“The public lost access to Census Bureau data for days after a Trump order”

Hansi Lo Wang for NPR:

An apparent attempt by the U.S. Census Bureau to follow an executive order by President Trump targeting gender identity led to the public losing access for days to certain key statistics.

Close to two weeks after users first noticed many parts of the bureau’s website — like those of other agencies — had gone dark, the federal government’s largest statistical agency has yet to make any public statement about the disappearing data and research, at least some of which now appears to be restored.

The lack of an official explanation from the bureau — known for producing closely monitored indicators about the U.S. population and economy — is raising concerns among data users about threats to public trust in the agency and its independence from political interference, as Elon Musk’s team within the Trump administration known as the Department of Government Efficiency seek data access at multiple agencies, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics….

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Levitsky and Way: “The Path to American Authoritarianism: What Comes After Democratic Breakdown”

Steven Letvitsky and Lucian Way in Foreign Affairs:

U.S. democracy will likely break down during the second Trump administration, in the sense that it will cease to meet standard criteria for liberal democracy: full adult suffrage, free and fair elections, and broad protection of civil liberties.

The breakdown of democracy in the United States will not give rise to a classic dictatorship in which elections are a sham and the opposition is locked up, exiled, or killed. Even in a worst-case scenario, Trump will not be able to rewrite the Constitution or overturn the constitutional order. He will be constrained by independent judges, federalism, the country’s professionalized military, and high barriers to constitutional reform. There will be elections in 2028, and Republicans could lose them.

But authoritarianism does not require the destruction of the constitutional order. What lies ahead is not fascist or single-party dictatorship but competitive authoritarianism—a system in which parties compete in elections but the incumbent’s abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition. Most autocracies that have emerged since the end of the Cold War fall into this category, including Alberto Fujimori’s Peru, Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela, and contemporary El Salvador, Hungary, India, Tunisia, and Turkey. Under competitive authoritarianism, the formal architecture of democracy, including multiparty elections, remains intact. Opposition forces are legal and aboveground, and they contest seriously for power. Elections are often fiercely contested battles in which incumbents have to sweat it out. And once in a while, incumbents lose, as they did in Malaysia in 2018 and in Poland in 2023. But the system is not democratic, because incumbents rig the game by deploying the machinery of government to attack opponents and co-opt critics. Competition is real but unfair.

Competitive authoritarianism will transform political life in the United States. As Trump’s early flurry of dubiously constitutional executive orders made clear, the cost of public opposition will rise considerably: Democratic Party donors may be targeted by the IRS; businesses that fund civil rights groups may face heightened tax and legal scrutiny or find their ventures stymied by regulators. Critical media outlets will likely confront costly defamation suits or other legal actions as well as retaliatory policies against their parent companies. Americans will still be able to oppose the government, but opposition will be harder and riskier, leading many elites and citizens to decide that the fight is not worth it. A failure to resist, however, could pave the way for authoritarian entrenchment—with grave and enduring consequences for global democracy….

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“US Homeland Security says election security personnel placed on leave”

Reuters:

The Department of Homeland Security, as part of an evaluation of its election security mission, said on Tuesday that personnel focused on misinformation, disinformation and foreign influence operations aimed at U.S. elections have been placed on administrative leave.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem is “undertaking an evaluation of how it has executed its election security mission with a particular focus on any work related to mis, dis and malinformation,” agency spokesperson Rhonda Lawson said in a statement in response to a Reuters query….

MORE from NPR.

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Must-Read Bloomberg Law Deep Dive: “Voting Rights Claims Plunge in Wake of Supreme Court Decision”

I’ve been waiting to see the results of this study, and it’s consistent with my own research and what I’ve written for my upcoming Yale Law Journal Feature about how Brnovich killed Section 2 vote denial cases:

After the Supreme Court weakened a key piece of the Voting Rights Act, voting discrimination cases are not just harder to bring to court but dramatically so, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis and experts who examined the findings.

Section 2 of the act, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting practices, was nearly 60% less likely to be cited following the court’s ruling in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee . The decision changed how courts consider whether a law or practice limits someone’s right to vote based on race.

