Sunday, September 15, 2024
More bomb threats hit Springfield, Ohio, after Trump elevates false claims about Haitians | Ohio | The Guardian
More bomb threats hit Springfield, Ohio, after Trump elevates false claims about Haitians
"Two hospitals sent into lockdown, government buildings shut down and local schools evacuated
Two hospitals in Springfield, Ohio, were sent into lockdown after bomb threats, police said on Saturday, marking the fourth such case in as many days that appears linked to false claims circulating among the far right that Haitian immigrants there are eating domestic pets and wildlife.
Saturday’s threats came even after the woman who started the rumors acknowledged to NBC News that they were unfounded and publicly apologized.
Kettering Health Springfield was one of the medical facilities targeted, with officials later saying they found nothing suspicious during a search. Another hospital, Mercy Health’s Springfield regional medical center, received a similar threat.
A spokesperson with Mercy Health said the hospital had continued to operate and thanked Springfield police as well as hospital staff “for their swift, efficient and caring response”.
The bomb threats on Saturday came after others had been called in to government buildings Thursday, forcing their closure and causing local schools to be evacuated.
“We recognize that the past few days have been particularly challenging for everyone in our community,” Springfield police said in a statement. Police added “we remain fully committed to ensuring the safety and wellbeing of each and every person”.
On Friday, a Springfield woman, Erika Lee, apologized for rumors about Haitian immigrants eating pets that resulted from a post she wrote on Facebook claiming that the friend of a neighbor’s daughter lost her cat – and then found the animal strung up outside the home of a Haitian family.
Lee now says she had no firsthand knowledge of the claim. The neighbor referenced in the post, Kimberly Newton, revealed that she also had heard the story from an acquaintance and not her daughter.
Lee said she was filled with regret and insists she never intended to put a target on the backs of the Haitian community.
“It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Lee told NBC News on Friday.
Local authorities in Springfield had already debunked the lies even before Donald Trumpmade the allegation that Haitian immigrants were eating pets during the debate with Kamala Harris on Tuesday. Lee told the outlet she never imagined her social media post would become fodder for conspiracy theories and hate aimed at the Haitian community in Springfield.
“I’m not a racist,” Lee said, adding that her daughter is half-Black and she herself is mixed race as well as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. “Everybody seems to be turning it into that – and that was not my intent.”
The city of Springfield believes the rumors may also have arisen from a case in Canton, Ohio, where an American with no known connection to Haiti was arrested in August for allegedly stomping a cat to death and eating the animal.
Separately, an explanation for a viral photo of a man carrying two geese in Columbus, Ohio, has been made, although it also helped set off the now-discredited rumors about pet-eating in nearby Springfield.
The Ohio state division of wildlife told TMZ that the man had been picking up the two geese that had been hit by a car. The agency also reported that there was no evidence that the man was Haitian, an immigrant or that he intended to eat the geese.
About 15,000 Haitian immigrants began trickling into Springfield – a city of 60,000 – to work in local produce packaging and machining factories in 2017. They have been in demand at Springfield’s Dole Fresh Vegetables and at automotive machining plants whose owners grappled with a labor shortage in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic."
How to check if you’re registered to vote before your state’s deadline - The Washington Post
Are you still registered to vote? How to make sure you’re up to date.
Here’s how to check before your state’s deadline.
If you want to vote in the presidential election, it’s time to check your voter registration.
Even if you voted in a previous election, you’re not necessarily registered for this one, and the window to register closes early next month in some states.
States periodically purge their voter rolls of people who haven’t voted recently or have died, moved or become ineligible by, say, being convicted of a felony. And sometimes eligible voters are mistakenly removed.
If you live in a place that doesn’t allow registration on Election Day on Nov. 5, you should make sure your registration is up-to-date before your state’s deadline passes.
Before D.C. police killed Justin Robinson, he worked to stop violence - The Washington Post
Before D.C. police killed Justin Robinson, he worked to stop violence
"The 25-year-old understood the city’s crime problem better than most, because he had been on both sides of it.
