, her elections staff and volunteers worked as many as 30 to 40 hours “without a break, without sleep” counting ballots. Gallatin County Clerk and Recorder Eric Semerad estimated it took a total of 24 hours to process just the absentee ballots submitted on Election Day last November, and cautioned against placing additional burdens on election workers at a time when his office has experienced nearly 200% turnover in the past year. “It just really is not humane to expect the people that are the backbone of our election department here to have to work through all of that without a break,” Semerad said, adding that after pausing the count and securing the ballots late on election night 2022, his staff got “about three hours of sleep” before returning to resume the count the following morning.
- [New Wisconsin GOP chair pushes early voting](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/new-wisconsin-gop-chair-pushes-early-voting/) - The new chair of the state Republican Party is encouraging more Republicans to vote early, a sharp contrast to the message pushed in the last two election cycles by former President Donald Trump.Longtime GOP operative Brian Schimming was selected to lead the Republican Party of Wisconsin last December. The decision to hire Schimming to the job followed an election cycle in which Republicans lost races for governor and attorney general among other statewide offices, falling short of the "red wave" many Republican activists had expected. During an interview on Wisconsin Public Radio, new state GOP Chair Brian Schimming acknowledged that Republicans need to do things differently to win future elections in Wisconsin. "Republicans tend to be a little bit more Election Day voters," Schimming told WPR's "The Morning Show." "But I've said to people, 'Look, you can't go into Election Day 200,000 votes down in the early vote and expect to have to make it up in 13 hours.' And so we're encouraging an early vote." Absentee voting has consistently grown in popularity in Wisconsin, surging after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when many voters were looking for ways to avoid going to polling places. In last November's election, more than 740,000 Wisconsin voters cast absentee ballots. That number included around 318,000 who "early voted," casting absentee ballots in person at sites designated by their local clerks. Schimming's endorsement of early voting come on the heels of an election cycle where Trump remained extremely prominent, endorsing candidates throughout the country and continuing to falsely assert that he had won the 2020 election. In Wisconsin, there was at least talk among Republicans loyal to Trump that lawmakers should consider scaling back absentee voting.
- [Trust in Georgia Elections Rebounds from 2020 Lows](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/trust-in-georgia-elections-rebounds-from-2020-lows/) - Trust in Georgia Elections Rebounds from 2020 Lows
- [Virginia 4th District special election set for Feb. 21 - 13News Now](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/virginia-4th-district-special-election-set-for-feb-21-13news-now/) - The contest is between Democrat Jennifer McClellan and Republican Leon Benjamin to replace Don McEachin, who died late last year. RICHMOND, Va. — Voters in Virginia's 4th Congressional District will head to the polls in a little more than three weeks. A special election on February 21 will determine who replaces the late Rep. Donald McEachin, who died in November. Democrat State Senator Jennifer McClellan and Republican pastor Leon Benjamin are vying for the spot. It's Benjamin's third try for the seat. He lost twice to McEachin, most recently last November. It's McClellan's first bid for Congress. She previously ran for the Democratic nomination for governor but lost in a three-way primary contest to Terry McAuliffe. "I'm talking directly to the voters about my record, why I'm the best candidate to continue and build on Donald's legacy and bring a perspective to the Virginia delegation that's never been there before as a Black woman," McClellan said in an interview with 13News Now. '"I'm talking to people on the ground and whether they're independent, Democrat or Republican, and they're saying, 'You know what? It's time for a change,'" Benjamin stated in a separate interview with 13News Now. "The same old-same old has not been working.'" Benjamin refused to concede when he lost to McEachin in 2020 and 2022 and he also questioned the legitimacy of President Joe Biden's presidential win. "I have questions about the elections, but I'm not alone. We have about 75% of all American citizens are questioning what went on in the elections in 2020," Benjamin claimed without attributing any data indicating a large percentage of people questioning the 2020 election outcome. Now, he wants to debate McClellan. "I think she's hiding," he said. "My opponent is hiding and I think it's so unfair to the constituents." But McClellan said nobody has offered to host a debate. "First of all, no organization has extended an invitation or organized a debate that I'm aware of, or that my campaign is aware of. And we will consider such invitations for candidate forums or organized debates," she said. McClellan went on to suggest that Benjamin may be unworthy of participating in a debate. "I do think, though, if he has denied that he lost two elections and he has proven that facts don't matter, so it's kind of difficult to have a real, true debate with someone who denies facts," The comments are similar to what McEachin had to say last fall when Benjamin tried to insist upon a debate with him. In a letter to Benjamin, McEachin wrote: "You have refused to acknowledge either my victory in 2020 - and your defeat - or the victory of President Biden, I will note that I won by over 90,000 votes, a margin of almost 25%." McEachin continued: "Until you accept the results of the 2020 election, concede the 2020 congressional race and acknowledge President Biden's victory, I will make no joint appearance with you." The non-partisan University of Virginia Center for Politics' "Sabato's Crystal Ball" rates the Fourth District as "Safe Democratic." [embedded content]
- [Former Twitter executives to testify on company's handling of Hunter Biden story - PBS](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/former-twitter-executives-to-testify-on-companys-handling-of-hunter-biden-story-pbs/) - WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Twitter employees are expected to testify next week before the House Oversight Committee about the social media platform’s handling of reporting on President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. The scheduled testimony, confirmed by the committee Monday, will be the first time the three former executives will appear before Congress to discuss the company’s decision to initially block from Twitter a New York Post article on Hunter Biden’s laptop in the weeks before the 2020 election. Republicans have said the story was suppressed for political reasons, though no evidence has been released to support that claim. The witnesses for the Feb. 8 hearing are expected to be Vijaya Gadde, former chief legal officer; James Baker, former deputy general counsel; and Yoel Roth, former head of safety and integrity. The hearing is among the first of many in a GOP-controlled House to be focused on Biden and his family, as Republicans wield the power of their new, albeit slim, majority. The New York Post first reported in October 2020 that it had received from former President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, a copy of a hard drive of a laptop that Hunter Biden had dropped off 18 months earlier at a Delaware computer repair shop and never retrieved. Twitter initially blocked people from sharing links to the story for several days. Months later, Twitter’s then-CEO Jack Dorsey called the company’s communications around the Post article “not great.” He added that blocking the article’s URL with “zero context” around why it was blocked was “unacceptable.” READ MORE: House Republicans push for investigation into Hunter Biden’s art sales The Post article at the time was greeted with skepticism due to questions about the laptop’s origins, including Giuliani’s involvement, and because top officials in the Trump administration had already warned that Russia was working to denigrate Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election. The Kremlin had interfered in the 2016 race by hacking Democratic emails that were subsequently leaked, and fears that Russia would meddle again in the 2020 race were widespread across Washington. “This is why we’re investigating the Biden family for influence peddling,” Rep. James Comer, chairman of the Oversight committee, said at a press event Monday morning. “We want to make sure that our national security is not compromised.” The White House has sought to discredit the Republican probes into Hunter Biden, calling them “divorced-from-reality political stunts.” Nonetheless, Republicans now hold subpoena power in the House, giving them the authority to compel testimony and conduct an aggressive investigation. GOP staff has spent the past year analyzing messages and financial transactions found on the laptop that belonged to the president’s younger son. Comer has previously said the evidence they have compiled is “overwhelming,” but did not offer specifics. Comer has pledged there won’t be hearings regarding the Biden family until the committee has the evidence to back up any claims of alleged wrongdoing. He also acknowledged that the stakes are high whenever an investigation centers on the leader of a political party. On Monday, the Kentucky Republican, speaking at a National Press Club event, said that he could not guarantee a subpoena of Hunter Biden during his term. “We’re going to go where the investigation leads us. Maybe there’s nothing there.” He added, “We’ll see.”
- [Trump's Lawyer Urges Him Not to Let Go of 2020 Election - Newsweek](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/trumps-lawyer-urges-him-not-to-let-go-of-2020-election-newsweek/) - Former President Donald Trump shouldn't move on from the 2020 election, according to his attorney Christina Bobb.More than two years after the election, which saw President Joe Biden defeat Trump by winning narrow victories in battleground states, Trump has refused to concede defeat. Instead, he and his supporters have pointed to alleged voter fraud in these key states as stealing the election from him, despite a lack of substantial evidence to back up these claims.Trump is now running in the Republican primary to challenge Biden during the 2024 election. So far, his campaign—which has been marred by a number of investigations, including into his conduct surrounding the 2020 election—has largely centered around his stolen election claims.However, some Republicans have sought to move away from these election fraud claims following a disappointing midterm election. Despite President Biden's struggling approval rating, Republicans only retook a slim majority in the House of Representatives and failed to win a majority in the Senate. Above, an image of former President Donald Trump alongside an inset of a voting sign. Trump attorney Christina Bobb urged him not to move on from the 2020 election last week, instead saying he should launch an investigation into the race if he wins the 2024 presidential election. LOGAN CYRUS/AFP via Getty Images; ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images Trump-endorsed candidates whose campaigns focused on election denialism lost in competitive races, delivering key victories to their Democratic opponents. Some Republicans have since raised concerns that focusing on these theories could turn away moderate voters in competitive races.Concerns that election denialism may be electorally toxic for Republicans are not deterring Bobb from talking about the 2020 election.Bobb doubled down on stolen election claims during a lengthy interview that aired last week on the right-wing news outlet American Media Periscope, in which she accused U.S. leaders, without naming anybody specifically, of trying to "enslave everybody."She suggested Trump could take legal action to launch an investigation into the 2020 race if he defeats Biden next year. Video of the interview was posted to Twitter by the Republican Accountability Project. "We will get Donald Trump back in office," she said. "And by that point I think we need an investigation into who actually overthrew the United States government to install a fake president in 2020. Personally, I would like to see that investigated for the first time, and I think that we need to get Donald Trump back in office before that can happen."Despite these remarks, election officials across the United States have maintained the integrity and accuracy of the 2020 presidential election. No substantial evidence has been provided to prove the election was stolen from Trump.Bobb, a former anchor of the right-wing One America News Network who joined Trump's team last year, has made a number of controversial statements about the 2020 election. She last year claimed that Trump would be reinstated as president if Republicans retook control of Congress, a claim that has not turned out to be true.She also said last year that Republican Kari Lake, who lost Arizona's gubernatorial race to Democrat Katie Hobbs, could also eventually become governor if election fraud was proven. Lake, like Trump, has claimed election fraud, but her legal battles have not proven to be fruitful so far.Newsweek reached out to Trump's office for comment.
- [For Trump, Georgia election case just one of many legal woes - ABC News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/for-trump-georgia-election-case-just-one-of-many-legal-woes-abc-news/) - An investigation in Georgia on efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election defeat is one of a number of cases that pose legal problems for the former president.A judge in Atlanta is weighing arguments on whether to release a special grand jury's report expected to include recommendations for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on possible criminal prosecution.Trump faces myriad inquiries as he campaigns for another term in 2024, including a criminal investigation over top secret documents found at his Florida estate, a probe in Washington into his efforts to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election, and more probes in New York.Trump, a Republican, has denied any wrongdoing and says he is being targeted by Democrats trying to keep him from reclaiming the White House.Here’s a look at the probes underway in different states and venues: MAR-A-LAGO The Justice Department is investigating the retention of top secret government documents at Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, and potential efforts to obstruct that probe.As part of that inquiry, agents and prosecutors have spent months interviewing multiple people close to Trump, including an aide who was seen on surveillance video moving boxes of documents at the property.A grand jury in Washington has been hearing evidence in the investigation. Prosecutors last year granted limited immunity to one close Trump ally to secure his testimony.Attorney General Merrick Garland in November named Jack Smith, a veteran war crimes prosecutor who previously led the Justice Department’s public integrity section, to serve as special counsel over the Mar-a-Lago investigation and key aspects of a separate probe into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.2020 ELECTION AND CAPITOL RIOT The Justice Department is investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and efforts to overturn the election Trump falsely claimed was stolen. Federal prosecutors have been especially focused on a scheme by Trump allies to elevate fake presidential electors in key battleground states won by President Joe Biden as a way to subvert the vote, issuing subpoenas to multiple state Republican party chairmen.Federal prosecutors have brought multiple Trump administration officials before the grand jury for questioning, including the former Trump White House counsel and a top aide to Vice President Mike Pence.In a sign of the expanding nature of the investigation, election officials in multiple states whose results were disputed by Trump have received subpoenas asking for communications with or involving Trump and his campaign aides.A House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack recommended that the Justice Department bring criminal charges against Trump and associates who helped him launch a wide-ranging pressure campaign to try to overturn his 2020 election loss.Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.GEORGIAAfter his 2020 election loss, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and urged him to “find 11,780 votes” — just enough to overtake Democrat Joe Biden and overturn Trump's narrow loss in the state.That Jan. 2 phone call was part of a monthslong investigation by a special grand jury in Atlanta investigating whether crimes were committed as part of the pressure campaign to overturn Trump's defeat. Among those who were questioned by the special grand jury are Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and Trump lawyer; Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina; and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp.Prosecutors have advised Giuliani and Georgia Republicans who served as fake electors that they are at risk of being indicted. The fake electors signed a certificate asserting Trump had won the election and declaring themselves the state’s electors, even though Biden had won the state and a slate of Democratic electors had already been certified.Trump and his allies have denied any wrongdoing, and he has repeatedly described his phone call to Raffensperger as “perfect.”NEW YORKNew York Attorney General Letitia James has sued Trump and the Trump Organization, saying it misled banks and tax authorities about the value of assets like golf courses and skyscrapers to get loans and tax benefits.That lawsuit, which is pending, could lead to civil penalties against the company if the Democratic attorney general prevails. She wants $250 million and a ban on Trump doing business in New York.In the meantime, a judge has appointed an independent monitor to watch the company. The Manhattan district attorney’s office says it is continuing to pursue a parallel criminal investigation into Trump’s business dealings.District Attorney Alvin Bragg recently named a new senior prosecutor to oversee that probe, which had appeared to be heading toward a possible Trump indictment when the Democrat slowed things down after taking office a year ago.Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen said he met Jan. 17 with Manhattan prosecutors who have revived a years-old investigation into payments made to a porn star to keep her quiet about an alleged extramarital tryst with Trump.In another case, the Trump Organization was convicted of tax fraud in December for helping executives dodge taxes on extravagant perks such as Manhattan apartments and luxury cars. Trump himself was not on trial. The company was fined $1.6 million.
- [Far-right project that pushed election lies expands mission as Trump ramps up 2024 campaign](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/far-right-project-that-pushed-election-lies-expands-mission-as-trump-ramps-up-2024-campaign/) - Far-right project that pushed election lies expands mission as Trump ramps up 2024 campaign ReAwaken America faces criticism from religious leaders as it pushes disinformation using Christian nationalist messages A far-right project that has helped spread Donald Trump’s false claims about voting fraud in 2020, and misinformation about Covid vaccines, is trying to expand its mission, while facing new criticism from scholars and religious leaders about its incendiary political and Christian nationalist messages.ReAwaken America, a project of the Oklahoma-based entrepreneur Clay Clark, has hosted numerous revival-style political events across the US after receiving tens of thousands of dollars in initial funds in 2021 from millionaire Patrick Byrne, and become a key vehicle for pushing election denialism and falsehoods about Covid vaccines.ReAwaken America also boasts close ties to retired Lt Gen Michael Flynn, who in December 2020 met with Trump, Byrne and others at the White House to plot ways to reverse Trump’s election loss. The meeting happened shortly after Trump pardoned Flynn, who was convicted for lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador before serving briefly as Trump’s national security adviser.Clark’s project also has links to Dr Simone Gold, who served a 60-day jail sentence for illegally entering the Capitol on 6 January and founded America’s Frontline Doctors, an anti-vaccine group that has also touted bogus cures.“Christian nationalism has deep roots in American history and has gained traction at different points,” said Amanda Tyler, the executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. “The ReAwaken America Tour taps into the unholy well of Christian nationalism to sow doubt about the US election system and the safety of Covid vaccines while equating allegiance to Trumpism with allegiance to God.”She added: “Clay Clark and others who run this tour are using the name of Jesus, holy scripture and worship music to promote a partisan political agenda and personal business interests.”Flynn and Gold have made multiple appearances at ReAwaken America events, and spoke this January at a two-day gathering hosted at the Tennessee church of rightwing pastor Greg Locke. It drew other Trump loyalists such as the My Pillow chief Mike Lindell, Eric Trump, Roger Stone and Kash Patel, all of whom have appeared at other ReAwaken meetings.Locke has attended a few other ReAwaken events too, and earned notoriety for calling vaccines “sugar water”, the pandemic fake, and holding book burnings.In a rabble-rousing attack on medical professionals at the Tennessee meeting, Gold announced that she plans to launch an “antidote” to the CDC on 10 March and denounced “mainstream systems” as being “ totally corrupted”.Gold was ousted from her post at the Frontline doctors group by its board last fall in a nasty legal dispute that alleged she misappropriated funds for her personal use, including the purchase of a $3.6m home in Florida and three cars, one of which is a Mercedes-Benz.Gold has countered reportedly in emails to three board members charging that “murdering the organization is incompatible with your fiduciary obligation to the organization”.Besides hosting Gold at its meetings, the ReAwaken website serves as a resource for vaccine naysayers. It provides information about jobs where proof of vaccinations are not required, and how to “request a Covid vaccine religious exemption”.To expand its events and audience in coming months, ReAwaken America has announced plans for a gathering in May to be held at the tony Trump National Doral golf club in Miami. Another is slated for Las Vegas in August.The ReAwaken event at Trump’s club could prove useful to Trump, too, as his fledgling campaign has reportedly witnessed a drop-off in support from some evangelical allies who have backed him in the past.The Doral event may “give the appearance that Trump is still strong among the evangelical community”, quipped veteran GOP consultant Charlie Black, adding that “it will be more expensive to do it at the Doral” than other venues the tour has used.But for mainstream religious leaders and scholars who have studied the growing influence of the Christian nationalist right, the evangelical trappings and talks at the ReAwaken events, coupled with conspiratorial claims about Trump’s loss and vaccine misinformation, are worrisome, and have prompted a backlash.Tyler’s group has worked with a religious coalition called Faithful America to mobilize mainstream leaders to take public stands against ReAwaken events, and has helped organize rallies to counter them in Tennessee and other states last year.“Our goal is to help Christians provide an alternative witness in the public square,” Tyler stressed, adding that these efforts began a few years ago as a movement dubbed “Christians against Christian nationalism. They want to counter the misinformation and threats to democracy.”Likewise, several academic critics are raising concerns about the medical falsehoods related to vaccines that Gold and others have spread at the ReAwaken events, as well as the far right’s mantra that the 2020 election was rigged.“The religious nature of these events is a pretext for a rally by people who are united by feeling victimized and outraged,” said Samuel Perry, a sociologist at the University of Oklahoma. “This is incredibly corrosive for democracy, because you have a group of political leaders and their followers who not only feel victimized by the culture, but they feel like the very political system is against them. That’s how you get populist coup attempts.”With regard to the attacks on vaccines, Perry said: “The rhetoric that we’re seeing from the Christian far right against medical experts stems from a variety of different sources, including the partisan tendency to fall in line behind leadership, information silos, and a bent toward populist conspiracy theories.”“From the earliest days of the pandemic, the issue of Covid response was politicized: Republicans and those on the right were more inclined to view any claims from so-called ‘experts’ with suspicion,” Perry added. “That obviously included masks and lockdowns, but ultimately bled into Covid-19 vaccines. These partisan conspiracies were promoted by pastors, conservative TV news and Christian talk radio, where conservative Christians would be more inclined to get their news.”Besides the ReAwaken tour’s events, there has been a drive by Gold, Flynn and other key figures in the election-denialist and anti-vaccine ecosystems to promote their conspiracies on multiple platforms, including the America Project that Byrne launched in early 2021 with Flynn as a key adviser.The America Project touts multiple missions – including election integrity, medical freedom and religious freedom – and likens its role to that of a “symphony conductor” with the goal of “magnifying the efforts of those who wish to ally with us through connecting, training, funding and working together to save America”. America’s Frontline Doctors, the group Gold founded, is listed among its allies.Byrne told the Guardian in 2021 that his group put up “tens of thousands of dollars” to launch the ReAwaken tour, and that he has attended some of their events too.In similarly expansive language, Gold’s rhetoric in Tennessee veered into a prophetic style as she talked up her vision for changing America: “We will create a separate society that is founded on righteousness, objective standards of right and wrong, good and evil.”From a historical perspective, the current role played by Christian nationalism in tandem with the election denial movement and the dubious critiques about Covid vaccines has been fueled by the rise of less-educated evangelicals in politics, especially in Republican ranks, said David Hollinger, a history professor emeritus at Berkeley.“White evangelicals are among the least educated of Americans. The Republican party’s increasing reliance upon them marks an unprecedented stage in American history: for the first time, one of the major political parties displays contempt for learning. Not even the Democratic party of Andrew Jackson was so dependent for its success on anti-intellectual postures.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2024US politicsnewsReuse this content
- [Chris Christie Says Trump Won't Win 2024 General Election - People.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/chris-christie-says-trump-wont-win-2024-general-election-people-com/) - Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says Donald Trump "can't win a general election" — as evidenced by his failure in 2020.
- [Charlie Russell Continues to Make Strides with COVID-19 Recovery | Christian Standard](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/charlie-russell-continues-to-make-strides-with-covid-19-recovery-christian-standard/) - CHARLIE AND FAITH RUSSELL AND THEIR DAUGHTER, CHARITY By Chris Moon Charlie Russell’s recovery from COVID-19 and multiple attendant health challenges during weeks of hospitalization in 2021 has gone better than expected—much better. His bout with COVID-19 had done significant damage to his body and caused his lungs to collapse and kidneys to fail, which required dialysis. He battled infections and sepsis. But improvements have continued since he returned to his home in November 2021. At one point, his medical team told him he likely wouldn’t be able to run again. “I’m actually on my way to pick up a treadmill right now,” Russell told Christian Standard during a recent interview. Russell is the son of Rusty Russell, lead pastor of New Day Christian Church in Port Charlotte, Fla. He’s also the grandson of Bob Russell, retired senior minister of Louisville’s Southeast Christian Church. In early August 2021, Charlie Russell was hospitalized with COVID-19. His case was so severe that doctors finally put Charlie on a ventilator. His chances to live were slim. His story captivated many who followed the regular Facebook updates by Charlie’s wife, Faith. Her Facebook page—“Charlie’s Road to Recovery!”—was created shortly after he was hospitalized. Thousands of people prayed daily for Charlie and the family. The page has 9,800 members and continues to share updates. Charlie’s story even involved the birth of his daughter, Charity, who was delivered while he was hospitalized. Those were difficult—but blessed—times. Charlie spent six weeks heavily sedated while intubated. He finally improved enough to be taken off the ventilator in October 2021. He went home about a month later. When Christian Standard interviewed Charlie and his family for an article exactly a year ago, he had made significant strides in his recovery. But he still was fighting what’s called “drop foot,” a condition where a person has difficulty lifting their foot, making it difficult to walk. Charlie also had been sent home from the hospital with 13 medications. EXCITED ABOUT RUNNING Much has changed since then. Today, Charlie is on just three medications, mostly for nerve pain. He recently was removed from a heart medication. His lung capacity no longer is diminished. He has some scarring on his lungs, but it doesn’t affect him in a negative way, he said. And Charlie’s drop foot still is present but is much improved—hence the acquisition of a treadmill. “You make little-by-little increments of progress,” Charlie said. “I never thought I’d be so excited about running, but that’s where I am now.” In March 2022, the young family moved from Tennessee to Port Charlotte, Fla.—where they are closer to Charlie’s family. Charlie is mostly back to full speed as a freelance graphic designer. Faith is a home health nurse. Charity is almost a year and a half old. The family now attends New Day Christian Church, where Charlie serves on the kids’ worship team. It’s not easy to keep up with kids, he jokes. “It takes a lot of energy,” he said. “It takes a lot of exertion.” Charlie still uses some assistance on long walks, such as getting around at one of Florida’s theme parks. “His legs were so weak,” Faith Russell said. “It has taken some time to build up his strength.” ‘WE NEED HIM ALL THE TIME’ The couple is keeping life in perspective. “I think about that experience a lot,” Charlie said. He said he thanks God he is able to kiss his wife and to pick up his daughter. “I remember how quickly you can lose those precious moments,” he said. Faith said she finds it is easy to fall back into a day-to-day grind without recognizing it. A person can get overwhelmed and take things for granted. “We have to take a step back,” she said. “I get to argue with my husband. I get to clean the house. I get to fix dinner. I’m not raising Charity alone.” She said she also remembers the power of prayer—seeking God in the good times and bad. “We need Him all the time,” she said. Chris Moon is a pastor and writer living in Redstone, Colo.
- [Flu cases drop across Kentuckiana as health officials see increase in 'mild' COVID-19 cases](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/flu-cases-drop-across-kentuckiana-as-health-officials-see-increase-in-mild-covid-19-cases/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Flu cases are dropping throughout Kentuckiana. From Jan. 15-21, Kentucky confirmed 309 new flu cases. That's half the number of cases reported during the first week of the year.Indiana is seeing a similar decline."Fortunately, it's kind of stabilized out a little bit," said Dr. Eric Yazel, Clark County health officer. Yazel said Indiana had "huge spikes" last month, but for the past few weeks it declined a bit."I would say it's kind a the lull between the storm," he said.Yazel said Clark County saw a huge spike during the holidays and, even though things are on a decline, they expect another peak of flu cases at the end of February."A lot of people wait until there is a big outbreak to get their shot," he said. "Now is a great time to get your immunization, because it takes a few weeks to build up that immunity, so, you will be protected for the next run."So far this year, Kentucky has confirmed 132 flu-related deaths this flu season. Indiana has reported 163."That's just kind of the viral pattern, to be honest. It hits hard. You get a big peak, you know, it levels out after a week or two, then it goes back down to normal until the next peak," Yazel said. "So, I think we are fortunate to just be in one of those down turn times, but that changes really fast."Yazel said even though the health department is watching flu cases decline, COVID-19 is making another comeback."Fortunately, most of the cases are very mild that we are seeing right now, but we are seeing a few more cases recently than we have been," he said.For those who already have their vaccines, Yazel said to keep washing your hands and stay home if you think you're sick."All the things you have been hearing from us for the last three years or so, still hold true," he said.For information about getting a flu shot in the Louisville area, click here. For the rest of Kentucky, click here. For information about getting vaccinated in Indiana, click here.Copyright 2023 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
- [After 'Hot Spot' Cops Killed Tyre Nichols, Hochul Boosts Them in New York](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/after-hot-spot-cops-killed-tyre-nichols-hochul-boosts-them-in-new-york/) - “WE’RE DOUBLING DOWN,” Governor Kathy Hochul said last week of her policing agenda. Three days before the city of Memphis, Tennessee, released four videos of officers with its police department’s SCORPION street crime unit beating Tyre Nichols to death, Hochul spoke at a police intelligence hub in Albany, touting plans to ramp up state government support for similar squads in New York. The SCORPION unit, which the Memphis Police Department announced it was disbanding on Saturday, was a “hot spot” policing team, tasked with flooding crime-dense urban areas with street cops in the hopes of smothering interpersonal violence. Such units have popped up across the country in recent years — including in New York, where Hochul is planning to funnel tens of millions of dollars to initiatives focused on hot spot policing and related strategies. The governor’s policing agenda centers on beefing up a grant program that pushes local law enforcement to aggressively patrol crime-dense communities, closely monitor their members, and compile information on likely “offenders.” The initiative, the Gun Involved Violence Elimination (GIVE) program, focuses on shootings, but grantees have used its resources to tackle everything from drug crime to parole enforcement. Hochul doubled funding for GIVE last year, and has proposed doubling it again in this year’s state budget. A spokesperson for the governor noted that GIVE is a “nationally recognized program that requires participating agencies to use proven, evidence-based strategies” to drive down gun violence. Grantee departments “must engage with the community, use procedural justice,” and submit their implementation plans to the state for approval. The spokesperson rejected any comparison between GIVE and Memphis’s SCORPION unit — “there are no similarities,” they said — but did not address the policing concepts that undergird both initiatives. Hot spot policing can drive significant short-term crime reductions, research has found, but cops often employ violent tactics in their pursuit. The units have been responsible for some of the highest-profile instances of police abuse in recent years, including the 2020 killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky. LAUNCHED IN 2014, New York’s GIVE initiative offers cash and technical assistance to police and sheriff’s departments, district attorneys, and probation offices in 17 counties across the state. The aim, in Hochul’s words, is to allow them to “focus on the small number of individuals” responsible for “persistent violent crime.” Cornerstones of GIVE include hot spot policing and “focused deterrence,” which take as their central premise that a limited group of people are usually responsible for most of the interpersonal violence that takes place in crime-dense areas. Police departments identify crime hot spots and ramp up patrols, community outreach, and undercover operations there, while gathering information about perceived troublemakers — and targeting them for arrest, sometimes for virtually any infraction. We’re not defunding the police. We are really ramping up funding for police. Governor Kathy Hochul In July 2017, for example, Syracuse police came up with a list of 34 people “at the highest risk for perpetrating or being a victim of gun crime” in an area experiencing many shootings, then watched them closely for six months. By the end, cops had arrested 26 of them through “proactive enforcement efforts,” according to a GIVE annual report. The report didn’t mention how police came to target the nearly three dozen people, nor why they were arrested. But that program dovetailed with another Syracuse police initiative, also featured in a GIVE report, which focused on getting alleged gang members off the streets by throwing the book at them whenever possible. “We’re going to make [their] lives miserable,” Richard Trudell, who helped implement the program, told Syracuse.com when the initiative launched a decade ago. He said that anything from warrant sweeps to child support enforcement to parking tickets was on the table. GIVE efforts similarly target people on parole and probation. Police reports and a complaint from a 2016 civil rights lawsuit show that, as part of GIVE policing, Syracuse cops, county sheriff’s deputies, and US Marshals closely monitored and conducted home inspections of parolees. In one instance, they staked out the home of a man whom they suspected of dealing cocaine, then followed him in an unmarked car as he drove his son to school. They eventually pulled him over, drove him to his house, and handcuffed his family as they searched his home, where they reported finding drugs. OFFICIALS REPORT THAT local GIVE-funded campaigns have corresponded with reductions in violent crimes in target areas. One GIVE report, for example, brags that a hot spot in Buffalo saw a 23 percent decrease in shootings between 2013 and 2018. “We’re investing in what we know works,” Hochul said of the program during her State of the State address this month. But it’s not a panacea: Overall, shooting numbers from GIVE jurisdictions have followed nationwide trends. “It’s not like hotspot policing has actually succeeded in any long term crime turn around,” said Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, professor of law at American University and author of The Rise of Big Data Policing. “The problem is poverty and disinvestment in communities, not coming up with a new theory of policing.” Another of GIVE’s strategies focuses on manipulating the landscapes of hot spot communities to make them less hospitable to crime, in part through hostile design concepts like removing structures to improve “natural surveillance” and limiting access to public spaces. In 2019, a task force in Binghamton learned of an eight-unit apartment building where tenants and neighbors had complained of drug use, disrepair, and loud parties, and where police had been called for overdoses and burglaries, according to a GIVE report. The task force condemned the building, forced the owner to evict all of the tenants, and then, after the owner made repairs on the empty building, lifted the condemned status. Hot spot enforcement falls within a broader category of street policing doctrines — with roots in “broken windows” and “stop-and-frisk” — linked to some of the most egregious police abuse incidents in recent memory. The unit that killed Breonna Taylor as she slept in her Louisville, Kentucky, apartment was overseeing a hot spot policing initiative there. In New York City, aggressive street policing teams were responsible for killing Amadou Diallo, Eric Garner, Sean Bell, Kimani Gray, and dozens of others. From Baltimore to Atlanta to Washington, DC, cops have used these units’ mandates as an excuse to attack community members and commit civil rights abuses. Mainstream criminologists assert that that doesn’t have to be the case. Scholars like David Weisburd, who worked with one of the earliest hot spot units in Minneapolis in the 1980s, has long argued that police departments could both drive down crime and retain legitimacy if they gave hot spot cops better training on how to respect community members. Others have echoed the idea. Yet problematic departments are still frequently tasked with carrying out the aggressive strategies. Syracuse police feature especially prominently in GIVE reports. In 2020, the state attorney general’s office launched an investigation into the Syracuse Police Department over whether it “engages in policies or practices that negatively impact communities of color,” per documents obtained by Central Current. Syracuse cops have told investigators that the department routinely disregards civil rights laws to make arrests, with one recalling that he was instructed: “Don’t worry about probable cause.” The attorney general’s office told New York Focus that the nearly three-year investigation is ongoing. LAST YEAR, Hochul doubled state funding for the GIVE program. In her State of the State address this month, she announced plans to double that again, bringing a program that received $9 million in 2021 to $36 million this year. The latest funding increase would enable the hiring of 150 new police officers and prosecutors. It’s one of several ways Hochul is planning to boost law enforcement funding in this year’s state budget. And unlike at the local level, where officials like New York City Mayor Eric Adams are routinely grilled over proposals to increase police funding, Hochul’s expansion plans have so far received little scrutiny. New York’s Crime Analysis Center Network, a series of 10 regional police intelligence hubs, works closely with officers working on GIVE projects. Syracuse police developed the 34 focused deterrence targets with help from the Onondaga Crime Analysis Center, and in 2020, Rochester police worked with the Monroe Crime Analysis Center to monitor community members’ Facebook accounts in order to label them as gang members — a practice activists assert is ripe for errors and abuse. Last year, Hochul nearly doubled funding to the network — from $8 million to $15 million. And in her recent State of the State, she announced plans to create a crime analysis center focused on New York City. Hochul is also deploying the state’s own street cops to help local departments police crime-dense areas. Last year, she doubled the capacity of the New York State Police’s Community Stabilization Units, increasing their funding to $13 million and deploying them to 16 communities across the state. In her recent State of the State, she announced similar plans to expand the units, deploying them to 25 communities. They are deployed “to address violence and surges in crime” and “remove guns and drugs from the streets,” according to the spokesperson for her office. And Hochul is planning on further boosting the State Police’s ranks. The department halted training for new uniformed officers when the Covid-19 pandemic hit; the governor plans to give it funding for four new academy classes. “We’re not defunding the police,” the governor assured a crowd of cops and reporters last week. (No New York jurisdiction has significantly cut law enforcement spending since “defund the police” became a common activist slogan in 2020.) “We are really ramping up funding for police. So all that era is over.”
- [David McAtee's family settles wrongful death lawsuit against Louisville police, Kentucky ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/david-mcatees-family-settles-wrongful-death-lawsuit-against-louisville-police-kentucky/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – The family of David McAtee, a popular West End business owner who died after he was struck by a bullet fired by the Kentucky National Guard during protests over Breonna Taylor's death in 2020, has received $725,000 to settle a lawsuit.An attorney for Odessa Riley, McAtee's mother, confirmed the settlement on Monday. "The family wanted to put all litigation behind them, both for themselves and the city that David loved," according to a statement by attorney Steve Romines. "Ms. Odessa is 89 years old and had no desire to litigate for another five years."The lawsuit accused law enforcement of making a series of escalating mistakes, including firing pepper balls at fleeing citizens, turning off body cameras and using deadly force without justification or warning.The suit, filed in Jefferson Circuit Court in September 2020, claimed the 53-year-old barbecue chef committed no crime before he was killed on June 1, 2020.McAtee was inside his home and business, YaYa's Barbecue at 26th and Broadway, "calmly grilling" a little after midnight as people milled about outside of Dino's Food Mart across the street, according to the suit. At the time, there had been four nights of protests over Taylor's March, 13, 2020 killing by Louisville police.But people were "not protesting, vandalizing or looting" when police and guard members "swarmed" the area in unmarked vans and armored vehicles and began yelling for people to leave, according to the suit.Within just a few minutes, McAtee was dead and his niece, Machelle, who is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit, had been shot with pepper balls while standing just inside the kitchen of the business, which the suit noted has long been "a place of refuge" for locals and police officers looking for a good barbeque sandwich.Video shows that as Machelle McAtee is pulled inside by David McAtee, he leans out the door and fires a bullet. When he reaches out and fires again seconds later, LMPD Officers Allen Austin and Katie Crews and two members of the National Guard returned fire, 18 shots in total.Crews pleaded guilty in October to one count of misdemeanor deprivation of civil rights under the color of law after admitting she used "unreasonable force" by shooting pepper balls at Machelle McAtee while she was standing on private property and not a threat to officers.She was sentenced on Monday to two years probation with the stipulation that she not seek a job in law enforcement again.The lawsuit, filed by attorneys Romines, Ted Shouse and Michael Goodwin, said Crews initiated the sequence of events leading to McAtee's death, shooting pepper balls at people in front of YaYa's, forcing them to run inside the restaurant's kitchen door and then continuing to fire, hitting McAtee's niece.In an interview, Shouse noted that it was significant it took "federal intervention to bring the truth to light in court. It was federal authorities who pushed criminal charges."Police have said they were dispersing a crowd when McAtee fired a gun from the doorway of his business and officers returned fire.David McAtee's family and attorneys say he didn't know who was shooting at his restaurant and fired up in the air, not at officers. Police have said McAtee fired at officers. Available video is inconclusive.An analysis of the bullet fragments recovered from McAtee's body show they were fired from a guard member, but investigators have not been able to identify which rifle they came from. He died from a single gunshot wound to the chest.Security video shows Machelle react to the sudden impact and external video shows puffs of smoke from the fired pepper balls."At this point, still no individual had used any force toward any law enforcement officer, and the police use of weapons was completely unnecessary and gratuitous, and in violation of law and police policies and procedures," according to the suit.McAtee, the suit claims, was "unaware" of who was shooting and why and looked outside at the same time police fired projectiles "that exploded in smoke around the door."McAtee was wearing a gun holstered on his right hip. The lawsuit claims police had in the past told him he needed to carry a weapon to protect himself and his business.When McAtee again looked out the door, he raised his arm in the air and those responding "immediately unleashed a hail of at least 18 bullets," striking him in the chest, according to the suit. He stumbled back into the kitchen and fell.Romines has said McAtee was firing warning shots into the air.McAtee and his niece had committed no crime or disobeyed any commands from law enforcement, the suit says."They were not in violation of the newly imposed curfew," according to the suit. "They had not threatened any officer and posed no immediate threat to any officer."The night of the McAtee shooting, police had fired flash bang grenades and tear gas at protesters in Jefferson Square Park and were, the suit says, "amped up, armed to the hilt, and still spoiling for a fight" when they arrived at 26th and Broadway.Members of the guard were not supposed to make arrests or fire their weapons without instruction from commanding officers, the suit claims.After McAtee was killed, police left his body on the ground at the scene for more than 12 hours, which is not typical procedure, the suit says.The conduct from law enforcement was "so outrageous as to shock the conscious," according to the suit. A jury trial had been scheduled to begin in April. Copyright 2023 Media. All Rights Reserved.
- [Former LMPD officer sentenced in shooting outside David McAtee's restaurant - WHAS11](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/former-lmpd-officer-sentenced-in-shooting-outside-david-mcatees-restaurant-whas11/) - Katie Crews previously pleaded guilty to using excessive force, admitting to shooting McAtee's niece with pepper balls the night he was killed. LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A former Louisville Metro Police officer who pleaded guilty to using excessive force during the Breonna Taylor protests won't see any jail time. Katie Crews, 29, was federally charged due to her part in escalating a conflict the night restaurant owner David McAtee was shot and killed. In court Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Beaton said he "reluctantly" agreed to a probation sentence for Crews' misdemeanor charge. He called probation "the best of our bad options." Prosecutors had suggested a sentence of one year probation and 100 hours of community service. Beaton instead issued a harsher sentence of two years probation, 200 hours of community service and a $5,000 fine. While Crews didn't shoot McAtee, prosecutors say she started the chain of events by firing pepper balls toward his restaurant. McAtee's niece was hit by those pepper balls which prompted McAtee to shoot out his doorway. He was shot and killed by a member of the state National Guard. [embedded content] Monday, defense attorney Steve Schroering said Crews had dedicated her life to service and didn't have any disciplinary issues before the night of McAtee's death. Beaton asked Schroering about a Facebook post and text messages, described in court documents, that Crews made about the 2020 protests. Schroering said the comments were in response to the stress of the situation. Monday, prosecutors said the victim's family and attorneys were on board with the decision and wouldn't be submitting a victim impact statement. Crews herself didn't speak in court. As part of the plea agreement, she also agreed not to seek employment as a law enforcement officer again. It comes as the McAtee family's attorney, Steve Romines, said the family has also settled its separate wrongful death lawsuit against LMPD and the Kentucky National Guard. "The family wanted to put all litigation behind them, both for themselves and the city that David loved," Romines said in a statement. "Ms. Odessa is 89-years-old and had no desire to litigate for another five years." Make it easy to keep up-to-date with more stories like this. Download the WHAS11 News app now. For Apple or Android users. Have a news tip? Email assign@whas11.com, visit our Facebook page or Twitter feed.
- [Former LMPD officer charged for actions the night of David McAtee's death avoids jail time](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/former-lmpd-officer-charged-for-actions-the-night-of-david-mcatees-death-avoids-jail-time/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - The former Louisville Metro Police officer who fired pepper balls to disperse crowds leading to the death of a west Louisville restaurant owner will not face prison time.On Monday, a judge said Katie Crews would serve probation time for her charge of deprivation of rights under color of law which she pleaded guilty to in October.She will serve two years of probation, 200 hours of community service and a $5,000 fine, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.“As in this case, our office will work diligently with our federal and local law enforcement partners to ensure the citizens of the Western District are protected from the use of excessive force by officers sworn to protect them,” U.S. Attorney Michael A. Bennett for the Western District of Kentucky said in a release.Prosecutors previously argued Crews’ actions were excessive the night of David “YaYa” McAtee’s death in June 2020, but was done with a “legitimate law enforcement purpose.”Court documents said Crews and other officers were given orders to disperse crowds who had gathered during summer protests following the death of Breonna Taylor. > >FULL COVERAGE: The Breonna Taylor CaseMcAtee’s niece, Machelle McAtee, had refused to get back inside the restaurant during an enacted curfew, leading to verbal arguments and eventual pepper balls being fired.David McAtee pulled Machelle out of the doorway, and documents stated he took a gun and fired several shots outside the door.Crews, along with another LMPD officer and two National Guard soldiers returned fire. McAtee was hit by one of the National Guard soldier’s bullets, which led to his death.A federal investigation into Crews was started by the FBI once she was cleared of all state charges.Copyright 2023 WAVE. All rights reserved.
- [David McAtee's family settles wrongful death lawsuit with Louisville - Courier-Journal](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/david-mcatees-family-settles-wrongful-death-lawsuit-with-louisville-courier-journal/) - More than two and a half years after Louisville barbecue stand owner David McAtee was killed by law enforcement officers during the first nights of the 2020 protests, a wrongful death lawsuit his family filed in the aftermath of the shooting has been settled.Steve Romines, an attorney for McAtee's family, told The Courier Journal on Monday that the case had been settled for $725,000. The two sides came to an agreement last week, he said."The family wanted the case over," the attorney said. "… They had no desire to litigate the case for another several years."The lawsuit was initially filed the lawsuit against Louisville Metro Police, the Kentucky National Guard and two LMPD officers in September 2020 on behalf of Odessa Riley, McAtee's mother, and Machelle McAtee, his niece. The plaintiffs said overuse of force and mistakes made by officers and National Guard members on the scene the night of the shooting were in violation of several department policies and ultimately led to McAtee's death.Background:Minute by minute: What happened the night David McAtee was killedFor Courier Journal subscribers:Rapid bus routes & light rail: Will TARC's plans for the future mean a new Louisville tax?McAtee was killed in the early morning hours of June 1, 2020, after protests over the police killing of Breonna Taylor had taken place throughout the day around Louisville. LMPD officers and soldiers with the National Guard, which had been dispatched in the city that day on orders from Gov. Andy Beshear, were sent to the site to break up a small crowd that had gathered after curfew at Dino's Food Mart, a business at Broadway and 26th Street where McAtee operated a small barbecue stand.Katie Crews, an LMPD officer at the time, fired several pepper balls at a group of people in the crowd, including Machelle McAtee, who was hit. David McAtee fired back with a 9 mm handgun and was subsequently shot and killed, with two LMPD officers and two National Guard members firing at him. Then-LMPD Chief Steve Conrad was fired following the shooting after it was determined none of the officers were wearing body cameras at the time.Crews was later charged with unreasonable force for her role in the shooting and was fired in February 2022 after being placed on administrative leave immediately after the shooting. She was sentenced to two years of probation, 200 hours of community service and a $5,000 fine on Monday by U.S. District Judge Benjamin Beaton and has also agreed to surrender her law enforcement certifications.More headlines:This Kentucky restaurant ranks on Yelp's list of top 100 eateries for 2023Reach Lucas Aulbach at laulbach@courier-journal.com.
- [Former Louisville officer sentenced for excessive force - Spectrum News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/former-louisville-officer-sentenced-for-excessive-force-spectrum-news/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Former Louisville police officer Katie Crews was sentenced Monday for violating an individual’s rights by using excessive force, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. What You Need To Know Crews pleaded guilty to firing a pepper ball at the niece of a local restaurant owner She's been sentenced to two years of probation, 200 hours of community service and a $5,000 fine She had initially been charged with a felony and faced up to 10 years in prison On June 1, 2020, Crews — who was employed with the Louisville Metro Police Department at the time — responded to the area of YaYa’s BBQ at 26th and Broadway along with other officers and the National Guard to break up a gathering that was violating a city-mandated curfew in wake of Breonna Taylor protests. Court documents said she used a pepper ball gun, striking Machelle McAtee, David McAtee‘s niece. David McAtee owned the restaurant and died from a single gunshot to the chest. A ballistics report found the bullet fragments had green paint, showing the bullet came from a National Guard member, but the fragment was so destroyed there was no way of knowing whose gun fired the fatal shot. Former officer Katie Crews. (LMPD) Crews admitted to her actions during a plea hearing in Oct. 2022 and pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count for using unreasonable force. She’s been sentenced to two years of probation, 200 hours of community service and a $5,000 fine. She is no longer part of the Louisville Metro Police Department as part of her plea deal, and she has also forfeited her Kentucky law enforcement certification. “This former Louisville police officer abused her authority as a law enforcement officer and violated the victim’s civil rights,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in a statement. “This sentence makes clear that law enforcement officials are not above the law. The Justice Department will continue to prosecute law enforcement officials who violate our federal civil rights laws and defy the public trust by using excessive force.” Crews was originally charged with a felony and faced as many as 10 years in prison. The FBI and the Louisville Metro Police Department’s Public Integrity Unit investigated the case through the Louisville Public Corruption Civil Rights Task Force. Related Stories
- [Restaurant patrons say they were disturbed by event with officer involved in Breonna Taylor raid](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/restaurant-patrons-say-they-were-disturbed-by-event-with-officer-involved-in-breonna-taylor-raid/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE/Gray News) - A video went viral on social media that shows the owner of Anna’s Greek Restaurant in Bowling Green being confronted by restaurant patrons.The customers said they are upset that their dinners were interrupted by a Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky event at the restaurant. The group hosted John Mattingly, a former Louisville Metro Police Department police sergeant shot by Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend during the raid at her apartment that claimed her life.They said Mattingly’s event had speakers playing loud footage that involved gunshots from the 2020 protests.“The presentation crossed the line,” said Cayce Johnson, who was dining at the restaurant during Mattingly’s event. “It was completely distasteful and disrespectful. It was devoid of humanity. They should have never put that on in a public space. We should have never been subjected to that.”Cayce Johnson made reservations at the Greek restaurant for a group of friends. She said the event took them back to March of 2020, including the Breonna Taylor protests.Originally, the plan reportedly was to host the Mattingly event at a private venue, but those plans changed.In a YouTube response, Mattingly apologized for disturbing other customers in the restaurant that night.“There was no ill will and no malice,” Mattingly said. “We didn’t want the other patrons to hear this. I apologize to you, I really do.”Mattingly also said in his apology video that he’s offered to pay people’s receipts from that night, and those individuals have declined.Johnson said she and her friends are still uncomfortable with the situation that took place. She said she believes the apology is a start but doesn’t erase how it made them feel.“I am so ashamed my friends were put in that situation,” Johnson said. “The memories from 2020, an awful year for people of color and for Kentucky.”Currently, the organization that hosted Mattingly, the Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky, has deactivated its social media accounts and not returned messages.Anna’s Greek Restaurant provided a statement on Thursday issuing an apology for individuals who were negatively affected.The restaurant explained in the statement it had received a two-hour request to accommodate a local community group. They were unaware of the content that would be presented by the Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky.“We have now recognized the need to be exceedingly diligent in reviewing any content to be presented when blending restaurant patrons with private events,” Anna’s statement reads.Copyright 2023 WAVE via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
- [Ex-officer involved in 2020 protest shooting avoids prison - WRAL](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/ex-officer-involved-in-2020-protest-shooting-avoids-prison-wral/) - LOUISVILLE, KY. — A former Louisville police officer blamed for instigating a deadly shooting during the 2020 protests over the death of Breonna Taylor was sentenced Monday to two years of probation.Katie R. Crews, 30, pleaded guilty last year to one count of using excessive force during a curfew crackdown in 2020 that ended with the fatal shooting of restaurant owner David McAtee.In court Monday, U.S. District Judge Benjamin Beaton called Crews' actions “incredibly dangerous” and doubled a one-year recommended probation period to two years. Crews was also ordered to perform 200 hours of community service, and she can no longer work in law enforcement.Beaton said he was reluctant to allow Crews to avoid prison time, but was told that McAtee's family had given their blessing to the recommended sentence.“None of us should minimize this,” Beaton said during the hourlong hearing.McAtee’s death further angered protesters who had began massing in Louisville’s downtown streets in May 2020 over the death of Taylor, a Black medical tech killed by police who entered her apartment using a falsified drug warrant.Crews fired pepper balls at a crowd near McAtee's restaurant and into his kitchen, where his niece was struck in the shoulder. McAtee returned fire with a handgun, and was fatally shot by a National Guard member who had been deployed to Louisville to help enforce curfews.Former Louisville Metro Police Chief Erika Shields said the firing of the pepper balls by Crews “really jump-started the chaos that ensued.”Crews was fired last year for for escalating the conflict the night of McAtee’s death and for a separate incident in which she taunted a protester on social media a couple of days earlier.The former officer had been photographed by media with a protester who appeared to offer her a flower. Crews posted the photo on social media and wrote that she hoped “the pepper balls that (the protester) got lit up with a little later on hurt.”“Come back and get ya some more ole girl, I’ll be on the line again tonight,” Crews wrote.Crews' attorney, Steve Schroering, said in court Monday that the woman in the photo was cursing and berating the officers that night, including Crews, according to reviews of body camera footage. Schroering said the officers were under extreme pressure during the protests and that Crews' social media post was “a reaction to something that was put out to the public that was not true.”On the night of McAtee’s death, Crews was part of a group of Louisville officers and National Guard members sent to an area near his eatery, YaYa’s BBQ, to break up a crowd.Crews approached the kitchen of the restaurant while firing nonlethal pepper balls, which release a chemical agent. The shots from Crews prompted bystanders to rush into McAtee’s kitchen, and Crews kept firing in that direction. McAtee’s niece, standing in the doorway of the kitchen, was hit in the shoulder by one of Crews’ nonlethal rounds.After his niece was hit, McAtee pulled a pistol from his hip and fired a shot out the door. Crews and other officers then switched to live rounds and McAtee, leaning out his kitchen door, was fatally shot in the chest. Family members said in a lawsuit against Crews that McAtee didn't know that nonlethal rounds were being fired into the restaurant.Prosecutors later cleared Louisville officers and two National Guard members in a criminal probe into McAtee’s death, saying they were justified in using deadly force because McAtee fired at them.
- [Ex-officer involved in 2020 protest shooting avoids prison - Connecticut Post](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/ex-officer-involved-in-2020-protest-shooting-avoids-prison-connecticut-post/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A former Louisville police officer blamed for instigating a deadly shooting during the 2020 protests over the death of Breonna Taylor was sentenced Monday to two years of probation.Katie R. Crews, 30, pleaded guilty last year to one count of using excessive force during a curfew crackdown in 2020 that ended with the fatal shooting of restaurant owner David McAtee. In court Monday, U.S. District Judge Benjamin Beaton called Crews' actions “incredibly dangerous” and doubled a one-year recommended probation period to two years. Crews was also ordered to perform 200 hours of community service, and she can no longer work in law enforcement.
- [Breonna Taylor's Mother Confirms She & Tyre Nichols Shared The Same Birthday](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/breonna-taylors-mother-confirms-she-tyre-nichols-shared-the-same-birthday/) - Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, confirmed on Instagram that her late daughter and Tyre Nichols share the same birthday. Both Taylor and Nichols died at the hands of police violence.After Palmer shared her post, her friend and activist, Tamika Mallory, reflected on speaking about Nichols’ death with Palmer. Mallory explained that she had to console Palmer following the news. LOUISVILLE, KY – SEPTEMBER 21: Tamika Palmer, mother of Breonna Taylor, poses for a portrait in front of a mural of her daughter at Jefferson Square park on September 21, 2020 in Louisville, Kentucky. Demonstrators gathered to prepare for possible unrest in wake of the Grand Jury decision regarding the officers involved in the killing of Breonna Taylor. Taylor was fatally shot by Louisville Metro Police officers during a no-knock warrant at her apartment on March 13, 2020 in Louisville, Kentucky. Demonstrators have occupied the park for 118 days. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images) “Yesterday, I spent 30 horrible minutes trying to calm down Breonna Taylor’s mother and my friend,” she stated. “She was hysterical after learning her daughter and Tyre share the same exact birthday to the year. She was damn near inconsolable and the only thing that broke her mourning was me saying, ‘Sis, you are going to get sick. Please stop before you get sick.’” Mallory continued: “Then I cracked a personal joke and we were able to shift the conversation. We started cussing and talking about the war to stop this shit. So many emotions in 30 minutes. This shit is traumatizing… It’s NOT OK. I’m NOT OK!” Nichols was brutalized by several Memphis police officers during a traffic stop. Video from the incident shows them punching and kicking him in the head repeatedly for three minutes. Nichols died three days later. Breonna Taylor was fatally shot during a police raid on her apartment in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2020. Check out Tamika Palmer and Tamika Mallory’s posts on Instagram below. [Via]
- [Former LMPD officer who fired pepper balls night David McAtee died avoids prison time](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/former-lmpd-officer-who-fired-pepper-balls-night-david-mcatee-died-avoids-prison-time/) - WLKY Digital Team Former LMPD officer who fired pepper balls night David McAtee died avoids prison time Updated: 6:15 PM EST Jan 30, 2023 Hide Transcript Show Transcript 2019. A FORMER LOUISVILLE POLICE OFFICER WON’T SERVE ANY PRISON TIME FOR USING EXCESSIVE FORCE. KATIE KRUSE WAS SENTENCED IN FEDERAL COURT FOR FIRING PEPPER BALLS AT
- [West End barbecue stand owner David McAtee's family settles wrongful death lawsuit](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/west-end-barbecue-stand-owner-david-mcatees-family-settles-wrongful-death-lawsuit/) - More than two and a half years after Louisville barbecue stand owner David McAtee was killed by law enforcement officers during the first nights of the 2020 protests, a wrongful death lawsuit his family filed in the aftermath of the shooting has been settled.Steve Romines, an attorney for McAtee's family, told The Courier Journal on Monday that the case had been settled for $725,000. The two sides came to an agreement last week, he said."The family wanted the case over," the attorney said. "… They had no desire to litigate the case for another several years."The lawsuit was initially filed the lawsuit against Louisville Metro Police, the Kentucky National Guard and two LMPD officers in September 2020 on behalf of Odessa Riley, McAtee's mother, and Machelle McAtee, his niece. The plaintiffs said overuse of force and mistakes made by officers and National Guard members on the scene the night of the shooting were in violation of several department policies and ultimately led to McAtee's death.Background:Minute by minute: What happened the night David McAtee was killedFor Courier Journal subscribers:Rapid bus routes & light rail: Will TARC's plans for the future mean a new Louisville tax?McAtee was killed in the early morning hours of June 1, 2020, after protests over the police killing of Breonna Taylor had taken place throughout the day around Louisville. LMPD officers and soldiers with the National Guard, which had been dispatched in the city that day on orders from Gov. Andy Beshear, were sent to the site to break up a small crowd that had gathered after curfew at Dino's Food Mart, a business at Broadway and 26th Street where McAtee operated a small barbecue stand.Katie Crews, an LMPD officer at the time, fired several pepper balls at a group of people in the crowd, including Machelle McAtee, who was hit. David McAtee fired back with a 9 mm handgun and was subsequently shot and killed, with two LMPD officers and two National Guard members firing at him. Then-LMPD Chief Steve Conrad was fired following the shooting after it was determined none of the officers were wearing body cameras at the time.Crews was later charged with unreasonable force for her role in the shooting and was fired in February 2022 after being placed on administrative leave immediately after the shooting. She was sentenced to two years of probation, 200 hours of community service and a $5,000 fine on Monday by U.S. District Judge Benjamin Beaton and has also agreed to surrender her law enforcement certifications.More headlines:This Kentucky restaurant ranks on Yelp's list of top 100 eateries for 2023Reach Lucas Aulbach at laulbach@courier-journal.com.
- [Ex-Louisville Metro Police officer gets probation in case tied to David McAtee's death](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/ex-louisville-metro-police-officer-gets-probation-in-case-tied-to-david-mcatees-death/) - Former Louisville Metro Police Officer Katie Crews, charged with using unreasonable force in the run-up to West End barbecue chef David McAtee’s 2020 death, was spared prison time and given probation Monday during a sentencing hearing in federal court. U.S. District Judge Benjamin Beaton sentenced her to two years of probation and 200 hours of community service and gave her a $500,000 fine. Crews, 30, was indicted last year with deprivation of rights under color of law after a grand jury found she “willfully deprived” McAtee’s niece, Machelle McAtee, of her constitutional right "to be free from an unreasonable seizure, which includes the right to be free from the use of unreasonable force by a law enforcement officer." As part of a plea deal, Crews was later charged in a superseding indictment with a misdemeanor instead of a felony, facing up to a year in prison instead of 10 years. Crews, who spent a decade in the National Guard, also agreed to surrender her law enforcement certifications and not seek any future employment in law enforcement.Federal prosecutors recommended one year of probation as part of the deal for Crews, who is now working as an explosive canine handler for a private security company and "mostly screening air cargo" for dangerous items, according to court documents. Her attorney, Steve Schroering, agreed with the probation recommendation, noting in court filings that Crews had no prior criminal history and has a wife along with a "large, loving and supportive family."Louisville police officers in court:These are the ex-LMPD officers charged by feds with unlawful forceIn a sentencing memorandum, prosecutors also recommended Crews serve 100 hours of community service.The federal indictment said that on June 1, 2020, Crews “fired a pepperball at M.M., striking M.M., while M.M. was standing on private property and not posing a threat to (Crews) or others.” The nonlethal pepperball projectile caused “bodily harm” to Machelle McAtee, per the indictment. Crews, of Jeffersonville, Indiana, was among the LMPD officers and Kentucky National Guard members who responded shortly after midnight on June 1, 2020, to a crowd that had gathered near David “YaYa” McAtee’s barbecue stand at 26th Street and West Broadway after a 9 p.m. curfew that then-Mayor Greg Fischer had put in place amid protests over Breonna Taylor's killing by police. The night would end with the shooting of David McAtee, 53, a beloved cook who would offer food to LMPD officers while they were on their beats. Crews, who joined LMPD in 2018, was on paid administrative leave after the shooting until LMPD fired her in February 2022 following internal investigations into her actions and also into a Facebook post published days before McAtee’s death in which she celebrated a protester getting hit by pepper balls. A lawsuit later filed on behalf of David McAtee’s mother and niece described YaYa’s BBQ that summer as a safe haven, blocks away from downtown protests and unrest. David McAtee's death:Police action marred by 'poor communication,' confusion and mistakesMachelle McAtee previously told The Courier Journal she was standing in the doorway of her uncle's shop just after midnight when she was hit at close range with at least three projectiles before her uncle pulled her inside. Video from a neighboring business shows Crews standing at the fence line shooting projectiles at McAtee's door, even though no one was outside. Surveillance footage shows that after pulling his niece inside from the doorway, David McAtee leaned out the door, fired his handgun twice above his shoulder and was almost immediately hit by return fire. An investigation determined a bullet from a Kentucky National Guard member killed him instantly, though another National Guard member and two LMPD officers, Crews and Officer Austin Allen, also fired their weapons. In May 2021, Jefferson Commonwealth’s Attorney Thomas Wine announced he would not prosecute the two National Guard members or LMPD officers for firing weapons that night. "The repercussions from her actions took an extensive toll on Ms. Crews," Schroering, her attorney, wrote in a sentencing memorandum ahead of Monday's hearing. "She permanently lost her career. Her reputation was destroyed as the incident and her subsequent charges were covered extensively by the local and national media for months."Along with Crews, several other now-former LMPD officers have faced federal charges since 2020 that relate to the unlawful use of force against civilians. The U.S. Department of Justice has also been conducting a "pattern-or-practice" investigation into LMPD over potential abuses and constitutional violations.In addition, the DOJ announced indictments in August 2022 against four LMPD personnel accused of lying on the drug-related search warrant or recklessly firing bullets into a neighboring apartment during the raid at Taylor’s South End apartment on March 13, 2020. Kala Kachmar contributed to this story. Reach Billy Kobin at bkobin@courierjournal.com
- [What Memphis got right after the death of Tyre Nichols](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/what-memphis-got-right-after-the-death-of-tyre-nichols/) - Editor’s Note: This article contains graphic videos and descriptions of violence. CNN — Weeks after Tyre Nichols was brutalized by Memphis police officers, city law enforcement officials are being hailed for their unusually rapid investigation and transparency compared to similar cases in other US cities. Five former officers were indicted Thursday on charges of second-degree murder and kidnapping. One day later, officials released police body camera and street surveillance footage of the deadly encounter after a January 7 traffic stop. “If we look at some past incidents in our country, there’s been some mistakes made,” said Ron Johnson, a former Missouri State Highway Patrol captain, referring to the handling of previous cases of police brutality. “I think a lot of things have been done right” in this case. “A year ago, two years ago, we wouldn’t have seen some of the things we’re seeing here,” Johnson said of Memphis law enforcement’s handling of Nichols’ death. The swift filing of charges and release of video contrasts with what happened in some previous instances of deadly police violence – including the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor by Louisville, Kentucky, police in 2020 and the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police the same year. But some initial statements from Memphis police were vague or misleading – as they were in the cases of Taylor and Floyd. In Taylor’s case, an initial statement from police about the botched raid in which the 26-year-old was killed said there was no forced entry. But officers had used a battering ram to enter her home before shooting her. Minneapolis police initially said Floyd “appeared to be suffering medical distress.” But video showed Officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for several minutes. In Memphis, police initially said that Nichols was pulled over by officers for reckless driving and a “confrontation” followed before Nichols ran away prior to a second “confrontation” with police. Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis told CNN that on hearing that initial account she thought it was “just a strange summary of what occurred on a traffic stop.” Once she viewed video of what actually happened, she was “outraged,” she said. Investigators have so far been unable to find evidence to corroborate the claim that Nichols was driving recklessly, the chief said Friday. Still, law enforcement and legal analysts are now pointing to Memphis’ actions as a new example of how to maintain trust in the community after fatal police encounters. “We’re in a new era of accountability,” said CNN legal analyst Joey Jackson, noting the proliferation of police body cameras and cell phone and surveillance video that capture violence by officers. “The more we have these instances that are caught on camera, the more public is outraged, the more there is demand for accountability.” Here is what Memphis law enforcement officials got right in the days since the beating that led to Nichols’ death, according to experts. Looking at police ‘through a different prism’ The incident that reignited long-simmering tensions over fatal police encounters with Black men started when Nichols, 29, was pulled over on the night of January 7 for alleged reckless driving, according to the Memphis Police Department. Police initially issued the statement about a “confrontation” between officers and the driver – later identified as Nichols – who then fled on foot. Officers caught up to the man and “another confrontation” resulted in Nichols’ arrest, police said. An ambulance was called to the scene after Nichols complained of shortness of breath, according to police. He was taken to a nearby hospital in critical condition. Three days later, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced Nichols had died from injuries sustained in the “use-of-force incident” with officers, according to the statement. Officials have not released Nichols’ autopsy report. The preliminary results of an autopsy commissioned by attorneys for Nichols’ family said he suffered “extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating,” family attorney Benjamin Crump said this week. The full independent autopsy report is not yet ready, Crump told CNN. After the incident, the five officers were relieved of duty – a standard departmental procedure while their use of force was investigated, police said. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office were enlisted to investigate. On January 15, noting the serious nature of the officers’ conduct during the stop,Chief Davis vowed “immediate and appropriate action.” The department was “serving notice to the officers involved,” she said. Three days later, the US Justice Department said a civil rights investigation has been opened into the death of Nichols. “We are now looking at cops through a different prism and when cops don’t act, when cops allow an event to happen over four, five, ten minutes, then maybe they should be held responsible to an even higher standard,” Mark O’Mara, a criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor, said Saturday. “So we are in a new era, I think, of looking at police behavior under a different eye towards possible prosecution.” Swift legal action a ‘blueprint for all America’ On January 20, after an internal investigation, Memphis police identified and fired five officers involved in the encounter, citing their violation of multiple department policies. Officers Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr., and Justin Smith were terminated for failing in their “excessive use of force, duty to intervene, and duty to render aid,” the department said in a statement. “The egregious nature of this incident is not a reflection of the good work our officers perform, with integrity every day,” Davis said. Last Monday, officials showed Nichols’ family the video in which officers pummeled him like “a human piñata” – in the words of one of the family attorneys. And on Thursday, the officers – all of them also Black – were charged with second-degree murder and kidnapping amid mounting public pressure to release footage of the incident. “No one out there that night intended for Tyre Nichols to die,” said William Massey, Martin’s attorney. Blake Ballin, an attorney for Mills, described his client as a “respectful father,” who was “devastated” to be accused in the killing. “The police department obviously learned something from … other high-profile cases when district attorneys were not transparent, when they did not act quickly,” said Areva Martin, an attorney and legal affairs commentator. “They did the right thing in this case by convening a grand jury, investigating the case quickly, and then charging these officers, bringing them into custody.” Crump, in a news conference Friday, called Memphis’ rapid criminal charges – compared to other cities that have waited months or years in brutality cases – a “blueprint” for police departments, prosecutors and political leaders in future cases. “We have a precedent that has been set here,” Crump said, calling the swift legal action a “blueprint for all America from this day forward.” Memphis authorities appeared to be guided by a long national history of poor handling and missteps in brutality cases, according to Johnson. “They’ve learned from them and it shows in their response,” said Johnson, who helped restore order in Ferguson, Missouri, after the 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old unarmed Black man. CNN political analyst Bakari Sellers said the swiftness of the charges reminded him of the case involving the April 2015 death of Walter Scott, who was fatally shot in the back after officers pulled him over for a broken brake light in South Carolina. Former North Charleston police officer Michael Slager was arrested days after the shooting and indicted on a murder charge two months later. The former officer’s 2016 state murder trial ended in a mistrial but Slager pleaded guilty to violation of civil rights by acting under the color of law in Scott’s killing. He was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. “That was the only time I’ve seen anything happen as quickly as this,” Sellers said. Mostly peaceful protests after video release Twenty days after Nichols’ traffic stop, Memphis officials released the video. They waited until 7 p.m. Friday to publicly release the agonizing footage of Nichols’ fatal encounter with officers, allowing time for local politicians, activists and Nichols’ family to make pleas for calm in the community. “The last thing you want to do is take a high tension event and then add that thing that’s going to increase tension … on a Friday night knowing that people don’t have to be at work in the morning and they have the whole weekend ahead of them,” said CNN law enforcement analyst John Miller. But, Miller said, the delay allowed authorities to show the public “the wheels of justice are turning and turning relatively quickly.” The additional time also allowed officials to “unite the faith community in Memphis, the voice of the family and the family’s lawyers, and the key community contacts” in calling for calm. Hours before the video release, Memphis’ police chief sought to prepare the community, saying the footage would show “acts that defy humanity.” Still, authorities braced for potential civil unrest. Police departments across the country – including in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Nashville and New York – said they were either monitoring events or already had plans in place in case of protests. “We’ve watched so many of these cases over the last several years,” Martin said. “And when (law enforcement authorities) come forward and when they’re transparent and they provide information to the community, we typically see a very peaceful response.” Mostly peaceful protesters in Memphis took to Interstate 55 Friday night after the videos went online, blocking both lanes of the highway’s bridge connecting the western Tennessee city to Arkansas. There were no arrests. Video raises unanswered questions In the video, Nichols screamed for his mother and the officers struck him multiple times, including punches to the face while his hands were restrained. “Mom!” Nichols yelled out in anguish. At one point officers are seen hitting him at least nine times without visible provocation. Though paramedics arrived minutes after officers disengaged, Nichols appeared to be left multiple times on the pavement without assistance before an ambulance showed up. The footage stunned hardened law enforcement experts. Officials across the country expressed outrage – including President Joe Biden, who said it was “yet another painful reminder of the profound fear and trauma, the pain, and the exhaustion that Black and Brown Americans experience every single day.” The five former officers accused in the fatal beating of Nichols were members of a recently created unit that tackled rising crime in the city. Launched in 2021, the SCORPION unit – Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods – was heralded as a direct response to the city’s worst crime, targeting homicides, robberies, assaults and other felonies. On Saturday, Memphis PD said it had permanently deactivated the unit after “listening intently to the family of Tyre Nichols, community leaders and the uninvolved officers who have done quality work in their assignments. “The officers currently assigned to the unit agree unreservedly with this next step,” Memphis PD said in a statement. “While the heinous actions of a few casts a cloud of dishonor on the title SCORPION, it is imperative that we, the Memphis Police Department take proactive steps in the healing process of all those impacted. The Memphis Police Department remains committed to serving our community and taking every measure possible to rebuild the trust that has been negatively affected by the death of Mr. Tyre Nichols.” Cheryl Dorsey, a retired sergeant with the Los Angeles Police Department, said the footage of Nichols’ fatal encounter has left many unanswered questions about what Memphis PD did to prevent the tragedy. “All of this was preventable,” she told CNN Saturday. “You have officers who are young on the job, unsupervised out there doing what they do on a regular basis. This was not anything that they aren’t accustomed to doing.” Memphis City Council Chairman Martavius Jones grew emotional after watching the video, telling CNN that despite the positive shift in the handling of brutality cases, much more needs to be done. “It’s the culture of policing that says that when you have a Black motorist, we can treat them any type of way,” he said. “We just have to change the culture … We have to hold people accountable. We have to let the legacy of Mr. Nichols be that there is going to be police reform not only here in Memphis but in this country.” CNN’s Mark Morales, Shimon Prokupecz, Don Lemon, Jamiel Lynch, Jason Hanna, Elizabeth Hartfield, Travis Caldwell, Sara Sidner, Andi Babineau, Nick Valencia, and Chandelis Duster contributed to this report.
- [The Cost of Ignoring Rural Voters - Progressive.org](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/the-cost-of-ignoring-rural-voters-progressive-org/) - BLUE RIVER, Wisconsin—My ancestors settled in rural Southwestern Wisconsin in the 1820s, and it is in this region that I learned about politics. My great-grandfather served for almost four decades as the village president of this community located just south of the Wisconsin River. He was an economic and social progressive who campaigned in rural Grant County for “Fighting Bob” La Follette, the U.S. Senator who founded The Progressive, and his friend John Blaine, a Lincoln Republican who a century ago served six years as one of Wisconsin’s most radical governors. When I was born, the Congressman from the district was Gardner Withrow, a railroad union activist from La Crosse who was elected several times on the ballot line of Wisconsin’s independent Progressive Party. Withrow finished his career as a liberal Republican who voted for civil rights, strong unions, and rural policies that helped family farmers stand up to corporate agribusiness. The lines of Withrow’s old Third Congressional District have changed somewhat during the ensuing decades, but the values that historically underpinned its politics have remained reasonably consistent. As the Republican Party abandoned the progressive stances associated with Blaine and Withrow and veered to the right, the district began to back Democrats. Western Wisconsin voted for Michael Dukakis in 1988 and for every other Democratic presidential nominee until 2016—when Republican Donald Trump narrowly won the region and the state. Joe Biden increased Democratic numbers in 2020, when he carried the state once more for the Democrats. That year, the Third District re-elected its Democratic Congressman, Ron Kind, and sent a crew of Democratic state senators and representatives to the Wisconsin legislature. Kind, who was first elected in 1996 and served for a quarter century as a quiet member of the House Ways and Means Committee, decided against seeking re-election in 2022. So the Third District was up for grabs. On a map where Democrats faced several tough contests, the Third shaped up as something of a bright spot. The 2022 Republican nominee was a noisy right-winger named Derrick Van Orden, who had won 48 percent of the vote in 2020. But Congressional redistricting had gone reasonably well for Democrats in Wisconsin. The Third District was competitive. And Democrats had a solid candidate in state Senator Brad Pfaff, a Western Wisconsin native with a track record of leadership on the agricultural issues that mattered to the district’s many dairy farmers. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the party’s strategists, consultants, and donors should have recognized that keeping the Third was not only possible, it was mission critical in a midterm election year where the party needed to fight for every seat it could get. Unfortunately, the Democrats in Washington, D.C., who make decisions about where to allocate resources in fights for Congressional control have a blind spot when it comes to rural, small-town, and small-city districts like the Third. The party has lost one rural enclave after another in the Upper Midwest in recent election cycles: Northern Michigan’s First District in the Upper Peninsula, Northern Wisconsin’s Seventh District, and the at-large districts of North and South Dakota in 2010; Northern Minnesota’s Eighth District in 2018; Western Minnesota’s Seventh District, and Eastern Iowa’s First and Second districts in 2020. In 2022, it was the Third District’s turn to be the Democratic Party’s missed opportunity. In early October, Axios reported that “Wisconsin Democrat Brad Pfaff, running to succeed retiring Representative Ron Kind, Democrat of Wisconsin, isn’t getting any outside backup in his race against Republican Derrick Van Orden. House Majority PAC reserved time in the district later this month, but a source familiar with the group’s plans said it intends to cancel those reservations.” The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel announced that the “Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee [DCCC] did not invest any money in Pfaff, and Pfaff was not on the committee’s ‘Red to Blue’ list, which puts a focus, along with extra resources, on the party’s key races.” The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee should have recognized that keeping the Third was not only possible, it was mission critical. The Third wasn’t the only district where D.C. Democrats abandoned their candidate. Winnable contests in Oregon and Texas experienced similar patterns of disengagement by the Democratic Party’s supposedly savvy strategists. In fact, when I started speaking about the abandonment of Wisconsin’s Third District before the election, I heard story after story from grassroots activists about neglected contests in regions of the country where Democrats historically have been viable—and should have remained so in 2022. It was clear before the election that Democrats were screwing up by neglecting rural and exurban districts that might have voted narrowly for Trump in 2016 or 2020, but that had not moved completely to the Republican column. Instead of fighting for these districts with a progressive and populist economic message rooted in the historic farmer-labor politics of the past century, Democratic insiders like then-DCCC chair Sean Patrick Maloney focused their attention—and their considerable campaign treasuries—on protecting vulnerable incumbents in suburban districts where the party made modest gains during Trump’s presidency. Some of those suburban districts were winnable, and there is nothing wrong with paying attention to them. But in their narrowly defined approach to targeting districts and to messaging, Maloney and his compatriots abandoned rural Democrats. In doing so, they put themselves at a disadvantage in the competition for control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Democrats went into the midterm elections with a slim majority in the House—220 seats versus 212 held by Republicans. In typical midterms, the Democrats, as the party in power in the White House and Congress, could have been expected to lose up to thirty seats in the House. But 2022 was not a typical election. Concerns about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn abortion rights protections, former President Trump’s rejection of the 2020 election results, and the growing extremism of the Republican Party kept Democrats in the running. Instead of losing dozens of seats, they lost just a handful—including, ironically, Maloney’s in the suburban counties outside New York City. When all was said and done, the Republicans took the House with a razor-thin majority of 222 seats to the Democrats’ 213. If the Democrats could have won just five more districts, they would have held the House and maintained a far greater ability to govern in the second half of President Biden’s first term. And five districts were there to be won—in rural and exurban America. One of them was the Third District in Western Wisconsin. Van Orden proved to be a weaker contender than the strategists in Washington, D.C., had imagined. A hotheaded candidate embroiled in multiple controversies, he would have been vulnerable to a well-funded television and radio ad campaign—as well as intensive grassroots organizing—that held him accountable for his association with Trump’s cabal of election deniers, his harassment of a teenage librarian over a display of books on LGBTQ+ subjects, and getting caught with a loaded gun in his carry-on bag as he tried to board a plane. But the Republican’s campaign owned the airwaves in October and early November, while Pfaff was sidelined. Van Orden’s campaign raised $6 million compared with just $1.4 million by Pfaff’s campaign. Outside groups that supported the Republican put another $1.38 million to work on Van Orden’s behalf, according to the campaign watchdog group OpenSecrets. The final numbers gave the Republican a $5 million spending advantage. Why? Because Maloney and D.C. Democrats had imagined that Pfaff was a “weak” candidate. They were wrong. Despite being significantly outspent, Pfaff finished with more than 48 percent of the vote. That was a higher percentage than was won by top-priority Democratic candidates such as Virginia Representative Elaine Luria and New Jersey’s Tom Malinowski—both of whom enjoyed full support from the DCCC, the powerful House Majority PAC, and other Democratic groups. Pfaff won the Third District’s three largest counties and kept the Democratic percentages—even in the rural, Republican-leaning counties—high, proving that the party could remain competitive in counties that Pfaff targeted with his message of ardent support for the family farmer, rural schools, and keeping small-town post offices open. “There is simply no spinning this: Derrick Van Orden is underperforming expectations” in the Third District, Anthony Chergosky, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse wrote on election night. “And plenty of Democrats are going to be furious at the party organizations and affiliated PACs for not giving Brad Pfaff some help in this one.” That help would have made all the difference. Yet, it never arrived. Even after the results confirmed him as one of the strongest candidates Democrats had in a competitive open-seat race in 2022, Pfaff received no public apology from Maloney or the D.C. Democrats. But he had the truth on his side. “I firmly believe if there would have been greater resources that would have been provided, we would’ve won this race,” he said. If there is any lesson that national Democrats should take from the 2022 election cycle, it is that they could have kept the House if they had simply believed that they could win the confidence of rural voters in Midwestern communities like Blue River. ◆
- [Brightline danger; DeSantis & Florida abyss; 2020 election | Letters - TC Palm](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/brightline-danger-desantis-2020-election-letters-tc-palm/) - Brightline lives, folks die, by rules, regardless of safetyThere have been some very astute letters to the editor lately about the death trains. The reason they are fencing the Brightline stretch from Cocoa Beach to the Orlando airport is because federal regulations for trains going 125 mph require it.The trains ripping through our communities at 110 mph? There's no fencing required, and they can cross streets at grade or street level. In fact, there are currently NO trains in the United States going 110 mph crossing streets at grade, unfenced, through populated areas. This will be the first.And to answer another letter: The state didn’t “approve” the trains on this route and no one “voted for it.” The corporation owning the FEC freight rail system said, “we own the land and tracks, we can do what we want,” and it did. Although two earlier studies said the coastal route was bad for high-speed rail (trains going 125 mph), the corporation dropped to 110 mph to build on the cheap, while doubling its freight capacity.A Legislature-funded study in 2018 found the Florida Department of Transportation regulates the system, not the Federal Railroad Administration, and the state had no regulations for trains going over 79 mph. Isn’t it about time our elected officials from our cities, counties and Legislature demand FDOT explain how they are going to make 36 trains per day going 110 mph crossing 150 streets at grade with open tracks SAFE?With 76 deaths already on the Brightline tracks at 79 mph and the infamous designation as the deadliest system in the nation, our coastal communities are in real peril when they go 30 mph faster. As one letter writer said: Speed kills! And it will!Susan Mehiel, Vero BeachUnenlightened can lead Florida into abyssFrom where I sit, I find all this talk about wokeness confusing ... and disturbing.To me, it sounds like woke equates with enlightened, and I thought enlightenment was a good thing. So why fight it? Why muzzle all the teachers at all levels in our communities?I'm old enough to still believe that to be a liberal thinker is to be open minded, and being open minded leads to enlightenment. Unfortunately it seems like we are headed for a return to the dark ages rather than to a new age of reason.If Gov. Ron DeSantis has a soul, I urge him to pray for it. But if, as I suspect, he has already sold his soul, he might as well just keep doing what he's doing: destroying the great state of Florida one Draconian law at a time. I just hope someone will be around who will be brave enough to stop the slide into the abyss.Wake up, people, before it's too late.Julie Eisdorfer, Vero BeachDeSantis acts like Trump on Warren rulingA judge ruled that Gov. Ron DeSantis suspending the ELECTED state attorney was UNCONSTITUTIONAL, but there is no mechanism for the judge to reinstate him.In Trumpian fashion, a DeSantis spokesperson declared: "Today, Judge (Robert) Hinkle upheld Gov. DeSantis' decision to suspend Andrew Warren from office for neglect of duty and negligence.” The governors press office put out a release that was major spin.That’s not what the judge said at all; the judge ruled it unconstitutional, just like DeSantis drawing the congressional maps and spending $12 million of taxpayer money to pick up illegal immigrants in Texas.While some people rejoice, the governor walks all over the Constitution.Don Whisman, Stuart2020 election challenges tossed not for lack of evidenceYour newspaper published a front-page story Jan. 6 that repeats the canard that Donald Trump and his minions sought to overturn the 2020 election results “that had been verified as accurate and ruled lawful in scoresof court challengers.” This conclusion is misleading.The American Bar Association has published a summary of all ofthe legal “challengers” to the 2020 election. You can find it at tinyurl.com/abalist1The list contains 67 cases, and the challengers lost every case.But HOW did they lose? Some of the cases were filed PRIOR to the election (procedural issues over mail-in ballots, etc.) and these were summarily dismissed. If there is a problem, the courts opined, file your case AFTER the election.Conversely, several cases filed after the election were dismissed by asserting that the challengers should have filed BEFORE the election (!) if they were aware of serious problems.Some cases questioned state certification of the election; the courts said that they could not constitutionally interfere with state certification. Scores of cases were simply dismissed for “lack of standing.”In an important case filed by the state of Texas against Pennsylvania (and several other states), Texas alleged “votingirregularities as a result of lack of proper ballot-integrity protections.” The Supreme Court simply denied the motion and held that “Texas lacked standing under Article 3 of the Constitution.” The substantive issues were never debated.Procedural issues and not any lack of evidence doomed the majority of the legal challenges to the 2002 election. To my knowledge, not one evidentiary hearing was ever permitted in any of these cases.Dom Armentano, Vero BeachAP African-American class controversy sign of fearRe: The story Jan. 21 about the Florida Department of Education rejecting the AP African-American Studies course.Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Stop WOKE Act makes it against the law for the Department of Education to allow an AP course on African-American studies. The department’s Office of Articulation stated the class is “inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.”That hurt my head!“Lacks educational value …” implies there is nothing we can learn from anything African Americans have contributed to our society in all the years since slave traders took them from Africa and forced them into labor. That part of their history does not need to be taught in any class. Everyone knows how awful that time was for their ancestors.The article goes on to state that the curriculum of this AP course would cover “literature, the arts and humanities, political science, geography, and science ... ” which could educate our students about contributions and experiences of African Americans.Wouldn’t a course like that benefit all students, so they could all learn a more positive history of African Americans in our country? Couldn’t it instill pride in our African-American students, who learn only about the oppression and racism that still exists today?There could be a positive way to teach African-American history. What is anyone afraid of? The article goes on to address the “Don’t Say Gay” Parental Rights in Education law; another show of fear and ignorance.Carol Grube, StuartSimple solution to end school shooting dangerWith all the school shootings the past few years, it never ceases to amaze me that our elected officials, both on and off the school boards, have not taken the most reasonable solution to protect our students. A simple wood door with an interior Kevlar panel and bulletproof glass seems to be that reasonable solution, since most shootings occur inside the classroom. Make the door lock when closed and the students are safe.I, a civilian, can buy a sheet of Kevlar sufficient to stop an AK-47 for under $250. I can only assume a school district could get one for less in quantity. Add $200 for bulletproof glass and the right lock for protection.So please, elected officials, tell me how many children have to die before you do the right thing? 10? 100? I understand budget restraints, but why let them die?Edward Marasi, Port St. Lucie
- [Trump investigations: Georgia prosecutor raises anticipation of charges - KKTV](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/trump-investigations-georgia-prosecutor-raises-anticipation-of-charges-kktv/) - ATLANTA (AP) — Former President Donald Trump and his allies have been put on notice by a prosecutor, but the warning didn’t come from anyone at the Justice Department.It was from a Georgia prosecutor who indicated she was likely to seek criminal charges soon in a two-year election subversion probe. In trying to block the release of a special grand jury’s report, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis argued in court last week that decisions in the case were “imminent,” and that the report’s publication could jeopardize the rights of “future defendants.”Though Willis, a Democrat, didn’t mention Trump by name, her comments marked the first time a prosecutor in any of several current investigations tied to the Republican former president has hinted that charges could be forthcoming. The remarks ratcheted anticipation that an investigation focused, in part, on Trump’s call with Georgia’s secretary of state could conclude before ongoing federal probes.“I expect to see indictments in Fulton County before I see any federal indictments,” said Clark Cunningham, a Georgia State University law professor.Besides the Georgia inquiry, a Justice Department special counsel is investigating Trump over his role in working with allies to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election and his alleged mishandling of classified documents.Trump had appeared to face the most pressing legal jeopardy from the probe into a cache of classified materials at his Florida resort, and that threat remains. But that case seems complicated, at least politically, by the recent discovery of classified records at President Joe Biden’s Delaware home and at a Washington office. The Justice Department tapped a separate special counsel to investigate that matter.Willis opened her office’s investigation shortly after the release of a recording of a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. In that conversation, the then-president suggested that Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, could “find” the votes needed to overturn Trump’s narrow election loss in the state to Biden, a Democrat.“All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said on the call.The classified documents saga continues to hover over Washington D.C. (CNN, POOL, WRTV, INTELLIGENCE.SENATE.GOV)Since then, the investigation’s scope has broadened considerably, encompassing among other things: a slate of Republican fake electors, phone calls by Trump and others to Georgia officials in the weeks after the 2020 election, and unfounded allegations of widespread election fraud made to state lawmakers.In an interview, Trump insisted he did “absolutely nothing wrong” and that his phone call with Raffensperger was “perfect.” He said he felt “very confident” that he would not be indicted.“She’s supposed to be stopping violent crime, and that’s her job,” Trump said of Willis. “Not to go after people for political reasons, that did things absolutely perfectly.”It is unclear how Willis’ case will impact the Justice Department’s probes or what contact her team has had with federal investigators. Justice Department prosecutors have been circumspect in discussing their investigations, offering little insight into how or when they might end.But Willis’ comments indicate that the Georgia investigation is on a path toward resolution — with charges or not — on a timetable independent of what the Justice Department is planning to do, legal experts said.Cunningham, the Georgia State professor, said that Willis’ comments implied that the special grand jury’s report contained detail about people who the panel and Wills believe should, at minimum, be further investigated.“She wouldn’t be talking about the release of the report creating prejudice to potential future defendants unless she saw in the report peoples’ names who she saw as potential future defendants,” he added.Attorney General Merrick Garland in November tapped Jack Smith, a former public corruption prosecutor, to act as special counsel overseeing investigations into Trump’s actions leading up to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and into his possession of hundreds of classified documents at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.Though Smith and his team of prosecutors have issued grand jury subpoenas, he has not revealed when his investigation might conclude or who might be a target.Garland has declined to discuss the probes, saying only that “no person is above the law” and that there aren’t separate rules for Democrats and Republicans.FBI agents recently searched Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home, finding six items containing classified documents, the White House said. Further muddling the Justice Department’s calculus: Classified records were found this month at the Indiana home of Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence.Public disclosures about Willis’ case are the result, to some degree, of the unusual nature of the Georgia proceedings.Willis in January of last year sought to convene a special grand jury to help her investigation, citing the need for its subpoena power to compel the testimony of witnesses who otherwise wouldn’t talk to her. She said in a letter to Fulton County’s chief judge that her office had received information indicating a “reasonable probability” that the 2020 election in Georgia “was subject to possible criminal disruptions.”The county’s superior court judges voted to grant the request, and the panel was seated in May. The grand jurors heard from 75 witnesses and reviewed evidence collected by prosecutors and investigators. Among the witnesses who testified were former New York mayor and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and such Georgia state officials as Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp.The panel lacked the authority to issue an indictment, but its report is presumed to include recommendations for further action, possibly including potential criminal charges.The special grand jury was dissolved earlier this month after wrapping up its work and finalizing a report on its investigation. The grand jurors recommended the report be made public.News organizations, including The Associated Press, argued for the report to be released. At a hearing last week, Willis said that a decision was looming on whether to seek an indictment and that she opposed releasing the report because she wanted to ensure “that everyone is treated fairly and we think for future defendants to be treated fairly, it is not appropriate at this time to have this report released.”Attorneys for witnesses and others identified as targets have insisted that Willis is driven by politics rather than by legitimate concerns that crimes were committed. Among other things, they pointed to her public statements and initial willingness to speak to print and television news outlets.Danny Porter, a Republican who served as district attorney in neighboring Gwinnett County for nearly three decades, said Willis has been navigating unfamiliar territory. Special grand juries are relatively rare in Georgia, and the law doesn’t provide much guidance for prosecutors, he said.Even so, Porter said, it appeared Willis had not crossed any ethical or legal red lines that would call into question the integrity of the investigation.“Procedurally,” he said, “I haven’t seen anything that made me go, ‘Oh, jeez, I wouldn’t have done that.’”___Tucker reported from Washington. AP writer Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
- ['The work has never stopped': Tyre Nichols' death prompts more reform calls in Louisville](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/the-work-has-never-stopped-tyre-nichols-death-prompts-more-reform-calls-in-louisville/) - Citizens around Louisville hosted marches and peaceful protests Sunday afternoon in the aftermath of the release of body cam footage from the altercation that led to the death of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols, a Black man killed by the Memphis Police Department during a traffic stop earlier this month.Several dozen people marched from the corner of Baxter Avenue and Broadway to Mid-City Mall on Bardstown Road and more gathered at Jefferson Square Park in downtown Louisville to call for police reform and for members of the community to start looking out for each other in the wake of Nichols' death.Who was Tyre Nichols?:Video shows police kicking, pepper spraying, beating Tyre Nichols after traffic stopAmber Brown, who organized the Baxter Avenue march, led the chant "no justice, no peace," echoing protests held during 2020 after the murder of Breonna Taylor. Protestors took up an entire lane of traffic on the busy street, carrying signs that read "Tyre Nichols: From Louisville to Memphis to the world" and "Louisville stands with Memphis" as they marched."Another Black man has been killed by police ... we have been out here fighting for justice for so long," Brown said. "And yet, once again, it's slapped in our face that no one cares."The body cam footage released Friday shows officers shouting expletives while using pepper spray and a Taser on Nichols during the Jan. 7 traffic stop, who at times called out for his mother. Police struck Nichols in the face, torso and head at least 13 times while being physically restrained by other officers.The beating, which has been widely condemned by other members of the law enforcement community, left Nichols hospitalized. He died three days later.Five Black officers involved in the beating have since been fired from the department and charged with several crimes connected to the death, including second-degree murder, according to USA TODAY reports.Brown said even though she hadn't watched the video of Nichols' murder, it was still important to march in the streets."We have to continue to make sure that people know that we're not going to leave. We haven't stopped," she said. "Throughout all of this, the work has never stopped."'We're tired'At the gathering in Jefferson Square Park, many of those who took the stage said it was time for widespread reform not just in Memphis, but in other cities, including Louisville.Dennisha Rivers, founder of Vision of Life Outreach Ministries, said she organized Sunday's vigil because she felt it was time to bring the community together to do something different to curb violence."It's time to restore, rebuild and reeducate, because apparently, we're doing something wrong and our system is doing something wrong," she said.Jamie McAtee, the brother of David McAtee, who was killed by law enforcement officers at his West End restaurant in 2020, said the video was difficult to watch, but is proof more work needs to be done."Here we are three years later, after ... so much has happened, we're tired," he said. "We're tired of being out here on the streets and trying to get some change. We're tired of saying 'we want peace' ... how long do we have to keep having peaceful protests to be heard?"Rivers said she's been in touch with members of Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg's administration who have been supportive of efforts to bring the community together to talk."They are very supportive and encouraging of what I did because we're just trying to make a difference," she said.Ray Barker, a retired Louisville Metro Police officer, said while he applauds Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn "CJ" Davis for taking immediate action regarding the officers, he said it will take more compassion among neighbors to start making a difference."(Speaking) as a Black person that still lives in one of the roughest neighborhoods in Louisville, please take this opportunity to evaluate our community," he said. "Stop living in fear. ... Step out on faith and open the door to see what's going on in your community."Some residents call for returning power to communitiesOther marchers, like Maxwell Mitchell, said one solution to overcoming police violence is putting "the power in community." By diverting money from police institutions, he said, and putting money toward people working on the ground, it can make changes in communities.Mitchell said communities can be just as powerful as institutions, like the police, because of trust."I know the people in my community. I'm friends with them. I'm neighbors with them. We say hi to each other and whatnot," he said. "If there's an infraction, something that happens, in my opinion, we have the best chance to deescalate the situation, to be there for one another, because we're right there."Antonio Brown, another marcher as Sunday's protest, said the fact the officers were Black reflects how embedded white supremacy is in policing."If it was a white man, these Black officers wouldn't have done it," he said.Brown called for an end to qualified immunity — a legal principle that prevents state and local officials, including law enforcement, from lawsuits alleging someone's constitutional rights have been violated, except in cases where the violation is clear — to better hold police officers accountable.Weekend editor Keisha Rowe contributed. Contact reporter Rae Johnson at RNJohnson@gannett.com. Follow them on Twitter at @RaeJ_33.
- [Rantz: Democrats sue to kill WA's one election security feature, which makes fraud easier](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/rantz-democrats-sue-to-kill-was-one-election-security-feature-which-makes-fraud-easier/) - A trio of left-wing organizations is suing Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, King County Elections Director Julie Wise, and two members of the King County canvassing board. The result of their lawsuit would make election theft virtually effortless, particularly for illegal immigrants or those taking advantage of the homeless. Before the Thanksgiving holiday, Vet Voice Foundation, Washington Bus, and El Centro de la Raza quietly filed a lawsuit challenging signature verifications on ballots. They are represented by the Perkins Coie firm, counsel to the Democratic National Committee. Three King County voters also joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs. Signature verification, mandated by Washington law, is the only mechanism an election office has to ensure that the ballot submitted was completed by the registered voter. But plaintiffs argue that the process is arbitrary, prone to errors, and disenfranchises young voters and minority groups. Lawsuit angry plaintiff doesn’t know how to sign her name One plaintiff, Daisha Britt apparently struggles to sign her name, though not due to any medical condition outlined in the lawsuit. Her lawyers merely describe her as a “Black, Native American, and White” local who “has a self-described ‘complicated signature'”. How is it complicated? They don’t say. Her name isn’t complicated to spell, indicating she chooses to make her signature unnecessarily complex. Or perhaps she never learned how to write in cursive. “The Signature Matching Procedure also disproportionately disenfranchises voters of color. In the 2020 General Election, Latino, Black, and Asian voters had their ballots rejected at approximately double the rate of white voters,” the lawsuit alleges. More Rantz: State releasing sex predators to unsecured housing by school bus stop This seems to imply that either signature verification staff purposefully target racial minorities by rejecting their signatures or that Latino, Asian, and black voters aren’t capable of signing their names. It does not mention Native American voters, so perhaps the racist elections staff have a soft spot for tribes. Maybe Native Americans are more capable of signing their names, according to the plaintiffs. Republicans push back The lawsuit rejects the idea that signature matching helps keep elections secure while simultaneously noting “voter fraud is exceedingly rare in Washington.” But it’s rare, in large part, to signature verification, a point elections officials routinely argue. “Once you are confirmed as registered to vote, and as not having turned in a ballot for this election, the signature on your return envelope is compared against the signature on your voter registration record. Without other changes, doing away with signature matching would mean that there isn’t that additional verification step,” a spokesperson for King County Elections explained to the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH. Alarmed at the election security implications, the Washington State Republican Party and the Republican National Committee filed a motion to intervene. If granted, it would allow their lawyers to defend the election security process the plaintiffs seek to toss out. “The signature verification process is literally, I would call it, the only safeguard we have in our elections right now,” Washington State Republican Party chair Caleb Heimlich explained on the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH. “When we’re mailing out 4.8 million ballots, and right now you have to sign the outside of the envelope, if that goes away, what is in place to verify the identity of the person sending the ballot back in is the person that intended to vote?” Democrats would make election fraud easy When you sign your name to the ballot envelope, you’re not just providing a signature to be verified. You’re also attesting that you’re not breaking the law by casting the ballot and that oath can be used against you in court if you break election laws. The attestation also affirms the voter is a citizen of the United States. To register to vote, you need a driver’s license. But in Washington, illegal immigrants can get a driver’s license without verification of citizenship. Couldn’t this be further abused by taking away a security mechanism? There are countless examples of duplicate ballots being sent to the same voter due to human error after a name change, or address change. What if someone steals one of your ballots? A King County Elections spokesperson says they’d still only count one of the ballots, but there’s a hiccup: the actual voter better be the one to mail in the ballot first. “With signature verification, though, we’d be able to look at those ballots, see if either or both signatures match what is on file, and then determine action from there, including potential referral to the Prosecuting Attorney if it looks like the envelope has been signed by someone other than the voter,” the spokesperson told the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH. “Without signature verification, we wouldn’t be able to do that comparison and would accept the first ballot returned for the voter, and reject the second returned. We would no longer have the ability to determine if the second ballot likely came from the voter themselves or another person.” Without the signature verification, I could steal plaintiff Britt’s ballot and mail it in without her knowing. When she eventually catches on and reports it, how would she prove to the election office that she wasn’t the one who mailed in the ballot in the first place? More alarming is how easy this process would be to steal the ballots of homeless people, the elderly, or other vulnerable adults who might not even realize they’re victims of voter fraud and don’t have the means (or interest) to easily find out if someone was voting in their name. Most voters do not check to see if their ballot was mailed in, particularly if they didn’t personally vote. So they wouldn’t know if fraud took place and it would be impossible to track. Democrats often brag about the safety of Washington’s elections. So why would they want to make an election less secure? Whatever their motivation, if they prevail, it will be easier to cheat in elections. What could replace signature verification? Washington state law still says elections officials would need to verify signatures, so a replacement mechanism would have to be introduced and approved by the state legislature. Ironically, it could involve another idea that Democrats loathe: voter ID. It would also be incredibly inconvenient. “The focus would be on verifying the returned ballot, so something like dropping your ballot off in person and showing photo ID instead of signing the envelope could work,” the spokesperson said. “We know as a county of 1.4 million registered voters that just one way of doing things doesn’t work for everyone, so are interested in exploring other options with our voters. Ultimately, we would need the legislature to allow such pilot programs and then there would be lots of details to iron out around implementation.” Would these left-wing groups be okay with voter ID laws? Of course not. Listen to the Jason Rantz Show on weekday afternoons from 3:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast. Follow @JasonRantz on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Check back frequently for more news and analysis. Follow @https://twitter.com/jasonrantz
- [Trump says he's 'more angry' and 'more committed' to White House bid as he breaks his ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/trump-says-hes-more-angry-and-more-committed-to-white-house-bid-as-he-breaks-his/) - By Kate Sullivan, Gabby Orr and Kristen Holmes, CNN (CNN) -- Former President Donald Trump said Saturday he's "more committed" to winning back the White House than ever before as he hit the campaign trail for the first time since announcing a third presidential bid in November.Appearing in New Hampshire before a second stop in South Carolina, Trump said he was "more angry" about the direction of the country and vowed to return to the first-in-the-nation primary state "many, many more times" as he looks to replicate his first-place finish in the Granite State in 2016."This is it," Trump told members of the New Hampshire GOP at their annual meeting in Salem. "We're starting right here as a candidate for president."In South Carolina, meanwhile, Trump pledged that his 2024 campaign would "be about the future" in a speech that largely avoided repeating the lies about the 2020 election that he has been promoting for the past two years."This campaign will be about the future. This campaign will be about issues. Joe Biden has put America on the fast track to ruin and destruction and we will ensure that he does not receive four more years," the former president said at a small event in the Statehouse in Columbia.On the way to South Carolina, Trump took aim at potential 2024 contender Ron DeSantis, telling reporters aboard his plane that the Florida governor and his team were "trying to rewrite history" regarding their Covid-19 pandemic response. He also called a potential presidential run by his GOP rival "very disloyal."Trump also said that Nikki Haley -- the state's former governor who served as his ambassador to the United Nations -- called him in recent days to inform him that she is considering launching a 2024 presidential bid."I talked to her for a little while, I said, 'Look, you know, go by your heart if you want to run,'" Trump said. "She's publicly said that 'I would never run against my president, he was a great president.'"Trump said he told Haley that she "should do it."Haley, who recently relocated her top aides to Charleston, is said to be weighing the timing of a campaign launch at this point, not wanting to be the first one to take on Trump by herself. In 2021, she said she would not challenge Trump if he ran again for the White House in 2024.CNN has reached out to DeSantis and Haley for comment.A return to the trailEarlier Saturday, Trump's campaign sent out a fundraising email declaring that "no other candidate is working this early to win every last vote," and touting himself as "the first Republican presidential candidate to campaign in the two early primary states."In New Hampshire, Trump announced that outgoing state GOP Chairman Stephen Stepanek will be added to his campaign as a senior adviser.Stepanek co-chaired Trump's first presidential campaign before becoming the top GOP official in New Hampshire, serving two terms. He joins Trump's team as the three-time presidential contender faces waning support among state officials who are looking for a fresh face to top their party's ticket.Trump in his remarks in Salem defended his monthslong hiatus from the trail, decrying media coverage that raised questions about his campaign's sluggish start with him remaining in Florida since launching his bid in November. He insisted his 2024 campaign isn't playing "prevent defense," referring to a strategy used in American football by a team with the lead late in a game."They said, 'He's not doing rallies, maybe he's lost that step.' I'm more angry now and I'm more committed now than I ever was," Trump said.In New Hampshire, Trump also touted his new proposal to eliminate federal funding for schools that "push critical race theory or left-wing gender ideology" and to have parents elect school principals, a plan he referred to as "the ultimate form of local control."Second stop of the dayMeanwhile, a who's who of campaign aides and allies were on hand for Trump's second campaign stop Saturday in Columbia, South Carolina, including senior advisers Brian Jack and Chris LaCivita and former White House social media director Dan Scavino.With his podium stationed beneath the Statehouse rotunda and flanked by American flags, the event had all the trappings of a presidential event. It was deliberately chosen to appear that way by the Trump team, which has hoped to capitalize on their candidate's unique position as a former president, particularly as he prepares to draw challengers in the coming weeks -- including, possibly, Haley.Just across the hallway from Trump's announcement was the South Carolina House chamber, whose Republican members have approached the former president's 2024 campaign with a mix of glee and apprehension.While some have eagerly embraced his bid, others told CNN before the Saturday event that they were waiting to see how the GOP primary field takes shape, especially if Haley and Sen. Tim Scott -- two native South Carolinians who are exploring their own White House runs -- decide to take on the former president.Trump was in South Carolina on Saturday to unveil his campaign's state leadership team, which includes Gov. Henry McMaster and Sen. Lindsey Graham. At the event, he stopped short of falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen, but he did pledge to "restore election integrity" and said, "People have to believe in elections."Trump won the South Carolina primary by 10 points in 2016, a feat he hopes to achieve again this cycle. Still, DeSantis, his chief potential rival, is already working to cultivate his own allies in the state, according to one person familiar with the outreach."He has a very tight-knit group already established, and they are making calls talking him up," this person said. Trump continues to be investigated by the Department of Justice, and special counsel Jack Smith is overseeing the criminal probes into the retention of classified documents at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort and into parts of the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol. Both investigations implicate the conduct of Trump.Trump's Saturday campaign events come in the wake of recent revelations that classified documents were also found at locations tied to both Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a separate special counsel to take over the investigation into the Obama-era classified documents found at Biden's home and former private office.Earlier this week, Facebook parent company Meta announced it would restore Trump's accounts on Facebook and Instagram in the coming weeks, just over two years after suspending him in the wake of the January 6 attack.This story and headline have been updated. The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved. Share this article:
- ['Loser, Loser, Loser, Loser': Chris Christie Says Trump Can't Win in 2024 - HuffPost](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/30/loser-loser-loser-loser-chris-christie-says-trump-cant-win-in-2024-huffpost/) - Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie insisted Sunday that Donald Trump “can’t win a general election.”“That’s not speculation,” the Republican and former staunch Trump supporter who may make his own run for the presidency said on ABC’s “This Week.” “That’s based upon the polling that I was privy to pre-the 2020 election and what we saw actually happen in the 2020 election. And it’s only gotten worse since then,” he observed.Advertisement Add to “what you saw happen in 2022 with election deniers” going down in losses across the nation, said Christie. “I think Republicans are recognizing” the impact of that, he stated.“We could go through the entire list: Loser, loser, loser, loser,” he noted, ticking off names of defeated extremists backed by Trump, including Republicans Kari Lake for Arizona governor, Doug Mastriano for Pennsylvania governor, Blake Masters for senator from Arizona, and Tim Michels for Wisconsin governor.Former Pres. Trump “can’t win a general election,” especially after election denying candidates lost in the 2022 midterms, @GovChristie says.“We could go through the entire list—loser, loser, loser, loser—and I think Republicans are recognizing that.” https://t.co/dNhW1EkeOU pic.twitter.com/zFNelRk96u— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) January 29, 2023Trump finally kicked off campaigning Saturday in what some described as low-energy speeches in South Carolina and New Hampshire. He announced he was running for the Republican presidential nomination back in November.Advertisement A Bloomberg columnist on Saturday warned that it’s “politically stupid” for Trump to alienate an increasingly larger group of Americans and have any expectation of winning the presidency.Columnist Robert A. George was referring in particular to Trump’s appallingly racist attacks on his former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, wife of his political nemesis Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).That’s bound to turn off vast numbers of Asian Americans, a powerful voting bloc with “rising influence,” George warned.RelatedDonald TrumpChris ChristieTrump Attacks On Asian Americans Not Only 'Repugnant,' But 'Politically Stupid': ColumnistTrump Opens 2024 Run, Says He's 'More Committed' Than EverTrump Calls For 'Certifying' Patriotic Teachers, Election Of Principals By School Parents Go To Homepage
- [People take to the streets of Louisville in response the death of Tyre Nichols - WLKY](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/people-take-to-the-streets-of-louisville-in-response-the-death-of-tyre-nichols-wlky/) - Dozens took to the streets of Louisville Sunday afternoon.The group, holding signs and calling out Tyre Nichols' name, met at Baxter and Broadway and marched for several blocks.Many of those taking part, walked the very same streets in the wake of Breonna Taylor's death in 2020, demanding justice for the young woman killed during a botched LMPD raid."Even if we did do things wrong that does not mean police get to execute us whenever they please," organizer Amber Brown said. "Because we will continue to be in the streets because Black lives always matter."And not long after, a group of pastors, community leaders and activists met at Jefferson Square Park to pray for the family of Tyre Nichols.The group also called for peace in the Metro and in cities around the country after what happened in Memphis."We're one human race. This can happen to anyone of us. And it has to stop, and it has to stop," said Dennisha Rivers, Vision of Life Outreach Ministries. People who have experienced and been impacted by violence also had the opportunity to share their stories at the rally. LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Dozens took to the streets of Louisville Sunday afternoon.The group, holding signs and calling out Tyre Nichols' name, met at Baxter and Broadway and marched for several blocks.
- [Letter: Why the 'persecution?' Because Trump keeps lying | Opinion | yakimaherald.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/letter-why-the-persecution-because-trump-keeps-lying-opinion-yakimaherald-com/) - To the editor — More than two years after the 2020 election, Donald Trump has allegations, but no evidence that has stood up in any court that there was election fraud that caused him to lose. Yet Trump still cries that he was cheated without proof. Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 by 2.8-plus million votes and over 7 million votes in 2020.Poor Donald is used to cheating and getting his way. Trump had a doctor lie to keep him out of the draft during the Vietnam War. Trump cheated on all three of his wives and his payment to Ms. Daniels was a tax deduction. Trump’s charity was about serving his family and so was shut down. Trump’s university engaged in fraud and was also shut down. Trump’s casinos went bankrupt. Trump’s organization has been convicted of tax evasion and fined $1.6 million.Trump is always being persecuted because he lies, cheats, and steals. Sixteen of Trump’s lawyers have been sanctioned due to false allegations and lack of evidence. Trump continues the "Big Lie" to milk his followers of money for his legal problems. Buy into all of his lies or you are the enemy, ask Bill Barr.STEVE McKENNASelah
- [Trump warns 2024 election 'our one shot' to save America | The Manila Times](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/trump-warns-2024-election-our-one-shot-to-save-america-the-manila-times/) - Columbia, United States: Donald Trump warned Saturday (Sunday in Manila) that the next election would be America's last chance for salvation as he attempted to revive a faltering third run for the White House in two US states that launched his winning 2016 presidential campaign.Buffeted by political and legal headwinds, the 76-year-old Republican addressed a few hundred supporters at an intimate rally in South Carolina's capital Columbia after speaking to grassroots activists in Salem, New Hampshire."The 2024 election is our one shot to save our country and we need a leader who's ready to do that on day one," Trump said from a podium beneath the Statehouse rotunda, flanked by American flags and some of his most loyal political allies.
- [Trump warns 2024 election 'our one shot' to save America | News24](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/trump-warns-2024-election-our-one-shot-to-save-america-news24/) - Donald Trump spoke to supporters in South Carolina and New Hampshire, two states that played a significant role in his 2016 presidential victory, in an effort to revive his political campaign.In his speeches, he focused on his claims of a stolen 2020 election and made divisive remarks towards conservative critics and "horrible, horrible people" who are "radial left-wing prosecutors."Legal challenges and controversies may be the biggest roadblock to Trump's path to the nomination, as he faces allegations of misconduct and is under investigation for his handling of classified documents, role in the 2021 insurrection, and attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.Donald Trump warned Saturday that the next election would be America's last chance for salvation as he attempted to revive a faltering third run for the White House in two US states that launched his winning 2016 presidential campaign. Buffeted by political and legal headwinds, the 76-year-old Republican addressed a few hundred supporters at an intimate rally in South Carolina's capital Columbia after speaking to grassroots activists in Salem, New Hampshire."The 2024 election is our one shot to save our country and we need a leader who's ready to do that on day one," Trump said from a podium beneath the Statehouse rotunda, flanked by American flags and some of his most loyal political allies. The events were seen as a chance to revitalize a stuttering campaign amid criticism over Trump's failure to make any public appearances since he announced his latest run in November. But there was no discernible shift in his messaging as he launched into his debunked claims of a stolen 2020 election and reprised his litany of disparaging nicknames for his political rivals.He touched on favorite culture war talking points, railing against critical race theory that he said was being taught in the military as well as gender ideology and windmills that he said were mainly Chinese-made bird-killers."There's only one president who has ever challenged the entire establishment in Washington, and with your vote next year, we will do it again," he said seeking to revive his 2016 image as an insurgent outsider.His most divisive remarks were reserved for the conservative critics he refers to as "RINOs" -- Republicans in name only -- whom he criticized at both events, arguing in New Hampshire that they were "even more dangerous than Democrats." During his address to party activists in Salem he had touted his record on law and order, immigration and "rebuilding" the US military as he vowed to save the country from "being destroyed by a selfish, radical, corrupt political establishment." "I'm more angry now and more committed now than I ever was," Trump said. "We need a president who's ready to hit the ground running on day one."'Horrible, horrible people' New Hampshire and South Carolina hold outsize influence as two of the first states in every presidential election year to hold nominating contests.They cemented Trump's frontrunner status in 2016 after a lukewarm start in Iowa.But he has reportedly struggled to hold together a support base in South Carolina amid simmering discontent over his endorsements of candidates who lost swing state races in November's midterms.The nomination could wind up a two-horse race between Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who came out on top in a straw poll at the National Pro-Life Summit in Washington just last weekend. The biggest roadblock on Trump's path to the nomination may end up being his mounting legal woes, with a quasi-independent "special counsel" appointed to look into numerous allegations of misconduct."These are radical left-wing prosecutors who are absolutely horrible, horrible people," Trump said in New Hampshire, vowing to investigate the Justice Department if he is reelected.He is under the spotlight over his handling of classified documents found in an FBI raid of his beachfront mansion in Florida, his role in the 2021 insurrection and, in Georgia, his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat."We need a fighter who can stand up to the left, who can stand up to the swamp, stand up to the media, stand up to the deep state... to stand up to the globalists and China, and stand up for America," he said in South Carolina. "And that's what we do, we stand up for America."
- [Arizona Republicans pick former Trump official to lead party](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/arizona-republicans-pick-former-trump-official-to-lead-party/) - PHOENIX (AP) - Arizona Republicans on Saturday selected former state treasurer and Donald Trump aide Jeff DeWit to be the party’s next chairman, turning to a familiar face with relationships across the fractured party after its worst election in decades.DeWit replaces firebrand Trump ally Kelli Ward, who helped the former president in his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and was a vocal proponent of his false claim that the election results were fraudulent. She broke with precedent in last year’s primary, openly promoting a slate of election deniers who went on to lose the general election in November.“I’m going to work for you and we’re going to unify,” DeWit said after winning. “And we’re going to get back to beating Democrats and winning elections.” DeWit was supported by Kari Lake, who lost the race for governor but became a rock star on the right,; Mark Finchem, the defeated candidate for secretary of state; and retired Gen. Michael Flynn. Lake said shortly before the vote that Trump made a last-minute endorsement of DeWit as well, though the former president didn’t say anything on his social media accounts.He won with 70% of the votes over several other nominees, including Steve Daniels, who was the choice of some of the party’s most ardent advocates of blowing up the election system. After helping to lead protests against face masks and critical race theory, Daniels founded the Arizona Patriot Party and wants all voting to take place in person on one day, with ballots counted by hand.During Ward’s four-year tenure, the GOP lost three Senate races and the state’s three top offices — governor, secretary of state and attorney general. In recent weeks she’s faced criticism over the party’s spending, including an expensive election night bash in November that Republicans hoped would be a victory celebration before GOP candidates fell short.DeWit was elected state treasurer in 2014 and resigned in 2018, shortly before his term ended, when he was confirmed as chief financial officer of NASA under Trump. He led Trump’s Arizona campaign in 2016 and was chief operating officer of Trump’s 2020 campaign.Meanwhile, Arizona Democrats elected Yolanda Bejarano, a senior national official in the Communications Workers of America union, to be their party chair following the first contested election for Democratic chair in 12 years. Bejarano was backed by most of the state’s elected Democrats, but newly elected Gov. Katie Hobbs supported Steve Gallardo, the only Democrat on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.Outgoing Democratic Chair Raquel Teran declined to run for another term, saying she wants to focus on her role as the state Senate minority leader. She said Friday she’s looking at running for the safely Democratic U.S. House seat being vacated by Ruben Gallego, who’s running for the Senate.The 2024 election includes several races with national implications. Arizona is likely to be a battleground in the presidential race, and independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s seat is also on the ballot. Sinema, a former Democrat who alienated much of the party, has not said whether she’ll seek a second term, setting up the possibility of a rare three-way contest.Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
- [Chris Christie says Donald Trump 'can't win a general election' and GOP is finally ... - Yahoo](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/chris-christie-says-donald-trump-cant-win-a-general-election-and-gop-is-finally-yahoo/) - Former Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie speaks at the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada, on November 19, 2022.WADE VANDERVORT/AFP via Getty ImagesAs Donald Trump embarks on his 2024 campaign, Chris Christie said he "can't win a general election."Former New Jersey Gov. Christie said on "This Week" he believes Trump's electability has declined since 2020.Christie pointed to the 2022 midterms where he said many election deniers proved to be "loser" candidates.Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Donald Trump "can't win a general election" and predicted the former president will not be successful in his 2024 presidential run.Christie, a Republican, said on "This Week" on ABC News that Trump's electability has "gotten worse" since the 2020 election."I've said, over and over again, that he can't win a general election," Christie said Sunday. "That's not speculation. That's based upon the polling that I was privy to pre-the 2020 election, and what we saw actually happen in the 2020 election. And it's only gotten worse since then."Christie said Trump's situation has worsened following the disappointing results of the 2022 midterms for Republicans, in which several of Trump's hand-picked candidates lost their races."Then add to it what you saw happen in 2022, the election deniers losing across the country, bad candidates like (Doug) Mastriano in Pennsylvania dragging the entire Pennsylvania ticket down in a historic way; Kari Lake, Blake Masters, Tim Michels," Christie said. "We could go through the entire list, loser, loser, loser, loser, and I think Republicans are recognizing that."Trump announced his run for re-election in November and has since conducted political visits to New Hampshire and South Carolina, saying he is "more angry" and "more committed now than I ever was."It's too dangerous to take the option of a Trump nomination off the table entirely, Christie and other commentators on "This Week" noted, referencing his unexpected success in 2016."You have him on the table every minute," Christie said.Recent polls have shown Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis leading Trump in presidential polls, though Trump has dismissed those, Insider previously reported."He won't be leading, I got him elected," Trump said of DeSantis, referencing his key 2018 endorsement that helped DeSantis rise to political stardom. "I'm the one that chose him."Read the original article on Business Insider
- [Louisville marches, prays following fatal police beating of Tyre Nichols - WHAS11](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/louisville-marches-prays-following-fatal-police-beating-of-tyre-nichols-whas11/) - Community activists gathered across the city to march and pray days after Memphis authorities released bodycam video of officers beating Nichols. LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Activists in Louisville have gathered in support of Tyre Nichols, two days after body cam video was released showing his violent arrest in Memphis, Tennessee. Community activists gathered across the city to march and pray. Many marched up Bardstown Road, chanting the names of Tyre Nichols and Breonna Taylor. WHAS11 News asked what their message was to those mourning the death of Tyre Nichols. They told us a few years ago amid the unrest in Louisville, people in Memphis stood by them. The marchers said they wanted to make sure Memphis knew they have the same support. “We have been out here fighting for justice for so long and yet once again it is slapped in our face that no one cares. No one in the powers at be actually cares at all to change these systems, to fix these systems, to have massive reforms," event organizer Amber Brown said. There was also an event held at Jefferson Square Park with pastors, community leaders and activists prayed for the family of Nichols and called for peace in Louisville. They made it clear they too believe drastic reform is needed, but focused on creating a safe space for people to come together unified and heal. ►Make it easy to keep up-to-date with more stories like this. Download the WHAS11 News app now. For Apple or Android users. Have a news tip? Email assign@whas11.com, or visit our Facebook page or Twitter feed. RELATED VIDEO [embedded content]
- [Protest, prayer vigil held in Louisville for Tyre Nichols | News - wdrb.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/protest-prayer-vigil-held-in-louisville-for-tyre-nichols-news-wdrb-com/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- People in Louisville gathered to protest in the streets and others held a prayer vigil for Tyre Nichols.Nichols died after being beaten by five Memphis police officers.On Sunday, a small group of protestors took to the streets in the Highlands to denounce police brutality and remember Nichols.The group called for police reform on a national scale. In 2020 after the death of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, protests were held in cities across the United States.Organizers said they want to bring the same attention to the death of Tyre Nichols."Memphis stood up for us when we were out in the streets in 2020," Amber Brown, a protest organizer, said. "It only makes sense for us to be out here, it only makes sense for us to have multiple marches and stand in solidarity because all of these cities did the same for us when we were out here fighting for Breonna Taylor, as we continue to fight for Breonna Taylor."Participants marched from the corner of Broadway and Baxter Avenue, east down Bardstown Road.Others gathered at Jefferson Square Park for a peaceful prayer vigil and rally. Those in attendance prayed for Tyre Nichols' family and called for change."I don't care what color you are, we are one human race," Dennisha Rivers, an event organizer, said. "One human race, this can happen to any of us and it has to stop."Faith leaders called for peace in Louisville and around the country in response to what happened in Memphis."But we already have the answer to evil and that's standing in front of me now, it's coming together, unified as one," Retired LMPD Officer Ray Barker said.Related StoriesCopyright 2023 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
- [Chris Christie Says Donald Trump 'Can't Win a General Election' - Business Insider](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/chris-christie-says-donald-trump-cant-win-a-general-election-business-insider/) - Former Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie speaks at the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada, on November 19, 2022. WADE VANDERVORT/AFP via Getty Images As Donald Trump embarks on his 2024 campaign, Chris Christie said he "can't win a general election." Former New Jersey Gov. Christie said on "This Week" he believes Trump's electability has declined since 2020. Christie pointed to the 2022 midterms where he said many election deniers proved to be "loser" candidates. Top editors give you the stories you want — delivered right to your inbox each weekday. Loading Something is loading. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. download the app Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. .inline-newsletter-signup.loading { width: 100%; max-width: 640px; margin: 0 auto; visibility: hidden; } Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Donald Trump "can't win a general election" and predicted the former president will not be successful in his 2024 presidential run. Christie, a Republican, said on "This Week" on ABC News that Trump's electability has "gotten worse" since the 2020 election. "I've said, over and over again, that he can't win a general election," Christie said Sunday. "That's not speculation. That's based upon the polling that I was privy to pre-the 2020 election, and what we saw actually happen in the 2020 election. And it's only gotten worse since then."Christie said Trump's situation has worsened following the disappointing results of the 2022 midterms for Republicans, in which several of Trump's hand-picked candidates lost their races. "Then add to it what you saw happen in 2022, the election deniers losing across the country, bad candidates like (Doug) Mastriano in Pennsylvania dragging the entire Pennsylvania ticket down in a historic way; Kari Lake, Blake Masters, Tim Michels," Christie said. "We could go through the entire list, loser, loser, loser, loser, and I think Republicans are recognizing that." —This Week (@ThisWeekABC) January 29, 2023Trump announced his run for re-election in November and has since conducted political visits to New Hampshire and South Carolina, saying he is "more angry" and "more committed now than I ever was."It's too dangerous to take the option of a Trump nomination off the table entirely, Christie and other commentators on "This Week" noted, referencing his unexpected success in 2016. "You have him on the table every minute," Christie said. Recent polls have shown Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis leading Trump in presidential polls, though Trump has dismissed those, Insider previously reported. "He won't be leading, I got him elected," Trump said of DeSantis, referencing his key 2018 endorsement that helped DeSantis rise to political stardom. "I'm the one that chose him." .content-lock-lock .hidden { display: none; } Sign up for notifications from Insider! Stay up to date with what you want to know. Subscribe to push notifications Close icon Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.
- [Fourth Villager cuts deal to avoid conviction in voter fraud case from 2020 election](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/fourth-villager-cuts-deal-to-avoid-conviction-in-voter-fraud-case-from-2020-election/) - John RiderA Villager is buying out of community service in a plea deal in a voter fraud cased dating back to the 2020 presidential election. John Rider, 62, a resident of the Village of Virginia Trace, cast his ballot in person during early voting Oct. 28, 2020 in Sumter County. He also cast an absentee ballot in New York, according to an arrest document. At the time, he was registered as a voter with No Party Affiliation in Sumter County. He was arrested in 2021 on a felony charge of casting more than one ballot in an election. Rider entered into a pre-trial intervention contract earlier this month in Sumter County Court. As part of the contract, Rider has agreed to perform 50 hours of community service, but was allowed buy out at the rate of $10 per hour. In a followup fax message to the court, Rider indicated he intends to use bond money from the case to buy out of community service. The remainder of the bond money will be refunded to him. Rider and his wife Carol purchased their home in 2019 at 904 Moses Loop in The Villages. Three other Villagers also faced voter fraud charges in the wake of the 2020 election: Charles Franklin Barnes Jay Ketcik Joan Halstead • Last year, 73-year-old Joan Marie Halstead of the Village of Palo Alto was ordered to complete a civics class and perform community service. She was arrested for casting more than one ballot in the 2020 election. She has requested that her court record be expunged. • Jay Richard Ketcik, 64, who lives at 5564 Henry Loop in the Village of Monarch Grove, was arrested in 2021 on a charge of voter fraud. The Manistique, Mich. native cast a ballot in Florida by mail on Oct. 13, 2020. He also cast a second ballot in Michigan via absentee ballot, according to an arrest report. At the time, he was a registered Republican. • Charles Franklin Barnes, 65, was also ordered into civics class. At the time of his arrest in early 2022, Barnes’ primary address was in Milford, Conn. and he also had a home in the Callahan Villas in the Village of Osceola Hills. He and his wife have since bought a home elsewhere in The Villages. He was charged with casting more than one ballot in the 2020 election. He was registered with No Party Affiliation.
- [Why police training in the US falls short compared to the rest of the world: Report | KSRO](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/why-police-training-in-the-us-falls-short-compared-to-the-rest-of-the-world-report-ksro/) - Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images (NEW YORK) — George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, Laquan McDonald, and now Tyre Nichols — all are part a growing list of people who have been killed by police. The latest disturbing death of Nichols at the hands of Memphis police officers has renewed calls for police reform. “The world is watching us,” Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said Thursday as he announced charges against the five police officers who allegedly beat Nichols to death earlier this month. “We need to show the world what lessons we can learn from this tragedy.” But rather than looking inward, some experts say U.S. law enforcement officials may be better served by looking at the rest of the world for its lessons. A recent report by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), an independent research organization that focuses on critical issues in policing, shows significant gaps in how police in the U.S. are trained when compared to their international counterparts. According to the report, titled “Transforming Police Recruit Training: 40 Guiding Principles,” training standards for the more than 18,000 police agencies in the U.S. are outdated and inconsistent, and often provide training that is too brief — with an emphasis on weapons and tactics and too little focus on decision-making, communications and other critical thinking skills that officers use every day. “Almost every major aspect of policing has fundamentally changed in recent decades, except for one: how we train officers,” the report states. A matter of weeks Police training in the U.S. is most often measured in weeks, while in many other countries it is measured in months or years. “Our training is outdated, antiquated, and is trying to do on the cheap what other places have done in a comprehensive way,” PERF Executive Director Chuck Wexler told ABC News. A 2018 Justice Department study of state and local law enforcement training academies found that the average length of core basic police training in the U.S. is 833 hours, or less than 22 weeks. A more recent survey by PERF found a similar result, with responding agencies reporting an average of 20 weeks of basic police training. In comparison, police recruits in Japan get between 15 and 21 months of training. Police in Germany get 2.5 years of training. And in Finland, police education takes three years to complete. U.S. law enforcement agencies do often provide additional training for police on the job who serve in specialized police units such as narcotics squads and violent crime suppression teams. But in Memphis, it was one of those special units — Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhood, or SCORPION — whose members are accused of fatally beating Nichols during a traffic stop arrest. The unit has now been deactivated following Nichols’ death. Like the military Many police academies in the U.S. still resemble military boot camps, with cadets in buzz cuts and hair buns getting yelled at by drill instructors. “Barking orders and giving commands and sort of a military kind of thinking — it’s not a problem-solving approach. It’s not critical thinking,” Wexler said. Much of the training in American police academies emphasizes skills like marksmanship and defensive tactics, with less focus on so-called “soft skills” like communication and crisis intervention. “People call those soft skills — those are not soft skills, those are hard,” Wexler says. “Communicating, being a good listener, responding, thinking, and sometimes saying, ‘You know what, we need to step back, we’re not the right ones here. For this we need to bring someone else in.’ Those are important skills, to know your limitations, and also to ask the right questions.” De-escalation training A 2020 study by the University of Cincinnati looked at the impact of a training program focused on de-escalation and critical thinking skills in the Louisville Metro Police Department in Kentucky. The program, called Integrated Communications, Assessment and Tactics (ICAT) was developed by PERF. University of Cincinnati researchers found that ICAT training was associated with a sizeable reduction in use-of-force incidents as well as the number of injuries to both citizens and officers. LMPD officers who had participated in ICAT training experienced a 28% reduction in use-of-force incidents and 36% fewer injuries, compared to their peers who had not been given the training. In addition, 26% fewer citizens were injured in encounters with officers who had the training compared to officers who did not. “It turns out that actually using a critical decision model … is not only safer for the person you’re dealing with, but it’s actually safer for police officers,” said Wexler. The cost of reform Regardless of their training, police in the U.S. face unique challenges compared to many of their international counterparts, experts say. American streets are awash in guns and illicit drugs like fentanyl, and training alone won’t change that. Meanwhile, police departments across the country continue to struggle with staffing shortages. Qualified new recruits are in short supply, and many departments are not keeping pace with the number of police retiring or leaving the profession. Expanding police training is costly and could have the undesirable effect of slowing down the pipeline of new officers at a time when law enforcement agencies can’t get new police online fast enough. According to a 2020 PERF survey, 71% of police agencies spend less than 5% of their budgets on recruit training. And law enforcement remains a dangerous profession, with difficult hours and limited pay. As a result, Wexler says that improving policing requires a wide-ranging investment in the profession. “There has to be a national commitment to want to fundamentally train … and to compensate police at a level that makes them professionals,” he said. Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
- [Why police training in the US falls short compared to the rest of the world: Report](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/why-police-training-in-the-us-falls-short-compared-to-the-rest-of-the-world-report/) - George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, Laquan McDonald, and now Tyre Nichols -- all are part a growing list of people who have been killed by police.The latest disturbing death of Nichols at the hands of Memphis police officers has renewed calls for police reform."The world is watching us," Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said Thursday as he announced charges against the five police officers who allegedly beat Nichols to death earlier this month. "We need to show the world what lessons we can learn from this tragedy."But rather than looking inward, some experts say U.S. law enforcement officials may be better served by looking at the rest of the world for its lessons.A recent report by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), an independent research organization that focuses on critical issues in policing, shows significant gaps in how police in the U.S. are trained when compared to their international counterparts.Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy answers questions during a press conference on Thursday, Jan. 26, 2023, after five fired Memphis Police Officers were charged in the murder of Black motorist Tyre Nichols.Mark Weber/APAccording to the report, titled "Transforming Police Recruit Training: 40 Guiding Principles," training standards for the more than 18,000 police agencies in the U.S. are outdated and inconsistent, and often provide training that is too brief -- with an emphasis on weapons and tactics and too little focus on decision-making, communications and other critical thinking skills that officers use every day."Almost every major aspect of policing has fundamentally changed in recent decades, except for one: how we train officers," the report states.A matter of weeksPolice training in the U.S. is most often measured in weeks, while in many other countries it is measured in months or years."Our training is outdated, antiquated, and is trying to do on the cheap what other places have done in a comprehensive way," PERF Executive Director Chuck Wexler told ABC News.A 2018 Justice Department study of state and local law enforcement training academies found that the average length of core basic police training in the U.S. is 833 hours, or less than 22 weeks. A more recent survey by PERF found a similar result, with responding agencies reporting an average of 20 weeks of basic police training.In comparison, police recruits in Japan get between 15 and 21 months of training. Police in Germany get 2.5 years of training. And in Finland, police education takes three years to complete.U.S. law enforcement agencies do often provide additional training for police on the job who serve in specialized police units such as narcotics squads and violent crime suppression teams. But in Memphis, it was one of those special units -- Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhood, or SCORPION -- whose members are accused of fatally beating Nichols during a traffic stop arrest. The unit has now been deactivated following Nichols' death.Like the militaryMany police academies in the U.S. still resemble military boot camps, with cadets in buzz cuts and hair buns getting yelled at by drill instructors."Barking orders and giving commands and sort of a military kind of thinking -- it's not a problem-solving approach. It's not critical thinking," Wexler said.Much of the training in American police academies emphasizes skills like marksmanship and defensive tactics, with less focus on so-called "soft skills" like communication and crisis intervention."People call those soft skills -- those are not soft skills, those are hard," Wexler says. "Communicating, being a good listener, responding, thinking, and sometimes saying, 'You know what, we need to step back, we're not the right ones here. For this we need to bring someone else in.' Those are important skills, to know your limitations, and also to ask the right questions."De-escalation trainingA 2020 study by the University of Cincinnati looked at the impact of a training program focused on de-escalation and critical thinking skills in the Louisville Metro Police Department in Kentucky. The program, called Integrated Communications, Assessment and Tactics (ICAT) was developed by PERF. University of Cincinnati researchers found that ICAT training was associated with a sizeable reduction in use-of-force incidents as well as the number of injuries to both citizens and officers.Boston Police recruits run on Columbus Ave, arriving at Boston Police Headquarters, May 29, 2020.Boston Globe via Getty ImagesLMPD officers who had participated in ICAT training experienced a 28% reduction in use-of-force incidents and 36% fewer injuries, compared to their peers who had not been given the training. In addition, 26% fewer citizens were injured in encounters with officers who had the training compared to officers who did not."It turns out that actually using a critical decision model ... is not only safer for the person you're dealing with, but it's actually safer for police officers," said Wexler.The cost of reformRegardless of their training, police in the U.S. face unique challenges compared to many of their international counterparts, experts say. American streets are awash in guns and illicit drugs like fentanyl, and training alone won't change that.Meanwhile, police departments across the country continue to struggle with staffing shortages. Qualified new recruits are in short supply, and many departments are not keeping pace with the number of police retiring or leaving the profession.Expanding police training is costly and could have the undesirable effect of slowing down the pipeline of new officers at a time when law enforcement agencies can't get new police online fast enough. According to a 2020 PERF survey, 71% of police agencies spend less than 5% of their budgets on recruit training.And law enforcement remains a dangerous profession, with difficult hours and limited pay.As a result, Wexler says that improving policing requires a wide-ranging investment in the profession."There has to be a national commitment to want to fundamentally train ... and to compensate police at a level that makes them professionals," he said.
- [Why police training in the US falls short compared to the rest of the world: Report - WSJM](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/why-police-training-in-the-us-falls-short-compared-to-the-rest-of-the-world-report-wsjm/) - Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images (NEW YORK) — George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, Laquan McDonald, and now Tyre Nichols — all are part a growing list of people who have been killed by police. The latest disturbing death of Nichols at the hands of Memphis police officers has renewed calls for police reform. “The world is watching us,” Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said Thursday as he announced charges against the five police officers who allegedly beat Nichols to death earlier this month. “We need to show the world what lessons we can learn from this tragedy.” But rather than looking inward, some experts say U.S. law enforcement officials may be better served by looking at the rest of the world for its lessons. A recent report by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), an independent research organization that focuses on critical issues in policing, shows significant gaps in how police in the U.S. are trained when compared to their international counterparts. According to the report, titled “Transforming Police Recruit Training: 40 Guiding Principles,” training standards for the more than 18,000 police agencies in the U.S. are outdated and inconsistent, and often provide training that is too brief — with an emphasis on weapons and tactics and too little focus on decision-making, communications and other critical thinking skills that officers use every day. “Almost every major aspect of policing has fundamentally changed in recent decades, except for one: how we train officers,” the report states. A matter of weeks Police training in the U.S. is most often measured in weeks, while in many other countries it is measured in months or years. “Our training is outdated, antiquated, and is trying to do on the cheap what other places have done in a comprehensive way,” PERF Executive Director Chuck Wexler told ABC News. A 2018 Justice Department study of state and local law enforcement training academies found that the average length of core basic police training in the U.S. is 833 hours, or less than 22 weeks. A more recent survey by PERF found a similar result, with responding agencies reporting an average of 20 weeks of basic police training. In comparison, police recruits in Japan get between 15 and 21 months of training. Police in Germany get 2.5 years of training. And in Finland, police education takes three years to complete. U.S. law enforcement agencies do often provide additional training for police on the job who serve in specialized police units such as narcotics squads and violent crime suppression teams. But in Memphis, it was one of those special units — Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhood, or SCORPION — whose members are accused of fatally beating Nichols during a traffic stop arrest. The unit has now been deactivated following Nichols’ death. Like the military Many police academies in the U.S. still resemble military boot camps, with cadets in buzz cuts and hair buns getting yelled at by drill instructors. “Barking orders and giving commands and sort of a military kind of thinking — it’s not a problem-solving approach. It’s not critical thinking,” Wexler said. Much of the training in American police academies emphasizes skills like marksmanship and defensive tactics, with less focus on so-called “soft skills” like communication and crisis intervention. “People call those soft skills — those are not soft skills, those are hard,” Wexler says. “Communicating, being a good listener, responding, thinking, and sometimes saying, ‘You know what, we need to step back, we’re not the right ones here. For this we need to bring someone else in.’ Those are important skills, to know your limitations, and also to ask the right questions.” De-escalation training A 2020 study by the University of Cincinnati looked at the impact of a training program focused on de-escalation and critical thinking skills in the Louisville Metro Police Department in Kentucky. The program, called Integrated Communications, Assessment and Tactics (ICAT) was developed by PERF. University of Cincinnati researchers found that ICAT training was associated with a sizeable reduction in use-of-force incidents as well as the number of injuries to both citizens and officers. LMPD officers who had participated in ICAT training experienced a 28% reduction in use-of-force incidents and 36% fewer injuries, compared to their peers who had not been given the training. In addition, 26% fewer citizens were injured in encounters with officers who had the training compared to officers who did not. “It turns out that actually using a critical decision model … is not only safer for the person you’re dealing with, but it’s actually safer for police officers,” said Wexler. The cost of reform Regardless of their training, police in the U.S. face unique challenges compared to many of their international counterparts, experts say. American streets are awash in guns and illicit drugs like fentanyl, and training alone won’t change that. Meanwhile, police departments across the country continue to struggle with staffing shortages. Qualified new recruits are in short supply, and many departments are not keeping pace with the number of police retiring or leaving the profession. Expanding police training is costly and could have the undesirable effect of slowing down the pipeline of new officers at a time when law enforcement agencies can’t get new police online fast enough. According to a 2020 PERF survey, 71% of police agencies spend less than 5% of their budgets on recruit training. And law enforcement remains a dangerous profession, with difficult hours and limited pay. As a result, Wexler says that improving policing requires a wide-ranging investment in the profession. “There has to be a national commitment to want to fundamentally train … and to compensate police at a level that makes them professionals,” he said. Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
- [Arizona Republicans elect Jeff DeWitt as new party chair - KTAR News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/arizona-republicans-elect-jeff-dewitt-as-new-party-chair-ktar-news/) - PHOENIX — Former state treasurer Jeff DeWit was elected chair of the Arizona Republican Party on Saturday by the GOP state committee. DeWit succeeded former Gov. Doug Ducey as treasurer in 2015 and was named the chief operations officer for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during his campaign in 2016. DeWit also served as chief financial officer of NASA starting in 2018. He was endorsed for state GOP chair by proponents of Trump’s conspiracy that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, including defeated Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and defeated secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem. Arizona Reps. Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs and Debbie Lesko also endorsed DeWit for party chair. He won with 71% of the vote, according to reports. “I’m going to work for you and we’re going to unify,” DeWit said after winning. “And we’re going to get back to beating Democrats and winning elections.” DeWit takes the reins from Kelli Ward, who was elected in 2019 and re-elected in 2021. Ward’s time as party leader involved numerous scandals as she pushed for Trump’s 2020 election defeat to be overturned. She pressured Republicans on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to investigate unsupported claims of fraud before election results were certified and allegedly signed a document falsely claiming she was a true Arizona elector, despite Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the state. Ward asserted her Fifth Amendment right during a deposition of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol after the Supreme Court denied her request to not turn over phone records. Republicans lost critical races during the Nov. 8 election including governor, senator, secretary of state and attorney general, and GOP primary election gubernatorial candidate Karrin Taylor Robson urged Ward to resign. State Democrats, meanwhile, elected Yolanda Bejarano as its new party chair on Saturday. The 2024 election includes several races with national implications. Arizona is likely to be a battleground in the presidential race, and independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s seat is also on the ballot. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Follow @KTAR923 We want to hear from you. Have a story idea or tip? Pass it along to the KTAR News team here.
- [Arizona Republicans pick former Trump official to lead party - AZPM News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/arizona-republicans-pick-former-trump-official-to-lead-party-azpm-news/) - Arizona Republicans on Saturday selected former state treasurer and Donald Trump aide Jeff DeWit to be the party’s next chairman, turning to a familiar face with relationships across the fractured party after its worst election in decades. DeWit replaces firebrand Trump ally Kelli Ward, who helped the former president in his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and was a vocal proponent of his false claim that the election results were fraudulent. She broke with precedent in last year’s primary, openly promoting a slate of election deniers who went on to lose the general election in November. “I'm going to work for you and we’re going to unify,” DeWit said after winning. “And we’re going to get back to beating Democrats and winning elections.” DeWit was supported by Kari Lake, who lost the race for governor but became a rock star on the right, Mark Finchem, the defeated candidate for secretary of state; and retired Gen. Michael Flynn. Lake said shortly before the vote that Trump made a last-minute endorsement of DeWit as well, though the former president didn't say anything on his social media accounts. He won with 70% of the votes over several other nominees, including Steve Daniels, who was the choice of some of the party's most ardent advocates of blowing up the election system. After helping to lead protests against face masks and critical race theory, Daniels founded the Arizona Patriot Party and wants all voting to take place in person on one day, with ballots counted by hand. During Ward’s four-year tenure, the GOP lost three Senate races and the state’s three top offices — governor, secretary of state, and attorney general. In recent weeks she’s faced criticism over the party’s spending, including an expensive election night bash in November that Republicans hoped would be a victory celebration before GOP candidates fell short. DeWit was elected state treasurer in 2014 and resigned in 2018, shortly before his term ended when he was confirmed as chief financial officer of NASA under Trump. He led Trump's Arizona campaign in 2016 and was chief operating officer of Trump's 2020 campaign. Meanwhile, Arizona Democrats elected Yolanda Bejarano, a senior national official in the Communications Workers of America union, to be their party chair following the first contested election for Democratic chair in 12 years. Bejarano was backed by most of the state's elected Democrats, but newly elected Gov. Katie Hobbs supported Steve Gallardo, the only Democrat on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. Outgoing Democratic Chair Raquel Teran declined to run for another term, saying she wants to focus on her role as the state Senate minority leader. She said Friday she's looking at running for the safely Democratic U.S. House seat being vacated by Ruben Gallego, who's running for the Senate. The 2024 election includes several races with national implications. Arizona is likely to be a battleground in the presidential race, and independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema's seat is also on the ballot. Sinema, a former Democrat who alienated much of the party, has not said whether she'll seek a second term, setting up the possibility of a rare three-way contest.
- [Arizona Republicans pick former Trump official to lead party - Las Vegas Sun News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/arizona-republicans-pick-former-trump-official-to-lead-party-las-vegas-sun-news/) - Published Saturday, Jan. 28, 2023 | 10:34 p.m. Updated Saturday, Jan. 28, 2023 | 11:10 p.m. PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona Republicans on Saturday selected former state treasurer and Donald Trump aide Jeff DeWit to be the party’s next chairman, turning to a familiar face with relationships across the fractured party after its worst election in decades. DeWit replaces firebrand Trump ally Kelli Ward, who helped the former president in his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and was a vocal proponent of his false claim that the election results were fraudulent. She broke with precedent in last year’s primary, openly promoting a slate of election deniers who went on to lose the general election in November. “I'm going to work for you and we’re going to unify,” DeWit said after winning. “And we’re going to get back to beating Democrats and winning elections.” DeWit was supported by Kari Lake, who lost the race for governor but became a rock star on the right,; Mark Finchem, the defeated candidate for secretary of state; and retired Gen. Michael Flynn. Lake said shortly before the vote that Trump made a last-minute endorsement of DeWit as well, though the former president didn't say anything on his social media accounts. He won with 70% of the votes over several other nominees, including Steve Daniels, who was the choice of some of the party's most ardent advocates of blowing up the election system. After helping to lead protests against face masks and critical race theory, Daniels founded the Arizona Patriot Party and wants all voting to take place in person on one day, with ballots counted by hand. During Ward’s four-year tenure, the GOP lost three Senate races and the state’s three top offices — governor, secretary of state and attorney general. In recent weeks she’s faced criticism over the party’s spending, including an expensive election night bash in November that Republicans hoped would be a victory celebration before GOP candidates fell short. DeWit was elected state treasurer in 2014 and resigned in 2018, shortly before his term ended, when he was confirmed as chief financial officer of NASA under Trump. He led Trump's Arizona campaign in 2016 and was chief operating officer of Trump's 2020 campaign. Meanwhile, Arizona Democrats elected Yolanda Bejarano, a senior national official in the Communications Workers of America union, to be their party chair following the first contested election for Democratic chair in 12 years. Bejarano was backed by most of the state's elected Democrats, but newly elected Gov. Katie Hobbs supported Steve Gallardo, the only Democrat on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. Outgoing Democratic Chair Raquel Teran declined to run for another term, saying she wants to focus on her role as the state Senate minority leader. She said Friday she's looking at running for the safely Democratic U.S. House seat being vacated by Ruben Gallego, who's running for the Senate. The 2024 election includes several races with national implications. Arizona is likely to be a battleground in the presidential race, and independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema's seat is also on the ballot. Sinema, a former Democrat who alienated much of the party, has not said whether she'll seek a second term, setting up the possibility of a rare three-way contest.
- [Is Ohio's new voting law a solution in search of a problem? - Canton Repository](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/is-ohios-new-voting-law-a-solution-in-search-of-a-problem-canton-repository/) - Last month while you were sleeping, the Ohio Legislature's Republican supermajority passed House Bill 458, a new law that requires voters to show state-issued photo identification while shrinking the window for mail-in voting, and limiting each of the state's 88 counties to a single drop box.Voting rights activists say the law is a bid to make it harder to vote by imposing hurdles for qualification while reducing access and opportunity.Utility bills, and other government documents will no longer be accepted. It also limits curbside voting, which directly impacts people with disabilities; shortens the time for returning ballots or fixing errors in them; increases the absentee ballot request deadline from three days to seven days before the election, and reduces the deadline for absentee ballots from 10 days after Election Day, to 7:30 p.m. on the day of the election.Though the law requires voters to furnish state-issued IDs, identification issued to college students by public universities, and those issued to veterans by county agencies, may not be accepted.More Charita Goshay:This is for all the lonely peopleOhio's law among the most strict:How Ohio's new voter ID law compares to other statesProponents of the law say it will reduce the potential for fraud, even as their former house speaker goes on trial for racketeering and bribery.If election integrity is really a concern, Republican legislators wouldn't be ignoring the courts, which have tossed out election maps that look like they were drawn by Picasso on a bender.Two years ago, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced that his review of the 2020 election found no evidence of voter fraud.So, it poses the question: Why fix a system that isn't broken?Why shrink the window for absentee voting and all but eliminate drop boxes, which have been successfully used in other states for years?Why reject state-college IDs as an acceptable form of identification? It wouldn't be because most college-age voters tend to support Democrats, would it?If the Legislature really wants to improve voting, why not pass a law that automatically registers every Ohioan when they turn 18?Ohio's map debacle:Ohio's map madness: What's democracy got to do with it?It has been argued that requiring a voter to furnish a state ID is hardly a burden, given that residents over 17 can acquire one for free and surveys show that the majority of Ohioans support requiring voters to show photo identification. But critics contend that applying for a state-issued ID is not that easy and can even be confusing.Let's not be virgins, here. From poll taxes, to suffragettes, to Bloody Sunday, creating obstacles to the vote is as American as a pickup truck.House Bill 458 was passed knowing that it makes voting a little bit harder — not better.The question is, what are those who feel the latest law creates more hurdles going to do about it? If it is believed that the complaints are valid, churches, student groups, and civil-rights organizations should be working to inform people of the changes, and to ensure that everyone who needs a state-issued ID gets one.That said, those who can vote, must do so. Poor voter turnout gives tacit permission to those in power to do whatever they want. The doings of state government tend to get ignored because it isn't "sexy," though state laws are more impactful to our daily lives than Joe Biden's unforced errors and George Santos' latest hijinks.Plus, we owe it to those forebears who did the hard and dangerous work of securing the right.Democracy needs voters:Election Day marks just the start of democracyA battle waged decades ago keeps reemerging to threaten new generations. When others dare to make voting harder, such schemes must be defeated at the ballot box.Charita M. Goshay is a Canton Repository staff writer and member of the editorial board. Reach her at 330-580-8313 or charita.goshay@cantonrep.com. On Twitter: @cgoshayREP
- [Election-denying lawmakers hold key election oversight roles - Times Leader](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/election-denying-lawmakers-hold-key-election-oversight-roles-times-leader/) - HARRISBURG — Republican lawmakers who have spread election conspiracy theories and falsely claimed that the 2020 presidential outcome was rigged are overseeing legislative committees charged with setting election policy in two major political battleground states. Divided government in Pennsylvania and Arizona means that any voting restrictions those GOP legislators propose is likely to fail. Even so, the high-profile appointments give the lawmakers a platform to cast further doubt on the integrity of elections in states that will be pivotal in selecting the next president in 2024. Awarding such plum positions to lawmakers who have repeated conspiracies and spread misinformation cuts against more than two years of evidence showing there were no widespread problems or fraud in the last presidential election. It also would appear to run counter to the message delivered in the November midterm elections, when voters rejected election-denying candidates running for top offices in presidential battleground states. At the same time, many mainstream Republicans are trying to move past the lies told by former President Donald Trump and his allies about his loss to President Joe Biden. “It is an issue that many Americans and many Pennsylvanians are tired of seeing litigated and relitigated over and over,” said Pennsylvania state Sen. Amanda Cappalletti, the ranking Democrat on the Senate committee that handles election legislation. “I think we’re all ready to move on, and we see from audit after audit that our elections are secure, they are fair and that people’s votes are being counted.” Multiple reviews and audits in the six battleground states where Trump disputed his loss, as well as dozens of court rejections and repeated admonishments from officials in his own administration, have underscored that the 2020 presidential results were accurate. There was no widespread fraud or manipulation of voting machines that would have altered the result. The legislative appointments in Pennsylvania and Arizona highlight the divide between the two major parties over election law. Already this year, Democratic-controlled legislatures are moving to expand access to voting and heighten penalties for intimidating voters and election workers, while many Republican-led states are aiming to pass further restrictions, a trend that accelerated after Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election. Democratic governors and legislative victories last fall will blunt the influence of Republicans who took steps or pushed rhetoric seeking to overturn the 2020 election. But in Arizona and Pennsylvania, two lawmakers who dismiss the validity of that election — not to mention other elections since then — will have key positions of influence as the majority chairs of legislative committees that oversee election legislation. In Arizona, Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers takes over the Senate Elections Committee after being appointed by an ally, Senate President Warren Petersen. He was one of two lawmakers who signed subpoenas that led to Senate Republicans’ widely derided audit of the 2020 election. Rogers, who has gained a national following for spreading conspiracy theories and questioning elections, has faced repeated ethics charges for her inflammatory rhetoric, support for white supremacists and conspiracy-filled social media posts. She now will be a main gatekeeper for election and voting bills in Arizona, where election changes are a top priority for some Republican lawmakers. Some want to eliminate voting by mail and early voting options that are used by more than 80% of the state’s voters. She has scheduled a committee meeting for Monday to consider bills that would ban unmonitored drop boxes, prohibit drive-through voting or ballot pickup and impose what voting-rights advocates say are additional burdens on early voting. In Pennsylvania, Republican Sen. Cris Dush takes over as chair of the Senate State Government Committee after pushing to block the state’s electoral votes from going to Biden in 2020. Dush also mounted an election investigation that he hoped would use the Arizona-style audit as a model. He was appointed by the Senate’s ranking Republican, President Pro Tem Kim Ward, whose office explained Dush’s appointment only by saying that seniority plays a role and that members have priority requests. In the first weeks of this year’s session, Dush has moved along measures to expand voter identification requirements and add a layer of post-election audits. Both are proposed constitutional amendments designed to bypass a governor’s veto by going to voters for approval. Dush said he also plans to develop legislation to require more security measures for drop boxes and ballots. “I’m going to make a promise to the people of Pennsylvania: The things that I’m doing here as chair of State Government, it’s going to be things that will be conducted in a fair, impartial manner,” Dush said in an interview. “You know, we’ve just got to make sure that we can ensure the integrity of the vote and people aren’t disenfranchised.” Arizona and Pennsylvania have newly elected Democratic governors who presumably would veto hard-line GOP bills opposed by Democrats. Still, Democrats, county election officials and voting-rights advocates in both states want changes to election laws that, with Dush and Rogers in place, may never see the light of day. Alex Gulotta, the Arizona director for the voting rights group All Voting is Local, said he anticipates the Legislature there will pass a lot of “bad elections bills.” He said moderate Republican lawmakers who might have voted down problematic measures under a Republican governor now might let them pass because they know Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs will likely veto them. “This is performative,” Gulotta said. “This isn’t substantive.” The question, he said, is whether Rogers and other Arizona lawmakers can cooperate on “small fixes” where there is consensus. That, he said, will take “real statesmanship.” Liz Avore, a senior adviser to the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab, said the organization expects another busy period of lawmaking related to voting and elections ahead of the 2024 presidential vote, even as candidates who repeated Trump’s lies about a stolen 2020 election lost bids for governor, secretary of state and attorney general in key battleground states. Democratic and Republican-led states are often moving in opposite directions, but some bipartisan consensus has emerged around certain aspects of election law, such as restoring voting rights to felons and expanding early in-person voting, Avore said. Republican proposals, such as expanding voter identification requirements, are popular and have majority support, as do some Democratic proposals to broaden access, said Christopher Borick, a political science professor and pollster at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. But to be successful with voters, Republicans need to mind the lessons from 2022. Denying the outcomes of fair elections, he said, “is a loser for the Republican Party. Straight up.”
- ["GOP Leadership Battles Expose Divisions in 2024 Battleground States" - Election Law Blog](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/gop-leadership-battles-expose-divisions-in-2024-battleground-states-election-law-blog/) - WSJ: Rifts in the GOP between those who support Donald Trump’s false 2020 election fraud claims and those who want the party to move on from the former president have resurfaced in party leadership races in key states, with each side blaming the other for disappointing midterm results. In Arizona, the state Republican party—which for years has been at odds with former GOP Gov. Doug Ducey and more establishment Republicans—on Saturday elected Jeff DeWit as party chairman. A former state treasurer, Mr. DeWit worked on both of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaigns and served in the Trump administration. Mr. Trump backed his bid, according to several people with knowledge. Kari Lake, the Trump-aligned failed GOP candidate for governor in 2022 also supported him. He is set to appear at a rally with Ms. Lake on Sunday. Mr. DeWit had support of many of the party’s activists, but he also made an effort to win over some more traditional Republicans. He has said he would focus on voter registration and fundraising, according to Jonathan Lines, a former state party chairman. Some Arizona Republicans say they don’t see room for themselves in a party apparatus dominated by supporters of Mr. Trump and his election-fraud claims. And they point to widespread defeat for Republican statewide candidates in a state that the GOP long dominated. “There’s a new conductor but the orchestra is still out of tune,” said Thomas Galvin, a Republican member of the GOP-led Maricopa Board of Supervisors, which runs elections in the state’s largest county. The board has been criticized from other Republicans for its handling of the past two election cycles when Democrats won. “There’s nothing to suggest that the new party chair will have the guts to state the harsh truth in order for the party to get back to its winning ways.” Mr. DeWit didn’t respond to requests for comment. Share this:
- [Washington Democrats back proposal to make voting legally required - OPB](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/washington-democrats-back-proposal-to-make-voting-legally-required-opb/) - Your browser does not support the audio element.Numerous Democrats in the Washington Legislature are backing a new proposal to make voting in elections compulsory. Citizens are required by law to cast ballots in about 25 counties but in no other U.S. states.THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR:Republicans in Olympia described the idea as "un-American."State Sen. Sam Hunt (D-Olympia) said he got the idea for what he calls “universal civic duty voting” from a recently published book titled “100% Democracy” by E.J. Dionne and Miles Rapoport. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Andy Billig of Spokane mailed Hunt a copy last year.“As a member of the Senate, once the majority leader sends you something, it sort of gets your attention,” Hunt said in an interview. “So, I read the book and it piqued an interest with me.”Voting in federal elections has been compulsory in Australia for the past 99 years. Australia is frequently held up as a model by supporters of universal voting.Mfunnell / Wikimedia CommonsSo much so, Hunt had the concept of compulsory voting turned into a legislative proposal. Billig's enthusiasm separately inspired state Rep. Sharlett Mena (D-Tacoma) to introduce an identical version of the legislation in the state House.The pending bills would require all eligible Washingtonians to register to vote. Then when your ballot comes in the mail, you'd be legally required to return it for every primary and general election, although there would be no punishment if you didn’t. You could also cast a blank ballot if you wanted, or get off the voter roll permanently by filling out a conscientious objector form. Compulsory voting would take effect in Washington state in 2026 if the bill passes.“Just like paying taxes and signing up for the draft for all males, it’s just another civic duty that we would require people to do,” Hunt said.Backers of universal voting claim it would reduce divisiveness and polarization in politics by prompting candidates to appeal to a broader electorate, especially to groups who now vote at lower rates, such as young voters, minorities and lower-income folks."Democracy and voting is a basic part of our country and the more we get involved, I think the better and the stronger our government is," Hunt argued.Chief sponsors Hunt and Mena have won over no Republicans to their proposal.“To me, this is an unconstitutional, un-American distraction,” said state Sen. Jeff Wilson, the ranking Republican on the Senate State Government and Elections Committee. That panel will be the first to scrutinize the proposal.Wilson said he foresees legal trouble in compelling people to speak through their vote.“Of course, you have the right to speak, you have the right to vote, but you also have the same right to not,” Wilson said in an interview. “Sometimes silence is golden. Sometimes silence can be measured. But it certainly shouldn’t be expected in the form of a ballot.”Even though there’s no penalty for failure to vote, Wilson still objected.THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR:“There’s no consequence now, but what would keep it from having a consequence later? That’s something to be very concerned about,” Wilson said.Compulsory voting mandated overseas and in Latin AmericaAbout two dozen foreign countries require their citizens to vote. Enforcement varies widely from getting into deep trouble for abstaining in North Korea to no consequence at all in places such as Greece, Fiji, Honduras and Egypt. Where there is enforcement, voter turnout is markedly better than in the U.S.Backers of universal voting often hold up Australia as their model. It consistently has one of the highest rates of voter turnout in the world at over 90%. The Australian Electoral Commission enforces the rule with a fine starting at AU$20 – around US$14."I really don't think at this point it is fear of a fine that is driving people to the booth," Australian journalist Amelia Ballinger told SkyNews. "The very large majority of the voting public in Australia supports compulsory voting. They want to participate."University of Sydney research fellow Sarah Cameron told the BBC that compulsory voting could tilt elections to the left."In countries with voluntary voting, people of lower socio-economic status are less likely to turn out to vote. These are groups that are more likely to support parties on the left," Cameron explained. "So, the effect is that when voting is compulsory, parties on the left benefit."Some American academics doubt this would be the case in the U.S."The evidence shows it would have little effect on election outcomes because non‐voters tend to break down about the same as for voters in their partisan preferences," wrote Cato Institute adjunct scholar Andy Craig.The Knight Foundation surveyed 12,000 chronic non-voters nationwide in 2020. If those respondents were compelled to vote, the results showed they would add a nearly equal share to Democratic and Republican candidates (33% versus 30%, respectively), while 18% said they would vote for a third party.Voter turnout is already comparatively high in the Pacific NorthwestThere’s also a question of whether a legal requirement to vote is needed. American states that make it easy to register to vote and then send every voter a ballot in the mail, such as Oregon and Washington, have better voter turnout than some of the foreign countries that require all citizens to vote but don’t enforce that rule.Ninety percent of eligible voters in Washington state were registered to vote ahead of the 2020 election, according to the Elections Division of the Washington Secretary of State. Registered voter turnout in the general election topped 84% in that presidential year. In the November 2022 midterm elections, 64% of Washington voters cast a ballot.For comparison, in Mexico, where voting is an obligation but there is no penalty, the average turnout in recent federal elections was 54%. Similarly, the last two parliamentary elections in Greece had a turnout between 57%-58%.At the Washington state capital, the compulsory voting legislation has a long road ahead, but it does have co-sponsorship from nearly half of the Democratic majority in the state Senate. Chief sponsors Hunt and Mena said that compulsory voting might be one of those proposals that take a couple of sessions for lawmakers and the public to warm up to.Hunt said he invited the co-author of the “100 Democracy” book, former Connecticut Secretary of State Miles Rapoport, as well as the Speaker of the New South Wales Parliament’s legislative assembly to address the state Senate Elections Committee, which Hunt chairs, on January 31 for an initial hearing. Mena said a public hearing in the state House could follow, but she did not anticipate the legislation would move all the way to the governor’s desk this year.First-term lawmaker Mena said she acted out of concern that her ethnically-diverse legislative district centered on South Tacoma has among the lowest voter turnout in the state.“My motivation is the idea that we should have this conversation about how to get to 100% democracy,” Mena said on Tuesday.THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR:
- [Republicans promoting election conspiracies now hold key oversight roles](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/republicans-promoting-election-conspiracies-now-hold-key-oversight-roles/) - HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania — Republican lawmakers who have spread election conspiracy theories and falsely claimed that the 2020 presidential outcome was rigged are overseeing legislative committees charged with setting election policy in two major political battleground states. Divided government in Pennsylvania and Arizona means that any voting restrictions those GOP legislators propose is likely to fail. Even so, the high-profile appointments give the lawmakers a platform to cast further doubt on the integrity of elections in states that will be pivotal in selecting the next president in 2024. Awarding such plum positions to lawmakers who have repeated conspiracies and spread misinformation cuts against more than two years of evidence showing there were no widespread problems or fraud in the last presidential election. It also would appear to run counter to the message delivered in the November midterm elections, when voters rejected election-denying candidates running for top offices in presidential battleground states. At the same time, many mainstream Republicans are trying to move past the lies told by former President Donald Trump and his allies about his loss to President Joe Biden. “It is an issue that many Americans and many Pennsylvanians are tired of seeing litigated and relitigated over and over,” said Pennsylvania state Sen. Amanda Cappalletti, the ranking Democrat on the Senate committee that handles election legislation. “I think we’re all ready to move on, and we see from audit after audit that our elections are secure, they are fair and that people’s votes are being counted.” Multiple reviews and audits in the six battleground states where Trump disputed his loss, as well as dozens of court rejections and repeated admonishments from officials in his own administration, have underscored that the 2020 presidential results were accurate. There was no widespread fraud or manipulation of voting machines that would have altered the result. The legislative appointments in Pennsylvania and Arizona highlight the divide between the two major parties over election law. Already this year, Democratic-controlled legislatures are moving to expand access to voting and heighten penalties for intimidating voters and election workers, while many Republican-led states are aiming to pass further restrictions, a trend that accelerated after Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election. Democratic governors and legislative victories last fall will blunt the influence of Republicans who took steps or pushed rhetoric seeking to overturn the 2020 election. But in Arizona and Pennsylvania, two lawmakers who dismiss the validity of that election — not to mention other elections since then — will have key positions of influence as the majority chairs of legislative committees that oversee election legislation. In Arizona, Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers takes over the Senate Elections Committee after being appointed by an ally, Senate President Warren Petersen. He was one of two lawmakers who signed subpoenas that led to Senate Republicans’ widely derided audit of the 2020 election. Rogers, who has gained a national following for spreading conspiracy theories and questioning elections, has faced repeated ethics charges for her inflammatory rhetoric, support for white supremacists and conspiracy-filled social media posts. She now will be a main gatekeeper for election and voting bills in Arizona, where election changes are a top priority for some Republican lawmakers. Some want to eliminate voting by mail and early voting options that are used by more than 80% of the state’s voters. She has scheduled a committee meeting for Monday to consider bills that would ban unmonitored drop boxes, prohibit drive-through voting or ballot pickup and impose what voting-rights advocates say are additional burdens on early voting. In Pennsylvania, Republican Sen. Cris Dush takes over as chair of the Senate State Government Committee after pushing to block the state’s electoral votes from going to Biden in 2020. Dush also mounted an election investigation that he hoped would use the Arizona-style audit as a model. He was appointed by the Senate’s ranking Republican, President Pro Tem Kim Ward, whose office explained Dush’s appointment only by saying that seniority plays a role and that members have priority requests. In the first weeks of this year’s session, Dush has moved along measures to expand voter identification requirements and add a layer of post-election audits. Both are proposed constitutional amendments designed to bypass a governor’s veto by going to voters for approval. Dush said he also plans to develop legislation to require more security measures for drop boxes and ballots. “I’m going to make a promise to the people of Pennsylvania: The things that I’m doing here as chair of State Government, it’s going to be things that will be conducted in a fair, impartial manner,” Dush said in an interview. “You know, we’ve just got to make sure that we can ensure the integrity of the vote and people aren’t disenfranchised.” Arizona and Pennsylvania have newly elected Democratic governors who presumably would veto hard-line GOP bills opposed by Democrats. Still, Democrats, county election officials and voting-rights advocates in both states want changes to election laws that, with Dush and Rogers in place, may never see the light of day. Alex Gulotta, the Arizona director for the voting rights group All Voting is Local, said he anticipates the Legislature there will pass a lot of “bad elections bills.” He said moderate Republican lawmakers who might have voted down problematic measures under a Republican governor now might let them pass because they know Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs will likely veto them. “This is performative,” Gulotta said. “This isn’t substantive.” The question, he said, is whether Rogers and other Arizona lawmakers can cooperate on “small fixes” where there is consensus. That, he said, will take “real statesmanship.” Liz Avore, a senior adviser to the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab, said the organization expects another busy period of lawmaking related to voting and elections ahead of the 2024 presidential vote, even as candidates who repeated Trump’s lies about a stolen 2020 election lost bids for governor, secretary of state and attorney general in key battleground states. Democratic and Republican-led states are often moving in opposite directions, but some bipartisan consensus has emerged around certain aspects of election law, such as restoring voting rights to felons and expanding early in-person voting, Avore said. Republican proposals, such as expanding voter identification requirements, are popular and have majority support, as do some Democratic proposals to broaden access, said Christopher Borick, a political science professor and pollster at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. But to be successful with voters, Republicans need to mind the lessons from 2022. Denying the outcomes of fair elections, he said, “is a loser for the Republican Party. Straight up.” Story by Marc Levy and Jonathan J. Cooper. More articles from the BDN
- [Does it matter if Trump believes he won the 2020 election? - MSN](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/does-it-matter-if-trump-believes-he-won-the-2020-election-msn/)
- [Does it matter if Trump believes he won the 2020 election? | The Hill](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/does-it-matter-if-trump-believes-he-won-the-2020-election-the-hill/) - Does it matter if Trump believes he won the 2020 election? | The Hill Skip to content Opinion>White House The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill Did former President Trump know, after the 2020 election, that he had lost as he convinced millions of supporters the election
- [Election-Denying Lawmakers Hold Key Election Oversight Roles - HuffPost](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/election-denying-lawmakers-hold-key-election-oversight-roles-huffpost/) - HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Republican lawmakers who have spread election conspiracy theories and falsely claimed that the 2020 presidential outcome was rigged are overseeing legislative committees charged with setting election policy in two major political battleground states.Divided government in Pennsylvania and Arizona means that any voting restrictions those GOP legislators propose is likely to fail. Even so, the high-profile appointments give the lawmakers a platform to cast further doubt on the integrity of elections in states that will be pivotal in selecting the next president in 2024.Advertisement Awarding such plum positions to lawmakers who have repeated conspiracies and spread misinformation cuts against more than two years of evidence showing there were no widespread problems or fraud in the last presidential election. It also would appear to run counter to the message delivered in the November midterm elections, when voters rejected election-denying candidates running for top offices in presidential battleground states.At the same time, many mainstream Republicans are trying to move past the lies told by former President Donald Trump and his allies about his loss to President Joe Biden.“It is an issue that many Americans and many Pennsylvanians are tired of seeing litigated and relitigated over and over,” said Pennsylvania state Sen. Amanda Cappalletti, the ranking Democrat on the Senate committee that handles election legislation. “I think we’re all ready to move on, and we see from audit after audit that our elections are secure, they are fair and that people’s votes are being counted.”Multiple reviews and audits in the six battleground states where Trump disputed his loss, as well as dozens of court rejections and repeated admonishments from officials in his own administration, have underscored that the 2020 presidential results were accurate. There was no widespread fraud or manipulation of voting machines that would have altered the result.Advertisement The legislative appointments in Pennsylvania and Arizona highlight the divide between the two major parties over election law. Already this year, Democratic-controlled legislatures are moving to expand access to voting and heighten penalties for intimidating voters and election workers, while many Republican-led states are aiming to pass further restrictions, a trend that accelerated after Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election.Democratic governors and legislative victories last fall will blunt the influence of Republicans who took steps or pushed rhetoric seeking to overturn the 2020 election.But in Arizona and Pennsylvania, two lawmakers who dismiss the validity of that election — not to mention other elections since then — will have key positions of influence as the majority chairs of legislative committees that oversee election legislation.Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, speaks at a Save America Rally prior to former president Donald Trump speaking on Jan. 15, 2022, in Florence, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, FileIn Arizona, Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers takes over the Senate Elections Committee after being appointed by an ally, Senate President Warren Petersen. He was one of two lawmakers who signed subpoenas that led to Senate Republicans’ widely derided audit of the 2020 election.Advertisement Rogers, who has gained a national following for spreading conspiracy theories and questioning elections, has faced repeated ethics charges for her inflammatory rhetoric, support for white supremacists and conspiracy-filled social media posts.She now will be a main gatekeeper for election and voting bills in Arizona, where election changes are a top priority for some Republican lawmakers. Some want to eliminate voting by mail and early voting options that are used by more than 80% of the state’s voters.She has scheduled a committee meeting for Monday to consider bills that would ban unmonitored drop boxes, prohibit drive-through voting or ballot pickup and impose what voting-rights advocates say are additional burdens on early voting.In Pennsylvania, Republican Sen. Cris Dush takes over as chair of the Senate State Government Committee after pushing to block the state’s electoral votes from going to Biden in 2020. Dush also mounted an election investigation that he hoped would use the Arizona-style audit as a model.He was appointed by the Senate’s ranking Republican, President Pro Tem Kim Ward, whose office explained Dush’s appointment only by saying that seniority plays a role and that members have priority requests.Advertisement Pennsylvania state Sen. Cris Dush, R-Jefferson, listens during a news conference in Harrisburg, Pa., Feb. 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)AP Photo/Matt Rourke, FileIn the first weeks of this year’s session, Dush has moved along measures to expand voter identification requirements and add a layer of post-election audits. Both are proposed constitutional amendments designed to bypass a governor’s veto by going to voters for approval.Dush said he also plans to develop legislation to require more security measures for drop boxes and ballots.“I’m going to make a promise to the people of Pennsylvania: The things that I’m doing here as chair of State Government, it’s going to be things that will be conducted in a fair, impartial manner,” Dush said in an interview. “You know, we’ve just got to make sure that we can ensure the integrity of the vote and people aren’t disenfranchised.”Arizona and Pennsylvania have newly elected Democratic governors who presumably would veto hard-line GOP bills opposed by Democrats.Advertisement Still, Democrats, county election officials and voting-rights advocates in both states want changes to election laws that, with Dush and Rogers in place, may never see the light of day.Alex Gulotta, the Arizona director for the voting rights group All Voting is Local, said he anticipates the Legislature there will pass a lot of “bad elections bills.” He said moderate Republican lawmakers who might have voted down problematic measures under a Republican governor now might let them pass because they know Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs will likely veto them.“This is performative,” Gulotta said. “This isn’t substantive.”The question, he said, is whether Rogers and other Arizona lawmakers can cooperate on “small fixes” where there is consensus. That, he said, will take “real statesmanship.”Liz Avore, a senior adviser to the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab, said the organization expects another busy period of lawmaking related to voting and elections ahead of the 2024 presidential vote, even as candidates who repeated Trump’s lies about a stolen 2020 election lost bids for governor, secretary of state and attorney general in key battleground states.Democratic and Republican-led states are often moving in opposite directions, but some bipartisan consensus has emerged around certain aspects of election law, such as restoring voting rights to felons and expanding early in-person voting, Avore said.Advertisement Republican proposals, such as expanding voter identification requirements, are popular and have majority support, as do some Democratic proposals to broaden access, said Christopher Borick, a political science professor and pollster at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania.But to be successful with voters, Republicans need to mind the lessons from 2022. Denying the outcomes of fair elections, he said, “is a loser for the Republican Party. Straight up.”___Cooper reported from Phoenix.___Follow Marc Levy on Twitter: http://twitter.com/timelywriterRelatedelectionselectionvotingrigged electionelection denierFailed GOP Candidate Arrested In String Of Shootings At New Mexico Democrats' HomesKevin McCarthy Has Packed The House Oversight Committee With Election DeniersA Running List Of All The Election Deniers Heading To Congress In 2023 Go To Homepage
- [Is Jeff DeWit the next Kelli Ward? (And if so, is Arizona's GOP doomed?) - AZCentral](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/is-jeff-dewit-the-next-kelli-ward-and-if-so-is-arizonas-gop-doomed-azcentral/) - Farewell, Kelli Ward.The four-year reign of the chaotic chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party ended on Saturday.Her list of accomplishments is both long and astonishing, having lost one presidential election, two Senate seats, the top three state offices and yes, even the party’s liability insurance. (The party’s insurance company cancelled, she announced on Saturday, "because we are Republicans.")The question is, what are Republicans moving on to?The GOP’s grassroots activists on Saturday elected Jeff DeWit as the new party chairman.Then they overwhelmingly rejected a resolution stating that Joe Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election.DeWit won't be as woefully incompetent, so wondrously bumbling as Kelli Ward.He’s not going to declare war on RINOs or invite McCain supporters “to get the hell out” of the once-Grand Old Party, as failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake did. And unlike Ward and Lake, he actually won a statewide election, having been tapped as state treasurer in 2014 before leaving the post three years later to work in the Trump administration. But with his ties to Trump and the far right, the jury’s still out on whether DeWit can save the party from itself as it tries to deliver the key battleground state to a Republican president, reclaim a Senate seat and strengthen its tenuous control of the Arizona Legislature in 2024.DeWit didn't return my call last week to talk about his plans but reaction by some in the party's establishment wing ranges from disappointed and downright skeptical to resigned but please-God-don't-let-him-be-another-Kelli-Ward."He has the DNA and relevant life experience to lead," Republican strategist Chuck Coughlin told me. "The question is, can he? Can he be selfless and serve not inward looking and boastful? Is he willing to be able to quietly be truthful and no succumb to social media and Twitter? We will see."For those who are hoping the Arizona Republican Party will return to its once-winning ways, there are some good signs. Then there are the exceedingly bad signs.DeWit beat out Steve Daniels, the pick of the fringiest of the party fringe.Daniels teamed with failed 2020 Senate candidate Daniel “Demand Daniel” McCarthy to start the wacky Patriot Party. The group is best known for trying to recall conservative House Speaker Rusty Bowers and for ths misfits who cruised Bowers’ neighborhood using a loudspeakers to brand him a pedophile. This, because Bowers refused to get behind efforts to overturn Arizona’s presidential election.But activists on Saturday passed up candidates from the party's establishment wing. Instead, they elected DeWit, who was endorsed by a who’s who of election deniers, including Ward, Lake, failed secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, Sens. Wendy Rogers and Sonny Borrelli, Reps. Anthony Kern and Austin Smith, R-Turning Point USA. According to Lake, he also was Trump’s pick for the job.DeWit – who ran Trump’s 2016 campaign in Arizona and played a key role in Trump’s 2020 national campaign -- says many of the right things about moving on. About removing the stake so delightfully driven into the heart of the party by the state’s prime RINO hunters, Ward and Lake. “We are going to unify and we’re going to get back to winning elections,” he told the 1,000 or so Republicans gathered at Saturday’s annual meeting.But during his pre-vote speech, he brought Rogers and Borrelli -- two of the many ultra-right legislators who continue to be obsessed by the 2020 and 2022 elections -- onto the stage to stand beside him.And as his first act, DeWit was scheduled to attend Lake’s Save America rally on Sunday.Was there ever a candidate less inclined to move on that Kari Lake?"Actions speak louder than words," Maricopa County Supervisor Thomas Galvin told me. "DeWit has no desire to unite the party nor signal to crucial donors that the party is heading in a new direction. By standing side-by-side with grifters who monetized election fraud, he provides no reason to think he wants to save the party from its death spiral."DeWit privately reassures more conventional Republicans that he’s moved on from Trump but on Saturday he called Democrats “the real enemy”. While that makes the hearts of the MAGA faithful go pitty-pat, it strikes the wrong note with more moderate and independent voters who see Democrats not as the enemy but as fellow Americans who simply have a different vision for how to run the country.The sort of candidates who moderates and GOP-leaning independents will hold their nose and vote for -- if, that is, the only other choices are the choices put forth of late by the Republican base.In fact, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego and independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema are depending on that, as is anyone who hopes to keep the Senate in Democratic hands.As for Republicans from the wing of the party that long controlled this state? They're not exactly delirious with excitement about Ward's successor. But, at least, most are hoping the party has traded up.Honestly, that wouldn't take much."He's an improvement," Republican consultant Tyler Montague told me. "If he takes the GOP forward on issues and stays out of the primaries, and most importantly, moves on from the election fraud mantra, he'll have been successful."The challenge DeWit faces is daunting.He has to figure out how to unite the MAGA faithful who have Trump’s face tattooed over their hearts -- deeply embedded in permanent ink -- with more conventional Republicans who are ready to move on from 2020.The question is, which one is he really?Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.Support local journalism: Subscribe to azcentral.com today.
- [Arizona Republicans pick former Trump official to lead party - NBC News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/arizona-republicans-pick-former-trump-official-to-lead-party-nbc-news/) - PHOENIX — Arizona Republicans on Saturday selected former state treasurer and Donald Trump aide Jeff DeWit to be the party’s next chairman, turning to a familiar face with relationships across the fractured party after its worst election in decades.DeWit replaces firebrand Trump ally Kelli Ward, who helped the former president in his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and was a vocal proponent of his false claim that the election results were fraudulent. She broke with precedent in last year’s primary, openly promoting a slate of election deniers who went on to lose the general election in November.“I’m going to work for you and we’re going to unify,” DeWit said after winning. “And we’re going to get back to beating Democrats and winning elections.”DeWit was supported by Kari Lake, who lost the race for governor but became a rock star on the right; Mark Finchem, the defeated candidate for secretary of state; and retired Gen. Michael Flynn. Lake said shortly before the vote that Trump made a last-minute endorsement of DeWit as well, though the former president didn’t say anything on his social media accounts.He won with 70% of the votes over several other nominees, including Steve Daniels, who was the choice of some of the party’s most ardent advocates of blowing up the election system. After helping to lead protests against face masks and critical race theory, Daniels founded the Arizona Patriot Party and wants all voting to take place in person on one day, with ballots counted by hand.During Ward’s four-year tenure, the GOP lost three Senate races and the state’s three top offices — governor, secretary of state and attorney general. In recent weeks she’s faced criticism over the party’s spending, including an expensive election night bash in November that Republicans hoped would be a victory celebration before GOP candidates fell short.DeWit was elected state treasurer in 2014 and resigned in 2018, shortly before his term ended, when he was confirmed as chief financial officer of NASA under Trump. He led Trump’s Arizona campaign in 2016 and was chief operating officer of Trump’s 2020 campaign.Meanwhile, Arizona Democrats elected Yolanda Bejarano, a senior national official in the Communications Workers of America union, to be their party chair following the first contested election for Democratic chair in 12 years. Bejarano was backed by most of the state’s elected Democrats, but newly elected Gov. Katie Hobbs supported Steve Gallardo, the only Democrat on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.Outgoing Democratic Chair Raquel Teran declined to run for another term, saying she wants to focus on her role as the state Senate minority leader. She said Friday she’s looking at running for the safely Democratic U.S. House seat being vacated by Ruben Gallego, who’s running for the Senate.The 2024 election includes several races with national implications. Arizona is likely to be a battleground in the presidential race, and independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s seat is also on the ballot. Sinema, a former Democrat who alienated much of the party, has not said whether she’ll seek a second term, setting up the possibility of a rare three-way contest.
- [Chris Christie says Donald Trump 'can't win a general election' and GOP is finally ... - Yahoo News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/chris-christie-says-donald-trump-cant-win-a-general-election-and-gop-is-finally-yahoo-news/) - Former Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie speaks at the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada, on November 19, 2022.WADE VANDERVORT/AFP via Getty ImagesAs Donald Trump embarks on his 2024 campaign, Chris Christie said he "can't win a general election."Former New Jersey Gov. Christie said on "This Week" he believes Trump's electability has declined since 2020.Christie pointed to the 2022 midterms where he said many election deniers proved to be "loser" candidates.Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Donald Trump "can't win a general election" and predicted the former president will not be successful in his 2024 presidential run.Christie, a Republican, said on "This Week" on ABC News that Trump's electability has "gotten worse" since the 2020 election."I've said, over and over again, that he can't win a general election," Christie said Sunday. "That's not speculation. That's based upon the polling that I was privy to pre-the 2020 election, and what we saw actually happen in the 2020 election. And it's only gotten worse since then."Christie said Trump's situation has worsened following the disappointing results of the 2022 midterms for Republicans, in which several of Trump's hand-picked candidates lost their races."Then add to it what you saw happen in 2022, the election deniers losing across the country, bad candidates like (Doug) Mastriano in Pennsylvania dragging the entire Pennsylvania ticket down in a historic way; Kari Lake, Blake Masters, Tim Michels," Christie said. "We could go through the entire list, loser, loser, loser, loser, and I think Republicans are recognizing that."Trump announced his run for re-election in November and has since conducted political visits to New Hampshire and South Carolina, saying he is "more angry" and "more committed now than I ever was."It's too dangerous to take the option of a Trump nomination off the table entirely, Christie and other commentators on "This Week" noted, referencing his unexpected success in 2016."You have him on the table every minute," Christie said.Recent polls have shown Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis leading Trump in presidential polls, though Trump has dismissed those, Insider previously reported."He won't be leading, I got him elected," Trump said of DeSantis, referencing his key 2018 endorsement that helped DeSantis rise to political stardom. "I'm the one that chose him."Read the original article on Business Insider
- [Wisconsin Attorney General Kaul, Sen. Warren supports Biden campaign during virtual event](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/28/wisconsin-attorney-general-kaul-sen-warren-supports-biden-campaign-during-virtual-event/) - Wisconsin Attorney General Kaul, Sen. Warren supports Biden campaign during virtual event WISCONSIN (WKBT) – Joe Biden’s campaign is virtually connecting with voters in Wisconsin.Biden’s campaign hosted a “What’s at Stake” Health Care event Tuesday.Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul took part.Warren says that problems with the health care system are nothing new.“Even before this crisis, our health care system was broken. Families were getting crushed by health care costs. People of color, especially African Americans experience deep disparities in health care,” said Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.The impact of the Affordable Care Act was also discussed during the event.wkbt
- [Trump opens 2024 run, says he's 'more committed' than ever - Crossroads Today](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/28/trump-opens-2024-run-says-hes-more-committed-than-ever-crossroads-today/) - COLUMBIA, S.C. — Former President Donald Trump kicked off his 2024 White House bid with stops Saturday in New Hampshire and South Carolina, events in early voting states marking the first campaign appearances since announcing his latest run more than two months ago."Together we will complete the unfinished business of making America great again," Trump said at an evening event in Columbia to introduce his South Carolina leadership team.Trump and his allies hope the events in states with enormous power in selecting the nominee will offer a show of force behind the former president after a sluggish start to his campaign that left many questioning his commitment to running again."They said, 'He's not doing rallies, he's not campaigning. Maybe he's lost that step,'" Trump said at the New Hampshire GOP's annual meeting in Salem, his first event. But, he told the audience of party leaders, "I'm more angry now and I'm more committed now than I ever was." An attendee claps Saturday as former President Donald Trump speaks during the New Hampshire Republican State Committee 2023 annual meeting in Salem, N.H. Reba Saldanha, Associated Press In South Carolina, he further dismissed the speculation by saying that "we have huge rallies planned, bigger than ever before."While Trump spent the months since he announced his run largely ensconced in his Florida club and at his nearby golf course, his aides insist they were busy behind the scenes. His campaign opened a headquarters in Palm Beach, Florida, and has been hiring staff. Backers reached out to political operatives and elected officials to secure support for Trump.In New Hampshire, Trump promoted his campaign agenda, including immigration and crime, and said his policies would be the opposite of President Joe Biden's. He cited the Democrats' move to change the election calendar, costing New Hampshire its leadoff primary spot, and accused Biden, a fifth-place finisher in New Hampshire in 2020, of "disgracefully trashing this beloved political tradition.""I hope you're going to remember that during the general election," Trump told party members. Trump himself twice won the primary, but lost the state each time to Democrats. Former President Donald Trump speaks Saturday during the New Hampshire Republican State Committee 2023 annual meeting in Salem, N.H. Reba Saldanha, Associated Press Later in South Carolina, Trump said he planned to keep the state's presidential primary as the "first in the South" and called it "a very important state."In his speech, he hurtled from criticism of Biden and Democrats to disparaging comments about transgender people, mockery of people promoting the use of electric stoves and electric cars, and reminiscing about efforts while serving as president to increase oil production, strike trade deals and crack down on migration at the U.S-Mexico border.While Trump remains the only declared 2024 presidential candidate, potential challengers are expected to get their campaigns underway in coming months.After his South Carolina speech, Trump told The Associated Press in an interview that it would be "a great act of disloyalty" if Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis opposes him in the primary and took credit for the governor's initial election."If he runs, that's fine. I'm way up in the polls," Trump said.Gov. Henry McMaster, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and several members of the state's congressional delegation attended Trump's event. People take to a snowbank Saturday in the parking lot of Salem High School to show support for former President Donald Trump before he speaks during the New Hampshire Republican State Committee 2023 annual meeting in Salem, N.H. Reba Saldanha, Associated Press Trump's team has struggled to line up support from South Carolina lawmakers, even some who eagerly backed him before. Some have said that more than a year out from primary balloting is too early to make endorsements or that they are waiting to see who else enters the race. Others have said it is time for the party to move past Trump.South Carolina House Speaker Murrell Smith was among the legislative leaders awaiting Trump's arrival, although he said he was there not to make a formal endorsement but to welcome the former president to the state in his role as speaker.Otherwise, dozens of supporters crammed into the ceremonial lobby between the state House and Senate, competing with reporters and camera crews for space.Gerri McDaniel, who worked on Trump's 2016 campaign, rejected the idea that voters were ready to move on from Trump. "Some of the media keep saying he's losing his support. No, he's not," she said. "It's only going to be greater than it was before because there are so many people who are angry about what's happening in Washington." The crowd listens Saturday as former President Donald Trump speaks during the New Hampshire Republican State Committee 2023 annual meeting in Salem, N.H. Reba Saldanha, Associated Press The South Carolina event was in some ways off-brand for a onetime reality television star who typically favors big rallies and has tried to cultivate an outsider image. Rallies are expensive, and Trump added new financial challenges when he decided to begin his campaign in November. That leaves him subject to strict fundraising regulations and bars him from using his well-funded leadership political action committee to pay for such events, which can cost several million dollars.Trump's campaign already has drawn controversy, most particularly when he had dinner with Holocaust-denying white nationalist Nick Fuentes and the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who had made a series of antisemitic comments.Trump also is the subject of a series of criminal investigations, including one into the discovery of hundreds of documents with classified markings at his Florida club and examinations of his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Biden.Still, early polling shows he's a favorite to win his party's nomination.
- [Election-denying lawmakers hold key election oversight roles - WTMJ](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/28/election-denying-lawmakers-hold-key-election-oversight-roles-wtmj/) - By MARC LEVY and JONATHAN J. COOPERAssociated Press HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Republican lawmakers who have spread election conspiracy theories and falsely claimed that the 2020 presidential outcome was rigged are overseeing legislative committees charged with setting election policy in two major political battleground states. Divided government in Pennsylvania and Arizona means that any voting restrictions those GOP legislators propose is likely to fail. Even so, the high-profile appointments give the lawmakers a platform to cast further doubt on the integrity of elections in states that will be pivotal in selecting the next president in 2024. Awarding such plum positions to lawmakers who have repeated conspiracies and spread misinformation cuts against more than two years of evidence showing there were no widespread problems or fraud in the last presidential election. It also would appear to run counter to the message delivered in the November midterm elections, when voters rejected election-denying candidates running for top offices in presidential battleground states. At the same time, many mainstream Republicans are trying to move past the lies told by former President Donald Trump and his allies about his loss to President Joe Biden. “It is an issue that many Americans and many Pennsylvanians are tired of seeing litigated and relitigated over and over,” said Pennsylvania state Sen. Amanda Cappalletti, the ranking Democrat on the Senate committee that handles election legislation. “I think we’re all ready to move on, and we see from audit after audit that our elections are secure, they are fair and that people’s votes are being counted.” Multiple reviews and audits in the six battleground states where Trump disputed his loss, as well as dozens of court rejections and repeated admonishments from officials in his own administration, have underscored that the 2020 presidential results were accurate. There was no widespread fraud or manipulation of voting machines that would have altered the result. The legislative appointments in Pennsylvania and Arizona highlight the divide between the two major parties over election law. Already this year, Democratic-controlled legislatures are moving to expand access to voting and heighten penalties for intimidating voters and election workers, while many Republican-led states are aiming to pass further restrictions, a trend that accelerated after Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election. Democratic governors and legislative victories last fall will blunt the influence of Republicans who took steps or pushed rhetoric seeking to overturn the 2020 election. But in Arizona and Pennsylvania, two lawmakers who dismiss the validity of that election — not to mention other elections since then — will have key positions of influence as the majority chairs of legislative committees that oversee election legislation. In Arizona, Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers takes over the Senate Elections Committee after being appointed by an ally, Senate President Warren Petersen. He was one of two lawmakers who signed subpoenas that led to Senate Republicans’ widely derided audit of the 2020 election. Rogers, who has gained a national following for spreading conspiracy theories and questioning elections, has faced repeated ethics charges for her inflammatory rhetoric, support for white supremacists and conspiracy-filled social media posts. She now will be a main gatekeeper for election and voting bills in Arizona, where election changes are a top priority for some Republican lawmakers. Some want to eliminate voting by mail and early voting options that are used by more than 80% of the state’s voters. She has scheduled a committee meeting for Monday to consider bills that would ban unmonitored drop boxes, prohibit drive-through voting or ballot pickup and impose what voting-rights advocates say are additional burdens on early voting. In Pennsylvania, Republican Sen. Cris Dush takes over as chair of the Senate State Government Committee after pushing to block the state’s electoral votes from going to Biden in 2020. Dush also mounted an election investigation that he hoped would use the Arizona-style audit as a model. He was appointed by the Senate’s ranking Republican, President Pro Tem Kim Ward, whose office explained Dush’s appointment only by saying that seniority plays a role and that members have priority requests. In the first weeks of this year’s session, Dush has moved along measures to expand voter identification requirements and add a layer of post-election audits. Both are proposed constitutional amendments designed to bypass a governor’s veto by going to voters for approval. Dush said he also plans to develop legislation to require more security measures for drop boxes and ballots. “I’m going to make a promise to the people of Pennsylvania: The things that I’m doing here as chair of State Government, it’s going to be things that will be conducted in a fair, impartial manner,” Dush said in an interview. “You know, we’ve just got to make sure that we can ensure the integrity of the vote and people aren’t disenfranchised.” Arizona and Pennsylvania have newly elected Democratic governors who presumably would veto hard-line GOP bills opposed by Democrats. Still, Democrats, county election officials and voting-rights advocates in both states want changes to election laws that, with Dush and Rogers in place, may never see the light of day. Alex Gulotta, the Arizona director for the voting rights group All Voting is Local, said he anticipates the Legislature there will pass a lot of “bad elections bills.” He said moderate Republican lawmakers who might have voted down problematic measures under a Republican governor now might let them pass because they know Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs will likely veto them. “This is performative,” Gulotta said. “This isn’t substantive.” The question, he said, is whether Rogers and other Arizona lawmakers can cooperate on “small fixes” where there is consensus. That, he said, will take “real statesmanship.” Liz Avore, a senior adviser to the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab, said the organization expects another busy period of lawmaking related to voting and elections ahead of the 2024 presidential vote, even as candidates who repeated Trump’s lies about a stolen 2020 election lost bids for governor, secretary of state and attorney general in key battleground states. Democratic and Republican-led states are often moving in opposite directions, but some bipartisan consensus has emerged around certain aspects of election law, such as restoring voting rights to felons and expanding early in-person voting, Avore said. Republican proposals, such as expanding voter identification requirements, are popular and have majority support, as do some Democratic proposals to broaden access, said Christopher Borick, a political science professor and pollster at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. But to be successful with voters, Republicans need to mind the lessons from 2022. Denying the outcomes of fair elections, he said, “is a loser for the Republican Party. Straight up.” ___ Cooper reported from Phoenix. ___ Follow Marc Levy on Twitter: http://twitter.com/timelywriter Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
- [Trump Delivers Bitter Speech Filled With Falsehoods in New Hampshire - Time](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/trump-delivers-bitter-speech-filled-with-falsehoods-in-new-hampshire-time/) - SALEM, N.H.— On Saturday, President Donald Trump pushed false claims about his own electoral losses and suggested foreign leaders shared his doubts about the outcome of the 2020 vote during his Saturday drop-by in the first-in-the-nation primary state. Speaking to activists in southern New Hampshire, the ex-President revived his greatest hits as he joined his first campaign event of his 2024 chase of the Republican Party’s White House nomination and tested a new idea—that every day in Joe Biden’s America is a cruel April Fools Day joke. “I think of the United States. Every day is April Fools Day,” Trump said. “We have open borders when they should be closed. It’s April Fools Day. … We have prisons—people from mental institutions and terrorists—being dumped into our country when they should not be accepted. April Fools Day, right? Who would do that?” The event’s tone and substance suggested the looming two-year campaign is going to match—if not surpass—the toxic tone of his past attempts. And it met a rowdy, welcoming audience in New Hampshire, a state Trump wrongly claimed he twice carried in a general election. (Trump lost New Hampshire in 2016 by one-third of a point and again in 2020 by 7 points, but did come out on top in the state’s primaries in those years.) “As someone who has won the New Hampshire presidential primary not once but twice—and, by the way, I believe we also won two general elections,” Trump said to applause. Later in his hour-long, stream-of-conscious remarks that seemed vamped, Trump said leaders from other nations were slow to call Biden with congratulations after he won the presidency. “They just didn’t believe it,” Trump said. “They didn’t believe the results.” (That is not the case, even as Trump refused to concede his loss.) Trump’s sustained truth-stretched swing is hardly a surprise. He has been marinating in exile for the last two years, imagining his revenge comeback and stewing in his grievances. In an update from his 2016 and 2020 speeches, he defended what he called “fringe benefits” that Trump provided to his former money man, Allen Weisselberg. In exchange for his cooperation with federal prosecutors, Weisselberg earned five months in jail after pleading guilty to 15 felony counts. Trump likened himself as a victim of a weaponized Department of Justice, with collateral damage hurled at folks like Weisselberg. But rhetoric isn’t fact any more than dreams are plans, and Trump’s midterm record is, at best, spotty. His efforts since launching his third real bid for the White House on Nov. 15 have been lacking, as several prominent Republicans have started more openly questioning Trump’s viability. Instead of sprinting to early nominating states like Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina to prove them wrong, Trump’s been making headlines for all the wrong reasons: he defended Kanye West amid an antisemitism crisis, dined with a white nationalist, and demanded an unconstitutional redo of the 2020 election. Trump mocked criticism that he’s been slow to scale-up his campaign. “They’re almost forcing me into the rallies,” Trump said. “We’re going to do them soon. … Bigger than they’ve ever been.” Read more: Trump’s Return to the Campaign Trail Reveals a Man Unsure of What His Base Wants And yet Trump won the prized keynote spot for New Hampshire’s state GOP, putting him on stage in front of some of the most plugged-in activists and donors in a state that gave his limping 2016 bid its first win. Trump has long pandered to Granite Staters and their coveted first-in-the-nation primary, and he announced on Saturday that the two-term state GOP chairman was joining the re-election bid as an adviser focused on New Hampshire. That’s not to say his path is expected to be easy. Consultants and pollsters alike are grumbling about Trump’s perceived vulnerabilities, especially in New Hampshire. A University of New Hampshire survey released this week shows Trump trailing DeSantis by 12 points among likely GOP primary voters in New Hampshire. While the state is famed for its openness to upstart candidates who campaign on a shoestring budget and unreasonable optimism, Trump skipped the small-scale house parties and town halls in favor of massive rallies before and seems on track to do the same this time. Downplaying the state’s history of rewarding underdogs, Trump steered far afield from his potential challengers. Only one likely rival won an explicit name-check: former National Security Adviser John Bolton, branded by Trump as “one of those stupid people” who were inconsistently Republican. Even so, two groups staffed tables outside the hall to promote Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and a life-size cutout of DeSantis stood across the hall for selfies with convention delegates, an unavoidable reminder that New Hampshire likes to be ornery. With typical bravado, Trump dismissed any threat to his re-nomination in New Hampshire hours before he was set to lead his first stop in South Carolina, another crucial early-nominating state. “I don’t think we have competition this time, to be honest,” Trump said. “We are so far ahead in the polls.” Nationally, that may be the case, but it feels plenty flimsy. When you’re Trump, saying something repeatedly is as good as fact. And, judging from his first swing on the 2024 trail, that’s going to be central to his strategy once more. More Must-Reads From TIME Essay: The Tyre Nichols Videos Demand Solemnity, Not Sensationalism For People With Disabilities, Losing Abortion Access Can Be a Matter of Life or Death Inside the Stealth Efforts to Smuggle Starlink Internet Into Iran Natasha Lyonne on Poker Face and Creating Characters Who Subvert Leading-Lady Tropes How to Help the Victims and Community After the Monterey Park Shooting Why Grocery Staples Are So Expensive Right Now Quantum Computers Could Solve Countless Problems—and Create a Lot of New Ones Where to Watch All of the 2023 Oscar Nominees How to Be Mindful if You Hate Meditating
- [US population center trending toward South this decade - WHAS11](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/us-population-center-trending-toward-south-this-decade-whas11/) - Last year, the South outgrew other U.S. regions by well over 1 million people through births outpacing deaths and domestic and international migration. ORLANDO, Fla. — The U.S. population center is on track this decade to take a southern swerve for the first time in history, and it's because of people like Owen Glick, who moved from California to Florida more than a year ago. Last year, the South outgrew other U.S. regions by well over 1 million people through births outpacing deaths and domestic and international migration, according to population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. The Northeast and Midwest lost residents, and the West grew by an anemic 153,000 people, primarily because a large number of residents left for a different U.S. region. The West would have lost population if not for immigrants and births outpacing deaths. In contrast, the South grew by 1.3 million new residents, and six of the 10 U.S. states with the biggest growth last year were in the South, led in order by Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Georgia. Experts aren't sure at this point if the dramatic pull of the South is a short-term change spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic or a long-term trend, or even what impact it will have on the reallocation of political power through redistricting after the 2030 census. Because of delays caused by the pandemic, changes were made in how the Census Bureau has calculated the estimates this decade, and that, too, may have had an impact. But experts say the Southern allure has to do with a mix of housing affordability, lower taxes, the popularity of remote work during the pandemic era and baby boomers retiring. Glick, 56, and his then-partner moved to the Orlando area from metro San Diego in December 2021 after he retired from his job in corporate sales. They had been making regular trips to central Florida before their move, to check on rental properties they had purchased because they were more affordable in the Sunshine State than in Southern California. While the cost of housing and food is lower than in California, there are hidden home upkeep costs in Florida, such as the need to paint more often because of the unrelenting sun and higher utility bills from year-round air conditioning, he said. “You're in better financial shape in terms of prices here, but there are more expenditures to maintain properties," Glick said. Glick was among the 233,000 people who left a Western state and planted roots in a different region from mid-2021 to mid-2022. He joined the ranks of the almost 868,000 people who moved to a Southern state from another region. If the trend continues through the rest of this decade, by 2030 the mean center of the U.S. population will head due south from a rural county in the Missouri Ozarks, without a westward extension for the first time in history, according to urban planner Alex Zakrewsky, who models the population center. [embedded content] Since the population center was first calculated to be in Chestertown, Maryland, in 1790, it has moved continuously westward, though it started taking a more southwestern tilt in the 20th century as the spread of air conditioning made the South more livable. “If this really pans out, it is really historical,” said Zakrewsky, a principal planner for Middlesex County, New Jersey. North Carolina state demographer Michael Cline said the growth in the South has been “above and beyond" trends the region experienced before the pandemic, which he thinks may have accelerated many movers’ decisions to relocate from cold-climate states or allowed people to work remotely for the first time. The departures from the West started in 2021, during the first full year of the pandemic, when 145,000 residents moved to another U.S. region. Up until then, domestic migration to the West had increased each year since 2010. A substantial portion of the departures was due to people leaving California, but Alaska, Hawaii, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington also had year-to-year losses in domestic migration from 2021 to 2022. Additionally, in several Western states that had year-to-year increases in domestic migration — Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Utah — those increases were smaller than in the previous year. In Oregon, the jury is still out on whether the phenomenon of more than 17,000 departures to other U.S. states was a temporary, pandemic-related trend due to remote-working freedoms and housing affordability, or whether it's a longer-term movement due to quality of life issues such as crime, weather or wildfires, said Josh Lehner, an economist for the state. Oregon, which gained a congressional seat in 2021 from the previous decade's boom, hadn't experienced a population decline since the 1980s, when the lumber industry downsized and the housing market collapsed. “If we aren’t seeing that growth in labor force as we normally do, that means economic activity will be slower, state revenues will be lower. It's a question we are struggling with," Lehner said. Lehner added that he wanted to see more data from 2023 “before I freak out." William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Metro think tank, also wants to see if the trend is only related to the pandemic or has legs through the rest of the decade. A big wild card is immigration, which was responsible for most of the growth in 2022, he said. “Some of that has to do with getting away from the big dense coastal metros to somewhere else," Frey said. “One thing that needs to be questioned is if the patterns of the past two years will continue for the rest of the decade." ►Make it easy to keep up-to-date with more stories like this. Download the WHAS11 News app now. For Apple or Android users. Have a news tip? Email assign@whas11.com, or visit our Facebook page or Twitter feed.
- [Crash that killed six in New York to be investigated: US transportation safety board](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/29/crash-that-killed-six-in-new-york-to-be-investigated-us-transportation-safety-board/) - The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said on Saturday it will investigate a crash of a Freightliner box truck and a bus that killed six in Louisville, New York.The crash, which occurred around 6:02 a.m. Saturday on State Highway 37 in the small city in St. Lawrence County near the Canadian border, also resulted in three serious and critical injuries to people who were then transported to a local hospital, New York State police said. The NTSB said it is launching a six-member team to investigate the crash.For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.Local TV station WWNY said roads were covered with snow and visibility was poor at the time of the crash. Photos of the devastating crash posted by WWNY showed it involved a Penske rental truck - a 2021 Freightliner box truck. State Police said the other vehicle involved was a 2013 Express bus. The crash closed the highway for about 12 hours.US traffic deaths have risen dramatically since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic as more drivers engaged in unsafe behavior following COVID-19 lockdowns. The number of people killed in the first six months of 2022 was the highest in the period since 2006.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said earlier this month that in the first half of 2022 road deaths in crashes involving at least one large truck increased by 10 percent.Read more:Two children among 11 burned to death in passenger van crash in central ThailandTwo Indian military jets crash in possible mid-air collision, one injured pilot foundVideo: Hotel guest drives car through lobby in China after fight over missing laptopAdvertisement
- [Louisville community members react to release of Tyre Nichols video - WHAS11](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/28/louisville-community-members-react-to-release-of-tyre-nichols-video-whas11/) - Everyone is sharing their thoughts across the country including here at home following the release of the disturbing traffic stop of Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee. LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Leaders throughout Louisville are stunned. Some saying they are confused, disturbed and importantly heartbroken. “That was awful. That was awful. That young man never even posed a threat. It was awful."It is a common reaction after disturbing clips of Tyre Nichols' traffic stop was released Friday."To watch something like that, I fear for the boys I mentor, the boys I coach, and I have 2 sons of my own. I fear as a father as well," Raymond Payne Jr. said. Payne runs the Young Gentlemen’s Cubs – a mentorship program teaching young boys respect, integrity and honesty. They are qualities he said the five Memphis police officers didn’t show. “It’s even worse because they look like us,” he expressed. Surveillance video captured the officers kicking Nichols and beating him with a baton. Some are later seen holding the unarmed 29-year-old while other officers strike him in the face and chest. [embedded content] “Why? Why did that happen? He never posed a threat to those guys. Why?”, Payne said. According to GameChangers executive director Christopher 2X, the answer is simple. "Once a person has that power of arrest, you got a lot of power and unfortunately that's probably what happened to these 5 black officers. Regardless of the neighborhoods they were patrolling, they over used that power. And it wasn't about black or white right then, it was about how much power I can exert on another human being,” he said. Ultimately, he says, forgetting to show compassion."There could have been a least one officer telling the other officers 'hey we're getting too emotional. We're over doing it," 2X said.If more officers did just that, both men believe less lives would be lost."Whether it's Breonna Taylor here in Louisville, George Floyd in Minnesota, Mike Brown Jr. in Ferguson, Missouri, and countless of others. ► Contact reporter Alexis Jones at AJones@whas11.com; on Facebook or Twitter ►Make it easy to keep up-to-date with more stories like this. Download the WHAS11 News app now. For Apple or Android users. Have a news tip? Email assign@whas11.com, or visit our Facebook page or Twitter feed.
- [Protesters ask for "human decency" following recent controversy at Anna's Greek Restaurant ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/28/protesters-ask-for-human-decency-following-recent-controversy-at-annas-greek-restaurant/) - On Saturday, members of The Bowling Green Freedom Walkers protested for a second time in response to a controversial event hosted by Anna’s Greek Restaurant in downtown Bowling Green. The group marched from Warren County Library to the corner of 12th and State Street, in front of Anna’s Greek Restaurant where a dozen protesters rallied with chants of “say her name” and held signs in protest of the Greek restaurant.Kirika Nelson, the founder of the Freedom Walkers, said the goal of the protest was to keep Breonna Taylor’s name alive and uphold her legacy. “This is our second protest of Anna’s for allowing the Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky to host the event last Monday night with Jonathan Mattingly, for him trying to make profits off of Breonna Taylor’s life,” Nelson said. “So we’re boycotting Anna’s Restaurant.”The protest was in response to a controversial event hosted at Anna’s Greek Restaurant on Jan. 17 by the Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky, which included an appearance by former Louisville Police Officer John Mattingly. The former LMPD officer was involved in the raid that resulted in the death of Breonna Taylor in 2020. Mattingly was not charged but remains a divisive figure following the raid.During the event at Anna’s, video footage of the aftermath of the deadly raid on Taylor’s apartment was shown. The restaurant did not disclose it would be hosting the event to patrons, nor did it close its dining area to the public. As a result, reports emerged that patrons unaffiliated with the group were subjected to audio and video, including audible gunshots, from body camera footage during the raid, which was played during the event. The Bowling Green Freedom Walkers held a protest in front of the restaurant on January 23 in response to the event. Carlos Bailey, Bowling Green City Commissioner, attended and spoke to protesters at the rally. Several patrons reached out to Ryan Dearbone, President of the Bowling Green-Warren County chapter of NAACP to voice their concerns, saying they felt uncomfortable due to the nature of the event and the footage being presented. Dearbone spoke with WKU Public Radio about the nature of the controversy. The NAACP of Bowling Green-Warren County is investigating the incident and released a statement following the event.The Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky had previously planned to host their event along with Republican gubernatorial candidate, Ryan Quarles, at the Bowling Green Country Club. Following community backlash, Quarles canceled his appearance at the event “due to the controversial nature of another speaker at the event”. The Bowling Green Country Club also backed out. The Republican Women’s Club pivoted to find a replacement venue for the event, and Anna’s Greek Restaurant agreed to host the event. After several days of silence following the event, Anna’s issued a statement apologizing to anyone “who has been emotionally or negatively affected by this controversial event.” Mattingly has also issued an apology to patrons at the restaurant. According to Nelson, the apology from Anna’s does not feel sincere and does not address the root of the issue.“You wait a whole week before you give an apology and in the apology, it didn't really name anything about Breonna Taylor,” Nelson said. “Basically it was an apology, to me, trying to save face and to save his business, so people won't boycott him.”Speaking to WKU Public Radio, Dearbone said he hopes the Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky and representation from Anna’s are willing to cooperate with the local NAACP to explain their side of what happened. He said the investigation will continue regardless of whether or not those groups speak to the NAACP and the results will be presented to the community when it is complete.The Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky has not responded to requests for comment from WKU Public Radio or issued a public statement at the time of this report. Nelson said the controversy has only created more division within the community.“It doesn’t matter if you're left or if you’re right, it's about doing what's right,” Nelson said. “It's about human decency and it’s about not dividing the community. It's about uniting the community whether you're white or Black.”
- [Memphis disbands police unit in fatal beating; more protests expected - The Jerusalem Post](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/28/memphis-disbands-police-unit-in-fatal-beating-more-protests-expected-the-jerusalem-post/) - The specialized police unit that included least some of the Memphis officers involved in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols was disbanded on Saturday, the police department announced, as more protests were planned in US cities a day after harrowing video of the attack was released.In a statement, the department said it was permanently deactivating the SCORPION unit after the police chief spoke with members of Nichols' family, community leaders and other officers.Video recordings from police body-worn cameras and a camera mounted on a utility pole showed Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, repeatedly calling "Mom!" as officers kicked, punched and struck him with a baton in his mother's neighborhood after a January 7 traffic stop. He was hospitalized and died of his injuries three days later.The release of the clips on Friday sparked protests in Memphis and elsewhere and prompted numerous cities to prepare for additional demonstrations on Saturday.Nichols' family and officials, including President Joe Biden, have expressed outrage and sorrow but have urged protesters to remain peaceful. Demonstrations so far have been free of violence. Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, stands next to a painting of her daughter at a gathering to mark two years since police officers shot and killed Breonna Taylor when they entered her home, at Jefferson Square Park in Louisville, Kentucky, US, March 13, 2022. (credit: REUTERS/JON CHERRY)Five officers involved in the beating, all Black, were charged on Thursday with murder, assault, kidnapping and other charges. All have been dismissed from the department.In Memphis on Saturday, protesters chanting, "Whose streets? Our streets!" angrily catcalled a police car that was monitoring the march, with several making obscene gestures. Some cheered loudly when they learned of the disbandment of SCORPION.The unit, the Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in our Neighborhoods, was formed in October 2021 to concentrate on crime hot spots. Critics say such specialized teams can be prone to abusive tactics.Taken together, the four video clips showed police pummeling Nichols even though he appeared to pose no threat. The initial traffic stop was for reckless driving, though the police chief has said the cause for the stop has not been substantiated.Who was Tyre Nichols?Friends and family say Nichols was an affable, talented skateboarder who grew up in Sacramento, California, and moved to Memphis before the coronavirus pandemic. The father of a 4-year-old child, Nichols worked at FedEx and had recently enrolled in a photography class.Nate Spates Jr., 42, was part of a circle of friends, including Nichols, who met up at a local Starbucks."He liked what he liked, and he marched to the beat of his own drum," Spates said, remembering that Nichols would go to a park called Shelby Farms to watch the sunset when he wasn't working a late shift.Nichols' death is the latest high-profile example of police using excessive force against Black people and other minorities. The 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white Minneapolis officer knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes, galvanized worldwide protests over racial injustice.
- [Kentuckians registered as other increasing, new Republicans continue to increase - WDKY](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/28/kentuckians-registered-as-other-increasing-new-republicans-continue-to-increase-wdky/) - Kentuckians registered as other increasing, new Republicans continue to increase | FOX 56 News Skip to content ✕ × Close Ad
- [Election-denying lawmakers hold key election oversight roles - FOX 17](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/28/election-denying-lawmakers-hold-key-election-oversight-roles-fox-17/) - HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Republican lawmakers who have spread election conspiracy theories and falsely claimed that the 2020 presidential outcome was rigged are overseeing legislative committees charged with setting election policy in two major political battleground states.Divided government in Pennsylvania and Arizona means that any voting restrictions those GOP legislators propose is likely to fail. Even so, the high-profile appointments give the lawmakers a platform to cast further doubt on the integrity of elections in states that will be pivotal in selecting the next president in 2024.Awarding such plum positions to lawmakers who have repeated conspiracies and spread misinformation cuts against more than two years of evidence showing there were no widespread problems or fraud in the last presidential election. It also would appear to run counter to the message delivered in the November midterm elections, when voters rejected election-denying candidates running for top offices in presidential battleground states.At the same time, many mainstream Republicans are trying to move past the lies told by former President Donald Trump and his allies about his loss to President Joe Biden.“It is an issue that many Americans and many Pennsylvanians are tired of seeing litigated and relitigated over and over," said Pennsylvania state Sen. Amanda Cappalletti, the ranking Democrat on the Senate committee that handles election legislation. "I think we’re all ready to move on, and we see from audit after audit that our elections are secure, they are fair and that people’s votes are being counted.”Multiple reviews and audits in the six battleground states where Trump disputed his loss, as well as dozens of court rejections and repeated admonishments from officials in his own administration, have underscored that the 2020 presidential results were accurate. There was no widespread fraud or manipulation of voting machines that would have altered the result.The legislative appointments in Pennsylvania and Arizona highlight the divide between the two major parties over election law. Already this year, Democratic-controlled legislatures are moving to expand access to voting and heighten penalties for intimidating voters and election workers, while many Republican-led states are aiming to pass further restrictions, a trend that accelerated after Trump's false claims about the 2020 election.Democratic governors and legislative victories last fall will blunt the influence of Republicans who took steps or pushed rhetoric seeking to overturn the 2020 election.But in Arizona and Pennsylvania, two lawmakers who dismiss the validity of that election — not to mention other elections since then — will have key positions of influence as the majority chairs of legislative committees that oversee election legislation.In Arizona, Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers takes over the Senate Elections Committee after being appointed by an ally, Senate President Warren Petersen. He was one of two lawmakers who signed subpoenas that led to Senate Republicans’ widely derided audit of the 2020 election.Rogers, who has gained a national following for spreading conspiracy theories and questioning elections, has faced repeated ethics charges for her inflammatory rhetoric, support for white supremacists and conspiracy-filled social media posts.She now will be a main gatekeeper for election and voting bills in Arizona, where election changes are a top priority for some Republican lawmakers. Some want to eliminate voting by mail and early voting options that are used by more than 80% of the state’s voters.She has scheduled a committee meeting for Monday to consider bills that would ban unmonitored drop boxes, prohibit drive-through voting or ballot pickup and impose what voting-rights advocates say are additional burdens on early voting.In Pennsylvania, Republican Sen. Cris Dush takes over as chair of the Senate State Government Committee after pushing to block the state's electoral votes from going to Biden in 2020. Dush also mounted an election investigation that he hoped would use the Arizona-style audit as a model.He was appointed by the Senate's ranking Republican, President Pro Tem Kim Ward, whose office explained Dush's appointment only by saying that seniority plays a role and that members have priority requests.In the first weeks of this year's session, Dush has moved along measures to expand voter identification requirements and add a layer of post-election audits. Both are proposed constitutional amendments designed to bypass a governor's veto by going to voters for approval.Dush said he also plans to develop legislation to require more security measures for drop boxes and ballots.“I’m going to make a promise to the people of Pennsylvania: The things that I’m doing here as chair of State Government, it’s going to be things that will be conducted in a fair, impartial manner,” Dush said in an interview. “You know, we’ve just got to make sure that we can ensure the integrity of the vote and people aren’t disenfranchised.”Arizona and Pennsylvania have newly elected Democratic governors who presumably would veto hard-line GOP bills opposed by Democrats.Still, Democrats, county election officials and voting-rights advocates in both states want changes to election laws that, with Dush and Rogers in place, may never see the light of day.Alex Gulotta, the Arizona director for the voting rights group All Voting is Local, said he anticipates the Legislature there will pass a lot of “bad elections bills.” He said moderate Republican lawmakers who might have voted down problematic measures under a Republican governor now might let them pass because they know Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs will likely veto them.“This is performative,” Gulotta said. “This isn’t substantive.”The question, he said, is whether Rogers and other Arizona lawmakers can cooperate on “small fixes” where there is consensus. That, he said, will take “real statesmanship.”Liz Avore, a senior adviser to the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab, said the organization expects another busy period of lawmaking related to voting and elections ahead of the 2024 presidential vote, even as candidates who repeated Trump's lies about a stolen 2020 election lost bids for governor, secretary of state and attorney general in key battleground states.Democratic and Republican-led states are often moving in opposite directions, but some bipartisan consensus has emerged around certain aspects of election law, such as restoring voting rights to felons and expanding early in-person voting, Avore said.Republican proposals, such as expanding voter identification requirements, are popular and have majority support, as do some Democratic proposals to broaden access, said Christopher Borick, a political science professor and pollster at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania.But to be successful with voters, Republicans need to mind the lessons from 2022. Denying the outcomes of fair elections, he said, “is a loser for the Republican Party. Straight up.”
- [Donald Trump kicks off presidential campaign in New Hampshire - Boston Herald](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/28/donald-trump-kicks-off-presidential-campaign-in-new-hampshire-boston-herald/) - Donald Trump kicked off his White House bid in New Hampshire, where he maintained that he won the 2020 election and framed Joe Biden’s bid to move the first presidential primary out of the state as the president taking “revenge” for losing “badly” there three years ago.Trump, former president and the keynote speaker at the Republican State Committee meeting held at the high school in Salem, N.H., on Saturday, vowed to a friendly crowd of supporters that he would ensure New Hampshire keeps its “first-in-the-nation” primary status, should he return to the White House. “You have it,” Trump said. “You’re first and you’re going to remain first.” Trump said he won the Republican presidential primary twice in New Hampshire — and believes he “also won two general elections” — and stated that Biden’s fifth-place finish there in the 2020 Democratic primary was influencing the president’s bid to change the 2024 voting calendar. “Now he’s taking revenge (on) the voters of your state, by clearly and disgracefully trashing this beloved political tradition,” Trump said. “And I hope you’re going to remember that during the general election.” The Democratic National Committee voted to place New Hampshire second on the 2024 presidential primary calendar, behind South Carolina and on the same day as Nevada, a move that drew opposition from the state’s Republican Gov. Chris Sununu and local Democrats. Sununu, who is also expected to challenge Biden for president, said last week that New Hampshire plans to vote first “no matter what,” despite penalties the national party said states could face for refusing to comply, USA Today reported. The New Hampshire Republican Party has already decided to keep the state first in the GOP primary lineup, according to Matt Mowers, former NHGOP executive director and a senior White House adviser to Trump, who said that lineup has “served our country really well.” States that vote early have more say and influence than those that vote later in the process. “I think it’s a shame that Joe Biden’s bringing boss-style politics here,” Mowers said. “He’s rewarding states that supported him, where all he had to do was get one endorsement. But he’s neglecting the state that has arguably the most open political process in the country.” Trump spoke for just under an hour at Saturday’s meeting, where he laid out his early presidential agenda, which included mainly a series of plans to continue what he started in his four years as president and undo measures Biden has taken since defeating him in 2020, describing his time in office as a colossal failure. “It’s strange, but I think of the United States — every day is April Fool’s Day,” Trump said. Trump said he would crack down on illegal immigration by re-securing the border between Mexico and the United States, replace Chinese imports of essential goods with American-made products, and boost the economy by lowering taxes and ending “Joe Biden’s war on American energy.” He also said he would impose congressional term limits, institute a lifetime ban on lobbying by former members of Congress, keep America out of “foolish foreign wars” and defend election integrity, which he suggested was impacted by early mail-in voting that was introduced during the pandemic. Trump also fell back on familiar refrains, leveling insults at political rivals, referring to President Biden as “Brandon” and the former House speaker as “Crazy Nancy Pelosi.” He referred to the gathered media as “fake news” and brought up the laptop controversy involving the president’s son, Hunter Biden, saying that the FBI covered up massive corruption revealed on the computer by telling the media it was Russian disinformation. He also suggested that crime was on the rise because of calls for defunding the police, quipping that, “You go to New York. No one gets prosecuted. I’m the only guy they go after.” Judging from the interest, Trump still has a strong presence with the Republican Party, despite his efforts to incite an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol following his election defeat, which is still being investigated by the Jan. 6 committee, and a laundry list of other criminal accusations lodged against him since his presidency. A New Hampshire GOP representative said Saturday’s turnout was the largest for an annual meeting, at roughly 90%, and hundreds of pro-Trump supporters, including a contingent of Proud Boys, a far-right, neo-fascist group, gathered in the Salem High School parking lot. The annual meeting was an invite-only event. Outgoing NHGOP Chair Stephen Stepanek, who Trump named as senior adviser to his campaign, led “USA” chants after the former president concluded his remarks, and a state committeewoman was singled out for her support by Trump, after she shouted, “We love you,” while he was talking. However, while Trump boasted that he was far ahead in the polls, the latest poll from the University of New Hampshire places him 12 points behind another Republican presidential hopeful, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in the Granite State. Support for DeSantis, who paid to ship migrants to sanctuary states like Massachusetts, was also evident at the New Hampshire GOP committee meeting, where his cardboard cutout was on display and tables were set up for him. Jim Mahoney/Boston HeraldFormer President Donald Trump salutes the crowd at the NHGOP convention at Salem High School in Salem, N.H., on Saturday. (Jim Mahoney/Boston Herald) Jim Mahoney/Boston HeraldFormer president Donald Trump waves to the crowd after delivering his speech at the NHGOP convention at Salem High School in Salem, N.H., on Saturday. (Jim Mahoney/Boston Herald)
- [Video of Memphis Officers Beating Tyre Nichols Elicits Widespread Horror](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/28/video-of-memphis-officers-beating-tyre-nichols-elicits-widespread-horror/) - As public officials and others condemned the actions they viewed, initial reactions from protesters around the country were largely peaceful.MEMPHIS — The release of video footage showing Memphis police officers pummeling, kicking and pepper-spraying Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, drew a swift avalanche of reaction from law enforcement officials, lawmakers from both parties, Black Lives Matter activists and many other people across the country.Their message was a largely unified expression of horror and disgust. The footage, which city officials made public on Friday evening, captured how what the police had initially portrayed as a routine traffic stop on Jan. 7 turned violent and led to Mr. Nichols’s death three days later.Yet protesters around the country, at least in the initial hours after the video release, largely heeded days of pleas from Mr. Nichols’s family and others to remain peaceful. Several dozen marched in Memphis on Friday night, spilling onto an interstate highway and blocking a major bridge; another demonstration was scheduled for Saturday afternoon.Protesters assembled on Friday night in Washington, D.C., Seattle, Detroit, Atlanta and in Times Square in Manhattan. Officials said minor acts of vandalism were committed during a protest outside the Los Angeles Police Department’s headquarters, which was blocked by police in riot gear.“The video is all the horrific things that were described to us,” said Josh Spickler, the executive director of Just City, a civil rights organization in Memphis, referring to days of warnings from law enforcement officials and Mr. Nichols’s family about the contents of the footage.Protesters stopped traffic in both directions as they spilled onto Interstate 55 in Memphis. Brad J. Vest for The New York TimesA protest in Memphis was one of several across the country that were largely peaceful. Brad J. Vest for The New York TimesCity officials in Memphis decided soon after the incident to make the video public as a step toward transparency. Four separate clips, from police body cameras and a surveillance camera mounted on a utility pole, were shared online, adding up to nearly an hour of footage.On Thursday, prosecutors announced that five Memphis police officers had been charged with second-degree murder in connection with Mr. Nichols’s death. Almost a week earlier, those same officers — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith — had been fired from the Memphis Police Department after an internal investigation found they had used excessive force and failed to intervene or render aid, as the agency’s policy required them to do.Lawyers for the officers have urged the community to avoid rushing to judgment. Blake Ballin, who represents Mr. Mills, said in a statement that the videos have “produced as many questions as they have answers.”After the video was released, Sheriff Floyd Bonner Jr. of Shelby County, which includes Memphis, said that two deputies who had appeared in the footage had been “relieved of duty” pending an investigation after he was concerned by what he saw. Separately, the Memphis Fire Department said that two of its employees were also being investigated for their actions at the scene.Mr. Nichols was stopped on the evening of Jan. 7 as he was headed to the home he shared with his mother and stepfather in the southeastern corner of Memphis. Mr. Nichols, who was pulled out of his car by officers, can be heard on the video saying, “I’m just trying to go home.” Mr. Nichols fled on foot, and when officers caught up to him, he was kicked, struck by a baton and pepper-sprayed, at one point screaming, “Mom! Mom! Mom!”Protesters near the White House on Friday evening. Kenny Holston/The New York TimesLora Dene King, daughter of Rodney King, and community members in Los Angeles watch the video of the beating of Tyre Nichols. Philip Cheung for The New York TimesThe officers, according to the video, escalated their use of physical force and gave conflicting orders, repeatedly demanding that Mr. Nichols show his hands, even as other officers held his arms behind his back while another punched him. After officers pepper sprayed and beat Mr. Nichols, they left him sitting on the ground unattended and handcuffed, and when medics arrived, they stood by for more than 16 minutes without administering treatment.An independent autopsy commissioned by his family found that Mr. Nichols “suffered extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating,” according to preliminary findings.Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum and an expert on law enforcement practices, called the officers’ actions “the definition of excessive force.” Ed Obayashi, a police training expert and lawyer who conducts investigations into the use of force, said the severity of what he saw in the video was alarming. “I’ve never seen an individual deliberately being propped up to be beaten,” he said.As police departments around the country responded, law enforcement officials said actions shown in the video defied what officers are trained to do. “What I saw in that video was not right,” Deputy Chief Gerald Woodyard, the commanding officer for South Los Angeles for the city’s police force. “What’s going on in their minds, I have no idea.”Yet the video reflected something achingly familiar, as the country has grappled repeatedly with high-profile cases of Black men and women having fatal encounters with police, including George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville.“I’m exhausted we constantly have to see this,” said Kori John, a teacher in Brooklyn. “It’s a norm at this point: Black men getting destroyed by the police force, by even Black police officers.”Protesters in Times Square on Friday. Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesPeople marching in Times Square. Law enforcement officials around the country said actions shown in the video defied what officers are trained to do.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesMr. Nichols’s family has urged lawmakers to pursue legislation requiring officers to intervene when they see colleagues using excessive force; they have also demanded that the Memphis Police Department disband the specialized team patrolling high-crime areas, known as the Scorpion unit, that the officers charged in Mr. Nichols’s death had been part of.In Sacramento, where Mr. Nichols grew up before moving to Memphis, family members planned a candlelight vigil for Monday, and local authorities urged protesters to demonstrate peacefully. Mayor Darrell Steinberg said the video filled him with “anger, sorrow and revulsion,” Police Chief Kathy Lester called the actions of the Memphis officers “inhumane and inexcusable,” and Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper said the “horrendous acts displayed by these few officers do not reflect the values of this office or law enforcement as a whole.”In Memphis, for days before the video release, city officials, civic leaders and Mr. Nichols’s family urged people not to allow protests to become destructive. But the relatively quick criminal charges, which Mr. Nichols’s family applauded, may have helped head off conflagrations.Even so, the anger and hurt were still there, leading some demonstrators to mobilize on Friday night and plan more protests in the coming days. Hunter Dempster, an organizer with Decarcerate Memphis, a group pushing for accountability and fairness in the criminal justice system, said he and others were blocking the Interstate 55 bridge leading from Memphis into Arkansas because they were “tired of empty promises.”Protesters in Atlanta gathered Friday after the video was released.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesHunter Dempster, an organizer with Decarcerate Memphis, a group pushing for accountability and fairness in the criminal justice system, said he and others protested because they were “tired of empty promises.”Desiree Rios/The New York Times“At the end of the day,” he said, “what recourse do we have?”Many described watching the video as wrenching. “I can’t believe no one thought ‘we don’t have to keep beating this man,’” Nino Brown, an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, said at a vigil for Mr. Nichols in Chicago.Others, including Ms. John, the teacher in Brooklyn, had decided they would not watch it, saying that the burden of viewing that kind of trauma outweighed any benefit from watching it.“I don’t want to see it — I can’t see it,” she said. “It’s so heartbreaking. We’ve seen that video so many times before.”Reporting was contributed by
- [Tyre Nichols video: LeBron James, Grizzlies, NBA world react - USA Today's FTW](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/28/tyre-nichols-video-lebron-james-grizzlies-nba-world-react-usa-todays-ftw/) - Protests and demonstrations have emerged across the country after the city of Memphis released body camera footage of five police officers severely beating 29-year-old Tyre Nichols, who died three days later.More than 20 minutes passed before Nichols started receiving medical treatment after officers beat him and left him on the pavement, according to the Associated Press. The officers, who were charged with second-degree murder on Thursday, have been relieved of duty. But that won’t bring Nichols back to life. Nor does it take away the sting of knowing that yet another unarmed Black man doing no one any harm has lost his life as a result of police brutality. We’re still here as a society. This is the same pain everyone felt after police officers killed George Floyd in Minnesota. And when police officers in Louisville killed Breonna Taylor. And when Trayvon Martin was killed in Florida — and that happened more than a decade ago. It’s the same pain over and over again. Tyre Nichols’ life mattered, as USA TODAY’s Mike Freeman writes. Nichols was a father. He was a son. He was a skateboarder. He was a regular person like the rest of us. He didn’t deserve this. Everyone has had enough. The NBA world tried its best to put a voice to that. To the Nichols family, my teammates and I are and have been paying attention. We are with you. To Memphis, we are hurting, too. Peaceful protest, supporting the family, pushing for accountability are what’s needed in this moment. 🤎 — JJJ (@jarenjacksonjr) January 27, 2023 #JusticeForTyre pic.twitter.com/gYY8AgCVbd — Memphis Grizzlies (@memgrizz) January 27, 2023 The Grizzlies and Timberwolves held a moment of silence for Nichols before their game. The Memphis Grizzlies and Minnesota Timberwolves honor the life and memory of Tyre Nichols with a moment of silence. pic.twitter.com/cFQkj8UsXN — NBA TV (@NBATV) January 28, 2023 TOO FACTUAL!!! https://t.co/Om43WiAzrN — LeBron James (@KingJames) January 28, 2023 Change is needed at all levels and we all need to do our part. We can’t lose our humanity as a society. To the Nichols’ family and Memphis community, my heart is with you tonight. — Chris Paul (@CP3) January 28, 2023 Grizzlies’ head coach Taylor Jenkins actually had a lot to say about the situation. Grizzlies coach Taylor Jenkins spoke about Tyre Nichols and the city of Memphis before Friday's game. pic.twitter.com/4p1ncTQEOd — NBA on ESPN (@ESPNNBA) January 28, 2023 “I wish I could extend my arms through this camera right now to the family. They’re going through a lot. I watched the interview with the family today and hearing Mrs. Wells talk with so much strength and positivity and love was powerful. It invoked a lot of emotions. I cried…My words will only mean so much. I want to continue to encourage people to put their arms around each other, put their arms around the Nichols family, the Wells family, to remember the life of Tyre Nichols, who I did not know…We’re here again, sadly. With the loss of life to police brutality is something that you can’t fathom. As the head coach of this team, trying to get everyone to understand the responsibilities that we have beyond basketball. This is a stark reminder of what position we’re in to unify our city.” Jenkins is absolutely right here. Words only matter so much. Our words won’t resuscitate Nichols — they’ll only provide little comfort in a fleeting moment. They won’t change anything. Hopefully, the NBA, WNBA, its players, and advocates all put their money where their mouth is to try and create some meaningful change.
- [Election-denying lawmakers hold key election oversight roles | Federal News Network](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/28/election-denying-lawmakers-hold-key-election-oversight-roles-federal-news-network/) - HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Republican lawmakers who have spread election conspiracy theories and falsely claimed that the 2020 presidential outcome was rigged are overseeing legislative committees charged with setting election policy in two major political battleground states. Divided government in Pennsylvania and Arizona means that any voting restrictions those GOP legislators propose is likely to fail. Even so, the high-profile appointments give the lawmakers a platform to cast further doubt on the integrity of elections...READ MOREHARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Republican lawmakers who have spread election conspiracy theories and falsely claimed that the 2020 presidential outcome was rigged are overseeing legislative committees charged with setting election policy in two major political battleground states. Divided government in Pennsylvania and Arizona means that any voting restrictions those GOP legislators propose is likely to fail. Even so, the high-profile appointments give the lawmakers a platform to cast further doubt on the integrity of elections in states that will be pivotal in selecting the next president in 2024. Awarding such plum positions to lawmakers who have repeated conspiracies and spread misinformation cuts against more than two years of evidence showing there were no widespread problems or fraud in the last presidential election. It also would appear to run counter to the message delivered in the November midterm elections, when voters rejected election-denying candidates running for top offices in presidential battleground states. At the same time, many mainstream Republicans are trying to move past the lies told by former President Donald Trump and his allies about his loss to President Joe Biden. “It is an issue that many Americans and many Pennsylvanians are tired of seeing litigated and relitigated over and over,” said Pennsylvania state Sen. Amanda Cappalletti, the ranking Democrat on the Senate committee that handles election legislation. “I think we’re all ready to move on, and we see from audit after audit that our elections are secure, they are fair and that people’s votes are being counted.” Multiple reviews and audits in the six battleground states where Trump disputed his loss, as well as dozens of court rejections and repeated admonishments from officials in his own administration, have underscored that the 2020 presidential results were accurate. There was no widespread fraud or manipulation of voting machines that would have altered the result. The legislative appointments in Pennsylvania and Arizona highlight the divide between the two major parties over election law. Already this year, Democratic-controlled legislatures are moving to expand access to voting and heighten penalties for intimidating voters and election workers, while many Republican-led states are aiming to pass further restrictions, a trend that accelerated after Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election. Democratic governors and legislative victories last fall will blunt the influence of Republicans who took steps or pushed rhetoric seeking to overturn the 2020 election. But in Arizona and Pennsylvania, two lawmakers who dismiss the validity of that election — not to mention other elections since then — will have key positions of influence as the majority chairs of legislative committees that oversee election legislation. In Arizona, Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers takes over the Senate Elections Committee after being appointed by an ally, Senate President Warren Petersen. He was one of two lawmakers who signed subpoenas that led to Senate Republicans’ widely derided audit of the 2020 election. Rogers, who has gained a national following for spreading conspiracy theories and questioning elections, has faced repeated ethics charges for her inflammatory rhetoric, support for white supremacists and conspiracy-filled social media posts. She now will be a main gatekeeper for election and voting bills in Arizona, where election changes are a top priority for some Republican lawmakers. Some want to eliminate voting by mail and early voting options that are used by more than 80% of the state’s voters. She has scheduled a committee meeting for Monday to consider bills that would ban unmonitored drop boxes, prohibit drive-through voting or ballot pickup and impose what voting-rights advocates say are additional burdens on early voting. In Pennsylvania, Republican Sen. Cris Dush takes over as chair of the Senate State Government Committee after pushing to block the state’s electoral votes from going to Biden in 2020. Dush also mounted an election investigation that he hoped would use the Arizona-style audit as a model. He was appointed by the Senate’s ranking Republican, President Pro Tem Kim Ward, whose office explained Dush’s appointment only by saying that seniority plays a role and that members have priority requests. In the first weeks of this year’s session, Dush has moved along measures to expand voter identification requirements and add a layer of post-election audits. Both are proposed constitutional amendments designed to bypass a governor’s veto by going to voters for approval. Dush said he also plans to develop legislation to require more security measures for drop boxes and ballots. “I’m going to make a promise to the people of Pennsylvania: The things that I’m doing here as chair of State Government, it’s going to be things that will be conducted in a fair, impartial manner,” Dush said in an interview. “You know, we’ve just got to make sure that we can ensure the integrity of the vote and people aren’t disenfranchised.” Arizona and Pennsylvania have newly elected Democratic governors who presumably would veto hard-line GOP bills opposed by Democrats. Still, Democrats, county election officials and voting-rights advocates in both states want changes to election laws that, with Dush and Rogers in place, may never see the light of day. Alex Gulotta, the Arizona director for the voting rights group All Voting is Local, said he anticipates the Legislature there will pass a lot of “bad elections bills.” He said moderate Republican lawmakers who might have voted down problematic measures under a Republican governor now might let them pass because they know Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs will likely veto them. “This is performative,” Gulotta said. “This isn’t substantive.” The question, he said, is whether Rogers and other Arizona lawmakers can cooperate on “small fixes” where there is consensus. That, he said, will take “real statesmanship.” Liz Avore, a senior adviser to the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab, said the organization expects another busy period of lawmaking related to voting and elections ahead of the 2024 presidential vote, even as candidates who repeated Trump’s lies about a stolen 2020 election lost bids for governor, secretary of state and attorney general in key battleground states. Democratic and Republican-led states are often moving in opposite directions, but some bipartisan consensus has emerged around certain aspects of election law, such as restoring voting rights to felons and expanding early in-person voting, Avore said. Republican proposals, such as expanding voter identification requirements, are popular and have majority support, as do some Democratic proposals to broaden access, said Christopher Borick, a political science professor and pollster at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. But to be successful with voters, Republicans need to mind the lessons from 2022. Denying the outcomes of fair elections, he said, “is a loser for the Republican Party. Straight up.” ___ Cooper reported from Phoenix. ___ Follow Marc Levy on Twitter: http://twitter.com/timelywriter Copyright © 2023 . All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.
- [A close look at the 2020 election - Santa Barbara News-Press](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/28/a-close-look-at-the-2020-election-santa-barbara-news-press/) - In a recent letter to the News-Press, we were all told to speak the truth. That is very good advice, and we should all take it seriously. However, the “truth” can be elusive. For example, the recent hearings by the Select(ed) Committee regarding Jan. 6, 2021 — conducted without even the pretense of due process and therefore devoid of the other points of view and cross examination, among other things — are an unlikely approach to finding the truth. Due process is how civilized nations have sought the truth for centuries, but it sadly is no longer important to a large portion of our population if it interferes with their political objectives. On the matter of the protesters’ concern on Jan. 6, the truth remains far more complicated than their opposition would like. For example, while there were numerous lawsuits regarding the issue of the 2020 election, many, if not most, were decided on procedural matters such as latches (like the statute of limitations) and standing rather than on the merits of those cases. In addition, it would be hard to fault a judge for avoiding the chaos that would result from reversing an election unless there was overwhelming evidence, which would be hard to prove as a result of the relaxed rules for identification, such as mail-in voting and extended voting days, and the extensive largely unregulated ballot harvesting. Those protesters might have had a more persuasive argument focusing on the four-plus years of pervasive lies regarding the Clinton-funded Trump/Russia conspiracy. Such a volume of disinformation on a daily basis could not help but affect some (unknowable) number of voters. Also, the now-proven cooperation between the Democratic controlled government and big tech, as well as the well-known Democrat bias of the mainstream media, resulted in pervasive censorship of nonconforming viewpoints regarding former President Donald Trump’s behavior, which would likely have resulted in changed votes. Certainly the fraudulent denial of the legitimacy of the Hunter Biden laptop had clear and significant impacts on the election. We will never know if such impacts were decisive. So, yes, we should speak the truth, but we must have the integrity to search for it objectively before, unintentionally perhaps, actually spreading lies. A good start would be to access facts and opinions on all sides of an issue rather than becoming a true believer of only one perspective. William K. Rogers Santa Barbara
- [Election-denying lawmakers hold key election oversight roles - The Register Citizen](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/28/election-denying-lawmakers-hold-key-election-oversight-roles-the-register-citizen/) - HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Republican lawmakers who have spread election conspiracy theories and falsely claimed that the 2020 presidential outcome was rigged are overseeing legislative committees charged with setting election policy in two major political battleground states.Divided government in Pennsylvania and Arizona means that any voting restrictions those GOP legislators propose is likely to fail. Even so, the high-profile appointments give the lawmakers a platform to cast further doubt on the integrity of elections in states that will be pivotal in selecting the next president in 2024. Awarding such plum positions to lawmakers who have repeated conspiracies and spread misinformation cuts against more than two years of evidence showing there were no widespread problems or fraud in the last presidential election. It also would appear to run counter to the message delivered in the November midterm elections, when voters rejected election-denying candidates running for top offices in presidential battleground states.
- [Election-Denying Lawmakers Hold Key Election Oversight Roles - DTN/Progressive Farmer](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/28/election-denying-lawmakers-hold-key-election-oversight-roles-dtn-progressive-farmer/) - But in Arizona and Pennsylvania, two lawmakers who dismiss the validity of that election -- not to mention other elections since then -- will have key positions of influence as the majority chairs of legislative committees that oversee election legislation. In Arizona, Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers takes over the Senate Elections Committee after being appointed by an ally, Senate President Warren Petersen. He was one of two lawmakers who signed subpoenas that led to Senate Republicans' widely derided audit of the 2020 election. Rogers, who has gained a national following for spreading conspiracy theories and questioning elections, has faced repeated ethics charges for her inflammatory rhetoric, support for white supremacists and conspiracy-filled social media posts. She now will be a main gatekeeper for election and voting bills in Arizona, where election changes are a top priority for some Republican lawmakers. Some want to eliminate voting by mail and early voting options that are used by more than 80% of the state's voters. She has scheduled a committee meeting for Monday to consider bills that would ban unmonitored drop boxes, prohibit drive-through voting or ballot pickup and impose what voting-rights advocates say are additional burdens on early voting. In Pennsylvania, Republican Sen. Cris Dush takes over as chair of the Senate State Government Committee after pushing to block the state's electoral votes from going to Biden in 2020. Dush also mounted an election investigation that he hoped would use the Arizona-style audit as a model. He was appointed by the Senate's ranking Republican, President Pro Tem Kim Ward, whose office explained Dush's appointment only by saying that seniority plays a role and that members have priority requests. In the first weeks of this year's session, Dush has moved along measures to expand voter identification requirements and add a layer of post-election audits. Both are proposed constitutional amendments designed to bypass a governor's veto by going to voters for approval. Dush said he also plans to develop legislation to require more security measures for drop boxes and ballots. "I'm going to make a promise to the people of Pennsylvania: The things that I'm doing here as chair of State Government, it's going to be things that will be conducted in a fair, impartial manner," Dush said in an interview. "You know, we've just got to make sure that we can ensure the integrity of the vote and people aren't disenfranchised." Arizona and Pennsylvania have newly elected Democratic governors who presumably would veto hard-line GOP bills opposed by Democrats. Still, Democrats, county election officials and voting-rights advocates in both states want changes to election laws that, with Dush and Rogers in place, may never see the light of day. Alex Gulotta, the Arizona director for the voting rights group All Voting is Local, said he anticipates the Legislature there will pass a lot of "bad elections bills." He said moderate Republican lawmakers who might have voted down problematic measures under a Republican governor now might let them pass because they know Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs will likely veto them. "This is performative," Gulotta said. "This isn't substantive." The question, he said, is whether Rogers and other Arizona lawmakers can cooperate on "small fixes" where there is consensus. That, he said, will take "real statesmanship." Liz Avore, a senior adviser to the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab, said the organization expects another busy period of lawmaking related to voting and elections ahead of the 2024 presidential vote, even as candidates who repeated Trump's lies about a stolen 2020 election lost bids for governor, secretary of state and attorney general in key battleground states. Democratic and Republican-led states are often moving in opposite directions, but some bipartisan consensus has emerged around certain aspects of election law, such as restoring voting rights to felons and expanding early in-person voting, Avore said. Republican proposals, such as expanding voter identification requirements, are popular and have majority support, as do some Democratic proposals to broaden access, said Christopher Borick, a political science professor and pollster at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. But to be successful with voters, Republicans need to mind the lessons from 2022. Denying the outcomes of fair elections, he said, "is a loser for the Republican Party. Straight up."
- [Ben Crump applauded 'swift justice' in Tyre Nichols killing. Experts say the speed was 'unusual.'](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/28/ben-crump-applauded-swift-justice-in-tyre-nichols-killing-experts-say-the-speed-was-unusual/) - Civil rights attorney Ben Crump applauded Friday the Memphis police chief and county prosectors for quickly taking action against the five former officers accused of murdering Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man."We look at how swiftly the district attorney brought charges against them in less than 20 days," Crump said in a news conference. "We want to proclaim that this is the blueprint going forward for anytime any officers, whether they be Black or white, will be held accountable. No longer can you tell us we've got to wait six months to a year."Officers pulled Nichols over in a traffic stop Jan. 7. He was hospitalized in critical condition and died Jan. 10. Federal investigators opened a civil rights investigation Jan. 18. The officers were fired Jan. 20 and charged with murder and other related crimes Thursday.'Remarkably swift and unusual'Crump noted the discrepancy in how quickly charges were brought against the Black officers in this case, compared to the length of time that passed in other police killings involving white officers, such as in the 2014 murder of Black 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by a white Chicago police officer."In similar cases involving white officers, a lengthy investigation typically ensues before a determination is made on charges," said Jason Williams, assistant professor of Justice Studies at Montclair State University in New Jersey. "Thus, the immediate reaction these officers are receiving is on par with the African American experience of navigating the criminal legal system."A Washington Post database of fatal police shootings since 2015 has found officers fatally shoot more than 1,000 people annually, including a disproportionate number of Black Americans.Information on subsequent accountability isn't "widely tracked," said Jorge Camacho, policy director of the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School in Connecticut. He called the charges in Nichols' death "remarkably swift and unusual," noting the closest example would be the charging of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin days after murdering of George Floyd."Part of the speediness of the process against these five officers has to do both with the availability of video evidence and the fact that Mr. Nichols died," Camacho said. In most cases of alleged police brutality, the victim does not die, and the officer's account "tends to hold more weight," especially in the absence of video evidence.Camacho cautioned that accountability for the Memphis officers alone is "insufficient" and called on the public to hold the wider department accountable, too.Here's a list of recent high-profile police killings of Black Americans and how long it took departments and prosecutors to take action – if any.Daunte WrightDaunte Wright, 20, was fatally shot by Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, police officer Kimberly Potter on April 11, 2021. The city released a medical examiner’s report and some video the next day. Potter and the police chief resigned April 13. Potter was charged April 14 and convicted of manslaughter that December.Rayshard BrooksRayshard Brooks, 27, was fatally shot by Atlanta police officer Garrett Rolfe on June 12, 2020. The next day, the police chief resigned, Rolfe was fired, and another officer involved was placed on administrative leave. Rolfe was later reinstated, and prosecutors in August announced that both officers would no longer face charges.George FloydGeorge Floyd, 46, was killed by Minneapolis police officers during an arrest on May 25, 2020. Video of the incident quickly circulated online. The four officers involved were fired the next day, and one, Derek Chauvin, was arrested and charged May 29. The other officers were charged days later. Chauvin was convicted of murder in April 2021. He also pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges that December. The other officers involved were convicted of violating Floyd's civil rights in February. On state charges, two officers pleaded guilty, and one chose to let a judge decide his fate.Breonna TaylorBreonna Taylor, 26, was fatally shot by Louisville police in March 2020. The department fired one of the officers, Brett Hankison, in June. A state grand jury indicted Hankison in September on three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment, but he was acquitted in 2022. Taylor was not considered the victim in those charges. The Justice Department charged four of the officers in August, and one pleaded guilty to some of the charges.Freddie GrayFreddie Gray, 25, was fatally injured by Baltimore police officers during an arrest April 12, 2015. He died April 19, and six officers were suspended that day. Prosecutors charged the officers on May 1. On May 21, a grand jury indicted the officers on most charges. The trial of one of the officers ended in a mistrial, three were acquitted, and charges against the others were dropped. In September 2017, the Justice Department declined to bring federal charges.Dig deeper on Tyre Nichols
- [Fury Over Kentucky Greek Restaurant Showing Police Shooting Video - The National Herald](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/28/fury-over-kentucky-greek-restaurant-showing-police-shooting-video-the-national-herald/) - KENTUCKY – Diners at Anna’s Restaurant, a Greek eatery in a Bowling Green, Kentucky converted church, said they were furious they could see and hear video footage of police shooting and killing an African-American woman in 2020.Breonna Taylor was shot in her Louisville, Kentucky apartment when at least seven police officers forced entry into the apartment as part of a drug dealing investigation raid.Customers at the restaurant, owned by Vilson Qehaja, said they were outraged over the event hosted by a Republican Woman’s Club and featuring John Mattingly, one of the officers in the raid.Two patrons tell CNN they heard audio clips of gunshots, sirens, and general commotion while they sat at their dimly lit tables, but neither could say for certain whether these were videos of Taylor’s death.“These patrons had to see and listen to graphic descriptions of the incident which killed Breonna Taylor because Mattingly was provided video equipment, a microphone, and a speaker and was able to be heard throughout the restaurant,” the NAACP said. “That’s just wrong. It’s just absolutely wrong. It’s not okay,” said former Anna’s employee, Aaron Preuett.
- [California Bar seeks to disbar ex-Trump attorney over quest to overturn 2020 election](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/28/california-bar-seeks-to-disbar-ex-trump-attorney-over-quest-to-overturn-2020-election-2/) - Creativeye99/Getty Images(SAN FRANCISCO) -- The State Bar of California on Thursday filed a notice of disciplinary charges against former Donald Trump attorney John Eastman over what bar officials said were Eastman's alleged efforts to aid Trump in his bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election.The complaint levels 11 different disciplinary -- not criminal -- charges against Eastman detailing various efforts to craft and play a leadership role in trying to reverse Trump's loss to Joe Biden, which hinged on false claims about widespread election fraud that the state bar claims led to the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol. "There is nothing more sacrosanct to our American democracy than free and fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power," California State Bar Chief Trial Counsel George Cardona said in a statement. "The Notice of Disciplinary Charges alleges that Mr. Eastman violated this duty in furtherance of an attempt to usurp the will of the American people and overturn election results for the highest office in the land—an egregious and unprecedented attack on our democracy—for which he must be held accountable," Cardona said. His office will seek Eastman's disbarment, according to a news release. Eastman's attorney did not immediately respond to ABC News' request for comment. Eastman's actions are already being scrutinized by federal prosecutors investigating Trump and his allies' attempt to overturn the election. Last June, agents seized Eastman's phone as part of their investigation. Grand jury subpoenas issued in recent months to Trump allies and state officials have sought any records documenting communications that any of those individuals may have had with Eastman, who has denied any wrongdoing while continuing to push officials in swing states to cast doubt on the 2020 results. Eastman is the latest legal ally of Trump to face the prospect of potential disbarment over involvement in the campaign against the 2020 election results. Rudy Giuliani, the famed New York City Mayor-turned-Trump attorney, is battling similar disciplinary efforts, in Washington, as is former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and lawyer Sidney Powell, who has been slapped with sanctions over filing lawsuits packed with false claims of fraud. Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
- [Presidential Lecture Explores Social Media Transparency, Accountability - SBU News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/presidential-lecture-explores-social-media-transparency-accountability-sbu-news/) - Frances Haugen (right) and Executive Vice President and Provost Carl Lejuez at the Presidential Lecture Jan. 25 at the Staller Center. Photos by Conor Harrigan. Frances Haugen, then a social media algorithm expert at Facebook, first began to have concerns about how the company was deploying its proprietary algorithms during the Iowa presidential caucuses in 2020. “Facebook understood the danger of misinformation long before that,” said Haugen, the featured speaker at the Jan. 25 Presidential Lecture at the Staller Center for the Arts. “They formed a panel they called the Civic Integrity team after 2016 and built it up for four years. Then less than a month after the 2020 election, they dissolved it. That was the moment where I thought, ‘I don’t think Facebook can save itself.’ If they could come out of that election and think ‘we’re done,’ then it was clear to me that they didn’t understand the potential danger of their own product. That was the moment I decided that I had to do something.” [embedded content] Haugen’s worst fears would be realized at the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — an attack coordinated in part by groups leveraging the capabilities of Facebook. Haugen, now an outspoken advocate for social media transparency and accountability, addressed the campus community in the presidential lecture, which was moderated by Stony Brook University Executive Vice President and Provost Carl Lejuez. (President Maurie McInnis was not feeling well and could not host as planned.) “This is a great opportunity to hear a story of advocacy and bravery that illuminates the need for transparency,” Lejuez said in his opening remarks. “It’s because of Frances and advocates like her that the world is beginning to grasp the critical importance of reforms to keep young people safe using social media as a tool for good, and a tool that unites instead of divides.” Frances Haugen delivers her remarks at the Presidential Lecture at the Staller Center Recital Hall. An algorithmic expert and co-founder of Beyond the Screen — a coalition of technologists, designers and thinkers addressing online harm — Haugen has carved out a career that has focused on ranking algorithms for technology companies and platforms including Google, Pinterest and Yelp. In 2019, she joined Facebook as lead product manager on the company’s civic misinformation team. After her concerns following the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Haugen shared thousands of internal documents, now known as the Facebook Files, with members of the U.S. Congress and offices of attorneys general. After leaving Facebook in May 2021, she embarked on an international mission of advocacy aimed at highlighting the danger of Facebook and other social media companies that prioritize profit over public safety. “When you read through those files, you realize how visceral some of the things we’re discussing are, and Facebook knew this,” said Haugen. “Algorithms are embedded to maintain control, but they knew that kids’ mental health was being harmed. Children were describing their behavior and their relationships with social media like an addict would. They couldn’t stop themselves, they felt horrible using it, but they thought that they would be marginalized if they didn’t. Facebook knew their algorithms were influencing people.” Haugen likened today’s social media danger to the American auto industry in the 1960s, a time when unsafe and dangerous designs were too often enabled and ignored — that is, until lawyer and consumer advocate Ralph Nader published his groundbreaking book Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile in 1965. The book’s central theme was that manufacturers resisted the introduction of safety features such as seat belts because they were reluctant to spend money on improving safety. “Ralph Nader’s book says, ‘Guess what? The automotive industry knows how to make cars safer, and they’ve known for years. They choose not to,’” said Haugen. “That’s kind of where Facebook is today. We know lots of ways we can easily make the platform safer. So why won’t they do it?” Frances Haugen and Executive Vice President and Provost Carl Lejuez. In 1966, the year after Nader’s book was published, the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act was enacted in the United States to empower the federal government to set and administer new safety standards for motor vehicles and road safety. The adoption of seat belts, booster seats for children and stricter enforcement of drunk-driving laws are just a few examples of the improved safety initiatives that would follow. As in the auto industry 60 years ago, much of today’s social media danger is due to a lack of transparency, Haugen said. “Nader’s book inspired other concerned citizen groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) to take action,” she said. “We don’t have anything like MADD for social media, mostly because most mothers have no contacts and can’t even learn how these platforms work other than going to work for them. We’re standing in a world where there are only a few thousand people in the world, and maybe as few as hundreds, who understand the physics of this. Yet no one is allowed to study these algorithms. Facebook has refused to provide data for at least 10 years.” Haugen is encouraged by the recent Digital Services Act — a European regulation adopted in October 2022 to address illegal content, transparent advertising and disinformation — calling it a landmark law. “The Digital Services Act is trying to really zoom in and explore the trade-offs that went into designing and building these algorithms,” she said. “There weren’t enough people at the table.” Remedies, Haugen said, can be as simple as requiring people to open links before they share them. “That sounds really easy, doesn’t it?” she said. “Saying you have to actually look at something before you spread it would decrease misinformation by 10 to 15 percent. Twitter did it, but not Facebook. There are at least 2 billion users on Facebook that are very minimally literate. This is not about what I think is right or what Mark Zuckerberg thinks is right. To make a positive difference, we need the input of a large number of people with diverse perspectives who can contribute to the conversation in a meaningful way.” “The work I do is aimed at figuring out how to get information out there so that we can have these conversations,” Haugen added. “We have no norms established around what’s adequate when it comes to a social media company. We need to collectively figure out what we want the ‘norm’ to be.” — Robert Emproto Related Posts
- [Trump lawyer John Eastman should be disbarred, California State Bar says - New York Post](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/trump-lawyer-john-eastman-should-be-disbarred-california-state-bar-says-new-york-post/) - Lawyer John Eastman has been hit with disciplinary charges — and should be disbarred for his alleged involvement in former President Donald Trump’s bid to throw out the 2020 election results, according to the California State Bar. The regulatory group said it’ll seek the revocation of Eastman’s law license after charging him with 11 ethics violations for allegedly making false statements in public, and for misleading courts. “There is nothing more sacrosanct to our American democracy than free and fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power,” said State Bar of California chief trial counsel George Cardona, according to a report by Law & Crime. “The Notice of Disciplinary Charges alleges that Mr. Eastman violated this duty in furtherance of an attempt to usurp the will of the American people and overturn election results for the highest office in the land — an egregious and unprecedented attack on our democracy — for which he must be held accountable,” Cardona said. Eastman – Trump’s personal lawyer when he was in office – penned a six-step legal plan claiming then-Vice President Mike Pence didn’t have to accept the election results in certain swing states, which Pence rejected. The State Bar of California wants John Eastman disbarred for allegedly helping Trump attempt to overthrow the 2020 election result.REUTERS The lawyer also repped Trump, 76, in a Supreme Court case seeking to overturn the election results in four states where Trump alleged there ‘d been voter fraud. Eastman also made similar statements outside the White House on Jan. 6, 2021 before the Capital riot ensued. A state bar courthas to rule on the charges Eastman faces and then recommend a discipline if they rule against him. Any discipline – such as suspension or disbarring – then has to be approved by the California Supreme Court. Eastman, Trump’s personal lawyer while in office, was hit with 11 ethics violations.AP Eastman penned a memo suggesting that then-Vice President Mike Pence didn’t have to accept the election result in some swing states.Gina M Randazzo/ZUMA Eastman’s lawyer Randall Miller said in a statement that his client disputes “every aspect” of the Bar’s allegations, claiming Eastman shouldn’t be penalize for simply offering legal advice to Trump. “Any lawyer engaged to provide his or her legal assessment in a dynamic, consequential, and often emotional arena should be deeply troubled by the notion that a licensing authority (bar) can take their license if they do not like the lawyer’s advice, or find the advocacy distasteful,” Miller’s statement said. With Post Wires
- [Election losses only deepen Arizona Republicans' insistence on fraud](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/election-losses-only-deepen-arizona-republicans-insistence-on-fraud/) - PHOENIX — As Republicans in Arizona’s largest county gathered earlier this month, the routine task of choosing new party leadership and setting priorities for the year ahead devolved into chaos.Assembled inside a megachurch, longtime local party leaders beseeched the crowd of hundreds to mark their choices on ballots and trust machines to count them. Some in the crowd, suspicious of the accuracy of the equipment, demanded their votes be counted by hand.For about two hours, they fought over which method was the right one. Some jumped out of their seats and waved their arms in dismay as they demanded hand counts. Others hissed and screamed. From the stage, a party leader shouted back as she struggled to maintain control.Just a few months ago, Arizona Republicans lost nearly every major statewide midterm race after campaigning for months on false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. That was not always a winning strategy in Arizona or in many other states, but many Republican leaders and their supporters here are still clinging to election-fraud falsehoods, refusing to acknowledge that their candidates lost and resisting attempts to lessen the extreme divisions in the state.The recent Saturday gathering of the Maricopa County Republican Committee to pick new leadership could have been a day of reflection, but it instead showcased how conspiratorial claims of voter fraud remain a litmus test for leaders in the GOP’s state and local party apparatus.The day was a preview of the fight to come this weekend when the state Republican Party convenes to select new leadership and priorities ahead of 2024. That meeting, set to unfold in the same megachurch, will test the power of new grass-roots activists versus a more tenured pragmatic faction focused less on litigating past elections and more on winning ones in 2024.By the end of the night, when county activists had to leave the church’s inner sanctum, it was unclear who would lead the county party, a frustrating end for some so focused on having elections that begin and end on a single day. Eventually, the ballots were counted both ways, and the race for chair was called for Craig Berland, who campaigned on getting rid of the machines. Berland was part of a slate endorsed by prominent election deniers Mike Lindell, the founder of a pillow company; state Sen. Wendy Rogers (R), the new chair of the chamber’s election committee; and Kari Lake, the Trump-backed GOP candidate who lost her own campaign for governor and has refused to concede.While Democrats narrowly swept key statewide offices, Republicans maintained vulnerable one-vote advantages in the state House and Senate. Some of those lawmakers have pledged to work against Gov. Katie Hobbs, the Democrat who beat Lake by more than 17,000 votes. Before she took office, Lake supporters dubbed Hobbs the “Governor-Select,” a riff off “Governor-Elect” and a disparaging moniker intended to sow doubt about the legitimacy of her win.In Arizona, long a breeding ground for conspiracies, many Republicans who do not trust democratic institutions said the midterm outcomes only deepened their disillusionment.“If you’re going to tell me somebody like Joe Biden beat Donald Trump, you’re delusional,” Georgia Cifelli-Amster, 62, a GOP activist and business owner from Scottsdale told The Post. “And if you think somebody like Katie Hobbs beat Kari Lake, you are certainly delusional.”Nowhere is Arizona’s political divide more evident than on the floor of the state House, where Republicans and Democrats once sat alongside each other. A new seating chart took effect this session that put GOP members on one side of the chamber and Democrats on the other.House Majority Whip Rep. Teresa Martinez (R), who crafted the chart, said she wanted to “surround people with experience and trusted faces they already knew.” She later told The Post the plan could encourage bipartisanship by prompting members from both parties to literally cross the aisle.The midterm elections ushered in 41 freshman lawmakers at the state Capitol, one of the largest crops of new or returning members in modern history. Of those, 25 are Republicans. Some have explicitly questioned election results, and about half appear sympathetic to the newly launched “Arizona Freedom Caucus,” an unofficial assembly of lawmakers who appear aligned with Trump’s agenda and combative approach to more traditional GOP members in leadership. The group does not publicly identify all of its members.On the opening day of the state legislature on Jan. 9, Republican lawmakers gathered with the caucus leader for a news conference, where they vowed to oppose Hobbs’s “woke agenda.” In the background, supporters yelled that she was not a legitimate governor. Modeled after the U.S. House’s ultraconservative Freedom Caucus, the state bloc aims to press moderate Republicans and Democrats more to the right.That afternoon, members crammed onto the House floor for the beginning of a new session, a pomp-filled ceremony steeped in patriotism — and partisanship. Members took turns introducing themselves and their guests. State Rep. Alexander Kolodin (R), a new lawmaker and an attorney who has represented the state party chair as part of the federal investigation into attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, said he would work collegially with those who want to secure elections and defend freedoms.“If you, instead, take the contrary position,” he continued, speaking into a microphone, “then you’ll find no worse enemy.”The new House speaker, state Rep. Ben Toma, a traditional conservative, acknowledged the divided environment. He invited Hanna Zack Miley, a Holocaust survivor, to share her path toward reconciliation over her parents’ deaths at the hands of Nazis when she was a child. In a quiet voice, to a hushed crowd, she described opening her heart. “I can still remember the lifting of that dark weight as I gave that weight to Him,” she said.It’s one thing to forgive internally, she told members. It’s another to consciously experience lasting reconciliation.But some in the divided chamber seemed uninterested in reconciliation. When Hobbs walked into the chamber to deliver her first State of the State address, the view from the gallery offered a stark visual of the factions within the GOP caucus she now must navigate.The new governor said she would not entertain those “chasing conspiracy theories” or efforts to undermine trust in democratic functions. As she spoke, Democrats cheered. Some Republicans clapped. Others scrolled on their cellphones or clasped their hands together atop desks.As the speech progressed, hostility built. As Hobbs repeated a campaign pledge to increase funding for public education, two Republican lawmakers stood and turned their backs on the governor. When Hobbs said she would protect abortion rights — earning an ovation from liberal lawmakers — Republicans aligned with the Freedom Caucus began walking out.Afterward, some Republicans accused Hobbs — who was previously the secretary of state and oversaw the 2020 and 2022 elections — of ignoring problems with the state’s election systems. With their newfound power, some GOP lawmakers have made clear their intent to double down on challenging recent election outcomes. State Rep. Liz Harris (R), a newcomer to the legislature who has spread election conspiracies, recently called on lawmakers to demand a new 2022 election.“I will now be withholding my vote on any bills in this session without this new election in protest to what is clearly a potential fraudulent election,” she said in a November statement. She has since cast votes and introduced legislation to outlaw early voting. She declined to speak to The Post.Activists, lobbyists, local officials and others are slowly learning how to navigate this divided legislature that is packed with newcomers.State Rep. Justin Heap (R), who ran on a slate that included several election deniers, recently received an email from a lobbyist seeking to meet with him. In responding, he asked whether the firm she works for had financially supported his campaign.“I need to prioritize which meetings I can take,” he wrote in the email obtained by The Post through a public records request. “May I ask you, Did Consortium [sic] Consulting donate to my campaign fund? And if not, why did you (or your clients) decide not to do so?” Heap did not respond to The Post’s request for comment. A Consilium Consulting owner declined to comment.Republicans at the legislature this week unilaterally changed rules, making it more difficult for the public to access such emails that offer insight into how they operate.Rogers, who has parlayed election falsehoods into a fundraising bonanza, now presides over the state Senate’s election committee. This week, she allowed a GOP activist, who just won a leadership position with the county GOP, to press unproven claims about the November election.Lake then cited the activist’s claims during an interview with Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump strategist and far-right radio host.On Saturday, the Arizona Republican Party will gather to select its leaders and plot its future. Kelli Ward, who has chaired the party since 2019, is not running for reelection. The six-way race to replace her is unpredictable. It includes Jeff DeWit, the former state treasurer who served as Trump’s chief operating officer during his two campaigns; Steve Daniels, head of the Patriot Party of Arizona who has taken on the GOP from the right; and Sheila Muehling, the party treasurer who has campaigned on her deep knowledge of the party’s operations and her opposition to Ward’s spending and management.State committee members will also consider resolutions, which are not binding but express the will of the party. One would censure Maricopa County’s Republican supervisors and recorder who presided over the 2020 and 2022 elections.Another resolution called on the party to accept the results of Joe Biden’s win in Arizona in 2020. It requested that the party “not belabor or try to overturn old elections.” It did not muster enough support from a party resolutions committee to even be considered at the GOP meeting.
- [Fox Loses Preliminary Ruling in Voting Machine Defamation Case - Bloomberg Law News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/fox-loses-preliminary-ruling-in-voting-machine-defamation-case-bloomberg-law-news/) - Tech & Telecom Law
- [Myanmar's military government enacts new political party law - WRAL](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/myanmars-military-government-enacts-new-political-party-law-wral/) - BANGKOK — Myanmar’s military-controlled government has enacted a new law on registration of political parties that will make it difficult for opposition groups to mount a serious challenge to army-backed candidates in a general election set to take place later this year.The new electoral law, published Friday in the state-run Myanma Alinn newspaper, sets minimum funding and membership levels for parties participating in the polls. It also bans participation by parties or candidates deemed unlawful or linked to organizations declared by the military government to be terrorist groups.The army seized power in February 2021 from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, arresting her and top members of her governing National League for Democracy party, which had won a landslide victory for a second term in a November 2020 general election.The security forces suppressed widespread opposition to the military takeover with lethal force, killing almost 2,900 civilians and arresting thousands more people who engaged in nonviolent protests. The savage crackdown triggered armed resistance in much of the country. The military government deemed major organizations opposed to army rule to be “terrorist” groups, and communication with them was declared illegal.The new law gives parties two months to re-register with the Union Election Commission and says those that do not will be “automatically invalidated” and considered dissolved.Parties that compete nationwide will need to attain a membership of least 100,000 within three months after being registered, which is 100 times higher than the minimum level set in the law used in the 2020 election. Parties also need to open offices in at least half of the country's 330 townships within six months and must be able to contest in at least half of all constituencies, the law says.Critics have already said the military-planned elections will be neither free nor fair because there is no free media and most of the leaders of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party have been arrested. Suu Kyi, 77, is serving prison sentences totaling 33 years after being convicted in a series of politically tainted prosecutions brought by the military.The National League for Democracy declared last November that it will not accept or recognize the military-planned election, which it described as “fake.” It said the polls are an attempt by the military to gain political legitimacy and international recognition.The party rejected the new law in a message sent Friday to The Associated Press."As the Central Working Committee of the National League for Democracy, we do not accept and acknowledge it, because all the actions of the military council are illegal. The coup by the military council also violated the existing laws and people are not supporting them at all,” said Kyaw Htwe, a member of the committee.Units of the People’s Defense Force, the armed wing of Myanmar’s banned main pro-democracy movement, have been attempting to disrupt preparations for the election by attacking personnel of the military government who are conducting a population survey that could be used to assemble voter rolls.Since the survey began on Jan. 9, at least 13 people have been killed and four government workers have been detained by the resistance, according to pro-military and independent media and statements issued by resistance groups.The announcement of the new law came four days after Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the country’s military ruler who led the 2021 seizure of power, called at a Cabinet meeting for a new law that structures the political party system in a manner that reduces the number of parties. He said the election could be held once a state of emergency declared after the army’s takeover is lifted, an action that is expected at the end of this month.There are currently more than 90 political parties, but the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party, which fared poorly in the 2020 election, appears to be the only one certain to be able to meet the new law's requirements.
- [World Of Pain For Former Trump Lawyers: Suspension, Fines, Possible Disbarment And More](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/world-of-pain-for-former-trump-lawyers-suspension-fines-possible-disbarment-and-more/) - ToplineThe California State Bar filed charges Thursday against attorney John Eastman over him helping former President Donald Trump try to overturn the 2020 election, which could lead to his disbarment, the latest in a slew of punishments the ex-president’s lawyers have faced for representing or working directly with him. Key Facts John Eastman: Eastman had 11 charges filed against him by counsel for the California State Bar stemming from his efforts to challenge the election results, and the state bar intends to seek his disbarment in court—and the attorney faces the possibility of criminal charges after the House January 6 Committee made a criminal referral against him to the Justice Department in December. Rudy Giuliani: Giuliani, who led Trump’s post-election efforts, has already had his law license suspended and proceedings are under way to determine if he should be fully disbarred; he’s also been sued for defamation by voting machine companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic and has been identified as a target in the criminal investigation into the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia. Sidney Powell: Powell, who did not directly represent Trump in court but did advise him after the election, is also facing possible disbarment by the State Bar of Texas, with a trial set for April, along with defamation lawsuits from Dominion and Smartmatic, a reported federal investigation into her organization’s fundraising arm and sanctions in a case she and her co-counsel brought in Michigan alleging election fraud. Michael Cohen: Trump’s longtime attorney served a three-year sentence in prison and home confinement for tax evasion and campaign finance-related crimes, after he orchestrated a series of “hush money” payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal over allegations they had affairs with Trump. Alina Habba: Habba, who’s representing Trump in many of his post-presidency legal battles, has been sanctioned multiple times in Trump’s failed lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, ordered to pay with her co-counsel $50,000 in sanctions and $16,274 in attorneys’ fees to one defendant in the case, and then sanctioned in January for nearly $1 million payable to Clinton, her campaign and other Democratic operatives—the same punishment Trump faced. Jeffrey Clark: Former DOJ attorney Clark, who aided Trump’s post-election efforts from within the agency, faces charges from the D.C. Bar, which filed a complaint against him in July 2022 and kicked off legal proceedings that could result in him being disbarred. Cleta Mitchell: Mitchell, who participated in Trump’s phone call in which he urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn the state’s election results, resigned from her law firm Foley & Lardner in January 2021, saying she left the firm due to a “massive pressure campaign” against her from the left to oust her over her associations with Trump. Pending Complaints: Ethics complaints urging state bars and disciplinary boards to investigate attorneys have been filed and remain pending against multiple Trump lawyers who aided his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including Mitchell, Jenna Ellis and Boris Epshteyn, though court records show another complaint against Trump attorneys in New Mexico was dismissed. Attorneys’ Fees: Trump and his campaign have been ordered to pay attorneys’ fees in a number of failed lawsuits—though it’s unclear if his attorneys have been forced to personally shoulder any part of those costs—including more than $20,000 to two Georgia counties over post-election litigation, $1.3 million to former White House advisor Omarosa Manigault and more than $54,000 to Daniels. What To Watch For Eastman, Guiliani and Powell face disbarment, or possibly less serious charges like probation. The lawyers representing Trump in New York have been threatened with sanctions, while the attorneys representing Trump in the DOJ’s investigation into White House documents stored at Mar-A-Lago may also face legal liability in that probe. Tangent A number of lawyers who aided Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, but did not directly represent him in court or advise him, have also faced punishments. Powell’s co-counsel in the Michigan case—in which Trump was not a plaintiff—were all sanctioned and jointly forced to pay more than $175,000 in attorneys’ fees, as well as ordered to undergo legal education and referred to their respective state bars for potential discipline. Attorney Lin Wood, who was involved with the Michigan litigation along with other post-election lawsuits, has been under investigation by the State Bar of Georgia for his efforts since even before the Michigan order was issued. The Georgia Bar confirmed to Forbes in December that the case against Wood remains pending, and it could result in his disbarment. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was also sued by the state bar’s disciplinary counsel in May over the lawsuit he filed at the Supreme Court seeking to overturn the election. Chief Critic Trump’s attorneys have largely denied wrongdoing and opposed the efforts to punish them, with the exception of Cohen, who pleaded guilty to his crimes. Eastman’s attorney Randall A. Miller said in a statement Thursday that Eastman “disputes ‘every aspect’ of the action that has been filed against him by the [California] State Bar,” claiming the move was part of a “nationwide effort . . . to penalize attorneys who opposed the current administration” in the 2020 election and Americans “should be troubled by this politicization of our nation’s state bars.” Surprising Fact After the court ordered sanctions in the Clinton case against Trump and Habba, Trump and Habba have gone on to voluntarily withdraw two cases stemming from James’ litigation against the Trump Organization, which courts had suggested could be viewed as frivolous and result in sanctions. Key Background Trump and his allies filed approximately 60 court cases in the aftermath of the 2020 election seeking to change its outcome, ultimately losing all but one case, which was a minor dispute in Pennsylvania that did not impact the overall results. Since leaving office, Trump has continued to be deeply ensnared in legal issues, as he’s faced numerous lawsuits over his alleged role in the January 6 riot at the Capitol building, ongoing federal and county investigations over the 2020 election, the DOJ’s probe into the documents at Mar-A-Lago, James’ lawsuit against the Trump Organization, a Manhattan investigation into his and his company’s financial dealings and a defamation lawsuit from writer E. Jean Carroll, among other litigation. None of those legal cases have so far resulted in any charges being brought against Trump—though it’s still too early to say whether he could be indicted in the ongoing probes against him—and Trump has broadly claimed he’s innocent of any wrongdoing. Further Reading Attorney John Eastman Charged with Multiple Disciplinary Counts by the State Bar of California (State Bar of California) Tracking Trump: A Rundown Of All The Lawsuits And Investigations Involving The Former President (Forbes) Giuliani Faces Disbarment In State Hearing Underway This Week—Sidney Powell, Lin Wood And Other 2020 Election Attorneys Could Be Next (Forbes) Campaign Targets 111 Trump-Linked Election Lawyers. Here’s Some Already Facing A Backlash. (Forbes) With Giuliani’s Law License Suspended, Here Are The Other Trump Lawyers Who May Face Discipline Next (Forbes)
- [Former State Rep. Attica Scott on Tyre Nichols killing - Spectrum News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/former-state-rep-attica-scott-on-tyre-nichols-killing-spectrum-news/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. — It’s days like this one that make time slow down for Attica Scott. “It’s just all connected, and that’s what makes Tyre Nichols’ murder so hard and so heartbreaking for me is because I remember what we went through right here in Louisville and what we continue to go through,” Scott told Spectrum News 1 on Friday. What You Need To Know Graphic footage of the beating of Tyre Nichols at the hands of police was released Friday night Tyre Nichols was 29 years old and was pulled over for a traffic stop Attica Scott, formerly a state representative, said it reminds her and the entire community of what the nation went through with the deaths of Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, George Floyd and others Scott advised Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg to seek help from people closest to the community While the country responds to the arrest and death of Tyre Nichols, Scott wonders what has changed since the death of Breonna Taylor in March 2020. “And whenever you have public officials and families calling for calm, it’s because they know something wrong was done,” Scott adds. Scott, a mother of two and now a former state representative, knows the country is reliving the same kind of trauma, grief, frustration and anger felt after the police killings of Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, George Floyd and others. Scott says she knows city leaders in Memphis and is ready to travel there if called upon. “My kids were born in Tennessee so, of course, my heart is there and I am torn because part of me wants to drive down in Memphis right now but I also know that’s not realistic for me right now. But eventually I’m probably going to end up in Memphis as folks are standing up and fighting for justice,” Scott said. It’s at this time Scott is also reminded her city, yet again, is searching for a new police chief. And with more reckoning to come, she has this advice for Louisville’s new administration: “I would tell Mayor Greenberg if you truly want a new direction for Louisville, if you truly want healthy and safe neighborhoods you’ve got to work with the people that you don’t like, that you don’t feel comfortable with because those are the folks that are closest to the community, that are deeply rooted and grounded in community,” Scott explained. And as Scott says, those are the people that will help move the city in a new direction.
- [John Eastman's California bar danger could hurt his Supreme Court ties, too](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/john-eastmans-california-bar-danger-could-hurt-his-supreme-court-ties-too/) - John Eastman, the former Donald Trump lawyer and possible future Trump co-defendant, has added the potential loss of his California law license to his list of troubles.If the state plucks Eastman’s license, that could put the former Justice Clarence Thomas clerk’s Supreme Court bar membership in further jeopardy as well. As it happens, on the subject of fringe election efforts, he’s lead counsel on a Supreme Court amicus brief — meaning a brief filed by an outside party not directly involved in the case — supporting North Carolina Republicans and the so-called independent state legislature theory in Moore v. Harper.The most extreme version of the theory, popular among Trump allies, could radically change elections in the United States, giving outsize power to state legislatures over federal elections. So, amazingly then, we have an architect of Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election telling the Supreme Court how elections ought to be run.So while the justices don’t appear to have acted on the complaint lodged to them directly, if Eastman faces discipline in California, then that could cause them to act.The high court is already aware of Eastman’s recent ... behavior — or should be. A bipartisan group pressed the court to disbar him in July, citing “the undisputed and publicly available accounts of actions taken by John C. Eastman, a member of the Supreme Court Bar, relating to a concerted effort to overturn the legitimate 2020 presidential election results.” (The House Jan. 6 committee included Eastman among its criminal referrals to the Justice Department last month, so bar discipline isn’t his only concern.)After the news of Eastman’s California trouble broke, I reached out to the group that wrote to the justices in July, The 65 Project, to check on the status of that effort. They said they haven’t received an update from the court. I also reached out to the court on the matter and will update if I hear back.At this point, given the lawless terrain on which everything seems to be happening, it’s worth pointing out that there’s a relevant Supreme Court rule for disbarment (Rule 8, for those keeping score at home), which shows that other courts taking action can prompt the justices to act:Whenever a member of the Bar of this Court has been disbarred or suspended from practice in any court of record, or has engaged in conduct unbecoming a member of the Bar of this Court, the Court will enter an order suspending that member from practice before this Court and affording the member an opportunity to show cause, within 40 days, why a disbarment order should not be entered. ...So while the justices don’t appear to have acted on the complaint lodged to them directly, if Eastman faces discipline in California, then that could cause them to act. But even if the high court disbars Eastman, that wouldn’t have a direct legal impact on Moore v. Harper, in which we’re awaiting a decision. Yet, no matter what happens with Eastman’s law license, given the antidemocratic allegations lodged at him in California (which he disputes), it will be worth watching if any of the justices cite his work when they rule.
- [The Week That Was: All of Lawfare In One Post](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/the-week-that-was-all-of-lawfare-in-one-post/) - Benjamin Wittes analyzed the extensive endnotes of the Jan. 6 Committee’s final report. Wittes argued that they provide an unprecedented look into the committee’s work, and that the committee's use of endnotes lays out a new model for future investigative bodies. Anna Bower presented a narrative of Tuesday’s hearing at the Fulton County courthouse, in which Judge Robert McBurney heard argument on whether the Fulton County Special Purpose Grand Jury’s final report should be made available to the public. Bower highlighted key arguments raised by prosecutors from the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office as well as counselors advocating for the document’s release on behalf of various media outlets. Wittes sat down with Bower to discuss Tuesday’s hearing concerning the release of the Georgia grand jury’s report on 2020 election interference. Wittes and Bower discussed McBurney’s ruling to keep the report sealed for the time being, the influence of media organizations advocating for its release, and whether the document will eventually become public: Bower also delved into the significance of presentments under Georgia state law and their relevance to the Fulton County grand jury investigation into alleged criminal interference in the 2020 presidential election. Bower evaluated whether the report produced by the grand jury could constitute a presentment. Bower live-blogged the hearing in Fulton County at which McBurney heard argument on whether the special purpose grand jury’s final report on their investigation into 2020 election interference in Georgia should be made public. Find Bower’s coverage of the hearing on the Fulton County Hearing Live Blog. Roger Parloff is live-blogging the seditious conspiracy trial of five top members of the Proud Boys organization in his Proud Boys Trial Diary, available on Lawfare. The live-blog will run each day that the trial is in session. Avery Schmitz shared a ruling by federal Judge Rudolph Contreras allowing the use of Google Location History data obtained with a “geofence” warrant to prosecute Jan. 6 rioter David Charles Rhine. The warrant has identified just over 5,700 devices within the geofence at some point during a four-and-a-half hour window on Jan. 6 and 1,498 devices whose users are of interest to federal investigators. Stewart Baker argued that Gen. Mark Milley wrongfully overclassified documents relevant to the Pentagon’s response to the Jan. 6 attack, and submitted questions which might illuminate Milley’s intentions and the impacts of any illegal activity. John Emmons shared a notice of disciplinary charges filed against John Eastman by the State Bar of California’s Office of Chief Trial Counsel. The notice alleges that Eastman “knew, or was grossly negligent in not knowing, that there was no evidence upon which a reasonable attorney would rely of election fraud or illegality that could have affected the outcome of the election” yet still sought to aid Trump in overturning election results. In an edition of Arbiters of the Truth, Quinta Jurecic sat down with J. Scott Babwah Brennen and Matt Perault, of the Center on Technology Policy at UNC-Chapel Hill, to discuss prior research into state-level tech policymaking–or a lack thereof–and their two recent reports on the topic. Jurecic, Brennen, and Perault analyzed how tech policy at the state level differs from federal legislative efforts: David Priess sat down with Yaya J. Fanusie for an episode of Chatter to discuss his path to working at the Central Intelligence Agency and National Counterterrorism Center, what analytic work on international economics and financial intelligence is like, the fundamentals and national security risks of cryptocurrency and bitcoin, and more: Susan Landau discussed President Biden’s call for greater regulation of big tech and online child sexual abuse and exploitation. Landau suggested that Biden draw on a report by Laura Draper for a new approach to address the issue. Perault and Samm Sacks detailed TikTok’s new plan—codenamed Project Texas—to implement an agreement with the U.S. government to address national security concerns. Pablo Chavez weighed the national security risks posed by TikTok as a mechanism of influence for the Chinese Communist Party inside the United States against its value as a mechanism for First Amendment speech. He focused on the role Congress could play in regulating the platform and the proposed ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act. Eve Gaumond and Catherine Régis evaluated problems created by AI algorithms used in various contexts, forging beyond common concerns of discrimination and infringements on personal privacy. Gaumond and Régis introduced a framework for weighing the negative impacts of AI and avenues to effectively regulate this burgeoning technology, and also acknowledged AI’s positive applications in healthcare, education, and content moderation settings. Tilman Rodenhäuser and Mauro Vignati discussed the merits of employing “digital emblems” as a form of identification and legal protection for potential targets of cyberattacks in conflict zones. Rodenhäuser and Vignati used the ongoing war in Ukraine to illustrate where digital emblems could be used to prevent indiscriminate attacks and lend clarity to international observers. Emmons shared a directive from the Defense Department reissuing Directive 3000.09, which revises policy and guidelines on the employment of autonomous and semi-autonomous weapons systems and creates the Autonomous Weapons Systems Working Group. Paul Stephan considered the value of big data as a target in global conflicts. Stephan discussed definitional questions about how the law of war governs attacks on information targets, clarifying how various international law frameworks protect or leave big data vulnerable, and considered legal and normative avenues to protect big data in future conflicts. Schmitz also shared the Justice Department’s statement and press conference announcing its successful disruption of the Hive network, which has leveraged ransomware attacks against more than 1,500 victims since June 2021. The release details the FBI’s strategy to counter Hive and protect victims of this ransomware variant. Stephanie Pell sat down with Gavin Wilde and Justin Sherman to discuss their new paper, “No Water’s Edge: Russia’s Information War and Regime Security,” and the development of Russian information warfare in the contexts of U.S. election interference and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine: Jaganath Sankaran evaluated the air war waged by Russia and accounted for Ukraine’s resiliency since the invasion in Feb. 2022. Sankaran considered miscalculations and successes by both the Russian and Ukrainian air forces in the latest installment of Lawfare’s foreign policy essay series. Henri Vanhanen analyzed Finland’s foreign and security policy in the last year, characterized by a shift away from neutrality and toward open opposition of Russia which was catalyzed largely by the Feb. 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Amid a lengthy application process, Vanhanen weighed the value of NATO membership for Finnish security interests and its impacts on future dealings with Putin’s regime. Priess sat down with Minna Ålander to discuss Turkish opposition to Sweden’s bid for NATO membership after a protest outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm, its impact on Finland’s concurrent NATO membership application, how Finnish politicians are responding to the situation, and paths forward for Finland and NATO: Scott R. Anderson and Jurecic were joined by Michel Paradis for an episode of Rational Security, and discussed a new agreement to send German and American main battle tanks to Ukraine, the Treasury Department’s designation of the Wagner Group as a Transnational Criminal Organization, the New York City District Attorney’s prosecution of a suspect under post-9/11 state criminal terrorist laws despite the suspect never having been present in New York state, and more: Jonathan Lord discussed the coming of a new Middle Eastern security architecture amid U.S. military withdrawal, improving relations between Israel and the Arabian Peninsula, and the continued threat of conflict with Iran. And Tyler McBrien sat down with Lynzy Billing to discuss her four-year investigation into Afghanistan’s Zero Units and their relationship with the CIA, why the United States continues to rely on a strategy of night raids, and more: And that was the week that was.
- ["The Incoherence of Facebook's Trump Decision" - Election Law Blog](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/the-incoherence-of-facebooks-trump-decision-election-law-blog/) - David Graham for The Atlantic: Whatever one thinks of Meta’s decision to allow Donald Trump back on Facebook and Instagram, how the company is doing so is already shambolic. This is a man who tried to stay in office despite losing the 2020 election and who incited a violent attack against Congress, efforts which Meta apparently found sufficiently dangerous to take the drastic action of banning him, then the president of the United States, from its platforms. But now Meta is lifting the ban, and as a Meta spokesperson told CNN’s Oliver Darcy, the company will permit Trump to attack the legitimacy of the 2020 election without repercussions. Why would Meta do this? The company seems to understand that Trump’s attacks undermine democracy and can destabilize the country. The spokesperson also told Darcy that if Trump works to undermine the upcoming 2024 election, then he could face action from the company. (What actions those might be, and whether they would have teeth or simply represent the gnashing of them, is left unstated.) This distinction makes no sense, and it demonstrates the incoherence of Meta’s handling of Trump…. Second, the danger posed by Trump’s lies about the 2020 election remains. “Our determination is that the risk has sufficiently receded, and that we should therefore adhere to the two-year timeline we set out,” Meta’s Nick Clegg said in a statement, citing a review of “the conduct of the US 2022 midterm elections, and expert assessments on the current security environment.” This is unpersuasive. The 2020 election is further in the past now, but not that much further, and one reason it can’t be relegated to history is that Trump continues to surface it—and the direct harms continue. The recent arrest of Solomon Peña, a failed Republican candidate and self-described “MAGA king,” for a spree of shootings at houses in New Mexico shows how Trump’s election denial reverberates. When the ban was levied, “the point was that an election was retrospectively under attack at the moment of crisis,” Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth who has studied election legitimacy, told me. “The danger wasn’t from attacks before as much as afterward. Why would that change?” I made the same point in my Slate piece the other day. Share this:
- [Criminalizing voters in Southern states | Facing South](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/criminalizing-voters-in-southern-states-facing-south/) - The past two U.S. election cycles led to historic voter turnout despite restrictive voting laws implemented in 20 states during last year's midterms. But Republican lawmakers across the country and the South have been passing laws that would criminalize people for minor voting infractions and create law enforcement units to prosecute such cases — an ongoing trend advocates fear will suppress the region's growing voter turnout. Across the country, some states have already passed laws that allow prosecutors to target people involved in the electoral process, including voters, election officials, and even volunteers assisting voters. Some of the new laws target actions such as altering a ballot, improper electioneering, or voting more than once. But some of the measures also criminalize harmless activities like providing support to people waiting in line to vote. In 2021, for example, Georgia made it a crime to distribute food and drinks to waiting voters — a law that a federal judge upheld ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. It applies within 150 feet of a polling place or within 25 feet of any voter at a polling place, and violators are guilty of a misdemeanor. Though the federal judge hearing the case denied voting rights advocates' request for a preliminary injunction, he acknowledged that the ban on "line relief" inhibited free speech and was most likely unconstitutional, strengthening the case against the law at a future full trial. Since the 2020 election, 26 states have created new or toughened existing punishments for a total of 120 election-related crimes, according to a States Newsroom analysis of state legislation and data from the Voting Rights Lab. Of these new and elevated crimes, 102 of them were put on the books in 18 Republican-led states, including nine in the South: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, South Carolina, Texas, and West Virginia. The new crimes range from misdemeanors to felonies punishable by up to 20 years in prison — and in those states with felony disenfranchisement laws the subsequent loss of voting rights. For example, in South Carolina last year Republican Gov. Henry McMaster signed a law elevating six voting-related offenses from misdemeanors carrying a maximum of three years in prison to felonies that carry a fine of up to $5,000 and up to five years in prison. The law targets voter fraud including actions like voting more than once, impersonating another voter, and aiding in fraudulent registration or voting. Under current South Carolina law, people with felony convictions cannot vote until completing their prison, parole, and/or probation sentences. And in West Virginia, lawmakers last year reclassified several offenses from misdemeanors to felonies, including voting while not legally eligible. The felonies are punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. In West Virginia, voting rights for people with felony convictions are also restored only once their prison, parole, or probation sentences have concluded. Voting rights advocates say these new laws are a consequence of the more-than-decade-long campaign by the Republican Party to use exaggerated claims of voter fraud — which study after study has found to be exceedingly rare and electorally inconsequential — to justify restrictive voting laws that boost Republican candidates' chances while disproportionately hurting communities of color and other marginalized groups. They worry this harsh criminal approach will create new disparities in a country where, as the New York Times found, prosecution of alleged voter fraud is highly inconsistent and the harshest punishment often reserved for the poor and people of color. An onslaught in Texas This year Republican lawmakers are continuing to file bills to toughen criminal penalties for voting-related infractions and to set up law enforcement units to prosecute them, and Texas is leading the way. Lawmakers there pre-filed several bills that among other things would increase the penalty for illegal voting from a class A misdemeanor to a second-degree felony punishable by up to two years in prison. That bill would overturn a provision in SB 1, the state's omnibus voting law passed in 2021, that included an amendment reducing the penalty from a felony to a misdemeanor. Texas lawmakers are also trying to establish an election police force similar to the one created last year by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). That state's new Office of Election Crimes and Security caused a stir for arresting 20 residents for allegedly committing voter fraud in the 2020 election. Those arrested face up to five years in prison and a fine of as much as $5,000. However, numerous media reports found that arrestees didn't know they were ineligible to vote — and in some cases were actually told by local elections officials that they could vote. Georgia and Virginia also established special state-level election crime units after the 2020 election, while a West Virginia House committee recently approved a measure giving the state attorney general the power to prosecute voting violations when local prosecutors do not. Under the current proposal being considered in Texas, the voting law enforcement unit would be led by state "election marshals." The top marshal would report to the secretary of state and would choose other marshals to represent different regions of the state, and they would be empowered to issue warrants and file criminal charges. Other legislation introduced in Texas would allow the attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor for criminal voting cases, and another would allow the office to issue injunctions against local prosecutors who do not investigate voting crimes. Current Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) has prioritized prosecuting voting crimes in the past, but his voter fraud unit closed after finding just 16 minor cases in 2020, according to the Houston Chronicle. Advocates are particularly worried that such laws will target citizens trying to vote again after felony convictions, who in most states across the South must navigate a confusing process to determine whether they are eligible. Last April, for instance, a Tennessee prosecutor was forced to drop all charges against Pamela Moses, who had been sentenced to prison after trying to register to vote in 2019. Moses registered after being mistakenly informed by her probation officer that her probation had come to an end. And in Texas, Crystal Mason was convicted of illegal voting during the 2016 election but alleged she didn't know that being on supervised release from prison made her unqualified. Last year the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that a lower appeals court had erroneously upheld Mason's conviction by determining that it was "irrelevant" to Mason's prosecution that she did not know she was ineligible to vote. Her case is headed back to the Court of Appeals for further review. "I am pleased that the court acknowledged issues with my conviction and am ready to defend myself against these cruel charges," Mason said in a statement distributed by her lawyers. "My life has been upended for what was, at worst, an innocent misunderstanding of casting a provisional ballot that was never even counted."
- [The risk of election violence in the United States in 2024 - Brookings](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/the-risk-of-election-violence-in-the-united-states-in-2024-brookings/) - Despite fears that the 2022 U.S. midterm elections would see a reprise of January 6-like political violence, the elections occurred with no mobs storming state capitals or other attacks. Improved law enforcement deserves much of the credit: January 6 was a shock, and both federal and state officials were far more vigilant this time around. In addition, no national figure tried to whip up mobs, as President Donald Trump did in 2020. Violence could return in 2024, especially if Trump or another figure willing to incite violence is on the ballot, but law enforcement, if it remains vigilant, will be better prepared to reduce the scope and scale of any threat. The High 2021 Threat Environment Since a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, the prospect of further political violence has loomed over America. Before the 2022 election, government agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and the National Counterterrorism Center warned of the risk of election-related violence. Polls found that one in 10 Americans believed violence was justified right now, and that figure rose to one in five of Republican-voting men. Threats against members of Congress skyrocketed, and even local school board races became far more threatening. The brutal attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, at his San Francisco home seemed to confirm many people’s fears. Making all this worse, hundreds of election deniers were on the ballot, creating worries that losers at the polls would incite violence rather than accept political defeat. In addition, the contests for Senate, governor, and other races were close, often coming down to small numbers of votes in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and other states. Yet November 8 came and went, and the United States did not see significant election-related violence despite the many warnings and an ominous environment. It’s always hard to understand why something didn’t happen, but this vital question is worth exploring, given the dire predictions and continuing concerns about future violence. Why Low Election Violence in 2022? To begin with, it is important to understand what contributed to the January 6 violence that shocked many Americans. Trump, along with several lieutenants and leading supporters in the media, pushed the idea that he was the rightful winner of the 2020 election. Many other Republican leaders stayed silent rather than openly stand against a president popular among the Republican electorate. In the leadup to January 6, election deniers organized relatively freely, both at face-to-face gatherings and online, where they often used Facebook to push misinformation and prepare for violence. Although some of the violence was spontaneous and involved bystanders who gathered on the mall simply to show support for Trump, it is now clear that organized groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers prepared for and planned violence before January. Despite many indicators that violence was brewing, law enforcement and intelligence agencies did not focus on the problem, leading them to be surprised when the storm broke. Some, but not all, of these contributing factors have changed for the better. Starting at the top, Trump himself was not on the ballot this last midterm election. As a result, he did not encourage his cultish followers to march on the Capitol or otherwise whip up their fears and anger as he did before the January 6 insurrection. He did champion several Republican candidates who lost races where Republicans had seemed well-placed to win, such as Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, among others, but rather than serve as inspiration for violence this actually discredited the former president. Even before the election, leading Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell cited “candidate quality” as a reason why Republicans might not win back the Senate. When this concern proved valid, he and other Republicans lambasted Trump for the loss, joined by Fox News and other conservative media outlets. Some candidates did raise doubts about the validity of elections, notably Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, Kari Lake, who claimed she lost due to voter suppression, an allegation that appears to have little evidence behind it. It appears that without Trump’s involvement, individual races did not capture the national imagination or inspire the same level of passion among voters: his charisma and national reach was unique. Social media companies also took several positive steps, though their efforts remained incomplete and the impact of these steps is not clear. Trump, of course, was banned from Twitter and Facebook, reducing his reach. Companies like Facebook sought to combat the incitement of violence and voting-related misinformation. Studies of major companies, however, showed that false information remained widespread on their platforms. Aggressive law enforcement is perhaps the biggest change from the 2020 election. Whereas in 2020 many plotters believed they could count on a degree of government complicity, that sense of security is gone. As the official warnings before the election suggest, government agencies are aware of the risk and trying to head off problems before they manifest. More concretely, the U.S. government charged almost 1,000 people with crimes related to January 6 so far, in the largest investigation in the FBI’s history. Organized groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were hit hard, with leaders convicted of felonies and the groups themselves under tremendous scrutiny. Prospects for 2024 Election violence, of course, could return in 2024. Part of this depends on whether Trump is on the ballot and how much support he has from others within the conservative political and media ecosystem to again whip up violence. The former president has shown he will push conspiracy theories and encourage violence should he lose, and there is no reason to expect that to change. For now Trump’s star appears to be falling, but he has proven resilient, and he has many die-hard supporters. In addition, new Twitter owner Elon Musk has welcomed the former president back to Twitter, and in general social media remains awash in dangerous conspiracies. But there is good news as well. Many GOP leaders seem to recognize that election denialism and support for violence is a losing strategy. Perhaps more important, Trump is not president, and the FBI and other federal law enforcement will be aggressive in trying to stop election-related violence. Indeed, even without direction from political officials, January 6 was a wakeup call, and both federal and state government officials are far less likely to be caught by surprise in future elections. None of this suggests violence is impossible, or even highly unlikely. Many politicians and ordinary Americans alike seem too willing to consider violence, should elections not go their way. As long as law enforcement remains vigilant, however, it will be more difficult for politicians to incite violent mobs and for dangerous groups to organize: important factors in reducing the scope and scale of the danger, even if it remains a strong concern. Related Content
- [Law prof Eastman's false statements about election helped provoke Capitol rioters, ethics ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/law-prof-eastmans-false-statements-about-election-helped-provoke-capitol-rioters-ethics/) - Home Web First Law prof Eastman's false statements about… Ethics Law prof Eastman's false statements about election helped provoke Capitol rioters, ethics charges say By Debra Cassens Weiss January 27, 2023, 1:35 pm CST John Eastman (left) joins lawyer Rudy Giuliani at a Washington, D.C., rally on Jan. 6, 2021, in support of then-President Donald Trump. They spoke before the attack on the U.S. Capitol. AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin. Former Chapman University law professor John Eastman should be disbarred in connection with his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his false statements that helped provoke Capitol rioters, according to California ethics regulators. Eastman is facing 11 counts of alleged misconduct in a notice of disciplinary charges filed Thursday. The State Bar of California’s Office of Chief Trial Counsel intends to seek Eastman’s disbarment, according to a press release. Eastman spoke at a stop the steal rally shortly before the Capitol riot. He asserted that voting machines had secret folders that manipulated the results, that dead people had voted, and Vice President Mike Pence didn’t deserve to be in office if he didn’t delay the electoral-vote count, according to the Jan. 26 notice of disciplinary charges. Eastman was also the author of two legal memos providing scenarios that could be used to change the election results. Eastman knew or should have known there was no evidence of election fraud sufficient to have affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, according to the ethics charges. Yet Eastman worked with former President Donald Trump and others to promote the idea that the election had been stolen. And his legal advice that Pence had unilateral authority to disregard or delay the counting of the electoral votes was “unsupported by the historical record and established legal authority and precedent,” the ethics charges said. The notice alleges Eastman violated his duty to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the United States; sought to mislead courts in election litigation; and committed acts involving moral turpitude or dishonesty. The moral turpitude counts are based on Eastman’s alleged false statements in his legal memos, court documents, media interviews, his speech on Jan. 6, 2021, and an email intended to pressure Pence. Eastman’s lawyer, Randall A. Miller, said in a press release that Eastman disputes “every aspect” of the disciplinary complaint, according to coverage of the bar charges by Law.com and Law360. Miller said serious allegations of vote fraud had been raised by numerous legislators and Eastman was representing Trump in the “fluid and fast-moving aftermath of the 2020 election.” Eastman’s legal advice was “the product of comprehensive research of the law and historical records,” and it was supported by “reasonable interpretation of legal and historical precedent, scholarly analysis and legislative history,” said Miller, an attorney with Miller Law Associates. Miller said the bar complaint “is part of a nationwide effort to use the bar discipline process to penalize attorneys who opposed the current administration in the last presidential election.” How Appealing links to additional coverage.
- [Has $1000 In Chevron Stock Been A Blowout For Investors Since Joe Biden Was Elected?](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/has-1000-in-chevron-stock-been-a-blowout-for-investors-since-joe-biden-was-elected/) - The 2020 presidential election featured President Donald Trump running against Joe Biden. At that time, investors and analysts pointed to several sectors that could benefit from each respective president winning the election.One sector that wasn’t seen as a likely benefactor of a Biden presidency turned into one of the best-performing sectors since the 2020 election.What Happened: Joe Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 election, a win that was seen as providing a boost for the clean energy sector and as a potential negative for oil stocks as Biden had publicly voiced opposition to pipelines.One of the best-performing large-cap stocks since Biden was elected to the presidency was Chevron Corporation (CVX), an oil stock that was also in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.The invasion of Ukraine by Russia was among the causes that led to higher prices per barrel of oil and higher gas at pumps around the country. Chevron was one of several oil companies that benefitted along the way.Shares of Chevron hit new all-time highs several times in 2022 and again in early 2023.The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY was down 19.2% in 2022, marking its biggest annual decline since 2008.Chevron, on the other hand, was up 53% in 2022 as one of the few Dow Jones Industrial Average stocks that were positive in 2022.Related Link: As Chevron Buyback Irks Biden, Jared Bernstein Says Excessive Repurchases Have Been A Concern For PresidentInvesting $1,000 in Chevron Stock: Chevron shares hit a high of $73.59 on Nov. 4, 2020, the day after the 2020 presidential election.An investor could have purchased 13.59 CVX shares with a $1,000 investment the day after the election when Biden had been declared the winner by many.The $1,000 investment would be worth $2,477.46 today, not including dividends. This represents a hypothetical return of 147.7% since the 2020 election. The investment would have returned an average of 68.1% annually over the last two years and two months.The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust is up 16.5% over the same time period.Read Next: 10 Highest Yielding Dow Jones Stocks Heading Into 2022Photo: David Lienemann via Wikimedia Commons; sockagphoto via Shutterstock
- [John Eastman's Long, Ignominious Legal Career Might Be Coming to an End](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/john-eastmans-long-ignominious-legal-career-might-be-coming-to-an-end/) - Donald Trump takes everything from his lawyers but legal advice. Many who have agreed to serve as his attorneys have ended up humiliated in the eyes of their peers; disgraced in the eyes of the public; ousted by colleagues at law firms, law schools, and legal groups; and even jailed for orchestrating crimes on his behalf. A few of them might not even be lawyers for much longer.The California state bar announced on Thursday that it would begin disbarment proceedings against conservative lawyer John Eastman, who helped mastermind Trump’s attempt to stay in power after losing the 2020 election. Disbarment would make him ineligible to practice law in California and could imperil his ability to practice it elsewhere in the country. George Cardona, the bar’s chief trial counsel, alleged that Eastman’s false public statements about the 2020 election amount to “moral turpitude, dishonesty, and corruption” in violation of the state’s professions code. “There is nothing more sacrosanct to our American democracy than free and fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power,” Cardona said in a statement. “For California attorneys, adherence to the U.S. and California Constitutions is their highest legal duty.”The bar’s 38-page filing makes two central accusations against Eastman. One is that he developed his legal theories and gave legal advice based on “allegations of election fraud that he knew, or was grossly negligent in not knowing, were false.” The other is that his theory that then–Vice President Mike Pence could unilaterally decide the outcome of the presidential election on January 6, 2021, was so obviously wrong as a matter of history and law that “no reasonable attorney with expertise in constitutional or election law would have concluded that the Vice President was legally authorized to take the actions respondent proposed.”Eastman, writing on his Substack newsletter on Thursday, described the charges as a “travesty of justice” and vowed to fight them. He blamed the charges on States United Democracy Center, a political group that had filed a complaint with the California state bar in October 2021. “Unmoved by that massive amount of evidence, and apparently under intense political pressure to take action against me,” Eastman said, citing an op-ed in The Sacramento Bee, “the California bar has nevertheless filed a massive [Notice of Disciplinary Complaint] against me today, which, like the States United Democracy Center’s complaint itself, is filled with distortions, half truths, and outright falsehoods.”He also said that the bar had sent him a 38-page letter last year requesting any evidence or communications that would support his claims. “I provided a fairly comprehensive response of about 100 pages, and incorporating by reference thousands of additional pages in sworn affidavits, expert reports, court decisions, and scholarly articles clearly demonstrating the validity, or at least the tenability, of the claims of election illegality and fraud that I was making and the legal advice I was providing,” Eastman said. That evidence apparently failed to persuade bar investigators.If Eastman is ultimately disbarred, it would be a sudden end to an ignominious legal career. He is not very good at reading the Constitution or the law. In 2020, well before he began plotting to overturn that year’s election, he published a widely derided op-ed in Newsweek suggesting that vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris might be ineligible for that office because she was supposedly not a U.S. citizen at birth. You do not need to be a former Clarence Thomas clerk or a former Chapman University law professor, as Eastman is, to Google “Kamala Harris birthplace” and read “Oakland, California,” thus making her a natural-born citizen.Eastman then suggested, however, that birthright citizenship itself might not be constitutional, a theory that characterizes much of his approach to the law during the 2020 election. The answer to any legal question is whatever John Eastman wants it to be, and if someone as misinformed as, say, the Supreme Court of the United States disagrees, they are also wrong and should correct themselves accordingly. This approach led him to conclude in an infamous set of memos after Election Day in 2020 that the Twelfth Amendment allows the vice president to throw out individual states’ electoral votes at his discretion and personally declare a winner. The point here is not to be right or correct—fortunately for Eastman, because he was neither—but to give a legalistic guise to a coup attempt.Had Eastman merely published his memos on Twitter or Substack or the comment section of a local newspaper’s weekly restaurant review, his crackpot theories would have been harmless. But he brought them to then-President Donald Trump, who made them the centerpiece of a pressure campaign against Pence to carry them out. After Pence publicly refused, a mob of Trump supporters who had been summoned to the nation’s capital at Trump’s behest marched on Capitol Hill and stormed the building. We can only speculate what they would have done if they had found Pence or any of the lawmakers in the building during the joint session, but the makeshift gallows outside Capitol Hill that day, combined with the chants of “Hang Mike Pence!” that rang through the Capitol’s halls, gave us some hints.The most important part of the bar’s notice is intent: It’s not enough for a lawyer to be wrong or even egregiously wrong; they must “know” or be “grossly negligent in not knowing” that their legal advice is based on falsehoods. Eastman’s habit of communicating by email, which I’ve praised before, has given us some evidence to support this. In December 2020, Eastman corresponded with a GOP state lawmaker in Pennsylvania who had asked about “legislative solutions to our current national predicament.” He advised that state lawmakers could, through some mathematical formula that he pulled out of thin air, extrapolate the “untainted” votes from the actual vote total and declare that to be the actual result by legislative resolution. In essence, he said they could just make it up. The voter fraud was coming from inside the house.And on January 6, 2021, when exchanging emails with a lawyer for Pence who had called his theories “bullshit,” Eastman responded with umbrage. “My bullshit—seriously?” he fired back. “You think you can’t adjourn the session because the [Electoral Count Act of 1887, or ECA] says no adjournment, while the compelling evidence that the election was stolen continues to build and is already overwhelming.” After acknowledging that the ECA ruled out his theory, Eastman then blamed the attack on the Capitol on Pence himself. “The ‘siege’ is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so the American people can see for themselves what happened,” he concluded. The bar’s notice said that these statements, made during and shortly after the attack, amounted to “moral turpitude.”Eastman is not the only Trump lawyer facing the end of their legal career for their role in the 2020 coup attempt. A New York court suspended Rudy Giuliani’s license to practice law in 2021 for his voter fraud claims in court, while a D.C. bar discipline committee concluded last December that he violated professional rules, setting the stage for his potential disbarment in the district sometime this year. The Texas State Bar is also weighing whether to disbar Sidney Powell, of kraken-releasing infamy, for filing frivolous lawsuits after the 2020 election with false claims of voter fraud. Courts have also levied sanctions and fines against multiple Trump-aligned lawyers for their conduct during the pivotal months between Election Day and January 6.It’s still unclear whether Trump himself will face any direct legal consequences for his actions other than his second impeachment. If he does, he’ll need lawyers to defend himself. And if his history of legal representation is any roadmap, they might need lawyers themselves. I am deeply skeptical that algorithmic chatbots like ChatGPT can ever replace genuine legal counsel. But if they are ever accepted by courts, then Trump will have finally found his perfect lawyer: something that says whatever he wants it to say and can’t be disbarred or sued for it.
- [Arizona Republicans Exempt Themselves From Open Records Rules - Truthout](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/arizona-republicans-exempt-themselves-from-open-records-rules-truthout/) - The new standard “benefits lawmakers who want to hide the truth,” one open government advocate said. Republicans in the Arizona state legislature have crafted new rules to shield themselves from future public records requests — an action that open government advocates say is a direct response to requests over the past few years related to the GOP’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. A recent state Supreme Court ruling determined that the judicial branch in Arizona lacks the authority to enforce laws on how Arizonans can request open records from within the legislative branch. In response to that ruling, both houses of the state legislature, which are controlled by Republicans, voted earlier this week to change standards for handling and maintaining communications records among their members and staff. The new rules exempt legislative lawmakers and their staffers from having to adhere to state public records laws. The rules also authorize the destruction of communications, such as emails and text messages, after 90 days — a timeframe in which many interested parties, including journalists, investigators and residents, may not even know that such records exist. Some of the rules differ between the two legislative chambers. In the state House, for example, the new rules enable lawmakers to immediately delete all text messages they send or receive, as well as any calendar records and communications on social media. While text messages must be maintained for 90 days in the state Senate, the rule only applies to government devices — lawmakers are allowed to immediately delete communications from their personal devices if they wish to do so. Following the 2020 presidential election, in which President Joe Biden became the first Democrat to win the state in decades, Arizona lawmakers demanded numerous audits in response to unfounded complaints from far right activists about alleged election fraud. One of these audits was performed by an unqualified organization called Cyber Ninjas; much of the reporting on that audit was obtained through open records requests to the state legislature. Open records requests were also responsible for making public emails in which Ginni Thomas, wife to federal Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, urged Arizona legislators to overturn the election results. Related Story The revelations have prompted calls for Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from cases related to the election. Open government advocates noted that, had the rules that Republicans passed this week been in place prior to the 2020 election, much of that information wouldn’t have been attainable. “This rule change only benefits lawmakers who want to hide the truth from the people they serve,” Heather Sawyer, executive director at American Oversight, said to NBC News. The new rules will “further obscure the roles of far-right national groups,” Brendan Fischer, head of the group Documented, said to The Washington Post. Michael Squires, editor for ProPublica in the southwest region of the U.S., expressed his disgust with Republicans’ action on social media. “The clown car gets tinted windows,” Squires wrote. This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.
- [California Bar seeks to disbar John Eastman, ex-Trump attorney, over quest to overturn 2020 election](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/california-bar-seeks-to-disbar-john-eastman-ex-trump-attorney-over-quest-to-overturn-2020-election/) - LOS ANGELES -- Conservative attorney John Eastman, a lead architect of some of former President Donald Trump's efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election, was slapped Thursday with a series of disciplinary charges in California that could lead to his disbarment.The State Bar of California's chief trial counsel, George Cardona, said in a statement that the 11 charges stem from allegations that Eastman assisted Trump with a strategy - not supported by facts - to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 election by obstructing the count of electoral votes of certain states.The office intends to seek Eastman's disbarment.Eastman, the former dean of Chapman University law school in Southern California, was one of Trump's lawyers during the election. He wrote a memo that argued former Vice President Mike Pence could keep Trump in power by overturning the results of the election during a joint session of Congress convened to count electoral votes. Critics have likened that to instructions for staging a coup.The State Bar said Eastman faces charges that he violated the business and professions code by making false and misleading statements that constitute acts of "moral turpitude, dishonesty, and corruption."Eastman disputes "every aspect" of the charges filed by the State Bar, which are based on his role as counsel to the former president after the election, his attorney, Randall A. Miller, said in a statement.The State Bar's action "is part of a nationwide effort to use the bar discipline process to penalize attorneys who opposed the current administration in the last presidential election. Americans of both political parties should be troubled by this politicization of our nation's state bars," Miller's statement said.In advising Trump, "Eastman's assessments were the product of comprehensive research of the law and historical records - including the 12th Amendment and Electoral Count Act - supported by reasonable interpretation of legal and historical precedent, scholarly analysis, and legislative history," Miller added."He was a lawyer, not Rasputin," Miller said.The bar disclosed in March that it was investigating Eastman for possible ethics violations.As the State Bar's chief trial counsel, Cardona investigates and prosecutes attorney disciplinary matters before the State Bar Court, which can recommend attorneys be either suspended or, in some cases, lose their licenses to practice law. The California Supreme Court ultimately decides what to do.Eastman has been a member of the California Bar since 1997, according to its website. He was a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute. He ran for California attorney general in 2010, finishing second in the Republican primary.Eastman retired as dean of the Chapman University law school last year after more than 160 faculty members signed a letter calling for the university to take action against him.In his statement, Cardona said the charges allege that Eastman "violated this duty in furtherance of an attempt to usurp the will of the American people and overturn election results for the highest office in the land - an egregious and unprecedented attack on our democracy."Copyright © 2023 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
- [Want free COVID-19 testing? | Community | somerset-kentucky.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/want-free-covid-19-testing-community-somerset-kentucky-com/) - #inform-video-player-1 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; } #inform-video-player-2 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; } Kentuckians can search for free COVID-19 testing sites nearest them thanks to a new website that launched nationwide last week.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched the site Jan. 24 with a goal of “focusing on communities at a greater risk of being impacted by the pandemic, people who do not have health insurance, and surge testing in state and local jurisdictions.”Visit the COVID-19 testing site at https://testinglocator.cdc.gov/Search and search by ZIP code. You can also dictate how far from home you’re willing to go for the free testing. The rate of positive COVID-19 tests statewide as of Jan. 23 was 10.27%. That number does not include at-home tests, which means it is likely higher.Each Friday, the state updates its community COVID-19 levels. The most recent update showed less red – which represents the most severe levels of infection – on that map.“We’re kind of bumping up and down a little bit… month to month but nothing like what we’ve previously lived through,” said Gov. Andy Beshear Thursday. Hospitalizations down statewideCabinet for Health and Family Services data shows the number of people hospitalized, in intensive care units and on ventilators with COVID-19 decreased for the past two weeks.In the week ending Jan. 23, there were 318 people hospitalized, 55 in ICUs and 27 on ventilators. That’s down from 406 hospitalized in the week of Jan. 16 with 63 in ICUs and 31 on ventilators.Still: “I do have to implore people,” Beshear said. “Please get the new booster. I believe that it is safe and effective.”The United States Food and Drug Administration says that the vaccines “can help protect against severe illness, hospitalization and death from COVID-19.”As of Jan. 23, about 39% of Kentucky’s total population had done so. The Kentucky Lantern previously reported that many Kentuckians believe the global pandemic is over as it pertains to their personal lives. #inform-video-player-3 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; }
- [Kentucky Trader Joe's becomes third store to unionize - CBS News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/kentucky-trader-joes-becomes-third-store-to-unionize-cbs-news/) - A Trader Joe's store in Louisville, Kentucky, has become the grocery chain's third to vote to unionize.Workers at the store voted 48-36 in favor of the union Thursday evening, according to the National Labor Relations Board, which conducted the election. Workers from the Louisville store will now join those from two other unionized Trader Joe's stores at the bargaining table, where they are trying to hammer out a new labor agreement. In July, a Trader Joe's in Hadley, Massachusetts, was the first in the country to unionize; a store in Minneapolis unionized in August. The unionization effort at Trader Joe's comes amid a larger wave of organizing largely led by younger workers. In 2020, a then 31-year-old Chris Smalls organized a walkout to protest the lack of face masks and other COVID-19 gear at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island. Jaz Brisack, a barista who began working at Starbuck in 2020 at the age of 22, helped lead the unionization of a store in downtown Buffalo, New York — the first Starbucks to form a union. Employees have unionized hundreds of Starbucks stores over the last year, as well as Apple stores and an Amazon warehouse. In the years since the pandemic, workers have increasingly flexed their muscle to demand better pay and treatment. Last year saw the biggest number of strikes in 15 years, with the ranks of unionized workers swelling by 273,000. Not all workers on boardBut Trader Joe's United hasn't convinced workers at every store where it has campaigned. A Trader Joe's in Brooklyn, New York, voted against unionizing in October. And the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which is also trying to unionize Trader Joe's stores, withdrew a petition for a union election from a Boulder, Colorado, store after failing to garner enough support.Connor Hovey, an employee and union organizer in Louisville, said the vote is "a step in the right direction for not only our store, but for the company as a whole." Workers are seeking higher pay, improved benefits and safer working conditions, among other things. Trader Joe's didn't respond Friday to a message seeking comment on the vote. The company has said in the past that it already offers higher starting pay and better benefits than other grocers. Monrovia, California-based Trader Joe's is privately held by the families that also own Aldi Nord, a German grocer. Trader Joe's operates around 530 stores in the U.S.
- [Strategist: Stoking violence before Nichols protests a 'media tactic' - NewsNation](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/strategist-stoking-violence-before-nichols-protests-a-media-tactic-newsnation/) - (NewsNation) — Several news outlets have reported officials in the city of Memphis are “bracing themselves” for protests and possible violence following the release of a police video showing the violent arrest of Tyre Nichols. “The media has made a habit of making those types of statements,” Ameshia Cross, a Democratic political activist, said on “Dan Abrams Live” Thursday night. “This isn’t the first time and I doubt it will be the last.” Cross noted that the media also did the same thing in the case of Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old who was fatally shot by a Chicago police officer, and Breonna Taylor, 26, a medical worker who was shot and killed by police in Louisville, Kentucky. “It’s a media tactic, when in all honesty, we see in very few of these cases that there have actually been extreme situations of violence,” Cross said. “Protests are a part of American democracy that happen and, quite frankly, too many unarmed Black people have become hashtags across social media because police officers have used excessive force.” Nichols, a 29-year-old FedEx worker and father, was pulled over for reckless driving on Jan. 7 while returning home from a suburban park, where he had taken photos of the sunset. How do M1 tanks compare to Challenger, Leopard tanks? Video Nichols’ family saw on Monday shows that he was stunned with a stun gun, pepper sprayed and restrained during his encounter with five Memphis police officers. Protests, Cross says, are not the problem. Her frustration lies with the media assuming that Black people will just “riot in the streets.” “That is extremely dangerous,” Cross said. “We see people holding signs, we see them wanting to hold police accountable in their own hometowns, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.” Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith, who were involved in Nichols’ arrest, were fired last Friday after a police probe determined they used excessive force or failed to intervene and render aid. All five men have received multiple charges, including second-degree murder. “There’s no hint of defensive posturing. No one is defending the officers except for their attorneys. To this point, the message has been clear,” Abrams said. “A determination was made that a very serious crime was committed.” RowVaughn Wells, center, mother of Tyre Nichols, who died after being beaten by Memphis police officers, is comforted by his stepfather Rodney Wells, at the conclusion of a candlelight vigil for Tyre, in Memphis, Tenn., Thursday, Jan. 26, 2023. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) However, Abrams said he’s sure there will still be protests. But, he added, instead of trying to follow the Memphis police chief’s lead and calm everyone down, the media is “ginning up unrest.” “We shouldn’t have to brace for violence, no matter how bad the video is. That would not and doesn’t justify violence,” Abrams said. Abrams questioned the point of the protests, as the police were charged. Cross replied that for every case that gets national news attention, there are hundreds across America that do not. “I think that for those individuals who do choose to protest, who are holding those signs, who are marching, they’re bringing light to the issues in their own communities of police brutality,” Cross said.
- ['This has nothing to do with politics': Bowling Green chapter of NAACP launches ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/this-has-nothing-to-do-with-politics-bowling-green-chapter-of-naacp-launches/) - The Bowling Green-Warren County branch of the NAACP has launched an investigation into the ongoing controversy surrounding former Louisville Metro Police officer Jonathan Mattingly, a Republican Women’s Club, and Anna’s Greek restaurant in Bowling Green. The Bowling Green-Warren County NAACP addresses the incidents which took place at an event held featuring former LMPD Officer Jonathan Mattingly at Anna’s Greek Restaurant on Tuesday, January 17, 2023. pic.twitter.com/2Vqj9W7wkI— BG-Warren Co. NAACP (@naacp_bgwc) January 19, 2023 Earlier this month, Mattingly and gubernatorial candidate Ryan Quarles were invited to speak at a Republican Women’s Club of South-Central Kentucky meeting at the Bowling Green Country Club.Mattingly is one of the three Louisville police officers involved in the 2020 raid that killed Breonna Taylor. No one was criminally charged for her death.The event sparked widespread backlash leading Quarles, who is one of 12 Republicans vying to unseat Governor Andy Beshear, to pull out of the function “due to the controversial nature of another speaker at this event.”The Bowling Green Country Club pulled out of the meeting shortly after.The Republican Women’s Club of South-Central Kentucky then moved the event to Anna’s Greek restaurant where Mattingly spoke about the night Taylor was killed during regular business hours.Some patrons of the restaurant claim they could hear audio of Jonathan Mattingly’s presentation that included video taken during the aftermath of the raid on Breonna Taylor’s apartment.There is no police body cam footage of Taylor’s death, but there is video of the scene after she was shot. The owner of Anna’s has commented publicly on the incident. In a statement, Anna’s claims that they were “unaware of the content to be presented to the Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky. We have now recognized the need to be exceedingly diligent in reviewing any content to be presented when blending restaurant patrons with private events.”WKU Public Radio attempts to reach the owner of Anna’s were unsuccessful.Jonathan Mattingly also issued a statement via twitter.Ryan Dearbone, president of the Bowling Green-Warren County chapter of the NAACP, says the investigation into the event is not political. “This is not about politics and some people will say this is about politics because they are a Republican Women’s club. This has nothing to do with politics. This has to do with human decency with moral objectivity.”Click the listen button at the top of this article to listen to a conversation with Ryan Dearbone about the controversy and the investigation.
- [Bookshelf: New nonfiction examines Black life through 3 different lenses](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/bookshelf-new-nonfiction-examines-black-life-through-3-different-lenses/) - Goldie Taylor will be in conversation with Brenda Wood at the Atlanta History Center at 7 p.m. on Feb. 2. For details go to atlantahistorycenter.com.“Black on Black” (Hanover Square Press, $27.99) by Daniel Black, a professor of African American studies at Clark Atlanta University and author of the novel “Don’t Cry for Me,” is a collection of essays that offer a bold, unflinching examination of the Black experience, ranging in topic from identity and self-love to integration and police brutality.Black’s essays range in tone from confessional to iconoclastic, the latter reserved for his criticisms of HBCUs and the Black church, two institutions he deeply loves, which makes his conflicted stance on the topics so illuminating.“My struggle was that I loved the same institution I hated. Still do,” he writes about the church. “Its music soothes my soul when nothing else can … Black people were free, or at least freer, there than any other place in the world … Outside the church, people didn’t hug me or love me quite so earnestly.”And yet, “(t)he downfall of the Black church is that it keeps teaching its own bondage … We fear the Christian God the same way we feared slave captors,” he writes. Many Black churches “depend upon Eurocentric understandings of God and spirit in ways that make them hate themselves.”More specifically, he cites the church’s failure to give women leadership roles, its condemnation of sexual fluidity and its failure to confront power structures in the face of recent killings of Black men and women like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.“Black on Black” reads like a passionate rallying cry by a man hellbent for change.“Driving the Green Book: A Road Trip Through the Living History of Black Resistance” (HarperCollins, $27.99) by Alvin Hall delves into the annual guide for Black travelers published for 30 years beginning in 1936. The book is not the travelogue of backroads and historic pitstops the title suggests, but a history of the publication’s evolution from 16 pages centered on New York to 80-page books encompassing Alaska, California and Maine.Travel wasn’t something Blacks typically engaged in until the Great Migration when they moved north for jobs and later returned to the South to visit family, explains Hall. Because of Jim Crow laws, Black travelers needed a guide to hotels, restaurants and gas stations where they would be welcomed and feel safe.“A car driven by a Black person, containing Black passengers and bearing an out-of-state license plate, was a vulnerable target, especially on the two-lane roads that went through the center of many small towns,” writes Hall.Many towns didn’t have hotels that would accommodate Blacks; instead listings included private homes that would provide overnight stays. Hall cites Dr. James Franklin, a Black physician in Mobile, Alabama, whose guestbook, which now resides in the History Museum of Mobile, includes the signatures of such luminaries as opera singer Marian Anderson and baseball legend Jackie Robinson.Eventually Hall does get around to highlighting some of the communities that hosted Black travelers during the Green Book era, including Paradise Valley in Detroit, Walnut Street in Louisville and Farish Street, Jackson, Mississippi.“Driving the Green Book” paints a painful picture of one aspect of the oppression Blacks endured during Jim Crow, while also illustrating the power of the human spirit to subvert an unconscionable system and still experience joy.Suzanne Van Atten is a book critic and contributing editor to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Contact her at svanatten@ajc.com.
- [Louisville's new inspector general lacks cooperation from LMPD on civilian review investigations](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/louisvilles-new-inspector-general-lacks-cooperation-from-lmpd-on-civilian-review-investigations/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Louisville's new inspector general says he isn't happy about the level of cooperation the city's civilian police review board has received from the Louisville Metro Police Department, but he's hopeful that a new mayor and a new administration will change that.According to Ed Harness' annual report published Wednesday, the Office of Inspector General launched 16 investigations last year and none were completed due to "denied access to LMPD personnel and data."The civilian review board was created in the wake of he Breonna Taylor shooting. When officers with the Louisville Metro Police Department knocked down Taylor's door and killed her in a raid, it sparked a storm of outrage and placed a spotlight on policing in Louisville.Citizens like Jeffe Cavalcante said the shooting made him become more civic-minded."Because of Breonna Taylor, just got involved," he said, adding that, "there's several boards and committees I watch closer and attend their meetings."Cavalcante says he had high hopes after the civilian review board was created, in essence, to police the police.Harness was named inspector general and assigned to head up that board. During an September. 2022 podcast with Metro Councilwoman Paula McCraney, Harness said the job of his board was "gathering evidence, evaluating it, and making a judgement without bias."But Harness says it's not working out that way, and he cites a lack of cooperation from LMPD as the primary obstacle."We are not getting the information as efficiently and as directly as I believe is warranted under the ordinance," Harness stated on the podcast. "We are supposed to have unrestricted access to people and reports and all that LMPD possesses -- and we are not getting that quite yet."Harness wrote a memorandum of understanding (MOU) last fall proposing a contract of sorts that outlined a process for interaction between his office and LMPD. But sources say it sat dormant, receiving no response from prior LMPD Chief Erika Shields or the administration of former Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer.Cavalcante calls that "classic stall tactics by LMPD."Louisville Metro Council was slated to address the problem this week in an ordinance, but it was pulled from the agenda again at the last minute. That's because Harness' memorandum of understanding is being discussed behind closed doors."I spoke with the inspector general yesterday," said newly inaugurated Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg on WDRB in the Morning on Friday. "I spoke with the chief of police yesterday about that very issue.""We hope to have a MOU between them in the very near future," Greenberg added. "They are working collaboratively to make that happen. I think that's important."One sticking point could be Harness' requirement for police interviews. Harness doesn't just want police records of specific incidents. He's asking for the ability to talk directly to officers who are subjects of civilian review investigations relating to policy violations, as well as instant unrestricted access to their body camera footage without having to request the footage through LMPD.Those issues also linger over union contract talks scheduled for later this year. The police department's stance has been that it won't turn over records that are part of open criminal investigations.Nonetheless, LMPD Interim Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel is keenly aware of the department's damaged credibility. "You will see some different forums that I'm creating in order to help build that community trust which is so needed," Gwinn-Villaroel said in a recent interview with WDRB.Cavalcante says for him, this MOU may be more than an agreement. It's a sign of how Louisville Metro government is doing business with new leaders."Actions speak louder than words," Cavalcante said. "I need to see a new direction."Below is the Office of Louisville Inspector General's 2022 Annual Report:Related StoriesCopyright 2023 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
- [Ronna McDaniel Hangs On As RNC Chair After Challenge From MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/ronna-mcdaniel-hangs-on-as-rnc-chair-after-challenge-from-mypillow-ceo-mike-lindell/) - ToplineRepublican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel was re-elected to her fourth term in a secret vote on Friday, defeating two far right-aligned challengers, including a former Trump campaign attorney and MyPillow CEO—and 2020 election denier—Mike Lindell, as frustration grows within the party after two consecutive underwhelming Republican election performances. Key Facts The RNC’s 168 members voted in a secret ballot Friday afternoon at a Southern California resort as McDaniel, the chair of the RNC since 2017, faced calls from inside—and outside—the committee for new GOP leadership. Harmeet Dhillon, a former Trump campaign attorney who also represented 2022 Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, threw her hat in the ring for the two-year position in an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson last month, telling Semafor, “I think people are tired of waiting” for McDanniel to step down. Lindell, who has repeatedly asserted the baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, announced his bid in November in an interview with former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, and told ABC News he believes he and Dhillon, combined, had enough votes to hold off a McDaniel victory—drawing parallels to the historic 15-round vote earlier this month for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). Dhillon and Lindell, however, were far from being considered favorites in the vote, with McDaniel, a niece of Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), reportedly receiving the only standing ovation at a candidate forum on Wednesday, and having support from nearly two-thirds of committee members. Jeff Kaufmann, the chair of the Iowa Republican Party, told VICE News that Lindell’s bid amounted to a “pseudo campaign,” with just two of the committee’s 168 members reportedly pledging their support for him. A simple majority of RNC members is needed to win. Key Background Even though RNC—and DNC—chair votes typically do not receive much fanfare, Friday’s election is being seen as a measure of Republican party identity, following former President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election and their worse-than-expected results in the November midterm elections, despite a so-called “red wave.” Tensions between the far-right arm of the party and GOP establishment, meanwhile, have been growing, as multiple polls show Trump’s command over the party has been waning, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) emerging as a potential challenger in 2024. It also comes two weeks after a group of far-right “never-Kevins” forced a vote for House speaker to a historic 15 rounds before House members chose McCarthy, but only after he agreed to a series of concessions that have been criticized by centrist Republicans, who worry they could weaken the party’s governing ability. Chief Critic In an interview with conservative talk show host Charlie Kirk, DeSantis—believed to be a frontrunner for the Republican presidential primary in 2024—called for “new blood” in the RNC, saying he likes what “Dhillon has said about getting the RNC [headquarters] out of [Washington] D.C.” DeSantis also expressed frustration with the GOP’s performance in the November midterm elections, when Republicans lost a seat in the Senate, giving Democrats a narrow majority, telling Kirk, “we’ve had three substandard election cycles in a row.” Contra Speaking to Semafor earlier this month, however, McDaniel backed up the Republican party’s performance in the 2018 election—her first as RNC chair—saying, “we defied history” that year, with two Senate seats flipping to the GOP, and that she believes “there’s a tendency to scapegoat or ignore the wins.” McDaniel also told Semafor that she expected she would have “well enough support” to win a fourth term as chair, with 100 of the committee’s 168 members saying they would support her. Benjamin Proto, an RNC member from Connecticut, called it a “mistake” for Dhillon to run for the position, saying “I don’t care what Tucker Carlson thinks the next chairman should do, or what Charlie Kirk does,” the Washington Post reported. Surprising Fact Former President Donald Trump did not make a formal endorsement in the race, although Trump aides had reportedly spoken with RNC staff about a possible McDaniel endorsement, though they decided against it. Trump is privately supporting McDaniel, the former chair of the Michigan Republican Party, whom he also endorsed in 2017, the Associated Press reported. Further Reading The latest leadership test for the Republican Party will be settled by secret ballot (CNN) Sleepy RNC chair race turns into contentious 3-way contest over party's future (ABC News) RNC Chair McDaniel fights for reelection in leadership feud (AP News)
- [Ohio Man Found Guilty of Felony and Misdemeanor Charges Related to Capitol Breach | USAO-DC](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/ohio-man-found-guilty-of-felony-and-misdemeanor-charges-related-to-capitol-breach-usao-dc/) - Defendant Convicted of Obstructing the Certification of the 2020 Election WASHINGTON – An Ohio man was found guilty in the District of Columbia late yesterday of felony and misdemeanor charges for his actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach. His actions and the actions of others disrupted a joint session of the U.S. Congress convened to ascertain and count the electoral votes related to the presidential election. Alexander Sheppard, 23, of Powell, Ohio, was found guilty of obstruction of an official proceeding, a felony, entering and remaining in a restricted grounds or building, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a capitol building, and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a capitol building, According to evidence introduced at trial, video from January 6, 2021, shows Sheppard among a large group of rioters who climbed the stairs on the Northwest side of the Capitol building just after the initial breach and entering through a door with shattered windows. Video recorded inside the U.S. Capitol building showed Sheppard overrunning police lines at multiple locations throughout the U.S. Capitol and engaging in disruptive conduct just outside of the House Chamber. Additional video showed Sheppard running to the Speaker’s Lobby doors and screaming at the U.S. Capitol Police officers who stood guard there while House members and staff attempted to evacuate behind them. Sheppard recorded a video of the evacuation on his cell phone. Sheppard also recorded other rioters smashing the glass windows of the doors to the Speaker’s Lobby. This case was investigated by the FBI’s Cincinnati and Washington Field Offices. Police from Columbus, Ohio, provided cooperation and assistance in the investigation. Valuable assistance was provided by the U.S. Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police Department. The case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. Valuable assistance was provided by U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio. In the 24 months since Jan. 6, 2021, nearly 950 individuals have been arrested in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol, including over 284 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement. The investigation remains ongoing. Anyone with tips can call 1-800-CALL-FBI (800-225-5324) or visit tips.fbi.gov.
- [Donald Trump's Save America PAC secretly funded 2020 Arizona election 'audit'](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/donald-trumps-save-america-pac-secretly-funded-2020-arizona-election-audit/) - Arizona Republicans commissioned Florida-based company Cyber Ninjas to perform a partisan-driven ‘audit’ of 2020 election results in Maricopa County, which ultimately confirmed the outcome. (AP)A $1,000,000 donation to the group responsible for the sham “audit” of Maricopa County, Arizona’s 2020 election results came from former president Donald Trump’s Save America PAC, according to analysis of publicly available data by the watchdog group Documented.The analysis, which was first reported by The Guardian, was based on campaign finance disclosures, tax filings, and communications records obtained by another transparency group. It contradicts statements made by Mr Trump’s associates who denied he had anything to do with the effort to “audit” election results in Arizona’s most populous county.The group found that a million-dollar donation flowed from the Trump PAC, which was his primary political operation from the end of his term as president until he launched his third presidential campaign late last year, to attorney Cleta Mitchell, a right-wing activist who tried to help Mr Trump overturn 2020 election results across the US, and who was forced to resign from her law firm partnership as a result.Ms Mitchell, who now works at a conservative nonprofit affiliated with many ex-Trump administration figures, directed the donation to the Arizona audit effort.Bill Gates, the Republican vice-chair of the Maricopa county board of supervisors at the time of the Cyber Ninjas audit, said he was “disappointed, but not surprised” by the revelation that Mr Trump had helped to fund it.He told The Guardian he has “no problem with audits,” but stressed that he objects to “an audit that is undertaken with a goal in mind, and that is literally being funded by one of the candidates”.“This is absolutely what we do not want to happen,” he said.
- ['We would all be breaking the law': Kansas runoff election bill draws criticism](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/we-would-all-be-breaking-the-law-kansas-runoff-election-bill-draws-criticism/) - TOPEKA — A bill that would implement runoff elections statewide is costly, damaging to voters and potentially illegal, critics say. Under House Bill 2013, if a candidate for a statewide office doesn’t receive a majority of votes in a general election, a runoff election would be held between the two candidates who garnered the most votes. The legislation would be in effect for candidates running for the positions of governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, state treasure and commissioner of insurance. Runoff elections would be held the first Tuesday in December, unless postponed by court order. If passed, the legislation would take effect immediately. Rep. Les Mason, a McPherson Republican and the only person who spoke in favor of the bill during a Tuesday hearing by the House Elections Committee, said HB2013 would shore up Kansans’ faith in elections. Mason, who asked for the bill to be introduced, said he wanted to open “this can of worms” because of his concerns about recent gubernatorial elections. Mason said in the past three elections, candidates have gotten into the governor’s office with less than 50% of the vote, and that candidates had been propped up with dark money. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly narrowly won reelection against Republican opponent Derek Schmidt in the November midterms, with 49.54% of the vote compared to Schmidt’s 47.33%. In 2018, Kelly beat out Kris Kobach, with 48.03% of votes to his 42.96%. In addition to Libertarian candidates, independent Dennis Pyle was on the ballot last year, and independents Rick Kloos and Greg Orman were on the ballot in 2018. Republican Gov. Sam Brownback won reelection in 2014 with 49.82% of the vote, defeating Democrat Paul Davis with 46.13%. Election security has been an increasingly heated subject in the past few years, with Republicans on a national and local level denying the results of the 2020 election. Kansas Republicans have called for more stringent voting security measures, despite a lack of evidence confirming widespread voter fraud. More restrictive voting legislation and new congressional maps have been criticized for blocking access to voting in Kansas, including 2021 legislation that put restrictions on ballot collection. A bill introduced this legislative session, House Bill 2056, would require all advance ballots to be returned by 7 p.m. on Election Day, and other election bills are expected to be introduced as the session continues. Mason said implementing a runoff election would foil dark money funding and also give candidates more confidence in governing. “My feeling is that Kansas deserves to have that confidence in whomever we install in the office that the majority of the public supports them,” Mason said. “I also feel it’s important for that candidate who ultimately wins to feel like they have some sort of a mandate. I think it’s really hard to say, ‘I’ve got a mandate to govern,’ at 47% of the popular vote. That means that 53% did not vote for them.” While the bill has been promoted as a way to increase voter involvement, several concerns surfaced during the hearing. In a fiscal note on the bill, Adam Proffitt, the governor’s budget director, noted the legislation could violate federal and state law, as military members and citizens overseas need to receive a ballot a minimum of 45 days before the election. “The agency indicates that the United States Department of Justice likely would pursue legal action to enforce the 45-day deadline,” the fiscal note reads. “Any litigation fees would be the responsibility of the agency. The agency cannot estimate possible litigation costs.” Proffitt’s note also said counties would have to pay millions more in election costs with the bill’s implementation, as Kansas counties conduct and pay for elections. Under the agency’s estimate, counties’ expenses could be between $5 million to $6 million for printing ballots, renting poll places and other election needs. Harvey County Clerk Rick Piepho, who also serves as the Elections Committee Chair for the Kansas County Clerks and Elections Officials Association, said the bill needed to be more thought out, especially since the short turnaround period means mail-in ballots and overseas ballots couldn’t be sent out in the legally mandated time frame. “The minute this election is called, we would all be breaking the law,” Piepho said. Piepho estimated that it cost about $25,000 to conduct countywide elections in Harvey County, serving about 23,000 voters. He said it would be difficult to include runoff election costs in the county budget, since they wouldn’t know when or if a runoff election would be held and election staff would have little preparation time. “In terms of time frames, cost, I think a lot of that would need to be more clearly defined, and/or you’d have to make some exceptions to advanced deadlines,” Piepho said. “There’d be a lot more than this short little bill if you were to make it work.” Several voting rights advocacy groups also had issues with the bill, including Loud Light, the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and the Kansas League of Women Voters. In written testimony opposing the bill, Kansas ACLU policy director Aileen Berquist said runoff elections discouraged voter engagement and were based on discriminatory practices that began in the Jim Crow era to disenfranchise Black voters. “At a time when the integrity of our elections is under attack and legislation making voting more difficult and confusing for citizens continues to be introduced in this building, we encourage the Legislature to introduce bills that encourage citizen participation rather than attempting to impose vestiges of the Jim Crow south on modern-day Kansans,” Berquist said.
- [Myanmar army set to cement rule with tough new election criteria - Reuters](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/myanmar-army-set-to-cement-rule-with-tough-new-election-criteria-reuters/) - Jan 27 (Reuters) - Myanmar's ruling junta on Friday announced tough requirements for parties to contest an election this year, including a huge increase in their membership, a move that could sideline the military's opponents and cement its grip on politics.Myanmar's top generals led a coup in February 2021 after five years of tense power-sharing under a quasi-civilian political system that was created by the military, which led to a decade of unprecedented reform.The country has been in chaos since the putsch, with a resistance movement fighting the military on multiple fronts after a bloody crackdown on opponents that saw Western sanctions re-imposed.The military has pledged to hold an election in August this year. An announcement in Friday's state media said parties intending to compete nationally must have at least 100,000 members, up from 1,000 previously, and commit to running in the election in the next 60 days or be de-registered as a party.The rules favour the Union Solidarity and Development Party, a military proxy stacked with former generals, which was trounced by Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party in 2015 and 2020 elections.The NLD was decimated by the coup, with thousands of its members arrested or jailed, including Suu Kyi, and many more in hiding.Richard Horsey, senior adviser to the International Crisis Group, who was based in Myanmar for 15 years, said the rules aimed to restore a political system the military can control."Parties are going to be either too scared, offended at the sham that the election is, or it will just be too expensive for them to mount a nationwide campaign in that kind of environment. Who would fund a political party right now?" he said."This whole exercise is something to perpetuate military rule. It's a piece of theatre. It doesn't have to work, because they've decided what the outcome will be."The junta says it is committed to democracy and seized power because of unaddressed violations in a 2020 election won in a landslide by the ruling NLD.The NLD in November described the election as "phoney" and said it would not acknowledge it. The election has also been dismissed as a sham by Western governments.Reporting by Reuters Staff; Writing by Martin Petty and Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Nick MacfieOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
- [Restaurant, ex-LMPD officer apologize to unwitting attendees of Breonna Taylor book event](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/restaurant-ex-lmpd-officer-apologize-to-unwitting-attendees-of-breonna-taylor-book-event/) - Restaurant owners and a former Louisville Metro Police officer involved in the 2020 raid at Breonna Taylor's apartment who hosted an event in Kentucky last week have apologized for holding the presentation while people who had not signed up to attend were in the crowd.In a video statement this week, ex-LMPD officer Jonathan Mattingly defended the event's subject matter, which concerned the aftermath of Taylor's killing at the hands of police in Louisville, but said it should have been held at a "totally secure location." And ownership of Anna's Greek Restaurant, the Bowling Green establishment where the presentation took place, said in a statement that it apologized to attendees and "anyone else who has been emotionally or negatively impacted by this controversial incident."Mattingly was a guest at a Jan. 17 event hosted by the Republican Women of South Central Kentucky to promote his new book, which discusses the March 2020 LMPD raid that left Taylor dead and the aftermath of the incident, a key factor behind a local and national protest movement that took place that summer. The dinner was initially scheduled to take place at the Bowling Green Country Club alongside state Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles, a gubernatorial candidate in the Republican primary, but both parties backed out after news of Mattingly's presence sparked a backlash.In his video, Mattingly said the dinner, which included a loud video presentation with audio of gunshots, was aimed at GOP donors in the crowd who "wanted to know the truth so they had some ammunition in their pocket on who they knew who to support and who to vote for."However, while the private event with about 80 guests took place on the second floor of Anna's Greek Restaurant, some patrons who had reserved seats that evening to dine on the first floor said they were not aware the presentation was set to take place upstairs and were unwittingly exposed to the controversial event during their meal.Mattingly apologized to those crowd members in his video – "I know if I were in your shoes and there was something that I disagreed with being played over a place I brought my patronage to and paid for I'd be very upset as well" – and to the restaurant, which he described as "victim in this because they didn't know what was going on." The event was moved from the country club because "naysayers and haters" threatened the venue when they learned he would be there, Mattingly said, which put the restaurant that took the dinner "in a rough situation, right in the middle of crossfire that they didn't belong."In a separate statement published on its website, Anna's Greek Restaurant said the accommodation for the group was made on a notice of two hours and owners were "unaware of the content to be presented.""We now have recognized the need to be exceedingly diligent in reviewing any content to be presented when blending restaurant patrons with private events," the restaurant's statement said. "... It is our deepest desire to meet the needs of all people who visit our restaurant, regardless of race, religion, culture, and opinions."Cayce Johnson, a patron in attendance that night who has spoken out about the event, previously said everyone in the restaurant could hear what was taking place. She said Mattingly was introduced to "raucous applause" and at one point, loud video footage from the night of the raid was played.In his video, Mattingly said the audio of gunshots in the footage that aired that night was not taken during the raid at her apartment, as no video footage of the incident exists. Instead, he said, the footage used video and audio of subsequent protests, including a shooting that left seven people injured on the first night of the demonstrations and a shooting that injured two officers after Attorney General Daniel Cameron announced just one LMPD officer, Brett Hankison, would face charges over the raid.Mattingly, who was shot in the leg the night officers attempted to serve the no-knock warrant at Taylor's apartment, is currently promoting his book "12 Seconds In The Dark: A Police Officer’s Firsthand Account of the Breonna Taylor Raid."Reach Ana Alvarez Briñez at abrinez@gannett.com; follow her on Twitter @SoyAnaAlvarez.More:Militia leader sentenced to prison for pointing rifle at police in LouisvilleMore:'A game changing decision': Why Louisville Trader Joe's employees voted to unionizeMore:'Says a whole lot more about him': Elaine Chao speaks out about Trump's racist comments
- [The Incoherence of Facebook's Trump Decision - The Atlantic](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/the-incoherence-of-facebooks-trump-decision-the-atlantic/) - Whatever one thinks of Meta’s decision to allow Donald Trump back on Facebook and Instagram, how the company is doing so is already shambolic. This is a man who tried to stay in office despite losing the 2020 election and who incited a violent attack against Congress, efforts which Meta apparently found sufficiently dangerous to take the drastic action of banning him, then the president of the United States, from its platforms. But now Meta is lifting the ban, and as a Meta spokesperson told CNN’s Oliver Darcy, the company will permit Trump to attack the legitimacy of the 2020 election without repercussions.Why would Meta do this? The company seems to understand that Trump’s attacks undermine democracy and can destabilize the country. The spokesperson also told Darcy that if Trump works to undermine the upcoming 2024 election, then he could face action from the company. (What actions those might be, and whether they would have teeth or simply represent the gnashing of them, is left unstated.) This distinction makes no sense, and it demonstrates the incoherence of Meta’s handling of Trump.First, Meta’s stance is effectively that Trump is free to return to the behavior for which he was banned in the first place, simply because the 2020 election is now somewhat more distant. For too long, Facebook was tolerant of his and others’ attacks on the legitimacy of the 2020 election; Trump was suspended only following the January 6, 2021, insurrection. The violence that day was especially egregious and horrifying, but insofar as Trump’s behavior was involved, the difference from his previous behavior was in degree and not type.What was not clear on January 7, 2021, but should be clear by now, as I have written, was that the riot was simply the final stage of a months-long attempt to steal the election. Trump began calling the balloting rigged even before Election Day, falsely declared himself the winner that night, and then spread false fraud claims for weeks. If Facebook grew concerned by the ultimate violence on January 6, it should now be concerned with the rhetoric that preceded that day and led to it.Yet now Meta is saying that Trump can go back to using the same rhetoric that was apparently too inflammatory for Facebook to bear after the insurrection. (At the time, Trump was banned indefinitely. Facebook’s independent oversight board then criticized the approach, saying that the ban was justified but the company hadn’t laid out criteria for indefinite suspensions. Facebook responded that it would review the ban in two years, which brought us to Wednesday’s announcement.) And it’s not as though Trump himself has stopped his wild election claims since getting booted off Facebook. The day before the Meta announcement, Trump was making bogus claims that he’d “won Georgia by a lot” on his own Truth Social site. (He did not win Georgia by a lot, or even by a little.)Second, the danger posed by Trump’s lies about the 2020 election remains. “Our determination is that the risk has sufficiently receded, and that we should therefore adhere to the two-year timeline we set out,” Meta’s Nick Clegg said in a statement, citing a review of “the conduct of the US 2022 midterm elections, and expert assessments on the current security environment.” This is unpersuasive. The 2020 election is further in the past now, but not that much further, and one reason it can’t be relegated to history is that Trump continues to surface it—and the direct harms continue. The recent arrest of Solomon Peña, a failed Republican candidate and self-described “MAGA king,” for a spree of shootings at houses in New Mexico shows how Trump’s election denial reverberates. When the ban was levied, “the point was that an election was retrospectively under attack at the moment of crisis,” Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth who has studied election legitimacy, told me. “The danger wasn’t from attacks before as much as afterward. Why would that change?”Third, Meta is pretending that a clean demarcation exists between attacking the legitimacy of the 2020 and 2024 elections, but it doesn’t. “Attacking the legitimacy of past elections is of course a way to cast doubt on future elections,” Nyhan said. “It’s absurd to pretend otherwise.”Political scientists have long identified a phenomenon called the “winner effect,” whereby confidence in the election system rises in partisans of the victorious party, while it erodes in supporters of the losing candidate. But even before Trump launched a seven-year (and counting) assault on trust in elections—recall that he said the 2016 election was rigged ahead of time, then claimed that the popular vote was tainted by fraud—the Republican Party was in a multi-cycle stretch of declining confidence in election systems. Each instance builds on the next.Trump knows as well as anyone else that an attack on the 2020 election is an attack on the 2024 election. The question is why Meta refuses to acknowledge it. (The company did not respond to questions about the decision.) The fundamental explanation may simply be that Meta is responding to political pressure: It was the motivation behind the ban, and it is the motivation behind loosening it. “Democracy is messy,” Clegg wrote in his statement. Meta is demonstrating that even before Trump makes a single new post.
- [Trump adviser Eastman faces California disciplinary charges - Spectrum News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/trump-adviser-eastman-faces-california-disciplinary-charges-spectrum-news/) - LOS ANGELES (AP) — Conservative attorney John Eastman, a lead architect of some of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election, was slapped Thursday with a series of disciplinary charges in California that could lead to his disbarment. What You Need To Know The State Bar of California’s chief trial counsel, George Cardona, said in a statement that the 11 charges stem from allegations that Eastman assisted Trump with a strategy — not supported by facts — to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 election Eastman, the former dean of Chapman University law school in Southern California, was one of Trump’s lawyers during the election The State Bar said Eastman faces charges that he violated the business and professions code by making false and misleading statements that constitute acts of “moral turpitude, dishonesty, and corruption” Eastman retired as dean of the Chapman University law school last year after more than 160 faculty members signed a letter calling for the university to take action against him The State Bar of California’s chief trial counsel, George Cardona, said in a statement that the 11 charges stem from allegations that Eastman assisted Trump with a strategy — not supported by facts — to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 election by obstructing the count of electoral votes of certain states. The office intends to seek Eastman’s disbarment. Eastman, the former dean of Chapman University law school in Southern California, was one of Trump’s lawyers during the election. He wrote a memo that argued former Vice President Mike Pence could keep Trump in power by overturning the results of the election during a joint session of Congress convened to count electoral votes. Critics have likened that to instructions for staging a coup. The State Bar said Eastman faces charges that he violated the business and professions code by making false and misleading statements that constitute acts of “moral turpitude, dishonesty, and corruption.” Eastman disputes “every aspect” of the charges filed by the State Bar, which are based on his role as counsel to the former president after the election, his attorney, Randall A. Miller, said in a statement. The State Bar's action “is part of a nationwide effort to use the bar discipline process to penalize attorneys who opposed the current administration in the last presidential election. Americans of both political parties should be troubled by this politicization of our nation’s state bars,” Miller's statement said. In advising Trump, “Eastman’s assessments were the product of comprehensive research of the law and historical records — including the 12th Amendment and Electoral Count Act — supported by reasonable interpretation of legal and historical precedent, scholarly analysis, and legislative history,” Miller added. “He was a lawyer, not Rasputin,” Miller said. The bar disclosed in March that it was investigating Eastman for possible ethics violations. As the State Bar’s chief trial counsel, Cardona investigates and prosecutes attorney disciplinary matters before the State Bar Court, which can recommend attorneys be either suspended or, in some cases, lose their licenses to practice law. The California Supreme Court ultimately decides what to do. Eastman has been a member of the California Bar since 1997, according to its website. He was a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute. He ran for California attorney general in 2010, finishing second in the Republican primary. Eastman retired as dean of the Chapman University law school last year after more than 160 faculty members signed a letter calling for the university to take action against him. In his statement, Cardona said the charges allege that Eastman “violated this duty in furtherance of an attempt to usurp the will of the American people and overturn election results for the highest office in the land — an egregious and unprecedented attack on our democracy."
- [Youth-led study in Kentucky outlines social challenges of COVID-19 in schools | Wdrb-video](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/youth-led-study-in-kentucky-outlines-social-challenges-of-covid-19-in-schools-wdrb-video/) - Louisville, KY (40203) Today Breezy with some sun. Mainly dry with a quick burst of rain in Indiana. Tonight Evening flurries Updated: January 27, 2023 @ 6:43 am
- [Nothing Has Changed Since Sandy Hook and That's a Damn Shame - Yahoo News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/nothing-has-changed-since-sandy-hook-and-thats-a-damn-shame-yahoo-news/) - Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyAs frustration builds over the seemingly endless number of Americans killed in mass shootings, Danielle Moodie, co-host of The New Abnormal, couldn’t contain her frustration on this week’s episode.“There have been so many tragedies since Sandy Hook and in my opinion, nothing has really changed,” Moodie vented to Gloria Pan, the senior vice president at Mom’s Rising, a pro-gun control group.Subscribe to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or Overcast.Pan countered by saying all is not lost—and that despite the lack of political leadership over the issue, the Sandy Hook event “jumpstarted the opposition to the NRA and their plans. Up until then there wasn’t really an effective gun safety movement.”“The vast majority of Americans do want stronger gun laws,” Pan says. “It’s just about how you talk about it. Ninety percent of Americans support universal background checks to make sure that people who really would not be responsible gun owners don’t get their hands on it. However, the people who have the power to vote for stronger gun laws… they’re answering to a different, more subset of constituents.”Pan, who has been working on gun safety since the Sandy Hook shootings, said Americans are in for a fight if they’re to make change for real.“We can bring our heartbreak, we can bring our stories to Washington and we can demand this change. But it’s not just not going to happen because the opposition to any kind of reform is just so strong. And the opposition to it is rooted. It’s somewhere else. It’s rooted in what they perceive as, as constitutional rights and stories about, you know, what America is about, going all the way back to our founding, which, you know, I think deserves a second look.”The Real Reason McCarthy Put Santos on the Science CommitteeAlso on the podcast, Radley Balko, an expert on police militarization in America who writes The Watch substack, discusses the danger of no-knock warrants and whether Breonna Taylor’s death has changed anything.“I’m extremely cynical about this stuff and I've been covering it for about 20 years now. I think that the backlash and reaction to the Breonna Taylor case, and George Floyd, has inspired more substantive reforms than we’ve ever seen, or at least since I’ve been covering this issue.“Louisville did pass a ban on no-knocks. It’s not the law I would’ve written and I think it’s a little bit too easy to get around, but the idea… if you told me five years ago that we would be talking about 30 cities and five or six states passing bans on no-knock grades because of the overwhelming public support for that position, I would’ve told you you were outta your mind.“I still think we have a long way to go, but… for the first time, probably in my career, I’m not completely a hundred percent cynical about the prospects of things changing.”Listen to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get the Daily Beast's biggest scoops and scandals delivered right to your inbox. Sign up now.Stay informed and gain unlimited access to the Daily Beast's unmatched reporting. Subscribe now.
- [How Wisconsin's Spring Election Will Impact Your Life for the Next 10+ Years](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/how-wisconsins-spring-election-will-impact-your-life-for-the-next-10-years/) - The New York Times is calling it “an election that carries bigger policy stakes than any other contest in America.” Politico says it’s “the most important election nobody’s ever heard of.” And they’re not wrong: Wisconsin’s February and April elections will decide the future of reproductive rights, legislative maps, the governor’s powers, and maybe even the results of the 2024 presidential election. You have the opportunity to change the direction of our state and our country. All you have to do is vote. Feb. 21 is the date of Wisconsin’s primary for a crucial state Supreme Court election, and the general election is on April 4. While many people excitedly cast their ballots for charismatic politicians during November elections, the main race on the ballot this spring is among people whose faces you may not see for another decade: the judge who will serve a 10-year term on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. The person who wins that seat will make decisions that impact all of our lives for the next decade. Here is where the four Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates stand on two of the most important issues. From Left to Right: Conservative judges Jennifer Dorow and Daniel Kelly, and liberal judges Everett Mitchell and Janet Protasiewicz Reproductive Freedom The Wisconsin Supreme Court is expected to hear a case challenging the state’s 19th-century law banning almost all abortions. Currently, Wisconsin abortion providers have stopped performing the procedure because the 1849 ban is so unclear. Dane County Judge Everett Mitchell and Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz are running on the pro-reproductive freedom side of this issue. Both support women’s right to have autonomy over their own bodies– a right that was taken from Wisconsin women after the US Supreme Court reversed 49 years of Roe v. Wade precedent and the state’s abortion ban went back into effect. In an interview last week, Protasiewicz argued abortion should be “a woman’s right to choose.” Running against abortion rights are conservative former state Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly, who was appointed to a spot on the court by then-Gov. Scott Walker in 2016 before losing a 2020 election for a full term, and Waukesha County Judge Jennifer Dorow, who received a lot of media attention for her handling of the trial of the 2021 Waukesha Christmas parade attack. Both candidates do not believe women can be trusted to make decisions about their own bodies. Democracy Wisconsin’s Supreme Court is also expected to decide major cases about election laws, voting rights, and legislative maps. Before and after the 2020 presidential election, the current conservative-leaning court made it more difficult for people to vote by banning all absentee drop boxes during a pandemic; struck down Governor Evers’ pandemic mitigation efforts; stripped regulatory powers from the democratically-elected state school superintendent; allowed political appointees of Evers’ Republican predecessor to remain in office long after their terms expired; and forced some public schools to pay for busing for parochial schools. Simply put: the current court has made decision after decision that went against the will of you, Wisconsin voters. Mitchell and Protasiewicz are on the pro-democracy side of these issues. If elected, Mitchell has promised to “revisit the maps,” calling the current GOP-drawn legislative district map lines “not fair.” RELATED: The Worst-Drawn Districts in America: How Wisconsin Got Here, How It’s Hurting Us, & How We Can Fix It Meanwhile, both Kelly and Dorow have ties to former President Donald Trump. In 2020, Trump endorsed Kelly and praised him at a Milwaukee rally. And Dorow’s husband, Brian, was a security official for Trump campaign events throughout Wisconsin. While neither has explicitly weighed in on what they think about the state’s current legislative maps, Dorow has leaned into Republican extremists’ conspiracies about the 2020 election results. What’s Next? The top two finishers in the Feb. 21 primary will face off in the April 4 general election. While it’s possible two ideologically similar candidates could advance to the general, most analysts don’t think that’s likely. Click here to learn more about Wisconsin’s upcoming Supreme Court race, check your registration status, and/or find out what else is on your ballot.
- [Local attorney discusses the DeKalb County District Attorney's decision to recuse herself](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/27/local-attorney-discusses-the-dekalb-county-district-attorneys-decision-to-recuse-herself/) - On Wednesday DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston announced her decision to recuse herself from reviewing the investigation of the officer-involved shooting that took place at the proposed site of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center. During a court hearing on Tuesday, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said her decision on whether to bring charges is “imminent” in the special grand jury investigation on whether former President Donald Trump and his allies tried to overturn to 2020 election in Georgia. On Thursday’s edition of “Closer Look,” former U.S. Attorney Michael Moore discussed the latest in the two pending legal cases.
- [Trump adviser Eastman faces California disciplinary charges - St. Louis Post-Dispatch](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/trump-adviser-eastman-faces-california-disciplinary-charges-st-louis-post-dispatch/) - Associated Press LOS ANGELES — Conservative attorney John Eastman, a lead architect of some of former President Donald Trump's efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election, was slapped Thursday with a series of disciplinary charges in California that could lead to his disbarment.The State Bar of California's chief trial counsel, George Cardona, said in a statement that the 11 charges stem from allegations that Eastman assisted Trump with a strategy — not supported by facts — to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 election by obstructing the count of electoral votes of certain states.The office intends to seek Eastman's disbarment.Eastman, the former dean of Chapman University law school in Southern California, was one of Trump's lawyers during the election. He wrote a memo that argued former Vice President Mike Pence could keep Trump in power by overturning the results of the election during a joint session of Congress convened to count electoral votes. Critics have likened that to instructions for staging a coup. People are also reading… The State Bar said Eastman faces charges that he violated the business and professions code by making false and misleading statements that constitute acts of "moral turpitude, dishonesty, and corruption."Eastman disputes "every aspect" of the charges, which are based on his role as counsel to the former president after the election, his attorney, Randall A. Miller, said in a statement.The State Bar's action "is part of a nationwide effort to use the bar discipline process to penalize attorneys who opposed the current administration in the last presidential election. Americans of both political parties should be troubled by this politicization of our nation's state bars," Miller's statement said. Chapman University law professor John Eastman stands at left as former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani speaks Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington at a rally in support of President Donald Trump. Jacquelyn Martin, Associated Press In advising Trump, "Eastman's assessments were the product of comprehensive research of the law and historical records — including the 12th Amendment and Electoral Count Act — supported by reasonable interpretation of legal and historical precedent, scholarly analysis, and legislative history," Miller added."He was a lawyer, not Rasputin," Miller said.The bar disclosed in March that it was investigating Eastman for possible ethics violations.As the State Bar's chief trial counsel, Cardona investigates and prosecutes attorney disciplinary matters before the State Bar Court, which can recommend attorneys be either suspended or, in some cases, lose their licenses to practice law. The California Supreme Court ultimately decides what to do.Eastman has been a member of the California Bar since 1997, according to its website. He was a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute. He ran for California attorney general in 2010, finishing second in the Republican primary.Eastman retired as dean of the Chapman University law school last year after more than 160 faculty members signed a letter calling for the university to take action against him.In his statement, Cardona said the charges allege that Eastman "violated this duty in furtherance of an attempt to usurp the will of the American people and overturn election results for the highest office in the land — an egregious and unprecedented attack on our democracy." 0 Comments #lee-rev-content { margin:0 -5px; } #lee-rev-content h3 { font-family: inherit!important; font-weight: 700!important; border-left: 8px solid var(--lee-blox-link-color); text-indent: 7px; font-size: 24px!important; line-height: 24px; } #lee-rev-content .rc-provider { font-family: inherit!important; } #lee-rev-content h4 { line-height: 24px!important; font-family: "serif-ds",Times,"Times New Roman",serif!important; margin-top: 10px!important; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #lee-rev-content h3 { font-size: 18px!important; line-height: 18px; } } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article { clear: both; background-color: #fff; color: #222; background-position: bottom; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding: 15px 0 20px; margin-bottom: 40px; border-top: 4px solid rgba(0,0,0,.8); border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(0,0,0,.2); display: none; } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article, #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article p { font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article h2 { font-size: 24px; margin: 15px 0 5px 0; font-family: "serif-ds", Times, "Times New Roman", serif; } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article .lead { margin-bottom: 5px; } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article .email-desc { font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 5px; opacity: 0.7; } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article form { padding: 10px 30px 5px 30px; } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article .disclaimer { opacity: 0.5; margin-bottom: 0; line-height: 100%; } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article .disclaimer a { color: #222; text-decoration: underline; } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article .email-hammer { border-bottom: 3px solid #222; opacity: .5; display: inline-block; padding: 0 10px 5px 10px; margin-bottom: -5px; font-size: 16px; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article form { padding: 10px 0 5px 0; } } Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox!
- [Former Trump DHS official Ken Cuccinelli testifying in grand jur - KAKE](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/former-trump-dhs-official-ken-cuccinelli-testifying-in-grand-jur-kake/) - .modal-body .Video-content { max-width: 100%; width:100%; } .Article-pill { visibility:hidden } .ArticleBody {font-size: 16px!important; } News15 hrs 56 mins ago
- [State Bar charges John Eastman, lawyer who advised Trump on overturning the election ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/state-bar-charges-john-eastman-lawyer-who-advised-trump-on-overturning-the-election/) - The State Bar of California filed disciplinary charges Thursday against Orange County attorney John Eastman, accusing him of multiple ethics violations stemming from his actions while advising then-President Trump on how to overturn the 2020 election.The charges could be the first step to Eastman losing his California law license. Eastman, a former professor and dean at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law, emerged as a key legal advisor to Trump in the weeks after Joe Biden won the presidency. Eastman helped develop a legal and political strategy promoting the false claim that the results were tainted by fraud and misconduct by election officials, according to a 35-page charging document filed by the State Bar. In the months that followed, the U.S. attorney general and others told the Trump campaign that there was no evidence of widespread fraud that could have affected the outcome of the election. Dozens of courts dismissed cases alleging fraud. Still, the State Bar alleges, Eastman continued to work with Trump to promote the lie of a stolen election.Eastman must be held accountable for his role in “an egregious and unprecedented attack on our democracy,” George Cardona, the State Bar’s chief trial counsel, said in a statement.An attorney’s highest duty is abiding by the federal and state constitutions, and Eastman violated that duty, Cardona wrote. The 11 disciplinary charges against Eastman include failure to support the Constitution and laws of the United States, misrepresentation, seeking to mislead a court, and making false and misleading statements that constitute acts of “moral turpitude, dishonesty and corruption.”State Bar officials said they intend to seek Eastman’s disbarment before the State Bar Court.In a Substack post, Eastman said the State Bar filing is “filled with distortions, half-truths and outright falsehoods.” In the post, which seeks funds for his legal defense, he also asks for prayers. Eastman’s attorney, Randall A. Miller, said in a statement that his client “disputes every aspect of the action that has been filed against him by the State Bar.”“The complaint filed against Eastman that triggered today’s action by the State Bar is part of a nationwide effort to use the bar discipline process to penalize attorneys who opposed the current administration in the last presidential election,” the statement said. “Americans of both political parties should be troubled by this politicization of our nation’s state bars.” The State Bar alleges that Eastman wrote legal memos — one in December 2020 and another on Jan. 3, 2021 — advising Vice President Mike Pence that he could declare that election results in seven states were in dispute. This would have led to electoral votes going uncounted and could have opened the door for Trump to remain president. In the second memo, Eastman asserted that the “election was tainted by outright fraud (both traditional ballot stuffing and electronic manipulation of voting tabulation machines),” according to the state bar filing. Eastman knew or should have known that the assertion was “false and misleading,” the State Bar filing said. Politics John Eastman’s long, strange trip to the heart of the Jan. 6 investigation The Jan. 6 investigation marks the confluence of key figures and influences in Eastman’s life, including his decades in California’s political scene. In a speech to tens of thousands of Trump supporters at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, Eastman said that “dead people had voted” and that electronic voting machines made by the Dominion company had altered the election results. Eastman’s comments constituted an “act of moral turpitude, dishonesty and corruption,” were “false and misleading” and helped provoke the crowd to attack the Capitol, the filing said. Eastman has a long history in California’s conservative legal circles. He was hired by Chapman’s law school in 1999 and was dean from June 2007 to January 2010, then continued to teach courses in constitutional law, property law, legal history and the 1st Amendment.He retired in early 2021 after more than 100 Chapman faculty and others affiliated with the university signed a letter calling on the school to take action against him for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection.Thursday’s charges are the result of a lengthy investigation into Eastman’s actions that began in 2021. In October of that year, the nonpartisan legal group States United Democracy Center filed an ethics complaint calling on the State Bar to investigate Eastman’s Jan. 6 actions.Christine P. Sun, a senior vice president at the States United Democracy Center, said in a statement Thursday that Eastman “abused the legal system and violated the oath he swore as an attorney, in an attempt to block the will of the people and prevent the peaceful transfer of power.” The level of detail included in the filing indicates that the State Bar is taking the allegations against Eastman seriously, said UC Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.“John Eastman was part of a concerted effort to overturn the election, and I think it’s so important that we not lose sight of how exceptional and disturbing those events were,” he said. “They’ve never been seen before in this country. This is a reminder that it’s not about partisanship — what went on then was inconsistent with democracy.”
- [Eastman faces disbarment push in California - Yahoo News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/eastman-faces-disbarment-push-in-california-yahoo-news/) - The California bar’s top disciplinary official is seeking the disbarment of John Eastman, an architect of Donald Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election, for what he describes as a “strategy, unsupported by facts or law, to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election.”George Cardona, the chief trial counsel for the State Bar of California, contended that Eastman violated rules of professional conduct at least 11 times as he pushed fringe legal theories aimed at keeping Trump in power despite his loss in the election.Cardona’s 35-page filing with the State Bar Court contends that Eastman pushed claims of election fraud or misconduct even though “there was no evidence upon which a reasonable attorney would rely” to support those contentions.“Nevertheless, from on or about December 9, 2020, and continuing to at least on or about January 6, 2021, respondent continued to work with Trump and others to promote the idea that the outcome of the election was in question and had been stolen from Trump,” the attorney wrote.In a statement, Eastman attorney Randall Miller said Eastman disputed “every aspect” of the bar charges against him.“Any lawyer engaged to provide his or her legal assessment in a dynamic, consequential, and often emotional arena should be deeply troubled by the notion that a licensing authority (bar) can take their license if they do not like the lawyer’s advice, or find the advocacy distasteful,” Miller said in the statement, describing Eastman’s 2020 work as the “evaluation of alternatives available to President Trump.”Eastman has maintained an active role in urging state legislatures to decertify the results of the 2020 election and recently signed a document urging House conservatives to deny Rep. Kevin McCarthy the speaker’s gavel.Eastman has been the subject of numerous investigations since Trump’s failed effort to overturn the 2020 election results. The Jan. 6 select committee recommended that he face criminal charges for his conduct, and a federal judge agreed that he “likely” entered into a criminal conspiracy with Trump to obstruct Congress’ effort to count electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021.Federal prosecutors seized Eastman’s phone in June and have obtained access to his emails as they pursue a grand jury investigation related to Trump’s effort to overturn the election. A special grand jury in Fulton County, Ga., has also eyed Eastman’s involvementas it pursued a district attorney’s probe of Trump’s effort to subvert the results. Eastman invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when appearing before the Fulton County grand jury, and he did the same before the Jan. 6 select committee.Eastman initially pressed state legislatures to adopt alternate slates of electors that could be sued to force a controversy on Jan. 6, 2021, when then-Vice President Mike Pence was presiding over a joint session of Congress to count electoral votes that determine the presidency. But after no state legislatures took up his call, Eastman pushed a more extreme theory, joining Trump to pressure Pence to overturn the results of the election unilaterally — or to at least call an unauthorized recess of the joint session in order to let states have more time to weigh in.Pence refused to go along, and Eastman continued his pressure campaign even as violent rioters — inflamed by Pence’s decision not to abide by Trump’s calls — stormed the Capitol and delayed certification of the election for hours.
- [Trump lawyer Eastman should be disbarred, California regulators say](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/trump-lawyer-eastman-should-be-disbarred-california-regulators-say/) - By Andrew Goudsward(Reuters) -California attorney regulators said on Thursday they will seek to disbar attorney John Eastman over his involvement in former U.S. President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.The State Bar of California charged Eastman, a former personal lawyer to Trump, with 11 counts of ethics violations, including misleading courts and making false public statements about voter fraud in the 2020 election.Eastman participated in a strategy “unsupported by facts or law” to obstruct the count of presidential electors in Congress following Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory, the bar’s complaint said.George Cardona, the bar’s chief trial counsel, said his office will ask a court to revoke Eastman’s law license.An attorney for Eastman, Randall Miller, disputed the allegations on Thursday, saying it was Eastman’s responsibility as a lawyer to provide Trump with a range of legal options to contest the election results.Eastman, a former law professor at Chapman University in California, drafted legal memos suggesting then-Vice President Mike Pence could refuse to accept electoral votes from several swing states when Congress convened to certify the 2020 vote count. Pence rebuffed his arguments, saying he did not have legal authority.Eastman also represented Trump in a long-shot lawsuit at the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to invalidate votes in four states where Trump had falsely claimed evidence of widespread voter fraud.Eastman repeated many of those claims at a rally outside the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, after which a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol and delayed the congressional certification of the election.A state bar court will weigh the charges against Eastman and recommend any discipline. The California Supreme Court would need to approve disbarring or suspending Eastman.(Reporting by Andrew GoudswardEditing by David Bario and Lincoln Feast)
- [Trump adviser Eastman faces California disciplinary charges - WRAL](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/trump-adviser-eastman-faces-california-disciplinary-charges-wral/) - LOS ANGELES — Conservative attorney John Eastman, a lead architect of some of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election, was slapped Thursday with a series of disciplinary charges in California that could lead to his disbarment.The State Bar of California’s chief trial counsel, George Cardona, said in a statement that the 11 charges stem from allegations that Eastman assisted Trump with a strategy — not supported by facts — to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 election by obstructing the count of electoral votes of certain states.The office intends to seek Eastman’s disbarment.Eastman, the former dean of Chapman University law school in Southern California, was one of Trump’s lawyers during the election. He wrote a memo that argued former Vice President Mike Pence could keep Trump in power by overturning the results of the election during a joint session of Congress convened to count electoral votes. Critics have likened that to instructions for staging a coup.The State Bar said Eastman faces charges that he violated the business and professions code by making false and misleading statements that constitute acts of “moral turpitude, dishonesty, and corruption.”Eastman disputes “every aspect” of the charges filed by the State Bar, which are based on his role as counsel to the former president after the election, his attorney, Randall A. Miller, said in a statement.The State Bar's action “is part of a nationwide effort to use the bar discipline process to penalize attorneys who opposed the current administration in the last presidential election. Americans of both political parties should be troubled by this politicization of our nation’s state bars,” Miller's statement said.In advising Trump, “Eastman’s assessments were the product of comprehensive research of the law and historical records — including the 12th Amendment and Electoral Count Act — supported by reasonable interpretation of legal and historical precedent, scholarly analysis, and legislative history,” Miller added.“He was a lawyer, not Rasputin,” Miller said.The bar disclosed in March that it was investigating Eastman for possible ethics violations.As the State Bar’s chief trial counsel, Cardona investigates and prosecutes attorney disciplinary matters before the State Bar Court, which can recommend attorneys be either suspended or, in some cases, lose their licenses to practice law. The California Supreme Court ultimately decides what to do.Eastman has been a member of the California Bar since 1997, according to its website. He was a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute. He ran for California attorney general in 2010, finishing second in the Republican primary.Eastman retired as dean of the Chapman University law school last year after more than 160 faculty members signed a letter calling for the university to take action against him.In his statement, Cardona said the charges allege that Eastman “violated this duty in furtherance of an attempt to usurp the will of the American people and overturn election results for the highest office in the land — an egregious and unprecedented attack on our democracy."
- [Trump adviser Eastman faces California disciplinary charges](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/trump-adviser-eastman-faces-california-disciplinary-charges/) - LOS ANGELES — Conservative attorney John Eastman, a lead architect of some of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election, was slapped Thursday with a series of disciplinary charges in California that could lead to his disbarment.The State Bar of California’s chief trial counsel, George Cardona, said in a statement that the 11 charges stem from allegations that Eastman assisted Trump with a strategy — not supported by facts — to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 election by obstructing the count of electoral votes of certain states. The office intends to seek Eastman’s disbarment.Eastman, the former dean of Chapman University law school in Southern California, was one of Trump’s lawyers during the election. He wrote a memo that argued former Vice President Mike Pence could keep Trump in power by overturning the results of the election during a joint session of Congress convened to count electoral votes. Critics have likened that to instructions for staging a coup.The State Bar said Eastman faces charges that he violated the business and professions code by making false and misleading statements that constitute acts of “moral turpitude, dishonesty, and corruption.” Eastman disputes “every aspect” of the charges filed by the State Bar, which are based on his role as counsel to the former president after the election, his attorney, Randall A. Miller, said in a statement.The State Bar’s action “is part of a nationwide effort to use the bar discipline process to penalize attorneys who opposed the current administration in the last presidential election. Americans of both political parties should be troubled by this politicization of our nation’s state bars,” Miller’s statement said.In advising Trump, “Eastman’s assessments were the product of comprehensive research of the law and historical records — including the 12th Amendment and Electoral Count Act — supported by reasonable interpretation of legal and historical precedent, scholarly analysis, and legislative history,” Miller added.“He was a lawyer, not Rasputin,” Miller said.The bar disclosed in March that it was investigating Eastman for possible ethics violations.As the State Bar’s chief trial counsel, Cardona investigates and prosecutes attorney disciplinary matters before the State Bar Court, which can recommend attorneys be either suspended or, in some cases, lose their licenses to practice law. The California Supreme Court ultimately decides what to do.Eastman has been a member of the California Bar since 1997, according to its website. He was a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute. He ran for California attorney general in 2010, finishing second in the Republican primary.Eastman retired as dean of the Chapman University law school last year after more than 160 faculty members signed a letter calling for the university to take action against him.In his statement, Cardona said the charges allege that Eastman “violated this duty in furtherance of an attempt to usurp the will of the American people and overturn election results for the highest office in the land — an egregious and unprecedented attack on our democracy.”
- [California Bar seeks to disbar ex-Trump attorney over quest to overturn 2020 election](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/california-bar-seeks-to-disbar-ex-trump-attorney-over-quest-to-overturn-2020-election/) - The State Bar of California on Thursday filed a notice of disciplinary charges against former Donald Trump attorney John Eastman over what bar officials said were Eastman's alleged efforts to aid Trump in his bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election.The complaint levels 11 different disciplinary -- not criminal -- charges against Eastman detailing various efforts to craft and play a leadership role in trying to reverse Trump's loss to Joe Biden, which hinged on false claims about widespread election fraud that the state bar claims led to the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol."There is nothing more sacrosanct to our American democracy than free and fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power," California State Bar Chief Trial Counsel George Cardona said in a statement."The Notice of Disciplinary Charges alleges that Mr. Eastman violated this duty in furtherance of an attempt to usurp the will of the American people and overturn election results for the highest office in the land—an egregious and unprecedented attack on our democracy—for which he must be held accountable," Cardona said.His office will seek Eastman's disbarment, according to a news release.Eastman's attorney did not immediately respond to ABC News' request for comment.Chapman School of Law professor John Eastman testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 16, 2017. Conservative attorney Eastman, a lead architect of some of former President Donald Trump's efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election, was slapped Thursday, Jan.26, 2023, with a series of disciplinary charges in California that could lead to his disbarment.Susan Walsh/APEastman's actions are already being scrutinized by federal prosecutors investigating Trump and his allies' attempt to overturn the election. Last June, agents seized Eastman's phone as part of their investigation.Grand jury subpoenas issued in recent months to Trump allies and state officials have sought any records documenting communications that any of those individuals may have had with Eastman, who has denied any wrongdoing while continuing to push officials in swing states to cast doubt on the 2020 results.Eastman is the latest legal ally of Trump to face the prospect of potential disbarment over involvement in the campaign against the 2020 election results.Rudy Giuliani, the famed New York City Mayor-turned-Trump attorney, is battling similar disciplinary efforts, in Washington, as is former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and lawyer Sidney Powell, who has been slapped with sanctions over filing lawsuits packed with false claims of fraud.
- [Grandmaster Jay pleads guilty, gets one year added to sentence - WVXU](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/grandmaster-jay-pleads-guilty-gets-one-year-added-to-sentence-wvxu/) - The founder of a Black militia that participated in some of the 2020 racial justice protests over the police killing of Breonna Taylor has pleaded guilty to five federal counts of wanton endangerment. John F. Johnson, AKA Grandmaster Jay, pleaded guilty Thursday for pointing an assault rifle at five police officers in September 2020. He will serve a one-year sentence that will run concurrently with a seven-year federal sentence for assaulting, resisting or impeding officers and a separate count of brandishing a firearm in relation to a violent crime. Johnson is the founder of the “Not F****ing Around Coalition, a Black militia that participated in racial justice protests in Louisville in 2020 calling for justice for Breonna Taylor, who was killed in her home by Louisville police earlier that year. Johnson has said the purpose of his organization is to educate Black Americans on their constitutional rights. Prosecutors said Johnson pointed a flashlight mounted on an assault rifle at federal agents and Louisville Metro Police officers staged on rooftops around Jefferson Square Park on September 4, 2020. Though none of the officers drew their weapons in response, prosecutors said officers feared Johnson might accidentally or intentionally fire his weapon. Following Johnson’s federal sentencing, racial justice advocates said he was treated unfairly, and that prosecutors wanted to make an example out of him because he was the leader of a Black militia. During Johnson’s first large-scale protest in the city in July 2020, he stood on the steps of Metro Hall surrounded by an armed militia and threatened to burn down the city. During the event, three militia members were struck by gunfire after an accidental discharge ahead of the demonstration. Copyright 2023 Louisville Public Media. To see more, visit Louisville Public Media.
- [California state bar seeking to strip John Eastman's law licence over Trump 2020 election lies](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/california-state-bar-seeking-to-strip-john-eastmans-law-licence-over-trump-2020-election-lies/) - John Eastman, who led Donald Trump’s legal bid to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, could be stripped of his licence to practise law after he was hit with 11 charges stemming from his efforts fuelled by the former president’s election lies.The State Bar of California’s Chief Trial Counsel George Cardona announced the case against Mr Eastman on Thursday.An 11-count complaint includes charges based on “allegations that Eastman engaged in a course of conduct to plan, promote, and assist then-President Trump in executing a strategy, unsupported by facts or law, to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by obstructing the count of electoral votes of certain states.”Essentially, it focuses on two areas of wrongdoing — statements containing falsehoods about election fraud and the veracity of the 2020 election results, as well as Mr Eastman’s role in the so-called “fake electors” scheme. That plot involved concocting Trump-supporting slates of “electors” in states actually won by Joe Biden in the hopes that state legislatures would pass resolutions calling for those Trump-supporting electors to be recognised in Washington during the counting of electoral college votes and their subsequent certification by Congress.“Specific charges allege that Eastman made false and misleading statements regarding purported election fraud ... that contributed to provoking a crowd to assault and breach the Capitol to intimidate then-Vice President Pence and prevent the electoral count from proceeding,” according to an accompanying statement from Mr Cardona.The state bar counsel went on to assert that after figures including then-Attorney General William Barr made clear that there was no evidence found to indicate widespread election fraud in 2020, Mr Eastman’s continued spreading of false claims was irresponsible and wrong.Mr Eastman “knew, or was grossly negligent in not knowing, that there was no evidence upon which a reasonable attorney would rely of election fraud or illegality that could have affected the outcome of the election, and that there was no evidence upon which a reasonable attorney would rely that the election had been ’stolen’ by the Democratic Party,” reads the official filing with the state bar.The complaint went on to assert of the “fake electors” scheme: “[N]o reasonable attorney with expertise in constitutional or election law would have concluded that the Vice President was legally authorized to take the actions respondent proposed” by Mr Eastman and the rest of Mr Trump’s legal team.Mr Eastman – who also was subpoenaed by the House select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol – has been under investigation by the state bar since last March.His speech on 6 January as part of Mr Trump’s “Stop the Steal”-themed rally on the Ellipse was a contributing factor to the charges against him, according to the complaint, which pointed to his unfounded remarks about election fraud before a mob violently breached the halls of Congress.“Eastman knew, or should have known, that the factual premise for his proposals – that massive fraud was at play – was false, and that Trump had lost his bid for re-election,” according to the bar’s statement.Mr Eastman “ignored” the truth when he spoke at the rally, the statement added.Mr Eastman was behind a shocking memo that articulated a widely condemned strategy that would give Mr Pence a pathway to declare Mr Trump the winner of the 2020 election, pointing to a clause in the US Constitution that is now central to a massive US Supreme Court case.His extreme reading of the so-called “independent state legislature” theory has alarmed constitutional law experts and civil rights groups, as well as chief justices of Supreme Courts in all 50 states, while animating bogus right-wing efforts to overturn democratic election results.Mr Eastman is the second member of Mr Trump’s former legal team to face repercussions for their actions in the wake of the ex-president’s defeat in 2020.Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York, was suspended from practising law in New York and now faces disbarrment in Washington DC over the same allegations of knowingly spreading mistruths about the 2020 election.Both of the men are also thought to be in danger of facing criminal charges in Fulton County, Georgia, where investigators have been pursuing a grand jury investigation into the former president’s campaign and legal team for months over their efforts to pressure state lawmakers and other officials in Georgia to reverse Mr Trump’s defeat there
- [Former Trump Lawyer Faces Disbarment for False 2020 Election Claims - Newsweek](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/former-trump-lawyer-faces-disbarment-for-false-2020-election-claims-newsweek/) - John Eastman, an attorney and previous adviser for former President Donald Trump, is facing potential disbarment in the state of California for spreading false claims about the 2020 election.Eastman served as Trump's election lawyer during the days between the 2020 general election and the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and has faced federal scrutiny for his alleged role in the attack, including receiving a criminal referral after the House committee investigating January 6 finished its hearings last month.On Thursday, the State Bar of California's chief trial counsel, George Cardona, announced that Eastman is facing 11 charges that "arise from allegations" that the attorney assisted Trump "in executing a strategy, unsupported by facts or law, to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by obstructing the count of electoral votes of certain states."Specific charges that Eastman faces include accusations that he "made false and misleading statements regarding purported election fraud," specifically singling out statements he made while attending the rally in Washington, D.C., that led up to the Capitol riot, according to the announcement. John Eastman speaks outside the University of Colorado at Boulder on April 29, 2021. In inset, former President Donald Trump is pictured. Eastman is facing possible disbarment in California for his alleged role in helping Trump in an effort to overturn the 2020 election results. Andy Cross/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post/Getty; Brandon Bell/Getty Cardona's office had been investigating Eastman since September 2021 in order to determine if he violated California law and attorney ethics rules "following and in relation to the November 2020 presidential election," read a previous release.Eastman had first caught Trump's eye in 2020 after he appeared on Fox News and Newsmax arguing that several states' electors were not constitutionally valid because of their changes to the rules for mail-in ballots.The attorney would go on to represent Trump's White House in a failed legal challenge, filed with the state of Texas, that attempted to overturn the election results in such states.Thursday's announcement also noted the two-page memo that Eastman wrote for former Vice President Mike Pence, laying out a six-step plan for how Pence could overturn the 2020 election results while Congress serviced the votes on January 6. Eastman also "ignored" truths about the 2020 election during the Save America March that led to the Capitol riots, according to the most recent release, where he stated during the rally that "'dead people had voted' in the presidential election, that Dominion voting machines had fraudulently manipulated the election results, and that Vice President Pence did not deserve to be in office if he did not delay the counting of electoral votes.""There is nothing more sacrosanct to our American democracy than free and fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power," Cardona said in the announcement.The State Bar Court will oversee Eastman's disciplinary proceedings, and noted that Eastman is "presumed to be innocent" until the charges have been proven.Newsweek reached out to Eastman for comment.
- [California Seeks to Disbar Trump Lawyer John Eastman for Efforts To Overturn the 2020 Election](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/california-seeks-to-disbar-trump-lawyer-john-eastman-for-efforts-to-overturn-the-2020-election/) - The State Bar of California announced Thursday it is seeking to disbar former Donald Trump lawyer John Eastman for trying to overturn the 2020 election.Eastman is accused of engaging “in a course of conduct to plan, promote, and assist then-President Trump in executing a strategy, unsupported by facts or law, to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by obstructing the count of electoral votes of certain states,” the California bar said in a statement.The bar association filed 11 charges against Eastman for making false statements about the nonexistent election fraud, including at the January 6 rally in Washington, D.C. that turned into the insurrection at the Capitol.“The Office of Chief Trial Counsel (OCTC) intends to seek Eastman’s disbarment before the State Bar Court,” the bar said.Eastman helped lead Trump’s legal efforts to undermine the election results and prevent certification of the votes, including by appealing directly to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Eastman was court ordered in November to hand over certain emails to the House January 6 investigative committee, with the judge arguing the exchanges showed evidence of potential criminal activity.At first he resisted, but eventually he and his team complied—and, cartoonishly, included a live Dropbox link to emails from Trump’s legal team discussing how to overturn the election. Media outlets were able to access the emails and share them with the public.Eastman was also a major player in efforts to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence into refusing to certify the election results. In actuality, vice presidents hold a mainly ministerial role in the certification and have no power to overturn an election (nor should they).The Asian American community is reeling from two consecutive mass shootings in California that targeted mostly Asian spaces. The tragedy has been made all the more difficult by the revelation that both gunmen were older Asian men.Many on the right have been quick to seize on this detail, with Donald Trump Jr. accusing media outlets of failing to cover the massacres because they don’t “work for the narrative” of white supremacy. This isn’t true: the story was covered extensively by most major media outlets, but that didn’t stop people from amplifying the lie.There are real reasons to talk about race when looking at what happened in California. The two shootings have compounded the trauma of Asian American communities, who have already been suffering from a meteoric rise in anti-Asian rhetoric and crimes the last few years, fueled in large part by Trump Jr.’s father, former President Donald Trump, and his language about the Covid-19 pandemic. The gunmen’s race is an anomaly when looking at the history of mass shootings in America. But focusing on their race alone, without taking into account the larger context of gun violence in the country, does us a massive disservice.“Multiple factors can be true, and one does not negate the other,” said Cynthia Choi, the co-executive director of Chinese Affirmative Action and the co-founder of the coalition Stop AAPI Hate. But “in America, race always does matter,” she told The New Republic. “We have had to deal with multiple forms of hate and violence, and that includes coming from outside the community, within the community, amongst our other community members.”Huu Can Tran, 72, is suspected of looking for his ex-wife when he killed 11 people and injured nine others in Monterey Park. Chunli Zhao, 66, is believed to have been targeting his workplace when he killed seven people and wounded another in Half Moon Bay. We may never know their true motives, but the suspected ones are completely typical for mass shooters in the U.S.Tran and Zhao also are not the only senior Asians to commit mass shootings: in May 2022, 68-year-old David Chou entered a church in Laguna Woods, California, that was hosting a congregation from the Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church and opened fire, killing one person and wounding five others.These three shooters indicate a chilling trend of increased radicalization among older Asian Americans.The Monterey Park shooter was 72-year-old Huu Can Tran.The Laguna Woods shooter was 68-year-old David Chou.The Half Moon Bay shooter was 67-year-old Zhao Chunli.Something is radicalizing our elders and leading them to procure guns to enact deadly violence.— Raymond Chang (@tweetraychang) January 24, 2023 Sylvia Chan-Malik, a professor of American Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University, said Asian elders increasingly get their news from videos—either found online or shared through chat platforms such as WeChat—instead of Asian-language newspapers.“They’re kind of engaging the same media landscape” as the rest of us, which is increasingly digital, she explained to TNR. “Except because of the limited range of media they can consume because of language barriers, YouTube and these content creators become the primary source of a lot of their media consumption.”Algorithms feed viewers suggestions, which include videos rife with mis- and disinformation tailored specifically for immigrant communities. “And all of a sudden, it’s not really news, it’s ideology,” Chan-Malik said, noting she’s “found that this is true across all sorts of communities of color.”She also pointed out that Asian immigrants come from a wide variety of backgrounds, but they are all being convinced there is truth in extremist views.But Tran, Zhao, and Chou’s jump from ideology to action is unusual—and uniquely American. The Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community has one of the lowest rates of gun violence in the U.S., and almost 60 percent of those gun-related deaths are suicides. This tracks with gun-related deaths in Asian countries, which have low rates of mass shootings.A major difference is how easy it is to acquire a firearm in the U.S., as well as the spread of ideology around guns.“What we’ve seen in the last couple of years is people mainstreaming the idea that guns keep us safe. It’s not true,” said Josh Horwitz, the co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.Gun regulations vary by locale nationwide, making it easy for someone to slip through one state’s tight restrictions and purchase a firearm elsewhere, as was the case in Monterey Park. What’s more, after a mass shooting, gun sales actually increase as people fear for their own safety and believe owning a gun will protect them.Mass shootings are most often the result of “pure, individual grievances,” Horwitz explained to TNR. Some, such as the shootings in Buffalo or El Paso, are fueled by clear-cut white supremacist ideology. But there’s a litany of other reasons, from perceived injustice to relationship problems and domestic violence. Authorities in Half Moon Bay say Zhao seemed to be targeting specific individuals.According to Horwitz, there’s been a “concerted effort” to push the idea that individual force has a place in decision-making, particularly for political decisions.“We often see very individualized grievances now getting into the idea that guns can solve” those grievances, he said. “There’s too many people who buy into the ideology that guns will keep us safe and save lives. And then in moments when they’re not doing well, they have lots of guns in their hands.”There have long been calls to tighten gun regulations in the United States. The vast majority of Americans, about 71 percent, support doing so, according to a poll conducted in August by the University of Chicago and the Associated Press. But efforts have repeatedly been blocked by Republican lawmakers.Unfortunately, race plays a role here, too: opposition to gun control has historically been rooted in racism. In their 2015 paper “Racial Resentment and Whites’ Gun Policy Preferences in Contemporary America,” University of Illinois Chicago political science professors Alexandra Filindra and Noah Kaplan argue that “racial prejudice colors all aspects of the debate regarding gun policy.”Not all current gun control opponents necessarily are prejudiced, but racial prejudice helped give rise to the anti-gun regulation stance.Post-World War II, gun ownership began being cast as a “right,” according to Filindra and Kaplan. The NRA actually supported gun control until 1977, when the group underwent a leadership change and began actively lobbying for increased gun ownership among Americans.“We strongly suspect that such a change in gun policy attitudes among whites was possible because guns have been a marker of white privilege throughout American history,” Filindra and Kaplan wrote. For much of its history, the Second Amendment did not even apply to non-white people.None of this, however, can fully explain what drove the gunmen. Instead, at the core of everything is a community that is grieving and struggling to process what happened. After almost three years of fear, this Lunar New Year—one of the most important holidays across the Asian diaspora—was supposed to be an especially fresh start.Celebrations were planned after being canceled during the first years of the pandemic, and California recently declared Lunar New Year a state holiday.“Our community is reeling,” Choi said. After the past three years, “we don’t feel safe going anywhere.”The start of the new year festivities “was just such a joyful moment,” she said. “And that feels like that was taken from us once again.We are looking down the barrel of a worldwide mass plant and animal extinction. And yet, the U.S. government continues to let fossil fuel interests treat our planet, and us, like garbage. A new report says the Environmental Protection Agency is failing to enforce the Clean Water Act, allowing U.S. refineries to pour half a billion gallons of wastewater every day into waterways. According to the Environmental Integrity Project report, this resulted in upwards of 1.6 billion pounds of chemical waste poisoning American waterways in 2021.These chemicals are incredibly harmful to wildlife—to their reproductive systems, food and oxygen sources, and even biology. In just one example, more than 80 percent of a Bay area minnow were found to have spinal deformities due to selenium pollution, a chemical that has been dumped to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds in American waterways.About 68 percent of the refineries examined in the report dumped into waterways designated as impaired. As in, these waters were already so polluted that they were not permitted to be used for fishing or swimming, or were not healthy for aquatic life.The refineries are also notable sources of so-called “forever chemicals,” or PFAS, that have been linked to things like cancer, endocrine disruption, and fetal development complications. Refineries that have been specifically sampled for PFAS show alarming results: in 2020, a Colorado facility had a concentration of a PFAS variety at 14,000 times higher than the EPA’s limit for drinking water.The Clean Water Act directs the EPA to limit discharge of harmful refinery pollutants, and to tighten those limits at least once every five years if possible. Instead, the report says, those standards have not been revised since 1985. Many chemicals are left unregulated, and many potential new innovations to enforce possible regulations are left untouched. And the EPA is remarkably failing to act in accordance with whatever authority it has now.Records showed that nearly 83 percent of examined refineries exceeded permitted limits on water pollutants at least once between 2019 to 2021; this was a total of 904 violations involving excess dumping of cyanide, ammonia nitrogen, sulfide, oil and grease, and more. Only about 15 violators were penalized. One culprit, the Phillips 66 Sweeny Refinery near Houston, Texas, exceeded its permitted pollution limits 44 times (42 of which involved cyanide) from 2019 to 2021. The facility was penalized just $30,000.“I have personally witnessed the dumping of untreated plant water into the southeast Texas watershed, which unfortunately drains into the Gulf of Mexico. The very waters upon which we depend for jobs, food and recreation become more polluted every passing day,” said John Beard, founder and executive director of the Port Arthur Community Action Network. “If water truly is life, what will become of us when there’s no more clean, living water?”The Florida High School Athletics Association is standing by its decision to require student athletes to give their schools detailed information about their periods, an unprecedented policy that is raising major concerns about privacy.The FHSAA announced in October that it was changing its annual physical form for student athletes to a digital version instead of paper. The form includes optional but detailed questions about students’ menstruation cycles, including when they got their first period, when they had their most recent one, and how many weeks pass between periods. Previously, only one page of the paper form—on which a pediatrician would sign off on a student being allowed to play—would be submitted to a school. But the entire digital form will now be submitted. Despite widespread public outcry, an FHSAA panel not only decided Tuesday night to stand by that change but also recommended the menstrual history questions be made mandatory.Other states and athletic programs require physicals - including details about menstruation - from students. But they allow all that private info to stay with the kids' doctors. Florida doesn't, they want it turned in directly to school administrators https://t.co/m7oqnKGlt1— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) January 26, 2023 The recommendation now goes before the FHSAA board of directors, which will meet in late February to make the final decision.While students’ medical history is necessary for doctors, it is entirely unclear why a school needs all of that information—or what it would plan to do with it.“I don’t see why (school districts) need that access to that type of information,” said Dr. Michael Haller, a pediatric endocrinologist in Gainesville with two teenage children.“It sure as hell will give me pause to fill it out with my kid,” he told The Palm Beach Post when the decision was first made in the fall.Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, people have been hypervigilant about third parties tracking menstrual data. Period tracker apps and the platform that hosts Florida’s new digital athletics form are not owned by medical institutions and therefore are not subject to health privacy laws. If subpoenaed for someone’s data, particularly in a state where abortion has been made illegal, companies would be required to hand it over.Florida has made it clear it is cracking down on the rights of women, girls, and gender minorities. The state has banned abortion after 15 weeks, forbidden transgender girls from playing on girls’ sports teams, and barred state residents from using Medicaid to pay for gender-affirming treatments.Many parents and doctors are worried that schools will use the menstrual data to monitor students for late or missed periods, a possible sign of pregnancy, or to out transgender students by watching for girls who don’t get periods or boys who do.School administrators say the information will stay private, but there’s no guarantee it will. It’s a terrifying glimpse of our dystopian post-Roe world.Television programming company DirecTV has dropped Newsmax, a far-right network, from its channel listing because of a fee dispute.DirecTV said in a statement that they “made it clear to Newsmax that we wanted to continue to offer the network,” but that “Newsmax’s demands for rate increases would have led to significantly higher costs” the company would then feel compelled to pass on to their customers. The company went even further, plugging the outlets people could still pursue (even for free) if they still wanted to get their Newsmax fix.In other words, the company’s decision does not seem, at least publicly, motivated by some ideological stand against misinformation or extremism. While DirecTV did drop conspiratorial network One America News last year because of its propagation of misinformation, the dropping of Newsmax appears to be just business.Nevertheless, Republicans, both elected officials and media personalities, are doing everything they can to stir up outrage and conspiracy to make it seem like Newsmax was exercising more than just ostensible financial diligence. Already, Representatives Michael Waltz and Jeff Van Drew and Senator Rick Scott have called for hearings into the company. Newly elected Monica De La Cruz has spent some of her inaugural time on the House floor to complain about the situation, calling it “another victory in the woke left’s efforts to cancel conservatives and limit free speech.”De La Cruz’s concerns for free speech came the same week fellow Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis rejected an African American history class and public school teachers are removing books from their classrooms to comply with a Desantis-backed law that threatens felony prosecution.All the while, the U.S. hurdles toward a debt crisis that could upend the global economy.People can’t afford to go to the hospital, can’t go out in public without fearing being shot to death, and struggle to find an affordable place to live. Meanwhile, Republicans are using their precious time (that we pay them for!) to make people mad about something that never happened. Just another day in America.Donald Trump will be reinstated on Facebook and Instagram in the coming weeks, after a two-year suspension, parent company Meta announced Wednesday.The former president was banned from the social media platforms following the January 6 insurrection, over accusations that his posts helped foment the violence in Washington, D.C., that day.“The public should be able to hear what politicians are saying so they can make informed choices,” Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg said in a statement explaining the decision to allow Trump back online.“We’ve put new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses.”One of those guardrails is Facebook’s independent Oversight Board, a panel of 20 people that helps with content moderation. The board upheld Trump’s initial suspension from Facebook but switched it from indefinite to two years long.In theory, Trump will be held to the same standards as every other Facebook user when it comes to what he shares on the platform: Content is removed if it causes public harm. But if a Trump post qualifies as “newsworthy”—meaning Meta deems it provides more to public interest than causes harm—it could be left up.Trump’s reinstatement means that he will be able to resume using Facebook to fundraise for his 2024 presidential campaign.Meta’s decision to let Trump back on comes a few months after Elon Musk let the former leader back on Twitter. Prior to his suspension on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, Trump had gotten in trouble multiple times for sharing misinformation.Trump has yet to post on Twitter since being allowed back on and has stuck to his Truth Social platform instead. But he is reportedly planning a grand reentry to his once favorite social network.Trump has 34 million followers on Facebook and 23 million followers on Instagram, and he has previously spent millions on Facebook ads. Many experts worry that his being allowed back on social media will increase the spread of misinformation, particularly as the United States gears up for the 2024 election cycle.One day after Twitter brought back Nazi, white nationalist, and Taliban fan Nick Fuentes to its platform, the company was compelled to ban him; Fuentes spent his inaugural evening back on Twitter proclaiming his “love” for Hitler, talking about the Unabomber’s “salient point,” and tweeting antisemitic conspiracies about Jews secretly controlling Western governments.“Stop the Steal” organizer and Fuentes ally Ali Alexander, implicated in numerous investigations for his role in seeking to overturn the 2020 election results, was also suspended Wednesday.While Fuentes and Alexander are gone, however, plenty of other inflammatory and dangerous accounts remain on Twitter. Neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer founder Andrew Anglin, who was reinstated in December, is still happily active, posting homophobic and antisemitic tweets in routine, and A/B testing whether his “anti-woman stuff” plays well with the Twitter algorithm. He expressed disappointment after Fuentes was suspended once again, tweeting, “Oh come on.”Programmer Travis Brown, who tracks Twitter suspensions, noted that several other accounts were reinstated Tuesday. Nick Fuentes has been getting the headlines, but Musk brought back a whole batch of hate / disinformation accounts yesterday: Patrick Howley, Pepe Escobar, Santino Rice, Clif High, Scott Ritter (again), Sam Hyde, etc. https://t.co/ur5ni1ppyi— Travis Brown (@travisbrown) January 25, 2023 These accounts, and others like them, come with records that at best are troublesome or in violation of content policies and, at worst, echo the same kind of rhetoric that Anglin and Fuentes espouse. Patrick Howley, for example, has complained about too many Black people at the Country Music Awards and written that “Zionist and Chinese institutions are genociding white people.”The haphazard reinstatements—and subsequent bans, as if Twitter couldn’t have anticipated Fuentes behaving exactly as he does on every other platform he still is on—offers little faith in Twitter’s content and safety policies.It’s been nearly two months since Musk tried welcoming Kanye West, or Ye, back to Twitter; Musk had to resuspend West fairly quickly after the disgraced artist appeared alongside Fuentes on Alex Jones’s show to peddle Nazi propaganda, Holocaust denialism, and support for Hitler. This is not Twitter’s—or its new leadership’s—first rodeo. And still, the company is tinkering with reinstating as many inflammatory accounts as possible and actually having a good deal of them stay while suspensions like Fuentes’s and West’s soak up most of the attention.All this comes while “journalists” like Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss continue their tired charade of receiving Musk’s own files and wrapping them up as investigations into Twitter’s policy practices under the evergreen “Twitter files” project. The project has had much of its source material come from the now CEO, who has had more than his fair share of mismanagement. On Tuesday, The Intercept revealed how Musk’s Twitter, in coordination with the Indian government, is censoring a documentary critical of right-wing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.Musk’s Twitter is indeed a win for free speech and transparency; Twitter is standing for free and maximized dissemination of vile hate, and transparently displaying how it’s doing so.House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has unilaterally moved to remove Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee.McCarthy made his decision to reject the pair’s reappointments to the committee on Tuesday night, citing supposed “misuse of this panel during the 116th and 117th Congress.”At a conference the same evening, McCarthy expounded after a reporter asked how he can support placing serial liar George Santos on committees while blocking Democrats from serving on particular ones. The House speaker spoke forcefully as he recycled old talking points.McCarthy cited a briefing he received on Swalwell’s alleged connections to a Chinese spy, arguing that this disqualified Swalwell from serving on the Intelligence Committee. Axios reported on what actually happened: A suspected Chinese operative developed ties with politicians in the Bay Area, interacting with Ro Khanna, Tulsi Gabbard, Swalwell, and others. But Swalwell has not been found to have actually done anything wrong; once the FBI alerted Swalwell about its concern for the operative, he immediately cut ties with her.As for Schiff, McCarthy seems to be targeting him for allegedly lying about whether he knew the whistleblower who prompted the impeachment inquiry into whether former President Trump pressured Ukrainian President Zelenskiy to investigate Joe Biden in exchange for military aid. There’s no hard proof of Schiff lying about this, and McCarthy and Republicans just as well have aimed to invalidate the impeachment inquiry overall.McCarthy had said that he will respect the will of the voters to defend his refusal to block Santos from committees, or even push for his removal; he has used the same logic in saying he will still allow Schiff and Swalwell on other committees. A good-faith interpretation would show McCarthy is at least principled in his committee delegation. But his rationale for blocking Schiff and Swalwell from committees seems less about actual security concerns and more about teeing off on Democrats who heavily invested in impeaching Trump.In the last Congress, Democrats removed Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar from committees after they incited violence against other members of Congress.Meanwhile, McCarthy has been pushing the House to vote to block Representative Ilhan Omar from serving on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where she has served for the past four years. A Somali American Muslim woman and vocal critic of human rights abuses by governments—including ones the United States has allied itself with—Omar is an easy target for a Republican Party undergirded by both racism and undying allegiance to America, no matter the abuses it is guilty of or contributes to. Schiff, Swalwell, and Omar released a joint statement calling out McCarthy’s actions as being part of a “corrupt bargain in his desperate, and nearly failed attempt to win the Speakership, a bargain that required political vengeance against the three of us.”The United States will send Abrams tanks to Ukraine, President Joe Biden announced Wednesday, reversing course on a major step in aiding Kyiv retake territory from Russia.Washington will send 31 tanks to Ukraine, Biden said during a press conference.Early reports on Tuesday evening of the U.S. agreeing to send Abrams tanks likely helped convince Germany to provide Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. The German government confirmed Wednesday that it would send 14 Leopard tanks to Kyiv. Berlin had been holding out on sending battle tanks until Washington agreed to do the same, as Russia has repeatedly warned that providing tanks to Ukraine would be seen as a major provocation.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hailed Germany’s decision, saying it would provide a “green light for partners to supply similar weapons.” Other Western nations such as Poland have been waiting for Germany’s go-ahead before providing Leopards to Ukraine.The U.S. had previously resisted sending Abrams tanks to Ukraine, citing difficulties with maintenance and training. Just last week, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl told journalists that Pentagon officials were worried about giving Kyiv a piece of equipment that its soldiers “can’t repair, they can’t sustain, and that they over the long term can’t afford.”Ukraine has repeatedly asked for battle tanks, which both its leaders and international defense analysts believe could help turn the tide of the now nearly yearlong war.Al Jazeera defense analyst Alex Gatopoulos noted that modern Western tanks have been designed with the specific goal of defeating Russian-made ones. He also pointed out that southern Ukraine is flat, making the terrain ideal for using tanks as “armoured fists that can punch through defensive lines.”The decision to send Abrams tanks also comes as opinions in Washington begin to split over Ukraine. Republicans, particularly in the House of Representatives, are losing their taste for providing so much aid to Kyiv. Meanwhile, Democrats have been pushing Biden to officially designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism, something he has been adamant he will not do.This post has been updated.Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is under fire for his comments about Jamal Khashoggi, the The Washington Post journalist who was brutally murdered by agents of the Saudi Arabian regime in 2018.Khashoggi was a columnist at the Post and a prominent critic of the Saudi kingdom. He was last seen alive in October 2018 entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to collect paperwork. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is accused of ordering a team of Saudi agents to capture and dismember Khashoggi.In his new book, Pompeo magnanimously acknowledges that Khashoggi’s killing was “outrageous, unacceptable, horrific,” but he spends several pages decrying what he considers the “disproportionate global uproar” and “faux outrage” over the journalist’s death.Pompeo argues that Khashoggi was an activist, not a journalist, and his death was blown out of proportion by a media that was trying to fracture U.S.-Saudi ties. Post publisher and CEO Fred Ryan released a statement Tuesday slamming Pompeo’s comments as “shameful” and “vile falsehoods,” noting that the CIA—which Pompeo led from 2017 to 2018—had concluded that Khashoggi was murdered on the orders of MBS, as the Saudi prince is known.Statement from Post Publisher and CEO Fred Ryan pic.twitter.com/bgM8zTkcEZ— Washington Post PR (@WashPostPR) January 24, 2023 Pompeo proceeded to dig his heels in, insisting the U.S. was better off not trying to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah state”—which President Joe Biden seems to have failed to do anyway—and falsely labeling Khashoggi a “part-time stringer,” as if his employment status makes his fate more or less worthy of outrage.Americans are safer because we didn’t label Saudi Arabia a pariah state. I never let the media bully me. Just b/c someone is a part-time stringer for WaPo doesn’t make their life more important than our military serving in dangerous places protecting us all. I never forgot that. https://t.co/jidmb6R6oU— Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) January 24, 2023 “Whatever [Pompeo] mentions about my husband, he doesn’t know my husband. He should be silent and shut up the lies about my husband,” Hanan Elatr Khashoggi, the journalist’s widow, told NBC News. “It is such bad information and the wrong information.… This is not acceptable.”Pompeo is rumored to be considering a 2024 presidential run and is clearly trying to curry favor among the main base of his former boss Donald Trump. Pompeo is embracing similar themes of friendliness toward Saudi Arabia and strongmen, as well as hostility toward journalists and peddling falsehoods.
- [Trump Lawyer John Eastman Faces Bar Discipline Over 2020 Election - Business Insider](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/trump-lawyer-john-eastman-faces-bar-discipline-over-2020-election-business-insider/) - John Eastman appeared alongside Rudy Giuliani at a pro-Trump rally on January 6. Jim Bourg California legal authorities want to disbar John Eastman for trying to keep Donald Trump in power. Eastman tried to convince former VP Mike Pence to block the vote certification on January 6, 2021. State bar charges say he corrupted the practice of law with "dishonesty and corruption." Top editors give you the stories you want — delivered right to your inbox each weekday. Loading Something is loading. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. download the app Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. .inline-newsletter-signup.loading { width: 100%; max-width: 640px; margin: 0 auto; visibility: hidden; } California legal authorities have filed disciplinary charges against John Eastman, a law professor who advised former President Donald Trump on how to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.George Cardona, the top trial lawyer for the California state bar, brought 11 charges that allege Eastman made false and misleading statements that amount to acts of "moral turpitude, dishonesty, and corruption," the disciplinary charges say. The case will go to the State Bar Court of California, where Eastman has an opportunity to defend himself.Following Trump's loss in the 2020 election, Eastman, a former professor at the Chapman University School of Law, drafted legal memos that purported to offer avenues to keep him in office. He backed the dubious legal theory that then-Vice President Mike Pence would have the power to override the will of voters and block certification of electoral college votes for now-President Joe Biden, as outlined in a memo he previously shared with Insider (and which one constitutional law expert described as a "proposed coup cloaked in legal language").Eastman pushed this bunk theory even after courts around the country tossed dozens of challenges to 2020 election results, and then-Attorney General Bill Barr said he saw no evidence of widespread fraud that would change Biden's victory, according to the charges. That prompted critics, including the bipartisan States United Democracy Center, to demand he be investigated for possible ethics violations — a demand the bar has now heeded. "By proposing to Pence that he had the legal authority to and should act unilaterally to resolve purported disputes regarding electoral votes on January 6, 2021, or that he had the legal authority unilaterally to delay certification of the votes, respondent advanced a radical and incorrect theory of constitutional law and election law," the bar charges state. Former Trump legal adviser John Eastman AP Photo/Susan Walsh Undeterred, Eastman spoke at the pro-Trump rally at the Ellipse of the National Mall in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021, and pushed false conspiracy theories about election fraud. At his speech, he demanded that Pence ask legislatures to examine those debunked theories."During his speech, respondent stated to the crowd that fraud had occurred in the November 3, 2020, presidential election, including a claim that 'dead people had voted' and that Dominion electronic voting machines had fraudulently manipulated the election results," the charges say. "Respondent made these statements with the intent to convince the listener that the outcome of the presidential election had been affected by fraud."Eastman's speech contributed to the violent attack on the Capitol by pro-Trump supporters, according to the charges. During the riot, Eastman emailed Pence's White House Counsel Greg Jacobs blaming him and Pence for the insurrection. "The 'siege' is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so that American people can see for themselves what happened," Eastman wrote at the time.The California Bar court ultimately has the ability to strip Eastman of the ability to practice law in the state. It may impose fines or issue other sanctions, such as censure.Randall A. Miller, an attorney for Eastman, said in a statement that his client — a senior fellow at the conservative Claremont Institute — was merely providing "his evaluation of alternatives available to [former] President Trump in the fluid and fast-moving aftermath of the 2020 election." Eastman, posting on Substack, said he plans to "respond to each charge in due course." For now, he is soliciting money for his legal defense, having already raised more than $250,000.The former law professor is one of many lawyers allied with Trump who has faced professional consequences for pursuing false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. The Washington, DC bar is currently evaluating potential sanctions against Rudy Giuliani, who pushed false claims while attempting to overturn Trump's loss in Pennsylvania. Giuliani has also been sued by election technology companies he implicated in false conspiracy theories about the election results, and has lost his ability to practice law in New York. Jeffrey Clark, a former Trump Administration Justice Department official who tried to overturn the election results, is also facing charges from the DC bar.Trump's attorneys have been sanctioned for other reasons, too. Earlier this month, a federal judge in Florida fined him and his attorney Alina Habba nearly $1 million for filing a "frivolous" lawsuit that alleged Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey colluded to make him lose the 2016 election, which he actually won. .content-lock-lock .hidden { display: none; } Sign up for notifications from Insider! Stay up to date with what you want to know. Subscribe to push notifications Close icon Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.
- [Eastman faces disbarment push in California - POLITICO](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/eastman-faces-disbarment-push-in-california-politico/) - John Eastman has maintained an active role in urging state legislatures to decertify the results of the 2020 election and recently signed a document urging House conservatives to deny Kevin McCarthy the speaker’s gavel. | Susan Walsh/AP Photo The California bar’s top disciplinary official is seeking the disbarment of John Eastman, an architect of Donald Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election, for what he describes as a “strategy, unsupported by facts or law, to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election.” George Cardona, the chief trial counsel for the State Bar of California, contended that Eastman violated rules of professional conduct at least 11 times as he pushed fringe legal theories aimed at keeping Trump in power despite his loss in the election. Cardona’s 35-page filing with the State Bar Court contends that Eastman pushed claims of election fraud or misconduct even though “there was no evidence upon which a reasonable attorney would rely” to support those contentions. “Nevertheless, from on or about December 9, 2020, and continuing to at least on or about January 6, 2021, respondent continued to work with Trump and others to promote the idea that the outcome of the election was in question and had been stolen from Trump,” the attorney wrote. In a statement, Eastman attorney Randall Miller said Eastman disputed “every aspect” of the bar charges against him. “Any lawyer engaged to provide his or her legal assessment in a dynamic, consequential, and often emotional arena should be deeply troubled by the notion that a licensing authority (bar) can take their license if they do not like the lawyer’s advice, or find the advocacy distasteful,” Miller said in the statement, describing Eastman’s 2020 work as the “evaluation of alternatives available to President Trump.” Eastman has maintained an active role in urging state legislatures to decertify the results of the 2020 election and recently signed a document urging House conservatives to deny Rep. Kevin McCarthy the speaker’s gavel. Eastman has been the subject of numerous investigations since Trump’s failed effort to overturn the 2020 election results. The Jan. 6 select committee recommended that he face criminal charges for his conduct, and a federal judge agreed that he “likely” entered into a criminal conspiracy with Trump to obstruct Congress’ effort to count electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021. Federal prosecutors seized Eastman’s phone in June and have obtained access to his emails as they pursue a grand jury investigation related to Trump’s effort to overturn the election. A special grand jury in Fulton County, Ga., has also eyed Eastman’s involvement as it pursued a district attorney’s probe of Trump’s effort to subvert the results. Eastman invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when appearing before the Fulton County grand jury, and he did the same before the Jan. 6 select committee. Eastman initially pressed state legislatures to adopt alternate slates of electors that could be sued to force a controversy on Jan. 6, 2021, when then-Vice President Mike Pence was presiding over a joint session of Congress to count electoral votes that determine the presidency. But after no state legislatures took up his call, Eastman pushed a more extreme theory, joining Trump to pressure Pence to overturn the results of the election unilaterally — or to at least call an unauthorized recess of the joint session in order to let states have more time to weigh in. Pence refused to go along, and Eastman continued his pressure campaign even as violent rioters — inflamed by Pence’s decision not to abide by Trump’s calls — stormed the Capitol and delayed certification of the election for hours.
- [Trump adviser Eastman faces California disciplinary charges - Manistee News Advocate](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/trump-adviser-eastman-faces-california-disciplinary-charges-manistee-news-advocate/) - LOS ANGELES (AP) — Conservative attorney John Eastman, a lead architect of some of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election, was slapped Thursday with a series of disciplinary charges in California that could lead to his disbarment.The State Bar of California’s chief trial counsel, George Cardona, said in a statement that the 11 charges stem from allegations that Eastman assisted Trump with a strategy — not supported by facts — to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 election by obstructing the count of electoral votes of certain states. The office intends to seek Eastman’s disbarment.
- [California Bar Calls for Trump Attorney John Eastman to Be Disbarred Over 2020 Election Denial](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/california-bar-calls-for-trump-attorney-john-eastman-to-be-disbarred-over-2020-election-denial/) - California attorney regulators said on Thursday they will seek to disbar attorney John Eastman over his involvement in former U.S. President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The State Bar of California charged Eastman, a former personal lawyer to Trump, with 11 counts of ethics violations, including misleading courts and making false public
- [California moves to disbar Trump's lawyer John Eastman over 2020 election - The Guardian](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/california-moves-to-disbar-trumps-lawyer-john-eastman-over-2020-election-the-guardian/) - California moves to disbar Trump’s lawyer John Eastman over 2020 electionFormer president’s attorney charged with misleading courts and making false statements about voter fraud in election California attorney regulators said on Thursday they will seek to disbar attorney John Eastman over his involvement in former US president Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.The state bar of California charged Eastman, a former personal lawyer to Trump, with 11 counts of ethics violations, including misleading courts and making false public statements about voter fraud in the 2020 election.Eastman participated in a strategy “unsupported by facts or law” to obstruct the count of presidential electors in Congress following Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory, the bar’s complaint said.George Cardona, the bar’s chief trial counsel, said his office will ask a court to revoke Eastman’s law license.An attorney for Eastman, Randall Miller, disputed the allegations on Thursday, saying it was Eastman’s responsibility as a lawyer to provide Trump with a range of legal options to contest the election results.Eastman, a former law professor at Chapman University in California, drafted legal memos suggesting then vice-president Mike Pence could refuse to accept electoral votes from several swing states when Congress convened to certify the 2020 vote count. Pence rebuffed his arguments, saying he did not have legal authority.Eastman also represented Trump in a long-shot lawsuit at the US supreme court seeking to invalidate votes in four states where Trump had falsely claimed evidence of widespread voter fraud.Eastman repeated many of those claims at a rally outside the White House on 6 January 2021, after which a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol and delayed the congressional certification of the election.A state bar court will weigh the charges against Eastman and recommend any discipline. The California supreme court would need to approve disbarring or suspending Eastman.TopicsDonald TrumpLaw (US)CaliforniaUS politicsnewsReuse this content
- [U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear 2020 election case filed by Delaware County residents](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/u-s-supreme-court-declines-to-hear-2020-election-case-filed-by-delaware-county-residents/) - Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case against the Delaware County Board of Elections that originated with the 2020 election.The court announced it would not hear the case of Gregory Stenstrom and Leah Hoopes v. the Delaware County Board of Elections. The case was among dozens of others that were also denied. “The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to not hear the case was entirely expected,” Delaware County Solicitor William F. Martin said. “Every month, hundreds of parties file motions seeking their cases to be heard by the Supreme Court. Only a few, raising significant legal and public policy issues, are selected. There was no possibility this case was going to be heard. The county had been so confident that we formally advised the court that we would not be filing a legal response to the request.” Delaware County Solicitor William F. Martin says the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the case against the Delaware County Board of Elections was totally expected. (COURTESY OF DELAWARE COUNTY) Attempts to reach Stenstrom were unsuccessful. The years-long case began when the Delaware County Republican Executive Committee filed an emergency petition Nov. 4, 2020, seeking increased access to ballot counting operations at a Chester facility where the votes for the 2020 presidential election were being tabulated. Delaware County Court Judge John Capuzzi issued an order that same day allowing representatives from the Republican and the Democratic parties to observe the ballot counting. Two observers — one from each party — were also allowed to enter the ballot room in five-minute intervals every two hours under the order. From that time, the Delaware County Republican Executive Committee has not raised any issue with how the Board of Elections handled that order. On Dec. 22, 2020, Dasha Pruett, who had been a Republican candidate in the U.S. House 5th District race, and observers Gregory Stenstrom of Glen Mills and Leah Hoopes of Bethel Township filed an emergency petition in Delaware County Court. Among their claims was that they were given limited access to the observing and they also sought sanctions of $1,000 against election board members with one year in prison. On Jan. 13, 2021, Capuzzi issued an opinion denying with prejudice the request for sanctions. Stenstrom and Hoopes then took the matter before Commonwealth Court, where Judges Michael H. Wojcik, Ellen Ceisler and Bonnie Brigance Leadbetter affirmed Capuzzi’s opinion 11 months later. Stenstrom and Hoopes then petitioned the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to hear the case. That was denied June 22, 2022. They then filed a petition for a Writ of Certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court, which is basically a request for the Supreme Court to have the case brought before it from the lower courts for review. The court itself said it has no obligation to hear these cases and will only do so if the case could have national significance, might harmonize conflicting decisions in the federal circuit courts, or could have precedential value. Of the more than 7,000 cases it is asked to hear each year, the U.S. Supreme Court accepts 100 to 150 cases to be heard. According to Martin, the petitioners have 25 days to petition for a rehearing. “Given their penchant to use litigation as political theater and a tool for fundraising, I assume they may do so,” the county solicitor said. There are some matters outstanding. There is a case pending before the Commonwealth Court, stemming from a petition filed by Stenstrom and Hoopes in February 2022 regarding the 2020 election. Another case involves the 2022 general election in which Stenstrom, Hoopes and Nichole Missino, the Republican candidate for state representative in the 165th Legislative District, filed a petition in Delaware County Court to halt that election’s certification. The day after the nine-hour Nov. 21, 2022, hearing, Common Pleas Judge Barry Dozor denied the petition and the election was certified. Preliminary objections and a petition to have the case thrown out of court are pending at the county level. Martin, who has challenged the petitioners to sue him personally, warned that the county may seek damages following the amount of litigation involved in these cases. “As each case reaches its final disposition, the county will consider what next steps are appropriate,” the county solicitor said. “Litigants and their counsel are cautioned that continuing to bring baseless law suits against Delaware County will not be without financial risk.”
- [An R.N.C. Remade by Trump Backs Away From His 2024 Campaign - The New York Times](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/an-r-n-c-remade-by-trump-backs-away-from-his-2024-campaign-the-new-york-times/) - Interviews with more than a third of the Republican National Committee’s members point to a desire for an alternative presidential nominee to emerge from a competitive primary.As Donald J. Trump prepares for his first public events since announcing his presidential campaign, dozens of members of the Republican Party’s governing body are expressing doubts about his ability to win back the White House and are calling for a competitive primary to produce a stronger nominee in 2024.The 168 members of the Republican National Committee are gathering in Southern California to select their own leader on Friday, and interviews this week with 59 of them — more than one-third of the committee’s membership — found few eager to crown Mr. Trump their nominee for a third time. While they praised his policies and accomplishments as president, many expressed deep concerns about his age (he’s 76), temperament and ability to win a general election, often in unusually blunt terms.“This isn’t 2016,” said Mac Brown, the chairman of the Republican Party of Kentucky. “People have moved on.”Jonathan Barnett, an R.N.C. member from Arkansas who claims to have been the first member of the committee to endorse Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, said the party would benefit from its nominee being forced to navigate a crowded primary field.“I’ve been a supporter of Donald Trump in the past,” Mr. Barnett said. “I just think that we need choices this time. We’ve got to look at all of our options.”The motivation to leave Mr. Trump behind is not ideological but political, the party leaders said: They worry he can’t win.“Everybody is very appreciative of Trump, and he did a lot of great things,” said Art Wittich, an R.N.C. member from Montana who said Mr. Trump was not best positioned to win the general election. “There’s this burning desire to win in 2024, and that’s what’s going to drive a lot of the action.”One year before the first presidential nominating contests are set to begin, Republicans eager for Trump alternatives are seeking candidates who could capture the populism animating his base without replicating the chaos that characterized his administration. First mentioned is almost always Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, though members cited other would-be rivals, including Nikki Haley and Mike Pence, both alumni of the Trump administration.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is viewed as Mr. Trump’s chief rival for the Republican nomination, a year before any voting will be held.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesOn Thursday, Mr. DeSantis waded into the contentious race to lead the committee, praising Harmeet Dhillon, who is challenging the current chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel. The comments could be viewed as an implicit critique of Mr. Trump, who handpicked Ms. McDaniel after his 2016 election.“We need to get some new blood in the R.N.C.,” Mr. DeSantis said in an interview with the news outlet Florida’s Voice. “I like what Harmeet has said.”Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.2023’s Most Unusual Race: The election for a swing seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court carries bigger policy stakes than any other contest in America this year.Anti-Transgender Push: Republican state lawmakers are pushing more sweeping anti-transgender bills than ever before, including bans on transition care for young adults up to 26.G.O.P. Power Struggle: In rural Pennsylvania, a fight between three warring factions is a microcosm of the national struggle for control over the Republican Party.A Key Senate Contest: Representative Ruben Gallego, a progressive Democrat, said that he would run for the Senate in 2024 in a potential face-off with Senator Kyrsten Sinema.The departure of many R.N.C. members from the former president, after moving in lock step with him for more than six years, is even more extraordinary given how many of them owe their own positions to him and his supporters.The R.N.C. has been transformed during the Trump era: Of the 168 members, 99 joined the committee since Mr. Trump seized the party’s presidential nomination in 2016. Dozens of the establishment-minded members with ties to the Bush and McCain political dynasties were cast aside by their state parties and replaced by Trump loyalists. That left the former president with what was seen as rock-solid standing during his time in and out of office.“Did I vote for Trump in 2016? You bet. Did I vote for him in 2020? You bet,” said Hank McCann, who joined the R.N.C. from Delaware in 2020. “Now, I don’t know. I think we’ve got probably 10 candidates that can win.”The New York Times called, emailed or texted all 168 R.N.C. members. Just four offered an unabashed endorsement of Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign. Twenty said the former president should not be the party’s nominee. An additional 35 said they would like to see a big primary field or declined to state their position on Mr. Trump. The remainder did not respond to messages.In interviews, some R.N.C. members estimated that between 120 and 140 of them preferred someone besides Mr. Trump to be their party’s presidential nominee.The defections of so many are particularly striking given the R.N.C.’s leading role in defending Mr. Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Now, committee members complained about the decision to fund Mr. Trump’s personal legal defense bills, including lawyers’ fees for criminal investigations into his businesses in New York, for months until he announced his candidacy in November.Mr. Trump was the first candidate to announce a 2024 campaign, in November at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.Jonathan Ernst/ReutersMr. Trump’s polarized political standing has plunged the party into a deeply unpredictable landscape, a situation unlike any since 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt’s attempt to recapture the presidency split the Republican Party four years after he left office.Mr. Trump enters the race as the party’s front-runner and owns by far the most robust fund-raising apparatus. Yet many R.N.C. members said he had nonetheless taken on the image of a loser after his 2020 defeat to President Biden, who is expected to announce his own re-election bid in the coming months. Mr. Trump’s subsequent refusal to accept the results and his endorsements of G.O.P. candidates in 2022 who stressed their devotion to him — and then lost seats in key battleground states including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — have some saying they are ready for a divorce.“To win 50 percent plus one in the Electoral College requires us to find an alternative and I think we’ve got plenty of good choices,” said John Hammond, an R.N.C. member from Indiana. “We can’t be a cult of personality any longer.”Speaking to one another, members of the committee can be even more blunt. The R.N.C.’s rules dictate that it is neutral in primaries, but members are free to back whomever they like.“I supported Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020, but it is clearly time for the Republican Party to move on from Donald Trump,” Oscar Brock, an R.N.C. member from Tennessee, wrote last week in a mass email to other members that was first reported by The Washington Post. “I know many of you feel the same way I do.”Mr. Trump still maintains a loyal following. Already, he has picked up endorsements in South Carolina from Gov. Henry McMaster and Senator Lindsey Graham and will be delivering a keynote address Saturday to the New Hampshire Republican Party, whose chairman, Stephen Stepanek, remains a key supporter. The most recent national polling shows Mr. Trump leading Mr. DeSantis in the primary, a shift from late last year when Mr. DeSantis had a small lead.Those seeking a new nominee say they object to Mr. Trump’s temperament and his focus on the 2020 election. By and large, they remain supportive of the stances on foreign policy, immigration, trade and cultural issues that powered his campaign and transformed the party’s ideology.Mr. Trump lost support last year as his actions leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol were broadcast to millions by a House committee.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesMr. Trump has been counted out so many times it has become a political cliché. Republican lawmakers, officials and strategists predicted his political demise after he made racist remarks about a federal judge’s ancestry, after the release of video in which he crudely boasted about grabbing women, when he authorized a program to separate migrant children from their families and following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.“President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party and anyone who questions that is simply living in a false reality,” said Steven Cheung, Mr. Trump’s campaign spokesman. “President Trump leads in the polls by wide margins and there is no other person who can generate the type of excitement and enthusiasm as he can.”The openness with which some R.N.C. members are now willing to speak out against Mr. Trump is new. Officials who once rolled their eyes and privately criticized Mr. Trump no longer fear repercussions from doing so publicly.There are other signs that Mr. Trump may face cracks in the foundation of his political coalition. His support has been wavering among evangelical voters, whose backing provided a crucial push in his 2016 victory. And Mr. Trump lost some support last year as his actions leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol were broadcast to millions by a House committee.Surveys show, and strategists note, that Mr. Trump commands the loyalty of roughly one-third to 40 percent of Republican primary voters. Even as some former supporters say he should not be the nominee, Mr. Trump’s loyalists cannot fathom the idea of someone else taking the reins from him as the party’s leader.“He needs to come back and finish what he started,” said Fanchon Blythe, an R.N.C. member from Nebraska who helped lead a Trumpian takeover of the Nebraska G.O.P. last summer. “DeSantis, stay in your own lane. Stay in Florida. Come back in 2028 if you want to run for president.”Mr. Trump is “an icon,” Shelly Gibson, an R.N.C. member from Guam, said in an interview during a layover in her 30-hour trip to California. “He sets a tone of pride. He has touched the hearts of citizens who felt forgotten and found a place they fit.”Surveys and strategists say Mr. Trump still commands the loyalty of roughly one-third to 40 percent of Republican primary voters.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMr. Trump’s support, along with an implicit threat that his backers would abandon any other nominee, could be enough to fend off a crowded field, a strategy that lifted him to the nomination in 2016.Even R.N.C. members who have been among the biggest Trump cheerleaders are reluctant to get behind his latest presidential campaign.Ed Broyhill, a North Carolina R.N.C. member who was the state’s finance chairman for Mr. Trump’s 2020 campaign, said he had met with both Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Pence, and plans to contribute to them should they run. Cindy Costa, who served as a Trump elector from South Carolina in 2020, said she was going into the primary with an open mind prepared to back the winner.Carson Jorgensen, the Utah G.O.P. chairman, said, “I was a big supporter of the president in 2016 and in 2020.” But now, Mr. Jorgensen said, he’s staying out of the primary. “I just want to keep my thumb off of it and let the people decide.”Jonathan Weisman
- [Youth-led study in Kentucky highlights social challenges of COVID-19 in schools - wdrb.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/youth-led-study-in-kentucky-highlights-social-challenges-of-covid-19-in-schools-wdrb-com/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The COVID-19 pandemic imposed a devastating effect on the psychological health of students, as they spent hours inside the house with little or no social contact with friends and classmates. A recent study published by the Kentucky Student Voice Team unpacks how Kentucky’s youth continue to cope with COVID. “The purpose of this study was to understand how Kentucky students are experiencing learning during, through and still in the pandemic,” Daniela DiGiacomo, a researcher with the University of Kentucky said. The Kentucky Student Voice Team, is a youth-led nonprofit with the goal of creating “more just, democratic Kentucky schools and communities as research, policy and advocacy partners.” “We found that students reported negative experiences with online learning for a host of reasons,” DiGiacomo said. One survey response said the sudden loss of social connection and lack of school and home boundaries was a challenge. “There were times during NTI and during bad times of COVID where I literally didn't leave my house for a week or so.” Researchers interviewed 50 Kentuckians. as well as conducted surveys of more than 10,000 students across every county in Kentucky. The research was analyzed by the Student Voice Team and the University of Kentucky researchers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 37% of high school students reported poor mental health in 2021. Additionally, 44% “reported they persistently felt sad or hopeless during the past year.” In Jefferson County, JCPS says it's working to improve the troubling statistics. It currently has more than 100 Mental health professionals on staff. “When we were on NTI, when we were removed from our students, it was an incredible challenge to get to our students to try to engage with them,” Jenni Garmon, a mental health practitioner at Newcomer Academy said Researchers say the overall goal of the study is to help students feel like they belong, as they cope with COVID. Copyright 2023. WDRB Media. All rights reserved.
- [Louisville health expert speaks on FDA's proposal of yearly COVID-19 booster - YouTube](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/louisville-health-expert-speaks-on-fdas-proposal-of-yearly-covid-19-booster-youtube/) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwwnK_Anibo
- [Michigan official pleads no contest in 2020 ballot sabotage case - WFIN Local News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/michigan-official-pleads-no-contest-in-2020-ballot-sabotage-case-wfin-local-news/) - ​ A woman who was a public official in a Flint-area community admitted Wednesday that she broke a seal on a ballot box to ensure that votes could not be recounted in her 2020 race, prosecutors said. Kathy Funk, 59, pleaded no contest to misconduct in office, a felony, under an agreement that includes no time in jail. Funk, a Democrat, was the Flint Township clerk in 2020 with responsibility over elections. She was accused of sabotaging a ballot box after the August primary that year, an act that would make those ballots ineligible for a recount. ALABAMA CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST’S SON INDICTED ON VOTER FRAUD CHARGES Funk had won the race by just 79 votes out of about 5,300. A recount was not conducted. Former Flint Township, Michigan, Clerk Kathy Funk pleaded no contest to charges stemming from a 2020 ballot sabotage case.(Brice Tucker/The Flint Journal via AP) Election officials who “undermine the very foundation of our democracy and will be held accountable,” Attorney General Dana Nessel said. CONNECTICUT DEMOCRAT SENTENCED TO 2 YEARS OF PROBATION FOR BALLOT FRAUD Funk quit her township post in 2021 for a bigger job as elections supervisor for Genesee County. She was dismissed last year. After the August 2020 election, Funk contacted state police to report a break-in at Flint Township Hall and that a seal on a ballot cannister had been damaged, the Flint Journal reported, quoting the police report. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Manya Triplett, who narrowly lost that race, now is the township clerk.
- [California State Bar Moves to Pull Trump Ally John Eastman's License Over 2020 Election Plot](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/california-state-bar-moves-to-pull-trump-ally-john-eastmans-license-over-2020-election-plot-2/) - The California State Bar charged Trump-allied attorney John Eastman with 11 disciplinary counts. The Office of Chief Trial Counsel George Cardona said it intends to seek Eastman's disbarment. Eastman's counts are related to his alleged scheme to overturn former President Donald Trump's loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election. The California State Bar on Thursday charged John Eastman, an attorney closely allied with former President Donald Trump, with 11 disciplinary counts related to his alleged scheme to overturn President Joe Biden's win in the 2020 election. The Office of Chief Trial Counsel George Cardona intends to seek Eastman's disbarment, according to a press release from the State Bar of California. Eastman is charged with making false statements about purported election fraud, including during a "stop the steal" rally outside the White House on Jan. 6, 2021. Eastman's remarks "contributed" to provoking a crowd of Trump's fans to storm the U.S. Capitol in order to block Congress from confirming Biden's electoral victory, the state bar alleges. Eastman was the legal architect of one of several efforts to overturn Trump's loss to Biden. Eastman drafted documents advancing a dubious legal theory that then-Vice President Mike Pence had the power to unilaterally refuse to certify Electoral College votes for Biden from key swing states. Pence, who presided over Congress' efforts to confirm Biden's victory on Jan. 6, 2021, refused to go along with that plan, despite pressure from Trump. Eastman did not immediately respond to CNBC's requests for comment. The notice of charges against Eastman says that his proposed strategies "were unsupported by law, based on false and misleading assertions of fact, and designed for the purpose of keeping Trump in office." Eastman allegedly "violated this duty in furtherance of an attempt to usurp the will of the American people and overturn election results for the highest office in the land," Cardona said in the press release. The lawyer "must be held accountable," Cardona said. Eastman, who has been admitted to practice law in California since 1997, "violated his obligations as an attorney" by promoting allegations of electoral fraud that he knew, or ought to have known, were false, the 35-page charging document alleges. He is also accused of furthering a legal view of Pence's powers "that no reasonable attorney with expertise in constitutional or election law would have concluded that the Vice President was legally authorized to take." Eastman featured prominently in public presentations of evidence gathered by the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot. The committee voted to refer Trump to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation before it wrapped up its probe late last year. Also on CNBC
- [Trump Lawyer Eastman Faces California Disbarment Action (1) - Bloomberg Law News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/trump-lawyer-eastman-faces-california-disbarment-action-1-bloomberg-law-news/) - US Law Week
- [California State Bar moves to pull Trump ally John Eastman's license over 2020 election plot](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/california-state-bar-moves-to-pull-trump-ally-john-eastmans-license-over-2020-election-plot/) - The California State Bar charged Trump-allied attorney John Eastman with 11 disciplinary counts. The Office of Chief Trial Counsel George Cardona said it intends to seek Eastman's disbarment. Eastman's counts are related to his alleged scheme to overturn former President Donald Trump's loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election. John Eastman, the University of Colorado Boulders visiting scholar of conservative thought and policy, speaks about his plans to sue the university at a news conference outside of CU Boulder on Thursday, April 29, 2021. Andy Cross | Denver Post | Getty Images The California State Bar on Thursday charged John Eastman, an attorney closely allied with former President Donald Trump, with 11 disciplinary counts related to his alleged scheme to overturn President Joe Biden's win in the 2020 election. The Office of Chief Trial Counsel George Cardona intends to seek Eastman's disbarment, according to a press release from the State Bar of California. Eastman is charged with making false statements about purported election fraud, including during a "stop the steal" rally outside the White House on Jan. 6, 2021. Eastman's remarks "contributed" to provoking a crowd of Trump's fans to storm the U.S. Capitol in order to block Congress from confirming Biden's electoral victory, the state bar alleges. Eastman was the legal architect of one of several efforts to overturn Trump's loss to Biden. Eastman drafted documents advancing a dubious legal theory that then-Vice President Mike Pence had the power to unilaterally refuse to certify Electoral College votes for Biden from key swing states. Pence, who presided over Congress' efforts to confirm Biden's victory on Jan. 6, 2021, refused to go along with that plan, despite pressure from Trump. Eastman did not immediately respond to CNBC's requests for comment. The notice of charges against Eastman says that his proposed strategies "were unsupported by law, based on false and misleading assertions of fact, and designed for the purpose of keeping Trump in office." Eastman allegedly "violated this duty in furtherance of an attempt to usurp the will of the American people and overturn election results for the highest office in the land," Cardona said in the press release. The lawyer "must be held accountable," Cardona said. Eastman, who has been admitted to practice law in California since 1997, "violated his obligations as an attorney" by promoting allegations of electoral fraud that he knew, or ought to have known, were false, the 35-page charging document alleges. He is also accused of furthering a legal view of Pence's powers "that no reasonable attorney with expertise in constitutional or election law would have concluded that the Vice President was legally authorized to take." Eastman featured prominently in public presentations of evidence gathered by the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot. The committee voted to refer Trump to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation before it wrapped up its probe late last year. WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP
- [Eastman Hit With Ethics Charges In Calif. Over 2020 Election - Law360](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/eastman-hit-with-ethics-charges-in-calif-over-2020-election-law360/) - By Jack Karp (January 26, 2023, 4:18 PM EST) -- Controversial Trump attorney John Eastman has been charged with multiple ethics violations that could result in his disbarment, the State Bar of California announced Thursday....
- [California Bar Slaps John Eastman with Disciplinary Charges - Law & Crime](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/california-bar-slaps-john-eastman-with-disciplinary-charges-law-crime/) - Former lawyer of former President Donald Trump, John Eastman, appears on screen during the fourth hearing by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol in the Cannon House Office Building on June 21, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images) The California bar slapped former President Donald Trump’s attorney John Eastman with nearly a dozen disciplinary charges for “false and misleading statements” alleging fraud in the 2020 election. The State Bar of California’s Chief Trial Counsel George Cardona intends to seek Eastman’s disbarment for alleged violations of Business and Professions Code section 6106, which punishes making false and misleading statements that constitute acts of “moral turpitude, dishonesty, and corruption.” “There is nothing more sacrosanct to our American democracy than free and fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power,” Cardona said in a statement. “For California attorneys, adherence to the U.S. and California Constitutions is their highest legal duty. The Notice of Disciplinary Charges alleges that Mr. Eastman violated this duty in furtherance of an attempt to usurp the will of the American people and overturn election results for the highest office in the land—an egregious and unprecedented attack on our democracy — for which he must be held accountable.” Eastman is the author of the so-called “coup memo,” a six-point plan to overturn the election results. “The 11 charges arise from allegations that Eastman engaged in a course of conduct to plan, promote, and assist then-President Trump in executing a strategy, unsupported by facts or law, to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by obstructing the count of electoral votes of certain states,” the bar wrote in a press release. A federal judge in California previously found that Trump and Eastman “more likely than not” violated two felony statutes in their attempts to overturn the election: obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States. The finding came in the context of civil litigation involving discovery by the Jan. 6th Committee. In 35-page notice of the disciplinary charges, the bar’s supervising attorney Duncan Carling wrote that Eastman had every opportunity to learn that his election fraud claims were baseless, including from top Trump officials. “In the months following the election, however, the Trump campaign received information from numerous credible sources, including Attorney General of the United States William Barr and members of Trump’s inner circle of advisors, that there was no evidence of widespread election fraud or illegality that could have affected the outcome of the election,” the notice states. “On or about December 1, 2020, Attorney General Barr, who headed the United States Department of Justice, which had monitored state elections for fraud and illegality, publicly stated that ‘to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.'” More than 60 courts rejected election fraud claims by Trump and his allies. “As a result of information received from credible sources and numerous court rulings, by no later than on or about December 9, 2020, respondent knew, or was grossly negligent in not knowing, that there was no evidence upon which a reasonable attorney would rely of election fraud or illegality that could have affected the outcome of the election, and that there was no evidence upon which a reasonable attorney would rely that the election had been ‘stolen’ by the Democratic Party or other parties acting in a coordinated conspiracy to fraudulently ‘steal’ the election from Trump,” the notice continues. Eastman still persisted with his election fraud claims long after that date, through at least Jan. 6, 2021. The lawyer spoke at Trump’s rally that day at the Ellipse. This is a developing story. Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
- [A Timeline of Events in the Tyre Nichols Case](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/a-timeline-of-events-in-the-tyre-nichols-case/) - The death of Tyre Nichols has provoked outrage and prompted state and federal investigations in the weeks since Mr. Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, died after being pulled over by the police in Memphis.Lawyers for Mr. Nichols’ family said video footage that has yet to be publicly released shows that he was beaten by police officers for three minutes during the traffic stop. “He was a human piñata for those police officers,” one of the lawyers said. “Not only was it violent, it was savage.”Here is a timeline of the major events in the case:Jan. 7: Around 8:30 p.m., Mr. Nichols was stopped by police officers on suspicion of reckless driving near the intersection of Raines Road and Ross Road in Memphis.The Memphis police said in an initial statement that a “confrontation occurred” as the officers approached his vehicle and that Mr. Nichols ran away. The police said there was then “another confrontation” as officers arrested him, and that an ambulance was called after he complained of shortness of breath.Jan. 10: The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced that Mr. Nichols had “succumbed to his injuries” and died.Jan. 14: Mr. Nichols’s family held a memorial event and released a balloon in his honor, according to the Commercial Appeal, a Memphis newspaper. Supporters held a protest at a nearby police precinct.Jan. 15: The Memphis Police Department announced that internal administrative investigations were underway.Jan. 16: Mr. Nichols’ family retained the prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who has represented the families of several Black victims of police violence, including Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. Mr. Crump called for Memphis police to release body camera footage of the encounter: “Nobody should ever die from a simple traffic stop — the footage is the only way to discern the true narrative of why and how that happened to Tyre.”Jan. 18: The U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had opened a civil rights investigation into Mr. Nichols’s death and was coordinating with the F.B.I.’s Memphis field office.Jan. 20: The Memphis Police Department said five officers had violated department policies in connection to Mr. Nichols’ death, including policies governing excessive use of force, duty to intervene and duty to render aid. All five officers were fired.Jan. 23: Mr. Nichols’s family watched the body camera footage from the night of the traffic stop, but Mr. Nichols’s mother was unable to watch the entire video. Lawyers for the family called the video “disgusting,” likening it to the one showing how Rodney King was brutalized by Los Angeles police in 1991. “How are we here again so many years later?” they asked in a statement.Jan. 24: Preliminary findings of an autopsy commissioned by Mr. Nichols’s family showed that he “suffered extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating.” His family shared a photo taken before he died on Jan. 10 that showed him in a hospital bed, apparently unconscious, his face bruised and swollen.The Memphis Fire Department announced that two employees involved in Mr. Nichols’ “initial patient care” were being “relieved of duty” pending an internal investigation.Jan. 25: The Memphis police chief, Cerelyn Davis, condemned the police officers’ actions as “a failing of basic humanity” in a video statement. Other Memphis police officers were still under investigation for policy violations, she said.Noting the “significant public interest” in the release of the video, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Tennessee also urged citizens to react in a “peaceful and non-violent way.”Jan. 26: The five fired police officers were arrested in connection with Mr. Nichols’s death and charged with second-degree murder, among other felony charges.Video of the incident will be released after 6 p.m. on Friday, said Steve Mulroy, the Shelby County district attorney, as Memphis braced for what has repeatedly been described as brutal footage.
- [Fani Willis has enough evidence to indict Donald Trump: Geoff Duncan on CNN](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/fani-willis-has-enough-evidence-to-indict-donald-trump-geoff-duncan-on-cnn/) - ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - Georgia’s former lieutenant governor, now an on-air CNN commentator, said Fulton County DA Fani Willis has enough evidence to indict former President Donald Trump for his alleged role in interfering with the result of the state’s 2020 presidential election.“There’s enough information for him to be indicted,” Geoff Duncan said on a Wednesday segment with his new employer. Duncan, who has been a strong Trump critic, chose not to run for re-election last year, clearing a path that led Burt Jones,. a strong Trump supporter, to win the seat this past November.Duncan’s comments come as Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney continues to mull whether a grand jury report on alleged 2020 Georgia presidential election interference should be made public.Trump has accused Willis of conducting a “strictly political witch hunt” as she pursues an investigation into alleged election interfering in the 2020 presidential vote count.Last year, Willis opened a criminal investigation “into attempts to influence the administration of the 2020 Georgia General Election.” A special grand jury with subpoena power was seated in May at her request. In court filings last month, she alleged “a multi-state, coordinated plan by the Trump Campaign to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere.”Trump also has defended his now-famous phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger a few days after the last presidential election.FULL POLITICAL COVERAGE FROM ATLANTA NEWS FIRSTBack in June, Raffensperger told a congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that Trump’s claims of 2020 election fraud “were false.”Georgia’s secretary of state, along with Gabriel Sterling, the office’s chief operating officer, appeared before the Democrat-led House Select Committee when the commission resumed its round of nationally televised public hearings.Raffensperger told the committee the Nov. 6, 2020, election went “remarkably smooth,” with average ballot-casting wait times between two to three minutes statewide.“I felt we had a successful election,” Raffensperger said.RELATED: ‘No rash decision’ | Judge deciding whether Trump grand jury report will be made publicDuring a hearing earlier this week, Willis urged the grand jury’s report not to be released so as to ensure “all future defendants be treated fairly” and that decisions on indictments “are imminent.”“At this time, in the interest of justice and the rights of not the state, but others, we are asking that the report not be released,” she said.The grand jury handed its report to Willis earlier this month. Willis and her team said it would be “dangerous” to release the report prematurely.“We think immediately releasing before the district attorney has even had an opportunity to address publicly whether there will be charges are not, because there’s not been a meaningful enough amount of time to assess it, is dangerous,” said Donald Wakeford, Chief Senior District Attorney.Willis said the grand jury heard from 75 witnesses. While her office claimed protecting future defendants’ rights constitutes secrecy, media interveners argued the report has enormous public interest and the law requires its release.“The discomfort of the prosecuting authority in disclosing court records isn’t enough to make them sealed. It has to be significant, identifiable evidence that is going to cause a problem,” said Thomas Clyde, the attorney representing news outlets. “The faith of the public in the court system is much improved by operating in a public way.”Anthony Kreis, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State University thought the judge was “somewhat skeptical” of the prosecutor’s arguments. He believes Georgia law is clear that the report is a public document.“These folks have done this investigation in our, the public name, and they might have information that’s not just critical to understanding what happened but might be essential to creating public policy to prevent the undermining or overturning of a democratic election every again,” Kreis said.McBurney said he has yet to come to a decision about sealing the report.“There will be no rash decisions,” he said.Copyright 2023 WANF. All rights reserved.
- [Kari Lake lost tens of thousands of Republican voters. It cost her the election.](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/kari-lake-lost-tens-of-thousands-of-republican-voters-it-cost-her-the-election/) - Former Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake could have won last year’s race if she won over more Republicans.Lake lost the race by 17,117 votes, and a study of Maricopa County voters found 40,690 Republican-leaning voters voted for down-ballot Republican candidates but not her. That number included 33,749 who voted for Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, while other Republican-leaning voters didn’t vote in the race or wrote another candidate in.Every election is bound to have crossover voters, but the number of Republican-leaning voters who turned out for Hobbs was “astonishing,” said Benny White, an attorney and longtime Republican election observer and analyst who reviewed cast vote data, which was obtained through a public records request.“It shows that that crossover voting effect in her race was a substantial part of the reason she lost the election,” White said. “The Democratic Party and the Democratic voters stayed with their candidates much better.” Lake was endorsed by former President Donald Trump and repeated his false claim the 2020 election was stolen. Other Trump-endorsed candidates who denied the 2020 results had an even more pronounced crossover voting effect, White said, including former Republican secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem who lost to Democrat Adrian Fontes. After winning their primaries, these Republican candidates didn’t transition to reaching out to general-election voters, he said.“These candidates just never made this transition, they never made any outreach to the nonpartisans.” In the case of Lake, she took active measures to infuriate members of her own party, he said, citing her criticism of the late Sen. John McCain. “These were all people she needed to support her.”Lake has not conceded her race, and has continued to tweet that it was stolen.White, who’s since left the party and registered as an independent, said his 2022 election study, which was first reported by the Arizona Republic, came after a similar study following the 2020 election “to counter the Cyber Ninja farce that was going on,” a reference to the Florida-based company that conducted a partisan audit of the 2020 results in Maricopa County.“They have no proof of anything,” he said of those who file “frivolous” lawsuits challenging election results. “Look at voter registration, look at who voted, it’s not rocket science.” Arizona Republicans’ 2022 gubernatorial primary was a contest between the party’s right and establishment wings. Lake defeated developer Karrin Taylor Robson, who was endorsed by then-Gov. Doug Ducey and former Vice President Mike Pence. In a statement after the election, Robson said Republicans were “in the weakest position in Arizona we’ve been in as a party in 50 years,” noting Republican candidates lost a majority of statewide races for the first time since 1974, the first election after Richard Nixon’s resignation during the Watergate scandal.Arizona’s next statewide race comes next year for U.S. Senate when Sen. Krysten Sinema is up for reelection. Sinema left the Democratic Party last year to become an independent, setting up a possible three-way race if she seeks another term. Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego announced Monday he’s running for the seat.
- [Eastman Hit With Ethics Violations In Calif. Over 2020 Election - Law360](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/eastman-hit-with-ethics-violations-in-calif-over-2020-election-law360/) - By Jack Karp (January 26, 2023, 4:18 PM EST) -- Attorney John Eastman has been charged with multiple ethics violations over his actions helping former President Donald Trump challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election, the State Bar of California said Thursday....
- [Factbox-Georgia on his mind: Donald Trump troubled by more legal woes - KFGO](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/factbox-georgia-on-his-mind-donald-trump-troubled-by-more-legal-woes-kfgo/) - (Reuters) – Donald Trump could learn soon whether he or any associates will be charged or cleared of wrongdoing in a Georgia probe into his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, one of a series of legal threats looming over the Republican former U.S. president:GEORGIA ELECTION TAMPERING PROBEOn Tuesday, the prosecutor in the state of Georgia spoke to a judge on behalf of a special grand jury empanelled in May to investigate Trump’s alleged efforts to influence that state’s 2020 election results.Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney and a Democrat who will ultimately decide whether to pursue charges against Trump or anyone else, said the grand jury had completed its task and decisions were “imminent.”The investigation focuses in part on a phone call Trump madeto Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican,on Jan. 2, 2021. Trump asked Raffensperger to “find” enoughvotes needed to overturn Trump’s election loss in Georgia.Legal experts said Trump may have violated at least threeGeorgia criminal election laws: conspiracy to commit electionfraud, criminal solicitation to commit election fraud andintentional interference with performance of election duties.Trump could argue that his discussions were constitutionallyprotected free speech.U.S. CAPITOL ATTACKThe U.S. Justice Department has investigations under way into both Trump’s actions in the 2020 election and his retention of highly classified documents after departing the White House in 2021.Both investigations involving Trump are being overseen by Jack Smith, a war crimes prosecutor and political independent. Trump has accused the FBI, without evidence, of launching the probes as political retribution.A special House of Representatives committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, assault by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol urged the Justice Department to charge Trump with corruption of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement and inciting or aiding an insurrection.The request is non-binding. Only the Justice Department can decide whether to charge Trump, who has called the Democratic-led panel’s investigation a politically motivated sham.MISSING GOVERNMENT RECORDSU.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith to investigate whether Trump improperly retained classified records at his Florida estate after he left office in 2021 and then tried to obstruct a federal investigation.Garland also appointed former U.S. Attorney Robert Hur for Maryland to investigate the removal of classified records in President Joe Biden’s possession dating to his time as vice president.It is unlawful to willfully remove or retain classified material.In Trump’s case, the FBI seized 11,000 documents from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago Florida estate in a court-approved Aug. 8 search. About 100 documents were marked classified; some were designated top secret, the highest level of classification.Trump has accused the Justice Department of engaging in a partisan witch hunt.NEW YORK ATTORNEY GENERAL CIVIL LAWSUITNew York Attorney General Letitia James said in a civillawsuit filed in September that her office uncovered more than200 examples of misleading asset valuations by Trump and theTrump Organization business between 2011 and 2021.A Democrat, James accused Trump of inflating his net worth by billions of dollars to obtain lower interest rates on loans and get better insurance coverage.A New York judge ordered that an independent monitor beappointed to oversee the Trump Organization before the case goesto trial in October 2023.e. J James seeks to permanently bar Trump and his childrenDonald Jr., Eric and Ivanka Trump from running companies in NewYork state, and to prevent them and his company from buying newproperties and taking out new loans in the state for five years.James also wants the defendants to hand over about $250million that she says was obtained through fraud.Trump has called the attorney general’s lawsuit a witchhunt. A lawyer for Trump has called James’ claims meritless.James said her probe also uncovered evidence of criminalwrongdoing, which she referred to federal prosecutors and theInternal Revenue Service for investigation.DEFAMATION CASEE. Jean Carroll, a former Elle magazine writer, has filed two lawsuits accusing Trump of having defamed her when he denied her allegation that he raped her in New York’s Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in late 1995 or early 1996.Trump accuses her of lying to drum up sales for a book.Carroll first sued Trump after he denied the accusation in June 2019 and told a reporter at the White House that he did not know Carroll, that “she’s not my type,” and that she concocted the claim to sell her new memoir.The second lawsuit arose from an October 2022 social media post where Trump called the rape claim a “hoax,” “lie,” “con job” and “complete scam,” and said “this can only happen to ‘Trump’!”That lawsuit includes a battery claim under the Adult Survivors Act, which starting last Nov. 24 gave adults a one-year window to sue their alleged attackers even if statutes of limitations have expired.A U.S. judge on Jan. 13 rejected as “absurd” Trump’s effort to dismiss the second lawsuit.Trump and Carroll are awaiting a decision from a Washington, D.C., appeals court on whether, under local law, Trump should be immune from Carroll’s first lawsuit over his June 2019 comments.That lawsuit would likely be dismissed if the court decided that Trump spoke within his role as president, and continue if Trump spoke in his personal capacity as Carroll argues.Any decision would have no effect on Carroll’s second defamation and battery lawsuit. A trial in the first lawsuit is scheduled for April 10.NEW YORK CRIMINAL PROBEAlthough Trump was not charged with wrongdoing, his real estate company was found guilty on Dec. 6 of tax fraud in New York state. A judge this month sentenced Trump’s namesake real estate company to pay a $1.6 million criminal penalty, the maximum the judge could impose.Jurors convicted the Trump Organization, which operates hotels, golf courses and other real estate around the world, of paying personal expenses for top executives including former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, and issuing bonus checks to them as if they were independent contractors.Weisselberg, the company’s former chief financialofficer, pleaded guilty and was required to testify againstthe Trump Organization as part of his plea agreement. He is alsoa defendant in James’ civil lawsuit.(Reporting by Joseph Ax, Luc Cohen, Karen Freifeld, Sarah N. Lynch, Jonathan Stempel and Jacqueline Thomsen; Editing by Howard Goller)
- [California's Vote-by-Mail Experiment Opens the Door to Widespread Election Fraud](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/californias-vote-by-mail-experiment-opens-the-door-to-widespread-election-fraud/) - After 37 states rigged the 2020 election with 100 million absentee ballots, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 37 into law the following year to make mail-in voting a permanent feature of elections in the state. This bill allows California to send a mail-in ballot to every active registered voter in the state whether or not they request one. Newsom’s office said the measure would “increase access to democracy and enfranchise more voters.” Yet a new Public Interest Legal Foundation report shows this vote-by-mail experiment failed spectacularly during the 2022 midterms. Widespread fraud: The Public Interest Legal Foundation audit of the California election found that of 22,184,707 ballots mailed out, 9,781,328 were accepted as valid, 120,432 were rejected as fraudulent, and 10,891,525 disappeared. The balance, 1,391,422 ballots, were not returned because recipients decided to vote in person. These are shocking statistics. A full 0.5 percent of absentee ballots were returned fraudulently, while 49 percent disappeared. It is fair to assume that many of these missing ballots were thrown out, but it is also possible that they were fraudulently counted elsewhere. Eighteen years ago, the 2005 Commission on Federal Election Reform concluded that “[a]bsentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.” Yet the nation has done nothing to make its elections more secure. Prophecy says: It is an open secret that Democrats stole the 2020 election from President Donald Trump, and now it looks like there was considerable fraud in the 2022 midterms. In his book America Under Attack, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry asserts that President Trump was the winner of the 2020 election and explains that the Bible prophesies that Trump will return to power. This astonishing forecast is based on 2 Kings 14:26-28, which say an end-time antitype of King Jeroboam ii will have to war to recover something that was stolen from him. Keep watching the audits and investigations popping up across the nation in state after state for the shocking results.
- [Donald Trump allowed back on Facebook: What Meta should do now](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/donald-trump-allowed-back-on-facebook-what-meta-should-do-now/) - Meta’s decision Wednesday to replatform former president Donald J. Trump on Facebook and Instagram is lamentable and ill-considered. The company’s own standards required his continued exclusion from the social media platform so long as he remains a “serious risk to public safety”—and he remains one. After all, it was Trump’s continuing election-denialist rhetoric that apparently led a MAGA-supporting New Mexico candidate last month to mastermind shootings into the homes of Democratic legislators. Millions of Americans continue to believe Trump’s false claim of a stolen 2020 election, and some have taken violent actions and made threats against election workers and others involved in the election process. The replatforming decision was the latest misstep by a company that “did not even try” to grapple with the risks of election delegitimization in 2020, according to a leaked draft report from the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the United States Capitol. But rather than wring our hands over mistakes Meta has made, we should focus instead on how the company can minimize the ongoing risk that Trump poses. The key thing that Meta can do now is escalate sanctions against him, such as demoting his content and blocking his expected campaign ads, if he continues to undermine the integrity of American elections. To begin with, we must understand that Meta’s decision to replatform Trump is not the result of a real examination of the continued risk he poses to American democracy but a political calculation. Republicans have taken back control of the United States House of Representatives, and Meta executives were already threatened with being hauled before House committees to answer to spurious calls of “censorship.” Elon Musk has invited Trump back to Twitter, so we can already expect his content to recirculate widely; Trump also is an announced candidate (and current frontrunner) for the Republican nomination for president, and, ordinarily, social media companies should be very reluctant to exclude major party candidates from their platforms. Meta executives may have felt they had no choice but to bring him back. So what should Meta do now that it has invited Trump to return? First, the company should understand it has significant leverage over him. Trump has used Facebook advertising as an effective fundraising tool in the past, which probably explains why he lobbied Meta to return to the platform, even as he has so far declined to return to Twitter. While Meta has said that Trump will face “heightened penalties” if he breaks the platform’s rules, such as by creating a risk of civil unrest, it should go further. Mark Zuckerberg should call Trump directly and warn him that he risks having his posts demoted or removed and his advertising limited if he glorifies or encourages violence, especially election-related violence. We know from the draft report that Zuckerberg has called Trump about specific posts before. Zuckerberg should be firm that sanctions will come if Trump posts anything that could be interpreted as even an implicit threat of violence, given that Trump likes to use innuendo to make his threats. For example, Trump recently took to posting on the Truth Social platform (in which he has a partial ownership interest) to once again attack Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman. His earlier false claims against Freeman and her mother led to threats of violence against them and a climate of fear for election workers. Meta should not tolerate anything like these posts on Facebook or Instagram. Second, Meta should demote posts from Trump that engage in election denialism. While Meta has said that it may demote content “that delegitimizes an upcoming election or is related to QAnon,” it does not appear to be willing to take action on what will likely be a core part of what he posts: delegitimation of the last election that will cause continuing harm to faith in our democracy and democratic institutions. This is a key failing on Meta’s part. Rolling Stone reports that Trump is planning to make his return to major social media platforms with posts about “rigged elections.” Demotion means that the material would remain visible to people searching for it, but the company’s algorithms would be less likely to suggest the posts into people’s feeds. As a private company, Meta has the right under the First Amendment to promote or demote content as it sees fit. And just as Musk, as owner of Twitter, can decide to replatform white supremacists and neo-Nazis (as he recently did), Meta can be a more responsible corporate citizen and decline to amplify election lies that threaten violence and undermine democratic institutions. Third, Meta can renew its commitment to protecting free and fair elections in the United States and around the world. It can begin by beefing up the election integrity team that it partially dismantled after the 2020 elections. The draft report of the Jan. 6 committee describes the weakening of election protections that the company had in place in the past. There is an urgent need for the restoration of strong election integrity measures. Whether Zuckerberg likes it or not, social media platforms are one of the main ways people communicate about politics and elections around the world. And that means they also become major vectors of election disinformation. That was true not only of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, but also the recent attack on government buildings in Brasília following the recent defeat of Trumpian candidate Jair Bolsonaro. As the Times’ Jack Nicas recently reported, the rioting was the result of social-media-fueled “mass delusion” focused on election denialism: “Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters have been repeating the claims for months, and then built on them with new conspiracy theories passed along in group chats on WhatsApp and Telegram, many focused on the idea that the electronic voting machines’ software was manipulated to steal the election.” The political pressure from the right for Meta to keep Trump’s posts and advertisements up, even if they continue to spew election denialism and include nods to violence, will be strong. But Meta has to be stronger in standing up for democracy and free and fair elections.
- [This election year, NZ voters should beware of reading too much into the political polls](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/this-election-year-nz-voters-should-beware-of-reading-too-much-into-the-political-polls/) - With a new prime minister sworn in and a cabinet reshuffle imminent, it’s no exaggeration to say the election year has begun with a bang. Already the punditry and speculation are ramping up, with anticipation building for the first opinion polls. There will be more polls to come, of course, but a word of caution is in order: don’t treat them as gospel, and try not to let them become self-fulfilling prophecies. At this point, we can’t predict who will form New Zealand’s next government, and it could yet be a tight race. Furthermore, political polling has not had a stellar record in recent times. Former prime minister Jim Bolger’s famous remark from 1993, after he didn’t get the election majority he expected, still resonates: “Bugger the polls.” It’s not just a local phenomenon, either. The results of the Brexit referendum and the Trump–Clinton presidential contest in 2016, and the 2019 Australian election, were all out of line with preceding opinion polls. In 2020, the US presidential polls were off by about four percentage points. And the 2022 US midterm elections didn’t produce the landslide (or “red tsunami”) many Republicans had predicted. Election night 2020: polls consistently underestimated the Labour Party’s eventual majority. Getty Images The 2020 election miss It’s a similar story in Aotearoa New Zealand. In 2020, the polls immediately prior to the election overestimated the National vote and underestimated Labour’s. Taking the averages of the results of all six polls published during the month before election day, National emerged on 30.9% and Labour on 47.2%. In the final three polls during the two weeks when advance voting was open, the averages were National 31.4% and Labour 46.3%. The gap was closing and Labour would land on about 46%, or so it seemed. As Labour’s trend in the polls since mid-2020 was already downward, 45% looked plausible. But predictions based on the opinion polls were significantly wrong. Labour’s election result was 50%, National’s only 25.6%. The polls in the final fortnight were overestimating National by an average of 5.8 percentage points. They were underestimating Labour by 3.7 points. The Green and Māori parties were also underestimated (1.1 and 0.7 points, respectively). There were even bigger failures in polls showing Green candidate Chlöe Swarbrick running third in Auckland Central with about 25% of the vote. Instead, she got 35% and won the seat. Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick on election night 2020: polls had placed her third but she won the Auckland Central seat. Getty Images Statistics 101 The opinion polls and the election – the only poll that counts, as the saying goes – use different methods with different samples. They’re intended for different purposes, and hence their results will differ, too. An opinion poll is a snapshot of a sample of potential voters. By the time it’s published, it’s already in the past. Surveys normally ask which party you’d vote for if the election were held tomorrow. But you may change your mind by the time you actually vote, if you vote at all. Read more: Here's how to make opinion polls more representative and honest Furthermore, surveys are prone to random error. So, no matter how scientifically rigorous, they only estimate – and can’t replicate – the relevant population. It’s in the interests of the polling companies to be accurate, of course, especially when close to an election. But we need to read their results critically. Samples are normally about 1,000 people, and pollsters try to ensure they closely resemble the demographic makeup (ideally by age, gender, ethnicity, education and location) of the eligible population, giving voters of all kinds an equal voice. Post-survey weighting boosts results from social groups with low response rates. The proportion of the population that holds a specified preference is estimated, and all estimates are subject to variance. This is expressed as a margin of error, which is normally plus or minus three percentage points. Read more: What is a margin of error? This statistical tool can help you understand vaccine trials and political polling The margin of error is the range in which the pollster bets the “true” results should probably fall, with the true figures being outside that range only 5% of the time. In other words, pollsters are 95% confident the actual results will fall within that range. It’s only a statistical estimate. But the quoted margin of error doesn’t apply evenly. If a given party is polling at 50%, then the quoted margin of error applies. If a party is polling higher or lower, then the margin of error narrows – the further you get from 50%, the narrower the margin of error. How new Prime Minister Chris Hipkins fares in the first opinion polls of 2023 will be closely watched. Getty Images Beyond the margin of error Another concern is whether respondents will give honest answers. Some may be unwilling to reveal their voting intentions or they’ll wilfully mislead the poll. And often a large proportion of a sample doesn’t know yet whether they’ll actually vote, or for whom they’ll vote. Responsible pollsters will report the percentage of “don’t know” responses. But the conservative bias in the pre-election 2020 opinion polls was systematically outside of the margins of error, and hence not due only to random variation. Apparently, pollsters didn’t obtain samples that resembled the population that actually voted. It looks like younger left-wing voters were especially hard to reach or unwilling to participate. Or their election turnout may have been underestimated. Polling companies are now using online panels to help correct such biases. We’ll have to wait for the next election’s results to judge how it’s working. Read more: Chris Hipkins becomes NZ’s new prime minister – there are two ways it can go from here Reading the tea leaves A series of opinion polls can reveal trends and thus serve a purpose as public information. But they’re not suited for forecasting. One result taken out of context may be misleading, so it’s disappointing when major news organisations over-hype polls. When party-vote percentages get converted into numbers of seats, journalists are reading tea leaves and not reporting news. Meanwhile, the market research firms are getting massive publicity. Accurate or not, opinion poll results can have self-fulfilling or “bandwagon” effects on people’s voting behaviour. People might want to back a winner, or not waste their vote on a party that’s polling below 5%. Or some might vote for a party other than their favourite, with an eye to post-electoral negotiations. Perhaps the best advice for voters is this: when deciding which party to vote for, try not to think about the polls. And poll-watchers should prepare for surprises on election night.
- [Militia leader sentenced to prison for pointing rifle at police in Louisville](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/militia-leader-sentenced-to-prison-for-pointing-rifle-at-police-in-louisville/) - A militia leader has been sentenced to more time in prison for pointing an assault rifle at police in Louisville during racial justice protests in 2020.John Johnson, who goes by Grand Master Jay, leads the Not F***ing Around Coalition, a group of Black militants that visited Louisville several times amid demonstrations over the police killing of Breonna Taylor.On Thursday, he was ordered to serve one year in prison after pleading guilty to five counts of wanton endangerment in Jefferson Circuit Court.More:Louisville to spend $30+ million on new housing campus, eviction prevention. Here's howJohnson, from Cincinnati, was previously sentenced to seven years and two months in prison after he was found guilty on federal charges for the same incident."Johnson manifested indifference to the value of human life and created a substantial danger of death or serious physical injury when he pointed an assault riffle at 5 police officers stationed on the roof" of a building near Jefferson Square Park, a press release from Jefferson Circuit Court said.More:Brooklawn to appeal state's decision to revoke license for treating kids at facilitiesThe sentences are set to be served concurrently.In November, Johnson's attorney Murdoch Walker II said he would appeal the federal sentencing.Reach Ana Rocío Álvarez Bríñez at abrinez@gannett.com; follow her on Twitter at @SoyAnaAlvarez
- ['Grandmaster Jay' sentenced to prison for pointing rifle at officers during protests](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/grandmaster-jay-sentenced-to-prison-for-pointing-rifle-at-officers-during-protests/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - A man who was federally convicted for pointing a weapon at law enforcement officers during protests over Breonna Taylor’s death has been sentenced in Kentucky for additional charges.John Fitzgerald Johnson, also known as “Grandmaster Jay,” entered a guilty plea for five counts of wanton endangerment in connection to the incident on Sept. 4, 2020.According to court documents, Johnson pointed an AR-15 rifle towards the rooftop of a government building in the direction of two Louisville Metro Police Department officers, who were acting as members of a federal task force.Johnson claimed that his rifle was not loaded, the safety was on and he was only using the flashlight on the barrel of his rifle.On Nov. 9, 2022, Johnson was federally sentenced to 86 months in prison for two counts of assaulting a federal task force and brandishing a firearm in relation to a crime of violence.The state sentence served in Jefferson County Circuit Court recommended a total sentence of one year in prison for the five counts of wanton endangerment.The Office of the Commonwealth’s Attorney said the sentence will also be served concurrently with his federal sentence. If the federal sentence was set aside on appeal, the state sentence would also be set aside.A new plea agreement would be negotiated if the state conviction is set aside.Copyright 2023 WAVE. All rights reserved.
- [Grandmaster Jay sentenced to one year after guilty plea to state wanton endangerment charges](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/grandmaster-jay-sentenced-to-one-year-after-guilty-plea-to-state-wanton-endangerment-charges/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. — John Johnson, the leader of the NFAC also known as Grandmaster Jay, appeared in state court on Thursday. According to court documents, the court recommended a sentence of one year to serve on each of the five counts on wanton endangerment. All charges would run concurrent for a total of one year to serve. Documents say that if Johnson's federal conviction is set aside on appeal, the state court sentence will be set aside as well. If the state conviction is set aside, a new plea agreement will be negotiated, or the charges will be presented to a jury. The incident happened the night before the 2020 Kentucky Derby, when the NFAC was in Louisville for a racial justice protest for Breonna Taylor. Make it easy to keep up-to-date with more stories like this. Download the WHAS11 News app now. For Apple or Android users.
- ['Grandmaster Jay' makes Alford plea on state charges related to Louisville protests - WLKY](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/grandmaster-jay-makes-alford-plea-on-state-charges-related-to-louisville-protests-wlky/) - The leader of a militant group who pointed a gun at police officers during protests in Louisville has been sentenced on state charges.John Johnson, who goes by "Grandmaster Jay" with the "NFAC," made an Alford plea Thursday morning to five counts of wanton endangerment. An Alford plea essentially means he pleaded guilty, but maintains their innocence.Johnson pointed a gun at officers from a rooftop as they monitored Jefferson Square in September 2020.He was in the city protesting Breonna Taylor's death by police officers. Last year, Johnson was sentenced to seven years on federal charges. For this recent guilty plea, he was sentenced to one year for each count, but each will be served concurrently. And that year will be served concurrently with his seven-year sentence. So his sentence remains at seven years.It should be noted that if his federal conviction is set aside on appeal, the state court sentence will be set aside as well. If the state conviction is set aside, a new plea agreement will be negotiated, or the charges will be presented to a jury. LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The leader of a militant group who pointed a gun at police officers during protests in Louisville has been sentenced on state charges.John Johnson, who goes by "Grandmaster Jay" with the "NFAC," made an Alford plea Thursday morning to five counts of wanton endangerment.
- [Militia leader sentenced to prison for pointing rifle at police in Louisville - Yahoo News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/militia-leader-sentenced-to-prison-for-pointing-rifle-at-police-in-louisville-yahoo-news/) - A militia leader has been sentenced to more time in prison for pointing an assault rifle at police in Louisville during racial justice protests in 2020.John Johnson, who goes by Grand Master Jay, leads the Not F***ing Around Coalition, a group of Black militants that visited Louisville several times amid demonstrations over the police killing of Breonna Taylor.On Thursday, he was ordered to serve one year in prison after pleading guilty to five counts of wanton endangerment in Jefferson Circuit Court.More:Louisville to spend $30+ million on new housing campus, eviction prevention. Here's howJohnson, from Cincinnati, was previously sentenced to seven years and two months in prison after he was found guilty on federal charges for the same incident."Johnson manifested indifference to the value of human life and created a substantial danger of death or serious physical injury when he pointed an assault riffle at 5 police officers stationed on the roof" of a building near Jefferson Square Park, a press release from Jefferson Circuit Court said.More:Brooklawn to appeal state's decision to revoke license for treating kids at facilitiesThe sentences are set to be served concurrently.In November, Johnson's attorney Murdoch Walker II said he would appeal the federal sentencing.Reach Ana Rocío Álvarez Bríñez at abrinez@gannett.com; follow her on Twitter at @SoyAnaAlvarezThis article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Militia leader Grandmaster Jay sentenced to prison in Kentucky court
- ['Grandmaster Jay' sentenced for pointing rifle at officers during Breonna Taylor protest](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/grandmaster-jay-sentenced-for-pointing-rifle-at-officers-during-breonna-taylor-protest/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- John Johnson, a militia leader who goes by the name "Grandmaster Jay," was sentenced Thursday in Jefferson Circuit Court to one year in prison for pointing a rifle at five police officers during the Breonna Taylor protests in 2020.Johnson is already serving seven years and two months in prison after a federal court jury in May 2020 found him guilty of one count of "Assaulting, Resisting or Impeding" and one count of "Brandishing a Firearm in Relation to a Crime of Violence" for the same crime.On Thursday, Johnson, 59, appeared in state court by teleconference and entered an Alford plea to five counts of wanton endangerment, meaning he maintained his innocence but acknowledged that prosecutors had enough evidence for a conviction.Johnson told Judge Annie O'Connell that he agreed "the possibility is very high based on the evidence that a guilty" finding would be returned by a jury. The prosecution recommend a one-year sentence for each wanton endangerment charge, to be served at the same time. That time will also run concurrently with the federal prison sentence."We agreed it's in his best interest to do this," said attorney David Lambertus, who represents Johnson.Judge O'Connell accepted the recommended plea.The incident took place while various groups were protesting at Jefferson Square Park in downtown Louisville in September 2020.The Kentucky Derby was scheduled to run and those groups said they were demonstrating because they felt the race should not be taking place when no criminal charges had yet been filed in connection with the death of Taylor.At that time, LMPD officers at the scene received a radio transmission stating that a group of "six to eight heavily armed individuals" were parked on Armory Place, near a parking garage, according to court documents.Two federal officers and three LMPD officers then went to the top of the nearby Jefferson County Grand Jury Building to watch the group, but were blinded by a flashlight when they leaned over the roof, the affidavit claimed.Prosecutors said the flashlight was attached to the barrel of a rifle Johnson was pointing at the officers.Copyright 2023 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
- [Former Trump DHS official Ken Cuccinelli testifying in grand jury investigation around 2020 ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/former-trump-dhs-official-ken-cuccinelli-testifying-in-grand-jury-investigation-around-2020/) - (CNN) — Former Trump-era Department of Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli is testifying before a federal grand jury in Washington, DC, on Thursday.Cuccinelli headed into the grand jury area just before 10 a.m. ET at the federal courthouse, where prosecutors looking at efforts to undermine the 2020 election as part of special counsel Jack Smith's investigation are also gathered."Yep," Cuccinelli told CNN when asked if was there to testify to the grand jury. When asked about the topic, he said, "Don't know." Cuccinelli was a notable figure in Donald Trump's attempts to use his administration to pursue unfounded election fraud claims after the 2020 election and was a frequent presence around Trump's Oval Office.He previously testified to the House select committee that investigated the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. His appearance at the federal courthouse on Thursday suggests that prosecutors are continuing to look into high-level conversations within the Trump administration after the election, and may build upon other testimony of top White House officials who have appeared before the grand jury.The House select committee reported that Cuccinelli fielded an inquiry from Trump and his top advisers about the executive branch seizing voting machines after the election, but Cuccinelli said his department didn't have that authority.Yet Cuccinelli had also messaged then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in November 2020 about Dominion voting machines, which Trump's advisers falsely believed were part of a fraud conspiracy in the election, according to the committee's final report.Trump also considered Cuccinelli for a special appointment to seek out election fraud on behalf of the White House after the election, according to a Senate Judiciary Committee report.Trump told a group of officials "something to the effect of, 'I think Ken Cuccinelli would be a great special counsel,'" former Justice Department Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue said, according to the Senate committee's report.
- [24 States Banned 'Zuckerbucks' Grants After 2020 Election - The Epoch Times](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/24-states-banned-zuckerbucks-grants-after-2020-election-the-epoch-times/) - In the wake of the 2020 elections, Republicans across the nation raised alarm over revelations that a Chicago-based nonprofit had dispersed nearly $420 million in grants, technical assistance, and other monetary contributions to assist local officials in administering elections. The little-known Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) had, with little attention, issued grants to nearly 2,500 county elections offices across 47 states and the District of Columbia before the 2020 election, using $350 million donated by Facebook—now Meta—founder Mark Zuckerberg for its Safe Elections Project. The CTCL grants and awards were largely accorded to local elections officials to manage the voting accommodations mandated by public health officials during pandemic-skewered 2020. Money was also made available by CTCL for county elections administrators to partner with community organization members for training in expanding voter registration, ballot curing, and mail-in voting among other outreach initiatives. Although CTCL describes itself as a bipartisan nonprofit, saying that it issued grants to any elections officials who sought assistance, Republicans maintain the center aggressively recruited officials in counties and precincts that are traditionally Democratic—most notably in densely urban areas. Conservatives railed against what they called “Zuckerbucks” or “Zuck bucks,” claiming that CTCL’s grants and other private contributions to election offices masked as COVID-19 relief was, in fact, an orchestrated effort to drive-up 2020 Democratic voter turnout and put Democrat Joe Biden in the White House. ‘Zuckerbucks’ Influence in Spotlight Chester County workers transport mail-in and absentee ballots to be processed at West Chester University in West Chester, Pa., on Nov. 4, 2020. (Matt Slocum/AP Photo) How much of an influence “Zuckerbucks” had on the 2020 election remains a hot debate, but there is smoke with this fire. Among many analyses of the 2020 vote that documented variations from traditional voting turnouts in counties that received “Zuckerbucks” grants are those conducted by the Honest Elections Project, created in February 2020 by the Federalist Society, which dismissed CTCL’s claims that the grants were for COVID-19 relief. “The data show otherwise,” it said. A Real Clear Investigations analysis determined that a significant majority of CTCL grants went to counties where the “average partisan lean in favor of Democrat Joe Biden over Republican Donald Trump was 33 points—meaning the aid could be expected to stimulate more Democratic votes.” Researchers at the Capital Research Center, a Washington-based conservative non-profit, documented CTCL’s partisan effects in nine states in seven studies: Texas, Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona/Nevada, and Michigan/Wisconsin. The Epoch Times has covered the “Zuckerbucks” scheme and responses by Republicans in state legislatures extensively, including heated battles in Missouri and Wisconsin. Most readers—like most Americans—were unaware that their local elections office could legally accept grants from private sources to help administer elections. A November analysis by The Epoch Times’ Benjamin Weingarten explains how pervasive the practice is. Or, was, that is. Since the 2020 election, state lawmakers—mostly Republicans—have taken a long look at private contributions to elections offices. Ejecting Private Money From Public Elections Over the last two years, 24 state Legislatures have adopted laws banning or restricting the use of private, third-party grants and other allegedly non-partisan contributions to “assist” local officials in administering elections. With 45 of the nation’s state Legislatures now convened in 2023 sessions, bills banning private money in public elections administration have been filed in at least two states and may be filed in at least two more. Montana’s Senate Bill 117 would ban election offices from accepting any private funding. A similar bill failed in 2021 when the Legislature was last in session. Montana is one of four states where lawmakers only convene in odd-numbered years. Idaho’s House Bill 11 would prohibit state employees and officials from accepting private moneys to administer elections. In 2021, Idaho lawmakers adopted a bill that only applied the ban to local elections officials. Similar measures are anticipated in Wisconsin, Wyoming, and Louisiana, where lawmakers convene April 10, the last legislature to begin its 2023 session; by then, 10 states will have already adjourned for the year. The Louisiana Legislature adopted an elections operations public funding ban in 2021 that was vetoed by Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards. A 2022 bill prohibiting any state or local official overseeing elections from accepting private donations never got out committee. A 2023 bill has not been pre-filed but is likely. Bel Edwards is one of six Democratic governors who have vetoed bills adopted by Republican-controlled Legislatures in 2021 and 2022 banning private money donations to local elections administrative offices. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers vetoes Republican bills during a news conference in the Capitol rotunda in Madison, Wis., on Aug. 10, 2021. (Scott Bauer/AP Photo) Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, North Carolina Gov. Gov. Roy Cooper, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers are the other five with Evers doing so in 2021 and, again, in 2022. Kelly’s veto of two Kansas bills, which prohibited the receipt and expenditure of private moneys by election officials, was overridden by the Legislature in two-thirds supermajority vote and went into effect July 1, 2021. Wolf vetoed a 2021 Pennsylvania bill that didn’t ban private contributions to elections offices, but required all grants be distributed equally across all counties. He did, however, sign into law SB 982, which prohibits any private, nongovernmental funding for elections administration in July 2022. According to an analysis by the Capital Research Center, CTCL in 2020 issued grants to 10 of the 13 counties that Biden won in Pennsylvania, including Erie County, which Trump had won in 2016. “Together, these 10 counties received $20.8 million, or over 83 percent of all CTCL grants to Pennsylvania,” the analysis determined. “In contrast, CTCL gave grants to 12 of the 54 counties Trump won statewide. These 12 counties received just $1.73 million, a mere 7 percent of all CTCL funds in the Keystone state.” Pennsylvania’s new law replaces private contributions to county elections offices with public money. The law includes an “election integrity grant program” that allows to state’s Department of Community and Economic Development to provide $45 million a year—$5.15 per registered voter—to reimburse counties for additional expenses in administering an election. The money can be used for “payment of staff needed to pre-canvass and canvass mail-in ballots and absentee ballots” and “physical security and transparency costs for centralized pre-canvassing and canvassing” under the law. “No matter who on the outside is contributing, no matter their expressed motivations, millions of dollars coming in from national figures or organizations naturally raises suspicions of hidden agendas,” said SB 92 lead sponsor Sen. Lisa Baker (R-Dallas) in a statement. It is uncertain if Wisconsin Republicans in 2023 will attempt to get a third bill past Evers’ veto pen, with the governor winning a second term in November. But they may not need to. In 2022, both chambers of the Legislature adopted a resolution to place a proposed state constitutional amendment before voters that would ban private funding for elections. The resolution must be approved again in 2023 for it to get on a ballot—most likely in 2024. Wisconsin lawmakers in 2021 passed a bill that did not prohibit private funding for elections offices but required the state’s Elections Commission to approve it and to distribute it to counties based on population in a process overseen by the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee. In 2022, the GOP-controlled Legislature included a total public funding ban in a broader elections bill. Evers shot them both down. “I am objecting to this bill in its entirety because I object to the ban on governments using private grant funds for election administration,” he wrote in his April 2022 veto. “Regardless of the source of additional funding for election administration, election administrators must always run elections according to state and federal law. By prohibiting donations or grants to election agencies, this bill unnecessarily restricts the use of resources that may be needed to ensure elections are administered effectively.” In response, at least four Wisconsin counties have adopted their own bans on local elections offices accepting private donations for operations and technical assistance. Two have also done so in Michigan where, with Democrats now in control of both legislative chambers, such bills are unlikely to advance out of committees.
- [With an eye on 2024, some states consider new protections for election workers](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/with-an-eye-on-2024-some-states-consider-new-protections-for-election-workers/) - Published 2023-01-26 10:29 10:29 January 26, 2023 am We’re answering the “how” and “why” of politics news. Subscribe to our daily newsletter. After lies about the 2020 presidential election led to threats against election workers and instances of actual political violence, all eyes were on how that would affect the 2022 midterms. While many breathed a sigh of relief that election administration went mostly as planned, the attention and pressure still took a toll. Now, some states are looking to add policies that would address potential future threats for election workers. It’s a continuation of legislative activity from 2022, but with a new urgency ahead of the 2024 presidential race. Federal funding was approved last year to help boost security, but some voting rights advocates say it wasn’t enough and more must be done to ensure the protection of election workers, a women-led workforce that will remain crucial to the sustainability of elections. “Being able to sufficiently fund elections plays a tremendous role in protecting democracy,” said Jena Griswold, the Democratic Colorado secretary of state. “As we see insider attacks spread across the country and threats to election workers, it requires upgrade of physical security and teams to be able to assess and respond to situations.” Election workers have increasingly warned of threats of violence and harassment due in part to conspiracies promoted by former President Donald Trump — who has said he’s running again — following his 2020 loss. His supporters, some of whom then ran for offices with power over elections, have continued to push those unfounded claims. Many of the election-denying candidates lost their races in November, a sign that democracy was a top issue for voters ahead of the midterms. But while election workers mostly powered through a smooth process in November, the threat of political violence continues, according to election officials and voting rights advocates. Ramping up protections for election workers will be critical this year for legislatures, said Sam Oliker-Friedland, executive director of the Institute for Responsive Government, a group that offers recommendations on voting policy and other civic engagement initiatives. He believes that can include state funding to beef up security infrastructure. “This is a workforce that’s one of the most sort of underfunded, under-resourced, overworked public service jobs that exists in the United States,” Oliker-Friedland said. “And it’s one that’s primarily women. I don’t think that’s an accident.” Colorado and Oregon enacted laws last year that add new criminal penalties against people accused of threatening election workers. A new California law keeps election workers’ home addresses private under a confidentiality program. The Voting Rights Lab, a nonpartisan group that tracks voting legislation, estimates 19 states introduced bills last year to protect election officials. Six of those states successfully passed new laws. At least eight states have introduced a minimum of 11 bills that would provide similar protections for election workers, according to the Voting Rights Lab, and more are possible. In Minnesota, lawmakers have announced a slate of election-related proposals, including plans aimed at punishing intimidation of election workers. In Texas, a bill ​​would create several new criminal offenses for conduct against election officials and protect their personal information. And in Montana and Indiana, bills have been introduced that would increase punishment for targeting an election worker. Most of the related legislation moving through statehouses have been led by Democrats. Whether these bills make it into law is unclear, but some have bipartisan support. In Missouri, a Republican has filed a bill that would create a felony criminal offense if someone takes one of several actions against an election official, including threatening or causing harm to the official or their family. In New Jersey, a pair of bills that would protect election workers’ personal information is sponsored by Republicans. Republicans last year authored bills in New Hampshire and Oregon, noted Liz Avore, Voting Rights Lab’s vice president of policy and law. “We’re seeing legislation that’s been introduced by both Democrats and Republicans,” she noted. “In some ways, this is a kind of call to action that is bipartisan.” Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic Michigan secretary of state who has been a prominent voice for fair elections, said it’s been heartening to see new secretaries of state announce plans to keep election workers safe. Earlier this month, she and Michigan lawmakers announced support for a bill that would protect election workers by increasing penalties for threatening that particular group. Among the proposals are security funding for local clerks. “We’re nowhere near where we need to be to protect our democracy or to protect our election workers,” Benson said. “My job, and the job of all of us in this space, is to keep fighting for it, and we will, and to use everything on the table to make smart, informed decisions to keep moving the ball forward where we can.” Oliker-Friedland said more funding for election materials and safety measures can go a long way in also protecting workers. Many offices are often funded through local and state taxes. “Just making election officials’ jobs easier actually is a pro for voter access in and of itself,” he said. “And I think people forget that sometimes.” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold greets supporters before a rally in Idaho Springs, Colorado on October 2022. (Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images) In Colorado, Griswold helped support legislation signed into law last year that establishes election officials and workers as a protected class against doxxing, or having their personal information published online for the purpose of threatening them or their family. Another provision prohibits intimidating, threatening or coercing an election official while they are performing official duties or retaliating against them for performing their official duties. Both carry penalties. “Election workers in the state of Colorado have been facing what many election workers have faced across the nation,” Griswold said. “… We’re doing everything that we have at our disposal to make sure that we’re protecting Colorado’s elections.” But whether the laws are all working as intended is still unclear, in part because not a lot of time has passed since they were implemented. In Washington state, a new law updated the state’s cyberstalking and cyber harassment law and made it a felony to target election workers online. Shortly after the state’s primary last August, an election worker in Jefferson County, in the western part of the state, received an email with a warning: “Be careful … your life might depend on it. The truth will prevail.” The worker, who spoke with The 19th on the condition of anonymity because of fear of their safety, filed a restraining order against the person who sent the email. A court granted the request, which will be in effect for five years, including for the 2024 presidential election. But the Jefferson County prosecutor’s office said unless there is new evidence, it does not intend to file charges in this case. James M. Kennedy, the Jefferson County prosecuting attorney, said Washington state law requires that threats be more specific than the language in the email to obtain a conviction. He said he sympathized with the election worker. “We absolutely agree that the conduct committed by this suspect was totally inappropriate,” Kennedy said in an email. “However we did not think it quite crossed the threshold into criminal.” The election worker said the threat made them question whether they want to keep working on elections. “I actually sat down with my parents and my spouse and said, ‘Is this something that I want to continue on as far as a career path? Is this really something that I want to do? And that my family wants to be subjected to too?’” they said. Even as legislators of both parties look to protect election workers, some Republican legislators are proposing bills that would limit how administrators do parts of their jobs. Many have been filed as a response to unfounded concern about election fraud. While Texas is considering some protections, a Republican-backed bill moving through the statehouse — one of more than a dozen voting-related bills this year — would expand the Texas attorney general’s power to prosecute election crimes. Voting rights advocates worry it will target election administrators. “We’re seeing a divide develop across the country, where states are either acting to protect their election officials or they’re acting to attack them,” Avore said. “We want you to pay attention to what your state is doing, because election professionals are the ones who we depend on to run our elections, to hold our democracy — their protection and their ability to do their job is incredibly important.” Griswold said Republican lawmakers who have introduced such legislation are creating “a culture of fear” for election workers just trying to do their jobs. “It’s a shame to see states pursue those types of actions, especially given what Republican and Democratic election workers have had to face in the last three years,” she said. Oliker-Friedland said states that make other changes to election rules, like a new photo ID requirement in Ohio, also “have intense implications for election officials’ workload, both actually how they plan for the election and how they communicate to voters.” What states do in the months ahead will play a part in how election workers view their work. Benson said she lives “in a constant state of concern and vulnerability,” in part because she continues to receive threats. At least one threat came just days after President Joe Biden awarded her with a presidential citizens medal for her work in supporting democracy, handling pressure from people who sought to overturn the 2020 election results. “We’re not out of the woods yet in terms of people being activated by misinformation to try to do harm to election workers,” she said. “It has been gratifying to connect with others who have dealt with this. That is where I find my strength.”
- [Louisville to spend $30+ million on new housing campus, eviction prevention. Here's how](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/louisville-to-spend-30-million-on-new-housing-campus-eviction-prevention-heres-how/) - Louisville plans to build a "first of its kind" medical and housing campus for unhoused residents, using federal funds dedicated through the American Rescue Plan, Mayor Craig Greenberg announced Thursday.The project is part of a sweeping plan to prevent and reduce homelessness, which includes spending $8.25 million on eviction prevention services and $24 million to build more affordable housing.The funds come from a $38 million grant the city received from Kentucky's state government last month, after the U.S. Treasury forced the state to reallocate part of its Emergency Rent Assistance Program dollars that had not been spent on deadline.At a press conference, Greenberg said the city's plan represents an opportunity to "make meaningful, impactful, long-term differences" for people experiencing and facing homelessness."Today, instead of choosing between short-term and long-term solutions to this problem we are choosing to make a permanent difference and do both," the mayor, who took office earlier this month, added in a press release.More:Louisville sweet shop destroyed in a fire is coming back and taking business on the roadHow Louisville will fund eviction preventionThe first money to go out the door will be spent on emergency rent assistance for people who already applied through the Kentucky Housing Corporation, a quasi-governmental agency tasked with distributing COVID-related aid statewide.KHC began accepting applications for Jefferson County residents in May after Louisville ran out of money for its own program. But it stopped Dec. 22 after announcing the $38 million grant.KHC has continued to process completed applications but withdrew about 2,400 that were unfinished — leaving those residents to face possible eviction.On Thursday, Greenberg said the city will work with the Community Area Ministries to distribute $5 million in assistance to that group."We have been working as fast as we can, and we know that far too many people in our community have been stressed and worried as they have applied for funding over the past several months," Greenberg said. "... On behalf of our state and local governments, I am sorry it has taken so long."Background:Thousands of Louisville renters face eviction while city weighs aid programThe city will also grant the Louisville Urban League $2.5 million to be spent on security deposits and the first month's rent for people forced to move. That program is expected to begin Feb. 20.Another $1.25 million be spent on mediation assistance and legal representation for low-income families in eviction court."We know there are some really gaping holes in our system that also prevent families from having stable housing," said Kish Cumi Price, president of the Louisville Urban League. "So we're looking forward to collaborating with the mayor and his administration and the other partners in our community to help solve those issues."What the housing campus will includeLouisville has agreed to spend $6.9 million on several properties in Old Louisville to build a "community care campus," in partnership with Norton Healthcare, U of L Health and the Coalition for the Homeless, along with other community agencies.The campus will take up most of a block along Breckinridge Street, between Floyd and Brook streets, where the Vu Guesthouse hotel and C2, an event space, are currently located.The city previously purchased property abutting the proposed campus to open a "safe outdoor space" for unhoused residents. Greenberg said his administration plans to continue working with operators of the site, called the Hope Village, to provide shelter for those who need it.The new campus will provide temporary housing, medical care and connections to other services for unhoused residents. It's expected to serve 150 people per day."The facilities on the new community care campus will be a safe place for hospitals to discharge patients who are experiencing homelessness who require ongoing medical support," Greenberg said, including physical therapy, wound care and mental health services."This is an impressive, important, groundbreaking partnership that is going to change a lot of lives in our community for the better," he added.Riggs Lewis, system vice president of health policy for Norton, said partners began working on plans for the campus a year ago. They settled on the location after touring multiple properties along the downtown Interstate 65 corridor, where 80% of Louisville's homeless community lives.For subscribers:Can a trip to the chiropractor cause a stroke? Two Kentucky women say yes.George Stinson, a member of the ownership group behind Vu and C2, said the COVID-19 pandemic slowed the businesses. And when approached to sell the properties, he saw it as an opportunity to support "the overall good of the city.""The new administration has a brighter, more progressive outlook to make things happen," he said.Stachelle Bussey, founder of the Hope Buss, which runs the Hope Village, said the medical care will be important for people in the adjacent outdoor space.She also hopes city officials continue to engage unhoused residents and community organizations as they develop the campus.Greenberg said the city will need at least $9 million to renovate one building on the properties. It remains unclear how much the total campus will cost and how the city plans to fund its development.More money goes toward affordable housingThe last piece of Greenberg's plan is $24 million to be spent on affordable housing — "a significant investment that will change neighborhoods and improve lives."A 2019 Housing Needs Assessment found Louisville was in need of more than 31,000 affordable housing units.In October, the Louisville Affordable Housing Trust Fund announced seven developments that will receive $40 million in American Rescue Plan funding to build 300 new affordable units.The city is now seeking partners to build more units for households at or below 50% of the area's medium income, about $42,350 annually.The deadline to apply is March 10.Reach reporter Bailey Loosemore at bloosemore@courier-journal.com, 502-582-4646 or on Twitter @bloosemore. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: https://www.courier-journal.com/baileyl.
- [Meta says it won't punish Trump for attacking the 2020 election - Erie News Now](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/25/meta-says-it-wont-punish-trump-for-attacking-the-2020-election-erie-news-now/) - And then there will surely be reprehensible, antidemocratic comments that Trump will make on Facebook that perhaps don't outright violate the company rules, despite how ugly they may be, but which ignite outrage and throw Meta into the spotlight. For example, last week, Trump raged on Truth Social that he believed the reporters, and perhaps editors, of Politico's scoop on the leaked Roe v. Wade decision should be jailed until they disclose their source(s).
- [Sinn Féin to seek to correct two more errors in 2020 election expenses statement](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/sinn-fein-to-seek-to-correct-two-more-errors-in-2020-election-expenses-statement/) - Sinn Féin made two more errors in its 2020 election expenses statement when it incorrectly listed sums in euro for spending charged in sterling, leading to an under-declaration of €945.The party is to seek to correct its statement to the Standards in Public Office Commission (Sipo).Sinn Féin previously had to change its declaration for the 2020 general election after it omitted spending on an opinion poll costing almost €7,000.The issue of election expenses has been the subject of controversy for almost two weeks.Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe was heavily criticised after it took him a week – and three separate statements – to outline the full extent of donations made to his campaigns by businessman Michael Stone.The errors in Sinn Féin’s 2020 election expenses statement were brought to the party’s attention by The Irish Times.Two entries under the “publicity” category in Sinn Féin’s return to Sipo related to work the party had carried out by businesses in Northern Ireland.The first related to work done by Belfast-based company Offline Central on editing Sinn Féin’s party political broadcast for the election. The party recorded the spending as being €4,800. However, the invoice from the company shows the work was charged for in Sterling at a rate of £4,800.The second entry was for work carried out on television and radio material by Newtownards business HotPress Sound. Similarly in this instance the party declared the spending as being €800 when the invoice shows the work was charged £800 in sterling.“This was an administrative error that should not have happened,” Sinn Féin said in a statement. “It will be corrected and returned to Sipo.”The statement added: “Both invoices were paid by the party in the south, at the following rates – Offline Central: €5601.25 and Hot Press Sound: €943.96.”Based on the these figures the errors amount to an under-declaration of €945.21.European electionsThere was also an omission in Sinn Fein’s expenses statement for the 2019 European elections. Two of its candidates, Matt Carthy in Midlands North West and Lynn Boylan in Dublin, assigned all their campaign spending to the party nationally.While spending on all individual items for both candidates was included in the national statement, the party did not report the total expenditure made on behalf of each candidate by the party, as required under SIPO rules. The sections were left blank.While the third candidate, Liadh Ní Riada, filed a personal election expenses statement, the party nationally also made payments on behalf of her campaign. Her expenditure on the national statement is also itemised individually but, like her colleagues, the total expenditure is not reported.The party said the omissions were a result of a simple error.Previously it emerged that Sinn Féin failed to declare spending on an opinion poll carried out by British company Survation during the 2020 election at a cost of almost €7,000. The party said the invoice was “accidentally omitted due to staff working remotely as a result of public health restrictions.“When this came to our attention, the statement was immediately amended and the invoice sent to them [Sipo].”The party said it was “well within the spending limits laid down for the 2020 general election”.It was reported on Thursday that Sinn Féin also failed to disclose expenses worth more than €2,000 for six events it held during the 2016 general election campaign.A party spokesman said Sinn Féin held 23 press events during the 2016 general election campaign, with only six of these held at indoor venues.“Their use should have been included in our election return seven years ago. We regret that they were not,” he said. “The total value of the hire of these venues was €2,160.70. All these invoices – bar one – were paid at the time. The remaining invoice has now been paid.”The spokesman said the party’s election return would now be amended as appropriate and returned to Sipo.He pointed out that the maximum amount permitted to be spent by Sinn Féin in 2016 was €229,000 at a national level.“Even with the addition of these invoices, Sinn Féin’s election expenses were less than a third of this amount,” he said.Fianna FáilWhile visiting Irish troops in South Lebanon on Thursday, Tánaiste Micháel Martin was asked whether he believed Fianna Fáil had any questions to ask regarding political donations and election spending.“We take the legislation very seriously and have done on a consistent basis over the last number of elections since the legislation came in,” said Mr Martin.“In the overall context, huge progress has been made in Ireland in respect of spending in elections.”Mr Martin said Irish legislation has “transformed both the electoral and political scene from a funding point of view.”“Ireland actually has one of the stricter regimes in terms of how much one can spend in an election and how much one one can receive,” said Mr Martin.He said that when compared with the United States, Northern Ireland, the United Kingdom and many European countries, Ireland has a “much stricter framework and that framework has worked”.Mr Martin added that “in parallel with that [legislation] has been the state funding of political parties which has also helped enormously in terms of disconnecting, if you like, the idea of money and influence having an impact on politics”.
- [Forty-six community leaders selected for Bingham Fellows Class of 2023 - Lane Report](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/forty-six-community-leaders-selected-for-bingham-fellows-class-of-2023-lane-report/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. — From a very competitive pool of candidates, forty-six community leaders have been selected to participate in the Leadership Louisville Center’s Bingham Fellows Class of 2023. The topic for the 2023 Bingham Fellows will be: TALENT: Pathways & Pipelines, focused on building a future-ready workforce. As with every Bingham Fellows program year, the class comprises a talented group of local leaders with a broad knowledge base and range of experience on the topic. Their focus will be better on understanding long-standing challenges with our talent pipelines and pathways. Beginning this week, they will discuss how we can scale best-practices to address our current talent shortages. Throughout the program, participants will work in teams on projects that will be revealed to the public at their completion. The Bingham Fellows class of 2022 will be sharing their projects on the topic, “Moving Downtown Forward: Adapt & Reinvent,” on March 9, 2023, from 4-5 p.m. Members of the Bingham Fellows Class of 2023: Rick Blackwell, Ed.D., Councilman, Louisville Metro Council B. Todd Bright, Division Director, Communications, Kentucky Farm Bureau Erika Brown, Communication & Marketing Manager, Louisville Water Company Randisha Carter, Warehouse Manager, Michelin (American Synthetic Rubber Co) Elizabeth Cassady, Ph.D., Assistant Vice Chancellor for Enrollment and Student Success, Ivy Tech Community College Nickie Cobb, Ed.D., Associate Vice President of Workforce Solutions, Kentucky Community & Technical College System, KCTCS Jennifer Coombs, Vice President of Human Resources and Operations, Facilities Management Services, PBC oSha Cowley-Shireman, Director of Policy & Development, Owsley Brown II Family Foundation JP Davis, President, TBAIN&Co. | Today’s Woman Magazine Pat Denbow, Vice President, Partnerships, Louisville City FC | Racing Louisville FC Tiffany Calvert Diehl, Director of Learning & Development, Brown-Forman Corporation Tiffany Felts, VP Marketing and Development, Park Community Credit Union Jill Gaines, Director of Admissions and Community Partnerships, Spalding University Tony Georges, VP Human Resources, UPS Airlines Kevin H. Gibson, UMP, Regionalization Director, Louisville MSD Brigid O’Reilly Gies, Associate Vice President and Deputy Counsel for Employment and Faculty Affairs, University of Louisville Brian Gupton, CEO, Dataseam Timothy J. Hagerty, Member, Frost Brown Todd LLC Kali Hayes, Vice President, Associate Experience, Humana Inc. Beau Johnston, Director of Career and Technical Education, Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) Burcum Keeton, Assistant Director of Planning, Transit Authority of River City (TARC) Alina Klimkina, Attorney, Dinsmore & Shohl LLP Debra Leist, Director Customer Service and Marketing, LG&E and KU Energy Lance Mann, Director, Dean Dorton Angie McCorkle Buckler, Partner, Parcel Joshua McKee, Deputy Director of Economic Development, Louisville Metro Government Elizabeth W. McKune, Ed.D., COO/VP, Peace Hospital George McMinn, Operations Vice President, Messer Construction Co. Brandon S. McReynolds, Public Policy Research Manager, Metro United Way Kristina Mielke, Career Counselor, Refugees and Immigrants, Jewish Family & Career Services (JFCS) Terri Montgomery, Chief People Officer, Volunteers of America Mid-States (VOA) Laura Morris, Senior Director, Human Resources, GE Appliances, a Haier company Danny L. Mosby, CEO/President, Jamon Brown Foundation Felicia J. Nu’Man, Director of Policy, Louisville Urban League Rachel Raymond, Head of Talent Acquisition, Jack Henry Matt Real, M.Ed, Director of Career Development, Bellarmine University Stephanie Renner, Founding Member, Renner Strategic Consulting Molley Ricketts, CEO, Incipio Workforce Solutions Jean Scott, Client and Community Relations Assistant Director, PNC Bank Rena Sharpe, Chief Operating Officer, Goodwill Industries of Kentucky Angela Shaw, Vice President, Clinical Operations Business Improvement, Humana Inc. Felisha Short, HR Business Partner, GE Appliances, a Haier company Antoine Terry, Founder, Unite502 Kevin Uyisenga, Executive Director, See Forward Ministries Sean G. Williamson, Partner, Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, LLP Angella Wilson, Sr Program Director, Adult Career Services, KentuckianaWorks (KCAC) For many years, cities across the country have struggled to build and support a workforce that will foster a thriving economy and allow them to stay competitive. Louisville is no different, and the COVID-19 pandemic has compounded this challenge. Work is changing, and companies must change with it. Talent is reprioritizing what they want out of jobs and locations. Gen-Z is entering the job market in larger numbers with different ideas of what work looks like. Learning and Instruction gaps caused by the pandemic have resulted in inconsistent preparation of today’s students for the workforce. Automation and AI continue to change workforce needs. As our labor market evolves, we must provide education and upskilling opportunities to our working residents to give them economic mobility while also meeting the needs of our city’s employers. The Bingham Fellows Class of 2023 will gather a diverse cohort of business and civic leaders better to understand long-standing challenges with our talent pipelines and pathways. They will discuss how we can scale best practices to address our current talent shortages. To ensure our talent infrastructure is sound, businesses, educational institutions, and the community must collaborate on solutions. It will require investment into strong training pathways to our most in-demand open positions, better retention of graduates, support for businesses in growing their talent pipelines from within, expansion of community initiatives focused on workforce development, and influencing talent to choose Louisville as their home. The Bingham Fellows Class of 2023 will study these challenges from various perspectives and seek community-based solutions. They will: Learn more about how to support initiatives already underway in our community that are developing our current and future workforce Work with higher education institutions to get more graduates to stay in Louisville Strengthen the skills of existing workers by scaling up work-based learning opportunities to help businesses ‘grow their talent from within Understand the motivators for relocation in a post-COVID world and how we can influence talent to choose Louisville Engage the business community to help educational institutions develop and support strong training pathways aligned with high wage-high demand occupations and employability skills Their work will begin in January 2023 and conclude with a public announcement of their initiatives in March 2024. Click here for more Kentucky business news.
- [Everything you need to know about the heated RNC chair election - The Washington Post](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-heated-rnc-chair-election-the-washington-post/) - DANA POINT, Calif. — Republican disputes over the future of the party will culminate here Friday when Republican National Committee members select the organization’s next leader.Third-term Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel is seeking another two-year term, but some members are pushing for a change in direction after disappointing election results under her leadership, including in the recent midterms, in which Republicans failed to regain control of the Senate and won a narrower House majority than many GOP leaders had expected to see.Her top competitor in the race is Harmeet Dhillon, a Republican lawyer and the RNC committeewoman from California. Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief executive who has spread false claims about the 2020 election and the coronavirus pandemic, also is running.Why has the race generated so much interest in the party? And how will the election work? Here’s what you need to know:What to knowShow
- [Meta says it won't punish Trump for attacking the 2020 election - KAKE](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/meta-says-it-wont-punish-trump-for-attacking-the-2020-election-kake/) - And then there will surely be reprehensible, antidemocratic comments that Trump will make on Facebook that perhaps don't outright violate the company rules, despite how ugly they may be, but which ignite outrage and throw Meta into the spotlight. For example, last week, Trump raged on Truth Social that he believed the reporters, and perhaps editors, of Politico's scoop on the leaked Roe v. Wade decision should be jailed until they disclose their source(s).
- [Arizona: elections director in county that refused to certify results quits - The Guardian](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/arizona-elections-director-in-county-that-refused-to-certify-results-quits-the-guardian/) - Arizona: elections director in county that refused to certify results quitsLisa Marra, who worked in Republican Cochise county, condemns ‘physically and emotionally threatening’ work environment The elections director of a rural Republican Arizona county that refused to certify the state’s 2022 elections has resigned.The Washington Post reported that Lisa Marra, the appointed elections director in Cochise county, will leave the role. The county has not yet confirmed the resignation to the Guardian. Marra could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.‘Decisions imminent’ in Trump election case, Atlanta district attorney saysRead moreMarra has served as the county’s elections director since 2017. She has been a vocal defender of Arizona elections, especially since 2020, which has led to backlash from Republicans.The Post obtained a letter from Marra’s attorney detailing her resignation, which criticized a work environment that had grown “physically and emotionally threatening” with “objectively difficult and unpleasant working conditions”.The resignation comes after two Republican members of the county’s board of supervisors, Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby, sought a full hand-count of ballots of the November election, arguing that a hand-count could double-check tabulator results and that tabulator machines were not properly certified, a claim debunked by state elections officials. Marra did not believe a hand-count was warranted or possible, while the supervisors and recorder pushed for it.A judge ruled in early November that a broad hand-count was not allowed by state law.The two supervisors then refused to certify the election, requiring a court intervention to force them to certify. Crosby is now the subject of a recall effort by local residents over his refusal to certify the election.In recent weeks, Judd and Crosby delayed paying for an outside attorney that Marra required when she, the supervisors, and the elected county recorder were sued over the hand-count.Her representation in the legal case, which was expedited over just a few days, cost more than $30,000. After delaying payment in December, the board approved the payment this week after the law firm that represented Marra sent a letter to the county notifying them that a failure to pay the bill could result in legal action.The county’s deputy director of elections also left the department recently. Martha Rodriguez, who worked for the county for 28 years, mostly in elections, retired on 13 January, the county’s local newspaper reported.The two departures leave Cochise county without seasoned elections officials at a time when elections workers are under increased scrutiny, often leading to threats and harassment. The field has seen high turnover nationwide and in Arizona, where several elections officials in multiple counties have quit in the past year because of the hostile environment.The county recorder and elections director in Republican-dominated Yavapai county both quit in 2022 after facing rounds of harassment and obstacles over the 2020 election, which Trump won handily in the county. In Yuma Ccounty, the recorder, and more recently the elections director, have both left in the past year.TopicsArizonaThe fight for democracyRepublicansnewsReuse this content
- [Food Was Amazing and Staff Was Even Better! - Common Dreams](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/26/food-was-amazing-and-staff-was-even-better-common-dreams/) - Graciously offering up some black trauma porn with dinner, a Republican Women's Club in Kentucky just hosted a book promo at a local restaurant for Jon Mattingly, one of the Louisville police officers who helped murder Breonna Taylor in her bed, to tell "his side" of a story that they claim "has been twisted to fit into a false, woke storyline.” They also broadcast the "snuff by cop" audio and video on public speakers so all the patrons could hear. So thoughtful. Up next: Postcards of the lynching.A black, 26-year-old emergency room technician in Louisville, Taylor was asleep in bed with her boyfriend Kenneth Walker around midnight on March 13, 2020 when plainclothes police officers pounded on their door as part of a drug raid mistakenly targeting her long-ex-boyfriend. After breaking down the door with a battering ram, at least seven cops burst into the apartment without identifying themselves; Walker, thinking they were intruders, fired a warning shot (from a licensed gun) that hit Mattingly in the leg. Police opened fire with at least 32 shots; Taylor was hit by six bullets and died. In the media, the murder of a loving, productive, entirely innocent black woman came to be routinely called "a botched raid." More accurately, it was a racist, bloody clusterfuck, born of already-contentious no-knock warrants, that just kept getting worse.The local Courier Journal had to sue to get the investigative report from Louisville police, who refused to release it. Months later, when they did, it was a four-page, almost blank report: It lists the time, date, case number, victim's name. It checks "no" to forced entry. Though she was shot at least eight times and died in a pool of blood on her hallway floor, it lists her injuries as "none." It names the three Louisville officers who fired shots - Jon Mattingly, Myles Cosgrove, Brett Hankison, all white and in their 40s - but omits the vital narrative of what happened except for the word "investigation." The Journal editor's response: "Are you kidding?" Activist Hannah Drake called the report a slap in the face to all black women." "This document is proof that LMPD continues to make a mockery of transparency," she said. "This is the best they could offer Breonna, even in her death."It got still worse when a grand jury declined to charge police for killlng Taylor, sparking widespread protests. They found Mattingly and Cosgrove, whose shots killed Taylor, acted "in self-defense," then bafflingly charged Hankison with three counts of "wanton endangerment" - one savage headline: "Cop Charged With 'Whoopsie' - for firing shots that passed into an adjoining apartment and displaying "an extreme indifference to the value of human life." It's unclear what they thought Mattingly's and Cosgrove's "wanton murder" displayed, but Hankison was acquitted. The DOJ charged four cops with federal civil rights offenses, falsifying the search warrant; two still face trials. The city also settled two lawsuits, paying $12 million to Breonna's mother Tamika Palmer and $2 million to Kenneth Walker; because the police's superpower remains shamelessness, he was initially charged with attempted murder of a cop, but protests, also reality, led to charges being dropped. Fortuitously inhabiting a country where, notes Ta-Nehisi Coates, "The officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of an American legacy" - both of which have long fallen disproportionately on black bodies - Mattingly has thus been free to retire from the Police Department, write a "tell-all" book about the raid in which he whines about "the woke mob," and rebrand-himself, Kyle-Rittenhouse-like, as a conservative speaker whose sole dubious qualification is having a barbarous hand in killing Breonna Taylor. In his grievance-laden book, Mattingly says he wants his story "to make a difference. "I want society to stop insisting on someone to blame for every crisis and tragedy," he writes. "I don’t want another Breonna Taylor or another John Mattingly.” By unfathomably equating his fate with hers, notes one sage, he indisputably proves once and for all that "white victimhood is so powerful it can leap a locomotive in a single bound."His hosts for last week's dinner-with-black-trauma-on-the-side were the Republican Women of South Central Kentucky, who in a now-deleted Facebook post dutifully parroted his paranoid cant. Mattingly, they said, would “share what really happened... what he saw, and how the media’s narrative has been corrupted and twisted to fit into a false, woke storyline.” Still, not everyone was there for it, even in deep-red Kentucky. He was originally scheduled to speak at the Bowling Green Country Club with a GOP gubernatorial candidate, but they backed out after a ripple of outrage appeared. Much of it echoed that of Kentucky Democratic Chair Colmon Elridge, who, citing the evening's price tag, termed "abhorrent" the right's ongoing fetish of lionizing those who kill innocent black people, "from Till to Taylor...Apparently the worth of a murdered innocent Black woman is a country club dinner at $40 per person, tax and tip included."The event was then moved to a second-floor space for private events at Anna’s Greek Restaurant, where Mattingly was reportedly introduced to "raucous applause" from about 80 people. The problem - or one problem - was that it's not really a private space: Other patrons said that, as they sat at their dinners, the lights were dimmed and graphic audio and video began loudly playing on the restaurant speakers, complete with gunshots. As Mattingly went through his grisly presentation and appalled guests started murmuring in protest, Mattingly fan-boys, demonstrating a long-honed skill of white supremacists, glared menacingly down at them. In interviews and social media posts afterwards, guests, including veterans and people of color, said they found the spectacle "disturbing," "disgusting," and "traumatizing." The local branch of the NAACP ripped the event as “beyond reprehensible,” charging it violated "the most fundamental principles of human decency.”For black viewers or listeners, of course, it also presents one more ugly example of the right's persistent celebration of black death at the hands of police - and, as an inevitable result, the belittling and diminishing of black lives. "It's already traumatizing that we are bombarded by these images...constantly coming up against these little snuff films where Black lives are ended," writes Toure in The Grio. He cites "searing" images of scores of black killings "we can call up at any time...We can see, in our mind’s eye, so many killings....Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Tamir Rice...We see the footage in our minds....We carry that around with us all the time." The impact of that baggage is "surely corrosive," he writes, never mind when it's used to make a tawdry buck to sell a shitty book. For many critics, the whole vile debacle - Breonna's murder, the justice she didn't get, her free killers resurfacing to hawk their plaints and wares while glad crowds applaud them - summon nothing so much as the American lynchings so many modern Black killings are likened to.There were, of course, thousands through the 19th and into the 20th century; many featured making a buck on the horrors. On August 7, 1930, a white mob broke into a Marion, Indiana jail to lynch three young black men wrongly accused of murdering a white man and raping a white woman.Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, both 19, were beaten and tortured, then hung from trees as a crowd of thousands gathered; James Cameron, 16, survived. When the bodies were cut down, people rushed to take parts as souvenirs, and photos were later bought and sold as postcards. On May 25, 1911, Laura Nelson and her teenage son L.D., both black, were kidnapped from an Oklahoma jail and hung from a bridge, where hundreds came to see; more photos as postcards. On June 15, 1920, a white mob of up to 10,000 stormed a jail in Duluth, Minn. holding six black circus workers falsely accused of rape; the crowd got to three - Isaac McGhie, Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson - and beat and hanged them. More postcards. Warning: very graphic photo here. Jon Mattingly, meanwhile, had a swell time re-living his lynching for profit; afterwards, he posted on Facebook, "Food was amazing and staff was even better!" Commenters were appalled: "What a vulture...And great entertainment too! How fun for you!...You are a murderer...Everything you put in your mouth will turn to ash...Shame shame shame..." and, after admitting it was maybe "a mistake" to broadcast his spiel, "You seem to make a lot of mistakes. Good thing you didn't make the mistake of being a black woman sleeping in her own home." Astonishingly - or not (see shameless) - he angrily argued with "all of you slamming a good man." The GOP ladies defended themselves too: The event was "taken out of context," Mattingly is "also a victim," none of them "are racist," and "other individuals with firsthand experience relating to this case are welcome to request an opportunity to speak to our organization." Yes, well. Kenneth Walker is still "deeply traumatized" and Breonna Taylor is still dead, so neither is available.Postscript: Witnessing that Duluth lynching was an 8-year-old immigrant boy named Abraham Zimmerman. Years later, he evidently described it to his son Robert, who was born 21 years later. Or maybe Robert, a curious, precocious boy who became Bob Dylan, learned about it on his own, found some of those photo postcards in the old junk stores he loved to explore his entire life. In any case, when Dylan came to write what's been deemed the sixth greatest song of all time - and some of us might put it higher - he bitterly recalled the photos to start Desolation Row: They're selling postcards of the hanging,They're painting the passports brown,The beauty parlor's filled with sailors,The circus is in town.
- [Clerk pleads no contest in 2020 Flint-area ballot sabotage - The Washington Post](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/25/clerk-pleads-no-contest-in-2020-flint-area-ballot-sabotage-the-washington-post/) - FLINT TOWNSHIP, Mich. — A woman who was a public official in a Michigan community admitted Wednesday that she broke a seal on a ballot box to ensure that votes could not be recounted in her 2020 race, prosecutors said. Kathy Funk, 59, pleaded no contest to misconduct in office, a felony, under an agreement that includes no time in jail.Funk, a Democrat, was the Flint Township clerk in 2020 with responsibility over elections. She was accused of sabotaging a ballot box after the August primary that year, an act that would make those ballots ineligible for a recount.Funk had won the race by just 79 votes out of about 5,300. A recount was not conducted.Election officials who “undermine the very foundation of our democracy and will be held accountable,” Attorney General Dana Nessel said.Funk quit her township post in 2021 for a bigger job as elections supervisor for Genesee County. She was dismissed last year.After the August 2020 election, Funk contacted state police to report a break-in at Flint Township Hall and that a seal on a ballot cannister had been damaged, the Flint Journal reported, quoting the police report.Manya Triplett, who narrowly lost that race, now is the township clerk.
- [Five things to know ahead of the RNC chair election | The Hill](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/25/five-things-to-know-ahead-of-the-rnc-chair-election-the-hill/) - Five things to know ahead of the RNC chair election | The Hill Skip to content Friday’s secret ballot for the next Republican National Committee (RNC) chair marks the final chapter in a bitter feud between former President Trump’s allies and within a party reeling from disappointing elections. Incumbent Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel is fielding
- [Plenty of evidence to charge Trump in Georgia election interference case, former Lt. Gov ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/25/plenty-of-evidence-to-charge-trump-in-georgia-election-interference-case-former-lt-gov/) - Former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan said Wednesday that there is more than enough evidence to charge former President Donald Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election in the Peach State.A day after an Atlanta prosecutor said “decisions are imminent” about charges, Duncan said he believes there is no question the former president broke the law by demanding officials “find” just enough votes to overturn his narrow 2020 loss.“There’s enough information for him to be indicted,” Duncan said on CNN.#placement_588509_0_i{width:100%;margin:0 auto;}Duncan said Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis presented an exhaustive case to the special grand jury that has now wrapped up its probe.“I mean, there were 75 witnesses that ranged all the way from lieutenant governors like me all the way up through folks that worked in the White House every day that were living and breathing inside the Oval Office,” Duncan said.Willis has said she is mulling indictments against Trump and “multiple others” for a multipronged effort to reverse his loss to President Joe Biden.The case includes Trump’s infamous call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which he demanded that the official declare him the victor in the battleground state.They are also probing his effort to recruit a slate of fake electors to cast doubt on Biden’s win.An Atlanta judge is mulling whether to make public the grand jury report which recommends whether to charge Trump and anyone else.Willis pleaded for more time to decide on indictments before the report is made public, saying it could disrupt the probe and potentially endanger the rights of defendants.
- [Clerk pleads no contest in 2020 Flint-area ballot sabotage - Yahoo News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/25/clerk-pleads-no-contest-in-2020-flint-area-ballot-sabotage-yahoo-news/) - FLINT TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — A woman who was a public official in a Michigan community admitted Wednesday that she broke a seal on a ballot box to ensure that votes could not be recounted in her 2020 race, prosecutors said.Kathy Funk, 59, pleaded no contest to misconduct in office, a felony, under an agreement that includes no time in jail.Funk, a Democrat, was the Flint Township clerk in 2020 with responsibility over elections. She was accused of sabotaging a ballot box after the August primary that year, an act that would make those ballots ineligible for a recount.Funk had won the race by just 79 votes out of about 5,300. A recount was not conducted.Election officials who “undermine the very foundation of our democracy and will be held accountable,” Attorney General Dana Nessel said.Funk quit her township post in 2021 for a bigger job as elections supervisor for Genesee County. She was dismissed last year.After the August 2020 election, Funk contacted state police to report a break-in at Flint Township Hall and that a seal on a ballot cannister had been damaged, the Flint Journal reported, quoting the police report.Manya Triplett, who narrowly lost that race, now is the township clerk.
- [Quarles on backing out of controversial dinner - Spectrum News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/25/quarles-on-backing-out-of-controversial-dinner-spectrum-news/) - Owensboro, Ky. — Current Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner and gubernatorial candidate Ryan Quarles was scheduled to speak at the Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky last week in Bowling Green. What You Need To Know GOP gubernatorial candidate Ryan Quarles was slated to speak at the Republican Women's Club of South Center Kentucky Former Louisville Metro Police Officer Jonathon Mattingly was also invited to speak, stirring a backlash that led the Quarles campaign to back out of the event Quarles said he looks forward to rescheduling meeting with the group, but a date has not yet been set. He later backed out of the event after public outcry that former Louisville Metro Police Officer Jonathon Mattingly would also be in attendance. Mattingly was one of the officers involved in the raid that killed Breonna Taylor and was attending the Republican Women’s Club meeting to promote his book about the events that occurred that night. The event was originally supposed to take place at the Bowling Green Country Club, but was secretly moved to a restaurant after public outcry over Mattingly’s appearance. At that time, the Quarles team said in a statement that they would reschedule their meeting with the Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky. “Due to the controversial nature of another speaker at this event, we have decided to reschedule to a later date,” the campaign said. Quarles said that his GOP opponents were able to speak to the group without having to deal with a controversial speaker. “And so for me, we wanted to have the same opportunity our friends in this primary have, so we look forward to rescheduling,” Quarles said. Mattingly sent out a video statement yesterday apologizing to the restaurant and its guests for showing video from the night of the raid at Taylor’s apartment. “There was no ill will, there was no malice. We did not want the other patrons to hear this. I apologize to you, I really do.” Mattingly also noted that he offered to pay the patrons’ bills. The Quarles campaign says that a new date for the dinner with the Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky has not been set. Quarles is one of the front-runners in the 2023 Republican Gubernatorial primary.
- [Jon Mattingly responds to Bowling Green restaurant controversy - WKYT](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/25/jon-mattingly-responds-to-bowling-green-restaurant-controversy-wkyt/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - A video goes viral on social media that shows the owner of Anna’s Greek restaurant in Bowling Green being confronted by restaurant patrons.The customers are upset that their dinners were interrupted by an event hosting Jon Mattingly. They said Mattingly’s event had speakers playing loud footage that involved gunshots from the 2020 protests.“The presentation crossed the line,” Cayce Johnson, who was dining restaurant during Mattingly’s event, said. “It was completely distasteful and disrespectful. It was devoid of humanity. They should have never put that on in a public space. We should have never been subjected to that.”Cayce Johnson made reservations at the Greek restaurant for a group of friends. She said the event took them back to March of 2020, including the Breonna Taylor protests.Originally, the plan was to host the Mattingly event at a private venue, but those plans changed. In a YouTube response, Mattingly apologized for disturbing other customers in the restaurant that night.“There was no ill will and no malice,” Mattingly said. “We didn’t want the other patrons to hear this. I apologize to you I really do.”Mattingly also said in his apology video that he’s offered to pay people’s receipts from that night and those individuals have declined.Johnson said she and her friends are still uncomfortable with the situation that took place. She believes the apology is a start but doesn’t erase how it made them feel.”I am so ashamed my friends were put in that situation,” Johnson said. “The memories from 2020, an awful year for people of color and for Kentucky.”As of now, the organization that hosted Mattingly, the Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky, has deactivated its social media accounts and not returned messages.Copyright 2023 WAVE. All rights reserved.
- [Texas lawmakers will debate election marshals in 2023 session - The Texas Tribune](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/25/texas-lawmakers-will-debate-election-marshals-in-2023-session-the-texas-tribune/) - Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. Less than two years after Texas Democrats staged a dramatic showdown to forestall sweeping changes to voting laws, the Legislature is poised to once again revisit how Texas runs elections. Entering the 2023 legislative session in January, more than 75 bills related to elections or voting had already been prefiled. Both major political parties have drafted bills. Democrats aim to expand voting access. Republicans are focused on enhancing election security. Because Texas Republicans successfully pushed through a number of their election priorities in the last session, voting-related legislation is unlikely to garner as much attention this year as it did in 2021. That year’s debate over Texas elections gripped the country as state Republicans pushed an omnibus election bill into law during a special legislative session in 2021. Democratic lawmakers fled the state Capitol and headed to Washington, D.C., in hopes of drawing more national attention to their opposition to the legislation, forcing a nearly six-week shutdown of the Legislature to try to prevent the lower chamber from having enough members to pass bills. Texas House Democrats breaking quorum hosted a press conference alongside U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and grassroots organizers at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Aug. 6, 2021. Credit: Shuran Huang They were ultimately unsuccessful, and the law Gov. Greg Abbott signed contained a slew of voting restrictions and a tightening of election security, including a prohibition on drive-thru and 24-hour voting, plus an expanded role for poll watchers. Still, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has said that tightening election laws is on his list of legislative priorities for this session. Among his goals is changing the penalty for illegal voting from a misdemeanor to a felony after it was downgraded in 2021. Another Republican proposal would allow the secretary of state to appoint election marshals to investigate violations of election law. “We need to have election results that we can rely on,” said Rep. David Spiller, R-Jacksboro, who has introduced a bill to enhance the criminal penalty for election crimes. “These laws will ensure that we have safe and secure elections.” Since 2020, Republicans nationwide — fueled by former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims about election fraud — have sought to increase barriers to voting. More than 3,600 election-related bills were introduced nationwide following the 2020 election, and 368 of them were enacted, according to the Voting Rights Lab, which tracks such legislation. Texas Democrats find the new proposals worrisome. State Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, who chairs the Texas House Democratic Caucus, said in a statement to The Texas Tribune that House Democrats would fight to protect voting rights. Fischer was a key player during the quorum break in 2021 and is known for using his vast knowledge of the legislative process to kill Republican bills. “House Democrats intend to use every rule in the rulebook, every sentence, every comma, every semicolon of the Texas Constitution to defend the right to vote,” Fischer said. One bill that has already prompted criticism is a proposal for election marshals filed by state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston. The bill appears similar to a law passed in Florida that created an elections crime unit, a move that has been widely criticized by voting rights advocates as ineffective and unnecessarily aggressive. Police body camera footage published by The Guardian in January showed armed Florida police officers arresting a Miami resident at gunpoint in August after the individual had allegedly voted illegally. He is among at least 19 Floridians who have been arrested for voter fraud since the state created the office to investigate and prosecute election fraud. At least some of those charged have indicated that they thought they were eligible to vote. “Despite a huge outlay of resources, that law is not rendering any results,” said Daniel Griffith, senior director of policy for Secure Democracy USA, a nonpartisan organization based in Washington, D.C., that seeks to improve voter access. “There is not pervasive voter fraud, so it’s difficult to understand the need for these law enforcement units.” In Texas, Bettencourt said election marshals are necessary because of “voter irregularities” in places like Harris County, where some polling locations opened late and reportedly ran out of paper on Election Day in November. In a post-election assessment, Harris County Elections Administrator Clifford Tatum said the investigation into what happened was “inconclusive.” Voters wait in line after 7 p.m. at the Metropolitan Multi-Service Center in Houston on Nov. 8, 2022. Credit: Briana Vargas for the Texas Tribune Bettencourt called the issues in Harris County “preposterous” and said the bill he filed would provide resources to investigate and immediately rectify administrative problems like paper ballot shortages. He said the bill had nothing to do with Republican claims of voter fraud following Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election. “This is not about election denying; it’s about voter irregularities,” Bettencourt said. “If the county election administrators aren’t going to follow the law, we need someone whose duty it is to go in and say ‘follow the law.’” Bettencourt introduced a similar bill during the 2021 legislative session, but it stalled in the House. State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, addresses his colleagues on the Senate floor on March 2, 2021. Credit: Jordan Vonderhaar for The Texas Tribune Other bills that have been introduced relate to the punishment for illegally voting. In 2021, lawmakers reduced the charge for illegally voting from a second degree felony to a Class A misdemeanor. A pair of bills from Spiller and state Sen. Bryan Hughes would reinstate the felony charge. “It’s so that we can have safe and secure elections,” Spiller said. “And it’s nothing new — this has been in place for years and years.” In one controversial case in 2016, a woman who cast a provisional ballot while on supervised release for a federal conviction was given a five-year prison sentence. At the time, illegal voting was a second-degree state felony. A Texas Court of Criminal Appeals asked a lower appeals court to reconsider the case because the voter, Crystal Mason, did not know she was ineligible to vote. That case is still moving through the court system. Voting rights advocates warn that reinstating a felony charge could dissuade people and create more voter intimidation. “Looking back over the past few legislative sessions, there have been repeated attempts to find creative ways to prosecute people for what really looks like an honest mistake,” said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for policies such as online voting registration and ending gerrymandering. “There’s no infrastructure to tell people what the process is for when you can vote again [after release from prison] or how you can vote again.” Another two bills filed in the Texas House of Representatives would expand Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s power to prosecute election crimes, something he has prioritized since he took office in 2015. One bill would allow the office to appoint special prosecutors on the cases and the other would penalize local prosecutors who “limit election law enforcement.” On the opposite side of the aisle, Democrats are advancing bills to support their own priority: expanding voting access. One bill filed in the House would allow Texans to complete their voter registration application online, something the majority of states in the U.S. already permit. “We all want safe and secure elections, and we have that in Texas,” said Rep. John Bucy III, D-Austin, who filed a bill relating to electronic voter registration. “We just need to figure out how to make them more accessible to Texans.” Bucy also proposed legislation to improve access to a tracker he helped introduce during the last session for applications for vote by mail. Overall, Bucy said he is hopeful that bills clamping down on election security won’t take center stage during this session. “These are distraction bills to appease Donald Trump and his faction,” Bucy said. “I don’t think the people of the House will stand for it.” The deadline to file a bill is March 11, the 60th day of the legislative session. Disclosure: Common Cause and Secure Democracy have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