That finding aligns with voting rights groups and some attorneys’ concerns: Brnovich debilitated the most direct avenue to challenge voting discrimination and will have a lasting impact on voting rights.

Law professors, former US election officials, and veteran litigators said the drop-off shows attorneys are searching for other ways to bring such cases, or aren’t bringing them at all.

“We are much more hesitant to bring Section 2 vote denial cases. Period,” said Pooja Chaudhuri, an attorney who represents voters challenging restrictive voting laws at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, one of the nation’s most active voting rights litigation groups.

Bloomberg Law looked at 579 federal voting rights complaints in the four-and-a-half years before the July 2021 Brnovich decision and in the three years and four months after, a period that encompasses the Covid-19 pandemic and two presidential elections. The analysis accounts for the difference in the number of cases filed during those time periods. Redistricting cases, which challenged the boundaries of voting districts, aren’t included because Brnovich didn’t interfere with how Section 2 is used in those cases.

The analysis sheds light on shifting strategies by lawyers bringing allegations of voting discrimination to federal courts.

“Brnovich unquestionably made it much harder to bring Voting Rights Act cases,” said Justin Levitt, an election law expert and professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. He agreed the drop-off in Section 2 cases reflects that.

The National Voter Registration Act and Help America Vote Act, voting rights bills designed to address specific problems and without the broad focus of Section 2, were both cited more frequently following Brnovich. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was also cited more often following the decision.

Experts agree Brnovich alone isn’t responsible for the difference in the types of cases filed. The number of cases that make up those differences can be small.

Still, Chaudhuri and others say the analysis aligns with their assumptions about Brnovich.

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“The Rise of America’s Broligarchy and What to Do About It”

Larry Norden and Dan Weiner in Time:

While the corrupting influence of big money over our government is not new, the specifics of this danger are different today than perhaps at any other time in our nation’s history. Tech billionaires, who already had enormous power, helped underwrite a winning presidential campaign in ways that would have been illegal just a few elections ago. And there are now fewer restraints than ever before on their ability, or the president they helped elect, to break through the checks and balances of our political system. This system, President Joseph Biden recently warned, can best be described as an “oligarchy.” Or, as others have dubbed, a “broligarchy.”

None of this means the situation is hopeless. Musk’s depredations are already encountering legal and political resistance, and it’s likely that the political pendulum will eventually swing back. When it does, those who care about the security of American democracy will need to be ready with fresh, bold solutions that meet the political moment, to ensure that our political system can actually respond to the needs of regular Americans.

Still, the question remains: How did we get to the point of having a tech billionaire campaign donor openly running huge parts of the federal government? And where do we go from here?

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“Former Sheriff Hayden investigated Johnson County’s top election official, records show”

KC Star:

Former Johnson County Sheriff Calvin Hayden investigated Johnson County Election Commissioner Fred Sherman over allegations of voter intimidation, according to records obtained by The Star. The case was the only one Hayden, a Republican, ever sent to Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe during his years-long investigation into election fraud. The inquiry never found any election fraud but helped stoke baseless conspiracy theories that the county’s elections were somehow tainted.

The Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, now led by Democrat Byron Roberson, and Howe, a Republican, both confirmed in separate statements last week that Hayden had submitted only one election-related case. Roberson announced last week that he had formally closed the election inquiry. But law enforcement documents provided to The Star in response to a records request now reveal Sherman was the subject of the intimidation investigation. The documents illustrate the extraordinary situation that played out in Johnson County in 2022 as the then-sheriff investigated the county’s top elections official. Howe declined to prosecute Sherman, finding no evidence of a crime….

The records provided on Tuesday include a full narrative report of the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office investigation. While the victim’s name is redacted in the newly-provided documents, the case number matches the partial report previously provided to The Star. In the narrative, Det. Kevin Cronister wrote that the alleged victim in an email alleged that during a July 13, 2022, election worker training, Sherman was disregarding her “beliefs as an American voter and election worker” because Sherman had told her she needed to vote in advance or by mail to be a poll worker on Election Day. The alleged victim said she only believed in voting in-person on Election Day. “Having been required by Fred Sherman to choose between my voting rights and his policy, I felt stripped of my rights,” the alleged victim said, according to Cronister’s narrative report….

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