<.....Donald Trump and his legal team are escalating efforts to discredit and delay a trial over his alleged attempt to overturn the 2020 election, as his fight to avert criminal convictions becomes ever more indistinguishable from his presidential campaign.

The former president’s attorney Sunday vowed to petition to relocate the trial from Washington, DC, claiming that a local jury won’t reflects the “characteristics” of the American people. And as prosecutors seek a speedy trial, he warned that his team will seek to run out the process for years in an apparent attempt to move it past the 2024 election.

Trump demanded the judge set to hear the case recuse herself in a flurry of assaults on the process that may fail legally, but will play into his campaign narrative that he is a victim of political persecution by the Biden administration designed to thwart a White House comeback.

Trump pleaded not guilty when he was arraigned in Washington last week – his third such plea in a criminal case in the past four months. But his new efforts to tarnish an eventual trial in this case mirror his long-term strategy of seeking to delegitimize any institution – including the courts, the Justice Department, US intelligence agencies and the press – that contradicts his narrative or challenges his power.

They unfolded as the precarious nature of his position after his third indictment began to sink in and the ramifications for the 2024 election widened.

Mike Pence, speaking on CNN this weekend, did not rule out providing testimony in a Trump trial if compelled, which would be a staggering potential scenario for a vice president to provide evidence against his ex-running mate.

Trump’s former Attorney General William Barr, meanwhile, dismissed one of the arguments the ex-president and his allies have turned to – that he was simply exercising his right to freedom of speech in seeking to reverse the election result in 2020. Barr, who told Trump there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud during his final weeks in office, also said Sunday that “of course” he would appear as a witness at the trial if asked.

Trump’s status as the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination has left his rivals with a painful political tightrope walk as they seek to take advantage of his plight while avoiding alienating GOP primary voters. But several candidates stiffened their criticism of the former president over the issue this weekend as campaigning heated up.

Pence said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that in the tense days ahead of Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s election, Trump asked him to put loyalty to him above his oath to the Constitution and halt the process. “I’m running for president in part because I think anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States,” Pence told Dana Bash.

And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis went a tiny bit further in his criticism of Trump, while still arguing that the Biden administration is weaponizing justice against the former president. On a campaign swing through Iowa on Friday, DeSantis – who is battling to preserve his tottering status as the No. 2 Republican in primary polls – said Trump’s false claims about election fraud were “unsubstantiated.”

The fast-moving developments since Trump’s indictment last week are offering a preview of one of the most monumental criminal trials in American political history. They also suggest this case, and two others in which Trump has pleaded not guilty – to mishandling of classified documents and to charges arising out of a hush money payment to an adult film actress – are certain to deepen a corrosive national political estrangement.

Trump slams prosecutors, judge, Biden administration and GOP senators Defense teams have the right to use every courtroom mechanism within legal bounds to their client’s best advantage. Attempts to delay trials with pre-trial litigation are not unusual and prosecutors and defense lawyers often differ over matters of procedure and evidence. But Trump’s case is unique, given the visibility of the accused, the fact that he’s a former president running for another White House term, and that he is using his power and fame to mount a vitriolic campaign outside the courtroom to drain public confidence in the justice system. It is becoming increasingly clear that there is no distinction between his legal strategy and his political one in an election that is now consumed by his criminal exposure and the possibility of convictions.....>

<....In posts on his Truth Social network that highlighted a furious state of mind, Trump on Sunday demanded the recusal of Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee who is presiding over the case, and a venue change out of the capital. He blasted special counsel Jack Smith as “deranged” and claimed that the US was being “destroyed.” On Saturday night, in a speech in South Carolina, Trump demanded that Senate Republicans do more to protect him.

His threatening rhetoric is already having a direct impact on pre-trial preparations as both parties shadow box ahead of a decision by the judge on a trial date.

Smith’s prosecutors asked the court late Friday to impose strict limits on how Trump can publicize evidence that will be handed over as part of the discovery process. Trump’s team sought an extension of a Monday afternoon deadline to file on the matter, but Chutkan refused their request. Prosecutors want the judge to impose a protective order limiting how Trump could use such evidence because of his previous public statements about witnesses, judges, attorneys and others. In their filing, they included a screenshot of a Truth Social post in which Trump warned: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”

Trump’s lawyer John Lauro argued on “State of the Union” Sunday that the special counsel was seeking to withhold evidence about the case from the press and the American people that “may speak to the innocence of President Trump.”

Barr rejects Trump’s theory of the case

Trump is seeking to delay and prolong the trial so that the country won’t have a final answer on his alleged culpability until after the election. If Trump wins the White House in November 2024, he will again gain access to executive powers and status that could freeze federal prosecutions against him or mitigate any guilty verdicts.

Lauro said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that he had not known any similar case go to trial within two or three years of an indictment. He also said on other talk show appearances that he planned to relitigate the 2020 election, which he said had never been drawn out in court, as a way of challenging Smith’s charges. Trump, however, made multiple attempts to have the 2020 result overturned in court, and judges repeatedly threw out his claims of voter fraud as having no merit.

Lauro also further revealed his hand on defense strategy by arguing that despite being told multiple times by officials and campaign advisers that he lost the election, Trump’s actions were not criminal since he was convinced he won.

“The defense is quite simple. Donald Trump … believed in his heart of hearts that he had won that election,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “And as any American citizen, he had a right to speak out under the First Amendment. He had a right to petition governments around the country, state governments, based on his grievances that election irregularities had occurred.”

But Barr, a conservative Republican who had been a staunch Trump defender until the very end of his administration, said that while Smith’s case was certainly “challenging,” he didn’t think it “runs afoul of the First Amendment.”

Trump’s prospective defense raises the possibility that any future politician could create an alternative reality that bears no relation to the facts of an election outcome, and then take actions designed to retain power.

Barr sought to clear up what he said was confusion about the case. “This involved a situation where the states had already made the official and authoritative determination as to who won in those states, and they sent the votes and certified them to Congress,” Barr said on “Face the Nation.”

“The allegation, essentially, by the government is that, at that point, the president conspired, entered into a plan, a scheme that involved a lot of deceit, the object of which was to erase those votes, to nullify those lawful votes.”...>

<....Another claim by Trump’s team being amplified on conservative media is that the former president cannot get a fair trial in Washington, where he won only 5% of the vote in the 2020 election. Lauro instead suggested one of the most pro-Trump states in the union, where the ex-president racked up nearly 70% of votes cast in the last election. “I think West Virginia would be an excellent venue to try this case,” he said on CBS.

Most legal experts think a change of venue is unlikely. Such a step would implicitly strike at the heart of the legal system since it would suggest that verdicts and juries in one jurisdiction are more valid than those elsewhere and could set a precedent that politicians could choose juries in politically advantageous regions.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, one of the handful of Republicans running for the 2024 nomination on an explicitly anti-Trump platform, insisted that Trump could get a fair trial in the nation’s capital.

“I believe jurors can be fair. I believe in the American people,” Christie said on “State of the Union.”

Christie, a former federal prosecutor in a blue state, also rejected the argument that Trump’s post-election conduct is protected by the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech. He argued that proof of Trump’s culpability lies in his failure to immediately seek to stop the ransacking of the US Capitol by his supporters during the certification of Biden’s victory on January 6, 2021.

“He didn’t do that. He sat, ate his overdone hamburger in the White House Dining Room he has off the Oval Office and enjoyed watching what was going on,” Christie said.>

<Donald Trump seems to have hell on his mind.

The former president invoked the perpetual flames of the underworld in two separate rants on Sunday against Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the U.S. women’s national soccer team.

Early in the day, he launched his attack on the former House speaker, who on Friday said Trump looked like a “scared puppy” during his arraignment last week on federal charges of election obstruction and conspiracy.

“I wasn’t ‘scared,’” Trump insisted in a post on his Truth Social website. “Nevertheless, how mean a thing to say! She is a Wicked Witch whose husbands [sic] journey from hell starts and finishes with her. She is a sick & demented psycho who will someday live in HELL!”

Trump wasn’t done raising hell just yet.

When the U.S. women were eliminated from the World Cup later on Sunday, the former president ― like many others on the right ― was weirdly thrilled.

He called the loss “fully emblematic of what is happening to the our [sic] once great Nation under Crooked Joe Biden” and accused the players of being “openly hostile” to the country.

“WOKE EQUALS FAILURE,” he wrote, then took a shot at star player Megan Rapinoe. “Nice shot Megan, the USA is going to Hell!!!” >

<The Clintons certainly aren’t strangers to corruption and controversy. Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, they were accused of running the Whitewater real estate investment scandal as governor of Arkansas. Bill allegedly pressured banker David Hale to provide an illegal $300,000 loan to Susan McDougal, the partner of the Clintons in the Whitewater deal.

Once they arrived at the White House, the Clintons were accused of illegally firing White House travel office employees and replacing them with friends. In 1996, the Clintons were accused of illegally obtaining FBI files on political opponents. It became known as “Filegate,” but they were never charged with any crimes.

Fast-forwarding to 2016, the Clintons were still exploiting the politicization and corruption within the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ). The bombshell “Durham Report” found that the FBI and DOJ relied on the lies fed to them by a Democrat-hired law firm in order to spy on the 2016 Trump campaign, which continued even after Trump was elected president. The federal agencies falsely told Americans there was evidence that President Trump’s 2016 campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the election.

Making matters worse, top leaders at the FBI shut down four criminal investigations into Hillary and Bill Clinton. The FBI did not dispute the findings in the Durham report. In 2014, a reliable source told the FBI that a foreign government planned to support and “contribute” to Hillary Clinton’s anticipated presidential campaign as a way to “gain influence with Clinton should she win the presidency,” the Durham report found.

An FBI field office began investigating this claim and sought a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant. The Durham report found that the FBI was hesitant and “more careful” to proceed with the investigation because agents were “scared with the big name [Clinton]” involved. “They were pretty “tippy-toeing’ around HRC because there was a chance she would be the next President,” the report found.

“Beginning in January 2016, three different FBI field offices, the New York Field Office (“NYFO*), the Washington Field Office (“WFO*), and the Little Rock Field Office (“LRFO**), opened investigations into possible criminal activity involving the Clinton Foundation,” the Durham report reads.

“The IRFO case opening communication referred to an intelligence product and corroborating financial reporting that a particular commercial ‘industry likely engaged a federal public official in a flow of benefits scheme, namely, large monetary contributions were made to a non-profit, under both direct and indirect control of the federal public official, in exchange for favorable government action and/or influence,'” the report said.

“The WFO investigation was opened as a preliminary investigation, because the Case Agent wanted to determine if he could develop additional information to corroborate the allegations in a recently-published book, Clinton Cash by Peter Schweizer, before seeking to convert the matter to a full investigation. Additionally, the LRFO and NYFO investigations included predication based on source reporting that identified foreign governments that had made, or offered to make, contributions to the Foundation in exchange for favorable or preferential treatment from Clinton,” the report added.

Despite three separate FBI field offices receiving reliable information about “possibly criminal activity involving the Clinton Foundation,” these investigations were shut down less than one year before the November 2016 presidential election.>

<Saying Gov. Ron DeSantis has followed the autocratic examples of governments in Russia and China, a group of mostly Republican former high-level government officials has called the Florida governor's takeover of Disney World's governing district “severely damaging to the political, social, and economic fabric of the State.”

The group of former governors, U.S. House members and presidential administration officials filed a “friend of the court” brief on Wednesday in Disney's federal lawsuit against DeSantis and his appointees to the board of Disney World's governing district. Disney's lawsuit says the Republican governor violated the company’s free speech rights by taking over the district after Disney publicly opposed Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, which banned classroom lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity in early grades.

The group's goal in filing the brief last week is to demonstrate “how the path the Governor has chosen is corrosive to the form of democracy envisioned by the Constitution, and to re-emphasize this Court’s critical constitutional role in curbing the excesses of governance by retaliation,” they said in a court filing.

Specifically, the group says that DeSantis' actions harm Florida economically because firms are being dissuaded from doing business in Florida since they could be subject to the governor's retaliatory whims if they ever voice disapproval over his policies. The group noted that Disney scrapped plans for a $1 billion campus in Orlando that would have relocated 2,000 employees from Southern California, following a year of attacks by DeSantis.

The group is made up of two former GOP governors, Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey and Arne Carlson of Minnesota; three former Republican U.S. House members, Tom Coleman of Missouri, Claudine Schneider of Rhode Island and Christopher Shays of Connecticut; and a host of attorneys, commissioners, chiefs of staff and other officials from previous Democratic and Republican presidential administrations.

DeSantis' actions were retribution with a goal of discouraging Disney and others from opposing his policies in the future, said the officials who compared the takeover to autocratic actions taken in Russian and China.

“The fact that Governor DeSantis has taken these anti-democratic actions so blatantly and brazenly — that he is proud of them — only makes them all the more damaging to the political and social fabric of Florida and the country as a whole,” they said.

An email seeking comment was sent Sunday morning to a spokesperson for the governor's office in Tallahassee. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press also has filed a brief in support of Disney, arguing that a win by the Florida governor would embolden other governments across the U.S. to take actions against journalists and other media when they exercise their First Amendment rights.

DeSantis, a candidate for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, is seeking a dismissal of Disney's lawsuit in Tallahassee federal court. The governor argues Disney is barred from filing a lawsuit because of legislative immunity protecting officials involved in the process of making laws and that the company lacks standing since it can't show that it has been injured.

DeSantis appointees took control of the Disney World district earlier this year following a yearlong feud between the company and DeSantis. The fight began last year after Disney, beset by significant pressure internally and externally, publicly opposed a state law banning classroom lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity in early grades, a policy critics call “Don’t Say Gay.”

As punishment, Republican lawmakers passed legislation reconstituting the district and DeSantis appointed a new board of supervisors to oversee municipal services for the sprawling theme parks and hotels. Disney sued DeSantis and his five board appointees in federal court, saying the governor violated the company’s free speech rights by taking the retaliatory action.

Before the new board came in, Disney made agreements with previous oversight board members who were Disney supporters that stripped the new supervisors of their authority over design and development. The DeSantis-appointed members of the governing district have sued Disney in state court in a second lawsuit stemming from the district’s takeover, seeking to invalidate those agreements.>

<Over the Fourth of July weekend, Moms for Liberty held a packed summit in downtown Philadelphia, its second-ever national convening. Founded in 2021, the fast-growing group claims 120,000 members in 285 chapters across 45 states, with hundreds of endorsed candidates elected to school boards to promote purging “critical race theory” and books with transgender characters from classrooms. At one session I attended, titled “(Wo)manhandling the Media,” the group’s strategy became crystal clear. Led by Christian Ziegler, the chair of the Florida Republican Party and the husband of Bridget Ziegler, a Moms for Liberty cofounder and Sarasota County School Board chair, the session provided lessons for new recruits on how to get the media—whom Ziegler described as a bunch of “lazy” liars—to boost their chapters’ profiles. A centerpiece of this approach involved using high-profile politicians to lure reporters to an event. “The media will show up because they’re thinking that what [the elected officials] say is going to be news—not your chapter, no offense,” he told a chapter head from a blue state who’d complained that journalists weren’t covering her rallies. “So you got to piggyback off those VIPs as much as you can. It’s like this summit, right?”

