A previous edition of this article incorrectly quoted through Donald J. Trump at a press conference.
electoral demonstration. He called on university leaders to “defeat the radicals and take back our campuses for all students in general,” “defeat the locals. “
How We Deal with Corrections
Michael Gold and Chris Cameron
Michael Gold reported from Waukesha, Wisconsin. Chris Cameron reported from Washington.
Former President Donald J. Trump told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Wednesday that he would not engage in accepting the effects of the 2024 election, repeating his lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
“If everything is honest, I’ll gladly settle for the results. I’m not going to become that,” Trump said, according to the Sentinel Journal. If not, you will have to fight for the rights of the country. “
In an interview with Time magazine published Tuesday, he also dismissed questions about November’s political violence, suggesting his victory was inevitable.
When asked what might happen if he loses, he replied, “If we don’t win, it depends on the fairness of an election. “
Trump’s insistent and fraudulent claims that the 2020 election was unfair were central to his efforts to reverse his defeat through President Biden and the violent storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, through a crowd of supporters who believed his claims. He now faces dozens of criminal charges in connection with those events.
Trump’s pledge to “fight for the rights of the country” also echoes his speech at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, where he told his supporters that “if you don’t fight like hell, you probably won’t stand a chance. “before urging his followers to march on the Capitol.
While campaigning in battleground states this year, Trump has continually attempted to sow doubt about the integrity of the fall election, while repeating many of the same lies he used to undermine the integrity of the 2020 election. Months before the vote, Trump made baseless claims that Democrats were most likely cheating to win.
“The Democrats rigged the 2020 presidential election, but we will not allow them to rig the presidential election (the most important day of our lives) in 2024,” Trump said at a rally in Freeland, Michigan.
Trump’s crusade did not respond to requests for comment.
Trump has been spreading the lie that he won Wisconsin in 2020 for years, and he did so in the Sentinel newspaper interview. Even after Jan. 6, 2021, and years after leaving office, he emphasized Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, the state’s most sensible Republican, to help him turn Vos’ defeat around. Trump in the state and to impeach the state’s nonpartisan head.
More than 1,250 people have been charged with crimes similar to the Jan. 6 attack, and many have been convicted. Trump said in a recent interview that he would “absolutely” pardon anyone convicted of charges similar to the storming of the Capitol. A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven other people were killed in the attack.
The former president and his allies also installed electoral deniers in influential positions in their crusade and in the institutions of the Republican Party. In March, Trump’s newly installed allies on the Republican National Committee appointed Christina Bobb, a former host of the far-right One America News Network. as senior advisor for election integrity. A self-proclaimed conspiracy theorist, she has consistently promoted false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
Ms. Bobb was indicted in Arizona last week, along with all of the fake electors who acted against Trump in that state and others, on charges similar to what the government considers attempts by the defendants to overturn the effects of the 2020 election. Arizona.
The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee have adopted a competitive strategy for “election integrity” — a broad term used by Republicans to cast doubt on the party’s lost election — at the center of their efforts as November strategies.
Last month, the committee announced a plan to exercise and send more than 100,000 volunteers and lawyers to monitor the election procedure in each and every battleground state and release competitive protests.
On Wednesday, Trump said at the rally in Freeland that his crusade and the national and state Republican parties would assemble “a team of the top highly professional lawyers and other professionals in the country so that what happened in 2020 will never happen again. “»
“I will secure our elections because you know what happened in 2020,” Trump said at a rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on Wednesday.
Trump lost Wisconsin by more than 20,000 votes.
Nicolas Nehamas
Report from Jacksonville, Florida.
transcription
Today, just today, at the stroke of midnight, some other Trump-driven abortion ban went into effect here in Florida. This morning, 4 million women in this state woke up with fewer reproductive freedoms than last night. This is the new truth akin to Trump’s abortion ban. The contrast in this choice may not be clearer. Basically, under Donald Trump, it would be fair for women to be monitored and punished through the government. Whereas Joe Biden and I have another point of view. that the government never deserves to stand between a woman and her doctor. [The crowd applauds. ]
On the day Florida began enforcing its six-week abortion ban, Vice President Kamala Harris launched a scathing attack on former President Donald J. Trump in Jacksonville, calling it “Trump’s new abortion ban” and saying it forced women to live. reality” without access to essential medical care.
