Tag Archives: judge

State Department Reverses Visa Ban, Allows Travelers With Visas Into US: Official

by Teri2063yeqkquw Posted on February 4, 2017

Mother Jones

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department will allow people with valid visas into the United States, a department official said on Saturday, in order to comply with an opinion from a federal judge in Seattle barring President Donald Trump’s executive action.

“We have reversed the provisional revocation of visas,” the State Department official said in a statement. “Those individuals with visas that were not physically canceled may now travel if the visa is otherwise valid.”

(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati and Julia Edwards Ainsley; Editing by Bill Trott)

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State Department Reverses Visa Ban, Allows Travelers With Visas Into US: Official

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Students With Valid Visas Are Trapped in Limbo Abroad

by TommieGrout Posted on January 30, 2017

Mother Jones

On Saturday morning, Niki Mossafer Rahmati got off her flight from Tehran in Doha, Qatar to board a connecting flight to Boston, when she got caught up in the chaos set off by President Trump’s immigration order.

Rahmati, an MIT junior studying mechanical engineering, had been home with her family for winter break when she received word Wednesday morning of the pending executive order. She changed her flight to return to Boston right away, only to find that order had gone into effect in the middle of her connecting flight to Doha. She and some 30 other Iranians with legal visas were blocked from boarding the plane and sent back to Tehran. Among them, Rahmati says, were two women traveling to their pregnant daughters to help them through their last trimester.

“Do any of the people sound like illegal immigrants?” Rahmati asked in a public Facebook post after arriving back home in Tehran. “This will not secure the borders from terrorism and illegal immigrants. It will only increase racism in the American society. The president is trying to make Islamophobia a norm and policy by which he wants to lead the country.”

“My inbox is flooded with messages and emails of love and support,” she also wrote. “But I cannot believe all this love is coming from the same country that banned me from entering its borders just a couple of hours ago.”

Rahmati is just one among many students from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen who have been barred from returning to school. MIT alone has 38 students from Iran, 1 from Iraq, 5 from Syria, 2 from Sudan, and 1 from Somalia; two, including Rahmati, were reportedly unable to board flights back to Boston. According to the New York Times, students from Stanford, Harvard, and Yale, among other universities, have also been affected.

Yesterday, after thousands of protesters stormed US airports to fight for the release of people detained upon arrival, a federal judge in Brooklyn blocked part of President Trump’s order by temporarily allowing valid visa holders who had landed in the US to stay. Federal judges in Massachusetts, Virginia, and Washington quickly followed suit, with the Massachusetts order additionally restraining enforcement of the order for visa holders traveling back to the US in the next seven days.

In response, MIT issued an statement urging students and staff to “fly back to Boston—directly to Logan Airport—as soon as possible, and before February 4.” Whether or not the court order will be respected by Custom and Border Protection officials abroad is unknown.

Rahmati is a member of the sorority Sigma Kappa and counselor for the MIT chapter of Camp Kesem, a national nonprofit that operates free summer camps for children whose parents have had cancer. For weeks before heading home for break, Rahmati had been fundraising for this summer’s camp. After the election, Rahmati encouraged her friends to keep an open mind to Trump supporters, according to her roommate.

As news of her situation has spread, the MIT community sprang into action, calling elected officials and circulating a White House petition. At this writing, her ability to return to MIT to finish her undergraduate remains uncertain.

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Students With Valid Visas Are Trapped in Limbo Abroad

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Judicial Watch Wants to Salt the Earth Over Hillary Clinton’s Corpse

by EulaFBBDfchcqb Posted on December 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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Oh FFS. We’re still not done with the lawsuits over Hillary Clinton’s emails:

A three-judge panel of the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously Tuesday that a lower court judge erred when he threw out the cases as moot after the State Department received tens of thousands of emails from Clinton and more from the FBI following the criminal investigation it conducted.

Watchdog groups Judicial Watch and Cause of Action filed separate suits in 2015, asking that Secretary of State John Kerry and the head of the National Archives, Archivist David Ferriero, be required to refer the Clinton email issue to the Justice Department to consider filing a civil suit to get missing federal records back.

Judicial Watch was founded for the purpose of destroying Bill Clinton, and then switched effortlessly to a new mission of destroying Hillary Clinton. It took more than 20 years, but they finally won. Victory is theirs. Bill Clinton has been out of office for years and Hillary Clinton will never be president of the United States.

