When it comes to regional literature, the Pacific Northwest is often overlooked. But Northwest authors have produced a diverse array of novels that capture what makes the area different.

Haboo

Vi Hilbert, 2020

The famed Skagit Indian storyteller shared some of her favorite stories from the Coast Salish tribes in this collection.

The Bridge of the Gods

Frederick Homer Balch, 1890

Although its romantic style is now dated, this novel was long considered the greatest from the Northwest in the 19th century.

The Land of Plenty

Robert Cantwell, 1934

A former worker at a Hoquiam veneer plant, Cantwell elevates this proletarian novel above its peers with an astonishing opening section.

Honey in the Horn

H.L. Davis, 1935

The winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, this novel was called “the finest debut American novel ever written” by H.L. Mencken.

No-No Boy

John Okada, 1957

Now a staple of college literature courses, Okada’s novel focuses on a former internee who refused to fight for the U.S. in World War II.

The Dharma Bums

Jack Kerouac, 1958

A classic novel of the Beat generation about two men searching for meaning in Zen Buddhism and the forests of the North Cascades.

Trask

Don Berry, 1960

A painstakingly researched account of a restless mountain man who sets out on a journey in Oregon with two Clatsop Indians.

Sometimes a Great Notion

Ken Kesey, 1964

A sprawling novel about a family of gyppo loggers that’s been called the “Moby Dick” of Northwest literature.

Trout Fishing in America

Richard Brautigan, 1967

This surrealistic novella from the Tacoma-born poet became a cult classic that inspired everyone from Tom Robbins to Haruki Murakami.

Another Roadside Attraction

Tom Robbins, 1971

A picaresque novel about hippies running a roadside zoo in the Skagit Valley who come into possession of the mummified body of Jesus Christ.

The Lathe of Heaven

Ursula K. Le Guin, 1971

A Portland man discovers his dreams can alter the nature of reality, a power his manipulative psychiatrist hopes to harness.

Cathedral

Raymond Carver, 1983

The watershed collection of short stories from the Port Angeles author who was widely considered the master of the form.

NBC News producer Abby Godard shared what she keeps inside her “Go-Bag,” a bag (or actually, several bags) that she keeps nearby at all times in case news breaks and she has to travel unexpectedly.

THE BAG / (+ bags inside the bag)

• A backpack and a shoulder bag. These should be large, spacious bags that you can cram a lot of things into in a pinch and still zipper shut — something like a diaper bag or “mom purse.”
• Cable organizer bag. This is a small zippered pouch, often with a hard case, for storing all the extra cords, batteries and connectors you might need for your electronic equipment. I recommend having two.
• Fannypack. These can be helpful for keeping small necessities nearby when you’re on the scene.

TECH

• IFB splitter: This is a connector that allows you to get a broadcast microphone and earpiece to work with your phone.
• 2 Mifis (AT&T, Verizon): These are small cellular hotspots that you can use to upload stories, photos and videos while keeping your regular cell phone charged and available for use. I carry two that are on different networks in case one has a stronger signal in a particular area.
• Various charging cables and blocs: This is just a spare battery for your equipment that you can use when you aren’t near an outlet.
• Portable phone charging block
• USB and USB-C cables, accompanying blocs
• Computer charger (your correspondent may have a different computer than you, so make sure they’re covered)
• Adaptors (car and regular outlet): You can get a small power inverter that will turn the car outlet into a standard electrical outlet.
• Power strip (for distance trips in the field)
• Extension cord (for distance trips in the field)

COSMETIC

• Back-up makeup that matches the correspondent’s skin tone
• Hair spray
• Dry shampoo
• Lint roller
• Deodorant
• Hair ties
• Brush/comb (make sure to have one dedicated to each correspondent and do not mix)
• Bobby pins
• Double-sided fashion tape
• Makeup setting spray (super important when it’s over 80 degrees and your correspondent is sweating under the lights or a balmy summer day)

OFFICE SUPPLIES

• Reporter’s notebook
• Dry erase marker / portable white board (to write down the anchors’ names for the corresponding local TV station and the hit time for the correspondent — for example, “WRC / Jim and Shawn / 1600”)
• Pens, sharpies
• Safety pins
• Paper clips
• Mini stapler
• Tape — masking and scotch

