Today’s Opinions: Trump indictment; SCOTUS ruling; and more
Comment on this storyComment Happy Friday. You’re reading the Today’s Opinions newsletter. Sign up to get it in your inbox. Indicted again, and this time, it’s federal Look, Thursday was nuts — a Supreme Court decision day that also saw the first-ever federal indictment of a former president?! So if Friday is bringing a heavy […] On Thursday, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in a redistricting case out of Alabama and upheld Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, leaving a map that redrew electoral districts to diminish the power of Black voters illegal. Columnist Colby King noted that the charges against former President Trump were more serious than national security issues. Law professors and legal commentators criticized the ruling, while others argued that it upholds the status quo of the court. Meanwhile, New Zealand's prime minister has a new concern about artificial intelligence, which looms large as a target for international cooperation.
Opublikowany : 2 lata temu za pomocą Ronald Patterson w Politics
Sure, Trump was indicted in April in New York for allegedly falsifying business records in an attempt to gain electoral advantage, and risks other charges in Georgia as that election interference case moves forward. But, Ruth writes, “there is something far more serious about an indictment by the government Trump led, and wants to lead again, asserting that the former president is a felon.” For her, the announcement brings a mix of relief that the rule of law is holding and worry about what happens next.
Columnist Colby King is focused less on the political implications than on the national security ones. He knows from personal experience how serious these charges are: “Protecting U.S. classified information was a duty I performed for years in Washington and in Europe. … You vetted those who would be trusted with national security documents, and you maintained safeguards to prevent unauthorized disclosures — the very circumstances we face with the discovery of secrets in Trump’s home.”
As evidence leading to the charges starts to be revealed, a 2021 recording has been reported in which Trump told someone, “This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is like, highly confidential. Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this.” Two of his lawyers have already resigned. Republican politicians are lining up to defend him. So, yeah, we’ll be trying to keep up. Stay with us as this complicated story unfolds.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in a redistricting case out of Alabama and, by a 5-4 majority in which Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts joined the more liberal justices, upheld Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — declaring a map that redrew electoral districts to diminish the power of Black voters illegal. Ruth Marcus hails the ruling as an unexpected reprieve from Chief Justice Roberts for the remaining tenets of a law he despises and “has worked throughout his career to hobble.”
Law professors and legal commentators Melissa Murray and Steve Vladeck see a glass less full. As they point out, all this ruling does is uphold the status quo. “And the status quo is that this court, over the past 10 years, has severely hobbled the law and its protections for minority voters,” they write.
Columnist George Will, in contrast to these others, doesn’t see the Supreme Court’s action as a victory of any kind. Instead, he charts what he sees as a shameful descent from the Voting Rights Act’s guarantee to end racial discrimination at the ballot box to a positive duty to give protected classes proportional representation, which he calls “racialist.” “With its new ruling, the court has again reaffirmed the federal judiciary’s repudiation of colorblind law,” George writes.
Contributor Vladimir Kara-Murza, waiting in jail to contest his sentence for treason in a Moscow appeals court, continues to be our writer most likely to file from impossible conditions. This week, he released a statement prepared for his appeal that includes a haunting warning. “I have some advice for all of those who organized my and other show trials against opponents of the war by trying to present opponents of the authorities as ‘traitors to the Motherland,’ for all of those who are so nostalgic for the Soviet system: Remember how it ended,” he writes. “All systems based on lies and violence end the same way.”
Jacinda Ardern, who stepped down in January as prime minister of New Zealand, has a new concern: artificial intelligence. It looms large as a target for international cooperation in her capacity as a special envoy for the Christchurch Call, “a community of over 120 governments, online service providers, and civil society organisations acting together to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online.”
As she reflects in an op-ed, “Solutions need to be dynamic, operable across jurisdictions, and able to quickly anticipate and respond to problems. There’s no time for open letters. And government alone can’t do the job; the responsibility is everyone’s, including those who develop AI in the first place.”
Congratulations to my neighbors, mom Calaya and dad Baraka, who delivered a gorgeous newborn girl at the end of last month! They are western lowland gorillas and live at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo. Baby Zahra, whose name means “beautiful flower” in Swahili, joins big brother Moke, 5, whom my own kids love to watch play. Rivka Galchen at the New Yorker has a lovely piece on the birth and the growing family. Chaser: In April, our columnist Bina Venkataraman got to delve into the mysteries of tiger sex at the same zoo.
Tematy: Donald Trump