Garland pauses federal executions as DOJ reviews policies

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday paused federal executions as the Department of Justice reviews its death penalty policies and procedures.

“The Department of Justice must ensure that everyone in the federal criminal justice system is not only afforded the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States, but is also treated fairly and humanely,” Garland said in a statement. “That obligation has special force in capital cases.”

Legal battles over the traditional three-drug protocol for carrying out execution by legal injection, and a shortage of sodium thiopental — one of the drugs — led to a two-decade lapse in federal executions. But then-Attorney General Bill Barr ordered federal prisons to resume executions in 2019, after making changes to the federal execution protocols.

Under Barr’s orders, federal prison officials were authorized to execute prisoners with a single drug, pentobarbital, a powerful sedative. Thirteen people on federal death row were executed using the single-drug method between July 2020 and January 2021. Garland on Thursday ordered an assessment of the risk of pain and suffering associated with the drug.

Garland is also calling for a review of adjustments made to the Justice Department regulations in November 2020 that expanded the methods of execution, as well as later changes that allowed for expedited execution of capital sentences.

New York Assembly OKs subpoenas in Cuomo impeachment probe

ALBANY, N.Y. — A state Assembly committee looking into a possible impeachment of Gov. Andrew Cuomo will begin issuing subpoenas as part of its investigation.

Assemblymember Charles Lavine (D-Nassau), who chairs the chamber's Judiciary Committee, made the announcement at the end of a meeting in Albany on Wednesday.

The subpoenas will likely be sent to “a whole wide range of categories of people,” Assemblymember Tom Abinanti (D-Greenburgh) said after the meeting. “This is the next step in the process, it’s a normal step, we all expected this was going to happen.”

Additionally, members have taken the technical step of issuing a commission to the law firm of Davis Polk, which the Assembly has retained to handle much of the probe. That step “allows our independent counsel to take testimony under oath,” Lavine said.

The Assembly launched its investigation of Cuomo in March. It is probing a litany of allegations made against Cuomo on subjects ranging from sexual harassment to the governor’s $5.1 million book deal.

State Attorney General Tish James is examining several similar issues. She started issuing subpoenas in March.

James said last week that she does not “share information” with the Assembly investigators. But Abinanti said on Wednesday that the granting of a commission to Davis Polk opens up that possibility, “because now they are authorized to subpoena the same information the attorney general’s office is subpoenaing … so I would assume the attorney general’s office would feel more comfortable cooperating with our counsel.”

Wednesday’s meeting was notable as the Assembly’s first mostly in-person committee meeting since state government shut down in March 2020. Since Cuomo ended New York’s state of emergency last week, the Legislature is now fully subjected to the Open Meetings Law, and the public was allowed into the room in the state Capitol for five minutes. The remainder of the roughly two-hour gathering took place in executive session.

Does the issuing of subpoenas mean that the investigation of Cuomo is nearing an end?

“Oh no, not yet, no no,” Abinanti said. “Let’s face it, we’ve given [Davis Polk] a huge task. There’s a lot of issues for them to look at.”

Team Trump quietly launches new social media platform

Former President Donald Trump’s team quietly launched a new social media platform on Thursday, billing it as an alternative to Big Tech sites.

The platform, called GETTR, advertised its mission statement as “fighting cancel culture, promoting common sense, defending free speech, challenging social media monopolies, and creating a true marketplace of ideas.”

Trump’s former spokesman, Jason Miller, is leading the platform. A person familiar described the site as similar to Twitter.

Trump’s involvement with the project is unclear as is whether or not he will set up an account on GETTR and use it, though his proximity to Miller suggests that this may be the latest attempt to get him back in the churn of social media

The former president has been looking for alternative ways to engage with his base online after having been booted off Twitter and suspended from Facebook after encouraging the Capitol rioters on January 6. And his prior effort to engage online—through the launch of a professional blog—ended quickly amid widespread ridicule and poor readership.

