“Justice Department Orders a Halt to Civil Rights Work”

Department of Justice

NY Times:

The Justice Department has ordered an immediate halt to all new civil rights cases or investigations — and signaled that it might back out of Biden-era agreements with police departments that engaged in discrimination or violence, according to two internal memos sent to staff on Wednesday.

The actions, while expected, represent an abrupt about-face for a department that had for the past four years aggressively investigated high-profile instances of violence and systemic discrimination in local law enforcement and government agencies.

The first of two short memos sent by Chad Mizelle, the chief of staff at the department, ordered a “litigation freeze” at the department’s Civil Rights Division to decide whether Trump appointees want “to initiate any new cases,” according to a screenshot of the document viewed by The New York Times.

Mr. Mizelle also barred lawyers working for the division from filing “motions to intervene, agreed-upon remands, amicus briefs or statements of interest,” unless they receive the approval of senior Trump appointees. It is the clearest sign yet that the hard-line conservatives taking over the department intend to swiftly sweep away the previous administration’s liberal agenda….

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“‘The gloves are off’: Trump appears poised to cash in from his presidency in new ways”

conflict of interest laws

Fredreka Schouten for CNN:

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump released meme coins just days before he took the oath of office. A splashy pre-inaugural party was held at a property his company owns. And a Saudi-backed golf tournament is headed to a Trump club this spring.

Trump’s latest money-making moves are raising alarms among ethics watchdogs who say that, just days into his presidency, the Republican appears poised to benefit financially from his final term in office in new and lucrative ways.

During his first four years in office, Trump’s team paid “lip service” to ethics guardrails, said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the liberal group Public Citizen, which this week sued the Trump administration over a separate issue – claiming that Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency is operating in violation of a federal transparency law that governs advisory panels….

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“In blow to GOP, NC Supreme Court won’t fast-track lawsuit seeking to throw out 60,000 ballots” (Divided opinions suggest an ultimate possible 3-3 tie in this case)

judicial elections

Will Doran of WRAL:

North Carolina’s Republican-majority state Supreme Court ruled partially against the Republican candidate seeking to join its ranks, rejecting his effort to fast-track a lawsuit seeking to throw out more than 60,000 people’s 2024 ballots.

The case — which could decide a razor-thin, undecided race for a seat on the high court — must go to trial first, the justices ruled ruled Wednesday, shooting down what it called an “extraordinary” effort to skip a trial, bypass the state Court of Appeals, and have the issue decided quickly and directly by the state’s highest court.

Wednesday’s decision was essentially unanimous. However, in an indication that the justices are aware of the close attention on the case, every member of the court wrote a separate opinion explaining his or her decision — except for Riggs due to her recusal.

The majority opinion sending the case back to trial was written by Republican Justice Trey Allen. The court’s other Republican justices — Chief Justice Paul Newby and justices Phil Berger Jr., Tamara Barringer and Richard Dietz — each wrote concurring opinions. The court’s other Democratic justice, Anita Earls, wrote an opinion that concurred in part and dissented in part.

Earls said she would have gone a step further and fully denied Griffin, allowing Riggs to be officially declared the winner. Allowing the election to remain in limbo while this goes back to trial, she said, sets a troubling precedent for future elections. “It sets up courts to be the arbiters of election outcomes instead of voters, and weakens faith in the democratic processes of this state,” she wrote.

You can find the set of opinions at this link. It is possible the Court will ultimately divide 3-3 over what to do, which could leave the lower court opinion in place unless NC has a different way of dealing with tie votes on courts than the normal procedure.

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“O.C. Registrar of Voters debunks viral election fraud claim”

election administration, fraudulent fraud squad

LA Times:

A recent Orange County Grand Jury report that found no evidence of voter fraud did little to dissuade a false claim of election tampering from exploding on social media soon after.

On Jan. 16, Joe Hoff, a far-right television and radio host, posted a video clip on his website of an Orange County Registrar of Voters worker scanning a batch of ballots three times after the November 2024 elections.

“We don’t know if there is a legitimate reason for the worker’s actions,” Hoff wrote.

Building on suspicion, the video was reposted by “End Wokeness,” an X account that commented Democrats “outperformed” on the ballot in O.C., as a poll worker was “caught” triple-scanning ballots.

The post has since amassed more than 2 million views.

In response, the Orange County Registrar of Voters issued a statement the following day and contended that the security camera footage only shows the worker properly doing her job.

“The employee scanned the batch of ballots twice and then cleaned the scanner before scanning the batch of ballots a third time because during the first two scans some of the ballots were rejected by the scanner,” the statement read. “Given the large number of vote-by-mail ballots we scan during an election, Registrar of Voters employees must regularly clean the scanners.”…

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Elon Musk Gaining Unprecedented Access to Government Information Via DOGE

Plutocrats United

Inside this WaPo story on the Musk/Ramaswamy divergence over DOGE’s goals, and Musk pushing his partner out, is this key information:

In his new role, Musk appears to have vast access to the inner workings of government that far exceeds the plan as initially conceived. The DOGE leader, also the chief executive of one company that has won billions of dollars in federal contracts and others that have faced significant federal scrutiny, will be able to deploy a team of handpicked software engineers to every government agency, where under Trump’s executive order they will be granted “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.” (Musk already has a White House email address, according to Bloomberg News.) Armed with sensitive data, Musk could draw on expertise gathered from his business empire — including deploying artificial intelligence — to achieve his aims, people familiar with the matter said….

Musk became increasingly convinced that DOGE should operate as a small team within the government, where it could get access to highly sensitive information and avoid lawsuits attempting to force disclosure of its meetings and minutes — several of which were, indeed, filed immediately after Trump was sworn in Monday.

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