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Whats the likely second term Trump foreign policy or Biden foreign policy agenda? Think pieces and Twitter threads abound, and dozens are willing to share their predictions on background. The re-elected president or the president-elect will have to make a series of critical choices on process and personnel during the next few months. These decisions, typically made during the transition period and not always as intentionally as they should be, will serve as the foundation for policy outcomes for the next four years.

Who leads, how agencies implement policy, and the role of the National Security Council process draw less attention than strategy and policies, but they shape the impact of a presidency. Habits set early in an administration will drive foreign policy outcomes during the next four years. While some personnel and process questions lend themselves to soundbite solutions like adopting the Brent Scowcroft model, holding over leaders of the opposing party, or shrinking the National Security Council staff they are not always realistic in practice for a particular administration and may not be best for a presidents policy agenda, or for the country.

Carefully considering these matters may be more important for second-term presidents than first-term presidents. A newly elected president is forced to dedicate time to personnel and process questions due to the requirements of setting up a new government. A president entering their second term, however, is liable to gloss over these issues. As former White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten has said, Every two-term presidency has had the same problem, which is the president doesnt think of it as a transition.

As we move towards transition, observers of national security should take careful stock of how these personnel and process questions are addressed and practitioners should push their principals to handle such choices with the seriousness they deserve.

Continuity and Change Among Senior Officials

The most public choice a new president needs to make is who will be kept on and who will be replaced.

Keeping experienced and effective leaders can ensure that ongoing operations are not disrupted, allow a new president to signal a predecessors policy decisions will not be repudiated, or serve as a bipartisan olive branch. In 2008, for instance, President Barack Obama decided to retain Robert Gates at the Defense Department. Doing so smoothed the Pentagon transition amid two major conflicts, and reassured skeptics of Obamas foreign policy instincts. As one Obama advisor told the New York Times, the decision to appoint Gates looks pretty damn good because of continuity and stability.

Of course, having the same cadre of senior officials direct American foreign policy can have unintended consequences. According to Kurt Campbell and Jim Steinberg, President Lyndon Johnsons heavy reliance on holdovers [from the Kennedy administration] undoubtedly made it more difficult to give serious consideration to a radical departure in U.S. policy on Vietnam. And though Gates leadership gave Obamas defense strategy and budget process credibility, it may also have prevented the president from pursuing his preferred approach in Afghanistan, given the two leaders divergent policy objectives in that theater.

Retaining the same foreign policy team can also have serious political downsides. During the 1976 Republican primary, President Gerald Ford was slammed by an upstart conservative rival Ronald Reagan for his decision to keep Henry Kissinger as secretary of state. While Reagans primary challenge was unsuccessful, his critique resonated so deeply with Republicans that they forced Ford to accept a plank in the party platform denouncing Kissingers and by extension Fords Soviet policy.

Moreover, new senior leadership can bring about much needed change. President Jimmy Carters selection of Adm. Stansfield Turner as CIA director helped to modernize the agencys collection process and move it past the Church committee-era scandals even if some of his reforms were less than appreciated by agency veterans. A re-elected president can also use the transition into a second term to reset the administration. In 2004, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley advised President George W. Bush to replace his entire national security team in order to distance himself from the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq.

A fresh foreign policy team, however, can take time to find their sea legs even if they have served before. Every new team needs time to develop personal rapport, and their years of experience may prove as much of a hindrance as an enabler. A common vocabulary, shared understanding of roles and division of labor, and balanced perception of risk take time to develop and cannot be waved away by lengthy resumes. The foreign policy team and process under President George H. W. Bush and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft is commonly regarded as exceptional. Yet during a showdown with Manuel Noriega, the dictator of Panama, Bush and his team struggled despite decades of collective experience. We did not act decisively. This was our first crisis. We didnt do particularly well, Scowcroft would later recall. Any new foreign policy team will face similar growing pains, making empowering new leadership a potentially risky decision.

Autonomy of the Cabinet

Who a president chooses to lead links closely to the role the cabinet plays in developing and implementing an administrations foreign policy. Senior officials granted autonomy on personnel and resources will have different qualifications and requirements than those more comfortable spending time debating policy in the White House Situation Room or deferring to presidential preferences.

