Courtesy of Politico, here is a link to April 26 presidential primary returns. Click on the map. The five states voting today are Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.
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On April 26, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued this procedural ruling in Holmes v FEC, 15-5120. The Holmes case is a challenge to the federal campaign finance limits from individual givers. The federal law lets an individual give $2,700 to a federal candidate in primary season, and another $2,700 in the general election. The plaintiffs say that if Congress does not believe a combined contribution of $5,400 to one particular candidate will cause corrpution, there can’t be any logical reason why the individual donor can’t give $5,400 to the candidate during the general election season (assuming he or she has given nothing to the candidate in primary season).
The Appeals Court did not decide the merits of this case, but it did rule that the case is not frivolous, and therefore it must be set before the entire panel of Judges in the D.C. Circuit. Congress wrote the campaign finance laws in 1974 to provide that when someone sues over the constitutionally of the federal campaign finance laws of 1974, the case must be set before all the Circuit Judges, unless it is a frivolous case. So, now the case gets its chance to be argued in front of all fourteen of the Appeals Judges.
This ruling virtually guarantees that another case, Libertarian National Committee v FEC, will also go before all the circuit judges. That is the case over whether the Libertarian Party can accept a $235,575 bequest all at once, or whether it can only get the money piecemeal, by receiving $33,400 per year while most of the money remains in escrow. Attorneys for the FEC have been fighting the party’s attempt to get the case before the Appeals judges.
On April 26, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion in Heffernan v City of Paterson, New Jersey, 14-1280. By a vote of 6-2, the Court ruled that a policeman who was demoted because he was seen holding a campaign sign for a candidate for Mayor is entitled to damages. It was already settled law that government employees cannot be demoted, fired, or denied promotion, just because of their political activities, unless they are in policy-making decisions or work closely with policy-making officials.
But in this case, the policeman had not actually been campaigning for any candidate for Mayor. He was merely delivering a campaign sign to his bedridden mother, who wanted to put the sign in her lawn. The lower courts denied any relief for the policeman, on the theory that while he may have been protected if he had been engaging in campaigning, in this case he wasn’t campaigning. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the lower courts and said even if he wasn’t campaigning, the fact that he was demoted because he was thought to be campaigning also entitles him to relief. See this story.
The Washington Post has this article about General James Norman Mattis, who is being urged to run by anti-Trump Republicans as an independent.
Here is the wikipedia article about Mattis. Mattis is age 65. This recent article quotes Mattis as saying that he has not even thought about running for President.
On April 26, Donald Trump tweeted that Bernie Sanders has been treated badly by the Democratic Party and that Sanders ought to run as an independent. See this story.