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Vox
a day ago
- Politics
- Vox
A new Supreme Court case is an existential threat to the Voting Rights Act
is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. He received a JD from Duke University and is the author of two books on the Supreme Court. Future Congressman John Lewis, then the chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and a key activist in the fight to enact the Voting Rights Act, speaks at the March on Washington in 1963. Getty Images In mid-May, two Republicans on a federal appeals court declared that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — the landmark law that a Senate report once described as 'the most successful civil rights statute in the history of the Nation' — is effectively null and void. The Voting Rights Act was one of the Black civil rights movement's signature accomplishments, and is widely considered one of the most consequential laws in American history because it was extraordinarily successful in ending Jim Crow restrictions on voting. Just two years after it became law, for example, Black voter registration rates in the former Jim Crow stronghold of Mississippi rose from 6.7 percent to nearly 60 percent. SCOTUS, Explained Get the latest developments on the US Supreme Court from senior correspondent Ian Millhiser. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. The two Republicans' decision in Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v. Howe attempts to strip private litigants of their ability to enforce the law, which bans race discrimination in elections. If the lower court's decision in Turtle Mountain is ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court, the Justice Department could still bring suits to enforce the law, but the Justice Department is currently controlled by President Donald Trump. As federal Judge Lavenski Smith noted in a 2023 opinion, over the past 40 years various plaintiffs have brought 182 successful lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act. Only 15 of these suits were brought solely by the DOJ. So, even if the United States still had a Justice Department committed to voting rights, the premise of the two Republicans' decision in Turtle Mountain is that the overwhelming majority of successful Voting Rights Act suits should have ended in failure. Turtle Mountain arises on the Court's 'shadow docket,' a mix of emergency motions and other matters that the justices decide on an expedited basis. So the Court could reveal whether it intends to nuke the Voting Rights Act within weeks. The idea that the Voting Rights Act is virtually unenforceable — and that, somehow, no one noticed this fact for four decades — appears to originate from Justice Neil Gorsuch, who suggested that the law may be a near-nullity in a 2021 concurring opinion. Ironically, less than a month ago, Gorsuch authored the Court's majority opinion in Medina v. Planned Parenthood, which cuts against his own attack on the law. Still, Gorsuch may ultimately prevail in his attack on this landmark law. Though much of the Medina opinion cuts against the lower court's reasoning in Turtle Mountain, Medina changed many of the rules governing which federal laws may be enforced through private lawsuits. Gorsuch's Medina opinion did not just narrow the rights of private litigants to bring suits enforcing federal law; it appeared to overrule the Court's two-year-old opinion in Health and Hospital Corporation v. Talevski (2023), which read the rights of private litigants much more expansively. It's hard to identify a principled distinction between Talevski and Medina, but there is an important political distinction between the two cases. Unlike Talevski, the Medina lawsuit was brought by Planned Parenthood, an abortion provider that Republicans love to hate. So the most likely explanation for the Court's shift in Medina is that the Republican justices wanted Planned Parenthood to lose, and were willing to change the rules to ensure this outcome. The Court's Republicans have shown similar contempt for the Voting Rights Act. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Republican justices deactivated a core provision of the law, which required states with a history of racist election practices to 'preclear' any new election laws with federal officials before they took effect. Other Supreme Court decisions have written arbitrary limits into the Voting Right Act that appear nowhere in the law's text, such as legal protection for voting restrictions that were commonplace in 1982. As Justice Elena Kagan said in a 2021 opinion, 'in the last decade, this Court has treated no statute worse.' So, while there are no good legal arguments supporting the lower court's decision in Turtle Mountain, it is still possible that the Court's Republican majority will neutralize the Voting Rights Act anyway. The dispute at the heart of the case Turtle Mountain is a dispute about what are known as 'implied causes of action.' There are many federal laws that do not state explicitly that they can be enforced through private lawsuits, but that nonetheless are understood to permit such suits. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court appears to change the rules governing when these suits are permitted about as often as Gorsuch changes his necktie. For many years, the Court applied a strong presumption that federal laws must be enforceable. In Allen v. State Board of Elections (1969), an early Voting Rights Act case, the Court held that 'a federal statute passed to protect a class of citizens, although not specifically authorizing members of the protected class to institute suit, nevertheless implied a private right of action.' As the Court moved rightward, it started announcing increasingly more restrictive rules governing when federal laws could be enforced through private suits. In its 2023 Talevski decision, however, the Court finally seemed to settle on a rule that would govern these sorts of cases moving forward. Under Talevski, a federal law may be enforced by private litigants if it is ''phrased in terms of the persons benefited' and contains 'rights-creating,' individual-centric language with an 'unmistakable focus on the benefited class.'' Thus, for example, a law stating that 'no state may prevent a hungry person from eating French fries' would be enforceable through private-person lawsuits, because the law's text focuses on the people who benefit from it (people who are hungry). A similar statute saying that 'states shall not impede access to fried potatoes' would not be enforceable, because it lacks the 'individual-centric language' demanded by Talevski. Two years later, however, in Medina, the Supreme Court considered a federal law that permits 'any individual eligible for medical assistance' under Medicaid to choose their own health provider. South Carolina violated this law by forbidding Medicaid patients from choosing Planned Parenthood as their health provider, but the Republican justices declared that this law is unenforceable — despite the fact that it is 'phrased in terms of the persons benefited' as Talevski demands. Gorsuch's Medina opinion is difficult to parse. Unlike Talevski, it does not state a clear legal rule explaining when federal laws are enforceable. It doesn't even quote Talveski's language about laws 'phrased in terms of the persons benefited.' That said, Medina does spend several pages suggesting that statutes, like the one in Talevski, which actually use the word 'right' in their text — as in individuals' rights — are enforceable. (Talevski involved several provisions of federal Medicaid law that protect nursing home residents, including a provision that protects the 'right to be free from' physical or drug-induced restraints.) In any event, the Voting Rights Act should be enforceable under either the clearly articulated rule announced in Talevski, or the more haphazard rule announced in Medina. Here is the relevant text from the act: No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color… Under Talevski, this statute may be enforced through private lawsuits because it is phrased in terms of the person benefited: 'any citizen of the United States.' Under Medina, the statute may also be enforced through private lawsuits because the law refers to 'the right' of any citizen to vote. This provision, moreover, appears in a section of the United States Code entitled 'denial or abridgement of right to vote on account of race or color through voting qualifications or prerequisites; establishment of violation.' That section appears in a chapter of the US Code entitled 'Enforcement of Voting Rights.' And, of course, the law that created this provision is called the 'Voting Rights Act.' So, even under the silly standard that Gorsuch appeared to lay out in his Medina opinion, the Voting Rights Act may be enforced through private lawsuits. The Supreme Court should not be allowed to change the rules, and then apply them retroactively to old laws There is something remarkably cruel about this entire exercise. Congress could not possibly have known in 1965, when it enacted the Voting Rights Act, that the Supreme Court would declare decades later that statutes must have 'individual-centric language' or they cannot be enforced by private litigants. Nor could it have known that, not long thereafter, the Supreme Court would hand down another decision that seems to scrap the Talevski rule and replace it with a new one that requires Congress to use the magic word 'right.' Similarly, as the Turtle Mountain plaintiffs point out in their brief to the justices, 'from 1982 through August 2024, 'private plaintiffs have been party to 96.4% of Section 2 claims that produced published opinions … and the sole litigants in 86.7% of these decisions.'' None of the courts that decided these cases could have anticipated Gorsuch's logic in Medina.
