Calif. Gov. Newsom Hopes to Poach Nike Plant from Ariz. w/ Liberal Virtue-Signaling

Ben Sellers
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‘Hey, @Nike — we’re just a quick jaunt over the border…’

Calif. Gov. Wants Nationwide Background Checks on Ammo Purchases
Gavin Newsom/Photo by XPRIZE Foundation (CC)

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) As many flee the oppressive taxation and costs of doing business in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom hoped to butter up athletic-apparel company Nike on Tuesday, not with economic incentives but with left-wing virtue-signaling.

Nike faced immense backlash from conservatives after pulling a line of shoes that featured a “Betsy Ross” American flag with 13 stars, which controversial pitchman Colin Kaepernick deemed racist due to the flag’s associations with slavery.

In response, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey announced the withdrawal of a million dollar incentive grant and another million in waived fees for the company to locate a new manufacturing plant in the Phoenix suburb of Goodyear.

Nike, in turn, planned to invest $184.5 million in the plant with a promise of bringing around 500 jobs, according to the Associated Press.

The Oregon-based corporation has an estimated net worth of some $92 billion.

In recent years, Newsom’s state has dealt with a large-scale exodus of both industry and wealthy residents to more affordable neighboring regions like Arizona and Nevada.

But in the wake of the Nike controversy, the California governor saw an opportunity for revenge by attempting to poach the Arizona plant.

Newsom recently made a similar appeal to disaffected movie-industry workers who, having left southern California to take advantage of tax incentives in areas like Georgia, found themselves alienated by red-state conservative values.

That included Georgia’s passage of a pro-life, “heartbeat” law restricting when pregnant women could seek an abortion.

In a Twitter video, Newsom besought the Tinsel Town refugees to “come back home.”

However, the idea that Nike would embrace a substantially higher corporate overhead simply to make a political point remained a dubious prospect.

The hiring of Kaepernick—the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback better known for his anthem kneeling than his athletic achievements—appeared to cement Nike’s divisive political stance, only to be reinforced by the recent recall of the flag-bearing Air Max 1 Quick Strikes.

It was a groundbreaking shift in paradigm for the company, which took a decidedly more innocuous approach in the past.

After declining to endorse the Democratic challenger in a 1990 North Carolina race, Nike pitchman Michael Jordan was famously reputed to have said, “Republicans buy sneakers too.”

But despite the change in strategy, industry analysts have noted that Nike’s hiring of Kaepernick remained a shrewdly calculated marketing gambit more than anything.

Nike’s affront to conservatives, even at the risk of a boycott, ultimately increased the company’s exposure and brand loyalty among its core demographic of younger consumers, who saw the move as an iconoclastic jab at the establishment.

Relocating its plant to California, while helping to reaffirm the company’s hard leftward shift, would not offer the same return on investment that its associations with Kaepernick afforded.

Rather, Newsom’s pitch was, in some ways, reminiscent of the disastrous efforts by Amazon to relocate its headquarters to tax-heavy New York earlier this year, only to scuttle the deal in March after its $1.7 billion in tax breaks and incentives came under harsh scrutiny from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, D-NY.

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Air Max 1 Quick Strike Fourth of July / IMAGE: Twitter

In a statement issued Tuesday in response to the recent flag flap, Nike downplayed its political posturing, claiming it had actually pulled the shoes to avoid creating controversy.

“We regularly make business decisions to withdraw initiatives, products and services,” it said, according to Fox News.

“NIKE made the decision to halt distribution of the Air Max 1 Quick Strike Fourth of July based on concerns that it could unintentionally offend and detract from the nation’s patriotic holiday,” the statement said.

Bootlegged pairs of the limited-edition shoes that had already hit the market on Tuesday were selling online for $2,500—more than 20 times their original price, according to Bloomberg.

Ariz. Gov. Revokes Economic Incentives for Flag-Bashing Nike

Ben Sellers
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‘We don’t need to suck up to companies that consciously denigrate our nation’s history…’

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Air Max 1 Quick Strike Fourth of July / IMAGE: Twitter

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) As patriotism-trashing shoemakers Nike sought to gin up more controversy by recalling a product that featured an American flag, Arizona’s governor responded by revoking a package economic incentives for the company.

Gov. Doug Ducey took to Twitter in a series of nine posts (see below) expressing his disappointment over the virtue-signalling corporation’s latest attack on American values.

