Court decision could set up fights over race gerrymandering
WASHINGTON — When North Carolina drew its most recent political maps, state leaders split a historically black university in Greensboro into two congressional districts that critics say diluted the voting power of African Americans on campus.
Lawmakers defended it as partisan gerrymandering — a tactic that the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block Thursday. But opponents cite it as a classic example where political gerrymandering can have racial consequences.
“It’s partisan, but it’s also based on race as well,” said Kylah Guion, a junior at North Carolina A&T University in Greensboro, North Carolina. Her university is one of the largest areas of black young voters in North Carolina.
Experts and advocates say the court’s decision to stay out of partisan gerrymandering decisions with its ruling on Thursday may make it more difficult to suss out and remedy illegal political line drawing meant to diminish the voting power of minorities.
Dividing voters by race is still illegal in the United States and can be banned by the federal courts. But the high court decided it could not rule on cases where lawmakers divvy up voters by party to give themselves advantages during elections.
Liberal, authoritarian values clash at G20 summit
OSAKA, Japan — World leaders attending a Group of 20 summit in Japan are clashing over the values that have served for decades as the foundation of their cooperation.
European Union President Donald Tusk on Friday blasted Russian President Vladimir Putin for suggesting in an interview with the newspaper Financial Times that liberalism was “obsolete.”
In a statement to reporters, Tusk said, “We are here as Europeans also to firmly and unequivocally defend and promote liberal democracy.”
He said, “What I find really obsolete are: authoritarianism, personality cults, the rule of oligarchs. Even if sometimes they may seem effective.”
As U.S. President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Putin and other leaders met on the sidelines of the summit, Tusk told reporters that such comments suggest a belief that “freedoms are obsolete, that the rule of law is obsolete and that human rights are obsolete.”
Democratic debate: Race, age, health care and Trump
MIAMI — Democratic divisions over race, age and ideology surged into public view in Thursday night’s presidential debate, a prime-time clash punctuated by a heated exchange between former Vice President Joe Biden and California Sen. Kamala Harris.
It was one of several moments that left the 76-year-old Biden, who entered the night as his party’s fragile front-runner, on the defensive as he worked to convince voters across America that he’s still in touch with the Democratic Party of 2020 — and best-positioned to deny President Donald Trump a second term.
“I do not believe you are a racist,” Harris said to Biden, though she described his record of working with Democratic segregationist senators on non-race issues as “hurtful.”
Biden called Harris’ criticism “a complete mischaracterization of my record.” He declared, “I ran because of civil rights” and later accused the Trump administration of embracing racism.
The debate marked an abrupt turning point in a Democratic primary in which candidates have largely tiptoed around each other, focusing instead on their shared desire to beat Trump. But the debate revealed just how deep the fissures are within the Democratic Party eight months before primary voting begins.
Cold, cramped, filthy: Migrants describe border centers
EL PASO, Texas — At night, the teenage girl from Honduras wraps a thin foil blanket around herself and her infant son as they lie on a floor mat in the cold. The lights are glaring and sleepless children are crying. It’s so crowded inside the caged area that there isn’t space for her baby boy to crawl.
This is the 17-year-old’s account, one of dozens filed in federal court this week by advocates for children locked away in the immigration system.
Every five days, she is given a shower and can brush her teeth. Her baby boy already had a fever and cough but she didn’t dare ask to see a doctor, for fear it would prolong their detention at the Ursula facility in McAllen, Texas. She said she has been there nearly three weeks.
“He feels frozen to the touch,” the girl said. “We are all so sad to be held in a place like this.”
From wire sources
Her declaration was filed with a court in Los Angeles that oversees a long-standing settlement agreement over custody conditions for migrant children caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Teens and children, detained days or weeks by U.S. border authorities, described frigid cells where flu-stricken youngsters in dirty clothes ran fevers, vomited and cried with no idea when they would be getting out.
House sends Trump $4.6B border bill, yielding to Senate
WASHINGTON — The Democratic-controlled House voted Thursday to send President Donald Trump a bipartisan, Senate-drafted, $4.6 billion measure to care for migrant refugees detained at the southern border, capping a Washington skirmish in which die-hard liberals came out on the losing end in a battle with the White House, the GOP-held Senate and Democratic moderates.
The emergency legislation, required to ease overcrowded, often harsh conditions at U.S. holding facilities for migrants seeking asylum, mostly from Central American nations like Honduras and El Salvador, passed by a bipartisan 305-102 vote. Trump has indicated he’ll sign it into law.
“A great job done by all!” Trump tweeted from his overseas trip.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., reluctantly brought the Senate bill to a vote by after her plan to further strengthen rules for treatment of migrant refugees ran into intractable opposition from Republican lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence. Many moderate Democrats split with Pelosi as well, undercutting her earlier efforts, which faded shortly after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he would swiftly reject them.
The legislation contains more than $1 billion to shelter and feed migrants detained by the border patrol and almost $3 billion to care for unaccompanied migrant children who are turned over the Department of Health and Human Services. It rejects an administration request for additional Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention beds, however, and contains provisions designed to prevent federal immigration agents from going after immigrants living in the country illegally who seek to care for unaccompanied children.
___