Supreme Court (US)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Why The Supreme Court's Voting Rights Ruling Leaves No Clear Answer

      by

      The Supreme Court’s decision on voting rights suggests that limits to the convenience of voting methods may be relatively permissible, while new burdens on casting a ballot in-person might be more vulnerable.What kind of restrictions on voting violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act? That’s the basic question in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold two Arizona voting provisions last week.The court’s decision didn’t offer a clear answer. Instead, it offered “guideposts” to illustrate why the Arizona law passed muster, without clearly indicating when a law might go too far. Those guideposts appear to set a high bar for successful voting rights litigation.But the guideposts offer lessons about what kinds of voting restrictions might be more or less vulnerable to legal challenge.Many of those lessons stem from a central concept underlying the decision: the idea that every voting system imposes certain “usual” burdens on voters, like traveling to a polling station or returning your ballot.Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, made the case that these burdens may inevitably result in “some” racial disparity. As a result, the conservative justices reject the idea that racial disparity alone is sufficient to establish that a state denied everyone an equal opportunity to vote. That leaves the court looking for signs of a particularly unusual and distinctive burden, even though this added hurdle doesn’t exist in the text of the Voting Rights Act.The court found, without too much trouble, that the two Arizona laws weren’t particularly unusual or burdensome. That was not surprising. Even the Biden Justice Department said the laws did not violate the Voting Rights Act. But the way the court reached that conclusion nonetheless said a lot about what kinds of laws might survive judicial scrutiny.The court’s reasoning suggests that restrictions on the convenience of voting methods may be relatively permissible, while new burdens on in-person voting, whether a reduction in precincts or new voter identification requirements, might be more vulnerable. It may even mean that states with relatively lenient voting laws might have more leeway to impose new restrictions. And no matter what, a fairly large racial disparity — backed by strong statistical evidence — may be crucial in future cases.Convenience voting is less protectedSo what’s a usual burden, anyway? Oddly enough, the clearest benchmark offered by the court is whether a rule imposes a burden that was typical in 1982, when the Voting Rights Act was last amended.If the burden on voters was typical at the time, the thinking goes, then Congress probably didn’t intend to undermine those provisions.What kind of burden would that be? The court went out of its way to note that there was virtually no early or no-excuse mail absentee voting at the time. That can lead one to infer that the court may be fairly likely to accept restrictions on mail and early voting. From this point of view, convenience voting is a bonus option for voters, and any restriction would still leave voters less burdened than they were 40 years ago.The court refrained from deciding “whether adherence to, or a return to, a 1982 framework is necessarily lawful.” Perhaps it would not be, since nonwhite voters now disproportionately use methods intended to make voting more convenient, like early voting. And many states have scaled back their traditional Election Day voting options as demand has declined; simply eliminating convenience voting would often leave many voters with fewer options than they had 40 years ago. On the other hand, there’s not much evidence that expanded voting options have narrowed racial disparities in turnout.Wherever the court draws the line, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that new ways to make voting more convenient will not be vigorously protected by the court.Novel restrictions may be unprotectedAt the same time, the court may look askance at novel regulations that impose burdens beyond what existed in 1982. Strict photo identification requirements, for instance, did not exist back then. And there was a certain level of basic access, in terms of the availability of in-person precincts, registration and voting hours, which the court would presumably be likely to protect.In oral arguments, Justice Elena Kagan asked whether it would be legal for a state to put all of its polling places in country clubs, where Black voters would need to travel farther than whites and would fear discrimination and experience a high level of discomfort. A 1982 standard, whatever its merits, would offer some level of protections against that kind of extreme possibility, even as it may allow rollbacks in mail and early voting.Size mattersWith the court resigned to some inevitable racial disparities in voting, successful voting rights litigation may entail finding a fairly large racial disparity.How large? Well, probably larger or clearer than in the Arizona case.The court believed that the requirement to vote in your own precinct would affect 1 percent of nonwhite in-person voters and .5 percent of non-Hispanic white in-person voters, or a disparity of about .5 percentage points. Even these figures overstate the share of voters who would be affected by the provision, as the majority of Arizonans cast ballots by mail, not in-person.Strong statistical evidence is also clearly important. The plaintiffs did not have any statistics to establish whether banning third-party ballot collection would create a large racial disparity in voting, and the court brushed aside the testimonial evidence that it was used more by non-white and especially Native American voters.If there’s any consolation for voting rights activists, it’s that many of the most prominent “voter suppression” laws usually feature clear statistical evidence showing that it imposes a burden on a larger share of eligible voters than Arizona’s requirement that voters cast ballots in their own precinct. But what the statistical threshold is for striking down a restrictive law based on racial disparity — 2 points, 5 points, 10 points? — remains to be seen.Court rules that fraud is a legitimate state interestNot even evidence of an unusual burden or a strong racial disparity would necessarily ensure the demise of a voting restriction, under the new ruling. The court also says it will weigh the strength of the state’s interest in regulating its elections against whatever burden it imposes.Judge Alito stated unequivocally in his opinion that preventing fraud was a “strong and entirely legitimate” state interest. A restriction that can be construed as a “reasonable means” for pursuing a legitimate state interest, like preventing fraud or ensuring that votes are cast free from intimidation, will be easier for the state to justify.Other restrictions, like eliminating automatic voter registration or Sunday early voting, do not have a clear connection to a strong state interest, like reducing fraud, and could be more likely to violate the Voting Rights Act.The case said relatively little new about establishing discriminatory intent, the focus of the Justice Department’s case in Georgia. The court reiterated its view that restrictions intended to advantage a specific political party are acceptable, though that distinction may be harder to sustain in Georgia, where Black voters make up an outright majority of Democrats. And the court rejected the theory that an otherwise legitimate and non-discriminatory legislative effort can be contaminated by racially tinged outside context. But that is not the allegation in Georgia, where the Justice Department asserts that the legislative process itself was flawed.The totality of the electoral systemPerhaps the most analytically significant twist in the court’s analysis is that it believes a state’s entire system of voting must be considered when evaluating the burden imposed by a provision.In a certain sense, it’s obvious that a state’s voting system affects whether a particular restriction imposes a great burden on voters. If Texas passed a law to require only a single in-person voting center per county, it might be tantamount to an end to free and fair elections in the state. But that’s the standard in Washington State, where nearly all votes are cast by mail.The court takes this proposition pretty far in the Arizona case. It implies that the availability of multiple, relatively easy options allows for restrictions on any particular option. It says, for instance, that the availability of no-excuse absentee voting — as opposed to universal vote by mail in Washington State — makes it easier to accept restrictions on in-person Election Day voting, even though many voters do not use mail voting and the opportunity to apply for a mail ballot has passed by the time Election Day rolls around.As a result, states offering more voting opportunities will probably find it easier to defend new voting restrictions. That’s probably good news for a state like Georgia, which has no-excuse absentee, early and Election Day voting. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Is Gone, Sort of. The Fireworks Are Still Going Off.

