Rick Casey looks behind the scenes of the Texas redistricting ruling

Via the SAEN, Rick Casey writes at San Antonio public television KLRN's blog, Texas Week (added links for background):

Last week’s ruling by a three-judge panel in San Antonio that the Texas Legislature racially discriminated in drawing three congressional districts is being hailed as a major civil rights triumph in some legal quarters.

“This is a huge victory for voting rights plaintiffs,” wrote nationally-recognized elections law expert Richard Hasen in his Election Law Blog. He predicted the 2-1 decision was unlikely to be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court because “it closely tracks Justice (Anthony) Kennedy’s views of the issues in this area.”

Kennedy is often the swing vote on the closely divided court.

Hasen said the ruling was especially important because it could lead to Texas once again being required to pre-clear redistricting and other election matters with the Justice Department, as was required before the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013. This is because Judges Rodriguez and Orlando Garcia found intentional discrimination in the case.

The Justice Department under Attorney General Jeff Sessions is not likely to be much of a watchdog on voting rights matters, but that would likely change if a Democratic president is elected in 2018. (sic)

The three judges who decided the case include one Democrat and two Republicans. Ironically, the decision may have gone the other way if one of the judges hadn’t been punished for joining in an earlier ruling in the case. Here’s the back story.

Judge Xavier Rodriguez, a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Texas law school, was first appointed to the Texas Supreme Court by then-Gov. Rick Perry. He lost in the Republican primary, however, when he had to stand for election. He returned briefly to private practice before being appointed to a federal district bench here by President George W. Bush.

Back in 2013, Rodriguez was asked to fill out the voluminous paperwork to be considered for promotion to the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. President Obama had selected a Democratic judge from Corpus Christi, but the two Republican senators reportedly made it clear they would block her nomination. So the Obama Administration lit on Rodriguez — a non-ideological choice who had been appointed to important benches by two Texas Republican leaders.

But the appointment languished until 2015 when, a friend of Judge Rodriguez said, he was told his name was withdrawn because of a lack of support from the two senators. The reason: His previous rulings in the redistricting case.

Had Rodriguez been elevated to the appellate court, he might well have been replaced with a more conservative Republican on the three-judge panel hearing the redistricting case. The 2-1 decision could have gone in the other direction with Rodriguez’s replacement joining the very conservative third member of the panel, Judge Jerry Smith of Houston.

Smith, a Reagan appointee, issued a bitter dissent. He was especially hostile toward lawyers from Obama’s Justice Department.

“It was obvious, from the start, that the DOJ attorneys viewed state officials and the legislative majority and their staffs as a bunch of backwoods hayseed bigots who bemoan the abolition of the poll tax and pine for the days of literacy tests and lynchings,” Smith wrote. “And the DOJ lawyers saw themselves as an expeditionary landing party arriving here, just in time, to rescue the state from oppression, obviously presuming that plaintiffs' counsel were not up to the task.”

A postscript: The seat on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals for which Rodriguez was considered remains vacant. In fact, two seats reserved for Texas judges on the appeals court are vacant. So, going back as far as 2011, are 11 seats on federal district courts around the state.

It appears that Republican refusals to grant President Obama his Supreme Court nominee last year wasn’t the sum total of Republican resistance, at least here in Texas.

Next week begins the confirmation hearings for Neil Gorsuch to be elevated to the Supreme Court, to fill at last the seat left vacant by the demise of Antonin Scalia fourteen months ago.  Senate Democratic resistance to Gorsuch is reportedly impotent.  Scalia oversaw appeals to the SCOTUS from the Fifth Circuit; that will likely also be Gorsuch's beat upon his confirmation.  As for the rest of these federal bench vacancies, it remains to be seen whether Chuck Schumer, et.al. will have the skilz to play the stalling game as well as Mitch McConnell, etc. until 2020.

No bets taken.

I thought I smelled Geraldo Rivera and Al Capone's vault

Maybe it was that dirty Coke bottle.

I didn't watch it (I too think Rachel Maddow is an asshole) but my wife did, and she fell asleep sometime during the first half hour.  I just watched the Twitter feed, and to say that Maddow was mocked for her typical drawing-out of the reveal -- of nothing much, it turned out -- is to call the Grand Canyon a ditch.

