Christie is a total POS. When he left office in NJ, his approval rating was 0.000001%. Even his dog wanted him gone. He will never win anything again. Bridgegate, about which he lied, the infamous beach photo, and on and on.
For my money, his only use in 2024 is the entertainment value he may provide in his sparring with Trump.
2024
Re: 2024
njbill wrote: ↑Thu Jun 08, 2023 1:55 pm Christie is a total POS. When he left office in NJ, his approval rating was 0.000001%. Even his dog wanted him gone. He will never win anything again. Bridgegate, about which he lied, the infamous beach photo, and on and on.
For my money, his only use in 2024 is the entertainment value he may provide in his sparring with Trump.
It has been proven a hundred times that the surest way to the heart of any man, black or white, honest or dishonest, is through justice and fairness.
Charles Francis "Socker" Coe, Esq
Charles Francis "Socker" Coe, Esq
Re: 2024
I don't think CC would want to be USAG again. Already done that. Would be a step backward. He wasn't qualified for the job the first time and really didn't like it. Did it only to further his political career. Too much work of the type that doesn't interest him. Not enough money.
He's running now because of his ego which of course is why many of these people run. He has zero chance of getting the nomination. If, by chance, the Rs decide to go with someone other than Trump, it will not be Christie.
He's running now because of his ego which of course is why many of these people run. He has zero chance of getting the nomination. If, by chance, the Rs decide to go with someone other than Trump, it will not be Christie.
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Seacoaster(1)
- Posts: 5294
- Joined: Tue Mar 29, 2022 6:49 am
Re: 2024
Put this here:
https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/06/supr ... ights-act/
“By a vote of 5-4 on Thursday, the justices issued a major voting rights decision, ruling that Alabama’s new congressional map likely violates the Voting Rights Act. But even more significantly, the court declined an invitation to adopt an interpretation of the act that would have made it much more difficult to challenge redistricting plans on the ground that they weaken the collective voting power of Black people.
The law at the center of the court’s decision in Allen v. Milligan is Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which bars election practices that result in a denial or abridgement of the right to vote based on race. Voters and other groups went to court in 2021 to challenge Alabama’s redistricting map for its seven seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. They argued that the map violated Section 2 by diluting the votes of the state’s Black residents, who make up 27% of the state’s population. Specifically, they said, the state’s new plan packed many Black voters into a single district in a part of central Alabama known as the “Black Belt,” while at the same time dispersing Black voters in the rest of the Black Belt into several other districts.
A three-judge court that included two judges appointed by President Donald Trump agreed with the challengers and ruled that the map likely violated Section 2. But last year the Supreme Court put that ruling on hold, clearing the way for Alabama to use the map in the 2022 elections. Republicans went on to win six of the state’s seven House seats in November.
The court’s stay of the lower court’s ruling prompted three justices to write separate opinions at the time. Justice Elena Kagan dissented from the decision to block the lower court’s decision, in a 12-page opinion joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor. In her view, the lower court’s ruling was clearly correct under the Supreme Court’s voting-rights case law, and the majority was wrong to put that ruling on hold.
Roberts wrote his own dissent in which he suggested that there was uncertainty about what litigants must show to prevail on a vote-dilution claim like the challengers’. But he would not put the lower court’s decision on hold, he explained, because he believed it was consistent with current voting-rights law.
And Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, in which he emphasized that the court’s order simply put the lower court’s ruling on hold until the Supreme Court could review it. He also argued that freezing the ruling was consistent with the election-law doctrine known as the Purcell principle – the idea that federal courts should not change state election rules shortly before an election.
After nearly two hours of oral argument in October, a majority of the court appeared ready to side with the state and permanently set aside the lower court’s ruling. But with Kavanaugh joining forces with Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three liberal justices, the court on Thursday instead upheld the lower court’s ruling. In a 34-page opinion by Roberts, the majority agreed with the challengers that the lower court had correctly applied the Supreme Court’s 1986 decision in Thornburg v. Gingles, which outlines a three-part test to evaluate claims brought under Section 2, to reach its conclusion that the new map violated the VRA.
Roberts considered, but rejected, two of the state’s arguments regarding the Gingles framework. First, he gave little weight to the state’s contention that the maps that the challengers offered fell short because they failed to keep the Gulf Coast region, in the southwest part of the state, in the same district. “Only two witnesses testified that the Gulf Coast was” the kind of “community of interest” that should be preserved in the same district, Roberts observed. And in any event, he continued, the challengers’ maps “joined together a different community of interest called the Black Belt,” an area with a large number of rural Black voters, many of whom are the descendants of former enslaved persons.
Roberts next dismissed the state’s argument that the challengers’ maps, unlike the state’s maps, fail to retain the “core” of the previous maps. The Supreme Court, he stressed, “has never held that a State’s adherence to a previously used districting plan can defeat a” Section 2 claim. Otherwise, he said, states could “immunize from challenge a new racially discriminatory redistricting plan simply by claiming that it resembled an old racially discriminatory plan.”
The real issue before the court, Roberts explained, was not whether the lower court had applied existing law – Gingles – but instead “Alabama’s attempt to remake our §2 jurisprudence anew” by focusing on computer-generated maps that are created without considering race at all. But that single-minded focus on the computer-generated maps – the so-called “race-neutral benchmark” – is inconsistent with the VRA’s requirement that courts look at the entirety of the circumstances, Roberts observed. Moreover, he emphasized, such an interpretation would require a change to the Ginglesframework “that has been the baseline of our §2 jurisprudence for nearly forty years.”
