Earthworks in preparation for major construction of Thacker Pass scheduled to begin in the second half of 2024. (Photo: Lithium Americas corporate presentation, May 2024)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

Nevada’s mining industry may soon get a reprieve after the Republican-controlled U.S. House passed industry-friendly legislation Wednesday, undoing a consequential court decision that restricted mining companies’ use of federal lands.

The Mining Regulatory Clarity Act of 2024 — introduced by Nevada Republican Rep. Mark Amodei — passed on a 216-195 vote, reversing a vote last week to return the bill to committee.

The bill would allow mining companies to conduct mining support operations on federal lands without valuable mineral deposits, including road maintenance, transmission lines, pipelines, and the construction of any other support facility needed at a mining site.

“Securing our domestic mineral supply chain is not only critical to our nation’s economic success, but to our national security. Now more than ever, we must ensure we are doing all that we can to increase domestic mineral production and protect the ability to conduct responsible mining activities on federal lands,” said Amodei in a statement.

Mining developers in Nevada have had to grapple with the aftermath of a 2022 federal appeals court ruling that imposed a stricter interpretation of the 150-year-old General Mining Law, restricting mining companies from using federal lands without valuable mineral deposits for mining related purposes.

Prior to the federal appeals court decision, mining companies used neighboring federal lands without valuable mineral deposits for mining related purposes – such as waste rock disposal or running power lines – without issue for decades.

The ruling — known as the “Rosemont decision” — blocked an Arizona mining project from dumping waste rock on U.S. Forest Service land. The court ruled that while federal mining law allows companies to mine on federal land where economically valuable minerals are present, they are not guaranteed the right to use federal land without valuable minerals as a dumping site.

Despite support from Arkansas Republican and House Natural Resource Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman, the bill faced some hurdles last week when six members of Amodei’s own party joined Democrats to block a bill.

Lawmakers did not make changes to the bill between the May 1 vote and Wednesday, but the presence of several Republicans who were absent last week allowed the measure to pass on the second attempt.

Rep. Pete Stauber of Minnesota, who chairs the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources and led Republican floor debate Wednesday, called the bill a benefit to domestic mining interests and a correction of the Rosemont decision.

 “This is a simple fix,” Stauber said. “We believe the court erred, so it’s our job to legislate.”

During floor debate Wednesday, New Mexico Democrat Melanie Stansbury called the bill a giveaway to mining companies, including those based in China and other countries.

“Why the heck are we back on the House floor one week after we voted on a bipartisan basis to send this bad bill back to committee?” Stansbury said on the House floor.

Not all Democrats in Congress oppose Amodei’s bill, which opponents have described as a corporate giveaway. While Nevada Democratic Reps. Dina Titus and Susie Lee voted against the measure, Nevada Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford was one of eight Democrats who voted for the legislation.

And Nevada Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto Wednesday praised House approval of the the bill, and called for the Senate to move quickly on companion  legislation she and Idaho Republican Sen. Jim Risch introduced in the Senate. Nevada Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen is also a cosponsor of the Senate companion bill, along with Senate Republicans Mike Crapo of Idaho and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

“Without a fix, the Rosemont decision could upend existing and future mining projects, threatening thousands of jobs in Nevada and across the West. I’ll continue to stand up for our communities and for our clean energy future,” said Cortez Masto in a statement.

Cortez Masto has argued that restricting mining companies from using public land that does not contain economically valuable minerals for waste storage or processing is “misguided.”

Some conservation groups warned that the broad scope of the legislation is alarming and could make room for speculative mining claims on public lands without a documented mineral deposit.

“This bill would create a free-for-all on public lands, with speculators able to file claims even when there are no valuable minerals present,” said Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Nevada is at the epicenter of a huge mining boom right now, and our public lands need strengthened protections. Instead this bill aims to unleash the mining industry, with devastating consequences for Nevada’s wildlife and communities.”

In Nevada, the Rosemont decision has proved consequential to the mining industry, which enjoys broad use of public lands under the 150-year-old General Mining Law, unlike other extractive industries. 

In the case of a planned molybdenum mine by Nevada-based developer Eureka Moly LLC, a district court judge vacated the 2019 Bureau of Land Management’s approval of the project after ruling the developer did not have the right to dump waste rock on federal land without valuable mineral deposits.

The new stricter interpretation of the 150-year-old General Mining Law under the federal appeals court ruling also affects what may potentially become the largest lithium mine in the United States, the Thacker Pass project south of the Nevada-Oregon border. Last year, a district judge cited the Arizona ruling when determining that federal land managers violated federal law when they approved the mine developer’s plan to bury 1,300 acres of public land under waste rock.

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(Getty Images)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

The Biden administration plans to remove marijuana from a list of the most dangerous and highly regulated drugs, the Department of Justice said Tuesday night.

The Drug Enforcement Administration will propose moving the drug from a Schedule I substance, which also includes heroin and methamphetamine, to Schedule III, which is the category for regulated-but-legal drugs including testosterone and Tylenol with codeine.

“Today, the Attorney General circulated a proposal to reclassify marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III,” DOJ spokesperson Xochitl Hinojosa said in a statement to States Newsroom. “Once published by the Federal Register, it will initiate a formal rulemaking process as prescribed by Congress in the Controlled Substances Act.”

Cannabis has been listed as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act since 1971, even as many states have moved to legalize recreational use for more than a decade and medicinal use for even longer.

State-legal marijuana businesses make up a multibillion-dollar industry, but the illegal status of the drug under federal law creates barriers unseen by other industries, including a lack of access to banking and the inability to deduct business expenses from taxes.

Social justice advocates have also noted that prosecutions for marijuana-related crimes have hurt communities of color. Many of those convicted for offenses related to marijuana have not benefited from the recent decriminalization in many states.

Moving cannabis to Schedule III would allow a more permissive approach to the drug, including permitting greater study of medicinal uses and allowing related businesses to use a common tax deduction.

Congressional leaders on the issue and other advocates of changing marijuana’s status welcomed the news Tuesday afternoon, even as they called for further action.

“For over 50 years marijuana has been treated the same as significantly more dangerous and harmful drugs like heroin and methamphetamines despite having fewer adverse outcomes than alcohol,” said Nevada Democratic Rep. Dina Titus in a statement. “I applaud the Biden Administration’s decision to reclassify the drug in a way that will allow researchers to more easily study the uses and benefits of medical marijuana. This decision would also allow legal cannabis businesses, like those in Nevada, to operate with significantly less tax burden and contribute more to local economies.”

“It is great news that DEA is finally recognizing that restrictive and Draconian cannabis laws need to change to catch up to what science and the majority of Americans have said loud and clear,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.

The New York Democrat added that other legislation, including bills to provide cannabis businesses with greater access to banking and to completely delist the drug, is still needed.

“Congress must do everything we can to end the federal prohibition on cannabis and address longstanding harms caused by the war on drugs,” he said.

Sen. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat from Colorado who was the state’s governor when it and Washington became the first states to legalize recreational use in 2012, said the news was welcome but did not go far enough.

“Rescheduling marijuana is a step in the right direction. But – just a step,” he posted to X. “Marijuana should be DEscheduled altogether.”

