<When former President Donald Trump's attorneys sought to push the ex-president's federal election interference trial to April 2026, they cited the landmark Supreme Court case regarding the infamous convictions of the "Scottsboro Boys" — nine young Black men falsely accused of raping two white women.

In the 1932 decision, Powell v. Alabama, the court's ruling guaranteed the right of a defendant to "reasonable time and opportunity to secure counsel."

The Scottsboro case attracted widespread attention. The men were swiftly arrested, tried, and sentenced within weeks, with hardly had any opportunity to speak with their attorneys before their convictions.

As a result of Powell, the men had their convictions reversed — but the effects of the accusations didn't go away. Collectively, the men had spent decades in prison. By 1950, some battled declining health and violence. One of the men died by suicide.

Trump's legal team, in seeking to fight charges that Trump sought to subvert the 2020 presidential election results, argued that that the former president needed additional time to prepare a defense, pointing to Powell.

US District Judge Tanya Chutkan wasn't persuaded by the citation and set the trial to begin in March 2024.

"I have seen many cases unduly delayed because a defendant lacks adequate representation or cannot properly review discovery because they are detained," the judge said. "That is not the case here."

Chutkan said that Trump — who has not been jailed for any extensive period of time — had a "profoundly different" situation that what was outlined in Powell.

Dehlia Umunna, a professor at Harvard Law School, recently told The Washington Post that it was "unbelievably juvenile" for the Trump team to cite the Scottsboro case.

"The Supreme Court held that there was an explicit denial of due process because the Scottsboro defendants were not afforded reasonable time and opportunity to procure counsel," she told the newspaper. "That is not the case with defendant Trump. His actions leading to these charges occurred over two years ago, and he has several lawyers representing him."

Kenneth W. Mack, a professor of law and an affiliate professor of history at Harvard University, told The Post that the Scottsboro case is "one of the landmarks of American law."

"It is hard to believe that Trump's legal team actually thought that citing it would be persuasive for this judge, or for any subsequent judges who will rule on appeals after the trial is over," he said.

During a CNN interview last week, Trump attorney John Lauro sought to cut through the criticism of the Scottsboro citation, arguing that Powell "is routinely cited in legal briefs and in Supreme Court decisions regarding the right of counsel."

"So we were ethically required to cite to that case and bring the court's attention to the holding and the legal principles that are set forth in Powell v. Alabama," he said. "What we didn't do in any way in our briefing was suggest that there are any parallels back to the factual circumstances of the Powell case with President Trump's case.">

<Republican New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu pinned the GOP's underperformance in recent elections on former President Donald Trump, saying “the Trump brand just doesn’t work.”

“It’s about the former president more than anything,” Sununu said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I’ve had school board members, Republican school board members, that have lost their seat because they felt like they had to constantly answer for being a Trump Republican,” Sununu said.

Trump’s negative influence on elections, Sununu argued, bleeds into local elections at all levels.

“It isn’t just the federal seats. It’s the governorships, the school boards, the congressional seats, all of them, especially in a place like New Hampshire where we can kind of get back and forth. We’re very independent minded. The Trump brand doesn’t work,” Sununu said. “It just doesn’t.”

New Hampshire was one of several states in the 2022 midterm elections that saw Democrats sweep competitive congressional races. That was in part due to Trump-aligned candidates failing to win support from the state's traditionally independent voters. Sununu is one of Trump’s most vocal critics and has urged his party to move on from him as the GOP’s de facto leader.

The New Hampshire governor, who passed on a 2024 presidential bid earlier this year, called on the candidates in the Republican primary race to be “a little tougher on Trump,” also praising presidential candidate and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for his willingness to go after the former president.

“I think they have to be a little tougher on Trump,” Sununu said during the interview. “Chris Christie kind of really goes nuclear on him and God bless Chris. He does a great job with that. He exposes a lot of that which I think is important.”

Sununu took aim at entrepreneur and rising candidate in the primary, Vivek Ramaswamy, for calling Trump “one of the greatest presidents.” The New Hampshire governor said there was too much “kowtowing” to Trump in the first Republican presidential primary debate.

“I think what we saw on the debate stage last week, I think there was still a little too much kowtowing to him. You had Vivek saying he was one of the greatest presidents, but he was going to be better than him,” Sununu said.>

<For months, the slate of Republican presidential contenders have sought to cut into former President Donald Trump's hefty advantage with GOP voters.

Candidates including Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, and Vivek Ramaswamy have spoken of the need for a new generation of conservative leadership. Gov. Ron DeSantis has long touted his governing record in Florida, arguing that he's best suited to produce conservative results. And Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina has sought to project a sort of sunny conservatism, a bit of a departure from what the party has seen in recent years.

Former Govs. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas have taken a more direct approach, openly criticizing Trump and asking GOP voters to move on from the former president.

But none of these approaches have worked, and even as Trump faces four indictments in multiple jurisdictions, he remains in a dominant position with the Republican primary electorate, relegating most of the field to single digits in polling.

As former House Speaker Newt Gingrich recently told The Washington Post, Trump is simply a figure that is unlike anyone else in the Republican Party. And Gingrich said the other candidates are not even on the same plateau.

"I keep trying to tell people, he is not a candidate. You can't think of him as a candidate. He is the leader of a mass movement," Gingrich told the newspaper. "They are competing with a leader in a completely different world."

Gingrich, who ran for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, left an indelible mark on US government throughout his two decades on Capitol Hill.

As a combative congressman from the Atlanta suburbs, he was the face of the 1994 "Republican Revolution," which saw the party regain control of the House of Representatives after 40 years in the minority — with the Senate also flipping to the GOP that year after nearly eight years of Democratic control.

Gingrich assumed the speakership in January 1995, going toe-to-toe with then-President Bill Clinton on everything from the budget to foreign affairs. But after a disappointing GOP midterm performance in 1998 — fueled in part by voter backlash over the party's push to impeach Clinton — Gingrich faced growing dissent within the Republican conference and ceded his leadership role shortly after the election.

