“Democrats Fume Over a Data Disaster Averted: ‘This Can’t Happen Again'”

March 1, 2025, 5:13 amcampaignsRick Hasen

NYT: Problems with a huge database of voter information that effectively functions as the central nervous system of the Democratic Party grew so worrisome last summer that top Democrats staged an extraordinary intervention to keep it running through the… Continue reading

“Musk and Republican Lawmakers Pressure Judges with Impeachment Threats”

March 1, 2025, 4:22 amauthoritarian threats in USRick Hasen

NYT: Congressional Republicans, egged on by Elon Musk and other top allies of President Trump, are escalating calls to remove federal judges who stand in the way of administration efforts to overhaul the government. The outcry is threatening yet another… Continue reading

“Catalysts of Insurrection: How White Racial Antipathy Influenced Beliefs of Voter Fraud and Support for the January 6th Insurrection”

March 1, 2025, 4:19 amfraudulent fraud squadRick Hasen

Tye Rush, Chelsea Jones, Michael Herndon, and Matt Barreto have written this article for the Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics. Here is the abstract: On January 6, 2021, the belief that voter fraud was to blame for Trump’s 2020… Continue reading

“Democratic National Committee Files Lawsuit Against Trump; The party claims President Trump’s executive order aimed at independent agencies will gut the Federal Election Commission.”

March 1, 2025, 4:16 amfederal election commissionRick Hasen

NYT: The Democratic Party sued President Trump on Friday, contending that his assertion of control over independent executive-branch agencies, which include the bipartisan Federal Election Commission, violated federal election law. The lawsuit, which was jointly filed by the three… Continue reading

Wisconsin: “Bice: Was it sexist for Brad Schimel to say liberal justices, all women, were ‘driven by their emotions’?”

March 1, 2025, 4:13 amjudicial electionsRick Hasen

Dan Bice in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Let’s stipulate at the outset that conservative Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel never mentioned the gender of the four justices who control the Supreme Court. Let’s also agree that this is what Schimel said on Nov.… Continue reading

“The SAVE Act Would Force Many Rural Americans To Drive Hours To Register To Vote”

February 28, 2025, 9:03 amUncategorizedRick Hasen

CAP: Soon, the U.S. House of Representatives will vote on the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act—legislation that would require Americans to provide documentary proof of citizenship, in person, when they register to vote and every time that… Continue reading

“How Elon Musk Executed His Takeover of the Federal Bureaucracy”

February 28, 2025, 7:29 amchicaneryRick Hasen

NYT: On the last Friday of September 2023, Elon Musk dropped in about an hour late to a dinner party at the Silicon Valley mansion of the technology investor Chamath Palihapitiya. Mr. Musk’s visit was meant to be discreet.… Continue reading

“The case of the missing $3M: Eric Adams’ campaign finance woes grow”

February 27, 2025, 9:04 pmcampaign finance, chicaneryRick Hasen

Politico:A mysterious $3 million sitting in Mayor Eric Adams’ reelection account is the latest irregularity giving campaign finance officials cause to deny him crucial public matching funds. The Campaign Finance Board broadened the criteria it used to deny Adams… Continue reading

How German Elections Are Financed

February 27, 2025, 7:21 amUncategorizedRichard Pildes

I’m often asked, including by students, about how elections in other major democracies are financed. Since Germany just had elections, there was some explanation of this issue in the press. A good summary can be found in this article;… Continue reading

“As Facebook Abandons Fact-Checking, It’s Also Offering Bonuses for Viral Content”

February 27, 2025, 7:05 amcheap speechRick Hasen

ProPublica: Hours after Donald Trump was sworn in as president, users spread a false claim on Facebook that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was paying a bounty for reports of undocumented people. “BREAKING — ICE is allegedly offering $750 per illegal… Continue reading

“White House Correspondents’ Association cedes control of pool reports to Trump administration”

February 27, 2025, 7:00 amauthoritarian threats in USRick Hasen

Politico: Reversing decades of precedent, the White House Correspondents’ Association announced Wednesday that it would no longer coordinate shared coverage of President Donald Trump in an escalating dispute over press access to official events. The association, which represents more than… Continue reading

“How Wisconsin’s inconsistent voting instructions raise the risk of disenfranchisement”

February 27, 2025, 6:48 amabsentee ballots, election administrationRick Hasen

Votebeat: Whether a voter can accurately cast a ballot can come down to some very technical issues, and for that reason, we at Votebeat are used to going down some really narrow — but important — rabbit holes. For example,… Continue reading

“Kansas Senate Republicans take up plan to rewrite constitution to elect Supreme Court justices”

February 27, 2025, 6:43 amjudicial electionsRick Hasen

Kansas Reflector: Senate Republicans are pursuing a ballot question to make the Kansas Supreme Court an elected office, dismantling a decades-old merit-based nomination system for justices that voters put in place after a notorious scandal. The move is largely a… Continue reading

Political Parties—A Fresh Look

February 27, 2025, 6:42 ampolitical parties, third partiesTabatha Abu El-Haj

We have a political party that was elected in part because Americans are concerned about the price of groceries. Now that they hold three branches of government, their primary budget goal is to maintain and extend tax breaks that overwhelmingly… Continue reading

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The law of politics and the politics of law