Alan Blinder

The ruling, an early step in a legal confrontation that critics of abortion orchestrated to try to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, ensured that abortion services would remain available in the state, at least for now.

The Alabama law would have made it a felony for doctors to provide abortions in almost all circumstances, and it threatened them with up to 99 years in prison. The law did not include any exceptions for abortions in cases of rape or incest, allowing the procedure only when a woman’s health was at “serious” risk.

The preliminary injunction, which was issued by Judge Myron H. Thompson of the U.S. District Court in Middle Alabama, will remain in effect until the “court resolves the case in full.”

This article originally appeared in

Alabama Abortion Ban Is Blocked by a Federal Judge

A federal judge blocked Alabama’s near-total ban on abortions on Tuesday, stopping the legislation from taking effect next month.

But few, if any, of the university leaders knew that Newsom had already decided to sign the measure and push the state into a confrontation over the economics of college sports.

Even if the National Collegiate Athletic Association ultimately prevails in the courts or through other means, it must reckon more immediately with a question whose answer could reverberate from coast to coast: How could some of the mightiest brands in American athletics, backed by some of the most powerful, politically connected institutions in California, suffer such a stunning setback in a statehouse?

“It was always going to get out,” said State Sen. Scott Wilk, a Republican who is vice chairman of California’s Senate Education Committee. “But by the margins it got out, it was impressive. It was that perfect storm.”

Indeed, the final votes looked like lopsided football shutouts: Every legislator who cast a vote backed the measure to upend the model of amateur sports. Not one publicly sided with the wishes of the state’s universities or the top leaders of college athletics.

Interviews with the governor, lawmakers and other people familiar with the workings of the California Capitol suggested the NCAA and the universities were undone by a blend of forces, including an uneven lobbying effort and shrewd work by the bill’s lead sponsor. There was also sustained hostility toward the NCAA, which is based in Indianapolis, as a distant juggernaut; deep skepticism that the association was willing to make consequential changes to its long-standing rules; and a governor, himself a onetime baseball player at Santa Clara, who had pushed for changes in college sports.

One danger for the long besieged but freshly staggered NCAA is that California’s move could prove to be just the leading edge of legislative efforts around the country to reshape the model of athletes as amateurs, an idea that has dominated for generations as the foundation for building college sports into an industry worth billions of dollars. In recent weeks, lawmakers in other states have voiced support for ideas that sound much like the ones that gained consensus in Sacramento, and legislation is formally pending in some legislatures.

The NCAA, which has often worked through legal and public relations battles with only limited modifications to its rules, could halt that momentum among lawmakers by winning a court victory in California. In the meantime, though, it is not clear whether or how the NCAA might change its political strategy, which in California largely relied on member institutions and at least two letters from association leaders that mirrored long-repeated talking points and, state officials said, did little or nothing to advance their cause.

The NCAA said in a statement on Monday that it “agrees changes are needed” to its rules about endorsements. It asserted, though, that it — not lawmakers — should be in charge of crafting new, nationwide rules. It warned that it was “clear that a patchwork of different laws from different states will make unattainable the goal of providing a fair and level playing field” (an argument it echoed in its so far unsuccessful push for federal instead of state regulation of sports betting).

Multiple California universities and their allies — which together spent more than $500,000 lobbying state legislators on an array of issues this year — did not respond to messages or declined requests for interviews about what transpired in Sacramento after Senate Bill 206 was introduced in February.

But the governor and Democratic and Republican lawmakers depicted the NCAA as politically impotent in California, the nation’s most populous state, and its universities as often distracted or resigned in the months leading up to the bill’s signing. Worse yet, they said, the NCAA and the universities sent erratic, sometimes conflicting messages about the legislation’s strengths, weaknesses and potential consequences.

“They kept changing their argument,” said state Sen. Nancy Skinner, a Democrat who was the bill’s architect. But officials recalled one familiar and repeated plea: that California should give a previously announced NCAA committee time to come up with its own proposals, which are expected to be announced by late October.

Newsom, in an interview with The New York Times before he signed the legislation, said he had considered the group’s talks to be a bargaining chip. By his account, his office sought a private preview of the group’s tentative ideas. Had those possible proposals been convincing, he said, he might have been willing to derail, even by veto, the bill that is now law.

“They said, ‘We don’t have enough time to do that,’” Newsom recalled, “which said everything I needed to know about how sincere they are, and how far they’re willing to go.”

In a statement to The Times, the NCAA said it “offered to share the working group’s report when finished” and noted that it did not “have final information to share because the working group’s efforts are ongoing.” The association said, though, it had told California officials about the committee’s “current progress.”

Newsom said that other efforts to influence him had been similarly lackluster.

The University of California, which legislators said had seemed more focused on defeating a measure related to its work force, “didn’t say one word to me,” the governor recounted. A meeting with Stanford’s president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, proved unpersuasive. And, according to the governor, the NCAA enlisted Timothy White, the California State University chancellor, as an intermediary to make its case.

The exchange, which the California State system declined to discuss, yielded no breakthroughs for the universities.

“He said, ‘I get it — I respect your point of view, they have a different point of view, so be it,’” Newsom said. “We didn’t have to indulge in flights of fancy and overly indulging ourselves with arguments that all of us are very familiar with.”

Indeed, the bill’s opponents faced a Capitol where views had hardened quickly, especially after the NCAA’s president, Mark Emmert, warned in June that California universities could be punished if the bill became law.

“This is one of those issues that is nonpartisan,” said Skinner, whose bill drew support from Republicans in part because they saw a reliance on the markets to resolve what they perceived as a stark inequity.

“They exploit young people to their detriment for a profit, and it’s offensive,” Wilk, a former trustee at a community college, said of the NCAA.

Years of public polling that showed rising support for compensating college athletes for their talents did not go unnoticed in Sacramento. Still, it was not until the final debate in the state Senate, lawmakers said, that the prospect of unanimous chambers became reality.

State Sen. Brian Jones, a Republican from San Diego County who said he had not been aggressively lobbied either way, said he arrived on the Senate floor expecting to oppose the bill. The debate, though, led him to reconsider his thinking, as did a series of pointed queries from one of his children, a community college volleyball player.

“He was just asking questions, he wasn’t advocating one way or the other,” Jones said. “As I had to answer his questions, I kind of had to come up with answers that made sense. I just worked myself into supporting it.”

There are other political perils on the horizon for the NCAA. In New York, a state senator has filed legislation that effectively mirrors the California law and adds an expensive twist: a requirement that colleges pay 15% of the money earned from sports ticket sales to student-athletes.

On Monday, the day Newsom announced his move in California, legislators in Florida and Illinois filed bills of their own. Federal lawmakers, as well as officials in Colorado, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Washington state, have also signaled unease with the NCAA’s way of doing business. Even in states where college sports are prized passions, the association and its policies have gradually grown more alarming.

“I think you could very well see a groundswell in statehouses across the country against the NCAA,” said Trey Lamar, a state representative in Mississippi who once filed a bill to limit how the association conducts investigations in the state.

“They just flat-out overstep their bounds in so many different areas,” said Lamar, who was a running back at Mississippi. “They’ve gotten too big for their britches, and they need to come back to the table.”

After Newsom’s decision became public Monday morning, the NCAA chose not to repeat its threat that universities there could be barred from competition. California’s major universities seemed to adopt a more conciliatory approach, hoping that state officials might reconsider the law’s provisions.

And at the University of California, Los Angeles, Chip Kelly, one of the nation’s highest paid college football coaches, said he saw the law as “progress.”

“The NCAA,” he said, “will have to make their adjustment.”

NCAA's Defeat in California Shows Limits of a Besieged Juggernaut

The word went out minutes into last Wednesday’s meeting of California State trustees: The university had asked Gov. Gavin Newsom to veto a bill to let student-athletes seek money beyond the costs of attendance.

In an indictment announced Tuesday, the operative, L. McCrae Dowless Jr., was accused of obstruction of justice and illegal possession of an absentee ballot, among other charges. Seven other people were also indicted in connection with the election fraud inquiry, but prosecutors said the charges against one person were inadvertent and would be dismissed.

In the indictment, prosecutors alleged that Dowless directed others in the criminal mishandling of absentee ballots and that “spoiled absentee ballots were counted.” Dowless’ crimes, the indictment said, “served to undermine the integrity of the absentee ballot process and the public’s confidence in the outcome of the electoral process.”

“This offense was done with deceit and intent to defraud and against the peace and dignity of the state,” said the indictment, which a grand jury in Wake County returned Tuesday.

Through his lawyer, Dowless, who worked during the 2018 campaign for Mark Harris, the Republican nominee in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, has denied wrongdoing, and a woman who answered the phone at his lawyer’s office Tuesday afternoon declined to comment.

Harris, who eventually gave up his bid to be elected to Congress, has also denied any role in any election fraud.

But state elections regulators and investigators concluded that Dowless, who had worked for Democratic and Republican politicians alike over the years, had overseen a network of people who collected absentee ballots — a violation of North Carolina law — and sometimes completed them while he was a contractor for Harris’ campaign.

Although officials never proved that Dowless’ group touched enough ballots in and around Bladen County to account for the entirety of Harris’ 905-vote edge, the State Board of Elections decided in February to order a new vote. At the time, the chairman of the elections board, Robert Cordle, cited “the corruption, the absolute mess with the absentee ballots” and described the November election as “tainted.”

Voters in the district, which includes part of Charlotte, will pick a new congressman in September. Harris is not a candidate, but last year’s Democratic candidate, Dan McCready, is running for the seat against Dan Bishop, who became the Republican nominee in May.

Dowless was charged in February with a series of felonies connected to the general election in 2016 and the primary balloting in 2018. In both elections, according to indictments that were filed in Wake County, Dowless’ conduct “served to undermine the integrity of the absentee ballot process and the public’s confidence in the outcome of the electoral process.”

Until now, though, Dowless had not been charged in connection with the 2018 general election. But his prosecution was widely expected as federal and state investigators spent months gathering evidence.

Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the state Board of Elections, said in a statement Tuesday that the misconduct linked to Dowless had “effectively disenfranchised voters” in the 9th District.

“North Carolina voters should be confident that state officials will continue to be vigilant and pursue any individuals or organizations that attempt to undermine our elections,” she said. “Democracy is best served by holding those who attempt to thwart it accountable.”