He then resigned from the House altogether in January 1999.>

<It appears that a few more of the witnesses involved in the Mar-a-Lago document scandal have abandoned lawyer John Irving, who is being paid for by Donald Trump.

Just a few weeks ago it was revealed in a Justice Department filing that IT supervisor Yuscil Taveras found another attorney outside of Trump world attorney Stanley Woodward, and was beginning to set the record straight after giving false testimony to the grand jury. Now, it appears that in another filing for witness Carlos De Oliveira, lawyer John Irving revealed others are abandoning his services as well.

Page 2 of the filing says: "Further, undersigned counsel no longer represents those three individuals, and new independent counsel is being made available to advise them going forward."

It's unclear if these individuals have turned on Trump, however.

Legal analyst Allison Gill shared the filing Sunday, explaining that special counsel Jack Smith had filed a request for a conflict of interest hearing. Irving is opposing it, but the filing reveals a lot about what's happening behind the scenes.

"The Government does not assert that any actual conflict of interest exists between Mr. De Oliveira and the three potential witnesses that it might call at a trial that currently is scheduled to proceed nearly nine months from now, nor does it 'seek a specific remedy' from the Court," Irving wrote in the filing.

The conflict in question is whether a lawyer paid for by the defendant is a conflict of interest.

"It appears that the other three witnesses repped by Irving have gotten new lawyers, too," wrote Gill. "So now it appears that everyone who gets advice from a lawyer not paid for by Trump has decided to tell the truth and has NOT BEEN INDICTED," Gill wrote on the site previously known as Twitter. She included "lol," meaning she was laughing out loud. "Since De Oliveria has filed his opposition to a conflict of interest hearing about his lawyer, there have been a few sealed entries."

The same thing happened with Woodward, she explained, with details about what the conflict is but asking for it to be under seal. Judge Aileen Cannon, presiding over the case, denied the request, saying it had to be public. Woodward then attacked Smith for not filing it under seal.

"Woodward even accused Jack Smith of releasing otherwise protected information without permission, but Jack Smith filed documents showing he got permission from the DC judge to disclose the details," continued Gill. It prompted her to wonder if Smith shared the details under seal why Irving has a conflict, similar to the way he did with Woodward.

"I'm willing to bet that we'll learn that Irvings [sic] other clients, just like Woodward's, were advised by a public defender, fired his a-s, and came clean. These Trump-paid lawyers do not want their clients to know they're f--king them over," explained Gill.>

<Rudy Giuliani "sealed his own fate" in a Georgia defamation suit that should have been his "case to lose," according to constitutional lawyer Gerry Weber.

On Wednesday, Georgia Judge Beryl Howell ruled against the former New York City mayor in a civil defamation suit brought against him by mother-daughter state election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. Giuliani, acting in his capacity as a legal adviser to Donald Trump, previously made false claims that the pair had committed fraud during the 2020 election, making them two of the most prominent targets for the ire of the former president's supporters.

Howell's ruling against Giuliani was by a default judgment, as the judge found that he had failed to comply with a number of subpoenas, particularly those pertaining to the lawsuit's discovery phase. The judge, in a 57-page opinion, called the discovery materials that he turned over insufficient. A jury will now decide how much Giuliani must pay to Freeman and Moss for his defamatory remarks. Additionally, Howell ordered Giuliani to pay Freeman and Moss' legal fees and costs, which CNN reported could amount to thousands, if not millions, of dollars.

In an opinion column for MSNBC on Sunday, Weber, a constitutional law attorney and adjunct professor at Emory University School of Law, wrote that Giuliani effectively sealed his own fate by failing to adequately provide discovery materials. Had he responded to the subpoenas to the satisfaction of the court, he might have prevailed in the case, given the historically high burden of proof plaintiffs in defamation cases must meet, Weber added.

"But this was Giuliani's case to lose," Weber wrote. "Famously, defamation cases are hard for plaintiffs to win, and purposefully so. Since The New York Times v. Sullivan in 1964, the Supreme Court has set a high bar for plaintiffs in libel cases because the First Amendment requires 'breathing space' to citizens and the press.

He continued: "False statements are not always defamatory. For false statements about famous and powerful people, there must be 'actual malice,' meaning the speaker knows that they are false or makes them with "reckless disregard" for the truth. Freeman and Moss are not powerful folks, and for them the legal path is easier."

Weber further noted that, in July, Giuliani's legal team said in a filing that he did not contest the notion that his statements about Freeman and Moss were false. He did, however, attempt to argue that the pair had not suffered any damage as a result of his statements.

In her decision, Howell also accused Giuliani of destroying evidence relevant to the case. Weber wrote in his column that such actions directly risked being handed a default judgment, which he called "the nuclear bomb of consequences in any lawsuit.">

<A state judge on Saturday rejected congressional district boundaries affecting communities across North Florida, saying they unconstitutionally restrict Black voting power and that Florida’s Legislature must redraw them.

“By dismantling a congressional district that enabled Black voters to elect their candidates of choice under the previous plan, the enacted plan violates … the Florida Constitution,” Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh in Tallahassee ruled.

In the 55-page ruling, he also noted that throughout history "Florida has been a state home to discrimination in voting."

Marsh barred state officials from holding elections that use the current boundaries developed to replace the former Congressional District 5, whose seat was held by former U.S. Rep. Al Lawson.

Weighing a lawsuit brought by groups including Black Voters Matter and the League of Women Voters of Florida, the judge said state lawmakers must develop a “remedial map” to comply with the state's constitution, and he retained control over the case to judge whether the new boundaries pass legal muster.

Secretary of State Cord Byrd promised to appeal the ruling, saying he would seek review by the Florida Supreme Court, the Florida Politics news website reported.

If it stands, the judge’s ruling will force changes to a series of districts between Jacksonville and the Panhandle.

Before last year, District 5 stretched from Jacksonville to Gadsden County west of Tallahassee, connecting largely Democratic Black communities within a region where Republicans enjoyed strong support among white voters.

But a redistricting plan championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and ultimately endorsed by state lawmakers eliminated that district and drew boundaries that allowed Republicans to win 20 of the state's 28 districts, a four-seat increase in the GOP's representation.

Seeking to become the Republican nominee for president, DeSantis has stressed the importance of those gains to Republicans winning a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

In Northeast Florida, the boundary changes meant that Jacksonville neighborhoods once represented by Lawson became part of Congressional District 4, which also covers Clay and Nassau counties and is represented by U.S. Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fla. Baker County, which had been part of District 5, became part of District 3, served by U.S. Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Fla.

Lawson told a USA TODAY Network reporter via text that Marsh's decision “is a victory for the people of North Florida, particularly those communities of color who have been historically disenfranchised.”

As to whether he would run again if the district is restored, Lawson said "there is still more work to be done."

"So any decision about my future plans will come when this process is complete," he said. "My only goal right now is to ensure that fair representation is returned to the people of North Florida.”

The judge's ruling was welcomed by Democrats. Duval County Democratic Party Chair Daniel Henry said that “it’s now incumbent on the Florida Legislature to embrace this ruling, follow the state’s Fair Districts Amendment, and draw a fair and equitable map that restores the voting power of Black voters.”

Voting rights advocates involved in the case also hailed the ruling.

"It should not be lost on the public that Governor DeSantis pushed for the discriminatory map that targeted Black voters with precision," said Olivia Mendoza, the director of litigation and policy for the National Redistricting Foundation. "But when the people tenaciously fought back in court to protect their rights, justice prevailed.">

<A US Congressman who tried to make it illegal for politicians to gerrymander may be ousted from his congressional district.

Why? Because of gerrymandering.

First-term US Rep. Jeff Jackson, a Democrat from North Carolina, issued a warning to his constituents in a video last week, saying the redistricting process would be "brutal."

"In about six weeks, the state legislature here in North Carolina is going to redraw the congressional map, and it looks like they will try to use that as an opportunity to take me out," Jackson said. "The majority party in the state legislature wants one of their own in this district, so they're going to bend it and stretch it to try and make that happen."

Gerrymandering refers to the practice of drawing political districts that give one party a lopsided advantage over the other in an election.

Boundaries for state and federal districts are redrawn every 10 years following the federal census to ensure each district contains roughly the same number of people. Usually, the party in power is the one in control of the redistricting — meaning both Republicans and Democrats have benefited from gerrymandering.

In the last round of redistricting, 26 states approved maps on a partisan basis, the Brennan Center for Justice reported in 2022. Just four states — Arizona, California, Colorado, and Michigan — used fully independent commissions to draw their maps. In an opinion in June, the US Supreme Court said Alabama violated the Voting Rights Act by creating congressional districts that discriminated against Black voters.

In 2015, when he was a member of the state's senate, Jackson filed a bill to establish an independent redistricting commission in North Carolina to draw voting districts instead of the state's lawmakers. But that bill never made it out of committee.

In his video, Jackson said it wasn't a shock to him that he'd be targeted by redistricting, adding that he doesn't think he will be the only Democrat impacted.

"This is what can happen in states where politicians are allowed to draw the political map, which is a bad system, and a lot of states don't allow it, and when I was in the state legislature, the first bill I ever filed was to ban politicians from being able to draw the map, and they sent that bill to a committee that hasn't met in over 20 years," Jackson said.

A spokesperson for Jackson's office did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. Reached for comment via email, the leader of the North Carolina General Assembly's Republican caucus, Rep. Jason Saine, only said that Jackson should "elaborate" on his claims.>

<Former President Donald Trump called states' attempt to disqualify him from the 2024 ballot using the 14th Amendment a "trick" and the latest example of election interference.

Trump said in a post to Truth Social on Monday night that "almost all legal scholars" have agreed that there is "no legal basis or standing" in using the 14th Amendment to keep the former president off the ballot for the presidential election.

"Like Election Interference, it is just another “trick” being used by the Radical Left Communists, Marxists, and Fascists, to again steal an Election that their candidate, the WORST, MOST INCOMPETENT, & MOST CORRUPT President in U.S. history, is incapable of winning in a Free and Fair Election. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" Trump posted.

Using the 14th Amendment to disqualify Trump has gained traction since the former president launched his 2024 bid following the midterm elections. It has received more attention since the announcement of Trump's four legal cases: two at the state level and two at the federal level.

The legal cases have caused conservatives to split over whether to back the former president in 2024 or look for a viable alternative candidate to face President Joe Biden.

Some Republicans are also looking to take steps to keep Trump from the White House in 2024, causing infighting among GOP state parties.

Some conservative legal scholars and critics of the former president say the 14th Amendment bars those who’ve taken an oath to support the Constitution from holding office again if they’ve “engaged in insurrection” against the United States or “given aid or comfort” to its enemies.

Free Speech for People, a legal advocacy group, sent letters to top election officials across nine states last month asking them to keep Trump from the ballot, including New Hampshire.

New Hampshire Republicans have contacted New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan over the disqualification argument, and Scanlan has said he is seeking input from the state's attorney general and other legal counsel.>

<Former President Donald Trump has little hope of getting the charges against him dismissed, argued Etan Mark, a Miami-based lawyer who focuses on civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) cases, to Law & Crime.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has charged Trump and 18 co-conspirators in a sweeping RICO case related to the election — and Georgia is a state where RICO laws are extremely sweeping, having previously allowed her to go after other kinds of entities like street gangs and even a teacher test-cheating ring in Atlanta.

“The Georgia indictment reminds me of the saying, ‘When you shoot at the king, you better not miss,'” said Mark. “The charges against Trump will survive dismissal." In particular, he argued, the charges are durable because they are "detailed and particularized, as RICO indictments must be, and their underpinnings are simple: it’s illegal to try to overturn an election, and any actions taken in furtherance of that scheme constitute predicate acts under RICO.”

Currently, some figures in the indictment like former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, are trying to get their cases dismissed on the grounds that they were acting under federal powers and thus immune. But that doesn't work, said Mark, because in a RICO case, the fact that your actions individually are legal isn't necessarily a defense.

“[I]f a group of people decides to participate in a flash mob because they want to record a TikTok video and become famous, there is nothing illegal about it,” Mark told Law & Crime. However, “if a group of people decides to participate in a flash mob to create a diversion for a getaway car, it is illegal. So motive matters as does the effect of the conduct. Here, the indictment refers to significant evidence suggesting that the purpose of these meetings, phone calls, and communications was to illegally overturn the results of an election, not to schedule a brunch and discuss UGA football.”>

<With Donald Trump facing four criminal indictments, the former president's legal team has been trying to delay his trials. Trump's attorneys requested a 2026 trial in special counsel Jack Smith's prosecution of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results — a request Smith has aggressively pushed back against.

But two of Trump's co-defendants in Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis' 2020 election case, attorneys Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, have a different request, according to the Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery: a "high-speed trial" in October.

Pagliery, in a report published on September 5, explains that if Judge Scott McAfee grants Powell and Chesebro's requests, the "alleged coup plotters" will "have the upper hand — for now."

Defense attorney David Oscar Markus told the Beast, "I think it's a win-win for the defendants. The ones going quickly will have the benefit of the state not being fully ready. The state has to prove the case. And the other defendants will get a free preview."

Pagliery stresses that Trump and his allies will "be closely watching whatever transpires during an early showdown in Fulton County courts." And Trump's legal team, according to Pagliery, "will be taking notes on the tactics displayed in the courtroom" in earlier trials.

Markus told the Beast, "The state won't want to show all their cards, so they may hold some stuff back. In fact, sometimes the state dismisses (a case) against a smaller defendant rather than show its cards for the big target. Now, I don't think that will happen here because it would be too embarrassing. Typically, the defense loves chaos. Prosecutors hate it."

Ronald Carlson, a University of Georgia law professor, told the Beast, "Prosecutors would very likely like to hold some cards back, but they won't want to run the risk of bad optics. You don't want to start it out with headlines that say, 'Chesebro and Powell Acquitted.' That will send a bad message.">

<Jenna Ellis, a conservative lawyer who was charged alongside Donald Trump and 17 others in the Georgia election-interference investigation, is continuing to attack the former president amid speculation she could flip on him during the case.

Ellis served as Trump's lawyer during the 2020 presidential campaign. She has pleaded not guilty to violating the state's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act and soliciting the violation of oath by a public officer as part of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' expansive probe.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges the prosecutor has brought on him and dismissed any possibility that he would accept a plea deal.

Despite at one time being a close ally of Trump, Ellis has started to turn on the former president as he is not paying her legal fees in the Georgia election case. The lawyer has also become a more vocal supporter of Trump's main rival in the GOP 2024 presidential primary, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

While there is no indication Ellis is starting or willing to cooperate with prosecutors in Georgia, she is continuing to speak out against Trump and his 2024 campaign at a time when others charged in the criminal investigation are hoping to be trialed separately.

Willis may be hoping to whittle down the number of defendants in her sprawling RICO case as she aims to put them all on trial together. Newsweek has contacted Ellis' legal team for comment via email.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, discussing the potential to pardon those convicted of non-violent crimes during the January 6 attack, Ellis wrote on September 4: "DeSantis said he would consider pardons on a case by case basis.

"Trump could have issued a blanket pardon before he left office, with certain requisite conditions to be ascertained later on a case by case basis (such as non-violent individuals for instance, to foreclose pardoning anyone in your example). Why didn't he?" she added.

In a separate X post from September 1, Ellis wrote: "Has Trump defended the J6ers [January 6, 2021 accused]? Has Trump defended the indicted lawyers? Has Trump defended the pastors jailed or threatened with fines over [former Chief Medical Advisor Anthony] Fauci's failed covid policies Has he paid for anyone's legal defense except himself (oh and Jason Miller's child support lawyer)?"

Ellis also accused Trump of using supporters' donations to help Miller, senior adviser on Trump's last three presidential campaigns, with his child-support legal battles, in a separate X post....>

<....."I have no problem with Trump using donations to fight a weaponized government. I Encouraged people to donate after the first NY indictment," Ellis wrote. "I do have a problem with Trump using little grandmas' pensions to pay for Jason Miller's child support battles."

In another recent social post expressing support for DeSantis, Ellis said: "I'm sick of a weak and feckless party that has no moral contours and is more concerned with memes than winning. The clear standout is Ron DeSantis, and he's the only shot that Republicans have to win in 2024." However, it is Trump who remains the early frontrunner for the GOP 2024 presidential nomination.

Tristan Snell, a lawyer and former assistant attorney general for New York state, was one of those who said that Ellis could flip on Trump. His post came amid reports the former president is refusing to pay her legal bills in the Georgia case.

"Watch Ellis carefully now. When Trump cuts someone off, it's the tipping point that results in the person flipping on Trump," Snell posted in August. "My bet: Ellis will cooperate."

Michael Cohen, Trump's one-time lawyer, has since become a vocal critic of the former president. He too said in August that the former president is taking a huge risk by not helping Ellis and fellow Georgia defendant and former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani with their legal bills.

"Donald's an idiot. Let me just be very clear when it comes to paying money. He is truly an idiot," Cohen told CNN.

"He has not learned yet that three people you don't want to throw under the bus: your lawyer, your doctor and your mechanic, because one way or the other, you're going to go down the hill, and there'll be no brakes."

Cohen served time in prison after pleading guilty to federal tax crimes; lying to Congress; and to campaign finance violations in 2018. This was in relation to hush-money payments paid to adult film actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal to keep alleged affairs between the women and Trump a secret ahead of the 2016 election.

Cohen later testified against the former president in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's separate falsifying business records investigation over the hush money paid to Daniels, in which Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 charges. The former president denies any wrongdoing. He has frequently accused President Joe Biden's administration of having "weaponized" the FBI and Department of Justice to try to hinder his 2024 presidential campaign.>

Yesterday I saw a film, which may very well be something for you.

