Politics Archives - Page 441 of 993 - Attention to the Unseen

Don’t underestimate the strengths of Alvin Bragg’s case against Donald Trump

April 6, 2023 From elsewhere

Harry Litman writes: Manhattan Dist. Atty. Alvin Bragg’s indictment of former President Trump takes an open-ended approach to the charges that some critics of the unprecedented prosecution see as a weakness. What the detractors have overlooked are the substantial and unanticipated legal and factual strengths in the case Bragg outlined. A key question in advance of Tuesday’s unsealing of the indictment concerned how Bragg would augment the easily proven misdemeanor charges of falsifying business records. Under New York law, those…

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How Russia’s offensive ran aground

April 6, 2023 From elsewhere

The New York Times reports: After months of pouring soldiers into eastern Ukraine, Russia’s progress essentially adds up to this: three small settlements and part of the city of Bakhmut, a high-profile battlefield with limited strategic value. Compare that with what Moscow had hoped to achieve from its winter offensive by now: to seize the entire Donbas region — which contains dozens more settlements, some of them much larger than Bakhmut. To do that, Russia would have to recreate and…

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Why did Sanna Marin lose Finland’s election?

April 6, 2023 From elsewhere

The Guardian reports: Sanna Marin was the most popular prime minister in Finland this century. She was praised for her handling of the Covid pandemic and led her country to join Nato with overwhelming support. In Sunday’s election, her centre-left Social Democratic party (SDP) increased its vote share and number of MPs. Nonetheless, she and the SDP have been defeated – and Finland is moving to the right. The leader of the conservative National Coalition party (NCP), Petteri Orpo, is likely to be the next prime minister. And…

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Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump is still a mystery

April 5, 2023 From elsewhere

Ken White writes: What we don’t know — at least with the precision necessary to evaluate the case’s strengths and weaknesses — is the District Attorney’s specific legal theory of how Trump was defrauding anyone and how he was promoting or concealing a crime by doing so. That may sound like law pedantry, but it’s crucial to understanding the case. Commentators disagree, but some argue that Bragg will have to prove that Trump conned someone out of money or property,…

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The Trump indictment is a legal embarrassment

April 5, 2023 From elsewhere

Jed Handelsman Shugerman writes: Astonishingly, the district attorney’s filings do not make clear the core crime that would turn a filing misdemeanor into a felony. Neither the 16-page indictment nor the accompanying statement of facts specifies, though the statement of facts does drop hints about campaign laws. In a news conference, Mr. Bragg answered that he did not specify because he was not required to by law. His answer was oblivious to how law requires more than doing the minimum…

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Trump’s calls to protest fall on weary, wary ears

April 5, 2023 From elsewhere

The New York Times reports: In Lower Manhattan on Tuesday morning, near the courthouse where Donald J. Trump was to be arraigned, Dion Cini, a Trump merchandise entrepreneur from Brooklyn and frequent presence at Trump rallies, waved an enormous flag that read TRUMP OR DEATH. “We’re living in history right now,” he told a scrum of mostly European reporters. But the crowd — for a demonstration convened by the New York Young Republican Club, where Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene would…

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Wisconsin’s stunning outcome puts MAGA Republicans in a serious bind

April 5, 2023 From elsewhere

Greg Sargent writes: To understand the significance of the victory that liberals just pulled off in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race, a win largely driven by abortion rights, consider what is set to happen some 1,100 miles from Madison: In coming weeks, Republicans in Florida’s state capital of Tallahassee are expected to ban abortions after a mere six weeks. Liberal Janet Protasiewicz was elected to Wisconsin’s high court Tuesday night by 55 percent to 45 percent over rival Daniel Kelly. That stunning margin in a razor-close swing…

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The thread that ties the recent chemical spills together

April 5, 2023 From elsewhere

Vox reports: There’s a common thread linking many of the high-profile chemical spills that have made headlines across the country lately: the oil and gas industry. Philadelphia residents were on high alert after the Trinseo latex plant 20 miles from the city released at least 8,100 gallons of acrylic polymers into a tributary for the Delaware River on March 24. Those acrylic polymers were made up of compounds known as butyl acrylate, ethyl acrylate, and methyl methacrylate; all are produced from fossil fuels….

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The dubious legal theory at the heart of the Trump indictment, explained

April 4, 2023 From elsewhere

Ian Millhiser writes: There is something painfully anticlimactic about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of former President Trump. It concerns not Trump’s efforts to overthrow the duly elected government of the United States, but his alleged effort to cover up a possible extramarital affair with a porn star. And there’s a very real risk that this indictment will end in an even bigger anticlimax. It is unclear that the felony statute that Trump is accused of violating actually applies to…

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Is the effort to hold Trump accountable showing the limits of our ‘politics of revelation’?

April 4, 2023 From elsewhere

Julia Azari writes: The politics of revelation casts Trump as not a catalyst of change but a mirror to how we have changed. At the heart of this narrative is the idea that partisan ties overwhelm everything. And this perspective has some basis in political science. Trump’s approval ratings in office were incredibly stable, regardless of positive or negative events. It’s quite striking when you contrast this with the approval patterns for Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan — you can…

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The opaque $70 million scheme by No Labels that could make Trump the next president

April 4, 2023 From elsewhere

Judd Legum and Rebecca Crosby write: No Labels, the purportedly non-partisan organization that supports Republicans and conservative Democrats, is making preparations to promote a third-party presidential ticket in 2024. The group says it is “laying the groundwork for a potential independent unity ticket in 2024” as an “insurance policy” in case both major parties “nominate candidates most Americans don’t want to vote for.” It claims that a “centrist” third-party ticket could win an “outright victory in the Electoral College in 2024.” The…

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‘He’s a war criminal’: Elite Putin security officer defects

April 4, 2023 From elsewhere

The Associated Press reports: On Oct. 14, a Russian engineer named Gleb Karakulov boarded a flight from Kazakhstan to Turkey with his wife and daughter. He switched off his phone to shut out the crescendo of urgent, enraged messages, said goodbye to his life in Russia and tried to calm his fast-beating heart. But this was no ordinary Russian defector. Karakulov was an officer in President Vladimir Putin’s secretive elite personal security service — one of the few Russians to…

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In Russian courts, espionage charges lead to secret trials and near-certain convictions

April 4, 2023 From elsewhere

The Wall Street Journal reports: As Moscow prosecutors prepare an espionage case against jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, lawyers with experience in the Russian judicial process predict a journey through a justice system with the familiar features of Western courts but little of their substance. Like in the U.S. and other Western legal systems, Mr. Gershkovich is guaranteed a defense lawyer in Russia. But in practice, there is no promise of when his lawyer will be allowed to…

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NY Gov. Hochul is helping her fossil fuel donors gut key climate law

April 4, 2023 From elsewhere

The Lever reports: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) is pushing to gut the state’s signature climate law after raking in nearly half a million dollars from the corporations and lobbyists pushing the move, according to a Lever review of campaign finance records. The governor’s office wants to place a provision into the state’s $230 billion budget that would change how the state counts methane emissions, allowing energy companies to include more natural gas in their energy mix while still…

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