“No matter how much damage he’s already done, a second Trump term would be even worse,” Harris told about 200 supporters at a conference center in a traditionally African-American neighborhood.
If Trump were to win in November, he argued, Americans would be forced to suffer “more prohibitions, more suffering, less freedom. “
President Biden has made abortion, a rare factor for which he votes heavily against Trump, a pillar of his reelection campaign. He and Harris have campaigned aggressively in states that have imposed abortion restrictions, Florida, where the president spoke last week, and Arizona, where lawmakers voted Wednesday to repeal a near-total ban dating back to 1864.
The president and vice president used their appearances to illustrate the fallout from the Republican election and placed the blame squarely on Trump, whose Supreme Court appointments helped overturn Roe v. Wade. “Donald Trump did that,” is a common refrain in Trump’s classified ads and speeches. Biden: A sharp, direct attack from a crusade that has struggled to get its message out to voters.
Harris’ presence in Jacksonville also allowed her to cash in on an interview with Trump for Time magazine, published Tuesday. In the interview, Trump refused to engage in vetoing a federal abortion ban, which appeared to contradict his recent statements, and said he would allow states to punish women who violate the abortion ban.
“Just this week, in an interview, Trump said states have the right to monitor pregnant women’s compliance with those bans and to punish pregnant women who seek abortion services,” Harris said.
Speaking about the issues distributed to surrogates on Tuesday, Biden’s crusade drew their attention to the Biden Trump campaign’s comments on abortion. And on Wednesday, he posted a video of Biden speaking directly to the camera.
“It turns out that there are no limits to the extent to which Trump allows the state to be intrusive,” the president said. “If a resolution is reached between a woman and her doctor, the government will step out of people’s lives. “
By Wednesday, the six-week ban had already begun to change lives. About 15 minutes before Ms. Harris’ campaign in Jacksonville, a reproductive health clinic called A Woman’s Choice won calls from women to get abortions.
One woman said she called from Georgia, which is also under a six-week ban. An official at the clinic informed him that a six-week ban is now in effect in Florida as well.
“Oh, Lord Jesus,” the woman responded, before opting to make an appointment in North Carolina, the closest state where an abortion would be available for her level of pregnancy.
Many women don’t know they’re pregnant at six weeks. And Florida’s ban means patients from the Southeast will have to travel all the way to North Carolina and Virginia for abortions, an unaffordable expense for many.
“The extremists who drafted this ban either don’t know how a woman’s constitution works or they just don’t care,” Harris said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the six-week ban last year before his failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination in which he attempted to court social conservatives. Floridians will have the option to repeal the law in a referendum in November. There is hope among Democrats that Florida could play a role in the presidential election, even though Biden’s crusade has yet to invest significant resources in the state and Republicans have primary merit in voter registration.
“It’s going to be a game-changer here in Florida. It’s going to be a source of motivation,” said Christina Diamond, executive director of Ruth’s List Florida, an organization that works to elect Democratic women who have abortion rights.
“The explanation for why we have a six-week ban,” Diamond added, “is because the state legislature and our statewide offices are held by Republicans. “
To emphasize this point, the Democratic National Committee has placed billboards in Florida in which Trump tells women how far they would have to travel to succeed in a state where they can simply get abortions. And he also chartered a plane to fly over Mar. -a-Lago, the former president’s apartment in Palm Beach, Florida, dragging a banner that read, “Trump’s Plan: Ban Abortion, Punish Women. “
(Trump is campaigning Wednesday in Wisconsin and Michigan as his Manhattan trial on trial is on a recess. )
Florida Republicans responded to Harris by talking about everything but abortion.
“In Florida, especially in Jacksonville, families are suffering from the disaster of the Biden-Harris Bidenomics exercise,” Evan Power, chairman of the Florida Republican Party, said in a statement. “Shopping is more expensive. Gas rates are skyrocketing. And the Housing Shortage continues to push Americans’ pocketbooks to the limit. Meanwhile, the lawlessness of Biden’s open-border massacre has turned each and every state, including Florida, into border states.
Jacksonville has one of the largest black populations in the United States, and the six-week ban will likely disproportionately affect African-American women, who benefit from the procedure at a higher rate than other groups.