Right. I had to admit, that was why I was there—along with 132 other journalists, according to media handlers for the event.

The previous weekend had been the first anniversary of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the Supreme Court decision that overturned the legal right to abortion nationwide. Anti-abortion leaders had rallied in Washington, D.C., to celebrate, inviting presidential candidates from the party responsible for that monumental victory to join them. The only one who came was Mike Pence. The Moms for Liberty summit, by contrast, attracted five candidates, including front-runners Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis. Their mere presence quickly became the story itself—which suited Ziegler just fine. “Moms for Liberty Didn’t Exist 3 Years Ago. Now It’s a GOP Kingmaker,” read a headline in The Washington Post that morning. Ziegler called it “probably the best headline I’ve ever seen.”

At the event, the candidates played to the crowd. DeSantis gave his standard speech against wokeness and drag queens at breakfast time. Trump had the closing spot that evening, drawing a raucous reaction from the crowd when he compared “radical left socialism” to a religion: “Instead of taking children to church, they believe in taking children to drag shows,” he said. For all their fire and brimstone, though, the candidates weren’t the real story. That was on display during lunch, when top education officials from four states—Florida, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and South Carolina—took the stage with Moms for Liberty cofounder Tiffany Justice. Their goal seemed to be to disparage public schools, painting a picture of a “literacy crisis” that they blamed on teachers’ unions and the encroachment into the classroom of “woke nonsense.” “These are folks that want to destroy our society; they want to destroy your family, and they want to destroy America as we know it,” Oklahoma schools superintendent Ryan Walters said. In May, Oklahoma’s governor signed a law creating a tax credit for families who send their children to private schools or homeschool them. The officials all spoke of the need to return to a “classical” education, which has become a dog whistle for Christian nationalists who oppose efforts to teach children about racism and gender diversity in the classroom, as a report by the Network for Public Education showed. They talked about “parental rights” and “school choice,” and they railed against the federal government’s involvement in schools. “We don’t need a federal Department of Education, folks!” Walters said, as the audience went wild, roaring and clapping. “Lotta moms like to hear that!” Tiffany Justice exclaimed....>

<....I turned around to find that almost all of the other journalists were gone. That seemed to be what Christian Ziegler was after. By wrapping its efforts in rhetoric about parental rights and protecting children, Moms for Liberty has successfully presented itself as just a group of angry moms shouting down “wokeness,” rather than as the latest link in a decades-long conservative project to undermine public education while upholding white supremacy and patriarchy. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan called for shutting down the Department of Education in a State of the Union address. More than 40 years later, the most significant change in the right’s strategy is its use of transphobia to cast public schools as dens of indoctrination and danger. And it’s working: People across the political spectrum are being swayed by the right’s fearmongering about trans kids; a Washington Post–KFF poll last year found that a majority of Americans believe, for example, that trans women and girls should not be allowed to play sports with their peers.

Examples of conservatives’ efforts to stoke anti-trans sentiment were everywhere. In the exhibit hall, I picked up a “ministry curriculum” titled “God Created Them Male and Female,” produced by a nonprofit called Advocates Protecting Children. It contained a lesson that would teach children in elementary school to recite the phrase “God created people male and female; there is nothing else.”

Abortion, the premier social conservative issue of the past half-century, was barely mentioned on the day I was there. I was beginning to realize why. A majority of Americans disagree with the overturning of Roe, and Republicans are paying the price politically. The framework of parental rights has given conservatives a way to meet the post-Dobbs moment by painting their opponents as the extreme ones. I asked Bridget Ziegler why I had heard so little at the Moms for Liberty conference about abortion. She told me she thought the summit probably “represents the country as far as a spectrum,” although by that she meant that some people were probably “pro-choice, not pro-abortion.” But the topic wasn’t likely to come up at school board meetings, she added, unless it was in relation to school-based medical clinics. Then she put into practice a lesson from that morning’s media strategy session, steering our conversation back to her talking points. “It really comes down to parental rights,” Ziegler said. “I mean, that’s really the core issue.”>

<"If you talk about the riots on January 6, they talk about Hunter Biden.

"If you talk about stealing nuclear secrets, they talk about Hunter Biden.

"If you talk about stealing military secrets and war plans, they talk about Hunter Biden.

"If you talk about an effort to overturn an American election, they talk about Hunter Biden.

"If you talk about the riots on January 6, they talk about Hunter Biden.

<Fox News anchor Julie Banderas on Monday struggled to understand why it would be illegal for former President Donald Trump to attempt to stay in office even after losing an election to President Joe Biden.

While discussing the potential fourth criminal indictment of the former president, Banderas ran through some of the behaviors that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis may charged [sic] Trump with and then declared each action to be perfectly within the bounds of the law.

"The attorney... Fani Willis is probing whether Trump committed crimes in trying to overturn the election results in Georgia," she said. "I want to talk about Trump's alleged crimes for a second. He hasn't been indicted with incitement, we know that. So, it's not a crime to tell lies. Being a narcissist is not a crime. Hatching schemes to stay in office is not a crime. And claiming you won an election that you know you lost is not a crime."

In fact, trying to illegally occupy that office of the presidency after losing an election is illegal.

What's more, special counsel Jack Smith made the case that Trump deliberately told election lies to prop a conspiracy to defraud the United States and to deny Americans' rights to have their votes counted, both of which are crimes.>

<Ohio voters on Tuesday will decide on a ballot measure to make it harder to amend the state constitution, a change conservatives say is needed to protect the state from a radical anti-gun, abortion and education agenda that could soon find its way to other states.

It's an issue that has already prompted a massive early vote turnout – one that has some election offices straining to manage the load. "This is gubernatorial-level turnout," said Regine Johnson, deputy director of the board of elections in Stark County.

As of Wednesday, more than 533,000 people had voted by mail or in-person since early voting began July 11, according to data collected by The Associated Press. That's nearly double the final early voting figures for Ohio's two previous midterm primary elections, which included races for governor and Congress.

Today, ballot measures to amend the Ohio Constitution need only 50% plus one vote to pass. But if State Issue 1 passes, that threshold would be raised to 60% – conservatives say this change is needed to protect the state from outside groups who want to alter the constitution.

"At its core, it's about keeping out-of-state special interest groups from buying their way into our constitution, which we're seeing happen far too often," Amy Natoce, press secretary for Protect Women Ohio, told Fox News Digital. "They're circumventing the legislative process and going directly after the constitution."

Democrat opponents have made the argument that the ballot measure would take away power from voters and give it to politicians.

"The purpose of Issue 1 is to silence the majority of Ohioans, and subject us to the policy preferences of a small group of extremists who have secured the favor of our unconstitutionally gerrymandered legislature," the ACLU wrote about the measure earlier this year.

"Just look at how Issue 1 supporters are framing their argument. They deem their effort the ‘Protect Ohio’s Constitution’ campaign. In fairness, they are desperately attempting to protect our Constitution," the group added. "The key question is, from whom are they protecting our Constitution? The answer is – a majority of Ohioans."

But Mehek Cooke, an Ohio attorney and Republican political consultant, told Fox News Digital the ACLU is putting out a "deceitful message."

"They're lying to Ohio voters when they say that we are taking their vote away," said Cooke, who said the goal is to prevent outside groups from influencing the state. "We're actually empowering Ohioans."

