Thursday, April 29, 2021

The next major US voting rights fight is here – and Republicans are ahead After the latest census numbers, Republicans are well positioned to draw districts that will give them an advantage in their effort to reclaim the House in 2022

The next major US voting rights fight is here – and Republicans are ahead

“After the latest census numbers, Republicans are well positioned to draw districts that will give them an advantage in their effort to reclaim the House in 2022

The Los Angeles skyline. California is among the seven states losing a seat in the House. Photograph: Damian Dovarganes/AP

Thu 29 Apr 2021 06.00 EDT

The next major fight over voting rights in the US kicked off Monday: a hugely consequential battle over the boundaries of electoral districts for the next 10 years that will have profound implications for American politics. And Republicansseem to be pulling ahead.

Census officials released a decennial tally of people living in the US, a number that’s used to apportion the House’s 435 seats among the 50 states. The Census Bureau announced that Colorado, Montana, Oregon, North Carolina and Florida will all gain an additional seat in the House, while Texas will get two more. Seven states – California, California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia – will lose a seat.

The numbers accentuated what many have predicted for months: Republicans are extremely well positioned to draw districts that will give them an advantage both in their effort to reclaim control of the US House in the 2022 midterms, and cement control over congressional seats for the next decade.

The constitution gives state lawmakers the power to draw districts and, because of their continued strength in state legislative races, Republicans will dominate the process later this year and can manipulate the lines to their advantage, a process often called gerrymandering.

Even though Democrats earned about 4.7m more votes in 2020 House races around the country, Republicans will have control over the drawing of 187 congressional districts later this year (down from 219 in 2011) while Democrats will have complete control over the drawing of 75 districts (up from 44 a decade ago), according to the Cook Political Report.

Republicans need to win just five seats to retake control of the US House of Representatives, a gap observers believe they can wipe out with gerrymandering alone. Eric Holder, the former US attorney general, told reporters Wednesday he was concerned Republicans could use their complete control of the redistricting process in Texas, Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina alone to overcome that gap.

“What we’re seeing is a Republican party that has shown they’re willing to bend or break the rules of democracy simply to hold on to power,” said Holder, who is leading the Democratic effort to push back on excessive GOP gerrymandering. “If Republicans gerrymander those states, as they have indicated they will, they will have the ability there, almost to take control of the House of Representatives just based on what they do in those four states.”

In 2019, the US supreme court said for the first time that federal courts could not do anything to stop severe manipulation of district lines for partisan gain. One lingering uncertainty is whether Democrats in Congress will be able to pass pending federal legislation to place new limits on the practice. Passing that legislation, however, requires getting rid of the filibuster, a Senate rule requiring 60 votes to advance legislation. Democrats do not yet have the votes to get rid of the procedure.

“You could pass new criteria, including a ban on partisan gerrymandering … require greater transparency in the process,” said Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice. “There’s a lot that could be done.”

Because of a 2013 supreme court ruling, states with a history of voting discrimination, like Texas and North Carolina, will not have to get their maps approved by the federal government before they go into effect. That leaves an opportunity for lawmakers to draw maps that discriminate based on race. Kathay Feng, the national redistricting and representation director at Common Cause, a government watchdog group, warned that voting advocates would be closely monitoring for that kind of discrimination. Much of the America’s population growth over the last decade has come from non-white people.

“Our top priority is ensuring that states that are adding congressional seats recognize the population growth fueled by communities of color in the upcoming redistricting process,” Feng said in a statement.

As federal legislation stalls, Democrats are already signaling they will move aggressively in court to challenge gerrymandering. Shortly after the apportionment numbers were released, Holder’s group filed three separate lawsuits in Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Louisiana – states where Democratsand Republicans share control of the redistricting process – asking courts to be prepared to step in if lawmakers reach an impasse. Such quick machinations are crucial because the redistricting process is moving on a condensed timeline this year because of delays releasing data due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Marc Elias, a top Democratic election lawyer, said this week more lawsuits are likely to follow.

While the Republicans made possible gains, the biggest surprise of the Census Bureau’s Monday’s announcement was that it didn’t result in more of a shift for the party. Projections based on population estimates had predicted Texas would gain three seats and Florida would gain two. Arizona, where districts are drawn by an independent commission, was expected to gain a seat, but ended up not doing so. Minnesota and Rhode Island were both projected to lose seats, and New York could have lost an additional seat.