Twelve hours after D.C. police officers opened fire on a man working with the city to quell violence, a teenage boy from Southeast Washington texted his teacher.
“Hey, don’t you got two twin sons?” asked Jesiah Swann, 14, referring to the identical twins he had heard longtime educator Sheldon Pinder talk about as if they were his own.
“One was killed this morning,” came the response.
Jesiah was quick to text back: “Oh my goodness. Is it the one that was telling me that I should always follow my dreams?”
Yes, the teacher confirmed. It was.
The Sept. 1 police killing of Justin Robinson, a 25-year-old Southeast Washington native, set off a wave of anger across the District. It came as the city was already reeling over the arrest of a council member, the death of a police officer and the expected sentencing of two officers in a murder case.
Robinson’s death meant losing someone who understood the city’s violence better than most, because he had been on both sides of it.
From an early age, those close to him had noticed his desire to help other kids growing up in a part of the District where childhood is often interrupted by gunfire. That was true even after he became caught up in it, serving time in prison for his role at the age of 16 in a murder that unfolded the day of his older brother’s funeral. Although Robinson did not pull the trigger, he said the shooter “could smoke” the victim, a young man from a rival neighborhood.
That Robinson knew what it was to get into serious trouble with the law, that he had served his time and come out of it wanting something different, made him credible to those he tried to reach — formally, as a violence interrupter for D.C.’s Cure the Streets program, and informally, through his onetime teacher.
“They talk about him being locked up,” said Pinder, who was an associate dean at Ballou High School when Robinson was a student. “He was. But he paid his time, and he came back out and changed the community.”
Outrage over Robinson’s killing spilled into the streets last week after the release of body-camera footage of the shooting. Videos show officers responding to reports of a car crashing into a Southeast Washington McDonald’s and finding Robinson unresponsive inside a banged-up Mercedes. A handgun, according to police, was seen in his lap.
In the videos, police move in as Robinson stirs, shouting at him to keep his hands off the weapon. He rolls the driver’s side window partway down and is met with a gun. Robinson reaches toward it — and, according to police, grabs it — and an officer threatens to shoot him in his “[expletive] face.” Moments later, the officer fires 10 shots, while a second officer fires another.
Two weeks later, much about the incident remains unknown. But as a funeral was held for Robinson on Thursday, a portrait was emerging of a man who from a young age found himself, as he once put it, both “behind the gun and in front of the gun” — and yet was seen by many as holding untold promise.
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The Washington Post reviewed records from Robinson’s criminal case and talked to people who knew him at different points in his life, including his teachers, mentors and young people he tried to help. One of them was Jesiah, who said meeting Robinson inspired him recently to stay late at school, where he used a computer to sign up for a College Board account and pore over universities.
The high school freshman recalled the advice Robinson gave him: “Stay consistent, don’t get into the streets, be myself and do what I have to do to make my family proud.”
It’s a conversation he’s continued to replay in recent days as he’s watched people around him mourn and march and call for “Justice for Justin.”
‘I know what the pain is like’
For Robinson, violence had long been a part of life.
The mama’s boy in a pair of twins, each given “J” names, he had spent much of his childhood in a part of Congress Heights that many refer to as “MLK” or “Da K.” Prosecutors described the area in a 2021 drug trafficking conspiracy case as “one of the most notorious in the city in terms of drug and gun violence.”
Robinson’s father was in and out of his life, according to court records. But his mother, who worked as an apartment leasing officer, raised him with “a lot of love” in a home where other kids often gathered, said family friend Shawn Roberts. The twins were so close that Roberts still refers to them as a unit.
He remembers telling Robinson: “There’s a difference between you and other people: You have a strong foundation. You have a great mother looking after you.”
The Post attempted to reach several of Robinson’s family members. An attorney for the family said they were not yet ready to speak to reporters.
People who knew Robinson described seeing in him a softness. Ephrame Kassaye, the owner of Mellon Market in MLK, remembers a 10-year-old Robinson walking around the neighborhood, full of warmth. “I love you,” Kassaye would tell him. He would reply: “I love you more.”
