Know Anyone Who Thinks Racial Profiling Is Exaggerated? Watch This, And Tell Me When Your Jaw Drops.

Thursday, April 29, 2021

The next major US voting rights fight is here – and Republicans are ahead After the latest census numbers, Republicans are well positioned to draw districts that will give them an advantage in their effort to reclaim the House in 2022

The next major US voting rights fight is here – and Republicans are ahead

“After the latest census numbers, Republicans are well positioned to draw districts that will give them an advantage in their effort to reclaim the House in 2022

The Los Angeles skyline. California is among the seven states losing a seat in the House. Photograph: Damian Dovarganes/AP

Thu 29 Apr 2021 06.00 EDT

The next major fight over voting rights in the US kicked off Monday: a hugely consequential battle over the boundaries of electoral districts for the next 10 years that will have profound implications for American politics. And Republicansseem to be pulling ahead.

Census officials released a decennial tally of people living in the US, a number that’s used to apportion the House’s 435 seats among the 50 states. The Census Bureau announced that Colorado, Montana, Oregon, North Carolina and Florida will all gain an additional seat in the House, while Texas will get two more. Seven states – California, California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia – will lose a seat.

The numbers accentuated what many have predicted for months: Republicans are extremely well positioned to draw districts that will give them an advantage both in their effort to reclaim control of the US House in the 2022 midterms, and cement control over congressional seats for the next decade.

The constitution gives state lawmakers the power to draw districts and, because of their continued strength in state legislative races, Republicans will dominate the process later this year and can manipulate the lines to their advantage, a process often called gerrymandering.

Even though Democrats earned about 4.7m more votes in 2020 House races around the country, Republicans will have control over the drawing of 187 congressional districts later this year (down from 219 in 2011) while Democrats will have complete control over the drawing of 75 districts (up from 44 a decade ago), according to the Cook Political Report.

Republicans need to win just five seats to retake control of the US House of Representatives, a gap observers believe they can wipe out with gerrymandering alone. Eric Holder, the former US attorney general, told reporters Wednesday he was concerned Republicans could use their complete control of the redistricting process in Texas, Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina alone to overcome that gap.

“What we’re seeing is a Republican party that has shown they’re willing to bend or break the rules of democracy simply to hold on to power,” said Holder, who is leading the Democratic effort to push back on excessive GOP gerrymandering. “If Republicans gerrymander those states, as they have indicated they will, they will have the ability there, almost to take control of the House of Representatives just based on what they do in those four states.”

In 2019, the US supreme court said for the first time that federal courts could not do anything to stop severe manipulation of district lines for partisan gain. One lingering uncertainty is whether Democrats in Congress will be able to pass pending federal legislation to place new limits on the practice. Passing that legislation, however, requires getting rid of the filibuster, a Senate rule requiring 60 votes to advance legislation. Democrats do not yet have the votes to get rid of the procedure.

“You could pass new criteria, including a ban on partisan gerrymandering … require greater transparency in the process,” said Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice. “There’s a lot that could be done.”

Because of a 2013 supreme court ruling, states with a history of voting discrimination, like Texas and North Carolina, will not have to get their maps approved by the federal government before they go into effect. That leaves an opportunity for lawmakers to draw maps that discriminate based on race. Kathay Feng, the national redistricting and representation director at Common Cause, a government watchdog group, warned that voting advocates would be closely monitoring for that kind of discrimination. Much of the America’s population growth over the last decade has come from non-white people.

“Our top priority is ensuring that states that are adding congressional seats recognize the population growth fueled by communities of color in the upcoming redistricting process,” Feng said in a statement.

As federal legislation stalls, Democrats are already signaling they will move aggressively in court to challenge gerrymandering. Shortly after the apportionment numbers were released, Holder’s group filed three separate lawsuits in Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Louisiana – states where Democratsand Republicans share control of the redistricting process – asking courts to be prepared to step in if lawmakers reach an impasse. Such quick machinations are crucial because the redistricting process is moving on a condensed timeline this year because of delays releasing data due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Marc Elias, a top Democratic election lawyer, said this week more lawsuits are likely to follow.

While the Republicans made possible gains, the biggest surprise of the Census Bureau’s Monday’s announcement was that it didn’t result in more of a shift for the party. Projections based on population estimates had predicted Texas would gain three seats and Florida would gain two. Arizona, where districts are drawn by an independent commission, was expected to gain a seat, but ended up not doing so. Minnesota and Rhode Island were both projected to lose seats, and New York could have lost an additional seat.

“Overall, the population shifts to the the south will definitely benefit Republicans, but definitely not as much as people were expecting, just because they got fewer seats,” Li said.

It’s not unusual for the final tallies to be slightly off from apportionment, but Li said he was surprised to see the kind of variation there was this year. There is some concern that the variation in the data may signal an undercount of Hispanic population, especially after the Trump administration repeatedly tried to tamper with the process. Bureau officials said Monday they are confident in the data.

Holder told reporters on Tuesday that it was impossible to separate the upcoming battle over redistricting from an aggressive GOP effort underway in state legislatures to restrict access to the voting booth.

“I have no doubt that the same Republican legislators that have pushed these bills will now try and use the redistricting process to illegitimately lock in power for that party, for them, for the next decade,” he said.”

Opinion: Biden’s address to Congress proves we have an adult back in the presidency

Jennifer Rubin

Image without a caption — President Biden addresses a joint session of Congress on Wednesday. (Pool/Reuters)

“It did not look like a typical presidential address before Congress. Wednesday night’s event, which lacked the packed House chamber due to pandemic guidelines, was missing some of the buzz and drama of past speeches. But there was a far more important difference this year: The return of normal presidential rhetoric and the embrace of traditional democratic values. As an added bonus, Americans saw two powerful women perched behind the president — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Vice President Harris. It made for a compelling, historic tableau and a reminder that only one party sends a consistently inclusive message.

President Biden struck an optimistic tone right off the bat: “Now — after just 100 days — I can report to the nation: America is on the move again. Turning peril into possibility. Crisis into opportunity. Setbacks into strength,” he declared. Without mentioning his predecessor, he echoed messages from his campaign. The country is choosing “light over darkness” and “hope over fear.” He did not shy away from the Jan. 6 insurrection, calling it the “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”

He began, as one would expect, with a recounting of how far the nation has come in fighting the covid-19 pandemic and used the opportunity to urge everyone to receive a vaccination. He called the progress made so far "one of the greatest logistical achievements this country has ever seen.” He touted his accomplishment in cutting child poverty and recounted the economic recovery to date while insisting the country cannot stay still as China and other world powers advance.

In introducing his jobs plan, he directly addressed working-class Americans who did not vote for him or were skeptical of his political promises. “I know some of you at home are wondering whether these jobs are for you. So many of you, so many of the folks I grew up with, feel left behind, forgotten in an economy that’s so rapidly changing,” he said before noting the number of jobs that would not need a college education. Biden then signaled he intends to reach out beyond the Democratic base to independent and Republican voters, not allowing Republicans in Congress to define the terms of the debate.

In a nod to bipartisanship — and a nudge for Republicans to end their obstruction — he declared: “Investments in jobs and infrastructure like the ones we’re talking about have often had bipartisan support. ... I applaud the group of Republican senators who just put forward their own proposal.” He added, “I welcome those ideas. But the rest of the world is not waiting for us. ... Doing nothing is not an option. Look, we can’t be so busy competing with one another that we forget the competition that we have with the rest of the world to win the 21st century.”

Biden used the opportunity to describe the wide range of investments — from broadband to electric cars to new water systems — that remain popular with Americans who do not care whether these things are called “infrastructure.” His basic message did not lack for alliteration: “A blue-collar blueprint to build America.”

He then moved to his American Families Plan, which includes child care, free pre-K and community college, paid family leave, investment in historically black colleges, and another extension of the child tax credit. He also vowed to keep Obamacare premiums and to lower drug prices. Anticipating Republicans’ complaints about taxes, he vowed only to raise taxes on the very rich and corporations. He denounced a tax code that allows big corporations to avoid taxes altogether and noted that the 2017 tax cut failed to pay for itself and pump up the economy. “In fact, the pay gap between CEOs and their workers is now among the largest in history. According to one study, CEOs make 320 times what the average worker in their corporation makes.”

This was a bold populist proposal. “It’s time to grow the economy from the bottom and the middle out,” he said. “You know, there’s a broad consensus of economists, left, right, and center, and they agree what I’m proposing will help create millions of jobs and generate historic economic growth. These are among the highest-value investments we can make as a nation."

Foreign policy usually gets short shrift in these speeches, but Biden touched on his administration’s re-engagement in the Paris climate accord, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, threats from China, his promises to stand up to unfair trade practices and rogue states seeking nuclear weapons. And he emotionally restated his commitment to human rights: “No responsible American president could remain silent when basic human rights are being so blatantly violated. ... An American president has to represent the essence of what our country stands for. America is an idea, the most unique idea in history. We are created, all of us, equal. It’s who we are. And we cannot walk away from that principle.”

He made a powerful pitch for police reform, citing the murder of George Floyd. He said, “We’ve all seen the knee of injustice on the neck of Black Americans,” and then urged the nation to come together to “root out systemic racism in our criminal justice system.” He set a goal of reaching a deal on police reform by the first anniversary of Floyd’s death.

He ticked off a whole list of other priorities, including gun safety, voting rights and immigration. And he refused to be cowed by Republicans’ denial and deflection on the Jan. 6 insurrection. “As we gather here tonight, the images of a violent mob assaulting this Capitol — desecrating our democracy — remain vivid in all our minds,” he said. “Lives were put at risk, many of your lives. Lives were lost. Extraordinary courage was summoned.” This was no mere riot; it was “an existential crisis — a test of whether our democracy could survive." It did, he said, adding that “the struggle is far from over.”

At the close, Biden confronted threats to democracy. He argued that government can be a force for good and that democracy, not authoritarianism, works. He practically pleaded with Americans: “It’s time to remember that we the people are the government. You and I. Not some force in a distant capital. Not some powerful force we have no control over. It’s us. ... In another era when our democracy was tested, Franklin Roosevelt reminded us — in America: We do our part. We all do our part. That’s all I’m asking. That we do our part, all of us.” It was the most compelling part of a long, policy-laden speech.

Biden’s speech was noteworthy in a number of respects. He made multiple pitches for bipartisanship. He spoke softly at times, in intimate terms, and eschewing bombast. He displayed his unique knack of making bold provisions seem reasonable and necessary. He was exceptionally optimistic, declaring that there is nothing Americans cannot do if they do it together. No one will have to endure inane punditry that Biden has finally “grown into the presidency.” He is comfortable in his new job — and determined to do big things.“

At 100 days, Biden seeks to leverage narrow majorities to reverse the Reagan era

Dan Balz

“As President Biden marked his first 100 days in office with a speech to the nation Wednesday, the scope and implications of his domestic agenda have come sharply into focus. Together they represent the most dramatic shift in federal economic and social welfare policy since Ronald Reagan was elected 40 years ago.

Reagan’s small-government philosophy resulted in a decades-long squeeze on the federal government, especially domestic spending, and on tax policies that mainly benefited the wealthiest Americans.

If Biden ultimately gets his way legislatively, and that is a big question mark, those policies would be replaced with ones that would directly address long-standing economic, racial and gender inequities that have only become more apparent during the coronavirus pandemic.

Biden had to wait nearly 50 years to achieve his dream of becoming president. In office, he is operating as if he has no time to spare. Throughout his first 100 days, and again on Wednesday night, the presentation of his agenda shows he believes there is an urgent need to act and an opportunity to do so, but that he has limited time to get it done.

Biden said that to win the competition for the future, the nation needs “a once-in-generation investment in our families and our children.”

His speech was a reflection of his presidency to date: an appeal for big and bold action described in the most workaday rhetoric and by a leader whose demeanor and temperament are the very opposite of his predecessor, former president Donald Trump.

But given the Democrats’ narrow majorities in Congress and a nation still sharply divided over the president’s performance, Biden’s agenda represents a policy and political gamble of enormous proportions, one that will be adjudicated in both the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential election. The politics of redistribution, which are at the heart of what Biden is proposing, could test decades of assumptions that Democrats should be afraid of being tagged as the party of big government.

Biden hopes to change the economy without bad side effects

It is unusual in the modern era for a new president to wait until the 100-day mark to address a joint session of Congress. By now, Biden has had months to shape, offer and begin to move the major elements of his agenda. In that way, Wednesday’s speech was both a summing-up and a call to action.

To date, the politics of the coronavirus pandemic have been central to Biden’s presidency and agenda. Ramping up the pace of vaccinations and moving the country toward a gradual loosening of restrictions, both economic and personal, have been his highest priorities. But as those conditions continue to move closer to pre-pandemic norms, the rest of his agenda will come to the forefront, and with it, a charged debate. Biden’s hope is that the progress on the coronavirus translates into greater public confidence in his leadership in other areas.

If the main outlines of what Biden talked about Wednesday night seem familiar, they are anything but ordinary, beginning with the sheer cost of the three major elements of his spending plans that have already been announced.

Together, the already approved coronavirus relief plan, the infrastructure proposal that was unveiled a few weeks ago and the newly proposed plan toinvest in social welfare programs would total roughly $6 trillion, much of it aimed at middle- and working-class families. Biden would pay for much of the infrastructure and family spending with increased taxes on corporations and on the wealthiest Americans.

“My fellow Americans, trickle-down economics has never worked,” Biden said. “It’s time to grow the economy from the bottom and middle out.”

House and Senate Republicans on April 25 rated President Biden's response to the border crisis, foreign policy and tax plans ahead of his formal joint address. (Amber Ferguson/The Washington Post)

Republicans have branded the president’s agenda as radical, and perhaps by the party’s prior standards — by the standards of the Reagan era — that is the case. It does represent a major departure. But it is also true that Trump embraced tax cuts and coronavirus spending that totaled well over $4 trillion — tossing aside long-standing Republican concerns about deficits and government spending — and also called for a massive infrastructure program of his own, though he never really pushed it.

In other words, the landscape began to change before Biden took office. But it is also the case that Biden has resisted advocating things like single-payer health care that could trigger the kind of political backlash the occurred when President Barack Obama successfully passed the Affordable Care Act. And as happy as many liberal Democrats are with the way Biden is governing, he has not fully embraced all that they would like to see done.

In other times, the $6 trillion cost might have produced sticker shock for many Americans, and perhaps that eventually will be the case. But the programmatic details, where the money would go, so far focus mainly on broadly popular programs, from $1,400 checks to individuals and child tax credits in the coronavirus relief plan to things like universal prekindergarten for 3 and 4-year-olds, two years of free tuition at community colleges, access to affordable child care, paid family and medical leave, and home health care for the elderly.

Government spending on social safety-net programs has been reduced compared with previous years. Over the past decade, needs have gone unattended because of the standoff between congressional Republicans and Obama, the sheer obstructionism of the GOP’s right-wing faction in Congress — whose members resisted virtually all spending — and then the angry politics of the Trump years.

The pandemic and the killing of George Floyd helped shine a bright light on the inequalities in the economy and the social structure, highlighting racial gaps in health care; the crushing of service-sector workers and their families as the hospitality, tourism and restaurant industries took major hits; and the departure of many women from the workforce because the absence of child care and the closing of schools fell most heavily on them.

Biden’s agenda represents a significant rebalancing of the nation’s priorities, though the effects will take considerable time to be fully felt. Money in the coronavirus relief package will be disbursed over the next few years. The money in the two packages that are in negotiation on Capitol Hill would be spent over a much longer time frame, but those trillions would have the greatest impact on changing national priorities.

Public opinion is mixed as Biden pushes to enact the rest of the agenda. The relief package is highly popular, while the infrastructure package enjoys less support, though still a slight majority. There is no current polling on the most recent package, the American Families Plan.

Support for bigger government has shifted since the early part of the previous decade and now stands statistically the same as support for smaller government with fewer services. But when people are asked about Biden, 53 percent say they are concerned that he will do too much to increase the size and scope of government compared with 45 percent who say they are not concerned about that, according to the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll.

What makes Biden’s situation unique from those of past presidents who have pushed for major changes — whether Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson or Reagan — is the difference between sizable real or working political majorities and the thinnest possible majorities upon which Biden’s hopes rest.

Biden is attempting transformative change on a base smaller by far than any of those previous presidents enjoyed, which is what makes the political gamble so big. If he succeeds and the economy roars through 2022 and then the public decides that, rather than concerns about deficits and spending, they prefer a government attending more aggressively to the social inequities, then Biden and the Democrats could prosper. But if things were to go the other way, that could easily put Republicans back in the driver’s seat and allow for the reappearance of Trumpism.

“The Biden administration is making an enormous wager on a certain vision of the future,” said William Galston of the Brookings Institution. “If they turn out to be right, it will not only be transformational but celebrated in history as such. It will have leveraged the thinnest possible political majority into very large accomplishments. But simply to state that thesis is to illustrate just how remarkable it would be if this line of policy and if this political strategy prevails.”

Negotiations lie ahead and Biden has signaled he’s prepared to make some changes. But in broad strokes, he has set his course and it is anything but timid, incremental or risk-free.“

Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Rep. Clyburn: Democrats will ‘surprise a lot of people after redistricting’

udge Declines Immediate Release of Video in North Carolina Shooting, joining in with the “law enforcement coverup of a man shot by police in the back of the head.

Judge Declines Immediate Release of Video in North Carolina Shooting

April 28, 2021, 1:35 p.m. ET14 minutes ago

“Andrew Brown Jr. was killed last week by sheriff’s deputies.

Demonstrators gathered in support of Andrew Brown Jr. in Elizabeth City, N.C., on Tuesday. — Carlos Bernate for The New York Times

ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. — A North Carolina judge on Wednesday declined to immediately release the body-camera footage in the shooting death of Andrew Brown Jr., agreeing with a prosecutor to delay its public dissemination for at least 30 days.

The Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office and lawyers for a group of media outlets, including The New York Times, petitioned Judge Jeff Foster to release the videos in a hearing that came after days of demands by protesters and elected officials to make the footage public.

Judge Foster denied the release altogether to the media outlets, saying they did not have legal standing to request the videos, but said that Mr. Brown’s family could view the footage. He directed the authorities to make redacted versions of the videos from five body cameras and one dashboard camera available within 10 days to Mr. Brown’s adult son, Khalil Ferebee, and his immediate family within one degree of kinship, plus one lawyer licensed to practice law in the state of North Carolina.

In arguments before Judge Foster, the local prosecutor, Robert Andrew Womble, said the body-camera footage shows that Mr. Brown struck deputies with his car while trying to escape and that deputies did not begin firing until after that moment.

Members of Mr. Brown’s family, plus one of the family’s lawyers, were shown 20 seconds of redacted footage on Monday. Chantel Cherry-Lassiter, the lawyer, said the footage showed Mr. Brown sitting inside his car, hands “firmly on the wheel,” when deputies began shooting.

But Mr. Womble, at the hearing, called that account “patently false.”

Also at the hearing, a lawyer for the Pasquotank County deputies involved in the shooting death said the killing was justified.

Mr. Womble, in arguing to delay the public release of the footage by at least 30 days, also said that if charges are brought against the deputies, he would not want the video shown until their trial.

The hearing came amid simmering tension in Elizabeth City, a majority-Black city of about 18,000 people. Residents have been peacefully protesting in the streets since the death of Mr. Brown, who was Black. On Tuesday, the city and surrounding Pasquotank County, both already under self-imposed states of emergency, established nightly curfews from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.

On Tuesday, lawyers for the family, including Ben Crump, who has represented the families of George Floyd and several other people killed by the police, continued to express anger that they were shown only a snippet of what must have transpired, saying that Mr. Brown had been subject to an “execution.”

Deputies from the Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office fired several times at Mr. Brown after arriving at his house on April 21 to serve drug warrants, according to Ms. Cherry-Lassiter. Seven deputies were placed on administrative leave after the killing.

The shooting continued, she said, as Mr. Brown drove away. Lawyers for the family have asserted that Mr. Brown, 42, was unarmed.

The Sheriff’s Office filed a petition in state court late Monday asking that the footage be released to Mr. Brown’s adult son, Khalil Ferebee, after mounting pressure from a range of officials, including Gov. Roy Cooper and the Elizabeth City Council, that it be made public. Under state law, only a judge can authorize the release of body camera footage.

Sheriff Tommy Wooten II, who has faced calls to resign from the local N.A.A.C.P., has said that he supports the release of the footage as long as it would not jeopardize the investigation into the shooting by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation.

The findings of an official government autopsy have not been publicly released. But Wayne Kendall, one of the lawyers for the family, said on Tuesday that an independent pathologist concluded that Mr. Brown was shot four times in his right arm and once in the back of his head, a finding that supported the lawyers’ contention that Mr. Brown had been shot while fleeing the scene.

“This, in fact, was a fatal wound to the back of Mr. Brown’s head as he was leaving the site, trying to evade being shot at by these particular law enforcement officers who we believe did nothing but a straight-up execution,” Mr. Kendall said.

The shooting of Mr. Brown took place one day after a jury found a former Minneapolis police officer guilty of murder in the killing of Mr. Floyd and as police violence against Black people has come under intense scrutiny across the country.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced on Tuesday that it had opened a civil rights investigation into the North Carolina shooting.

And Mr. Cooper, in a tweet, said he had appointed a special prosecutor who would “help assure the community and Mr. Brown’s family that a decision on pursuing criminal charges is conducted without bias.”

Mr. Cooper said his position reflected the recommendation, made in a recent state task force report on criminal justice reform, to appoint a special prosecutor to handle all police use-of-force cases.“

Rudy Giuliani’s Apartment Searched in Federal Investigation - The New York Times

Federal Investigators Execute Search Warrant at Rudy Giuliani’s Apartment

"Prosecutors obtained the warrant as part of an investigation into whether Mr. Giuliani broke lobbying laws as President Trump’s personal lawyer.

