By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S House of Representatives Republicans on Thursday adopted government spending targets for the next fiscal year below the level agreed by Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Democratic President Joe Biden, setting up a fight with the Democratic-led Senate that could again risk a government shutdown.
The House of Representatives Appropriations Committee voted 33-27 along party lines to adopt a discretionary spending level of $1.47 trillion for fiscal year 2024, which starts on Oct. 1.
That is about $120 billion below the $1.59 trillion set out in the debt ceiling bill negotiated by Biden and McCarthy.
The targets would maintain defense spending at the $866 billion level agreed in the debt ceiling legislation. But the plan would slash spending for the environment, public assistance and foreign aid.
It would also increase spending for border security, drug enforcement and countering China.
Democrats say that the lower levels renege on the debt-ceiling agreement. Republicans counter that the deal only capped spending.
"The debt ceiling bill set a ceiling, not a floor, for fiscal year 2024 bills. The allocations before us reflect the change members on my side of the aisle want to see," said Appropriations Committee chair Kay Granger.
Congress will try to pass 12 appropriations bills before October, covering everything from law enforcement to scientific research.
On Wednesday, the panel adopted a bill that would cut spending on agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration by 30% from current levels.
Republicans on the committee unveiled another bill for energy and water development that Democrats said cuts spending on domestic programs like green energy incentives by 22%.
Democrats also objected to policies that Republicans attached to the spending bills, such as one that would prevent an abortion drug from being distributed through pharmacies.
Lower spending levels could make it harder for the House to reach agreement with the Democratic-led Senate.
Federal agencies could have to shut down if the two chambers are unable to agree to spending levels by October.
"They're moving toward a shutdown. That's what they seem to want to guarantee," Representative Rosa DeLauro, the top House Democratic appropriator, told Reuters.
Republican Representative Steve Womack also expressed concern about a shutdown. "I worry about what's going to happen on Oct. 1," he said.
(Reporting by David Morgan; editing by Andy Sullivan and Alistair Bell)
The powerful Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee is defending his repeatedly failed attempts to find dirt of President Joe Biden by attacking his liberal critics.
Chairman Jim Comer, the former Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner, told Fox News on Thursday, "the liberal media, like MSNBC with their low IQ audience, that are sitting there, and they're being told bad things about me and members of the Oversight Committee because we have the audacity to investigate."
Comer's failed attempts to prove a baseless bribery conspiracy theory against President Biden have led nowhere – except forcing Republicans in the House and Senate to walk back claims they even have audio recordings proving their allegations.
"We're having to go against a hostile media, a media that's turned a blind eye," Comer claimed, referring to his repeatedly ginned up claims that have been debunked or proved baseless.
Comer's claim is false.
If college education can be taken as an indication of intelligence (it's about as reliable an indicator of intelligence as an IQ test, which means not very), Chairman Comer is just plain wrong.
Last year Pew Research published a massive study on Americans' media habits. It found MSNBC had a greater percentage of viewers having a college degree, or at least some college education, compared Fox News viewers. Although the differences were slim between all three networks, CNN was one point higher than MSNBC.
CNN: 62% have at least some college education
MSNBC: 61% have at least some college education
Fox News: 57% have at least some college education
But Comer, perhaps unintentionally, is also attacking women in his "IQ" claim.
The majority of MSNBC's viewers are women.
"The regular viewers of MSNBC also are mostly women (62%). By comparison, the regular audiences for both CNN and Fox News are more evenly divided between women and men," Pew found.
Comer's attack on the "IQ" of liberals raises a critical point: Do Americans deserve representation based on their alleged level of intelligence?
Why would a powerful U.S. Congressman even mention "IQ," a largely discredited measurement of intelligence. And really, is that what we want America to be about? Dividing us by our intelligence levels?
Watch a clip of Comer's remarks below or at this link.
The US Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a law that gives Native American families priority in adoptions and foster care placements of tribal children.
In a 7-2 vote, the nation's highest court rejected challenges to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) brought by a non-Native American couple seeking to adopt an Indian child and the state of Texas.
They had argued that the ICWA, passed by Congress in 1978, was unconstitutional and discriminates on the basis of race.
"The issues are complicated," said Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who authored the majority opinion.
"But the bottom line is that we reject all of petitioners' challenges to the statute, some on the merits and others for lack of standing," said Barrett, who is herself the mother of two adopted children of Haitian origin.
