Just 6% of US House Seats Expected to Be Competitive Thanks to Rigged Maps

Gerrymandered congressional districts come alongside a wave of GOP voter suppression laws.

KENNY STANCIL

February 17, 2022

In a major blow to the democratic principle that lawmakers are accountable to voters who can remove them from office, the vast majority of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are becoming non-competitive—a trend that critics say threatens to exacerbate GOP extremism as incumbents in solidly red districts shift further right to fend off more reactionary primary challengers.

Several months into the decennial redistricting process, 335 congressional districts have been redrawn as of Thursday. Just 27 of them are considered competitive—meaning neither Democrats nor Republicans have an advantage of more than five points—according to FiveThirtyEight.

Dave Wasserman, an elections expert for the non-partisan Cook Political Report, told The Guardian on Thursday that by the time the remaining 100 boundaries are mapped, he expects just 30 to 35 seats—out of 435—to be competitive.

If as many as 94% of representatives are running in relatively safe districts, "that means that when voters show up at the polls in November to vote for their candidates, the contests will already be decided," The Guardian reported. "Their votes won't matter."

"Some of the decline in competitive seats is due to natural geographic clustering of likeminded voters," The Guardian noted. "That clumping means that when states draw new lines, it's harder to draw competitive districts. In 2012, there were 66 competitive districts, Wasserman noted. By 2020, under the same set of lines, there were 51."

However, "politicians are undoubtedly accelerating the decline in competition by distorting district lines to their advantage," the newspaper added.

Over the past year, as Common Dreams has reported, GOP-controlled states have supplemented their "tidal wave" of voter suppression laws by redrawing congressional and state legislative maps in ways that disenfranchise Democratic-leaning communities of color and give Republicans outsized representation, which could help them cement minority rule for at least a decade.

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'Time Is Really Running Out': Democrats Urged to Counteract GOP's Gerrymandering Spree

Kenny Stancil

In perhaps the most egregious example of gerrymandering in the past year, Texas Republicans rigged congressional boundaries to slash the number of competitive U.S. House districts from 12 to one, doubling the number of safe GOP seats from 11 to 22 in the process. In an essay published last fall, voting rights expert Ari Berman called it "an ominous sign of things to come in other Southern battleground states," including Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina.

"Despite gaining nearly two million Hispanic residents and more than 500,000 Black residents since 2010, Republicans didn't draw a single new majority-Latino or majority-Black congressional district," Berman wrote of Texas. "Instead, the two new House seats the state gained due to population growth were given to majority-white areas in Austin and Houston."

Meanwhile, the right-wing dominated U.S. Supreme Court's ruling last week on the constitutionality of Alabama's new electoral maps gave lawmakers the green light to continue partisan and racial gerrymandering, effectively gutting what was left of the Voting Rights Act.

The diminishing number of competitive U.S. House seats has far-reaching implications. If only 6% of congressional districts are considered up for grabs, most politicians no longer have to worry about the general election and instead play to the party's base.

GOP incumbents in solidly red districts, in particular, have moved further right to avoid being unseated by more reactionary primary challengers.

According to The Guardian's Sam Levine, map-rigging has enabled Texas lawmakers to take "the state's long history of chest-thumping conservatism to new levels" in recent months.

"Republicans are steamrolling a series of extremist laws, undeterred by demographic shifts in the state favoring Democrats," wrote Levine. That includes GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, who has been burnishing "his conservative bona fides" in anticipation of a challenge from the right in this year's primary.

The lack of competitive districts "will further increase polarization... it's also a reflection of polarization, but it'll also entrench polarization more deeply," Richard Pildes, a law professor at New York University, told The Guardian.

Michael Li of the Brennan Center for Justice has stressed that if Senate Democrats reform or scrap the filibuster and pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, racial and partisan gerrymandering of the sort being pushed by right-wing lawmakers in multiple states would be outlawed.

This article originally appeared at CommonDreams.org. Originally published on February 2nd, 2022. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. 

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Western Media Fall in Lockstep for Neo-Nazi Publicity Stunt in Ukraine

Photo Credit:Spoilt.exile

JOHN MCEVOY

When the corporate media push for war,  one of their main weapons is  propaganda by omission.

In the case of the recent crisis in  Ukraine, Western journalists have  omitted key context about the  expansion  of NATO since the end of the  Cold War, as well as US support for the  Maidan coup in 2014  (FAIR.org, 1/28/22).

