All posts by Guy Charles

Emil Bove’s Troubling Answers

Uncategorized

CBS news reports here that Emil Bove, the current Deputy Attorney General and President Trump’s nominee to the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, has “declined to rule out the possibility of the president running for a third term and did not denounce the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol in a questionnaire submitted to a Senate panel considering his nomination for a lifetime appointment as a federal judge.”

Bove is also the subject of a whistleblower allegation that he might have advised government lawyers to defy court orders.

Share this:

Voting Rights Plaintiffs and Texas Officials Spar Over Mid-Decade Redistricting

Department of Justice, redistricting, Voting Rights Act

A group of plaintiffs in a case challenging the State’s redistricting map have asked the trial court to reopen testimony in the case in response to Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s decision to call a special session to consider redrawing some of the State’s congressional lines. Michael Li has good coverage of these proceedings on his X feed.

From the plaintiffs’ motion:

New evidence reveals that witnesses, including Senator Huffman, Chris Gober, and Adam Kincaid, potentially falsely testified that Texas’s congressional map was drawn without consideration of race. Specifically, the Governor has called a special session of the Legislature to take up redistricting of the congressional map, approvingly citing a letter from the United States Department of Justice asserting that evidence exists to prove that the current congressional map was drawn with race as a predominant consideration. The deposition and trial testimony of the relevant witnesses and this new evidence are flatly contradictory. One or the other is false, and Plaintiffs and the Court are entitled to probe whether key witnesses truthfully testified at deposition and at trial—on the central question in this case—given this new evidence. That testimony is not only probative to Plaintiffs’ specific claims regarding the existing congressional map but is also probative to the credibility of these witnesses in general on all of Plaintiffs’ claims.

The State has responded to oppose the plaintiff’s motion.

From the State’s response:

As established by the robust trial record, the Texas Legislature did not racially discriminate in drawing the current congressional electoral districts—full stop. Following that robust trial record, and perhaps because of it, the Brooks, Gonzales, and MALC Plaintiffs (Plaintiffs) have filed an Emergency Motion, requesting that this Court reopen the record and schedule an expedited hear-ing in response to “new evidence.” This “new evidence” contains no alleged facts about how districts were drawn back in 2021. It does not even consist of any new, contradictory statements by the witnesses whose testimony they seek to reopen. Instead, it is a legal argument by the De-partment of Justice (DOJ)—a third party with no personal knowledge—about changes to redis-tricting caselaw in 2024, as well as Governor Abbott’s call for the Legislature to consider congres-sional redistricting in an upcoming special session. Neither the DOJ letter nor the Governor’s Proclamation—both of which come nearly four years after the Legislature passed the current maps—constitute new evidence requiring the Court to reopen the record. And neither in any way impugns the truthfulness of Chairwoman Joan Huffman, Chris Gober, and Adam Kincaid. 

Share this:

Lloyd Mayer on the Johnson Amendment

campaign finance, campaigns, ethics investigations, tax law and election law

The always insightful tax and election law scholar Lloyd Mayer on the Johnson Amendment here. From the post:

Churches and other houses of worship can endorse political candidates without risking the loss of their tax-exempt status, the Internal Revenue Service said in a legal document the tax-collection agency filed on July 7, 2025. This guidance is at odds with a law Congress passed more than 70 years ago that’s known as the Johnson Amendment and applies to all charitable nonprofits, whether they are secular or religious.

The Conversation U.S. asked Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer, a law professor who has studied the regulation of churches’ political activities, to explain what this statute is, how the IRS seeks to change its purview and why this matters.

What’s the Johnson Amendment?

The Johnson Amendment is a provision that Lyndon B. Johnson added to a tax bill passed by Congress in 1954, when he was a senator. It says that any charity that wants to be tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code cannot “participate in, or intervene in … any political campaign on behalf of … any candidate for public office.” In the U.S., all houses of worship are designated as charities by the IRS.

The IRS has interpreted the Johnson Amendment for more than 70 years to mean that charities cannot speak in favor of political candidates or take any other action that supports or opposes them.

Share this:

VoteBeat on Texas Redistricting

Department of Justice, redistricting, Voting Rights Act

VoteBeat covers the Texas redistricting here. They also have a fantastic quote from our brilliant colleague Justin Levitt.

