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GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. On Tuesday, Chicago Police Commander Eric Winstrom stayed true to his reputation as a community-based cop upon his official introduction to the city whose police force he will now lead.

I plan to be the most exhausted person in the city of Grand Rapids in the first 30 days, he said inside the City Commission Chambers during his official introduction Tuesday afternoon. There's dozens of communities here, there are dozens of neighborhoods, I think there's something like 24 or more neighborhood associations. I'd love to meet with every single one of them.

Winstrom comes to Grand Rapids from the Windy City, where he served on the CPD force for nearly 20-years. In that time, he served as a patrol officer, on tactical teams, as an investigator and administrator, as an instructor at the Chicago Police Academy, and as a barred attorney with a J.D. from the Brooklyn Law School. In his most recent command role, he oversaw 200 employees including 40 homicide detectives.

I'll be brand new here in Grand Rapids, he added Thursday. There's a lot of people that I need to meet internally as well. So I'm going to be busy, I'm going to be tired, but it's going to be wonderful.

Commander Winstrom was joined at the press conference by his family. He said they were in the process of moving to Grand Rapids.

Winstrom comes from a family with deep ties to the criminal justice system, on both sides of it. In Ottawa County, Winstrom Park is named for the commanders great-grandfather, who served as a deputy sheriff there in the 1960s. But when he was young, Winstrom recalls the arrest and treatment of his brother after he was jailed on drug charges as a teenager in Austin, Texas. Winstrom said it affected his decision to enter law enforcement, and his policies as an officer of the law.

It gave me the insight to see not only the impact incarceration has on an individual, somebody that obviously I love very much, but also family, he said. So I'm excited where I am now. We're working on things like the Narcotics Diversion Program, where we try and divert people out of the criminal justice process. It's really impacted me; it's impacted my whole philosophy on policing."

Winstrom said hed eventually like to bring the citys jail numbers down by turning to more forms of alternative sentencing.

He also touted his work during racial injustice protesting in 2014 and 2020 in Chicago, saying protestors were allowed their First Amendment rights without excessive use of force.

When asked about his approach to mending racial divides in Grand Rapids, after a 2017 study found Black and Hispanic drivers were more likely to be pulled over versus white drivers, and several high profile incidences that garnered national attention, Winstrom said the answer required two approaches.

It goes to recruitment and retention. You want a diverse workforce, no one with a diverse background is going to want to be at a place that tolerates that sort of bias, he said. My approach, just in general, is I'm going to get out of the community. I'm going to meet everyone and I want to hear input like this.

Excerpt from:
Winstrom on first 30-days as Chief: I plan to be the most exhausted person in the city of Grand Rapids - Fox17

Supreme Court Justice Breyer to retire

Justice Breyer has been facing calls to retire while Democrats can fill his seat in the highest court in the land.

Associated Press, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON Associate Justice Stephen Breyer is expected to step down this year after nearly three decades on the Supreme Court, opening a rare opportunity for President Joe Biden to name a replacement whocould influence the court for a generation.

Breyer, who usually votes with the high court's liberals, has had a profound impact on the American legal system, crafting landmark opinions on abortion rights, the First Amendment and the inner workings of government. He has also written biting dissents on the death penalty, campaign finance and Second Amendment issues.

Here's a look at some of his more memorable opinions:

Mahanoy Area School Districtv. B. L. (2021): Held that a Pennsylvania school district violated the First Amendment when it punished a student for avulgar social media post written off-campus. Writing for an 8-1 majority, Breyer rejected the idea that schools may never regulate off-campus speech but said the school's interests were not sufficiently implicated to justify penalizingthe student's speechin this case.

"It might be tempting to dismiss (the student's)words as unworthy of the robust First Amendment protections discussed herein," Breyer wrote. "But sometimes it is necessary to protect the superfluous in order to preserve the necessary."

Read: MahanoyArea School Dist. v. B.L.

June Medical Services v. Russo (2020):Struck down a Louisiana law that required doctors performing abortions to have admitting privilegesat a hospital within 30 miles of the abortion clinic. Writing for the plurality, Breyer found the law placed burdens on women without providing any "significant health-related benefits," and he laid out the burdens in detail.

"A Shreveport resident seeking an abortion who might previously have obtained care at one of that citys local clinics would either have to spend nearly 20 hours driving back and forth to (a) clinic twice, or else find overnight lodging in New Orleans," he wrote. "Both experts and laypersons testified that the burdens of this increased travel would fall disproportionately on poor women, who are least able to absorb them."

