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Jeffrey Stein  //  4/20/18  //  Daily Update

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New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that he intends to restore voting rights to felons on parole, a move that could open the ballot box to more than 35,000 people. The White House cybersecurity team is undergoing a major shuffle that former officials say could jeopardize the administration’s efforts to develop policy and punish hackers. Congressional Republicans want to impose "net neutrality" rules that allow Internet service providers to charge online services and websites for priority access to consumers, analogizing paid priority to TSA Precheck. Just four months after giving $1.5 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, House Republicans recently unveiled a farm bill that would dismantle the nation’s main source of nutrition assistance for struggling workers and families. Congress will hold hearings to debate America’s role in the Yemeni civil conflict, which has led to one of the world's most dire humanitarian crises.

 

TRUMP: INVESTIGATIONS & LITIGATION 

President Trump’s and Michael Cohen’s attorneys are unlikely to prevail in their effort to obtain exclusive privilege review in the aftermath of the raid, writes Andy Wright at ACS Blog.

• The American Civil Liberties Union believes U.S. District Court Judge Kimba Wood should appoint a neutral “special master ” to review the files at issue (WaPo).

There is no evidence to back up Alan Dershowitz’s recent assertion that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is responsible for keeping four innocent people in prison, a theory that has been used to undermine the Special Counsel, writes Nancy Gertner, the federal judge who presided over the relevant case, in the New York Times.

 

IMMIGRATION 

Under the Trump Administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement regime, marriage to a United States citizen is no longer a virtual guarantee of legal residency (NYT).

Regardless of the ultimate decision in the Travel Ban case, the Supreme Court should take note of the breakdown of internal norms and legal processes within the executive branch and adjust its level of deference accordingly, write W. Neil Eggleston and Amanda Elbogen in Just Security.

 

CIVIL RIGHTS

The Department of Justice has issued a series of stunningly senseless, wasteful, and cruel immigration policies which undermine due process, writes Cecillia Wang, deputy legal director of the ACLU.   

 

DEMOCRACY

A federal judge has found Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who helped lead a much-criticized commission set up by President Trump to investigate supposed voter fraud, in contempt of court for disobeying a court order in a case testing that state's controversial proof-of-citizenship voting law (NPR, WaPo).

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that he intends to restore voting rights to felons on parole, a move that could open the ballot box to more than 35,000 people (NYT).

 

JUSTICE & SAFETY

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un is no longer demanding that American troops be removed from South Korea as a condition for denuclearizing his country (NYT).

• However, President Trump said that he would scrap a planned summit meeting with Kim Jong-un if his diplomatic overture was not heading toward success (NYT).

The White House cybersecurity team is undergoing a major shuffle that former officials say could jeopardize the administration’s efforts to develop policy and punish hackers (The Hill).

The Trump administration is blaming foreign governments for cyber attacks at more than 8 times the rate of its predecessors (Axios).

Some lawmakers from both parties expressed alarm over President Trump’s plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, arguing that there is not a viable strategy to secure American objectives in the region (WaPo).

California Governor Jerry Brown reached an agreement with the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense officials with respect to his state’s National Guard deployment to the border, after insisting the troops will not be used to help U.S. agents enforce immigration laws (WaPo).

• But President Trump has threatened to upend the tentative agreement, declaring via tweet that his administration will not pay for the deployment (WaPo).

Bipartisan legislation was introduced to establish a process for the federal government to identify, deter and respond to state-sponsored cyberattacks against the United States (The Hill).

A bipartisan group of senators is pushing the Department of Homeland Security to make public more information about the use of rogue surveillance devices, which the agency has acknowledged are being used by hostile actors in Washington, D.C. (The Hill).

 

REGULATION

Former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman excoriated current EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt in a submission for Time Magazine's “100 Most Influential People List.” (Time)

Just four months after giving $1.5 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, House Republicans recently unveiled a farm bill that would dismantle the nation’s main source of nutrition assistance for struggling workers and families, writes Rebecca Vallas in The Hill.

Facebook asked conservative groups for help last week in heading off European-style privacy rules, according to internal emails (Politico).

Congressional Republicans want to impose "net neutrality" rules that allow Internet service providers to charge online services and websites for priority access to consumers, analogizing paid priority to TSA Precheck (ArsTechnica).

 

CHECKS & BALANCES

There are plausible legal rationales for the Syria strikes, argues Charlie Dunlap in Lawfare, responding to Jack Goldsmith and Oona Hathaway's arguments that the recent strikes on Syria violated both domestic and international law.

• Defense Secretary James Mattis’ apparent self-defense justification for the strikes is profoundly flawed, writes Benjamin Haas for Just Security.

Congress will hold hearings to debate America’s role in the Yemeni civil conflict, which has led to one of the world's most dire humanitarian crises (The Hill).

 

RULE OF LAW

The Justice Department inspector general referred its finding that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe repeatedly misled investigators (WaPo).

 

RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE  

Someone needs to get to the bottom of a Russian oligarch’s funding of the NRA, argues Ciara Torres-Spelliscy at the Brennan Center for Justice.

 

Tags:

Immigration Rule of Law Checks & Balances Regulation Democracy Civil Rights Justice & Safety Russian Interference

 

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