Gorsuch, Thomas dissent as Supreme Court declines to take up Apache challenge to copper mine
A 2014 law enabled a land transfer between mining company Resolution Copper and the federal government, allowing the miner to take control of a site called Oak Flat in Arizona, which is sacred to the Western Apache.
A group called Apache Stronghold, which says it represents Apaches, other Native peoples, and non-Native allies, appealed the case to the Supreme Court, asking it to reverse a Ninth Circuit decision on religious freedom grounds.
The high court declined to take up the case on Tuesday without explaining its decision. However, Gorsuch issued a dissent, joined by Thomas.
'For centuries, Western Apaches have worshipped at Chí'chil Biłdagoteel, or Oak Flat. They consider the site a sacred and 'direct corridor to the Creator,'' Gorsuch wrote. ' Now, the government and a mining conglomerate want to turn Oak Flat into a massive hole in the ground.'
'Before allowing the government to destroy the Apaches' sacred site, this Court should at least have troubled itself to hear their case,' he added.
Apache Stronghold said in its petition that Oak Flat 'is the site of religious ceremonies that cannot take place elsewhere' including ceremonies for boys entering manhood and girls entering womanhood.
For the court to take up a case, it needs at least four votes in favor of doing so. It's not clear whether any other justices voted with Gorsuch and Thomas, though Samuel Alito recused himself.
In its own filing, Resolution Copper argued that the court should not have take up the case because the land exchange was authorized by Congress and because Apache Stronghold is a nonprofit 'with no religious claim of its own and thus no standing' to bring the case.
Resolution Copper is a joint venture between mining companies Rio Tinto and BHP.
Zach Schonfeld contributed.
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Wall Street Journal
11 minutes ago
- Wall Street Journal
The Gerrymandering Wars Heat Up - All Things with Kim Strassel
A battle of restricting in Texas has created a national firestorm, with Lone Star State Democrats fleeing to other states, and governors from California to New York getting in on the fight. But what is gerrymandering, how did it start, and what does it mean for Donald Trump's second term? On this episode of All Things, Kim Strassel speaks with legal scholar and former member of the Federal Election Commission Hans von Spakovsky about how race, politics, and Supreme Court rulings all collide in gerrymandering cases, and why so-called 'independent' commissions are nothing like they say they are. Full Transcript This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated. Narrator: From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is All Things with Kim Strassel. Kim Strassel: The Redistricting Wars rage on as growing numbers of states from Florida to California consider further gerrymandering in the wake of Republican moves to redo Texas's congressional maps. Welcome to All Things with Kim Strassel, and this week, we're going to talk to a guy who knows a lot about redistricting, not just politics, but importantly, its legal and constitutional foundations and its longtime role in our republic. Welcome Hans von Spakovsky, former member of the Federal Election Commission, and senior legal Fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Hans, thank you for joining us. How are you? Hans von Spakovsky: I'm doing just fine, thanks, and I appreciate you having me on the show. Kim Strassel: Yeah, I'm excited about this, because I can tell viewers and listeners, you're going to say some things that might surprise them. Okay. On the topic du jour, or rather, the topic day, August, all redistricting all the time, as most everyone knows by now, this all kicked off when Republicans moved to redistrict Texas midway through the census cycle, and even though Texas already had its congressional map, with the goal of adding about five more Republican seats, Democrats melted down. Governors like California's Gavin Newsom and New York's Kathy Hochul vowed to respond by drawing their own maps. This has now provoked Republicans to double down themselves. They're now looking at Florida, Missouri, Indiana, and the trench warfare is going on. I want to actually spend most of this podcast talking about some important bigger issues about gerrymandering and redistricting, but just quickly, Hans, from an immediate political perspective, where do you see all this headed? Hans von Spakovsky: Well, folks need to understand that there's no law or constitutional provision prevents Texas from midterm redistricting. Any state can do that if they want to. They just haven't in the past, because it's a lot of work to go through the redistricting process. What I haven't seen mentioned, Kim, much is that the incentive for this was actually a warning letter from the Department of Justice. The warning letter was over the fact that at the end of last year, the Fifth Circuit US Court of Appeals, right, that's the appeals court that has authority over both Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, said, "Oh, you know what? We made a mistake 40 years ago when we said that the Voting Rights Act protects covers and requires what are called coalition districts." Coalition districts are districts that are not what are called majority/minority districts, a district where perhaps black voters are a majority. Coalition districts are where they can't find enough racial minorities to fill up a district, so they combine two different groups, like a group of black voters and a group of Hispanic voters, so they become a majority. Well, Texas in 2021 thought they had to comply with that, so they drew up four of those coalition districts. Well, what the Fifth Circuit said is, "That's a political alliance. That is not protected under the Voting Rights Act, and therefore, Texas, when you drew up those districts, you were engaging in unconstitutional racial gerrymandering." What they meant was that what was