“With his original plan for writing off billions of dollars in student loans undone by the Supreme Court, President Biden has a more modest workaround in mind. But that scheme, based on adjustments to existing income-driven repayment plans, faces not only renewed legal challenges and a bureaucratic gauntlet on its way to implementation, but estimates that the ultimate price tag will be $475 billion—much higher than originally expected. In other words, be ready for an already spendthrift federal government to burden taxpayers with yet more debt.”
“Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel this week announced criminal charges against 16 Republicans who presented themselves as the state’s electors after the 2020 presidential election. Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Norman Eisen and New York University law professor Ryan Goodman responded with a New York Times essay headlined “Trump’s Conspirators Are Facing the Music, Finally.” As Eisen and Goodman see it, the Michigan defendants participated in a criminal conspiracy to overturn Joe Biden’s victory by posing as the state’s true electors.
The defendants, of course, do not accept that narrative. As they see it, their conduct was a legitimate way of preserving objections to a contested election, grounded in historical precedent and the advice they received from Donald Trump’s lawyers. The “contingent” Trump electors in Georgia, who have been informed that they are targets of a similar investigation by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, make the same basic argument. Press coverage of these investigations, which routinely describes the targets as “fake” or “bogus” electors, tends to dismiss that argument out of hand. But it is worth a closer look, because it is central to the question of whether prosecutors can prove that would-be electors who followed the Trump campaign’s advice acted with criminal intent.”
“Yes, those publications have liberal biases. And, yes, some progressives are using the Thomas/Alito/Gorsuch reports to undermine the conservative majority’s legitimacy and push dangerous court expansion plans. But all of these nondisclosures, luxury trips, and gift-taking still seem sleazy.”
“A federal judge on Friday permanently banned Arizona from enforcing a new law restricting how closely people may film police, finding that the law violates a core First Amendment right to record law enforcement officers.”