From the article:

Justin Levitt, a constitutional law expert who served in the DOJ under former President Barack Obama, said the agency misinterpreted Petteway in its letter. That 2024 decision, Levitt said, did not rule on what constitutes an unconstitutional racial gerrymander — it just asserted that the Voting Rights Act does not let individual racial or ethnic groups join together to claim that political boundaries dilute their votes.

The argument laid out in the letter, he added, is not befitting of DOJ’s typical quality, in both Democratic and Republican administrations — especially on a topic so familiar to the agency. 

“It’s sloppily dashed-off work,” Levitt said. “It looks like the sort of thing I’d expect from an AI engine that didn’t know how to do law.”

The DOJ declined to comment. 

Share this:

Preliminary Injunction Against Maine Foreign Influence Initiative Upheld By First Circuit

campaign finance, court decisions, First Amendment theory, political equality, referendum

A panel of the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed a district court’s preliminary injunction against a Maine ballot initiative that prohibited “foreign governments and ‘foreign government-influenced entit[ies] from contributing or otherwise influencing candidate elections and ballot initiatives.” The district court granted the plaintiffs’ preliminary injunction motion on the ground that a substantial application of the statute was unconstitutional and that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits. In a 47-page opinion, Judge Lara Montecalvo upheld the lower court’s decision.

According to the Court:

The Act states that “[a] foreign government-influenced entity may not make, directly or indirectly, a contribution, expenditure, independent expenditure, electioneering communication or any other donation or disbursement of funds to influence the nomination or election of a candidate or the initiation or approval of a referendum.” Tit. 21-A, § 1064(2).

The district court upheld the Act’s ban on political spending by foreign corporations. But the court concluded that a substantial number of the Act’s application was likely unconstitutional. From the opinion:

In the end, because the district court determined that a substantial number of the Act’s applications likely violated the First Amendment, and the remaining factors favored a preliminary injunction, it enjoined the Act in its entirety. Id. at 55-56. In doing so, the district court expressly noted Maine severability law but declined to sever given the expedited and preliminary nature of the proceeding; instead, the court reserved the issue for later consideration. Id. at 55.

Maine timely appealed, arguing that the district court abused its discretion as to its holdings regarding preemption, the applicable level of scrutiny, the state’s compelling interest, and whether the Act was narrowly tailored. Maine also argued that the Act was not facially invalid, the injunction was overly broad, and the district court abused its discretion in reserving its decision on severability. Since March 21, 2024, the proceedings have been stayed pending appeal.

This case raises a number of interesting issues including the level of scrutiny applicable to political spending by foreign citizens and whether one can distinguish the speech of a domestic subsidiary from the speech of its foreign parent company.

Share this:

Could the Texas Mid-Decade Redistricting Scheme Backfire?

redistricting, Voting Rights Act

This article from Politico, quoting Democratic lawmakers, makes the case.

From the article:

A Donald Trump-backed effort to gerrymander Texas would boost the GOP’s attempts to cling to its razor-thin House majority in next year’s midterms — but it also runs a serious risk of backfiring.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott asked the state legislature to redraw the map during its special session this summer, following a push from the White House and the Justice Department. Ohio is also required by state law to redraw its lines before next year’s midterms. Taken together, Republicans see an opportunity to potentially create more GOP seats, guarding against the possibility of a blue wave in 2026.

But in Texas, Republicans are in danger of creating a so-called dummymander, whereby an attempt to draw more seats for one party accidentally benefits the other. Texas’ congressional map already heavily favors the GOP, so any changes to further benefit the party would have to walk a careful line. Adding Republican voters to blue districts to reduce Democrats’ margins means taking those same voters out of the red districts where they reside. The result is more competitive districts across the board — ones Democrats hope to take advantage of as they harness anti-Trump energy in the midterms.

Share this:

Texas Mid-Decade Redistricting and DOJ Letter

Uncategorized, ,

Harmeet Dhillon, the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, and Michael Gates, the Deputy Assistant Attorney General, have sent this letter to Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General, warning that four of the State’s congressional districts are unconstitutional.

Three of the four districts are represented by a person of color—two African Americans and one Latina: Al Green, Sylvia Garcia, and Marc Veasey. The fourth district is currently vacant after its representative, Sylvester Turner, died in office.

The DOJ’s letter declares that the districts “constitute unconstitutional ‘coalition districts’ and we urge the State of Texas to rectify these race-based considerations from these specific districts.” The letter cites cases, though its legal analysis is superficial. Its evident purpose is to provide a justification for Texas if it redraws those four districts. Governor Abbott’s decision to include congressional redistricting on the legislative agenda is ostensibly a response to the constitutional concerns raised by the DOJ.

Share this:

Plaintiffs in a North Dakota VRA Case Intend to File a Cert Petition

Uncategorized

Yunior Rivas with the Democracy Docket has the story here.

From Yunior’s write-up:

In a case where the 8th Circuit has severely weakened the Voting Rights Act (VRA), Native American voters in North Dakota are preparing to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene after the federal appeals court ruled that private individuals cannot bring lawsuits under Section 2 — the part of the Voting Rights Act that bars racially discriminatory voting laws.

On Wednesday, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, the Spirit Lake Tribe and Native voters asked the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to pause the implementation of its decision, warning that the ruling puts “every American citizen” in danger of losing their ability to fight racial discrimination in voting.

“Plaintiffs intend to file a petition for a writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court to resolve this circuit split on a question of exceptional importance,” the motion states. “There is a reasonable probability that at least four Justices will agree to grant Plaintiffs’ petition for certiorari.”

If the Supreme Court agrees with the 8th Circuit’s ruling, it could end voters and private groups’ ability to file Section 2 lawsuits, leaving only the U.S. Department of Justice with power to enforce one of the most important protections in federal civil rights law.

Share this:

Mid-Decade Redistricting in Texas Redux?

Uncategorized

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has put redrawing the State’s congressional map on the agenda for a special legislative session. Stories here, here, and here.

From one of the news stories:

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday that tackling redrawing the state’s congressional maps would be part of an special legislative session later this summer as Republicans seek to hold on to their narrow U.S. House majority in next year’s midterm elections.

Abbott said in a news release that the session, scheduled to begin July 21, would address 18 different policy items the Legislature didn’t get to during its regular session, which wrapped up last month. That list included: “Legislation that provides a revised congressional redistricting plan in light of constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice.”

The New York Times reported last month that members of President Donald Trump’s political operation had privately urged Texas Republicans to redraw their maps ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Republicans hold a slim 220-212 advantage in the House. And in Texas, they already control 25 of the 38 congressional districts. Padding the GOP’s majority by even just a few seats in Texas could complicate Democrats’ ability to take control of the House in 2026.

Share this:

New Lawsuit Challenging Wisconsin Congressional Districts

Uncategorized

The story is here.

From the report:

MADISON, Wis. — A new lawsuit seeking to redraw Wisconsin’s congressional district boundary lines was filed on Tuesday, less than two weeks after the state Supreme Court declined to hear a pair of other lawsuits that asked for redistricting before the 2026 election.

The latest lawsuit brought by a bipartisan coalition of business leaders was filed in Dane County circuit court, rather than directly with the state Supreme Court as the rejected cases were. The justices did not give any reason for declining to hear those cases, but typically lawsuits start in a lower court and work their way up. 

This new lawsuit’s more lengthy journey through the courts might not be resolved in time to order new maps before the 2026 midterms.

The Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy argue in the new lawsuit that Wisconsin’s congressional maps are unconstitutional because they are an anti-competitive gerrymander. The lawsuit notes that the median margin of victory for candidates in the eight districts since the maps were enacted is close to 30 percentage points.

Share this:

DOJ Possibly Investigating Former Directors of the FBI and CIA

Uncategorized

Glenn Thrush and Julian Barnes reporting here.

From the article:

The Trump administration appears to be targeting officials who oversaw the investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s connections to Russia, examining the actions of the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and the former C.I.A. director John O. Brennan, according to people familiar with the situation.

John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director and a harsh critic of his Democratic-appointed predecessors, has made a criminal referral of Mr. Brennan to the F.B.I., accusing him of lying to Congress, officials said. The bureau is also scrutinizing Mr. Comey for his role in the Russia investigation, other officials said, although the exact basis for an inquiry remains unclear.

Even if it is unclear whether the moves will lead to charges, they are among the most significant indications that President Trump’s appointees intend to follow through on his campaign to exact retribution against his perceived enemies. That includes people leading the investigation into what he has repeatedly denounced as the “Russia hoax” nine years ago and officials involved in two failed federal prosecutions of Mr. Trump during the Biden years.

Share this: