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Yurij Rudensky
@yurijrudensky
attorney | sometimes adjunct | formerly | personal and curated views | cascadian
Mastodon: @[email protected]
NY NYJoined January 2010
Yurij Rudensky’s Tweets
Wow - Republicans improved on their 2020 margins in every 👏 county 👏 in 👏 New 👏 York 👏 State 👏 timesunion.com/state/article/
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So questions about the health of democracy in WI are well founded but it's important to understand how prominently SCOTUS features in the degradation.
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SCOTUS issued one of the most disgraceful redistricting decisions (and trust, there's no shortage of those) to toss Gov. Evers's maps.
They used the shadow docket to change substantive law to give WI Rs a boost.
A thread on what happened w/ details: twitter.com/yurijrudensky/
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Earlier today, the U.S. Supreme Court upended legislative district maps that the Wisconsin Supreme Court selected. This SCOTUS ruling is legally unsound and makes a mockery of process.
I wanted to string a quick thread together explaining what happened. 1/
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A conservative justice broke ranks and joined more progressive colleagues and ordered that Gov. Evers's maps be used. They best complied with stated goals so fair was fair.
Rs appealed this decision to SCOTUS arguing, among other things, that the maps were unconstitutional.
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Gov. Evers did best of all. His maps changed districts the least. But they also managed to be the fairest while working within the absurd constraints.
In fact, his maps increased Black representation in the Milwaukee area, accounting for pop. change and election dynamics.
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That's b/c WI had an aggressive gerrymander that SCOTUS kept in place when it refused to allow federal courts to hear partisan gerrymandering cases.
Despite the absurd minimal change criteria, various parties submitted proposed district lines for consideration.
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A grim WI redistricting story:
The WI Supreme Court took over redistricting because the legislature couldn't override Gov. Evers's veto.
The WI Supremes have a partisan pro-Republican majority and adopted "least change" as the top goal for drawing maps.
Big red flag.
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So the Democrats won statewide with 51% of the vote and earned 30% of the state house. Can someone explain to me how Wisconsin is a democracy?
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Redistricting abuses repeatedly failed POC this election. But some of the most egregious, & intimately felt, are local, in America’s fastest-changing suburbs.
For ex—the 1st Black commissioner in Gwinnett County, GA, who lost her seat after being targeted by gerrymanders. A🧵
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One additional thought: know-nothing punditry cuts across ideological divides.
Speaking to people on the ground was far more useful.
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Just look at this:
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The disconnect between the agenda of conservatives on SCOTUS and that of voters was on full display.
Will the justices listen? Hope so.
The election results have to be looked at in light of a cataclysmic shift in public opinion of the justices and the Court.
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The SCOTUS decision in Merrill v. Milligan, which set aside a lower court order that required AL to draw an additional Black opportunity congressional district for 2022, and the subsequent ripple effects in GA and LA may well determine control of the House.
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This American Life takes on the long and frustrating battle for fair representation in Ohio.
Just a reminder: the case on behalf of our clients is still ongoing and we will continue the fight as long as it takes.
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Ohio Republicans drew electoral maps that violated their own constitutional amendment, and those are the ones they’re using in this year’s elections. bit.ly/3Upe9Xe
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Ohio Republicans drew electoral maps that violated their own constitutional amendment, and those are the ones they’re using in this year’s elections.
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Amazing how there isn't any real hand wringing about the actual public safety crisis on the streets of NYC.
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Traffic deaths remain above pre-pandemic levels.
Crashes killed 188 people in NYC during the first nine months of 2022. One in four of those deaths occurred in the Bronx.
Urgent action is needed to get Vision Zero back on track.
Read our new analysis: transalt.org/press-releases
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Highly recommend this piece about identity and the necessity of forging of a new patriotism to reckon with both the historical and the present.
Medvedev's context is Russia, but easily applicable elsewhere. His concluding thoughts below.
posle.media/language/en/if
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As cars grow expensive and enormous, the disruption of the automobile is becoming a real possibility.
How might challengers appear? In the innocuous form of e-cargo bikes and “souped-up golf carts.”
