Justice Anthony M. Kennedy has long been troubled by extreme partisan gerrymandering, where the party in power draws voting districts to give itself a lopsided advantage in elections. But he has never found a satisfactory way to determine when voting maps are so warped by politics that they cross a constitutional line.
After spirited Supreme Court arguments on Tuesday, there was reason to think Justice Kennedy may be ready to join the court’s more liberal members in a groundbreaking decision that could reshape American democracy by letting courts determine when lawmakers have gone too far.
Justice Kennedy asked skeptical questions of lawyers defending a Wisconsin legislative map that gave Republicans many more seats in the State Assembly than their statewide vote tallies would have predicted. He asked no questions of the lawyer representing the Democratic voters challenging the map.
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People including Bill Millhouser protesting gerrymandering outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday. The court was hearing a case based on voting district maps in Wisconsin.Credit Tom Brenner/The New York Times
The worst mass shooting in modern American history was met with immediate calls for action on gun control Monday from some Democratic lawmakers.
Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut demanded that Congress “get off its ass and do something.”
“This must stop,” Murphy said. “It is positively infuriating that my colleagues in Congress are so afraid of the gun industry that they pretend there aren’t public policy responses to this epidemic.”
He added: “The thoughts and prayers of politicians are cruelly hollow if they are paired with continued legislative indifference. It’s time for Congress to get off its ass and do something.”
President Donald Trump’s tax plan could put $757 million in his own pocket over the likely 10-year lifetime of the proposal, just from the reduction in taxes on so-called “small businesses.”
The vast majority of Trump’s income in the past year came from “limited liability companies” he owns, which are exactly the sort of businesses that would see their maximum tax rate fall from 39.6 percent currently to 25 percent.
“This will be the lowest top marginal income tax rate for small- and medium-sized businesses in more than 80 years,” Trump said Friday at the National Association of Manufacturers. “And it will be rocket fuel for our economy.”
Whether that rate cut would actually fuel economic growth is not clear. What is clear, though, is the scale of the tax savings that would personally benefit Trump: $75.7 million per year, based on a HuffPost analysis of the president’s most recent financial disclosure.
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Under growing pressure from Congress and the public to reveal more about the spread of covert Russian propaganda on Facebook, the company said on Thursday that it was turning over more than 3,000 Russia-linked ads to congressional committees investigating the Kremlin’s influence operation during the 2016 presidential campaign.
“I care deeply about the democratic process and protecting its integrity,” Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said during an appearance on Facebook Live, the company’s video service. He added that he did not want anyone “to use our tools to undermine democracy.”
“That’s not what we stand for,” he said.
The announcement that Facebook would share the ads with the Senate and House intelligence committees came after the social network spent two weeks on the defensive. The company faced calls for greater transparency about 470 Russia-linked accounts — in which fictional people posed as American activists — which were taken down after they had promoted inflammatory messages on divisive issues. Facebook had previously angered congressional staff by showing only a sample of the ads, some of which attacked Hillary Clinton or praised Donald J. Trump.
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Facebook said it would share more than 3,000 Russia-linked adds with two congressional committees investigating Russian influence on last year’s presidential campaign. The company previously showed congressional staff a sample of the ads, some of which attacked Hillary Clinton or praised Donald J. Trump, but had not shared the entire collection.Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team is reaching back more than a decade in its investigation of Paul Manafort, a sign of the pressure Mueller is placing on President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman.
The FBI’s warrant for a July search of Manafort’s Alexandria, Virginia, home said the investigation centered on possible crimes committed as far back as January 2006, according to a source briefed on the investigation.
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The broad time frame is the latest indication that Mueller’s team is going well beyond Russian meddling during the campaign as part of its investigation of Trump campaign associates. Manafort, who has been the subject of an FBI investigation for three years, has emerged as a focal point for Mueller.
A retweet may not always equal an endorsement, but when you’re a public officeholder, it certainly can carry a lot of weight.