A third and crucial case of propaganda by omission relates to the integration of neo-Nazis into the Ukrainian armed forces (FAIR.org, 3/7/14, 1/28/22). If the corporate media reported more critically about Western support for the neo-Nazi-infested Ukrainian security services, and how these forces function as a front-line proxy of US foreign policy, public support for war might be reduced and military budgets called into greater question.

As recent coverage demonstrates, one way of resolving this issue is by not mentioning the inconvenient matter of Ukrainian neo-Nazis altogether.

The Azov Battalion

The Azov Battalion’s Nazi-inspired logo can be seen in an MSNBC segment (2/14/22).

In 2014, the Azov Battalion was incorporated into the National Guard of Ukraine (NGU) to assist with fighting against pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

At the time, the militia’s association with neo-Nazism was well documented: The unit used the Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel symbol as its logo, while its soldiers sported Nazi insignia on their combat helmets. In 2010, the Azov Battalion’s founder declared that Ukraine should “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen.”

The Azov Battalion is now an official regiment of the NGU, and operates under the authority of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs.

‘A granny with a gun’

Pointing out that people training the 79-year-old woman to use an assault weapon (London Times,  2/13/22) were members of a fascist force would have spoiled the heart-warming aspect of the image.

In mid-February 2022, as tensions mounted between the US and Russia over Ukraine, the Azov Battalion organized a military training course for Ukrainian civilians in the port city of Mariupol.

Images of Valentyna Konstantynovska, a 79-year-old Ukrainian learning to handle an AK-47, soon featured across the Western broadcast and print media.

The figure of a pensioner lining up to protect her homeland made for an emotive image, collapsing the conflict into a simple good versus evil binary, while adding weight to US and British intelligence assessments forecasting an immediate full-scale Russian invasion.

Such a narrative was not to be ruined by reference to the neo-Nazi group training her. Indeed, mention of the Azov Battalion was largely erased from mainstream coverage of the event.

The BBC (2/13/22), for instance, showed a clip of “civilians lining up for a few hours’ military training with the National Guard,” with International Correspondent Orla Guerin describing Konstantynovska endearingly as “a granny with a gun.” Though Azov Battalion insignia was visible in the report, Guerin made no reference to it, and the report ends perversely with an NGU combatant helping a child to load an ammunition magazine.

The BBC (2/13/22) depicts a young boy getting a lesson on how to load ammo—without mentioning that the training was sponsored by a far-right paramilitary.

The BBC (12/13/14) has not always been so reluctant to discuss the Azov Battalion’s neo-Nazism. In 2014, the broadcaster noted that its leader “considers Jews and other minorities ‘sub-human’ and calls for a white, Christian crusade against them,” while it “sports three Nazi symbols on its insignia.”

Both MSNBC (2/14/22) and ABC News (2/13/22) also reported from Mariupol, showing similar video footage of an Azov Battalion member teaching Konstantynovska to use a rifle. As with the BBC, no mention was made of the regiment’s far right association.

Sky News updated its initial report (2/13/22) to include mention of the “far right” trainers (2/14/22), while Euronews (2/13/22) made a rare mention of the Azov Battalion in its initial coverage.

‘Glorification of Nazism’

There was a time when Western news outlets (Daily Telegraph, 8/11/14) recognized the Azov Battalion as a neo-Nazi force rather than a source of photo ops.

The printed press fared little better. On February 13, UK newspapers the London Times and the Daily Telegraph ran front-page spreads showing Konstantynovska preparing her weapon, without any reference to the Azov Battalion running the training course.

Worse still, both the Times and the Daily Telegraph had already reported on the militia’s neo-Nazi associations. In September 2014, the Times described the Azov Battalion as “a group of heavily armed men” with “at least one sporting a Nazi logo…preparing for the defense of Mariupol,” adding that the group had been “formed by a white supremacist.” For its part, the Daily Telegraph described the battalion in 2014 as “the neo-Nazi brigade fighting pro-Russian separatists.”

In light of NATO’s recent posturing in defense of Ukraine, the fact of the Azov Battalion’s neo-Nazism seems to have become an inconvenience.

On December 16, 2021, only the US and Ukraine voted against a United Nations resolution condemning the “glorification of Nazism,” while the United Kingdom and Canada abstained. There can be little doubt that this decision was made with the conflict in Ukraine in mind.

