GERRY 3

SEE FOUR 8 25

THREE 2 22

SEE roberts scotus

see redmap and main

see hofeller files revelations

scotus?

dirty tricks

see alabama

See WISC wins

see texas

see florida

see polarization

see voter suppress // RACISM

see north carolina 2024

see gop supermajority

SEE MINORITY RULE

see post-trump

OG TOM DELAY TX 5 YR REDISTRICT

redmap did systemic long term damage TP--> freedom cocks, suicide squad, unaccountable old white guys --> voter suppression, anti-abortion ... see daley below

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tool

https://ballotpedia.org/Influencers includes gerry

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am 3 26

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports the Republican leader of the Wisconsin Senate is the latest in a “string of retirements” of prominent GOP lawmakers as rebalanced district maps begin to take effect.

Sen. Devin LeMahieu has held the office since 2015 and was elected majority leader in 2020. But now that the state’s new liberal-leaning supreme court has agreed to new un-gerrymandered district maps giving Republicans less of an advantage in upcoming elections, LeMahieu has suddenly determined that “… the time has come for a new chapter in my life."

“LeMahieu is the second top Republican to announce his intention to leave the GOP-controlled state Legislature,” reports MJS. “Assembly Speaker Robin Vos earlier this year announced he would retire at the end of his current term.”

In 2023, the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned legislative maps drawn by GOP lawmakers, which overwhelmingly favored Republicans, by a 4-to-3 vote — but only after a ferocious and expensive election that put a new liberal judge on the court.

That ruling forced the state to submit new maps in advance of the 2024 election. Liberal judge Janet Protasiewicz, elected that same year, cast the deciding vote to eliminate the GOP-drawn maps.

Prior to its new maps, the Princeton Gerrymandering Project called Wisconsin's state legislative maps among the most unfair in the nation, with Princeton giving "F" grades to both the state assembly map and the state senate map in 2022.

Vox.com's Ian Millhiser called the Wisconsin’s Republican gerrymander so aggressive that it was practically impossible for Democrats to gain control of the state legislature.

"In 2018, for example, Democratic state assembly candidates received 54 percent of the popular vote in Wisconsin, but Republicans still won 63 of the assembly’s 99 seats — just three seats short of the two-thirds supermajority Republicans would need to override a gubernatorial veto," Millhiser wrote.

Now, three years later, Republicans are headed for the door as fairer maps end the likelihood of reelection in this state that voted for President Donald Trump in the last national election.

The MJS reports LeMahieu said he is looking forward to spending more time with his wife and “rooting for bold conservative reform from the sidelines."

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duck 8 25

48 Hills

https://48hills.org › 2025 › 08 › the-big-gop-money-attacking-newsoms-redistricting-plan

The big (GOP) money attacking Newsom's redistricting plan

6 days agoThe work of Charles Munger, Jr., who is a big GOP donor Here's the interesting thing: The mailers appear to be funded by Charles Munger Jr, the son of a billionaire investor who portrays himself as a supporter of fair elections.

Only include results for this site Hide site from these results

Deep-pocketed Republican donor launches 'misleading' mailers into Calif.

A quote plastered on the front of an anti-redistricting flyer prompted a clarifying statement from the organization

By Anabel Sosa,

Senior California Politics Reporter

Aug 27, 2025

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signs bills related to redrawing the state’s congressional maps on Aug. 21, 2025, in Sacramento, Calif.

Last week, scores of California households received a stark 8-by-11-inch flyer in the mail that declared, “We cannot save democracy by burning it down.” The mailer was sent out after Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that his proposal to redistrict California along partisan lines is headed to voters this November. But while the mailers, bankrolled by a major Bay Area donor to the Republic Party, were supposed to dissuade voters from approving the new congressional map, they included some misquotes that only led to more confusion.

The mailers were paid for by Protect Voters First, a campaign committee funded by Charles Munger Jr., a physicist who lives in Palo Alto and is the son of Warren Buffett’s late business partner. They urged voters to vote “no” on Proposition 50, the ballot measure for Newsom’s redistricting plan. The four-page mailer also had a quote from Gloria Chun Hoo, the president of the League of Women Voters of California, plastered on the front page: “Let’s protect the integrity of our democratic process and reject the dangerous idea of mid-cycle redistricting.”

The League of Women Voters, a leading good government group, immediately denied any involvement with Munger’s campaign.

A mailer from Protect Voters First in San Francisco. (Address details removed for privacy concerns.)

“You may have received a mailer from ‘Protect Voters First’ about the redistricting ballot initiative this November. By naming our organization and quoting Gloria Chun Hoo, the mailer wrongly implies that the League of Women Voters of California is part of their coalition and endorses the information contained in the flyer,” the organization said in a statement on Aug. 21. “This implication is not correct—we are not part of that coalition. The League of Women Voters of California did not authorize this action.”

A small attribution under the Hoo quote on the Protect Voters First flyer noted it had come from the Sacramento Bee. Hoo penned an op-ed for the paper that was published July 30, but it did not mention the Protect Voters First coalition.

Darius Kemp, the executive director of Common Cause, another good government group, said he was also quoted out of context. The flyer quoted him as saying “Point blank, this is a dangerous move” and defending independent redistricting as a system that works better. When reached for comment by SFGATE, Kemp referred to a news release issued by Common Cause on Aug. 22 that said, “Our position on mid-cycle redistricting is clear — we will not oppose mid-cycle redistricting efforts in states that meet our fairness criteria.”

Common Cause was initially critical of Newsom’s gerrymandering idea but later clarified its position before the mailers were sent out, saying in an Aug. 12 statement that the organization recognizes California’s effort as a “counterbalancing” measure in response to moves by Republicans in Texas. The organization has since said that the proposed new map for California meets its “fairness criteria.”

Charles Munger Jr., chairman of the Santa Clara County Republican Party, center, talks with Assemblyman Brian Jones, R-Santee, right, at the California Republican Party convention in Sacramento, Calif., Sunday, March 3, 2013.

While it’s still early days, it will be a two-month sprint for the “yes” and “no” campaigns to bring in millions of dollars — much of which will fund television ads and mailers like these that are targeted to sway undecided voters.

The national opposition campaign is led by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who is recruiting national donors to contribute to the Stop Sacramento’s Power Grab committee, according to Politico. He is reportedly aiming to bring in upward of $100 million. Protect Voters First has already dumped $10 million toward the “no” effort. Meanwhile, Newsom’s campaign committee, called the Election Rigging Response Act, has already brought in over $11 million to support the redrawing of California’s map.

So far, it’s not clear what impact Protect Voters First’s flyers will have. What is clear is that they’ve confused voters. Even with the clarifying statements from Hoo and Kemp, some people online raised questions about whether those clarifications would reach enough voters. Right after the flyers went out, Reddit sleuths were seeking answers about who was behind the effort. One poster called the flyer “misleading s—t,” while another dug deeper: “went to the website listed at the bottom. in small letters at the bottom of the webpage is the name of the sponsor of this whole thing: Charles Munger Jr. So googled him: He donates millions to Republican CA candidates. SO, you guys in CA need to be fighting that. This Munger guy has very deep pockets and is obviously trying to get people to oppose the CA redistricting.”

A mailer from Protect Voters First in San Francisco.

Amy Thoma Tan, a spokesperson for Protect Voters First, maintained that those quotes were taken directly from newspaper op-eds but did not directly respond to claims that they mislead voters into thinking these organizations support Munger’s coalition specifically. She also did not specify how many households were targeted.

“The mailers were sent to Californians, therefore focused on fighting the gerrymandering happening here. Our coalition opposes gerrymandering in all states,” Tan told SFGATE.

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an 8 25

no lnx

Arnold Schwarzenegger is right — but also so wrong

Sabrina Haake, Raw Story August 25, 2025

Arnold Schwarzenegger, a lifelong Republican, has benefitted the world in immeasurable ways.

As California’s 38th governor, he reduced the state's greenhouse gas emissions by moving the state away from fossil fuels and toward renewables, particularly hydrogen and solar. He sought and obtained a waiver to allow California to adopt more stringent greenhouse gas emissions standards for passenger vehicles than those mandated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He’s been named an EPA Climate Change Champion for his work in green energy, clean technology and the overall struggle against climate change.

Schwarzenegger’s climate progress is even more impressive considering the size of California’s economy, now the fourth-largest in the world. With a $4.1 trillion GDP, California’s economy is larger than that of almost all countries, including Japan, Russia, and India. Only the economies of China, Germany, and the US are larger.

Given the cost and complexity of transitioning industries away from fossil fuels, especially 20 years ago, Schwarzenegger’s success demonstrates deep intelligence and an ability to see beyond the immediate. His prescience makes his “vow to fight” California’s redistricting efforts all the more puzzling.

Texas is rigging the midterms

At Trump’s insistence, Texas is passing a law designed, by intent and craft, to rig future elections beginning with the 2025 midterms.

Sensing voter backlash, Trump demanded that Republicans gerrymander Texas years ahead of its scheduled census. Having just completed its congressional maps in 2021, Texas wasn’t due to re-draw them until 2031. On Wednesday, the Texas House of Representatives obliged, creating five new Republican-leaning Congressional seats. The Texas Senate is following suit and Abbott will soon sign it into law.

Republicans don’t hide the fact that they’re manipulating voting boundaries to carve up Democratic voters, merging them with heavily Republican districts where their votes will be outnumbered. The practice got the green light in 2019 in Rucho v. Common Cause, when the Supreme Court ruled that partisan gerrymandering was a political question beyond the reach of the federal courts.

Rigging elections to protect Trump in perpetuity portends too many disastrous consequences to list. So California Gov. Gavin Newsom is pushing back with a plan to redistrict five Congressional seats. Newsom vowed only to move forward with his plan if Texas states continued theirs. Texas is moving forward, and now Trump is pushing other red states to do the same.

Arnie is right about gerrymandering

Newsom’s “Election Rigging Response Act” is a defensive move to counteract what Trump and Republicans are doing. The challenge for California is that in 2010, when Schwarzenegger was governor, an independent commission approved by voters redrew maps with the laudable goal of reducing partisanship in districting.

Although Newsom’s plan would only temporarily suspend the commission's authority, Schwarzenegger has come out swinging against it, hoping to “terminate gerrymandering.”

Schwarzenegger, who successfully campaigned for independent redistricting in California, argues correctly that gerrymandering undermines democracy and voter trust. His spokesperson said Schwarzenegger “calls gerrymandering evil, and he means that. He thinks it’s truly evil for politicians to take power from people.”

Schwarzenegger isn’t wrong. It is truly evil, as well as despotic, for politicians to choose their voters instead of the other way around. But if Newsom and other Democrat governors fail to counter Trump’s partisan redistricting war in Texas and elsewhere, Republicans will seize power nationwide, possibly permanently.

Schwarzenegger’s ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’ principle is no defense to concentration camps, book bans, state forced births, and Trump’s ever-spreading police state, to say nothing of accelerated climate destruction.

Welfare state v. donor state

Compared to California, Texas is a welfare state. In 2022, Texas received approximately $71.1 billion more from the federal government than it paid in. In contrast, California taxpayers pay far more than they receive from the federal government. In financial year 2023-24, California’s total federal taxes were $806 billion — nearly twice as much as Texas, which contributed $417 billion.

Comparative economic health is relevant here because most of the Republican-led states seeking to rig elections for Trump are also welfare states presenting drains on federal resources.

California leads not only Texas, but the nation in Fortune 500 companies, high-tech industries, new business start-ups, venture capital access, manufacturing output, and agriculture.

Despite their decades-long campaign claims, Republican economies create poverty, not wealth. Nineteen of the 20 richest states are predominantly Democratic, while 19 of the 20 poorest states are predominantly Republican. Letting poverty-producing states steer the national economy is economically backward, especially as they reject science, pretend climate change is a hoax, and ignore evidence that climate devastation is accelerating.

The partisan redistricting fight could deliver a fatal blow to democracy. Schwarzenegger is right about that, as he’s been right about so many existential challenges. The Brennan Center for Justice warns of an extremely dangerous time for American democracy: “Gerrymandering … flips the democratic process on its head, letting politicians choose their voters instead of the other way around.”

But that’s where we are: the president’s party is committed to seeking power at all costs.

As Schwarzenegger continues to lead globally on climate, pushing back against ignorance from the right that threatens to drown coastal regions and incinerate habitats out of existence, he should see that California’s redistricting response is a matter of survival. California voters will stand on Schwarzenegger’s ceremony at the nation’s peril.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

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an 8 25

Texas Republicans' redistricting/gerrymandering scheme for U.S. House of Representatives seats is getting a scathing response from Democrats, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom — who is recommending that members of his party "fight fire with fire" and engage in aggressive gerrymandering of their own in blue states. Liberal economist Robert Reich wholeheartedly agrees, urging "other blue states" to "follow California's lead" and play hardball with Republicans.

But in an article published on August 14, Salon's Russell Payne warns that the redistricting/gerrymandering plan being pushed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republicans is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes the GOP's broad scheme to maintain control the United States' federal government.

That broad MAGA game plan, according to Payne, includes not only maintaining control of both branches of Congress in the 2026 midterms, but also, keeping the White House in 2028 — despite having wildly unpopular ideas.

"The new Texas maps are part of a larger redistricting play, in which Republicans think they can squeeze out a dozen new GOP seats from states such as Texas, Florida, Missouri and Indiana," Payne explains. "The redistricting play from Republicans, however, is only part of a larger campaign to totally change the state of play in the House of Representatives. If successful, that effort could see Republicans pick up more than 40 seats without having to win any more support from voters, according to GOP operatives."

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The Salon journalist continues, "GOP strategist Alex deGrasse, an advisor to Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., spoke about the emerging plan on Steve Bannon's 'War Room,' outlining three changes that Republicans are counting on to bail them out of potential democratic accountability: partisan gerrymandering; a Supreme Court ruling that guts the Voting Rights Act; and an unprecedented and unconstitutional mid-decade Census."

The U.S. Census is conducted every ten years, mostly recently in 2020. But instead of waiting until 2030, President Donald Trump, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk are pushing for a new U.S. Census. Kirk told the Daily Caller that a mid-2020s Census could "potentially subtract 20 electoral votes from Democrats in the Electoral College system, as congressional seat appropriation is directly correlated with Electoral College totals."

If the GOP succeeds with their scheme, Payne warns, the result could be long-term minority domination of the federal government — from the White House to both branches of Congress to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"The GOP's Census plan will almost certainly be challenged in court," Payne notes. "Federal law holds that a mid-decade Census can be conducted, but not used for apportionment. And, since the country’s founding, the U.S. has conducted a Census once a decade for the purposes of apportionment."

Read Russell Payne's full Salon article at this link.

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AN 8 25

FASCISM

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has agreed to a request from U.S. Senator John Cornyn to locate the Texas Democratic state lawmakers who exited the state in an effort to deny Republicans a quorum—part of a broader attempt to block Governor Greg Abbott and President Donald Trump’s push to redraw congressional maps and boost GOP-held House seats, the Texas Republican announced Thursday.

“We cannot allow these rogue legislators to avoid their constitutional responsibilities,” Senator Cornyn said in a statement that referred to the Texas Democrats as “supposed lawmakers.”

Axios reported that “Texas issued civil warrants for the Democratic lawmakers, but local law enforcement can’t make arrests outside the state.”

The Texas Democrats are in Illinois, according to that state’s Democratic governor, JB Pritzker.

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Legal and political experts are blasting the move.

“There’s literally no federal law applicable to this situation. None,” Governor Pritzker Jessica Yellin on Wednesday, according to Axios.

“The key question here is on what grounds would the FBI be doing this,” wrote MSNBC Justice and Intelligence correspondent Ken Dilanian. “What is the crime they are investigating? The FBI can’t just use its vast surveillance powers to locate random citizens. In fact, that’s what conservatives have long been so concerned about re FISA authorities.”

“This is a patently unlawful, unconstitutional abuse of federal power,” constitutional law professor and political scientist Anthony Michael Kreis said on Thursday.

“We are in a deeply dangerous, illiberal place in America when the federal government will deploy law enforcement to force state legislators to act on legislation that’s contrary to their conscience and an attempt to undermine free elections,” Kreis added.

The Atlantic’s Dr. Norman Ornstein, a political scientist, addressed Senator Cornyn: “John, I understand your need to tilt crazy right to counter your lunatic primary challenger. But calling on the FBI to act illegally and wrongly to go after Texas Democrats is beneath you, and simply shameful. You used to believe in the law and the Constitution.”

Asking what “criminal interest” the FBI could have in this, U.S. Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY) called it “yet another disgusting partisan abuse of power by the FBI,” and said that “any agent asked to assist should refuse to do so.”

Watch video of Governor Pritzker below or at this link.

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OMFG

NOTE PROJECTION RUBBER REVERSE 2x

an 8 25

Trump is reviving his years-old plan to exclude undocumented immigrants from the U.S. census, which legal scholars say is in direct conflict with the Constitution’s requirement to count all persons.

“I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,” Trump wrote Thursday morning. “People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

The President’s remarks appear to align with his plan to redistrict red states to deliver more GOP-controlled seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, where Republicans currently hold a razor-thin majority.

Absent court orders, it is extremely rare for a state, outside of the census window, to redistrict with the direct goal of providing more seats to a particular party, and the United States has never conducted a decennial census officially excluding undocumented immigrants.

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The Fourteenth Amendment states that “the whole number of persons in each State” is to be counted.

On Wednesday night, Trump White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller claimed that during the first Trump presidency, Democrats “rigged” the 2020 census by including undocumented immigrants, causing them to gain an extra 20 to 30 seats in the House.

“At every level this country—Illinois, Chicago, New York, Massachusetts—Democrats have gerrymandered the vote beyond recognition to try to maintain their advantage in the House elections,” Miller alleged.

“Democrats rigged the 2020 census by including illegal aliens,” he charged, despite every census in U.S. history, per the U.S. Constitution, having done so.

Independent analysis contradicts Miller’s claim.