MISCELLANEOUS

• White balancing cards
• Mints/gum
• Hand sanitizer
• Hand lotion
• Mask(s)
• Snacks/water (find out what your crew likes)
• First aid kit
• Band-Aids, gaus, disinfecting wipes
• Advil, Ibuprofen, allergy meds, etc.
• Emergen-C/Liquid I.V.
• Sunscreen, bug spray (seasonal)

PERSONAL

• Keep a blazer in work closet in case of emergency (for example, needing to go to Capitol Hill or the White House)
• Keep sneakers in work closet in case of emergency
• Change of clothes
• Sweater or sweatshirt
• Hat, gloves: Seasonal, but I always keep an extra beanie and baseball cap in my desk for rainy/windy liveshots. Keep in mind you may suddenly be in a very different climate if you are sent across the country for news.
• Undergarments
• Toothbrush, toothpaste

“I wanted to be a journalist because I like to ask questions. And I like the idea that someone might feel responsible for answering them.” — Gwen Ifill

Monday, Jan. 30: Covering Politics

What are the different ways of covering politics? How does the audience of a news organization affect its approach to politics?

Reading: “13 Ways of Looking at a White House”

Assignment: Choose a publication, outlet, podcast, TV program, newsletter, or other form of journalism that covers politics. (Get instructor approval first.) Research its audience, where its reporters worked previously, and major stories it has covered. Write an analysis of its coverage and three pitches you would bring to an interview with an editor there.

Monday, Feb. 5: Polls

How do you read a poll? What are some common pitfalls in polling stories How do you write a standard polling brief? How do you dig deeper to find a more meaningful story? What are the limitations of writing about polls?

Reading: “Public Opinion Polling Basics,” Scott Keeter; “How to read polls like an expert — or, at least, not like a newbie,” Philip Bump; “Here’s How to Properly Read an Election Poll,” Emma Grey Ellis; “Journalist Cheat Sheet to Understanding Polls,” American Association for Public Opinion Research; “CNN’s transparency questionnaire for polling standards.”

Slideshow: How to Read a Poll

Assignment: Choose a recent publicly available poll and read it carefully. (Get instructor approval first.) Interview the pollster or, if not possible, another pollster about what it shows. Write a story that uses the poll as a launching point but is not limited to just the poll itself.

Monday, Feb. 12: CPAC

What is the Conservative Political Action Conference? How do you write about a grassroots event? How do you find an angle at a massive event? What are some pitfalls of covering an event?

Readings: “Despite Republicans cooling on him, CPAC is still the Trump show,” Elena Moore; “The Sad, Desolate Scenes of CPAC 2023,” Laura Jedeed; “CPAC 2023 Is Low Energy,” Tom McKay; “At right-wing CPAC forum, Trump shows why he’ll be tough to topple,” James Oliphant; “Why some big-name Republicans are skipping CPAC, even as Trump, 2024 hopefuls gather,” Tal Axelrod and Libby Cathey.

Assignment: Interview attendees at CPAC and find a story about a 2024 race, campaign issue or other hot topic. Conduct outside reporting to broaden the perspective of the story.

Monday, Feb. 19

How do you read a campaign finance report? What can you learn from campaign contributions and expenditures? How can you compare candidates? What are the limitations of campaign finance reports?

Guest speaker: Matt Holt

Assignment: Choose a recent campaign finance report and go over it thoroughly. Identify and interview contributors about their reason for donating. Write a story that uses the campaign finance report as a major source but gives a broader perspective on the race or candidate.

Monday, Feb. 26

How do you cover a campaign event? What are some ways to avoid simply repeating the campaign’s intended coverage? What are the downsides of covering campaign events?

Assignment: If possible, attend a campaign event and write a story based on it. If that is not possible, find a livestream of a campaign event and cover that. As always, use the event as the focal point but not the only source for the story.

Monday, March 5

How are courts playing a larger role in campaigns and elections? How do you read and understand a court opinion in order to report on it? What are some mistakes to watch for when reporting on court decisions?

Assignment: Find a recent notable court decision (with instructor approval). Read it carefully and look at other filings, friend of the court briefings and related material. Write a story that uses the court decision as a jumping-off point for a broader political analysis.

Monday, March 17

How do you cover a speech? What are some good forms of preparation for a speech story? How do you quickly find the gist of the speech? What are some ways to ensure that a speech story doesn’t repeat misinformation?

