Also on today’s menu:
Sununu Declines Senate Bid
Judge Lashes Out At Trump
The Republican proposal for redrawing the U.S. Congressional districts in New Hampshire has come under heavy fire, with advocacy groups and members of the public calling it a major gerrymandering effort to ensure a Republican representative in Congress.
During a public hearing on Tuesday, former Rep. Dan McGuire of Epsom praised the plan, which moves 75 communities and a quarter of the state’s population into different congressional districts to create a clear GOP majority in the First District and a majority of Democrats in the Second District, saying it would give New Hampshire a greater say in Washington, D.C. He said that, by guaranteeing the election of a member of each party in New Hampshire, the state would always have one member in the majority, making it easier to build seniority in the nation’s capital.
Currently, the state is served by two Democrats in Washington, and the redrawn map would move Seacoast communities that tend to vote Democrat into District 2, while southern-tier communities that tend to vote Republican are moved into District 1.
The Democrats’ proposal would satisfy the shifts in the population by moving a single community — Hampstead — from the 1st Congressional District into the 2nd Congressional District. It also would result in more towns having their own representatives to meet a state Constitutional requirement for towns with sufficient population to merit their own representatives, rather than being part of multi-town districts.
Sununu Declines Senate Bid
Another hope for the Republicans was to have Gov. Chris Sununu, 47, run for U.S. Senate to secure the seat for the GOP by defeating Democrat Maggie Hassan, another former New Hampshire governor. Sununu dashed that hope by declaring that he loves his current job and will seek re-election in 2022. “I really don’t believe I would be as effective” in Washington, he said. “I think I would be a lion in a cage” down there.
Sununu had not told Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) or National Republican Senatorial Committee chair Rick Scott (R-FL) ahead of time, he said. Both had been urging him to seek the seat in Washington, D.C., viewing it as an easy victory for their party. However, with Democrats doing well in New Hampshire in last week’s election, Sununu may have decided that this was a poor time to tie himself to the national party.
The corner office in Concord is “where you can be the most impactful,” he said, citing his efforts at pushing back on a lot of President Joe Biden’s executive orders, including the current OSHA vaccine mandate, “that hit home right in the 603.”
Judge Lashes Out At Trump
U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected former president Donald Trump’s lawsuit claiming executive privilege to block the National Archives and Records Administration from answering a subpoena from the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol for telephone records, visitor logs, and other documents.
Judge Chutkan went further, saying that Congress might want to consider amending criminal laws “to deter and punish violent conduct targeted at the institutions of democracy, enacting measures for future executive enforcement of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment against any Member of Congress or Officer of the United States who engaged in ‘insurrection or rebellion,’ or gave ‘aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.’”
A senior legal adviser to Trump responded that the former president is simply trying to “defend Executive Privilege for Presidents past, present & future,” and that “Trump remains committed to defending the Constitution & the Office of the Presidency, & will be seeing this process through.”
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