“A Pew Research Center analysis found that if unauthorized immigrants were excluded from the 2020 apportionment count, three states could have each lost a congressional seat,” Axios reported.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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common cause does not want retaliation 7 25 tx

dem docket delay OG tx midterm redist ok’d by tx scotus? sued Delay for racketeering

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7 25 TEXAS GERRY GAVIN PRTIZKER ILL HOST DEM REP REFUGEE

'This is a war': Hochul joins blue-state push in brewing gerrymander arms race

David Badash

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AN 7 25

Six years after Trump demanded Geogia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “find” him enough votes to win in 2020, Republicans are still trying to find him votes.

“Now, he’s calling on Texas Republicans to find five congressional seats — before a single vote is cast in the 2026 midterms. And the GOP is answering that call,” said MSNBC co-host Symone Sanders Townsend.

Townsend referenced Texas Republicans proposing a heavily gerrymandered congressional map this week that gives Republicans control of 30 out of 38 House seats, despite 42 percent of the state voting for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in 2024.

If enacted, Townsend said the Republican map would “erase Democratic power in one of the most diverse states in the nation.”

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“We’ve seen this kind of maneuver before,” said Townsend. “After the 2010 tea party wave election, Republicans launched a nationwide campaign called the Redistricting Majority Project (REDMAP) to win control of state legislatures ahead of the 2011 redistricting cycle. That effort paid off. Republicans gerrymandered themselves into durable congressional majorities in states like North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin. A decade later, we’re still living with the consequences.”

The map, she said, “slices up Black and Latino communities,” particularly in urban centers like Dallas and Houston and gives an advantage to a white population that only comprises about 40 percent of the state’s population. The Texas Tribune reportsat least 54 percent of lawmakers were white in 2023, and half are white men.

“Now, Trump is attempting a mid-decade REDMAP 2.0 in Texas, a state that already had one of the most gerrymandered congressional maps in the country and has a long history of using racial gerrymandering to suppress voters of color,” Townsend said.

This is part of a broader Republican Party strategy, said Townsend, which targets not only congressional maps but also state legislative lines.

“And that matters, because America’s policy doesn’t begin in Washington,” she said. “It starts in state capitols. Bathroom bills. Book bans. Voter roll purgers. Attacks on trans children. These policies are born in Republican-controlled legislatures and then bubble up to the national level.”

She added that Republicans know this, and "have been playing the long game," unlike Democrats

The public is already fighting back with hundreds of protestors showing up at redistricting hearings in Texas this week, but Townsend said Democrats need to get serious about investing in and flipping state seats or they could “lose a fair shot at the House not just in 2026, but until 2032. A full decade of minority rule.”

Read the full MSNBC report at this link.

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an 7 25

A prominent U.S. Senator is warning the Republican Party that if it continues its promise to redistrict their states, eliminating some Democratic-held House seats, she will “go nuclear” and work to do the same. It is rare for a state to redistrict at any time except after the decennial census, but top Democrats have indicated they are prepared to take action in several states.

President Donald Trump recently directed Texas to redistrict, declaring he wanted five of the 13 seats in the Lone Star State currently held by Democrats to become Republican. That alone would make Speaker Mike Johnson’s job easier — he currently oversees the narrowest margin in the House in nearly a century.

“I don’t know if it’s unprecedented what they’re trying to do in Texas,” U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) told Axios on Wednesday (video below). “They’re trying to pick their voters, right? They’re trying to redraw the lines in the middle of a decade so that they have more seats, right? It is very open and obvious.”

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Senator Slotkin went on to explain that in her home state of Michigan—a critical swing state—voters added a constitutional amendment against gerrymandering, in response to “how bad it is when politicians get to draw their own districts.”

She noted that when the citizens’ commission is in charge of redistricting her state, it makes it more competitive.

“But I will tell you this,” Slotkin warned, “if they’re gonna go nuclear in Texas, I’m gonna go nuclear in other places.”

“I’m not gonna, like, fight with one arm tied behind my back,” said Slotkin, a former CIA analyst and Department of Defense official. “I don’t want to do that, but if they’re proposing to rig the game, like, we’re gonna get in that game and fight.”

House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has indicated he wants to reorganize the congressional maps in California, New York, New Jersey, Minnesota, and Washington state, to help Democrats pick up as many seats as possible—if the courts allow it.

“We have a responsibility of making sure that we look at every single state of the union and do what we can to ensure that we maximize fairness in those jurisdictions,” Jeffries told CNN. “Some of the best and brightest lawyers in the country are looking at every single aspect of what’s possible in these states.”

Elections analyst Philip Germain responded to Slotkin’s remarks.

“Senator Slotkin continues to understand the moment we’re in and charts a course more Dems should follow,” he wrote. “Democrats cannot continue to ‘play nice’ at the expense of being forced into a competitive authoritarian system of government. We must fight now or get locked out of power.”

U.S. Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) on Tuesday wrote:

“It’s time for Democrats to understand the existential threat. Republicans aren’t playing around and they will do this as long as it takes to keep power. It’s time we dilute VRA [Voting Rights Act] districts. There are plenty of Democratic districts that have 65-80% Dem performance.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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an no lnx

The Supreme Court has a new playbook — and Democrats need to adapt before it's too late

Thom Hartmann February 25, 2025

Imagine that the NFL made a rule change that allowed every team to have an extra three men on the field during the game — but half of the NFL teams, protesting the new rule as “wrong” and “too much of a deviation from fairness and norms” refused to add the three players to their own lineups.

Who’d be winning almost every game? Who’d be going to the Superbowl?

This is an almost perfect analogy to what Democrats are doing today with electoral politics.

In 2013, five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court changed the rules for our elections, gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act. They ruled, over liberal justice’s objections, that it was just fine to allow states to gerrymander based on presumed political affiliation and on race (with a tiny fig leaf required) and to throw millions of people off the voter rolls, again based on race or their living in an area that votes heavily for one party or the other.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in her Shelby County v Holder dissent:

“Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”

This was followed by two other corrupt all-Republican decisions, Rucho v Common Causeand Alexander v NAACP, that expanded the ability of states to gerrymander their political districts to favor one political party over another to consolidate control over state legislatures and the US House of Representatives.

Additionally, the all-Republican 2018 Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute decisionmade it easy for states to target voters with postcards that look like junk mail and throw them off the voting rolls if they failed to return them.

As a result of this rapid-fire series of corrupt voting-related decisions Republican-controlled states have:

— Passed hundreds of laws making it harder to register to vote, particularly for poor, Black, female, disabled, and elderly voters,

— Thrown, just last year, 4.2 million mostly Democratic voters off the rolls or refused to count their votes, leading, as journalist Greg Palast documented last month, to the 2024 election of Donald Trump and Republicans seizing control of the House and Senate, and,

— Gerrymandered their states even more heavily and surgically to give Republicans a solid hold on the House of Representatives and multiple state legislatures.

Democratically controlled states, meanwhile, have done nothing.

Actually, Democratic controlled states have done worse than nothing; many, citing “fairness” and “the way it should be done” have stopped gerrymandering altogether. None have engaged in any sort of voter suppression; to the contrary, most have expanded mail-in voting and other options to make voting easier for both Democrats and Republicans.

The result is plain and reflects the obvious goal of the rightwingers on the Supreme Court: Republicans today control the House, Senate, White House, and a handful of state houses that otherwise would have gone to Democrats.

North Carolina is a great example; it’s politically a roughly 50/50 state, which is why a statewide office like Governor has repeatedly gone to a Democrat. Nonetheless, Republicans hold 10 out of the state’s 13 seats in the US House of Representatives because of gerrymanders. If North Carolina hadn’t been gerrymandered, the US House would today be in Democratic hands.

Ditto for Alabama, Florida, Texas, Georgia, Louisiana, Ohio, and Utah, providing Republicans with seven additional House seats that would have gone to Democrats without gerrymandering.

Meanwhile, in 2008 California did away with gerrymanders because they were “unfair,” handing as many as 4 mostly permanent House seats to Republicans. Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, and Virginia are moving in the same direction.

But that’s just the beginning.

Another strategy that the GOP has rolled out in a big way to suppress the vote in Blue areas of Red states is “strict signature matching.” They primarily use this against voters who’ve succeeded in obtaining vote-by-mail ballots, which are authenticated by comparing the signature on the envelope with the voter’s registration card.

Because signatures change over time and often vary a lot when people are in a hurry, this is low-hanging fruit for the GOP. Last year they rolled out a program to field an “army” of 50,000 “poll watchers,” including interviewing candidates from among white supremacist militia groups, for the 2024 election.

Democrats, on the other hand, generally go out of their way to allow for small variations, noting that “people’s signatures often change as they age or if they’re in a hurry.”

And then there are the voter roll purges that used to be illegal.

In multiple Republican states, particularly Georgia, Ohio, Florida, and Texas, mailing out postcards into urban areas to purge people from the voting rolls has become a routine practice. (It was Ohio that took the issue to the Supreme Court in the Husted case.)

This is because purging voters — by the tens of millions every election cycle — is where Republicans find their best result. As a Demos report notes:

“Between the close of registration for the 2020 general election and the close of registration for the 2022 general election, states reported removing 19,260,000 records from their voter registration rolls. This was equal to 8.5% of the total number of voters who were registered in the United States as of the close of registration for the 2022 general election.”

Additionally, 17 million voters were purged in the two years leading up to the 2018 election, fully ten percent of America’s voting population, according to the Brennan Center.

Given that the most radical purges took place among Black and youth voters in Blue cities in Republican-controlled Red states, those 8.5 percent and 10 percent “national averages” could well be two or three times that percentage in the states where these purges were concentrated.

Remember George W. Bush’s 537-vote “victory” over Al Gore in 2000? Just a few months before that election, as the BBC documented and reported, Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris purged over 90,000 Black voters from the rolls because, Harris alleged, their names were “similar” to the names of felons in Texas.

More recently, the Brennan Center found that just between 2014 and 2016, in the two years leading up to the Hillary/Trump presidential election, over 14 million people were purged from voter rolls, largely in Republican-controlled states. Then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp purged over a million voters in Georgia alone in 2018, leading up to his 50,000-vote win that year against Stacey Abrams.

Calling the findings “disturbing,” the Brennan Center noted:

“Almost 4 million more names were purged from the rolls between 2014 and 2016 [just after the Supreme Court legalized large-scale no-oversight voter purges in 2013] than between 2006 and 2008. This growth in the number of removed voters represented an increase of 33 percent—far outstripping growth in both total registered voters (18 percent) and total population (6 percent).”

It’s time for Democrats to start fighting back: They need to put their three extra men on the field.

— Democratic states, instead of rejecting gerrymanders, should start to aggressively gerrymander like Republican states have done; it could produce a near-permanent Democratic majority in the House of Representatives.

— Democratic states should start mailing postcards into rural Red areas, purging Republican voters who fail to return them from the rolls.

— Democratic election judges should, as Republicans often do, aggressive challenge mail-in voter’s signatures in GOP-heavy areas, leading to the rejection of their ballots.

None of these things are “fair” but all are “legal.” It’s called fighting fire with fire.

And if Democrats were to do these simple things, in addition to winning more seats in the House and state legislatures, it would evoke howls of “unfair” from Republicans. Those protests, in turn, may even lead to Republicans working with Democrats to reform our voting system to make it easy for everybody in America to vote. (Not holding my breath, but just saying…)

Instead, Republicans are on the verge of passing the SAVE act that will prevent millions, perhaps tens of millions, of married women who haven’t gone to court to change their names after marriage from voting in 2026 and 2028. And Democratic leadership isn’t even making a concerted effort to let Americans know about it!

As distasteful as it may be, Democrats need to suck it up and fight Republicans on the field by using the new rules the Republican-controlled Supreme Court has defined over the past decade.

Otherwise, prepare for even more losses in the next two election cycles.

NOW READ: That Trump 'backlash' may not be real — here's why

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A top Florida Republican running for Congress asserted this week that the GOP has been drawing congressional districts to benefit Republicans, a move that brought criticism from one of his primary rivals.

At a campaign event in North Florida on Monday night, Florida Chief Financial Officer and District 1 congressional candidate Jimmy Patronis acknowledged that the district was gerrymandered by state Republicans in the 1990s, and that the party has continued to maintain that practice ever since.

The remark came at a candidate forum hosted by the Niceville Republican Women Federated.

Patronis is one of ten Republicans running to win the GOP nomination for the seat in the special primary election slated for Jan. 28. The seat is considered one of the most conservative congressional districts in the state, with the winner of the primary slated to face Democrat Gay Valimont and other write-in and non-party affiliated candidates on April 1.

Screenshot of video of Jimmy Patronis speaking at a campaign event in Niceville on Jan. 6, 2024 (video courtesy of the Patronis campaign)

“Let me give you a little civics lesson,” Patronis says to the audience in a video clip obtained by the Phoenix. “Do you know why District 1 is where it is? It’s because a Republican Legislature is in charge right now – and this is what we’ve done since Daniel Webster was speaker of the House as a Republican – we try to create as many Republican congressional seats as possible. Okay? So what happened? You get gerrymandered lines.”

Daniel Webster served as Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives in 1996-1998. He’s served in Congress representing districts in Central Florida since 2010.

Gerrymandering is the practice of a political party dividing or arranging election districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage. As a way of stopping that from happening, Florida voters in 2010 overwhelmingly approved what were called the Fair Districts Amendments to the state constitution to stop elected officials from manipulating voting maps to keep themselves and their party in power.

In the case of Florida, Republicans have controlled both chambers of the Florida Legislature since 1996.

Patronis is from PC

In a statement, Joel Rudman, a physician and former legislator who resigned from the House of Representatives to run in the GOP primary in District 1, blasted Patronis’ comments.

“I resent the accusation that Republican leadership would embark on anything unethical or unconstitutional when creating district lines, when in fact, the most gerrymandered district in history (CD-5) that stretched across the Georgia state line from Tallahassee to Jacksonville, was actually Democrat. The fact remains that, for his entire political career, Mr. Patronis has been synonymous with Panama City, which is squarely in Congressional District 2.

“I am disappointed that the candidate would blame others for his lack of residency in our district. I vehemently denounce those comments accusing Republicans of gerrymandering and respectfully ask the candidate to apologize for that statement casting aspersions on our Republican leadership.”

As Rudman noted, Patronis’ voting address is in Panama City, which isn’t in District 1. However, under the U.S. Constitution, candidates aren’t required to live in the U.S. House district in which they run so long as they are a resident of the state. He has been endorsed in the race by President-elect Donald Trump.

The seat had been held by Matt Gaetz from 2016 until this past November. That’s when Gaetz resigned from congress after he was nominated by Trump to serve as his attorney general. But a week later Gaetz announced that because of growing doubts that he could be confirmed because of a House Ethics panel investigation about alleged payments for sex, he would withdraw his name for consideration to head the U.S. Justice Department.

Patronis’ campaign did not respond to the Phoenix’s request for comment.

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES. SUBSCRIBE

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

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an 11 24

The 2024 presidential election was particularly bleak for Democrats, as Republicans swept every battleground state in the Electoral College and even won the popular vote for the first time in 20 years. But at the state level, Democratic candidates notched several big wins that will allow the party to have a few extra arrows in its quiver over the next few years.

The Guardian reported that in multiple state legislatures — including statehouses in several key swing states — Democrats are now well-positioned to use their new gains to frustrate President-elect Donald Trump's agenda in their own backyards. In addition to keeping three governorships in Democratic hands, the party also managed to flip numerous Republican seats in both chambers of several state capitols.

Some of the bigger marquee wins include keeping their one-seat majority in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, despite Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Bob Casey (D-Penn.) losing at the federal level. In North Carolina, Democrats elected Attorney General Josh Stein to become the next governor. Stein dispatched Republican nominee Mark Robinson by a whopping 14-point margin despite Harris losing the Tar Heel State by more than 173,000 votes. North Carolina Democrats also managed to finally wipe out Republicans' legislative supermajority, meaning Stein's future vetoes can't be overridden.

READ MORE:[Mark Robinson on track for 'largest defeat in more than 40 years' of any NC gov candidate

Daniel Squadron, who is the co-founder of the States Project, told the Guardian that Democratic state legislative candidates outperforming Harris was likely due to both their reliance on face-to-face campaigning, and on the high quality field of state house and senate candidates across the country.

"That is the only way it was possible to hold the Pennsylvania house when the statewide results were so disappointing," Squadron said. "It’s the reason the North Carolina house supermajority was broken."

One of the most significant victories for Democrats on election night was in Wisconsin, where Democrats flipped 10 seats in the state assembly and four seats in the state senate. This win notably came a year after the Wisconsin Supreme Court — which has a 4-3 liberal majority — struck down Republicans' heavily gerrymandered state legislative maps in favor of fairer ones.

According to the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, Wisconsin's prior legislative districts were among the most unfair in the United States, with Princeton giving "F" grades to both the state assembly map and the state senate map in 2022. Vox writer Ian Millhiser referred to the Badger State's old maps "America's worst gerrymander" in 2023. Democrats are poised to make additional gains in the Wisconsin legislature in the 2026 elections, when the governor's mansion will also be on the line.

Andrew Whitley, who is the executive director of the Wisconsin senate Democratic caucus, attributed his party's gains to candidates' deep knowledge of local issues in their own respective districts. He also pointed out that candidates were able to use hot-button national issues like abortion bans to convince voters to send them to the capitol.

“It’s very rare when you have bottom-of-the-ticket state legislators over-perform Kamala and Senator [Tammy] Baldwin,” Whitley said. “They worked their a—es off.”

“It’s going to be truly historic,” he added. “Gone are the days where a manufactured majority can override vetoes and pass super-regressive policies. We’re actually going to have some balance, and we’re on the cusp of not only having a balanced legislature, but a trifecta.”

Click here to read the Guardian's full article.

READ MORE:[Ex-North Carolina GOP gov admits Republicans knew Mark Robinson was a 'ticking time bomb'

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North Carolina GOP says voters have no right to fair elections ELLSWORTH TOOHEY

BB 6 24 Gerry

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aha a sort of force multiplier? varIous oTher dirty tricks supported by it eg vote harvest

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pastor Mark Harris — whose previous primary election win in 2018 was tossed out after an alleged election fraud scheme — has once again won the Republican nomination for a newly drawn US House district deemed as safely Republican.

