WASHINGTON, Dec 13 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law on Tuesday at a jubilant celebration that featured U.S. singer Cyndi Lauper performing “True Colors” in front of thousands of supporters on the White House lawn.
The new law provides federal recognition to same-sex marriages, a measure born out of concern that the Supreme Court could reverse its legal support of such relationships.
Cheers erupted from the crowd as Biden signed the bill.
“Marriage is a simple proposition. Who do you love? And will you be loyal to that person you love? It’s not more complicated than that. The law recognizes that everyone should have the right to answer those questions for themselves,” Biden said. “Today’s a good day.”
The event featured performances by pop icons Lauper and British singer Sam Smith.
[1/8] U.S. President Joe Biden celebrates with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin, Rep. Jerry Nadler, first lady Jill Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris after signing the “Respect for Marriage Act,” a landmark bill protecting same-sex marriage, on the South Lawn at the White House in Washington, U.S., December 13, 2022. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
“Well, this time, love wins,” Lauper said before starting to sing.
Made famous by her 1983 song “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” Lauper, 69, said the act offered peace of mind to families like hers and Americans nationwide.
“We can rest easy tonight because our families are validated and because now we’re allowed to love who we love, which sounds odd to say, but Americans can now love who we love,” Lauper, an activist on LGBT issues who has been married to actor David Thornton since 1991, told reporters at a briefing prior to the performance.
Addressing the crowd before the signing, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the bill promoted equality.
“Everyone deserves to bask in the magical blessing of building a union with the person you love,” she said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, whose daughter and her wife are expecting a child, called it “a day of jubilation.”
Reporting by Steve Holland, Andrea Shalal, Katharine Jackson; Editing by Howard Goller and Josie Kao
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WASHINGTON, Nov 29 (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate passed a bill on Tuesday that would protect federal recognition of same-sex marriage, a measure taken up in response to worries the Supreme Court could overturn a 2015 decision that legalized it nationwide.
The narrowly tailored bill, which would require the federal government to recognize a marriage if it was legal in the state in which it was performed, is meant to be a backstop if the Supreme Court acted against same-sex marriage.
It would not bar states from blocking same-sex or interracial marriages if the Supreme Court allowed them to do so.
“Today the long but inexorable march towards greater equality advances forward,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.
“By passing this bill, the Senate is sending a message that every American needs to hear: no matter who you are or who you love, you too deserve dignity and equal treatment under the law.”
[1/4] The U.S. Capitol is seen at sunset on the eve of the first anniversary of the January 6, 2021 attack on the building, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., January 5, 2022. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz/File Photo
The bill was passed 61 to 36, with 60 votes needed for passage. Twelve Republicans joined 49 Democrats in supporting the bill. One Democrat, Georgia’s Raphael Warnock, was absent, as were two Republican senators.
A similar, but not identical, bill passed the House of Representatives earlier this year with support from 47 Republicans and all Democrats. The House would need to approve the Senate version before it is sent to President Joe Biden to sign into law.
No. 2 House Democrat Steny Hoyer told reporters on Tuesday the House would likely take up the Senate’s version of the bill next week.
In June, the Supreme Court overturned the nationwide right to an abortion, undoing 50 years of precedent.
In a concurring opinion, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the court should consider reversing other decisions protecting individual freedoms, including the 2015 ruling on gay marriage.
About 568,000 married same-sex couples live in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Reporting by Moira Warburton
Editing by Chris Reese and Richard Chang
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Gram Slattery
Thomson Reuters
Washington-based correspondent covering campaigns and Congress. Previously posted in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Santiago, Chile, and has reported extensively throughout Latin America. Co-winner of the 2021 Reuters Journalist of the Year Award in the business coverage category for a series on corruption and fraud in the oil industry. He was born in Massachusetts and graduated from Harvard College.
Arguments set for Monday; ruling due by end of June
Oct 27 (Reuters) – When the U.S. Supreme Court next week considers ending policies used by many colleges and universities to increase their numbers of Black and Hispanic students, a conservative activist will be on hand to watch this fateful moment in his long quest to erase racial preferences intended to boost diversity in American life.
The challenges to race-conscious admissions policies used by Harvard University and the University of North Carolina were brought by a group called Students for Fair Admissions founded and headed by Edward Blum, a 70-year-old former stockbroker and unsuccessful Republican congressional candidate.
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in the two cases on Monday, with rulings due by the end of June. The litigation gives its 6-3 conservative majority another chance to issue blockbuster decisions after rulings four months ago overturning abortion rights and expanding gun rights.
The conservative justices – Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – are expected to be receptive to arguments Blum has honed against affirmative action policies, crafted as a remedy to discrimination. As such, Blum may be on the verge of a huge legal victory as he fights race-based policies not only in higher education but in areas such as elections and diversity in corporate America.
“I’m a one-trick pony,” Blum said in an interview. “I hope and care about ending these racial classifications and preferences in our public policy.”
Blum, who is white, has cast his mission as one aimed at creating a colorblind society.
“An individual’s race or ethnicity should not be used to help them or harm them in their life’s endeavors,” Blum said.
