MADISON, Wis. – By a vote of 5-4, the Supreme Court of the United States this morning granted Attorney General Brad D. Schimel’s application for a stay in the redistricting case, Gill v. Whitford. Earlier today, the Court agreed to hear the case, which is expected to be scheduled for oral argument during the term starting in October 2017.
The stay prevents implementation of the three-judge panel’s ruling, which would have required the Wisconsin Legislature to redraw district maps in the coming months.
Attorney General Brad Schimel released the following statement in response.
”The stay is particularly important because it preserves the Legislature’s time, effort, and resources while this case is pending. In our stay application, I argued that requiring the Legislature to re-draw district maps this year would have been a waste of resources. I also argued that it was likely that the lower court’s decision would be eventually overturned. I am pleased that the Court granted our request on this important issue.”
Russia has said it will treat US warplanes operating in parts of Syria where its air forces are present as “targets” amid a diplomatic row caused by the downing of a Syrian jet.
The country’s defence ministry said the change in position would apply to all aircraft, including those operating as part of the US-backed coalition.
It will also suspend a hotline between Russia and the US set up to prevent mid-air collisions.
It’s interesting how the reporter in this story frames the story.
The U.S. Supreme Court could announce as soon as Monday how it’s handling a landmark legal fight over Wisconsin’s gerrymandered political map, which has helped lock in legislative majorities for the GOP since it took power in 2011.
The key legal question: Can a set of political districts be so stacked toward one party that it violates the Constitution?
Until the court speaks, that is unsettled law.
But while the law is uncertain, the politics are quite clear.
Legislative boundaries like Wisconsin’s present a stark civics question:
How meaningful are elections when control of the legislature in a competitive state is largely predetermined by the way the districts are drawn?
One might also ask, “how meaningful are elections when the party that is elected to control the legislature is stripped of the power to draw districts as they have done for the last 150 years?”
The incident occurred in the town of Ja’Din, south of Tabqa, Syria, which had recently been retaken from ISIS by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an umbrella group of Syrian Kurdish and Arab rebel forces supported by the U.S. in the fight against the militant group.
SDF came under attack from regime forces in favor of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad around 4:30 p.m. Syria time. A number of SDF fighters were wounded in the assault, and the SDF soon left Ja’Din.
Coalition aircraft conducted a show of force overhead that stopped the initial pro-regime advance towards the town.
“Following the Pro-Syrian forces attack, the coalition contacted its Russian counterparts by telephone via an established ‘de-confliction line’ to de-escalate the situation and stop the firing,” said a statement from Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS.
“At 6:43 p.m., a Syrian regime SU-22 dropped bombs near SDF fighters south of Tabqah and, in accordance with rules of engagement and in collective self-defense of coalition partnered forces, was immediately shot down by a U.S. F/A-18E Super Hornet,” said the statement.
The Syrian pilot is believed to have been able to eject from the aircraft, according to a U.S. official.
The whole situation is set up to escalate very quickly if we let it.
Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke has “rescinded his acceptance” of an offer to join the Trump administration, a spokesman says.
Clarke announced in a radio interview last month that he had accepted an offer to become an assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He said the position was in the Office of Partnership and Engagement as a liaison with state, local and tribal law enforcement.
But the agency never publicly announced the position.
In a statement late Saturday, Clarke spokesman Eric O’Keefe said the sheriff notified Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly on Friday that he would not accept the offer.
It looks like Clarke got out ahead of his skis on this one.
by Owen | 0715, 17 Jun 1717 | Off-Duty | 0 Comments
Washington Co. to implement park stickers in 2018
This week the Washington County Board approved the Parks Fiscal Sustainability Plan.
The plan aims to operate County Parks and Trails independent of the Property Tax Levy and sets course to achieve this over the next three years in order to maintain and improve parks for current and future generations of park users.
A major component of the plan includes new user fees in 2018 – daily entrance fees or annual park entrance stickers for County Parks to include the following parks: Glacier Hills Park, Ackerman’s Grove Park, Heritage Trails Park, Sandy Knoll Park, Leonard J. Yahr Park, and Homestead Hollow Park.
“We will be encouraging park and trail users and non-users to consider purchasing annual park stickers to support park maintenance and improvements,” said Central Services Director Jamie Ludovic.