FiveThirtyEight's Nathaniel Rakich tweeted that Harris officially won the Republican primary to replace outgoing Rep. Dan Bishop (R-North Carolina), who is now the GOP nominee for Attorney General in the Tar Heel State. Harris won the competitive primary in spite of a controversy from 2018 that resulted in the bipartisan North Carolina State Board of Elections calling a new election the following year.

In 2018, Harris narrowly won the general election to the 9th Congressional District by a little more than 900 total votes against Democrat Dan McCready. However, Leslie McCrae Dowless — a consultant who worked for his campaign — was alleged to have illegally handled absentee ballots, which is a felony. Dowless was described as a "shady character" by Harris' son, John, amid allegations that he engaged in similar underhanded practices with absentee ballots in 2016.

"Witnesses told state officials that Dowless, with help of his assistants, gathered hundreds of absentee ballots from Bladen County in 2018," the AP reported. "Those workers testified they were directed to collect blank or incomplete ballots, forge signatures on them and even fill in votes for local candidates."

After investigators compiled a mountain of evidence suggesting Dowless was engaging in underhanded efforts to compromise absentee ballot voting, Harris pivoted from urging election officials to certify his victory to calling for a new election. He ultimately avoided criminal charges in the investigation.

"Through the testimony I've listened to over the past three days, I believe a new election should be called," Harris said at the time. "It's become clear to me that the public's confidence in the 9th District seat general election has been undermined to an extent that a new election is warranted."

But now, with his primary victory on Tuesday night, Harris is poised to cruise to a general election victory in the new district in spite of the scandal that rocked his political career six years ago. This is especially true given how GOP-friendly the district has become after the North Carolina Supreme Court adopted a map regarded as one of the most biased redistricting efforts in recent memory.

In late 2023, the Brennan Center for Justice reported that the Tar Heel State's highest court reversed a prior 2022 decision rejecting maps that were deemed unfair to voters of color. That decision notably came after a 2022 election in which two conservatives won two additional seats on the court, granted in response to a request from Republican state lawmakers. The new, more conservative court concluded that gerrymandering was a "political" question and that the judiciary didn't need to involve itself.

While the old maps each had seven predominantly Republican districts and seven Democratic districts, the new maps effectively erased four of those Democratic seats.

"The new map easily ranks, along with Texas’s, as one of the two most extreme congressional maps currently in place," the Brennan Center wrote. "Indeed, the Republicans’ new North Carolina gerrymander is so durable that even an exceptionally strong Democratic wave year (think 2018) would not dislodge it. Even under the rosiest of foreseeable scenarios, Democrats win at most 4 of 14 seats. Put another way, Democrats could win a solid majority of the ballots cast for Congress, but their candidates would win less than 30 percent of seats thanks to Republicans’ carefully engineered gerrymander."

In addition to Harris' victory, Republican Mark Robinson's victory in the GOP gubernatorial primary also made headlines on Tuesday night. Robinson has called the LGBTQ+ community "filth," and likened them to "maggots" and "flies." He also said the Covid-19 pandemic was a "globalist" plot to oust Donald Trump from the White House.

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defacto gerry

at their annual convention in late May, the Texas Republican Party approved their new 50-page 2024 platform — which calls for the Bible to be taught in public schools, doctors who perform abortions to be charged with homicide, and the United States to permanently withdraw from the United Nations.

The Washington Post's Karen Tumulty, in a June 3 column, attacks the "hair-raising" proposals as proof that "the id of a political party" has "gone off the deep end." Similarly, The New Republic's Matt Ford describes the Texas GOP's platform as "outlandish" in an article published on June 4.

But Ford emphasizes that one part of the platform goes way beyond "outlandish" and is downright "ominous" — a proposal that, Ford warns, "would effectively end representative democracy in Texas" and "keep the state firmly in GOP hands even as it becomes increasingly diverse and urban."

Ford describes the proposal as an "electoral college of sorts for Texas statewide races."

The platform reads, "The State Legislature shall cause to be enacted a State Constitutional Amendment to add the additional criteria for election to a statewide office to include the majority vote of the counties with each individual county being assigned one vote allocated to the popular majority vote winner of each individual county."

This proposal, according to Ford, is "born from the party's fear that it will not rule Texas forever."

Texas is still a red state, but some Democratic strategists believe it is light red rather than deep red at this point. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was narrowly reelected in 2018, defeating former Rep. Beto O'Rourke by only 2 percent. And President Joe Biden lost Texas by roughly 6 percent in 2020 — compared to the double-digit wins GOP presidential nominees typically enjoyed in Texas during the 1990s and 2000s.

READ MORE: '[Ted Cruz isn't fooling anyone': Texas senator slammed over outreach to Democrats

But those statewide election results would have been much different under the proposal in the Texas GOP's new platform.

"It is hard to imagine that such a system as the Texas GOP has proposed would comply with the one-person, one-vote principle, to put it lightly," Ford explains. "Texas has 254 counties, some of which are extremely sparsely populated. Loving County, which is on the state's western border with New Mexico, counted only 64 residents during the 2020 census, making it the least populous county in the United States. Eight Texas counties are home to fewer than 1000 people, and an additional 86 counties each have fewer than 10,000 inhabitants."

Ford continues, "Adopting a county-majority requirement for statewide elections would obviously cement Republicans into perpetual power in statewide races. In modern American politics, Democratic voters tend to be concentrated in urban areas, while Republican voters are overwhelmingly popular in rural counties. President Joe Biden received 1.9 million votes just from the three Texas counties in 2020 that cover Houston, Dallas, and Austin."

The New Republic journalist points out that a "county-majority requirement" in Texas "would dramatically shift the state's electoral power toward its rural residents in general."

"Roughly 3.9 million people live in the least-populated half of Texas counties," Ford observes. "They would enjoy an effective veto in statewide elections over the other 26 million or so Texans who live in denser areas."

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at Texas GOP convention, Republicans call for spiritual warfare]

(https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/28/texas-gop-convention-elections-religion-delegates-platform/)" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

SAN ANTONIO — From his booth in the exhibit hall of the Texas GOP’s 2024 convention, Steve Hotze saw an army of God assembled before him.

For four decades, Hotze, an indicted election fraud conspiracy theorist, has helmed hardline anti-abortion movements and virulently homophobic campaigns against LGTBQ+ rights, comparing gay people to Nazis and helping popularize the “groomer” slur that paints them as pedophiles. Once on the fringes, Hotze said Saturday that he was pleased by the party's growing embrace of his calls for spiritual warfare with “demonic, Satanic forces” on the left.

![](https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/JFkqsROPRlcFcL99azhBNmhW0bY=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/ee33b4da54577749111fe238d8b0bd90/0905%20Impeach%20Trial%20Day%201%20BD%20TT%2013.jpg)

From left: Conservative activists Steven Hotze and Jared Woodfill enter the Senate gallery during the afternoon session of Day 1 of the Ken Paxton impeachment trial in the Texas Senate on Sept. 5, 2023. Credit: Bob Daemmrich for The Texas Tribune

“People that aren’t in Christ have wicked, evil hearts,” he said. “We are in a battle, and you have to take a side.”

Those beliefs were common at the party’s three-day biennial convention last week, at which delegates adopted a series of new policies that would give the party unprecedented control over the electoral process and further infuse Christianity into public life.

Delegates approved rules that ban Republican candidates — as well as judges — who are censured by the party from appearing on primary ballots for two years, a move that would give a small group of Republicans the ability to block people from running for office, should it survive expected legal challenges. The party’s proposed platform also included planks that would effectively lock Democrats out of statewide office by requiring candidates to win a majority of Texas’ 254 counties, many of which are dark-red but sparsely populated, and called for laws requiring the Bible to be taught in public schools.

Those moves, delegates and leaders agreed, were necessary amid what they say is an existential fight with a host of perceived enemies, be it liberals trying to indoctrinate their children through “gender ideology” and Critical Race Theory, or globalists waging a war on Christianity through migration.

![](https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/fzcMrsQQEKXRO3FPEF7YT6aOTHo=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/da9c4842dbc8e8cb35ddbcee11590f3b/0523%20GOP%20Convention%20EH%20TT%2031.jpg)

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick speaks during the Texas GOP Convention on Thursday, May 23, 2024 in San Antonio. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune

Those fears were stoked by elected officials in almost every speech given over the week. “They want to take God out of the country, and they want the government to be God,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Thursday morning.

“Our battle is not against flesh and blood,” Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, said Friday. “It is against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

”Look at what the Democrats have done,” U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said Saturday. “If you were actively trying to destroy America, what would you do differently?”

*[“The house is on fire”: Texas GOP plots its next chapter amid civil war, depleted staff, funding drops]

Controlling elections

The Texas GOP’s conventions have traditionally amplified the party’s most hardline activists and views. In 2022, for instance, delegates approved a platform that included calls for a referendum on Texas secession; resistance to the “Great Reset,” a conspiracy theory that claims global elites are using environmental and social policies to enslave the world’s population; proclamations that homosexuality is an “abnormal lifestyle choice”; and a declaration that President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected.

The 2024 convention went a step further.

It was the first Texas GOP convention set against the backdrop of a civil war that was sparked by the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton and inflamed by scandals over white supremacists and antisemites working for the party’s top funders, West Texas oil billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks. This year’s convention was also sparsely attended compared to past years, which some longtime party members said helped the Dunn and Wilks faction further consolidate their power and elect their candidate, Abraham George, for party chair.

“What we're seeing right now is a shift toward more populism,” said Summer Wise, a former member of the party’s executive committee who has attended most conventions since 2008, including last week’s. “And the [party’s] infrastructure, leadership, decision-making process, power and influence are being controlled by a small group of people.”

(https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/_X93OkVqWjKf0MF0YqIovXarXM4=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/37d777dfbb61f282f112bd04a575cbbc/0523%20GOP%20Convention%20EH%20TT%2055.jpg)

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, wave to attendees during the Republican Party of Texas convention in San Antonio on Thursday, May 23, 2024. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune

That shift was most evident, she said, in a series of changes to the party’s rules that further empower its leaders to punish dissent. The party approved changes that would dramatically increase the consequences of censures — which were used most recently to punish House Speaker Dade Phelan for his role in impeaching Paxton, and against U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales for voting for gun safety legislation.

Under the changes, any person who is censured by the party would be banned for two years from appearing on GOP primary ballots — including judges, who are elected in partisan races but expected to be politically neutral once on the bench. The party also voted to unilaterally close its primaries, bypassing the Legislature, in a move intended to keep Democrats from voting in Republican primaries.

“It’s pretty hypocritical,” Wise said of the changes, which legal experts and some party members expect will face legal challenges. “Republicans have always opposed activist judges, and this seems to be obligating judges to observe and prioritize party over law — which is straight-up judicial activism.”

The convention came amid a broader embrace of Christian nationalism on the right, which falsely claims that the United States’ founding was God-ordained and that its institutions and laws should reflect their conservative, Christian views. Experts have found strong correlations between Christian nationalist beliefs and opposition to migration, religious pluralism and the democratic process.

*[Proposed Texas GOP platform calls for the Bible in schools, electoral changes that would lock Democrats out of statewide office]

Wise said she has seen parts of the party similarly shift toward dogmatic political and religious views that have been used “to justify or rationalize corrupting the institution and stripping away its integrity, traditions, fundamental and established principles" — as if “‘God wants it, so we can rewrite the rules.’”

“Being Republican and being Christian have become the same thing,” she said. “If you're accused of being a (Republican in Name Only), you're essentially not as Christian as someone else. … God help you if you're Jewish.”

The “rabbit hole”

Bob Harvey is a proud member of the “Grumpy Old Men’s Club,” a group in Montgomery County that he said pushes back against Fox News and other outlets that he claims have been infiltrated by RINOs.

“People trust Fox News, and they need to get outside of that and find alternative news and like-minded people,” Harvey, 71, said on Friday, as he waited in a long line to meet Kyle Rittenhouse, who has ramped up his engagement in Texas politics since he was acquitted of homicide after fatally shooting two Black Lives Matter protesters.

Rather, Harvey’s group recommends places such as the Gateway Pundit, Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News or the Epoch Times, a far-right website that also had a booth at this year’s convention and is directly linked to the Falun Gong, a hardline anti-communist group.

Such outlets, Harvey said, are crucial to getting people “further down the rabbit hole,” after which they can begin to connect the dots between the deep-state that has spent years attacking former President Donald Trump, and the agenda of the left to indoctrinate kids through the Boy Scouts of America, public schools and the Democratic Party.

Harvey’s views were widely-held by his fellow delegates, many of whom were certain that broader transgender acceptance, Critical Race Theory or “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives were parts of a sinister plot to destroy the country and take over its churches.

The culprits behind the ploy differed — Democrats, socialists or “globalists,” to name a few. But their nefarious end goals loomed over the convention. Fearing a transgender takeover of the Republican Party of Texas, delegates pushed to explicitly stipulate that the party’s chair and vice chair must be “biological” men or women.

At events to recruit pastors and congregations to ramp up their political activism, elected leaders argued that churches were the only thing standing between evil and children. And the party’s proposed platform included planks that claim gender-transition care is child abuse, or urge new legislation in Texas that's "even more comprehensive" than Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits the teaching of sexual orientation or gender identity in public schools.

![](https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/ciJpskJjFVkA32MexM-6q3bGI6M=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/8fc7586ac950819feeeabb4760560fb8/0523%20GOP%20Convention%20EH%20TT%2072.jpg)

Kyle Rittenhouse shakes hands with conventioneers at a meet and greet during the Texas GOP convention on Thursday in San Antonio. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune

“Our next generation is being co-opted and indoctrinated where they should have been educated,” Rep. Nate Schatzline, R-Fort Worth, said at a Friday luncheon for pastors and churches. “We are in a spiritual battle. This isn't a political one.”

For at least a half-century, conservative Christian movements have been fueled by notions of a shadowy and coordinated conspiracy to destroy America, said Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University who focuses on movements to put the Bible in public schools.

“It's like the boogeyman that won't go away, that gets summoned whenever a justification is needed for these types of agendas,” he said. “They say that somebody is threatening quintessential American freedoms, and that these threats are posed by some sort of global conspiracy — rather than just recognizing that we're a pluralistic democracy.”

In the 1950s, such claims were the driving force behind the emergence of groups such as the John Birch Society, a hardline anti-communist group whose early members included the fathers of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Trump. After decades of dwindling influence, the society has seen a revival since Trump's 2016 election. And in the exhibit hall last week, so-called Birchers passed out literature and pamphlets that detailed the New World Order's secret plans for "world domination."

Steve Oglesby, field director for the Birch Society's North Texas chapter, said interest and membership in the group has been on the rise in recent years — particularly, as COVID-19 lockdowns and international climate change initiatives have spurred right-wing fears of an international cabal working against the United States.

"COVID really helped," he said, adding that the pandemic proved the existence of a global elite that has merely shifted its tactics since the 1950s. “It’s not just communism — it’s the people pulling the strings.”

Throughout the week, prominent Republicans invoked similar claims of a coordinated conspiracy against the United States. On Friday, Patrick argued that a decadeslong decline in American religion was part of a broader, “Marxist socialist left” agenda to “create chaos,” including through migration — despite studies showing that migrants are overwhelmingly Christian. Attorney General Ken Paxton echoed those claims in his own speech minutes later, saying migration was part of a plan to "steal another election."

“The Biden Administration wants the illegals here to vote,” he said.

![](https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/XrT-lkapyY0opApzI2UV_yF-8JE=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/f65ff0a8564b0acdb321e69bd3b233c7/0523%20GOP%20Convention%20EH%20TT%2011.jpg)

Ella Maulding and Konner Earnest watch as Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick speaks during the Republican Party of Texas convention in San Antonio on Thursday, the first day of the gathering. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune

As Paxton continued, Ella Maulding and Konner Earnest held hands and nodded their approval from the convention hall’s front row. Last year, the two were spotted outside of a Tarrant County office building where Nick Fuentes, a prominent white nationalist and Adolf Hitler fan, was hosted for nearly seven hours by Jonathan Stickland, then the leader of Dunn and Wilks' most powerful political action committee. They eventually lost their jobs after The Texas Tribune reported on their ties to Fuentes or white nationalist groups.

Maulding has been particularly vocal about her support for Great Replacement Theory, a conspiracy theory that claims there is an intentional, often Jewish-driven, effort to replace white people through migration, LGBTQ+ acceptance or interracial marriage. Once a fringe, white nationalist worldview, experts say that Great Replacement Theory has been increasingly mainstreamed as Republican leaders, including some who spoke last week, continue to claim that migration is part of a coordinated effort to aid Democrats. The theory has also been cited by numerous mass shooters, including the gunman who murdered 22 Hispanic people at an El Paso WalMart in 2019.

Five hours after Paxton and Patrick spoke, Maulding took to social media, posting a cartoon of a rabbi with the following text: “I make porn using your children and then make money distributing it under the banner of women’s rights while flooding your nation with demented lunatics who then rape your children.”

David Barton

Kason Huddleston has spent the last few years helping elect Christians and push back against what he believes is indoctrination of children in Rowlett, near Dallas. Far too often, he said, churches and pastors have become complacent, or have been scared away from political engagement by federal rules that prohibit churches from overt political activity.

Through trainings from groups like Christians Engaged, which advocates for church political activity and had a booth at this year’s convention, he said he has been able show more local Christians that they can be “a part of the solution” to intractable societal ills such as fatherlessness, crime or teen drug use. And while he thinks that some of his peers’ existential rhetoric can be overwrought, he agreed that there is an ongoing effort to “tear down the family unit” and shroud America’s true, Christian roots.

“If you look at our government and our laws, all of it goes back to a Judeo-Christian basis,” he said. “Most people don’t know our true history because it’s slowly just been removed.”

He then asked: “Have you ever read David Barton?”

Since the late 1980s, Barton has barnstormed the state and country claiming that church-state separation is a “myth” meant to shroud America’s true founding as a Christian nation. Barton, a self-styled “amateur historian” who served as Texas GOP vice chair from 1997 to 2006, has been thoroughly debunked by an array of historians and scholars — many of them also conservative Christians.

