Donavan McKinney announces run for Congress, seeking to oust Shri Thanedar
With that move, McKinney, 32, of Detroit, would be a primary challenger to incumbent Rep. Shri Thanedar, a Democrat who won that seat in the 2022 and 2024 elections. In his campaign materials, he said Thanedar has more in common with President Trump and Elon Musk than he does with the people of the Congressional district.
District 13 includes portions of Detroit and some of its suburbs, including Lincoln Park and Hamtramck.
"I'm not running for Congress because I'm a millionaire or a billionaire. I'm running because I'm not," McKinney said in his campaign announcement. "I'm running because our community deserves to have someone fighting back against the Trump-Musk administration who knows our struggles of housing insecurity, of wages that haven't kept up with the cost of living, of environmental racism, and more — someone who has lived those struggles, and will fight for us with the urgency that this moment demands."
McKinney's campaign announcement included a video, social media and website launch.
"People across this country and even the world know Detroit – or they think they do. They know our music, our sports, our struggle. But what people always forget is none of this is possible without our people," his video script said.
"This district is one of the poorest places in America. But the mighty 13th knows hard work better than anyone. It's the people who clock in, generation after generation, shift after shift, who get forgotten first. ... I'm running for Congress because we deserve better."
His platform includes bringing economic security to those who have been adversely affected by high utility costs and other expenses. He is focusing on environmental quality and pollution mitigation so that children living in Metro Detroit have healthier air, citing his own history of an asthmatic cough developed while growing up in Detroit.
He also emphasizes quality public education and a robust public transit system.
In Lansing, McKinney represents the poorest legislative district in the state, with a median income of less than $20,000 among the residents. In that role, he sought funding for community violence intervention programs, community recreation centers and lead water pipe replacement.
McKinney attended Detroit Public Schools and is a graduate of the University of Michigan.
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The Hill
13 minutes ago
- The Hill
Trump notches winning streak in Supreme Court emergency docket deluge
President Trump is on a winning streak at the Supreme Court with conservative-majority justices giving the green light for the president to resume his sweeping agenda. Their recent blessing of his firings of more independent agency leaders is the latest example of the court going the administration's way. This White House in six months has already brought more emergency appeals to the high court than former President Biden did during his four years in office, making it an increasingly dominant part of the Supreme Court's work. But as the court issues more and more emergency decisions, the practice has sometimes come under criticism — even by other justices. Trump prompts staggering activity Trump's Justice Department filed its 21 st emergency application on Thursday, surpassing the 19 that the Biden administration filed during his entire four-year term. The court has long dealt with requests to delay executions on its emergency docket, but the number of politically charged requests from the sitting administration has jumped in recent years, further skyrocketing under Trump. 'The numbers are startling,' said Kannon Shanmugam, who leads Paul, Weiss' Supreme Court practice, at a Federalist Society event Thursday. Trump's Justice Department asserts the burst reflects how 'activist' federal district judges have improperly blocked the president's agenda. Trump's critics say it shows how the president himself is acting lawlessly. But some legal experts blame Congress for being missing in action. 'There are a lot of reasons for this growth, but I think the biggest reason, in some sense, is the disappearance of Congress from the scene,' Shanmugam said. In his second term, Trump has almost always emerged victorious at the Supreme Court. The administration successfully halted lower judges' orders in all but two of the decided emergency appeals, and a third where they only partially won. On immigration, the justices allowed the administration to revoke temporary legal protections for hundreds of thousands of migrants and swiftly deport people to countries where they have no ties while separately rebuffing a judge who ruled for migrants deported to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act. Other cases involve efforts to reshape the federal bureaucracy and spending. The Supreme Court allowed the administration to freeze $65 million in teacher grants, provide Department of Government Efficiency personnel with access to sensitive Social Security data, proceed with mass firings of probationary employees and broader reorganizations and dismantle the Education Department. Last month, Trump got perhaps his biggest win yet, when the Supreme Court clawed back federal judges' ability to issue universal injunctions. The most recent decision, meanwhile, concerned Trump's bid to expand presidential power by eviscerating independent agency leaders' removal protections. The justices on Wednesday enabled Trump to fire three members on the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Decisions often contain no explanation Unlike normal Supreme Court cases that take months to resolve, emergency cases follow a truncated schedule. The justices usually resolve the appeals in a matter of days after a singular round of written briefing and no oral argument. And oftentimes, the court acts without explanation. Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, two of Trump's three appointees, have long defended the practice. Last year, the duo cautioned that explaining their preliminary thinking may 'create a lock-in effect' as a case progresses. At the Federalist Society event, Shanmugam suggested the court might have more energy for its emergency cases if the justices less frequently wrote separately on the merits docket — a dig at the many dissents and concurrences issued this term. But the real challenge, he said, is the speed at which the cases must be decided. 'It takes time to get members of the court to agree on reasoning, and sometimes I think it's therefore more expedient for the court to issue these orders without reasoning,' he said. 'Even though I think we would all agree that, all things being equal, it would be better for the court to provide more of that.' The frequent lack of explanation has at times left wiggle room and uncertainty. A month ago, the Supreme Court lifted a judge's injunction requiring the Trump administration to provide migrants with certain due process before deporting them to a country where they have no ties. With no explanation from the majority — only the liberal justices in dissent — the judge believed he could still enforce his subsequent ruling, which limited plans to deport a group of violent criminals to the war-torn country of South Sudan. The Trump administration accused him of defying the Supreme Court. Ultimately, the justices rebuked the judge, with even liberal Justice Elena Kagan agreeing. The Supreme Court's emergency interventions have also left lower judges to grapple with their precedential weight in separate cases. After the high court in May greenlit Trump's firings at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), the administration began asserting lower courts still weren't getting the message. The emergency decision led many court watchers to believe the justices are poised to overturn their 90-year-old precedent protecting independent agency leaders from termination without cause. But several judges have since continued to block Trump's firings at other independent agencies, since the precedent still technically remains on the books. The tensions came to a head after a judge reinstated fired CPSC members. The Supreme Court said the earlier case decides how the later case must be interpreted, providing arguably their most succinct guidance yet for how their emergency rulings should be interpreted. 'Although our interim orders are not conclusive as to the merits, they inform how a court should exercise its equitable discretion in like cases,' the unsigned ruling reads. Liberals object to emergency docket practices The lack of explanation in many of the court's emergency decisions has frustrated court watchers and judges alike, leading critics to call it the 'shadow docket.' Those critics include the Supreme Court's own liberal justices. 'Courts are supposed to explain things. That's what courts do,' Kagan said while speaking at a judicial conference Thursday. Kagan pointed to the court's decision last week greenlighting Trump's mass layoffs at the Education Department. She noted a casual observer might think the president is legally authorized to dismantle the agency, but the government didn't present that argument. Her fellow liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and, particularly, Ketanji Brown Jackson, have made more forceful criticisms. Jackson increasingly accuses her colleagues of threatening the rule of law. She called one recent emergency decision 'hubristic and senseless' and warned another was 'unleashing devastation.' Late last month, Jackson wrote that her colleagues had 'put both our legal system, and our system of government, in grave jeopardy.' But in Wednesday's decision letting the CPSC firings move forward, the trio were united. Kagan accused the majority of having 'effectively expunged' the Supreme Court precedent protecting independent agency leaders, Humphrey's Executor v. United States, from its records. 'And it has accomplished those ends with the scantiest of explanations,' she wrote. Kagan noted that the 'sole professed basis' for the stay order was its prior stay order in another case involving Trump's firing of independent agency heads. That decision — which cleared the way for Trump to fire NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox and MSPB member Cathy Harris — was also 'minimally (and, as I have previously shown, poorly) explained,' she said. 'So only another under-reasoned emergency order undergirds today's,' Kagan wrote. 'Next time, though, the majority will have two (if still under reasoned) orders to cite.'
Chicago Tribune
43 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
How redistricting in Texas and other states could change the game for US House elections
WASHINGTON — Redistricting usually happens after the once-a-decade population count by the U.S. Census Bureau or in response to a court ruling. Now, Texas Republicans want to break that tradition — and other states could follow suit. President Trump has asked the Texas Legislature to create districts, in time for next year's midterm elections, that will send five more Republicans to Washington and make it harder for Democrats to regain the majority and blunt his agenda. The state has 38 seats in the House. Republicans now hold 25 and Democrats 12, with one seat vacant after the death of a Democrat. 'There's been a lot more efforts by the parties and political actors to push the boundaries – literally and figuratively – to reconfigure what the game is,' said Doug Spencer, Rothgerber Jr. Chair in Constitutional Law at the University of Colorado. Other states are waiting to see what Texas does and whether to follow suit. The rules of redistricting can be vague and variable; each state has its own set of rules and procedures. Politicians are gauging what voters will tolerate when it comes to politically motivated mapmaking. Here's what to know about the rules of congressional redistricting: Every decade, the Census Bureau collects population data used to divide the 435 House seats among the 50 states based on the updated head count. It's a process known as reapportionment. States that grew relative to others might gain a seat at the expense of those whose populations stagnated or declined. States use their own procedures to draw lines for the assigned number of districts. The smallest states receive just one representative, which means the entire state is a single congressional district. Some state constitutions require independent commissions to devise the political boundaries or to advise the legislature. When legislatures take the lead, lawmakers can risk drawing lines that end up challenged in court, usually for violating the Voting Rights Act. Mapmakers can get another chance to resubmit new maps. Sometimes, judges draw the maps on their own. By the first midterm elections after the latest population count, each state is ready with its maps, but those districts do not always stick. Courts can find that the political lines are unconstitutional. There is no national impediment to a state trying to redraw districts in the middle of the decade and to do it for political reasons, such as increasing representation by the party in power. 'The laws about redistricting just say you have to redistrict after every census,' Spencer said. 'And then some state legislatures got a little clever and said, well it doesn't say we can't do it more.' Some states do have laws that would prevent midcycle redistricting or make it difficult to do so in a way that benefits one party. Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., has threatened to retaliate against the GOP push in Texas by drawing more favorable Democratic seats in his state. That goal, however, is complicated by a constitutional amendment that requires an independent commission to lead the process. Texas has done it before. When the Legislature failed to agree on a redistricting plan after the 2000 census, a federal court stepped in with its own map. Republican Tom DeLay of Texas, who was then the U.S. House majority leader, thought his state should have five more districts friendly to his party. 'I'm the majority leader and we want more seats,′′ he said at the time. Statehouse Democrats protested by fleeing to Oklahoma, depriving the Legislature of enough votes to officially conduct any business. But DeLay eventually got his way, and Republicans replaced Democrats in five seats in 2004. In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts should not get involved in debates over political gerrymandering, the practice of drawing districts for partisan gain. In that decision, Chief Justice John Roberts said redistricting is 'highly partisan by any measure.' But courts may demand new maps if they believe the congressional boundaries dilute the votes of a racial minority group, in violation of the Voting Rights Act. Washington Rep. Suzan DelBene, who leads House Democrats' campaign arm, indicated at a Christian Science Monitor event that if Texas follows through on passing new maps, Democratic-led states would look at their own political lines. 'If they go down this path, absolutely folks are going to respond across the country,' DelBene said. 'We're not going to be sitting back with one hand tied behind our back while Republicans try to undermine voices of the American people.' In New York, Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul recently joined Newsom in expressing openness to taking up mid-decade redistricting. But state laws mandating independent commissions or blunting the ability to gerrymander would come into play. Among Republican-led states, Ohio could try to further expand the 10-5 edge that the GOP holds in the House delegation; a quirk in state law requires Ohio to redraw its maps before the 2026 midterms. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he was considering early redistricting and 'working through what that would look like.'
Politico
44 minutes ago
- Politico
Americans don't approve of Trump. But they don't like Democrats either.
While voters still have significant concerns over the president's and the Republican Party's handling of the economy, inflation, tariffs and foreign policy, the majority of respondents nonetheless say they trust Republicans more to handle those issues in Congress. Despite criticism of the administration's handling of inflation — disapproval outweighed approval by 11 points in the poll — the Republican Party, by 10 points, is trusted more than Democrats to deal with inflation. That's the same case when it comes to thoughts on the president's drastic tariffs policy. By 17 points, voters disapproved of Trump's handling of tariffs, while still trusting Republicans more on the issue to Democrats by 7 points. Health care and vaccine policy are the only two policy issues in which respondents favor Democrats to Republicans on. Both Trump and the Republican Party at large are also disliked by more Americans than liked, but by far lower margins than Democrats in this survey. The president has a -7 point net unfavorability, while the GOP is at -11 in the WSJ survey. The Journal poll has found Trump's favorability rating to be relatively stable through the beginning of his second term. But other recent surveys have found far lower approval ratings for Trump. 'The Democratic brand is so bad that they don't have the credibility to be a critic of Trump or the Republican Party,' Anzalone told the newspaper. 'Until they reconnect with real voters and working people on who they're for and what their economic message is, they're going to have problems.' Despite widespread irritation of Democrats, voters still said that if an election was held today, they would back a Democrat for Congress over a Republican by 3 points, 46 to 43 percent. It's still a drop from this time in 2017, six months into Trump's first term, when Democrats held an 8-point advantage in that category. The Journal polled 1,500 registered voters, conducted from July 16-20 by landline and cellphone. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
