What To Do When You're Stopped By Police - The ACLU & Elon James White
What To Do When You're Stopped By Police - The ACLU & Elon James White
Know Anyone Who Thinks Racial Profiling Is Exaggerated? Watch This, And Tell Me When Your Jaw Drops.
This video clearly demonstrates how racist America is as a country and how far we have to go to become a country that is civilized and actually values equal justice. We must not rest until this goal is achieved. I do not want my great grandchildren to live in a country like we have today. I wish for them to live in a country where differences of race and culture are not ignored but valued as a part of what makes America great.
Judge Reinstates Over 500 Voice of America Journalists and Staff
"The reversal of firings is the latest defeat that the Trump administration has incurred in its effort to close down the federal news organization.
Since President Trump orders its closure, Voice of America has broadcast around an hour per day. Before, Voice of America had been broadcasting around the clock.Jason Andrew for The New York Times
A federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to reverse the layoff notices sent out to nearly all remaining employees at Voice of America, a federal news organization that provides independent reporting to countries with limited press freedom, such as China, Russia and Iran.
In a scathing ruling that accused Trump officials of ignoring and disrespecting the court, Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found that the administration had violated his April order torestore Voice of America’s news coverageso that it would “serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news.”
Despite his earlier order, Kari Lake, a fierce Trump ally and a former local TV anchor in Arizona who has led the administration’s efforts to gut Voice of America, and other Trump officials kept the news programming and staffing at the news agency bare bones.
In August, a few days after Judge Lamberth criticized her for potentially violating his order, she moved to lay off 532 full-time journalists and support staff at the agency. All but three radio broadcast technicians were fired, although Voice of America needs those employees to provide radio broadcasting as Congress required, according to court filings.
Those actions have irked Judge Lamberth, who has threatened to hold Ms. Lake in contempt and required her to demonstrate that the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the agency Ms. Lake runs that oversees Voice of America, has complied with his order and the laws Congress passed that required the news group’s continued broadcasting across the world.
On Monday, in ordering the reversal of layoffs, the judge expressed his frustration with what he saw as Ms. Lake’s noncompliance with his April order. He again warned her and other Trump officials that they were risking contempt for failing to continue Voice of America’s news broadcasting across the globe."
"Federal funding will lapse this week if Congress does not act. Areas across the government will be affected.
Congress — the only entity that can bring a shutdown to an end — does not go dark. But congressional staffers are subject to the same furloughs as other federal workers.Alex Kent for The New York Times
As the country hurtles toward a shutdown this week, offices across the federal government are scrambling to finalize their contingency plans, knowing that many — but not all — operations will have to go dark.
A shutdown occurs when Congress cannot reach a deal to continue government funding by the time current funding lapses. One would begin at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday if Democrats and Republicans cannot come to an agreement.
In some parts of the federal government, there is an immediate impact. But not every federally funded initiative is at the mercy of Congress’s budgeting standoffs, and even some that are may be able to rely on cash reserves to get through a brief shutdown.
But if the two sides dig in, the consequences could be significant and lasting. Here is what to know.
What shuts down? What doesn’t?
The effects of a shutdown tend to unfold in stages. Some of the most visible expected closures are museums and monuments. Those planning a trip to a national park or the National Mall may find themselves greeted by locked doors and no entry signs if the shutdown lasts more than a few days. And federal workers will see their paychecks stop for the duration of a shutdown — even if they have to stay on the job.
Department to department, the impacts vary. The Postal Service, which is self-funded, and Social Security and Medicare benefits, which are considered “mandatory” spending, should keep on going. While most federal workers are likely to be furloughed, those designated as “excepted,” such as active-duty troops, air traffic controllers and federal law enforcement officers, stay on the job, even though they cannot be paid for that work until after the shutdown is over.
Here isa fuller viewof how a shutdown would affect different agencies.
Congress — the only entity that can bring a shutdown to an end — does not go dark. But congressional staffers are subject to the same furloughs as other federal workers.