It takes less time to fill out your taxes than for Rachael Maddow to get to what's in Trump's taxes

— Eric Stangel (@EricStangel) March 15, 2017

Interesting move by Rachel Maddow here, saving the tax-return reveal for Trump's second term.

— Michael Rosenberg (@Rosenberg_Mike) March 15, 2017

With all due respect, not even my mother takes this long to get to the point.

— Mo Rocca (@MoRocca) March 15, 2017

Cringeworthy indeed.  I'll cut to the chase myself, via the NYT:

Nothing in the two pages produced on Tuesday night suggested any ties with Russia. Nor did they provide much information about his businesses that was not previously known. But they showed that the vast bulk of the federal income taxes he paid in 2005, $31 million, was paid under the alternative minimum tax, which Mr. Trump wants to abolish.

That tax serves as a backstop to the ordinary income tax and is intended to prevent wealthy Americans from paying no income tax at all. Without it, Mr. Trump would have paid about $5 million in regular taxes, plus nearly $2 million in self-employment taxes, on $153 million in income in 2005.

Trump wants to eliminate the AMT, natch.  Maddow got a lot of pushback from Team Trump even before her show began, and the Democrats tried to buttress... whatever it was Maddow was claiming. 

Maybe more recent tax returns -- the ones Trump has refused to disclose -- will show some Russian business relationships that demonstrate the president has profitable ties to other Caucasian mobsters, as with Felix Sater.  That will be the big news if it exists, and can be evidenced, because there is as much election hacking hiding somewhere as there is a pony underneath a pile of shit.  And if nothing turns up, we'll have 3.8 more years of crying from Clinton Democrats about the Kremlin's nefarious plots to undermine our country.  Republican voters don't seem to give a damn about that presently.  What do you suppose it will take for them to believe now that Maddow has cried wolf?

Update:  From a supportive viewer, 'The night Rachel Maddow let me down'.  From Gin and Tacos: "More like Rachel Much-Ado, amirite?"  Contrary to the skepticism in the headline, his thinking is that Maddow is methodically building a case, like a prosecutor *facepalm*.  And No More Mister, also hoping this is all going to lead us somewhere.

I wonder how many MAGAmericans have ditched their microwaves

“There was an article this week that talked about how you can surveil someone through their phones, through their—certainly through their television sets, any number of different ways,” (Trump spokesperson Kellyanne) Conway said. “And microwaves that turn into cameras, et cetera. So we know that that is just a fact of modern life.” 

Sewer Rat Barbie is just trolling us all again.  SNL writers are hard at work on this weekend's sketches as we speak.  It must be a real challenge to make satire out of what is already patently ridiculous.  Here's Conjob, walking back this week's shit-pulled-out-of-her-ass.

“I’m not Inspector Gadget. I don’t believe people are using the microwave to spy on the Trump campaign,” she told CNN on Monday. “However, I’m not in the job of having evidence, that’s what investigations are for.”

"I (or Trump or Sean Spicer) will say or Tweet whatever we like, you putzes are the ones who have to verify it.  Good luck!  We'll have some more crap for you next week to get to the bottom of, you nasty fake news enemies of the people!"

While I wouldn't discuss any plans I might have for the revolution in front of my Samsung TV, I still feel comfortable walking into my kitchen in my underwear, despite Conway's warnings.  Though I might consider wearing a bulletproof vest when I stumble in, sleepy-eyed, for my first cup of coffee.  Or maybe replacing my gas stove with an electric.  One with no Internet connection, mind you.

Update: What do you do when liars don't care if you know they're lying?

The Weekly Wrangle

With this week's lefty blog post roundup, the Texas Progressive Alliance is springing forward to unpack its sweaters and jackets as spring break begins.

Off the Kuff looked at two different analyses of the Harris County Democratic sweep of 2016.

Socratic Gadfly takes a look at some of the key issues as of this time in an overview of the Wikileaks Vault7 dump.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme notes Republicans aren't even bothering to hide their ugly war on women and children. Increases in maternal deaths? No problem. Torture the children of immigrants? Go for it.

Obamacare has morphed into Trumpcare, which is actually DonTcare, and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs notices that Republicans on both sides of the right aisle want to kill it.