GETTR is one of the highest-profile projects in a larger ecosystem of pro-MAGA tech and social media platforms that have blossomed on the right, largely fueled by a sense that Big Tech is attempting to silence conservative and pro-Trump ideology from being disseminated online. In recent months, it was widely reported that the Trump team was searching for a platform on which to re-establish his online presence, either by buying a company outright and rebranding it as his exclusive platform, or becoming a featured draw.

The app first went live on the Google and Apple app stores in mid-June and was most recently updated Wednesday. It’s been downloaded over one thousand times on each, drawing positive reviews from users.

A description for GETTR on the app stores calls it a “non-bias social network for people all over the world.” The app is rated “M” for mature, meaning it is recommended for users 17 and older.

GETTR’s user interface appears similar to that of Twitter. Initial promotional materials for GETTR on the app stores displayed posts of users celebrating the House of Representatives no longer requiring masks on the floor of the chamber.

Initial trending topics on the app included the hashtags “#trump,” “#virusorigin,” “#nra” and “#unrestrictedbioweapon.” Those tags refer to the newfound and still unproven refrain from Republicans that China created the Covid-19 virus in a lab as a bioweapon.

Whether GETTR will succeed is dubious at best. Their last attempt to replicate his twitter feed, a site called “From The Desk of Donald Trump”, was widely derided as nothing more than a blog, barely received any web traffic, and shut down less than a month later.

Opinion | Republicans Shouldn’t Sign on to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal

So far, the bipartisan infrastructure deal is going through the normal life cycle of such proposals—alive, dead, revived, uncertain.

For Republicans, the best answer should be dead.

They have nothing to gain by blessing a portion of President Joe Biden’s spending plans, when an ungodly amount of money is going to go out the door regardless of whether they vote for a chunk of it or not.

The conventional wisdom is that the Senate has to prove that it can work, and the test of its functioning is how much of Biden’s spending Republicans endorse.

This is a distorted view of the Senate’s role, which shouldn’t be to get on board a historic spending spree for which Biden won no mandate and which isn’t justified by conditions in the country (it’s not true, for instance, that the nation’s infrastructure is crumbling).

Besides, if bipartisan spending is the test, the Senate just a few weeks ago passed a $200 billion China competition bill by a 68-32 vote. It used to be that $200 billion constituted a lot of money, but now it doesn’t rate, not when there’s $6 trillion on the table.

The infrastructure deal lurched from gloriously alive to dead when Biden explicitly linked its passage to the simultaneous passage of a reconciliation bill with the rest of the Democratic Party’s spending priorities in it.

Then, it revived again when Biden walked this back, and promised a dual track for the two bills.

The fierce Republican insistence on these two tracks doesn’t make much sense and amounts to asking Democrats to allow a decent interval before going ahead with the rest of their spending—Democrats are going to try to pass a reconciliation whether the bipartisan deal passes or not.

At the end of the day, then, there’s only one track: Democrats are going to spend as much money as they possibly can. The bipartisan deal might shave some money off the hard infrastructure priorities (according to Playbook, the White House says it doesn’t want to double dip, on say, electric cars or broadband by getting some money for them in the deal and then getting yet more in the reconciliation bill). But the emphasis is going to blow out spending across the board.

The calculation of Republicans supporting the bill is that a significant bipartisan package can take some of the heat off of Sen. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema in their resistance to the filibuster.

A deal that passes and is signed into law will certainly be a feather in their caps, but it’s hard to believe they’d change their minds on the filibuster if the deal fell apart.

They are both so extensively and adamantly on the record in favor of the filibuster that a climb-down would be politically embarrassing and perilous. They may be sincere in believing that the filibuster is important institutionally to the Senate. But the politics also work by allowing them to brand themselves as a different breed of Democrat.

If they flip-flip on the filibuster, they release the brake on the left-most parts of the Democratic agenda and find themselves taking a lot of tough votes on priorities dear to the Democratic base.

