Fourteen Republican attorneys general argue that a federal judge’s interpretation of the Voting Rights Act in a ruling that overturned Louisiana’s legislative maps was unconstitutional. The attorneys general, led by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, stated their case in an amicus brief filed Wednesday in the U.S.
5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans for the case Nairne v. Ardoin. “States deserve fair notice regarding how to draft redistricting laws that comply with federal law,” the brief reads.
“Yet under the District Court’s free-wheeling approach, members of the Louisiana Legislature could never guess ahead of time what facts might — in a court’s view — trigger a (Voting Rights Act) violation and thus might justify presumptively unconstitutional race-based districting.” Jared Evans, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund that represents Black Louisianians in redistricting lawsuits, said the attorneys general, several of whom are defending their own states from Voting Rights Act lawsuits, are trying to turn Louisiana’s legislative redistricting lawsuit into test case to weaken the landmark civil rights legislation. Their case focuses on Section 2 of the act, which prohibits voting laws or procedures that purposefully discriminate on the basis of race, color or membership in a language minority group.
“They know that if Section 2 is upheld, there are a lot of states that need to have additional minority Black districts in their house maps, but also in the congressional map, in the state school board maps and all of the other political boundaries,” Evans said in an interview. “Every case that is going to get under Section 2 going forward with the Supreme Court is a test case to see if they can further poke holes in Section 2 jurisprudence.” GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX SUBSCRIBE In February, U.
S. District Judge Shelly Dick of the Middle District of Louisiana ruled in Nairne v. Ardoin that maps Louisiana lawmakers drew two years ago to update the boundaries of their own districts do not give Black voters a fair opportunity to elect their own representatives.
Plaintiffs in the case are Black voters who challenged then-Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, Louisiana’s top elections official. In her ruling, Dick, a federal court appointee of former President Barack Obama, gave the state a “reasonable period of time” to approve new legislative districts that do not violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Dick did not specify in her ruling what a reasonable period of time is or the number of majority Black districts necessary to comply with the Voting Rights Act.
Plaintiffs have said the state should add six in the Louisiana House and three in its Senate. Currently, 28 out of 105 House seats are majority Black, as are 11 of 39 Senate seats. In the months since the ruling, Republicans have ramped up their efforts to weaken key parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Building off a 2023 ruling in the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals based in St.
Louis that only the federal government can seek an enforcement ruling under the Voting Rights Act, Republican attorneys general and voting officials have sought to intervene in lawsuits brought by voters, such as Nairne v. Ardoin. In April, Louisiana filed a brief in the case asking the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to hear an appeal on the basis that there is no private right of action under the Voting Rights Act.
That means that voters would not have the legal standing to sue over their rights being violated. The court denied the state a hearing before the full court, but litigation is still ongoing before a three-judge panel in the 5th Circuit. The 8th Circuit’s ruling is not legally sound, Evans argued.
“Section 2 has been upheld and private groups have been allowed to bring cases since the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized 1984, and so this is another attempt to weaken the Voting Rights Act,” Evans said . Much of the 14 attorney general’s brief relies on a footnote in Dick’s ruling. On the 84th page of the 91-page document, Dick writes the following in a footnote: “Dr.
Washington pointed out the subliminal message of the Sheriff’s Office being housed on the same floor as her Registrar of Voter’s Office.” The footnote references a government building in an unnamed parish where the sheriff and the registrar are headquartered on the same floor, which Alice Washington, a Black voter in Louisiana, cited as evidence of voter suppression. The 14 attorneys general mocked this idea at several points in their brief: “The Voting Rights Act is concerned with the right to register, vote, and participate in politics — win or lose — not on whispers from parish buildings.
” “Perhaps if those walls could literally talk, the District Court’s interpretation would not be ‘hopelessly indeterminate,’” the brief continues “...
But bad vibes cannot be the test for vote dilution,” the attorneys general also wrote. Evans pushed back on their arguments. “Given the history that minorities have with law enforcement and over-policing and police brutality, having to register at the same place where law enforcement is housed is a form of voter suppression and intimidation,” Evans said.
“I’m not sure what they’re trying to brag about or what they’re trying to imply,” he added. Marshall, Alabama’s attorney general, was joined in the brief by his counterparts in Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and West Virginia. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, who is a defendant in Nairne v.
Aucoin and did not join the brief, declined to provide a comment for this report. At a status report in June, legislative leaders told Dick they did not have immediate plans to draw new state House and Senate maps. SUPPORT NEWS YOU TRUST.
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com . Follow Louisiana Illuminator on Facebook and X . During an appearance on MSNBC's "The Weekend," former GOP strategist Tara Seymayer pointed out to the Donald Trump campaign that it has hit a major speed bump now that Vice President Kamala Harris will be the former president's opponenti n November.
And a big part of that speed bump, she noted, is his choice of running mate, Sen. J. D.
