Election-rigging simplified Breaking news of Donald Trump’s forever-imminent indictment on federal and state charges came so thick and fast on Wednesday that I missed this detailed New Yorker essay from Andrew Marantz until MSNBC’s Chris Hayes interviewed him on set last night. “How a Fringe Legal Theory Became a Threat to Democracy” charts the journey of the independent-state-legislature theory (I.S.L.T.) from crank theory supporting the Bush v. Gore decision that settled the 2000 presidential election to one mainstream enough to reach the U.S. Supreme Court again. Marantz reviews this one, Moore v. Harper, from North Carolina: In 2021, with Tim Moore as the speaker of the North Carolina House, the majority-Republican legislature drew gerrymandered congressional maps—that is, even more egregiously gerrymandered than usual. Several voters (one of them named Becky Harper) and a handful of nonprofits (including Common Cause, where [democracy activists Sailor]Jones works) sued to block the implementation of those maps, and the state Supreme Court ruled in their favor. The U.S.
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Trump-DOJ news took some keeping up with on Wednesday Luckily, Marcy Wheeler keeps up better than anybody.
This is what he’s come to I can’t tell you how much I love this: Had it come from anyone else, the transition would have been amusing. “The media lie,” the host says, looking into the camera for a video posted on Twitter. “They do. But mostly, they just ignore the stories that matter.” Stories like what, you ask? Well, fast-forward a few seconds and you get your answer. “Yesterday, for example,” he explains, “a former Air Force officer who worked for years in military intelligence came forward as a whistleblower to reveal that the U.S. government has physical evidence of crashed, non-human-made aircraft, as well as the bodies of the pilots who flew those aircraft.” Ah, okay. Everyone over the age of 13 can see where this is going. But the speaker here wasn’t one of the unidentifiable talking phenomena that litter social media. It wasn’t even Alex Jones, who made a career out of elevating skepticism in authority so high that people might even believe that his nutritional supplements were worth the cost.
But it’s on life support From Professor Melissa Murray: Some initial thoughts on Allen v. Milligan. Media is trumpeting this as a “victory” for the Voting Rights Act. And it is. And I don’t want to be a turd in the punchbowl… but this is pretty weak sauce from this Court. First, this doesn’t “strengthen” the VRA. It preserves the status quo. And the status quo is that this Court has done an A+ job of hobbling the VRA over the last 10 years. In 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder, it eviscerated the preclearance formula. The preclearance regime required states with a history of voting discrimination to first “preclear” any changes to their voting rules and regs with the DOJ or a three-judge federal court panel The Court invalidated the preclearance formula on the ground that progress had been made and minorities were voting and blah blah blah. This progress narrative prompted RBG to note in dissent that throwing out the preclearance formula was like throwing out your umbrella in a rainstorm because you weren’t getting wet.
The Washington Post: Paralysis, limbo, stalemate — any of them describe the state of the House of Representatives this week. On Wednesday, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) sent the House home until Monday after spending an entire day talking with a group of far-right conservatives who held up all floor action over their dissatisfaction with the debt limit bill signed into law last week, among other grievances. They failed to reach any path forward. McCarthy told reporters that he’s not exactly sure what they want and that different members are asking for different things. This is a significant challenge to McCarthy’s leadership and his ability to govern and run the House. While it’s not as dire as the motion to vacate — the procedural maneuver by which a single House Republican could trigger a vote to depose McCarthy as speaker — supporters of the rebels say that their tactic of bringing the chamber to a halt by voting against House rules could be just as damaging. They weren’t doing anything real anyway. All they had on the agenda were messaging bills for the wingnut faction.
There is movement in the electorate For the first time in decades there is a fissure in the Republicans party on the issue of guns: Young Republicans aren’t clinging to guns like the rest of the GOP. As former President Donald Trump and new campaign entrants, including former Vice President Mike Pence, tout their Second Amendment bonafides and opposition to “gun confiscation” to 2024 primary voters, some Gen Z and millennial Republicans are moving in the opposite direction: A significant share of younger conservatives, reared in an age of mass violence, embrace firearm restrictions. One poll conducted by Harvard’s political institute this spring found that a clear majority of young conservatives supported mandatory psychological exams for gun purchasers. A separate, recurring survey from YouGov concluded in March that Gen Z and millennial Republicans are more likely to believe in tougher gun laws than older Republicans and that young conservatives’ support for the idea has grown in the past year.
More modern than most And more decent. His White House will be hosting a huge LGBTQ+ party on Sunday. (It was originally scheduled for today but was postponed due to the air quality emergency) It’s an important gesture: The party, which is expected to include thousands of guests on the White House’s South Lawn, is a deliberate contrast to a cascade of Republican legislation and other attacks targeting LGBTQ+ people, Biden officials have said. Biden, a Democrat, planned an evening celebration of LGBTQ+ families featuring singer Betty Who and Baltimore DJ Queen HD. This is good too: Biden announced that the Department of Homeland Security, working with the Justice and Health and Human Services departments, will partner with LGBTQ+ community organizations to provide safety resources and training to help thwart violent attacks. Separately, HHS and the Department of Housing and Urban Development will provide resources to help LGBTQ+ young people with mental health needs, support in foster care and homelessness. To confront a spike in book bans, the Department of Education’s civil rights office will appoint a new coordinator to work with schools to address that threat.
They’re throwing sand in each other’s faces already Rolling Stone reports: THIS IS HOW petty and aggressively stupid the 2024 GOP presidential primary has become: several close aides and allies to Donald Trump want to challenge Ron DeSantis to a literal dick-measuring contest. It wouldn’t be the first juvenile move by Team Trump in this young primary season. Already, Trump has suggested that DeSantis, his chief rival, might be secretly gay. He’s gone after DeSantis over pronunciation of his own last name. He has claimed to have salacious dirt on Florida’s governor, that he might release during the primary. Recently, Trump’s campaign went after one of DeSantis’ top aides, apparently insulting her physical appearance. Now, some of Trump’s longtime advisers are even urging him to continuously make reference to the size of DeSantis’ penis, telling him such insults could stick with GOP primary voters and mess with his rival’s head, two sources with knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone.