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      Overcoming Trumpery review: recipes for reform Republicans will never allow

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      Overcoming Trumpery review: recipes for reform Republicans will never allow The depth of Trump’s corruption is familiar but still astonishing when presented in the whole. Alas, his party shares itThe great abuses of power by Richard Nixon’s administration which are remembered collectively as Watergate had one tremendous benefit: they inspired a raft of legislation which significantly strengthened American democracy.The Presidency of Donald Trump review: the first draft of historyRead moreThis new book from the Brookings Institution, subtitled How to Restore Ethics, The Rule of Law and Democracy, recalls those far-away days of a functioning legislative process.The response to Watergate gave us real limits on individual contributions to candidates and political action committees (Federal Election Campaign Act); a truly independent Office of Special Counsel (Ethics in Government Act); inspector generals in every major agency (Inspector General Act); a vastly more effective freedom of information process; and a Sunshine Law which enshrined the novel notion that the government should be “the servant of the people” and “fully accountable to them”.Since then, a steadily more conservative supreme court has eviscerated all the most important campaign finance reforms, most disastrously in 2010 with Citizens United, and in 2013 destroyed the most effective parts of the Voting Rights Act. Congress let the special counsel law lapse, partly because of how Ken Starr abused it when he investigated Bill Clinton.The unraveling of Watergate reforms was one of many factors that set the stage for the most corrupt US government of modern times, that of Donald Trump.Even someone as inured as I am to Trump’s crimes can still be astonished when all the known abuses are catalogued in one volume. What the authors of this book identify as “The Seven Deadly Sins of Trumpery” include “Disdain for Ethics, Assault on the rule of law, Incessant lying and disinformation, Shamelessness” and, of course, “Pursuit of personal and political interest”.The book identifies Trump’s original sin as his refusal to put his businesses in a blind trust, which led to no less than 3,400 conflicts of interest. It didn’t help that the federal conflict of interests statute specifically exempts the president. Under the first president of modern times with no interest in “the legitimacy” or “the appearance of legitimacy of the presidency”, this left practically nothing off limits.The emoluments clause of the constitution forbids every government official accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State” but lacks any enforcement mechanism. So a shameless president could be paid off through his hotels by everyone from the Philippines to Kuwait while the Bank of China paid one Trump company an estimated $5.4m. (As a fig leaf, Trump gave the treasury $448,000 from profits made from foreign governments during two years of his presidency, but without any accounting.)Trump even got the federal government to pay him directly, by charging the secret service $32,400 for guest rooms for a visit to Mar-a-Lago plus $17,000 a month for a cottage at his New Jersey golf club.The US Office of Special Counsel catalogued dozens of violations of the Hatch Act, which prohibits political activity by federal officials. Miscreants included Peter Navarro, Dan Scavino, Nikki Haley and most persistently Kellyanne Conway. The OSC referred its findings to Trump, who of course did nothing. Conway was gleeful.“Let me know when the jail sentence starts,” she said.There was also the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, addressing the Republican convention from a bluff overlooking Jerusalem during a mission to Israel. In a different category of corruption were the $43,000 soundproof phone booth the EPA administrator Scott Pruitt installed and the $1m the health secretary Tom Price spent on luxury travel. Those two actually resigned.The book is mostly focused on the four-year Trump crimewave. But it is bipartisan enough to spread the blame to Democrats for creating a climate in which no crime seemed too big to go un-prosecuted.Barack Obama’s strict ethics rules enforced by executive orders produced a nearly scandal-free administration. But Claire O Finkelstein and Richard W Painter argue that there was one scandal that established a terrible precedent: the decision not to prosecute anyone at the CIA for illegal torture carried out under George W Bush.This “failure of accountability” was “profoundly corrosive. The decision to ‘look forward, not back’ on torture … damaged the country’s ability to hold government officials to the constraints of the law”.However, the authors are probably a little too optimistic when they argue that a more vigorous stance might have made the Trump administration more eager to prosecute its own law breakers.The authors point out there are two things in the federal government which are even worse than the wholesale violation of ethical codes within the executive branch: the almost total absence of ethical codes within the congressional and judicial branches.The ethics manual for the House says it is “fundamental that a member … may not use his or her official position for personal gain”. But that is “virtually meaningless” became members can take actions on “industries in which they hold company stock”.Dignity in a Digital Age review: a congressman takes big tech to taskRead moreThe Senate exempts itself from ethical concerns with two brilliant words: no member can promote a piece of legislation whose “principal purpose” is “to further only his pecuniary interest”. So as long as legislation also has other purposes, personal profit is no impediment to passage.The authors argue that since the crimes of Watergate pale in comparison to the corruption of Trump, this should be the greatest opportunity for profound reform since the 1970s. But of course there is no chance of any such reform getting through this Congress, because Republicans have no interest in making government honest.Nothing tells us more about the collapse of our democracy than the primary concern of the House and Senate minority leaders, Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell. Their only goal is to avoid any action that would offend the perpetrator or instigator of all these crimes. Instead of forcing him to resign the way Nixon did, these quivering men still pretend Donald Trump is the only man qualified to lead them.
      Overcoming Trumpery is published in the US by Brookings Institution Press
      TopicsBooksDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsUS political financingUS voting rightsUS constitution and civil libertiesreviewsReuse this content More

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      Florida Republicans pass congressional map severely limiting Black voter power

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      Florida Republicans pass congressional map severely limiting Black voter powerPlan drawn by Ron DeSantis gives Republicans a significant boost and is one of the most aggressively gerrymandered maps in US Florida Republicans approved a new congressional map that severely curtails Black voting power in the state on Thursday, taking a final vote as Black lawmakers staged a sit-in on the floor of the legislature.The new plan, which was drawn by Governor Ron DeSantis, gives Republicans a significant boost in the state and is one of the most aggressively gerrymandered maps passed in recent months. Republicans would be expected to win 20 of the state’s 28 congressional districts, a four seat increase from the 16 they hold now. It also eliminates two of four districts where Black voters have been able to elect the candidate of their choice. DeSantis is expected to sign the districts into law, and lawsuits challenging the maps are immediately expected.“We are plainly in this map denying minority voters the ability to elect the representative of their choice,” said state representative Fentrice Driskell, a Democrat who represents the Tampa area.Black Democratic lawmakers halted the final debate of the bill Thursday morning just before noon. They took over the floor of the legislature, leading prayer and chants. One member, state representative Dianne Hart, was seen wiping tears from her eyes during the protest, according to the Miami Herald.The Sergeant at Arms removed an Associated Press photographer from the floor of the legislature while the demonstration was ongoing, the Miami Herald reported. The legislature reconvened and held a final vote on the maps while the protest was continuing, according to The Tributary.A focal point of the new maps has been the way it eliminates the fifth congressional district, which stretches from Jacksonville to Tallahassee. 46% of that district is currently Black, and it is represented by Al Lawson, a Black Democrat. DeSantis has openly called for getting rid of the district, saying it is unusually shaped and was unlawfully drawn based on race. After vetoing a proposal that would have allowed Black voters in Jacksonville to continue to elect the candidate of their choice, DeSantis’s map breaks up the district into four pieces in which Black voters comprise a much smaller share of the population.DeSantis and lawyers from his office have said the law allows them to dismantle the district, voting rights experts have said the plan brazenly disregards laws designed to protect the interests of minority voters.Republicans would be favored to win all of those districts.At one point during the debate on Thursday, Representative Randy Fine, a Republican who was the vice-chair of the redistricting committee, explained why he was opposed to drawing districts that prevented minorities from electing candidates of their choice if they don’t comprise a majority of voters.“When we guarantee that a group of people gets to select the candidate of their choice, what we’re saying is we’re guaranteeing that those who aren’t part of that group get no say. Chew on that one for a little bit,” he said. The 1965 Voting Rights Act was designed to prevent this kind of voting discrimination, ensuring that lawmakers could not split up sizable and compact minority communities to dilute their vote.“They’re trying to see what they can get away with,” said Stuart Naifeh, a lawyer at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “It’s pretextual to say that the district doesn’t make sense. He wants to dismantle a Democratic district, and in this case a Democratic district that’s been held for a Black person for a long time and that’s a majority-minority district. So it’s concerning that he’s diluting minority voting strength.”“It seems like it’s got all the hallmarks of intentional discrimination,” he said.TopicsFloridaUS voting rightsUS politicsRon DeSantisRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Election integrity summits’ aim to fire up Trump activists over big lie

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      ‘Election integrity summits’ aim to fire up Trump activists over big lieThe Conservative Partnership Institute’s meetings promote poll watching and ‘clean’ voter rolls, sparking fears of vote suppression An influential conservative group that includes two Trump allies who helped push lies about voter fraud in 2020 is spearheading “election integrity” summits in battleground states, advocating for expanded poll watching, “clean” voter rolls and other measures watchdogs say could curb voting rights to help Republican candidates.The Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI) “election integrity network” is run by the veteran GOP lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who helped to spread misinformation about supposed election fraud in 2020.Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s last White House chief of staff, is a senior partner of the CPI and reportedly had a lead role in at least one of its summits.Mitchell, CPI’s senior legal fellow, has hosted multi-day summits, seeking to mobilize hundreds of conservative activists for elections this year in Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania, all states that Trump lost to Joe Biden, and Florida, which he won.CPI is slated to hold summits this spring in Virginia, Michigan and Wisconsin, as it seeks to build “election integrity” infrastructure in swing states.Powerful groups on the right such as Heritage Action and Tea Party Patriots Action have participated in previous summits.Ties between CPI and Trump were underscored last July, when the former president’s Save America leadership Pac donated $1m to the group weeks after the House voted to create a committee to investigate the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 by Trump loyalists seeking to disrupt certification of Biden’s election victory.Mitchell’s election summits began in February this year. Previously, she and other conservatives worked with legislators in states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Texas to spur the passage of voting laws, including new voter ID requirements and curbs on absentee voting, that seem heavily aimed at Black voters, voting rights advocates say.A participant at the CPI Arizona event said falsehoods about voter fraud in 2020 were voiced to gin-up enthusiasm for more aggressive election monitoring in 2022.“The event definitely used the false allegations of fraud in 2020 as a call to action to rally support for vigilant engagement this year in the election process,” the participant told the Guardian, speaking on condition of anonymity.“There was a large focus on recruiting precinct officials to watch the polls and all of the other processes associated with elections.”Voting rights watchdogs voiced strong concern about the CPI summits.“Ongoing efforts to promote false claims of widespread voter fraud are dangerous and damaging to our democracy,” Wendy Weiser, vice-president for democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice, said.“There is a multi-pronged attack on the core principles of our democracy in the name of election integrity. The country’s history with these kinds of so-called ‘election integrity’ operations makes clear that they create a serious risk of racial targeting, voter intimidation, and vote suppression.”The push to forge state election “integrity” networks is occurring while Mitchell and Meadows face congressional scrutiny and other investigation of their efforts to help Trump stay in power.Mitchell participated in a 2 January 2021 call with the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in which Trump urged the state official to “find” 11,780 votes, in order to overturn Biden’s win in the state.The Fulton county district attorney and a special grand jury are investigating whether Trump and others broke laws barring the solicitation of election fraud and other statutes in Georgia. Last month, Mitchell was subpoenaed by the House January 6 committee that is investigating the Capitol attack.Meadows was a “keynote speaker” at a two-day CPI Georgia summit in February, where he was scheduled to discuss “what happened in Georgia in 2020 and what we must do to protect future elections”, according to the Citizen Times, a paper in Meadows’ home state, North Carolina.Meadows is now under scrutiny for alleged voter fraud in 2020. North Carolina officials announced last week the four-term congressman had been removed from voter rolls pending the outcome of an investigation prompted by a New Yorker report that in 2020 he registered to vote using an address he never lived at.In March, several days before the North Carolina inquiry was announced, Meadows pulled out of the CPI’s Arizona summit, where he had been billed as a top speaker. He has reportedly not participated in other events.Meadows also faces a criminal contempt of Congress referral to the US justice department, for refusing to comply fully with requests from the January 6 committee.‘Capitalizing on confusion’CPI declined to answer queries about the summits and about Meadows’ role.Watchdog groups say the summits are sham efforts based on the lie that the 2020 election was subject to widespread fraud.“The people who perpetrated the fraudulent notion that the 2020 election was stolen are capitalizing on the confusion they deliberately sowed to undermine the safety and security of future elections and, not coincidentally, rake in money in the process,” Melanie Sloan, a senior adviser to the government watchdog group American Oversight, said.Some details of CPI’s gameplan for the 2022 elections have been revealed by websites promoting state summits.In Pennsylvania, a three-day summit in late March was advertised to include sessions on how to form a “local election integrity taskforce”; how to protect “vulnerable voters from leftist activists”; “researching your local election office”; “monitoring voting equipment and systems”; and more.Some “election integrity” meetings have drawn powerful conservative groups such as FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity that have to varying degrees amplified false claims about the 2020 elections.Some groups at the summits have been bankrolled by donors including the oil and gas billionaire Charles Koch, billionaire businessman Richard Uihlein and the conservative Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, where Mitchell is a board member.CPI gatherings have also been attended by GOP figures including candidates running for governor in Pennsylvania and the sitting Florida governor, Ron DeSantis.According to the Center for Media and Democracy, at a secretive January meeting with leaders of Tea Party Patriots and conservative groups from several states, Mitchell and CPI distributed a “citizens’ guide to building an election integrity infrastructure” to promote the summits and her message.Mitchell was also tapped last March by FreedomWorks to spearhead what it billed as a $10m drive to push tougher voting laws in more than half a dozen states and to fight Democratic proposals to make voting easier.Some watchdog groups say the CPI summits pose several threats to voting rights in 2022.Sloan, of American Oversight, said the CPI agenda had echoes of “Jim Crow-style voter suppression techniques, and a recipe for more verbal and physical threats against election administration officials”, similar to ones that occurred in Georgia and other states after the 2020 elections.Weiser, of the Brennan Center, warned: “There is a growing risk that in the name of election integrity, partisans and vigilantes will mobilize to intimidate voters and thwart their participation.”TopicsRepublicansUS politicsUS voting rightsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Report raises alarm on ‘insidious’ effort to undermine US democracy

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      Report raises alarm on ‘insidious’ effort to undermine US democracyState legislatures using gerrymandering, voter suppression, misinformation and intimidation to make voting more difficult An “insidious and coordinated” effort between lawmakers and extremist groups is under way to undermine American democracy, according to a new report.On Tuesday, the nonpartisan civil rights organization National Urban League released the annual report in its analysis series The State of Black America. The report, called Under Siege: The Plot to Destroy Democracy, outlines the “conspiracy and the urgent case for a national mobilization to protect and defend our most sacred constitutional right”.It focuses on four main tactics that it says are used in this effort: gerrymandering, voter suppression, misinformation and intimidation.In 2021 alone, 20 states have leveraged census data to redraw congressional maps, it noted. The new maps proposed by Republican state lawmakers “are no more than modern-day gerrymandering that strips voting power away from communities with Black and brown voters”, the report said.It also listed 34 laws passed in 19 states between January 1 and December 7 2021 that make it more difficult for people to vote.In addition to shortening the window to apply and deliver mail ballots, those laws limit absentee voting lists, restrict assistance in returning a voter’s mail ballot, reduce the availability of mail ballot drop boxes, and increase barriers for voters with disabilities, among other restrictions.“The burden of these laws – strict photo ID requirements, the elimination or restriction of Sunday voting, voting by mail and early voting, and the closing of polling locations – overwhelmingly falls on Black voters,” Marc Morial, president and CEO of NUL, said in the report.“Since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the United States has seen a steady rise in disenfranchisement practices giving one party an edge over the other. But never before has the nation seen such an insidious and coordinated campaign to obliterate the very principle of ‘one person, one vote’ from the political process.”According to the report, state legislatures in 18 states carried over at least 152 restrictive bills from the 2021 legislative season. Additionally, in states that allow lawmakers to “pre-file” bills ahead of the next legislative season, at least 96 bills in 12 states would make it more difficult for voters to cast their ballots.The report also laid out steps that have been taken to sabotage elections, including discrediting the vote and outright aiming to establish one-party rule, as demonstrated by the Stop the Steal movement.It also notes an uptick in intimidation of election officials since 2020, with one in six local election officials saying they have personally experienced threats, and a quarter concerned about being assaulted because of their role.Additionally, the report found that election workers are resigning and retiring at alarming rates, with one in five saying that they are “very” or “somewhat” unlikely to continue serving through 2024.It cites a poll conducted by the strategic research and consulting firm Benenson Strategy Group in which an overwhelming majority of Black Americans said they believe strongly in the power of their vote to make a difference when it comes to social and racial justice, police violence and economic opportunity.However, nearly as many agree that elected officials are not doing enough to protect their voting rights and are in fact “doing more to limit voting rights than to protect them”.TopicsUS voting rightsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Florida must seek court preapproval to change some voting laws, judge rules

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      Florida must seek court preapproval to change some voting laws, judge rulesFederal judge Mark Walker says state’s discrimination against Black voters warrants extraordinary oversight Florida cannot change certain voting laws without getting preapproval from a federal court for the next decade, a federal judge ruled on Thursday, saying the state has an ongoing and extensive history of discrimination against non-white voters that warranted extraordinary oversight.US district judge Mark Walker put the state back under preclearance on Thursday as part of a 288-page ruling striking down new voting restrictions in Florida limiting the availability of drop boxes, and making it more difficult for third-party groups to register voters. “Florida has repeatedly, recently, and persistently acted to deny Black Floridians access to the franchise,” he wrote in his opinion.Placing a state under federal preclearance is an extraordinary, and rarely used, action. A provision of the Voting Rights Act allows judges to place jurisdictions under federal supervision if there is evidence of intentional discrimination. Until Thursday, courts have not placed any states back under supervision since the supreme court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v Holder.“Without preclearance, Florida can pass unconstitutional restrictions like the registration disclaimer with impunity,” Walker wrote in his opinion. “Without preclearance, Florida could continue to enact such laws, replacing them every legislative session if courts view them with skepticism. Such a scheme makes a mockery of the rule of law. Under any metric, preclearance is needed.”Florida is expected to quickly appeal the ruling. The state is likely to find a more favorable audience in the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit and the US supreme court, which have both looked skeptically on challenges to new voting laws.Walker appeared to acknowledge the court’s hostility to voting rights in his ruling, writing “the right to vote, and the VRA particularly, are under siege”.In addition to the preclearance requirement, Walker’s opinion blocked a provision in the law that required election officials to continuously monitor ballot drop boxes and made them less available outside early voting hours. He also blocked a requirement that third-party voter registration groups provide voters a disclaimer that they might not deliver their registration in a timely manner. He also blocked a provision prohibiting assistance within 150ft of a polling place. Those requirements, he said, ran afoul of both the US constitution and the Voting Rights Act.The legislature enacted some of those provisions, Walker wrote, intending to discriminate against Black voters. Black voters are more likely, on average, to use drop boxes, he noted, and the legislature restricted their availability during times when Black voters were more likely to use them. Non-white voters are also more likely to rely on third-party voter registration groups than white voters and likely to wait longer in line at the polls, Walker noted. The legislature, he said, was aware of data showing the disparate impact.“The Legislature would not have passed the drop-box provisions, the solicitation definition, or the registration return provision absent an intent to discriminate against Black voters,” he wrote.A spokesperson for Florida governor Ron DeSantis did not immediately return a request for comment.TopicsUS voting rightsFight to voteFloridaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Maryland judge rules Democratic-drawn electoral map is unconstitutional

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      Maryland judge rules Democratic-drawn electoral map is unconstitutionalLegislature was accused of gerrymandering after substituting its own new district maps for ones drafted by outside commission A Maryland judge ruled on Friday that the state’s new congressional map is unconstitutional, the first map by a Democratic-controlled state legislature to be struck down by a court this redistricting cycle.So far courts have intervened to block maps they found to be GOP gerrymanders in North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania, infuriating Republicans and leading conservatives to push for the US supreme court to limit the power of state courts to overturn maps drawn by state legislatures.US state legislatures threaten citizens’ rights. We ignore them at our perilRead moreJudge Lynne Battaglia issued the ruling after a trial last week in which Republican lawmakers contended that Maryland’s congressional map approved by the general assembly in December violates the constitution by drawing districts that favor Democrats, who control the legislature.“The limitation of the undue extension of power by any branch of government must be exercised to ensure that the will of the people is heard, no matter under which political placard those governing reside. The 2021 Congressional Plan is unconstitutional, and subverts that will of those governed,” Battaglia wrote.The judge added that she was entering a judgment in favor of the plaintiffs to reject the map and “permanently enjoining its operation, and giving the general assembly an opportunity to develop a new Congressional Plan that is constitutional”.Battaglia has a long history in Maryland’s judiciary. She served as a member of the state’s highest court from 2001 to 2016. She served as Maryland’s US attorney from 1993 to 2001. She also was chief of staff to the former Maryland senator Barbara Mikulski, a Democrat, from 1991 to 1993.An appeal by the state is almost certain. Raquel Coombs, a spokeswoman for the attorney general, said the office was reviewing the decision.In Maryland, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one and Democrats hold a strong majority in both chambers of the legislature, the GOP has long criticized the map as one of the most gerrymandered in the country.