Speaker Mike Johnson plans to swear in Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva of Arizona as a member of Congress on Wednesday, according to his office, 50 days after her election, as the House returns from an extended recess.
Ms. Grijalva, a Democrat, won a special election on Sept. 23 for the Arizona seat left vacant by the death of her father, Representative Raúl Grijalva. Mr. Johnson had since refused to seat her, despite several opportunities to do so, public pleas, a Democratic pressure campaign and, eventually, a federal lawsuit brought by Ms. Grijalva and the attorney general of Arizona that argued that Mr. Johnson had no authority to continue to stall.
The delay prevented Ms. Grijalva from freely entering and moving about the Capitol complex, or having access to the budget or the materials she needed to do her job. As recently as Tuesday afternoon, she told NPR that she had not heard directly from Mr. Johnson’s office about the swearing-in and that she was “90 percent” confident it would happen at last. She said on social media on Monday that she was traveling to Washington after hearing from news reports and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader, that she could soon be seated.
“For seven weeks, 813,000 Arizonans have been denied a voice and access to basic constituent services,” Ms. Grijalva said. “This is an abuse of power that no Speaker should have.”
Category Archives: chicanery
“Texas Latino civic group sues to block AG Ken Paxton from shutting it down”
Jolt Initiative, a nonprofit that aims to increase civic participation among Latinos, is suing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to block his efforts to shut them down. Paxton announced Monday that he was seeking to revoke the nonprofit’s charter, alleging that the group had orchestrated “a systematic, unlawful voter registration scheme.”
This is not the first legal back-and-forth between Jolt and Paxton’s office. Last year, the organization successfully sued to stop the state’s investigation into their voter registration efforts. In the new suit, Jolt’s lawyers argue Paxton’s efforts to shut them down are retaliation. The attorney general’s office has also in recent years targeted other organizations aiding Latinos and migrants, such as the effort to investigate and shut down El Paso-based Annunciation House.
“Jolt is simply the latest target of his unlawful campaign to undermine and silence civil rights groups in Texas,” said Mimi Marziani, a lawyer representing the nonprofit.
“Spending Bill Would Pave Way for Senators to Sue Over Phone Searches”
NYT:
A spending package expected to be approved as part of a deal to reopen the government would create a wide legal avenue for senators to sue for as much as half a million dollars each when federal investigators search their phone records without notifying them.
The provision, tucked into a measure to fund the legislative branch, appears to immediately allow for eight G.O.P. senators to sue the government over their phone records being seized in the course of the investigation by Jack Smith, the former special counsel, into the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The provision would make it a violation of the law to not notify a senator if their phone records or other metadata was taken from a service provider like a phone company. There are some exceptions, such as 60-day delays in notification if the senator is considered the target of an investigation.
The language of the bill states that “any senator whose Senate data, or the Senate data of whose Senate office, has been acquired, subpoenaed, searched, accessed, or disclosed in violation of this section may bring a civil action against the United States if the violation was committed by an officer, employee, or agent of the United States or of any federal department or agency.”
Because the provision is retroactive to 2022, it would appear to make eligible the eight lawmakers whose phone records were subpoenaed by investigators for Mr. Smith as he examined efforts by Donald J. Trump to obstruct the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Each violation would be worth at least $500,000 in any legal claim, according to the bill language. The bill would also sharply limit the way the government could resist such a claim, taking away any government claims of qualified or sovereign immunity to fight a lawsuit over the issue…..
“Kansas mayor charged with alleged voter fraud; state leader says ‘hundreds’ more cases expected”
The mayor of a small south-central Kansas town has been charged with committing fraud by voting in elections since 2022 even though he is not a United States citizen, the state’s attorney general and secretary of state said Wednesday.
Attorney General Kris Kobach said Joe Ceballos, who garnered nearly 83% of the vote Tuesday for a second term as Coldwater mayor, was charged with three counts of voting without being qualified and three counts of election perjury. Both are felony offenses.
“These charges carry a potential maximum penalty of up to 68 months imprisonment and up to $200,000 in fines,” Kobach said.