Roberts also pushed back against the state’s suggestion that a race-neutral benchmark should be used because the Supreme Court’s current Section 2 case law “inevitably” requires states to ensure that the number of majority-minority districts is representative of the state’s demographics. Section 2 creates no such obligation, Roberts retorted, and the limitations imposed under the Gingles framework have in fact meant that, in recent years, Section 2 lawsuits have rarely been successful. The “exacting requirements” of Section 2, Roberts said, “limit judicial intervention to ‘those instances of intensive racial politics’ where the ‘excessive role [of race] in the electoral process … den[ies] minority voters equal opportunity to participate.”
Finally, Roberts rejected the state’s contention that the challengers should be required to show that any differences between the state’s plan and any race-neutral benchmarks can only be explained by racial discrimination. Both the court’s own cases and Congress “clearly” declined to require an intent to discriminate as a condition for liability under Section 2, he explained.
Kavanaugh authored a brief concurring opinion of his own in which he addressed several points at the center of Alabama’s argument but made clear that he agreed with Roberts that “Alabama’s redistricting plan violates §2 of the Voting Rights Act as interpreted in” Gingles. He also addressed a point made by Justice Clarence Thomas, who in his dissent argued that even if Congress once had the power to authorize race-based redistricting, “the authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future.” The state, Kavanaugh stressed, had not raised that argument in the Supreme Court, and so he would “not consider it at this time.”
Thomas penned a 48-page dissent that was joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch and joined in part by Justices Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett. He described the case as “yet another installment in the disastrous misadventure of this Court’s voting rights jurisprudence.”
Thomas characterized the question before the justices as whether Section 2 “requires the State of Alabama to intentionally redraw its longstanding congressional districts so that black voters can control a number of seats roughly proportional to the black share of the State’s population.” But Section 2 “demands no such thing,” Thomas insisted. To the contrary, Thomas argued, Section 2 does not apply to redistricting at all, but instead only to laws or policies that regulate access to the ballot or the counting of the ballot.
But if Section 2 does apply to redistricting, Thomas continued, the lower court’s interpretation of it violates the Constitution because under that reading the law “does not remedy or deter unconstitutional discrimination in redistricting” but instead “requires it, hijacking the districting process” to allocate political power based on race.
Alito wrote a separate dissent, joined by Gorsuch, in which he criticized the majority’s decision as inconsistent with the text of Section 2, its own cases, “and the fundamental principle that States are almost always prohibited from basing decisions on race.” Thursday’s ruling, he warned, “unnecessarily sets the VRA on a perilous and unfortunate path.”
Thursday’s ruling is the third in a series of decisions involving the Voting Rights Act in the past decade. Two recent decisions had narrowed the act’s reach. In Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, a divided court struck down Section 5 of the VRA, which contained the formula used to determine which state and local governments must obtain approval from the federal government before making any changes to their voting laws and procedures (including maps). This approval requirement, known as “preclearance,” was intended to prevent voting-related discrimination by governments with a history of such discrimination – which, until 2013, included Alabama – before the laws or policies could go into effect.
Writing for the majority in Shelby County, Roberts emphasized that “things have changed dramatically” since the Supreme Court first upheld the VRA in 1966 – but the coverage formula had not, which is not fair. Therefore, although the preclearance requirement remains in place, no government has had to comply with it since 2013, because Congress has not enacted a new formula.
And in 2021, in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the court – by a vote of 6-3 – upheld two Arizona voting provisions that Democrats and civil rights groups had challenged as disproportionate burdens on minority voters. Alito’s opinion for the majority outlined a series of “guideposts” for future challenges to voting laws that, taken together, make it more difficult to contest election regulations under Section 2. The Brnovichdecision did not address, however, Section 2 vote-dilution claims like the ones before the court in the Alabama case.
The decision came as somewhat of a surprise after the oral argument in October, at which the court’s conservative justices seemed likely to set aside the lower court’s ruling. But it was a welcome surprise for the challengers and their supporters. In a press release, Abha Khanna – who argued on behalf of one set of challengers – called Thursday’s ruling “the right decision” that affirmed “the district court’s ruling in accordance with decades of established precedent.”
https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/06/supr ... ights-act/
“By a vote of 5-4 on Thursday, the justices issued a major voting rights decision, ruling that Alabama’s new congressional map likely violates the Voting Rights Act. But even more significantly, the court declined an invitation to adopt an interpretation of the act that would have made it much more difficult to challenge redistricting plans on the ground that they weaken the collective voting power of Black people.
The law at the center of the court’s decision in Allen v. Milligan is Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which bars election practices that result in a denial or abridgement of the right to vote based on race. Voters and other groups went to court in 2021 to challenge Alabama’s redistricting map for its seven seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. They argued that the map violated Section 2 by diluting the votes of the state’s Black residents, who make up 27% of the state’s population. Specifically, they said, the state’s new plan packed many Black voters into a single district in a part of central Alabama known as the “Black Belt,” while at the same time dispersing Black voters in the rest of the Black Belt into several other districts.
A three-judge court that included two judges appointed by President Donald Trump agreed with the challengers and ruled that the map likely violated Section 2. But last year the Supreme Court put that ruling on hold, clearing the way for Alabama to use the map in the 2022 elections. Republicans went on to win six of the state’s seven House seats in November.
The court’s stay of the lower court’s ruling prompted three justices to write separate opinions at the time. Justice Elena Kagan dissented from the decision to block the lower court’s decision, in a 12-page opinion joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor. In her view, the lower court’s ruling was clearly correct under the Supreme Court’s voting-rights case law, and the majority was wrong to put that ruling on hold.
Roberts wrote his own dissent in which he suggested that there was uncertainty about what litigants must show to prevail on a vote-dilution claim like the challengers’. But he would not put the lower court’s decision on hold, he explained, because he believed it was consistent with current voting-rights law.
And Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, in which he emphasized that the court’s order simply put the lower court’s ruling on hold until the Supreme Court could review it. He also argued that freezing the ruling was consistent with the election-law doctrine known as the Purcell principle – the idea that federal courts should not change state election rules shortly before an election.
After nearly two hours of oral argument in October, a majority of the court appeared ready to side with the state and permanently set aside the lower court’s ruling. But with Kavanaugh joining forces with Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three liberal justices, the court on Thursday instead upheld the lower court’s ruling. In a 34-page opinion by Roberts, the majority agreed with the challengers that the lower court had correctly applied the Supreme Court’s 1986 decision in Thornburg v. Gingles, which outlines a three-part test to evaluate claims brought under Section 2, to reach its conclusion that the new map violated the VRA.
Roberts considered, but rejected, two of the state’s arguments regarding the Gingles framework. First, he gave little weight to the state’s contention that the maps that the challengers offered fell short because they failed to keep the Gulf Coast region, in the southwest part of the state, in the same district. “Only two witnesses testified that the Gulf Coast was” the kind of “community of interest” that should be preserved in the same district, Roberts observed. And in any event, he continued, the challengers’ maps “joined together a different community of interest called the Black Belt,” an area with a large number of rural Black voters, many of whom are the descendants of former enslaved persons.
Roberts next dismissed the state’s argument that the challengers’ maps, unlike the state’s maps, fail to retain the “core” of the previous maps. The Supreme Court, he stressed, “has never held that a State’s adherence to a previously used districting plan can defeat a” Section 2 claim. Otherwise, he said, states could “immunize from challenge a new racially discriminatory redistricting plan simply by claiming that it resembled an old racially discriminatory plan.”
The real issue before the court, Roberts explained, was not whether the lower court had applied existing law – Gingles – but instead “Alabama’s attempt to remake our §2 jurisprudence anew” by focusing on computer-generated maps that are created without considering race at all. But that single-minded focus on the computer-generated maps – the so-called “race-neutral benchmark” – is inconsistent with the VRA’s requirement that courts look at the entirety of the circumstances, Roberts observed. Moreover, he emphasized, such an interpretation would require a change to the Ginglesframework “that has been the baseline of our §2 jurisprudence for nearly forty years.”
Roberts also pushed back against the state’s suggestion that a race-neutral benchmark should be used because the Supreme Court’s current Section 2 case law “inevitably” requires states to ensure that the number of majority-minority districts is representative of the state’s demographics. Section 2 creates no such obligation, Roberts retorted, and the limitations imposed under the Gingles framework have in fact meant that, in recent years, Section 2 lawsuits have rarely been successful. The “exacting requirements” of Section 2, Roberts said, “limit judicial intervention to ‘those instances of intensive racial politics’ where the ‘excessive role [of race] in the electoral process … den[ies] minority voters equal opportunity to participate.”
Finally, Roberts rejected the state’s contention that the challengers should be required to show that any differences between the state’s plan and any race-neutral benchmarks can only be explained by racial discrimination. Both the court’s own cases and Congress “clearly” declined to require an intent to discriminate as a condition for liability under Section 2, he explained.
Kavanaugh authored a brief concurring opinion of his own in which he addressed several points at the center of Alabama’s argument but made clear that he agreed with Roberts that “Alabama’s redistricting plan violates §2 of the Voting Rights Act as interpreted in” Gingles. He also addressed a point made by Justice Clarence Thomas, who in his dissent argued that even if Congress once had the power to authorize race-based redistricting, “the authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future.” The state, Kavanaugh stressed, had not raised that argument in the Supreme Court, and so he would “not consider it at this time.”
Thomas penned a 48-page dissent that was joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch and joined in part by Justices Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett. He described the case as “yet another installment in the disastrous misadventure of this Court’s voting rights jurisprudence.”
Thomas characterized the question before the justices as whether Section 2 “requires the State of Alabama to intentionally redraw its longstanding congressional districts so that black voters can control a number of seats roughly proportional to the black share of the State’s population.” But Section 2 “demands no such thing,” Thomas insisted. To the contrary, Thomas argued, Section 2 does not apply to redistricting at all, but instead only to laws or policies that regulate access to the ballot or the counting of the ballot.
But if Section 2 does apply to redistricting, Thomas continued, the lower court’s interpretation of it violates the Constitution because under that reading the law “does not remedy or deter unconstitutional discrimination in redistricting” but instead “requires it, hijacking the districting process” to allocate political power based on race.
Alito wrote a separate dissent, joined by Gorsuch, in which he criticized the majority’s decision as inconsistent with the text of Section 2, its own cases, “and the fundamental principle that States are almost always prohibited from basing decisions on race.” Thursday’s ruling, he warned, “unnecessarily sets the VRA on a perilous and unfortunate path.”
Thursday’s ruling is the third in a series of decisions involving the Voting Rights Act in the past decade. Two recent decisions had narrowed the act’s reach. In Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, a divided court struck down Section 5 of the VRA, which contained the formula used to determine which state and local governments must obtain approval from the federal government before making any changes to their voting laws and procedures (including maps). This approval requirement, known as “preclearance,” was intended to prevent voting-related discrimination by governments with a history of such discrimination – which, until 2013, included Alabama – before the laws or policies could go into effect.
Writing for the majority in Shelby County, Roberts emphasized that “things have changed dramatically” since the Supreme Court first upheld the VRA in 1966 – but the coverage formula had not, which is not fair. Therefore, although the preclearance requirement remains in place, no government has had to comply with it since 2013, because Congress has not enacted a new formula.