![](https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/Pr4f05aMyQrJ6_1ubGg9az8vwjQ=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/7acf1f2412dd7df9c6f492e50a5f07ee/BD%20INC%20Barton%20David%20748%202012)

David Barton, left, of WallBuilders, at a Texas Eagle Forum reception at the Republican Party of Texas convention in Fort Worth on June 7, 2012. Credit: Bob Daemmrich for The Texas Tribune

Despite that, Barton’s views have become widespread among Republicans, including Patrick, Texas Supreme Court Justice John Devine and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson. And his influence over the party was clear at last week’s convention, where his group, WallBuilders, maintained a booth and delegates frequently cited him.

This year’s platform, the votes for which are expected to be released later this week, included planks that urged lawmakers and the State Board of Education to “require instruction on the Bible, servant leadership and Christian self-governance,” and supports the use of religious chaplains in schools — which was made legal under a law passed by the state Legislature last year.

Warren Throckmorton, a former Grove City College professor and prominent conservative, Christian critic of Barton, told the Tribune that the platform emblematized Barton’s growing influence, and his movement’s conflicting calls to preserve “religious liberty” while attempting to elevate their faith over others. The platform, he noted, simultaneously demands that students’ religious rights be protected, and for schools to be forced to teach the Bible.

“What about the other students who aren’t Christians and who don't believe in the Bible?” he said. “This is not religious liberty — it’s Christian dominance.”

As Zach Maxwell watched his fellow Republicans debate and vote last week, he said he was struck by the frequency and intensity with which Christianity was invoked. Maxwell previously served as chief of staff for former Rep. Mike Lang, then the leader of the ultraconservative Texas House Freedom Caucus, and he later worked for Empower Texans, a political group that was funded primarily by Dunn and Wilks.

He eventually became disillusioned with the party’s right wing, which he said has increasingly been driven by purity tests and opposition to religious or political diversity. This year’s convention, he said, was the culmination of those trends.

“God was not only used as a tool at this convention, but if you didn’t mention God in some way, fake or genuine, I did feel it was seen as distasteful,” he said. “There is a growing group of people who want to turn this nation into a straight-up theocracy. I believe they are doing it on the backs of people who are easily manipulated.”

Nancy Leclerc poses for a photo in front of a GOP elephant statue during the Texas GOP convention in San Antonio on Thursday, May 23, 2024. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/28/texas-gop-convention-elections-religion-delegates-platf

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GERRY FIXED IN WISC ? 4 24 POD SAVE TAMMY

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GERRY CAME UP 2X TODAY BUT INDIRECT?

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rural white voters have, in many cases, far more political power than suburban or urban voters, and they’re using that outsized power to push our nation toward disaster. While they’re only 20 percent of the country, for example, because of gerrymandering they control fully 42 percent of seats in the House of Representatives.

The authors of new book, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy point out that rural whites are measurably more bigoted and xenophobic than suburban or urban voters, 13 points more likely to hate on queer people, 15 points more likely to support Trump’s Muslim ban.

They’re also far more likely to agree that setting democracy aside for a strongman like Trump or another Putin wannabee will “fix the mess and drain the swamp.” And fully 74% of the members of Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 election represented rural districts.

The majority of rural white voters disagree with the statement (or have no opinion) that “diversity makes America stronger.” And while only 22 percent of city dwellers believe Trump won the 2020 election and Biden and Democrats “stole” it, a mind-boggling 47 percent of rural whites are certain Biden is illegitimately occupying the White House.

READ:Revealed: What government officials privately shared about Trump not disclosing finances

The astonishing paradox, though, is how Republican politicians regularly crap on their own voters in rural America. Instead of offering help or solutions to rural problems, the GOP and conservative media instead feed them a steady diet of xenophobic and racist fear and hate.

And they eat it up! The racist buffoons among them are one and a half times more likely to be QAnon followers than people who live in cities or suburbs.

Democrats created — and Republicans opposed — virtually all the programs that are keeping rural America from sinking even farther into poverty and despair. Social Security, unemployment insurance, SS Disability, Medicare, Medicaid, over 60 farm subsidy programs that funnel billions in taxpayer dollars into rural communities, food stamps, the Women and Infant Children (WIC) program, anti-addiction programs, etc.

The only real accomplishment of the Trump presidency was passing a massive $2 trillion dollar tax cut for the morbidly rich that had virtually no effect on rural voters. Nonetheless, 71 percent of rural voters cast a ballot for Trump in 2020.

There are still 11 mostly rural states where hospitals are closing and people are dying younger than necessary because Republicans in those states have refused to expand Medicaid.

Republicans in Congress fought against legislation to expand rural broadband access. They constantly try to cut or gut rural health and nutrition programs, and fought against expanding Obamacare in a way that would help rural people.

gerry SUPERMAJORITY

Most of the Red State Republican politicians in America know their seats will never be in danger, so they take millions from special interest groups to write loopholes into the tax code, vote for larger fossil fuel subsidies, and vote against efforts to lower prescription drug prices or do anything about global warming.

They get rich while the people who put them into office struggle to get by. Ted Cruz escapes to Cancun with the $600,000+ in cash he just got for his podcast, laughing at Texas voters all the way. JD Vance, a multimillionaire Wall Street guy, lives in an elite townhouse and travels by first class while people in Ohio watch Republican politicians gut their public schools and try to outlaw abortion and birth control.

Republican members of Congress representing rural states went all the way to the Supreme Court to successfully block President Biden’s first attempt at reducing student debt while rural students carry 60% more student debt than urban students by age 25.

One of the most chilling quotes from the book is about how rural voters are willing to both abandon democracy and embrace a violent rightwing coup:

“[R]ural Americans are more likely to believe that ‘it may be necessary at some point soon for citizens to take up arms against the government.’ Indeed, more than one out of four rural residents agree that Trump should be returned to office by force if necessary.”

White rural voters are more likely than any other demographic group — Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans — to be willing to overturn our democracy, and the people who represent them are in the majority of legislators who voted to overturn the 2020 election the day after the January 6th attack on our capitol.

If, say, Black people held that view, rightwing media would be trumpeting it every day from coast to coast. But because it’s rural white people, the so-called “heartland Americans,” it gets largely ignored by American media.

After all, most mainstream outlets treat rural people as if they’re an exotic species who must be listened to: going to rural diners to interview people is so common it’s become a cliché. In the past month I’ve seen dozens of such interviews played on MSNBC and CNN, but not once have I seen those same reporters go into a city and ask why people are voting for Biden.

The Biden administration has done more for rural America than any president since Lyndon Johnson rolled out Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps. Biden’s American Rescue Plan provided specific tax breaks and credits targeted at rural poverty, subsidized mortgage payments, and provided rent assistance to tens of thousands of rural residents:

— Rural Americans are nine times more likely to lack access to affordable child care, so Biden’s program allocated $39 billion for subsidies for child care providers, with the money disproportionately going to rural communities. There was also $350 billion specifically allocated for small towns in rural areas to help them run basic government functions and upgrade their infrastructure. He even put up $198 million in funding for rural colleges and universities.

— Biden and Democrats delivered a 15% increase in SNAP (food stamp) benefits that have a huge impact in rural areas, reaching “2.9 million people in rural areas, including 800,000 children, reducing rural poverty by 11 percent and rural child poverty by 20 percent.” Biden’s USDA, over Republican objections, also put a billion dollars into rural food banks.

— Biden and Democrats “invested a historic $3 billion in the Department of Commerce’s (DOC) Economic Development Administration (EDA) to build local [rural] economies that are resilient to future economic shocks, including a $300 million Coal Communities Commitment.”

— Biden and Democrats — over GOP objections — expanded hunting and fishing opportunities on 2.1 million acres of public lands, the largest such expansion in U.S. history, and provided $1.5 billion in annual funding for wildlife and habitat conservation efforts. Another $2 billion went “for funding communities in the Rural Partners Network to spur job creation and build infrastructure.”

— They put $5 billion in “investments to help rural areas update infrastructure, boost high-speed internet access, and aid agricultural producers and small businesses in implementing climate-focused practices” and “$1.7 billion in funding to assist farmers, ranchers and foresters in adopting techniques to adapt to the changing climate, such as cover crops, nutrient management, and carbon storage.”

And that’s just the beginning: for a full list of the ways the Biden administration, over the objection of Republicans in Congress, has helped rural people click here.

Not one single Republican in either the House or the Senate voted for any of the things listed above: in fact, almost all voted against these helps to rural America.

Instead of concerning themselves with the well-being of rural people, they’re trying to block clean air standards that prevent rural communities from being poisoned, block clean water standards in rivers that supply water to rural communities, cut taxes on billionaires, and increase subsidies to the fossil fuel and banking industries.

All while taking huge campaign contributions, private jet rides, taxpayer funded junkets overseas, and the promise of million-dollar-a-year jobs when they leave Congress if only they vote the right way.

Because Republican politicians are more interested in feathering their own nests than helping out the people they were elected to represent, rural Red states are massively subsidized by urban Blue states just to keep their heads above water. As the Associated Press recently reported:

“Mississippi received $2.13 for every tax dollar the state sent to Washington in 2015, according to the Rockefeller study. West Virginia received $2.07, Kentucky got $1.90 and South Carolina got $1.71.

“Meanwhile, New Jersey received 74 cents in federal spending for every tax dollar the state sent to Washington. New York received 81 cents, Connecticut received 82 cents and Massachusetts received 83 cents.”

It’s undeniably true (and documented with each hotlink below) that Republican-controlled “Red” states, almost across the board, have higher rates of:

— Spousal abuse

— [Obesity — Smoking](https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/11/10/1994653/-Decades-of-Republican-Mismanagement-Have-Left-Red-States-Mired-in-the-Past-at-the-Bottom)

— Teen pregnancy

— Sexually transmitted diseases

— Abortion (at least before Dobbs; now it would be “forced births”)

— Bankruptcies and poverty

— Homicide and suicide

— Infant mortality

— Maternal mortality

— Forcible rape — Robbery and aggravated assault

— Dropouts from high school

— Divorce

— Contaminated air and water

— Opiate addiction and deaths

— Unskilled workers

— Parasitic infections

— Income and wealth inequality

— Covid deaths and unvaccinated people

— Federal subsidies to states (“Red State Welfare”)

— People on welfare

— Child poverty — Homelessness

— Spousal murder

— Unemployment

— Deaths from auto accidents

— People living on disability

— Gun deaths

So, why do Red state voters tolerate being conned and ripped off by their own elected representatives? Are they just stupid?

One theory is that “they hate the same people we hate.” And, indeed, for a significant and measurable cohort of rural white voters, racial fear and hatred is a primary motivating factor in their embrace of the GOP, although that’s only, according to this new book, about 20% of rural people.

Others vote Republican because the party has been so effective at branding itself with county fairs, NASCAR, country music, and the overall rural lifestyle including a faux paean to rugged individuality and independence.

Having over 1500 radio stations daily broadcasting a rightwing Republican message to literally every nook and cranny of rural America is another large factor. As is the dominance of Australian billionaire Lachlan Murdoch’s Fox “News.”

Will rural voters ever wake up to how badly they’re being screwed now and have been screwed by Republicans ever since Reagan started the whole neoliberal austerity and free trade movement that shipped over 60,000 factories and 20 million jobs overseas?

Or is the GOP’s cynical manipulation of religion, gender, and race enough to keep them voting to hurt themselves and further enrich Republican fat-cats?

So far, all indications seem like that’s the case and will stay that way for at least the next election cycle.

While the media struggles with trying to “understand” the rural white voter every election cycle, instead they should be running stories on how the very real problems and crises of rural America are daily made worse by Republicans in Congress and at the helm of their Red States.

How to break through?

Democrats need to get smart and start using the “negative partisanship” strategies Rachel Bitecofer recommends in her new book Hit 'Em Where It Hurts: How to Save Democracy by Beating Republicans at Their Own Game. They can do this by pointing out, with ad buys and media appearances, just how bad Red state Republicans politicians have been for rural people and their communities.

And they need to do it soon. As the authors of White Rural Rage point out:

“By 2040, 70% of Americans will reside in the 15 most populous states and choose 30 of the 100 US senators. Concentrated in smaller and more rural states, the remaining 30% of the population will elect 70 senators. No matter how distorted these population ratios become, each state is guaranteed its two senators — past, present, and forever.”

Our mainstream media have made it clear, for over 40 years, that they won’t expose the damage Republicans are doing to rural areas because their TV programs will fail if Republican politicians boycott them.

So, the job falls to us and the Democrats. Can we do it? I believe so; we just need to get started.

NOW READ:GOP Senators back away from MTG's 'ridiculous' speaker threat

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/ron-desantis-black-congressional-seats/

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After the 2020 redistricting cycle, a set of local political maps stood out to voting rights advocates and the U.S. Department of Justice: Galveston County, Texas. Now, the lawsuit over those maps has taken an interesting twist, and it highlights the way long standing legal precedents are under challenge right now.

First, the backstory: Galveston County used redistricting to break up the sole majority-minority district for its commissioners court, thrusting Black and Latino voters into majority-white districts where they would have no real opportunity to elect their candidates of choice. The lawsuit over Galveston County’s redistricting became the first local redistricting case this cycle to prompt the U.S. Department of Justice to intervene.

Last month, the plaintiffs won a decisive victory. A federal judge ruled the county’s redistricting violated the Voting Rights Act, and, in a 157-page ruling, made clear it wasn’t an especially close call.

“This is not a typical redistricting case. What happened here was stark and jarring,” wrote the U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey Brown, a former state Supreme Court justice who was nominated to the federal bench in 2019 by former President Donald Trump. “Looking at the totality of the circumstances, it was a clear violation of § 2 of the Voting Rights Act. And it must be overturned.”

Brown ordered new maps in Galveston. The county — predictably — appealed, arguing it hadn’t violated the Voting Rights Act. And here’s where things get a little less predictable.

A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, by most measures the most conservative appellate court in the country at the moment, unanimously affirmed Judge Brown’s ruling, finding it was correct under the law.

Brown also correctly abided by a precedent set by the 5th Circuit itself decades ago, in which the court decided that Black and Latino voters can be combined for the sake of the legal analysis, as long as they vote cohesively. In other words, if there aren’t enough Black voters or Latino voters, or voters of another protected class, to make up a majority of the district by themselves, they can be put together when plaintiffs can show their political interests align.

That’s what happened in Galveston. The panel of 5th Circuit judges acknowledged that plaintiffs met the tests to proceed with the lawsuit on behalf of what, in legal jargon, is referred to as a “coalition claim.”

But there’s a but.

The 5th Circuit panel, it turns out, isn’t so sure that the long-standing precedent was, in fact, decided correctly by the 5th Circuit, an issue Galveston had raised.

“[T]his panel is bound by it under the rule of orderliness,” they wrote, “But the court’s decisions in this respect are wrong as a matter of law.”

The panel affirmed the district court order, requiring new maps, but first, it wants to poll all the judges on the 5th Circuit to see if a majority want to hold what’s known as an en banc hearing, to revisit that decades-old precedent, “at the earliest possible date.”

So where does that leave the voters of Galveston County, who need new commissioner district maps pretty quickly, since the 2024 election is coming up fast?

“At the current moment, everything the district court said is stayed,” said Mark Gaber of the

Campaign Legal Center, who represents some of the plaintiffs in the case, though he said he expects the 5th Circuit to move relatively quickly. Still, he said, it’s hard to be sure what will happen.

“It’s not usual to see a six-page affirmance saying, ‘We wish we didn’t have to do this,’” he said, adding, “The facts are so clear-cut, the only way out is if the law doesn’t allow this.”

Michael Li of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, a redistricting expert, said the precedent is a straightforward one, and if the 5th Circuit decides to move forward with an en banc hearing, “it’s probably not a very good sign.”

Earlier this year, defying expectations, the Supreme Court issued a strong ruling upholding voting rights precedents in another voting rights case, this one out of Alabama. The decision was celebrated by voting rights advocates, but challenges to precedents haven’t ended. In addition to the Galveston case, for example, Louisiana last week signaled it plans to bring another challenge to the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act in connection with its redistricting.

Li acknowledged the country is in a moment where voting rights laws and precedents are “potentially changing,” and points out the current Supreme Court is upending precedents in many areas. Just because the justices didn’t do so in the Alabama case doesn’t mean changes aren’t coming, in other words.

“You could do it in a big way,” he said, “or you could do it in death by a thousand cuts.”

Back Then

Want to read more about redistricting? Check out this 2012 article from the Atlantic, “The League of Dangerous Mapmakers,” for a look at how the process has been manipulated for centuries for political advantage....

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republicans in North Carolina appear poised to pass one of the most extreme redistricting maps in the US, with little in the way of opposition.

Last week, WUNC reported that Republicans' proposed new maps are much more favorable to the GOP than the court-drawn maps used in 2022, which split representation evenly with both Democrats and Republicans having seven House seats apiece. The new proposed maps would instead give Republicans 10 safe seats, carve out three safe seats for Democrats, and give Republicans the advantage in a red-leaning district. Cook Political Report senior editor Dave Wasserman posted on X that the new maps would effectively eliminate four Democratic districts.

In addition to the advantages the new proposed maps would give Republicans in Congress, the maps would also lock in Republicans' majorities in the North Carolina legislature, likely for the remainder of the decade. Democratic state representative Lindsey Prather responded to the new proposed maps by calling for an independent redistricting process.

"I want to take a second & acknowledge the sheer insanity that is #ncpol," Rep. Prather posted, using the hashtag for North Carolina politics. "We need nonpartisan, independent redistricting. We shouldn't be waiting w/bated breath for maps that were drawn in secret. This shouldn't be exciting. It should be a boring thing that happens every 10 years."

While Democratic Governor Roy Cooper is expected to veto the maps, Republicans have a large enough legislative majority to override him, meaning the federal judiciary is the only remaining hurdle the maps need to clear in order to go into effect.

Even though conservatives in the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has a 6-3 majority, the Court struck down a gerrymandered Congressional map in Alabama, forcing Republicans to have at least two House districts for residents of predominantly Black counties. Republicans initially attempted to resist the Court's order, but SCOTUS had a special master draw a map with two districts for its Black residents, who make up roughly 1/4 of the state's population.

