Former Johnson County Sheriff Calvin Hayden investigated Johnson County Election Commissioner Fred Sherman over allegations of voter intimidation, according to records obtained by The Star. The case was the only one Hayden, a Republican, ever sent to Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe during his years-long investigation into election fraud. The inquiry never found any election fraud but helped stoke baseless conspiracy theories that the county’s elections were somehow tainted.
The Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, now led by Democrat Byron Roberson, and Howe, a Republican, both confirmed in separate statements last week that Hayden had submitted only one election-related case. Roberson announced last week that he had formally closed the election inquiry. But law enforcement documents provided to The Star in response to a records request now reveal Sherman was the subject of the intimidation investigation. The documents illustrate the extraordinary situation that played out in Johnson County in 2022 as the then-sheriff investigated the county’s top elections official. Howe declined to prosecute Sherman, finding no evidence of a crime….
The records provided on Tuesday include a full narrative report of the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office investigation. While the victim’s name is redacted in the newly-provided documents, the case number matches the partial report previously provided to The Star. In the narrative, Det. Kevin Cronister wrote that the alleged victim in an email alleged that during a July 13, 2022, election worker training, Sherman was disregarding her “beliefs as an American voter and election worker” because Sherman had told her she needed to vote in advance or by mail to be a poll worker on Election Day. The alleged victim said she only believed in voting in-person on Election Day. “Having been required by Fred Sherman to choose between my voting rights and his policy, I felt stripped of my rights,” the alleged victim said, according to Cronister’s narrative report….
All posts by Rick Hasen
Must Read Adam Liptak in the NYT: “Trump’s Actions Have Created a Constitutional Crisis, Scholars Say” (Gift Link)
There is no universally accepted definition of a constitutional crisis, but legal scholars agree about some of its characteristics. It is generally the product of presidential defiance of laws and judicial rulings. It is not binary: It is a slope, not a switch. It can be cumulative, and once one starts, it can get much worse.
It can also be obvious, said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley.
“We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis right now,” he said on Friday. “There have been so many unconstitutional and illegal actions in the first 18 days of the Trump presidency. We never have seen anything like this.”
He ticked off examples of what he called President Trump’s lawless conduct: revoking birthright citizenship, freezing federal spending, shutting down an agency, removing leaders of other agencies, firing government employees subject to civil service protections and threatening to deport people based on their political views.
That is a partial list, Professor Chemerinsky said, and it grows by the day. “Systematic unconstitutional and illegal acts create a constitutional crisis,” he said.
The distinctive feature of the current situation, several legal scholars said, is its chaotic flood of activity that collectively amounts to a radically new conception of presidential power. But the volume and speed of those actions may overwhelm and thus thwart sober and measured judicial consideration.
It will take some time, though perhaps only weeks, for a challenge to one of Mr. Trump’s actions to reach the Supreme Court. On Monday, a federal judge said the White House had defied his order to release billions of dollars in federal grants, marking the first time a judge has expressly declared that the Trump administration is disobeying a judicial mandate.
It remains to be seen whether Mr. Trump would defy a ruling against him by the justices.
“It’s an open question whether the administration will be as contemptuous of courts as it has been of Congress and the Constitution,” said Kate Shaw, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “At least so far, it hasn’t been.”…
Pamela Karlan, a law professor at Stanford, added that a crisis need not arise from clashes between the branches of the federal government.
“It’s a constitutional crisis when the president of the United States doesn’t care what the Constitution says regardless whether Congress or the courts resist a particular unconstitutional action,” she said. “Up until now, while presidents might engage in particular acts that were unconstitutional, I never had the sense that there was a president for whom the Constitution was essentially meaningless.”….
Professor Karlan said she worried that the justices would rule for Mr. Trump for fear that he would ignore decisions rejecting his positions. “The idea that courts should preserve the illusion of power by abdicating their responsibilities would just make the constitutional crisis even worse,” she said….
MORE from Joan Biskupic.