“Parks and trails offer many economic and social benefits to our community that we intend to pay for through new and innovative revenue streams. We plan to structure this in a way that transparently demonstrates that money collected for parks and trails, stays with parks and trails.”
Eisenbahn Trail users will be encouraged to support the parks and trails by purchasing annual stickers.
However, the fee is planned to be assessed per vehicle entering the parks and no charge will be enforced for walkers, ATVs, snowmobiles or bikers at this time.
“We’re still hopeful that these user groups will support our system by purchasing the stickers,” Ludovic added.
Fee prices will be authorized as part of the County’s 2018 budget but are being recommended as follows: Residents would pay $5 daily or $30 for an annual sticker. Non-residents pay $5 daily or $40 annual. Senior Citizens pay $5 daily or $25 annual. A sticker for a second vehicle would be $20 annual. A bus would be $10 daily and the boat launch passes, which include park entrance, would be $8 daily or $80 annual.
Keith Franz, director of Venerable Fire Museum has died By Ron Naab
Keith Franz, the director of The Venerable Fire Museum Inc., on Hillside Road in Slinger has died. Word of the death was initially posted by the Milwaukee Fire Bell Club.
Franz was well known in the Wisconsin fire service and in many national venues of fire service.
Under Franz’s guidance, inspiration, and direction his non-profit Cedar Lake Venerable Fire Museum was created and is maintained.
“Keith really worked to promote the history of the fire service,” said Ron Naab, President of Badger Firefighters Association. “He was very meticulous; he had furniture from old fire stations and he restored fire trucks to like new condition.”
Naab raved about Franz’s collection of fire boxes. “Keith lived and breathed fire history,” said Naab. “Even though he was never a true firefighter he was respected for his knowledge and dedication by career and volunteer firefighters.”
On Labor Day of 1961, the Cedar Lake Fire Company was created and later became the Venerable Fire Museum, Inc.
This fire museum is considered as one of the five best fire museums in the United States.
Franz also served a number of years as the Wisconsin State Fire Chiefs Association Executive Secretary, along with serving as Secretary of the Washington County Fire Chiefs Association.
The Venerable Fire Museum was featured in the John McGivern series Around the Corner on PBS. Details on memorial services will be posted as soon as the information is available.
Stocky’s Fast Track auction is Tuesday, June 20
There’s an auction June 20 at Stocky’s Fast Track in the Town of Trenton. Owner Jeff Stockhausen announced Sunday, May 28 he was closing after 16 years in business. Stockhausen said he’d like to sell the business but since he didn’t get any takers he is opting to lease the space. The building is roughly 21,000 square feet and the asking price through Boss Realty is $1.25 million. The auction starts at 10:30 a.m.
Town Hall meeting for veterans
The Milwaukee (Zablocki) VA Medical Center and Milwaukee VA Regional Office will jointly host a town hall/claims clinic for veterans, service members, their families and survivors, to discuss VA benefits and health care.
Community members and organizations that assist veterans with their benefits, as well as the general public are also invited to attend.
The meeting will take place at UW-Washington County on Wednesday June 21 from 4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. The VA has reserved Room 201 at UW-Washington County for this free event.
Tom Hostad wins Cliff and Betty Nelson Award
United Way of Washington County presented Tom Hostad with the Clifford A. & Elizabeth M. Nelson Volunteer Leadership Award. The award was created to recognize an individual in Washington County who has demonstrated notable community leadership and a long-term commitment to volunteering.
Hostad has championed and led causes in human services, economic development, arts, religion, service clubs, and youth. He is a long-standing member of Rotary, serving as president for both Hartford Rotary and the Hartford Rotary Foundation. He is also a founding member and chairperson of the Washington County Workforce Alliance.
Advocating for the improvement of lives and community conditions, Hostad currently volunteers as board president for United Way of Washington County. He has served three board terms, and chaired the United Way Campaign in 2004.
Additionally, Hostad is a current board member of The Threshold and has volunteered in leadership roles for Boys & Girls Clubs of Washington County, Waubun and Great Blue Heron Girl Scout Councils, Schauer Arts Center, Hartford Area Chamber of Commerce, and Redeemer Lutheran Church.
40th annual Steak in the Park is Tuesday, June 20
Don’t miss the chance for some great food and a good time on Tuesday, June 20 at Regner Park as the West Bend Noon Kiwanis Club holds its 40th annual Steak in the Park fundraiser.
Proceeds will be generously designated to the Threshold’s Birth to 3 Program. There will be steak or chicken dinner, raffles, music, fun for only $20 per person.
Updates & tidbits
–Shop indoors this weekend at Rummage-A-Rama!at Washington County Fair Park. There’s free parking next to the building and admission each day has been dropped to only $1 at the door.
-The Kewaskum Area Chamber of Commerce is gearing up for its 2017 Party on the Pavement. Money raised during the Tuesday, June 27 event will support Kewaskum Area Community Projects.
-Holy Angels Student of the Month for May 2017 include: 6th grader Kaylee Schiller, 7th grader Isabelle Sternig and 8th grader Jordyn Wedemayer.
-The Richfield Historical Society invites you to Step Back In Time on Sunday on July 9 and August 13. The Historical Park’s Messer/Mayer Mill, Mill House and Lillicrapp Welcome Center will be open and staffed with tour guides.
-There are 59 new units being added in Phase II construction at Cast Iron Luxury Living in West Bend. Phase II is officially over 25% pre-leased. Cast Iron is located in the former West Bend Company building. An opening celebration of Phase II is scheduled for Saturday, August 12. It will feature a pig roast with live entertainment.
– Horicon Bank has stepped up this year to sponsor the fireworks during the July 4th celebration at Riverside Park in West Bend.
-The Kettle Moraine Sport Riders 34th Annual Motorcycle Hill Climb is Father’s Day Sunday, June 18 at Sunburst Ski Hill. Gates open 9 a.m. and the first bike goes up the hill at noon.
– Tennies Ace Hardware in Jackson is looking for full and part-time sales associates. The locally-owned hardware store is looking for someone who enjoys working with people and is handy with home repair projects.
– After meeting with National Weather Service officials and the Osceola Management Director Tuesday afternoon, Fond du Lac County Communications and Emergency Management Director Bobbi Hicken said it was determined an EF-0 tornado hit the Town of Osceola Monday night.
Online retail giant Amazon is making a bold expansion into physical stores with a $13.7 billion deal to buy Whole Foods, setting the stage for radical retail experiments that could revolutionize how people buy groceries and everything else.
Amazon could try to use automation and data analysis to draw more customers to stores while helping Whole Foods cut costs and perhaps prices. Meanwhile, the more than 460 Whole Foods stores in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. could be turned into distribution hubs — not just for delivering groceries but as pickup centers for online orders.
“The conventional grocery store should feel threatened and incapable of responding,” Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said.
Moody’s lead retail analyst Charlie O’Shea said the deal could be “transformative, not just for food retail, but for retail in general.”
Amazon’s online business model has contributed to the destruction of brick and mortar retail, and now they are pivoting into main street retail? Fascinating.
Conservative Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman announced Thursday he will not seek re-election next year, saying he is “more hopeful than ever in the triumph of the rule of law in Wisconsin.”
Gableman’s statement did not explicitly address whether he will fill out the rest of his term, which ends in August 2018. But a spokesman said it was his understanding that Gableman plans to complete his term.
The justice said in the statement he trusts “the people of Wisconsin will elect a successor who is similarly committed to the rule of law.”
Gableman said he ran nine years ago believing that “judges ought to apply the law rather than make it.”
“In decisions large and small, I have fulfilled my promises and put my judicial philosophy into practice,” Gableman said in the statement.
The state Assembly today approved a bill adding more scrutiny to administrative rules that have an economic impact estimate of at least $10 million over a two-year period.
The Assembly’s approval, on a 62-34 vote, sends the REINS Act to Gov. Scott Walker’s desk for his signature. The state Senate approved the bill last month.
The bill requires that rules that meet the $10 million threshold need to get approval from the Legislature. Agencies would otherwise have to tweak the rule to reduce the costs below $10 million if they want to implement it.
Shocking, I know. The liberal leaders in this country hold some responsibility for condoning and encouraging the kind of escalating hate rhetoric against Trump and Republicans that creates an environment where some folks resort to violence. It is a small step from riots and violent protests to assassination.
(CNN)James T. Hodgkinson, the man identified as shooting a Republican member of congress and four others on Wednesday morning, was a small business owner in Illinois who defined himself publicly by his firm support of Bernie Sanders’ progressive politics — and his hatred of conservatives and President Donald Trump.
