How do you keep Texas from turning blue? Well, one of the best ways is to make neo-segregationist Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III the Attorney General of the United States so he can drop the government’s case against the Lose Star State’s racist voter disenfranchisement law that has already been knocked down in the courts.
President Trump’s Justice Department is ending the government’s opposition to a controversial voter ID law in Texas, according to a group involved in the case…
…After six years of legal wrangling, the Justice Department will no longer argue that Texas intentionally sought to discriminate against minorities when it passed the law that mandates voters show certain forms of identification before casting a ballot.
Did Texas intentionally seek to discriminate against minorities or was that some kind of incidental side effect?
While a federal appeals court struck down the voter ID law a few months before the 2016 elections on the grounds that it had a discriminatory effect, it sent the question about intent back to the lower courts. The Supreme Court rejected Texas’s appeal earlier this year on the first question.
The Department of Justice had one opinion until today, and now they have the opposite opinion.
“This signals to voters that they will not be protected under this administration,” [Danielle] Lang [the Campaign Legal Center’s deputy director of voting rights] told Talking Points Memo.
“We have already had a nine-day trial and presented thousands of pages of documents demonstrating that the picking and choosing of what IDs count was entirely discriminatory and would fall more harshly on minority voters. So for the [Justice Department] to come in and drop those claims just because of a change of administration is outrageous.”
…The Justice Department is expected to lay out its new position during a hearing on Tuesday. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is a supporter of voter identification laws as long as they are “properly drafted” and has voiced skepticism about the Voting Rights Act.
Republicans argue that the limits are unnecessary burdens on a state’s right to make its own laws to protect the ballot box.
This has nothing to do with Texas protecting the ballot box and everything to do with neo-segregationists doing everything they can to find a modern equivalent to asking blacks and (now) Latinos to guess how many jelly beans are in the jar.
The new Jim Crow may not be as bad as the old Jim Crow, but it’s close enough to earn universal moral condemnation.
Confederates gonna Confederate.
Well, obviously NOT universal moral condemnation. For one thing, TX GOP thinks the TX law is great and I suspect the majority of other GOP voters in other states do too. Anyway, the GOP stopped caring about equal justice under the law decades ago.
Will the ACLU of Texsas be able to take over the appeal or do they have to start over at the bottom?
That is a good question.
One would hope that the Republican Congress’s ability to take over without a new law passed to add them to the list of people allowed to ‘defend’ the government during the DOMA court fights, could be used as precedent for 3rd party intervention in this case.
A sea of blue ribbons and fewer lame Trump attack words* at the Oscar show would have been helpful.
*Some were very good and good movie/TV making elevates the best and cuts the rest.
The question was whether the ACLU would have legal standing to step into the role of the Justice Department in pursuing the ongoing court case at the current appellate level. Perhaps you can explain the jurisprudential implications therefor of “a sea of blue ribbons at the Academy Awards”?
Heh. 18 comments on this thread. Nine have absolutely nothing to go with the op.
I’d noticed. And look who launched them, eh? Surprise, surprise.
IANAL but I am reaching out to my people in Texas who might know.
The case goes forward. Don’t have to start over. Justice is just backing away from the claim that the law was passed with the intent to discriminate.
Good news! Thanks.
The public remains disgusted:
Latest NBC/WSJ poll – favorable/unfavorable/dk and net favorable:
Democratic Party: 30/46/24 – net -16
Republican Party: 35/43/22 – net -8
From the same poll:
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? “For too long a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have born the cost.”
Agree —— 86%
Disagree— 12%
DK ———- 2%
The key word here is who are the “people” borning this cost, and who is being enriched? Question tells nothing about policy or direction.
It’s a gut check or mood question. You can ignore it if you want. Hold onto a belief that people vote rationally (and are conscience consumers of widgets). Too bad it better predicted the rise of Trump than any of the other polling questions. A data point going into the 2016 presidential election cycle that Democrats still refuse to recognize and prefer to claim that Putin-Russia have mind-meld power over US voters.
At the moment, Trump is the new bum and therefore, scores a lower net unfavorable than the old bums.
See, I don’t believe people vote rationally based on policy positions, per se. Where’s your evidence for its predictive ability for the rise of Trump?
I agree it’s a gut check question. The left sees the rich and corporations having undue influence, the right sees the “undeserving” put ahead of the line at The People’s expense.
“For too long a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have born the cost.”
Everyone is saying they are seeing the same thing: “small group in DC” Right and Left are capable of seeing THAT.
Mino jumped in before I got back to you and highlighted that this current question was more defined than a generic mood question. Very specific as to who the “takers” are: “For too long a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have born the cost.”
What’s surprising about this poll result is the low contamination by party affiliation. Or perhaps fewer Republicans are as strictly partisan as Democrats.
A more general “mood” polling question is the “right track” vs. “wrong track.” However, rarely is that not contaminated by political party affiliation. If we look back to the first six months of 2015 — Gallup is good enough for this type of poll. Republicans/conservatives jazzed about taking back the Senate in the 2014 midterms would probably have equaled the Democrats/liberals distressed by that outcome. OTOH, more Democrats/liberals would have been satisfied with Obama in the WH and Republicans/conservatives were still distressed about that.
