Ellen Ioanes | Vox

Are North Carolina Republicans trying to steal a state supreme court seat?

2025-01-09T09:33:43-05:00

Then-attorney Allison Riggs, with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, speaks to the press in front of the US Supreme Court building in Washington, DC, on December 7, 2022. | Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images

North Carolina’s supreme court has temporarily prohibited the state’s Board of Elections from certifying the election of sitting Democratic Justice Allison Riggs to the bench on Tuesday, despite her 734-vote victory over Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin.

The court’s decision is not an out-and-out bar on the certification of the election’s results; it’s a stay, meaning the board can’t declare the results final. The board was set to certify the results of the November 5, 2024, election Friday absent the court’s intervention.

Griffin, who sits on the state’s Court of Appeals, and state Republicans have filed hundreds of cases challenging Riggs’s victory. Those cases hinge on the claim that 60,000 ballots are ineligible, primarily because voters did not provide their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number when registering to vote.

The battle for the state supreme court seat is part of the power struggle that has long animated North Carolina politics, particularly in the past eight years since the election of former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.

The effort to seat Griffin follows congressional gerrymandering meant to favor the GOP, legal maneuvering weakening the power of incoming Democratic officials, and the establishment of a GOP supermajority in North Carolina’s legislature in 2023. Though Republicans currently control North Carolina’s partisan, seven-member supreme court, a successful challenge by Griffin could give the party nearly absolute control: Currently, the state’s highest court has five Republican members and two Democratic justices, one of whom is Riggs.

This is the latest setback in a two-month saga

On Election Day, Griffin appeared poised to beat Riggs, a longtime civil rights lawyer, by 10,000 votes. But a 10-day process known as canvassing — in which county elections officials count mail-in votes and provisional ballots — revealed the election had gone in Riggs’s favor.

However, because her margin of victory was so slim — only 635 votes at that point — Griffin demanded a recount, which he was entitled to under state law. (If a candidate bests another by fewer than 10,000 votes, the losing candidate can request a recount, but one is not automatically triggered.) The Board of Elections performed a machine recount, then a hand tabulation, both of which showed Riggs as the winner by a narrow margin — but by then, Griffin had already taken the fight to the courts.

Griffin’s claims are based on a 2023 complaint challenging North Carolina’s registration paperwork, alleging that voter registration forms violated the 2002 federal Help America Vote Act. That act states all voter registration forms must include a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number, with some exceptions; according to the complaint, North Carolina’s voter registration material did not make it clear that either a driver’s license number or the Social Security identification was required. The state Board of Elections agreed and amended the registration paperwork but ruled that it should be able to accept the old voter registration forms as well.

That 2023 complaint that provides the foundation for Griffin’s challenge was filed by a private North Carolina citizen, Carol Snow, who called herself an “election denier” in an email to CBS News last year. According to CBS News, Snow is part of an activist group connected to the Election Integrity Network, which was started in an effort to overturn the 2020 election, through a North Carolina umbrella group.

Griffin’s challenge made it to a federal court of appeals, which then kicked it back down to the state supreme court. The court’s Tuesday decision halts the certification while ig hears the case.

Complicating the case is the question of whether a federal or state court should have jurisdiction in the case. The case came before the state supreme court after a federal district judge ruled that it didn’t need to be decided at the federal level. However, the board of elections is still pursuing the case in the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, arguing that it concerns a federal statute; Griffin maintains that the state court is the correct venue because it concerns state election law. Riggs has requested that a federal appeals court decide the issue.

“The Griffin camp’s theory is, there’s a parallel statute in North Carolina, this is a state race for state office,” Bob Orr, a former associate justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, told Vox. “There’s nothing federal about it, and therefore the state court should resolve it.”

North Carolina’s supreme court has become increasingly partisan in its decision-making, most notably when it comes to abortion rights. Riggs holding onto her seat wouldn’t change that reality, but it would help Democrats maintain a presence on the court that they could try to build on in future election cycles. That’s especially significant as the federal Supreme Court has decided issues like abortion should be left to the states to decide.

“Democrats are digging themselves out of a hole on the Court, and they need to hold this seat,” Michael Bitzer, a professor of political science at Catawba College in North Carolina, told Vox. “It’s kind of like what they needed to do with the General Assembly, and that is break at least one chamber’s supermajority Republican numbers. If they were to lose the seat, that drops them down to one”: Democratic Justice Anita Earls, whose eight-year term ends next year.

That means whether Riggs can take her spot on the bench is important not just for current Democratic priorities in the state, but also for future Democratic goals in the state. Griffin must submit his legal argument to the North Carolina Supreme Court by January 14.

What banning medical debt from your credit score actually means

2025-01-07T18:17:12-05:00

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Rohit Chopra arrives to testify before a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on December 11, 2024, in Washington, DC. | Kent Nishimura/Getty Images

In the final days of its tenure, the Biden administration has banned credit reporting agencies from including medical debts in their reports, aiming to make it easier for people to access credit, including loans and mortgages.

“No one should be denied economic opportunity because they got sick or experienced a medical emergency,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a White House statement announcing the new rule Tuesday.

The administration first proposed the rule in June 2024, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued the final ruling today.

The new rule is part of a constellation of federal, state, and local strategies, stretching back to the Obama administration, to reduce the burden of medical debt on Americans. Advocates hail the change as an important step, but its effects may not be as significant as the administration hopes. And with Republicans already speaking out against it, it’s possible the rule might be reversed or not enforced at all.

How the ban — and medical debt reporting — works

It’s up to individual medical providers whether they report debt to credit agencies. The information in that report is then used to calculate a person’s credit score, which helps lenders like banks determine how likely a person is to pay off debt they accrue. The idea to remove medical debt from credit reports isn’t new. In 2023, major companies like TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax stopped including medical debt under $500 in their credit reports.

The new rule “will remove an estimated $49 billion in medical bills from the credit reports of about 15 million Americans,” according to the CFPB. The CFPB claims that medical debt isn’t actually a very good predictor of a person’s overall creditworthiness, and that “consumers frequently report receiving inaccurate bills or being asked to pay bills that should have been covered by insurance or financial assistance programs.”

The new rule only addresses medical debt when it has already gone into collections, Stanford University economics professor Neale Mahoney explained. “You can basically either address medical debt at the source, like right after hospitalization, or you can sort of address things downstream,” like the new rule, he said. Other downstream interventions include retiring medical debt, as some municipalities have done.

The change can improve people’s financial situations, according to Francis Wong, an economist at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

“Our research indicates that people are better off, in the sense that having medical debt removed from their credit reports leads to meaningful increases in credit scores, especially for those who do not show signs of financial distress outside of their medical debt,” Wong wrote in an email.

As part of the broader landscape of medical debt interventions, the new rule is an important tool because it could encourage people to continue seeking medical care, according to Eva Marie Stahl, vice president of programs and policy at Undue Medical Debt, an organization that helps pay off medical debt and advises on policy solutions to medical debt.

“In some cases, [reported medical debt] could prevent somebody from accessing work or a place to live,” Stahl said. “It’s top of mind for people when they access health care. So we’re hoping that people are just sort of breathing a sigh of relief today and thinking a little bit differently about how they engage with the health system, so that they’re putting their health care needs first.”

