The Morning Dispatch: Noncitizens Get the Vote in NYC Elections
Plus: Sen. Mike Rounds's stand against the 2020 election truthers.
Happy Tuesday! On this day 49 years ago, MLB’s American League adopted the designated hitter rule for the first time.
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
After the New York Times reported last week he had failed to disclose well-timed stock purchases from the early days of the pandemic, Federal Reserve Vice Chair Richard Clarida announced Monday he will resign from the Fed’s Board of Governors on Friday—two weeks before he was slated to step down. Clarida is the third Federal Reserve official to resign in recent months following trading scandals, and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell will likely be asked about the controversy in his confirmation hearing later today.
Ousted Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi was sentenced to an additional four-year prison term on Monday after the military junta that overthrew the country’s government last February found her guilty of violating COVID-19 protocols and possessing “unlicensed walkie-talkies.” Suu Kyi, 76, was hit with another four-year sentence last year on separate charges, but junta chief Min Aung Hlaing cut it down to two years.
The White House said Monday that President Joe Biden spoke with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed yesterday about the country’s civil war, “commending” him on the release of political prisoners but “expressing concern” about the Ethiopian government’s recent airstrikes that have caused civilian casualties.
Rep. Ed Perlmutter of Colorado announced Monday he will not seek reelection in 2022, becoming the 26th House Democrat to do so this cycle.
South Korean military officials said Tuesday morning that North Korea had launched another projectile off its east coast, the country’s second in two weeks.
The Georgia Bulldogs won the College Football Playoff national championship on Monday, defeating the Alabama Crimson Tide 33-18.
Noncitizens Get the Vote in NYC Elections
Aside from working to keep public schools open amid the Omicron surge, the most significant move made thus far by New York City Mayor Eric Adams—who was sworn in January 1—involved him doing nothing at all.
Late last year, New York’s city council voted 33-14 to pass a bill giving the city’s 800,000 noncitizen residents the right to vote in municipal elections. Under New York City law, approved legislation automatically goes into effect after 30 days if the mayor doesn’t veto it—even if he or she neglects to actively sign it. Outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio sat on his hands for several weeks, and Adams declined to take action as the veto period expired over the weekend.
On Sunday, therefore, New York became by far the biggest city in America to extend the franchise—for local races, at least—to legally present noncitizens like green card holders and “Dreamers.” (Or rather, to pledge to extend the franchise; the affected populations won’t be eligible to vote in citywide races until January 2023.)
“I think it is imperative that people who are in a local municipality have the right to decide who is going to govern them,” Adams told CNN on Sunday. He had initially toyed with opposing the bill over the shortness of its residence qualification period—the newly franchised noncitizens need only to have lived in New York City for 30 days—but ultimately decided it was “more important” to “allow the bill to move forward.”
Rounds Stands Up to Trump
When Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota agreed to go on ABC News’ This Week on Sunday, he had to have known host George Stephanopoulos would ask him his thoughts on the first anniversary of the January 6 riots and what led to them. He had an answer prepared.
“As a part of our due diligence, we looked at over 60 different accusations made in multiple states,” Rounds said, noting that none of the irregularities brought to his attention would’ve changed the outcome in any state. “The election was fair, as fair as we have seen. We simply did not win the election, as Republicans, for the presidency.”
Rounds, the former governor of South Dakota who was elected to the Senate in 2014, is neither a Never Trumper nor a MAGA devotee. He broke with the former president on policy grounds a handful of times—on a bipartisan immigration deal in 2018, on Trump’s trade war with China in 2019—but voted in line with Trump’s position 90 percent of the time, generally did his best to avoid weighing in on the various scandals of the past five years, voted against conviction in both impeachment trials, and said on January 5, 2021 that he was going into the next day’s proceedings with an open mind. (He ultimately decided against objecting to the Electoral College vote counts.)
None of that mattered to Trump, who in a statement Monday morning accused Rounds of going “woke” on the “fraudulent” 2020 election. “Is he crazy or just stupid? The numbers are conclusive, and the fraudulent and irregular votes are massive,” Trump continued, lying. “Even though his election will not be coming up for 5 years, I will never endorse this jerk again.”
Worth Your Time
It’s dangerous to allow politicians and officials to decide what constitutes “truth,” J.D. Tuccille writes in an essay for Reason. Although bigotry, extremism, and disinformation are real problems, “free societies recognize that it's a lot more dangerous to let government officials designate what constitutes capital-T Truth than it is to respect people's rights to decide for themselves,” he writes. “Truthful information doesn't require a government seal of approval because government officials are as flawed and biased as anybody else.”
Steven Greenhut offers a piece of advice for politicians in his latest column for the Orange County Register: Keep it simple. While officials preoccupy themselves with initiatives aimed at remedying society’s various ills, most people just want a government that keeps them safe and carries out basic administrative functions. “Upon election to office, politicians come to believe that they have the wherewithal to solve the world's toughest problems. They usually mishandle the nuts-and-bolts chores they're charged with addressing, yet dream of altering the Earth's climate and eliminating enduring human conditions such as inequality and poverty,” Greenhut writes. “Most pols view themselves as the second coming of John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, or even Ronald Reagan, when most of us just want public servants who make sure the potholes are filled, the streets are marginally safe, the government budget balances, the trash gets picked up on time, and homeless people aren’t defecating in our local park.”
Presented Without Comment
Toeing the Company Line
On Monday’s episode of Advisory Opinions, David and Sarah go deep on Friday’s vaccine mandate oral arguments at the Supreme Court. How did Scott (Husband of the Pod) do? How do they see each case shaking out? And which basketball analogy best describes the likeliest outcome?
On the website today: Paul Miller offers a defense of (occasional) “nutpicking”—viewing a handful of extremists as representative of the other “side”—and Michael Petrilli writes on expected new Biden administration guidance on school discipline.
Reporting by Declan Garvey (@declanpgarvey), Andrew Egger (@EggerDC), Charlotte Lawson (@lawsonreports), Audrey Fahlberg (@AudreyFahlberg), Ryan Brown (@RyanP_Brown), Harvest Prude (@HarvestPrude), and Steve Hayes (@stephenfhayes).