A brief update on where things stand in the lawsuit Arizona Dems brought against the AZ audit: An hour-plus long hearing just wrapped up. Judge Martin (who has taken over case after Judge Coury recused over the weekend) is for now letting Coury's TRO from Friday to lapse... But Martin hinted that he might re-impose a TRO later on: "I am not yet persuaded that there has been a showing that the rights of the voters if Maricopa are being protected."

Arizona legislature is moving closer to undermining the mail voting system used by the vast majority of the state's electorate. Some elements of GOP AZ have always been a little skeptical of VBM, but Trump's 2020 rhetoric put that hostility on overdrive talkingpointsmemo.com/news/how-the-f… The current AZ push has local election officials—who in the past have felt like they could stall or mitigate harmful bills —scrambling. One county recorder had to add a whole new person to her staff just to keep track of all the voting-related legislation talkingpointsmemo.com/news/how-the-f…

The confirmation hearing for Lisa Monaco and Vanita Gupta (Biden's picks for the No. 2 and No. 3 DOJ roles, respectively) has started. You can watch here judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/02/25… Durbin says that the misleading ads that a conservative group are running targeting Gupta are "sad and pitiful." He adds that he's "disappointed" some senators are embracing the false claims.

Apparently 3999 people called in to the hearing in the Trump campaign PA case. (the line max was 4,000). Rudy confirms that only 2 remaining counts in Trump lawsuit are the alleged violations of equal protection of 14th amendment and elections/electors clause

Kavanaugh's concurrence in the Wisconsin case is sloppy AF.

(A thread.) Merrill II is a weird citation here, as the Supreme Court intervened to allow a state election official to unilaterally implement a voter restriction — a ban on curbside voting — that was ~no where~ in the state’s code.

NEWS: Federal judge says that she wants to move forward with a CONTEMPT proceeding after Sec. Ross resets the deadline for completing the census count for 10/5. Judge said she wants to move quickly on the contempt proceeding, and resolve it by the 10/5 deadline. The challengers say they can file their formal contempt motion by tomorrow.

The latest census hearing in front of Judge Koh (judge in CA overseeing litigation over the rushed count) is beginning. Earlier today, gov filed internal documents explaining Ross decision to end counting on 10/5 Koh to DOJ: did you file full record for that decision?
DOJ: this is "full and complete" set of docs you filed.
Koh: why is Ross email confirming decision timestampted after tweet?
DOJ: shows this if a "fluid" situation

We're on a break in Flynn, so a quick census update. Internal docs filed in the rushed count litigation in California suggest that 10/5 is now the target date for finishing data collection b/c it's the last date Bureau could guarantee delivering apportionment data by 12/31 Going beyond 10/5 would "allow additional states to reach the 99% completion rate goal and for better completion rates in hard to count areas such as tribal lands." It would "preclude meeting the 12/31 date, but furthers the goal of a complete and accurate 2020 Census."

While we're on recess in Flynn, I'll just tweet here a few thoughts about the hearing today in one of the census cases that is in front of a 3 judge panel in D.C., which wrapped up right before Flynn began The case is one of several that have been brought challenging Trump's new policy of excluding undocumented immigrants from the count used for congressional apportionment. A 3-panel in a case brought in NY already said policy is illegal, but that decision is on appeal to SCOTUS

With the big developments in recent weeks around Pennsylvania's voting rules, I broke down the state of play and what issues could arise if PA emerges as a flashpoint of any post-election legal battle talkingpointsmemo.com/fivepoints/pen… THE GOOD: election officials told me they've scaled up their mail ballot counting infrastructure, so results should be reported more quickly than what happened in the primary. Tho legislative precanvass fix would still be ideal. talkingpointsmemo.com/fivepoints/pen…

It's becoming clear that the PA military ballot "issue" was caused by an inadvertent (albeit unfortunate) administrative screw-up, not any nefarious Democratic scheme against Trump justice.gov/usao-mdpa/pr/l… All the wailing we saw from Team Trump about how "Democrats" are "trying to steal the election" would be borderline hilarious, in the clownish nature of it all, had the DOJ — purposely or not — not played the role it did in setting it all off.