His critics paint his work as a war on racial equity aimed at undercutting policies designed to help non-white Americans overcome racial obstacles persisting in U.S. life.
“He’s made it harder for corporations, boards and governments to make racial diversity an explicit goal,” said Kristin Penner, a co-founder of a group called the Coalition for a Diverse Harvard that supports affirmative action. “And thus people of color continue to be blocked out of positions of power.”
Blum’s goal is for the Supreme Court to overturn its own precedents allowing race as a factor in admissions.
Blum lost in a previous case challenging race-conscious student admissions when the court ruled 4-3 in 2016 against a white woman he recruited as a plaintiff suing the University of Texas after being denied admission. Conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy provided the crucial vote. The court has moved rightward since then. Kennedy himself retired in 2018.
With Monday’s arguments, the court will have taken up eight race-related cases engineered by Blum. For instance, a Blum-backed challenge led to a 2013 Supreme Court ruling gutting a central part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that had forced nine states, mainly in the South, to obtain federal approval for voting rules changes affecting Black and other minority voters.
In addition, Blum last year launched a group called the Alliance For Fair Board Recruitment and filed lawsuits challenging Nasdaq rules and California laws mandating gender and racial diversity on corporate boards.
A 1978 LANDMARK
From his home in South Thomaston, Maine, Blum has orchestrated a 14-year legal campaign to challenge affirmative action in college and university admissions.
The Supreme Court first upheld such affirmative action in a landmark 1978 ruling in a case called Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, holding that race could be considered as one of several factors, along with academic and extracurricular criteria, but racial quotas were prohibited. The court reaffirmed that stance in 2003.
Blum in 2008 recruited Abigail Fisher, the daughter of an old friend, and through his first group, the Project for Fair Representation, helped fund her University of Texas suit that yielded the 2016 ruling he called a “grave disappointment.”
By then, Blum had shifted gears to the next generation of cases, forming Students for Fair Admissions in 2014 and turning his attention to Harvard and UNC. Those lawsuits accused UNC of discriminating against white and Asian American applicants and Harvard of discriminating against Asian Americans.
Boston University School of Law professor Jonathan Feingold said Blum was “transparent” in saying he needed Asian American plaintiffs this time around to sue the universities, allowing him to “spin a narrative that affirmative action is pitting students of color against one another.”
Blum raised more than $8 million from 2015 to 2020 for Students for Fair Admissions, most going to covering legal fees. Big checks came from conservative supporters including DonorsTrust and Searle Freedom Trust. Blum said 5,000 smaller donors also contributed.
Students for Fair Admissions has said it boasts 20,000 members. Its critics said it is not a true membership association at all. No Students for Fair Admissions members served as plaintiffs or testified in court in the Harvard and UNC cases as the group lost in lower courts. The Supreme Court in January agreed to hear appeals backed by Blum in both cases.
The Harvard lawsuit accused the university of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination based on race, color or national origin under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.
The UNC lawsuit accused that university of violating the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law. Blum and his supporters argue that the 14th Amendment bars government entities including public universities like UNC from treating people differently due to race.
“His efforts and broader project are paying off because now because you have a court that is very receptive to the specific arguments that are being made here,” Feingold said.
For Blum, potential victories over Harvard and UNC may not be the final word in the fight against racial preferences in student admissions.
“It might be the beginning of the end,” Blum said. “More likely, it’s probably the end of the beginning.”
Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham
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Nate Raymond reports on the federal judiciary and litigation. He can be reached at nate.raymond@thomsonreuters.com.
WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (Reuters) – Former President Donald Trump was ordered on Friday to testify under oath and provide documents to the House of Representatives committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.
The committee said it had sent a subpoena to Trump requiring documents to be submitted to the panel by Nov. 4 and for him to appear for deposition testimony beginning on or about Nov. 14.
Deposition testimony often refers to closed-door, videotaped questioning of a witness on the record. Such testimony could be made public and become part of a final report by the special panel.
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“As demonstrated in our hearings, we have assembled overwhelming evidence, including from dozens of your former appointees and staff, that you personally orchestrated and oversaw a multi-part effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and to obstruct the peaceful transition of power,” the committee wrote in a letter to Trump on Friday.
The committee is seeking a wide range of documents from Trump that would detail communications he may have had over a period of several months leading up to the Jan. 6 riot and beyond with lawmakers, Oath Keepers and Proud Boys members, as well as associates and former aides, including Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn and Rudy Giuliani.
Additional documents, text messages and other communications being sought relate to information detailing possible travel of people to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, communications relating to efforts to encourage state legislatures or lawmakers to take actions that would have delayed Congress’ certification of the presidential election or changes in states that would have certified an alternate slate of “electors” that would support naming Trump as the winner of the 2020 election.
Trump, who regularly refers to the panel as the “unselect committee,” has accused it of waging unfair political attacks on him while refusing to investigate his charges of widespread election fraud.
He is not likely to cooperate with the subpoena and could simply try to run out the clock on a committee whose mandate will likely end early next year if Republicans win a majority in the House in November’s midterm elections.
