“A still-unresolved North Carolina court election is back before judges next week”

judicial elections, recounts

AP:

A panel from North Carolina’s intermediate-level appeals court will hear arguments next week about a still-unsettled November election for a seat on the state’s Supreme Court.

The March 21 hearing by three judges on the Court of Appeals was announced Friday, the same day the court rejected a request by incumbent Supreme Court Associate Justice Allison Riggs to have the entire Court of Appeals consider the matter now instead.

After recounts and election protests, the registered Democrat Riggs leads Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin by 734 votes out of more than 5.5 million ballots cast in their race for an eight-year term on the highest court in the ninth-largest state.

While The Associated Press declared over 4,400 winners in the 2024 general election, the North Carolina Supreme Court election is the only race nationally that is still undecided.

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“Trump calls his opponents ‘scum’ and lawbreakers in bellicose speech at Justice Department”

authoritarian threats in US, Department of Justice

Politico:

President Donald Trump on Friday walked into the Department of Justice and labeled his courtroom opponents “scum,” judges “corrupt” and the prosecutors who investigated him “deranged.”

With the DOJ logo directly behind him, Trump called his political opponents lawbreakers and said others should be sent to prison.

“These are people that are bad people, really bad people,” the president said in a rambling speech, during a section when he was condemning both the people who directed the withdrawal from Afghanistan and those he falsely accused of rigging the 2020 election. “The people who did this to us should go to jail.”

In remarks that were by turns dark, exultant and pugnacious, Trump vowed to remake the Justice Department and retaliate against his enemies.

It was, even by Trump’s standards, a stunning show of disregard for decades of tradition observed by his predecessors, who worried about politicizing or appearing to exert too much control over the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency. Trump, instead, called himself the “chief law enforcement officer in our country” and accused the DOJ’s prior leadership of doing “everything within their power to prevent” him from becoming the president.

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Mar 21 Event from Issue One on CISA and Protecting Federal Elections

election administration

This looks important:

Following unprecedented levels of foreign interference operations during the 2016 presidential election, members of Congress and President Trump’s first administration recognized the urgent need to bolster election security. That collective effort resulted in the Department of Homeland Security designating election systems as critical infrastructure, and President Trump signing into law and establishing the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

Today, and despite a history of broad bipartisan support since its inception, CISA has been dramatically downsized by the new Trump administration and funding for key cybersecurity initiatives, including the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC) and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), has been halted. This dismantling of CISA leaves our elections vulnerable and impairs a critical partnership between the federal government and state and local election officials that keeps our elections secure and safe.

Join us on Friday, March 21 at 1 pm ET for an important discussion about the role that CISA plays in identifying and mitigating cyber threats and enhancing election security. “Safeguarding Democracy: CISA’s Role in Protecting Elections,” will feature Kim Wyman, former Washington Secretary of State and CISA Senior Election Security Advisor, in conversation with current election officials Rob Rock, Rhode Island Deputy Secretary of State, Wesley Wilcox, Supervisor of Elections in Marion County, Florida, and Julie Wise, Director of Elections in King County, Washington.

The event is presented by Issue One and Issue One’s Faces of Democracy initiative.

Register for the event.

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“Under G.O.P., Congress Cedes Power to Trump, Eroding Its Influence”

authoritarian threats in US, legislation and legislatures

NYT:

The Republican-led Congress isn’t just watching the Trump administration gobble up its constitutional powers. It is enthusiastically turning them over to the White House.

G.O.P. lawmakers are doing so this week by embracing a stopgap spending bill that gives the administration wide discretion over how federal dollars are distributed, in effect handing off the legislative branch’s spending authority to President Trump. But that is just one example of how Congress, under unified Republican control, is proactively relinquishing some of its fundamental and critical authority on oversight, economic issues and more.

As they cleared the way for passing the spending measure on Tuesday, House Republicans leaders also quietly surrendered their chamber’s ability to undo Mr. Trump’s tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China in an effort to shield their members from having to take a politically tough vote. That switched off the only legislative recourse that Congress has to challenge the tariffs that are all but certain to have a major impact on their constituents.

Republicans have also stood by, many of them cheering, as the administration has upended federal departments and programs funded by Congress and fired thousands of workers with no notice to or consultation with the lawmakers charged with overseeing federal agencies. So far, no congressional committee has held an oversight hearing to scrutinize the moves or demand answers that would typically be expected when an administration undertakes such major changes….

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