Citizen Cartwright

Some of the thousands of state laws that took effect Jan. 1

At least 20 states increased the statewide minimum wage — the highest in Washington state at $16.66 an hour, followed by California at $16.50, says NPR.

 

And gun safety activists have been touting the wave of newly passed laws to educate consumers on the risks of gun ownership and how to securely store firearms, says USA Today.

 

Iowa and Louisiana are joining 12 other states that charge a flat individual income tax.

 

Kentucky is the latest state to legalize medical marijuana.

 

Minnesota is the latest state to increase transparency when purchasing tickets to concerts, sporting events and other big events.

 

Other new laws:

 

— New York is the first state to offer all private-sector pregnant workers 20 hours of paid leave a year for prenatal care

 

— California says schools can no longer require teachers to out LGBTQ+ students to their parents

 

— Illinois police are required to undergo autism awareness training

 

— Florida is banning children under 14 from having social media accounts

 

— California is imposing harsher sentences for large-scale "smash-and-grab" retail theft

 

— Texas no longer requires car safety inspections

 

— Colorado says all eggs sold in the state must come from a cage-free facility

GOP takes control of federal government; states move to protect democracy

Republicans secured enough seats on Wednesday to retain their majority in the House, giving the GOP control of Congress after Republicans earlier took the Senate majority from Democrats.

 

"With hard-fought yet thin majorities, Republican leaders are envisioning a mandate to upend the federal government and swiftly implement Trump’s vision for the country,” says The Associated Press.

 

“When he returns to the White House, Trump will be working with a Republican Party that has been completely transformed by his 'Make America Great Again' movement and a Supreme Court dominated by conservative justices, including three that he appointed,” AP says.

 

However, “a highly functioning House is also far from guaranteed,” AP notes. “The past two years of Republican House control were defined by infighting as hardline conservative factions sought to gain influence and power by openly defying their party leadership.” 

 

And “the right wing of the party is ascendant and ambitious on the heels of Trump’s election victory,” AP says.

 

At the same time, the Republican majority depends on a small group of lawmakers who won tough elections by running as moderates, and it remains to be seen whether they'll be onboard with some of the most extreme proposals championed by Trump and his allies, says AP.

 

Meanwhile, as frequently happens, some states are gearing up to be a counterweight to federal action.

 

For example, the Democratic governors of Illinois and Colorado will co-chair a new “non-partisan” coalition of the nation's governors committed to protecting the “state-level institutions of democracy.” 

 

Governors Safeguarding Democracy will be supported by a network of senior staff designated by each leader and by GovAct, an organization “championing fundamental freedoms.”

 

GovAct is advised by a bipartisan board that includes former GOP Gov. Arne Carlson of Minnesota, former Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts and former GOP Gov. Bill Weld of Massachusetts.

Protecting mobile home owners from private equity, others

Manufactured homes are one of the most affordable options for home ownership in the United States. But typically, homeowners don’t own the land under their home.

 

And as you and I have discussed before, investors have increasingly been buying up mobile home parks, driving rents up and residents out.

 

Between 2015 and 2022, about 800,000 manufactured housing sites were sold to private equity investors and real estate investment trusts, more than a quarter of the total estimated number of sites across the country, according to an analysis by George McCarthy, president of the nonprofit Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

 

Now states including Maine, Connecticut and New York have passed laws to require mobile home park owners to provide advance notice to residents if they intend to sell, giving the community members a chance to buy it themselves, says The New York Times.

 

A bipartisan Senate bill would offer a tax credit to manufactured home park owners who sell the land to residents rather than to outside investors.

 

Housing advocates say that across the nation, government intervention increasingly is necessary to create and sustain affordable housing. 

 

“The government needs to do more to correct the power imbalance between property owners and tenants, especially in manufactured housing communities where residents are particularly vulnerable to predatory and abusive practices,” says Lisa Sitkin, a supervising attorney at the nonprofit National Housing Law Project. 

 

Some owners of mobile home parks question the fairness of a law that can complicate the selling process, and some industry groups say institutional investors can be helpful to the communities by providing resources and expertise.

Supreme Court allows Virginia purge of voter registrations

The court’s conservative majority left in place on Wednesday Virginia’s purge of voter registrations that the state says is intended to stop people who aren't U.S. citizens from voting, The Associated Press and other media report.

 

Over the dissents of the three liberal justices, the court granted an emergency appeal from Virginia’s Republican administration led by Gov. Glenn Youngkin. 

 

The court’s one-paragraph order gave no reasoning for the justices’ decision, as is often the case with emergency appeals, Scotusblog says.

 

Virginia isn't a swing state, but the case underscores a baseless theory of former President Trump and his allies, who've cast voting by undocumented immigrants as a threat in an effort to stoke doubt about the election outcome, says The New York Times.

 

It's illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and studies have found that instances of it happening are extremely rare, the Times notes.

 

The court acted on Virginia’s appeal after a federal judge found that the state illegally purged more than 1,600 voter registrations in the past two months. A federal appeals court previously had allowed the judge’s order to remain in effect.

 

Youngkin says voters who believe they were improperly removed from the voting rolls still can vote in the election because Virginia has same-day registration.

 

Civil rights groups, backed by the Biden administration, had challenged the plan, saying it had led to some legal voters being removed from the rolls. 

 

The state's plan flagged people for removal if they checked a box on a Department of Motor Vehicles form declaring they aren't citizens or if they left it blank, says NBC News.

 

Rina Shaw, 22, of Chesterfield, Va., says she was born in Virginia, has lived in the state her entire life and has never left the United States. She says she may have forgotten to check a citizenship box on a form when she was updating her voter registration at the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles while getting her learner’s permit.

 

The National Voter Registration Act requires a 90-day “quiet period” before elections for the maintenance of voter rolls so legitimate voters aren't removed from the rolls by bureaucratic errors or last-minute mistakes that can't be quickly corrected.

 

Virginia maintained that the NVRA’s “quiet period” provision doesn't apply because the law doesn't bar the removal of noncitizens who weren't eligible to vote in the first place, Scotusblog says.

 

Wendy Weiser, vice president for Democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice, says, “For any eligible voter in Virginia who may be impacted by the purge, please use same-day registration to cast a vote in this election. Or call 866-OUR-VOTE if you need assistance.”

 

In a similar lawsuit in Alabama, a federal judge this month ordered the state to restore eligibility for more than 3,200 voters who'd been deemed ineligible noncitizens. Testimony from state officials in that case showed that about 2,000 of the 3,251 voters who were made inactive actually were legally registered citizens, AP says.

A citizen’s guide to defending democracy

“We can be absolutely certain that an attempt will be made to steal the 2024 election if Kamala Harris wins,” says Anne Applebaum, a longtime reporter, Pulitizer Prize-winning author and expert on authoritarianism, in The Atlantic. (The italics are hers.)

 

"This prospect can feel overwhelming: Many people are not just upset about the possibility of a lost or stolen election, but oppressed by a sensation of helplessness,” she says. "This feeling — I can’t do anything; my actions don’t matter — is precisely the feeling that autocratic movements seek to instill in citizens, as Peter Pomerantsev and I explain in our recent podcast, Autocracy in America. But you can always do something. If you need advice about what that might be, here is an updated citizen’s guide to defending democracy.”

 

Organizations and websites:

 

— Register to vote, and make sure everyone you know has done so. Vote.gov has a list of the rules in all 50 states.

 

— Vote early and in person if you can. Here is a list of the early-voting rules for every state.

 

— If you or anybody you know has trouble voting, for any reason, call 866-OUR-VOTE, a hotline set up by Election Protection, a nonpartisan national coalition led by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

 

If you have time to do more, the coalition is looking for lawyers, law students, and paralegals to help out if multiple, simultaneous challenges to the election occur at the county level. People are needed to serve as poll monitors and to staff the hotline.

 

— If you live in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin, you can volunteer to help All Voting Is Local. It's recruiting legal professionals and poll monitors. If you don’t live in one of these states, you can make a financial contribution.

 

— Wherever you live, you can contact Power the Polls about helping to staff your local polling place.

 

— You can volunteer to give people a ride to vote. A website for Democrats offering or needing rides is Rideshare2Vote.

 

And Lyft is offering discounts on rides to the polls on Election Day.

 

— If you see a long voting line or if you find yourself in one, report it to Pizza to the Polls, and the group will send over free pizza.

 

— Organizations to get information from and donate to include Protect Democracy, the States United Democracy Center, the Brennan Center for Justice, Democracy Docket (for Democrats) and Republicans for the Rule of Law.

 

By the way, Applebaum urged continued support for Ukraine as she accepted a German peace prize on Sunday, saying pacifism in the face of aggression can be appeasement.

AP series on how U.S. elections work

In the last couple of years, The Associated Press has upped its effort to improve civic literacy and combat misinformation by bolstering its explanatory journalism and providing information and tools to local newsrooms to assist their coverage.

 

Here is the link to AP’s full Explaining Election 2024 series.

 

Among the recently updated articles:

 

— Not everything will run perfectly on Election Day; still, U.S. elections are remarkably reliable

 

— What is the Electoral College and how does the United States use it to elect presidents?

 

— AP has called winners in elections for more than 170 years. Here’s how it’s done

 

— Why and how AP counts the vote for thousands of U.S. elections 

 

— If the polls have just closed, how can AP already declare a winner?

 

— Florida has nearly all its ballots counted on Election Day, while California can take weeks. This is why

 

— Courts could see a wave of election lawsuits; experts say the bar to change the outcome is high

First Monday in October: Supreme Court begins new term

Some important cases are on the court’s calendar so far. And it’s possible that lawsuits over counting ballots and voting access will draw the court into election-related disputes, The Washington Post and others report.

 

Among the top cases:

 

— The Biden administration and families of transgender minors in Tennessee are challenging a federal appeals court decision that upheld the state's ban on gender-affirming care for minors. About half the states have enacted similar restrictions. The court extended employment protections to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers in 2020 but hasn’t ruled on the constitutionality of lower-court decisions involving transgender minors, bathroom access or athletes.

 

— A woman in Ohio is asking the court to revive her workplace discrimination lawsuit claiming she unfairly lost out on state jobs to LGBTQ people, in violation of federal law.

 

— The Biden administration is appealing a federal appeals court ruling that struck down a regulation to reduce the proliferation of hard-to-trace ghost guns, which lack serial numbers. The firearms assembled from kits have become increasingly popular with teenagers and those whose criminal records keep them from buying guns in the marketplace.

 

— Leading U.S. gun manufacturers want the court to overturn an appellate ruling keeping alive a $10 billion lawsuit filed by Mexico over allegations that the companies’ practices are responsible for violence in Mexico.

 

— The Nuclear Regulatory Commission wants the court to restore licenses it issued for temporary nuclear waste storage facilities in rural New Mexico and Texas that were invalidated by a federal appeals court.

 

— The Food and Drug Administration wants the justices to overturn a ruling that would allow the marketing of sweet e-cigarette products amid concern about an increase in youth vaping in recent years. 

 

— The adult entertainment industry is challenging a provision of Texas law, upheld by a federal appeals court, requiring that pornographic websites verify the age of their users.

 

— This week, the justices are to consider whether to reverse the death penalty conviction of Richard Glossip, an Oklahoma man whose case has drawn national attention and bipartisan intervention because of prosecutors’ admitted errors.

 

Some of these cases are among 15 the court added on Friday to its docket for this term. Here is that full list, from Scotusblog.

How abortion bans have delayed emergency medical care

Republican lawmakers who've voted for state bans on abortion say the laws have exceptions to protect the “life of the mother,” but medical experts say the language isn't rooted in science and ignores the fast-moving realities of medicine, ProPublica reported on Monday.

 

Experts had predicted that the most restrictive state laws would pit doctors’ fears of prosecution against their patients’ health needs, requiring providers to make sure their patient was inarguably on the brink of death or facing “irreversible” harm when they intervened.

“They would feel the need to wait for a higher blood pressure, wait for a higher fever — really got to justify this one — bleed a little bit more,” Dr. Melissa Kottke, an obstetrician-gynecologist who teaches at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, told lawmakers in 2019 during one of the hearings over Georgia’s ban.

 

Now, the ProPublica article tells the story of Amber Thurman, who died at an Atlanta hospital of an infection that an official state committee — including 10 doctors — concluded was “preventable,” after her treatment was delayed.

 

Since abortion was banned or restricted in 22 states over the past two years, women have been turned away from emergency rooms and told that they need to be in more danger before doctors can help, ProPublica says. Some women have been forced to continue high-risk pregnancies that threatened their lives. 

Such stories have been at the center of the 2024 presidential election, during which the right to abortion is on the ballot in 10 states, notes ProPublica.

 

Also on Monday, Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s Human Rights Subcommittee, held a field hearing on the issue in Atlanta. Two Georgia women and an OGBYN doctor testified that Georgia’s 6-week abortion ban is forcing Georgia women to continue high-risk and nonviable pregnancies, posing risks to their health and human rights.

 

Here is video from the hearing.

NYTimes: Supreme Court insiders on Roberts’ role in Trump cases

In three Jan. 6-related cases, the Supreme Court last term was more entangled in presidential politics than at any time since the 2000 election, says The New York Times. And Chief Justice John Roberts responded by using his authority to steer rulings that benefited former President Trump, according to a Times examination of new information about the court’s decision making.

 

The Times says its examination involves “details from the justices’ private memos, documentation of the proceedings and interviews with court insiders, both conservative and liberal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because deliberations are supposed to be kept secret.”

 

All nine justices declined to respond to written questions from the Times.

 

Roberts wrote the majority opinions in all three cases: on presidential immunity, obstruction charges against Jan. 6 rioters, and an unsigned case concluding that Trump couldn’t be barred from election ballots in Colorado, the Times says.

 

Immunity

 

The inside information the Times cites on the presidential immunity case involves justices’ disagreements on scheduling of the case, that Roberts “froze out” the liberal justices in deliberations, and justices' views on whether the ruling should focus on the facts of the case or its implications for the future.

 

Roberts' opinion cited “enduring principles,” quoted Alexander Hamilton’s endorsement of a vigorous presidency, and asserted it would be a mistake to dwell too much on Trump’s actions. “In a case like this one, focusing on ‘transient results’ may have profound consequences for the separation of powers and for the future of our Republic,” he wrote. “Our perspective must be more farsighted.”

 

But “To Democrats, the Republican-appointed justices were brushing away the violent Capitol attack and abandoning the core principle that no one is above the law,” says the Times. "The chief justice, who had long said he wanted to keep the court out of politics, had plunged it more deeply in.”

 

Obstruction of an official proceeding

 

Had prosecutors overreached in charging some Jan. 6 rioters under a law originally focused on white-collar crime?

 

Justice Barrett, along with Justices Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, believed that prosecutors were entitled to charge rioters under the obstruction law.

 

Justice Jackson agreed with the majority that the law had been applied too broadly, according to several court insiders. But she thought the others were going too far by reversing the lower court’s judgment, tossing out the charge in the case before them and undermining many others.

 

She said she'd join the majority if they would send the cases back to the lower courts to be reconsidered. The final vote was 6 to 3, with Barrett siding with the liberals and Jackson with the conservatives.

 

Colorado ballot

The Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, contains language prohibiting insurrectionists from holding office. So could Colorado remove Trump from the ballot in its GOP primary?

"Roberts told his colleagues he wanted the decision to be unanimous and unsigned,” The Times says. "In any politically charged case, agreement among the justices made the decision more authoritative. He even said he would consult individually with everyone to discuss what they would accept — a rare step.”

While all nine justices agreed that Trump should stay on state ballots, four of the conservatives were pushing to go further and rule that the Constitution’s prohibition would require congressional action to take effect. 

Justice Barrett and the three liberals wrote concurring opinions saying the majority had gone too far. Although the ruling was 9 to 0, the justices hadn't reached true agreement, the Times says.

Who’s Tim Walz, Harris’ pick for vice president?

"It would be hard to find a more vivid representative of the American heartland than Walz,” says The Associated Press.

 

Born in West Point, Neb., a community of about 3,500, he joined the National Guard and became a teacher in Minnesota.

 

Democrat Walz "has a proven ability to connect with conservative voters," says AP. In his first race for Congress in 2006, Walz won in a largely rural, southern Minnesota congressional district against six-term Republican Rep. Gil Gutknecht. During his six terms in the House, Walz championed veterans’ issues.

 

When Minnesota Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton decided not to seek a third term in 2018, Walz won the office on a “One Minnesota” theme. 

Walz has been a champion of Democratic causes, including union organizing, workers’ rights and the $15-an-hour minimum wage. 

 

While Walz isn’t from one of the crucial “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where both sides believe they need to win, he’s right next door.

 

Walz’s ability to speak in layman’s terms about policy and politics, coupled with his knowledge of the internet zeitgeist, has helped propel him to the national stage and on the “For You” social media pages of millions of Gen Z voters whose support will be crucial for Democrats in November, says a separate AP article.

 

Here is a “Who is Tim Walz?” from the Star Tribune, Minnesota’s top newspaper.

 

And here are "55 things to know about Tim Walz," from Politico Magazine.