Blue state's top court strikes down law allowing non-citizens to vote
A former New York City Council member responded to the ruling by saying it should have been an "open and shut case" and that the law was "embarrassing."
In a court filing by New York City attorneys, the city said that non-U.S. citizens make up about a third of the adult population in the city.
The near unanimous, 6-1, decision blocks a law passed in 2021 by New York City's majority Democratic city council that would have made nearly 1 million non-citizens eligible to vote in municipal elections, including for mayor and city council.
Those arguing in favor of the law claimed that a provision in the New York constitution on the qualifications of voters only guaranteed the right of citizens over 18 to vote while not denying that right to non-citizens.
Chief Judge Rowan Wilson wrote in the decision that the New York state constitution clearly articulates that only citizens are eligible to vote.
Wilson wrote that under the appellants' logic, municipalities would be "free to enact legislation that would enable anyone to vote—including … thirteen-year-old children."
"The New York Constitution as it stands today draws a firm line restricting voting to citizens," he said. "It is plain from the language and restrictions contained in that 'citizen' is not meant as a floor, but as a condition of voter eligibility: the franchise extends only to citizens whose right to vote is established by proper proofs."
Joe Borelli, one of the plaintiffs in the case and a former New York City councilman who voted against the law, told Fox News Digital that "the state constitution and statutes are plainly written and in clear language."
"This has always been an open and shut case, and it's embarrassing that the city council fought so hard to skirt the law, undermine the constitution, and weaken the votes of citizens," he said.
The ruling upholds an earlier decision by a lower court invalidating the law. Associate Judge Jenny Rivera was the only member of the court to dissent.
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24 minutes ago
- Yahoo
How Donald Trump is reshaping Washington, D.C., in his image
U.S. President Donald Trump is presiding over one of the most dramatic transformations of Washington, D.C., in a generation, as he makes monumental changes to the historic White House complex, federalizes local police as part of a "beautification" campaign, takes over the district's performing arts centre and dictates what should be on display in the national museums. Trump is taking a more hands-on approach to district issues than any of his recent predecessors as he tries to remake the capital in his image, all while rooting out what he calls "wokesters," homeless people, hardened criminals, illegal migrants and others. In Trump's D.C., there will be no more "savagery, filth and scum," he said. As he tightens his grip on the federal district he says has been badly managed for decades, Trump has flatly ruled out granting D.C. statehood. It's something residents have long demanded, and it would stymie his efforts to exert more control over what happens in this city of 700,000 people. "What we want to do is make Washington, D.C., the greatest, most beautiful, safest capital anywhere in the world, and that's going to happen," Trump told reporters at an event on Wednesday. "Already they're saying, 'He's a dictator,'" he said of his Democrat critics. But Trump insisted D.C. "is going to hell. We've got to stop it." This week, federal agents have been out on patrol in parts of the district, arresting dozens of suspected criminals in the first few days of the Trump operation. The city's Democratic mayor, Muriel Bowser, initially called the deployment "unsettling." But she has been largely deferential to Trump, saying she's powerless to stop his efforts and that more officers on the streets "may be a positive." Barbara Perry, co-chair of the presidential oral history program at the University of Virginia and a board member of the White House Historical Association, told CBC News that Trump's D.C. intervention is truly unprecedented. 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The proposed building is nearly double the size of the existing structure. PHOTOS | Trump's proposed ballroom at the White House: "Part of his real estate developer persona is plastering the name of Trump over anything that he ever owned or wanted to own," Perry said. "He sees himself as a businessman and a developer and the desire to build something like this giant ballroom — it's right in his strike zone." The plan has drawn fierce criticism from architectural purists but praise from others who say the current building is too small for large state functions. His defenders say Trump is right that unsightly tents have to be rolled out onto the lawn when more than 250 people are invited to a formal event. Stephen Ayers, the interim CEO of the American Institute for Architects, which was entrusted by president Theodore Roosevelt more than a century ago to be the "perpetual guardian" of the White House's architectural integrity, urges caution. "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is the people's house, a national treasure and an enduring symbol of our democracy. Any modifications to it — especially modifications of this magnitude — should reflect the importance, scale and symbolic weight of the White House itself," Ayers said. Trump's proposed structure "raises concerns regarding scale and balance," he said, and any additions should be adjusted so that they align with "the White House's historic character." Others have been more blunt, calling the planned addition "hideous," "ugly," "dumb" and gaudy given the liberal use of gold. "I can see where this ballroom would be helpful and needed. We struggled with guests lists when I was there," said Anita McBride, the former chief of staff to ex-first lady Laura Bush, who helped plan social events. "With tented events, you really can't say you're having dinner at the White House, because you're not. You're on the lawn. It's not as attractive, in my mind." 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Yahoo