Vance (R-OH) , who is being dogged by controversies both real and fake which have taken social media by storm. Now that Vance's comments in 2021 that " childless cat ladies," were "miserable" and had no "direct stake" in the country have been dredged up, combined with a fake claim on X that Vance wrote about having sex wth a couch in his best-selling "Hillbilly Elegy," Setmayer claimed that Trump's message to voters is being drowned out . ALSO READ: Boebert, MTG and far-fight friends derail Speaker Mike Johnson’s summer plans Speaking with co-host Michael Steele, Setmayer stated, "It hasn't even been a week, people, it hasn't even been a week.
In this time frame, we've got Donald Trump and MAGA and J.D. Vance playing defense.
They are talking about couches and cat ladies and we are talking about Kamala Harris and record-breaking activity, whether it is fundraising, whether it is the grassroots organizing." "I say it is a pretty great week for the Democrats. They need to maintain this, right? We talk about the it is only 100 days — it is a sprint at this point, it is not a marathon," she added.
"We are in the final days of this 2024 election, which feels like it never ended, it has been going on for years." "Women are fired up and ready to go," she later added. "The audacity of J.
D. Vance to call women 'miserable cat ladies.' Women aren't miserable, they are motivated and look out," she claimed.
Watch below or at the link . MSNBC 07 27 2024 08 02 53 youtu.be CONTINUE READING Show less On Saturday morning the co-hosts and panel of guests on MSNBC's "The Weekend" were stunned by the number of volunteers who have signed up to help Vice President Kamala Harris win the presidency in November.
Kicking off the segment on Saturday, MSNBC's Symone Sanders-Townsend pointed out to her co-host Michael Steele that the Harris campaign has signed up a whopping 170,000 volunteers and has scheduled over 2,300 events in battleground states . As she put it, "Vice President Kamala Harris is hitting the ground not just running but literally sprinting because it is just about 100 days that she has to make her case to the people." ALSO READ: Boebert, MTG and far-fight friends derail Speaker Mike Johnson’s summer plans "The Kamala Harris coalition is hosting 2300 events to motivate voters in key swing states, the campaign has more than 250 battleground offices to organize in the months ahead.
And since Sunday, 170,000 new volunteers — these numbers are insane — have joined the campaign effort," she reported. That led co-host Steele to speak to guest Tara Setmayer, a former GOP strategist, and point out, "Tara, you and I have been having a lot of fun over the last week watching the politics evolve around the vice president and how she has been able to transition from behind the curtain, if you will, to, you know, to the main stage. What is your assessment of this transitional week for her?" "As Symone unmentioned, 170,000 people, think about that, volunteered within a three or four day span to work on her campaign, raised over, well over $100 million, and seemingly has started to get under Donald Trump's skin," he added.
"There is one word and it is reinvigorated," Setmayer replied. "The country, the voters, the Democratic base is reinvigorated.Tthat is evidenced by what we have seen since last Sunday.
It hasn't even been a week, people — it hasn't even been a week." Watch below or at the link . MSNBC 07 27 2024 08 01 33 youtu.
be CONTINUE READING Show less Donald Trump took the first step to extinguishing the free and independent press in American yesterday, when federal judge and Bush-appointee Cecilia Altonaga ruled that his defamation lawsuit against George Stephanopoulos and ABC News could go forward. She ruled that “a reasonable jury could conclude Plaintiff was defamed and, as a result, dismissal is inappropriate.” (emphasis hers) Stephanopoulos had asked Republican Representative Nancy Mace how she could continue to support Trump when he had been “found liable for rape.
” Trump is claiming that question libeled him and asking for damages that could run into the tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. You’d think he doesn’t have a case. When a jury of his peers found in favor of E.
Jean Carroll in her defamation case against Trump, Judge Lewis Kaplan noted : “[T]he jury’s finding that Mr. Trump ‘sexually abused’ Ms Carroll implicitly determined that he forcibly penetrated her digitally – in other words, that Mr Trump in fact did ‘rape’ Ms Carroll as that term commonly is used and understood in contexts outside of the New York penal law.” Nonetheless, Judge Altonaga is letting Trump’s lawsuit against the reporter and news organization go forward.
This is a very, very big deal that could signal the beginning of the end for a free and open press in America. Trump is right now following a road blazed before him by multiple authoritarians and dictators who took over democracies in recent years. When Vladimir Putin took over Russia in 1999, there was a thriving, diverse, and free press in the country.
Today there is none; he largely used libel laws to destroy what had been there and replace it with a press landscape entirely owned by oligarchs friendly to him and state outlets. When Viktor Orbán was elected Prime Minister of Hungary 14 years ago, there was also a flourishing free press in that nation; today, every major press outlet — from TV to radio to newspapers and internet sites — exclusively sing his praises all day, every day and there’s functionally no meaningful opposition press within the country. All major media in Hungary is now owned by oligarchs beholden to Orbán.
