Politics
Senate confirmation hearings to begin for Biden’s Supreme Court pick Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson
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The Supreme Courtroom affirmation hearings for Decide Ketanji Brown Jackson will start Monday within the Senate, marking President Biden’s first nomination to the excessive court docket.
With Democrats in slim management of the Senate and Jackson receiving three GOP votes prior to now for her affirmation to a federal appellate court docket, Jackson heads into the hearings on a stable path towards affirmation.
However Republicans do not intend to let her off straightforward, elevating issues on every part from her previous work as a public defender representing Guantanamo Bay detainees and whether or not she was too lenient on intercourse offenders as a district court docket choose.
“The issue is I have never been capable of finding a single case the place she has had a toddler porn offender, a pedophile in entrance of her, the place she hasn’t given him probably the most lenient sentence she presumably may,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., not too long ago instructed “Hannity.”
WHO IS BIDEN SUPREME COURT NOMINEE KETANJI BROWN JACKSON?
The White Home has dismissed Hawley’s claims as “conspiracy idea” and pointed to truth checks on his remarks from retailers just like the Washington Submit and the Related Press.
“Decide Jackson is a proud mom of two whose nomination has been endorsed by main legislation enforcement organizations, conservative judges, and survivors of crime,” White Home spokesman Andrew Bates mentioned in a press release to Fox Information. “That is poisonous and weakly-presented misinformation that depends on taking cherry-picked parts of her report out of context – and it buckles beneath the lightest scrutiny.”
Democrats, in the meantime, have touted what they are saying are Jackson’s stellar credentials, evenhanded judicial report and bipartisan assist. Jackson has been endorsed by Decide Thomas Griffith, a well known, retired conservative federal choose, as nicely legislation enforcement teams just like the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP).
“Her {qualifications} are distinctive,” mentioned Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ailing. “In each position she’s held, she has earned a repute for thoughtfulness, evenhandedness and collegiality. And simply as spectacular as Decide Jackson’s report is her character and temperament. Humble, personable, she’s devoted herself to creating our authorized system extra comprehensible and extra accessible for everybody who got here in her courtroom.”
GRASSLEY CALLS FOR JUDGE JACKSON RECORDS AMID GOP SCRUTINY OVER CHILD PORN SENTENCING; WHITE HOUSE PUSHES BACK
Jackson is a Harvard Regulation College graduate who was most not too long ago confirmed final spring in a 53-44 vote to serve on the highly effective U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She beforehand was a Senate-confirmed federal district court docket choose, member of the USA Sentencing Fee, a federal public defender and a non-public legal professional at 4 elite legislation corporations.
The schedule
4 days of hearings are scheduled for the Senate Judiciary Committee from March 21-25. The lengthy days of questioning for Jackson will probably be Tuesday and Wednesday.
Monday will probably be a day of introductory statements beginning at 11 a.m. ET.
Opening statements will probably be 10 minutes from every of the 22 Senate Judiciary Committee members, 5 minutes from the surface introducers — retired federal appeals court docket Decide Thomas Griffith and Professor Lisa Fairfax of the College of Pennsylvania Carey Regulation College – and 10 minutes from Decide Jackson herself.
Tuesday is when the 22 senators will start questioning Decide Jackson beginning at 9 a.m. ET.
Senators may have the chance to ask questions for half-hour every so as of seniority. Tuesday’s testimony is predicted to final nicely into the night.
Wednesday would be the second day of questions for Decide Jackson beginning at 9 a.m. ET.
Every of the 22 senators can ask a second spherical of questions for 20 minutes every. Afterward, the Senate Judiciary Committee will meet privately and will probably be permitted to ask Jackson about any materials contained in her FBI background investigation. This closed session is normal for each Supreme Courtroom nominee, no matter whether or not the background investigation has raised issues, in accordance with the committee.
Thursday will embrace testimony from exterior witnesses beginning at 9 a.m. ET. Decide Jackson is not going to be current on Day 4.
The witnesses will embrace the American Bar Affiliation, associates and colleagues talking on behalf of Decide Jackson and Republican-picked opposition audio system akin to victims or shedding events in Decide Jackson’s instances.
COLLINS CALLS SUPREME COURT PICK JACKSON ‘IMPRESSIVE’ AFTER MEETING, BUT REMAINS UNDECIDED
Statements from the witnesses will probably be 5 minutes every, and query rounds from senators may also be 5 minutes every.
The senators
The Senate Judiciary Committee hearings will probably be led by chairman Durbin. The highest Republican on the committee is Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa. Democrats are very supportive of Jackson and are anticipated to be pleasant questioners, whereas Republicans, together with former and potential presidential candidates, will dig into extra controversial subjects and put Decide Jackson and President Biden’s politics on the new seat.
Apart from Grassley, the extra 10 Republicans on the committee who will query Decide Jackson are Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, John Cornyn of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Cruz of Texas, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, John Kennedy of Lousiana, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, the one GOP girl on the committee.
DEMS TOUT SUPREME COURT PICK JACKSON BACKING FROM GOP-APPOINTED JUDGES, POLICE GROUPS: ‘WIDE RANGE OF SUPPORT’
Along with Durbin, the ten different Democrats on the committee are senators Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Dianne Feinstein of California, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Chris Coons of Delaware, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Alex Padilla of California and Jon Ossoff of Georgia, one of many latest members of the Senate.
The problems
Democrats have touted Decide Jackson’s distinctive report as a public defender from 2005 to 2007, however Republicans have sought to painting her work as having particular empathy for convicted criminals.
“I assume that implies that authorities prosecutors and harmless crime victims begin every trial at a drawback,” Senate Minority Chief Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has mentioned.
One space of particular controversy is the work she did as a public defender representing 4 Guantanamo Bay detainees, which some Republicans have depicted as “defending terrorists.” Decide Jackson mentioned in a written response to the committee that ethics guidelines that apply to legal professionals imply an “legal professional has an obligation to signify her shoppers zealously” no matter private views.
Bates, the White Home spokesman, added: “Public defenders don’t select their shoppers and they’re obligated to do their job competently.”
Decide Jackson’s selections on government privilege are additionally beneath scrutiny. Maybe her most high-profile opinion got here on the D.C. District Courtroom within the case between the Home Judiciary Committee and former White Home counsel Don McGahn. McGahn was ordered by Trump to not testify earlier than the committee, regardless of a subpoena citing government privilege.
Jackson dominated that McGahn could possibly be pressured to testify, writing that “presidents will not be kings.”
And a few Republicans have sought to color Jackson as too tender on criminals, primarily based partially on her work on the U.S. Sentencing Fee, which lowered sentences for drug offenders by addressing the disparity between crack and powder cocaine drug crimes. The reforms had bipartisan assist on the time.
HAWLEY RAISES CONCERNS OVER BIDEN’S SUPREME COURT JUSTICE PICK GIVING SEX OFFENDERS ‘LENIENT SENTENCES’
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., has been elevating issues over what he mentioned was lax sentencing of about 10 little one pornography offenders by Decide Jackson, suggesting a sample of going tender on sure legal defendants. “I’m involved that this a report that endangers our kids,” Hawley mentioned.
The White Home’s Bates says within the “overwhelming majority” of Decide Jackson’s instances involving little one intercourse crimes, Jackson imposed sentences that “have been in keeping with or above what the federal government or U.S. Probation really helpful.”
Republicans additionally plan to press Decide Jackson whether or not she agrees with liberal teams backing her, akin to Demand Justice, which have pushed to develop the Supreme Courtroom with further justices.
Blackburn “will ask Decide Jackson if she helps the positions of the novel left-wing teams which might be funding a large PR blitz to get her confirmed – akin to packing the Courtroom,” a Blackburn aide instructed Fox Information. “The American individuals have a proper to know if Decide Jackson will capitulate to the novel left and be part of their name to pack the court docket.”
The stakes
If confirmed, Decide Jackson will make historical past, fulfilling President Biden’s marketing campaign promise to call the primary Black girl to the Supreme Courtroom.
She’d succeed the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, for whom she as soon as clerked.
The ideological make-up of the court docket will stay the identical with a 6-3 break up in favor of justices appointed by Republican presidents.
The Supreme Courtroom within the coming months will probably be deciding hot-button points like abortion entry, gun rights, non secular liberty disputes, immigration limits and affirmative motion.
Fox Information’ Kelly Laco, Tyler Olson, Invoice Mears and Shannon Bream contributed to this report.
Politics
3 hackers with ties to Iran indicted in plot against Trump campaign: DOJ
Three men connected to Iran have been indicted in relation to a hacking plot against former President Donald Trump’s campaign, the Department of Justice announced Friday.
Masoud Jalili, Seyyed Ali Aghamiri and Yasar Balaghi are the three suspects named in the case, according to a federal indictment unsealed Friday afternoon.
The indictment shows the trio are facing a long list of charges, including: Conspiracy to Obtain Information from a Protected Computer; Defraud and Obtain a Thing of Value; Commit Fraud Involving Authentication Features; Commit Aggravated Identity Theft; Commit Access Device Fraud; and Commit Wire Fraud While Falsely Registering Domains.
DOES IRAN’S HACKING OF THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN PROVE THEY WANT KAMALA HARRIS TO WIN THE ELECTION? EXPERTS WEIGH IN
The three hackers, who are accused of working for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, were allegedly “engaged in a wide-ranging hacking campaign that used spearphishing and social engineering techniques to target and compromise the accounts of current and former U.S. government officials, members of the media, nongovernmental organizations, and individuals associated with U.S. political campaigns.”
