Why Republicans Want Voters to Fear Kamala Harris As President
Jessica Washington – May 1, 2023
GREENBELT, MARYLAND – APRIL 25: In this handout image provided by NASA, Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks during a tour of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center with President Yoon Suk Yeol of the Republic of Korea, on April 25, 2023
Just read what she said on Fox News last week; “He announced that he’s running again in 2024, and I think that we can all be very clear and say with a matter of fact that if you vote for Joe Biden, you really are counting on a President Harris because the idea that he would make it until 86 years old is not something that I think is likely,” said Haley, 51.
Rather than run against Biden and his record, Republicans like Haley want to make this election about Harris, says Jo Von McCalester, a Political Science Lecturer at Howard University. “To imply that [Biden] is not going to live and if you vote for him, it’s really going to be her,” says McCalester, “is to dog whistle to people that you could end up with a Black woman as President in your country.”
Nina Smith, a political strategist and former senior advisor to Stacey Abrams, agrees with McCalester’s assessment. “It’s definitely the GOP trying to weaponize an inherent bias that we have against women in leadership,” she says.
Ted Cruz Chimes in on Biden’s Age
Haley isn’t the only Republican trying to position this as a race against Harris, not the sitting President. In an interview last week, Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz made similar jabs.
“Joe Biden is 142 years old,” said Cruz on Fox News. “Can you imagine Kamala Harris sitting across from Putin or Xi and just cackling?”
The imagery employed by Cruz is very intentional, says McCalester. “The idea of her sitting across from Putin gives two visuals,” she says. “It gives the visuals of a Black person that you don’t believe sounds intelligent enough to sit across from a ‘world power or leader.’ It also harkens to the fact that she’s a woman.”
This isn’t the first time Republicans have tried to make Harris the focus of their attacks on the Biden-Harris ticket, says Cliff Albright, Executive Director of Black Voters Matter Fund, a voting rights organization.
“They tried it to a certain extent in the last presidential election, right? But there, there really wasn’t a consensus on the strategy,” says Albright. “It’s likely to increase this time because now, unlike in 2020, it’s even more clear what Biden’s merits are. They’re starting to realize that we’re gonna have a hard time running against his record.”
Is Making The Election About Harris a Winning Strategy?
The bigger question is whether Republicans can win by making the election about Harris. According to Smith, it might be the most effective tool in their arsenal, especially for someone like Haley.
“Nikki Haley is barely registering in polls. She’s not making up any ground when it comes to beating Donald Trump in a primary,” says Smith. “I think they know they have to split this ticket up… if you split them up, then his age becomes a question, and her experience becomes a question.”
“It’s really pathetic,” says Albright. “It’s a sign that they know they can’t win just on the strength of their case… and so when all else fails in the Republican party, what do they lean on, and the usual answer is good old racism.”
None of these strategies are new, says Albright pointing to the infamous Willie Horton ads used against Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis. But in the modern era, he argues, they have their limits. “They’re effective to a certain extent with the base, but all recent elections are showing us that it can go only so far,” says Albright, adding. “So, will it be more effective than going after Biden? I think so. Will it be effective enough for them to win? I don’t believe so.”
Hillary Holley, Executive Director of Care in Action, a nonprofit progressive labor organization, and a former Democratic strategist in Georgia, says she doesn’t believe these tactics can win if Progressive groups are on the ground making a case for the administration and Harris’ accomplishments. “People may be concerned that voters may fall for these distractions, these lies,” says Holley. “Our allies have proven that we know how to talk to voters. We can tell voters the truth, and we once we do that massive robust outreach, they end up voting for progress.”
McCalester is more skeptical. This could “absolutely” be a winning message for Republicans, she says. “It’s the we’re gonna appeal to racists, we’re gonna appeal to sexists [strategy],” she says. Unfortunately, it’s worked repeatedly for Republicans, says McCalester, and there’s no reason to think it can’t work again.
Manchin’s ‘playing with fire’ — and some Democrats are tired of the drama
Josh Siegel – May 1, 2023
Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/AP Photo
Sen. Joe Manchin is losing patience with his fellow Democrats over their signature climate law — and the feeling is mutual.
The West Virginia Democrat has spent weeks escalating his attacks on President Joe Biden’s implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, the sweeping bill that Manchin helped write in a deal that stunned Washington last summer. Last week, he threatened to join Republicans in voting to repeal the law, as the House GOP is demanding in its legislation for raising the nation’s debt limit.
Manchin’s comment caught his caucus colleagues off guard, even if such a repeal would be a long shot in Congress. It came just as Biden was launching a reelection campaign that rests heavily on that legislation’s climate and health care provisions.
“That surprises me that he wants to repeal it. I think it’s one of his greatest accomplishments,” said Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), a close colleague of Manchin’s on the Energy Committee, in an interview.
The IRA is far less of a political bright spot for Manchin, whose potential reelection hopes are clouded by growing disapproval ratings in his home state, partly driven by his support for the law. Manchin has yet to announce whether he’s running, but a formidable challenger entered the West Virginia Senate race last week — GOP Gov. Jim Justice.
Manchin’s fellow Democrats understand that his reelection could determine whether they retain their slim 51-seat Senate majority in 2024. But they are also growing weary of his attacks against their marquee climate law — even if they’ve come to expect it and know there’s little they can do to change his mind. And his votes against Democratic policies and Biden nominees have already complicated his party’s agenda in the 51-49 Senate.
Some Democrats fear that Manchin’s criticisms will do real damage by confusing the public about one of the law’s most debated-provisions: its $7,500 tax credits for electric vehicles. He has accused the Treasury Department of violating the law by flouting strict provisions he wrote designed to force electric vehicles to be made in the U.S. with American-made parts.
