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      Mail Ballots Are at Issue as States Consider New Rules and Legal Action

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      As the nation prepares for yet another pandemic election, the rules for voting by mail remain a flash point in many states, a conflict that is being waged in courtrooms and state houses over Republican-backed restrictions.Here’s what happened this week:In North Carolina, the State Board of Elections rejected a signature-matching requirement for absentee ballots that was proposed by the state Republican Party. The measure, denied by a party-line vote on Thursday, would have let counties compare signatures on applications and return envelopes for absentee ballots with those on voter registration cards.The board’s three Democrats said that the verification method would conflict with state law and would contribute to voters being treated differently, which they cautioned would be unconstitutional. The panel’s two G.O.P. members contended that checking signatures “simply builds trust in the system.”North Carolina is not the only battleground state where Republicans and Democrats are clashing over mail-in ballots.Pennsylvania’s top election official, Leigh M. Chapman, a Democrat who is the acting secretary of the commonwealth, sued three counties on Tuesday over their refusal to include undated mail-in ballots in their official tallies from the May 7 primaries.A state court had directed counties in June to report two sets of tallies to Ms. Chapman’s office, one that included ballots without dates handwritten on their return envelopes as required by law and one that did not.The three counties — Berks, Fayette and Lancaster, which are controlled by Republicans — have prevented the state from completing its final certification of the primary results, state elections officials said.The lack of dates on ballot envelopes was a point of contention in the Republican Senate primary that was narrowly won by Dr. Mehmet Oz over David McCormick. Disputes over such ballots have resulted in legal action in state and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.The conflict over mail-in voting is not limited to purple or red states.In deep-blue Massachusetts, the Supreme Judicial Court on Monday denied a lawsuit filed by the state Republican Party that had sought to block no-excuse mail-in voting from becoming permanent.The party had argued that voting by mail, made popular during the pandemic and codified as part of a law signed last month by Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, is unconstitutional.The court’s order in Massachusetts was not the only setback this week for Republicans.In Texas, a lawsuit challenging voting restrictions that were enacted in 2021 was for the most part allowed on Tuesday to move forward by a federal court judge in San Antonio.The secretary of state and state attorney general, offices held by Republicans, had sought to dismiss the legal action by several voting rights groups.The restrictions forbade balloting methods introduced in 2020 to make voting easier during the pandemic, including drive-through polling places and 24-hour voting. They also barred election officials from sending voters unsolicited absentee-ballot applications and from promoting the use of vote by mail.Voters must now provide their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number on applications for mail-in ballots and on return envelopes. More

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      A Surprisingly Tight Race

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      Despite Biden’s low approval ratings, Democrats are roughly tied with Republicans in the midterm polls. We explain why.My colleague Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, has spent a lot of time thinking about the changing politics of economic class in the U.S. College graduates used to favor Republicans, while blue-collar voters favored Democrats. Increasingly, though, the opposite is true.The social liberalism of Democrats — on immigration, marijuana, L.G.B.T. rights, affirmative action, abortion and more — has simultaneously attracted progressive college graduates and repelled more culturally conservative working-class voters. If you’re trying to figure out why Latino voters have shifted right in the past few years, even during the Trump presidency, this dynamic offers an explanation.In this year’s midterm elections, the changing politics of class may get supercharged, Nate notes. Why? Look at the stories in the news. Many working-class voters are frustrated over inflation and other economic disruptions, making them unhappy with the Biden administration and Democrats. Many college graduates are angry about the recent decisions from a Supreme Court dominated by Republican appointees.These attitudes are evident in the first New York Times/Siena College poll of the midterm cycle: Among registered voters who never attended college, Republicans lead by almost 20 percentage points. Among college graduates, Democrats lead by almost 30 points. One startling comparison is that Democrats lead by almost as much among white college graduates as among all voters of color.To give you a clearer sense for what these patterns mean for the likely outcome of the November midterms — and which party will control the House and the Senate for the next two years — I’m turning over the rest of today’s lead item to Nate.With President Biden’s approval rating sagging into the low 30s and nearly 80 percent of voters saying the country is headed in the wrong direction, the ingredients would seem to be in place for a Republican landslide in this year’s midterm elections.But the first Times/Siena survey of the cycle shows something else: a close, competitive race for Congress.Overall, voters prefer Democrats to control Congress over Republicans by one point among registered voters, 41 to 40 percent. Once we exclude those people who are unlikely to vote, Republicans lead by one point, 44 to 43 percent.It’s a pretty surprising result, given the circumstances. Analysts have all but written off the Democrats in the race for House control, not only because Biden’s ratings are so poor but also because there’s a long history of the president’s party getting pummeled in midterm elections. These factors help explain why FiveThirtyEight’s statistical forecast gives the Republicans an 88 percent chance of winning House control.But the Times/Siena poll is not alone in showing a competitive race at this stage. Since the court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, most polls have shown a tight race on the so-called “generic ballot,” which asks whether voters would prefer Democrats or Republicans to control Congress. The race has shifted about three points in the Democrats’ direction, compared with surveys by the same pollsters before the court’s ruling.At least for the moment, conservative policy victories — on abortion, climate policy, religious rights and gun laws — and a spate of mass shootings seem to have insulated Democrats. State polls have also looked good for Democrats. The party has led just about every poll of a hotly contested Senate race over the last few months, including polls of Republican-held states like Pennsylvania and Ohio.If all this good polling for the Democrats reminds you of a story you’ve heard before, there is a reason. The polls have overestimated Democratic support for much of the last decade, partly because polls have a harder time reaching working-class voters, who have been trending Republican. It’s hard not to wonder whether the good news for Democrats might simply be a harbinger of yet another high-profile misfire.It could also mean that the Democrats are at a high-water mark that will not last. Republicans will try to make the races a referendum on the president, and only 23 percent of undecided voters in the Times/Siena poll approve of Joe Biden’s performance. If inflation remains high this year, as many economists expect, undecided voters might have further reason to break against the Democrats.Americans are paying more for groceries.Alisha Jucevic for The New York TimesThe general election campaign might be especially helpful to the Republican Senate candidates coming out of bruising primary elections. It’s understandable why Republican voters who just voted against damaged or flawed candidates — like J.D. Vance in Ohio and Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania — may be reluctant to embrace these candidates immediately. Yet that could change when the race focuses on partisan issues and the stakes of congressional control, reminding these voters why they are Republicans.For the moment, the Democrats are benefiting from a favorable news environment. The recent Supreme Court rulings, the mass shootings and even the Jan. 6 hearings have focused national attention on a relatively favorable set of issues for Democrats. For them to stay competitive, they might need to keep those issues in the limelight until November.RelatedAnother poll detail: We asked respondents to tell us what they thought was the most important problem facing the country — in an open-ended question, without any suggested answers. About 35 percent named inflation or the economy. Less than 1 percent named the pandemic.Nate Cohn explains the poll on today’s episode of “The Daily.”THE LATEST NEWSJames Webb TelescopeThe edge of a star-forming region in the Carina Nebula, a vast cloud of dust and gases.NASA, ESA, CSA and STScIScientists revealed images of stars and galaxies that had been too far away or too dim to see.Here’s how the Webb telescope, the most powerful ever, looks into the universe’s origins.Experts spent weeks picking out which images to share. See their choices here.In Times Opinion, Shannon Stirone writes that the images remind us how small — and connected — we are.Jan 6.Donald Trump mobilized supporters, some prepared for violence, to travel to Washington to disrupt Congress’ election certification, new evidence at a Jan. 6 committee hearing showed.“We basically were just following what he said,” testified Stephen Ayres, an Ohio man who entered the Capitol that day.Trump planned for him and his supporters to go to the Capitol but he wanted it to seem spontaneous.During a profane, hourslong White House meeting weeks earlier, Trump advisers including Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn proposed that the military seize voting machines.Trump has tried to contact a committee witness, which suggests he was trying to influence testimony.BusinessHow many dollars one euro buys