The charges, filed in Comanche County, are based on Ceballos’ voting in the 2022 general election, the 2023 general election for local offices and the 2024 primary election, Kobach said.
Ceballos served two terms on the Coldwater City Council and was elected mayor in 2021, a position he is not qualified to hold if he is not a U.S. citizen although it is not a criminal violation, Kobach said.
He referenced a Kansas statute that requires a city officer to be a qualified elector, which requires that person to be a United States citizen.
“He is a legal permanent resident of the United States and a citizen of Mexico,” Kobach said.
Schwab said it would be up to the local governing board to make a determination about the mayoral race after the election is finalized.
Coldwater government leaders did not find out about the situation until Wednesday. …
During a news conference in Topeka, Kobach and Secretary of State Scott Schwab said the state is actively pursuing cases like this by using the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database, which can be queried by states to determine a voter’s U.S. citizenship status.
According to The Center Square, 26 states are using the database to verify voter registration information. Schwab confirmed Kansas has begun using the SAVE database to check voter registrations, but also said the case against Ceballos was not compiled using the database.
Kobach has waged a campaign for years claiming significant voter fraud and pushing for stricter voting regulations, including proof of citizenship laws and showing photo identification at the polls.
Schwab, who is the state’s top elections officer, said until Kansas began recently using the SAVE database, he had disagreed with Kobach that there was much of an issue.
“We’re currently verifying. We don’t want any false positives, but attorney general, be prepared to be busy as we go through these and find out potential positives of people who are non-U.S. citizens that have voted,” Schwab said. “I was never really a big believer this happened. I always came from the angle of, let’s prove it’s not happening, and then we get the data, and it’s important we clean this up.”
Kobach said he expects there will be hundreds of people on the voter rolls who are not legally eligible to vote. Although that may be a small number compared to the 2 million registered to vote in Kansas, it matters, he said. …
“Bomb threats force closures at some New Jersey polling places”
Across New Jersey, bomb threats at multiple polling locations have prompted closures and relocations today.
Attorney General Matthew Platkin says law enforcement responded to emailed threats at polling places in seven New Jersey counties and secured each location.
He says some of these polling locations have already reopened to the public, while at others, voters have been directed to a nearby polling location to cast their ballot. “Voters should continue to have confidence that they can cast their ballot without fear of intimidation, and we will continue to work tirelessly to ensure a free, fair, and secure election. Make no mistake: We will not tolerate any attempts to interfere with our elections, and we will swiftly hold accountable anyone who seeks to interfere with the safety or security of our electoral process.”…
Threats have been sent via email to the following locations:
- Bergen County
- Essex County
- Mercer County
- Middlesex County
- Monmouth County
- Ocean County
- Passaic County
ProPublica Profile of NC Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby Draws Veiled Threat from Justice’s Daughter to Drop the Story or Deal with Trump Administration
In early 2023, Paul Newby, the Republican chief justice of North Carolina’s Supreme Court, gave the state and the nation a demonstration of the stunning and overlooked power of his office.
The previous year, the court — then majority Democrat — had outlawed partisan gerrymandering in the swing state. Over Newby’s vehement dissent, it had ordered independent outsiders to redraw electoral maps that the GOP-controlled legislature had crafted to conservatives’ advantage.
The traditional ways to undo such a decision would have been for the legislature to pass a new law that made gerrymandering legal or for Republicans to file a lawsuit. But that would’ve taken months or years.
Newby cleared a way to get there sooner, well before the crucial 2024 election.
In January — once two newly elected Republican justices were sworn in, giving the party a 5-2 majority — GOP lawmakers quickly filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to rehear the gerrymandering case. Such do-overs are rare. Since 1993, the court had granted only two out of 214 petitions for rehearings, both to redress narrow errors, not differences in interpreting North Carolina’s constitution. The lawyers who’d won the gerrymandering case were incredulous.
“We were like, they can’t possibly do this,” said Jeff Loperfido, the chief counsel for voting rights at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. “Can they revisit their opinions when the ink is barely dry?”
Under Newby’s leadership, they did.
