Ron DeSantis and “waste, fraud, and abuse”

  Republicans and conservatives are still celebrating Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s immigration antic with respect to his shipping and dumping immigrants in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. They are convinced that what DeSantis did was a brilliant political move because it supposedly exposed the hypocrisy of rich, elite progressives/liberals/Democrats who say they favor immigrants but then won’t take them into their homes to live.

Juneteenth celebrates just one of the United States’ 20 emancipation days – and the history of how emancipated people were kept unfree needs to be remembered, too

  The actual day was June 19, 1865, and it was the Black dockworkers in Galveston, Texas who first heard the word that freedom for the enslaved had come. There were speeches, sermons, and shared meals, mostly held at Black churches, the safest places to have such celebrations.

  The perils of unjust laws and racist social customs were still great in Texas for the 250,000 enslaved Black people there, but the celebrations known as Juneteenth were said to have gone on for seven straight days.

The Supreme Court has overturned precedent dozens of times in the past 60 years, including when it struck down legal segregation

  It is a central principle of law: Courts are supposed to follow earlier decisions – precedent – to resolve current disputes. But it’s inevitable that sometimes, the precedent has to go, and a court has to overrule another court or even its own decision from an earlier case.

  In its upcoming term, the U.S. Supreme Court faces the question of whether to overrule itself on abortion rights. Recent laws in Texas and Mississippi restrict the right of women to terminate pregnancies in ways that appear to challenge the long-standing precedent of the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which allowed women to have abortions in most circumstances.

Jim Crow tactics reborn in Texas abortion law, deputizing citizens to enforce legally suspect provisions

  The new Texas law that bans most abortions uses a method employed by Texas and other states to enforce racist Jim Crow laws in the 19th and 20th centuries that aimed to disenfranchise African Americans.

  Rather than giving state officials, such as the police, the power to enforce the law, the Texas law instead allows enforcement by “any person, other than an officer or employee of a state or local governmental entity in this state.” This enforcement mechanism relies solely on citizens, rather than on government officials, to enforce the law.

Police bigotry and the drug war

  To suggest that all cops and all judges are racial bigots would obviously be ridiculous. But it would be equally ridiculous to suggest that there are no racial bigots within law enforcement or even the judiciary.

  In fact, the DEA, the state police, and local law enforcement all serve as a magnet for racial bigots. There is a simple reason for that. The enforcement of drug laws attracts racial bigots. End the drug war, and you get rid of that magnet.

Long lines, broken machines, voter ID laws: Welcome to the neo-Jim Crow

  Felon disenfranchisement was designed to “preserve the purity of the ballot box,” or in other words, the whiteness of the electorate.

  By the time the Alabama Supreme Court issued that opinion in 1884, Florida had already beaten it to the punch. Florida outlawed voting for anyone convicted of a felony in 1868, at the very same time that it began to convict more black people of felonies.

  Exactly 150 years later, Florida voters finally overturned that discriminatory policy, re-enfranchising 1.5 million people in a single stroke last Tuesday. The news that Florida had passed Amendment 4, giving as many as 40 percent of the state’s black men the right to vote, was cause for celebration around the country and certainly here at the Southern Poverty Law Center, where we invested heavily to support its passage.

Jacob G. Hornberger: A heroic lawsuit against the border patrol in my hometown

  A controversy near my hometown of Laredo, Texas, provides a real-life example of the violations of liberty and privacy that come with immigration controls. The issue is especially relevant to the libertarian movement given that some conservative-oriented libertarians continue trying to persuade libertarians to abandon their position in favor of open borders and instead join up with conservatives and progressives by embracing their system of immigration controls.

  According to an article at CourthouseNews.com, a South Texas rancher named Richard Palacios has filed a lawsuit against U.S. Customs and Border Protection in U.S. District Court in Laredo. The lawsuit alleges that the border patrol repeatedly trespassed onto his ranch without a warrant and over Palacios’ repeated objections.

House Republican budget would eliminate critical disaster relief funding

  Families in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands are beginning the hard work of rebuilding their lives in the wake of Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma. House Republicans, however, are proposing to eliminate some of the critical tools people will need.

  When a natural disaster hits, affected communities rely on federal resources to rebuild homes, schools, and highways. But the proposed fiscal year 2018 House majority budget eliminates programs that provide disaster relief and the administrative resources needed to deploy funding quickly and effectively. If implemented, the budget will eliminate the Community Development Block Grant program, the office within the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that administers relief funds; eliminate the Legal Services Corporation, which provides free legal services to affected families; and eliminate AmeriCorps, which sends volunteers to help with disaster cleanup.

