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      The next major US voting rights fight is here – and Republicans are ahead

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterThe next major fight over voting rights in the US kicked off Monday: a hugely consequential battle over the boundaries of electoral districts for the next 10 years that will have profound implications for American politics. And Republicans seem to be pulling ahead.Census officials released a decennial tally of people living in the US, a number that’s used to apportion the House’s 435 seats among the 50 states. The Census Bureau announced that Colorado, Montana, Oregon, North Carolina and Florida will all gain an additional seat in the House, while Texas will get two more. Seven states – California, California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia – will lose a seat.The numbers accentuated what many have predicted for months: Republicans are extremely well positioned to draw districts that will give them an advantage both in their effort to reclaim control of the US House in the 2022 midterms, and cement control over congressional seats for the next decade.The constitution gives state lawmakers the power to draw districts and, because of their continued strength in state legislative races, Republicans will dominate the process later this year and can manipulate the lines to their advantage, a process often called gerrymandering.Even though Democrats earned about 4.7m more votes in 2020 House races around the country, Republicans will have control over the drawing of 187 congressional districts later this year (down from 219 in 2011) while Democrats will have complete control over the drawing of 75 districts (up from 44 a decade ago), according to the Cook Political Report.Republicans need to win just five seats to retake control of the US House of Representatives, a gap observers believe they can wipe out with gerrymandering alone. Eric Holder, the former US attorney general, told reporters Wednesday he was concerned Republicans could use their complete control of the redistricting process in Texas, Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina alone to overcome that gap.“What we’re seeing is a Republican party that has shown they’re willing to bend or break the rules of democracy simply to hold on to power,” said Holder, who is leading the Democratic effort to push back on excessive GOP gerrymandering. “If Republicans gerrymander those states, as they have indicated they will, they will have the ability there, almost to take control of the House of Representatives just based on what they do in those four states.”In 2019, the US supreme court said for the first time that federal courts could not do anything to stop severe manipulation of district lines for partisan gain. One lingering uncertainty is whether Democrats in Congress will be able to pass pending federal legislation to place new limits on the practice. Passing that legislation, however, requires getting rid of the filibuster, a Senate rule requiring 60 votes to advance legislation. Democrats do not yet have the votes to get rid of the procedure.“You could pass new criteria, including a ban on partisan gerrymandering … require greater transparency in the process,” said Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice. “There’s a lot that could be done.”Because of a 2013 supreme court ruling, states with a history of voting discrimination, like Texas and North Carolina, will not have to get their maps approved by the federal government before they go into effect. That leaves an opportunity for lawmakers to draw maps that discriminate based on race. Kathay Feng, the national redistricting and representation director at Common Cause, a government watchdog group, warned that voting advocates would be closely monitoring for that kind of discrimination. Much of the America’s population growth over the last decade has come from non-white people.“Our top priority is ensuring that states that are adding congressional seats recognize the population growth fueled by communities of color in the upcoming redistricting process,” Feng said in a statement.As federal legislation stalls, Democrats are already signaling they will move aggressively in court to challenge gerrymandering. Shortly after the apportionment numbers were released, Holder’s group filed three separate lawsuits in Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Louisiana – states where Democrats and Republicans share control of the redistricting process – asking courts to be prepared to step in if lawmakers reach an impasse. Such quick machinations are crucial because the redistricting process is moving on a condensed timeline this year because of delays releasing data due to the Covid-19 pandemic.Marc Elias, a top Democratic election lawyer, said this week more lawsuits are likely to follow.While the Republicans made possible gains, the biggest surprise of the Census Bureau’s Monday’s announcement was that it didn’t result in more of a shift for the party. Projections based on population estimates had predicted Texas would gain three seats and Florida would gain two. Arizona, where districts are drawn by an independent commission, was expected to gain a seat, but ended up not doing so. Minnesota and Rhode Island were both projected to lose seats, and New York could have lost an additional seat.“Overall, the population shifts to the the south will definitely benefit Republicans, but definitely not as much as people were expecting, just because they got fewer seats,” Li said.It’s not unusual for the final tallies to be slightly off from apportionment, but Li said he was surprised to see the kind of variation there was this year. There is some concern that the variation in the data may signal an undercount of Hispanic population, especially after the Trump administration repeatedly tried to tamper with the process. Bureau officials said Monday they are confident in the data.Holder told reporters on Tuesday that it was impossible to separate the upcoming battle over redistricting from an aggressive GOP effort underway in state legislatures to restrict access to the voting booth.“I have no doubt that the same Republican legislators that have pushed these bills will now try and use the redistricting process to illegitimately lock in power for that party, for them, for the next decade,” he said. More

