a modern-day Svengali.”

compared himself to Einstein and Gandhi while touting Nxivm as a “community guided by humanitarian principles that seek to empower people.”

he created a secret master-slave group for women within Nxivm called DOS, where stick-thin devotees were branded with his initials above their genitals, made to wear dog collars and submit to unwanted sex with Raniere and other members, the feds said.

who went by the title “The Vanguard” — preyed on the young as he committed what the FBI called “serious crimes against humanity.”

part of his bizarre plan to use her as some kind of “vessel” to supposedly achieve immortality — and took porno shots of her, according to testimony at his trial.

Many were then branded with a cauterizing pen in ceremonies videotaped by other members to prove their loyalty to the group, some women said.

“The world closed in on me,” she recalled. “Every degree of freedom I had was lost.”

In June 2019, the jury took under five hours to convict Raniere of all of the seven counts against him, including for sex-trafficking, racketeering, child pornography and forced labor. He faces 15 years to life on the charges.

The sentencing comes amid heightened interest in the case, with two recent docu-series — HBO’s “The Vow” and Starz’ “Seduced” — featuring survivors telling their stories.

Raniere, who did not testify at his trial, has also vowed to protest his innocence.

Barrett tried to distance herself and the judiciary from the politics swirling around her nomination and the presidential election.“It is the job of a judge to resist her policy preferences. It would be a dereliction of duty for her to give in to them," she said.

Barrett will become the fifth woman ever to serve on the high court, succeeding the late liberal Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

"is one of our nation’s most brilliant legal scholars.”

Barrett will become the fifth woman ever to serve on the high court, succeeding the late liberal Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Petitions challenging voting procedures in Pennsylvania and North Carolina are pending before the high court, which ruled 5-3 along ideological lines Monday night against extending Wisconsin's deadline for absentee ballots.

It represents the culmination of conservatives' decades-long project to win control of the Supreme Court, perhaps for decades to come.

Democrats immediately cited McConnell's 2016 refusal to act on Obama's nominee as reason to delay action until after the election, to no avail.

All 12 Republicans voted to send her nomination to the Senate floor; all 10 Democrats boycotted the vote. 

“The American people will never forget this blatant act of bad faith," Schumer said. "It will go down as one of the darkest days in the 231-year history of the United States Senate.”

Biden is also in better position than Clinton was in swing states – and could even win the race on or shortly after election night if his large leads hold – but pathways to a Trump victory remain. 

The simplest pathway for Biden to win the election is through Big Ten country, by winning three states that Trump won in 2016 by razor-thin margins: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

"The blue wall has to be reestablished,” he said.

"You've got almost a counter-trend going in those battlegrounds states where the average is going up for Biden. Trump has to break into one of those three states unless he can pick up a Clinton state from 2016,

If Biden wins all three and carries each of the states that Clinton won, he's the next president.

"That (Rust Belt) wall is really the first line of defense for Biden, and right now that looks pretty solid, but anything could change," Paleologos said.

The reason: Pennsylvania and Wisconsin don't allow the processing of mail-in ballots to begin until Election Day and Michigan only has a 10-hour start, compared to other states that start that can start the process days or weeks in advance

Trump won each of these states in 2016 by less than 4 percentage points. But Biden has polling leads, albeit small, in all three.

Conversely, Biden would still have life if Trump were to carry Florida, Arizona and North Carolina. The former vice president would need to carry every state that Clinton won in 2016 and flip Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Texas and Georgia have long been targets of Democrats because of diverse demographics and growing populations in suburbs.

Minnesota, with 10 delegates just like neighboring Wisconsin, last voted for a Republican president in 1972, but the Trump campaign continues to tout its chances there.

all but one Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, who herself is battling for re-election

With Judge Barrett’s elevation in place of Justice Ginsburg, a liberal icon, the court is expected to tilt decisively to the right.

It was the first time in 151 years that a justice was confirmed without a single vote from the minority party, a sign of how bitter Washington’s decades-old war over judicial nominations has become.

Democrats called it a hypocritical power grab by Republicans, who they said should have waited for voters to have their say on Election Day — the stance Republicans had taken four years ago when they declined even to hold hearings for one of former President Barack Obama’s nominees to the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland.