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ALEX V GERRY nc MACE

This hotly debated Supreme Court case could be Democrats' key to flipping the House in 2024 - Alternet.org

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Alarm grows over Wisconsin GOP's Supreme Court impeachment threats

Jake JohnsonandCommon Dreams August 31, 2023

Wisconsin Democrats are urging the U.S. public to pay close attention to the Republican Party's maneuvering in the key battleground state, where GOP lawmakers are floating impeachment proceedings against a recently elected liberal Supreme Court justice if she doesn't recuse herself from cases related to the state's gerrymandered legislative maps.

"We've been sounding the alarm bells on the dangerous threats from Republicans to impeach justices who don't follow their orders. And yesterday, they doubled down," Wisconsin Senate Democrats wrote in a social media post on Wednesday after state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-63) left open the possibility of an impeachment push against Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Vos suggested that Protasiewicz has "pre-judged" a potential case challenging the legality of Wisconsin's legislative maps. If Protasiewicz doesn't recuse, Vos said that would be "a pretty clear violation" and indicated impeachment proceedings would be on the table.

Wisconsin Republicans have the simple Assembly majority needed to impeach and the two-thirds Senate majority needed to convict. State Republicans are also currently attempting to remove Wisconsin's nonpartisan head of elections.

"This is crazy," Wisconsin Senate Democrats wrote Wednesday. "The entire country should know what's happening here in Wisconsin. Spread this far and wide."

In a statement, Senate Minority Leader Melissa Agard (D-16) said that "considering impeachment mere weeks after Justice Protasiewicz has been sworn in is utterly absurd."

"Legislative Republicans will jump over any hurdle to usurp the will of the majority," said Agard.

Earlier this month, a day after Protasiewicz was sworn in, voting rights organizations filed a legal challenge urging the Wisconsin Supreme Court to toss out the state's maps, which the groups argue have entrenched an unfair electoral advantage for Republicans and allowed them to cling to power in the Legislature for more than a decade.

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A second legal challenge against the maps was filed days later.

Protasiewicz's victory over right-wing former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly in April wrested control of the state's high court from conservatives for the first time in 15 years.

During her campaign, Protasiewicz described Wisconsin's legislative maps as "rigged" and "unfair," an assessment that is widely shared by legal experts and voting rights campaigners. Protasiewicz did not say how she would rule should the Wisconsin Supreme Court take up a gerrymandering case.

Vos and other Wisconsin Republicans nevertheless seized upon Protasiewicz's comments as evidence that she has already decided how she would rule and should therefore recuse from any redistricting cases. Last week, Wisconsin Senate Republicans filed a motion demanding Protasiewicz's recusal from challenges to the constitutionality of the state's maps, which are so warped that they've been described as "Swiss cheese."

In response to the Republican motion, law firms that are suing over the state's maps argued that Republicans are pushing for Protasiewicz's recusal because they are "unhappy" with her election victory, "which they could not prevent through gerrymandering."

Wisconsin Republicans "now seek to nullify the election and pick their judges," the firms added. "Respondents' arguments in support of recusal are without merit, and this motion should be denied."

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https://www.alternet.org/how-lawless-maga-republicans-are-trying-to-overthrow-democracy/

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these are not normal times. Still, as Will Bunch observed in a powerful column for the Philadelphia Inquirer, out of force of habit, laziness or just plain denial, a lot of journalists continue to treat the Republican presidential contest as if it were a regular political event instead of the lawless authoritarian movement it really is.

The Republican party has been hijacked by Donald Trump. His enablers here in Wisconsin are part of a destructive cabal that is undermining democratic institutions and the rule of law.

That’s the context around Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Annette Ziegler’s denunciation of the “rogue lawlessness” of the new liberal court majority for daring to set procedural rules.

Ziegler’s claim that the court’s 4-3 liberal majority has staged a “coup” and conducted an “illegal experiment” by choosing a new administrator of state courts and changing some procedural rules is demonstrably false. In a calm, clear email response grounded in reality and the Wisconsin Constitution, Justice Rebecca Dallet explains why Ziegler is wrong.

:{:{}:

The Wisconsin Constitution clearly states that a four-person quorum of justices constitutes a majority for the conduct of the court’s business, including setting internal operating procedures. The chief justice exercises “administrative authority pursuant to procedures adopted by the supreme court.”

:{:{}:

Ziegler doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

From one angle, this looks like a tempest in a teapot. Dueling late-August memos about internal court procedures don’t generally rise to the level of headline news.

But the battle for control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court by a right-wing minority that lost its power in the recent spring election is part of a bigger plot by MAGA Republicans to flout the will of the voters and entrench minority rule

Take this week’s seemingly unrelated AP story about the right-wing groups preparing to gut the federal government if they succeed in getting Trump reelected. Project 25, funded by the Heritage Foundation and fueled by former Trump administration officials, “is essentially a government-in-waiting for the former president’s second term,” AP reports. The idea is to “gut the ‘administrative state’ from within, by ousting federal employees they believe are standing in the way of the president’s agenda and replacing them with like-minded officials more eager to fulfill a new executive’s approach to governing.”

The Project 25 handbook includes a suggested purge of tens of thousands of federal employees, replacing civil service jobs with patronage positions, stopping the FBI from working to curb the spread of misinformation and stepped-up prosecution of anyone who helps provide abortion pills by mail. It’s scary stuff.

Anti-government rhetoric has been a Republican staple for decades. But the willingness to spread lies, destroy democratic institutions and subvert elections to hold onto power is something new.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has threatened to launch impeachment proceedings against Justice Janet Protasieiwiczunless she recuses herself from a challenge to the Republicans’ gerrymandered voting maps. By stating the truth during her campaign that the current maps are “rigged” to give Republicans a disproportionate legislative majority — an observable fact with which a federal court, a majority of Wisconsin voters and even Vos himself have agreed — Protasiewicz opens herself up to “corruption” charges if she doesn’t disqualify herself, Vos says.

The impeachment threat, like the caterwauling by the Chief Justice, is absurd. The judicial branch, as a coequal branch of government, has its own recusal rules. Those rules do not require justices to recuse themselves from cases because of remarks they made during a campaign. If the Legislature intervenes and impeaches a justice who follows the rules, it violates the separation of powers among the branches of government. But the emboldened right-wing majority in the Assembly might give it a try anyway, as The Washington Post reports, in order to set up a process by which the Republicans can block a gerrymandering lawsuit that could diminish their power. The point would not be to convict Protasiewicz of anything, just to gum up the workings of the Court long enough to slow down a challenge to the gerrymandered map.

A successful impeachment vote in the Assembly would force a justice to stop hearing or weighing in on cases until the Senate holds a vote on removal from office. Given the Senate’s track record of delaying confirmation hearings for Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ nominees, it’s easy to foresee the foot-dragging that would ensue, at least until the 2024 election is over.

Stop calling them ‘conservatives’

On the same day the dueling memos between the new Wisconsin Supreme Court majority and the power-grabbing right-wing minority came out, the Senate held a public hearing on whether or not Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe should be allowed to continue in her job. The hearing went forward against the advice of legislative attorneys and Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul,who have held that the Senate does not have the power to remove Wolfe. It featured MAGA cult members Michael Gableman, who was fired as head of the Legislature’s bumbling “investigation” of the 2020 election, and Racine County election conspiracy theorist Harry Wait, who is facing criminal charges for making fraudulent absentee ballot requests.

One thing Gableman, Wait andChief Justice Ziegler all have in common is that they supported Trump’s challenge to the 2020 election results in Wisconsin. Had a lone conservative on the court, Brian Hagedorn, not voted with the liberal minority, Trump’s challenge would have been upheld.

Ziegler joined team MAGA — and very nearly made the Wisconsin Supreme Court the only forum in the nation to allow Trump’s spurious challenge to the election results to move forward.

Let’s stop calling these people “conservatives.” The Republican Party has devolved into a cult of personality, working to install a strongman in the White House who has been charged with 91 felonies and who could easily be convicted and sentenced before the 2024 Republican convention in Milwaukee. It’s a real possibility that Trump could deliver his acceptance speech for the Republican nomination from prison.

Wisconsin is going to play a key role in the next election, and defending democracy and justice in this state is going to be critical to preventing our country’s slide authoritarianism.

To protect the elected majority on the state’s highest court, theoretically, Protasiewicz could seek an injunction against the Legislature and prevent them from impeaching her in violation of her free speech rights.

In 2002 the U.S. Supreme Court held in Republican Party of Minnesota v. White that the First Amendment protects the rights of candidates for judicial election to announce their views on disputed legal and political issues. The opinion written by conservative Justice Antonin Scalia,

Time is of the essence, though. That lawsuit would have to be filed promptly to head off the Legislature’s impeachment delaying tactic.

Another possibility is that Protasiewicz, if impeached by the Assembly, could resign. Then Democratic Gov. Evers could appoint another justice to take her place. Evers could choose someone like former Democratic Rep. Chris Taylor or progressive Judge Everett Mitchell. The new appointee would finish out Protasiewicz’s term, which runs until 2027. Protasiewicz could then run against MAGA Justice Rebecca Bradely in 2026. Given the outcome of recent Wisconsin Supreme Court races, it seems likely she’s win again.

Meanwhile, the Wisconsin Department of Justice should file charges against Wisconsin’s fake electors – one of whom, Robert Spindell, is still serving on the state elections commission.

The only way to defeat the sheer chutzpah of the right-wing attack on democracy is by fighting back just as aggressively. Our future depends on it.

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https://apnews.com/article/state-legislatures-supermajorities-extreme-policies-5cff2be330289aa034dce295fa0a3a56

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BY DAVID A. LIEB

Published 9:15 PM PDT, June 16, 2023

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Lawmakers in state capitols this year have been flexing their superpowers.

In North Carolina, a new supermajority of Republicans enacted abortion restrictions. In Vermont, a new supermajority of Democrats imposed a climate-sensitive home heating law. And in Montana, a GOP supermajority booted a transgender lawmaker from the House floor.

In each case, the views of their political opponents ultimately were irrelevant.

OTHER NEWS

Attorney Taylor Meehan talks with Utah House Speaker Brad Wilson during a break in oral arguments for a case challenging the state's congressional districts before the Utah Supreme Court in Salt Lake City, Tuesday, July 11, 2023. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP, Pool)

Utah high court scrutinizes process that sliced state’s most Democrat-heavy county into 4 districts

FILE - Members of the Ohio Senate Government Oversight Committee hear testimony on a new map of state congressional districts onNov. 16, 2021, at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio. The Ohio Supreme Court will take yet another look at the legality of the state's congressional districts after the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, June 30, 2023, set aside a ruling striking down the districts and ordered further consideration of the case. (AP Photo/Julie Carr Smyth, File)

Supreme Court directs Ohio’s top court to take another look at redistricting lawsuit

FILE - Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper speaks to The Associated Press in a year-end interview at the Executive Mansion in Raleigh, N.C., Dec. 14, 2022. On Friday, June 16, 2023, Cooper vetoed GOP legislation that would ban the promotion of certain beliefs that some lawmakers have likened to critical race theory in state government workplaces. (AP Photo/Hannah Schoenbaum, File)

North Carolina GOP bars promotion of certain beliefs in state government, 1 of 6 veto overrides

FILE - Reggie Weaver, at podium, speaks outside the Legislative Building in Raleigh, N.C., Feb. 15, 2022, about a partisan gerrymandering ruling by the North Carolina Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has ruled that North Carolina’s top court did not overstep its bounds in striking down a congressional districting plan as excessively partisan under state law. The justices on Tuesday rejected the broadest view of a case that could have transformed elections for Congress and president by leaving state legislatures virtually unchecked by their state courts when dealing with federal elections. (AP Photo/Gary D. Robertson, File)

Supreme Court rejects GOP in North Carolina case that could have reshaped elections beyond the state

By at least one measure, political power is at its highest mark in decades. That’s because Republicans or Democrats hold majorities so large in 28 states that they could override gubernatorial vetoes without any help from the minority party.

“Supermajorities give one party a lot of power to do what they want to do,” said Steven Rogers, a political scientist at Saint Louis University who focuses on elections and state legislatures.

There is no single standard for a supermajority, though the term generally is equated with whatever threshold is needed to override a gubernatorial veto. In many states, that’s a two-thirds majority. In some, that’s a three-fifths majority. In six states — Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia — it takes only a simple majority to override a veto. But those states all have Republican majorities around 70% or greater — easily exceeding any definition of a supermajority.

The number of states with supermajorities is at its highest level since at least 1982, with 19 Republican supermajorities and nine Democratic ones, according to research by Rogers.

This year began with supermajorities in 26 legislatures, including new Republican ones in Florida and Montana and a new Democratic one in Vermont. That total grew in March when Louisiana state Rep. Francis Thompson — who had served nearly 50 years as a Democrat — switched to the Republican Party to give the GOP a supermajority. Thompson cited his conservative voting record while asserting that Democratic leaders were pushing issues that didn’t align with his Christian values.

In April, North Carolina state Rep. Tricia Cotham switched from Democrat to Republican to give the GOP another supermajority. Six weeks after Cotham’s switch, she provided a pivotal vote as the new GOP supermajority overrode Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of legislation banning most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Some North Carolina Republicans already are eying other proposals they could pass with a supermajority, including an elections bill containing provisions that Cooper previously vetoed and an expansion of taxpayer-funded vouchers for students to attend private schools.

The supermajority creates an opportunity to “adjust the playbook” [ IE RULES, GERRY DIRTY TRICKS] to ensure “that we are scoring more touchdowns, so to speak, than we might have previously,” said North Carolina Republican state Rep. John Torbett, chair of an education committee.

The new Republican supermajority in Louisiana also could soon be put to the test.

Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards has said he intends to veto a package of bills that targets the LGBTQ+ community, including a ban on gender-affirming treatments for transgender minors. Louisiana lawmakers have convened for just two veto sessions since 1974. But Republicans now have the two-thirds majority necessary to override an Edwards veto.

Vermont’s Democratic-led legislature is to return to the Capitol next week to consider overriding vetoes by Republican Gov. Phil Scott, including one of a bill expanding child care subsidies for some families. The Democratic supermajority already notched one victory in May — overriding Scott’s veto of a clean-heating-standard bill that credits utilities for energy-efficient technologies and penalizes them for not meeting certain goals.

Scott vetoed a similar bill last year before Democrats obtained a supermajority, but an override failed by one vote in the House.

Republican-led legislatures in Kansas and Kentucky this year also overrode vetoes by Democratic governors, including on bills dealing with transgender issues, abortion and work requirements for food assistance.

Political scientists cite a couple of reasons for the rise of supermajorities.

Over the past decades, Americans have increasingly voted along party lines— picking state lawmakers and even local officials who align with their party choice for president or the top of the ticket, Rogers said. At the same time, politicians in power in many states have gerrymandered voting district boundaries to give their party’s candidates an advantage in legislative elections.

As parties gain more seats in House and Senate chambers, the political ideology of their middle members often shifts further to the right or left, reducing the need to appeal to moderates and virtually eliminating the need to compromise with the opposing party.

“All that we have is our voice,” said North Carolina state Rep. Marcia Morey, a Democratic whip. But now “there’s no need for (Republicans) to have any dialogue.”

Parties with supermajorities also can more easily silence their opponents. In Tennessee, where Republicans hold at least three-fourths of the seats, the GOP supermajority expelled two Black Democratic lawmakers who used a bullhorn on the House floor to protest for gun control after a deadly school shooting in Nashville. Democrats also were upset Republicans had limited debate on various topics.

Following Tennessee’s expulsions, Montana’s Republican supermajority banned transgender Rep. Zooey Zephyr from the House floor. Zephyr initially was silenced after telling lawmakers supporting a prohibition on gender-affirming treatments for minors that they would have blood on their hands; she was exiled for participating in a protest over her right to debate in the House.

When supermajorities run state capitals, some voters may be pleased by the sweeping policies that get enacted. Others may feel like their priorities are ignored.

“On behalf of the voters, it might be a good thing, because it helps clarify responsibility,” said Carlos Algara, an assistant professor of government and politics at Claremont Graduate University in California.

“If you are a voter in California, you know explicitly which party owns policy – it’s the Democratic Party,” Algara said. “So if you don’t like the direction of policy in California, you have a very easy choice.”

Voters in Florida are in a similar situation with Republicans. GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis helped build a Republican supermajority by becoming more involved in legislative races, and the candidates he backed remained firmly loyal during this year’s legislative session.

DeSantis had no problem passing a legislative agenda that included a six-week abortion ban, tougher immigration laws, more power for parents to remove books from public schools and an easier ability for prosecutors to win death sentences, among other things. He now is campaigning on that agenda as he runs for president.

House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell said DeSantis “changed the vibe” in the Capitol. She recalled that lawmakers last year had included limits on how the governor could use funds in an emergency management bill.

“That was when they did not have a supermajority,” Driskell said. “This time, we didn’t see anything that would be a check on his power.”

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judd y 7 23

...The plaintiffs won a request to block the maps in federal district court. The court found that "Black Alabamians enjoy virtually zero success in statewide elections," that political campaigns in Alabama are “characterized by overt or subtle racial appeals,” and that “Alabama’s extensive history of repugnant racial and voting-related discrimination is undeniable and well documented.”

Alabama, however, appealed the decision to the Supreme Court,[SHELBY?] which lifted the injunction and allowed the maps to be used for the 2022 election. The Supreme Court agreed to consider the case on the merits after the 2022 election, but many observers thought they would again side with Alabama officials and gut Section 2's protections against racially discriminatory voting practices.

On June 8, 2023, however, the Supreme Court rejected Alabama's maps, with Justices Roberts and Kavanaugh joining the court's three liberal justices, Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson. The majority opinion agreed with the district court's determination that Alabama's maps have a “racially discriminatory motivation” or an “invidious purpose.” The maps, the court found, were put into place "'to minimize or cancel out' minority voters’ 'ability to elect their preferred candidates.'"

The Supreme Court's ruling reinstated the district court's order, which required the Alabama legislature to create new maps. The district court's decision emphasized that, to comply with the law, the new maps "will need to include two districts in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it."

The Alabama legislature has until Friday to comply with the district court's order. But the state's political leaders have chosen to pursue a different path.