      As of 8:42 a.m. Eastern time WednesdaySource: FactSetBy The New York TimesOne U.S. dollar is worth almost as much as a euro for the first time in nearly 20 years.Twitter sued Elon Musk to force him to go through with buying the company.Other Big StoriesSri Lanka’s president fled to the Maldives, days after protesters stormed his residence.On his trip to the Middle East, Biden will try to speed up oil flow to the U.S., among other things.A sixth Covid wave is hitting New York City. Many people are shrugging it off.Republicans are pressing Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, to curb abortions. He has stayed quiet about his plans.The South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh will probably be charged with murdering his wife and son, one of his lawyers said.OpinionsLaughing can be a valuable coping mechanism, even for abortion, Alison Leiby writes.To navigate growing up poor, Joshua Hunt learned to lie.One redrawn Texas congressional district shows how partisan gerrymandering drives our politics toward the extremes, Jesse Wegman explains.MORNING READSResearch says most of us underestimate the power of the casual check-in.Moritz WeinertChecking in: Text your friends.Dial 988: What to know about a new mental health crisis hotline.Ask Well: Is chocolate good for you?A Times classic: Why one man kayaked alone across the Atlantic at 70.Lives Lived: In 1975, the singer and actor Adam Wade became the first Black host of a network television game show. He died at 87.SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETICHow M.L.B. could eliminate the infield shift: Jayson Stark reports that some change is now “inevitable” and it’s only a matter of when. Minor-league teams are already acting.Another N.B.A. star could be traded: Donovan Mitchell of the Utah Jazz is the name to watch. The New York Knicks would have interest. They aren’t alone.Jimmy Garoppolo’s next stop: The San Francisco 49ers quarterback could be the next one dealt after Baker Mayfield was traded last week.The Boston Red Sox get their ace back: Chris Sale returned last night, striking out five batters while not allowing a run in five innings. A healthy and effective Sale makes the Red Sox far more formidable.ARTS AND IDEAS Brian Cox of “Succession.”Macall Polay/HBO, via Associated PressThe Emmy nominations“Succession” dominated the Emmy nominations, which were announced yesterday, earning 25. In the best drama category, it will square off against the South Korean thriller “Squid Game,” which secured 14 nominations, the most ever for a foreign-language show. Other highlights:Repeat nominees: Last year’s best actor and actress in a comedy, Jason Sudeikis (for “Ted Lasso”) and Jean Smart (for “Hacks”), received nominations. Sudeikis will be up against Steve Martin, for his role in “Only Murders in the Building.” The last time Martin won an Emmy was 1969.Breakout star: Quinta Brunson, from the rookie hit “Abbott Elementary,” got her first nominations.Hulu: The streaming service could score its biggest Emmys haul with nominations for the limited series “Dopesick,” “The Dropout” and “Pam & Tommy.”Snubs: Neither Sterling K. Brown nor Mandy Moore were recognized for the final season of “This Is Us.”Full list: Here are all the nominees.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookRyan Liebe for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.Savory Thai noodles and seared brussels sprouts make for a delicious vegan dinner.What to Read“Carnality,” by Lina Wolff, starts as a conventional novel. That doesn’t last.What to WatchThe director of “Persuasion” argues that the movie is faithful to Jane Austen.Now Time to PlayThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was alchemy. Here is today’s puzzle.Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Wild guesses (five letters).And here’s today’s Wordle. After, use our bot to get better.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — DavidP.S. Two Times correspondents are swapping roles: Norimitsu Onishi will cover Canada, and Catherine Porter will replace him in Paris.Here’s today’s front page.“The Daily” is about The Times’s new political poll.Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      Gerrymandered Redistricting Maps Have Become the Norm

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      The downtown of Denton, Texas, a city of about 150,000 people and two large universities just north of Dallas, exudes the energy of a fast-growing place with a sizable student population: There’s a vibrant independent music scene, museums and public art exhibits, beer gardens, a surfeit of upscale dining options, a weekly queer variety show. The city is also racially and ethnically diverse: More than 45 percent of residents identify as Latino, Black, Asian or multiracial. There aren’t too many places in Texas where you can encounter Muslim students praying on a busy downtown sidewalk, but Denton is one of them.Lindsey Wilkes, left, and Kimberlyn Spain with friends from the Muslim Student Association near the University of North Texas.Drive about seven hours northwest of Denton’s city center and you hit Texline, a flat, treeless square of a town tucked in the corner of the state on the New Mexico border. Cow pastures and wind turbines seem to stretch to the horizon. Texline’s downtown has a couple diners, a gas station, a hardware store and not much else; its largely white population is roughly 460 people and shrinking.It would be hard to pick two places more different from one another than Denton and Texline — and yet thanks to the latest round of gerrymandering by Texas’ Republican-dominated Legislature, both are now part of the same congressional district: the 13th, represented by one man, Ronny Jackson. Mr. Jackson, the former White House physician, ran for his seat in 2020 as a hard-right Republican. It turned out to be a good fit for Texas-13, where he won with almost 80 percent of the vote.Denton’s bustling downtown square is a gathering point for the city’s diverse population.The city’s soccer facilities provide meeting grounds for families from all walks of life.Enjoying live music is a multigenerational undertaking, as the Rojas family did one afternoon at a performance of Latin funk at Harvest House.This was before the 2020 census was completed and Congress reapportioned, which gave the Texas delegation two more seats for its growing population, for a total of 38. State Republicans, who control the governor’s office and both houses of the Legislature, were free to redraw their district lines pretty much however they pleased. They used that power primarily to tighten their grip on existing Republican seats rather than create new ones, as they had in the 2010 cycle. In the process, they managed to squelch the political voice of many nonwhite Texans, who accounted for 95 percent of the state’s growth over the last decade yet got not a single new district that would give them the opportunity to elect a representative of their choice.Marsha Keffer, a volunteer and precinct chair, looking over district maps at the the Denton County Democratic Party headquarters.A development of multistory homes under construction in Denton.Denton offers a good example of how this played out. Under the old maps, downtown Denton, where the universities lie, was part of the 26th District — a Republican-majority district, but considerably more competitive than the 13th. If Texas politics continue to move left as they have in recent years, the 26th District could have become a tossup. The liberal residents of Denton could have had the chance to elect to Congress a representative of their choosing.Now that the downtown has been absorbed into the 13th District and yoked to the conservative Texas panhandle, however, they might as well be invisible. Even with the addition of all those younger and more liberal voters, the 13th remains a right-wing fortress, with a 45-point