April 28, 2021Updated 12:17 p.m. ET

Evan Vucci/Associated Press

Federal investigators in Manhattan executed a search warrant on Wednesday at the Upper East Side apartment of Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who became President Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer, stepping up a criminal investigation into Mr. Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine, three people with knowledge of the matter said.

One of the people said the investigators had seized Mr. Giuliani’s electronic devices.

Executing a search warrant is an extraordinary move for prosecutors to take against a lawyer, let alone a lawyer for a former president, and it marks a major turning point in the long-running investigation into Mr. Giuliani.

The federal authorities have been largely focused on whether Mr. Giuliani illegally lobbied the Trump administration in 2019 on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs, who at the same time were helping Mr. Giuliani search for dirt on Mr. Trump’s political rivals, including President Biden, who was then a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The United States Attorney’s office in Manhattan and the F.B.I. had for months sought to secure a search warrant for Mr. Giuliani’s phones.

Under Mr. Trump, senior political appointees in the Justice Department repeatedly sought to block such a warrant, The New York Times reported, slowing the investigation as it was gaining momentum last year. After Merrick B. Garland was confirmed as President Biden’s attorney general, the Justice Department lifted its objection to the search.

While the warrant is not an explicit accusation of wrongdoing against Mr. Giuliani, it shows that the investigation has entered an aggressive new phase. To obtain a search warrant, investigators need to persuade a judge they have sufficient reason to believe that a crime was committed and that the search would turn up evidence of the crime.

Spokesmen for the F.B.I. and the U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment.

The investigation of Mr. Giuliani grew out of a case against two Soviet-born men who aided his mission in Ukraine to unearth damaging information about Mr. Biden and his son Hunter, who was on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. The prosecutors charged the two men, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, with unrelated crimes in late 2019 and a trial is scheduled for October.

While investigating Mr. Giuliani, prosecutors have examined, among other things, his potential business dealings in Ukraine and his role in pushing the Trump administration to oust the American ambassador to Ukraine, which was the subject of testimony at Mr. Trump’s first impeachment trial.

As he was pressuring Ukrainian officials to investigate the Bidens, Mr. Giuliani became fixated on removing the ambassador, Marie L. Yovanovitch, whom he saw as an obstacle to those efforts. At the urging of Mr. Giuliani and other Republicans, Mr. Trump ultimately ousted Ms. Yovanovitch.

As part of the investigation into Mr. Giuliani, the prosecutors have exploredwhether he was working not only for Mr. Trump, but also for Ukrainian officials or businesses who wanted the ambassador to be dismissed for their own reasons, according to people briefed on the matter.

Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, it is a federal crime to try to influence or lobby the United States government at the request or direction of a foreign official without disclosing it to the Justice Department.

The prosecutors have scrutinized Mr. Giuliani’s dealings with Yuriy Lutsenko, one of the officials who helped Mr. Giuliani and his associates in their dirt-digging mission while also urging them to work to get the ambassador removed.

Among other things, the prosecutors have examined discussions Mr. Giuliani had about taking on hundreds of thousands of dollars in apparently unrelated consulting business from Mr. Lutsenko, which resulted in a draft retainer agreement that was never executed.

Mr. Giuliani has said he turned down the deal, which would have involved him helping the Ukrainian government recover money it believed had been stolen and stashed overseas.

As the investigation heated up last summer, prosecutors and F.B.I. agents in Manhattan were preparing to seek the search warrant for Mr. Giuliani’s records about his efforts to remove the ambassador, but they first had to notify Justice Department officials in Washington, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Federal prosecutors must consult Justice Department officials in Washington about search warrants involving lawyers because of concerns that they might obtain confidential communications with clients. The proposed warrant for Mr. Giuliani was particularly sensitive because his most prominent client was Mr. Trump.

Career Justice Department officials in Washington largely supported the search warrant, but senior officials raised concerns that the warrant would be issued too close to the election, the people with knowledge of the matter said.

Under longstanding practice, the Justice Department generally tries to avoid taking aggressive investigative actions within 60 days of an election if those actions could affect the outcome of the vote.

The prosecutors in Manhattan tried again after the election, but political appointees in Mr. Trump’s Justice Department sought once more to block the warrant, the people with knowledge of the matter said. At the time, Mr. Trump was still contesting the election results in several states, a legal effort being led by Mr. Giuliani, those officials noted."

Rudy Giuliani’s Apartment Searched in Federal Investigation - The New York Times

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How police and politicians undermine civilian oversight of law enforcement - Washington Post

UNACCOUNTABLE

When communities try to hold police
accountable, law enforcement fights back

Civilian oversight is undermined by politicians and police, who contend citizens are ill-equipped to judge officers

A painting of Valente Acosta-Bustillos is flanked by names and portraits of others who were fatally shot by law enforcement officers in New Mexico. It's outside the Albuquerque offices of the Southwest Organizing Project. (Adria Malcolm for The Washington Post)

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A wall outside the Southwest Organizing Project, which is dedicated to empowering low-income communities of color, displays the dates when unnamed people were killed by police. (Adria Malcolm for The Washington Post)

Nicole Dungca and

Jenn Abelson

April 27, 2021

When the Justice Department in 2012 began investigating Albuquerque police, it found a department unaccountable to the city it served.

Over four years, police had fatally shot 20 people, including a mentally ill Hispanic man struck three times in the back outside his home. Justice officials discovered a pattern of unconstitutional and excessive use of force, and a civilian oversight office that had “simply been too forgiving of the department’s use of deadly force.”

Federal authorities demanded a wide range of reforms from the city — including a new civilian oversight agency with greater authority.

