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      Alabama Redistricting Decision Reasserts Voting Rights Act

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      Three federal judges in Alabama ruled that a new congressional map drawn by G.O.P. state lawmakers violated the Voting Rights Act.After years of court decisions battering the Voting Rights Act, a ruling in an Alabama redistricting case is reasserting the power of the 56-year-old law — and giving Democrats and civil rights groups hope for beating back gerrymandered maps.The decision from three federal judges ordered state lawmakers to rework their newly drawn congressional maps. The Republican-led legislature violated the Voting Rights Act, the judges ruled, by failing to draw more than one congressional district where Black voters might elect a representative of their choice.Alabama’s Republican attorney general, Steve Marshall, quickly appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit on Tuesday, and asked for a motion to stay the ruling.Still, the unanimous ruling — signed by two judges appointed by former President Donald J. Trump and one by former President Bill Clinton — was a sign that a key weapon against racial discrimination in redistricting could still be potent, even as other elements of the landmark Voting Rights Act have been hollowed out by Supreme Court decisions. The case hinged on Section 2 of the act, which bars racial discrimination in election procedures.A similar case already is pending in Texas, and the success of the challenge in Alabama could open the door to lawsuits in other states such as South Carolina, Louisiana or Georgia. It could also serve as a warning for states such as Florida that have yet to finish drawing their maps.“The Supreme Court has cut back on the tools that we in the voting rights community have to use to deal with misconduct by government authorities and bodies,” said Eric Holder, a former U.S. Attorney General who is now the chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. “Section 2 to now has remained pretty much intact.”The court’s ruling in Alabama — where the Black residents make up 27 percent of population yet Black voters are a majority in just one of seven House districts — comes amid a polarized redistricting cycle, in which both Republicans and Democrats have sought to entrench their political power through district lines for congressional and legislative maps. In much of the country, that has created districts that bisect neighborhoods or curl around counties to wring the best possible advantage.Civil rights leaders and some Democrats argue that process too often comes at the expense of growing minority communities. Black and Hispanic voters have a history of being “packed” into single congressional districts or divided up across several so as to dilute their votes.In 2013, the Supreme Court dealt the Voting Rights Act a significant blow in Shelby v. Holder, hollowing out a core provision in Section 5. The “preclearance” provision required that states with a history of discrimination at the polls get approval from the Justice Department before making changes to voting procedures or redrawing maps. Last year, the court ruled that Section 2 would not protect against most new voting restrictions passed since the 2020 election.Mr. Marshall, the Alabama attorney general, argued the only way to create two majority-Black congressional districts is to make race the primary factor in map-drawing and called the court’s ruling “an unconstitutional application of the Voting Rights Act.”“The order will require race to be used at all times, in all places, and for all districts,” Mr. Marshall wrote in his appeal Tuesday. “Based on the political geography of Alabama and the broad dispersion of Black Alabamians, it is essentially impossible to draw a map like those presented by plaintiffs unless traditional districting principles give way to race.”The case is very likely to advance to the Supreme Court, where Justice Clarence Thomas has already indicated he does not believe that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prevents racial gerrymandering, a question the court did not address when it struck down other elements of the law.The Alabama decision is the second this month in which a court has invalidated a Republican-drawn congressional map. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled state legislative and congressional maps drawn by Republicans violated a state constitutional prohibition on partisan gerrymandering. The North Carolina Supreme Court delayed the state’s primaries while a challenge to Republican-drawn maps there is heard.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Court Throws Out Alabama’s New Congressional Map

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      A federal panel of judges ordered state lawmakers to redraw the lines, saying Black voters “have less opportunity than other Alabamians” to elect candidates of their choice.WASHINGTON — A panel of three federal judges threw out Alabama’s congressional map on Monday and ordered state lawmakers to draw a new one with two, rather than just one, districts that are likely to elect Black representatives.The map that Alabama’s Republican-majority State Legislature adopted last fall drew one of the state’s seven congressional districts with a majority of Black voters. The court ruled that with Alabama’s Black population of 27 percent, the state must allot two districts with either Black majorities or “in which Black voters otherwise have an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice.”