In an interview in February, Lorrin Freeman, the Wake County district attorney, said she and other investigators had been waiting for the elections board to conclude its work before they turned their focus to last year’s general election.

“What has been challenging about this case and this investigation is that, as has been widely reported, certain activity has gone on for years,” Freeman, who began investigating Dowless’ activities in Bladen County after the local prosecutor recused himself, said in her suite of offices in Raleigh, the North Carolina capital. “The more interviews you do, the more interviews you have to do.”

The 9th District has been without representation since January, when the term of Rep. Robert M. Pittenger expired. Harris narrowly defeated Pittenger in a Republican primary in May 2018.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/us/mccrae-dowless-indictment.html" id="c8de710a-4ecd-37ea-a949-560265fecb0e">The New York Times</a>.

Election Fraud in North Carolina Leads to New Charges for Republican Operative

A Republican operative in North Carolina has been charged in connection with a voter-turnout effort that investigators said was intended to manipulate the results of a now-overturned general election for Congress last year.

<h1>MEMPHIS — The fatal shooting Wednesday evening of a 20-year-old black man named Brandon Webber, whom officials had planned to arrest on outstanding felony warrants, took place on a suburban-style block in front of a brick ranch house with a wide lawn. Then came a violent protest and clash, which left at least 25 police officers injured.</h1>

On Thursday afternoon, scores of African-American residents were crowded on the lawn and in the driveway of the house where Webber had lived. The air was thick with anger. They shouted about their mistreatment at the hands of the police.

The violent clash between protesters and the police was an explosion of tensions in a city long troubled by poverty, crime and racism. It also unfolded at a moment when the city’s leaders have been trying to build momentum for Memphis by reviving its economy and investing in downtown.

The past week alone has shown how often Memphis, where about one-quarter of the roughly 650,000 residents live in poverty, can veer from hope to despair. On June 6, a developer detailed his plans for a project worth at least $190 million. The next night, a business executive was killed after he left a fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, one of the city’s preeminent institutions.

Then by sundown Wednesday, Webber was dead after another law enforcement shooting, the third in the city this year, and rumors quickly spread through Frayser, the North Memphis neighborhood where he was killed.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which is leading the inquiry into the shooting, said that the episode began when members of a U.S. Marshals Service task force found Webber, who had outstanding felony warrants, outside a Frayser home. When the marshals confronted him, Webber reportedly rammed his vehicle into the officers’ vehicles several times and brandished a weapon.

The marshals opened fire, killing Webber and drawing city police officers to the area. Over a matter of hours, according to police and local television stations that aired video of some of the chaos, protesters hurled bricks and rocks toward police, who made three arrests and used tear gas to disperse the crowd.

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said a business had been damaged when a concrete wall was torn down, and that windows at a nearby fire station had been broken. In one instance, a man repeatedly slammed a chair against a police car.

“We’ve been very supportive of protests, but we will not allow any acts of violence,” Police Director Michael Rallings said. “We will not allow destruction of property. We will not allow acts of vandalism to occur.”

Strickland told WREG-TV that “a violent response” to any police shooting was “absolutely unacceptable and will not be tolerated and should not be tolerated by anyone in the Memphis community.”

But the confrontation — although nowhere near as widespread, long-lasting or violent as the protests that roiled cities like Baltimore, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Ferguson, Missouri, over the past five years — revealed some of the frayed relations between police and residents in a city with endemic crime. (In a speech in January, Strickland prefaced an improvement in crime statistics by saying, “I know it doesn’t feel like crime is down.”)

In 2018, Memphis recorded 184 homicides, more than larger cities like Boston, Nashville, Phoenix and Seattle. So far this year, it has logged more than 80 homicides, including shootings involving the police and fatal hit-and-run episodes, according to The Commercial Appeal.

“There is unrest in this city, and a lot of it is systemic problems,” said Mike Williams, president of the Memphis Police Association, who argued that police officers were often blamed for policy failures that extended beyond law enforcement’s purview, such as education and the economy.

On Thursday, Williams insisted that the broad relationship between officers and the communities they policed was not toxic. But in some places, he said, officers encountered “a blatant disregard for law enforcement” that fueled turmoil.

Memphis police officers played no role in Wednesday’s shooting, but the history of tension between law enforcement and residents fueled the protest this week.

“You’re dealing with decades and decades and decades of mistrust,” said Bruce Kramer, a Memphis civil rights lawyer who has litigated against the police department since the 1970s. “Was I shocked? No. Was I disappointed? Yes.”

In part because of Kramer and his allies, Memphis police have been a subject of scrutiny and protest for decades. In 2016, demonstrators tied to the Black Lives Matter movement blockaded the Hernando de Soto Bridge, whose two arches lend the structure its “M Bridge” nickname.

In 2018, a federal judge ruled that the department, which patrols a city where about 2 in 3 residents are black, had violated a consent decree when it “conducted political intelligence” about Black Lives Matter.

On Wednesday night, and then into Thursday, Frayser was the epicenter of renewed debate about policing in Memphis.

“Don’t judge Frayser without asking a community how it feels to mourn their youth over and over again,” Tami Sawyer, a mayoral candidate and a member of the Shelby County Board of Commissioners, wrote on Twitter.

