Blue Cities and States
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Judge Dale Ho just slammed NYC voters by extending the Eric Adams legal circus
Federal Judge Dale Ho threw yet another spanner into this year’s mayoral race Friday by kicking the can on whether he’ll force a trial of Mayor Eric Adams even though the feds want to drop the charges.
More, he named powerhouse attorney Paul Clement to make the case for going ahead — and gave him ’til March 4 to file his brief, with a followup hearing March 14.
The trial had been scheduled to start April 21, and so finish in time for the June 14 start of early voting in the June 24 Democratic primary — but if Clement convinces Ho the case should go ahead, that timeline’s still out the window as a whole new prosecution team would have to be assembled and given time to prepare.
Meanwhile, petitioning to make the primary ballot starts Monday, running from Feb. 25 to April 3.
Dem Governors Get Strategy for National Guard Deployment, Executive Orders to Resist Trump
The “Firewall for Freedom – Template Gubernatorial Executive Order” directs that “no state agency, employee, or agent may comply with a request for information or assistance if they have reason to believe the request is in furtherance of any investigation, arrest, prosecution, or other sanction of conduct initiated by federal authorities or out-of-state authorities.”
This includes no assistance to federal officials regarding “health care services … lawful under state law”; and no assistance to the federal government to “identify or apprehend a person in order to subject them to civil immigration detention, removal, or deportation proceedings,” or “to prosecute a person or persons for offenses related to immigration status.”
While the descriptions for “health care services” aren’t explicit, elsewhere in the documents, the group references abortion and “gender affirming care,” a phrase used to describe surgical sex operations.
“What leaps out is not just the sheer number of consultants being provided by donors for governors willing to serve the donors’ resistance agenda, but the functions they are serving: drafting executive orders, talking points, and white papers to assist in resistance advocacy … up to and including deploying the National Guard,” Chris Horner, a lawyer for Government Accountability and Oversight, told The Daily Signal.
In a Dec. 12 email to the staffs of governors’ offices, Emma Clough, special assistant to Governors Action Alliance CEO Julia Spiegel, wrote: “Please join for a briefing on executive actions governors can take to protect sensitive data and prepare for potential National Guard deployments.”
The model executive order on the National Guard says, “No assistance to deployments over objection of the office of the governor.” The draft order says state employees “shall provide no time, money, facilities, property, equipment, personnel, or other resources for purposes of: assistance to any National Guard unit of another state that is deployed to this state, if the Office of the Governor of [this state] has objected to such deployment.”
A Dec. 3 email from Spiegel to governors’ offices offers staff assistance, including a former Democrat Senate aide who “has offered white glove service to support staffing efforts at the state level (gov offices and agencies).” The guidance further says that American Civil Liberties Union national support staff would be available to help.
Illinois Runs a Scholarship That Excludes White Applicants. It Could Get the State’s Top Universities Defunded.
The program, Diversifying Higher Education Faculty in Illinois (DFI), was established by state law in 2004 and provides financial aid to "members of traditionally underrepresented minority groups" pursuing masters or doctoral degrees. Those groups include "African American, Hispanic American, Native American, Asian American, Alaskan Native, and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander," according to the program’s landing page.
Students apply to the program through their universities, each of which has an "institutional representative" who helps "verify ... that applicants for the fellowship meet all eligibility criteria." That structure means that participating institutions, which include the top public and private universities in the state, are directly involved in an application process that violates federal law, according to five attorneys who reviewed the program requirements.
"This isn’t a hard one," said Gail Heriot, a law professor at the University of San Diego and a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. "The program was illegal and unconstitutional since its inception."