Like in Canada, Native American children in the United States were for decades removed from their biological parents and placed in boarding schools or with non-Indigenous families as part of a policy of forced assimilation.
Congress sought to bring an end to the practice with the passage of the ICWA, which set strict standards for removing Native American children from their parents and required tribal families to receive priority for foster care placements and adoptions.
Republican-led Texas, as well as families restricted by the ICWA from adopting Native American children, filed a legal challenge under the US Constitution's 14th Amendment, which limits the differentiation between citizens on the basis of race.
Several Native American tribes, backed by the administration of President Joe Biden and the powerful ACLU civil rights organization, countered that the law was not based on race but on Indigenous groups' sovereign rights.
Under US law, Native American tribes have a special status with their own legal jurisdictions and court systems.
The Supreme Court decided to intervene in the case after lower courts issued divergent opinions.
Biden welcomed the court ruling.
"Our Nation's painful history looms large over today's decision," the president said in a statement. "In the not-so-distant past, Native children were stolen from the arms of the people who loved them.
"The Indian Child Welfare Act was passed to protect the future of Tribal Nations and promote the best interests of Native children, and it does just that."
© 2023 AFP
On Friday, June 9, former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) responded to former President Donald Trump's 37-count federal criminal indictment by tweeting a video of comments she had made a year earlier.
The arch-conservative congresswoman was serving as vice chair of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-California) bipartisan January 6 Select Committee when, on June 9, 2022, she declared, "Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues: You are defending the indefensible. There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain."
Cheney tweeted that her June 2022 warning "still applies" — an obvious attack on all the Republicans who have been rushing to Trump's defense in response to the federal prosecution he is facing. Special counsel Jack Smith alleges that Trump endangered the United States' national security by storing classified government documents, including those with top-secret information, at Mar-a-Lago.
Some Republicans are defending Trump more aggressively than others.
In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on June 15, journalist Jill Lawrence slams the Republicans who are "threading the needle" when discussing Smith's case against Trump. Their tepid criticism of Trump, Lawrence stresses, is too little too late.
"Sure, some of them are saying aloud that maybe, if that gobsmacking federal indictment is true, even fractionally, he just might be careless — even a teensy bit reckless — about how he handles top national security secrets," Lawrence explains. "Never mind that this has been clear since his first months in office…. Any acknowledgment is welcome, even now, eight long years into this nightmare. That said, those who publicly recognize Trump's malfeasance don't deserve praise for pivoting, shifting, or threading some needle between telling the truth about Trump and protecting their own ambitions."
Lawrence continues, "The problem is that the concession is wrapped in lies at least as dangerous as Trump's alleged actions themselves — lies that, like Trump's Big Lie that he won the presidency in 2020, are designed to sow mistrust in American elections, institutions, and rule of law. Most GOP leaders are offering hedged concerns about Trump accompanied by fevered falsehoods about a two-tiered justice system weaponized by President Joe Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Department of Justice, and the FBI to go after, well, Donald Trump."
Lawrence goes on to criticize former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and other Republicans who have been attacking the Smith/DOJ indictment. "Trump is unfit for office," Lawrence writes, "and more prominent Republicans should be saying that flat out without burying it in baseless assaults on the pillars of U.S. democracy."
Meagan Wolfe’s tenure as Wisconsin’s election administrator began without controversy.
Members of the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission chose her in 2018, and the state Senate unanimously confirmed her appointment. That was before Wisconsin became a hotbed of conspiracy theories that the 2020 election had been stolen from Donald Trump, before election officials across the country saw their lives upended by threats and half-truths.
Now Wolfe is eligible for a second term, but her reappointment is far from assured. Republican politicians who helped sow the seeds of doubt about Wisconsin election results could determine her fate and reset election dynamics in a state pivotal to the 2024 presidential race. Her travails show that although election denialism has been rejected in the courts and at the polls across the country, it has not completely faded away.
One of the six members of the election commission has already signaled he won’t back Wolfe. That member is Bob Spindell, one of 10 Republicans who in December 2020 met secretly in the Wisconsin Capitol to sign electoral count paperwork purporting to show Trump won the state, when that was not the case.