Will the new policy make a difference?

However, Wong and Mahoney, who worked together on a research paper about paying off medical debt, also cautioned how the new rule will impact people’s financial situations.

The change will be most significant for people who don’t carry much other debt, according to Mahoney. “There are people who have otherwise good credit except for medical debt and collections, and so for those folks you see, I think, meaningful increases in credit scores,” Mahoney told Vox. This might look like an increase of 14 points on average and an increase of $900 in credit limits, which is not insignificant.

Simply leaving medical debt off credit reports doesn’t address the broader problem of continued medical debt. “Those who owe medical debt may be grappling with ongoing issues associated with the original medical event, such as poor health and inability to work,” Wong wrote. For many people, it also probably won’t mean the difference between getting a home loan and being denied, he said. “Although removing medical debt from credit reports is likely to increase access to credit card borrowing, the same may not be true for access to mortgages, given that few people with medical debt may be in a position to afford a mortgage.”

Ultimately, the debt still exists, whether or not it shows up on a credit report, and it impacts people’s finances and their ability to access medical care.

Then there’s the possibility that whatever relief the rule brings to people in debt will not last. Republicans in Congress have already spoken out against the rule, both from a policy perspective and as part of an effort to curtail the CFPB’s regulatory agenda.

In an August memo to CFPB director Rohit Chopra, members of the House Committee on Financial Services wrote that “restricting inclusion of medical debt in credit reports and scores will undermine underwriting processes and increase risk in the financial system, to the detriment of consumers,” and argued that the rule would have “significant negative effects on access and affordability of credit for all consumers, and particularly for low-income borrowers.”

Banking industry lobbying groups, like the Bank Policy Institute and the Consumer Bankers Association, urged Chopra to withdraw the rule, saying that it would actually make credit more expensive because it would be riskier and more scarce if access improved. The groups also pushed back against the common argument that medical debt, as a product of circumstances beyond people’s control, is different from other kinds of debt related to a lack of financial knowledge or adequate planning.

A Republican Congress might not have the votes to roll back the new rule. But the CFPB will change dramatically under the incoming Trump administration, and leadership may not enforce the medical debt credit reporting ban or the other protections the agency has put in place in the last months of the Biden administration.

Justin Trudeau is resigning. Here’s what comes next.

2025-01-07T15:50:38-05:00

Justin Trudeau joins a round-table discussion led by Environment and Climate Change Canada with approximately 40 representatives from a variety of policy and business backgrounds from across Canada at the John G. Diefenbaker Building on day two of the Platinum Jubilee Royal Tour of Canada on May 18, 2022, in Ottawa, Canada. | Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said today that he’d step down as head of the country’s Liberal Party, after weeks of speculation that his time in leadership was coming to an end.

In Canada, the head of the party with the highest number of seats in Parliament leads the country. Though Trudeau will no longer be the Liberal Party leader, he’ll remain prime minister until his party chooses a new leader, likely in the next two months. Canada must also hold a general election by October to choose a new government.

“I intend to resign as party leader, as prime minister, after the party selects its next leader through a robust, nationwide, competitive process,” Trudeau — who has led the Liberal Party since 2013 and been prime minister since 2015 — said in a press conference Monday morning.

Trudeau and his party were initially popular: He had a 65 percent approval rating shortly after taking office nearly a decade ago. But they’ve suffered following a cost-of-living crisis due to inflation in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as criticism about the government’s immigration and environmental policies.

The end of Trudeau’s tenure as party leader and as prime minister was all but sealed last month after his one-time deputy Chrystia Freeland announced her departure from her post as finance minister. Her scathing resignation letter included criticisms about Trudeau’s ability to navigate the incoming Trump administration’s proposed tariffs on Canadian goods.

Monday’s announcement prompts serious questions about what comes next for a post-Trudeau Liberal Party and also for Canada.

Trudeau’s resignation is no surprise

Voters around the world — including in the US — rejected incumbents in elections last year. In recent months, polls have indicated that Canadian voters are also ready for a change. Trudeau’s popularity has decreased fairly steadily over the past year; he now has only a 22 percent approval rating, his lowest ever.

“In some ways, it’s not surprising that Canadians are just kind of fed up with the government, because you get to a certain point in your tenure where you’ve been in there for so long that it’s easy to look around and blame everything that’s wrong on the guy who’s been in charge for 10 years,” Elizabeth McCallion, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, told Vox in a December interview. “We’re reaching that limit where many Canadians don’t want Trudeau around anymore.”

The rejection of incumbents coincides with real issues in Canada, including the cost-of-living crisis and an affordable housing crisis brought on by the limited supply, population growth, and decades of divestment in social welfare for housing. Debate over the wisdom of the Liberal Party’s welcoming immigration policy and a carbon tax to reduce the country’s emissions has also escalated ahead of national elections.

“There’s a cost-of-living issue, and that’s affected lots of Western countries,” Andrew McDougall, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, told Vox in December. “That’s something that they’ve had to deal with. Housing has obviously been a big part of that for a lot of Canadians, and the immigration file has been one that [Liberals] have been harshly criticized recently on [for] allowing that situation to get out of control, and seeing a backlash in Canada.”

Conservatives, notably party leader Pierre Poilievre, have also linked the carbon tax — Trudeau’s signature environmental policy achievement — to the economic crisis, though the Liberal Party has disputed that the two are connected.

Rival parties’ political attacks on Liberals and their record have already proved potent, with Trudeau’s party losing what should have been safe seats in recent special elections.

“He’s been going through sort of a string of setbacks over the last couple of months,” including losing strongholds in Toronto and Montreal, McDougall said. “If you can’t win there, you really can’t win anywhere, was the suggestion.”

Freeland’s December resignation only renewed and intensified calls for Trudeau to resign, with some of those calls coming from members of his own party. It’s unusual for members of Parliament and government ministers to speak out against their party leadership, McCallion and McDougall explained, and Freeland’s departure showed just how unstable Trudeau’s party unity actually is. Conservatives are expected to make major gains in this year’s elections.

Where do the Liberals — and Canada — go from here?

It seems unlikely that the Liberals can win the next national election, no matter who they choose for their next party leader.

Thus far, no one has stepped up to replace Trudeau, although Freeland has been floated as a possible candidate. She is currently the frontrunner among Liberal voters and held a number of posts in Trudeau’s cabinet including foreign minister, trade representative, and most recently finance minister. Dominic LeBlanc, a Trudeau ally juggling multiple cabinet roles, is also a potential leader, and Transportation Minister Anita Anand, as well as former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney, have also been discussed as replacements.

Whoever wins, it’s a period of reflection and reinvention for the party, McCallion said.

“I think parties often have these kinds of reckonings — it’s kind of a cyclical thing, ‘Who are we? What does our party stand for, and who is the best person to lead us in that fight?’” she said. “I do not think the entire Liberal Party is going off the cliff, in the sense that they’ll never come back from this, because the Liberal Party has been known as the natural governing party of Canada.” That’s because, McCallion added, “they tend to tailor their policies to what the median voter wants, and they’re really good at reinventing themselves and readjusting depending on what most Canadians are interested in at the time.”

