The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Wednesday appeared likely to uphold a Republican-drawn congressional district in South Carolina that a lower court found was racially gerrymandered.
The case — Alexander v. South Carolina Conference of the NAACP — tests the legal limits of partisan gerrymandering when it intersects with race. The NAACP is accusing Republican lawmakers of drawing the state’s 1st District, represented by GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, by shuffling Black voters in and out of the district to make it reliably Republican.
But the GOP insists it ignored race and only considered partisanship when it drew a district that was more favorable to Republican candidates.
The court’s conservative majority seemed likely to side with the South Carolina GOP lawmakers. During an oral argument that stretched for more than two hours, several conservative justices voiced doubts that the evidence presented at the lower court proved that race was a predominant factor when mapmakers drew the lines.
“We’ve never had a case where there has been no direct evidence, no map, no strangely configured districts,” said Chief Justice John Roberts. “Instead, it [is] all resting on circumstantial evidence.” Roberts said that it wasn’t impossible to bring a racial gerrymander claim on circumstantial evidence, but “this would be breaking new ground in our voting rights jurisprudence.”
The case is the third time in two years that the nation’s top court has heard arguments about states’ congressional lines, once again putting the justices in the position of deciding political boundaries ahead of a big election. The country has a long history of racial gerrymandering, which federal courts still police. But the court has ruled that the federal judiciary has no role in adjudicating partisan gerrymandering, leaving Wednesday’s case as the latest test of how the courts will handle it when the two collide.
The NAACP and other challengers argued that Mace’s district was drawn by intentionally sorting out Black voters from the district and moving them into the state’s 6th District, which is represented by longtime Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn. They argued that race was the primary factor in drawing the lines after the 2020 census, in violation of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and the 15th Amendment’s guarantee that Americans’ right to vote won’t be “denied or abridged” on account of race.
Republicans said they didn’t look at race while drawing the lines, instead relying solely on partisan data — and that they were clear in their goals to make the district more Republican.
A panel of three federal judges — two appointees of former President Barack Obama and one of President Joe Biden — agreed with the challengers earlier this year, writing that “race was the predominant factor motivating” the new 1st District and that there was an “effective bleaching of African American voters out of the Charleston County portion” of the district.
Mapmakers “may not use partisanship as a proxy for race,” that court ruled.
Republicans appealed to the Supreme Court, conceding that the district was gerrymandered — but for partisan, not racial, reasons. The lower court “failed to disentangle race from politics” when tossing out the district, South Carolina Republicans argued: They had drawn the voters out of the district because they were Democrats, not because they were Black.
“The Plan treated all Democratic voters the same and all Republican voters the same — regardless of race,” attorneys for the state’s GOP officials wrote in a brief filed with the high court. “It is undisputed that the Plan likely disadvantages just as many or more white Democrats as African-American Democrats in District 1.”
Justice Samuel Alito was the most aggressive questioner of the lower court’s decision, arguing the justices need not “rubber stamp” findings by the lower court, “particularly in a case in which the basis for a judgment in favor [of the NAACP] relies very heavily, if not entirely, on expert reports.”
The case in the lower court presented no explicit evidence that mapmakers used racial data to draw the lines — like, for example, a text message or speech from a lawmaker stating as much. Instead, it largely relied on expert analysis that argued there was no way to draw the district without using racial demographics.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor and the court’s other liberals argued that the circumstantial evidence the lower court relied in its ruling was enough, citing past court precedent: The court was “clear that you don't need a smoking gun” in a 2017 case that found North Carolina’s lines to be unconstitutional. “And if you don't need a smoking gun, you don't need direct evidence.”
Many of the conservative justices also focused on perceived flaws in the NAACP experts’ analysis.
The arguments on Wednesday were remarkable in the fact that nobody — not the attorneys for the state of South Carolina, the NAACP or the Justice Department, nor the justices themselves — questioned what the goal of the South Carolina congressional map was: to give Republicans an advantage in the 1st District. The Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that partisan gerrymandering was not something federal courts could police. Roberts wrote at the time that efforts to get federal judges involved in such fights lacked “standards that are clear, manageable, and politically neutral.”
“Everybody seems to take as given that the legislature here did seek to pursue a partisan gerrymander, if you will — or partisan tilt, I think, is their preferred term — and that’s permissible under this court’s precedents,” Justice Neil Gorsuch said.