Republicans supporting the deal also think that it will make passing the subsequent reconciliation bill harder. First, the parts of infrastructure that have the widest support—roads and bridges—will be in the deal and not in the reconciliation bill. Second, the unwelcome tax increases excluded from the bipartisan deal will be in the reconciliation bill.

This isn’t a crazy calculation, although it’s not clearly correct, either. The higher the top-line number is for the reconciliation bill, the harder it is to pass. By allowing Democrats to cleave off some of their spending into a bipartisan deal, the overall number for the reconciliation bill gets smaller. In other words, the bipartisan deal could make the partisan reconciliation easier rather than harder to pass.

If this is true, the deal is bipartisanship in the service of a partisan end.

It not as though Biden is fiscally prudent on all other fronts, except in this one area which he considers a particularly important national investment with unmistakable returns. No, he’s universally profligate. His reckless spending on all fronts (except defense) makes it more imperative for Republicans to stake out a position in four-square opposition.

It’s not as though the bipartisan bill is exemplary legislation, by the way. It resorts to all the usual Beltway gimmicks to create the pretense that it’s paid for, when it’s basically as irresponsible as the rest of the Biden spending.

Bipartisanship has its uses, but so does partisanship. Joe Biden wants to be known for his FDR- and LBJ-like government spending, believing that it’s the key to political success and to an enduring legacy. Fine. Let him and his party own it.

California budget contains $1.2B in legislator earmarks

California state lawmakers included nearly 300 member requests in a budget bill they sent Monday to Gov. Gavin Newsom, totaling $1.2 billion in grants for district projects, many of which they began touting to constituents after the vote.

Among the asks: $8 million for a nonprofit dance academy in south Los Angeles, $5 million for a nonprofit Shakespeare theater company in central Los Angeles and $1 million for equipment and a performance center in downtown Sacramento for Capital Public Radio.

The spending comes amid a record budget surplus and as lawmakers and Newsom scramble to write the budget with the new fiscal year starting Thursday.

Praise for the deal poured in after the vote on CA AB129 (21R) from lawmakers trumpeting their victories, like $8 million to help a conservancy buy Banning Ranch, a 385-acre parcel of land in coastal Orange County.

“This project will restore vital coastal wetlands, provide unparalleled coastal access for surrounding underserved communities and preserve this jewel for all Southern Californians to enjoy," said Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris (D-Laguna Beach).

Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) notched eight appropriations totaling $17 million, including food assistance programs, park upgrades, an anti-Asian-hate arts program and a center for people overdosing on methamphetamines. Assemblymember Marc Levine (D-Greenbrae) secured nearly $15 million for his district, including programs for homeless veterans, highway and drinking water system upgrades, and wildfire prevention. Sen. Melissa Hurtado (D-Sanger) obtained $100 million to fix crumbling water canals plus $25 million for a firefighting training center in Fresno, among other earmarks.

Republicans, though, argued the state should have put more money into reserve and paid off growing unemployment insurance costs.

“Now is the time to plan responsibly and build up our reserves, while reducing the burdens on small businesses and families," Assemblymember Vince Fong (R-Bakersfield) said. "This unsustainable budget ignores the lessons learned from past mistakes and fails to address basics concerns for Californians.”

Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) said the earmarks reflected local requests and were a response to the record budget surplus that has surpassed $76 billion.

"The budget allocations are in direct response to what Senators are hearing from the local level," her office said in an email. "California's finances overall are in great shape, but we know many local communities continue to struggle in the aftermath of the pandemic. This is a common sense approach that allocates one-time state resources to help our local communities."

Most of the earmarks are for municipal parks and buildings, water infrastructure improvements, police departments, homelessness, firefighting and wildfire fuels management. The largest single earmark is $45 million for the Southeast Los Angeles Cultural Center Project, while two earmarks are the smallest at $50,000 each: one would rename the “Eden Landing Ecological Reserve” to the “Congressman Pete Stark Ecological Reserve" in Alameda County; the other would go toward analyzing sea level rise and sediment management.