“Arizona’s economy is doing just fine without Nike,” Ducey said. “We don’t need to suck up to companies that consciously denigrate our nation’s history.”

The company’s latest firestorm erupted as the city of Goodyear was set to move forward on an agreement for Nike to build a manufacturing facility there, expected to create 505 jobs, according to CNN Wire.

In return, the Phoenix suburb planned to waive about $1 million in permit and review fees, and to reimburse Nike up to $1 million in costs through an economic-development grant supplied by the Arizona Commerce Authority.

Ducey’s announcement left the overall fate of the deal uncertain as it was unclear what role state-level officials played in brokering it.

Nike said it recalled the shoes, which inexplicably incorporated a version of the original “Betsy Ross” flag of the 13 colonies stitched on their back, because controversial spokesman Colin Kaepernick took offense.

Kaepernick
Colin Kaepernick (center)/IMAGE: Johnny Ahoy via Youtube

CNN reported that Nike already had shipped the Air Max 1 Quick Strike Fourth of July products to stores but had asked for their return after Kaepernick—the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback now known more for his anthem-kneeling protests—said he found the flag’s association with slavery to be racist.

The announcement last year that Kaepernick had signed as a Nike pitchman initially drew strong backlash, with product boycotts and even some consumers burning their Nike gear in protest.

However, the company deftly used the negative publicity to rebrand itself among its target younger demographics and ultimately was said to reap considerable dividends from the scandal.

The extent to which Nike actively engineered the latest controversy remains unknown.

Last week, it pulled another limited-edition line from Chinese stores after their Japanese designer drew backlash by supporting a Hong Kong protest against the mainland.

Already, the black-market price of the recalled “Betsy Ross” shoes has risen to $2,500, more than 20 times their original value, reported Bloomberg.

In addition, Nike has once again succeeded in getting free marketing exposure from the flap, with other conservatives—including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas—joining Ducey to express their outrage.

Eric Holder Has Plan to Bypass SCOTUS’s Gerrymandering Decision

Ben Sellers
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‘History will not be kind in its assessment of the ways in which this court has undermined voting rights and core democratic principles in America…’

Eric Holder, Dems Have Plan to Bypass SCOTUS Gerrymandering Decision
Eric Holder / IMAGE: Mother Jones via Youtube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) When the Supreme Court last week ruled in a pair of landmark cases that federal courts had no jurisdiction in dictating how states determine their voting districts, conservatives hailed it as a victory against the Left’s efforts to undermine duly elected state legislatures.

But, in fact, it merely added an extra step for groups like former Attorney General Eric Holder‘s National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which has considerable resources tied in its plan to forcibly redraw the political map using liberal judges.

The focus is now on installing radical activists on state Supreme Courts, who can then use their authority to gerrymander both federal districts and the state districts in order to turn state legislatures blue before the next round of redistricting in 2021.

And with the U.S. Supreme Court having washed its hands of the matter, there will be no legal remedy if they succeed.

Already, Democrat activists in North Carolina, one of the two states—along with Maryland—that was represented in the recent court decision, have pushed the very same complaint to the state level, where a solid liberal majority on the state Supreme Court bench is poised to forcibly redistrict the state’s Republican legislative seats.

Meanwhile Holder has shifted his list of targets from national races to hone in completely on state-level races in vulnerable regions.

There, he is able to leverage the massive infrastructure and funding from NDRC’s tax-exempt trust and political-action committee to influence key local elections with implications for the entire country.

Earlier this year, former President Barack Obama merged his own campaign arm, Organizing for Action, into the Holder-led gerrymandering group, giving his self-declared wingman and donation bundler access to an army of social-justice warriors ready to mobilize at the click of a button.

Although conservatives recently established their own counterpart, the National Republican Redistricting Trust, with former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker helping to raise the group’s profile, it has nowhere near the level of resources needed to go toe-to-toe with the NDRC in courtroom battles.

Scott Walker Tells NFL Players to Focus on Not Beating Their Wives 1
Scott Walker/Photo by Gage Skidmore (CC)

Walker’s home state of Wisconsin is among the 12 historically red or battleground states that the NDRC has directly targeted for upcoming elections.

Issuing a menacing statement in response to the recent Supreme Court decision, Holder—who notoriously has declared that America was never great—threatened the conservative judiciary that it will suffer for not ruling in his favor.