The state’s current Gov. Jared Polis, also a Democrat, cheered the move in a written statement.

“I am thrilled by the Biden Administration’s decision to begin the process of finally rescheduling cannabis, following the lead of Colorado and 37 other states that have already legalized it for medical or adult use, correcting decades of outdated federal policy,” Polis said.

“This action is good for Colorado businesses and our economy, it will improve public safety, and will support a more just and equitable system for all.”

The U.S. Cannabis Council, a business group, applauded the expected change.

The move was based on U.S. Department of Health and Human Services research and would have myriad benefits for business, Executive Director Edward Conklin said in a written statement.

The update would put marijuana on a path to full legalization and make it easier for state-legal businesses to run profitable operations, he said.

“Moving to Schedule III represents a tectonic shift in our nation’s drug laws. The US Cannabis Council is committed to ending federal cannabis prohibition, and we believe that reclassification is a necessary and critical step toward that goal,” he wrote. “In the coming days, we will submit comments to the DEA in support of the proposed rule.”

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report.

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(Photo: Harry Reid International Airport)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

Key members of Congress announced an agreement Monday on a $105 billion bill to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration for five years ahead of a May 10 deadline.

The 1,000-page bill would raise hiring targets for air traffic control and would codify in law a rule the Biden administration introduced this month requiring airlines to offer refunds for canceled or significantly delayed flights, among other consumer-focused provisions.

The legislation also would add flights to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, despite opposition from U.S. senators from Virginia and Maryland who said in a letter Monday the move would hurt safety efforts.

The compromise measure was negotiated by U.S. Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Chair Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington state, and ranking Republican Ted Cruz of Texas and U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Chair Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican, and ranking Democrat Rick Larsen, a Washington Democrat.

The four lawmakers released a joint statement announcing the agreement early Monday praising their “bipartisan, bicameral, comprehensive agreement.”

“The American people deserve nothing less than the safest and most efficient aerospace system in the world, and to that end, our bill provides critical safety enhancements, grows America’s aviation workforce, invests in infrastructure at airports of all sizes, sets clear priorities for advancing innovative aviation solutions, improves the flying public’s travel experience, and ensures a healthy general aviation sector for years to come,” the lawmakers said.

The bill would authorize $66.7 billion to fund key safety programs such as aircraft safety certification and the hiring of air traffic controllers and technical engineers. It would also authorize $19.35 billion for infrastructure improvements. It would more than double annual funding for the Essential Air Service program that subsidizes flights to small rural airports.

No votes have been scheduled in either chamber on the measure, which President Joe Biden must sign by midnight on May 10 to avoid a lapse in FAA authority.

The bill includes several provisions meant to protect consumers.

It would establish in law a rule the Biden administration proposed this month to require airlines to offer cash refunds for flight delays of more than three hours for domestic flights or six hours for international travel.

The Biden administration had sought such a measure, even as it pursued the rule.

It would also require airline credits to be effective for at least five years, bar airlines from charging families to sit together and require the Transportation Department to create a digital dashboard of the minimum seat sizes for U.S. airlines. It does not mandate a national standard for seat size, but it does direct the FAA to decide if a rule on the issue is needed.

The legislation would establish a Senate-confirmed position of deputy secretary for consumer protection, who would run a new office with an annual budget of $14 million dedicated to consumer issues.

With endorsements from committee leaders on both sides of the aisle, the bill should have broad bipartisan appeal in both chambers of Congress.

But senators from the states bordering Washington, D.C., said Monday they opposed the provision adding five incoming and five outgoing flights to Washington’s Reagan National Airport, or DCA, located in Northern Virginia just across the Potomac River.

In a statement, Democratic Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine of Virginia and Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland vowed to “continue to fight against this ridiculous and dangerous provision.”

Two planes cleared to take off from the busy airport came within 400 feet of crashing in an April 18 incident. The near-miss should have underscored the crowded conditions at DCA, which, as the closest airport to the Capitol, is a favorite of members of Congress, the senators wrote.

Committee members, none of whom are from the area, “decided to ignore the flashing red warning light of the recent near collision of two aircraft at DCA and jam even more flights onto the busiest runway in America,” the senators said. “It should go without saying that the safety of the traveling public should be a higher priority than the convenience of a few lawmakers who want direct flights home from their preferred airport.”

Because the federal government owns DCA and Dulles International Airport further into the Northern Virginia suburbs, Congress has the power to make operational changes.

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Dozens of anti-Trump protesters gathered outside the U.S. Supreme Court on April 25, 2024, while the justices heard arguments about whether former President Donald Trump has immunity from prosecution on criminal charges related to his actions while in office. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court appeared skeptical Thursday of former President Donald Trump’s argument he is immune from criminal charges that he tried to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.

But conservatives who dominate the court appeared open to returning key questions to a trial court, possibly delaying Trump’s prosecution beyond the November election — and essentially assisting the former president as he fights legal challenges on multiple fronts.

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has argued in a federal trial court and in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that his actions following the 2020 election and leading up to the violent Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, were “official acts” conducted while still in office and therefore are not subject to criminal prosecution.

While court precedent establishes that U.S. presidents are immune to civil damages for their official acts, and to criminal prosecution while in office, the justices now must decide the unanswered question of whether former presidents are absolutely immune from criminal law.

At oral arguments Thursday in Trump v. United States, much of the discussion centered on what should be considered an official presidential act.

Several conservative justices suggested that lower courts work to determine what aspects of the charges against Trump arose solely from his private conduct.

Such a detour could eat up additional weeks or months as the trial calendar converges with Election Day.

A decision from the court may not arrive until late June or early July. If a ruling calls for additional fact-finding at the trial court level, Trump’s election interference trial likely would not happen prior to the November election.

Trump’s lawyer, D. John Sauer, of St. Louis, argued that nearly everything a president does in office — including hypotheticals about ordering a military coup or assassinating a political rival — could be considered official acts.

While much of the court appeared skeptical of that broad view of official acts, several justices on the conservative wing asked about having the trial court determine what acts should be considered official. They also suggested prosecutors could drop sections of the four-count indictment against Trump that dealt with official acts.

The court’s three liberal justices voiced serious concerns about Trump’s immunity argument, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wondering aloud if the court accepting a broad view of criminal immunity for the president would make the Oval Office “the seat of criminal activity.”

The case is one of four in state and federal courts in which criminal charges have been made against Trump. On Thursday, he was in a New York state courtroom where he faces charges in an ongoing hush-money trial; the judge there did not allow him to attend the Supreme Court arguments.

Conservative justices asked if they could avoid the constitutional question by having the trial court, presided over by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, determine which parts of the allegations could be considered official or unofficial acts.

Special counsel Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors have indicated that prosecuting only Trump’s private conduct would be sufficient, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said.

“The normal process, what Mr. Sauer asked, would be for us to remand if we decided that there were some official acts immunity, and to let that be sorted out below,” Barrett said, referring to a process in which a case is sent back to a lower court. “It is another option for the special counsel to just proceed based on the private conduct and drop the official conduct.”

‘Absolute immunity’

Sauer argued, as he has for months, for “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for presidents acting in their official capacity.

