Politics Central

Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a federal appellate judge and Notre Dame law professor, is a proven conservative with a compelling personal story who has long been atop President Donald Trump's Supreme Court short list.
Trump announced he is nominating Barrett to be the new high court justice during a ceremony at the White House Rose Garden. The Senate Judiciary Committee will begin confirmation hearings on Barrett's nomination on October 12.
Barrett, the mother of seven children and a former law clerk to the late right-wing beacon Justice Antonin Scalia, Barrett, now 48, was a finalist for the Supreme Court spot that went to Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.
She met with Trump to discuss the nomination on Monday, sources close to the process told CNN.
Advocates on the far right have backed her possible nomination because of her writings on faith and the law. Religious conservatives were especially energized for Barrett when, during the 2017 confirmation hearing for her current judgeship, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California suggested to her that the "dogma lives loudly within you." Barrett supporters believed the nominee was being disparaged for her Catholicism.
For all the reasons that Trump sees Barrett as a potential successor to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Democratic senators and liberal advocates have long been poised to oppose her, warning particularly that she could roll back abortion rights and invalidate the Affordable Care Act.
Critics beyond Feinstein, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, have suggested Barrett's religious views would influence her rulings.
Barrett testified that her faith would not shape her rulings at the Senate hearings for appointment by Trump to the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin.
2nd Amendment, immigration and abortion
Since joining the appellate bench, Barrett has been a cautious jurist, plainly aware that she remains under a national microscope for any Supreme Court confirmation battle. Still, she has demonstrated her conservative bona fides on Second Amendment gun rights, immigration and abortion.
Last year, she dissented alone when a 7th Circuit panel majority rejected a Second Amendment challenge from a man found guilty of felony mail fraud and prohibited from possessing a firearm under federal and Wisconsin law.
"History is consistent with common sense: it demonstrates that legislatures have the power to prohibit dangerous people from possessing guns," she wrote in Kanter v. Barr, applying an originalist approach that looked to the 18th-century intentions. "But that power extends only to people who are dangerous. Founding legislatures did not strip felons of the right to bear arms simply because of their status as felons."
Barrett concluded, "Holding that the ban is constitutional ... does not put the government through its paces, but instead treats the Second Amendment as a second-class right."
More recently in June, she dissented as a 7th Circuit panel left intact a US district court decision temporarily blocking a Trump policy that disadvantaged green card applicants who apply for any public assistance. In dispute were federal immigration regulations regarding when an applicant would be deemed a "public charge" and ineligible for permanent status in the US.
In her dissent, Barrett wrote that the Trump administration's interpretation of the relevant "public charge" law was not "unreasonable." The 7th Circuit majority in Cook County v. Wolf countered that her construction failed to take account of the immigrants who would "bear the brunt of the" new rule.
In 2018, when the full 7th Circuit declined to reconsider a dispute over an Indiana abortion regulation requiring that the post-abortion fetal remains be cremated or buried, Barrett dissented with fellow conservatives. They began by focusing on a more contentious provision that had been...

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Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a federal appellate judge and Notre Dame law professor, is a proven conservative with a compelling personal story who has long been atop President Donald Trump's Supreme Court short list.
Trump announced he is nominating Barrett to be the new high court justice during a ceremony at the White House Rose Garden. The Senate Judiciary Committee will begin confirmation hearings on Barrett's nomination on October 12.
Barrett, the mother of seven children and a former law clerk to the late right-wing beacon Justice Antonin Scalia, Barrett, now 48, was a finalist for the Supreme Court spot that went to Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.
She met with Trump to discuss the nomination on Monday, sources close to the process told CNN.
Advocates on the far right have backed her possible nomination because of her writings on faith and the law. Religious conservatives were especially energized for Barrett when, during the 2017 confirmation hearing for her current judgeship, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California suggested to her that the "dogma lives loudly within you." Barrett supporters believed the nominee was being disparaged for her Catholicism.