Who decides what workers are ‘excepted’? Do essential employees have to work without pay?
It is up to every department, agency and congressional office to make contingency plans for a shutdown, including who stays on and who goes home. Whether they work or not, employees at federal agencies affected by a shutdown are not paid until the government opens again.
While much is left to the discretion of managers, designating “essential” workers ensures that even in the case of a federal shutdown, the government can continue to preserve public safety. That is why active-duty military members are traditionally required to keep working, as are officials at the F.B.I., Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Secret Service, among others. It is also why air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration officers traditionally must work, albeit without pay.
In the past, Congress had to approve back pay to make furloughed and excepted workers whole. But after the last shutdown — a 35-day ordeal that began in December 2018 — Congress passed a law to make back pay for federal employees automatic once the government opens.
How long will it last?
It depends on how bitterly opposed the two parties are — and how willing each side is to dig in for the long haul. For now, the impasse hascentered on health care, as Democrats demand that Republicans agree to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year. They are also looking to reverse cuts to Medicaid and other health programs in President Trump’s tax and domestic policy law.
Republicans control both houses of Congress, but they need at least seven more Senate votes to bypass procedural hurdles and reopen the government if all members of their party hang together. In March, theymanaged to avoid a shutdown, but the political blowback against Democrats who broke rank was severe, motivating the party to stand firmer this time.
Still, as constituents begin to lose pay and access to federal services, the cost-benefit analysis of a shutdown for each senator may start to shift. In early 2019, slowdowns at airports — fueled in part by air traffic controllers and T.S.A. agents calling in sick — helped to bring an end to thelongest shutdown on record.
What happens with the courts?
The federal courts are a bit of a hybrid: They are subject to federal appropriations, but they also collect fees, and historically have been able to tap into reserves to continue services. But some district courts are alreadyfacing funding shortfalls, and it is unclear how long each jurisdiction would be able to operate before cases are delayed.
According to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, the federal judiciary expects to continue full operations through Oct. 3. But if the shutdown goes longer, courts may have to limit their work to “activities needed to support the exercise of the judiciary’s constitutional functions and to address emergency circumstances,” according to a spokesman for the administrative office.
The salaries of federal judges and Supreme Court justices are considered mandatory spending, but furloughs are expected to affect court staff members.
A shutdown-induced slowdown in the federal courts is particularly significant in the current climate, as the judiciary has been the main forum formounting challenges to Trump administration policies. Immigrants facing deportation, laid off federal workers and holders of terminated federal contracts have turned to the federal courts for relief, adding volume and urgency to what were already robust dockets.
It is also unclear how furloughs at the Justice Department, whose litigators argue on behalf of the government, could affect the timing of certain cases. Jurors in federal cases would not be paid during a shutdown, though they would receive back pay when the government reopens.
What about government contracts?
Contractors — including the companies, nonprofits and service providers who rely on federal funding — are also facing a hybrid situation. Their funding is at the mercy of the federal government reopening, and they are not covered by the 2019 law guaranteeing back pay. But depending on the disbursement schedule of the federal government’s payments to them, they may be able to get through a short shutdown relatively unscathed.
The federal government does not have the ability to claw back funds that have already been disbursed to contractors, so programs and positions that have been fully funded before a shutdown would be in the best position to ride out the budgetary storm.
Contractors more closely tethered to the incremental operations of the federal government — with pay or work space — would be more directly affected. Contractors performing public safety and national security functions for the federal government may also be required to work without pay.
How does this all end, and what are the long-term impacts?
Congress has to pass an appropriations bill to end a shutdown. But that means Republicans and Democrats have to compromise. The blame gamehas startedeven before the shutdown does, as each side attempts to spin the negative effects as the other party’s fault, and their own refusal to bend as a principled fight.
How long this could go on is anybody’s guess.Shutdowns were once common: During Jimmy Carter’s presidency, shutdowns lasting a week or two occurred almost annually. When President Ronald Reagan was in office, near-annual shutdowns lasted just a day or so. But they have become rarer in recent decades. The last one, which began just before Christmas in 2018 and ended in late January 2019, set a record of34 full days.