      by

      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. Hope you had a nice Fourth of July. Politically speaking, most of the fireworks seemed to be coming from the Supreme Court. Any thoughts on how the term ended?Gail Collins: Bret, I’ve never been too romantic about Independence Day. I guess in my youth I learned to regard a successful Fourth as one in which nobody got a finger blown off.Bret: Where I grew up, Independence Day was on Sept. 16, though festivities began the night before with a famous shout. Anyone who knows the country to which I’m referring without help from Google gets a salted margarita.Gail: Well, Sept. 16 is Mexican Independence Day — you know, we haven’t had nearly enough talks about your life south of the border. Putting that down for a summer diversion.I admit I did have to look up the famous shout, which I assume is the Cry of Dolores, calling for freedom from Spain, equality and land redistribution.Bret: Mexico was always progressive, though more in theory than practice. And if you really want to nerd out, next month marks the 200th anniversary of the Treaty of Córdoba, when Mexico gained its formal independence.Gail: And Sept. 16 is also the day the Pilgrims set sail on the Mayflower. We need to set aside a fall conversation about history.But right now we’re going to talk about the Supreme Court’s performance. Given its current makeup, I tend to see success in any get-together that concludes without total disaster. (The Affordable Care Act survives!) But I’m very worried about the way the majority is siding with the bad guys on voting rights issues.How about you?Bret: Not that it will surprise you, but I was with the bad guys on that Arizona voting case. It isn’t at all tough for anyone to vote in the Grand Canyon State, in person or, for a full 27 days before an election, by mail. I don’t think it violates the Voting Rights Act to require people to vote in their precinct, or to ban ballot harvesting, which is susceptible to fraud.Gail: One person’s ballot harvesting is another person’s helping their homebound neighbors vote. But I’m not as concerned about what the court’s done so far as where it will take us. We’ve got Republican states eagerly dismantling many procedures that make it easier for poor folks — read Democratic folks — to vote. And some have also been very protective of political leaders’ right to squish their voters into districts that are most favorable to their interests, even if some of them look like two-headed iguanas.Bret: There’s a perception that ballot harvesting mainly helps Democrats. Maybe that’s true, though there are plenty of poor Republicans. But the most notorious example of ballot harvesting being used to steal an election was in a North Carolina congressional race in 2018, where the fraudster was working for the Republican. But I’m with you on those two-headed iguanas. Democracy would be much better off if we could find our way out of the partisan gerrymanders.Gail: Very tricky, since both parties tend to be in favor of creative district-drawing when their folks get the advantage.Bret: On the whole, though, I think the court had a pretty good term considering the fears people had about a 6-3 conservative-liberal split. Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts voted with the court’s liberals to uphold a federal moratorium on evictions. Amy Coney Barrett voted to uphold Obamacare. And every justice except Clarence Thomas upheld a cheerleader’s right to use a certain four-letter epithet in connection to the words “school,” “softball,” “cheer” and “everything” that we’re usually not allowed to write in this newspaper.Gail: Yeah, we’ve moved into a world in which, for teenagers, posting that word on Snapchat or Instagram is getting to be as common as … buying sneakers or Googling the answers to a take-home quiz. If every student who did it got punished, we might have to replace all after-school activities with detention.Bret: I think the culture crossed the curse-word Rubicon a long time ago. Like, around the time of George Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” monologue in 1972.Gail: Although I do have to admit it’d be nicer if the cool kids were the ones who thought of the most creative non-four-letter ways to express their dissatisfaction with life.Maybe bird metaphors? (“Family reunion? I’d rather hang out with a flock of starlings!”) Or … well, let this be an ongoing project.Bret: Flocked if I know how that’ll ever happen.Gail: Let’s talk about something cheerful — the Trump indictments. Or rather, the indictment of the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization for failure to pay taxes on about $1.76 million worth of perks.Have to admit, the part I liked best was the family, particularly Eric, treating perks like a luxury apartment and car and $359,000 in private school tuition as normal life. I mean, if your neighbor brought you over a plate of cookies, would you have to pay taxes on that?Do you think this is going to lead to something bigger? The chief financial officer in question, Allen Weisselberg, is a longtime Trump loyalist. Of course, he’s also 73 …Bret: You know that I hold the Trump Organization in the same high regard in which I hold toxic sludge, K.G.B. poisoned underpants or James Patterson novels. But I’m a little dubious about this prosecution. After all this investigating, this is the worst they can come up with? I’m not excusing it, assuming the charges stick. But it seems like the sort of sneaky and unethical corporate self-dealing that usually results in heavy civil penalties but not criminal charges.Gail: There’s been so much anticipation of an indictment of Donald Trump himself, for overvaluing his properties at sale time, and undervaluing them for tax assessments. Instead, we’ve got a guy nobody’s ever heard of getting a tax-free Mercedes. You’re right — it is kind of a downer.Presumably this is just an early step. Remember there’s that grand jury in Manhattan that’s committed to spending six months looking into possible Trump misdeeds. And they’ve hardly begun.Bret: The larger point is that it has more of the feel of a political prosecution, of the sort that Trump was always threatening against his political opponents, starting with Hillary Clinton. It’s a game at which two can play.Gail: The challenge for the prosecutors is to come up with something bad enough to shock New Yorkers. Or something so very likely to lead to jail time that Trump will come around and make the kind of deal that would freeze him out of politics forever.Bret: My general theory of Trump is that the best thing we can do is starve him of the things he most craves, which is publicity (doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad), plus the opportunity to play the martyr.As for something that could shock New Yorkers — either he skins cats for pleasure or he’s a fan of the owners of the Knicks.Gail: Hey, give the Knicks a break. And let’s change the subject. Give me a snappy summary of your feelings about the never-ending negotiations over Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan.Bret: The result is going to be good, I think. And popular, too. We need a program that’s ambitious and forward-looking, that allows for projects like the George Washington and Golden Gate bridges — projects that will last for centuries — to be built, except this time with greater environmental sensitivity.Gail: Readers, please get out your Twitters and quote this.Bret: I’d also love to see the Biden administration resurrect some of the more inspiring programs of the Roosevelt administration’s New Deal, particularly the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Public Works of Art Project. I don’t just mean creating programs as employment schemes, but also as a way of channeling civic energies toward active, participatory environmental stewardship and aesthetic creation. I also think the art project should be open to foreigners, so that future Diego Riveras can leave their imprint on American buildings and parks and boulevards.Gail: We are in total agreement. But — just checking — are you equally enthusiastic about the other side of Biden’s plan, which would shore up and expand critical social infrastructure like early childhood education and community colleges?Bret: Sure. Why not? You’ve worn me into submission — I mean, agreement!Gail: Pardon me one more time while I pour a glass of champagne. Are you listening, moderate Republicans?Bret: Final topic, Gail. July 4 was supposed to mark the date when Americans could finally mark their independence from the Covid pandemic. Do you finally feel free of it?Gail: Pretty much, Bret. I guess for most people it depends on the things they liked to do that weren’t doable during the shutdown. For me a lot of the loss was not being able to go with my husband to crowded public places like theaters or jazz clubs and not seeing the friends who weren’t real comfortable interacting outside their families.Bret: And I missed the foreign travel.Gail: Now pretty much everything we like is back. The one thing I still really miss is being at work in the real physical office. The work gets done digitally but it really isn’t the same. As much as I love hanging out with you in these conversations, I’d like it better if I could walk over to your desk and make fun of Mitch McConnell.Bret: That, and putting the office’s fancy coffee machines to regular use.Gail: But soon, right? See you in September!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

