POLITICO Nightly: The future of the Voting Rights Act is still in jeopardy

 

View in browser   BY ZACH MONTELLARO Presented by Voting rights activists rally outside the Supreme Court during oral arguments in the Moore v. Harper case. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images UNEASY ANNIVERSARY — The Voting Rights Act dodged a bullet earlier this month when the Supreme Court passed on the opportunity to further narrow its scope. In a case out of Alabama, the court upheld a key provision which allows minority voters to challenge voting maps that hinder their collective ability to elect their chosen candidates. And today, the first major domino fell after the Alabama ruling when the Supreme Court restored a lower court’s ruling that Louisiana’s congressional lines also likely diluted the power of Black voters there — a decision that will likely reverberate in other states, including Georgia and Texas. It’s an unexpected development, given the last decade of jurisprudence on the VRA. Sunday marked the 10-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder , which kicked off a near-unbroken pattern, until this month, of the high court whittling away at the VRA. A decade later, the future of the landmark piece of legislation remains incredibly uncertain. The Court’s decision 10 years ago was the first of many blows to the Voting Rights Act. The 5-4 decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, effectively eviscerated Section 5 of the VRA, which required states and local municipalities with a history of discriminatory voting practices to get any changes to election laws precleared by either the Department of Justice or a federal court in D.C. The court gutted those protections by tossing out the formula used to determine if a jurisdiction had that history of discrimination. Since there’s no way to determine who has a discriminatory history, the thinking went, there’s no way to apply Section 5 protections. But that was only the beginning. The court further chipped away at other sections of the Voting Rights Act in subsequent decisions, like one in 2021 adopting five “guideposts” to assess voting rules that activists decried for its sweeping nature . The Shelby County decision and subsequent rulings allowed for what voting rights activists have called a wave of new state election laws that have restricted the vote. The Brennan Center — a liberal think tank — found that there had been at least 29 laws passed in 11 states that were previously subject to preclearance, either in whole or in part, that added some sort of new voting restriction over the last decade. This pattern seemed like it would continue unabated — until earlier this month, that is. The decision from the Alabama redistricting case shocked most court watchers, who assumed the court would continue on its path of cutting away at the Voting Rights Act. Instead, along with today’s ruling in the Louisiana case, it could lead to another majority Black House seat in both states — and open a path for a boon in minority representation across the South. That does not mean the future of the Voting Rights Act is secure, however. The Alabama decision in Allen v. Milligan merely affirms the current law that has already been whittled away over the last decade, and does not expand it. And Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was in the majority in that case, nevertheless channeled Justice Clarence Thomas’ biting dissent by noting in a concurrence that the case did not delve into “the authority to conduct race-based redistricting … indefinitely into the future.” Also still to be decided is a case in Arkansas, arguing the provision at the core of the Voting Rights Act does not allow for a “private right of action.” If successful, it would represent perhaps the biggest blow to the VRA yet, limiting challenges to just the federal government and closing the door to private groups’ right to sue entirely. The Eighth Circuit heard that case earlier this year , and has yet to issue a decision. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at zmontellaro@politico.com or on Twitter at @ZachMontellaro .   A message from Bank of America: As climate change intensifies, every segment of society must have an abiding interest in stemming its impact. In Bank of America’s sustainability Q&A , leaders share the essential commitment needed by business and financial communities to create innovative solutions that counter the environmental and social challenges facing our planet.   WHAT'D I MISS? — Supreme Court won’t hear charter school dress code case that promised broader fallout: The Supreme Court today declined to take up a case that could have upended the charter school industry , but a legal fight over the future of the embattled segment of public schools is not over. Justices denied a petition to hear Charter Day School, Inc. v. Peltier after conferring over the case last Thursday. Religious liberty groups, some school choice organizations, plus 10 attorneys general in Republican-led states had asked the justices to intervene after the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a charter dress code that required girls to wear skirts. — Freedom Caucus takes key vote on Marjorie Taylor Greene’s future: House Freedom Caucus members took a momentous vote today on Marjorie Taylor Greene’s future with the group , according to three people familiar with the matter — but it’s not yet clear whether she’s been officially ejected. The right-flank group took up Greene’s status amid an internal push, first reported by POLITICO, to consider purging members who are inactive or at odds with the Freedom Caucus. Greene’s close alliance with Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and her accompanying criticism of colleagues in the group, has put her on the opposite side of a bloc that made its name opposing GOP leadership. While her formal status in the conservative group remains in limbo, the 8 a.m. vote — which sources said ended with a consensus against her — points to, at least, continued strong anti-Greene sentiment. — Study shows federal weather model underplays flooding, putting infrastructure spending at risk: The federal government is relying on an outdated weather model that is putting hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure spending at risk , according to a study by climate research firm First Street Foundation. The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, H.R. 3684 (117), calls for state and local governments to consult a federal prediction model that First Street says vastly underestimates the likelihood of flooding. That means that many new projects could face flooding threats far earlier than expected, forcing local governments to pay for unanticipated maintenance or potentially wasting funds from the $350 billion the legislation set aside for projects.   SUBSCRIBE TO POWER SWITCH: The energy landscape is profoundly transforming. Power Switch is a daily newsletter that unlocks the most important stories driving the energy sector and the political forces shaping critical decisions about your energy future, from production to storage, distribution to consumption. Don’t miss out on Power Switch, your guide to the politics of energy transformation in America and around the world. SUBSCRIBE TODAY .     