If retained by a majority of the commissioners, Wolfe would have to be confirmed by the state Senate. But the Wisconsin Legislature is dominated by Republicans who buttressed Trump’s false claims about fraud in the 2020 election. The Senate president has in the past called for Wolfe’s resignation after a dispute over how voting was carried out in nursing homes. Some other senators have registered their opposition to reappointing Wolfe, as well.
Republicans and Democrats have fought to a power stalemate in Wisconsin in recent months. Voters reelected a Democratic governor in November of last year and this year elected a new Supreme Court justice who tilts the court away from Republican control.
A December 2022 report by three election integrity groups looking at voter suppression efforts nationwide concluded that in Wisconsin the threat of election subversion had eased. “The governor, attorney general, and secretary of state, all of whom reject election denialism, were re-elected in the 2022 midterm election,” they wrote.
Still, the groups warned, Wisconsin continues to be a state to watch, noting “the legislature now has an election subversion-friendly Republican supermajority in the senate and a majority in the assembly.”
“We are in a better place,” attorney Rachel Homer of Protect Democracy said of the national landscape in a recent press conference following an update to that study. “That said, the threat hasn’t passed. It’s just evolved.”
There are fears that the state Senate could refuse to reappoint Wolfe and instead engineer the appointment of a staunch partisan or an election denier, tilting oversight of the state’s voting operations.
“It could be a huge disruption in our elections in Wisconsin,” said Senate Democratic leader Melissa Agard. “If you have someone who has this pulpit using it to spew disinformation and harmful rhetoric, that is terrible.”
As for Wolfe, she mostly only speaks out about election processes and stays out of the political fray.
Through a spokesperson, Wolfe declined to comment in response to ProPublica’s questions. In a public statement issued last week, she said she found it “deeply disappointing that a small minority of lawmakers continue to misrepresent my work, the work of the agency, and that of our local election officials, especially since we have spent the last few years thoughtfully providing facts to debunk inaccurate rumors.
“Lawmakers,” she continued, “should assess my performance on the facts, not on tired, false claims.” The commission created a page on its web site to address rampant misinformation.
Wolfe has maintained the support of many election officials throughout the state.
She has been “a great patriot” for not quitting despite the attacks and for being willing to be reappointed, said the executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, Claire Woodall-Vogg. “I think she understands the pressure and understands the peril that the state could face if she’s not in that position.”
The state commission was created in 2016 by Republican state officials unhappy with the independent board of retired judges that then oversaw elections. They created a panel of three Democrats and three Republicans, advised by an administrator with no political ties.
The commission provides education, training and support for the state’s roughly 1,900 municipal and county clerks, who in recent years have faced cybersecurity threats, budget woes, shortages of poll workers and other challenges. The commission also handles complaints, ensures the integrity of statewide election results and maintains Wisconsin’s statewide voter registration database. The administrator manages the staff, advises commissioners and carries out their directives.
At first the newly established commission had someone else at the helm: Michael Haas, who had served the prior agency, the Government Accountability Board, which had investigated GOP Gov. Scott Walker for campaign finance violations. (The state Supreme Court halted the probe in 2015, finding no laws had been broken.) As a result, Haas did not win state Senate confirmation and stepped down.
The six commissioners then unanimously promoted Wolfe, the deputy administrator, to the top post in March 2018. She won unanimous confirmation in May 2019 in the Senate, which then-state Senate majority leader Scott Fitzgerald said looked to her to “restore stability.”
“I met with Ms. Wolfe last week and was impressed with her wide breadth of knowledge regarding elections issues,” Fitzgerald, now a U.S. representative, said at the time. “Her experience with security and technology issues, as well as her relationships with municipal clerks all over the state, will serve the commission well.”
The bliss did not last.
Wisconsin was one of the first states to put on an election following the start of the pandemic in 2020, amid lockdowns, fear and uncertainty. The primary that April was chaotic, with legal fights over whether to even hold the contest. Local officials closed some polling places. There were long lines in Milwaukee, Green Bay and elsewhere. The governor deployed the state National Guard to assist, and mail-in voting soared.
Later in the year, after it became clear that Trump had lost Wisconsin to Joe Biden in the election the previous November, state Republicans blasted the elections commission for accommodations made during the pandemic, such as the wider use of ballot drop boxes and unmonitored voting in nursing homes. Critics claimed the moves increased the likelihood of fraud and tainted the election.
