Reason Magazine has this interview with national Libertarian Party chair Angela McArdle, titled, “What Role Did the Libertarian Party Play in Freeing Ross Ulbricht?”. It is approximately 20 minutes long. McArdle explains the history of her work on this subject, which began in 2023. She mentions that the Trump campaign was accutely aware that the Libertarian Party had polled 1,865,724 votes for President in 2020
On January 22, six New York Assemblymembers introduced A2724, the same bill that was introduced in the State Senate earlier as S1870. The bill lowers the statewide petition for independent candidates and the nominees of unqualified parties from 45,000 to 15,000 signatures. It moves the petition deadline from May to August. It expands the petitioning period from six weeks to twelve weeks. It changes the definition of a qualified party from a group that polled 2% for the office at the top of the ticket, to exactly 50,000 votes.
The sponsors are Ken Blankenbush, Joe Angelino, Joe DeStefano, Brian D. Miller, Michael Novakhov, and Chris Tague. All are Republicans.
New Mexico has always had closed primaries since primaries were first established in 1938. On January 21, two New Mexico State Senators introduced SB 16, to let independent voters vote in the primary of their choice. The sponsors are Senators Peter Wirth and Natalie Figueroa.
Over the last decade, this bill has been introduced in every session, but so far it hasn’t passed.
On January 21, two federal lawsuits were filed to overturn President Donald’s Trump Executive Order on birthright citizenship. The leading such case is filed by 18 states in U.S. District Court of Massachusetts. It is titled State of New Jersey et al v Trump, 1:25cv-10139. Here is the Brief. The case is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Leo T. Sorokin, an Obama appointee.
This blog post is election-related. Varying definitions of citizenship affect whether certain individuals can run for office in the United States.
On January 21, President Donald Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht, and credited the Libertarian Movement for influencing him to do this.
His statement on Truth Social says, “I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbricht to let her know that in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross.”
Here is the wikipedia article about Ulbricht.
Here is a Reason magazine article about the pardon.
