This Bloomberg story says that Congressman Richard Neal, chair of the U.S. House Ways & Means Committee, apparently doesn’t want to see President Trump’s New York state income tax returns, even if the New York legislature passes the bill that would let Neal see the state income tax returns.
The New York bill has already passed the State Senate, but not the Assembly.
Peter Wallison, a Senior Fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, here argues in The Hill that if the electoral college is abolished, the two-party system will cease to exist. This seems obviously wrong. Every state elects its Governor with a state popular vote, and every state has a two-party system. The classic definition of a two-party system is one in which two particular parties are much stronger than all the other parties.
Related:
On May 14, Rhonda Brown Fleming sued the Cherokee Nation in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., over whether she should be allowed on the ballot for the June 1 election for President of the Cherokee Nation. She is a descendant of a slave. Until 1866, the Cherokee Nation permitted slavery.
She was kept off the ballot because she is not a blood member of the tribe, but she argues that it had previously been determined that descendants of slaves held by members of the Cherokee Nation are also part of the tribe. Here is the complaint. The case is Brown Fleming v Cherokee Nation, 1:19cv-1397. The case is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan. She was also kept off the ballot because she does not live on the reservation.
On May 14, the Maine House held a vote on LD 1477, the proposed constitutional amendment to expand ranked choice voting. Currently it exists in Maine for congressional elections in both the primary and the general, and it also exists for state office, but only in primaries. LD 1477 would have expanded it to state office in the general election.
Although most House members voted for it, it did not get two-thirds. The vote was 85-54.
Crosscut, a non-partisan on-line news service in Washington state, has this article about the two lawsuits still pending on whether states can punish or replace presidential electors who voted for someone other than the person who received the most popular votes in their own state.
The article also explains how irrational it was for the Washington state legislature this year to pass a bill to replace “disobedient” electors, while the Washington State Supreme Court still hasn’t issued its opinion on whether the U.S. Constitution gives electors the freedom to vote for any qualified candidate.
The article quotes Washington State Senator Patty Kuderer as saying that, “so far”, all the courts have ruled that states can control electors. Actually, no court has yet ruled that states may do that. All of the lower court opinions on this issue have ducked the issue, by saying the cases were moot, or that the electors don’t have standing. Kuderer is also wrong to say, “I don’t think that’s what the Constitution ever intended (in reference to whether presidential electors have freedom of choice).” It is clear from the debate at the 1787 constitutional convention that the founders expected the electors to make their own enlightened choice on who should be president.