Alabama produces new maps with the same problems

Alabama is on a path to approve new maps before Friday's deadline. But the new maps do not comply with the district court order and continue to dilute the Black vote. Specifically, the legislature has failed "to craft a second majority-Black district" or "something quite close to it." Instead, the new map only still includes one district, District 7, which is majority Black. It looks like this:

...

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wife and clarence scandals a factor? supermaj state --> tenn 3

an badash

it’s being called a “surprise decision,” a “landmark win,” and a “a major victory for the Voting Rights Act (VRA),” but some legal experts are warning that heralding the U.S. Supreme Court’s Thursday decision as anything except upholding the status quo is a mistake, and other experts suggest it means the Court’s earlier rulings wrongly threw control of the House of Representatives to Republicans. Some experts say a Democratic-majority House in 2024 is now more likely.

In short, in its 5-4 decision in Allen v. Milligan, the Supreme Court ruled that the state of Alabama discriminated against Black voters, which make up a quarter of its population, by drawing congressional maps to exclude them.

Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, who writes about law and the courts, exclaimed, “WHOA!” as he explained: “The Supreme Court’s final decision of the day is a 5–4 ruling that AFFIRMS the Voting Rights Act’s protection against racial vote dilution! Roberts and Kavanaugh join the liberals. This is a HUGE surprise and a major voting rights victory.”

Democracy Docket, the website founded by Marc Elias, the voting rights attorney who won 63 of the 64 court cases Donald Trump and his allies filed to contest the 2020 presidential election, also served up a similar response on social media, calling it “a massive victory for voting rights.”

On its website, Democracy Docket calls it “an overwhelming win for Alabamians, specifically Black voters, whose voting power was found to be diluted under the current congressional map. Importantly, the conservative Supreme Court did not make the drastic decision to strike down Section 2 of the VRA, leaving an important tool in voting rights litigation in place.”

It adds the Supreme Court’s decision in Allen v. Milligan “leaves Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) intact and, in a landmark win for voters, struck down the state’s congressional map. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, is joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson and joined in part by Justice Brett Kavanaugh.”

Democracy Docket also notes the decision “will have major positive implications for outstanding redistricting lawsuits.”

Stern agrees, writing: “It’s a boon to Democrats’ chances of retaking the House in 2024. The Supreme Court had blocked multiple lower court rulings striking down congressional maps that diluted Black voting power. At least some of those rulings should now be implemented.”

Democracy Docket adds: “The Court’s decision in Allen likely means that litigation challenging Louisiana’s congressional map can move forward and paves the way for a favorable outcome for Louisiana voters. Louisiana’s situation directly mirrors Alabama’s. In both states, voting rights advocates argued that a second majority-Black congressional district is needed to ensure compliance with the VRA. The Supreme Court paused Louisiana’s litigation pending a decision in Allen.”

Dave Wasserman, U.S. House editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report calls the decision “a major surprise,” and says: “This could reverberate to LA, SC and/or GA, forcing creation of 2-4 new Black majority districts and netting Dems 2-4 seats” in the House.

Wasserman, known for his keen knowledge of congressional districts and iconic “I’ve seen enough” early and accurate predictions of House election races, offered this view of how the Court’s decision could impact current districts:

“The Alabama Republicans in most jeopardy owing to the SCOTUS ruling: Reps. Jerry Carl (R) #AL01, Barry Moore (R) #AL02 and Mike Rogers (R) #AL03. Moore could be squeezed the most in any map reconfigured to feature a second Black majority seat.”

University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck, author of a book on the Supreme Court, “The Shadow Docket,” offers up a stinging reminder of how the Court has damaged voting rights and helped Republicans in the process:

“If you assume that additional majority-minority districts in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, & 1–2 other states would’ve been safe Democratic seats, then today’s #SCOTUS ruling strongly suggests that the Court’s 2022 shadow docket stays [decisions/rulings] wrongly gave Republicans control of the House.”

Professor of law Anthony Michael Kreis, pointing to Vladeck’s remarks, adds: “there’s a House majority built on discriminatory lawlessness.”

Also taking note of Thursday’s SCOTUS ruling: House Democrats. Axios’ Andrew Solender reports House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ office is “inviting Dem[ocratic] congressional staff to a Friday briefing on recent Supreme Court cases, including the Alabama congressional map case.”

Meanwhile, the well-known NYU professor of law, Melissa Murray, is stepping in to properly frame reactions to what she sees as the Court’s “weak sauce” decision on the Voting Rights Act.

“Some initial thoughts on Allen v. Milligan,” she writes on Twitter. “Media is trumpeting this as a ‘victory’ for the Voting Rights Act. And it is. And I don’t want to be a turd in the punchbowl… but this is pretty weak sauce from this Court.”

Professor Murray says, “this doesn’t ‘strengthen’ the VRA. It preserves the status quo. And the status quo is that this Court has done an A+ job of hobbling the VRA over the last 10 years.”

Murray offers up some quick historical background.

“In 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder, it eviscerated the preclearance formula. The preclearance regime required states with a history of voting discrimination to first ‘preclear’ any changes to their voting rules and regs with the DOJ or a three-judge federal court panel.”

“The Court invalidated the preclearance formula on the ground that progress had been made and minorities were voting and blah blah blah,” she notes. “This progress narrative prompted RBG [the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg] to note in dissent that throwing out the preclearance formula was like throwing out your umbrella in a rainstorm because you weren’t getting wet. She was right.”

Murray also refers to a number of other cases along the way that weakened voting rights.

“So, yes,” she concludes, “today’s decision is a victory that maintains the status quo for Section 2 of the VRA. But it is cold comfort when one considers the way this Court through its decisions has actively distorted the electoral landscape and made true representative government more elusive.”

The Economist’s Supreme Court reporter Steven Mazie, calls Prof. Murray’s remarks, “Crucial zoomed-out context for today’s Voting Rights Act ruling. The 5-4 is a surprise, and it’s a victory—but after a long string of losses, today’s win amounts to…not losing YET MORE voting protections for people of color.”

The Nation’s justice correspondent, Elie Mystal, offers a bit of a more compact and down-to-earth response: “A way to understand what just happened with Roberts and Kav[anaugh] in the Voting Rights Case is that it’s not going to change much in terms of Alabama’s racist maps. This cost them little,” he says. “The *victory* is that these fools could have straight killed Section 2 of the VRA, but didn’t.”

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

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3 23 state scotus

https://www.alternet.org/gerrymandering-house/

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gerry bad 2011, worse 2021

https://www.democracynow.org/2022/10/28/how_wisconsin_became_gops_laboratory_dismantling

with Republicans set to make major gains in the November midterms, we speak with reporter Ari Berman, who says Republican control of the Legislature in Wisconsin is a preview of the damage the party could do if empowered in Washington. Berman’s latest piece for Mother Jones is titled “How Wisconsin Became the GOP’s Laboratory for Dismantling Democracy.” It looks at how severely gerrymandered districts there give Republicans nearly two-thirds of the seats in the statehouse with less than 50% of the popular vote, and how they have used those inflated majorities to undermine Democratic Governor Tony Evers by stripping his powers, refusing to confirm his nominees and ignoring his legislative proposals. Berman says the takeover of the Wisconsin Legislature is part of a larger GOP plan to empower swing state officials to assist former President Trump in staging a coup in 2024.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We continue our conversation with Ari Berman, one of the leading journalists covering voting rights, reporter at Mother Jones, author of Give Us The Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America. His new cover story is headlined How Wisconsin Became the GOP’s Laboratory for Dismantling Democracy. Ari, can you lay out what you found?

ARI BERMAN: Absolutely, Amy, and thank you for having me on to discuss this. Really Wisconsin is a case study for how Republicans are dismantling democracy in real time. Right now, but also it’s a project that dates back over a decade where Republicans have tried to create a situation where their majorities are voter-proof, that they control the state no matter what happens politically.

First it was the election of Scott Walker in 2011 and the union-busting, the voter suppression, the dismantling of the state’s campaign finance system. Then it was the extreme gerrymandering that has basically put Republicans in control of the state legislature for the past decade. They passed the most gerrymandered maps in the country in 2011. Last year in 2021, they passed even more gerrymandered maps. Now Republicans in the state legislature are on the verge of a supermajority in the state which would allow them to be able to override the veto of Democratic Governor Tony Evers if he is reelected.

What we have in Wisconsin is a paradox. It’s a 50/50 swing state,but in the state legislature, they are on the verge of a two-thirds Republican supermajority, meaning that the legislature is completely out of step with the rest of the state and they have refused to pass popular policies like expanding Medicaid, like background checks for guns. They refused to repeal anabortion ban from 1849 that makes no exceptions for rape or incest. In the Dobbs decision, Justice Samuel Alito said that we need to return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives, but what Wisconsin has shown is just how disconnected the people’s representatives are from the people themselves.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk more about this, what this gerrymandering represents, and how Wisconsin has often been a laboratory for the country from welfare to this kind of gerrymandering and then how this fits into another very closely watched race, the senator race, that could be flipped—not clear—by Mandela Barnes as he challenges Ron Johnson.

ARI BERMAN: It’s important to note that Wisconsin has had a long progressive history for many years. It was a state that had the blueprint for policies like Social Security, for collective bargaining rights, for the direct election of U.S. senators back in the early 1900s. Under Scott Walker, it became a laboratory for anti-democratic conservatism.Tons of money from places like the Bradley Foundation to try to privatize schools, to dismantle unions, to dismantle campaign finance laws, to suppress votes. That has accelerated dramatically with the extreme gerrymandering that we are seeing. Basically what Republicans can do in Wisconsin is they can nullify the will of the voters. They don’t have to pass popular policies, they can do extreme things and they feel like there is no accountability.

Routinely, Democrats get more votes than Republicans but Republicans have these huge majorities in the state legislature. In 2018, for example, Democrats won all five statewide elections in Wisconsin including for governor. They got 53% of the vote for the state assembly but Democrats only got 36% of seats.Right now there’s a competitive race for governor, there’s a competitive race for the U.S. Senate, but Republicans could be on the verge of getting two thirds majorities in the legislature. That is a really scary situation for democracy because what that means is that essentially the heavily gerrymandered legislature which has no accountability could be in charge of running elections in the state. That poses a grave danger to fair elections in 2024.

AMY GOODMAN: You have written about what the Republican plan is for one-party rule this year. Explain.

ARI BERMAN: Basically, what Republicans want to do is they want to take control in 2022 in key swing states like Wisconsin so that Trump’s coup will succeed in 2024. You will remember that Trump asked Republican state legislatures in places like Wisconsin to overturn the will of the voters. They didn’t do that because in some cases they didn’t have the power to do that. In Wisconsin the governor certifies the presidential election. What Republicans want to do is they want to get a two-thirds supermajority in Wisconsin so the ultra gerrymandered legislature will instead be in charge of certifying elections. That could potentially mean they could overthrow the popular vote in these states.

I think it is really important to note that these state races in 2022, who is elected governor, secretary of state, attorney general, but also who controls the legislatures, is going to have a huge impact on whether we will have a fair election in 2024. I think a lot of people only pay attention to presidential elections but if you overlook these midterms, it is going to be too late. What happens in the states has a huge impact on what happens nationally as well. Wisconsin has become the laboratory for dismantling democracy not just in the state, but nationwide. The voter suppression, the union-busting, the attacks on campaign finance laws, these are things that happened in Wisconsin and then were exported to other states to become not just a state model but a national model as well. So what is happening in places like Wisconsin affects not just Wisconsin, but the whole country as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, of course talking about Mandela Barnes, the lieutenant governor could become Wisconsin’s first Black U.S. senator if he defeats Republican incumbent Ron Johnson in November.

During the protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020, we spoke to Barnes and asked him what is being done at the state level around police reform.

MANDELA BARNES: We introduced—or the governor introduced—a legislative package Now, we know that a legislative package is not going to solve the deep problems, but it takes a coordinated effort. We need action at every level of government reimagining what keeping people safe looks like.

It goes to making sure that there is funding on the front end to prevent violence from happening in the first place, like violence interrupters, but also having support for community organizations, having support for job training programs, whatever the case may be, to create communities, to create societies where people have an opportunity to thrive, where less or fewer police are actually needed to respond to anything in the first place.

AMY GOODMAN: That is Mandela Barnes, who could become the first Black senator from Wisconsin in the U.S. Senate. If you could comment overall on this race, as you traveled through Wisconsin, and what else you are looking at in this pivotal election year?

ARI BERMAN: First off, I think it is important to note that criminal justice reform was very popular in Wisconsin, was introduced before the legislature, and the heavily gerrymandered legislature took no action on it. So the lack of criminal justice reform in Wisconsin is also a victim of gerrymandering.

But Republicans are absolutely hammering Mandela Barnes on “Defund the police.” When I was there, there were ads over and over by Ron Johnson’s campaign saying Mandela Barnes wanted to defund the police. That’s not true. They’ve twisted his words. But I think the idea is that they’re trying to make the election of the first Black senator in Wisconsin seem like something that’s scary and dangerous and that’s going to lead to more crime. So I think they are absolutely running a very racist campaign against Mandela Barnes there by Ron Johnson. I think it is hurting Mandela Barnes and he has a difficult time to become a U.S. senator to try to counteract these attacks.

But it is a very, very close state. And so what I’m looking at is not just the U.S. Senate; I’m looking at whether Tony Evers, the Democratic governor, will get reelected, and I’m looking at whether Republicans will get supermajorities in the legislature or not. So I think there are a lot of races that are really important. I think it is a microcosm of the country writ large where these state races have a tremendous importance, and they have a tremendous importance affecting not just state politics but national politics as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Ari Berman, thank you for being with us, senior reporter for Mother Jones. We will link to your piece How Wisconsin Became the GOP’s Laboratory for Dismantling Democracy. Ari is author ofGive Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America. Coming up, we go to Florida, to voting rights activist Desmond Meade on how Republican Governor Ron DeSantis is attempting to scare formerly incarcerated people away from voting by using his newly formed election police force to arrest people on trumped-up voter fraud charges.

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gerry? one trad AA distr gone?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/florida-law-discriminates-against-black-voters-to-gain-partisan-advantage-doj-filing/

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spitfire extensive on gerry

https://spitfirelist.com/news/john-roberts-gives-bad-faith-blessing-to-hyper-partisan-gerrymandering-and-paved-the-way-for-the-kochstitution/comment-page-1/

...here was a recent article in Slate about a audio recording leaked from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) annual meeting this year. The audio was of the closed-door “How to Survive Redistricting” panel discussion, so this was a panel that’s particularly important for understanding what the GOP has in mind for its 2021 hyper-gerrymandering schemes. The panel’s advice included helpful tips like destroying evidence under the expectation that the district maps they draw up are guaranteed to end up challenged in court. The evidence they recommended attendees destroy included evidence they had attended this panel discussion. It’s that kind of panel discussion.

the panel had four experts: North Carolina election lawyer Thomas Farr, former Georgia Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (who co-chaired Project REDMAP in 2010), Texas state Rep. Phil King, and Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation who happens to be one of the GOP’s biggest backers of voter suppression schemes. In particular, von Spakovsky has specialized in issuing fraudulent warnings about illegal immigrants voting in US elections and using those scare stories as justification for voter suppression laws. Von Spakovsky was also on Trump’s short-lived presidential commission aimed at uncovering proof of this alleged rampant voter fraud. In keep with this theme of whipping up fears about immigrants, von Spakovksy has been one of the chief advocates for using only population based on citizenship, and not the total number of people in a state, for redistricting purposes during the 2021 redistricting process...

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https://documented.net/investigations/exclusive-documented-obtains-recording-of-3-hour-long-voter-suppression-strategy-session-hosted-by-alec

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https://slate.com/news-and-politics**/2019/10/**alec-meeting-gerrymandering-audio-recording.html

slate no lnx audio

luxury cabanas atop Austin’s JW Marriott kept state legislators cool poolside as August-in-Texas temperatures soared above 103 degrees during each day of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s 2019 annual meeting. The gathered Republican officials could enjoy a $14 rooftop Peppered Paloma cocktail with Patrón silver, housemade grapefruit poblano soda, and Chilean salt, all while gazing over Lady Bird Lake and the nearby state Capitol, or catching a ballgame on the cabana’s 55-inch private TV.

Downstairs, meanwhile, five of the GOP’s most seasoned redistricting minds and über-lawyers would teach them the finer points of tilting maps and drawing districts that would allow them to retain such spoils for another decade.

Slate has obtained an exclusive audio recording of the closed-door panel called “How to Survive Redistricting,” moderated by influential Republican lawyer Cleta Mitchell. The panel’s four experts—Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation, North Carolina election lawyer Thomas Farr, former Georgia Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, and Texas state Rep. Phil King—are among the architects and defenders of some of the most notorious gerrymanders and voter suppression plans of this decade.

During the session, the legislators were advised to treat redistricting as “political adult blood sport,” trash potential evidence before it can be discovered through litigation, avoid the word gerrymander, and make deals with black and Latino legislators that guarantee them easy reelections by packing as many minority voters as possible into their districts, thereby making the rest of the map whiter and more conservative.

“You are going to be sued. Let’s start with that.” — Cleta Mitchell

Panelists offered complicated technical advice, such as adding a legal provision that would allow a legislature to defend its maps in court even if the state attorney general refuses. And then there was less-technical advice, like being sure to put “sharp” legislators on redistricting committees because they’ll spend a lot of time explaining the maps in court.

:{“You are going to be sued. Let’s start with that,” Mitchell told a packed room at the ALEC gathering, attended by more than 1,400 people, including Trump administration officials and top conservative lawmakers, thinkers, donors, and activists.Mitchell made light of ALEC’s reputation as a conveyor belt for cookie-cutter conservative legislation enacted by state after state. “Mindless state legislators, we’re just pouring in information and we’re indoctrinating you, pouring into your empty skulls!” she said, sarcastically. :{“We’re going to teach you how to gerrymander.”}::{}:

:{:{}:

And then she did. “Let us begin with the fact that, probably, your notes from this conference, and this workshop, will probably be part of a discovery demand,” Mitchell said on the recording, dropping the sarcasm. “My advice to you is: If you don’t want it turned over in discovery, you probably ought to get rid of it before you go home.”}:}:

View Transcript

Farr, the veteran North Carolina election lawyer whose nomination to the federal bench in North Carolina ended amid persistent allegations that he had defended efforts to suppress the black vote, compared lawsuits against GOP redistricting plans to a cancer diagnosis. “You better get some chemotherapy,” he said, “because if you don’t, things aren’t going to turn out real well for you.” He also told legislators that they needed to think about any trial as a play that he would direct as the counsel, and to be sure that they created a script that an attorney could work with before a judge.