With more than two million full-time civilian employees, the sheer size of the federal government demands some degree of decentralization. And without a leadership team that is empowered to take risks and innovate, the federal government can struggle to respond effectively to crises and threats. At the same time, strong incentives push presidents towards centralized decision-making. As Charles Dawes, a cabinet secretary and Calvin Coolidges vice president, once remarked, Cabinet secretaries are vice presidents in charge of spending and as such are the natural enemies of the president.

During the transition period, a president should evaluate these tradeoffs and decide how to manage the relationship with their cabinet.

Attempts at total decentralization have run aground. Carter began his administration pledging to have a cabinet government that empowered individual secretaries an explicit rejection of the strong White House model developed by President Richard Nixon. The result, according to Stu Eizenstat, Carters chief domestic policy aide, was a disjointed and confused administration in which the White House was blindsided by controversial decisions made by the cabinet. Before the end of his term, Carter abandoned the experiment. More recently, Obama walked back a promise to delegate power to Attorney General Eric Holder after Holder controversially decided to try accused terrorists in the civilian court system.

Hierarchical control, however, also has its downsides. Cabinet secretaries frequently chafe under tight White House control. Gates grew so frustrated with White House interventions that he told subordinates if they ever got a call from the White House they should tell em to go to hell and call me. Micromanagement became the most dire insult of the Obama national security apparatus, though frequently with little attention to why or whether White House scrutiny was necessary. But too often if White House attention or support becomes a necessary condition for policy implementation, a distracted or inattentive White House can inadvertently kill promising initiatives.

Among the most contentious issues is that of sub-cabinet appointments. Presidents often want to place their preferred personnel in political appointments in the agencies, especially personnel with White House relationships. As Reagan aide Ed Meese explained, We wanted our appointees to be the presidents ambassadors to the agencies, not the other way around. Carter bucked this trend and gave his cabinet secretaries free rein to name their subordinates, a choice that empowered greater team-building at the agency level but resulted in less trust and connectivity with the White House.

Cabinet officers generally want to control sub-cabinet appointments themselves. And selections made by external parties like the White House can prove problematic. In 2001, a hawkish John Bolton was placed in Colin Powells relatively more moderate State Department behind enemy lines, as a member of Vice President Dick Cheneys staff put it. The result of this arrangement was a State Department that was frequently at odds with itself, undermining American diplomatic efforts. A lack of control over personnel may also discourage promising candidates from even seeking cabinet positions.

A president will have to decide how to weigh the need for centralized authority against the desire to offer autonomy to their team and do so with purpose.

The National Security Council Process and Role of the Staff

The primary mechanism for enforcing the choice of centralization or autonomy is the National Security Council and its associated staff. Presidents and their advisors can give lip service to the archetypal Scowcroft model for policy process and decision-making, but the National Security Council process the battle rhythm of decisions, the priority of voices, the acceptance of risk, the iteration of policy and strategy reflects the presidents preferences. These habits are set early in an administration and are difficult to adjust midstream, even with leadership rotation.

The National Security Council process is a collection of bureaucratic decisions with major policy consequences: who hosts meetings on what topic; what is on the agenda; when are decisions made; who attends these meetings and who is kept out; and who follows up on decisions when they are made. Some presidents, like Carter and Reagan, have resisted a formalized or centralized decision-making process driven from their West Wing. In Carters case, that decision was explicitly intended to to place more responsibility in the departments and agencies. Other presidents, perhaps best exemplified by President Dwight Eisenhower and Nixon, have attempted to concentrate foreign policy decision-making within the National Security Council, and were supported by an active staff.

Today, many advocates seek to move decision-making out of the National Security Council and into the State Department and other cabinet-level agencies. Less formal or centralized approaches, however, when pursued by Carter and Reagan, have been criticized as leading to disputes and bureaucratic intrigue. In Carters case, the lack of clear responsibilities and formal process led to squabbles between his secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, and National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. In Reagans case, an informal and free-wheeling National Security Council process was identified as one of the proximate causes of the Iran-Contra scandal. Without formal process and clear lines of authority, the National Security Council may also struggle to coordinate long-range planning, instead becoming consumed with the issue of the day.

Still, when the National Security Council has driven the policy process, it has faced critiques that it has become less a hub for coordination than a policy and operational entity in its own right. Successive national security advisors across administrations have sought to streamline the National Security Council staff, judging size as a key driver of operational mischief and outsized control. While the size of the National Security Council may enable micromanagement, micromanagement is also driven by the specific preferences of White House leadership and capacity gaps at agencies.