“History will not be kind in its assessment of the ways in which this court has undermined voting rights and core democratic principles in America,” he said.

In its decision last week, however, the Supreme Court explicitly rejected the effort to use the courts as a means of reversing unfavorable election outcomes.

Chief Justice John Roberts cautioned that the result could be having every future election challenged and decided ultimately by the ideological leanings of the court rather than the people of the district.

“The expansion of judicial authority would not be into just any area of controversy, but into one of the most intensely partisan aspects of American political life,” Roberts said.

“That intervention would be unlimited in scope and duration—it would recur over and over again around the country with each new round of districting, for state as well as federal representatives,” he said.

Despite those bipartisan concerns, Holder continued to use misinformation to sway the partisan Left into supporting his efforts, with the goal of securing a permanent Democrat majority in both the legislatures and the courts.

Holder collaborated with far-left mouthpiece Mother Jones to create a propaganda video in order to spin his efforts to the general populace.

NYTimes Unhinged by Satirical Joe Biden Website

Ben Sellers
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‘Mr. Mauldin’s website hews far closer to the disinformation spread by Russian trolls in 2016 than typical political messaging…’

BIDEN: 'Regret That I am Not President'
Joe Biden/IMAGE: YouTube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Leftist media, who have long ducked behind the cover of anti-conservative political comedy, are far less bemused by a humor site mocking former Vice President Joe Biden, which The New York Times likened to a Russian cyber-attack.

From websites like The Onion to television programs like “The Daily Show,” satire often has played a pivotal role in the Left’s attacks on conservatism.

Ridiculing one’s opponent ranks as No. 5 on Saul Alinsky‘s “Rules for Radicals“—which helped to lay the foundation of political strategies like those used by the Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigns.

A few months prior to the 2016 election, in fact, The Boston Globe (owned until 2013 by The New York Times) ran a fake front page spoofing then-candidate Donald Trump, among a litany of questionable journalistic practices.

More recently, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., was criticized by media leftists after filing a defamation suit over a Twitter profile that claimed to represent his mother and one claiming to be his cow.

Nunes said the sites “repeatedly tweeted and retweeted abusive and hateful content” against him.

Yet, in a scathing, 2,400-word, front-page report in Saturday’s Times, writer Matthew Rosenberg came unhinged over the popularity of JoeBiden.info.

The site lampoons Biden on his many gaffes and his creepy invasion of other people’s personal boundaries, including that of many underage girls.

Rosenberg’s piece sought primarily to expose the owner of the site, Patrick Mauldin.

The reporter deployed all of his investigative skills to root out the unidentified jokester and then to breathlessly attack Mauldin for having the audacity to parody the current Democratic front-runner.

“[I]n anonymously trying to exploit the fissures within the Democratic ranks—fissures that ran through this past week’s debates — Mr. Mauldin’s website hews far closer to the disinformation spread by Russian trolls in 2016 than typical political messaging,”Rosenberg whined.

Rosenberg then linked to a September 2017 article about Russian conspiracies and election meddling that seemed to cast aside the nearly two-year-long Mueller investigation, which debunked many of the underlying claims that the Times and others had relentlessly perpetuated.

“With nothing to indicate its creator’s motives or employer,” the Times griped of the Biden spoof, “the website offers a preview of what election experts and national security officials say Americans can expect to be bombarded with for the next year and a half: anonymous and hard-to-trace digital messaging spread by sophisticated political operatives whose aim is to sow discord through deceit. Trolling, that is, as a political strategy.”

REPORT: Focus on Climate Change Takes Away from REAL Disaster Planning

Ben Sellers
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‘The more urgent problem of our lemming-like march to the sea requires immediate and sustained attention…’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A leading climatologist said that blaming things like carbon-dioxide emissions while ignoring the real policy issues surrounding natural disasters left regions more vulnerable for future catastrophe.

Judith Curry, president of the Climate Forecast Applications Network and a professor emeritus of Georgia Tech’s climatology department, became a leading climate-change skeptic after looking at the scientific evidence.

Curry was among the expert witnesses to testify recently before a House Oversight subcommittee on the topic of “Recovery, Resilience and Readiness,” where she was pitted against climate-change dogmatists and research manipulators including Penn State’s Michael Mann.

