“Trump says Missouri will revise congressional districts to favor Republicans”

redistricting

Missouri Independent:

Missouri “is IN” for redrawing the state’s congressional districts in a special legislative session, President Donald Trump proclaimed Thursday on his social media platform.

With Texas moving quickly toward a mid-decade revision of its congressional map to tilt five districts toward the Republican Party, Missouri would now be expected to follow suit to help the GOP gain one more.

Missouri has eight congressional districts, and Democrats hold two. Any proposal is likely to split the 5th District, which is mainly in Kansas City, by adding Republican voters in sufficient numbers to take it away from incumbent Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.

That would give Republicans seven of the state’s seats in the U.S. House.

For nearly a month, Trump has been pressuring Gov. Mike Kehoe and legislative leaders, with calls to at least one Republican lawmaker who expressed reluctance to go along.

“The Great State of Missouri is now IN,” Trump wrote. “I’m not surprised. It is a great State with fabulous people. I won it, all 3 times, in a landslide. We’re going to win the Midterms in Missouri again, bigger and better than ever before!”

And Kehoe, in a statement responding to Trump, inched closer to saying he intended to call a special session. At a news conference in his office Tuesday, Kehoe said no decision had been made.

“Governor Kehoe continues to have conversations with House and Senate leadership to assess options for a special session that would allow the General Assembly to provide congressional districts that best represent Missourians,” a statement sent by spokeswoman Gabby Picard read. “Governor Kehoe appreciates President Trump’s attention to this issue on behalf of Missourians.”..

Share this:

Bob Bauer Sounds the Alarm: “Donald Trump’s Plan for ‘Honest’ Mid-Term Elections”

authoritarian threats in US, election administration, election subversion risk

Bob Bauer writes, very much in line with what I wrote in the NYT yesterday:

On August 18, Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that he would sign another executive order, following one issued in March, to “help bring honesty” to elections and to the 2026 mid-term elections in particular. According to Trump, its aims are to end to mail-in voting and to replace voting machines in favor of “watermark paper” ballots. Trump claims the legal authority to do this because it is “good for the country.” The president has no such authority, but it appears that his plans may include exploiting a particular feature of the American electoral process. That process is entrusted to election officials and administrators selected through partisan processes, and Trump is evidently seeking to make Republican state and local official support for “honest elections” a litmus test of party loyalty….

Trump could certainly call on Republican-controlled state legislatures to pass bills that support in various ways this drive against mail-in voting and voting machines. But he has other ways to apply partisan pressure in achieving these goals. As the Presidential Commission on Election Administration noted in its 2014 Report: “The United States runs its elections unlike any other country in the world,” and one of [its] distinguishing features…is the choosing of election officials and administrators through a partisan process. Some are appointed and others elected, but almost all are selected on a partisan basis.” It is complex, decentralized system run by local officials in more than 8,000 individual jurisdictions. In the last years since the “stop the steal movement” gelled, the vast majority of these officials across the country and the political divide have held firm against pressures to follow the president in his claims about “rigged” elections.

There have been a small but notable number of exceptions. Officials declined to certify lawful vote tallies until courts intervened or sought a change in the rules to give them broad discretion to do so. In one case in Colorado, Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters arranged to give unlawful access to county voting equipment to conspiracy theorists seeking to support Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election. She was prosecuted on state law charges, convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison.

These are only a few examples of how the American system of elections is vulnerable to partisan political pressure directed by a zealously committed president. The way it can all go from here under intensifying pressure from Trump can be seen in the ongoing tale of the Colorado prosecution. Trump has denounced the prosecution of Peters as a “Communist prosecution by the Radical Left Democrats to cover up their Election crimes and misdeeds in 2020.” At Trump’s direction, the Department of Justice sought to have a state court release Peters. An administration working with its party to undermine confidence in the integrity of the mid-terms can both demand Republican official support and offer protection in return. While a president cannot issue pardons for state crimes, he can ensure that the Department of Justice takes other action to aid in applying pressure to election officials. DOJ has reportedly started going down that path, exploring the options for criminally prosecuting election officials for not meeting the administration’s expectations for computer security protocols.

