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The Fox News anchor Chris Wallace made headlines of his own on Sunday, by pointing out to a senior Republican that he and the rest of his party recently voted against $350bn in funding for law enforcement.

Cant you make the argument that its you and the Republicans who are defunding the police? Wallace asked Jim Banks, the head of the House Republican study committee.

The congressman was the author of a Fox News column in which he said Democrats were responsible for spikes in violent crime.

There is overwhelming evidence, Banks wrote, connecting the rise in murders to the violent riots last summer a reference to protests over the murder of George Floyd which sometimes produced looting and violence and the defund the police movement. Both of which were supported, financially and rhetorically, by the Democratic party and the Biden administration.

Joe Biden does not support any attempt to defund the police, a slogan adopted by some on the left but which remains controversial and which the president has said Republicans have used to beat the living hell out of Democrats.

On Fox News Sunday, Banks repeatedly attacked the so-called Squad of young progressive women in the House and said Democrats stigmatised law enforcement and helped criminals.

Let me push back on that a little bit, Wallace said. Because [this week] the president said that the central part in his anti-crime package is the $350bn in the American Rescue Plan, the Covid relief plan that was passed.

Covid relief passed through Congress in March, under rules that meant it did not require Republican votes. It did not get a single one.

Asked if that meant it was you and the Republicans who are defunding the police, Banks dodged the question.

Wallace said: No, no, sir, respectfully wait, sir, respectfully Im asking you, theres $350bn in this package the president says can be used for policing

Congressman Banks, let me finish, and I promise I will give you a chance to answer. The president is saying cities and states can use this money to hire more police officers, invest in new technologies and develop summer job training and recreation programs for young people. Respectfully, Ive heard your point about the last year, but you and every other Republican voted against this $350bn.

Turning a blind eye to Wallaces question, Banks said: If we turn a blind eye to law and order, and a blind eye to riots that occurred in cities last summer, and we take police officers off the street, were inevitably going to see crime rise.

Wallace asked if Banks could support any gun control legislation. Banks said that if Biden was serious about reducing violent crime in America, he should admonish the radical voices in the Democrat [sic] party that have stigmatised police officers and law enforcement.

Despite working for Republicans favoured broadcaster, Wallace is happy to hold their feet to the fire, as grillings of Donald Trump and Kevin McCarthy have shown.

He has also attracted criticism, for example for failing to control Trump during a chaotic presidential debate last year which one network rival called a hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck.

Last year, Wallace told the Guardian: I do what I do and Im sitting there during the week trying to come up with the best guests and the best show I possibly can and Im not sitting there thinking about how do we fit in some media commentary.

Were not there to try to one-up the president or any politician.

Link:
Republicans are defunding the police: Fox News anchor stumps congressman - The Guardian

In Washington, the real insiders know that the true outrages are whats perfectly legal and that its simply a gaffe when someone accidentally blurts out something honest.

And so it barely made a ripple last week when a Texas congressman (and Donald Trumps former White House physician) said aloud whats supposed to be kept to a backroom whisper: Republicans intend to retake the US House of Representatives in 2022 through gerrymandering.

We have redistricting coming up and the Republicans control most of that process in most of the states around the country, Representative Ronny Jackson told a conference of religious conservatives. That alone should get us the majority back.

Hes right. Republicans wont have to win more votes next year to claim the US House.

In fact, everyone could vote the exact same way for Congress next year as they did in 2020 when Democratic candidates nationwide won more than 4.7 million votes than Republicans and narrowly held the chamber but under the new maps that will be in place, the Republican party would take control.

How is this possible? The Republican party only needs to win five seats to wrench the Speakers gavel from Nancy Pelosi. They could draw themselves a dozen or more through gerrymandering alone. Republicans could create at least two additional red seats in Texas and North Carolina, and another certain two in Georgia and Florida. Then could nab another in Kansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and New Hampshire.

They wont need to embrace policies favored by a majority of Americans. All they need to do is rework maps to their favor in states where they hold complete control of the decennial redistricting that follows the census some of which they have held since they gerrymandered them 10 years ago. Now they can double down on the undeserved majorities that they have seized and dominate another decade.

If Republicans aggressively maximize every advantage and crash through any of the usual guardrails and they have given every indication that they will theres little Democrats can do. And after a 2019 US supreme court decision declared partisan gerrymandering a non-justiciable political issue, the federal courts will be powerless as well.