Republican lean, according to an analysis by the website FiveThirtyEight. (The redrawn 26th District, meanwhile, will likely become a few points more Republican in the absence of Denton’s downtown.)Families enjoyed a custom ride after attending a Spanish-language church service in Krum, a town in Denton County in the newly redrawn 13th Congressional District.Recycled Books, a used book, record, CD and video game store, fills several floors of an old opera house in the middle of Denton Square.This is the harm of partisan gerrymanders: Partisan politicians draw lines in order to distribute their voters more efficiently, ensuring they can win the most seats with the fewest votes. They shore up their strongholds and help eliminate any meaningful electoral competition. It’s the opposite of how representative democracy is supposed to work.A music and film festival drew Chelsey Danielle, left, and Stefanie Lazcano to the dance floor.Kinsey Davenport getting inked at Smilin’ Rick’s tattoo shop in Denton.The kitchen staff at Boca 31, an upscale Latin street-food restaurant, during a Saturday afternoon rush.Ross Sylvester, right, and Chuck Swartwood joined a crew of volunteers at a food distribution site run by First Refuge in Denton.How is it supposed to work? Politicians are elected freely by voters, and they serve at the pleasure of those voters, who can throw them out if they believe they aren’t doing a good job. Partisan gerrymanders upend that process. Politicians redraw lines to win their seats regardless of whether most voters want them to; in closely fought states like Wisconsin and North Carolina, Republicans drew themselves into control of the legislatures even when Democrats won a majority of votes statewide.When these gerrymanders become the norm, as they have in the absence of meaningful checks, they silence the voices of millions of Americans, leading people to believe they have little or no power to choose their representatives. This helps increase the influence of the political extremes. It makes bipartisan compromise all but impossible and creates a vicious circle in which the most moderate candidates are the least likely to run or be elected.A music class for infants and toddlers at the Explorium, a children’s museum and play and education center in Denton.Texas Republicans have been especially ruthless at playing this game, but they’re far from alone. Their counterparts in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Kansas have taken similar approaches to stack the deck against Democrats. Democrats have likewise gone on offense in states where they control mapmaking, such as in Illinois and Oregon, where lawmakers drew maps for 2022 that effectively erased swathes of Republicans.After a virtual home wedding for family members in Moldova and Mexico, Matt Lisovoy and Diana Lisovaya celebrated with ice cream on the square.Diya Craft and her punk-fusion band, Mutha Falcon, playing at a nonprofit social club featuring local bands and craft beers.Iglesia Sobre la Roca serves a varied population from Mexico and Central America with Spanish-language services.The Austin-based rock band Holy Death Trio at Andy’s Bar on the square.The Supreme Court had an opportunity in 2019 to outlaw the worst of this behavior, but it refused to, claiming it had neither the authority nor any clear standards to stop gerrymanders that “reasonably seem unjust.” This was nonsense; lower federal courts and state courts have had no problem coming up with workable standards for years. Court intervention is essential, because voters essentially have no other way of unrigging the system. But the Supreme Court’s conservative majority stuck its head in the sand, giving free rein to the worst impulses of a hyperpolarized society.As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent: “Of all times to abandon the court’s duty to declare the law, this was not the one. The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government. Part of the court’s role in that system is to defend its foundations. None is more important than free and fair elections.”The view in Texline, Texas, on the far western edge of the 13th Congressional District.The Supreme Court isn’t the only institution to shirk its responsibility to make maps fairer. Congress has the constitutional authority to set standards for federal elections, but Republicans have repeatedly blocked efforts by Democrats to require independent redistricting commissions. It doesn’t help matters that most Americans still don’t understand what redistricting is or how it works.The Amarillo office of Representative Ronny Jackson is on the far west side of the district.Visitors to Amarillo can find an astonishing selection of cowboy boots and other western wear at Cavender’s.They can also take in a film at the American Quarter Horse Foundation Hall of Fame and Museum.Left to their own devices, states are doing what they can. More than a dozen have created some type of redistricting commission, but the details matter greatly. Some commissions, like California’s and Michigan’s, are genuinely independent — composed of voters rather than lawmakers, and as a result these states have fairer maps.Isaiah Reed mastering his trampoline basketball skills in his backyard in Texline.Commissions in some other states are more vulnerable to partisan influence because they have no binding authority. In New York, the commission plays only an advisory role, so it was no surprise when Democrats in power quickly took over the process and redrew district lines to ensure that 22 of the state’s 26 seats would be won by their party. The state’s top court struck the Democratic maps down for violating a 2014 amendment to the State Constitution barring partisan gerrymanders — a good decision in a vacuum, perhaps, but the result is more chaos and infighting, because the final maps are forcing several top Democratic lawmakers to face off against one another. Meanwhile in Ohio, where the State Constitution has a similar provision barring partisan gerrymanders, the State Supreme Court repeatedly invalidated Republican-drawn gerrymanders for being unfairly biased, but Republicans have managed to ignore those rulings, and so will end up with the maps they want, at least for this cycle.A truck driver making a pit stop in Conway, Texas, which is in the 13th District.Palo Duro Canyon State Park, home to the second-largest canyon in the United States, is part of the arid landscape of northwestern Texas.Bushland, a suburb of Amarillo.Drew Merritt’s “The Chase” in downtown Amarillo.The patchwork of litigation and different outcomes around the country only strengthens the case for a national standard, which is nowhere in sight. It’s a maddening situation with no apparent solution — until you widen the lens and look at the larger structure of American government. When you do, it becomes clear that extreme partisan gerrymandering is more a symptom than a cause of democratic breakdown. The bigger problem is that the way we designed our system of political representation incentivizes the worst and most extreme elements of our politics.On the federal level, at least, there are clear solutions that Congress could adopt tomorrow if it had the will to do so.The 190-foot-tall cross in Groom, Texas, is among the largest in the country.First, expand the House of Representatives. As The Times’s editorial board explained in 2018, the House’s membership, 435, is far too small for America in the 21st century. It reached its current size in 1911, when the country had fewer than one-third as many people as it does today, and the national budget was a tiny fraction of its current size. In 1911, each representative had an average of 211,000 constituents — already far more than the founders had envisioned. Today that number is more than 750,000. It is virtually impossible for one person, Ronny Jackson or anyone else, to accurately represent the range of political interests in a district of that size.In the Texas Panhandle, which lies almost entirely in the 13th District, wind turbines dot the landscape, and cattle outnumber voters.The region is littered with desolate downtowns like Shamrock, where a stray cat was among the few signs of life.On the far northwestern edge of the district, in Texline, Carlos Mendoza tossed a few pitches to his neighbor Sebastian Reed. They live about 450 miles from the opposite corner of the district.Why are we still stuck with a House of Representatives from the turn of the last century? The founders certainly didn’t want it that way; the original First Amendment to the Constitution, which Congress proposed in 1789, would have permanently tied the size of the House to the nation’s population; the amendment fell one state short of ratification.Still, as the country grew Congress kept adding seats after every decennial census, almost without fail. After 1911, that process was obstructed by rural and Southern lawmakers intent on stopping the shift in political power to the Northern cities, where populations were exploding. In 1929, Congress passed a law that locked the House size at 435 seats and created an algorithm for reapportioning them in the future.A bigger House is necessary to more accurately reflect American politics and to bring the United States back in line