36 minutes ago
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News Analysis: Newsom's decision to fight fire with fire could have profound political consequences
Deep in the badlands of defeat, Democrats have soul-searched about what went wrong last November, tinkered with a thousand-plus thinkpieces and desperately cast for a strategy to reboot their stalled-out party. Amid the noise, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has recently championed an unlikely game plan: Forget the high road, fight fire with fire and embrace the very tactics that virtue-minded Democrats have long decried. Could the dark art of political gerrymandering be the thing that saves democracy from Trump's increasingly authoritarian impulses? That's essentially the pitch Newsom is making to California voters with his audacious new special election campaign. As Texas Democrats dig in to block a Republican-led redistricting push and Trump muscles to consolidate power wherever he can, Newsom wants to redraw California's own congressional districts to favor Democrats. His goal: counter Trump's drive for more GOP House seats with a power play of his own. 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But she and others were clear-eyed about the need to stop a president "willing to rig the election midstream," she said. Friedman said she was hearing overwhelmingly positive reactions to the proposal from all kinds of Democratic groups on the ground. "The response that I get is, 'Finally, we're fighting. We have a way to fight back that's tangible,'" Friedman recounted. Still, despite the state's Democratic voter registration advantage, victory for the ballot measure will hardly be assured. California voters have twice rallied for independent redistricting at the ballot box in the last two decades and many may struggle to abandon those beliefs. A POLITICO-Citrin Center-Possibility Lab poll found that voters prefer keeping an independent panel in place to draw district lines by a nearly two-to-one margin, and that independent redistricting is broadly popular in the state. (Newsom's press office argued that the poll was poorly worded, since it asked about getting rid of the independent commission altogether and permanently returning line-drawing power to the legislators, rather than just temporarily scrapping their work for several cycles until the independent commission next draws new lines.) California voters should not expect to see a special election campaign focused on the minutia of reconfiguring the state's congressional districts, however. While many opponents will likely attack the change as undercutting the will of California voters, who overwhelmingly supported weeding politics out of the redistricting process, bank on Newsom casting the campaign as a referendum on Trump and his devious effort to keep Republicans in control of Congress. Newsom employed a similar strategy when he demolished the Republican-led recall campaign against him in 2021, which the governor portrayed as a "life and death" battle against "Trumpism" and far-right anti-vaccine and antiabortion activists. Among California's Democratic-heavy electorate, that message proved to be extremely effective. "Wake up, America," Newsom said Thursday at a Los Angeles rally launching the campaign for the redistricting measure. "Wake up to what Donald Trump is doing. Wake up to his assault. Wake up to the assault on institutions and knowledge and history. Wake up to his war on science, public health, his war against the American people." Kevin Liao, a Democratic strategist who has worked on national and statewide campaigns, said his D.C. and California-based political group chats had been blowing up in recent days with texts about the moment Newsom was creating for himself. Much of Liao's group chat fodder has involved the output of Newsom's digital team, which has elevated trolling to an art form on its official @GovPressOffice account on the social media site X. The missives have largely mimicked the president's own social media patois, with hyperbole, petty insults and a heavy reliance on the 'caps lock' key. "DONALD IS FINISHED — HE IS NO LONGER 'HOT.' FIRST THE HANDS (SO TINY) AND NOW ME — GAVIN C. NEWSOM — HAVE TAKEN AWAY HIS 'STEP,' " one of the posts read last week, dutifully reposted by the governor himself. Some messages have also ended with Newsom's initials (a riff on Trump's signature "DJT" signoff) and sprinkled in key Trumpian callbacks, like the phrase 'Liberation Day,' or a doctored Time Magazine cover with Newsom's smiling mien. The account has garnered 150,000 new followers since the beginning of the month. Shortly after Trump took office in January, Newsom walked a fine line between criticizing the president and his policies and being more diplomatic, especially after the California wildfires — in hopes of appealing to any semblance of compassion and presidential responsibility Trump possessed. Newsom had spent the first months of the new administration trying to reshape the California-vs.-Trump narrative that dominated the president's first term and move away from his party's prior "resistance" brand. Those conciliatory overtures coincided with Newsom's embrace of a more ecumenical posture, hosting MAGA leaders on his podcast and taking a position on transgender athletes' participation in women's sports that contradicted the Democratic orthodoxy. Newsom insisted that he engaged in those conversations to better understand political views that diverged from his own, especially after Trump's victory in November. However, there was the unmistakable whiff of an ambitious politician trying to broaden his national appeal by inching away from his reputation as a West Coast liberal. Newsom's reluctance to readopt the Trump resistance mantle ended after the president sent California National Guard troops into Los Angeles amid immigration sweeps and ensuing protests in June. Those actions revealed Trump's unchecked vindictiveness and abject lack of morals and honor, Newsom said. Of late, Newsom has defended the juvenile tone of his press aides' posts mocking Trump's own all-caps screeds, and questioned why critics would excoriate his parody and not the president's own unhinged social media utterances. "If you've got issues with what I'm putting out, you sure as hell should have concerns about what he's putting out as president," Newsom said last week. "So to the extent it's gotten some attention, I'm pleased." In an attention-deficit economy where standing out is half the battle, the posts sparkle with unapologetic swagger. And they make clear that Newsom is in on the joke. 'To a certain set of folks who operated under the old rules, this could be seen as, 'Wow, this is really outlandish.' But I think they are making the calculation that Democrats want folks that are going to play under this new set of rules that Trump has established,' Liao said. At a moment when the Democratic party is still occupied with post-defeat recriminations and what's-next vision boarding, Newsom has emerged from the bog with something resembling a plan. And he's betting the house on his deep-blue state's willingness to fight fire with fire. Times staff writers Seema Mehta and Laura Nelson contributed to this report. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
an hour ago
Iraq starts excavation of large mass grave left by Islamic State
IRBIL, Iraq -- Iraqi officials have begun the excavation of what is believed to be a mass grave left behind by the Islamic State extremist group during its rampage across the country a decade ago. Local authorities are working with the judiciary, forensic investigations, Iraq's Martyrs' Foundation, and the directorate of mass graves to carry out the excavation of the site of a sink hole in al-Khafsa, south of the northern city of Mosul, the state-run Iraqi News Agency reported Sunday. Ahmad Qusay al-Asady, head of the Martyrs Foundation's mass graves excavation department, told The Associated Press that his team began work at Khasfa on Aug. 9 at the request of Nineveh province's Gov. Abdulqadir al-Dakhil. The operation is initially limited to gathering visible human remains and surface evidence while preparing for a full exhumation that officials say will require international support. After an initial 15 days of work, the foundation's Mosul teams will build a database and start collecting DNA samples from families of suspected victims. Al-Asady explained that laboratory processing and a DNA database must come first to ensure proper identification. Full exhumations can only proceed once specialized assistance is secured to navigate the site's hazards, including sulfur water and unexploded ordnance. Khasfa is 'a very complicated site,' he said. Based on unverified accounts from witnesses and families and other unofficial testimonies, authorities estimate that thousands of bodies could be buried there, he said. Scores of mass graves containing thousands of bodies of people believed to have been killed by the extremist group have been found in Iraq and Syria. At its peak, IS ruled an area half the size of the United Kingdom in Iraq and Syria and was notorious for its brutality. It beheaded civilians and enslaved and raped thousands of women from the Yazidi community, one of Iraq's oldest religious minorities. The group was defeated in Iraq in July 2017, when Iraqi forces captured the northern city of Mosul. Three months later, it suffered a major blow when Kurdish forces captured the Syrian northern city of Raqqa, which was the group's de-facto capital. The war against IS officially ended in March 2019, when U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces captured the eastern Syrian town of Baghouz, which was the last sliver of land the extremists controlled. Rabah Nouri Attiyah, a lawyer who has worked on more than 70 cases of missing people in Nineveh, told the AP that information he obtained from the foundation and different Iraqi courts during his investigations points to Khasfa as 'the largest mass grave in modern Iraqi history." Al-Asady, however, said investigators 'cannot confirm yet if it is the largest mass grave' to be found in Iraq, 'but according to the size of the space, we estimate it to be one of the largest.' Attiyah said roughly 70% of the human remains at Khasfa are believed to belong to Iraqi army and police personnel, with other victims including Yazidis. He said he has interviewed numerous eyewitnesses from the area who saw IS fighters bring people there by bus and kill them. 'Many of them were decapitated,' he said. Attiyah's own uncle and cousin were police officers killed by IS, and he is among those hoping to identify and recover the remains of loved ones. Testimonies and witness statements, as well as findings from other mass graves in Nineveh, indicate that most of the military, police and other security forces personnel killed by IS are expected to be found at Khasfa, along with Yazidis from Sinjar and Shiite victims from Tal Afar, he said.