NIGHTLY ROAD TO 2024 STUMBLING BLOCKS — For several months this year, Ron DeSantis seemed poised for a breakthrough in New Hampshire. But in the month since DeSantis formally entered the presidential race, he’s stumbled in the first-in-the-nation primary state , reports POLITICO’s Lisa Kashinsky and Meredith McGraw. He got dragged into a tit-for-tat endorsement battle with Trump that generated some media attention but little measurable increase in support. His first visit to the state as a presidential candidate drew more headlines for what he didn’t do — take questions from voters — than the retail politicking he did. And that’s on top of polls that had already swung back in Trump’s favor. There are signs that even inside DeSantis’s orbit, they see New Hampshire as a challenge. The super PAC that’s effectively running his operation has been off the air in New Hampshire since May — temporarily, its founder told POLITICO — while running a new ad in Iowa and South Carolina this week. BORDER CONTROL — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis moved today to undercut Donald Trump on immigration, reports POLITICO’s Sally Goldenberg, casting the former president as ineffectual on the issue that helped propel him to the White House in 2016 . He depicted President Joe Biden as even worse. In his first major policy proposal as a presidential candidate, DeSantis called for an end to “catch and release” — a practice of discharging undocumented migrants into their American homes while they await court hearings. He called for asylum seekers along the U.S.-Mexico border to be blocked entry while their claims are processed. And he said, as Trump has previously, that children born in the United States to parents living here illegally should no longer be granted citizenship, a proposal that stands to face significant legal challenges. TV TIME — Super PACs for the former president and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the two top-polling candidates in the GOP race so far, are spending millions to get their messages to the primary electorate . The Wall Street Journal reports that much of the advertising is targeting Republicans in states that launch the nomination process early next year: Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. Some spots are running nationally, another option used by campaigns to win over supporters in those and other states near the front of the nomination calendar, as many voters are just starting to tune into the race. The advertising pace is likely to pick up in July as some lesser-known candidates work to meet qualification requirements for the first Republican National Committee debate on Aug. 23.   A message from Bank of America:     AROUND THE WORLD Russia's President Vladimir Putin, seen on a laptop screen, addressing the nation in Moscow today. Putin said that he gave an order to avoid bloodshed during an armed rebellion over the weekend. | Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP via Getty Images WHAT NOW? — Vladimir Putin’s strongman mask is slipping — and Ukraine sees opportunity in the chaos, writes Zoya Sheftalovich . Warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin’s short-lived mutiny over the weekend exposed Putin’s tenuous grip on the levers of power , the disunity within his ranks and the weakness in Russia’s own border defenses. The ease with which Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenaries were able to take control of Russian territory and march to within 200 kilometers of Moscow — and the videos of Russians cheering for them — showed Putin’s regime is far from invincible. “Today the world saw that Russia’s bosses do not control anything,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his evening address late Saturday. “In one day, they lost several of their million-plus cities and showed all Russian bandits, mercenaries, oligarchs and anyone else how easy it is to capture Russian cities and, probably, weapons arsenals.” On Sunday, Prigozhin’s mercenaries started pulling out of Russia’s southern Voronezh region, which is situated along a highway that the Wagner Group wanted to use to march on Moscow, and from Rostov-on-Don, the Russian city close to the Ukrainian border seized by Wagner on Saturday. The question is, where will they go now? With Prigozhin out of the way during his supposed exile in Belarus, the Wagner mercenaries — 25,000 of them, if Prigozhin is to be believed — will either go back to where they came from, or sign contracts with the Russian defense ministry. Indeed, Russian military bloggers have speculated that Prigozhin launched his offensive on the country’s military leadership in response to the Kremlin seeking to defang him by integrating his mercenaries into the army. (Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu earlier this month ordered all “volunteer detachments” at the front in the Ukraine war to sign contracts with the ministry by July 1 — which Prigozhin vowed to oppose.)   STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING : What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today .     NIGHTLY NUMBER $1.7 billion The amount that the Department of Transportation is awarding in grants to purchase zero- and low-emission buses across 46 states and territories. The grants will enable transit agencies and state and local governments to buy 1,700 U.S.-built buses, nearly half of which will have zero carbon emissions. Funding for the grants comes from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill. RADAR SWEEP SCHOOL TIES — Earlier this month, after years of legal battles that ended at the Texas Supreme Court, the Texas Education Agency took over management of the Houston Independent School District , the state’s largest school system. Nearly every local Houston official is against the takeover, and the state-appointed superintendent for HISD, Mike Miles, could currently be the most hated person in the county, with some residents leveling threats at him. Miles, for his part, plans to totally overhaul three chronically underperforming high schools using a similar model that he implemented while he was in Dallas. Michael Hardy reports for Texas Monthly on Miles, his educational philosophy and the future of the Houston school system. PARTING IMAGE On this date in 1963: President John F. Kennedy spoke in front of a crowd of more than 300,000 in the main square in front of Schöneberg City Hall. Kennedy delivered one of the most famous anti-communist speeches of the Cold War, "Ich bin ein Berliner." | AP Photo Did someone forward this email to you?  Sign up here .   A message from Bank of America: What will it take to create a more sustainable world? Three Bank of America leaders discuss what the transition to a low-carbon economy entails, why environmental and social challenges are linked, and the essential role financial institutions and investors must play in driving solutions. They share the innovations needed in financing, technology and risk management to counter the environmental and social challenges facing our planet. “Sustainable finance means putting humanity and purpose together with capital. Every industry has the power and obligation to adapt and help drive positive change,” said Karen Fang, Global Head of Sustainable Finance for Bank of America. Learn how Bank of America is supporting the transition to a sustainable economy through its operations, business activities and partnerships.     Follow us on Twitter Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh Katherine Long @katherinealong   FOLLOW US

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