A 🧵 about my new article in
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The amicus briefs in the SCOTUS fight vs. the independent state legislature theory—Moore v. Harper—are now all IN. Together, they make a strong cross-partisan case against the ISLT that highlights big problems with Petitioners' presentation. Let's go! 🧵👇
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Replying to
Bronx teacher of hospitalized homeless students is crowdfunding for warm clothing for her pupils. A retweet would be amazing
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NEWS: Seattle Judge Douglass North has just ordered Meta to pay $24,660,000 to the State of Washington for 822 violations of the state's unusually strong law mandating transparency in online political ads.
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This should be a leading political issue but we've grown callous and desensitized to this devastating reality.
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More than 104,000 public school students in New York City were homeless during the last school year, new data shows.
The number of students in temporary housing rose by about 3%, a daunting figure that does not include recently arrived migrant children.
nyti.ms/3f8JVIQ
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Mike Davis changed how I view the built social/physical environment perhaps more than any other thinker. Grateful for the legacy he leaves.
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Only 5% or plastics in the US is recycled, and the peak was never higher than 10% (in 2014)
cbsnews.com/amp/news/plast
Stamping plastics with those little recycling arrows was a deliberate marketing scam, as detailed by reporting here npr.org/2020/09/11/912
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Trying to check out some high waisted pants in person.
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COOL JOB ALERT: Come join the Judiciary Program at ! We're hiring a counsel/senior counsel to drive forward a major court reform campaign. Help us build a system where courts can be relied on to protect fundamental rights & democratic values.
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This makes me sick. I live 2 blocks from here and ride daily. It’s illegal for this semitruck to be on Parkside.
This death is a tragedy. It was entirely avoidable. City leaders and the NYPD lack the will and vision needed to keep streets safe.
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A bicyclist was hit and killed by a semi truck driver on Parkside avenue earlier this morning. Her right handlebar was snapped off as it appears she was crushed against another truck
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What exactly is the “independent state legislature theory” and how will it affect your right to vote? Our new explainer video has the answers. Watch now:
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If Russia is ever free, it will need a national reckoning similar to the German one. Memorial will be a crucial organization to carry out this nation-wide discussion and rethinking of the very foundations of Russianness. I applaud this decision of the Nobel Committee.
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The 2022 #NobelPeacePrize laureate and human rights organisation Memorial, @MemorialMoscow, was established in 1987 by human rights activists in the former Soviet Union who wanted to ensure that the victims of the communist regime’s oppression would never be forgotten.
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On Friday, Gov. Ivey said Alabama prisons were "under control."
Less than 24 hours later, prisoners w/contraband phones filmed a man apparently getting stabbed to death.
It's almost hard to imagine less "under control" than ADOC rn.
My latest:
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Fifth Circuit has reportedly released its decision in the #DACA case. The court hasn’t yet posted it to its website. Hopefully it will soon.
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I spoke to from about the Voting Rights Act and what is on the line as SCOTUS considers Merrill v. Milligan. The piece dives into the history and purpose of the VRA and why it's as important now as it was when first passed.
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Some miscellany:
Plaintiffs’ counsel kicked ass. Very compelling presentation and absolutely airtight.
Justice Jackson is a FORCE. We are so lucky to have her on the highest bench. I was nodding so hard I thought my head would fall off in the court room.
Now we wait . . .
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One thing that didn’t come up: it’s more difficult to program these algorithmic plans to consider how many opportunity districts there are rather than majority-minority districts.
There are other significant limitations to these analyses that’s not worth getting into here.
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Plaintiffs’ counsel explained that this analysis is more relevant for an intent inquiry rather than in the disparate impact context. They also tried to convey how much subjectivity can go into such mapping.
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5. The Chief Justice did not tip his hand much during oral argument. He asked about the role of computer generated maps and when it would be appropriate for courts to consider these ensembles of 1000s or millions of districts to understand expected distribution.
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Overall, my impression from these questions was that Justice Kavanaugh seemed interested in clarifying existing standards not creating new ones. This stood in contrast to Justice Alito who was caught up on race neutrality and Justice Barrett who wanted a benchmark for measuring.
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Plaintiffs’ counsel and the US did a much better job here. Pointing to criteria that suggest there’s an internal logic to the demo districts.
This includes things like compactness, communities of interest, and political subdivision splits.
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This is quite literally the problem that Section 2 is designed to solve and has been calibrated over the last 40 years to deal with.
Congress passed Section 2 of the VRA because second generation discrimination would be veiled, however thinly, in race neutral justifications.
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