with other advanced democracies. But on its own it wouldn’t solve our failure of representation. The larger culprit is our winner-take-all elections: From the presidency down, American electoral politics gives 100 percent of the spoils to one side and zero to the other — a bad formula for compromise at any time, and especially dangerous when the country is as polarized as it is today. But at least some of that polarization can be attributed to the manner in which we choose our representatives.Texline is at one end of the 13th District.Tattoos of a musician in Denton.In Congress, districts are represented by a single person, which is harmful in two ways: First, it’s hard to see how one person can adequately represent three-quarters of a million people. Second, even though representatives are supposed to look out for all their constituents, the reality of our politics means most people who didn’t vote for the winner will feel unrepresented entirely.The solution: proportional multimember districts. When districts are larger and contain three or even five members, they can more accurately capture the true shape of the electorate and let everyone’s voice be heard. And if the candidates are chosen through ranked-choice voting, then Republicans, Democrats and even third parties can win representation in Congress in rough proportion to their vote share. It’s no longer a zero-sum game that leaves out millions of Americans.A farm in Texline at the New Mexico border. The founders were comfortable with multimember districts, just as they were with a House of Representatives that kept expanding. In fact, such districts were common in the early years of the Republic, but Congress outlawed them at the federal level, most recently in 1967, partly out of a concern that Southern lawmakers were using them to entrench white political power — a problem that ranked-choice voting would solve.These reforms may sound technical, but they are central to saving representative democracy in America.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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      Next Front Line in the Abortion Wars: State Supreme Courts

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      Court challenges to sweeping rollbacks of abortion rights must go through state supreme courts, many of which have been shaped by years of conservative activism.WASHINGTON — Fresh from the political thicket of the United States Supreme Court, the struggle over abortion is now moving to venues that are poised to become the next front line in the country’s partisan warfare: state supreme courts.In Florida, seven justices appointed by Republican governors will decide whether the State Constitution’s explicit right to privacy, which protected abortion rights in past rulings, remains a precedent. In Michigan, a court with a 4-3 majority of Democratic nominees has been asked to conclude whether a 91-year-old law banning abortions is constitutional. In Kentucky, a decision on a ban on almost all abortions appears bound to a Supreme Court composed largely of nonpartisan elected justices.In those states and others, the federal reversal of Roe v. Wade tosses one of the nation’s most politically explosive issues into courtrooms that, until recently, had operated mostly beneath the radar of national politics.The increasing political pressure on justices — and the rightward drift of some courts — suggests that options for abortion rights advocates to soften the impact of the federal abortion ruling may be limited. It also reflects how partisan politics is emerging as a driving force in how some justices rule.Abortion rights protesters gathered at the Florida Supreme Court in May.Kenny Hill/USA TODAY NETWORKOver the past decade or so, the national Republican Party and other conservative groups have spent heavily to move both state legislatures and courts rightward. The party’s Judicial Fairness Initiative says it has spent more than $21 million since its formation in 2014 to elect conservatives to state courts, and will spend more than $5 million this year. The Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative advocacy group that has been a principal backer of recent Republican nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court, also has invested money in state supreme court races.The Democratic Party has also poured growing sums of money into court elections, as have allies like labor unions — but not as much, and not for as long, as have Republicans. But the rightward lurch of federal courts increasingly is leading progressives to see state courts as potential bulwarks against more conservative gains, said Joshua A. Douglas, an elections and voting rights scholar at the University of Kentucky.The right’s focus on the courts could pay off handsomely in legal battles over abortion, according to Douglas Keith, an expert on state judicial issues at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.Consider Iowa, whose Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that the due process clause in the State Constitution guaranteed a right to abortion. Aided by an advertising campaign financed by the Judicial Crisis Network, the General Assembly then revised the judicial nominee process, handing more control to the governor, Kim Reynolds.Gov. Kim Reynolds has turned the Iowa Supreme Court into a conservative bastion.Nick Rohlman/The Gazette, via Associated PressMs. Reynolds, a Republican, turned the court into a conservative bastion. Last month, a week before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its ruling in Roe v. Wade, the Iowa justices reversed their own 2018 ruling on abortion.Montana also recognizes a constitutional right to abortion. In the nonpartisan primary election last month for one of its Supreme Court’s seven seats, both the Judicial Fairness Initiative and the state Republican Party spent money to ensure that a candidate endorsed by abortion opponents, James Brown, would oppose an incumbent judge, Ingrid Gustafson, in November. Ms. Gustafson was nominated to the bench in 2017 by the governor at the time, Steve Bullock, a Democrat.The reversal of abortion rights in Iowa “is not the last one we might see,” Mr. Keith said. “The lack of attention that these courts have gotten from the left, comparatively, is going to come home to roost.”From Opinion: The End of Roe v. WadeCommentary by Times Opinion writers and columnists on the Supreme Court’s decision to end ​​the constitutional right to abortion.David N. Hackney, maternal-fetal medicine specialist: The end of Roe “is a tragedy for our patients, many of whom will suffer and some of whom could very well die.”Mara Gay: “Sex is fun. For the puritanical tyrants seeking to control our bodies, that’s a problem.”Elizabeth Spiers: “The notion that rich women will be fine, regardless of what the law says, is probably comforting to some. But it is simply not true.”Katherine Stewart, writer: “​​Breaking American democracy isn’t an unintended side effect of Christian nationalism. It is the point of the project.”A major test looms in Florida, where the State Constitution’s Bill of Rights declares that “every natural person has the right to be let alone and free from governmental intrusion into the person’s private life.”The Florida Supreme Court previously cited that explicit guarantee of privacy in striking down laws that restricted access to abortion. That precedent now appears endangered.In 2019, the last three justices who had been nominated by a Democratic governor retired. Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican who has made opposition to abortion a centerpiece of a possible presidential campaign, replaced them with conservatives.From voting rights to redistricting, the State Supreme Court has ruled reliably in support of conservatives in recent years. Daniel A. Smith, a University of Florida political scientist who watches the court, said he believed that was unlikely to change.“I think the U.S. Supreme Court is sending a signal to justices in state high courts that precedent no longer matters,” he said. Dr. Smith predicted that the constitutional guarantee of privacy “will be whittled away” when the state court makes its abortion ruling.Attorney General Daniel Cameron of Kentucky, a Republican, on Sunday asked the State Supreme Court to issue an emergency order suspending a lower court decision allowing the state’s only abortion provider to remain open. The court denied the request on Tuesday.In elections to the State Supreme Court this fall, State Representative Joseph Fischer, perhaps the Legislature’s leading opponent of abortion, is running to unseat Michelle M. Keller, who was appointed to the court in 2013 by Steve Beshear, a Democrat who was then the governor.State Representative Randy Bridges gave a thumbs down as protesters chanted “bans off our bodies” at the Kentucky State Capitol in April.Ryan C. Hermens/Lexington Herald-Leader, via Associated PressNational political parties and interest groups will focus their money and attention this fall on state supreme courts in four states — Illinois, Michigan, North Carolina and Ohio — where elections could flip the courts’ majority from Democratic to Republican or vice versa. But other states could be in play.Six of seven justices on the Democratic-led Supreme Court in Kansas must stand for retention elections, and some are likely to become targets of Republicans infuriated by the court’s ruling in 2019 that abortion is a constitutional right. Arkansas Republicans are backing a former chairman of the state party against a Democratic incumbent justice in an effort to scrub remaining moderates from the already conservative court.Even more than abortion, the focus on state courts has reflected the politics of redistricting, particularly after a 2019 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that left oversight of partisan gerrymanders to state legislatures and courts. National Republicans say changing state supreme courts is the only way to stop Democrats from gaining power by successfully suing to overturn gerrymandered Republican political maps, a strategy they mockingly call “sue till it’s blue.”