Fox News
2 days ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Hunter Biden rages against ‘f---ing thug' Trump, invokes KKK in immigration rant
EDITOR'S NOTE: VIDEO INCLUDES PROFANITY Hunter Biden raged against President Donald Trump and his mass deportation efforts during an expletive-laden interview with a Philadelphia podcaster in which he calls his father's successor a "f—ing thug" and draws parallels to 19th Century government actions against Black freedmen. Biden and "Channel 5" podcaster Andrew Callaghan spoke for three hours on a range of topics, from the former first son's cocaine use, to the former president's disastrous debate, to theories that he was marketing paintings to assuage overseas interests in favor of his dad. On immigration, Biden began by revisiting the Reconstruction Era and the Ku Klux Klan's early role as a voter suppression organization against Black Americans. He discussed an 1873 incident in Colfax, La., wherein former Confederate militiamen and the Klan converged with a cannon on a courthouse where several Black men were defending GOP officeholders following a contested election. Many of those defenders were slaughtered outside the courthouse and Biden said such violence and intimidation continued throughout the country thereafter. Connecting that time to present, Biden said that America gets stuck in a "permanent Jim Crow loop" that when the "more perfect union" is nearly realized, a "symbiosis between money and power" ruins it. "There is a minority group that those in power, that came into power through democratically elected means, are going to target this minority group because they're stealing all the jobs," he said, as clips played of Trump from 2016 speaking about "Mexico not sending their best" and claims of migrants "eating the dogs" in Ohio. "And what we're going to do is we're going to send masked men to this marginalized group, and we are going to take them, put them on planes, put them on buses, put them on trains, and send them to a prison camp in a foreign country," Biden fumed. "What am I describing right then? Am I describing Germany? Or am I just describing the United States right now? Because I will tell you what. You think that the prison in El Salvador is not a f---ing concentration camp, you're out of your f---ing mind." Biden said some Democrats are too soft on the issue and telling others that people are upset about illegal immigration. "F--- you," Biden replied. "How do you think your hotel room gets cleaned? How do think you got food on your f---ing table? Who do you think washes your dishes? Who do think does your f---ing garden? Who do you think is here by the f---ing sheer f---ing just grit and will that they figured out a way to get here because they thought that they could give themselves and their family a better chance and he's somehow convinced all of us that these people are the f---ing criminals." Biden then claimed White men are "45 times more likely" to commit a violent crime than illegal immigrants. He also reserved invective for former President Barack Obama's top acolytes, including the "Pod Save America" hosts, and top advisers David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel. Biden said Axelrod wrongly surmised that Democrats need to understand why people are upset and appeal to them. "Well, the only people that f---ing appealed to those f---ing white voters was Joe Biden, 81 years old, and he got 81 million votes. And he did because not because he appeased their f---ing Trumpian sense, but because he challenged it," Biden said. "And he said, you can be an 81-year-old Catholic from f---ing Scranton that doesn't understand it, but still has empathy for transgender people and immigrants," he said, as Callaghan posted a photo of former Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine. If he were president, Biden said, he would call Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and warn him that "you either f---ing send them back [to the U.S.] or I'm going to f---ing invade." "It's a f---ing crime what they're doing. He's a f---ing dictator thug," he added. When Callaghan asked if Biden meant Trump or Bukele was a "thug," Biden indicated "both."
Fox News
2 days ago
- Politics
- Fox News
DNC vice chair compares President Trump to notorious segregationists during heated town hall event
The DNC's vice chair appeared to liken President Donald Trump to Jim Crow-era segregationists and warned of impending strife during a Philadelphia town hall alongside former Rep. Beto O'Rourke. Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, D-Philadelphia, who survived a June re-vote of DNC leadership that saw the departure of David Hogg, warmed up the crowd in America's sixth-largest city by drawing comparisons between the racial strife of the past and Trump's style of governance. Speaking about "would-be autocrats and would-be kings," Kenyatta remarked that "these guys are a--holes, but they're not super creative." He said such "would-be kings" – alluding to Trump – rely on "historical revisionism" in the style of 1930s book-burnings and censorship of websites to "forget who we are as Americans." "This is not, in fact, the first time we've had to deal with a guy like the one in the White House," Kenyatta said. He said it is key for Americans to remember the protests of female suffragists, civil rights leaders like the late Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, and people who demonstrated at New York's Stonewall bar for gay rights. "They found themselves in a moment just like we find ourselves where they didn't know the end of the story," the Democratic Party leader went on. "We now benefit from knowing the end of the story – but what they all knew for certain was that there were dogs at the end of the damn bridge, that there was fire hoses at the bridge, that they were going to be losing their jobs and have to move out of their communities…" He noted how then-Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Theophilus "Bull" Connor used fire hoses and dogs on civil rights protesters in the mid-20th century. "That is where we are right now in our moment of the story. We can see the dogs. We can see the firehoses," he claimed. "And we have a guy, whenever he's not hanging out on Epstein's Island, who is saying some version of 'segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever'," he said of Trump. The latter half of Kenyatta's sentence referenced former Alabama Democratic Gov. George Wallace's campaign slogan of the 1960s. "But I don't know about each and every one of you, but I am not bowing to a damn king. I'm certainly not kissing the ring of a king," Kenyatta fumed. "And we have a bad relationship in Philadelphia with kings, and we're not changing that relationship now." O'Rourke, whose last electoral effort -- to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz -- failed, told the crowd that Republicans in places like Texas feel too comfortable that they need to "show up for anything" their constituents want. He pointed to efforts to redistrict mid-decade there, and said Democrats need to take that cue no matter how uncomfortable they might feel about violating norms. "[S]tates that have the power to do so, that're led by Democrats right now, must also redistrict to add Democratic advantage; in California where we can pick up some seats," he said. "And I know that there are some of you old-line, old-school Democrats -- and I used to be one of them -- who were like, hey, wait a second, this isn't right, this is how it's supposed to work." "Well, f--- how it supposed to work, we need to win political power," O'Rourke fumed. Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment.
New York Post
7 days ago
- Politics
- New York Post
MLB's ‘apology' to Georgia, our party's nuts to ‘welcome' Zohran Mamdani and other commentary
Sports desk: MLB's 'Apology' to Georgia Major League Baseball was 'implicitly making amends to Atlanta with Tuesday's All-Star Game after moving the 2021 game in protest of Georgia election reforms,' declares J.T. Young at The Wall Street Journal. Objections to Georgia's 'Election Integrity Act, a package of common-sense measures to improve the voting process,' included calling it 'racist' and 'Jim Crow in the 21st Century,' and so MLB 'moved the All-Star Game to Denver.' Yet 'criticisms of Georgia's 2021 election law as racist and restrictive proved moot in the 2022 and 2024 election cycles.' Early voting 'surged' in 2022, 'hit a record high in 2024' and 'the number of black Georgians casting ballots increased by 800,000' between 2020 and 2024. 'By bringing the All-Star Game back to Georgia,' Major League Baseball was making 'a baseball apology.' Democrat: Our Party's Nuts To 'Welcome' Zohran Advertisement Veteran Dem operative Joe Klein at Sanity Clause mocks calls to welcome Zohran Mamdani into the 'big tent' of the Democratic Party. 'Lefties' like Mamdani are 'not a 'new brand' but the same old soreheads.' While his own 'big tent is closed to QAnon, Proud Boys. . . and to the Democratic Socialists of America,' many Dems are 'wobbly on Mamdani. Where the hell are you, Chuck Schumer?' After all, 'the Democratic Socialists are the Proud Boys of the Democratic Party.' The sad truth is that socialism makes 'a lot of sense' if you have 'no sense of how things actually work' — it's for people who have 'idealism but no experience.' Meanwhile, the DNC is busying planning 'litigation' against President Trump, but it has no plans for immigration or tax reform. 'Instead, we get anti-zionism and state-run grocery stores.' Conservative: What the Autopen Scandal Reveals It would be hard to find 'any reasonably informed American who honestly thinks President Joe Biden wasn't in a state of serious cognitive decline at the end of his term in office,' thunders The Federalist's John Daniel Davidson. The recent Times article on the Biden 'administration's use of the autopen' is an attempt at 'damage control' in light of probes into 'the high-profile clemency decisions that came down in the final days' of his presidency. The 'scandal reveals just how far the deep state was willing to go to keep a mentally compromised figurehead in office.' Indeed, at the end of the day, the Biden 'presidency stands as one of the greatest political scandals perpetrated against the American people' — and 'someone needs to answer for that.' Advertisement Science beat: Climate Idiocy Over Rat Boom A study claiming that 'global warming' caused an 'increase in the urban rat population' has gotten undeserved credit, scoffs Aaron Brown at Reason. The study 'contains nothing meaningful about either climate change or rats,' because, for starters, its underlying data was drawn from 'counting rat complaints reported by residents.' Different cities have different ways of recording rat complaints, with some including 'calls about roaches, bedbugs, cats, dogs, raccoons, and mice.' Other cities only recorded rat bites. 'Weak data and inaccurate statistics' make for bad science and are no basis for forming public policy. DC watch: Hold the Tears Over Rubio's Cuts Advertisement The New York Times and Washington Post are sounding alarms after Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued layoffs in his department, but the move requires 'a little perspective,' cautions the Washington Examiner's Byron York. With more than 80,000 employees, how 'can a cut of 1,350 be 'devastating?'' Remember, 'the cuts are focused and not across the board,' with 'a significant number' seemingly hitting the department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Team Trump had 'already cut most of DRL's funding, so it was no surprise that the bureau's staff was next' — and they amount to 'only about 1.6% of the agency's staff.' Besides, such offices only 'distracted from the department's core goals.' Rubio needs to 'keep going, to put into place the reforms he envisioned for the department.' — Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
USA Today
7 days ago
- Politics
- USA Today
Who was John Lewis? The civil rights icon inspires 'Good Trouble' protests
Tens of thousands of people are expected to turn out across the country this week to protest President Donald Trump's administration and to honor the legacy of one of the nation's most enduring figureheads in the fight for social justice, John Lewis. The protests, "Good Trouble Lives On," are expected to take place in dozens of cities and towns on July 17, five years to the day since Lewis' death in 2020. The late congressman, who led some of the most seminal demonstrations during the Civil Rights movement, popularized the phrase "good trouble," referring to the kind of nonviolent action and civil disobedience he became known for early in his career. The late 17-term congressman was often called the 'moral compass'' of the U.S. House of Representatives, but he made a name for himself long before he became a lawmaker, as one of the youngest leaders in the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Lewis' biography as a civil rights activist and lawmaker is a long one, involving some of the most significant U.S. political events and figures of the mid-20th century. Here's a brief overview of his past, as planned protests invoke his legacy on July 17. 'Good Trouble' protest locations: See where demonstrations are planned Where was John Lewis born? Lewis is the son of Alabama sharecroppers, born in Troy, Pike County, Alabama on February 21, 1940. Lewis began preaching in local churches when he was 15 years old, according to a biography from Stanford's Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. He then enrolled in the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville after high school. Lewis first met Martin Luther King Jr. in 1958, when he traveled to Montgomery, Alabama, to seek King's help in suing to transfer to Troy State University, an all-white institution closer to his home, according to the institute. Though he ended up not pursuing the litigation, the experience connected Lewis with King and other Black Civil Rights leaders and gave him his nickname, 'the boy from Troy." Inspired to 'get in good trouble again:' Black lawmakers salute the legacy of John Lewis What did John Lewis do during the Civil Rights movement? As a leader in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Lewis challenged Jim Crow segregation across the South, participating in and leading many nonviolent protests. "Lewis became heavily involved in the Nashville movement and participated in a series of student sit-ins in early 1960 that aimed to integrate movie theaters, restaurants, and other businesses," the MLK Research and Education Institute said, "In April 1960, he helped form SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and later participated in the Freedom Rides of 1961." During this time, he rose to prominence within the movement, as chronicled by the National Archives and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library Archives. He was among a group who met with Kennedy in 1963 ahead of the historic March on Washington, and addressed the many thousands who descended upon the National Mall that day before King took the stage to deliver his 'I Have a Dream Speech.' John Lewis' involvement in 'Bloody Sunday' in Selma, Alabama Among all demonstrations and actions, he is perhaps most known for his involvement in what would be called "Bloody Sunday." Lewis helped lead hundreds of peaceful protestors across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965 in support of equal voting rights for Black Americans. The protesters, including a then-25-year-old Lewis, where beaten back brutally by state troopers. Lewis suffered a fractured skull, and many others were injured by deployed gas, clubs, whips, and other weapons wielded by police. The brutal attack galvanized public support for the movement and is seen as a pivotal precursor to the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Until his health failed, Lewis had led an annual bipartisan congressional pilgrimage to Selma to mark that anniversary. He stopped by the pilgrimage months before his death. What was John Lewis' political legacy as a Democratic congressman from Georgia? In 1987, Lewis was elected to represent Georgia's 5th District in the U.S. House of Representatives, often taking the lead on debates and legislation connected to civil rights and social justice, becoming known as the "conscience of the Congress," according to the National Archives. Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said she learned a lot from Lewis during their 30 years serving together in Congress. Pelosi said ''he taught us through words and action what true moral leadership looked like,' while members of the Congressional Black Caucus told USA TODAY that Lewis inspired them to continue the push for civil rights. Lewis was an ally to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and was an outspoken critic of the invasion and subsequent years-long war in Iraq. He also became a leading voice against gun violence and advocated for gun control legislation prominently following the shooting of former Rep. Gabby Giffords. "We have been too quiet for too long,'' Lewis said during a 2016 sit-in in the House chambers over gun control legislation. 'There comes a time when you have to say something, when you have to make a little noise, when you have to move your feet. This is the time.' Contributing: Deborah Barfield Berry and Susan Page, USA TODAY. Kathryn Palmer is a national trending news reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach her at kapalmer@ and on X @KathrynPlmr.