In-Class Exercise: Biden speech

Assignment: Find a speech that is planned by the president or another major political figure. (With instructor approval.) Watch the speech, get a transcript and do any additional reporting needed to write a story about what was said and why it matters.

This syllabus is a work in progress. Check back later.

Winner, 2023 Dateline Award, Washington Society of Professional Journalists

Story by Ryan Teague Beckwith and Bill Allison
Graphics by Paul Murray, Allison McCartney and Mira Rojanasakul
Bloomberg News, Aug. 7, 2022

Donald Trump’s effort to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden failed, but his loyalists have never stopped trying to turn the US election system into one that would return him to the White House in 2024 — fairly or otherwise.

In the last two years, Republicans have sought to remove state officials who wouldn’t manufacture votes and falsely declare him the winner. They changed the way elections are run in response to his conspiracy theories. Most importantly, they’ve nominated people who insist Trump won as candidates for US Congress and governor, and for offices that certify the outcome.

Has it worked?

To answer that question, a team of Bloomberg journalists set out to find which states are most vulnerable to political election interference — and what it means for elections this fall and in 2024, when the White House will once again be at stake. We dug into laws in all 50 states and scrutinized the thousands of election-related bills proposed nationwide since 2020. We consulted election-security experts, voting rights advocates, election lawyers, academics and current and former elections administrators as well as decades of political research to zero in on how elections work.

Read the full story here.

The entire project is worth exploring, since it includes in-depth research on voting access and election security, recent legislation and the words and actions of election deniers in all 50 states.

But since it’s behind the paywall, here are some highlights.

Voting Access

Problem: Each state has dramatically different voting laws, making comparisons difficult.

Solution: After studying decades of research, we settled on seven policies that make it easier to vote. We summarized the results overall in a chart, on a map and on individual pages for each state.

Election Security

The Problem: Many of the measures typically proposed to improve election security have no effect.

The Solution: Talking with election security experts, we identified eight benchmarks that ensure election results are timely and accurate.

Election Denial

The problem: There is a wide range of election denial among elected officials from all 50 states.

The solution: We focused on incumbents and candidates for governor, secretary of state, attorney general and Congress, providing “baseball card” snapshots of what they said and did.

This also became the focus of the main bar, since our research found that the biggest risks to elections came from a handful of candidates in races for key positions in battleground states.

Other Data

The project also included looking at every state bill proposed and passed since the 2020 election that would affect elections, providing a plain English summary and an overview of how the laws have changed.

All graphics © Bloomberg News, 2022.

By Ryan Teague Beckwith
Businessweek, March 20, 2021

Susan Wise Bauer’s editor reached out to her last year about updating her 2008 book The Art of the Public Grovel, about how politicians apologize when accused of sexual misdeeds. Given the #MeToo movement and claims against Donald Trump, her editor said, a new edition might sell well.

This time, it was Bauer’s turn to say sorry. “I just don’t know what I would write,” Bauer, a historian, recalls saying. “No one really apologizes anymore.”

The modern American political apology, which dates back to President Grover Cleveland seeking forgiveness in 1884 for fathering a child out of wedlock, is in a precarious state as a result of polarization, faster-than-ever news cycles, and a new shamelessness among the political class.

Earlier this month, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo — facing allegations from several women of sexual harassment — gave only a semi-apology for making some female aides “uncomfortable.” He denied he did anything wrong and argued the public should “wait for the facts.” He’s continued to maintain his innocence, ignoring growing calls from fellow Democrats to resign.

Cuomo is just the latest in a recent string of male political figures, from state lawmakers to members of Congress to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who have hotly denied allegations of sexual harassment, attacked their accusers, or claimed to be the victims of smear campaigns. Even when forced to retire or resign, these men have often declined to make a public apology or any kind of comments on their decision to end their political careers.

It’s part of a broader shamelessness in political life. In February, Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia privately apologized to colleagues in her party for her social media posts claiming that school shootings were faked and supporting the QAnon conspiracy theory. In public, she remained defiant. The same month, Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said a family trip to Cancun, Mexico, during a massive power outage in his home state was “obviously a mistake,” but blamed the trip on his young daughters and went on to joke about it at a conservative conference.

In the past, voters demanded that politicians who had stumbled own up to it. They often did so in tearful televised speeches, flanked by their wives and pastors. When then-New York Governor Eliot Spitzer apologized for hiring escorts in 2008, his wife Silda stood beside him stoically, a moment that inspired the television series The Good Wife.