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      Why Michigan Republicans’ attack on voting rights is ‘particularly anti-democratic’

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterOn the surface, the Republican effort to roll back voting rights in Michigan looks similar to what’s happening in states around the country: after Donald Trump narrowly lost a key battleground state where there was record turnout, Republicans are moving swiftly to implement sweeping restrictions to curtail access to the ballot box.But the effort is raising unique concerns. Even though the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, is likely to veto a package of dozens of pending bills to curb voter access, Republicans are already hinting they will use a loophole to implement the measures anyway. They can take advantage of a quirk in Michigan’s law allowing voters to send a bill to the legislature if just over 340,000 voters sign a petition asking them to take it up. These kinds of bills cannot be vetoed by the governor.“This effort is particularly anti-democratic, not just in substance, but in procedure,” said the Michigan secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat who serves as the state’s top election official.The proposals include measures that are breathtakingly restrictive, even when held up in comparison to other measures states are considering. One bill bans Michigan’s secretary of state not only from mailing out absentee ballot applications to all voters, but also blocks her from even providing a link on a state website to a mail-in ballot application. Another proposal does not allow voters to use absentee ballot drop boxes after 5pm the day before election day. A different measure would require voters to make a photocopy of their ID and mail it in to vote by mail.The effort is being closely monitored in a state known for razor-thin elections and where Donald Trump and allies tried to overturn the result in 2020. Republicans are moving aggressively to put the new voting restrictions in place ahead of the 2022 elections, when there are races for governor, attorney general and secretary of state. Michigan also has several key swing congressional districts that will help determine who controls the US House of Representatives in Washington.The new restrictions are also urgent for Republicans because they are about to lose one of their most powerful advantages in the state legislature. A decade ago, Republicans manipulated the boundaries of electoral districts in such a way that virtually guaranteed they would hold a majority of seats. That manipulation, called gerrymandering, has allowed Republicans to control the legislature since 2011.But in 2018, voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to strip lawmakers of their ability to draw districts, giving the power to an independent commission. With the commission set to draw new districts later this year, the new restrictions may be Republicans’ last-ditch attempt to distort voting rules to give them an edge in elections.“Everything from January 6 forward is about 2022 and ultimately 2024. I believe we should plan for and anticipate that the very forces that emerged in 2020 to try to undermine democracy will be back in full force, potentially stronger, in more positions of authority, to try again in 2024,” Benson said.In 2018, Michigan voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment to expand voting by mail in the state. Now Republicans, more powerful thanks to their manipulated districts, are seeking to undo those reforms, Benson said.“What you have here is legislators, elected through gerrymandered districts, using that power and those seats to reach out to a very small, small portion of Michigan registered voters and use them to justify overturning the will of millions of Michigan citizens who quite clearly want these policies in place and who quite clearly oppose the very policies that the Republicans are promoting,” she said.