September 7, 2023

Thursday, September 7, 2023. Annette’s News Roundup.

I think the Roundup makes people feel not so alone.

To read an article excerpted in this Roundup, click on its blue title. Each “blue” article is hyperlinked so you can read the whole article.

Please feel free to share.

Invite at least one other person to subscribe today! buttondown.email/AnnettesNewsRoundup

_____________________________

Joe is always busy.

In this undated photo, an airplane flies over caribou on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeast Alaska. | U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via AP Photo.

Biden blocks oil drilling on 10M acres in Alaska, including leases Trump sold.

The Biden administration will cancel oil leases sold by the Trump administration in an Alaskan wildlife refuge and block new drilling in millions of acres in the state, setting up a new brawl with Republicans over access to fossil fuels on federal land.

The move is latest in the political jousting over the long-protected Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and would prohibit drilling in an area the size of Switzerland inside Alaska’s petroleum reserve. And it may help assuage the ire environmentalists and some native Alaskan tribes felt toward the White House for approving ConocoPhillips’ massive Willow oil project earlier this year in northern Alaska.

But it comes at a risky time for President Joe Biden, with a surge in crude oil prices this week threatening to drive up the cost of gasoline. And it will almost surely meet resistance from the oil industry and powerful Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a key vote that the administration has taken pains to court, as well as fellow Alaskan Sen. Dan Sullivan, who blasted the move as denying economic opportunities to Indigenous people.

“[Biden administration officials] love to talk about racial equity, racial justice, environmental justice, taking care of people of color, but one big exception — the Indigenous people of Alaska. They screw ‘em every time,” he told reporters in the Capitol.

Under the measures announced Wednesday, the Interior Department would revoke the ANWR leases sold by the Trump administration shortly before it left office. And it would propose banning drilling from 10.6 million acres inside the National Petroleum Reserve along the state’s North Slope — about 40 percent of total acreage in the reserve — while limiting drilling activity in another 2.6 million acres there. Those areas are home to significant intact habitat for wildlife, including grizzly and polar bears, caribou and hundreds of thousands of migratory birds, the agency said.

In her Wednesday announcement, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland cited the threats that the fast-changing Alaskan climate posed to the Indigenous groups in the decision to block the production of the fossil fuels that are warming the planet.

“With climate change warming the Arctic more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet, we must do everything within our control to meet the highest standards of care to protect this fragile ecosystem,” Haaland said.

Some local tribes praised the move to protect ANWR from the drilling and construction of pipelines that they had feared would threaten wildlife in the northeastern corner of Alaska.

“The Arctic Village and Venetie Tribal governments want to extend deep gratitude to the Department of Interior for making the just decision to cancel all Arctic Refuge leases,” the two entities said in a press release following the announcement. “This is a significant step towards true, meaningful protection of these lands that are so vital to the survival of our people now and into the future.”

Former President Donald Trump had bragged about his success in opening ANWR to oil production after decades of political fighting over the resources locked under the tundra there. But oil industry interest in drilling in Alaska has waned over the years as companies turned to cheaper and more accessible fields in Texas and New Mexico.

The lease sale held by the Trump Interior Department in January 2021 was seen as a flop, drawing only $14.4 million in bids from two companies and the Alaskan state oil development company.

Still, the oil industry criticized Interior’s move, saying the administration was choking off potential oil production at a time when it was also trying to prevent Russia from profiting from crude sales as it wages war in Ukraine. (Politico).

Blinken pledges $1 billion more to Ukraine amid doubts about offensive.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky greets Secretary of State Antony Blinken before a meeting in Kyiv on Wednesday.

KYIV — Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged an additional $1 billion in assistance to Ukraine on Wednesday during a visit to Kyiv aimed at boosting support for the country as its military makes only incremental gains against entrenched Russian forces and U.S. lawmakers begin debate about future funding for the war.

Zelensky expressed thanks to President Biden and to Congress for showing “great unity” in their support for Ukraine, while noting that this is a “tough period” for his country.


Blinken, a close confidant of Biden, is among Ukraine’s staunchest supporters within the administration, repeatedly pushing officials at home and abroad to provide more sophisticated weaponry to Kyiv and tamping down calls for a negotiated cease-fire with Moscow.


His trip comes less than a month after Biden requested that Congress provide more than $24 billion in additional aid for Ukraine as some polls show U.S. public support for continued funding is slipping. (Washington Post).

_____________________________

Kamala is always busy.

Jan. 6 Capitol riot: Kamala Harris says Trump can’t be spared accountability.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris said Wednesday that those responsible for the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and the ensuing violence at the U.S Capitol must be held accountable — even if that means Donald Trump.

