Brennan

• Furniture City will lease the building back on a short-term basis as they build a larger facility in another market.
• The dual-purpose warehouse manufacturing design includes a heavy power system of 4,000 amps at 480 volts, 24-foot clear ceiling heights, and eight dock doors with three ground level doors.
• "Southern California offers compelling risk-adjusted opportunity if you are willing to be creative and persistent," observed Scott McKibben, Chief Investment Officer and Managing Principal of Brennan.
• "The continuing strength of southern California's industrial fundamentals makes southern California a long-term investment target for Brennan."

• Three of the charges in United States of America v. Donald J. Trump are fairly easy to understand.
• They require a jury to determine whether Trump tried to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 election and if he knowingly conspired to obstruct the certification of results on Jan. 6, 2021, all in an attempt to remain in the White House.
• But the fourth charge against Trump – of conspiring against the rights of the voters to cast ballots and have them fairly and honestly counted – is more complicated, and it comes from a dark time in U.S. history.
• As a historian who studies and writes about democracy and the American South, I believe the 1870s have something to teach us about the fourth count in the Jan. 6 case against Trump.

Ku Klux Klan Acts

• The indictment asserts that Trump knowingly conspired “to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States – that is, the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted.” That quote comes from a series of laws enacted in the 1870s called the Ku Klux Klan Acts.
• As the Brennan Center for Justice points out, in the 20th century the Supreme Court has ruled that all sorts of election infringements violate the Enforcement Acts, including stuffing ballot boxes and bribing voters.

Retreat from democracy

• The Department of Justice secured convictions in 140 cases by using the law that is being used to prosecute Trump.
• Congress had to expand the attorney general’s staff into an entire department of government to handle the excessive case load.
• After Grant was reelected, many champions of Black rights lapsed into what historians often characterize as a moral fatigue.
• Nine stood trial, including one William Cruikshank, the burly, self-confident plantation owner who had supervised the executions.
• The Supreme Court set William Cruikshank free, and white supremacists established racist regimes in every Southern state for nearly 100 years thereafter.

Civil War amendments today

• The 5-4 majority held that states could be trusted to guarantee citizens’ voting rights.
• Writing in dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg compared enforcing the Civil War amendments to “battling the Hydra,” the multiheaded monster that sprouted new heads after one was defeated.
• Given this long history of advance and retreat, it’s not surprising, then, that special counsel Jack Smith, in his use of a law to prosecute Trump that dates back to the Reconstruction Era’s laws protecting the Black vote, has reasserted the Department of Justice’s power to enforce the Civil War amendments.

• A column based on Brennan Center analysis and research will be published monthly in La Opinión, the nation’s number one Spanish-language daily newspaper, and occasionally in El Diario, the oldest daily in Spanish in the United States.
• Impremedia and Brennan en español will also collaborate to build multimedia content and spaces for experts in the electoral process and the Latino vote to analyze and discuss critical issues.
• "It is especially important for us to collaborate with Impremedia at this critical time for Latinos in the U.S.
• This collaboration is a step forward for La Opinión/El Diario's commitment to their readers."

• AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles is pleased to announce the addition of New Jersey philanthropist and entrepreneur Wendy Neu and Matt Horton, a Director at Milken Institute, to its Board of Trustees, effective January 1, 2023.
• Entrepreneur and philanthropist Wendy Neu is a grassroots community organizer and activist that brings decades of knowledge and experience on environmental boards.
• “We are thrilled to have Wendy and Matt join our Board of Trustees as AltaSea and our campus continues to grow,” said AltaSea President & CEO Terry Tamminen.
• “We are looking forward to getting to work with Wendy and Matt, drawing on their experience and expertise.”