In the doctrine of Western militarism, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And if that friend happens to enlist neo-Nazis, Western corporate media can be relied on to look the other way.

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'Shame on Them': DOJ Will Not Reopen Tamir Rice Case

"I think they're pitiful and pathetic, and at this point no one is going to get justice when it comes to police shootings in America," said Rice's mother.

Julia Conley

February 1, 2022                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

The mother of Tamir Rice, who was shot to death at age 12 by a Cleveland, Ohio police officer, condemned the U.S. Department of Justice's decision not to reopen her son's case.  "Shame on them," Samaria Rice told Buzzfeed News Monday after receiving a letter from the DOJ regarding the Biden administration's decision. "I think they're pitiful and pathetic, and at this point no one is going to get justice when it comes to police shootings in America. It's disgusting I don't have an indictment for my 12-year-old son."

"Curing a defective state process... is consistent with the fundamental purpose of the federal civil rights laws and squarely within the mandate of the DOJ."

Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who heads the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, told the Rice family in a letter dated last Friday that federal prosecutors who looked at the case could not prove that Rice's civil rights were violated intentionally when he was shot and killed by the officer.

The letter referenced Section 242 of Title 18 in the U.S. Code, which states that "an officer acted ‘willfully’ if he did so with bad purpose—that is, with the specific intent to do something the law forbids—to deprive a person of their constitutional rights."

"After viewing, and exhaustively evaluating the available evidence in this matter," Clarke wrote, "career prosecutors determined that the federal government could not meet this high standard."

Rice was killed in 2014 after a witness called 911 to report that he was playing with a pellet gun outside a recreation center in Cleveland. Officer Timothy Loehmann shot and killed the boy less than two seconds after pulling up to the scene in a police car, according to video evidence.

The Trump administration said in December 2020 that it would not bring charges against the officer and a grand jury decided not to indict Loehmann as well.

The Cleveland Police Department has been under court-ordered supervision since 2015 after an investigation that began before Rice's killing found its officers had a "pattern or practice" of using excessive force and violating people's civil rights.

Samaria Rice sent four letters to the Biden administration asking the DOJ to reopen her son's case, citing the "long-standing and systemic excessive force problem" in the Cleveland Police Department as one reason to consider federal charges.

Fifty legal scholars signed one of the letters arguing that "covening a federal grand jury and prosecution under Section 242 is warranted."

The scholars cited two federal cases that demonstrate the fact of the case "satisfy the requirement" of Loehmann's intent to violate Rice's civil rights, including United States v. Couch:

The Sixth Circuit upheld jury instructions that explained the intent element to include "reckless disregard" of constitutional rights, and that intent could be inferred from circumstantial evidence. Specifically, the jury instructions in Couch included the explanation that "intent is a state of mind and can be proven by circumstantial evidence" and that it is "not necessary for you to find that the defendants were thinking in constitutional terms at the time of the incident, as a reckless disregard for a person’s constitutional rights is evidence of a specific intent to deprive that person of those rights."

In our view, the tragic and unnecessary shooting death of Tamir Rice presents an important opportunity for the Department to clarify and cement a clear, fair, and proper interpretation of Section 242 that fully realizes the purpose of the statute as enacted by Congress.

"Curing a defective state process—in this case, one that appears to have been impermissibly slanted to protect local white law enforcement officials from accountability in the shooting death of a young black child—is consistent with the fundamental purpose of the federal civil rights laws and squarely within the mandate of the DOJ," wrote the scholars.

This article originally appeared at CommonDreams.org. Originally published on February 2nd, 2022. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. 

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Right-Wing Supreme Court Takes Up Challenge to Affirmative Action

"We will vigorously defend access and opportunity in higher education," said head of civil rights legal group.

JESSICA CORBETT

January 24, 2022

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a pair of affirmative action cases related to college admissions, giving its right-wing supermajority an opportunity to strike down race-conscious selection policies in higher education.

"Without programs like affirmative action, my whole life could have gone in an entirely different direction."

Both cases, taking aim at the policies of Harvard and the University of North Carolina, were brought by Students for Fair Admissions, a group founded by the conservative legal strategist Edward Blum. The high court has consolidated the cases.