“If Republicans and conservatives want to control the redistricting process, then winning control of state legislatures is not enough. You also need to control the supreme courts,” said Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for the Republican State Leadership Committee.Kelly Burton, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which has backed many of those suits, said the battle was more about stopping a creeping autocracy than about changing political boundaries.“It’s about voting rights cases,” she said. “It’s about fights over access to abortion. And fundamentally, we’re trying to protect these courts as neutral arbiters, while Republicans want to make them less independent and more partisan.”Some justices say they feel caught in the middle as partisan pressures surge.Maureen O’Connor, a Republican who is chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, was threatened with impeachment by some in her party this spring after she voted with Democratic justices to strike down political maps gerrymandered by Republicans.To some people, she said, her vote on redistricting “shows integrity and independence and respect for the rule of law and the Constitution. To others, I am a traitor.”Chief Justice Nathan Hecht of the Texas Supreme Court has campaigned for years to scrap the state’s system of partisan elections for judicial positions.Robert Daemmrich Photography Inc/Corbis via Getty ImagesNathan Hecht, the chief justice of the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court, has campaigned for years to scrap the state’s system of partisan elections for judicial positions. “Texas has one of the stupidest systems in the world,” he said, and he worries that growing partisanship will make it even worse.Still, he said he thought there was a good chance that as divisive issues like abortion “devolve down to the states, the states will find ways to reach a middle ground that federal lawmakers have not been able to find.” But he added, “I’m not going to bet on that.”On Friday, the Texas court lifted a lower-court freeze on a 1925 law that bans abortions and holds out the prospect of imprisonment for those who provide them. A full hearing on the law will be held later.Sheelagh McNeill More

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      Justice Dept. Sues Arizona Over Voting Restrictions

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      It is the third time the Justice Department under Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has sued a state over its voting laws.The Justice Department sued Arizona on Tuesday over a new state law requiring proof of citizenship to vote in a presidential election, saying the Republican-imposed restrictions are a “textbook violation” of federal law.It is the third time the department under Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has challenged a state’s voting law and comes as Democratic leaders and voting rights groups have pressed Mr. Garland to act more decisively against measures that limit access to the ballot.Arizona’s law, which Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, signed in March, requires voters to prove their citizenship to vote in a presidential election, like showing a birth certificate or passport. It also mandates that newly registered voters provide a proof of address, which could disproportionately affect people with limited access to government-issued identification cards. Those include immigrants, students, older people, low-income voters and Native Americans.“Arizona has passed a law that turns the clock back by imposing unlawful and unnecessary requirements that would block eligible voters from the registration rolls for certain federal elections,” Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, told reporters on Tuesday.Ms. Clarke said that by imposing what she described as “onerous” requisites, the law “constitutes a textbook violation” of the National Voter Registration Act, which makes it easier to register to vote. The department said the law also ran afoul of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in asking election officials to reject voter registration forms based on errors or omissions that are not relevant to a voter’s eligibility.As of March, 31,500 “federal only” voters could be prevented from voting in the next presidential election under the new requirements if state officials are unable to track down their information in time to validate their ballots.Some voting rights groups contend that the number of affected voters could be even greater. But even a few thousand fewer votes could be decisive in Arizona, one of the most closely contested battleground states: In 2020, Joseph R. Biden Jr. defeated President Donald J. Trump in Arizona by about 10,000 votes.A spokesperson for Mr. Ducey did not immediately respond to requests for comment. When he signed the bill in March, Mr. Ducey said the law, expected to take effect in January, was “a balanced approach that honors Arizona’s history of making voting accessible without sacrificing security in our elections.”Arizona has been at the center of some of the most contentious battles over the 2020 election. Six months after the election, its Republican-led Senate authorized an outside review of the election in Maricopa County, an abnormal step that quickly devolved into a hotbed for conspiracy theorists. The state has also passed multiple laws that impose new restrictions to voting.Even before the Republican-controlled Legislature passed the measure, existing state law required all voters to provide proof of citizenship to vote in state elections. Federal voting registration forms still required voters to attest that they were citizens, but not to provide documentary proof.In 2013, the Supreme Court upheld that law but added that Arizona must accept the federal voter registration form for federal elections. That essentially created a bifurcated system in Arizona that would require documented proof of citizenship to vote in state elections but allow those simply registering with the federal voter registration form the ability to vote in federal elections.The new law could threaten the registrations of those voters, preventing tens of thousands of them from casting a ballot in presidential elections, voting rights groups contend.“There’s certainly going to be some people in Arizona that are not going to be able to vote under the proof-of-citizenship requirement,” said Jon Greenbaum, the chief counsel for the nonpartisan Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and a former Justice Department lawyer.While the new law would have sprawling consequences for many groups, local election officials have noted that delivering documentary proof of citizenship can be especially hard among Native American populations, which were key to helping flip Arizona to Mr. Biden in 2020.“You may have folks who were born on reservations who may not have birth certificates, and therefore may find it very difficult to prove citizenship on paper somehow,” said Adrian Fontes, the former election administrator for Maricopa County and a current Democratic candidate for secretary of state. “Things of this nature have always been of great concern for election administrators in Arizona.”Shortly after taking office, Mr. Garland announced an expansion of the department’s civil rights division in response to a wave of laws introducing new voting restrictions after the 2020 election.In June 2021, the department sued Georgia over its sweeping new voting law that overhauled the state’s election administration and introduced a host of restrictions to voting in the state, especially voting by mail. In November, the department sued Texas over a provision limiting the assistance available to voters at the polls.Marc Elias, a Democratic elections lawyer who represented a group that filed a suit against Arizona earlier this year, said he was relieved to see the department follow through on Mr. Biden’s pledge last year to counter a threat from Republican-sponsored state laws he called the “most significant test to democracy” since the Civil War.“Adding the voice and authority of the United States is incredibly helpful to the fight for voting rights,” Mr. Elias said in an interview. More

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      The Long Path to Reclaim Abortion Rights