But they just can’t stop. Maybe there are more emails! Somewhere there’s a smoking gun! There just has to be. I swear, 20 years from now, on the day after the funeral of whichever Clinton lives the longest, Judicial Watch will be filing lawsuits against their estate demanding more emails.

POSTSCRIPT: I have never gotten an answer to this question, so I’ll try again. In November 2014 Vice News reporter Jason Leopold filed a FOIA request for every email Hillary Clinton sent and received during her tenure as Secretary of State. Unsurprisingly, the State Department pushed back against this very broad request. In January 2015 Leopold filed a lawsuit, and in March, both State and Hillary Clinton agreed to release everything. However, Leopold wasn’t happy with the terms of the release, and continued his lawsuit.

So far, so good. State obviously has the authority to release all of Clinton’s emails if it wants to, and Leopold has the right to continue his suit. But in May, US District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras ordered State to release the emails, and to release them on a remarkably specific—almost punitive—rolling schedule. However, his order provided no reasoning for his decision. So here’s my question: what was the legal justification for ordering the release of all of Clinton’s emails? This has never happened to any other cabinet officer. Can anyone now file a FOIA request for all the emails of any cabinet officer?

I know I’m missing something here, but I’ve been missing it for a long time.

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Judicial Watch Wants to Salt the Earth Over Hillary Clinton’s Corpse

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Fake news is old news to climate scientists

by c7u433n Posted on December 26, 2016

Think fake news is a recent plague, borne of the presidential election? It’s not.

“The notion of ‘fake news’ is hardly new to climate scientists like myself,” Penn State climatologist Michael Mann told Grist. “We’ve known about it (and written about it) for years.”

Thanks to researchers like Mann — the originator of the famed “hockey stick” chart and a frequent target of fake news himself — the science behind climate change is settled. And yet there remains a vocal contingent of ideologues who refuse to accept the connection between carbon emissions and a warming planet. For example, Donald Trump and a good portion of his proposed cabinet. For years, right-wing news organizations like Breitbart, Infowars, the Daily Caller, and Climate Depot have fed their denial, publishing stories that misinterpret, misrepresent, or distort scientific findings — or just outright lie.

This kind of fake news has set progress back years, if not decades, Mann said. It’s a “crime against the planet,” he told Grist, and a “crime against humanity.”

All the news that’s unfit to print

There are many flavors of fake news. Some of these stories push the idea that, yes, the climate is changing, but it’s just a natural effect of changes in the sun’s activity and humans have nothing to do with it. This theory has been a favorite of deniers for three decades, and even though it’s been widely discredited, Breitbart reported it in again in 2014, under the headline, “Solar Activity Could Cause Global Warming, New Paper Says.” Of course, this runs contrary to actual science, but Breitbart never lets that stop them.

Other fake stories claim that carbon dioxide is good because it increases plant growth, as the ever-optimistic Breitbart declared again last year. But while it’s true that CO2 can be beneficial for plants, it doesn’t outweigh the fact that increasing concentrations in the atmosphere are toasting our home planet. Good for plants does not equal good for people.

Bogus climate stories also allege that a so-called “pause” in global warming undermines established climate science. Although climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that temperatures are rising and climate change is real, there has been debate over whether the rate of temperature increase slowed in the early 2000s — which climate deniers refer to as the “pause” or “hiatus.” Fake media outlets have seized on this debate and tried to spin it as proof that climate change isn’t real: Breitbart even claimed that Mann jumped on the pause bandwagon, deserted his scientific colleagues, and decided that there’s been no global warming since 1998. This was likely news to Mann himself.

There’s also the classic seasonal variety of stories alleging that cold, snowy weather disproves climate change. This reached a fever pitch in 2015, when Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe threw a snowball on the Senate floor. What Inhofe and his fellow deniers don’t get is that weather is not climate. Climate change is about long-term warming trends, not individual weather events, and so snow and climate change just aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, a warming climate could actually lead to an increase in snowfall in some places as melting sea ice in the Arctic alters jet streams.

And, of course, some deniers claim that this whole thing is a vast conspiracy perpetrated by scientists hungry for government research money. (They have never, apparently, seen what climate scientists drive.) Others — like our president-elect — say it’s a hoax created by China to crush U.S. manufacturing. Still other deniers insist that it’s a scheme cooked up by Al Gore to make himself rich — but, not to worry, they also tell us that Al Gore was sued by 30,000 scientists for his global warming fraud.

Unfortunately, conspiracy theories are hard to combat. Research shows that when presented with evidence that contradicts our beliefs, instead of reconsidering those beliefs, we humans tend to double-down on our preconceived notions. So if you already believe climate change is the greatest hoax ever perpetuated on the American public or that the Earth hasn’t warmed in 17 years or that this is all a big Communist plot, it’s unlikely that evidence to the contrary will dissuade you.

Some deniers — perhaps those who really believe Al Gore was sued by 30,000 scientists — think climate science is a lie because of the misinformation they absorb every day on TV and through social media. But other deniers have a more base motivation: money. The most high-profile deniers — people like Inhofe and Climate Depot’s Marc Morano — are backed by the fossil fuel industry. Exxon alone spent over $30 million to fund climate-denying organizations between 1998 and 2014, and an investigation by Carbon Brief found that nine of the 10 most prolific authors of papers skeptical of climate change have ties to Exxon. The industrialist Koch brothers, too, have spent a fortune on climate denial, donating nearly $50 million between 1997 and 2008 to groups that work to undermine climate science.

The money, it seems, was well-spent. Right-wing media outlets spread those groups’ misleading messages far and wide. So while the rest of the world has long since accepted the reality of climate change and humanity’s role in causing it, in the U.S., not only are we still debating its existence, but a climate change denier is about to occupy the White House.

Reality strikes back

Soon, however, there may be a cost to spreading misinformation about climate scientists, if not about climate change itself. The D.C. Court of Appeals recently ruled that Mann can proceed with a defamation suit against two bloggers who called his work fraudulent — and worse.

“Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science,” wrote Rand Simberg in a 2012 post on the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s blog, “except for instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in service of politicized science that could have dire consequences for the nation and planet.” The National Review’s Mark Steyn then quoted these comments in a post of his own, writing that Simberg “has a point” and calling Mann’s work “fraudulent.”

For this, the court has ruled that Mann can sue both bloggers as well as their institutions — but you wouldn’t know that from the headlines in the climate-denying press. Climate Depot reported, “Court dismisses Michael Mann defamation lawsuit against National Review.” This is a clear manipulation of the truth: While the court did dismiss Mann’s claims against one National Review editor, its ruling clearly says that Mann can proceed with his suit against Steyn and National Review itself. But if we learned anything from the election of 2016, it’s that truth no longer carries much weight.

In the court’s ruling, Judge Vanessa Ruiz wrote, “Tarnishing the personal integrity and reputation of a scientist important to one side may be a tactic to gain advantage in a no-holds-barred debate over global warming.” It’s not a new tactic, but tarnishing reputations and publishing lies has proved to be an effective one. As for how destructive, we’re soon to find out.

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Fake news is old news to climate scientists

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Obama’s USDA Just Played Chicken With the Trump Transition Team

by Hadwin Partize Posted on December 17, 2016

Mother Jones

In its waning days, President Barack Obama’s US Department of Agriculture injected an extra dose of drama into President-elect Donald Trump’s chaotic transition of the ag department this week.

The USDA issued a blunt assessment of the state of the poultry industry, portraying it as dominated by a handful of chicken processors that “often wield market power” against the farmers who raise the nations’ chickens, “treating them unfairly, suppressing how much they are paid, or pitting them against each other.” The USDA has a point, as Christopher Leonard showed in his excellent 2014 book The Meat Racket (my review here): Farmers own the growing facilities and are responsible for upgrading them according to the companies’ whims, while the companies supply the chicks and the feed and dictate the price farmers are paid.

And it put substance behind the critique, rolling out long-delayed proposed rules designed to give chicken farmers “protections against the most egregious retaliatory practices” used by the big companies. The USDA has been required to release a version of these rules, known as GIPSA, since being charged to do so by the 2008 farm bill, but GOP stalwarts in the US House have been pushing back ever since, using legislative chicanery to block them. This 2015 Washington Monthly piece by Lina Khan details the Obama USDA’s tortured and—until now—failed attempts to release the rules. The farmers’ rights group RAFI has a good summary of what’s in them.

But there’s a catch—the new rules can’t go into effect until a 60-day comment period has passed. And that means it will be up to the Trump USDA to implement and enforce them—or choose not to.

And that plunges GIPSA into the dark heart of Trump’s USDA transition. For weeks, as I reported here, Team Trump has been floating Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), a moderate Democrat, as his top pick to take the USDA helm. But the motley crew of right-wing farm state pols, agribiz flacks, and donors who make up Trump’s agricultural advisory committee has been pushing back hard against Heitkamp—and the GIPSA rules will likely heighten their fervor. They could spell the end of the Heitkamp trial balloon.

According to the trade journal Agri-Pulse, Heitkamp has “consistently supported” strong GIPSA rules, and in 2014, “she opposed industry efforts to put a provision in the farm bill that would have prohibited USDA from issuing the regulations.” If Heitkamp were to get the job, Agri-Pulse reported, “she would immediately face a confrontation with livestock and poultry groups over the new contracting rules.”

Indeed, the meat industry is acting like an aggrieved rooster in response to the GIPSA rules. The National Chicken Chicken Council, a trade group for the big poultry packers, declared that the rules “threaten to upend the structure of the livestock and poultry industries, raise the price of meat/poultry and cost jobs in rural America.” These claims are nonsense. According to the USDA’s economic analysis, the GIPSA rules, once implemented, will likely trigger “price increases of approximately one-hundredth of a cent or less in retail prices for beef, pork, and poultry,” because the “increase in total industry costs triggered by the GIPSA rules is very small in relation to overall industry costs.”

Perhaps not coincidentally, the Trump team appears to be moving on from Heitkamp and is now looking at Idaho Gov. Butch Otter, Politico reports. A “74-year-old cowboy hat-wearing Republican,” as Politico puts it, Otter is likely to be friendly to meat industry interests if he takes the USDA helm. Regarding the GIPSA rules, the National Meat Institute quotes Otter like this: “Why are we trying to fix something that isn’t broken? Anybody ought to be free to sell at any price that they want to whomever they want.”

And back in 2014, Otter signed into law one of those infamous “ag gag” bills, championed by Big Ag, that make it a crime to secretly document conditions inside livestock farms. The Idaho law was so overreaching that a federal judge struck it down in 2015, declaring that its only purpose was to “limit and punish those who speak out on topics relating to the agricultural industry, striking at the heart of important First Amendment values.” While serving in the US House from 2002 to 2006, Otter was a magnet for agribusiness cash. And he’s a former executive at Simplot, the enormous potato-processing company founded by Otter’s ex-wife.

Otter sounds like a man after Trump’s heart—and that of his ag advisers.

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Obama’s USDA Just Played Chicken With the Trump Transition Team

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How Good Is Flint’s Water These Days?

by Porfirio07K Posted on November 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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Last week a federal judge in Michigan ordered the state to deliver four cases of bottled water each week to families in Flint that need it. On Thursday, the state asked the judge to stay his order, arguing that the court order would “require a ‘Herculean effort’ equivalent to a large-scale military operation and cost the state at least $10.45 million a month, or $125 million annually.” This prompted a reader to ask me what was up. Is Flint’s water still unsafe to drink?

I haven’t checked in on Flint since June, so I figured maybe it was time for an update. I brought up the latest testing results and created a new data point for the past two months, and then added the data point to my old chart using the same metric as always. Here it is:

That’s…not bad.1 Using a different measure, it turns out that about 6 percent of Flint homes were over the EPA’s “action limit” of 15 ppb and 1 percent were way over. That’s not great, obviously, but not catastrophic either. The catch is that presumably these measurements were all taken with water filters in place, and the judge’s ruling applied only to homes without filters:

The city is not required to deliver water to residents whose homes have properly installed and working filters, are unoccupied or decline the service. Judge Lawson also ordered that officials provide information in multiple languages, including English, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and Hmong, to residents about lead levels of city water and how to install filters that properly reduce the contamination.

….Flint had fought the request for deliveries of water, arguing that residents had sufficient access to clean water from distribution centers throughout Flint and at home using filters that the city provided. Judge Lawson disagreed. Residents struggled to properly install the filters because of language barriers, old age, cognitive barriers or a lack of necessary tools, the judge said. Others struggled to retrieve water even from the distribution centers.

I guess I’m a little puzzled. If Flint is getting good results even though lots of homes don’t have working filters, then its water is in pretty good shape and the judge might be overreacting. However, if it’s getting these results because most homes do have working filters, then the judge’s order wouldn’t be all that burdensome and it’s not clear why the state is fighting it. Perhaps someone with deeper knowledge of what’s going on will weigh in on this.

1There’s a broader measure of blood lead levels that looks oddly high, but the entire state of Michigan looks oddly high. I’m not sure what to make of it.

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How Good Is Flint’s Water These Days?

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Gun Control Advocates Have Something to Smile About Today

by Alica91Oyfwp Posted on November 9, 2016

Mother Jones

Even as the National Rifle Association celebrates Donald Trump’s victory, gun control advocates have something to smile about today. Of the four gun-related measures on state ballots this year, three passed.

Maine’s Question 3

The only gun-related ballot measure not to win, Question 3 asked voters whether background checks should be required for private gun sales. If neither the buyer nor the seller is a licensed gun dealer, they’d have to go to a licensed dealer who would run a background check. The measure would have also required a background check for loaning guns, with exceptions for gun transfers between family members, emergency self-defense, and temporary transfers for hunting and sport shooting. Supporters, including Maine Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense Fund and Mainers for Responsible Gun Ownership Fund, have spent $5.2 million to get the measure passed. Approximately $1 million was spent against it, the vast majority by the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action.

California’s Proposition 63

Prop 63 passed easily, garnering 63 percent of the vote. It will ban certain types of semi-automatic assault rifles, require background checks for ammunition sales, outlaw magazines that carry more than 10 bullets, create a system for confiscating guns from felons, and require gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms. Major components of the initiative already became law earlier this year, and gun rights groups say they will challenge the overlapping laws in court. Opponents spent nearly $1 million against the measure to the nearly $4.5 million spent by supporters.

Nevada’s Question 1

Similar to Maine’s ballot initiative, Question 1 will require most gun sales, including private sales, to be subject to a background check. However, it narrowly passed by less than 10,000 votes. The same exemptions that Maine allows also apply here. Supporters spent more than $18 million and received significant financial backing from Everytown For Gun Safety. The NRA Nevadans for Gun Freedom and Nevadans for State Gun Rights spent nearly $6.5 million to sink the initiative. The NRA stuck to its usual script in opposing the measure, writing, “Question 1 does nothing to prevent criminals from obtaining firearms.”

Washington’s Initiative 1491

Initiative 1491 allows family, household members, and police to petition a judge to temporarily prohibit a person’s access to guns if that person is found to be a risk to himself or others. Petitions for an “extreme risk protection order” will last one year. Those under order can request a hearing to argue against the order. The NRA opposed the measure, saying that “if a person is truly dangerous, existing law already provides a variety of mechanisms to deal with the individual.” Nonetheless, it passed with 71 percent of the vote.

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Gun Control Advocates Have Something to Smile About Today

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Donald Trump’s Campaign Just Scored a Big Win in Pennsylvania

by WolfganElias Posted on November 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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A federal judge in Philadelphia has refused a request by Democrats to issue an order that would prohibit the Trump campaign and its supporters from intimidating Pennsylvania voters at the polls on Tuesday.

Pennsylvania is one of the few swing states that could help decide the presidential election. The state’s Democratic Party filed a lawsuit last week—similar to lawsuits filed in five other swing states—alleging possible voter intimidation and requesting an injunction compelling the Trump campaign to not harass voters. In his opinion issued on Monday in a district court, Judge Paul Diamond, a George W. Bush appointee, said the Democratic Party had not proved that a substantial threat of voter intimidation exists in the state. Moreover, he said, the party had waited too long to bring its concerns before the court.

“Plaintiff has not explained what it learned in the last month or even the last week that created emergent conditions. On the contrary, Plaintiff has long known of the acts and statements on which it bases its claims,” wrote Diamond. “Plaintiff has not explained why it filed its Emergency Motion only two business days before the election…Plaintiff has contrived to transform this litigation into a mad scramble.”

The judge also chided the Democrats for using media reports as much of their evidence and for taking portions of that evidence out of context. “I am thus compelled to base a ruling that could restrict Defendants’ Election Day speech and conduct on media reports,” he wrote, noting that several items cited by the Democratic Party as evidence of possible voter suppression actually constitute protected election activity.

Taking issue with the Democrats’ claim that white nationalists’ enthusiasm for the Trump campaign could lead to intimidation of minority voters, the judge wrote, “Unless it is psychic, Plaintiff has no idea who might have been ‘energized by’ Mr. Trump. Plaintiff’s heated suggestion does not even rise to the level of speculation.”

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Donald Trump’s Campaign Just Scored a Big Win in Pennsylvania

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Donald Trump’s Favorite Anti-Immigrant Sheriff May Finally Lose an Election

by Freddie9132 Posted on September 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, walked onto the stage at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, a few hours before Donald Trump was supposed to deliver his acceptance speech. Arpaio, a tough-on-illegal-immigration crusader, flashed a peace sign as the crowd roared its approval. Wearing an oversize black suit and a tie pin in the shape of a pistol, the 84-year-old sheriff said he’s spent 55 years in law enforcement, but his “most important mission has just begun: to help elect Donald Trump president of the United States.”

Trump is the only candidate strong enough to defend the nation from “terrorists coming over our border, infiltrating our communities and causing massive destruction and mayhem,” he said, adding that “criminals are penetrating our weak border security system and committing serious crime.”

Arpaio earned his spot on the RNC stage by styling himself as “America’s Toughest Sheriff,” who famously stops immigrants for no reason, dresses jail inmates in pink underwear, and houses the inmates in Korean War tents in the desert heat. He’s ridden his fame to six four-year terms as sheriff of the country’s fourth-biggest county.

Now running for his seventh term, he’s facing an opponent with better poll numbers whose message is getting a signal boost with $300,000 from liberal billionaire George Soros. He’s also having his own trouble with the law, with a looming criminal contempt referral for disobeying the orders of a federal judge who sought to restrain some of his anti-immigrant excesses. He’s saddled Maricopa County taxpayers with more than $140 million in settlement fees and court costs—the results of his sometimes overzealous approach to law enforcement.

Arpaio has been a national figure for years, but this year’s race underscores the wider political fight playing out across the country: Donald Trump’s xenophobic brand of populist bigotry has propelled the once-taboo and semi-fringe identity politics of white racists back into the mainstream conversation. For years Arpaio has been a leading national figure for fighting and criminalizing undocumented immigrants, and this race is drawing a lot of attention. Millions of dollars in out-of-state donations have poured in for Arpaio, but his challenger—retired Phoenix Police Sergeant Paul Penzone—has also drawn outside support, chiefly in the form of an independent expenditure committee funded solely by liberal financier George Soros.

Trump’s nomination could push the red state blue for the first time in a generation and motivate the state’s Hispanic voters to vote in greater numbers than ever before. A proposal to legalize recreational marijuana, and a minimum-wage ballot question could also drive younger Democratic-leaning voters to the polls. Republican Sen. John McCain’s tough challenge from Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick has enhanced on-the-ground Democratic organization across the state and won’t help Arpaio, nor will the sheriff’s ongoing “investigation” into President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

On the other hand, Trump’s intense anti-immigrant rhetoric has galvanized many voters, and Arpaio has been that crowd’s hero for years. “He’s somewhat like me,” Arpaio told the Guardian, referring to Trump. “Or I’m like him. I don’t know which way it goes.” Whichever way it is, Arpaio is still incredibly popular among Republicans in Maricopa County. He easily won the Republican primary in August, defeating three other candidates. (The second-place finisher came in nearly 40 points behind Arpaio.)

So will this be Arpaio’s last election?

“If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen now,” says David Berman, a professor emeritus of political science at Arizona State University and a senior research fellow at Arizona’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy. “It’s going to be the toughest election he’s ever had.”

Arpaio’s challenger is Paul Penzone, a retired Phoenix police sergeant who came within six points of beating the sheriff (50.66 to 44.65) in 2012. That year, a third-party candidate named Mike Stauffer siphoned off crucial votes. Some Arizona Democrats assumed Stauffer had been recruited by Arpaio’s campaign to thwart a Penzone victory. They wondered again this year when third-party candidate Chad Lisk threw his hat into the ring, only to be blocked after failing to garner the requisite number of petition signatures.

“It’s apparent that the voters are tired of the nonsense they’ve seen from the sheriff the last several terms, and we feel confident with our chances,” said Penzone.

He says the 2012 race was closer than it looked because the percentage of the vote Arpaio received was “barely above the median.” He rattles off the problems: Arpaio has cost county taxpayers at least $72 million, and that’s from only one case related to profiling and harassing Latinos; he’s facing a referral from a federal judge for criminal contempt of court related to a racial profiling case filed in 2007; his lawyers hired an investigator to look into the wife of the judge who issued that order. Penzone is announced that he filed a defamation lawsuit against Arpaio after the sheriff ran an ad recycling overstated and exaggerated claims that Penzone assaulted his ex wife in 2003. “It’s all just a complete abuse of his authority,” Penzone says. “The voters are tired of it, and I’m tired of it.”

Chad Willems, Arpaio’s campaign manager, did not respond to several requests for comment. After the contempt referral, Willems told the Associated Press that the exorbitant legal fees were the fault of the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the case, because the organization refused to settle, costing taxpayers millions in legal fees. “If Penzone wants to side with the ACLU on this issue, he can be our guest,” he said. He told reporters with Cronkite News at Arizona State University that polling casting doubt on Arpaio’s popularity is dead wrong, and that the Arpaio campaign’s internal polling suggests the incumbent will “heavily” defeat Penzone.

But Penzone’s political challenge isn’t Arpaio’s only problem. The sheriff could face criminal charges after US District Court Judge Murray Snow, appointed by George W. Bush, ruled August 19 that Arpaio and another senior sheriff’s deputy ignored court orders, lied to the court, and withheld information in a racial profiling case dating back to 2007. The case, Melendres v. Arpaio, was filed by a group of Latinos in Maricopa County targeted by sheriff’s deputies for illegal-immigration sweeps during traffic stops. In 2011, Snow ordered Arpaio and his deputies to quit detaining suspected undocumented immigrants who had not broken any state laws. In 2013, Snow ruled that Arpaio and his deputies had discriminated against Latinos and also that Arpaio had violated the 2011 order in part to bolster his popularity during the 2012 election.

In May this year, Snow ruled that Arpaio had continued to arbitrarily detain Latinos based solely on immigration suspicions and held him in civil contempt, which left the door open for a criminal contempt referral that took place on August 19. Now the US Department of Justice will determine whether to criminally charge Arpaio with contempt of court, a crime punishable with up to six months in prison. In the middle of all this, Arpaio’s attorneys hired a private investigator to investigate the judge’s wife after a tipster told Arpaio that Snow’s wife said that Snow wanted to get Arpaio out of office.

“This is really almost completely uncharted territory,” says Mel McDonald, a former US attorney who is representing Arpaio privately in the criminal case. McDonald says there isn’t a lot of precedent for Arpaio’s case, and he’s meeting with DOJ officials October 11 to figure out what the next steps will be. He says the DOJ can choose to pursue criminal charges, or it can decline to do so. Snow can then choose to appoint a special prosecutor to pursue the case.

Although Arpaio is paying for his legal defense in the criminal contempt case, the rest falls on the taxpayers of Maricopa County to the tune of $72 million, according to the Arizona Republic, which notes that in all, Arpaio has cost taxpayers $142 million in legal fees, settlements and court awards since 1993. Arpaio does have a massive war chest that dwarfs the approximately $540,000 Penzone has raised thus far. According to filings published by the county on Thursday, Arpaio has raised just more than $12 million, roughly three-fourths of which came from small donors in other states, according to the Associated Press’ August analysis.

Penzone also has support from out of state: Liberal financier George Soros has stepped in to help. Soros has pumped $3 million into local district attorney races in a half-dozen states over the last year with an eye toward reforming the criminal justice system, according to Politico, with millions of dollars going toward radio and television ads. In Arizona he donated $300,000, the total budget of Maricopa Strong, an independent expenditure committee not affiliated with the Penzone campaign, according to records filed with the county. “We’re looking to persuade voters who have some doubts about Arpaio because of his record of wasting taxpayer money on lawsuits and legal fees, and losing sight of his primary mission of enforcing the law and keeping the people of Maricopa County safe,” said a source close to Maricopa Strong.

Despite all this baggage, Arpaio still has a strong chance of extending his 23-year reign over Maricopa County. Berman, the political scientist, says pundits have been predicting a surge of Hispanic voter turnout for years—a prospect that could cripple state Republicans up and down the ballot—only for it to never materialize. He concedes that the marijuana initiative, the minimum-wage question, an organized Democratic effort in the Kirkpatrick race against McCain, and Donald Trump—let alone all of Arpaio’s legal issues and history of racial profiling and harassment—could put Penzone over the top.

But there are still many more Republican voters in Maricopa County than Democrats and independents (737,439 active Republicans, 577,885 Democrats, 743,456 others). Besides, he said, it’s Arpaio’s true believers who have kept him in office this long.

“Arpaio has got the Trump supporter type—he has the same kind of true believer behind him,” says Berman. “If he went to jail, they’d still elect him. He just has this following that thinks he can do no wrong, just like Trump.”