“Judge Battaglia’s ruling confirms what we have all known for years – Maryland is ground zero for gerrymandering, our districts and political reality reek of it, and there is abundant proof that it is occurring,” said Doug Mayer, a spokesman for Fair Maps Maryland. “Marylanders have been fighting for free and fair elections for decades and for the first time in our state’s shameful history of gerrymandering, we are at the precipice of ending it.”The ruling comes under the unusual circumstances of Maryland having a Republican governor in a redistricting year. Governor Larry Hogan, who has long sought reforms to the way the state draws political boundaries, created a separate commission to draw maps for the state’s congressional seats and state legislative districts in hopes of taking politicians out of the process of drawing districts.Hogan submitted the maps to the general assembly, but the legislature moved forward with maps approved by a separate panel that included top legislative leadership, including four Democrats and two Republicans.Hogan vetoed the map approved by the legislature in December, saying it made “a mockery of our democracy”. After the judge’s ruling, the governor called on lawmakers to approve the map submitted by the commission he supported.“I call on the general assembly to immediately pass the independent Citizens Redistricting Commission maps that were written with accountability and transparency,“ Hogan said in a statement. “This is an historic milestone in our fight to clean up the political process in our state, and ensure that the voices of the people we are elected to serve are finally heard.”If the case comes before the Maryland court of appeals, the state’s highest court, it will be considered by a panel on which all but one of the serving judges was appointed by Hogan.Chief Judge Joseph Getty last week delayed the state’s primary elections from 28 June to 19 July, as courts weigh challenges to the state’s new legislative map as well as the congressional map.At trial last week, a witness for Maryland Republicans testified that partisan considerations had taken over when Democrats drew the map. Democrats currently hold a seven-to-one advantage over the GOP in the state’s eight US House seats. The new map made the district held by lone Republican representative, Andy Harris, more competitive for a Democrat to potentially win.Sean Trende, an elections analyst at RealClearPolitics, testified as a witness for Republicans at last week’s trial that Democrats “are almost guaranteed to have seven districts and have a great shot at winning that eighth district”.The trial involved two lawsuits. One was brought by a group of Republican state lawmakers backed by Fair Maps Maryland. The other was brought by the national conservative activist group Judicial Watch.TopicsMarylandUS voting rightsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      US state legislatures threaten citizens’ rights. We ignore them at our peril

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      US state legislatures threaten citizens’ rights. We ignore them at our perilThe bodies have become the engines of policymaking, behind Georgia’s voting restrictions and Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ bill Hello, and happy Thursday,Since late last year, I have been intensely focused on the frantic efforts by both major parties to put themselves in the best position to win US House races this fall.State-by-state, lawmakers are undertaking the once-a-decade task of redrawing all 435 districts in the US House. In most states, legislatures are responsible for drawing the new lines, and to no one’s surprise, both parties have jostled to draw as many districts in their favor as possible. While many, including me, expected Republicans to dominate the process, because they have control of more legislatures, Democrats have been boosted as a result of anti-gerrymandering reforms and an aggressive legal strategy.Reading lots of analysis about what’s happening at the congressional level, I started thinking that there was a much more significant redistricting story that was being largely overlooked. As they’ve been drawing congressional districts, state lawmakers have also been redrawing districts for their state legislatures (yes, they are setting the boundaries for the districts they run in).US supreme court blocks new Wisconsin voting maps in boost for RepublicansRead moreThis lack of attention is significant because state legislatures have become the engines of policymaking in the US. Take a second and think about the most controversial pieces of legislation you’ve heard about recently. Maybe it’s the sweeping new voting restrictions in Georgia. The “don’t say gay” bill in Florida. Anti-abortion bills in Texas and Oklahoma. All of these measures were passed in state legislatures, not Congress. With the federal government bogged down in gridlock, state legislatures, where one party often has control, have become the forums to pass legislation on issues such as school funding and public health that directly affect people’s lives.“The gerrymandering of the state legislative maps, it’s actually more important than even the congressional gerrymandering,” David Pepper, a former chairman of the Ohio Democratic party, told me. “We have this repeat cycle where every few weeks an outrage of some state law that passed somewhere and then we all cover the court case. But very rarely do people go back and look at: ‘What’s the cause of all this craziness in states?’”Republicans currently control 62 legislative chambers, while Democrats control 36. There are 23 states where Republicans have complete control over state government, and 14 where Democrats do.While things are slightly better for Democrats than they were a decade ago, control of state legislatures is unlikely to change over the next decade. Just 17.5% of districts are estimated to be competitive, a slight decrease from a decade ago, according to Chris Warshaw, a political science professor at George Washington University.“Most of the plans are pretty uncompetitive and most are biased in favor of one of the two parties. So I don’t think we’re likely to see many state legislatures flip control over the next decade,” he said.Letting Republicans depress the vote is ‘not in the cards’: a US governor on a race that may shape democracyRead morePerhaps no state better embodies the consequences of state legislative gerrymandering than Wisconsin. The Wisconsin state assembly, the legislature’s lower chamber, is widely understood to be one of the most gerrymandered bodies in the US. It’s so distorted that it’s virtually impossible for Republicans to lose a majority in it – even if they got a minority of the vote, they would still be able to hold a majority of the seats.Republicans have used that advantage recently to press a slew of anti-democratic policies, including a partisan review of the 2020 election that made the impossible case for how the lawmakers could “decertify” the results of the 2020 race.Earlier this month, Democrats had hoped they would get a slight boost in the legislative maps. After looking at a range of proposals, the state supreme court picked a new legislative map submitted by Tony Evers, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, saying it best complied with an earlier court order to make as little change as possible to the current maps.But on Wednesday, the US supreme court stepped in and threw out those maps, taking issue with the creation of additional Black-majority district in the Milwaukee area. It sent the case back to the state court for further consideration.“The will of the people is traditionally the law of the land. That is not the case at this point in time,” Tony Evers, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, told me last week.Also worth watching…
      I spoke with Evers about the stakes for his re-election bid and democracy.
      Listen to Pamela Moses, the Black Memphis woman sentenced to six years in prison for trying to register to vote, speak about her case.
      This redistricting cycle has blunted the political power of voters of color.
      Arizona Republicans are advancing a measure that would do away with no-excuse mail-in and early voting, which is widely used in the state.
      Ohio Republicans remain engaged in a high-stakes standoff with the state supreme court, which has refused to let GOP lawmakers enact gerrymandered electoral districts.
      TopicsUS newsFight to voteUS voting rightsUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsWisconsinfeaturesReuse this content More

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      ‘It’s a scare tactic’: Pamela Moses, the Black woman jailed over voting error, speaks out

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      ‘It’s a scare tactic’: Pamela Moses, the Black woman jailed over voting error, speaks outExclusive: Longtime activist who still faces the possibility of a retrial tells the Guardian she believes she’s being ‘persecuted’ for being outspoken Pamela Moses, the Memphis woman who was sentenced to six years in prison for trying to register to vote, says she is grateful to be released – but believes the case against her was a “scare tactic” to discourage other people from casting a ballot.Moses was released from prison on bond on 25 February after a judge unexpectedly granted her request for a new trial, citing evidence, obtained by the Guardian, that had not been disclosed to Moses’ defense.New evidence undermines case against Black US woman jailed for voting error | The fight to voteRead moreIn her first interview since being freed Moses recalled the moment in the courtroom when Judge W Mark Ward decided to grant her a new trial – and said she was “overwhelmed with joy”. Video shows Moses nearly in tears and screaming in excitement when Ward ruled he was granting her a new trial.She knew that judges rarely reverse themselves and grant requests for new trials, but she had been praying Ward would see beyond her criminal record. “I was very grateful that God had allowed him to correct his own mistake, and that’s what you need in the criminal justice system.”But Moses, a longtime activist who founded the Memphis chapter of Black Lives Matter, still faces the possibility of a retrial. Moses says she was unaware she was ineligible to vote, and state officials acknowledged they made an error in indicating to her that she was eligible. Her case has brought renewed focus to the practice, common in many US states, of depriving people convicted of certain felonies of their voting rights for widely varying lengths of time, but sometimes for life.“It’s a scare tactic, what they did to me,” Moses told the Guardian. She thinks other people with criminal convictions will think twice before seeking to cast a ballot in elections. “It’s like, ‘if she went to jail for that, we don’t need to do that. We don’t need to follow her because we’re going to be in jail for six years too.’ I would say it sends a confusing message to people who want to vote.“Why should people be worried if they’re going to be prosecuted for doing their civic duty?”Moses is a well-known activist in Memphis who has filed numerous cases in local and federal courts, often representing herself. She has been outspoken against a number of local officials, including the local election commission, judges and Amy Weirich, the local district attorney who is prosecuting her case. She said she believes she’s being “persecuted” for being so outspoken.