V-RA Day
Even the Roberts Court can surprise you. The Voting Rights Act got a shocking victory in the Supreme Court yesterday when justices struck down the Alabama Republican congressional map that shrunk Black representation down to a single, gerrymandered district.
Justices ruled 5-4 that the map violates Section 2 of the VRA, which prohibits race discrimination in voting laws or practices. Now, Alabama will have to redraw the map to likely include two Black-represented districts instead of one.
To call this one a stunner is an understatement. The Roberts Court has shown consistent hostility to voting rights legislation in general, and the Voting Rights Act in particular. In 2013 it gutted Section 5, which limited the ability of historically racist jurisdictions to enforce discrimination through elections. In 2021 it eviscerated Section 2 when it upheld Arizona GOP restrictions on ballot counting that impacted indigenous Americans and other minorities most, while severely restricting their ability to challenge restrictions in court.
All that was really left of section 2 was the partisan redrawing of congressional maps known as gerrymandering. Chief Justice John Roberts conceded in his majority opinion that conservatives may be right that the VRA "impermissibly elevates race" as a factor in dividing up political power. Only, that's not what played out in Alabama, he wrote.
The decision could have implications for other Southern states with large Black voting populations and diluted and gerrymandered districts, including Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Mississippi.
It's a rare expansion of voting power in a grim era, but people may not be celebrating for long. We're still waiting for the court to rule on Moore v Harper and its right-wing assertion of "independent state legislature" theory. That one could put partisan ideologues in charge of voting and federal elections with no ability for governors, courts or anyone else to stop them.
Suddenly it all Licht
There's bad news and good news in Chris Licht's firing as head of CNN this week. I don't work at CNN, and as a mere viewer and reader I don't have an important opinion on whether he should have kept his job after The Atlantic's devastating profile of his brief tenure. (Definitely read it, if you haven't yet.)
A couple weeks ago I wrote about CNN's terrible decision to air a live Trump town hall. It was by no means the only decision that led to Licht's weakening and eventual firing. But it was a very important, visible, and salient one.
What's important from a "news media and democracy" perspective are the impulses that led Licht and his bosses at Warner Bros. Discovery to try to boost CNN's ratings by mollifying and courting Trump voters, and Trump himself. The town hall was just one symptom of the strategy.
Licht was looking to make CNN a "fairer' and friendlier place to Trump supporters. Under his vision it would be a place where voters who think the election was stolen and that their leader is a victim of political witch hunts, rather than a legitimate target of prosecutors, would see their views reflected.
The bad news is that CNN's top execs believed, and likely still do, that Trumpism's systematic lying and institution-killing can be appeased in this way. That responsible journalism, based on parsing truth from lies, can also present the "balanced" view at the halfway point between facts and propaganda.
That's the spirit that engendered the town hall, the one that led to some very dubious panel guest decisions, and the very one that led Licht to encourage CNN journalists to treat Trump's antidemocratic campaign like he was "any other candidate."
The good news is that CNN journalists revolted against that view. Again, the town hall wasn't the only thing that got Licht in trouble with employees. But Tim Alberta's Atlantic profile, and lots of reporting since, show that CNN journalists largely opposed the town hall specifically, and the strategy of "all-sides-ing" politics to please Trump and MAGA Republicans generally.
That's a sign that journalists who want to do their jobs well and responsibly (CNN is full of them) understand that when reporting on an anti-democratic candidate, "balance" cannot be a stand-in for truth.
All the president's fen
Once former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows had his executive privilege claims blown up, it was clear he'd eventually have to testify before a grand jury. That's apparently happened. But between the dual Special Counsel probes, now the questions are: which grand jury did Meadows talk to (Mar-a-Lago/documents? Jan. 6/coup attempt? Both?) and why was he answering questions?
That second one matters a lot, especially since Meadows refused to cooperate after a certain point with the January 6 committee, and took the Fifth in the Fulton County grand jury. If Meadows has now answered questions instead of invoking his right against self-incrimination, did he do it under an immunity deal? Has he flipped on Trump, secretly pleading guilty and agreeing to cooperate with investigators? Does he just feel really rotten and wants to come clean to make up for all that coup-plotting? (LOL.)
Meadows' profile has been so low since the Special Counsel got appointed that it's making Trumpworld nervous.
Either way, as we always say, Meadows' testimony is going to be a big, big deal in the coup attempt investigation. He was the 2000-texting switchboard and operative for every aspect of the plan and was an eye-witness to Trump's actions and statements up to and including Jan. 6. Oh… and he burned documents, according to his assistant! As for the documents case, Meadows might know something about the classified war document Trump bragged about at Bedminster in 2021.
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