In broadcasting his conclusion that “VOTING MACHINES… ARE A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISASTER” and that mail-in voting is a “SCAM,” the president is leaving no doubt that Republican election officials should share his view as members of the “Republican party” partnering with him in what he terms a “movement.” The President tried in his challenge to the 2020 election to have the department seize voting machinery to support his allegations of fraud, but while such an order was prepared, senior DOJ officials at the time successfully resisted. Those officials are now gone and those taking their places are far less likely to put up a fight in the Oval Office when the time comes. State and local election officials will likely now also face pressure to support in 2026 actions like the seizure of voting machines he could not achieve 6 years ago. The attacks on the 2020 election have already resulted in an extraordinary turnover of election officials who had enough of the “challenges, burnout, threats and harassment that [they have been] facing.”

It is impossible to identify every possible challenge to the process we may see in the months ahead. Federal and state courts will be called upon to respond as defenses are mounted under federal and state constitutional and statutory law. The success of any such legal defense will depend on the particular case and the forum in which it is presented. It is more certain that a well-coordinated attack would enable the president to seize at least the initial advantage, leaving the courts to catch up with severely destabilizing moves the administration may take, such as machine or ballot seizures and threats or actions to prosecute election officials who won’t get on the program.

Over the years, as well as at the present time, I have met and worked on a nonpartisan basis with election officials around the country, both Democrats and Republicans, who have been elected or appointed to discharge these responsibilities. I have never failed to be impressed with their professionalism. The vast majority from both parties—in red, blue, and purple states—do their jobs exceptionally well and without regard to partisan pressures. But it does appear that Donald Trump is preparing to subject them, and through them the system with its built-in partisan features, to severe pressure, and he will have federal law enforcement at his command for this purpose. The electoral process will be tested in unprecedented ways….

Share this:

“Musk must face lawsuit brought by voters he convinced to sign petition in $1 million-a-day election giveaway, judge says”

Uncategorized

The Independent:

A judge in Texas denied, on Wednesday, Elon Musk’s request to dismiss a class action lawsuit against him and his political action committee brought by a group of voters who participated in his $1-million-a-day “giveaway” leading up to the 2024 election.

Over the last few months, lawyers for Musk and America PAC have sought to get rid of the lawsuit brought by voters in battleground states who claim they were defrauded when the tech mogul and his PAC misled them to believe that if they signed a petition and gave away personal information, they could “randomly” win $1 million.

In reality, Musk and his PAC had pre-selected people to win the $1 million in exchange for a spokesperson contract – meaning those who signed the petition had no chance of winning.While lawyers for Musk and the PAC argued that there were “red flags” in their petition announcement that should have tipped people off that they were unlikely to win $1 million, the Texas judge disagreed.

“The Court finds it is plausible that [the plaintiff] would rely on Musk’s assertion that $1 million would be given out randomly notwithstanding his or America PAC’s later statements,” Judge Robert Pitman, appointed by former president Barack Obama, said in his order.

Share this:

“Appeals court throws out massive civil fraud penalty against President Donald Trump”

chicanery

AP:

An appeals court has thrown out the massive civil fraud penalty against President Donald Trump, ruling Thursday in New York state’s lawsuit accusing him of exaggerating his wealth.

The decision came seven months after the Republican returned to the White House. A panel of five judges in New York’s mid-level Appellate Division said the verdict, which stood to cost Trump more than $515 million and rock his real estate empire, was “excessive.”

After finding that Trump engaged in fraud by flagrantly padding financial statements that went to lenders and insurers, Judge Arthur Engoron ordered him last year to pay $355 million in penalties. With interest, the sum has topped $515 million.

The total — combined with penalties levied on some other Trump Organization executives, including Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr. — now exceeds $527 million, with interest.

“While the injunctive relief ordered by the court is well crafted to curb defendants’ business culture, the court’s disgorgement order, which directs that defendants pay nearly half a billion dollars to the State of New York, is an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution,” Judges Dianne T. Renwick and Peter H. Moulton wrote in one of several opinions shaping the appeals court’s ruling.

UPDATE: The 323 pages of multiple opinions are here. You can get a sense of the mess from the beginning of Justice Moulton’s opinion for himself and one other justice:

Defendants appeal from two decisions (and the resulting judgment) holding that defendants violated Executive Law § 63(12) by repeatedly submitting deceptive business records to banks, insurance companies, and the New York City Parks Department. Presiding Justice Renwick and I find that Supreme Court correctly found defendants liable. We agree with Supreme Court that the Attorney General acted well within her lawful power in bringing this action, and that she vindicated a public interest in doing so. We also find that Supreme Court properly ruled only on claims that are timely under the applicable statute of limitations. However, we would modify the remedy ordered by Supreme Court. While the injunctive relief ordered by the court is well crafted to curb defendants’ business culture, the court’s disgorgement order, which directs that defendants pay nearly half a billion dollars to the State of New York, is an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution.