“Trump allies suggest defying court orders after stinging legal rebukes”
Federal judges have issued President Donald Trump stinging legal rebukes in the early clashes over his blitz of executive orders, and two of his top advisers have responded by suggesting that his administration defy the courts and move forward with its agenda.
There’s no indication that Trump has adopted such a strategy, although a U.S. judge in Rhode Island ruled Monday that the administration has been violating a court order to disburse billions of dollars in already-approved grant funding and hinted at possible penalties.
But the combative rhetoric by Vice President JD Vance and top adviser Elon Musk has troubled legal experts,who said there is no modern precedent for a president to ignore or defy court orders.
Vance wrote on X on Sunday that it would be illegal for a judge to tell a general how to conduct a military operation or for a jurist to dictate how the attorney general used his discretion as a prosecutor. “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” he wrote.
The vice president also shared a post by a Harvard University professor who argued that “judicial interference with legitimate acts of state” is a violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers. Vance has made similar comments in the past, including on a 2021 podcast where he said he would urge the president to defy a court order preventing him from firing federal workers. On Monday, Vance continued to repost messages from other users embracing the theme.
Musk, who owns X and is leading the Trump administration’s effort to cut the federal government, echoed Vance’s comments in his ownpostings on the social media platform. He called for impeaching a judge who last weektemporarily blocked his associates from accessing sensitive data about Americans that iskept in a Treasury Department database. Musk also shared the post of another X user who calledfor Trump to defy judges.
“It is exceptionally myopic, hypocritical and dangerous,” Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck said of the calls by Trump officials to defy court orders. “In our system, the way you object to a legal ruling you find objectionable is to appeal.”..
“Push to Drop Adams Charges Reveals a Justice Dept. Under Trump’s Sway”
The Justice Department on Monday ordered federal prosecutors to drop the corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York, a remarkable incursion into a continuing criminal case that raises questions about the fair administration of justice during President Trump’s second term.
The order was sent in a letter from the department’s acting No. 2 official, Emil Bove III, to Manhattan prosecutors who brought the charges against the mayor last year.
Mr. Bove justified the decision to ask for the dismissal by saying that the mayor’s indictment had limited Mr. Adams’s ability to cooperate in President Trump’s immigration crackdown. He also suggested that the indictment, which was handed up in September, threatened to interfere with the June 2025 mayoral primary, despite the nine-month interval between the two events.
Mr. Bove explicitly said that the Justice Department had made its decision without assessing the strength of the evidence against Mr. Adams or the legal theories undergirding the case. Instead, his letter criticized the U.S. attorney who brought it and former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. He offered expressly political arguments for dropping the charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions from foreign nationals and bribery, asserting the urgency of Mr. Trump’s immigration objectives.
It will now fall to the acting head of the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, Danielle R. Sassoon, whether to heed Mr. Bove’s order to dismiss the charges “as soon as is practicable” by filing a motion with the judge. A spokesman for Ms. Sassoon’s office declined to comment.
The letter was a remarkable intervention in a high-profile public corruption prosecution, one that cast the independence of federal prosecutors into doubt given the way Mr. Adams has curried favor with Mr. Trump. Mr. Bove directed that the charges against Mr. Adams be dismissed without prejudice, suggesting that the case could be revived if merited — or if it pleased the president….
“Fiery Directives Under Trump’s Justice Dept. Signal a Significant Shift”
Hours after being sworn in as President Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi declared to the entire Justice Department work force, “This shameful era ends today.”
That assertion, in one of 14 memos she issued on Wednesday, underscored what many current and former law enforcement officials describe as a major — and alarming — departure from years of Justice Department practice in which it steered clear of political rhetoric. The new tone, they said, suggests the opposite, seeming to promise a campaign of intimidation against career prosecutors and agents viewed as insufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump.
