NAACP Sues Trump, GOP Over Alleged Disenfranchisement of Black Voters

Black voters likened President Donald Trump and his campaign to white supremacy groups in a new lawsuit.

Joining a lawsuit originally brought by Detroit-based Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, the NAACP accused both Trump and the Republican Party of violating the Ku Klux Klan Act in their efforts to overturn the results of the election.

While the original complaint only went so far as to call out violations of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the amended lawsuit filed on Monday night included the Jim Crow era-law and added the Republican National Committee (RNC) as a defendant in the case.

"Defendants' efforts to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters—targeting cities with large Black populations, including Detroit, Michigan, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Atlanta, Georgia—repeat the worst abuses in our nation's history, where Black Americans were denied a voice in American democracy for most of the first two centuries of the Republic," the new lawsuit reads.

"These systematic efforts—violations of the [Voting Rights Act] and the Ku Klux Klan Act—have largely been directed at major metropolitan areas with large Black voter populations. These include Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and others. Defendants have not directed these efforts at predominantly white areas," the complaint states.

https://www.newsweek.com/naacp-sues-trump-gop-over-alleged-disenfranchisement-black-voters-1556713

Biden picks top North Carolina environmental official to run EPA

President-elect Joe Biden will choose to nominate Michael S. Regan, who heads the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, as the next Environmental Protection Agency administrator, according to two individuals who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it has not yet been formally announced.

Regan, 44, would be the first Black man to run the EPA.

He would play a central role in realizing Biden’s promises to combat climate change, embrace green energy and address environmental racism. As administrator of the EPA, he would be responsible for crafting fuel-efficiency standards for the nation’s cars and trucks, overseeing emissions from power plants and oil and gas facilities, and cleaning up the country’s most polluted sites ...

Regan has served as North Carolina’s top environmental official since early 2017, when Gov. Roy Cooper (D) named him to his role. During that time, he forged a tough multibillion-dollar settlement over a coal ash cleanup with Duke Energy, established an environmental justice advisory board, and reached across the political divide to work with the state’s Republican legislature.

“Right away he prioritized climate change, environmental justice and coal ash cleanup,” said Cassie Gavin, the Sierra Club’s director of government affairs for North Carolina.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/12/17/biden-epa-regan/

Ari Berman Tweet:

There were 2 faithless Trump electors in 2016, so Trump formally got 304 electoral votes. There were no faithless electors in 2020 so Biden got 306 electoral votes. Another way he beat Trump

Nearly 50 years later, things have changed dramatically. Largely because of the Voting Rights Act, “[v]oter turnout and registration rates” in covered jurisdictions “now approach parity. Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels.” The tests and devices that blocked ballot access have
been forbidden nationwide for over 40 years. Yet the Act has not eased §5’s restrictions or narrowed the scope of §4’s coverage formula along the way. Instead those extraordinary and unprecedented features have been reauthorized as if nothing has changed, and they have grown even stronger.

Chief Justice John Roberts, Shelby v. Holder, 2013

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-96_6k47.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwi7zKvexM7tAhUBP6wKHag1AnkQFjAAegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw1-7OfT6EiAHCb7Mebj2j-D