“Overall, the population shifts to the the south will definitely benefit Republicans, but definitely not as much as people were expecting, just because they got fewer seats,” Li said.

It’s not unusual for the final tallies to be slightly off from apportionment, but Li said he was surprised to see the kind of variation there was this year. There is some concern that the variation in the data may signal an undercount of Hispanic population, especially after the Trump administration repeatedly tried to tamper with the process. Bureau officials said Monday they are confident in the data.

Holder told reporters on Tuesday that it was impossible to separate the upcoming battle over redistricting from an aggressive GOP effort underway in state legislatures to restrict access to the voting booth.

“I have no doubt that the same Republican legislators that have pushed these bills will now try and use the redistricting process to illegitimately lock in power for that party, for them, for the next decade,” he said.”

Opinion: Biden’s address to Congress proves we have an adult back in the presidency

Jennifer Rubin

Image without a caption — President Biden addresses a joint session of Congress on Wednesday. (Pool/Reuters)

“It did not look like a typical presidential address before Congress. Wednesday night’s event, which lacked the packed House chamber due to pandemic guidelines, was missing some of the buzz and drama of past speeches. But there was a far more important difference this year: The return of normal presidential rhetoric and the embrace of traditional democratic values. As an added bonus, Americans saw two powerful women perched behind the president — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Vice President Harris. It made for a compelling, historic tableau and a reminder that only one party sends a consistently inclusive message.

President Biden struck an optimistic tone right off the bat: “Now — after just 100 days — I can report to the nation: America is on the move again. Turning peril into possibility. Crisis into opportunity. Setbacks into strength,” he declared. Without mentioning his predecessor, he echoed messages from his campaign. The country is choosing “light over darkness” and “hope over fear.” He did not shy away from the Jan. 6 insurrection, calling it the “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”

He began, as one would expect, with a recounting of how far the nation has come in fighting the covid-19 pandemic and used the opportunity to urge everyone to receive a vaccination. He called the progress made so far "one of the greatest logistical achievements this country has ever seen.” He touted his accomplishment in cutting child poverty and recounted the economic recovery to date while insisting the country cannot stay still as China and other world powers advance.

In introducing his jobs plan, he directly addressed working-class Americans who did not vote for him or were skeptical of his political promises. “I know some of you at home are wondering whether these jobs are for you. So many of you, so many of the folks I grew up with, feel left behind, forgotten in an economy that’s so rapidly changing,” he said before noting the number of jobs that would not need a college education. Biden then signaled he intends to reach out beyond the Democratic base to independent and Republican voters, not allowing Republicans in Congress to define the terms of the debate.

In a nod to bipartisanship — and a nudge for Republicans to end their obstruction — he declared: “Investments in jobs and infrastructure like the ones we’re talking about have often had bipartisan support. ... I applaud the group of Republican senators who just put forward their own proposal.” He added, “I welcome those ideas. But the rest of the world is not waiting for us. ... Doing nothing is not an option. Look, we can’t be so busy competing with one another that we forget the competition that we have with the rest of the world to win the 21st century.”

Biden used the opportunity to describe the wide range of investments — from broadband to electric cars to new water systems — that remain popular with Americans who do not care whether these things are called “infrastructure.” His basic message did not lack for alliteration: “A blue-collar blueprint to build America.”

He then moved to his American Families Plan, which includes child care, free pre-K and community college, paid family leave, investment in historically black colleges, and another extension of the child tax credit. He also vowed to keep Obamacare premiums and to lower drug prices. Anticipating Republicans’ complaints about taxes, he vowed only to raise taxes on the very rich and corporations. He denounced a tax code that allows big corporations to avoid taxes altogether and noted that the 2017 tax cut failed to pay for itself and pump up the economy. “In fact, the pay gap between CEOs and their workers is now among the largest in history. According to one study, CEOs make 320 times what the average worker in their corporation makes.”

This was a bold populist proposal. “It’s time to grow the economy from the bottom and the middle out,” he said. “You know, there’s a broad consensus of economists, left, right, and center, and they agree what I’m proposing will help create millions of jobs and generate historic economic growth. These are among the highest-value investments we can make as a nation."

Foreign policy usually gets short shrift in these speeches, but Biden touched on his administration’s re-engagement in the Paris climate accord, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, threats from China, his promises to stand up to unfair trade practices and rogue states seeking nuclear weapons. And he emotionally restated his commitment to human rights: “No responsible American president could remain silent when basic human rights are being so blatantly violated. ... An American president has to represent the essence of what our country stands for. America is an idea, the most unique idea in history. We are created, all of us, equal. It’s who we are. And we cannot walk away from that principle.”

He made a powerful pitch for police reform, citing the murder of George Floyd. He said, “We’ve all seen the knee of injustice on the neck of Black Americans,” and then urged the nation to come together to “root out systemic racism in our criminal justice system.” He set a goal of reaching a deal on police reform by the first anniversary of Floyd’s death.

He ticked off a whole list of other priorities, including gun safety, voting rights and immigration. And he refused to be cowed by Republicans’ denial and deflection on the Jan. 6 insurrection. “As we gather here tonight, the images of a violent mob assaulting this Capitol — desecrating our democracy — remain vivid in all our minds,” he said. “Lives were put at risk, many of your lives. Lives were lost. Extraordinary courage was summoned.” This was no mere riot; it was “an existential crisis — a test of whether our democracy could survive." It did, he said, adding that “the struggle is far from over.”

At the close, Biden confronted threats to democracy. He argued that government can be a force for good and that democracy, not authoritarianism, works. He practically pleaded with Americans: “It’s time to remember that we the people are the government. You and I. Not some force in a distant capital. Not some powerful force we have no control over. It’s us. ... In another era when our democracy was tested, Franklin Roosevelt reminded us — in America: We do our part. We all do our part. That’s all I’m asking. That we do our part, all of us.” It was the most compelling part of a long, policy-laden speech.

Biden’s speech was noteworthy in a number of respects. He made multiple pitches for bipartisanship. He spoke softly at times, in intimate terms, and eschewing bombast. He displayed his unique knack of making bold provisions seem reasonable and necessary. He was exceptionally optimistic, declaring that there is nothing Americans cannot do if they do it together. No one will have to endure inane punditry that Biden has finally “grown into the presidency.” He is comfortable in his new job — and determined to do big things.“

At 100 days, Biden seeks to leverage narrow majorities to reverse the Reagan era

Dan Balz

“As President Biden marked his first 100 days in office with a speech to the nation Wednesday, the scope and implications of his domestic agenda have come sharply into focus. Together they represent the most dramatic shift in federal economic and social welfare policy since Ronald Reagan was elected 40 years ago.

Reagan’s small-government philosophy resulted in a decades-long squeeze on the federal government, especially domestic spending, and on tax policies that mainly benefited the wealthiest Americans.

If Biden ultimately gets his way legislatively, and that is a big question mark, those policies would be replaced with ones that would directly address long-standing economic, racial and gender inequities that have only become more apparent during the coronavirus pandemic.

Biden had to wait nearly 50 years to achieve his dream of becoming president. In office, he is operating as if he has no time to spare. Throughout his first 100 days, and again on Wednesday night, the presentation of his agenda shows he believes there is an urgent need to act and an opportunity to do so, but that he has limited time to get it done.

Biden said that to win the competition for the future, the nation needs “a once-in-generation investment in our families and our children.”

His speech was a reflection of his presidency to date: an appeal for big and bold action described in the most workaday rhetoric and by a leader whose demeanor and temperament are the very opposite of his predecessor, former president Donald Trump.

But given the Democrats’ narrow majorities in Congress and a nation still sharply divided over the president’s performance, Biden’s agenda represents a policy and political gamble of enormous proportions, one that will be adjudicated in both the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential election. The politics of redistribution, which are at the heart of what Biden is proposing, could test decades of assumptions that Democrats should be afraid of being tagged as the party of big government.

Biden hopes to change the economy without bad side effects

It is unusual in the modern era for a new president to wait until the 100-day mark to address a joint session of Congress. By now, Biden has had months to shape, offer and begin to move the major elements of his agenda. In that way, Wednesday’s speech was both a summing-up and a call to action.

To date, the politics of the coronavirus pandemic have been central to Biden’s presidency and agenda. Ramping up the pace of vaccinations and moving the country toward a gradual loosening of restrictions, both economic and personal, have been his highest priorities. But as those conditions continue to move closer to pre-pandemic norms, the rest of his agenda will come to the forefront, and with it, a charged debate. Biden’s hope is that the progress on the coronavirus translates into greater public confidence in his leadership in other areas.

If the main outlines of what Biden talked about Wednesday night seem familiar, they are anything but ordinary, beginning with the sheer cost of the three major elements of his spending plans that have already been announced.

Together, the already approved coronavirus relief plan, the infrastructure proposal that was unveiled a few weeks ago and the newly proposed plan toinvest in social welfare programs would total roughly $6 trillion, much of it aimed at middle- and working-class families. Biden would pay for much of the infrastructure and family spending with increased taxes on corporations and on the wealthiest Americans.

“My fellow Americans, trickle-down economics has never worked,” Biden said. “It’s time to grow the economy from the bottom and middle out.”

House and Senate Republicans on April 25 rated President Biden's response to the border crisis, foreign policy and tax plans ahead of his formal joint address. (Amber Ferguson/The Washington Post)

Republicans have branded the president’s agenda as radical, and perhaps by the party’s prior standards — by the standards of the Reagan era — that is the case. It does represent a major departure. But it is also true that Trump embraced tax cuts and coronavirus spending that totaled well over $4 trillion — tossing aside long-standing Republican concerns about deficits and government spending — and also called for a massive infrastructure program of his own, though he never really pushed it.

In other words, the landscape began to change before Biden took office. But it is also the case that Biden has resisted advocating things like single-payer health care that could trigger the kind of political backlash the occurred when President Barack Obama successfully passed the Affordable Care Act. And as happy as many liberal Democrats are with the way Biden is governing, he has not fully embraced all that they would like to see done.

In other times, the $6 trillion cost might have produced sticker shock for many Americans, and perhaps that eventually will be the case. But the programmatic details, where the money would go, so far focus mainly on broadly popular programs, from $1,400 checks to individuals and child tax credits in the coronavirus relief plan to things like universal prekindergarten for 3 and 4-year-olds, two years of free tuition at community colleges, access to affordable child care, paid family and medical leave, and home health care for the elderly.

Government spending on social safety-net programs has been reduced compared with previous years. Over the past decade, needs have gone unattended because of the standoff between congressional Republicans and Obama, the sheer obstructionism of the GOP’s right-wing faction in Congress — whose members resisted virtually all spending — and then the angry politics of the Trump years.

The pandemic and the killing of George Floyd helped shine a bright light on the inequalities in the economy and the social structure, highlighting racial gaps in health care; the crushing of service-sector workers and their families as the hospitality, tourism and restaurant industries took major hits; and the departure of many women from the workforce because the absence of child care and the closing of schools fell most heavily on them.

Biden’s agenda represents a significant rebalancing of the nation’s priorities, though the effects will take considerable time to be fully felt. Money in the coronavirus relief package will be disbursed over the next few years. The money in the two packages that are in negotiation on Capitol Hill would be spent over a much longer time frame, but those trillions would have the greatest impact on changing national priorities.

Public opinion is mixed as Biden pushes to enact the rest of the agenda. The relief package is highly popular, while the infrastructure package enjoys less support, though still a slight majority. There is no current polling on the most recent package, the American Families Plan.

Support for bigger government has shifted since the early part of the previous decade and now stands statistically the same as support for smaller government with fewer services. But when people are asked about Biden, 53 percent say they are concerned that he will do too much to increase the size and scope of government compared with 45 percent who say they are not concerned about that, according to the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll.

What makes Biden’s situation unique from those of past presidents who have pushed for major changes — whether Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson or Reagan — is the difference between sizable real or working political majorities and the thinnest possible majorities upon which Biden’s hopes rest.

Biden is attempting transformative change on a base smaller by far than any of those previous presidents enjoyed, which is what makes the political gamble so big. If he succeeds and the economy roars through 2022 and then the public decides that, rather than concerns about deficits and spending, they prefer a government attending more aggressively to the social inequities, then Biden and the Democrats could prosper. But if things were to go the other way, that could easily put Republicans back in the driver’s seat and allow for the reappearance of Trumpism.

“The Biden administration is making an enormous wager on a certain vision of the future,” said William Galston of the Brookings Institution. “If they turn out to be right, it will not only be transformational but celebrated in history as such. It will have leveraged the thinnest possible political majority into very large accomplishments. But simply to state that thesis is to illustrate just how remarkable it would be if this line of policy and if this political strategy prevails.”

Negotiations lie ahead and Biden has signaled he’s prepared to make some changes. But in broad strokes, he has set his course and it is anything but timid, incremental or risk-free.“

Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Rep. Clyburn: Democrats will ‘surprise a lot of people after redistricting’

udge Declines Immediate Release of Video in North Carolina Shooting joint in the “law enforcement” covering up of the police shooting of a man in the back of the head.