No president who has not been impeached and removed from office can be prosecuted for official actions, Sauer said, broadly interpreting the meaning of official acts.

Liberal justices questioned Sauer about how far his definition of official acts would stretch. Trump’s attorney was reluctant to list any exceptions.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked a hypothetical that arose in a lower court: Would it be an official act for the president to order the assassination of a political rival?

“That could well be an official act,” Sauer answered.

He also answered Justice Elena Kagan that it could be an official act for a president to order a military coup, though Sauer said “it would depend on the circumstances.”

Michael R. Dreeben, representing the U.S. Department of Justice, argued that Trump’s broad view of presidential immunity would break a fundamental element of U.S. democracy, that no one is above the law.

“His novel theory would immunize former presidents for criminal liability for bribery, treason, sedition, murder, and here, conspiring to use fraud to overturn the results of an election and perpetuate himself in power,” Dreeben said.

Jackson, questioning Sauer, appeared to agree with that argument.

She said Sauer appeared worried that the president would be “chilled” by potential criminal prosecution, but she said there would be “a really significant opposite problem if the president wasn’t chilled.”

“Once we say, ‘No criminal liability, Mr. President, you can do whatever you want,’ I’m worried that we would have a worse problem than the problem of the president feeling constrained to follow the law while he’s in office,” Jackson said.

‘A special, peculiarly precarious position’

But other members of the court appeared more amenable to Sauer’s argument that subjecting presidents to criminal prosecution would constrain them.

Justice Samuel Alito, one of the court’s conservatives, asked Dreeben about Trump’s argument that a president’s duties require a broad view of immunity.

The president has to make difficult decisions, sometimes in areas of law that are unsettled, Alito said.

“I understand you to say, ‘If he makes a mistake, he makes a mistake, he’s subject to the criminal laws just like anybody else,’” Alito said. “You don’t think he’s in a special, peculiarly precarious position?”

Dreeben answered that the president has access to highly qualified legal advice and that making a mistake is not what generally leads to criminal prosecution.

He also noted that the allegations against Trump involve him going beyond his powers as president to interfere with the certification of an election, which is not a presidential power in the Constitution.

Incumbents leaving office

Alito, who seemed to be the justice most sympathetic to Trump’s argument that allowing a president to be prosecuted would undermine the powers of the office, also raised the prospect that incumbents who lose elections may seek to illegally stay in power precisely because prosecution would await after they leave office.

“A stable democratic society requires that a candidate who loses an election, even a close one, even a hotly contested one, leave office peacefully,” he said.

“If an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election, knows that a real possibility after leaving office is … the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?”

Dreeben answered that “it’s exactly the opposite,” because there are well-established lawful options, including court challenges, available to challenge election results.

Trump posted several times Thursday morning on his social media platform Truth Social that the president would “have no power at all” without absolute immunity.

“That would be the end of the Presidency, and our Country, as we know it, and is just one of the many Traps there would be for a President without Presidential Immunity. Obama, Bush, and soon, Crooked Joe Biden, would all be in BIG TROUBLE,” he wrote.

‘Writing a rule for the ages’

Some justices indicated they will be thinking beyond the question as it relates to Trump’s election interference charges, possibly hinting at a drawn-out process in issuing an opinion.

Criminally prosecuting a former president could open the door to prosecution based on motives, including the motive to get reelected or for other personal gain, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch suggested.

“I’m not concerned about this case, but I am concerned about future uses of the criminal law to target political opponents based on accusations about their motives,” Gorsuch said in a lengthy back-and-forth with Dreeben.

“I’m going to say something that I don’t normally say, which is: That’s really not involved in this case,” Dreeben said, eliciting a laugh from Gorsuch.

“I understand that. I appreciate that. But you also appreciate that we’re writing a rule for the ages,” Gorsuch responded.

At another point, Dreeben tried to redirect the justices to specific details of the Trump case, including his point that the judicial system has safeguards against purely politically motivated and retaliatory legal action.

Dreeben attempted to detail for Alito that the Justice Department functioned “in the way that it is supposed to” when Trump’s alleged plan to ask officials to send fraudulent letters to states regarding election results failed.

Alito pushed back, saying he wanted to discuss the case “in the abstract.”

“I understand that Mr. Dreeben. But as I said, this case will have effects that go far beyond this particular prosecution,” Alito said.

Alan Morrison, a law professor at George Washington University who has argued 20 cases before the Supreme Court, said in a phone interview after oral arguments that the court will not reach “a fast decision” as the justices wrestle with the extent of what is considered a president’s official acts.

“Neither side is going to get everything they want,” Morrison said. “And the hardest questions to answer are going to be what are official and what are not official acts.”

‘Reacting against a monarch’

Sticking to the specifics of the indictment against Trump, Kagan ran through a list of the allegations and asked Sauer to discern what constituted an official act.

“The defendant asked the Arizona House Speaker to call the legislature into session to hold a hearing based on their claims of election fraud,” Kagan said, citing the indictment.

“Absolutely an official act for the president to communicate with state officials on a matter of enormous federal interest and concern,” Sauer answered, “attempting to defend the integrity of a federal election to communicate with state officials and urge them to view what he views as their job under state law and federal law.”

Kagan moved to hypotheticals and asked if a president who ordered a military coup, but was never impeached and convicted by Congress, could not be held to U.S. criminal law.

“He was the president. He is the commander in chief. He talks to his generals all the time, and he told the generals, ‘I don’t feel like leaving office. I want to stage a coup.’ Is that immune?”

“If it’s an official act, there needs to be impeachment and conviction beforehand,” Sauer said, citing the defense’s reliance on the Constitution’s Impeachment Clause argument.

“That is the wisdom of the (Constitution’s) framers,” he added.

“The framers did not put an immunity clause into the Constitution,” she quickly responded. “… They didn’t provide immunity to the president, and you know, not so surprising. They were reacting against a monarch who claimed to be above the law.”

“Wasn’t the whole point that the president was not a monarch and the president was not supposed to be above the law?” she said.

Federal election interference charges

A federal grand jury charged Trump with four felony counts in August 2023 for working with several co-conspirators to overturn election results in seven states.

The indictment charged the former president with conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of an official proceeding, among other charges.

Trump allegedly worked with several others to replace legitimate electors with fraudulent ones in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to the indictment.

The prosecution also alleges that he tried to leverage the Justice Department to pressure the states to replace their slates of electors, and pressure Vice President Mike Pence into altering results during Congress’s joint session to certify the results on Jan. 6, 2021.

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Public lands in the Montana Mountains provide access to the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge in northwest Nevada. (Bureau of Land Management photo)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

The Bureau of Land Management will publish a final rule soon allowing the nation’s public lands to be leased for environmental protection, a Thursday news release from the Interior Department said.

The rule, which both proponents and detractors say marks a shift in the agency’s focus toward conservation, directs land managers at the agency to identify landscapes in need of restoration and to create plans to fill those needs.

It also creates two new types of leases focused on protecting natural areas. The BLM already leases parcels of land for extractive industries including energy development, mining and livestock grazing.

The rule is likely to set off a conflict in Congress, where Republicans immediately on Thursday renewed their criticism of President Joe Biden’s conservation policies.