“It makes it harder for every person and it’s really only supported by 340,000 people,” said Nancy Wang, the executive director of Voters Not Politicians, a civic action group in Michigan that was behind the 2018 anti-gerrymandering effort. “It’s the tyranny of the minority, but in such extreme, it’s shocking.Critics say the proposed laws would put up nearly insurmountable barriers for some residents who are elderly, low-income, disabled or face other challenges. Rachel Rion, 87, lives in Westland, a suburb of Detroit, and has relied on mailing absentee ballots in recent elections.She said the law that would require a photocopy of her identification to be mailed in with her ballot presents a problem because she doesn’t drive, doesn’t understand the rule change and doesn’t know where to get a photocopy made or how to use a copy machine.She also gave the example of a friend who is battling cancer and who is too sick to get out of bed, let alone deal with photocopies.“How would she vote?” Rion asked. “I really hope they don’t push through those laws. It really would be hard for us.”Chris Swope, the city clerk responsible for overseeing elections in Lansing, the state capital, said there was “not much good” in the package of bills Republicans are proposing. Many voters who use drop boxes, he said, return their ballots on election day and the GOP proposal would take away that option entirely.The party has cited a lack of trust in elections as their motivation, but “the lack of confidence was caused by people lying because they lost and couldn’t face that”, he said. “I don’t think you overreact to that by making it harder for everyone to vote when you still had 30% of people who didn’t vote at all.”Republicans have repeatedly used the veto-dodging loophole in recent decades to circumvent opposition from Whitmer and the former GOP governor Rick Snyder. Since 1987, the anti-abortion group Right to Life has used it to push through initiatives to ban public funds from being used to pay for abortions for welfare recipients, require parental consent before a minor can get an abortion, define a legal birth and require women to purchase a health insurance rider for an abortion, dubbed “rape insurance”.Republicans dealt a blow to unions when they used the procedure in 2016 to repeal the state’s prevailing wage law, and in the coming weeks it could be used to strip Whitmer of her emergency order powers used to lock down the state during the pandemic.The Republican party is likely to turn to an activist network developed and still in place from the emergency order initiative, and the state’s loose laws around dark money will allow donors to contribute without fear of blowback.“You need people who are highly motivated, have the ground game, and people who have money, and every indication is, boy, Republicans have those things there in spades,” said Bill Ballenger, a Michigan political analyst.However, the process isn’t foolproof, and Democrats say they plan to use every tool to derail the effort. A 2018 Right to Life campaign would have banned abortions after six weeks, but it failed when the secretary of state found a high number of invalid signatures. Meanwhile, the petition to strip Whitmer’s emergency orders faces a possible legal challenge.If a voting restrictions package moves forward, Democrats would probably first mount a “decline to sign” campaign to drum up opposition during Republicans’ signature-collection process, said Mark Brewer, a state constitutional attorney and former head of the Michigan Democratic party. They would also challenge the signatures turned into the secretary of state, who has already voiced strong opposition to the proposed laws and could slow the process. “There will be a very concerted effort to ensure that any citizen who signs any potential effort like this knows exactly what they’re signing so we eliminate the opportunity for deception, which has been an issue in the past, repeatedly,” Benson said.Democrats could also challenge the laws’ constitutionality in the courts, and a counter ballot initiative is also possible, though the logistics are difficult in terms of timing and language. If both measures are approved, the Michigan supreme court, controlled by a 4-3 Democratic majority, decides which elements of each become law.As lawmakers across the country move hundreds of bills to restrict voter access, stopping the new Michigan restrictions would send a powerful message, Benson said.“If we can overcome this attack on our freedom to vote, and we have many pieces in place to do that, we can be a story of that as opposed to the Georgia story,” where the governor signed a package of restrictions into law in March. “The actions we take now will set the stage for what is attempted in the future.” More