But many in Albuquerque fought change at every turn: The police union sued to block the new agency and later demanded the resignation of an agency board member who pushed to tighten the police department’s use-of-force policy. The city council took four years to give the agency stronger subpoena power for its investigations. And veteran police officials pushed back against efforts to increase scrutiny of the department’s use of force, creating a backlog of investigations that has prevented the agency and its board from completing their reviews of most fatal shootings.

“This was supposed to be the [board] that wasn’t dysfunctional, and it ends up being just as dysfunctional, just as ineffective as the prior iteration,” said Chelsea Van Deventer, the board member who was targeted by the union.

The struggle in New Mexico’s largest city illustrates the challenge of asking civilians to check police powers. Police nationwide have frequently defied efforts to impose civilian oversight and, in turn, undermined the ability of communities to hold law enforcement accountable, according to a Washington Post review of audits, misconduct complaints, emails, lawsuits and interviews with dozens of current and former officials.

More than 160 municipalities and counties have implemented some form of civilian oversight through review boards, inspectors general and independent monitors. Another 130 localities are trying to do so, according to officials from the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement, or NACOLE, though this represents a fraction of roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide.

Chelsea Van Deventer resigned from the board of Albuquerque's Civilian Police Oversight Agency in the fall of 2019. (Adria Malcolm for The Washington Post)

The issue has gained new traction as part of the push to overhaul policing in the United States after the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, both unarmed and Black. Their deaths last year sparked massive demonstrations and reignited long-held skepticism about law enforcement’s treatment of Black people and its tolerance for misconduct.

Those high-profile deaths, however, also reveal the limits of civilian oversight: In Louisville, the civilian board had no standing to investigate Taylor’s death. In Minneapolis, the current and former civilian oversight entities had fielded 12 complaints of alleged misconduct about former officer Derek Chauvin before he killed Floyd by pressing a knee into his neck. Last week, a jury found Chauvin guilty of murder and manslaughter in Floyd’s death.

[Fatal Force: Explore The Post's police shootings database ]

While many hailed the verdict as long-overdue justice, they also said much more needs to be done to address a systemic lack of accountability for police misconduct. An examination of civilian review boards shows that well-meaning reform attempts often end in failure and frustration.

The initial results of a survey by NACOLE found that 38 of the 64 oversight groups that responded have no independent investigative authority and are limited to doing audits or reviews to determine whether internal affairs investigators have been thorough or followed policies.

The survey, funded by the Justice Department, also found that 30 of the groups cannot issue subpoenas and that 23 have no access to open internal affairs files. Thirty-four have no authority even to recommend discipline. For those that can suggest disciplinary action, chiefs and arbitrators usually can reject their recommendations.

Sharon Fairley, who led one of Chicago’s citizen oversight agencies from 2015 to 2017, said the groups can help build community trust with police but need power and resources to be effective.

“Civilian oversight is not a panacea for police misconduct,” said Fairley, now a professor at the University of Chicago Law School who has studied such efforts nationwide. “Or else we wouldn’t be seeing the problems that we’re seeing.”

People react in Minneapolis on April 20 after former police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder and manslaughter in the death of George Floyd. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)

The modern push for civilian oversight began at the turn of the 20th century but came of age around the civil rights era, when communities, especially Black and Latino ones, successfully lobbied for civilian-run boards in cities such as New York and Washington. By the 2010s, the Justice Department regularly included civilian review entities as part of consent decrees or settlements with municipalities, including Albuquerque, where federal officials found patterns of excessive force or discriminatory policing. Congress has introduced “The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act,” which would enable the Justice Department to award grants to states to establish citizen oversight entities.

Police have generally argued that citizens do not need to investigate police because internal affairs units or other law enforcement agencies already do so. In many cities, such oversight efforts have been limited by strict collective bargaining agreements with police unions and, in 22 states, through laws known as officers’ bills of rights, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Maryland, the first state to enact such legislation, recently approved repealing the law.

Jim Pasco, executive director of the national Fraternal Order of Police, described civilian monitors as well-meaning but ill-equipped to judge police officers. He said citizens lack the expertise and experience of trained law enforcement professionals.

“It would be akin to putting a plumber in charge of the investigation of airplane crashes,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how good a plumber that he or she is. It gives no level of expertise in terms of evaluating the cause of a plane crash.”

But Susan Hutson, who is the independent police monitor in New Orleans and also president of NACOLE, said that having an outsider’s perspective on policing can be crucial in identifying and stopping officer misconduct. Many civilian boards include lawyers, auditors and others with relevant expertise.

“It really allows for a voice for community members who want ... to see whether the police department is really doing what it’s supposed to be doing,” she said. “Just having another set of eyes that is not part of the police department is value in itself.”

Built to fail

Demonstrators in Louisville on March 13 protest the police killing of Breonna Taylor. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) speaks with relatives of Breonna Taylor, including her mother, Tamika Palmer, center, after signing a partial ban on “no-knock” warrants on April 9. (Timothy D. Easley/AP)

Across the country, civilian oversight has often been limited by design or even banned.

In Urbana, Ill., the police union secured an agreement with the city in 2007 that prevents the Civilian Police Review Board from conducting “independent third party investigations of an officer’s conduct. ... Inquiries and concerns of the CPRB will be addressed by the Chief of Police or his designee.”

In New Bedford, Mass., the police union’s contract since the 1980s has included this clause: “There will be no Civilian Review Boards in the New Bedford Police Department.”

Bruce Rose, a former president of the New Bedford chapter of the NAACP, said the prohibition “represents a conscious collusion on the part of the police department and the city to prevent the public from being assured of an independent, objective review.”