Such language is not unique to Ms. Bondi. Newly minted senior officials from powerful perches across the Justice Department have issued fiery broadsides against employees, denouncing “insubordination” or “abhorrent” conduct and, in one instance, vowing to pursue unspecified opponents of Mr. Trump’s cost-cutting efforts “to the ends of the Earth.”
One Justice Department lawyer who has worked in both Republican and Democratic administrations said the attorney general’s words were chilling in appearing to suggest that the new leadership of the department sees long-serving career lawyers as villains.
Another of Ms. Bondi’s memos urged “zealous” advocacy for the president’s agenda, part of a series of missives from top officials effectively demanding loyalty from their employees.
“I am not the president’s lawyer; I serve the people of the United States,” the lawyer said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “I’ve always been able to go to my supervisor and say, ‘I got this case and I’m uncomfortable with it.’ Based on the attorney general’s emails, it seems like those conversations are not welcome anymore, and that is scary.”
That memo warned that “any attorney who because of their personal political views or judgments declines to sign a brief or appear in court, refuses to advance good-faith arguments on behalf of the administration, or otherwise delays or impedes the department’s mission will be subject to discipline and potentially termination, consistent with applicable law.”
It has long been the practice within the Justice Department that lawyers do not substitute their own views for the administration’s goals or the department’s policies. On rare occasions, however, lawyers may argue that they cannot make a good-faith argument for a particular position. To some Justice Department lawyers, the new directives are intended to nip any such internal disagreement before an objection can be raised.
“Trump Pauses Enforcement of Law Banning Foreign Bribery”
President Trump on Monday ordered a pause in the enforcement of a federal law aimed at curbing corruption in multinational companies, saying it creates an uneven playing field for American firms.
The law, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, makes it illegal for companies that operate in the United States to pay foreign government officials to secure business deals. Though the law was enacted in 1977, federal authorities have more heavily enforced it since around 2005, cracking down on bribery, especially in countries where it is a common business practice.
Mr. Trump has objected to the law, which has led to charges and huge fines against some of the world’s largest companies. In November, U.S. prosecutors accused Gautam Adani, the Indian tycoon, of bribing Indian officials and charged him with fraud. His company has called those claims “baseless.”
Companies that have paid fines under the act include the engineering conglomerate Siemens and the Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson. In 2020, Goldman Sachs agreed to pay more than $2.9 billion to resolve charges that employees at its Malaysian subsidiary had paid $1 billion in bribes to foreign officials.
The law has been “abused in a manner that harms the interests of the United States,” Mr. Trump’s executive order on Monday said, adding that its enforcement was impeding foreign policy objectives.
The order bars federal authorities from starting any new investigations under the act or enforcing new actions for 180 days. The administration will also review existing investigations launched under the act, it said, to “restore proper bounds” on the law.
It also directs the attorney general to issue new guidance on how to enforce the act “that promotes American competitiveness and efficient use of federal law enforcement resources.”…
“With firings and lax enforcement, Trump moving to dismantle government’s public integrity guardrails”
In the first three weeks of his administration, President Donald Trump has moved with brazen haste to dismantle the federal government’s public integrity guardrails that he frequently tested during his first term but now seems intent on removing entirely.
In a span of hours on Monday, word came that he had forced out leaders of offices responsible for government ethics and whistleblower complaints. And in a boon to corporations, he ordered a pause to enforcement of a decades-old law that prohibits American companies from bribing foreign governments to win business. All of that came on top of the earlier late-night purge of more than a dozen inspectors general who are tasked with rooting out waste, fraud and abuse at government agencies.
It’s all being done with a stop-me-if-you-dare defiance by a president who the first time around felt hemmed in by watchdogs, lawyers and judges tasked with affirming good government and fair play. Now, he seems determined to break those constraints once and for all in a historically unprecedented flex of executive power.
Levitsky: “The New Authoritarianism: This isn’t single-party rule, but it’s not democracy either.”
Steve Levitsky in The Atlantic:
With the leader of a failed coup back in the White House and pursuing an unprecedented assault on the constitutional order, many Americans are starting to wrap their mind around what authoritarianism could look like in America. If they have a hard time imagining something like the single-party or military regimes of the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, or more modern regimes like those in China or Russia, that is with good reason. A full-scale dictatorship in which elections are meaningless and regime opponents are locked up, exiled, or killed remains highly unlikely in America.
ut that doesn’t mean the country won’t experience authoritarianism in some form. Rather than fascism or single-party dictatorship, the United States is sliding toward a more 21st-century model of autocracy: competitive authoritarianism—a system in which parties compete in elections but incumbent abuse of power systematically tilts the playing field against the opposition. In his first weeks back in office, Donald Trump has already moved strongly in this direction. He is attempting to purge the civil service and directing politicized investigations against rivals. He has pardoned violent paramilitary supporters and is seeking to unilaterally seize control over spending from Congress. This is a coordinated effort to dig in, cement power, and weaken rivals.
Unlike in a full-scale dictatorship, in competitive-authoritarian regimes, opposition forces are legal and aboveground, and they often seriously vie for power. Elections may be fiercely contested. But incumbents deploy the machinery of government to punish, harass, co-opt, or sideline their opponents—disadvantaging them in every contest, and, in so doing, entrenching themselves in power. This is what happened in Venezuela under Hugo Chávez and in contemporary El Salvador, Hungary, India, Tunisia, and Turkey.
Crucially, this abuse of the state’s power does not require upending the Constitution. Competitive autocracies usually begin by capturing the referees: replacing professional civil servants and policy specialists with loyalists in key public agencies, particularly those that investigate or prosecute wrongdoing, adjudicate disputes, or regulate economic life. Elected autocrats such as Chávez, Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Viktor Orbán, Narendra Modi, and Nayib Bukele all purged public prosecutors’ offices, intelligence agencies, tax authorities, electoral authorities, media regulatory bodies, courts, and other state institutions and packed them with loyalists. Trump is not hiding his efforts to do the same. He has thus far fired (or declared his intention to fire, leading to their resignation) the FBI director, the IRS commissioner, EEOC commissioners, the National Labor Relations Board chair, and other nominally independent officials; reissued a renamed Schedule F, which strips firing protections from huge swaths of the civil service; expanded hiring authorities that make it easier to fill public positions with allies; purged more than a dozen inspectors general in apparent violation of the law; and even ordered civil servants to inform on one another….
Weiser and Garber: “The SAVE Act Would Undermine Voter Registration for all Americans”
The following is a guest post from Wendy Weiser & Andrew Garber:
Last month, congressional Republicans pledged to fast-track the SAVE Act (H.R. 22), a bill that would require all Americans to provide a birth certificate, passport, or one of a few other citizenship documents every time they register or re-register to vote. If enacted, the bill would devastate voter registration while disenfranchising tens of millions of eligible American citizens.
More than 21 million American citizens don’t have documentary proof of citizenship readily available, according to previously-published survey data. But the SAVE Act would likely adversely affect many, many more Americans than these data suggest. Many might not have noticed how broadly the bill could apply; its show-your-papers requirement is not just limited to new registrations but rather applies to every “application to register to vote,” which may not exclude re-registrations and changes of address. Tens of millions of Americans register or re-register between every federal election.
The SAVE Act Would Upend Most Methods of Voter Registration
What is more, the bill would obliterate or upend longstanding and popular methods of voter registration – including registration by mail, voter registration drives, online voter registration, and automatic voter registration. This would apply to all voters, regardless of whether they have the required documentation.
Here is the relevant bill text:
- Section 2(b)(3) mandates that states “shall not accept and process an application to register to vote . . . unless the applicant presents documentary proof of United States citizenship with the application.” Sections 2(c)(4) and 2(e)(1)(B) make clear that this requirement applies to registration at DMVs and voter registration agencies.
- Section 2(f)(3) similarly provides that states “may not register an individual to vote . . . unless at the time the individual applies to register to vote, the individual provides documentary proof of United States citizenship.”