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      Republican lawyer is key player in voter suppression drive across US

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      It was an abrupt end to two decades as a partner at legal giant Foley & Lardner for the influential and conservative election lawyer Cleta Mitchell.Days after Mitchell participated in Donald Trump’s controversial 2 January phone call with Georgia’s secretary of state where the then president pressured him to “find” him more votes to reverse Joe Biden’s win, Mitchell resigned her post in the midst of an internal firm review and mounting criticism.But Mitchell, a combative and top lawyer in the right’s drive to promote unproven charges of sizable voting fraud in 2020 and tighten future voting laws, was not idle for long. She has now emerged in a series of roles that have put her at the heart of what many see as a ferocious Republican push on limiting voting rights that now reaches across America.Last month, Mitchell was tapped by the libertarian FreedomWorks to spearhead a $10m drive in seven key states including Georgia, Arizona and Michigan to change voting laws to curb potential but unproven election fraud, which many Democrats and legal experts view as aimed at limiting minority votes.According to a FreedomWorks spokesman, another key part of Mitchell’s mission leading its “National Election Protection Initiative”, is to rally opposition to a House-passed bill that in part would expand voting rights nationally which its sponsors see as necessary to counter the conservative assaults on voting rights in many states.Georgia last month enacted a law that makes voting tougher with new curbs on absentee ballots and on voters in heavily Democratic urban and suburban areas, sparking lawsuits from civil rights and liberal groups, plus a sharp attack from Biden.FreedomWorks’ president, Adam Brandon, has hailed Mitchell as “an outspoken advocate and voice of reason for improved election laws, especially during the chaotic 2020 election cycle”, and dubbed her “our guide”, chairing its election initiative, which will also include training and deploying activists in the states to monitor election procedures.Likewise, the Trump-allied Conservative Partnership Institute last month recruited Mitchell as a “senior fellow” with a similar mission. Mitchell told the AP she is working to “coordinate” conservative views on voting to bolster opposition to the House passed voting rights legislation that is pending in the Senate.Mitchell’s FreedomWorks and CPI projects come even as a Georgia DA in Fulton county is looking into whether Trump and others broke laws in pressuring Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to find enough votes to block Biden’s win. On that call, Mitchell claimed she had evidence of voting fraud, but officials with Raffensperger’s office disagreed and faulted her data.Some voting rights lawyers say Mitchell could face scrutiny over her role in the call.Gerry Hebert, who spent over two decades as a senior attorney at the Justice Department’s voting rights section, said in an interview Trump’s actions and words constituted “election interference [and] violated both state law and federal law, and he should be held accountable”.Mitchell “reportedly interjected multiple times during the call in which she tried to support Trump’s allegations of fraud”, he said. “Her role in that call may well be part of the investigation” by the Georgia DA. Hebert added the state bar to which Mitchell belongs “has a responsibility to determine if she committed any violation of the legal ethics rules in that state.Reached by phone, Mitchell declined to comment on her work for the two conservative outfits, or the Georgia inquiry into Trump’s call and whether she might face scrutiny.Historically, the 70-year-old Mitchell has done legal work for many key players on the right including the National Rifle Association where she previously was on the board. A former Democrat and member of the Oklahoma legislature, Mitchell in the 1990s switched parties and moved to DC, where she has given legal counsel to many GOP candidates, campaign committees and non-profits.Mitchell’s new roles with FreedomWorks and CPI underscore the right’s goal of swaying future election results with more voting curbs. The conservative blitz to tighten voting laws in which Heritage Action for America is a key player too, is being fueled by tens of millions of dollars, coupled with allegations that Trump as well as Mitchell and conservative allies have spread about unproven widespread voter fraud in the last elections.In post-election radio interviews, Mitchell has escalated her rhetoric charging that Raffensperger is a “pathological liar” and attacking some GOP leaders in Georgia as “morally bankrupt”, according to the watchdog group Documented.In another radio segment, Mitchell said that last September she told Trump and his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, there was a “massive effort to steal the election”.More recently, Mitchell told the AP that she and Trump have been in contact “fairly frequently”, but declined to provide details.Meanwhile, other right leaning groups with which Mitchell has had good ties are engaged in campaigns that seem to overlap those of FreedomWorks and CPI to limit voting rights.For example, Mitchell told the AP: “I’ve been working with state legislatures for several years to get them to pay attention to what I call the political process.”To be sure, Mitchell prior to the election served as outside counsel and helped coordinate a major voting law initiative for the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), an influential group of conservative state legislators which promotes model bills for states. Alec has reportedly been increasingly active this year in pushing its ideas for changing voting laws.Known as well connected in conservative big money circles, Mitchell also serves on the board of the deep pocketed Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, a top donor to many rightwing groups including Alec to which it gave $750,000 dollars in 2020, records show.Further, Mitchell has attended meetings of the famously secretive Council for National Policy, an influential rightwing group that boasts top donors, evangelical leaders and prominent conservatives like FreedomWorks’ Brandon.At a CNP national meeting in mid November one panel featured Mitchell, Christian Adams the president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation (Pilf), and other lawyers discussing “Election results and legal battles: What now?”Mitchell, who also chairs Pilf, which received $300,000 in 2020 from the Bradley foundation, has indicated it could get active in the legal battles over the new Georgia law.To be sure, some conservatives voice doubts about Mitchell’s legal acumen. An ex senior NRA official who knows Mitchell quipped her views are on the “fringe of the fringe”.And one prominent GOP voting rights lawyer said Mitchell “tells clients what they want to hear regardless of law or reality”. The lawyer predicted Mitchell “will get scrutiny, but probably won’t be charged” in the Georgia DA’s inquiry. More

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      Fight to vote: Arizona county’s ‘ludicrous’ election audit