In a deviation from the March 2023 draft rule that proposed a new category of conservation leases, the final rule will allow two new types of leases: restoration and mitigation.

Restoration leases will be “a tool for investment in the health of our public lands” an agency fact sheet reads. Lessees would be empowered to work to restore lands, including those impacted by other uses.

Similarly, mitigation leases would be a tool to offset the impacts of other BLM land uses. The agency said an example could be a solar power company that has a facility on BLM land may receive a mitigation lease to restore nearby habitat to mitigate the impact of its development.

The rule is in line with BLM’s multiple-use mandate that requires balancing energy development, mining, recreation and other uses on the nation’s public lands, the agency said.

“As stewards of America’s public lands, the Interior Department takes seriously our role in helping bolster landscape resilience in the face of worsening climate impacts,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement.

“Today’s final rule helps restore balance to our public lands as we continue using the best-available science to restore habitats, guide strategic and responsible development, and sustain our public lands for generations to come.”

BLM released a 178-page preliminary version of the rule Thursday, saying a substantially similar version would be published as a final rule “in the coming days.”

Congressional fight ahead

The rule has met with polarized reaction since the draft proposal was released in March 2023.

Reaction to the final rule from across the political spectrum began arriving within minutes of the announcement Thursday.

Conservation groups and environmental advocates cheered the rule for prioritizing conservation, while Republicans worried it would restrict other types of uses on public lands.

The Mountain Pact, a coalition of local leaders from Western states, released a statement praising the rule.

“The BLM’s Public Lands Rule highlights the need for the agency to work with local communities to focus on the conservation of land, water, and wildlife to ensure communities can protect future access to federal public lands while combating the growing impacts of climate change,” Patrice Horstman, the chair of the Coconino County, Arizona, Board of Supervisors, said in the statement.

David Willms, associate vice president for public lands at the National Wildlife Federation, said in a written statement the rule gives BLM “new tools to restore and conserve degraded lands, while supporting robust local economies. The rule will help the agency identify intact landscapes that wildlife depend on for survival, which will ensure that they thrive for decades to come.”

Democrats in Congress also applauded the measure.

Colorado’s Diana DeGette, the ranking member on the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Climate, called the move “a significant accomplishment for land conservation and wildlife protection.”

“I am proud that BLM and the Biden Administration are continuing to lead in defending our natural world,” she said in a statement.

Pledge to repeal

But Republicans pledged to undo it.

Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, promised he and North Dakota’s senior Republican senator would challenge the rule with a resolution under the Congressional Review Act. The law allows lawmakers to try to repeal executive branch rulemaking.

“The people of Wyoming depend on access to public lands for their livelihoods — including energy and mineral production, grazing, and recreation,” Barrasso said in a statement “With this rule, President Biden is allowing federal bureaucrats to destroy our way of life. Senator John Hoeven and I will introduce a Congressional Review Act resolution to repeal this outrageous rule.”

The closely divided U.S. Senate has approved Congressional Review Act resolutions on environmental and agricultural issues in which rural-state Democrats or those in tough reelection races, such as centrist West Virginian Joe Manchin III, Ohio’s Sherrod Brown or Jon Tester of Montana, align with Republicans.

Republicans on the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee approved a bill, sponsored by Utah Republican John Curtis, last year to block the rule from taking effect. The legislation has not received a vote from the full House.

“This rule from the Biden Administration undermines the very people who rely on our federal lands for ranching, grazing, recreation, and beyond,” Curtis said in a Thursday release.

House Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman of Arkansas said Thursday he would do “everything in (his) power” to get Curtis’ bill through the House.

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Donald Trump arriving for his arraignment at Manhattan Criminal Court in 2023 in New York City. With the indictment, Trump became the first former U.S. president in history to be charged with a criminal offense. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

Donald Trump on Monday in a New York City courtroom will make history as the first former U.S. president to stand trial in criminal proceedings.

And it raises new issues for the presumptive Republican nominee for president in November, even as he builds a political brand that so far has seemed immune from accusations of wrongdoing.

Trump is accused of falsifying business records to cover up payments made during his first White House run in 2016 to the adult film star Stormy Daniels in return for her silence about an alleged affair.

It’s a somewhat complicated, documents-based case in which prosecutors must convince jurors that bookkeeping errors were committed with the aim of illegally affecting an election, Jessica A. Levinson, the director of the Public Service Institute at Loyola Marymount University’s law school, said in an interview.

And though some experts consider it an election interference case, it’s neither the most serious allegation Trump faces nor the easiest for prosecutors to prove, Levinson said.

“This case is being asked to bear more weight than it possibly should or could,” Levinson said. “It’s being asked to be a bellwether, a referendum on Trump. And it’s a state criminal case. It’s not more, it’s not less, but the amount of attention it’s getting is obviously outsized.

“For people who feel like Trump should be held to account, now all eyes are on this one business records case,” she added. “When you think about the things that were most harmful to our democracy, arguably this isn’t the case that should have gone first.”

The outcome of the trial could affect voters’ perceptions of the other prosecutions, Levinson said.

The case is one of four against Trump involving criminal charges, two in state courts and two in federal courts. A state prosecution in Georgia accuses him of conspiring to overturn that state’s election results.

The two cases in the federal courts include a federal charge related to Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, and another federal case charging Trump with improperly storing classified documents after he left office.

Election interference?

Norm Eisen, a legal analyst who was Democratic co-counsel for the U.S. House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment on charges he solicited election interference from Ukraine during the 2016 election, said the New York state case should also be considered an election interference case.

Levinson, an expert on the law of the political process, including campaign finance law, agreed, though she said the allegations are not at the same level as charges related to attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.

The payments to Daniels were meant to disrupt the 2016 election by withholding key information from voters, she said. They began shortly after video footage surfaced of Trump bragging about grabbing women’s genitals.

Prosecutors say allegations of infidelity with a porn actor would have further eroded Trump’s support with women voters and the payments were meant to stop that.

The allegations in the case are violations of election law and campaign finance law, Levinson noted.

“It’s not the same as ‘I don’t want you to count up Electoral College votes,’” she said, referring to the charges in other election interference cases. But “it is about, in my view, trying to hide a story from the voters right after they had just heard the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape and right before they were going to the ballot box.”

Trump has consistently characterized the case, as he has with all the criminal charges against him, as a political witch hunt by Democrats to undermine a political rival.

In a fundraising appeal Friday, Trump repeated the message.

“ON MONDAY ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE!” the email said. “BIDEN AND HIS ALLIES WANT ME LOCKED AWAY IN PRISON! RABID DEMOCRATS ARE POISED TO RAISE MILLIONS WHILE I’M STUCK DEFENDING MYSELF IN COURT!”

That critique ignores the high standard of evidence needed to bring criminal charges, and doesn’t refute the allegations, but that type of all-caps accusation has proved effective at keeping many Republican voters supportive of Trump.

Spokespeople for the Trump campaign did not return messages seeking comment for this story.

In the courtroom

The trial will start Monday with jury selection, which could last several days or longer.

Once the actual arguments begin, the case will hinge on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s ability to show jurors that the irregularities in Trump’s business records were in service of committing another crime.

