Transcription
This is Democracy Watch. Mark, we have a surprise update from the DOJ where Donald Trump's Department of Justice is now yet again being weaponized against one of the states. Can you explain what just happened?
Yeah, so the Department of Justice under Donald Trump just filed a motion to intervene in the Republican lawsuit challenging the new congressional map in California. And moments ago, they filed a motion for a a preliminary injunction, which means they want very fast relief. They're going to try to rush this into court, try to get this uh this new map blocked. But I got news for them. Uh my law firm and I were already in this case on behalf of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that is going to fight for this map, standing side by side with the state of California. So, but we're in for a fight because uh this is, you know, it's interesting. Harbec Dylan's law firm is representing the Republicans and of course Harlem Dylan is repres is is the head of the voting section for the Department of Justice.
Can you explain to me why they're bringing this case recognizing that usually you start off with your best shot, right? And and they had they had done that in court. They that lawsuit failed. They tried a few more avenues. All of those lawsuits failed. And so we're on I think try number three or four if I'm not mistaken. If the first ones when they presumably had a stronger case, if those weren't successful, why would they think that this one would actually work?
Yeah, Brian. So, number one, this is case number five.
So, they have lost four prior cases. They first went to the state supreme court in California. That got dismissed without the state of California even having to respond, which is pretty embarrassing. If you bring a lawsuit and the judges find it so unpersuasive, they don't have to respond. They then filed another lawsuit in the state supreme court in California. same result. So then, you know, it's interesting. They switched to the state of Texas and actually Ronnie Jackson, the MAGA uh Republican congressman from Texas filed a creative lawsuit in the courtroom of Matthew Casmmer, judge uh very conservative uh ultra-conservative judge appointed by Donald Trump. That got dismissed. So then Daryl Isa, congressman from California, uh who's one of the members who's had their seat redrawn, he and Ronnie Jackson went back to Judge Kasmar's courtroom and that also was dismissed again without the state of California even having to respond. So four, they're 0 for four. Uh in three of the four, the judges threw them out before they anyone responded. So this lawsuit then got filed after the ballot initiative passed uh in California federal court. And basically their claims here is, wait for it, that this is not a partisan gerrymander. No, no, no, no, no, no. If you thought that the reason why this map was redrawn was because Democrats in California were trying to, for example, level the playing field with Texas or otherwise, you know, uh, create five more Democratic seats. You totally misunderstood. No, their argument is this was actually a racial jury. This was just all an effort to to draw a map uh to increase the uh prospects that Hispanic uh candidates would win elections.
So do you think um when the state of California comes in and points to three full months on a daily basis of every single official >> evidence that this was a I mean you think maybe occasionally it came up this was a partisan jerry? I mean, I I don't know how many more times per day like any California officials could have said that this is a way to neutralize what Texas has done so that we can so that we can counteract their partisan jerrymander with a partisan jerrymander of our own right here in California. Do you think that that's going to have uh some persuasive impact on the judge?
I I think it'll have a persuasive impact. I just I I'm waiting to see their evidence that actually that was not really at all what was happening.
Right. So, so it's first of all, it's it's worth noting here that that your law firm is again representing one of the parties. A small step that we all can take uh who are watching right now to support the invaluable work that Mark and his team are doing, not just in the media, but also in the courtroom, is to sign up for Democracy Docket, which is the news outlet Mark founded to focus on everything voting in elections. These are the exact kind of people Mark and his team that we need to be elevating in this space. So, I'm going to put that link right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video. Mark, do you find it a little bit odd that this is the same DOJ that was involved in Texas's effort to redraw their maps? And not only was that acceptable by the DOJ standards, but their involvement was critical in making sure it got done. And yet here in an analogous situation or relatively analogous situation, the DOJ finds it so offensive that they're actually engaging in a lawsuit to stop it.
So it's I I had a feel you were going to ask this question. So, just before we went on, I just like triple checked this myself and actually asked some some other folks at my law firm. Um, the Department of Justice apparently did not have a problem with the Texas redraw. Uh, they have had no uh problem with the Missouri uh redraw. Uh, they have not done anything to try to interfere or slow down or overturn the North Carolina redraw. In fact, the only state where where uh they are arguing that the constitution has been broken is in California, which again I want to reiterate, their argument is that you all in California were not trying to respond or offset Texas. No, you are actually trying to racially gerrymander your state. That's why all of this money was spent. That's why all of these efforts went into it. It is a preposterous claim, but it goes to show their thinking, right, which is that they cannot abide that Democrats would fight back. They can't they can't allow it to be true that Gavin Newsome and Democrats in in California fought hard and beat them like a drum. And I'm sure we're going to see the same thing in Virginia when Virginia Democrats do the same thing. And even though everyone in Virginia is saying we are doing this because of what Republicans are doing, they will say no, no, no, that wasn't it at all. It's just like it's, you know, the I think back to and I can't remember was it Kelly and Kellyanne Conway who uh one day coined the term alternative facts.
Yes.