Curry followed up on her written testimony for the committee by adapting it into a report, which was released Monday by The Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Even if evidence fails to support man-made climate change as a cause for natural disasters, she said, the recurrence and unpredictability of extreme weather patterns meant more should be done to anticipate them in order to minimize risk.

“Many regions of the U.S. are not well adapted to the current weather and climate variability or to the extremes that were seen earlier in the 20th century,” Curry said in a GWPF press release. “We can do much to improve our resilience to extreme weather regardless of climate change.”

In fact, the illusion of climate change—which taps into a long continuum throughout history of blaming extreme weather on the sins of mankind—creates greater risk in suggesting that the weather will somehow become less severe simply by going green.

“Since no level of decarbonisation will prevent hurricanes or wildfires from hitting towns and cities, only a pragmatic policy of preparedness and adaptation will make communities saver and more resilient,” said the GWPF press release.

To illustrate the point, Curry noted, as have some in Congress, that a discrepancy between wildfires on public and private lands proved it was poor forest management that was, in effect, fueling fires in places like California, where environmental regulations prevented foresters from clearing brush.

“The abundance of fuels is the most important controlling variable in fire regimes of these semi-arid forests,” noted the report. “Reduction of widespread fires over the last century reflects extensive human impacts on forests and fire regimes.”

To the extent that climate variability factored into the equation—such as periods of drought—the current uptick mirrors one from the early part of the 20th century when the fires were even more prevalent.

Curry’s report also examined the alleged man-made impact on Atlantic hurricanes.

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2018’s Hurricane Michael, the fourth deadliest U.S. hurricane on record since the 20th century recording began, left parts of southern Florida in rubble. /IMAGE: The Washington Post via Youtube

“In spite of the low confidence in attributing changes in hurricane activity to human influence, the public discourse on the threat of hurricanes in a changing climate is often characterized by exaggerated alarm, fueled by statements from some climate scientists,” she wrote, taking a dig at Mann’s claims of major cities being lost.

Although a period in the mid-2000s saw back-to-back years with four and three major hurricanes, lending to the perception of increased weather severity, it was immediately followed by a span of nearly that broke records for having no major hurricanes.

This results in a negative overall trend, a slight downturn in the number of hurricanes, since the early 20th century.

The fact that there was no consensus on the 2019 hurricane season underscored the challenges scientists continued to face in predicting the weather, Curry said.

“The variation among these forecasts reflects different assumptions about the important factors that drive seasonal hurricane activity,” she said. “The relatively low skill of seasonal hurricane forecasts reflects a combination of incomplete understanding and unpredictable weather variability.”

Curry’s own models, based on the prevalence of La Niña events—essentially the cooling phase of ocean surface temperatures—would indicate a 2019 season with heavy hurricanes and an overall upward trend of hurricanes lasting into the 2020s before shifting into another period of decline, noted the report.

Curry said that adapting a “resilience” mindset geared more toward recovering from extreme weather than trying to prevent it would lessen the impact.

“A focus on policies that support resilience, anti-fragility and thrivability reduces our vulnerability to extreme weather events and doesn’t rely on highly uncertain predictions of the future climate,” she noted in the report.

However, in terms of prevention efforts, one of the leading factors was that government policies encouraged risk. While Western states’ tree-thinning regulations increased risk of fires, so, also, did its insurance industry regulations, by inviting people to build near coastal areas prone to greater risk, increase the devastation caused by the major events.

“[T]he more urgent problem of our lemming-like march to the sea requires immediate and sustained attention,” noted Curry and a coalition of scientists in a 2006 statement. “We call upon leaders of government and industry to undertake a comprehensive evaluation of building practices, and insurance, land use, and disaster relief policies that currently serve to promote an ever-increasing vulnerability to hurricanes.”

JUDICIAL WATCH: Obama Justice Dept. Gave Immunity to Hillary Lawyer Who Vetted Emails

Ben Sellers
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Ex-White House liaison contradicted previous FBI deposition in which she claimed no knowledge of private server during public service…

JUDICIAL WATCH: Obama Justice Dept. Gave Immunity to Hillary Lawyer Who Vetted Emails
Heather Samuelson / IMAGE: Screenshot via State.gov

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) In its ongoing efforts to shed light on Hillary Clinton‘s campaign corruption and the subsequent cover-up efforts, Judicial Watch revealed new testimony from a top Clinton lawyer who helped destroy crucial evidence, acknowledging that she got an immunity deal.