It is called "The Card Counter", from 2021, and there is a lot of poker in it. And a very fine composed story, which I enjoyed.

All the best

<“If you’re indicted, you’re invited,” quipped the comedian Joey Adams about a birthday party the disgraced lawyer Roy Cohn threw for himself. Cohn was a source for Adams’s wife Cindy, the New York Post gossip columnist and one of Roy’s pals in the media. Joey and Cindy spilled many a drink aboard Cohn’s yacht, and Cindy got many a spicy story from Cohn.

A glittering guest list drawn from café society — politicians, judges, wealthy businessmen and mobsters gathered at Cohn’s soirées, invited by telegram to pay tribute to the prince of America’s dark side. A perennial guest was the flashy real estate developer Donald Trump.

As a lawyer and a former federal prosecutor, I never thought being indicted was a laughing matter. Cohn enjoyed being indicted (he was three times; beat the rap three times), and Donald Trump may enjoy it just as much. Trump has been indicted four times and stands charged with 91 felony counts, 44 federal and 47 state charges. He is a defendant in a civil suit brought by New York’s attorney general charging him with fraudulent overstatement of his assets. There will also be a separate phase in the defamation action brought by journalist E. Jean Carroll, who says Trump raped her in a department store dressing room many years ago (a jury already returned a verdict for Carroll in a prior incarnation of the case).

In addition, there is the serious case, inevitably to be brought sometime soon, that Trump is disqualified from public office by reason of Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which prevents a former office who has participated in an insurrection or rebellion against the United States from ever again holding public office. Asa Hutchinson or Chris Christie, who have both said they believe Trump disqualified, would have standing to sue. Or the case might arise if election officials in various states refuse to put Trump on the ballot — then Trump, as the aggrieved party, would have standing to sue, and the case would be on a bullet train for the Supreme Court.

Trump’s PAC has already spent an estimated $40 million in legal fees, and the shindig has just begun. His only apparent defense to all his legal troubles is that he might just be elected the 47th president.

A new Wall Street Journal poll encourages him: Trump has the support of nearly 60 percent of GOP primary voters, up 11 points since April, with no one else even close.

Among GOP primary voters, getting indicted would appear to be a badge of honor. Asked about the indictments of Trump, more than 60 percent of Republican primary voters said each was politically motivated and without merit. Some 78 percent said Trump’s actions after the 2020 election were legitimate efforts to ensure an accurate vote, while 16 percent said Trump had illegally tried to block Congress from certifying an election he had lost. 48 percent said the indictments made them more likely to vote for Trump in 2024. There was apparently no polling on the Mar-a-Lago documents case, which lacks the political flavor of the other indictments....>

<.....In the general election, Biden and Trump are locked in a dead heat, 46 percent to 46 percent, in a two-person rematch. A significant share of those polled — some 17 percent — were undecided.

The polling has caused Washington Post columnist Max Boot to tweet: “What is wrong with people?”

Political pundit Ron Brownstein offers this explanation: “Reason why Trump/Biden are so close is polarization & ‘calcification’ leaves few voters open to switching. But there’s more to it. The big factors so far shaping 24 are offsetting each other: inflation & age are hurting Biden while abortion & democracy hurt Trump. Sums to stalemate.”

Trump must not run for office. If he knows what is good for him, he would be well advised to withdraw from the race. Given the gravity and scope of his crimes, the duration of his illegal activity and his abuse of our highest office, justice requires that if he is convicted he receive a prison sentence equal to or greater than those received by lead January 6 defendants. If he withdraws from the race, however, and is remorseful, a judge, seeking to temper justice with mercy, may well not send him to prison out of “the high degree of respect” due the high office he once held.

Biden may also withdraw, particularly if Trump is out, and he has plenty of time to do it. Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection on March 31, 1968. Polls show that most Democrats have serious misgivings about Biden’s age and apparent frailty. Few have any appetite for Kamala Harris, whom many view as a cypher.

The Democrats have a strong bench. A ticket, consisting of, for example, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock would be stronger than any of the seven Republicans on the recent debate stage, none of whom are getting much traction.

We almost lost our precious democracy on January 6 when the mob tried to take over the government, and the plotters attempted to subvert the Constitution. We must not let this happen again.>

<Signs with the website of a white supremacist group were posted outside two Black-owned businesses on Martha's Vineyard.

Cape and Islands District Attorney Robert Galibois said his office has been made aware of the signs in Oak Bluffs, which include the website for the group Patriot Front.

Galibois said the signs were posted outside two businesses that are owned by Black families early Sunday morning. The DA said he has notified all 22 police chiefs in the district and is working with Massachusetts State Police detectives.

"If you observe any of these signs on public property or private property without the owner's permission then please notify your local police department," Galibois said in a statement. "We are all working collectively on identifying the individual(s) involved."

Founded after the "Unite the Right" rally, Patriot Front's manifesto calls for the formation of a white ethnostate in the United States, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center's website.

Its members post flyers and stickers, put banners on buildings or overpasses and even perform acts of public service, designed to maximize propaganda value, the SPLC said.

Also active online, the Patriot Front is one of the nation's most visible white supremacist groups "whose members maintain that their ancestors conquered America and bequeathed it to them, and no one else," according to the Anti-Defamation League.>

<Wisconsin Republicans' plans to impeach state Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz were derailed Tuesday when a state judiciary commission denied "several complaints" against the recently elected judge, Politico reports.

Last week, the Wisconsin Assembly's Republican leader threatened impeachment proceedings against "Protasiewicz if she doesn't recuse herself from cases involving Wisconsin's legislative maps, which GOP lawmakers have aggressively gerrymandered to give themselves what experts say is an illegal electoral advantage."

Wisconsin Judiciary Committee, according to the report, informed the liberal justice in a letter Tuesday that the complaints "had been dismissed without action."

Per Politico, the complaints alleged Protasiewicz "violated the judicial code of ethics for comments she made during the campaign."