“When you’re Joe Manchin it never hurts to be seen butting heads with the administration, but I think this is genuine umbrage over the fact Congressional intent seems pretty clear, even if the statutory construction left room for Treasury to maneuver,” said Liam Donovan, a lobbyist with the firm Bracewell who previously worked for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “And given that he would not have been on board for the bill at all had this been the understanding, it reads as a personal betrayal.”
Democrats counter that the administration has been doing its best to balance the IRA’s competing goals of lowering the cost of electric vehicles while promoting U.S. manufacturing and jobs.
“Fifty of us agree that [boosting electric vehicle deployment] is a priority,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) said in an interview. “The law is what it is. If he doesn’t like implementation he can run for president.”
Manchin in recent weeks has also joined Republicans in supporting resolutions they’ve brought up for a vote disapproving of the administration’s energy and environmental policies, most recently on Wednesday when he was the only Democrat to vote with Republicans in overturning an EPA regulation on emissions from heavy-duty trucks.
And Manchin, chair of the Senate Energy Committee, has also expressed his ire with the administration by torpedoing a series of Biden’s nominees, including Richard Glick to chair the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Laura Daniel-Davis, Biden’s pick for assistant Interior secretary for land and minerals management, and Gigi Sohn as a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission.
The White House has supported fossil fuel projects that Manchin has backed — angering environmentalists — including the Willow oil and Alaska LNG projects, as well as the Mountain Valley Pipeline that would deliver natural gas produced in West Virginia.
Manchin did not comment for this article, but his spokesperson Sam Runyon said his objections were because the administration had strayed from the intent of the bill.
“President Biden, then-Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Schumer were in full agreement with Sen. Manchin that the IRA was an energy security bill and the legislative language is crystal clear,” she said. “The Administration continues to blatantly violate the law in an effort to replace Congressional intent with their own radical climate agenda that simply didn’t, and wouldn’t have, passed.”
Some Republicans have expressed sympathy for Manchin’s position.
“Is it playing with fire? Sure. Does Joe care? I don’t think so,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Manchin’s frequent legislative partner when she chaired the Energy Committee. “Good for him for calling the administration out.”
Murkowski noted that the climate law had been seemingly dead for most of last year until Manchin’s support allowed Democrats to pass it on a party-line vote. The law includes $369 billion in incentives for clean energy and electric vehicles, as well as health measures such as a cap on insulin costs for Medicare recipients.
“They made a deal with him,” Murkowski said. “And it was a hard deal and they wanted his vote, and they got it — at some political cost to him and he would admit that. And now [the Biden administration is] trying to rewrite the bill, or interpret in the way they wished they had been able to get it passed. That’s their problem.”
Manchin has repeatedly denounced Biden’s electric vehicle policies in recent weeks, including by announcing he would support Republican efforts in Congress to overturn EPA auto pollution rules designed to speed up EV adoption. He accused the administration of “lying to Americans with false claims about how their manipulation of the market to boost EVs will help American energy security.”
“Y’all broke the law,” Manchin later told Biden’s Energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, at a hearing April 20, accusing the administration of “liberalizing” its rollout of the tax subsidy to stimulate sales of electric vehicles — and warning that that approach could send money and jobs to China.
Republicans are eager to pounce on Democratic dissension over how the administration is executing the climate law. GOP lawmakers, who unanimously opposed the law, argue that it spends too much money and say its twin goals — quickly weaning the U.S. economy off fossil fuels while reducing reliance on China for clean energy technologies — are incoherent.
“Maybe he’s looked at it [the IRA] more deeply and realized it’s not what he thought it was,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, Manchin’s GOP counterpart from West Virginia, said in an interview. “I can’t believe he would be that naïve. But who knows?”
But other Democrats say the administration is carrying out the law that Congress passed.
“Almost all of us who voted for this legislation and contributed to it wanted to supercharge EV sales,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) in an interview. “Clearly Sen. Manchin did not. He thought he was maybe sabotaging the EV industry. And it’s driving him nuts that it’s not working out that way.”
Negotiations over the EV tax credit were fraught from the start.
After Manchin rejected Democrats’ climate and social spending agenda last July when it was packaged as Build Back Better — Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer quietly resumed negotiations. The electric vehicle tax credits were among the last items they haggled over.
During the preceding months, Manchin repeatedly criticized Democrats’ interest in subsidizing electric vehicle sales, calling the idea “ludicrous.”
Manchin, whose state is home to a non-unionized Toyota manufacturing facility, also derided Democrats’ original proposal to offer an extra incentive for electric vehicles made by union workers. He called the proposal “not American.” The version that became law dropped it.
Manchin, Schumer and their staffs finally forged a compromise on electric vehicles in secret talks, unveiling the renamed Inflation Reduction Act on July 27. It offered a credit of up to $7,500 for electric vehicles, but only for those meeting a thicket of stringent requirements on what countries their battery minerals and components come from. Those requirements have since sparked a major trade feud with European governments whose companies are blocked from the incentives.
“He [Manchin] does not support the credit at all. And really when he wrote it, he hoped nobody could use it. And so he’s disappointed there are a few vehicles that can use it,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat from auto-industry-heavy Michigan.
Heinrich said a clash with Manchin over implementation was “inevitable” given the different ways Manchin and the White House characterized the end product, which Manchin sees as an energy security measure designed to shore up energy production of all types. Biden is using the law to push a rapid transition away from fossil fuels in the name of combating climate change.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the House Progressive Caucus, downplayed the idea of a rift within the Democratic Party.