Presidents should be honest with themselves about the sort of policy process they wish to run and transparently organize their National Security Council process and staff accordingly. Though certain models have attractive reputations, the worst outcome would be to select a popular concept and circumvent it with duplicative policy mechanisms or staff.

Each of these three choices will have a profound impact on the way that American foreign policy is implemented and pursued. The transition period first to second is the only time presidents have to wrestle with these decisions and ensure their outcomes are to their liking.

Loren DeJonge Schulman is the Vice President for Research, Analysis, and Evaluation at the Partnership for Public Service, co-host of the Bombshell podcast, and has previously served in senior staff roles at the National Security Council and Department of Defense.

Alex Tippett is a research associate at the Partnership for Public Services Center for Presidential Transition.

Image: White House (Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Manuel Noriega was the dictator of Nicaragua, when in fact he was the leader of Panama.

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Make Good Choices! National Security Transitions and the Policy and Process Decisions - War on the Rocks

Share us on: By Jimmy Hoover

Elections have been rife with litigation since the Bush v. Gore fiasco in 2000, but the coronavirus pandemic has led to an explosion of lawsuits across the country. Stakeholders are clashing over how to make sure voters can safely get to the polls while ensuring election integrity through an unprecedented public health crisis that makes the mundane act of queuing up to the polls a potentially deadly risk.

Some legal scholars have raised the possibility that, like in the 2000 presidential election, the winner of this contest won't be immediately clear due to the time it will take to process and count the historic number of mail-in ballots.

But Loyola Law School, Los Angeles professor Justin Levitt,who has been tracking pandemic-related litigation over the election, said it's unlikely that there will be a repeat of the 2000 election battle between George W. Bush and Al Gore, which he called a "black swan event" that came down to 537 votes in the Sunshine State.

"We had an incredibly rare probability event," he said of the 2000 election. "The chance that it happens twice is that much more rare and the fact that we've had so much litigation so far makes it rarer still."

In recent weeks, The New York Times and other media outlets have disclosed that Biden's campaign has tapped a number of powerful Democratic attorneys to form a kind of legal phalanx to battle through what the litigation trackers call "perhaps the most litigated election season in the last two decades."

With President Donald Trump counting onhis own star legal teamheading into Election Day andbeyond, Law360 looks at some of the key attorneys, firms and groups working for the 2020 Biden campaign.

Dana Remus

Despite rising in the Democratic firmament, Remus also has worked closely with conservative jurists. The Yale Law School graduate clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Jr. and co-taught with Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, a class in Duke University School of Law's 2019 D.C. Summer Institute on Law and Policy, a program for undergraduates and working professionals considering law school.

She also clerked for Judge Anthony J. Scirica of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and was an associate at Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP.

A major concern for Remus will be fending off Republican challenges to alternative voting methods, such as mail-in ballots or curbside voting, as a response to the risks that the coronavirus poses to in-person voting. Trump has called such methods a "scam" designed to help Biden.

The issue has already reached the U.S. Supreme Court. This past week, the justices blocked a deadline extension for mail-in ballots in Wisconsin, while upholding extensions in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. But the litigation is far from over, and Republicans are likely to ask the court to throw out ballots received after Election Day in certain battleground states.

Robert Bauer

Bauer has been a fierce critic of the Trump administration, attacking current White House Counsel Pat Cipollone for his "remarkably partisan performance" during Trump's impeachment trial, as well as the "counterfeit product" of Trump's now-shuttered voter fraud task force. At the start of state lockdowns in March, Bauer called for increased mail-in ballots and $2 billion in congressional funding for state election preparation.

Biden has lined up a top-flight team to wage the likely state-by-state legal fights of local voting and counting rules led by Marc Elias of Perkins Coie LLP, the top lawyer on Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, and Obama's former attorney general, Eric Holder, The Associated Press has said. In assembling a robust legal team ahead of the election, Biden is likely trying to avoid the last-minute rush to the courthouse that followed the 2000 election, when litigation broke out in Florida over a recount.

Marc EliasPerkins Coie LLP

Marc Elias

Eric Holder

The special unit overseeing the litigation at the state level may already have the heavy lifting behind it. The hundreds of lawsuits filed around the country since the pandemic started will actually make it less likely that the U.S. Supreme Court, or any other court, will be forced to declare a winner like it did in 2000.

"Those cases got resolved in June, July, August and September, and so that means there's less to fight about in October and November," said Loyola's Levitt. "The big questions about how most Americans are going to cast or count ballots those are already decided."

So even if the winner isn't clear on election night, that doesn't mean there's reason to panic, Levitt said. It will simply be up to the "far more democratic, far more boring" exercise of officials counting ballots, rather than explosive litigation. "I have no doubt that there will be litigation after the election, but I have real doubts about how much of that will be meaningful."

Nevertheless, if the election winds up in the Supreme Court, Democrats fear a repeat of the 2000 Bush v. Gore decision in which a conservative majority ended the Florida recount and effectively sealed the presidency for Bush.

To prepare, Biden's campaign has organized a "national litigation team" consisting of former U.S. Solicitors General Walter Dellinger, now a professor emeritus at Duke University School of Law, and Donald Verrilli of Munger Tolles & Olson LLP, according to the AP. Dellinger and Verrilli served as the government's top Supreme Court lawyers for the Clinton and Obama administrations, respectively.

"In 2000, we were not in the habit of having litigation over national elections," said Barry Richard of Greenberg Traurig LLP, who led the Florida legal efforts for President George W. Bush's campaign. "We didn't have a history of that."

As Bush's top lawyer in Florida in 2000, Richard oversaw 47 lawsuits across the state in the frantic litigation over the recount. "Everything was operating at light speed," Richard said. "You could be in the trial court and the appellate court a few hours later."

Campaigns have learned the lessons of Bush v. Gore and now "everybody has lawyers on call all the time," Richard said.

"I'm sure what they're doing right now is having teams of lawyers studying the issues that are currently arising and likely to arise," he said. "There are probably people even preparing rough drafts of briefing right now, and that's what they should be doing."

Walter Dellinger

Since then, Dellinger has appeared before the Supreme Court numerous times in his private practice. He clerked for Justice Hugo Black during the 1968 term.

Before becoming Clinton's acting solicitor general, he was an assistant attorney general and head of the Office of Legal Counsel in his administration, where he advised on "loan guarantees for Mexico, on national debt ceiling issues, and on issues arising out of the shutdown of the federal government," according to his law school profile.

Donald Verrilli

Since joining his current firm after his government service, his appearances before the Supreme Court include the successful defense of the constitutionality of Puerto Rico's Financial Oversight and Management Board.

Verrilli is the lead attorney for the Democratic Party in a blockbuster case pending before the Supreme Court about whether Pennsylvania can count mail-in ballots received up to three days after the election. Republicans asked the court to strike down the extension and have the battleground state throw out ballots received after Election Day.

Should election disputes move from state to federal courts, Dellinger and Verrilli will likely lead the Biden team as appeals wind their way to the Supreme Court.

Levitt, however, said earlier rounds of litigation this summer may have dampened the chances that the Supreme Court will ultimately decide who won the election.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh were part of the Republican legal team supporting Bush in the fight, as was Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was confirmed Oct. 26.

During her confirmation hearings, Justice Barrett refused to say whether she would recuse in an election case, saying that would be "short-circuiting" the normal recusal process.

Levitt said Biden's and Trump's legal teams are likely preparing for such a scenario, however unlikely.

"I think the legal teams are preparing for exceedingly unlikely contingencies, much like the Department of Defense has all kinds of playbooks, all kinds of military plans, for all types of contingencies, even those that never happen."

The Biden campaign did not return a request for comment from Law360 on its legal defense operations.

--Editing by Orlando Lorenzo.

--Update: This story has been updated to adjust Walter Dellinger's affiliation.

For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.

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The Legal Heavyweights In The Ring For Joe Biden - Law360

CIVIL rights activist Al Sharpton has admitted Donald Trump appealed to black and minority voters after criticizing the US president's response to the Black Lives Matter protests.

After accusing Trump of trying to make Black Lives Matter protesters "look like hoodlums and thugs" earlier this year, Sharpton admitted Trump had appealed to black and Hispanic voters in the presidential election.

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Despite his attacks on the BLM movement, Trump picked up 20 per cent of black male voters this year, according to an NBC News poll, up two per cent from 2016.