Childhood friend TaRajah Ruffin said Robinson would walk him to the bus stop after football practice, because even though they never mentioned it, the area could be intimidating at night.
There were just two years between them. But Ruffin looked up to Robinson, whom he called Twin.
“He just was a real powerful person,” he said. “It’s a small city with a lot of attitudes and pride. He was one of the ones that, oh, if he says something, everybody was kind of like, ‘Okay, it’s Twin saying it, all right.’”
Justin Robinson, left, stands with his godfather, Sheldon Pinder, right, at Ballou High School in Washington, D.C. (Video: Courtesy Sheldon Pinder)
Former staff at Ballou High School said Robinson helped break up fights and counsel teens. But he was also running into trouble of his own, getting arrested and suspended twice and ultimately switching to his school’s alternative program. In court records, he’s described as saying he saw friends and family pass in and out of jail and decided he could make a name for himself being tough.
Pinder, the former associate dean, chalks it up to Robinson falling into the wrong crowd. He was a kid who was “living life to what the youth think life is supposed to be — getting money and living without a care in the world.”
After Robinson’s older brother, Robert Brandon, was shot to death in 2016, it was hard to tell how the then-16-year-old was feeling, said Angela Nivens, the former dean of students at Ballou.
“He had known so much at such a young age,” she said. “It’s like he carried that weight.”
For his brother’s funeral on Feb. 24, 2016, Robinson wore a brand new all-white outfit. He was still wearing those clothes when he stopped at a convenience store and bumped shoulders with Demetrius Medlay, who was from a rival neighborhood, according to court records. The two exchanged words. Robinson left, court documents say, and returned 10 minutes later with a gun he flashed before driving off.
A man from his neighborhood, Kevin Grover, was standing at a corner. Passing him, Robinson said Grover could “smoke him.” Minutes later, Grover shot Medlay twice in the chest with a semiautomatic weapon. The 22-year-old collapsed outside of the store and was soon pronounced dead.
After pleading guilty in 2018 to assault with intent to kill, Robinson told a court official that he learned to be smarter, more patient — to not associate himself with “just anybody.” Of Medlay’s loved ones, he said, “I am sorry for their loss. I have lost multiple family members and friends and I know what the pain is like to grieve and to want justice.”
He was sentenced to five years and spent time in federal prison, followed by a stint in a halfway house. On the first day of 2022, he walked out a free man, and by April of this year, he was working for Cure the Streets. He said in a video shared on social media that he wanted to show people there was “more to life than going to go grab a gun.”
On the day he died of gunshot wounds, he was wearing the program’s black and yellow jacket, with the city’s flag on the sleeve.
‘Credibility, relationships and influence’
The thinking behind Cure the Streets, a program overseen by the D.C. attorney general’s office, is one that guides similar programs across the country: Sometimes the people best positioned to help fight gun violence are those who have lost loved ones or their freedom to it.
The initiative is one of several District-funded efforts that try to tackle one of the city’s most concerning issues — violent crime — by building relationships with the people considered most at risk of being swept into it. Another is called Credible Messenger, which is administered through the city’s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services.
Launched in 2018, Cure the Streets aims to stop retaliatory shootings and mediate problems between beefing neighborhood groups. Program officials look to hire violence interrupters who have “credibility, relationships and influence” in high-violence neighborhoods and train them in conflict resolution, according to a city summary. They often recruit people who were formerly incarcerated and want to use their influence for good.
Nivens, the former Ballou High School dean of students, saw Robinson’s involvement in the program as fulfilling a conversation they had after his arrest. Standing in her office, she asked whether he would turn his experience into an opportunity or let it fester. At first he didn’t say much, just shrugged. Nivens remembers saying everything would be okay and telling him: “You do believe that, though, right? You have to believe it for it to happen.”
She recalled holding both of his hands as he smiled and told her, “No, I believe. I believe.”
Although community violence interruption programs have seen results in other cities, their effectiveness locally remains unclear. A report by the D.C. auditor found that some community leaders could point to cases of violence interrupters bringing peace; others did not even know they existed. University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University researchers said they are conducting a review of the city’s programs but that it’s too early to share results.