Paying hush money is not illegal by itself, Levinson said, so the violation of campaign finance law is crucial to the case.

Bragg and his team should try to simplify the case and “emphasize over and over again” that the payments were meant to influence the election, she said.

Trump’s defense will likely focus on Michael Cohen, the former vice president of the Trump Organization and Trump’s onetime personal counsel who allegedly delivered the payments to Daniels.

Cohen, who served a federal prison sentence for tax fraud and perjury, has publicly described Trump’s role in the alleged scheme. But his credibility, after his convictions and the public reversal of his account, is a major question.

Electoral impact of conviction unclear

For more than eight years, Trump has successfully deflected and even used to his advantage the types of scandals that were previously believed to be fatal to political candidates, disproving predictions of an imminent political collapse so regularly it became a cliche.

He has so far weathered any significant damage from the criminal proceedings, including the New York case, and even gained some political benefit from them.

He has said the prosecutions are politically motivated attempts by Democrats to weaken their chief political opponent. Republican voters, at least, seem to largely accept that argument, allowing Trump to coast to the nomination early this year.

And the criminal allegations have not yet critically damaged Trump’s reputation with general election voters. He is polling close to President Joe Biden in several swing states and in national surveys, though voters have told pollsters that their opinions may change if Trump is convicted.

But there is reason to doubt that a conviction would have any impact on Trump’s position with voters, Seth Masket, the director of the Center on American Politics at the University of Denver, said in an interview with States Newsroom.

Political observers wondered throughout 2023 how much the four criminal indictments against Trump would affect the former president in the 2024 primaries, Masket said.

The accusations, especially the New York charges that were the first to be revealed, seemed to actually help in the nominating race. His rivals in that contest largely defended Trump.

Even if he’s convicted, Republican voters in a polarized country are more likely to side with Trump than a judicial system he describes daily as corrupt, Masket said.

“Everything we’ve seen so far suggests that every bad thing that happens to him causes Republicans to rally behind him and ratify his view that the system is after him,” he said. “The idea that a conviction would be perceived broadly enough across parties as completely legitimate and aboveboard I think is pretty unlikely.”

Eisen, who said he expects Trump to be convicted in the New York case, disagrees, saying the spectacle of a criminal conviction would break Trump’s hold on voters.

“When a jury of Trump’s peers — and their peers, ordinary Americans — sit in judgment and reach a verdict, if they do, that’s a different order of magnitude,” Eisen said. “And then when you combine that with a criminal sentence following that kind of verdict, well then you really are in a whole different ballgame.”

Beyond the first trial

But if Trump is not convicted, or if the charges are reduced to misdemeanors, it could insulate him in voters’ minds against the other pending cases, Levinson said.

Because Trump has for years described the legal actions against him as political, winning the first case to reach court could help reinforce that message, she said.

“If he’s anything short of convicted on the felonies, then it’s just a huge win for him because he’s going to take this to say, ‘Look, every legal action against me is baseless,’” Levinson said. “I don’t think it has anything to do legally with the other cases. But it will be politically a huge win for the former president.”

It’s unclear what the historical import of the first trial of a former president will be, Masket said. But the concept that Trump remains a viable presidential contender — and therefore somewhat immune from criminal accountability — is a troubling sign for U.S. democracy.

“We repeatedly get this message that no one is above the law, except maybe this one guy,” Masket said. “And that’s a problem. That just undermines a lot of people’s faith in the democratic system.”

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The White House said Wednesday that President Joe Biden will veto the measure if it passes both chambers of Congress. (Photo: Ronda Churchill/Nevada Current)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

WASHINGTON –– The U.S. Senate voted Wednesday to roll back a Transportation Department rule that targeted greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles traveling on highways.

The rule, issued by the Transportation Department’s Federal Highway Administration in December, established greenhouse gas reductions as one of the 18 performance measures for state transportation departments and local planning organizations to track.

The 53-47 vote, with four Democrats and independents joining all Republicans, was approved via a resolution under the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to undo new executive branch rules. Only a majority vote is required.

The White House said Wednesday that President Joe Biden will veto the measure if it passes both chambers of Congress. The margin in the Senate’s vote Wednesday would be well below the two-thirds standard needed to override a veto.

The U.S. House, where Republicans enjoy a slim majority, is likely to approve the measure.

Democrats Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Jon Tester of Montana, and independent Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, voted along with every Senate Republican to approve the resolution.

Brown and Tester are among the most vulnerable Democratic senators facing reelection this year. Manchin and Sinema are leaving the Senate rather than seeking reelection.

The rule went into effect Jan. 8. It required state transportation departments and metropolitan planning organizations to make reducing carbon emissions a goal and established a method to measure the amount of carbon emitted from vehicles on their highway systems.

The rule did not mandate what the state and local goals must be.

It was issued as part of a Biden administration goal to reduce carbon emissions at least 50% below 2005 levels by 2030 and reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

The transportation sector is the largest single source of carbon emissions in the country, accounting for 28% of emissions nationwide in 2021, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

North Dakota Republican Kevin Cramer introduced the resolution to repeal the rule. Every Republican and Manchin signed on as cosponsors.

In floor speeches Wednesday, Manchin, a frequent Biden administration critic, and Cramer said the rule was illegal.

The small group of senators that wrote the bipartisan infrastructure law in 2021 considered and declined to grant the FHWA the authority to establish greenhouse gas emissions monitoring, Manchin, who was among that group, said.

“This rule is yet another example of the administration’s trying to implement the law they wanted instead of the one they got,” he said.

Mandating lower emissions would not be possible without limiting driving, Manchin added, which is unworkable in rural states such as West Virginia.

In a statement ahead of the Senate vote, the White House said the vote to repeal the rule would only take away a tool for states to measure greenhouse gas emissions from transportation.

The resolution repealing the rule “would remove GHG emissions management from the suite of national highway performance measures – in other words, removing a common-sense, good-government tool for transparently managing transportation-related GHG emissions and informing transportation investment decisions,” the statement of administration policy read.

Beth Osborne, the director of the left-leaning transportation policy think tank Transportation for America, criticized the move in a post to X.

“If we can’t even track our emissions from transportation, we certainly can’t do anything about it,” Osborne said. “What are 53 members of the Senate so afraid that the public might learn?”

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Trump's view “would have been anathema to the Framers” of the Constitution, who “adopted a system of checks and balances to avoid” dangers of a monarch who is above the law, Special Counsel Jack Smith wrote in his brief. Smith is pictured at the Department of Justice in June, 2023. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

Donald Trump’s view of absolute immunity for actions he took as president would radically change U.S. democracy and give presidents unprecedented power akin to monarchs rather than elected leaders, U.S. Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith wrote in a reply brief to the U.S. Supreme Court late Monday.

Smith’s 66-page brief, answering Trump’s argument to the high court that federal criminal charges against him for seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election should be dropped because he was president at the time, called Trump’s claim a “radical suggestion” that would upend foundational principles of U.S. democracy.

Trump’s argument that conduct a president commits in office cannot be prosecuted “would free the President from virtually all criminal law — even crimes such as bribery, murder, treason, and sedition,” Smith wrote.