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Democrats Face High New Bar in Opposing Voting Laws

      by

      Democrats and voting rights groups say they can no longer count on the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, to serve as a backstop for preventing racially discriminatory voting restrictions.The 6-to-3 decision by the Supreme Court on Thursday that upheld voting restrictions in Arizona has effectively left voting rights advocates with a higher bar for bringing federal cases under the Voting Rights Act: proving discriminatory intent.That burden is prompting civil rights and voting groups to recalibrate their approach to challenging in court the raft of new restrictions that Republican-controlled legislatures have passed this year in the aftermath of Donald J. Trump’s election loss in November. No longer, they say, can they count on the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, to serve as a backstop for preventing racially discriminatory voting restrictions.“We have to remember that the Supreme Court is not going to save us — it’s not going to protect our democracy in these moments when it is most necessary that it does so,” Sam Spital, the director of litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said Friday.The high court gutted the central protection of the Voting Rights Act in a 2013 decision, and on Thursday the court further limited the act’s reach in combating discriminatory laws, establishing strict new guidelines for proving the laws’ effects on voters of color and thus requiring litigants to clear the much higher bar of proving purposeful intent to discriminate.Mr. Spital said his group would have to carefully assess its next moves and “think very carefully” before bringing new cases that, if defeated, could set damaging new precedents. The Arizona case, filed in 2016 by the Democratic National Committee, was considered a weak vehicle for challenging new voting laws; even the Biden administration acknowledged that the Arizona law was not discriminatory under the Voting Rights Act. Choosing the wrong cases, in the wrong jurisdictions, could lead to further setbacks, Mr. Spital and other voting rights advocates said.At the same time, Mr. Spital said, it is imperative that voting restrictions enacted by Republicans not go unchallenged.“It will force us to work even harder in the cases that we do bring,” he said. “Once the rules of the game are set, even if they are tilted against us, we have the resources — we have extraordinary lawyers, extraordinary clients, and we have the facts on our side.”Thursday’s ruling also laid bare an uncomfortable new reality for Democrats and voting activists: that under existing law, they can expect little help from the federal courts on election laws that are passed on a partisan basis by the party that controls a state government. Republican lawmakers in Georgia, Florida and Iowa have moved aggressively to push through voting laws, brushing aside protests from Democrats, voting rights groups and even major corporations.Arizona Republicans were candid about the partisan nature of their efforts when the Supreme Court heard the case in March. A lawyer for the Arizona Republican Party told the justices that the restrictions were needed because without them, Republicans in the state would be “at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats.”“It’s much harder to prove these things — it takes a lot more evidence,” said Travis Crum, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who specializes in voting rights and redistricting cases. “Courts are often reluctant to label legislators racist. That’s why the effects standard was added in 1982.”The high court’s decision also raises the stakes for 2022 contests for governor in the key swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where Democratic governors are poised to block measures proposed by Republican-controlled legislatures. If a Republican won the governor’s seat in any of those states, the legislature would have a clear path to pushing through new voting laws.Republicans on Friday lauded the Supreme Court ruling, calling it a validation of the need to combat voter fraud — though no evidence of widespread fraud emerged in President Biden’s victory.Justin Riemer, the chief counsel at the Republican National Committee, argued that the new “guideposts” set by Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority opinion, were welcome and would force a recognition of the broader options for voting available in a state.“It reaffirms, for example, that states have an incredibly important interest in protecting against voter fraud and promoting voter confidence,” Mr. Riemer said. “When the court looked at Arizona’s laws, it noted how generous the voting provisions were.”Mr. Riemer noted that Democrats would also have a harder time in meeting new standards for showing that laws impose unreasonable burdens on voters.“I don’t want to say completely shuts them out of Section 2, but it’s going to make it very difficult for them to strike down laws that are really minimally, if at all, burdensome,” Mr. Riemer said, referring to the section of the Voting Rights Act that addresses racially discriminatory practices.Major Supreme Court decisions affirming a new restriction on voting have historically been followed by waves of new state-level legislation. In 2011, 34 states introduced some form of new voter identification legislation after the court upheld Indiana’s voter identification law in 2008.The first immediate test of a newly emboldened legislature will come next week in Texas, where lawmakers are scheduled to reconvene for a special session, in a second attempt by Republicans to pass an election overhaul bill. The first attempt failed after Democrats in the State Legislature staged a contentious late-night walkout, temporarily halting proposals that were among the most restrictive in the country.Those proposals included bans on new methods of voting, a reduction in Sunday voting hours and provisions that would make it easier to overturn elections and would greatly empower partisan poll watchers.The uncertain legal fights will play out in a federal judiciary remade during Mr. Trump’s administration, and Democrats in Congress have failed to enact federal voter protections.The legal defense fund that Mr. Spital represents sued Georgia in May over its new voting laws, arguing that the laws would have a discriminatory effect. Other lawsuits, including one the Department of Justice filed last week, argue that Georgia acted with intent to discriminate against voters of color.But some Democrats, while lamenting the decision by the Supreme Court, noted that they still had plenty of constitutional tools to challenge repressive voting laws.“Obviously, it is now going to be more difficult to litigate,” said Aneesa McMillan, a deputy executive director at the super PAC Priorities USA, who oversees the organization’s voting rights efforts. “But most of our cases that we challenge, we challenge based on the First, the 14th and the 15th amendments of the Constitution.”Among the guideposts Justice Alito articulated is an assessment of “the standard practice” of voting in 1982, when Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was amended.“It is relevant that in 1982 States typically required nearly all voters to cast their ballots in person on election day and allowed only narrow and tightly defined categories of voters to cast absentee ballots,” Justice Alito wrote.Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling established a series of guideposts for determining whether merely the effect of a voting law is discriminatory, rather than the intent.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesThe court did not address the purpose clause of Section 2. But those cases often rely on racist statements by lawmakers or irregularities in the legislative process — trickier elements of a legal case to prove than the effects.“You’re not going to get that smoking gun kind of evidence,” said Sophia Lakin, the deputy director of the A.C.L.U.’s Voting Rights Project. “It’s pulling together a lot of circumstantial pieces to show the purpose is to take away the rights of voters of color.”People protested voting restrictions outside the Texas Capitol in Austin in May.Mikala Compton/ReutersIn Texas, some Democrats in the Legislature had been hoping that they could work toward a more moderate version of the bill in the special session that starts next week; it remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court decision will induce Republicans to favor an even more restrictive bill.Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and State Representative Briscoe Cain, both Republicans, did not respond to requests for comment. Speaker Dan Phelan and State Senator Bryan Hughes, both Republicans, declined to comment.But whether the Supreme Court decision will open the floodgates for more restrictive voting legislation in other states remains an open question; more than 30 state legislatures have adjourned for the year, and others have already passed their voting laws.“It’s hard to imagine what a spike in voting restrictions would look like now, because we are already seeing such a dramatic surge, more than at any time since Reconstruction,” said Wendy Weiser, the director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a research institute. “But passing new waves of legislation has certainly been the response in recent years.”Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin is one of the Democratic governors who are holding off voting measures passed by Republican-led legislatures. On Wednesday, he vetoed the first of several pieces of Republican legislation on the electoral process.In an interview, he said Republicans’ monthslong effort to relitigate the 2020 election had had the effect of placing voting rights on the level of health care and education among the top priorities of Wisconsin voters.“It’s rising up as far as people’s recognizing that it’s an important issue,” Mr. Evers said. “They brought it on themselves, frankly, the Republicans have. I don’t think the people of Wisconsin thought the election was stolen. They understand that it was a fair election. And so the Republicans’ inability to accept Donald Trump’s loss is making it more of a bread-and-butter issue here.” More