“Black voters have less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect candidates of their choice to Congress,” the panel of judges wrote.The case is certain to be appealed and could lead to the U.S. Supreme Court addressing the question of whether lawmakers can draw political maps to achieve a specific racial composition, a practice known as racial gerrymandering. In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts have no role to play in blocking partisan gerrymanders. However, the court left intact parts of the Voting Rights Act that prohibit racial or ethnic gerrymandering.If Alabama legislators do not produce and pass a new map with a second majority-Black district within 14 days, the court will appoint a special master to do so, the judges wrote. That second district would be a significant legal and political victory for Democrats, who would be overwhelming favorites to carry it.“This decision is a win for Alabama’s Black voters, who have been denied equal representation for far too long,” said Eric H. Holder Jr., the chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. “The map’s dilution of the voting power of Alabama’s Black community — through the creation of just one majority-Black district while splitting other Black voters apart — was as evident as it was reprehensible.”The Alabama Republican Party chairman, John Wahl, said he was disappointed in the court’s ruling and expected it to be appealed. “The basic outlines of Alabama’s congressional districts have remained the same for several decades and have been upheld numerous times,” he said. “What has changed between now and those past decisions to cause the court to act in this manner?”The Alabama congressional map is the second drawn by Republicans to be struck down by courts this month. Two weeks ago, the Ohio Supreme Court invalidated a map drawn by Republicans which would have given the G.O.P. a likely 12-to-3 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation. North Carolina’s new congressional map is also enmeshed in a legal battle, and several other states are likely to be sued over their political cartography.The three-judge panel is made up of two Federal District Court judges appointed by former President Donald J. Trump and one by former President Bill Clinton. All three signed the opinion. The panel pushed back Alabama’s ballot qualification deadline from Jan. 28 to Feb. 11 for the state’s May primaries.Alabama’s secretary of state, John H. Merrill, declined to comment on the ruling.Adam Kincaid, the executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, the party’s main mapmaking organization, said the map was based on one that was cleared in 2011 by President Obama’s Justice Department, then led by Mr. Holder, and comports with the Voting Rights Act.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      On Vaccines and More, Republican Cowardice Harms America

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      Back in July, Kay Ivey, governor of Alabama, had some strong and sensible things to say about Covid-19 vaccines. “I want folks to get vaccinated,” she declared. “That’s the cure. That prevents everything.” She went on to say that the unvaccinated are “letting us down.”Three months later Ivey directed state agencies not to cooperate with federal Covid-19 vaccination mandates.Ivey’s swift journey from common sense and respect for science to destructive partisan nonsense — nonsense that is killing tens of thousands of Americans — wasn’t unique. On the contrary, it was a recapitulation of the journey the whole Republican Party has taken on issue after issue, from tax cuts to the Big Lie about the 2020 election.When we talk about the G.O.P.’s moral descent, we tend to focus on the obvious extremists, like the conspiracy theorists who claim that climate change is a hoax and Jan. 6 was a false flag operation. But the crazies wouldn’t be driving the Republican agenda so completely if it weren’t for the cowards, Republicans who clearly know better but reliably swallow their misgivings and go along with the party line. And at this point crazies and cowards essentially make up the party’s entire elected wing.Consider, for example, the claim that tax cuts pay for themselves. In 1980 George H.W. Bush, running against Ronald Reagan for the Republican presidential nomination, called that assertion “voodoo economic policy.” Everything we’ve seen since then says that he was right. But Bush soon climbed down, and by 2017 even supposed “moderates” like Susan Collins accepted claims that the Trump tax cut would reduce, not increase, the budget deficit. (It increased the deficit.)Or consider climate change. As recently as 2008 John McCain campaigned for president in part on a proposal to put a cap on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. But at this point Republicans in Congress are united in their opposition to any substantive action to limit global warming, with 30 G.O.P. senators outright denying the overwhelming scientific evidence that human activities are causing climate change.The falsehoods that are poisoning America’s politics tend to share similar life histories. They begin in cynicism, spread through disinformation and culminate in capitulation, as Republicans who know the truth decide to acquiesce in lies.Take the claim of a stolen election. Donald Trump never had any evidence on his side, but he didn’t care — he just wanted to hold on to power or, failing that, promulgate a lie that would help him retain his hold on the G.O.P. Despite the lack of evidence and the failure of every attempt to produce or create a