At oral arguments in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in January, Trump lawyer D. John Sauer said his team’s theory of broad presidential immunity would mean that a president could not be prosecuted for ordering SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival, unless the president was first impeached and removed from office by Congress.

In Trump’s brief to the court last month, his lawyers claimed a theory of “absolute presidential immunity” that asserts a president cannot be criminally indicted for actions taken in office.

The one exception to that rule is a president who has been impeached and removed from office, Trump’s legal team has argued.

Trump was impeached by the Democrat-controlled U.S. House for inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters attempted to block the certification of the 2020 election results. An evenly split Senate fell short of the two-thirds standard for conviction, though seven Republicans voted with all Democrats and independents to convict.

Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for president this year.

Smith said Monday that Trump’s broad immunity argument placed too much faith in Congress’ execution of an inherently political process to achieve criminal accountability.

Impeachment is “not intended to provide accountability under the ordinary course of law,” he wrote.

Historical examples

The prosecutor also took aim at the historical examples Trump cited to back up his immunity claim.

The examples Trump used either applied only to sitting presidents and not to former presidents, or were used to dismiss civil lawsuits and not criminal charges, Smith said.

In contrast, the Watergate scandal provided an example to show that presidents have long understood they are subject to criminal justice after they leave office.

By offering a pardon, President Gerald R. Ford implied that former President Richard Nixon could be held liable for criminal conduct. And by accepting the pardon, Nixon endorsed that view, Smith said.

Every president since George Washington has understood they are subject to criminal charges and punishment, Smith said.

The U.S. legal system rests on the principle that no person — no matter their office — is above the law, Smith said.

A different interpretation, including the one advanced by Trump and his legal team, would make the presidency indistinguishable from a monarchy, Smith wrote. That view “would have been anathema to the Framers” of the Constitution, who “adopted a system of checks and balances to avoid” dangers of a monarch who is above the law.

Criminal charges are not civil suits

Smith also argued that Trump’s claim that rejecting a broad interpretation of presidential immunity would motivate political prosecutions of every future former president was unfounded.

Protections against civil suits may be appropriate, Smith said, citing Supreme Court precedent.

But federal criminal charges, which can be brought only by the Department of Justice and are subject to “institutional standards of impartial prosecution,” are much harder to abuse, Smith said.

There are “strong safeguards against groundless prosecutions,” Smith said.

Smith’s brief was a response to Trump’s argument last month in which the former president advanced his theory of “absolute presidential immunity.”

Trump’s attorneys said presidents needed immunity from any criminal prosecutions for the office itself to function. The framers were willing to trade a president’s criminal accountability for the office’s independence, Trump’s team argued, saying that a similar prohibition against civil suits should apply to the charges brought by a federal grand jury.

Up next

Trump has the option to respond to Smith’s brief by the end of the day April 15.

Oral arguments on the immunity question are scheduled for April 25.

The Supreme Court case is meant to decide a pretrial issue in a federal case related to Trump’s part in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Trump asked the trial court to dismiss the charges based on his presidential immunity claim. Both the trial judge and the D.C. Circuit rejected that argument.

In the Monday brief, prosecutors asked the court to quickly issue an opinion in the case. The start of the trial has been delayed for months while the immunity question has been pending.

With less than seven months to Election Day, the four criminal proceedings against Trump will increasingly conflict with his campaign schedule as he pursues a return to the White House.

A separate criminal trial — on New York state business records falsification charges — against Trump is scheduled to begin April 15.

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Simrand Thind holds a Leave it Blank flyer outside of Masjid Al-Abidin on March 29, 2024, in the Queens borough of New York City. The “Leave It Blank NY” campaign, which gained about 12% of the vote statewide on April 2, sought to persuade primary voters to submit empty ballots in protest of the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. (Photo by Adam Gray/Getty Images)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

Joe Biden has a problem.

Seven months ahead of the presidential election, some progressives, young voters and Muslim American voters are showing serious reservations about the Democrat’s reelection campaign as his administration backs Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

“For some of those people — maybe a critical number — what’s happening in Gaza is so salient and existential that they really see this election as a referendum on that issue,” Larry Jacobs, the director of the Center for the Study of Politics at the University of Minnesota, said in an interview.

The pushback has played out in otherwise uneventful primaries as Biden has clinched the presidential nomination. About 13% of Michigan’s Democratic primary voters cast ballots in February for uncommitted, rather than Biden.

In Minnesota a week later, the percentage grew to 19% of the Democratic electorate. Both states have sizable Muslim American populations and progressive activists who oppose Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza.

And in Wisconsin on April 2, more than 45,000 Democrats voted uninstructed instead of for Biden. That total more than doubled Biden’s margin of victory in the state in the 2020 general election.

The movement has also landed in New Jersey, where in most of the state, Democrats on June 4 will be able to essentially cast an “uncommitted” vote by choosing delegates under the slogan “Justice for Palestine, Permanent Ceasefire Now.”

Recent polling has shown dissatisfaction with Biden among young voters, who skew more progressive than the general electorate, and are demanding a ceasefire to a war that has so far claimed more than 30,000 lives in Gaza, according to health authorities there. Moves the administration has taken that critics claim are meant to appease those voters appear to have had little effect.

“He’s in trouble with young voters and voters of color,” Stevie O’Hanlon, the national communications director for the progressive, youth-led climate group Sunrise Movement, said in an interview.

Jacobs said not everyone who cast a protest vote in a primary election will sit out in November.

But the number should be concerning for a Biden campaign that only eked out a victory against Donald Trump four years ago, Jacobs said.

Anger flared anew after the Israeli military bombing April 1 that killed seven aid workers, including an American, delivering supplies for World Central Kitchen, a humanitarian nonprofit led by Spanish American celebrity chef José Andrés. Andrés has said the workers were targeted; the Israeli military said April 5 two officers have been dismissed and three others reprimanded.

In a written statement to States Newsroom, a Biden campaign spokesperson said the votes for uncommitted were part of the democratic process and said the president was working to find a peaceful resolution to the war.

“The President believes making your voice heard and participating in our democracy is fundamental to who we are as Americans,” the spokesperson wrote. “He shares the goal for an end to the violence and a just, lasting peace in the Middle East. He’s working tirelessly to that end.”

Era of close elections

In the 2020 election, Biden flipped five states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — that Trump had won in 2016.

Razor-thin margins provided his victories in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin, which he won by a combined margin of less than 50,000 votes.

If those states flipped again in 2024, their 37 electoral votes would be enough to swing the election to Trump.

Additionally, Michigan, which Biden won in 2020 with a margin of 150,000 votes out of about 5.5 million cast, is among the states whose Democratic electorate appears most displeased with the incumbent.

More than 100,000 Democrats voted uncommitted instead of Biden in the primary there last month, showing just how little room for error Biden has to win a second term.

Democratic primary voters casting protest ballots against an incumbent president is not unprecedented. More than 20% of North Carolina Democrats, 14% of Rhode Island Democrats and 11% of Michigan Democrats selected uncommitted over then-President Barack Obama in 2012 on his path to reelection.

But in a 2024 race that could again be decided by slim margins in a handful of states, every lost Democratic vote is a problem for Biden, Jacobs said.

“Slivers really matter,” Jacobs said. “These close elections are happening in a period where Arab Americans and voters from Africa are kind of coming into their own. They have a consciousness of themselves. They have a consciousness of their interests. They’re organized politically.”

End to military support urged

Eighty Muslim American groups wrote to Biden April 3 urging an end to military support of Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The groups said Israel’s military action in Gaza was responsible for significant civilian casualties and widespread food insecurity in the territory.

“Risking your presidential legacy and the reputation of our nation around the world to enable the Netanyahu government’s genocide has been a disastrous decision,” they wrote to Biden. “We implore you to reverse course before thousands more die.”

The advocacy for Palestinians comes at a time when Muslim American communities in the U.S., especially Arab Americans outside Detroit and Somali Americans in the Twin Cities, are wielding greater political power, Jacobs said.

A leader among Minnesota’s Muslim American voters, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat who represents Minneapolis and the first Somali American member of Congress, said in a CNN interview last month that she would vote for Biden despite her differences with him over Israel.

However, she said, “I think it is the responsibility of every citizen of this country that cares for the humanity of all to continue to push this administration to do what it can do to end the onslaught that Palestinians are living through every single day.”

But communicating with those groups generally has proven a challenge for Biden, Jacobs said, despite efforts by the administration and campaign to make inroads.

“You’ve got a kind of mid-20th-century politician who really doesn’t understand the enormous shift in American politics, as you’re getting large groups of voters of color, with a whole variety of kinds of backgrounds and interests, moving into the electorate,” he said.

“What would have worked with blue-collar workers in Detroit in 1970 is just not going to work with Arab Americans. And understanding that, appreciating it, I think is a real barrier for the White House.”

Biden condemned the killing of the aid workers and told Netanyahu on an April 4 call that further U.S. aid would be conditional on Israel putting in place “a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers.”

But while “jawboning from the president” may attract some headlines, it has been insufficient for voters who want to see policy changes, Jacobs said.

“These voters are smart,” he said. “They see the 2,000-pound bombs are still being sent to Israel.”

Eyes on Gaza

Even progressive groups that traditionally are not active on foreign policy will evaluate Biden’s handling of the war when deciding how much support to lend the president’s reelection effort.

O’Hanlon said whether and to what degree Sunrise campaigns for Biden in the fall will depend in part on the administration’s actions between now and Election Day on climate — and Gaza.

“As a climate group, we’re fighting to make sure that people have clean air, access to clean water, to healthy food, that everyone has safe homes and doesn’t have to fear for losing their loved ones to something that they didn’t cause,” O’Hanlon said. “Whether that’s climate change or bombs from the (Israeli military).”

But surveys of young voters also show that, while they are more likely to oppose Israeli military action against Palestinians, there are a host of other issues affecting their votes.

Inflation, economy weigh on voters

Data show that the Israel-Hamas war, and the U.S. role in it, may not be the most important issue influencing younger voters, who tend to be more progressive.

An Economist/YouGov poll conducted March 30 to April 2 found that foreign policy was tied for 13th among voters younger than 30 in a list of 15 issues respondents were asked to select as the “most important issue for you.”

Just 1% of respondents said foreign policy was most important. By comparison, 24% said inflation/prices, 14% said health care, 12% said jobs and the economy, and 11% said abortion.

That’s consistent with survey data by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, or CIRCLE, at Tufts University from last fall that showed 10 issues that voters ages 18 to 34 ranked as their top three.

Cost of living and inflation topped the list, with 53% surveyed including the issue in their top three. Jobs that pay a living wage, gun violence prevention and climate change were between 26% and 28% of responses. Expanding access to abortion was the fifth-most popular response at 19%.

The CIRCLE poll, with questions designed before the Israel-Hamas war and surveys conducted in the early weeks of the war, found that among youth voters who called themselves extremely likely to vote, Biden held a 21-percentage-point advantage, roughly the same margin as he won in the 2020 election.

Other foreign policy crises, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have not significantly boosted the importance of foreign policy to young voters, according to a follow-up report CIRCLE published in February, though there are signs that the war in Gaza is breaking through more.

Perceptions of the war

Younger voters are more likely to describe Israel’s action in Gaza as “genocide,” according to an Economist/YouGov poll that found 49% of young voters agreed with that description.

They are less likely to describe Israel’s reasons for fighting as valid, and more likely to consider Hamas’ reason for fighting valid, according to a separate Pew Research survey in March.

“Beyond any specific data points, our sense is that this issue is certainly important to many young people, and that youth overall do seem to have different views than older Americans,” Alberto Medina, an author of the CIRCLE poll, wrote in an email to States Newsroom.

“That said, as our own poll reveals and as we’ve been tracking in recent election cycles, young people do not tend to be single-issue voters and they have a wide range of economic, environmental, and social issues they’re concerned about that may drive their electoral participation this November.”

But as the war has dragged on, Biden has seen a drastic change in support among young voters.

A February Economist/YouGov poll showed his job approval rating with voters ages 18 to 29 was 20 points higher than his disapproval rating. That was much better than the net +4 rating voters the same age gave Obama, the last president to win reelection, at the same point in his reelection race.

But the more recent data from the same pollster showed Biden’s approval rating had nearly flipped among young voters in less than two months. In the most recent poll, the percentage of young voters who disapproved of his performance was 18 points higher than those who approved.

‘Mixed record’

The Biden White House has taken steps in recent months to highlight action on other issues that are important to younger voters, even as that strategy has attracted criticism that the White House is “playing politics” in an election year.

Jacobs, the political scientist, said Biden can rightly tout to progressive voters a highly effective first term of historic accomplishments.

“Biden has probably been the most progressive president since (Lyndon) Johnson,” Jacobs said. “The administration has done a whole lot and it’s tended to be progressive leaning.”

In February, the Biden administration paused exports of liquid natural gas to certain countries, giving environmental groups a policy win.

The White House deployed Vice President Kamala Harris to North Carolina, a competitive presidential election state, on April 3 to announce $20 billion in grant funding from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a program created in Democrats’ 2022 climate, taxes and policy bill that Biden championed.

The administration and campaign have continually highlighted Biden’s moves to forgive student debt.

Those moves have opened the administration to accusations of valuing electoral politics over policy.

“The White House has gone out of its way to signal that the pause is a political ploy intended to get votes in an election year—it’s all about politics, not economics,” U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin III, a centrist West Virginia Democrat and frequent Biden critic, said of the LNG export pause.

Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos tweeted about loan forgiveness that Biden would “stop at nothing to buy votes.”

And even as Biden promotes policies meant to appeal to progressives, that has not been enough to win full-throated endorsements from some on the far left.

“His record on climate is mixed,” O’Hanlon, with Sunrise, said. “It’s both true that he’s delivered more on climate than any president in history, and it’s also true that the bar is incredibly low.”

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Lawyers for former President Donald Trump and attorneys general from 18 states in amicus briefs filed to the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday urged that Trump be granted blanket immunity, reversing a lower court ruling. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

Former President Donald Trump renewed his call to the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to dismiss charges against him, asserting that presidents enjoy near-total immunity from criminal prosecution.