“The majority of [the IRA] we are all together on,” Jayapal said. “I do think he [Manchin] believes we should have a renewable energy transition. We probably have different ideas for what the transition looks like and how we get there. “
But the law didn’t leave the Biden administration much wiggle room in developing regulations to fit its complex domestic content restrictions, energy experts say. Manchin contends the administration is abusing the leeway it got. He’s especially taken umbrage at the Treasury’s initial three-month delay in issuing rules, which until mid-April allowed electric vehicles to qualify for the tax credit without meeting any domestic sourcing requirements.
When Treasury finally announced the guidance in March, it offered some olive branches to automakers worried about the rules being overly restrictive, but still left the majority of EVs on the market ineligible for the credit.
Even so, Manchin cried foul, calling the Treasury rules too loose in allowing foreign suppliers to share in the tax credit bounty.
He took particular aim at the Biden administration’s classification of certain foils, powders and other components used in the batteries. By classifying the powders as “critical minerals,” rather than “battery components,” Treasury avoided placing even more severe restrictions on vehicles eligible for the tax credit.
Manchin has also criticized Treasury for allowing leased vehicles to qualify for full tax breaks as “commercial” vehicles, a workaround that skirts some restrictions in the law.
And a crucial piece of guidance is still missing: clarity on which companies’ vehicles could be barred from receiving the credit because of their connections to China. The Treasury Department says it expects to release that provision later this year.
“Manchin very clearly wanted to put deglobalization ahead of decarbonization,” said Kevin Book, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners, a research group. “He wants this stuff made here and if it slows down the transition so be it. Treasury is leaning toward trying to transition faster.”
Most Democrats, though, disagree that Biden has ignored congressional intent. They point to projections showing the IRA has already been a boon to the country’s clean energy jobs: It has prompted at least $243 billion in investments in battery plants, electric vehicles factories and other green energy projects since Biden signed the law in August.
Since Biden became president, there have been at least $95 billion in private-sector investments announced across the U.S. clean vehicle and battery supply chain, according to the Department of Energy, including $45 billion since the IRA passed.
Heinrich said he knows it may be “politically expedient” for Manchin to argue the IRA is not taking shape as he intended.
“But the reality is this legislation is working, and this administration is trying to manage both what we need to do long term, which is make all of this stuff here, but also build the runway to get there,” Heinrich said.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this report incorrectly quoted Kevin Book.
Trump Lawyer Joe Tacopina’s Terrible Cross-Examination Gets Even Worse
Mitchell Epner – May 1, 2023
Michael M Santiago/GettyImages
During more than a full day of cross-examination of E. Jean Carroll, Joe Tacopina, Donald Trump’s lead trial lawyer, gave an object lesson on how NOT to conduct a cross-examination in federal court.
The first day of cross-examination was bad. Day two was even worse. If a juror believed E. Jean Carroll’s direct testimony that she was raped by Donald Trump, Tacopina gave that juror precious little reason to reconsider that conclusion.
Before court even started Monday morning, Tacopina filed an 18-page motion for a mistrial, contending that Judge Lewis Kaplan–who is overseeing the case–had violated Trump’s rights by repeatedly ruling against Tacopina pre-trial and during the first day of cross-examination.- ADVERTISEMENT -https://s.yimg.com/rq/darla/4-11-1/html/r-sf-flx.html
Tacopina acted as if Judge Kaplan was a batter who had dug in too closely to home plate, and he could use the motion as a “brush back” pitch to get Judge Kaplan to give Tacopina more leeway. The motion literally asked Judge Kaplan to either declare a mistrial or reverse virtually all of his evidentiary rulings.
This motion never had a chance of success. At best, it was performative–designed to give Tacopina the chance to demonstrate to Trump that he was trying his best to get Judge Kaplan to reverse himself. If Tacopina actually believed that the motion had any prospect for success, he is not nearly as formidable a trial attorney as I thought he was.
Predictably, Judge Kaplan ruled against the motion with a single word: “Denied.” During the rest of the day’s proceedings, Judge Kaplan made comments that underscored that he was not amused by the motion.
But that was just the beginning of the blunders.
Joe Tacopina, lawyer of former U.S. President Donald Trump, questions former Elle magazine advice columnist E. Jean Carroll before U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan.Jane Rosenberg/Reuters
Tacopina Violated Cardinal Rules Of Cross-Examination
One of the central rules of cross-examination is to never reinforce the testimony that the witness provided during direct testimony. This is difficult, because it is a challenge to remind the jurors of the testimony that the attorney intends to discredit without recapitulating that testimony.
The best cross-examination usually avoids this problem by using this formulation: “When you said [prior testimony] on direct examination, that was not the truth, was it?” The witness will either defend the prior testimony or appear confused. Good cross-examination will then lay out, in simple and direct assertions (phrased as questions), why the prior testimony had to be false.
Tacopina did precisely the opposite. He spent minutes at a time giving Carroll the opportunity to repeat her direct testimony. When he then tried to debunk it, he rarely had anything of substance to convince the jury that she must have been lying. Rather, he repeatedly just tried to get Carroll to admit that her testimony was “incredible” or “extraordinary”. Once she admitted that she found it amazing that she went from bantering with Trump to being a rape victim in the course of a couple of minutes, he had no place left to go.
Tacopina also forgot the cardinal rule to never ask a question where you don’t know the answer.
Anyone who watches an episode of Law & Order (more on that shortly) knows that an attorney should never ask a question on cross-examination where they do not already know the answer (and have the evidence to control the witness).
Tacopina, however, repeatedly asked questions where it was clear he had no idea what the answer would be. During the first day of cross-examination, he jousted with Carroll about a SNL skit that she had written, which he clearly knew nothing about. On Monday, he did more of the same, asking about a text message to “Carol Martin” (who will testify for Carroll), when the text exchange was actually with “Carol Martin’s daughter Courtney”. Even after he was corrected, Tacopina repeated his assertion that the message was to Carol Martin.
