“Former Trump Staff Members Liken His Actions to Those of ‘Royal Despot;’ In an open letter, prominent Republicans criticized President Trump for using his power to punish two former administration officials who criticized him.”

authoritarian threats in US

NYT:

A number of prominent Republicans, including several former members of the first Trump administration, have signed an open letter decrying the president for using his power to punish two former administration officials who criticized him, likening his actions to those of a “royal despot.”

“For a president to personally and publicly direct the levers of the federal government against publicly named citizens for political reasons sets a new and perilous precedent in our republic,” the group wrote. “No matter one’s party or politics, every American should reject the notion that the awesome power of the presidency can be used to pursue individual vendettas.”

Earlier this month, Mr. Trump issued two executive orders revoking the security clearances of Chris Krebs, who led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency under during Mr. Trump’s first term and rebutted his claims that the 2020 election had been rigged and stolen, and Miles Taylor, who once served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Taylor anonymously wrote a New York Times opinion essay in 2018 accusing Mr. Trump of rampant “amorality” and telling of an internal government “resistance.”

Mr. Trump’s executive orders also revoked the security clearances of people and institutions affiliated with Mr. Krebs and Mr. Taylor, and called for investigations into their government tenures. The letter, signed by more than 200 people, criticized those actions as part of a “profoundly unconstitutional break” with precedent.

“Behavior of this kind is more to be expected from a royal despot than the elected leader of a constitutional republic,” the signers wrote. “This is the path of autocracy, not democracy.”

The letter’s signatories include Ty Cobb, a lawyer who led Mr. Trump’s response to a special counsel’s investigation of his ties to Russia during its early phases, and John Mitnick, who served as general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security until he was fired in 2019 after clashing with the White House….

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“Trump ally pushes DoJ unit to shift civil rights focus, new messages show”

Department of Justice

Sam Levine for The Guardian:

The justice department’s civil rights division is shifting its focus away from its longstanding work protecting the rights of marginalized groups and will instead pivot towards Donald Trump’s priorities including hunting for noncitizen voters and protecting white people from discrimination, according to new internal mission statements seen by the Guardian.

The new priorities were sent to several sections of the civil rights division this week by Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump ally who was confirmed a little more than two weeks ago to lead the division. Several of them only give glancing mention to the statutes and kinds of discrimination that have long been the focus of the division, which dates back to the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Several of the mission statements point to Trump’s executive orders as priorities for the section.

The mission statement for the voting section, for example, barely mentions the Voting Rights Act and instead says the section will focus on preventing voter fraud – which is exceedingly rare – and helping states find for noncitizens on their voter rolls (non-citizen voting is also exceedingly rare). The guidance for the Housing and Civil Enforcement section does not make a single mention of the Fair Housing Act, the landmark 1968 civil rights law that has long been a central part of the department’s work.

“It’s absolutely astonishing,” said Sasha Samberg-Champion, a former appellate lawyer in the justice department’s civil rights division. “This reflects the complete abdication of the core responsibilities of each of these sections.”

The justice department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The decision to send new mission statements to the sections is itself unusual. While the priorities of the sections often change from administration to administration, the core work often remains the same and the department’s career attorneys are expected to be apolitical. Trump has moved to end the independence of the justice department and use it as a tool to further his political goals and punish rivals.

“To me, these new mission statements signal a significant change in the priorities that each of these sections will be expected to pursue,” said Jocelyn Samuels, who led the civil rights division from 2013 to 2014. “Some of this is explicit – where, for example, the new statements specifically call out enforcement of some of the president’s executive orders as the guide for the section’s work. Some of it is a matter of omission.

“I suspect that the descriptions don’t themselves dictate what the sections will do, but they certainly manifest the expectations that leadership of the division will impose,” added Samuels, who is currently suing the Trump administration for firing her from her position on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

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“Administration’s Dubious Trustworthiness Permeates Hearing On Trump Election Order”

election administration, Election Assistance Commission, election subversion risk

TPM:

A cagey Trump administration arrived at court Thursday, where a judge presided over the early stages of a lawsuit stemming from a March executive order mandating that proof of citizenship be added to federal voting forms. 

As soon as the hearing began, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly began grilling the Justice Department’s Michael Gates. The administration said, in court documents, that it hadn’t even begun implementing the executive order. So why, she asked, do the Democratic groups challenging the order have a letter from the director of the Election Assistance Commission — dated days after the administration made that claim to the court — seeking a consultation with state election officials about how to implement it?

“Your briefs and her declaration don’t mention the letter at all,” Kollar-Kotelly said, referring to the EAC director. “Were you or any defense counsel aware of the letter at the time you filed your opposition briefs on April 14th?” 

“Your honor, we’re probably both under the same understanding that the letter is dated three days after we submitted our opposition —”  

“No,” interrupted Kollar-Kotelly. “The letter was dated April 11 and you submitted it after. So your brief came after, which is why I’m raising the question.” 

Gates quickly changed tacks. 

“Fair enough,” he responded. “On the one hand, we didn’t know about the letter — but on the other, I now have an explanation in the context of the rulemaking process under the [Administrative Procedure Act].” 

He’d go on to argue that the EAC director was taking a preliminary step and not starting the process in earnest. In a prolonged, frustrated back-and-forth, which came to characterize much of the hearing, the increasingly incredulous judge asked whether Gates truly believed that gathering the input of the states and describing the executive order as an “instruction” was not starting the process of implementation. 

Gates was similarly squishy throughout, declining to say, at one point, under which law Attorney General Pam Bondi would enforce the executive order, offering that he and the judge could gaze into their “crystal balls” to know what form future legal action would take.