Westmoreland, the former Georgia congressman who co-chaired a Republican 2010 redistricting initiative called REDMAP, told a story about giving black Democrats in his state mapmaking software and encouraging them to draw their “perfect district,” knowing that districts filled with minority voters would make surrounding districts whiter and more Republican.

:{:{“We ended up being very successful with it,” Westmoreland said.}:

Westmoreland recalled inviting the members of the “black caucus” to his office, “off campus,” to create their “perfect map.” One incumbent, he said, “finally fell into the trap and came over there and drew his perfect district.” To show the redistricting plan benefited black Democrats too, he “immediately got the local paper down there” to run an article on that lawmaker’s perfect district. Westmoreland then included a district as close as possible to that overwhelmingly black and Democratic one in the state’s official map. The legislator, he said, voted against the map and soon lost his seat.}:

“I promise you it’ll be beneficial to you,” he told the ALEC attendees. “They still want to be reelected. They still want to have the best district they can have.”

View Transcript

The speakers repeatedly insisted that there is no such thing as a nonpartisan redistricting process. Farr argued that maps can never be neutral. “Every time you draw a districting line, it benefits one party and hurts the other party,” he said.

:{:{}:

The idea that Republicans are simply fighting similarly skewed Democratic gerrymanders has been debunked. According to a University of Southern California study, 59 million Americans live in states where at least one chamber of the state legislature is controlled by the party that won fewer votes in 2018. In every case, Republicans drew the lines, and hold minority control. That the process is inherently political has been disproved as well: Several states, including California, Iowa, and New Jersey, use independent commissions or various neutral or bipartisan processes that have successfully created fairer and more competitive maps. Three-quarters of the seats that flipped during the 2018 U.S. House elections were drawn by commissions or courts. Studies show that maps become more representative and equitable when more parties have a seat at the table.}:

:{:{}:

Nevertheless, Farr urged these lawmakers to make their processes appear as open as possible, even though they are driven by partisanship behind closed doors.

The legislative record, he told them, must appear to be business as usual, following every statute, with every transcript and debate filed for the record.

Given that every map could end up in court, Farr advised extraordinary caution. “You never know what you might say, even if it’s unjust, that the left can take out of context and try to use to make the Republicans look like they’re evil.”

Then, in court, Farr could take it from there.}:

“It’s like I’m a director of a play,” he explained to the room. “I know what I want the play to look like for the judges when we actually have to go and defend what we’ve done in court, and so this is why you want to make it look like—I know most of you know this already—you’re very cordial, cooperative with the minority party or the opposing party. … The more you take the high road in the legislative process, the better it’s going to look in court when you have to defend what you’ve done.”

View Transcript

Republicans, Farr suggested, are outgunned by the litigation power and the expert witnesses on the side of fair maps. He complained that Republicans have only five or six expert witnesses, while Democrats have between 18 and 20 “really outstanding and smart people” able to explain “newfangled theories” about identifying gerrymanders.

Many of those expert witnesses create tens of thousands of neutral maps using nonpartisan, legal redistricting criteria. Courts in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Ohio were all persuaded to overturn maps as partisan gerrymanders by relying, in part, on simulated maps that demonstrate that the ones drawn by legislators are wild partisan outliers. This technological advancement offers the potential of using the same technology that partisans use to rig maps to strip their intent bare. For Farr, this is a great threat. He warned the legislators that computer-assisted maps would be the tactic deployed against their maps as partisan gerrymandering moves to state courts during the upcoming 2020 redistricting cycle—and that he would help them defeat those maps.

“Garbage in and garbage out,” he said. “You can read these things to get the results that you want.” Farr said that the professors working on these simulated maps were “very smart” and that the work is “very complex.” “You’ve got to get the right experts to look at their algorithm and all the backup that they have. But there’s a definite way to defeat the concept of computer-simulated maps.”

View Transcript

As Farr and Westmoreland taught lawmakers to conceal the true intent of their maps and appear to play by the rules, Von Spakovsky envisioned a longer game to change the rules of redistricting entirely.

Von Spakovsky, a member of the Trump-Kobach “election fraud” commission, urged GOP lawmakers to use citizenship data to redistrict state legislatures rather than count the total populations of districts, the latter being the constitutional standard for U.S. House districts and the longtime norm for states, as well. Most state legislatures, however, could redistrict state legislative lines based on citizen population, in most cases simply by passing a statute. (Recent revelations from the files of late GOP redistricting mastermind Thomas Hofeller demonstrated that Republicans attempted to place a citizenship question on the 2020 census to gather citizenship data for this purpose.)

“All of you need to seriously consider switching to using citizen population to do redistricting,” he said, asserting that the concept of “one person, one vote” was just something that liberal justices on the U.S. Supreme Court “created … out of whole cloth.”

Von Spakovsky also told lawmakers that census data is important for two reasons: the apportionment of U.S. House seats, and state and federal redistricting. Congressional apportionment based on total population, as the Constitution mandates, is “fundamentally unfair,” he said, because “states with large numbers of aliens, particularly illegal aliens, are getting more political power.”

“Liberals do not want you doing this,” he said, because “the higher the number of noncitizens in a district, the greater the chances they’re going to vote for a liberal.”

View Transcript

Von Spakovsky also praised Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority, 5–4 opinion earlier this year in Rucho v. Common Cause, which essentially closed the federal courts to partisan gerrymandering claims. But he warned that other legal avenues are still open to proponents of fair maps. “What you have to understand is this is not the end of this,” he said.

Gerrymandered maps could get challenged under state constitutions as a political question, he said, or in federal courts for unconstitutional use of race data and for diluting the votes of minorities contrary to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. He called this “the Goldilocks principle of redistricting,” noting that “you can’t use too much race,” but if you don’t use race at all, “Hispanics, African Americans are going to claim you didn’t create a district in which they can elect a candidate of their choice.”

To withstand these inevitable legal challenges, the panelists said, it is important to control not only legislative majorities but also the judges approving or rejecting redistricting plans.

“Always know who’s going to end up ruling on your maps,” Westmoreland, the Georgia lawmaker, advised. “It’s important to work with the judges, the judicial system. You need to work for your attorney generals. … You need to work with as many organizations that you can to make sure that not only you win the majority, but that you elect people that are going to be able to supervise what these maps, or what you, come up with.”

Enticing more “dance partners” from minority groups to protect their own seats is another key part of that plan.

“It’s not rocket science,” Westmoreland said. “It’s politics.”

Read the full transcript of the ALEC meeting here.

This story is part of Slate’s Who Counts? project, which investigates who has decision-making power in America and what happens to those who don’t. Read more from Dahlia

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yikes gerry qanon:

an 6 22

in Ohio, much of the focus on former President Donald Trump’s endorsements of Republican candidates has been on “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance, who is competing with Rep. Tim Ryan, the Democratic nominee, in Ohio’s 2022 U.S. Senate race. One Trump-endorsed MAGA candidate and GOP nominee in Ohio who hasn’t received nearly as much national attention as Vance isJ.R. Majewski, a full-fledged QAnon conspiracy theorist running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives via Ohio’s 9th Congressional District.

Majewski is hoping to unseat the Democratic nominee, long-time Rep. Marcy Kaptur. If the 43-year-old Majewski managed to defeat Kaptur, it would be a political shocker; the Ohio Democrat was first elected to the U.S. House in 1982. Kaptur, now 75, has the distinction of being the only woman who has been serving in that branch of Congress for almost 40 years.

Kaptur survived the red waves of 1994 and 2010 and was reelected both years. But thanks to gerrymandering, it isn’t out of the question that Majewski — even with his support of QAnon — could win.

The Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt, in an article published on June 13, observes, “This is no quixotic campaign…. The 9th District has been redrawn for 2022, and is now rated as a toss-up bythe Cook Political Repor**t, ahead of elections in which Republicans are increasingly hopeful of winning the House and the Senate. If that happens, (President) Joe Biden will face extreme difficulty in passing any meaningful legislation for the rest of his first term.”

Majewski is among the extremists who buys into the Big Lieand doesn’t believe that Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election — never mind the fact that numerous recounts confirmed the fact that he did. The Ohio Republican marched with fellow Big Lie promoters in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021, although he wasn’t part of the mob who broke into the U.S. Capitol Building.

The Big Lie isn’t the only conspiracy theory that Majewski believes. QAnon has been claiming that the United States’ federal government has been hijacked by an international cabal of pedophiles, child sex traffickers, Satanists and cannibals and that Trump was put in the White House to fight the cabal.

Majewski, Gabbatt notes, repainted a pro-Trump sign on his front law so that it was changed into a sign promoting QAnon.

“The sign repainting wasn’t Majewski’s only dalliance with QAnon — a baseless right-wing conspiracy theory which has been labeled a potential domestic terror threat by the FBI — and which states, among other things, that a cabal of Democrats and liberals are engaged in child trafficking,” Gabbatt reports. “In a television interview about the sign, Majewski was wearing a QAnon t-shirt — and Media Matters, a media watchdog, documented multiple instances of Majewski posting images and hashtags relating to the baseless conspiracy theory.”

Majewski has also called for red states to secede from the United States. In a video posted on the Periscope app, Gabbatt notes, Majewski said, “I didn’t want to be a hype beast, but I’ve had it in my back pocket to say that every state that went red should secede from the United States. I don’t think it sounds out there.”

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msnbc 6/6/22?

dem atty marc elias desantis ignore gop state scotus 4x? 5? nottime to sue/win for 2022 but there is for 2024

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6 22 sattler an

who wouldn’t like to see Marjorie Taylor Greene’s career-ending after one uselessly nauseating term in the US House of Representatives?

Who wouldn’t like to see her spending more time chilling with Putin-loving white nationalists, harassing kids who survived school shootings, or groping photoshopped cutouts of Donald Trump?

It’s just the way our brains need things to work.

Q-curious spreaders of Jewish Space Laser conspiracies who incite violence against public servants aren’t supposed to win reelection.

They’re supposed to be defeated – forced to fly away to an even worse fate, like fleeing Congress to run Trump’s failing fake Twitter site.

Our brains are so desperate to make this true that Marcus Flowers, a possible Democratic opponent, has raised almost $5 million with 87 percent coming from donations of less than $200 – even though his home seems to no longer be in Greene’s district in Georgia.

To be honest, it wouldn’t matter whether Flowers, or any Democrat, raised $50 million or even the more than $90 million Amy McGrath spent to lose to Mitch McConnell in 2020, Greene is going to win – likely by more than the nearly 20-point margin, McGrath lost by.

Why?

Because gerrymandering doesn’t care about your feelings.

If picking your voters didn’t work, Republicans wouldn’t bother rigging maps. No one knows better than Republicans that their future as a party depends on turning fewer (and whiter) votes into more power.

A genius candidate with a bursting war chest could overcome a five-point or 10-point or possibly even a 20-point advantage if everything including the earth’s axis swings to her advantage.

But no candidate is going to overcome a 45 percent Republican lean, not in a country whose largest export is now negative partisanship.

Greene could marry Hunter Biden, put her pronouns on her Twitter bio and give herself a real-time abortion on Tucker Carlson’s desk while wearing a rainbow-colored N95 mask – she’d still win.

All she needs are the votes from her party.

They’d vote for a cumquat as long as it had an “R” next to it.

The urge to lance this human boil from our body politic is obviously born of the best intentions. Democrats must contest every race, including in the second-most Republican House district in Georgia. Remember the success of Howard Dean’s “50-state” strategy?

A “whole ballot” strategy is crucial to confronting the menace of a GOP that has chosen Trumpism (aka American Putinism) over democracy.

You could even argue that investing millions in Georgia’s 14th could end up helping Georgia’s Senator Raphael Warnock, whose race could easily decide control of the upper chamber of the Congress, or Stacey Abrams, who lost to Brian Kemp in her first effort to become the first Black woman governor in US history by a mere .4 percent in 2018.

But whoever runs against Greene is going to have plenty of cash – too much cash, in fact – so why not just give to Warnock or Abrams!

Better yet, donate to Democrats in the House majority who face tight races, including 13 whose races are deemed toss-ups by the Cook Political report. Those races could decide control of the lower chamber of Congress. Even better, how about helping the effort to take control of at least one state House in every key swing state?

I hate lecturing anyone on the best ways for doing politics given the last election I won was for the honor of “Most Talkative” in the ninth grade. But I know one thing. Democracy is on the ballot in 2022.

If the GOP takes both chambers and retains control of legislatures in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, or Michigan, the chances of a Democrat being fairly elected president in 2024 will veer dangerously close to zero.

Don’t believe me. Believe election law expert Rick Hasen. He fears that Republicans could swipe the presidency in one of two ways.

Try employing an absurd legal theory giving state control of elections that has support from at least four Republicans on the Supreme Court.

Or try swaying the actual vote count by corrupting state and local election officials or by threatening their non-corrupt counterparts.

All that’s holding up Nightmare No. 1 is Democratic governors in blue states, all of whom are running for election and facing tight races.

Steve Bannon is aiming for Nightmare No. 2 with a laser focus on local elections to pick the hands that guide the machinery of democracy.

On the Democrat’s side, there’s no national figure trying to rally the party in preparation for a full-ballot assault favoring democracy.

Run for Something is an incredible organization. It’s focused on helping young progressives get on the ballot and win.

But Run for Something’s national budget in the last election was less than half of what Marcus Flowers has raised to lose to Greene.

By November, the millions spent on Flowers’ already-decided race may exceed the $39.3 million spent on all the 2020 races for the Michigan House. And Democratic control of the Michigan House could stop the Trump effort to steal that state in 2024 through the legislature, cold.

Patriotic Democrats should have no delusions about the enormity and importance of the challenge they face.

No Democratic president has seen his party hold both chambers of the Congress through his first midterm election since 1978. Rick Hasen has said that if Kevin McCarthy – who’d likely be the Speaker of the House were the Republicans to win in 2022 – were in chargeback in 2020, “I don’t know that we’d have a President Biden right now.”

You can’t beat Marjorie Taylor Greene.

But you can do even better.

You can help stop a plot to destroy democracy. You might even keep Greene mostly irrelevant with zero committee assignments.

This will require matching, then exceeding Republicans’ ruthless focus on winning. That begins with fixating on where our democracy is decided, not burning money to make our brains feel a little bit better.

an 422

Extremist groups and lawmakers are engaged in an "insidious and coordinated” plot to undermine American democracy. That's according to a newly issued report from the nonpartisan civil rights organization National Urban League (NUL).

The report, titled "Under Siege: The Plot to Destroy Democracy," documents the “conspiracy and the urgent case for a national mobilization to protect and defend our most sacred constitutional right”. NUL specifically notes four key tactics in the effort: gerrymandering, voter suppression, misinformation and intimidation.

In 2021 alone, 20 states have leveraged census data to redraw congressional maps, it noted. It labeled the new maps proposed by Republican state lawmakers “no more than modern-day gerrymandering that strips voting power away from communities with Black and brown voters."

By NUL's count, 34 laws were passed in 19 states between January 1 and December 7 2021 that make it more difficult for people to vote.

In addition to shortening the window to apply and deliver mail ballots, it says, those laws limit absentee voting lists, restrict assistance in returning a voter’s mail ballot, reduce the availability of mail ballot drop boxes, and increase barriers for voters with disabilities, among other restrictions.

"The burden of these laws – strict photo ID requirements, the elimination or restriction of Sunday voting, voting by mail and early voting, and the closing of polling locations – overwhelmingly falls on Black voters,” Marc Morial, president and CEO of NUL, said in the report.

“Since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the United States has seen a steady rise in disenfranchisement practices giving one party an edge over the other. But never before has the nation seen such an insidious and coordinated campaign to obliterate the very principle of ‘one person, one vote’ from the political process.”

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While we’re imagining though, imagine having an electric car and clean energy grid to power it, so you’re not reliant on Russian fossil fuels for your car or electricity!

Similarly wrong yet Right was Dan Crenshaw, Texan Republican who has received $689,000 from the oil and gas industry for his campaigns for one of the most obviously gerrymandereddistricts in the country. He suggested that the Keystone XL pipeline could have replaced the fossil fuels we import from Russia, as though that pipeline was for US consumption (and not the global market it’s already reaching anyway). “Relying on Russian oil is a choice.” he added, “And it’s a stupid one.”

And he’s right! It’d be infinitely smarter to not rely on oil at all!

(But we somehow doubt that’s what he meant.)

(Originally appeared at DailyKos)

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an 2 22

As the 2022 midterm elections approach, Republican lawmakers across the country are scrambling to redraw congressional district maps in hopes of making them more uncompetitive and, subsequently, safer for the party's candidates. So, how can they achieve this goal?

According to HuffPost's Travis Waldron, veering further to the right will likely do the trick. Waldron pointed to Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) and the political battle unfolding in Texas as a prime example of what is transpiring in many areas of the United States. While the Republican lawmaker appeared to seamlessly breeze through his first campaign two years ago, Waldron notes that things aren't as simple this time around.

Although Crenshaw is widely considered to be one of the most conservative lawmakers in the House, the Republican candidates looking to unseat him have more radicalized far-right belief systems. In short, Crenshaw is being depicted as the type of Republican lawmaker to straddle the fence; a moderate-centrist perspective the radicalized far-right has no tolerance for.

Waldron wrote:

"To hear his opponents tell it, Crenshaw is the personification of Republican heresy: Although he supported a Texas lawsuit that sought to overturn the election in late 2020, Crenshaw has since denounced conspiracy theorists who said that the election was 'stolen' from Trump. He’s also criticized the idea that sham audits, like those the Arizona GOP and Republicans elsewhere have conducted, will lead to Trump’s imminent return to the White House. 'Republicans like Dan Crenshaw,' one of his right-wing challengers told The Texas Tribune recently, are 'why we allowed ... the election to be stolen.'"