“Let the evidence, the facts, take it where it may,” Harris said in an interview with The Associated Press in Jakarta, Indonesia, where she was attending a regional summit, noting: “Everyone has their right to their day in court.”

Federal prosecutors have indicted Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, for his efforts to cling to power in 2020. The former president also has been charged in Georgia in a scheme to subvert the will of voters who elected Democrat Joe Biden instead of giving Trump a second term.

“I spent the majority of my career as a prosecutor,” said Harris, who served as California’s attorney general before moving to Washington as a U.S. senator. “I believe that people should be held accountable under the law. And when they break the law, there should be accountability.” (Associated Press).

_____________________________

Barring Trump from running for the Presidency.

Colorado has the first serious test case of the 14th amendment. The plaintiffs have standing.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold.

The idea of barring former President Donald Trump from seeking the presidency on grounds that it would violate the 14th Amendment may be an increasingly catchy constitutional argument pushed by a segment of legal scholars and activists.

But it turns out election officials have been discussing how to handle it for months.

“We have been thinking about this in my office for quite some time, before the start of the year, assuming that this will play out,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in an interview.

Underscoring the seriousness with which she has been treating the topic, Griswold noted that “there have been conversations among secretaries” about it.

The legal theory argues Trump is constitutionally disqualified from running for president under the 14th Amendment’s “insurrection clause,” which states that anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” after taking an oath of office to defend the Constitution is forbidden from holding public office.

The theory has rarely been tested in modern times, creating a significant degree of uncertainty around who even has the ability to make the determination on whether Trump should be kept off the ballot — let alone what legally is considered “an insurrection or rebellion.”

And some election officials — including Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who resisted Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election — are saying they don’t have the authority to make that determination.

Now the theory is being tested.

The liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, sued Griswold on Wednesday in Colorado court to have Trump declared ineligible. It is one of the first lawsuits looking to bar the former president from the ballot.

Griswold said the lawsuit in her state was likely one of the first on the issue — but not the last.

“We can expect a lot of lawsuits filed on this issue across the nation,” she said in an interview with POLITICO on Wednesday. “I’m really hopeful that this case will provide guidance to election officials.”

Griswold, who also chairs the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, has been a sharp critic of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, regularly blaming the former president’s spread of misinformation for threats election workers have faced. She has called him a danger to democracy.

“This is an unprecedented situation. We’ve never had a president incite an insurrection and attack our democracy like this,” she said.

Yet, Griswold added that “there are several things that are unclear” when it comes to how the 14th Amendment may apply to ballot access. “The U.S. Constitution does not say whether someone who has engaged in insurrection is prohibited from running for office, or just prohibited from being seated into that office. Colorado law is also arguably unclear.”

Griswold declined to go into detail on the pending lawsuit. Asked whether she has the authority herself to decide on Trump’s eligibility, she said it was her belief that “the court has to make those determinations and likely will.” When asked explicitly if she thought Trump was ineligible to run, Griswold demurred, saying she “thinks it is important for a court of law to resolve crucial questions for the state of Colorado, in terms of ballot access, and for the country.”

A handful of other secretaries of state have also publicly discussed the 14th Amendment push.

Adrian Fontes, the Democratic secretary of state of Arizona, recently told MSNBC that his office was still “deciding how to decide,” noting he has only until mid-December to determine who is eligible to be on the primary ballot in the battleground state.

He said that the issue would ultimately make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court — a sentiment other secretaries have echoed.

Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic secretary of state in Michigan, also recently told MSNBC that the “arguments for disqualification are quite strong, but we also have to recognize we are in uncharted territory here.” And New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan, a Republican, told NH Journal that he “will be seeking input from the attorney general and others so I better understand the legal issues that are involved” after some in the state have pushed the idea.

Raffensperger wrote an op-ed Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal saying he did not have the authority to use the 14th Amendment to block Trump from the ballot — and suggesting it would be unwise for election officials elsewhere to do so.

“Georgia law contemplates a legal process that must take place before anyone is removed from the ballot,” he wrote. “Anyone who believes in democracy must let the voters decide.”

A handful of organizations have been calling on secretaries of state to disqualify Trump. A pair of organizations, Free Speech for People and Mi Familia Vota Education Fund, sent letters to top election officials in nine states— including Colorado, Georgia and Michigan — in July urging them to bar the former president from the ballot.

“We’re having both private and public conversations with various secretaries of state, and it could well be yet that one courageous official makes the first move and then a larger number follow,” Ron Fein, Free Speech for People’s legal director, said in an interview earlier this week, declining to share details about conversations his organization has had with election officials.