5 Ways Congress can help to rebuild stronger and safer communities after Harvey

  Hurricane Harvey delivered a devastating and deadly blow to Houston, southeast Texas, and parts of Louisiana. The storm unleashed unprecedented amounts of rain—more than 50 inches in some areas—and caused catastrophic flooding that consumed communities, including the entire Houston area. As of this writing, the storm has killed at least 70 people, destroyed or damaged more than 185,000 homes, and inflicted economic costs that could rise as high as $190 billion.

  It will take years for many Texas and Louisiana residents to recover from the storm. For others, recovery will never happen unless federal, state, and local officials channel disaster assistance into rebuilding strategies that will reduce the costs, health impacts, and loss of life brought on by floods and extreme weather events. Scientists are confident that climate change will only intensify storms like Harvey in the future, as sea level rise contributes to bigger storm surges, warmer oceans fuel more powerful winds, and rising air temperatures trigger heavier downpours.

Will Tucker and Cassie Miller: Systematic voter suppression — not 'voter fraud' — is the real cause for concern

  President Trump last week resurrected a big lie from the campaign trail, claiming that he lost the popular vote because as many as 5 million people voted illegally – all for his opponent.

  He offered no evidence. There is none. In fact, studies show conclusively that voter fraud is exceedingly rare.

  At best, Trump’s search for phantom voter fraud is a distraction from the very real voter suppression efforts carried out systematically by his own party – and from the recent, high-profile federal court decisions striking down those laws.

  At worst, it’s a precursor to a renewed push to suppress voting.

Racial and gender diversity sorely lacking in America’s courts

  This month a group of African American voters sued Alabama under the Voting Rights Act, alleging that its system of at-large elections for the state’s three appellate courts discriminates against black voters. Since 1994, every black candidate for the state’s 19 appellate judgeships has lost to a white candidate. As ThinkProgress noted, “At-large elections have been a common tactic across the country” to minimize the political influence of voters of color. A similar lawsuit was recently filed in Texas. Around 40 percent of Texas’ population is Latino, yet only 5 of the 76 justices who have served on the Texas Supreme Court since 1945—a mere 6.6 percent—have been Latino.

Jacob G. Hornberger: The military base dole

  During my recent visit to my hometown of Laredo, Texas, as I was heading out of town toward Corpus Christi, I passed by the former site of Laredo Air Force Base. Serving as a training base for new pilots, the base was a prominent part of Laredo life when I was growing up.

  During that time, public officials and much of the citizenry were scared to death that the base might close. Like many people on the dole and like many other American communities with military bases, Laredoans were convinced that without LAFB, the city would die.

Richard Cohen: The criminalization of black children in McKinney, Texas, and schools across America

  It’s hard to watch the video of the 15-year-old, swimsuit-clad African-American girl at a pool party in McKinney, Texas, being shoved into the ground by a white police officer and not be shocked.

  There was nothing that could have justified the use of force in that situation.

  But the reality is, this kind of police overreaction to the perceived misbehavior of black children is happening every day across America – not just on the streets but in our schools.

Bill Morlin: Austin shooter apparently tied to Phineas Priesthood

  A man who went on a shooting spree last week in Austin, Tex., firing at government buildings and a police headquarters, was a “homegrown American extremist” with “hate in his heart,” the city’s police chief said.

  Larry Steve McQuilliams, 49, also appeared to have been a devotee of a doctrine known as the Phineas Priesthood, an ideology that believes violence to be divinely justified if used against race-mixers, gay people, abortion proponents and others.

Charles C. Haynes: In Texas schools, failing grade for Bible courses

  Fifty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional the devotional use of the Bible by public schools, in its ruling on Abington Township v. Schempp.

  But many school districts in the Lone Star State still haven’t gotten the message, according to a report released last month by the Texas Freedom Network (TFN) entitled “Reading, Writing and Religion.”

Wendy McElroy: Texas inventories children

  Officials at Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas, apparently view George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four as an instruction manual rather than a cautionary tale.

  Over 6,000 students will be required to carry microchipped ID so that the district can track their movements in school and on school buses. Radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips will be embedded in student IDs. Doors within the two affected schools are presumably now fitted with sensors that track students as they move from class to class, from the cafeteria to the bathroom. The district’s administration is determined to increase student attendance.