Behind the closed doors of the courthouse, he set aside decades of institutional precedent by not gathering the court’s seven justices to debate the legislature’s request in person, as chief justices had historically done for important matters.
Instead, in early February, Justice Phil Berger Jr., Newby’s right-hand man and presumed heir on the court, circulated a draft of a special order agreeing to the rehearing, sources familiar with the matter said. Berger’s accompanying message made clear there would be no debate; rather, he instructed his colleagues to vote by email, giving them just over 24 hours to respond.
The court’s conservatives approved the order within about an hour. Its two liberal justices, consigned to irrelevance, worked through the night with their clerks to complete a dissent by the deadline.
The pair were allowed little additional input when the justices met about a month and a half later in their elegant wood-paneled conference room to reach a decision on the case. After what a court staffer present that day called a “notably short conference,” Newby and his allies emerged victorious.
Newby then wrote a majority opinion declaring that partisan gerrymandering was legal and that the Democrat-led court had unconstitutionally infringed on the legislature’s prerogative to create electoral maps.
The decision freed GOP lawmakers to toss out electoral maps that had produced an evenly split North Carolina congressional delegation in 2022, reflecting the state’s balanced electorate.
In 2024, the state sent 10 Republicans and four Democrats to Congress — a six-seat swing that enabled the GOP to take control of the U.S. House of Representatives and handed Republicans, led by President Donald Trump, control of every branch of the federal government.
The gerrymandering push isn’t finished. This month, North Carolina Republican lawmakers passed a redistricting bill designed to give the party an additional congressional seat in the 2026 election….
ewby declined multiple interview requests from ProPublica and even had a reporter escorted out of a judicial conference to avoid questions. He also did not answer detailed written questions. The court system’s communications director and media team did not respond to multiple requests for comment or detailed written questions.
When ProPublica emailed questions to Newby’s daughter, the North Carolina Republican Party’s communications director, Matt Mercer, responded, writing that ProPublica was waging a “jihad” against “NC Republicans,” which would “not be met with dignifying any comments whatsoever.”
“I’m sure you’re aware of our connections with the Trump Administration and I’m sure they would be interested in this matter,” Mercer said in his email. “I would strongly suggest dropping this story.” …
“A Fundraiser Convicted of Defrauding ‘Vulnerable’ Victims Is Back — and Making Millions From Republican Campaigns”
Dave Levinthal for Notus:
Jack Daly, who was convicted and sent to prison last year after pleading guilty to defrauding thousands of conservative political donors out of money, has emerged from federal custody to quietly re-establish himself as a top Republican Party campaign fundraiser.
A NOTUS investigation found that dozens of federal-level Republican political committees — including the Republican National Committee, numerous congressional committees and campaign operations tied to President Donald Trump — have together spent nearly $18 million on digital fundraising, donor lists and other services from Daly’s latest political consulting firm, Better Mousetrap Digital, according to Virgin Islands corporate filings and Federal Election Commission records.
As California SOS Questions Department of Justice Authority to Send Federal Election Monitors to 5 California Counties, Looks Like DOJ is Sending Only Two U.S. Attorneys to Observe Voting Processes in Orange County
The California Secretary of State questions authority of DOJ to send monitors to 5 California Counties:
The CA GOP released a letter citing supposed irregularities in the 5 California counties that formed its purported basis for “requesting” DOJ monitors.
Despite the announcement and concern, this seems very modest:
Donald Trump Files Appellate Brief Raising Strong Arguments to Overturn His New York Conviction in Stormy Daniels Campaign Finance Case
You can find the brief here.
The first argument raised is that of federal preemption, and there are a number of other strong arguments as well.
This was not the case that should have been brought against Donald Trump. This was but it wasn’t brought in time.
Adding New Meaning to the Expression “Flooding the Zone with Shit,””Trump Posts Fake Video of Himself Flying a ‘King Trump’ Jet Over Protesters”
President Trump has posted a fake video on social media that showed him wearing a crown and flying a jet labeled “King Trump” that dumps brown liquid on protesters.