The report notes that "In recent weeks, Republican lawmakers have been floating the possibility of impeaching Protasiewicz over her comments calling the legislative maps they drew 'unfair' and 'rigged.'"

The justice said in January, "I don't think you could sell any reasonable person that the maps are fair. I can't tell you what I would do on a particular case, but I can tell you my values, and the maps are wrong.">

<Alabama Republicans’ brash defiance of the Supreme Court hit a wall on Tuesday when a federal district court declared that the state’s new congressional maps discriminate against Black citizens in violation of the Voting Rights Act. The decision was entirely predictable given that GOP lawmakers have openly refused to draw districts that comply with the Supreme Court’s recent ruling against them. But the opinion is still remarkable for its caustic and exasperated criticism of the state’s legislative leaders for their perfidious yet bumbling efforts to evade a court order. The court’s exhaustive 196-page decision not only shoots down the new, racist maps, but also adds a new layer to the case: This dispute is now largely about the federal judiciary’s authority to enforce its own decisions against states dead-set on eviscerating the voting rights of their Black residents. If Alabama appeals to SCOTUS, the justices will notice this shift. And whenever a state legislature challenges the Supreme Court’s power, you should never bet against the court.

Alabama has ruthlessly attempted to undermine the political power of racial minorities since the end of Reconstruction in 1876; the sad truth is that, in 2023, Black Alabamians have not truly acquired equal citizenship in the state. Its state constitution remained an explicitly racist document designed to preserve “white supremacy,” including Jim Crow and slavery until last year, when voters finally replaced it. No Black Alabamian has won a statewide election since Reconstruction. And in 2021, white Republicans exploited their stranglehold on the Legislature to gerrymander racial minorities into a permanent minority. Although the state is nearly one-third Black, the Legislature’s 2021 maps gave Black voters a majority in just one of seven congressional districts. As a result, white voters controlled 86 percent of congressional districts, while only 65 percent of the state’s population is non-Hispanic white.

Voting rights advocates filed suit against this redistricting plan, alleging a violation of the Voting Rights Act. That law includes a requirement, known as Section 2, that racial minorities maintain equal opportunity to elect representatives of their choice. In January 2022, based on long-standing precedent, a right-leaning district court sided with the plaintiffs and ordered the state to draw a second “opportunity” district “in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it.” (These cases are heard by three judges sitting on a district court, and this panel included two Donald Trump appointees.) The Supreme Court affirmed that decision in June in Allen v. Milligan, a 5–4 opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the liberals. Roberts went out of his way to endorse every aspect of the district court’s opinion, including its mandate for a second “opportunity” district controlled by Black voters....>

<....Alabama Republicans, however, treated the Supreme Court’s ruling as a mere suggestion. After a pointless delay, the Legislature enacted a map that contained the same flaws as the old one. Its new “opportunity” district did not give Black voters a majority “or something quite close to it,” as the district court had called for and the Supreme Court had endorsed. Instead, Black Alabamians make up just under 40 percent of the district’s voting-age population. Of course, 40 percent is not a majority, nor is it “quite close to” a majority under the Supreme Court’s voting rights precedents. GOP House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter gave the game away when he explained that “the Supreme Court ruling was 5–4, so there’s just one judge that needed to see something different.” His goal was not to draw a lawful map, but to peel off a conservative justice from the Supreme Court majority. Indeed, he and his colleagues did not even claim to follow the court’s order. They simply insisted that their new map restarted the entire legal process, erasing the court’s past analysis and forcing it to begin again from square one.

The district court did not agree. “We are deeply troubled,” it declared on Tuesday, “that the state enacted a map that the state readily admits does not provide the remedy we said federal law requires. We are disturbed by the evidence that the state delayed remedial proceedings but ultimately did not even nurture the ambition to provide the required remedy. And we are struck by the extraordinary circumstance we face.” Never before, the court noted, has a state submitted a revised redistricting plan that, by the state’s own admission, fails to comport with a previous order. Somehow, decades after the racist reign of George Wallace, we are in uncharted waters when it comes to racist voter suppression in Alabama.

Again, Alabama’s chief argument at this stage is that every time the Legislature redraws a map, courts must throw out their prior analysis and restart the case afresh. Moreover, according to the state, courts must permit elections under the challenged plan while mulling each redrawn map. And if a court strikes down a new map, it must put its ruling on hold for any upcoming races. It must also wait for the Legislature to draw a substitute map before imposing its own, even if the Legislature drags its feet in a bid to run out the clock to the next election....>

<....The court found this position not just unpersuasive, but unconstitutional. “The state’s view,” it proclaimed, “is inconsistent with the Article III judicial power because it allows the state to constrain (indeed, to manipulate) the court’s authority to grant equitable relief.” Alabama seeks to create “an endless paradox that only it can break, thereby depriving plaintiffs of the ability to effectively challenge and the courts of the ability to remedy.” States cannot transform voting rights litigation into an “infinity loop” that only they may stop.

Then, just to drive in the ax, the court went ahead and assessed the new map from “ground zero anyway.” It easily concluded that, like the previous plan, these districts violated the Voting Rights Act by denying Black citizens an equal shot at electing their preferred representatives.

There were other digs along the way. Last time around, the court found that the testimony of Alabama’s “expert” witness, Thomas Bryan, was not credible, but rooted in errors, confusion, and “odious” race stereotyping. This time, “it is as though our credibility determination never occurred,” the court wrote. “The state repeatedly cites Mr. Bryan’s opinions but makes no effort to rehabilitate his credibility.” Alabama’s attempt to smear the Voting Rights Act as unconstitutional racism fared no better. The state claimed that protecting Black voters would amount to “affirmative action in redistricting” that violates the equal protection clause. It even suggested that the district court’s own order could run afoul of equal protection by, in essence, overprotecting Black citizens.

Here, Alabama was trying to channel Kavanaugh’s musing that, like affirmative action, “race-based redistricting” must have an endpoint—which, the state says, is right now. In its blundering effort to raise this argument, though, the state wound up accusing the district court itself of racism. And so, in yet another way, Alabama Republicans made this case about the judiciary’s own power to enforce the Voting Rights Act rather than a legal quarrel over the law’s scope. As the Supreme Court made clear in a different election case last term, it does not look kindly upon state legislatures that question such judicial authority.