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      The Supreme Court Is Putting Democracy at Risk

      by

      In two disturbing rulings closing out the Supreme Court’s term, the court’s six-justice conservative majority, over the loud protests of its three-liberal minority, has shown itself hostile to American democracy.In one case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the court has weakened the last remaining legal tool for protecting minority voters in federal courts from a new wave of legislation seeking to suppress the vote that is emanating from Republican-controlled states. In the other, Americans for Prosperity v. Bonta, the court has laid the groundwork for lower courts to strike down campaign finance disclosure laws and laws that limit campaign contributions to federal, state and local candidates.The court is putting our democratic form of government at risk not only in these two decisions but in its overall course over the past few decades.Let’s begin with voting rights. In Brnovich, the court, in an opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, held that two Arizona rules — one that does not count votes for any office cast by a voter in the wrong precinct and another that prevents third-party collection of absentee ballots (sometimes pejoratively referred to by Donald Trump and his allies as ballot harvesting) — do not violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.Section 2 is supposed to guarantee that minority voters have the same opportunity as other voters to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice. The evidence presented to the court showed that minority voters were much more likely to have their votes thrown out than white voters for out-of-precinct voting and that Native Americans — because many live on large reservations — were less likely to vote in the absence of help with ballot collection.That the conservative majority of justices on the Supreme Court found that these rules did not violate Section 2 is unsurprising. Compared to other laws making it harder to register and to vote, such as strict voter identification provisions, these were relatively tame. In fact, some voting rights lawyers were unhappy that the Democratic National Committee pushed this case aggressively; minority voters have had some success using Section 2 in the lower courts, even getting the very conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to strike down Texas’ voter ID law, one of the strictest in the nation. The concern was that the Supreme Court would mess up this track for protecting voting rights.And mess it up it did. The real significance of Brnovich is what the court says about how Section 2 applies to suppressive voting rules. Rather than focus on whether a law has a disparate impact on minority voters, as Justice Elena Kagan urged in her dissent, the court put a huge thumb on the scale in favor of restrictive state voting rules.Thanks to Brnovich, a state can now assert an interest in preventing fraud to justify a law without proving that fraud is actually a serious risk, but at the same time, minority voters have a high burden: They must show that the state has imposed more than the “usual burdens of voting.” Justice Alito specifically referred to voting laws in effect in 1982 as the benchmark, a period when early and absentee voting were scarce and registration was much more onerous in many states.It is hard to see what laws would be so burdensome that they would flunk the majority’s lax test. A ban on Sunday voting despite African American and other religious voters doing “souls to the polls” drives after church? New strict identification requirements for those voting by mail? More frequent voter purges? All would probably be OK under the court’s new test as long as there are still some opportunities for minority citizens to vote — somewhere, somehow.What’s worse, the court did not decide Brnovich in a vacuum but after two other significant decisions that undermined the fight against restrictive voting rules. In a 2008 decision, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, the court again put a thumb on the scale favoring a state’s restrictive laws when it upheld Indiana’s voter identification law against an argument that it violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. And in the infamous 2013 Shelby County v. Holder case, the court killed off the part of the Voting Rights Act that required states and other jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination in voting to get approval before they could adopt laws that could burden minority voters.We were assured back then not to worry about the loss of this preclearance provision because there was always Section 2 to fall back on. So much for that. There are now fewer and fewer tools with which to fight suppressive voting rules in the federal courts.And Justice Alito ended with a shot across the bow for Congress, should it consider amending the Voting Rights Act to provide an easier standard for minority plaintiffs to meet, such as Justice Kagan’s disparate impact test in dissent. Such a test, he wrote, would “deprive the states of their authority to establish nondiscriminatory voting rules,” potentially in violation of the Constitution.The news on the campaign finance front is almost as dire. In the Americans for Prosperity case, the court considered a law that required charities to disclose their donors in reports filed with the government of California. The state wanted the information for law enforcement purposes, to ferret out fraud by charities, and by law, the information was not supposed to be publicly released. Unfortunately, California had leaks, and some of the information was disclosed. The groups challenging the law said compelled disclosure of their donors violated their First Amendment rights. They put forth evidence that their donors faced danger of harassment if they were revealed. The court had long held that those who face such a danger can be exempt from disclosure rules.Once again, it is unsurprising that this particular conservative majority on the Supreme Court sided with these conservative charities. And had the court said only that California’s law as applied to those facing a threat of harassment was unconstitutional, it would have been no big deal. But the majority opinion, by Chief Justice John Roberts, is much more troubling. The court held the disclosure law could not be applied to anyone, even those not facing a risk of harassment. He also rejiggered the First Amendment standards to call many other laws into question.In the Americans for Prosperity case, he redefined the “exacting scrutiny” standard to judge the constitutionality of disclosure laws so that the government must show its law is “narrowly tailored” to an important government interest. This makes it more like strict scrutiny and more likely that disclosure laws will be struck down. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, “Today’s analysis marks reporting and disclosure requirements with a bull’s-eye.”The court’s ruling calls into question a number of campaign finance disclosure laws. Perhaps even more significant, it also threatens the constitutionality of campaign contribution laws, which are judged under the “exacting scrutiny” standard, too. Lower courts can now find that such laws are not narrowly tailored to prevent corruption or its appearance or do not provide voters with valuable information — two interests the court recognized in the past to justify campaign laws. A requirement to disclose a $200 contribution? A $500 campaign contribution limit? Plaintiffs in future cases are likely to argue that laws targeting small contributions for disclosure or imposing low contribution limits are not “narrowly tailored” enough to deter corruption or give voters valuable information, even if Congress or a state or municipality found such laws necessary.And that’s a key point. As in Shelby County and in the 2010 Citizens United case, which struck down Congress’s limit on corporate campaign spending, this conservative Supreme Court in today’s rulings shows no deference to democracy-enhancing laws passed by Congress, states or local governments.Justice Kagan’s Brnovich dissent is passionate about the majority’s failure to defer to Congress’s determination that minority voters need protection. Instead, the majority showed undue deference to democracy-reducing laws passed by states and localities.If you put the Brnovich and Americans for Prosperity cases together, the court is making it easier for states to pass repressive voting laws and easier for undisclosed donors and big money to influence election outcomes.It is too much to ask for the Supreme Court to be the main protector of American democracy. But it should not be too much to ask that the court not be one of the major impediments.Richard L. Hasen (@rickhasen) is a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of “Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust and the Threat to American Democracy.”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

    • 75 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Supreme Court Upholds Arizona Voting Restrictions

      by

      The decision, a test of what remains of the Voting Rights Act, suggested that challenges to many new measures making it harder to vote may not be successful.WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld voting restrictions in Arizona and signaled that challenges to new state laws making it harder to vote would face a hostile reception from a majority of the justices.The vote was 6 to 3, with the court’s three liberal members in dissent.The decision was the court’s first consideration of how a crucial part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 applies to voting restrictions that have a disproportionate impact on members of minority groups, and it was issued as disputes over voting rights have taken center stage in American politics.As Republican-controlled state legislatures increasingly seek to impose restrictive new voting rules, Democrats and civil rights groups have turned to the courts to argue that Republicans are trying to suppress the vote, thwart the will of the majority and deny equal access to minority voters. The decision suggested that the Supreme Court would not be inclined to strike down many of the measures.The larger message of the ruling was that the Voting Rights Act of 1965, hobbled after the Supreme Court in 2013 effectively struck down its central provision, retains only limited power to combat voting restrictions said to disproportionately affect minority voters’ access to the polls.The 2013 decision, Shelby County v. Holder, concerned the law’s Section 5, which required prior federal approval of changes to voting procedures in parts of the country with a history of racial and other discrimination. But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s majority opinion said the law’s Section 2 would remain in place to protect voting rights by allowing litigation after the fact.While Section 5 was available, Section 2 was used mostly in redistricting cases, where the question was whether voting maps had unlawfully diluted minority voting power. Its role in testing restrictions on the denial of the right to vote itself has been subject to much less attention.The new case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, No. 19-1257, concerned two kinds of voting restrictions in Arizona. One required election officials to discard ballots cast at the wrong precinct. The other made it a crime for campaign workers, community activists and most other people to collect ballots for delivery to polling places, a practice critics call “ballot harvesting.” The law made exceptions for family members, caregivers and election officials.The larger battle in the case was not whether the particular challenged restrictions should survive. The Biden administration, for instance, told the justices in an unusual letter that the Arizona measures did not violate Section 2. But the letter disavowed the Trump administration’s interpretation of Section 2, which would have limited its availability to test the lawfulness of all sorts of voting restrictions.Section 2 bars any voting procedure that “results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race.” That happens, the provision goes on, when, “based on the totality of circumstances,” racial minorities “have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.”Tracking the Major Supreme Court Decisions This TermPublic opinion is closely divided on health care, voting, religion and gay rights cases.The Arizona case was filed by the Democratic National Committee in 2016. Last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled that both Arizona restrictions violated Section 2 because they disproportionately disadvantaged minority voters.In 2016, Black, Latino and Native American voters were about twice as likely to cast ballots in the wrong precinct as were white voters, Judge William A. Fletcher wrote for the majority in the 7-to-4 decision. Among the reasons for this, he said, were “frequent changes in polling locations; confusing placement of polling locations; and high rates of residential mobility.”Similarly, he wrote, the ban on ballot collectors had an outsize effect on minority voters, who use ballot collection services far more than white voters because they are more likely to be poor, older, homebound or disabled; to lack reliable transportation, child care and mail service; and to need help understanding voting rules.Judge Fletcher added that “there is no evidence of any fraud in the long history of third-party ballot collection in Arizona.”In dissent, four judges wrote that the state’s restrictions were commonplace, supported by common sense and applied neutrally to all voters.Lawmakers were entitled to try to prevent potential fraud, Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain wrote. “Given its interest in addressing its valid concerns of voter fraud,” he wrote, “Arizona was free to enact prophylactic measures even though no evidence of actual voter fraud was before the legislature.”The appeals court stayed its ruling, and the restrictions were in place for the election last November. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Senate Confirms Top Biden Judge as McConnell Threatens Future Nominees