At times, apologizing has saved careers. In one infamous example from the 1970s, Democratic Congressman Wilbur Mills salvaged a reelection attempt with a public apology to voters and his wife after he was caught drunk driving with a former stripper named Fanne Foxe. (That show of contrition went only so far: Mills decided not to run again after getting up on stage with Foxe at a burlesque show.)

The classic American political apology, in a case of sexual misconduct, draws from Christian confessions of sin. The politicians appear before reporters, often alongside their spouse and a spiritual advisor. They acknowledge that they’ve done wrong, maybe quote some Scripture, and ask for forgiveness.

In Bauer’s interpretation, by placing the leader on the same level as their audience — since Christian theology holds that everyone is born a sinner — the ritual is meant to reassure voters who might worry that the politician will take similar advantage of them.

Former President Bill Clinton and former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford both followed the formula when begging for forgiveness in public comments after being caught cheating on their wives. “Indeed, I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate,” Clinton said in his 1998 speech. “In fact, it was wrong.” Sanford, in a 2009 address acknowledging that he was not actually hiking on the Appalachian Trail but was instead visiting his mistress, apologized at length to his wife and four sons, his staff, his friends, his in-laws, voters, and “people of faith across South Carolina.”

Then came Donald Trump. At a 2015 Christian conservative forum, he was thrown a softball question about whether he had ever asked God for forgiveness, a standard part of Christian theology. “I am not sure I have,” he said, adding that he participates in Holy Communion. “When I drink my little wine — which is about the only wine I drink — and I have my little cracker, I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness.”

That disinclination to seek forgiveness showed closer to the 2016 election. When a tape surfaced of Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women on Access Hollywood, he dismissed it as “locker-room talk” and pivoted to attacking Hillary Clinton over her husband’s transgressions. The tape was damaging, as was Trump’s response to it, but the scandal was soon eclipsed by Clinton’s own troubles and Trump won.

Many lawmakers took a lesson from Trump’s survival, says historian Julian Zelizer, a professor at Princeton University.

“The media cycle is now so fast, there’s a realistic assumption that if you just wait it out, eventually the media will move on to something else,” he says. “What feels like a total frenzy in the moment ends, and all of a sudden it’s yesterday’s news.”

Zelizer says many Democrats have also come to regret moving so quickly in 2017 to force out Minnesota Senator Al Franken, who resigned within weeks of accusations of having groped and kissed a fellow performer on a USO tour years earlier, after other women said he had also behaved inappropriately during photo ops.

Franken didn’t make a traditional public apology, either. When the first allegation came out, he released a short statement giving his “sincerest apologies” while adding that he did not remember the events the same way — and that, in any case, he was a comedian who was just trying to be funny. The statement was so poorly received that Franken was forced to issue a longer one within hours in which he acknowledged that he, like other men, had come to realize that his past conduct was inappropriate, while still maintaining he did not recall the event the same way.

Although nearly all of the public apologies over sex scandals have come from men, there are exceptions. In 2019, former Democratic Representative Katie Hill of California resigned from Congress after nude photos surfaced on a conservative blog and allegations that she had an inappropriate relationship with a staffer. Speaking to a nearly empty chamber on the House floor, Hill apologized repeatedly to family, friends, supporters, volunteers, and “every little girl who looked up to me,” but she did not mention the relationship, focusing instead on the leaked images and attacking “gutter politics” and “a double standard” for women in politics.

Frank Newport, former editor-in-chief of Gallup polling, says the public apology may be a victim of the rise in partisan polarization since the early 2000s. Polls show that many voters now back elected officials from the same party no matter what, Newport says, giving them a base of support that politicians in years past did not have, along with an easy out for any
accusations. “The highly polarized environment makes it easier
for politicians and public officials to transfer blame,” he says. “Everything is us against them, and that makes it quite easy to attribute causality for almost anything negative to the other side.”

America may be becoming more like the rest of the world. The classic public apology was always uniquely American, Bauer says, and leaders of other countries have rarely had to go through the same ritual. French President Francois Mitterrand unapologetically maintained a second family while in office. In February last year, a candidate for mayor of Paris was forced to stand down over videos and texts he sent to a woman who was not his wife, but he did not apologize and instead dropped out with a fiery attack on his adversaries. One French politician lamented that even the fact he dropped out reflected an “Americanization” of the country’s politics.