Read:June Medical Services v. Russo

What's next: What is the process for Supreme Court nominations? Here's what's next and how long it could take.

Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt (2016): In aprecursor toJune Medicaldealing with similar circumstances, the court struck down a Texas law that required abortion providers to have admitting privilegesat nearby hospitals. Writing for a 5-3majority, Breyer said that courts must balance the ostensible benefit of abortion restrictions againstthe burdens the law imposes on access to abortion.

"We have found nothing in Texas record evidence that shows that, compared to prior law (which required a 'working arrangement' with a doctor with admitting privileges), the new law advanced Texas legitimate interest in protecting women's health," he wrote.

Read: Whole Women's Health v. Hellerstedt

Stenberg v. Carhart (2000): Yearsearlier, Breyer wrote for a 5-4 court striking down a Nebraska law banning late-term abortions. Physicianswho performed the procedure could have their medical licenses pulled and face prosecution. Breyer wrote that the law was unconstitutional under Roe v. Wade and other cases because it put an undue burden on a woman's right to choose whether to have an abortion. Specifically, the majority concluded the law also could be used to prosecute doctors who also performed second-trimester abortions using the most common method to terminate a pregnancy.

"Allthose who perform abortion procedures using that method must fear prosecution, conviction, and imprisonment," Breyer wrote. "Theresult is an undue burden upon a woman's right to make an abortion decision."

Read: Stenberg v. Carhart

Denver Area Educational Telecommunications Consortium v. FCC (1996): Writing for a 6-3 majority, Breyer struck down a provision of a 1992 federal law allowing cable companies to ban offensive or indecent programming on public access channels. The court upheld another provision allowing cable providers torestrict the transmission of "patently offensive" programming on leased access channels.

"The upshot, in respect to the public access channels, is a law that could radically change present programming-related relationships," Breyer wrote. "In doing so, it would not significantly restore editorial rights of cable operators, but would greatly increase the risk that certain categories of programming (say, borderline offensive programs) will not appear."

Read: Denver Area Ed. Telecommunications Consortiumv. FCC

Dissenting opinions may reflect the losing side of a case butthat doesn't mean they're unimportant. Well-crafted dissents are often cited in future litigation. And the Supreme Court's history is replete with situations where a majority of the justices revisited an old controversy and found an earlier dissent influential in arriving at their decision.

Dissenting and concurring opinions can also signal a justice's thinking on a given issue to astute lawyers who may craft future challengesto address that approach.

NFIB v. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (2022):Breyer wrote a dissent, joined by the court's other liberals, in the recent challenge to Biden's COVID-19 vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers. In an unsigned opinion, the court ruled that OSHA likely didn't have the authority under a 1970 law that authorizes the agency to impose those requirements and it blocked the mandate's enforcement. Breyer argued the text of the law, while broad, seemed to give OSHA the power to impose the requirements. And he asserted that the court's opinion could have longstanding effects on the government's ability to respond to emergencies.

"It stymies the federal governments ability to counter the unparalleled threat that COVID-19 poses to our nations workers," Breyer wrote. "Acting outside of its competence and without legal basis, the court displaces the judgments of the government officials given the responsibility to respond to workplace health emergencies."

Read: NFIB v. OSHA

Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid (2021):In a6-3 ruling, the majority concluded that a California law that permitted labor unions to organize on private farms was ataking ofprivateproperty without justcompensation in violation oftheFifth Amendment. Writing for court's liberals, Breyer asserted there was no "physical appropriation" of property and raised concerns about the decision'simpact on safety inspections.

"I do not believe that the court has made matters clearer or better," Breyer wrote. "Rather than adopt a new broad rule and indeterminate exceptions, I would stick with the approach that I believe the courts case law sets forth. 'Better the devil we know...'"

Read: Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid

Glossip v. Gross (2015): A 5-4 majority of the court held thatOklahoma could use midazolam as an initial drug to administer a death sentence, despite some evidence that it risked subjecting a death row inmate to pain. In an often-cited dissent, Breyer called for a broader reexamination of the death penalty.

"Rather than try to patch up the death penaltys legal wounds one at a time, I would ask for full briefing on a more basic question: Whether the death penalty violates the Constitution," he wrote. "At the very least, the court should call for full briefing on the basic question."

Read:Glossip v. Gross

Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007): A divided court struck down an effort in Seattle to use race as one factor in deciding which schools students would attend to promote racial diversity. Breyer wrote an impassioned dissent asserting the plurality opinion worked against the vision laid out in the court's landmark 1954case Brown v. Board of Education, which ended school segregation.

"What of the hope and promise ofBrown?" Breyer wrote. "In this courts finest hour,Brownv.Board of Educationchallenged this history and helped to change it... The pluralitys position, I fear, would break that promise. This is a decision that the court and the nation will come to regret."

Read: PICS v. Seattle School District

Clinton v. New York (1998): Having worked in all three branches of government, Breyer seemed to enjoy delving into intergovernmental disputes. In this case, a 6-3 court struck down a president's ability to veto certain provisions of legislation approved by Congress, known as the line-item veto. Breyer wrote in dissent that nothing in the Constitution prohibited the power.

"In a sense, it skirts a constitutional edge. But that edge has to do with means, not ends. The means chosen do not amount literally to the enactment, repeal, or amendment of a law," he wrote. "Those means do not violate any basic separation-of-powers principle. They do not improperly shift the constitutionally foreseen balance of power from Congress to the president."

Read: Clinton v. New York

Go here to read the rest:
Justice Stephen Breyer's notable majority opinions and dissents, from abortion to the death penalty - USA TODAY

The bills enjoy broad support the 42 co-sponsors of Ms. Spanbergers TRUST in Congress Act include Representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Harris of Maryland, all firmly in the Trump wing of their party and if anything, they are putting Ms. Pelosi in the spotlight.

You have the speaker of the House out there trading, and her husband making millions and millions of dollars a year, Mr. Hawley said.

Democrats are just as eager to contrast their position with Ms. Pelosis. They said her refusal in December to consider a stock trading ban Were a free-market economy, she said when asked about the push made the issue a cause clbre.

The speaker, I dont want to directly call her out, but handfuls of members have put dozens and dozens of years here. They come at this from a different time and a different perspective, said Ms. Stevens, who has found herself almost certainly facing another Democrat, Andy Levin, in the upcoming House primaries in redistricted Michigan. Both signed on to last weeks letter demanding action on a trading ban.

Democratic leaders remain leery. They argue that once Congress begins trying to regulate its own members out of investments, it is difficult to draw the line between what is permissible and what is not. If stock ownership is forbidden because it could create a conflict with legislating, would having student loan debt make it inappropriate for a member to press for loan relief? Would owning real estate confer an improper personal interest in environmental or land-use policy?

Mr. Roy allowed that there were complexities, but, he said, a line had to be drawn.

If youre talking about dirt, well, are you talking about your family farm or are you engaging in thousands of real estate transactions? he asked. Are you buying and selling and engaging in commercial real estate transactions development while youre in Congress? There are limits to what were supposed to do.

Drew Hammill, Ms. Pelosis deputy chief of staff, said the speaker had asked Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and the chairwoman of the Committee on House Administration, to examine an array of proposals to regulate lawmakers trading, including a ban on owning stocks. Ms. Lofgren is also looking at increasing penalties for unacceptable noncompliance with the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, a 2012 law that mandates that lawmakers disclose their stock trading, a step he said Ms. Pelosi supports.

Excerpt from:
Democrats Break With Leaders Over Congressional Stock Trading - The New York Times

Residents wait in line to vote outside of the Tippecanoe branch library on Oct. 20, 2020, in Milwaukee, Wis. Minimum standards for access to in-person early voting are one reform that both Republicans and Democrats have backed. Scott Olson/Getty Images hide caption

Residents wait in line to vote outside of the Tippecanoe branch library on Oct. 20, 2020, in Milwaukee, Wis. Minimum standards for access to in-person early voting are one reform that both Republicans and Democrats have backed.

Earlier this year, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called a targeted effort by some senators to reform the election certification process that former President Donald Trump attempted to hijack on Jan. 6, 2021, "unacceptably insufficient and even offensive."

Schumer wanted to go bigger.

He wanted to focus on much more expansive voting rights legislation, known as the Freedom to Vote Act, which would have overhauled essentially everything about the American election system: when and where Americans could cast a ballot, how they contribute to political campaigns and how states draw their political lines.

The proposal was trimmed down from an even larger elections bill, but it was still so massive that many election experts and even some Democrats privately say they never actually expected it to pass.

Then it failed.

Democrats in Congress haven't made it clear what they might pursue next, but experts see at least two paths toward a more piecemeal approach to putting in some guardrails around elections in the U.S.

The option gaining momentum recently is an update to the aforementioned rules around presidential election certification, known as the Electoral Count Act.