      by

      As Ketanji Brown Jackson became the president’s first appellate judge, Senator Mitch McConnell suggested he would block a Biden Supreme Court pick in 2024 if Republicans gained the majority.The Senate confirmed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on Monday to the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, giving President Biden his first pick on an appeals court even as the Senate Republican leader threatened future roadblocks for Biden administration judicial nominees.Following her approval by a bipartisan vote of 53 to 44, Judge Jackson, who served as a federal district judge, will join the court regarded as the second highest in the land, and considered an incubator for Supreme Court justices. She is widely considered a potential nominee for the Supreme Court should a vacancy occur during the tenure of Mr. Biden, who has promised to appoint the first African-American woman as a justice.“She has all the qualities of a model jurist,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said as he urged her approval. “She is brilliant, thoughtful, collaborative and dedicated to applying the law impartially. For these qualities, she has earned the respect of both sides.”Her approval came as Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, threatened to open a new front in the judicial wars that have rocked the Senate for decades. In an interview with the conservative radio commentator Hugh Hewitt, Mr. McConnell said Republicans would most likely block any Supreme Court nominee put forward by Mr. Biden in 2024 if Republicans regained control of the Senate in next year’s elections and a seat came open.“I think in the middle of a presidential election, if you have a Senate of the opposite party of the president, you have to go back to the 1880s to find the last time a vacancy was filled,” Mr. McConnell said. “So I think it’s highly unlikely.”His position was not surprising, since it was in line with his refusal in 2016 to consider President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nomination of Merrick B. Garland, now the attorney general, saying it was too close to the presidential election even though the vacancy occurred in February. But it was nevertheless striking, given that Mr. McConnell was the architect of the strategy that allowed former President Donald J. Trump to fill a Supreme Court vacancy in the final six weeks before he stood for re-election.As for what would happen if a seat became open in 2023 and Republicans controlled the Senate, Mr. McConnell stopped short of declaring that he would block Mr. Biden from advancing a nominee so long before the election, but he left the door open to the possibility. “Well, we’d have to wait and see what happens,” Mr. McConnell said.Stonewalling a nominee in the year before a presidential election would amount to a significant escalation in the judicial wars.Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, said he is likely to block any Supreme Court nominee put forward by President Biden in 2024 if his party regains control of the Senate next year.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMr. McConnell’s pronouncements will most likely amplify calls from progressive activists for Justice Stephen G. Breyer to retire while Democrats hold the Senate and can push through a successor. Justice Breyer, 82, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, has resisted calls to step aside. Justices often time their retirements to the end of the court’s term, which comes in two weeks.Mr. McConnell’s position in 2016 stood in stark contrast to the one he took last year when Senate Republicans, still in the majority, rushed through the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett just days before the presidential election, racing to fill the vacancy created by the death in September of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Republicans who had banded together in 2016 at Mr. McConnell’s urging and declared that it was not appropriate to confirm a Supreme Court nominee during an election year had remarkable conversions in the case of Judge Barrett. The Republican leader insisted that he had not changed his position, arguing that because Mr. Obama was a Democrat, it was entirely appropriate for members of his party to block his nominee.“What was different in 2020 was we were of the same party as the president,” Mr. McConnell told Mr. Hewitt. “And that’s why we went ahead with it.”Mr. McConnell’s decision to block Mr. Obama from filling the vacancy caused by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia was widely credited with encouraging conservatives to rally around Mr. Trump for the presidency, and ultimately allowing him to name three justices to the court, which now has a 6-to-3 conservative majority.Working in concert with the White House, Mr. McConnell and Senate Republicans also installed 54 conservative judges on the nation’s federal appeals courts, leaving Mr. Biden and Senate Democrats with significant ground to make up as they try to compensate for the conservative success of the Trump era.Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, called Judge Jackson “the first of many circuit court nominees we will confirm in this Congress.”Judge Jackson will now claim a seat on a court that is particularly prominent because of its routine involvement in Washington policy disputes and national security matters. She and other pending judicial nominees are part of a concerted effort by the Biden administration to diversify the federal courts, both in terms of the nominees themselves and their professional backgrounds.Judge Jackson counted being a public defender among her multiple legal jobs before becoming a federal judge, a role that her supporters note is different from the prosecutorial experience of many sitting on the federal bench.“Our judiciary has been dominated by former corporate lawyers and prosecutors for too long, and Judge Jackson’s experience as a public defender makes her a model for the type of judge President Biden and Senate Democrats should continue to prioritize,” said Christopher Kang, the chief counsel for the progressive group Demand Justice.Such experience has been an obstacle for judicial nominees in the past, and Republican opponents raised questions about her defense work at her confirmation hearing.Judge Jackson will replace Mr. Garland, who remained on the appellate court after his Supreme Court nomination was stymied before becoming attorney general. Mr. Biden has not named his choice for a second vacancy on the prestigious appeals court. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Supreme Court Case Throws Abortion Into 2022 Election Picture