A leaking gas well in southern Denton has residents there alarmed about the safety of their children, reports Txsharon at Bluedaze.

jobsanger shows evidence that helping working women through a progressive social agenda, including paid leave and affordable child care, would boost the nation's economy by closing both the gender employment and the gender wage gaps.

Michael Burgess held a town hall meeting in Lewisville, taking his critics head on (for the most part), reported the Texan Journal.

Texas Leftist documents the efforts of citizens and the business lobby who are coming together to stop SB6 (Dan Patrick's bathroom bill).

Metaphoric of current social and political circumstances, Neil at All People Have Value took a picture of a Houston dog living in a not fully nice home barking and growling a stray dog out on the street that had nothing.  APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

==============

More Texas news and blog posts!

Via the Austin Monitor, city officials talked about smart cities and robot cars in their 15 minutes in between the concerts, booze blowouts, tech reveals, art displays, and cosplay (via All Ablog Austin) going on during South by Southwest.

RG Ratcliffe's roundup at Burkablog included some of Trump's words, UT's troubles with the now-cancelled southwest Houston campus, and a trio of bills in the Lege dealing with children's autism.

The denials by state government of public records requests is soaring, according to the AP (via the Laredo Morning Times).

The Austin Statesman reported on Houston state representative Jessica Farrar's bill that would penalize men for ejaculating outside a woman's vagina, calling “masturbatory emissions” an “act against an unborn child, and failing to preserve the sanctity of life.”

The Texas Election Law Blog has a mini-roundup of the variety of news that broke last week on redistricting and voter ID and other related topics.

Save Buffalo Bayou rebutted the 'engineer's view', published in the Texas Tribune, regarding where the fault lies for the flooding that resulted in the creation of the flood control district.

Texas Watch points to the conservative organization Texans for Lawsuit Reform working with insurance lobbyists to manufacture another crisis.

And Pages of Victory posts one of the timeless cartoons of R Cobb.

Sunday Funnies

Scattershooting the state and local Dems again

Some developments in the wake of Lillie Schechter's election as HCDP chair last Sunday afternoon:

--Schechter won handily, as everyone who cares already knows, but not without some drama from the African American HERO-hating caucus, when both Chris Spellmon and Keryl Douglas accepted their nominations and then promptly resigned them in their acceptance speeches, throwing their support to fellow traveler Eartha Jean Johnson in a too-obvious conspiracy to take over party management.  Schechter tried to mend fences immediately by asking all candidates to join her on the dais following her swearing-in by TDP chair Gil Hinojosa, but that effort may not be working.  Yesterday Schechter sent out an email to party faithful containing this bullet point ...

• began the process of creating a Millennial Committee with the help of Johnathon Miller and Dominique Davis (two of her vanquished foes)

... the day after Sen. Borris Miles sent out this email, under the header "Just My Thoughts":

From Sunday’s vote emerged 2 front runners, our newly elected Chair Lillie Schechter and Candidate Eartha Jean Johnson; both candidates are intelligent, determined and armed with very progressive and strategic plans on turning Texas Blue; now imagine what HCDP could accomplish with them working together, side by side. The DNC runs with a Chair and a Vice Chair, I believe HCDP should follow that example and structure itself in the same manner. Lillie Schechter and Eartha Jean Johnson both have the ability to bring our precinct chairs and party together. I believe structuring HCDP with a Chair and Vice Chair would heal the party and also let our precinct chairs and constituents know that we hear them.

There's more unityblahblahfearthepartywillbefracturedblahloseanychanceofturningTexasBlueblah.
If you want more, just ask for it in the comments.

Miles misuses the word "progressive" and "narrow-minded thinking" as antonyms to their actual meaning, but I can still catch his drift.  He's sending the message that the HCDP is going to have to be a lot more in the future than white people reaching out to brown people.  I think it's a real concern that black Democrats may find themselves not voting again in 2020 -- as in 2016 -- if their concerns continue to go unaddressed.  The quandary here is finding room for Christian fundamentalists under the big blue tent who are unwavering in their belief that homos are sinners.  Of any creed, for what it's worth.  One party of hate is one too many.  Don't need two.

I can't see how this gets resolved without somebody forfeiting a core belief.  How often does that happen in politics?