Republicans have been more apt than Democrats to refuse to say sorry, and Bauer says Democrats are still more likely than Republicans to issue a traditional apology — as President Joe Biden did after several women said his public touches made them uncomfortable. But that may not last. “I think Cuomo is going to be something of a litmus test,” she says. “If he manages to stay in power without doing a full-on grovel, I think that will be the death of the public apology.”

© Bloomberg, 2021

By Ryan Teague Beckwith
Bloomberg News, Jan. 24, 2023

A Watergate-era honor system for safeguarding top-secret information in the White House clearly isn’t working.

Revelations that Donald Trump, Joe Biden and now Mike Pence have mishandled classified documents expose the pitfalls of trusting presidents and vice presidents to hand over the nation’s secrets appropriately when they leave office.

They also raise the question of how many more documents will be discovered in the homes of the nation’s top leaders. Trump took boxes with him to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Smaller sets of material marked classified have been uncovered in Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home and at the Penn Biden Center in Washington.

At the very least, the incidents underscore the need for an independent authority to review records, especially during presidential transitions.

“It’s a messed-up system,” said national security lawyer Kel McClanahan. “There should be somebody who is not the president, vice president or their staff who has the job of going through everything before they put it in a box and take it to the Penn Center or Mar-a-Lago.”

Additional documents might turn up in the coming weeks, experts said, especially considering more records are categorized as classified than ever before.

“If I am a public official who has had access to classified documents in the past, I would be calling my lawyers right now and telling them to start searching all of my stored materials immediately,” said Bradley Moss, a longtime national security expert who is following the Trump and Biden cases.

Outdated laws, the increased use of telework during the coronavirus pandemic and a “tsunami of digitally created” records are straining the Information Security Oversight Office of the National Archives, which urged modernizing the handling of classified information in a July report to the White House.

The problem isn’t just a bureaucratic headache, but a political one. The FBI in August searched Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago, retrieving hundreds of documents that had been marked as classified and sparking partisan bickering.

The political tensions intensified in recent weeks when it became public that Biden’s attorneys had uncovered classified documents dating to his vice presidency. On Tuesday, a Pence spokesman confirmed a CNN report that the former vice president’s lawyers had found a small number of documents at his house in Indiana.

“What the hell is going on around here is my reaction,” Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee told NBC news about the discovery of misplaced classified documents. “Look, obviously there is a systemic problem in the executive branch. Talking about two successive administrations from two different parties with officials at the top level having in their possession documents in places where they don’t belong.”

Classified documents turn up in the wrong place often, something investigators call “spillage.” Federal employees with security clearances and attorneys must immediately report any documents they find stored inappropriately, and it’s only considered a crime if they are found to have intentionally taken the documents or tried to cover up the mishandling.

McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, said most cases don’t lead to criminal charges, so they never end up in the news. He recalled one client who discovered months after leaving her job that a CD with classified information on it had gotten stuck to the bottom of a folder when she was boxing up her desk.

“Spillages happen so much more than anyone ever knows,” he said.

The Pence revelation suggests that the retention of secret documents outside safe locations is “perhaps even normal,” former federal prosecutor Kevin O’Brien said.

“It also appears that Pence, like Biden, may have inadvertently engaged in this conduct,” O’Brien said. “The contrast with Trump, who intentionally removed documents for private reasons and then misled and obstructed the government after it attempted to retrieve them, is clear.”

Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, was critical of Biden in an interview on Bloomberg Radio’s “Sound On,” and said reforms were necessary.

“You’re now looking at President Biden, as not only vice president but as a member of the Senate who ended up with classified documents,” she said. “It’s hard to imagine how someone ends up with these in their home, or not properly caring for these documents.”

“And cleaning up that process, making certain that we tighten those protocols in how the documents are viewed, when and where they’re viewed. How you sign them in, sign them out. That is an appropriate step to take,” she added. Blackburn, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said she “would love” to see the panel take action this year.

© Bloomberg News, 2023

By Ryan Teague Beckwith
Bloomberg News, Aug. 5, 2023

Donald Trump is learning the hard way that the bare-knuckles tactics he used in civil cases as a businessman can backfire dramatically in a criminal courtroom.

Over decades in business, Trump fought through at least 3,500 lawsuits by making sweeping claims and using his personal wealth to outlast the other side, treating court cases as publicity efforts and his attorneys as “fixers” whose job was to use the law to get what he wanted.