"The Constitution is truly for the structure of government and then fundamental rights, not policies. I believe that's the place for the legislature. So I feel very strongly as a mom, but also a business owner and an attorney that we need to protect a strict analysis of our constitution and not allow these outside groups to dictate what works in Ohio."

Natoce also explained that some of the biggest opponents of State Issue 1, including the ACLU and the Ohio Democratic Party, have internal rules in their organizations requiring a 60% threshold for actions such as removing board members, endorsing candidates, and amending their own constitutions. Cooke said the change would put Ohio more in line with other states that have higher thresholds for changing the constitution.

State Issue 1 would take effect immediately if passed, which means that a November ballot measure enshrining the right to an abortion into the state constitution would need 60% voter approval, not 50% plus one....>

<....Critics of that abortion measure say it is written in such an expansive and ambiguous way, including not mentioning the words "woman" or "adult," that it would take away parental rights when it comes to sex change surgeries and abortion for minors.

The proposed amendment states that "every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, miscarriage care, and abortion."

Protect Women Ohio has committed $25 million in ads in opposition of the amendment. One of the advertisements released in May includes video of President Biden stating, "There’s no such thing as someone else’s child" and ends by warning, "They’re coming for your parental rights."

Democrats have focused largely on abortion in their opposition to State Issue 1, but Cooke told Fox News Digital that progressives will attempt to strip away gun rights as well as the rights of parents in classrooms and other issues in state’s [sic] across the country.

Cooke and Natoce told Fox News Digital that Cleveland's Democrat Mayor Justin Bibb has signaled a plan to push gun control changes to the constitution.

"We can use our real political power to change the culture of guns in this state. It starts by voting no on Issue 1, by the way, to make sure we can maybe put a ballot measure on our state constitution to have commonsense gun reform," Bibb said.

State Issue 1 would also eliminate the 10-day curing period during which citizen-led campaigns may submit additional signatures if they fall short the first time, and increase the number of counties where signatures must be collected from 44 to all 88. But those provisions would come too late to impact the abortion issue, which has already faced both legal and administrative hurdles and is now set for a vote in November.

Polling in July showed that voters are split on the issue with 42% saying they are a yes on State Issue 1, 41% saying they are a no, and 16% neutral.>

<The federal judge overseeing the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump delivered multiple blows to Special Counsel Jack Smith's efforts in a brief Monday.

Judge Aileen Cannon of the Southern District of Florida – who is presiding over the case stemming from a Miami grand jury's June indictment of Trump – denied the Department of Justice's (DOJ) request for sealed filings, striking two from the record. Cannon also requested additional information from prosecutors regarding the continued use of an out-of-state grand jury to investigate the case.

"The Special Counsel states in conclusory terms that the supplement should be sealed from public view ‘to comport with grand jury secrecy,’ but the motion for leave and the supplement plainly fail to satisfy the burden of establishing a sufficient legal or factual basis to warrant sealing the motion and supplement," Cannon wrote in the brief, denying the DOJ's request.

"Among other topics as raised in the Motion, the response shall address the legal propriety of using an out-of-district grand jury proceeding to continue to investigate and/or to seek post-indictment hearings on matters pertinent to the instant indicted matter in this district," she continued in the brief.

The filing Monday came in response to the special counsel's request for a hearing to examine the defense attorney Stanley Woodward's potential conflicts of interest. Woodward – who represents Waltine Nauta, a Trump aide listed as a co-defendant in the case – also represents three individuals who may be called to testify in the case.

Cannon gave counsel for Nauta until Aug. 17 to file a response to the motion for a hearing. She gave prosecutors until Aug. 22 to file a brief in support of the hearing.

The latest action in the case comes about nine months before the scheduled trial. Cannon previously set the case to go to trial on May 20, 2024, amid the Republican presidential primaries.

Trump is accused of 37 counts, including willful retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice and making false statements. He pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Nauta is charged with six counts, including conspiracy to obstruct justice, and also pleaded not guilty. A third defendant Carlos De Oliveira, a property manager at Mar-A-Lago, is accused by the special counsel of working with Trump to hide security footage.

"Adherence to the rule of law is a bedrock principle of the Department of Justice. And our nation’s commitment to the rule of law sets an example for the world," Smith said on June 9. "We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone. Applying those laws. Collecting facts. That’s what determines the outcome of an investigation. Nothing more. Nothing less."

"The prosecutors in my office are among the most talented and experienced in the Department of Justice," he continued. "They have investigated this case hewing to the highest ethical standards. And they will continue to do so as this case proceeds.">

While there was never any question that Cannon would bow before her lord and liege and bend every effort to clear his name in this farce of a proceeding, her ardour is almost comical.

<On June 30, the Supreme Court invalidated the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness program, which promised to wipe $10,000 off the debt of borrowers earning less than $125,000 per year and $20,000 off the debt of Pell Grant recipients — in total, around $430 billion. While the primary victims of the Supreme Court’s decision are debtors, another long-term danger stems from the reasoning behind the decision.

The Biden program was unlawful, according to the court, because the 2003 Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students (HEROES) Act, which authorizes the secretary of education to “waive” or “modify” student debt obligations during a national emergency, could not have possibly authorized debt cancelation on this scale. If Congress wanted to permit something so vast and sweeping, it would have said so explicitly.

This idea — that “Congress does not hide elephants in mouseholes” — is called the “major questions doctrine.” On its face, it is consistent with Supreme Court precedents. In reality, it empowers the Supreme Court and its conservative majority to veto the rare executive actions that actually have a social impact.

Getting the federal government to do anything useful is hard enough at the best of times. Thanks to the major questions doctrine, it is about to get a lot harder.

The Logic of the Major Questions Doctrine

It was far from surprising to see the Biden administration lose the student loans case, known as Biden v. Nebraska. The well-known conservative leanings of the Supreme Court aside, both Biden and other senior Democrats set themselves up for failure by repeatedly stating that the president lacked the authority to cancel student debt not very long before he decided that he could in August 2022. For example, Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the Biden v. Nebraska opinion, favorably quoted then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s remarks from July 2021: “People think that the president of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not. He can postpone. He can delay. But he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress.” The slow rollout of the plan itself also gave conservative legal activists ample time to plot their attack.

With the aid of Democratic Party incompetence, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority developed several arguments for striking down the debt relief plan. “The question here is not whether something should be done,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “it is who has the authority to do it.” Through its broad interpretation of the HEROES Act, he asserted, the “Executive [was] seizing the power of the Legislature.” The HEROES Act allows the president (through the secretary of education) to “waive” or “modify” student loan obligations during a national emergency, but the student loan forgiveness plan, Roberts said with derision, “has ‘modified’ the cited provisions [of the HEROES Act] only in the same sense that the French Revolution ‘modified’ the status of the French nobility.” Besides, Roberts added, the plan was announced just “a few weeks before President Biden stated that ‘the pandemic is over,’” undermining the plan’s COVID-19 emergency rationale.

The overarching problem, according to the six conservative justices for whom Roberts wrote, was that the cancelation of $430 billion in debt was “a decision of such magnitude and consequence” and a matter of such “earnest and profound debate across the country” that it must “rest with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation” from Congress. If Congress wanted such bold executive action, it would have said so explicitly. Roberts referred to this logic as the “major questions doctrine,” a term first used by the Supreme Court in last term’s West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency decision but articulated differently in prior cases. “The shared intuition behind these cases,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in her Biden v. Nebraska concurrence, “is that a reasonable speaker would not understand Congress to confer an unusual form of authority [to the executive] without saying more.”