But the end of a shutdown may not mark a return to normalcy. Mr. Trumphas threatened layoffsif the government shuts down, potentially making some staffing reductions permanent.
“The article describes the history of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its potential dismantling by the current Supreme Court. The article argues that the Court's decisions, influenced by conservative justices, could lead to the erosion of voting rights and the erosion of the Reconstruction amendments.
Louisiana v Callais could roll back what remains of the Voting Rights Act, putting the future of America’s multiracial democracy at stake
With so many things happening everywhere all at once, the start of a new supreme court term on 6 October may be flying under the radar. It shouldn’t.
The state of checks and balances in the country is among the more ominous indicators of the health of America’s democracy: in the executive branch is a president who is keen on exercising every lever of power that he has – as well as some he does not – to enrich himself and his allies and to suppress dissent and political opposition. The legislature is dominated by a regime-friendly political party that is too happy to roll over and accede to the president’s wishes, repeatedly failing to exercise the congressional powers that could rein in the executive branch.
Because the executive and legislature branches seem to have jumped the constitutional shark, some people continue to hold out hope that the judicial branch, with the supreme court at its apex, will offer a way out of this mess. That would be a mistake: like Congress, the Republican majority on the supreme court has lined up behind most of the president’s sweeping assertions of novel powers. The supreme court has blocked lower federal court rulings that had reined in the president’s authority to withhold federal medical research grants for ideological reasons. It has allowed the executive branch to deploy roving immigration patrols to engage in racial profiling; to expel noncitizens to countries on the brink of civil wars where they could face torture, trafficking or death; to fire non-regime friendly officials (in violation of federal law); to dismantle entire departments and more.
But one specific case on the court’s docket for this term illustrates its role in a more far-reaching rightwing project that goes back all the way to the end of the civil war.
Louisiana v Callais is a major challenge to what remains of the Voting Rights of Act of 1965, and could radically rework the structure of political representation in the United States. A successful challenge to the VRA would allow the Republican party to further cheat democracy by engaging in even more partisan gerrymandering and erasing several legislative districts held by Democratic officials, many of whom are racial minorities.
Callais arises out of the 2020 redistricting process, when Louisiana, like other states, drew new congressional maps. The resulting maps gave Black voters fewer opportunities to elect the candidates of their choice than white voters, significantly diluting their voting power.
Louisiana has six congressional representatives in a state that is about one-third Black, but drew maps that allowed Black voters to select only one-sixth of the state’s representatives. Lower courts concluded the maps violated section two of the VRA. Passed during the civil rights movement to address a long history of disenfranchisement, the VRA prohibits voting policies that have the effect of disadvantaging Black voters, including in electoral representation. In response to these judicial decisions, the Louisiana legislature took another crack at maps that accomplished its partisan objectives – such as preserving Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson’s seat – while also affording Black voters political opportunities. A group of white voters challenged those maps as unconstitutional racial discrimination. Their theory was that the legislature, by trying to ensure both Black voters and white voters were represented, had somehow discriminated against white voters.
The case is even bigger than a fight about the future of the VRA; it is also bigger than the Republican party’s decades-long campaign against the VRA. The case is part of a broad effort to not only reinterpret the Reconstruction amendments – the constitutional amendments passed after the civil war to ensure equal rights and due process – but also to weaponize them against democracy and civil rights. That conflict is being waged in both the supreme court and the White House, and its roots go back more than a century to the aftermath of the civil war.
The big picture helps to underscore what is at stake: the future of the United States as a multiracial democracy.
An engraving depicting freed men registering to vote in Macon, Georgia, during the first registration under army rule during the 19th century. Photograph: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images
The story of Louisiana v Callais begins with the project of Reconstruction, the effort to reconstitute the United States after the civil war and the end of slavery. Reconstruction was an ambitious undertaking that sought to integrate Black Americans into the polity and to protect their rights against the states and political movements that already wanted to claw them back on the heels of the civil war.