On Thursday afternoon, Sawyer was not certain whether the night would bring another burst of public anger. The attacks on the police were wrong, she said, but she added that whatever the circumstances that had brought the marshals to Webber’s door, local officials needed to recognize the pain along Frayser’s streets.

“The issue is that there’s been very little acknowledgment of how deeply hurtful this loss is,” she said.

DeAndre Brown, executive director of LifeLine to Success, a group that helps ex-offenders re-enter society, said he had taught cultural diversity classes to Memphis officers who had been “very receptive.”

“The problem is the frustration is so deep,” he said, speaking of young black Memphians. “They don’t know how to direct their pain, and so it gets directed to the closest target.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/13/us/memphis-shooting-frayser.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

25 Memphis officers hurt in protest after a shooting

The violent clash between protesters and the police was an explosion of tensions in a city long troubled by poverty, crime and racism. It also unfolded at a moment when the city’s leaders have been trying to build momentum for Memphis by reviving its economy and investing in downtown.

Judge Carlton W. Reeves of the U.S. District Court in Jackson issued a preliminary injunction against the ban, delivering another judicial rebuke of laws that seek to forbid abortions early in pregnancy — a type of measure that has gained traction across the South this year. The decision was also at least the second since November that limited Mississippi’s efforts to restrict abortions.

The law “threatens immediate harm to women’s rights” and “prevents a woman’s free choice, which is central to personal dignity and autonomy,” Reeves wrote in his ruling. “This injury outweighs any interest the state might have in banning abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat.”

The Mississippi law, which was to take effect July 1, would have barred abortions once health care providers were able to detect the pulsing of what would become a fetus’ heart, which can be as early as six weeks into pregnancy. The law was just one of the year’s fetal heartbeat bills that, supporters and critics alike said, would effectively ban abortions before many women even knew they were pregnant.

Under the Mississippi law, abortions would have been permitted after the detection of fetal pulsing only to save a woman’s life or “to prevent a serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.” Doctors who performed abortions that were illegal under the statute could have been jailed for up to six months.

A court blocked a similar law in Kentucky in March, and comparable measures in Arkansas, Iowa and North Dakota faltered in the courts before that. But the history of courtroom defeats has not deterred abortion critics, who have championed similar restrictions this year in, among other states, Georgia and Ohio. Louisiana legislators are expected to vote on a comparable proposal next week.

The decision by Reeves, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, was widely expected. The judge appeared skeptical of the law during a hearing Tuesday, and in a decision last year that blocked Mississippi’s 15-week ban, he lashed out at state leaders for pressing proposals that he felt plainly defied Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.

“The state chose to pass a law it knew was unconstitutional to endorse a decadeslong campaign, fueled by national interest groups, to ask the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade,” the judge wrote in November. “This court follows the commands of the Supreme Court and the dictates of the United States Constitution, rather than the disingenuous calculations of the Mississippi Legislature.”

He added, in a footnote that drew widespread attention beyond the state, that the Legislature’s “professed interest in ‘women’s health’ is pure gaslighting.”

The legal challenge to Mississippi’s new law was brought by the state’s only abortion clinic, Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The state will almost certainly appeal the decision to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in New Orleans. In fact, Republican politicians in Jackson have effectively pledged a blank check to try to defend the law.

“We will all answer to the good Lord one day,” Gov. Phil Bryant wrote on Twitter before he signed the measure into law in March. “I will say in this instance, ‘I fought for the lives of innocent babies, even under threat of legal action.’”

In recent interviews, two of the law’s leading architects in Mississippi said they had pushed the measure through the Legislature this year after they believed that Virginia’s Democratic governor had effectively endorsed infanticide.

In a radio interview over the winter, Ralph Northam, the Democratic governor, described a situation in which an infant would be delivered with severe deformities, and then a “discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”

Northam’s comments alarmed social conservatives across the country. In Jackson, Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, a candidate for governor, summoned Sen. Joey Fillingane, one of the Legislature’s leading critics of abortion, to his state Capitol office. There, in a meeting that lasted just a few minutes, they agreed to move the heartbeat legislation that Republican leaders had planned to let stall.

“Tate looked at me and was like, ‘I think this is the year we’ve got to do something a little more bold,’” Fillingane recalled ahead of the hearing before Reeves. “We just felt like this is a bridge too far. We’re not going to sit back and be passive and lackadaisical.”

But the law’s critics said the measure was but another chapter in Mississippi’s protracted quest to restrict abortions. After the governor signed the measure, they quickly went to Reeves’ court to request an injunction.

The ban “continues a long-running strategy by Mississippi lawmakers and national anti-abortion special interest groups to eliminate abortion in the state, and ultimately the entire nation,” lawyers for the Center for Reproductive Rights said in a court filing in the suit. “The 6 Week Ban is on a collision course with Roe v. Wade and its progeny, by design.”

Federal judge blocks Mississippi abortion law

A federal judge in Mississippi on Friday temporarily blocked a state law that effectively banned abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy.