For all the reasons that Trump sees Barrett as a potential successor to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Democratic senators and liberal advocates have long been poised to oppose her, warning particularly that she could roll back abortion rights and invalidate the Affordable Care Act.
Critics beyond Feinstein, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, have suggested Barrett's religious views would influence her rulings.
Barrett testified that her faith would not shape her rulings at the Senate hearings for appointment by Trump to the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin.
2nd Amendment, immigration and abortion
Since joining the appellate bench, Barrett has been a cautious jurist, plainly aware that she remains under a national microscope for any Supreme Court confirmation battle. Still, she has demonstrated her conservative bona fides on Second Amendment gun rights, immigration and abortion.
Last year, she dissented alone when a 7th Circuit panel majority rejected a Second Amendment challenge from a man found guilty of felony mail fraud and prohibited from possessing a firearm under federal and Wisconsin law.
"History is consistent with common sense: it demonstrates that legislatures have the power to prohibit dangerous people from possessing guns," she wrote in Kanter v. Barr, applying an originalist approach that looked to the 18th-century intentions. "But that power extends only to people who are dangerous. Founding legislatures did not strip felons of the right to bear arms simply because of their status as felons."
Barrett concluded, "Holding that the ban is constitutional ... does not put the government through its paces, but instead treats the Second Amendment as a second-class right."
More recently in June, she dissented as a 7th Circuit panel left intact a US district court decision temporarily blocking a Trump policy that disadvantaged green card applicants who apply for any public assistance. In dispute were federal immigration regulations regarding when an applicant would be deemed a "public charge" and ineligible for permanent status in the US.
In her dissent, Barrett wrote that the Trump administration's interpretation of the relevant "public charge" law was not "unreasonable." The 7th Circuit majority in Cook County v. Wolf countered that her construction failed to take account of the immigrants who would "bear the brunt of the" new rule.
In 2018, when the full 7th Circuit declined to reconsider a dispute over an Indiana abortion regulation requiring that the post-abortion fetal remains be cremated or buried, Barrett dissented with fellow conservatives. They began by focusing on a more contentious provision that had been...

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Has Shane Jones given up on Northland?
The NZ First MP and minister is one of the key players in the party's election hopes. He is contesting the Northland electorate, a seat the party may need to win if they can't reach the 5 per cent vote threshold to make it back into Parliament. 
However, speaking to Newshub Nation, Jones admitted that he does not have the "mana" of his leader Winston Peters to secure the victory 
"I do believe I can be a bit of a magnet up north, but in order to achieve the perpetuation of our political movement in Parliament, we need to gather votes from everywhere."
The answer raised questions about Jones' commitment to the seat - but Peters told The Weekend Collective that that is not the case. 
"What he said was he is not the sole magnitude to harvest votes for New Zealand First." 
However, former minister Peter Dunne told The Weekend Collective that it is a fair admission from Jones that he can't win the seat. 
"I think Jones has admitted the thing that people have begun to suspect anyway that's he not going to win Northland. It requires hardwork and he is a well-known stranger to that."
Dunne says it is difficult to imagine NZ First getting to 5 per cent in the current environment. 
Peters was also grilled about his interview with Jack Tame - and whether or not he intentionally called the Q&A host 'James'. 
The Deputy PM confirmed that he intentionally misnamed him, and that he had other names in mind!
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Labour is promising voters it will double workers' sick leave entitlements from five to 10 days a year.
If re-elected, it is committing to making the change within its first 100 days and would work with businesses and unions on timeframes.
Labour's workplace relations spokesperson Andrew Little unveiled the party's policy this morning which also promises to increase the minimum wage beyond the scheduled increase to $20 next year, raise the age for workers to be allowed to perform hazardous work from 15 to 16, improve transparency for pay across genders and ethnicity.
Little told The Weekend Collective that the Covid-19 lockdown proved that this was necessary, as many people had already exhausted their sick leave. 
He acknowledges that half of the workforce is entitled to more than five days already. 