case, however, a steady drumbeat of propaganda has persuaded an overwhelming majority of Republicans that Joe Biden’s victory was illegitimate.And establishment Republicans, who at first pushed back against the Big Lie, have gone quiet or even begun to promote the falsehood. Thus on Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal published, without corrections or fact checks, a letter to the editor from Trump that was full of demonstrable lies — and in so doing gave those lies a new, prominent platform.The G.O.P.’s journey toward what it is now with respect to Covid-19 — an anti-vaccine, objectively pro-pandemic party — followed the same trajectory.Although Republicans like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott claim that their opposition to vaccine requirements is about freedom, the fact that both governors have tried to stop private businesses from requiring customers or staff to be vaccinated shows this is a smoke screen. Pretty clearly, the anti-vaccine push began as an act of politically motivated sabotage. After all, a successful vaccination campaign that ended the pandemic would have been good political news for Biden.We should note, by the way, that this sabotage has, so far at least, paid off. While there are multiple reasons many Americans remain unvaccinated, there’s a strong correlation between a county’s political lean and both its vaccination rate and its death rate in recent months. And the persistence of Covid, which has in turn been a drag on the economy, has been an important factor dragging down Biden’s approval rating.More important for the internal dynamics of the G.O.P., however, is that many in the party’s base have bought into assertions that requiring vaccination against Covid-19 is somehow a tyrannical intrusion of the state into personal decisions. In fact, many Republican voters appear to have turned against longstanding requirements that parents have their children vaccinated against other contagious diseases.And true to form, elected Republicans like Governor Ivey who initially spoke in favor of vaccines have folded and surrendered to the extremists, even though they must know that in so doing they will cause many deaths.I’m not sure exactly why cowardice has become the norm among elected Republicans who aren’t dedicated extremists. But if you want to understand how the G.O.P. became such a threat to everything America should stand for, the cowards are at least as important a factor as the crazies.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Republicans Fear Flawed Candidates Could Imperil Key Senate Seats

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      Races in Missouri and Alabama, with others to come, reflect the potential risks for a party in which loyalty to Donald Trump is the main criterion for securing nominations.The entry of two hard-right candidates this week into Senate races in Missouri and Alabama exposed the perils for Republicans of a political landscape in which former President Donald J. Trump is the only true north for grass-roots voters.Strong state parties, big donors and G.O.P. national leaders were once able to anoint a candidate, in order to avoid destructive demolition derbies in state primaries.But in the Trump era, the pursuit of his endorsement is all-consuming, and absent Mr. Trump’s blessing, there is no mechanism for clearing a cluttered primary field. With the former president focused elsewhere — on settling scores against Republicans who advanced his impeachment or showed insufficient loyalty — a combative Senate primary season is in store for the 2022 midterms, when Republicans who hope to regain the majority face a difficult map. They are fighting to hold on to five open seats after a wave of retirements of establishment figures, and even deep-red Missouri and Alabama pose potential headaches.A scandal-haunted former Missouri governor, Eric Greitens, entered the race on Monday to replace the retiring Senator Roy Blunt. His candidacy set off a four-alarm fire with state party leaders, who fear that Mr. Greitens may squeak through a crowded primary field, only to lose a winnable seat to a Democrat.In Alabama, the entry of Representative Mo Brooks, a staunch but lackluster Trump supporter, into the race for the seat being vacated by Senator Richard C. Shelby raised a different set of fears with activists: that Mr. Brooks, who badly lost a previous statewide race, would cause waves of Republican voters, especially women, to sit out the off-year election and crack open the door in a ruby red state for a Democrat.Both candidacies are likely to pose challenges for Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, who has weighed in to cull potentially flawed candidates in the past and has said he may do so again this time. Last year, a super PAC aligned with Mr. McConnell intervened in a Senate primary in Kansas against Kris Kobach, a polarizing figure whose candidacy threatened the loss of a seat that was ultimately won by the G.O.P. establishment’s favorite, Roger Marshall.Mr. Trump has so far stayed out of the potential pileups to fill the open Senate seats — the others to date are in Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Alabama and Missouri, both Republican strongholds, afford the G.O.P. a margin of error even with a flawed candidate, a cushion not available in the more competitive traditional battleground states.In announcing his candidacy on Fox News on Monday, Mr. Greitens, a former Navy SEAL, sought to appeal to Mr. Trump and Trump voters, boasting of having routed “antifa” from Missouri as governor and pledging to be a “fighter” who would be committed to “defending President Trump’s America First policies.”Mr. Greitens, who took office in 2017, resigned the next year amid accusations of physical and sexual abuse by a woman he had been involved with in an extramarital affair before his election. Still, he remains popular with a core of Republican voters. Many Republican officials fear that in a multicandidate primary, which appears likely, he could win with around 30 percent of the vote.