There have been few recent cases testing the “insurrection clause.” But notably, CREW represented New Mexico voters who successfully sued in state court to remove a New Mexico county commissioner from office who was convicted of illegally entering the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6. CREW noted on Wednesday that the New Mexico case was “the only successful case to be brought under Section 3 since 1869.”

And while the efforts have, so far, largely focused on at least nominally competitive states, Griswold said it may not stay that way.

“All secretaries of state should be focused in on this issue as something that’s developing across the country,” she said. (Politico).

Lawsuit contends Constitution's 'insurrection' clause bars Trump from running again for president.

DENVER (AP) — A liberal group on Wednesday filed a lawsuit to bar former President Donald Trump from the primary ballot in Colorado, arguing he is ineligible to run for the White House again under a rarely used clause in the U.S. Constitution aimed at candidates who have supported an “insurrection.”

The lawsuit, citing the 14th Amendment, is likely the initial step in a legal challenge that seems destined for the U.S. Supreme Court. The complaint was filed on behalf of six Republican and unaffiliated Colorado voters by the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

It will jolt an already unsettled 2024 primary campaign that features the leading Republican candidate facing four separate criminal cases.

Liberal groups have demanded that states’ top election officials bar Trump under the clause that prohibits those who “engaged in an insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution from holding higher office. None has taken that step, looking for guidance from the courts on how to interpret a clause that has only been used a handful of times since the 1860s.

While a few fringe figures have filed thinly written lawsuits in a few states citing the clause, the litigation Wednesday was the first by an organization with significant legal resources. It may lead to similar challenges in other states, holding out the potential for conflicting rulings that would require the Supreme Court to settle.

Colorado’s secretary of state, Democrat Jena Griswold, said in a statement that she hoped “this case will provide guidance to election officials on Trump’s eligibility as a candidate for office.”

The lawsuit contends the case is clear, given the attempt by then-President Trump to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden and his support for the assault of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The Republican has said he did nothing wrong in his actions.

The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, helped ensure civil rights for freed slaves — and eventually for all people in the United States. But it also was used to prevent former Confederate officials from becoming members of Congress after the Civil War and taking over the government against which they had just rebelled.

The clause cited in the lawsuit allows Congress to lift the ban, which it did in 1872 as the political will to continue to bar former Confederates dwindled. The provision was almost never used after that.

CREW and law professors of both parties contend the amendment is clear and is a qualification for president, just as the Constitution’s mandate that a candidate for the White House must be at least 35 years old and a natural born citizen.

But others note there is much unsettled about the provision and that a case involving this issue has not reached the justices in Washington.

The clause cites a wide range of offices “under the United States” and states that the provision applies to, including “presidential electors” — but not the presidency itself. There is a debate among some experts about whether Trump’s acts constitute an “insurrection” under the language of the amendment.

In its complaint, CREW asked the court to expedite the matter so it can be resolved before the state’s primary ballot is set on Jan. 5, 2024. “We understand that there’s great interest in states across this country about this question, and it needs to be resolved expeditiously so there’s clarity,” said Donald Sherman, CREW’s chief counsel, told reporters in a teleconference.

A Trump spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the suit.

Georgia’s secretary of state, writing in The Wall Street Journal, warned that using the 14th Amendment in this way could take the country down a dark path.

“For a secretary of state to remove a candidate would only reinforce the grievances of those who see the system as rigged and corrupt,” said Republican Brad Raffensperger, who drew Trump’s ire when he refused to declare Trump as the winner of Georgia in 2020. “Denying voters the opportunity to choose is fundamentally un-American.”

The 14th Amendment was used last year to bar from office a New Mexico county commissioner who entered the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. That was the first time it was used in 100 years. In 1919, Congress refused to seat a socialist, contending he gave aid and comfort to the country’s enemies during World War I.

Another liberal group, Free Speech For People, unsuccessfully tried to use the provision to prevent Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina from running for reelection last year.

The judge overseeing Greene’s case ruled in her favor. Cawthorn’s case became moot after he was defeated in his primary.

CREW said it expects to file more cases in other states and anticipates that different groups may do so as well. It picked Colorado, its leaders said, because the state allows ballot challenges to go directly to court and it assembled a prominent roster of plaintiffs, including a former Republican leader of both houses of the legislature and a conservative columnist for the Denver Post.

There was another reason, Sherman noted: In 2015, a Guyana-born naturalized citizen lost his lawsuit to be included on the state’s presidential primary ballot, failing to convince a federal magistrate that the Constitution’s requirement that he be a natural-born citizen was unfair.

A federal appeals judge upheld that ruling barring him from the ballot. The judge was Neil Gorsuch, now on the U.S. Supreme Court. (Associated Press).

versus. . .

