Sam Levine for HuffPo: A top House Republican said he was willing to subpoena one of President Donald Trump’s Justice Department appointees to appear before Congress and answer questions about the department’s controversial request to add a question about citizenship … Continue reading
Category Archives: Department of Justice
BuzzFeed: The part of the manual addressing the Justice Department’s civil rights work was revised in March. In a section discussing enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, the new version removes previous references to redistricting and racial gerrymandering. The previous version stated: “The Voting Section … Continue reading
Austin American-Statesman: President Donald Trump’s top appellate lawyer has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow him to argue in defense of Texas political maps that were found to be discriminatory by a lower court. Solicitor General Noel Francisco asked to split … Continue reading
NYT: Five days after the Department of Justice announced that it would retry Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the judge in the case all but ripped out its core. Prosecutors, he said in an 53-page opinion, had failed to … Continue reading
News today that DOJ, after a hung jury the last time, has dropped the remaining charges against Sen. Menendez (some were dropped by the judge after the first trial). Much of the reason for the problems with the charges against … Continue reading
Zoe Tillman: Fewer than a third of attorneys and staff in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division who participated in a workplace survey this year reported feeling “satisfied” with the policies and practices of senior DOJ leadership, according to a report obtained … Continue reading
Pacific Daily News: The Trump administration is arguing in federal court that, if one U.S. territory doesn’t have the same rights as the others, then all of them should be stripped of those rights, according to a group pursuing lawsuits … Continue reading
MSMHL: The email was sent in February of this year. In June, President Trump appointed one of these Heritage experts, Hans Von Spakovsky, to the Commission. It turns out that Von Spakovsky also wrote the email, a fact now confirmed by … Continue reading
Release: Today Common Cause filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging that one or more unknown foreign nationals made expenditures, independent expenditures or disbursements in connection with the 2016 presidential … Continue reading
Pema Levy for Mother Jones: Recent events loomed over the hearing. Dreiband faced questions about the violence in Charlottesville, which the division is investigating, and the rise of hate crimes. He was also asked about voting rights, amid moves by … Continue reading
The NLJ: A federal judge is stepping in to ensure that President Donald Trump’s voter integrity commission is in compliance with public disclosure laws. Justice Department lawyer Elizabeth Shapiro apologized to U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the District of … Continue reading
Justin here (and with a caveat: at DOJ, I worked on amicus briefs on this issue, including in this case). Today, DOJ filed an amicus brief in Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute. The case, now at SCOTUS, is about … Continue reading
Texas Observer reports. … Continue reading
Texas dragged its feet in implementing the district court’s interim remedy in the Texas voter id case, which allowed voters without one of the right (narrow) forms of identification to vote in Texas elections. The state was so bad at … Continue reading
TPM reports. … Continue reading
HuffPo: Former Department of Justice officials and voting advocates are seriously alarmed over a DOJ letter sent to states last week that they say could signal a forthcoming effort to kick people off voter rolls. This comes as national attention … Continue reading
Vanita Gupta in The Root: Instead of focusing on actual problems, like modern-day voting discrimination, however, the Trump administration is working to further undermine our democracy. One of Jeff Sessions’ first moves as attorney general was to withdraw the Department … Continue reading
NYT: Under Justice Department rules, Mr. Trump would seemingly have to order Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein to rescind department regulations protecting a special counsel from being fired for no good reason, and then to fire Mr. Mueller. If … Continue reading
Bloomberg on this DOJ brief: George Washington did it, so Donald Trump can too. That’s the Justice Department’s take on why the 45th president isn’t violating the U.S. Constitution by accepting payments for goods and services from foreign governments without congressional … Continue reading
Reveal: Federal judges have ruled four separate times this year that Republican leaders in Texas rigged election systems to discriminate against minority voters, which potentially could land the entire state under federal oversight. Under what’s known as preclearance, local and … Continue reading
Joshua Matz and Leah Litman: At the end of March, a group of conservative activists sent Attorney General Jeff Sessions an unsolicited letter with some detailed suggestions about how to “fix” the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. … Continue reading
Texas Lawyer reports. My coverage of Judge Smith’s dissent in the Texas redistricting case is here and here. … Continue reading
Last night I linked to the extensive ruling and findings of fact and conclusions of law in a very long-running dispute about whether Texas’s congressional districting were a violation of the Voting Rights Act and/or the Constitution. I have now … Continue reading
Read at Slate. … Continue reading
With a nice section on voting rights, in the new NYT Magazine. … Continue reading
Manny Fernandez and Eric Licthblau in the NYT: The Justice Department remains a party in the case. But it is pulling back at a crucial phase. If a judge finds the state acted with discriminatory intent, as the Justice Department … Continue reading
Release: Groups and individuals suing Texas over its strict photo ID law filed a brief in U.S. District Court today in opposition to a joint request by the state and the United States Department of Justice, who asked to delay … Continue reading
Post: Mr. Bannon was responding to a question posed by the Washington Post and inspired, apparently, by the AG nominee’s part in fashioning President Trump’s policy agenda. Mr. Bannon is reported to have described Senator Sessions as “the clearinghouse for … Continue reading
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins: President Donald Trump on Wednesday called for a “major investigation” into voter fraud. While his tweets announcing the call focus on the possibility of double voting and voter registration fraud, the … Continue reading
NYT: A leading civil rights group on Tuesday denounced the Trump administration’s delay of legal cases to overhaul the Baltimore Police Department and challenge a voter ID law in Texas — two lawsuits that were major efforts of the Obama-era … Continue reading
Here, at Slate’s set of predictions for the new administration. … Continue reading
Written questions from Sen. Leahy and Sen. Sessions’ answer in connection with his nomination as AG: 21. You claim to be a champion of the Voting Rights Act because you voted for VRA’s reauthorization in 2006. But aside from this … Continue reading
DOJ has filed this request for a one month extension of a hearing in the trial court hearing the latest round in the Texas voter id case. The motion, which is opposed by the private plaintiffs in the case but … Continue reading
WaPo: We spoke with Gupta on Wednesday morning, the last day in her fifth-floor Justice Department office, where pictures of Robert F. Kennedy and Frederick Douglass hung over her desk. The conversation started with the fight to protect voting rights, … Continue reading
David Lat lists a number of Jones Day lawyers going to work for the Trump administration. Among those listed is attorney John M. Gore to be the deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights in the DOJ. According to Gore’s bio, … Continue reading
NYT: Few areas of federal policy are likely to change so definitively. President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be attorney general, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, opposes not only the Justice Department’s specific policies on civil rights but its entire approach. … Continue reading
NYT: The Justice Department announced on Thursday that it had filed a motion to join a lawsuit against the New York City Board of Elections, alleging that the board’s Brooklyn office violated federal voter registration law by erasing more than … Continue reading
Newsweek reports. … Continue reading
Mic reports. … Continue reading
Release: The Justice Department filed a lawsuit late yesterday to challenge the at-large method of electing the city council of Eastpointe, Michigan. The complaint alleges that the election system in Eastpointe violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by … Continue reading
Ed Kilgore blogs. … Continue reading
Here. … Continue reading
See here, beginning at page 39. Introduction: The integrity of our democracy depends on ensuring that every eligible voter can meaningfully participate in the electoral process. Voting forms the bedrock of our democracy. The division works to ensure that every … Continue reading
Adam Gitlin and Wendy Weiser with a new Brennan Center report in advance of the Sen. Sessions confirmation hearings for AG. … Continue reading
Release: Today, Common Cause announced it opposition to the nomination of Sen. Jefferson Beauregard “Jeff” Sessions III (R-AL) to serve as U.S. Attorney General, deeming him unfit to serve as the nation’s top law enforcement officer. Senator Sessions has for … Continue reading
Gerry Hebert, Joe Rich, and Bill Yeomans with a WaPo oped: In the questionnaire he filed recently with the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sessions (R-Ala.) listed four civil rights cases among the 10 most significant that he litigated “personally” as the … Continue reading
Ariane de Vogue for CNN. … Continue reading
AP: Several NAACP protesters led by their national president were escorted away in handcuffs by police after staging a sit-in Tuesday at the Alabama office of Sen. Jeff Sessions, the nominee for U.S. attorney general, the civil rights group said. … Continue reading
Nice piece from Carrie Johnson for NPR: Sessions, 69, returned his questionnaire to the committee amid little fanfare late last Friday evening. The former U.S. Attorney and Attorney General for the state of Alabama dutifully listed his employment record. But … Continue reading