So, how are far-right radicals tapping in to steer elections in their favor? By incorporating what Waldron describes as "suburban gerrymandering." Waldron explained how this works:

"Throughout the current redistricting cycle, Republicans have largely sought to shore up seats they already hold, by increasing the proportion of Republican voters in those districts, instead of creating new ones. And in Texas and elsewhere, their main targets have been seats like Crenshaw’s — districts that include substantial suburban areas that have trended, both demographically and politically, in favor of Democrats over the last decade. As in past rounds of redistricting, that approach is almost certain to dilute the votes of Black, Hispanic and other minority voters who have driven suburban population booms in Texas and other states."

Michael Li, an expert on gerrymandering and congressional redistricting at Brennan Center for Justice, shed light on the Republican perspective and the goal they are trying to reach.

“In places like Texas, Republicans drew maps like they felt they had to neutralize the suburbs,” said Li. “That’s what Republicans did across the country: They created a lot of rural-suburban districts. They broke up the suburbs, and that’s going to affect the kinds of people that are elected."

While these types of practices raise ethical questions and concerns, the problem, according to Alex Keena, —a Virginia Commonwealth University professor who researches the impact of gerrymandering— is that they are legal.

“This is just the obvious consequence,” said Keena. “It’s basically legal now."

As the political population of suburban Republicans continues to diminish, Republican lawmakers like Crenshaw will be left with limited platform options. The obvious alternative: lean further to the far right or jeopardize the possibility of re-election.

“You can see a world in which they become a little bit more conservative,” Li said. “Because they have to win the primary, and the primary electorates in these newly drawn districts are much more conservative."

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2 22

no lnx

These states are seeing some of the GOP’s most 'egregious' power grabs: reporter

Ron DeSantis speaking at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland]

Alex Henderson February 16, 2022

During the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan and his allies in the Republican National Committee believed that the way to grow the GOP was by appealing to a wide range of voters — including the Blue Dog “Reagan Democrats” in his coalition. And during the 1990s and 2000s, members of the Bush family, along with Republican strategist Karl Rove, argued that many Latinos were potential Republican voters and natural conservatives even if they didn’t realize it yet.

Now, MAGA Republicans believe that the best way to stay in office is by making it more difficult to vote, and draconian GOP-sponsored voter suppression laws are being passed or proposed all over the United States.

Journalist Ari Berman, in a listicle published by Mother Jones on February 16, offers examples of some of the “egregious” power grabs that Republicans have been attempting or carrying out in various states — including Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida and Colorado.

“Ahead of the midterms,” Berman warns, “Republicans have launched a full-scale assault on the election system. Fueled by the Big Lie, this attack relies upon a multi-pronged strategy of gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the takeover of election positions by ideologues who allege that the 2020 election was stolen.”

Most of the states that Berman discusses are ones that President Joe Biden won in the 2020 election, although former President Donald Trump carried Florida by around 3.5%. Describing Florida’s voter suppression law, Berman explains, “Mimicking Georgia, Republicans banned giving food and water to voters in line, along with making it harder to vote by mail — after more Democrats than Republicans did so for the first time in the state’s recent history. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill in May during a ‘Fox & Friends’ exclusive; all other media outlets were barred from the event.”

In Texas, which Biden lost by 6% in 2020, Republicans have responded to Democratic gains in the light red state with a voter suppression bill that Gov. Greg Abbott happily signed into law. Texas Republicans, Berman notes, have banned all ballot drop boxes in Texas — and Berman adds that in Galveston, “the GOP-controlled county commission has adopted new redistricting maps that eliminated the county’s lone district where voters of color are the majority, represented by Democrat Stephen Holmes for 22 years — one of the most flagrant examples of racial gerrymandering since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013.”

Meanwhile, in the swing state of Pennsylvania — which has gone Democrat in every post-1980s presidential election except 2016 — MAGA Republicans are not only pushing for voter suppression, but trying to take over election administration positions.

Berman observes, “Stephen Lindemuth of Elizabethtown attended the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally on January 6 that led to the insurrection. In November, he won a bid to become a local election judge — part of a growing wave of Big Lie proponents who are taking over election administration positions.”

The “Stop the Steal” movement is also alive and well in Wisconsin, another state that flipped from Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020.

Berman warns, “Republicans have launched an all-out assault on the integrity of the state’s election system, with former conservative State Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman — who admitted he didn’t have ‘any understanding of how elections work’ — launching a sprawling Arizona-style audit of the 2020 election, while other top Republicans have called for jailing members of the state’s bipartisan elections commission and stripping them of the authority to oversee elections.”

Arizona, once a deep red state known for the conservative politics of Sen. Barry Goldwater and Sen. John McCain, is much more Democrat-friendly than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Biden won Arizona, which has two centrist Democratic senators (Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly) and a conservative Republican governor (Doug Ducey).

Describing the MAGA power grab in Arizona, Berman observes, “Republicans stripped Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs of the power to defend state election laws and transferred that authority to the Republican attorney general — but only through the 2022 election, in case the partisan composition of the offices is reversed after that.”

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ok gerry again?!

https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/scotus-voting-rights/

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starbuck candace owen ~

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/madison-cawthorn-2656485066/

igor salon

Top allies of former President Donald Trump pushed back after he endorsed a former administration aide over a conservative influencer who is highly popular on the far right.

On Tuesday, Trump endorsed Morgan Ortagus, a former State Department spokeswoman and Fox News contributor, in the upcoming Republican primary in Tennessee's 5th congressional district. Incumbent Rep. Jim Cooper, a Democrat, has announced that he will retire, saying that Republicans had "dismembered" his longtime Nashville district for partisan gain.

"Morgan was fantastic in her role working with Secretary Mike Pompeo at the U.S. State Departmentand understands the threats posed by China, Russia, Iran and others, and will be tough, not just roll over like the Democrats and RINOs," Trump said in a statement. "She won't bow to the Woke Mob or the Leftist LameStream Media. Morgan Ortagus will have my Complete and Total Endorsement if she decides to run!"

That statement brought immediate and highly unusual pushback from some of Trump's most ardent supporters.

"Nope. Trump has this completely wrong," tweeted conservative pundit Candace Owens, writing that the "correct pick" is Robby Starbuck, a former music video producer running as a pro-MAGA Republican in the district.

Former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka and former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis echoed that sentiment.

Starbuck is running on a platform to crack down on ballot access, so-called Critical Race Theory, LGBTQ rights and Big Tech companies. It's unclear why Trump snubbed Starbuck in favor of Ortagus, who called him "disgusting" during his 2016 campaign before joining his administration.

Numerous other Trump allies joined in backing Starbuck over Trump's preferred candidate.

"I endorsed [Starbuck] months ago and I stand by my endorsement," tweeted Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C.

"I endorsed Robby months ago & believe he's exactly what we need in these difficult times," wrote Trump-backed Arizona gubernatorial candidateKari Lake. "He's a God-fearing man who loves his wonderful family — he's a true 'citizen politician.'"

The Republican scramble comes after the GOP-dominated state legislature carved up Cooper's Nashville-area district. Cooper, who has trounced every Republican challengers for decades and ran unopposed in 2020, said the Republican plan to split reliably blue Nashville into three Republican-leaning districts made it impossible for him to win.

"Despite my strength at the polls, I could not stop the General Assembly from dismembering Nashville," he said in a statement. "No one tried harder to keep our city whole. I explored every possible way, including lawsuits, to stop the gerrymandering and to win one of the three new congressional districts that now divide Nashville. There's no way, at least for me in this election cycle, but there may be a path for other worthy candidates."

The Tennessee House of Representatives on Monday approved a new congressional map that would split Nashville, combining areas of the state's largest city with more conservative parts of the state. Cooper, who represented a district President Joe Biden won by 24 points, was drawn into a new district that former Trump carried by nine points, according to Cook Political Report editor Dave Wasserman.

"Our Republican legislature has savaged Nashville in order to get one more vote in Congress," Cooper told Axios. "This is a cruel blow to all people of Nashville, certainly to minority groups, but to every resident of Nashville," he added.

Although Republicans have not been as aggressive at carving out new districts in other states, many of the Republican-drawn maps have been perceived as intended to dilute the power of voters of color. Several Republican-drawn maps have already been struck down and Democrats have vowed to continue to litigate partisan and racial gerrymanders.

"The maps passed by Tennessee Republicans are blatant partisan gerrymanders," former Attorney General Eric Holder, the chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement. "The congressional map splits Nashville into three separate districts, weakening the voting power of the region's economic powerhouse and the city's black community. This map is an obvious attempt to deliver illegitimate political power to the Republican Party for the next decade."

Republicans already hold a 7-2 edge in the state's congressional delegation but the Nashville redistricting could give the GOP eight of the state's nine House seats. Cooper suggested that the aggressive gerrymander was unnecessary, since Republicans are likely to win back control of the House in November anyway. Cooper is the 29th Democratic incumbent to announce he won't seek re-election ahead of a likely power shift.

While Cooper said the redistricting plan would prevent him from winning re-election, it's unclear whether progressive primary challenger Odessa Kelly plans to continue her campaign after comparing the effect of the redistricting to Jim Crow-era laws that prevented Black people from voting.

"I joined the congressman in fighting back against the Tennessee General Assembly's racist gerrymandering that will erase the voices of Black and brown voters in Nashville," Kelly told Tennessee Lookout. "But I know one thing is true: People-powered movements in this state have been building power for years and no map is going to slow it down."

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no lnx twt

‘A huge setback for the GOP': Republicans suffer a blow in their fight for control of the House

Alex Henderson January 14, 2022

Between President Joe Biden’s weak approval ratings, gerrymandering and voter suppression, many pundits have been predicting that Republicans will retake the U.S. House of Representatives in November. But that remains to be seen, and Republican gerrymandering was dealt a blow in the Midwest this week when the Ohio Supreme Court — including Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor — struck down the congressional map that Ohio Republicans had in mind for the Buckeye State.

On top of that, Rep. John Katko of New York State has announced that he won’t be seeking reelection — which is more bad news for the GOP. Katko is one of the Republicans who is moderate enough to fare well among centrist Democrats and swing voters in his state. Neither of these problems is necessarily decisive for control of the House, but if 2022 ends up being close, a few seats on the margin could make all the difference.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled, 4-3, that the map violated the state’s constitution by drawing the districts to unfairly favor one party over another. Columbus Dispatch reporters Jessie Balmert and Laura A. Bischoff note that the map “could have given Republicans as much as a 12-3 advantage in a state that voted for President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump twice.”

Ohio Supreme Court Justice Michael Donnelly, who was part of the majority opinion, argued, “When the dealer stacks the deck in advance, the house usually wins.”

READ: Here's what it would really mean to prosecute Trump]

Now, lawmakers in the Ohio State Legislature, according to Balmert and Bischoff, will have 30 days to “craft a new map.”

The Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman, in response to the ruling, tweeted:

Meanwhile, in New York State, Katko’s decision not to seek another term takes away a GOP candidate who isn’t a polarizing figure among centrist Democrats and swing voters. Katko, who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump following the January 6, 2021 insurrection, is conservative but not extreme.

Not surprisingly, Trump sees Katko’s decision as good news, as he considers the congressman a RINO: Republican in Name Only.

READ: 'To defy Trump's wishes is to defy God's plan': The scary truth about modern right-wing misinformation]

But outside of the MAGA bubble, political analysts are saying that Democrats just got some good news in New York State. Two of them are Cook's Wasserman and Kyle Kondik of Sabato's Crystal Ball:

Here are some more reactions to Katko’s announcement:

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lwv HAS PJT?

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yikes omg sys ampl fdbk? lack of diversity?

an 10 21

Ron Watkins, the guy most QAnon experts believe is on half of the duo — with his father Jim Watkins — to be the infamous Q of QAnon (He denies it) is now running for Congress. Watkins has relocated to Arizona from Japan, where he was believed by most QAnon researchers to have written the "Q drops" — along with his father — by pretending to be a high-placed D.C. official in the Donald Trump administration. He's planning to run as a Republican against Democratic incumbent Rep. Tom O'Halleran.

Watkins didn't pick Arizona's 1st district out of any real connection to the area, or even the state. The district has become a hot commodity because, after a robust bout of gerrymanderingby the GOP-controlled state legislature, it's believed that that the congressional seat will likely turn over to a Republican.Subsequently, the race is a magnet for a lot of Republicans with congressional dreams and a better base of donors than the denies-he-is-Q guy.

GOP political consultants are quick to downplay the possibility that Watkins could win. Arizona Republican political consultant Stan Barnes told Will Sommer of the Daily Beast that a guy "who's allegedly related to the QAnon phenomenon has no chance of winning." But as Sommer pointed out, "QAnon connections haven't proved disqualifying" for Republicans like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado.Indeed, Donald Trump incited an insurrection on the Capitol that was manned heavily by QAnoners, and he is the current favorite to win the 2024 election. Watkins is squirrelly, will likely be outspent, and his sleazy history includes giving an interview in a brothel — so I wouldn't bet in his favor. Still, he's not crazy to think that he's got a shot.

Blame gerrymandering.

Across the country, Republicans — who already control the majority of state legislatures — are working swiftly to redraw election maps to marginalize Democratic voters and create as many non-competitive Republican seats as possible. Most of the political coverage of this, for understandable reasons, is focused on how this will further enshrine the Republican power, giving them what could very well be permanent control of the federal government, despite the fact that most voters actually cast their ballots for Democrats.

But another, less intended consequence of gerrymandering is that it will speed up the Republican race to the bottom.

GOP gerrymandering empowers an ever-larger cast of idiots, conspiracy theorists, con artists, and open white nationalists to win national office. The situation is bad now, with Congress home to characters like Taylor Green, Boebert and Florida's Rep. Matt Gaetz, currently under federal investigation for sex trafficking of minors.But it's about to get much worse. Very soon the clown car will unload its passengers into primary campaigns for all of these newly safe Republican seats created by gerrymandering.

Here's how it happens: In districts with safe seats for one party or another, the election that counts is not the general, but the dominant party's primary election. This lack of general election competition creates all sorts of problems, but it's less of an issue in Democratic districts, where the diversity of the coalition at least creates real ideological debate in primaries. For Republican candidates, however, the incentives are completely skewed.

The kinds of people who vote in Republican primaries are ... well, not America's best. Without having to worry about running candidates who have to compete against Democrats for moderate voters, GOP primary voters can just go with whatever candidate excites them the most. And what speaks to Republican primary voters is sadism, racism, and a deep commitment to wild conspiracy theories. Gerrymandering makes it so that America's worst voters also happen to be the only voters who count at all in an increasing number of districts.

This is how we got Gaetz, who won with nearly 65% of the vote in his staunchly Republican district, Taylor Green, who drew nearly 75% of the vote, and Rep. Paul Gosar, who flaunts his white nationalist yearnings and got nearly 70% of the vote in his deeply conservative Arizona district. Having a heavily Republican district is an open invitation for the worst people to run, secure in the knowledge that as long as they can win over the Newsmax-addled, Facebook-meme-sharing hard right nuts that vote in GOP primaries. After that, it's a red carpet straight to national office.

Gerrymandering is not just a problem on the district level, either.

We can see from statewide offices what happens when Republicans don't feel they need to compete with Democrats in general elections. In both Florida and Texas, the incumbent Republican governors — Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbot, respectively – are running on what can be fairly described as a pro-COVID-19 platform. Both have waged all-out war on any effort to stymie the virus's ability to spread to as many bodies as possible, with a doggedness that is indistinguishable from what they'd do if they were trying to get their own constituents killed.

They aren't doing this to win any popularity contests in their states. On the contrary, polling shows repeatedlythat the majority of Americans want leaders to fight the virus, not help it spread. In fact, their actions are causing Abbott and DeSantis to see big dips in their approval numbers. But neither of them cares because both states passed draconian voter suppression laws that shield Republican politicians from having to answer to the majority of their state residents. Having secured what they likely see as an easy GOP win through voter suppression, both Abbott and DeSantis are focused instead on pleasing Republican primary voters. Doing that means maximizing the sadism and the plain old nuttiness. As Adam Serwer wrote in the Atlantic, Abbott is "too afraid of his own base to act responsibly."

Such fear-based governance will only become more and more the norm as Republicans shut Democrats out of the ability to compete in general elections, meaning that Republican primaries loom ever larger as the only elections that count. The only way to win in many Republican primaries is to show you can out-crazy the other candidate.

So it's no wonder the guy who is alleged to be Q is running for office in Arizona. When all the political incentives favor a race to the bottom, the people who are already living in the sewer have a strong advantage.

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dead of night

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/texas-gerrymandering/

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbridge_Gerry

https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1365&context=facpub

1997

Ulysses at the Mast: Democr Ulysses at the Mast: Democracy, Federalism, and the Sir alism, and the Sirens' Song ens' Song

of the Seventeenth Amendment

Jay S. Bybee

University of Nevada, Las Vegas -- William S. Boyd School of Law

Richard Spaight of North Carolina proposed that the second branch be chosen by state legislatures, and his proposal was moved again by John Dickinson.60 While the convention ultimately approved this proposal, the delegates offered very different reasons for supporting it. Several delegates argued that a senate elected by state legislatures, instead of selected by the people, would be more likely to produce "fit men."'61

Elbridge Gerry, taking a page from the experience of the colonial councils, argued that "commercial & monied interest [would] be more secure in the hands of the State Legislatures, than of the people at large." 62 The former, he argued, "have more sense of character, and will be restrained by that from injustice. 63 Since most states had two branches, "one of which is somewhat aristocratic," there would be a "better chance of refinement in the choice" of senators. 64 He repeated that "the great mercantile interest and of stockholders" would be better represented "if the state legislatures choose the second branch. '65 Madison added that the "Senate ought to come from, & represent, the Wealth of the nation. 66

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Extreme partisan gerrymandering once again saved Michigan Republicans — despite Biden's statewide win

Jeff Singer Daily Kos

June 28, 2021

Daily Kos Elections has calculated the 2020 presidential results for every state Senate and state House district in Michigan, where the GOP's gerrymandered maps will be replaced next year...

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boasts

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/john-cornyn/

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/gerrymandering/

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