“There is a high level of concern,” said Gregg Keller, a Republican strategist in Missouri, where Democrats have been shut out of major statewide victories for nearly a decade.Mr. Keller, who is unaligned in the race, said nominating Mr. Greitens would be “the only way Republicans stand a chance of losing this seat.” He added, “It would be an incredible self-own and would put the seat in play.”On Wednesday, a second candidate entered the race, Attorney General Eric Schmitt of Missouri, who had joined a Texas-led lawsuit by attorneys general to overturn the 2020 election results, which was rejected by the Supreme Court. At least three other Republicans have shown interest in the race, including Representative Ann Wagner, a moderate from the St. Louis suburbs.Mr. Greitens claimed while announcing his candidacy that he had been “completely exonerated” in the scandals that led to his resignation. But he elided important details. Accused by a hair stylist of binding her hands, spanking her, taking seminude pictures and threatening to release them if she disclosed their affair, Mr. Greitens was charged with felony invasion of privacy. The case fell apart, but the Republican-led Legislature moved to impeach Mr. Greitens anyway. An explosive investigation by the Missouri House concluded that the woman’s accusations were credible.Representative Mo Brooks was one of the first Republicans to announce that he would object to the Electoral College certifying President Biden’s victory.Elijah Nouvelage/ReutersSeparately, the attorney general at the time, Josh Hawley, now the state’s junior senator, turned up evidence that led to a felony count against Mr. Greitens related to political fund-raising, which Mr. Hawley described as “serious charges.”Mr. Greitens, 46, stepped down in May 2018 after reaching a deal with prosecutors that led to the campaign finance charge being dropped. A state ethics commission later found he had not engaged in wrongdoing in the finance case.“His claim to have been totally exonerated is a fraud and misrepresentation of the facts,” said Peter Kinder, a former Republican lieutenant governor. “An overwhelmingly Republican Legislature was prepared to impeach him and was within days of doing that.”Mr. Greitens has both grass-roots supporters and high-profile enemies in the Missouri G.O.P., including Mr. Kinder, who lost to him in a 2016 primary for governor, and Mr. Hawley.After Mr. Blunt this month announced his plans to retire, Mr. Trump called Mr. Hawley to ask about whom he should support, according to a person familiar with the conversation. They agreed to stay in touch as the field develops, and Mr. Hawley could be expected to steer Mr. Trump away from the former governor.In an argumentative interview on Wednesday with the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Mr. Greitens said the Missouri House’s 24-page report about him had been “discredited,” but he would not say how. He claimed, without evidence, that his accuser, two of her friends and her former husband, all of whom testified under oath, were “lying.” “Why did you quit?” Mr. Hewitt asked Mr. Greitens, referring to his resignation. “SEALs don’t quit.”In Alabama, the fear of some Republicans about a lack of enthusiasm for Mr. Brooks, the highest-profile candidate in an emerging field, traces to the lacerating sting of 2017, when the Democrat Doug Jones won a Senate seat after G.O.P. voters failed to show up to support the party’s nominee, the scandal-plagued Roy Moore.Mr. Brooks, a six-term congressman from northern Alabama, was one of the first Republicans to announce that he would object to the Electoral College certifying President Biden’s victory. He faced calls for censure from Democrats after an incendiary speech he made at the pro-Trump rally on Jan. 6 before the riot at the Capitol. In announcing his candidacy on Monday, he aired once again his and Mr. Trump’s false accounts of the election. “In 2020, we had the worst voter fraud and election theft in history,” he said. Few individual cases and no evidence of widespread fraud have been confirmed.But in Alabama, Mr. Trump’s fraud narrative is hardly a controversial view among Republican voters. Both Mr. Brooks, 66, and the only other announced candidate to date, Lynda Blanchard — a major G.O.P. donor who was ambassador to Melania Trump’s native Slovenia — have aggressively sought Mr. Trump’s endorsement. But it is entirely possible he will withhold one in the interest of not alienating potential future allies, political observers say.The bigger danger with Mr. Brooks, in the view of some party strategists, is that he simply fails to excite Republican voters in an off-year election. He finished an unimpressive third in a 2017 primary to fill an open Senate seat, winning fewer than one in five Republican votes.“The danger becomes that there will be nothing to motivate Republicans to go to the polls,” said Angi Horn, a Republican strategist in Alabama, “which would put us at the peril that we have been in in the past, when a large majority of Republican voters did not see a candidate that motivated and inspired them to go vote.” More