NPR: A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to make its main official behind the 2020 census citizenship question — Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross — available to testify out of court for the lawsuits over the hotly contested question. “Secretary Ross … Continue reading
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Cap Times: Stubbs will be the first African-American person elected to represent Dane County in the state Legislature, in a state that continues to rank among the worst in the nation for racial equality. She was, at the time of the … Continue reading
Last night, in a remarkable act of bad faith, Ed Whelan accused another person without credible evidence of the attempted rape of Dr. Ford, in an effort to claim that Judge Kavanaugh was a victim of mistaken identity. The extensive … Continue reading
Looking forward to being the luncheon keynote at this PLI event in San Francisco on October 4. There’s also going to be a webcast. Here’s a link for a 20% discount on the program. … Continue reading
Here’s the abstract for a new paper of mine, forthcoming in a Harvard Law & Policy Review symposium on representation, power, and corruption: Academic studies of redistricting tend to be either doctrinal or empirical, but not both. As a result, … Continue reading
Right. For those who have not been following this closely, Secretary Ross initially said — including in sworn congressional testimony — that DOJ initially approached him about adding the citizenship question. This email, among others, show that story was, um, … Continue reading
NPR: In a sign that America’s two centuries-old democracy is under strain, nearly 2 in 5 American voters do not believe elections are fair, according to a new NPR/Marist poll. Nearly half of respondents lack faith that votes will be counted … Continue reading
Smith in WaPo: The first relevant statute is 18 U.S.C. 201, which prohibits any person from “corruptly” offering “anything of value to any public official . . . with intent to influence any official act.” The organizers and donors here clearly want … Continue reading
I wanted to flag for the blog’s readers some significant developments that took place this week in the North Carolina and Wisconsin partisan gerrymandering cases. In North Carolina, the trial court agreed to stay the remedial process on the condition … Continue reading
This is the second in a series of guest posts by Travis Crum: In this series of posts, I’m addressing the statutory, constitutional, and strategic issues surrounding a potential bail-in of Texas. But before we dive into this ongoing redistricting … Continue reading
The OC Register reports. … Continue reading
Op-ed at WRAL. … Continue reading
3-Californias is dead. … Continue reading
Elizabeth Reese has posted this draft on SSRN (Cardozo Law Review). Here is the abstract: To protect state sovereignty, contemporary textualism has reinvigorated the Tenth Amendment as a judicially enforceable limit on federal powers. However, in casting the Tenth Amendment … Continue reading
Howard with the details. … Continue reading
Common Cause ratings. … Continue reading
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins: On Monday, Sen. Susan Collins accused political opponents of Judge Brett Kavanaugh of attempted “bribery.” The charge itself is without any legal merit whatsoever. That complaints about the campaign finance effort … Continue reading
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports. … Continue reading
Long Beach Business Journal. … Continue reading
Thanks to Justin for filling in the last few days. So. Much. News. … Continue reading
A Ninth Circuit panel today unanimously reversed a lower court decision barring California’s collection of IRS Form 990 Schedule B, which lists the top contributors to 501c3 organizations. This was an as-applied claim by the Americans for Prosperity Foundation and … Continue reading
And Shana Tovah. It’s Justin: I’ll be at the helm of the blog for a day or two. Please send your news (and your hate mail) my way for the next 48 hours. … Continue reading
NYT: In a further sign of the sprawling nature of the Justice Department’s effort to collect voting records in North Carolina, prosecutors demanded eight years of information from the state’s Division of Motor Vehicles, according to a copy of the subpoena obtained … Continue reading
Bloomberg: Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are investigating whether anyone in the Trump Organization violated campaign-finance laws, in a follow-up to their conviction last month of Michael Cohen, according to a person familiar with the matter. The inquiry, not previously reported, … Continue reading
Release: Inclusion of a citizenship question on the 2020 Census is likely to increase the costs and compromise census accuracy, according to a report released today by Georgetown Law’s Center on Poverty and Inequality. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur L. Ross Jr.’s … Continue reading
TPM reports. … Continue reading
Klobuchar asking Kavanaugh now about voting rights and the myth of widespread voter fraud. Kavanaugh says he reads @rickhasen’s blog, where “there is discussion of this issue.” Won’t comment further on the existence of voter fraud. — Kira Lerner (@kira_lerner) … Continue reading
This is huge. The US Attorney for EDNC postpones #ncpol election subpoena compliance until January 2019. @rickhasen @HHHElections @AriBerman @vbauerlein https://t.co/5I2phVnBHR — Gerry Cohen (@gercohen) September 6, 2018 This is the right call, and shows some good faith on … Continue reading
[Bumping to the top] Looking forward to doing this: Gerrymandering and the New Supreme Court: Where Do We Go From Here? Date: Thursday, September 6, 2018 Time: 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. ET Format: Webinar DESCRIPTION: The webinar will discuss … Continue reading
Between Regulation and Legislation Call for Papers for Special Issue of The Theory and Practice of Legislation Guest Editors: Nir Kosti, David Levi-Faur, Guy Mor, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem We live in an age in which different … Continue reading
AP: A grand jury must be convened to investigate whether Republican gubernatorial candidate and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach intentionally failed to register voters in 2016, the Kansas Supreme Court has ruled. The court’s one-page opinion was released Friday … Continue reading
BuzzFeed: The state of Georgia has blocked all foreign internet traffic to its online voter registration site, BuzzFeed News has learned, a move that would do little to deter hackers but blocks absentee voters. The site, registertovote.sos.ga.gov, is accessible only to … Continue reading
News and Observer: A three-judge panel has expanded Gov. Roy Cooper’s authority to make certain appointments, the latest step in a separation-of-powers struggle that began when then-Gov. Pat McCrory sued the General Assembly in 2016. Cooper sued in May 2017 … Continue reading
KC Star: Nearly eight months after President Donald Trump disbanded his election integrity commission because it was tangled up in lawsuits over its request for voters’ personal data, the information has been destroyed and the cases have been dismissed. Trump’s administration notified … Continue reading
You can find the opinion here. Usually review of three-judge courts goes right to the Supreme Court. This case fits into a rare exception. … Continue reading
The latest from NC. … Continue reading
Mark Joseph Stern for Slate. … Continue reading
four: it really is historically significant that two large southern states have viable, competitive black nominees for governor that seek to represent and enhance the voting influence of black people in their respective states — b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) August 29, … Continue reading
NYT reports. … Continue reading
Bruce Cain and I are very happy with the two panels we’ve put together for this year’s annual meeting on behalf of the Law and Political Process Study Group: California Election Reform: Has It Improved Representation and Participation? Fri, August … Continue reading
Unreal: President Trump warned evangelical leaders Monday night that Democrats “will overturn everything that we’ve done and they’ll do it quickly and violently” if Republicans lose control of Congress in the midterm elections. Speaking to the group in the State … Continue reading
Joan Biskupic for CNN. … Continue reading
Might it be connected to the partisan gerrymandering order from yesterday? Maybe now North Carolina Republican leaders want to get these cases resolved and ballots printed to forestall a court ordered redistricting to solve the partisan gerrymandering problem https://t.co/m7d7F1rhjG — … Continue reading
Charlotte Observer Editorial Board. … Continue reading
Celeste Katz for Glamour. … Continue reading