Speaking on MSNBC'sMorning Joeshow, Sharpton said Trump "has done better than, in my judgment, he should have with black men and Hispanics".

He said there needs to be a "real conversation" in the civil rights communities "on what it is to be different in terms of being entrepreneurial aspirants".

"I think he appealed to some that wanted to feel that they had to be a certain kind of way to be aspirational and that you can be that and still be centrists," said Sharpton.

"I think that a lot of them bought into the false view they were putting out on Joe Biden with the crime bill rather than dealing with the fact that Joe Biden was going along with the majority of people, even in the black leadership with the black crime bill."

Last month, Bidenadmitted it was a "mistake" to support a controversial crime bill which critics said laid the foundations for mass incarceration.

But Biden still defended parts of the 1994 legislation.

The NBC poll revealed 80 per cent percent of black men supported Biden, down from Hilary Clintons 82 per cent in 2016, but significantly down from Barack Obamas support among black men in 2012 and 2008.

Who is Al Sharpton?

The 65-year-old says only 'latte liberals' want to defund the police. But who is he?

Al Sharpton is an American civil right activist, Baptist minister, talk show host and politician.

He's the founder of the National Action Network, a not-for-profit, civil rights organisation.

In 2004, Sharpton was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the US presidential election.

In 2011, he was named the host of MSNBC's PoliticsNation.

His phrase 'get your knee off our necks' became a national rallying cry for black Americans after he said it at the Minneapolis memorial for George Floyd.

He also gave the eulogy for Mr Floyd at a private funeral after the 46-year-old died when he was being arrested outside a shop in Minneapolis.

Footage of the arrest on May 25 shows a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeling on Mr Floyd's neck while he was pinned to the floor.

Chauvin, 44, has since been charged with murder.

Earlier this year, Trump claimed Black Lives Matter was "destroying many lives because it "spread violence across the US".

TheBlack Lives Matter movementis the civil rights group that came about in response to extreme police brutality.

Trump blasted the movement during a speech at an event called Black Economic Empowerment where he set out his platinum plan for Black voters.

Taking up the issue of the recent high-profile deaths of several Black American at the hands of the police, Trump said: "Many of those who are spreading violence in our cities are supporters of an organization called Black Lives Matter or BLM.

"Its really hurting the Black community. This is an unusual name for an organization whose ideology and tactics are right now destroying many Black lives."

Speaking at Floyd's funeral, Sharpton used the stage to criticize Trump, telling mourners the president used the St Johns Church outside the White House as a "prop" for his photo-op during the BLM protests.

Wickedness in high places, Sharpton said of Trump.

Later, Sharpton also slammed the president for "projecting those that are violent" and said "he tries to act like Black Lives Matter and Antifa is the same thing".

Despite Trump's comments, he and his Republican allies made significant inroads with Latino voters in Tuesday's election, alarming some Democrats who warned that immigration politics alone was not enough to hold their edge with the nation's largest minority group.

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In Texas, Trump won tens of thousands of new supporters in predominantly Mexican American communities along the border.

Biden still won a sizable majority (63 per cent) of Latino voters nationwide, compared to Trump's 35 per cent, according to AP VoteCast.

But Trump was able to shave that margin in some competitive states, like Florida and Nevada.

However, Sharpton accused the Trump campaign of "distorting" Kamala Harris record and depicting the Democrats as socialists.

He called it "false propaganda" which many Americans bought into.

"I really believe there is going to be a lot of work in those areas, Sharpton told Morning Joe.

"If we ignore it, or act like it doesnt matter, I think is not wise and I think if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, if theyre successful, are going to have to really work."

Key Democrats also said the Republican Party's attacks against them as wild-eyed socialists had been damaging, and some of the party's most liberal proposals caused problems.

They cited the "defund the police" movement which calls for shifting law enforcement resources to social workers and other ways of resolving conflicts.

It gained prominence over summer after the death of George Floyd sparked a nationwide reckoning on racial injustice.

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"I think that the Democratic party needs to clearly push that we are not supportive of ideas like socialism or defunding the police or anti-Semitism," Rep. Stephanie Murphy, a co-chair of the centrist Blue Dog Coalition, said.