The short video, shared on Mr. Trump’s Truth Social account late Saturday, was posted on the same day that protesters participated in a daylong mass demonstration, known as “No Kings,” against the Trump administration. The protests were held in cities and towns in all 50 states, with participants holding signs such as “I Pledge Allegiance to No King” and chanting slogans against the president, accusing him of acting in authoritarian ways.
The fake video, set to the song “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins, shows the plane dropping a brown liquid resembling feces onto the heads of protesters, who appeared to be gathered in a city.
The White House on Saturday also posted on social media an A.I.-generated image of Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance wearing crowns. “Have a good night, everyone,” the post said, with the crown emoji.
“Trump says he has commuted sentence of former US Rep. George Santos in federal fraud case”
President Donald Trump said Friday he had commuted the sentence of former U.S. Rep. George Santos, who is serving more than seven years in federal prison after pleading guilty to fraud and identity theft charges.
The New York Republican was sentenced in April after admitting last year to deceiving donors and stealing the identities of 11 people — including his own family members — to make donations to his campaign.
He reported to Federal Correctional Institution in Fairton, in southern New Jersey, on July 25 and is being housed in a minimum security prison camp with fewer than 50 other inmates.
“I just signed a Commutation, releasing George Santos from prison, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump posted on his social media platform.
“George Santos was somewhat of a ‘rogue,’ but there are many rogues throughout our Country that aren’t forced to serve seven years in prison,” he wrote….
How I Expect the Supreme Court to Kill Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in Callais (If It Does So): Not By Direct Overruling but By Pretending They Are Simply Reinterpreting the Meaning of Section 2
I’ve written of good reason to believe the Supreme Court is going to sap Section 2 of its power in the Louisiana v. Callais case, being argued on Wednesday. I won’t rehash those arguments here. Instead I want to ask how the Court will denude section 2 of its power to require the creation of minority opportunity districts if the Court goes in that direction.
One possibility is that the Court simply strikes down Section 2 as an impermissible race conscious remedy or, following Justice Kavanaugh’s dissent in Allen v. Milligan, by saying (as the Court said about Section 4/5 in Shelby County) that time is up because of changed conditions on the ground. (Given that Section 2 is self-sunsetting as racially polarized voting disappears, that may be a very hard argument to make.) Doing so, especially just before the mid-term elections would raise even greater disapproval of the Court from half the country. It could well spark the beginning of a new civil rights movement, aimed partly at reforming the Supreme Court.
Given how high profile it would be for the Court to strike down Section 2, and given how at least some of the Justices consider the politics of their decisions, there’s a far more likely path to achieve this same purpose without an opinion explicitly striking down Section 2—interpret Section 2 so that it has no power.
We have seen this before. Justice Alito for the Court in the Brnovich case ignored text, history, precedent, and congressional intent to interpret Section 2 outside the context of redistricting so that has had no power. As I recently discussed in a Yale Law Journal article, there has not been a single successful section 2 lawsuit outside of redistricting since the 2021 Brnovich case. Alito imposed such an absurd standard (including one that freezes voting rights advances to 1982, when Congress wrote the amended section 2) that is is essentially a dead letter outside of redistricting.
One can easily see Callais get the “Alito Treatment”—reading Section 2 acontextually and in a voter-hostile way. It might require overturning Gingles (perhaps on grounds that parts of Gingles were agreed to only by a plurality of judges, not a majority—never mind how many times the Court has treated Gingles as controlling law). The Trump Administration seems to favor that in a despicable amicus brief filed in this case. It could be through some combination of constitutional avoidance to reread the statute so as to make it less (or not at all) race conscious and ignoring decades of precedents going the other way. I don’t know exactly what it would look like, but Brnovich shows how the Court’s conservative majority could do this in a way to try to avoid taking a political hit.
And because it’s so hard to explain technical voting rights rulings to the general public, and because it won’t be immediately clear to journalists and others that this is essentially a denuding of Section 2, the Justices just might be able to get away with it.
Note: This post has been corrected (it had indicated that the DOJ filing in this case was the only time that DOJ had come in against voting rights plaintiffs in a Supreme Court case—it happened before, including in Brnovich).