But now he’s in criminal courts, where the same aggressive demands he’s made on civil lawyers aren’t faring as well — especially for his attorneys and the dozens of lawyers in other states who worked unsuccessfully to overturn the election on his behalf.

“That doesn’t work in a criminal setting where he’s not driving things,” said Michael Teter, a Washington lawyer working on state ethics complaints against some of the attorneys who challenged the election results.

Five of Trump’s own former lawyers were identified by people familiar with the case as the unnamed unindicted co-conspirators in the 78-count criminal charging document that special counsel Jack Smith released Tuesday, all pertaining to roles that went well beyond advising Trump on his legal options.

None of them has been charged with a crime.

Despite the legal jeopardy hanging over him, Trump remains the runaway favorite among Republican primary voters for the 2024 nomination and national polls looking ahead to the general election put him in a dead heat with President Joe Biden.

Trump continued to confuse civil and criminal proceedings, referring to the three indictments in a social media post on Friday as “lawsuits.”

Trump has long had associations with controversial lawyers, including most infamously the late Roy Cohn, who advised anti-communist Senator Joe McCarthy and was later disbarred for defrauding a client. But the indictment shows how Trump’s approach to the law can drag down even lawyers with sterling resumes.

John Eastman, who Bloomberg News has identified as co-conspirator №2 in the indictment, once clerked for the US Supreme Court, worked at the white-shoe law firm Kirkland & Ellis, ran for California attorney general and taught constitutional law at Chapman University.

According to the indictment, Eastman personally lobbied the Arizona House speaker and Georgia state lawmakers to decertify Biden’s wins in those states, submitted election fraud claims he knew were false in court filings and drafted a plan to have Vice President Mike Pence throw out Biden electors in Congress, even though he acknowledged that would be against the law and would be rejected by the Supreme Court.

The indictment alleges that a senior White House adviser told Eastman that the plan would lead to “riots in the streets.” He responded, in a rough paraphrase from the indictment, that there had “previously been points in the nation’s history where violence was necessary to protect the republic.”

Even after the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol, in which a mob threatened to hang Pence, Eastman emailed the vice president directly at 11:44 p.m., according to the indictment, asking him to “consider one more relatively minor violation” of the law by forcing a 10-day delay in the certification.

Eastman’s defense attorney, Harvey Silverglate, told CNN on Thursday that the email was not asking Pence to break the law but instead simply putting forward “a very minority view” of how to interpret it that “very few people would agree” with.

Pence said he immediately rejected all of Eastman’s proposals as unconstitutional.

“Sadly, the president was surrounded by a group of crackpot lawyers that kept telling him what his itching ears wanted to hear,” he said Wednesday.

The other unnamed co-conspirators have been confirmed to be lawyers already facing personal and professional consequences for their efforts to challenge Trump’s 2020 election losses in key states: former New York City mayor and 2008 GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, former US Assistant Attorney General Jeff Clark, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro.

Eastman retired early as a law professor amid protests from his fellow faculty and faces disbarment proceedings in California. Giuliani already had his law license suspended in New York, faces disbarment hearings in Washington and is being sued for defamation by two election workers in Georgia whom he claimed were cheating. Clark, Powell and Chesebro also face ethics complaints.

They are not alone. Some of Trump’s other lawyers have been fined nearly $1 million, lost jobs at high-end law firms, and been sued by their former client. One went to prison and two have even testified against him — an extremely rare move. Another 60 attorneys face unresolved bar complaints over their work on the 2020 election challenges.

Some have been implicated directly in other potential crimes.

An earlier indictment charging Trump with obstruction over his alleged refusal to return classified documents he removed from the White House says that he told one of his lawyers to hide or destroy them after they were subpoenaed, while another lawyer falsely certified to the Justice Department that all the documents had been handed over.

Matthew DePerno, a Michigan lawyer who tried to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss in that state and later ran unsuccessfully for attorney general with his endorsement, was charged this week in connection to a plot to break into voting machines in a failed attempt to prove they had been hacked in the 2020 election.

Silverglate argued that Eastman was simply representing his client. But other legal experts say that being a lawyer does not mean doing everything a client asks.

Diana Florence, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, said that there are bright lines lawyers are not supposed to cross, including lying in court or actively trying to undermine the law.

“There’s a difference between defending a crime and being an accomplice,” she said.

