Roberts Court Tosses GOP One More Midterm Gift
INSIDE: Melissa DuBose ... Jeanine Pirro ... Hannah Natanson
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Partisan Hackery
Destroying the Voting Rights Act wasn’t enough.
The Supreme Court gifted Republicans another partisan political advantage Monday, deviating from its normal procedure by immediately certifying last week’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais and sending it back to the lower court, rather than waiting the usual 32 days under its own rules. The court offered no real explanation for its ruling.
Accelerating the usual timing will make it easier for Louisiana to redraw its House district maps to eliminate at least one of its two majority-Black districts before the midterm elections.
It also added insult to injury, as the Roberts Court has been wildly inconsistent in applying its own principle that federal courts should not intervene in redistricting cases too close to elections. In this case, the court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais came after mail-in voting in the House primary elections were already under way. The new special dispensation for Louisiana came after its Republican governor suspended the House primaries in order to redraw the districts in light of Louisiana v. Callais.
The court’s procedural decision prompted a heated dissent from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who noted the court had made a similar decision only two other times in the least 25 years:
These post-Callais developments have a strong political undercurrent. … Not content to have decided the law, it now takes steps to influence its implementation. The Court’s decision to buck our usual practice … and issue the judgment forthwith is tantamount to an approval of Louisiana’s rush to pause the ongoing election in order to pass a new map.
In a concurring opinion penned solely to respond to KBJ, the always-indignant Justice Samuel Alito (joined by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas) called her dissent “insulting” and accused her of being hotheaded: “It is the dissent’s rhetoric that lacks restraint.”
It’s not clear which justices voted to rush the certification of its ruling. “It is, still, somewhat of a surprise that Justices Kagan and Sotomayor did not sign Justice Jackson’s dissent,” election law professor Rich Hasen observes.
There’s a final element of bitter irony here to unpack, as KBJ and Alito wrangle over whether the 2026 election should be conducted using old or new maps. Back in the 2022 cycle, the Roberts Court allowed Alabama to use House district maps that lower courts had found to be unconstitutional but then after the election affirmed the lower courts.
It wasn’t just that the election was run with legally flawed maps. It was the difference maker in control of the House, as Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck points out:
… one can draw a straight line from the Court’s unsigned, unexplained February 2022 intervention in Alabama to at least five congressional districts that should have been redrawn before the 2022 midterms but weren’t. Republicans won all five of those seats—giving Republicans their exact margin of control in the House in the 118th Congress.
The Roberts Court’s unique ability to be nakedly partisan and thin-skinned about it mirrors the Trumpian attitude of the current era: We will behave with impunity, and we don’t want to hear a peep from you about it.
The Great Whitening
The fallout from Louisiana v. Callais continues:
Louisiana: The state Senate committee overseeing redistricting will likely favor a map that eliminates only one of the state’s two majority-Black congressional districts when it convenes Friday, its chair said.
Alabama: A crowd of 150 people protested the start of a special session of the legislature called to redraw the state’s congressional district map to eliminate at least one near-majority-Black district before the midterms.
Tennessee: The special session to eliminate the state’s sole majority-Black district begins today.
Digging in on Supreme Court Reform
Expanding the Supreme Court — which last had a majority of justices appointed by Democratic presidents in May 1969 — is but one of the means of reforming the court:
Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck (again!) offers a quick summary of the history of Congress exerting its powers over the Supreme Court, many of which it has declined to assert in recent decades.
Jonathan Bernstein: “The truth is that Democrats cannot expect anything they do in 2029 to survive, no matter how large their majorities might be in 2029 or how seemingly solid the Constitutional case for their actions might be, as long as the current GOP majority runs the high court.”
The Big Lie Never Ends
The Trump DOJ has demanded the identities of every worker — including thousands of volunteer poll workers — who staffed the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia, as part of its retributive investigation of Trump’s loss.
Judge Mulls Contempt Against DOJ/DHS
U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose of Rhode Island was incensed that the Trump DOJ failed to tell her about an outstanding international warrant against an ICE detainee whom she ordered released — but that the Trump administration then put out a press release claiming she knowingly freed the man wanted for murder.
A Trump DOJ attorney “profusely apologized” to the judge, saying ICE instructed him not to share the existence of the Dominican Republic arrest warrant with her.
“DuBose said at the hearing Monday that she is considering whether to hold officials from DHS or DOJ in contempt of court for their handling of the situation,” Politico reports.
Trump DOJ Watch
Federal Reserve: D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro has dropped her appeal of U.S. District Judge James Boasbeg’s ruling quashing her two subpoenas of the Federal Reserve and chair Jay Powell, but she asked Boasberg to vacate his ruling so that it doesn’t stand as precedent on the constitutional issues the Trump administration claims are at stake.
Cole Allen: D.C. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui ripped local jail officials for treating the alleged White House Correspondents Dinner gunman more harshly than the Jan. 6 defendants.
Hannah Natanson: The Trump DOJ lost its appeal of a magistrate judge’s ruling that he and not prosecutors would review the electronic devices seized from WaPo reporter Hannah Natanson in a classified leaks case. In the same case, a federal judge in Maryland ordered the pretrial release of the government contractor charged with leaking to Natanson.
Lawless Boat Strike Campaign Continues
Two people were killed Monday in a U.S. strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean Sea, bring the the death toll in the months-long campaign to at least 187.
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As I frequently note, today's Scotus acts like it does because...it can, end of.
The Partisan Hackery inspiring Justice Jackson’s epic dissent is why Jonathan Bernstein is correct. It’s time to say that the actions of this illegitimate court cannot be considered precedent and that its membership needs changing now.