The programs have faced additional scrutiny in recent weeks following the arrest of D.C. Council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8), who is accused of accepting bribes over contracts centered on violence interruption. White’s indictment focuses on his relationship with an organization that had contracts with the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement and the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services. Cure the Streets has not been mentioned in his case.
During a Monday news conference in which authorities released footage of the Robinson shooting, D.C. Police Chief Pamela A. Smith praised the programs, describing their efforts to mediate and resolve conflicts as “instrumental” to the work of her agency.
‘Violence is just not the way’
Outside the Marion Barry Avenue McDonald’s where Robinson took his last breaths, hundreds gathered more than a week ago for a vigil, releasing orange balloons into the sky.
There, his older sister said police should have been able to handle the situation without gunfire. Among the crowd were mothers of other Black men and boys killed by local law enforcement, including Pamela Brooks, whose son Amir was fatally injured fleeing from Prince George’s County police in 2014.
“This is a sorority I wouldn’t want nobody to be a part of,” she said.
The U.S. attorney’s office for D.C. is investigating Robinson’s shooting and whether charges are warranted against the officers, who have been identified as Vasco Mateus and Bryan Gilchrist. Police officials said they will review how officers are trained to respond to unresponsive people in cars with guns. Many questions remain, including what led up to the crash, why Robinson had the weapon, whether officers followed protocol and how they decided on their approach.
Meanwhile, the killing has reverberated across the city’s Black neighborhoods, inflaming long-standing tensions between police and the communities they are sworn to serve. By the time the body-camera footage was released, simmering tensions boiled over as people took to the streets to protest. Police said they were investigating whether a handful of overnight burglaries and attempted burglaries at local businesses were connected to the demonstrations.
Another protest came Tuesday, when more than a hundred people marched between the 7th District police station and the McDonald’s where Robinson was shot. Around 10 p.m., D.C. police said, some people threw bottles and rocks at officers, leading to several arrests. But for most of the night, the protest was peaceful, with people carrying signs calling for justice and locking arms in a show of unity.
When word of Robinson’s death reached the mother still grieving the son whose killing sent Robinson to prison, she felt no urge to join those marching. Tiffany Medlay said her first thought, instead, was, “An eye for an eye.”
She viewed Robinson as having played a pivotal role in her child’s death. It hurt to watch people fight for him when, she said, “nobody fought for my son.”
After seeing the police footage, though, she thought of Robinson’s mother. Her feelings grew more nuanced.
“When I saw them shooting him, it broke my heart,” she said. “It really made me feel some type of way. I was really upset. So I just want people to know that violence is just not the way.”
In Pinder’s view, Robinson had been working toward that same cause. He acknowledged not knowing all the details of his former student’s “run-ins with the law.”
But he had seen so much potential — in Robinson as a child coming up under tough circumstances and in Robinson as a man trying to keep young people from making the same mistakes he had.
Pinder spent part of Wednesday with three boys he had introduced to Robinson, each with a story to tell.
There was 12-year-old Quintus, who did not want to share his last name. When Robinson found out about his slipping grades, he said, Robinson promised him $20 for every A and $10 for every B. Quintus ended up making the sixth-grade honor roll.
There was 11-year-old Da’Kahri Richardson, who said Robinson had “a very positive attitude, and it made me want to be positive.”
There was his brother Da’Zari Richardson, 10, who said Robinson showed him how to “do better for myself and do better for others, too.”
Pinder listened as those children talked about the differences Robinson had made in their lives. He then took the next day off from teaching. He spent it at Robinson’s funeral, then in a park on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, where Robinson’s friends and family gathered to celebrate his life."
How Chief Justice Roberts Shaped Trump’s Supreme Court Winning Streak - The New York Times
How Roberts Shaped Trump’s Supreme Court Winning Streak
"Behind the scenes, the chief justice molded three momentous Jan. 6 and election cases that helped determine the former president’s fate.