The district court closed out its opinion by directing a nonpartisan, court-appointed special master to draw, at long last, a congressional map that complies with the Voting Rights Act by including two “opportunity” districts controlled by citizens of color. Alabama will probably ask the Supreme Court to intervene; its odds of success appear slim.

The state has pivoted to a strategy of bashing the very district court that a majority of justices already affirmed in full. It has turned this case into a referendum on the federal judiciary’s ability to enforce federal voting rights law—in essence, an assault on the Constitution’s supremacy clause itself. Roberts, Kavanaugh, and the liberals may not all agree on the precise contours of the Voting Rights Act. But they are united in their certainty that their decisions, not the gripes of some supercilious state legislators, are the law of the land.>

<A new poll showing Representative Lauren Boebert trailing behind Democrat Adam Frisch has sparked a flurry of campaign emails warning her supporters about how dire her position in the race has become.

"If we don't turn things around quickly, we could lose this seat to the Democrats," an August 29 email sent by her campaign read. "I can't believe I'm saying those words, but I need you to understand how dire this situation is. [Adam Frisch's] latest internal polls have him beating us by two points."

The likely rematch between Boebert and Frisch, the Democrat who challenged the MAGA star in 2022, has been increasingly heating up. Already shaping up to be one of the closest watched races in the 2024 elections, the contest is a battle for the Republican stronghold of Colorado's 3rd Congressional district.

Frisch had been widely viewed as a long-shot candidate, but the margin of 546 votes in the last election turned Boebert's easy re-election on its head and made it the closest congressional race of the midterms. While Frisch proved to be a real threat to the congresswoman, he had still struggled to make gains on her in the polls.

That changed last month when Keating Research released the first poll showing Frisch in the lead with a 2-percentage point advantage over Boebert. The August 22 survey also showed Frisch with a 42 percent favorability rating among voters in the district and Boebert with 34 percent.

Keating Research, a Democratic polling firm, was the only pollster to accurately predict a dangerously close race between Boebert and Frisch last year.

"This tracks with everything that we've been shouting from the rooftops for months: this is the hottest race in the country," Boebert's campaign told her supporters in an August 28 email. "At the rate that we're going, our race could be out of reach before we even hit 2024."

In another email from August 30, former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told Colorado Republicans, "If the Election were held today... Lauren would lose."

The emails pointed out that Frisch is continuing to outraise Boebert's campaign. Frisch has raised the fourth-highest amount of any 2024 congressional candidate with $4.4 million, while Boebert has only raised $1.6 million this year.

"The outpouring of support for Frisch, particularly from Colorado residents and grassroots donors, comes as Boebert continues her extremist antics despite her exceptionally narrow victory of 546 votes against Frisch in 2022," the Democrat said in a July email that noted more than 98 percent of his contributions were low-dollar donations of $100 or less.

Boebert's campaign has stressed that Frisch would still need to win the Democratic primary against other candidates, like Grand Junction Mayor Anna Stout who is also running for the Democratic nomination, to appear on the general ballot against the congresswoman.

"For the poll to have any relevance Aspen Adam needs to secure the Democrat nomination, which he only won by a couple hundred votes last time," Boebert's campaign manager Drew Sexton previously told Newsweek.>

It is an ill wind indeed for GOP adherents when even Kellyanne Airhead is sounding the trumpets of doom.

<With Labor Day having come and gone, Congress’ summer break is wrapping up, with senators returning to Capitol Hill this week, and House members getting back to work next week. Collectively, they’re confronting a lengthy to-do list — along with some tough deadlines.

At the top of the list, of course, is funding federal operations and preventing a government shutdown by the end of the month, but it’s not the only task lawmakers have to complete in the coming weeks. There’s also work on a new farm bill, the need to reauthorize the FAA, funding for domestic disaster relief, and a new round of aid to our Ukrainian allies.

But for some Republican members, there’s an entirely different priority weighing heavily on their minds.

Last week, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene declared her intention to move toward a government shutdown unless GOP leaders advanced an impeachment push against President Joe Biden. “I’ve already decided I will not vote to fund the government unless we have passed an impeachment inquiry on Joe Biden,” the Georgia Republican said.

Yesterday, as The Hill reported, one of Greene’s cohorts made related comments, which were likely noticed by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

“I worked very hard in January to develop a toolkit for House Republicans to use in a productive and positive way. I don’t believe we’ve used those tools as effectively as we should have,” Gaetz told a conservative radio host, adding that when the lower chamber gets back to work next week, the GOP majority has to “seize the initiative.”

“That means forcing votes on impeachment,” the Florida Republican said. “And if Speaker McCarthy stands in our way, he may not have the job long.”

Have I mentioned that there's literally zero evidence of Biden having done anything wrong? And there's no reason whatsoever to begin an impeachment inquiry? Because there’s literally zero evidence of Biden having done anything wrong and there’s no reason whatsoever to begin an impeachment inquiry.

Gaetz didn’t go into specific details about the strategy he has in mind, but the unsubtle threat directed at his party’s House speaker was almost certainly a reference to motion-to-vacate-the-chair rules that were tweaked in January to make it easier for GOP members to try to take McCarthy’s gavel away.

Gaetz’s comments also came just a few days after Republican Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho said that House GOP leaders would likely have to work with Democrats to prevent a shutdown, which would complicate the larger partisan dynamic.

“The challenge for McCarthy, and I’ll be real honest with you, is that if he works with the Democrats, obviously, the Democrats are not going to do it for free. They want something. So, it’s going to be a compromise — one of those really bad words in Washington for some reason,” Simpson told CNN. “Then you’re going to find a resolution introduced on the floor to vacate the chair.”

Looking ahead, there’s no obvious path for the House speaker. If he tries to satisfy Greene and Gaetz by holding a floor vote on an impeachment inquiry, it would likely fail. If McCarthy doesn’t hold the vote, some of his members would likely push Congress closer to a government shutdown.