That’s what made President Donald Trump’s retweet of a GIF Sunday morning that showed him swinging a golf club and appearing to hit Hillary Clinton with a golf ball so stunning.
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The GIF puts together footage of Trump, wearing a red cap, taking a swing on a golf course, with footage of Clinton tripping and falling as she boarded a plane while serving as secretary of state in 2011. The edited footage makes it appear as though the ball hit Clinton in the back, causing her to fall.
“Donald Trump’s amazing golf swing #CrookedHillary,” the Twitter user whom Trump retweeted wrote in the image’s caption.
Sen. John McCain acknowledged the severity of his cancer prognosis Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” saying in his first national interview since receiving the diagnosis that it is the latest test in a lifetime of tough fights.
“I’m facing a challenge, but I’ve faced other challenges,” McCain said. “And I’m very confident about getting through this one as well.”
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The Arizona Republican, who was diagnosed with brain cancer in July, said he will receive a magnetic resonance imaging test on Monday and expressed optimism about his condition.
“I’m fine,” McCain told anchor Jake Tapper. “The prognosis is pretty good. Look, this is a very vicious form of cancer that I’m facing, but all the results so far are excellent.”
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McCain returned to Washington as the Senate came back from its August recess last week, and he said he planned to focus in the coming week on a key defense bill.
The Supreme Court granted Tuesday a Trump administration request to continue to bar most refugees under its travel ban.
Without comment, the court blocked a federal appeals court ruling from last week that would have exempted refugees who have a contractual commitment from resettlement organizations from the travel ban while the justices consider its legality. The ruling could impact roughly 24,000 people.
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The travel ban bars certain people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the US.
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The issue concerning the scope of the travel ban has been ricocheting through the courts since last spring when the Supreme Court allowed Trump’s ban to go into effect except for those with a “bona fide” relationship to the United States. The order might give hope to supporters of the ban, but it may also simply reflect a desire on the part of the justices to maintain the status quo until the justices can hear the case next month.
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“Although it may be tempting to see the order as a harbinger of how the court is likely to rule on the merits, it’s better understood as a very modest procedural step to stabilize the full scope of the injunctions against the travel ban over the next four weeks,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor of law at the University of Texas School of Law.
The House approved Wednesday an initial $7.9 billion package of disaster relief funds in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, while Senate leaders appear likely to attach the bill to a politically-fraught effort to raise the debt ceiling.
The vote was 419-3. The bill moves to the Senate, which is expected to vote on the plan this week, the bulk of which will go to Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has warned that it is running out of resources rapidly. In addition to supporting the recovery efforts in Texas, the agency is preparing for Hurricane Irma, another powerful storm that is approaching Puerto Rico and threatens to have a devastating impact on Florida.
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But in a new wrinkle that could complicate the debt ceiling fight, Democratic leaders, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, released a statement Wednesday morning backing only a three-month debt limit increase as part of the Harvey aid package.
While Republican leaders haven’t said how long they plan to extend the debt limit, it was expected that it would be longer than three months.
President Trump struck a deal with Democratic congressional leaders on Wednesday to increase the debt limit and finance the government until mid-December, undercutting his own Republican allies as he reached across the aisle to resolve a major dispute for the first time since taking office.
The agreement would avert a fiscal showdown later this month without the bloody, partisan battle that many had anticipated by combining a debt ceiling increase and stopgap spending measure with relief aid to Texas and other areas devastated by Hurricane Harvey. But without addressing the fundamental underlying issues, it set up the prospect for an even bigger clash at the end of the year.
In embracing the three-month deal, Mr. Trump accepted a Democratic proposal that had been rejected just hours earlier by Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin. Mr. Trump’s snap decision at a White House meeting caught Republican leaders off guard and reflected friction between the president and his party. After weeks of criticizing Republican leaders for failing to pass legislation, Mr. Trump signaled that he was willing to cross party lines to score some much-desired legislative victories.
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President Trump and Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, spoke during a meeting with the congressional leadership in the Oval Office on Wednesday.Credit Al Drago for The New York Times
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
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John McCain
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James' World 2 