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“This was about vindication of her First Amendment rights,” said Anne Tindall, an attorney at Protect Democracy who was one of the lawyers representing Douša. “It’s about making sure she’s free to travel to Mexico and continue her ministry there. (It was) about shining a light on DHS and its activities, (which were) not what we should expect of our government.”
A California federal judge has ruled in favor of a New York pastor who alleged U.S. border officials trounced her First Amendment rights by retaliating against her for ministering to members of a migrant caravan in Mexico.
U.S. District Judge Todd W. Robinson handed down his ruling on Tuesday, finding that a December 2018 email from a U.S. Customs and Border Protection official to Mexican immigration authorities with instructions to detain and return Kaji Dousa, along with other individuals, to the U.S. was sent in retaliation for protected speech. The email also flouted the free exercise clause of the First Amendment because it has restricted her ministry in Mexico, the judge’s order said.
Michigan has done a great job of maintaining a clean and accurate Qualified Voter File, said Quinn Raymond, co-founder of VoteShield, a partner of the organization Protect Democracy. VoteShield tracks states’ efforts on keeping voter rolls up-to-date, accurate, and transparent, and federal law requires states to maintain clean and updated voter rolls.
“Secretary Benson and her elections team have been very effective at ensuring that there are not unlawful removals from the voter rolls. There’s a uniformed and fair process across the state for when and how you remove records,” said Raymond.
“People are worried about getting any election legislation past him,” said Kyle Miller, a policy advocate with the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy and a former aide to a Democratic member of the committee. “We don’t see a realistic path for getting anything done, given his past.”
“In both the 2020 and 2022 elections, Michiganders rejected politicians who denied lawful election results or who distorted facts for political gain,” said Matt Patton, Michigan policy advocate for Protect Democracy.
“Appointments like this should be a warning bell for Michigan voters who believe facts matter and that acknowledging clear winners and losers of elections is the bedrock of democracy itself.”
“Election-denier secretaries of state absolutely present a risk of election subversion that the public still needs to be aware of and responding to,” said Rachel Homer, counsel for the nonpartisan advocacy organization Protect Democracy. “The risk that the will of the people might not translate into who was actually elected — that’s a threat to democracy.”
As Ian Bassin and Erica Newland argued in a powerful and persuasive New York Review of Books article last July, it is beyond the “proper powers” of the Department of Justice “to weigh whether indicting would be in the national interest.” Weighing the national interest is the president’s purview, and the path to avoiding prosecution for the sake of national stability is through a presidential pardon, not through an exercise of prosecutorial discretion.
But Orion Danjuma, an attorney with Protect Democracy, noted that Liburdi left the door open for the League of Women Voters of Arizona to file for another temporary emergency order against Clean Elections USA and Jennings. That gives him and other attorneys the ability to act swiftly to prevent voter intimidation as long as the case continues to be litigated.
“I think the fact that there is a pending lawsuit against this individual will have some deterrent effects in and of itself,” Danjuma said. “And I hope that some of the most extreme unlawful abuses that we saw in the past will not occur partly because this individual and entity remains in active litigation over the conduct at issue.“
A report released Thursday from the nonpartisan National Task Force on Election Crises detailed proposals for combating mis- and dis-information that have arisen amid recent U.S. elections.
The report asserts that while efforts such as greater communication, transparency, and coordination combated information threats during the 2022 midterm campaign season, serious concerns remain as the 2024 election approaches.
Many Donald Trump-backed election deniers lost bids for office last year, but the threat of election subversion remains, says a new report – particularly physical threats to election workers.
“While the most feared threats to election administration and vote counting did not materialize in 2022, that doesn’t mean that the elevated risks to our elections have disappeared and we can lower our guard,” said Wendy Weiser, Vice President for Democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law.
Defeating authoritarianism is going to take all of us. Everyone and every institution has a role to play. Together, we can protect democracy.
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