Its one of the many time bombs that threatens representative democracy and American traditions of majority rule. Its a sign of how much power they have and how aggressively they intend to wield it that Republicans arent even bothering to deny that they intend to implode it.

We control redistricting, boasted Stephen Stepanek, New Hampshires Republican state party chair. I can stand here today and guarantee you that we will send a conservative Republican to Washington as a congressperson in 2022.

In Kansas, Susan Wagle, the Republican party state senate president, campaigned on a promise to draw a gerrymandered map that takes out the only Democrat in the states congressional delegation. We can do that, Wagle boasted. I guarantee you that we can draw four Republican congressional maps.

Texas Republicans will look to reinforce a map that has held back demographic trends favoring Democrats over the last decade by, among other things, dividing liberal Austin into five pieces and attaching them to rural conservative counties in order to dilute Democratic votes. Texas will also have two additional seats next decade due largely to Latino population growth; in 2011, when similar growth created four new seats for Texas, Republicans managed to draw three for themselves.

North Carolina Republicans crafted a reliable 10-3 Republican delegation throughout the last decade. When the state supreme court declared the congressional map unconstitutional in 2019, it forced the creation of a fairer map in time for 2020. Democrats immediately gained two seats. But the state GOP will control the entire process once again this cycle, so those two seats will likely change side and Republicans could find a way to draw themselves the seat the state gained after reapportionment.

Two Atlanta-area Democrats are in danger of being gerrymandered out of office by Republicans. The single Democratic member from Kentucky, and one of just two from Tennessee, are in jeopardy if Republicans choose to crack Louisville and Nashville, respectively, and scatter the urban areas across multiple districts. Florida Republicans ignored state constitution provisions against partisan gerrymandering in 2011 and created what a state court called a conspiracy to mount a secret, shadow redistricting process. It took the court until the 2016 election to unwind those ill-gotten GOP gains, however, which provides little incentive not to do the same thing once more. This time, a more conservative state supreme court might even allow those gains to stand.

Might Democrats try the same thing? Democrats might look to squeeze a couple seats from New York and one additional seat from Illinois and possibly Maryland. But thats scarcely enough to counter the overall GOP edge. In Colorado, Oregon and Virginia, states controlled entirely by Democrats, the party has either created an independent redistricting commission or made a deal to give Republicans a seat at the table. Commissions also draw the lines in other Democratic strongholds like California, Washington and New Jersey. There are no seats to gain in overwhelmingly blue states like Massachusetts, New Mexico and Connecticut.

In many ways, the Republican edge is left over from 2010, when the party remade American politics with a plan called Redmap short for the Redistricting Majority Project that aimed to capture swing-state legislatures in places like North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Florida, among others. Theyve never handed them back. Now Redmap enters its second decade of dominance just as the lawmakers it put into office continue rewriting swing-state election laws to benefit Republicans, under the unfounded pretext of voter fraud that did not occur during 2020.

Republicans already benefit from a structural advantage in the electoral college and the US Senate. Presidents that lost the popular vote have appointed five conservative justices to the US supreme court. Now get ready for a drunken bacchanalia of partisan gerrymandering that could make hot vax summer look like a chaste Victorian celebration.

Meanwhile, this is how a democracy withers and disappears slowly, legally, and in plain sight.

More here:
Republicans can win the next elections through gerrymandering alone - The Guardian

A lead Republican negotiator has welcomed Joe Bidens withdrawal of his threat to veto a $1.2tn bipartisan infrastructure bill unless a separate Democratic spending plan also passes Congress.

Senator Rob Portman of Ohio said on Sunday he and fellow Republicans were blindsided by Bidens comment, which the president made on Thursday after he and the senators announced a rare bipartisan compromise on a measure to fix roads, bridges and ports.

I was very glad to see the president clarify his remarks because it was inconsistent with everything that we had been told all along the way, Portman told ABCs This Week.

Moments after announcing the deal, Biden appeared to put it in jeopardy by saying it would have to move in tandem with a larger bill that includes a host of Democratic priorities and which he hopes to pass along party lines.

Biden said of the infrastructure bill on Thursday: If this is the only thing that comes to me, Im not signing it.

