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Here’s What’s Happening in the Battle for Voting Rights

by AlfredoBML Posted on August 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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The courts have recently transformed the voting rights debate.

Last Friday, a panel of judges struck down a sweeping set of voting restrictions enacted by North Carolina Republicans in 2013 in the wake of the Supreme Court’s gutting of a key portion of the Voting Rights Act. Later that day, a federal district court killed a series of voting restrictions in Wisconsin, including rules that banned students from using expired student IDs, a residency requirement aimed at limiting college students’ right to vote, and some restrictions on early in-person voting. And in Kansas, a state district court judge ruled that the state’s two-tier system of voting—proof of citizenship required for state local elections but not federal elections—would disenfranchise too many citizens, and ordered the state to count the ballots at all levels.

The following Monday, a federal judge blocked a North Dakota voter ID law that he said posed an undue burden on the voting rights of Native Americans. And all these decisions come less than two weeks after the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a voter ID law in Texas, and a federal judge weakened that state’s voter ID law.

“It has been a string of victories for voting rights advocates, and we’ll have to see whether or not they stick, or they all stick, but it is an impressive string of victories for now,” said elections expert Richard Hasen, a professor of law and political science from the University of California Irvine.

The court battles have played out during a period when a number of restrictive voting laws have been passed across the country. Since 2010, 22 states have added new restrictions related to voting, according to the Brennan Center. After the court decisions relating to North Carolina and North Dakota, new restrictions will be in place in 15 states for the first time in a presidential election year.

As promising as these recent court victories have been for voting rights advocates, some states have already vowed to appeal the rulings. Other states continue to have restrictive laws that could jeopardize the ability of minority voters to cast ballots this November. Here is an overview of the voting rights landscape:

North Carolina: In 2013, a US Supreme Court decision, Shelby County v. Holder, cleared the way for states that previously had to have all voting-law and procedural changes reviewed by the US Department of Justice or a federal judge to enact any voting changes they wished. The next day, North Carolina Republicans passed one of the most sweeping pieces of legislation that restricted access to voting, eliminated same-day voter registration, reduced early voting, instituted a strict photo ID requirement, and ended a program that preregistered 16- and 17-year-olds to vote. That law was struck down July 29 in a scathing 83-page opinion that exposed the extent of the law’s racial bias. Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, writing for the majority on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, noted that the law’s provisions “targeted African Americans with almost surgical precision,” by using race data in the decision-making process.

“In holding that the legislature did not enact the challenged provisions with discriminatory intent, the district court seems to have missed the forest in carefully surveying the many trees,” Gribbon Motz wrote. “This failure of perspective led the court to ignore critical facts bearing on legislative intent, including the inextricable link between race and politics in North Carolina.”

State Republicans and Gov. Pat McCrory have said they will appeal the case to the US Supreme Court. “Photo IDs are required to purchase Sudafed, cash a check, board an airplane or enter a federal court room,” the governor said in a statement on Friday. “Yet three Democratic judges are undermining the integrity of our elections while also maligning our state. We will immediately appeal and also review other potential options.”

Ohio: On May 24, a federal district court ruled that a state law passed in 2014 that eliminated the state’s so-called “Golden Week”—a period of time during which voters could register and vote at the same time—violated the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits “voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in one of the language minority groups.” Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican, has appealed the ruling, but for now the restoration of Golden Week will be in place for the November 2016 election.

The elimination of Golden Week was part of a broader election bill pushed by state Republicans and signed into law in 2014 by Republican Gov. John Kasich. It also included provisions that limited the number of early-voting sites in each county and the distribution of certain voting machines in each county. The judge let those provisions stand.

Husted is also dealing with a lawsuit over his plan to purge voters from the rolls if they haven’t voted in two consecutive federal elections. A district court judge sided with Husted on June 29, but the appeal (which is joined by the US Department of Justice) is ongoing.

Wisconsin: According to Hasen in his Election Law Blog, a federal district court “struck a host of Wisconsin voting rules” on Friday, blocking a law that required citizenship information to be included in dormitory forms as proof of residence, that created narrow requirements for valid ID, and that made it illegal to vote if you’d moved into the state 28 days before an election.

“The Wisconsin experience demonstrates that a preoccupation with mostly phantom election fraud leads to real incidents of disenfranchisement, which undermine rather than enhance confidence in elections, particularly in minority communities,” wrote US District Judge James Peterson. He bolstered his assertion that the rules were discriminatory by pointing to Milwaukee specifically. “I reach this conclusion because I am persuaded that this law was specifically targeted to curtail voting in Milwaukee without any other legitimate purpose,” he wrote, speaking of rules to limit early voting. “The Legislature’s immediate goal was to achieve a partisan objective, but the means of achieving that objective was to suppress the reliably Democratic vote of Milwaukee’s African Americans.”

The decision came less than two weeks after a separate federal judge ruled that voters can cast ballots in November without IDs if they submit affidavits at the polls saying they couldn’t easily get IDs. Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel said he would appeal the court’s decision.

Texas: A majority of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled July 20 that a Texas voter ID law passed in 2011 violated the Voting Rights Act and discriminated against African American and Hispanic voters. The law required many residents to show ID before their ballots would be counted. The ruling didn’t stop the law; it only forced a lower court to come up with a remedy that would do a better job of getting all eligible citizens proper ID. Experts estimate that several hundred thousand people in the state currently lack proper ID.

The law was originally passed in 2011 and signed into law by Republican Gov. Rick Perry, but under the Voting Rights Act at that time, the state had to have all changes to election law reviewed by the Department of Justice or a federal judge. Before the pre-clearance decision was made, Perry sued the federal government in hopes of speeding up the process. That case became moot in 2013 when the Supreme Court decision removed the mechanism for determining which states should seek federal review for voting law changes. At that point the Texas law came into effect, but it has faced legal challenges and has racked up at least $3.5 million in legal fees along the way. The July 20 ruling was the result of one of the most recent of those cases.

Now a federal judge in Texas is tasked with fixing the law and plans to hold a hearing August 17.

Virginia: On April 22, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, signed an executive order granting voting rights restoration for more than 200,000 felons in the state. State Republicans cried foul, claiming that McAuliffe, a longtime confidante of Bill and Hillary Clinton, was trying to throw a key swing state toward Clinton for the November election. Besides, they argued, McAuliffe only had the right to restore felon rights on an individual basis, and they threatened to sue. They followed through with that threat about a month later.

On July 22, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that the Republicans were right, and McAuliffe couldn’t give a blanket restoration, wiping out 11,000 voter registrations that had taken place under the governor’s executive order. McAuliffe said after the ruling that he would sign about 13,000 individual orders “expeditiously” and then “continue to sign orders until I have completed restoration for all 200,000 Virginians.”

In May, the US Supreme Court sided with state Democrats who had challenged the way state Republicans had redrawn congressional districts. The Democrats charged that Republicans redrew the districts in 2013 to pack African American voters into one district. A district court panel of judges agreed and redrew the districts. Three Virginia Republicans appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which left the lower court’s ruling in place, opening the door for a new black congressional hopeful from Virginia to run this fall.

Kansas: On Friday, a state judge temporarily blocked Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s attempt to disqualify 17,500 state voters who, under a 2013 state law, didn’t provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote. The voters are eligible to participate in federal elections, but the state law would have prevented their votes in local and state races from counting. The judge’s order temporarily blocked that rule and, if it’s still in place in November, could affect about 50,000 people. The judge’s ruling expires shortly after the November election.

Arizona: On March 22, Arizona held its presidential primary election and totally bungled it. Thousands of people waited for hours to cast ballots in the state’s largest county, Maricopa County. Local officials blamed the large number of unaffiliated voters trying to cast ballots as the main culprit, but critics charged that it most likely had to do with the county’s decision to reduce its number of polling places from 200 to just 60, which worked out to about one polling place for every 20,833 eligible voters. The state’s biggest paper called the situation an “outrage” and the Republican governor called it “unacceptable.”

The Democratic National Committee, along with the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, filed a lawsuit against the state of Arizona and Maricopa County on April 14. The suit is seeking to restore federal review of Arizona election procedures, something state and local officials had to deal with before the 2013 Supreme Court Shelby County v. Holder decision. Additionally, the suit seeks to block officials from not counting provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct, and to halt a law that prevents people from turning in others’ absentee ballots. That case is working its way through federal court.

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Here’s What’s Happening in the Battle for Voting Rights

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The Growing Push to Arm College Kids

by MagaretFinney Posted on August 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Monday, 50 years to the day since the clock tower massacre at the University of Texas-Austin, a new Texas law made it legal to carry concealed guns at public universities, including in dorms and classrooms. The legislation allows private universities to opt out, and all but one have chosen to do so. The policy has been controversial to say the least; it prompted a lawsuit from three University of Texas professors, who claimed that the law forces state schools to impose “overly-solicitous, dangerously-experimental gun policies” and violates the First and Second Amendments.

Texas is now the eighth state to allow concealed carry on college campuses, with its law among the broadest in terms of where guns are allowed. Other states have passed so-called “campus carry” laws recently, and more could soon follow.

In Tennessee, a new law guarantees concealed-carry rights for full-time university employees. They must register their guns with campus or local law enforcement. In May, Republican Gov. Bill Haslam allowed the measure to pass into law without his signature. “I hope that as a state we will monitor the impact of this new law and listen to the feedback of higher education leaders responsible for operationalizing it,” Haslam said, as the state’s colleges and universities scrambled to prepare for the change.

A broader law may be in the works for Tennessee next year: Republican Rep. Andy Holt, who raffled off two AR-15s after the mass shooting in Orlando, said it was an “important next step” to let students be armed. “My intention is to eliminate all gun-free zones, whether it’s the legislature or a college campus,” he said.

Georgia considered a campus carry bill similar to the one in Texas this year; it passed both the state Senate and House but was vetoed by Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, who said the right to bear arms in “sensitive places” was not guaranteed by the Second Amendment or the Georgia Constitution. “From the early days of our nation and state, colleges have been treated as sanctuaries of learning where firearms have not been allowed,” Deal wrote. “To depart from such time-honored protections should require overwhelming justification. I do not find that such justification exists.”

Utah was the first state to approve campus carry, in 2004. The list has since grown to include Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Oregon, Texas, and Wisconsin. As in Tennessee now, Arkansas has a law allowing university employees to carry licensed firearms, but not students. Additionally, eight states allow guns to be stored in vehicles on campus grounds, though they disallow carrying them more broadly on campuses: Florida, Georgia, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, and Tennessee.

The last two years in particular have brought a big push on this issue, though with little success. In 2014, five states introduced legislation to prohibit campus carry, none of which passed, and 14 states introduced legislation to allow concealed carry on campus. Two bills passed.

A driving force behind the push has been Students for Concealed Carry, an activist group born out of the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre that claims 43,000 members. The group reportedly was developed by members of The Leadership Institute, an organization focused on recruiting young conservatives that pushed hard for campus carry in Idaho. (In fact, Students for Concealed Carry was not particularly enthusiastic about Texas’ new campus-carry law—arguing that it was rife with too many exceptions.)

Supporters of campus carry argue that these laws make students and faculty safer from attacks like the one that devastated the University of Texas a half century ago. But while there is no evidence that ordinary civilians with guns stop mass shootings, other outcomes have started to materialize, including a professor who accidentally shot himself in the middle of class.

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The Growing Push to Arm College Kids

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Clinton’s VP Pick Just Made Pro-Choice Groups Mad

by CeliaPolley Posted on July 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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Earlier this week, the 2016 Democratic platform committed to securing public funding for abortion by calling for the repeal of the Hyde and Helms amendments. The Hyde Amendment prohibits the use of federal Medicaid money to pay for the procedure for low-income women, and the Helms Amendment bans the use of US foreign aid to help women abroad obtain abortions.

But on Friday, Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential nominee, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), broke from both Clinton and the party when he said in an interview on CNN that he still supports the Hyde Amendment. “I have been for the Hyde Amendment,” said Kaine, a lifelong Catholic, repeating several times, “I haven’t changed my position on that.” Kaine is only repeating what he told the Weekly Standard earlier this month, when the Democratic Party first released its draft platform. “I haven’t been informed of that change, but I’m going to check it out,” Kaine said. “I’ve traditionally been a supporter of the Hyde Amendment, but I’ll check it out.”

Kaine has a 100 percent rating from Planned Parenthood and has long said he doesn’t personally believe in abortion but supports it as a legal right. Still, he has had a mixed record on the issue during his political career. As governor of Virginia from 2006 to 2010, Kaine supported a partial-birth abortion ban, as well as a parental notification measure. NARAL refused to support his gubernatorial bid, and in 2009 Kaine signed a bill that created “Choose Life” license plates whose proceeds are funneled to anti-abortion groups.

But as Clinton’s VP vetting process this year ramped up, Kaine appeared to be more outspoken in his support of abortion rights, presumably to further align himself with the direction of the party. He issued an approving statement on the Supreme Court’s June decision to invalidate two Texas abortion restrictions. “I applaud the Supreme Court for seeing the Texas law for what it is—an attempt to effectively ban abortion and undermine a woman’s right to make her own health care choices,” he wrote. And later in June, the Huffington Post pointed out that Kaine had suddenly signed on as a co-sponsor to the Women’s Health Protection Act—a bill that would ban states from passing medically unneccesary restrictions on abortion that has been slowly moving through Congress for three years with dozens of sponsors.

Earlier this week, Kaine was reported to have changed his position on the Hyde Amendment: Bloomberg News reported that spokespeople for both Clinton’s campaign and Kaine had told the outlet that Kaine had said privately that he would support the Hyde repeal. His interview on CNN Friday rolled back those statements, creating a rift between Kaine and the party that pro-choice advocates thought had been resolved. “In this campaign, Hillary Clinton has broken new ground with her frank talk about the damaging effect of denying poor women basic reproductive healthcare,” wrote NARAL President Ilyse Hogue in a statement released Friday afternoon. “This is why Senator Kaine’s statement earlier today that he opposes repealing the discriminatory Hyde amendment was deeply disappointing.”

The Hyde Amendment is popular among more conservative voters in both parties, so Kaine’s support of it could be a selling point to those who are wary of Trump but feel Clinton has gone too far left on abortion. At a Democrats for Life event in Philadelphia this week, the group’s leader, Kristen Day, expressed frustration over the platform’s anti-Hyde-amendment provision, saying that Clinton appears to no longer believe that abortions should be “safe, legal, and rare”—a phrase from the nominee’s unsuccessful 2008 campaign. Anti-abortion groups like the Susan B. Anthony List viewed the support of public financing for abortion as the Democratic Party’s abandonment of compromise across the political divide. “There is no hiding the fact now that Hillary Clinton’s Democratic Party is the party of abortion-on-demand, paid for by us—the taxpayers,” wrote Susan B. Anthony President Marjorie Dannenfelser in an email to subscribers on Wednesday.

In a statement issued on Friday responding to Kaine’s support for the Hyde Amendment, Planned Parenthood Action Fund President Cecile Richards said her group “will redouble efforts to educate Senator Kaine on the dangerous impact Hyde has on women with public insurance coverage.”

She added, “While we strongly disagree with Senator Kaine on this point, there are many places where we do agree. He has been an outspoken advocate for access to reproductive health care and stands in stark contrast to Mike Pence and Donald Trump, whose nightmarish commitments include ending access to care at Planned Parenthood health centers, punishing women for having abortions, and appointing Supreme Court judges to overturn the right to safe, legal abortion.”

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Clinton’s VP Pick Just Made Pro-Choice Groups Mad

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Sanders Delegates to Bernie: You’re Not the Boss of Me

by AmyPalacios Posted on July 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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At a press conference held on Tuesday by the Bernie Delegates Network, an outfit independent of the Sanders campaign, none of the speakers indicated they had any knowledge that dozens of Sanders delegates later that day would walk out of the convention, stage a sit-in in the media workspace, and join a protest mounted by Sanders supporters outside the Wells Fargo Center. On Wednesday morning, Karen Bernal, a Sanders delegate who co-chairs the large and boisterous Sanders delegation from California, explained how that demonstration transpired. It was an organic action, with Sanders delegates deciding spontaneously to express their discontentment with a dramatic gesture. The protest signaled that some Sanders delegates were not looking for unity and had rejected Sanders’ request that his delegates not stage such actions during the convention. The message from these delegates to Sanders: You’re not the boss of me.

At the Wednesday morning briefing conducted by the Bernie Delegate Network, it was clear that Sanders was not in full control of his delegates. The group noted that the previous day, it had polled the 1,846 Sanders delegates on two questions. The first query: Did listening to the speakers on the first night of the convention (which included Sanders, who made a strong pitch for Hillary Clinton) make you more or less enthusiastic about the Clinton-Tim Kaine ticket? Of the 311 delegates who responded, only one-fifth said the night had juiced them up. Fifty-five percent said they were less enthusiastic. The second question: How much had Sanders’ message—work for Clinton in order to stop Donald Trump and don’t disrupt the convention—influenced you? Of the 276 who responded to that query, 43 percent said considerably, 30 percent replied somewhat, and 27 percent said that Sanders’ request had no influence on them.

Put that all together and here’s the picture: There is a noisy and substantial portion—perhaps a minority—of Sanders delegates who do not want to go quietly into the good night of a Hillary-Rah-Rah convention. And they’re not listening to the guy who brought them—or whom they brought—to the party.

A pro-Clinton convention/infomercial is just too hard for these delegates to swallow. “They’re accustomed to healthy granola,” said Norman Solomon, a coordinator of the Bernie Delegates Network, “and they get into the convention and they hear puffy white bread. It’s a shock to their system.” It certainly did not ease any of their concerns, he pointed out, that Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime pal of the Clintons, said on Tuesday night that he was sure that Hillary Clinton would reconsider her opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal if she were to become president. As Solomon noted, his group’s survey of Sanders delegates found that the opposing the TPP is their paramount issue.

Speaking at the Bernie Delegate Network, Bernal explained that the Sanders delegates spoiling for a fight—or a protest—at the convention are beyond Sanders’ control and are not an organized force. “No one organized yesterday’s quiet walk-out,” she said. “It was Occupy-style…It came together very organically in the most old-fashioned way. People were talking to one another.”

Bernal excoriated the Democratic establishment for not making room for the Sanders dissidents. “If you don’t allow for the space for that type of dissent within the party, you basically say we don’t have a place for you in the party,” she said. As a leader of the California Sanders delegation, she added, she could not rein in the protesters even if she wanted to (which she does not). “It is not a top-down affair,” she said. “We feel that we are not willing to go along with being extras in a scripted production.”

The delegates who walked, she said, were upset by the Kaine pick and remain angry about numerous slights directed at the Sanders crowd by the Democratic powers that be. “We’re still fighting an establishment orthodoxy we have pledged to fight against,” Bernal explained. “This is our one shot of doing that. We’re doing what we were elected to do.”

Solomon and Bernal both said they accept Sanders’ analysis that Trump must be defeated and that means Sanders people should support Clinton. Asked whether walk-outs and protests during the convention are in sync with this mission of thwarting Trump, Bernal responded with a long explanation about how the Democratic Party must respect and incorporate the Sanders wing:

It is a big experiment. The Democratic Party is being tested with our actions on how they will respond…We don’t start out with a plan of agreement. If you’re negotiating with an adversary…you don’t start out with below your bottom line…If they don’t provide that kind of space, the rank-and-file Bernie delegates say there is no place in this party for me.

Sanders has declared that he and his delegates did succeed in winning victories during the deliberations over the party platform and the party rules governing future presidential contests. Yet Bernal said she and other delegates were still upset that they lost platform fights on several matters: fracking, single-payer health care, TPP, and Middle East policy. And she was not satisfied with the rules change that will diminish the influence of superdelegates in future elections. She explained passionately that it was hard for many Sanders delegates to sit through the roll-call vote the previous night that included superdelegate votes that heavily favored Clinton and “skewed” the overall count. The roll call, she said, “spat in the faces” of the Sanders delegates.

Repeatedly, Bernal noted that a slice of Sanders delegates will not heed Sanders. “Sanders has a job to do,” she said. “He’s in a difficult position. We have a different job.” But, she added, she thinks that Sanders is actually delighted to see delegates upset the order of the convention. “I have to believe that deep down, secretly, he’s happy about some things,” she said. He had the motto during the campaign: ‘Not me, us.’ And some of the Bernie delegates have taken this to heart.”

A reporter asked Bernal if Sanders had started a fire that he no longer controls. She quickly replied, “He was never in control of it.” She then added, “We haven’t gotten much instruction from the Sanders campaign at all. And that silence speaks volumes.”

Yet Sanders, with his direct messages to his delegates and his speech to the convention, has been clear that he wants his base to join the party to elect Clinton. But Bernal shows that there is a band of Sanders delegates who embraced his crusade but who now believe they have a better strategy than he does. She said she had no idea what this group might do on the final nights of the convention. (Will they disrupt Kaine’s address on Wednesday night? There could be disorder. Or maybe not.) Their version of the Bernie revolution is not organized at this moment. The Sanders campaign empowered them, and now they are using that power on their own.

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Sanders Delegates to Bernie: You’re Not the Boss of Me

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Clinton’s VP pick gets decent reviews from both enviros and fossil fuel industry

by QuentinZtf Posted on July 23, 2016

citizen kaine

Clinton’s VP pick gets decent reviews from both enviros and fossil fuel industry

By on Jul 23, 2016Share

Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s brand-new running mate, appears to have an uncanny ability to appeal to people across the spectrum.

Kaine is no Elizabeth Warren, but he’s no Jim Webb either, getting good reviews from surprising quarters. As Politico reported earlier this month, he opposed the Keystone XL pipeline, protected 400,000 acres of land from development as governor of Virginia, supports the Clean Power Plan, and has worked to prepare coastal communities for climate change and sea-level rise. The League of Conservation Voters has given him a lifetime voting score of 91 percent.

Kaine, however, has also supported offshore drilling in the Atlantic — contradicting Clinton’s position — and supported a bill to fast-track the construction of natural gas terminals. Even fossil fuel interests have taken a liking to him. “We’re encouraged by the reasonable approach he’s taken on oil and natural gas, that he hasn’t been swayed by politics and ideology,” Miles Morin, executive director of the Virginia Petroleum Council, told Politico.

Of course, being on good terms with the fossil fuel industry is a cause for concern among some greens. “If Kaine is the pick, Hillary will need to stake out much clearer positions on drilling, fracking, and new fossil fuel infrastructure,” said 350.org’s Jason Kowalski before Clinton’s choice was made. R.L. Miller, Climate Hawks Vote cofounder and a chair of California Democrats’ environmental caucus, responded to Kaine with a resounding “meh,” citing his mixed record on fossil fuels as something that won’t lure progressive Democrats to the polls.

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Clinton’s VP pick gets decent reviews from both enviros and fossil fuel industry

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The Virginia Supreme Court Tried To Kill A Key Voting Rights Order—And This Democratic Governor Won’t Let Them

by JinaGirardi Posted on July 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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Virginia’s Supreme Court on Friday blocked Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s attempt to restore voting rights to more than 200,000 felons. The 4-3 ruling, which could have a significant impact on the potential swing state in November, comes three months after the Democratic governor issued an executive order to enfranchise felons who had completed their sentences and parole or probation as of April 22.

In May, Virginia Republicans sued the governor over the use of taxpayer money to make such an order, suggesting that the order would aid Democratic turnout in the general election. State Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Normen, Jr. said in a statement at the time that McAuliffe had “overstepped the bounds of his authority and the constitutional limits on executive powers.” McAuliffe struck back, stating that the lawsuit would “preserve a policy of disenfranchisement that has been used intentionally to suppress the voices of qualified voices.”

The Virginia Supreme Court found that McAuliffe overstepped his clemency authority in granting 206,000 felons the right to vote through executive order and that it violated the state constitution. The ruling could affect the one in five African Americans who are disenfranchised as a result of a felony conviction in the state.

“Never before have any of the prior 71 Virginia governors issued a clemency order of any kind—including pardons, reprieves, commutations, and restoration orders—to a class of unnamed felons without regard for the nature of the crimes or any other individual circumstances relevant to the request,” wrote Chief Justice Donald W. Lemons in the majority opinion.

“To be sure, no governor of this commonwealth, until now, has even suggested that such a power exists,” the justice wrote.

The court’s decision made Virginia “an outlier in the struggle for civil and human rights,” McAuliffe said in a statement Friday. He criticized Republicans’ lawsuit.

“I cannot accept that this overtly political action could succeed in suppressing the voices of many thousands of men and women who had rejoiced with their families earlier this year when their rights were restored,” he said, adding that he would “expeditiously sign” orders to restore voting rights to 13,000 felons. It was immediately unclear if the court’s order would affect McAullife’s plans to grant rights for those people.

You can read the judges’ opinions here.

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The Virginia Supreme Court Tried To Kill A Key Voting Rights Order—And This Democratic Governor Won’t Let Them

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Possible Clinton VP pick has a weird appeal with enviros, fossil fuel groups

by MelisaTimm Posted on July 13, 2016

Sen. Tim Kaine REUTERS/Jason Reed

citizen kaine

Possible Clinton VP pick has a weird appeal with enviros, fossil fuel groups

By on Jul 13, 2016Share

Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, one of Hillary Clinton’s potential picks for vice president, appears to have an uncanny ability to appease special interests across party divides.

Kaine is no Elizabeth Warren on the environment, but he’s no Jim Webb either, getting good reviews from surprising quarters. As Politico reports, he opposed the Keystone XL pipeline, protected 400,000 acres of land from development as governor of Virginia, supports the Clean Power Plan, and has worked to make coastal communities prepare for climate change and sea-level rise. The League of Conservation Voters has given him a lifetime score of 91 percent.

Kaine, however, has also supported offshore drilling in the Atlantic — contradicting Clinton’s position — and supported a bill to fast-track the construction of natural gas terminals. Even fossil fuel interests have taken a liking to him. “We’re encouraged by the reasonable approach he’s taken on oil and natural gas, that he hasn’t been swayed by politics and ideology,” Miles Morin, executive director of the Virginia Petroleum Council, told Politico.

Of course, being on good terms with the fossil fuel industry is a cause for concern among some greens. “If Kaine is the pick, Hillary will need to stake out much clearer positions on drilling, fracking, and new fossil fuel infrastructure,” said 350.org policy director Jason Kowalski. R.L. Miller, Climate Hawks Vote cofounder and a chair of California Democrats’ environmental caucus, responded to Kaine’s record with a resounding, “meh,” citing his mixed record on fossil fuels as why he’s a bad pick to lure progressive Democrats to the polls.

Clinton is expected to announce her choice after the GOP convention next week.

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Possible Clinton VP pick has a weird appeal with enviros, fossil fuel groups

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10 More States Sue Federal Government Over Transgender Bathroom Rules

by Adan36Vsqcmfib Posted on July 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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Ten more states sued the federal government Friday over rules allowing transgender kids to use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity—rather than the sex listed on their birth certificates—in public schools. They join a group of 13 other states already suing the Obama administration over the same mandate.

A May 13 directive from the Department of Education and the Department of Justice, which does not carry the force of law, said schools that forced transgender kids to use bathrooms matching their birth sex would be violating Title IX and could lose federal funding.

The lawsuit filed Friday is being brought by the states of Nebraska, Arkansas, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Wyoming. They argue the Obama administration’s directive was an overreach and a misinterpretation of Title IX.

“The recent action by these two federal agencies to require showers, locker rooms, and bathrooms to be open to both sexes based solely on the student’s choice, circumvents this established law,” Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson wrote in a statement. “It also supersedes local school districts’ authority to address student issues on an individualized, professional and private basis. When a federal agency takes such unilateral action in an attempt to change the meaning of established law, it leaves state and local authorities with no other option than to pursue legal clarity in federal court in order to enforce the rule of law.”

On May 25, another lawsuit was filed against the federal government over the same directive by the states of Texas, Alabama, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Utah, and Georgia; the governor of Maine; the Arizona Department of Education; and school districts in Texas and Arizona. Kentucky and Mississippi later signed on to that lawsuit.

The Obama administration argues that transgender kids are already a vulnerable minority and that blocking them from bathrooms of their choice is discriminatory.

“We’re talking about kids, and anybody who’s been in school, been in high school, who’s been a parent, I think should realize that kids who are sometimes in the minority—kids who have a different sexual orientation or are transgender—are subject to a lot of bullying, potentially they are vulnerable,” President Barack Obama said in an interview with BuzzFeed defending the directive.

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10 More States Sue Federal Government Over Transgender Bathroom Rules

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Watch a burning house float away in an epic flood

by Tina270173925682 Posted on June 24, 2016

Rain of Terror

Watch a burning house float away in an epic flood

By on Jun 24, 2016Share

West Virginia’s deadly deluge just took a turn for the apocalyptic. A burning building was swept down a creek after significant flooding in the small town of White Sulphur Springs.

The video leaves us with a major cliffhanger: What happened after the house hit the bridge?

We don’t know — but we do know that a storm dumped up to nine inches of rain on parts of West Virginia (eight inches on White Sulphur Springs) during a 24-hour period leading up to Thursday night, which set the stage for this alarming vision. The floods prompted a state of emergency in several counties around the state and caused at least four deaths.

From Paris to Houston, we’ve witnessed more than the world’s fair share of formidable floods in recent months, from the devastating to the truly surreal. Case in point: Earlier this week, a D.C. subway station escalator essentially turned into a waterfall after extensive rainfall in the area. Though it’s hard to pin the blame for any one extreme weather event on climate change, a shifting climate means heavier deluges in some areas and longer dry spells in others. Looks like West Virginia is getting a whole lot of the former.

Hey, can we at least take a raincheck for the apocalypse?

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Watch a burning house float away in an epic flood

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American Drivers Regain Appetite for Gas Guzzlers

by Myrna Posted on June 24, 2016

Setting aside concerns about global warming, consumers are unloading hybrid and electric vehicles in favor of bigger cars, pickups and S.U.V.s. Link to article:   American Drivers Regain Appetite for Gas Guzzlers ; ; ;

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American Drivers Regain Appetite for Gas Guzzlers

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