- [Clerk pleads no contest in 2020 Flint-area ballot sabotage - Detroit News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/25/clerk-pleads-no-contest-in-2020-flint-area-ballot-sabotage-detroit-news/) - Flint Township – A woman who was a public official in a Flint-area community admitted Wednesday that she broke a seal on a ballot box to ensure that votes could not be recounted in her 2020 race, prosecutors said.Kathy Funk, 59, pleaded no contest to misconduct in office, a felony, under an agreement that includes no time in jail.Funk, a Democrat, was the Flint Township clerk in 2020 with responsibility over elections. She was accused of sabotaging a ballot box after the August primary that year, an act that would make those ballots ineligible for a recount.Funk had won the race by just 79 votes out of about 5,300. A recount was not conducted.Election officials who “undermine the very foundation of our democracy and will be held accountable,” Attorney General Dana Nessel said.Funk quit her township post in 2021 for a bigger job as elections supervisor for Genesee County. She was dismissed last year.After the August 2020 election, Funk contacted state police to report a break-in at Flint Township Hall and that a seal on a ballot cannister had been damaged, the Flint Journal reported, quoting the police report.Manya Triplett, who narrowly lost that race, now is the township clerk.
- [On the gas, just not full throttle - Powersports Business](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/25/on-the-gas-just-not-full-throttle-powersports-business/) - Powersports Business attended the Parts Unlimited NVP Product Expo in Louisville, Kentucky, Jan. 21 and 22. We’ll recap the event in more detail in our February issue and give some show highlights here. Back at the Kentucky International Convention Center in downtown Louisville for the first time since a couple of Covid-19 cancellations, the Parts Unlimited / Drag Specialties event covered more square footage and included more aftermarket vendors than ever before. “The show is going very well overall,” said Mike Collins, Parts Unlimited president, when we sat down on Sunday to talk. “We had high expectations figuring dealers in this area would be hungry to see other people. We had 800 dealers pre-registered, but some of them don’t show, and other dealers come without registering.” We interviewed dozens of vendors during the weekend event and came away with a few highlights. Inventory is on everyone’s mind, from vendors to dealers to Parts executives, but for different reasons. Some vendors are still behind with inventory, including Arai Helmets, one of the newest vendors in the Parts / Drag family. The company has 18 months of wholesale orders to fill internationally, “so everyone is fighting for attention,” said Arai’s Brian Watson. And for the distributor itself, inventory remains a top priority. LeMans Corporation Chairman Paul Langley told dealers, “we will make inventory investments so we can get goods to you quickly.” Those investments will include, according to Langley, spending on warehouses as well as technology updates. S & S Cycles, a company well known to Drag Specialties customers, launched its off-road performance parts at the Parts NVP. E-bikes and related accessories were quite evident on the show floor. Intense Bikes, led by Jon-Erik Burleson, executive chairman and former KTM exec., showed bikes and provided demo rides inside. Burleson called this “the incubation phase” for e-bikes into powersports dealers. Judging by the number of bike accessory companies present, the incubator is heating up. Dealers at the show got a close look at bicycle clothing, helmets, car carriers, tires, and other gear.
- [Global Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size and Outlook 2023 by Market Production, Types ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/25/global-backpack-baseball-bags-market-size-and-outlook-2023-by-market-production-types/) - PRESS RELEASEPublished January 25, 2023Backpack Baseball Bags Market report gives information on industry dynamics, drivers, trends, market segmentation by types, applications and manufactures like Mizuno, Louisville Slugger, Diamond Sports, GRIT, Akadema, Rawlings, Easton, Nike, Paul Pryor Bag, Champro, DeMarini, Wilson, BOOMBAH. "Final Report will add the analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on this industry."Global “Backpack Baseball Bags Market” Research report 2023 focuses on market overview which contain market status, future trends forecast, growth opportunity and challenges of top key players. It gives comprehensive insights of major growth factors that influence the Backpack Baseball Bags research methodology, market forces, top impacting factors (PESTEL Analysis) and industry trend analysis. Backpack Baseball Bags market report delivers information on market size, share, and segment by type, applications, regional segmentation, competitive landscape, SWOT analysis, and product portfolio of growing key players with their revenue details, new investment plans and development forecast. Get a Sample Copy of the report: https://www.absolutereports.com/enquiry/request-sample/17501142 Market Analysis and Insights: Global Backpack Baseball Bags Market MIBK (Methylisobutylketone) is a stable, medium evaporating liquid and compatible with many organic materials, which makes it a good industrial solvent. MIBK can also be used in order to extract, separate and purify various products. It is used in the pharmaceutical, agrochemical industries, in fine chemistry…It is also commonly used as a solvent in paints, lacquers, varnishes and adhesives. An other major use for MIBK is as a chemical intermediate in the synthesis of a rubber anti-ozonant additive in tyres.This report elaborates the market size, market characteristics, and market growth of the Methyl Isobutyl Ketone industry, and breaks down according to the type, application, and consumption area of Methyl Isobutyl Ketone. The report also conducted a PESTEL analysis of the industry to study the main influencing factors and entry barriers of the industry. Major Players in Backpack Baseball Bags market are: Mizuno Louisville Slugger Diamond Sports GRIT Akadema Rawlings Easton Nike Paul Pryor Bag Champro DeMarini Wilson BOOMBAH Get a Sample Copy of the Backpack Baseball Bags Market Report Backpack Baseball Bags Market by Types: Chemical Fiber Canvas Cotton Others Backpack Baseball Bags Market by Applications: Team Amateur Backpack Baseball Bags Market Key Points: Define, describe and forecast Backpack Baseball Bags product market by type, application, end user and region. Provide enterprise external environment analysis and PEST analysis. Provide strategies for company to deal with the impact of COVID-19. Provide market dynamic analysis, including market driving factors, market development constraints. Provide market entry strategy analysis for new players or players who are ready to enter the market, including market segment definition, client analysis, distribution model, product messaging and positioning, and price strategy analysis. Keep up with international market trends and provide analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on major regions of the world. Analyze the market opportunities of stakeholders and provide market leaders with details of the competitive landscape. To Understand How Covid-19 Impact Is Covered in This Report - https://www.absolutereports.com/enquiry/request-covid19/17501142 Geographically, the detailed analysis of consumption, revenue, market share and growth rate, historical data and forecast : United States Europe China Japan India Southeast Asia Latin America Middle East and Africa Years considered for this report: Historical Years: 2015-2019 Base Year: 2019 Estimated Year: 2020 Forecast Period: 2020-2025 Inquire or Share Your Questions If Any before the Purchasing This Report - https://www.absolutereports.com/enquiry/pre-order-enquiry/17501142 Chapter including in Backpack Baseball Bags market report: Chapter 1 is the basis of the entire report. In this chapter, we define the market concept and market scope of Backpack Baseball Bags, including product classification, application areas, and the entire report covered area. Chapter 2 is the core idea of the whole report. In this chapter, we provide a detailed introduction to our research methods and data sources. Chapter 3 focuses on analyzing the current competitive situation in the Backpack Baseball Bags market and provides basic information, market data, product introductions, etc. of leading companies in the industry. At the same time, Chapter 3 includes the highlighted analysis--Strategies for Company to Deal with the Impact of COVID-19. Chapter 4 provides breakdown data of different types of products, as well as market forecasts. Different application fields have different usage and development prospects of products. Therefore, Chapter 5 provides subdivision data of different application fields and market forecasts. Chapter 6 includes detailed data of major regions of the world, including detailed data of major regions of the world. North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, South America, Middle East and Africa. Chapters 7 focus on the regional market. We have selected the most representative 20 countries from 197 countries in the world and conducted a detailed analysis and overview of the market development of these countries. Chapter 8-15 focuses on market qualitative analysis, providing market driving factor analysis, market development constraints, PEST analysis, industry trends under COVID-19, market entry strategy analysis, etc. Some of the key questions answered in this report: What will the Backpack Baseball Bags market growth rate during the forecast period? Which are the key factors driving the Backpack Baseball Bags market? What was the size of the Backpack Baseball Bags market by 2025? Which region is expected to hold the highest market share in the Backpack Baseball Bags market? What trends, challenges and barriers will impact the development and sizing of the Global Backpack Baseball Bags market? What are the Backpack Baseball Bags market opportunities in the global Backpack Baseball Bags Industry? Purchase this Report (Price 3360 USD for a Single-User License) -https://www.absolutereports.com/purchase/17501142 Detailed TOC of Global Backpack Baseball Bags Industry Research Report 1 Backpack Baseball Bags Market - Research Scope 1.1 Study Goals 1.2 Market Definition and Scope 1.3 Key Market Segments 1.4 Study and Forecasting Years 2 Backpack Baseball Bags Market - Research Methodology 2.1 Methodology 2.2 Research Data Source 2.2.1 Secondary Data 2.2.2 Primary Data 2.2.3 Market Size Estimation 2.2.4 Legal Disclaimer 3 Backpack Baseball Bags Market Forces 3.1 Global Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size 3.2 Top Impacting Factors (PESTEL Analysis) 3.2.1 Political Factors 3.2.2 Economic Factors 3.2.3 Social Factors 3.2.4 Technological Factors 3.2.5 Environmental Factors 3.2.6 Legal Factors 3.3 Industry Trend Analysis 3.4 Industry Trends Under COVID-19 3.4.1 Risk Assessment on COVID-19 3.4.2 Assessment of the Overall Impact of COVID-19 on the Industry 3.4.3 Pre COVID-19 and Post COVID-19 Market Scenario 3.5 Industry Risk Assessment Get a Sample Copy of the Backpack Baseball Bags Market Report 4 Backpack Baseball Bags Market - By Geography 4.1 Global Backpack Baseball Bags Market Value and Market Share by Regions 4.1.1 Global Backpack Baseball Bags Value ($) by Region (2015-2020) 4.1.2 Global Backpack Baseball Bags Value Market Share by Regions (2015-2020) 4.2 Global Backpack Baseball Bags Market Production and Market Share by Major Countries 4.2.1 Global Backpack Baseball Bags Production by Major Countries (2015-2020) 4.2.2 Global Backpack Baseball Bags Production Market Share by Major Countries (2015-2020) 4.3 Global Backpack Baseball Bags Market Consumption and Market Share by Regions 4.3.1 Global Backpack Baseball Bags Consumption by Regions (2015-2020) 4.3.2 Global Backpack Baseball Bags Consumption Market Share by Regions (2015-2020) 5 Backpack Baseball Bags Market - By Trade Statistics 5.1 Global Backpack Baseball Bags Export and Import 5.2 United States Backpack Baseball Bags Export and Import (2015-2020) 5.3 Europe Backpack Baseball Bags Export and Import (2015-2020) 5.4 China Backpack Baseball Bags Export and Import (2015-2020) 5.5 Japan Backpack Baseball Bags Export and Import (2015-2020) 5.6 India Backpack Baseball Bags Export and Import (2015-2020) 6 Backpack Baseball Bags Market - By Type 6.1 Global Backpack Baseball Bags Production and Market Share by Types (2015-2020) 6.1.1 Global Backpack Baseball Bags Production by Types (2015-2020) 6.1.2 Global Backpack Baseball Bags Production Market Share by Types (2015-2020) 6.2 Global Backpack Baseball Bags Value and Market Share by Types (2015-2020) 6.2.1 Global Backpack Baseball Bags Value by Types (2015-2020) 6.2.2 Global Backpack Baseball Bags Value Market Share by Types (2015-2020) 7 Backpack Baseball Bags Market - By Application 7.1 Global Backpack Baseball Bags Consumption and Market Share by Applications (2015-2020) 7.1.1 Global Backpack Baseball Bags Consumption by Applications (2015-2020) 7.1.2 Global Backpack Baseball Bags Consumption Market Share by Applications (2015-2020) 8 North America Backpack Baseball Bags Market 8.1 North America Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size 8.2 United States Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size 8.3 Canada Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size 8.4 Mexico Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size 8.5 The Influence of COVID-19 on North America Market 9 Europe Backpack Baseball Bags Market Analysis 9.1 Europe Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size 9.2 Germany Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size 9.3 United Kingdom Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size 9.4 France Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size 9.5 Italy Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size 9.6 Spain Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size 9.7 The Influence of COVID-19 on Europe Market 10 Asia-Pacific Backpack Baseball Bags Market Analysis 10.1 Asia-Pacific Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size 10.2 China Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size 10.3 Japan Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size 10.4 South Korea Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size 10.5 Southeast Asia Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size 10.6 India Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size 10.7 The Influence of COVID-19 on Asia Pacific Market 11 Middle East and Africa Backpack Baseball Bags Market Analysis 11.1 Middle East and Africa Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size 11.2 Saudi Arabia Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size 11.3 UAE Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size 11.4 South Africa Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size 11.5 The Influence of COVID-19 on Middle East and Africa Market 12 South America Backpack Baseball Bags Market Analysis 12.1 South America Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size 12.2 Brazil Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size 12.3 The Influence of COVID-19 on South America Market 13 Company Profiles 13.1 Manufacture 1 13.1.1 Manufacture 1 Basic Information 13.1.2 Manufacture 1 Product Profiles, Application and Specification 13.1.3 Manufacture 1 Backpack Baseball Bags Market Performance (2015-2020) .. 14 Market Forecast - By Regions 14.1 North America Backpack Baseball Bags Market Forecast (2020-2025) 14.2 Europe Backpack Baseball Bags Market Forecast (2020-2025) 14.3 Asia-Pacific Backpack Baseball Bags Market Forecast (2020-2025) 14.4 Middle East and Africa Backpack Baseball Bags Market Forecast (2020-2025) 14.5 South America Backpack Baseball Bags Market Forecast (2020-2025) 15 Market Forecast - By Type and Applications 15.1 Global Backpack Baseball Bags Market Forecast by Types (2020-2025) 15.1.1 Global Backpack Baseball Bags Market Forecast Production and Market Share by Types (2020-2025) 15.1.2 Global Backpack Baseball Bags Market Forecast Value and Market Share by Types (2020-2025) 15.2 Global Backpack Baseball Bags Market Forecast by Applications (2020-2025) For Detailed TOC - https://www.absolutereports.com/TOC/17501142#TOC Contact Us: Absolute Reports Phone : US +1 424 253 0807 UK +44 203 239 8187 Email : [email protected] Web : https://www.absolutereports.com Our Other Reports: In-Home Karaoke Market Super Glue Market Water TOC Testing Instrument Market Switchgear Equipment For Power Market Sodium Dichromate Market Polar Crane Market Ag Etchant Market Soft Magnetic Alloys Market Fabric Corner Sofa Market WiFi Modules MarketPress Release Distributed by The Express Wire To view the original version on The Express Wire visit Global Backpack Baseball Bags Market Size and Outlook 2023 by Market Production, Types, Applications, Trends and Forecast to 2025WRITTEN BYTheExpressWire
- [Mike Linnig's Restaurant preparing for 99th season, reopens on Thursday in Louisville](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/25/mike-linnigs-restaurant-preparing-for-99th-season-reopens-on-thursday-in-louisville/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A Louisville restaurant is soon reopening for its 99th season on Thursday.Mike Linnig's Restaurant will be back in business this Thursday, Jan. 26 after taking its usual winter break. The restaurant is located on 9308 Cane Run Road and reopens every year in late January. The restaurant has been serving Louisville since 1925. It's known for generous portions of fried fish, shrimp, frog legs and onion rings.On Wednesday, the kitchen was busy with more a dozen people preparing for opening day. The restaurant has nearly reached a century of operation with three generations of Linnigs."My grandfather started the small restaurant and then my dad and my uncle took over from him," said Bill Linnig, co-owner of the restaurant. Mike Linnig's restaurant in Louisville, Ky. Bill runs the seafood staple with his two sisters. The restaurant is filled with photos from all the years, but there is still plenty of room for new memories.Mike Linnig's has survived floods, fires and blizzards, but the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting shipping supply issues has been one of the hardest tests. "We had to take some things off the menu because it got so expensive, but this year is getting a little bit better and hopefully will continue throughout the year," Bill said. Kitchen inside of Mike Linnig's Restaurant in Louisville, Ky. Most of the beloved seafood is back on the menu. There are nearly 40 individual fry baskets in the kitchen. On a busy day, they can fry up more than 2,000 pounds of fish. "We don't do changes, not very much," Bill said. "We might add some different things but our main things we don't change. And that has helped us."While Mike Linnig's is known for its expansive outdoor seating that can accommodate around 1,000 patrons, there is still demand in the winter months. The inside pavilion can seat around 200 people and is completely booked through the weekend.The 20-acre property gets plenty busy on spring and summer days with outside bars and activities like car shows. Seafood gumbo at Mike Linnig's in Louisville, Ky. "We're still a place," Bill said. "We got fancy and now we say 'restaurant,' Mike Linnig's Restaurant, but we are still a place. We are just a little bit different and that is what we want to keep."Mike Linnig's is open Tuesday through Sunday and closed on Mondays.Last year, the restaurant closed for the season on Nov. 6.Cake and desserts will be available while supplies last. For more information, visit their website.Related StoriesCopyright 2023 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
- [Republican Women Play Footage of Breonna Taylor's Death at Public Event Celebrating ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/25/republican-women-play-footage-of-breonna-taylors-death-at-public-event-celebrating/) - The Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky is a vile hate group. They recently held an event in recognition of one of the cops involved in the killing of Breonna Taylor, at a restaurant of all places because so insidious is white supremacy in American society that these people are comfortable holding what is essentially a celebration of murder in public. (Meanwhile, peacefully protesting outside of a restaurant is still an unacceptable trampling of conservative freedoms, remember.) Not only that, but they showed footage of the raid on Taylor’s home right there in the goddamned restaurant. How do we know this? Diners not affiliated with the event saw/heard the murder while they were trying to eat. Per The New Republic: The event took place on Tuesday at Anna’s Greek Restaurant, a well-known local restaurant in Bowling Green, with a dining area and second-floor space where events can be held. There, former Louisville Metro Police Department Sergeant Jonathan Mattingly, one of the officers who conducted the no-knock warrant and raid that killed Taylor in March 2020, reportedly shared photos and blared video footage with gunshot noises. The restaurant was open to the public at the time of the event. Guests, some of whom had made reservations, were not informed by management about the last-minute event happening upstairs. Guests, including people of color, there for their own dinner plans were then shocked by what appeared to be a bustling event celebrating an officer who was part of the raid that killed a Black woman in her own home. We are a broken society. The article continues: Cayce Johnson, a guest at the restaurant that night, told The New Republic that the lights dimmed in the middle of their meal. “The woman comes back on and introduces Jonathan Mattingly, and everyone just roared upstairs—applause, cheers, and our mouths just dropped.” Sound carried throughout Anna’s, a retrofitted old church. If you are like me and like to believe that people are inherently good and will do the right thing when presented with the opportunity to do so, well, be prepared to completely have your worldview shattered. Not only did the restaurant owner know what was happening when it was happening, he all but threatened patrons when they complained about the deeply inappropriate and vile nature of what was going on. Per The New Republic: Katelyn Jones, another diner, told TNR the event also included a raffle and jokes about Covid-19. She said the event was initially so loud her father couldn’t hear anything at the table. After realizing the event included Mattingly, Johnson and her friends sought out the restaurant owner, Vilson Qehaja. Qehaja responded to the group’s concerns by literally shrugging his shoulders, according to video footage. “I have no idea what’s happening, so,” he said as the group complained about the presentation on Taylor. “I have nothing to do with that, so.” […] “He was drinking his coffee and staring at us, raising his eyebrows, kind of intimidating us, like, ‘What are you going to do?’” Johnson said. Qehaja’s behavior mimicked what event attendees upstairs allegedly were doing, as guests claimed men from the audience glared down from the second-floor balcony at restaurantgoers, seeming to warn them not to disrupt their event. America, ain’t she grand? Naturally, because American society exists to protect businesses first, Yelp has shut down reviews for the restaurant as of 1/25/2023, because capitalism must be protected at all costs. However, the BG Freedom Walkers recently arranged a protest at the restaurant. Per WBKO: “That’s just wrong. It’s just absolutely wrong. It’s not okay,” said former Anna’s employee, Aaron Preuett, “That’s intimate information, and that should not have happened.” Preuett said even after everything he’d seen working at Anna’s, he was still surprised. “To take it to that level, that’s detestable, there’s no other word for it,” Preuett said. Imagine what a racist POS you have to be to surprise an ex-employee at the depths of what a scumbag you are. If these people had any shame or self-reflection that might give them pause, but we all know bottom-feeders like them don’t. The article continues: The Freedom Walkers say Anna’s isn’t the only party to blame though, and that the Republican Women’s Club must take responsibility for inviting Mattingly. “He probably didn’t think he was going to get this big of a response by allowing that to happen, because they thought it was hush hush,” said BG Freedom Walkers Founder, Karika Nelson. “There’s always somebody watching, it’s always going to come to light.” Nelson says, while the customers of Anna’s deserve an apology from both the restaurant and Republican Women’s Club, the Freedom Walkers are past that point. “The event should have never taken place. They should have never brought Jonathan Mattingly into Bowling Green, so we’re passed an apology,” Nelson said. “But for the customers that went through all of that last Tuesday, they deserve an apology from the owner. That’s the least that he could do.” WBKO has made several attempts to contact Anna’s Greek Restaurant, as well as the Republican Women’s Club, but has not gotten a reply at this time. I think if there’s anything positive to be taken away from this horrible, awful, depraved situation it’s that these people are being watched and that there are members in the community that are willing to hold these people accountable for their actions if no one else is. (featured image: Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Frontline Action Hub)Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
- [Second protest in one week in wake of controversial dinner - Spectrum News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/second-protest-in-one-week-in-wake-of-controversial-dinner-spectrum-news/) - BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — Summer Shannon, president of the Bowling Green Freedom Walkers, stood outside Anna’s Greek Restaurant Monday night demanding justice. It was the second protest Shannon has attended in the last week. What You Need To Know A protest took place outside Anna’s Greek Restaurant in Bowling Green The Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky hosted a dinner with Ex-LMPD Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly at the restaurant The dinner was cancelled at its original venue because of the controversy, but the women’s club quietly moved to the Greek restaurant The Bowling Green Freedom Walkers organized the protest “I’m disappointed that Anna’s Restaurant allowed the event to take place, that Mattingly is profiting off of Breonna Taylor’s murder and that we’re allowing a murderer to come into our town,” Shannon said. Shannon was helping lead the protest against Anna’s Greek Restaurant, which hosted the Republican Women’s Club of South Center Kentucky and the club’s guest—former LMPD officer Jonathan Mattingly. He’s one officer involved in the March 2020 raid where Breonna Taylor was shot and killed. Aaron Preuett was among the two dozen who came out to stand up against the restaurant. He was the head of bartending for 8 months at Anna’s Greek Restaurant. He has a challenging time wrapping his head around what happened the other night. “I can’t begin to imagine what that must have been like to just candidly appear when you’re dining… I mean, I would’ve been horrified,” Preuett said. The Bowling Green Freedom Walkers are making sure Breonna Taylor’s name lives on. “[We’ll] keep Breonna Taylor’s name alive, keep her legacy alive, and be her voice because she no longer has one,” Shannon said. Spectrum News 1 reached out to Mattingly on Monday and did not receive a reply. Anna’s Greek Restaurant did not respond to phone calls made on Monday.
- [After $11K bill, will Lycoming County move on from 2020 election? - Williamsport Sun-Gazette](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/25/after-11k-bill-will-lycoming-county-move-on-from-2020-election-williamsport-sun-gazette/) - And on the 818th day after the 2020 presidential election, Forrest Lehman, director of Voter Services, was joined by the board of elections in saying it is done — the hand recount is over, there was no fraud, no thousands of ballots that weren’t counted — it’s time to move on. “Each day that passes
- [Consultant's report on Wichita police department to be released online soon, city says - AOL](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/consultants-report-on-wichita-police-department-to-be-released-online-soon-city-says-aol/) - Matthew KellyJanuary 24, 2023, 1:21 PM Travis Heying/The Wichita EagleJensen Hughes, a top law enforcement consulting firm in the U.S., is expected to issue its report suggesting reforms to the Wichita Police Department next month.City officials say that analysis will be published online in its entirety.The report, which will investigate the breadth and depth of bias within the police force, focusing on racism, officer discipline, public oversight and violent interactions with civilians, is on track to be finalized sometime in February.“I do not have a date yet for the final report that we will receive in February but it will be posted on the website,” city spokesperson Megan Lovely told The Eagle.Jensen Hughes issued sobering reports to the cities of Louisville and Minneapolis after the police killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, and was selected from a pool of nine candidates to audit WPD and issue a cultural assessment of the department after an Eagle investigation found little was initially done to discipline SWAT officers involved in the sending of racist and inappropriate text messages.At the time of the firm’s most recent update on the city website in December, Jensen Hughes had completed 56 one-on-one interviews with WPD personnel and 420 of 628 department employees had responded to an email survey.The Chicago-based firm, which is being paid an estimated $214,000, says it has reviewed 10GB of documents and data, including policies, reports, organizational charts, budgets, standard operating procedures and complaints against department members.Jensen Hughes investigators visited Wichita on Jan. 9 to conduct more interviews and discuss communication between the city manager’s office, city legal and the HR department.The scope of the cultural assessment was broadened to examine the disconnect between police leadership and various city departments after interim Chief Lem Moore promoted an officer who is being sued for killing an unarmed civilian.The report will also determine whether the Fraternal Order of Police has undue influence on officer discipline — an accusation leveled in a threatened lawsuit filed on behalf of former Police Chief Gordon Ramsay and his deputy chiefs, who say City Manager Robert Layton, the city HR director and police union leadership repeatedly lied about and subverted efforts to address the “abhorrent subculture” of “a small cabal of some SWAT members and officers” in the department.Layton has denied the accusations of corruption and obstruction made by Ramsay’s executive team.Mayor Brandon Whipple said at a City Council meeting last month that a first draft of the cultural assessment will be sent to Assistant City Manager Donte Martin for “non-substantive technical amendments.”“Some police departments might refer to something as a bureau while other people refer to it as a precinct, so it’s to make sure that we’re using the same language,” Whipple said. All changes made to the document must be approved by the researchers, he said.Whipple has said the Jensen Hughes report will serve as a “road map” for the new police chief. Chief Joe Sullivan, who was hired in October and previously served as a leader in the Philadelphia Police Department, did not immediately respond to a request to comment for this story Tuesday.
- [Louisville's police interim chief discusses surge in violent crime, recruiting and tip line results](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/louisvilles-police-interim-chief-discusses-surge-in-violent-crime-recruiting-and-tip-line-results/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Louisville's interim police chief is working to turn over a new leaf within the community, as the department battles broken community trust and a surge in violent crime. Interim LMPD Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel sat down for a live interview with WDRB in the Morning Tuesday about her strategy to deal with the long list of issues, but says there's no single answer. Louisville finished 2022 with 160 lives lost to violence and nearly a dozen homicides to start 2023, and Gwinn-Villaroel says lowering those numbers is one of LMPD's top priorities. "Good, old-fashioned investigations -- thorough, proper investigations -- are yielding some great results for us," she said. "But again, any deaths that we're experiencing, anyone that is a victim to being shot, is just too many."Some of those arrested for violent crimes include boys and girls in their teens, and Gwinn-Villaroel says programs are in place to help prevent young people from becoming involved in a life of crime. "They (young people) need assistance, they need help, and LMPD is so committed to anything, any initiative like GVI (Group Violence Intervention) or Violence Intervention, that particular program working with OSHN (Office for Safe and Healthy Neighborhoods) is critical. Let's get ahead of these young individuals that need a new direction and a new path in order to not actually drive themselves into a life of violence." Gwinn-Villaroel says she knows making those changes requires trust between the community the police officers on the street. That trust was substantially damaged when police killed Breonna Taylor during a drug raid in 2020, and the aftermath that followed. She says restoring that trust starts at the top with her."We're telling officers, we're advising them: make sure you get out of your cars when you go inside a store. It doesn't take anything away from you to have a quick conversation, to walk down the street and to wave your hand to one of the community members that you are crossing paths with."As for dealing with LMPD's officer shortage, Gwinn-Villaroel says the department is actively marketing and trying to recruit quality officers -- even asking current officers to send referrals. "But again, officers within this department are one of our main recruiters, actually sharing that message that if it's good for you to be here, and you see the positive changes and that ... you're able to help the community that needs your support, then we're asking for them to go out there and recruit those individuals that can make a difference," Gwinn-Villaroel said. This computer-generated graphic shows a representation of the number of anonymous tips the Louisville Metro Police Department received through its crime tipline in 2022. She also encourages citizens to keep leaving anonymous tips through the LMPD crime tip line, which received 6,365 tips in 2022. Of those, 2,953 were received at the 502-574-LMPD (5673) number, and another 3,412 tips came in through the online crime tip portal. "Anything, any information that you feel that we need is valuable to us," Gwinn-Villaroel said. "We don't discount anything because we're going to, we're going to look at it and actually drill down on it."The number to call with anonymous tips about any crime is 502-574-LMPD (574-5673). Anonymous tips can also be left through the LMPD Crime Tip Portal.Copyright 2023 WDRB Media. All rights reserved.
- [Outrage after Kentucky restaurant shows video of what patrons believe was Breonna Taylor's killing](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/outrage-after-kentucky-restaurant-shows-video-of-what-patrons-believe-was-breonna-taylors-killing/) - A Kentucky-based Republican women’s group is being asked to apologize to Breonna Taylor’s family after it held an event at a restaurant where it allegedly played video footage of the deadly 2020 raid, CNN reported. John Mattingly, who was one of the officers involved in the Black woman’s killing, was also invited to speak at the event. The Bowling Green-Warren County Branch of the NAACP said the Tuesday program was held at a Greek restaurant in Bowling Green, adding that patrons weren’t told the Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky was organizing an event of such nature. Diners at the restaurant also told the news outlet that though they heard sounds of gunshots, sirens and confusion, they couldn’t confirm if it was indeed video footage of Taylor’s killing. One of the diners at the restaurant, Cayce Johnson, said she noticed the event was taking place when she entered the establishment. The event was reportedly held upstairs. “They had a sound system. It was being broadcast throughout the whole restaurant,” Johnson recalled. “We could hear every word. And when the lady introduced John Mattingly [one of the officers involved in Taylor’s killing], my jaw dropped.” As previously reported by Face2Face Africa, Taylor, 26, was killed in her home while sleeping with her boyfriend in a botched narcotics raid by the Louisville Metro Police Department. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, shot at the officers who were executing a “no-knock” warrant, hitting Mattingly in the leg. Mattingly, together with officers Brett Hankison and Myles Cosgrove, returned fire, hitting Taylor several times. Walker claimed he acted in self-defense as he believed intruders were breaking into the home. Charges were never brought against Mattingly in the wake of the botched raid. He later retired after he was put on administrative leave. Hankison was charged with wanton endangerment – making him the only officer to face charges in connection with the deadly raid. But he was acquitted of those charges last March. Following the fatal encounter, Mattingly reportedly sent a broadcast email to around 1,000 of his colleagues, justifying their actions that fateful night and also condemning authorities for allegedly hanging them out to dry. “He went through everything, talked about the investigation and then played several tapes during his presentation,” Johnson told CNN. Katelyn Jones was also at the restaurant with her family at the time of the event. She told the news outlet that she could not see what was taking place upstairs. But she said her family had difficulties maintaining a conversation because of the sound of police radio chatter, sirens, and gunshots. “Towards the end of our meal, the lights shut off and we heard police radio chatter and sirens on a recording. We heard the gunshots, too, and it was so loud and chaotic. It was really loud,” Jones recalled. Jones said that when her family ultimately complained about the loud noise, the event attendees began telling them to keep quiet. She also said some men were seemingly hostile towards them. “These patrons had to see and listen to graphic descriptions of the incident which killed Breonna Taylor because Mattingly was provided video equipment, a microphone, and a speaker and was able to be heard throughout the restaurant,” said the NAACP. “It is beyond reprehensible to subject anyone, let alone children and customers of African American descent, to such indecent exposure, graphic and upsetting images while they were attempting to enjoy their meal.” But leading up to the event, the Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky released a statement saying it believed Mattingly had “the right to share” his side of the story, Spectrum News reported. “These events may be controversial, however, we believe Sgt. Mattingly has the right to share his experience,” the group said. “Other individuals with firsthand experience relating to this case are welcome to request an opportunity to speak to our organization as well.” The event was initially set to be held at a different venue, the NAACP said. And though it was initially canceled because of how “controversial” it was, the organizers made another U-turn and held the event at the restaurant that same night. “They have had no accountability in this. They took their Facebook page down and are just laying low,” Johnson said about the group. “They need to apologize first and foremost and they need to apologize to Breonna Taylor’s family.” She added: “I want accountability from this group. They give powerful people platforms and they need to explain to the community and Breonna Taylor’s family why they gave him [Mattingly] a platform.”
- [Louisville's interim police chief discusses surge in violent crime, recruiting and tip line results](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/louisvilles-interim-police-chief-discusses-surge-in-violent-crime-recruiting-and-tip-line-results/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Louisville's interim police chief is working to turn over a new leaf within the community, as the department battles broken community trust and a surge in violent crime. Interim LMPD Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel sat down for a live interview with WDRB in the Morning Tuesday about her strategy to deal with the long list of issues, but says there's no single answer. Louisville finished 2022 with 160 lives lost to violence and nearly a dozen homicides to start 2023, and Gwinn-Villaroel says lowering those numbers is one of LMPD's top priorities. "Good, old-fashioned investigations -- thorough, proper investigations -- are yielding some great results for us," she said. "But again, any deaths that we're experiencing, anyone that is a victim to being shot, is just too many."Some of those arrested for violent crimes include boys and girls in their teens, and Gwinn-Villaroel says programs are in place to help prevent young people from becoming involved in a life of crime. "They (young people) need assistance, they need help, and LMPD is so committed to anything, any initiative like GVI (Group Violence Intervention) or Violence Intervention, that particular program working with OSHN (Office for Safe and Healthy Neighborhoods) is critical. Let's get ahead of these young individuals that need a new direction and a new path in order to not actually drive themselves into a life of violence." Gwinn-Villaroel says she knows making those changes requires trust between the community the police officers on the street. That trust was substantially damaged when police killed Breonna Taylor during a drug raid in 2020, and the aftermath that followed. She says restoring that trust starts at the top with her."We're telling officers, we're advising them: make sure you get out of your cars when you go inside a store. It doesn't take anything away from you to have a quick conversation, to walk down the street and to wave your hand to one of the community members that you are crossing paths with."As for dealing with LMPD's officer shortage, Gwinn-Villaroel says the department is actively marketing and trying to recruit quality officers -- even asking current officers to send referrals. "But again, officers within this department are one of our main recruiters, actually sharing that message that if it's good for you to be here, and you see the positive changes and that ... you're able to help the community that needs your support, then we're asking for them to go out there and recruit those individuals that can make a difference," Gwinn-Villaroel said. This computer-generated graphic shows a representation of the number of anonymous tips the Louisville Metro Police Department received through its crime tipline in 2022. She also encourages citizens to keep leaving anonymous tips through the LMPD crime tip line, which received 6,365 tips in 2022. Of those, 2,953 were received at the 502-574-LMPD (5673) number, and another 3,412 tips came in through the online crime tip portal. "Anything, any information that you feel that we need is valuable to us," Gwinn-Villaroel said. "We don't discount anything because we're going to, we're going to look at it and actually drill down on it."The number to call with anonymous tips about any crime is 502-574-LMPD (574-5673). Anonymous tips can also be left through the LMPD Crime Tip Portal.Copyright 2023 WDRB Media. All rights reserved.
- [Airing footage of Breonna Taylor's death in a diner is yet another example of the GOP ... - AOL](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/airing-footage-of-breonna-taylors-death-in-a-diner-is-yet-another-example-of-the-gop-aol/) - January 24, 2023, 4:05 PMOPINION: It isn’t enough that cops can kill Black people with little to no consequences, but now Republicans are using our trauma to luxuriate in their pro-cop narrative.Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.Bowling Green, Kentucky is less than two hours from Louisville, the city where 26-year-old Breonna Taylor was killed by police officers while in her home in 2020. Her death was one of the more shocking deaths by police in recent years, and so her name rings out in the Black community with a special power. The Justice Department has charged four officers with falsifying the affidavit used to obtain the search warrant in violation of federal civil rights laws; one officer pleaded guilty. Breonna’s family received a $12 million settlement, but her death continues to be traumatizing for Black people, and the traumatizing happened again last week in Bowling Green.There’s a restaurant there that hosted a Republican group — I’m not going to name them — which came together to listen to Jonathan Mattingly speak. Mattingly was one of the three officers who fired shots at Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker during the raid of her home. During the raid, Mattingly was shot by Walker, who thought the cops were intruders. Mattingly, now a retired officer, is the author of a book about the shooting, which I will not name, but in it, he whines about “the woke mob,” so, you know who he is. He also thinks he and Breonna are somehow equal. In his book, he says, “I want my story to make a difference. I want society to stop insisting on someone to blame for every crisis and tragedy. I don’t want another Breonna Taylor or another John Mattingly.” Gross. I don’t know how he became one of the victims here, but white victimhood is so powerful it can leap a locomotive in a single bound.Mattingly has told his story many times — in the book and in various interviews — but for some reason, this Republican group needed him to come to its event and tell his story again. This is part of the right’s bizarre fetish of lionizing people who kill Black people and their allies. You see the way they have made Kyle Rittenhouse into a hero because he killed people at a BLM rally — right-wing star slash lunatic Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said Rittenhouse is a hero who deserves a Congressional Gold Medal. Wow.The Republican group who hosted Mattingly said he “has the right to share his experience” and I mean, yeah, sure, Mattingly does have the right to share his experience, but of all the people in the world, why are they so interested in hearing his widely available story again? They also said “Other individuals with firsthand experience relating to this case are welcome to request an opportunity to speak to our organization as well,” but there’s one living individual who was there who tells a different story — Kenneth Walker. I am sure they are not interested in hearing his firsthand experience. If we’re being real, we know this was not a genuine “let’s just hear what he has to say” situation. We know they weren’t there to get down to the truth. They wanted another chance to luxuriate in their pro-cop narrative.But there’s more. The night that Mattingly spoke, most of the restaurant was still open to guests and, at some point, they all were forced to be part of the show. According to some of the guests, the lights in the restaurant dimmed, and both audio and police bodycam footage were broadcast in the restaurant. Can you imagine sitting in some mid-level restaurant trying to get through a meal when someone starts blasting footage of a Black person getting killed by police? That’s traumatizing.It’s already traumatizing that we are bombarded by these images via traditional media and social media, constantly coming up against these little snuff films where Black lives are ended. We are shown these images so often, and they are so searing and painful that I know that most Black people have about 20 or 25 Black killings in their memory that they can call up at any time. We can see, in our mind’s eye, so many killings. If I just call out the names of Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Tamir Rice … we see the footage in our minds. We carry that around with us all the time, and it’s some heavy emotional baggage. I don’t know what impact that’s having on all of us, but it’s surely corrosive.Those poor diners had the images and the sound of Breonna’s death played while they ate. It’s cruel and unusual, but it also reminds me of the way white people in this country would take photographs of lynching and turn them into postcards as a way of celebrating the destruction of a Black body and the perpetuation of white power.The president of the Bowling Green-Warren County NAACP chapter, Ryan Dearbone, said, “It is beyond reprehensible to subject anyone, let alone children and customers of African-American descent, to such indecent exposure, graphic and upsetting images while they were attempting to enjoy their meal. Such disturbing occurrences must not be tolerated especially in places of public accommodation. At a minimum, these acts are devoid of humanity and violate the most fundamental principles of human decency.”Amen.Touré, theGrio.comTouré is a host and Creative Director at theGrio. He is the host of the podcast “Toure Show” and the podcast docuseries “Who Was Prince?” He is also the author of seven books including the Prince biography Nothing Compares 2 U and the ebook The Ivy League Counterfeiter. Look out for his upcoming podcast Being Black In the 80s.TheGrio is FREE on your TV via Apple TV, Amazon Fire, Roku, and Android TV. Please download theGrio mobile apps today! The post Airing footage of Breonna Taylor’s death in a diner is yet another example of the GOP celebrating Black death at the hands of police appeared first on TheGrio.
- [Airing footage of Breonna Taylor's death in a diner is yet another example of the GOP ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/airing-footage-of-breonna-taylors-death-in-a-diner-is-yet-another-example-of-the-gop/) - OPINION: It isn’t enough that cops can kill Black people with little to no consequences, but now Republicans are using our trauma to luxuriate in their pro-cop narrative.Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.Bowling Green, Kentucky is less than two hours from Louisville, the city where 26-year-old Breonna Taylor was killed by police officers while in her home in 2020. Her death was one of the more shocking deaths by police in recent years, and so her name rings out in the Black community with a special power. The Justice Department has charged four officers with falsifying the affidavit used to obtain the search warrant in violation of federal civil rights laws; one officer pleaded guilty. Breonna’s family received a $12 million settlement, but her death continues to be traumatizing for Black people, and the traumatizing happened again last week in Bowling Green.There’s a restaurant there that hosted a Republican group — I’m not going to name them — which came together to listen to Jonathan Mattingly speak. Mattingly was one of the three officers who fired shots at Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker during the raid of her home. During the raid, Mattingly was shot by Walker, who thought the cops were intruders. Mattingly, now a retired officer, is the author of a book about the shooting, which I will not name, but in it, he whines about “the woke mob,” so, you know who he is. He also thinks he and Breonna are somehow equal. In his book, he says, “I want my story to make a difference. I want society to stop insisting on someone to blame for every crisis and tragedy. I don’t want another Breonna Taylor or another John Mattingly.” Gross. I don’t know how he became one of the victims here, but white victimhood is so powerful it can leap a locomotive in a single bound.Mattingly has told his story many times — in the book and in various interviews — but for some reason, this Republican group needed him to come to its event and tell his story again. This is part of the right’s bizarre fetish of lionizing people who kill Black people and their allies. You see the way they have made Kyle Rittenhouse into a hero because he killed people at a BLM rally — right-wing star slash lunatic Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said Rittenhouse is a hero who deserves a Congressional Gold Medal. Wow.The Republican group who hosted Mattingly said he “has the right to share his experience” and I mean, yeah, sure, Mattingly does have the right to share his experience, but of all the people in the world, why are they so interested in hearing his widely available story again? They also said “Other individuals with firsthand experience relating to this case are welcome to request an opportunity to speak to our organization as well,” but there’s one living individual who was there who tells a different story — Kenneth Walker. I am sure they are not interested in hearing his firsthand experience. If we’re being real, we know this was not a genuine “let’s just hear what he has to say” situation. We know they weren’t there to get down to the truth. They wanted another chance to luxuriate in their pro-cop narrative.But there’s more. The night that Mattingly spoke, most of the restaurant was still open to guests and, at some point, they all were forced to be part of the show. According to some of the guests, the lights in the restaurant dimmed, and both audio and police bodycam footage were broadcast in the restaurant. Can you imagine sitting in some mid-level restaurant trying to get through a meal when someone starts blasting footage of a Black person getting killed by police? That’s traumatizing.It’s already traumatizing that we are bombarded by these images via traditional media and social media, constantly coming up against these little snuff films where Black lives are ended. We are shown these images so often, and they are so searing and painful that I know that most Black people have about 20 or 25 Black killings in their memory that they can call up at any time. We can see, in our mind’s eye, so many killings. If I just call out the names of Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Tamir Rice … we see the footage in our minds. We carry that around with us all the time, and it’s some heavy emotional baggage. I don’t know what impact that’s having on all of us, but it’s surely corrosive.Those poor diners had the images and the sound of Breonna’s death played while they ate. It’s cruel and unusual, but it also reminds me of the way white people in this country would take photographs of lynching and turn them into postcards as a way of celebrating the destruction of a Black body and the perpetuation of white power.The president of the Bowling Green-Warren County NAACP chapter, Ryan Dearbone, said, “It is beyond reprehensible to subject anyone, let alone children and customers of African-American descent, to such indecent exposure, graphic and upsetting images while they were attempting to enjoy their meal. Such disturbing occurrences must not be tolerated especially in places of public accommodation. At a minimum, these acts are devoid of humanity and violate the most fundamental principles of human decency.”Amen.Touré, theGrio.comTouré is a host and Creative Director at theGrio. He is the host of the podcast “Toure Show” and the podcast docuseries “Who Was Prince?” He is also the author of seven books including the Prince biography Nothing Compares 2 U and the ebook The Ivy League Counterfeiter. Look out for his upcoming podcast Being Black In the 80s.TheGrio is FREE on your TV via Apple TV, Amazon Fire, Roku, and Android TV. Please download theGrio mobile apps today! The post Airing footage of Breonna Taylor’s death in a diner is yet another example of the GOP celebrating Black death at the hands of police appeared first on TheGrio.
- [Officer involved in Breonna Taylor shooting responds to outrage over video played at GOP ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/officer-involved-in-breonna-taylor-shooting-responds-to-outrage-over-video-played-at-gop/) - Diners at a Greek restaurant in Bowling Green, Kentucky were able to hear the sounds of gunshots and unsettling police footage from an upstairs event held by a local Republican group hosting one of the officers who fired into the home of Breonna Taylor.The Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky held a dinner event last week at Anna’s Greek Restaurant for Jonathan Mattingly, a former sergeant with the Louisville Metro Police Department who was among the officers who performed a botched police raid that killed the 26-year-old Black woman while she was in her apartment in 2020.Complaints fielded by a local chapter of the NAACP revealed that Anna’s patrons were not aware of the event, which they claimed included “graphic descriptions” of her killing, broadcast throughout the restaurant, according to the organisation.A week after the event, the former officer turned author and conservative pundit who was the honoured guest has denied that such footage was shown and apologised to restaurant patrons who believed they were hearing unsettling footage of Taylor’s killing.On 24 January, Mr Mattingly released a video statement denying that the event showed footage of Taylor’s death and condemning the “lies” surrounding the event. The sounds of gunshots, he said, came from news broadcasts about police who were shot during protests that were included in a presentation.He also offered to pay for affected diners’ meals.“There was no ill will, no malice. We did not want the other patrons to hear this,” he said in the video. “I apologise to you. I really do. I know, if I were in your shoes, and there was something that I disagreed with being played … I would be very upset as well.”A statement in from the NAACP Bowling Green-Warren County chapter said the organisation is “profoundly dismayed” and “outraged” over reports of the event, which has drawn several protests in Bowling Green.“It is beyond reprehensible to subject anyone, let alone children and customers of African American descent, to such indecent exposure, graphic and upsetting images while they were attempting to enjoy their meal,” according to a statement shared with The Independent from NAACP Bowling Green-Warren County president Ryan Dearbone.“Such disturbing occurrences must not be tolerated especially in places of public accommodation,” he added. “At a minimum, these acts are devoid of humanity and violate the most fundamental principles of human decency.”Mr Mattingly was the first officer to enter Taylor’s apartment on 13 March, 2020, as police executed a search warrant and used a battering ram to break down her door.Believing the police were intruders, her boyfriend Kenneth Walker fired one shot as officers broke through. Mr Mattingly was shot in the leg, and officers returned fire.Mr Mattingly was never charged in connection with the incident; he retired after he was placed on administrative leave.“Unfortunately it’s been a total disaster ever since,” Mr Mattingly said in his video statement, criticising the subsequent investigations into the incident.Last year, the US Department of Justice indicted three police officers – Kelly Goodlett, Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany – on charges of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and civil rights violations for allegedly conspiring to mislead the judge who approved the search warrant on Mr Walker’s house.Detective Brett Hankison also was charged with civil rights violations, alleging that the now-former officer “willfully used unconstitutionally excessive force, while acting in his official capacity as an officer, when he fired his service weapon into Taylor’s apartment through a covered window and covered glass door,” according to the indictment.The Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky initially planned to host the event at a different location, the Bowling Green Country Club, which declined after it became “aware of the guest speaker,” according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles also was set to appear, but he also backed out of the event due to “the controversial nature of another speaker at this event,” according to Spectrum News.Before the event, the group said in a statement to Spectrum News that Mr Mattingly was invited to speak so attendees could “obtain a firsthand account” of what happened the night Taylor was killed.Restaurant patron Cayce Johnson told The Courier Journal that audio from the event could be heard throughout the restaurant and that Mr Mattingly was introduced to “raucous applause”.She told CNN that Mr Mattingly’s presentation “went through everything, talked about the investigation and then played several tapes during his presentation”.Another patron, Katelyn Jones, told CNN that she was unable to see what was happening upstairs but heard the sounds of sirens and gunshots that drowned out their own dinner conversation.“Towards the end of our meal, the lights shut off and we heard police radio chatter and sirens on a recording. We heard the gunshots, too, and it was so loud and chaotic. It was really loud,” she told CNN.
- [Newly-painted statue reflects Black community - The Record | Archdiocese of Louisville](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/newly-painted-statue-reflects-black-community-the-record-archdiocese-of-louisville/) - Before and after photos of restoration work performed by by Neal Sullivan, a member of St. Joseph Church in Butchertown, who finished in late October. The weathered statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary stands in an alcove on the northeast side of Christ the King Church located between the Shawnee and Chickasaw neighborhoods in the west end. (Photos Special to The Record) A newly painted statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary — depicted as a brown-skinned woman — has brightened the campus of the nearly 100-year-old Christ the King Church located between the west end’s Shawnee and Chickasaw neighborhoods. The statue — which was weathered and covered in flakes of peeling paint — was re-painted in late October. The restoration was done by Neal Sullivan, a member of St. Joseph Church in Butchertown. Sullivan moved to Louisville from Notre Dame, Ind., in 2020 during the civil unrest brought on by the killing of Breonna Taylor by Louisville Metro Police. “I was an outsider looking in without preconceived notions of the social justice issues in the city, but I saw the divide,” he said. Sullivan said he wanted to encounter African American Catholics, develop friendships and contribute to “racial healing and understanding,” but wasn’t certain how to go about doing that. Neal Sullivan, scraped peeling paint off a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the grounds of Christ the King Church in late October. Sullivan who was visiting the parish last fall volunteered to paint the statue. (Photo Special to The Record) A conversation with Archbishop Shelton J. Fabre last year helped him better understand how to do this, he noted. The archbishop told him that an “encounter” is required for racial healing; an “encounter leads to understanding and understanding leads to healing,” Sullivan said. The archbishop’s encouragement, along with Pope Francis’ message for Catholics to “go forward,” inspired him to seek friendships in the African American Catholic community. He began by visiting different African American parishes for worship. He was visiting Christ the King when he came across the statue and was saddened by its weathered condition, he said. “I’m looking at her and I hear my mom’s voice saying ‘Fix that. That’s unacceptable,’ ” said Sullivan, who said he grew up in a large Irish Catholic family. Sullivan asked for permission to work on the statue, though he said that’s not his line of work. He received permission from Father Christopher Rhodes, pastor of Christ the King, he said. Sullivan’s work included scraping, priming and painting the statue. He wanted the statue to represent the community and the church, so he decided to use a darker color paint for the skin tone. The restoration of the statue couldn’t have come at a better time, said Robert Frazier, a long-time member of Christ the King. The parish, which serves the African American community, will celebrate its centenary in four years. The work done on the statue has “so much spiritual meaning and great legacy as Christ the King is nearing its 100th birthday,” Frazier said.
- [Mattingly responds following protests over Republican club event at local restaurant - WBKO](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/25/mattingly-responds-following-protests-over-republican-club-event-at-local-restaurant-wbko/) - BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (WBKO) - A former Louisville Metro Police Officer, who was shot during the raid on Breonna Taylor’s apartment, released a statement following protests after footage of the deadly raid was reportedly shown in a local restaurant.On Jan. 23, the Bowling Green Freedom Walkers held a protest in front of Anna’s Greek Restaurant, in response to the Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky holding an event featuring John Mattingly.Mattingly said in a YouTube video the restaurant was not aware of what was going on and apologized to Anna’s Greek Restaurant and those who were at the restaurant that night.“And looking back, I apologize to the patrons,” Mattingly said. “It was a bad decision to carry on the event since we didn’t have a totally secure location. When we got there. We were put in a separate part of the restaurant but unfortunately, part of that restaurant could be heard by other patrons. They couldn’t see what we were watching, but they could hear.”Mattingly said he offered to pay patron’s bills, and claimed footage shown at the event was from the first night of protests in Louisville following Taylor’s death.But, patrons and the NAACP claim the footage being shown at the restaurant was from the night of Taylor’s death.We have reached out to Anna’s Greek Restaurant and the Republican Women’s Club multiple times and have not yet received a response from them.[embedded content]Copyright 2023 WBKO. All rights reserved.
- [Former LMPD officer responds to backlash surrounding local GOP event - WNKY News 40 Television](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/25/former-lmpd-officer-responds-to-backlash-surrounding-local-gop-event-wnky-news-40-television/) - 2 hours ago
- ['Adjust on the fly' | Louisville restaurant owners working to stay open amid ongoing challenges](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/adjust-on-the-fly-louisville-restaurant-owners-working-to-stay-open-amid-ongoing-challenges/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Two restaurants recently announced they are closing their doors in Germantown, the latest ones to open and then shut down since COVID-19.The news comes on the heels of two other restaurants closing in Colonial Gardens over the past few months.Many restaurant owners have talked about the struggles of staying open during the pandemic, including shutdowns, supply chain issues, worker shortages and rising costs.Ryan Cohee is the owner of Red Top Hotdogs, which rolled out as a cart about a decade ago. A few years after transitioning to a food truck, he decided to chase his dream and open a brick-and-mortar restaurant on Logan Street.But ever since the March 2020 COVID-related shutdown, his dream has been a nightmare."It's the overhead (cost). It's not being able to find anyone (to work). It's all the insurances," Cohee said.He held onto the spot, but decided to pivot. He resurrected the brick-and-mortar's former name, Keswick, and moved the hot dog business back to the food truck."By closing the dining room, and turning it into a bar, I cut my staff into about a third of what it used to be," Cohee said.Colonial Gardens, Fourth Street Live, Bardstown Road, and Goss Avenue are just a few Louisville hot spots recently hit by closures. No corner of the city, or quality of restaurant, is immune from shutting down.Some business owners have survived, and a few, including Parlour Pizza, have actually expanded. They just announced the future opening of a location in Jeffersontown. Their other locations are in Jeffersonville, New Albany, Frankfort Avenue, and downtown Louisville."Downtown was tough at first. Right after COVID," Parlour CEO Don Robinson said.But Robinson said as conventions have returned, the bar has filled up."COVID really taught us to act quickly and adjust on the fly," Robinson said.He said that important lesson is followed by another; to focus on what keeps customers coming back."There's a reason that our tagline is 'people, pizza, pints,' and 'people' is first," Robinson said.People are the reason Silly Axe Cafe is still open. Customers helped the owner, Angela Pike, with donations to keep the doors open last year. But the family was forced to move away from their Bardstown Road location to save on rent."I think it hurt me the most, you know, seeing her dream fall through a little bit," Angela's son, Conner Pike, said. "But I think that moving to Logan Street and having this was the best thing for us, and our family, and our business."Like many restaurants, the family business has also adjusted hours, and days of operation to keep serving."Food is medicine, food is medicine," Pike said.Next door to the Silly Axe, there's a new business moving in. And another person looking to achieve a dream.Related StoriesCopyright 2023 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
- [Alert: Georgia special grand jury report on 2020 election meddling to remain secret for ... - CT Insider](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/alert-georgia-special-grand-jury-report-on-2020-election-meddling-to-remain-secret-for-ct-insider/)
- [Witness: Proud Boys expected 'civil war' to break out after 2020 election outcome - FOX 7 Austin](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/witness-proud-boys-expected-civil-war-to-break-out-after-2020-election-outcome-fox-7-austin/) - Events to mark 2 years since Jan. 6 attack on U.S. Capitol Multiple events will mark the second anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. FOX 5 DC's Melanie Alnwick spoke with LiveNOW from FOX's Josh Breslow about the attack.WASHINGTON (AP) - The month before the riot at the U.S. Capitol, members
- [Louisville's Colonial Gardens searching for 2 restaurants after recent closures - wdrb.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/louisvilles-colonial-gardens-searching-for-2-restaurants-after-recent-closures-wdrb-com/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A 120-year-old Louisville property with millions of dollars invested needs to fill two vacancies.Colonial Gardens reopened in 2021 after redevelopment created a space for restaurants in south Louisville, but less than two years later, it's searching for new tenants.Biscuit Belly opted to close its location in Colonial Gardens in October due to lingering effects from the COVID-19 pandemic. Biscuit Belly said it had high hopes for this location and the redevelopment of the property when it opened in 2020. But the store has recently struggled with the increased costs of food and goods, higher utilities and the ongoing labor shortage. Colonial Gardens on Kenwood Drive in Louisville, Ky. Union 15, a pizzeria, closed last week after three years at Colonial Gardens.Half of these business are no longer at Colonial Gardens…and that was just in the last few weeks.What the property’s owner says about its future…and the millions spent - @WDRBNews 6pm pic.twitter.com/BTZzVbZre7— Joel Schipper (@JSchipperWDRB) January 24, 2023Metro Councilmember Betsy Ruhe (D-21) was elected to the district seat that includes neighborhoods Iroquois Park, Beechmont and Southside on November. Ruhe, who is a founding member of the Friends of Iroquois Park, has fond memories of growing up near Colonial Gardens."I still have plenty of people who can tell me about hanging out at Colonial Gardens when it was a dance hall," Ruhe said.Taco Luchador and The B.A. Colonial are still open at Colonial Gardens."The optics of walking past two closed restaurants to get to the ones that are being successful and that area has become such an asset to our community that we are really nervous right now," Ruhe said.The property across from the Iroquois Amphitheater was originally opened as a beer garden in 1902. It also housed a nightclub and even Louisville's first zoo before it was left vacant in 2003. Colonial Gardens on Kenwood Drive in Louisville, Ky. South Louisville residents had the iconic white building declared a local landmark in 2008, and the city bought the rundown property in 2013. Underhill Associates then bought the property from the city of Louisville in 2014 for $1, with the promise to spend $5 million to restore the building. The project called for renovating the 7,000-square-foot building and adding three new, one-story buildings that will share a common patio and garden area. The city of Louisville also put in more than a million dollars.But now, half of its tenants are gone, leaving some questioning the investment's worthwhile."It's paid for itself, already," Jeff Underhill said. "The property is paying taxes because the property employs people who are paying taxes because it has cleaned up the look of that strategic corner."Iroquois Park and Amphitheater are across the street, which bring crowds and business to the areas in the warmer months filled with events. Historical Sign outside Colonial Gardens "I am disappointed that we have had two businesses that have moved out of the property, but it should be no surprise, it is happening everywhere all over the country and the challenge is to reload," Underhill said.After the departure of two restaurants, Underhill and Ruhe are looking for two locally-owned restaurants to move-in but they want to fit to be right and also timely."We are private business people, we have to pay a mortgage to the bank and have to pay property taxes and everything else involved in it so we have the necessity to come up with a formula that works over there," Underhill said.Underhill said he has been talking to prospective tenants but couldn't give a time to when the vacancies would be filled."Hopefully people will draw together and realize that to have special places you need to support them," Underhill said."I think if they sit empty while people think about it that is not going to look good," Ruhe said.Related Stories:Copyright 2023 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
- [Georgia election probe report to remain secret for now - Los Angeles Times](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/georgia-election-probe-report-to-remain-secret-for-now-los-angeles-times/) - ATLANTA — A judge said Tuesday that a final report produced by a special grand jury tasked with investigating attempts by President Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election defeat in Georgia will remain under wraps for now.Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said he was considering whether to release the report after hearing arguments from prosecutors, who urged that it be kept secret until they decide whether to file charges, and a coalition of media organizations, which pressed for its release.He said he would reflect on the arguments before making a decision. He also said he anticipated that his decision will be appealed.The report is expected to include recommendations for Fulton County Dist. Atty. Fani Willis on possible criminal prosecution. If McBurney decides to disseminate the report, as the special grand jury urged, he must determine whether any parts should be redacted.The investigation is one of several that threaten legal consequences for the Republican former president as he seeks reelection in 2024. Over a period of roughly seven months, the special grand jury heard from dozens of witnesses, including high-profile Trump allies such as attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and high-ranking Georgia officials, such as Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp.Willis began investigating shortly after a recording of a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Raffensperger became public. In that call, the president suggested that the state’s top elections official, a fellow Republican, could “find” the votes needed to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said. “Because we won the state.”A coalition of news organizations, including the Associated Press, argued in favor of releasing the report in full, saying public interest in the report is “extraordinary.” Attorney Tom Clyde, representing the news media, said arguments for keeping a report secret would typically be made in a case involving minors or highly private information. “It doesn’t typically involve public officials who are involved in activities following a national election,” Clyde said.Willis argued Tuesday that disclosing the report now could violate the rights of potential defendants and could negatively affect the ability to prosecute those who may be charged with crimes.“We want to make sure that everyone is treated fairly, and we think for future defendants to be treated fairly, it is not appropriate at this time to have this report released,” Willis said.The district attorney’s office is not opposed to the eventual public release of the report, added prosecutor Donald Wakeford, but “it is opposed to it right now.”Trump’s legal team in Georgia said in a statement Monday that it would not participate in the hearing.“To date, we have never been a part of this process,” Drew Findling, Marissa Goldberg and Jennifer Little wrote, noting that the former president was never subpoenaed or asked to come in voluntarily as part of the investigation.“Therefore, we can assume that the grand jury did their job and looked at the facts and the law, as we have, and concluded there were no violations of the law by President Trump,” they wrote.Trump defended his actions in several posts Tuesday morning on his social media platform Truth Social. Referring to his call to Raffensperger, he wrote: “It was PERFECT, nothing done or said wrong.”The original order granting Willis’ request for a special grand jury authorized the panel to “make recommendations concerning criminal prosecution as it shall see fit.”It’s unclear how specific those recommendations will be. The special grand jury did not have the power to issue indictments, and it will be up to Willis to decide whether to seek indictments from a regular grand jury.While the special grand jury’s work took place in secret, as required by law, related public court filings provide a glimpse of investigative threads that were being pursued. Among them: • Phone calls by Trump and others to Georgia officials in the wake of the 2020 election.• A group of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate in December 2020 falsely stating that Trump had won the state and that they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.• False allegations of election fraud made during meetings of state legislators in December 2020 at the Georgia Capitol.• The copying of data and software from election equipment in rural Coffee County by a computer forensics team hired by Trump allies.• Alleged attempts to pressure Fulton County elections worker Ruby Freeman into falsely confessing to election fraud.• The abrupt resignation in January 2021 of the U.S. attorney in Atlanta.Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price in New York contributed to this report.
- [Pa. county official has had enough with 2020 election recount: 'It's time to move on'](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/pa-county-official-has-had-enough-with-2020-election-recount-its-time-to-move-on/) - WILLIAMSPORT – Lycoming County Commissioner Scott L. Metzger on Tuesday said he’s spent enough time looking back now that the hand recount for the 2020 presidential and auditor general races has been completed.“We’ve done our due diligence. It’s time to move on,” he said, addressing those who have alleged improprieties.Of the more than 59,000 votes cast in the 2020 presidential race, the hand count differed from the electronic tabulation by 26.The electronic tabulation had Trump with 41,462 votes while his hand count total was 41,455. The hand count gave Joe Biden 16,956 votes, 15 less than the 2020 official count.Commissioners Tony R. Mussare and Richard Mirabito at a meeting of the county Board of Elections also expressed a desire to move on.However, Karen DiSalvo, an attorney and a leading spokesperson for the election deniers, continued to raise concerns.She attacked elections director Forrest K. Lehman personally and cited alleged incidents of voter fraud across the country.Her request to see the tally sheets from the hand recount has been denied and there has been no response to her right-to-know request, she said.DiSalvo criticized the state Department of State for opposing the release of the county’s clear vote record (CVR) of the 2020 general election.CVRs are a collection of spreadsheets containing raw data for each ballot but with no voter identification information.County Judge Eric R. Linhardt on Dec. 12 overturned an Office of Open Records decision ruling the CVRs were public. The Department of State has filed an appeal with Commonwealth Court.It was “disgusting” having to go to court to get the CVRs, said Jeffrey J. Stroehmann, who describes himself as a former member of the conservative Patriots organization.He expressed fear that a consolidation of precincts and central vote counting will be next. But on the recount, he said, “mission accomplished,” and applauded the transparency in the process.Lehman presented a PowerPoint explaining the recount process and why the results differed slightly from those generated from the paper ballots fed into a scanner for tabulation.They included human error and the interpretation of marks on the ballot.He concluded his presentation by expressing hope the recount will allow people to reconsider any misgivings about the voting system. What he said next prompted DiSalvo’s personal attack on him.The claim that the county’s vote totals were off by thousands were put to bed, Lehman said.“But we need to watch for what comes next and avoid falling into the same trap all over again,” he said. “Unfortunately, there are people who are committed to attacking the county’s elections no matter what.“They will respond to the results of this hand count by trying to back away from the original arguments they made about the vote totals being off by thousands.“They will try to pretend they never said that. They will try to change the subject. They will expect everyone to keep listening to them, and believing them, in spite of the fact their allegations about the voting system were incorrect.“The question is, how long do we as a community, as a country keep listening to these arguments and letting them tear us apart?”Lehman accused those who attack him of doing so without evidence. “My job as a career election official is to ensure that democracy survives and to defend our elections when they are attacked,” he said.Mirabito, who voted against the recount, voiced strong support for the elections director and also applauded those who challenged the system by seeking a recount.Added Metzgar, “People exercised democracy.” The Elections Board took the extra step to be sure the electronic tabulation of votes was accurate, he said.Lycoming County elections director Forrest K. Lehman reviews tally sheets generated from a hand recount of the 2020 results of the races for president and state auditor general.The recount, which took less than three days, “proved to me the equipment was correct,” Mussare said.The recount of the county’s 83 precincts was conducted by 28 county employees who combined put in 559 hours. They were supervised by Lehman and two others.They did not get paid extra but compiling their hourly rate totaled $11,452 or about 10 cents for each county resident, Metzger said. Maybe 11 cents since the county bought them lunch, he added.One of the issues that commissioners note they are facing as they move forward is bringing 56 polling places into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act to ensure all those who want to vote in person can.More:Ousted Shamokin councilman seeks former seat despite having criminal recordWoman who lost job in Shop-Vac shutdown seeks class action certification
- [Judge deciding whether a grand jury report into the 2020 election will be made public - WABE](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/judge-deciding-whether-a-grand-jury-report-into-the-2020-election-will-be-made-public-wabe/) - WABE’s mission is simple: “Inform, inspire, reflect and empower our greater Atlanta community. ” We do that through the news, information, and entertainment we bring you via radio and TV, on your phone, in your car, on your smart speaker, or online at the new WABE.org—anywhere and everywhere throughout greater Atlanta. And we can only do this with your help. Please consider becoming a member of WABE today.
- [Witness: Proud Boys expected 'civil war' to break out after 2020 election outcome](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/witness-proud-boys-expected-civil-war-to-break-out-after-2020-election-outcome/) - Events to mark 2 years since Jan. 6 attack on U.S. Capitol Multiple events will mark the second anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. FOX 5 DC's Melanie Alnwick spoke with LiveNOW from FOX's Josh Breslow about the attack.WASHINGTON (AP) - The month before the riot at the U.S. Capitol, members
- [Fulton DA hints at seeking indictments following grand jury investigation into 2020 election](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/fulton-da-hints-at-seeking-indictments-following-grand-jury-investigation-into-2020-election-2/) - ATLANTA — In a Tuesday afternoon court hearing, Fulton County District Attorney hinted she could seek indictments on multiple people in connection with the special purpose grand jury’s investigation into possible criminal interference in Georgia’s 2020 election.Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney heard arguments about potentially releasing that investigative report.Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said she didn’t want it released now because it could impact her cases.Attorneys for WSB-TV and other media outlets argued that, under Georgia law, the judge was required to release that report, and that the public had a right to know what was in it.“The state understands the media’s inquiry and the world’s interest,” Willis argued. “But we have to be mindful of protect future defendants’ rights. If that report was released, there somehow could be arguments made that it impacts the right for later individuals, multiple, to get a fair trial.”RELATED STORIESBut WSB-TV attorney Tom Clyde argued that there were no other potential defendants in the hearing arguing to keep the report sealed, only the DA’s Office. He also pointed out that the special grand jurors specifically asked the judge to release their investigation.“We acknowledge the operations of the grand jury, while it was ongoing, were subject to a veil of secrecy,” Clyde said. “But that has come to an end, and they’ve issued their final report. And the jurors themselves have asked for it to be published.”The special purpose grand jury finished its eight-month-long investigation two weeks ago. It looked into possible criminal meddling with Georgia’s 2020 election by former President Donald Trump and subpoenaed people like Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, to former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn.McBurney will have to decide if a special purpose grand jury is an instrument of the court system or an investigative arm of the District Attorney’s Office.That decision will guide him to whether he will release the report.RELATED NEWS:Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn appears before special grand jury into 2020 election ©2023 Cox Media Group
- [Year or more wait for Louisville defendants needing competency evaluations before trial has ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/year-or-more-wait-for-louisville-defendants-needing-competency-evaluations-before-trial-has/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – As recently as this past summer, the wait for a defendant in Louisville to get a competency evaluation at Kentucky’s state-run psychiatric center was a year or more, leaving people jailed indefinitely and victims unsure when they would get any resolution.Now, however, that wait is “half the time,” Jefferson Commonwealth’s Attorney Tom Wine said in an interview Tuesday.Last August, an official with the Kentucky Correctional Psychiatric Center (KCPC) in La Grange said there was a statewide waiting list of more than 300 defendants, with a wait time of a year or more — up from about eight weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic. The waiting list had been about 80 people before the pandemic. Officials with KCPC have been meeting regularly with the Louisville mayor's office, prosecutors, defense attorneys and representatives from the jail to find solutions, which have included doing the evaluations through teleconference or at the jail facility. “We have reduced the number tremendously,” Wine said. “I’ve seen the backlog go down. It cuts down tremendously on the amount of time that it takes to take a case to trial."Wine said some defendants were having to wait as much as 18 months before getting an evaluation to determine if they were competent for trial. "Now they are going much more quickly," he said. "It gives us an opportunity to move those cases forward, helps reduce the jail population, helps bring closure to families" and gives defendants less time awaiting a disposition of their case. Metro Department of Corrections Director Jerry Collins said the psychiatric center has begun working here and around the state to perform some evaluations through video conferences or sending psychiatrists to the facilities instead of waiting for space to open up at KCPC. The result is a current waiting list of 35 inmates in Jefferson County who need on-site competency evaluations at KCPC, he said, a huge reduction from the previous backlog. “That’s really good for us, really low for us,” he said in an interview. “We’ve done an excellent job lately since we started on-sites, with KCPC evaluators coming here, and telehealth for the last several months. We’re not behind at all.”This is a drastic reversal from last August, when Jefferson Circuit Court Judge Annie O’Connell threatened to hold KCPC officials in contempt of court for repeatedly failing to follow orders to evaluate defendants on their competence to stand trial.KCPC is the only facility in the state that can conduct mental competency evaluations for people charged with a felony, the most serious crimes.Officials at the center have said employees aren't intentionally defying court orders. They claim there just isn't the necessary space and employees available.A few weeks after the contempt hearing, KCPC sent letters to judges across the state acknowledging the waitlist had grown “extensively” due to several reasons, including staffing shortages.The letter asked judges to “consider allowing the use of telehealth evaluations in your county, on a case-by-case basis, as it will help us to fulfill the court orders more quickly.”O’Connell, who did not immediately return a message seeking comment, did not hold anyone with KCPC in contempt. The defendants in the cases she brought up during the hearing are no longer waiting for evaluations.It is unclear, however, if the rest of the state is seeing the same backlog reduction as Louisville. A spokeswoman for the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, which oversees KCPC, did not immediately return a phone message and email asking about the statewide backlog. Campbell County Jailer Jim Daley, president of the Kentucky Jailers Association, said, “I still hear complaints about it” from other jailers.As for his jail, Daley said there has been some teleconferencing, but “I don’t know that (the backlog) is any better.”Koleen Slusher, facilities director at the psychiatric center, told O’Connell during the contempt hearing that KCPC had been unable to take inmates because of coronavirus issues both in jails and at the psychiatric facility.At the same time, staffing levels have plummeted, she said.The facility can only evaluate about 30 defendants at a time, as compared to 78 when fully-staffed, she said at the time.Slusher told O'Connell the center needs about 80 security officers but only had 30.This story may be updated. Copyright 2023 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
- ['Decisions are imminent' on charges in Trump's effort to overturn 2020 election in Georgia ... - KESQ](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/decisions-are-imminent-on-charges-in-trumps-effort-to-overturn-2020-election-in-georgia-kesq/) - By Sara Murray, Jason Morris and Devan Cole, CNN Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis suggested Tuesday that the special grand jury investigating Donald Trump and his allies’ efforts to upend the 2020 election in Georgia has recommended multiple indictments and said that her decision on whether to bring charges is “imminent.” At a hearing in Atlanta on whether to publicly release the special grand jury report. Willis, a Democrat, said she opposes making it public at the moment, citing her ongoing deliberations on charges. “Decisions are imminent,” Willis told Judge Robert McBurney. “We want to make sure that everyone is treated fairly, and we think for future defendants to be treated fairly it’s not appropriate at this time to have this report released,” she said. The special grand jury, barred from issuing indictments, penned the highly anticipated final report as a culmination of its seven months of work, which included interviewing witnesses from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. The special grand jury heard from a total of 75 witnesses, Willis said Tuesday. Its final report is likely to include some summary of the panel’s investigative work, as well as any recommendations for indictments and the alleged conduct that led the panel to its conclusions. Donald Wakeford, Fulton County’s chief senior assistant district attorney, also argued to the judge that it would be “dangerous” to release the report before any announcement related to possible charges is made. “We think immediately releasing before the district attorney has even had an opportunity to address publicly whether there will be charges or not — because there has not been a meaningful enough amount of time to assess it — is dangerous,” Wakeford said. “It’s dangerous to the people who may or may not be named in the report for various reasons. It’s also a disservice to the witnesses who came to the grand jury and spoke the truth to the grand jury.” Atlanta-area prosecutors are already poring over the report as they weigh whether to bring charges against Trump or his associates. McBurney, who oversaw the special grand jury’s roughly seven-month investigation, will decide whether the report should be released publicly and, if so, how much of it. While the panel of grand jurors recommended its report be made public, so far, the contents have been closely held. A media coalition, which includes CNN, is seeking for the full report to be made public. “We believe the report should be released now and in its entirety. And that approach is consistent with the way the American judicial system operates,” attorney Tom Clyde, representing the coalition, argued. “In other words, it is not unusual for a district attorney or a prosecuting authority to be generally uncomfortable with having to release information during the progress of the case. That occurs all the time.” At the close of the nearly two-hour hearing, McBurney emphasized the unique nature of the issue, saying, “I think the fact that we had to discuss this for 90 minutes shows that it is somewhat extraordinary.” “There’ll be no rash decisions” he said, adding later: “No one’s going to wake up with the court having disclosed the report on the front page of a newspaper.” McBurney will have to weigh the public’s interest in learning about efforts to interfere in the last presidential election against concerns that making the information public could hinder an ongoing investigation if the district attorney is pursuing indictments and that the release could disparage individuals who have not been charged with crimes, said Peter Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia. “What you don’t want is an opportunity for a grand jury to make some allegation of criminal conduct that later on either can’t be proven or is unsubstantiated and the person hasn’t had a chance to clear his or her name,” Skandalakis said. Attorneys for Trump did not participate in Tuesday’s hearing. “The grand jury compelled the testimony of dozens of other, often high-ranking, officials during the investigation, but never found it important to speak with the President,” Trump attorneys Drew Findling, Marissa Goldberg and Jennifer Little said in a statement. “Therefore, we can assume that the grand jury did their job and looked at the facts and the law, as we have, and concluded there were no violations of the law by President Trump.” The path to indictments The Georgia probe began soon after Trump phoned Raffensperger in January 2021, pressing the secretary of state to “find” the votes necessary for Trump to win the state. He lost the state to Joe Biden by nearly 12,000 votes. “Our vote is as important as anyone else,” Willis told CNN in a 2022 interview. “If someone takes that away or violates it in a way that is criminal, because I sit here in this jurisdiction it’s my responsibility.” Willis requested a special grand jury to investigate the case and the panel began its work in June 2022, calling a roster of witnesses that included Raffensperger, Giuilani, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. Over time, the investigation has expanded well beyond the Trump call to include false claims of election fraud to state lawmakers, the fake elector scheme, efforts by unauthorized individuals to access voting machines in one Georgia county and threats and harassment against election workers. Along the way, Willis has designated a number of people as targets of her probe, including 16 Republicans who served as pro-Trump electors in 2020 and Giuliani. But how much of that makes it into the final report was up to the special grand jurors. “It’s important for people to know that the prosecutor’s office does not write the presentment, traditionally,” said Robert James, who used a special grand jury to investigate local corruption when he was district attorney in Georgia’s DeKalb County. “It literally is the will of the people.” Now that Willis has the special grand jury’s report, it’s up to her to decide whether to go to a regular grand jury to pursue indictments. She’s not required to follow the exact recommendations laid out by the special grand jury, but its work product is likely to eventually become public and she could risk backlash if she runs too far afield of the panel’s suggestions. Willis has previously said she could pursue Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) charges in this case, which would allow prosecutors to bring charges against multiple defendants and make the case that Trump and his allies were part of a criminal enterprise. Whatever her approach, she’s likely to face pressure to move expeditiously with indictments or close her investigation. The level of pressure is “all encompassing,” said James, who predicted Willis would marshal her resources and get her case trial-ready before she seeks any indictments. “The spotlight is hot,” James said. “You can’t afford to lose a case like this, right?” Prior special grand jury reports offer hints of what to expect Prior special grand jury reports have laid out a narrative of the panel’s investigation and concluded with recommendations. The 2013 special grand jury James worked with issued a roughly 80-page report, but it was only released publicly after a months-long court fight. The DeKalb County panel’s investigative summary referenced testimony and documents provided to the grand jury. Tacked on to the end of the report was a list of all the witnesses who appeared. The grand jurors ultimately referred one person for indictment — who fought the report’s public release — and nearly a dozen others for further investigation, laying out the infractions in each case that led them to their conclusions. They also recommended a variety of government reforms. A 2010 report from a special grand jury in Gwinnett County summarized its investigative activity surrounding local land acquisition deals and indicted one public official, though the indictment was later overturned when a court ruled that special grand juries could not issue indictments. For McBurney, there are only a few special grand jury examples to guide his decision-making on the report’s handling. “Like everyone else I’m sitting around eating popcorn waiting to see what he’s going to release and what he’s not going to release,” said Robert James, who used a special grand jury to investigate local corruption when he was district attorney in Georgia’s DeKalb County. This story has been updated with additional details. The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved. CNN’s Sarah Fortinsky, Aaron Pellish, Saba Haroon and Aryeh HajibayPiranesi contributed to this report.
- [The arguments around releasing report on efforts to overturn 2020 election in Georgia](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/the-arguments-around-releasing-report-on-efforts-to-overturn-2020-election-in-georgia/) - Menu 91.5 Chapel Hill 88.9 Manteo 90.9 Rocky Mount 91.1 Welcome 91.9 Fayetteville 90.5 Buxton 94.1 Lumberton 99.9 Southern Pines
- [Media coalition seeks release of grand jury findings on Trump's role in Georgia's 2020 election |](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/media-coalition-seeks-release-of-grand-jury-findings-on-trumps-role-in-georgias-2020-election/) - Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ATLANTA – A lawyer for a coalition of media outlets asked a Fulton County judge Tuesday to release the final report of a special purpose grand jury that investigated then-President Donald Trump’s alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. “There is genuine public interest in what these grand jurors found,” Thomas Clyde told Fulton Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney during a 90-minute hearing. But Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said releasing the special grand jury’s findings in the case could jeopardize the rights of future defendants who may be indicted to a fair trial. “We want to make sure everyone is treated fairly,” Willis said. “For future defendants to be treated fairly, it is not appropriate at this time to have this report released.” Willis empaneled the special purpose grand jury early last year to investigate whether Trump and/or others unlawfully interfered in Georgia’s election results. Those efforts included a phone call Trump placed to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in January 2021 urging him to “find” 11,780 votes, the margin that would have been needed to put Republican Trump over the top in Georgia. Instead, Democrat Joe Biden carried the Peach State’s 16 electoral votes. On another front, Georgia Republicans assembled an “alternate” slate of electors who met at the Georgia Capitol in December 2020 to vote for Trump on the same day the actual slate of electors were in another part of the building casting their Electoral College votes for Biden. Willis will use the special purpose grand jury’s findings to inform her decision whether to empanel a grand jury to consider whether to indict the former president and/or his associates on criminal charges. When the special purpose panel completed its work earlier this month, the jurors voted to ask McBurney to order their findings released to the public. On Tuesday, Clyde cited the jurors’ request as a factor in the media coalition’s efforts to put its findings out for public scrutiny. But Fulton Assistant District Attorney Donald Wakeford said going public with the report now could taint what he characterized as an ongoing investigation. “Ongoing criminal investigations are not subject to public scrutiny,” he said. “It is premature to make the report public at this time.” But Clyde cited previous instances in Georgia where a special purpose grand jury has recommended prosecution of a named individual, and the information was subsequently published in its entirety. “Ongoing investigations frequently continue after there is significant disclosure of information in a case,” he said. “This is what would happen here.” McBurney promised careful consideration of what he called a complex case. “I’ll think about this a little bit,” the judge told the lawyers. “There will be no rash decisions.” This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
- [Fulton DA hints at seeking indictments following grand jury investigation into 2020 election](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/fulton-da-hints-at-seeking-indictments-following-grand-jury-investigation-into-2020-election/) - The Wall Street JournalDozens of Major Shootings Sweep the U.S. in JanuaryMass shootings such as the two that occurred within 48 hours in California in recent days have been on the rise annually in the U.S., data show, though the volume of such incidents varies substantially from year to year. The shootings that occurred Saturday night at a dance studio in Monterey Park, Calif., and Monday at two farms in the town of Half Moon Bay, which killed a total of 18 people, have added to the ongoing debate about gun violence in America and what can be done to stop it. While the number of mass shootings in which at least four people die in a public setting has both risen and fallen annually over the past several years, the long-term trend shows such incidents growing, according to the Violence Project, a nonprofit research group.
- [Louisville Downtown Partnership reports progress in 2022, expects more growth this year](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/louisville-downtown-partnership-reports-progress-in-2022-expects-more-growth-this-year/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Community leaders believe downtown Louisville is headed in the right direction after recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.Louisville Downtown Partnership said 46 new businesses opened in the downtown area in 2022, while another 15 businesses have announced plans to open in 2023.Rebecca Fleischaker, executive director of Louisville Downtown Partnership, expects 2023 to be an even better year."Office workers aren't 100% back in the office, even though it's increasing a little bit," Fleischaker said. "People are really wanting to come out and enjoy each other with activities and events that we have, plus concerts and ballgames and enjoying whiskey row along Main Street." Rebecca Fleischaker, Executive Director of Louisville Downtown Partnership, speaks to WDRB News on Jan. 24, 2023. According to a news release, 11 projects were completed last year with a $284 million investment. Another 50 projects are underway or announced, totaling to more than $1.1 billion in investments.The bourbon industry brought in 540,675 people to Louisville in 2022. That was more than 116,000 people than 2019, which set a record."Tourism is doing amazingly well, we really wanted to highlight what a great year 2022 was," Fleischaker said. "For the first time, the bourbon distillery attendance surpassed 2019, which was the record year that we're holding everything against, so that's an exciting statistic."Downtown Louisville also hosted more than 880,000 convention-goers last year, creating an economic impact of $176 million.The Downtown Partnership also said crime in the downtown area has decreased, reporting 46% less car break-ins and 33% less thefts in the downtown area than in 2019.The organization said events like Food Truck Wednesdays and Cyclouvia on Main Street will continue in 2023."We know that there's more coming in 2023, so we're really excited to continue this momentum," Fleischaker said.Related StoriesCopyright 2023 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
- [Georgia election probe report to remain secret for now - KMBC](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/georgia-election-probe-report-to-remain-secret-for-now-kmbc/) - A judge said Tuesday that a final report produced by a special grand jury that investigated possible illegal interference in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia by then-President Donald Trump and his allies will remain under wraps for now.Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said he was considering whether to release the report after hearing arguments from prosecutors, who urged it be kept secret until they decide whether to file any charges, and a coalition of media organizations, which pressed for its release.He said he would further reflect on the parties' arguments and would reach out with any questions before making a final decision. He also said he anticipated his eventual decision would be appealed.The report is expected to include recommendations for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on possible criminal prosecution. If McBurney decides to disseminate the report, as the special grand jury urged, he must also determine whether any parts of it should be redacted.The investigation is one of several that threaten potential legal consequences for the Republican former president as he seeks reelection in 2024. Over a period of roughly seven months, the special grand jury heard from dozens of witnesses, including high-profile Trump allies, such as attorney Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and high-ranking Georgia officials, such as Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp.Willis began investigating shortly after a recording of a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Raffensperger became public. In that call, the president suggested that the state's top elections official, a fellow Republican, could "find" the votes needed to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden. "I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have," Trump had said. "Because we won the state."A coalition of news organizations, including The Associated Press, argued in favor of releasing the report in full, saying public interest in the report is "extraordinary." Attorney Tom Clyde, representing the news media, said arguments for keeping the report secret would typically be a case involving minors or highly private information."It doesn't typically involve public officials who are involved in activities following a national election," Clyde said.Willis argued Tuesday that disclosing the report now could violate the rights of potential defendants and could negatively affect the ability to prosecute those who may be charged with crimes."We want to make sure that everyone is treated fairly and we think for future defendants to be treated fairly, it is not appropriate at this time to have this report released," Willis said.The district attorney's office is not opposed to the eventual public release of the report, added prosecutor Donald Wakeford, but "it is opposed to it right now."Trump's legal team in Georgia said in a statement Monday that it would not participate in the hearing."To date, we have never been a part of this process," Drew Findling, Marissa Goldberg and Jennifer Little wrote, noting that the former president was never subpoenaed or asked to come in voluntarily as part of the investigation."Therefore, we can assume that the grand jury did their job and looked at the facts and the law, as we have, and concluded there were no violations of the law by President Trump," they wrote.Trump defended his actions in several posts Tuesday morning on his social media platform, Truth Social. Referring to his call to Raffensperger, he wrote: "It was PERFECT, nothing done or said wrong."The original order granting Willis' request for a special grand jury authorized the panel to "make recommendations concerning criminal prosecution as it shall see fit."It's unclear just how specific those recommendations will be. The special grand jury did not have the power to issue indictments, and it will ultimately be up to Willis to decide whether to seek indictments from a regular grand jury.While the special grand jury's work took place in secret, as required by law, related public court filings provided a glimpse of investigative threads that were being pursued. Those included:— Phone calls by Trump and others to Georgia officials in the wake of the 2020 election.— A group of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate in December 2020 falsely stating that Trump had won the state and that they were the state's "duly elected and qualified" electors.— False allegations of election fraud made during meetings of state legislators at the Georgia Capitol in December 2020.— The copying of data and software from election equipment in rural Coffee County by a computer forensics team hired by Trump allies.— Alleged attempts to pressure Fulton County elections worker Ruby Freeman into falsely confessing to election fraud.— The abrupt resignation of the U.S. attorney in Atlanta in January 2021.___Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price in New York contributed to this report. ATLANTA — A judge said Tuesday that a final report produced by a special grand jury that investigated possible illegal interference in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia by then-President Donald Trump and his allies will remain under wraps for now.Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said he was considering whether to release the report after hearing arguments from prosecutors, who urged it be kept secret until they decide whether to file any charges, and a coalition of media organizations, which pressed for its release.
- [Georgia prosecutor says decision 'imminent' on charges in Trump scheme to overturn 2020 election](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/georgia-prosecutor-says-decision-imminent-on-charges-in-trump-scheme-to-overturn-2020-election/) - A Georgia district attorney urged a judge Tuesday to suppress a special grand jury’s report on possible crimes by former President Donald Trump and his allies in their efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election, saying she will decide soon whether to bring charges. “Decisions are imminent,” Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, a Democrat up for reelection next year, told the judge. After investigating for eight months and hearing from 75 witnesses, the special grand jurors recommended that its report be made public. The special grand jury was dissolved earlier this month. Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said he will decide later whether to release any of the report, saying the issue “is not simple.” “What’s extraordinary is what’s at issue here — the alleged interference with the presidential election,” the judge said. SEE ALSO: Trump says he had ‘obligation’ to overturn Georgia election, as judge weighs grand jury report If the special grand jury’s report does recommend criminal charges, Ms. Willis would need to convene a new grand jury to consider indictments. In the meantime, she said, prosecutors “have to be mindful of protecting future defendants’ rights.” “We want to make sure that everyone is treated fairly. It is not appropriate at this time to have this report released,” she told the judge. Lawyers for a coalition of media companies, including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Associated Press, argued in court Tuesday that the report should be made public immediately. Attorney Tom Clyde said the special grand jury’s “veil of secrecy has come to an end.” “The faith of the public in the court system is much improved by operating in a public way,” Mr. Clyde told the judge. “The jurors themselves have asked for the report to be published. There is enormous public interest in what they have said.” Among the witnesses who were called to testify in the probe were former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican. The special grand jury investigated matters including an infamous phone call on Jan. 2, 2021, between Mr. Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger; the appointment of 16 “alternate” Republican electors for Mr. Trump; and efforts to pressure a Fulton County poll worker to falsely claim she committed election fraud. There were no lawyers in the courtroom Tuesday representing Mr. Trump or other potential targets, including the 16 Republicans who signed certificates claiming to be Georgia’s valid presidential electors. The special grand jury did not request Mr. Trump’s testimony. But the former president weighed in about the case Tuesday in a series of posts on his Truth Social platform, saying he had “an obligation” to call Georgia officials in protest of the 2020 election. Referring to his phone call with Mr. Raffensperger, Mr. Trump offered a likely defense if criminal charges are brought. “With many people on the line on what was a PERFECT call protesting the Rigged Georgia Election, which I have a clear right to do, and in fact an obligation to do since I made the call as President, how come not one person said, while on the call, that I acted inappropriately, or made a statement of protest at what I said, & then slammed down the phone,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Not one, even with so many opposing people, lawyers, and others on the line. NO ADMONISHMENT at all.” On the call, which was recorded, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes, enough to give him more than Mr. Biden in Georgia. State officials certified Mr. Biden’s victory and found no evidence of voter fraud. Mr. Trump insisted again Tuesday that his phone call was “perfect” and that his opponents cheated in the election. “Many people, including lawyers for both sides, were knowingly on the line,” he wrote. He said Georgia’s presidential election was “RIGGED AND STOLLEN.” “We have all the evidence needed. That is the CRIME!” Mr. Trump said.
- [Georgia special grand jury report on 2020 election meddling to remain secret for now while ... - KXAN](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/georgia-special-grand-jury-report-on-2020-election-meddling-to-remain-secret-for-now-while-kxan/) - Georgia special grand jury report on 2020 election meddling to remain secret for now while judge considers release – KXAN Austin Skip to content ✕ × Close Ad
- [Alert: Georgia special grand jury report on 2020 election meddling to ... - Midland Reporter-Telegram](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/alert-georgia-special-grand-jury-report-on-2020-election-meddling-to-midland-reporter-telegram/) - Jan. 24, 2023Updated: Jan. 24, 2023 1:29 p.m. ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia special grand jury report on 2020 election meddling to remain secret for now while judge considers release. Written By
- [Georgia special grand jury report on 2020 election meddling to remain secret for now while ... - NY1](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/georgia-special-grand-jury-report-on-2020-election-meddling-to-remain-secret-for-now-while-ny1/) - ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia special grand jury report on 2020 election meddling to remain secret for now while judge considers release.Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
- [Alert: Georgia special grand jury report on 2020 election meddling to remain ... - Big Rapids Pioneer](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/alert-georgia-special-grand-jury-report-on-2020-election-meddling-to-remain-big-rapids-pioneer/) - Jan. 24, 2023Updated: Jan. 24, 2023 2:29 p.m. ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia special grand jury report on 2020 election meddling to remain secret for now while judge considers release. Written By
- [Georgia election probe report to remain secret for now - WHSV](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/georgia-election-probe-report-to-remain-secret-for-now-whsv/) - ATLANTA (AP) — A judge said Tuesday that a final report produced by a special grand jury that investigated possible illegal interference in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia by then-President Donald Trump and his allies will remain under wraps for now.Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said he was considering whether to release the report after hearing arguments from prosecutors, who urged it be kept secret until they decide whether to file any charges, and a coalition of media organizations, which pressed for its release.He said he would further reflect on the parties’ arguments and would reach out with any questions before making a final decision. He also said he anticipated his eventual decision would be appealed.The report is expected to include recommendations for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on possible criminal prosecution. If McBurney decides to disseminate the report, as the special grand jury urged, he must also determine whether any parts of it should be redacted.The investigation is one of several that threaten potential legal consequences for the Republican former president as he seeks reelection in 2024. Over a period of roughly seven months, the special grand jury heard from dozens of witnesses, including high-profile Trump allies, such as attorney Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and high-ranking Georgia officials, such as Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp.Willis began investigating shortly after a recording of a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Raffensperger became public. In that call, the president suggested that the state’s top elections official, a fellow Republican, could “find” the votes needed to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump had said. “Because we won the state.”.FILE - Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney swears in potential jurors during proceedings to seat a special purpose grand jury in Atlanta, on May 2, 2022. McBurney is set to hear arguments on whether to release a report by a special grand jury tasked with investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies broke any laws as they sought to overturn his narrow 2020 election loss in Georgia.(AP Photo/Ben Gray, File)A coalition of news organizations, including The Associated Press, argued in favor of releasing the report in full, saying public interest in the report is “extraordinary.” Attorney Tom Clyde, representing the news media, said arguments for keeping the report secret would typically be a case involving minors or highly private information.“It doesn’t typically involve public officials who are involved in activities following a national election,” Clyde said.Willis argued Tuesday that disclosing the report now could violate the rights of potential defendants and could negatively affect the ability to prosecute those who may be charged with crimes.“We want to make sure that everyone is treated fairly and we think for future defendants to be treated fairly, it is not appropriate at this time to have this report released,” Willis said.The district attorney’s office is not opposed to the eventual public release of the report, added prosecutor Donald Wakeford, but “it is opposed to it right now.”Trump’s legal team in Georgia said in a statement Monday that it would not participate in the hearing.“To date, we have never been a part of this process,” Drew Findling, Marissa Goldberg and Jennifer Little wrote, noting that the former president was never subpoenaed or asked to come in voluntarily as part of the investigation.“Therefore, we can assume that the grand jury did their job and looked at the facts and the law, as we have, and concluded there were no violations of the law by President Trump,” they wrote.Trump defended his actions in several posts Tuesday morning on his social media platform, Truth Social. Referring to his call to Raffensperger, he wrote: “It was PERFECT, nothing done or said wrong.”The original order granting Willis’ request for a special grand jury authorized the panel to “make recommendations concerning criminal prosecution as it shall see fit.”It’s unclear just how specific those recommendations will be. The special grand jury did not have the power to issue indictments, and it will ultimately be up to Willis to decide whether to seek indictments from a regular grand jury.A Georgia judge hears arguments Tuesday on releasing the special grand jury report on former President Donald Trump. (Source: CNN/POOL/WSB/Obtained by CNN)While the special grand jury’s work took place in secret, as required by law, related public court filings provided a glimpse of investigative threads that were being pursued. Those included:— Phone calls by Trump and others to Georgia officials in the wake of the 2020 election.— A group of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate in December 2020 falsely stating that Trump had won the state and that they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.— False allegations of election fraud made during meetings of state legislators at the Georgia Capitol in December 2020.— The copying of data and software from election equipment in rural Coffee County by a computer forensics team hired by Trump allies.— Alleged attempts to pressure Fulton County elections worker Ruby Freeman into falsely confessing to election fraud.— The abrupt resignation of the U.S. attorney in Atlanta in January 2021.___Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price in New York contributed to this report.Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
- [Alert: Georgia special grand jury report on 2020 election meddling to ... - Beaumont Enterprise](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/alert-georgia-special-grand-jury-report-on-2020-election-meddling-to-beaumont-enterprise/) - Jan. 24, 2023Updated: Jan. 24, 2023 1:29 p.m. ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia special grand jury report on 2020 election meddling to remain secret for now while judge considers release. Written By
- [Alert: Georgia special grand jury report on 2020 election meddling to remain secret for ... - SFGATE](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/alert-georgia-special-grand-jury-report-on-2020-election-meddling-to-remain-secret-for-sfgate/) - Jan. 24, 2023Updated: Jan. 24, 2023 11:29 a.m. ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia special grand jury report on 2020 election meddling to remain secret for now while judge considers release. Written By
- [Final report from Georgia election investigation remains under wraps for now - WABE](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/final-report-from-georgia-election-investigation-remains-under-wraps-for-now-wabe/) - Updated January 24, 2022 at 4 p.m. ET One year ago, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis asked a judge to convene a special grand jury, saying she had reason to believe the 2020 election in Georgia had been “subject to possible criminal disruptions.” Now, after hours of closed-door testimony from 75 witnesses over eight months, that special grand jury has concluded its work and a judge is deciding whether, when and how to release the panel’s final report. Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney, who has overseen the investigation from the start, heard arguments on Tuesday about the report’s release. The report may include recommendations for criminal charges, which Willis could decide to pursue by asking a standing grand jury to issue indictments – which could happen as soon as this week. Willis is asking McBurney to keep the report under wraps – at least for now. “We want to make sure that everyone is treated fairly, and we think for future defendants to be treated fairly, it’s not appropriate at this time to have this report released,” she told the judge in rare public comments on the investigation. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, shown here with Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade, presented public comments in the courtroom during Tuesday’s hearing. (Matthew Pearson/WABE) Prosecutors argued that the time to figure out what to do with this report is after Willis announces whether she is pursuing any criminal charges. Willis says that decision is “imminent.” A coalition of media outlets, including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Associated Press and the New York Times, is urging the judge to release the report, unredacted. “The public interest in the Report is extraordinary,” lawyers for the news outlets wrote in a brief filed Monday. “The Court should file the Report in the public docket and publish it… as the special purpose grand jurors have requested.” The court did not hear from lawyers for any of the potential targets of the investigation or witnesses, who may have found it difficult to argue for redactions without having seen the report. “It’s a question, in my view, not of if, but of when,” says legal scholar Norm Eisen, who’s studied the investigation extensively. “If I were the D.A. I would want the judge to sequence the release of the report with the indictments.” The judge will have to consider a tangle of Georgia code, murky legal definitions and court precedent, as well as weigh the public interest with any conflicting interests of prosecutors, witnesses and subjects of the investigation. Special grand juries are relatively rare, so there is not extensive precedent to lean on. “So I think the bottom line is Judge McBurney has to answer whether this is a report he mandatorily has to release to public or is it something else under Georgia law – and is there any obligation or need on his part to redact any of the information that’s in that report,” says Anthony Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University. McBurney told the lawyers that his decision won’t be a simple one – and he will take some time to think on it before releasing an order. Should he decide the report should be released, McBurney said it won’t likely be released immediately with his decision. In a statement released Monday to multiple media outlets, Trump’s Georgia-based legal team wrote that they won’t appear in court on Tuesday, saying the former president was never subpoenaed or asked to voluntarily appear before the special grand jury. “We can assume that the grand jury did their job and looked at the facts and the law, as we have, and concluded there were no violations of the law by President Trump,” wrote attorneys Drew Findling, Marissa Goldberg and Jennifer Little. It’s not known whether the jurors recommend charges for Trump or anyone else. “I don’t think there’s anything anybody can read in one way or the other,” Kreis says. “Not being called (to testify) is kind of a neutral observation.” The investigation was spurred by Trump’s call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, pressuring him to “find” 11,780 votes for him. The 26-member panel also examined plans to organize a fake slate of electors for Trump and other attempts to interfere with the election, including targeting election workers and spreading false conspiracy theories about widespread election fraud. Legal experts say Willis is likely looking at potential violations of specific Georgia codes, like criminal solicitation to commit election fraud. Jurors heard testimony from dozens of figures in Trump’s inner orbit, often after lengthy court fights, including former White House chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Trump’s onetime personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). Other witnesses included Raffensperger and Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who both brushed off entreaties from Trump and his allies. Many of the events scrutinized by the special grand jury have also been the subject of other probes, including investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice and the select committee in Congress that examined the January 6th insurrection. Unlike a standard grand jury, a special purpose grand jury is dedicated to just one case and can meet for much longer. But if prosecutors choose to pursue any criminal charges, they would need to separately ask a standard grand jury to issue indictments. The decision would be a pivotal moment for Willis, a longtime prosecutor who Fulton County voters elected as district attorney in 2020. A fresh Fulton County grand jury was seated earlier this month, and hears cases twice a week. Even if prosecutors move quickly to secure indictments this week or in the coming days, it would still take months or even years for the cases to work their way through the justice system.
- [Georgia special grand jury report on 2020 election meddling to ... - The San Diego Union-Tribune](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/georgia-special-grand-jury-report-on-2020-election-meddling-to-the-san-diego-union-tribune/) - Newsletter Top headlines by email, weekday mornings Get top headlines from the Union-Tribune in your inbox weekday mornings, including top news, local, sports, business, entertainment and opinion. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the San Diego Union-Tribune.
- [2020 Georgia election probe report to remain secret for now | Las Vegas Review-Journal](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/2020-georgia-election-probe-report-to-remain-secret-for-now-las-vegas-review-journal/) - ATLANTA — A judge said Tuesday that a final report produced by a special grand jury that investigated possible illegal interference in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia by then-President Donald Trump and his allies will remain under wraps for now. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said he was considering whether to release the report after hearing arguments from prosecutors, who urged it be kept secret until they decide whether to file any charges, and a coalition of media organizations, which pressed for its release. He said he would further reflect on the parties’ arguments and would reach out with any questions before making a final decision. He also said he anticipated his eventual decision would be appealed. The report is expected to include recommendations for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on possible criminal prosecution. If McBurney decides to disseminate the report, as the special grand jury urged, he must also determine whether any parts of it should be redacted. The investigation is one of several that threaten potential legal consequences for the Republican former president as he seeks reelection in 2024. Over a period of roughly seven months, the special grand jury heard from dozens of witnesses, including high-profile Trump allies, such as attorney Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and high-ranking Georgia officials, such as Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp. Willis began investigating shortly after a recording of a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Raffensperger became public. In that call, the president suggested that the state’s top elections official, a fellow Republican, could “find” the votes needed to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden. “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump had said. “Because we won the state.” A coalition of news organizations, including The Associated Press, argued in favor of releasing the report in full, saying public interest in the report is “extraordinary.” Attorney Tom Clyde, representing the news media, said arguments for keeping the report secret would typically be a case involving minors or highly private information. “It doesn’t typically involve public officials who are involved in activities following a national election,” Clyde said. Willis argued Tuesday that disclosing the report now could violate the rights of potential defendants and could negatively affect the ability to prosecute those who may be charged with crimes. “We want to make sure that everyone is treated fairly and we think for future defendants to be treated fairly, it is not appropriate at this time to have this report released,” Willis said. The district attorney’s office is not opposed to the eventual public release of the report, added prosecutor Donald Wakeford, but “it is opposed to it right now.” Trump’s legal team in Georgia said in a statement Monday that it would not participate in the hearing. “To date, we have never been a part of this process,” Drew Findling, Marissa Goldberg and Jennifer Little wrote, noting that the former president was never subpoenaed or asked to come in voluntarily as part of the investigation. “Therefore, we can assume that the grand jury did their job and looked at the facts and the law, as we have, and concluded there were no violations of the law by President Trump,” they wrote. Trump defended his actions in several posts Tuesday morning on his social media platform, Truth Social. Referring to his call to Raffensperger, he wrote: “It was PERFECT, nothing done or said wrong.” The original order granting Willis’ request for a special grand jury authorized the panel to “make recommendations concerning criminal prosecution as it shall see fit.” It’s unclear just how specific those recommendations will be. The special grand jury did not have the power to issue indictments, and it will ultimately be up to Willis to decide whether to seek indictments from a regular grand jury. While the special grand jury’s work took place in secret, as required by law, related public court filings provided a glimpse of investigative threads that were being pursued. Those included: — Phone calls by Trump and others to Georgia officials in the wake of the 2020 election. — A group of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate in December 2020 falsely stating that Trump had won the state and that they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors. — False allegations of election fraud made during meetings of state legislators at the Georgia Capitol in December 2020. — The copying of data and software from election equipment in rural Coffee County by a computer forensics team hired by Trump allies. — Alleged attempts to pressure Fulton County elections worker Ruby Freeman into falsely confessing to election fraud. — The abrupt resignation of the U.S. attorney in Atlanta in January 2021. Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price in New York contributed to this report.
- [Will Trump Be Indicted In Georgia? Fulton County DA Suggests 'Multiple' People Could ... - Forbes](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/will-trump-be-indicted-in-georgia-fulton-county-da-suggests-multiple-people-could-forbes/) - ToplineThe district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, will soon determine whether to bring charges against former President Donald Trump or allies who backed his effort to overturn the 2020 election, she said Tuesday, asking a judge not to publicly release a report that would say whether or not there’s evidence of a crime—and suggesting multiple people could be indicted. Key Facts DA Fani Willis asked a Fulton County Superior Court judge Tuesday not to make public a special grand jury report that outlines a months-long investigation into Trump and his allies’ efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which would recommend whether or not charges should be brought and evidence to back that up. Willis argued it would be harmful to “future defendants” if the report was released right now, based on its contents, saying it could stymie “later individuals’—multiple—[ability] to get a fair trial.” “Decisions are imminent,” Willis told Judge Robert McBurney, arguing he had also read the report and should understand why it could be harmful. The DA said withholding the decision was “in the interest of justice” and she wanted to be “mindful of protecting future defendants’ rights.” Her office still hasn’t made final decisions yet on whether people should be charged, Donald Wakeford, an attorney for the DA, told the court, noting there “has not been a meaningful amount of time to assess” the report and take its recommendations into account. What To Watch For McBurney still hasn’t determined yet whether or not to make the report public, and it’s unclear when he’ll issue a decision. The special grand jury that was convened to investigate the election doesn’t actually have the power to bring charges against anyone itself, but Willis will use its recommendations to determine if a second, regular grand jury should be convened and consider whether to indict anyone. In addition to Trump, “fake” electors who submitted a false slate of electors to Congress claiming Trump won the state have also been informed they’re targets of the investigation and could face charges, as has attorney Rudy Giuliani. Surprising Fact Trump’s attorneys were not present at the hearing on Tuesday, and said in a statement Monday that Trump had not been subpoenaed or asked to appear at all before the grand jury or provide documents. The attorneys said they “assume” that means the grand jury “concluded there were no violations of the law by President Trump,” though there’s no concrete evidence to suggest that’s the case. Key Background Willis’ office has been investigating Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss since February 2021, based on Trump’s phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which he asked Raffensperger to “find” enough votes for Trump to win the state. The call and Trump’s other post-election efforts could violate a range of state election laws, a Brookings Institution analysis notes, including criminal solicitation to commit election fraud and election interference. The investigation has included interviews with 75 witnesses, the DA’s office said, including Raffensperger and leading Trump allies like former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Giuliani. The grand jury was dissolved earlier in January after first convening in May 2022, prompting the new legal tussle over whether its report should be made public, and none of the contents of its final report have yet been released or leaked to the press. Chief Critic Trump railed against the accusations against him in Georgia Tuesday on Truth Social, claiming his phone call with Raffensperger was “PERFECT” and claiming he “won Georgia by a lot.” President Joe Biden won Georgia with 49.5% of the vote, and there is no credible evidence to suggest any widespread election fraud. Further Reading Georgia’s Trump 2020 Investigation Heats Up Following Midterms (Forbes) Final report of Ga. grand jury investigating Trump may be released soon (Washington Post) Backgrounder: Fulton County Special Grand Jury Investigation Into 2020 Presidential Interference (States United Democracy Center) Fulton County, Georgia’s Trump Investigation (Brookings Institution)
- [Georgia 2020 election probe report to remain secret while judge considers release - PBS](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/georgia-2020-election-probe-report-to-remain-secret-while-judge-considers-release-pbs/) - ATLANTA (AP) — A judge said Tuesday that a final report produced by a special grand jury that investigated possible illegal interference in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia by then-President Donald Trump and his allies will remain under wraps for now. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said he was considering whether to release the report after hearing arguments from prosecutors, who urged it be kept secret until they decide whether to file any charges, and a coalition of media organizations, which pressed for its release. He said he would further reflect on the parties’ arguments and would reach out with any questions before making a final decision. He also said he anticipated his eventual decision would be appealed. The report is expected to include recommendations for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on possible criminal prosecution. If McBurney decides to disseminate the report, as the special grand jury urged, he must also determine whether any parts of it should be redacted. READ MORE: Georgia judge to hold hearing over special grand jury report on Trump The investigation is one of several that threaten potential legal consequences for the Republican former president as he seeks reelection in 2024. Over a period of roughly seven months, the special grand jury heard from dozens of witnesses, including high-profile Trump allies, such as attorney Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and high-ranking Georgia officials, such as Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp. Willis began investigating shortly after a recording of a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Raffensperger became public. In that call, the president suggested that the state’s top elections official, a fellow Republican, could “find” the votes needed to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden. “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump had said. “Because we won the state.” A coalition of news organizations, including The Associated Press, argued in favor of releasing the report in full, saying public interest in the report is “extraordinary.” Attorney Tom Clyde, representing the news media, said arguments for keeping the report secret would typically be a case involving minors or highly private information. “It doesn’t typically involve public officials who are involved in activities following a national election,” Clyde said. Willis argued Tuesday that disclosing the report now could violate the rights of potential defendants and could negatively affect the ability to prosecute those who may be charged with crimes. “We want to make sure that everyone is treated fairly and we think for future defendants to be treated fairly, it is not appropriate at this time to have this report released,” Willis said. The district attorney’s office is not opposed to the eventual public release of the report, added prosecutor Donald Wakeford, but “it is opposed to it right now.” Trump’s legal team in Georgia said in a statement Monday that it would not participate in the hearing. “To date, we have never been a part of this process,” Drew Findling, Marissa Goldberg and Jennifer Little wrote, noting that the former president was never subpoenaed or asked to come in voluntarily as part of the investigation. “Therefore, we can assume that the grand jury did their job and looked at the facts and the law, as we have, and concluded there were no violations of the law by President Trump,” they wrote. Trump defended his actions in several posts Tuesday morning on his social media platform, Truth Social. Referring to his call to Raffensperger, he wrote: “It was PERFECT, nothing done or said wrong.” The original order granting Willis’ request for a special grand jury authorized the panel to “make recommendations concerning criminal prosecution as it shall see fit.” It’s unclear just how specific those recommendations will be. The special grand jury did not have the power to issue indictments, and it will ultimately be up to Willis to decide whether to seek indictments from a regular grand jury. While the special grand jury’s work took place in secret, as required by law, related public court filings provided a glimpse of investigative threads that were being pursued. Those included: Phone calls by Trump and others to Georgia officials in the wake of the 2020 election. A group of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate in December 2020 falsely stating that Trump had won the state and that they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors. False allegations of election fraud made during meetings of state legislators at the Georgia Capitol in December 2020. The copying of data and software from election equipment in rural Coffee County by a computer forensics team hired by Trump allies. Alleged attempts to pressure Fulton County elections worker Ruby Freeman into falsely confessing to election fraud. The abrupt resignation of the U.S. attorney in Atlanta in January 2021. Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price in New York contributed to this report.
- [Nevada officials share findings of investigation into deadly 2020 Election Day shooting](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/nevada-officials-share-findings-of-investigation-into-deadly-2020-election-day-shooting/)
- [Trump Georgia grand jury report secrecy at issue in court hearing - CNBC](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/trump-georgia-grand-jury-report-secrecy-at-issue-in-court-hearing-cnbc/) - The Georgia prosecutor investigating former President Donald Trump and his allies for possible criminal interference in that state's 2020 presidential election told a judge Tuesday that decisions on whether and whom to charge in the probe "are imminent." Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis cited that plan during a hearing in Atlanta, where she urged the judge to keep sealed for now a final special grand jury report that was assembled to gather evidence and hear testimony for that investigation. Trump is being eyed for his efforts to reverse his loss to President Joe Biden in Georgia, which was a key swing state in the 2020 election. Fulton County Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis photographed in her office on Jan. 4, 2022. Ben Gray | AP The Georgia prosecutor investigating former President Donald Trump and his allies for possible criminal interference in that state's 2020 presidential election told a judge Tuesday that decisions on whether and whom to charge in the probe "are imminent." Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis cited that plan during a hearing in Atlanta, where she urged the judge to keep sealed for now a final special grand jury report that was assembled to gather evidence and hear testimony for that investigation. A consortium of media outlets has asked Judge Robert McBurney to make the report public, as the grand jury has recommended. CNBC Politics Read more of CNBC's politics coverage: Willis, in arguing to keep it sealed, said, "For future defendants to be treated fairly, it's not appropriate at this time to have this report released." ""We need to be mindful of protecting future defendants' rights," she told McBurney "Decisions are imminent," Willis said. Another prosecutor, Donald Wakeford, told McBurney that report could be made public after any potential indictments are issued in the case. Thomas Clyde, a lawyer for the media outlets, said the report should be made public, in its entirety, immediately. "We believe the statutory law, the case law, and the constitutional law supports the release of the special grand jury report right now," Clyde told the judge. The hearing ended without McBurney ruling on the question. Trump is being eyed for his efforts to reverse his loss to President Joe Biden in Georgia, which was a key swing state in the 2020 election. That effort involved pressuring Georgia's secretary of state to find Trump enough votes for him to overcome his margin of loss to Biden. The grand jury did not have the power to issue indictments in the case. That decision is left to Willis. Trump's lawyers told NBC News on Monday that they would not be present or participate in the hearing, and said they assumed that the grand jury did not find that Trump broke the law. "To date, we have never been a part of this process," the lawyers said in a statement. "The grand jury compelled the testimony of dozens of other, often high-ranking, officials during the investigation, but never found it important to speak with the President," the statement said. " He was never subpoenaed nor asked to come in voluntarily by this grand jury or anyone in the Fulton County District Attorney's Office. Therefore, we can assume that the grand jury did their job and looked at the facts and the law, as we have, and concluded there were no violations of the law by President Trump." This is breaking news. Check back for updates. WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP
- [Georgia special grand jury report on 2020 election meddling to remain secret for now while ... - WRIC](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/georgia-special-grand-jury-report-on-2020-election-meddling-to-remain-secret-for-now-while-wric/) - Georgia special grand jury report on 2020 election meddling to remain secret for now while judge considers release | WRIC ABC 8News Skip to content ✕ × Close Ad
- [DA Investigating Trump Asks Judge To Hold Grand Jury Report - Law & Crime](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/da-investigating-trump-asks-judge-to-hold-grand-jury-report-law-crime/) - Donald Trump and Fulton County DA Fani Willis (Photo of Trump via Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images/ Photo of Willis via screenshot of video on DA’s website) The Georgia district attorney investigating former President Donald Trump in a wide ranging probee over a wide-ranging probe of 2020 election-related crimes urged a judge not to release a special grand jury’s report that could recommend prosecution. “In this case, the state understands the media’s interest and the world’s interest — but we have to be mindful of protecting future defendants’ rights,” Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) declared on Tuesday. “Thou Shalt Not Disclose” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said at the beginning of the hearing that the jury voted for the report to be public, though he said that this determination did not end the matter. The judge also noted that there is no rule that he needs to keep the report under wraps to protect the rights of future defendants. “I see nothing that says, ‘Thou shalt not disclose,’” McBurney noted. By design, McBurney noted, the special grand jury cannot issue indictments, only findings disseminated in a written report. “Special purpose grand juries are different. They last longer. They investigate in a different way. They cannot hand down a bill of indictment. or anything like that. But in lots of ways, they’re grand juries,” the judge stated. A separate panel or panels, however, could determine whether to follow through on the special grand jury’s recommendations. The day before the hearing, more than a dozen print and television news outlets filed a 19-page legal brief — with 90 pages of attachments — calling for that report to be made public. “The public interest in the Report is extraordinary, and there are no countervailing interests sufficient to overcome the presumption,” lead attorney Thomas M. Clyde wrote. The news organizations include The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, ABC, The Associated Press, Bloomberg, CNN, WSB-TV, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Athens Banner-Herald, The Augusta Chronicle, the Savannah Morning News, WANE, The New York Times Company, WXIA-TV, and Yahoo News — as well as certain of their parent companies. They want the report to be released in full, unredacted form. “There is no basis for sealing here,” the brief concludes. “This investigation has been a matter of profound public interest that goes to the heart of the nation’s democratic forms of government. Much of the matters before the special purpose grand jury are already public knowledge through related federal and state court proceedings and Congressional hearings. There is quite simply no ‘clear and convincing proof’ that sealing, either in whole or in part, is warranted.” In order to unseal the report, Judge McBurney would have to determine that it qualifies as a “judicial document,” and Clyde argued during the hearing that it fit the bill. “This is a judicial process,” said Clyde, adding that it is an “extraordinary” one. “It Is Premature” Since opening more than a year ago, the special grand jury investigation has roped in prominent figures in Trump’s orbit, including former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, ex-aide and pundit Boris Epshteyn, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and others. Some Trump allies resisted subpoenas, leading to protracted litigation. One of the key states where Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election, Georgia is where the former president told Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to “find” 11,780 votes to swing the election in his favor. Trump and his allies also used a fake-elector scheme and other gambits for overturning his loss to President Joe Biden. Potential charges could be wide-ranging. Experts from Brookings Institution, a centrist think-tank, found that found that Trump’s post election conduct in Georgia put him at “substantial risk of possible state charges predicated on multiple crimes,” including criminal solicitation to commit election fraud, intentional interference with performance of election duties, conspiracy to commit election fraud, criminal solicitation, and state Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act violations. The latter crime would involve a multiple defendant case. Another prosecutor with Willis’s office, Donald Wakeford, remained tight-lipped on its contents, except through a cryptic statement. “Everything about this report indicates that it is premature to release the report at this time,” Wakeford said. Judge McBurney pointedly asked what would prevent a special purpose grand juror from reaching out to the press. The judge offered a fanciful hypothetical in which the special grand jury recommended the prosecution of Oscar the Grouch, the beloved, cantankerous Sesame Street character who lives in a trash-can. The green monster, having been recommended for prosecution for “treason,” could lawyer up and convene a press conference to oppose the findings. The judge asked what hypothetical harms to an investigation could follow that sequence of events. “I’m not totally sure,” Wakeford responded. “But we can avoid that question entirely by not publicizing the report.” “Why tangle with it if you don’t have to?” McBurney asked. “Exactly,” Wakeford said. After roughly 90 minutes of oral arguments, McBurney ended the hearing without a ruling. He said he will make “no rash decisions” before releasing the report, giving all parties an opportunity to respond to his eventual ruling or prepare for its ramifications. Update—Jan. 24 at 12:45 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to include more details from the ongoing hearing, as well as relevant background. Update—Jan. 24 at 1:20 p.m. ET: More details from the hearing added. This is a developing story. Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
- [Judge considers release of grand jury report on Trump Georgia election probe - NBC News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/judge-considers-release-of-grand-jury-report-on-trump-georgia-election-probe-nbc-news/) - A Georgia judge said Tuesday that he would not make any "rash decisions" on whether to release a report by a special grand jury on its investigation into whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies unlawfully attempted to interfere with the 2020 election results.Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said he would rule at a later date and reach out with any questions on the points made by the Fulton County district attorney's office and news organizations on the grand jury’s report, which is expected to include recommendations on possible criminal prosecution.District Attorney Fani Willis argued that the disclosure of the report could violate the rights of potential defendants and could negatively affect the ability to prosecute those who may be charged with crimes. She said the special grand jury heard from a total of 75 witnesses during the course of the investigation. “We want to make sure that everyone is treated fairly and we think for future defendants to be treated fairly, it is not appropriate at this time for this report to be released,” Willis said.If McBurney ultimately decides to disseminate the recently completed report, as the special grand jury urged, he must also determine whether any parts of it should be redacted.A coalition of news organizations, including the Associated Press, argued in favor of the report’s release in full, saying in a filing Monday that the document “is a court record subject to a presumption of openness” under state court rules and the state and federal constitutions. The media group said public interest in the report is “extraordinary” and there “are no countervailing interests sufficient to overcome the presumption.”Attorneys representing Trump in the investigation, meanwhile, told NBC News that they would not participate in Tuesday’s hearing and asserted that Trump had never been never subpoenaed or asked to voluntarily testify before the grand jury. Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney on May 2, 2022 in Fulton County, Ga. Ben Gray / APIn their statement, Trump’s attorneys make no mention of any intention to fight the release of the report. “Therefore, we can assume that the grand jury did their job and looked at the facts and the law, as we have, and concluded there were no violations of the law by President Trump,” they said.Prosecutors argued in court Tuesday that a discussion about whether to release the report should occur after the district attorney’s office has decided whether to seek charges. The district attorney’s office is not opposed to the eventual public release of the report, said prosecutor Donald Wakeford, but “it is opposed to it right now.”The original order granting Willis’ request for a special grand jury authorized the panel to “make recommendations concerning criminal prosecution as it shall see fit.” But it’s unclear just how specific those recommendations will be. The special grand jury did not have the power to issue indictments, and it will ultimately be up to Willis to decide whether to seek indictments from a regular grand jury.A grand jury handbook produced by the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia says courts have repeatedly held that a grand jury “cannot include, in a report or general presentment, comments that charge or accuse identifiable person(s) of misconduct.” That can only be done in a charging document, like an indictment, the handbook says.Willis called for the special grand jury last year because it has the authority to issue subpoenas for witnesses to testify. The panel has heard testimony from multiple figures in Trump’s inner circle, including attorney Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. Top Georgia officials, such as Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — both Republicans whom Trump and his allies tried to pressure into overturning the 2020 election results — also testified.Willis opened the investigation in early 2021 after a recording surfaced of a phone call that January between Trump and Raffensperger. The then-president pressed Raffensperger to “find” the votes needed to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. "All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state,” Trump said in the call.In a post on his social media platform, Trump on Tuesday repeated his oft-stated claim that the call was "PERFECT, nothing done or said wrong."Summer ConcepcionSummer Concepcion is a politics reporter for NBC News.Vaughn HillyardVaughn Hillyard is a political reporter for NBC News. Associated PressDareh Gregorian
- [Fulton grand jury report on attempts to overturn Trump's 2020 Georgia election loss could ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/fulton-grand-jury-report-on-attempts-to-overturn-trumps-2020-georgia-election-loss-could-2/) - by Stanley Dunlap, Georgia Recorder [This article first appeared in the Georgia Recorder, republished with permission] January 23, 2023 You could get your first glimpse soon into what a Fulton County special grand jury heard behind closed doors as it investigated efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to interfere in the results of the 2020 election. The calls by several media groups for an immediate release of the grand jury’s findings into the lengthy investigation are set to come to a head at a hearing on Tuesday before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney. Advertisement Dozens of witnesses have testified in the Atlanta courthouse since last summer, including top state officials and close supporters and aides of the former president and dominant leader of the Republican party. Legal experts predict that details of the grand jury’s report will begin trickling out depending on when criminal charges are filed, but that under state law some details may be kept from the public as the investigation continues. McBurney, who oversaw the special investigation, has discretion over what information is revealed. However, don’t expect the full report to come out next week, said J. Tom Morgan, former DeKalb County District Attorney and criminal law professor at Western Carolina University. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ special grand jury was appointed last year to investigate whether Trump’s team interfered with Georgia’s 2020 presidential election that Trump lost to President Joe Biden by fewer than 12,000 votes. “The judge will put some fire behind the district attorney and say, I’m going to order that this report be released in its entirety on such and such a date and portions of it may be released next week and you need to judge yourself accordingly,” Morgan said. “This report puts the D.A. in a quandary because the report says there have been certain crimes and certain persons should be prosecuted and if she doesn’t prosecute, it’s going to come back to bite her.” In a press briefing on Friday, Morgan joined the Defend Democracy Project to discuss the Fulton case, which could deliver explosive national aftershocks, including the first-ever criminal indictment of a former president. Trump says he intends to run again in 2024. Willis’ investigation was boosted by the January 2021 public release of a recorded phone call in which Trump pressed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough ballots to overcome Biden’s victory. In the court circuit, a special investigative grand jury is appointed by a majority of the judges. Special investigative grand juries can recommend to the district attorney whether the crimes might have been committed based on the evidence. Before a district attorney can even subpoena witnesses in a regular case, the case must be indicted before a regular grand jury. Former U.S. Ambassador Norman Eisen, legal scholar and counsel in the first impeachment trial of Trump, said Fulton prosecutors may want to redact the names of key witnesses who could face threats. The timing of the details becoming public may hinge on when any indictments are handed down. “The strong possibility is that Donald Trump and his co-conspirators have been recommended for criminal charges under multiple Georgia statutes for their attempted coup and assault on the 2020 election results,” Eisen said. “While the great likelihood is that we’re going to see a recommendation of charges here, you just never know,” Eisen said. “The proof of the pudding is in the edict.” Eisen was one of the authors of a Brookings Institute report that said Trump appears to be at substantial risk of prosecution in Georgia for several criminal charges that could include solicitation and conspiracy to commit election fraud and interfering in elections. The Brookings report asserted that Trump and his cohorts, including 16 Georgia false electors, might have committed other crimes, including making false statements, improper influence on government officials, and forging documents. Among the witnesses who testified during the months-long grand jury probe were Raffensperger, Trump’s ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows, Trump’s former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, South Carolina Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, and Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer. Eisen said that the Fulton probe along with a separate U.S. Justice Department inquiry into the attempted coup are tipping points in American justice. The U.S. House Jan. 6 select committee report alleges obstruction of probable cause findings regarding Trump. The Department of Justice has been referred to investigate and possibly prosecute Trump over his attempts to overturn his election results. “It’s vitally important for the future of our democracy, that there be accountability for this very serious misconduct by Donald Trump and others who attempt to overthrow the legitimate outcome of election results,” Eisen said. “Because I believe this special grand jury report likely reflects that. I think it will be an important document in the history and in the future of American democracy.” Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and Twitter. Advertisement
- [Atlanta D.A. Wants Grand Jury Findings Kept Private in Trump Inquiry - The New York Times](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/atlanta-d-a-wants-grand-jury-findings-kept-private-in-trump-inquiry-the-new-york-times/) - The prosecutor asked that a report on efforts to overturn former President Donald J. Trump’s election loss not be released, saying that she was “mindful of protecting future defendants’ rights.”Fani T. Willis, the local prosecutor overseeing the investigation into efforts by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia, asked a judge in Atlanta on Tuesday not to make public the findings of a special grand jury that heard months of testimony in the case, saying that she was “mindful of protecting future defendants’ rights.”In a two-hour hearing before Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court, Ms. Willis argued that disclosing the jury’s recently completed investigative report could complicate potential efforts to seek indictments.“We want to make sure that everyone is treated fairly,” Ms. Willis said, “and we think for future defendants to be treated fairly it is not appropriate at this time to have this report released.”Judge McBurney said he would rule on the matter at a later date. The Trump team did not send a lawyer to the hearing, but a lawyer representing a coalition of news organizations asked Judge McBurney to make the report public.Nearly 20 people known to have been named targets of the criminal investigation, as well as others, could face charges, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, and David Shafer, the head of the Georgia Republican Party.Understand Georgia’s Investigation of Election InterferenceCard 1 of 5An immediate legal threat to Trump.
- ['We'll miss you, Germantown': Restaurant announces sudden closure - WHAS11](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/well-miss-you-germantown-restaurant-announces-sudden-closure-whas11/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A restaurant located in the heart of Louisville's Germantown neighborhood announced it has closed its doors indefinitely. "The ride ended much too soon, but it was an honor to serve the great Germantown community during this time," the post read. The restaurant cited obstacles faced during the COVID-19 pandemic as a reason why it closed. "Opening during a pandemic presented a few obstacles....okay, a lot of obstacles, but when a site like Germantown Social becomes available, you only hope to figure it out," The post said. "The location is a true gem and we’ll be rooting for whatever comes next." Germantown Social was located on McHenry Street next to Germantown Mill Lofts near several local restaurants. Make it easy to keep up-to-date with more stories like this. Download the WHAS11 News app now. For Apple or Android users.
- [What we know about the Georgia 2020 election investigation - WCMY](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/what-we-know-about-the-georgia-2020-election-investigation-wcmy/) - What we know about the Georgia 2020 election investigation | The Voice of LaSalle County since 1952! We use cookies for various purposes including analytics and marketing. By continuing to use this service, you agree to use cookies by us and out third-party service providers as described in the Privacy Policy.
- [Fox News' defense in defamation suit invokes debunked election-fraud claims - OPB](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/fox-news-defense-in-defamation-suit-invokes-debunked-election-fraud-claims-opb/) - The News Corp. building in New York City, home to Fox News.Kevin Hagen / Getty ImagesFox News’ attorneys have set out the starkest defense yet against the accusation the network defamed an election-technology company when it broadcast false claims that the company had cheated then-President Donald Trump of victory in the 2020 election.THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR:The overwhelming majority of Fox's argument was made in sealed motions filed last week asking the presiding judge to dismiss Dominion Voting Systems' $1.6 billion suit before it is to go to trial in April. Yet in supplementary public filings, the contours of the Fox team's reasoning emerge more sharply in focus.Of the approximately 115 statements on Fox by its hosts and guests that Dominion contends are defamatory, Fox News wrote in its filing, "there is not a single statement for which Dominion can prove every element of its claim for defamation."Fox and Dominion did not comment for this story.An explanation offered for Fox stars’ willingness to air debunked claimsIn those documents, Fox's attorneys offer "omitted context" for the seemingly incendiary remarks by such hosts as Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo, as well as their featured guests, including Trump and his former campaign attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. That context includes assertions that have long since been debunked and rebutted in dozens of court challenges and by local and state election officials from both parties.Among them: claims that the use of Sharpie markers in Maricopa County, Arizona, had invalidated the votes cast by Trump supporters because the ink often bled through the ballots. Allegations of voter fraud in Detroit. The sworn deposition of an anonymous witness who said he was a former member of the Venezuelan presidential security team and accused Dominion of committing election fraud in the U.S.All of these allegations have been disproven. Many were unraveled in real time during the 2020 election season – often by Fox's own reporters.Fox News' legal team does not defend them as correct. Instead, its filings suggest that the Fox stars relaying them on the air reflected an appropriate journalistic response to stark claims about the functioning of American democracy, as they involve "questions to a newsmaker on newsworthy subjects" or they "accurately report on pending allegations."“Didn’t stand up to the light of day”Eddie Perez, board member at the OSET Institute, a non-profit, non-partisan outfit advocating for reliable and transparent election technology, calls the claims about Dominion that were amplified by Fox hosts and peddled by its guests "outlandish.""If anything, because they were so outlandish, they immediately attracted widespread attention and were debunked," Perez says. "They instantly didn't stand up to the light of day."In countering Dominion, Fox's lawyers offer a chart of offending statements and what it termed the "omitted context" that could explain why the material was newsworthy, why the Fox hosts' treatment of it was responsible, and then why it was not defamatory.The network's lawyers write, as they have before, that Fox was merely relaying inherently newsworthy claims by Trump and his surrogates. The lawyers contend the supposedly defamatory statements often involved hyperbolic characterizations or mere opinions. (Fox attorneys previously fended off an unrelated defamation lawsuit against star Tucker Carlson filed by a woman who had an affair with Trump by arguing no one believes that what the Fox star says is literally true.)Further, Fox's attorneys say many of the claims under dispute were true, or largely true. And the network says Dominion cannot prove "actual malice" – a tough legal standard requiring it to show Fox's journalists and executives acted either with knowledge that what it was broadcasting wasn't true or with reckless disregard.Fox “doubled down” on Dominion fraud conspiraciesTHANKS TO OUR SPONSOR:Fox's bold assertion that Dominion will fail to prove any incidents of defamation does not find universal embrace in legal circles. Lawyers with no involvement in the case pointed to statements on Fox's airwaves that they say gave the Trump camp far too much credence for far too long to claim a mere journalistic sensibility."Fox's journalists and managers were repeatedly told the stories about the voting machine were false, over a period of weeks," Lucy Dalglish, the dean of the University of Maryland Merrill College of Journalism, writes in an email for this story."Quoting the president of the United States and relying on a 'fair report' privilege only gets you so far," says Dalglish, a noted First Amendment advocate and media lawyer. "They didn't just quote Trump. They doubled down and repeatedly reported and opined that Dominion's systems were faulty."Dominion's legal team is counting on a rich reservoir of material from their questioning of Fox journalists and executives under oath and from mining their emails, texts, and other communications. Only a glimpse of that has come into public view. It suggests, behind the scenes, key people at Fox knew the accusations against Dominion were meritless.In a sworn deposition cited by a Dominion attorney in court, Hannity said he didn't believe the claims of fraud "for one second." Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott told colleagues privately "not to give the crazies an inch." A producer begged her peers in an e-mail not to let Pirro go on the air to spread baseless conspiracy theories pulled from dark recesses of the internet.Dominion's attorneys have deposed people throughout the Fox hierarchy, from junior producers to stars, to executives, to most recently, controlling owner Rupert Murdoch, who sat for questioning under oath at the Fox Studio lot last Thursday and Friday. Its case relies on the theory that there was an effort - from top to bottom of Fox hierarchy - to appease viewers angered that Fox had been the first television network to call the key state of Arizona for Joe Biden in November 2020. (The Murdochs and Fox refused to reverse the projection despite intense pressure from Trump and his campaign.) That explains the sustained embrace of unsustainable claims, Dominion's legal team argues.In the new filings, Fox's lawyers are seeking to offer its own context for what played out on the network's shows.Thomas Wienner, a retired corporate litigator based in Michigan who is following the case at NPR's request, says he appreciates the logic of the Fox team in seeking to undercut each element of Dominion's claims. And he says Fox well may succeed in convincing the court to knock out some of the claimed instances of defamatory statements to be put in front of the jury.But after reviewing the most recent legal filings, Wienner says he believes Fox is in legal trouble."They put themselves in a real pickle when they start to provide the surrounding context," Wienner says. "Sometimes that context is helpful to them. But sometimes... it makes it worse. It doesn't make it better.""The overall impression you get, when you read the omitted text, is that these people were night after night, day after day, promoting theories that were ridiculous and that had been rejected by the courts," Wienner says. "And there really was no support for them other than a couple of crackpots."A tale of Sharpie markers in Arizona shared despite thorough debunkingThe discredited allegations that helped shape the climate in which the Fox hosts spoke included, among other claims, one echoed by Trump, his campaign and his lawyers: that the use of Sharpie markers in Arizona had invalidated the votes of Trump voters because the ink often bled through the ballots.Those claims were debunked by Maricopa County officials even before Election Day: "Even if there is bleed through it won't impact counting because our upgraded ballots have off-centered columns and our new tabulators only read the ovals," the county elections department tweeted on Oct. 26, 2020, for example. It said any confusion would be resolved by tallying by hand.Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel asserted on Fox that Republican observers were tossed from Michigan voting sites, ominously suggesting that as indirect proof fraud took place. No such fraud was found to have taken place. (A few days after the election, as Fox has noted, anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum pushed McDaniel repeatedly for any proof of her insinuations.)In mid-December 2020, Perez appeared on Fox as an expert for an awkward segment in which he was interviewed by an off-camera producer to debunk claims made on the network about a second voting technology company called Smartmatic. It ran on the shows hosted by Dobbs, Bartiromo and Pirro. Dobbs left Fox Business in February 2021, the day after Smartmatic sued Fox in a separate $2.7 billion defamation suit. It is not as far along as the Dominion case.Fox's supplemental filings last week also reproduce the affidavit of an anonymous man said to be a security guard for a Venezuelan president. He alleged that Smartmatic had ties to the late Venezuelan autocratic leader Hugo Chavez and warned that both election tech companies were attempting to defraud the U.S. voting public. His affidavit was part of a lawsuit filed by the attorney and pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Lin Wood, who was subject of an effort by the Georgia state bar to have his mental fitness evaluated as it weighed a complaint seeking to strip him of his license to practice law. No proof has emerged to support the unnamed man's claims against Dominion and Smartmatic."My guess is that the lawyers from Fox cringed every time they saw one of these stories," says Dalglish, the First Amendment lawyer and dean. "I certainly did."Karl Baker contributed to this story.Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR:
- [What we know about the Georgia 2020 election investigation - WEIS Radio](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/what-we-know-about-the-georgia-2020-election-investigation-weis-radio/) - Hill Street Studios/Getty Images (ATLANTA) — After months of testimony, a special grand jury seated in Atlanta last year as part of a probe into efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election has submitted its final report detailing its findings, marking a significant milestone in one of several criminal investigations targeting the former president. Though the special grand jury does not have the ability to return an indictment, it can make recommendations concerning criminal prosecution — which could then be brought by an additional grand jury. On Tuesday, the judge overseeing the case is scheduled to hear arguments over whether or not to make the report public, with the central question remaining: Did the grand jury recommend criminal charges for Donald Trump and his allies? Ambassador Norman Eisen (ret.), a senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institute who served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2020, told ABC News that “the mountain of evidence” that has been made public regarding the efforts to overturn the election in Georgia “points strongly toward a forecast that the report recommends Donald Trump and his conspirators for prosecution.” “Like the weather forecast or rain, there’s no guarantee,” Eisen said, “but when you look outside your window and the rain clouds are dark … that’s where we are with all of these facts.” Possible charges could include solicitations of election fraud, other forms of fraud, conspiracy, and possibly racketeering, Eisen said. “The allegations are very serious. If indicted and convicted, people are facing prison sentences,” Willis said of the investigation in an interview with The Washington Post last year. A spokesperson for the DA’s office declined to comment on the status of the investigation ahead of the hearing next week, including whether the DA would oppose or support the release of the report. The office also has not yet filed a motion in court indicating its position. ‘Find 11,780 votes’ Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis officially launched the probe in February 2021, sparked in part by the now-infamous Jan. 2, 2021, phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump pleaded with Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes,” the exact number Trump needed to win Georgia. Trump has repeatedly defended his call to Raffensperger, calling it “perfect.” The special grand jury was seated in May 2022, after Willis wrote that the panel was needed because “a significant number of witnesses and prospective witnesses have refused to cooperate with the investigation absent a subpoena requiring their testimony.” Since then, those who have been subpoenaed for testimony include some of Trump’s closest allies and supporters, including attorneys Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, who unsuccessfully fought his subpoena up to the United State Supreme Court. Graham argued, among other things, that he was acting “within [his] official legislative responsibilities” as a senator and chairman of the Judiciary Committee when he allegedly made calls to Georgia officials following the 2020 election. During calls to Raffensperger and others, Graham allegedly asked about “reexamining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump,” the judge wrote in a filing in the case. Willis also sought testimony from a number of Georgia’s highest elected officials, including Raffensperger, Gov. Brian Kemp and Rep. Jody Hice. Targets of the probe A number of individuals have also been informed that they are considered “targets” of the probe, including Giuliani. In the wake of the election, Giuliani appeared at a series of legislative hearings around the country — including Georgia — where he urged state legislators to reject the results of the election. Responding to the notification of his status as a target of the probe, Giuliani said, “I appeared in Georgia as attorney for Donald J. Trump. So I’m going to be prosecuted for what I did as an attorney?” Sixteen people identified as so-called “fake electors” in the state were also notified that they were considered targets in the ongoing criminal investigation, prosecutors revealed in court documents over the summer. The 16, who allegedly participated in a scheme to overturn the state’s election results, received letters “alerting that person both that [their] testimony was required by the special purpose grand jury and that [they were a] target of the investigation” the filing said. Specifically, they are being investigated for “creation of a document that identified [themselves] as being among the ‘duly elected and qualified Electors for president and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Georgia,’ and the submission of that document to the National Archives.” The House committee probing the Jan. 6 attack on U.S. Capitol described the “fake electors” plan, which appeared to have multiple iterations, as being set up by the Trump campaign in multiple swing states in which they sought to assemble “groups of individuals in key battleground states and got them to call themselves electors, created phony certificates associated with these fake electors and then transmitted these certificates to Washington, and to the Congress, to be counted during the joint session of Congress on January 6th,” according to the filing. The Department of Justice is also examining the issue of fake electors as part of its own separate investigation, sources have told ABC News. Attorneys for the electors have denied any wrongdoing in their actions. “They cannot have and did not commit any crime as a matter of fact and law,” wrote attorney Holly Pierson, who represents 11 of the alleged fake electors. Setbacks for Willis Willis suffered a setback last year when she unsuccessfully fought to have Pierson and her law partner disqualified from representing those 11, alleging that it was a “conflict of interest.” Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney largely denied the request, only removing one of the electors as Pierson’s client, but keeping the rest. Earlier, McBurney disqualified Willis from investigating one of the 16 alleged fake electors, Georgia state Sen. Burt Jones, after Willis held a fundraiser for Jones’ political opponent in the race for lieutenant governor. The judge called it “harmful” to the investigation and said the “optics are horrid.” “An investigation of this significance, garnering the public attention it necessarily does and touching so many political nerves in our society, cannot be bordered by legitimate doubts about the District Attorney’s motives,” McBurney wrote. On Tuesday, McBurney will consider whether the report should be made public or remain sealed — though Eisen, the Brookings expert, said its release could be harmful to the case. “If you have the report out there before the DA has taken it to the regular grand jury, it complicates her life, because the report gets ahead of the normal lifecycle of the case, where the indictments are the first,” Eisen told ABC News. “She may not want the report to be issued until her indictments are out,” he said. Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
- [Judge to hold hearing over Georgia special grand jury report - Midland Daily News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/judge-to-hold-hearing-over-georgia-special-grand-jury-report-midland-daily-news/) - ATLANTA (AP) — A judge is set to hear arguments Tuesday on whether to release a report by a special grand jury tasked with investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies broke any laws as they sought to overturn his narrow 2020 election loss in Georgia.Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney will hear arguments from the district attorney’s office, news outlets and potentially other parties before making a decision on the release of the report. The special grand jury, whose work was overseen by McBurney, recommended that the report be made public. The report is expected to include recommendations for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on possible criminal prosecution, though it’s unclear just how specific those recommendations will be. The special grand jury did not have the power to issue indictments, and it will ultimately be up to Willis to decide whether to seek indictments from a regular grand jury.
- [Judge to hold hearing over Georgia special grand jury report - WRAL](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/judge-to-hold-hearing-over-georgia-special-grand-jury-report-wral/) - ATLANTA — A judge is set to hear arguments Tuesday on whether to release a report by a special grand jury tasked with investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies broke any laws as they sought to overturn his narrow 2020 election loss in Georgia.Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney will hear arguments from the district attorney’s office, news outlets and potentially other parties before making a decision on the release of the report. The special grand jury, whose work was overseen by McBurney, recommended that the report be made public.The report is expected to include recommendations for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on possible criminal prosecution, though it’s unclear just how specific those recommendations will be. The special grand jury did not have the power to issue indictments, and it will ultimately be up to Willis to decide whether to seek indictments from a regular grand jury.If McBurney decides to disseminate the report, he must also determine whether any parts of it should be redacted and whether the report should be made public now or later. It’s unclear how quickly he will rule.The investigation is one of several that threaten potential legal consequences for the Republican former president as he seeks reelection in 2024. Over a period of roughly seven months, the special grand jury heard from dozens of witnesses, including high-profile Trump allies, such as attorney Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and high-ranking Georgia officials, such as Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp.Willis began investigating shortly after a recording of a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Raffensperger became public. In that call, the president suggested that the state’s top elections official, a fellow Republican, could “find” the votes needed to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump had said. “Because we won the state.”A coalition of news organizations, including The Associated Press, argued in favor of the report's release in full, saying in a filing Monday that the document “is a court record subject to a presumption of openness” under state court rules and the state and federal constitutions. The media group said that the public interest in the report is “extraordinary” and that there “are no countervailing interests sufficient to overcome the presumption.”Willis, a Democrat, had not filed a brief by Monday outlining whether the report should be released.Trump's legal team in Georgia said in a statement that it does not plan to be present or to participate in the hearing.“To date, we have never been a part of this process,” Drew Findling, Marissa Goldberg and Jennifer Little wrote, noting that the former president was never subpoenaed or asked to come in voluntarily as part of the investigation.“Therefore, we can assume that the grand jury did their job and looked at the facts and the law, as we have, and concluded there were no violations of the law by President Trump," they wrote.The order granting Willis' request for a special grand jury authorized the panel to “make recommendations concerning criminal prosecution as it shall see fit.”A grand jury handbook produced by the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia says courts have repeatedly held that a grand jury “cannot include, in a report or general presentment, comments that charge or accuse identifiable person(s) of misconduct.” That can only be done in a charging document, like an indictment, the handbook says.“I don’t think you can accuse anybody specifically of committing a crime, so it’s going to have to be a general recommendation” on whether the district attorney should continue to pursue the investigation, Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council executive director Pete Skandalakis said of the report.If the special grand jury did recommend that specific people be charged, Skandalakis said he believes that would have to be redacted before the report can be released.While the special grand jury’s work took place in secret, as required by law, related public court filings provided a glimpse of investigative threads that were being pursued. Those included:— Phone calls by Trump and others to Georgia officials in the wake of the 2020 election.— A group of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate in December 2020 falsely stating that Trump had won the state and that they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.— False allegations of election fraud made during meetings of state legislators at the Georgia Capitol in December 2020.— The copying of data and software from election equipment in rural Coffee County by a computer forensics team hired by Trump allies.— Alleged attempts to pressure Fulton County elections worker Ruby Freeman into falsely confessing to election fraud.— The abrupt resignation of the U.S. attorney in Atlanta in January 2021.
- [Judge mulls release of report by grand jury probing efforts to overturn 2020 election in Georgia](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/judge-mulls-release-of-report-by-grand-jury-probing-efforts-to-overturn-2020-election-in-georgia/) - A Fulton County, Georgia, judge is hearing arguments Tuesday regarding whether or not to publicly release the long-anticipated report submitted recently by the special grand jury investigating efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The special grand jury submitted its confidential final report earlier this month, according to court records, after probing the matter for months.Though the grand jury does not have the ability to return an indictment, it can make recommendations concerning criminal prosecution. Another grand jury would bring any possible charges, should they be recommended.The central question regarding the report: Did the grand jury recommend criminal charges for Donald Trump and his allies?Former President Donald Trump arrives to speak at Mar-a-lago on Election Day, Nov. 8, 2022, in Palm Beach, Fla.Andrew Harnik/AP, FILEAttorneys for Trump said in a statement on Monday that they would not be participating in Tuesday's hearing -- and did not expect charge recommendations."On behalf of President Trump, we will not be present nor participating in Tuesday's hearing regarding the possible release of the special purpose grand jury's report," said the statement. "To date, we have never been a part of this process. The grand jury compelled the testimony of dozens of other, often high-ranking, officials during the investigation, but never found it important to speak with the President. He was never subpoenaed nor asked to come in voluntarily by this grand jury or anyone in the Fulton County District Attorney's Office."Attorneys in the statement said they therefore "assume that the grand jury did their job and looked at the facts and the law, as we have, and concluded there were no violations of the law by President Trump" -- although there's no indication if that's true or not.A spokesperson for the DA's office declined to comment on the status of the investigation ahead of the hearing. The office also had yet filed a motion in court indicating its position on whether the report should be publicly released.Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis officially launched the probe in February 2021, sparked in part by the now-infamous Jan. 2, 2021, phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump pleaded with Raffensperger to "find 11,780 votes," the exact number Trump needed to win Georgia.Trump has repeatedly defended his call to Raffensperger, calling it "perfect."
- [A Georgia judge weighs release of a grand jury report into 2020 election interference - NPR](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/a-georgia-judge-weighs-release-of-a-grand-jury-report-into-2020-election-interference-npr/) - Enlarge this image In this May 2022 file photo, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney speaks during proceedings to seat a special purpose grand jury in Fulton County, Ga., to look into the actions of former President Donald Trump and his supporters who tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Ben Gray/AP Ben Gray/AP A Georgia judge will soon decide what, if any, parts of a special grand jury report will be made public following an eight-month investigation into efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the state's 2020 election results. The special purpose grand jury, which was dissolved earlier this month after completing its work, did not have indictment powers but could use gathered evidence and testimony to recommend that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis seek charges. Several people, ranging from Trump's onetime personal attorney to Republicans who falsely claimed to be presidential electors, were informed they were targets of the investigation. Jurors voted to release their report to the public, but the extremely rare nature of the special grand jury and limited legal authority have led to hurdles that could delay disclosure of the findings.
- [Trump and allies face legal jeopardy in Georgia over 2020 election interference | US news](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/trump-and-allies-face-legal-jeopardy-in-georgia-over-2020-election-interference-us-news/) - Trump and allies face legal jeopardy in Georgia over 2020 election interferenceJudge considers releasing grand jury report as DA weighs pressing charges against former president and his ally Rudolph Giuliani A judge in Atlanta will hear legal arguments today to determine if he should make public a Georgia grand jury’s report into whether former president Donald Trump committed criminal offences when he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state.Before the special purpose grand jury was dissolved two weeks ago after months of hearings, its members recommended releasing its findings while the Fulton county district attorney who launched the investigation, Fani Willis, decides whether to press charges against Trump.Arizona’s new attorney general to use election fraud unit to boost voting rightsRead moreLegal scholars have said they believe Trump is “at substantial risk of prosecution” in Georgia over his attempts to strong-arm officials into fixing the election in his favour when it looked as if the state might decide the outcome of the presidential election. At least 18 other people have been told they also potentially face prosecution, including Trump’s close ally and lawyer, the former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani.The Fulton county superior court judge who oversaw the grand jury, Robert McBurney, will hear from Willis but not lawyers for Trump, who said on Monday that they will not participate in the hearing. They said that Willis had not sought to interview the former president for the investigation.“Therefore, we can assume that the grand jury did their job and looked at the facts and the law, as we have, and concluded there were no violations of the law by President Trump,” the lawyers said in a statement.Willis’s office has not said what its position will be at the hearing, but the prosecutor may see an advantage in releasing at least part of the report if she intends to press ahead with charges.The rarely used special purpose grand jury cannot issue indictments; if it recommends prosecutions, Willis would be required to ask a regular grand jury to formalise the charges.McBurney is not expected to immediately rule on whether the report should be released.TopicsUS newsThe fight for democracyDonald TrumpRudy GiulianiGeorgiaRepublicansUS elections 2020US politicsnewsReuse this content
- [Fulton grand jury report on attempts to overturn Trump's 2020 Georgia election loss ... - Douglas Now](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/fulton-grand-jury-report-on-attempts-to-overturn-trumps-2020-georgia-election-loss-douglas-now/) - By Stanley DunlapThe Georgia Recorder www.georgiarecorder.comYou could get your first glimpse soon into what a Fulton County special grand jury heard behind closed doors as it investigated efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to interfere in the results of the 2020 election.The calls by several media groups for an immediate release of the grand jury’s findings into the lengthy investigation are set to come to a head at a hearing on Tuesday before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney.Dozens of witnesses have testified in the Atlanta courthouse since last summer, including top state officials and close supporters and aides of the former president and dominant leader of the Republican party. Legal experts predict that details of the grand jury’s report will begin trickling out depending on when criminal charges are filed, but that under state law some details may be kept from the public as the investigation continues. McBurney, who oversaw the special investigation, has discretion over what information is revealed. However, don’t expect the full report to come out next week, said J. Tom Morgan, former DeKalb County District Attorney and criminal law professor at Western Carolina University.Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ special grand jury was appointed last year to investigate whether Trump’s team interfered with Georgia’s 2020 presidential election that Trump lost to President Joe Biden by fewer than 12,000 votes.“The judge will put some fire behind the district attorney and say, I’m going to order that this report be released in its entirety on such and such a date and portions of it may be released next week and you need to judge yourself accordingly,” Morgan said. “This report puts the D.A. in a quandary because the report says there have been certain crimes and certain persons should be prosecuted and if she doesn’t prosecute, it’s going to come back to bite her.”In a press briefing on Friday, Morgan joined the Defend Democracy Project to discuss the Fulton case, which could deliver explosive national aftershocks, including the first-ever criminal indictment of a former president. Trump says he intends to run again in 2024.Willis’ investigation was boosted by the January 2021 public release of a recorded phone call in which Trump pressed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough ballots to overcome Biden’s victory. In the court circuit, a special investigative grand jury is appointed by a majority of the judges. Special investigative grand juries can recommend to the district attorney whether the crimes might have been committed based on the evidence.Before a district attorney can even subpoena witnesses in a regular case, the case must be indicted before a regular grand jury. Former U.S. Ambassador Norman Eisen, legal scholar and counsel in the first impeachment trial of Trump, said Fulton prosecutors may want to redact the names of key witnesses who could face threats. The timing of the details becoming public may hinge on when any indictments are handed down.“The strong possibility is that Donald Trump and his co-conspirators have been recommended for criminal charges under multiple Georgia statutes for their attempted coup and assault on the 2020 election results,” Eisen said.“While the great likelihood is that we’re going to see a recommendation of charges here, you just never know,” Eisen said. “The proof of the pudding is in the edict.”Eisen was one of the authors of a Brookings Institute report that said Trump appears to be at substantial risk of prosecution in Georgia for several criminal charges that could include solicitation and conspiracy to commit election fraud and interfering in elections.The Brookings report asserted that Trump and his cohorts, including 16 Georgia false electors, might have committed other crimes, including making false statements, improper influence on government officials, and forging documents.Among the witnesses who testified during the months-long grand jury probe were Raffensperger, Trump’s ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows, Trump’s former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, South Carolina Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, and Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer.Eisen said that the Fulton probe along with a separate U.S. Justice Department inquiry into the attempted coup are tipping points in American justice. The U.S. House Jan. 6 select committee report alleges obstruction of probable cause findings regarding Trump. The Department of Justice has been referred to investigate and possibly prosecute Trump over his attempts to overturn his election results.“It’s vitally important for the future of our democracy, that there be accountability for this very serious misconduct by Donald Trump and others who attempt to overthrow the legitimate outcome of election results,” Eisen said. “Because I believe this special grand jury report likely reflects that. I think it will be an important document in the history and in the future of American democracy.”
- [Judge to hold hearing over Georgia special grand jury report - Connecticut Post](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/judge-to-hold-hearing-over-georgia-special-grand-jury-report-connecticut-post/) - ATLANTA (AP) — A judge is set to hear arguments Tuesday on whether to release a report by a special grand jury tasked with investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies broke any laws as they sought to overturn his narrow 2020 election loss in Georgia.Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney will hear arguments from the district attorney’s office, news outlets and potentially other parties before making a decision on the release of the report. The special grand jury, whose work was overseen by McBurney, recommended that the report be made public. The report is expected to include recommendations for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on possible criminal prosecution, though it’s unclear just how specific those recommendations will be. The special grand jury did not have the power to issue indictments, and it will ultimately be up to Willis to decide whether to seek indictments from a regular grand jury.
- [Some TDs anxious as Donohoe set to disclose fresh details of 2020 election expenses](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/24/some-tds-anxious-as-donohoe-set-to-disclose-fresh-details-of-2020-election-expenses/) - Government TDs expect Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donohoe to survive a vital Dáil outing about his election expenses on Tuesday but an underlying nervousness about the affair remains on the Coalition benches.Mr Donohoe is set to detail fresh disclosures about his 2020 election expenses, following an ongoing controversy over corrections he made to filings in the previous general election.A spokeswoman for Mr Donohoe said on Monday evening he is “keen” to address the Dáil shortly before 4pm on Tuesday, with Government sources bullish on Monday evening.A senior source said there was confidence that all questions and clarifications “that are asked will be answered ... And that we then have a chance to move on and address the bread and butter issues”.[ What could go wrong for Paschal Donohoe as he addresses poster controversy in Dáil? ][ Opposition join forces to press Paschal Donohoe on election expenses ]Mr Donohoe has been grappling with a controversy over his election expenses for over a week, since it emerged he failed to properly record that a friend had paid for the erection of some of his posters in 2016.Businessman Michael Stone, who was in 2019 appointed to the board of the Land Development Agency and northeast Inner City taskforce – a post for which he has waived his fees, paid a total of €1,100 to workers for postering, as well as buying raffle tickets from Mr Donohoe. The Minister has said he did not know the workers were paid, a stance the opposition has described as not credible.Mr Donohoe’s spokeswoman said all issues raised “have been treated with absolute sincerity and seriousness by the Minister – he will address the matters raised, both through his speech and by taking questions in the Dáil.”He briefed Coalition leaders over the weekend and on Monday morning, with all of them saying they were satisfied with what he had to tell them. Privately, Coalition TDs also expect Mr Donohoe to come through the controversy but are reserving final judgment until after his Dáil appearance. “His judgment and reputation for judgment has been definitely damaged,” a Fianna Fáil source said.Some Government TDs are of the view that Mr Donohoe should have classified the payments as donations, rather than expenses, while others are apprehensive about what may yet emerge. “I’m confident that he will put it to bed but we’ll only know tomorrow in relation to what’s going to come up,” one Fine Gael backbencher said.[ Miriam Lord: If Paschal Donohoe falls, the whole house of cards of this Government falls with him ]Sinn Féin is yet to decide whether to move a motion of no confidence in Mr Donohoe, it is understood, with the party reserving its position until after the question and answer session.Independent TDs who spoke to The Irish Times on Monday were for the most part reserving their positions ahead of the vote.Roscommon-Galway TD Denis Naughten said: “Most people are willing to wait and hear what the minister has to say in the house tomorrow.”“Everyone is conscious of the challenges there in making returns after every elecetin – it will all depend on the scale of the correction that has to be made.”His constituency colleague Michael Fitzmaurice said there was a need to do a “proper Q&A” but that the issue hadn’t been raised with him much by constituents – a view shared by Clare TD Michael McNamara, who said constituents were asking him to instead focus on health and housing.However, Sligo-Leitrim TD Marc MacSharry said that while Mr Donohoe was a “gentleman” his view was that the Minister had further questions to answer. Mr MacSharry said a standardised toolkit for sanctioning politicians should be developed. “Until it is, we cannot have one rule for Hogan, Calleary, Cowen and within a Fianna Fáil context MacSharry and a different approach to others.” He also criticised the media what he said were “breathtaking” efforts to save Mr Donohoe’s position.
- [Four Oath Keepers convicted of Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy - WABI](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/four-oath-keepers-convicted-of-jan-6-seditious-conspiracy-wabi/) - WASHINGTON (AP) — Four members of the Oath Keepers were convicted Monday of seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack in the second major trial of far-right extremists accused of plotting to forcibly keep President Donald Trump in power.The verdict against Joseph Hackett of Sarasota, Florida; Roberto Minuta of Prosper, Texas; David Moerschel of Punta Gorda, Florida; and Edward Vallejo of Phoenix comes weeks after after a different jury convicted the group’s leader, Stewart Rhodes, in the mob’s attack that halted the certification of President Joe Biden’s electoral victory.It’s another major victory for the Justice Department, which is also trying to secure sedition convictions against the former leader of the Proud Boys and four associates. The trial against Enrique Tarrio and his lieutenants opened earlier this month in Washington and is expected to last several weeks.The Washington jury deliberated for about 12 hours over three days before delivering their guilty verdict on the rarely used charge, which carries up to 20 years in prison. The four were also convicted of two other conspiracy charges as well as obstructing an official proceeding: Congress’ certification of the 2020 election. Minuta, Hackett and Moerschel were acquitted of lesser charges.Three members of the Oath Keepers and a fourth person associated with the far-right militia group were convicted of seditious conspiracy by a Washington, DC, jury on Monday for their role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection.(CNN, Pinellas County Sheriff, US Department of Justice, Homefront Battle Buddies)The judge didn’t immediately set a date for sentencing. The judge denied prosecutors’ bid to lock up the men while they await sentencing, finding them not to be a risk of flight. They were ordered to remain in home detention with electronic monitoring.It was one of the most serious cases brought so far in the sweeping Jan. 6 investigation, which continues to grow two years after the riot. The Justice Department has charged nearly 1,000 people in the riot and the tally increases by the week.Attorney General Merrick Garland told reporters after the verdict that he is “grateful to the prosecutors, agents and staff for their outstanding work.”Oath Keepers leader Rhodes and Florida chapter leader Kelly Meggs were convicted of seditious conspiracy in the previous trial that ended in November. They were the first people in decades found guilty at trial of the Civil War-era charge. Three other Oath Keepers were cleared of the charge in that case but were found guilty of other serious crimes. They are all awaiting sentencing.Lawyers for Moerschel and Minuta suggested after the verdict that their clients were hurt by not being able to stand trial alongside Rhodes because the judge split the case into two groups. Moerchel’s lawyer, Scott Weinberg, said he could have pointed to Rhodes as the “real bad guy.”“I think it would be easier to be a low-level person in the same case as Stewart Rhodes, who is basically the figurehead of of this organization,” Weinberg said.William Shipley Jr., Minuta’s attorney, said he was disappointed and “somewhat puzzled” by the verdict. He said the government’s witnesses didn’t stand up to scrutiny and there were gaps in the evidence presented.“We didn’t really think that in the 15 days of trial testimony the government really had a good day,” Shipley said.Vallejo left the courthouse without speaking to reporters. Joseph Hackett’s attorney, Angela Halim, declined to comment after the verdict.Prosecutors told jurors that Rhodes and his band of extremists began shortly after the 2020 election to prepare an armed rebellion to keep Trump in power. Messages show Rhodes and the Oath Keepers discussing the prospect of a “bloody” civil war and the need to keep Biden out of the White House.“Our democracy was under attack, but for the defendants it was everything they trained for and a moment to celebrate,” prosecutor Louis Manzo told jurors in his closing argument.Prosecutors alleged that the Oath Keepers amassed weapons and stashed them at a Virginia hotel for so-called “quick reaction force” teams that could quickly shuttle guns into Washington to support their plot if they were needed. The weapons were never used.Defense attorneys sought to downplay violent messages as mere bluster and said the Oath Keepers came to Washington to provide security at events before the riot. They seized on prosecutors’ lack of evidence that the Oath Keepers had an explicit plan to storm the Capitol before Jan. 6 and told jurors that the extremists who attacked the Capitol acted spontaneously like thousands of other rioters.Prosecutors argued that while there is not evidence specifically spelling out a plan to attack the Capitol, the Oath Keepers saw the riot as a means to an end and sprung into action at an apparent opportunity to help keep Trump in power.Hackett, Moerschel and other Oath Keepers approached the Capitol in a military-style stack formation before they entered the building, according to prosecutors. Minuta and his group from a second stack of Oath Keepers clashed with police after heeding Rhodes’ call to race to the Capitol, according to court documents.Prosecutors said that Vallejo, a U.S. Army veteran and Rhodes ally, drove from Arizona to prepare with the “QRF” — the quick reaction force — at the hotel outside Washington. Jurors heard an audio recording of Vallejo talking about a “declaration of a guerilla war” on the morning of Jan. 6.Three other Oath Keepers have pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in the hopes of getting a lighter sentence. They are among about 500 people who have pleaded guilty to riot-related charges.____Richer reported from Boston. Associated Press reporters Lindsay Whitehurst and Andrew Harnik contributed from Washington.____Follow AP’s coverage of the Capitol riot at: https://apnews.com/hub/capitol-siegeCopyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
- [Albuquerque DA appoints special prosecutor in 2020 monument shooting](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/albuquerque-da-appoints-special-prosecutor-in-2020-monument-shooting/) - The Bernalillo County District Attorney has appointed a special prosecutor to handle the criminal case against a former Albuquerque City Council candidate who shot a protester in June 2020 at the statue depicting Spanish colonizer Juan de Oñate called La Jornada at Tiguex Park in Albuquerque’s Old Town neighborhood. Steven Ray Baca, 34, is accused of attacking several protesters and shooting Scott Williams four times in the torso with a .40-caliber handgun. He is charged with aggravated battery causing great bodily harm for shooting Williams, two counts of battery on two other protesters, and unlawful carrying of a weapon. He pleaded not guilty in August 2020. His trial begins June 20 and is set to last approximately eight days, according to Second Judicial District Court Judge Brett R. Loveless. On Jan. 13, attorney David Foster took the oath to serve as special prosecutor in the criminal case, according to court records. Second Judicial District Attorney Sam Bregman appointed Foster in a court filing five days later. Foster is a former prosecutor who has handled criminal cases in New Mexico and New York, according to his website, and has offices in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Whenever a district attorney in New Mexico cannot prosecute a case “for ethical reasons or other good cause,” state law allows them to appoint a special assistant district attorney to act as a special prosecutor in one case. In his role in the case, Foster will have all of the authority and duties Bregman would normally have. Spokesperson Nancy Laflin said in a written statement on Monday that Bregman chose to ask for an outside prosecutor because the DA’s office has a “high volume of cases.” “There are a number of attorneys in the community who are working with us to prosecute cases,” Laflin said. “That’s what happened here.” A request for comment sent to Foster on Monday was not returned. Williams, through his attorney Laura Schauer Ives, declined to comment. Diego Esquibel, one of the two attorneys representing Baca, said Foster’s appointment doesn’t change anything about the case. “It’s not unusual, it’s a pretty common practice on some of these cases,” Esquibel said in an interview on Monday. “It will be nice to actually get a fresh set of eyes looking at the case. We felt that the case got politicized pretty early on, and I think that that’s kind of driven the way that the case has been handled.” Loveless estimates a trial to last eight days and has scheduled it to begin June 20, according to court records. He has required all parties to hand over scientific evidence by Feb. 17, interview all witnesses before April 5, and hold any evidence hearings by May 15. Former DA anticipated self-defense claim The shooting happened during deep social unrest in 2020: the George Floyd protests, criticism of police violence, and the destruction or removal of more than 160 monuments to the Confederacy — including the removal of the Spanish colonial statues in Alcalde, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque. Prosecutors in August 2020 wrote that they anticipate Baca’s attorneys will claim he acted in self defense. But former Second Judicial District Attorney Raúl Torrez previously said his office will argue that because Baca was the first aggressor, he will not be able to make a claim of self defense, and that Williams acted in response to Baca’s “violent provocation.” In the minutes leading up to the shooting, video shows Baca push a woman from behind, causing her to fall to the ground and injure her legs. It also shows him moments later trying to push past another woman to get near the statue, and while she had her arms out and her back turned, he grabbed her shoulder and slammed her into a concrete sidewalk where she hit her head. A group of protesters including Williams chased Baca away from the monument, according to court records. As Baca ran away, he sprayed them with mace. One protester attempted to hit Baca in the head with a longboard, but dropped it. Williams attempted to use the longboard to knock the gun out of Baca’s hands, but Baca shot Williams. After the shooting, video shows six members of a right-wing militia called the New Mexico Civil Guard armed with rifles surrounding Baca. Other members of the militia were also rendering aid to Williams’ gunshot wounds. Last year, Torrez won a civil case that tried to dissolve the militia group, which had mostly broken up and dormant since the 2020 election. The group did not have legal representation and was not responding to court deadlines. Documents in that case revealed that Baca acted alone and was not part of the group during the Oñate shooting. District Court Judge David A. Murphy in September recused himself from presiding over the case, which was reassigned to Loveless. Editor-in-Chief Marisa Demarco recused herself from editing these stories out of a conflict-of-interest concern. Instead, this story was edited by Senior Reporter Shaun Griswold and Sean Scully, a national editor with States Newsroom.
- [Fulton grand jury report on attempts to overturn Trump's 2020 Georgia election loss could ... - WABE](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/fulton-grand-jury-report-on-attempts-to-overturn-trumps-2020-georgia-election-loss-could-wabe/) - You could get your first glimpse soon into what a Fulton County special grand jury heard behind closed doors as it investigated efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to interfere in the results of the 2020 election. The calls by several media groups for an immediate release of the grand jury’s findings into the lengthy investigation are set to come to a head at a hearing on Tuesday before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney. Dozens of witnesses have testified in the Atlanta courthouse since last summer, including top state officials and close supporters and aides of the former president and dominant leader of the Republican party. Legal experts predict that details of the grand jury’s report will begin trickling out depending on when criminal charges are filed, but that under state law some details may be kept from the public as the investigation continues. McBurney, who oversaw the special investigation, has discretion over what information is revealed. However, don’t expect the full report to come out next week, said J. Tom Morgan, former DeKalb County District Attorney and criminal law professor at Western Carolina University. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ special grand jury was appointed last year to investigate whether Trump’s team interfered with Georgia’s 2020 presidential election that Trump lost to President Joe Biden by fewer than 12,000 votes. “The judge will put some fire behind the district attorney and say, I’m going to order that this report be released in its entirety on such and such a date and portions of it may be released next week and you need to judge yourself accordingly,” Morgan said. “This report puts the D.A. in a quandary because the report says there have been certain crimes and certain persons should be prosecuted and if she doesn’t prosecute, it’s going to come back to bite her.” In a press briefing on Friday, Morgan joined the Defend Democracy Project to discuss the Fulton case, which could deliver explosive national aftershocks, including the first-ever criminal indictment of a former president. Trump says he intends to run again in 2024. Willis’ investigation was boosted by the January 2021 public release of a recorded phone call in which Trump pressed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough ballots to overcome Biden’s victory. In the court circuit, a special investigative grand jury is appointed by a majority of the judges. Special investigative grand juries can recommend to the district attorney whether the crimes might have been committed based on the evidence. Before a district attorney can even subpoena witnesses in a regular case, the case must be indicted before a regular grand jury. Former U.S. Ambassador Norman Eisen, legal scholar and counsel in the first impeachment trial of Trump, said Fulton prosecutors may want to redact the names of key witnesses who could face threats. The timing of the details becoming public may hinge on when any indictments are handed down. “The strong possibility is that Donald Trump and his co-conspirators have been recommended for criminal charges under multiple Georgia statutes for their attempted coup and assault on the 2020 election results,” Eisen said. “While the great likelihood is that we’re going to see a recommendation of charges here, you just never know,” Eisen said. “The proof of the pudding is in the edict.” Eisen was one of the authors of a Brookings Institute report that said Trump appears to be at substantial risk of prosecution in Georgia for several criminal charges that could include solicitation and conspiracy to commit election fraud and interfering in elections. The Brookings report asserted that Trump and his cohorts, including 16 Georgia false electors, might have committed other crimes, including making false statements, improper influence on government officials, and forging documents. Among the witnesses who testified during the months-long grand jury probe were Raffensperger, Trump’s ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows, Trump’s former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, South Carolina Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, and Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer. Eisen said that the Fulton probe along with a separate U.S. Justice Department inquiry into the attempted coup are tipping points in American justice. The U.S. House Jan. 6 select committee report alleges obstruction of probable cause findings regarding Trump. The Department of Justice has been referred to investigate and possibly prosecute Trump over his attempts to overturn his election results. “It’s vitally important for the future of our democracy, that there be accountability for this very serious misconduct by Donald Trump and others who attempt to overthrow the legitimate outcome of election results,” Eisen said. “Because I believe this special grand jury report likely reflects that. I think it will be an important document in the history and in the future of American democracy.”
- [Judge to weigh releasing Fulton County grand jury investigation into 2020 election interference](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/judge-to-weigh-releasing-fulton-county-grand-jury-investigation-into-2020-election-interference/) - One year ago, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis asked a judge to convene a special grand jury, saying she had reason to believe the 2020 election in Georgia had been “subject to possible criminal disruptions.” Now, after hours of closed-door testimony from dozens of witnesses over eight months, that special grand jury has concluded its work and a judge will decide whether, when and how to release the panel’s final report. Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney, who has overseen the investigation from the start, will hear arguments on Tuesday about the report’s release. The report may include recommendations for criminal charges, which Willis could decide to pursue by asking a standing grand jury to issue indictments – which could happen as soon as this week. A coalition of media outlets, including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Associated Press and the New York Times, is urging the judge to release the report, unredacted. “The public interest in the Report is extraordinary,” lawyers for the news outlets wrote in a brief filed Monday. “The Court should file the Report in the public docket and publish it… as the special purpose grand jurors have requested.” It’s possible prosecutors might urge the judge to delay or redact portions of the report, citing, for example, a desire to protect witnesses. Or they could back its swift release. Subjects of the investigation may also try to push for redactions, though that may be difficult without having seen the report. “It’s a question, in my view, not of if, but of when,” says legal scholar Norm Eisen, who’s studied the investigation extensively. “If I were the D.A. I would want the judge to sequence the release of the report with the indictments.” The judge will have to consider a tangle of Georgia code, murky legal definitions and court precedent, as well as weigh the public interest with any conflicting interests of prosecutors, witnesses and subjects of the investigation. Special grand juries are relatively rare, so there is not extensive precedent to lean on. “So I think the bottom line is Judge McBurney has to answer whether this is a report he mandatorily has to release to public or is it something else under Georgia law – and is there any obligation or need on his part to redact any of the information that’s in that report,” says Anthony Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University. In a statement released Monday to multiple media outlets, Trump’s Georgia-based legal team wrote that they won’t appear in court on Tuesday, saying the former president was never subpoenaed or asked to voluntarily appear before the special grand jury. “We can assume that the grand jury did their job and looked at the facts and the law, as we have, and concluded there were no violations of the law by President Trump,” wrote attorneys Drew Findling, Marissa Goldberg and Jennifer Little. It’s not known whether the jurors recommend charges for Trump or anyone else. “I don’t think there’s anything anybody can read in one way or the other,” Kreis says. “Not being called (to testify) is kind of a neutral observation.” The investigation was spurred by Trump’s call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, pressuring him to “find” 11,780 votes for him. The 26-member panel also examined plans to organize a fake slate of electors for Trump and other attempts to interfere with the election, including targeting election workers and spreading false conspiracy theories about widespread election fraud. Legal experts say Willis is likely looking at potential violations of specific Georgia codes, like criminal solicitation to commit election fraud. Jurors heard testimony from dozens of figures in Trump’s inner orbit, often after lengthy court fights, including former White House chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Trump’s onetime personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). Other witnesses included Raffensperger and Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who both brushed off entreaties from Trump and his allies. Many of the events scrutinized by the special grand jury have also been the subject of other probes, including investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice and the select committee in Congress that examined the January 6th insurrection. Unlike a standard grand jury, a special purpose grand jury is dedicated to just one case and can meet for much longer. But if prosecutors choose to pursue any criminal charges, they would need to separately ask a standard grand jury to issue indictments. The decision would be a pivotal moment for Willis, a longtime prosecutor who Fulton County voters elected as district attorney in 2020. A fresh Fulton County grand jury was seated earlier this month, and hears cases twice a week. Even if prosecutors move quickly to secure indictments this week or in the coming days, it would still take months or even years for the cases to work their way through the justice system.