Q: OK. This, in fact, was a text message that you had sent to Carol Martin, correct, and then to pass on to her daughter?
A: No.
Q: This was directed to her daughter?
A: Yes. I wrote directly to her daughter.
Q: So, with that adjustment in my question, that this was sent to Ms. Martin’s daughter, what you wrote was true?
A: Yes.
Tacopina Lost Control
Another rule for strong cross-examination is to never lose control of the courtroom. A good attorney will command the attention of the jury, using the witness as a prop who can only say “yes” when the attorney finishes a leading question with only one possible answer.
Instead, Tacopina ceded control to a video, playing an entire segment (over 10 minutes) of a CNN interview where Carroll talked to Anderson Cooper about being raped by Trump. Tacopina’s client, Trump, has repeatedly stated that he believes that anyone who watches the segment would conclude that Carroll must be lying. Instead, Tacopina gave the jury the opportunity to see Carroll once again cogently describe being sexually assaulted by Trump. While the video was playing, Tacopina was literally reduced to being an observer.
During my more than 25 years as a trial attorney, I have appeared before Judge Kaplan several times. He does not suffer fools gladly. During Monday’s cross-examination, Judge Kaplan frequently treated Tacopina as a fool who did not know the basics of the rules of evidence. He sustained several objections to lines of questions, just as Tacopina thought he was about to score points.
Virtually every time that Tacopina tried to use snide comments or repetition to undercut Carroll’s credibility, Judge Kaplan sustained objections or simply told Tacopina to “move along.”
In the courtroom, jurors typically look to the judge for guidance on how to regard the proceedings. When Judge Kaplan showed such disdain for Tacopina’s blustering and preening, he gave the jurors permission to disregard Tacopina’s questions as improper.
Tacopina Had A Few Scattered Successes
Tacopina had about five minutes of strong cross-examination. The problem was that it was hidden in about eight hours of ineffective questioning. His best questions were when he used Carroll’s own words (either from deposition or televised interviews) to rebut some of her direct testimony. For example, Carroll testified on direct that the rape by Donald Trump was the reason that she never had sex again.
Tacopina got Carroll to admit that she had previously stated during a podcast: “Well, after the episode in Bergdorf’s, I never had sex again, but I think it wasn’t because of him. I think it was I just didn’t have the luck to meet that person who would be desirous again. I think maybe in that dressing room my desire for desire was killed, but I think if I had met somebody, had the good luck to meet somebody, I think I would have been revived again. I think the desire would have boiled up again. I just think I’ve been unlucky.”
Had Tacopina limited himself to similar excerpts, I believe that he would have had a much greater impact in undercutting Carroll’s credibility.
Re-Direct of Carroll Brought Home Her Central Allegation
One of the fundamental trial rules is that after cross-examination, the witness’ attorney has the opportunity to “rehabilitate” the witness through re-direct. Carroll’s attorney, Michael Ferrera, did a spectacular job. He gave Carroll the opportunity to directly address the insinuation on cross-examination that she had conjured up a rape allegation against Trump on the basis of an episode of Law & Order SVU that included a rape at Bergdorf Goodman.
Carroll testified that she never saw that episode or had never heard of it until she received an email (after she filed suit) telling her about it, and that she still did not know what happened in that episode.
More importantly, Carroll had the opportunity to again clearly state that Trump had raped her. She again testified that she could still feel the pain from when Trump sexually assaulted her. Her testimony was unshaken, even after two days of cross-examination.
A good cross-examination takes less than 30 minutes. The cross-examiner makes a few powerful points, which the witness cannot deny and re-direct cannot rehabilitate. By that standard, Tacopina conducted a very poor cross-examination. Whatever credibility the jurors thought Carroll had after she finished her direct testimony, they likely still believe that she has now.
A law school named after the late Antonin Scalia is a haven for conservative Supreme Court justices to enjoy lavish treatment, New York Times reports
Hannah Getahun – April 30, 2023
AP
Antonin Scalia Law School at the Virginia-based George Mason University was renamed in 2016.
The renaming was part of a plan to help its reputation by getting closer to the Supreme Court.
Justices were given notable benefits to teach there, emails obtained by The New York Times reveal.
A conservative law school looking to rebrand into a powerhouse institution buttered up conservative Supreme Court Justices with excessive benefits and good pay, documents obtained by The New York Times show.
Because justices are legally allowed to make money outside of the court in limited ways, including through teaching opportunities, Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, which was renamed after the late judge in 2016, offered justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas teaching roles in remote locations like Iceland and Italy, as well as salaries sometimes upwards of $30,000 for two weeks of teaching, the NYT reported.
According to the NYT, the judges were treated well, with lodging and trip planning arranged by the school. University officials told Gorsuch in 2017, before a teaching trip to Italy, that he would only be required to teach in the mornings, leaving the rest of the day to explore the country, according to the emails obtained by the Times. Upon hearing this news, Gorsuch replied, “Fantastico!”
Even liberal justices were enamored by the treatment, according to the Times, with Justice Elena Kagan, who once spoke at the university, saying the law school “seems like a really good place to be.”
Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia, spoke with the NYT and described the teaching jobs as appearing to be “all-expenses-paid vacations, with a little teaching thrown in.”
The law school began its relationships with the court following a renaming ceremony — planned by the school’s dean and Republican megadonor Leonard Leo — in 2017, where multiple justices attended and spoke. According to internal emails from university leadership, these relationships were explicitly made to help build the school’s reputation.
“Establishing and building a strong relationship with Justice Gorsuch during his first full term on the bench could be a game-changing opportunity for Scalia Law, as it looks to accelerate its already meteoric rise to the top rank of law schools in the United States,” one email from the university law school read, according to the NYT.
The law school’s staff, many of whom worked directly with the justices, often filed amicus briefs with the court, and court staff helped to handle school duties — despite not being allowed to do so — revealing how the justices’ jobs frequently entwined with their outside work at Scalia Law.
This desire to keep Supreme Court leadership on their roster even superseded scandals the judges faced. Following the sexual misconduct allegations Brett Kavanaugh faced right before he was appointed, Butler assured the justice protests from students against the soon-to-be law professor on campus had nothing to do with the law school, according to the NYT.
A new report from Insider’s Mattathias Schwartz found that the wife of Chief Justice John Roberts made millions as a legal recruiter for law firms, according to a whistleblower who worked with him.
Despite this extra scrutiny over conflicts of interest, legal experts told Insider there isn’t much that can be done to hold justices accountable.
The Antonin Scalia Law School and a spokesperson for the Supreme Court did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
The uptick on excoriating “woke ” ideology has increased in recent years among politicians, including former President Donald Trump, as Americans across the nation battle over diversity, inclusion and equity efforts in the workforce, public schools and in legislation.
But what is “woke”? And what do the GOP attacks mean for 2024?
Among conservative lawmakers and activists “woke” tends to be an across-the-board denunciation of progressive values and liberal initiatives.
Some have used it to attack trans and gay rights while others apply it to critical race theory – a legal theory that examines systemic racism as a part of American institutions – and the teachings of the New York Times’ 1619 project in public schools.
“If you ask people what woke is, I think what they mean is they want to stand against people who are engaging in some type of advocacy for marginalized people,” said Andra Gillespie, political scientist at Emory University.
“It’s kind of this lumping together of anybody whose views could be construed as being progressive on issues related to identity and civil rights.”
As the Black Lives Matter movement began after the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, “woke” expanded outside of Black communities into the larger public lexicon.
What about ‘stay woke’?
Black artists and entertainers continued to insert the phrase in their music, including Grammy-award-winning artists Erykah Badu and Childish Gambino — a.k.a. Donald Glover—for political causes.
Yet “woke” has now been hijacked by the political right to mean something far from its original definition.
“The reason we have to ‘stay woke’ is because of exactly what these people are doing right now, which is finding very insidious ways to undercut our rights,” said Terri Givens, a political science professor at McGill University.
Givens called the attacks on the term “a full-on dog whistle” and pointed to attempts to limit the right to vote, curtail reproductive and abortion rights and ban inclusive education in schools as examples of the backlash against Black and brown civil rights.
“Learning history is not about woke-ism,” Given said.
Conservatives now use the term as a political retort to combat what they perceive as political correctness gone haywire.
But progressive commentators note that the response also comes in the context of a changing America, which is becoming more diverse racially and ethically and along sexual orientation and gender identity lines.
“What they’re trying to do is make the term a pejorative,” said Kendra Cotton, chief operating officer of New Georgia Project, a progressive-leaning voting rights group.
As more marginalized groups are elected into office and exercising their voting power during elections, it can make some Americans afraid, said Cotton.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a possible GOP presidential candidate, has built a persona crusading against ideas and policies conservatives deem as “woke.”
Tehama Lopez Bunyasi, a political scientist at George Mason University and co-author of the book “Stay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter,” said the legislation is “perhaps the most explicit way we see the co-optation of the term ‘woke’ today.”
“Right now, we’re seeing racially conservative pundits and politicians positioning themselves as adversaries of the multiracial Black Lives Matter movement,” said Lopez Bunyasi. “One of the rhetorical tools they are using is the maligning of a term that has been in use by Black people and in Black politics for well over a hundred years.”
Have the anti-woke attacks been successful?
Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin cruised to victory in 2021 riding a wave of parental anger over teaching inclusive history in public schools.
Keneshia Grant, a political scientist at Howard University, said Youngkin’s success was part of an intentional pushback against marginalized communities, which includes misunderstanding terms like woke, critical race theory, and LGBTQ rights.
“He ends up successfully using the fear that people have about teaching students Black history or American history through the guise of CRT and successfully uses that to motivate a base,” Grant said. “They are doing this because they think it will help them win. And we have evidence that sometimes it actually does help them win.”
Americans divided on what ‘woke’ means
What’s telling is that despite the conservative backlash most Americans don’t view “woke” negatively heading into the 2024 presidential contest.
A March 2023 USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll found that 56% of Americans said it means “to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices.”
But the efforts to re-define “woke” have worked with a significant portion of the country. Roughly 39% of those surveyed agree with the Republican definition,”to be overly politically correct and police others’ words.”
“Racial resentment and grievance are certainly one of those things that have been very effectively used to mobilize a certain segment of the Republican population for a long time,” said Gillespie.
Reporter Phillip M. Bailey contributed to this story.
Here’s everybody with stricter ethics rules than the Supreme Court
Rick Newman, Senior Columnist – April 27, 2023
Ponder this: Most journalists at mainstream news organizations face far tougher ethical rules than the nine Supreme Court justices who decide monumental issues that directly affect the lives of millions of Americans.
The Associated Press’s rule on gifts allows its journalists to accept nominal offerings worth no more than $25 from anybody who could plausibly be the source of subject or a news story—even if it’s a personal friend. Most news organizations follow the AP guidelines or have a similar code.
There are no such rules at the Supreme Court. A troubling exposé by ProPublica recently revealed that Justice Clarence Thomas has accepted numerous lavish gifts from real-estate magnate Harlan Crow, including an Indonesian yachting trip worth as much as half-a-million dollars. Thomas also sold real-estate to Crow in what looks like a sweetheart deal for the jurist. Thomas’s fellow conservative, Justice Neil Gorsuch, also profited from a property deal with a wealthy friend, as if there’s some secret real-estate agency that only serves nine exalted judges, allowing them to avoid the vicissitudes of the normal market.
FILE – Members of the Supreme Court sit for a new group portrait following the addition of Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, at the Supreme Court building in Washington, Oct. 7, 2022. Bottom row, from left, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts, Associate Justice Samuel Alito, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan. Top row, from left, Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
Thousands of US businesses and most of the federal government follow ethics guidelines meant to sustain trust in those organizations, protect their integrity, and prevent self-dealing. Nobody pretends those guidelines are perfect. People cheat. Businesses play dirty. Bosses cover up wrongdoing. But a basic code of ethics protects against legal liability and bolsters morale at most organizations in the country.
“Most companies take the code of ethics seriously,” says Rue Dooley, a knowledge adviser at the Society for Human Resource Management. “It’s a good way to regulate certain behaviors. It’s about building trust, sustaining credibility with vendors, clients, customers, patients, and stockholders.”
The executive branch of the federal government has an exhaustive set of rules governing what’s permissible, covering gifts, outside income, investments, property, financial disclosures, conflicts of interest and many other things. There’s a whole agency, the Office of Government Ethics, whose job is to oversee and enforce ethics rules in the executive branch.
The House of Representatives has a detailed code of ethics, with any gift valued at more than $250 requiring approval of the House Ethics Committee. In the Senate, the limit on gifts is $50. Both codes clarify what counts as a “personal friendship,” including possible conflicts of interest. The federal judiciary has its own code of ethics, with the same $50 gift limit as the Senate.
The Supreme Court, by contrast, is uniquely unbound by any behavioral rules. With the court under fire, Chief Justice John Roberts published an unusual note on April 25 outlining what he called the “foundational ethics principles” the justices follow. “The Justices … consult a wide variety of authorities to address specific ethical issues,” he wrote. These include guidelines for other judges and federal employees, various laws, scholarly articles, disciplinary decisions and advice from colleagues.
There are a couple of problems with Roberts’s reasoning, however. First, there is no single document or set of documents that represents the court’s code of ethics. If you go looking for it, you won’t find it. That’s an obvious recipe for confusion. Justice Thomas responded to the ProPublica exposé saying that years earlier, he “sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends … was not reportable.” This would never fly in an organization with a formal policy and a process for approving or disapproving gifts.
That gets to another problem with the court: There’s no ethics enforcement mechanism. In virtually every other organization, somebody has the power to rule yes or no on a dodgy ethics question. In Congress, it’s the ethics committees. In the rest of the federal judiciary, there’s a chief judge or some other authority. At companies, bosses leading up to the CEO decide what’s acceptable, and they’re accountable if something goes wrong. At the Supreme Court, the chief justice has no such authority over any other justice. Justices are literally answerable to nobody. Roberts acknowledged this in his April 25 memo, pointing out that the organization that oversees other federal courts does not have jurisdiction over the Supreme Court.
Thomas claims that his rich buddy Harlan Crow is a “close personal friend who did not have business before the court,” at the time Thomas went on all-expense-paid luxury trips with him. A proper ethics inquiry would likely shred this defense. Crow is a politically active conservative who, along with his wife, has donated nearly $15 million to candidates and causes during the last 30 years. Almost all of that went to Republicans. During that time the court has heard numerous cases Republicans took a position on, such as three challenges to the Affordable Care Act, several matters involving former President Donald Trump, and the current legal challenge to President Biden’s effort to forgive student debt. Saying a major Republican donor has no interest in Supreme Court outcomes is either woefully naïve or completely disingenuous.
The Roberts defense is “wholly insufficient,” says Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a nonprofit that advocates for more judicial accountability. “The Supreme Court should agree, or Congress should require them, to follow all the same rules on gifts, travel, and personal hospitality that Congress has to follow.”
A new bill in Congress would do just that. The Supreme Court Code of Conduct Act would require the court to adopt a formal set of ethics rules, appoint somebody to enforce them and publish an annual report on any violations or complaints about questionable activity by the justices. Prospects are dim, however, since Republicans who control the House are generally opposed. For the foreseeable future, the Supreme Court will govern itself and enjoy fewer strictures than most of the Americans it supposedly serves.
Disney sues Florida’s DeSantis for ‘weaponizing’ government
Dawn Chmielewski and Lisa Richwine – April 26, 2023
FILE PHOTO: Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando
(Reuters) -Walt Disney Co sued Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis on Wednesday, asking a court to overturn state efforts to control Disney World and intensifying a battle between a global entertainment giant and a likely White House contender.
In its lawsuit, Disney accused DeSantis and his supporters of illegally using the state government to punish a company for voicing an opinion that should be protected by free-speech rights.
The skirmish began last year after Disney criticized a Florida measure banning classroom discussion of sexuality and gender identity with younger children. DeSantis repeatedly attacked “woke Disney” in public remarks.
Florida lawmakers passed legislation that ended Disney’s virtual autonomy in central Florida where the Disney World theme parks attract millions of visitors each year.
In the action filed in federal court in Tallahassee, Disney said it aimed to protect Disney World’s employees, guests and developers from “retaliation for expressing a political viewpoint unpopular with certain State officials.”
“Disney now is forced to defend itself against a State weaponizing its power to inflict political punishment,” the company said.
Last year, Disney’s then-chief executive, Bob Chapek, said the company opposed a bill formally known as the Parental Rights in Education Act. Critics called it the “Don’t say gay” law.