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, proposed dissolving the commission and transferring its duties to the GOP-controlled Legislature. Talk of that ended with the reelection last year of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. The Legislature would need his approval to disband the commission.
“What’s happened over the last six years, in particular since the Trump years, is there’s been a systematic attempt to undermine the work of the Wisconsin Elections Commission,” said Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin. “Because it’s apparently not as responsive in a partisan way to the Republicans as they would like.”
Wolfe became a target. Many Republicans accused her of facilitating the awarding of private pandemic-related grants to election clerks that those critics claimed fostered turnout in Democratic areas, though the money was widely distributed.
They also criticized Wolfe for allowing the commission to vote in June 2020 to send absentee ballots to nursing homes during the health emergency rather than have special poll workers visit to assist residents and guard against fraud. Republicans discovered that some mentally impaired people in the facilities who were ineligible to vote cast ballots in Nov. 2020, though the numbers were small and not enough to change the election results. Municipal clerks had received only 23 written complaints of alleged voter fraud of any type in the presidential election, the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau found.
Wolfe was the target of lawsuits and insults. Michael Gableman, a former state Supreme Court justice and Trump supporter tapped by the Assembly Speaker to lead a 2020 election investigation, mocked her attire: “Black dress, white pearls — I’ve seen the act, I’ve seen the show.”
One conservative grassroots group, H.O.T. Government, has been sending out email blasts urging Wolfe’s ouster, referring to her as the “Wolfe of State Street.”
Wolfe does have champions, but they are not as vocal as her critics. “I think she’s done an outstanding job with running the Wisconsin Elections Commission here,” said Cindi Gamb, deputy clerk-treasurer of the Village of Kohler. “She’s been very communicative with us clerks.”
Gamb is the first vice president of the Wisconsin Municipal Clerks Association, but she said the group’s rules bar it from making endorsements.
Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell finds the assaults on the once-obscure bureaucrat troubling. “What has Meagan done to deserve the abuse she's gotten?” he said. “Nothing.”
Wolfe did receive the support of 50 election officials nationwide who called her “one of the most highly-skilled election administrators in the country” in a 2021 letter to the Wisconsin Assembly speaker. Wolfe is a past president of the National Association of State Election Directors.
And she has had the backing of a bipartisan business group that in February of last year sent a letter of appreciation to her and the commission. “Although the 2020 elections were among the most successful in American history thanks to your efforts, we recognize election administrators nationwide are facing increasing unwarranted threats and harassment. We hereby offer our sincere gratitude and full support,” said the letter from Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy.
The 22 signers included the president of the Milwaukee Bucks, the former CEO of Harley-Davidson and two top members of the Florsheim shoemaker family.
Wolfe’s term expires July 1.
To avoid a showdown, some legal experts are exploring whether the commission could take no action and just allow Wolfe to continue past June 30, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. They’ve pointed to the example of Fred Prehn, a dentist appointed to the state Natural Resources Board who refused to leave after his term expired in May 2021, preserving GOP control over the board.
The state Supreme Court ruled last year that Prehn had lawfully retained his position, finding that the expiration of a term does not create a vacancy. And because there was no vacancy, the governor could not make a new appointment unless he removed Prehn “for cause.” Prehn ultimately resigned last Dec. 30.
That scenario now is unlikely. Commission chair Don Millis, a Republican attorney, told ProPublica Wednesday that “there will be a vote” in the near future to consider the appointment of an administrator.
“If someone didn’t think we should have a vote, and we should rely on the Supreme Court decision in the Prehn case, they could move to adjourn,” he said, but added: “I’m not excited about that. To me it would be avoiding our responsibility if we didn’t act.”
Millis declined to say if he would back Wolfe but said he feared that if the commission did not take a vote “that would only add fuel to the fire of the conspiracy theories that we get hit with.”
He warned, “If we decide no vote is required and Megan Wolfe keeps her position after July 1, I can guarantee you we’ll be sued and the courts will decide.”
Arguing that Wolfe does not have the confidence of Republicans, Spindell said, “I did tell her that I’m not going to vote for her.” He stressed, however, that he thought she was unfairly blamed for long-standing policies set by the commission.
In a letter Wednesday to clerks statewide, Wolfe acknowledged that “my role here is at risk” but said she preferred that the Legislature act quickly to confirm someone, even if it isn’t her. Still, she made it clear she considers herself the best choice to serve the commission. “It is a fact that if I am not selected for this role, Wisconsin would have a less experienced administrator at the helm,” she wrote.