That interpretation is consistent with 2014 numbers of wrong track being in the mid to high 70s. That then dropped to 66 and slowly increased to 71 by June 2015 where it’s been since then. At different points during this period, there will have been partisan shifting. Until the 2016 election day, only 25%-29% were satisfied. That’s a very slim to no margin for a status quo candidate. Worse than they were in the first six months of 2007 when the 2008 election cycle began and they got progressively worse as the months wore on. Hitting a low of 7% in the second week of October 2008. That’s why it was so easy to forecast a Democratic win by September 2007.
And where was it going into the 2010 midterms? 2012 general election? 2014 midterms? Right/wrong track polling in every possible swing state was probably much worse. Clinton only eked out a win in MN by 1.52%. The last time a Republican won the state was in 1972. Carter won it in 1980 by almost four points.
The PR problem (obviously) is that, even though the Republicans are, say, 95% corrupt, and the Democrats are (say) 35% corrupt, when Republicans are in power the FOX News types think, “Oh, they’re for freedom/free enterprise/business” etc. and doesn’t see the corruption, but when Democrats are in power the Republicans point at that 35% corruption and scream “Corruption! Look how awful `government’ is!” and, in so doing, turn those voters against Democrats (while convincing the voters that what they’re “really” doing is fighting “government corruption”).
No evidence that people vote on perceptions of the general level of DC corruption in either Party. They may believe that DC is 99% corrupt, but they tend to exclude their Senator and House Rep from that 99%.
Feingold wasn’t tossed because voters came to view him as corrupt. Doubt even strictly partisan Republicans in WI held such a notion of Feingold.
In this present political era, roughly dating from 1980, US voters have bought into the idea that the private sector does it better and that government doesn’t do anything for them personally. A profoundly ignorant and naive position. And one held even by people that have government jobs or jobs for work funded by government.
Back when the GOP preached “we’ll make you rich” and the DP preached “we’ll provide all the basic big stuff that the private sector can’t and/or won’t,” the latter won the argument with the majority of the electorate. Government doesn’t always deliver on that mission by doing it well (and considering the average boobs that we elect, it’s surprising that it does it as well as it does), but it rarely doesn’t deliver more and/or better than the private sector would. After the “roaring twenties,” the “we’ll make you rich” core message didn’t sell. So, the GOP set that aside and preached “we’ll keep you safe from the commies that are coming.” Good enough to oust an authentically good public servant, Jerry Voohis, and deny a promotion of another one, , Helen Gahagan Douglas, to make the career of Nixon.
The GOP shot their wad on that one by ’62; so, they returned to a modified version of their original — “we’ll make white people richer AND safer.” In a decade, that began to crumble because they didn’t deliver; so, it was revised to “we (and God) will make white people, particularly men – the rightful head of families, richer.” Once Democratic politicians embraced a similar position and message — substituting “worthy” or a meritocracy for “white” and “men” — and similar policies, they have intermittently won a few electoral cycles.
As there is always a lag time (sometimes very long) between change legislation and the results of it and early on doesn’t appear to impact almost all people, voters can’t assess what has been done and what it’s meant for them. Or even if there is any meaningful difference between the GOP and Dem approach. Thus, Democrats have fully embraced a significant change in health care policy that was incubated in a rightwing think tank.
Trump can’t deliver except on his most stupid promises, but the DP appears to be doubling down on the alternative they offered in the past two election cycles and that is no more than GOP-lite-slo.
It sounds like there are other plaintiff organizations here, so the Littlest Confederate’s DOJ is in effect simply defecting to the Texas GOoP’s side of the case and will side with Texas on any appeal. The Trumper DOJ and Repub states obviously will be allies and fast friends for the duration of TrumpAmerica.
But even if the DOJ was the only plaintiff, the issue of discriminatory intent appears to have been tried and submitted to the court, which certainly does not have to recognize this transparent confederate bullshit if it doesn’t want to—it could still rule on the issue.
But certainly this sort of legal stunt by the Littlest Confederate’s Boyz was not unexpected–indeed, it was predicted, since Repubs and Trumpites have no shame and will argue anything.
If Trumper’s DOJ is dropping THIS case against the racist Texans, which is obviously an egregious case of intentional (Dem) vote suppression, then it is quite clear that there will be literally no circumstance or state law that the Repub Yoda will challenge in coming years. The focus will shift to suing Blue states for one thing or another—climate laws in CA, pot laws in CO, stepping in to “protect” the dissenting anti-birth control pharmacists or gay-hatin’ cake bakers somewhere or other—those are the “civil rights” that will be supported.
So one can be absolutely certain that the Voting Rights Act will not be enforced by the Littlest Confederate. The Dems could try to make political hay over this, but everyone must understand that Repub troglodites from coast to coast are totally on board with these “conservative” vote suppression schemes. They know that the schemes hurt the Dem party and rig the game in favor of the white minority that has taken over the federal government. So pious appeals to “democracy” fall on completely deaf ears now.
In effect, there is no longer an impartial Justice Department that will seek to ensure that the “Laws be Faithfully Executed” as the Constitution commands. We are no longer a nation under law, and informed people should not continue to imagine that we are.
That is why we have ACLU state affiliates. Even League of Women Voters have been party to lawsuits in the past. I wish we still had a powerful one in Texas.
Taking up the slack when Session-types are in power.