Heather Samuelson, who became Clinton’s personal attorney after serving a stint as her White House liaison at the State Department, “was primarily responsible for conducting the review of Clinton emails and sorting out ‘personal’ emails from government emails,” said the nonprofit accountability watchdog.

Clinton’s team later used a BleachBit software to wipe clean all of the emails on her server that Samuelson deemed unnecessary to return to the State Department servers.

During a sworn deposition with Judicial Watch, Samuelson acknowledged that she, like several other Clinton associates who helped oversee the cover-up, secured from the Loretta Lynch-headed Justice Department an immunity deal from prosecution around June 2016, according to her estimation.

Fox News previously reported on side-deals with the James Comey-led FBI that both Samuelson and Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills had been offered, which included having the agency destroy their laptops after reviewing them.

Judicial Watch said Samuelson in her recent testimony also contradicted her previous FBI deposition by saying she was, in fact, aware of Clinton’s use of a private server during the latter’s time as secretary of State.

“I believe I first became aware when either she e-mailed me on personal matters, such as wishing me happy birthday,” Samuelson said, “or when I infrequently would receive e-mails forwarded to me from others at the department that had that e-mail address listed elsewhere in the document.”

Then-President Barack Obama similarly denied knowledge of the private server, only to have it be revealed later that he, himself, had sent official messages to and from her [email protected] address while using a fake name himself.

Samuelson also acknowledged but was unable to account for a gap in the emails from January to March of 2009, Clinton’s first two months as head of the State Department.

She blamed the gap on Platte River Networks, the private, Colorado-based company that had maintained the server.

“My understanding is—well, I’m sorry, I should say my recollection is—when we received the documents, the file from Platte River Networks, there was a period of time that was missing in her e-mails,” Samuelson said. “… They said they did not have that information.”

Judicial Watch conducted the investigation as part of an ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that originally focused on the cover-up surrounding the Benghazi embassy attacks during Clinton’s State Department tenure.

Was Pinocchio-Plagued Flip-Flopper Kamala REALLY the Thurs. Night Debate Winner?

Ben Sellers
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‘You’re not answering the question directly…’

Candidates during the first Democratic primary debate raise their hand in response to a question over their support for eliminating private health insurance and extending public health benefits to illegal immigrants. / IMAGE: America Rising PAC

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Sen. Kamala Harris was touted as one of the big winners of Thursday night’s Democratic primary debates thanks to a carefully orchestrated race-baiting attack on former Vice President Joe Biden, the current front-runner.

But, once again, Harris proved that she is far weaker when put on the spot, often struggling to explain where she stands on even the most basic of positions in the current Democratic platform.

Harris in the past has waffled on issues such as whether she supported the debunked Jussie Smollet case and whether she would allow incarcerated felons to vote.

She put her flip–flopping skills on display again during the debate over a controversial call for extending universal healthcare that would forcibly end private insurance plans and socialize the entire medical industry.

After raising her hands in support, Harris promptly walked back her position the next morning, noted the conservative America Rising PAC.

“Less than 12 hours later, she said on ‘Morning Joe’ that she is not in support of eliminating private insurance and had a different interpretation of the question than the 9 other Democrats on stage, the moderators, and the millions of Americans watching,” they said in a release on Friday.

Harris clarified on the MSNBC show, “The question was, ‘Would you give up your private insurance for that option,’ and I said yes.”

However, America Rising noted that it wasn’t her first time walking back a statement that she would eliminate private insurance and switch to a single-payer system.

She did the same thing in January during a CNN town-hall forum, it noted.

Despite being a co-sponsor of the Medicare for All bill introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., within 24 hours after pronouncing her support Harris reversed course when other Democrats in the field rejected the position.

America Rising compiled its own four-minute montage of the many times Harris had second-guessed herself on her own private insurance stance.

Harris has also been the recipient of several “Pinocchio” ratings by Washington Post fact-checkers, particularly over a policy she endorsed as a San Francisco district attorney that resulted in the incarceration of parents due to their children’s school truancy.

Other issues that have been called out by fact-checkers include a false statement about President Donald Trump’s tax cuts and a deceptive video about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his nomination hearing.

Harris’s confusion problem has even come into play during high-profile testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

She notably attacked Attorney General William Barr at a hearing over the Mueller Report, demanding to know whether then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein—who oversaw the bulk of the investigation—had been cleared to do so, given what Harris claimed was a conflict of interests.