52-to-48

including abortion rights, gay rights, business regulation and the environment.

Her impact could be felt right away. There are major election disputes awaiting immediate action by the Supreme Court from the battleground states of North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Both concern the date by which absentee ballots may be accepted

Judge Barrett will quickly confront a docket studded with major cases on Mr. Trump’s programs and policies

Justices can begin work as soon as they are sworn in, meaning she could be at work on Tuesday.

Yes. The court will soon act on cases from North Carolina and Pennsylvania concerning whether deadlines for receiving mailed ballots may be extended.

“If courts don’t have to defend their decisions, then they’re just acts of will, of power. They’re not even pretending to be legal decisions.”

On that docket — the “merits docket” — the court ordinarily agrees to hear about 1 percent of the petitions asking it to intercede. In its last term, it decided just 53 merits cases.

“The political branches of government claim legitimacy by election, judges by reason,” he wrote. “Any step that withdraws an element of the judicial process from public view makes the ensuing decision look more like fiat, which requires compelling justification.”

The Trump administration has been a major contributor to the trend, Professor Vladeck wrote, having filed 36 emergency applications in its first three and a half years.

Lower courts have struggled to make sense of the court’s orders, which are something less than precedents but nonetheless cannot be ignored by responsible judges.

One is that Republicans tend to win.

“federal courts ordinarily should not alter state election rules in the period close to an election.”

A trial judge refused to block it, but, about a month before the 2006 general election, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued an injunction forbidding state officials to enforce it.

“The Purcell principle,” he wrote, is “the idea that courts should not issue orders which change election rules in the period just before the election.”

“No one can read Purcell itself and think it created the doctrine that it now has been transformed into by the Supreme Court.”

“bolster the legitimacy of the court in the eyes of the public, something especially important in controversial cases, such as election cases.” And they “may also discipline justices into deciding similar cases alike, regardless of the identity of the parties.”

Without policies like Medicare For All and a Green New Deal, working class people will continue to die. Compromise will not save them.

Biden’s platform instead includes a want to not “demonize” the wealthy and have “no one’s standard of living change,” as he told rich donors at a fundraiser last June.

And as much as Democrats want me to, I do not believe in voting for the “lesser” of two rapists.

He also authored the 1994 crime bill, which led to mass incarceration of disproportionately black and brown Americans. Just a few months ago, Biden gave a speech in Iowa claiming “poor kids are just as bright as white kids.”

Any Democrat who dismisses these allegations as uncredible or illegitimate is a hypocrite.

he notably neglects those who suffered the most as a result of the administration’s mass deportations, record civilian drone strikes and infamous Wall Street bailout.

We must not forget that Biden voted for the Iraq war, voted for NAFTA, has consistently supported corporate bailouts and opposes Medicare for All amid a pandemic (one that he has been largely absent from)

Biden was nowhere to be found. The only coronavirus response policy he has been vocal about, other than criticizing President Donald Trump, is advocating to hold in-person elections and putting thousands at risk.

After all, Biden voted to confirm both conservative judges Sandra Day O’Connor and Antonin Scalia. More importantly, Biden was the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman during the Anita Hill hearings where Clarence Thomas, now the most conservative justice on the Court, was accused of sexual misconduct.

But those key Bernie-Trump voters were never Democrats in the first place – they were self-identifying independents and traditional non-voters who distrust establishment politicians.

But neither have I, and neither have the sexual assault survivors or former incarcerated people whose lives were affected by Biden’s decisions.

Trump is a dangerous figure, but he exists only by virtue of the prevailing establishment and status quo. He is a symptom of the late capitalist neoliberalism that the Democratic establishment embodies

By continuously voting for the lesser of two evils, I have effectively taken away the power of my own vote and allowed our country to move further to the right.

In her view, a universal scientific, social and political commitment to liberating and focusing the power of children would prevent the formation of stunted, dysfunctional adults.

Nonetheless, it took decades to fully implement them. The 1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child was built on the premise that humankind owes children the best it can give.

Childhood was valuable in and of itself, not as a transitional phase that predates adulthood or simply as a “training period” for life.

Despite all of this apparent progress, children and young adults remain politicized but unable to be political. Mostly this is because politics remains an old person’s game, seldom open to direct representation of young people and adolescents even in issues that directly concern them, such as the presence of armed security officers in school.