Disney’s lawsuit alleges that a newly formed DeSantis-appointed tourist board violated the company’s contract rights, and did so without just compensation or due process. The company is asking the court to declare Florida’s legislative action unlawful.
DeSantis has argued that Disney, which employs roughly 75,000 people in Florida, had been enjoying unfair advantages for decades.
“We are unaware of any legal right that a company has to operate its own government or maintain special privileges,” DeSantis spokesman Jeremy Redfern said Wednesday on Twitter.
The governor is currently traveling in Asia on a four-country trade mission.
Disney shares fell 1.4% to close at $96.61 on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday.
POLITICAL RISK
DeSantis’ clash with Disney has been a centerpiece of his speeches as he toured the United States ahead of his expected presidential bid. But as the battle has intensified, it has brought mounting political risk.
Former President Donald Trump, the favorite for the Republican nomination, has slammed DeSantis’ stance, saying on social media that the governor “is being destroyed by Disney” and warning that the company would reduce its investments in Florida.
Carlos Curbelo, a former U.S. Republican congressman from Miami, said DeSantis’ attacks on Disney “made sense for a time.”
“Now it’s coming across as petty and personal,” Curbelo said. “Disney clearly detects that the governor is in a weaker position today and is going on offense for the first time in this conflict.”
Before DeSantis appointees took over a state board that oversees Disney World, the company pushed through changes to the special tax district agreement that limit the board’s action for decades.
Florida’s new oversight body on Wednesday said Disney’s plans for potential expansion of Disney World did not comply with state law, and declared that agreement void.
The Central Florida Tourism Oversight Board unanimously supported an attorney’s findings of legal flaws in the developers’ agreement Disney reached in February with a previous board, including a lack of proper public notice.
“What they created is an absolute legal mess,” said board Chairman Martin Garcia. “It will not work.”
Disney announced its lawsuit minutes later.
The tussle could boost DeSantis’ support among U.S. Republican voters, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found, but also hurt him among the wider electorate.
Seventy-three percent of respondents – including 82% of Democrats and 63% of Republicans – said they were less likely to support a political candidate who backs laws designed to punish a company for its political or cultural stances.
The judge that will oversee Disney’s case against DeSantis, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, has struck down several laws that defined the governor’s conservative political agenda, including statutes that sought to limit the speech of college professors, curtailed protests and restricted voting access.
(Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski and Lisa Richwine in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by James Oliphant in Washington; Editing by Sonali Paul, David Gaffen and Matthew Lewis)
Disney v. DeSantis judge called Florida governor’s law ‘dystopian’
Tom Hals – April 26, 2023
WILMINGTON, Delaware (Reuters) -When attorneys for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis appear in court to defend against Walt Disney Co’s lawsuit that accuses the Republican official of weaponizing state government, they will see a familiar face, if not always a welcome one.
U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee has struck down several laws that defined DeSantis’ conservative political agenda, including statutes that sought to limit the speech of college professors, curtailed protests and restricted voting access.
Walker was nominated to the federal court by former President Barack Obama, a Democrat.
Disney sued DeSantis on Wednesday to block a state law that created an oversight board that Disney said will interfere with billions of dollars of planned development.
The feud between the global entertainment giant and a likely candidate for the 2024 presidential election started last year, when Disney criticized a law signed by DeSantis that banned classroom instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation for younger children.
Disney alleges a law that imposed an oversight board was punishment for voicing opposition to DeSantis’ classroom instruction law known as the Parental Rights in Education Act.
The company called the state’s actions “particularly offensive here due to the clear retaliatory and punitive intent.”
The gender-education statute, derided by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, survived challenges in federal court before a different judge.
Free speech has been central to several rulings by Walker against DeSantis, although the judge has also at times sided with the governor.
Walker blocked the Individual Freedom Act or Stop Woke Act, which limited the speech of college professors, calling it “positively dystopian” in an opinion that began with a quote from George Orwell’s anti-totalitarian novel “1984.”
In 2021, Walker blocked the Combating Public Disorder Act, which DeSantis signed into law after the 2020 protests over the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of police.
Walker ruled the law’s expansion of the definition of “riot” infringed on protesters’ right to free speech.
The judge last year enjoined a law signed by DeSantis that banned ballot drop boxes and prevented groups from offering food and water to voters waiting in long lines, causes championed by Democrats as a way to support voter turnout.
The judge also sided with plaintiffs in a second lawsuit challenging a different aspect of the Stop Woke Act, which defined as “unlawful employment practices” workplace training around issues of race and sex.
Walker said Florida had become a place where the First Amendment allowed, rather than prevented, the state to limit speech. Or as he put it, “in the popular television series Stranger Things, the ‘upside down’ describes a parallel dimension containing a distorted version of our world. Recently, Florida has seemed like a First Amendment upside down.”
The judge has also ruled with DeSantis and declined to block the execution of a death row inmate and dismissed some claims against the governor over the Individual Freedom Act.
(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, DelawareAdditional reporting by Lisa Richwine in Los AngelesEditing by Amy Stevens and Matthew Lewis)
Supreme Court on ethics issues: Not broken, no fix needed
Jessica Greskow – April 26, 2023
Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts arrives before President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol, Feb. 7, 2023, in Washington. Roberts has declined a request from the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify at a hearing on ethical standards at the court, instead providing the panel with a statement of ethics reaffirmed by the court’s justices. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)The Supreme Court is seen on Friday, April 21, 2023, in Washington. While the court’s six conservatives and three liberals have been deeply divided on some of the most contentious issues of the day including abortion, gun rights and the place of religion in public life, they seem united on this particular principle: on ethics they will set their own rules and police themselves. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., speaks with reporters about reproductive rights for U.S. veterans, on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, April 19, 2023, in Washington. Durbin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary, has invited Supreme Court Justice John Roberts to testify next month at a hearing on ethics standards. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is speaking with one voice in response to recent criticism of the justices’ ethical practices: No need to fix what isn’t broken.