- Section 2(a) defines “documentary proof of United States citizenship” but is silent on whether photocopies or electronic records of those documents would comply. For reasons cited below, there is a significant risk that they would not be accepted.
- For people registering to vote using the national mail voter registration form, section 2(d)(4) expressly requires them to present documentary proof of citizenship “in person to the office of the appropriate election official.” That must be done “not later than the deadline provided by State law for the receipt of a completed voter registration application for the election.” In other words, every individual registering by mail would be required to show up in person at an election official’s office with satisfactory documents before the registration deadline.
- Section 2(j)(3) creates criminal penalties for election officials who register “an applicant to vote in an election for Federal office who fails to present documentary proof of United States citizenship.” This would undoubtedly deter election officials from adopting a flexible or liberal reading of the documentation requirements (including whether to accept a registration or re-registration from someone who has not produced the documents in person or whether to allow alternative methods of proving citizenship under section 2(f) beyond the “documentary proof” required by this provision).
Taken together, these provisions would upend or undermine almost every method of voter registration. They would functionally eliminate mail registration by requiring mail registrants to produce citizenship documents in person to an election official before the registration deadline. They would also abolish many or all voter registration drives and online voter registration systems – which are typically treated like mail registration. And they would severely hamper automatic voter registration, as many of those transactions don’t occur in person while someone has citizenship documents with them. Address changes could be significantly impacted, too: instead of your registration automatically updating when, for instance, you change your driver’s license address online, you might have to bring your passport or birth certificate to an election agency office to update your voter registration.
Nothing we have found in the SAVE Act addresses these concerns. The bill consistently cuts in favor of in-person registration at a select few places for your registration to count. And that would likely be the case every time you need to update your registration.
The SAVE Act’s Documentation Requirement Could Exclude Tens of Millions of Americans
Beyond the impact on voter registration methods, the SAVE Act would exclude millions of eligible American citizens who do not have ready access to the documentation it requires. According to a survey conducted by the Brennan Center and several partners, more than 9 percent of American voting-age citizens, or 21.3 million people, don’t have a passport, birth certificate, or naturalization papers readily available. Voters of color (11% of whom lacked access to citizenship documents as compared to 8% of white Americans), voters who change their names (most notably, married women), and lower income voters would be most significantly affected.
In addition, as our colleagues Owen Bacskai and Eliza Sweren-Becker catalogued, proof of citizenship requirements in Arizona and Kansas blocked tens of thousands of citizens from registering. Kansas’s show-your-papers policy was struck down as unconstitutional, and recently prompted criticism even from Kansas’s Republican secretary of state. Those state policies are generally less onerous than the SAVE ACT. (In Arizona, for instance, most voters do not have to produce citizenship documents because the state accepts driver’s license numbers from most voters as proof of citizenship—something that would not be allowed under the SAVE Act.)
Contrary to what some have suggested, the SAVE Act does not contain a meaningful failsafe provision that would allow those without physical documentation to register. While the bill includes a provision (Section 2(f)) requiring states to establish a failsafe process for those without citizenship documents to demonstrate their citizenship through “other evidence” and swear an affidavit, that option is vague and severely undercut by the provision (Section 2(j)(3)) making it a crime for election officials to register any applicant who does not “present documentary proof of United States citizenship.” Many election officials would be wary of risking criminal prosecution for running afoul of this provision.
In short, the potential disenfranchising consequences of the SAVE Act are substantial.
“Trump Muses About a Third Term, Over and Over Again”
Maggie Haberman for the NYT:
Just eight days after he won a second term, Mr. Trump — whose supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to prevent Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory from being certified — mused about whether he could have a third presidential term, which is barred by the Constitution.
Since then, he has floated the idea frequently. In public, he couches the notion of staying in office beyond two terms as a humorous aside. In private, Mr. Trump has told advisers that it is just one of his myriad diversions to grab attention and aggravate Democrats, according to people familiar with his comments. And he has made clear that he is happy to be past a grueling campaign in which he faced two assassination attempts and followed an aggressive schedule in the final weeks.
