Alabama Republicans refuse to create second majority-Black district
Alabama Republicans on Monday defended their decision not to create a second majority-Black district in a hearing before a panel of federal judges over the state’s redrawn congressional maps.
State Republicans continue to resist court orders, including from the supreme court in June, to amend the congressional maps to give Black voters increased political power and representation.
Lawyers for voters called Alabama’s plan, which maintains one majority-Black district, discriminatory. Abha Khanna, an attorney representing one group of plaintiffs in the case, said Alabama chose “defiance over compliance”.
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In response to the ruling, Alabama Republicans boosted the percentage of Black voters in the majority-white second congressional district, now represented by Republican representative Barry Moore, from about 30% to 39.9%, failing to give Black voters a majority which would allow them to elect their candidate of choice.
A lawyer for the state accused plaintiffs of seeking a “racial gerrymander” over traditional guidelines for drawing districts, such as keeping districts compact and keeping communities of interest together.
Then arrest them. Or in Garland's DOJ is it ok to just get away with anything simply because you're a Republican?
Garland is spineless, the Right Wing's current talking points are constantly about the weaponization of the DoJ, but that's just for two reasons, making the Biden admin look like they're "the big gubment coming to get conservatives" and normalizing what Trump and DeSantis and too many other Republican candidates want to actually do once they get control of the country back. Once that happens you will see useless hearings like the Hillary Benghazi hearings or worse, much worse.
Garland should fucking be removed from the GOP if he refuses to do his fucking job. He never should have been appointed. He is a Republican that will allow them to do whatever they want.
Firstly the GOP stands for "Grand old party" aka the Republicans of the American Right wing. I believe you mean the DoJ, the Department of Justice.
Secondly he is not a Republican, he has worked with every democratic administration since Clinton's, I cannot find his political affiliation but he's well known as a Centrist.
With that being said, Centrist and conservative Germans enabled Hitler's rise, so him being a centrist obviously doesn't mean he's not on the Republicans side, I'm just stating that he works almost exclusively with Democratic administrations and attempts to bring the aisle and work with both parties. However working what he seems to fail to realize is that working with the current Republican party means that he isn't working with other centrists anymore, since they are mostly extremists now.
I wish that Merrick Garland was my uncle or something so that I could call him up and ask him off the record how he thinks about all of this stuff.
He clearly wants to avoid looking political and as such rarely shares any comments on all of this fuckery. The problem, which all of us here I think are fairly clear on, his lack of calling out this bullshit is not only dangerous, but does a disservice to justice.
I would love to be able to hear his off-the-record reasoning as to why he isn't speaking up, and be able to challenge him in real time. Due to the political landscape, this could never be public as it would immediately be weaponized, as we can all probably predict.
Still, it sucks. The inaction is just as bad as taking a stance that isn't popular with the fascist party we call Republicans.
He isn't a part of the GOP, but he might as well be a moderate one that disagrees with Trump and his foam-at-the-mouth idiot sheep sycophants, not unlike someone like Romney or Cheney (although she voted with Trump 90% or more of the time IIRC). The effect of silence is almost the same as a plant that looks the other way.
Our political system pisses me the fuck off. It's depressing watching this happen in real time.
I absolutely agree, it's been like watching a slow motion train wreck, except for the fact that we're all passengers on that train.
Yes memt DOJ and I heard he is a Republican.
did you check under "spineless bitch"?
Garland is not in the GOP?
It would be the courts responsibility to enforce the court order, not Garland's. They need to issue a contempt of court ruling against the state.
arrest them and form a completely redrawn map.
fuck them at this point. like “aha! we refuse! checkMATE!”? bitch please.
republicans seem to think they can just shout "NO!" at any part of democracy they don't care for and it's about time someone did something.
Why hasn't it happened? This is blatant at this point. Why are they not behind bars????
Because for some bonkers reason the Supreme Court has no enforcement powers for their decisions.
More than 60 years after George Wallace and things appear unchanged in Alabama. Not that anyone expected much better from Alabama.
That's a feature not a bug to these people, conservatism is all about resisting progress even at their very own detriment.
Congressional boundaries need to be drawn by a neutral party, not the political party which happens to be in power.
Maybe that's a potential use for generative AI?
"Draw up a congressional boundary map for Alabama being sure to allocate each of the seven districts with an equal population and with two of the seven being a majority of African Americans."
Shortest straight line method is perfectly fair, non-partisan, and super easy to implement with basic GIS tools and a free map from the census bureau. It wouls take literally minutes to determine every congressional district in the country, and every 10 years you could spend 30 seconds importing the new numbers to get new maps.
Yes, sometimes the lines separate neighbors. So what?
I don't care if my neighbor is in a different congressional district.
I mean, the line has to fall somewhere and there are neighbors in different towns and cities and even states in some places, what's the big deal about a district?
https://theconversation.com/can-math-solve-the-congressional-districting-problem-44963
Just get rid of districts! They don't need to fucking exist!
Whatever we do, and we need to do SOMETHING, it should probably be defined by a Constitutional amendment.
Right now, you're right, congressional districts have no constitutional mandate other than "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers"
It's already been updated once thanks to that ugly 3/5ths language:
"Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed."
And again since that update only specifically mentioned male voters. :(
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/19th-amendment
But at no point did we define HOW the congressmembers are to be selected.
Nor that there should be winner take all districts. I think reps should be based on population and then reps allotted based on the percentage of votes the party received. Each party can have their own district maps.
There are already algorithms for gerrymandering based on whatever you require the final product to be.
we're about to see what happens if you tell the supreme court to get fucked. I assumed the next constitutional crisis was gonna be either marijuana laws or when some state decides to just not bother with elections, but this could be a fun one too
Nah, this just goes to a lower court who hands it off to a special master who then redraws the lines with zero input from their legislature: It’s if they try and ignore that is where we get into the fun “federal executive flexes it’s genitals at a state” and runs the election. Probably a long con, but the Republicans are going to lose at least one seat, and the special master may find a way to make them lose two.
When you're so racist even a conservative Supreme Court is telling you to chill out
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Alabama Republicans on Monday defended their decision not to create a second majority-Black district in a hearing before a panel of federal judges over the state’s redrawn congressional maps.
Abha Khanna, an attorney representing one group of plaintiffs in the case, said Alabama chose “defiance over compliance”.
The results of the extended court battle could also determine whether Democrats pick up another seat in Congress, where Republicans currently hold a slim majority.
“It’s unlawful to enforce proportionality over traditional redistricting principles,” Edmund LaCour, Alabama’s solicitor general, told the three-judge panel.
Plaintiffs in the supreme court case attended with many wearing T-shirts printed with their proposed map which would have two majority-Black districts.
“Alabama’s latest congressional map is a continuation of the state’s sordid history of defying court orders intended to protect the rights of Black voters,” former US attorney general Eric Holder, chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I'll do you one better, bot. "Republicans are racist". Done.
The party of "law and order"
I wonder how many dead Alabama Republican politicians it would take to change their minds? Obviously I am just asking questions and not advocating for vigilantes to take matters into their own hands lol. But how many, though?