“How Right-Wing Influencers Are Shaping the Guard Fight in Portland”
In the fight over deploying National Guard troops to Portland, Ore., Democratic leaders in the city and state have pleaded with President Trump and the courts to trust law enforcement records, both local and federal, that describe the demonstrations as small and comparatively calm.
But in the bifurcated media world of 2025, one side’s comparative calm is the other’s “hellscape” — as the White House described Portland on Wednesday — and the narrative that the Trump administration has wanted has been supplied by a coterie of right-wing influencers elevated by Mr. Trump himself.
On Thursday, the repercussions of those dueling versions of reality became clear as judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit questioned a district court’s finding that the protests in Portland were likely too minor to justify the National Guard deployment. The appeals court judges instead cited federal reports of demonstrators spitting on federal officers and shining flashlights in their eyes, behavior that has been captured, amplified and sometimes even prompted by pro-Trump personalities eager to counter local police.
“The Portland Police Chief did an interview today attacking independent journalists for exposing the violent terrorists that he allows to run the city,” Benny Johnson, a popular pro-Trump podcaster, wrote Tuesday on social media after accompanying Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, in Oregon. “He’s humiliated and knows Portland is under siege.”
To some extent, the right’s assertions of chaos in Oregon have been self-fulfilling. The administration’s close ties to a small but well-followed group of influencers and conspiracy theorists has amplified their voices, and they in turn have encouraged administration efforts to crack down on demonstrators. The portrayals of a city on fire have angered protesters.
And sometimes, left-wing activists have risen to the bait, leading to scuffles and injuries conservative streamers then promote on the internet. One right-wing commentator, Katie Daviscourt, said she received a black eye when a demonstrator hit her with a flag pole.
“Certainly over the last 10 days, the energy level has gone up, the amount of conflicting points of view have increased greatly,” Chief Bob Day of the Portland Police Bureau said at a news media briefing Tuesday. “And this has created an environment that’s equally, if not more, challenging for us.”
Pro-Trump provocateurs have gotten more open about their efforts as the stakes in the battle over how to police protests grow. Ms. Noem has threatened to quadruple the number of federal law enforcement agents in Portland if she is not satisfied with the city’s crowd-control efforts. Troops from the Oregon and California National Guards are awaiting deployment. Another group of guardsmen from Texas could be summoned at the president’s request….
“Amid ongoing investigation into found ballots, Sec. Bellows underscores Maine election security”
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows is confident law enforcement will ultimately uncover why 250 official ballots were allegedly delivered to a Newburgh home in an Amazon package. She also said the incident underscored that Maine’s processes work and that the state’s elections are safe and secure.
“Even if the most enterprising criminal were able to fabricate Maine ballots or Maine absentee ballot envelopes or if that chain of custody were broken, our elections would remain free, safe and secure because of the checks and balances in absentee voting itself,” Bellows said at a news conference at the State House Monday afternoon.
Monday also marked the first day of in-person absentee voting throughout the state for the November election.
In order to vote absentee, lawfully registered Maine voters must specifically request a ballot, Bellows explained. Those requests are tracked in the central voter registration system. Additionally, the Secretary of State’s office uploads public files in the lead up to the election that list absentee ballot requests.
Bellows outlined the various steps in Maine’s absentee voting process including how the ballots are returned in secure envelopes to clerks throughout the state. With that process in place, Bellows underscored her faith in the safety of Maine elections.
At the same time, her office continues to work with law enforcement to investigate the Newburgh incident. In response to several questions from the press, Bellows repeatedly said she couldn’t provide specific details because the investigation is ongoing.
“Those checks and balances in our production and distribution of ballots have been in place for a long time,” Bellows said. “Clearly, there was an interruption in the process this time so we will certainly do an after-action to evaluate how we can safeguard against any bad actor who seeks to interrupt that chain of custody.”
Despite sharing that the town of Ellsworth reported that it was missing 250 ballots the same day that the conservative news website the Maine Wire reported a Newburgh woman discovered official Maine ballots inside an Amazon shipment, Bellows said Monday that the towns of Ellsworth and Newburgh have all the ballots they need. The woman who reportedly found the ballots has not spoken with other news outlets. …