Last February, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. sent his eight Supreme Court colleagues a confidential memo that radiated frustration and certainty.
Former President Donald J. Trump, seeking to retake the White House, had made a bold, last-ditch appeal to the justices. He wanted them to block his fast-approaching criminal trial on charges of attempting to overturn the 2020 election, arguing that he was protected by presidential immunity. Whatever move the court made could have lasting consequences for the next election, the scope of presidential power and the court’s own battered reputation.
The chief justice’s Feb. 22 memo, jump-starting the justices’ formal discussion on whether to hear the case, offered a scathing critique of a lower-court decision and a startling preview of how the high court would later rule, according to several people from the court who saw the document.
The chief justice tore into the appellate court opinion greenlighting Mr. Trump’s trial, calling it inadequate and poorly reasoned. On one key point, he complained, the lower court judges “failed to grapple with the most difficult questions altogether.” He wrote not only that the Supreme Court should take the case — which would stall the trial — but also how the justices should decide it.
“I think it likely that we will view the separation of powers analysis differently” from the appeals court, he wrote. In other words: grant Mr. Trump greater protection from prosecution.
In a momentous trio of Jan. 6-related cases last term, the court found itself more entangled in presidential politics than at any time since the 2000 election, even as it was contending with its own controversies related to that day. The chief justice responded by deploying his authority to steer rulings that benefited Mr. Trump, according to a New York Times examination that uncovered extensive new information about the court’s decision making.
This account draws on details from the justices’ private memos, documentation of the proceedings and interviews with court insiders, both conservative and liberal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because deliberations are supposed to be kept secret.
The chief justice wrote the majority opinions in all three cases, including an unsigned one in March concluding that the former president could not be barred from election ballots in Colorado.
Another case involved a highly unusual switch. In April, the chief justice assigned Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. to write a majority opinion saying that prosecutors had gone too far in bringing obstruction charges against some Capitol rioters. But in late May, the chief justice took it over.
Who initiated the change, and why, is not clear. The switch came days after The Times reported that an upside-down flag, a symbol of the Stop the Steal movement, had flown outside the Alito home following the Capitol attack. While that timing is suggestive, it is unclear whether the two are linked. (All nine justices declined to respond to written questions from The Times, a Supreme Court spokeswoman said.)
During the February discussions of the immunity case, the most consequential of the three, some of the conservative justices wanted to schedule it for the next term. That would have deferred oral arguments until October and almost certainly pushed a decision until after the election. But Chief Justice Roberts provided crucial support for hearing the historic case earlier, siding with the liberals.
Then he froze them out. After he circulated his draft opinion in June, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the senior liberal, signaled a willingness to agree on some points in hopes of moderating the opinion, according to those familiar with the proceedings. Though the chief justice often favors consensus, he did not take the opening. As the court split 6 to 3, conservatives versus liberals, Justice Sotomayor started work on a five-alarm dissent warning of danger to democracy.
In his writings on the immunity case, the chief justice seemed confident that his arguments would soar above politics, persuade the public, and stand the test of time. His opinion cited “enduring principles,” quoted Alexander Hamilton’s endorsement of a vigorous presidency, and asserted it would be a mistake to dwell too much on Mr. Trump’s actions. “In a case like this one, focusing on ‘transient results’ may have profound consequences for the separation of powers and for the future of our Republic,” he wrote. “Our perspective must be more farsighted.”
But the public response to the decision, announced in July on the final day of the term, was nothing like what his lofty phrases seemed to anticipate.
Both conservatives and liberals saw it as an epic win for Mr. Trump. The former president and his supporters exulted over the decision, which greatly expanded presidential immunity and pushed off any trial until well after the election — if ever. To Democrats, the Republican-appointed justices were brushing away the violent Capitol attack and abandoning the core principle that no one is above the law. The chief justice, who had long said he wanted to keep the court out of politics, had plunged it more deeply in.
Now his opinion is the key document in a legal drama playing out this autumn, as the judge presiding over the long-delayed trial, Tanya S. Chutkan, parses what the court meant and how to move forward. Legal scholars say her job won’t be easy. Despite the chief justice’s reputation as a methodical craftsman, many experts, both conservative and liberal, say he produced a disjointed, tough-to-interpret opinion.