The comments put party pressure on the 11 Republicans in the group of 21 senators who endorsed the infrastructure package. One Republican, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, told Politico Biden had made his group of senators look like fucking idiots.

Biden issued a statement on Saturday that said he had created the impression that I was issuing a veto threat on the very plan I had just agreed to, which was certainly not my intent The bottom line is this. I gave my word to support the infrastructure plan and that is what I intend to do.

The White House said Biden would tour the US to promote the plan, starting in Wisconsin on Tuesday.

We were glad to see them disconnected and now we can move forward, Portman said.

A key Democrat, the West Virginia centrist Joe Manchin, told ABC he believed the bipartisan proposal could reach the 60 votes needed to become law.

This is the largest infrastructure package in the history of the United States of America, Manchin said. And theres no doubt in my mind that [Biden] is anxious for this bill to pass and for him to sign it. And I look forward to being there when he does.

Manchin also appealed to progressives to support the bill as part of a process which will see Democrats attempt to pass via a simple majority a larger spending bill containing policy priorities opposed by Republicans.

I would hope that all my colleagues will look at [the deal] in the most positive light, Manchin said. They have a chance now to review it. It has got more in there for clean infrastructure, clean technology, clean energy technology than ever before, more money for bridges and roads since the interstate system was built, water, getting rid of our lead pipes. Its connecting in broadband all over the nation, and especially in rural America, in rural West Virginia.

Another Republican, Mitt Romney of Utah, said he trusted Biden. He also delighted in needling Democrats over the separate spending package.

This is a bill which stands on its own, Romney told CNNs State of the Union about the infrastructure deal. I am totally confident the president will sign up if it comes to his desk. The real challenge is whether the Democrats can get their act together and get it on his desk.

Romney said Republicans are gonna support true infrastructure that doesnt raise taxes. Another Republican negotiator, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, told NBCs Meet the Press he thought the minority leader Mitch McConnell, will be for it, if it continues to come together as it is.

But, Romney, said, Democrats want to do a lot of other things and I think theyre the ones that are having a hard time deciding how to proceed.

A leading House progressive, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, told NBC it was very important for the president to know that the Democratic caucus is here to ensure that he doesnt fail.

And were here to make sure that he is successful in making sure that we do have a larger infrastructure plan. And the fact of the matter is that while we can welcome this work and welcome collaboration with Republicans that doesnt mean that the president should be limited by Republicans, particularly when we have a House majority, we have 50 Democratic senators and we have the White House.

I believe that we can make sure that [Biden] is successful in executing a strong agenda for working families.

See the article here:
Republicans will move forward on infrastructure after Biden veto threat - The Guardian

MADISON -Republican lawmakers are promising to try to swiftly take a dispute over their redistricting attorneys to the state Supreme Court if they don't get a favorable ruling from appeals judgesthis week.

The move may be risky because the high court on Friday reminded conservatives that it wants those bringing casesto follow regular procedures instead of engineering ways to get them to the justices as fast as possible.

Republicans who control the Legislature hired attorneys in December and January because they expect to be involved in litigation over redistricting, the high-stakes political process that takes place every 10 years of drawing new legislative and congressional districts.

A group of Madison teachers sued over the hiring of the attorneys and a Dane County judge in Aprilvoided the legal contracts, finding the legislators had no authority to hire the attorneys at this stage.

Appeals Judge Lisa Stark last week declined to put that ruling on hold.

In a motion Friday, an attorney for the Republicans asked a three-judge panel to set Stark's ruling aside and take up the issue itself. If it doesn't rule by Thursday, the Republicans will ask the Supreme Court to get involved, attorney Misha Tseytlin wrote.

"Absent stay relief from this Court, the Legislature intends to seek expedited relief from the Supreme Court on July 1, as it has previously indicated," Tseytlin wrote.

Whether the Supreme Court would be willing to take the case at this point is unclear. In a different case, a 4-3 majority on Friday emphasized that lawsuits should follow ordinary procedures instead of getting placed on fast tracks to the high court.

In that case, the majority said it was important to follow "well-establishedjudicial ground rules."

"To be sure, this court has an obligation to say what the law is, but this is not a standalone duty," the justices wrote. "Our responsibility to declare the law arises in the context of our duty to decide cases genuine and ripe disputes between parties with standing to raise them. It is not our institutional role to step in and answer every unsettled and interesting legal question with statewide impact."