© Bloomberg News, 2023

By Ryan Teague Beckwith
Bloomberg News, March 6, 2023

Donald Trump hates losing so much that he has suggested he will mount a third-party campaign if he doesn’t win the Republican presidential nomination.

But he can’t win that way either, thanks to “sore loser” laws in six states he would need to return to the White House.

Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas, as well as Arkansas and Alabama, have laws that bar a candidate defeated in a major-party primary from running as an independent or on a third-party ticket in the general election. That would put Trump at the general-election starting gate with a deficit of 91 electoral votes of the 270 required to capture the White House.

Trump has flirted since 2016 with running for president on a third-party ticket or as an independent if he loses the GOP nomination. Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel said she hopes to require candidates to sign a pledge to support the GOP nominee as a requirement to participate in primary debates, a similar tactic the RNC used to try to box in Trump in 2016.

But any pledge would not be binding. Sore-loser laws would keep Trump’s name from even appearing on the ballot, although voters could still write him in.

A third major candidate on a presidential ballot poses problems for the Republican or Democratic parties, which dominate US politics, by splitting the votes of similarly minded candidates and handing victory to the opposite candidate, something that has happened a handful of times since the 19th century.

Presidential candidates who ran as independents or on a third-party ticket after losing a major-party primary include former President Theodore Roosevelt — also making an attempt to return to office four years after leaving the White House — in 1912, US Representative John Anderson in 1980 and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson in 2012. They all lost.

Asked about the risk of an independent run splitting the GOP vote, a Trump campaign spokesperson stated simply that he would win the Republican primary.

Trump declined to commit to an RNC pledge to back the presidential nominee, telling reporters during the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday he’d have to think about it because there are “people I wouldn’t be very happy about endorsing.”

Trump is generally ahead or roughly tied in early polls with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has not yet announced if he will run. Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who launched her campaign in mid-February, and other potential contenders remain in single digits.

In a recent survey by Republican pollster Whit Ayres for The Bulwark, an anti-Trump conservative news outlet, 28% of Republican primary voters said they would back Trump if he ran as an independent in a three-way race with DeSantis and President Joe Biden.

That’s the exact situation that sore-loser laws were designed to prevent. Some simply set early deadlines for filing, which makes it hard for candidates to launch such a campaign only after losing a party nomination, to strict bans on appearing on the ballot at all.

The laws aren’t always clear on whether they apply to presidential candidates.

“These laws have not really been scrutinized or tested because there hasn’t been a significant case like this since John Anderson” in 1980, said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “My guess is if Trump tried this move, there’d be a lot of litigation.”

Mark Brown, a law professor at Capital University who has worked on cases involving the laws, said that if Trump mounts a credible third-party candidacy “all bets are off.”

Even in states without strict bans, he said getting on the ballot would be a massive undertaking, and Republican officials like secretaries of state and attorneys general wouldn’t be inclined to give Trump the benefit of the doubt.

“It’s a draining process,” he said. “I know Trump’s wealthy, but it costs a lot of money to navigate, even without the legal challenges which are sure to come.”

Still, Trump wouldn’t have to be a viable candidate to have an effect on the race. In 2000, third-party candidate Ralph Nader was only on the ballot in 43 states, but his share of the vote was larger than the margin of victory for George W. Bush in Florida and New Hampshire. A win in either state would have made Democratic nominee Al Gore president.

Theresa Amato, Nader’s campaign manager in 2000 and 2004, said tracking election laws in 50 states and the District of Columbia was a massive undertaking for the campaign, lining up everything from volunteer signature gatherers to election law attorneys and presidential electors. The campaign had to put together its own manual on getting on the ballot.

“It’s a huge logistical undertaking, and no candidate should underestimate it,” she said.

© Bloomberg News, 2023.

By Ryan Teague Beckwith
Bloomberg News, July 12, 2023

Republican efforts to restrict voting have sparked a backlash among people with disabilities, hurting the party’s appeal to a key group of swing voters.

Disability rights advocates say new laws to reduce early in-person voting, restrict vote-by-mail and ban curbside voting — in response to Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread fraud — have angered voters with disabilities.

“You are going to hear from us,” said Vincenzo Piscopo, president of the United Spinal Association, which advocates for people with spinal injuries.

Disabled voters make up a sizable, diverse group, with nearly 16 million casting ballots in the 2022 midterms, according to a US Election Assistance Commission report released Wednesday.