“It’s a strange, sprawling opinion,” said William Baude, a University of Chicago law professor and a former clerk to the chief justice. “It’s hard to tell what exactly it is trying to do.”
Others said the ruling was untethered from the law. “It’s certainly not really tied to the Constitution,” said Stephen R. McAllister, a law professor at University of Kansas and former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas.
But inside the court, some members of the majority had complimented the chief justice even as they requested changes. Two days after the chief justice circulated his first draft in June, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh responded to what he called an “extraordinary opinion.”
In a final flourish, he wrote, “Thank you again for your exceptional work.”
Soon afterward, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch added another superlative: “I join Brett in thanking you for your remarkable work.”
Roberts’s Unsigned Opinion
Two years earlier, as the other conservative justices overturned Roe v. Wade, the chief justice had been sidelined as he sought a middle ground that would restrict but not eliminate the constitutional right to abortion. In failing to persuade a single colleague to adopt his approach, he appeared to lose control of the court. This term he seemed determined to regain it.
In February, the justices heard arguments on a provocative question. The Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, contains language barring insurrectionists from holding office. So could Colorado kick Mr. Trump off the ballot in its Republican primary, creating an obstacle for his presidential campaign?
From the start of the justices’ private discussions of the case, Trump v. Anderson, it was clear that the court was going to say no, according to several people at the court familiar with the conversations. Allowing states to excise candidates from ballots in a national election was out of the question, the justices agreed. With sparse and cryptic text in the amendment, and little case law, to guide them, they raised various ideas for the court’s ruling and rationale.
The court’s conservative supermajority has prevailed in many of the most consequential cases in recent years. This time, Chief Justice Roberts told his colleagues he wanted the decision to be unanimous and unsigned. In any politically charged case, agreement among the justices made the decision more authoritative. He even said he would consult individually with everyone to discuss what they would accept — a rare step.
While all nine justices agreed that Mr. Trump should remain on state ballots, four of the conservatives were pushing to go beyond that and rule that the Constitution’s prohibition would require congressional action to take effect. Such a decision would provide greater protection for Mr. Trump: To prevent him from taking office if he won re-election, Congress would have to vote to enforce the insurrectionist ban.
That left the chief justice in control of the outcome. He lingered over the choice, those familiar with the process said. Ultimately, he sided with the four conservatives in an opinion that he wrote but that was issued unsigned. Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the three liberals wrote concurrences saying the majority had gone too far.
Although the judgment was 9 to 0, the justices had not reached true agreement.
A Change of Authors
The next case, one with the potential to undermine charges against Mr. Trump, spurred behind-the-scenes footwork by the justices, including the mysterious reassignment of a majority opinion.
The case, Fischer v. United States, posed another sensitive question: Had prosecutors overreached in charging some Jan. 6 rioters under a law originally aimed at white-collar crime? Of the nearly 1,500 people who had been indicted in the Capitol attack as of June, when Fischer was decided, about 250 cases included a charge of obstructing an official proceeding.
After oral arguments in April, a majority of the court, including the chief justice, privately concluded that prosecutors had erred. It appeared that the result would narrow, overturn or prevent convictions of some Capitol rioters. It also seemed poised to imperil some of the charges against Mr. Trump, which included obstructing Congress’s certification of the 2020 election.
The chief justice assigned the opinion to Justice Alito, according to several court insiders. But a month later, Chief Justice Roberts updated the court: Justice Alito was no longer the author. The chief justice was taking over the opinion.
Outside the court, the switch went undetected. Inside, it caused surprise. To change authors without the judgment itself shifting was a break from court procedure, several court insiders said.
In interviews, Supreme Court scholars agreed. “Can I tell you an instance when it’s happened? No,” said Paul J. Wahlbeck, a professor at George Washington University who has studied opinion assignments.
The chief justice and Justice Alito did not respond to inquiries from The Times about the reason for the change. But the date of the new assignment, May 20, offers a possible clue. Four days earlier, The Times had reported on the upside-down flag that flew at the Alitos’ Virginia home soon after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
As the three Jan. 6 cases were being decided, Americans’ trust in the court was at a near low, polls show. Justice Thomas had declined to recuse himself from matters related to Jan. 6, even though his wife, Virginia Thomas, had encouraged Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. After the flag revelations, some legal experts and lawmakers pushed Justice Alito to recuse himself from the three cases. He also declined.
The change in authorship wasn’t the last shift in the case. Soon after, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson deployed her vote to change the outcome.
As in the Colorado case, the vote did not fall along strictly partisan lines. Justice Barrett, along with Justices Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, felt that prosecutors were entitled to charge rioters under the obstruction law. It appeared that Justice Jackson would stand alone. She agreed with the majority that the law had been applied too broadly, according to several court insiders. But she thought the others were going too far by reversing the lower court’s judgment, tossing out the charge in the case before them and undermining many others.
Her intermediate position gave her leverage. She said she would join the majority if they would send the cases back to the lower courts to be reconsidered. The conservatives said yes. The final vote was 6 to 3, with Justice Barrett siding with the liberals and Justice Jackson with the conservatives.
Prosecutors would get a shot at salvaging some of the cases, including charges against Mr. Trump.
Redefining Presidential Immunity
The immunity case, Trump v. United States, would determine whether and how the once and would-be future president could be prosecuted on charges of trying to overturn an election.
Just after the chief justice sent his Feb. 22 memo, showing that he was sympathetic to Mr. Trump’s arguments, his position became stronger. Justice Kavanaugh responded the next morning, agreeing with the chief’s logic, according to insiders who knew of the exchange. The three most conservative justices were presumably on board, and with two of the justices at the court’s ideological center in agreement, the direction was clear.
At the justices’ private conference meeting that day, Justice Sotomayor protested that she did not see how the court could reverse the appellate decision. It would look like the Supreme Court was being used to delay the trial, she said, according to someone with knowledge of the proceedings.
So she and the other liberal justices focused on the crucial question of timing. Every day that the court waited to hear the case was a benefit to Mr. Trump, diminishing the possibility of a trial before the Nov. 5 election. At the meeting, some of the court’s most conservative members said they did not want to hear the case until the start of the next term in October, according to several court insiders.
Justice Thomas, who favored scheduling the arguments in October, told colleagues that he did not want to see the court dragged into political battles.
Justice Gorsuch agreed. The matter was too important to rush, he said, and lawyers on the case would need time to prepare their strongest arguments.
On that schedule, the Supreme Court would not decide the immunity question until after the presidential contest. If Mr. Trump won, he could have the criminal case dismissed.
Once again, the chief justice’s position prevailed: He preferred to hear the case in the current term, and Justice Kavanaugh was amenable. Oral arguments were set for two months later. While relatively fast by the court’s usual standards, that timing frustrated many Democrats.
The justices instructed lawyers from both sides to address a broad question: “whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure.”
On April 25, the justices and the lawyers in the case gathered for oral arguments in the courtroom, across the street from where the Jan. 6 rioting had taken place three years earlier. The clamor from the Capitol attack had been audible from inside the court building, former employees recalled in interviews, and afterward, security sharply increased and fences shielded the building.
During the arguments, however, several conservative justices said that they wanted to focus not on what had happened that day, but on broader legal questions.
“I’m not discussing the particular facts of this case,” Justice Alito told the courtroom.
“I’m not focused on the here and now of this case,” Justice Kavanaugh said. “I’m very concerned about the future.”
“We’re writing a rule for the ages,” Justice Gorsuch said.
All of the conservative justices, including the three Trump appointees, had voted against Mr. Trump or his administration in some major cases. The chief justice, who had cast several crucial votes with liberals, had once taken the extraordinary step of rebuking Mr. Trump to defend the independence of the judiciary.