Part of this era entailed the passage and ratification of the Reconstruction amendments – the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments that outlawed slavery, guaranteed equal protection, and prohibited racial discrimination in voting, among other things. The people who drafted the 15th amendment saw the measure as a way to allow Black voters “to choose from among his fellow citizens the man who suits him for his representative”, as senator John F Edmunds put it in 1869. As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson detailed in an oral argument a few years ago, a report submitted by a congressional committee on Reconstruction said “that the entire point” of the project was to secure rights of formerly enslaved people. “The legislature who introduced [the 14th] amendment said: ‘Unless the constitution should restrain them, those states will all, I fear, keep up this discrimination and crush to death the hated freedmen,’” Jackson said.
Reconstruction was an ambitious project that produced real gains. Within a few years, former Confederate states sent Black representatives and senators to Congress and elected Black leaders to state political offices. The federal military conducted voter registration drives in the south; through Freedmen’s Bureau offices, the federal government helped set up thousands of schools that educated hundreds of thousands of children who had been enslaved.
In part because of these successes, Reconstruction encountered resistance that became violent. That included the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, which enforced racial hierarchy through a campaign of terror.
Black people in South Carolina vote in 1948 for the first time since Reconstruction. Photograph: North Carolina Central University/Getty Images
The many varied opponents of Reconstruction channeled several talking points. One was the idea that the very project of Reconstruction was too radical and had to be limited so as to preserve a pre-existing constitutional order of white supremacy that Reconstruction had sought to remake. The anti-Reconstruction movement scored important victories with supreme court decisions from the late 1800s that narrowly interpreted provisions in the 14th amendment and weakened the federal government’s oversight of states’ regulation of elections.
Another anti-Reconstruction trope was the notion that federal civil rights protections were no longer needed since slavery was a thing of the past. And, this line of argument continued, because federal protections for Black freedmen were unnecessary, retaining the protections was actually unfair to the people who were prohibited from disenfranchising or discriminating against them. Along these lines, when Andrew Johnson vetoed a congressional statute, he insisted that since slavery had been “abrogated”, federal protections for freedmen therefore “operated in favor of the colored and against the white race”. When the supreme court invalidated the Reconstruction-era Civil Rights Act in 1883, it, too, insisted that the time for federal civil rights protections for freedmen was up, since “there must be some stage in the progress of [freedmen’s] elevation when he takes the rank of a mere citizen and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws.” (This was less than two decades after the end of the civil war.)
In short, opponents of Reconstruction tried to weaponize the principles of Reconstruction against it. Southern sympathizers maintained that prohibiting former Confederate states and Confederates from discriminating against Black Americans was itself a kind of discrimination – discrimination against the Confederate states and would-be discriminators.
This logic has endured: decades later, white business owners even challengedthe 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits businesses from engaging in racial discrimination, as a violation of the 13th amendment, which prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude.
Civil rights organizers and leaders continued to press forward the vision that Reconstruction offered. The 1965 Voting Rights Act was a milestone in their efforts. The VRA had two main elements: section two, prohibited voting discrimination on a nationwide basis. The other, section five, required certain jurisdictions with especially bad histories of voting discrimination to get federal permission before changing their voting laws or policies. The latter system was known as preclearance.
The VRA had barely become law before the modern Republican party decided to attack the statute and to specifically use the federal courts to do so. President Richard Nixon opposed renewing the preclearance process; members of his administration referred to it as “punitive” legislation – arguing, essentially, that it was unfair to, and discriminated against, the former Confederate states. Nixon reportedly promised to appoint supreme court justices who would not make the south a “whipping boy” (of all things) on civil rights; to the supreme court, he appointed a southerner, Lewis Powell, who would later warn that expansive interpretations of the VRA would turn American “cities into jungles”. Nixon also appointed William Rehnquist, who was accused of challenging Black and Latino men’s voting credentials during elections. (Rehnquist denied doing so).
Later Republican administrations continued the fight against the VRA. Ronald Reagan also opposed renewing the law, referring to it as “vindictive, selective” and “humilitary [sic]” to the poor former Confederacy. His assistant attorney general called the VRA’s protections against voting discrimination a kind of “government-imposed discrimination”. (Again the same refrain: anti-discrimination is the new discrimination.) His administration produced a legal document warning that expansive interpretations of the Reconstruction amendments, which allowed Congress to adopt expansive civil rights protections, had “extreme consequences” and must be rejected. The Reagan administration hired a young Samuel Alito after he professed interest in apportionment, or how legislatures draw districts. The administration also hired a young John Roberts who helped the administration’s (unsuccessful) effort to oppose renewing and expanding the VRA. Both men are now poised to decide whether section two of the VRA can limit how states apportion representation.
President Lyndon B Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act on 6 August 1965 at the US Capitol in Washington DC. Photograph: AP
This effort – to weaponize the principles of equality against it – would return with Bush v Gore, the case that halted Florida’s efforts to accurately count the votes in the 2000 presidential election and, in the process, handed the presidency to George W Bush. Bush’s litigation team argued that manually recounting votes in the jurisdictions affected by lingering uncertainty resulting from machine tabulation was a denial of equal protection. Their argument was that manually recounting ballots only in those areas affected by tabulation uncertainties was unequal – in other words: “equal” protection required potentially disenfranchising voters in the affected areas, which had comparatively large groups of minority voters. The lawyers who pressed this theory included Roberts, Amy Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, all of whom now sit on the supreme court.
The Trump administration has picked up these ideas and pushed them to further extremes. In an array of executiveorders and guidance letters, the administration has insisted that civil rights laws actually prohibit measures that are designed to achieve equality. It has invoked federal civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination to insist that schools must discriminate against certain speech. It has decided that federal anti-discrimination law bars efforts designed to achieve diverse schools and businesses. It has argued that federal anti-discrimination measures actually require some discrimination against some disfavored groups.
The Roberts court has channeled these same ideas into its decisions. It was unfair and unequal to “punish” the south, Roberts wrote for the Republican justices who invalidated the preclearance process in 2013. That system was too extreme in giving the federal government that kind of control over elections, he added.
True equality, the Roberts court has ruled, actually requires a prohibition on schools trying to achieve diverse student bodies by considering applicants’ race. The time for schools’ race-conscious measures designed to achieve racial diversity and representation is over, according to this court.
Members of the supreme court in Washington DC in 2021. Photograph: Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty Images
So too is the time for protecting the rights of minority voters, the court said when it invalidated the VRA’s preclearance system in 2013. Preclearance was no longer necessary, the court said, because section two’s nationwide ban on voting discrimination could do all the work.
But the court has decided to consider whether section two’s time is up as well. In 2023, Kavanaugh openly stated that Congress’s authority to “authorize race-based redistricting … cannot extend indefinitely into the future”. He was referring to the VRA’s requirement that legislatures ensure Black voters are represented, not to legislatures’ frequent practice of ensuring (only) white voters are represented. The latter is apparently neutral and fine, whereas the former is seen as suspect. No wonder Justice Elena Kagan remarked in an oral argument that “in recent years”, the VRA “has fared not well in this court”.
Which brings us to Louisiana v Callais. Multiple courts relied on section two of the VRA to strike down a set of legislative maps that did not afford Black voters with equal rights or equal opportunities as white voters. That set off a redistricting process where the Louisiana legislature had to ensure the state’s maps provided Black voters with political representation.
Now the supreme court is being asked to find section two illegal – to say that considering political equality is a kind of discrimination. The argument is that prohibiting legislatures from discriminating against Black voters, by denying them political opportunities, actually discriminates against white voters.
