The Supreme Court will examine partisan gerrymandering in 2017. That could change the voting map. →

Gerrymandering has helped give the Republican Party a significant advantage in Congress. Because Republicans had unified control of twice as many states as Democrats when the last congressional district maps were drawn, estimates suggest that gerrymandering before the 2012 elections cost Democrats between 20 and 41 seats in the House.
Partisan gerrymandering has become the norm in U.S. politics because the Supreme Court has declined to declare it unconstitutional. For three decades, a majority of justices have failed to identify manageable standards to determine when a plan rises to the level of an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.
As a result, state legislators have come to believe that they can draw partisan gerrymanders so long as long as they satisfy two criteria: They do not violate one-person, one-vote standards and do not reduce the electoral fortunes of African Americans or other protected racial and ethnic groups. As a result, the 2010 round of redistricting saw partisan gerrymandering run amok in some states.
But change may be coming.
 
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Because recent computer-based partisan gerrymandering has been done very skillfully — mainly by wasting opposition votes in “packed” districts — and because increased partisanship has reduced the likelihood of split ticket voting, the results of most 2010 gerrymanders are unlikely to wear off. That gives Republicans a virtual lock on Congress for the rest of the decade. Moreover, the imbalance in unified control of states grew to a more than 4 to 1 Republican advantage following the 2016 elections, suggesting even more aggressive partisan gerrymandering is ahead of us in 2020 unless the Supreme Court acts.
If, in 2017, the court does not specify a manageable standard for identifying unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering, “partisanship gone wild” will continue indefinitely, leaving us with a never-ending political nightmare: congressional delegations whose partisan balance is frozen into place regardless of changes in the preferences of the voters.
Stopping egregious gerrymandering is not a partisan issue; it benefits Republicans right now, but in the past it has advantaged Democrats. Regardless of which political party gains, the loser is U.S. democracy.

The FBI Has Quietly Investigated White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement →

White supremacists and other domestic extremists maintain an active presence in U.S. police departments and other law enforcement agencies. A striking reference to that conclusion, notable for its confidence and the policy prescriptions that accompany it, appears in a classified FBI Counterterrorism Policy Guide from April 2015, obtained by The Intercept. The guide, which details the process by which the FBI enters individuals on a terrorism watchlist, the Known or Suspected Terrorist File, notes that “domestic terrorism investigations focused on militia extremists, white supremacist extremists, and sovereign citizen extremists often have identified active links to law enforcement officers,” and explains in some detail how bureau policies have been crafted to take this infiltration into account.
Although these right-wing extremists have posed a growing threat for years, federal investigators have been reluctant to publicly address that threat or to point out the movement’s longstanding strategy of infiltrating the law enforcement community.
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In a heavily redacted version of an October 2006 FBI internal intelligence assessment, the agency raised the alarm over white supremacist groups’ “historical” interest in “infiltrating law enforcement communities or recruiting law enforcement personnel.” The effort, the memo noted, “can lead to investigative breaches and can jeopardize the safety of law enforcement sources or personnel.” The memo also states that law enforcement had recently become aware of the term “ghost skins,” used among white supremacists to describe “those who avoid overt displays of their beliefs to blend into society and covertly advance white supremacist causes.” In at least one case, the FBI learned of a skinhead group encouraging ghost skins to seek employment with law enforcement agencies in order to warn crews of any investigations.
That report appeared after a series of scandals involving local police and sheriff’s departments. In Los Angeles, for example, a U.S. District Court judge found in 1991 that members of a local sheriff’s department had formed a neo-Nazi gang and habitually terrorized black and Latino residents. In Chicago, Jon Burge, a police detective and rumored KKK member, was fired, and eventually prosecuted in 2008, over charges relating to the torture of at least 120 black men during his decadeslong career. Burge notoriously referred to an electric shock device he used during interrogations as the “nigger box.” In Cleveland, officials found that a number of police officers had scrawled “racist or Nazi graffiti” throughout their department’s locker rooms. In Texas, two police officers were fired when it was discovered they were Klansmen. One of them said he had tried to boost the organization’s membership by giving an application to a fellow officer he thought shared his “white, Christian, heterosexual values.”

Eric Trump’s business trip to Uruguay cost taxpayers $97,830 in hotel bills →

It was a high-profile jaunt out of the country for Eric, the fresh-faced executive of the Trump Organization who, like his father, pledged to keep the company separate from the presidency. Eric mingled with real estate brokers, dined at an open-air beachfront eatery and spoke to hundreds at an “ultra exclusive” Trump Tower Punta del Este evening party celebrating his visit.
The Uruguayan trip shows how the government is unavoidably entangled with the Trump company as a result of the president’s refusal to divest his ownership stake. In this case, government agencies are forced to pay to support business operations that ultimately help to enrich the president himself...

Trust Records Show Trump Is Still Closely Tied to His Empire →

This kind of thing would send even an Illinois governor to jail immediately, for a long time. The president should aim to be above reproach, yet President Trump isn't even trying.

While the trust structure, outlined in documents made public through a Freedom of Information Act request by ProPublica, may give the president the appearance of distance from his business, it drew sharp criticism from experts in government ethics.
“I don’t see how this in the slightest bit avoids a conflict of interest,” said Frederick J. Tansill, a trust and estates lawyer from Virginia who examined the documents at the request of The New York Times. “First it is revocable at any time, and it is his son and his chief financial officer who are running it.”
It is not uncommon for people to place assets in a trust with themselves as beneficiaries for estate-planning purposes. But Mr. Trump’s situation is unprecedented because it involves a wealthy president acting to avoid an appearance of conflict of interest.

Do women matter to national security? The men who lead U.S. foreign policy don’t think so. →

...Researchers found that nations with higher rates of violence against women also had higher risks of conflict and instability and that when women were part of peacemaking, that peace was more durable. The United Nations’ Women, Peace and Security initiatives sought to put these insights into action globally.
Incoming Trump administration officials, on the other hand, have suggested that gender- and other development-focused programming detracts from a focus on U.S. security and have signaled hostility toward U.N. efforts, such as considering gender in security efforts.
In the United States at least, Trump’s team is not unusual according to our new survey of nearly 500 U.S. foreign policy leaders. This establishment remains overwhelmingly male and thinks quite differently about the importance of gender in national security efforts. Further, national security policymakers, particularly men, appear uninformed about the latest research that shows how women’s social status predicts stability and how ensuring that women are involved in building peace and democracy results in more stable and secure nations...

The Trump Threat to the Rule of Law and the Constitution →

Taken together, these and more seem to give a pretty clear picture of Trump's authoritarianism:

Also highly troubling is the fact that Trump has maintained and apparently plans to continue to maintain a private personal security force independent of the Secret Service—the same security force that policed his rallies, and has been accused of excessive force as well as racial profiling... It is already being sued for allegedly violently interfering with political protest. Yet Trump’s chief private bodyguard has been named Director of Oval Office Operations, and there are no indications that the private security force will be disbanded.
This force is unaccountable to the usual political and legal checks and balances—Congress cannot cut its budget or audit its records, it may not count as a government actor for purposes of Constitutional challenges to his operations, like racial discrimination or retaliation for political speech. I would argue that the security force actually has become a government agency for Constitutional purposes, but there’s no good way to predict how a court would respond to this argument...
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Reinforcing worries about the undermining of the professionalism of the security services are Trump’s most recent moves to reshuffle the National Security Council. On January 28, Trump removed the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff from the NSC “principals committee” and replaced them with Stephen Bannon. This raises the worrying risk that intelligence information will be channeled to political operatives, and that political operatives with greater loyalty to Trump than to the Constitution will be exercising unchecked authority over the use of America’s military and intelligence apparatus.
Equally alarming are Trump’s efforts to undermine the free press. It doesn’t seem like an exaggeration to say that millions of his supporters completely distrust the media, and are unlikely to believe reporting on any of his misconduct. And this appears to be a conscious strategy of Trump’s, who has been attacking the media in speeches and on Twitter, who put the press in a pen at his rallies to be abused by the attending mobs, and who has installed the CEO of the leading far-right “news” site in the West Wing, ready to feed the house interpretation of his actions directly to his supporters, no independent input required. This, of course, is Bannon again, who has also described the media as the “opposition party.”
No catalog of Trump’s danger to the free press can omit his evident disregard for the First Amendment. Trump has threatened to “loosen up the libel laws,” to allow suits against the press, and his campaign manager made thinly veiled libel threats against no less than the outgoing Senate Minority Leader...

Does Trump Want to Lose the EO Battle in Court? Or is Donald McGahn Simply Ineffectual (or Worse)? →

The Immigration EO has a surprisingly strong basis in law but was issued in haste, without proper interagency coordination, without proper notice, without adequate consideration of its implications, and with a media strategy, if it was that, that suggested that the EO was motivated by discrimination against Muslims.  These factors combined with the subject matter and scope of the EO to alarm many people and to invite a fierce initial legal reaction from civil society groups, states, and judges across the country.
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The clearly foreseeable consequence of the roll-out combined with Trump’s tweets is to weaken the case for the legality of the EO in court.  Why might Trump want to do that?  Assuming that he is acting with knowledge and purpose (an assumption I question below), the only reason I can think of is that Trump is setting the scene to blame judges after an attack that has any conceivable connection to immigration.  If Trump loses in court he credibly will say to the American people that he tried and failed to create tighter immigration controls.  This will deflect blame for the attack.  And it will also help Trump to enhance his power after the attack.  After a bad terrorist attack at home, politicians are always under intense pressure to loosen legal constraints.  (This was even true for near-misses, such as the failed Underwear bomber, which caused the Obama administration to loosen constraints on its counterterrorism policies in many ways.)  Courts feel these pressures, and those pressures will be significantly heightened, and any countervailing tendency to guard against executive overreaction diminished, if courts are widely seen to be responsible for an actual terrorist attack.  More broadly, the usual security panic after a bad attack will be enhanced quite a lot—in courts and in Congress—if before the attack legal and judicial constraints are seen to block safety.   If Trump assumes that there will be a bad terrorist attack on his watch, blaming judges now will deflect blame and enhance his power more than usual after the next attack.
Many people responded to my tweet last night by saying that I was giving Trump too much credit.  He is not that clever, they said.  His tweets are an angry impulsive reaction, not part of a plan.  Perhaps these criticisms are right; I don’t know.  But if they are right, then the White House has a different problem (among others): An ineffectual or incompetent White House Counsel.