The season finale of Season 6 of the ELB Podcast:
What does the Trump executive order on elections purport to do?
Why did a federal court put big parts of that executive order on hold?
Does this EO threaten the 2026 midterm elections?
On the season finale of Season 6 of the ELB Podcast, we speak with Danielle Lang of the Campaign Legal Center.
You can subscribe on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation of Andrew M. Cuomo, a front-runner in the New York City mayoral race, after Republicans accused him of lying to Congress about decisions he made during the coronavirus pandemic as governor, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The inquiry, begun about a month ago by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, comes after senior Justice Department officials in February demanded the dismissal of an indictment of the city’s current mayor, Eric Adams, on corruption charges.
That puts the Trump administration in the unusual position of having ended a criminal case against the leader of the nation’s largest city and opened one into his chief rival in the span of a few months. Mr. Adams is running for re-election as an independent, and Mr. Cuomo is leading the Democratic primary field in the polls.
The existence of the investigation is sure to fuel further criticism that President Trump and his administration are wielding the Justice Department as a cudgel to achieve political ends and punish his perceived enemies.
Mr. Trump routinely calls for criminal inquiries of political foes and people who have crossed him, often based on what legal experts say are flimsy claims of wrongdoing. His appointees at the Justice Department have increasingly signaled a willingness to use their investigative and prosecutorial powers to carry out Mr. Trump’s wishes.
The people familiar with the details of the investigation into Mr. Cuomo spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it. A spokesman for the Justice Department and a spokeswoman for the F.B.I. declined to comment, citing a general policy of not confirming or denying investigations.
Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, questioned the basis of the investigation. “We have never been informed of any such matter, so why would someone leak it now?” he said. “The answer is obvious: This is lawfare and election interference plain and simple — something President Trump and his top Department of Justice officials say they are against.”…
Senate Republicans plan to move on Wednesday to overturn California’s landmark vehicle emissions law, using a little-known federal statute that allows Congress to strike down regulations and that Democrats claim would erode the filibuster.
The fight has serious implications for both environmental policy and the institution of the Senate. Republican leaders intend to use the statute, the Congressional Review Act, to force a vote to nullify federal waivers granted in the last days of the Biden administration to allow California to phase out gas-powered vehicles by 2035 and impose other emissions reductions.
They are acting even though the Government Accountability Office and their own Senate parliamentarian determined that the Environmental Protection Agency waivers were not subject to the review law, which is meant to give the legislative branch a way of undoing federal regulations, not state ones.
“Republicans seem to be putting the wealth of the big oil industry over the health of our constituents,” Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, said on Tuesday as he and other Democrats laid out their case against the Republican effort to undo his state’s emissions requirements.
Because resolutions of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act need only a majority vote, they are some of the only legislation that can avoid a filibuster in the Senate. Democrats have accused the Republicans of “going nuclear” on the California emissions standards. In the Senate, that refers to employing a simple majority to overrule precedents on issues that otherwise require a 60-vote supermajority under the filibuster.
Republican leaders dismissed the Democratic complaints. Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, who has vowed to protect the filibuster, said the dispute was over the “novel and narrow” issue of whether an E.P.A. waiver constituted a rule — not anything central to the future of the filibuster governing legislation….
The U.S. Supreme Court this week turned away a petition by 11 Republican Michigan legislators who sought to overturn expanded voting measures enacted through statewide ballot initiatives, bringing an end to the federal case known as Lindsey v. Whitmer.
The federal case was always a longshot, experts told Votebeat when it was first brought before the Supreme Court, which hears only about 150 of the thousands of requests it gets each year.
The justices denied the lawmakers’ petition without comment.
But their attorney, conservative legal activist Erick Kaardal, told lawmakers that he’s not done trying to challenge the election measures, which include no-reason absentee voting, and straight-party voting, passed as part of 2018’s Proposal 3, as well as early voting and ballot drop boxes from Proposal 2 in 2022.
The Lindsey case was based on a controversial legal interpretation called the Independent State Legislature theory, which suggests that under the U.S. Constitution’s elections clause, only state legislatures — not governors, courts, or voters through ballot initiatives — have the authority to set election laws. …
Election Law & Voting Rights eJournal
As of: 22 Mar 2025 – 21 May 2025
| Rank | Paper | Downloads |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | The State Capacity Crisis Nicholas Bagley and David Schleicher University of Michigan Law School and Yale University – Law School Date Posted: 05 May 2025 Last Revised: 05 May 2025 | 862 |
| 2. | Faux Campaign Finance Regulation and the Pathway to American Oligarchy Richard L. Hasen UCLA School of Law – UCLA School of Law Date Posted: 25 Apr 2025 Last Revised: 08 May 2025 | 207 |
| 3. | Voter Harassment and the Limits of State and Federal Power Ellen D. Katz University of Michigan Law School Date Posted: 07 May 2025 Last Revised: 08 May 2025 | 140 |
| 4. | Voter Fraud Mistake Benjamin Plener Cover University of Idaho College of Law Date Posted: 17 Apr 2025 Last Revised: 17 Apr 2025 | 140 |
| 5. | A Reprieve for Democracy: Reading Allen v. Milligan on the Sixtieth Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act Deuel Ross NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Date Posted: 31 Mar 2025 Last Revised: 31 Mar 2025 | 120 |
| 6. | Bush v. Gore‘s Ironic Legacy Richard L. Hasen UCLA School of Law – UCLA School of Law Date Posted: 24 Mar 2025 Last Revised: 25 Mar 2025 | 116 |
| 7. | Reporting Gerrymanders Ross E. Davies George Mason University – Antonin Scalia Law School Date Posted: 06 May 2025 Last Revised: 06 May 2025 | 92 |
| 8. | Hispanic and Latino Voters’ Declining Political Cohesion: A Thorn in the Side of Thornburg v. Gingles’s Framework for Evaluating Claims Under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act Jacob Maguire Pennsylvania State University – Penn State Dickinson Law Date Posted: 06 May 2025 Last Revised: 06 May 2025 | 84 |
| 9. | State Confidence in Elections: Results, Practice, and Legislation Charles Stewart III and Joseph Loffredo Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – Department of Political Science and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – Department of Political Science Date Posted: 04 Apr 2025 Last Revised: 04 Apr 2025 | 79 |
| 10. | Analyzing the Benefits of Artificial Intelligence to Racially Inclusive Democracy Spencer Overton George Washington University – Law School Date Posted: 27 Mar 2025 Last Revised: 27 Mar 2025 | 77 |