<Taking to her Substack column "Civil Discourse," former U.S. Attorney and current MSNBC legal analyst Joyce Vance fired back at Donald Trump after he singled her out by name in a Truth Social post.

Late last week the now 4-times indicted loser of the 2020 presidential election lashed at Vance and other legal commentators who have weighed in on the possible use of the 14th Amendment to keep ban him from running from office due to the Jan. 6 insurrection he inspired.

As Trump wrote, “The group suing me in Colorado to ridiculously try and Unconstitutionally keep me off the ballot (I am leading against DeSanctimonious by almost 50 points, and beating Crooked Joe, BIG!), is TRUMP DERANGED ‘CREW,’ composed of many slime balls & groups like Norm Eisen through Brookings or Just Security, Andrew Weissmann, Joyce Vance, et al. They are, perhaps illegally, working with Weissmann acolyte Lisa Monaco at ‘Injustice.’ I have been beating them for years, including Impeachments. MAGA!!! "

With Trump accusing her of acting "illegally," Vance called out Trump's history of inciting violence against his perceived enemies.

The former prosecutor wrote, "It unconscionable for any former president to do this, let alone one who knows there are people in his army of followers who react unpredictably and sometimes violently to his ranting. The Republican Party that continues to condone it is complicit."

Vance followed that by calling out some of Trump's lowlights starting with his announcement he would run for office in 2016.

"Sometimes, and especially with the daily barrage of inane behavior from Trump, it’s easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. But Trump continues to show us who he is. He is still the person who rode down an escalator and dubbed Mexicans criminals and rapists. He is still the man who made fun of a reporter with a disability, criticized a federal judge over his ethnicity, and stood by, heartless, after he put policies in place that ripped babies from their mothers’ arms at the border," she wrote. "He might as well have been the one wearing the 'I really don’t care, do u?' jacket Melania sported on her visit to the border."

"I’ve lost track of all the times Trump named, implicitly targeting, people who served our government, like Colonel Alexander Vindman and FBI agent Pete Strzok," she continued. "Trump relentlessly attacked people who should have been his political partners from the loyal opposition. His refusal to refrain from doing so led to the brutal attack on Speaker Pelosi’s husband. That’s what all of this is about. It’s never about service, and it’s not about making America great. It’s about Trump and only Trump."

According to the former prosecutor, after all of this Trump should be judged harshly in "the court of public opinion."

"Trump wasn’t worthy to serve in the first place and shouldn’t be returned to office. He keeps telling us. The question is whether, when it counts, when they vote, enough Americans will believe him," she concluded.>

<In recent weeks, a chorus of conservative media personalities and Trump campaign surrogates have emerged to assure us the former president is poised to secure an unprecedented 20 percent of the Black vote in a rematch against President Biden next year. Such a performance would be a modern-day achievement for the Republican Party. But the chances of it happening are slim to none.

The most glaring problem with the extravagant claim is that it hinges on a poll with fewer than 150 black respondents and a 9.5 percent margin of error on this data point. As pollsters, we must be careful when taking the pulse of the Black community, because the African Americans who are most likely to participate in surveys and online panels are suburban voters with daytime work hours who tend to be less loyal to the Democratic Party than their urban counterparts.

Republicans should resist the temptation of placing too much stock in overly optimistic predictions about improvements with minority voters. After all, we've seen this before. In the lead-up to the 2020 election, an Emerson poll suggested that Trump was poised to win one out of every five Black voters, only to secure a mere 8 percent of the Black vote that year. Nor was 2020 the first time some polls have overstated Black support for Republicans. The issue is well-known to pollsters conducting research in states with large numbers of Black voters.

Similarly, throughout much of last year, a litany of news articles predicted that Republicans were on the cusp of winning Hispanics. A June 2022 Quinnipiac poll even showed the GOP leading by three points among Latinos in the generic ballot. Yet in the end, although Republicans saw slight gains, Democrats still carried Hispanics by 21 points and won 93 percent of Black voters.

That is not to say that Black voters are satisfied with President Biden after they pretty much saved his 2020 primary campaign. But an Ipsos poll from earlier this year with a large Black sample found that while African Americans may not be enthusiastic about Biden, they still like him. Meanwhile, when Trump is pitted against a Republican, eight out of 10 Black voters say they would never vote for him....>

<.....Additionally, the most recent polling from Civiqs with thousands of Black respondents shows only 7 percent of African Americans have a favorable view of the former president.

It may also be true that Biden is facing a potential turnout problem with Black voters, but this is precisely the kind of challenge a well-funded effort can address, especially one with a significant financial advantage over its rival. Trump's cash-strapped 2024 campaign would have limited resources to hold down the fort, let alone win over converts in expensive media markets.

So, why do some on the Right insist on peddling this pipe dream? Beyond the allure of clicks, this narrative distracts Republicans from far more compelling evidence showing Trump losing support among White voters.

Our team analyzed every poll with publicly available crosstabs featured in RealClearPolitics in the month of August. Seven out of the nine studies showed Trump performing well below his 2020 levels with White voters. An average of all nine polls found Trump's lead over Biden with White voters has shrunk from 17 points in 2020 to just 9 points now. Interestingly, the same Fox News poll Trump's surrogates push because they like its African American numbers has him up by just four points with Whites.

Upon closer examination, the data reveal that college-educated white men, in particular, are among those shifting away from Trump. This group was a key swing voting bloc in 2021 and 2022, and evidence is starting to point toward that trend continuing. There is also data showing Trump's grip over some White voters without college degrees has weakened.

Mathematically, it would be implausible for Trump to offset his losses with White voters with gains among Black voters, since the former outnumber the latter by a ratio of about 7 to 1. For every one percentage point Trump loses among Whites, he would need seven percentage points among Blacks just to break even—a daunting task.

Further erosion of White voters, particularly among those without degrees, would be catastrophic for Republicans, especially in battleground states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, whose electorates are significantly whiter than the national average. Even if Trump were to achieve more realistic improvements among African Americans and Hispanics, Biden would have a clear path to re-election if Trump's standing with Whites significantly deteriorates, as most polls suggest it has.

History offers a stark reminder of what Republicans can expect if Trump were to only win Whites by 9 points. In 2008, John McCain won White voters by 12, and still lost in a landslide while Democrats clinched 21 House seats.

Hemorrhaging white voters, while counting on a common polling mirage to produce a miraculous wave of Black support, is a recipe for disaster for the Republican Party in 2024.>

<House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) already faces a slim majority where he can't afford to lose more than five seats before being tossed back into the minority.

Added to this, reports Politico, McCarthy's majority is being further imperiled by court-ordered redistricting that could be enough by itself to tip the scales to Democrats next year.

"In the past nine days, state and federal judges threw out two congressional maps — and helped Democrats avoid a worst-case scenario in Ohio — kicking off an unusually busy redistricting calendar heading into the election year," the publication writes. "All told, a dozen or more seats across at least six states could be redrawn, increasing the likelihood Democrats could chip away the five-seat GOP House majority through redistricting alone."

In particular, the redrawn maps could give Democrats likely seats in Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana, where Republican-drawn gerrymanders have been thrown out by courts.

And things could get even better for Democrats in New York, the state where Republicans made significant gains to take their majority last year.

Democrats are arguing that they should get another crack at drawing congressional maps in the Empire State after a court-appointed master drew a map that helped usher in the GOP majority in 2022.

"If courts agree, Democrats could draw somewhere between 18 and 22 Democratic districts," notes Politico.>

<After a district judge last week resoundingly rejected Mark Meadows’ arguments to remove his Georgia racketeering (RICO) case to federal court, the former White House chief of staff for then-President Donald Trump filed an “emergency” motion Monday seeking to put the ruling on hold pending the outcome of an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

In the latest filing, Meadows advanced four arguments that the effect of the ruling should be put on hold as the former White House chief of staff ramps up an appeal.

Meadows claims he has “at least a substantial case on the merits” on a “novel question,” that the lack of a stay pending appeal would irreparably harm him, that a stay pending appeal in his case would not “prejudice the State, nor other defendants in state court, because it would not prevent other ongoing proceedings,” and that “a stay is in the public interest.”

Meadows’ high-powered lawyers at McGuireWoods asserted that the rights their client claims to have “would be effectively nullified” if there is no stay and that state gets its way.

“Absent a stay, the State will continue seeking to try Meadows 42 days from now on October 23, 2023,” the lawyers wrote. “If the State gets its way, Meadows could be forced to go to trial—and could be convicted and incarcerated—before the standard timeline for a federal appeal would play out.”

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Steve CarMichael Jones, a Barack Obama appointee, ruled Friday that Meadows failed to clear the “quite low” bar to show that his criminal case should be removed from state court to federal court given his status as a federal officer at the time of the charged conduct.

The judge found that only one of the eight alleged Meadows overt acts outlined in the Fulton County RICO indictment “could have occurred within the scope of Meadows’s federal office.”

As a result, Judge Jones concluded federal court was not the appropriate venue in Meadows’ case and ordered the matter remanded to the Fulton County Superior Court.

Meadows is accused of participating in a racketeering enterprise which “refused to accept that Trump lost, and […] knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.”

The grand jury indictment secured by Fulton County DA Fani Willis (D) alleged that Meadows joined efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss by unlawfully soliciting Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to break the law “by unlawfully altering, unlawfully adjusting, and otherwise unlawfully influencing the certified returns for presidential electors for the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia[.]”

At the end of his emergency motion, Meadows warned there would be a “chilling effect” if he does not get the stay he seeks.

“The very premise of Supremacy Clause immunity and the Federal Officer Removal Statute is that it is vitally important to the proper functioning of our Federal Government that federal officials be free from state arrest and prosecution when carrying out their duties,” the motion said. “For the State to proceed to trial and seek to impose a verdict, it would give rise to the very ‘chilling effect’ that federal law goes out of its way to protect against.”>

<On Monday, Marjorie Taylor Greene posted a photograph of herself having Sunday evening dinner with Trump at Bedminster. It's rumored Trump could possibly pick Greene to be his running mate in 2024. Trump also had dinner with white nationalist Nick Fuentes and Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago in 2023. Greene spoke at Fuentes' white nationalist conference in 2022.

Greene said Trump, who inspired his MAGA hordes to flood the capitol on January 6th to pressure Congress in order to overturn the election results, is "an inspiration." Greene also objected to the electoral results on January 6th.

Seditious activities are nothing new to Greene and Trump. Greene, who has been calling for a national divorce this year, previously assured her call wasn't about actually splitting up the United States or calling for a civil war. However, Greene just posted a tweet revealing that her heart actually yearns for secession.

In a tweet posted on 9/11, Greene took the opportunity to sow division in the country by painting migrants as criminals, implying Joe Biden is engaged in traitorous activity, and openly calling for secession from the United States. Greene said if migrants aren't stopped from entering the country, "states should consider seceding from the union."

Marjorie Taylor Greene: "...States should consider seceding from the union."

This is a Republican member of Congress backed by Speaker Kevin McCarthy and a potential Trump running mate openly calling on states to split from the Union which would trigger a civil war, proving once again that that MAGA is synonymous with sedition.>

<Alabama officials on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to temporarily halt a lower court's ruling that rejected a Republican-crafted electoral map for diminishing the clout of Black voters, escalating a legal dispute with potentially broad implications for the 2024 congressional elections.

The state's request concerned Tuesday's decision by three federal judges in Birmingham who found that the map approved by the Republican-led state legislature to set the boundaries of Alabama's seven U.S. House districts was unlawfully biased against Black voters and must be redrawn.

That map was devised after the Supreme Court in June blocked a previous version, also for weakening the voting power of Black Alabamians.

With Republicans holding a slim 222-212 majority in the U.S. House, court battles like this one may be pivotal in the 2024 fight for control of the chamber, as President Joe Biden's fellow Democrats seek to regain control of the chamber.

Black people make up 27% of Alabama's population but are in the majority in only one of the seven House districts as drawn by the state legislature in both the maps it has approved.

Electoral districts are redrawn each decade to reflect population changes as measured by a national census, last taken in 2020. In most states, such redistricting is done by the party in power, which can lead to map manipulation for partisan gain. Voting rights litigation that could result in new maps of congressional districts is playing out in several states.

The Supreme Court in its 5-4 June ruling ordered state lawmakers to add a second House district with a Black majority - or close to it - in order to comply with the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting. Black voters tend to favor Democratic candidates.

Following that ruling, the legislature adopted a plan that increased the portion of Black voters in a second House district from around 30% to 40%, still well below a majority. The three-judge panel on Tuesday ruled that the new map failed to remedy the Voting Rights Act violation present in the first map and directed a special master - an independent party appointed by a court - to draw a new, third version of the map ahead of next year's congressional elections.

The latest Republican-drawn map drew swift objections from Black voters and civil rights activists. They said the plan failed to remedy the Voting Rights Act violation identified by the Supreme Court, and that it raised concerns under the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law.

The Alabama map concentrated large numbers of Black voters into one district and spread others to districts in numbers too small to make up a majority.

The Supreme Court's June ruling was authored by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts and joined in full by the court's three liberals, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the judgment in a separate opinion.

Conservative litigants had succeeded in persuading the Supreme Court to limit the Voting Rights Act's scope in some important previous rulings.

The Supreme Court's 2013 ruling in another Alabama case struck down a key part that determined which states with histories of racial discrimination needed federal approval to change voting laws. In a 2021 ruling endorsing Republican-backed Arizona voting restrictions, the justices made it harder to prove violations under a provision of the Voting Rights Act aimed at countering racially biased voting measures.>

<Legal experts are panning former President Donald Trump's request for U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to recuse herself in his federal election interference case as "ridiculous" and doomed to failure.