This decision is one of three issued by this Court today. Presiding Justice Renwick and I agree with our colleagues on certain points. Most importantly, we agree with Justice Higgitt, who is joined by Justice Rosado, that the Attorney General is empowered by Executive Law § 63(12) to bring this action. However, our remaining disagreements with our colleagues’ decisions are profound. In sum, Justice Friedman finds that Supreme Court’s rulings are infirm in almost every respect and would hold that the Attorney General had no power to bring this case under Executive Law § 63(12). He would dismiss the complaint outright. Justice Higgitt, while agreeing that the Attorney General had the power to bring this lawsuit, finds that errors made by Supreme Court require a new trial limited to only some of the transactions in question.

Respectfully, Presiding Justice Renwick and I cannot harmonize our approach with that of our colleagues. Justice Friedman’s decision runs athwart our prior rulings in this case and misconstrues Executive Law § 63(12) and the case law that has interpreted that statute. While he justly criticizes comments made by the Attorney General about defendants when she was running for that office, he ignores that this issue has already been considered, and rejected, by this Court. Justice Higgitt’s decision contains cogent criticisms of aspects of Supreme Court’s two written decisions. However, this Court has the power to independently analyze the record made below in evaluating those decisions. That record amply justifies Supreme Court’s findings of fact and conclusions of law. Returning this action to Supreme Court for a new trial as urged by Justice Higgitt is both unnecessary and likely terminal. It is difficult to imagine that a trial could proceed while one of the principal defendants, and a central witness, is President of the United States. The inevitable elapse of time and the attendant difficulties in recreating a vast record of testimony and documents – an exercise that is both Sisyphean and unneeded, because an extensive trial record already exists – would likely consign this meritorious case to oblivion.


Because none of the three decisions garners a majority, Justices Higgitt and Rosado join the decretal of this decision for the sole purpose of ensuring finality, thereby affording the parties a path for appeal to the Court of Appeals. Like Justice Friedman, we commend them for doing so. Unlike Justice Friedman, we do not find that this necessary measure is unfair to defendants. This Court previously imposed a stay on the judgment, a stay that defendants can seek to extend pursuant to CPLR 5519(e) until the Court of Appeals rules.

Share this:

“Adams Adviser Suspended From Campaign After Giving Cash to Reporter”

chicanery

NYT:

A close adviser to Mayor Eric Adams was suspended from his re-election campaign on Wednesday after giving a journalist cash tucked inside a potato chip bag.

The adviser, Winnie Greco, who was the mayor’s former director of Asian affairs at City Hall and one of his best fund-raisers, had returned to the campaign trail as a volunteer during Mr. Adams’s run for a second term. She had been at the center of controversy after the F.B.I. raided her homes last year as part of a federal investigation into possible Chinese government interference in the 2021 mayor’s race.

On Wednesday, Ms. Greco attended an event with Mr. Adams in Harlem and gave more than $100 in a red envelope stashed inside the snack bag to a reporter for The City, according to an article in the online news outlet. The City promptly reported the incident to the city’s Department of Investigation, and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn contacted the newspaper’s lawyers, according to the newspaper’s account….

Share this:

“Obama applauds Newsom’s California redistricting plan as ‘responsible’ as Texas GOP pushes new maps”

direct democracy, redistricting

AP:

Former President Barack Obama has waded into states’ efforts at rare mid-decade redistricting efforts, saying he agrees with California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s response to alter his state’s congressional maps, in the way of Texas redistricting efforts promoted by President Donald Trump aimed at shoring up Republicans’ position in next year’s elections.

“I believe that Gov. Newsom’s approach is a responsible approach. He said this is going to be responsible. We’re not going to try to completely maximize it,” Obama said at a Tuesday fundraiser on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, according to excerpts obtained by The Associated Press. “We’re only going to do it if and when Texas and/or other Republican states begin to pull these maneuvers. Otherwise, this doesn’t go into effect.”

While noting that “political gerrymandering” is not his “preference,” Obama said that, if Democrats “don’t respond effectively, then this White House and Republican-controlled state governments all across the country, they will not stop, because they do not appear to believe in this idea of an inclusive, expansive democracy.”

Share this: