Courts And Cartography

Hello, it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕

This week brought major redistricting news, some of it coming in the wake of the Supreme Court’s red-letter (and totally unexpected) June ruling to nix Alabama’s congressional map as a racial gerrymander.

After Alabama’s loss, the legislators were supposed to go back to the drawing board to add a second district where Black voters have the opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice. They…did not.

They passed and Gov. Kay Ivey (R-AL) signed yet another map with only one majority Black district.

A panel of judges slapped down the “remedial map” on Tuesday.

“We are deeply troubled that the State enacted a map that the State readily admits does not provide the remedy we said federal law requires,” the judges wrote, calling the lawmakers’ refusal to comply with federal court orders an “extraordinary circumstance.” 

They also note the “lack of political will to respond to the needs of Black voters in Alabama.”

Saying that they have “no reason to believe” that the legislature would produce an adequate map if given another chance, they appointed a special master. Alabama is appealing the decision, and, get this, asking the SUPREME COURT to intervene on its behalf — the same Supreme Court who rejected a very similar map less than three months ago.

Over in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) saw his maximal gerrymander — where he sliced up a Black majority district, to the chagrin of even some Republican legislators — go down in state court. Had he not been intent on humiliating Republicans and proving his governor-king bona fides, he may have accepted their (still gerrymandered!) map which left the Black majority district alone. Now, he faces the horrifying possibility that the map — one of the most extreme partisan gerrymanders in a very gerrymandered country — could be replaced with something (gasp!) even a little bit more fair.

These cases are important on their face: Voter suppression, particularly of Black voters, is one of the most grotesque historical legacies of this country. To the extent that courts can mitigate that disenfranchisement, they should.

Then there’s the political angle. Republicans currently hold the House of Representatives by the barest of majorities. If this round of court action ends with the creation of a handful of Democratic leaning seats — which experts expect — it could level the playing field come 2024.

More on other news below. Let’s dig in. 

— Kate Riga

GOP Sens: Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys 

The Senate was back on Capitol Hill this week. And so was I.

The anxiety throughout the Senate halls was palpable as the reality of a possible government shutdown was on the minds of lawmakers returning from their lengthy August recess. The federal government will shut down unless a spending bill is passed by Sep. 30. That leaves about 14 legislative days for lawmakers to agree on a plan – and even less time for the House as members don’t return to Washington until Tuesday.

As far-right House Republicans risk a government shutdown trying to manipulate concessions out of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), a handful of Senate Republicans made it clear this week that their colleagues on the other side of the building would ultimately be the ones responsible for a potential shutdown.

“I’m convinced it’s happening,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) told reporters on Wednesday when asked if he was worried about a government shutdown. “I just think there are too many people that think that there’s some benefit in that,” he added as he headed to the Senate chamber for a vote. “The House is a raucous place and some people like government shutdowns, so we’ll see.”

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) also told reporters he thinks a shutdown is “very likely.” “Sounds like the House is gonna have a hard time reaching consensus,” he added.

Senate Democrats are on the same page. They have been pointing the finger at far-right Republicans for what they are already describing as a looming “MAGA shutdown.”

“I’m worried about the far right extremists on the Republican side of the House and what they may do to hold hostage the supplemental for Ukraine [and] almost everything else,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told TPM.

— Emine Yücel

It’s A Cozy Club

And you’re not in it. 

That, at least, is the upshot of the latest news cycle revolving around Justice Samuel Alito.

It started in June with two incidents involving Alito’s relationship with the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page which would be surprising if they weren’t already so familiar. In the first, Alito used the section as a platform to publish a preemptive rebuttal of a bombshell ProPublica investigation into his relationship with billionaire Paul Singer. In the second instance, a conservative movement attorney and right-wing commentator named David Rivkin scored a sprawling interview with Alito, publishing it in the WSJ opinion pages along with his co-author James Taranto.

As the interviews were being conducted, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case where Rivkin was representing the plaintiff: Moore v. United States, a matter seemingly about a $14,729 IRS bill which could rewrite the entire federal tax code. That caused Democratic senators to suggest that Alito alternately recuse, or that Chief Justice John Roberts do something about Alito.

It’s less that there’s some conspiracy here between Rivkin and Alito to throw the case in favor of Rivkin’s clients via a quid pro quo involving favorable coverage at the WSJ. Alito doesn’t need that, and it’s missing the point. What this episode shows is that at the commanding heights of the conservative movement really is a small club: the attorneys who rep the big cases, the writers who score the big messaging interviews, the Supreme Court justices who shove the country rightwards are a very, very small group, sometimes small enough to be counted on two fingers.

— Josh Kovensky

“We are about to have some serious respiratory problems — we always do in the fall — and maybe it will be worse this fall and this winter than before. But I think what our children most of all need and I’m the father of three kids under the age of seven. They need us to not be Chicken Little about every single respiratory pandemic and problem that confronts this country.”

That’s Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) giving a floor speech on a new bill he introduced this week proposing a ban on future mask mandates for COVID-19.

It is clear this is a messaging bill from the MAGA loyalist senator during a time when COVID cases across the country are on the rise. It appears to be Vance’s attempt to get out ahead of the pack and position himself as the anti-COVID  senator before a new mass wave of infections that could result in new recommendations on masking at some point this winter.

Besides the fact that this bill will go nowhere in a Democratic-controlled Senate, the “Chicken Little” comparison is dripping with disdain and insensitivity towards the horrors the world endured during the pandemic that killed more than 6,900,000 people globally, according to the World Health Organization. But downplaying real life atrocities to secure a platform for their grievances is what this lot does best.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) pushed back on Vance’s proposal on the Senate floor, calling it a “red herring” and a “false debate” meant to “distract from what the GOP really stands for right now: gimmicks over people.”

— Emine Yücel