As an aside to Team Donkey, you may take some small solace in the fact that the Harris County Green Party's recent local election shows even more racial dysfunction than this, if you can believe it.  The old white guard just voted out their black co-chair, a woman, replacing her with a white woman who could not muster so much as a nominating acceptance speech with a plan for action.  Yet she upset the incumbent by a single vote, after the meeting location was switched with an hour to go before it was to begin.  Somebody forgot to reserve space, you see.

I suppose to their credit, and before someone accuses me of sour grapes, I should mention that the county steering committee has a new man of color who should do a fine job, along with two other members bringing fresh blood.  I ran and came in fourth to these three (and don't feel bad at all about the outcome.  My improving health gives me more time and energy that needs to be devoted to resurrecting my business practice anyway.)

-- Kuff didn't like the Andrew Cockburn/Harper's piece that praised Harris Democrats for their 2016 victories that I linked to over two weeks ago; apparently it didn't have enough math for him.  He made a point of praising TOP four times in his post but thought Cockburn should have talked to someone local.  Check his own tag for TOP, though, and you won't find any interviews with local TOP organizers over the past year.  Not sure why the guy in town should be knocking the national writer for something he hasn't done himself.

Now to cut him some slack, Kuff hosts a blogger's luncheon once a month that I no longer attend, so maybe there's TOP folks at that who talk to him that he doesn't blog about ("what happens at bloglunch stays at bloglunch", you see).  There could be stuff he knows that he can't really blog about, just like me and others.  Or he could not really know too much about TOP, like me.  By all indications, TOP is getting the job done that BGTX has long talked about but didn't.  I volunteered in that latter organization, and I can tell you straight from the inside that they couldn't organize their way out of a paper bag in 2014.  But they seem to be a haven for budding consultant wannabees, so there's that.  Whoever's giving money to BGTX should shift it over to TOP (JMHO, Democrats).

-- Let me make sure Kuff doesn't grind his teeth too much reading this, because he has properly noted that Eddie Lucio needs to be run out of the Democratic Party tarred, feathered, and on a rail, and that Mike Collier is indeed the next Best Hope for the TDP in 2018... if you're not looking forward to a US Senate race that features Beto O'Rourke, that is.  In the comments here I mentioned that with Matthew Dowd acting serious about an independent bid, it's at least possible that he siphons enough R votes away from Ted Cruz to open a general election door to victory for Beto.  That goes out the window if Michael McCaul challenges Poop Cruz in the GOP primary, spends a wad, and beats him.  And I'm hoping whichever Castro it is that's dithering about this race will exercise the family's customary reticence and sit it out.  Just no fan of Blue Dogs.

-- Finally and with regard to the real, actual key to getting more Democrats in Congress -- fixing these awful gerrymanders -- a quick click over this morning reveals that Charles didn't have time to get to this breaking news from late yesterday.  I'm sure it's in his draft queue.

Some of Texas’ 36 congressional districts violate either the U.S. Constitution or the federal Voting Rights Act, a panel of federal judges ruled Friday.

In a long-delayed ruling, the judges ruled 2-1 that the Texas Legislature must redraw the political maps it most recently used for the 2016 elections.

Specifically, they pointed to Congressional District 23, which stretches from San Antonio to El Paso, takes in most of the Texas-Mexico border and is represented by Republican Will Hurd of Helotes; Congressional District 27, represented by Blake Farenthold, R-Corpus Christi; and Congressional District 35, a Central Texas district represented by Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin.

No remedies have been suggested by the court, and one observer alleges that the reason this decision came down at last night's late hour is so that no bill in the current, regular Texas Legislative session would be possible.  Clever AF, don't you think?

Much more excellent reporting from that link by Ross Ramsey at the TexTrib, and I stole their graphic above, produced by Anneke Paterson and Todd Wiseman.  Chuck Lindell at the Statesman and Michael Li (Tweet feed), the former Texan now at the Brennan Center, and Rick Hasen at Election Law Blog all with more, including the unhinged dissent from Judge Jerry Smith.  You really should go read it.

Smith is obviously trying to draw attention to himself as a potential Supreme Court nominee with these frothing-mad attacks on the Obama DOJ, a common thread for Smith w/r/t the voter ID lawsuit.  (BTW, Kuff did get to news I didn't with the story about Jeff Sessions having his voter ID crew switch tables.)  As for Justice Smith: get you a snappy Twitter account; you got a long way to go to catch Don Willett.