This is based on CNN’s review of Hodgkinson’s Facebook profiles, public records, and three years of impassioned letters to his local newspaper.
“Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co.” he posted on his personal Facebook page on March 22.
“Republicans are the Taliban of the USA,” he posted in February.
by Owen | 0731, 14 Jun 1717 | Politics | 3 Comments
As always happens in the immediate aftermath of something like this, there is a lot of disinformation out there. For now, we just pray for the victims and their families.
A US Republican politician and aides have been shot during baseball practice in Virginia, US reports say.
Police in the upmarket Washington DC suburb of Alexandria said they were investigating a “multiple shooting” and a suspect was in custody.
[…]
Local media report there is a major police presence after the attack.
Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, texted Fox News to say that Mr Scalise had been shot in the hip and would survive.
He said someone had used a belt as a tourniquet on him.
Mr Lee said the shooter had used a long gun and was dead.
“I was never asked to sign the recall petition,” Gronik told FOX6 News in an email. He declined an interview.
Gronik said he’s against Act 10, Walker’s signature law, despite not signing a recall petition.
“I support collective bargaining and find it inconceivable that anyone would ever make decisions about how to provide the highest quality education for our children without having teachers at the table,” he said in his email to FOX6.
Mordecai Lee, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, questioned Gronik’s explanation.
“If they really were committed to being against Act 10 and figured that, as a Democrat, this was a symbol of how they opposed Scott Walker, you think somebody could’ve found how to do it,” Lee said. “You couldn’t go out in public and not have somebody ask you to sign the recall petition.”
First, the recall petition has been used by righties in Wisconsin to disqualify candidates for office – particularly in local races. It has been used as a litmus test to disprove someone’s assertion that they were conservative. And every time it has come up, lefties get their knickers in a twist about how they were just “exercising their rights” and how signing the recall shouldn’t be used against someone.
Now the shoe is on the other foot. A guy without a political record is thinking about running for governor as a Democrat and the fact that he didn’t sign the recall is making lefties uneasy. Is he really a lefty like them if he didn’t sign the recall? One wonders…
Meh. They are still flailing around for more ways to raise taxes instead of controlling the spending. This one is just a tax on businesses.
MADISON – Wisconsin could break a budget stalemate, avoid toll roads and raise more than $250 million for highways over the next two years by using a little-known approach being floated by a key Republican lawmaker.
Wisconsin would join four other states in placing a per mile fee on the kinds of heavy trucks that do more damage to roads, under the concept offered by a member of the Legislature’s budget committee.
In general, the fee or tax could be implemented cheaply — a sharp contrast to the big investment that would be required to implement the toll roads being considered by Republican lawmakers and Gov. Scott Walker.
Rep. Amy Loudenbeck (R-Clinton) said the approach could be paired with spending cuts to help close a long-term funding gap for the state’s road fund.
“I think this could be part of a broader solution as a revenue generator that’s equitable and sustainable,” she said.
Despite its advantages, Loudenbeck’s proposal faces an uncertain path forward at best. Many lawmakers don’t even know about it and a key industry group is not inclined to back it.
My column for the Washington County Daily News is online. Here you go:
As one drives around these great United States, one is bound to find oneself on a toll road at some point. Thirty-five states require drivers to pay tolls on some 5,000 miles of roads as a way to raise money to pay for their transportation infrastructure. Is Wisconsin set to become the 36th?
Toll roads are nothing new. In fact, toll roads predate our nation. The first toll roads in the United States were constructed in the years immediately after the signing of the Constitution. The 1790s saw the construction of the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike and the Great Western Turnpike in New York.
For many of us who grew up in the previous century, our memories of toll roads are long lines of cars jostling for position at a row of toll booths while digging for the correct change. Toll roads have come a long way since then. We have David Cook to thank for revolutionizing toll roads in 1989. David Cook is the Dallas entrepreneur who founded Blockbuster. Before 1985, video rental stores existed as small, independent, unremarkable enterprises. Cook’s innovation was to utilize barcode scanning and database-driven inventory management to rent videos on a large scale. He then used a centralized distribution system and leveraged the behavioral and demographic information his databases held to get the movies people wanted into their local stores. Until the next wave of digital transformation obliterated its business model, Blockbuster was a remarkable business.
