Up First eta’ 2017: The indictment of a mobile voter fraud investigation in coffee county, North Dakota, claimed by the Fadel family
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A section of the indictment deals with the effort to copy election data in rural Coffee County, where Trump allies gained access to a voting machine and hired an IT firm to look for voter fraud, which did not exist.
This essay is written by Leila Fadel, who hosts Morning Edition and Up First. Prior to that, she was an International correspondent for NPR, reporting on race and identity.
Pagonis, the Intersex Advocate: Up First Briefing: Trump’s Georgia Indictment, DA Fani Willis, kimchi Fermentation
The intersex advocate was raised as a girl. They didn’t know why they didn’t get a period. They didn’t know the real reason doctors operated on them throughout their childhood. They didn’t know that surgeries weren’t necessary.
They discovered the truth by accident in a college freshman gender studies class. They were intersex. The world was upended by it. They became involved in a path of activism because it changed their view of their past. The book takes the reader on the same journey Pagonis lived. It’s full of pain, healing and triumph. They say that they’re done telling their stories after this book. From now on, they’ll only look forward. Listen here.
Source: Up First briefing: Trump’s Georgia indictment; DA Fani Willis; microbes and kimchi
How to Make a Superboiler with a Fingerprint of an Old Man: The Case for a New Law Enforcement Action in Fulton County
Some foods do better with age while others do not. NPR’s Pien Huang set out to find the answer by spending time with Chef Patrice Cunningham to learn how to make kimchi. From cabbage to yogurt to soy sauce, there are many delicious things that are made through the process of tiny microbes.
I love that it’s an appreciation that brings me together with my partner. My German family introduced me to sauerkraut, a favorite food of the Asian American. Listen to learn the science behind and health benefits of the wonder-inducing process of fermentation. This is where you can read the story.
Several people who were involved in that plan are facing charges, among them a former Coffee County Election supervisor and a former Republican Party official.
Under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act, prosecutors simply need to prove that the defendants were associated “in fact” as opposed to involved in a formal enterprise, says Fred Smith Jr., a professor at Emory University School of Law.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has said she would like to try the 19 defendants in one place and that it might be difficult to find a courtroom to accommodate it.
They can ask the court to separate them from the others in order to get a fair trial, according to NBC News.
The case could be moved from the state to the federal court, according to Stephen Gillers.
Gillers says a change in venue would likely benefit the defendants, since a jury would be picked from a more conservative area than the one in Fulton County. Plus, he adds, it could delay the case for several months.
“Ultimately the federal court might send it back to state court, or federal court might keep it if the court concludes that the conduct alleged was under color of federal law,” he adds, predicting “a real fight over that … in the next two months.”
At that point they would be arraigned, a process that involves hearing the charges, entering a plea and taking fingerprints and mugshots (which would be a first for Trump, despite this being his fourth indictment). The defendants could be arraigned individually or together.
The Three Reasons Why Trump’s Recent Charges Could Hardly Shake (And Why) He’s Betrayed by the Democratic Party
Legally, they may be trickier for the former president to wiggle out of, and politically, they pose fresh narrative challenges, even for a candidate who has a solid grip on the GOP primary race.
The case is not a case of one person trying to overturn an election; prosecutors believe that Trump organized a network of false claims and may have broken the law.
As the news of these charges was spreading on Tuesday, one of Trump’s GOP primary rivals broke with a pattern he’s stuck to for the previous three indictments.
Instead of using the moment to take a full swipe at Trump, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said he thought the indictment was “unnecessary” because Trump has already been indicted on the federal level for his efforts to overturn the election.
That is true of both the potential consequences he faces as well as the narrative he could offer.
In the U.S., the states administer all elections, including the vote for president. And in Georgia, it was a slate of Republican office holders — from Gov. Brian Kemp to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — who pushed back against his election fraud claims.
You can expect Trump to still claim the state’s politicians are biased against him, but it’ll be a bit harder for him to pin that on his favorite scapegoat: the Democratic Party.
There is a video of people trying to convince Georgia lawmakers that they have the right to choose the state’s president. There is a lot of fake documents from Republicans claiming to be presidential electors.
Probing the epoch of deliberation with a simple, accessible evidence: How to go about finding evidence that sheds light in the public opinion
It is possible that the sort of straightforward, accessible evidence would move the needle in the public’s opinion. Sound bites are easier to digest than novel-length, jargon-dense indictments, even if they are starting to pile up.