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Rahul Sharma's AP Govt Blog 4.2

Due Process Rob Porter and others who have been accused of sexual abuse or harassment are not being deprived of their life or their liberty as a result of the allegations made against them. The due process of a court action is often a very complicated and lengthy affair, involving pretrial discovery, witnesses, and a judicial proceeding. T he government cannot charge you with a crime or take other action against you without notifying you of the charges or proposed action. And that you must be given the opportunity to present your side of the story to a neutral fact-finder before action is taken. One fundamental aspect of due process is the requirement that the government hears the other side  whenever any individual, however lowly and unfortunate, asserts a legal claim. Reputable journalists seek confirmation of their stories and solicit a response from the person accused. Due process as a cultural matter is influenced by legal ideas but is really a cluster of fluid no...
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Rahul Sharma's AP Govt Blog 4.1

Midterm Predictions In a district that President Trump won by 20 percentage points, it is strange that a Democratic candidate won by a large margin.  Democratic swing is the difference between the special election result and the district’s partisan lean.  Alabama's US Senate special election has had the largest Democratic swing.  Republicans trail Democrats by only 8 or 9 percentage points on the  generic congressional ballot , which suggests a close race for control of the House this year that only narrowly favors Democrats. By contrast, the 16- or 17-point  average Democratic overperformance in special elections so far suggests a Democratic mega-tsunami. Democrats have a 10-point advantage over Republicans in congressional preference in the 2018 midterm elections. T he state’s Supreme Court  redrew the map  to tamp down partisan gerrymandering, but Lamb still  eked out a victory  over Saccone.  President Donald Trump’s approval ra...
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Rahul Sharma's AP Govt Blog 3.5

How the 9th Circuit became conservatives’ least favorite court The district court is a trial court within the Ninth Circuit; the appellate court is one step higher on the ladder and oversees all individual districts.  The 9th Circuit has long been  stereotyped as a liberal outlier , prone to left-wing rulings that are frequently reversed by the Supreme Court on appeal.  The Court’s reputation arguably derives from its transformation under President Jimmy Carter. While Carter was the only the fourth president to make no appointments to the Supreme Court, he did appoint 15 people to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and  Carter appointed some of the most liberal judges ever, to any court.  Stephen Reinhardt wrote the Ninth Circuit’s opinion striking down California’s same-sex marriage ban Proposition 8 in 2012, ruled that the Second Amendment doesn’t recognize an individual right to bear arms, and argued that bans on assisted suicide ...
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Rahul Sharma's AP Govt Blog 3.4

Scott Pruitt is slowly strangling the EPA With Scott Pruitt being in charge of the rule-making process, he can stall and delay implementation. By doing so, Pruitt can effectively shift policy by doing nothing.  Compared to the Obama administration,  the Trump administration launched 30 percent fewer cases and collected about  60 percent fewer fines  in the same period of time.  Now, under Pruitt, t he agency’s enforcement division now has to get  approval from headquarters  before investigating potential violations of environmental regulations, which slows down efforts to catch violators of laws.  Under Pruitt's leadership, the EPA already has tried to roll back at least  19 environmental regulations.  C ritics  say that continuing to make many of these regulations more stringent is regulatory malpractice since these rules are reaching diminishing returns,  costing businesses  and individuals more and more to comply wi...
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Rahul Sharma's AP Govt Blog 3.3

Quick Shut Down  Congress failing to pass a new  government funding  law before the old one expired led to the government shutdown.  In a shutdown,  Military and law enforcement activities continue.  Social Security  checks still go out. Air traffic controllers still go to work.  However, activities the government has deemed “nonessential” stop.  One point of potential leverage Democrats had over the Republicans is that Democratic votes are needed to fund the government. So, activists argued that Democrats shouldn’t vote for any government funding bill without a DACA deal.  Some Democrats were eager to end the shut down quickly because  keeping the government shut down on behalf of unauthorized immigrants — even the DREAMers — is a political loser. Furthermore, many Democratic senators are facing tough reelections in red states this year and fear being tagged as extremists.   In the funding agreement, the Children's He...
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Rahul Sharma's AP Govt Blog 3.2

If the vice president and a majority of sitting Cabinet secretaries decide that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” they put that down in writing and send it to both the speaker of the House and the Senate’s president pro tem. I t takes 9 people to make the vice president the acting president: the vice president and eight cabinet members. If the president disagrees with the VP & cabinet , he can. If he/she does, it would be up to Congress to settle the matter with a vote. A two-thirds majority in both houses would be necessary to keep the vice president in charge. The chaos that followed John F. Kennedy’s assassination spurred Congress to quickly pass the 25th Amendment in 1965 and winning its ratification in the states by 1967. P rior to the 25th Amendment, the VP office was vacant. The original interpretation says you basically can't fill the VP vacancy. The first part of Section 4 of the 25th Amendment is still open to interpret...
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Rahul Sharma's AP Govt Blog 3.1

The Trump administration decide to end the Voter Fraud  Commission because of the   States’ resistance to the commission. The White House said that “many states have refused to provide the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity with basic information relevant to its inquiry.”  Trump claims that  millions of people voting illegally had cost him the popular vote in the 2016 election. However, there is no evidence to back up his comments. The rate of voter fraud found by a Loyola Law School study was pretty much rare/nonexistent  - 35 total credible accusations between 2000 and 2014 out of  the 800 million ballots  cast in those 15 years.  That represents about 0.000003 alleged cases of fraud for every vote cast Another, more recent investigation  in North Carolina by the State Board of Elections similarly  found  just one — out of nearly 4.8 million total votes in 2016 — credible case of in-person voter fraud...
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