In another exchange, Kollar-Kotelly tried to determine whether the executive order would allow states to decide against adding a proof of citizenship question, or if it was a mandate. The Democratic groups and voter leagues challenging the order took Gates’ evasiveness as proof that adding the question would be mandatory, and state input merely decorative.

Calling Gates’ performance “helpful,” the voting groups’ Sophia Lin Lakin said: “It is not speculative whether or not a documentary proof of citizenship requirement will be added to the federal form as defendants’ briefing suggested — but Mr. Gates says while the exact language on the form might change depending on notice or comment, the outcome is predetermined; it is a requirement of the executive order.”….

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Pa: “Two Millbourne council members confessed to trying to steal an election. They have no plans to resign yet. “

chicanery

Philly Inquirer:

 Two weeks after two Millbourne officials pleaded guilty to federal charges in a brazen scheme to steal a 2021 mayoral election, they are still sitting on the tiny Delaware County borough’s council and are poised to vote to appoint new members to the board. 

On April 1, Md Nural Hasan, the vice president of the Millbourne Borough Council, and Md Munsur Ali, a council member, admitted to several felony election fraud charges for conspiring to register nonresidents to vote in Millbourne and cast ballots for Hasan on their behalf. 

Hasan faces separate charges in state court, and a third coconspirator, Md Rafikul Islam, also pleaded guilty earlier this month. They are scheduled to be sentenced in June and face the possibility of years in prison. 

Under state law, Ali and Hasan are ineligible to hold office as convicted felons. But the law does not mandate they immediately vacate their seats. Confronted by residents at a council meeting Tuesday night, Hasan and Ali said they did not yet plan to resign. 

The two men’s convictions coincided with the resignation of two other members of the five-person council — placing the borough on the edge of a potential crisis where the council may be reduced to a single member …

The case against Hasan, Ali and Islam laid out an “exceedingly rare” voter fraud scheme that risked swaying the results of a local election in a small town with low turnout. The men used personal identifying information, like Social Security numbers, to change addresses for registered voters in Pennsylvania’s online voter registration system. Sometimes the changes were made with the knowledge and consent of these voters; other times, that was not the case. 

After changing the addresses, they would request mail ballots on behalf of these voters and return them in the November 2021 general election with Hasan’s name written in for mayor. In total, prosecutors said, the men submitted about three dozen fraudulent ballots. Despite the effort, Hasan lost to current Mayor Mahabubul A. Tayub by about 30 votes. …

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Wisconsin Supreme Court on 4-3 Ideological Vote Upholds Governor Evers’ Crazy Rewriting of State Law to Protect School Funding for 402 Years Instead of 2 Years

legislation and legislatures

You can find the majority decision, a concurrence, and the dissent at this link. It’s not every day I side with the conservative justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, but they are surely right here. As the majority explained: “As related to this matter, the governor deleted entire words and some numbers from Sections 402, 403, 404, and 408 of Senate Bill 70. The result, published as 2023 Wisconsin Act 19, authorized a $325 per pupil revenue limit increase from 2023–2425,
extending the provision by 400 additional years.”

Here’s the key edit:

Here’s the introduction to Richard Briffault’s amicus brief in this case (authored by Rob Yablon and Bryna Godar):

Wisconsin’s partial veto power stands at a fork in the road. For decades, this Court has been the most permissive in the nation in condoning broad partial vetoes, an outlier even among states with similar constitutional text. But the Court’s most recent precedent has rejected creative partial vetoes, albeit without binding reasoning. See Bartlett v. Evers, 2020 WI 68, ¶ 4, 393 Wis. 2d 172, 945 N.W.2d 685 (per curiam). As the Court considers the future of this jurisprudence, it should maintain guidelines that phold the partial veto’s founding purpose: facilitating the democracy-promoting system of bicameralism and presentment, not subverting it.


Wisconsinites adopted the partial veto to address a defect of early twentieth century democracy: the “[v]ery definite evils” of legislative malfeasance through “log-rolling” multiple measures that “could not pass on their own merits.” State ex rel. Martin v. Zimmerman, 233 Wis. 442, 447–48, 289 N.W. 662 (1940). As this Court has correctly recognized, the partial veto is a broad gubernatorial power. State ex rel. Wis. Tel. Co. v. Henry, 218 Wis. 302, 314–15, 260 N.W. 486 (1935). By design, it is an affirmative or even “quasi legislative” power. Id. at 315. “By putting asunder what the legislature has put together,” a partial veto necessarily “results in laws that the legislature never passed.” Briffault at 1174.


But the power is not limitless. The governor may only reject “part” of an appropriations bill for the legislature’s “reconsideration”—he may not invent entirely novel provisions. Wis. Const. art. V, § 10. Neither the text nor purpose of Wisconsin’s partial veto provision establishes a loophole for the governor to act as a unilateral lawmaker. Using the veto to add unforeseen measures cannot be squared with the state constitution’s structural commitment to deliberative, accountable lawmaking. Whatever the merits of this or any individual policy dispute, such an unbounded power is corrosive to democracy in the long run. Line-drawing in partial veto cases is inherently difficult; no state court has avoided close judgment calls. Yet this Court, like every court to consider the question nationwide, has recognized a role for state courts in preventing the partial veto power’s misuse. This is an appropriate case in which to resist further expansion.

By striking individual digits and words to convert a two-year revenue limit increase to a 402-year increase, the governor here engaged in novel lawmaking that exceeds this Court’s prior approvals (at least under the Constitution’s current text). Allowing this creativity would further depart from the Constitution’s text, history, and structure and its core democratic commitments. And it would make Wisconsin even more of an outlier among states with partial vetoes.

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