In a motion for recusal on Monday, Trump's legal team argued that Chutkan, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, made "prior negative statements regarding [former] President Trump" that would "unavoidably taint" his trial related to an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election outcome and the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol that followed.

The motion includes Chutkan quotes from two trials involving January 6 defendants, which Trump's lawyers claim are evidence that she has "prejudged the guilt" of the former president. Chutkan will ultimately decide whether to grant or deny the motion, although Trump could appeal if she rejects recusing herself.

The motion was met with a mostly negative response from legal experts, many of whom argued that the filing lacked the type of evidence that would compel Chutkan to recuse herself.

In an email on Monday night, Professor Carl Tobias, Williams chair in law at the University of Richmond, told Newsweek that the motion was "not sound." He also suggested that Trump's lawyers were unlikely to succeed on appeal if the motion is denied.

"These motions are almost never granted unless there is a very clear conflict of interest, which is not present in this case," Tobias wrote. "The only thing rarer than how infrequently they are granted is how rarely appeals courts differ with trial court recusal rulings."

On X, formerly Twitter, Laurence Tribe, professor emeritus of constitutional law at Harvard University, called the filing "a ridiculous motion" that was "filed far too late and without any plausible supporting argument." Tribe predicted that the motion "should and will be denied."

In an email to Newsweek, Tribe further rejected the assertion from Trump's lawyers that Chutkan's comments in the two January 6 cases show she is biased, writing that the judge "did not prejudge Trump's guilt — certainly not of the charges pending before her, which conspicuously do not include any charge of insurrection."

Conservative lawyer and frequent Trump critic George Conway argued on X that a Chutkan case cited in the motion—when the judge mentioned that "the people" who encouraged a January 6 defendant to "take action and to fight" had "not been charged"—had shown that Trump's lawyers themselves assumed the former president was responsible for the attack.

"A careful reading of this excerpt from Trump's recusal brief shows it's not Judge Chutkan who has expressed the view that P01135809 'was responsible for the events of January 6,' but rather Trump's lawyers, via *their* assumption that their client planned the attack," Conway wrote while sharing a passage from the filing. "Oops."

"This filing to remove Judge Chutkan is made for Trump's base, as it is way off the mark legally; and to boot it should have been filed long ago, not after her ruling on a trial date," former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann posted.

"Trump's motion for Judge Chutkan's recusal is very unlikely to succeed," posted former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti. "Among other things, the initial decision will be made by Judge Chutkan herself.

"It was poor judgment to make this motion — it strongly suggests that Trump is dictating strategy," he added. "Foolish tactical move."

Trump's motion was supported by some. Conservative activist Tom Fitton, who is not an attorney but heads the pro-Trump group Judicial Watch, argued that the motion "makes [a] strong case for recusal of Judge Chutkan."

Conservative activist and lawyer Mike Davis said on X that Chutkan "did not have the intelligence or discipline to refrain from pronouncing Trump's guilt at prior proceedings for other January 6th defendants," while insisting "if she wants to restore integrity to these proceedings, she must recuse."

Trump's case before Chutkan is one of four criminal proceedings against the ex-president and accounts for only four of the 91 felony charges facing him.

The former president has pleaded not guilty to all charges, claiming to be the victim of a "witch hunt" and "election interference" while campaigning as the leading Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential election.>

<The New York judge presiding over Donald Trump's hush-money case has signaled a possible change to the trial's March start date as a result of the former president's other cases that are set to play out in court next year.

In a brief letter, Judge Juan Merchan said he that he would no longer hold a conference to discuss scheduling in the Manhattan case, opting instead to hold the discussions on Feb. 15 when the parties meet to discuss motions.

"In light of the many recent developments involving Mr. Trump and his rapidly evolving trial schedule, I do not believe it would be fruitful for us to conference this case on September 15 to discuss scheduling," Merchan wrote to Trump lawyer Todd Blanche in a letter dated Sept. 1 that was first reported by Business Insider and obtained Monday by NBC News.

"We will have a much better sense at that time whether there are any actual conflicts and if so, what the best adjourn date might be for trial," he added.

In the meantime, Merchan said, he will keep the existing schedule for the case, in which Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with hush money paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump has pleaded not guilty.

The case is schedule to go to trial March 25. He was indicted in March of this year.

Blanche and a spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday night.

Blanche last month had requested a status conference to discuss the trial date in the Manhattan case.

Trump's civil and criminal trials have been piling up in recent months, with one starting next month and several others starting in the first half of 2024, when the GOP primary season will be in full swing.

Trump has argued that various legal challenges against him should be delayed until after the 2024 presidential election.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over Trump's federal case in Washington, D.C., has said publicly that she has spoken to Merchan about rescheduling the New York case to allow the election interference trial to go first. That trial is scheduled to start March 4.>

<Twenty-two years ago today, the West woke up to a diabolical new existential enemy. When 19 terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners and crashed two into the Twin Towers, killing almost 3,000 people, the US government and its European counterparts learnt to their horror that the fall of the Soviet Union had not, in fact, brought about the End of History – that is, the final exhaustion of the great dialectical battle between the forces of freedom and fundamentalism.

Instead it turned out that there were people who were willing to blow themselves up in order to destroy the West. Their fundamentalism boiled down to a total rejection of Western civilisation, and in particular its idea of freedom anchored in individual liberty and personal autonomy rather than unquestioning submission before God.

Frightening as this attack was, it was at least tangible. The new struggle seemed a straightforwardly Manichean one, between individual freedom and collective fundamentalism; the life force and death instinct.

Terrorists, exalting their murderous deeds, raged against the infidel in the open air. The movement had standout villains, most notably Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi millionaire who seemed pathologically obsessed with Whitney Houston and yet so despised American consumerism that he refused to use a fridge. The gauntlet thrown down by these terrorists brought out the essence of the West. The cowboy president George W Bush vowed, with a Texan smoke ’em out lilt, to hunt down the ringleaders “dead or alive”.

Today, the enemy we face – the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) – is in some ways more frightening than al-Qaeda. This new enemy does not seek to destroy Western values by waging open war. Rather it is steadily rendering freedom and democracy obsolete, through infiltration of our economic and political system in the shadows. The CCP has been extraordinarily successful in capturing Britain plc.

In recent decades it has bought into strategic infrastructure in industry and energy, from Heathrow Airport to Hinkley Point. Beijing has also effectively co-opted large parts of British academia, much of which is now financially reliant on Chinese donations and students. And there are suspicions that it has extended its tentacles into the heart of our democracy, with alleged spies in Parliament.

This penetration of every aspect of British life has afforded China leverage to mute elite criticism of its dire human rights record and aggression towards Taiwan. It amounts to a new mode of attack on the West, and this time not the work of a ragtag group of guerrillas but a remorseless double-faced state....>

Quo vadis, <fredfradiavolo>? Acting on behalf of the enemy?

<.....Chillingly, Project Britain may only be a sideshow in China’s quest for power at all costs. Having influence on UK assets enables Beijing to get away with nationalist aggression in the South China Sea. Yet this capture has been assured by our ruling class’s relentless willingness to endanger their own country for the sake of global investment.

What started out as a naivety about the price of Chinese money has ossified into a maniacal defiance; the attitude at the top of the Government seems to be that Britain is in too deep to row back. The Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, recently visited Beijing, and has boasted about securing £600 million of licences to launch fund management companies there. At the same time, he lectures the British media that disengaging with China is not “credible”.

That we have only now learnt of the alleged China spy scandal, even though this person was arrested back in March, suggests that the British state is more interested in containing public outrage than cleaning its own house. Rather than leading on countering China, Britain has already surrendered.

From the country which strived to be America’s most loyal partner in the War on Terror, such defeatism is quite something. Our post-war global strategy, which has been to thrive as a mid-sized power in a superpower world by punching above our weight, may never recover.

Such epic foolishness on the part of our political leaders is hard to fathom. But it surely comes down to a basic inability to recognise that the CCP poses a bigger threat to human progress than primitive Wahhabism. In promoting a rival civilisation-system anchored in security rather than freedom, its challenge is fundamental.

As China proved at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, authoritarian states can formidably crush certain threats. But, ultimately, humanity has not survived and progressed over hundreds of thousands of years because of its ability to anticipate every risk around the corner. We are not prey animals with eyes on the sides of our heads; we are large-brained, autonomous languaging beings who thrive in collaborative, creative communities that can tolerate a level of novelty and heretical thinking.

The West is in danger of forgetting this lesson. Chinese political culture, on the other hand, held back by authoritarian rulers, never learnt it.

What our elites, who are so lacking in both imaginative range and intellectual depth, have failed to comprehend is that a Beijing-dominated world, defined by a yearning for certainty rather than a striving for freedom, will be a dead end for human progress. It would be a world both claustrophobic and stagnant.

Any future technological leaps would be unlikely to enhance our quality of life and will instead be clustered around human targeting, prediction and control. This danger is heightened by the fact that the AI weapons industry, as well as surveillance capitalism, are already starting to form a closed loop of mutually enforced innovation. They are powered by a similar basic technological architecture, comprising the likes of transistors, specialised microchips and big data analytics.

Whether our confidence and the self-knowledge required to prevent such a future lies buried somewhere, or has been traded away in one too many grubby business deals, is up for debate. What is clear is that we are running out of time to remember what we stand for.>

<Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis argued Tuesday against delaying the Georgia prosecution of Mark Meadows until an appeals court decides whether to move his case to federal court because he's a former White House chief of staff.

U.S. District Judge Steve Jones rejected Meadows' request Friday to move his case to federal court. Meadows now seeks a freeze on his part of the state case, to avoid reaching a verdict before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decides whether to move his case.

But Willis argued that Jones had been careful in his 49-page ruling and that Meadows hadn't articulated his federal job duties "at all."

"The defendant has not made a 'strong showing' that he is likely to succeed on the merits," Willis wrote. "Far from making a strong showing that he is likely to succeed on the merits in his appeal, the defendant has not actually made any showing."

Willis also said Meadows couldn't show he would suffer irreparable harm from the state case proceeding because a verdict could take months to reach and he's asked for an expedited review by the appeals court. She argued it wouldn't be in the public interest to delay his state trial.

The eventual decision about where to hold trials is fundamental to 19 co-defendants in the case, including Donald Trump. At least five of the 19 co-defendants in the case have asked to move their trials from Fulton County Superior Court to federal court. Trump has filed that he may make a similar request.

Meadows and the others have argued they should be protected from state-level charges because they served in federal jobs during the events cited in the indictment. Jeffrey Clark was an assistant attorney general, and three others were Republican presidential electors who met to support Trump despite President Joe Biden winning the state: Georgia Republican Chairman David Shafer, state Sen. Shawn Still and Cathy Latham.

Meadows is charged with racketeering and with soliciting Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to violate his oath of office during a call Jan. 2, 2021, when Trump asked him to "find" enough votes to win the state. Meadows has pleaded not guilty.

Meadows asked to move his case to federal court by arguing the actions he was charged for − setting up calls, contacting state officials − were part of his job as chief of staff. He also asked the charges should be dismissed in federal court for the same reason.

Meadows' lawyers argued that if the state court reached a verdict before the appeals court eventually rules, the case could become "a shuttlecock batted back and forth between state and federal court" and raise a "rat's nest" of issues about federalism.

But the prosecutor, Willis, argued Meadows was committing crimes as part of a wide-ranging conspiracy beyond his official duties to help Trump overturn the 2020 election.>

<Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton coordinated through encrypted communications with a lawyer he hired to investigate law enforcement officials probing one of the Republican’s wealthy donors, the lawyer testified at Paxton’s impeachment trial Tuesday.

The testimony from Brandon Cammack on the sixth day of the historic proceeding addressed a central charge against Paxton: that he abused his office to help a local real estate developer resist FBI investigation by hiring an outside attorney to look into the agents, a judge and other officials involved in the probe.

Cammack told the jury of state senators who could decide Paxton's political fate within days that he consulted with the attorney general about how to proceed. Cammack also said he kept Paxton apprised as he obtained a series of grand jury subpoenas with guidance from the developer's lawyer.

"I did everything at his supervision,” Cammack said of Paxton.

Paxton has pleaded not guilty in the impeachment. He is not required to be present for testimony and was absent Tuesday, as he has been for most of the trial.

Paxton's hiring of Cammack in 2020 prompted eight of his top deputies to report the attorney general to law enforcement for allegedly committing crimes to help developer Nate Paul. Their allegations prompted an ongoing FBI investigation of Paxton.

That year, Paul alleged wrongdoing by state and federal authorities after the FBI searched his home. Several of Paxton's former deputies have testified that they found Paul's claims “ludicrous" and not worthy of investigation.

Paul was indicted in June on charges of making false statements to banks. He pleaded not guilty.

The bipartisan group of lawmakers prosecuting Paxton's impeachment have alleged that in return for Paxton's help, Paul paid for renovations to his Austin home and employed a woman with whom the attorney general was having an extramarital affair.

Cammack testified that he met several times with Paxton, Paul and Paul's lawyer about Cammack's investigation, and regularly forwarded to Paxton information that Paul's lawyer was sending him about whom to target with grand jury subpoenas.

Subpoenas were issued for cellphone records of law enforcement officials, including an agent involved in the search of Paul’s home and the assistant to a federal magistrate, Cammack said. Paul's lawyer joined him when he served others on banks.

“He was insistent on going,” Cammack said. “I didn’t really think it was appropriate.”

One bank subpoena was aimed at information that could have been helpful to Paul in a separate civil lawsuit, said Darren McCarty, one of the deputies who reported Paxton to the FBI. McCarty said Paxton pressured his staff to intervene on Paul's behalf in the civil case. He called the subpoena “weaponizing the criminal process.”

Cammack said Paxton used the encrypted service Proton Mail to email about the investigation and that the attorney general told him to communicate over encrypted messaging service Signal.

Cammack said he learned that Paxton had a different official email address when he saw it copied on an email from a Paxton's deputy ordering Cammack to stop his investigation.

In 2020, Cammack was five years out of law school, had a modest criminal defense practice in Houston and had never before gotten grand jury subpoenas. He testified that Paxton hired him at the recommendation of Paul's lawyer, whom he said he knew socially.

The senators also heard testimony Tuesday from Joe Brown, a former federal and state prosecutor who said he talked with Paxton about the job that ultimately went to Cammack. Brown said he subsequently exchanged emails with Paxton's staff but never heard back about the job.

Cammack recalled that he was excited to be hired by Texas' top lawyer and said Paxton told him he would need “guts” for the investigation.

Under cross-examination by defense attorney Dan Cogdell, Cammack said Paxton also told him he wanted to see the original version of a search warrant for Paul’s home that the developer alleged had been altered. Cammack recalled the attorney general saying, “I just want to know the truth.”

After getting the cease-and-desist letter, Cammack said U.S. Marshals showed up at his office. He said he called Paxton and the attorney general told him not to talk without a lawyer.

Cammack said he later was called to a meeting at Paul's house and Paxton was there. The attorney general spent most of the meeting outside on the phone, Cammack said, but toward the end Paxton told him to continue his investigation.

Cammack said the attorney general's office never paid him.>

<Espionage-ware thought to have been developed by China has once again been spotted within the power grid of a neighboring nation.…

According to Symantec's Threat Hunter Team on Tuesday, a team dubbed Redfly infiltrated the national grid of an unnamed Asian nation using the ShadowPad Trojan, stole credentials, installed additional malware, and moved laterally to multiple systems on the infected network during six months of persistent access.

If that sounds familiar, there's a good reason why: ShadowPad was the Windows malware used by what's believed to have been a Beijing-backed crew to infect the Indian power grid near the border with China last year. In that attack, the snoops are believed to have infiltrated the grid's computer systems via vulnerable internet-facing devices – think IP cameras, DVRs, and the like – to install ShadowPad.

Symantec didn't mention an ingress route in this latest attack – only that it began from a single compromised computer.

In this intrusion, ShadowPad masqueraded as VMware program files and directories to hide itself. Once in place, it unloaded additional tools including a keylogger and something that decrypted payloads of encrypted code to run.

According to Symantec, a variant of ShadowPad was used in the attack, with a direct relationship to the hit on India last year: it used the same hardcoded remote command-and-control (C2) server. While not drawing conclusions, Symantec Threat Hunter Team principal intelligence analyst Dick O'Brien told us the same infrastructure was definitely used.

"It's possible they're the same actor," O'Brien told The Register, but "[the use of ShadowPad] and the C2 overlap … is the extent of the link at the moment."

Redfly – if it's the same team that went after India earlier – appears to be focused on such state-level attacks, forgoing more lucrative commercial targets in favor of those with high intelligence value.

The Redfly intrusion didn't result in any disruption, Symantec said, but it's not the only unwanted probing of critical national infrastructure (CNI) that's happened recently.

Five Eyes security agencies warned in May of Chinese crews perpetuating living-off-the-land attacks to gain persistent access to critical infrastructure systems in the US – similar to what Redfly did in the grid of its unnamed Asian target.

China isn't the only country known to attack infrastructure, either. Russia has been screwing with Ukraine all the way through the former's invasion of the latter, and long before that conflict kicked off. The US and Israel knackered crucial machinery at Iran's uranium-enrichment plant, if you can recall. Those are just two examples.

And things aren't getting any better. "The frequency at which CNI organizations are being attacked appears to have increased over the past year and is now a source of concern," Symantec warned.

"Obtaining a disruptive capability could be one possible motivation behind this surge in CNI attacks," O'Brien told us, meaning whoever's using ShadowPad has added some functionality that could have real-world effects.

While Symantec noted the intrusion it spotted was restricted to the power grid, O'Brien noted that Microsoft's observations of similar attacks launched by the China-linked Volt Typhoon crew weren't as focused.

"They listed communications, manufacturing, utility, transportation, construction, maritime, government, information technology, and education sectors," O'Brien said. In other words, it's high time for those in the critical infrastructure world, regardless of their particular sector, to start keeping an eye on threat intelligence reports and developing good patch habits.>

<A slew of individuals convicted for various charges directly related to their involvement in the January 6, 2021, riot are seeking appeals based on a law that could ultimately comprise a major aspect of Donald Trump's trial defense.

Trump was charged with four crimes associated with January 6, including obstruction of an official proceeding. The obstruction charge is being focused on by the January 6 defendants' legal counsel as a maneuver for the Supreme Court to weigh in and potentially rule in their favor and eventual dismissal.

At least 310 cases involving alleged January 6 participants include that same charge, most notably already used against high-profile individuals who were already convicted and sentenced including Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and "QAnon Shaman" Jacob Chansley.

The obstruction charge is tied to the bipartisan Sarbanes-Oxley Act passed by Congress in 2002 after major scandals including Enron. Prosecutors in January 6-related cases have referenced this act, notably Section 1512.

Title 18, Section 1512 of the U.S. Code, called "Tampering with a Witness, Victim, or Informant" provides that an individual who "corruptly alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document" or "otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so" can be imprisoned for up to 20 years.

Garret Miller, of Richardson, Texas, was charged on January 20, 2021, and later pleaded guilty to 11 crimes including assaulting or resisting officers, threats to injure and kidnap, disorderly conduct inside the Capitol, and obstruction of an official proceeding.

He also threatened to assassinate Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. On February 23 of this year, Miller was sentenced in the District of Columbia to 38 months in prison.

A petition for a writ of certiorari filed August 30 on Miller's behalf argues: "Vagueness in the government's [application of Section 1512] has created chaos in the administration of justice across hundreds of January 6 cases."

"Hundreds of protesters who entered the Capitol Building that day have been charged solely with a parading, picketing or demonstrating offense, a Class B misdemeanor with a six-month maximum sentence, while hundreds of others who did the same thing, like Petitioner, have been charged with felony obstruction," the petition reads.

It also warns of setting a bad precedent moving forward: "It is not enough to point out that the vagueness inherent in this new crime against Congress would invite—has perhaps already invited—the politicization of criminal justice."

Craig Trocino, a law professor at the University of Miami, told Newsweek that the argument made by Miller and others charged in the district courts is that the language in the statute is ambiguous enough to qualify for a motion to dismiss.

"The problem in general with a motion to dismiss on these grounds is they're rarely granted," Trocino said. "And they're rarely granted, not because courts are indifferent to them, but the law on motions to dismiss under these circumstances is very limited because the case law says that the court's authority to dismiss an indictment based on these grounds encroaches on the fundamental role of [a] grand jury, and therefore they should only be granted in unusual circumstances."....>

<.....He said, in his view, the district court in the Miller case "engaged in a rather strained analysis of parsing out that paragraph and the words that come after 'otherwise.'" He pointed to the 14 different district court judges in D.C. who read the language the same way.

"Factually, it appears that Mr. Miller entered into the Capitol building, I believe he admitted to that when it was closed for public traffic," Trocino said. "Either he forced his way in or went in after somebody else forced his way. Either way, he was there in violation of the law and that is a corruption, otherwise obstructing, influencing or impeding any official proceeding."

Edward Lang of New York was also charged and his attorneys also have petitioned the Supreme Court to weigh in on that specific charge while arguing that it has been applied too broadly.

"Under the Justice Department's current reading and use of 1512, I expect the department will bring this charge against Trump," Norm Pattis, Lang's lawyer, previously told Newsweek. "Of course, that makes the First Amendment issues even more profound. The president made a political judgment about a stolen election: criminalizing that and calling it corrupt would turn a dark page in our history."

Arguing about vagueness and the statute itself being unlawful and casting too wide a net is one that defense lawyers have to make, Trocino said.

"But looking at the particular facts that are covered here, it doesn't seem to me that any citizen would think charging into the Capitol during a joint session of Congress in order to disrupt it when the Capitol is closed to the public at the moment, would not be covered under the statute," he added.

He expects Trump's legal defense team to make similar arguments to that of Pattis and others, to dismiss on similar grounds. The question is whether the Supreme Court's nine justices will listen to the argument.

The U.S. Supreme Court jurisdiction in these cases is typically referred to as discretionary jurisdiction, Trocino said, so even if they have it they don't have to exercise it. In order to exercise jurisdiction, there has to be a difference in circuit courts of appeals on the issue or a really important case with national consequences.

Miller could be arguing the latter, that there are many defendants in the situation and it's of national importance and the Supreme Court should take the case.

"I don't see that they do under these circumstances, but you never know," he said. "It would be difficult to see them taking it on a motion to dismiss, given the standard law, the established law that says district courts should not grant motions to dismiss unless it's an unusual circumstance.

"And the application of this particular statute, to those particular facts, don't in my opinion strike me as terribly unusual.">

<Senate Republicans lined up with Democrats on Tuesday to move forward a federal spending package, isolating House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in an impending government shutdown fight.

Thirty-seven Republicans joined with Democrats to expedite the measure, part of a plan to provide $100 billion more in annual government funding than House Republicans are seeking. The plan doesn’t include the border security, anti-abortion and other provisions House conservatives are demanding to keep the government open beyond Sept. 30.

The vote is the latest sign of a breach among Republicans over the shutdown strategy, a sharp contrast to a political battle earlier this year over raising the US legal debt limit. Senate and House Republicans then united to force President Joe Biden to agree to spending cuts in exchange for avoiding the nation’s first default.

“If there is a shutdown, it is all on the House side,” said Democratic Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland. “The Senate has been very responsible throughout this process.”

The vote is the first step toward a week of debate on annual funding for the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Transportation and Housing and Urban Affairs. After passing those bills, the Senate is planning to pass a stopgap bill to avoid an Oct. 1 government shutdown and pairing that with $24 billion in aid to Ukraine as well as $16 billion in disaster aid.

“We know that in divided government you are not going to get everything in a bill,” said Republican Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota. “We need our military to get the funds they need.”>

<A super PAC aligned with former President Donald Trump on Tuesday morning launched an attack on Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is facing demands by Trump to recuse herself from overseeing his trial on charges related to trying to overturn the 2020 election.

As flagged by Politico's Kyle Cheney, Make America Great Again, Inc. attacked Chutkan for supposedly defending people who rioted during the 2020 protests against police brutality that were inspired by the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.

Cheney describes this attack as "brazen" but also "deceptive," as the super PAC deleted portions of a ruling Chutkan made to make it seem as though she believed no violence occurred as a result of Black Lives Matter protesters.

Specifically, the super PAC quotes Chutkan as saying, "People gathered all over the country last year to protest the violent murder by police of an unarmed man ... to compare the actions of people protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights, to those of a violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government is a false equivalency."

In the ellipsis, the super PAC simply deleted the section of the ruling where Chutkan said, "Some of those [George Floyd] protesters became violent.">

Just another day in the life of the party of law and order, don't you know.

<Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers shot down as “bogus” a surprise plan Republicans floated Tuesday that would have the Legislature approve new maps drawn by nonpartisan staff, preempting the state Supreme Court from tossing the current GOP-drawn boundaries.

The Republican move comes as Wisconsin justices are considering two Democratic-backed lawsuits seeking to toss the current maps, first enacted in 2011, that are among the most gerrymandered in the country and have helped Republicans increase their majority.

Republicans have long opposed plans put forward by Democrats to enact a nonpartisan redistricting process. But now, faced with the likelihood that the liberal-controlled state Supreme Court was going to throw out their maps ahead of the 2024 election, Republicans proposed enacting a new system modeled after neighboring Iowa.

“If you’re sick of the arguing, if you’re sick of the vitriol, if you want people to work together, this is a better way for us to do it,” Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said at a news conference.

But minutes later, Evers came out against the plan that he would have to sign in order for it to become law.

“Republicans are making a last-ditch effort to retain legislative control by having someone Legislature-picked and Legislature-approved draw Wisconsin’s maps,” Evers said in a statement. “That is bogus.”

Under the bill, the maps would be drawn by the Legislative Reference Bureau, nonpartisan staff who work for the Legislature. Legislators would then vote up or down on the plan, and if passed it would then go to the governor for final approval.

The maps drawn could not favor a political party, incumbent legislator, or other person or group, according to the bill.

That is closely modeled after Iowa's redistricting process, but that is not entirely devoid of politics.

Legislative staff there use nonpartisan criteria to draw districts that are then subject to an up or down vote by the Legislature and a potential gubernatorial veto. After the 2020 census, Iowa’s Republican-led Senate voted along party lines to reject the first maps produced by staff, sending them back for another try. The Legislature then accepted the second version, which resulted in Republicans winning all four of the state’s congressional districts in the 2022 elections. Democrats had held at least one district for the previous two decades.

Evers said the Wisconsin Legislature “cannot be trusted to appoint or oversee someone charged with drawing fair maps.”

“Wisconsinites deserve a redistricting process that’s free of partisanship and interference from politicians, and it’s never been clearer that today’s Legislature cannot be trusted with that important responsibility,” Evers said.

Democratic state Sen. Mark Spreitzer said it was disingenuous for Republicans to propose the plan after years of fighting nonpartisan redistricting.

“Speaker Vos doesn’t do anything unless it benefits him and his gerrymandered Republican majority,” Spreitzer said in a statement.

The Assembly was going to vote on the measure Thursday. It would then head to the Senate, where Republicans hold a 22-11 majority. If approved there, it would then go to Evers.

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu did not respond to request for comment.

“This debate over the years has really undermined the respect of the people in the governing process and in the belief that we are truly being represented,” said Republican Rep. Joel Kitchens, who joined with Vos and dozens of other Republican lawmakers at the news conference. “So I think it really is the time to get it done.”

Vos said he preferred the current system for drawing maps — which gives full authority to the Legislature — but “sometimes you have to listen and you change your mind.” Vos said the proposal would also avoid wasting millions of dollars fighting the two pending redistricting lawsuits and a possible impeachment.

Vos and other Republicans have floated the possibility of impeachment if newly elected Justice Janet Protasiewicz doesn't recuse from the redistricting cases because she called the current maps “unfair” and “rigged” and accepted nearly $10 million in campaign donations from the Wisconsin Democratic Party.

Protasiewicz's win in April flipped majority control of the court from conservative to liberal for the first time in 15 years.

<Donald Trump is now posing as the defender of freedom and the scourge of lockdowns, but in truth, he is the most Draconian lockdown president in the history of the United States.

When the COVID outbreak began in March 2020, Trump declared “we have to stay apart," called for the closure of civil society and much of the economy, and basically handed the reins over to Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci.

When some conservative governors tried to unwind the initial lockdowns, Trump attacked them for it.

So why did Donald Trump go along so fully with the lockdown approach at first? Part of it was certainly his famous germophobia. But two other reasons reflect not on his personality but on his fitness to be president. First, he was uninterested in pandemic response, and so he handed it over to the experts. Second, he doesn’t really have any regard for individual liberty or believe there is any limiting principle on what government leaders can do.

Let’s start with the boredom point. Do you remember Trump suggesting, absent any reason to believe so, that COVID would disappear by Easter 2020? He picked Easter because it would be “a beautiful timeline” for the resurrection of civil society or something. He said that in late March, less than two weeks after things began closing down. That was a sure sign that he was done talking about the virus.

Because it bored him, he handed management of the pandemic response over to career bureaucrats.

“The president got bored with it,” one veteran GOP operative said.

This is actually part of the defense Trump supporters launch: The nationwide lockdown guidelines weren’t Trump’s idea, he just went along with them.

This is, of course, not a good defense of a man who wants another stab at being the chief executive of the United States.

Trump has a famously short attention span for anything besides Trump, and he is incredibly impressionable. For that reason, he often simply abdicates his responsibility on important issues and lets others make the decisions.

A good executive listens to the experts and then makes decisions — especially on momentous matters. Public health experts will always put too much emphasis on illness and have too little concern for community, commerce, and liberty.

Which brings us to the second reason Trump was fine with guidelines that called for outlawing church and large gatherings: he doesn’t have any deep regard for individual liberty or freedom.

Consider his fondness for authoritarians like Vladimir Putin, Rodrigo Duterte, Kim Jong Un, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Consider his calls to execute drug dealers and lock up political opponents. He believes in limitless law enforcement powers.

A lack of interest in governing and a disregard for freedom — the traits that led Trump to advocating lockdowns — are two very bad traits in a president.>

<House Republican Nancy Mace warned her GOP colleagues they will lose in 2024 if they continue to "walk the plank" on issues such as abortion, birth control and efforts to impeach President Biden.

The South Carolina congresswoman, who was elected in November 2020, was responding to comments by fellow House Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is urging her party to block any additional government funding unless an impeachment inquiry is held into Biden. Without additional funding the government is currently due to run out of money on September 30, resulting in a shutdown that would see many federal agencies forced to close.

Asked by CNN's Kaitlan Collins whether "making [GOP] moderates vote for this would put them at risk" Mace replied: "Oh, 100 percent it puts them at risk."

"Biden district Republicans are the reason Republicans have the slim majority that we have today and if we want to keep that majority we have to keep those folks in their seats," she said.

"So you don't do that by making Republicans in moderate districts walk the plank on abortion, walk the plant on women's issues, walk the plank on birth control, walk the plank on an impeachment vote. Those are all reasons why we will lose next year if we continue down that path."

Mace said she does support holding an impeachment inquiry into Biden focused on whether he benefitted improperly from his family's business activities, but isn't ready to back an impeachment vote itself at this point.

"I think there's a difference between an impeachment vote and an inquiry. An inquiry would give us another toolbox specifically to look at Joe Biden's bank records," the congresswoman said.

"Everybody's screaming about the evidence, where's the evidence? The bank records hold all of the evidence and if the American people—Kaitlan, if you could see the suspicious activity reports that I have seen on the Biden family you too would probably support an impeachment inquiry just as a tool to get more information on, specifically the bank information of Joe Biden and his family members...I'll support an impeachment inquiry, an impeachment vote is totally separate but an inquiry I would support at this juncture."

Mace also said she will vote against more government funding, as "Republicans and Democrats have spent too much," but insisted she isn't making any connection between this and a potential impeachment inquiry.

After winning control of the House at the November midterms Republicans launched a number of committee inquiries to investigate the Biden family's business activities, with a particular focus on the president's son, Hunter Biden.

Speaking in 2019, Biden insisted he had "never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings."

This was apparently contradicted by Devon Archer, one of Hunter's former business associates, who appeared before the House Oversight Committee on July 31.

Following his testimony, the committee tweeted: "Archer's testimony confirms Joe Biden lied to the American people when he said he had no knowledge about his son's business dealings and was not involved."

According to the committee, then-Vice President Biden "joined Hunter Biden's dinners with his foreign business associates in person or by speakerphone over 20 times."

Speaking to Newsweek in response, a White House spokesperson commented: "It appears that the House Republicans' own much-hyped witness today testified that he never heard of President Biden discussing business with his son or his son's associates, or doing anything wrong.

"House Republicans keep promising bombshell evidence to support their ridiculous attacks against the President, but time after time, they keep failing to produce any. In fact, even their own witnesses appear to be debunking their allegations."

Appearing on MSNBC's Inside with Jen Psaki on Sunday, House Republican Ken Buck said he hasn't seen proof that Biden has committed any impeachable offence.

"The time for impeachment is the time when there's evidence linking President Biden—if there's evidence linking President Biden, to a high crime or misdemeanor. That doesn't exist right now," Buck said.>

<The case is about Alabama's congressional districts, but the decision by the Supreme Court could have far-reaching implications for the rest of the nation.

Alabama officials filed an emergency appeal at the Supreme Court late Monday, asking the justices review its controversial congressional map that critics say dilutes Black voting power.

While the lawsuit is technically limited to Alabama, the outcome will affect other legal challenges to congressional districts, particularly in the south. Together, those cases could give African Americans more power to choose congressional candidates − and it could give an advantage to Democrats in the 2024 election.

Did Alabama defy the Supreme Court?

The appeal came days after a federal court in Alabama struck down that state's congressional map for not including a second majority African American district or something close to it. Alabama's map includes one of seven districts where African Americans make up a majority of voters, even though African Americans make up 27% of the state's population.

Voting rights groups claim Alabama ignored a surprise Supreme Court ruling in June that had found the state's maps likely violated the Voting Rights Act.

After that ruling, Alabama redrew its map but − again − included only one majority Black district.

Alabama officials say that to create a second majority African American district would require a "sacrifice" of other priorities, such as keeping similar communities together in the same districts. Without intervention from the Supreme Court, the state said, Alabama's map would be "replaced by a court-drawn map that no state could constitutionally enact. Millions of voters will be placed into congressional districts whose design is dictated...by the race of voters."

The Supreme Court could move relatively quickly on the appeal, potentially within a matter of weeks.

'Shameful and arrogant.' Election attention shifts to Alabama

Earlier this year, David Wasserman, senior editor of the Cook Political Report, wrote that the decision could "send shockwaves beyond Alabama" and "shake up the 2024 battle for the House." Wasserman predicted at that time that the changes could force the creation of two to four new Democrat-friendly House districts.

The case could influence similar legal battles over maps in Texas, Florida, Georgia and other states where the interplay between race, politics and redistricting has been fraught for decades.

"This is a shameful and arrogant continuation of a sordid history in Alabama that denies equal rights to Black Alabamians, no matter how the United States Supreme Court rules," said Eric Holder, the former attorney general during President Barack Obama's administration and the head of the National Redistricting Foundation, a Democratic group that has supported the plaintiffs in the case.

But Alabama is relying heavily on a concurring opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who joined the 5-4 majority in June but who expressed reservations. Even if Congress has the power under the Constitution to “authorize race-based redistricting,” Kavanaugh wrote in June, that power “cannot extend indefinitely into the future.”

Alabama officials repeatedly cited Kavanaugh's opinion in its appeal.

"Just as this court held that 'race-based' affirmative action in education 'at some point' had to 'end,' the same principle applies to affirmative action in districting," they told the court late Monday.>

<Members of the House Freedom Caucus repeatedly pressed during a Tuesday press conference that an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden has nothing to do with their ongoing efforts to drive the government into a shutdown unless a list of their demands are met.

The attempt to deny any connection between the two came in a lengthy news conference, just hours after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy officially announced an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden — without a floor vote.

“We agree with the Speaker that impeachment should not be done for political reasons. If the facts take us to that location then that’s where they should take us,” Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry (R-PA) told reporters at the House Triangle. “But it has nothing to do with the debt, the deficit, the outrageous spending, the inflation that’s crushing American families. Those are two separate issues and they should be dealt with separately.”

For weeks before the August recess, far-right House Republicans slowed down the appropriations process by stuffing the bills with riders going after abortion access and LGBTQ rights. While tacking manufactured far-right grievances onto standard issue appropriations bills, MAGA Republicans have been claiming they want to cut government spending to pre-COVID levels.

In a late August statement, the Freedom Caucus vowed to oppose any short-term solution — to keep the government funded until lawmakers can reach an agreement — unless House leadership met a list of their demands. To their point, that list did not officially include any requests for impeachment, but far-right members have been pushing the idea for months. It was even reported before the August recess that McCarthy was weighing an impeachment inquiry as a bone to the hardliners mucking up the appropriations process.

Despite all of this, Perry and his far-right colleagues insisted on Tuesday that this wasn’t an effort to bully McCarthy into giving the recently emboldened group concessions. The concession in this case being every MAGA Republican’s wish: seeking revenge for former President Donald Trump’s two impeachments.

“This isn’t political revenge,” Perry said frustrated, when a reporter asked if he had any evidence to justify impeachment. He also reiterated Tuesday that hardliners are still not on board with a temporary spending bill.

“We’re not interested in a continuing resolution that continues the policies and the spending of the Biden, Schumer, Pelosi era,” Perry said. “We’re not going to vote for it. We didn’t vote for it last December. And we’re not gonna vote for it now.”

Freedom Caucus member Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) also said he will not vote for a continuing resolution.

“It’s time to fight and if it shuts the government down, shut it down,” Norman told reporters on the House steps following the press conference. “It’s my message.”>

<Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., announced a bill to cap credit card interest rates Tuesday.

“Americans are being crushed under the weight of record credit card debt—and the biggest banks are just getting richer," said Senator Hawley. "The government was quick to bail out the banks just this spring, but has ignored working people struggling to get ahead. Capping the maximum credit card interest rate is fair, common-sense, and gives the working class a chance.”

The Capping Credit Card Interest Rates Act caps the annual percentage rate for credit cards at 18%, with penalties for companies that try to violate the cap through higher APR or by imposing additional fees to create an effectively higher APR.

Credit card debts and APR have both reached record levels this year, with APR averages reaching 20.92% and collective credit card balances in the United States hitting $1 trillion in August.>

<Explosive new allegations have emerged in the tangled bankruptcy case of Texas hedge fund Highland Capital Management, raising serious questions about potential corruption and conflicts of interest.

A whistleblower complaint filed with the SEC accuses Highland's court-appointed trustee, James Seery, of improperly profiting from insider information related to Amazon's acquisition of MGM Studios last year. The complaint alleges that Seery acquired a creditor's stake in an entity holding substantial MGM shares at a steep discount, knowing the value would skyrocket after the merger. Seery allegedly provided false testimony in bankruptcy court to conceal the true value of the shares, which soared from $22 million to $55 million in a matter of months.

These troubling charges land amid ongoing controversy surrounding Bankruptcy Judge Stacey Jernigan, who continues to preside over the Highland case despite calls for her recusal. Jernigan has published two novels featuring characters closely modeled on herself and Highland founder Jim Dondero, portraying the hedge fund manager as a villain. Experts argue these books create, at minimum, an appearance of bias.

Nonetheless, Jernigan has consistently ruled in favor of Seery while rejecting transparency efforts and rebuffing allegations of wrongdoing. The whistleblower complaint asserts she turned a blind eye to Seery's alleged insider profiteering, refusing to hear testimony from industry experts.

If proven true, these claims point to serious ethical breaches and potential corruption. The SEC must thoroughly investigate whether Seery misused his court-appointed position for personal gain. And Jernigan may need to finally acknowledge her novels have irreparably tainted the proceedings and step aside.

At stake is the integrity of the bankruptcy process. Hedge funds and creditors alike deserve impartial justice, not courtroom drama. This saga underscores the urgent need for oversight and accountability.>

Texass strikes again!!

Ain't that so, <fredthestalker>?