And she also made clear what she thinks is driving the questions about her future, writing that “enough legislators have fallen prey to false information about my work and the work of this agency that my role here is at risk.”
If the commission does vote on Wolfe, Agard said, she expects Wolfe will secure at least one Republican vote, moving her nomination on to the Senate — and what could be a hostile environment.
Senate President Chris Kapenga, a Trump loyalist, told the Associated Press this week that “there’s no way” Wolfe will be re-confirmed by the Senate. “I will do everything I can to keep her from being reappointed,” he said. “I would be extremely surprised if she had any votes in the caucus.”
In the Senate, the matter could first be considered by the Committee on Shared Revenue, Elections and Consumer Protection — chaired by GOP Sen. Dan Knodl. In the weeks after the 2020 election, Knodl signed on to a letter calling on Vice President Mike Pence to delay certifying the results on Jan. 6.
Spindell already is envisioning a future without Wolfe. He said there is talk of conducting a national search for a new administrator, but Millis said there doesn’t appear to be an appetite among the commissioners for this approach. He noted the commission is pressed for time: Come July 1, the state will be only about 16 months away from a presidential election.
State law restricts who can be appointed as election administrator. Appointees cannot have been a lobbyist or have served in a partisan state or local office. Nor can they have made a contribution to a candidate for partisan state or local office in the 12 months prior to their employment.
If the position is vacant for 45 days, the Joint Committee on Legislative Organization, chaired by Kapenga and GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, can appoint an interim commissioner.
As for Wolfe, Spindell said: “She’s experienced. She’s been on all the various boards. I’m sure she would have no problem getting a job anywhere else.”
A panel comprised of three-quarters of the House Republican caucus released a budget proposal on Wednesday that would raise the Social Security retirement age—cutting benefits across the board—while further privatizing Medicare and slashing taxes for the rich, a plan that Democratic lawmakers and progressive advocacy groups said is a clear statement of the GOP's warped priorities ahead of a critical spending fight this fall.
The proposal outlined by the 175-member Republican Study Committee (RSC), led by Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), would gradually raise Social Security's full retirement age—the age at which people are eligible for full Social Security benefits—to 69, up from the current level of 67 for those born in 1960 or later.
Nancy Altman, the president of Social Security Works, said the RSC budget would "destroy Social Security as we know it," using a "modest shortfall" that's more than a decade away to justify reducing benefits for millions.
"These changes would transform Social Security from an earned insurance benefit, which replaces wages lost in the event of old age, disability, or death, into a subsistence-level welfare benefit," said Altman, who noted that the RSC "rules out any options for raising revenue, such as requiring billionaires to contribute even a penny more."
Currently, just the first $160,200 of wage earnings are subject to Social Security's payroll tax, allowing the rich to stop contributing to the program early each year.
The GOP's refusal to force the wealthy to put more of their income into the program "leaves benefit cuts as the only 'solution,'" said Altman.
"In other words, they want to cut benefits now to avoid cutting them later, which isn't a solution at all. Indeed, the budget will increase the number of workers who will have no ability to retire while maintaining their standard of living," she added. "The RSC plan would make it especially hard for Americans so disabled that they can no longer work to claim their earned Social Security, and far easier for the government to take those benefits away."
Far from raising taxes on the rich, the RSC budget calls for massive tax cuts by proposing a permanent extension of the individual tax provisions of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that such a move would add $2.5 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade.
"The largest group of House Republicans just released a budget that calls for massive tax cuts for the super-rich and raising the Social Security retirement age, a benefit cut for millions of Americans," Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), a member of the House's chief tax-writing committee, wrote on Twitter.
Altman pointed out that the plan contains a "particularly cruel provision" that "would force disability beneficiaries to wait five long years (instead of the current two, which is already too long) before becoming eligible for Medicare benefits."
"Outrageously, this change would deprive some of the most medically vulnerable people in America of healthcare," said Altman. "This provision alone would inevitably lead to more medical bankruptcies and increased homelessness."
The GOP proposal also demands work requirements for "all federal benefit programs" and sides with the pharmaceutical industry in calling for a repeal of Inflation Reduction Act provisions aimed at lowering prescription drug costs.
"The ink is barely dry on the Bipartisan Budget Agreement and House Republicans are already reneging on the deal and undercutting their own speaker," Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said in a statement, referring to the recently approved debt ceiling measure that sets topline spending levels.
"What's worse, Republicans are attempting to renege on our sacred promise to American workers and seniors by renewing their attacks on Social Security and Medicare," said Boyle. "It is astounding that the overwhelming majority of House Republicans support this backwards and extreme budget, but, after they manufactured a default crisis to try to force cruel cuts, I guess we shouldn't be shocked."
"Budget Committee Democrats will make sure every American family knows that House Republicans want to force Americans to work longer for less, raise families' costs, weaken our nation, and shrink our economy—all while wasting billions of dollars on more favors to special interests and handouts to the ultra-wealthy," Boyle added.
While House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is not a member of the RSC, he has also signaled plans to pursue cuts to Social Security in the coming months by setting up a bipartisan "commission" that would propose changes to the program.
"Republicans know how politically toxic their plans to gut Social Security and Medicare are, so they are begging Democrats to share the blame," Altman said Wednesday. "Not a single Democrat should take the bait. Instead, they should fight to protect and expand Social Security and Medicare, and pay for it by requiring the wealthy to pay their fair share. Then, let the American people decide which plan they prefer."
Texas’ highest criminal court ruled Wednesday that the securities fraud case against now-suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton’s should remain in Houston, settling a key issue in the 8-year-old case as Paxton faces an impeachment trial in the Texas Senate this summer.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, in a 6-3 ruling, overturned lower-court decisions that said Paxton’s trial had been improperly moved from Collin County, where he lives, to Harris County because the trial judge had lost jurisdiction over the matter.
However, the Texas Constitution and state law protected the judge’s authority over the case, the court ruled.
“We’re gratified but not surprised that the Court recognized that this defendant must stand trial before a Harris County jury and a judge who will follow the law,” prosecutor Brian Wice said.
Paxton’s defense team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In 2015, a Collin County grand jury indicted Paxton on two counts of securities fraud, a first-degree felony with a punishment of up to 99 years in prison, and one count of failing to register with state securities regulators, a third-degree felony with a maximum 10 years in prison.
The securities fraud charges relate to Paxton’s efforts in 2011 to solicit investors in Servergy Inc. without disclosing that the McKinney-based tech company was paying him to promote its stock.
Paxton, who was suspended from acting as attorney general when the Texas House voted to impeach him late last month, has said he did nothing wrong and dismissed the charges as motivated by his political rivals.
Prosecutors were able to remove the case from Collin County in 2017, arguing that they could not get a fair trial in a county that Paxton had represented during his 10 years in the Texas House and two years in the state Senate.
Paxton’s lawyers, arguing that the judge who ordered the case to Harris County had lost jurisdiction over the case, succeeded in sending the case back to Collin County in 2020, leading to appeals from prosecutors that resulted in Wednesday’s ruling.
Where a trial is held could have implications for the jury pool in a criminal trial. Collin County leans Republican, and 51% of voters supported Donald Trump, compared with 47% for Democrat Joe Biden, in 2020. In contrast, Harris County voted 56% to 43% for Biden over Trump.
The delay over the venue change was one of multiple holdups in the long-delayed securities fraud case. Paxton’s defense team had also tried to get the charges dismissed, citing problems with the grand jury process. Another dispute arose over six-figure payments to the appointed prosecutors, also leading to extended appeals.
The latest issue involved orders that assigned state District Judge George Gallagher to the Paxton case after another judge had stepped aside. One of those orders allowing him to serve as a traveling judge expired on Jan. 1, 2017.
Paxton’s lawyers argued that because Gallagher moved the case to Harris County in March 2017, he no longer had authority over the matter, voiding his order. A Harris County trial judge and an intermediate appeals court agreed.
On Wednesday, the Court of Criminal Appeals said Gallagher, as an active district judge, “had constitutional authority to sit in any district court across the state” after he was properly appointed to handle the case in July 2015.
“Judge Gallagher had authority to sit in the 416th District Court to preside over [Paxton’s] case when he issued the venue transfer order on April 11, 2017,” Judge Bert Richardson wrote for the majority. “To hold otherwise, would erroneously limit the constitutional statewide authority vested in duly elected district court judges by the Texas Constitution.”
Presiding Judge Sharon Keller and Judge Mary Lou Keel dissented, arguing that Gallagher had not been properly assigned to Paxton’s case because the recused Collin County judge had not agreed to let Gallagher sit in his court, as required by the Texas Constitution.
“The Constitutional provision appears to require mutual consent — one district judge can sit for another if both consent. Here, mutual consent was lacking,” Keller and Keel wrote.
Judge Kevin Yeary issued a separate dissenting opinion, arguing that Gallagher lacked the authority to change the venue to Harris County.
Wednesday afternoon, Tony Buzbee, Paxton's lead impeachment lawyer, questioned the timing of the ruling.
“This case has been before the Court of Criminal Appeals for nearly two years and the timing of today’s decision was no coincidence [—] specifically timed and designed to create maximum negative press and political damage to the Attorney General and targeted to hurt him with the Senate,” Buzbee said in a statement.
Paxton's impeachment trial before the Senate has not yet been scheduled, though senators approved a resolution saying it will begin no later than Aug. 28. The Senate is scheduled to discuss rules for trial on Tuesday.
Go behind the headlines with newly announced speakers at the 2023 Texas Tribune Festival, in downtown Austin from Sept. 21-23. Join them to get their take on what’s next for Texas and the nation.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/06/14/ken-paxton-securities-fraud-houston/.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
Psaki notes that in the aftermath of Tuesday’s arraignment in Miami in which Trump faced a 37-count indictment in connection with the handling of classified documents, the former president went to a popular Cuban restaurant and then later a Bedminster fundraiser.
Trump’s arraignment was the news of the day, but with cameras rolling in both locations, the former president was able to present Tuesday’s events on his own terms.
Psaki writes that, “Trump knew exactly what he was doing.”
“Without courthouse cameras, a policy which seems unlikely to change, and with a Justice Department that is abiding by traditional guidelines for criminal cases, Trump is making a clear play to control the narrative. And he’s putting his old reality TV production skills to effective use.”
But Psaki said Trump’s reality TV strategy “cuts both ways,” noting that “a PR strategy isn’t a legal strategy.”
Psaki acknowledges that, without cameras in the courtroom, Trump has an opportunity to control the media narrative without much pushback.
“But for now, don’t freak out about Trump’s finding new ways to dominate the headlines,” Psaki writes.
“He’s very good at sucking up all the oxygen, but outside of Hollywood, that talent could end up a curse.”
Fox News drew ridicule and outrage for running a caption slandering President Joe Biden Tuesday night as a “wannabe dictator” during its post-arraignment coverage of Donald Trump.
But some supporters of the twice-indicted former president apparently thought it was great.
“Conservatives appeared to simply accept the chyron as an accurate assessment of the situation,” chortled the right-wing Daily Wire. Among prominent voices it cited was Abigail Marone, communications director for Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO).
“Where’s the lie?” asked Marone is response to a Tweet by Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for the New York Times. And Hawley’s aide was not alone in her approval of the Fox chyron.
IN OTHER NEWS: 'They're mine': New details of Trump feud with lawyers revealed in latest report
Rich Baris, a blogger who describes himself as “the People’s Pundit,” also responded to Baker’s post referring to Biden: “Peter, I'm no Fox apologist. But be honest, is he not? He's not one yet, because he's not gotten away with it yet. But if he does, is he not a dictator?”
And there was this from Sean Parnell, a podcaster who ran for 2022 U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania with Trump’s endorsement, only to drop out of the race after six months over child-custody issues. Parnell responded, “and they would be correct” to Fox’s description of Biden.
PHILADELPHIA — The AFL-CIO will endorse President Joe Biden ahead of his rally with union members in Philadelphia on Saturday, according to two sources familiar with the plan. The vote of the general board, which represents 12.5 million members and 60 affiliated unions, is slated to happen Friday on a Zoom call. Biden will speak to union members at the Convention Center on Saturday, marking the first political event of his presidential reelection campaign. The endorsement isn’t a surprise — the union also backed Biden’s 2020 presidential bid — but it comes about a year earlier than the vote la...
U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), who has spent years promoting countless conspiracy theories on topics ranging from COVID-19 to climate change, apparently isn’t sold on House Republicans’ claim that when President Joe Biden was a vice president, he took a $5 million bribe and there are taxes to prove it.
