“What America Can Learn from Australia”

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I was honored to be a Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the University of Melbourne this summer (well, winter in Australia). The fellowship was a wonderful opportunity to get to know members of the university’s superb faculty, especially at its law school, and to discuss with them and their students matters of mutual interest on the nature and sustenance of democracy. The main event associated with the fellowship was delivery of a public lecture. The video of the lecture is now available. 

The specific focus of the lecture concerns the work of Edward Nanson, a professor at the University of Melbourne, who was the one to rediscover Condorcet’s analysis of elections, which had been lost to history after Condorcet’s death during the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution. Nanson also significantly improved upon Condorcet’s work, and the main point of the lecture was to explain how America could benefit from Nanson’s ideas. As Australians themselves no longer know of Nanson’s important contributions, the lecture’s audience at the University of Melbourne appreciated learning about one of their own. The rest of us can, and should, appreciate what Nanson did to advance the modern understanding of electoral democracy and majority rule.

(This notice of the lecture originally appeared on Common Ground Democracy.)

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“Louisiana urges Supreme Court to bar use of race in redistricting, in attack on Voting Rights Act”

Supreme Court, Voting Rights Act

Mark Sherman for the AP:

Louisiana on Wednesday abandoned its defense of a political map that elected two Black members of Congress and instead called on the Supreme Court to reject any consideration of race in redistricting in a case that could bring major changes to the Voting Rights Act.

Appealing to a conservative-dominated court that has been skeptical of the use of race, Louisiana is advancing a position that could allow it and other Republican-led states in the South to draw new maps that eliminate virtually all majority Black districts, which have been Democratic strongholds, voting rights experts said.

“If Louisiana’s argument prevailed at the Supreme Court, it would almost certainly lead to a whiter and less representative Congress, as well as significantly less minority representation across the country in legislatures, city councils, and across other district-based bodies,” UCLA law professor Richard Hasen said in an email….

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“Fresh off Texas Senate’s approval, new congressional map is target of lawsuits”

redistricting

Texas Tribune:

Hours after the Texas Senate approved a new congressional map early Saturday morning that more heavily favors Republicans — legislation Gov. Greg Abbott plans to “swiftly” sign into law — a lawsuit against the governor was filed, alleging that the redrawn districts are racially discriminatory.

The 67-page complaint against Abbott and Secretary of State Jane Nelson supplements legal action filed by LULAC in 2021 challenging the state’s original maps and argues that redrawing districts mid-decade is unconstitutional…

Lawyers’ Committee:

 Today, the Texas NAACP, represented by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, filed a motion for a preliminary injunction in their ongoing lawsuit against the state of Texas, challenging its recently passed congressional maps for illegal, racial gerrymandering. The maps bulldoze important majority-minority districts and dilute the ability for Black and Brown communities to pick their political representation fairly. 

The Texas NAACP and Lawyers’ Committee originally filed the case in 2021 regarding Texas’ redistricting plan for Congress, as well as the state Senate and House, arguing that multiple districts at all levels—principally in the Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston areas—intentionally discriminate against people of color. 

In July of this year, the Department of Justice sent Texas Governor Greg Abbott a letter arguing that four Democratic districts—three of them coalition, or synonymously, majority-minority districts—were racially gerrymandered and that the Fifth Circuit had declared coalition districts unconstitutional. While this was a misstatement and blatant misinterpretation of the law, it still instructed Texas to redraw its maps, and Governor Abbott obliged by adding redistricting to the legislative agenda, claiming the state no longer needed coalition districts. 

Now, with the passage of the new maps, the Texas Legislature doubles down on its original gerrymander, seeking to dismantle majority Black and Brown communities and weaken their political power for the years to come, and critically, ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. 

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“Justice Dept. Broadens Inquiry Into Key Players in Russia Investigation”

authoritarian threats in US, chicanery, Department of Justice

NYT:

Pursuing a theory promoted by Trump loyalists, the Justice Department is investigating whether F.B.I. officials during and after the Biden administration tried to hide or secretly destroy documents that might cast doubt on the earlier inquiry into Russia’s attempt to tilt the 2016 election in President Trump’s favor, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

The steps taken by the Justice Department are the latest in a series of efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to impugn the Russia investigation, which the president sees as having been a partisan witch hunt that unfairly dogged him throughout his first term.

The new inquiry seeks to determine if senior F.B.I. officials spent years working to cover up the supposed misdeeds of James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director at the time of the Russia investigation, and John O. Brennan, who was then the C.I.A. director, after the two men left government by squirreling away potentially damaging classified documents.

The disclosures bring into sharper focus how Kash Patel, now the F.B.I. director, is intent on substantiating longstanding claims Mr. Trump has peddled to his base that he was framed by the Obama administration. Under Mr. Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, the bureau has moved to oust employees they believe are disloyal or who have worked on investigations into Mr. Trump….

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“Silicon Valley Pledges $200 Million to New Pro-A.I. Super PACs”

campaign finance

NYT:

Silicon Valley corporations and investors, emboldened by President Trump’s embrace of the technology and crypto industries, have pledged up to $200 million to two new super PACs that are aimed at forcing out politicians whom they see as insufficiently supportive of the push into artificial intelligence.

One of the new PACs, Meta California, is funded by tens of millions of dollars from Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram and has been investing heavily in A.I. The second super PAC, Leading the Future, is backed initially with $50 million from the A.I. investor Andreessen Horowitz and $50 million from Greg Brockman, a co-founder of OpenAI, and his wife, Anna.

The first-of-their-kind groups reflect a new appetite for political combat from the A.I. industry, which is a relatively new policy area without clear partisan allegiances.

Meta, Google, OpenAI, Microsoft and others are shoveling tens of billions of dollars into developing A.I. models, building data centers, hiring top researchers and taking a lead in the technology. At the same time, the companies face questions over whether A.I. might take away people’s jobs and whether the technology is safe, as well as mounting concerns over the environmental effects of data centers….

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