Thousands of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after Trump delivered a fiery speech at a rally near the White House featuring false claims that his defeat in the 2020 presidential election by Democrat Joe Biden was the result of fraud.
Police clear the U.S. Capitol Building with tear gas as supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump gather outside, in Washington, U.S. January 6, 2021. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith/File Photo
The assault saw rioters smash through glass and battle police. Five people including a police officer died during or shortly after the riot, more than 140 police officers were injured, the Capitol suffered millions of dollars in damage and Pence, members of Congress and staff were sent running for their lives.
The committee announcement came hours after Steve Bannon, a former adviser to Trump, was sentenced to four months in federal prison for refusing to cooperate with the panel’s investigation. He is free, however, pending his appeal. read more
PRIOR PRESIDENTIAL TESTIMONY
The committee made clear that congressional testimony by a former or sitting president was not unprecedented. The letter listed seven former presidents — most recently Gerald Ford — having testified after leaving office. “Even sitting presidents, including Abraham Lincoln and Gerald Ford” also appeared while still in the White House, it said.
“In short, you were at the center of the first and only effort by any U.S. president to overturn an election and obstruct the peaceful transition of power, ultimately culminating in a bloody attack on our own Capitol and on the Congress itself,” Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson and Vice Chair Liz Cheney wrote Trump.
Committee members have not said how they will proceed if Trump disregards his subpoena.
Federal law says that failure to comply with a congressional subpoena is a misdemeanor, punishable by one to 12 months imprisonment. If the select committee’s subpoena is ignored, the committee would vote to refer the issue to the full House. The House then would vote on whether to make a referral to the Department of Justice, which has the authority to decide whether to bring charges.
The rioters were attempting to stop Congress’ formal certification of Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
The House Jan. 6 select committee has held a series of hearings making its case – via documents, live witness testimony and recorded testimony from interviews conducted behind closed doors – that Trump was largely responsible for the deadly assault on the Capitol.
They argued that the Republican planned in advance to deny his election defeat, failed for hours to call off the thousands of his supporters who stormed the Capitol and followed through with his false claims that the election was stolen even as close advisers told him he had lost.
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Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Doina Chiacu; Additional reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Alistair Bell and Daniel Wallis
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WASHINGTON, Oct 13 (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters voted unanimously on Thursday to subpoena the former president, a move that could lead to criminal charges if he does not comply.
The House select committee’s seven Democratic and two Republican members voted 9-0 in favor of issuing a subpoena for Trump to provide documents and testimony under oath in connection with the storming of the Capitol.
“He must be accountable. He is required to answer for his actions. He is required to answer for those police officers who put their lives and bodies on the line to defend our democracy. He is required to answer to those millions of Americans whose votes he wanted to throw out as part of his scheme to remain in power,” the panel’s Democratic chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, said.
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The vote came after the committee spent more than two hours making its case – via statements from members, documents, and recorded testimony – that Trump planned to deny his 2020 election defeat in advance, failed to call off the thousands of supporters who stormed the Capitol, and followed through with his false claims that the election was stolen even as close advisers told him he had lost.
Federal law says that failure to comply with a congressional subpoena is a misdemeanor, punishable by one to 12 months imprisonment. If the select committee’s subpoena is ignored, the full House must vote on whether to make a referral to the Department of Justice, which has the authority to decide whether to bring charges.
LOOMING MID-TERMS
The subpoena is expected within days, and would typically give Trump a date by which he should comply. It was not clear when the full House – which is out of Washington until mid-November – could vote on whether to make a criminal referral.
Trump responded to the vote with angry comments on his social media service Truth Social. “Why did they wait until the very end, the final moments of their last meeting? Because the Committee is a total ‘BUST’ that has only served to further divide our Country which, by the way, is doing very badly – A laughing stock all over the World?” he wrote.
One former Trump adviser, Steve Bannon, is due to be sentenced next week after a jury found him guilty of contempt of Congress charges for not complying with a committee subpoena. But the Justice Department declined to charge another, Mark Meadows, who the House had also suggested should be prosecuted.
Federal prosecutors are also investigating the former president’s removal of classified documents from the White House at the end of his term, and have warned that they believe they have not yet recovered all the documents taken.
The House select committee has been investigating the attack on the Capitol, which left more than 140 police officers injured and led to several deaths, for more than a year, interviewing over 1,000 witnesses.
U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol meets for a hearing in the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, U.S., October 13, 2022. Alex Wong/Pool via REUTERS
Thompson said he recognized that subpoenaing a former president was a serious action, but argued that the stakes were high for the future of U.S. democracy.
Thursday’s meeting followed eight hearings earlier this year and one in July 2021. There were no live witnesses on Thursday, but the panel presented videotaped testimony to build a case that Trump’s efforts to overturn his November 2020 presidential election defeat constituted illegal conduct, far beyond normal politics.
FEARS OF VIOLENCE
The committee presented evidence from Secret Service agents and intelligence officials who said before Jan.6 that they expected violence at the pro-Trump rally and believed there were caches of weapons around Washington.