In Louisville, the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor last year brought into stark relief the limits of the city’s civilian review board.

Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room technician, and her boyfriend had been asleep when shortly after midnight on March 13, 2020, multiple police officers broke into her home with a battering ram as part of a narcotics investigation of her ex-boyfriend. Her boyfriend at the time of the raid said he feared that the police bursting in were intruders and shot at them. Officers then fired more than 30 shots, striking Taylor six times and killing her, according to Kentucky’s attorney general. The city agreed to pay $12 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Taylor’s family.

Prosecutors charged one of the officers on the raid with wanton endangerment for shooting into a neighbor’s home. But no officer was charged in Taylor’s death. Three officers involved with the raid were terminated, though they have appealed their findings, according to Louisville police.

Louisville’s Citizens Commission on Police Accountability could do nothing. As set up, it could initiate no investigations or take complaints from citizens. It could only examine closed internal affairs investigations of police shootings to determine if they were adequate and recommend changes in policy or training. It could not recommend discipline for officers.

“What happened here is that the weakest, most flaccid form of citizens review that could be constructed was constructed,” said Ricky L. Jones, a member of the board.

Public anger over Taylor’s death pressured the city to give the group more teeth. In December, the mayor signed an ordinance that would replace the commission with a new inspector general post and a civilian review board with more investigative authority and the power to recommend discipline.

In Minneapolis, two months after Taylor was killed, George Floyd, 46, died when Chauvin pinned him to the street with his knee for more than nine minutes.

Ricky L. Jones, a member of Louisville's Citizens Commission on Police Accountability at the time of Breonna Taylor's killing, said the board was powerless. (Jon Cherry/The Washington Post)

Leading up to that moment, Chauvin had been the subject of at least 22 complaints of alleged misconduct from 2003 to 2015, according to data obtained by a local activist group called Communities United Against Police Brutality.

Of those, 12 cases were handled by the Minneapolis civilian oversight agencies, the Office of Police Conduct Review or its predecessor. Only one case had allegations that were sustained by one of the panels. A 2003 finding that Chauvin used derogatory and demeaning language led to oral reprimands from the department, according to the documents from Communities United.

Casper Hill, a spokesman for the city of Minneapolis, declined to discuss the complaints against Chauvin. But he said the Office of Police Conduct Review generally closes cases if they are dismissed, are duplicates or are forwarded to other jurisdictions.

Dave Bicking, who served from 2008 to 2010 on the city’s previous civilian review board, said there is a long pattern of oversight groups failing to crack down on police misconduct. Out of more than 3,100 complaints filed by the public with the current oversight office from October 2012 through June 2020, only 16 officers were disciplined, according to a data analysis by Communities United, which Bicking now helps to lead.

“The tiny bit of discipline that comes from the Office of Police Conduct Review is not enough to change, to correct officers’ conduct or deter other officers,” he said. “It certainly didn’t correct the conduct of Derek Chauvin, and it didn’t make other officers feel like they had to do anything about it on the scene, either.”

Former police officer Derek Chauvin is taken away April 20 after being found guilty of murder and manslaughter in the death of George Floyd. (Pool/Reuters)

In Miami, about 1,400 of more than 2,300 allegations reviewed by the city’s Civilian Investigative Panel from 2009 to 2020 were closed without any finding, according to data analyzed by The Post.

This outcome frequently happens because Miami police can take six to eight months to review a complaint before they send it to the panel, according to Cristina Beamud, executive director of the panel. By then, the complainants have often moved or changed telephone numbers. Others have lost motivation or feel discouraged by the initial findings of the police department, she said.

In the District of Columbia, the civilian oversight office is required by law to send some of the complaints it receives to police without investigation.

The D.C. Office of Police Complaints referred more than 1,100 misconduct allegations — or about 5 percent of the roughly 22,000 lodged between 2010 and 2020 — to police because they were filed too many days after the incident, according to The Post analysis. (Previously, complaints had to be filed within 45 days; the period is now 90 days). The agency also sent more than 2,000 misconduct allegations to police because it had no authority to investigate those cases, or the complaints were filed anonymously or were made by people other than the alleged victims or direct witnesses.

“There is a heightened need for independent investigations of all types of misconduct, not just what we are currently limited to under law,” said Michael Tobin, the D.C. agency’s executive director.

In Newark, Mayor Ras Baraka said the police union tried to block him when he sought to make police reform a cornerstone of his administration.

“The police departments have become political organizations,” Baraka said. “Because they’re a political organization, people tend to cater to them.”

In 2014, the year that Baraka was sworn in as mayor, the Justice Department concluded that Newark’s police department had a record of excessive force and discriminatory policing, and called for federal intervention.

In Newark, Mayor Ras Baraka, second from left, marches to protest police brutality. (Michael Mancuso/NJ Advance Media/AP)

Baraka said that as a Black man growing up in Newark, he was handcuffed and assaulted by police when he and his mother went to the police station to check on his younger brother, who had been arrested for allegedly blocking the sidewalk and harassing pedestrians.

In his first year as mayor, Baraka issued an executive order that created a civilian review board to investigate police misconduct complaints and to subpoena officers accused of wrongdoing. The city council made the board permanent.

The Fraternal Order of Police sued the city, arguing that the board’s powers violated state law and the union’s contract. In 2020, the Supreme Court of New Jersey stripped the board of its subpoena power. The city filed an appeal in January to the U.S. Supreme Court. Baraka also is pushing for a state law to restore the board’s powers.

The president of the Newark police union said he supports reform and transparency but called the mayor’s efforts to change state laws “shocking.”