"In countries we compare ourselves to - Australia, the UK, and others - they have better sick leave provisions than we have to, so we thought it was time to set a new minimum standard."
Covid-19 has also changed people's attitudes towards sick leave, Little says, with people becoming more conscious of the fact that they need to stay home when they are unwell. 
Little rejects that this is another sign of Labour not being supportive of small businesses, saying that this change "is not a huge burden on business". 
"The ability for the New Zealand economy to recover quite quickly has surpassed all expectations."

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Bob Woodward, facing widespread criticism for only now revealing President Donald Trump's early concerns about the severity of the coronavirus, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he needed time to be sure that Trump's private comments from February were accurate.
In Woodward’s upcoming book on Trump, “Rage,” the president is quoted saying the virus was highly contagious and “deadly stuff” at a time he was publicly dismissing it as no worse than the flu. Woodward, the celebrated Washington Post journalist and best-selling author, spoke with Trump more than a dozen times for his book.
“He tells me this, and I'm thinking, ‘Wow, that’s interesting, but is it true?' Trump says things that don't check out, right?” Woodward told the AP during a telephone interview. Using a famous phrase from the Watergate era, when Woodward's reporting for the Post helped lead to President Richard Nixon's resignation, Woodward said his mission was to determine, “What did he know and when did he know it?”
On Twitter and elsewhere online, commentators accused Woodward of valuing book sales over public health. “Nearly 200,000 Americans have died because neither Donald Trump nor Bob Woodward wanted to risk anything substantial to keep the country informed,” wrote Esquire's Charles P. Pierce.
The issue of daily journalists presenting newsworthy information in books isn’t new. The competition for attention is intense, and headlines help boost sales and guest shots for interviews. Reporter Michael S. Schmidt of The New York Times recently attracted attention for his book, “Donald Trump v. The United States,” by reporting new details on an unannounced visit by Trump to Walter Reed military hospital in November 2019. Schmidt reported that Vice President Mike Pence was put on alert that he might have to briefly assume the powers of the presidency if the president had to undergo a procedure that required anesthesia.
Pence later said he didn’t recall being put on standby for the Reed visit, which the White House has said was part of the president’s routine annual physical. But Schmidt’s book renewed speculation about Trump’s health.
Political figures with book deals also have been chastised for holding back timely material. Former national security adviser John Bolton, whose scathing memoir “The Room Where It Happened” came out in June, declined discussing Trump's actions towards Ukraine while the impeachment hearings were being held earlier this year.
Woodward's book, which comes out next week, draws from 18 conversations with Trump between December and July. During his AP interview, Woodward said Trump called him “out of the blue” in early February to “unburden himself" about the virus, which then had few cases in the U.S. But Woodward said that only in May was he satisfied that Trump's comments were based on reliable information and that by then the virus had spread nationwide.
"If I had done the story at that time about what he knew in February, that's not telling us anything we didn't know," Woodward said. At that point, he said, the issue was no longer one of public health but of politics. His priority became getting the story out before the election in November.
“That was the demarcation line for me,” he said. “Had I decided that my book was coming out on Christmas, the end of this year, that would have been unthinkable.”
Asked why he didn't share Trump's February remarks for a fellow Post reporter to pursue, Woodward said he had developed “some pretty important sources” on his own.
“Could I have brought others in? Could they have done things I couldn't do?" he asked. “I was on the trail, and I was (still) on the trail when it (the virus) exploded.”

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A crowd of a few thousand packed in Auckland's Aotea Square yesterday afternoon, at the "National Rally for Freedom", organised by Advance Party co-leaders, Jami Lee Ross and Billy Te Kahika.
There was little social distancing and few people in the crowd wore masks.
Criminal lawyer Steve Cullen told The Weekend Collective the police should've taken a tougher position on the protestors.
"For the police to permit thousands of people to gather, which is against the laws of not allowing more than 10 people at gatherings, is a failure of their responsibilities."
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On Thursday night The Atlantic published a bombshell story that alleged -- citing four anonymous sources -- that President Donald Trump had repeatedly mocked US soldiers killed in battle and skipped a visit to a veterans' cemetery in France out of concern that rainy conditions would mess up his carefully coiffed hair.
The report immediately became a massive story, with Democrats -- including Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden -- rushing to condemn Trump for his alleged behaviour and the White House rallying an aggressive pushback against the article, including the President himself.
"To think that I would make statements negative to our military when nobody has done what I've done, with the budgets and the military budget," Trump said Thursday night after returning from a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. "We're getting pay raises for the military. It is a disgraceful situation, by a magazine that is a terrible magazine, I don't read it."
On Friday morning, Trump took his defense to Twitter. "The Atlantic Magazine is dying, like most magazines, so they make up a fake story in order to gain some relevance," he wrote. "Story already refuted, but this is what we are up against. Just like the Fake Dossier. You fight and and fight, and then people realize it was a total fraud!"
National security adviser Robert O'Brien was called in to serve as a character witness for Trump, telling reporters, "You're not going to find anybody who's more sympathetic to their situation than the President." Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News he never heard the President use the language described in the article.
Jeffrey Goldberg, who authored The Atlantic piece, stood by his reporting in an appearance on CNN's "New Day" Friday morning.
"I stand by my reporting," he said. "I have multiple sources telling me this is what happened, and so I stand by it."
So, we're left with this dilemma: Goldberg insists the story is true. Trump insists the story is false. Both of those views can't be right.
On Saturday, a former senior administration official confirmed to CNN that Trump referred to fallen US service members at the Aisne-Marne cemetery in crude and derogatory terms during the November 2018 trip to France to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. Fox News, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Associated Press have also corroborated parts of The Atlantic's reporting.
Trump's insistence that he would never say anything disparaging about a military veteran or the military more generally is belied by, well, facts.
In 2015, shortly after he had officially entered the 2016 Republican presidential race, Trump said this of the late Arizona Sen. John McCain: "He's not a war hero. He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured." McCain was shot down and kept captive by the North Vietnamese for more than five years. The wounds he suffered as a result of the torture he endured during his captivity left him unable to raise his arms over his head -- among other maladies -- for the rest of his life.
In the wake of Gold Star father Khizr Khan's speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2016 -- in which Khan suggested Trump had never sacrificed anything in life -- the billionaire businessman suggested that Hillary Clinton's speechwriters had actually written the speech and that Khan's wife, who stood silently by her husband, was not allowed to speak. As for Khan's claim that Trump had never sacrificed, the Republican nominee responded this way: "I think I've made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard. I've created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures."
Following the death of US Army Sgt. La David Johnson in Niger in 2017, the slain soldier's wife (and a Florida Democratic congresswoman) said that Trump had told her on a phone call that her husband "knew what he had signed up...

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The election campaign is officially underway - and the question remains how many of the current parties will make it back to Parliament. 
Both NZ First and the Greens are hovering close to falling out of Parliament. The Greens are polling around 5%, while NZ First is down on 2%, with both parties campaigning hard for electoral seats to ensure they make it back.
However, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has made headlines during the first weekend of campaigning for all the wrong reasons.
In a fiery clash with Q+A broadcaster Jack Tame this morning, he accused TVNZ of lying and ambushing him about topics which he had not prepared for.
"I regret coming here this morning, to stop off my campaign, to come along to see some junior who thinks he's going to play Billy the Kid," he told Tame.
Meanwhile, the Greens have dominated headlines over the week after co-leader James Shaw advocated for a Green School to receive $11.7 million as part of shovel-ready funding. 
Former MP and United Future leader Peter Dunne joined The Weekend Collective to discuss a rough week for both parties and what it means for the election.
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An independent crash investigator says that a new Police policy is "clear as mud".
Police put out a statement on Thursday saying that there would be a year-round zero-tolerance approach to speeding.
Normally this is only applied to holiday periods, where the usual 5-10km/h leeway is reduced to 4km/h. Now, the buffer has been removed, and anyone caught speeding will be pulled over and fined any time of year, regardless of how much over they are.