The judge overseeing the Trump campaign's federal lawsuit challenging Pennsylvania's voting processes has a lengthy order laying out the next steps, now that the case is coming back to life courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco… The Trump camp/RNC filed recently had filed an amended complaint laying out what they still wanted to challenged about PA's election plans now that the state Supreme Court had weighed in. Here's the judge's summary of those amended claims

After several hearings ostensibly focused on housekeeping matters, the rushed census count lawsuit in California is finally getting its preliminary injunction right now. Judge Koh kicks if off by suggesting gov didn't follow her directions w/r/t additional filings she requested. Judge Koh asks the parties to address this email sent by Census Bureau officials just before they were ordered to speed up the count. Melissa Sherry, a lawyer for the challengers, takes the first swing

https://twitter.com/hansilowang/status/1308483992103026688

I know there is a lot going on right now, but the situation around the 2020 census continues to be ~insane ~ talkingpointsmemo.com/news/census-ru… The administration is now rushing to complete the census by the end of the year, even though back in April it said, because of COVID, it would need an additional 4 months. Why it reversed on that request is still a mystery w/in the Census Bureau talkingpointsmemo.com/news/census-ru…

Three Big Ways RBG's Death Could Impact Disputes Already At Or Likely Headed To SCOTUS talkingpointsmemo.com/news/ruth-bade… OBAMACARE: Court hears arguments in Nov. A 4-4 deadlock defers to the lower court (and the 5th Circuit so far has been hostile to the ACA) talkingpointsmemo.com/news/ruth-bade…

Here are the state-by-state enumeration rates, w/ NRFU included, for the 2020 census Per Al Fontenot, a top Census official, as the census approaches the end of data collection, they're facing "major challenges" from nature. He notes that the western states affected by the fires at least had some of the highest rates of enumeration before the fires.

ICYMI: A majority of the U.S. Senate is at least open to the idea of giving the Census Bureau more time to finish its 2020 count. So why isn't this problem getting fixed? talkingpointsmemo.com/news/census-se… The entire Dem caucus supports extending the count's deadlines. 3 GOP senators have formally asked the same. In the hallways, I found two more who were coming around to the idea talkingpointsmemo.com/news/census-se…

NEW: As the fight over how the Trump administration finishes the census count gets messier, a look at the state of play in Congress, where the Senate could fix all this if it wanted to talkingpointsmemo.com/news/census-se… “Although there are Republicans who have been supportive of the census, they need to get a little louder," said Sen. Schatz, who warned that "partisans who are unconstitutionally manipulating the process are determined to have their way.” talkingpointsmemo.com/news/census-se…

For the last hour and 40 minutes, Judge Koh has been presiding over a very contentious hearing the lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's move to truncate the census count...(we're now on a 15 minute break) Much of the proceeding has been focused on the government's failure to produce by the judge's 9/13 deadline certain documents explaining how the administration came to the decision in early August to speed up the count.

NEWS: A panel of three judges has ruled that Trump's anti-immigrant *apportionment* policy — which would have starved immigrant-rich states of representation in the House — is unlawful (deleting/replacing tweet w/ "appointment") typo courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco… The court notably doesn't say whether or not Trump's policy is constitutional. Rather it says what he is trying to do is a clear violation of laws passed by Congress dictating how the census/apportionment process works

I am watching the hearing in the case brought in California to reverse the recent expedition of the census count — the challengers are asking for a TRO — and judge is struggling to get DOJ to stick to basic questions she has about how to even describe what's going on. DOJ is eager to tell the judge about how the challengers are mischaracterizing how quickly the counting is winding down, and keep trying to drift away from her questions to get into that. She's finally just let the DOJ attorney to give his shpeel.