<h1>On a Friday evening in February, Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia confessed that he was one of two men in a racist photograph that had been published in a medical school yearbook about 35 years earlier. In a subsequent video, he apologized and promised to do better.</h1>

The next afternoon, standing before a throng of reporters, the Democrat suddenly recanted and insisted that neither man in the picture, which showed one in a Ku Klux Klan robe and another in blackface, was him.

On Wednesday, almost four months after the photograph surfaced and plunged Virginia’s government into turmoil, investigators said they had been unable to determine which of Northam’s accounts was true.

“No one we interviewed told us the governor was in the photograph, and no one could positively state who was in the photograph,” the investigators, hired by Eastern Virginia Medical School, which awarded Northam his medical degree in 1984 and had been aware of the image for years, wrote in a 55-page report.

The inquiry also did not determine whether the photograph had been placed in error on a page that included Northam’s name and pictures.

But the report detailed how the gravest crisis of Northam’s career unfolded behind closed doors, and how early decisions helped shape a “shocking and chaotic” drama that left Virginians flummoxed, the statehouse in shambles and the governor more a punch line than a powerful politician. On Wednesday, the governor again denied that he was in the “racist and offensive photo that appears under my name.”

“I know and understand the events of early February and my response to them have caused hurt for many Virginians, and for that, I am sorry,” Northam, who had rebuffed calls for his resignation, said in a statement after the report’s release. “I felt it was important to take accountability for the photo’s presence on my page, but rather than providing clarity, I instead deepened pain and confusion.”

Indeed, the turmoil that began with the yearbook picture taxed Northam’s credibility and also spread throughout Virginia government. In the days that followed Northam’s shifting explanations, Lt. Gov. Justin E. Fairfax was accused of sexual assault, which he denied, and Attorney General Mark R. Herring acknowledged that he had worn blackface as an undergraduate student. Fairfax and Herring, also Democrats, remain in office.

Given that messy line of succession, as well as polls that showed most Virginia voters wanted Northam to stay, the calls for his resignation from fellow Democrats ebbed. Some even said they regretted making such calls too quickly.

Northam then pledged to dedicate the remainder of his term to focusing on issues of inequity, a vow that members of the state’s Legislative Black Caucus said he has so far showed signs of honoring.

The governor slowly and steadily began resuming a public schedule, but the awkwardness remains, especially in a year of legislative elections. An appearance by the governor is still seen as a risk by other Democrats on the campaign trail, and rearrangements under public pressure have been necessary. Republicans have been in no mood to let the scandals fade away, and on Wednesday, the Republican Party of Virginia renewed its demand that Northam quit.

“Only one person has confessed to being in the racist photograph, and that person is Ralph Northam,” the party chairman, Jack Wilson, said in a statement.

The black-and-white photograph had been a looming, if largely unknown, threat to Northam for more than three decades. It was not until Feb. 1, though, with the governor embroiled in a national controversy over abortion rights, that a conservative website published the image and the governor went from a policy dispute to an international maelstrom linked to race.

Northam’s account of events varied slightly from one interview to another, and from the recollection of his chief of staff, Clark Mercer. But Northam told investigators — in an account corroborated by Mercer — that he had immediately wondered whether it was fraudulent. A friend’s urgent review of a yearbook on Eastern Virginia’s campus revealed that it was real.

As the photograph spread quickly online, the governor’s roster of allies dwindled just as fast, and “thousands” of messages began to flood Northam’s aides.

“That night his closest political allies abandoned him en masse,” Mercer recounted to investigators. “Not one called him and said, ‘Governor, can we walk through this?’ or offered to stand by him.”

The governor’s office, Mercer said, was “on an island,” and aides prepared three options: a denial, an admission and a condemnation of the photo coupled with a pledge to investigate it. Aides discarded the third choice, Mercer recalled, because “you can’t equivocate whether you were in the picture or not.”

The group collectively opted for a statement in which Northam would effectively admit to appearing in the photograph. Aides drafted the statement, which Northam reviewed and approved.

The statement — in which Northam said he was “deeply sorry for the decision I made to appear as I did in this photo and for the hurt that decision caused then and now” — contradicted what Northam was telling his staff, according to the investigators. But a panic, Mercer said, had seized the governor’s office.

“I wanted to take responsibility for a picture being on my yearbook page and — I hate to say this because I’ve been in the Army and taken care of dying children — but I was shocked,” the governor said, according to the report. “It hit me like a ton of bricks. I didn’t think through it.”

As hours passed, investigators said, Northam became more confident that he was not in the photograph. It was also becoming clear that Northam’s initial statements, one in writing and another on video, would not quell the outrage. The governor scheduled a news conference that would shadow him for months: He denied being in the photograph, he admitted to once darkening his face for a Michael Jackson costume and, at one moment, he seemed poised to demonstrate his dance skills.

Northam and his staff, Mercer said, “underestimated how strong and how quickly” there would be demands for his resignation.

Within days, though, scandals were enveloping Fairfax, Herring and a powerful Republican senator. The governor retreated from public view and re-emerged slowly. He cannot run for re-election in 2021, and in Richmond, people have become increasingly convinced that he will serve — hobbled as he might be — the balance of his term.

The investigation’s inconclusive outcome may help, observers said, because it did not definitively undermine Northam’s account. But the investigation, conducted by McGuireWoods, a law firm with close ties to Virginia’s most powerful figures, still faced some skepticism on Wednesday.