“Hopefully, should such legislation be moved in Trenton, our elected politicians will do their due diligence and come up with a sound decision and not simply cave in to the anti-police piling on that is sweeping the country today,” said James Stewart Jr., president of Newark’s Fraternal Order of Police.

But Baraka said he isn’t willing to compromise after seeing the shortcomings of civilian oversight in other municipalities.

“It’s a waste of money and bureaucracy,” he said. “There are boards all over the country, and police are still doing what they want to do without any redress.”

Politics and pushback

A crowd in Petaluma, Calif., in October 2020 listens to information about a ballot measure to strengthen civilian oversight for the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office. (Talia Herman for The Washington Post)

People pray during an October 2020 rally in which Jerry Threet spoke about a proposed ballot measure that would give more power to the local oversight office. (Talia Herman for The Washington Post)

The pushback by police and a lack of political support for the civilian agencies has prompted many oversight officials to resign in frustration.

In Portland, Ore., Kristin Malone quickly learned the limitations of the city’s Citizen Review Committee when she volunteered to serve on it in 2015: The committee couldn’t conduct investigations and reviewed only appeals from those who were unhappy with the Portland Police Bureau’s response to their complaints. The committee had no subpoena power and couldn’t review cases involving police shootings and other in-custody deaths.

Malone, a lawyer, said she felt that the process gave “extreme deference” to police: The officer’s supervisor would first rule on the merits of an officer’s conduct, and the committee would then determine whether a “reasonable person” could reach the same conclusion.

In one use-of-force case in 2014, a police officer had discharged a Taser on a cyclist six times after he resisted arrest for banging on a driver’s window. Cellphone video showed the officer shocking the cyclist as he lay facedown on the pavement with three officers restraining him. After the department’s internal affairs bureau determined that the officer had not violated policy, the cyclist appealed to the Citizen Review Committee, which found the opposite, according to Malone and public documents.

But the police chief at the time disagreed with the committee’s decision, so the case, in a step rarely used, went to the city council for a final decision. The council declined to exonerate the officer or discipline him. A Portland Police Bureau spokesman declined to comment.

Malone said the difference in how a civilian and police officer interpreted the “reasonable person” standard allowed the officer to go unpunished.

“Ultimately, it felt like death by a thousand cuts,” said Malone, who resigned from the committee in January 2020.

After Matthew Klug was tased by a police officer in Portland, Ore., he brought his case to the Citizen Review Committee. (Courtesy of Matthew Klug)

Five other members have resigned since December 2019, with several publicly criticizing the lack of subpoena power and citing insufficient support from the mayor. In September, as protests against police brutality roiled Portland, three volunteers resigned within days.

Asked about the resignations and committee members’ concerns, James Middaugh, a spokesman for the mayor’s office, said the city is “in the midst of significant public safety reform work.”

In November, voters approved a law that would replace Portland’s existing civilian oversight system with a community-led police oversight board that has the power to subpoena and impose officer discipline.

The police unions, however, have tried to stop the measure by filing unfair-labor-practice complaints and a grievance with the Portland Police Bureau.

Elsewhere, some oversight officials who were employed by municipalities said they faced threats, pressure and retaliation from law enforcement and politicians.

In 2018 in Sonoma County, Calif., Jerry Threet, then-director of the Independent Office of Law Enforcement Review and Outreach, prepared a report that criticized the sheriff’s internal affairs investigators for their handling of misconduct investigations. He found that they had failed to interview witnesses and didn’t consider the full list of complaints filed against officers.

Soon, the sheriff and local politicians pushed him not to release the findings, Threet said.

“Elected officials were contacting me behind the scenes, trying to get me to back off conflict with the sheriff and accommodate the sheriff,” he said.

That summer, then-Sheriff Rob Giordano told the county board of supervisors that he objected to the report and was frustrated that Threet, a government employee, had not completed overdue audits. A few months later, Giordano recommended that Threet’s office be disbanded and that future auditors be retained for only limited periods.

“If there is no expectation of employment beyond a specific period of time, there is no pressure or inherent need to justify [the office],” Giordano wrote in a response to Threet’s annual report.

The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office declined to comment.

Threet said the stress was taking its toll. His doctor bluntly advised, “If I didn’t quit this job, I was going to end up dead,” he said. He eventually left in 2019.

Jerry Threet said the stress from overseeing the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office as the director of the county's oversight office took a toll on his health. (Talia Herman for The Washington Post)

The next year, he helped pass an ordinance to give the oversight office more access to personnel records and body-camera footage from the sheriff’s office. The Sonoma County Deputy Sheriff’s Association, however, has filed a complaint with the state’s Public Employment Relations Board to challenge the ordinance.

Cristina Beamud, who now heads the Miami civilian panel, said she resigned as executive director of Atlanta’s Citizen Review Board out of frustration in 2011. There, she said that a conflict of interest with city officials threatened the integrity of the board.

In September 2009, as part of a police investigation into allegations of public sex and drug sales, about two dozen police officers raided an Atlanta gay bar, using anti-gay slurs and forcing everyone to lie on the floor, according to an independent report later commissioned by the city. Employees were arrested on permit violations, but most of the cases fell apart.

Beamud’s office sustained nearly all of the citizen complaints filed against officers that night, recommending discipline for every officer involved. But the police chief at the time rejected the recommendations as internal affairs continued its investigation.

When a group of bar patrons and employees sued the city and police chief alleging excessive force and other illegal conduct, the city’s attorney argued that the raid was constitutional and defended the officers’ actions.

“The law department took the position that I was wrong, which undermined my ability to be critical,” Beamud said. “They eventually settled the case with a great deal of embarrassment to the city.”

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Thursday, April 29, 2021