The majority expressed that sentiment in explaining why it wasn't taking a challenge to Wisconsin's election rules that was brought straight to the high court instead of a lower court. The majority consisted of Justice Brian Hagedorn, who was elected in 2019 with the help of Republicans, and the court's three liberals, Justices Ann Walsh Bradley, Rebecca Dallet and Jill Karofsky.

The fight over the redistricting attorneys is being closely watched because it will likely affect how litigation over election maps plays out.

States must draw new districts every 10 years to account for population changes. Where the lines are placed can give one political party an advantage over the other.

Both sides expect the matter to wind up in court because Republican lawmakers and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers are unlikely to agree on the maps.

The legislators signed two contracts. One iswithattorney Adam Mortara and the Washington, D.C. law firmConsovoy McCarthy. The otheris withthe Madison law firmBellGiftosSt. John.

As of May, Republicans had spent about $103,000 in taxpayer funds on the attorneys. It's unclear if taxpayers could be reimbursed for any of that money.

ContactPatrick Marley at patrick.marley@jrn.com. Followhim on Twitter at @patrickdmarley.

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Continue reading here:
Republicans say they will try to take case over redistricting attorneys to the Wisconsin Supreme Court - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

On a sweltering morning in Harvard Square, Leah Samura strode through the future home of a recreational marijuana shop she plans to open this fall and marveled at the irony of the location: Thestore where she will soon sell legal pot was once a police station.

"To be a Black woman in Harvard Square with a cannabis shop that used to be a police station is just an amazing opportunity," Samura said.

Launching her store,Yamba Boutique,has not been easy. Marijuana may be legal in Massachusetts and many other states, but a federal prohibition makes banks wary of issuing business loans to cannabis companies.

Democrats and Republicans in Washington increasingly agree it is time to legalize marijuana at the federal level; the trouble is lawmakers don't see eye to eye on how to do it.

Entrepreneurs caught in the middle of this debate often have to get creative. Samura and her husband, Sieh who is leading the plan for a second Yamba location, in Cambridge's Central Square have managed to pay some bills by supplying other retailers with a cannabis product they developed.

"It is a cannabis-infused personal lubricant," Leah Samura explained. "It was designed to really help women deal with some of the issues that we have down there."

The product's sales are not enough to cover all the costs of getting a business off the ground, however, so the Samuras turned to a private investor named Sean Hope. Though Hope is a successful attorney and real estate developer, the new cannabis company is a stretch even for him.

"I have essentially leveraged my family's worth in real estate to be able to participate," he said. "There's tremendous risk."

Lifting the federal marijuana ban could mitigate the risk by easing bank lending.

It also could bring the law in line with public opinion. In a recent Pew poll, 91% of American adults said marijuana should at least be legal for medical use, and 60% backed recreational use.Plus the vast majority of states have legalized medical or recreational marijuana already.

Yet Democrats and Republicans are in a stalemate.

"All we want is strictly to legalize it," saidTom Mountain, vice chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party, which supports a relatively straightforward legalization proposal by GOP congressmen Don Young of Alaska and David Joyce of Ohio.

"Now, the Democrats, on the other hand, they want to add a surtax to it," Mountain continued. "And then they want to divert the money to this program and that program. It's so typical. It's really so typical."

A Democratic bill called the MORE Act includes clearing some criminal records and funding social justice efforts with a 5% to 8% sales tax. MORE stands for Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement.

"I think it confronts the injustices of the past and charts a better path forward and gives people back their lives," said Rep.Ayanna Pressley, a cosponsor.

Studies show cannabis law enforcement disproportionately affects people of color, so Pressley argues it is only fair that people of color reap financial rewards from cannabis legalization.

Sieh Samura worries that is unlikely to happen without the special provisions in the MORE Act.

"Equity considerations for a fair market and the long history of cannabis prohibition and all the people that have been harmed there have to be part of the equation or else you will not be able to build a healthy, sustainable market," he said.

Still, Congress could legalize cannabis at the federal level and leave it up to states to launch equity initiatives, if they see fit. Some, like Massachusetts, already have such programs.

But a bipartisan deal does not appear imminent. The House passed a version of the MORE Act last year, only to see it stall in the Senate. The same could happen again.

Read the rest here:
Republicans And Democrats Are Divided Over Marijuana. Businesses Are Caught In The Middle - WBUR