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterHappy Thursday,The baseless conspiracy theories that Donald Trump spread about the 2020 election are about to have some of their starkest real-world consequences to date in Arizona.Republicans in the Arizona state senate are set to begin an unprecedented audit of the presidential vote in Maricopa county, the most populous of the state, this week. Part of the audit will consist of a hand recount of all 2.1m votes cast for president there.Voting rights advocates told me they’re deeply concerned about the audit for a few reasons. First, they said, Maricopa county has already performed two audits of the election and found no irregularities in the vote. Second, the effort is being led by a Florida-based firm with a CEO who voiced support for election conspiracies after the election. Third, the audit will probably only breathe new life into Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 race in Arizona.Republicans in the legislature will likely use that uncertainty to justify new voting restrictions. One expert I spoke with said the entire effort seemed so shoddy that he was hesitant to even call it an “audit”.“It’s ludicrous,” the Arizona secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, told me this week. “We cannot set a precedent where people that are mad can just bring this on every election. It’s just not how we do things.”There are a ton of other important concerns. Private donors, reportedly including rightwing lawyer L Lin Wood, are helping finance the effort. And a spokesman for the audit told a reporter for the Arizona Mirror this week that there would be significant restrictions in place for reporters who covered the event.The Maricopa county board of supervisors, which is controlled by Republicans, isn’t on board with the effort. It agreed to turn over ballots and election equipment after Republicans got a court order, but refused to allow the audit to take place in a county-owned facility. Republicans are now paying to rent out an entire stadium to conduct the audit.“This audit, it seems as if they are seeking a predetermined outcome. They want to find fraud,” said Martin Quezada, a Democrat in the state senate. “They need to find fraud in order to justify all of their actions and in order to keep this radical wing of their constituency happy. They need to find fraud. So they are intent on finding it.”Also worth watching …
      The Senate confirmed Vanita Gupta to be the associate attorney general, placing one of the nation’s leading civil rights lawyers in the number three role at the justice department.
      Florida Republicans are advancing legislation to impose new restrictions on mail-in voting, despite objections from election officials across the state, including Republicans. The move to curtail mail-in voting in Florida is notable because the state has been held up as a national example – including by Trump – of how to successfully run a vote-by-mail system.
      Montana Republicans enacted a law that ends same-day voter registration in the state and another that tightens ID requirements for voting. Democrats are already challenging the measure. More

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      ‘It would be glorious’: hopes high for Biden to nominate first Black woman to supreme court

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      Joe Biden’s promise to nominate an African American woman to the supreme court for the first time holds broad symbolic significance for Darlene McDonald, an activist and police reform commissioner in Salt Lake City, Utah.But McDonald has specific reasons for wanting a Black woman on the court, too.When Chief Justice John Roberts asserted in 2013 that federal oversight of voting in certain southern states was no longer needed because “things have changed dramatically” since the civil rights era, McDonald said, he revealed a blindness to something African American women have no choice but to see.“I believe that if Chief Justice Roberts had really understood racism, he would never have voted to gut the Voting Rights Act,” McDonald said, adding that hundreds of voter suppression bills introduced by Republicans in recent months suggest things have not “changed dramatically” since 1965.“Myself, as an African American woman, having that representation on the supreme court will be huge,” McDonald said, “especially in the sense of having someone that really understands racism.”The gradual diversification of US leadership, away from the overwhelming preponderance of white men, towards a mix that increasingly reflects the populace, was accelerated by the election last November of Kamala Harris, a woman of color, as vice-president.Black women have been overlooked in terms of their values and what they have to bring to society as well as to the benchNow enthusiasm is building around a similarly historic leap that activists, academics and professionals expect is just around the corner: the arrival on the court of a justice who would personify one of the most historically marginalized groups.“Black women have been overlooked for decades and decades in terms of their values and what they have to bring to society as well as to the bench,” said Leslie Davis, chief executive of the National Association of Minority and Women Owned Law Firms. “We should be able to look at our highest court in the land and see the reflection of some of the folks who have made America great. And that absolutely includes Black women.”Out of 115 justices in its history, the supreme court has counted two African American justices, one Latina and just five women. The court has no vacant seats but calls are growing for Stephen Breyer, a liberal who turns 83 this year, to retire. Last month, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden’s campaign commitment to nominating a Black woman “absolutely” holds.“This is a big moment in the making,” said Ben Jealous, president of People For the American Way, which recently launched the Her Fight Our Fight campaign to support and promote women of color in government and public service roles.“The presumption is that whomever Biden nominates, the first Black woman to the supreme court would be filling both the shoes of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall,” said Jealous.The late Ginsburg, a pioneering lawyer for women’s rights, was succeeded last fall by the conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett. Marshall was succeeded in 1991 by the George HW Bush appointee Clarence Thomas, who “is anathema to everything that the civil rights community stands for”, Jealous said.“It would be both glorious and a relief to have a Black woman on the supreme court who actually represents the values of the civil rights community, and the most transformative lawyers in our nation’s history.”Tomiko Brown-Nagin, a civil rights historian, dean of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute and professor of constitutional law, said having qualified federal judges who “reflect the broad makeup of the American public” would strengthen democracy and faith in the courts.“It’s an important historical moment that signifies equal opportunity,” Brown-Nagin said. “That anyone who is qualified has the chance to be considered for nomination, notwithstanding race, notwithstanding gender. That is where we are. In some ways, we shouldn’t be congratulating ourselves, right?”Brown-Nagin pointed out that a campaign was advanced in the 1960s to nominate Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman to sit as a federal judge, but some Democratic allies of President Lyndon Johnson opposed such a nomination because they saw it as too politically risky.“This moment could have happened 50 years ago,” Brown-Nagin said.Daniel L Goldberg, legal director of the progressive Alliance For Justice, said to call the moment “overdue” did not capture it.“It is stunning that in the entire history of the republic, that no African American woman has sat on the highest court in the country,” Goldberg said. “For way too long in our nation’s history, the only people who were considered suitable and qualified for the court happened to be white males.”The first Black woman supreme court justice is likely to be nominated at a time when a renewed push for racial justice brings renewed focus on the court, which has played a key role in enforcing desegregation and reinforcing anti-discrimination laws.I would like to see someone like Sherrilyn Ifill or Lia Epperson – a woman who comes out of Thurgood Marshall’s old law firmThe killing of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, by a white police officer outside Minneapolis last weekend during the murder trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin has sharpened cries for a national answer to serial injustice at the local level – precisely the kind of conflict that typically lands before the supreme court.“As we sit here today, and watch the trial of Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd, that precipitated a summer of protests for the lives of Black people to matter – it feels that it is time for there to be a Black woman on the supreme court, because of the moment that we are in right now,” said McDonald, the Utah activist.Davis said it was “imperative” the country make strides toward racial justice after the invasion of the Capitol in January by white supremacists intent on overturning the 2020 presidential election, goaded on by a former president.“That shows that there are folks who are intentional about not seeing diversity, equity and inclusion thrive,” Davis said. “Now is the time for us as a country to recognize that until we value the voices of everyone, including Black women, we are silencing a very important part of the fabric of America.”‘A significant pool’The percentage of Black women who are federal judges – a common stepping-stone to a high court nomination – is extraordinarily small.According to the federal judicial center, the US circuit courts count only five African American women among sitting judges out of 179. There are 42 African American women judges at the district court level, out of 677.Those numbers are partly owing to Republican obstruction of Black women nominated by Barack Obama, including former seventh circuit nominee Myra Selby. She was denied a hearing in the Senate for the entirety of 2016 – a year later Republicans filled the seat with Donald Trump’s nominee: Amy Coney Barrett.“There is a significant pool of lawyers, law professors, public officials who would be viable nominees for the federal courts,” said Brown-Nagin. “The problem is not the pool.”Last month, Brown-Nagin co-signed a letter to the Senate judiciary committee supporting the nomination of district court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the court of appeals for the DC district, sometimes informally referred to as the second-highest court in the land.“Her resumé virtually screams that she is an ideal nominee for an appellate court or even the supreme court, and that is because she has the combination of educational and professional experience on the federal courts that feasibly fits the mold of typical supreme court nominees,” Brown-Nagin said.“I would say it goes beyond what we’ve seen, frankly, in recent nominees to the court.”Jealous, a former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), said he would like to see a nominee “who cut their teeth defending the people, not corporations”.“I would like to see someone like Sherrilyn Ifill or Lia Epperson – a woman who comes out of Thurgood Marshall’s old law firm, the NAACP legal defense fund, with a courageous commitment to defending the rights of all Americans,” he said.McDonald said having a Black woman on the supreme court would mean American history had “come full circle”.“I feel in my heart that it’s time,” she said. “Everything takes its time. And everything happens at its time. I was raised in a church, so I’m just going to say it like that.” More

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      Are US corporations really taking a stand for voting rights?