In both Roberts’s and Barrett’s opinions, discussions of pragmatism and Supreme Court precedents are much more prominent than discussions of the Constitution’s original meaning. Nevertheless, Roberts and Barrett trace the major questions doctrine to the separation of powers created by the Constitution. By stopping the executive branch from playing fast and loose with the powers given to it by Congress, the conservative justices believe that the major questions doctrine preserves the Constitution’s promise of a legislature that legislates and an executive that “faithfully” enforces the law but does not make it....>

<....The Danger of the Major Questions Doctrine

On the other hand, an honest “originalist” could justifiably feel uncomfortable with the major questions doctrine. Although the framers of the Constitution deliberately vested “all legislative powers” in Congress, not the executive, it is debatable at best to conclude that the judiciary was supposed to police congressional delegations to the executive when the executive acted on matters of “earnest and profound debate.” Indeed, the original purpose of originalism — as popularized by conservatives in the 1970s and 1980s — was supposedly to cut the judiciary down to the modest role that the framers intended it to have. The major questions doctrine runs squarely against this purpose: it is a judge-made concept that gives more power to judges.

Apart from its dubious roots in the text, history, and structure of the Constitution, the major questions doctrine poses serious threats to the functionality of the federal government. As Justice Elena Kagan emphasized in her Biden v. Nebraska dissent, “Congress delegates to agencies often and broadly . . . because agencies have expertise Congress lacks,” “because times and circumstances change, and agencies are better able to keep up and respond,” and “because Congress knows that if it had to do everything, many desirable and even necessary things wouldn’t get done.”

In the context of student loan forgiveness, it seems as though the HEROES Act was a textbook example of broad delegation. In 1991 and 2002, Congress passed legislation providing student loan relief for Americans serving in the First Gulf War and those affected by the 9/11 attacks; in 2003, as Justice Kagan notes, “with those one-off statutes in its short-term memory, Congress decided there was a need for a broader and more durable emergency authorization,” so the HEROES Act did not mention any particular emergency, leaving this at the future discretion of the president and the secretary of education. It is irrelevant that President Biden said the pandemic was over “a few weeks” soon after announcing the student loan relief program, because a formal state of emergency still existed when the program was announced, and this is all the HEROES Act requires....>

<....To be sure, it might have been unwise — and may often be unwise — for Congress to provide such broad delegations of power to the executive. Executive agencies are not always accountable and can be captured by the industries that they are supposed to regulate. But this has long been a complaint for the elected Congress or the elected president, not the unelected Supreme Court. The court waded into this territory in the 1930s, undermining New Deal legislation, but since 1937, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt threatened to pack the court, it has largely left the elected branches to figure out how they should divide or share their constitutional powers.

Among other examples, the Supreme Court has upheld delegations to the Federal Communications Commission to regulate in the “public interest,” to the under secretary of war to define “excessive profits” gained by subcontractors during wartime, to the Federal Power Commission to set “just and reasonable rates,” to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to issue air-quality standards “requisite to protect the public health,” and to the US Sentencing Commission to set federal sentencing guidelines. For better or worse, almost the entire machinery of the federal government has come to rely on expansively worded delegations.

This is why the major questions doctrine is so dangerous. It allows the Supreme Court to look at almost any consequential action by a federal agency and question whether it was ever really authorized by Congress. Prior to Biden v. Nebraska, the current conservative Supreme Court has applied the doctrine to invalidate the EPA’s Clean Power Plan and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s eviction moratorium. In each case, the court reassured the public that it was not declaring these policies to be unconstitutional; it was only requiring Congress to be more explicit about what powers it had delegated. The problem, of course, is that Congress can rarely do this, because small factions can easily sabotage legislation, the Senate is a giant obstruction machine, and any remotely progressive legislation activates fierce resistance from powerful donors. In this context, the main achievement of the major questions doctrine will be an even more dysfunctional federal government.

Usually, the ability of the judiciary to implement dangerous doctrines such as this is limited by the Supreme Court’s standing rules. These rules require that a plaintiff show a real or imminent injury stemming from the government action that they seek to invalidate; they cannot simply say, “This is illegal!” and have their day in court. But in the Biden v. Nebraska case, the Supreme Court accepted a highly dubious theory of standing, allowing the state of Missouri (not, as the case name would suggest, Nebraska, which was one of five other states bringing suit) to sue on behalf of the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, a state-created corporation that is financially and legally independent from the state. Missouri itself suffered no plausible injury as a result of the student loan forgiveness plan.

If the Supreme Court is willing to make it this easy for states to sue the federal government, then the major questions doctrine will be coming soon to a courtroom near you. More menacingly, conservative legal activists will accelerate toward their long-standing goal of dismantling the “administrative state.”>

<Chief Justice Annette Ziegler complained about her liberal colleagues and accused them of a “raw exercise of overreaching power.” However, Justice Rebecca Dallet fired back, claiming that their moves were designed to make the court “more accessible and more accountable to the people of Wisconsin.”

Making the Court more responsive

Liberal Justice Rebecca Dallet said after four justices voted to slash the power of the Court’s conservative chief Justice, impose new filing deadlines, and reopen organizational meetings that these changes will make the court “more inclusive, timely, and responsive.” However, deep partisan divisions on the court aren’t new, especially in this state.

Liberals took over after 15 years

For the first time in 15 years, Wisconsin has a Democratic majority, and it will remain that way for at least two years. The Court’s administrative conferences were opened in 1999 but were closed down in 2012 by the GOP majority. Ziegler also accused “four rogue members of the court” of meeting in a “secret, unscheduled, illegitimate closed meeting in an attempt to get the Chief Justice’s constitutional authority as an administrator of the court.” She said any such action is “illegitimate and unenforceable.”

Allegations on social media

Other conservative justices also shared their discontent primarily via X. Conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote a lengthy three-part post on X that opened with “Ann Bradley & her cabal of extreme leftists-Rebecca Dallet, Jill Karofsky & Janet Protasiewicz, met in secret, without their colleagues, to usurp the power the people gave the Chief Justice. They have no respect for the people they are supposed to serve or for the constitution.”

Dallet’s response

In response, Justice Dallet expressed, “On behalf of a majority of justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, I want to express my disappointment that the Chief Justice, rather than collegially participate in a scheduled meeting of the court today, is litigating issues normally discussed by Justices either in conference or through email, through media releases.” The Justice added, “It is not my intention, nor the intention of a majority of my colleagues, to continue to litigate internal issues through the media.”

Changes in deadlines

Madison wrote that according to the new procedure, any concurrences or dissents from the deadline “shall be circulated within seven business days of the circulation of the order granting or denying a petition to commence an original action.”

Open meetings

Another significant change would mean returning to holding open, public administrative meetings, a practice abandoned in 2012 and again five years ago. According to Madison, this means, “Wisconsin high court justices would discuss and vote on changing judicial policies across the state court system, including when they should recuse themselves from Supreme Court cases, rules regarding evidence and coming up with new ways to encourage lawyers to provide free legal services.”

Judge Protasiewicz said she supported opening the court meetings

Janet Protasiewicz was elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in one of our nation’s most expensive court races. Her term started on August 1st, and during the swear-in, the Judge said, “The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s execution of our duties without favor to special interests, political pressure, or our own personal beliefs is vital to giving the people of our state trust and confidence in our judicial system.”>

<A Democratic congresswoman from North Carolina with a history of more than 50 late stock disclosures appears to have violated a decade-old federal transparency and conflicts-of-interest law.

Again.

Rep. Kathy Manning (D-N.C.) reported purchasing $29,122 worth of stock in investment management company Blackstone Inc. on June 10, 2022, jointly with her husband — more than a year late, according to an Aug. 2 federal filing reviewed by Raw Story.

“The purchase was inadvertently omitted due to an administrative error. The error was discovered during preparation of the 2022 Annual Report for timely filing on August 2, 2023,” read a description on Manning’s filing.

The description noted that Manning sold the stock at a loss five days later for $25,755 on June 15, 2022, which she correctly reported to U.S. House officials on July 7, 2022 report.

But Manning never disclosed she purchased the stock in the first place — a requirement of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act. The law, passed in 2012 to stop insider trading, curb conflicts-of-interest and enhance transparency, requires prompt reporting within 45 days of most purchases, sales and exchanges of stocks, bonds, commodity futures and cryptocurrency by key government officials, particularly members of Congress.

This is Manning’s second known STOCK Act violation. Sludge reported in February 2022 that Manning and her husband failed to properly report 51 trades totaling between $275,000 and $1.25 million.

Many of the 51 stocks were in tech companies such as Meta and Amazon, which have faced high-stakes legislative battles in Congress.

The couple’s stock transactions with Nvidia, meanwhile, came at a time when the semiconductor company stood to benefit from billions in subsidies from the America COMPETES Act, according to Sludge.

Manning was one of eight representatives who signed a letter asking for the delay of a House Judiciary Committee markup of antitrust bills, Sludge reported as well.

Manning also purchased shares in chip manufacturers, Micron Technology and Nvidia, on July 27, 2022, the day before she voted for the bipartisan CHIPS Act. But she said the purchases were made by a third-party broker, not by herself or husband directly, local North Carolina Fox station WGHP reported.

“Congresswoman Manning and her husband have no discretion or control over the underlying assets held in the accounts. Neither Congresswoman Manning nor her husband exercised, or attempted to exercise, any control or direction over any transactions executed within the accounts,” said a statement from Manning’s staff sent to WGHP. “Congresswoman Manning supported the CHIPS Act because it will incentivize investments in semiconductor manufacturing in the United States, which will create good-paying jobs, strengthen our country’s competitive edge, and protect our national security.”

Manning’s congressional office did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.

The standard fine for violating the STOCK Act is $200, but the House Committee on Ethics and Senate Select Committee on Ethics have historically waived the fees for many violators.

In a recent interview with Raw Story, one of the STOCK Act’s original authors, former Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA), blasted Congress for its continued excuses for failing to abide by the law.

“I mean, come on. ‘The dog ate my homework,’ aren’t we a little more grown up than that?” Baird said. “If we're capable of voting on whether or not to raise or lower taxes or send people to war, I think we can report when we make an investment.”

Epidemic of violations

Dozens of members of Congress have failed to comply with the STOCK Act. During the 117th Congress from 2021 to 2022, at least 78 members of Congress — Democrats and Republicans alike — were found to have violated the STOCK Act's disclosure provisions, according to a tally maintained by Insider.

Raw Story has this year identified at least 19 members of the 118th Congress who have broken the federal conflicts of interest law, including the new addition of Manning.

In recent weeks, repeat violators have broken the federal disclosure law again — Rep. Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) violated the STOCK Act for the third time in 14 months, and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) was several months late disclosing a family stock sale — again.

And Manning isn’t the only North Carolina legislator to violate the STOCK Act.

Of the 19 legislators Raw Story has identified as violating the STOCK Act, four of them are from North Carolina — Manning, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C). and Rep. Deborah Ross (D-N.C). That’s one in four members of North Carolina’s 16-member congressional delegation — 14 House members and two senators....>

<....The ongoing violations come at a time when a bipartisan group of lawmakers have introduced several similar bills aimed at banning congressional stock trading.

The most recent legislation introduced is the Ban Stock Trading for Government Officials Act, which would prohibit members of Congress, the president, the vice president, senior executive branch officials, their spouses and children from trading stocks and would require greater transparency with financial disclosures, The Hill reported.

Another two-party bill, the Bipartisan Restoring Faith in Government Act was introduced in May and is co-sponsored in part by political rivals in Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL).

Other materially similar bills include the Ending Trading and Holdings in Congressional Stocks (ETHICS) Act, the TRUST in Congress Act and the Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments (PELOSI) Act. In the decade since the STOCK Act’s passage, the push for a total ban on lawmakers trading stocks while in office gained but then lost momentum last year when the Democratic-led House, then led by Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, decided not to conduct a hearing on any of stock-ban bills and never brought it to the House floor for a vote.

News organizations including the New York Times, Insider, NPR and Sludge have documented rampant financial conflicts of interests among dozens of members of Congress, such as those who bought and sold defense contractor stock while occupying positions on congressional armed services committees or otherwise voting on measures to send such companies billions of federal dollars. The executive and judicial branches are riddled with similar financial conflict issues, too, as the Wall Street Journal has reported.

The Wall Street Journal won a 2023 Pulitzer Prize for its investigation into financial conflicts among officials who work in federal agencies while Insider won the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sunshine Award for its reporting on congressional financial conflicts.>

<A stunning new ruling on Monday by U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida Judge Aileen Cannon that would expose secret grand jury testimony is grounds for the Department of Justice to call for her removal from overseeing the 40-count indictment filed against Donald Trump.

That is the opinion of former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance after Cannon questioned "the legal propriety of using an out-of-district grand jury proceeding" and struck two sealed motions filed by prosecutors pursuing the former president over the stolen government documents he was hoarding at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

As part of her ruling, she is giving government lawyers until Aug. 22. to defend their request which raises questions about possible conflicts of interest by Trump aide Walt Nauta's lawyer, Stanley Woodward.

News of the ruling -- and its implications as far as testimony privacy matters -- led former U.S. Attorney Vance to suggest there is now cause to ask the supervising Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals to intervene and strip her of the case.

"Judge Cannon responds to the govt's request for a hearing on Nauta's lawyer's conflicts & discloses the existence of a grand jury investigation in another district while denying gov't's motion to seal. The govt can appeal. This may tee up the issue of her fitness on this case," Vance tweeted.

She added, "Looking like a good week to ask the 11th Circuit to replace the judge."

MSNBC host and former prosecutor Katie Phang agreed, chiming in with: "If the DOJ filed under seal certain documents, and Judge Cannon just disclosed the existence of an otherwise confidential grand jury proceeding, we might be at the motion for recusal stage for the DOJ…"

Former senior DOJ official Harry Litman also questioned what Cannon is doing by writing, "I'm betting that Judge Cannon's account of the out-of-district investigation is not the full story. But hard to see how she can justify not sealing her order referring to another Grand Jury. Could this be a possible vehicle for taking her up and seeking her recusal? Not clear yet."

And Andrew Weissmann, a former prosecutor who worked for special counsel Robert Mueller, argued that Cannon was either showing bias or ignorance with her latest ruling.

"The obstruction crimes that were investigated are charges that could have been brought in FLA or in DC and thus could be investigated in either district," he wrote. "And there was conduct that is alleged to have occurred outside FLA."

Reuters recently reported that Cannon bungled a previous case which led one law professor to remark, "She ignored the public trial right entirely. It's as though she didn't know it existed.">

<In June 1953, at the height of the McCarthy era, while congressional investigators and private groups were hunting down “subversive” or merely “objectionable” books and authors in the name of national security, the American Library Association and the Association Book Publishers Council issued a manifesto called “The Freedom to Read.” The document defended free expression and denounced censorship and conformity in language whose clarity and force are startling today. It argued for “the widest diversity of views and expressions” and against purging work based on “the personal history or political affiliations of the author.” It urged publishers and librarians to resist government and private suppression, and to “give full meaning to the freedom to read by providing books that enrich the quality and diversity of thought.” The manifesto took on not just official censorship, but the broader atmosphere of coercion and groupthink. It concluded: “We do not state these propositions in the comfortable belief that what people read is unimportant. We believe rather that what people read is deeply important; that ideas can be dangerous; but that the suppression of ideas is fatal to a democratic society. Freedom itself is a dangerous way of life, but it is ours.”

“The Freedom to Read” was covered in papers and on TV news. President Dwight Eisenhower, who that same month had urged the graduating class of Dartmouth College not to “join the book burners,”’ sent a letter of praise to the manifesto’s authors. In one of the darkest periods of American history, the manifesto gave librarians and publishers the courage of their principles. One librarian later wrote, “There developed a fighting profession, made up of dedicated people who were sure of their direction.”

This past June, the library and publishers’ associations reissued “The Freedom to Read” on its 70th anniversary. Scores of publishers, libraries, literary groups, civil-liberty organizations, and authors signed on to endorse its principles. And yet many of those institutional signatories—including the “Big Five” publishing conglomerates—often violate its propositions, perhaps not even aware that they’re doing so. Few of them, if any, could produce as unapologetic a defense of intellectual freedom as the one made at a time when inquisitors were destroying careers and lives. It’s worth asking why the American literary world in 2023 is less able to uphold the principles of “The Freedom to Read” than its authors in 1953.

The attack on intellectual freedom today is coming from several directions. First—and likely the main concern of the signatories—is an official campaign by governors, state legislatures, local governments, and school boards to weed out books and ideas they don’t like. Most of the targets are politically on the left; most present facts or express views about race, gender, and sexuality that the censors consider dangerous, divisive, obscene, or simply wrong. The effort began in Texas as early as 2020, before public hysteria and political opportunism spread the campaign to Florida and other states, and to every level of education, removing from library shelves and class reading lists several thousand books by writers such as Toni Morrison and Malala Yousafzai.

Given that states and school districts have a responsibility to set public-school curricula, not all of this can be called government censorship. But laws and policies to prevent students from encountering controversial, unpopular, even offensive writers and ideas amount to a powerfully repressive campaign of book banning, some of it probably unconstitutional. The campaign stems from an American tradition of small-minded panic at rapid change and unorthodox thinking. You can draw a line from Tennessee’s 1925 Scopes trial to Florida’s 2022 Stop WOKE Act. This threat to intellectual freedom is the easiest one for the progressive and enlightened people who predominate in the book world to oppose. No one at Penguin Random House or the National Book Foundation hesitates to stand up for Gender Queer and The Handmaid’s Tale....>

<....“There is more than one way to burn a book,” Ray Bradbury once said. “And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.” The second threat to intellectual freedom comes from a different source—from inside the house. This threat is the subject of a new report that PEN America has just published, “Booklash: Literary Freedom, Online Outrage, and the Language of Harm.” (Because I have written about censorship and language in the past, PEN asked me to read and respond to an earlier draft and gave me an advance copy of the final version.) The report is focused on the recent pattern of publishers and authors canceling their own books, sometimes after publication, under pressure organized online or by members, often younger ones, of their own staffs. PEN has tracked 31 cases of what might be called literary infanticide since 2016; half occurred in just the past two years. “None of these books were withdrawn based on any allegation of factual disinformation, nor glorification of violence, nor plagiarism,” the report notes. “Their content or author was simply deemed offensive.”

A few cases became big news. Hachette canceled Woody Allen’s autobiography after a staff walkout, and Blake Bailey’s biography of Philip Roth was withdrawn after publication by Norton, both following accusations of sexual misconduct by the authors (Allen and Bailey denied the accusations). Publishers have canceled books following an author’s public remarks—for example, those of the cartoonist Scott Adams, the British journalist Julie Burchill, and the right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.

In one particularly wild case, an author named Natasha Tynes, on the verge of publishing her first novel, a crime thriller, saw a Black employee of the Washington, D.C., Metro system eating on a train (a violation of the system’s rules). She tweeted a picture of the woman at the transit authority with a complaint, and immediately found herself transformed into a viral racist. Within hours her distributor, Rare Bird Books, had dropped the novel, tweeting that Tynes “did something truly horrible today.” The publisher, California Coldblood, after trying to wash its hands of the book, eventually went ahead with publication “due to contractual obligations,” but the novel was as good as dead. “How can you expect authors to be these perfect creatures who never commit any faults?” Tynes lamented to PEN. Most publishers now include a boilerplate morals clause in book contracts that legitimizes these cancellations—a loophole that contradicts tenets of “The Freedom to Read” that those publishers endorsed.

Many of the cases discussed in the report have nothing to do with an author’s offensive statements or bad behavior. Instead, they involve sins of phrasing, characterization, plot, subject matter, or authorial identity. Last year Picador dropped a schoolteacher’s prizewinning memoir when it was attacked for racially insensitive portrayals. A scholarly study of Black feminist culture was withdrawn by Wipf and Stock after critics pointed out that its author was white. Simon & Schuster preemptively killed a biography for children of Hitler because of Hitler. Four young-adult and children’s novels (which seem particularly vulnerable to attack) were pulled for supposedly offensive stories and descriptions. One of them, A Place for Wolves—a novel about two gay American boys set in Kosovo during its war with Serbia—was canceled by its author, Kosoko Jackson, himself a prosecutor of literary offenses via Twitter, after people on social media accused him of violating his own edict about identity placing strict limits on appropriate subject matter: “Stories about the civil rights movement should be written by black people,” he’d tweeted. “Stories of suffrage should be written by women. Ergo, stories about boys during horrific and life changing times, like the AIDS EPIDEMIC, should be written by gay men. Why is this so hard to get?”....>

<....At the heart of these literary autos-da-fé is identity—or, in a phrase the report uses several times, “marginalized identities.” The trip wires that can blow up a writer’s work—charges of “harmful” language, failures of “representation,” “appropriation,” or generally “problematic” content—are all strung along lines of identity. When Jeanine Cummins, a white writer, received a lot attention (and, reportedly, a seven-figure book deal) in 2020 for American Dirt, a novel about a Mexican mother and child on the run from a drug gang, she was denounced for taking an opportunity that should have gone to a Latina author who would, some critics said, have written a better book. Her publisher, Flatiron/Macmillan, didn’t pull the novel—it was selling far too many copies—but it canceled Cummins’s tour, citing safety concerns, and issued an abject statement of self-criticism. The ordeal of American Dirt showed publishers that crossing lines of identity can be dangerous, prompting one former editor, interviewed anonymously by PEN, to ask: “Are we saying that not anyone can write any story? Do you have to have a certain identity? There’s a lot of fear around that.”

A skeptic might ask why a few dozen awkward decisions and minor controversies out of tens of thousands of books published every year should matter. The answer is that these incidents reveal an atmosphere of conformity and fear that undermines any claim book publishing has to being more than just a business. Most of the canceled books described in the report are victims of a pervasive orthodoxy. At its most rigid, this orthodoxy puts the claims of identity above everything else—literary quality, authorial independence, the freedom to read. Its reach can be seen in how many of the canceled books were already making obvious, if clumsy, efforts to abide by the values of equity and inclusion; and in Natasha Tynes’s attempt to defend herself from online attacks by pleading that she herself is “a minority writer.”

Eventually, orthodoxy makes the suppression of books unnecessary because it leads to self-censorship by editors and writers. One canceled author interviewed by PEN said, “It has shut me down, creatively. There is always a censor, perched on my shoulder, telling me I cannot write about this or that topic.” What writer can honestly say it isn’t true of them? Almost none of the editors interviewed for the PEN report were willing to be quoted by name. What are they afraid of, if not the fate of their authors?