Though the Supreme Court has previously allowed affirmative action policies to stand—most recently in 2016—the current makeup of the court is fueling concerns about a new course, whether the case is heard during this or the next term.

As writer and podcaster Touré tweeted in response to the decision: "RIP affirmative action."

Slate staff writer Mark Joseph Stern, who covers the U.S. legal system, pointed out that "like so many other grants this term, the affirmative action cases illustrate how Republicans have outsourced large chunks of their agenda to the federal judiciary and the Supreme Court, which now serves as the nation's most powerful policymaking body."

"Rather than expend time and energy prohibiting affirmative action through the democratic process," he added, "Republicans captured a sufficient portion of the federal judiciary—including the Supreme Court—to ensure that their judges will do it for them."

Democrats now control both chambers of Congress and the White House, but during former President Donald Trump's tenure, he and then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) worked to reshape the federal judiciary with more than 200 appointees, including Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

NPR's Nina Totenberg noted that "starting in 1978, the Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of affirmative action programs three times. In each of these cases, the court's controlling opinion was authored by a traditionally conservative justice."

However, she explained, "three of the justices who voted against affirmative action in 2016—Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito—are still on the court, and they now have been joined by three Trump-appointed conservatives."

Both Harvard and UNC won in federal trial courts, and the former's case was affirmed by an appeals court. The New York Times' Adam Liptak highlighted the potential significance of the nation's highest court deciding to take up both challenges:

The Supreme Court's decision to hear both cases may have been influenced by the differing legal regimes that apply to the two schools. Harvard, a private entity, must comply with a federal statute that bans race discrimination as a condition of receiving federal money; the University of North Carolina, which is public, must also satisfy the Constitution's equal protection clause.

Warning that the court's upcoming decision "could have a wide-ranging effect," HuffPost editor-in-chief Danielle Belton shared in a series of tweets Monday how affirmative action made a difference for her father's aerospace career and their family.

"There is this mistake people make when talking about affirmative action, that it 'rewards' unqualified people based on their race," Belton wrote. "This couldn't be further from the truth. It merely opens a historically closed door to level an uneven playing field."

"Race-conscious admissions policies are a critical tool that ensures students of color are not overlooked in a process that does not typically value their determination, accomplishments, and immense talents."

"How could my father compete with a system that rewarded nepotism and protected only those who'd always had access to power? The reality is, even with a college degree, he couldn't. Affirmative action had to happen," she continued.

"Because my father was able to have his career in aerospace, he could afford a home and raise a family alongside my mother. He could get us into good public schools and put all his daughters through college, leading to our future successes," Belton added. "Without programs like affirmative action, my whole life could have gone in an entirely different direction."

The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law represents Harvard and UNC students and alumni who helped defend their policies. The group's president and executive director, Damon Hewitt, vowed to keep up the fight in a statement Monday.

"Selective universities like Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill have long struggled to admit students of color, who have over time been excluded for access to elite institutions and are historically marginalized," Hewitt said. "Race-conscious admissions policies are a critical tool that ensures students of color are not overlooked in a process that does not typically value their determination, accomplishments, and immense talents."

"We will vigorously defend access and opportunity in higher education," he added, "alongside a diverse coalition of students of color, including our incredible clients whose testimony about their experiences on campus served as the cornerstone for the lower courts' favorable decisions in both of these cases."

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) president and director-counsel Sherrilyn Ifill similarly asserted Monday that "holistic, race-conscious admissions programs" not only enable universities to "bring together people of different backgrounds to learn from one other" but also "help mitigate systemic barriers to educational opportunities faced by many Black students and other students of color, ensuring that all hard-working and qualified applicants receive due consideration."

"Further, the court's decision today comes amidst the backdrop of widespread efforts to erase and deny the experiences of people of color," Ifill said. "As our country experiences a resurgence of white supremacy, it is as important now as ever before that our future leaders be educated in a learning environment that exposes them to the rich diversity that our country has to offer, so they may be fully prepared for the many challenges ahead."

This post has been updated with comment from the NAACP LDF.

This article originally appeared at CommonDreams.org. Originally published on January 25th, 2022. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. 

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Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Defender of Human Rights in South Africa and Beyond, Dies at 90

JULIA CONLEY

December 26, 2021

Photo by Peter Williams, WCC

Leaving behind a legacy of fighting for oppressed people in South Africa and around the world, Archbishop Desmond Tutu died Sunday at age 90 in Cape Town, South Africa. The cause was reportedly cancer.