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      Despite a wave of public statements by corporations opposing legislation that would make it harder for people to vote, election reform advocates doubt American capitalism is really coming to the rescue of American democracy.Activists are welcoming corporate involvement in the fight against bills introduced by Republicans in state legislatures across the US to erect barriers to voting that disproportionately affect people of color and other groups that often vote Democratic.Hundreds of companies and business leaders lent their names this week to a two-page ad declaring “we must ensure the right to vote for all of us”, published in the country’s biggest papers.But past corporate interventions in social justice campaigns, including statements of solidarity with Black Lives Matter protesters last summer, did not go far beyond words, activists say.The pursuit of lower taxes and lax regulations, meanwhile, has led corporations to continuously finance the Republican party’s most corrosive projects, from voter suppression to the takeover of the judiciary to the big election lie that led to the sacking of the Capitol in January, they say.“Of course we welcome corporate support against outrageous voter suppression efforts by GOP state legislatures that make it harder for voters, particularly from communities of color and other historically marginalized communities, to vote,” said Ben Jealous, president of People For the American Way.It does feel, on this one, that some of these companies are getting out ahead of a potential boycott from consumers“That reaction is no doubt driven by their fears of losing business from their customers in the midst of heated public anger over such aggressive and targeted voter suppression, and we hope they will put their money where their mouth is and take real action to stop such proposals.”Thenewspaper ad was organized by two African American business leaders – Kenneth Frazier, chief executive of Merck, and Kenneth Chenault, former head of American Express – who have said such bills are racially discriminatory, even as Republicans insist election security is their deepest concern.The corporate decision to speak out created a rare moment of discombobulation for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, who warned chief executives to “stay out of politics” before clarifying a day later, with no hint of self-consciousness: “I’m not talking about political contributions.”But the surface friction between McConnell and his erstwhile patrons belies the mildness of most corporate criticism of anti-voter laws and obscures companies’ ambivalence when it comes to taking a stand on voting rights, activists said.Large Georgia-based companies including AT&T, Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola did not voice concerns last month about legislation to restrict voting in the state until they came under public pressure. Their eventual statements were measured.“We are working together with other businesses through groups like the Business Roundtable to support efforts to enhance every person’s ability to vote,” said AT&T’s chief executive, John Stankey. “In this way, the right knowledge and expertise can be applied to make a difference on this fundamental and critical issue.”The same three companies declined to sign the ad published in the New York Times and Washington Post last week, referring media to their statements about Georgia, though similar high-profile clashes are playing out in Michigan, Arizona, Texas and elsewhere.Walmart declined to sign the ad, with its chief executive, Doug McMillon, who chairs the Business Roundtable, telling employees: “We are not in the business of partisan politics.”Walmart’s reticence was spotlighted by LaTosha Brown and Cliff Albright, co-founders of Black Voters Matter, in a statement that praised the newspaper ad as a “righteous decision to stand up to racism, disenfranchisement, and voter suppression” and criticized those who did not sign.“They – and all of these other companies – continue to issue misleading statements that create a false equivalency between securing elections and attacking voting rights,” Black Voters Matter said. “These corporations are pandering to a big lie that is being used to justify voter suppression. That’s partisan.”Michael Serazio, a professor of communications at Boston College, said corporations appeared to be taking a “proactive” approach on voting rights to protect their bottom lines.“It does feel, on this one, that some of these companies are getting out ahead of a potential boycott from consumers, before the boycott around the laws was going to kick off,” Serazio said.Corporations increasingly feel pressure from consumers and in some cases employees on social and political issues, Serazio said.“Without question, the broader trend over the last decade has been corporations responding to a perceived or real sense that consumers want them to take a stand on political issues that they wouldn’t have done before.”But corporations simultaneously shovel money into the coffers of the very politicians who engineer the policies the companies claim to detest.A report this month by Public Citizen, a government watchdog, found corporations had given more than $50m in campaign donations in recent years to legislators who advanced anti-voter laws and promoted Donald Trump’s big election lie.Josh Silver, director of Represent.us, a non-partisan elections reform group, said corporations have “an extraordinarily important role” to play in the struggle over voting rights and there was “cause for hope”.“But it’s also practical for them,” Silver said. “They have to choose whether to side with an increasingly authoritarian [Republican party], or the majority of their workers and their consumers.“This is not just altruism.” More

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      Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance quits AppHarvest board after voting law tweets