The law has been derided as poorly written and vague for decades, and its lack of clarity led to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump supporters falsely believed Vice President Mike Pence had more power over the certification of Electoral College votes submitted by the states than he actually did.

A bipartisan group of senators has been meeting to discuss potential revisions to the law, and there are indications that Schumer's opposition to it may be softening since the larger Democratic effort on voting rights failed.

Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California-Irvine, said that he feels the voting reforms in the Freedom to Vote Act are necessary too, but Congress would be right to prioritize the ECA and other laws meant to prevent subversion of the results of a presidential election.

"As much as one might be concerned about voter suppression and I've written two books on the subject, I'm very concerned about it I put the concern about election subversion even higher," Hasen said. "If you don't have a system where votes are fairly counted, you don't have a democracy at all."

The bipartisan group of senators looking at changing the law is working in smaller groups focused on a number of different aspects of voting reform, according to Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who spoke to reporters Monday night after the group met on Capitol Hill.

Each of the smaller groups has a Democrat and Republican co-chair, Collins said, and they are focused on protecting election workers and potential new funding for election administration, in addition to updating the ECA. But she made it clear she thinks whatever legislation that comes from the group will not look anything like the Freedom to Vote Act.

"My goal is to have a bipartisan bill that can secure 60 or more votes in the Senate," she said. "If we re-litigate issues that have already been rejected by the Senate, then I think it would be very difficult for us to reach the 60-vote margin."

The bipartisan group of 16 senators, which includes nine Republicans, is set to meet again on Friday and could start writing text for their proposal in the coming days or weeks. The GOP support is key, since Democrats would need 10 Republicans in agreement to pass a measure in the Senate.

"This group is full of members of the Senate that have experience in getting bipartisan bills to the floor of the Senate. So maybe this group will be more successful," said Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, a member of the group.

On Tuesday, a group of key Democratic senators also separately released their own potential draft update to the ECA. In some cases, the plan by Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Angus King, I-Maine, mirrors proposals that were part of a House Administration Committee staff report released last month.

For example, it says that for an objection to a state's election results to be raised before Congress, the current threshold of only needing one member from each chamber should be raised. Rather, the Senate Democratic proposal, like the House staff report, suggests that one-third of each chamber should have to object. Both Democratic plans also say objections should be subject to a vote by a supermajority not a simple majority in both the House and Senate.

"We stand ready to share the knowledge we have accumulated with our colleagues from both parties and look forward to contributing to a strong, bipartisan effort aimed at resolving this issue and strengthening our democracy," Durbin, Klobuchar and King said in a statement on Tuesday.

King and several members of the bipartisan group agreed they see a potential to work together.

"I'm going to work with anybody who wants to work on the issue," King said.

Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski, another member of bipartisan group, says the various efforts signal momentum.

"I think what that telegraphs is that this is important and it's something that we can move through on a bipartisan basis," Murkowski said.

The level of bipartisan engagement on the ECA never coalesced around the other voting rights reforms Democrats had hoped would come from this Congress, which have grown more urgent as some states across the country passed laws last year restricting voting access.

Republicans have often said they have no interest in federalizing the nuts and bolts of election infrastructure, so mandating things like automatic voter registration or no-excuse absentee voting was a nonstarter.

But Matthew Weil thinks there is another way.

Weil leads the elections project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, which recently released a report detailing what it sees as an "achievable" set of reforms for Congress to focus on.

"Both parties have prioritized elections to their voters," said Weil. "Democrats have been spending a lot of time talking about voter suppression and voters from the Republican Party are hearing that our election system is completely insecure."

BPC's proposal would address both concerns, Weil says, meaning there's a way for politicians to sell it to their voters no matter their affiliation.

Importantly, the BPC report does not argue for federal mandates, but instead argues for an incentivization structure where federal funding would be tied to whether states meet minimum accessibility and security standards such as:

Nine states that range across the political spectrum either currently already meet all of the report's minimum standards or meet all but one. Both Colorado and Georgia meet all of the proposed minimum standards for instance, even though Colorado is a vote-by-mail state and Georgia leans more heavily on in-person voting.

Because of the incentive structure, the proposal also might be an easier sell to Republicans like Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who worry about federal overreach. LaRose staunchly opposed the Freedom to Vote Act, calling it a power grab on the part of Democrats.

But in an interview with NPR recently, LaRose said he had read the BPC report and that he could see supporting similar legislation. Ohio already complies with more than 80% of the report's standards.