Biden’s campaign has worked to bolster popularity among African Americans. Polls show that black voters are more likely to see abortion as their top issue. At the Jacksonville event, a marching band from Edward Waters University, a traditionally black university, warmed up the atmosphere. crowd. Harris’ introductory speakers included Fentrice Driskell and Tracie Davis, two of the state’s most prominent black politicians.
“We need little women in Florida to have the same freedom as their mothers and grandmothers,” said Driskell, a Tampa Democrat and House minority leader. “So let’s say it loud enough for you to hear it from Jacksonville to the point of shaking the walls of Mar-a-Lago: Get out of our physical care. Get out of our exam rooms. We are regaining our rights.
Abigail Geiger contributed from Jacksonville, Florida, Reid J. Epstein from Washington and Patricia Mazzei from Miami.
Chris Cameron and Michael Gold
Chris Cameron reported from Washington and Michael Gold from Waukesha, Wisconsin.
Former President Donald J. Trump said Wednesday that he asked his Secret Service to take him to the Capitol after his speech at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021, acknowledging a key detail of his movements that is central to the investigation’s findings. A House committee created to investigate the attack.
At a crusade rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Trump brought up a sensational but debatable detail from testimony given to the House committee on Jan. 6 through a Trump aide at the White House: that Trump got behind the wheel and fought. Secret Service agents refused to take him to join the gigantic crowd of supporters marching to the Capitol.
“I sat in the back,” Trump said, giving his version of events. And you know what I said? I said, “I’d like to go in because I see a lot of other people coming down. They said, “Lord, it’s better if you don’t. ” I said, “Well, I’d like to. “
“It’s worse if you don’t,” Trump told an agent. The former president said he replied, “Okay, whatever you believe is fine,” adding, “That’s the whole tone of the conversation. “
President Biden’s crusade without delay highlighted Biden’s comments by Trump, amplifying the fact that the former president intended to engage in what would be an attack through his supporters on the Capitol in an effort to overturn Trump’s Biden victory in the 2020 election.
This isn’t the first time Trump has spoken about his efforts at the Capitol on Jan. 6. He has said in several interviews that he regretted not marching to the Capitol with his supporters that day, and that his Secret Service detachment prevented him from doing so. then.
“The Secret Service said he couldn’t go,” Trump said in an interview with the Washington Post in April 2022. “It would have been there in a minute. “
Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, later testified about Mr. Hutchinson’s conversation. Trump with Secret Service agents televised hearings held through the House committee on Jan. 6. Hutchinson was not in the car with Trump and said his testimony about those events came from what other people had told him that day.
In an interview with the same committee, Trump, whose call has not been disclosed, said: “The president insisted on going to the Capitol. It’s clear to me that he was looking to get to the Capitol.
At Wednesday’s rally, Trump described his requests to his Secret Service as requests.
In the interview with the House panel’s investigators, the host said that while he hadn’t noticed Trump accosting officials or taking the wheel, “what stood out was the swelling in his voice, rather than his physical presence. “
After Trump was escorted back to the White House via his Secret Service, the former president sat back and watched the resulting violence be broadcast on television, according to testimony from several former administration officials. After Trump’s speech at the Ellipse, where he repeated his false claims that the election had been stolen from him and suggested attendees march to the Capitol, a mob of his supporters broke through police barricades to raze the building, temporarily disrupting Trump’s certification.
In a lengthy interview with Time magazine published Tuesday, Trump said he would “absolutely” forgive anyone who has been convicted or convicted of charges similar to those in the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. I would not rule out the option of political violence after this year’s elections.
“I think we’re going to win,” he said. And if we don’t win, it depends on the fairness of an election.
Shane Goldmacher, Neil Vigdor, Nicholas Nehamas and Maggie Astor
More news
The Libertarian Party announced that Donald J. Trump would attend the party’s national conference scheduled for last May in Washington, D. C. , and said it would be the first time a former president would speak at a party rally.