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      The Supreme Court decision to reverse Roe, far from settling the matter, instead has launched court and political battles across the states likely to go on for years.Attempting to recover from their staggering loss in the Supreme Court, abortion rights groups have mounted a multilevel legal and political attack aimed at blocking and reversing abortion bans in courts and at ballot boxes across the country.In the week since the court overturned Roe v. Wade, litigators for abortion rights groups have rolled out a wave of lawsuits in nearly a dozen states to hold off bans triggered by the court’s decision, with the promise of more suits to come. They are aiming to prove that provisions in state constitutions establish a right to abortion that the Supreme Court’s decision said did not exist in the U.S. Constitution.Advocates of abortion rights are also working to defeat ballot initiatives that would strip away a constitutional right to abortion, and to pass those that would establish one, in states where abortion access is contingent on who controls the governor’s mansion or the state house.And after years of complaints that Democrats neglected state and local elections, Democratic-aligned groups are campaigning to reverse slim Republican majorities in some state legislatures, and to elect abortion rights supporters to positions from county commissioner to state supreme court justices that can have influence over the enforcement of abortion restrictions.“You want all the belt and suspenders that you can have,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which litigated Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case the Supreme Court used to overturn Roe. While the Supreme Court said it wanted to end five decades of bitter debate on abortion, its decision has set up a new fight, one that promises to be long and equally bitter.Although abortion rights supporters say their strategy is promising, the path ahead is slow and not at all certain. Polls show that Americans overwhelmingly say that the decision to have an abortion should be made by women and their doctors rather than state legislatures. But Republican-controlled state legislatures have passed hundreds of restrictions on abortion over the last decade, and legislative districts are heavily gerrymandered to protect Republican incumbents. Litigation in state courts will be decided by judges who in many cases have been appointed by anti-abortion governors.Although abortion rights supporters say their strategy is promising, the path ahead is not at all certain.Anna Rose Layden for The New York TimesAbortion rights groups say their cases relying on state constitutions offer a viable path forward to establish Roe-like protections in states. Even in conservative states such as Oklahoma and Mississippi, they see an opportunity to overturn abortion bans and establish a constitutional backstop against further restriction.But in other places, the goal of the litigation is to at least temporarily restore or preserve abortion access, now that the court’s decision stands to make it illegal or effectively so in more than half the states, which include 33.5 million women of childbearing age.In Louisiana, for example, though the state constitution expressly says there is no right to abortion, the legal challenge has allowed three clinics to continue serving women whose plans to end their pregnancies were thrown into disarray by the court’s decision.From Opinion: The End of Roe v. WadeCommentary by Times Opinion writers and columnists on the Supreme Court’s decision to end ​​the constitutional right to abortion.Michelle Goldberg: “The end of Roe v. Wade was foreseen, but in wide swaths of the country, it has still created wrenching and potentially tragic uncertainties.”Spencer Bokat-Lindell: “What exactly does it mean for the Supreme Court to experience a crisis of legitimacy, and is it really in one?”Bonnie Kristian, journalist: “For many backers of former President Donald Trump, Friday’s Supreme Court decision was a long-awaited vindication.” It might also mark the end of his political career.Erika Bachiochi, legal scholar: “It is precisely the unborn child’s state of existential dependence upon its mother, not its autonomy, that makes it especially entitled to care, nurture and legal protection.”“We have to take these things in steps,” said Joanna Wright, a partner at Boies Schiller Flexner who, with the Center for Reproductive Rights, is leading the Louisiana case. “A lot can change in a day, a month and six months. Time will tell the rest, but this is the fight right now.”The Supreme Court’s decision has flipped the dynamic of abortion strategy that has prevailed for the half-century since Roe, when anti-abortion groups chipped away at legal access by electing like-minded state legislators and passing increasingly strict laws, and abortion rights groups could rely on Roe to prevent the most severe bans from taking effect.Now, anti-abortion groups and congressional Republicans discuss federal legislation that would ban abortion across the country after 15 weeks of pregnancy, and abortion rights groups have begun climbing the steeper and narrower path state by state. “Democracy is a collective action,” said Ms. Wright, “and what we’ve seen from the anti-abortion movement is an ability to mobilize all the pieces of that,” which culminated, she added, with the overturning of Roe.By Friday, the groups had temporarily blocked bans from taking effect in Utah, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Florida; judges have set hearings over the next several weeks to consider permanent injunctions. But they lost bids to hold off bans in Ohio and Texas.Anti-abortion groups had argued for decades that the question of abortion should be left up to states, not to unelected judges in Washington. Within hours of the court’s decision, Republican politicians and law enforcement officials announced that bans, once held up in court, were now in effect, and would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.They decried their opponents’ strategy in the courts.“To say that the State Constitution mandates things like dismemberment abortions, I just don’t think that’s the proper interpretation,” Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said after Florida’s ruling temporarily blocking a law prohibiting abortion after 15 weeks.The legal challenges argue that the Supreme Court’s decision has thrown abortion providers and patients into chaos, subjecting them to state laws that are often unclear, contradictory or confusing. Women have shown up for appointments only to be told that their pregnancies have now progressed too far to be eligible for abortion under new laws banning abortion after six weeks. In Montana, Planned Parenthood clinics said recently that they would require proof of residency for women seeking abortion pills, because of fears that prosecutors in other states might prosecute anyone who helped their residents get abortions.Abortion rights groups have not given up on hopes of federal action to protect abortion: They are pushing President Biden to use a declaration of a public health emergency to allow the Department of Health and Human Services to authorize out-of-state providers to prescribe and provide abortion pills to women in states where abortion bans have made them illegal.They are also pushing the Senate to suspend its filibuster and pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would establish a right to abortion before viability, as was provided in Roe. Mr. Biden reversed himself on Thursday to say that he supported lifting the filibuster, though he also told a group of Democratic governors that there were not enough votes in the Senate to do so.Abortion rights groups have not given up on hopes of federal action to protect abortion, but they have begun pursuing legal and legislative action state by state. Anna Rose Layden for The New York TimesBut by necessity, the groups are focused first on state action.While the Supreme Court’s opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, declared that it was returning the regulation of abortion regulation “to the people and their elected representatives,” its decision has delivered the issue to other courts, those in the states.