And in 2021, in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the court – by a vote of 6-3 – upheld two Arizona voting provisions that Democrats and civil rights groups had challenged as disproportionate burdens on minority voters. Alito’s opinion for the majority outlined a series of “guideposts” for future challenges to voting laws that, taken together, make it more difficult to contest election regulations under Section 2. The Brnovichdecision did not address, however, Section 2 vote-dilution claims like the ones before the court in the Alabama case.
The decision came as somewhat of a surprise after the oral argument in October, at which the court’s conservative justices seemed likely to set aside the lower court’s ruling. But it was a welcome surprise for the challengers and their supporters. In a press release, Abha Khanna – who argued on behalf of one set of challengers – called Thursday’s ruling “the right decision” that affirmed “the district court’s ruling in accordance with decades of established precedent.”
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Seacoaster(1)
- Posts: 5294
- Joined: Tue Mar 29, 2022 6:49 am
Re: 2024
Postscript: so…the current House majority appears to have been ushered in by unlawful voting districts.
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NattyBohChamps04
- Posts: 2824
- Joined: Tue May 04, 2021 11:40 pm
Re: 2024
Don't forget all the legal gerrymandering too! Who doesn't want to be ruled by a superminority of voters?Seacoaster(1) wrote: ↑Thu Jun 08, 2023 5:55 pm Postscript: so…the current House majority appears to have been ushered in by unlawful voting districts.
Re: 2024
... don't disagree with your read, I just don't think Christie sees it that way, he believes he has a future. From my perspective I am happy he is giving Trump gas, and he will give Trump far more gas than Pence will.njbill wrote: ↑Thu Jun 08, 2023 1:55 pm Christie is a total POS. When he left office in NJ, his approval rating was 0.000001%. Even his dog wanted him gone. He will never win anything again. Bridgegate, about which he lied, the infamous beach photo, and on and on.
For my money, his only use in 2024 is the entertainment value he may provide in his sparring with Trump.
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Farfromgeneva
- Posts: 23826
- Joined: Sat Feb 23, 2019 10:53 am
Re: 2024
But does he know where Kashoggis pieces are?cradleandshoot wrote: ↑Thu Jun 08, 2023 5:28 amYeah but Pence knows where the bodies are buried.jhu72 wrote: ↑Thu Jun 08, 2023 1:42 am... Chris Christie is doing a better job IMO.a fan wrote: ↑Wed Jun 07, 2023 11:06 pm Big tip of the hat to Mike Pence, again.
I might get ahead of myself here, but wouldn't it be something to see Mike Pence plunge the final dagger into Trump, finishing him off in a debate where Pence lets his true views on Trump all hang out on stage? He didn't have a front row seat....he was actually in the play for four years.
“I believe that anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States. And anyone who asks someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be president of the United States again,” the former vice president said of his onetime boss, currently the front-runner for the 2024 GOP nomination.
Now I love those cowboys, I love their gold
Love my uncle, God rest his soul
Taught me good, Lord, taught me all I know
Taught me so well, that I grabbed that gold
I left his dead ass there by the side of the road, yeah
Love my uncle, God rest his soul
Taught me good, Lord, taught me all I know
Taught me so well, that I grabbed that gold
I left his dead ass there by the side of the road, yeah
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Farfromgeneva
- Posts: 23826
- Joined: Sat Feb 23, 2019 10:53 am
Re: 2024
My daughter is getting impatient waiting for her turn. Starting to really crack down on the state of my householdNattyBohChamps04 wrote: ↑Thu Jun 08, 2023 12:23 pmIf the presumptive R nominee wins, he'll be the oldest president in US history.kramerica.inc wrote: ↑Thu Jun 08, 2023 12:01 pm WSJ:
Biden's age and health re-emerge as 2024 looms:
https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/opinion-po ... 9b4f11a98b
If the presumptive D nominee wins, he'll be the oldest president in US history.
Now I love those cowboys, I love their gold
Love my uncle, God rest his soul
Taught me good, Lord, taught me all I know
Taught me so well, that I grabbed that gold
I left his dead ass there by the side of the road, yeah
Love my uncle, God rest his soul
Taught me good, Lord, taught me all I know
Taught me so well, that I grabbed that gold
I left his dead ass there by the side of the road, yeah
-
Farfromgeneva
- Posts: 23826
- Joined: Sat Feb 23, 2019 10:53 am
Re: 2024
Now I love those cowboys, I love their gold
Love my uncle, God rest his soul
Taught me good, Lord, taught me all I know
Taught me so well, that I grabbed that gold
I left his dead ass there by the side of the road, yeah
Love my uncle, God rest his soul
Taught me good, Lord, taught me all I know
Taught me so well, that I grabbed that gold
I left his dead ass there by the side of the road, yeah
-
Farfromgeneva
- Posts: 23826
- Joined: Sat Feb 23, 2019 10:53 am
Re: 2024
It is kind of funny that Kavanaugh was the one everyone bugged out about but then Coney Barrett is the “fall in line political hack” of them while Kav has been generally closer to Roberts than many believed.Seacoaster(1) wrote: ↑Thu Jun 08, 2023 5:51 pm Put this here:
https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/06/supr ... ights-act/
“By a vote of 5-4 on Thursday, the justices issued a major voting rights decision, ruling that Alabama’s new congressional map likely violates the Voting Rights Act. But even more significantly, the court declined an invitation to adopt an interpretation of the act that would have made it much more difficult to challenge redistricting plans on the ground that they weaken the collective voting power of Black people.
The law at the center of the court’s decision in Allen v. Milligan is Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which bars election practices that result in a denial or abridgement of the right to vote based on race. Voters and other groups went to court in 2021 to challenge Alabama’s redistricting map for its seven seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. They argued that the map violated Section 2 by diluting the votes of the state’s Black residents, who make up 27% of the state’s population. Specifically, they said, the state’s new plan packed many Black voters into a single district in a part of central Alabama known as the “Black Belt,” while at the same time dispersing Black voters in the rest of the Black Belt into several other districts.
A three-judge court that included two judges appointed by President Donald Trump agreed with the challengers and ruled that the map likely violated Section 2. But last year the Supreme Court put that ruling on hold, clearing the way for Alabama to use the map in the 2022 elections. Republicans went on to win six of the state’s seven House seats in November.
The court’s stay of the lower court’s ruling prompted three justices to write separate opinions at the time. Justice Elena Kagan dissented from the decision to block the lower court’s decision, in a 12-page opinion joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor. In her view, the lower court’s ruling was clearly correct under the Supreme Court’s voting-rights case law, and the majority was wrong to put that ruling on hold.
Roberts wrote his own dissent in which he suggested that there was uncertainty about what litigants must show to prevail on a vote-dilution claim like the challengers’. But he would not put the lower court’s decision on hold, he explained, because he believed it was consistent with current voting-rights law.
And Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, in which he emphasized that the court’s order simply put the lower court’s ruling on hold until the Supreme Court could review it. He also argued that freezing the ruling was consistent with the election-law doctrine known as the Purcell principle – the idea that federal courts should not change state election rules shortly before an election.
After nearly two hours of oral argument in October, a majority of the court appeared ready to side with the state and permanently set aside the lower court’s ruling. But with Kavanaugh joining forces with Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three liberal justices, the court on Thursday instead upheld the lower court’s ruling. In a 34-page opinion by Roberts, the majority agreed with the challengers that the lower court had correctly applied the Supreme Court’s 1986 decision in Thornburg v. Gingles, which outlines a three-part test to evaluate claims brought under Section 2, to reach its conclusion that the new map violated the VRA.
Roberts considered, but rejected, two of the state’s arguments regarding the Gingles framework. First, he gave little weight to the state’s contention that the maps that the challengers offered fell short because they failed to keep the Gulf Coast region, in the southwest part of the state, in the same district. “Only two witnesses testified that the Gulf Coast was” the kind of “community of interest” that should be preserved in the same district, Roberts observed. And in any event, he continued, the challengers’ maps “joined together a different community of interest called the Black Belt,” an area with a large number of rural Black voters, many of whom are the descendants of former enslaved persons.
Roberts next dismissed the state’s argument that the challengers’ maps, unlike the state’s maps, fail to retain the “core” of the previous maps. The Supreme Court, he stressed, “has never held that a State’s adherence to a previously used districting plan can defeat a” Section 2 claim. Otherwise, he said, states could “immunize from challenge a new racially discriminatory redistricting plan simply by claiming that it resembled an old racially discriminatory plan.”
The real issue before the court, Roberts explained, was not whether the lower court had applied existing law – Gingles – but instead “Alabama’s attempt to remake our §2 jurisprudence anew” by focusing on computer-generated maps that are created without considering race at all. But that single-minded focus on the computer-generated maps – the so-called “race-neutral benchmark” – is inconsistent with the VRA’s requirement that courts look at the entirety of the circumstances, Roberts observed. Moreover, he emphasized, such an interpretation would require a change to the Ginglesframework “that has been the baseline of our §2 jurisprudence for nearly forty years.”
Roberts also pushed back against the state’s suggestion that a race-neutral benchmark should be used because the Supreme Court’s current Section 2 case law “inevitably” requires states to ensure that the number of majority-minority districts is representative of the state’s demographics. Section 2 creates no such obligation, Roberts retorted, and the limitations imposed under the Gingles framework have in fact meant that, in recent years, Section 2 lawsuits have rarely been successful. The “exacting requirements” of Section 2, Roberts said, “limit judicial intervention to ‘those instances of intensive racial politics’ where the ‘excessive role [of race] in the electoral process … den[ies] minority voters equal opportunity to participate.”
Finally, Roberts rejected the state’s contention that the challengers should be required to show that any differences between the state’s plan and any race-neutral benchmarks can only be explained by racial discrimination. Both the court’s own cases and Congress “clearly” declined to require an intent to discriminate as a condition for liability under Section 2, he explained.
Kavanaugh authored a brief concurring opinion of his own in which he addressed several points at the center of Alabama’s argument but made clear that he agreed with Roberts that “Alabama’s redistricting plan violates §2 of the Voting Rights Act as interpreted in” Gingles. He also addressed a point made by Justice Clarence Thomas, who in his dissent argued that even if Congress once had the power to authorize race-based redistricting, “the authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future.” The state, Kavanaugh stressed, had not raised that argument in the Supreme Court, and so he would “not consider it at this time.”
Thomas penned a 48-page dissent that was joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch and joined in part by Justices Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett. He described the case as “yet another installment in the disastrous misadventure of this Court’s voting rights jurisprudence.”
Thomas characterized the question before the justices as whether Section 2 “requires the State of Alabama to intentionally redraw its longstanding congressional districts so that black voters can control a number of seats roughly proportional to the black share of the State’s population.” But Section 2 “demands no such thing,” Thomas insisted. To the contrary, Thomas argued, Section 2 does not apply to redistricting at all, but instead only to laws or policies that regulate access to the ballot or the counting of the ballot.
But if Section 2 does apply to redistricting, Thomas continued, the lower court’s interpretation of it violates the Constitution because under that reading the law “does not remedy or deter unconstitutional discrimination in redistricting” but instead “requires it, hijacking the districting process” to allocate political power based on race.
Alito wrote a separate dissent, joined by Gorsuch, in which he criticized the majority’s decision as inconsistent with the text of Section 2, its own cases, “and the fundamental principle that States are almost always prohibited from basing decisions on race.” Thursday’s ruling, he warned, “unnecessarily sets the VRA on a perilous and unfortunate path.”