In addition, as a deadline loomed for briefs in the case, 18 Republican-led states filed an amicus brief Tuesday urging the Supreme Court to reverse the lower courts and grant Trump blanket immunity. Oral arguments before the high court on the immunity question are scheduled for April 25, and federal district court proceedings have been halted until the Supreme Court issues a ruling.

Trump’s lawyers, led by D. John Sauer of St. Louis, in a 52-page brief argued that a strong executive with virtually no criminal liability from the judicial system was intended by the framers of the Constitution and part of a “234-year unbroken tradition” of not prosecuting presidents for action taken while in office.

The justices should weigh that tradition and dismiss the federal charges accusing Trump — now the presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican Party — of conspiring to overturn his reelection loss in 2020, they wrote.

U.S. Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith oversaw an investigation into Trump that led to the criminal charges that the president spearheaded a multipart conspiracy trying to avoid leaving office.

But Trump’s attorneys have argued that those charges should be dismissed under a doctrine of “absolute presidential immunity,” which they said presidents must have to properly exercise their powers.

“The President cannot function, and the Presidency itself cannot retain its vital independence, if the President faces criminal prosecution for official acts once he leaves office,” the attorneys wrote in the brief’s opening paragraph.

That view is in line with how framers of the Constitution saw the presidency, they said.

“Even if some level of Presidential malfeasance, not present in this case at all, were to escape punishment, that risk is inherent in the Constitution’s design,” Trump’s attorneys wrote.

“The Founders viewed protecting the independence of the Presidency as well worth the risk that some Presidents might evade punishment in marginal cases. They were unwilling to burn the Presidency itself to the ground to get at every single alleged malefactor.”

Impeachment

The only exception to absolute immunity is a president who is impeached by the House and convicted in the Senate, Trump’s lawyers said.

Trump was twice impeached by the House while in office, but acquitted in two Senate trials that required a two-thirds vote for conviction. A majority of senators — with seven Republicans joining all Democrats — voted to convict him in 2021 on charges similar to those he faces in criminal court related to his efforts to subvert the 2020 election results.

Trump’s lawyers argued, as they have in previous filings, that federal courts should never be able to review the conduct of presidents who haven’t been convicted in an impeachment trial.

They asked the court to reject an argument that another exception to presidential immunity could be made for criminal charges stemming from a president’s desire to stay in power.

“Because virtually all first-term Presidents’ official actions carry some, at least partial, motivation to be re-elected, this exception to immunity would swiftly engulf the rule,” they wrote.

Prosecuting or not prosecuting a president is inherently a political act, Trump’s attorneys said.

“This observation applies to former Presidents as well — and it applies most of all to a former President who is the leading candidate to replace the incumbent who is prosecuting him,” they wrote.

Trump has amassed enough delegates to win his party’s nomination and  face President Joe Biden in a fall rematch of the 2020 election.

A Feb. 6 decision by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding a lower court’s ruling against Trump noted that the charges allege criminal action that emanated from an effort to unlawfully retain the presidency.

Trump appealed that decision to the Supreme Court.

Red states line up behind Trump

Attorneys general from Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and West Virginia signed a brief to the court filed Tuesday, accusing the government’s timing of the 2020 election interference case as politically motivated.

“After waiting 30 months to indict President Trump, the Special Counsel has demanded extreme expedition from every court at every stage of the case. His only stated reason, the ‘public interest,’ is so thin it’s almost transparent,” the attorneys general wrote.

In the 54-page amicus brief, the state officials allege that the prosecution’s “failure to explain its extraordinary haste suggests one troubling answer: That the timing of the prosecution is designed to inflict maximum damage on President Biden’s political opponent before the November 2024 election.”

The attorneys general argued that the threat of liability could distort a president’s decision-making and lead to a worse job performance, citing several cases, including 1997’s Clinton v. Jones.

The attorneys general, led by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, further accuse the lower courts of “mistreatment” of concerns over opening the proverbial “floodgates” for future partisan prosecutions. Marshall has taken a lead role in advancing a string of legal arguments surrounding election rules likely to boost Trump.

“The court below also underestimated the risk of ‘a torrent of politically motivated prosecutions’ on the ground that ‘this is the first time since the Founding that a former President has been federally indicted,’” the attorneys general wrote, citing the appeals court.

“Glaringly absent is the fact this case is the second of two federal prosecutions against President Trump, who also faces two state prosecutions. How can the ‘risk’ possibly ‘appear slight’?”

The state officials pointed to state and civil cases against Trump in Georgia and New York as evidence that the 2020 election interference case “is not the only one to raise concerns of partisanship.”

Another view, from Ohio, Alaska and Wyoming

Another brief, signed by only three Republican attorneys general, called on the court to assert a more complex legal standard that would still provide broad immunity on a sliding scale.

The three Republican attorneys general told the U.S. Supreme Court that the justices should take a broad view of presidential immunity when the court hears Trump’s attempt to dismiss criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost led a brief to the court that was also signed by Alaska Attorney General Treg R. Taylor and Wyoming Attorney General Bridget Hill. The Republicans argued not for absolute immunity, but a two-part test that would still allow for broad immunity.

Arguing more about legal theory than the specifics of Trump’s case, Yost, Taylor and Hill said the judiciary must balance the need for a president to exercise wide discretion in executing the office’s powers with the need for accountability of a rogue executive.

“Very broad, but not limitless, presidential immunity is dictated by our constitutional structure,” they wrote.

The three attorneys general proposed a two-part test to settle a claim of presidential immunity.

First, the courts should determine how closely the alleged acts are tied to the president’s core constitutional duty, they said. As an example, they said presidents should be given more latitude in conducting foreign affairs than in investigating a political rival because conducting foreign affairs is a central constitutional duty.

Courts should also determine the “urgency of the situation surrounding” alleged crimes by a president, they said. For example, a president seizing property of political opponents should be considered differently than a president seizing property during a war.

The attorneys general did not say how courts should decide Trump’s case, suggesting instead the Supreme Court simply announce that it is adopting the two-part test and leave the trial court responsible for determining how to apply it to the facts of the case.

A Supreme Court-sanctioned test would help the trial court conduct unprecedented proceedings and could also give the public confidence that the trial was nonpolitical, they said.

Other arguments

Several other interested parties submitted briefs Tuesday, the last day for so-called friend-of-the-court briefs in Trump’s case before the high court.

Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, led by Montana’s Steve Daines, wrote that the court should adopt the absolute immunity standard, worrying that a decision otherwise would create a cycle of political prosecutions for every future president.

“The D.C. Circuit opinion is akin to a loaded gun lying on the table that future prosecutors can now wield against Presidents (and former Presidents) of all political persuasions,” the NRSC wrote. “The D.C. Circuit seems to believe that partisan actors will be able to resist the temptation to use that weapon against their political enemies; anyone who pays the slightest attention to American politics knows better.”

Mark Meadows, Trump’s White House chief of staff during the 2020 election and his subsequent efforts to overturn the results, also wrote to the court to ask that a decision in the case reinforce the legal principle giving lower federal officials immunity from state prosecution.

Meadows, a former U.S. House member from North Carolina, is among Trump’s co-defendants on state charges in Georgia related to the effort to overturn the 2020 election.

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