The third-term gambit could also serve another purpose, political observers noted: keeping congressional Republicans in line as Mr. Trump pushes a maximalist version of executive authority with the clock ticking on his time in office.
“It serves Donald Trump’s public relations to start the bantam rooster crowing that he may serve a third term because it makes him not a lame duck,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian.
“It insinuates that he’s one of the greats like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, that the people are demanding another term and, ‘I guess I’ll do it because I’m a patriot,’” Brinkley added, referring to the 32nd president, whose four terms in office spurred the constitutional amendment setting presidential term limits.
A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Trump’s advisers mock those who take his comments about a third term seriously, saying he has been trolling his critics with the idea of a permanent presidency since he launched his campaign to return to the White House.
But his suggestion that he could stay in office beyond January 2029 now comes against a very different backdrop. In the first three weeks since his inauguration, Mr. Trump has sought to sweepingly expand executive power and granted the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, seemingly unfettered reach to dismantle federal agencies and to push roughly two million federal workers to consider leaving their posts.
Even when Mr. Trump presents something as a joke, the idea he suggests often becomes socialized by his supporters, both those in office and in the right-wing media. The concept then often takes on more weight, including for Mr. Trump.
Recently, some Republicans have started pushing the idea of changing the Constitution for him.
“People are already talking about changing the 22nd Amendment so he can serve a third term,” Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas, posted on X on Jan. 25, a message that Mr. Trump elevated on his own platform, Truth Social. “If this pace and success keep up for 4 years, and there is no reason it won’t, most Americans really won’t want him to leave.”….
“Supreme Court Signals That Landmark Libel Ruling Is Secure”
Adam Liptak for the NYT:
Starting in 2019, Justice Clarence Thomas has repeatedly called for the Supreme Court to reconsider New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark First Amendment decision that made it hard for public officials to prevail in libel suits.
That project gained momentum in 2021, when Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said the decision “has evolved into an ironclad subsidy for the publication of falsehoods by means and on a scale previously unimaginable.”
So it was notable that just five days before President Trump took office last month, the Supreme Court seemed to go out of its way to signal that it is not ready to embrace one of his most dearly held goals: to “open up our libel laws” and overrule the Sullivan decision.
The signal, faint but unmistakable, came in a routine case on whether sales representatives were entitled to overtime. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh cited the Sullivan decision with seeming approval, noting that it had held that the Constitution insists that public officials suing for libel must prove their cases with clear and convincing evidence….
The positive reference to the Sullivan decision last month was not a fluke. In 2023, Justice Elena Kagan, writing for five justices in a 7-to-2 decision, relied on Sullivan to rule that the First Amendment imposes limits on laws that make it a crime to issue threats on the internet….
All of this suggests that there remain only two votes to overturn the Sullivan decision, well short of the four it takes to add a case to the court’s docket, much less the five required to prevail on the merits.
Still, the attacks from Justices Thomas and Gorsuch have not gone unnoticed. Their dissents have been cited in 25 court decisions, according to a database search….
“Advocate of Jan. 6 Rioters Now Runs Office That Investigated Them”
NYT:
Ed Martin was in the mob outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, posting on social media that the violent riot that day was marked by “faith and joy.”
He has often echoed President Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged, declaring on the night before the Capitol was stormed that “true Americans” should work until their “last breath” to “stop the steal.”
He has spent the past four years raising money for — and in some cases defending — people charged with joining the mob. And when the House committee that investigated Jan. 6 sent him a subpoena, he never complied, risking criminal charges.
Now, Mr. Martin, 54, has been tapped by Mr. Trump to oversee the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington where he has been put in charge of dismantling the office’s signature project: the sprawling investigation of Jan. 6 that he has energetically opposed.
While his role, for now, is temporary — Mr. Trump has not yet chosen a full-time candidate — Mr. Martin is unlike anyone else who has run the agency that has taken the lead in charging more than 1,500 people in connection with the Capitol attack.