Below the waterline lie all the books that aren’t contracted, or even written, because of the examples that become public. In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, the best-selling author Richard North Patterson wrote that his latest novel—about an interracial relationship set against battles over voting rights and white racism—was rejected by “roughly 20” New York publishers. “The seemingly dominant sentiment was that only those personally subject to discrimination could be safely allowed to depict it through fictional characters,” Patterson wrote. (Trial was published in June by a conservative Christian firm in Tennessee and currently ranks around No. 37,000 among all books on Amazon. Several books in the PEN report, canceled by major publishers, were grabbed up by small houses with far less reach.)

PEN is a free-speech organization. Having already issued a lengthy report and numerous statements condemning book banning by state and local governments, it seems to have realized that it could not ignore a pattern of suppression closer to home, by organizations that publish PEN members and sponsor its fundraising galas.

In May, PEN landed in the middle of its own free-speech controversy when two Ukrainian soldier-writers announced that they would withdraw from the organization’s World Voices Festival if two Russian writers were also included on another panel. Rather than cancel the Ukrainians, who had already arrived in the United States, and send them back home to the war, PEN asked the Russian writers and their panel’s moderator, Masha Gessen, a PEN board member, to speak under a different banner, that of PEN America. The Russians and Gessen instead decided to cancel their own event, and Gessen resigned from the board in protest for what was seen as PEN caving in to the Ukrainians’ demands. (One of the Russian writers later said that she did not want to participate if the Ukrainians didn’t want her there.) A month later, PEN declared it “regrettable” and “wrongheaded” when the writer Elizabeth Gilbert suspended publication of her next novel because Ukrainian readers were upset that it was set in Soviet Russia. All of this merely shows that it’s easier to hold a principled position on free speech when you’re not the one facing unpleasant consequences.....>

<....PEN spent months researching and internally debating the new report, anticipating controversy. An early draft was hampered by reflexive hedges and tactical critiques, and a few of them remain in the published report: Accusations of literary harm “risk playing into the hands of book banners” on the right who use the same rhetoric; the publisher of American Dirt might have avoided trouble if it had marketed the novel with more sensitivity.

The report is an important, even courageous, document in our moment. PEN is offering guidance and backbone for a book trade that appears to have lost its nerve and forgotten its mission in the face of ceaseless outrage. Among its recommendations, the report urges that “publishing houses should rarely, if ever, withdraw books from circulation.” It calls for greater transparency and author involvement in any decisions about cancellations. Goodreads, the online review site, where mobs sometimes beat books to death before they’re even finished, let alone published and read, is asked to “encourage authentic reviews” and prevent “review-bombing.”

These technical fixes would greatly improve policies and procedures in the publishing industry, but they can’t solve the wider problem—a climate of intolerance and cowardice that stifles the book world. In the conclusion to its report, PEN calls for “a broader tonal shift in literary discourse,” which is necessary but probably beyond the power of any report. Essentially, PEN is saying to the remaining gatekeepers, “Remember your purpose,” and to the new gate-crashers, “Don’t use speech to limit speech.” For inspiration it reprints “The Freedom to Read” in full and urges workers in the book world to take it to heart. Ayad Akhtar, the president of PEN America, told me that he hopes publishers will include the 70-year-old manifesto along with DEI training for new hires. PEN wants its report to have an effect similar to that of the earlier document—to make publishing once more “a fighting profession.”

And yet something holds the report back from using the full-throated language of “The Freedom to Read.” I think the difficulty lies in an earlier report that PEN published last year.

In “Reading Between the Lines: Race, Equity, and Book Publishing,” PEN examined in detail how the American book business has always been and, despite recent improvements, remains a clubby world of the white, well connected, and well-off. It presented a damning picture, backed by data, of “the white lens through which writers, editors, and publishers curate America’s literature.” It called for publishers to hire and promote more staff of color, publish more books by writers of color, pay them higher advances, and sell their books more intelligently and vigorously.

The two reports are related, but the relation is fraught. The first showed the need for an intensified campaign of diversity, equity, and inclusion across the industry. The second argues for greater freedom to defy the literary strictures of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Is there a contradiction between the two?

PEN doesn’t think so. The new report states: “It is imperative that the literary field chart a course that advances diversity and equity without making these values a cudgel against specific books or writers deemed to fall short in these areas.” In the words of Suzanne Nossel, PEN’s chief executive officer, “You can dismantle the barriers to publication for some without erecting them anew for others.” But this might be wishful thinking, and not only because of practical limits on how many books can feasibly be published. In a different world, it would be entirely possible to expand opportunity without creating a censorious atmosphere. In our world, where DEI has hardened into an ideological litmus test, the effort to place social justice at the center of publishing almost inevitably leads to controversies over “representation” and “harm” that result in banned books. The first report presented DEI in publishing as an urgent moral cause. The second report takes issue with “employees’ increasing expectation that publishers assume moral positions in their curation of catalogs and author lists.” But those employees no doubt believe that they are carrying out the vision of the first report....>

<.....Social justice and intellectual freedom are not inherently opposed—often, each requires the other—but they are not the same thing, either. “The Freedom to Read” makes this clear: “It would conflict with the public interest for [publishers and librarians] to establish their own political, moral, or aesthetic views as a standard for determining what should be published or circulated.” That statement was written at a time when the cause of intellectual freedom was non- or even anti-ideological. Its authors advocated no other goal than the widest and highest-quality expression of views. But in PEN’s new report you can feel a struggle to reconcile the thinking of its earlier one, in which every calculation comes down to identity, with the discriminating judgment and openness to new and disturbing ideas that are essential to producing literature. As one editor told me, “There’s no equity in talent.”

Last year, a federal judge blocked a bid by Penguin Random House, the largest publisher in America, to buy Simon & Schuster, the third largest (a takeover would have practically made the conglomerate a sovereign country). This year, book sales are down across the industry, bringing waves of layoffs; last month, senior editors at Penguin Random House were given the option of a buyout under the shadow of termination, and some of the most illustrious gatekeepers in publishing headed for the door. These events bring me to the third and most serious attack on the written word.

This one is more insidious and pervasive and therefore harder to see clearly, let alone oppose, than book bans and cancellations. It’s the air every writer and reader breathes: the consolidation of publishing into a near-monopoly business; the correspondent shrinking of heterodoxy and risk taking; the fragile economic situation of employees; the withering away of bookstores and book reviews; the growing illiteracy of the public; the decline of English instruction in schools, regardless of political pressures; the data crunching that turns ideas into machine-made products and media into highly sensitive barometers of popularity (with artificial intelligence coming soon to replace the last traces of human originality). All of these trends amount to an assault on the free intellect perpetrated not by Moms for Liberty or YA Twitter, but by Mark Zuckerberg, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Amazon. In a sense, this third attack underlies the other two, because strong emotions and extreme language are programmed into the brains of book banners of every type by algorithms that profit a handful of technology and media giants.

Literature and journalism have never been remunerative fields. But compared with three decades ago, the chances of a serious, sustained career today are far slimmer. I can’t help thinking that these circumstances have something to do with the willingness of publishers to be frightened by a few hundred tweets. Perhaps years of consolidation and precarity have so weakened their conviction in the mission of book publishing that a little outrage online and in house is sufficient to erase it. If the editor’s function is to match the identity of writer and subject matter, then gather data to measure the success of the product, perhaps gatekeepers have finally outlived their usefulness.>