“If you silence the loudest person that’s screaming, ‘hey Black people, go vote, don’t vote for her, remove her from office’ then you eliminate the opposition,” she said. “I believe, not only if I wasn’t Black, but if my name wasn’t Pamela Moses, this probably never would have been a case.”Moses’ case attracted national attention because of the harshness of her sentence, which seemed at odds with the evidence in the case. Before the trial, election officials in Memphis conceded that they erroneously never removed her from the voter rolls after she pleaded guilty to felony charges in 2015.In 2019, Moses launched a campaign for mayor of Memphis and sought clarification from court officials about whether she had completed her felony probation and could appear on the ballot. A judge told her she was still on probation, but Moses still believed she was eligible and went to a probation office and asked them to verify her eligibility and sign a certificate saying she could vote. After about an hour of investigating, the probation officer did so.Prosecutors blamed Moses for this. In their request for an indictment, they wrote she “convinced” the officer to sign off on the document. And during her sentencing hearing, Ward, the judge overseeing her case, accused her of deceiving the probation officer into signing off on the eligibility certificate. Moses said she didn’t trick anyone and was stunned to hear such an assertion.“I was like wow, I need to go to magic school or something. I’m the new Houdini. I’ve got that much power to trick somebody I’ve never met, never seen in my life into doing something just by walking in the place? You know, no.”But a document obtained by the Guardian last month, after the trial concluded, showed that probation officials investigated the incident and found that the probation officer, identified as Manager Billington, had made an error on his own. Even though Moses’ file said she was still on probation, Billington thought that another person had made a mistake. The official who conducted the investigation ultimately determined that Billington was negligent and to blame for the error.Moses went out of her way to defend Billington. “I don’t like how everybody is portraying that supervisor as a bad person. That man did his job,” she said. “I don’t think that man did anything other than what he could do based on the information that he had in front of him.”But Moses was critical of Weirich, the prosecutor, who has said Moses bears some of the responsibility for her sentence because she declined to accept a plea deal that would not have resulted in additional prison time. “I gave her a chance to plead to a misdemeanor with no prison time,” Weirich said in February “She requested a jury trial instead. She set this unfortunate result in motion and a jury of her peers heard the evidence and convicted her.”Moses pushed back on that characterization. “I haven’t done anything in my mind wrong so why would I plead to anything?” she said.“We have a right to that. But you want me to give it up because you want it to be right? It was about the principle to me. “I hadn’t done anything wrong.”Weirich’s office did not immediately return a request for comment. Weirich has yet to say whether she will pursue a new trial. Moses and her new legal team plan to hold a press conference in Memphis on Friday asking her to drop all of the charges.Her prosecution may already be having a local policy impact. Citing her case, a coalition of civil rights groups is pushing the county commission to conduct a “racial equity audit” to examine whether there is racial discrimination in Weirich’s office.The Moses case is one of several high-profile instances that underscores the disparity between how white and Black defendants can be treated when it comes to election crimes. Several white defendants across the country received minimal punishments, such as probation, for purposefully impersonating family members in order to cast multiple votes – yet Black people who made mere mistakes when attempting to follow complicated processes and procedures received prison sentences.“The reason why Ms Moses’ situation has got the attention of the nation is because this sort of disparate treatment happens all the time,” said Rodney Diggs, one of her attorneys. “The disparate treatment between people of color and non-people of color. You can just see the differences.”Moses had been in jail since December, when the judge overseeing her case abruptly revoked her bond. She said that she contracted Covid-19. She was unaware of the attention her case was getting, except for periodic dispatches from a jail nurse who would mention that she had seen her on the local news.Her incarceration had been particularly hard on Tyler, her 24-year-old son, who she said lost his job and took on tasks like handling her mail and bills.Since she’s been released, she said she has spent time with her 13-year-old son Taj – a “mini me”. The weekend after she was released, they went to a funeral for a relative who had been killed. She has been taking him to school and they watch Netflix together. She hasn’t had to explain her case to him because he’d researched it on the internet. “He asked me certain things. And I just divert,” she said.Still, Moses said she still has a lot of anxiety. On Wednesday, she was at 40% back to normal. On Thursday, she said she was up to 65%.“I’m anxious. I’m worried because these charges haven’t gone away,” she said. “I mean look at how much money they spent on this. Just think about it. They probably could have built a school with all the money they spent prosecuting me over a piece of paper.”TopicsUS voting rightsFight to voteUS politicsRaceTennesseeMemphisfeaturesReuse this content More