“Trump’s Blueprint for Bending the Media Has Nixon Written All Over It”

Jim Rutenberg for the NYT:

Mr. Trump and his aides have called reporters for major news outlets liars; falsely accused them of accepting government payoffs for favorable treatment of Democrats (a misrepresentation of agency spending on news subscriptions); and made a show of reducing their prominence in the White House and Pentagon briefing rooms while giving more space to friendlies from newer, right-wing alternatives.

Mr. Trump has coupled those largely symbolic and by now familiar moves with an attempt to use the levers of government against traditional journalists that goes well beyond his first-term attacks.

He and people close to him have threatened to use the Federal Communications Commission to punish the broadcast news networks, to defund PBS and even to prosecute journalists for their coverage of the investigations and criminal cases against Mr. Trump and his supporters.

“We have not experienced this kind of raw, blatant use of government power for ideological purposes since Nixon,” said Andrew Schwartzman, a longtime public interest lawyer specializing in media regulations.

“In many ways,” he said, “the threat is greater,” coming with a harder edge against a weaker press corps.

Mr. Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has told reporters that “the White House believes strongly in the First Amendment.” But, in her very first briefing, she had warned, “We know for a fact that there have been lies that have been pushed by many legacy media outlets in this country about this president, about his family, and we will not accept that.”

Much of the early action has emanated from the F.C.C., which is an independent agency with a bipartisan board whose chair is selected by the president. Mr. Trump named a longtime Republican commissioner, Brendan Carr, to the post in November, calling him a “warrior for free speech.”

Already raising Nixon-style threats to tie television-station license renewals to government determinations about content — which the agency has some leeway to do under regulations that still require licensed broadcasters to serve the “public interest” — Mr. Carr has revived previously dismissed complaints against the three traditional broadcast networks, and opened an investigation into PBS and NPR.

An inquiry into CBS played out in public in recent days when the network cooperated with the F.C.C.’s request for information relating to the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview last fall with Vice President Kamala Harris. Mr. Trump had accused the network, in his own multibillion-dollar lawsuit, of deceptively altering the interview to boost Ms. Harris’s presidential campaign, which CBS denies.

Mr. Carr has said the outcome of the inquiry could factor in his agency’s review of a pending merger between CBS’s parent company, Paramount, and Skydance, creating a division between him and Democrats on the commission…..

“It is a little bit dispiriting and worrying to see the press respond in this way to this president at this particular moment,” said Jameel Jaffer, the executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. The settlements, though not great in number, raise questions about whether the traditional press will have the wherewithal to “stand up to power,” he said….

See also Trump’s New Line of Attack Against the Media Gains Momentum

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Eric Holder: “The Courts Must Stop This Judge From Stealing an Election”

Eric Holder NYT oped:

But there is no suggestion that any of these 60,000-plus voters acted improperly, deliberately cast illegal ballots or failed to produce required identification when voting. And when the State Board of Elections reviewed his claim, it concluded, in a meticulous written decision, that Judge Griffin’s allegations lacked substance. The issue that is now before the courts is whether a court can simply cast aside tens of thousands of appropriately cast ballots after an election is over. This shouldn’t be a question: The United States Constitution and other federal laws protect against such ballots from being retroactively discarded.

Ordinarily, a request like this one would be a nonstarter. That a sitting judge filed this lawsuit in the first place is, frankly, disturbing. As an officer of the court who has sworn an oath, Judge Griffin has an obligation to protect the electoral process, not undermine it with a shameless attempt to disenfranchise voters. What’s even more distressing, though, is that the North Carolina Supreme Court’s Republican majority has allowed such a lawsuit to proceed and, in doing so, has stopped the certification of the election results.

This action is a departure from the way courts on the whole acted in 2020. That year, federal and state judges across the country — including those affiliated with the Republican Party, all the way up to the conservative-dominated U.S. Supreme Court — refused Mr. Trump’s demands to throw out legal ballots. They refuted baseless claims that the presidential race was stolen. None of the courts ultimately stopped any states from certifying election results by their required deadlines — not one.

What’s happening in North Carolina, by contrast, should concern all Americans. Any judge operating in an independent and fair manner would maximize the chance that all of North Carolinians’ ballots are counted and ensure that the electoral result reflects the decision of the state’s citizens. But so far, the North Carolina Supreme Court has done the opposite, opening the door to mass disqualifications of legitimate voters — after the fact — to try to install a losing candidate from the court majority’s political party.

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“Broken elevators threaten St. Louis primary as election equipment trapped on 3rd floor”

KSDK:

A brewing crisis at a downtown St. Louis building has placed millions of dollars of voting equipment in limbo and raised serious questions about elevator maintenance oversight, just days before the March primary election begins.

Approximately 80 steel cages containing critical voting machines and heavy election equipment are stranded on the third floor of 300 N. Tucker Boulevard, where both elevators are now inoperable. While officials race to devise a solution before early voting begins in 12 days, records indicate potential lapses in required safety inspections….

