Sample Ballots
Sample Ballots

November 19 Update

Nov 19, 2025

Please look at and consider whether you are comfortable liking and/or reposting my most recent LinkedIn postings entitled,

 

 

You may wish to look at the following audios/videos:

 

 

 

 

  • November 20, 2025 Lawyers Defending American Democracy Meeting the Moment Webinar entitled, From the Social Media Feed to the Courtroom: How Judges and Jurors Remain Impartial.  Opening Remarks from Hon. Peggy Quince: Retired Chief Justice, Florida Supreme Court; LDAD Board Member, Moderator: Catherine A. Christian, Esq: Partner, Liston Abramson; Former Assistant District Attorney, Manhattan District Attorney’s Office ,Hon Nancy Gertner: Retired Judge, U.S. District Ct., D. Mass; Senior Lecturer, Harvard Law School, Hon. Diane Kiesel: Retired Justice, New York; Law Professor and Author.  Registration is available at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfRajPPBdaIYyNNSsTM2gToduHbsrEKQNgHB2t0dqQLPl7GKg/viewform

 

 

You may wish to look at the following recent court documents:

 

  • November 13, 2025 order by Judge Jeffrey I. Cummings of the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Illinois that the Trump Administration had violated a 2018 consent decree and ordering the administration to all release 13 individuals whom the parties agree were arrested in violation of the decree,
    • by Friday, DHS must provide details on the status and flight risk of 615 people ICE detained without a warrant between June and early October.
    • DHS must next show up-to-date status reports on the people ICE and Customs and Border Protection have arrested in Chicago by Nov. 19, andf
    • DHS must then release 313 people detained in violation of the Castañon Nava agreement and deemed by the government as a low flight risk by Nov. 21.

On November 18, 2025, the judge refused to stay his order.

 

 

 

  • November 17, 2025 memorandum opinion by Magistrate Judge William E. Fitzpatrick of the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ordering the DOJ to turn over all the grand jury material pertaining to James Comey to his attorneys.  The DOJ has appealed the order to Judge Michael S. Nachmanoff, who is overseeing the case has stayed the order and required that all briefs be submitted by Friday, November 21. 2025.The main issue is set forth as follows
    • Accordingly, when prosecutorial misconduct before the grand jury prejudices a defendant and threatens the defendant’s right to fundamental fairness in the criminal process, a district court may exercise its supervisory authority to dismiss the indictment. See United States v. Derrick, 163 F.3d 799, 807 (4th Cir. 1998) (explaining that the Fourth Circuit has “consistently recognized that an indictment may not be dismissed for prosecutorial misconduct absent a showing that the misconduct prejudiced the defendant). The Supreme Court has held that a defendant who seeks to have an indictment dismissed because of misconduct before the grand jury must show actual prejudice and “establish[ ] that the violation substantially influenced the grand jury’s decision to indict’ or [that] there is ‘grave doubt’ that the decision to indict was free from the substantial influence of such violations.’” Bank of Nova Scotia v. United States, 487 U.S. 250, 256 (1988); see also United States v. Feurtado, 191 F.3d 420, 425 (4th Cir. 1999) (applying the standard established by Bank of Nova Scotia v. United States and affirming a district court’s dismissal of the indictment without prejudice, where the court found that, although the defendants had not shown that improper testimony substantially influenced the grand jury, there remained “some doubt that the grand jury’s decision to indict was free from the influence of that testimony”). Here, the procedural and substantive irregularities that occurred before the grand jury, and the manner in which evidence presented to the grand jury was collected and used, may rise to the level of government misconduct resulting in prejudice to Mr. Comey.

 

 

  • November 18, 2025 order by Judge Orlando L. Garcia of the Federal District Court for the Western District of Texas granting a preliminary injunction ordering public schools not to post the ten commandments as required by a Texas statute. The court stayed its order until the resolution of the appeal of the order and two related matters before the Fifth Circuit.