Thursday’s ruling is the third in a series of decisions involving the Voting Rights Act in the past decade. Two recent decisions had narrowed the act’s reach. In Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, a divided court struck down Section 5 of the VRA, which contained the formula used to determine which state and local governments must obtain approval from the federal government before making any changes to their voting laws and procedures (including maps). This approval requirement, known as “preclearance,” was intended to prevent voting-related discrimination by governments with a history of such discrimination – which, until 2013, included Alabama – before the laws or policies could go into effect.
Writing for the majority in Shelby County, Roberts emphasized that “things have changed dramatically” since the Supreme Court first upheld the VRA in 1966 – but the coverage formula had not, which is not fair. Therefore, although the preclearance requirement remains in place, no government has had to comply with it since 2013, because Congress has not enacted a new formula.
And in 2021, in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the court – by a vote of 6-3 – upheld two Arizona voting provisions that Democrats and civil rights groups had challenged as disproportionate burdens on minority voters. Alito’s opinion for the majority outlined a series of “guideposts” for future challenges to voting laws that, taken together, make it more difficult to contest election regulations under Section 2. The Brnovichdecision did not address, however, Section 2 vote-dilution claims like the ones before the court in the Alabama case.
The decision came as somewhat of a surprise after the oral argument in October, at which the court’s conservative justices seemed likely to set aside the lower court’s ruling. But it was a welcome surprise for the challengers and their supporters. In a press release, Abha Khanna – who argued on behalf of one set of challengers – called Thursday’s ruling “the right decision” that affirmed “the district court’s ruling in accordance with decades of established precedent.”
Now I love those cowboys, I love their gold
Love my uncle, God rest his soul
Taught me good, Lord, taught me all I know
Taught me so well, that I grabbed that gold
I left his dead ass there by the side of the road, yeah
Love my uncle, God rest his soul
Taught me good, Lord, taught me all I know
Taught me so well, that I grabbed that gold
I left his dead ass there by the side of the road, yeah
-
Farfromgeneva
- Posts: 23826
- Joined: Sat Feb 23, 2019 10:53 am
Re: 2024
https://youtu.be/_SXF85u8vsQjhu72 wrote: ↑Thu Jun 08, 2023 11:40 pm... don't disagree with your read, I just don't think Christie sees it that way, he believes he has a future. From my perspective I am happy he is giving Trump gas, and he will give Trump far more gas than Pence will.njbill wrote: ↑Thu Jun 08, 2023 1:55 pm Christie is a total POS. When he left office in NJ, his approval rating was 0.000001%. Even his dog wanted him gone. He will never win anything again. Bridgegate, about which he lied, the infamous beach photo, and on and on.
For my money, his only use in 2024 is the entertainment value he may provide in his sparring with Trump.
Now I love those cowboys, I love their gold
Love my uncle, God rest his soul
Taught me good, Lord, taught me all I know
Taught me so well, that I grabbed that gold
I left his dead ass there by the side of the road, yeah
Love my uncle, God rest his soul
Taught me good, Lord, taught me all I know
Taught me so well, that I grabbed that gold
I left his dead ass there by the side of the road, yeah
-
Seacoaster(1)
- Posts: 5294
- Joined: Tue Mar 29, 2022 6:49 am
Re: 2024
I think folks were more concerned with Kavanaugh’s position on reproductive rights. He comes from — his provenance, so to speak — is entirely establishment GOP, with some Ken Starr (the original culture villain) thrown in.Farfromgeneva wrote: ↑Fri Jun 09, 2023 7:27 amMy daughter is getting impatient waiting for her turn. Starting to really crack down on the state of my householdNattyBohChamps04 wrote: ↑Thu Jun 08, 2023 12:23 pmIf the presumptive R nominee wins, he'll be the oldest president in US history.kramerica.inc wrote: ↑Thu Jun 08, 2023 12:01 pm WSJ:
Biden's age and health re-emerge as 2024 looms:
https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/opinion-po ... 9b4f11a98b
If the presumptive D nominee wins, he'll be the oldest president in US history.
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Farfromgeneva
- Posts: 23826
- Joined: Sat Feb 23, 2019 10:53 am
Re: 2024
Now I love those cowboys, I love their gold
Love my uncle, God rest his soul
Taught me good, Lord, taught me all I know
Taught me so well, that I grabbed that gold
I left his dead ass there by the side of the road, yeah
Love my uncle, God rest his soul
Taught me good, Lord, taught me all I know
Taught me so well, that I grabbed that gold
I left his dead ass there by the side of the road, yeah
-
Seacoaster(1)
- Posts: 5294
- Joined: Tue Mar 29, 2022 6:49 am
Re: 2024
Core GOP figures finally coming to the realization that their party is literally anti-American. Michael Luttig in the Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/25/opin ... party.html
“Donald Trump this month became the first former or incumbent American president to be charged with crimes against the nation that he once led and wishes to lead again. He cynically calculated that his indictment would ensure that a riled-up Republican Party base would nominate him as its standard-bearer in 2024, and the last few weeks have proved that his political calculation was probably right.
The former president’s behavior may have invited charges, but the Republicans’ spineless support for the past two years convinced Mr. Trump of his political immortality, giving him the assurance that he could purloin some of the nation’s most sensitive national security secrets upon leaving the White House — and preposterously insist that they were his to do with as he wished — all without facing political consequences. Indeed, their fawning support since the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol has given Mr. Trump every reason to believe that he can ride these charges and any others not just to the Republican nomination, but also to the White House in 2024.
In a word, the Republicans are as responsible as Mr. Trump for this month’s indictment — and will be as responsible for any indictment and prosecution of him for Jan. 6. One would think that, for a party that has prided itself for caring about the Constitution and the rule of law, this would stir some measure of self-reflection among party officials and even voters about their abiding support for the former president. Surely before barreling headlong into the 2024 presidential election season, more Republicans would realize it is time to come to the reckoning with Mr. Trump that they have vainly hoped and naïvely believed would never be necessary.
But by all appearances, it certainly hasn’t occurred to them yet that any reckoning is needed. As only the Republicans can do, they are already turning this ignominious moment into an even more ignominious moment — and a self-immolating one at that — by rushing to crown Mr. Trump their nominee before the primary season even begins. Building the Republican campaign around the newly indicted front-runner is a colossal political miscalculation, as comedic as it is tragic for the country. No assemblage of politicians except the Republicans would ever conceive of running for the American presidency by running against the Constitution and the rule of law. But that’s exactly what they’re planning.
The stewards of the Republican Party have become so inured to their putative leader, they have managed to convince themselves that an indicted and perhaps even convicted Donald Trump is their party’s best hope for the future. But rushing to model their campaign on Mr. Trump’s breathtakingly inane template is as absurd as it is ill fated. They will be defending the indefensible.
On cue, the Republicans kicked their self-defeating political apparatus into high gear this month. Almost as soon as the indictment in the documents case was unsealed, Mr. Trump jump-started his up-to-then languishing campaign, predictably declaring himself an “innocent man” victimized in “the greatest witch hunt of all time” by his “totally corrupt” political nemesis, the Biden administration. On Thursday, he added that it was all part of a plot, hatched at the Justice Department and the F.B.I., to “rig” the 2024 election against him.
From his distant second place, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida denounced the Biden administration’s “weaponization of federal law enforcement” against Mr. Trump and the Republicans. Mike Pence dutifully pronounced the indictment political. And both Governor DeSantis and Mr. Pence pledged — in a new Republican litmus test — that on their first day in office they would fire the director of the F.B.I., the Trump appointee Christopher Wray, obviously for his turpitude in investigating Mr. Trump. It fell to Kevin McCarthy, the House speaker, to articulate the treacherous overarching Republican strategy: “I, and every American who believes in the rule of law, stand with President Trump against this grave injustice. House Republicans will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”
There’s no stopping Republicans now, until they have succeeded in completely politicizing the rule of law in service to their partisan political ends.
If the indictment of Mr. Trump on Espionage Act charges — not to mention his now almost certain indictment for conspiring to obstruct Congress from certifying Mr. Biden as the president on Jan. 6 — fails to shake the Republican Party from its moribund political senses, then it is beyond saving itself. Nor ought it be saved.
There is no path to the White House for Republicans with Mr. Trump. He would need every single Republican and independent vote, and there are untold numbers of Republicans and independents who will never vote for him, if for no other perfectly legitimate reason than that he has corrupted America’s democracy and is now attempting to corrupt the country’s rule of law. No sane Democrat will vote for Mr. Trump — even over the aging Mr. Biden — when there are so many sane Republicans who will refuse to vote for Mr. Trump. This is all plain to see, which makes it all the more mystifying why more Republicans don’t see it.
When Republicans faced an 11th-hour reckoning with another of their presidents over far less serious offenses almost 50 years ago, the elder statesmen of the party marched into the Oval Office and told Richard Nixon the truth. He had lost his Republican support and he would be impeached if he did not resign. The beleaguered Nixon resigned the next day and left the White House the day following.
Such is what it means to put country over party. History tends to look favorably upon a party that writes its own history, as Winston Churchill might have said.
Republicans have waited in vain for political absolution. It’s finally time for them to put the country before their party and pull back from the brink — for the good of the party, as well as the nation.
If not now, then they must forever hold their peace.“
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/25/opin ... party.html
“Donald Trump this month became the first former or incumbent American president to be charged with crimes against the nation that he once led and wishes to lead again. He cynically calculated that his indictment would ensure that a riled-up Republican Party base would nominate him as its standard-bearer in 2024, and the last few weeks have proved that his political calculation was probably right.
The former president’s behavior may have invited charges, but the Republicans’ spineless support for the past two years convinced Mr. Trump of his political immortality, giving him the assurance that he could purloin some of the nation’s most sensitive national security secrets upon leaving the White House — and preposterously insist that they were his to do with as he wished — all without facing political consequences. Indeed, their fawning support since the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol has given Mr. Trump every reason to believe that he can ride these charges and any others not just to the Republican nomination, but also to the White House in 2024.
In a word, the Republicans are as responsible as Mr. Trump for this month’s indictment — and will be as responsible for any indictment and prosecution of him for Jan. 6. One would think that, for a party that has prided itself for caring about the Constitution and the rule of law, this would stir some measure of self-reflection among party officials and even voters about their abiding support for the former president. Surely before barreling headlong into the 2024 presidential election season, more Republicans would realize it is time to come to the reckoning with Mr. Trump that they have vainly hoped and naïvely believed would never be necessary.
But by all appearances, it certainly hasn’t occurred to them yet that any reckoning is needed. As only the Republicans can do, they are already turning this ignominious moment into an even more ignominious moment — and a self-immolating one at that — by rushing to crown Mr. Trump their nominee before the primary season even begins. Building the Republican campaign around the newly indicted front-runner is a colossal political miscalculation, as comedic as it is tragic for the country. No assemblage of politicians except the Republicans would ever conceive of running for the American presidency by running against the Constitution and the rule of law. But that’s exactly what they’re planning.
The stewards of the Republican Party have become so inured to their putative leader, they have managed to convince themselves that an indicted and perhaps even convicted Donald Trump is their party’s best hope for the future. But rushing to model their campaign on Mr. Trump’s breathtakingly inane template is as absurd as it is ill fated. They will be defending the indefensible.
On cue, the Republicans kicked their self-defeating political apparatus into high gear this month. Almost as soon as the indictment in the documents case was unsealed, Mr. Trump jump-started his up-to-then languishing campaign, predictably declaring himself an “innocent man” victimized in “the greatest witch hunt of all time” by his “totally corrupt” political nemesis, the Biden administration. On Thursday, he added that it was all part of a plot, hatched at the Justice Department and the F.B.I., to “rig” the 2024 election against him.
From his distant second place, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida denounced the Biden administration’s “weaponization of federal law enforcement” against Mr. Trump and the Republicans. Mike Pence dutifully pronounced the indictment political. And both Governor DeSantis and Mr. Pence pledged — in a new Republican litmus test — that on their first day in office they would fire the director of the F.B.I., the Trump appointee Christopher Wray, obviously for his turpitude in investigating Mr. Trump. It fell to Kevin McCarthy, the House speaker, to articulate the treacherous overarching Republican strategy: “I, and every American who believes in the rule of law, stand with President Trump against this grave injustice. House Republicans will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”
There’s no stopping Republicans now, until they have succeeded in completely politicizing the rule of law in service to their partisan political ends.
If the indictment of Mr. Trump on Espionage Act charges — not to mention his now almost certain indictment for conspiring to obstruct Congress from certifying Mr. Biden as the president on Jan. 6 — fails to shake the Republican Party from its moribund political senses, then it is beyond saving itself. Nor ought it be saved.
There is no path to the White House for Republicans with Mr. Trump. He would need every single Republican and independent vote, and there are untold numbers of Republicans and independents who will never vote for him, if for no other perfectly legitimate reason than that he has corrupted America’s democracy and is now attempting to corrupt the country’s rule of law. No sane Democrat will vote for Mr. Trump — even over the aging Mr. Biden — when there are so many sane Republicans who will refuse to vote for Mr. Trump. This is all plain to see, which makes it all the more mystifying why more Republicans don’t see it.
When Republicans faced an 11th-hour reckoning with another of their presidents over far less serious offenses almost 50 years ago, the elder statesmen of the party marched into the Oval Office and told Richard Nixon the truth. He had lost his Republican support and he would be impeached if he did not resign. The beleaguered Nixon resigned the next day and left the White House the day following.
Such is what it means to put country over party. History tends to look favorably upon a party that writes its own history, as Winston Churchill might have said.
Republicans have waited in vain for political absolution. It’s finally time for them to put the country before their party and pull back from the brink — for the good of the party, as well as the nation.
If not now, then they must forever hold their peace.“
-
MDlaxfan76
- Posts: 27117
- Joined: Wed Aug 01, 2018 5:40 pm
Re: 2024
Well, conservative Judge Luttig is certainly laying it down correctly.
I considered myself a "core" Republican 8 years ago...nowhere near as conservative as Liz Cheney or even Romney, and very likely not as conservative as Judge Luttig, but "core" nevertheless...and it was obvious to me that following this POS would destroy the legitimacy of the Party.
I considered myself a "core" Republican 8 years ago...nowhere near as conservative as Liz Cheney or even Romney, and very likely not as conservative as Judge Luttig, but "core" nevertheless...and it was obvious to me that following this POS would destroy the legitimacy of the Party.
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Seacoaster(1)
- Posts: 5294
- Joined: Tue Mar 29, 2022 6:49 am
Re: 2024
One part of the problem is the “but I like his policies” crowd. You see it here. People willing to see the country destroyed so their taxes are low. People willing to see the country ruined as long as someone supports their fear of LGBTQ people. The parties are not equivalent. It’s plain and clear that the GOP is taking us down the road to authoritarianism.MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Sun Jun 25, 2023 4:58 pm Well, conservative Judge Luttig is certainly laying it down correctly.
I considered myself a "core" Republican 8 years ago...nowhere near as conservative as Liz Cheney or even Romney, and very likely not as conservative as Judge Luttig, but "core" nevertheless...and it was obvious to me that following this POS would destroy the legitimacy of the Party.
Re: 2024
Said it before, and I'll say it again: Nixon would NEVER have been removed if they current crop of both Republican leaders and their voters were around back then.Seacoaster(1) wrote: ↑Sun Jun 25, 2023 6:16 pmOne part of the problem is the “but I like his policies” crowd. You see it here. People willing to see the country destroyed so their taxes are low. People willing to see the country ruined as long as someone supports their fear of LGBTQ people. The parties are not equivalent. It’s plain and clear that the GOP is taking us down the road to authoritarianism.MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Sun Jun 25, 2023 4:58 pm Well, conservative Judge Luttig is certainly laying it down correctly.
I considered myself a "core" Republican 8 years ago...nowhere near as conservative as Liz Cheney or even Romney, and very likely not as conservative as Judge Luttig, but "core" nevertheless...and it was obvious to me that following this POS would destroy the legitimacy of the Party.
It's both weird and sad to watch the very idea of a moral compass get tossed aside by millions of Republicans all within the span of a handful of years.
It's also why the part has stopped solving problems, and why they do nothing but make government bigger every time you give them power.
Re: 2024
What a dilemma when that evil SCOTUS rules in your favor. What's a true-believing partisan progressive to do?NattyBohChamps04 wrote: ↑Thu Jun 08, 2023 11:09 pmDon't forget all the legal gerrymandering too! Who doesn't want to be ruled by a superminority of voters?Seacoaster(1) wrote: ↑Thu Jun 08, 2023 5:55 pm Postscript: so…the current House majority appears to have been ushered in by unlawful voting districts.