Last week, the U.S. revealed the Iranian hackers had obtained information on the Trump campaign and tried to distribute it to people linked to the Biden campaign and media organizations since June.
IRAN TRIED TO INFLUENCE ELECTION BY SENDING STOLEN MATERIAL FROM TRUMP CAMPAIGN TO BIDEN’S CAMP, FBI SAYS
READ THE FEDERAL INDICTMENT – APP USERS, CLICK HERE:
The federal government acknowledges that the Trump campaign has been a specific and repeated target of Iran since he ordered the killing of Qasem Soleimani, the former commander of the IRGC Qods Force.
Trump was briefed Tuesday about “real and specific threats” from Iran to assassinate the Republican presidential candidate, according to his campaign.
Iran’s aim to assassinate Trump is part of the Islamic Republic’s efforts to “destabilize and sow chaos in the United States,” Trump Campaign Communications Director Steven Cheung said in a press release.
“Intelligence officials have identified that these continued and coordinated attacks have heightened in the past few months, and law enforcement officials across all agencies are working to ensure President Trump is protected and the election is free from interference,” Cheung said.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Fox News Digital’s Bradford Betz and Morgan Phillips contributed to this report.
Politics
Scripps News is shutting down, another victim of the TV news business downturn
Television station group owner E.W. Scripps is shutting down its 24-hour news channel on Nov. 15, another sign of a contraction in the TV news industry.
E.W. Scripps Chief Executive Adam Symson informed staff Friday of the closure of the channel known as Scripps News. More than 200 jobs will be eliminated, according to his memo.
Scripps News supplied a 24-hour feed of live coverage and documentary programming to broadcast TV stations and ad-supported streaming services such as Tubi and Pluto. The free channel also streamed on the company’s digital platforms. The service was founded as Newsy in 2015 and was a cable channel before evolving into a full-time service for TV and streaming platforms in 2021.
Symson said the audience for the Atlanta-based Scripps News channel was growing. The channel drew 1 million viewers with its coverage of the Sept. 10 debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump, according to two people familiar with the data.
But Symson said the company was unable to get major advertisers to sign on because of the current divisive political environment in the U.S.
“Many brands and agencies have decided that advertising around national news is just too risky for them given the polarized nature of this country, no matter the accolades and credentials a news organization like Scripps receives for its objectivity,” Symson said. “I vehemently disagree, but it is hurting Scripps News, along with every other national linear and digital news outlet.”
The shutdown is the latest example of how the TV news business is struggling as it faces an exodus of viewers away from traditional television viewing. Earlier this week, CBS News announced the layoffs of a weekend morning anchor, Jeff Glor, and several prominent correspondents. CNN and the news divisions of NBC and ABC are all expected to make significant staff and salary reductions after the presidential election in November.
Symson said Scripps’ digital platforms will continue to carry live news coverage from the field and will have a reporting team in Washington to serve the company’s TV stations.
Scripps News received an Emmy Award this week and has earned a number of other journalism prizes over its two-year run.
The operation also partnered on significant stories with other news organizations on stories including ProPublica, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.
Politics
Which Battleground State Voters Could Sway the Election?
It’s no secret that the political sentiments of Americans follow lines of race and ethnicity, education and age. But what makes presidential elections so competitive is how these demographic groups often balance each other out.
In 2024, this delicate equilibrium is key to understanding the seven battleground states where, according to the polls, the presidential race is closest. Last election, several of these states were decided by fewer than 40,000 votes. Since then, together they’ve added about 1.3 million potential voters, and the smallest shifts in sentiment or turnout among certain groups could be enough to alter the outcome of this election.
To better understand the demographic forces at play in the battlegrounds, The New York Times conducted a granular review of the 2020 contest and compared precinct-level results with census data to estimate who cast ballots and how they voted. We examined race and ethnicity, age, education and geography to identify trends and key groups in each state. (Gender is another growing factor in partisanship but was not part of this analysis.)
What to watch President Biden’s winning coalition relied heavily on Latino voters, who made up nearly a quarter of those who voted in 2020, a figure that will likely rise in this election. But while Latino voters in the state have typically favored Democrats, no group is a monolith.
Experts say Latinos have weaker party attachment than other nonwhite groups and could be persuaded to change their votes. Moreover, a significant share of this group is made up of U.S.-born, young Latinos who will vote for the first time, and their sentiment is less predictable. Recent surveys have shown former President Donald J. Trump making inroads with young people and voters of color.
Mr. Trump’s biggest support in 2020 came from white voters aged 35 and older. This group accounted for half of the ballots cast, due in part to the outsize number of white retirees in the state.