However, given racially polarized voting patterns in many parts of the country, maps that limit the power of Democrats often limit the power of Black voters and other voters of color. So the ruling four years ago left the door open to disputes like the one heard by the justices on Wednesday.
Justice Elena Kagan, who was perhaps the most forceful member of the liberal minority in trying to defend the lower court’s decision, acknowledged at one point that this was the first case of its kind since that decision. But she argued that mapmakers would not have relied just on 2020 election results, as they claimed, in drawing their GOP-leaning map.
“Everybody can tell you that if you really want to draw a stable partisan gerrymander, you do not rely on a single presidential year election data,” she said. “They had not only the opportunity — it was sitting there on their computers — but the clear incentive to be looking at this race data, which is certainly more predictive of future voting behavior than a single presidential year election, in which President Trump was the candidate, which further distorts voting behavior.”
South Carolina’s 1st District was one of Democrats’ biggest upsets in 2018, when Joe Cunningham won an open-seat race.
Mace then narrowly flipped the district back to the GOP in 2020, beating Cunningham by just over 1 percentage point. Republicans shored up the district and made it more reliably red during the decennial redistricting process, and Mace won a blowout last year, defeating an underfunded Democrat with a nearly 14-point win.
The court’s two most recent redistricting rulings may provide fairly little guidance for how justices will side in this case.
The Supreme Court upheld an order throwing out Alabama’s congressional lines for racial gerrymandering over the summer — but that case was argued under the Voting Rights Act using a distinct legal theory from the 14th Amendment claim.
While Roberts has traditionally been skeptical and even hostile to voting-rights cases, the chief justice surprised many civil rights advocates in June by siding with voting-rights groups and Democrats in a racial gerrymandering lawsuit from Alabama. The court’s liberal justices also joined Roberts in the decision and Justice Brett Kavanaugh backed the bulk of it.
And at some points during Wednesday’s hearing, Roberts left wiggle room, appearing to leave open the possibility of not overturning the lower court’s findings because of the high court’s practice of deferring to the factual findings of lower judges unless they are clearly in error.
The court’s other recent redistricting case focused on North Carolina but was really a vehicle to advance a controversial legal theory that state legislatures have near unbounded authority to set election laws — an argument the Supreme Court largely rejected. That case has little similarity with the South Carolina case heard on Wednesday.
The battle for control of the House in 2024 could come down to how courts rule on a series of challenges to state-drawn maps. Republicans have a razor-thin House majority already. And it will likely get smaller with an all-but-guaranteed Democratic pickup in Alabama, where a federal court last week picked a map that will almost certainly add a Black member to the delegation.
Two other cases are advancing in lower courts in Georgia and Louisiana that challenge maps under the Voting Rights Act, which could together result in a pair of additional Democratic-leaning seats.
And two big states could have significant redraws by the end of the year. North Carolina Republicans are set to introduce a map later this month that will break up the state’s evenly split 14-seat delegation to one where the GOP could have as many as 11 seats. And Democrats in New York are trying to erase a court-drawn competitive map and pick up an additional handful of seats.
Tim Scott ripped into Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy on Tuesday for foreign policy positions he said project American weakness abroad, amid ongoing violence stemming from Hamas’ attack on Israel.
“Vivek Ramaswamy has said that the definition of success is reducing America’s support for Israel,” Scott, the South Carolina senator and longshot presidential contender, said at a Hudson Institute event. “And he’s proposed that we surrender Taiwan to the Chinese Communist Party as long as we’ve relocated some factories.”
“Governor [Ron] DeSantis once dismissed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as just some ‘territorial dispute,’” he added. “The last thing we need is a Joe Biden wing of the Republican Party on foreign policy.”
Scott’s remarks follow former Vice President Mike Pence’sscathing rebuke over the weekend of “voices of appeasement” in the GOP, serving to widen the rift in the Republican presidential primary between the party’s more isolationist and engagement-oriented wings.
“American courage and American values are not in decline,” Scott said, as he endorsed a whole-of-government response to supporting Israel.
Currently at issue in Scott’s day job at the Capitol is continued military assistance funding for Ukraine, which a considerable number of conservative Republicans in the House have firmly opposed.
Scott leveled several attacks at progressive Democrats and Biden over the violence in the Middle East, claiming that the president has “blood on his hands,” and that his weakness “invited the attack.”
But Scott’s direct criticism of his GOP rivals represents a change of tactics for the senator, who has for months generally refrained from directly criticizing his opponents. It is also a shift for a senator who has spent his Senate tenure on committees with a mostly domestic focus.