Weil, of the BPC, sees parallels to 2002 when Congress passed a bipartisan set of election reforms in the shadow of the 2000 presidential election, one of the closest and most contentious in modern history.

"Both parties had incentives to do something about the elections process," Weil said. "I think I see some of those same possibilities now."

NPR's Claudia Grisales contributed to this report.

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There are election reforms that both Democrats and Republicans seem to like - NPR

Introduction

As President Biden begins his second year in office and the battle for control of Congress in 2022 heats up, Democrats find themselves in a deep hole. Early in Bidens administration, 55% of Americans approved of his performance; today, his job approval has fallen to 42%. Polls conducted during the past three weeks show Democrats trailing Republicans by an average of 4 percentage points in the aggregate vote for the House of Representatives.[1]

This disadvantage in the generic House vote is even more significant than it appears. Because Democratic votes are distributed less efficiently among congressional districts than are Republican votes, Democrats need an edge of at least 2.5 percentage points to retain control. In 2016, a Republican advantage of just 1 percentage point translated into a 47-seat House majority. In 2012, a 1-point Democratic popular vote advantage left Republicans with a 33-seat majority. By contrast, it took a massive 8.6 percentage popular vote victory to give Democrats a comparable 36-seat majority in 2018.

Contrary to early expectations, the redistricting process after the 2020 Census is likely to leave the Houses existing partisan tilt about where it is now. But the parties have pursued different strategies. While Republicans have focused on making their seats safer, Democrats have sought to increase the number of districts where they have a reasonable chance of winning. This strategy will increase Democratic gains when the popular vote balance is favorable to them, but at the cost of increasing their losses when the vote turns against them. In these circumstances, the Republicans current 4-point edge in the generic House vote would likely produce a massive seat swing in their direction.

There is a strong relationship between President Bidens public standing and Democrats prospects in the forthcoming midterm elections. A recent study found that in this era of polarized and nationalized politics, a presidents job approval does more to influence midterms than does any other factor. Another analysis shows that Bidens low job approval in swing states is weakening Democratic candidates for the Senate. Unless Biden can move his approval from the low to the high-40s, Democrats have virtually no chance of retaining their House majority or of continuing to control the Senate.

Voters have downgraded their evaluation of the presidents performance across the board, but his losses on two key issues that were key to his campaigndealing with the pandemic and bringing the country togetherhave been especially steep.

To understand what it would take for President Biden to improve his public standing, lets examine which voters have moved from approval to disapproval, and why. A recently released report from the Pew Research Center offers some answers.

In early 2021, when public approval for President Biden was at its peak, support among Independent voters who said they lean toward the Democrats stood at 88%, nearly as high as among voters who identify as Democrats (95%), and differences between strong and not-strong Democrats were insignificant. Since then, the gap between these groups has widened significantly. While the presidents ratings among Democrats have declined by 19 percentage points (from 95% to 76%), they have declined by 32 percentage points among Leaners, and a 22-point gap has opened between those who say they are strong and not strong Democrats.

Data provided by Pew show a strong correlation between these shifts and ideological differences among Democratic support groups. Simply put, strong Democrats, a group dominated by liberals, continue to approve of the presidents performance much more than do not-strong Democrats and Democratic leaners, who have strong majorities of moderate and conservative voters. Liberals make up 56% of strong Democrats, compared to just 40% of not-strong Democrats and 36% of Independents who lean toward the Democrats.

Other survey data supports Pews findings. For example, compare two polls conducted by the Economist and YouGov, the first in mid-March of 2021, the second in the third week of January 2022. Among all voters, President Bidens job approval has declined by 15 points. But it has declined by 21 points among Independents and 22 points among moderates.

A Gallup survey, which examined the impact of partisanship but not ideology, found that the decline in Bidens personal ratings was driven mainly by shifts among Independents.

A key reason for these shiftsmoderates and Independents now view President Biden as less moderate and more liberal than they did at the beginning of his administration. When asked to place Biden on the ideological spectrum from very liberal to very conservative, heres what they said:

During this period, moreover, the share of these voters who saw Biden as very liberal rose by 6 percentage points among both moderates and liberals.

While President Biden has suffered reverses across the board, he has lost more ground among voters in the center of the electorate than on the left. If he is to regain support among moderates and Independents, he must work harder to overcome their objections to the way he has positioned himself during his first year in officeincluding their perception that he has governed farther to the left than they expected when they voted for him in 2020.

[1] Source: authors calculation based on polls conducted January 12-26, 2022.

See the article here:
Can President Biden and the Democrats get out of the hole? - Brookings Institution