The latest protests to end racism and police violence have shown how a new generation of activists is willing to take on vexing, seemingly intractable issues, the very same problems that adults may deny even exist.

It is now up to organized political parties to harness the power of youth organizations, to galvanize them and inspire young people to believe that the existing political machinery is receptive to their demands and that politics can indeed change the system it represents.

Joe Biden has struggled to speak to younger voters, evidenced by the results of the Democratic Party’s primary elections

The New York Times spoke with more than 30 young Democrats from 17 states this week, ranging in age from 17 to 34. Most of them said they had voted for Mr. Sanders or planned to do so if he stayed in the race through their state’s primary. Some had voted for Senator Elizabeth Warren before she dropped out. Only two said they wanted Mr. Biden to be the nominee.

reluctantly vote for Mr. Biden

for the sake of beating President Trump, about a third said they would consider staying home or voting for a

But those plans, the young Democrats said, were not the solution to the generational gap among the candidates’ supporters; they were a cause.

Mr. Biden needed to stop accepting super PAC money and endorse both “Medicare for all” and the Green New Deal.

Or else they need to die and we will create a new party ourselves.”

“The Republican Party has moved farther to the right than Democrats have moved to the left, which leaves this huge vacuum, I feel, for younger people who actually want to be a part of a truly progressive movement,”

‘I won’t change anything to help progressive causes, really, but at least I’m not Trump.’”

While Mr. Sanders has actively engaged with young people, Mr. Biden has never given much indication that he is seeking their votes at all. At times, he has appeared openly disdainful or condescending toward them.

“Would I like a candidate like Bernie Sanders, who puts young people at the forefront? Of course I would. But young voters didn’t turn out in the primaries to support him. That’s our generation’s mistake. We can’t make that same mistake in the general election.”

“I worry, win or lose, that the party will learn nothing from this election and continue to dismiss the concerns and policy goals of the younger generation they rely upon,”

Republicans frequently accused Democrats of maligning Judge Barrett because of her personal values and religion, even though Democrats determinedly avoided discussion of either topic.

Others have minimal legal experience, but were selected to share personal stories that committee members believe relate to cases currently being litigated that Judge Barrett, if confirmed, could eventually rule on.

Judge Barrett’s nomination on Oct. 22. A vote on confirmation by the full Senate is expected the following week, as early as Oct. 26.

Given that Democrats have few, if any, means to push the confirmation schedule back,

two members of the American Bar Association’

as “well qualified” and has historically been supportive of the vast majority of nominees.

nominees, rating 10 as “not qualified”

The second panel will feature a more diverse selection of experts whose stories will be far more personal and pointed.

Crystal Good, who is expected to speak about her experience having an abortion after being granted a judicial bypass, which allows minors to have the procedure without seeking consent from parents or guardians.

Republicans have called one of her former clerks and a former student at Notre Dame. They have also called a retired federal judge who recently wrote an opinion article arguing that Judge Barrett’s Catholic faith would not color her opinions as a justice.

A) is very bright; and B) would solidify a conservative Supreme Court majority whose judicial philosophy has been on the wrong side of many of the great issues of my lifetime.

that this path toward social progress would ideally have been blazed by legislators, not judges.

Forward-thinking justices struck down such laws — and that wasn’t about “activist judges” but about decency, humanity and the 14th Amendment.

Perhaps the divide instead is between forward-thinking judges and backward-thinking judges.

Three backward-thinking justices, including Antonin Scalia, Barrett’s mentor, would have allowed Taliban-style prosecutions of gay people for intimacy in the bedroom. (Barrett refused in the hearing Wednesday to say whether the case was rightly decided.)

That’s one reason next month’s election is such a milestone, for one political party in America is trying to join the rest of the civilized world and provide universal health care, and the other is doing its best to take away what we have.

My take is that Democrats are exaggerating that risk; the Republican argument in the case, to be heard next month, is such a legal stretch that it’s unlikely to succeed fully, even if Barrett is on the court.

Yet she’s working with a gang of Republican senators to steal a seat on the Supreme Court.