More than 650 Black women, from members of the House of Representatives to local activists, supported Alsobrooks in opposition to Rep. David Trone in Maryland’s Democratic Senate primary and criticized a recent announcement of the Throne. The ad showed black officials wondering about the qualifications of Alsobrooks, the Prince George’s County executive. , and suggesting that you might want “training wheels”; He said the ad “echoes tones of misogyny and racism. “Race has been a major detail of the competition; Alsobrooks is black and Throne is white. Some of Throne’s supporters responded: State Sen. Jill P. Carter, who is also Black, said she believes the ad is not an attack, but simply “a crusade ad in which other people communicate about their express experience. ” -Maggie Astor
Nearly four in 10 local election officials surveyed through the Brennan Center for Justice for a new report said they had experienced threats, harassment or abuse, another sign of the coercion the organization has faced since the 2020 election. percent said they were involved in political leaders seeking to interfere with the way they or other election officials do their jobs. —Neil Vigdor
Florida’s six-week abortion ban is set to go into effect today, giving Democrats a chance to make their case against former President Donald J. In a statement, President Biden called the ban “extreme” and a “nightmare” and said the electorate would teach Trump “a valuable lesson” in November.
Katie Gluck
In Florida, the maximum number of abortions is banned after six weeks of pregnancy.
In Arizona, state lawmakers have repealed a strict ban on abortion that dates back to the Civil War.
And across the country, Wednesday’s presidential crusade was replete with reminders of how core Democrats hope the abortion rights debate will influence voters’ decisions this fall.
Nearly two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Democrats are betting that the tangible effects of abortion restrictions that many Americans are already experiencing — and the threats of others to come — will help their party gain strength in a troubling situation. and a volatile political environment, while Republicans are struggling to solve a challenge that has a significant and lasting disadvantage for them.
“Donald Trump is guilty of the harm done every day by the abortion ban to women in our country,” Vice President Kamala Harris wrote on social media Wednesday morning, before giving a speech in Jacksonville, Florida, about the state’s “extremes. “”New ban.
Trump, he said there, would bring “more prohibitions, more suffering, fewer freedoms” if he were re-elected.
As they did in the 2022 midterms, Democrats are borrowing language long favored by Republicans — about freedom and restricting the reach of government — to make their case.
They claim that Trump, whose Supreme Court nominees helped overturn Roe, has recently strengthened his argument.
In an interview with Time magazine published Tuesday, Trump refused to devote himself to vetoing a nationwide abortion ban and said it would allow states to monitor women’s pregnancies and sue those who violate abortion restrictions.
“As it turns out, there are no limits to the extent to which Trump would allow the state to be invasive,” President Biden said in a video released Wednesday morning. “It will be a resolution between a woman and her doctor, and the government will make a decision. “get out of people’s lives. “
The issue of abortion rights propelled Democrats into the midterm elections, as petitioners exploited voter anger over abortion restrictions to triumph over national difficulties in key elections.
And it remained a tough force in the upcoming elections.
Florida state Rep. Mike Caruso, a Republican opposed to the six-week ban, noted that several states, Florida, are expected to propose measures related to abortion rights in elections this fall.
“It’s going to hurt Republicans,” he said. For Democrats who weren’t thrilled with Biden, he said, “Now you have an explanation for why you’re running. I think this will have an impact on the primaries in the November election. “
But it’s not yet clear to what extent the factor will galvanize the entire country in a presidential election marked by domestic economic considerations and external crises, with two well-known and unpopular men — one of whom, Trump, faces criminal cases. on the most sensible of your party tickets.
“President Trump has long supported states’ right to make decisions about abortion,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Trump, said in a statement. Women need a president who will protect our country’s borders, drive violent criminals out of our neighborhoods, and build an economy that helps working families thrive. “
And even as Democrats tried Wednesday to keep this factor at the forefront of voters’ minds, they were competing with riots on school campuses across the country, adding critical battleground states, while academics protested the war in Gaza, and many opposed Mr. Simpson. . . Biden is for Israel.
Such scenes of unrest, some strategists have warned, can be negative for whoever controls the White House.
Nicholas Nehamas contributed reporting.
Chris Cameron
Democrats nearly nailed it in the 2022 midterm elections.
In the final weeks of the campaign, with an unpopular president in his first term, polls predicted a red wave sweeping the country and affecting the House and Senate, sparking fear among Democrats and Republican predictions of a decisive victory.
But this wave never materialized, a mirage of bad polls and exaggerated expectations. Democrats came close to maintaining a national trio, but Republicans won a narrow majority in the House, winning a handful of seats in New York and California, through just a few thousand votes.
