Wis. Supreme Court bars use of drop boxes for absentee ballots
MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin’s conservative-controlled Supreme Court ruled Friday that absentee ballot drop boxes may be placed only in election offices and that no one other than the voter can return a ballot in person, dealing a defeat to Democrats who said the decision would make it harder to vote in the battleground state.
However, the court didn’t address whether anyone other than the voter can return his or her own ballot by mail. That means that anyone could still collect multiple ballots for voters and, instead of using a drop box, put them in the mail.
Republicans have argued that practice, known as ballot harvesting, is rife with fraud although there has been no evidence of that happening in Wisconsin. Democrats and others argue that many voters, particularly the elderly and disabled, have difficulty returning their ballots without the assistance of others.
Twenty-nine other states allow for absentee ballot drop boxes, according to the U.S. Vote Foundation.
The decision sets absentee ballot rules for the Aug. 9 primary and the fall election; Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers are seeking reelection in key races.
Johnson and other Republicans hailed it as a win for voter integrity.
“This decision is a big step in the right direction,” Johnson said.
Evers and other Democrats said the ruling will make it more difficult for people to vote.
“It’s a slap in the face of democracy itself,” said Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler.
The court’s 4-3 ruling has critical implications in the 2024 presidential race, in which Wisconsin will again be among a handful of battleground states. President Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020 by just under 21,000 votes, four years after Trump narrowly won the state by a similar margin.
Cipollone meets panel:
Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone arrived Friday on Capitol Hill for a private interview with the Jan. 6 committee about his role in trying to prevent then-President Donald Trump from challenging the 2020 presidential election and joining the violent mob that laid siege to the U.S. Capitol.
Cipollone had been a sought-after witness after bombshell testimony revealed his apparently desperate and last-ditch efforts to prevent Trump’s actions. Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the panel he warned the defeated president would be charged with “every crime imaginable” if he went to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, trying to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election. Cipollone was subpoenaed for his testimony.
But the conservative attorney, once a staunch presidential confidant who had defended Trump during his first impeachment trial, could claim his counsel to the Republican president is privileged information.
The panel said Cipollone is “uniquely positioned to testify” in a letter accompanying the subpoena issued last week.
Prince Harry’s libel suit:
Prince Harry won the first stage of a libel suit against the publisher of Britain’s Mail on Sunday newspaper
as a judge ruled Friday that parts of a story about his fight for police protection in the U.K. were defamatory.
The suit revolves around the newspaper’s coverage of a separate High Court action Harry filed in an effort to force authorities to provide police protection for the prince and his family when they are in the U.K. The government withdrew the family’s round-the-clock protection when Harry and his wife, Meghan, gave up frontline royal duties and moved to California.
Harry claims that the Mail on Sunday libeled him when it suggested that the prince lied in his initial public statements about the suit against the government and that he “cynically” tried to confuse the public by authorizing his representatives to put out “false and misleading statements” about his willingness to pay for police protection.
China slams US-Taiwan ties:
China has demanded the U.S. cease military “collusion”
with Taiwan during a virtual meeting between the joint chiefs of staff from the two countries whose relationship has grown increasingly fractious.
Gen. Li Zuocheng told Gen. Mark Milley on Thursday that China had “no room for compromise” on issues affecting its “core interests,” which include self-governing Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own territory to be annexed by force if necessary.
Such language is fairly routine and Li was also quoted in a Defense Ministry news release saying China hoped to “further strengthen dialogue, handle risks, and promote cooperation, rather than deliberately creating confrontation, provoking incidents and becoming mutually exclusive.”
Sri Lanka curfew: Police imposed a curfew in Sri Lanka’s capital and surrounding areas on Friday, a day before a planned
protest demanding the resignations of the country’s president and prime minister because of the economic crisis that has caused severe shortages of essential goods and disrupted people’s livelihoods.
The protesters and other critics have said that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is responsible for the economic crisis, the worst since the country’s independence in 1948. They also blame Ranil Wickremesinghe, who became prime minister two months ago, for not delivering on promises to end the shortages.
Civic and opposition activists have announced that thousands more protesters will gather in Colombo on Saturday. But the police announcement of the curfew said it took effect at 9 p.m. and will last until further notice in Colombo and its suburbs.
Sri Lanka is nearly bankrupt and has suspended repayments of $7 billion in foreign debt due this year.
Extinction warning: Every day billions of people depend on wild flora and fauna to obtain food, medicine and energy. But a new United Nations-backed report says that overexploitation, climate change, pollution and deforestation are pushing 1 million species towards extinction.
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services report said Friday that unless humankind improves the sustainable use of nature, the Earth is on its way to losing 12% of its wild tree species, over a thousand wild mammal species and almost 450 species of sharks and rays, among other irreparable harm.
Humans use about 50,000 wild species routinely and 1 out of 5 people of the world’s 7.9 billion population depend on those species for food and income, the report said. And 1 in 3 people rely on fuel wood for cooking, the number even higher in Africa.