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Donald Trump’s Favorite Anti-Immigrant Sheriff May Finally Lose an Election

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Court hears attacks on Obama’s big climate initiative

by LavadaMarsden Posted on September 28, 2016

This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

President Obama’s signature climate change initiative had its day in court Tuesday, as lawyers for 27 states, nonprofit groups, and utility companies argued that it is unconstitutional.

The rule, known as the Clean Power Plan, would enforce a 32 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from electric power plants by 2030 (compared with 2005 levels). As part of the implementation, the Environmental Protection Agency would require states with at least two coal-fired power plants to submit plans for emissions reductions. If a state chose not to submit an acceptable plan, the EPA would impose one on it. The plan was a critical piece of the Obama administration’s successful efforts to forge the landmark Paris climate agreement last year.

The administration is relying on a section of the Clean Air Act as justification for the regulations, arguing that the law, originally passed by Congress in 1970 and later amended, empowers the EPA to “protect public health and welfare” from pollutants — in this case, carbon emissions that are driving global warming.

But the Clean Power Plan’s path has not been an easy one. Even before the regulations had been finalized, opponents sued to block it — a move that the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected last year. Opponents had more success once the final version of the rule was adopted. In a 5-4 decision in February, the Supreme Court issued an unusual stay, which prevented the rule from being implemented before it made its way through the courts. Yesterday’s arguments were the latest episode in the legal drama.

A panel of 10 federal judges heard the case in a marathon session that pitted the administration’s lawyers and environmental groups against a slate of opponents who argued the regulations exceed the EPA’s authority. West Virginia Solicitor General Elbert Lin charged that the rule would create a complex “new energy economy.” Others, such as attorney David Rivkin, who represents the state of Oklahoma, argued the Clean Power Plan intrudes on states’ rights to regulate their own electric grids. There were also several hours of highly technical arguments relating to inconsistent language in the House and Senate versions of a 1990 amendment to the Clean Air Act.

At a panel discussion on Monday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose state is part of the coalition suing to block the rule, said the Clean Power Plan “represents an unprecedented expansion of federal authority.”

Others, such as attorney Allison Wood, who represents utility industry groups, told the court that the EPA can’t regulate emissions from sources like power plants under one section of the Clean Air Act when it already does so under a different section.

But Judge Cornelia Pillard, an Obama appointee, questioned this “double regulation” argument, pointing to laws that require motorists to drive on the right side of the road while also following the speed limit.

On constitutional grounds, the plan has one unlikely critic: Laurence Tribe, a liberal Harvard lawyer and former mentor to Obama who is participating in the case on behalf of the opponents to the rule. During Tuesday’s hearing, Tribe argued the Clean Power Plan violates the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. If the Obama administration wants to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, he told the judges, “the solution is to go to Congress.”

But advocates say the Supreme Court has already determined that the EPA can regulate carbon dioxide. In the 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA case, they note, the court found that the Clean Air Act gives the EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles.

After a long day of arguments, supporters of the plan were optimistic. “I think it was a remarkable day,” said Howard Fox, counsel for Earthjustice, an environmental law organization that signed on to a motion in support of the Clean Power Plan, on a conference call with reporters.

Where will the fight over the Clean Power Plan end up, and what does it mean for Obama’s legacy on climate issues?

If the D.C. Circuit were to find that the EPA exceeded its authority, it would remand the case to a lower court and the “EPA would essentially redo the rule,” Joanne Spalding of the Sierra Club told Mother Jones at a briefing. That would leave the country’s climate regulations in the hands of an administration led by either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.

Another pathway is to the Supreme Court. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who has led the charge against the Clean Power Plan, speculated at a panel discussion that if the current case doesn’t go his way, it could wind up at the Supreme Court in the fall of 2017. This time around, the result could be very different; Justice Antonin Scalia died in February shortly after casting one the deciding votes to put the regulations on hold. With the court now potentially split 4-4 on the issue, the fate of the Clean Power Plan could be tied to the ongoing fight over Scalia’s replacement.

The D.C. Circuit Court’s opinion in the case is expected to come out near the end of this year or early next year, according to David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which supports the plan.

Whichever way it goes, the stakes are high. As Brett Kavanaugh, one of the D.C. court’s most outspoken judges during the arguments, said, “This is a huge case.”

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Court hears attacks on Obama’s big climate initiative

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