Several Democrats said the socialist label particularly harmed lawmakers who lost seats in Florida with its vast Cuban and Venezuelan communities who largely reject socialist ideologies.

"This playing footsies with socialism is not going to win over most of America," Murphy said.

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US Election 2020: Al Sharpton admits Trump appealed to black and minority voters after slamming him over BLM - The Sun

Rev. Al Sharpton urges Black Chicago to take back America

Black faith leaders rally behind Kim Foxx in States Attorneys race

By Erick Johnson

With a week left for the Presidential and local General Elections, civil rights leader Al Sharpton visited Chicagos South Shore neighborhood on Tuesday, October 27, where he and Black leaders led a passionate press conference as they urged residents to take their frustrations to the polls and vote for their future.

The press conference resembled a spirited pep rally where Black leaders cheered on Cook County States Attorney Kim Foxx, as she defended her record as a reformer and attacked Republican opponent Pat OBrien, accusing him of being a prosecutor who helped make Cook County the False Confession Capital of America.

Foxx was among several Black leaders who spoke passionately at a press conference that stressed the importance of voting as racial hostilities permeate political races on local, state, and federal levels. Black neighborhoods and cities struggle to survive under President Donald Trump. In 2016, many Blacks in Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida did not vote as Trump became the nations 45th president.

Today, Blacks young and old are flooding polls across the country. In Chicagos Black wards, many wait in long lines for hours to cast their ballots during Early Voting. Trumps opponent, Democratic candidate Joe Biden, is making final campaign stops in big states, including Florida and Pennsylvania. On Tuesday, he campaigned in Georgia, where no Democratic president has won since 1992, when Bill Clinton defeated Republican George H.W. Bush.

As of October 27, nearly 65 million Americans have already cast their ballots during Early Voting. However, many more in Chicago and across the country have yet to cast their ballots in a race that may smash voter turnout records, including that of 2008, when more Blacks than whites went to the polls to elect Barack Obama as Americas first Black president.

Twelve years later, Black America is worse off than four years ago. The Black unemployment is higher than that of whites and Hispanics. Racial tensions and police shootings continue to rise. The percentage of Blacks dying from COVID-19 remains higher than any other ethnic group. And more than ever, there are concerns that Blacks are moving backward. And with the future of Obamacare and the Supreme Court in doubt, Sharpton and Chicagos Black leaders say they believe this election will be the most consequential in the nations history.

During his 20-minute speech at the South Shore Cultural Center, Sharpton said this past summer that was filled with police shootings and violent protests has made the voting even more important.

Today and all the way to next Tuesday, millions of us are going to the polls complaining, he said. We had to march to vote. We had to fight to vote. People laid down and went to jail to vote. None of us have the right not to use a vote that exists in the blood of fathers. When we dont vote, we get whatever thats left over.

We need to have unprecedented numbers. Chicago is where we saw our political and economic capital get started. Its where we saw Black businesses emerge as powerhouses. Its where our people rise like [Congressman] William Dawson and [Mayor Harold Washington].

While in Chicago, Sharpton promoted his book, fittingly titled, Rise Up: Confronting a Country at the Crossroads. At the South Shore Cultural Center, David Cherry, President of the Leaders Network; Pastor Ira Acree; Reverend Cy Fields; Reverend Marshall Hatch; Congressman Danny Davis and Reverend Jesse Jackson, Jr. were also present.

Sharpton was scheduled to attend a vigil in Waukegan, Illinois, later that day to remember Marcellis Stinnette, a Black 19-year-old who was shot and killed by a police officer, who was later fired from the force. Stinnettes girlfriend, Tafara Williams, was also shot, but she is recovering in a hospital. The FBI has joined Illinois State Police in investigating the shooting.

They should not only fire him, they need to prosecute him, Sharpton said., Were not anti-police, but police are not above the law.

At the press conference, Jacob Blake Sr., the father of Jacob Blake Jr., stood near Sharpton as he spoke. In August, Jacob Blake Jr. was shot seven times by a police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The shooting sparked weeks of social unrest. Unlike many Black victims killed by police, Jacob Blake, Jr. is still alive and recovering. No charges have been brought against the officer who shot him.

Police issues take center stage in the race for Cook County States Attorney. Foxx faces OBrien, who this summer turned up his attack on the countys first Black female states attorney after incidents of looting and social unrest grew after the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer.