- [Fox News' defense in defamation suit invokes debunked election-fraud claims - NPR](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/fox-news-defense-in-defamation-suit-invokes-debunked-election-fraud-claims-npr/) - Enlarge this image The News Corp. building in New York City, home to Fox News. Kevin Hagen/Getty Images Kevin Hagen/Getty Images Fox News' attorneys have set out the starkest defense yet against the accusation the network defamed an election-technology company when it broadcast false claims that the company had cheated then-President Donald Trump of victory in the 2020 election. The overwhelming majority of Fox's argument was made in sealed motions filed last week asking the presiding judge to dismiss Dominion Voting Systems' $1.6 billion suit before it is to go to trial in April. Yet in supplementary public filings, the contours of the Fox team's reasoning emerge more sharply in focus. Of the approximately 115 statements on Fox by its hosts and guests that Dominion contends are defamatory, Fox News wrote in its filing, "there is not a single statement for which Dominion can prove every element of its claim for defamation." Fox and Dominion did not comment for this story. An explanation offered for Fox stars' willingness to air debunked claims In those documents, Fox's attorneys offer "omitted context" for the seemingly incendiary remarks by such hosts as Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo, as well as their featured guests, including Trump and his former campaign attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. That context includes assertions that have long since been debunked and rebutted in dozens of court challenges and by local and state election officials from both parties. Among them: claims that the use of Sharpie markers in Maricopa County, Arizona, had invalidated the votes cast by Trump supporters because the ink often bled through the ballots. Allegations of voter fraud in Detroit. The sworn deposition of an anonymous witness who said he was a former member of the Venezuelan presidential security team and accused Dominion of committing election fraud in the U.S. All of these allegations have been disproven. Many were unraveled in real time during the 2020 election season – often by Fox's own reporters. Fox News' legal team does not defend them as correct. Instead, its filings suggest that the Fox stars relaying them on the air reflected an appropriate journalistic response to stark claims about the functioning of American democracy, as they involve "questions to a newsmaker on newsworthy subjects" or they "accurately report on pending allegations." "Didn't stand up to the light of day" Eddie Perez, board member at the OSET Institute, a non-profit, non-partisan outfit advocating for reliable and transparent election technology, calls the claims about Dominion that were amplified by Fox hosts and peddled by its guests "outlandish." "If anything, because they were so outlandish, they immediately attracted widespread attention and were debunked," Perez says. "They instantly didn't stand up to the light of day." In countering Dominion, Fox's lawyers offer a chart of offending statements and what it termed the "omitted context" that could explain why the material was newsworthy, why the Fox hosts' treatment of it was responsible, and then why it was not defamatory. The network's lawyers write, as they have before, that Fox was merely relaying inherently newsworthy claims by Trump and his surrogates. The lawyers contend the supposedly defamatory statements often involved hyperbolic characterizations or mere opinions. (Fox attorneys previously fended off an unrelated defamation lawsuit against star Tucker Carlson filed by a woman who had an affair with Trump by arguing no one believes that what the Fox star says is literally true.)
- [Atlanta judge to decide whether to release 2020 election probe report - Axios](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/atlanta-judge-to-decide-whether-to-release-2020-election-probe-report-axios/)
- [Election deniers set sights on next target - POLITICO](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/election-deniers-set-sights-on-next-target-politico/) - Wes Allen’s abandonment of ERIC illustrates how ideas stemming from the falsehood of a stolen presidential election remain in the bloodstream of the American democratic system. | Butch Dill/AP Photo Swing state voters broadly rejected candidates in last year’s midterms who questioned the results of the 2020 elections. But unfounded accusations of fraud and other malfeasance continue to tear at the machinery of U.S. elections. The latest example comes from Alabama and its newly elected secretary of state, Wes Allen. His first official act upon taking office earlier this month was unusual: The Republican fulfilled a campaign promise by withdrawing Alabama from an obscure interstate compact that helps states maintain voter rolls, citing data security concerns. That consortium — known as Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC — has been a genuine bipartisan success story, finding buy-in from red states like Florida and Texas and blue states like Colorado and Connecticut to help them remove duplicate voter registrations and catch potential instances of double voting. But conservative conspiracy sites like The Gateway Pundit and the Thomas More Society, a nonprofit that filed lawsuits that unsuccessfully sought to overturn the 2020 election, have attacked ERIC as part of a liberal plot to control the underpinnings of American elections. Allen’s abandonment of ERIC illustrates how ideas stemming from the falsehood of a stolen presidential election remain in the bloodstream of the American democratic system, even after its most well-known proponents were shut out from winning key positions in major swing states in the midterms. It also suggests the era of bipartisan, behind-the-scenes, mundane cooperation on the mechanics of running elections is at risk. “It’s not the start, nor the end,” said David Becker, a former DOJ attorney who was central to setting up ERIC over a decade ago. “If you’ve been to any meetings of election officials over the last few years — if you’ve been to anything where consensus is attempted — it seems that fewer and fewer want to engage in that.” Becker, who is now the founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, retains a non-voting position on the board of ERIC, which is otherwise made up of voting representatives from member states. Allen’s office did not respond to an interview request or to written questions about his decision to pull the state out of ERIC. But in a statement accompanying his letter to ERIC, he said that: “Providing the private information of Alabama citizens, including underage minors, to an out of state organization is troubling to me and to people that I heard from as I traveled the state for the last 20 months.” ERIC collects voter registration and motor vehicle data from each member state regularly throughout the year, the organization says. That data is used to produce several reports identifying voters on their rolls who may have moved to or from other member states or within a state, who may be registered in multiple states — which in itself is not a crime — or who may have died. The system can also generate a report on voters who may have voted in different states in the same election — which generally carries criminal penalties — and people who appear to be eligible but are unregistered to vote, which ERIC members are required to contact. The Gateway Pundit published a series of posts in mid-January 2022 about ERIC, claiming it was part of a left-wing cabal. And in December 2022, the Thomas More Society said it has filed complaints in three states about ERIC and planned to continue to do so in more. A spokesperson for TMS did not respond to a request for an update on the filings. Allen was the second secretary of state to pull his state out of ERIC. Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, a Republican, announced last January that Louisiana would “suspend” its participation in the program and sent a letter in July withdrawing entirely. John Tobler, a spokesperson for Ardoin’s office, said the office had conversations with ERIC officials before it left, but did not make Ardoin available for an interview and declined to answer specific questions about the move. Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, a Republican, announced last January that Louisiana would “suspend” its participation in the program and sent a letter in July withdrawing entirely. | Matthew Hinton/AP Photo The announcement from Ardoin’s office about the suspension alleged: “concerns raised by citizens, government watchdog organizations and media reports about potential questionable funding sources and that possibly partisan actors may have access to ERIC network data.” In a statement at the time, Ardoin said he spoke with “election attorneys and experts,” but did not identify those people, nor the watchdog groups and media reports. Ardoin’s campaign website says he “demanded answers from ERIC … to keep Louisiana’s elections secure,” linking to a brief local news article from January about the announcement. On the campaign trail, Allen more closely echoed the postings from Gateway Pundit website: He said he opposed ERIC because it was a “Soros-funded, leftist group,” referencing the prominent liberal donor George Soros. The group is entirely funded and controlled by member states, after receiving initial startup support from The Pew Charitable Trusts in 2012. Despite the two states leaving the organization, ERIC still broadly maintains bipartisan support. Republican officials have praised ERIC for helping their states remove from the rolls voters who have either moved out of state or died, and for its use as a backstop to catch people who potentially cast ballots in two different states in one election. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis highlighted ERIC by name in a summer press conference as helping to catch potential cases of double voting. (DeSantis announced the state would join ERIC in 2019.) And one of its biggest proponents of the program was Allen’s predecessor, now-former Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, who regularly defended the value of ERIC after Allen raised it as an issue on the campaign trail. “ERIC does something that no other entity is capable of doing,” Merrill, a Republican, said in an interview in November, following the midterm elections. “The people who have complaints about ERIC and who have concerns about ERIC, don’t understand ERIC.” Trey Grayson, a Republican and former Kentucky secretary of state who remains active in the election administration community, said in a text that he was a “big fan” of ERIC and that it was an “important tool” to maintain accurate voter rolls. He said it was disappointing to see the two states leave the group. “I especially find it disappointing because in general we Republicans tend to care more about cleaning up the voter rolls,” Grayson wrote. “And these Republican secretaries are shooting those efforts in the foot with their decisions.” Officials from other member states also expressed displeasure over the exit of Louisiana and Alabama. Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, said he was “disappointed with the decision because I think the more members there are in ERIC, the stronger ERIC is.” “ERIC does something that no other entity is capable of doing. The people who have complaints about ERIC and who have concerns about ERIC, don’t understand ERIC.” Former Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill The scuffle around ERIC is just one point of agitation between election officials. Recent public meetings of the National Association of Secretaries of State, a longstanding, bipartisan organization, have showcased the tension growing within the group. Sessions at NASS meetings now focus on the increasingly fraught task of ensuring the safety of election officials from physical threats, and there has been public chatter about the risk of insider threats to election offices. And a few sessions have triggered sharp disagreements among secretaries that, at times, have gotten heated. That could continue to grow, with several newly-elected secretaries in red states who have at least questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election now eligible to join the organization, Allen among them. But Simon — who is set to assume the NASS presidency in the summer of 2024 and helped lead a near-unanimous NASS resolution for election audits in 2021 — said he was still hopeful that there would be plenty of room for behind-the-scenes election cooperation to survive and thrive. “I actually have thought about that,” Simon said when asked if the tension around ERIC could metastasize into something more. “We might have differences, including on this issue, but I really don’t think it changes the fundamentals. … So I don’t see this as a body blow to cooperation among secretaries of state of varying political viewpoints.”
- [Trump complains about length of Diamond's funeral and 2020 election in “narcissistic” eulogy](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/trump-complains-about-length-of-diamonds-funeral-and-2020-election-in-narcissistic-eulogy/)
- [Current economic crisis can be traced to 2020 election-related expenses – Prof Bokpin](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/current-economic-crisis-can-be-traced-to-2020-election-related-expenses-prof-bokpin/)
- [Trump faces judge's ruling on 2020 Georgia election interference - New York Daily News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/trump-faces-judges-ruling-on-2020-georgia-election-interference-new-york-daily-news/) - Former President Donald Trump faces a crucial Tuesday morning hearing when a Georgia judge will determine whether to release a grand jury’s report on its probe into his 2020 election interference effort.A report from a special investigative grand jury may recommend that Trump and others should face criminal charges in the scheme to bully state election officials into overturning President Biden’s narrow win in the Peach State.AdvertisementPresident Donald Trump walks to board Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on Jan. 12, 2021, in Washington. (Gerald Herbert/AP)It could also recommend charges in his effort to create a Trump slate of so-called “fake electors” who would be pledged to Trump even though he lost the state.Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney will preside over the hearing and could decide to immediately unseal the grand jury report, delay doing so or decide to keep it secret.AdvertisementWhatever he decides, nothing will happen immediately to Trump or other potential targets of the probe like Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani.Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who has been aggressively investigating the case for two years, would have to make the case for indictments to a regular grand jury that could then hand up indictments in coming months.The case burst into the public eye when Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in the days before the Jan. 6 attack, demanding that he “find” just enough votes to overturn Biden’s lead of about 12,000 ballots.Raffensperger rejected Trump’s demands, telling him that all allegations of major irregularities had been investigated and found to be baseless. He released a bombshell tape of the call.Willis also questioned officials about Trump’s unconstitutional plot for fake electors, a scheme that pro-Trump Republicans also tried unsuccessfully in other swing states.Trump hoped to create enough uncertainty about the validity of his loss in Georgia and other swing states to convince Congress to not certify Biden’s win.Trump won’t be in the courtroom and his lawyers insist he has nothing to fear.“We can assume that the grand jury did their job ... and concluded there were no violations of the law by President Trump,” they said in a statement.
- [Will Trump Face Criminal Charges in Georgia Election Inquiry? - The New York Times](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/will-trump-face-criminal-charges-in-georgia-election-inquiry-the-new-york-times/) - The House Jan. 6 committee report offered fresh evidence that former President Donald J. Trump was at the center of efforts to overturn election results in Georgia.A few weeks after losing the 2020 election, President Donald J. Trump called Ronna McDaniel, the head of the Republican National Committee, with a plan for keeping himself in office. During the call, he asked John C. Eastman, an architect of the strategy, to lay it out: Trump supporters in states that the president had lost would act as if they were official Electoral College delegates, an audacious scheme to circumvent voters.After the plan was put in motion, Ms. McDaniel forwarded an “elector recap” report to Mr. Trump’s executive assistant, who replied soon after, “It’s in front of him!”Such details, from the report released in December by the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, offer fresh evidence that Mr. Trump was not on the periphery of the effort to overturn the election results in Georgia but at the center of it.For the last two years, prosecutors in Atlanta have been conducting a criminal investigation into whether the Trump team interfered in the presidential election in Georgia, which Mr. Trump narrowly lost to President Biden. With the wide-ranging inquiry now entering the indictment phase, the central question is whether Mr. Trump himself will face criminal charges.Legal analysts who have followed the case say there are two areas of considerable risk for Mr. Trump. The first are the calls that he made to state officials, including one to Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, in which Mr. Trump said he needed to “find” 11,780 votes. But the recently released Jan. 6 committee transcripts shed new light on the other area of potential legal jeopardy for the former president: his direct involvement in recruiting a slate of bogus presidential electors in the weeks after the 2020 election.The Atlanta prosecutors have moved more quickly than the Department of Justice, where a special counsel, Jack Smith, was recently appointed to oversee Trump-related investigations. This month, the Fulton County Superior Court disbanded a special grand jury after it produced an investigative report on the case, concluding months of private testimony from dozens of Trump allies, state officials and other witnesses.Election personnel count absentee ballots in Atlanta in November 2020.Audra Melton for The New York TimesThe report remains secret, although a hearing is scheduled for Tuesday to determine if any or all of it will be made public. Nearly 20 people known to have been named targets of the investigation could face charges, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, and David Shafer, the head of the Georgia Republican Party.Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, which encompasses most of Atlanta, will need to make her case to a regular grand jury if she seeks indictments, which would likely come by May. That means the nation could be in for months more waiting and speculating, particularly if a judge decides after this week’s hearing not to make public the report’s recommendations.Mr. Trump’s lawyers said in a statement Monday that they would not be at Tuesday’s hearing, adding that Mr. Trump “was never subpoenaed nor asked to come in voluntarily by this grand jury or anyone in the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office.”Understand Georgia’s Investigation of Election InterferenceCard 1 of 5An immediate legal threat to Trump.
- [Shasta supervisors are talking about Dominion voting machines again. New acting CEO update](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/shasta-supervisors-are-talking-about-dominion-voting-machines-again-new-acting-ceo-update/) - Here we go again.Shasta County’s contract with the Dominion Voting Systems will be up for discussion at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting.The voting machines have drawn the ire of local election deniers who’ve voiced grievances and parroted former President Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was rigged — Trump received nearly two-thirds of the vote in Shasta County in 2020. Those same deniers unsuccessfully fought to reject certification of the results of last June’s primary, in which four “non-establishment,” far-right candidates lost convincingly to the four incumbents.They have called for the elimination of electronic voting and the ability to vote by mail.Also on Tuesday’s agenda is a contract to appoint Mary Williams acting county executive officer effective Feb. 1.Williams, who is the deputy county executive officer, would succeed Patrick Minturn, who has said he will retire after his contract expires Jan. 31. Minturn was named acting CEO in June after CEO Matt Pontes resigned.Williams would make $19,546 a month as acting CEO. Minturn, who retired as county public works director before becoming acting CEO, is making $24,338 a month.The county is still searching for a permanent CEO and at this time has not said when it plans to hire Pontes’ successor.Dominion voting machines back on the agendaMeanwhile, board chairman Patrick Jones, who represents District 4, put the Dominion machines on Tuesday's agenda. Jones himself is not happy with the machines, and many of the same election skeptics who question the accuracy of the machines and want to get rid of them are Jones' supporters.But county Clerk and Registrar of Voters Cathy Darling Allen, through audits, has defended the accuracy of the machines.In December 2021, Darling Allen told supervisors that a paper count audit of 10,000 ballots tallied by Dominion machines after the November 2020 election showed "zero variances.” In other words, there were no mistakes. Jones beat incumbent Steve Morgan in 2020 to win the District 4 seat.At that same December meeting, supervisors voted 4-1 to amend the county’s agreement with Dominion Voting Systems. Jones cast the lone dissenting vote.After the recall of District 2 Supervisor Leonard Moty in February 2022, Darling Allen’s office did a paper audit of the entire recall vote count. There were no mistakes.Those who urged supervisors not to certify the June 7 primary were quiet after the Moty recall and after this past November election, in which non-establishment, far-right candidates Chris Kelstrom and Kevin Crye won seats on the board of supervisors.Dominion machines have been used by the county in every election since 2018. Its contract with Shasta County goes through 2025.Tuesday’s agenda states that supervisors could provide direction to staff regarding the Dominion machines.According to the contract, the county can terminate its agreement without cause but must provide 30 days’ written notice to Dominion.The contract states that only the CEO “and his/her designee,” or the county clerk and registrar of voters can terminate the agreement.Win-River Casino relocation proposal also back to supervisorsAbout eight months after approving a letter to support the Redding Rancheria’s plan to relocate Win-River Casino Resort to freeway frontage property near the Sacramento River, supervisors once again could send another letter to the U.S. Department of Interior Bureau of Indian Affairs reaffirming their support.Last May, the board approved a letter that withdrew its previously stated opposition to the casino relocation and voted to support the plan.Jones has requested county staff write up another letter reaffirming support.In December, the Redding City Council voted unanimously to double down on its opposition of the casino relocation, approving a cover letter that will be attached to its 2019 letter of opposition to the BIA.
- [What is Georgia's Trump election inquiry and will it lead to charges? - The Guardian](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/what-is-georgias-trump-election-inquiry-and-will-it-lead-to-charges-the-guardian/) - ExplainerWhat is Georgia’s Trump election inquiry and will it lead to charges?The investigation looks at if Trump and his allies committed a crime in their efforts to overturn the 2020 election A court hearing on Tuesday will mark one of the most significant developments in a Georgia investigation examining whether Donald Trump and allies committed a crime in their efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Here’s all you need to know about that hearing and what to expect next.Trump’s political fate may have been decided – by a Georgia grand juryRead moreWhat exactly is happening on Tuesday?Since May of last year, a special purpose grand jury in Fulton county, Georgia has been investigating whether Donald Trump committed a crime under state law when he tried to overturn the 2020 election by pressuring state officials to try and overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state.The grand jury concluded its work earlier this month. On Tuesday, there will be a hearing to determine whether the grand jury’s report should be made public. The special grand jury – which consisted of 23 jurors and three alternates – has recommended its report be made public.Why is this investigation such a big deal?Trump and allies have yet to face any criminal consequences for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The Fulton county probe could be the first time that charges are filed against Trump and allies for those efforts. The US House committee that investigated the January 6 attacks also made a criminal referral to the justice department, which is also investigating Trump’s actions after the 2020 election.What is a special purpose grand jury?A special purpose grand jury is seated to investigate one topic and has no time limit. It can subpoena witnesses, unlike a regular grand jury, but can’t indict someone. Instead, it makes a recommendation to prosecutors on whether to move forward with charges.A regular grand jury is seated for a set amount of time and hears a wide range of cases. It ultimately can issue an indictment.Will we know if Trump is going to be charged with a crime on Tuesday?Not necessarily. The special grand jury likely has made a recommendation on whether to bring charges to Fani Willis, a Democrat serving in her first term as the Fulton county district attorney. Willis can go to a regular grand jury and seek indictments. Tuesday’s hearing could provide a glimpse into Willis’ thinking about how to move forward.Why is this all taking place in Fulton county, Georgia?After the 2020 election, Donald Trump and allies made repeated efforts to get Georgia state officials to try and overturn the 2020 election. Many of those actions were in Atlanta, which is in Fulton county.Those efforts included Trump’s infamous call to Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger asking him to overturn the election. “All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more that we have because we won the state,” Trump told Raffensperger, who rebuffed the request.In 2020, Trump campaign officials also appeared at a Georgia legislative hearing and put forth false allegations of fraud.Willis also has told Rudy Giuliani, who played a key role in spreading election misinformation in Georgia and elsewhere, that he is a target of her investigation. Other targets reportedly include those who participated in the attempt in Georgia to send fake presidential electors to Congress. Those targets include David Shafer, the chair of the Georgia GOP, and Burt Jones, a Republican state senator in 2020 who is now the state’s lieutenant governor.Willis’ investigation also reportedly includes a phone call from Senator Lindsey Graham to Raffensperger in which Graham asked if Raffensperger had the power to throw out absentee ballots. Willis is also investigating efforts to remove BJ Pak, the former US attorney with jurisdiction over Atlanta, who refused to go along with Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.Grand jury in Georgia’s Trump 2020 election investigation finishes workRead moreWhat criminal charges could Trump face?There are a menu of legal charges that could be available to prosecutors, legal experts have noted. Georgia law makes it illegal to intentionally ask, command, or get someone else to engage in election fraud. Another state statute makes it a crime to interfere with an election official as they try to carry out their official duties.Willis may also pursue RICO – Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations – charges against Trump and his allies. Relying on RICO, Willis could pursue charges against multiple defendants at once, showing that they were part of a broader conspiracy to interfere with the election. Willis has used the statute in the past and hired a lawyer who specializes in RICO cases to assist with the Trump investigation.Who has testified before the special grand jury?Top elected officials, both nationally and in Georgia, have appeared before the panel. It has heard testimony from Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Raffensperger as well as Giuliani, Graham, and Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff. The latter three went to court to block them from having to appear. All three were unsuccessful.TopicsGeorgiaUS politicsDonald TrumpexplainersReuse this content
- [Election denialism is not a 'both sides of the aisle' problem - MSNBC News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/election-denialism-is-not-a-both-sides-of-the-aisle-problem-msnbc-news/) - When House Republican leaders announced their slate of committee chairs for the new Congress, too many of them had something unfortunate in common. Of the 17 GOP members who’ll lead standing committees, 11 voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and 12 signed on to a misguided legal brief that asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the results.On some key panels, the data was even more discouraging. Of the 15 new Republicans tapped to serve on the House Oversight Committee, HuffPost found that “13 either voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election based on former President Donald Trump’s lie about it being stolen from him, or are freshman members who have rejected or questioned the validity of President Joe Biden’s win.”Republican Rep. Mike Turner — who did not try to overturn the 2020 election — sat down with CBS News’ Margaret Brennan yesterday, and the “Face the Nation” host asked the incoming House Intelligence Committee chairman about his party elevating so many election deniers to powerful posts. Turner replied:“There’s a long history of both sides having raised issues, including, you recall, Al Gore taking President [George W.] Bush’s election all the way to the Supreme Court.” This was an unfortunate start. As the GOP congressman really ought to know, it was George W. Bush’s lawyers, not Gore’s, who asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. What’s more, there was a post-election recount controversy at the time, not ridiculous allegations about non-existent “fraud”: At no point did Gore deny the legitimacy of election results.In other words, Turner tried to argue that “both sides” have denied elections, and in his first example, the Ohio Republican got the relevant details backward. He then reiterated his point, this time without evidence:“I work with both sides of the aisle, and there are election deniers on both sides of the aisle.”There really aren’t. Election denialism is a problem, but it’s not a bipartisan problem.A similar issue came up last month, when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Republican National Committee targeted House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries as an “election denier” because the New York Democrat was among the many who raised serious concerns about the 2016 election. Jeffries, like others throughout his party, also repeatedly emphasized the fact that Russia targeted our political system in order to help put Donald Trump in power.But that does not an election denier make.Let’s not define the label down to the point that it no longer has any meaning. After the 2020 race, Republicans opposed the certification of election results. And helped file lawsuits asking courts to throw out votes they disapproved of. And claimed that the losing candidate secretly won based on evidence that only exists in the imagination of fringe conspiracy theorists. And described legitimate votes as “fake.” Some even went so far as to express sympathies for insurrectionist rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol in response to discredited election conspiracy theories.If Turner or others in his party can point to congressional Democrats who’ve done the same thing, I’m all ears.
- [What we know about the Georgia 2020 election investigation - ABC News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/what-we-know-about-the-georgia-2020-election-investigation-abc-news/) - After months of testimony, a special grand jury seated in Atlanta last year as part of a probe into efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election has submitted its final report detailing its findings, marking a significant milestone in one of several criminal investigations targeting the former president.Though the special grand jury does not have the ability to return an indictment, it can make recommendations concerning criminal prosecution -- which could then be brought by an additional grand jury.On Tuesday, the judge overseeing the case is scheduled to hear arguments over whether or not to make the report public, with the central question remaining: Did the grand jury recommend criminal charges for Donald Trump and his allies?Attorneys for Trump said in a statement on Monday that they will not be participating in the hearing -- and do not expect charge recommendations."On behalf of President Trump, we will not be present nor participating in Tuesday's hearing regarding the possible release of the special purpose grand jury's report," said the statement. "To date, we have never been a part of this process. The grand jury compelled the testimony of dozens of other, often high-ranking, officials during the investigation, but never found it important to speak with the President. He was never subpoenaed nor asked to come in voluntarily by this grand jury or anyone in the Fulton County District Attorney's Office."Attorneys in the statement said they therefore "assume that the grand jury did their job and looked at the facts and the law, as we have, and concluded there were no violations of the law by President Trump" -- although there's no indication if that's true or not.Ambassador Norman Eisen (ret.), a senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institute who served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2020, told ABC News that "the mountain of evidence" that has been made public regarding the efforts to overturn the election in Georgia "points strongly toward a forecast that the report recommends Donald Trump and his conspirators for prosecution.""Like the weather forecast or rain, there's no guarantee," Eisen said, "but when you look outside your window and the rain clouds are dark ... that's where we are with all of these facts."Possible charges could include solicitations of election fraud, other forms of fraud, conspiracy, and possibly racketeering, Eisen said."The allegations are very serious. If indicted and convicted, people are facing prison sentences," Willis said of the investigation in an interview with The Washington Post last year.A spokesperson for the DA's office declined to comment on the status of the investigation ahead of the hearing next week, including whether the DA would oppose or support the release of the report.The office also has not yet filed a motion in court indicating its position.'Find 11,780 votes'Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis officially launched the probe in February 2021, sparked in part by the now-infamous Jan. 2, 2021, phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump pleaded with Raffensperger to "find 11,780 votes," the exact number Trump needed to win Georgia.U.S. President Donald Trump signs H.R. 3151, the Taxpayer First Act, during a ceremony in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., July 1, 2019.Bloomberg via Getty Images, FILETrump has repeatedly defended his call to Raffensperger, calling it "perfect."The special grand jury was seated in May 2022, after Willis wrote that the panel was needed because "a significant number of witnesses and prospective witnesses have refused to cooperate with the investigation absent a subpoena requiring their testimony."Since then, those who have been subpoenaed for testimony include some of Trump's closest allies and supporters, including attorneys Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, who unsuccessfully fought his subpoena up to the United State Supreme Court.Graham argued, among other things, that he was acting "within [his] official legislative responsibilities" as a senator and chairman of the Judiciary Committee when he allegedly made calls to Georgia officials following the 2020 election.During calls to Raffensperger and others, Graham allegedly asked about "reexamining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump," the judge wrote in a filing in the case.Willis also sought testimony from a number of Georgia's highest elected officials, including Raffensperger, Gov. Brian Kemp and Rep. Jody Hice.Targets of the probeA number of individuals have also been informed that they are considered "targets" of the probe, including Giuliani. In the wake of the election, Giuliani appeared at a series of legislative hearings around the country -- including Georgia -- where he urged state legislators to reject the results of the election.Responding to the notification of his status as a target of the probe, Giuliani said, "I appeared in Georgia as attorney for Donald J. Trump. So I'm going to be prosecuted for what I did as an attorney?"Sixteen people identified as so-called "fake electors" in the state were also notified that they were considered targets in the ongoing criminal investigation, prosecutors revealed in court documents over the summer.The 16, who allegedly participated in a scheme to overturn the state's election results, received letters "alerting that person both that [their] testimony was required by the special purpose grand jury and that [they were a] target of the investigation" the filing said.Specifically, they are being investigated for "creation of a document that identified [themselves] as being among the 'duly elected and qualified Electors for president and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Georgia,' and the submission of that document to the National Archives."The House committee probing the Jan. 6 attack on U.S. Capitol described the "fake electors" plan, which appeared to have multiple iterations, as being set up by the Trump campaign in multiple swing states in which they sought to assemble "groups of individuals in key battleground states and got them to call themselves electors, created phony certificates associated with these fake electors and then transmitted these certificates to Washington, and to the Congress, to be counted during the joint session of Congress on January 6th," according to the filing.The Department of Justice is also examining the issue of fake electors as part of its own separate investigation, sources have told ABC News.Attorneys for the electors have denied any wrongdoing in their actions."They cannot have and did not commit any crime as a matter of fact and law," wrote attorney Holly Pierson, who represents 11 of the alleged fake electors.Setbacks for WillisWillis suffered a setback last year when she unsuccessfully fought to have Pierson and her law partner disqualified from representing those 11, alleging that it was a "conflict of interest."Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney largely denied the request, only removing one of the electors as Pierson's client, but keeping the rest.Earlier, McBurney disqualified Willis from investigating one of the 16 alleged fake electors, Georgia state Sen. Burt Jones, after Willis held a fundraiser for Jones' political opponent in the race for lieutenant governor. The judge called it "harmful" to the investigation and said the "optics are horrid.""An investigation of this significance, garnering the public attention it necessarily does and touching so many political nerves in our society, cannot be bordered by legitimate doubts about the District Attorney's motives," McBurney wrote.On Tuesday, McBurney will consider whether the report should be made public or remain sealed -- though Eisen, the Brookings expert, said its release could be harmful to the case."If you have the report out there before the DA has taken it to the regular grand jury, it complicates her life, because the report gets ahead of the normal lifecycle of the case, where the indictments are the first," Eisen told ABC News."She may not want the report to be issued until her indictments are out," he said.
- [The biggest conventions coming to Louisville in 2023, and tourism's outlook for the year](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/the-biggest-conventions-coming-to-louisville-in-2023-and-tourisms-outlook-for-the-year/) - Advertisement The biggest conventions coming to Louisville in 2023, and tourism's outlook for the year Updated: 10:11 AM EST Jan 23, 2023 Louisville Business First The theme Louisville Tourism is focused on when it looks to the rest of 2023 is growth, not recovery, after three years of travel-related economic activity hampered at various levels
- [Second person dies after Denny's restaurant sign crushes car in Elizabethtown](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/second-person-dies-after-dennys-restaurant-sign-crushes-car-in-elizabethtown/) - A second person has died after a Denny's restaurant sign fell onto a family's car in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, last week during a wind advisory.The death of Lloyd Eugene Curtis Sr. follows that of wife, Lillian Curtis, 72, who died from "blunt force injuries" sustained when the sign fell on the car, according to Dan Alpiger from the Jefferson County Coroner's Office. The sign partially crushed the car after falling from a pole near a Denny's parking lot in Elizabethtown, about 45 miles south of Louisville.Chaos with 'no repercussions': This one middle school shows the many challenges JCPS facesLillian Curtis died of blunt force injuries, according to the Jefferson County Coroner's Office. Curtis suffered a "catastrophic" head wound, her granddaughter, Amy Nichols, told local news outlets.Lillian's husband, Lloyd Curtis, 77, died early on Monday morning at home from his injuries sustained in the accident, according to family.Their daughter, Mary Graham, who was driving, was released from the hospital after being treated for chest injuries, Nichols told news outlets.A wind advisory was in effect Thursday afternoon with peak wind gusts of 45 to 55 mph, according to the National Weather Service in Louisville.The couple, who had been together for over 50 years, were on their way to Columbia from Louisville with their daughter, family said. Lloyd Curtis had heart surgery just a few days prior, and the family had gone to pick him up.The granddaughter said her grandparents were the "glue" in her family and this will be a "whole change" for them, including the couple's two daughters and son. Lloyd Curtis had come home the night before he died to attend Lillian Curtis' funeral, said Brit Curtis and Amy Nichols.Nichols describes her grandparents as the most "loving, compassionate, understanding, whole-hearted people in the world" and felt "blessed" to have been their granddaughter.How did Denny's respond?A Denny's spokesperson told USA Today the company is aware of the incident."Safety is our top priority, and we are working with the authorities to better understand what led to this situation," the restaurant chain said in a statement to USA TODAY."Our thoughts are with all of those involved," it added.More:Dinner featuring ex-LMPD officer in Breonna Taylor case crossed line, attendee saysThe Curtis and Nichols family have set up a GoFundMe for travel and funeral expenses that can be found online.Contact reporter Rae Johnson at RNJohnson@gannett.com. Follow them on Twitter at @RaeJ_33.
- [Fulton grand jury report on attempts to overturn Trump's 2020 Georgia election loss could ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/fulton-grand-jury-report-on-attempts-to-overturn-trumps-2020-georgia-election-loss-could/) - You could get your first glimpse soon into what a Fulton County special grand jury heard behind closed doors as it investigated efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to interfere in the results of the 2020 election. The calls by several media groups for an immediate release of the grand jury’s findings into the lengthy investigation are set to come to a head at a hearing on Tuesday before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney. Dozens of witnesses have testified in the Atlanta courthouse since last summer, including top state officials and close supporters and aides of the former president and dominant leader of the Republican party. Legal experts predict that details of the grand jury’s report will begin trickling out depending on when criminal charges are filed, but that under state law some details may be kept from the public as the investigation continues. McBurney, who oversaw the special investigation, has discretion over what information is revealed. However, don’t expect the full report to come out next week, said J. Tom Morgan, former DeKalb County District Attorney and criminal law professor at Western Carolina University. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ special grand jury was appointed last year to investigate whether Trump’s team interfered with Georgia’s 2020 presidential election that Trump lost to President Joe Biden by fewer than 12,000 votes. “The judge will put some fire behind the district attorney and say, I’m going to order that this report be released in its entirety on such and such a date and portions of it may be released next week and you need to judge yourself accordingly,” Morgan said. “This report puts the D.A. in a quandary because the report says there have been certain crimes and certain persons should be prosecuted and if she doesn’t prosecute, it’s going to come back to bite her.” In a press briefing on Friday, Morgan joined the Defend Democracy Project to discuss the Fulton case, which could deliver explosive national aftershocks, including the first-ever criminal indictment of a former president. Trump says he intends to run again in 2024. Willis’ investigation was boosted by the January 2021 public release of a recorded phone call in which Trump pressed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough ballots to overcome Biden’s victory. In the court circuit, a special investigative grand jury is appointed by a majority of the judges. Special investigative grand juries can recommend to the district attorney whether the crimes might have been committed based on the evidence. Before a district attorney can even subpoena witnesses in a regular case, the case must be indicted before a regular grand jury. Former U.S. Ambassador Norman Eisen, legal scholar and counsel in the first impeachment trial of Trump, said Fulton prosecutors may want to redact the names of key witnesses who could face threats. The timing of the details becoming public may hinge on when any indictments are handed down. “The strong possibility is that Donald Trump and his co-conspirators have been recommended for criminal charges under multiple Georgia statutes for their attempted coup and assault on the 2020 election results,” Eisen said. “While the great likelihood is that we’re going to see a recommendation of charges here, you just never know,” Eisen said. “The proof of the pudding is in the edict.” Eisen was one of the authors of a Brookings Institute report that said Trump appears to be at substantial risk of prosecution in Georgia for several criminal charges that could include solicitation and conspiracy to commit election fraud and interfering in elections. The Brookings report asserted that Trump and his cohorts, including 16 Georgia false electors, might have committed other crimes, including making false statements, improper influence on government officials, and forging documents. Among the witnesses who testified during the months-long grand jury probe were Raffensperger, Trump’s ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows, Trump’s former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, South Carolina Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, and Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer. Eisen said that the Fulton probe along with a separate U.S. Justice Department inquiry into the attempted coup are tipping points in American justice. The U.S. House Jan. 6 select committee report alleges obstruction of probable cause findings regarding Trump. The Department of Justice has been referred to investigate and possibly prosecute Trump over his attempts to overturn his election results. “It’s vitally important for the future of our democracy, that there be accountability for this very serious misconduct by Donald Trump and others who attempt to overthrow the legitimate outcome of election results,” Eisen said. “Because I believe this special grand jury report likely reflects that. I think it will be an important document in the history and in the future of American democracy.” GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX SUBSCRIBE
- [Reject voting restrictions | Editorial | citizensvoice.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/reject-voting-restrictions-editorial-citizensvoice-com/) - Donald Trump and other purveyors of his “big lie” — that widespread fraud cost him the 2020 election — have proved the opposite. Their baseless claims about corrupt judges and public officials, “rigged” election machinery and much else, all have been disproved. × This page requires Javascript. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings. .viafoura p { font-size: 14px !important; } .vf-follow-toggle { display: inline-block; padding: 0 5px; border: 1px solid #cccccc; margin: 0 0 0 5px; border-radius: 2px; line-height: 20px; font-size: 10px; text-transform: uppercase; font-family: 'Roboto', sans-serif; } .vf-trending-article__comment-icon[data-v-71d404e6] { height: 25px !important; }
- [Students, faculty react to Mealer election challenge - The Daily Cougar](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/students-faculty-react-to-mealer-election-challenge-the-daily-cougar/) - By Malachi Key January 23, 2023 Juana Garcia/The Cougar Former Republican challenger for Harris County Judge Alexandra Moral Del Mealer has said she plans to contest the results of the election, which was initially decided in favor of the incumbent, Judge Lina Hidalgo. While Mealer initially said she would accept the election results if she lost, she now claims that she decided to file because of concerns over election security outlined in a recent report by the county Election Administrator. Student reactions to Mealer’s announcement were mixed, with many noting that they were uncertain why she chose to contest the election. “I just don’t get what she’s trying to do other than make Harris County look bad,” said public administration graduate student Abbie Culver. “The voter suppression we’ve been told about affects primarily left-leaning groups, so it’s not like it would change the results of the election.” Other students were more cynical with their reactions, claiming that Mealer planned to contest the election from the start.“I honestly shouldn’t be surprised,” said political science sophomore Ryan Camp. “She ran on a platform of Trump 2020 election fraud, so it makes sense she’d strike as soon as the opportunity presented itself.” Mealer is joined by eight other candidates who filed for election contests. While it is uncertain if these contests will be successful, some experts believe that they were filed to build community momentum instead. “The likelihood of a successful challenge is low, but the challenge itself appeases her political base that doesn’t trust elections,” said political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus. “These challenges are primarily political rather than legal, so I anticipate more challenges if politicians don’t get the results they like from elections.” [email protected] Tags: campus, elections, lina hidalgo
- [GOP's Newly-Elected Arizona Lawmakers Push Bills to Reform State Elections](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/23/gops-newly-elected-arizona-lawmakers-push-bills-to-reform-state-elections/) - Four freshman Republican state representatives have introduced a package of bills that could significantly change how elections are run in the Grand Canyon State. Reps. Liz Harris, Justin Heap, Rachel Jones, and Austin Smith intend to greatly restrict eligibility to vote by mail and do away with expansions to early voting. They hope to return the state to in-person election-day voting on paper ballots that are to be hand-counted—no more electronic scanners or voting machines. Harris, a successful real estate broker and mother of three, told The Epoch Times, “When I first ran for state rep. in 2020, I heard President Trump warning about the potential for fraud in the mail-in ballot system. “I thought at the time he must be talking about someplace like Pennsylvania. After all, Arizona had decades of mail-in balloting experience. We’ve perfected the process. Arizona State Rep. Liz Harris (R) (Courtesy of Liz Harris) “Back then, I had no idea what was really going on behind the scenes, but my eyes were soon to be opened. Mail-in voting is a huge problem in Arizona.” When Harris lost her first bid for the legislature in November 2020, she began to study the state’s voter rolls. She joined a group of citizen canvassers who knocked on tens of thousands of doors comparing the information they garnered in the field with the data recorded on the state lists. “We found that in one of every five cases, the two sets of data did not match. The official lists were full of errors and irregularities. It was the perfect environment for the creation of phantom voters,” she said. “Phantom voters” are those names that are listed as having cast ballots from invalid or nonexistent addresses. “I discovered such fraudulent votes could be going to Democrats and Republicans. It was then and there that I committed myself to fight for free and fair election until the day I die,” Harris said. Representative Austin Smith, 26, is a cattle rancher and Turning Point USA activist. Smith said in an online statement, “Following the disaster that was the year 2020 and 2021, I felt strongly that Arizona and the country I grew up in were getting close to being unrecognizable … We need Arizonans who recognize just how high the stakes are this far in the game.” Rachel Jones, a homemaker turned first-term state representative, said in an internet post that she became very concerned about the direction that the nation was beginning to go after the 2020 election. Jones said she wants to “try and do some good and get things going in the right direction.” Harris said that she and her colleagues are under no illusion about the intensity of the opposition coming against their legislation. The group’s bills were attacked in an alert called “Democracy Docket,” a newsletter founded by the nationally-known Democrat election strategist Marc Elias. “Not only do we have to fight the Democrats, but we have to overcome the resistance of Republican legislators who don’t want to see change. “Then, there’s Gov. Katie Hobbs and her veto pen,” Harris said. Election workers sort ballots at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix, Arizona, on Nov. 9, 2022. (John Moore/Getty Images) The Arizona State House of Representatives and Senate are controlled by Republicans by a margin of one seat in each chamber, making passage of the reform bills a daunting task in a state where a two-thirds majority in both houses is required to override a governor’s veto. “To be successful,” said Harris, “we need to win over public opinion. That’s something hard to accomplish given the lack of truthful media in our state.” Another obstacle to reform is that, according to public opinion surveys, the majority of the state’s voters, like those across the nation, strongly favor mail-in voting because it is convenient. According to the state website azcleanelections.gov, in the 2020 presidential election, 89 percent of Arizona voters cast their ballots early—the vast majority by mail. Conflicted Electorate Polls have also shown that the majority of American voters strongly favor increased ballot security in order to achieve better election integrity. Yet, a majority of respondents believe that mail-in ballots are one of the prime sources of election fraud. When asked how the reformers will deal with such a conflicted electorate, Harris said, “We must get the truth out about mail-in voting the best we can. “We are not helped by our courts where, despite mounds of evidence, the judges won’t hear the cases based on their merits. “And, of course, the Arizona press amplifies every election integrity case that is thrown out of court. “If our people properly understood all the flaws and vulnerabilities of mail-in voting, I believe they would not be so much in favor of it,” she said.
- [Lawmakers seek to bar insurrectionists from holding office - The Washington Post](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/22/lawmakers-seek-to-bar-insurrectionists-from-holding-office-the-washington-post/) - ALBANY, N.Y. — Democratic lawmakers in a handful of states are trying to send a message two years after the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol: Those who engage in an attempted overthrow of the government shouldn’t be allowed to run it. New York, Connecticut and Virginia are among states where proposed legislation would prohibit anyone convicted of participating in an insurrection from holding public office or a position of public trust, such as becoming a police officer.While the bills vary in scope, their aim is similar.“If you’ve tried to take down our government through violent means, in no way should you be part of it,” New York state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal said.He is sponsoring a bill that would bar people convicted of engaging in an insurrection or rebellion against the United States from holding civil office, meaning they would not be able to serve as a judge or member of the Legislature. Hoylman-Sigal said he introduced the bill this year because he saw more people who were involved in the riot in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, running for office last year.He described the assault on the Capitol as “a real attack on the foundations of our free and fair democracy and the values which enable that to persist.”A Virginia lawmaker introduced a bill this month, on the second anniversary of the Capitol riot, that would prohibit anyone convicted of a felony related to an attempted insurrection or riot from serving in positions of public trust — including those involving policymaking, law enforcement, safety, education or health.A Connecticut bill would prohibit people convicted of sedition, rebellion, insurrection or a felony related to one of those acts from running for or holding public office. Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, who introduced the measure, told The Associated Press that he wants the legislation eventually to bar them from holding state or municipal jobs.The legislation in the states comes after the House Jan. 6 committee’s final report, which found Donald Trump criminally engaged in a conspiracy to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election he lost and failed to take action to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol.The committee’s recently concluded work may have provided another springboard for lawmakers to act and propose ways to hold people accountable, said Victoria Bassetti, a senior policy adviser at States United Democracy Center, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for fair elections. Some Republicans say the legislation is unnecessary. In New York, Republican Assemblyman Will Barclay, the minority leader, called the bill there a “political statement,” saying it is “more political than it is a concern about public policy.”He said existing rules already apply to people in certain positions who are convicted of crimes and that those laws “should be sufficient.”The legislation is another example of how the Capitol riot has become a political Rorschach test in the country. Many Republicans refuse to see the attempt to violently halt the presidential certification — which was based on lies that 2020 election was stolen — as an insurrection, while a strong majority of the party continues to believe that President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected. Even students are being taught different versions of the attack, depending on whether they live in more conservative or liberal parts of the nation.The opposing realities came into sharp focus this month in Pennsylvania during a fraught exchange between two lawmakers.In a committee hearing, Republican state Sen. Cris Dush slammed his gavel as he ruled Democratic state Sen. Amanda Cappelletti out of order after she described the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as “the site of an insurrection.”“Insurrection, nobody has been charged with that,” Dush said. “There’s not been a single charge against any of those people as insurrectionists. In this committee, we are not using that term.”Nearly 1,000 people have been charged in the Capitol riot with federal crimes, with about half of them pleading guilty to riot-related charges and more than three dozen convicted at trial. The charges range from misdemeanors for those accused of entering the Capitol illegally but not participating in violence to felony seditious conspiracy for far-right extremist group members accused of plotting to stop the transfer of presidential power.In November, two leaders of the Oath Keepers extremist group were convicted of seditious conspiracy for what prosecutors alleged was a weekslong plot to use force to keep Trump in office. Leaders of the Proud Boys and additional members of the Oath Keepers are currently standing trial on the sedition charge, which carries up to 20 years behind bars.Weeks after the committee exchange, Cappelletti told The Associated Press that it’s important to make sure people understand that the attack on the Capitol was an insurrection.“These are factually correct things,” she said. “That doesn’t mean that we can’t disagree politically about policy or other things, but we can acknowledge that that happened and start to figure out how we move forward to work together to build up that public trust again.”Dush remained steadfast in his view that what unfolded on Jan. 6 was not an insurrection.“If there had been some sort of plot for an insurrection, that would’ve come apart quite quickly after the government got the control back,” he said in a phone interview.There have been some earlier attempts to prevent certain officials from either running for or holding office.A New Hampshire bill that would have barred anyone who participates in an insurrection or rebellion from holding office in the state died last year.Also last year, groups brought lawsuits under a rarely cited section of the 14th Amendment dealing with insurrection. They sought to disqualify a handful of U.S. House members from seeking reelection for events surrounding the Jan. 6 riot.In New Mexico, a state court in September disqualified a rural county commissioner from holding public office for engaging in the Capitol insurrection. Couy Griffin had been previously convicted in federal court of a misdemeanor for entering the Capitol grounds, without going inside the building. He was sentenced to 14 days and given credit for time served.The judge permanently barred Griffin, who was then an elected commissioner from Otero County, from federal and local public office.In West Virginia, a former state lawmaker who pleaded guilty to a felony — civil disorder — for participating in the riot and who served time, announced earlier this month that he was running for Congress.“We have to really rid ourselves of those who would take down our government,” said Duff, the Connecticut lawmaker. “There’s no place for any of them to be (in) any kind of elected or appointed officer.”___Associated Press writers Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut; Michael Hill in Albany, New York; Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston contributed to this report. ___Maysoon Khan is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Maysoon Khan on Twitter.
- [Opinion | Fact-check and listen to alternative narratives - The Daily Iowan](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/22/opinion-fact-check-and-listen-to-alternative-narratives-the-daily-iowan/) - Fact-checking the spread of disinformation is key for the campus community. Even though the hectic 2020 election and the events that occurred after seem like they happened just the other day, I predict this next year will become noticeably more focused on politics. In 2024, the U.S. could elect its 47th president. As with any pre-election year, campaign and smear ads alike are expected before the end of 2023. Hearing alternative narratives — even when untrue or biased — only furthers our own advocacy and understanding of other people. By focusing on verified information and working together to achieve community goals, even if they first appear to be in opposition, I see some hope for the future. College students are needed in the polls. In the 2022 midterms, young people are leading election results. No matter which side of the aisle you align with, it is important to recognize the power that comes with being a young voter. Of concern to professionals in fields like sociology and psychology, young adults in the 18-29 age group and all adults with some college education are not only controlling the polls but are also the highest internet users in the U.S. In order to lead local, statewide, and national elections in a way that benefits all citizens, being properly informed on issues and diverse perspectives is key. To accomplish this, we must all do our best on campus to combat disinformation in the classroom and online, disengage in trolling behavior, and allow everyone the right to access information. Understanding campaign issues means citizens are engaged in voting years as well as the years between elections. With trolling, disinformation, and internet censorship becoming increasingly common since the 2020 pandemic lockdown, a simple Google search these days feels like preparing for an information war. But being aware goes beyond understanding campaign promises and goals. In college programs, students should be learning and embracing several concepts that may not seem relevant to their academic aspirations. These skills are intrinsically tied to the quality of information students receive and how they choose to vote. Essential skills to combating misinformation online, at the polls, and in the classroom were outlined in 2022 by the American Psychological Association. One concept highlighted by the APA is the importance of informing college students how to examine the weight and validity of any academic argument or study result. Students should also be aware of author and personal biases when trusting online information. Fact checking and source evaluation is another skill with positive benefits for class work and understanding political campaigns. Using search engines to first identify a source of information — but also to research the source itself, any persons quoted, and potential political or professional biases — is key to ensuring sources are as unbiased and reliable as possible. As a student passionate about justice and equity, I often feel conflicted in these conversations. As a library employee, I have an obligation to ensure information is readily available for every patron. As a local activist, second generation immigrant, and North African woman, I can’t always agree that all opinions or “information” should be given the same value or attention. Sitting in a classroom in the first week of the spring 2023 semester, I heard similar sentiments and personal conflicts from folks with identities and political perspectives similar to my own. As I weighed these internal conflicts, I realized my top priority in this state and on campus is forward progress. Attacking others on opposing lines or not allowing all perspectives to be heard only harms the idea that we can and must work together to build a better, more equitable, and more just tomorrow. Columns reflect the opinions of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Editorial Board, The Daily Iowan, or other organizations in which the author may be involved.
- [Letter to the Editor | GOP moves disappointing - News-Gazette](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/22/letter-to-the-editor-gop-moves-disappointing-news-gazette/) - GOP moves disappointingHow rich the irony!The Republican-controlled House will open investigations into the weaponization of the federal government. This, in itself, is weaponization. Richer yet is that Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, will be chair of the committee. Jordan, the election denier and participant in attempts to overthrow the 2020 election. That all 64 lawsuits claiming fraud were rejected and the Jan. 6 Committee thoroughly debunked Donald Trump’s Big Lie with objective fact hasn’t tempered his vitriolic attacks against anything Democrat, making Jordan an effective weapon in the Republican arsenal.More irony: Speaker Kevin McCarthy is poised to shut down the federal government to prevent the debt ceiling from being raised. Taking the American economy hostage for political posturing isn’t weaponization, nope, not a bit. Trending Food Videos
- [Opinion: We need a functioning democracy. Teaching media literacy can help](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/22/opinion-we-need-a-functioning-democracy-teaching-media-literacy-can-help/) - While the internet has increased access to information and has often been a force for good, it has also contributed to making many people misinformed, uninformed and even radicalized.That's why it is welcome news to see New Jersey become the first state in the country to require schools to teach media literacy to K-12 students. Other states should follow the Garden State's lead.Students raised on mobile phones have a world of information -- and disinformation -- at their fingertips. Studies show many teens get their news from TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, barely regulated spaces where most anything goes. That is all the more reason why it's essential for schools to teach students how to discern fact from fiction.Researchers at Stanford University's Graduate School of Education found that 96% of high school students surveyed failed to see how a website's ties to fossil fuel companies could affect its credibility on information about climate change. Two-thirds of students couldn't tell the difference between news stories and advertising, even if it was labeled as "sponsored content."Alexander Pope, the 18th-century poet and satirist, famously wrote that "a little learning is a dangerous thing." That danger turned all too real when an angry mob of Donald Trump supporters staged a deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, fueled by misinformation that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.For months, Trump and his allies promoted the "Big Lie" about election fraud. Two years later, the spread of misinformation remains a threat to democracy here and abroad.That was underscored by the recent coup attempt in Brazil, which was also driven by lies and conspiracy theories pushed by its ousted far-right president -- who received advice from Trump allies.It is not just political misinformation that is dumbing down America. The pandemic fueled a range of conspiracies and an assault on science. Much of the misinformation was spread through social media and "news" outlets that put profits above the truth.The result was a separate pandemic of misinformation.The fire hose of information distributed on social media is especially pernicious. One study found fake news spreads faster on Twitter than real news. The same goes for Facebook, where a study found misinformation received six times more engagement than factual news.The spread of misleading information has also increased political polarization and reduced trust in institutions such as the courts, law enforcement and intelligence agencies.Adding to the polarization and spread of falsehoods are reckless sites such as Infowars. A jury recently ordered founder Alex Jones to pay $473 million for promoting conspiracy theories surrounding the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. It is a rare case of accountability -- one which came a decade and countless fabricated stories later.The peril goes way beyond any political divide. Society can't function well, or tackle critical issues such as climate change, when half the public is armed with facts and the other half traffics in lies and conspiracies.It's troubling enough when a small percentage of the population wrongly believes the moon landing was staged. But it is a whole other level of danger when 147 members of Congress vote to overturn the 2020 election.A well-informed public is key to a functioning democracy and a civil society. Teaching media literacy is one way to not only inoculate future generations from falling for misinformation but to also help solve the problems left behind by today's leaders.The Philadelphia Inquirer
- [Trump Gives Bonkers Eulogy at Diamond and Silk Funeral - Mediaite](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/22/trump-gives-bonkers-eulogy-at-diamond-and-silk-funeral-mediaite/) - Former President Donald Trump went into several strange tangents about himself and his own self-interests on Saturday during the funeral for Lynette “Diamond” Hardaway in North Carolina. Hardaway — who comprised half of the conservative commentary duo Diamond & Silk — died earlier this month from unknown causes. She and her sister, Rochelle “Silk” Richardson, were among Trump’s most vocal supporters, having visited him at the White House and rallied on his behalf before he announced Hardaway’s passing on Truth Social. Trump presided over Hardaway’s memorial service, which Richardson used to push unsubstantiated claims about coronavirus vaccines. Richardson and Hardaway were outspoken anti-vaxxers, and they were cut from Fox Nation years ago for spreading conspiracy theories about Covid-19. As Richardson spoke, she described how Trump treated her and Hardaway “just like the other children: Eric, Don Jr., Tiffany.” When Trump spoke later, however, he weirdly told the mourners that Richardson never made an impression on him until that day. After Silk goes on and on about how much she loves Trump and all the great times they had together, Trump gets up and says this: “I knew Diamond, but I didn’t know Silk at all. I just learned about Silk. You’re fantastic.” pic.twitter.com/jgReN5hW5C — Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) January 21, 2023 “The world has lost one of its brightest stars,” Trump said. “But I see that we have another star who was equal to, but she stepped up and she is different. I’m serious, I thought I knew them both, I didn’t. I knew Diamond, but I didn’t know Silk at all. I just learned about Silk. You’re fantastic, you’re going to carry on beyond, beyond anybody’s wildest imaginations.” After this belittlement for Hardaway’s partner-in-crime, Trump went on to — once again — claim without evidence that the 2020 election was stolen from him. This was accompanied by Trump breaking from the Hardaway honorifics in order to rail about the state of the country on a variety of fronts. “How do we stop the cheating? How do we stop it where you get more votes, but you still don’t win?” Trump whined. “The answer is the Republicans have to get tougher, the top people have to get tougher, and you have to really swamp ’em.” Trump concludes his moving eulogy to Diamond by saying the 2020 election was stolen from him, and Republicans have to get a lot tougher so they can swamp the Democrats in 2024 so they can fix the country. pic.twitter.com/vJ3TE0PdNz — Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) January 22, 2023 On top of all that, Trump seemed to complain that the funeral turned out to be longer than he thought it would be. They told me, just give me a little time. I’ve got a lot of people waiting for me back in a place called Palm Beach, Florida. They said give me a little time. What do you think it’ll take? About 15 – 20 minutes, in and out. I said ‘Well it could take longer.’ This is a little longer than 15 minutes, right? I can tell you one thing for sure, because he said it himself 5 times, Trump was definitely NOT expecting to sit through 3+ hours of hymns and stories at Diamond’s memorial service today: “They said about 15-20 minutes, in and out. This is a little longer than 15 minutes, right?” pic.twitter.com/IZgRioU3Iq — Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) January 22, 2023 Watch above. Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com
- [Muncie Marine charged in Jan. 6 Capitol riot - Yahoo](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/22/muncie-marine-charged-in-jan-6-capitol-riot-yahoo/) - MUNCIE, Ind. — A Marine from Muncie has been charged with participating in the riot — on Jan. 6, 2021 — at the U.S. Capitol.Micah Coomer, 22, is one of three active-duty Marines charged last week in a case filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.Rioters gather at the U.S. Capitol to protest certification of the election of Joe Biden on Jan. 6, 2021.He and co-defendants Joshua Abate, from Virginia, and Dodge Dale Hellonen, of Michigan, each face four misdemeanor counts — knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.Those charges were filed on Jan. 17.Coomer, an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems engineer most recently assigned to Camp Pendleton in California, was arrested last Wednesday in Oceanside, California.He enlisted in the Marines in September 2018, a few months after graduating from Delta High School.A "statement of facts" by Kelsey Randall, special agent with the FBI, alleges Coomer published on Instagram a "collection" of photos taken in the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 uprising.Those photos carry the caption "Glad to be a part of history," Randall wrote.Investigators also reviewed "direct message conversations," between Coomer and other Instagram users, in the wake of the November 2020 election in which Democrat Joe Biden unseated Republican President Donald Trump."Coomer wrote about his beliefs that the election was unfair and fraudulent," the document said."I just love how after years of trying to get Trump out of office by any means the left all of a sudden is going to have a 'fair' election," the Muncie Marine reportedly wrote on Nov. 7, 2020.On Jan. 19, 2021 — almost two weeks after the Capitol riot — Coomer reportedly told a fellow Instagram user that "everything in this country is corrupt.""We honestly need a fresh restart," he allegedly added. "I'm waiting for the boogaloo."Asked what a "boogaloo" was, Coomer reportedly responded, "Civil War 2."The FBI agent reported investigators used Coomer's Indiana driver's license photo to identity images of him, accompanied by the other two Marines, in the Capitol on Jan. 6.The Marines "entered the U.S. Capitol building through the Senate Wing Door and (proceeded) to walk south down a hallway," the document said. On surveillance video, they were later seen in the Capitol Rotunda, where they reportedly placed a red "Make America Great Again" hat on a statue and took photos of it.The men were later observed inside Statuary Hall before returning to the Rotunda, the report said. They reportedly left the building after being inside for what was estimated to be 52 minutes.The document said a fellow Marine who had served with Coomer at a base in Virginia identified him through photos and surveillance images taken in the Capitol.Cellphone records also indicated Coomer's phone was in the area of the Capitol at the time, the document alleged."The Marine Corps is fully cooperating with the appropriate authorities in support of the investigation," a spokesman told Stars and Stripes last week.While a student at Delta, Coomer had competed in high-jump and pole-vaulting competitions as a member of the school's track team. Court records on Sunday did not reflect whether he remained in federal custody.More than 950 people have now been charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riot, conducted the day a joint session of Congress was formalizing Biden's win in the 2020 presidential election . Nearly 500 defendants have pleaded guilty to related charges.Douglas Walker is a news reporter for The Star Press. Contact him at 765-213-5851 or at dwalker@muncie.gannett.comThis article originally appeared on Muncie Star Press: More than two years later, Marine from Muncie charged in Capitol riot
- [Study: To win more in North Carolina, Democrats need to change this one thing](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/22/study-to-win-more-in-north-carolina-democrats-need-to-change-this-one-thing/) - NED BARNETT The Charlotte Observer There’s a reason Democrats struggle to win statewide elections in North Carolina, and there’s a way they can do better.That’s the upshot of an analysis of voter turnout in North Carolina’s 2022 Senate race by Michael Bitzer, a Catawba College political scientist, something Democrats should consider as they approach the 2024 race for governor.In the Senate race, Democrats nominated former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley and Republicans chose U.S. Rep. Ted Budd, a backer of gun rights and opponent of abortion and LGBTQ rights who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The contest looked promising for the Democrats: a respected jurist against a reactionary congressman, yet Budd won with 50.5% of the vote to Beasley’s 47.2%.Democrats blamed their defeat on a lack of national funding that resulted in Beasley being heavily outspent by outside groups supporting Budd. That was part of it, but Bitzer’s analysis shows the main reason: Poor turnout among core Democratic groups. People are also reading… “For Black/African Americans, their turnout rate was nearly 10 points below the state’s turnout rate, while white turnout was 7 points ahead,” Bitzer said in his analysis. He added that participation by voters under 40 — a key to Democrats’ successes in other states — was “abysmally below the state’s turnout rate.”In part, the shortfall reflected historic midterm patterns, but Bitzer notes that Democratic turnout has not matched Republican turnout in any midterm or presidential election since 2008.That trend matters as Democrats look ahead to 2024. The early favorites to face off for governor are Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein and Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson. If that’s the case, it’s something of a replay of the Senate race: A prominent and politically cautious legal veteran vs. a very conservative firebrand.The result could be the same, too, unless Democrats address the voting intensity gap they have with Republicans. Democrats who water-down their progressive positions in hopes of cutting their rural and suburban losses also diminish their support among core Democratic groups.Pope “Mac” McCorkle, a professor at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy and a veteran North Carolina political consultant, thinks Stein should stay the middle course. While Democrats haven’t won a statewide federal race since 2008, he said, they have won seven of the last eight gubernatorial elections, and Stein has won two statewide elections for attorney general.“That’s nothing to sneeze at,” McCorkle said. “He didn’t win big, but he still won.”David McLennan, a Meredith College political science professor, thinks Stein will have trouble repeating Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s feat of winning twice despite Donald Trump carrying the state.“Recent history suggests that Gov. Roy Cooper may be one of the few Democrats that can win statewide elections by any comfortable margin,” he said. “Stein, for example, ran almost four points behind Cooper in 2020.”A Democratic strategy of trying to reduce losses in Republican areas is also questioned by Chris Cooper, a Western Carolina University political scientist. He said Stein “won’t be able to pull the Roy Cooper magic trick” of drawing votes from rural counties. “Stein’s path,” he said, “will be to double down on urban counties.”That’s good advice for Stein or any Democrat trying to overcome their party’s troubles with winning statewide. Sure, Cooper succeeded twice, but he got a big assist in 2016 from Republican Gov. Pat McCrory’s disastrous decision to support the “bathroom bill.” In 2020, he had the advantage of incumbency as he faced Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Forest.A key message for Democratic candidates is that trying to reach unreachable rural and conservative-leaning voters invites failing to inspire core Democratic voters. In short, to win as a Democrat, run as one. 0 Comments #lee-rev-content { margin:0 -5px; } #lee-rev-content h3 { font-family: inherit!important; font-weight: 700!important; border-left: 8px solid var(--lee-blox-link-color); text-indent: 7px; font-size: 24px!important; line-height: 24px; } #lee-rev-content .rc-provider { font-family: inherit!important; } #lee-rev-content h4 { line-height: 24px!important; font-family: "serif-ds",Times,"Times New Roman",serif!important; margin-top: 10px!important; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #lee-rev-content h3 { font-size: 18px!important; line-height: 18px; } } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article { clear: both; background-color: #fff; color: #222; background-position: bottom; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding: 15px 0 20px; margin-bottom: 40px; border-top: 4px solid rgba(0,0,0,.8); border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(0,0,0,.2); display: none; } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article, #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article p { font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article h2 { font-size: 24px; margin: 15px 0 5px 0; font-family: "serif-ds", Times, "Times New Roman", serif; } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article .lead { margin-bottom: 5px; } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article .email-desc { font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 5px; opacity: 0.7; } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article form { padding: 10px 30px 5px 30px; } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article .disclaimer { opacity: 0.5; margin-bottom: 0; line-height: 100%; } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article .disclaimer a { color: #222; text-decoration: underline; } #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article .email-hammer { border-bottom: 3px solid #222; opacity: .5; display: inline-block; padding: 0 10px 5px 10px; margin-bottom: -5px; font-size: 16px; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #pu-email-form-breaking-email-article form { padding: 10px 0 5px 0; } } Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox!
- [Natrain Batra: U.S. House gridlock could be broken; call it an impossible possible](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/22/natrain-batra-u-s-house-gridlock-could-be-broken-call-it-an-impossible-possible/) - This commentary is by Narain Batra, who is affiliated with the Diplomacy and International Program in the graduate college at Norwich University. He is the author of several books, writes a regular online column and produces a podcast, Freedom Public Square.The Cheshire Cat smile never left his face, even when Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California was repeatedly knocked down during the grueling voting process for the House speakership election for the 118th Congress. Like a bobo doll, he bounced back again and again and finally won in the 15th round. He did not shut the door even on his worst menace, Matt Gaetz, who had called him in an interview with Fox’s Laura Ingraham “the masthead of the lobby core … (who) has sold shares of himself to special interests, to political action committee” But couldn’t the same be said about many other American politicians, Republicans as well as Democrats? Rep. Gaetz of Florida, a Trump loyalist, neither a saint nor a sinner (the sex-trafficking charges against him regarding a 17-year-old girl were dropped), neutered himself by voting “present” at the last round. In spite of the fact that the House Republicans have a slim majority of 222-212 with one seat vacant, they have the illusion of supreme power to put the Biden administration into a hothouse of endless investigation — from the weaponization of the Justice Department and the FBI, the border crisis, the chaotic military debacle of withdrawal from Afghanistan to the role of Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who had become a most important public face of the fight against the pandemic. Donald Trump, even when he was in the White House, trusted neither the Justice Department nor the FBI because he failed to bend the agencies to his will. After Trump lost the 2020 election — he and his ardent MAGA followers even today have not given up the stolen election claim — Republicans have accused the Department of Justice and the FBI of being a political arm of the Biden administration, especially after the FBI carried out a search warrant at Trump’s estate Mar-a-Lago for an investigation into the handling of classified documents. Now in power, Republicans want to probe the business dealings of President Biden’s immensely controversial son Hunter Biden, over which, Republicans assert, the Department of Justice has shilly-shallied. The House Committee on Oversight and Reforms would be tasked to investigate Hunter Biden's business affairs, focusing on the laptop that showed up in 2020 during the election time containing evidence of influence peddling and corrupt business practices. The ultimate target is to diminish Joe Biden, as James Comer, chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” To investigate how law enforcement agencies have been weaponized, the House Judiciary Committee — under the chairmanship of Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, a member of the Republican Freedom Caucus, Trump’s staunch ally, and the recipient of the Medal of Freedom from him — would appoint a subcommittee with the power of subpoena to investigate “a rampant culture of unaccountability, manipulation and abuse at the highest level.” And, of course, more importantly, the recent President Biden’s classified documents imbroglio. It’s the power of subpoena and the television spectacle of congressional subcommittees’ hearings, during which a member can ask any outrageous and absurd question, which gives them the illusion of exaggerated political power. The new Republican House majority has raised the fear of brinkmanship over the nation’s debt limit, which if not raised would unnerve the market and rattle the economy, it is argued. Actually, raising the debt limit — the government’s ability to borrow money to pay its bills — is an annual ritual, though sometimes it has led to political paralysis, as happened when Barack Obama and the Republican House majority struck an 11th-hour deal in 2011 to avoid the default on the nation’s debt. But this was not the first time that Americans saw the last-hour political tango. In 1995-96, the government was partially shut down before Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, the Republican Speaker of the House — with his “Contract With America” platform to cut government spending — reached the settlement. According to Don Gonyea of NPR, the shutdown was “a landmark in U.S. political history, birthing a new era of American gridlock that arguably led to the sharp partisanship that has gripped the nation. … But since that time, the fisticuffs of divided government and spending disputes have become fairly commonplace.” The annual threats of the government shutdown have always been about spending bills, budgets and fiscal issues. The first partial shutdown occurred in 1976, when Gerald Ford vetoed a health department spending bill. Jimmy Carter’s administration endured five shutdowns. Ronald Reagan saw eight from 1981 through 1989, blaming, of course, the Democrats who controlled the House. And as Don Gonyea argued, “the fingerpointing then — and the rhetoric — can feel quite familiar to today.” He was referring to Donald Trump’s government shutdown in 2018-19, which lasted 35 days, the longest ever, because the Democrat-controlled House led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi had refused to provide funds, more than $5 billion, for the border wall. It was a game of chicken. Trump blinked. The United States government, to some extent, runs on borrowed money. At the end of the year, Congress must increase the debt limit, or you might say the credit card limit, which is $31 trillion today so that the government keeps paying its bills — for example, Social Security, Medicare, government employee salaries, interest on bonds, etc. Speaker McCarthy, in obeisance to the hard-core Republicans who let him crawl to grab the House leadership, says that his party won’t back a debt limit increase unless it’s equally matched by spending cuts. The Democrat-controlled Senate and the White House won’t let him push the nation over to the precipice. It has never happened. But imagine the impossible possible: The House Democrats, with 212 members, need only six good Republicans to form an alliance to work with the Senate to pass the debt limit increase. The parliamentary procedure called “discharge petition,” the Wall Street Journal reported, is being bandied around as the ultimate solution to the American gridlock.
- [AP sources: Biden to pick Zients as his next chief of staff - NBC15](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/22/ap-sources-biden-to-pick-zients-as-his-next-chief-of-staff-nbc15/) - WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is expected to name Jeff Zients, who ran the administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic at the start of Biden’s term, as his next chief of staff, according to two people familiar with the matter.Biden’s current top aide, Ron Klain, is preparing to leave the job in the coming weeks.Since serving as COVID-19 response coordinator, Zients has returned to the White House in a low-profile position to work on staffing matters for the remainder of Biden’s first term.The two people familiar with the matter were not authorized to publicly discuss Biden’s plans before an official announcement and spoke on condition of anonymity.The Washington Post first reported on Zients’ expected appointment. The White House did not respond to requests for comment.The change at the highest levels of senior staff comes as Biden passes his two-year mark in office and pivots to a defensive stance against a House Republican majority hungry to investigate his administration’s actions and his family. The White House remains mired in controversy over discoveries of classified documents at Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, and at his former institute in Washington, with the latest tranche of found records disclosed Saturday evening.Biden, 80, is also preparing to launch his reelection campaign in the coming weeks, bolstered by a string of legislative accomplishments in the first two years of his presidency when Democrats controlled both chambers of Capitol Hill. He is confronting a Republican presidential field that is far from formed but for now is led by former President Donald Trump, whom Biden defeated in 2020.The president’s main sphere of advisers, in addition to Zients, on politics and legislation will continue to include presidential counselor Steve Ricchetti, senior advisers Mike Donilon and Anita Dunn, legislative affairs director Louisa Terrell, and Jen O’Malley Dillon and Bruce Reed, who are deputy chiefs of staff.Klain will remain in Biden’s political orbit, according to a person familiar with his plans — not unlike the role played by Cedric Richmond, who was the president’s first director of the White House Office of Public Engagement and now is a senior adviser at the Democratic National Committee.The outgoing chief of staff was also known to be friendly with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. But some liberal critics of Zients swiftly went on the attack against the appointment even before it was official, highlighting in particular his private-sector ties.Jeff Hauser, the founder and director of the Revolving Door Project, a progressive group that advocates for liberal appointees in government, said Sunday that the selection of Zients as the top White House aide did not jibe with Biden’s “Scranton Joe” political image.“Unfortunately, Zients is a veteran of private equity, rapacious health care providers, and Big Tech, which sets up a fundamental question that could determine Biden’s political future: Will a Zients-led executive branch pursue the unpopular misconduct of people like Jeffrey Zients?” Hauser said. “It would be against Zients’ character to pursue corporate lawbreaking, but it is also the only way Biden can retain the mantle of populist against the likes of (Florida Gov. Ron) DeSantis and Trump.”Zients, vice chairman of Biden’s transition operation after his November 2020 election, brings significant managerial expertise in government and the private sector. He was the director of the National Economic Council during the Obama administration and acting director of the Office of Management and Budget.The longtime management consultant developed a Mr. Fix It reputation, tapped to lead the Obama administration’s effort to repair HealthCare.gov after the bungled initial rollout of the site in fall 2013. Zients served as top executive at the Advisory Board Co., a Washington consulting firm.Former President Barack Obama also enlisted Zients in 2009 to eliminate the backlog in applicants for the Cash for Clunkers program, which offered rebates to drivers who swapped old cars for fuel-efficient vehicles. Zients later took on a similar challenge to smooth sign-ups for an updated version of the GI Bill.Another coming perk for White House aides: Zients, who was an initial investor in Call Your Mother, a bagel shop in Washington, had a penchant for hosting “Bagel Wednesdays” for staff. (Zients divested his shares before joining the White House in 2021).Zients and his deputy on the White House’s pandemic response team, Natalie Quillian, left the Biden administration last April. Biden thanked him for “stunning” and “consequential” progress battling the pandemic.“When Jeff took this job, less than 1% of Americans were fully vaccinated; fewer than half our schools were open; and unlike much of the developed world, America lacked any at-home COVID tests,” Biden said when the White House announced Zients’ departure last year. “Today, almost 80% of adults are fully vaccinated; over 100 million are boosted; virtually every school is open; and hundreds of millions of at-home tests are distributed every month.”___Kim reported from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
- [Photos of Monterey Park mass shooting suspect released - MSNBC News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/22/photos-of-monterey-park-mass-shooting-suspect-released-msnbc-news/) - IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.UP NEXT"The justices are in essence undisciplinable." Joyce Vance on the Supreme Court's leak investigation.06:05"They're going to make this into a circus." Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) reacts to far-right House Republicans securing high profile committee assignments07:15"You don't give up." Rev. Al Sharpton on carrying forward Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy05:47Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts on recent victories05:57Good Liars create 'Honest Trump Cards' focusing on 2020 election loss06:17‘Packing 537 days into one report’: What to expect from Jan 6 Committee final report05:02Fmr. Mayor of San Antonio on lifting of Title 42: ‘Our immigration system is not working.’04:35‘It’s absolutely unsafe and we won’t stand for it': Flight attendants speak out against one-pilot cockpits 05:54“What I saw and heard shouldn’t be tolerated in our country:’ Rusty Bowers reacts to criminal referral for Trump06:01‘Obscene and unprecedented’: Text messages reveal GOP calls to overturn 2020 election results06:55‘They’re all going to have to pay this money back’: Florida attorney hopes to hold celebrity promoters of FTX accountable04:31"I will never give up." Documentary chronicles fight for justice after Flight PS752 was shot down in Iran in 202018:02New Documentary ‘Loan Wolves’ Investigates Student Debt Crisis04:09‘They’re digging a hole for themselves’: GOP-Controlled House prepares to launch frivolous investigations05:18‘A champion of humanity’: Soccer community remembers legacy of Grant Wahl after death at Qatar World Cup06:37Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) becomes highest-ranking Asian American in Democratic House Leadership05:14‘An award for the Ukrainian people’: Zelenskyy named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year04:54‘Once we're in these rooms, we can make a difference’: Montana elects first openly transgender legislator 04:53‘The community feels very vulnerable right now’: Experts show concern about normalization of hate speech and antisemitism04:46“Their time is up”: Iranian regime under pressure after three-day strike by protestors 07:4005:04Share this -Police have released surveillance photos of the suspect in the mass shooting in Monterey Park, California. NBC News' Josh Lederman reports that police are linking the suspect to an incident in a neighboring town and asking the public to help locate the suspect. Jan. 22, 2023Read
- [GOP action on mail ballot timelines angers military families - WOUB Public Media](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/22/gop-action-on-mail-ballot-timelines-angers-military-families-woub-public-media/) - GOP action on mail ballot timelines angers military families By: Julie Carr Smyth | Gary Fields | AP Posted on: Sunday, January 22, 2023
- [Patrons at a Kentucky restaurant outraged at video they believe showed Breonna Taylor's killing](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/22/patrons-at-a-kentucky-restaurant-outraged-at-video-they-believe-showed-breonna-taylors-killing-3/) - By Sharif Paget and Kristina Sgueglia, CNN (CNN) -- Diners at a Kentucky restaurant were outraged to see and hear what they believe was video footage showing the killing of Breonna Taylor at an event featuring John Mattingly, one of the officers involved in the 2020 raid, according to the local NAACP chapter and witnesses.Patrons weren't informed that a GOP women's club was hosting the event at a Greek restaurant in Bowling Green on Tuesday evening and may have been exposed to graphic depictions of the raid that led to Taylor's death, the Bowling Green-Warren County Branch of the NAACP said.Two patrons tell CNN they heard audio clips of gunshots, sirens and general commotion while they sat at their dimly lit tables, but neither could say for certain whether these were videos of Taylor's death.Cayce Johnson tells CNN when she first walked into the restaurant she could see and hear the event upstairs, hosted by the Republican Women's Club of South Central Kentucky."They had a sound system. It was being broadcast throughout the whole restaurant," she said. "We could hear every word. And when the lady introduced John Mattingly, my jaw dropped."Mattingly was the first officer to enter Taylor's apartment on March 13, 2020, after Louisville police executing a search warrant used a battering ram to break the door down.Believing the police were intruders, Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker III, fired one shot when officers broke through the door, CNN previously reported.Mattingly suffered a gunshot wound to the leg, and Taylor was killed when the officers returned fire. Mattingly was never charged in connection with the incident and retired after he was put on administrative leave.The only officer charged in the botched raid, Brett Hankison, was acquitted of wanton endangerment charges in March.Mattingly has always defended his actions in the fatal exchange. CNN has reached out to Mattingly for comment regarding the incident at the restaurant this week and has not received a response."He went through everything, talked about the investigation and then played several tapes during his presentation," Johnson tells CNN.Another patron, Katelyn Jones, tells CNN she was unable to see what was happening upstairs, but the sound of police radio chatter, sirens and gunshots made it hard for her family to even carry out a conversation."Towards the end of our meal, the lights shut off and we heard police radio chatter and sirens on a recording. We heard the gunshots, too, and it was so loud and chaotic. It was really loud," she explained.Jones tells CNN that when her family showed their displeasure at the loud recording, the people attending the event upstairs started to shush them. Some men stared down at them with a "sour look on their faces," she said. Pictures shown on the restaurant's website appear to show the upper seating level of the restaurant as a mezzanine, partially visible from the lower level.Both patrons believed a video was playing based on the low lighting in the restaurant."These patrons had to see and listen to graphic descriptions of the incident which killed Breonna Taylor because Mattingly was provided video equipment, a microphone, and a speaker and was able to be heard throughout the restaurant," the NAACP said."It is beyond reprehensible to subject anyone, let alone children and customers of African American descent, to such indecent exposure, graphic and upsetting images while they were attempting to enjoy their meal."A number obtained from public phone records for the Greek restaurant where the event was held appeared to be disconnected. CNN has reached out to the restaurant through an online form but has yet to receive a response.CNN has also reached out to the Republican Women's Club of South Central Kentucky for comment. Prior to the event, the Republican Women's Club said in a statement that it invited Mattingly to speak at the event "to obtain a firsthand account" of the raid that resulted in Taylor's death."These events may be controversial, however, we believe Sgt. Mattingly has the right to share his experience," the group said in a statement to Spectrum News in Louisville. "Other individuals with firsthand experience relating to this case are welcome to request an opportunity to speak to our organization as well."Regarding the women's group, Johnson said, "They have had no accountability in this. They took their Facebook page down and are just laying low.""They need to apologize first and foremost and they need to apologize to Breonna Taylor's family," Johnson said."I want accountability from this group," she continued. "They give powerful people platforms and they need to explain to the community and Breonna Taylor's family why they gave him [Mattingly] a platform."The NAACP said the event featuring Mattingly was canceled at its original venue due to its "controversial" nature but went ahead as planned at the Greek restaurant on the same night. The NAACP did not provide further information about the supposed cancellation from what it said was the "original venue."Protests over plans to stage the event featuring Mattingly also took place in Bowling Green Tuesday, according to reporting from CNN affiliates WBKO and WNKY.CNN has reached out to Louisville police for comment on the reported use of video footage showing the killing of Taylor at the Kentucky restaurant.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved. Share this article:
- [Trump resort in Miami set to host conference bolstering conspiracy theories - CBS News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/trump-resort-in-miami-set-to-host-conference-bolstering-conspiracy-theories-cbs-news/) - A resort owned by former President Donald Trump is set to host a spring conference led by former national security adviser Michael Flynn and radio personality Clay Clark whose past speakers have echoed false claims about the 2020 election and COVID-19 as Trump launches a third bid for the White House.The conference, known as the ReAwaken America Tour, had no official lineup of speakers for the May event at Trump's Doral hotel in Miami, but past events have featured speakers who have echoed conspiracy theories that Trump has supported, including Eric Trump, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, Overstock.com founder Patrick Byrne, Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk, and former chief of staff to the Acting Secretary of Defense Kash Patel. Also included previously in the lineups are Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), attendees of the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, QAnon influencers, and some of the most prominent anti-vaccine activists in the country.The former president is central to QAnon and its ideology. The conspiracy theory includes the unfounded belief that a cabal of famous Democratic politicians and liberal elites run a child sex trafficking ring, and that Trump will arrange for mass arrests and military tribunals of corrupt politicians, among other outlandish ideas. The FBI has warned that conspiracy theories like QAnon pose a growing domestic terrorism threat.Last July, Clark reportedly asked the crowd at a ReAwaken event, "Alright, ladies and gentlemen, how many of you believe Jesus is king? How many of you believe that Donald J. Trump is their president?" A flier advertising the event twice names the Trump National Doral Miami resort as its location, and includes a photo of the resort. It would be the first time the tour held its conference at a Trump property. The Daily Beast was first to report the location of the conference. The flier alludes to its hosts and speakers providing a "Great Re-Awakening," a QAnon dog whistle pointing to information posted on online message-board 8chan by "Q," the primary messenger in the conspiracy, in order to motivate followers ahead of prophesied mass arrests. The Anti-Defamation League warned about the ReAwaken America events when they launched in early 2021, writing in a report that the extreme ideas like QAnon, and election fraud and anti-vaccine conspiracies are "fusing with other conspiracies that are creating doubt, fear and anger about the government and the country."The conference news comes as Trump prepares for his first public 2024 presidential campaign event in South Carolina on Jan. 28, where he hopes to re-establish his political momentum after declaring his latest presidential run in November. The Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment.
- [Spindell should resign from Wisconsin Elections Commission -- Jan Fullenwider](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/22/spindell-should-resign-from-wisconsin-elections-commission-jan-fullenwider/) - Robert Spindell, vice chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, should resign from his post on the Wisconsin Elections Commission. He made unpatriotic and racist comments in an email newsletter indicating the GOP should be “proud” of its successful efforts to decrease the votes cast by Black and Hispanic voters in Milwaukee during the 2022 midterm election, as quoted in numerous newspapers.Spindell has also besmirched his role on the WEC when he posed as a fake Republican elector for Wisconsin in an effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election -- despite the evidence repeatedly shown in Wisconsin courts and beyond that the 2020 election was free and fair.I encourage all Wisconsin voters to contact Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, to request Spindell’s resignation from the WEC.Jan Fullenwider, Madison People are also reading… 0 comments #lee-rev-content { margin:0 -5px; } #lee-rev-content h3 { font-family: inherit!important; font-weight: 700!important; border-left: 8px solid var(--lee-blox-link-color); text-indent: 7px; font-size: 24px!important; line-height: 24px; } #lee-rev-content .rc-provider { font-family: inherit!important; } #lee-rev-content h4 { line-height: 24px!important; font-family: "serif-ds",Times,"Times New Roman",serif!important; margin-top: 10px!important; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #lee-rev-content h3 { font-size: 18px!important; line-height: 18px; } } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article { clear: both; background-color: #fff; color: #222; background-position: bottom; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding: 15px 0 20px; margin-bottom: 40px; border-top: 4px solid rgba(0,0,0,.8); border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(0,0,0,.2); display: none; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article, #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article p { font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article h2 { font-size: 24px; margin: 15px 0 5px 0; font-family: "serif-ds", Times, "Times New Roman", serif; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article .lead { margin-bottom: 5px; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article .email-desc { font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 5px; opacity: 0.7; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article form { padding: 10px 30px 5px 30px; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article .disclaimer { opacity: 0.5; margin-bottom: 0; line-height: 100%; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article .disclaimer a { color: #222; text-decoration: underline; } #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article .email-hammer { border-bottom: 3px solid #222; opacity: .5; display: inline-block; padding: 0 10px 5px 10px; margin-bottom: -5px; font-size: 16px; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #pu-email-form-opinion-email-article form { padding: 10px 0 5px 0; } } Catch the latest in Opinion Get opinion pieces, letters and editorials sent directly to your inbox weekly!
- [The House's legal lieutenant in its Trump wars speaks out — about Jan. 6 and more](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/22/the-houses-legal-lieutenant-in-its-trump-wars-speaks-out-about-jan-6-and-more/) - Attorney Douglas Letter, who is representing House Democrats, leaves federal court in Washington, Tuesday, May 14, 2019. | Susan Walsh/AP Photo While Congress’ biggest Donald Trump antagonists are household names to political junkies — think Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff, Jamie Raskin — there’s a lesser-known Trump adversary who may have been more effective than the others: Doug Letter. The former House general counsel was involved in every political brawl between House Democrats and Trump that has defined Washington politics for the past four years. Letter helped guide the work of the Jan. 6 select committee, played a critical role in both Trump impeachments and strategized the certification of Joe Biden’s win — before violent rioters upended those plans on Jan. 6, 2021. Before the Capitol riot, Letter spent years litigating the chamber’s effort to obtain Trump’s tax returns and financial records, not to mention fighting the Trump administration’s effort to include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, among many more fronts of courtroom battle. In a wide-ranging interview with POLITICO, the House’s former top attorney described his tenure battling a former president who tested the limits of executive power at every turn, resisting efforts at accountability in ways that previous chief executives had not. But he has faith that his work helped to stem future presidential attempts to push constitutional boundaries, lending more power to lawmakers. “I just feel like the Biden administration and future administrations are not going to act like the Trump administration,” Letter said. “They’re not going to show such ignorance of our system and think that the executive branch can ignore the legislative branch. That’s not the way it works.” Until the Capitol attack, Letter was convinced that his role in Trump’s first impeachment would’ve been the pinnacle of a job already marked by extraordinary legal confrontations. That changed on Jan. 6. Letter was returning to the House floor from some basement vending machines when he ran into Speaker Nancy Pelosi being whisked from the Capitol under heavy guard. Don’t go back up there, one official told him. An angry mob had breached the building. But Letter, in a panic, said he had to retrieve several giant binders that were full of sensitive strategy and scripts for the day’s proceedings. He opted to forgo evacuating with Pelosi and instead raced back to the chamber. “I was the last person in before they locked the doors,” Letter recalled. The attack on the Capitol led to the Jan. 6 select committee, where the House’s then-top attorney charted a legal strategy that Letter now describes as one of the hallmarks of his tenure. Through his work on that panel, Letter secured at least two streams of information that became a core element of the committee’s voluminous findings: Trump’s confidential White House records and the Chapman University emails of attorney John Eastman, an architect of the then-president’s bid to subvert the 2020 election. Through his work with the Jan. 6 committee, Doug Letter was able to subpoena the emails of key Trump election witness John Eastman (left), who invoked the Fifth Amendment in a deposition before the committee. | AP Letter also won court fights to obtain telephone records from Arizona GOP chair Kelli Ward, who took part in Trump world’s plan to send false electors to Congress. And he helped direct the House’s strategy to hold certain Trump advisers in contempt of Congress, which resulted in prosecutions of Trump advisers Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon. “We had a whole enormous number of people that, as we now know, were putting together this massive, not just a conspiracy, but a whole bunch of conspiracies, to attack our democracy,” Letter said. Additionally, Letter played a role in the select committee’s decision to subpoena five sitting Republican members of Congress to testify before the Jan. 6 select committee, including now-Speaker Kevin McCarthy. He has moved on now that Republicans have gained the House majority, taking a new job as chief legal officer for Brady: United Against Gun Violence. That role bears a more significant connection to his Jan. 6 committee work than it may appear, in his view. Brady, he noted, had previously written a report that credited D.C.’s strict gun laws with limiting the damage rioters caused; if they had been able to stockpile firearms closer to the Capitol, it could’ve been much worse, the report said. And he still remembers the Capitol attack vividly. Letter said he was one of the last to leave the House chamber on Jan. 6, recalling the scene in which Capitol Police officers aimed their firearms at a rear door that the pro-Trump mob had attempted to breach. He finally evacuated at around the same moment one rioter, Ashli Babbitt, was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer. Letter doesn’t remember hearing the shot. But that same evening, as he was processing his own trauma, he was still acting as an attorney — representing a sergeant-at-arms official who had attempted to administer medical aid to Babbitt and faced questions about the incident from Washington-area law enforcement. He’d kept doing his job right after being evacuated from the chamber, too. Letter joined lawmakers at a safe location in the Capitol complex, where he continued to draft scripts to rebut potential challenges, should the House reconvene and continue the session (as it did later that night). But he noticed something else that bothered him — a group of House Republicans were crowded 10 feet away and refusing to wear masks, despite the raging pandemic and the limited availability of vaccines at the time. “I’m not going to get killed by insurrectionists,” he remembers thinking. “I’m going to die of Covid.” One of the most interesting challenges for the House counsel, Letter said, is having to technically be the lawyer for every member of the chamber — even those who would later battle the Jan. 6 select committee. Though the position is filled by the speaker, the House general counsel is often called upon to represent individual members in legal disputes. Letter remembers successfully representing Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) in a First Amendment case, even though she had also been considered one of Trump’s enablers in the election gambit. But when lawmakers aim legal disputes at each other — as when McCarthy sued to block Pelosi from implementing a system of “proxy voting” amid the pandemic, or when Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) sued to overturn House fines for refusing to wear masks on the floor — Letter defaulted to representing the speaker and the institution as a whole. Overall, Letter says he believes his efforts helped empower the institution of the House by putting teeth behind its subpoenas and earning court rulings that reinforced Congress’ power to obtain information to support potential legislation. Republicans, who now hold the gavels of powerful investigative committees that Letter had previously aided, have fretted that some of the rulings during Letter’s tenure could cut against the House’s authority. One example the GOP notes is Democrats’ pursuit of Trump’s financial information through his accounting firm, which resulted in a Supreme Court ruling that established a test for the type of private information Congress could request from a sitting president. While Letter acknowledged the criticism, he said he considered that case a “major victory” for Congress. The Supreme Court endorsed lawmakers’ sweeping power to demand information, he argued, and agreed they could obtain a president’s private information under specific circumstances, which the House ultimately met in that instance. Mostly, he said, the rulings he pursued all the way to the Supreme Court were a function of Trump’s willingness to battle Congress more aggressively than any of his predecessors. But Letter hopes that marked a unique moment in history. “I would hope that we’ll go back to a system where there are nowhere near as many fights in court,” he said.
- [Ron Klain to reportedly step down as Biden chief of staff - The Guardian](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/22/ron-klain-to-reportedly-step-down-as-biden-chief-of-staff-the-guardian/) - Ron Klain to reportedly step down as Biden chief of staffNew York Times reports Klain to announce departure in coming weeks, following two grueling years since president took office Ron Klain, Joe Biden’s chief of staff, is reportedly set to step down from his position, in what will be the biggest change to the US president’s inner circle of advisors since he took office two years ago.Klain will announce his departure in the coming weeks, according to the New York Times, after telling colleagues that he is ready to move on following a grueling period of successes and frustrations that stretch back to Biden’s successful 2020 election campaign.Trump is trying to make a comeback. It’s not working | Lloyd GreenRead more“Two hard years,” Klain tweeted on Friday, marking the second anniversary of Biden’s inauguration. “So much to be done. But so much progress.”The impending exit of Klain follows a period where the chief of staff worked to secure Biden’s legislative priorities, including the bipartisan infrastructure bill and last year’s inflation reduction act, which was achieved following 18 months of often torturous negotiations between the White House and lawmakers, most notably Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia.More recently, Biden has come under scrutiny for alleged improper handling of federal documents, as well as fresh pressure from Republicans in their new majority in the House of Representatives. The new chief of staff is expected to have to mount a defense of Biden’s victories so far, as well as oversee the lead-up to a likely re-election bid by the 80-year-old president.Klain, who is 61, has a long record in Democratic political circles, having been involved in both of Bill Clinton’s presidential campaigns, acted as chief of staff to both Al Gore and then Biden when the men served as vice president previously. Klain, a lawyer by training, also oversaw the Obama administration’s response to an outbreak of Ebola in 2014.He was named as Biden’s chief of staff just a few days after the 2020 election victory was secured.TopicsJoe BidenUS politicsDemocratsnewsReuse this content
- [Rioters throw rocks at Atlanta Police Foundation in response to death of Manuel Esteban Paez Teran](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/rioters-throw-rocks-at-atlanta-police-foundation-in-response-to-death-of-manuel-esteban-paez-teran/) - Photo byMaria OswaltonUnsplashATLANTA, GA. - On Saturday night, a group of rioters set off fireworks and threw rocks at the Atlanta Police Foundation in response to the death of 26-year-old Manuel Esteban Paez Teran. According to Georgia Bureau of Investigations (GBI) Michael Register, Teran shot at Georgia State Patrol troopers on Wednesday without warning, resulting in a fire return by law enforcement which led to his death.The tragedy sparked outrage from activists who were protesting against the development of the City of Atlanta's Public Safety Training Center, for which Teran had been working. After his death, protesters took their cause to the streets and began damaging property near Peachtree Street in downtown Atlanta.Responding officers arrested several individuals and restored order after a period of chaos, though they declined to give specifics on arrests or property damage. GBI Agent Ben Harrell stated that their investigation is still ongoing and will look into all aspects of Teran's death. [embedded content]He also emphasized that any information related to this incident must be shared with law enforcement rather than spread through social media or other avenues, as false speculation can impede the due process.The tension between police and protesters has been incredibly high following other recent events, such as George Floyd's killing in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor's death in Louisville. In the wake of these tragedies, many call for reform within law enforcement agencies across the country so that incidents like this do not occur again.Randi McGinn from Middle Ground Law Firm noted, Allegations such as those against the GBI must be taken seriously if we are going to have trust between our communities and law enforcement…it is important that we take all measures necessary to ensure justice prevails both now and going forward". As many continue to speak out about their grievances related to police brutality, it appears clear that tangible changes need to be made across all areas if progress is going to be made toward improving relationships between police officers and civilians alike.
- [Active-duty military and families express disillusionment over Republican efforts to restrict ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/active-duty-military-and-families-express-disillusionment-over-republican-efforts-to-restrict/) - COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio’s restrictive new election law significantly shortens the window for mailed ballots to be received — despite no evidence that the extended timeline has led to fraud or any other problems — and that change is angering active-duty members of the military and their families because of its potential to disenfranchise them. The pace of ballot counting after Election Day has become a target of conservatives egged on by former President Donald Trump. He has promoted a false narrative since losing the 2020 election that fluctuating results as late-arriving mail-in ballots are tallied is a sign of fraud. See: Kyrsten Sinema was pivotal in Senate’s failure to pass voting-rights legislation in 2022. She’s sanguine about it at Davos. Republican lawmakers said during debate on the Ohio legislation that even if Trump’s claims aren’t true, the skepticism they have caused among conservatives about the accuracy of election results justifies imposing new limits. The new law reduces the number of days for county election boards to include mailed ballots in their tallies from 10 days after Election Day to four. Critics say that could lead more ballots from Ohio’s military voters to miss the deadline and get tossed. This issue isn’t confined to Ohio. Three other states have narrowed their post-election windows for accepting mail ballots, according to data from the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab. Similar moves pushed by Republican lawmakers are being proposed or discussed this year in Wisconsin, New Jersey, California and other states. See: Incoming Democratic governor of Pennsylvania taps Philadelphia Republican for top election-administration post Ohio’s tightened window for receiving mailed ballots is likely to affect just several hundred of the thousands of military and overseas ballots received in any election. Critics say any number is too great. “What kind of society do we call ourselves if we are disenfranchising people from the rights that they are over there protecting?” said Willis Gordon, a Navy veteran and veterans affairs chair of the Ohio NAACP’s executive committee. Republican state Sen. Theresa Gavarone, who championed the tightened ballot deadline, said Ohio’s previous window was “an extreme outlier” nationally. She said Ohio’s military and overseas voters still have ample time under the new law. “While there is certainly more work to do, this new law drastically enhances Ohio’s election security and improves the integrity of our elections, which my constituents and citizens across the state have demanded,” she said. Republicans’ claims that Ohio needs to clamp down in the name of election integrity run counter to GOP officials’ glowing assessments of the state’s current system. Ohio reported a near-perfect tally of its 2020 presidential election results, for example, and fraud referrals represent a tiny fraction of the ballots cast. Board of elections data show that in the state’s most populous county, which includes the capital city of Columbus, 242 absentee ballots from military and overseas voters were received after Election Day last November. Of that, nearly 40% arrived more than four days later and would have been rejected had the new law been in effect. In 2020, a federal survey administered by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission found that Ohio rejected just 1% of the 21,600 ballots cast by overseas and military voters with the 10-day time frame in place. That compared with 2.1% nationally, a figure attributed mostly to voters missing state ballot deadlines. All states are required to transmit ballots to registered overseas and military voters at least 45 days before an election, or as soon as possible if the request comes in after that date. Former state Rep. Connie Pillich, an Air Force veteran who leads the Ohio Democratic Party’s outreach to veterans and military families, rejects arguments that the relatively small number of affected ballots is worth the trade-off. “These guys and gals stationed overseas, living in the sandbox or wherever they are, doing their jobs, putting themselves in harm’s way, you’re making it harder for them to participate,” said Pillich, who led an unsuccessful effort to have GOP Gov. Mike DeWine veto the bill. “I can tell you everyone I’ve talked to is livid and upset,” she said. Those familiar with submitting military ballots said applying for, receiving and filling out a mailed ballot requires extra time for those who are deployed. Postal schedules, sudden calls to duty, even extra time needed to consult family back home about the candidates and issues are factors. Ohio’s new law also sets a new deadline — five days earlier — for voters to request a mailed ballot, a move supporters say will help voters meet the tightened return deadline. Neither the Ohio Association of Election Officials nor the state’s elections chief, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, asked lawmakers to shrink the existing 10-day window for receiving mailed ballots. Aaron Ockerman, a lobbyist for the election officials’ group, said the seven-day post-election window called for in an early version of the legislation was a compromise that county election directors decided they could live with. “They felt the vast, vast majority of the ballots have arrived within eight days,” he said. The group opposed making the window any shorter, on grounds that voters — including those in the military — would be disenfranchised. Research by the Voting Rights Lab shows Ohio joined three other states — Republican-controlled Arkansas and Iowa, and Nevada, where Democrats held full control at the time — in passing laws in 2021 that shortened the post-election return window for mailed ballots. Five states lengthened theirs. Nationwide, a little more than 911,000 military and overseas ballots were cast in 2020. Of those, about 19,000, or roughly 2%, were rejected — typically for being received after the deadline, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. The Secure Families Initiative, a national nonpartisan group advocating for military voters and their families, is trying to push state election laws in the other direction, toward broader electronic access to voting for service members and their families. Kate Marsh Lord, the group’s communications director, said they were “deeply disappointed” to see DeWine sign the Ohio bill. “In fact, I’m an Ohio voter — born and raised in Columbus — and I’ve cast my Ohio ballot from as far away as Japan,” she said. “HB458 set out to solve a problem that didn’t exist, and military voters will pay the price by having their ballots disqualified.” Marsh Lord, currently in South Carolina where her husband is stationed in the Air Force, said mail sometimes took weeks to reach her family when they lived in Japan. “Even if I were to get my ballot in the mail a week ahead of time, a lot of times with the military postal service and the Postal Service in general, there are delays,” she said. “So that shortened window doesn’t allow as much time for things that are really out of military voters’ control.” She said it’s even more challenging for active-duty personnel deployed to remote areas — “the people on the front lines of the fight to defend our democracy and our freedom and the right to vote around the world. Those are the people who will be most impacted by this change.” Read on: Democrats and voting-rights groups express dismay as Wisconsin Republican election official boasts of minority-voter suppression
- [Pena case highlights threats of violence in the world of politics - Albuquerque Journal](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/22/pena-case-highlights-threats-of-violence-in-the-world-of-politics-albuquerque-journal/) - Copyright © 2023 Albuquerque Journal When Solomon Pena lost his election for House District 14 in November, he insisted the election was rigged and he should have been declared the winner. He also believed Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election, again claiming the election was rigged. Police say that appears to be the reason Pena – a 39-year-old failed Republican candidate who had shared photographs implying he was in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021 – allegedly orchestrated shootings at four Democratic lawmakers’ homes. University of New Mexico political science professor Gabriel Sanchez said there has been a rise in threats of violence toward elected officials over the past couple of years, and that false claims of the 2020 election being stolen is “a big part of the escalation.” “The attack on the U.S. Capitol building, for me, that was an indicator that we were going to see more violence,” he said. “That’s the easiest connection point because a lot of these folks believe that the 2020 election was stolen from them and that, I think, is fueling their hatred, their anger, and, unfortunately, what we’re seeing.” No one was hurt in the incidents involving the local lawmakers’ homes, but in one case bullets pierced the bedroom of a 10-year-old girl while she was sleeping. Pena was arrested Monday. Local Republican Party and elected officials have condemned Pena’s alleged acts, saying they do not represent the beliefs of the GOP. Pena was unopposed in the primary for New Mexico House District 14, which leans heavily Democratic. He lost in a landslide, coming in 48 percentage points behind Garcia. However, Pena’s behavior during the campaign had already raised eyebrows. A picture Solomon Pena posted on Twitter that appears to imply he was in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, during the protest and march on the Capitol. (Source: Twitter screenshot)Some of those whose doors Pena knocked on while campaigning told his opponent – longtime incumbent Democratic state Rep. Miguel Garcia – that Pena was aggressive and hostile and insisted that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and “we need to ship (those responsible) off to Guantanamo for the rest of their lives, and let them rot in those jails.” Sanchez taught Pena, a political science major who graduated from UNM in 2021, but said he was instructed by the university not to talk about him. Threats, actions While Sanchez said it’s clear that there has been an increase in threats of violence toward elected officials over the past couple of years, instances of those threats being carried out are rare. He said he thinks that’s why Pena’s case has gained so much national attention. “We actually have somebody that carried out the threats and actually fired on elected officials,” Sanchez said. “Many places have not actually seen the threats of violence actualized.” In California, Paul Pelosi – the husband of Nancy Pelosi – was attacked and seriously injured in his home in October, allegedly by a man looking for the then-U.S. House Speaker, saying he was tired of the lies coming out of Washington, D.C. The 82-year-old Paul was seriously injured and had to undergo surgery. Here in New Mexico a number of elected officials or candidates – Democrats and Republicans – have faced threats over the past three years. A man caught the attention of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s security detail in March 2020, prior to the 2020 presidential election, when he posted on Facebook: “Time to pick up your rifles and kill this governor so we can re-establish the constitution as law of New Mexico. I’m done with corrupt government. They will serve the people or die.” Daniel Mock pleaded guilty to one count of interstate transmission of threatening communication and was sentenced to 14 months in federal prison in August 2020. And following the 2020 election, New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver received so many threats she left her home for almost six weeks. Toulouse Oliver said she was one of about 40 people whose photo, home address and other personal information were published on a website called “Enemies of the People.” On the other side of the aisle, Mark Ronchetti and his wife received several threatening emails following his campaign for U.S. Senate. The messages threatened physical violence and included the use of ethnic slurs. Stephen Yochim was arrested in January 2021, after the election was over and Ronchetti had lost. He pleaded guilty to stalking and was sentenced to 18 months in federal custody in March 2022. Last September, during Ronchetti’s gubernatorial race against Lujan Grisham, someone sprayed his home’s garage door with pellets, breaking a window. High-profile figures aren’t the only ones to have faced hostility – the Doña Ana County clerk said during the lead-up to the 2020 election she received racist mail and one of her employees was followed at night as she took absentee ballots back to the office. Pena as a candidate State Rep. Garcia has represented the heavily Democratic areas of the South Valley and Barelas in the New Mexico Legislature for a quarter century. In recent years he had been unopposed in the general election. This year was different. After seeing he had a Republican challenger Garcia looked Pena up and saw that he had only just recently registered to vote. Pena’s right to vote had been restored in April 2021 after he was discharged from probation. Then, Garcia said, he began getting anonymous tips from his constituents asking if he knew about his opponent’s criminal record. He saw on social media that Pena was “boasting about being at the insurrection.” And, Garcia said, people started relaying troubling stories about Pena’s approach while door knocking. He said some reported feeling threatened since he was “spewing kind of a real aggressive, assertive, fascist-style type demagoguery, hostile rhetoric.” “In about five of these instances, two of them being women, after being told four or five times to leave – that they don’t want to hear any more of what he’s saying and that they don’t want him on their property – he basically takes two steps back … and waves with his hands, you know, ‘come on out. Tell me to my face,'” Garcia said. “He’s actually calling them out to duke it out. To slug it out.” Around the same time, Garcia filed a suit seeking to bar Pena from being on the ballot due to his past felony burglary and larceny convictions. A judge ruled in favor of Pena remaining on the ballot. When Garcia heard about the shootings, he reached out to the Albuquerque Police Department to tell them everything he had gathered about Pena. An APD spokesman said Garcia’s information is now part of the case. Visits to homes Two of the four lawmakers whose homes were targeted – Bernalillo County Commissioners Adriann Barboa and Debbie O’Malley – were tasked with certifying the election. O’Malley’s term has since ended. It’s unclear why the other two – state Sen. Linda Lopez and state Rep. Javier Martínez – were targeted. Both Barboa and O’Malley told the Journal that Pena visited their homes, uninvited, before the shootings to insist that the election results were fraudulent. They said the documents he showed them mirrored those they had received from other election deniers. Police have said that Pena visited Lopez’s home as well. A spokeswoman for the House Democrats said they don’t have any indication he visited Martínez’s home before the shooting. Although his house was not shot, Bernalillo County Commissioner Steven Michael Quezada said Pena did pay him a visit the day after the election. Pena spoke briefly to Quezada’s wife and left papers for the commissioner, who wasn’t home at the time. Quezada, a Democrat, said he called Pena the next day out of duty to a constituent and also to express displeasure that he had visited his home, something the second-term commissioner said he has never experienced as an elected official. In an email following last June’s primary, a writer identifying himself as Solomon Pena demanded that then-Bernalillo County Commissioner Charlene Pyskoty not certify the primary election results until there had been a forensic audit, hand recount and Pena personally had received a “cast vote record.” “I am warning you. You will not certify the 07 June 2022 N.M. Primary election that was held in Bernalillo County until these three listed acts have been carried out,” begins the June 14 email that Pyskoty provided to the Journal. Deputy Bernalillo County Clerk Jaime Diaz said the message is not unusual and that he’s seen many more like it from others in his role as an elections administrator. Diaz, who has spent 30 years working in elections, said there has been a “small group” of people questioning electronic voting machines going back to the mid-1990s but conspiracy theories have grown after former President Trump began insisting that he actually won the 2020 election. As for the only Republican member of the county commission, Bernalillo County Commissioner Walt Benson, he said he had no interactions with Pena. “Honestly, I didn’t even recognize the name when I first read it,” Benson said. “He has not ever reached out to me.” Family, friends, and records paint complex picture of Solomon Pena Shooting suspect filed many civil complaints while serving time for property crimes… January 21, 2023 3:02PM
- ['Trauma torture on our dime': Unsuspecting customers at a Kentucky restaurant said they felt ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/trauma-torture-on-our-dime-unsuspecting-customers-at-a-kentucky-restaurant-said-they-felt/) - Hundreds of BLM protesters gathered at the Times Square and marched on streets for Breonna Taylor in New York City, United States on March 13, 2021.Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesA Kentucky GOP group hosted an event for one of the officers involved in the police raid that led to Breonna Taylor's death.The group and the restaurant involved have since received backlash after diners complained about hearing gunshots.Cayce Johnson, a guest at the restaurant, said the GOP group owes the community an apology.A Kentucky GOP women's group hosted a dinner featuring Jonathan Mattingly — one of the officers involved in killing 26-year-old Breonna Taylor — as a speaker and played the footage of the raid that led to her death during the event.The event, which was hosted by the Republican Women's Club of South Central Kentucky on Jan. 17 at the upstairs area of Anna's Greek Restaurant in Bowling Green, drew complaints from other diners casually eating at the restaurant who heard graphic audio and gunshots as they ate their meals.One diner, Cayce Johnson, told Insider in a phone interview it was "trauma torture on our dime."Johnson said the lights were lowered as she was eating when Mattingly, a former Louisville Metro Police Department Sergeant, was introduced one floor above while dozens of guests unrelated to the event dined below. Mattingly, who used a slideshow and a microphone during his presentation, was not criminally charged for his role in the March 2020 raid and has since authored a book about the altercation.Johnson described the restaurant manager as "extremely dismissive" when she complained and said that people attending the GOP event appeared to be taunting some of the other diners."After the conversation with him, I think our frustration really boiled over at that point," she told Insider. "We felt helpless. We're paying for this, and this is awful. It was trauma torture on our dime. There was nothing we could do."She added, "And that's when we started recording and trying to just get out of there before things escalated between us and the people upstairs because they were trying to intimidate us. They were staring and making faces at the people of color in our group and kind of antagonizing them, like 'Do something. Come up here.'"Johnson, a 34-year-old analyst from Bowling Green, shared a video on Facebook of her and a friend confronting the owner of the restaurant, Vilson Qehaja, and complaining that some of the guests from the GOP event were staring and "smirking" at them."I didn't know this was going on tonight. Why weren't the guests aware of what was going on if we have reservations? I would not have sat here through this," Johnson's friend, who is Black, can be seen saying to Qehaja in the video. "I think it's very rude.""It's the first thing I'm hearing about it. I have no idea. They reserved the room to eat," Qehaja responded in between sips from a coffee cup. "I have nothing to do with that, so."When Johnson and her friend complained that they made reservations and "paid to eat here" but received no warning that the disruptive event was going on, Qehaja replied: "You're being served, right?"As they left the restaurant after paying their bill, Johnson said she and her friends chanted, "Say her name," a slogan that raises awareness for Black women who have been victims of police brutality and become a rallying cry in Taylor's case.In response, Johnson said her party heard Mattingly say into his mic: "Come up here. You might learn something."Representatives for the restaurant and Mattingly did not immediately return Insider's requests for comment on Saturday.Some 80 people attended the GOP event where Mattingly went through a presentation of photos and videos of the raid, per The New Republic. In a since-deleted post, the Republican Women's Club of South Central Kentucky advertised for the event saying that Mattingly would "share what really happened during the raid that killed Breonna Taylor, what he saw, and how the media's narrative has been corrupted and twisted to fit into a false, woke storyline," per TNR.The Bowling Green-Warren County chapter of the NAACP released a statement calling the event "horrific."A spokesperson for the Republican Women's Club of South Central Kentucky did not respond to Insider's request for comment on Saturday.The event was initially meant to be held at the Bowling Green Country Club and included Kentucky gubernatorial candidate Ryan Quarles. However, both Quarles and the country club later backed out, TNR reported.Johnson told Insider that the GOP club owes the community an apology."They need to put out an apology to Breonna Taylor's family and to our Bowling Green community because this is not a reflection of us," Johnson said. "We do not support the profiting of murder."Read the original article on Insider
- [Despite Red Flags, GOP Backed Candidate Now Charged in Shootings - Yahoo](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/despite-red-flags-gop-backed-candidate-now-charged-in-shootings-yahoo/) - ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The former Republican candidate accused of targeting the homes of Democrats in drive-by shootings had routinely called for locking up 2020 election officials in Guantánamo Bay. He promoted conspiracy theories about solar power, feminism and “the demonic theories of the Globalist Elites.” He had been demoted twice by the U.S. Navy and served nearly seven years in prison for burglary.Yet powerful party leaders in New Mexico not only gave the first-time candidate, Solomon Peña, 39, full-throated endorsements, but they also opened their checkbooks to fund his race for a state legislative seat in central Albuquerque long held by Democrats. Some knew about his prison record but said they felt that he had turned his life around. Local and state authorities now say they are investigating whether drug money helped fund his campaign.“He came across to me as a very respectful, thoughtful young man,” said Harvey Yates, an oilman and former chair of the New Mexico Republican Party, who donated $5,000 to Peña’s election effort. Now, Yates acknowledges that he may have made a mistake. He said that he felt “very bad, very sad” for Peña, “who I think really had possibilities.”Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York TimesPolice say that after losing his race by a landslide in November — he received 26% of the vote — and refusing to concede, Peña organized shootings at the homes of prominent Democrats, including two who certified the election results. The attacks came at a time of growing fears nationwide about a trend of political violence, mostly from the right wing, including the attack on the husband of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a conspiracy to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.In New Mexico, the case also highlights the internal struggles among Republicans as election deniers such as Peña — who was in the crowd for President Donald Trump’s speech in Washington on Jan. 6, according to videos collected by online sleuths — fill the ranks of candidates seeking elected office. Other Republicans such as Audrey Trujillo, who ran for secretary of state, embraced conspiracy theories about elections, school shootings and COVID-19 vaccines.Many election deniers lost in New Mexico, mirroring similar Republican setbacks in other parts of the country. The results helped the state’s Democrats solidify their control of both houses in the state Legislature, the governor’s office and the entire congressional delegation, sparking recriminations over Republicans’ loss of power.Michael Candelaria, a prominent state Republican who until recently was the party chair in Valencia County, near Albuquerque, said the Peña case laid bare a dilemma in a state where Democrats have steadily expanded their sway in recent years: how to appeal to some of Trump’s most ardent supporters, who refused to accept his 2020 reelection defeat, without alienating other voters who reject the lies and conspiracy theories.“You don’t take a group of people whose support you want and tell them, ‘You’re a bunch of crazies,’” Candelaria said. “You’re going to have some extremists that you have to figure out how to keep their support.”But Candelaria, who has pushed for leadership changes in the state party, said that Peña’s arrest showed the risks of promoting such figures. “Had we done some good vetting, we could have picked apart this guy, but no, we don’t do a good job of picking candidates,” he said.It was unclear how much Republican leaders had examined Peña’s background. Steve Pearce, a former member of Congress who is now chair of the New Mexico Republican Party, did not respond to requests for comment.Some Republicans are bracing for more revelations about Peña, who was arrested Monday and charged with criminal solicitation, attempted aggravated battery, shooting at an occupied dwelling, shooting from a moving vehicle and conspiracy. Police called him the “mastermind” behind a conspiracy in which four other men were paid to shoot at the homes of two county commissioners and two state legislators, and said that he personally participated in at least one of the shootings.As part of their investigation, Albuquerque police detectives said they were also examining whether Peña used proceeds from narcotics trafficking to finance his campaign and whether campaign laws were violated. The New Mexico attorney general’s office will lead the investigation into Peña’s campaign finances, a spokesperson for the office said Friday.The turn in the investigation came after detectives learned through witness interviews that Peña had identified individuals to funnel contributions from an unknown source into his campaign, according to Gilbert Gallegos, a spokesperson for the department. Investigators said they are focusing on José Trujillo, who is also accused in the shootings, and Trujillo’s mother, Melanie Griego, who are listed as donating a total of $9,150 to Peña’s campaign.Police arrested Trujillo on Jan. 3, shortly after the shooting targeting the Albuquerque home of Linda Lopez, a state senator. In the car that Trujillo was driving, which police say is owned by Peña, investigators say they found 893 fentanyl pills and $3,036 in cash, as well as a firearm matching shell casings found at Lopez’s home.Peña made his first court appearance Wednesday and did not enter a plea. Roberta Yurcic, a lawyer representing him, said she couldn’t comment on specific aspects of her client’s background, including his military demotions and work history. “The investigation into the charges against my client is ongoing,” she added. “Mr. Peña has a right to a fair trial.”Javier Martinez, a Democrat whose home was targeted in the attacks after the November election, said he had “never experienced anything like this before.” Martinez, who took over this month as New Mexico’s speaker of the House, tied Peña’s extremism to the election lies voiced by Trump.“The previous president, I think, really exploited some of those feelings,” Martinez said. “And we’ve seen it play out in different ways, including the insurrection in Washington, D.C., including this set of events here in our own backyard.”Peña presented himself as someone on the mend, leading groups in prayer at political meetings and telling neighbors that he did not drink or take drugs. But he made little effort to hide his extreme views. His campaign website denounced “the demonic theories of the Globalist Elites and their foreign counterparts,” called feminism “demonicism,” and said the 2020 election had been rigged against Trump by “enemy combatants” who “must be placed in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for the remainder of their natural lives.”During his campaign, Peña highlighted his time as a Navy hospital corpsman assigned to a Marine division in Okinawa, Japan. But promotion data provided by the U.S. Navy’s public affairs office shows that Peña hardly served with distinction. He was demoted twice during his four years in the service and left the military in 2004 at the lowest possible rank. The Navy was unable to provide the reasons for Peña’s demotions.Peña ran on a platform of cracking down on crime, despite his own criminal history. He served nearly seven years in prison in New Mexico on charges including burglary and larceny after being part of a “smash-and-grab” crew that slammed vehicles into retail stores, including a Kmart in Albuquerque, then stole items, according to court records.After being released from prison in 2016, Peña tried selling cars at a dealership in Albuquerque but lasted less than a month before he was fired for showing up late, court records from a lawsuit filed by Peña in 2017 show. (The case was dismissed.) Peña also enrolled at the University of New Mexico, obtaining a political science degree in 2021, the same year that his voting rights were restored after his prison term.Peña appears to have run for the Republican nomination for the state legislative seat unopposed. In October, he received an endorsement from the Republican National Hispanic Assembly’s New Mexico chapter. Ronnie Lucero, chair of both the group’s national organization and the state chapter, said that he had spoken with Peña at events during the campaign and that the candidate had filled out a questionnaire asking about his professional, financial and criminal history before the group endorsed him.The group did not see Peña’s criminal record as disqualifying, Lucero said, adding: “At the time that we made the endorsement, there was the impression that he’d got his life together and he’s one of those second-chance stories that would turn out to be something good and positive for the community.“It was a bad decision that we made and regretfully,” he said. “But we can’t read the future.”When asked about some of the extremist rhetoric on Peña’s campaign website, Lucero said that he had not seen the statements — although they were published before the endorsement, according to the Internet Archive — and that they would have given him pause if he had.Some Republican officials defended the apparent lack of vetting before the party establishment put its support behind Peña, which included defending him when his opponent sought to have him disqualified from the race because of his criminal record, which could potentially have prohibited him from taking office.“The Republican Party did not recruit him,” said Rep. Bill Rehm, a Republican state legislator from Albuquerque, adding that he did not think the party establishment should vet candidates. “He, like anyone else, can sign up to run for whatever office.”© 2023 The New York Times Company
- ['Zuck Bucks 2.0': Zuckerberg-funded group pushing millions to influence local election ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/zuck-bucks-2-0-zuckerberg-funded-group-pushing-millions-to-influence-local-election/) - An $80 million initiative begun last spring to support election offices across the country is the latest chapter in an ongoing effort by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to influence election officials, according to a new report. In April, a coalition of left-wing nonprofits led by the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), a Chicago-based group funded by Zuckerberg, launched the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, whose stated purpose was to send money to election offices for training, equipment, consulting and other resources. However, the Honest Elections Project (HEP) on Thursday released a report in conjunction with the John Locke Foundation that described the Alliance as “merely a continuation” of CTCL’s so-called “Zuck Bucks scheme,” a term critics use to describe the private funding of elections by left-wing donors in 2020. CTCL issued about $400 million in grants during the 2020 election to fund a variety of work and equipment. That included ballot drop boxes, voting equipment, additional manpower, protective gear for poll workers and public education campaigns on new voting methods, among other expenses. IN ARIZONA, VOTING MACHINE GLITCH GIVES WAY TO ELECTION INTEGRITY CONCERNS Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is funding another effort to influence local election offices.(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Democrats defended the money as necessary to conduct the election safely during the COVID-19 pandemic, while Republicans noted most of the grants targeted Democrat-leaning districts. In several states, counties that broke heavily for Joe Biden received more “Zuck Bucks” donations, according to an analysis by the Capital Research Center. House Republicans found in an investigation that less than 1% of the funds were spent on personal protective equipment. Instead, the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence appears to be another effort by Zuckerberg and CTCL to influence local election operations, according to critics. “The work of the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence is Zuck Bucks 2.0, which is why they avoided states that have instituted bans on the private funding of election administration,” Andy Jackson, director of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity, said in a statement. MONTANA MAY SHOW HOW ELECTION OFFICES ARE ‘ADDICTED’ TO PRIVATE MONEY LIKE MARK ZUCKERBERG’S, REPORT FINDS Twenty-four states have enacted bans or restrictions on private funding of local election offices. But the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence has been working to ingratiate itself with local offices. In November, the Alliance announced its first ten member offices — dubbed “Centers for Election Excellence” — including two counties in North Carolina, Brunswick and Forsyth. Other grant recipients on the list are from California, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan and Nevada. More are expected to be added in the coming months. The first offices will receive grants over a two-year period leading up to the 2024 presidential election, CTCL Executive Director Tiana Epps-Johnson told The Associated Press last month. Epps-Johnson added that grant amounts will vary based on the size of each jurisdiction, from $50,000 for those with fewer than 5,000 registered voters to $3 million for those with more than 1 million voters. An election worker boxes tabulated ballots inside the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office Nov. 9, 2022, in Phoenix.(AP Photo/Matt York) While the effects of the Alliance’s creation remain to be seen, the HEP report says its activities show the group is working to target local election offices and influence their operations to push left-wing voting policies. HEP and the John Locke Foundation used the report to highlight documents they obtained through public records requests that, they argue, show the Alliance “is actually designed to systematically influence every aspect of election administration in target offices and push progressive voting policies.” MISSISSIPPI ELECTION OFFICIAL PLEADS GUILTY TO MISUSING PANDEMIC RELIEF MONEY The report describes, for example, how after the Alliance recruited its first members, it announced plans to begin charging offices to join. The Alliance also created “scholarships” to cover these membership costs, which are instantly converted into “credits” that member offices can use to buy services from CTCL and other Alliance partners. “As a result, offices receive access to funds they can spend exclusively on services provided by left-wing companies and nonprofits, entirely outside normal public funding channels,” the report said. “Based on documentation obtained through the public records process, these services range from ‘legal’ and ‘political’ consulting to public relations and guidance on recruitment and training.” In exchange for grants and services, offices are expected to provide CTCL and its partners “substantial in-kind contributions,” help the Alliance develop its programming and turn over information regarding their inner workings, according to HEP. Such efforts are designed, in part, so election offices can work with the Alliance to develop and implement an “improvement plan” that may change the way each office operates. Maricopa County elections officials count ballots Nov. 4, 2020, at the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office in Phoenix.(AP Photo/Matt York) “Elections should be transparent and accountable to the people. No matter what it claims to be, the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence is nothing more than a dark money-fueled scheme to push liberal voting policies and influence election administration in key states and localities,” Jason Snead, executive director of HEP, said in a statement. “This report should make clear that a private funding ban, vigorous oversight and complete transparency from officials are essential to restoring trust in our election system and making it easier to vote and harder to cheat.” CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Proponents of the Alliance have argued its planned investments — $80 million over five years — are necessary to ensure a fair voting process. “Every American voter, no matter their zip code, should have access to a process that is fair and trustworthy,” Epps-Johnson said at the time of the Alliance’s launch. “Unfortunately, years of under-investment means many local election departments often have limited capacity and training. The U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence will bring together world-class partners so that local election officials no longer have to go it alone.” The Alliance did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital about the report.
- ["They're going to make this into a circus." Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) reacts to far-right ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/theyre-going-to-make-this-into-a-circus-rep-jimmy-gomez-d-ca-reacts-to-far-right/) - IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser."The justices are in essence undisciplinable." Joyce Vance on the Supreme Court's leak investigation.06:05Now Playing"They're going to make this into a circus." Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) reacts to far-right House Republicans securing high profile committee assignments07:15UP NEXT"You don't give up." Rev. Al Sharpton on carrying forward Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy05:47Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts on recent victories05:57Good Liars create 'Honest Trump Cards' focusing on 2020 election loss06:17‘Packing 537 days into one report’: What to expect from Jan 6 Committee final report05:02Fmr. Mayor of San Antonio on lifting of Title 42: ‘Our immigration system is not working.’04:35‘It’s absolutely unsafe and we won’t stand for it': Flight attendants speak out against one-pilot cockpits 05:54“What I saw and heard shouldn’t be tolerated in our country:’ Rusty Bowers reacts to criminal referral for Trump06:01‘Obscene and unprecedented’: Text messages reveal GOP calls to overturn 2020 election results06:55‘They’re all going to have to pay this money back’: Florida attorney hopes to hold celebrity promoters of FTX accountable04:31"I will never give up." Documentary chronicles fight for justice after Flight PS752 was shot down in Iran in 202018:02New Documentary ‘Loan Wolves’ Investigates Student Debt Crisis04:09‘They’re digging a hole for themselves’: GOP-Controlled House prepares to launch frivolous investigations05:18‘A champion of humanity’: Soccer community remembers legacy of Grant Wahl after death at Qatar World Cup06:37Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) becomes highest-ranking Asian American in Democratic House Leadership05:14‘An award for the Ukrainian people’: Zelenskyy named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year04:54‘Once we're in these rooms, we can make a difference’: Montana elects first openly transgender legislator 04:53‘The community feels very vulnerable right now’: Experts show concern about normalization of hate speech and antisemitism04:46“Their time is up”: Iranian regime under pressure after three-day strike by protestors 07:4007:15Share this -
- [GOP Group Played Graphic Footage Of Breonna Taylor Death In Public: Reports - HuffPost](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/gop-group-played-graphic-footage-of-breonna-taylor-death-in-public-reports-huffpost/) - Patrons trying to enjoy their dinner at a Kentucky restaurant this week were shocked to find a Republican women’s club using the venue to host one of the officers involved in the 2020 police raid that killed Breonna Taylor, according to the local NAACP chapter and two patrons who spoke with news outlets.At one point, graphic video footage of the raid was allegedly played loudly in the restaurant, where other diners said they could hear it. Advertisement “You could hear the gunshots in the footage,” one diner, 34-year-old Cayce Johnson, told The Washington Post. “Our dinner was completely hijacked. We couldn’t hear ourselves at that point.”The Bowling Green-Warren County branch of the NAACP said it was “outraged” and “profoundly dismayed” over the incident on Tuesday at Anna’s Greek Restaurant in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky was forced to find a new location for its event, featuring former Louisville Police Sgt. John Mattingly, after their original country club venue dropped them, NBC News reported. Mattingly was one of several officers involved in Taylor’s killing in March 2020. The officers executed a no-knock warrant at Taylor’s apartment in Louisville late one night, startling the Black medical technician and her boyfriend, who was armed. He then shot Mattingly in the leg. Officers retaliated with a hail of gunfire toward the pair, killing Taylor. Advertisement The man the officers were searching for, an ex-boyfriend of Taylor’s, was not in the apartment at the time. Mattingly was allowed to retire over a year later. Since then, he has become a right-wing pundit and critic of the police reform movement. According to a now-deleted Facebook post from the Republican Women’s Club, Mattingly would “share what really happened during the raid that killed Breonna Taylor, what he saw, and how the media’s narrative has been corrupted and twisted to fit into a false, woke storyline,” reported LEX18, a local NBC News affiliate. The Greek restaurant, which sits in a former church, was open to the public while the event took place upstairs, according to the local NAACP chapter. Because Mattingly had access to the restaurant’s speaker system, the group said, the footage of the raid and his commentary could be heard throughout the venue. Another patron took to Facebook to express her disgust. She described the Republican event as “some kind of loud tribute/rally” for Mattingly and said, “they were speaking very loudly with a microphone.” Advertisement After a glowing review of the restaurant Mattingly posted on Facebook attracted criticism, Mattingly began picking fights with the commenters. Johnson, the diner who later spoke to The Washington Post and The New Republic, filmed a restaurant manager responding to questions about why the event had been permitted. The man can be seen shrugging his shoulders. RelatedRepublicansKentuckyBreonna TaylorBreonna Taylor's Boyfriend Settles Lawsuits Over ShootingTold By Ron DeSantis ‘Nobody Wants To Hear From You,’ Now He's Headed To CongressFormer Louisville Cop Pleads Guilty In Breonna Taylor Case Go To Homepage
- [GOP Group played graphic images of Breonna Taylor's death in public: Reports](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/gop-group-played-graphic-images-of-breonna-taylors-death-in-public-reports/) - Patrons trying to enjoy their dinner at a Kentucky restaurant this week were shocked to find a Republican sorority using the location to host one of the officers involved in the 2020 police raid involving Breonna Taylor was killed, according to the local NAACP chapter and two patrons who spoke to news outlets. At one point, graphic video footage of the robbery was reportedly played loudly in the restaurant, where other diners said they could hear it. “You could hear the gunshots in the footage,” one diner, 34-year-old Cayce Johnson, told The Washington Post. “Our dinner was completely hijacked. We couldn’t hear ourselves at the time.” The NAACP’s Bowling Green-Warren County chapter said it was “outraged” and “deeply appalled” by Tuesday’s incident at Anna’s Greek Restaurant in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky was forced to find a new venue for its event, with former Louisville Police Sgt. John Mattingly, after their original country club location dropped them, NBC News reported. Mattingly was one of several officers involved in Taylor’s murder in March 2020. The officers executed a no-knock warrant at Taylor’s Louisville apartment late one night, leading the black medical technician and her boyfriend, who was armed, to to startle. He then shot Mattingly in the leg. Officers retaliated with a hail of gunfire on the pair, killing Taylor. The man the officers were looking for, an ex-boyfriend of Taylor’s, was not in the apartment at the time. Mattingly was allowed to retire just over a year later. He has since become a right-wing pundit and critic of the police reform movement. According to a now-deleted Facebook post from the Republican Women’s Club, Mattingly would “share what really happened during the raid that killed Breonna Taylor, what he saw, and how the media’s narrative has been corrupted and twisted into a false, shaken-up movie. storyline,” reported LEX18, a local NBC News affiliate. The Greek restaurant, which sits in a former church, was open to the public while the event took place upstairs, according to the local NAACP chapter. Because Mattingly had access to the restaurant’s speaker system, the group said, footage of the robbery and his commentary could be heard throughout the room. Another patron took to Facebook to express her disgust. She described the Republican event as “kind of a loud tribute/gathering” for Mattingly, saying, “They were talking really loud into a microphone.” After a glowing review of the restaurant that Mattingly posted on Facebook drew criticism, Mattingly began feuding with the commenters. Johnson, the diner who later spoke to The Washington Post and The New Republic, filmed a restaurant manager responding to questions about why the event was allowed. The man is seen shrugging his shoulders.
- [UPDATE: Video of Breonna Taylor raid allegedly played at Bowling Green restaurant](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/update-video-of-breonna-taylor-raid-allegedly-played-at-bowling-green-restaurant/) - UPDATE: (1/21/2023)BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (WTVQ) – We told you last week about how Gubernatorial candidate Ryan Quarles backed out of a speaking event held by the Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky, due to another speaker set to attend. That speaker is former Louisville metro police officer Jonathan Mattingly, who was one of the officers involved in the deadly Breonna Taylor raid. Well, since then it seems only more controversy has followed the event. According to the Bowling Green-Warren County NAACP, due to the rise in concern over the January 17th event, it got canceled at its original venue. But, the NAACP says it learned it was then moved that same night to Anna’s Greek restaurant where Mattingly was still a speaker. The NAACP says the restaurant remained open to the public while the event took place in the balcony area, and while other people were enjoying dinner, they all of a sudden had to see and listen to graphic descriptions of the raid that led to the shooting of Breonna Taylor According to the NAACP, there were also reports of video footage of her death being played. In the NAACP’s release, the organization says the restaurant is supposed to be family-friendly and that “It is beyond reprehensible to subject anyone let alone children and customers of African American descent to such indecent exposure, graphic and upsetting images while they were attempting to enjoy their meal.” The NAACP is investigating this incident at Anna’s Greek restaurant and is asking any witnesses with information to contact them. (ORIGINAL STORY (1/17/2023) BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (WTVQ) – Gubernatorial candidate Kentucky AG Commissioner Ryan Quarles has backed out of attending an event tonight, Tuesday, Jan. 17, in Bowling Green that features one of the officers involved in the Breonna Taylor shooting. In a statement provided by his campaign, Quarles says: “I, like other candidates running for Governor, have been invited to introduce myself to this group. I was invited independently of other speakers and due to the controversial nature of another speaker at this event, we have decided to reschedule to a later date.” The event, hosted by the Republican Women’s Club of South Central KY is a dinner buffet at the Bowling Green Country Club. It featured Quarles and Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, who was one of three officers involved in the raid on Breonna Taylor’s apartment. Mattingly fired shots that hit Taylor. Since then, Mattingly has written and published a book titled ‘12 seconds in the dark. A police officer’s firsthand account of the Breonna Taylor raid‘. Photo Courtesy: Amazon The announcement of Tuesday’s event sparked controversy among many. Kentucky Democratic Party Chair, Colmon Elridge tweeted the following: “From Till to Taylor, the extreme right has a legacy of traumatizing & ridiculing POC when innocent black folk are murdered, but this is abhorrent. Apparently, the worth of a murdered innocent black woman is a country club dinner at $40 per person, tax & tip included.” And another tweet stated: “The 1A is precious, even for those who use it to monetize the murder of innocent citizens & to traumatize their family. But any candidate who believes this is just politics or not a big deal is unworthy of serving & is clearly not interested in governing for all Kentuckians.” State Rep. Lamin Swann also tweeted: “Sickening a Kentucky gubernatorial candidate wants to lift a name like this! Kentucky, we can do better!” BG Freedom Walkers in Bowling Green also responded to the announcement of the event with a planned protest against the fundraiser and in honor of Breonna Taylor, set to begin 30 minutes before the start of the dinner Tuesday. ABC 36 reached out to BG Freedom Walkers for further comment but has not received a response back. The Republican Women’s Club later took down its Facebook post promoting the event and put out the following press release defending the event. “The Republican Women’s Club of South Central KY is open to people of all races, religions, and ages. One of the objectives of our organization is to educate members regarding community issues and topics of political, social, and financial concern. Sometimes these issues can be controversial and complex. In order to protect our freedoms of speech and due process, we are committed to providing peaceful forums to present information and opinions by knowledgeable parties regarding issues and events of our day. We have recently invited Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly to speak at our meeting to obtain a firsthand account of the drug raid where Breonna Taylor was killed in Louisville. Sgt. Mattingly was one of the officers involved and injured in the raid. Sgt. Mattingly will be sharing his firsthand accounts of the evening. These events may be controversial however, we believe Sgt. Mattingly has the right to share his experience. Other individuals with firsthand experience relating to this case are welcome to request an opportunity to speak to our organization as well.” ABC 36 has also reached out to the club for more information on if the event will be canceled following Quarles backing out, or if it will still be held. We have not received a response.
- [Letter: Fabricated conspiracy theories in Greenwich - NewsTimes](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/letter-fabricated-conspiracy-theories-in-greenwich-newstimes/) - Remember Donald Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp”? He fell far short of his rhetoric, being the only president to be twice impeached. Ten Republicans voted to impeach him for inciting insurrection, the most pro-impeachment votes ever from a president's party. A bipartisan majority of senators voted to convict him the second time around, even though they fell short of the two-thirds needed to find him guilty. Last year, unprecedented in American history, the bipartisan January 6 select House committee voted unanimously to refer the former president to the Department of Justice for potential prosecution for attempting to overturn the 2020 election.
- [How Widespread Was FBI Interference in 2020 Election? - Ricochet](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/how-widespread-was-fbi-interference-in-2020-election-ricochet/)
- [GOP Group Played Graphic Footage Of Breonna Taylor Death In Public: Reports](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/gop-group-played-graphic-footage-of-breonna-taylor-death-in-public-reports/) - Patrons trying to enjoy their dinner at a Kentucky restaurant this week were shocked to find a Republican women’s club using the venue to host one of the officers involved in the 2020 police raid that killed Breonna Taylor, according to the local NAACP chapter and two patrons who spoke with news outlets.At one point, graphic video footage of the raid was allegedly played loudly in the restaurant, where other diners said they could hear it.“You could hear the gunshots in the footage,” one diner, 34-year-old Cayce Johnson, told The Washington Post. “Our dinner was completely hijacked. We couldn’t hear ourselves at that point.”The Bowling Green-Warren County branch of the NAACP said it was “outraged” and “profoundly dismayed” over the incident on Tuesday at Anna’s Greek Restaurant in Bowling Green, Kentucky.The Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky was forced to find a new location for its event, featuring former Louisville Police Sgt. John Mattingly, after their original country club venue dropped them, NBC News reported.Mattingly was one of several officers involved in Taylor’s killing in March 2020. The officers executed a no-knock warrant at Taylor’s apartment in Louisville late one night, startling the Black medical technician and her boyfriend, who was armed. He then shot Mattingly in the leg. Officers retaliated with a hail of gunfire toward the pair, killing Taylor.The man the officers were searching for, an ex-boyfriend of Taylor’s, was not in the apartment at the time.Mattingly was allowed to retire over a year later. Since then, he has become a right-wing pundit and critic of the police reform movement.According to a now-deleted Facebook post from the Republican Women’s Club, Mattingly would “share what really happened during the raid that killed Breonna Taylor, what he saw, and how the media’s narrative has been corrupted and twisted to fit into a false, woke storyline,” reported LEX18, a local NBC News affiliate.The Greek restaurant, which sits in a former church, was open to the public while the event took place upstairs, according to the local NAACP chapter. Because Mattingly had access to the restaurant’s speaker system, the group said, the footage of the raid and his commentary could be heard throughout the venue.Another patron took to Facebook to express her disgust. She described the Republican event as “some kind of loud tribute/rally” for Mattingly and said, “they were speaking very loudly with a microphone.”After a glowing review of the restaurant Mattingly posted on Facebook attracted criticism, Mattingly began picking fights with the commenters.Johnson, the diner who later spoke to The Washington Post and The New Republic, filmed a restaurant manager responding to questions about why the event had been permitted. The man can be seen shrugging his shoulders.Related...
- [Letter: Fabricated conspiracy theories in Greenwich - Connecticut Post](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/letter-fabricated-conspiracy-theories-in-greenwich-connecticut-post/) - Remember Donald Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp”? He fell far short of his rhetoric, being the only president to be twice impeached. Ten Republicans voted to impeach him for inciting insurrection, the most pro-impeachment votes ever from a president's party. A bipartisan majority of senators voted to convict him the second time around, even though they fell short of the two-thirds needed to find him guilty. Last year, unprecedented in American history, the bipartisan January 6 select House committee voted unanimously to refer the former president to the Department of Justice for potential prosecution for attempting to overturn the 2020 election.
- [Patrons at a Kentucky restaurant outraged at video they believe showed Breonna Taylor's killing](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/patrons-at-a-kentucky-restaurant-outraged-at-video-they-believe-showed-breonna-taylors-killing-2/) - Diners at a Kentucky restaurant were outraged to see and hear what they believe was video footage showing the killing of Breonna Taylor at an event featuring John Mattingly, one of the officers involved in the 2020 raid, according to the local NAACP chapter and witnesses. (CNN) -- Diners at a Kentucky restaurant were outraged to see and hear what they believe was video footage showing the killing of Breonna Taylor at an event featuring John Mattingly, one of the officers involved in the 2020 raid, according to the local NAACP chapter and witnesses.Patrons weren't informed that a GOP women's club was hosting the event at a Greek restaurant in Bowling Green on Tuesday evening and may have been exposed to graphic depictions of the raid that led to Taylor's death, the Bowling Green-Warren County Branch of the NAACP said. Two patrons tell CNN they heard audio clips of gunshots, sirens and general commotion while they sat at their dimly lit tables, but neither could say for certain whether these were videos of Taylor's death.Cayce Johnson tells CNN when she first walked into the restaurant she could see and hear the event upstairs, hosted by the Republican Women's Club of South Central Kentucky."They had a sound system. It was being broadcast throughout the whole restaurant," she said. "We could hear every word. And when the lady introduced John Mattingly, my jaw dropped."Mattingly was the first officer to enter Taylor's apartment on March 13, 2020, after Louisville police executing a search warrant used a battering ram to break the door down.Believing the police were intruders, Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker III, fired one shot when officers broke through the door, CNN previously reported.Mattingly suffered a gunshot wound to the leg, and Taylor was killed when the officers returned fire. Mattingly was never charged in connection with the incident and retired after he was put on administrative leave.The only officer charged in the botched raid, Brett Hankison, was acquitted of wanton endangerment charges in March.Mattingly has always defended his actions in the fatal exchange. CNN has reached out to Mattingly for comment regarding the incident at the restaurant this week and has not received a response."He went through everything, talked about the investigation and then played several tapes during his presentation," Johnson tells CNN.Another patron, Katelyn Jones, tells CNN she was unable to see what was happening upstairs, but the sound of police radio chatter, sirens and gunshots made it hard for her family to even carry out a conversation."Towards the end of our meal, the lights shut off and we heard police radio chatter and sirens on a recording. We heard the gunshots, too, and it was so loud and chaotic. It was really loud," she explained. Jones tells CNN that when her family showed their displeasure at the loud recording, the people attending the event upstairs started to shush them. Some men stared down at them with a "sour look on their faces," she said. Pictures shown on the restaurant's website appear to show the upper seating level of the restaurant as a mezzanine, partially visible from the lower level.Both patrons believed a video was playing based on the low lighting in the restaurant."These patrons had to see and listen to graphic descriptions of the incident which killed Breonna Taylor because Mattingly was provided video equipment, a microphone, and a speaker and was able to be heard throughout the restaurant," the NAACP said."It is beyond reprehensible to subject anyone, let alone children and customers of African American descent, to such indecent exposure, graphic and upsetting images while they were attempting to enjoy their meal."A number obtained from public phone records for the Greek restaurant where the event was held appeared to be disconnected. CNN has reached out to the restaurant through an online form but has yet to receive a response.CNN has also reached out to the Republican Women's Club of South Central Kentucky for comment. Prior to the event, the Republican Women's Club said in a statement that it invited Mattingly to speak at the event "to obtain a firsthand account" of the raid that resulted in Taylor's death."These events may be controversial, however, we believe Sgt. Mattingly has the right to share his experience," the group said in a statement to Spectrum News in Louisville. "Other individuals with firsthand experience relating to this case are welcome to request an opportunity to speak to our organization as well."Regarding the women's group, Johnson said, "They have had no accountability in this. They took their Facebook page down and are just laying low.""They need to apologize first and foremost and they need to apologize to Breonna Taylor's family," Johnson said."I want accountability from this group," she continued. "They give powerful people platforms and they need to explain to the community and Breonna Taylor's family why they gave him [Mattingly] a platform."The NAACP said the event featuring Mattingly was canceled at its original venue due to its "controversial" nature but went ahead as planned at the Greek restaurant on the same night. The NAACP did not provide further information about the supposed cancellation from what it said was the "original venue."Protests over plans to stage the event featuring Mattingly also took place in Bowling Green Tuesday, according to reporting from CNN affiliates WBKO and WNKY.CNN has reached out to Louisville police for comment on the reported use of video footage showing the killing of Taylor at the Kentucky restaurant.
- [Letter: Fabricated conspiracy theories in Greenwich - Stamford Advocate](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/letter-fabricated-conspiracy-theories-in-greenwich-stamford-advocate/) - Remember Donald Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp”? He fell far short of his rhetoric, being the only president to be twice impeached. Ten Republicans voted to impeach him for inciting insurrection, the most pro-impeachment votes ever from a president's party. A bipartisan majority of senators voted to convict him the second time around, even though they fell short of the two-thirds needed to find him guilty. Last year, unprecedented in American history, the bipartisan January 6 select House committee voted unanimously to refer the former president to the Department of Justice for potential prosecution for attempting to overturn the 2020 election.
- [RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel Declines to Tell Steve Bannon the 2020 Election Was Legitimate](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/rnc-chair-ronna-mcdaniel-declines-to-tell-steve-bannon-the-2020-election-was-legitimate/) - Chair of the Republican National Committee Ronna McDaniel, who is currently running for reelection, joined Steve Bannon on his War Room podcast Friday for an at times contentious interview. Bannon pushed McDaniel on her support for former President Donald Trump and pressed her on whether or not she believed the 2020 election was legitimate – a key litmus test in Trumpworld. “Do you believe that President Trump won in 2020? It was stolen and rightfully since he got 74 million votes, that he is the rightful nominee and we got to take another shot at this or we’ve lost everything, every purpose as a party?” Bannon asked. “I’ve been, I mean, listen, I’ve testified on January 6th. I think there were all types of problems in 2020,” McDaniel replied. “And we all saw this. I mean, if you look at Pennsylvania, right, So 2016, the total mail in vote in Pennsylvania was, what, 260,000? In 2020, it was 2.6 million. So there were all types of problems. The reality is, Steve, if you’re figuring it out after the fact, that’s a problem. You got to figure it out before,” McDaniel added. McDaniel is currently facing a frustrated GOP base, with several state parties moving against her in favor of MAGA favorite Harmeet Dhillon. NBC News reported last week that “From Arizona to Florida, state parties are passing or considering votes of no confidence in McDaniel, demanding new leadership after three disappointing elections.” NBC noted that both Alabama and Louisiana’s GOP state parties passed a motion not to support McDaniel again as RNC chair, adding: Roger Villere Jr., an RNC member from Louisiana who supports McDaniel rival Harmeet Dhillon for chair, confirmed Tuesday that his state party approved an anti-McDaniel resolution at his urging on Saturday. “The grassroots is firmly supporting a change,” Villere said. “Every vote, every call every day, I hear from people who want someone other than Ronna. … We’ve had three cycles where we’ve underachieved significantly, and it’s just time.” Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com
- [Polling site merge mulled | Sampson Independent](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/polling-site-merge-mulled-sampson-independent/) - A potential move by the Sampson County Board of Elections to consolidate polling places in Clinton was tabled after some concerns and confusion, with elections officials utilizing a public hearing this week as a forum to explain what was actually being proposed to merge — voting sites, not precincts — and ultimately tabling the matter until February so the clarification could be more widely communicated. In the weeks leading up to Tuesday night’s election board meeting, a notice of the public hearing from the Sampson County Board of Elections referred to a proposal of “consolidating all Clinton precincts.” Elections officials said that may have been misleading, with precincts set to remain intact, but a main polling place proposed to be utilized for all Clinton precincts, an effort to cut down confusion as well as reduce the staffing necessary to operate the sites. This is not out of the ordinary, as elections officials took similar action during the 2020 election in order to accommodate expected larger crowds for a highly-contested Presidential election while also provide more social distancing amid the COVID pandemic, something that elections board member Dwight Williams Jr. noted during Tuesday’s meeting. At that time, Williams noted, the old Badcock Furniture building off Southeast Boulevard in Clinton was used as one of five established early voting sites in Sampson County, which served the county well. This time around, the Sampson County Agri-Expo Center is being considered as a potential hub for voters from all Clinton precincts to cast their votes. When Tuesday’s meeting began, Sampson County Board of Elections Chairwoman Sherri White-Williamson immediately it up for public comment as part of the hearing. There was initially some confusion on the proposal on the table prior to Williams and others stepping in to clear things up a bit. Larry Sutton, the first to speak, said he had general thoughts concerning a potential consolidation, but had attended hoping to hear the board speak to the issue and give reasons surrounding a possible action. “I believe that voting should be free, fair and easy,” said Sutton. “The ‘easy’ part I want to emphasis a great deal. There shouldn’t be a burden on the voters to cast their vote. I hope that by merging the precincts, it would not present a burden on any voter to cast his or her vote. And, also, I hope that this will not create confusion among the electorate … not knowing where I go to vote. That, to me, is a form of suppression of the vote. I also hope this will not create longer lines when exercising the right to vote.” Alluding to what the board ultimately meant to be the actual proposal on the table, Sutton proposed the possibility of one “voting area” where multiple precincts would be permitted to vote at one facility — “however let’s make sure that one facility is accessible, won’t produce long wait times and won’t cause confusion on where one is to vote,” Sutton pointed out. After Sutton’s comments, Williams stepped in to offer a summation of what was actually being considered, which was welcomed among Sutton and others who were signed up to speak. “Let’s be very specific about what we’re talking about doing — we’re not consolidating precincts,” said Williams. “We do not have that authority to merge (precincts). That’s completely on census data and statutes. What we’re talking about doing is consolidating voting places, which is one of the things I believe Mr. Sutton, you said that you favored.” Williams mentioned the “good response” received from the use of Badcock building back in 2020. “We used that facility for 17 days (of early voting),” said Williams. “It was not used for election day, which became confusing to a lot of citizens in the county. But during those 17 days of one-stop voting in the county, somewhere around 52% of all the votes cast in Sampson County — city, county, all votes cast — were cast at the Badcock center during those 17 days. “Obviously, it was a good thing, and welcomed by the citizens of the county,” he continued. “So, we’re not talking about precincts. We are talking about consolidating voting places, much in the fashion that was done at the Badcock center. But now, we are very well assured that we can use one of the city’s voting places, the civic center, and that it would be available not only for (the entirety of early voting) but also on election day. For seven precincts, they would have the exact same voting place for the one-stop voting and also for election day, which should clear up a lot of confusion.” Currently the listed seven precinct polling sites in Clinton are: • Clinton Central — Clinton City Hall Auditorium • Clinton East — Sampson Agri-Expo Center • Clinton Northeast — Sampson County Adult Day Care Center • Clinton Southwest — Clinton Fire Station • Clinton West — Sampson Community College • Kitty Fork — N.C. National Guard Armory • Rowan — Rowan Community Building Elections director Niya Rayner said the consolidation to the Agri-Expo Center would alleviate some of the questions from voters looking for their precincts. Often, voters will inundate the Board of Elections with questions on where specific sites are located. “What the public does not see is when we get a lot of people going to our office to ask where (Clinton polling sites are located),” said Rayner. “But everybody seems to know the focal point of the Expo Center. That way we have one place instead of all of these places.” Geographically, Williams said all of the seven existing polling sites in Clinton are located within about a 2-mile diameter. Consolidating those into a centrally-located voting area would be ideal, he noted. “It has wonderful parking, lots of access in-site, so if lines do develop, which they do, the lines will be indoors and it has some degree of comfort and ample restroom facilities,” said Williams. “The Badcock building just worked so well, it seemed to be the logical conclusion to press toward using the civic center. “And if you can put seven voting places into one voting place, we reduce the number of people required to make that function from about 48 down to about 16 or 18 — a considerably lot less folks,” said Williams. “We will have one location; everybody in those seven precincts will come cast their ballots and those voting machines are easily-programmed to keep track of all the necessary information to account for the ballots by precinct. Functionally, it’s no different than it was with the Badcock building two years ago.” Staffing has definitely been an issue over the last two election cycles, White-Williamson noted, saying those personnel who “ready and willing to work” at polling sites. “That has become a big struggle,” said elections board member Coley Michael Warren. “That is a huge issue for the board — people dropping out at the last minute, dropping out the day of, dropping out two days into the cycle,” said White-Williamson. “It’s been very difficult to keep a good group of folks who are working at these precincts. This action would certainly solve a lot of issues that the board has seen.” Warren said having one area would severely reduce confusion. Voters are already in the system based on their address, so poll workers know which ballot they are to receive. Knowing where to cast it should be the least of a voter’s worries, he said. Elections board member Danny Jackson reiterated that it was polling places, not precincts. Clinton precinct chairs would remain as such. White-Williamson noted that the Sampson Board of Elections would also not be the final determining body on the polling site combination. That action would be a local recommendation to the N.C. State Board of Elections, which would ensure the measure is in line with state law. Williams said he felt that the civic center would serve to assuage Sutton’s concerns and fulfill the standards Sutton laid out for easy voting. Jackson pointed to the issues election officials have dealt with specifically at the Kitty Fork precinct — Sutton noted it was his home precinct — and how much that voting site has moved around in recent years, from the armory, to a mobile unit, to Star Telephone to Farm Bureau Insurance. “It wasn’t the most ideal,” said Jackson. “This (proposal) will hopefully alleviate that.” Williams said the largest impact of a consolidation would likely be to the Kitty Fork and Rowan precincts. He inquired as to the impact to Sutton personally. He said having the Expo Center as the polling site “should become the norm.” “Not Star, Not Farm Bureau and not here and there each year, because that’s very confusing,” said Sutton. “I’m pretty sure we’ve lost some voters behind that changing at Kitty Fork. It became confusing to me, and I know other folks were confused as well.” “I was on the board, and it was confusing to me,” Jackson stated. Williams said elections officials have been assured that the Expo Center, a county-owned building, should be available to serve as a polling site “for the foreseeable future.” In response to another question, Rayner said savings would be realized in reduced staffing — estimated at about $2,000 — as well as the lack of community donation funds the board regularly earmarks to reserve and use existing community sites. However, Rayner said some of that savings may need to be used to pay poll workers more as they will be handling more volume. Ed Gillim, another speaker during the public hearing, thanked election officials for clearing up confusion. “The only thing I’m concerned about right now is communication and advertisement,” said Gillim. “Let’s make sure these people in these precincts have this knowledge. I’m thinking about the person who has been voting in one place for years and years and years and now all of a sudden they have to go to the civic center — which is a convenience — but let’s make sure they know and we get that information out there.” Jackson noted mailers that will be sent out if the move is approved. He did note that any approval would not affect the upcoming municipal election in November 2023, filing for which would take place in July. Warren said he was ready to vote on the polling site consolidation, but cited initial confusion on the matter as a reason to hold off. “Would it behoove us — we’ve got some time on this — to let the news get out and see what happens in the next 30 days as response back to us? Hopefully, it’s positive, as we’ve cleared up some things.” Warren made a motion to table the issue until the board’s next scheduled regular meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 21, at 10 a.m. Editor Chris Berendt can be reached at 910-592-8137 ext. 2587.
- [Patrons at a Kentucky restaurant outraged at video they believe showed Breonna Taylor's killing](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/patrons-at-a-kentucky-restaurant-outraged-at-video-they-believe-showed-breonna-taylors-killing/) - Diners at a Kentucky restaurant were outraged to see and hear what they believe was video footage showing the killing of Breonna Taylor at an event featuring John Mattingly, one of the officers involved in the 2020 raid, according to the local NAACP chapter and witnesses.Patrons weren't informed that a GOP women's club was hosting the event at a Greek restaurant in Bowling Green on Tuesday evening and may have been exposed to graphic depictions of the raid that led to Taylor's death, the Bowling Green-Warren County Branch of the NAACP said.Two patrons tell CNN they heard audio clips of gunshots, sirens and general commotion while they sat at their dimly lit tables, but neither could say for certain whether these were videos of Taylor's death.Cayce Johnson tells CNN when she first walked into the restaurant she could see and hear the event upstairs, hosted by the Republican Women's Club of South Central Kentucky."They had a sound system. It was being broadcast throughout the whole restaurant," she said. "We could hear every word. And when the lady introduced John Mattingly, my jaw dropped."Mattingly was the first officer to enter Taylor's apartment on March 13, 2020, after Louisville police executing a search warrant used a battering ram to break the door down.Believing the police were intruders, Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker III, fired one shot when officers broke through the door, CNN previously reported.Mattingly suffered a gunshot wound to the leg, and Taylor was killed when the officers returned fire. Mattingly was never charged in connection with the incident and retired after he was put on administrative leave.The only officer charged in the botched raid, Brett Hankison, was acquitted of wanton endangerment charges in March.Mattingly has always defended his actions in the fatal exchange. CNN has reached out to Mattingly for comment regarding the incident at the restaurant this week and has not received a response."He went through everything, talked about the investigation and then played several tapes during his presentation," Johnson tells CNN.Another patron, Katelyn Jones, tells CNN she was unable to see what was happening upstairs, but the sound of police radio chatter, sirens and gunshots made it hard for her family to even carry out a conversation."Towards the end of our meal, the lights shut off and we heard police radio chatter and sirens on a recording. We heard the gunshots, too, and it was so loud and chaotic. It was really loud," she explained.Jones tells CNN that when her family showed their displeasure at the loud recording, the people attending the event upstairs started to shush them. Some men stared down at them with a "sour look on their faces," she said. Pictures shown on the restaurant's website appear to show the upper seating level of the restaurant as a mezzanine, partially visible from the lower level.Both patrons believed a video was playing based on the low lighting in the restaurant."These patrons had to see and listen to graphic descriptions of the incident which killed Breonna Taylor because Mattingly was provided video equipment, a microphone, and a speaker and was able to be heard throughout the restaurant," the NAACP said."It is beyond reprehensible to subject anyone, let alone children and customers of African American descent, to such indecent exposure, graphic and upsetting images while they were attempting to enjoy their meal."A number obtained from public phone records for the Greek restaurant where the event was held appeared to be disconnected. CNN has reached out to the restaurant through an online form but has yet to receive a response.CNN has also reached out to the Republican Women's Club of South Central Kentucky for comment. Prior to the event, the Republican Women's Club said in a statement that it invited Mattingly to speak at the event "to obtain a firsthand account" of the raid that resulted in Taylor's death."These events may be controversial, however, we believe Sgt. Mattingly has the right to share his experience," the group said in a statement to Spectrum News in Louisville. "Other individuals with firsthand experience relating to this case are welcome to request an opportunity to speak to our organization as well."Regarding the women's group, Johnson said, "They have had no accountability in this. They took their Facebook page down and are just laying low.""They need to apologize first and foremost and they need to apologize to Breonna Taylor's family," Johnson said."I want accountability from this group," she continued. "They give powerful people platforms and they need to explain to the community and Breonna Taylor's family why they gave him [Mattingly] a platform."The NAACP said the event featuring Mattingly was canceled at its original venue due to its "controversial" nature but went ahead as planned at the Greek restaurant on the same night. The NAACP did not provide further information about the supposed cancellation from what it said was the "original venue."Protests over plans to stage the event featuring Mattingly also took place in Bowling Green Tuesday, according to reporting from CNN affiliates WBKO and WNKY.CNN has reached out to Louisville police for comment on the reported use of video footage showing the killing of Taylor at the Kentucky restaurant.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
- [Group showed footage of fatal Breonna Taylor raid at restaurant event, diners say](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/group-showed-footage-of-fatal-breonna-taylor-raid-at-restaurant-event-diners-say/) - Body-camera footage and images of the night Breonna Taylor was killed in 2020 were shown in front of diners at a Kentucky restaurant this week during an event in which a GOP women’s group hosted one of the officers who fired into Taylor’s apartment, according to an NAACP chapter and accounts from patrons.The Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky held a dinner event Tuesday at Anna’s Greek Restaurant in Bowling Green, Ky., for Jonathan Mattingly, a former sergeant with the Louisville Metro Police Department who was among the officers who conducted the botched no-knock raid at Taylor’s Louisville apartment in search of her ex-boyfriend. Mattingly, who was one of the officers who fired into the 26-year-old Black woman’s apartment the night she died, was cleared of wrongdoing in an internal police investigation and retired in 2021 to become a conservative author and pundit.Cayce Johnson, a Bowling Green resident who was dining at Anna’s on Tuesday, told The Washington Post that after Mattingly was introduced with “raucous applause” from the event’s attendees one floor above them, the former sergeant played a presentation featuring footage and images of the night Taylor was killed. After the lights were dimmed in the restaurant, diners who were not affiliated with the event could hear and see the graphic descriptions of Taylor’s killing, Johnson said.“You could hear the gunshots in the footage,” Johnson, 34, said Saturday. “Our dinner was completely hijacked. We couldn’t hear ourselves at that point.” She added, “It makes me nauseous to think about now.”Katelyn Jones, another Bowling Green resident dining at Anna’s, recounted her frustration in a Facebook post about how the group was featuring “one of the cops that killed Breonna Taylor there and had some kind of loud, tribute/ rally to support him while we were eating.”“It was extremely disrespectful disturbing and loud,” she wrote of the footage of the gunshots. “It was so loud and nobody wants to hear or see police footage, especially of the murder of an innocent Black woman while they are trying to enjoy their meal.”Death penalty dropped for man charged in botched no-knock raidRepresentatives with the Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky did not immediately respond to The Washington Post’s requests for comment early Saturday. The GOP group’s Facebook page was inaccessible Saturday morning. Before the event, the group said in a statement to Spectrum News in Louisville this week that it had invited Mattingly to speak at its event “to obtain a firsthand account” of what happened the night Taylor was killed.“These events may be controversial, however, we believe Sgt. Mattingly has the right to share his experience,” the group said in a statement to Spectrum. “Other individuals with firsthand experience relating to this case are welcome to request an opportunity to speak to our organization as well.”Mattingly, who did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment Saturday morning, wrote on Facebook that he enjoyed his time at the event, saying, “Food was amazing and staff was even better!” After Jones replied to his post by thanking him “for ruining my family’s and everyone else’s dinner,” Mattingly offered to pay for her family’s dinner and said he meant no harm in his presentation.“That was not the intent,” he wrote on Facebook.Anna’s Greek Restaurant did not immediately respond to The Post’s email or voice mail requesting comment Saturday morning. Its Facebook page also was inaccessible early Saturday. No one answered a phone call to a number listed for Vilson Qehaja, who is listed in state records as the business owner.The event was moved to Anna’s after it was scheduled to be held at Bowling Green Country Club, which had declined to host it “upon being made aware of the guest speaker,” reported the Louisville Courier-Journal. It was also going to feature an appearance by Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles, a 2023 gubernatorial candidate in the state’s Republican primary. But the candidate backed out due to what his office described as “the controversial nature of another speaker at this event,” according to Spectrum News.The GOP group’s event at the Greek restaurant has been met with backlash, including from the Bowling Green-Warren County chapter of the NAACP.“It is beyond reprehensible to subject anyone, let alone children and customers of African American descent, to such indecent exposure, graphic and upsetting images while they were attempting to enjoy their meal,” Ryan Dearbone, president of the NAACP chapter, said in a statement Thursday. “Such disturbing occurrences must not be tolerated especially in places of public accommodation. At a minimum, these acts are devoid of humanity and violate the most fundamental principles of human decency.”The Bowling Green-Warren County NAACP addresses the incidents which took place at an event held featuring former LMPD Officer Jonathan Mattingly at Anna’s Greek Restaurant on Tuesday, January 17, 2023. pic.twitter.com/2Vqj9W7wkI— BG-Warren Co. NAACP (@naacp_bgwc) January 19, 2023 Tuesday night was shaping up to be a fun one for Johnson, who had made a reservation for eight people at Anna’s to welcome back some friends. Johnson said she caught part of a report about how Mattingly would be speaking somewhere, but thought nothing of it.“I didn’t catch the location,” she said. “I had no idea it was happening in my town, put on by people in the community.”Johnson and her party noticed a buffet event was being held upstairs for an estimated 80 people. They thought it was funny and weird that the event was raffling off a chocolate cake, she said. But after a woman at the event made a joke about covid-19 over the sound system blaring throughout the restaurant, Johnson wondered what kind of an event was happening.It didn’t take long for her and her group to realize Mattingly was the guest of honor and what he was talking about: March 13, 2020, and the no-knock raid that killed Taylor. Johnson’s party, which featured two people of color and a veteran with PTSD, were rocked by what they were hearing and seeing.“We were just sick and in shock, and we didn’t know what to do,” Johnson told The Post.Johnson said she and her party found Qehaja, the owner of Anna’s, and expressed their concerns about how their dinner was disrupted by what was supposed to be a private event. Cellphone footage obtained by The Post shows a man, whom Johnson identified as Qehaja, shrugging his shoulders in response to their concerns.Cellphone footage obtained by The Post shows a man, whom Cayce Johnson identified as Vilson Qehaja, shrugging his shoulders in response to their concerns. (Video: Cayce Johnson)“I have no idea what’s happening,” the man replies.Johnson’s group specifies that the event featured gunshots from Taylor’s killing, then the man responds, “I have nothing to do with that.” At one point in the video, loud bangs from the presentation can be heard in the background.After another member of Johnson’s party asked whether he knew it was Mattingly speaking in his restaurant, the man in the video addressed the question with an unrelated question: “You’re being served, right?”Four officers involved in Breonna Taylor’s killing face federal chargesThe event from the GOP women’s group came five months after the Justice Department filed federal civil rights charges against four former Louisville police officers in Taylor’s killing. Former detectives Brett Hankison, Joshua Jaynes and Kelly Goodlett and former sergeant Kyle Meany face the first federal counts stemming from Taylor’s death, amid mounting anger from civil rights activists and Taylor’s family.In the four days since the dinner, Johnson said it has been hard for her or any of her friends to sleep after hearing the gunshots that killed Taylor over what was expected to be a nice night out.“The GOP women’s group should apologize to Breonna Taylor’s family and the people who were present that night and subjected to that,” Johnson said. “Why they wanted to give Jonathan Mattingly of all people a platform to speak about Breonna Taylor, I don’t know. It’s disgusting.”
- [Marjorie Taylor Greene Pushes 'How To Steal An Election' Conspiracy Video - Newsweek](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/marjorie-taylor-greene-pushes-how-to-steal-an-election-conspiracy-video-newsweek/) - Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has shared a video to Twitter that argues that the 2020 presidential election was stolen through a combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and voter fraud.Greene, who was recently appointed to serve on the powerful House of Representatives' Oversight Committee, shared the video entitled "How to steal an election" on Saturday morning.In just over a minute, a narrator alleges a vast conspiracy to steal the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump involving the media, "Big Tech," the Democratic Party and others, with a particular focus on President Joe Biden.Former President Trump and his allies have long made unfounded claims that the election was "stolen" from him through mass voter fraud and other irregularities, but these claims have been consistently rejected by election officials from both parties and by the courts.The video Greene shared is not new and has been available online since at least September, 2021 at screencast-o-matic.com, a website for creating and editing videos.At the beginning of the video, the narrator says: "Start with a virus imported into America," referring to the COVID-19 pandemic that struck the U.S. beginning in the early months of 2020.The video then goes on to suggest that COVID-19 was used to "blame the president. Keep blaming. Blame some more" and then mentions the lockdowns of small businesses as the narrator says "Kill the economy.""Push mail-in voting. Stoke a race war. Call for riots," he adds.When mail-in voting is mentioned, there's a brief clip from John Carpenter's 1988 movie They Live, a cult classic where aliens and their human collaborators secretly rule the world. Footage of a burning car features when the voiceover mentions riots. The video then turns to Biden, initially showing former Democratic Representative Tulsi Gabbard - who has since left the party - and says "Pick a candidate. No, not her."Gabbard sought the Democratic presidential nomination for 2020 but performed poorly in polls, dropping out in March of that year and endorsing Biden.The video goes on to suggest that polls showing Biden ahead of Trump were manipulated, that software designed to steal elections was installed in voting machines in swing states and that ballot boxes were stuffed with extra ballots to the benefit of the president."Get media to say it's over. Call the Big Tech guys. Ban anyone who notices," the narrator says as an image of a suspended Twitter account is shown. "Act like the whole thing never happened. Stealing the most powerful republic in the world? It's that easy."More than 50 lawsuits brought by former President Trump and his allies challenging the results of the 2020 election were dismissed by state and federal courts by January, 2021, according to a Reuters fact check.On November 12, 2020, U.S. election security officials issued a joint statement saying that the election "was the most secure in American history.""There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised," the statement said.Newsweek has asked Marjorie Taylor Greene's office for comment. U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) addresses supporters during a primary election watch party on May 24, 2022 in Rome, Georgia. Greene shared a video to Twitter on Saturday alleging the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Jessica McGowan/Getty Images
- [Here's what we know: Republican, independent voter registration rises in Oklahoma](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/heres-what-we-know-republican-independent-voter-registration-rises-in-oklahoma/) - Republican and independent registration has continued to grow in Oklahoma, according to new voter statistics that show Democratic registration has slipped below 30%.The new numbers, released by the Oklahoma State Election Board, show a slight increase from January 2022 in registration, after culling the rolls for duplicate and inactive registrations.They also reflect the impact of redrawing the congressional district boundaries in 2021.Here are five things to know about the latest registration figures.Statewide registration growsThe number of registered voters in Oklahoma as of Jan. 15 was 2,225,086, up from 2,218,374 on Jan. 15, 2022. That is up from just over 2 million in 2018, but down from 2,272,252 in 2021.According to the Federal Register, Oklahoma’s voting-age population in 2021 ― the latest year available — was 3,025,109, meaning about one-quarter of eligible residents are not registered to vote.Republican, independent shares riseRepublicans made up 51.9% of registered voters this month, up from 50% last year, while the independent share rose to 17.7% from 17%. Democratic registration fell to 29.5%, from 31%. Libertarian registration remained below 1%.Ten years ago, in January 2013, Democrats comprised 45% of registered voters, while Republicans were 42% and independents were 12%.Republican registration first crossed the 50% mark in Oklahoma before the 2020 elections. Before that, the last time a majority of voters belonged to one party before a presidential election was Nov. 1, 2004, when Democrats made up 51.3% of registered voters.Registered Republicans outnumbered Democrats in Oklahoma for the first time in 2015, when the January statistics showed Republicans with 43.6% and Democrats with 43.5%.Oklahoma voters have favored Republican presidential and gubernatorial candidates even when Democrats led in registration. A Democratic presidential candidate hasn’t carried Oklahoma since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, and no Democrat has won a single county since Al Gore in 2000. Four Republicans were elected governor — three won twice — in the time that Democrats held the advantage in registration.In the short time that Republicans have held the advantage, Republican Kevin Stitt has twice won gubernatorial elections easily over the Democratic nominee.Congressional district changesThe Oklahoma Legislature redrew the boundaries for congressional and state legislative districts last year to conform to the 2020 census numbers. Each of the five congressional districts now has about 792,000 residents. All are represented by Republicans.The biggest change in registration by party came in the 5th District, which was composed of most of Oklahoma County and Pottawatomie and Seminole counties for the 2020 elections. Then, Republicans had a registration edge of 43% to 36% over Democrats. Democrat Kendra Horn won the district in 2018, but lost to Republican Stephanie Bice in 2020. Republicans redrew the lines in 2021 to add more rural areas around Oklahoma County and gave the 5th District parts of heavily Republican Canadian County. Now the 5th District registration edge is 49% to 31% for Republicans, according to the new figures.The 3rd District seat, held by Republican Rep. Frank Lucas, picked up Democratic parts of Oklahoma City, and though the partisan gap narrowed some, Republicans still have a 30-point advantage in the district, which includes much of western Oklahoma. It is the most heavily Republican district, with 56% of voters registered as GOP.More:Oklahoma Republicans gave party a double-digit registration edge in all five districtsCounty changesOnly Coal County has more Democratic than Republican voters, according to the new figures. In January 2022, Democrats outnumbered Republicans in Cherokee, Coal, Harmon, Latimer, McIntosh, Muskogee and Pushmataha counties, all in the eastern part of the state.In Oklahoma County, the state’s largest, Republicans have a 42% to 36% edge over Democrats among the 432,291 registered voters. Independents comprise 21% of registered voters in Oklahoma County.Since 2018, the percentage of independents in the county has grown the most, rising from 17%. The Republican share has grown by three points since 2018, while the Democratic percentage has dropped two points.Oklahoma County was one of three won by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Joy Hofmeister last year. Tulsa and Cleveland counties were the other two. Changes to the rollsThe routine voter list maintenance at the Oklahoma State Election Board this month removed 2,855 duplicate voter registrations and 83,719 inactive voter registrations from Oklahoma’s voter rolls.“The removal of inactive and duplicate voter registrations is a thorough, multi-step process the State Election Board is required by law to conduct every two years following a General Election,” according to the board.“Duplicate registrations that were deleted matched newer registrations by the same person at a new address. Inactive registrations that were removed were for voters who failed to confirm their address in 2019 and then had no voter activity through the 2022 General Election.”
- [Patrons at Kentucky restaurant outraged at video they believe showed Breonna Taylor's killing](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/patrons-at-kentucky-restaurant-outraged-at-video-they-believe-showed-breonna-taylors-killing/) - CNN — Diners at a Kentucky restaurant were outraged to see and hear what they believe was video footage showing the killing of Breonna Taylor at an event featuring John Mattingly, one of the officers involved in the 2020 raid, according to the local NAACP chapter and witnesses. Patrons weren’t informed that a GOP women’s club was hosting the event at a Greek restaurant in Bowling Green on Tuesday evening and may have been exposed to graphic depictions of the raid that led to Taylor’s death, the Bowling Green-Warren County Branch of the NAACP said. Two patrons tell CNN they heard audio clips of gunshots, sirens and general commotion while they sat at their dimly lit tables, but neither could say for certain whether these were videos of Taylor’s death. Cayce Johnson tells CNN when she first walked into the restaurant she could see and hear the event upstairs, hosted by the Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky. “They had a sound system. It was being broadcast throughout the whole restaurant,” she said. “We could hear every word. And when the lady introduced John Mattingly, my jaw dropped.” Mattingly was the first officer to enter Taylor’s apartment on March 13, 2020, after Louisville police executing a search warrant used a battering ram to break the door down. Believing the police were intruders, Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker III, fired one shot when officers broke through the door, CNN previously reported. Mattingly suffered a gunshot wound to the leg, and Taylor was killed when the officers returned fire. Mattingly was never charged in connection with the incident and retired after he was put on administrative leave. The only officer charged in the botched raid, Brett Hankison, was acquitted of wanton endangerment charges in March. Mattingly has always defended his actions in the fatal exchange. CNN has reached out to Mattingly for comment regarding the incident at the restaurant this week and has not received a response. “He went through everything, talked about the investigation and then played several tapes during his presentation,” Johnson tells CNN. Another patron, Katelyn Jones, tells CNN she was unable to see what was happening upstairs, but the sound of police radio chatter, sirens and gunshots made it hard for her family to even carry out a conversation. “Towards the end of our meal, the lights shut off and we heard police radio chatter and sirens on a recording. We heard the gunshots, too, and it was so loud and chaotic. It was really loud,” she explained. Jones tells CNN that when her family showed their displeasure at the loud recording, the people attending the event upstairs started to shush them. Some men stared down at them with a “sour look on their faces,” she said. Pictures shown on the restaurant’s website appear to show the upper seating level of the restaurant as a mezzanine, partially visible from the lower level. Both patrons believed a video was playing based on the low lighting in the restaurant. “These patrons had to see and listen to graphic descriptions of the incident which killed Breonna Taylor because Mattingly was provided video equipment, a microphone, and a speaker and was able to be heard throughout the restaurant,” the NAACP said. “It is beyond reprehensible to subject anyone, let alone children and customers of African American descent, to such indecent exposure, graphic and upsetting images while they were attempting to enjoy their meal.” A number obtained from public phone records for the Greek restaurant where the event was held appeared to be disconnected. CNN has reached out to the restaurant through an online form but has yet to receive a response. CNN has also reached out to the Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky for comment. Prior to the event, the Republican Women’s Club said in a statement that it invited Mattingly to speak at the event “to obtain a firsthand account” of the raid that resulted in Taylor’s death. “These events may be controversial, however, we believe Sgt. Mattingly has the right to share his experience,” the group said in a statement to Spectrum News in Louisville. “Other individuals with firsthand experience relating to this case are welcome to request an opportunity to speak to our organization as well.” Regarding the women’s group, Johnson said, “They have had no accountability in this. They took their Facebook page down and are just laying low.” “They need to apologize first and foremost and they need to apologize to Breonna Taylor’s family,” Johnson said. “I want accountability from this group,” she continued. “They give powerful people platforms and they need to explain to the community and Breonna Taylor’s family why they gave him [Mattingly] a platform.” The NAACP said the event featuring Mattingly was canceled at its original venue due to its “controversial” nature but went ahead as planned at the Greek restaurant on the same night. The NAACP did not provide further information about the supposed cancellation from what it said was the “original venue.” Protests over plans to stage the event featuring Mattingly also took place in Bowling Green Tuesday, according to reporting from CNN affiliates WBKO and WNKY. CNN has reached out to Louisville police for comment on the reported use of video footage showing the killing of Taylor at the Kentucky restaurant. CNN’s Zenebou Sylla and Kiely Westhoff contributed to this report
- [Capito pleased the electoral reform act now law](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/capito-pleased-the-electoral-reform-act-now-law/) - A bill that Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., championed is now law, and she praised the bipartisan effort to get the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act through.The act will reform and modernize the outdated Electoral Count Act of 1887, ensuring the electoral votes tallied by Congress accurately reflect each state’s vote for president, as well as promote a peaceful transition of power between the outgoing and incoming president.“I am a firm supporter of our electoral system, which allows states to administer elections based on the tailored needs of their populations,” Capito said in a statement Thursday. “The federal government should not be tasked with adjudicating lawfully cast votes, which is why I proudly introduced this legislation and provided support as a member of the Senate Rules Committee. I am thrilled to see this bill become law and reaffirm each state’s rightful responsibility to administer their elections, help deter bad faith decertification efforts on both sides of the aisle, and provide the common-sense solutions we need.”Capito said that in developing the bills, she and her colleagues received input from state election officials as well as from an ideologically diverse group of election experts and legal scholars, including the American Law Institute.Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., nine other Democratic senators and nine other GOP senators co-sponsored the bills.“I am pleased that bipartisan support for this critical legislation continues to grow,” Manchin said when the bills were developed. “From the beginning, our bipartisan group has shared a vision of drafting legislation to fix the flaws of the archaic and ambiguous Electoral Count Act of 1887, and today’s announcement marks a significant step in the right direction. I encourage all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support these much-needed, commonsense reforms, and we will continue our bipartisan efforts to get the bill signed into law.”Changes were pursued after the 2020 election and subsequent partisan battles over the electoral count as well as the less than smooth process of the transition of power before Pres. Joe Biden was sworn in as President in January 2021.The Electoral Count Reform Act will reform and modernize the outdated Electoral Count Act of 1887 to ensure that electoral votes tallied by Congress accurately reflect each state’s vote for President.Capito said it will replace ambiguous provisions of the 19th-century law with clear procedures that maintain appropriate state and federal roles in selecting the President and Vice President of the United States as set forth in the U.S. Constitution.A “single, conclusive slate of electors from each state” will result with the specific procedures from the act in place.It also affirms that the constitutional role of the Vice President, as the presiding officer of the joint meeting of Congress, is “solely ministerial and that he or she does not have any power to solely determine, accept, reject, or otherwise adjudicate disputes over electors.”That was another issue that surfaced on Jan. 6, 2021, when then Vice President Mike Spence rightly refused to intervene in the electoral count.Other provisions include:• A Higher Objection Threshold, which raises the threshold to lodge an objection to electors to at least one-fifth of the duly chosen and sworn members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. This change would reduce the likelihood of frivolous objections by ensuring that objections are broadly supported. Currently, only a single member of both chambers is needed to object to an elector or slate of electors. • A Protection of Each State’s Popular Vote that stikes a provision of an archaic 1845 law that could be used by state legislatures to override the popular vote in their states by declaring a “failed election” – a term that is not defined in the law. Instead, this legislation specifies that a state could move its presidential election day, which otherwise would remain the Tuesday immediately following the first Monday in November every four years, only if necessitated by “extraordinary and catastrophic” events.The Presidential Transition Improvement Act will help to promote the orderly transfer of power by providing clear guidelines for when eligible candidates for President or Vice President may receive federal resources to support their transition into office.
- [Trump endorses DePerno in race for Michigan Republican Party chair - Detroit Free Press](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/trump-endorses-deperno-in-race-for-michigan-republican-party-chair-detroit-free-press/) - LANSING — Former President Donald Trump endorsed Kalamazoo attorney Matt DePerno on Friday in the race for chairman of the Michigan Republican Party.DePerno lost the 2022 attorney general election to incumbent Attorney General Dana Nessel by nearly 9 points. Trump had also endorsed DePerno in that race."Republicans in Michigan must unite and work together if they want to save Michigan," which has fallen into the hands of "radical Democrats," Trump said in a news release. "We must start by supporting Matt DePerno for chairman of the Michigan Republican Party. He is the only candidate running who can get the job done!"Eleven candidates are running to succeed Ann Arbor businessman Ron Weiser, who is not seeking another term. The party has suffered recent election setbacks and is facing a fund-raising shortfall as Democrats hold the governor's office and majorities in both the state House and Senate for the first time in 40 years. Democratic nominees also hold a majority on the Michigan Supreme Court.The choice is to be made at the GOP state party convention, held Feb. 17 and 18 in Lansing.More:Here's who's running to be the next Michigan GOP chairMore:Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel faces GOP challenger Matthew DePerno: What to knowAlso running for Michigan Republican Party chair is Kristina Karamo. Like DePerno, she has made unsupported claims that fraud affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. She was endorsed by Trump in her unsuccessful bid for secretary of state in 2022.DePerno was the lawyer behind an Antrim County lawsuit that served as a vehicle to advance conspiracy theories about voting machines used in the 2020 presidential election. He is currently under criminal investigation for allegedly orchestrating an effort to gain unauthorized access to voting machines in Michigan in the wake of the 2020 election."He is the only candidate who has a proven background on election integrity, fundraising, party unity, and has my complete trust," said Trump, who has announced he is running for president in 2024.Also running for party chair are Scott Aughney, Kent Boersema, Drew Born, Lena Epstein, Mike Farage, Mark Forton, JD Glaser, Scott Greenlee, and Billy Putman.
- [Despite Red Flags, G.O.P. Backed Candidate Now Charged in Shootings](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/despite-red-flags-g-o-p-backed-candidate-now-charged-in-shootings/) - “We could have picked apart this guy,” one Republican leader in New Mexico said of Solomon Peña, who is accused of organizing attacks on the homes of four Democratic officials.ALBUQUERQUE — The former Republican candidate accused of targeting the homes of Democrats in drive-by shootings had routinely called for locking up 2020 election officials in Guantánamo Bay. He promoted conspiracy theories about solar power, feminism and “the demonic theories of the Globalist Elites.” He had been demoted twice by the U.S. Navy and served nearly seven years in prison for burglary.Yet powerful party leaders in New Mexico not only gave the first-time candidate, Solomon Peña, 39, full-throated endorsements, they also opened their checkbooks to fund his race for a state legislative seat in central Albuquerque long held by Democrats. Some knew about his prison record but said they felt that he had turned his life around. Local and state authorities now say they are investigating whether drug money helped fund his campaign.“He came across to me as a very respectful, thoughtful young man,” said Harvey Yates, an oilman and former chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party, who donated $5,000 to Mr. Peña’s election effort. Now, Mr. Yates acknowledges that he may have made a mistake. He said that he felt “very bad, very sad” for Mr. Peña, “who I think really had possibilities.”The police say that after losing his race by a landslide in November — he received 26 percent of the vote — and refusing to concede, Mr. Peña organized shootings at the homes of prominent Democrats, including two who certified the election results. The attacks came at a time of growing fears across the country about a trend of political violence, mostly from the right wing, including the attack on the husband of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a conspiracy to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.In New Mexico, the case also highlights the internal struggles among Republicans as election deniers like Mr. Peña — who was in the crowd for President Donald J. Trump’s speech in Washington on Jan. 6, according to videos collected by online sleuths — fill the ranks of candidates seeking elected office. Other Republicans such as Audrey Trujillo, who ran for secretary of state, embraced conspiracy theories about elections, school shootings and Covid-19 vaccines.Many of those election deniers lost in New Mexico, mirroring similar Republican setbacks in other parts of the country. The results helped the state’s Democrats solidify their control of both houses in the state Legislature, the governor’s office and the entire congressional delegation, sparking recriminations over the Republicans’ loss of power.Michael Candelaria, a prominent state Republican who until recently was the party chairman in Valencia County, near Albuquerque, said the Peña case laid bare a dilemma in a state where Democrats have steadily expanded their sway in recent years: how to appeal to some of Mr. Trump’s most ardent supporters, who refused to accept his 2020 re-election defeat, without alienating other voters who reject the lies and conspiracy theories.“You don’t take a group of people whose support you want and tell them, ‘You’re a bunch of crazies,’” Mr. Candelaria said. “You’re going to have some extremists that you have to figure out how to keep their support.”But Mr. Candelaria, who has pushed for leadership changes in the state party, said that Mr. Peña’s arrest showed the risks of promoting such figures. “Had we done some good vetting, we could have picked apart this guy, but no, we don’t do a good job of picking candidates,” he said.It was unclear how much Republican leaders had examined Mr. Peña’s background. Steve Pearce, a former member of Congress who is now chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party, did not respond to requests for comment.Some Republicans are now bracing for more revelations about Mr. Peña, who was arrested on Monday and charged with criminal solicitation, attempted aggravated battery, shooting at an occupied dwelling, shooting from a moving vehicle and conspiracy. The police called him the “mastermind” behind a conspiracy in which four other men were paid to shoot at the homes of two county commissioners and two state legislators, and said that he personally participated in at least one of the shootings.As part of their investigation, Albuquerque police detectives said they were also examining whether Mr. Peña used proceeds from narcotics trafficking to finance his campaign, and whether campaign laws were violated. The New Mexico attorney general’s office will lead the investigation into Mr. Peña’s campaign finances, a spokeswoman for the office said on Friday.The turn in the investigation came after detectives learned through witness interviews that Mr. Peña had identified individuals to funnel contributions from an unknown source into his campaign, according to Gilbert Gallegos, a spokesman for the department. Investigators said they are focusing on José Trujillo, who is also accused in the shootings, and Mr. Trujillo’s mother, Melanie Griego, who are listed as donating a total of $9,150 to Mr. Peña’s campaign.Police arrested Mr. Trujillo on Jan. 3, shortly after the shooting targeting the Albuquerque home of Linda Lopez, a state senator. In the car that Mr. Trujillo was driving, which the police say is owned by Mr. Peña, investigators say they found 893 fentanyl pills and $3,036 in cash, as well as a firearm matching shell casings found at Ms. Lopez’s home.Mr. Peña made his first court appearance on Wednesday and did not enter a plea. Roberta Yurcic, a lawyer representing him, said she couldn’t comment on specific aspects of her client’s background, including his military demotions and work history. “The investigation into the charges against my client is ongoing,” she added. “Mr. Peña has a right to a fair trial.”Javier Martinez, a Democrat whose home was targeted in the attacks after the November election, said that he had “never experienced anything like this before.” Mr. Martinez, who took over this month as New Mexico’s speaker of the House, tied Mr. Peña’s extremism to the election lies voiced by Mr. Trump.“The previous president, I think, really exploited some of those feelings,” Mr. Martinez said. “And we’ve seen it play out in different ways, including the insurrection in Washington, D.C., including this set of events here in our own backyard.”Mr. Peña presented himself as someone on the mend, leading groups in prayer at political meetings and telling neighbors that he did not drink or take drugs. But he made little effort to hide his extreme views. His campaign website denounced “the demonic theories of the Globalist Elites and their foreign counterparts,” called feminism “demonicism,” and said the 2020 election had been rigged against Mr. Trump by “enemy combatants” who “must be placed in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for the remainder of their natural lives.”During his campaign, Mr. Peña highlighted his time as a Navy hospital corpsman assigned to a Marine division in Okinawa, Japan. But promotion data provided by the U.S. Navy’s public affairs office shows that Mr. Peña hardly served with distinction. He was demoted twice during his four years in the service and left the military in 2004 at the lowest possible rank. The Navy was unable to provide the reasons for Mr. Peña’s demotions.Mr. Peña ran on a platform of cracking down on crime, despite his own criminal history. He served nearly seven years in prison in New Mexico on charges including burglary and larceny after being part of a “smash-and-grab” crew that slammed vehicles into retail stores, including a Kmart in Albuquerque, then stole items, according to court records.After being released from prison in 2016, Mr. Peña tried selling cars at a dealership in Albuquerque but lasted less than a month before he was fired for showing up late, court records from a lawsuit filed by Mr. Peña in 2017 show. (The case was dismissed.) Mr. Peña also enrolled at the University of New Mexico, obtaining a political science degree in 2021, the same year that his voting rights were restored after his prison term.Mr. Peña appears to have run for the Republican nomination for the state legislative seat unopposed. In October, he received an endorsement from the Republican National Hispanic Assembly’s New Mexico chapter. Ronnie Lucero, the chairman of both the group’s national organization and the state chapter, said that he had spoken with Mr. Peña at events during the campaign, and that the candidate had filled out a questionnaire asking about his professional, financial and criminal history before the group endorsed him.The group did not see Mr. Peña’s criminal record as disqualifying, Mr. Lucero said, adding: “At the time that we made the endorsement, there was the impression that he’d got his life together and he’s one of those second-chance stories that would turn out to be something good and positive for the community.“It was a bad decision that we made, and regretfully,” he said. “But we can’t read the future.”When asked about some of the extremist rhetoric on Mr. Peña’s campaign website, Mr. Lucero said that he had not seen the statements — although they were published before the endorsement, according to the Internet Archive — and that they would have given him pause if he had.Some Republican officials defended the apparent lack of vetting before the party establishment put its support behind Mr. Peña, which included defending him when his opponent sought to have him disqualified from the race because of his criminal record, which could potentially have prohibited him from taking office.“The Republican Party did not recruit him,” said Representative Bill Rehm, a Republican state legislator from Albuquerque, adding that he did not think the party establishment should vet candidates. “He, like anyone else, can sign up to run for whatever office.”John Ismay
- [Diners caught off guard by footage related to Breonna Taylor's death aired at a Kentucky restaurant](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/diners-caught-off-guard-by-footage-related-to-breonna-taylors-death-aired-at-a-kentucky-restaurant/) - Michelle Garcia and Emma SánchezJanuary 20, 2023, 4:14 PMDiners at a Greek restaurant in Bowling Green, Kentucky, on Tuesday night were subjected to police body camera footage from the night Breonna Taylor was shot and killed in her Louisville apartment in 2020, according to the local NAACP and restaurant patrons.The Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky scrambled to find a new venue for an event featuring former-Louisville-police-officer-turned-conservative-author-and-pundit John Mattingly after the initial location for its dinner, the Bowling Green Country Club, said it would no longer host the group. Additionally, gubernatorial candidate and Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles backed out of the event because of the mounting controversy around Mattingly’s attendance, according to Spectrum News in Louisville.Mattingly was one of the three police officers who raided Taylor's home and fired shots while searching her apartment for her ex-boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover. He was not in the apartment at the time. Glover was handed a five-year probation sentence in 2021 after he accepted a plea deal from prosecutors for charges related to narcotics.The Tuesday night event took place in the balcony of Anna's Greek Restaurant, while it was still open to patrons unaffiliated with the event. According to the Bowling Green-Warren County NAACP and restaurant patrons' accounts online, the lights went dark, as patrons unaffiliated with the event heard and saw graphic descriptions of the incident that killed Taylor. The audio from that night could be heard throughout the restaurant, through its speaker system.Cayce Johnson, who posted an account of the evening to Facebook, said that restaurant patrons were given no warning the event would take place and that it became so invasive that “we were no longer able to even hear people at our table and barely could see our food.”Johnson told NBC News on Friday that she was not made aware of the event before entering the restaurant. The Bowling Green resident said she heard actual gunshots in the videos and that they showed footage of Taylor’s body.“Words can’t even describe how absolutely disgusting it is, what this group put on, the platform they gave him and what he showed to them,” Johnson said. “These women, they need to be held accountable. Not just Anna’s restaurant but the group themselves that put it on, and at the very least they need to apologize to the people that they offended, to Breonna Taylor’s family and, and the community honestly.”The restaurant did not reply to a voicemail left requesting comment.Prior to the event, the Republican Women’s Club said in a statement that it invited Mattingly to speak at the event “to obtain a firsthand account” of the raid that resulted in Taylor’s death.“These events may be controversial, however, we believe Sgt. Mattingly has the right to share his experience,” the group said in a statement to Spectrum News in Louisville earlier this week. “Other individuals with firsthand experience relating to this case are welcome to request an opportunity to speak to our organization as well.”Stacy Webb, the president of the women’s club, has not responded to a request for comment. The group’s Facebook page has since been deleted.“It is beyond reprehensible to subject anyone, let alone children and customers of African American descent, to such indecent exposure, graphic and upsetting images while they were attempting to enjoy their meal,” Ryan Dearbone, president of the Bowling Green-Warren County NAACP chapter, said in a statement Thursday. “Such disturbing occurrences must not be tolerated especially in places of public accommodation. At a minimum, these acts are devoid of humanity and violate the most fundamental principles of human decency.”CORRECTION (Jan. 20, 2023, 3:45 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misspelled the last name of the Kentucky agriculture commissioner. He is Ryan Quarles, not Quarle.
- [Kentucky GOP Club Blares Footage of Breonna Taylor's Death to People ... - The New Republic](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/20/kentucky-gop-club-blares-footage-of-breonna-taylors-death-to-people-the-new-republic/) - The Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky held an event this week honoring one of the cops in the raid that killed Breonna Taylor.The event took place on Tuesday at Anna’s Greek Restaurant, a well-known local restaurant in Bowling Green, with a dining area and second-floor space where events can be held. There, former Louisville Metro Police Department Sergeant Jonathan Mattingly, one of the officers who conducted the no-knock warrant and raid that killed Taylor in March 2020, reportedly shared photos and blared video footage with gunshot noises.Meanwhile, the restaurant was open to the public at the time of the event. Guests, some of whom had made reservations, were not informed by management about the last-minute event happening upstairs. Guests, including people of color, there for their own dinner plans were then shocked by what appeared to be a bustling event celebrating an officer who was part of the raid that killed a Black woman in her own home.Cayce Johnson, a guest at the restaurant that night, told The New Republic that the lights dimmed in the middle of their meal. “The woman comes back on and introduces Jonathan Mattingly, and everyone just roared upstairs—applause, cheers, and our mouths just dropped.” Sound carried throughout Anna’s, a retro-fitted old church.Johnson said Mattingly took the audience “back to March 2020” before going through the presentation with photos and video footage with the sound of gunshots. “One of the members of our group was a war veteran and he has PTSD, so we were just in extreme shock.”Katelyn Jones, another diner, told TNR the event also included a raffle and jokes about Covid-19. She said the event was initially so loud her father couldn’t hear anything at the table.After realizing the event included Mattingly, Johnson and her friends sought out the restaurant owner, Vilson Qehaja. Qehaja responded to the group’s concerns by literally shrugging his shoulders, according to video footage. “I have no idea what’s happening, so,” he said as the group complained about the presentation on Taylor. “I have nothing to do with that, so.” One of Johnson’s friends said “Do you realize who that is? They killed somebody, a cop. He’s a cop…I made reservations, I came from Kansas City.”“You’re being served, right?” Qehaja responded.Guests say Qehaja later simply turned up the music.“He was drinking his coffee and staring at us raising his eyebrows, kind of intimidating us, like, ‘What are you going to do?’” Johnson said. Qehaja’s behavior mimicked what event attendees upstairs allegedly were doing, as guests claimed men from the audience glared down from the second-floor balcony at restaurant-goers, seeming to warn them not to disrupt their event. An estimated 80 people reportedly attended the event. Since the event, Mattingly has left a glowing review of Anna’s—and gotten into fights with people who say his presence disrupted their dinner. He did not explicitly deny reports of gunshot noises during the presentation.“It is beyond reprehensible to subject anyone, let alone children and customers of African American descent, to such indecent exposure, graphic and upsetting images while they were attempting to enjoy their meal,” said the Bowling Green-Warren County Branch of the NAACP in a statement. “Such disturbing occurrences must not be tolerated especially in places of public accommodation. At a minimum, these acts are devoid of humanity and violate the most fundamental principles of human decency.” TNR reached out to the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department. They had no comment.The event took place despite earlier controversy about Mattingly’s presence. He was originally slated to appear alongside Agriculture Commissioner and Kentucky gubernatorial candidate Ryan Quarles at the Bowling Green Country Club. In a post from their now-removed Facebook page, the Republican Women’s Club said Mattingly was going to “share what really happened during the raid that killed Breonna Taylor, what he saw, and how the media’s narrative has been corrupted and twisted to fit into a false, woke storyline.” After the event garnered attention from the media and local political leaders, Quarles and the Bowling Green Country Club both backed out.Attempts were also made to contact the Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky and its officers, to no avail. Regina Webb, a Republican who ran for the state House of Representatives in 2012, claimed ignorance about the event to TNR. Webb, listed by the secretary of state in 2020 as vice president and director of the women’s Republican club, also said she was not involved in the club.“A lot of people attending are actually people in positions of power in Bowling Green… People are hesitant to put their name out there for fear of retribution,” Johnson said. “They thought that because they were going to secretly and quietly move the event, there would be no one who knew what it was, and no one to call them out.”“We are calling them out.”A federal judge ruled Friday that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis violated the state Constitution and First Amendment when he suspended an elected Democratic state attorney last year, but the court would not step in and overturn that suspension.State Attorney Andrew Warren sued DeSantis in August, two weeks after the governor suspended him for alleged “willful defiance of his duty.” DeSantis cited in particular a joint statement Warren signed with other elected prosecutors the day Roe v. Wade was overturned, stating “our firm belief that prosecutors have a responsibility to refrain from using limited criminal legal system resources to criminalize personal medical decisions,” such as abortion or transgender health care.In his suit, Warren denied explicitly refusing to enforce laws and argued his suspension was political retaliation and a violation of his First Amendment right to free speech. He sought a judge’s order to restore him to office and to bar DeSantis from taking further action against him. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Robert L. Hinkle sided with Warren that his rights had been violated, blasting DeSantis’s argument that the prosecutor had neglected his duty by making blanket promises not to prosecute certain cases.“Mr. Warren’s well-established policy, followed in every case by every prosecutor in the office, was to exercise prosecutorial discretion at every stage of every case. Any reasonable investigation would have confirmed this,” Hinkle wrote in his ruling. In his opinion, there was “not a hint of misconduct by Mr. Warren.”But, the judge said, he was unable to restore Warren to office. He argued that the Eleventh Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which restricts individuals from suing states in federal court, tied his hands.“The Eleventh Amendment prohibits a federal court from awarding … relief of the kind at issue against a state official based only on a violation of state law,” Hinkle said in the ruling.Not only is it frustrating to watch an elected official break the law and still get away with it, it is also worrying that this case will push DeSantis to go further. The Republican—and current favorite to face off against Donald Trump for the GOP presidential nomination—has gone to war with what he calls “trendy ideologies.”He signed Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law and pushed the so-called Stop Woke Act, which restricts certain race-based conversations and analyses in colleges. That bill has been temporarily blocked from being implemented. This week, he banned an A.P. African American studies course in schools.DeSantis getting away with suspending Warren without so much as a slap on the wrist could embolden him to take retaliatory measures against other public officials whom he deems too “woke.”Republican lawmakers in Kansas have introduced a bill that would allow individual cities and counties to ban abortion, directly overriding a vote last year where the majority of state residents chose to protect reproductive rights.Almost 60 percent of Kansans voted in August to keep the right to an abortion in the state Constitution. The result was considered—and turned out to be—a bellwether for the fight for reproductive rights after the fall of Roe v. Wade a few months earlier.But on Thursday, Kansas state Senator Chase Blasi introduced a bill that would allow cities and counties to enact abortion restrictions, arguing he was taking the issue to “a more local level.”NEWS: Kansas lawmakers have introduced a bill that would allow cities + counties to ban abortion -- despite the August referendum where Kansans voted overwhelmingly in favor of protecting abortion rights. pic.twitter.com/VYIj2JEElE— Caroline Kitchener (@CAKitchener) January 20, 2023 Blasi apparently subscribes to the belief “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” If it becomes law, his bill would undermine the voters’ decision from August. “The irony of this bill is too much,” Anamarie Rebori Simmons, spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes, told The New Republic. “The party that tried to remove fundamental protections from the state Constitution didn’t get the outcome they wanted when Kansans overwhelmingly supported abortion access. This is an attempt to blatantly disregard the will of the people. Abortion rights won in a landslide, including in the home county of the bill’s sponsor. Politicians serve as the voice of the people in the legislature, and Republican lawmakers should know better than to silence those they represent.”Kansas allows abortion up to 22 weeks, but the state also has multiple rules aimed at discouraging people from getting abortions, such as requiring patients to receive state-directed counseling and to undergo an ultrasound before getting the procedure. The ultrasound provider must offer the patient the option to see the image.Democratic state Senator Cindy Holscher slammed the bill as an attempt by “extremists” to “find another path” to increase restrictions on abortion and said the measure will likely go to court if it passes.It’s not the only bill attacking reproductive rights: State Senator Mark Steffen also introduced a bill that would ban the prescription via telemedicine of abortion pills or drugs used to induce abortions.Ashley All, a senior advisor for the reproductive freedom nonprofit Families United for Freedom, slammed the Blasi bill’s hypocrisy. “It’s important to remember that the amendment on the ballot in August specifically asked voters’ permission for politicians to further regulate abortion and voters said NO,” she told The New Republic. “These extreme anti-abortion politicians are ignoring the will of Kansas voters and attempting to eliminate our constitutional rights.”Neither bill is likely to become state law. Kansas Governor Laura Kelly supports abortion rights and thus will probably veto them both should they make it to her desk. But the legislation is an indication that the attempts to limit reproductive freedom are only getting more intense.This post has been updated.The Supreme Court has spent months investigating who might have leaked the draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, and the results released Thursday can best be paraphrased as such: “IDK, bro.”The leaked draft last May caused widespread outrage, both in and outside the highest U.S. court. Protesters took to the streets, demanding the justices protect the right to abortion, but Chief Justice John Roberts was more concerned about the sanctity of the court, calling the leak a “betrayal of the confidences of the Court.” He assigned the marshal of the court and her team to investigate the source of the leak.After a months-long investigation, the team announced Thursday it is “unable to identify a person responsible by a preponderance of the evidence.”The court also consulted Michael Chertoff, a former secretary of homeland security, who confirmed the marshal “undertook a thorough investigation.”Except … maybe not so much.The sleuthing that’s gone into identifying the Supreme Court leaker appears a little . . . thin. https://t.co/9WovtbqOb7 pic.twitter.com/a8HsBGOK62— Cristian Farias (@cristianafarias) January 13, 2023 Investigators conducted 126 interviews of 97 court personnel, many of which were reportedly short and not exactly in-depth. Employees were asked to turn over the call and text logs from their personal cell phones, but investigators found “nothing relevant” in the records. Investigators also examined employees’ search histories to see if anyone was essentially stupid enough to Google, “Is it illegal for me to leak a Supreme Court draft opinion?” It appears no one was.Several personnel admitted they had told their partners about the opinion draft, which violates the court’s confidentiality rules. It is unclear whether those staffers will face disciplinary measures and, more importantly, whether their partners were also questioned as potential leakers.What’s more, the marshal’s report doesn’t specify whether any of the justices themselves were questioned, focusing instead on “Court personnel” and “temporary … and permanent employees.”OK, so, I just finished the Marshal's report. It's wild. But, at the end of the day, this is really all that matters: The justices themselves were not asked questions or investigated, per what I gather from the Marshal's report. pic.twitter.com/6Dl29JiE9D— Chris “Subscribe to Law Dork!” Geidner (@chrisgeidner) January 19, 2023 There has been plenty of speculation about who might have leaked the draft and why, but one thing is clear: This investigation was never going to give us those answers.Nearly 500,000 school buses carry 25 million children to school across the country every day. And now America is in a full-swing effort to replace those buses with electric ones, setting the country on the path to cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than five million tons—equivalent to removing one million cars from the road.Though states have begun transitioning buses for years, the nationwide project follows the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which commissioned $5 billion toward the effort to replace old, diesel-fueled buses with new cleaner vehicles. The first round of funding distributed nearly $1 billion to districts in states nationwide, including Washington, D.C., and territories including Puerto Rico and Guam.Such investments not only save millions in emissions and in fuel costs but also correlate to better health and academic outcomes for children: better school attendance, lower rates of asthma, and stronger general respiratory health and cognitive functioning. While electric buses may come at a higher cost at first, the investment pays dividends almost immediately.And districts from coast to coast are reaping the benefits.“Our district’s diesel fuel costs are tremendous,” Heath Oates, superintendent of Missouri’s El Dorado Springs R-II school district, told The Daily Yonder. “My initial estimates show we’re going to save around $200,000 a year, which is the cost of four beginning teachers with benefits.”Pellston Public Schools in Michigan are estimated to save 80 percent in energy use, saving the 461-student district about $33,000 annually. The estimated reduction in maintenance costs is about 60 percent, which would offer another $23,812 in annual savings.Nevada’s Clark County district, which operates the nation’s largest owned-and-operated school bus fleet, with nearly 2,000 buses serving 125,000 students, has just unveiled its first electric model. Just one bus is estimated to save $60 a day in fuel costs—scale that to the whole fleet, and the district could save nearly $120,000 per day.Beyond the massive fiscal and emission-reduction benefits, the bus rides themselves improve. Bus drivers cite the “smoother ride” and substantial noise reduction as improvements both for their own sake and in enabling them to more easily hear and communicate with their young passengers.Policies like school bus transitions are good in their own right: The benefits they proffer fiscally, environmentally, and even socially are valuable. But they also show people across the country why policy—and policy battles—matter at all. A society acquainted with the benefits of things like electric school buses would be one eager to demand more such changes.The Treasury is having to resort to “extraordinary measures” to prevent the United States from defaulting on its debt, which could plummet the country into a recession, Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress Thursday.In a letter, Yellen explained the U.S. has reached its $31.4 trillion debt limit, forcing her to take steps to ensure the government does not default and has a little more time to solve the problem. For now, those “extraordinary measures” include redeeming and suspending new federal investments in the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund and the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund. In a letter last week, Yellen also expected that the Treasury will suspend reinvestment of the Government Securities Investment Fund of the Federal Employees Retirement System Thrift Savings Plan.Suspending investment in these funds will preserve the country’s credit until June, but Yellen noted that the amount of time these measures will work is “subject to considerable uncertainty” and urged Congress to act quickly. She warned last week that defaulting would cause “irreparable harm to the U.S. economy.”The debt ceiling is the maximum amount of money the U.S. can borrow. The current level was set two years ago. If the government reaches its borrowing limit, it could default on its debt or fail to make a payment. Already high prices and inflation could skyrocket, sending the U.S. into a recession.House Republicans, who hold the majority in the chamber, refuse to raise the debt ceiling and instead are trying to slash spending in other areas, such as entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare. But Democrats and President Joe Biden refuse to negotiate, with White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre warning Wednesday that the debt limit should not be used as a “political football.”Defaulting means the government would be unable to pay military salaries and Social Security benefits. A lower debt ceiling would also mean less funding for programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, SNAP or food stamps, and meal programs for low-income students.During the last debt ceiling standoff in 2021, Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, warned that defaulting would send the U.S. into an almost immediate recession, wiping out up to $15 trillion in household wealth and nearly doubling the unemployment rate from about 5 percent at the time to about 9 percent.“This economic scenario is cataclysmic.… The downturn would be comparable to that suffered during the financial crisis” of 2008, Zandi and Bernard Yaros, Moody’s assistant director and economist, said in a report.George Santos has lied about most of his background, including that his grandparents fled the Holocaust, that his employees died at the Pulse nightclub shooting, and that he was a star volleyball player at a school he didn’t attend. But this week brought another array of revelations about Santos’s past. First, there was the report that he used his fake animal charity to raise money for a homeless veteran’s dying dog, before stealing the money. Then newly uncovered immigration records showed that Santos’s mother, who Santos had repeatedly implied died from 9/11-related afflictions, was not in the United States at all that day.And finally, another new piece of information came from old photos circa 2008 in Brazil, showing Santos adorned in drag, under the moniker Kitara Ravache, grinning alongside Brazilian drag queen Eula Rochard.On Thursday, Santos denied stealing money from a dying dog and that he performed in drag, but notably ignored reports that he lied about 9/11.The reports that I would let a dog die is shocking & insane. My work in animal advocacy was the labor of love & hard work. Over the past 24hr I have received pictures of dogs I helped reduce throughout the years along with supportive messages.These distractions won’t stop me!— George Santos (@Santos4Congress) January 19, 2023 The most recent obsession from the media claiming that I am a drag Queen or “performed” as a drag Queen is categorically false.The media continues to make outrageous claims about my life while I am working to deliver results.I will not be distracted nor fazed by this.— George Santos (@Santos4Congress) January 19, 2023 Santos/Devolder/Zabrovsky/Ravache’s tweets are among the few public statements he has made in direct response to the endless stream of revelations and questions about his past. The volume of new information about Santos’s background is continually shocking. Similarly interesting is what revelations seem to bother Santos and which ones he is trying to let slip through the public’s consciousness, simply by sheer will of the lies being so insurmountable, so untrackable, that it’s hard to maintain meaningful scrutiny on him.Based on the little time Santos has actually spent denying most of the charges against him, perhaps he understands his party to be willing to overlook lies about 9/11 and the Holocaust, but not the rest. Donald Trump mistook the woman accusing him of rape for his ex-wife in a photograph during a deposition last year, contradicting one of his weakest but most-used arguments for his innocence.Popular writer E. Jean Carroll is suing Trump for defamation and sexual assault. Trump has rejected the rape allegation, repeatedly saying that he never knew Carroll and that she is not his “type.”Since Carroll accused Trump of assault, a photograph has been widely circulated and cited as proof that the two had met before. Taken in 1987, the picture shows Trump, Carroll, and their respective spouses, at the time Marla Maples and John Johnson, talking at a party. In an excerpt of Trump’s 2022 deposition, parts of which were unsealed Wednesday, Trump mistakes Carroll for Maples.*Here's the part of the deposition where Trump mistakes E. Jean Carroll for his ex-wife, Marla Maples, and is corrected by his lawyer. pic.twitter.com/HUAwuNvNrN— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) January 19, 2023 Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba is quick to correct him, but only after Trump repeatedly insists that Carroll is Maples. The fact that he can’t differentiate between Carroll, a woman to whom he said he wasn’t attracted, and Maples, a woman to whom he definitely was, undermines Trump’s main case for his innocence.In another unsealed excerpt of the deposition, given in October, Trump appallingly claimed that Carroll “loved” the assault.“She said it was very sexy to be raped,” he said. He also repeatedly said Carroll was mentally ill.Carroll accused Trump in her memoir, released in 2019, of raping her in the Manhattan Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s. She has sued him twice for allegedly defaming her, first in 2019 when he said she made up the rape allegation in order to sell her book, and again in November for posts he made about her on social media.She is not the only one: At least 26 women have accused Trump of sexual harassment or assault since the 1970s, all of which he was denied, and he bragged in a 2005 recording of the show Access Hollywood about grabbing women’s genitals and kissing them without their consent. So far, Carroll’s case has gotten the most national attention and is one of the few to actually reach a courtroom. Trump is expected to go on trial in April.Sexual assault is about power, not desire, and Psychology Today notes the “motivation stems from the perpetrator’s need for dominance and control.” Trump has made clear the lengths he will go to for power, from trying to bully Ukraine into digging up dirt on his political rival to lying about the 2020 election being stolen and so much more.* This article originally misstated the year of Trump’s deposition.Kevin McCarthy owes his long-desired speakership to a group of 21 holdouts finally caving, all of whom have been rewarded for flipping with plum committee assignments.McCarthy made no secret of his ambition to be speaker, apparently no matter the cost, and the California Republican made us all sit through 15 agonizing votes before finally making enough deals to win. But it seems that the many changes to the rules package were not the only concessions he made.Representative Lauren Boebert kept her seat on the Committee on Natural Resources and received a new post on the powerful House Oversight Committee. She is joined there by Scott Perry, Anna Paulina Luna, and Paul Gosar. Gosar was previously stripped of all committee assignments after he shared an animated video showing him killing Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Joe Biden with swords.Andy Biggs and Matt Gaetz who, along with Boebert, were some of the most vocal McCarthy critics, will keep their seats on the House Judiciary Committee, along with Chip Roy and Dan Bishop. Byron Donalds, who at one point ran against McCarthy for speaker, will stay on the House Oversight Committee and has joined the House Committee on Financial Services. Many other McCarthy holdouts will keep their committee assignments.McCarthy also rewarded his allies: Jim Jordan, who consistently voted for McCarthy even when the holdouts nominated Jordan for speaker, is the new chair of the House Judiciary Committee.Marjorie Taylor Greene spent months allying herself with McCarthy and urging her colleagues to back him. She, like Gosar, was stripped of committee assignments by Democrats for her inflammatory social media posts. Greene now sits on the Oversight Committee and the Committee on Homeland Security. Problematic king George Santos voted for McCarthy every time, and not only has the new speaker refrained from condemning the freshman congressman’s many lies but McCarthy also gave him two committee assignments.James Comer is the new chair of the Oversight Committee. Mike Rogers threatened to withhold committee assignments from the holdouts and even nearly came to blows with Gaetz for refusing to vote for McCarthy. He now chairs the Armed Services Committee.The White House slammed the assignments, with spokesman Ian Sams telling Axios, “It appears that House Republicans may be setting the stage for divorced-from-reality political stunts, instead of engaging in bipartisan work on behalf of the American people.”“Republicans are handing the keys of oversight to the most extreme MAGA members of the Republican caucus who promote violent rhetoric and dangerous conspiracy theories,” he said.Ritchie Torres, former vice chair of the Homeland Security Committee, tweeted he was “horrified” by Greene’s assignment to the group.As the former Vice Chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, I’m HORRIFIED that it was just announced that Marjorie Taylor Greene will serve on the committee.A QAnon conspiracy theorist + Jan 6 insurrectionist doesn’t belong on a committee that exists to fight extremism.— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) January 17, 2023 George Santos has positioned himself as a proud, unabashed conservative—on social issues and all. He has expressed support for Florida’s regressive “Don’t Say Gay” law that bars teachers from discussing sexual orientation or gender identity in school. Accusing Democrats of wanting to “groom our kids,” Santos peddled right-wing talking points that equate discussing sexual orientation or gender identity with children with sexual abuse. Such talking points often go further, holding that drag shows, or even LGBTQ people generally, groom and abuse children.It now appears Santos has participated in drag himself. A 2008 photo from Brazil depicts Santos, known at the time as Anthony, in a drag costume under the moniker Kitara Ravache.NEW: I just spoke by phone with Eula Rochard, a Brazilian drag queen who was friends with George Santos when he lived near Rio. She said everyone knew him as Anthony (*never* George), or by his drag name, Kitara, and confirms this photo is from a 2008 drag show at Icaraí Beach. pic.twitter.com/1MeeDR1O2O— Marisa Kabas (@MarisaKabas) January 18, 2023 The photo comes from Santos’s old friend Eula Rochard, a Brazilian drag queen who spoke with journalist Marisa Kabas. According to their conversation, Rochard met Santos when he was a teenager, and they bonded over both being gay and enjoying drag. After Rochard had seen a news story about Santos, Rochard shared the photo to her social media to prove the old connection.“Me with the American Republican deputy at the Niterói parade, as I had said he wouldn’t leave my house, there’s the proof for those who called me a liar,” Rochard wrote on Instagram (in rough translation from Portuguese).To be clear, it’s great that Santos enjoyed drag and made a friend while doing it. And in any abstract sense, it doesn’t matter! What matters is that Santos has positioned himself among a political movement incredibly antagonistic toward drag queens and others who enjoy drag, one that stokes transphobia and hate toward all LGTBQ people. Santos will try to have it both ways—and Republicans who have decried drag as a moral crisis will too: Either drag truly is an existential threat to our children (wrong) and Santos should be removed from Congress (correct), or drag is absolutely fine (correct) and Santos should not be removed from Congress (wrong).
- [Prosecutors argue no jail time for former LMPD officer charged in David McAtee death](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/20/prosecutors-argue-no-jail-time-for-former-lmpd-officer-charged-in-david-mcatee-death/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - The former Louisville Metro Police officer who was charged federally in connection to the death of west Louisville restaurant owner David “YaYa” McAtee may not serve prison time.A government sentencing memorandum was filed in U.S. District Court on Wednesday, arguing Katie Crews should serve a probation sentence for her role in McAtee’s death.Crews plead guilty in Oct. to one count of deprivation of rights under color of law. As part of the guilty plea, Crews agreed not to pursue another law enforcement job.In June 2020, Crews and other officers were given orders to disperse crowds gathering near McAtee’s restaurant during the summer protests following Breonna Taylor’s death. > >FULL COVERAGE: The Breonna Taylor CaseThe former officer told investigators she had fired pepper balls at McAtee’s niece, Machelle McAtee, after she refused to get back in the restaurant during the mayor’s enacted curfew.David McAtee pulled Machelle out of a doorway after the pepper balls were fired, and documents state he opened the door and fired several shots with a gun.Crews, another LMPD officer and two National Guard soldiers returned fire, with one of the National Guard soldier’s bullets striking and killing McAtee.The FBI case began as Crews was cleared of all state charges, with Commonwealth Attorney Tom Wine saying Crews acted appropriately in returning fire.Prosecutors argued that while Crews’ use of force was excessive, her actions were done with a “legitimate law enforcement purpose” to clear the area and enforce the curfew.Documents state Crews first shouted verbal arguments, then fired pepper balls at the ground before eventually firing at McAtee’s niece after Crews’ orders were not followed.Prosecutors said they did not identify any use of excessive force by Crews prior to the incident, stating the former officer had no criminal history.Due to the listed reasons, prosecutors recommended sentence of probation with 100 hours of community service as sufficient punishment.Crews is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 30.Copyright 2023 WAVE. All rights reserved.
- [False prophets and ravening wolves - PoliticsNC](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/20/false-prophets-and-ravening-wolves-politicsnc/) - Earlier this week, the Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky hosted a fundraiser that featured Jonathan Mattingly, one of the police officers who killed Breonna Taylor, as a speaker. Taylor, an African American woman, was killed when three white policemen broke down her door in a botched raid of her apartment and shot her numerous times. Taylor was unarmed. The group played body camera footage of the raid and broadcast it over speakers. The Republican Women’s Club defended the event by saying “Mattingly has a right to share his experience.” What is wrong with Republicans? Why do they insist on making White people who kill innocent people, especially Black people, heroes? And why do they go out of their way to smear the victims of gun violence? Do they have no sense of empathy? They did it with George Zimmerman who killed Trayvon Martin and they’ve done it to Kyle Rittenhouse who killed two people during riots following the George Floyd murder. If the officer who killed Floyd had been acquitted, you can bet he would be on the right-wing lecture and media circuit. Same with those racists who killed Ahmaud Arbery. Celebrating murderers has a long, sordid history in this country, especially in the South. For most of the 20thcentury, White people could kill Black people without worrying too much about consequences. When the White killers were arrested and tried, White defenders made them out to be the victims and, often, turned them into celebrities. Emmett Till’s murderers were acquitted by an all-White jury and then went on to detail their crimes in a national magazine. Lynch mobs were rarely ever held accountable, but victims of lynching were smeared regardless of their guilt or innocence.
- [GOP Group Airs Footage Of Breonna Taylor Shooting At Kentucky Restaurant | BIN](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/20/gop-group-airs-footage-of-breonna-taylor-shooting-at-kentucky-restaurant-bin/) - Diners at a Kentucky restaurant were caught off guard when a GOP group aired body camera footage of the 2020 fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor.According to NBC News, the Republican Women's Club of South Central Kentucky were holding an event on the balcony of Anna's Greek Restaurant on Tuesday (January 17), when patrons unaffiliated with group were subjected listening and hearing the moment when Taylor was shot and killed in her Louisville apartment. Reports say the Republican Women's Club was forced to find a new venue for its event featuring John Mattingly, a former Louisville police officer who raided Taylor's home in 2020, after the Bowling Green Club said it would no longer host the event. Gubernatorial candidate Ryan Quarles also backed out of the event due to controversy surrounding Mattingly's attendance, per Spectrum News. At their new venue, lights went dark as diners at the Greek restaurant were forced to see and listen to the graphic events leading to Taylor's death. Audio was played through a speaker system in the restaurant so loud that "we were no longer able to even hear people at our table and barely could see our food," one patron said. Ahead of the event, the Republican Women's club said Mattingly was invited to the event to give "a firsthand account" of the raid that led to Taylor's death. “These events may be controversial, however, we believe Sgt. Mattingly has the right to share his experience,” the group said in a statement earlier this week. “Other individuals with firsthand experience relating to this case are welcome to request an opportunity to speak to our organization as well.” According to NBC News, Stacy Webb, the president of the women’s club, hasn't responded to a request for comment, and the group's Facebook page has been deleted. “It is beyond reprehensible to subject anyone, let alone children and customers of African American descent, to such indecent exposure, graphic and upsetting images while they were attempting to enjoy their meal,” Ryan Dearbone, president of the Bowling Green-Warren County NAACP chapter, said in a statement Thursday (January 19). “Such disturbing occurrences must not be tolerated especially in places of public accommodation. At a minimum, these acts are devoid of humanity and violate the most fundamental principles of human decency.” Get the latest news 24/7 on The Black Information Network. Listen now on the iHeartRadio app or click HERE to tune in live.
- ['Absolutely disgusting': Kentucky GOP group shocks diners by airing gruesome footage ... - Raw Story](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/20/absolutely-disgusting-kentucky-gop-group-shocks-diners-by-airing-gruesome-footage-raw-story/) - Diners at Anna's Greek Restaurant in Bowling Green, Kentucky were caught totally off guard when a local Republican group showed up to hold an event for one of the police officers from the raid that killed Breonna Taylor — and aired body camera footage from the incident in front of all the patrons.The event, which was reported by NBC News on Friday, enraged many of the onlookers."The Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky scrambled to find a new venue for an event featuring former-Louisville-police-officer-turned-conservative-author-and-pundit John Mattingly after the initial location for its dinner, the Bowling Green Country Club, said it would no longer host the group," reported Michelle Garcia. "Additionally, gubernatorial candidate and Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles backed out of the event because of the mounting controversy around Mattingly’s attendance, according to Spectrum News in Louisville.""Mattingly was one of the three police officers who raided Taylor's home and fired shots while searching her apartment for her ex-boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover. He was not in the apartment at the time. Glover was handed a five-year probation sentence in 2021 after he accepted a plea deal from prosecutors for charges related to narcotics," said the report. "The Tuesday night event took place in the balcony of Anna's Greek Restaurant, while it was still open to patrons unaffiliated with the event. According to the Bowling Green-Warren County NAACP and restaurant patrons' accounts online, the lights went dark, as patrons unaffiliated with the event heard and saw graphic descriptions of the incident that killed Taylor. The audio from that night could be heard throughout the restaurant, through its speaker system."IN OTHER NEWS: GOP operative thanks God for killing Georgia House Speaker because he was an 'obstacle' to abortion bansThe NAACP of Bowling Green-Warren County condemned the event, calling it "threatening and inappropriate." One of the patrons that night, Cayce Johnson, confirmed she and other unaffiliated diners were given no warning and blasted the GOP group and the restaurant, saying, "Words can’t even describe how absolutely disgusting it is, what this group put on, the platform they gave him and what he showed to them."A Kentucky grand jury indicted only one of the three officers involved in the fatal raid, and on a relatively minor charge. However, one officer, Joshua Jaynes, was also charged federally for lying on the application for the "no-knock" warrant
- ['Soulless bunch': Internet slams GOP club for showing video of Breonna Taylor's killing in restaurant](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/soulless-bunch-internet-slams-gop-club-for-showing-video-of-breonna-taylors-killing-in-restaurant/) - BOWLING GREEN, KENTUCKY: The Republican Women's Club of South Central Kentucky hosted an event on Tuesday, January 17, that honored one of the law enforcement officers who participated in the raid that resulted in the death of Breonna Taylor. ADVERTISEMENT The gathering took place at Anna's Greek Restaurant in Bowling Green, a well-known local establishment that features both a dining room and a space on the restaurant's second floor that can be rented out for parties and other gatherings. RELATED ARTICLES Breonna Taylor's boyfriend Kenneth Walker III settles 'unlawful raid' lawsuit with Louisville for $2M Breonna Taylor shooting: Louisville cops shouldn't have fired, said internal probe but bosses overruled report Taylor was shot eight times in March year 2020 by police, who accidentally stormed her home in connection with a drug bust. According to TNR, former Louisville Metro Police Department Sergeant Jonathan Mattingly, one of the officers who carried out the said raid, displayed photos and played video footage with the sounds of gunshots. ADVERTISEMENT Meanwhile, as other guests, who were unaware of the event, including people of color, were left dumbfounded seeing what was happening. The restaurant failed to warn the guests, some of whom had booked reservations, about the unexpected event taking place upstairs at the last minute. One of the guests, Cayce Johnson, told The New Republic that the lights were lowered while they were eating. “The woman comes back on and introduces Jonathan Mattingly, and everyone just roared upstairs—applause, cheers, and our mouths just dropped,” Johnson said.ADVERTISEMENT Johnson took the audience "back to March 2020" before going through the presentation with photos and video footage with the sound of gunshots. "One of the members of our group was a war veteran and he has PTSD, so we were just in extreme shock," Johnson added. Another diner, Katelyn Jones, reportedly said there was a raffle and some funny Covid-19 jokes at the occasion. According to her, her father first couldn't hear anything being said at the dinner table because of how loud the event was.ADVERTISEMENT A Facebook video showed Johnson and her friends going to the restaurant owner, Vilson Qehaja, after they learned that Mattingly would be attending the event, to which he replied, "I have nothing to do with that, so." ADVERTISEMENT "Republicans seem to be a rather soulless bunch" The internet exploded with anger after such behavior from the Republicans. A reddit user wrote, "This is just sick. I hope this group of women is shunned by all their friends and family. Despicable," while another wrote, "Is this what they call the Daughters of the Confederacy these days?" Another user commented, "There is no bottom for people who hate as an identity." ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT "Republicans seem to be a rather soulless bunch," one user wrote. Criticizing the party, another person wrote, “Such disturbing occurrences must not be tolerated especially in places of public accommodation. Agreed." "Because people are quick to idolize someone who accomplishes their sick fantasies," another user wrote. One more user wrote, "For Republicans there is no bottom." ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT This article contains remarks made on the Internet by individual people and organizations. MEAWW cannot confirm them independently and does not support claims or opinions being made online.
- [Footage from night of Breonna Taylor's shooting shown at Kentucky restaurant - NBC News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/21/footage-from-night-of-breonna-taylors-shooting-shown-at-kentucky-restaurant-nbc-news/) - Diners at a Greek restaurant in Bowling Green, Kentucky, on Tuesday night were subjected to police body camera footage from the night Breonna Taylor was shot and killed in her Louisville apartment in 2020, according to the local NAACP and restaurant patrons.The Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky scrambled to find a new venue for an event featuring former-Louisville-police-officer-turned-conservative-author-and-pundit John Mattingly after the initial location for its dinner, the Bowling Green Country Club, said it would no longer host the group. Additionally, gubernatorial candidate and Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles backed out of the event because of the mounting controversy around Mattingly’s attendance, according to Spectrum News in Louisville. Mattingly was one of the three police officers who raided Taylor's home and fired shots while searching her apartment for her ex-boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover. He was not in the apartment at the time. Glover was handed a five-year probation sentence in 2021 after he accepted a plea deal from prosecutors for charges related to narcotics. The Tuesday night event took place in the balcony of Anna's Greek Restaurant, while it was still open to patrons unaffiliated with the event. According to the Bowling Green-Warren County NAACP and restaurant patrons' accounts online, the lights went dark, as patrons unaffiliated with the event heard and saw graphic descriptions of the incident that killed Taylor. The audio from that night could be heard throughout the restaurant, through its speaker system.Cayce Johnson, who posted an account of the evening to Facebook, said that restaurant patrons were given no warning the event would take place and that it became so invasive that “we were no longer able to even hear people at our table and barely could see our food.”Johnson told NBC News on Friday that she was not made aware of the event before entering the restaurant. The Bowling Green resident said she heard actual gunshots in the videos and that they showed footage of Taylor’s body.“Words can’t even describe how absolutely disgusting it is, what this group put on, the platform they gave him and what he showed to them,” Johnson said. “These women, they need to be held accountable. Not just Anna’s restaurant but the group themselves that put it on, and at the very least they need to apologize to the people that they offended, to Breonna Taylor’s family and, and the community honestly.”The restaurant did not reply to a voicemail left requesting comment.Prior to the event, the Republican Women’s Club said in a statement that it invited Mattingly to speak at the event “to obtain a firsthand account” of the raid that resulted in Taylor’s death.“These events may be controversial, however, we believe Sgt. Mattingly has the right to share his experience,” the group said in a statement to Spectrum News in Louisville earlier this week. “Other individuals with firsthand experience relating to this case are welcome to request an opportunity to speak to our organization as well.”Stacy Webb, the president of the women’s club, has not responded to a request for comment. The group’s Facebook page has since been deleted. “It is beyond reprehensible to subject anyone, let alone children and customers of African American descent, to such indecent exposure, graphic and upsetting images while they were attempting to enjoy their meal,” Ryan Dearbone, president of the Bowling Green-Warren County NAACP chapter, said in a statement Thursday. “Such disturbing occurrences must not be tolerated especially in places of public accommodation. At a minimum, these acts are devoid of humanity and violate the most fundamental principles of human decency.”CORRECTION (Jan. 20, 2023, 3:45 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misspelled the last name of the Kentucky agriculture commissioner. He is Ryan Quarles, not Quarle.Michelle GarciaMichelle Garcia is the editorial director of NBCBLKEmma Sánchez
- [Jury deliberates in Oath Keepers seditious conspiracy trial | Courts News | Al Jazeera](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/20/jury-deliberates-in-oath-keepers-seditious-conspiracy-trial-courts-news-al-jazeera/) - Prosecutors allege that the far-right group took part in a violent plot to overturn the results of the 2020 election.A United States jury continues to deliberate on whether four members of the far-right militia group known as the Oath Keepers committed the crime of “seditious conspiracy” during the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. During closing arguments on Wednesday, federal prosecutor Louis Manzo told the jury that the defendants had been willing recruits in an effort to use violent means to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election, in which Republican incumbent Donald Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden. “Our democracy was under attack, but for the defendants, it was everything they trained for and a moment to celebrate,” Manzo said. “The defendants could not let the election stand. They could not let Biden come to power.” The conclusion of the trial will mark the end of one of the most high-profile cases related to the deadly attack on the US Capitol, in which a mob of Trump supporters tried to halt the peaceful transition of power. [embedded content] The four Oath Keepers members on trial — Roberto Minuta, Joseph Hackett, David Moerschel and Edward Vallejo — are facing charges of seditious conspiracy for their role in the attacks. In November, the group’s leader, Stewart Rhodes, was found guilty of the same charge and faces a prison sentence of up to 20 years. Another sedition trial is currently under way for members of the far-right group known as the “Proud Boys“, with the organisation’s leader, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, among the defendants. More than 950 people have been charged with crimes in relation to the 2021 Capitol attack, and at least 192 people have been sentenced to time behind bars, according to the US Department of Justice. The charges range from crimes such as entering a restricted building and impeding an official proceeding, to assaulting police officers and conspiracy. About 484 have also pleaded guilty to various charges. Several Oath Keepers have previously offered guilty pleas to seditious conspiracy, a relatively rare and difficult-to-prove charge that alleges the defendant plotted to attack the US government or oppose its authority. They include Graydon Young, a 54-year-old Florida resident who submitted his plea during a hearing in June 2021. November’s seditious conspiracy conviction against Rhodes and another leader in the Oath Keepers’ Florida chapter was seen as a major victory for the Department of Justice. The current trial of the four members will test whether a jury can also be persuaded to convict lower-level members of sedition. During Rhodes’s trial, three other members of the Oath Keepers were acquitted of sedition but found guilty of obstructing Congress from certifying the electoral count, which can also result in up to 20 years in prison. [embedded content] While none of the four defendants in the current trial was believed to have held high-ranking positions in the group, Hackett, Minuta and Moerschel physically entered the Capitol, while Vallejo allegedly stockpiled weapons in nearby Virginia. The defendants’ lawyers have denied that the four members plotted to block the certification and said that the prosecution had painted a misleading picture of their involvement. “This case is about a narrative in a sea of evidence,” said Minuta’s lawyer William Shipley. “But the evidence isn’t there.” Prosecutors have pointed to incendiary videos Minuta posted on social media on the day of the riot as evidence to the contrary. “You know what? Millions will die. So what?” Minuta says in one video. “Get your fucking soul ready. Get right with God.”
- [Pick your early Democratic primary states with our 2024 lineup builder - Washington Post](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/20/pick-your-early-democratic-primary-states-with-our-2024-lineup-builder-washington-post/) - For the first time in 16 years, Democrats are poised to change which states vote early in the presidential primaries. The full Democratic National Committee is expected to approve President Biden’s proposed early states for 2024 at the start of February after a years-long rethink of how to prioritize racial and ethnic, geographic and income diversity, among other criteria.For their part, Republicans have stuck with the traditional early states — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada — in next year’s calendar. On Dec. 1, Biden selected 5 of the 18 states that had requested the DNC’s blessing to hold early nominating contests.What would you prioritize? Using our early state generator below, you can pick from a selection of criteria used by the DNC to build your personalized “first five” state combination for the primaries.Tell us which aspects are most important to you to see in early states. Our matching tool will find the best combination for you!Check any number of items below to find your combination.See your lineup!States have long jockeyed for position in the primary calendar, looking to secure the influence, campaign spending and face-time that come with being an early decider.“Ever since the reform movement of the 1970s, the earliest states have had an enormous impact on the voters in subsequent states,” said Elaine Kamarck, a government scholar at the Brookings Institution and DNC rules committee member. “Which is why the early states spend so much time and effort trying to be early and which is why presidential candidates spend so much money and so much time in those early states.”[The first four caucus and primary states don’t look like America. Combined, they get closer.]Story continues below advertisementAdvertisementStory continues below advertisementAdvertisementFor this analysis, The Washington Post created a tool that takes every combination of five states among the 18 DNC applicants and eliminates options that don’t fit with your preferred criteria. (Puerto Rico and the group of Democrats voting abroad also applied for consideration but are not included here because of lack of comparable data.)Biden’s picks meet several of the criteria examined in the analysis, including geographic diversity — Michigan would replace Iowa as the Midwestern state — and competitiveness in the general election.The schedule addresses concerns that White voters had outsize influence in the first month of voting. Iowa, a predominantly White state that has been the first major contest of the primary season, will be cut out of the first-five lineup according to Biden’s plan. The state’s caucuses were criticized after a range of issues delayed vote results in 2020.[DNC: New York and Nebraska Democrats won’t go early in 2024 primaries]Black voters, an important bloc in the Democratic coalition, were crucial to Biden’s securing the nomination in 2020. Biden’s lineup includes two states with high Black population share — Georgia and South Carolina. South Carolina would vote first according to Biden’s plan.In fact, the Black population share in Biden’s early states is larger than the United States broadly. (More than 20 percent of the combined population of Biden’s early states versus 12 percent of the United States as a whole.) The Hispanic share in Biden’s lineup is only 10 percent, falling short of the 19 percent of the country as a whole.Here are the states Biden selected:Obstacles remain for implementing the plan. While the DNC is ready to approve Biden’s picks, Democrats and Republicans in New Hampshire vowed to defy it by declaring their intent to hold the first in the nation primary at least a week before South Carolina. Georgia Republicans who control the state’s elections have also said they don’t plan to move the primary date to comply.Biden told fellow Democrats in a letter that he did not want to bind the party to the same calendar in 2028.“The Rules and Bylaws Committee should review the calendar every four years, to ensure that it continues to reflect the values and diversity of our party and our country,” he wrote.Michael Scherer contributed to this report.Story continues below advertisementAdvertisementStory continues below advertisementAdvertisementMethodologyThe tool created for this analysis uses the criteria selected to narrow the list of all 8,568 possible combinations of five states that can be made from the 18 states that applied for consideration from the Democratic National Committee. Puerto Rico and the group of Democrats voting abroad also applied for consideration but are not included here because of lack of comparable data. Any combination that does not meet a requirement selected by the user is eliminated.For the questions on race, income and urbanization, the model retains any five-state combination whose combined race, income or urbanization breakdowns are similar to the country at large. Urbanization is measured using a three-level aggregation of the National Center for Health Statistics Urban-Rural Classification Scheme for Counties. If the user says yes to representing each region of the United States, only combinations that use a state from each of the four regions, as defined by the DNC, are included. If the user indicated a preference for competitiveness in the general election, the tool maintained only combinations with at least four states that had a vote margin within eight percentage points in the 2020 presidential election. And to gauge high rates of voter participation, the combination of states needed to have an average turnout greater than nationwide turnout in the 2020 presidential election.Once the user picks their criteria, the tool finds all the five-state combinations that are eligible for all of the user’s choices simultaneously. This tailored list of combinations is then ranked from best to worst, taking each of the user’s criteria into consideration equally.Illustrations by Lucy Naland. Graphics editing by Kevin Uhrmacher. Data editing by Anu Narayanswamy and Lenny Bronner. Copy editing by Sarah Mark.
- [Clerks may get more absentee ballot preprocessing, but will it be necessary? - MLive.com](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/20/clerks-may-get-more-absentee-ballot-preprocessing-but-will-it-be-necessary-mlive-com/) - Vote counting last November ran smoothly in Michigan with an assist from absentee ballot preprocessing – even if it was brief.Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson had wanted weeks, but in a comprise with then-Republican leaders of the legislature, clerks got two days. Now with Democrats in control of the legislature, a new look at preprocessing will be a priority.“A lack of funding” and “the timing” of the last year’s law – passed about a month before the election –made it hard for preprocessing to have a significant impact, Benson told reporters this week, “but now we have an opportunity to see to what extent it would be necessary for future elections.“And I know that’s going to be top-of-mind and part of any package that we bring forward.”Go deeper: 3 big election priorities outlined by Democratic lawmakers, Michigan SOS BensonPreprocessing is when election workers open absentee ballot mailing envelopes, take ballots out, and check that the number on a stub attached to the ballot matches the number on the secrecy sleeve the ballot is in.But Michigan still does not allow ballots to be counted until polls open on Election Day. That’s what many clerks really want.“I want to have early processing including ballot scanning,” Lansing Clerk Chris Swope told MLive. “It makes no sense to be handling ballots multiple times.”Swope’s team preprocessed in 2020 – when lawmakers made an exception in the heart of the pandemic – but not in 2022. He said the new law came too late, and “without actually fully processing the ballots, it creates extra work and doesn’t save enough time on Election Day.”Michigan’s preprocessing law only allows the early time for municipalities with more than 10,000 residents. But only 39 of the nearly 200 eligible places chose to preprocess last year. If municipalities can “fully process” next time, Swope said, he thinks it’ll catch on more.FILE: An election worker removes absentee ballots from their outer mailing envelopes during preprocessing in Lansing, Mich., on Monday, November 2, 2020. (Mike Mulholland | MLive.com)Mike Mulholland | MLive.comGrand Rapids preprocessed for a day last November, and clerk Joel Hondorp also said he wished workers could have done more with the ballots.“But I don’t know if I want that now with nine days early voting,” he said.Proposal 2′s passage in November greenlit nine days of early in-person voting – something other states have but that is completely new to Michigan – to begin for the 2024 primary at the latest.“So, if we have early voting and [absentee voting’s] down, I don’t need preprocessing,” Hondorp said. “Because I can take care of it all on Election Day.”Related: Clerks face unknowns as Michigan must implement early in-person votingLawmakers still must implement early in-person voting, but “the idea of preprocessing and the need for it is diminished somewhat,” Benson acknowledged.“It’s not done away [with] entirely,” she said, “but we’re going to basically look at the data and assess what communities still need additional preprocessing.”Swope said he wants absentee processing to begin at the clerk’s decision up to the first required day of early in-person voting, which will be the Saturday 10 days before Election Day.Hondorp wants more funding for local elections, because early in-person voting will require more tabulators, more laptops for e-pollbooks and longer rental of facilities as polling places.“Tell me a school that’s going to let me be there for nine days,” he said.Benson told reporters she wants $100 million total to fund the state Bureau of Elections and support local officials. Her office also formed an election policy advisory taskforce to guide implementation of Props 1, 2 and 3.In a sign that Republicans will come to the table, former House elections committee chair, state Rep. Ann Bollin, R-Brighton Township, reacted positively to Democrats’ proposed election bill package.“I’m willing to work across the aisle on legislation to implement election security measures, protect clerks and fund our elections,” Bollin said in a statement.Read more from MLive:Michigan faith leaders call on new legislature to enact ‘sensible’ gun reform lawsThe U.S. hit a $31 trillion debt ceiling. What does that mean?These are Michigan’s busiest animal shelters – by intake, adoptions and euthanizationsConsumers Energy OK’d to raise electric rates, must double rooftop solar
- [Factoring the Muslim Vote Into American Elections - PRRI](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/20/factoring-the-muslim-vote-into-american-elections-prri/) - On the evening of Dec. 6, 2022, Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock took the stage in Atlanta, Georgia, to deliver his victory speech after winning the runoff election against Republican candidate Herschel Walker. Georgia is one of two states that require runoff elections when no candidate receives a majority of the vote. As Warnock waved at his cheering supporters, I noticed the array of diversity represented behind him on the stage, including a woman wearing the hijab. The presence of a Muslim person on the stage may seem surprising at first glance, but it reflects the impact the Muslim vote is having in places like Georgia.In the 2020 presidential election, Georgia and Pennsylvania voted for Biden by a narrow enough margin that the relatively small Muslim vote in those states could have an impact on the results. In Georgia, which Biden won by 12,000 votes, more than 61,000 Muslims showed up to polls. And he won Pennsylvania by 81,000 votes with 125,000 Muslims coming out to vote. In states where elections are coming down to tens of thousands of votes, it may be time to pay closer attention to the Muslim vote. The 2020 PRRI Census of American Religion has data on religious identity by county level. These maps show that in Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, all of which had very narrow election results in 2020, the Muslim population is large enough to have an impact on close federal elections. Fulton County, Georgia, which has a population of about 1,064,000, is 2% Muslim — which is a small percentage but, in raw numbers, represents a lot of potential votes. Muslims, along with other minority populations who primarily live in urban areas, have a significant role in countering rural voters and shifting red states toward Democrats. Muslim American civic organizations, such as Emgage, have been working to mobilize the Muslim vote in recent years. According to Emgage’s website, the group helped turn out more than a million Muslim voters in the 2020 election through its Million Muslim Vote campaign. Efforts to engage Muslim voters have been on the rise since 9/11, and they accelerated after Donald Trump’s election in 2016. Mosques have been participating in this effort by serving as polling sites and hosting voter registration drives for the Muslim community. According to Emgage, the top five domestic issues for Muslim voters are jobs and the economy, civil rights, health care, voting rights and foreign policy. Over the past two years, I have conducted qualitative interviews with 42 Muslims of South Asian, Arab and African American descent. The majority of African American Muslims have told me that the political issues that most motivate them to vote are racial inequality and educational equality. The majority of South Asian and Arab Muslims said abortion is a top issue that motivates them to vote.[1] In 2000, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) estimated that more than 70% of Muslims who cast a ballot in the 2000 presidential election voted for George W. Bush. Bush and the Republican Party had courted the Muslim vote in that election. After 9/11, however, the Republican Party’s rhetoric became overtly vitriolic against Muslims, which pushed Muslim voters toward the Democratic Party. In a 2017 study, Pew Research estimated that more than two-thirds of Muslims in the United States identify as Democrats. As we continue to witness historically red states like Georgia voting Democratic by narrow margins in national elections, it is crucial to pay attention to the Muslim vote. Increased civic engagement among Muslims, coupled with a rise in anti-Muslim discrimination and bigotry, is likely to continue pushing these voters to turn out for the Democratic Party. [1] The majority of the interviews with South Asian and Arab Muslims occurred after the Supreme Court ruled on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn Roe v. Wade.
- [GOP action on mail ballot timelines angers military families - 13abc](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/20/gop-action-on-mail-ballot-timelines-angers-military-families-13abc/) - COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio’s restrictive new election law significantly shortens the window for mailed ballots to be received — despite no evidence that the extended timeline has led to fraud or any other problems — and that change is angering active-duty members of the military and their families because of its potential to disenfranchise them.The pace of ballot counting after Election Day has become a target of conservatives egged on by former President Donald Trump. He has promoted a false narrative since losing the 2020 election that fluctuating results as late-arriving mail-in ballots are tallied is a sign of fraud.Republican lawmakers said during debate on the Ohio legislation that even if Trump’s claims aren’t true, the skepticism they have caused among conservatives about the accuracy of election results justifies imposing new limits.The new law reduces the number of days for county election boards to include mailed ballots in their tallies from 10 days after Election Day to four. Critics say that could lead more ballots from Ohio’s military voters to miss the deadline and get tossed.This issue isn’t confined to Ohio.Three other states have narrowed their post-election windows for accepting mail ballots, according to data from the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab. Similar moves pushed by Republican lawmakers are being proposed or discussed this year in Wisconsin, New Jersey, California and other states.Ohio’s tightened window for receiving mailed ballots is likely to affect just several hundred of the thousands of military and overseas ballots received in any election. Critics say any number is too great.“What kind of society do we call ourselves if we are disenfranchising people from the rights that they are over there protecting?” said Willis Gordon, a Navy veteran and veterans affairs chair of the Ohio NAACP’s executive committee.Republican state Sen. Theresa Gavarone, who championed the tightened ballot deadline, said Ohio’s previous window was “an extreme outlier” nationally. She said Ohio’s military and overseas voters still have ample time under the new law.“While there is certainly more work to do, this new law drastically enhances Ohio’s election security and improves the integrity of our elections, which my constituents and citizens across the state have demanded,” she said.Republicans’ claims that Ohio needs to clamp down in the name of election integrity run counter to GOP officials’ glowing assessments of the state’s current system. Ohio reported a near-perfect tally of its 2020 presidential election results, for example, and fraud referrals represent a tiny fraction of the ballots cast.Board of elections data shows that in the state’s most populous county, which includes the capital city of Columbus, 242 absentee ballots from military and overseas voters were received after Election Day last November. Of that, nearly 40% arrived more than four days later and would have been rejected had the new law been in effect.In 2020, a federal survey administered by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission found that Ohio rejected just 1% of the 21,600 ballots cast by overseas and military voters with the 10-day time frame in place. That compared with 2.1% nationally, a figure attributed mostly to voters missing state ballot deadlines.All states are required to transmit ballots to registered overseas and military voters at least 45 days before an election, or as soon as possible if the request comes in after that date.Former state Rep. Connie Pillich, an Air Force veteran who leads the Ohio Democratic Party’s outreach to veterans and military families, rejects arguments that the relatively small number of affected ballots is worth the trade-off.“These guys and gals stationed overseas, living in the sandbox or wherever they are, doing their jobs, putting themselves in harm’s way, you’re making it harder for them to participate,” said Pillich, who led an unsuccessful effort to have GOP Gov. Mike DeWine veto the bill.“I can tell you everyone I’ve talked to is livid and upset,” she said.Those familiar with submitting military ballots said applying for, receiving and filling out a mailed ballot requires extra time for those who are deployed. Postal schedules, sudden calls to duty, even extra time needed to consult family back home about the candidates and issues are factors. Ohio’s new law also sets a new deadline — five days earlier — for voters to request a mailed ballot, a move supporters say will help voters meet the tightened return deadline.Neither the Ohio Association of Election Officials nor the state’s elections chief, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, asked lawmakers to shrink the existing 10-day window for receiving mailed ballots.Aaron Ockerman, a lobbyist for the election officials’ group, said the seven-day post-election window called for in an early version of the legislation was a compromise that county election directors decided they could live with.“They felt the vast, vast majority of the ballots have arrived within eight days,” he said. The group opposed making the window any shorter, on grounds that voters — including those in the military — would be disenfranchised.Research by the Voting Rights Lab shows Ohio joined three other states — Republican-controlled Arkansas and Iowa, and Nevada, where Democrats held full control at the time — in passing laws in 2021 that shortened the post-election return window for mailed ballots. Five states lengthened theirs.Nationwide, a little more than 911,000 military and overseas ballots were cast in 2020. Of those, about 19,000, or roughly 2%, were rejected — typically for being received after the deadline, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.The Secure Families Initiative, a national nonpartisan group advocating for military voters and their families, is trying to push state election laws in the other direction, toward broader electronic access to voting for service members and their families.Kate Marsh Lord, the group’s communications director, said they were “deeply disappointed” to see DeWine sign the Ohio bill.“In fact, I’m an Ohio voter — born and raised in Columbus — and I’ve cast my Ohio ballot from as far away as Japan,” she said. “HB458 set out to solve a problem that didn’t exist, and military voters will pay the price by having their ballots disqualified.”Marsh Lord, currently in South Carolina where her husband is stationed in the Air Force, said mail sometimes took weeks to reach her family when they lived in Japan.“Even if I were to get my ballot in the mail a week ahead of time, a lot of times with the military postal service and the Postal Service in general, there are delays,” she said. “So that shortened window doesn’t allow as much time for things that are really out of military voters’ control.”She said it’s even more challenging for active-duty personnel deployed to remote areas — “the people on the front lines of the fight to defend our democracy and our freedom and the right to vote around the world. Those are the people who will be most impacted by this change.”___Fields reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta and Mike Catalini in Trenton, New Jersey, contributed to this report.__In a story published January 15, 2023, about election legislation that could affect military ballots, The Associated Press erroneously reported the timing of three such laws referenced by a nonprofit group. All three laws were passed in 2021, not last year. A corrected version of the story is below.Copyright 2023 WTVG. All rights reserved.
- [Answering Reader Questions on a Covid Effect, Gerrymandering and More](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/20/answering-reader-questions-on-a-covid-effect-gerrymandering-and-more/) - How much did coronavirus deaths, redistricting and voter suppression matter in the last election?Supporters of a trucking convoy that included vaccine opponents last year in Adelanto, Calif.Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesA lot of mail has piled up since the election, so let’s take a trip to the mailbag while we’re in a relatively quiet period.Covid mortality and votingI’m not sure if I should be surprised by this, but one of the most popular email topics has been a morbid one: the effect of the coronavirus death toll.“Since the 2020 election, Covid has claimed well over half a million lives, predominantly elderly unvaccinated persons. Studies have documented the greater fatality rate in red counties. It appears that more elderly G.O.P. voters have died than their Democratic counterparts. Death certificates don’t include party affiliation, but there appears to have been something of a red wave of G.O.P. morbidity occurring over the last two years.“As pollsters extrapolate from their samples, has the weighting been revised since 2020 to reflect the shift in surviving voters due to Covid fatalities?” — John BaileyJohn, I doubt pollsters are revising their weighting targets to directly account for Covid deaths. And if some went through the motions of doing so, my guess is they found it wasn’t worth the time.I don’t want to appear to minimize the significance of more than half a million deaths since the 2020 election (and more than a million since the start of the pandemic), but the truth is this is not a large enough number to significantly affect the American electorate.Let’s suppose the most extreme case: Imagine that every single post-2020 Covid death was a Trump voter in the last election. How much would the result have changed if they hadn’t voted? Well, President Biden would have won by 4.8 points instead of 4.4 points.A swing of four-tenths of a point isn’t nothing, but polls don’t even report results to the decimal point. If pollsters made this adjustment, most poll results would go unchanged. The likeliest scenario, of course, is a much, much smaller effect.Nonetheless, coronavirus deaths will eventually affect the makeup of the polls, even if pollsters make no effort to account for Covid whatsoever. That’s because most polls are adjusted to match the characteristics of the population, based on data from the Census Bureau or voter registration files. To the extent Covid deaths ultimately change the characteristics of the population or the voter rolls, the targets that pollsters use for weighting will incrementally change as well.The role of gerrymanderingA recurring theme in the inbox was gerrymandering, which I did not mention in any of my post-election analyses:Not a mention of gerrymandering in this piece. A competitive congressional district map in N.Y. was very instrumental in the G.O.P. House victories there whereas a very gerrymandered map in Florida led to Democratic losses there — combined maybe at least half the expected majority the G.O.P. is estimated to end up with in the House when the dust settles. I would love to read your analysis on this issue. — Stan RoeI’m not so sure about that, Stan. As I wrote in the fall, this year’s congressional map was the fairest House map in decades. It gave the Democrats a serious and underrated chance at winning the House. And the final results bear this out: Democrats nearly won the House even though they lost the popular vote by a few percentage points.Going state by state, it’s striking how often the Democrats got their money’s worth. Their riskiest, maximum-effort gerrymanders paid off in Nevada, New Mexico and Illinois, where the party swept the eight competitive districts that they risked in order to maximize their chances at additional seats.Meanwhile, Republicans did so well in the red states that some of their most extreme gerrymanders may not have paid off as much as one might have guessed based on the results of the 2020 presidential election. Believe it or not, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida would have carried more seats on the relatively fair map he vetoed than on the enacted Republican gerrymander.Effects of voter suppressionMany readers asked about another topic I didn’t mention in my post-election analyses: voter suppression.Did voter suppression or even the threat thereof affect Black and Hispanic turnout? Thank you for your interesting newsletters! — Claire HessIt’s worth noting that this is a reply to a newsletter entry from early December, when I noted that Black turnout appeared to drop markedly across the country. Indeed, Black turnout really did seem to decline everywhere, regardless of whether states imposed new voter suppression laws or even expanded voter access.To take the three states where we have the best data — North Carolina, Louisiana and Georgia — Black turnout dropped off the most in North Carolina and Louisiana, where Democratic governors blocked efforts to restrict access. And turnout stayed strongest in Georgia, the epicenter of the fight over voting rights.This pattern doesn’t prove that new voter laws had zero effect in Georgia or elsewhere — and this analysis is separate from the ethics of the intent of the laws — but the broad decline in Black turnout across the country suggests that other factors were mainly responsible. It also implies that the effect of the new laws was small enough that it’s hard to tease out from the other factors that affect turnout from state to state.As I wrote two years ago about the new Georgia law, “In the final account, it will probably be hard to say whether it had any effect on turnout at all.” This is by no means the final account, but that remains my best guess.
- [States Push for New Voting Laws With an Eye Toward 2024 - The New York Times](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/20/states-push-for-new-voting-laws-with-an-eye-toward-2024-the-new-york-times/) - Republicans are focused on voter ID rules and making it harder to cast mail ballots, while Democrats are seeking to expand access through automatic voter registration.The tug of war over voting rights and rules is playing out with fresh urgency at the state level, as Republicans and Democrats fight to get new laws on the books before the 2024 presidential election.Republicans have pushed to tighten voting laws with renewed vigor since former President Donald J. Trump made baseless claims of fraud after losing the 2020 election, while Democrats coming off midterm successes are trying to channel their momentum to expand voting access and thwart efforts to undermine elections.States like Florida, Texas and Georgia, where Republicans control the levers of state government, have already passed sweeping voting restrictions that include criminal oversight initiatives, limits on drop boxes, new identification requirements and more.While President Biden and Democrats in Congress were unable to pass federal legislation last year that would protect voting access and restore elements of the landmark Voting Rights Act stripped away by the Supreme Court in 2013, not all reform efforts have floundered.In December, Congress updated the Electoral Count Act, closing a loophole that Mr. Trump’s supporters had sought to exploit to try to get Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election results on the day of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.Now the focus has returned to the state level. Here are some of the key voting measures in play this year:Ohio Republicans approve new restrictions.Ohioans must now present a driver’s license, passport or other official photo ID to vote in person under a G.O.P. measure that was signed into law on Jan. 6 by Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican.The law also set tighter deadlines for voters to return mail-in ballots and provide missing information on them. Absentee ballot requests must be received earlier as well.Republicans, who control the Legislature in Ohio, contend that the new rules will bolster election integrity, yet they have acknowledged that the issue has not presented a problem in the state. Overall, voter fraud is exceedingly rare.Several voting rights groups were quick to file a federal lawsuit challenging the changes, which they said would disenfranchise Black people, younger and older voters, as well as those serving in the military and living abroad.Texas G.O.P. targets election crimes and ballot initiatives.Despite enacting sweeping restrictions on voting in 2021 that were condemned by civil rights groups and the Justice Department in several lawsuits, Republican lawmakers in Texas are seeking to push the envelope further.Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.2023 Races: Governors’ contests in Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi and mayoral elections in Chicago and Philadelphia are among the races to watch this year.2024 Presidential Race: As the 2024 primary approaches, the wavering support of evangelical leaders for Donald J. Trump could have far-reaching implications for Republicans.Democrats’ New Power: After winning trifectas in four state governments in the midterms, Democrats have a level of control in statehouses not seen since 2009.G.O.P. Debates: The Republican National Committee has asked several major TV networks to consider sponsoring debates, an intriguing show of détente toward the mainstream media and an early sign that the party is making plans for a contested 2024 presidential primary.Dozens of bills related to voting rules and election administration were filed for the legislative session that began this month. While many are from Democrats seeking to ease barriers to voting, Republicans control both chambers of the Texas Legislature and the governor’s office. It is not clear which bills will gain the necessary support to become laws.Some G.O.P. proposals focus on election crimes, including one that would authorize the secretary of state to designate an election marshal responsible for investigating potential election violations.“Similar bills have passed in Florida and in Georgia,” said Jasleen Singh, a counsel in the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “We should be concerned about whether this will happen in Texas as well.”Under another bill, a voter could request that the secretary of state review local election orders and language on ballot propositions and reject any that are found to be “misleading, inaccurate or prejudicial,” part of a push by Republicans in several states to make it harder to pass ballot measures after years of progressive victories.One proposal appears to target heavily populated, Democratic-controlled counties, giving the state attorney general the power to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate voter fraud allegations if local officials decline to do so. Another bill goes further, allowing the attorney general to seek an injunction against local prosecutors who don’t investigate claims of voter fraud and pursue civil penalties against them.A 19-year-old registering to vote in Minnesota, where Democrats introduced a bill that would allow applicants who are at least 16 years old to preregister to vote. Tim Gruber for The New York TimesDemocrats in Minnesota and Michigan go on offense.Democrats are seeking to harness their momentum from the midterm elections to expand voting access in Minnesota and Michigan, where they swept the governors’ races and legislative control.In Minnesota, the party introduced legislation in early January that would create an automatic voter registration system and allow applicants who are at least 16 years old to preregister to vote. The measure would also automatically restore the voting rights of convicted felons upon their release from prison and for those who do not receive prison time as part of a sentence.In Michigan, voters approved a constitutional amendment in November that creates a nine-day early voting period and requires the state to fund absentee ballot drop boxes. Top Democrats in the state are also weighing automatic voter registration and have discussed criminalizing election misinformation.Pennsylvania Republicans want to expand a voter ID law.Because of the veto power of the governor, an office the Democrats held in the November election, Republicans in Pennsylvania have resorted to trying to amend the state constitution in order to pass a voter ID bill.The complex amendment process, which ultimately requires putting the question to voters, is the subject of pending litigation.Both chambers of the Legislature need to pass the bill this session in order to place it on the ballot, but Democrats narrowly flipped control of the House in the midterms — and they will seek to bolster their majority with three special elections next month.“If the chips fall in a certain way, it is unlikely that this will move forward and it might quite possibly be dead,” said Susan Gobreski, a board member of the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania. “But it ain’t dead yet.”Gov. Josh Shapiro has indicated an openness to compromise with Republicans on some voting rules.“I’m certainly willing to have an honest conversation about voter I.D., as long as that is something that is not used as a hindrance to voting,” Mr. Shapiro said in an interview in December.First-time voters and those applying for absentee ballots are currently required to present identification in Pennsylvania, but Republicans want to expand the requirement to all voters in every election and have proposed issuing voter ID cards. Critics say the proposal would make it harder to vote and could compromise privacy.Mr. Shapiro has separately said he hoped that Republicans in the legislature would agree to change the state’s law that forbids the processing of absentee ballots and early votes before Election Day. The ballot procedures, which can drag out the counting, have been a flash point in a series of election lawsuits filed by Republicans.Georgia’s top election official, a Republican, calls to end runoff system.Early voting fell precipitously in Georgia’s nationally watched Senate runoff in December after Republicans, who control of state government, cut in half the number of days for casting ballots before Election Day.Long lines at some early-voting sites, especially in the Atlanta area, during the runoff led to complaints of voter suppression.But the G.O.P. lost the contest, after a set of runoff defeats a year earlier that gave Democrats control of the Senate.Now Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who is Georgia’s secretary of state and its top election official, wants to abandon the runoff system altogether, saying that the condensed timeline had put added strain on poll workers.Critics of ranked-choice voting cited the system as being instrumental to the re-election last year of Senator Lisa Murkowski, a centrist Republican.Ash Adams for The New York TimesRepublicans in Alaska want to undo some voting changes approved in 2020.After a special election last year and the midterms, when Alaska employed a novel election system for the first time, some conservatives reeling from losses at the polls have directed their ire at a common target: ranked-choice voting.At least three Republican lawmakers have introduced bills seeking to repeal some of the electoral changes that were narrowly approved by voters in 2020, which introduced a “top-four” open primary and ranked-choice voting in general elections. In addition to deciding winners based on the candidate who receives the most votes, the bills also seek to return to a closed primary system, in which only registered party members can participate.Supporters of the new system contend that it sets a higher bar to get elected than to simply earn a plurality of votes.But critics have called the format confusing. Some have blamed it for the defeat of Sarah Palin, the Republican former governor and 2008 vice-presidential nominee, in a special House election in August and again in November for the same office.They also cited the system as being instrumental to the re-election last year of Senator Lisa Murkowski, a centrist Republican who angered some members of her party when she voted to convict Mr. Trump at his impeachment trial after the Jan. 6 attack.Still, Republican foes of ranked-choice elections could face hurdles within their own party. According to The Anchorage Daily News, the incoming Senate president, a Republican, favors keeping the system in place.Nebraska Republicans aim to sharply curb mail voting.Nebraska does not require voters to provide a reason to vote early by mail, but two Republican state senators want to make wholesale changes that would mostly require in-person voting on Election Day.Under a bill proposed by Steve Halloran and Steve Erdman, G.O.P. senators in the unicameral legislature, only members of the U.S. military and residents of nursing homes and assisted living facilities could vote by mail.The measure would further require all ballots to be counted on Election Day, which would become a state holiday in Nebraska, along with the day of the statewide primary.The League of Women Voters of Nebraska opposes the bill and noted that 11 of the state’s 93 counties vote entirely by mail under a provision that gives officials in counties with under 10,000 people the option to do so.“This is an extreme bill and would be very unpopular,” MaryLee Mouton, the league’s president, said in an email. “When most states are moving to expand voting by mail, a bill to restrict vote by mail would negatively impact both our rural and urban communities.”In the November election, Nebraskans overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative that created a statewide photo ID requirement for voting.A Republican bill in Missouri would hunt for election fraud.In Missouri, where Republicans control the governor’s office and Legislature, one G.O.P. bill would create an Office of Election Crimes and Security. The office would report to the secretary of state and would be responsible for reviewing election fraud complaints and conducting investigations.Its investigators would also be authorized to enter poling places or offices of any election authority on Election Day, during absentee voting or the canvass of votes.
- [Louisville Brings Measles Vaccinations to School](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/20/louisville-brings-measles-vaccinations-to-school/) - (Precision Vaccinations)In western Kentucky, the Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) began conducting measles vaccination clinics for about 10,000 students this week.Students at Iroquois High School were offered the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine and the COVID-19 and Flu vaccines. On January 18, 2023, local media reported additional on-campus measles clinics at Marion C. Moore School on January 25, Newcomer Academy on January 31, and Fern Creek High School on February 7, 2023. JCPS Health practitioner Angela Hayes informed WLKY, "The U.S. CDC has named Kentucky an at-risk state." "At this point, we are not excluding students from classes if they are not up to date for their vaccinations," said Hayes. "However, if there is an outbreak, those 10,000-plus students may have to be excluded from the school for a certain amount of time to help protect them and others." Measles is an acute viral respiratory illness. It is characterized by a prodrome of fever (as high as 105°F), malaise, cough, coryza, and conjunctivitis, as reported by the Kentucky Board of Health. Measles is one of the most contagious infectious diseases. The virus is transmitted by direct contact with infectious droplets or by airborne spread when an infected person breathes, coughs, or sneezes. The measles virus can remain in the air for up to two hours after an infected person leaves. The Louisville-Jefferson County Metro Government publishes local measles information. The JCPS's actions relate to the recent measles outbreak in the Columbus, Ohio, area, where about 85 children/students have contracted measles, with over 30 hospitalized. Both Kentucky and Ohio require most students to be protected against measles before attending classes. Nationwide, there were a total of 118 measles cases reported by six jurisdictions in 2022. This total increased from 2021 when only 49 measles cases were reported to the U.S. CDC.
- [Dinner featuring ex-LMPD officer in Breonna Taylor case crossed line, attendee says](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/20/dinner-featuring-ex-lmpd-officer-in-breonna-taylor-case-crossed-line-attendee-says/) - A Kentucky NAACP chapter is speaking out after a woman in Bowling Green claimed diners at an upscale local restaurant were subjected to a graphic promotion of a book by a former officer involved in the killing of Breonna Taylor that was held without advance notice.The event Tuesday was hosted by the Republican Women of South Central Kentucky, attendees and the local NAACP branch said, and included an appearance by ex-Louisville Metro Police officer Jonathan Mattingly, who was promoting his new book about the Breonna Taylor shooting and the fallout from the botched raid at her apartment in March 2020.While the group met on the second floor, restaurant patron Cayce Johnson told The Courier Journal that audio from the event could be heard throughout the restaurant because organizers used a loud speaker. Mattingly was introduced to "raucous applause," she said, and at one point, loud video footage from the night of the raid was played, which could be clearly heard by diners below.“We actually had friends of color with us in our group, and we were all disgusted and infuriated,” Johnson said Thursday. “It was just it was so inappropriate and it had to be traumatizing for them to experience that.”More headlines:Blasting to resume at VA hospital construction site. Here's when it will happenThe event was initially scheduled to take place at the Bowling Green Country Club in conjunction with an appearance by Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles, a 2023 gubernatorial candidate in the Republican primary. Quarles canceled his appearance ahead of time, citing “the controversial nature of another speaker at this event,” and the country club told The Courier Journal it "made the decision to cancel the dinner event upon being made aware of the invited guest speaker."Representatives from Anna’s Greek Restaurant did not respond to a request for comment Friday, and a phone call to the Bowling Green Country Club was not immediately returned. A woman who answered a call Friday to the phone number connected to the Republican Women of South Central Kentucky hung up on a reporter seeking comment, and by Friday afternoon the organization's Facebook page was no longer publicly accessible.Ryan Dearbone, president of the Bowling Green-Warren County NAACP, said his organization is conducting an investigation into what happened at the restaurant. He said the Bowling Green Country Club canceled the event after his organization and other local civil rights groups spoke up against it earlier in the week. He said he was told by people who had attended the restaurant that night without knowing the event was taking place that body camera footage was shown and had created an “uncomfortable situation.""This is not a political issue,” Dearbone added. “This is an issue of human decency and civil rights."Dearbone added a Republican Women of South Central Kentucky member had contacted him and said the event was “taken out of context,” as the group was “simply opening a door of First Amendment rights to Mr. Mattingly to hear his story – that he is also a victim in all of this and they hate that it's affected Anna's Greek Restaurant … also that she and none of the people in the group are racist."Read more:Kentucky Derby Festival unveils official 'Spirit of Kentucky' poster for 2023Johnson, who was at the restaurant on the night of the dinner, said she had made a reservation several days prior and was not made aware of the event until her group was ordering food. Everything was fine, she said, until lights at the restaurant dimmed and the presentation began."Ryan Quarles did the right thing. And the country club did the right thing. They canceled,” Johnson said. “They realized the optics were absolutely horrible, that this is not something that needs to be monetized or perpetuated."Taylor was a Black woman who lived in Louisville who was shot and killed in March 2020 by LMPD officers serving a no-knock warrant at her apartment. She was 26, and her death, along with the prominent police killings of George Floyd and several other Black people across the country, sparked a large protest movement that summer and fall.Reporter Lucas Aulbach contributed.See also:How you can land tickets to the Louisville Orchestra's Mammoth Cave shows with Yo-Yo Ma
- [Bill would ban private grant funding of elections - Helena Independent Record](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/19/bill-would-ban-private-grant-funding-of-elections-helena-independent-record/) - Sam Wilson Montana lawmakers are considering a bill that would ban grant funding and other private money or services from being used by local officials to run elections, a practice that has come under intense scrutiny since the 2020 elections.Senate Bill 117 would ensure that local election offices are not influenced by outside funding, Darin Gaub, chairman of the Lewis and Clark County Republican Central Committee, told lawmakers during a Wednesday hearing. The central committee last summer adopted a resolution declaring President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected. Despite a raft of allegations since the 2020 election, no evidence has emerged to substantiate those claims.“This is simply, in essence, a basic ethics bill,” Gaub told the Senate State Administration Committee. “I don’t believe any organization of any kind should be able to donate funds to assist and facilitate the elections … whether they mean to or not, you have the influence of impropriety.” People are also reading… Similar efforts around the country in the last two years have emerged in response to $350 million in grants given to local election offices around the country by the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL). The large donation was made by a foundation set up by Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, earning the grants the pejorative nickname “Zuckerbucks” from some on the right who have questioned the results of the 2020 presidential election.According to a list published by CTCL, 30 counties in Montana received grants to conduct the 2020 election. Much of the funding supported changes to election process caused by the pandemic, which prompted most counties in Montana to hold the general election solely by mail-in ballots.Several proponents of the bill took aim at the CTCL grants, noting that several of the organization’s founders have connections to politically liberal groups. Helena resident Becky Stockton criticized Lewis and Clark County’s use of the funds in 2020, saying that informational fliers the county distributed allowed CTCL to influence the election.“I believe it was a get-out-the-vote campaign for our election office, which is not one of their roles,” Stockton said. “It is the role of the candidates, political parties and initiative campaigns.”In an interview Thursday, Amy Reeves, the county’s top elections official, said she understood the proponents’ wariness of counties taking money from outside groups, but noted that the CTCL grants had “no strings attached.” The fliers were not partisan, and only directed voters to resources for how to register and vote, and information about changes to the process due to the pandemic. The Montana State Capitol in Helena on Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2023. THOM BRIDGE, Independent Record “It was nice to be able to do a lot of things that we wouldn’t have normally been able to do without using taxpayer dollars,” Reeves said.The Montana Association of Clerk and Recorders, representing county election administrators, didn’t take a stance on the bill. But Regina Plettenberg, speaking for the group, did raise the possibility that language prohibiting donations of “personal services” could create issues for the volunteers that help out with local elections.Opposing the bill were the ACLU of Montana and the Blackfeet Tribe, arguing that it could jeopardize the ability of rural, reservation-based Native Americans to access satellite election offices.The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Shelley Vance, R-Belgrade, said it's the responsibility of local election offices to request sufficient funds from their county commissioners.The committee didn’t immediately vote on the measure, but it appeared to attract some bipartisan opposition from members of the Legislature’s American Indian Caucus. That includes 10 Democratic lawmakers, along with two Republicans, Sen. Jason Small and Rep. Rhonda Knudsen.“This bill would impact tribal communities negatively by restricting the already scarce funding that could go toward ensuring voting access for American Indians,” read a letter from the caucus. 0 Comments #lee-rev-content { margin:0 -5px; } #lee-rev-content h3 { font-family: inherit!important; font-weight: 700!important; border-left: 8px solid var(--lee-blox-link-color); text-indent: 7px; font-size: 24px!important; line-height: 24px; } #lee-rev-content .rc-provider { font-family: inherit!important; } #lee-rev-content h4 { line-height: 24px!important; font-family: "serif-ds",Times,"Times New Roman",serif!important; margin-top: 10px!important; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #lee-rev-content h3 { font-size: 18px!important; line-height: 18px; } } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article { clear: both; background-color: #fff; color: #222; background-position: bottom; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding: 15px 0 20px; margin-bottom: 40px; border-top: 4px solid rgba(0,0,0,.8); border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(0,0,0,.2); display: none; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article, #pu-email-form-politics-email-article p { font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article h2 { font-size: 24px; margin: 15px 0 5px 0; font-family: "serif-ds", Times, "Times New Roman", serif; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .lead { margin-bottom: 5px; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .email-desc { font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 5px; opacity: 0.7; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article form { padding: 10px 30px 5px 30px; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .disclaimer { opacity: 0.5; margin-bottom: 0; line-height: 100%; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .disclaimer a { color: #222; text-decoration: underline; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .email-hammer { border-bottom: 3px solid #222; opacity: .5; display: inline-block; padding: 0 10px 5px 10px; margin-bottom: -5px; font-size: 16px; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #pu-email-form-politics-email-article form { padding: 10px 0 5px 0; } } Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! 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- ['Clear as mud': Ohio's new voting restrictions from GOP raise alarm - The Washington Post](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/19/clear-as-mud-ohios-new-voting-restrictions-from-gop-raise-alarm-the-washington-post/) - Two weeks after a Republican-backed voting law significantly reshaped Ohio’s election procedure, local officials, advocates and voters are still making sense of the changes — and how the alterations could restrict who might cast ballots in 2024.One Ohio county office that had distributed about 5,000 veteran ID cards in total realized inadvertently it would no longer be an acceptable form of identification for registering to vote. The League of Women Voters has paused updating its election education material while it analyzes the new law. And local election officials are waiting to hear from the Ohio secretary of state about what IDs they will now accept, how long they can count votes and who can vote outside of polling places.Legal challenges of the law could further complicate the situation: A federal lawsuit brought against Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose by groups representing the homeless, teachers, seniors and veterans argues the restrictions are unconstitutional and suppress votes. Other advocacy groups told The Washington Post that they are considering legal action, too.The legislation, which is now one of the most restrictive voter-ID laws in the country, comes as GOP-led legislatures are increasingly revamping their voting apparatuses following unfounded complaints of fraud by former president Donald Trump after he lost in 2020. Republican state leaders who support the law have argued that it is necessary to quicken the pace of ballot counting and to reduce fraud, even though Ohio’s secretary of state assessed the state’s 2020 election was legitimate.Meanwhile, the aftershocks of the bill’s Jan. 6 signing by Gov. Mike DeWine (R) have been felt across the spectrum as groups representing people with suspended licenses, the disabled and more have brought up questions about potential hurdles for voting.“Every day there’s something that comes out that we are learning more about,” said Kayla Griffin, state director for Ohio’s All Voting is Local chapter.For instance, Hanna Detwiler, spokeswoman of the Franklin County recorder, was preparing material for an upcoming veterans’ event when she scanned the latest major election law passed by the state’s Republicans and noticed an issue. The law restricted the identification of former military members registering to vote to just a Department of Veterans Affairs-issued ID, meaning the county-issued IDs some veterans are accustomed to showing could no longer be used. No state official had reached out to the county office before or after the discovery, she said.“If we hadn’t stumbled on the fine print of the bill, we would have had no idea, no opportunity to let people know that this no longer works as voter ID,” Detwiler said.The office shared the news of the change on social media Tuesday and will notify every cardholder, Detwiler said.“This is the beginning of sounding the alarm and reaching out to veterans,” she said.Other groups say they are still learning about the contents of the law before they update voters. The 165-page bill came up in the final days of the legislative session, passing in the House overnight, a day after a major overhaul in the Senate. The League of Women Voters of Ohio said they testified against the bill only once before its passage. Now, they are coordinating with other groups to interpret the law’s “gray areas.”“We don’t really practically know all the impacts of this bill until the dust settles a little more,” said Jen Miller, who leads the League of Women Voters of Ohio. “It’s still as clear as mud.”Before the new law, Ohio required voters to show identification at the polls, but it accepted a number of alternatives, including a utility bill, paystub or other documentation that could prove a person’s identity and residence. Now, the only acceptable forms are an Ohio driver’s license, state ID card, interim identification form, U.S. passport or federal military ID card.And the ID cannot be expired. The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland found that an estimated 1 million Ohioans had suspended driver’s licenses between 2016 and 2020 because of debts, such as a lack of insurance, unpaid fines and court costs. Those people in impoverished minority communities could face more difficulties getting their licenses reinstated or a state-issued ID in Ohio.“With millions of people having suspended licenses, it really could be a much larger impact on the number of eligible voters in Ohio than I suspect anybody anticipated,” said Anne Sweeney, an attorney at the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland.The new law also reduces the number of days county election boards can count mailed ballots from 10 days after Election Day to four. Critics of the law argue that could restrict the counting of ballots from military members stationed outside of Ohio.It also prohibits curbside voting — the practice of casting ballots from cars or outside polling places that was popularized during the coronavirus pandemic — unless the voter is “physically unable” to enter the building. Kevin Truitt, the legal advocacy director of Disability Rights Ohio, said that might be interpreted to restrict people with a disability that doesn’t physically prevent them from going into a polling station but could make it more difficult, such as an immune-compromised person or someone with sensory disabilities who might struggle in large crowds or narrow spaces.“It’s concerning that we’re moving in this direction of narrowing access to voters with disabilities instead of finding ways to be more inclusive and accessible,” Truitt said.With the legal help of Democratic lawyer Marc Elias, Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, Ohio Federation of Teachers, Ohio Alliance for Retired Americans and Union Veterans Council sued LaRose, arguing the restrictions make it harder for people who have limited time or forms of ID to cast their ballots and calling the law “an all-sides attack on the voting process.” The lawsuit cites LaRose’s earlier assessment that 2020’s election was safe and secure with “a 99.98% accuracy rate.”Asked about the lawsuit, LaRose’s office referred The Post to the statement LaRose shared after the law’s signing, which defended the restrictions and noted the popularity of stricter voter-ID laws in polling. A Monmouth University poll in January last year found that 80 percent of Americans supported “requiring voters to show a photo ID” to vote. On the other hand, Arizonans rejected a ballot measure in 2022 to restrict acceptable forms of ID, a shocking loss for a historically red state.Democrats signal a shift toward accepting voter ID laws“Ohioans are clearly supportive of strict photo ID for voting, and we have found a common-sense way to make it happen that ensures voters are not disenfranchised,” LaRose said. “No piece of legislation is a silver-bullet solution, but we are once again showing Ohioans that we take their concerns seriously and are dedicated to continuously improving our elections.”In a tweet, LaRose pointed to the less restrictive ID law in Texas that was upheld.However, other courts have struck down state voter identification laws in North Carolina and Montana.Abha Khanna, lead attorney for the groups suing LaRose, said the secretary has not made clear why the stricter voter law was needed — especially after declaring the state’s 2020 election was safe.“I’m assuming that the legislature would enact laws they believe are solving problems,” Khanna said. “Where the secretary has previously disclaimed any such problem, it is puzzling why he would then endorse this purported solution.”At a conference of 650 election officials held last week in Columbus, participants peppered LaRose with questions about the specifics of the law as they await more detailed rules from his office, said Aaron Ockerman, executive director of the Ohio Association of Election Officials, a bipartisan group.“The secretary of state’s folks were generally saying, ‘We’re reading this for the first time just like you,’” Ockerman said. “'We don’t have all the answers today. But it’s good to know what’s on your mind and you can absolutely count on a lot more communication from our office as we figure this out.’”Getting a photo ID so you can vote is easy. Unless you’re poor, black, Latino or elderly.Liz Avore, an election expert tracking states’ revamps at Voting Rights Lab, said that while the law makes Ohio an outlier in terms of strictness, it has also joined a trend of states moving in the same direction.Since 2020, eight states, now including Ohio, have made their voting-ID laws stricter, Avore said.Thirty-five states ask voters to show a form of ID at the polls, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which groups the states by strict and non-strict. Ohio joins eleven other states in the strict column.Avore said the law also touches upon a deepening divide across the country, as Republican-led states have restricted mail-in voting after Trump claimed the batches of mailed-in ballots were fraudulent in the states where he lost. In bluer states, the remote method of voting more widely used during the pandemic has expanded.“Most folks across the country are experiencing changes in terms of their access to mail voting,” Avore said.
- [Democratic senators, voting rights groups call for Spindell's removal from WEC](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/19/democratic-senators-voting-rights-groups-call-for-spindells-removal-from-wec/) - Wisconsin Senate Democrats and voting rights groups have called for Wisconsin Elections Commissioner Robert Spindell to resign or be removed from his post after comments he made celebrating the suppression of Black and Hispanic votes in last year’s midterm elections. The comments, which Spindell made in a memo to members of the 4th Congressional District Republican Party, were first reported by Urban Milwaukee. In the memo, Spindell, who is also the chair of the district party, cites the party’s work getting Black voters not to turn out as a key reason for U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson’s re-election. “In the City of Milwaukee, with the 4th Congressional District Republican Party working very closely with the RPW, RNC, Republican Assembly & Senate Campaign Committees, Statewide Campaigns and RPMC in the Black and Hispanic areas, we can be especially proud of the City of Milwaukee (80.2% Dem Vote) casting 37,000 less votes than cast in the 2018 election with the major reduction happening in the overwhelming Black and Hispanic areas,” he wrote. On Wednesday, all of the 11 Senate Democrats denounced the comments and called for Spindell to resign or for Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) — who appointed Spindell — to remove him. “In Wisconsin, our election officials should be working to ensure that every single eligible voter should be able to cast their ballot freely and fairly,” Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) said. “We don’t need election officials bragging about suppressing voters and especially voter turnout in historically disenfranchised communities. Celebrating voter suppression is antithetical to the mission of the elections commission and it undermines confidence in the ability of Mr. Spindell to do his job. In fact, Spindell’s remarks are disqualifying.” Spindell, the most right-wing of the three Republicans on the six-person commission, has a long history of statements and actions aimed at undermining Democratic voters in Milwaukee. In the runup to the 2020 election, after the commission chose not to allow Kanye West onto the presidential ballot for turning in his nominating papers late, Spindell often complained about how that decision would prevent Black voters from being able to choose the rapper, whose candidacy was seen as a spoiler for Democrats, potentially pulling votes away from Democratic candidate Joe Biden. “How about Kenyon (sic.) West?” Spindell complained at a rally in December of 2020 as he listed a number of actions he perceived as nefarious plots by the Democratic party. Spindell also worked to get the Green Party’s presidential candidate on the 2020 ballot after the party failed to properly file its nominating papers. Emails showed that Spindell assisted Green Party officials in finding a Wisconsin-based attorney to file a lawsuit attempting to force their candidate onto the ballot in the hopes that the presence of the Green Party would pull votes away from Democrats. Spindell was also one of 10 Republicans who cast false Electoral College votes on behalf of former President Donald Trump in 2020, attempting to install Trump as president even though he’d lost the election in Wisconsin. Despite Spindell’s previous actions, Democrats said that his comments in the memo were a bridge too far and grounds for his ouster. “I think there have certainly been many folks, myself included, who have called for Spindell to resign for his many infractions that undermine confidence in his ability to be a commissioner,” Roys said. “I think what’s different about this is how blatant it is.” Roys said that LeMahieu and the Republicans who control the Senate have made a number of comments at the beginning of this legislative session stating their desire for working together and bipartisanship. She said removing Spindell would be an opportunity for Republicans to prove they mean it and that they believe they can win elections with their ideas and not by working to suppress votes in Milwaukee. “The fact that the Republican party and particularly Senate Majority Leader LeMahieu has stated that he wants to turn over a new leaf, he wants to work together with Gov. Evers … this is an opportunity for him to be true to his words,” Roys said. “These comments are of public import to every citizen of WIsconsin, whether you’re a member of a disenfranchised community or not. We all want our vote to be cast and counted fairly. Spindell’s continued presence on WEC is an affront to that.” Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee), one of the few Black members of the Senate, said that as someone who “works tirelessly” for her Milwaukee community, she finds it personally insulting that Spindell would celebrate keeping her constituents from the polls. “As an African-American, a person of color and an elected official who works tirelessly in this building trying to improve the lives of the residents of Milwaukee and communities of color, I am angry, I am irritated and I am frustrated that Bob Spindell, a Republican member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, whose job is to help control how elections are administered, has praised the public attack on the voting rights of communities of color and the principles of democracy,” Johnson said. Johnson said that the Republican party has ignored communities of color in Wisconsin and its agenda has left out the poor communities in and around her district but added that comments such as Spindell’s don’t go unnoticed. “Black and Hispanic people, their lives, their quality of life and the racial disparities that plague our communities and continue to worsen year after year hold no importance to the Republican party or their agenda,” she said. “I just want the Republican party and Bob Spindell to know that communities of color are not stupid.” GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX SUBSCRIBE
- [In Michigan, Democratic women are rising. Now some are weighing a Senate run.](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/19/in-michigan-democratic-women-are-rising-now-some-are-weighing-a-senate-run/) - When Democrat Debbie Stabenow began her political career in 1974, fewer women were running for office. In a recent interview, she recalled hearing that her male opponent in that first race had dismissively referred to her as “that young broad.”Nearly half a century later, Stabenow, who won that county election and went on to become the first woman to represent Michigan in the U.S. Senate, is retiring from Congress. Her decision has set off a scramble for her seat in a state where Democratic women have become a dominant political force, propelled by a new generation of officeholders.Several prominent Democratic women are now deciding whether to run for the seat in 2024. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D), 46, is moving swiftly toward a run, calling party leaders across the state to tout her victories in hard-fought House races as evidence of her ability to win statewide, according to half a dozen Democrats with knowledge of her activities. These Democrats, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations, said they expect her to announce her candidacy in the near future. Slotkin has said publicly that she’s “seriously considering it.”Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, 45, who became the face of Michigan’s defense against then-President Trump’s false claims in 2020 that the presidency had been stolen from him, is looking at the race. Benson oversaw the election and afterward, she defended the election systems, even as she faced armed protesters. Democratic Reps. Haley Stevens, 39, and Debbie Dingell, 69, are looking too.“I’ve told people I won’t say no yet,” Dingell said in an interview. “There are a lot of people with a lot of thoughts about this … I’ve had a lot of phone calls.”Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), 51, fresh off a decisive reelection and seen widely in the party as a potential future presidential candidate, has ruled out a run for Senate. State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, 36, who became a national figure in 2022 with a viral speech denouncing a Republican colleague’s incendiary personal attacks, hasn’t fully closed the door on the idea, but said in an interview that she’s eager to see what a Democratic majority in state government will accomplish during the next two years.The success Democratic women have had in recent elections in Michigan stands out among battleground states. Five of the seven Democrats serving in the U.S. House are women. A majority of Democrats in both chambers in the state legislature are women, including the majority leader of the state Senate. Along with the governor and secretary of state, the Democratic attorney general is also a woman. So is the chair of the state Democratic Party.In interviews, Michigan Democrats pointed to a system that recruits and encourages women to run for office. When women rose up in anger during the Trump presidency in 2018, the party embraced them, they noted. And in November, Michigan voters decisively chose to codify abortion protections in the state constitution, another signal of the influence of Democratic women the state.It wasn’t always that way, recalled Stabenow, who entered politics as a 24-year-old in the 1974 race for the Ingham County Board of Commissioners. Gordon Swix, the Republican she defeated, said he has no recollection of calling her a “young broad” and that’s not how he talks. Now in his 80s, Swix praised Stabenow’s work ethic and drive, but said he never voted for her.When she was elected to the state House a few years after that campaign, one of only eight women at the time, Stabenow said she fought back a male leader’s desire to group them on a committee of “constitutional revisions and women’s rights.”“At that point, I really had to break down doors myself, and there were very few women involved in elected office,” Stabenow said in an interview. “At that time, there was a lot of attention for being the first, but you know, if you’re the first, if you’re the only, and there’s not a second, third or fourth, another way to look at that is we are the token, and so from my perspective, the real power and representation comes from having many, many women involved.”Today, many Democratic women in Michigan are controlling the levers of government, and perhaps the most prominent among them is Whitmer. After a double-digit reelection win last year, she has said she intends to serve her entire term, ruling out a run for the Senate. Whitmer was considered by Joe Biden’s campaign to be his running mate in 2020 and is frequently mentioned among the Democrats who might run for president in the future.Whitmer was also the target of a failed kidnapping plot by far-right extremists in 2020. During her governorship, Whitmer and other top officials have confronted sexist remarks. In August 2021, Michigan Republican Party Chairman Chairman Ron Weiser was caught on video calling Whitmer, Benson and state Attorney General Dana Nessel “three witches” who should be burned at the stake. Amid widespread condemnation, Weiser released a statement of apology “for the flippant analogy.”The next year, as the three women ran for reelection — all were first elected to their posts in 2018 — Benson posted a photo of them on Twitter doing “Charlie’s Angels” poses with the caption: “We are fierce, we are fearless, we are ready to win.”Right now, the open Senate seat is seen as the strongest opportunity for a political promotion in the state, as Stabenow’s retirement caught many by surprise. Democrats face a difficult Senate map in 2024, putting their narrow 51-49 majority at risk. Michigan, where the last two presidential elections have been close, is expected to be a key battlefront, with Republicans eager to flip the seat red. Among the Republicans’ considered potential candidates are Rep. John James, former congressman Fred Upton and 2022 GOP gubernatorial nominee Tudor Dixon.“We are going to aggressively target this seat in 2024,” said National Republican Senatorial Committee communications director Mike Berg in a statement.Benson, the secretary of state, “is taking a serious look” at the Senate race, according to a person with knowledge of her thinking, though during an interview with NBC News earlier this month she appeared to wave it off. The person with knowledge of Benson’s thinking spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private deliberations.Earlier this month, Biden awarded Benson the Presidential Citizens Medal, one of the nation’s highest civilian honors, for “courage and selflessness during a moment of peril for our nation.” After the 2020 election, armed, pro-Trump protesters showed up at her home chanting, “Stop the Steal.”Stevens, who worked on the Obama administration’s federal auto task force, came to Congress at the same time as Slotkin, winning a seat in 2018 when a record number of women ran for office across the country amid a major backlash to Trump. She said in an interview that supporters have reached out about her running for the Senate seat, but “I’m not ready to say anything right now.”She added that, “If you’re looking at who is going to run and what we’re expecting to see, I think you’ll see some strong female contenders.” During her 2022 campaign — in which she beat a Democratic congressman in a primary after he decided to run in her district rather than run in his redrawn district that had become more competitive — she said she would tell voters: “It feels good to be a Democrat, and boy does it feel good to be a Democratic woman in Michigan.”McMorrow, who received national attention last year for a speech that went viral chastising a Republican colleague who had falsely accused her of wanting to sexually groom children, is also thinking about her political future. Soon after that speech, McMorrow hired Lis Smith, a well-known Democratic strategist who helped elevate now-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg from relative obscurity as mayor of South Bend, Ind., to a formidable presidential candidate. (Buttigieg has a residence in Michigan, but has also said he doesn’t intend to run.)McMorrow said it’s been “surreal” to see her “name circulated” as a possible Senate contender, but that she’s eager to see what Democrats can accomplish controlling all levers of state government. She said her goal is for national Democrats by 2024 to use Michigan as a template for what gets done when the party is in charge.McMorrow, who is close friends with Slotkin, described a kind of sisterhood among the women who ran together for the first time in 2018 and said Stabenow paved the way for that.“As we think about her retiring, she’s really created a pathway and infrastructure that supports Democratic women all across the state,” said McMorrow, who was also first elected in 2018.When it comes to the Senate race, Slotkin is seen by many Democrats as a potential early front-runner, though more liberal Democrats in the state are hesitant to anoint the centrist as the nominee. Others, like Alexis Wiley, a Democratic strategist and former chief of staff to Detroit mayor Mike Duggan, said Slotkin is Democrats’ best shot at holding the Michigan seat in a year when their Senate majority is on the line.Wiley said Slotkin has “made clear her intentions” in what Wiley sees as an effort to clear the field early and avoid a costly and bruising primary.“I’m seriously considering it, and I’ve been open about that, but you know, Sen. Stabenow leaves just a huge hole in the Senate, and so I just want to make sure before I jump in that I’ve really thought about it and talk to people and do it with eyes wide open,” Slotkin said last week.But former congresswoman Brenda Lawrence, who opted not to seek reelection in 2022, said she expects a crowded primary and said many people are assessing their chances. Lawrence, who is Black, said she is looking for a “strong African American to run.” If she doesn’t find one, she said she’d consider running herself.At least one prominent Democratic man is also looking at the race. Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, who is also Black, has said he is considering running.Lawrence said Slotkin may struggle to win over parts of the state where she hasn’t spent as much time. Slotkin is already working to shore up support in areas beyond her congressional boundaries: On Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend, Slotkin attended events outside her district, in Detroit and Grand Rapids.When Stabenow announced her retirement earlier this month, she said it was time to “pass the torch” to a new generation. She added that she suspects a woman will replace her and hopes the party will coalesce around whoever is the strongest candidate.“I think with all of our wonderful candidates, it is very likely to be a woman, but I do want to step back and give everyone a chance,” she said. “I think we have to see who’s interested and how this plays out. It’s always better if we can get behind one candidate and not have a divisive primary.”correctionA previous version of this story misspelled Lt. Gov. Gilchrist's first name. It is Garlin, not Garland. Camila DeChalus contributed to this report.
- [Wall Street ally Sen. Thom Tillis tapped to join GOP leadership - OpenSecrets](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/19/wall-street-ally-sen-thom-tillis-tapped-to-join-gop-leadership-opensecrets/) - Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) questions U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill, March 23, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) reportedly tapped Wall Street ally Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) to join his leadership team as a counselor, elevating the bipartisan dealmaker — and strong fundraiser — within the ranks of an increasingly partisan Congress. North Carolina voters elected the former House speaker of the state’s General Assembly to the U.S. Senate in 2014. His 2020 reelection bid was the most expensive Senate race in history until the Georgia U.S. Senate contests advanced to a runoff that cycle. Tillis’ campaign reported raising $25.3 million ahead of his 2-point victory, with top contributors including Wall Street banks and private investment funds. Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with GOP Senate leadership, poured $47.1 million into his contentious reelection race against Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham. The super PAC bankrolled a TV ad attacking Cunningham over an extramarital affair that came out just weeks before the general election. The second term senator has helped broker prominent bipartisan bills, including the Respect for Marriage Act, a bill passed in December that protects same-sex and interracial marriage, and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, breaking decades of partisan gridlock on gun control legislation in the wake of the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Tillis told Punchbowl News that he hopes to find a legislative path forward on immigration reform and border security. Tillis, the ranking member of the Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection Subcommittee, has also paved the way for regulatory and legislative moves that benefit his top contributors on Wall Street. The securities and investment industry has been a top contributor to Tillis’ Senate campaigns, according to OpenSecrets data. Tillis’ campaign reported receiving $2.4 million from individuals in the securities and investment industry since 2013 and another $288,350 from industry PACs. Individuals affiliated with the real estate industry — another top contributor – collectively gave Tillis’ campaigns $2.2 million since 2013, while PACs affiliated with the industry gave $136,000. His campaigns also reported receiving $836,185 from the commercial banking industry, $709,157 from the private equity industry and $328,398 from hedge funds through the same period. The top five contributors to his 2020 reelection campaign were individuals and PACs affiliated big banks and Wall Street firms, including $93,286 from Blackstone Group, $78,155 from Truist Financial, $58,475 from Goldman Sachs, $57,890 from Bank of America and $57,294 from Wells Fargo. All five companies contributed heavily to U.S. senators serving on the Senate Banking Committee, according to OpenSecrets data. At the Senate Banking Committee’s “Annual Oversight of the Nation’s Largest Banks” hearing on Sept. 20, 2022, Tillis decried “partisan bills” and executive orders that he claimed have added $201 billion in regulatory costs and 131 million hours of new paperwork during the first year of the Biden administration. That number appears to come from a report from the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank and sister organization to the “dark money” group American Action Network, which spends tens of millions of dollars promoting Republican congressional candidates each cycle without disclosing the source of their funds. “I, for one, think that we need fewer regulations in this space,” Tillis told his colleagues and the panel of CEOs from the biggest banks in the country. Forecasting a recession in 2023 — as are two-thirds of economists at 23 large financial institutions doing business directly with the Federal Reserve — Tillis said people “are going to suffer from the policies coming from this body, not what you all are doing.” Tillis, who once defended financial giant Goldman Sachs as a firm that probably employs “a lot of little guys,” has been a vocal critic of regulations imposed on Wall Street banks in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. In 2018, Tillis introduced legislation that would have directed the Securities and Exchange Commission to expand the definition of accredited investors. Sludge reported it would pave the way for Wall Street to raise more money by expanding opportunities to less-wealthy investors. While the legislation did not pass, the SEC voted to change the definition in December 2019 after Tillis and six GOP colleagues sent a letter to then-SEC Chairman Jay Clayton asking him to expand the definition of accredited investor. Blackstone also sent letters to the SEC encouraging the definition change, the Wall Street Journal reported. Tillis’ aides told Bloomberg in 2019 that the senator’s pro-bank views are all about helping North Carolina, which is home to several banks including the principal executive offices of Bank of America. The outlet also reported that Tillis’ father was a longtime board member of BB&T, also based in North Carolina, serving as chairman for more than a decade. A spokesperson for Tillis did not return OpenSecrets’ request for comment. Tills was also a top recipient of contributions from the payday lender industry during the 2020 election cycle, with an influx of donations coming after he defended the industry from allegations payday lenders may prey upon those hit by unemployment, eviction, medical bills and other hardships during the coronavirus pandemic. During a March 10, 2020, Senate Banking Committee hearing, Tillis warned against “overreach” and “painting with a broad brush” when it comes to the industry he described as a lifeline when he was a child. Four major payday lenders contributed more than $20,000 to Tillis’ campaign within days of the hearing, the Daily Beast reported. Payday lenders aggressively pitched their products through online advertising, although federal relief helped curb demand for many low-income Americans impacted by the pandemic. Tillis was also the top recipient of contributions from the tobacco industry during the 2020 election cycle. The North Carolina senator was the second biggest beneficiary of lobbyist contributions that cycle. During the 2022 election cycle, Tillis’ leadership PAC, Together Holding Our Majority PAC, reported raking in $1 million. Over two-thirds of the $977,355 spent went toward fundraising, and the leadership PAC made another $234,955 in contributions. That included $10,000 each to Republican challengers Herschel Walker in Georgia and Adam Laxalt in Nevada, and $5,000 each to Republican challengers Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Blake Masters in Arizona, the four races rated toss-ups by the Cook Political Report. Tillis also played a pivotal role in primarying former Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) in the 2022 midterms. Tillis backed Republican state Sen. Chuck Edwards in the 11th Congressional District GOP primary and reportedly headlined a fundraiser for Edwards three weeks before the primary, which Edwards went on to win.
- [House GOP's 'all-star' oversight panel features 13 election deniers, 10 impeach-Biden-world ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/19/house-gops-all-star-oversight-panel-features-13-election-deniers-10-impeach-biden-world/) - Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado; Republican Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania; Republican Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona; Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of GeorgiaGetty ImagesHouse Republican leaders have stocked the oversight panel with partisan bomb-throwers.Many of the new panelists voted to overturn the 2020 election and defied Jan. 6 investigators."It's like giving Al Capone the power to investigate Eliot Ness," said a congressional watchdog.House Republicans have tapped some of their unruliest colleagues to spearhead the chamber's political investigations arm, a roster that includes more than a dozen members who voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election, 10 who've already endorsed impeaching a Biden administration official, and a trio of folks who disregarded subpoenas issued by the Jan. 6 select committee in the last Congress.House Oversight Committee chair James Comer welcomed the "all-star lineup" of newcomers — including Kevin McCarthy-aligned Republican Reps. Lisa McClain of Michigan and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, as well as speaker-vote rebels Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, and freshman Anna Paulina Luna of Florida — on Wednesday, touting their mission as "to root out waste, fraud, abuse" and collectively "hold the Biden Administration accountable."Authorizing this menagerie of scandal-plagued politicians to probe others, and possibly insert themselves into Department of Justice and FBI investigations reviewing their own activities, seems ridiculous to American Enterprise Institute scholar Norm Ornstein."It'd be like if we gave Al Capone the power to investigate Eliot Ness," Ornstein said during a press conference hosted by left-leaning nonprofit Facts First USA on Wednesday, referring to the infamous gangster and the prohibition agent who brought him down.White House counsel office spokesman Ian Sams, who is likely to have his hands full with Comer's planned investigation into President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter's, business dealings, said the oversight appointments explain a lot."It appears that House Republicans may be setting the stage for divorced-from-reality political stunts, instead of engaging in bipartisan work on behalf of the American people," Sams wrote in an official statement.US House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy embraces Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) in the House Chamber during the fourth day of elections for speaker of the House at the US Capitol Building on January 06, 2023 in Washington, DC.Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images'They're just gonna do whatever they want'Other ultra-conservative members of the GOP oversight roster with 2020 election-related issues include Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan, House Freedom Caucus members Perry, Greene, Boebert, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Byron Donalds of Florida, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Clay Higgins of Louisiana, and Gary Palmer of Alabama.Perry and Biggs, both of whom withheld their support from McCarthy's demoralizing speaker bid until he caved to their myriad demands, voted to overturn Biden's lawful 2020 win, blew off Jan. 6 investigators, and have cheered on efforts to impeach someone in the Biden administration sooner rather than later.Jordan also voted to overturn the election results and shunned Jan. 6 investigators, while individuals like Higgins, Donalds, Gosar, Palmer, Greene, Boebert, McClain, and fellow panelists Reps. Pete Sessions of Texas, Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, Pat Fallon of Texas, and Jake LaTurner of Kansas voted to overturn the 2020 election, have co-sponsored a Biden-related impeachment proposal, or both.Retired Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who chaired the House Oversight Committee last session, asserted that this new cast of characters were getting into it for the wrong reasons."The personal vendettas these committees pursue are not a legitimate use of the oversight power. The attempts to obstruct investigations into their own criminality are not an appropriate use of subpoena power," she said during the Facts First event.Maloney also accused the group of choosing revenge rather than focusing on "how you're going to help the American people" in the 118th Congress.Kurt Bardella, a former House GOP leadership aide turned Democratic strategist, said what's most alarming is that there doesn't seem to be anyone around who'll be able to rein them in when they inevitably overreach."These are basically the people who own Kevin McCarthy at this point," Bardella told Insider at the Facts First event. "So when Lauren Boebert, or Marjorie Taylor Greene, or Scott Perry want to start impeaching Joe Biden, McCarthy's not going to be able to stand up and stop them.""They're just gonna do whatever they want," Bardella stressed.Read the original article on Business Insider
- [Murdoch Deposed: Here's What Fox Is Accused Of Lying About In Defamation Lawsuit Over ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/19/murdoch-deposed-heres-what-fox-is-accused-of-lying-about-in-defamation-lawsuit-over/) - ToplineNews Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch is testifying Thursday and Friday in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation case against Fox News, a billion-dollar lawsuit that has ensnared some of the network’s biggest personalities over repeated statements after the 2020 election that falsely linked Dominion machines to fraud—including comments by both Fox News personalities and guests. Key Facts Dominion alleges in its lawsuit, which a Delaware state court allowed to move forward in December 2021, that Fox News and its anchors repeatedly and knowingly pushed false claims that linked Dominion voting machines to election fraud as a tactic to boost ratings, despite Dominion sending repeated letters to the network contesting its claims. The network “made, endorsed and accepted” false claims about Dominion machines, the lawsuit alleges, through repeated interviews on its programs with far-right Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, who pushed the Dominion fraud claims without anchors challenging them. Powell told Maria Bartiromo there was “a massive and coordinated effort to steal this election” and “manufacture votes for Joe Biden,” told Sean Hannity the company “ran an algorithm that shaved off votes from then-President Donald Trump and awarded them to Biden” and claimed to Lou Dobbs that Trump’s “lead was so great … they had to stop the counting and come in and backfill the votes they needed to change the result,” according to the lawsuit. Giuliani claimed in December on Fox & Friends that Dominion machines “[were] developed to steal elections, and being used in the states that are involved,” and he and Powell both repeatedly pushed false claims that linked Dominion machines to rival company Smartmatic—which has also sued Fox News—and claimed the company has ties to Venezuela, which it does not, the Dominion suit notes. Fox anchors also asserted false election claims on the network themselves, Dominion alleges: Jeanine Pirro asked, “Why was there an overnight popping of the vote tabulation that cannot be explained for Biden?”, for instance, and Dobbs said Dominion machines were part of “the most ludicrous, irresponsible and rancid system imaginable in the world’s only superpower” and Trump “has to take, I believe, drastic action, dramatic action” to combat it. In addition to claims made on the network, Dobbs also tweeted a two-page document that claimed “there was an embedded controller in every Dominion machine, that allows an election supervisor to move votes from one candidate to another” and described the purported voting machine conspiracy as a “cyber Pearl Harbor.” Tucker Carlson, who Dominion notes initially said on-air there was no election fraud that changed the results, brought on MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell for an interview in January 2021, and Lindell claimed he “ha[s] all the evidence” to prove fraud with Dominion machines and the voting company “hired hit groups, bots and trolls” to “go after” him. Chief Critic Fox News has disputed Dominion’s claims and maintained comments made on the network were not defamatory, arguing they’re covered under the First Amendment and the network and its anchors were reporting on matters of public importance. "We are confident we will prevail as freedom of the press is foundational to our democracy and must be protected, in addition to the damages claims being outrageous, unsupported and not rooted in sound financial analysis, serving as nothing more than a flagrant attempt to deter our journalists from doing their jobs,” the network said in a statement to Forbes Tuesday. Big Number 774. That’s the approximate number of statements made on Fox News that challenged the election results or asserted claims of election fraud in the two weeks after Biden was declared president-elect, according to an analysis by left-leaning media watchdog MediaMatters that Dominion cited in its lawsuit. Contra Dominion’s lawsuit acknowledges that Dobbs said on air on January 4, 2021, that “we still don’t have verifiable tangible support” to prove election fraud involving voting machines, and “we have had a devil of a time finding actual proof.” The Fox Business host, whose show was canceled a month later, did not change his tune on election fraud, however, saying, “The fact of the matter is that this President is looking at the prospect of having this election stolen from him.” What To Watch For Dominion’s lawsuit against Fox News is scheduled to go to trial in April 2023, according to court documents, and the voting machine company is asking the network to pay $1.6 billion in damages for its alleged defamation. Fox also faces a separate defamation lawsuit from Smartmatic, which a court allowed to move forward in March. Dominion has also brought a separate case against the Fox Corporation directly that focuses on Rupert and son Lachlan Murdoch’s alleged involvement in pushing election fraud claims on Fox News, which is also now pending after a court rejected Fox’s motion to dismiss the case in June. What We Don’t Know What Murdoch will say when he’s deposed. The News Corp. chair was initially slated to be deposed in December via video call, but his testimony was delayed until this week and will now take place in person in Los Angeles, according to court filings in the case. The transcript will not be made public. Dominion’s Fox News lawsuit alleges that even though Murdoch did not personally believe there was widespread election fraud, he was swayed by his personal relationship with Trump and the effect of pushing false election claims on Fox News’ ratings to “nevertheless [encourage] on-air personalities to perpetuate these baseless claims.” The lawsuit alleges Murdoch exerted direct influence over Fox’s programming in the aftermath of the 2020 election, citing media reports from the time that claimed Murdoch had “stepped in to call the shots directly” at the network amid a ratings decline. Key Background Dominion sued Fox News in March 2021, one of nine defamation lawsuits the company has brought against companies and figures in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Murdoch marks the most major figure to be deposed thus far in the months-long discovery process leading up to the case’s trial, though Dominion has asked a number of the network’s highest-ranking personalities and officials to testify in court. Among those who have already been deposed are Pirro, Carlson, Dobbs, Hannity, Bartiromo, Lachlan Murdoch, James Murdoch, Shepard Smith, Steve Doocy, Brett Baier, Laura Ingraham and Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, along with non-Fox figures like former Attorney General William Barr, court records show. Court records in the case indicate proceedings have become contentious in recent months, as both Dominion and Fox News have asked the court to issue sanctions against the other for allegedly destroying evidence. Dominion alleged that evidence was spoiled by Fox figures including Hannity, Ingraham and Scott, though the full request for sanctions is confidential, so it’s unclear what that evidence may have entailed. Surprising Fact A December court hearing in the case suggested that many of the network’s high-ranking anchors and executives have opposed the 2020 fraud claims under oath, though full transcripts of the depositions have not been made public. Dominion’s attorneys said during the hearing that Hannity testified he “did not believe [Powell’s fraud claims] for one second,” and alleged Carlson also doubted the fraud claims, along with Fox News exec Meade Cooper. A Dominion attorney also alleged a Fox Corporation executive had pushed the White House to stop having Powell advise Trump, calling her claims “outlandish.” Dominion argued this was further evidence that Fox Corp, which Murdoch controls, knew the fraud claims were false but had Fox News push them anyway. Further Reading Fox News Sued By Dominion Voting For Defamation Over Election Conspiracy (Forbes) Court Lets Lawsuit Against OANN Move Forward—Here’s Where Dominion And Smartmatic’s Defamation Suits Stand Now (Forbes) Billionaire Rupert Murdoch Will Be Deposed In Dominion’s Defamation Suit Against Fox, Report Says (Forbes) Rupert Murdoch's turn to face questions in $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News (NPR) Dominion's Lawsuit Is No Slam Dunk—But Neither Is Fox News' Defense (Vanity Fair)
- [Lycoming County 2020 general election cast vote records will remain confidential](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/19/lycoming-county-2020-general-election-cast-vote-records-will-remain-confidential/) - MARK NANCE/Sun-Gazette Lycoming County Courthouse.
- [John Eastman Is Defiant as Trump-Related Investigations Proliferate - The New York Times](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/19/john-eastman-is-defiant-as-trump-related-investigations-proliferate-the-new-york-times/) - A legal reckoning awaits a chief architect of Donald Trump’s effort to reverse his election loss. But in Mr. Eastman’s telling, he was far from a criminal.WASHINGTON — John C. Eastman, a legal architect of Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times under questioning by the House Jan. 6 committee.But in recently released testimony from the committee’s investigation, other witnesses had plenty to say about him.Many White House lawyers expressed contempt for Mr. Eastman, portraying him as an academic with little grasp of the real world. Greg Jacob, the legal counsel to former Vice President Mike Pence, characterized Mr. Eastman’s legal advice as “gravely, gravely irresponsible,” calling him the “serpent in the ear” of Mr. Trump. Eric Herschmann, a Trump White House lawyer, recounted “chewing out” Mr. Eastman. Pat A. Cipollone, the chief White House counsel, is described calling Mr. Eastman’s ideas “nutty.”In the coming months, Mr. Eastman will be facing a legal reckoning. He has been drawn into the criminal investigation into election interference in Atlanta, which is nearing a decision on potential indictments. The F.B.I. seized his iPhone. And the Jan. 6 committee, in one of its last acts, asked the Justice Department to investigate Mr. Eastman on a range of criminal charges, including obstructing a congressional proceeding. For good measure, he faces a disciplinary bar proceeding in California.A once-obscure scholar at the right-wing Claremont Institute, Mr. Eastman joined the Trump camp shortly after the election and was soon among a group of lawyers who, with the president’s blessing, largely commandeered decision-making from lawyers at the White House and on the Trump campaign.He championed a two-pronged strategy that the Jan. 6 committee portrayed as a coup plot. The first was enlisting party officials to organize slates of bogus electors in swing states where Mr. Trump lost, even after the results had been certified and recertified, as in Georgia. The second was pressuring Mr. Pence to deviate from the vice president’s traditionally ceremonial role and decline to certify all the electoral votes on Jan. 6.While Mr. Eastman refused to answer most of the committee’s questions, he has hardly been at a loss for words. At the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, held on the Ellipse moments before Trump supporters marched toward the Capitol, he spoke ominously of stolen elections, voting machine chicanery and ballots stuffed in a “secret folder.” Over the last two years he has remained defiant in a string of public appearances and interviews, and painted a picture sharply at odds with other accounts, most notably those of Mr. Pence and two of his aides who cooperated with the House committee.In Mr. Eastman’s telling of the lead-up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, he was far from a criminal. In fact, in a recent interview — a fuller version of one he gave to The New York Times in the fall of 2021 — he says he was helping to head off a potentially more perilous outcome.Mr. Eastman spoke of voter fraud at the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, just before Trump supporters marched toward the Capitol.Jim Bourg/ReutersHe claims that in an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 4, he helped convince Mr. Trump that Mr. Pence did not have the power to pick whomever he wanted as president. And Mr. Eastman said his advice to the president and vice president was only that Mr. Pence should pause the certification of the election, giving legislatures more time to consider fraud allegations in certain states where Mr. Trump had lost.“I think my greatest contribution to this conversation is to have backed Trump away from the notion that Pence could just simply gavel him as re-elected,” Mr. Eastman said during the interview at his lawyer’s office in Washington, just blocks from the White House. “And, you know, you look at some of his tweets before that Jan. 4 meeting, he’s saying things like that, because that’s what people out there are saying. But if you look at his speech on Jan. 6, after I weigh in at that meeting, he’s saying exactly the opposite.”Understand the Events on Jan. 6Timeline: On Jan. 6, 2021, 64 days after Election Day 2020, a mob of supporters of President Donald J. Trump raided the Capitol. Here is a close look at how the attack unfolded.A Day of Rage: Using thousands of videos and police radio communications, a Times investigation reconstructed in detail what happened — and why.Lost Lives: A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died in connection with the attack.Jan. 6 Attendees: To many of those who attended the Trump rally but never breached the Capitol, that date wasn’t a dark day for the nation. It was a new start.Few in the White House, however, saw him as anything close to a voice of moderation amid the riot that followed. And Mr. Eastman’s account differs in significant ways from those provided by Mr. Pence and his aides.The former vice president refused to cooperate with the Jan. 6 committee but addressed the issue in a recent opinion essay in The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Pence wrote that on Jan. 5, a day after first meeting with Mr. Eastman in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump summoned the vice president for another meeting where “the president’s lawyers, including Mr. Eastman, were now requesting that I simply reject the electors.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% - 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(--color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(--color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(--color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(--color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.He said that he “later learned that Mr. Eastman had conceded to my general counsel that rejecting electoral votes was a bad idea and any attempt to do so would be quickly overturned by a unanimous Supreme Court. This guy didn’t even believe what he was telling the president.”The crux of Mr. Eastman’s defense is that he was simply a lawyer offering advice, and that he was acting in good faith, since he still believes many of the fraud claims that were made. “I’m not backing down on that,” he said. “I mean, the amount of evidence, even if I’m wrong about it, was certainly enough to have warranted further review.”In an email to Mike Pence’s lawyer on the night of Jan. 6, Mr. Eastman urged that the vice president should not certify the electoral vote.House Select Committee, via Associated PressAsked what he based such claims on, he cited a report issued last year by Michael J. Gableman, a former Wisconsin judge who was hired, and later fired, by the Republican speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly, Robin Vos. The report endorsed a host of debunked claims. He also cited the deeply flawed documentary “2000 Mules,” directed by Dinesh D’Souza, a conservative activist who once pleaded guilty to felony campaign finance fraud. (He was later pardoned by Mr. Trump.)In recent weeks, Mr. Eastman has continued to assert himself as a far-right stalwart, signing a letter endorsing dissident Republicans’ ultimately failed efforts to block Representative Kevin McCarthy of California from becoming speaker of the House. Among the other signatories to the letter was Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for whom Mr. Eastman once clerked. In her own testimony to the Jan. 6 committee, Ms. Thomas referred to Mr. Eastman as “an active participant with the ‘Thomas clique’ clerks” who keep in touch.Perhaps Mr. Eastman’s most immediate potential exposure comes in the criminal investigation into election interference in Fulton County, Ga., which encompasses most of Atlanta. One of Mr. Eastman’s lawyers said last year that his client was “probably a target” in the inquiry, but his lawyers said this month that he had received no notification that he is one.Robert Sinners, the Trump campaign’s state director of Election Day operations in Georgia, testified to the Jan. 6 committee that he later felt “ashamed” at having taken part in the plan orchestrated by Mr. Eastman and Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, to assemble bogus slates of Trump electors in Georgia and other states that Mr. Trump had lost.“I don’t think Rudy Giuliani’s intent was ever about legal challenges,” he said. “It was clear to me that he was working with folks like John Eastman and wanted to put pressure on the vice president to accept these slates of electors just regardless, without any approval from a governor, without any approval from, you know, the voters or a court, or anything like that.”Clark D. Cunningham, a professor at Georgia State University College of Law, said in an email that “if Sinner’s testimony, or similar testimony, is deemed credible, then John Eastman faces considerable risk of prosecution.”“If Eastman was part of a conspiracy to trick Georgia citizens into signing false election documents, neither his role as an attorney nor a personal belief that election results were tainted by fraud could justify such criminal conduct,” he added.In addition to his central role in the electors plan, Mr. Eastman appeared remotely before a Georgia State Senate panel on Dec. 3, 2020, and made several false claims about the election. Among them was the assertion that “the number of underaged individuals who were allowed to register” in the state “amounts allegedly up to approximately 66,000 people.”Asked about the claim during the interview last month, Mr. Eastman said that he had relied on a consultant who made an error that was later corrected, and that the actual number was about 2,000 who “were only 16 when they registered.” The new figure, he said, came from the same consultant. In a statement, the Georgia Secretary of State’s office said that “the system literally does not allow a person to register if they don’t have a birth date that makes them at least 17.5 years old.”A review of the data used by Mr. Eastman showed that he was referring to any Georgians who were recorded as having registered early going back to the 1920s; data entry errors appeared to be a common culprit, with many people’s registration year listed in place of their birth year. A review by The Times found only about a dozen Georgians who were recorded as having registered in 2020 when they were 16, in what appeared most likely to be another data-entry problem. Norman Eisen, special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first Trump impeachment and co-author of a lengthy report on the Fulton County inquiry, said Mr. Eastman “was referred for criminal prosecution by the Jan. 6 committee, with good reason,” adding that if charges are brought in Georgia “it’s hard to imagine that D.A. Fani Willis does not include him.”Jack Begg
- ['I see things now that I've never seen before': the Maricopa county attorney fighting false ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/19/i-see-things-now-that-ive-never-seen-before-the-maricopa-county-attorney-fighting-false/) - Interview‘I see things now that I’ve never seen before’: the Maricopa county attorney fighting false election claimsRachel LeingangTom Liddy, a lifelong Republican, is a target of his own party for fending off lawsuits against the county over blatant election lies Down the hall from Tom Liddy’s office in downtown Phoenix, a whiteboard tracks all the election law cases filed against Maricopa county, where he works as civil division chief. Liddy has defended the county against dozens of claims, including that the 2020 election was stolen and that only hand-counted ballots can be trusted.In his office, he keeps ammunition in a safe to protect himself should a threat, which have become more frequent, become reality at work. At his desk, he’s surrounded by photos of his family, who have also become a target.Republicans have already filed dozens of bills to restrict voting in 2023Read moreLiddy is the son of G Gordon Liddy, the longtime political operative who was sentenced to prison for his role in the Watergate scandal. The 15-year veteran of the Maricopa county attorney’s office has run for Congress, hosted a conservative radio show, and defended the county in high-profile trials, including a racial profiling case that became a national flashpoint.The lifelong Republican, who calls himself a “student of politics”, still maintains his conservative principles, despite the pushback from members of his own party who have sued the county and made him a central character in their attacks. Before his work at the county, he worked as an attorney for the Republican National Committee.In recent years, he’s seen more cases based on flimsier facts. A barrage of suits after the 2022 election, when Democrats won key statewide races, contended that that year’s election was stolen as well. The county has succeeded in the courts – though it has come at a political cost for the largely Republican elected officials who run the county.As a result of his work defending Maricopa county, Liddy became the subject of a leaked video shared on social media by allies of Kari Lake, the failed Republican candidate for Arizona governor, which he says led to death threats. The FBI recently filed charges against a Texas man who threatened Liddy and his children.Known for his fiery comments and strongly worded legal letters, Liddy isn’t one to shy away from a fight.“I would hope that my friends would have kind things to say about me and the people who crossed me would be still pissed off about it,” he said.The Guardian spoke to Liddy about the rise in election lawsuits and how he’s protecting his family from violent threats against them.This interview has been edited for length and clarity.There were even more post-election lawsuits after the 2022 election than in 2020. Why do you think that is?In 2020, we saw a lot of lawsuits filed that would never have been filed before. I think it opened up the eyes of a lot of people. ‘Hey, you can contest these elections more often than if you just lose by 510 votes.’ What’s different is when you lose by more than a little bit, and you sue not to canvass or re-canvass or recount or contest, but just throw the spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks.What we’re seeing now, which I never saw before, is folks not just contesting the election, but rather demonizing county officials or state officials or entrepreneurs who are in the business of creating voting systems or voting machines. Prior to the end of the cold war, the Soviets were trying to convince the world that our system of government was no good and was no better than theirs. And now, I think that there are folks in this country that are starting to feel that way, or at least, trying to persuade others of that. I see things now that I’ve never seen before.In a few of the election lawsuits in 2022, Maricopa county asked for lawyers’ fees or sanctions – a rare move. What’s the thought process there?When lawyers go into the court, be it a state court or federal court, you may only bring facts forward and you’re obligated to do an investigation to determine that the facts that you’re getting ready to present to the court are true. We’ve been hearing a lot of stuff in 2020, 2021 and 2022 said in court that are not true. If somebody goes into court and says something that’s not true, egregiously so, the court has the power to call them on it.When we asked for sanctions, we got sanctions in federal court. The plaintiffs went in and said, ‘The elections Maricopa county is running are unconstitutional because they don’t use paper ballots.’ What? How can you say we don’t use paper ballots? The plaintiffs were two individuals that were running for office at the time. Each had voted for themselves on paper ballots for at least the last 10 years. So we asked for sanctions.I think the courts have a responsibility as well. We are a nation of laws. We adjudicate our differences peacefully in court. You can’t do it by lying to the judge or lying to the jury. If you think that’s the right way to do it, then you’re a Pino: Patriot In Name Only.Candidates have filed lawsuits over their losses even when the margins were wide. You mentioned two candidates, Mark Finchem and Kari Lake, who tried to outlaw tabulation machines. Can you seek sanctions against the plaintiffs themselves or is that atypical?Atypical, but there is a method to do it. Generally, sanctions are against the attorneys, not just because they should know better, but they must know better. It’s their obligation. There are rules of the court and rules of civil procedure. One of the rules is that if you make claims before court, you have to do at least a basic investigation to ensure that those facts are true. You can’t just be hired by a plaintiff, the plaintiff says, ‘up is down, down is up, black is white, white is black,’ and you write it in your brief and tell the court. The standards are not that high, but we’ve been hearing some things that aren’t even close to true in some of these lawsuits for three years. Somebody’s got to stop it. The courts have an obligation, in my view.Are you still a Republican?Oh, yeah.Most of the people filing these egregious lawsuits are Republicans. Has this affected how you see your politics or your beliefs?No. I’ve been a Republican since long before I could vote. One of the proudest days of my life was my 18th birthday when I went and registered to vote. I’m a real Republican and I will not change. I will be when they bury me. Now, other folks that come in here and claim to be Republican or claim to be conservative, they don’t even know what conservative is, really. I not only want smaller government, lower taxes, more personal responsibility, greater protections for the private ownership of firearms, I’m pro-life. Being a Republican and being a Democrat has never really been about being for one candidate. It’s always been for a basket of ideas.But that’s me, Tom Liddy the person, speaking, not Tom Liddy the government lawyer. My political beliefs don’t influence what I do. I defend my clients and my client is Maricopa county. I’m happy and pleased to do that. I think it would be an abuse of the public trust to hijack government power to benefit one party or the other. I just would never do that.How much does it cost the county to defend itself against these lawsuits? You mentioned that before the 2020 election, you helped the county bolster its election law team, increasing from one specialized lawyer to about eight people who dedicate at least some of their time on elections. It seems like it’s been expensive.No doubt that it’s expensive. I don’t have that figure. The real expense, much, much larger than just the legal expenses, is the time that the county employees, be they in the recorder’s office or in the elections office or support of the board of supervisors, have to put into it, because normally they’re doing the government’s business. My salary is what my salary is, whether I’m in court duking it out with somebody defending the county or not. These other folks have jobs to do. So you’ve got to ask yourself what they could have done that they weren’t able to do. The dollars and cents is a lot but I think the opportunity cost is much, much higher.The video that captured your phone conversation with the Lake campaign …[Interrupts] Captured 2min and 8sec of a 12-minute phone call.The video showed a heated conversation between you and lawyers for Lake and the Republican National Committee. It was posted online and spread among rightwing channels to imply you weren’t being helpful or transparent with the attorneys. Has something like that happened to you before?That’s an ethical violation for a lawyer to tape a conversation with another lawyer without telling the lawyer. So somebody put that on the internet and said that a Kari Lake campaign volunteer called me – that’s not true. I called a lawyer who was working for the Lake campaign and other candidates. We had many phone calls a day leading up to that. One of the other lawyers there was – and I didn’t know at the time – a lawyer for the Republican National Committee. After we’d had a conversation and they had asked me maybe three or four questions, I said, ‘let me go get the answers for you.’ And then this other guy came on the line and said, ‘Now it’s really important that we get these questions answered quickly … because there’s a lot of angry people out there that want to take to the streets, and I don’t want to have to tell them that Tom Liddy has not been cooperative.’I said, ‘That sounds like a threat.’ I said, ‘Tell them whatever you want to tell them, but if you’re not happy working with me, then don’t work with me, don’t call me, don’t ask me questions. But don’t think for a minute you could intimidate me, because you cannot, and you can’t intimidate Maricopa county, either.’ I admit I used colorful language. It was recorded, and they took only the last two minutes and put it out on the internet.Since then, I’ve been getting death threats. One of those death threats is very real, very specific. The Dallas field office of the FBI notified me of it. The FBI came in and met with my employer and my employer told me to arm myself and that the ammunition I had was not the correct ammunition. They issued me this [pulls out a box of bullets from a safe in his office] – that’s a hollow point. That’s a man-stopper. They issued me and my four children body armor, because this son of a bitch from Texas specifically threatened to kill my four children.The Texas man who made those threats was just charged recently, right?Arrested and denied bail in Lubbock, Texas. That’s the one who threatened to kill my four children, but there are plenty others that were not specific. That makes it difficult for my family to enjoy Thanksgiving, when I’ve got 24-hours-a-day armed security around my home, cameras all over my home and body armor for my kids, and I gotta pack iron everywhere I go. Listen, I’m a second amendment guy – I got plenty to protect myself, all sorts of different calibers. Come at me from up close or far away, I’m prepared. But that’s not how you want to live. That’s not how you want to celebrate Christmas and Thanksgiving. So this guy was arrested I think shortly after Christmas, but that’s what my family had to deal with.Did it give you any sense of relief when he was arrested?Definitely a sense of relief, but also just happiness that the system works, somebody’s going to pay the piper. Now, he’s entitled to defense counsel, he’s entitled to a trial, a jury of his peers. I’m looking forward to flying to Texas to testify against him. I’ll be happy to do it because that’s the way the system works.Do you still have security at your home?I’m not going to comment on that. This office will provide me whatever my family needs to keep us safe. I will say, the threat level has changed since this guy was not only arrested, but denied bail. But there are still security at my home, and we still have body armor, and I still carry a firearm with me.Is it accurate to say that this was not happening before the past couple of years? Or have you experienced similar levels of threats at other times in your career?I have experienced levels of threats before in my career, but nowhere near this volume. This is the only time that the FBI contacted me.Elections have become so polarized, with threats against elections officials and lawyers like yourself and endless lawsuits after a candidate loses. What gets us out of this situation as a country?I would say the same thing that got us out of previous problems that we’ve had. Sometimes the troublemakers are either held responsible, or they fade away, or they disappear in a flash. I think there’ll be more than just lawsuits to change it. I am very optimistic that we will come together again, and we will move forward, and our best days are ahead of us. But I’m not so naive as to think we can solve this problem by one lawsuit here, one Bar complaint there.Do you think things will get better or worse in the short term, in terms of the amount of misinformation and disinformation after elections?I think better. I think that a lot of the stuff we saw in 2020 was very chaotic. Some of the stuff we have seen in 2022 was a little bit more organized. Not necessarily well founded, but a little bit more organized. My fear is that this sort of thing becomes an industry and that if people can make a name for themselves or make money, then that’s an incentive to keep doing it. Election contests are an important part of the law, but just suing for the sake of suing, and suing so you can say you’re suing and then set up a defense fund and raise millions of dollars – that’s not healthy for our society.TopicsUS newsThe fight for democracyRepublicansArizonaUS elections 2020US midterm elections 2022Donald TrumpLaw (US)interviewsReuse this content
- [Three governor's races to watch in 2023 - News-Talk 1480 WHBC](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/19/three-governors-races-to-watch-in-2023-news-talk-1480-whbc/) - (WASHINGTON) — While 2023 will be a less crowded year for elections, because it falls between the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential race, it will still feature three governor’s races, in Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi. Republicans hope to flip one seat and hold another and Democrats hope to hold the third. The results could also begin to show how voters are feeling in the wake of last year’s midterms and before they head back to the polls to vote for president. Last year was a successful one for Democratic gubernatorial candidates, with the party flipping Arizona, Maryland and Massachusetts. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, chair of the Democratic Governors Association (DGA), said that Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, the current vice-chair of the DGA, will be important in applying the lessons learned from the wins in traditionally red states and states with a history of Republican leaders. Of the gubernatorial races in 2023, Kentucky and Louisiana are held by Democrats. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear was elected in 2019, ousting Republican Gov. Matt Bevin, and is seeking reelection. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards is term-limited. Mississippi’s governor, Tate Reeves, is seeking reelection as well. Kentucky The Republican primary in Kentucky, scheduled for May, is shaping up to be a serious competition to face off against Beshear in November. State Attorney General Daniel Cameron, state Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles and businesswoman Kelly Craft, a U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under President Donald Trump, are among those running in the Republican primary. Cameron, who scored an early endorsement from Trump, is the first Black attorney general in the state’s history. He garnered national attention in 2020 for how his team handled a grand jury who then did not indict the Louisville officers who shot Breonna Taylor for any direct wrongdoing in her death. The Kentucky governor’s race will be a test to see if Democrats can continue wielding power in a state where Trump beat President Joe Biden by more than 25 points. But Democrats do have an edge in the race due to having a popular incumbent running for reelection. In Louisiana, though, they’ll have to field a potential successor to Edwards. “Clearly, our top priority is to get Andy Beshear reelected in Kentucky,” Murphy said. “John Bel Edwards has been a phenomenal governor in Louisiana … but John Bell is term-limited. So, we’ve got to find somebody to step into his shoes and that’s a process that is unfolding.” Louisiana Currently, four Republicans are running in the Louisiana governor race: state Rep. Richard Nelson, state Sen. Sharon Hewitt, state Treasurer John Schroder and state Attorney General Jeff Landry. But despite the state’s primary being 10 months away, in October, the Louisiana Republican Party gave an early endorsement to Landry in November, which sparked some outcry from other politicians in the state. “There is nothing more conservative, nothing more [Republican], than competition,” Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser tweeted. “This endorsement process looks more like communist China than the Louisiana we know and love. Some think this is a coronation. Real republicans will make sure we have an election, not a monarchy.” Edwards, the Democrat who is term-limited, was first elected in 2015. He notably departs from others in his party on key issues like abortion access. Mississippi Lastly, in Mississippi, a state where Democrats haven’t won the governor’s office since 1998 and will likely be facing their toughest race, Murphy insisted they aren’t taking it off the map. “We think with the right candidate and contrasting what we as Democrats stand for up against the actual middling record of the current incumbent, that’s a state that we’re going to take very seriously,” he said of Reeves, who is touting accomplishments in local schools as part of his bid. Brandon Presley, a distant cousin of Elvis Presley (their grandfathers were brothers), announced last week that he is running for governor of Mississippi. Presley, who has served on the Public Service Commission since 2007, describes himself as a “Populist, FDR-Billy McCoy Democrat” and is known for reaching across the aisle. He endorsed the reelection campaign of former President George W. Bush in 2004. Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
- [FOCUS | Louisville library workers concerned about fights, guest behavior - WHAS11](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/19/focus-louisville-library-workers-concerned-about-fights-guest-behavior-whas11/) - The images that come to mind for most people when you think "public library" are not scary. "I've never come across anybody that's unruly," Michelle Smith said, who visits the Shawnee branch of the Louisville Free Public Library (LFPL) multiple times per month. People who work at the library feel a bit differently. "A lot of them (days at work) are fine. There just are a lot of incidents. So, you have to be ready," Katherine Skaggs said, who has been a librarian at the Shawnee branch since 2019. Skaggs is the president of the library workers' union, AFSCME Local 3425. When Skaggs says "incidents," she is referring to fights between guests, patrons making unwelcomed advances towards staff members, drug use and verbal threats. Throughout all 17 LFPL branches in 2022, there were 533 incident reports filed with library administrators. Many of them were something small like a patron slipping on ice, or someone pulling the fire alarm. But many were also traumatizing for staff. One of the most noteworthy events was a large fight between a group of teenagers and a security guard on Oct. 10. According to an incident report FOCUS obtained through an open records request, a group of five teenagers was being disruptive and staff asked them to leave around 5:50 p.m. that day. The teens left around the same time the security guard went on break, and the two groups got in another verbal argument off-property. When the security guard returned from break, she went into the library manager's office to write an incident report. At the same time, a group of 20 teenagers entered the library and staff asked them to leave. They refused. When the guard walked out of the manager's office, a large fight ensued. The guard was hospitalized with a badly swollen eye. She told FOCUS her dentures were also destroyed. "I didn't know what to do," the guard said. She asked to stay anonymous. "I always have to look over my shoulder now...I'm still frightened, I'm still traumatized." Morgan Security Company, who was providing security services at the time, said the guard was only defending herself and she kept her job. That was one of five incidents within a 12-day period FOCUS obtained reports on. At the Western branch on Sept. 28, a patron was caught touching themselves in the lower level, directly outside of the staff break area. On Sept. 29 at the Newburg branch, a patron was reported asking a staff member for their number and to hang out after work, and then following that staff member home in his car. Two staff members "lost him" in a Target parking lot. On Oct. 6 at the Shawnee branch, a man was reported rubbing up against the backside of one staff member and another guest. “It’s difficult. And it’s especially difficult knowing, ‘What are we doing?’ Firing incidents reports into a void? Like, is this being dealt with?” Skaggs said. How the incident report process works: If staff members can identify someone by name, they file an incident report, advise administrators how long they think the person should be banned for, and then that person gets a lock on their account with a message. If they cannot identify a person, an incident report is filed in the same way, and a non-addressed, anonymous ban letter is left at the branch. If the person returns and staff can identify them, staff are instructed to present the letter to them and tell them they've been banned for a certain amount of time. If they don't feel comfortable, they are instructed to call LMPD and have them present the letter. Skaggs says even if this system works perfectly, they can only stop someone from renting a book, and not entering the library. LFPL Director Lee Burchfield says they really don't have any other options if they want to be a true public library. "A public library is open to everyone in the community, whether they have a library card or not. It's one of the main difference between a university library, where it is only for those students," Burchfield said. Ten of the 17 branches have security guards, and Burchfield encourages staff to call police any time a crime is committed. "The library doesn't charge people with crimes, we enforce library rules of behavior," Burchfield said. Police were called for the fight on Oct. 10, but not called for either the stalking at Newburg or the sexual touching at Shawnee. Skaggs says some of her patrons don't feel comfortable around police, and she feels that is a reactionary response instead of a preventative measure. "Calling the police after the fact that's not...like this is about prevention. This is about analyzing these structures," Skaggs said. Steps administrators have committed to: Burchfield asked for an analysis of incident reports in 2019 that looked back five years. They found an average of 1,117 incidents per year, with 17% requiring police or EMS assistance. By far the majority were at Main Library, with 61% of all incidents. The next highest was Shawnee with 8%. Burchfield intended to present this data to metro council in October 2020, but that meeting was canceled due to COVID-19. However, he says the data still led him to start installing security cameras at all branches. Prior to this, no branches had security cameras. As of January, three branches have cameras, and Shawnee is scheduled to be the fourth. "We need to have security cameras at our libraries, and we've prioritized that," Burchfield said. Burchfield and administrators worked on two more changes in 2022. The library signed a new security company on Jan. 1, 2023. Allied Universal replaced Morgan Security Services. Burchfield said this was partially to "address concerns with the previous vendor," but would not elaborate on what those concerns were. Morgan Security reached the end of its agreed-upon five-year contract and LFPL was very clear that this was a routine move. The library did add several new trainings with the Allied contract, though, like de-escalation training. A request for proposal (RFP) also just closed on Jan. 11 for a brand new website for the library. The contract is yet to be awarded, but a function of it will be for a new system to house the incident reports. The RFP specifies the database must offer "searchable data and analytics." “It’s one of several improvements that we’re making to improve the speed and accuracy with which we can record incident reports," Burchfield said. What's next?: Skaggs says she was not well-informed about the change to a new security company. "They way it was portrayed to me was that Morgan's contract was ending and that Allied's was starting," she said. "It didn't seem like we had a say in it." Skaggs is also skeptical if all employees will have access to the new incident report tracking system, and if administrators will use it to its full potential. “This is the groundwork for a system to analyze the data that’s coming in," she said. “So at some point, this isn’t about software, this is about policies and procedures within the library system.” When asked about employee access to the new portal, Burchfield said: It is administration's goal to be able to provide staff with whatever information they need to be aware of and enforce patron bans, but it is unclear at this point whether that will include access to the incident reports themselves. Skaggs hopes LFPL keeps a focus on safety, for them and the well-being of all guests. "This isn't just about staff, it also impacts the public," she said. Friday at 6, WHAS11 will have a follow-up to this report, getting thoughts from new Metro Council President Markus Winkler about this data. Make it easy to keep up-to-date with more stories like this. Download the WHAS11 News app now. For Apple or Android users. Have a news tip? Email assign@whas11.com, visit our Facebook page or Twitter feed. [embedded content]
- [Can a Democrat hold on as governor in deep-red Kentucky? - ABC News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/19/can-a-democrat-hold-on-as-governor-in-deep-red-kentucky-abc-news/) - While 2023 will be a less crowded year for elections, because it falls between the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential race, it will still feature three governors races, in Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi.Republicans hope to flip one seat and hold another and Democrats hope to hold the third. The results could also begin to show how voters are feeling in the wake of last year's midterms and before they head back to the polls to vote for president. Last year was a successful one for Democratic gubernatorial candidates, with the party flipping Arizona, Maryland and Massachusetts. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, chair of the Democratic Governors Association (DGA), said that Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, the current vice-chair of the DGA, will be important in applying the lessons learned from the wins in traditionally red states and states with a history of Republican leaders.Of the gubernatorial races in 2023, Kentucky and Louisiana are held by Democrats. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear was elected in 2019, ousting Republican Gov. Matt Bevin, and is seeking reelection. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards is term-limited.Mississippi's governor, Tate Reeves, is seeking reelection as well.Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear delivers his State of the Commonwealth speech from the floor of the Kentucky House of Representatives, Jan. 4, 2023, in Frankfort, Ky.Timothy D. Easley/AP, FILEKentuckyThe Republican primary in Kentucky, scheduled for May, is shaping up to be a serious competition to face off against Beshear in November. State Attorney General Daniel Cameron, state Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles and businesswoman Kelly Craft, a U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under President Donald Trump, are among those running in the Republican primary.Cameron, who scored an early endorsement from Trump, is the first Black attorney general in the state's history. He garnered national attention in 2020 for how his team handled a grand jury who then did not indict the Louisville officers who shot Breonna Taylor for any direct wrongdoing in her death.The Kentucky governor's race will be a test to see if Democrats can continue wielding power in a state where Trump beat President Joe Biden by more than 25 points.But Democrats do have an edge in the race due to having a popular incumbent running for reelection. In Louisiana, though, they'll have to field a potential successor to Edwards."Clearly, our top priority is to get Andy Beshear reelected in Kentucky," Murphy said. "John Bel Edwards has been a phenomenal governor in Louisiana … but John Bell is term-limited. So, we've got to find somebody to step into his shoes and that's a process that is unfolding."In this April 24, 2018 file photo Gov. John Bel Edwards with his wife Donna Edwards arrive for a State Dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron and President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington.Alex Brandon/AP, FILELouisianaCurrently, four Republicans are running in the Louisiana governor race: state Rep. Richard Nelson, state Sen. Sharon Hewitt, state Treasurer John Schroder and state Attorney General Jeff Landry. But despite the state's primary being 10 months away, in October, the Louisiana Republican Party gave an early endorsement to Landry in November, which sparked some outcry from other politicians in the state."There is nothing more conservative, nothing more [Republican], than competition," Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser tweeted. "This endorsement process looks more like communist China than the Louisiana we know and love. Some think this is a coronation. Real republicans will make sure we have an election, not a monarchy."Edwards, the Democrat who is term-limited, was first elected in 2015. He notably departs from others in his party on key issues like abortion access.MississippiLastly, in Mississippi, a state where Democrats haven't won the governor's office since 1998 and will likely be facing their toughest race, Murphy insisted they aren't taking it off the map."We think with the right candidate and contrasting what we as Democrats stand for up against the actual middling record of the current incumbent, that's a state that we're going to take very seriously," he said of Reeves, who is touting accomplishments in local schools as part of his bid.Brandon Presley, a distant cousin of Elvis Presley (their grandfathers were brothers), announced last week that he is running for governor of Mississippi.Presley, who has served on the Public Service Commission since 2007, describes himself as a "Populist, FDR-Billy McCoy Democrat" and is known for reaching across the aisle. He endorsed the reelection campaign of former President George W. Bush in 2004.
- [Prosecutors argue for probation for former Louisville officer who shot pepper balls at David ...](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/19/prosecutors-argue-for-probation-for-former-louisville-officer-who-shot-pepper-balls-at-david/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A former Louisville Metro Police officer who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor deprivation of civil rights under the color of law for her actions the night David McAtee was killed in 2020 should be sentenced to one year of probation and 100 hours of community service, prosecutors say.In October, Crews admitted she used "unreasonable force" by shooting pepper balls at McAtee's niece, Machelle McAtee, on June 1, 2020, striking her once in the shoulder, as the woman was standing on private property and not a threat to officers.While attorneys for McAtee’s family say Crews initiated the sequence of events leading to David McAtee’s death, federal prosecutors asked for a sentence of no incarceration, arguing, in part, Crews was fairly new on the force and “clearly could not have foreseen the tragic outcome of her actions in this case.”And while a pepper ball gun is considered a dangerous weapon under sentencing guidelines, prosecutors wrote that many officers perceive them as “minimal force” and similar to paintball guns.“In using a weapon that most LMPD officers equate with a 'paintball gun,' Defendant Crews likely did not foresee the likelihood of injury," prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney's office wrote in a sentencing recommendation on Wednesday.Under terms of the plea agreement reached in October, Crews could be placed on probation with the stipulation that she not seek a job in law enforcement again. Crews was initially charged with a felony and was facing up to 10 years in prison. Prosecutors agreed to reduce the charge to a misdemeanor carrying a maximum of one year behind bars.The sentencing memorandum lays out the reasoning behind why prosecutors agreed to the plea deal. U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Beaton will ultimately decide whether to accept the plea deal and recommended punishment at the sentencing scheduled for Jan. 30.If Judge Beaton decides the plea agreement is too lenient, it would be withdrawn and both sides would resume negotiations. If Beaton accepts the plea, Crews will still be able to vote and own a firearm.In the sentencing memorandum, prosecutors made the case that Crews should avoid any incarceration, noting she has no prior criminal history, accepted responsibility for her actions, had only been with the department two years and had never previously used a pepper ball gun in the field, according to the filing.“Her decision to deploy a pepperball directly at (Machelle McAtee) was a quick decision that did not involve planning or deliberation,” prosecutors wrote. “While a pepperball gun is a dangerous weapon under the guidelines, many LMPD officers perceive it as minimal force.”Crews was also likely acting on high emotions from previous days of city-wide protests revolving around the Breonna Taylor slaying on March 13, 2020, according to the prosecution.While working downtown on May 28, Crews was “accosted by a female protestor,” according to the filing. A picture of this encounter was published in The Courier-Journal, and Crews, prosecutors said, posted a comment on Facebook that “expresses delight at the prospect of a pepperball gun being used to cause pain to this particular prosecutor.”The picture appears to show a female protester handing Crews a flower, but Crews wrote that the woman "was saying and doing a lot more than 'offering flowers' to me."P.S. I hope the pepper balls that she got lit up with a little hurt," she wrote on Facebook. "Come back and get you some tonight ole girl, I'll be on the line again tonight."The prosecution argued that Crews’ actions “were likely motivated, at least in part, by these emotions. However, (the prosecution) did not identify any uses of excessive force by Defendant Crews predating the incident.”And since the incident, Crews has maintained employment and is a contributing member to society, according to the sentencing recommendation. She works as a K-9 handler, though not with law enforcement, according to the sentencing filing. “Given the circumstances, a sentence of probation is sufficient to protect the public from further crimes of the defendant," the U.S. Attorney's office concluded. Attorneys for McAtee’s family said, "Ms. Crews accepted responsibility for her role in this and the family feels that sending her to prison would only make it worse when it is the LMPD as a whole that inadequately trained her and sent her there that night that deserves the lion's share of blame."The incident and subsequent death of McAtee, killed by a Kentucky National Guard soldier, occurred after Louisville police and guard members arrived at Dino’s Food Mart at 26th Street and Broadway in the Russell neighborhood to disperse a crowd in violation of the then-citywide curfew in response to protests over the death of Taylor.Crews told investigators she shot at Machelle McAtee because she "didn't comply" with orders. Machelle McAtee was standing in the doorway of a private business. Video shows that as Machelle McAtee is pulled inside by David McAtee, he leans out the door and fires a bullet. When he reaches out and fires again seconds later, Crews, LMPD Officer Allen Austin and two members of the National Guard returned fire, 18 shots in total.An unidentified guardsman fired the only bullet that struck and killed McAtee, 53. He was shot once in the chest.Copyright 2023 Media. All Rights Reserved.
- [Former LMPD officer may not serve any prison time for role in death of David McAtee](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/19/former-lmpd-officer-may-not-serve-any-prison-time-for-role-in-death-of-david-mcatee/) - POLICE. THE NUMBER IS 574. LMPD. ALSO NEW TONIGHT AT SIX, A FORMER LOUISVILLE POLICE OFFICER MAY NOT SERVE ANY TIME IN PRISON FOR HER ROLE IN A DEADLY SHOOTING DURING THE PROTESTS OVER THE KILLING OF BREONNA TAYLOR IN MAY OF 2020. LMPD AND THE NATIONAL GUARD WERE BREAKING UP A GROUP VIOLATING A CITYWIDE CURFEW AT 26 OF BROADWAY. KATY CREWS SHOT PEPPER BALLS THAT HIT THE NIECE OF DAVID MCATEE, WHO PULLED OUT A GUN AND OPENED FIRE FROM HIS RESTAURANT. MCATEE WAS KILLED BY A NATIONAL GUARD SOLDIER WHO RETURNED FIRE CREWS PLEADED GUILTY TO DEPRIVATION OF CIVIL RIGHTS UNDER THE COLOR OF LAW, WHICH IS A MISDEMEANOR FOR A NEWLY FILED DOCUMENTS. PROSECUTORS HAVE REQUESTED ONE YEAR PROBATION AND COMMUNITY
- [Ryan Quarles' first visit to Bowling Green after cancellation of campaign stop - WBKO](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/19/ryan-quarles-first-visit-to-bowling-green-after-cancellation-of-campaign-stop-wbko/) - BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (WBKO) - Ryan Quarles, Agriculture Commissioner and Republican candidate for Governor of Kentucky, delivered his final keynote speech at the 2023 Kentucky Commodity Conference.This marks his first appearance in Bowling Green since his last visit was canceled.His campaign stop with the Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky was initially held at the Bowling Green Country Club. It was later canceled once the country club found out about one of the keynote speakers, Jonathan Mattingly. Mattingly was the former Louisville Metropolitan Police Officer who was involved in the death of Breonna Taylor.He was in attendance at the event promoting his book titled, “12 Seconds in the Dark: A Police Officer’s Firsthand Account of the Breonna Taylor Raid.”Once the Bowling Green Country Club and Quarles’ campaign discovered this, the event was canceled due to public outcry.“I was invited independently of other speakers and due to the controversial nature of another speaker at this event, we have decided to reschedule to a later date,” wrote Quarles in a written statement to the media.Quarles said despite the Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky hosting Mattingly, he hopes to reconnect with the organization along the campaign trail.“We look forward to speaking with Republican women’s groups like we do almost every week across Kentucky,” said Quarles. “As one of 12 gubernatorial candidates, I feel like our campaign, like others, deserves the same sort of atmosphere, so we are going to come back. I am really gracious to the Republican Women of South Central Kentucky, and look forward to continuing our campaign.”Quarles also mentioned that with the primaries inching closer, he and his campaign team feel confident they can carry on their race into November.“I feel like in the rural counties, especially in Western Kentucky, the people I have gotten to know over the past eight years were very active and very visible across Kentucky,” said Quarles. “Whether it is from tornado response or flood response, I am just doing my job as AG Commissioner. I think that our campaign has a great shot at winning this and moving forward past the primary.”Copyright 2023 WBKO. All rights reserved.
- [Teachers advocate for Gov. Beshear's Education First Plan - Spectrum News](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/19/teachers-advocate-for-gov-beshears-education-first-plan-spectrum-news/) - LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Gov. Andy Beshear is traveling the state speaking about the Education First Plan.In October, Beshear announced his plan to address the loss of learning for students during the pandemic, teacher shortages, and pay increases. What You Need To Know The plan includes funding for a 5% pay raise for school staff, universal pre-K, textbooks, technology and training Beshear also wants to address mental health and provide more resources for both students and teachers The General Assembly can address the plan during the 2023 regular session In the state’s latest report card, a majority of schools fell right down in the middle in the yellow category, while about 5% of schools in the state fell in the worst ranking, the red category He’s now calling on lawmakers to address the plan during the 2023 regular session. Emilie McKiernan Blanton is a teacher at Southern High School in Louisville. She has two children in the school district and described her experience. “Before I’m a teacher, I’m a mother,” Blanton said. “I’m a mother whose daughter did not have a 1st-grade teacher, I’m a mother whose son did not have a 5th-grade teacher, I’m a mother whose son did not have a science teacher last year. I’m a mother whose daughter does not have a reading teacher right now.” Blanton said in her experience, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the teacher shortage crisis affected many school districts. “I know what it’s like to see your child’s schedule and see vacancy there instead of a teacher’s name. I know that the real learning loss is the catastrophic teacher shortage—and that it’s not really a teacher shortage, it is a shortage of people willing to work in these conditions for that money,” Blanton said. It’s one reason also echoed by Beshear to address not only the teacher vacancies and pay, but also enhance learning for students. “It’s important that the state step up and do our part, especially when we are in the third year of what will be the four largest budget surpluses in our state’s history,” Beshear said. “At the end of the budget, we’ll have 2 billion dollars of revenue that came in over expenditures. How can we not invest when teacher pay is 44th [in the U.S.] and we’re sitting on two billion extra dollars even before we look at our rainy day fund?” Beshear’s calling on passing the Education First Plan to prepare the next generation, but he says it’s harder if there are 11,000 vacancies across districts in the state. “Once again, if you recall, there are 11,000 [vacancies] in the Commonwealth of Kentucky,” said Marty Pollio, JCPS Superintendent. “This is not just a rural issue or an urban issue or a suburban issue, it’s not a JCPS issue. I talked to my colleagues and I stand here to represent the superintendents of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. And this is in every county of the Commonwealth and also in every large district across the United States.” The plan includes funding for a 5% pay raise for school staff. “I want my children’s teacher to focus on my children and their education instead of making it in time for their second job so that they can clock in,” Blanton said. The plan also includes universal pre-k, textbooks, technology and training. In the state’s latest report card, a majority of schools fell right down in the middle in the yellow category. About 5% of schools in the state fell in the worst ranking, the red category. A little under 8% of schools got the highest, the blue category.
- [Gov. Beshear provides Team Kentucky update - The Ohio County Monitor](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/19/gov-beshear-provides-team-kentucky-update-the-ohio-county-monitor/) - FRANKFORT, Ky. — Today, Gov. Andy Beshear updated Kentuckians on UofL Health – South Hospital; applications for the Recovery Ready Communities program; tax filing assistance; eviction relief; recovery and rebuilding efforts in Eastern Kentucky; the Department of Juvenile Justice and public health. He also named the Louisville Orchestra musicians and staff as this week’s Team Kentucky All-Stars.UofL Health – South Hospital Yesterday, Gov. Beshear joined UofL Health to celebrate the hoisting of the commemorative community beam at the new South Hospital in Bullitt County. The new facility will provide additional inpatient beds, enhanced emergency capabilities, an intensive care unit, a cardiac/vascular lab and increased surgical and outpatient services. The project will add 100,000 square feet of new space and is expected to create at least 100 new jobs.“I believe that health care is a basic human right. And the new UofL Health – South Hospital will provide lifesaving care and treatment for all of the people who come through the doors,” Gov. Beshear said. “The completion of UofL Health – South Hospital represents the steps we’re taking to move Kentucky forward and make it a better place to call home for our families.”Applications Open for Recovery Ready Communities ProgramToday, Gov. Beshear announced that applications are open for Kentucky communities to apply for Recovery Ready certification.In June of 2022, the Governor announced the creation of the Recovery Ready Communities program. The Office of Drug Control Policy, the Advisory Council for Recovery Ready Communities and Volunteers of America Mid-States created this certification program for communities across the Commonwealth. Communities are eligible to apply for this certification, which measures their services to residents seeking help for drug or alcohol addiction in three different categories: prevention, treatment and recovery support. To read more, see the full release.Department of Revenue Offers Tax Filing AssistanceGov. Beshear reminded Kentuckians that each year, the Department of Revenue partners with the IRS to operate Volunteer Income Tax Assistance sites. At these sites, knowledgeable staff provide free tax filing assistance to eligible individuals and families, as well as Kentucky state government employees.This free service is available to help individuals with an annual income of $60,000 or less or any Kentucky state government employee. The window to schedule an appointment opened this week. In-person assistance will be offered on Tuesdays and Thursdays from Feb. 2 to Apr. 13.If you believe you qualify and would like to take advantage of this service, please schedule an appointment. You can find a list of all the regional taxpayer service centers on the Department of Revenue’s website.Healthy at Home Eviction Relief FundGov. Beshear said that rent and utility assistance applications through the Healthy at Home Eviction Relief portal will no longer be reviewed beginning at 5 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 20, 2023.“We will use the remaining dollars to fund programs for those most at risk of eviction and homelessness. If Kentucky receives more federal funding, the program will resume,” Gov. Beshear said. “The goal is to have an ongoing program for rent assistance.”The fund has provided 52,738 households nearly $205 million in rental assistance and more than $23.5 million in utility and internet assistance to help keep families in their homes during the pandemic.In December, Gov. Beshear announced the reallocation of $54 million through Team Kentucky’s Healthy at Home Eviction Relief Fund to further support Lexington and Louisville homeowners, renters and landlords who are still impacted by the pandemic. Since the program launched in February 2021, Gov. Beshear has directed over $46 million in funds to Lexington and $92.2 million in funds to Louisville.Eastern Kentucky Flood UpdateGov. Beshear provided an update on Eastern Kentucky’s stabilization and rebuilding efforts.“Next week, we will mark six months since unprecedented flooding destroyed many homes and devastated communities in Eastern Kentucky,” Gov. Beshear said. “We are making good progress, but there is much work left to be done.”Currently, 243 families are housed in travel trailers. Kentucky State Parks are now housing 28 people, down from the 360 people sheltered on Sept. 1, 2022.If flood victims need help, they should call FEMA directly or visit a Multi-Agency Resource Center. Visit governor.ky.gov/FloodResources for more information. FEMA is still approving claims and actively working to help flood victims.The Team Eastern Kentucky Flood Relief Fund has raised over $13.1 million from more than 41,000 donors. To contribute, click here.Future of Juvenile Justice SystemToday, Gov. Beshear expanded upon recent steps taken by his administration to enhance youth and staff safety at the Department of Juvenile Justice in response to recent violent incidents.The Governor announced additional action to improve the juvenile justice system and called on the General Assembly to support these changes and fund the salary increase. Click here to read the full release.Public Health Update Gov. Beshear also updated Kentuckians on influenza, RSV and COVID-19. The spread of influenza seems to be declining but remains at elevated levels in Kentucky. Locations and appointments for the flu vaccine can be found at vaccines.gov.RSV activity appears to be declining in the state. People of any age can become infected with RSV, and most recover within one to two weeks. RSV can be serious, however, especially for infants and older adults.The Governor said the most recent COVID-19 data shows that the virus is increasing nationwide. Most Kentucky counties now have moderate or high COVID-19 Community Levels. He encouraged those who are eligible to get their COVID-19 vaccine booster.Team Kentucky All-StarsGov. Beshear named the Louisville Orchestra musicians and staff as this week’s Team Kentucky All-Stars. The Governor joined the Louisville Orchestra yesterday to announce the orchestra’s two-year tour across Kentucky beginning in May, playing for audiences as part of “In Harmony – The Commonwealth Tour of the Louisville Orchestra.”“These musicians are the living legacy of the many who came before them, all working to build a better Kentucky. The Louisville Orchestra is meeting Kentuckians where they are, highlighting the impact an orchestra can have,” Gov. Beshear said. “Team Kentucky knows you all are going to touch countless lives – and we are grateful to each of you.”Other Posts That May Interest You
- [Kentucky youth-led study shows mental health, social challenges of COVID-19](https://slc.lul.org/2023/01/19/kentucky-youth-led-study-shows-mental-health-social-challenges-of-covid-19/) - This story is by the Kentucky Lantern, which is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. More of Kentucky Lantern’s work can be found at kentuckylantern.com. Follow them on Facebook and Twitter. A new study on how Kentucky’s youth have coped with COVID-19 reports mental health challenges, negative views toward remote learning and more. The report was published Wednesday by the Kentucky Student Voice Team, which is a youth-led nonprofit with a goal of creating “more just, democratic Kentucky schools and communities as research, policy & advocacy partners.” Researchers interviewed 50 Kentuckians as well as conducted a survey for the study. It was analyzed by the Student Voice Team and University of Kentucky researchers. They found that many students felt “heavily negative” about online learning. Students felt like their opinions did not matter enough to administrators. Youth experienced strained mental health during the pandemic. Finally, many reported they struggled with loss of social interactions and milestones. They described “shock and grief at the loss of the social aspects of learning,” which ranged from jokes in a group project to prom. And, students praised their teachers for helping them cope. Still, challenges brought on by the pandemic were relentless. ‘Give them options.’ One student told interviewers that they felt like in Zoom classes the lack of requirement that cameras be on was a “barrier” to learning. Another said they needed better instruction and didn’t get much out of watching videos. “Give them options,” one student is quoted in the report as saying. “That’s what I would have liked last year, that’s what I would have liked this year, and that’s what I would have liked or will like for every year that we’re dealing with something like this.” Students who participated in this study expressed “almost universal frustration” with administrators, who they said made them feel like their opinions did not matter when they were difficult to reach. One student described contradicting guidance on masking in schools from the principal and superintendent.

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- [HBCU Indoor Classic - LUL/TEAMS/JCPS ONLY](https://slc.lul.org/event/hbcuclassic-special/) - On behalf of the Louisville Urban League, we would like to extend an invitation to LUL staff, JCPS coaches, local track teams, and any student-athletes you have to join us Friday, February 25, 2022, for the Louisville Urban League/Kentucky State University HBCU Indoor Classic presented by Humana. This meet will feature teams from Historically
- [PRESIDENT'S DAY INVITE - Vendor Tables](https://slc.lul.org/event/presidents-day-invite-vendor-tables/) - Join us on Sunday, February 20, 2022, for the President's Day Invite. This meet is for club teams & unattached athletes. Runners, parents, and spectators from all over the city will be on hand for this event. This will be a great opportunity for local businesses. Important Vendor Information: Vendors are not allowed to sell food
- [LUL/KSU HBCU Indoor Classic - Vendor Tables](https://slc.lul.org/event/louisville-urban-league-ksu-hbcu-indoor-classic-presented-by-humana/) - Join us on Friday, February 25, 2022, for the Louisville Urban League/KSU HBCU Indoor Classic presented by Humana. This meet will feature teams from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) from across the country. This new partnership between the Louisville Urban League and Kentucky State University is a phenomenal opportunity to showcase the talent, history, and culture
- [Pop-Up at the Black Farmers Market](https://slc.lul.org/event/pop-up-at-the-black-farmers-market/) - Good morning! On Saturday, October 9, the Louisville Urban League and Good Food are joining to promote food justice through a Black Farmers’ Market Tour. This is an opportunity to eat local, learn about healthy food options, and support Black-owned businesses. In addition to the farmers, we will host an additional 15 black businesses to
- [LUL Community Health Fair](https://slc.lul.org/event/lul-health-fair/) - In celebration of its centennial, the Louisville Urban League along with other partners are hosting a Community Health Fair. "Jobs, Justice, Education, Health, and Housing” are the pillars of the Louisville Urban League and on that day we will lift up and celebrate Health--holistic well-being for individuals of all ages and their families (mental, physical,
- [Back-to-School Bash and Youth Business Pop-Up](https://slc.lul.org/event/back-to-school-bash-and-youth-business-pop-up/) - This event is specifically for Youth-owned (24 and under) businesses and for organizations offering free educational resources to students and families.

## Timeline Stories

- [Urban League: West Louisville best place for proposed sports complex](https://slc.lul.org/timeline/urban-league-west-louisville-best-place-for-proposed-sports-complex/)
- [Groundbreaking](https://slc.lul.org/timeline/groundbreaking/)
- [Louisville Urban League names new president and CEO](https://slc.lul.org/timeline/louisville-urban-league-names-new-president-and-ceo/) - Phillip M. Bailey @phillipmbailey Published: 11:13 a.m. ET Aug. 11, 2015 Updated: 11:36 p.m. ET Aug. 11, 2015" The Louisville Urban League announced Tuesday it has selected Sadiqa Reynolds as the first woman president and CEO in the local branch’s history. A former Jefferson District judge, Reynolds is currently Mayor Greg Fischer’s chief of community
- [West Louisville FoodPort canceled](https://slc.lul.org/timeline/35-million-project-envisioned-to-revitalize-western-louisville-and-support-local-food-economy-shelved-after-major-tenant-backed-away/) - $35 million project envisioned to revitalize western Louisville and support local food economy shelved after major tenant backed away Jere Downs @JereDowns $35 million West Louisville FoodPort canceled as tenant backs out Nonprofit developer Seed Capital Kentucky to deed land back to city. The developer of the West Louisville FoodPort abruptly canceled the $35 million
- [Sports complex among ideas for West End site](https://slc.lul.org/timeline/sports-complex-among-ideas-for-west-end-site/) - Martha Elson @MarthaElson_cj Published: 12:44 p.m. ET Sep. 13, 2016 Updated: 5:12 p.m. ET Sep. 13, 2016" A sports complex, trade school, professional soccer stadium and an entertainment mall were among the wide-ranging ideas suggested by participants at the "West Louisville Visioning Session" Monday evening, to discuss the potential future of a 24-acre site that had been
- [Public meeting at LCCC to vote on proposals for Heritage West reuse](https://slc.lul.org/timeline/public-meeting-at-lccc-to-vote-on-proposals-for-heritage-west-reuse/)
- [$35 million West End sports complex secures big donation](https://slc.lul.org/timeline/35-million-west-end-sports-complex-secures-big-donation/) - By Marty Finley – Reporter, Louisville Business First Jul 26, 2019 Updated Jul 27, 2019, 12:08pm EDT The organization launched phase two of its fundraising campaign last month. https://www.bizjournals.com/louisville/news/2019/07/26/35-million-west-end-sports-complex-secures-big.html
- [Proposed Russell sports complex receives $10 million in city funding](https://slc.lul.org/timeline/proposed-russell-sports-complex-receives-10-million-in-city-funding/) - Kate Talerico | Courier Journal Published: 12:11 p.m. ET Jul. 2, 2018 Updated: 12:17 p.m. ET Jul. 2, 2018" While the new LouCity stadium is transforming Butchertown, track and field might just be the sport to change the face of the Russell neighborhood. On Tuesday, Louisville Metro Council voted to grant city land to the Louisville Urban League for a proposed
- [City and Louisville Urban League sign development agreement for $30 million redevelopment of Heritage West site](https://slc.lul.org/timeline/city-and-louisville-urban-league-sign-development-agreement-for-30-million-redevelopment-of-heritage-west-site/) - June 22, 2018 Mayor Greg Fischer today joined Sadiqa Reynolds, President and CEO of Louisville Urban League, and community leaders to announce that Louisville Metro Government (LMG) has entered into a development agreement with the Louisville Urban League (LUL) for the redevelopment of the Heritage West site, a 24-acre acre property in the Russell neighborhood.
- [High-profile business leaders commit millions to West End track project](https://slc.lul.org/timeline/high-profile-business-leaders-commit-millions-to-west-end-track-project/) - By Carolyn Tribble Greer – Digital editor, Louisville Business First Nov 1, 2018 Updated Nov 1, 2018, 2:14pm EDT The $35 million sports and learning complex planned for Louisville's West End is picking up support from area business leaders. The Louisville Urban League, which is leading the efforts for the development, announced Thursday that it has personal commitments totaling
- [Urban League Track Complex Gets $3M Gift And Challenge To Raise More](https://slc.lul.org/timeline/urban-league-track-complex-gets-3m-gift-and-challenge-to-raise-more/) - By Amina Elahi COMMUNITYECONOMY November 26, 2018 The Louisville Urban League is nearly halfway to its funding goal for a $35 million track and field facility, which it is planning to build in the West End starting next spring. On Monday, officials announced a $3 million gift for the project from the James Graham Brown Foundation.
- [Nearly $30K raised for complex during groundbreaking](https://slc.lul.org/timeline/nearly-30k-raised-for-complex-during-groundbreaking/) - The city and the Louisville Urban League broke ground on a multimillion-dollar sports and learning complex Tuesday, and raised a lot of money for it in the process.
- [Access Louisville: Norton Sports & Learning Complex](https://slc.lul.org/timeline/access-louisville-norton-sports-learning-complex/) - Norton Healthcare makes a $3 million gift and $2 million challenge grant for the West End multi-use sports & learning complex.
- [Humana Announces Support for Louisville to Help Rebuild and Unite City](https://slc.lul.org/timeline/humana-announces-support-for-louisville-to-help-rebuild-and-unite-city/) - Company commits $11.5 million and 160,000 employee volunteer service hours to advance healing, equity and a more united community June 03, 2020 01:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time LOUISVILLE, Ky.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, Humana (NYSE: HUM) announced actions to support its hometown of Louisville in its efforts to address racial inequity and unite toward a stronger community. “We
- [Louisville couple makes major gift to West End sports complex](https://slc.lul.org/timeline/louisville-couple-makes-major-gift-to-west-end-sports-complex/) - By Carolyn Tribble Greer – Digital editor, Louisville Business First Sep 26, 2018, 11:17am EDT A prominent couple in Louisville's business community has made a $500,000 pledge to the Louisville Urban League to support the sports complex planned for the West End. Louisville Urban League President and CEO Sadiqa Reynolds announced on Facebook that the pledge from Wade and Alice Houston is

## Portfolio

- [Year 1 Photo Book](https://slc.lul.org/portfolio-items/year-1-photo-book/) - The Louisville Urban League Sports & Learning Campus, home to the Norton Healthcare Sports & Learning Center and the Humana Outdoor Track & Field, is excited to celebrate its first anniversary! We are so proud of this facility and what we have been able to accomplish in such a short period of time, while still
- [A Path Forward was Created](https://slc.lul.org/portfolio-items/a-path-forward-was-created/) - ×Reserve Space at the SLC ASM Global manages the facility and handles all reservations. If you are interested in renting space–including everything from the inside and outside tracks, meeting rooms, the rock climbing wall, bowling alley, and mezzanine–please contact ASM through their website. Thank you. CloseWhile We Were Building | A Path ForwardIn the wake
- [Breonna Taylor](https://slc.lul.org/portfolio-items/breonna-taylor/) - While We Were Building | Breonna TaylorOn March 13, 2020 a seismic shift happened in Louisville. That was the night Breonna Taylor–a young, Black, brilliant, EMT–was killed in her apartment. Everything we would come to find out about the horrific and completely preventable death would change how the city would function and how the community
- [COVID-19](https://slc.lul.org/portfolio-items/covid-19/) - While We Were Building | COVID-19Lyndon Pryor2023-03-08T02:20:23-05:00ACC Tournament: Kenny Payne’s first Louisville basketball season ends – Courier-JournalLyndon Pryor2023-03-08T02:20:23-05:00March 8th, 2023|Lyndon Pryor2023-03-07T20:21:52-05:00Gaia’s reverses fortunes as COVID-era trends fade – BizWestLyndon Pryor2023-03-07T20:21:52-05:00March 7th, 2023|Lyndon Pryor2023-03-06T22:25:28-05:00Feed Louisville partners with local restaurants for fundraiser to reach more people in needLyndon Pryor2023-03-06T22:25:28-05:00March 6th, 2023|Lyndon Pryor2023-03-03T20:22:04-05:00Louisville Metro Council to hire outside
- [Election 2020](https://slc.lul.org/portfolio-items/election-2020/) - While We Were Building | Election 2020Lyndon Pryor2023-03-07T15:28:48-05:00Kevin Robinson has 1 edge in Phoenix District 6 race – and it’s an important oneLyndon Pryor2023-03-07T15:28:48-05:00March 7th, 2023|Lyndon Pryor2023-03-03T20:25:00-05:0017 FEMALE ACTIVISTS WE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT – Her CampusLyndon Pryor2023-03-03T20:25:00-05:00March 3rd, 2023|Lyndon Pryor2023-03-01T19:20:43-05:00Democrats ask Fox not to push ‘propaganda’ on 2020 election | Raleigh News & ObserverLyndon Pryor2023-03-01T19:20:43-05:00March
- [Injustice Square](https://slc.lul.org/portfolio-items/injustice-square/) - While We Were Building | A Year of Protests[Louisville Courier Journal, 2021] The protests began May 28, 2020, two months after Taylor, a 26-year-old Black emergency room technician, was shot and killed by Louisville police officers serving a search warrant at her South End apartment. Spurred by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis
- [David McAtee](https://slc.lul.org/portfolio-items/david-mcatee/) - While We Were Building | David McAteeJust after midnight on June 1, 2020, at the height of the protests over the killing of Breonna Taylor, a group of military trucks carrying police officers and National Guard members pulled up to an intersection in the West End of Louisville. They had just received an order to

## Categories

- [Uncategorized](https://slc.lul.org/category/uncategorized/)
- [timeline](https://slc.lul.org/category/timeline/)
- [Breonna Taylor](https://slc.lul.org/category/breonna-taylor/)
- [David McAtee](https://slc.lul.org/category/david-mcatee/)
- [COVID-19](https://slc.lul.org/category/covid-19/)
- [Election 2020](https://slc.lul.org/category/election-2020/)
- [A Path Forward](https://slc.lul.org/category/a-path-forward/)

## Tags

- [BLACK LIVES MATTER](https://slc.lul.org/tag/black-lives-matter/)
- [LOUISVILLE](https://slc.lul.org/tag/louisville/)
- [BREONNA TAYLOR](https://slc.lul.org/tag/breonna-taylor/)
- [DAVID MCATEE](https://slc.lul.org/tag/david-mcatee/)
- [8:46 NEWS](https://slc.lul.org/tag/846-news/)
- [THE 8:46 PROJECT](https://slc.lul.org/tag/the-846-project/)

## Categories

- [Timeline Stories](https://slc.lul.org/ctl-stories/timeline-stories/)
- [Construction](https://slc.lul.org/ctl-stories/construction/)

## Event Categories

- [Vendor Events](https://slc.lul.org/events/category/vendor-events/)

## Portfolio Categories

- [While We Were Building](https://slc.lul.org/portfolio_category/wwwb/)
- [IMPACT](https://slc.lul.org/portfolio_category/impact/)