The Liberals have until the end of March to find a new leader. That person will be elected by Liberal Party members throughout the country, and will represent the party in national elections, which, according to McDougall, could actually be called before the official October date.

Canadian general elections must occur at least every four years but can be triggered if the ruling party loses a no-confidence vote in Parliament. “The opposition parties [the Conservatives and New Democratic Party] have said that they want to bring down the government and trigger an election at the first opportunity,” McDougall said. The New Democratic Party has called for a no-confidence vote, and the Liberals are likely to lose it.

Perhaps the most pressing question in that election is who is best positioned to take on US President-elect Donald Trump, who has threatened tariffs of up to 25 percent on Canadian imports.

“[Conservative Party leader] Poilievre has said he would fight [the tariffs] and he seems aligned with the provincial premiers, many of whom are conservative, in saying that they will make sure Canada holds its own and not bow to or fold under any 25 percent tariffs,” McCallion said. But members of the Trudeau government, notably Freeland, successfully negotiated a major trade deal with the US under the first Trump administration.

That experience, however, may not be enough to convince voters that the Liberals should stay in power, given the obstacles they’re facing.

The past 24 hours in South Korea’s chaotic politics, explained

2025-01-08T14:41:36-05:00

People holding K-pop light sticks and placards during a protest against impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol, following a failed attempt by the prosecutors to arrest him on a warrant in Seoul on January 3, 2025. | Daniel Ceng/Anadolu via Getty Images

It’s been a contentious 24 hours in South Korean politics, after impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol narrowly avoided arrest for insurrection on Friday, a month after his martial law declaration.

It’s the latest development in a month-long political meltdown that has not only thrown Korean politics into turmoil, but surfaced the country’s deep political polarization, evidenced most dramatically by dueling protest movements — one calling for Yoon’s ouster and arrest, and a smaller but still vocal one trying to protect him.

The crisis took a dramatic new turn on Friday, when officials with the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) tried to enter Yoon’s residence to arrest him for his martial law declaration on December 3 — and possible attempted self-coup. Though many South Koreans took to the streets demanding the arrest, counterprotesters blocked the road leading to the presidential palace and used social media to insist that an arrest was illegal.

CIO officials eventually called off the attempt to detain Yoon after his presidential security detail, aided by military personnel, blocked the CIO’s entry to the palace.

“Regarding the execution of the arrest warrant today, it was determined that the execution was effectively impossible due to the ongoing standoff,” according to a CIO statement. “Concern for the safety of personnel on-site led to the decision to halt the execution.”

That doesn’t mean Yoon’s troubles are over, however; there is an ongoing case against him in South Korea’s constitutional court — which will ultimately decide whether the impeachment stands and Yoon will be permanently removed from power — and the arrest warrant is still valid through Monday. If he is detained, he will be the first sitting South Korean president to be arrested. (While Yoon has not yet been removed from office, an acting president has been carrying out his duties since the National Assembly’s December 14 vote to impeach him.)

The intensity and instability of the past month means there’s no clear sense of what comes next for South Korea. As Friday’s unrest underscored, however, whatever the fate of Yoon’s political career, the future will likely revolve around the divide between the country’s two main political parties: Yoon’s conservative People Power Party and the more liberal Democratic Party.

How did we get here?

When Yoon declared martial law, he was in the second year of his five-year term (South Korean presidents are allowed to serve just one term). During his tenure, his approval rating fell below 20 percent, as his political agenda stalled in South Korea’s legislature, the National Assembly, which is controlled by the center-left Democratic Party.

According to Celeste Arrington, a professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and director of the George Washington Institute for Korean Studies, Yoon “certainly is unpopular and frustrated by an inability to do politics.”

“Yoon is the first president in democratic South Korea to rule without his party in the majority in the National Assembly, and so he has been stymied in all of his legislative initiatives by a national assembly that’s quite opposed to his ideas,” Arrington said in December in an interview with Vox.

Those frustrations appear to have contributed to Yoon’s decision to declare martial law, which he first announced in a televised statement claiming, without evidence, that the opposition party to his government was in the midst of an “insurgency” and “trying to overthrow the free democracy.”

The move to declare martial law — for the first time in South Korea since 1980 — took Yoon’s political opponents and allies alike, as well as the South Korean public and the world, by surprise.

In theory, the South Korean Constitution allows the president to declare martial law under certain “national emergency states” — but Yoon appears to have exceeded that authority, also deploying troops in an attempt to block the National Assembly from convening. Ultimately — after some legislators were forced to scale walls to enter the assembly building — the body voted unanimously to vote down the martial law decree.

Yoon’s declaration was almost universally unpopular within South Korea, reinvigorating fears of the country’s repressive 20th-century dictatorship, which only ended in the 1980s following mass demonstrations demanding democracy and direct presidential elections. Decades later, South Korean citizens turned out in the thousands to protest Yoon’s move and call for his ouster.

The end of Yoon’s tenure wouldn’t fix South Korea’s political problems

While the past month in South Korean politics has been extraordinary, it also points to the underlying tension in the country’s politics, which in recent years has been defined by a high level of polarization between its two major political parties and their supporters.

“Through each election that’s taken place in the last few years, it swings either from very conservative to very liberal, most recently being very conservative,” Emma Whitmyer, a senior program officer for the Asia Society Policy Institute, told Vox.

Both progressives and conservatives claim they are protecting democracy. But what conservatives are largely concerned with, experts told Vox, is upholding the stability of the government — which happens to be a democracy — not ensuring that democratic systems are preserved and utilized.

The conservative vision, Arrington said — the vision of Yoon’s party and supporters — is rooted in a post-Cold War conception of democracy as oppositional to communism, and centers broadly on “making sure that no one threatens the state” rather than ensuring that democratic principles remain intact.

This political faction was “heavily influenced by government propaganda about anti-Communism, and [the] North Korean threat,” Joan Cho, a professor of Korean politics at Wesleyan University, told Vox. In their view, “whoever is trying to protest against the government, they are North Korean spies. They’re pro-Communist.”

In contrast, according to Arrington, supporters of South Korea’s Democratic Party grew up in an era of pro-democracy protests in the 1970s and 1980s, which has become a guiding force of their politics and which they’ve passed along to the younger generation.

“I think the contentiousness and concerns surrounding stability [have] to do with the polarization, and it’s at both elite level and the mass level,” Cho said. “I think that first became obvious with the impeachment [of former President Park Geun-hye] — that was more obvious at the mass level because of these pro-impeachment, anti-impeachment protests that were going on.”

On a mass level, polarization is expressed through South Korea’s strong protest culture; on an elite level, it looks like the kinds of legislative challenges Yoon experienced with a Democratic Party-dominated National Assembly.

According to Whitmyer, Yoon’s impeachment — on top of that of Park, who was impeached in December 2016 and removed the next year — has created a sense of frustration with the system, even though Yoon’s actions were also hugely unpopular.