But the chief justice and Justice Kavanaugh had spent formative years as White House lawyers, working to protect presidential power. At oral arguments, Justice Kavanaugh and some other conservatives worried aloud that presidents without sufficient immunity might become overly cautious or vulnerable to politically motivated prosecutions.
Chief Justice Roberts, echoing his critique in the February memo, called the logic of the appeals court ruling circular. “As I read it, it says simply a former president can be prosecuted because he’s being prosecuted,” he said.
When the justices met in private shortly after the arguments, the six conservatives voted in favor of Mr. Trump and greatly expanding presidential immunity. The three liberals voted against. After the chief justice circulated a draft on June 1, and Justice Sotomayor responded that she would consider a partial compromise, her invitation appeared to go nowhere.
That left the chief justice with plenty of requests for changes from members of his own majority, but only one main challenger: Justice Barrett. After he filed his draft majority opinion, she seemed somewhat skeptical, saying she intended to vote with him, but could not join on three points, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Inside the chief’s chambers, all four of his clerks participated in a furious rewriting effort. Later, others at the court wondered if the chief justice had taken on too much. The writing of a majority opinion requires responding to suggestions and edits from other justices, addressing any dissents, and crafting an analysis to withstand scrutiny. He had assigned himself seven majority opinions over the term, five of them blockbuster cases.
Months earlier, on the ballot case, the chief justice had sought consensus. But the immunity decision, which was issued on July 1 and set off a national uproar, reflected a court cleaved sharply in two.
The majority awarded sweeping immunity to Mr. Trump. The opinion did not say whether any of the crimes he had been accused of were fair game for prosecution, even though Mr. Trump’s lawyer had repeatedly conceded in oral arguments that some of the charges against his client appeared to concern purely private acts outside the role of president.
Chief Justice Roberts’s language in the opinion seemed intended to stay above the fray, extending protections to “all occupants of the Oval Office, regardless of politics, policy or party.” But in a withering dissent, Justice Sotomayor wrote that the majority opinion gave Mr. Trump “all the immunity he asked for and more.” It also, she wrote, protected “treasonous acts,” transformed the president into “a king above the law” and ultimately caused her to “fear for our democracy.”
The court’s leader shot back that the liberal justices “strike a tone of chilling doom that is wholly disproportionate to what the court actually does today.”
The immunity ruling proposed three categories of protection for former presidents accused of having committed crimes while in office: absolute immunity for core responsibilities set out in the Constitution, at least presumptive immunity for all other official conduct and no immunity for private acts that fall outside of presidential duties.
But many legal experts said they could not figure out how the ruling should be applied. Even Justice Barrett, who had joined much of the opinion, wrote that it could have been clearer.
One footnote left scholars wondering whether former presidents could ever be prosecuted for taking bribes. An N.Y.U. professor was startled to discover that the opinion, which leaned heavily on Nixon v. Fitzgerald, a 1982 case on presidential immunity, truncated a quote from that decision, changing its meaning.
Now one person above all others is charged with interpreting the decision in Trump v. United States: Judge Chutkan, who was presiding over the trial that stalled last winter when the chief justice sent his memo and the court took the case. Since then, Mr. Trump has been convicted of falsifying business records in New York, but the sentencing has been deferred until after the election, and three other efforts to prosecute him have, for now at least, run aground.
For the trial before Judge Chutkan to resume, she must examine the indictment, which prosecutors reframed after the Supreme Court ruling, and decide which charges against Mr. Trump can survive.
Both sides will be able to appeal her interpretation of the new immunity rules. More delay is likely to ensue. Her conclusions could be sent up to the appellate court in Washington. And then the very same question, of just how accountable Mr. Trump can be held for trying to overturn an election, will likely return to the nine justices on the Supreme Court.
Alan Feuer contributed reporting, and Julie Tate contributed research.
Jodi Kantor is a Times investigative reporter and co-author of “She Said,” which recounts how she and Megan Twohey broke the story of sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein. More about Jodi Kantor
Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court and writes Sidebar, a column on legal developments. A graduate of Yale Law School, he practiced law for 14 years before joining The Times in 2002. More about Adam Liptak"
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