Here are this week’s SWAJ Research Links, compiled by SWAJ Team Member Mark Kurth.
National Inquiries
Trump lawyers meet with Justice Department officials as charging decision nears in Mar-a-Lago case
The Trump lawyers two weeks ago requested a meeting with Attorney General Merrick Garland to raise concerns about what they alleged was prosecutorial misconduct and overreach by the team led by special counsel Jack Smith. But a defense attorney meeting with Justice Department officials is also often used as an opportunity to try to persuade them against bringing criminal charges.
I’m not running for president in 2024. Beating Trump is more important.
Our party is on a collision course toward electoral irrelevance without significant corrective action. The stakes are too high for a crowded field to hand the nomination to a candidate who earns just 35 percent of the vote, and I will help ensure this does not happen.
Former Gun Company Executive Explains Roots of America’s Gun Violence Epidemic
It was a combination of factors. After Columbine in 1999, the National Rifle Association in very well-publicized meetings now, thanks to sleuthing and digging by reporters at NPR, we now have tapes of the meetings where they literally said, are we going to be part of the solution here? Or maybe we can use these things to drum up hate and fear in our members? We might even be able to use them to drive membership. And they chose the latter. They perfected that system for about seven or eight years, getting their feet underneath them. They figured out it can drive politics. And then an explosion hit. That explosion was the future Black president leading in the polls in 2007. And then Barack Obama won in 2008. So you have this sort of uncapping of hate and conspiracy, much of it racially driven, that the NRA was tapping into.
In need of success in Iowa, DeSantis starts making his pitch to Evangelical voters
In an effort that began years ago and accelerated as he prepared to run for president, DeSantis has forged personal relationships with Evangelical leaders and begun layering his speeches with Biblical allusions. He even held his first in-person campaign event last Tuesday at a conservative church near Des Moines, where he spoke from a stage where a pastor normally spreads the Gospel every week.
Is House Oversight’s pressure on FBI just a Giuliani goose chase?
Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani thought he had a useful angle to that end: an allegation from a former Ukrainian official that Biden had leveraged American funding to benefit a company for which Hunter Biden, the vice president’s son, worked. That official, Viktor Shokin, met with Giuliani, then Trump’s attorney, to allege that the vice president had pressured Ukraine to fire him to block a probe into the energy company Burisma.
How a Fringe Legal Theory Became a Threat to Democracy
“This one” was Moore v. Harper, a Supreme Court case that was set to be argued in December and resolved by the end of June. In 2021, with Tim Moore as the speaker of the North Carolina House, the majority-Republican legislature drew gerrymandered congressional maps—that is, even more egregiously gerrymandered than usual.
If the Supreme Court reverses the state-court ruling, it would be a vindication of the independent-state-legislature theory, or I.S.L.T., a line of legal reasoning that scarcely existed twenty-five years ago but has since travelled from the fringes of legal discourse to the centers of power. Some advocates of the theory interpret a clause of the Constitution to mean that state legislatures can run federal elections almost however they choose—drawing maps for partisan advantage, outlawing forms of voting (such as mail-in ballots) that tend to favor one party, and challenging election results on thin procedural grounds.
How Moms for Liberty is helping states pass vicious anti-LGBTQ bills
Moms for Liberty is best known for its efforts to loudly overtake and intimidate public schools, but unbeknownst to many the group was terrorizing school boards while simultaneously planting a sophisticated state legislative advocacy infrastructure that it’s now using to strategically attack LGBTQ rights.
Most US Pastors Use Armed Congregants as Church Security
In terms of security specifics, pastors are most likely to say their congregation has an intentional plan for an active shooter situation (57%). Additionally, most (54%) also say armed church members are part of the measures they have in place.
Woe to us if the case of a Catholic-run charter school reaches the Supreme Court
The board put the archdiocese on the path to provide a Christian education paid for by the state. Though transparently unconstitutional, this arrangement may still be blessed by the radical conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, which has issued a series a rulings in recent years that use a specious idea of religious freedom to promote the establishment of religion.
Wow, Jack Smith Has Been Busy!
While he’s been pretty tight-lipped about his investigations, not making any public appearances since being appointed, there’s been a flurry of reports recently that give us a hint of what he’s working with.
AS PAT ROBERTSON RETIRES, HERE ARE 10 OF HIS MOST CRINGEWORTHY MOMENTS
Through his efforts to build and expand the evangelical and fundamentalist alternative media ecosystem—launching CBN well over three decades before Fox News Channel came on the scene in 1996—Robertson has done incalculable damage to American civil society. In 1991, he published a book that popularized New World Order conspiracy theories among evangelicals, and his influence is reflected in our current post-truth political landscape, in which white evangelicals regularly collaborate with street-brawling fascists and are more likely than any other demographic to embrace anti-vax disinformation and the pernicious QAnon conspiracy theory.
‘I Don’t Want to Violently Overthrow the Government. I Want Something Far More Revolutionary.’
But Deneen’s political vision doesn’t end with minor tweaks to the Republican Party’s agenda. As Deneen explained to his audience at Catholic, the major fault line in American politics is no longer the one between the progressive left and the conservative right. Instead, the country is split into two warring camps: “the Party of Progress” — a group of liberal and conservative elites who advocate for social and economic “progress” — and the “Party of Order,” a coalition of non-elites who support a populist agenda that combines support for unions and robust checks on corporate power with extensive limits on abortion, a prominent role for religion in the public sphere and far-reaching efforts to eradicate “wokeness.”
Is Gen Z Coming for the GOP?
As many as 7 million to 9 million more members of the racially and culturally diverse Gen Z could cast ballots in 2024 than did in 2020, while the number of the predominantly white Baby Boomers and older generations voting may decline by a corresponding amount, according to nonpartisan forecasts. As a result, for the first time, Gen Z and Millennials combined could account for as many votes next year as the Baby Boomers and their elders—the groups that have made up a majority of voters for decades.
How Pat Robertson created today’s Christian nationalist GOP
Robertson, who mounted a failed run for the GOP presidential nomination in 1988, was founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network. His televangelism mobilized untold numbers of conservative Christians to become more active in politics, initiating a transformation that is still unfolding all around us.
Fact check: Seven of Trump’s false or unsupported claims on the documents investigation
Former President Donald Trump has made numerous false and unsupported claims about the federal investigation into his handling of government documents, a probe he announced Thursday has resulted in his indictment.
States Fights
Trump-appointed federal judge rules Tennessee’s anti-drag show law is ‘unconstitutional’
“As a matter of text alone, the (Adult Entertainment Act) is a content, and viewpoint-based restriction on speech. The AEA was passed for the impermissible purpose of chilling constitutionally-protected speech,” US District Court Judge Thomas Parker, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, said in a 70-page late-Friday ruling.
Parker, who called the law “unconstitutionally vague and substantially overbroad,” also barred the defendant in the case – the district attorney of Shelby County, which is home to Memphis – from enforcing the law in that county.
Newsom slams DeSantis over migrant drop-off: 'You small, pathetic man'
Over the weekend, Attorney General Rob Bonta claims Florida had arranged for the first group, which were South American migrants, to be transported from Texas to California and dropped off in Sacramento, noting that he's looking into whether any crimes may have been committed.
If true, the 16 Colombian and Venezuelan migrants who turned up at the Roman Catholic Church diocese's headquarters in Sacramento on Friday would be the latest to have been moved from a Republican-led state to one led by Democrats. The migrants had documents that appeared to be issued by the state of Florida, though the circumstances surrounding their arrival was still under investigation, Bonta said Saturday.
Americans United preparing legal action in Oklahoma after board approves nation’s first religious public charter school
“It’s hard to think of a clearer violation of the religious freedom of Oklahoma taxpayers and public-school families than the state establishing the nation’s first religious public charter school. This is a sea change for American democracy. Americans United will work with our Oklahoma and national partners to take all possible legal action to fight this decision and defend the separation of church and state that’s promised in both the Oklahoma and U.S. Constitutions.
Republican prosecutor declined to pursue cases similar to those brought by DeSantis’ election police
The office of State Attorney Bill Gladson, whose district includes The Villages and five Republican counties, confirmed six convicted sex offenders in Lake County had voted in the 2020 general election, according to a determination letter obtained by the Orlando Sentinel.
In August, 20 people living in majority Democrat counties were swiftly jailed in the first significant action taken by the Office of Election Crimes and Security, DeSantis’ new election police force. Each had voted despite being convicted of a felony sex offense or murder, which makes them ineligible to have their voting rights restored under Amendment 4.
The Dark Money Behind Kansas’ Misleading Anti-Abortion Campaign
New tax documents hint at how Leo’s network has been quietly working to influence abortion policy in the states utilizing his historic $1.6 billion dark money fund, in the wake of the Supreme Court decision last year overturning Roe v. Wade and ending federal protections for abortion rights. As President Donald Trump’s judicial adviser, Leo helped select three of the six justices making up the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority.
Oklahoma Republicans pave the way for the Supreme Court to end secular education
But, of course, Oklahoma is run by far-right Republicans who are far more interested in pushing a Christian nationalist agenda than serving the needs of their constituents. Republicans didn't approve St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School to be funded by the taxpayers because of its educational value. There is only one, shameless reason for this: To give the far-right Supreme Court a chance to destroy the separation of church and state, a founding American principle.
As Rural Republicans Derail School Vouchers in Texas, Gov. Abbott Vows a Special Legislative Session For His Top Education Priority
But in the end, the hope of instituting universal school choice didn’t advance nearly far enough, even under unified Republican control over both the legislature and executive. An effort that could have transformed Texas, virtually overnight, into the biggest school choice marketplace in the country — and potentially bolstered its governor’s conservative bona fides — instead faltered before the goal line. And while the chances of a statewide voucher offering haven’t been extinguished entirely, the greatest prize for voucher proponents appears to be slipping away.
Vocal Locals
Pride in the Park returns to North Idaho one year after members of hate group are arrested
"This is a community that needs pride, and they need the North Idaho Pride Alliance," said Dr. Lynch. "And I think, you know, that's why coming back and doing it again, this year is so important, but also getting the message out as to what the North Idaho Pride Alliance is and what we do. You know, we envision in North Idaho where LGBTQIA+ people can belong and where they can connect and where they're empowered to thrive."
Family of woman shot through door in Florida calls for arrest
No arrest has been made in the shooting death of Ajike "AJ" Owens, which took place in Ocala on Friday, though Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods said police know the identity of the shooter.
Woods said his office is working to determine what role the state's "stand your ground" laws might play in the shooting. Under Florida's "stand your ground" law, enacted in 2005, people can use deadly force if they feel their lives are in danger.