The Supreme Court refused an appeal on a 10th Circuit Court decision affirming sanctions against a frivolous 2020 election awarded to several defendants including Michigan, Facebook, Dominion Voting Systems, and Pennsylvania. Amounts and plaintiffs are here.
The high court giveth and it taketh away: justices’ responses to arguments in Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the N.A.A.C.P., No. 22-807 appear to indicate that the conservatives may reinstate a unconstitutional racially gerrymandered redistricting map in South Carolina that was unanimously opposed by a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court. Chief Justice John Roberts said that evidence of Republicans use of race as the predominant factor in redistricting was both circumstantial and consistent with legal acceptability. Although the case is similar to the high court’s ruling against racial gerrymandering, it was determined by the Voting Rights Act; the South Carolina case was determined by the Constitution’s equal protection clause. Ergo opposite results.
Justice Elena Kagan said the D.C. ruling was sound, but legislators could not achieve their political goals by using data on race which she called “a proxy for politics.” She asked why mapmakers would “use race as a proxy to do partisan gerrymandering when [they] could do partisan gerrymandering. She suggested their data was more reliable on racially polarized than a partisan tilt, suggesting that race was more reliable than partisanship.
Anchored in Charleston, the challenged district, anchored in Charleston, elected a Republican every year since 1980 except for 2018. The 2020 race was close, electing GOP Nancy Mace, so the legislature wants a stronger GOP tilt, and Mace is cooperating, moving from supposedly a reasonable Republican to a radical right-winger supporting Jordan for Speaker and wearing a “A” for her T-shirt. But the legislature wants to guarantee a Republican from the district by moving 62 percent of Black voters out of the district to another one that Black Democrat James Clyburn has held for 30 years. That keeps Mace’s district safe for her.
In Slate, Chris Geidner describes how Justice Samuel Alito is determined to keep South Carolina’s District 1 safe for Republicans. He writes:
“After more than two hours of Alito-centered arguments, the question for his other conservative colleagues will be whether they side with him, change the law, and have the Supreme Court serve as a super-trial court in such cases—allowing the high court to reject trial court findings when they come out a way the conservative majority doesn’t like.
“Instead of moving 90,000 residents out of the overpopulated district and into the underpopulated one, the state swapped more than 50,000 residents into the overpopulated district and moved 140,000 residents out of it. The decisions about who was moved out of the district were done in a way, the district court found, that kept the Black voting-age population in the district at the same level—in part to help ensure that district would remain a Republican district—even as the new demographics of the area suggested the Black voting-age population in the district should increase.”
The D.C. court found that this action violated the unlawful racial gerrymander under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, requiring a “clear error” for the Supreme Court to overturn its findings. Justice Clarence Thomas, however, attacked those findings for finding the defendant’s experts noncredible. Alito supported Thomas by saying that they don’t “simply rubber-stamp findings by a district court” and then moved on to discredit the plaintiff’s experts before asking the NAACP’s lawyer 37 questions, part of it in a marathon 19-question session. At one point the lawyer asked if “we are retrying expert testimony on appeal.” The other eight justices asked a total of 28 questions.
The outcome is not guaranteed. Inquiry from Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett did not clarify their positions.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, presiding over the damages trial against Rudy Giuliani, said she will tell jurors that the former personal lawyer for Deposed Donald Trump (DDT) intentionally hid financial documents and other records in defiance of court orders. Jurors are to determine how much he must pay two Georgia election workers he defamed. Giuliani’s lawyer cannot make “any argument, or introducing any evidence, stating or suggesting that he is insolvent, bankrupt, judgment proof, or otherwise unable to defend himself.” The election workers received death threats after Giuliani, also criminally charged in the Fulton County racketeering case with DDT and others, falsely accused them of election fraud. Giuliani is also in almost $2 million debt to his former lawyers and the IRS.