“If the Supreme Court and Justice Alito and the anti-abortion advocates thought this was going to settle the question, they are going to see just how wrong they are,” Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a news conference Friday alongside lawyers and leaders from the Center for Reproductive Rights and Planned Parenthood. “The proliferation of litigation that will embroil the states in our country for years to come is going to underscore that this is not settled in the public’s mind.”The lawsuits argue that state constitutions offer more protection for abortion than the federal constitution, either by quirk of state tradition or history. Some, such as Florida’s, include an explicit right to privacy. In Kentucky, lawyers argue their constitution provides a right to “bodily autonomy” as well as privacy. The Roe decision in 1973 declared that the U.S. Constitution afforded a right to privacy that included a woman’s right to abortion; while the Supreme Court overturned that decision, it generally cannot overturn what states say in their own constitutions.The suit in Utah, one of the most conservative states in the country, seeks to protect abortion under a provision of the state constitution — adopted in 1896 — that provides that “both males and female citizens of this state shall enjoy equally all civil, political and religious rights and privileges.”Largely because of the influence of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the constitution also ensures that state residents have the right to plan their own families; the lawsuit argues this includes the right to choose abortion.Even in states where lawsuits have been successful, abortion rights groups say they are playing Whack-a-Mole. In Utah, as soon as the court put a temporary injunction on the state’s trigger law banning abortion, a legislator declared that the state’s law against abortion after 18 weeks, which courts had upheld while Roe was in effect, was now the operative law.“We’re in a chess game and we haven’t gotten checkmate,” said Karrie Galloway, the chief executive of Planned Parenthood in Utah. “We’re doing check, check, check, check. Unfortunately, we’re doing check, check, check with pregnant people and their families’ lives.”In Kansas, a state Supreme Court decision in 2019 found a right to abortion under the constitutional provisions for “equal and inalienable natural rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” But anti-abortion groups put an initiative on the primary ballot this August that seeks to amend the constitution to explicitly say that it does not include a right to abortion, and that the Legislature has the authority to pass further restrictions.That vote will be the first indication of how much the outrage seen in response to the Supreme Court’s decision translates into support for abortion rights in elections.Historically, voters who oppose abortion have been more driven to vote on the issue than those who support a right to abortion. But polls taken since the leak of a draft of the Supreme Court’s decision in May and the final decision in late June show that those who support abortion rights — largely Democrats — now cite it as one of their top concerns, and that the court’s decision has motivated them more to vote in elections this fall.Vote Pro Choice is attempting to turn out women, especially Black and Latina women, to vote in races including county commissioners, judges and sheriffs, particularly in states such as Texas and Georgia with restrictive abortion laws — positions responsible for enforcing anti-harassment laws outside abortion clinics, and deciding whether to give government money to crisis pregnancy centers, which anti-abortion groups have used to steer women away from abortions.Democrats need to learn from the successes of the anti-abortion groups and Republicans, said Sara Tabatabaie, the group’s chief political officer.“We have been out-raised, out-organized and out-funded for 50 years, and that is across the board,” she said. But she is encouraged by the number of people who say abortion will guide their votes in November: “In moments of tragedy, I am hopeful that there comes solidarity and increased clarity.” More

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      The Supreme Court Is the Final Word on Nothing

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      The U.S. Constitution contains several idle provisions: words, phrases and clauses that have little to no bearing on our constitutional order as it currently exists.Let’s start here: Article 3 of the Constitution gives the Supreme Court “original jurisdiction” in all cases affecting “Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party.” That part is obviously in effect, although most cases between states occur in the lower federal courts established by Congress. The Constitution then states that in all other cases, “the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction.” This, too, is in full effect.But then the Constitution tells us that the court’s appellate jurisdiction is subject to “such Exceptions” and “under such Regulations” as “the Congress shall make.”This is where it gets interesting. The court’s appellate jurisdiction accounts for virtually everything it touches. And the Constitution says that Congress can regulate the nature of that jurisdiction. Congress can strip the court of its ability to hear certain cases, or it can mandate new rules for how the court decides cases where it has appellate jurisdiction. And as I recently mentioned, it can even tell the court that it needs a supermajority of justices to declare a federal law or previous decision unconstitutional.There are real questions about the scope of congressional power to regulate the Supreme Court. If Congress has complete control over the court’s appellate jurisdiction, then there are no real limits as to what it could do to shape and structure the court, threatening the separation of powers. As James Madison said with regard to the Bank Bill of 1791, “An interpretation that destroys the very characteristic of the government cannot be just.”But this is nearly a moot point. The modern Congress has largely relinquished its power to regulate and structure the court. The final clause of Article 3, Section 2 is not quite a dead letter, but it is close.What is a dead letter (and which I’ve also written about before) is the Guarantee Clause of the Constitution, which states thatThe United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.The reason for the clause is straightforward. “The more intimate the nature of such a Union may be,” Madison wrote in Federalist No. 43, “the greater interest have the members in the political institutions of each other; and the greater right to insist that the forms of government under which the compact was entered into, should be substantially maintained.”But neither Congress nor the courts has ever said, with any precision, what it means for the United States to guarantee to every state a “republican form of government.” The most we have is Justice John Marshall Harlan’s famous dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, in which he condemns “sinister legislation” passed to “interfere with the full enjoyment of the blessings of freedom, to regulate civil rights, common to all citizens, upon the basis of race, and to place in a condition of legal inferiority a large body of American citizens, now constituting a part of the political community.”This, he writes, “is inconsistent with the guarantee given by the Constitution to each State of a republican form of government, and may be stricken down by congressional action, or by the courts in the discharge of their solemn duty to maintain the supreme law of the land.”A Congress that wanted to could, in theory, use the Guarantee Clause to defend the basic rights of citizens against overbearing and tyrannical state governments. It’s been done before. After the Civil War, Radical Republicans in Congress found their constitutional power to reconstruct the South chiefly in the Guarantee Clause, which they used to protect the rights of Black Americans from revanchist state governments.Since Reconstruction, however, no Congress has wanted to use the Guarantee Clause to protect the rights and liberties of Americans. It’s a vestigial part of our constitutional history, atrophied from disuse.The same goes for sections 2 and 3 of the 14th Amendment. Section 2 states that “representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.” It then specifies that if the right to vote for federal office is “denied” or “in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion” to “any of the male inhabitants” of such a state, then “the basis of representation therein shall be reduced” in proportion to the denial in question.Section 3 also deals with representation. It states thatNo person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid and comfort to the enemies thereof.The purpose of section 2 was to invalidate the Three-Fifths clause of the Constitution and to prevent state governments from disenfranchising Black voters. And the purpose of section 3 was to prevent former Confederate leaders from holding state and federal office. But while the 14th Amendment gives Congress the power to enforce its provisions by “appropriate legislation,” Congress has never exercised its ability to deny representation to states that violate the right of citizens to vote, nor has it used its ability to disqualify those lawmakers who have engaged in acts of rebellion or insurrection. In the wake of Jan. 6, Representatives Cori Bush and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called on Congress to investigate and expel members who aided the attack, but their demands went nowhere.It’s here that you can see why I think it’s important to talk about these seemingly idle provisions. As recent events have made clear, powerful reactionaries are waging a successful war against American democracy using the counter-majoritarian institutions of the American political system, cloaking their views in a distorted version of our Constitution, where self-government means minority rule and the bugaboos of right-wing culture warriors are somehow “deeply rooted” in