“Their plan is to literally kill people. Please please take this tip seriously and investigate further,” a Dec. 26 Secret Service email said.
Thursday’s vote could be the committee’s last public action before the Nov. 8 midterm elections that will determine whether President Joe Biden’s fellow Democrats or Trump’s Republicans control Congress.
The committee is also due to release a report on its findings within the coming weeks.
Representative Liz Cheney, the panel’s Republican vice chairperson, said the panel might ultimately decide to make a series of criminal referrals to the Department of Justice.
The hearings held this year may have convinced some Republicans that Trump bears some responsibility for the attack. A two-day Reuters/Ipsos poll concluded on Wednesday showed two in five Republicans view Trump as at least partly responsible for the attack.
Previous hearings focused on Trump’s inaction before and during the storming of the Capitol, his pressure on Vice President Mike Pence to deny Biden’s victory, militias whose members participated in the attack, and Trump’s interactions with close advisers questioning his false allegations of massive voter fraud.
The one-time reality television star has denied wrongdoing and hinted he will seek the White House again in 2024. He regularly holds rallies where he continues to claim falsely that he lost the election because of widespread fraud.
More than 880 people have been arrested in connection with the violence, with more than 400 guilty pleas so far.
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Reporting by Patricia Zengerle, Moira Warburton and Doina Chiacu; Additional reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Scott Malone, Aurora Ellis and Rosalba O’Brien
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Facebook, Google and Twitter logos are seen in this combination photo from Reuters files. REUTERS/File Photo
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Sept 16 (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court on Friday upheld a Texas law that bars large social media companies from banning or censoring users based on “viewpoint,” a setback for technology industry groups that say the measure would turn platforms into bastions of dangerous content.
The largely 2-1 ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in New Orleans, sets up the potential for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the law, which conservatives and right-wing commentators have said is necessary to prevent “Big Tech” from suppressing their views.
“Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say,” Judge Andrew Oldham, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, wrote in the ruling.
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The Texas law was passed by the state’s Republican-led legislature and signed by its Republican governor.
The tech groups that challenged the law and were on the losing end of Friday’s ruling include NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which count Meta Platforms’ (META.O) Facebook, Twitter (TWTR.N) and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube as members.
They have sought to preserve rights to regulate user content when they believe it may lead to violence, citing concerns that unregulated platforms will enable extremists such as Nazi supporters, terrorists and hostile foreign governments.
The association on Friday said it disagreed with forcing private companies to give equal treatment to all viewpoints. “‘God Bless America’ and ‘Death to America’ are both viewpoints, and it is unwise and unconstitutional for the state of Texas to compel a private business to treat those the same,” it said in a statement.
Some conservatives have labeled the social media companies’ practices abusive, pointing to Twitter’s permanent suspension of Trump from the platform shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his supporters. Twitter had cited “the risk of further incitement of violence” as a reason.
The Texas law forbids social media companies with at least 50 million monthly active users from acting to “censor” users based on “viewpoint,” and allows either users or the Texas attorney general to sue to enforce the law.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Twitter hailed the ruling as “massive victory for the constitution and free speech.”
Because the 5th Circuit ruling conflicts with part of a ruling by the 11th Circuit, the aggrieved parties have a stronger case for petitioning the Supreme Court to hear the matter.
In May, the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, found that most of a similar Florida law violates the companies’ free speech rights and cannot be enforced. read more
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Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Leslie Adler
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FILE PHOTO – Abortion rights protesters participate in nationwide demonstrations following the leaked Supreme Court opinion suggesting the possibility of overturning the Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision, in Houston, Texas, U.S., May 14, 2022. REUTERS/Callaghan O’Hare
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Aug 24 (Reuters) – A federal judge on Wednesday blocked Idaho from enforcing a ban on abortions when pregnant women require emergency care, a day after a judge in Texas ruled against President Joe Biden’s administration on the same issue.
The conflicting rulings came in two of the first lawsuits over Biden’s attempts to keep abortion legal after the conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized the procedure nationwide.
Legal experts said the dueling rulings in Idaho and Texas could, if upheld on appeal, force the Supreme Court to wade back into the debate.
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About half of U.S. states have or are expected to seek to ban or curtail abortions following Roe’s reversal. Those states include Idaho and Texas, which like 11 others adopted “trigger” laws banning abortion upon such a decision.
Abortion is already illegal in Texas under a separate, nearly century-old abortion ban that took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision. Idaho’s trigger ban takes effect on Thursday, the same day as in Texas and Tennessee.
In Idaho, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill agreed with the U.S. Department of Justice that the abortion ban taking effect Thursday conflicts with a federal law that ensures patients can receive emergency “stabilizing care.”
Winmill, who was appointed to the court by former Democratic President Bill Clinton, issued a preliminary injunction blocking Idaho from enforcing its ban to the extent it conflicts with federal law, citing the threat to patients.
“One cannot imagine the anxiety and fear (a pregnant woman) will experience if her doctors feel hobbled by an Idaho law that does not allow them to provide the medical care necessary to preserve her health and life,” Winmill wrote.
