Politics
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is off North Carolina ballot, thanks to GOP-majority state Supreme Court
In the latest litigation shaping the 2024 presidential electionthe Supreme Court of North Carolina split 4-3 to remove Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from the ballot. The decision siding with the former independent presidential candidate was reached by four Republican justices, over Democratic dissent that accused the majority of abandoning its judicial role.
“Neither party in this case disputes that plaintiff submitted a resignation of candidacy,” Justice Trey Allen noted for the majority in an order on Monday. Kennedy suspended his campaign last month and announced his support for Republican nominee Donald Trump.
“Therefore, by law, a vote for plaintiff in this election will not count,” the majority observed, adding that if Kennedy’s name appeared on the ballot, “it could disenfranchise countless voters who mistakenly believe that plaintiff remains a candidate for office.”
The decision could delay the mailing of absentee ballots by several weeks.
The majority acknowledged that expediting the printing of new ballots “will require considerable time and effort by our election officials and significant expense to the State.” But it said that’s “a price the North Carolina Constitution expects us to incur to protect voters’ fundamental right to vote their conscience and have that vote count.”
While there’s a certain logic to that outcome at first glance, the dissenting justices argued that, at best, the majority doesn’t have the right to reach it.
Though he called the majority’s analysis “entirely reasonable,” fellow Republican Justice Richard Dietz wrote in his dissent that the court’s role “is to follow the law as it is written.” He explained that while state law lets a party’s nominee resign at any time before the state sends out ballots, that’s different from having the candidate’s name removed from the ballot.
In separate dissents, the court’s two Democratic justices were less charitable to the majority.
Justice Anita Earls wrote to express her concern
that contravening state and federal laws to satisfy the shifting desires of a particular political candidate and his political party erodes the rule of law and contributes to a loss of faith in the impartiality of the state judiciary.
She said Kennedy sought removal too late, and the court gave him “special treatment.”
Joined by fellow Democratic Justice Allison Riggs, Earls called out Kennedy’s gamesmanship as part of a strategy to get off the ballot in certain swing states while, for example, fighting to stay on the ballot in states like New York.
“The rules of our elections allow such attempted gaming of the presidential election system when done far enough in advance, but it is not fair to the rest of the state to disregard state election laws to accommodate a late-breaking political strategy,” Earls wrote. “Even a second grader knows it is not fair to change the rules in the middle of the game just because you fear you are not winning.”
Meanwhile, going the other way, Kennedy on Monday lost his effort to stay off the ballot in the battleground state of Michigan.
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Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro,” a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined BLN, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
Blue Light News has been crunching the numbers to see how all 48 of this year’s World Cup participants rank in several other off-field categories, which we’ll share more of over the weekend.
In today’s item, we look at whether GDP per capita has any connection to soccer performance. As you can see, the chart does show some positive correlation — note, for example, wealthy tournament contenders such as France, the Netherlands and Germany all in the upper right corner.
But it’s not a perfect indicator. By this metric, Qatar is the wealthiest country in the tournament — and it lost 6-0 to Canada on Thursday …
CANBERRA — It was disappointment from start to finish around the USA vs. Australia match in the Bush Capital, won comfortably by the American side.
Neither of Canberra’s Socceroos made the starting lineup and the local government failed to provide an outdoor watch site for the match, despite a heavy social media campaign from locals. With federal politicians out of town and back in their districts this week, the campaign lacked star power and fell on deaf ears.
That left thousands to fill inner city pubs and the University of Canberra, which were allowed special trading hours for the match, from 4.30 a.m.
Australia’s politicians — vocal in their support in the lead-up to the match — went silent quickly, after Australia’s own goal 11 minutes minutes into the game.
If the Aussies’ lackluster performance left the crowd subdued, they found energy to boo Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a notably unpopular figure in Australia, which embraced harsh Covid lockdowns and vaccines — when he appeared on the match broadcast.
While Boston and Dallas have been taken over by marauding Scotland and England fans, Washington D.C. this week welcomed a (slightly) more sedate British crowd at Duke’s Grocery, a trendy restaurant and bar in Washington’s West End neighborhood.
Call it the U.K.’s diplomatic mullet: Business in the front; party in the back.
More than a hundred England fans crowded some ten television sets inside the bar on Wednesday, invited by the U.K. embassy to mark their team’s first game of the World Cup against Croatia.
Flags for every participant hung down from the ceiling. An old British telephone box sat in the corner, chock full of cups and salt shakers. There was also a cardboard cutout of Prince William and Kate at their wedding tucked underneath a Pride flag just by the front door.
Despite a critical byelection in Makerfield on Thursday, which is set to propel Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham toward a leadership challenge to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, sport was top of mind at the party.
“That’s the best bit about it,” said Frances Sterling, head of strategic communications and public diplomacy at the British Embassy in Washington. “This afternoon, there’s been no politics.”
The event pulled in Premier League fans from many of England’s largest clubs, encompassing World Bank staffers and embassy employees, English and Americans. They drank, celebrated heartily when England scored and chanted “wanker” in unison when calls went against them on the field.
A sign just off the projection set at the center of the bar read, “Great sport brings people together.”
“You know, you get in a stand, and you watch a football game, and everybody’s a friend,” Sterling said. “Everybody is there for one thing, and you go do the highs and lows of that team, and you feel like you live it, and, for everyone in the U.K. it’s that sense of national pride that this is their game, but it’s played all over the world.”
Duke’s will have hosted three games in tandem with the U.K. embassy throughout round robin play — two for England and just one for Scotland.
Sterling said that’s because the Scottish fans have decamped to Boston, where they’re drinking the city dry.
“The U.K. consulate there is absolutely overrun,” she said. “And so we were like, you know what? Scotland is doing great in Boston, so we’ll do one, but we know they’re all there.”
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