“There is starting to become this feeling that, [one impeachment] was one thing, but now it’s happened again, and again,” Whitmyer said. “Whoever the next president [will be], whether they’re a liberal or a conservative, are they going to face many of the same challenges from the opposition wanting to impeach them, either for legitimate reasons or for maybe more petty or smaller claims?”

The sense of chaos and ineffectiveness has fueled distrust in the government, but experts say there’s no clear path for reform that would allow for a political compromise to reemerge — and may not bode well for the future.

According to Whitmyer, “It seems that the pendulum has swung very far in both directions, [and] there really is no longer a middle ground for both sides to work together.”

The Matt Gaetz ethics report, explained

2024-12-23T17:14:21-05:00

Rep. Matt Gaetz speaks during the Republican National Convention at Fiserv Forum on July 17, 2024, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. | John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

After much back-and-forth, the House Ethics Committee released a bombshell report about alleged sexual misconduct by former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), stating that he broke multiple state laws and that he’s previously paid a minor for sex. Gaetz has categorically denied the allegations and on Monday filed a lawsuit aimed at preventing the report’s release.

The review, which is the culmination of a years-long investigation, contains multiple allegations of wrongdoing, including that Gaetz spent tens of thousands paying women, and in at least one instance a 17-year-old, for sex or drugs, and that he’s used illicit drugs like ecstasy and cocaine. Although the Ethics Committee concluded that Gaetz had not violated federal sex trafficking statutes, it found that the lawmaker had broken other state laws.

“The Committee concluded there was substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, acceptance of impermissible gifts, the provision of special favors and privileges, and obstruction of Congress,” the report reads.

There was some question about whether the report would be released, and substantial portions of it leaked before it was formally published. The Ethics Committee, a bipartisan panel that investigates wrongdoing by lawmakers, initially deadlocked when it came to releasing their results in the wake of Gaetz’s resignation from Congress. It’s uncommon for the panel to share its findings after a member is no longer in Congress, though it’s not unheard of.

Gaetz abruptly resigned following his nomination to be President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general. After he withdrew from consideration for attorney general when it became clear that he wouldn’t get sufficient Senate support, the Ethics panel ultimately voted to publicize the report.

The report contains detailed documentation of the allegations it levies against Gaetz and is the product of contacting more than two dozen witnesses and reviewing 14,000 documents. Whether the report will lead to additional legal consequences or political ramifications for the bombastic former member of Congress is still an open question, however. Here’s what you need to know about the report, and what may come next for Gaetz.

What does the report say?

The report centers on allegations of Gaetz paying women, and one teenage girl, for sex, his use of illegal drugs, and his acceptance of improper gifts.

“Commercial sex”: The report alleges that Gaetz paid women for sex on numerous occasions between 2017 and 2020, and paid a 17-year-old girl for sex in 2017.

In the course of its investigation, which included multiple interviews with women who said they had sexual encounters with Gaetz, the Ethics Committee’s report said there were at least 20 instances when he paid women for sexual activity or drugs. They found such payments were made on platforms including PayPal, Venmo, and CashApp, as well as via check and cash. When given an opportunity to explain the payments he made, Gaetz did not provide any information to the committee.

Gaetz allegedly met many of these women via his friend Joel Greenberg, a former Seminole County tax attorney who’s now serving 11 years in prison for multiple crimes, including underage sex trafficking and wire fraud. Greenberg connected with the women via a website called SeekingArrangement.com that aims to link older affluent men and younger women. Broadly, the report says there was evidence that women expected payment for their interactions with Gaetz and Greenberg, with the report citing explicit examples including one when a woman noted: “I usually do $400 per meet.”

One of the people who Gaetz allegedly had a sexual encounter with was 17 years old at the time of their meet-up in July 2017, the report notes. He allegedly had sex with her at a party that month; she did not disclose that she was under 18 nor did he ask her age. The committee concluded that he was not aware that that person was a minor, though the report also notes that “ignorance” of a minor’s age doesn’t shield an offending adult from being charged with statutory rape under Florida law.

Gaetz has repeatedly denied that he paid women for sex and denied that he had sex with a minor.

“In my single days, I often sent funds to women I dated – even some I never dated but who asked,” Gaetz previously wrote on X. “I dated several of these women for years. I NEVER had sexual contact with someone under 18.”

The panel determined that Gaetz’s actions were a violation of Florida state laws addressing commercial sex and statutory rape. It also did not find that Gaetz had violated federal sex trafficking laws, claiming that he did transport women across state lines for commercial sex, but that there was no evidence those individuals were under 18 or that they had been “induced by force, fraud, or coercion.”

Illegal drug use: Two women that the committee spoke with also testified to seeing Gaetz repeatedly engage in illegal drug use including that of ecstasy and cocaine, while additional evidence points to his regular use of cannabis.

Gaetz has denied allegations of unlawful drug use.

The committee found that these actions were a violation of Florida state laws, which bar the use of all three drugs for recreational purposes.

Excessive gifts: The panel alleges that Gaetz also accepted gifts in excess of the $250 limit that Congress members are supposed to adhere to (but that lawmakers, in practice, aren’t always held to). This specifically included a trip to the Bahamas in 2018, during which Gaetz allegedly accepted a flight on a private plane as well as lodgings.

Gaetz has denied these allegations, but failed to provide the committee with evidence that he paid for these services himself.

The committee determined that his acceptance of these gifts was an ethical violation of the House Gift Rule.

Obstruction of Congress: Gaetz did not voluntarily participate in an interview with the committee and also did not respond to a subpoena he faced for testimony. He provided some documents in response to the panel’s requests, but little relevant information, according to the report.

Gaetz has repeatedly cited the lack of charges levied against him by the DOJ inquiry and argued that the Congressional investigation was targeted.

The committee, however, stated that Gaetz was required by federal law to cooperate with a congressional investigation regardless of what the DOJ decided to do with its investigation, or how he may have felt about the House inquiry. Failing to answer the committee’s questions and being unresponsive to its subpoena constitutes “obstruction of Congress,” according to the report.

Why is the Ethics Committee report coming out now?

The Ethics Committee first began its investigation into Gaetz in 2021, but put it on pause once the Justice Department started its own investigation later that year. It took up its review once more after the DOJ inquiry ended in 2023. The department did not release any details about its findings or why it declined to continue its probe, though the New York Times reported that federal prosecutors were uncertain about their ability to make the case that Gaetz had broken federal law.

The panel was scheduled to release its findings in mid-November, right around when Trump announced Gaetz as his AG pick. Gaetz stepped down from Congress swiftly following that announcement, a surprising move as Congress members who are nominated typically haven’t given up their jobs before getting confirmed.

Gaetz’s departure raised questions about whether the committee would still publish the report, with some Republicans arguing that it was no longer in its “jurisdiction” since the conservative was no longer a lawmaker. While Gaetz was still under consideration for AG, the committee deadlocked about releasing the report. After he withdrew from the role, the majority — including at least one Republican member — voted on December 10 to release the report.

“The Committee has typically not released its findings after losing jurisdiction in a matter,” the report reads. “However, there are a few prior instances where the Committee has determined that it was in the public interest to release its findings even after a Member’s resignation from Congress.”