The justices’ response on Tuesday struck some critics and ethics experts as tone deaf at a time of heightened attention on the justices’ travel and private business transactions. That comes against the backdrop of a historic dip in public approval as measured by opinion polls.
Deeply divided on some of the most contentious issues of the day — including abortion, gun rights and the place of religion in public life — the court’s six conservatives and three liberals seem united on this particular principle: on ethics they will set their own rules and police themselves.
Charles Geyh, an Indiana University law professor and legal ethics expert, said everything the justices detailed Tuesday evening about ethics was essentially outlined in Chief Justice John Roberts’ annual year-end report from 2011, more than a decade ago.
“They’re basically saying … What we’ve been doing is just fine. Let’s just re-say it for those of you at the back…That just strikes me as, you know, pretty empty,” Geyh said.
The most recent stories about the questionable ethics practices of justices began earlier this month. First came a ProPublica investigation that revealed that Thomas has for more than two decades accepted luxury trips nearly every year from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow without reporting them on financial disclosure forms. Thomas responded by issuing a statement saying that he was not required to disclose the trips.
A week later, ProPublica revealed in a new story that Crow had purchased three properties belonging to Thomas and his family, a transaction worth more than $100,000 that Thomas never disclosed. Politico reported more recently that when Justice Neil Gorsuch sold property he co-owned shortly after becoming a justice, he disclosed the sale but omitted that the property was purchased by a person whose firm frequently has cases before the high court.
And earlier this year, there were stories about the legal recruiting career of Chief Justice John Roberts’ wife and whether it raised ethical concerns that she was paid large sums for placing lawyers at firms that appear before the court.
The series of revelations has provoked outcry and calls for reform particularly from Democrats. On Wednesday, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Sen. Angus King, the independent from Maine, announced legislation that would require the Supreme Court to create a code of conduct and appoint an official to oversee potential conflicts and public complaints. Next week, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Supreme Court ethics reform.
“The time has come for a new public conversation on ways to restore confidence in the Court’s ethical standards. I invite you to join it,” wrote Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., in a letter.
Roberts declined in his own letter made public Tuesday evening. He wrote that testimony by previous holders of his office before Congress is “exceedingly rare, as one might expect in light or separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence.”
To his letter, however, Roberts attached a “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices” signed by all nine justices describing the ethical rules they follow about travel, gifts and outside income. “This statement aims to provide new clarity to the bar and to the public on how the Justices address certain recurring issues, and also seeks to dispel some common misconceptions,” the statement read.
But ethics experts and other court observers said the statement that followed and ran just over two pages was nothing new, just “the rehashing of things we already knew and found insufficient,” said Gabe Roth of the watchdog group Fix the Court in a statement.
The statement signed by the justices essentially said that they consult a wide variety of sources to address ethical issues, decide for themselves when a conflict requires that they step away from a case and file the same annual financial disclosure reports as other judges.
The justices have previously resisted calls to write a formal code of conduct.
Kathleen Clark, a legal ethics professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said in her view the problem is that the justices “have not been subjected to basic accountability that just about everybody else in the federal government has to comply with.”
What was striking to her about the statement, she said, was “a failure to grapple with the fundamental problem of lack of accountability.” The justices “seem to be utterly clueless about the problem they have … They’re in a bubble apparently. They don’t see what a big problem they have with the lack of accountability,” she said.
Trump allies who stole from border wall donors sentenced to prison
Lauren Sforza – April 26, 2023
Two founders of an online fundraising scheme to help former President Trump build a border wall were sentenced to prison Wednesday for participating in a fraud scheme that stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors.
Brain Kolfage and Andrew Badolato were sentenced for their alleged involvement in the scheme, which siphoned the money from hundreds of thousands of people that donated to their “We Build the Wall” campaign. The campaign promised the donors that their funds would go toward the construction of a wall at the border with Mexico, which is part of Trump’s core platform.
The fundraising campaign raised more than $25,000,000 from thousands of donors, with Kolfage promising that “100% of the funds raised … will be used in the execution of our mission and purpose,” according to court documents. The court documents said this was false, alleging that Kolfage alone took more than $350,000 for personal funds.
Kolfage was sentenced to 51 months in prison, and Badolato was sentenced to 36 months in prison, according to a press release from the Southern District of New York U.S. attorney’s office. Kolfage and Badolato both pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, with Kolfage also pleading guilty to tax and wire fraud charges.
“Brian Kolfage and Andrew Badolato abused the trust of donors to We Build the Wall and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to line their own pockets,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement. “The defendants have now been held accountable for their criminal conduct.”
District Judge Analisa Torres also said at the sentencing that “the fraud perpetrated by Mr. Kolfage and Mr. Badolato went well beyond defrauding individual donors. They hurt us all,” the release stated.
Kolfage was ordered to three years of supervised release and to forfeit $17,872,106, as well as to pay restitution of $2,877,414, in addition to the prison sentence. Badolato was ordered to three years of supervised release and to forfeit $1,414,368 and pay restitution in the same amount.
Trump’s former top political adviser Steve Bannon was also allegedly involved in the scheme, but the case was halted after the former president pardoned him. He will likely stand trial for his alleged involvement in the scheme in November 2023.
The third co-founder, Timothy Shea, will have his sentencing on June 13 after being convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and obstruction of justice.