Now, a new coalition of progressive outfits in California has shaped a super PAC aimed at backing Democratic candidates in a state the party views as very important to winning the House this fall.
The super PAC, Battleground California, said it intends to spend $15 million this year on 8 competitive House races, seven with incumbent Republican candidates (in Northern California, Orange County, the Inland Empire east of Los Angeles, the Central Valley and Los Angeles). as well as the seat left vacant through Rep. Katie Porter, a Democrat who is not running after a failed campaign for the Senate.
It is an ambitious effort, which aims to identify a sustainable progressive device in California, solicited and supported through local activists and networking organizations, to promote to Democratic applicants in swing districts a broad operation on the ground, adding door-to-door marathons. Campaigns aimed at broadening participation among minority groups.
“Trusted messengers from network paintings are a very critical component,” said Steve Phillips, co-founder of California Donor Table, the organization that runs the Battleground California PAC, adding that those citizens not only have more buy-in with voters, but they’re also better able to offer feedback on which messages work and which don’t.
Pablo Rodriguez, executive director of Communities for a New California, a civil rights-focused group, is among the activists running with the PAC. He said focusing on the issues, and less on the “national noise” generated by President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump, would be the key to victory.
“The road to victory,” Rodriguez said, “is not about making big TV or radio buys, or even virtual ad buys, right?We want to have face-to-face conversations with voters.
Battleground California has set an ambitious goal. Only two of the seven Republicans the PAC will oppose — Reps. David Valadao and John Duarte, who make up the predominantly Latino districts in the Central Valley region — won their 2022 elections by narrow margins. : Rudy Salas and Adam Gray, two former Democratic congressmen from the state.
The PAC’s $15 million spending target, while substantial, may not go very far in a state where House elections can be costly. In the Central Valley, Valadao’s 2022 seat race generated more than $25 million in door expenses. Porter also spent more than $28 million on his re-election campaign. Michael Gomez Daly, political strategist for the California Donor Board, said the coalition has raised about $1. 3 million so far, with a goal of raising $5 million through July.
Phillips and Daly said their goals were on the success of Democrats with sufficient investment in resources.
“Every district deserves to be able to be reversed,” he said Daly. Se declined to say how many victories would be considered a success, adding that “failure is not an option for this cycle. “
Both Gray and Salas attributed their 2022 losses to low turnout, and in interviews highlighted their efforts to temporarily release efforts to get out the vote. They also had high expectations of an increase in voter turnout in the presidential year.
Valadao and Duarte declined interview requests, but California Republican pollsters, strategists and experts said demographic shifts and new efforts to succeed among voters of color have tipped the balance of power in their favor. They also point to Valadao’s narrow victory in 2020. such as the victories of minority candidates such as Reps. Young Kim and Michelle Steel in the same year. Others argue that the presidential race is equally likely to inflate Republican turnout.
“It’s going to be close, but Valadao is going to win,” said Cathy Abernathy, a Republican campaign representative in Kern County. “And he’s most likely going to win because Trump is on the ballot. “
The Republican electoral base is also developing in the Central Valley districts represented by Valadao and Duarte, according to registration records from the California Secretary of State’s office, a net gain of several thousand voters in the two districts from September 2022 to February of last year, surpassed the narrow margin of victory of those seats in the 2022 election.
“This contrasts a little bit with the typical narrative that other people of color are more progressive,” said Rachel Hernandez, Riverbank City Council member and mayoral candidate. Instead, he added, “what we’re seeing in the Central Valley is that the Latino network is electing more conservative candidates. “
Hernandez added that, for now, this is not an irreversible trend, but it is a wake-up call for Democrats to pay attention to the nuances of the Latin American electorate. It encouraged many of the tactics Battleground California plans to use: formulating a message tailored to the desires of an express network and working with members and volunteers who make up the network.
“My volunteers, for example, until this weekend, were all young women,” Hernandez said. “Young Latinas, college-aged, who came to me because they said, ‘Wow, this is like our field. ‘”
Chris Cameron
Former President Donald J. Trump will resume the campaign trail today, with stops in Wisconsin and Michigan, his first primary elections in key states since the start of his criminal trial three weeks ago.