Rosenstein was approved directly by the Senate in a 96–4 vote following the recusal of then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

“I think they cleared it when he took over the investigation,” Barr said, noting what appeared to be a flip–flop by Democrats who had strongly favored Rosenstein in the past.

“Sir, the flip–flop in this case, I think, is that you’re not answering the question directly,” Harris said, cutting off the attorney general.

As the Left Celebrates Census Delay, SCOTUS Decision Could Be Great News for Trump

Ben Sellers
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‘A court may not set aside an agency’s policymaking decision solely because it might have been influenced by political considerations or prompted by an Administration’s priorities…’

SCOTUS Set to Rule on Landmark Cases in Census, Gerrymandering
PHOTO: Fred Schilling, Supreme Court Curator’s Office

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Pundits on both sides of the aisle interpreted as a victory for leftist open-border advocates the complex ruling by the Supreme Court over the Commerce Department‘s inclusion of a citizenship question on the 2020 U.S. census.

But by striking down arguments that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was “arbitrary and capricious” in his decision to include the question, the court in fact delivered a victory to the Trump administration—provided it can outmaneuver activist stall tactics to delay the census.

The Court’s decision on Thursday sent the Department of Commerce v. New York back to the Southern District of New York, leaving the liberal district court to determine whether Ross can provide a “reasoned explanation,” in keeping with the Administrative Procedure Act, for including the citizenship question.

The Court rebuked what it characterized as a “contrived” explanation provided by Ross that the measure was done in coordination with the Justice Department to comply with the Voting Rights Act.

Instead, the justices contended that Ross’s true aim was pretextual, coming well before he approached the attorney general’s office to provide him with the voting rights rationale.

“The record shows that the Secretary began taking steps to reinstate a citizenship question about a week into his tenure, but it contains no hint that he was considering VRA enforcement in connection with that project,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a unanimous decision that nonetheless received three separate dissents, comprising the objections of all eight other members of the bench.

While casting doubt on Ross’s official explanation, however, the court also upheld the authority of the Commerce secretary to use his discretion in what questions to include of the census.

It thus limited the ability of activist judges in the lower courts to reject his rationale simply because it was politically motivated.

“[A] court may not set aside an agency’s policymaking decision solely because it might have been influenced by political considerations or prompted by an Administration’s priorities,” Roberts wrote.

Renegade Judge, w/out a Jury, Blocks Citizenship Question on 2020 Census 1
Wilbur Ross/Photo by Gage Skidmore (CC)

In essence, the court’s ruling told Ross to admit there were other factors involved in his decision while also asserting that those other factors could not prevent the inclusion of the question.

At several times, the ruling opinion pointedly observed that it was not the court’s place to substitute its own judgment for that of a government agency.

“It is not for us to ask whether his decision was ‘the best one possible’ or even whether it was ‘better than the alternatives,'” wrote Roberts, who criticized the district court and dissenting justices for imposing their own value judgments.

Opponents’ challenge to the decision rested largely on their own political motives—among them, the fear of losing funding and political power if illegal immigrants being harbored in “sanctuary states” declined to be included in the official census count.

The court agreed, saying evidence supported the likelihood that the question would result in fewer responses from illegals.

Even so, it said, that concern did not present a valid legal challenge to Ross’s authority, maintaining that the inclusion of a citizenship question was entirely permissible in the eyes of the law.

“[W]e decline respondents’ invitation to measure the constitutionality of the citizenship question by a standard that would seem to render every census since 1790 unconstitutional,” Roberts wrote.

The question was included on every census up until 1950 when, in order to simplify the process, the Census Bureau began putting it only on a long-form census questionnaire to be completed by a smaller, representative sample of the population.

The Census Bureau then used estimates provided by other agencies to fill in the gaps, but Ross contended that those estimates were not sufficient to provide an accurate count of legal residents.

“Weighing that uncertainty against the value of obtaining more complete and accurate citizenship data, he determined that reinstating a citizenship question was worth the risk of a potentially lower response rate,” Roberts wrote. “That decision was reasonable and reasonably explained, particularly in light of the long history of the citizenship question on the census.”

Although government officials are prevented by law from using the citizenship information collected by the census to enforce immigration policies, Ross can certainly make the case that there is strong national interest in having a thorough count of the number of illegal immigrants residing in the country.