Both men used Trump’s strategy to take down the media in their respective countries. When Republicans visited Budapest, Hungary in 2022 to celebrate strongman Orbán’s “illiberal Christian democracy” model of government, he had some very specific advice about how to take over and hold a nation: “Have your own media,” he said to cheers. “It’s the only way to point out the insanity of the progressive left.
The problem is that the western media is adjusted to the leftist viewpoint. Those who taught reporters in universities already had progressive leftist principles.” He added, speaking of Putin-booster Tucker Carlson: “Of course, the GOP has its media allies but they can’t compete with the mainstream liberal media.
My friend Tucker Carlson is the only one who puts himself out there. His show is the most popular. What does it mean? It means programs like his should be broadcasted day and night.
Or, as you say, 24/7.” Both Putin and Orbán started by changing their nation’s libel laws, making it possible for the leaders and their cronies to sue any newspaper, radio or TV station, blogger, social media user, or website that criticized them for libel. It’s a much “softer” way of shutting up the press (and the public) than simply storming in and arresting journalists: instead, you drive them and their media outlets into bankruptcy so they self-censor and their outlets can then be acquired by friendly billionaires and turned into pro-government organs.
Russian libel penalties run into the millions of rubles, as Tanya Lokshina, senior Russia researcher at Human Rights Watch noted : “These high fines can effectively suffocate smaller Russian media outlets and seem designed to increase self-censorship in mass media and online. ..
. Freedom to criticize officials and expose their alleged wrongdoing is crucially important to fostering public debate and to holding officials accountable. The threat of criminal sanction to restrict speech strikes at the very core of Russia’s vibrant community of rights activists and independent journalists.
” Orbán, who visited Trump at Mar-a-Largo just a few weeks ago, followed a similar path, as he told state radio after independent journalists revealed his closest allies’ use of luxury yachts and private jets years ago. Threatening those journalists , he said : “We do not attack anyone, we do not want to force anything on anybody, we do not say bad things about others, we do not smear people, we do not unnecessarily criticize anyone, we do not want to tell people what to do or how to live their lives, what decisions to make. But, when someone wants to do this to us, then we will protect our independence and the Hungarian way of thinking.
” Russia and Hungary are not, of course, the only countries that use libel laws to destroy opposition press and drive independent commentators, bloggers, social media users, and newsletter writers into bankruptcy. Currently, such a strategy is employed by strongman leaders in Turkey, Egypt, Thailand, Philippines, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, China, Iran, Belarus, Eritrea, Cuba, and Vietnam, among others. Here in America, Florida was the first state where Republicans recently tried (unsuccessfully) to “open up” their state libel laws, in that case proposing legislation to make it criminally libelous for reporters to “cite an anonymous source.
” More Red states will certainly follow as Orbán’s model is further embraced across the GOP. And Donald Trump got the memo. After his win in court yesterday, he posted to his Nazi-infested social media site: “A big win today in high Florida court against ABC fake News, and Liddle' George Slopadopolus.
A powerful case! Before you know it, the fake news media will be forced by the courts to start telling the truth. This is a great day for our country. MAGA2024.
” He’s been threatening this for a while. When campaigning in February, 2016, he told attendees at a rally in Fort Worth, Texas: “One of the things I’m going to do if I win, and I hope we do and we’re certainly leading. I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.
We’re going to open up those libel laws. “So when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace or when The Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected.” As president, Trump tried to make it happen but didn’t then have the allies in Congress, the courts, and his administration willing to support destroying America’s free and independent press.
During an October, 2017 meeting in the White House with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau he shocked the media in attendance by openly contradicting our Constitution and the Founders of America by saying : “It is frankly disgusting the way the press is able to write whatever they want to write.” Three months later, he told his Cabinet that he wants to “take a strong look at our country’s libel laws,” which he called “a sham and a disgrace.” When media reports something bad about him, he said, the laws should be re-written or interpreted by the courts “so that when somebody says something that is false and defamatory about someone that person will have meaningful recourse in our courts.
” He added , reading from prepared notes: “Our current libel laws are a sham and a disgrace, and do not represent American values or American fairness. So we’re going to take a strong look at that. We want fairness.
You can’t say things that are false, knowingly false, and be able to smile as money pours into your bank account ...
I think what the American people want to see is fairness.” And now, after seven years of pushing, Trump has finally found a federal judge who appears to agree with him. If pointing out that another judge had actually said that Trump raped E.
Jean Carroll is defamation according to this conservative judge, can you imagine what could happen to those people who’ve called Trump a fascist or worse? This case could well end up before the Supreme Court , currently dominated by authoritarian right-wingers, which should send shudders down the spines of every reporter, commentator, blogger, radio or TV host, social media participant, Substack writer, and news organization in America. NOW READ: Boebert, MTG and far-right friends derail Speaker Mike Johnson’s summer plans CONTINUE READING Show less.
