Attention to the Unseen

The New York Times reports: Republican legislators in Oklahoma and Iowa have passed bills granting immunity to drivers whose vehicles strike and injure protesters in public streets. A Republican proposal in Indiana would bar anyone convicted of unlawful assembly from holding state employment, including elected office. A Minnesota bill would prohibit those convicted of unlawful protesting from receiving student loans, unemployment benefits or housing assistance. And in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed sweeping legislation this week that toughened existing laws…

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The New York Times reports: The Minneapolis Police Department’s initial inaccurate and misleading description of George Floyd’s death last May “might have become the official account” of what took place, had it not been for video taken by a teenage bystander, Keith Boykin, a CNN commentator, wrote on Twitter. The video, taken by Darnella Frazier, emerged the night of Mr. Floyd’s death and drove much of the public’s understanding of what took place. Chief Medaria Arradondo of the police department…

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Politico reports: Jon Schaffer, a heavy metal guitarist and self-described “lifetime member” of the Oath Keepers, on Friday became the first Capitol rioter to plead guilty to charges based on his participation in the attack and has entered into a cooperation agreement with the government. The move from Schaffer came at an unannounced proceeding before U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta on Friday morning. During a lengthy plea dialogue with Metha, Schaffer acknowledged that the deal requires him to “cooperate…

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The New York Times reports: President Biden on Friday ordered a 180-day study of adding seats to the Supreme Court, making good on a campaign-year promise to establish a bipartisan commission to examine the potentially explosive subjects of expanding the court or setting term limits for justices. The president acted under pressure from activists pushing for more seats to alter the ideological balance of the court after President Donald J. Trump appointed three justices, including one to a seat that…

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CNN reports: At least one of the Capitol riot defendants has flipped against the Proud Boys, agreeing to provide information that could allow the Justice Department to bring a more severe charge against the group’s leadership, according to an attorney involved in the case. The development is the first indication that people charged in the insurrection are cooperating against the pro-Trump extremist group. Federal prosecutors have made clear they are focused on building conspiracy cases against leadership of the Proud…

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Jessica Levinson writes: In 2013, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg predicted, with prescient clarity, what is happening right now in Georgia. Ginsburg knew then, when the Supreme Court threw out half of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, that it would be open season for voter suppression in states previously covered under the act. And here we are facing that reality with a sweeping and unquestionably restrictive new voting law passing on a party-line vote in Georgia late last…

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The New York Times reports: State prosecutors in Manhattan investigating former President Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization have subpoenaed the personal bank records of the company’s chief financial officer and are questioning gifts he and his family received from Mr. Trump, according to people with knowledge of the matter. In recent weeks, the prosecutors have trained their focus on the executive, Allen H. Weisselberg, in what appears to be a determined effort to gain his cooperation. Mr. Weisselberg,…

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Mother Jones reports: San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin was at home cooking dinner on a Thursday evening in January when he opened a new app called Clubhouse that lets people drop into virtual “rooms” and listen to live, unrecorded conversations. Someone had messaged Boudin to let him know that tech investors were hosting an “interesting” conversation about the “Future of SF.” As he prepared his food, some of them were speaking critically about San Francisco’s liberal political leaders. Soon,…

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The Daily Beast reports: A sheriff’s deputy who went to law school but remained a cop for another two decades. A prosecutor best known for tackling juvenile offenders. And the guy who literally wrote the book on racketeering cases against mafia goons. This is the team Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is assembling to investigate Donald Trump—to go after his advisers and their attempts to manipulate election results in Georgia. In interviews with Willis, her staff, five former members…

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HuffPost reports: For years, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has been a lonely voice in the Senate on the need to put people with all kinds of different legal backgrounds into lifetime federal judgeships. “We face a federal bench that has a striking lack of diversity,” she said at a 2014 event on this topic, hosted by Alliance for Justice, a progressive judicial advocacy group. “President Obama has supported some notable exceptions but … the president’s nominees have thus far been…

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