In his long legal career, he has never been a prosecutor, spending more time as a political operative and radio host. Moreover, he is saddled by an array of potential conflicts arising from his efforts to exonerate Jan. 6 defendants — including serving on the board of an organization that helped to pay their legal fees.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington is one of the most important field divisions in the Justice Department, which for decades has aimed to insulate itself from partisan politics. It often takes on cases of significance in the realms of national security, espionage and public corruption. In many instances, it is led by someone who has worked there.
Mr. Martin holds an obvious appeal for Mr. Trump. He is a loyal soldier and a savvy political player who has often spun untruths in a way that has favored the president. And because he oversees criminal cases in Washington, his office was just asked to join the Justice Department’s new “Weaponization Working Group,” which will turn the investigative powers of the government on several of Mr. Trump’s perceived enemies….
25th Anniversary of Bush v. Gore Two-Day Conference at Florida State
I went to the first conference on Bush v. Gore at Florida State back right when the case was decided, and I’m very excited to be going back for this event with an amazing group on Feb. 28 and March 1:
FSU Election Law Center
Bush v. Gore 25th Anniversary Conference
All events are in the FSU College of Law Main Classroom Building, Auditorium 101, unless otherwise noted.
Friday, February 28, 2025
9:00-9:30 A.M. – Optional Breakfast in Rotunda
9:45-10:00 A.M. – Welcome
- Dean Erin O’Hara O’Connor, Donald J. Weidner Chair, Florida State University College of Law
- Professor Michael T. Morley, Sheila M. McDevitt Professor of Law, Faculty Director, FSU Election Law Center, Florida State University College of Law
10:00-11:30 A.M. – State and County Officials Panel
Presenters and their respective roles in 2000:
- Ms. Sally Bradshaw, Chief of Staff to Governor Jeb Bush
- Paul Hancock, Esq., Florida Deputy Attorney General
- Deborah K. Kearney, Esq., General Counsel, Florida Department of State
- The Honorable Theresa LePore, Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections
- The Honorable John Thrasher, Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives
- Moderator: Professor Michael T. Morley
11:30 A.M. – 12:30 P.M. – Lunchand Remarks by Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd
12:30-2:00 P.M – State Litigation Panel*
- The Honorable Harry Lee Anstead, Former Justice, Florida Supreme Court
- Mitchell W. Berger, Esq., Senior Advisor and Counsel, Gore-Lieberman Presidential Campaign
- The Honorable Major Harding, Former Justice, Florida Supreme Court
- The Honorable Judge Terry Lewis, Former Leon County Circuit Court
- Barry Richard, Esq., Lead Litigation Counsel, Bush-Cheney Presidential Campaign
- Moderator: Joseph Van de Bogart, General Counsel, Florida Department of State
2:00-2:15 P.M. – Break
2:15-3:45 P.M. – Parallel Federal Litigation Panel*
- Professor Richard Briffault, Joseph P. Chamberlain, Professor of Legislation, Columbia Law School
- The Honorable John Antoon, Senior Judge, U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida
- The Honorable Joel F. Dubina, Senior Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
- The Honorable Gerald Bard Tjoflat, Senior Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
- Moderator: Professor Michael T. Morley
3:45-4:00 P.M. – Break
4:00-5:30 P.M. – Keynote Address
- Mr. David Boies, Esq., Chairman Emeritus and Founding Partner, Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, National Counsel, Gore-Lieberman Presidential Campaign
- Mr. Ben Ginsberg, Esq., Volker Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution, National Counsel, Bush-Cheney Presidential Campaign
Saturday, March 1, 2025
8:30-9:00 A.M. – Optional Breakfast in Rotunda
9:00-10:30 A.M. – Bush v. Gore, the Right to Vote, and Election Administration*
- Professor Joshua Douglas, Acting Associate Dean for Research, Ashland, Inc. – Spears Distinguished Research Professor of Law, University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law
- Professor Richard L. Hasen, Gary T. Schwartz Endowed Chair in Law, Director, Safeguarding Democracy Project, University of California, Los Angeles School of Law
- Professor Richard H. Pildes, Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law, New York University School of Law