It's like they still live in an alternative facts world. Well, the irony of that is that even if there was some legitimacy to their claim that this was not done as a partisan jerrymander, despite the fact that every single day every single person who spoke about it made it abundantly clear that this is a partisan jerrymander to counteract Texas's party partisan jerrymander. But that notwithstanding, even if there was some merit to this claim that it was a racial gerrymander, the reality is that the maps were drawn to be VRA compliant, to be voting rights act compliant. And so how can they bring a suit forward um and put resources behind a lawsuit that even if it was taken on its face uh that their justification to do this? The facts behind it don't even don't even serve uh serve what they're trying to claim because remember their theory is that the Voting Rights Act itself is illegitimate, right? I mean, like the whole whole philosophy of the Trump administration and this Department of Justice is that the use of race in any way uh you know to offset historical wrongs or to comply with federal law or to comply with the US Constitution. So that's the interesting thing, Brian, right? Because in Texas, remember, the reason why they they wind up being so unhelpful to the to the state of Texas is because they send this letter saying, "You all racially gerrymandered. You all impermissibly used race when you drew the map in 2021." And this was on the heels literally days after the Republican state senator who had drawn the map had testified under oath at a trial that they had not used race at all. right? That like the Republicans in the state of Texas were like, "We didn't use race at all." And they were still being accused by this justice department of using race. Now, it was a pretext there to allow them to then tried to redraw the map. And then, of course, the state of Texas did use race. Basically, they deconstructed uh uh coalition districts, districts that had blacks, whites, and Hispanics in them to on on racial grounds, which is why they then got sued by my law firm and others. But, you know, this is just the same playbook that this administration uses across the board.
Mark, if we had seen so many instances before this, in those four other cases where, you know, in some of those cases, judges just threw out threw out these these lawsuits before um before the state of California even needed to respond. Is there any possibility here that a judge will look at this where they claim that the whole basis for this lawsuit is something that that go that is, you know, in direct uh in direct contradiction to what Governor Nuome and California Democrats have been saying every day for months. Is there any likelihood that judge can just see that and throw it away in the same way that these other cases have been thrown away?
Look, I think we live in a world in which when the Department of Justice makes factual claims, you know, federal courts are going to give them their say. And you and I have talked about this a lot in a lot of context, how dangerous that is. Now, in this instance, you know, presumably the judge and judges potentially more than one who hear this case, they like live in the state of California, so they know what the arguments were. I mean what's really interesting about this is you could imagine in a parallel universe in a different world in which Gavin Newsome had made the decision look I'm going to try to pass a new map through the ballot initiative process that's going to override a nonpartisan commission and therefore to spare the sensibilities of California who after all tend to be pretty liberal and progressive we are not going to ever say that this was for partisan if we're going to act like we're doing this because we think the Voting Rights Act requires it. Like you actually could imagine that parallel universe, but you and I have talked about this before. What has made this effort so extraordinary and its success so unbelievably powerful uh politically is that actually Gavin Newsome and the Democratic uh uh coalition behind this from top to bottom was very very clear that this was an effort of exercising political power to offset what Texas had done in their own partisan gerrymandering. In other words, like I have been I still marvel at how effective a job was done to convince a state of really people who love nonpartisanship and love the voting rights act and love, you know, the rule of law to really just say, "Look, we need to fight fire with fire and for it to succeed." So it's it's just so you know the judges would have to not just buy the evidence they have to sort of suspend the world in which you tell me you've been watching the TV commercials and everything like the world in which it has actually existed on the ground.
Right. Right. Let let's let's humor these Republicans for just a moment and let's say that the unlikely event that they're successful actually comes to pass. Would that then create some precedent where Democrats could say, "Okay, using the exact precedent that we have in California, let's go attack uh what just happened in Texas?" Like, aren't these inextricably linked?
They are. But look, they're playing a couple of games here. One is they're just playing a timing game, right? They they are figuring that if they can do something in California quickly enough that maybe they stop California, but it won't be fast enough to stop other states there. the whole PCEL doctrine that you and I have talked about before, right? They're sort of trying to arbitrage that a little bit by trying to get California heard first and then maybe claim the others are too late. That was number one. Number two, I just think, you know, as a pra as a litigation strategy, they're just like, look, we take them as they come. Like, we make one set of arguments before judges in California and we make a different set of arguments before judges elsewhere. And maybe that catches up to us, but maybe it doesn't. You know, maybe it doesn't set precedent across circuits. Maybe it doesn't ever go to the US Supreme Court. That has to sort of resolve it all. Right. Maybe we do get to live with there being some inconsistency in the law. So I I suspect that that's their um their their gamut here.
And last question here to that point of PCEL and how quickly this can all move. When should we expect some type of response or resolution given the fact that we are very quick heading, you know, we're less than a year until until midterms.
Yeah. So look, the court has not yet set a schedule for when this preliminary injunction hearing will be firmly, right? There are some tentative dates that have been put in place, but I've been litigating long enough to tell you that the best laid plans of quick hearings oftentimes get delayed due to a lot of other moving parts. So, and one of those big moving parts, by the way, is the fact that the Department of Justice just got in the case today. That's like a pretty big change of circumstances. So, um I think that the the my suspicion is that we will wind up having a preliminary injunction hearing in this case sometime in December. Uh and then we will take it from there. And I am sure you and I will be back to cover that as soon as we have more information.
And just a reminder for everybody who's watching again to support Mark's work in the courtroom in this case that we're talking about right now, which is not which is to say nothing of, you know, the dozens and dozens and dozens of other cases that uh Mark and his firm are are litigating. a small step we can all take to support his work and keep on top of exactly what's happening in the courts. Please sign up for Democracy Docket. I'm going to put that link right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video. If you want to stay up on Democracy Watch videos, I'm going to put the link to this channel on the screen as well. I'm Brian Taylor Cohen.
I'm Mark Elias.
This is Democracy Watch.