Vice President Kamala Harris will deliver a speech “on the fight for reproductive freedoms” in Jacksonville, Florida, when that state’s six-week abortion ban begins. His is part of a national tour aimed at energizing black voters in battleground states. In Washington, President Biden will attend a crusade reception at the Mayflower Hotel.
Trump will deliver his remarks first in Waukesha, Wisconsin, before holding a rally later that night in Freeland, Michigan. Thousands of Saginaw County voters supported Nikki Haley in the Republican primary; so far, Trump has not directly appealed to the support of his electorate. .
In front of a friendly audience, Trump will most likely use his intimidating speech during his Midwestern vacation to attack the justice system. He has continually claimed, without evidence, that his legal troubles constituted a conspiracy to interfere in the election, and has argued that he deserves to be immune from criminal prosecution for the moves he made as president, while vowing to use the Justice Department to prosecute the president. Biden and his family.
But Trump knew the limits of the attacks on Tuesday, when his felon trial found him in contempt for violating a gag order for attacking witnesses and jurors. He was fined $9,000 and ordered to remove offensive posts on his social media site, Truth Social. . Trump complied and removed the posts by the mid-afternoon deadline.
The former president is also expected to make a statement about the escalating clashes between police and pro-Palestinian protesters on university campuses. Trump called the most common nonviolent protests “riots,” filled with “immense hate. “He also misrepresented the violent demonstration of white supremacists. in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, comparing the two events and describing it Tuesday morning as “a big hoax” compared to the protests on campus.
Rick Rojas
Reporting from Atlanta
A new congressional map in Louisiana was rejected Tuesday by a panel of federal judges who ruled that the new boundaries, which make up a second majority-Black district in the state, amounted to an “inadmissible racial gerrymander” that violated the Equal Protection Clause. the U. S. Constitution.
The 2-to-1 resolution now leaves in doubt what barriers will be used in the November elections, which will be held in just six months and could play a role in determining the balance of power in the House of Representatives.
Critics have warned that the resolution may have broader implications for voting rights. Eric H. Holder Jr. , former U. S. Attorney General and current chairman of the Democratic National Redistricting Committee, said that “the ideological nature of the resolution may be clearer. “”
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican, said Tuesday that the case could move to the U. S. Supreme Court. “I have said that the Supreme Court will have to explain this situation,” he wrote on social media.
The justices have scheduled a hearing for May 6 to discuss next steps. Louisiana’s secretary of state has ordered the congressional map to be finalized by May 15.
A new congressional map in Louisiana was invalidated by a panel of federal judges who found that the new boundaries, which make up a second majority-black district in the state, amounted to an “impermissible racial gerrymander” that violated the U. S. Constitution.
The new districts were explained in January during a special consultation of the state legislature. Lawmakers had been ordered to draw the new barriers after a three-judge panel of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found that the previous map’s maximum likely violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the electoral strength of Black residents.
But the new maps were presented to another panel of federal judges after an organization of citizens scattered throughout the new congressional district who describe themselves as “non-African-American” voters questioned the maps. They argued that lawmakers had to “separate the electorate entirely. “founded on their races,” and to accomplish this, they had brought together “communities in remote spaces of Louisiana. “
The new predominantly black district runs along a long, narrow strip stretching from Baton Rouge, the capital at the tip of Louisiana’s boot, to Shreveport in the northwest corner of the state. Approximately 54% of the district’s population is black.
In Tuesday’s decision, Justices David C. Joseph and Robert R. Summerhays, both of the Western District of Louisiana, testified that issues other than race, such as coverage for certain holders, had been considered in the process. That said, it was clear that creating a second district with a majority of black voters was the overall goal of the legislators.
“The primary role of race in state decisions,” the justices wrote, “is reflected in the statements of legislative decision-makers, the Department of Towns and Parishes on racial lines, the shape of the district, and the evidence that the contours of the district were made to absorb a sufficient number of majority-Black neighborhoods to accomplish the purpose of a functioning majority-Black-majority district. “
The justices noted that the ruling did not make a decision “whether it was conceivable to create a second majority-Black district in Louisiana that would comply” with the Equal Protection Clause. But they added that the Voting Rights Act “never requires race to predominate in the drawing of electoral districts, sacrificing the classic principles of the electorate. “
In a dissenting opinion, Fifth Circuit Judge Carl E. Stewart argued that the challengers had failed to show that their constitutional rights had been violated.
