Colorado
Secretary of state hopeful barred from election role
DENVER (AP) — A Colorado judge has barred a Republican running for secretary of state from overseeing this year’s election in her home county due to her role in breaking into election equipment and subsequent indictment.
Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters was already prohibited by a judge from managing last year’s local elections in her western Colorado county. She’s become a hero to election conspiracy theorists following the lead of former President Donald Trump, and is running for the GOP nomination to become the state’s top elections official despite the finding she’s unfit to run an election.
The secretary of state’s office asked the same Mesa County judge, Valerie J. Robison, to block Peters from administering the midterm elections. In a ruling releases Tuesday evening, Robison agreed. “Peters and Knisley have committed a neglect of duty or other wrongful act such that they are unable to perform the duties required under the Election Code due to the allegations of criminal acts that are currently pending,” wrote Robison. Knisley was Peters’ deputy and is charged with cybercrime for activities related to the break-in.
Data from Mesa County’s voting machines appeared on election conspiracy websites last summer shortly after Peters appeared at a symposium about the election organized by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.
Peters’ campaign did not immediately comment Tuesday night. Peters is running against two other candidates for the GOP nomination for secretary of state. The winner will face the incumbent, Democrat Jena Griswold, in November.
Washington
Judge won’t make Sen. Warren retract letter about COVID book
SEATTLE (AP) — A federal judge in Seattle has declined to order Sen. Elizabeth Warren to retract statements she made criticizing a book that promotes misinformation about COVID-19 and suggesting that companies that sold it might face liability.
U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein on Monday issued an order rejecting the request by the publisher and authors of the book “The Truth About COVID-19,” which accuses the “global elite” of using the pandemic to grab “unprecedented power.”
The publishing company, Chelsea Green of White River Junction, Vermont, and the authors, including prominent anti-vaccine propagandist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., sued the Massachusetts Democrat last fall. Kennedy is a nephew of President John F. Kennedy and the son of his slain brother, former U.S. attorney general, civil rights activist and Democratic presidential contender Robert F. Kennedy.
The lawsuit said a letter Warren sent to Amazon complaining about the company’s sale of the book amounted to censorship. The plaintiffs sought a preliminary court order requiring Warren to publicly retract her letter and banning her from issuing further such letters.
The book is by Dr. Joseph Mercola, a Florida osteopath who has a long history of selling unapproved health products, and Ronnie Cummins, an activist against genetically modified food. It features a foreword by Kennedy.
It promotes unproven and possibly dangerous treatments for the coronavirus, Warren said, while falsely suggesting COVID-19 vaccines approved by the government have not been properly tested. The Food and Drug Administration has warned Mercola to stop offering vitamin D and other products as “safe and/or effective for the treatment or prevention of COVID-19.”
In a letter last September, Warren accused Seattle-based Amazon of peddling misinformation, saying the company’s search algorithms promoted the book. Warren suggested Amazon’s actions were “unethical, unacceptable, and potentially unlawful,” and she asked the company to review its algorithms.
Two days later, another bookseller, Barnes & Noble, stopped sales of the work.
Chelsea Green, along with the book’s authors, sued, saying the book contains factual information and reasonable opinions protected by the First Amendment. Warren’s “veiled threats” that Amazon or other booksellers could face legal repercussions for selling the book amounted to unlawful government censorship, the lawsuit said.
But in her order denying the request for a preliminary injunction, Rothstein noted that Warren is just one senator, “far removed from the power to legally punish booksellers for continuing to sell” the book.
“The threat of legal sanctions can act as an unlawful restriction on speech, but a threat will only be perceived as such if there is a realistic chance the threatened action can be carried out,” Rothstein wrote. “Defendant Warren does not have any unilateral investigative authority, and there is no immediate statutory basis for her statement that Amazon’s practices are ‘potentially unlawful.’”
The lawsuit continues but the judge wrote that the plaintiffs were “unlikely to succeed on the merits of their claim that Defendant Warren’s letter constitutes a prior restraint on speech.”
The book continued to be offered for sale on Amazon’s website.
Wisconsin
Judge finds lame-duck settlement language unconstitutional
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Provisions in contentious Wisconsin lame-duck legislation that require Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul to get Republican lawmakers’ permission to settle certain lawsuits are unconstitutional, a judge has ruled.
The Wisconsin State Journal reported Tuesday that Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford handed down her ruling on May 5. Crawford put the decision on hold while the Legislature’s attorney prepares a stay request. The case is likely headed to the state Supreme Court.
Republican legislators passed measures during a December 2018 lame-duck session that require Kaul to seek approval from the Legislature’s finance committee before settling cases. Republicans control the committee. The laws also weakened Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ powers. The GOP passed them weeks before Evers and Kaul took office.
A group of labor unions challenged the statutes affecting Kaul in 2019. The state Supreme Court upheld them in a July 2020 ruling but left the door open to future challenges. Kaul filed one in November 2020, arguing the settlement approval requirements are unconstitutional as applied to civil lawsuits involving environmental and consumer protection cases as well as cases involving the executive branch. The attorney general argued the law in those instances violates the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches.
Kaul asked the state Supreme Court to take the case directly without waiting for it to wind through lower courts but the justices refused. Kaul took the case to Dane County Circuit Court last summer.
Crawford wrote that the laws give “absolute power” to the Legislature. Lawmakers’ ability to approve or reject a settlement proposal effectively operates as a veto with no override mechanism, she wrote.
Crawford put her decision on hold while Republican legislators prepare a motion requesting a stay. The case likely will end up before the state Supreme Court again.