The claims, apparently based on a single FBI document used to record unverified statements made by third-parties, have been gobbled up and spewed across far-right media and social media by some of the most extreme Republicans in the House of Representatives, and even a few GOP Senators.
How far out there is Sen. Johnson?
“All told, when it comes to spewing dangerous drivel, Mr. Johnson has displayed a commitment and creativity rarely seen outside of QAnon gatherings or Trump family dinners,” The New York Times’ Michelle Cottle wrote in an opinion piece last year.
So it’s stunning that Sen. Johnson is now apparently walking back the unsubstantiated claims exploding on the right that President Biden took a $5 million bribe when he was President Barack Obama’s Vice President.
The latest twist of “evidence,” according to Republicans, is that there are now “tapes” allegedly proving the Biden bribe conspiracy theory.
But, in a Tuesday interview with a local Wisconsin right-wing talk radio show host, Johnson – whose outrageously wild claims in the past have crowned him the “Senate’s leading conspiracy theorist” a “bagman for Qanon,” and “Putin’s favorite Senator” – said the allegations he and other Republicans have been spreading now must be taken with a grain of salt.
“We don’t even know” if the tapes “exist,” Johnson said. “It’s a claim, it’s an allegation. We don’t know whether they really exist or not.”
Another GOP Senator who has been spreading the bribery conspiracy theory is Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the president pro tempore emeritus of the United States Senate who began serving in public elected office in 1959.
Grassley has been a consistent partner with House Republican Oversight Committee Chairman Jim Comer on the Biden bribery conspiracy theory, despite having no official Senate function or role that would allow him to pursue an investigation.
Chairman Comer, who has admitted his purpose as that powerful committee’s chief is to attack Biden and help Trump get elected, has repeatedly suggested or implied the FBI document, officially called an FD-1023, is proof (it is not).
“The FBI’s 6/30/20 FD-1023 record stands on its own and contains information from a trusted confidential human source who had conversations with the foreign national who claimed to have bribed Biden,” Comer’s Oversight Committee tweeted over the weekend.
Last month Comer’s Oversight Committee posted a nearly ten-minute video of a press conference with him making various wild allegations about Biden and the Biden family.
Newsweek on Tuesday notes that “The Washington Post reported last week that the allegations contained in the FD-1023 document being sought by Republican lawmakers was reviewed by the FBI under former Attorney General William Barr, only for the agency to conclude the allegations were found not to be supported by facts. The investigation was later dropped, a fact confirmed by several outlets.”
Stunningly, it’s not only Senator Johnson, but Chairman Comer himself on Tuesday, under pressure by a Newsmax host pressing him to either say the tapes are legitimate or say when he will be able to confirm their legitimacy, confessed on live TV: “We don’t know if they’re legit or not.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) warned that Republicans wouldn't accept an indictment of Donald Trump on charges related to the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Graham gave an impassioned speech hours after Trump supporters stormed into the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of President Joe Biden's election win, saying "count me out" of efforts to keep him in the White House – but he's since changed his tune.
The South Carolina Republican told CNN that the former president shouldn't be prosecuted for his role in the insurrection.
"If the special counsel indicts President Trump in Washington, DC for anything related to Jan. 6, that will be considered a major outrage by Republicans because you could convict any Republican of anything in Washington D.C.," Graham said. "I fear that's where this is going, as sort of an insurance policy."
Fox News on Wednesday addressed a caption that aired on Tuesday night that labeled President Joe Biden as a "wannabe dictator."
The chyron, which aired shortly after the arraignment of former President Donald Trump on 37 felony charges in Florida, was placed underneath footage of President Joe Biden and read, "Wannabe Dictator Speaks at the White House After Having His Political Rival Arrested."
The Washington Post reports that, in a statement issued on Wednesday afternoon, Fox News simply said that "the chyron was taken down immediately and was addressed."
The network offered no details about how it was "addressed" and how it got to be on the screen in the first place.
READ MORE: Former Trump aide blames Republicans 'who know better' for continuing to prop up Trump
"The graphics are written by each individual show, rather than a central network newsroom, and provide wide latitude for color and attitude," notes the Post. "The 'wannabe dictator' graphic was also in line with other chyrons during that evening’s program. Earlier, viewers saw a graphic previewing the Trump speech with: 'Soon: Donald Trump Speaks After Being Targeted by Biden’s Department of Justice.'"
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