The $1.2 billion in legislator requests will flow to both local entities and state agencies. That includes $65 million for various University of California programs; $53 million for the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy; $42.5 million for the Coastal Conservancy; and $25 million for the Labor and Workforce Development Agency. The bill language prevents any of the money from being spent before Sept. 30.

LGBTQ civil rights group sues Florida over ban on transgender girls in sports

TALLAHASSEE — LGBTQ civil rights group Human Rights Campaign filed a long-expected federal lawsuit on Wednesday challenging Florida’s recent legislation banning transgender athletes from playing girls sports.

The lawsuit marks the first case against Florida’s “Fairness in Women Sports Act” since it was signed and touted by Gov. Ron DeSantis, who joined with Republicans across the U.S. in targeting transgender athletes in women’s athletics as a culture wars issue this year. More than two dozen state legislatures have introduced similar measures.

“We are sending a message to him, and all anti-equality officials, that you cannot target our community without retribution,” Alphonso David, Human Rights Campaign president, said in a statement.

The HRC lawsuit was filed on behalf of a 13-year-old transgender student referred to as Daisy, a multisport athlete who is about to start eighth grade and plays as a goalie on three different soccer teams.

Daisy has participated in sports exclusively on girls teams but would be pushed to play on the boys soccer team under the new legislation in Florida, which the lawsuit claims would be detrimental to her academic and social development while risking her personal privacy and safety.

“Playing sports makes me feel like I fit in, the thought of not being able to play next year scares me,” Daisy said in a statement through the HRC.

HRC argues that Florida’s ban on transgender athletes in girls’ sports is a “clear violation” of the Constitution under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, and Title IX, a federal education law that bars discrimination based on sex. Similar arguments have been made surrounding laws in Idaho and West Virginia that have already been disputed in court.

The Biden administration earlier this month made its first legal move to protect transgender girls’ rights to play sports by blasting the West Virginia law as unconstitutional.

Florida’s new law establishes that women’s sports from middle school through college, including intramurals and club teams, are closed to males based on the biological sex listed on a student’s birth certificate.

The measure was celebrated by Republicans for “protecting the integrity” of girls athletics. Florida joined more than 20 other GOP-leaning states pushing similar ideas. Democrats by and large disavow the policy, claiming it’s unwarranted in the state, fuels transphobia and discriminates against transgender students.

The HRC lawsuit marks the latest legal challenge facing Florida and DeSantis stemming from the 2021 session. Already, the DeSantis administration is fighting court battles on the state’s contentious new voting law and a crackdown on social media companies.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has died at the age of 88

Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense under both Gerald Ford and George W. Bush, has died. He was 88.

Rumsfeld, both the youngest and second-oldest person to have served as secretary of Defense, died surrounded by family in Taos, N.M., his family said in a statement.

“History may remember him for his extraordinary accomplishments over six decades of public service, but for those who knew him best and whose lives were forever changed as a result, we will remember his unwavering love for his wife Joyce, his family and friends, and the integrity he brought to a life dedicated to country,” the family said in the statement.

Rumsfeld graduated from Princeton University in 1954 with a degree in political science and went on to serve in the Navy for three years. The Illinois native launched a campaign for Congress in Illinois’ 13th Congressional District, winning in 1962 at the age of 30. He was a leading co-sponsor of the Freedom of Information Act.

He served under several presidents. He was appointed to the Office of Economic Opportunity by President Richard Nixon in 1969. He also headed Nixon’s Economic Stabilization Program before being appointed as ambassador to NATO.

In 1974, Rumsfeld returned to Washington to serve as President Ford’s chief of staff. When Ford later appointed him secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld recruited Dick Cheney, his young former staffer and a staunch ally, to take over his role.

Rumsfeld holds the distinction of serving two non-consecutive terms as head of the DoD, as he was later appointed again in 2001 by President George W. Bush. He was also the youngest, at 43, and the oldest, at 74, to have the title.