Per the NY Times, 5 reasons:
The 2024 Democratic National Convention will be held in Chicago:
President Joe Biden and Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison chose Chicago over New York City and Atlanta despite the president’s broader efforts to expand his foothold in the South.
“Chicago is a great choice to host the 2024 Democratic National Convention,” Biden said in a prepared statement.
The latest fight about abortion is once again in the courts. This time the battle is over “medical” abortion. Even before the Dobbs decision last year, there has been a move away from “surgical” abortions to medical abortions. (According to the latest statistics, it is close to a 50-50 split between surgical abortions and medical abortions.) The reasons for this trend are somewhat simple.
First, it is easy for a state to regulate surgical abortions. While most surgical abortions are not what most people would consider to be surgical, a surgical abortion is still a hands-on, in-person procedure. It requires an office, and a state can enact rules about that physical facility — size, location, and equipment.
Second, the need for a physical location for surgical abortions creates two problems. On the one hand, that makes it easy for anti-abortion activists to target the facility in various ways. On the other hand, the need for a physical facility makes it harder for patients to access the facility. Due to the regulations, an abortion clinic is rather expensive investment. As a result, abortion clinics are in the biggest cities. If you live in the rural part of your state, the nearest abortion clinic can be over three or four hours away.
To begin with the obvious, an indictment is a document used to formally bring criminal charges against an individual (here the Orange Menace). Under the law, all criminal defendants are presumed to be innocent of the charged offense, and the prosecution has the burden to present sufficient evidence to convince twelve jurors to unanimously agree that the evidence proves that defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
There is no precise timetable for when a case must go to trial. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that, as a matter of federal constitutional law, a trial begun within eight months of charges being filed is sufficiently speedy to satisfy the speedy trial clause of the U.S. Constitution. If, as often happens, it takes more than eight months to bring a case to trial, the courts then use a balancing test to decide how long is too long. In theory, Trump might be able to delay the trial until after the 2024 election. If he succeeds in this goal, the problems for him will be mostly how much of a distraction the pending case(s) will be (both in terms of time and money) and how voters react to the charges. While it’s too early to tell for sure, the initial reaction of voters seems to be that the true believers will see any accusation against their god as persecution and an attempt to block them from electing him. This groups might be just enough to get him the Republican nomination, but this group is not large enough to get him elected. On the other hand, a significant group of swing voters seem to be tired of the chaos and criminality associated with Trump, and these charges (unless something else comes out to undermine them) seem likely to make it harder for Trump to win the general election.
The “interesting” questions come when Trump is convicted. (Most defendants are convicted. While there is an old saying that a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich, that saying is only half true. Yes, the prosecution controls what a grand jury hears, but they still need some credible evidence that the defendant committed a crime. And, after you get the indictment, you still need to win a trial. While some prosecutors might put the hand slightly on the scale to get an indictment in a case that is a close call, it does little good to bring charges when your evidence is so weak that you have no chance at getting a conviction.) And this is a question of ballot laws in the fifty states (plus D.C.) and the rules of the Republican Party.
There have been signs, including a posting on his Twitter-alternative website from the Crook-in-Chief that an arrest was supposed to be about to occur, that Donald Trump may soon be the prisoner in the dock. Obviously, until charges are filed, any discussion of potential charges are just speculation. But here is what seems to be in the wind. And I did postpone writing this to see what might get filed this past week, but, since there is no guarantee about when these charges will come, I decided to go ahead with this post.
Right now, the case that appears on the eve of being filed is from Manhattan County in New York. These charges arise out of something which is, unfortunately, somewhat common with closely-held corporations — an inability to keep the corporation separate from the person. Legally, a corporation is a separate legal person from its owners, officers, and employees. The corporation is legally responsible for paying its own expenses and liabilities. The personal expenses and liabilities of the employees are supposed to be paid by the employees out of their personal funds. If the employer covers those expenses, that is considered to be compensation to the employee (or dividends to the owner) which has to be reported to the IRS and state taxing authorities as income for the employee (or income to the owner). This situation is what got the Trump Organization charged and convicted for benefits that it provided to some of the executives which were included as business expenses (and employee compensation is a business expense) on the corporate returns but not reported as income to the executives.