our “history and traditions.”But the Republic is not defenseless. The Constitution gives our elected officials the power to restrain a lawless Supreme Court, protect citizens from the “sinister legislation” of the states, punish those states for depriving their residents of the right to vote and expel insurrectionists from Congress.They are drastic measures that would break the norms of American politics. They might even spark a constitutional crisis over the power and authority of Congress.But let’s not be naïve. The norms of American politics were shattered when Donald Trump organized a conspiracy to subvert the presidential election. They were shattered again when he sent an armed mob of supporters to attack the Capitol and stop Congress from certifying the votes of the Electoral College. And they were shattered one more time in the early hours of the next day, when, even after all that, hundreds of his congressional allies voted to overturn the election.As for the constitutional crisis, it is arguably already here. Both the insurrection and the partisan lawmaking of the Supreme Court have thrown those counter-majoritarian features of the American system into sharp relief. They’ve raised hard questions about the strength and legitimacy of institutions that allow minority rule — and allow it to endure. It is a crisis when the fundamental rights of hundreds of millions of Americans are functionally overturned by an unelected tribunal whose pivotal members owe their seats to a president who won office through the mechanism of the Electoral College, having lost the majority of voters in both of his election campaigns.The ground has shifted. The game has changed. The only question left is whether our leaders have the strength, fortitude and audacity to forge a new path for American democracy — and if they don’t, whether it is finally time for us to find ones who do.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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      A Broken Redistricting Process Winds Down, With No Repairs in Sight

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      WASHINGTON — The brutal once-a-decade process of drawing new boundaries for the nation’s 435 congressional districts is limping toward a close with the nation’s two political parties roughly at parity. But the lessons drawn from how they got there offer little cheer for those worried about the direction of the weary American experiment.The two parties each claimed redistricting went its way. But some frustrated Democrats in states like Texas, Florida and Ohio sounded unconvinced as Republicans, who have controlled the House in 10 of the last 15 elections despite losing the popular vote in seven of them, seemed to fare better than Democrats at tilting political maps decisively in their direction in key states they controlled.At the least, political analysts said, Republicans proved more relentless at shielding such maps from court challenges, through artful legal maneuvers and blunt-force political moves that in some cases challenged the authority of the judicial system.And, to many involved in efforts to replace gerrymanders with competitive districts, the vanishing number of truly contested House races indicated that whoever won, the voters lost. A redistricting cycle that began with efforts to demand fair maps instead saw the two parties in an arms race for a competitive advantage.“Once the fuel has been added to the fire, it’s very hard to back away from it,” said Kathay Feng, the national redistricting director for the advocacy group Common Cause. “Now it’s not just the operatives in the back room, which is where it started. It’s not just technology. It’s not just legislators being shameless about drawing lines. It’s governors and state officials and sometimes even courts leaning in to affirm these egregious gerrymanders.”Democrats pulled nearly even — in terms of the partisan lean of districts, if not the party’s prospects for success in the November midterms — largely by undoing some Republican gerrymanders through court battles and ballot initiatives, and by drawing their own partisan maps. But the strategy at times succeeded too well, as courts struck down Democratic maps in some states, and ballot measures kept party leaders from drawing new ones in others.New York is a particularly glaring example. In April, the seven Democratic justices on New York’s highest court blew up an aggressive gerrymander of the state’s 26 congressional districts that had been expected to net Democrats three new House seats. The court’s replacement map, drawn by an independent expert, pits Democratic incumbents against each other and creates new swing districts that could cost Democrats seats.Weeks later in Florida, where voters approved a ban on partisan maps in 2010, the State Supreme Court, comprising seven Republican justices, declined to stop the implementation of a gerrymander of the state’s 28 congressional districts. The ruling preserves the new map ordered by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, that could net his party four new House seats. The ruling cited procedural issues in allowing the map to take effect, but many experts said there was never much doubt about the result.In New York, Democrats ignored a voter-approved constitutional mandate that districts “not be drawn to discourage competition” or favor political parties. And in Republicans’ view, Democrats sabotaged a bipartisan commission that voters set up to draw fair maps.“The Democrats seriously overreached,” said John J. Faso, a Republican and former New York state assemblyman and U.S. representative. The bipartisan commission, he added, “is what people voted for.”What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Deepening Divides: As political mapmakers create lopsided new district lines, the already polarized parties are being pulled even farther apart.But in Ohio, Republicans who gerrymandered congressional and state legislative districts this spring also ignored a voter-approved constitutional ban on partisan maps. They not only successfully defied repeated orders by the State Supreme Court to obey it, but suggested that the court’s chief justice, a Republican, be impeached for rejecting the maps drawn by the state’s Republican-dominated redistricting commission.State Representative Doug Richey of Missouri, a Republican, showed fellow lawmakers a proposed congressional redistricting map in May.David A. Lieb, Associated PressOf the approximately 35 states where politicians ultimately control congressional redistricting — the remainder either rely on independent commissions or have only one House seat — the first maps of House seats approved in some 14 states fit many statistical measures of gerrymandering used by political scientists.One of the most extreme congressional gerrymanders added as many as three new Democratic House seats in staunchly blue Illinois. Texas Republicans drew a new map that turned one new House seat and eight formerly competitive ones into G.O.P. bastions.Republicans carved up Kansas City, Kan.; Salt Lake City; Nashville; Tampa, Fla.; Little Rock, Ark.; Oklahoma City and more to weaken Democrats. Democrats moved boundaries in New Mexico and Oregon to dilute Republican votes.Most gerrymanders were drawn by Republicans, in part because Republicans control more state governments than Democrats do. But Democrats also began this redistricting cycle with a built-in handicap: The 2020 census markedly undercounted Democratic-leaning constituencies, like Blacks and Hispanics.Because those missed residents were concentrated in predominantly blue cities, any additional new urban districts probably would have elected Democrats to both congressional and state legislative seats, said Kimball W. Brace, a demographer who has helped Democratic leaders draw political maps for decades.Undoing those gerrymanders has proved a hit-or-miss proposition.Lawsuits in state courts dismantled Republican partisan maps in North Carolina and Democratic ones in New York and Maryland. But elsewhere, Republicans seized on the Supreme Court’s embrace of a once-obscure legal doctrine to keep even blatant gerrymanders from being blocked. The doctrine, named the Purcell principle after a 2006 federal lawsuit, says courts should not change election laws or rules too close to an election — how close is unclear — for fear of confusing voters.Alabama’s congressional map, drawn by Republicans, will be used in the November election, even though a panel of federal judges ruled it a racial gerrymander. The reason, the Supreme Court said in February, is that the decision came too close to primary elections.The delay game played out most glaringly during the extended process in Ohio, where ballot initiatives approved by voters in 2015 established a bipartisan redistricting commission that Republicans have dominated. Federal judges ordered the gerrymandered G.O.P. maps of Ohio House and Senate districts to be used for this year’s elections, even though the state’s high court had rejected them.When a State Supreme Court deadline for the commission to submit maps of legislative districts for legal review came due last week, Republicans simply ignored it.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More