Justice Department files new lawsuit against the state of Texas, contending that the state’s voter ID law violates the Voting Rights Act.
It seems pretty clear that the Justice Department is testing out the extent of its powers under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act against Texas first because Texas is a much stronger case. It’s not easy to prove intentional discrimination, which is the bar that DOJ must now meet, since the Supreme Court’s June decision that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional. But lucky for DOJ, a federal court has already ruled in an earlier case that a Texas redistricting map was deliberately discriminatory. That gives DOJ a leg up as it argues that Texas should be subjected to stricter oversight under the law. Today’s new effort by DOJ to block the Texas voter ID law follows the same basic theory. Read More
Donald Trump, birther extraordinaire, doesn’t want to talk to TPM about Ted Cruz’s Canadian birth certificate.
Plotters wanted to abduct police officers, put them on trial in people’s courts and then execute them in order to build a following for their radically antiauthoritarian political movement. “We need to arrest the police and take them to our jail and put them in a cell and put them on trial in a people’s court,” David Allen Brutsche allegedly said, “If we run into the position that they resist, then we need to kill them.”
I’m going on vacation for a week. Honestly, I really need it. But before I do I couldn’t help leaving with you not with anything particularly insightful but something actually pretty obvious to anyone who has a brain and/or doesn’t harbor a lot of racial animosity toward black people that needs to find some comeuppance or ‘I told you so’ about Trayvon Martin.
So here goes. Read More
On the latest stop on President Obama’s summer bus tour, he heads to CNN to discuss all of the season’s big stories.
Former U.S. Senate candidate arrested for allegedly trying to hire a hit man to kill his sheriff deputy uncle.
The white supremacist prison gang known as 211 Crew is apparently still causing havoc in Colorado. After being linked to the killing of the state’s prison chief earlier this year, the gang has allegedly ordered a “hit” on a local judge, causing him to go into hiding.
Secretary of State John Kerry to make statement on Syria situation at 2 p.m. ET. Watch.
Measles outbreak hits Texas megachurch whose pastor expressed skepticism about vaccines.