In Trump’s case, the issue is sexual misconduct by the CEO of the company. Now, if the company is being sued for sexual harassment of its female employees under Title VII, that is a legitimate business expense. If the CEO is sued for sexual misconduct in his personal ife, that is not a legitimate business expense, and he should be paying the settlement and the legal expenses out of his personal account. Complicating the matter for Trump is that these issues arose while Trump was running for office. That raises the issue of whether the settlements and non-disclosure agreements were for personal reasons — to avoid his spouse learning about his infidelity — or for political reasons — to avoid the public learning that the candidate is a liar and cheat who can’t even keep his wedding vows much less any other promise. It is clear that there are some fraudulent business records here as Michael Cohen and the women should not have been paid from Trump Organization accounts but whether the offense is a felony or misdemeanor depends upon whether that improper use of corporate funds where for other criminal purposes — namely avoiding tax liability on the part of Donald Trump (if Trump had paid the bills and then taken a draw from the company that would have been income to Trump and the expense would not have been tax deductible) and the Trump Organization (distribution of income by a company is not tax deductible but legal expenses are) or to avoid reporting a campaign expense (if the settlement was designed to avoid the political consequences, it would be considered to be a campaign expense).
Well, if Whoopi supports it, how can New York lose?
Lots to cover:
This past week, the United States Supreme Court heard challenges to President Biden’s program giving partial student loan forgiveness. There are two separate cases (one brought primarily by Republican states and one brought by individuals), but the issues in the two case are relatively similar.
The first issue in both cases is standing. For those unfamilar with standing, it derives from the Constitution’s language giving federal courts authority to decide cases and controversies. Traditionally, courts have viewed this language as barring the ability of parties from requesting “advisory opinions” about how courts would rule if the parties did X. As such, the courts require a real dispute. More importantly, standing is concerned about who brings the dispute. In simplest terms, a party can’t bring a case merely because they don’t like what the other party is doing. The party bringing the case must be injured by the opposiing party’s actions in a way that can be fixed by the court. Under the federal system, the state governments do not have the right to challenge the acts of the federal government merely because a given state disagrees with the federal government’s decisions. They have to show that the federal government’s acts injure that state.
For the state challenge, the lower court found standing based on the impact of loan forgiveness of MOHELA. To understand the issue, one needs to know what MOHELA is. Several of the states over the years have gotten heavily involved in the processing and handling of student loans. I remember that when I was in law school, my student loans were handled by the Pennsylvania equivalent of MOHELA. While I do not know the structural details of all of these agencies, MOHELA is somewhat equivalent to Fannie Mae. Like Fannie Mae, MOHELA is a separate entity from the state government. MOHELA is not a party to the case. The question for the Supreme Court is whether Missouri has the right to speak for MOHELA. If there is a decision in favor of the student loan forgiveness program, it is likely to be based on the theory that Missouri is not MOHELA and Missouri has not shown that it will be harmed if MOHELA is harmed. If Missouri does not have the right to sue on behalf of MOHELA, it is unclear how any of the state governments has standing on any other theory.
The advantage of being the party in power is that you can make changes to your rules about your presidential nomination process without worrying about which potential candidate will benefit. Barring the unlikely event that President Biden does not seek the nomination, he will be the Democratic nominee regardless of the rules. So these changes will not impact who will win the nomination in 2024, and 2028 is way too far away for anybody to guess who will be running in 2028 much less who benefits from the changes.
First, as always, the nomination process is a battle between state laws and national rules. And, under the First Amendment, as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court, the national party rules for choosing the national presidential candidate prevails over state law. Of course, while the states are unable to bind the national party, the states do set the rules for who appears on their general election ballots. As of now, no state laws designate anybody other than the national nominees as the presidential candidate of that party (and no state party has refused to certify their national candidate).
Second, the two parties have different rules. Both sets of rules involve potential penalties for states that violate the rules. In the past, the two parties had similar rules on timing of primaries. But this time, thanks to the Democrat’s changes to the list of states that can go before the first Tuesday in March, the list of potential February contests is not the same for the two parties. And each party has potential penalties for states that violate their rules.
The Democratic National Convention told Houston officials this week the city will not host Democrats’ national convention in 2024.
Mayor Sylvester Turner’s office confirmed Thursday that Houston no longer is in the running. The snub leaves New York City, Chicago and Atlanta vying to host the convention, which Democrats have estimated could bring more than $230 million in economic activity.