While still at Blockbuster, Cook invested in Amtech, a company that was tinkering with technology that used radio frequencies to identify moving objects. They hoped to use the technology for railroads. Cook envisioned another use for the technology to make toll roads faster by removing the need to collect cash. Cook installed the technology for free in Dallas in 1989 with tremendous results. Other companies and toll road authorities quickly followed suit.
Most toll roads in the U.S. still use a variation of Cook’s transponder technology, but it has been improved to where vehicles can travel at full speed. Newer technologies are also being developed. For example, in Colorado, a sophisticated camera system eliminates the need for a transponder by taking a picture of each car’s license plates and sending the bill to the owner.
But while the technology of separating drivers from their money has become remarkably convenient and easy, that does not resolve the essential economic and political problems associated with tolling.
One of the core responsibilities with which we have tasked our governments is to construct and maintain an adequate transportation infrastructure. This is necessary primarily for economic reasons since the movement of goods and labor is vital for economic prosperity. But it is also for the pleasure and enjoyment of citizens to be able to move around our great nation with relative ease.
A good transportation infrastructure is not inexpensive and there are a variety of philosophies on how to pay for it. One way is to just use general taxes under the notion that every taxpayer benefits from the transportation system either directly or indirectly. This spreads the cost over the greatest number of taxpayers and our political leaders must balance transportation priorities against all of the other demands on general funds like education, law enforcement, etc.
Another way to fund transportation is to levy taxes and fees from the direct users of the transportation system. This is largely how the state of Wisconsin does it by using the vehicle registration fee and gas tax as proxies for users. In Wisconsin, if you register several or larger vehicles, or buy a lot of gas, you pay more transportation taxes because you are presumably using the transportation infrastructure more. In the age of electric cars, however, the proxy of the gas tax is less valid than it once was.
Toll roads are merely an extension of the latter philosophy for transportation funding. It is a direct tax on the people using a specific road at a specific time. There is nothing inherently wrong with the concept, but it must be put into perspective.
The reason that Wisconsin Republican politicians are talking about toll roads is because they want to spend more money on transportation and they cannot find the money elsewhere. Wisconsin’s gas tax and registration fee are already well above the national average and the public has no appetite to raise our ranking any higher. State lawmakers could tap the state’s general fund for more money or borrow more, but there is also stiff opposition to those ideas. The idea of toll roads are being floated as another possible option to get more money from taxpayers.
The intractable problem with the transportation budget in Wisconsin is not that there is too little money for our needs. The problem is that politicians want to spend far more than Wisconsinites can afford. Toll roads will not fix that problem. Fiscal restraint and leadership will. Are Wisconsin’s Republicans capable of that anymore?
by Owen | 2210, 12 Jun 1717 | Politics | 2 Comments
And will pay for it next year if they don’t get their stuff together. Kurt Schlichter has some great ideas on what they need to do.
Here’s a good idea for a first step – work as hard as we do. Let’s see some late-night sessions. Let’s see some five day work weeks – and even some working on weekends. We work weekends. I work weekends. I’m writing this on a weekend. Why not you?
And let’s see you cancel the August recess. Work. We keep hearing about how you “don’t have time” to do your jobs, but then you propose to vanish in August? Hey, how about staying around that sticky, sweaty swamp of a city through August and getting your job done? I’m going to be working in August. Everyone else I know is going to be working in August. You bums need to work during August too.
And no, you don’t need to “come home to touch base with your voters.” We don’t want to see you here. We want to see you back in D.C., enacting the agenda we elected you to enact instead of chillin’ out at your crib and attending town halls filled with paid leftist shills where you tell us that you don’t have time to do what you’re being paid to do.
[…]
Cut our taxes, like the GOP promised.
Rebuild our military, like the GOP promised.
Fix infrastructure (wisely), like the GOP promised.
Build a wall, like the GOP promised.
Kill Obamacare, like the GOP promised.
Oh, and how about recruiting some decent GOP candidates? Karen Handel seems like a nice lady, but she’s lousy at politics so she never should have gotten in the race. Her upcoming loss is going to motivate our enemies, and we can’t have that. We don’t have the luxury of letting nice people who are crummy candidates be our nominees. We need winners, not losers.