Advocates for human rights, health equity, economic justice, and nonviolence honored Tutu, who helped lead the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which was formed afterwards.

The Elders, the independent groudenp of global leaders working for justice and good governance, said his "commitment to peace, love, and the fundamental equality of all human beings will endure to inspire future generations."

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."

"The Elders would not be who they are today without his passion, commitment, and keen moral compass," said Mary Robinson, former Irish president and chair of The Elders. "He inspired me to be a 'prisoner of hope,' in his inimitable phrase. [Tutu] was respected around the world for his dedication to justice, equality, and freedom. Today we mourn his death but affirm our determination to keep his beliefs alive."      

Tutu served as The Elders' first chair from 2007 until 2013, after becoming internationally recognized for his work leading Black South Africans in the fight against the apartheid system, which he condemned as "evil" while urging nonviolent methods of protest.

He preached that apartheid threatened the dignity and humanity of both Black and white South Africans and called on international leaders to impose sanctions on the country's government in protest of the apartheid system, a demand which led South African officials to revoke his passport twice.

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor," Tutu famously said during the struggle against apartheid. "If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in 1984. After the fall of the apartheid system in 1994, Tutu chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which aimed to provide a record of the violence and injustice perpetrated by the government under the system. The archbishop sought to provide "restorative justice," offering compensation to survivors and amnesty to perpetrators who cooperated with the inquiry.

Tutu was a fierce critic of economic and racial inequality that persisted in South Africa following the formal end of the apartheid system, accusing President Thabo Mbeki in 2004 of serving a small number of elites while "too many of our people live in grueling, demeaning, dehumanizing poverty."

"Can you explain how a Black person wakes up in a squalid ghetto today, almost 10 years after freedom?" Tutu said in 2003. "Then he goes to work in town, which is still largely White, in palatial homes. And at the end of the day, he goes back home to squalor?"

Beyond his home country, Tutu was an outspoken critic of militarism and imperialism in the Global North, calling for former U.S. President George W. Bush and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair to face prosecution at the International Criminal Court over their invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Tutu was also a defender of Palestinians' rights and a critic of Israel's violent policies targeting millions of people in Gaza and the West Bank, comparing their treatment to the apartheid system.

In 2014, as the Israeli Defense Forces carried out attacks that killed more than 2,100 Palestinians—the vast majority of whom were civilians—Tutu wrote an exclusive article in Israeli newspaper Haaretz, calling for a global boycott of Israel.

He called on Israelis "to actively disassociate themselves and their profession from the design and construction of infrastructure related to perpetuating injustice, including the separation barrier, the security terminals and checkpoints, and the settlements built on occupied Palestinian land."

"Those who continue to do business with Israel, who contribute to a sense of 'normalcy' in Israeli society, are doing the people of Israel and Palestine a disservice," Tutu wrote. "They are contributing to the perpetuation of a profoundly unjust status quo. Those who contribute to Israel's temporary isolation are saying that Israelis and Palestinians are equally entitled to dignity and peace."

That same year, Tutu called for a global divestment from the fossil fuel industry modeled on the international sanctions that he supported against South Africa, which helped to end apartheid.

"As we celebrate Desmond Tutu's legacy, remember his unflagging support for the people of Palestine."

"We live in a world dominated by greed," Tutu wrote in The Guardian. "We have allowed the interests of capital to outweigh the interests of human beings and our Earth. It is clear [the companies] are not simply going to give up; they stand to make too much money."

"People of conscience need to break their ties with corporations financing the injustice of climate change," he added. "We can, for instance, boycott events, sports teams, and media programming sponsored by fossil-fuel energy companies... We can encourage more of our universities and municipalities and cultural institutions to cut their ties to the fossil-fuel industry."

Tutu was also recognized for his global fight for LGBTQ+ rights, his calls for an end to AIDS denialism in South Africa, and recently, his efforts to combat misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines.

"Bishop Tutu meant so much to so many," said Rev. Dr. William Barber II, co-chair of the anti-poverty Poor People's Campaign in the U.S. "Thank God for his life. Let we who believe in freedom and justice be his legacy always."

This article originally appeared at CommonDreams.org. Originally published on December 26th, 2021.It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. 

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