James Boyd, the president of the Portsmouth chapter of the NAACP, said he had “zero trust” in the inquiry and believed that it had been improperly tilted toward Northam. The firm, he said at the news conference where Eastern Virginia announced the results of the investigation, seemed to be “attorneys for Ralph.”

The lawyers defended the scope of their inquiry, which included interviews with 52 witnesses, and their findings.

And Wednesday morning, the medical school’s president, Richard V. Homan, said the photograph should not have been included in the yearbook. It had been, he said, a “failure of administrative oversight.”

“Their publication was hurtful, particularly to the African-American community and to our campus community,” Homan said. “It should never have happened.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="f1934ffc-a966-434a-a04d-bcec46f67388" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/us/ralph-northam-yearbook-blackface.html">The New York Times</a>.

Investigation of Blackface Photo Ends Without Answer

On Wednesday, almost four months after the photograph surfaced and plunged Virginia’s government into turmoil, investigators said they had been unable to determine which of Northam’s accounts was true.

Investigation of blackface photo ends without answer

But Tuesday, Republican voters found themselves picking someone else to represent them in a do-over election after last year’s seeming success collapsed in the wake of fraud accusations. By night’s end, The Associated Press had projected that state Sen. Dan Bishop, who played a substantial role in North Carolina’s caustic battle a few years ago over bathroom access for transgender people, would be the party’s candidate in the Sept. 10 general election against Dan McCready, the Democrat.

The AP projected that Bishop, who closely aligned himself with President Donald Trump during the primary campaign, would win at least 30% of the vote and become the Republican nominee without a runoff.

Some Republicans expected that Tuesday’s primary vote — to narrow a 10-candidate field in a protracted process to resolve the final unsettled race of the midterms — would help them begin to escape the taint of wrongdoing in last year’s campaign for Congress in the 9th District.

Still, the campaign, lengthy as it will be, may end before a swirl of state and federal inquiries that have already led to charges against L. McCrae Dowless Jr., a contractor who oversaw an impropriety-ridden effort on behalf of the campaign of Mark Harris, the Republican candidate in 2018.

North Carolina regulators ordered a new election after they concluded in February that Dowless’ operatives — who acknowledged they had illegally collected and filled in absentee ballots — had compromised the vote. Harris appeared to have won the election by 905 votes, and although state authorities did not explicitly conclude that there had been enough misconduct to tip the outcome in the Republican’s direction, they found that improprieties had been sufficiently widespread to undermine the balloting’s integrity.

Republicans initially resisted calls for a new election, which began within weeks of the midterm vote, and Bishop was a passionate defender of Harris.

In an interview in December, Bishop described Harris as “congressman-elect” and said it was “premature to throw Mark Harris under the bus.”

Harris’ support ultimately eroded, though, especially after days of damning testimony before the state Board of Elections, during which Harris appeared to mislead regulators, and party officials conceded that another campaign was inevitable and appropriate.

State regulators quickly agreed and essentially reset the district’s 2018 election by reopening candidate qualifying and ordering primary and general elections. The 9th District includes a sliver of Charlotte and runs eastward to rural areas like Bladen County, where the most well-documented misconduct took place.

Three of the district’s most prominent Republicans — Harris, former Gov. Pat McCrory and former Rep. Robert M. Pittenger — declined to run in the new election. But the Republican field still quickly filled, and Democrats again coalesced around McCready, a former Marine who was their nominee last fall.

McCready has been among the most celebrated candidates in Democratic congressional politics in recent years. Although Republicans have held the House seat in the 9th since the Kennedy administration, McCready proved a skilled candidate last year. During the drama before the regulators in Raleigh, he largely kept out of sight, leaving the most pointed of jabs to lawyers and Democratic campaign operatives.

Yet it was always clear that if the state ordered another vote, McCready would run again. The question was whether Harris would. By the end of February, Harris, who has not been charged with a crime and has denied wrongdoing, cited health reasons and said he would skip another campaign.

Although some of Harris’ supporters argued that he had been treated unfairly, he would have likely faced many skeptical voters had he run again. After the scandal’s contours became public, North Carolina voters expressed alarm about past and future elections. In an Elon University poll of registered voters there, just more than half of respondents reported that they thought election fraud was a “major problem” in the state. According to the study, which the university released in March, about 60% of voters said they were “somewhat confident” that future elections would be fair.

Dowless, who has been indicted in connection with voter-turnout efforts in the 2016 general election and the 2018 primary, has remained a subject of official investigation and public curiosity. On the first day of early voting, local news outlets reported, Dowless went to cast his ballot in Bladen County.

This article originally appeared in <a id="87ef64cd-cd83-33fd-a147-3243800523b7" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/us/politics/north-carolina-republican-primary.html">The New York Times</a>.

North Carolina Republicans Choose Candidate for Do-Over Election for House Seat

North Carolina Republicans have controlled the state’s 9th Congressional District since 1963. In November, the party celebrated a narrow 905-vote victory over the Democratic candidate, and the long streak appeared unbroken.

