SCOTUS PROTESTERS PLEAD GUILTY | Yes Prez, We Will See You In Court | How Dems Can Win The West
May 5, 2017
PRAY YOU CATCH ME
|Yesterday, the five people who disrupted Supreme Court proceedings to protest the Citizens United decision pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges, one month after losing a constitutional challenge to part of the case. It was April 1, 2015 when the justices entered the courtroom and the protesters stood up—and even sang out—in protest. The justices’ response? “Oh, please,” CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS said in remarks captured in a court audio recording, after JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA grumbled, “Give them stiff, stiff sentences.”
HOLD UP
|With the Supreme Court about to consider petitions in several third-party doctrine cases related to cell phone records, Fix the Court is urging the justices who own shares of publicly traded mobile technology firms to sell them before their May 11 conference. Executive Director of Fix the Court, GABE ROTH: “The justices should be well aware of the conflict-of-interest laws on the books, and given the likelihood that publicly traded telecom companies will be litigants or amici in the cell tower cases, the justices should ensure they do not have a financial interest in their outcome.”
DON'T HURT YOURSELF
|The president may have meant what he said when he tweeted “SEE YOU IN COURT” but he may not have wanted to see so much of America’s legal system. Richard Wolf with USA Today reports, “For an executive branch that has yet to fill most of its top jobs or get any major legislation through Congress, the Trump administration already is dealing with an array of court battles — many of its own making — that could stretch through the next four years.”
I'M A'LOOKIN AND I'M A'LIKIN
|Cogan Schneier with The National Law Journal delivers us a list of the five judges to watch in the Fourth Circuit travel ban hearing on May 8. And good news, folks: The hearing will be streamed live via CSPAN and other networks.
TOP-ED
|He doesn’t like JUSTICE NEIL GORSUCH, but he does like that he’s from the American West. In The New York Times, Democratic Governor of Montana STEVE BULLOCK opines that it’s time for Democrats to start winning the West. Bullock pleads with his fellow Democrats to start reaching out and showing up. “If you’re not geographically diverse, it’s hard to even speak a language that makes sense to folks in faraway places. That’s especially a problem in the West, where voters have always mistrusted the federal government.”
OUR LAND, OUR HERITAGE
|In his piece, Bullock also notes that in many places way out West, Democrats and conservatives aren’t too far apart from each other on several issues. Bullock: “In the past decade Democrats in the West have battled a bizarre but powerful right-wing movement to allow wealthy individuals to take ownership of public lands and close them off, an issue on which even some of the most conservative voters here side with Democrats. These are our forests and parks and rivers, great equalizers where all citizens can escape to hunt, fish and hike, activities central to our heritage. But it barely moves the needle in Washington, because it seems like such a faraway issue to people inside the Beltway bubble.”