      by

      Supporters and opponents of abortion rights say a major ruling just before the midterm elections could upend political calculations for the two parties.WASHINGTON — Within hours of the Supreme Court accepting a case that could lead it to overturn or scale back a landmark abortion rights ruling, Senator Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat facing re-election next year, issued a dire warning to supporters: The fate of Roe v Wade is on the line.“We cannot move backwards,” Mr. Bennet said in a campaign statement. “Colorado was a leader in legalizing abortion — six years before Roe v Wade. I will always fight for reproductive justice and to ensure everyone has safe and legal access to the health care they need.”His declaration was among the first in a quickly intensifying clash over abortion, long a defining issue to many voters but one likely to gain additional prominence as the court weighs the possibility of rolling back the constitutional protections it provided to abortion rights in Roe 48 years ago.Motivated in part by a belief that the Supreme Court will give them new latitude to restrict access, Republican-dominated states continue to adopt strict new legislation, with Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas signing into law on Wednesday a prohibition on abortions after as early as six weeks. The law, sure to face legal challenges, is one of more than 60 new state-level restrictions enacted this year, with many more pending.With the Supreme Court ruling likely to come next year — less than six months before midterm elections that will determine control of Congress and the future of President Biden’s agenda — the court’s expanded conservative majority has injected new volatility into an already turbulent political atmosphere, leaving both parties to game out the potential consequences.Republicans had already shown that they intended to take aim at Democrats over social issues, and abortion will only amplify the culture wars.Nearly all agree that the latest fight over Roe, which has been building for years, is certain to have significant political repercussions. Conservative voters are traditionally more energized than liberals about the abortion debate, and for many of them it has been the single issue spurring voter turnout.But Democrats, likely to be on the defensive given their current hold on the White House and Congress, say a ruling broadly restricting abortion rights by a court whose ideological makeup has been altered by three Trump-era appointees could backfire on Republicans and galvanize women.“Outlawing Roe would create a backlash that would have critical unintended consequences for those who would like to repeal it,” said Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire and a leading voice in Congress for abortion rights. “The women of the country would be very upset, particularly young women, that there would be such a deliberate effort to limit women’s access to reproductive choices.”Those on the right, already anticipating a favorable ruling given the conservative tilt of the 6-3 court, say they expect liberals to seize on the issue to try to “scare” voters. But they believe they can make a case for “reasonable” abortion limits.“This is clearly going to invigorate people on both sides of the debate, but this is a winning issue for pro-life candidates,” said Mallory Quigley, a spokeswoman for Susan B. Anthony List, a conservative nonprofit.She said she did not expect conservative voting enthusiasm to ebb if the right triumphed at the Supreme Court, an outcome that would bring to fruition years of emphasis on electing anti-abortion lawmakers at the federal and state levels and working aggressively to confirm conservative judges.“What happened on Monday is evidence that elections have consequences,” Ms. Quigley said, referring to the Supreme Court’s decision to take a case about a Mississippi law that seeks to ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy — about two months earlier than Roe and subsequent decisions allow.Anti-abortion activists in the Texas State Capitol in Austin in March.  Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday signed into law one of the country’s most restrictive abortion measures.Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman, via Associated PressThe Supreme Court action may have political ramifications before next year. The case is likely to be argued weeks before Virginia voters head to the polls in November to elect a new governor in a race often seen as a midterm bellwether. Terry McAuliffe, a former governor and most likely the Democratic nominee, is eager for another political battle over abortion rights, rattling off his record protecting clinics in the state and vetoing legislation that would impose restrictions.“This is going to be a huge motivator,” he said in an interview. “In 2013, I promised women I would be a brick wall to protect their rights. And I will be a brick wall again.”Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, downplayed the potential effect of the court ruling, though he said that as an abortion opponent he welcomed the court taking up the case. But Mr. Scott said he believed voters would be more persuaded by what he described as the Biden administration’s failings on issues such as immigration, the economy, taxes, inflation and more.While the lines have always been starkly drawn on abortion into the pro and anti camps, public opinion has proved more nuanced, with a clear majority backing Roe but majorities also favoring some limits. How the Supreme Court comes down on the fine points of abortion law could determine how the issue plays in the elections.“Considering the decision will likely be made five months ahead of the election, and depending on the decision itself, it’s too early to measure its ultimate impact on the midterms,” said Nathan Gonzales, the editor of the nonpartisan Inside Elections. Mr. Gonazales said it could conceivably energize Republicans but also pay benefits for Democrats — a view shared by others.President Donald J. Trump helped inspire record turnout last year from Democratic voters, who were eager to reject his administration. With Mr. Trump no longer on the ballot, many Democrats say the Supreme Court case could provide crucial midterm motivation, particularly for suburban women in swing districts who were instrumental in Democratic wins last year.Katie Paris, the founder of Red, Wine and Blue, a group focused on organizing suburban female voters for Democrats across the country, said the Supreme Court news immediately touched off alarm on the Facebook groups and other social media channels run by her organization.“When the news came out that this was going to be taken up, it was like, ‘Everybody get ready. This is real,’” she said. “We know what this court could do, and if they do it, the backlash will be severe.”Tresa Undem, a pollster who specializes in surveys on gender issues, said that abortion rights would continue to be an effective cause for Democrats because voters link it to larger concerns about power and control that motivated female voters during the Trump administration.“Democrats and independents have felt a loss of control and power from people at the top,” said Ms. Undem, who has conducted polling for several abortion rights organizations. “Now you have six individuals who are going to make these decisions about your body in this personal area that will affect the rest of your life.”Mr. Bennet said he could not predict the political implications of the court taking on abortion, but he wanted to alert his supporters that something of consequence was at hand.“There are a lot of people who have worked for a long time to overturn Roe v. Wade, and that is what is at stake,” he said. “I think people needed to hear that in the wake of the Supreme Court taking this case from Mississippi.” More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Republicans Attack Democrats as Liberal Extremists to Regain Power