In a statement to POLITICO, Ramaswamy’s campaign said he would defend Taiwan and criticized the status quo “One China” policy, in which the U.S. recognizes the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China while retaining unofficial ties with Taiwan.
“We understand Tim Scott is attempting to gain some semblance of relevance in this race, but lying in the face of these barbaric atrocities isn’t an effective way to do so,” spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said. “Vivek has offered a clear, rational response that supports Israel while avoiding another U.S.-led disaster in the Middle East.”
The DeSantis campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Scott has largely failed to gain traction in a race dominated by former President Donald Trump.
Since Hamas attacked Israel over the weekend, Scott has repeatedly criticized Biden for being too weak and called for unstinting American support to Israel. He has joined calls for thepresident to refreeze a $6 billion funds package that his administration greenlit in a deal involving the release of Iranian prisoners. Hemet with Michael Herzog, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., shortly before his remarks.
Notably missing from his jabs were Trump — who has repeatedly mentioned that he supports withholding Ukraine aid in many circumstances — and his home-state competitor, Nikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador who has been ticking up in recent polls.
Scott, unlike Trump, DeSantis, Ramaswamy and Haley, has yet to qualify for the third primary debate, scheduled for the beginning of November,according to POLITICO analysis. Trump has already said he will skip the event, as he did for the first two.
Alex Jones intends to resist efforts by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to compel him to testify in this month’s trial of two Donald Trump co-defendants, his attorney said Tuesday.
Norm Pattis, an attorney for the far-right broadcaster, said Jones has nothing to offer in the trial — and that even if a court were to order him to testify, he would simply plead the Fifth, as he did when subpoenaed to testify to the House Jan. 6 select committee last year.
“We’re not going to help Fani’s fantasy life come true any more than we did that of the J6 committee,” Pattis said.
Willis indicated her intent to compel Jones’ testimony in a court filing posted publicly Tuesday. The filing indicated that Jones had contacts with Kenneth Chesebro, an attorney who helped craft Trump’s last-ditch strategy to upend Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election and keep Trump in power. Chesebro and attorney Sidney Powell are slated to go on trial Oct. 23, the first batch of Trump’s 18 co-defendants in an alleged racketeering conspiracy to face jurors.
“[Jones] possesses unique knowledge concerning communications between himself and Kenneth Chesebro and other known and unknown individuals involved in the multi-state, coordinated efforts to influence the results of the November 3, 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere,” Willis wrote.
Recently unearthed videos show Chesebro walking alongside Jones’ entourage on the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021, in the restricted area of the Capitol grounds, but it’s unclear if the two had any previous communications.
Jones, a far-right conspiracy theorist with a massive following on InfoWars, was a prominent booster of Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, and he attended Trump’s speech on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021. He helped lead a massive crowd from the speech to the Capitol, which had been breached by the time he arrived. Jones has not been charged for his actions that day but a close associate, Owen Shroyer, who accompanied him on Capitol grounds, was recently sentenced to 60 days in jail for his actions.
To obtain Jones’ testimony — along with dozens of other potential witnesses who reside outside of Georgia — Willis must seek permission from both a judge in her district and in the courts where the witnesses reside. Jones, she noted, lives in Travis County, Texas. His resistance to Willis’ effort to compel his testimony portends a potential wide array of legal fights that could result from Willis’ effort to put on a massive case against all of the alleged co-conspirators.
For example, Willis also signaled on Tuesday that she intends to seek testimony from Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. And last week, she indicated plans to call Trump legal adviser Boris Epshteyn, several Republicans who falsely posed as presidential electors in 2020 and attorney Lin Wood.
Willis fought similar battles to obtain testimony during her year-long special grand jury investigation into the matter, initiating legal processes that helped make public the witnesses she was targeting across the country. Some of those witnesses — including Trump allies Mike Flynn, Lindsey Graham, Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani and Chesebro himself — resisted those efforts. But all ultimately lost local and federal court battles on the matter.
Two top Democratic organizations filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging a Republican-backed North Carolina election law moments after it went into effect.
The lawsuit, filed by Democratic National Committee and North Carolina Democratic Party, tackles multiple aspects of Senate Bill 747.
But the plaintiffs are specifically seeking preliminary relief on the bill’s provisions on same-day registration, which require additional photo ID and address verification requirements. Under those provisions, if voters opt to do same-day registration but do not have their submitted information verified on time, the ballot could be withdrawn under the new laws.