In criticizing Ross’s claims about the Voting Rights Act being his primary motivation, Roberts cited a 1977 opinion that justices were “not required to exhibit a naiveté from which ordinary citizens are free.”

While that may hold true, however, it also means the justices would likely accept the ongoing national emergency and contentious debate over immigration to be a valid reasons on their face for including the question.

Regardless, the race to come up with a more plausible and legally sound rationale for the citizenship question is likely to mean delays for the Census Bureau, which had set next Monday, July 1, as its target to begin printing.

While in Japan at the G20 summit, President Donald Trump weighed in, saying he would seek to push back the deadlines pending a court resolution.

Supreme Court Upholds Partisan Gerrymandering

Ben Sellers
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‘What the appellees and dissent seek is an unprecedented expansion of judicial power…’

Dem. Attorney Marc Elias Used Activist Court Rulings to Redraw GOP Districts 1
North Carolina’s Congressional districts/IMAGE: USA Today via Youtube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) In a pair of cases challenging largely left-wing efforts to subvert state legislatures’ ability to establish their own voting districts, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the courts had no authority to force partisan maps to be redrawn.

“No one can accuse this Court of having a crabbed view of the reach of its competence,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts, delivering the majority opinion. “But we have no commission to allocate political power and influence in the absence of a constitutional directive or legal standards to guide us in the exercise of such authority.”

The decision remanded two cases back to the lower courts with the charge to dismiss due to lack of jurisdiction: Rucho v. Common Cause, an appeal to a federal court ruling that forced North Carolina‘s GOP-led legislature to redraw its lines making the map more favorable to their opponents; and Lamone v. Benisek, in which Republicans in Maryland challenged the Democratic legislature over a lost seat.

The court’s conservative majority not only affirmed the role of duly-elected representatives to make redistricting decisions, but it also delivered a stinging rebuke to those attempting increasingly to use the courts for their own partisan, political purposes.

“What the appellees and dissent seek is an unprecedented expansion of judicial power,” Roberts wrote.

In a 2017 ruling, Cooper v. Harris, also from North Carolina, the court struck down race-based gerrymandering as a violation of the Voting Rights Act.

But despite repeated efforts to get the court to do so over the past 45 years, Roberts said it has never once ruled a a partisan gerrymander to be unconstitutional.

Doing so would establish an alarming precedent for the court, already criticized for having lost its objectivity as politically motivated forces continue to pressure it to be the final authority on divisive issues—including elections themselves.

“The expansion of judicial authority would not be into just any area of controversy, but into one of the most intensely partisan aspects of American political life,” Roberts said.

“That intervention would be unlimited in scope and duration—it would recur over and over again around the country with each new round of districting, for state as well as federal representatives,” he said.

In tackling the question of fairness, Roberts expressed skepticism that any courtroom was more fit than any legislative chamber to make those determinations.

SCOTUS Set to Rule on Landmark Cases in Census, Gerrymandering
PHOTO: Fred Schilling, Supreme Court Curator’s Office

Citing the late Justice Antonin Scalia in a previous decision that attempted to tackle a judicial standard of “fairness,” Roberts wrote, “The initial difficulty in settling on a ‘clear, manageable and politically neutral’ test for fairness is that it is not even clear what fairness looks like in this context. There is a large measure of ‘unfairness’ in any winner-take-all system.”

That is why the Constitution specifically vested the power to those who were elected and could be held politically accountable, he added.

“Even the most sophisticated districting maps cannot reliably account for some of the reasons voters prefer one candidate over another, or why their preferences may change,” noted Roberts.

“Voters elect individual candidates in individual districts, and their selections depend on the issues that matter to them, the quality of the candidates, the tone of the candidates’ campaigns, the performance of an incumbent, national events or local issues that drive voter turn-out, and other considerations.”

It was not immediately clear what the implications might be for other states, such as Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Virginia, where, prior to the 2018 elections, the lower federal courts already had mandated that legislative maps be redrawn due to alleged partisan influence.

The court previously had punted on challenges to lower court decisions from Wisconsin and Virginia, saying that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the cases. It had recently put on hold the cases pending in Ohio and Michigan.

Thursday’s landmark decision determined that the states themselves must decide what standards to follow, which also left open the possibility of judicial activism at the state level rather than the federal level.