Foxx has vacated many convictions of victims of corrupt Chicago police officers who were found to have forced many Black and Latino males to confess to crimes they did not commit. In 2017, her office stopped prosecuting people who were driving with suspended licenses. This year, Foxx vacated more than 1,000 marijuana convictions just before marijuana became legal earlier this year on January 1.

During her first term in office, Foxx raised the felony threshold for theft from $300 to $1,000. As looting and thefts in the Loop and Mag Mile increased, so did OBriens accusations that Foxx is too soft on criminals as the countys top prosecutor. There is also the Jussie Smollett case, where her office dropped all charges after the Empire actor was charged with staging a homophobic hate crime in Streeterville in 2019.

At the press conference, Foxx reaffirmed her commitment to bringing fairness to Cook Countys notorious criminal justice system. She recalled how growing up in the Cabrini Green public housing projects shaped her. She reminded the crowd about OBriens days as a prosecutor in the 1980s, where he had four innocent Black teenagers convicted of raping a white woman based on wrongful confessions. They were later cleared by DNA evidence.

When I ran for this office in 2016, I ran unapologetically as someone who has compassion and as a prosecutor who worked in this very office, Foxx said. I remind those that when I came here in 2016 in the wake of the Laquan McDonald case, it was before we had a consent decree put on our police department. It was one promise that I as your prosecutor could, in fact, ensure you had a justice system that was fair and bereft of the things weve seen before. We cannot ignore history that predates this moment. We cannot go backwards.

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'Get out and vote' | The Crusader Newspaper Group - The Chicago Cusader

The Ontario County Sheriffs Office provided an update on the officer-involved shooting that happened at the Woodridge Motel on Tuesday.

According to a press release Supreme Hines, 27, of Canandaigua was on parole for a third-degree burglary conviction. Officer Jeffrey Smith, 57, of Rochester went to the motel to take Hines into custody on a violation warrant.

He had been arrested on October 29th for separate counts of petit larceny after stealing liquor from stores in the town and city of Geneva.

Sheriff Henderson offered a correction to earlier reports that there was a second person in the vehicle. He said in the press release that it wasnt the case.

Hines remains in stable condition at Strong Memorial Hospital. The press release indicates that he will be transported to the Ontario County Jail to be held on the parole warrant.

The shooting remains under investigation, but the circumstances that led to it have been contested by Hines family.

Sheriff Henderson said on Tuesday that it happened around 8:15 a.m. when Hines attempted to flee parole officers. The officer who became trapped on the hood of the vehicle according to the Sheriffs account was the one that fired his service weapon.

Hines was struck three times.

Sheriff Henderson also said that there were other witnesses being interviewed at the time.

UPDATE: Parolee shot three times after attempting to flee arrest at Canandaigua motel

Trust me its the last thing any of us want to do is have to use deadly force, but in this case the parole officer needed to make sure he was safe. He was clinging to the roof of a motor vehicle that is accelerating at a high rate of speed so obviously he chose to use this level of force and again through out this investigation working with the district attorneys office, well deem if this was an appropriate level of force, Henderson added.

Damita Bonnemere, the mother of Hines, spoke with the Finger Lakes Times hours after the entire incident unfolded.

My son is not a violent offender, Damita Bonnemere said. Maybe they were right in trying to arrest him, but wrong to use deadly force. This is happening too often.

Hines was airlifted by Mercy Flight from the scene of the shooting. Bullet holes could be seen in the vehicle at the scene.

My son was a low-level, non-violent offender. He has never been convicted of violence of any kind, she added in her conversation with the FLT.He was literally backing away from the parole officer when he unholstered his gun and fired. The parole officer jumped onto the car.

The incident wasnt captured on body cameras, so there is no video evidence of the shooting.

We are not trying to play games here. That is just how we are doing this right now, Henderson added speaking with the FLT. Trust me, we are doing a thorough investigation here. We are putting everything together and will consult with the DAs office on future charges for this individual (Hines) and the discharge of a duty firearm.

Bonnemere told the FLT that she plans to contact Rev. Al Sharpton and organize at least one protest. She was concerned that the parole officer came without a social worker despite the fact that Hines suffered from mental health and substance use problems.

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Sheriff gives update on Canandaigua shooting; family says at least one protest will happen - FingerLakes1.com