“The overall record,” he writes, “demonstrates that the Louisiana legislature weighed political concerns (including insurance holder coverage) against race, with one thing taking precedence over the other. “
The ruling is the latest in a long-running legal war over Louisiana’s congressional districts and comes as other southern states have also been forced through the courts to redraw district barriers over allegations of racial discrimination.
Louisiana was forced to redraw congressional districts after the 2020 census to account for population changes. The census found that the state’s Black population had grown 3. 8% over the past decade, accounting for about one-third of the total Black population. But on the map drawn up through the Republican-controlled Congress, only one of the six congressional districts had a majority black population.
In June 2022, a federal ruling ruled that the map had been racially truncated and had illegally weakened the electoral strength of Black voters. The ruling ordered lawmakers to create some other district that would give the black electorate a chance. to choose the candidate of your choice. But the disputed card is still being used in the 2022 election.
Other southern states were also ordered to redraw their maps after a stunning U. S. Supreme Court ruling last year in which justices rejected Alabama’s congressional boundaries, finding that they sufficiently took into account the state’s black population. The resolution reaffirmed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which had been weakened over the years due to the court’s conservative majority.
Critics of Tuesday’s resolution argued that the repercussions in Louisiana could go beyond a single election, or even component divisions. Ashley Shelton, who heads the Power for Equity and Justice Coalition, which is part of the challenge to the original 2020 map, said she and others aren’t discouraged.
“We will continue to fight for a map that reflects our communities, fulfills the promise of the Voting Rights Act,” Shelton said, “and respects the voices of the thousands of Louisianans who have participated in the redistricting process. We have been transparent from day one in our call for a fair and representative map.
Nicolas Fandos
Timothy M. Kennedy, a Democratic senator from New York state, won a special election in the House on Tuesday to update a sitting congressman in Western New York, according to the Associated Press.
The victory is not a surprise. Democrats have controlled the Buffalo district for decades. And Kennedy outspent his Republican opponent, Gary Dickson, by a staggering 47 to 1.
But his victory will have an immediate effect in the House of Representatives at a time when Louisiana President Mike Johnson is struggling to retain a narrow Republican majority and fend off an uprising on his right flank.
Once Kennedy takes office, Johnson’s margin will be reduced to a single, fragile vote on partisan issues. A handful of special elections in Wisconsin, Ohio, Colorado and California are expected to offer boosters to Republicans, but so far summer.
Meanwhile, Kennedy, 47, secured a reliable Liberal vote. He campaigned on a familiar Democratic platform, promising to fight for federal infrastructure investments in an economically suffering region, for federal abortion rights and opposing former President Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee who will face President Biden this fall.
Mr. Dickson, a former F. B. I. agent and local city supervisor, led a moderate crusade for a Trump-era Republican. He had supported the former president but called the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol a “travesty. “He has supported Ukraine’s war against Russia and federal investments. On transportation projects, spending priorities that most conservative Republicans strongly oppose.
But that wasn’t enough to convince a district that has more than twice as many Democrats as Republicans. With 62 percent of the vote counted, Kennedy defeated Dickson by 34 points, 67 to 33.
The seat became vacant in February following the retirement of Brian Higgins, a moderate Democrat who had represented Buffalo’s dominance for 19 years.
Higgins, who left his post early to run the Shea Performing Arts Center in Buffalo, was part of a wave of seasoned lawmakers on both sides of the aisle headed for exit this year. Like many others, Higgins, 64, cited a toxic and unproductive environment at the Capitol.
Kennedy is a former occupational therapist who has worked in the New York State Senate since 2011. In Albany, he led a primary legislative committee on transportation and supported a strict package of gun protections after a racist gunman killed 10 other people in Buffalo. A supermarket in 2022. He has also earned a reputation for being a prolific fundraiser.
He was selected directly through party leaders as the Democratic nominee for the remainder of the presidency. Kennedy will most likely remain on the crusade path this year, with a Democratic number one in June and the November general election still to come.
The district stretches north from Buffalo, the city, several of its suburbs, and Niagara Falls.
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