PSJD Public Interest News Digest – October 23, 2020
Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives
Interested public. So many urgent concerns clamor for our attention these days. I hope my attempt to be focused in this space suits your needs. Here is some news.
Take care of one another,
Sam
State-Directed Violence
- In North Carolina, “Donald Trump added controversy to the September law enforcement killing of antifa activist and murder suspect Michael Reinoehl, by alleging the U.S. Marshals ‘didn’t want to arrest him’ and proudly declaring, ‘We got him.’ Trump’s remarks came during a rally Thursday in Greenville, North Carolina. ‘We sent in the U.S. Marshals. Took 15 minutes, it was over, 15 minutes it was over,’ Trump said of Reinoehl’s death to cheers from the crowd. ‘We got him. They knew who he was. They didn’t want to arrest him, and 15 minutes, that ended.’”
- The Guardian reported that “[t]hree years after Donald Trump ordered a crackdown on undocumented migrants crossing into the US, lawyers are still struggling to find the parents of 545 children separated from them under the “zero-tolerance” policy, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.”
Free and Fair Elections
- In Washington DC, “[a] 36-year veteran of the Justice Department this week accused Attorney General William P. Barr of abusing his power to sway the election for President Trump and said he was quitting, making him the third sitting prosecutor to issue a rare public rebuke of the attorney general.“
- Also in Washington DC, “[a]fter a very long delay in an emergency election case, the shorthanded United States Supreme Court came to a 4–4 tie in an election law case out of Pennsylvania on Monday evening. While a tie result that leaves the lower court ruling standing is a clear short-term win for Democrats in making it easier to vote in the Keystone State in November, Republicans could end up with a much bigger victory if there is any post-election Trump v. Biden litigation.”
- Commentary from CNN casts the ultimate stakes in this case as particularly weighty: “Normally, a state supreme court has the last word on state laws. So the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision should have ended the matter. The US Supreme Court’s 4-4 decision rejected the appeal, but if the Court had accepted the Pennsylvania Republicans’ argument, we would have been in for a whole new wave of federal judicial oversight over election rules. That would spell bad news for state constitutional protection for the right to vote, which is broader than the safeguards afforded under the US Constitution.”
- In California, “[t]he California Republican Party has admitted responsibility for placing more than 50 deceptively labeled “official” drop boxes for mail-in ballots in Los Angeles, Fresno and Orange Counties — an action that state officials said was illegal and could lead to election fraud.”
The Civil Service
- GovExec analyzed the details of the order: “The order would create a new Schedule F within the excepted service of the federal government, to be composed of “employees in confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating positions,” and instructs agency heads to determine which current employees fit this definition and move them[; …]Positions in the new Schedule F would effectively constitute at-will employment, without any of the protections against adverse personnel actions that most federal workers currently enjoy, although individual agencies are tasked with establishing “rules to prohibit the same personnel practices prohibited” by Title 5 of the U.S. Code. The order also instructs the Federal Labor Relations Authority to examine whether Schedule F employees should be removed from their bargaining units, a move that would bar them from being represented by federal employee unions.”
- The full text of the order is available at whitehouse.gov