Election Integrity Threatened

[INSIDE JW]

Judicial Watch Seeks Injunction Against Chicago Mayor’s Admitted
Racist Interview Policy

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The case of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s attempt to institute a
racist interview policy isn’t over. The latest development
is a brief
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we
filed in support of our request for a preliminary injunction to
immediately prevent her from denying Daily Caller News Foundation
reporter Thomas Catenacci’s interview request on the basis of race.

The filing comes in response to an admission
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filed
by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office that confirms her office
engaged in a two-day “press tour” involving six interviews that
was “exclusively” limited to “journalists of color.”

We initially filed the lawsuit
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on
May 27, 2021, in the United States District Court for the Northern
District of Illinois, Eastern Division (_Catenacci et al v. Lightfoot_
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(No. 1:21-cv-02852)).

We sued after Catenacci, a white journalist, emailed Mayor
Lightfoot’s office requesting a one-on-one interview with the mayor.
The office never replied to the request or to two additional follow-up
emails from Catenacci. Catenacci’s request came on one of the days
that the mayor admittedly was discriminating based on race.

The lawsuit and subsequent preliminary injunction request assert that
Lightfoot’s refusal to be interviewed by Catenacci violates the
Daily Caller News Foundation’s and his First Amendment rights and
Catenacci’s right to equal protection. In our most recent filing,
we note that our journalist clients continue to suffer irreparable
injury because of Mayor Lightfoot’s admitted racist interview
policy:

While other journalists may be relieved that Mayor Lightfoot has
asserted that she will not discriminate against them on the basis of
race going forward, the mayor’s assertion that she has stopped
discriminating on the basis of race does nothing to remedy the
irreparable harm Plaintiffs suffered on May 20, 2021 and continue to
suffer. And absent an injunction or other order of this Court, nothing
compels Mayor Lightfoot from not discriminating on the basis of race
in the future. A preliminary injunction is necessary to prevent
continuing irreparable harm caused by Mayor Lightfoot’s violation of
Plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights and Catenacci’s right to equal
protection.

“Mayor Lightfoot admits she discriminated based on race on the day I
requested an interview,” said Thomas Catenacci. “The Court gave
her the chance to say she didn’t discriminate against me because I
am white. She did not do so. Every day my interview request is not
granted because of my race, my Constitutional rights are violated.
This is simply unacceptable.”

“Mayor Lightfoot should just grant our interview request and commit
to never again discriminate on the basis of race,” said Daily Caller
News Foundation Editor-in-Chief Ethan Barton. “What’s to stop her
from using this racist policy to block the freedom of the press in the
future?”

Mayor Lightfoot confessed to a racist interview policy. The court
should refuse to give Mayor Lightfoot a day pass for racial
discrimination and issue an injunction immediately protecting our
clients and the public from this outrageous abuse.

FEDERAL PRISON INMATES ESCAPE UNDETECTED, DECEIVE GUARDS WITH DUMMIES
IN BED

The Federal Bureau of Prisons brags
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on its website: “Sleep soundly. We'll be up all night.” Well, you
might want to keep one eye open, as this Corruption Chronicles report
explains
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The nation’s federal prison system is in hot water again, this time
for security failures that allow inmates to escape undetected. In some
cases, the prisoners who slip away place dummies in their bed to
deceive correctional officers and in other instances they simply have
other inmates pose as them during counts. Details of the breaches are
offered in a Management Advisory Memorandum
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issued
this month by the Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General (IG).
The document focuses on the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FOB) minimum
security facilities, known as Federal Prison Camp (FPC) and Satellite
Prison Camp (SPC) locations. The watchdog’s findings should
embarrass FOB officials at every level. “Gaps in security at FPCs
and SPCs present risks that inmates will escape and, if they return,
smuggle contraband back into facilities undetected, which endangers
the community, other BOP inmates, and correctional staff,” the IG
writes in its memo to prison officials.