Voters with disabilities were evenly split between Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 but swung hard against the former president four years later amid concerns about his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which was especially threatening to those with pre-existing health problems.

A poll from Greenberg Research just before Election Day in 2020 showed voters with disabilities in battleground states backed Biden over Trump, 60–35%. The same survey showed 62% of voters with disabilities disapproved of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak — 10 points higher than voters without disabilities.

And the wave of Republican-spearheaded voter restrictions passed since 2020 has left voters with disabilities “really angry,” said Dom Kelly, president and CEO of the nonpartisan advocacy group New Disabled South.

“This is an issue that will polarize our community and push us toward the folks who are going to make it easier for us to vote,” Kelly said.

Republican-led states have reduced early voting hours popular with blind voters who need assistance; restricted who can return a ballot and limited drop boxes, changes that make it harder for voters with mobility issues; and tightened signature requirements, creating problems for those with limited fine motor skills.

“I don’t think these laws were necessarily targeted at people with disabilities, but they have an outsized impact on us,” said Brian Dimmick, senior staff attorney for disability rights with the ACLU.

In Wisconsin, Republican officials have sought to restrict who can assist voters living in long-term care facilities with their ballots. Alabama and Texas banned curbside voting popular with those who have trouble walking or use wheelchairs.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott vetoed a bill in June that would have made it easier for people with disabilities to vote by mail. Advocates say they were particularly angry about that decision, since Abbott uses a wheelchair and his own advisory panel backed the measure.

In a veto statement, Abbott said bill’s intent was “laudable” but that it was overly broad, saying he would help to rework it.

Kathy Bernier, a former Republican state senator in Wisconsin, said that she worked closely with disability rights advocates on a bill that sought to clarify state law around voters confined to their homes amid concerns the provision was being abused during the pandemic.

“It’s like a disabled parking space,” Bernier said. “You want to make sure it’s only used by the disabled.”

Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said her surveys have found that when new voting limits were described as making it harder for people with disabilities, more than 80% of likely voters opposed them.

“People were quite angry when they were told that this restriction or that restriction would make it harder for seniors, veterans or people with disabilities to vote,” she said. “It’s really operating less at a policy level than a values level.”

Beyond the voting laws, Republican presidential candidates have so far done little outreach to the disabled community.

Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, the retired founder of RespectAbility, a nonpartisan advocacy group, noted that none of the candidates has put forward a disability policy platform.

She said they’re also failing to take simple steps, such as posting alt text that describes photos on their campaign sites and social media feeds or adding captions and hiring sign language interpreters for live events.

“Even if they had the best message, they’re going to lose votes because people can’t receive it,” she said.

© Bloomberg News, 2023.

Feature stories are like a meringue: a light, airy confection that requires a lot of work behind the scenes to pull off.

For the reader, a feature story is a fun diversion from the news of the day, an interesting glimpse into other people’s lives or a simple reminder of the human moments we all share.

But to write a feature, first you must find it.

The best feature ideas come when you are working on something else entirely. A member of the audience at a city council meeting offhandedly mentions an unusual hobby. You chance upon a group of old men playing dominoes in the park. Or a friend casually mentions something interesting that they saw.

One time, I saw a woman driving a Volkswagen Beetle covered in hundreds of tiny plastic figurines, and I followed her for 10 minutes until I could talk to her in a parking lot. I ended up with a feature about a woman who overcame her extreme shyness after a brush with cancer by intentionally driving the most outlandish car she could.

Some features begin as topics. Maybe you decide you want to write a story about people who play tabletop role-playing games in the back of the local comic book store.

That’s a good start, but you’ll need to report it out until you get to the hook of the story. Maybe there’s one member who started the group and has been doing it for 20 years, or another who joined the group to get over a tough divorce. Maybe the group is seeing an influx of younger members who want to push it in a different direction, or it’s losing members and may have to shut down. Find the story, and write that.

• Minimum of three sources
• Minimum of 550 words, maximum of 625
• Google News headline: 60 characters maximum, lead with keywords
• Google News summary: 160 characters maximum, include keywords
• Social media headline: 95 characters maximum
• Minimum of three links to relevant websites or previous news stories
• Written in AP Style
• Turned in by deadline
• Ready to publish

Don’t forget to use the generic story template!

“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It’s that easy, and that hard.” — Neil Gaiman