A Madison man pleaded no contest Monday to misdemeanor battery and disorderly conduct charges for slashing the face of a Stoughton man who was trying to defend his inflatable Minnesota Vikings lawn decoration from vandalism.
Jacob A. Justice, 22, faces up to 15 months in jail on each of the battery convictions and up to six months for the disorderly conduct conviction when he is sentenced at a later date by Circuit Judge Nicholas McNamara.
Justice was arrested on Oct. 9 after he fought with Vikings fan David Moschel in the yard of Moschel’s home in the 700 block of South Van Buren Street in Stoughton. According to a criminal complaint, Moschel said he caught Justice cutting a hole in the large, inflated figure, and when he confronted Justice a fight ensued. Moschel received eight cuts, mostly to his face and head, requiring 67 stitches and eight staples, the complaint states.
WEST BEND – A lawyer for 90 retired Germantown teachers asked a jury Monday to award them more than $9 million in damages from their former employer, who the retirees say took their affordable long-term care insurance in a political power play after passage of Wisconsin’s Act 10 law.
The district’s attorney urged jurors to reject liability under all three of the plaintiffs’ theories. “They ignored it (a warning that the insurance plan could terminate) and now they want to blame the school district,” Kevin Pollard said.
The lawyers’ closing arguments came after a weeklong trial, but it took the jury just an afternoon to decide the district owed nothing to the retirees.
Basically, here’s the deal… nearly 20 years ago, the Germantown school district agreed to give the employees long-term care insurance. As part of that, employees who retired were allowed to continue to purchase the same insurance at the same rate as current employees. After Act 10 empowered the school board, they revised their benefits package and eliminated the long-term care insurance option, thus also eliminating it for retirees. The insurance company, WEA Trust, would allow the retirees to maintain their insurance if they paid all of the premiums up front – about $35k – but many of the retirees couldn’t afford it continue the coverage.
The retirees’ argument was essentially that once a benefit was granted, the school board and taxpayers were obligated to continue that benefit for all time. Obviously, if the retirees were successful in their argument, it would severely limit the ability of school boards to make adjustments to benefit packages over time to manage costs and expectations. Such a ruling would have also hurt future employees because it would have discouraged school boards from ever offering additional benefits. After all, would you want to offer a creative new benefit if you knew that it would obligate the taxpayers to pay that benefit for eternity? Also, if a benefit granted can never be rescinded, school boards would have a hard time replacing one benefit with another one that the employees want more.
A Moscow court has ruled that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny should be jailed for 30 days for staging an unsanctioned rally in Moscow.
The anti-corruption rallies called for by Navalny were held in more than 100 Russian towns and cities on Monday. In Moscow, thousands of angry protesters held an unsanctioned rally on Tverskaya, the capital’s main street. More than 1,000 people have been arrested across Russia.
The judge at the Simonovsky district court ruled after midnight Monday that Navalny should be jailed for repeated violations of the law on public gatherings.
Our two main political parties were founded and evolved to deal with the social and economic challenges of the industrial revolution.
Conservative and Labour, left and right, capitalism and socialism – these ideological movements were a response to the economic and cultural challenges of power moving from the field to the factory.
But power is moving again, from the national to the multinational.
How citizens think we should respond to that shift is the new divide in our politics.
It is less about left v right and more about nationalism v globalism.
The 9.5% increase in the vote share for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party and the 6% increase in Theresa May’s Conservative support might be held up as evidence that the British electorate is once again becoming more “tribal” in left-right terms.
But I suspect old-fashioned political tribalism is actually on the wane.
Frustrated by the profound limitations of a first-past-the-post electoral system, voters are striving to get their voice heard as best they can.
While the suit is clearly grandstanding and another symptom of Democrats trying to overturn an election that they lost, I’m interested in seeing the case progress. The first question I wonder is whether or not these Attorneys General have standing?
The state of Maryland and the District of Columbia plan to sue President Trump on Monday, alleging that he has violated the Constitution by accepting foreign money through his business empire, according to a person familiar with the plans.
The attorneys general of Maryland and D.C., both Democrats, have scheduled a news conference for noon ET in Washington.
The suit, to be filed in federal court in Maryland, will allege that Trump has violated the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which prohibits the president from accepting payments from foreign governments without the consent of Congress, according to the person.