Seven of the FOB’s 122 facilities are minimum security
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and fall
under the category of FPC. They have dormitory housing, a low
staff-to-inmate ratio and limited perimeter fencing. SPCs are small
camps adjacent to the main facility and provide inmate labor to the
main institution, according to the FOB website
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as well as
off-site work programs. Security weaknesses found by investigators
vary by facility and are serious enough to enable inmates to escape
undetected. They include unsecured outer building doors within some
FPCs and SPCs, even during times when inmates were not permitted to
move freely; door locks and sensors that were susceptible to
tampering, thus leading to alarms failing to function when locked
doors were opened without authorization; limited or no outer perimeter
fencing; and limited video surveillance. The lapses allowed four
inmates at a Beaumont, Texas facility to slip away undetected for more
than 12 hours despite three overnight inmate counts conducted by
officers. “The evidence showed that the 4 inmates escaped the
facility after the 4:00 p.m. stand up count (for which they were
present) and that, despite the Correctional Officers conducting counts
at 12:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m., and 5:00 a.m., they were not discovered
missing at those times,” the management advisory memo states.

Incredibly, investigators found that correctional officers did not
violate policy because they were essentially fooled by the inmates.
“The evidence showed that the inmates who escaped may have had other
inmates pose as them or placed dummies in their beds to deceive
Correctional Officer during nighttime counts,” the DOJ IG memo says,
adding that “evidence showed that the Correctional Officers likely
complied with BOP and FCC Beaumont policy when conducting the
nighttime counts.” This indicates that standards are quite low for
trained federal prison officers so easily duped by the convicted
criminals they are charged with guarding. The DOJ watchdog seems to
defend the officers, instead attributing the lapse on “security
concerns that enabled the inmates’ escape.” Furthermore, BOP
policy discourages correctional officers from using excessive light
when conducting inmate counts allowing inmates to deceive officers
into counting them when they are not actually present, the DOJ IG
reveals. “We were told that as long as inmates return to their
assigned building and bunk before the correctional officers conduct
stand-up inmate counts, they can escape the SPC undetected,”
according to the advisory memo.

The minimum security report comes on the heels of a more serious lapse
involving the FOB’s failure to monitor terrorist inmates
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amid
a huge spike in radicalized convicts in its custody. Part of the
nation’s federal prison system is to keep America safe by, among
other things, monitoring all social communications of high-risk
inmates, especially those with terrorist ties. It is a crucial part of
the BOP’s duties considering that in the last decade the number of
inmates with known links to terrorism increased by an astounding 250%.
Incredibly, the BOP, which has a $7.1 billion annual budget
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doesn’t
adequately check the communications of terrorist prisoners and
hasn’t even bothered identifying all terrorists in its custody,
according to a report
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issued
earlier this year by the DOJ IG. Even when the BOP monitors the
communications of high-risk inmates, it does not do it consistently
and the inspector general found that “thousands of terrorist inmate
communications” are only partially checked. Investigators offer the
consequences of this negligence, writing that the disbursement of
sensitive information—including videos, pictures, and other
documents—helps “radicalize other inmates.”

Less than a year earlier the BOP came under fire after its elite riot
teams committed embarrassing gaffes
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during
training exercises that made the highly trained officers seem like
amateurs. BOP staff members were seriously injured because there was
“inappropriate and dangerous” use of force and pepper spray during
the mock exercises, according to an audit conducted by the DOJ IG. The
units, known as Special Operations Response Teams (SORT), gained
national media attention because they were deployed by the attorney
general to respond to violence and looting after George Floyd’s
death. They are specialized tactical squads trained to respond to
emergency situations such as prison riots, hostage taking, assaults on
jail staff and inmate escapes. All federal prisons have their own SORT
and they usually have 15 members led by a commander or captain.

BIDEN ADMINISTRATION ALLOWS LEFTIST GROUPS PICK ILLEGAL ALIEN ASYLEES,
EXPANDS YOUTH ENTRY

The Biden administration’s unprecedented assault on immigration law
and border security involves allied leftist groups in the private
sector, as our _Corruption Chronicles_ blog reports
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The Biden administration has confirmed leftist groups are picking
hundreds of illegal immigrants daily to enter the U.S. to request
asylum and the comeback of an Obama-era program to woo more Central
American minors though there are already tens of thousands in
government shelters nationwide. The double whammy was delivered just
weeks apart as the migrant crisis reaches a boiling point and the
nation sees record high illegal immigration along the nearly
2,000-mile Mexican border. High-ranking administration officials call
it a “legal alternative to irregular migration
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First, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) finally verified to
Congress
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that
it conceded to the demands of the leftist national organization
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to admit approximately 250
illegal aliens daily, or 7,750 a month. DHS officials explained that
certain non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are helping it identify
potential illegal immigrants for asylum, veteran members of Congress
revealed in late May. They include ranking members of the House
Oversight, Judiciary and Homeland Security committees. The lawmakers
disclose the information in a letter
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to
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas demanding the criteria being used by
the administration for a humanitarian exception for illegal immigrants
as well as the NGOs that are determining eligibility of those seeking
the exception.

This week a mainstream newspaper reports
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that
nearly 4,000 illegal immigrants chosen by leftist NGOs were granted
exceptions and allowed to cross the border in May. Citing Customs and
Border Protection (CBP) data, the article documents a steady rise in
exemptions even as the administration claims the border is closed. In
April CBP let 1,790 migrants enter legally, up from about 719 in
March. “In prior months, the numbers were in the low hundreds,”
the story reads. In May alone, CBP encountered 180,034 illegal aliens
attempting entry along the southwest border, agency figures
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show.
In Tijuana, more than 10,000 have requested to enter the U.S. seeking
asylum under the Biden administration’s expanded exemption program.
An open borders group called Al Otro Lado (on the other side) that
promotes “justice for migrants” is screening the candidates along
with the International Rescue Committee
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which helps people whose lives are shattered by conflict and disaster,
and the ACLU. To facilitate the process Al Otro Lado has an online
form
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in
Spanish to screen candidates. Questions include if asylum seekers have
ever been deported from the U.S., if they identify as indigenous or
LGBTQ, have experienced sexual abuse, kidnapping, homelessness, or
hunger. To promote its new process, the group has distributed fliers
at the Tijuana encampment and area shelters, the article says, adding
that a popular mobile messaging app is also used to spread the word.

Also this week the Biden administration announced
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it
is bringing back a program started under Obama in 2014 to allow more
Central Americans under the age of 21 to come to the U.S. legally.
Never mind that the administration is already housing tens of
thousands of illegal immigrant minors seeking asylum in hundreds of
facilities around the country. Data obtained by a national newswire
shows the number of migrant youths, known as Unaccompanied Alien
Children (UAC), in U.S. custody more than doubled
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in
the last two months and the government is currently housing more than
21,000. Reinstating the Obama program will make tens of thousands of
minors from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador eligible to come to
the U.S.

A statement
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issued
jointly by Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and DHS Secretary
Mayorkas describes it as “reinstituting and improving the Central
American Minors (CAM) program.” The presidential cabinet officials
add that they “are firmly committed to welcoming people to the
United States with humanity and respect, as well as providing a legal
alternative to irregular migration.” They also claim that they are
delivering on their promise to promote safe, orderly, and humane
migration from Central America through this expansion of legal
pathways to seek humanitarian protection in the United States.

JUDICIAL WATCH WARNS OF ELECTION INTEGRITY CRISIS

The Left has a singular focus on changing federal and state election
laws in ways that undermine election integrity and, to put it bluntly,
make it easier for bad actors to steal elections. Judicial Watch has
been on the front lines in the courts and the public square to defend
the rule of law and clean elections. Micah Morrison, our chief
investigative reporter, has the latest
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Judicial Watch has long been at the forefront of the fight for
election reform, battling to clean up voter rolls and informing the
public about threats to the integrity of the electoral system. Today,
clashes over election laws are raging in state legislatures and
Congress. The fight is often ugly, with cries from the Left of a new
“Jim Crow” regime—the laws that suppressed and segregated Blacks
in the aftermath of the Civil War—echoing across the land
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The election integrity crisis is unfolding on many fronts. One of the
most serious threats comes from Congressional attempts to move control
of elections from the states into the federal government. Judicial
Watch Senior Attorney T. Russell Nobile recently testified before a
committee of the House of Representatives on legislation that would
dramatically increase the role of the Justice Department in overseeing
elections.

The first attempt by Democrats to reshape the American electoral
system in the Biden era was stymied last week when a moderate member
of their own party balked
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The
action in Washington now shifts to the bill known as H.R. 4—the John
Lewis Voting Rights Act.

“The truth is that H.R. 4 goes far beyond any civil rights law
enacted during the height of the civil rights era,” Nobile told
Congress. “Rather, it is part of a grander plan to shift control of
American elections away from individual state legislatures and into
the hands of a single federal bureaucratic department. It accomplishes
this by giving the attorney general a previously unseen level of
authority over elections.”

Before joining Judicial Watch, Nobile served as a trial attorney for
the Justice Department, enforcing election laws and bringing cases
under the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, and the National
Voter Registration Act. He warns that buried deep in H.R. 4 is a
provision that gives the attorney general sweeping new constitutional
authority to bring civil rights cases—including cases that have
nothing to do with voting.

The new provision grants the attorney general authority to intervene
in “any act prohibited by the 14th or 15th Amendment” of the
Constitution.

Nobile warns that the “little-noticed provision will abolish a
long-standing legal principle.” For more than 200 years, Congress
and the courts have declined to give the attorney general authority to
bring such cases.

Nobile explains: “Under current law, the attorney general is only
authorized to bring civil rights claims under specific statutes,
typically those statutes prohibiting discrimination, and has no
authority to sue directly for certain violations of the
Constitution.” H.R. 4 changes that. The “proposed change is a
major power shift, allowing the Justice Department to become involved
in a whole range of 14th Amendment cases that previously it would
have been unable to pursue.” For example, under the new provision,
the attorney general could bring a case challenging a state abortion
regulation, or intervene as a party in lawsuits to support
2nd Amendment restrictions.

That’s not the only sweeping change envisioned by H.R. 4. The
legislation also would reinterpret the keystone Section 5 of the
Voting Rights Act. As Nobile notes, Section 5, passed into law in
1965, “was a temporary, extraordinary remedy to address an
extraordinary problem…intentional state-sponsored and/or
state-supported efforts to disenfranchise Blacks” in many Southern
states by preventing voter registration and suppressing turnout.

Section Five “_presumed_ that any voting change by a covered
jurisdiction was implemented out of discriminatory intent or effect,
until the jurisdiction proved otherwise. The Supreme Court ruled this
presumption of guilt without a trial was justified in the context of
the terrible racial discrimination occurring in 1965,” Nobile notes.


But Section 5 was meant to be a temporary solution and expire after
five years. Instead, Congress kept it in effect for sixty-six years,
until the Supreme Court intervened in 2013 with the _Shelby
County_ decision. _Shelby_ threw out the decades-old
“temporary” solution, ruling that it was unconstitutional and
outdated.

H.R. 4 seeks to put it back—and expand it to other parts of the
country.

Nobile notes that permanent provisions of the Voting Rights Act, such
as Section 2, still prohibit discrimination “and provide the tools
needed for the Justice Department or private litigants to challenge
election standards, practices, or procedures that are enacted with
discriminatory intent or that result in minorities having less
opportunity than others to participate in the electoral process.”

H.R. 4 goes even further, Nobile warns, by granting the Justice
Department “new nationwide preclearance” power—that is,
preapproval power from the attorney general or the courts—targeting
a wide array of “popular voter integrity provisions,” including
“voter identification and list maintenance.”

With the country in an uproar over voting and elections, the
Democrat-sponsored H.R. 4 looks more like a naked power grab than a
reasoned response to the facts on the ground. For example: the Justice
Department has brought only a trickle of Section 2 actions since
Section 5 was thrown out by _Shelby_ eight years ago. That would not
be the case if rampant voter suppression existed.

More telling: detailed data studies show that Black voter registration
in the Southern states previously covered by Section 5 has
“completely rebounded and, in some instances, exceeds White
registration rates,” Nobile notes.

The data show that “eight years after _Shelby County_, registration
disparities in Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Louisiana, and
Mississippi—all previously covered (in whole or part) by Section
5—are all below the national average. In fact, Black registration in
Mississippi is 4.3% _higher_ than White registration.”

The 2020 election saw a higher turnout across all racial groups.
Turnout disparities in previously covered Section Five states like
“Mississippi, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Texas were all
smaller than the national average,” Nobile notes. “In fact, the
disparities in turnout in Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Oregon, Colorado,
New Jersey, and New York were higher than the turnout disparities in
these former Section 5 states. Again, turnout for Blacks in
Mississippi outperformed that of Whites.”

Facts are stubborn things, after all. “However one views any talking
points about ‘rampant voter suppression,’” Nobile notes, “the
data cannot be ignored: registration and turnout data in 2020 far
exceeds that in 1965. When Blacks now register and turn out at higher
rates in places like Mississippi, it is simply not credible to claim
that Jim Crow style voter suppression currently exists.”

Read Judicial Watch Senior Attorney T. Russell Nobile’s remarks
before the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and
Civil Liberties here
[[link removed]].
More on
Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act here
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And
more on the _Shelby County_ decision here
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Until next week,







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