Callais is emblematic of several themes that have defined the work of the Roberts court to date and that the court will expand upon still. Front and center is the notion of conservative grievance – the idea that Republican constituencies are the real victims of subordination today, their power diminished by pluralism, modernity, civil rights, democracy, you name it. Conservative grievance imagines that there is no discrimination except for discrimination against white, Christian conservatives and the super rich. That’s not reality, as there is no evidence of widespread discrimination against white people.
The conservative grievance mindset insists that the constitution and civil rights laws protect social and religious conservatives’ prejudices. The idea is that if you squint hard enough, it turns out that civil rights protections actually prohibit measures that are designed to secure civil rights.
The court has played a pivotal role in the rightwing project translating these grievances into a redesign of American law and politics. In cases on racial discrimination, the court has insisted that measures prohibiting racial discrimination actually discriminate against white people. In cases on LGBTQ+ equality, the court has insisted that measures prohibiting discrimination against gay, lesbian and bisexual people actually discriminate against religious and social conservatives who are opposed to LGBTQ+ equality. In addition to Callais, another case on the court’s docket for this term invites more of this thinking: that case asks whether it is unconstitutional to prohibit conversion practices that seek to counsel people out of being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender – a form of “therapy” a UN expert has said can amount to torture. The court will also consider whether federal civil rights protections against sex discrimination permit – or even require – discrimination on the basis of gender identity, against trans student athletes.
The reality of the court’s shadow docket – the set of orders and decisions the court issues without full briefing, oral argument, advance notice and often on an emergency basis – is that we do not know which other matters will make their way up to the court over the next year. The shadow docket is one of the primary vehicles the court has used to weigh in on much of the litigation concerning the Trump administration – and specifically to block lower court rulings and greenlight many of the administration’s claims of new, sweeping presidential authority.
In the last three months alone, the shadow docket is where the court allowedthe administration to continue to withhold almost $800m in medical research grants; to fire officials in violation of federal law; to take steps to dismantle the Department of Education; to have roving immigration patrols engage in racial profiling and more. In one of the many cases where the court’s Republican appointees voted in favor of the Trump administration on the shadow docket, Justice Jackson wrote what the supreme court is doing is “Calvinball but with a twist”. In Calvinball, the fictional game played in the Calvin and Hobbes comics, there are no rules. Here, there is one rule – “this administration always wins”, Jackson quipped.
Black Louisiana voters and civil rights advocates call on the supreme court to uphold a fair and representative congressional map in Louisiana v Callais on 24 March in Washington DC. Photograph: Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Legal Defense Fund
But the supreme court’s governing rule may be a little broader and even more terrifying than that. The Republican justices seem to think that not only are Republicans entitled to power, they are also entitled to use that power to do whatever they want. That is why the court treats it as an emergency when a lower federal court blocks a Trump administration policy.
That is also why the court seems to look at the VRA’s prohibitions on racial discrimination as illegitimate. This is also another iteration of the Republican justices’ refrain that the constitution is colorblind – that it does not permit officials to take race into account for any reason.
The theory is a work of historical fiction: as Jackson illustrated by pointedly quoting from Congress’s report on Reconstruction, Reconstructionist lawmakers argued that the Reconstruction amendments authorized measures that would benefit Black Americans, rectify discrimination against them, and prevent future discrimination as well. Moreover, the “colorblind” theory has been somewhat less than colorblind in practice. In the context of the VRA case, for example, “colorblind” constitutionalism would permit legislatures to redistrict in ways that result in white voters being overrepresented, but would prohibit laws from requiring legislatures to ensure that Black voters are represented as well. That is not being colorblind; it is racial hierarchy. In the recent past, “colorblind” constitutionalism has led the court to say that colleges considering race as one factor in an applicant’s file to ensure colleges are diverse is unconstitutional, but immigration officers considering race as one factor in who to detain and deport is perfectly legal.
So-called colorblind constitutionalism has always been a tool to reinforce Republicans’ power. A century ago, it was a way of resurrecting the Confederacy and dismantling Reconstruction. Soon it could pave the way for the end of the law that made the United States a multiracial democracy.
