states – Lone Candle

North Carolina’s top court clears path for some ballots to be tossed in contested state Supreme Court race

Posted on April 16, 2025April 16, 2025 by Lone Candle

“North Carolina’s top court cleared the way for some voters’ ballots in a contested state Supreme Court race to be tossed months after the election, opening a path for Republican Jefferson Griffin to potentially overturn an apparent narrow loss.

However, the extraordinary decision from the Republican-controlled court — which drew angry rebukes from Democrats and a sitting GOP justice in the state — still may see more litigation in federal court.”

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“Griffin argued three categories of votes should be tossed: Voters who were registered to vote with incomplete voter registration data; military and overseas voters who did not meet the state’s voter ID requirements; and overseas voters who have never lived in the state or expressed an intent to do so, a small category of voters who are generally family members of expats or service members.

Tossing out wide swaths of ballots after the election would be a near-unprecedented decision that voting rights groups, Democrats and even some Republicans condemned as violating voters’ due process rights and changing the rules of an election after it has already been run.”

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“The state’s high court ruled Friday that most of those ballots — coming from roughly 60,000 voters with incomplete registration data, which could include missing driver’s license numbers or Social Security numbers — should still be counted for this election, placing the blame on the state board of elections.

But the court’s order has the latter two categories of voters at risk. The court ruled that military and overseas voters who didn’t meet the identification requirement must prove their identity within 30 days — known as a “cure process” — or their votes could be invalidated, while affirming the lower court order that “never residents” ballots, which amount to a couple hundred votes, should be disqualified.

Friday’s majority decision elicited scathing dissents from two of the court’s justices — Anita Earls, the lone Democrat who participated in the case, and Republican Justice Richard Dietz.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/11/north-carolina-supreme-court-ballots-tossed-00008327

Trump declares war on state climate laws

Posted on April 10, 2025 by Lone Candle

“President Donald Trump is throwing the weight of the Justice Department against the last bastion of U.S. climate action: states and cities.
In a sweeping executive order signed late Tuesday, Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to “stop the enforcement of State laws” on climate change that the administration says are unconstitutional, unenforceable or preempted by federal laws.”

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“The move came as Trump presided over a White House event Tuesday aimed at reviving the coal industry, which has withered against competition from less expensive natural gas and renewables.

He pledged to a row of coal miners standing behind him that he’d direct the Department of Justice to “identify and fight every single unconstitutional state or legal regulation that’s putting our coal miners out of business.”

Some legal experts said the White House’s executive order would be “toothless,” though climate advocates worry about gambling with a judiciary dominated by conservative appointees. And in a statement, Democratic governors said Trump would not intimidate them from climate action.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/09/trump-declares-war-on-state-climate-laws-politico-00280178

14 states sue DOGE, blasting Musk’s ‘unprecedented’ power as unconstitutional

Posted on February 14, 2025 by Lone Candle

“the lawsuit argues — in often dramatic terms — that the Appointments Clause of the Constitution calls for someone with such significant and “expansive authority” as Musk to be formally nominated by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

“There is no greater threat to democracy than the accumulation of state power in the hands of a single, unelected individual,” says the lawsuit, filed by New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez and officials from Arizona, Michigan, Maryland, Minnesota, California, Nevada, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii. “Although our constitutional system was designed to prevent the abuses of an 18th century monarch, the instruments of unchecked power are no less dangerous in the hands of a 21st century tech baron.” Two of the 14 states are led by Republican governors.”

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“The suit filed by the 14 states says the Constitution blocks the president from overriding “existing laws concerning the structure of the Executive Branch and federal spending.” As a result, the suit says, the commander-in-chief from is forbidden from creating — or even “extinguishing” — federal agencies, and from “slashing federal programs or offering lengthy severance packages as a means of radically winnowing the federal workforce,” in a nod to the Trump administration’s “deferred retirement” offer to government employees.”

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“”[T]he President does not have the constitutional authority to unilaterally dismantle the government. Nor could he delegate such expansive authority to an unelected, unconfirmed individual,” Thursday’s lawsuit says.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/lawsuit-against-doge-14-states-203603702.html

How Trump could crack down on blue cities and states to enact mass deportations

Posted on January 9, 2025 by Lone Candle

“During Trump’s first term, sanctuary cities refused to allow local law enforcement to share information with federal immigration agents or hand over immigrants in their custody. This time around, many are planning to do the same, even if doing so draws them into a fight with the second Trump administration.
Trump’s so-called border czar Tom Homan, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a named contributor to its Project 2025 manifesto, has indicated the incoming administration plans to make sanctuary jurisdictions targets for “mass deportations.” Homan said recently he hopes that local law enforcement will cooperate with requests from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to hand over undocumented immigrants already in their custody, especially when they pose a public safety threat.

“What mayor or governor doesn’t want public safety threats out of their communities?” he told the Center Square. “Their No. 1 responsibility is to protect their communities. That’s exactly what we are going to do.”

Most Democratic leaders, however, have made it clear that they will not accept federal government overreach on deportations and that they are preparing to challenge Trump’s immigration policies in court.

“We’re not looking for a fight from the Trump administration, but if he attacks our progress, we’ll fight back,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta told Vox. “Immigrants are such a critical part of who we are … who we will be.””

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“In his first term, Trump’s crackdown on sanctuary jurisdictions took two forms: attempting to withhold federal funding from them and challenging their policies in court.”

https://www.vox.com/politics/392201/sanctuary-cities-trump-california-mass-deportations

Republicans won big in the Senate. A warning lurks in the purple states.

Posted on November 12, 2024 by Lone Candle

“That 53-seat majority will be a boon to the GOP agenda next year. But three of Republicans’ wins were in solidly red seats in West Virginia, Ohio and Montana. They flipped a true swing state in Pennsylvania but suffered losses in Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona. That means they’ll fall well short of the 57 seats they might have had, thanks to undervoting, smaller Trump coattails and well-funded and disciplined Democratic opponents.
This was the fourth straight cycle in the Trump era that Senate Republicans struggled to win purple states. In theory, Trump could have pulled some of their top recruits over the finish line — he outperformed Senate GOP candidates in every single battleground state.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/12/republican-senate-majority-battleground-states-00188953

How Donald Trump won the presidency

Posted on November 7, 2024November 7, 2024 by Lone Candle

“According to the exit poll, 35 percent of voters nationally rated the “state of democracy” as the most important factor to their vote. Eighty-one percent of these people voted for Harris and just 17 percent for Trump. But the economy was the next-most-influential issue. Among these voters, Trump led 79 percent to 20 percent. In the end, abortion did not rate as highly as Democrats might have hoped; only 14 percent rated it as their biggest concern.

It’s possible that inflation contributed to the growing divide between high-income voters and low-income voters. According to the exit poll, Democrats increased their vote share by 9 points among voters living in households that make more than $100,000 dollars a year. Among households making less, which account for about 60 percent of voters, Republicans gained 12 points on margin.”

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“In addition to economic headwinds and deteriorating margins with their base, it looks like Democrats also simply had bad turnout. So far, around 137 million ballots have been counted for the 2024 presidential race. Predictions of final turnout are hovering somewhere in the neighborhood 152 million votes. That would be a decrease from the 158 million who voted in 2020 and would be equivalent to about 61 percent of eligible voters. That would be a decline from 66 percent in 2020.”

https://abcnews.go.com/538/donald-trump-won-presidency/story?id=115556511