If the speaker tries to advance appropriations bills to prevent a shutdown, they’d likely fail. If he tries to pass a stopgap spending measure, members of the House Freedom Caucus have already said they’ll balk unless Republican leaders agree to meet a series of outlandish demands.

All the while, McCarthy is trying to navigate these waters knowing that if he pursues a course some of his members don’t like, they’ll try to fire him — and as Gaetz’s rhetoric helped demonstrate, such talk has advanced beyond mere whispers.>

<According to a report from CNN's KFiles, one of the Michigan fake electors who has been charged with eight felony charges by Attorney General Dana Nessel for her part in a plot to help Donald Trump steal the 2020 election admitted during an interview in 2020 that she was the recipient of help from lawyers she claimed were tied to the former president.

Meshawn Maddock, who served as co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party from 2021 to 2023, recently claimed her memory was "vague" about the circumstances that led up to the fake elector plot, explaining, "A lot of that is still vague to me. And I don’t have any email communications with any of these people.”

As CNN is reporting, on December 16, 2020 -- after the 2020 election but before the Jan. 6 riots -- she sat down for an interview with local radio host Steve Gruber where she asked about the election maneuver that ultimately failed.

“I’m no constitutional attorney," she began. “I’m an elector for Donald Trump from the Michigan Republican Party. I along with the other 15 electors were guided by legal minds – attorneys for our president, some very incredible constitutional attorneys – I’ve never in my whole life appreciated legal minds and attorneys before.”

She then added, “I can tell you that in the last few weeks, just some incredible minds. And from what I understand, you know, you have the federal constitutional law, and then you have state statutes, um, and they’re two different things. So, what we did, uh, along with seven other states, really send in dueling electors, and that will be there before, um, you know, a federal constitutional attorney, and it’ll be before, uh, Mike Pence and Congress to make that decision.”

According to the KFiles' Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck, "She parroted some of Trump’s most controversial false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election and eventually deleted a tweet spreading the unfounded conspiracy theory that Dominion Voting Systems had changed votes in the election. In the December 2020 interview, Maddock cited the 1960 election in Hawaii in which pro-Kennedy electors were also sent to the National Archives – an argument cited by Trump campaign attorneys in memos that outlined their fake elector plans.">

<In a recent editorial we critiqued President Trump’s proposal for a 10% border tax on anything and everything imported by the U.S., and the self-proclaimed Tariff Man has upbraided us in a letter. This is a good debate to have, and Mr. Trump begins his missive by boasting that while he was in office the trade deficit with China was falling before Covid-19 hit.

But that’s not close to the full story. The goods trade deficit with China did dip somewhat after Mr. Trump launched his global tariff campaign in 2018. At the same time, however, the deficits with Mexico and the rest of the world went up. A trade surplus or deficit isn’t a good measure of success, but since Mr. Trump thinks it is, see the chart nearby. President Biden has left Mr. Trump’s policies in place, so the figures run through last year.

Since 2017, when Mr. Trump entered the Oval Office, goods imports to the U.S. in nominal dollars have increased 174% from Vietnam, 116% from Taiwan, 96% from Bangladesh, 89% from Thailand, 76% from India, and 62% from South Korea. Maybe Mr. Trump should start giving out campaign hats that say “Make Vietnam Great Again.”

Kidding aside, as Beijing turns up the temperature in the Pacific, it’s good for the U.S. to have diverse supply chains, and Mr. Trump’s tariffs no doubt played a role. On the other hand, a shift was probably inevitable, given China’s behavior since Mr. Trump took office.

That includes its regulatory assault on successful private companies, its crushing of Hong Kong, its increasingly documented abuses in Xinjiang, its machinations to extend Xi Jinping’s rule, and its coverup of the origins of the Covid virus. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said recently that U.S. companies tell her they see China as “uninvestable.”

If Mr. Trump’s goal was to nudge businesses to friendlier locales, a better U.S. policy was to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement that excluded China. But Mr. Trump rejected that deal. The Pacific pact would have boosted trade among a dozen countries, including Vietnam, while offering companies an incentive to set up shop in those places. This approach would have avoided the collateral damage from Mr. Trump’s blunderbuss tariffs, and here we part ways with him again.

He says our editorial cited “debunked talking points from corporate-funded studies,” but the economic evidence is unambiguous that border taxes are passed on to consumers, and Mr. Trump’s tariffs have cost Americans tens of billions of dollars. Readers can look at the analyses and make up their own minds.

But that isn’t all: After other countries retaliated, Mr. Trump bailed out farmers with tens of billions from taxpayers. If a U.S. business found itself suddenly uncompetitive after tariffs raised prices on imported parts or materials, it had to beg a Commerce Department bureaucrat for an exclusion to stay alive.

And for what? As of 2022, the bilateral goods deficit with China was roughly back to where it was in 2017, at least in nominal terms. This isn’t exactly a decoupling. Mr. Trump promised that metal tariffs would revitalize foundries, but U.S. Steel wants a buyer and doesn’t seem saved, and the industry’s job count has hardly budged. America’s total crude steel production last year was slightly lower than in 2017, according to the World Steel Association.

Mr. Trump’s answer, as usual, is to quintuple down in a second term. A universal 10% tariff would “raise taxes on American consumers by more than $300 billion a year—a tax increase rivaling the ones proposed by President Biden,” the Tax Foundation says. Including expected retaliation, it would “shrink the U.S. economy by 1.1 percent and threaten more than 825,000 U.S. jobs.”

Slapping 10% tariffs on everything made by Vietnam, South Korea and other U.S. partners would have the effect of abandoning them to China’s economic sphere, which is the opposite of America’s geostrategic interests.

Mr. Trump’s great mistake is his belief that trade is a zero-sum exercise. But countries and companies trade because they see a mutual advantage. When American consumers buy clothing and Scotch on a global market, while American producers sell soybeans and Boeing jets, the magic is that both sides benefit.>