North Carolina Republicans choose candidate for do-over election for House seat

Faced with a procedural dispute and open divisions among Republicans over how far the abortion ban should go, the Senate abruptly adjourned until Tuesday. As the chaos played out on the Senate floor, where lawmakers clashed over whether the state should allow abortions in cases of rape or incest, supporters and critics alike acknowledged that the bill, the most far-reaching effort in the nation this year to curb abortion, was still likely to become law.

“I know you all are for this bill, and I know this bill is going to pass,” state Sen. Vivian Davis Figures, a Democrat and one of the few women in the Alabama Legislature, told Republicans on the floor on Thursday. “You all are going to get your way, but at least treat us fairly and do it the right way.”

The measure would effectively ban most abortions at every stage of pregnancy. Doctors could be charged with a felony and face up to 99 years in prison for performing an abortion unless the woman’s health was at “serious” risk.

On Thursday, in a maneuver that set off a chorus of shouts and screams in the Senate, some Republicans sought to abandon a provision — backed by other Republicans — that would have allowed exceptions to the abortion ban in cases of rape or incest.

“I think it is a healthy conversation to have, as long as elected officials listen to their constituents,” said Terry Lathan, the chairwoman of the Alabama Republican Party. “At the end of the day, we want a strong abortion ban bill.”

The House has already passed the measure without those exceptions, but a Senate committee added them Wednesday before sending the bill to the full chamber. That addition stirred anger from some lawmakers, who wanted to ban abortion as broadly as possible and force the courts to take a new look at Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that legalized abortion up to the point when a fetus is viable outside the womb, usually about 24 weeks into a pregnancy.

The frustrations of some Republicans spilled into public view on Thursday. The Senate removed the exceptions with a hasty procedural tactic, but the disputed provision could still be restored before a final vote.

In the end, with the Alabama Senate in turmoil and even senior lawmakers flabbergasted, Thursday served mostly as a preview of the debate that will play out once the bill returns to the chamber floor, which could come as soon as next week.

“If we want to talk about privacy, I would want to talk about the right of privacy of that unborn child,” said state Sen. Clyde Chambliss, a Republican from the Montgomery area. “That child has a right to develop and be delivered without its privacy being invaded, invaded by forceps and scalpels. That’s what this bill is about today.”

Democrats have complained that the measure would nearly eliminate abortion rights in Alabama, and they have argued that lawmakers should devote more attention to the state’s most pressing issues, not national cultural battles.

“We will probably spend more money on legal fees on this particular case than it takes for us to be able to bring healthy babies into the world,” Sen. Bobby Singleton, the top Democrat in the chamber, said Thursday. “But we’re willing to do legislation for grandstanding versus the ability to look at the human factor and allow a woman to have her own choice.”

The legislation has moved through Montgomery, the Alabama capital, at a time when opponents of legal abortion in the South and beyond have been encouraged and emboldened by the realignment of the Supreme Court with the arrival of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. This year, especially in the South and Midwest, state lawmakers have pursued a range of proposals to limit abortions, including so-called heartbeat bills that essentially ban abortions at six weeks of pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant.

Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia signed such a measure on Tuesday, following the governors of Kentucky, Mississippi and Ohio.

But by all accounts, the Alabama measure was intended to go farther than the heartbeat legislation, and to provoke a review of Roe’s 46-year-old precedent.

Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, has not committed to signing the measure into law if it reaches her desk, but many state lawmakers expect her eventual support. Her spokeswoman has declined to comment.

Opponents of the legislation have vowed to sue to block the measure if it becomes law. They said that they would argue that Alabama would have unlawfully restricted access to abortion, a right that the courts have repeatedly reaffirmed since Roe.

“Passing bills that they know will be struck down in federal court are a waste of millions of taxpayer dollars that could be going to address the urgent needs in our communities,” the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama said in a statement. “Ignoring those needs in favor of scoring political points is an irresponsible use of their power and privilege.”

In the statement, issued before the bill’s turbulent appearance on the Senate floor, the ACLU warned, “If the full Senate and governor insist on passing this bill, they will see us in court.”

Although the bill’s supporters expect it to be blocked in at least one lower court, they hope that the Supreme Court will ultimately take the case.

“Our position is just simply that the unborn child is a person, and the bill goes directly to that,” said state Rep. Rich Wingo, a Republican who supported the legislation. “Courts can do — and have done — many things good and bad, but we would hope and pray that they would go and that they would overturn Roe.”

Alabama, a conservative state where Republicans dominate politics and where the number of abortion clinics has fallen over the years, has long sought to limit abortion access. Last year, voters supported an amendment to the Alabama Constitution that declared that the “public policy of this state is to recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, including the right to life.”

In the past, lawmakers set a 48-hour waiting period for abortions; mandated that women receive counseling before undergoing procedures; and required minors to receive consent for an abortion from a parent or legal guardian.

It was not immediately clear when the Senate would resume its consideration of the measure.

Lathan, the Republican Party chairwoman, said she was not surprised by the ferocity of the debate inside her party and out.

“At the end of the day, we are talking about a life here,” she said.

This article originally appeared in <a id="79736523-5da1-3e37-adc1-16c7e923879c" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/us/alabama-abortion-ban.html">The New York Times</a>.