Is the Ethics Committee investigation connected to the DOJ’s investigation?

The two investigations aren’t connected in any legal way, though the Ethics Committee noted in its report that it tried to use some of the DOJ’s work in its investigation. DOJ pushed back on that effort and according to the committee, the DOJ failed to comply with a subpoena and FOIA request for information.

“The Committee hopes to continue to engage with DOJ on the broader issues raised by its failure to recognize the Committee’s unique mandate,” the report states.

The committee hoped to work with the DOJ in part because the two investigations covered many of the same allegations, primarily that Gaetz regularly paid women for sex, had sex with a minor, and transported women across state lines for the purpose of engaging in commercial sex.

The DOJ investigation, which started in 2020 during Trump’s previous term, had a more limited scope than the ethics investigation. That’s because the DOJ looks for proof that a federal crime was committed, while the ethics panel is concerned with — as the report put it — “upholding the integrity of our government institutions.” That is, an act can be deemed unethical without being a federal crime.

Again, the DOJ’s investigation did not result in any federal charges against Gaetz and is no longer open.

Will the ethics report have any legal repercussions?

Although the federal government is no longer investigating Gaetz, the ethics report highlights several acts allegedly taken by Gaetz that lawmakers claim are state crimes. And that could lead to further legal entanglements for Gaetz, Donald Sherman, executive director and chief counsel for legal advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told Vox.

“Of course, the committee no longer has jurisdiction over Mr. Gaetz, but … I would venture to guess that there is some conduct that he engaged in that can and should be investigated by local law enforcement,” dependent on state laws, statutes of limitations, and local willingness to launch an investigation, Sherman said.

The ethics report finds that Gaetz violated Florida state law by having sex with the 17-year-old, paying for sex, and using illicit drugs. Florida law enforcement officials have yet to announce any investigations into Gaetz related to either allegation. The DOJ has also made no indication it intends to revisit the matter, and given Gaetz is a Trump ally who was once in line to lead that department, it seems unlikely that Trump’s DOJ would reopen the case into Gaetz.

The people who deliver your Amazon packages are striking. Here’s why.

2024-12-23T11:22:16-05:00

Amazon workers and union members picket outside the DB4 Amazon distribution center in the Queens, New York, on December 20, 2024. | Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Delivery workers continued to picket Amazon facilities in New York City, Atlanta, Illinois, and California after launching a strike on Thursday, following the company’s refusal to engage in bargaining for a labor contract.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has been organizing the workers, though Amazon does not recognize those efforts and claims that the workers are not Amazon employees. (A stance federal labor watchdog the National Labor Review Board, or NLRB, disagrees with.)

The striking workers, who are primarily delivery drivers, are agitating for a contract that offers better pay and working conditions. The Teamsters gave Amazon until December 15 to start contract negotiations. Those did not transpire, leading to a strike timed for the week before Christmas as part of a push to bring the company to the bargaining table. It’s one of the biggest strikes in Amazon’s history, and it’s not clear how long it will last. And it’s already having legal consequences; an Amazon delivery driver and a Teamsters organizer were arrested at a Queens facility Thursday allegedly for disrupting traffic.

“If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed,” Teamsters president Sean O’Brien said in a Thursday statement. “We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it.”

The delivery workers’ strike is part of a larger effort to unionize the workers, including delivery drivers and warehouse employees, who perform Amazon’s shipping and fulfillment services. The unionization battle has been ongoing for years. In 2022, labor organizers had their first major victory, when an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island voted to unionize and formed the Amazon Labor Union. Since then, the Amazon Labor Union joined the Teamsters, which bills itself as the largest labor union in North America and represents workers from a variety of industries, including transportation and health care. The Teamsters say the union represents 10,000 Amazon workers.

There is little indication this week’s strike will result in the type of win the Staten Island workers saw in 2022; Amazon has argued the strike won’t hurt its operations, and dismissed its validity. And while workers trying to organize at Amazon have notched some victories in cases before the NLRB, that body is expected to undergo major, pro-business changes in the incoming Donald Trump administration. All that puts the success of the striking workers, and how the federal government will treat labor in the years to come, in doubt.

Workers are striking to make a statement

It’s not clear how many workers are striking, but they represent only a fraction of the approximately 800,000 people who make up Amazon’s delivery workforce.

Amazon warehouse workers’ poor working conditions, including injuries and insufficient access to medical care, have been well-documented, including in a new Senate report. That’s what inspired the first unionization effort at the Staten Island warehouse.

Drivers and delivery workers say they struggle, too.

“The pay needs to be better. The health insurance needs to be better,” Thomas Hickman, a Georgia-based delivery worker, told CNN. “We need better working conditions. If we do have 400-plus packages, we need someone to be a helper with us, to ride with us.”

This strike isn’t focused on working conditions or pay and benefits exactly, although that’s part of it; it is what’s called an unfair labor practices strike, because Amazon refused to bargain with the workers by the deadline the Teamsters gave Amazon management. The workers are striking to get the company to negotiate a labor contract that sets out acceptable working conditions, pay, benefits, and more. The workers hope to get their rights and benefits enshrined so they can’t be arbitrarily removed by the company.

The Teamsters maintain that the company is violating labor law by refusing to negotiate a contract.

“In some ways, this isn’t so unique,” Eric Blanc, professor of labor relations at Rutgers University’s school of management and labor relations, told Vox. “In many cases, employers will ignore labor laws and refuse to bargain. Sometimes, striking is the way to get them to the table.”

Amazon, however, maintains that the striking workers aren’t even Amazon employees.

“There are a lot of nuances here but I want to be clear, the Teamsters don’t represent any Amazon employees despite their claims to the contrary,” Kelly Nantel, a spokesperson for Amazon, told CNN. “This entire narrative is a PR play and the Teamsters’ conduct this past year, and this week is illegal.” Vox reached out to Nantel to clarify which actions Amazon believes to be illegal but did not receive a response by publication time.

According to Amazon, these drivers and delivery workers work for a third-party contractor — what they call a delivery service partner (DSP). But Amazon doesn’t name the DSPs and advertises for those delivery jobs on Amazon websites. Delivery workers drive Amazon-branded vans and wear Amazon uniforms; they deliver Amazon packages, and Amazon “completely dictates the way the third-party company operates,” Rebecca Givan, professor of labor relations at Rutgers University’s school of management and labor relations, told Vox. “Amazon sets the terms.”

The Teamsters filed unfair labor practice charges against Amazon and one of its California DSPs, Battle Tested Strategies, in 2023, saying that Amazon and the DSP are joint employers of dozens of delivery workers the Teamsters had organized there. In August of this year, the NLRB ruled that Amazon and Battle Tested Strategies were joint employers, and in September, an NLRB regional director lodged a formal complaint against Amazon.

Amazon is not likely to back down any time soon — and the stakes are high

Amazon has “made it very clear that they have no intention of bargaining” with the workers, Seth Harris, senior fellow at the Burnes Center for Social Change and former top labor policy adviser to the Biden administration, told Vox.