Will voters reward the party that is working to provide more health care, or the party that has painstakingly robbed one million children of insurance? Will voters help tug the United States forward, or will they support the backward thinkers who have been on the side of discrimination, racism, bigotry and voter suppression?

which side of history will you stand on?

development of her legal philosophy of originalism, the view that judges must adhere closely to the written text of the Constitution and the plain meaning of language used in statutes at the time they were enacted.

Barrett, an acolyte of Justice Antonin Scalia, often expressed disdain for injecting policy preferences into judicial rulings. 

“wit, wisdom and a dose of terror.”

“Not having a philosophy is a philosophy. If your approach is grab-bag, that’s your theory,”

 “can’t answer about specific cases, but questions about judicial philosophy should be on the table. ... You have a right to know what yardstick you’re using to make those decisions.” 

"If you think the judge will be imposing their policy preferences, it leads to an all-in takedown.”

Barrett has used that metaphor for those who might surrender to temptation to disregard the Constitution.

“Is the Constitution a straitjacket? No, the Constitution itself leaves plenty of room for change – political, legal, social and otherwise.

The Constitution is less than 6,000 words and makes no attempt to regulate every aspect of American life.” 

“The fact that we weren’t alive or didn’t have the ability to participate doesn’t render the law illegitimate,” Barrett said. “We accept the law as we find it, until we lawfully change it.”

“I would not be surprised if opponents misrepresent or caricature originalism on incendiary topics,”

“A primary way that the Supreme Court contributes to stability is not to grant cert (accept a case for review) when the question presented is ‘Do you want to overturn a precedent?’"

“We shouldn’t be putting people on the court who share our policy preferences,” she said. “We should be putting people on the court who want to apply the Constitution.” 

despite the obstacles she faced in the legal profession as a woman.

“Justice did not arrive like a lightening bolt, but rather through dogged persistence, all the days of her life,” said Rabbi Hotlzblatt, whose husband clerked for Justice Ginsburg from 2014 to 2015. “Real change, she said, enduring change, happens one step at a time.”

Only about 30 Americans have received the honor of lying in state at the Capitol: presidents, military leaders and members of Congress, all of them men. Rosa Parks, the civil rights icon, is the only other woman granted a similar honor, but as a private citizen, she lay “in honor.”

The first viewing slots were reserved for the women serving in Congress; Democratic and Republican women were to gather later on the steps of the Capitol as her coffin is carried out.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, were notably absent from the proceedings,

He dropped to the floor before her coffin and did three full push-ups.

After Justice Ginsburg saw her first opera — a condensed version of “La Gioconda” in 1944, when she was 11 — she was immediately hooked, becoming the kind of aficionado who went to dress rehearsals, then opening nights and then closing nights, too, for good measure.

It was a love she shared with Justice Antonin Scalia, her Supreme Court colleague, friend and ideological antagonist; an opera, “Scalia/Ginsburg,” was written in 2015 about their relationship

White House officials and Senate Republicans busied themselves on Friday with preparations of their own to usher in a conservative successor to the Supreme Court with remarkable speed

6-to-3 conservative majority on the court in reach, Republicans were aiming for a vote before Election Day, just over a month away.

“The chants were appalling, but certainly to be expected when you’re in the heart of the swamp,” she said. “I thought it was an appalling and disrespectful thing to do, as the president honored Justice Ginsburg.”

Mr. Trump has angered many supporters of Justice Ginsburg by quickly announcing that he would nominate a new conservative justice to succeed her before the election in November, and by questioning, without evidence, whether her “dying wish” that another president appoint her replacement was real or concocted by top Democrats.

This was an omen — and a harrowing one at that.

“I have never in my adult life seen such a deep shudder and sense of dread pass through the American political class.”

Is a fair fight still imaginable in America? Do rules and standards of decency still apply? For a metastasizing segment of the population, no.

Right on cue, we commenced a fight over Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat that could become a protracted death match, with Mitch McConnell’s haste and unabashed hypocrisy

On Wednesday Trump was asked if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power in the event that he lost to Joe Biden. Shockingly but then not really, he wouldn’t

“There won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.”

We’re in terrible danger. Make no mistake.

Trump, who rode those trends to power, is now turbocharging them to drive America into the ground.

The week since Ginsburg’s death has been the proof of that. Many of us dared to dream that a small but crucial clutch of Republican senators, putting patriotism above party,

Hah. Only two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, broke with McConnell, and in Collins’s case, there were re-election considerations and hedged wording. All the others fell into line.

Most politicians — and maybe most Americans — now look across the political divide and see a band of crooks who will pick your pocket if you’re meek and dumb enough not to pick theirs first.

“If the situation were reversed, the Dems would be doing the same thing.”

Ugliness begets ugliness until — what? The whole thing collapses of its own ugly weight?

The world’s richest and most powerful country has been brought pitifully and agonizingly low. On Tuesday we passed the mark of 200,000 deaths related to the coronavirus, cementing our status as the global leader, by far, on that front. How’s that for exceptionalism?

What’s the far side of a meltdown? America the puddle? While we await the answer, we get a nasty showdown over that third Trump justice. Trump will nominate someone likely to horrify Democrats and start another culture war: anything to distract voters from his damnable failure to address the pandemic.

University of California-Irvine School of Law, with the headline: “I’ve Never Been More Worried About American Democracy Than I Am Right Now.”

you can be re-elected at the cost that American democracy will be permanently disfigured — and in the future America will be a failed republic — I don’t think either would have taken the deal.

“I don’t think the survival of the republic particularly means anything to Donald Trump.”

“Tribal,” “identity politics,” “fake news” and “hoax” are now mainstays of our vocabulary, indicative of a world where facts and truth are suddenly relative.

“The coronavirus pandemic, a reckless incumbent, a deluge of mail-in ballots, a vandalized Postal Service, a resurgent effort to suppress votes, and a trainload of lawsuits are bearing down on the nation’s creaky electoral machinery,”

But what if there’s bottom but no bounce? I wonder. And shudder.

According to a database kept by New York University’s nonpartisan Institute for Policy Integrity, the Environmental Protection Agency has won only nine out of 47 cases in court under Mr. Trump, while the Interior Department has won four of 22.

That followed decisions by judges that have thrown the future of the Dakota Access Pipeline into doubt, struck down the relaxation of protections for migratory birds and vacated the rollback of an Obama-era rule to reduce waste from natural gas flaring on federal lands.

“There is a sense that the administration has been in a hurry and has been sloppy,” said Jonathan H. Adler, a conservative legal expert and professor of environmental law at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

biggest rollbacks of clean water rules, curbs to greenhouse gas emissions in automobiles and power plants, and environmental reviews of infrastructure projects.

It is not only a sin to kill a mockingbird, it is also a crime. That has been the letter of the law for the past century.

a number of courts ruled that agencies acted illegally by providing little or no justification when they rewrote, weakened or repealed regulation.

“The Trump administration is impatient,” he said. “The Trump administration is sloppy. The Trump administration doesn’t like to do its homework.”

17 states to block the Trump administration’s revisions to a rule that significantly narrows the definition of which bodies of water are federally regulated

“The current record shows that D.O.J. and E.P.A. are making a solid defense of the Trump administration priorities.”

ignoring facts about climate change.

“The Trump administration, along with allies like me, wins on big-picture issues at the highest levels,” Mr. Morrisey said.

rejected the E.P.A.’s 2019 approval of an air pollution rule for Pennsylvania that would have allowed coal-fired power plants in that state to exceed pollution limits.

“The administration is so reluctant to mention climate change that they get in trouble for not even mentioning it,” Mr. Gerrard said.

“A lot of these rollbacks are going to have very shallow roots, and perhaps no roots as all,” said David Hayes, executive director of the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center.

“If there’s a Democratic president, roll up your sleeves and wait for Texas to file lawsuits against President Biden,” he said.

the Constitution does not establish it.

It also depends on whether future presidents and Congresses choose to accept judicial supremacy.

“the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.”

The Republican Party, despite having lost the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections, may use the judiciary to dictate policy on climate change, voting rights, economic inequality and more, for decades to come.

Democrats could also pass a law restricting the court from reviewing some areas of the law — a power that the Constitution explicitly gives Congress.

On the other hand, the acceptance of judicial supremacy brings big downsides, as well. It may be tantamount to forfeiting political power for the majority of Americans.

“If protecting the right of the people to govern for themselves means curbing judicial power and the Supreme Court’s claim to judicial supremacy, then Democrats should act without hesitation,”