Judge Declines Immediate Release of Video in North Carolina Shooting

April 28, 2021, 1:35 p.m. ET14 minutes ago

“Andrew Brown Jr. was killed last week by sheriff’s deputies.

Demonstrators gathered in support of Andrew Brown Jr. in Elizabeth City, N.C., on Tuesday. — Carlos Bernate for The New York Times

ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. — A North Carolina judge on Wednesday declined to immediately release the body-camera footage in the shooting death of Andrew Brown Jr., agreeing with a prosecutor to delay its public dissemination for at least 30 days.

The Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office and lawyers for a group of media outlets, including The New York Times, petitioned Judge Jeff Foster to release the videos in a hearing that came after days of demands by protesters and elected officials to make the footage public.

Judge Foster denied the release altogether to the media outlets, saying they did not have legal standing to request the videos, but said that Mr. Brown’s family could view the footage. He directed the authorities to make redacted versions of the videos from five body cameras and one dashboard camera available within 10 days to Mr. Brown’s adult son, Khalil Ferebee, and his immediate family within one degree of kinship, plus one lawyer licensed to practice law in the state of North Carolina.

In arguments before Judge Foster, the local prosecutor, Robert Andrew Womble, said the body-camera footage shows that Mr. Brown struck deputies with his car while trying to escape and that deputies did not begin firing until after that moment.

Members of Mr. Brown’s family, plus one of the family’s lawyers, were shown 20 seconds of redacted footage on Monday. Chantel Cherry-Lassiter, the lawyer, said the footage showed Mr. Brown sitting inside his car, hands “firmly on the wheel,” when deputies began shooting.

But Mr. Womble, at the hearing, called that account “patently false.”

Also at the hearing, a lawyer for the Pasquotank County deputies involved in the shooting death said the killing was justified.

Mr. Womble, in arguing to delay the public release of the footage by at least 30 days, also said that if charges are brought against the deputies, he would not want the video shown until their trial.

The hearing came amid simmering tension in Elizabeth City, a majority-Black city of about 18,000 people. Residents have been peacefully protesting in the streets since the death of Mr. Brown, who was Black. On Tuesday, the city and surrounding Pasquotank County, both already under self-imposed states of emergency, established nightly curfews from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.

On Tuesday, lawyers for the family, including Ben Crump, who has represented the families of George Floyd and several other people killed by the police, continued to express anger that they were shown only a snippet of what must have transpired, saying that Mr. Brown had been subject to an “execution.”

Deputies from the Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office fired several times at Mr. Brown after arriving at his house on April 21 to serve drug warrants, according to Ms. Cherry-Lassiter. Seven deputies were placed on administrative leave after the killing.

The shooting continued, she said, as Mr. Brown drove away. Lawyers for the family have asserted that Mr. Brown, 42, was unarmed.

The Sheriff’s Office filed a petition in state court late Monday asking that the footage be released to Mr. Brown’s adult son, Khalil Ferebee, after mounting pressure from a range of officials, including Gov. Roy Cooper and the Elizabeth City Council, that it be made public. Under state law, only a judge can authorize the release of body camera footage.

Sheriff Tommy Wooten II, who has faced calls to resign from the local N.A.A.C.P., has said that he supports the release of the footage as long as it would not jeopardize the investigation into the shooting by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation.

The findings of an official government autopsy have not been publicly released. But Wayne Kendall, one of the lawyers for the family, said on Tuesday that an independent pathologist concluded that Mr. Brown was shot four times in his right arm and once in the back of his head, a finding that supported the lawyers’ contention that Mr. Brown had been shot while fleeing the scene.

“This, in fact, was a fatal wound to the back of Mr. Brown’s head as he was leaving the site, trying to evade being shot at by these particular law enforcement officers who we believe did nothing but a straight-up execution,” Mr. Kendall said.

The shooting of Mr. Brown took place one day after a jury found a former Minneapolis police officer guilty of murder in the killing of Mr. Floyd and as police violence against Black people has come under intense scrutiny across the country.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced on Tuesday that it had opened a civil rights investigation into the North Carolina shooting.

And Mr. Cooper, in a tweet, said he had appointed a special prosecutor who would “help assure the community and Mr. Brown’s family that a decision on pursuing criminal charges is conducted without bias.”

Mr. Cooper said his position reflected the recommendation, made in a recent state task force report on criminal justice reform, to appoint a special prosecutor to handle all police use-of-force cases.“

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Thursday, April 29, 2021