For Democrats, there are potentially more votes to gain. In 2020, there were more ballots cast for the Democratic Senate candidate than for Mr. Biden. “Those voters who voted for Mark Kelly but decided not to vote for Biden or Trump could have decided the outcome of the race,” said Samara Klara, a political science professor at the University of Arizona.
What to watch Democrats in Georgia have long been guided by the “30/30 rule,” a term made popular by the University of Georgia political scientist Charles S. Bullock III. It says that in order for Democrats to win, Black voters must make up 30 percent of all voters and at least 30 percent of white voters must vote Democratic.
Black voters, who cast nearly a third of the ballots in 2020, overwhelmingly favored Mr. Biden — by almost 90 percent. But that reliable base of support appeared to be slipping earlier this year, and it’s a group that experts say Vice President Kamala Harris must energize and excite. About 850,000 Black Georgia residents did not vote in 2020.
“If you have anemic turnout among Black voters, that will spell doom for the Democratic ticket,” said Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University.
Both parties will also be looking to appeal to a growing share of white voters with a bachelor’s degree, a group whose votes were split nearly evenly between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump in 2020.
What to watch In 2020, Mr. Biden won Michigan handily — at least by the standards of a battleground state.
But Mr. Trump performed very well with white residents in suburban and rural communities, who made up nearly two-thirds of the voters in the 2020 election.
Democrats’ strong performance among nonwhite voters and in the suburbs of Detroit helped erase Republicans’ advantage in the suburbs around smaller cities in 2020. But even though Black voters overwhelmingly supported Mr. Biden, they were a relatively small group — just 14 percent of those who cast ballots. And experts say that Black support for Democrats could be waning in Michigan.
“There’s definitely an attitude that they aren’t represented, in comparison to their population and their outsize role in the Democratic party,” said Matt Grossmann, a political science professor at Michigan State University. He pointed to Detroit, a majority-Black city that does not have any Black representation in Congress. “The feeling is, how much attention are you paying to us? And how much are you taking us for granted?”
Disillusionment among the estimated 3 percent of Michigan voters who are Muslim and Arab American — a traditionally strong Democratic constituency — could also make a difference this year. Many of these voters have voiced their anger and frustration with the Biden administration’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza, and some have said they may choose to sit out this election or cast ballots in favor of a third-party candidate.
What to watch Nationally, education is a major political fault line, with college-educated voters far more likely to support the Democratic Party and less-educated voters favoring Republicans. But Nevada is the major exception to this rule: Democrats have won there in the past four elections, despite the state having a relatively low share of college-educated voters.
That’s because educational attainment divides mostly white voters, and many of Nevada’s less-educated voters are not white. Mr. Biden won half of the vote among voters without a four-year degree in Nevada, atypical for the nation as a whole.
Over the last several years, inflation has hurt working-class voters, and concerns about the economy could make it easier for the Trump campaign to eat into the Democratic advantage with blue-collar voters of color.
“Nevada is a little bit of a different animal,” said David Damore, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, pointing to the state’s low voter turnout, high diversity and more transient population. “This all means that there are a lot of potential untapped voters that could be mobilized.”
What to watch In 2020, North Carolina gave Mr. Trump the narrowest lead of any state he won. Voters in rural areas, who accounted for nearly a fifth of the total, helped deliver Mr. Trump his victory.
But North Carolina also has many small cities with a strong partisan divide between city-dwellers, who favor Democrats, and suburbanites, who favor Republicans.
For Democrats to flip the state, they must lose fewer votes in rural areas and increase voter turnout in smaller cities, like Greensboro and Asheville, said Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University.
“If we see a marginal movement away from Trump in rural areas, that’s really important,” he said. “The map will still show these places as red, but those differences can be the difference between winning and losing.”
What to watch As it does in other states, education plays a big role in the partisan divide in Pennsylvania. White voters without a bachelor’s degree made up nearly half the total, and they favored Mr. Trump three to one in 2020. Even so, that wasn’t enough for him to overcome the coalition of white voters with a college degree and voters of color who delivered Mr. Biden a victory.
The other big factor is geography.
Mr. Trump dominated the state’s rural areas and small towns, as well as the Pittsburgh suburbs. But Mr. Biden had a strong showing in Pennsylvania’s cities and in the Philadelphia suburbs, areas that accounted for more than 40 percent of the votes in 2020.
Wisconsin saw a similar geographic divide among voters. The bulk of Mr. Trump’s support came from the state’s more than 1,000 small towns and the outer suburbs of Milwaukee.
But the fastest-growing part of the state is an area that increasingly favors Democrats: the suburbs of Madison, home to the main campus of the University of Wisconsin.
In 2020, turnout in Dane County, which includes Madison, was 89 percent.
“It is among the highest turnout counties in the country,” said Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette Law School Poll. “The question for Democrats here is, is it even possible to squeeze more votes out of Dane County?”
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