      by

      As Democrats prepare to run on an ambitious economic agenda, Republicans are working to caricature them as liberal extremists out of touch with voters’ values.WASHINGTON — Minutes after a group of congressional Democrats unveiled a bill recently to add seats to the Supreme Court, the Iowa Republican Party slammed Representative Cindy Axne, a Democrat and potential Senate candidate, over the issue.“Will Axne Pack the Court?” was the headline on a statement the party rushed out, saying the move to expand the court “puts our democracy at risk.”The attack vividly illustrated the emerging Republican strategy for an intensive drive to try to take back the House and the Senate in the 2022 midterm elections. Republicans are mostly steering clear of Democrats’ economic initiatives that have proved popular, such as an infrastructure package and a stimulus law that coupled pandemic relief with major expansions of safety-net programs, and are focusing instead on polarizing issues that stoke conservative outrage.In doing so, they are seizing on measures like the court-expansion bill and calls to defund the police — which many Democrats oppose — as well as efforts to provide legal status to undocumented immigrants and grant statehood to the District of Columbia to caricature the party as extreme and out of touch with mainstream America.Republicans are also hammering at issues of race and sexual orientation, seeking to use Democrats’ push to confront systemic racism and safeguard transgender rights as attack lines.The approach comes as President Biden and Democrats, eager to capitalize on their unified control of Congress and the White House, have become increasingly bold about speaking about such issues and promoting a wide array of party priorities that languished during years of Republican rule. It has given Republicans ample fodder for attacks that have proved potent in the past.“They are putting the ball on the tee, handing me the club and putting the wind at my back,” said Jeff Kaufmann, the chairman of the Iowa Republican Party.Democrats argue that Republicans are focusing on side issues and twisting their positions because the G.O.P. has nothing else to campaign on, as Democrats line up accomplishments to show to voters, including the pandemic aid bill that passed without a single Republican vote.“That was very popular, and I can understand why Republicans don’t want to talk about it,” said Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, the new chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “But we’re going to keep reminding folks who was there when they needed them.”The contrast is likely to define the 2022 races. Democrats will sell the ambitious agenda they are pursuing with Mr. Biden, take credit for what they hope will continue to be a surging economy and portray Republicans as an increasingly extreme party pushing Donald J. Trump’s lies about a stolen election. Republicans, who have embraced the false claims of election fraud and plan to use them to energize their conservative base, will complain of “radical” Democratic overreach and try to amplify culture-war issues they think will propel more voters into their party’s arms.A release from the National Republican Senatorial Committee highlighted what it called the “three pillars” of the Democratic agenda: “The Green New Deal, court packing and defund the police,” even though the first two are far from the front-burner issues for Mr. Biden and Democratic leaders and the third is a nonstarter with the bulk of the party’s rank and file.President Biden and Democrats have promoted a wide array of party priorities that languished during years of Republican rule.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesLast week Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, sought to thrust a new issue into the mix, leading Republicans in protest of a proposed Biden administration rule promoting education programs that address systemic racism and the nation’s legacy of slavery. He has taken particular aim at the 1619 Project, a journalism initiative by The New York Times that identifies the year when slaves were first brought to America as a key moment in history.“There are a lot of exotic notions about what are the most important points in American history,” Mr. McConnell said on Monday during an appearance in Louisville. “I simply disagree with the notion that The New York Times laid out there that year 1619 was one of those years.”Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the Republicans’ Senate campaign arm, has been explicit about his strategy.“Now what I talk about every day is do we want open borders? No. Do we want to shut down our schools? No. Do we want men playing in women’s sports? No,” Mr. Scott said during a recent radio interview with the conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt.“Do we want to shut down the Keystone pipeline? No. Do we want voter ID? Yes,” he continued. “And the Democrats are on the opposite side of all those issues, and I’m going to make sure every American knows about it.”Democrats who have fallen victim to the Republican cultural assault concede that it can take a toll and that their party needs to be ready.“It was all these different attacks that were spread all over mainstream media, Spanish-language media, Facebook, WhatsApp,” said Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a former Democratic House member from South Florida who was defeated last year after Republicans portrayed her as a socialist who was anti-police. “A lot of it was misinformation, false attacks.”She said Democrats must begin taking steps now to combat Republican misdirection, warning that their legislative victories might not be enough to appeal to voters.“We can have a great policy record,” she said, “but we need to be present in our communities right now, reaching out to all of our constituencies to tell them we are working for them, that their health and their jobs are our priorities.”On the Supreme Court issue, progressive groups began pushing the idea of an expansion after Mr. Trump was able to appoint three justices, including one to a vacancy that Republicans blocked Barack Obama from filling in the last year of his presidency and another who was fast-tracked right before last year’s election.Hoping to neutralize the issue, some Senate Democrats who will be on the ballot next year have made it clear that they would oppose expanding the court, and the bill seems to be going nowhere at the moment. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would not bring any court bill to the floor until at least after a commission named by Mr. Biden to study the matter issued its report, which is due in six months. The president has been cool to the expansion idea as well.The office of Ms. Axne, the only Democrat in Congress from Iowa, did not respond to requests for reaction to the Republican attacks on her over the court plan. In an interview with MSNBC, Ms. Axne said that she, like Ms. Pelosi, would await the findings of the commission.But Republicans are not waiting to try to score political points. They say more moderate Republican voters and independents who broke with the party during the Trump years have been alienated by the call to enlarge the court and other initiatives being pushed by progressives.One key for Republicans next year will be winning back suburban voters while running campaigns that also energize the significant segment of their supporters who are fiercely loyal to Mr. Trump and want the party to represent his values. That may be a difficult balance to achieve, as evidenced this week when Republican leaders moved to strip Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming of the party’s No. 3 leadership post for calling out the former president’s false election claims.Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said it would matter less what Republicans said about Democrats than what his party was able to accomplish.“The one thing that will win people over, no matter what they do, is whether we can deliver,” he said. “They are doing what appeals to their base, but the voters in the middle, including a good chunk of Republican voters, actually care about getting things done.”Instead of focusing on Democrats’ economic initiatives that have proved popular, Republicans are seizing on measures like a bill to expand the Supreme Court.Al Drago for The New York TimesMr. Peters said Democrats would be better positioned to rebut attacks such as those that falsely portray them as pressing to defund the police after voters had experienced two years of the party holding power.“President Biden and the caucus have been very clear that we are not about defunding the police, we are about making sure police have the resources they need to do their jobs,” he said. “Ultimately, it is about how it is impacting people’s lives.”Mr. Kaufmann, the Republican leader in Iowa, begged to differ. He said he believed the hot-button issues Republicans were homing in on would drive voters more than “the nuance of tax policy and who gets credit for the vaccine.” He is eager to get started.“Some of this stuff is really controversial,” he said. “These are all very bold and clearly delineated issues. I can use this to expand the base and get crossover voters.” More