Joined by the court’s other liberal members, Justice Elena Kagan said in her dissenting opinion that by choosing not to impose its own activist demands on state legislatures, the court was effectively breaking precedent.

“For the first time ever, this Court refuses to remedy a constitutional violation because it thinks the task beyond judicial capabilities,” she began, accusing the recent gerrymandering efforts of having “debased and dishonored our democracy.”

Gerrymandering practices, originally named after a Democratic governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry, have been in existence since at least 1812.

The challenges to the practice picked up momentum after a coalition of leftist politicians and investors established the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, led by former Attorney General Eric Holder, which has been at the forefront of many of the “Sue till Blue” legal challenges targeting red states.

Additional reporting drawn from the Los Angeles Times contributed to this piece.

SCOTUS Set to Rule on Landmark Cases in Census, Gerrymandering

Ben Sellers
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Contrary to expectations, conservative justices have kept people guessing on recent decisions by siding with liberal minority…

SCOTUS Set to Rule on Landmark Cases in Census, Gerrymandering
PHOTO: Fred Schilling, Supreme Court Curator’s Office

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) As the final day of the Supreme Court’s current session arrived, it had yet to announce the decisions in several landmark cases that will likely impact the political landscape in next year’s presidential election and beyond.

Those cases will determine whether state legislatures are permitted to factor in partisan advantages when drawing the lines of voting districts and whether the national census, which the Commerce Department will soon undertake, may include a question about citizenship.

Although some had anticipated that the court’s addition of Justice Brett Kavanaugh might help entrench its conservative bloc, either by design or happenstance justices have kept court-watchers guessing.

While it was expected that Chief Justice John Roberts might fill the former niche of the retired Anthony Kennedy as a moderate swing vote, instead the recent decisions have seen some of the bench’s most conservative members—including justices Clarence Thomas and the libertarian-leaning Neil Gorsuch, siding with the liberals in several cases.

In keeping with past sessions that pushed major cases on matters like Obamacare and gay marriage to the very end, Thursday’s cases are, with little dispute, the most impactful and politically divisive of the current session.

The first issue will be decided in a pair of cases: Lamone v. Benisek, in which Republicans in Maryland challenged the Democratic legislature over a lost seat; and Rucho v. Common Cause, an appeal to a federal court ruling that forced North Carolina‘s GOP-led legislature to redraw its lines making the map more favorable to their opponents.

The National Democratic Redistricting Committee, led by former Attorney General Eric Holder, has been at the forefront of many of the legal challenges targeting red states, which enabled Democrats to pick up seats last year in places like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

But many were left struggling to read the omens after the court last week dismissed a challenge brought by Virginia’s Republican legislature.

The majority opinion in Virginia House of Delegates v. Bethune–Hill said that the legislators lacked standing and that only the state’s left-wing attorney general, Mark Herring, had the authority to pose a legal challenge to the lower court’s decision.

While it could possibly signal reason for the Republican plaintiffs to worry in the other two cases, it is equally likely that the court simply sought to clear the docket knowing that the Lamone and Rucho cases would provide a stronger basis for the same outcome.

The court’s decision in Department of Commerce v. New York, whether to allow Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to include a citizenship question on next year’s census will also have implications on the balance of political power.

Democrats, who have pushed for open borders an allowing illegal immigrants to reside in sanctuary states, stand to gain funds and, possibly, congressional seats by importing new residents, regardless of whether they have the ability to legally vote in the state.

On the other hand, they have raised objections to the addition of the censorship question out of the fear that it will cause illegals not to participate in the census, thus costing seats.

Ross has said the purpose of its inclusion was to help ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in its efforts to ensure that all legally voting citizens have equal access.

Challengers have lately sought to urge the justices to send the case back to the lower courts, claiming they have discovered new evidence of Ross’s partisan intentions.

However, the effort seems a likely stall tactic as the Supreme Court initially had agreed to fast-track its hearing because the printing of the census needs to begin soon.

The decisions, regardless of how they break, are likely to draw a firestorm of criticism from opponents.

One more case remaining on the docket, Mitchell v. Wisconsin, may offer the justices a brief respite, as they decide whether blood drawn from an unconscious motorist is a violation of the Fourth Amendment’s search and seizure protections.

The court will begin its session at 10 a.m., according to the SCOTUSblog website. Stay tuned to Liberty Headlines for the latest developments as they come.

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