After a House subcommittee asked the DOJ to sue Google for antitrust violations, it is taking action with a lawsuit alleging anticompetitive practices such as the multibillion-dollar deal making Google the default search engine on Apple phones. With a market value of almost $2 trillion, Google controls over 90 percent of the online search market. The DOJ plans to prove that Google abused the monopoly to harm its competitors and kept the monopoly through illegal means. Google is accused of blurring search and advertising with tweaks and ranks of what searchers see while injecting advertising. Last week the FTC and 17 states filed a similar case against Amazon for anticompetitive tactics, illegal if people must pay higher prices.
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) has been indicted for being an unregistered agent of the Egyptian government after an indictment on receiving bribes. In 2015, Menendez helped resolve the Egyptian government’s reluctance to pay for an injured American by their U.S.-made Apache helicopter. Charges accuse him of secretly aiding Egyptian officials while he was chair of the Senate foreign relations committee. Although 60 percent of the Democratic senators urged him to resign, Menendez remains in the chamber and hasn’t said whether he will run for reelection in 2024.
The Senate has unanimously passed legislation to fund prevention of stillbirths, attempting to stop the preventable of over 5,000 deaths of a fetus at 20 weeks of pregnancy or more. Under one-third of state health departments are currently using money allocated for stillbirth reduction by Title V Maternal and Child Health block grants. The lack of a Speaker ensures that the House cannot address the Senate bill.
Marion (KS) Police Chief Gideon Cody has been suspended after he oversaw an illegal raid on the small Kansas newspaper leading to the 98-year-old owner’s death from the harassment. The town mayor has not provided any details including whether Cody still gets paid. The raid removed all computers, cell phones, and electronic devices. Cody got the Marion job after Kansas City fired him from the police department for allegations of sexual misconduct. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation is in charge of the probe into the entire situation, early on revoking the warrant for the seizures of the equipment.
Former IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn has pled guilty to leaking tax returns of wealthy people–including DDT, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk—showing what a small percentage of their earnings they pay in taxes.
Idaho has been wooing residents in a large geographic area of Oregon to separate from the state and join Idaho, and some counties have already voted in favor of it. The process is not quick: both state legislatures must leave, and Congress must approve. With a huge majority of Republicans, the Idaho legislature has vote in favor, but the Democrats in Oregon will likely disagree. Idaho bans abortion as well as support for pregnancies and births, failing to expand postpartum Medicaid coverage and turning down federal grants for child care. As a result, doctors are rapidly leaving the state.
Cannabis is also illegal in Idaho, greatly reducing the tax base. Idaho also has the worst-funded schools in the nation at 58 percent of the national average, but taxes are increasing. The state sales tax includes food, and the state’s water resources are weaker than in Oregon. Roads face several funding problems, and the number of state troopers is limited. And Oregonians want to be a part of Idaho.
Presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis keeps losing. An 11th Circuit Court panel voted 2-1 to refuse his request to let his drag show ban be in effect during the case against it. A U.S. District judge agreed with the plaintiff that the ban violated free speech rights and placed a temporary statewide injunction against the ban. The higher court agreed in the state appeal, writing about “a serious chill upon protected speech” if the law goes into effect during the proceedings. Courts have also blocked similar drag bans in Tennessee and Texas.
In another DeSantis loss, 27 percent of the student body, 186 of 691 students, has dropped out after he changed the New College of Florida from a liberal arts school to a right-wing indoctrination institution. The school’s retention history is at 64.9 percent after DeSantis patterned it after Hillsdale, the conservative Christian college in Michigan. New students are experiencing a decrease in the grade-point averages and test scores. During last summer, the school also lost 36 faculty members, leaving only 100 still on full time.
Charles Koch, 16th wealthiest person in the U.S. worth $54.5 billion, said he has transferred $5.3 billion of his $125 billion stock to two conservative nonprofits with fewer restrictions on lobbying and politics than traditional charities. Before that he donated $1.8 billion to charity through his Stand Together nonprofit network, formerly the Koch network.
In its strong support for Israel, MSNBC has removed three respected Muslim-American hosts from their positions: Mehdi Hasan, Ayman Mohyeldin, and Ali Velshi.
Nel's New Day 