First of all, Amazon’s business model depends on low-cost labor and that is easily replaced during periods of high turnover, according to all of the labor experts Vox spoke to. Putting a contract in place that guarantees workers certain levels of pay, benefits, and workplace safety contradicts that model.

Amazon hasn’t recognized the original Amazon Labor Union, even though it is recognized by the NLRB. And they have also spent “tens of millions” of dollars over the years on illegal union-busting activities, Blanc said, including threatening employees’ wages and benefits if they unionized, removing information about union efforts from a digital message board, and firing workers for unionizing.

There are federal laws governing how companies are meant to interact with unions and collective action efforts. But there’s no real penalty for failing to negotiate with workers, Arthur Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, told Vox.

The NLRB is tasked with adjudicating labor disputes, but Amazon (as well as Elon Musk’s SpaceX) have filed lawsuits claiming the NLRB and the current dispute resolution system is unconstitutional. If courts rule in favor of Amazon and SpaceX, that could significantly alter how the federal government handles labor disputes.

Therefore, Amazon can just “delay, delay, delay” negotiating a contract with the striking workers, Wheaton said, hoping that they win their case, or that they will soon have a Trump administration that is much more antagonistic to labor, and an NLRB that is much more friendly to corporations. President-elect Donald Trump will get to fill at least two seats on the NRLB, and is expected to select pro-business candidates; his labor secretary pick, however, is viewed as more pro-labor than expected.

Regardless of what stance the incoming administration takes, the unionization push at Amazon, which has only grown over a relatively short period of time, is likely to continue.

“This strike is a way of making it clear to the company — and the public — that [the push to unionize and negotiate a contract] is not going away,” Blanc said.

Trump’s media lawsuits could do serious damage to America’s free press

2024-12-18T17:49:05-05:00

President-elect Donald Trump speaks at a reception at the New York Stock Exchange after being named Time’s Person of the Year. He followed the event by ringing the opening bell on the trading floor. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images

President-elect Donald Trump’s contempt for the media is well-known, but two lawsuits filed against news organizations offer a worrying look at the next four years for outlets and reporters covering his administration.

Disney, the parent company of ABC News, settled a suit with Trump for $15 million; Trump sued the company because anchor George Stephanopoulos mistakenly said Trump was found liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll, when he was actually found liable for sexual abuse. Trump also sued the Des Moines Register, an Iowa newspaper, this week because they published a poll showing Vice President Kamala Harris would win the state; he also sued the person who produced the poll. Trump is alleging this is election interference. These developments come amid ongoing lawsuits Trump has against CBS and publisher Simon & Schuster.

These kinds of lawsuits aren’t new. They’re meant to be expensive and time-consuming for news companies, even if the outlets win the case. They are also meant to make all news organizations question whether it’s worth publishing critical reporting about public figures — in this case, Trump — given the financial, legal, and public relations risk.

The US has strong protections for the press, so news groups can fulfill their obligation to inform the public, particularly about powerful people and organizations. But Trump’s lawsuits could interfere with their ability to do so.

What are these lawsuits about?

Lawsuits such as Trump’s against ABC, the Des Moines Register, and the Iowa pollster Ann Selzer are commonly called strategic litigation against public participation (SLAPP) suits.

The first such suit Trump filed was a defamation case against ABC News. Trump’s team initially filed the suit in Florida in the spring, after Stephanopoulos said in a March interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) on This Week that Trump was found to have raped Carroll in 1996. In fact, the jury in Carroll’s case found in 2023 that Trump’s actions qualified as sexual abuse, and not rape under the law in New York, where the Carroll case was filed. However, the judge in the case did note that Trump’s abuse did align with commonly held definitions of rape, even if they didn’t meet the specific legal standard.

Defamation cases against the press must meet a very high standard in the US; reporters make mistakes, but that’s not enough to warrant a lawsuit against a reporter or news organization. Defamation cases must prove a reporter acted with actual malice, writing or saying something they knew or had good reason to believe was false.

In July, Disney asked to have the suit dropped, on the grounds that Stephanopoulos’s statements were essentially true, if imprecise, and his reporting was protected by Florida law. The judge argued that a jury could potentially find Stephanopoulos guilty. Then on Friday, she ordered Stephanopoulos and Trump into depositions and for Disney to hand over documents related to the case. Disney reportedly pushed to settle the case in part because the company worried it could lose a jury trial in heavily Republican Florida.

In Iowa, Trump is suing the Des Moines Register, its parent company Gannett, Selzer, and her polling company on the grounds that they perpetrated consumer fraud for producing and publishing a pre-election poll that had Vice President Kamala Harris winning the state. (Trump won Iowa by over 10 percentage points.) The lawsuit accuses Selzer of “brazen election interference,” according to the New York Times.

Trump filed a similar suit against CBS News in October, alleging that an interview with Harris on its program 60 Minutes violated consumer protection laws due to its editing.

SLAPP suits are meant to have a chilling effect

The sort of lawsuits Trump is filing against media companies are “the latest workaround that wealthy and powerful people who want to bully the press have found to attempt to circumvent the well-established safeguards for the press under the First Amendment against defamation and similar claims,” Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told Vox.

Trump may not win these suits, but that’s not really the point.

“What really marks a SLAPP suit, aside from it being legally baseless, is that the intent is not so much to win, but to send a message to bully and punish critics through forcing them to incur legal fees, and not only legal fees, but time costs spent defending against litigation, which can be quite devastating for smaller outlets,” Stern said.

Trump has made clear in the past he knows the purpose of these suits — to induce these costs, and to establish fear of speaking out against him. As Trump infamously said about a lawsuit he brought against the author of a book he did not like, “I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees, and they spent a whole lot more. I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about.”

SLAPP suits have a long history in the US, according to Samantha Barbas, a legal historian at the University of Iowa School of Law.

“Historically, politicians and other public figures have tried to shut down their critics in the press using defamation law in particular,” she told Vox. “Back in the early 20th century, it was really common for public officials to basically try to sue the press out of existence over comments they didn’t like.”

Now, the US has robust press freedom protections, established in the 1964 case New York Times v. Sullivan, which codified those protections. Many states also have anti-SLAPP legislation, and a federal anti-SLAPP law was proposed in 2022. But Trump has said he wants to undo some of those safeguards.

That those protections exist largely because of Supreme Court precedent rather than due to federal law is reportedly also part of why Disney’s lawyers chose to settle — so the case couldn’t go to the Supreme Court and potentially result in a rollback of Sullivan.

“At least one Supreme Court justice, Justice Thomas has expressed skepticism about the New York Times v. Sullivan standard, and would like the Supreme Court to revisit it,” Stern said, although there’s no indication the other justices share Thomas’ opinion.

For not, there is nothing stopping Trump from continuing to file SLAPP suits — and he may even inspire copycat cases, Barbas said.

“When someone wins a libel suit against the press, it will just inspire others to bring claims, and it becomes very dangerous,” Barbas said.

How a tiff over tariffs exposed the Canadian government’s fragility

2024-12-18T10:16:24-05:00

Then-US President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attend the NATO summit at the Grove Hotel on December 4, 2019 in Watford, England. | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Canada’s government is in trouble.

The government currently in charge of the country — led by longtime Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — took its latest hit on Monday, when Trudeau’s right-hand official (and former staunch ally), Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, surprised Canadians by offering her resignation in a spectacular fashion, issuing a letter that sharply criticized her old boss.

Freeland specifically cited her disagreements over how to manage Canada’s economy in the face of looming US tariffs as the breaking point in her relationship with Trudeau. President-elect Donald Trump threatened new tariffs on Canada shortly after his election; that threat has put a strain on Trudeau’s government, but they are only part of a larger problem. Trudeau and his party have been steadily losing public and parliamentary confidence for years. Deals meant to keep Trudeau’s party in power crumbled this year, and pressure on Trudeau to resign has begun to build, especially given his party is expected to suffer in national elections next year.

All that means that, even before Freeland resigned, Trudeau’s administration was inching closer to the brink of collapse. And now, with Freeland’s resignation, Canada’s government is on even shakier ground as it prepares to confront an incoming, adversarial, Trump administration.

Trudeau is unpopular in his party and in Canada

Before the Freeland debacle, Trudeau had two problems: The public was unhappy with him and his party’s policies, and many in his party were unhappy with his management.

Trudeau has been the leader of Canada for nearly 10 years now, and of his Liberal Party for nearly 12. That’s quite a long time to be in power in the Canadian context. In that time, Trudeau’s popularity has taken a beating; although he started out with a 63 percent approval rating, that has dropped to 28 percent in recent polls.

“In some ways, it’s not surprising that Canadians are just kind of fed up with the government, because you get to a certain point in your tenure where you’ve been in there for so long that it’s easy to look around and blame everything that’s wrong on the guy who’s been in charge for 10 years,” Elizabeth McCallion, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, told Vox. “We’re reaching that limit where many Canadians don’t want Trudeau around anymore.”

Canada does have some major problems at the moment. The country is struggling with cost-of-living and housing crises, and debate over the wisdom of the Liberal Party’s immigration and environmental strategies has escalated ahead of the 2025 elections. The Liberal Party’s chief rival, the Conservative Party, has been quick to make connections between Trudeau’s policy choices and these issues.

Conservatives are expected to make major gains in next year’s elections, and rival parties’ political attacks on Liberals and their record have already proved potent, with Trudeau’s party losing what should have been some safe seats in recent special elections. Those losses have helped spur a crisis of confidence for Trudeau within his party.

“He’s been going through sort of a string of setbacks over the last couple of months, including by-election losses — quite significant ones,” Andrew McDougall, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, told Vox. “He lost a [district] in Toronto called St. Paul’s, which was really the core of the Liberal support, and that alone had triggered speculation he might have to go. [Liberals lost] in Montreal as well, which is really where the party has its strongest base — if you can’t win there, you really can’t win anywhere, was the suggestion.”

Freeland’s resignation only renewed and intensified calls for Trudeau to resign — and some of those calls came from members of his own party. There’s almost no way to eject him from party leadership if he doesn’t resign, and no one has stepped forward as a strong candidate for the job. However, the House of Commons could vote to trigger early elections through a no-confidence vote after late January, when they meet again after the holidays.

Elections would only be called early if that vote succeeds, and it’s unclear if it will. Trudeau survived previous no-confidence votes thanks to the support of former coalition partner, the left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP) and the pro-Quebec party Bloc Québécois. But the NDP pulled out of its partnership agreement with the Liberals earlier this year, and Bloc Québécois’s leader said he would work to end Trudeau’s tenure after the Liberal Party failed to meet some of his demands. However, it may not be in the NDP’s interest to dissolve the government now, and if they choose to save Trudeau, the Liberals will keep their hold on power — for now.

“The Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois both want to trigger elections but the New Democratic Party is much less eager to do so because the polls look bad for them,” Daniel Béland, director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, told Vox. “They have propped up the Liberals for years and they could continue to do this when there’s another confidence vote.”

The tariffs factor brought everything to a head

Trump dropped a new factor into all of this domestic turmoil.

In late November, Trump threatened to slap 25 percent tariffs on goods imported from Mexico and Canada “until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!”

The realities of fentanyl trafficking and migrant flows are far more complicated than Trump suggests, and there is little Canada or Mexico could do to quickly alter either. If he were to follow through on his threat, those tariffs would be extremely damaging to both countries; in Canada’s case, the US is far and away its largest and most important trading partner. Those tariffs would make the affordability crisis that has so hampered Trudeau of late even worse.

Freeland was expected to lead Canada’s response to those tariffs, and her resignation letter suggested she and Trudeau disagreed on how to approach the problem they posed.

“The incoming administration in the United States is pursuing a policy of aggressive economic nationalism, including a threat of 25 percent tariffs,” Freeland wrote. “We need to take that threat extremely seriously.”

In the letter, Freeland also accused Trudeau of using expensive economic “gimmicks” — including a pause on certain taxes and stimulus checks for households making below a certain threshold — to retain support, putting Canada in a precarious financial position as it faces “a grave challenge.”

It’s atypical for members of parliament and government ministers to speak out against their party leadership, McCallion and McDougall explained, and Freeland’s departure showed just how unstable Trudeau’s party unity actually is.

Trudeau hasn’t made any public statements since Freeland’s resignation; it’s not clear what his next move is, or how he and his new finance minister, Dominic LeBlanc, plan to deal with either the potential tariffs or internal party discord. Trudeau and Freeland did negotiate a trade deal with the previous Trump administration, and that combined experience could have served Trudeau well.

Trudeau may not get the chance to fully reprise those negotiations, however. Even if he survives a potential no-confidence vote early next year, elections are scheduled for October, and, again, the Conservatives are projected to win.

The danger of Trump’s promise to pardon J6 defendants

2024-12-16T14:46:10-05:00

Then-President Donald Trump speaks at the “Stop the Steal” Rally on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC. | Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

President-elect Donald Trump has been talking for years about pardoning the people who took part in the January 6, 2021, insurrection, and he could do so on day one of his second term.

In a March post on his social media network Truth Social, he said he would “Free the January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned!” In 2022, Trump promised full pardons and apologies, and claimed he was financially supporting people associated with the insurrection. All that culminated last weekend when, in an interview with NBC News’s Kristen Welker, Trump again said he may pardon people who had been convicted of crimes related to the insurrection.

Those pardons would be well within the president’s powers. And they would be a remarkable victory for a collection of groups that have spent the last few years agitating for them. They would also provide Trump with a political win, allowing him to simultaneously reward some of his most fervent supporters while also undermining a legal system he has long claimed is unjust.

Who are the insurrectionists? What charges do they face?

There are roughly 1,500 arrested, charged, or imprisoned January 6 insurrectionists, and among their number are all sorts of people.

The January 6 defendants aren’t just hard-boiled leaders of militant groups; the insurrectionists included an actor, small-business owners, and even a self-proclaimed shaman, many of whom voiced a belief in conspiracy theories. However, some of the January 6 insurrectionists were affiliated with a variety of radical anti-government movements, most notably the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, right-wing paramilitary groups recognized as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Those convicted have been found guilty of a range of crimes, from low-level offenses like trespassing or property damage to grave offenses like seditious conspiracy.