I Can’t Keep Trump Off the Ballot by Brad Raffensperger.

Voters should decide elections: That’s the simple lesson of Georgia in 2018 and 2020.

Atlanta

Some legal scholars are arguing that secretaries of state should remove Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which states that a public official is ineligible for public office if he has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” America. But Georgia law contemplates a legal process that must take place before anyone is removed from the ballot. Anyone who believes in democracy must let the voters decide.

The 14th Amendment was a product of the Reconstruction era, immediately following the Civil War. It was written to keep former Confederate officials and leaders from regaining power by holding public office, and historians have questioned whether it was meant as a permanent standard. It went nearly unused after the 1870s until September 2022, when a state judge in New Mexico removed a county commissioner who participated in the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021. Attempts to invoke Section 3 against the candidacies of Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn failed. Each of the cases required a decision in the courts. But activists are urging secretaries of state like me to bar Mr. Trump from the ballot unilaterally.

Invoking the 14th Amendment is merely the newest way of attempting to short-circuit the ballot box. Since 2018, Georgia has seen losing candidates and their lawyers try to sue their way to victory. It doesn’t work. Stacey Abrams’s claims of election mismanagement following the 2018 election were rejected in court, as were Mr. Trump’s after the 2020 election.

Mr. Trump might win the nomination and general election. Or he could lose. The outcomes should be determined by the people who show up to make their preference known in primaries (including Georgia’s on March 12) and the general election on Nov. 5. A process that denies voters their chance to be the deciding factor in the nomination and election process would erode the belief in our uniquely American representative democracy.

For a secretary of state to remove a candidate would only reinforce the grievances of those who see the system as rigged and corrupt. Denying voters the opportunity to choose is fundamentally un-American. Since our founding, Americans have believed that a government is just when it has earned the consent of the governed. Taking away the ability to choose—or object to—the eligibility of candidates eliminates that consent for slightly less than half of the country.

Georgia has faced the cottage industry of election denialism and shut it down. The right side won in 2022. Rather than hiding behind lawyers and bureaucratic hurdles, Gov. Brian Kemp and I traveled the state. I told the story of 2018 and 2020 so voters could choose their candidate with confidence.

The 2024 election won’t be decided by prosecutors. It won’t be decided by John Eastman. And it won’t be decided by the vice president, whose role is simply to oversee a joint session of Congress in which each state’s electors are counted.

The American people will make their own decisions. Country music singer Luke Bryan, a fellow Georgian, said it best: “Most people are good.” Most of the time they will get it right. Trust the voters. (Wall Street Journal).

Mr. Raffensperger, a Republican, is Georgia’s secretary of state.

_____________________________

Update on the Trump Georgia Case and 2nd E. Jean Carroll’s Case.

19 not guilty pleas as Trump Georgia defendants all waive arraignment.

All 19 defendants who were indicted in Fulton County last month on election interference-related charges have pleaded not guilty and waived their arraignments that had been scheduled before a superior court judge on Wednesday.

That means there won’t be any circus-like courtroom appearances — at least not in the near future — for former President Donald Trump, ex-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and others who are accused of conspiring to reverse Georgia’s 2020 election results. The defendants were indicted on racketeering and a combined 40 felony counts on Aug. 14.

Fulton Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who is overseeing the case, had scheduled all of the arraignments in 15-minute increments throughout the day on Wednesday. But one by one, the defendants waived their right to the appearance, which is permissible under Georgia law and was expected given that most live out of state.

Arraignments are when defendants appear before a judge for the first time to formally hear the charges against them and enter a plea of guilty or not guilty. The process is designed, in part, to ensure the defendant knows his or her rights. Judges often set additional court dates at arraignments, such as deadlines for pretrial motions and a trial date. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution).

With no defendants set to appear in person, McAfee scheduled a hearing for Wednesday afternoon on motions filed by two defendants, Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, to separate out — or sever — their portions of the case from the other defendants.

___

Trump found liable for defamation in writer Carroll's second lawsuit.

NEW YORK, Sept 6 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Wednesday found Donald Trump liable for defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll by denying in 2019 that he had raped her, and said jurors will decide only how much the former U.S. president should pay in damages.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan comes ahead of a scheduled Jan. 15, 2024, civil trial, after a jury in May ordered Trump to pay Carroll $5 million for sexual assault and a separate defamation.

Fulton Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who is overseeing the case, had scheduled all of the arraignments in 15-minute increments throughout the day on Wednesday. But one by one, the defendants waived their right to the appearance, which is permissible under Georgia law and was expected given that most live out of state. (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution).

_____________________________

Hillary comes out fighting.

Others should join her.

Yesterday was Hillary’s first day as a professor at Columbia University.

_____________________________