However, former police officer and crash investigator Hamish Piercy told The Weekend Collective that the leeway has always been there as some speedometers can often by out by 5 km/h - mean people could think they are driving at 98 when they are actually at 103. 
"There are problems there with being strictly 101, you get a ticket. That's going to cause problems." 
He says things like tyre pressure and the size of the rims can also alter the speed of your car, while machines Police use to measure speed can also be faulty.
Piercy says that if they are going to enforce speeding, they also need to increase enforcement of slow drivers or lane hoggers. 
"We've got to see a balanced level of enforcement."
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With chants of "One person, one vote!" and "No justice, no peace!" a crowd of about 1,000 demonstrators gathered outside a Wisconsin courthouse Saturday to denounce police violence and share messages of change, a week after an officer shot Jacob Blake in the back and left the 29-year-old Black man paralyzed.
The diverse group of protesters also chanted "Seven bullets, seven days!" — a reference to the number of times Blake was shot last Sunday — as they marched toward the courthouse in Kenosha. There, Blake's father, Jacob Blake Sr., gave an impassioned call for changing a system he described as fostering police brutality and racial inequities.
"There were seven bullets put in my son's back. ... Hell yeah, I'm mad," said Blake Sr. He said he wants to ask the police "what gave them the right to attempted murder on my child? What gave them the right to think that my son was an animal? What gave them the right to take something that was not theirs? I'm tired of this."
Kenosha Police Officer Rusten Sheskey and two other officers were responding to a domestic dispute call last Sunday when Sheskey shot Blake in the back. Blake Sr. told reporters on Saturday that his son is heavily sedated, but he has regained consciousness.
"He's in a lot of pain," he said. "I just wish I could pick my baby up and make it all right." He called for Sheskey to be charged and for the other two officers at the scene to be fired.
Several of Saturday's speakers encouraged the crowd to vote for change in November, and to push for changing legislation in Wisconsin that would lead to police reform.
"Justice is a bare minimum," Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes said. "Justice should be guaranteed to everybody in this country."
Blake Sr. asked those at the rally to raise their fists with him. "We are not going to stop going in the right direction. We're going to the top ... we're gonna make legislation happen because that's the only thing that they recognize," he said.
Blake Sr. also referred to the May 25 death of George Floyd, a handcuffed Black man who died after a Minneapolis officer pressed his knee into Floyd's neck. Said Blake Sr., "We all have a knee on the back of our necks, every day."
One of Blake's sisters, Letetra Widman, said she felt recharged "to stand up not just for Jacob, but for all the people who have not gotten justice."
Captured on cellphone video, the shooting sparked new protests against racial injustice and police brutality months after Floyd's death touched off a wider reckoning on race.
Protesters have marched in Kenosha every night since Blake's shooting, with some protests devolving into unrest with damage to buildings and vehicles. On Tuesday, two people were killed by an armed civilian. The commander of the National Guard said Friday that more than 1,000 Guard members had been deployed to help keep the peace, with more on the way.
Most people dispersed from the protest on Saturday before a 7 p.m. curfew. More than an hour after curfew, law enforcement officers, including some wearing U.S. Marshals Service identification, surrounded about a dozen people gathered outside of the Kenosha County Courthouse and made several arrests.
President Donald Trump will visit Kenosha on Tuesday to meet with law enforcement and survey damage from recent demonstrations that turned violent, White House spokesman Judd Deere told reporters traveling with the president Saturday night. Trump, who toured hurricane-ravaged areas of Louisiana and Texas earlier Saturday, had told reporters that he "probably" would visit the city.
Asked to weigh in on Tuesday's shootings in which 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse was charged, Trump demurred and said "it's under investigation" and that "we are looking at it very, very carefully."
Aniyah Ervin, a 16-year-old from Kenosha who is Black, said Saturday that the week has been surreal. Although she protested against racial injustice over the summer,...

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