The Court’s Stay in the LA Redistricting Case

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As I noted earlier on this blog, the Court was faced with a procedural mess (I called it a “train wreck”) in the LA redistricting case. Two different federal courts had issued two decisions which left LA with no valid congressional map in place. The first federal court said LA’s original map violated the Voting Rights Act; the second federal court said the new map LA enacted to remedy the VRA violation itself violated the Constitution.

Today, the Court stayed that second decision. The effect of that stay is the state’s remedial map — which creates 2 VRA districts rather than just the 1 the state had created initially — will be the map LA uses this fall.

The stay application apparently got tangled up with Purcell issues, but the Court didn’t have to say anything about Purcell even if it were going to issue the stay. The Court was up against some tight deadlines regardless of any issue about Purcell. It basically had two options:

  1. The Secretary of State represented very forcefully to the Court that she had to know which map was in place by today, in order to meet the series of deadlines the state’s election laws rolled out from here on in. If the Court accepted those representations, then the case for issuing a stay was strong.
  2. The other side disputed whether May 15th was such a firm deadline. If the Court thought there was a bit more play in the joints, then it did not have to issue the stay today. The Court could have given a couple more weeks for the next stage of the remedial process to play out (the lower court had stated it would have a remedial map in place by June 4th). Justice Jackson’s dissent disagreed that the May 15th deadline was so important, but didn’t explain why; she simply noted that the lower court had disagreed with the Secretary of State’s representation.

The majority could have said we aren’t in a position to second guess the Secretary of State’s representation that May 15th is a firm deadline by which a map must be in place in order to meet the rest of the election deadlines under the state’s laws. Because we accept that representation, we issue the stay. That would not require invoking Purcell or deciding how it ought to apply in this procedurally messy situation. Since I would imagine the Secretary of State’s representation did play a major role in the Court’s stay decision, the Court could have justified the stay, if it accepted the SOS’s representation, without bringing Purcell into the picture.

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CNN [UPDATE: and ABC] will host presidential debate with Biden, Trump, but some questions about its criteria

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Last November, I blogged some questions about the future of the Commission of Presidential Debates. And my instincts were right. We learned today that the Biden and Trump campaigns have privately back-channeled with one another about an alternative debate format. More at the New York Times. There are lots of political reasons for each campaign to do this–both have grievances with the CPD and apparently have the leverage to jettison it (aging candidates looking to have greater control over timing and conditions)–and have agreed to a debate hosted by CNN on terms they prefer.

To get around campaign finance restrictions, CNN has listed “pre-established objective” criteria to participate in the debate. And here’s where things get complicated.

Continue reading CNN [UPDATE: and ABC] will host presidential debate with Biden, Trump, but some questions about its criteria →
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Fusion as a Party-Centric Reform to Empower the Center-Right

third parties

What does it take to get a lefty union organizer and former director of the Working Families Party on stage with neo-liberals? Donald Trump. In “The Power of Fusion,” Dan Cantor provides a great overview of how fusion works and how it could empower the center-right. If we care about the future of democracy, he argues, our key goal should be to find a party home for the “politically homeless anti-Trump, pro-Constitution Republicans who continue to stand for democracy and freedom.” They still make up one-fifth of the Republican Party. What they need is a mechanism for leveraging those numbers. Fusion voting is that mechanism. The article is also just a great read.

“But here I was on a panel with a former Joe Manchin staffer and a former executive director of the Michigan GOP. I wasn’t sharing the stage with them because I had altered my views on the policies I’d like to see our government enact. But I’m traveling in more mixed company these days because I’m convinced that the threat of ethnonationalist authoritarianism must take precedence over everything else. My views on Reaganism, Bushism, and neoliberal corporatism haven’t changed, . . . But for the moment, I’m more interested in building bridges than barricades. The only way to defeat authoritarianism is with an electoral coalition that includes the center-right.”

. . . .

“If fusion voting were the norm today, it would provide a way for Republican and unaffiliated moderates and centrists to cast a vote for Biden without endorsing a Democratic party they mostly disagree with. . . . In the current moment, it will force GOP leaders to make a choice: risk more and more defections to a center party currently favoring Democrats, or change your behavior enough to warrant your share of a center party’s nominations. Either outcome should be welcomed by all supporters of pluralism and liberal democracy.”

Disclosure: I serve on the Center for Ballot Freedom’s voluntary Advisory Board and view fusion as a meaningful and achievable party-centric reform worthy of serious consideration for a variety of reasons.

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Trump’s Attacks on Judges Fan the Flames

Election Meltdown, ,

A Reuters Special Report analyzes posts on Truth Social since March 1, 2024, showing that Trump’s attacks on the integrity of the judges presiding over his cases are fanning the flames. Presumably, the tweets of his Republican colleagues who have been joining him in court this week will do the same. The images of the posts are worth a look.

“The rhetoric is inspiring widespread calls for violence. In a review of commenters’ posts on three pro-Trump websites, including the former president’s own Truth Social platform, Reuters documented more than 150 posts since March 1 that called for physical violence against the judges handling three of his highest-profile cases – two state judges in Manhattan and one in Georgia overseeing a criminal case in which Trump is accused of illegally seeking to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.

Those posts were part of a larger pool of hundreds identified by Reuters that used hostile, menacing and, in some cases, racist or sexualized language to attack the judges, but stopped short of explicitly calling for violence against them.”

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Republican Party of Nebraska Fails to Oust Incumbents

political parties, political polarization, primaries

AP News reported recently that after being taken over by loyalists to Trump, “[t]he Nebraska GOP . . . refused to endorse any of the Republican incumbents who hold all five of the state’s congressional seats.” In three instances, it endorsed challengers. In two, it simply declared it would not be endorsing the incumbents. Its efforts, however, have failed: All the incumbents won their seats, including Don Bacon, whose congressional district is “purple-ish” having gone for Obama in 2008 and Biden in 2020.

“It’s not a good look,” [Political Science Professor] Hibbing said. “You’d like the faces of your party, who would be your elected representatives, and the state party leaders to be on the same page.”

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