 

 

You may also wish to look at the following items:

 

  • September 3, 2025 Remarks delivered by Professor (former Harvard President) Claudine Gay to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences entitled, From Stakeholders to Shareholders: How Donor Power Threatens University Independence. Two of the key paragraphs is
    • The costs of shareholder philanthropy can also be measured in the creeping self censorship that takes hold when universities chase donor approval. It is the cost of what never gets proposed, what doesn’t get said, what remains unexplored. The boundaries of permissible inquiry gradually contract as universities internalize donor sensitivities and limit themselves to lines of inquiry that won’t strain important relationships. And in this way, shareholder philanthropy poses an existential threat to what universities are meant to be: centers of knowledge creation and transmission—institutions that courageously pursue truth wherever it leads, guided only by the logic and rigor of inquiry itself.
    • The greatest gift a donor can give is their trust in the academic enterprise itself—their faith that open inquiry will ultimately prove more valuable than directed research, that independent institutions will serve society better than responsive ones, that the pursuit of truth for its own sake remains among humanity’s most practical endeavors. This perspective should inform every donor relationship, every fundraising conversation, and every institutional decision about accepting or declining support.

 

  • November 18, 2025 Atlantic column by Quinta Jurecic entitled, The Trump Administration’s Favorite Tool for Criminalizing Dissent.  Three key paragraphs are
    • As the government continues to attempt mass deportations, that law, Section 111 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, has become a favored tool of the Justice Department for painting opposition to immigration enforcement as a corrosive, lawless force. The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security often describe these cases in exaggerated language, even referring to defendants as “domestic terrorists,” though the law has nothing to do with terrorism. Across the country, prosecutors have charged case after case in federal court—one against a member of Congress; one against a congressional candidate; another against a bystander who happened to walk by a protest at the wrong time; and, most memorably, another against a Washington, D.C. man who hurled a sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection officer, creating an instant symbol of protest for a city patrolled by the National Guard and other federal forces. I was able to tally more than a hundred prosecutions charged under Section 111 in recent months—and given the difficulty of searching federal court records across more than 90 judicial districts, my data are almost certainly an undercount.
    • Perhaps the most extreme example of specious Section 111 allegations may be that of Marimar Martinez, whom the government says repeatedly rammed her car into Border Patrol vehicles in Chicago before driving toward officers, one of whom fired at her in self-defense. According to Martinez’s lawyer, however, it was the Border Patrol officer who rammed Martinez, telling her, “Do something, bitch,” before shooting her five times. Text messages from the officer released in court show him later bragging about his aim. Martinez, despite bleeding profusely, was able to drive herself to a repair shop, where an ambulance took her to the hospital.
    • Faced with so many questionable cases, some judges are starting to lose their patience. In the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Judge Xavier Rodriguez dismissed a felony Section 111 case against a Honduran man arrested by ICE on the grounds that the man could not conceivably be held criminally liable for the scrapes on an ICE agent’s hand after the agent punched a hole in his car window—a use of force that the judge found to be unconstitutionally excessive. The indictment, Rodriguez wrote, was “shocking to the universal sense of justice.” In Chicago, Judge April Perry pointed to a string of failed indictments against protesters as evidence that immigration officials’ claims of violence against them could not be relied upon as a justification for sending National Guard troops into the city.

 

  • November 18, 2025 Slate column by Mark Joseph Stern entitled, Trump’s Scheme to Give the GOP Extra House Seats Just Blew Up in His Face. The author explains why a Trump appointed judge wrote the opinion overturning the Texas attempted gerrymander and why it will be difficult for the Supreme Court to reverse this, if it adheres to traditional constitutional principles. One of the key paragraphs is
    • Over and over again, Republicans openly acknowledged that they were shifting voters around on the basis of race. Brown packed his opinion with direct admissions from legislators, along with expert analysis showing that the redistricting process was “racially discriminatory” from start to finish. The upshot, he wrote, is a map tainted by “unconstitutional racial classifications” that deprives minority voters of their “constitutional right to participate in free and fair elections” under the 14th and 15th amendments. He therefore blocked its use in the 2026 elections, ordering the state to revert to its earlier, less gerrymandered map.