Amid Chaos, Alabama Lawmakers Delay Vote on Far-Reaching Abortion Ban

The Alabama Senate on Thursday postponed debate on a proposal to outlaw most abortions in the state, delaying a measure that is intended to serve as a direct challenge to the Supreme Court’s holding that a woman has a constitutional right to end a pregnancy.

Amid Chaos, Alabama lawmakers delay vote on far-reaching abortion ban

The Republican-controlled Senate, faced with procedural disputes and intraparty debate over details of the measure, abruptly adjourned until Tuesday. Chaos spilled into public view on the Senate floor, but it neither definitively advanced nor sank the proposal that is the nation’s most far-reaching effort to curb abortion this year.

The measure would effectively ban most abortions at every stage of pregnancy and criminalize the procedure for doctors, who could be charged with a felony and face up to 99 years in prison for performing an abortion unless a woman’s health was at “serious” risk. On Thursday, in a maneuver that helped set off a chorus of shouts and screams on the Senate floor, some Republicans sought to abandon provisions that would have allowed exceptions to the abortion ban in cases of rape or incest.

The House has already passed a measure without such exceptions, and a Senate committee added them Wednesday, stirring anger from some who thought they watered down the effort to ban abortion as broadly as possible and to force a new look at Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark case that legalized abortion up to the point when a fetus is viable outside the womb, usually about 24 weeks into a pregnancy. Although the Senate removed the exceptions Thursday, the provision could be restored before a final vote.

In the end, with the Alabama chamber in turmoil and even senior lawmakers flabbergasted, Thursday served as a preview of the debate that will play out once the bill returns to the Senate floor as soon as next week.

Democrats have complained that the measure would nearly eliminate abortion rights in Alabama, and they have argued that lawmakers should spend more time on the state’s most pressing issues, not national cultural battles. But they have also conceded that the bill is very likely to pass the Legislature.

The legislation has moved through Montgomery, the Alabama capital, just as opponents of legal abortion in the South and beyond have been encouraged and emboldened by the realignment of the Supreme Court with the arrival of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. This year, especially in the South and Midwest, state lawmakers have pursued a range of proposals to limit abortions, including so-called heartbeat bills that essentially ban abortions at six weeks of pregnancy.

Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, has not committed to signing the measure into law if it reaches her desk, but many state lawmakers expect her eventual support.

Although the bill’s supporters expect it to be blocked in at least one lower court, they hope that the Supreme Court will ultimately seize on the legal battle to reconsider its essential holding in Roe.

It was not immediately clear when the Senate would resume its consideration of the measure and how Republicans would settle the matter of rape and incest exceptions, which some of the Republican Party’s leading figures support.

Democrats, though, seemed to sense an opportunity to depict at least some Senate Republicans as reckless with their power over the chamber’s business.

“I know you all are for this bill, and I know this bill is going to pass,” Sen. Vivian Davis Figures, a Democrat and one of the few women in the Alabama Legislature, told Republicans on the floor Thursday. “You all are going to get your way, but at least treat us fairly and do it the right way.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/us/alabama-abortion-ban.html" id="79736523-5da1-3e37-adc1-16c7e923879c">The New York Times</a>.

The Alabama Senate on Thursday postponed debate on a proposal to outlaw most abortions in the state, delaying the measure that is intended to serve as a direct challenge to the Supreme Court’s holding that a woman has a constitutional right to end a pregnancy.

The measure would effectively ban most abortions at every stage of pregnancy and criminalize the procedure for doctors, who could face up to 99 years in prison for performing an abortion unless a woman’s health was at “serious” risk. On Thursday, in a maneuver that helped set off a chorus of shouts and screams on the Senate floor, some Republicans sought to abandon provisions that would have allowed exceptions to the abortion ban in cases of rape or incest.

Democrats have complained the measure would nearly eliminate abortion rights in Alabama, and they have argued that lawmakers should spend more time on the state’s most pressing issues, not national cultural battles. But they have conceded that the bill is very likely to pass the Legislature.

But a law student working for the defense team in Cannon’s death penalty trial noticed something else: In a city with one of the South’s largest public universities, not one member of last month’s jury pool in East Baton Rouge Parish seemed all that young.

On Wednesday, court officials explained why: A “computer glitch” prevented the parish’s jury database from updating properly. Since 2011, more than 150,000 people — including thousands born after June 2, 1993 — have been inadvertently left off the jury rolls, potentially starving young defendants of jurors who were roughly their age.

Across the country, computer-reliant jury coordinators have for years confronted database problems that kept otherwise-eligible potential jurors from being called to the nation’s courthouses. Although they are typically unintentional, such systematic exclusions raise constitutional concerns and threaten the integrity of the jury system, legal experts said.

“It is a vital government function that isn’t that hard to get right, so it’s at least a bit surprising to see errors today that you might think had been eliminated 20 years ago,” said David Rosen, a lawyer who was involved in a jury selection debacle in the early 1990s in Connecticut. “It counts as something that sounds hard to believe until you think a little more about it, and then it becomes all too easy to believe.”

BATON ROUGE, La. — The Louisianans who were summoned to decide whether Grover Cannon killed a police officer were Asian, black, Hispanic and white. They were caregivers and engineers, state workers and self-employed.

Alan Blinder

Articles written by the author

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