WJI's Daily Reads for Jan. 20, 2022

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: State Supreme Court hears redistricting case.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin U.S. Senate candidate sues over ballots and voting machine software.

Forbes: New Treasury rule nixes use of COVID relief money for jail and prison construction.

At least 17 states across the US are angling to use at least $830 million of their federal Covid relief funds to build new jails and prisons, ranging from tiny $8,000 projects to the hundreds of millions. These funds would all come from the near party-line passage of The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

The Treasury has now released guidance to states essentially saying, “not so fast…” making it clear that new prison construction is not a sanctioned use of COVID relief funds.

Slate: U.S. Supreme Court rejects Trump's claim of executive privilege.

On Wednesday evening, the Supreme Court delivered a crushing blow to Donald Trump’s efforts to keep relevant White House records secret from the House Select Committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack. In an apparent 8-1 decision, with only Justice Clarence Thomas noting his dissent, the Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit had not made an obvious error in holding that Trump’s claims of executive privilege over the documents would fail under any test proposed by the former president.

Vox: U.S. Supreme Court hears Ted Cruz's campaign finance case.

The case is Federal Election Commission v. Ted Cruz for Senate, and it involves a federal law intended to prevent campaign donors from putting money directly into the pockets of elected officials. Specifically, the law permits candidates to loan money to their own campaigns, but forbids the campaign from repaying more than $250,000 of that loan from funds raised after the election takes place....

Without a cap on loan repayments, elected officials with clever accountants could profit off of their donors. In 1998, for example, Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-CA) made a $150,000 loan to her campaign at 18 percent interest (though she later reduced that interest rate to 10 percent). By 2009, she’d reportedly raised $221,780 to repay that loan, meaning that she earned at least $71,000 in profits.