Senate Democrats investigate Trump’s reported offer to oil bosses of climate rules rollback for donations – live | Donald Trump

The Senate Democrats investigation into Trump’s alleged quid-pro-quo suggestion to oil executives stems from an 11 April dinner at Mar-a-Lago, the New York Times reported.

Trump reportedly told 20 oil executives that they would save over $1b in “taxes and legal fees” once Trump was elected as he would repeal Biden’s restrictions on drilling that hurt their industries.

Trump allegedly promised to “drill, baby, drill” if he won the 2024 presidential election in November, according to several people who spoke to the Times anonymously.

Read the full article here (pay wall).

The day so far

Senate Democrats launch investigation into Trump’s reported offer to oil executives of regulatory rollback in exchange for donations

A former White House lawyer for Donald Trump says he should already be on trial for the classified documents discovered at Mar-a-Lago, the Guardian’s Robert Tait reports:

Donald Trump’s former White House lawyer has attacked Aileen Cannon, the judge handling the ex-president’s classified documents charges, for repeated delays, attributing her rulings to “incompetence” and “perceived bias” and saying the case should have already come to trial.

Ty Cobb, the luxuriantly whiskered attorney who served as Trump’s counsel during former FBI director Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, said decisions taken by Cannon, a Trump-appointed judge in the US district court in Florida, virtually guaranteed that the case would not be tried before November’s presidential poll.

In an interview with CNN, Cobb said Cannon had delayed on issues that most federal judges would have long since dealt with.

“I don’t think this case will move at all,” he said. “And I think the fact that she’s scheduling hearings, multiple hearings, sort of one or two motions at a time is compelling evidence of that. Most federal judges would have long ago ruled on all the pending motions.

“And frankly, this is a case that should’ve started trial yesterday or two days ago when the original trial date was set. This case could have easily gotten to trial. Only her incompetence and perceived bias has prevented that.”

Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace’s district is at the heart of the supreme court case in which the challengers to legislative maps drawn by the state’s Republican lawmakers argued that they constituted an illegal racial gerrymander.

Here’s what Mace had to say after the supreme court’s conservative majority today ruled against the challengers:

And here’s a recap of the decision, which could have ripple effects on congressional maps across the south:

Politico reports that Samuel Alito seemed brusque when he announced the opinion he authored that essentially allows South Carolina to use Republican-drawn congressional maps, even though challengers claimed they discriminated against African Americans:

Alito, who has been under fire in recent days over claims that the display of flags at his Virginia home and New Jersey shore house reflected bias and violated judicial ethics, delivered an unusually short, almost perfunctory summary of his opinion when the court announced its decisions from the bench Thursday morning.

Reporters in the court’s press room had only just begun to read the voting-rights ruling when he moved on to an unrelated, criminal-justice opinion he also wrote.

However, the court’s ruling, which was joined by all six conservative justices, did not completely end the challenge to South Carolina’s maps, Politico notes:

The high court’s ruling did not entirely foreclose the possibility that civil rights groups might eventually prevail in their challenge to the map on what Alito said was a distinct theory under the Voting Rights Act of diluting minority votes.

The majority ordered the case returned to the lower court for a fresh look at that issue by the panel that earlier ruled the map unconstitutional. All of those judges are Democratic appointees.

But with the state’s congressional primaries looming on June 11, and the lower court already having given the green light to use the legislature’s map this year, the chances of any changes in the map this year seem vanishingly remote.

National Public Radio reports that attorney general Merrick Garland declined to comment on supreme court justice Samuel Alito’s display of rightwing flags:

So, too, did Joe Biden, when reporters shouted questions about the matter at him, as he welcomed Kenyan president William Ruto to the White House:

In an appearance on MSNBC yesterday, progressive Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused supreme court justice Samuel Alito of siding with the people who attacked the Capitol on January 6.

She also signaled that Democrats would investigate Alito if they retook the House majority, and argued that the Senate – where the party currently has control – should do the same immediately:

Top House Democrat Jeffries calls on Alito to recuse himself from January 6 cases over rightwing flags

In her dissent, liberal justice Elena Kagan accused the supreme court’s conservatives of greenlighting racial gerrymanders of congressional districts with their ruling in favor of South Carolina’s Republican-drawn map:

What a message to send to state legislators and mapmakers about racial gerrymandering. For reasons I’ve addressed, those actors will often have an incentive to use race as a proxy to achieve partisan ends. And occasionally they might want to straight-up suppress the electoral influence of minority voters. Go right ahead, this Court says to States today. Go ahead, though you have no recognized justification for using race, such as to comply with statutes ensuring equal voting rights. Go ahead, though you are (at best) using race as a short-cut to bring about partisan gains – to elect more Republicans in one case, more Democrats in another. It will be easy enough to cover your tracks in the end: Just raise a “possibility” of non-race-based decision-making, and it will be “dispositive”. And so this “odious” practice of sorting citizens, built on racial generalizations and exploiting racial divisions, will continue. In the electoral sphere especially, where “ugly patterns of pervasive racial discrimination” have so long governed, we should demand better – of ourselves, of our political representatives, and most of all of this Court.

Here’s more from the Guardian’s Sam Levine on the decision by the supreme court’s conservative supermajority to allow South Carolina’s congressional map to stand, despite claims that they amount to a racial gerrymander, and what that means for voting rights in the south:

South Carolina Republicans do not need to redraw their congressional map, the US supreme court ruled on Thursday, saying that a lower court had not properly evaluated the evidence when it ruled that the lawmakers had discriminated against Black voters.

In a 6-3 decision, the justices sent the case back to the lower court for further consideration.

The decision in Alexander v South Carolina Conference of the NAACP is a major win for Republicans, who hold a slim margin in the US House with six of South Carolina’s seven congressional seats. It also could give lawmakers more leeway to discriminate in redistricting and use partisanship as a proxy for race. That could be enormously powerful in the US south, where voting is often racially polarized.

Supreme court allows South Carolina to use congressional map accused of racial gerrymander

Supreme court to release decisions with abortion and Trump immunity cases pending

A growing chorus of Democratic lawmakers is demanding supreme court justice Samuel Alito recuse himself from cases dealing with January 6 or the 2020 election, after the New York Times reported his homes flew flags associated with rightwing causes.

Here’s Katherine Clark, the Democratic House whip:

Justice Alito has displayed flags at his homes that support insurrection against our government, promote religious nationalism, and attack free and fair elections.

This is not just another example of extremism that has overtaken conservatism. This is a threat to the rule of law and a serious breach of ethics, integrity, and Justice Alito’s oath of office.

At minimum, he must recuse himself from any cases involving January 6th, Donald Trump, and the security of our elections. Anything less will tarnish our judicial system and democracy.

Over in the Senate, Sheldon Whitehouse, a member of the judiciary committee, referenced Alito’s explanation last week that an upside-down American flag that hung outside his Virginia home was put up by his wife:

While Richard Blumenthal demanded Alito offer “an explanation” for the flags:

Alito’s vacation residence flew flag linked to Christian extremists – report

Supreme court to issue more decisions as Democrat calls for Alito to recuse himself over second rightwing flag flown at house