The Justice Department has said the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act requires abortion care in emergency situations.
“Today’s decision by the District Court for the District of Idaho ensures that women in the State of Idaho can obtain the emergency medical treatment to which they are entitled under federal law,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a written statement.
“The Department of Justice will continue to use every tool at its disposal to defend the reproductive rights protected by federal law,” Garland said. The DOJ has said that it disagrees with the Texas ruling and is considering next legal steps.
U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix ruled in the Texas case that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services went too far by issuing guidance that the same federal law guaranteed abortion care.
Hendrix agreed with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, that the guidance issued in July “discards the requirement to consider the welfare of unborn children when determining how to stabilize a pregnant woman.”
Hendrix, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, said the federal statute was silent as to what a doctor should do when there is a conflict between the health of the mother and the unborn child and that the Texas law “fills that void.”
Hendrix issued an injunction barring enforcement of the HHS guidance in Texas and against two groups of anti-abortion doctors who also challenged it, saying the Idaho case showed a risk the Biden administration might try to enforce it.
Hendrix declined to issue a nationwide injunction as Paxton wanted.
Appeals are expected in both cases and would be heard by separate appeals courts, one based in San Francisco with a reputation for leaning liberal and another in New Orleans known for conservative rulings.
Greer Donley, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh Law School and expert on abortion law, said that if the conflicting rulings were upheld the U.S. Supreme Court may feel pressured to intervene.
“Without a federal right abortion, this is the type of legal chaos that most people were predicting would be happening,” she said.
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Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Grant McCool and Christopher Cushing
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Nate Raymond reports on the federal judiciary and litigation. He can be reached at nate.raymond@thomsonreuters.com.
Aug 7 (Reuters) – The Republican nominee for Michigan attorney general led a team that gained unauthorized access to voting equipment while hunting for evidence to support former President Donald Trump’s false election-fraud claims, according to a Reuters analysis of court filings and public records.
The analysis shows that people working with Matthew DePerno – the Trump-endorsed nominee for the state’s top law-enforcement post – examined a vote tabulator from Richfield Township, a conservative stronghold of 3,600 people in northern Michigan’s Roscommon County.
The Richfield security breach is one of four similar incidents being investigated by Michigan’s current attorney general, Democrat Dana Nessel. Under state law, it is a felony to seek or provide unauthorized access to voting equipment.
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DePerno did not respond to a request for comment.
The involvement of a Republican attorney general nominee in a voting-system breach comes amid a national effort by backers of Trump’s fraud falsehoods to win state offices that could prove critical in deciding any future contested elections.
In Arizona last week, three Trump-backed candidates who claim the 2020 election was stolen won Republican primary elections for governor, attorney general and secretary of state, the top official overseeing elections. In Pennsylvania, Republican gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano has vowed to decertify any election he considers fraudulent through his appointed secretary of state. Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania are all presidential election battlegrounds.
Trump lavished praise on DePerno before a large audience this weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas. “He’s going to make sure that you are going to have law and order and fair elections,” Trump said, pumping his fist as DePerno stood up in the audience and waved. “That’s an important race.”
Reuters established the connection between Michigan’s DePerno and the Richfield voting-system breach by matching the serial number of the township’s tabulator to a photograph in a publicly released report written by a member of DePerno’s team. The photograph showed a printed record of a vote-tabulator’s activity, which also included a string of ten digits. Reuters confirmed that those numbers matched the serial number of a Richfield vote tabulator through public records obtained from the township. State officials had previously identified Richfield as the site of a voting-equipment security breach.
DePerno had submitted the report as evidence in a failed lawsuit challenging the 2020 election results in a different Michigan county, Antrim. The report claimed that Dominion and ES&S election equipment was vulnerable to hacking and vote-rigging.
Reuters asked an election-security expert to review the materials. Kevin Skoglund, president and chief technologist for the nonpartisan Citizens for Better Elections, an election-security advocacy organization, said the matching numbers indicate that DePerno’s team had access to the Richfield Township tabulator or its data drives.
DePerno led the “Michigan Antrim County Election Lawsuit & Investigation Team,” which included himself, Detroit attorney Stefanie Lambert, private investigator Michael Lynch, and James Penrose, a former analyst for the National Security Agency, according to promotional material for a July 2021 fundraising event in California sponsored by a conservative group that advertised appearances by DePerno’s team members. Penrose, who had assisted other prominent Trump allies in their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, authored the report that Reuters tied to a tabulator involved in the Richfield Township security breach.
Lambert, Lynch and Penrose did not respond to requests for comment.
The previously unreported link to GOP attorney general candidate DePerno and his associates comes as Democratic incumbent Nessel advances her probe, which she launched in February 2022. Nessel is seeking re-election, which would create a conflict of interest if her political opponent became a suspect in her office’s investigation.
The attorney general’s office declined to comment on the specifics of its investigation but said Nessel would “take appropriate steps to remove herself and her department should a conflict arise.”