How did pardoning the insurrectionists become a cause for those on the far right?

The push for freeing insurrectionists has its roots in the false assertion, popularized by Trump, that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. That false claim, based on a variety of conspiracy theories, asserts that the 2020 election was improper; thus the insurrectionists were justified in taking action. Furthermore, the insurrectionists’ supporters claim, Justice Department investigations into Trump show that it is weaponized against those on the right, and that makes the prosecution against insurrectionists improper and invalid.

Trump has encouraged this line of thinking, repeatedly claiming that the DOJ is being weaponized against him and his supporters, often saying, as he did following an indictment, “They’re coming after you — and I’m just standing in their way.”

As the trials of insurrectionists unfolded, several groups began to work to draw attention to the trials and recast them as persecution. One leader of these efforts is Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt, a woman shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer during the insurrection. (The officer was investigated by the DOJ; he was cleared of any wrongdoing.) Witthoeft moved to Washington, DC, from San Diego to support January 6 defendants and hold vigils in support of the cause.

Trump has supported the narrative that January 6 defendants are the victims, with Babbitt cast as a martyr and the convicted as “political prisoners.” To be clear, they’re in prison not for expressing political beliefs but for interfering with the political process, committing serious violence, and other crimes.

Now, there is a constellation of pro-insurrectionist groups, like Justice for January 6 (J4J6), American Patriot Relief, J6 Pardon Project, and stophate.com, all of which have called for pardons. Proud Boys leadership has requested clemency, and a slew of other groups and individuals associated with the January 6 insurrectionists have asked for pardons, too.

What happens if Trump does pardon the insurrectionists?

A pardon would help validate two arguments that Trump has made: that the Justice Department was weaponized against him and his supporters and that the 2020 election was “rigged.”

It would also help to fully bring the insurrectionists — many of whom are aligned with the far right — into the GOP fold.

“I think we can look at the movement behind the pardoning, the desire for those individuals to be pardoned, as part and parcel of the mainstreaming of the extremist elements that comprised the Stop the Steal movement now becoming a centralized part of a mainstream political party in the United States,” Matthew Kriner, managing director of the Accelerationism Research Consortium, told Vox.

January 6 insurrectionists have already started running for office themselves, and once freed, those now imprisoned could join their number. Groups like Look Ahead America are not only advocating on behalf of January 6 defendants, but also engaging in political organizing, including voter registration, turnout, and lobbying efforts — all on behalf of the Republican Party.

Pardoned insurrectionists could also go back to the groups that radicalized them in the first place. Some of these groups, like the Oath Keepers, have essentially collapsed following the imprisonment of their leaders, but right-wing antigovernment groups are still plenty active in the US.

A pardon would mean that some of the more extreme insurrectionists could see themselves as having been “given a permission structure to use politically motivated violence,” Kriner said. It’s “a clean slate for them to come back and essentially pick right back up where they were before.”

How Trump could gut the refugee program

2024-12-20T15:08:56-05:00

Demonstrators holding placards chant during a protest on January 30, 2017, outside Downing Street in London against the Trump ban on travel from seven Muslim countries. | Jack Taylor/Getty Images

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to halt refugees from coming to the US in his second term — a promise that will largely be within his power as president to keep.

Trump has said he plans to “suspend refugee admission, stop the resettlement, and keep the terrorists the hell out of our country” on his first day back in office. The rules for refugee admissions were established by Congress, including in the 1980 Refugee Act, but also via legislation directly following World War II. Therefore, any effort to formally end the refugee program would take an act of Congress. However, the president has lots of authority over refugee admissions — and Trump exercised that authority during his first term.

It is up to the president to decide how many refugees will be allowed to enter the US in any given year, and Trump significantly lowered the cap on refugee admissions during his first term. Presidents can also pause admissions, as President George W. Bush did in the wake of 9/11.

“Every president has used their powers to either expand or contract as circumstances might fit,” Eric Welsh of Reeves Immigration Law Group told Vox. “It’s something that is very, very susceptible to his influence.”

Given how significantly Trump eroded the US’ refugee program during his first term, it’s not unreasonable to fear that he would do even more damage this time around. While there are technically legal limits to how much Trump can do to dismantle the refugee program, there is plenty the administration could do practically to gut it.

How does the US refugee system work?

Refugees are migrants hoping to escape threats and extreme conditions in their home country to settle in a safe country, in this case the US.

To be classified as a refugee, migrants must go through a vetting process while they are outside the US. Potential refugees are typically first screened by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and then by the US government. After they pass the vetting process, they then receive refugee status in the US where they are assisted with basics like finding housing, getting children enrolled in school, and signing up for government benefits by the US Refugee Admissions Program.

Refugees can work once they’re in the US, and can apply for US citizenship when they have legal status in the US.

What did Trump do in his first term?

The first time he took office in 2017, Trump paused the refugee admissions for three months.

“The justification was to determine if [the US refugee program] was safe and secure because of alleged security risks,” Welsh said. Trump also barred Syrians from the refugee resettlement program indefinitely; Syrians were not accepted again until 2018.

“And then he kicked that a step further with the Muslim ban, by specifically banning [refugee] applicants from certain countries” — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, Welsh said. The Supreme Court allowed a version of that ban to stand following more than a year of litigation.

Trump also greatly reduced the overall number of refugees allowed into the US over the course of his first term. For example, Trump set a ceiling of only 15,000 refugees for 2021; under Biden, that number has grown to 125,000 for this past year.

What else can Trump do to the refugee program in a second term?

Given his first-term actions to limit refugees, refugee advocates are concerned Trump will go further this next term — and there are several things he could do to increase pressure on the refugee program.

First, he has promised to freeze the program as he did his first term, but it’s not clear for how long the process would be paused or what the justification would be. He could also institute something similar to the 2017 travel ban, Welsh said.

“The concern is, this time around — with four years to think about it — Trump would try and do [a travel ban] again and do it better, because he has so much authority in this arena,” Welsh told Vox.

Of course, Trump could also simply lower the ceiling for how many refugees are permitted into the US on a yearly basis, as he did during his first term.

There are administrative ways Trump and his government could hollow out the program, too, Chris Opila, staff attorney at the American Immigration Council, told Vox.

“The Trump administration could elect to reallocate refugee officers to different tasks, such as asylum within the United States, or credible fear proceedings at the border and sort of pull adjudicative resources away,” Opila said.

Under the previous Trump administration, “with the [federal] resettlement agencies, some of the changes caused them to close some of their offices. And I think that some of what we can anticipate would be similar in terms of measures that slow processing and limit the number of people who can come in,” Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an attorney with the Migration Policy Institute, told Vox.

Ultimately, Welsh said, Trump is unpredictable, and it’s impossible to say what he will or won’t do come January. But if his first term is any indication, refugees hoping to come to the US could face an increasing number of obstacles to a safe future.

Correction, December 20, 3 pm ET: An earlier version of this article misstated the status of refugees when they enter the US.