- Professor Charles Stewart III, Kenan Sahin, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Moderator: Professor Lonna Atkeson, Ph.D., Leroy Collins Eminent Scholar in Civic Education and Political Science, Director, LeRoy Collins Institute, FSU College of Social Sciences and Public Policy
10:30-10:45 A.M. – Break
10:45-12:15 P.M. – Congressional v. Judicial Power Over Elections and the Political Question Doctrine*
- Professor Nelson Lund, Distinguished University Professor, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
- Professor Robert Pushaw, James Wilson Endowed Professor of Law, Pepperdine University Rick J. Caruso School of Law
- Dean Daniel Tokaji, Fred W. & Vi Miller Dean, Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School
- Moderator: Professor Charquia Fegins, Assistant Professor, Florida State University College of Law
12:15-1:15 P.M. – Lunch
1:15-2:45 P.M. – Remedies in Election Cases/ Constitutional Questions Concerning the Electoral College*
- Professor Sam Isaacharoff, Bonnie and Richard Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law, New York University School of Law
- Professor Justin Levitt, Professor of Law, Gerald T. McLaughlin Fellow, Loyola Law School, Loyola Marymount University
- Professor Derek T. Muller, Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School
- Moderator: Professor Michael T. Morley
2:45-3:00 P.M. – Break
3:00-4:30 P.M. – Bush v. Gore and the Future of the Voting Wars*
- Professor Guy-Uriel Charles, Charles Ogletree, Jr., Professor of Law, Faculty Director, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, Harvard Law School
- Professor Christopher Seaman, Robert E.R. Huntley Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University School of Law
- Dean Franita Tolson, Carl Mason Franklin Chair in Law, University of Southern California Gould School of Law
- Moderator: Ryan Owens, Professor of Political Science, Director of the Florida Institute on Governance and Civics, FSU College of Social Sciences and Public Policy
*Denotes those events eligible for two general CLE credits by the Florida Bar.
“GOP laws aimed at very rare noncitizen voting could hit eligible voters”
In the months before last year’s election, Alabama removed valid voters from the rolls after wrongly tagging them as noncitizens. Tennessee’s secretary of state told 14,000 voters they had to prove their citizenship. And officials debatedwhetherhundreds of thousands of Arizonans could vote in state races after they discovered they were missing citizenship documentation.
More episodes like those are likely to lie ahead throughout the country.
Republicans in Congress and state legislatures are charging forward with plans to require Americans to prove they are citizens as they say they seek to crack down on noncitizen voting — an almost nonexistent problem.
Voting by noncitizens is already illegal in all state and federal elections, and requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship could make it harder for millions of legitimate voters to cast ballots. Driver’s licenses and other state IDs can be used only for people who provided proof of citizenship to get those IDs, so some people will need to track down other documents.
Many people do not have ready access to birth certificates or passports, including women who changed their names when they got married, rural residents who live far from government offices where birth records are kept, and people who lost documents in fires or floods….
Noncitizen voting is extremely rare, with academic studies finding just a handful of examples out of tens of millions of ballots cast over many years.
This year, laws took effect in Louisiana and New Hampshire requiring people to provide proof of citizenship when they register to vote. The laws are modeled on one in Arizona, where officials continue to struggle with administering a measure voters approved 20 years ago.
The Wyoming House last month passed a bill requiring proof of citizenship, and lawmakers in 13 other states have introduced similar legislation, according to the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab. Republicans control the legislatures and governor’s office in eight of those states, boosting the legislation’s prospects.
Critics warn that longtime voters — including those who ardently support Trump — could find it harder to vote as more measures are passed and they discover they can’t track down their birth certificate or other documents proving their citizenship….