The lawsuit was filed immediately after the GOP-dominated legislature overrode Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of the bill, according to Biden campaign officials who have been working closely with the DNC and North Carolina Democrats to craft the lawsuit in anticipation of the bill’s movement.
“Defending Americans’ fundamental right to cast their ballots against efforts to undermine their freedom to vote is an urgent priority for President Biden and Vice President Harris. SB 747 is not about protecting election security. It’s about making it harder for North Carolinians to vote and adding new burdens for voters to cast their ballot safely and, ultimately, have their vote counted,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement.
Senate Bill 747 overhauls the state’s election laws, adding new restrictions and deadlines, while also empowering partisan poll watchers, becoming the latest GOP-led effort to impose new voting restrictions in state legislatures across the country. In North Carolina, Republicans have deemed the law necessary to improve election security, while Cooper on Tuesday blasted it as a means for “manipulating elections to entrench their power” and North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton condemned it as an “all out attack on democracy itself.”
Tuesday’s legal challenge foreshadows the DNC and Biden campaign’s strategy going into 2024, drawing lessons from efforts to counter voting restrictions in 2020, campaign officials told POLITICO. During the last cycle, DNC officials found greater success in targeted challenges.
The goal with the design of Tuesday’s lawsuit, campaign officials said, is to successfully overturn some provisions before voters cast ballots in 2024. On the preliminary injunction on this case, the expectation is that a judge will issue a ruling in the next few months.
“In the wake of the GOP’s continuous assault on democracy, we’re using every tool in our arsenal to put an end to Republicans’ voter suppression,” DNC chair Jaime Harrison said in a statement.
President Joe Biden on Tuesday decried the brutal Hamas attack that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians as an act of “sheer evil,” and confirmed American hostages were among those taken in the assault.
In a nod to the lengthy conflict ahead, he also appealed to Congress to support aid for the U.S. ally.
“When Congress returns, we’re going to ask them to take urgent action to fund the national security requirements of our critical partners,” Biden said, acknowledging a demand for aid for both Israel and the ongoing war in Ukraine. “This is not about party or politics. It’s about the security of our world. The security of the United States of America.”
The White House address marked the president’s second public response amid the eruption of violence in Israel, and came shortly after Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the administration’s support for the nation. Since Biden first delivered remarks on Saturday after Hamas’ surprise assault on the country, ghastly images have surfaced from the attacks and Israel’s forceful counterattack, fueling fears the conflict might spiral into a larger war.
The carnage has also directly touched the United States: The president, flanked by Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, said at least 14 Americans were among those killed in Israel — an increase from the previously announced toll of 11.
“There are moments in this life … when a pure unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world. People of Israel lived through one such moment this weekend. The bloody hands of the terrorist organization Hamas, a group whose stated purpose for being is to kill Jews. So as an act of sheer evil, more than 1,000 civilians slaughtered in Israel,” Biden said.
“Parents butchered using their bodies to try to protect their children. Stomach-turning reports of babies being killed. Entire families slain. Young people were massacred while attending a musical festival to celebrate peace, to celebrate peace. Women raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies.”
Biden’s speech comes as the crisis piles on to a growing list of pressures facing the president — posing yet another delicate foreign policy challenge as he seeks reelection, while largely pinning his case on his ability to remain a steady head during times of turmoil.
The president and his top advisers over the weekend held calls with dozens of foreign leaders and allies, pulling together a response while fielding Israel’s requests for aid. The Biden administration surged weapons to Israel on Monday, sending air defenses and munitions.
“So in this moment, we must be crystal clear. We stand with Israel. We stand with Israel. And we will make sure it has what it needs to take care of its citizens, defend itself, respond to this attack,” Biden said.
But Biden’s vows of support also come as the administration navigates growing turmoil at home, with the House lacking a speaker and any coherence for how to rapidly deliver the help that may be needed abroad.
The White House and some Senate lawmakers, including Republican leader Mitch McConnell, have suggested the possibility of folding aid to Israel into a pre-existing funding package for Ukraine. But House Republicans skeptical of sending more money to Ukraine have already signaled they’d oppose such an effort, and there is likely little that Congress can accomplish overall until the GOP settles on a new leader.
The White House has kept in close touch with Senate and House leaders and appropriators, though officials said they’ve not yet settled on a specific path forward for passing any aid. The administration does not expect that Israel will need Congress to approve any additional aid for at least the next several days, giving senators time to return to Washington next week and negotiate its next steps.