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      The author of Appalachian memoir Hillbilly Elegy, author JD Vance, has resigned from the board of a company that uses green technology to mass-produce food in the region, days after sending some controversial tweets.Vance was an early investor in AppHarvest, a mega-greenhouse company that produced its first tomatoes this year at a 300-employee facility in Morehead, Kentucky, the Herald-Leader reported.An AppHarvest spokesman, Travis Parman, said “it would not be appropriate for me to discuss his motivation” for leaving the board.But Vance is also being floated in Ohio as a Republican candidate for the US Senate, and he has drawn criticism in recent days for his opposition to corporate leaders who have stood up against anti-voting rights legislation brought by GOP legislators in several states.Last weekend, more than 100 CEOs joined a call to discuss how to respond to recent proposals in state legislatures to restrict voting rights, most notably in Georgia. Vance said in a recent tweet states should “raise their taxes and do whatever else is necessary to fight these goons”.One recent proposal from the CEOs was to pull back donations for politicians who support such legislation. Republicans have been the overwhelming backers of anti-voting rights legislation and would disproportionately benefit from them. GOP legislators have often cited falsehoods about election fraud pushed by former president Donald Trump as justification for the new restrictions.Vance’s most monied donors are well-known Trump supporters. A super Pac supporting Vance’s US Senate bid received a $10m donation from Peter Thiel, his former employer and, at one time, an enthusiastic Trump supporter. The donation is Thiel’s largest ever political gambit.Vance has also received donations from the hedge fund magnate Robert Mercer. The billionaire Trump supporter is perhaps best known for backing uber-conservative Breitbart News and Cambridge Analytica, a firm embroiled in a controversial data-mining operation to manipulate voter sentiment.Vance also praised the Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Twitter, calling him “the only powerful figure who consistently challenges elite dogma on both cultural and economic questions”.Carlson has been recently embroiled in a battle with the Anti-Defamation League, which accused Carlson of using his show to mount, “an impassioned defense of the white supremacist ‘great replacement theory’”. After the letter from the ADL, Carlson again argued on his show that Democrats were, “importing a brand new electorate” through immigration. More

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      Warren Buffett, Amazon, Starbucks and others condemn voting restrictions in letter

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      Amazon, BlackRock, Google, Starbucks, billionaire investor Warren Buffett and hundreds of other companies published a letter on Wednesday condemning “discriminatory legislation” designed to hinder voting rights in the US.The letter – the biggest statement yet from corporate America – follows weeks of heated debate over corporate opposition to a series of Republican-sponsored bills that critics charge will restrict voting rights in states across the US.“We Stand for Democracy,” the double-page, centrefold advertisement published in the New York Times and Washington Post, begins. “Voting is the lifeblood of our democracy and we call upon all Americans to take a nonpartisan stand for this basic and most fundamental right of all Americans,” the statement reads.The statement was organized by two of the US’s most prominent Black executives, Kenneth Chenault, former chief executive of American Express, and Kenneth Frazier, the chief executive of Merck. Both executives have been prominent in opposition to restrictive voting laws and in leading a response from the business community.The statement does not address specific election legislation in states but it is the clearest indication yet that US corporations are looking to present a united front despite calls from several senior Republicans, including the former president Donald Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell, to stay out of politics.In an interview with the Times, Chenault said: “It should be clear that there is overwhelming support in corporate America for the principle of voting rights.” Frazier added that the statement was intended to be non-partisan.“These are not political issues,” he said. “These are the issues that we were taught in civics.”The effort to rise above partisan politics comes after several companies, including Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines, found themselves at the center of a dispute over voting rights legislation passed in Georgia. Lawmakers in the state threatened to withdraw tax breaks after the companies spoke out against the measures and others, including Trump, called for boycotts.The new statement comes after Chenault and Frazier convened a Zoom call of 100 CEOs over the weekend and is notable also for several companies that did not add their names, including Coca-Cola, Delta, Home Depot and JP Morgan.Coca-Cola and Delta declined to comment, according to the Times, while Home Depot said in a statement on Tuesday that “the most appropriate approach for us to take is to continue to underscore our belief that all elections should be accessible, fair and secure.”The JPMorgan Chase chief executive, Jamie Dimon, made a statement on voting rights before many other companies, saying: “We believe voting must be accessible and equitable.”Some signatories, including Buffett, chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, elected to sign personally rather than on behalf of their companies. Buffett has previously stated that businesses should not be involved in politics but he did not put his personal political views “in a blind trust at all when I took the job”.The statement follows a declaration on Tuesday by automakers ahead of voting legislation hearings in Michigan that they oppose election laws that would inhibit voting.In a separate statement, GM posted on Twitter: “We are calling on Michigan lawmakers and state legislatures across the nation to ensure that any changes to voting laws result in protecting and enhancing the most precious element of democracy.“Anything less falls short of our inclusion and social justice goals,” the company said. More