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“U.S. intelligence, law enforcement candidates face Trump loyalty test”

WaPo:

Candidates for top national security positions in the Trump administration have faced questions that appear designed to determine whether they have embraced the president’s false claims about the outcome of the 2020 election and its aftermath, according to people familiar with cases of such screening.

The questions asked of several current and former officials up for top intelligence agency and law enforcement posts revolved around two events that have become President Donald Trump’s litmus test to distinguish friend from foe: the result of the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, according to the people, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

These people said that two individuals, both former officials who were being considered for positions within the intelligence community, were asked to give “yes” or “no” responses to the questions: Was Jan. 6 “an inside job?” And was the 2020 presidential election “stolen?”

These individuals, who did not give the desired straight “yes” answers, were not selected. It is not clear whether other factors contributed to the decision.

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“Why Federal Courts May Be the Last Bulwark Against Trump”

NYT:

More than 40 lawsuits filed in recent days by state attorneys general, unions and nonprofits seek to erect a bulwark in the federal courts against President Trump’s blitzkrieg of executive actions that have upended much of the federal government and challenged the Constitution’s system of checks and balances.

Unlike the opening of Mr. Trump’s first term in 2017, little significant resistance to his second term has arisen in the streets, the halls of Congress or within his own Republican Party. For now at least, lawyers say, the judicial branch may be it.

“The courts really are the front line,” said Skye Perryman, the chief executive of Democracy Forward, which has filed nine lawsuits and won four court orders against the Trump administration.

The multipronged legal pushback has already yielded quick — if potentially fleeting — results. Judicial orders in nine federal court cases will, for a time, partially bind the administration’s hands on its goals. Those include ending automatic citizenship for babies born to undocumented immigrants on U.S. soil; transferring transgender female inmates to male-only prisons; potentially exposing the identities of F.B.I. personnel who investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol; coaxing federal workers to accept “deferred resignation” under a tight deadline; and freezing as much as $3 trillion in domestic spending.

The judiciary’s response to the legal challenges is continuing through the weekend. On Friday afternoon, Judge Carl Nichols, a district judge nominated by Mr. Trump. said he would issue a temporary restraining order halting the administrative leave of 2,200 employees at the U.S. Agency for International Development and the looming withdrawal of nearly all of the agency’s workers from overseas.

Also, late on Friday night, Judge John D. Bates, a nominee of President George W. Bush, rejected a request by a coalition of unions for an emergency order blocking Elon Musk’s team from accessing Labor Department data. While that case is ongoing, Judge Bates’s ruling was the first victory for Mr. Trump’s new administration in federal court. In the early hours of Saturday, U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer, one of President Obama’s nominees, restricted access by Mr. Musk’s government efficiency program to the Treasury Department’s payment and data systems, saying access would risk “irreparable harm.”….

But while the executive branch is entrusted with the capacity for swift, decisive action, the judiciary is slow by design, and the legal opposition to Mr. Trump’s opening moves may struggle to keep up with his fire hose of disruption….

Some legal experts see the executive branch’s deliberate effort to push the boundaries of legality as a bare-knuckle strategy to overwhelm the president’s opposition and eventually win at least some precedent-shattering decisions from the conservative Supreme Court.

“The administration seems to have wanted challenges that consume a ton of resources — of opponents, courts and public attention — even as members of the administration know the provisions do not square with the law that exists,” said Judith Resnik, a professor at Yale Law School.

To Mr. Trump’s backers, the president’s orders are well within the powers outlined in the Constitution’s second section on the executive branch. It is the judicial pushback, they say, that is overstepping the constitutional boundaries laid out in the third section on the judiciary.

“President Trump is not stealing other branches’ powers,” said Mike Davis, who heads the Article III Project, a conservative advocacy group. “He is exercising his Article II powers under the Constitution. And judges who say he can’t? They’re legally wrong. The Supreme Court is going to side with Trump.”…

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“Trump’s defamation and media litigation spikes”

Axios:

Since President Trump began his political career in 2015, the number of media and defamation lawsuits involving him or his businesses as either the plaintiff or defendant quadrupled compared to the prior three decades, according to an Axios analysis of public databases.

Why it matters: The growing volume shows how, since turning into a political figure, Trump has become bolder about using the courts in media and free speech cases.

How it works: One observer notes a theme in Trump’s increasing legal attacks.

  • Each case is unique yet connected, Kevin Goldberg, vice president at Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan nonprofit fostering First Amendment freedoms, tells Axios.
  • “The consistent theme is his willingness to use the court system, even as a public figure and a public official, to silence people, to force them to correct statements, to just generally make them uncomfortable,” Goldberg says.

By the numbers: Ahead of the 2016 election, USA Today reported that Trump and his businesses had been involved in more than 4,000 legal actions since 1976. Media and defamation cases accounted for a small percentage.

  • According to Axios’ analysis, Trump was involved in seven lawsuits related to media or defamation in the three decades prior to announcing his presidential bid on June 16, 2015. Since that date, that count jumped to 29.
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