Those steps include requesting a special prosecutor to look into the election breaches, according to a letter from the attorney general advising the secretary of state of the request. The request was sent to the Prosecuting Attorneys Coordinating Council, an autonomous entity within the attorney general’s office that would decide whether a special prosecutor is warranted.
Nessel’s office started investigating the voting-system security breaches after a request from Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. In a February statement, Benson said that “at least one unnamed third party” had gained access to tabulation machines and data drives from Richfield Township and Roscommon County.
Jake Rollow, a spokesperson for the secretary of state, said the office does not believe DePerno’s team had legal approval to access ES&S voting equipment. Rollow declined to comment further on the attorney general’s investigation but emphasized its importance. “To ensure Michigan’s elections are secure in the future, there must be consequences now for the people who illegally accessed the state’s voting machines,” he said.
ES&S did not respond to requests for comment.
SEIZING ON A GLITCH
Voting and vote-counting equipment is subject to strict chain-of-custody requirements to ensure accuracy and guard against fraud. Access to tabulators is tightly restricted, and any machine compromised by an unauthorized person is typically taken out of commission.
The four cases being investigated by Nessel are among at least 17 incidents identified by Reuters nationwide in which Trump supporters gained or attempted to gain unauthorized access to voting equipment. Michigan accounts for 11 of them, reflecting how conspiracy theorists sought to capitalize on an error in the initial reporting of 2020 results in Antrim County to allege widespread fraud in the state, without evidence.
A state review of the Antrim County incident found that a failure to properly update software caused a computer glitch that resulted in county officials initially reporting Joe Biden as the winner of the reliably Republican county. The officials quickly acknowledged and corrected the mistake, and Trump’s victory was affirmed by a hand tally of every vote cast.
DePerno seized on the confusion, filing a lawsuit making the unfounded claim that tabulators made by Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems had been rigged to flip votes from Trump to Biden in Antrim County.
“No evidence of machine fraud or manipulation in the 2020 election has ever been presented in Michigan or any other state, and courts in Michigan and elsewhere have dismissed such claims as baseless,” Dominion spokesman Tony Fratto said.
In early December 2020, 13th Circuit Court Judge Kevin Elsenheimer granted DePerno’s legal team permission to take forensic images of Antrim County voting equipment to search for evidence of election fraud. The court order was limited to Antrim, where only Dominion equipment was used. The order did not extend to other jurisdictions or machines made by other voting-system providers.
Yet DePerno’s team submitted two reports in April 2021 to the court that revealed they had also examined equipment made by Election Systems & Software (ES&S).
The report written by Penrose, dated April 9, contained a photograph of a “summary tape” with information about a tabulator’s activity on election night, such as when results were submitted to the county. Among other things, the tape showed a sequence of figures: 0317350497.
That is the serial number for one of two ES&S DS200 tabulators Richfield Township used during the 2020 vote, according to copies of documents obtained by Reuters through a public-records request.
Skoglund, the election-security specialist consulted by Reuters, said the matching numbers indicate that the report’s author had access to either Richfield’s tabulator or a data drive containing the results and other information on the machine.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that the Penrose photograph is output from that same DS200 — that he had physical hands-on access,” Skoglund told Reuters.
A second person familiar with the workings of ES&S voting equipment examined the records obtained by Reuters and concurred that the tabulator tape shown in the Penrose report matches the machine with the same serial number.
MORE MACHINES
The Penrose report was part of a series of submissions from DePerno’s team that failed to convince Judge Elsenheimer. At an April 12, 2021 hearing, the judge shut down DePerno’s attempt to subpoena several Michigan counties for access to election data and equipment.
DePerno gave an interview later the same day to two right-wing websites, Gateway Pundit and 100 Percent Fed Up. DePerno said that Penrose had examined an ES&S machine. He added that the team had also looked at Dominion equipment “outside of Antrim County.” The attorney said he didn’t consider Elsenheimer’s ruling a dead-end.
“Maybe there will be some county somewhere that decides to come forward and cooperate. That would be nice,” DePerno told the websites.
In reality, DePerno’s associates had already taken possession of voting machines from local officials in Richfield Township in Roscommon County and Lake Township in Missaukee County, according to police records and text messages acquired through public records requests.
Lynch, the private investigator who worked with DePerno on his Antrim county case, exchanged texts with Lake Township clerk Korinda Winkelmann on March 20, 2021. Lynch asked for help accessing a Dominion device she had provided to him, according to the messages, obtained by Reuters through a public-records requests. Winkelman shared with Lynch an operational manual and a password for the device, while also speculating on how election systems might be rigged.
Lynch had no authorization to examine the machine, and the incident remains under state investigation. Winkelmann did not respond to requests for comment.
Elsenheimer dismissed the Antrim suit in May 2021, a decision that was affirmed this year by the Michigan Court of Appeals. DePerno’s fraud claims have been widely debunked. A Republican-led Michigan Senate committee issued a scathing report in June 2021 that called DePerno’s various allegations “demonstrably false.”
In September 2021, Trump endorsed DePerno as the Republican nominee for Michigan attorney general, praising his pursuit of “fair and accurate elections” and his ongoing effort to “reveal the truth about the Nov. 3 presidential election scam.”
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Reporting by Nathan Layne; additional reporting by Peter Eisler; editing by Brian Thevenot
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
LUVERNE, Alabama, July 22 (Reuters) – A subsidiary of Hyundai Motor Co has used child labor at a plant that supplies parts for the Korean carmaker’s assembly line in nearby Montgomery, Alabama, according to area police, the family of three underage workers, and eight former and current employees of the factory.
Underage workers, in some cases as young as 12, have recently worked at a metal stamping plant operated by SMART Alabama LLC, these people said. SMART, listed by Hyundai in corporate filings as a majority-owned unit, supplies parts for some of the most popular cars and SUVs built by the automaker in Montgomery, its flagship U.S. assembly plant.
In a statement sent after Reuters first published its findings on Friday, Hyundai (005380.KS) said it “does not tolerate illegal employment practices at any Hyundai entity. We have policies and procedures in place that require compliance with all local, state and federal laws.” It didn’t answer detailed questions from Reuters about the findings.
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SMART, in a separate statement, said it follows federal, state and local laws and “denies any allegation that it knowingly employed anyone who is ineligible for employment.” The company said it relies on temporary work agencies to fill jobs and expects “these agencies to follow the law in recruiting, hiring, and placing workers on its premises.”
SMART didn’t answer specific questions about the workers cited in this story or on-the-job scenes they and other people familiar with the factory described.
Reuters learned of underage workers at the Hyundai-owned supplier following the brief disappearance in February of a Guatemalan migrant child from her family’s home in Alabama.
The girl, who turns 14 this month, and her two brothers, aged 12 and 15, all worked at the plant earlier this year and weren’t going to school, according to people familiar with their employment. Their father, Pedro Tzi, confirmed these people’s account in an interview with Reuters.
Police in the Tzi family’s adopted hometown of Enterprise also told Reuters that the girl and her siblings had worked at SMART. The police, who helped locate the missing girl, at the time of their search identified her by name in a public alert.
Reuters is not using her name in this article because she is a minor.
The police force in Enterprise, about 45 miles from the plant in Luverne, doesn’t have jurisdiction to investigate possible labor-law violations at the factory. Instead, the force notified the state attorney general’s office after the incident, James Sanders, an Enterprise police detective, told Reuters.
Mike Lewis, a spokesperson at the Alabama attorney general’s office, declined to comment. It’s unclear whether the office or other investigators have contacted SMART or Hyundai about possible violations. On Friday, in response to Reuters’ reporting, a spokesperon for the Alabama Department of Labor said it would be coordinating with the U.S. Department of labor and other agencies to investigate.
Pedro Tzi’s children, who have now enrolled for the upcoming school term, were among a larger cohort of underage workers who found jobs at the Hyundai-owned supplier over the past few years, according to interviews with a dozen former and current plant employees and labor recruiters.
Several of these minors, they said, have foregone schooling in order to work long shifts at the plant, a sprawling facility with a documented history of health and safety violations, including amputation hazards.
Most of the current and former employees who spoke with Reuters did so on the condition of anonymity. Reuters was unable to determine the precise number of children who may have worked at the SMART factory, what the minors were paid or other terms of their employment.
The revelation of child labor in Hyundai’s U.S. supply chain could spark consumer, regulatory and reputational backlash for one of the most powerful and profitable automakers in the world. In a “human rights policy” posted online, Hyundai says it forbids child labor throughout its workforce, including suppliers.
The company recently said it will expand in the United States, planning over $5 billion in investments including a new electric vehicle factory near Savannah, Georgia.
“Consumers should be outraged,” said David Michaels, the former U.S. assistant secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, with whom Reuters shared the findings of its reporting.
“They should know that these cars are being built, at least in part, by workers who are children and need to be in school rather than risking life and limb because their families are desperate for income,” he added.
At a time of U.S. labor shortages and supply chain disruptions, labor experts told Reuters there are heightened risks that children, especially undocumented migrants, could end up in workplaces that are hazardous and illegal for minors.
In Enterprise, home to a bustling poultry industry, Reuters earlier this year chronicled how a Guatemalan minor, who migrated to the United States alone, found work at a local chicken processing plant read more .
“WAY TOO YOUNG”
Alabama and federal laws limit minors under age 18 from working in metal stamping and pressing operations such as SMART, where proximity to dangerous machinery can put them at risk. Alabama law also requires children 17 and under to be enrolled in school.
Michaels, who is now a professor at George Washington University, said safety at U.S.-based Hyundai suppliers was a recurrent concern at OSHA during his eight years leading the agency until he left in 2017. Michaels visited Korea in 2015, and said he warned Hyundai executives that its heavy demand for “just-in-time” parts was causing safety lapses.
The SMART plant builds parts for the popular Elantra, Sonata, and Santa Fe models, vehicles that through June accounted for almost 37% of Hyundai’s U.S. sales, according to the carmaker. The factory has received repeated OSHA penalties for health and safety violations, federal records show.
A Reuters review of the records shows SMART has been assessed with at least $48,515 in OSHA penalties since 2013, and was most recently fined this year. OSHA inspections at SMART have documented violations including crush and amputation hazards at the factory.
The plant, whose website says it has the capacity to supply parts for up to 400,000 vehicles each year, has also had difficulties retaining labor to keep up with Hyundai’s demand.
In late 2020, SMART wrote a letter to U.S. consular officials in Mexico seeking a visa for a Mexican worker. The letter, written by SMART General Manager Gary Sport and reviewed by Reuters, said the plant was “severely lacking in labor” and that Hyundai “will not tolerate such shortcomings.”
SMART didn’t answer Reuters questions about the letter.
Earlier this year, attorneys filed a class-action lawsuit against SMART and several staffing firms who help supply workers with U.S. visas. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia on behalf of a group of about 40 Mexican workers, alleges some employees, hired as engineers, were ordered to work menial jobs instead.
SMART in court documents called allegations in the suit “baseless” and “meritless.”
Many of the minors at the plant were hired through recruitment agencies, according to current and former SMART workers and local labor recruiters.
Although staffing firms help fill industrial jobs nationwide, they have often been criticized by labor advocates because they enable large employers to outsource responsibility for checking the eligibility of employees to work.
One former worker at SMART, an adult migrant who left for another auto industry job last year, said there were around 50 underage workers between the different plant shifts, adding that he knew some of them personally. Another former adult worker at SMART, a U.S. citizen who also left the plant last year, said she worked alongside about a dozen minors on her shift.
Another former employee, Tabatha Moultry, 39, worked on SMART’s assembly line for several years through 2019. Moultry said the plant had high turnover and increasingly relied on migrant workers to keep up with intense production demands. She said she remembered working with one migrant girl who “looked 11 or 12 years old.”
The girl would come to work with her mother, Moultry said. When Moultry asked her real age, the girl said she was 13. “She was way too young to be working in that plant, or any plant,” Moultry said. Moultry didn’t provide further details about the girl and Reuters couldn’t independently confirm her account.
Tzi, the father of the girl who went missing, contacted Enterprise police on Feb 3, after she didn’t come home. Police issued an amber alert, a public advisory when law enforcement believes a child is in danger.
They also launched a manhunt for Alvaro Cucul, 21, another Guatemalan migrant and SMART worker around that time with whom Tzi believed she might be. Using cell phone geolocation data, police located Cucul and the girl in a parking lot in Athens, Georgia.
The girl told officers that Cucul was a friend and that they had traveled there to look for other work opportunities. Cucul was arrested and later deported, according to people familiar with his deportation. Cucul didn’t respond to a Facebook message from Reuters seeking comment.
After the disappearance generated local news coverage, SMART dismissed a number of underage workers, according to two former employees and other locals familiar with the plant. The sources said the police attention raised fears that authorities could soon crack down on other underage workers.
Tzi, the father, also once worked at SMART and now does odd jobs in the construction and forestry industries. He told Reuters he regrets that his children had gone to work. The family needed any income it could get at the time, he added, but is now trying to move on.
“All that is over now,” he said. “The kids aren’t working and in fall they will be in school.”
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Editing by Paulo Prada
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WASHINGTON, July 19 (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a bill protecting gay marriage rights, after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade imperiled similar precedents that protected rights to same-sex relations and contraception.
The bill, which passed the Democratic-controlled chamber by a vote of 267-157 with support from 47 Republicans, establishes federal protections for gay marriage and prohibits anyone from denying the validity of a marriage based on the race or sex of the couple.
It will now go to the Senate for a vote, where it faces unclear odds in the evenly divided chamber. House Republicans were told to vote with their conscience by party leadership, who did not whip against the bill.
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House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler sponsored the bill after the federal right to an abortion was overturned when the Supreme Court struck down its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.
In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas said the court should also reconsider its past rulings that guaranteed access to contraception and the 2015 right to gay marriage, because they relied on the same legal arguments as Roe.
Pride flags are used to celebrate Pride Month at the Stonewall National Monument at Christopher Park adjacent to The Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village section of New York City, New York, U.S., June 23, 2021. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
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Some congressional Republicans have echoed Thomas’ arguments. Republican Senator Ted Cruz said on Saturday that the high court was “clearly wrong” in establishing a federal right to gay marriage.
Democrats have argued that Congress must enshrine the right to gay marriage into federal law in case the court revisits its past rulings.
“The rights and freedoms that we have come to cherish will vanish into a cloud of radical ideology and dubious legal reasoning,” Nadler said in a statement on Monday.
Under the House bill, states could still restrict gay marriage if the Supreme Court overturns its prior ruling. But such states would be required to recognize marriages that occurred in states where they remain legal.
The House will vote Thursday on a bill to guarantee nationwide access to contraception, another right that Thomas suggested the court revisit.
Democrats are hoping the bills will draw a contrast to Republicans ahead of Nov. 8 midterm elections, in which soaring inflation challenges Democrats’ majority hold on the House and the Senate.
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Reporting by Rose Horowitch and Moira Warburton; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Leslie Adler
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.