the primary factor they used to draw up the boundary lines? Kim Strassel: Race. Hans von Spakovsky: It was race, and you can't do that. Texas is now trying to fix that, and in fixing that, well, yeah, it's going to create what GOP-favored districts, because what were those other districts supposed to do? Elect Democrats. Kim Strassel: Yeah, and we're going to talk some about how the Congress and courts have really made this issue more complicated in ways that you just mentioned, but you make a really good point about what Texas is doing here, in that it is essentially attempting to help the Republican Party because it's currently in the hands of Republican legislators. Gerrymandering or the process of cutting up voters in the districts in a way that favor one political party or the other has become a bit of a dirty word in our politics. Not everybody knows exactly what it is or exactly how it works, but there's this general view these days that it's bad because it equals base partisan politics. I've read a lot of your writing, Hans, on this, and you make the point that gerrymandering, that the founders knew that politics would play a part in the process of drawing boundaries, and it gave that power to state legislators nonetheless. Moreover, you note that telling those legislators that they can't consider politics would, and I quote you here, "Destroy a fundamental element of our democratic system." I think that would surprise a lot of people, that view, so explain it. Hans von Spakovsky: Yeah, the whole reason we have the word gerrymander is because the first time it happened was in 1812. We've had this for our entire history, and the word comes from Elbridge Gerry, who was the governor of Massachusetts, and he drew up a district that looked like a salamander. They combine that to come up with gerrymander. What the Supreme Court has also said about this is, "Look, redistricting is a political question, a political issue, and it's part of the hurly burly of politics." It's the political parties battling each other in the political arena and in the world of ideas. There's nothing unconstitutional about it. In fact, Kim, as you probably know, the Democratic Party actually went all the way to Supreme Court just a couple of years ago, trying to claim that political gerrymandering was unconstitutional, even though they've been doing it for a very long time. The Supreme Court said, "It's not unconstitutional, and we are not going to make decisions about that because it's a political question." What I would say to people, if you don't like what's happening in a particular state, well, if the legislature is the one doing it, then work to unelect and get those people out of office. That's the solution to it, or the other potential answer is push the legislature to put in very strict rules, very strict standards on compactness, contiguousness, not breaking up county governments and cities as much as possible. That's how you do it. Kim Strassel: Well, I think you make a really good point, that it's not impossible to both understand that there will always be an element of politics involved in this, but to also expect those engaged in the politics to have common sense in the way they draw these districts, as you say, to have tight compact districts, ones that maybe follow set boundaries, like mountain ranges or rivers, rather than these kind of inkblot maps that we get these days. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, more with Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation. Welcome back. I'm here with Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation, talking about redistricting. You actually make the point too that there's actually some good arguments why you don't want to try to keep politics out of redistricting. People forget that as much as we like to suggest there's all these nefarious people sitting in a room, coming up, micromanaging the data, this is a bit of an inexact science. You've got a very mobile society, where districts change quickly. Sometimes voters split their tickets. You don't really know how that's going to work. Also, there's a tension between trying to shore up the security of your districts versus creating more, which maybe dilutes your power in more districts. There's a lot of reasons why this can boomerang on plenty of the people that are engaged in the districting, right? Hans von Spakovsky: That's true. Particularly because look, most states, as we were discussing, they do redistricting right after the census within a year or two. By the time the next census rolls around 10 years later, those districts, the populations have radically changed in many places because we're such a mobile society. Take Texas where the current fight is going on, right? They redistricted in 2021, but Texas has had the fastest growing population in the country. They've added over 2 million people since those districts were drawn, which means that those districts now, which are supposed to be equal in population, well, they're obviously not, because that huge increase in population has obviously distorted those districts. Kim Strassel: Does your view change on this at all, then, given what might be a move toward more mid-decade redistricting? Is there a risk that some of these points or calculations change if essentially legislatures are meeting on a constant basis to re-update their maps to most benefit them? Hans von Spakovsky: Well, yeah, that's a potential problem. What was interesting just recently when the president said he wants to do a mid-decade census is I actually checked the US code, right? That's the list of federal statutes. It turns out, I don't think a lot of people know this, in the 1970s, Congress actually passed a law amending the census statute to provide for guess what? A midterm census. Kim Strassel: Is there any special reasons for that? Hans von Spakovsky: I couldn't quite find out why they did it, but I suspect it was because of the fact that they knew that we are one of the most mobile societies of any of the Western democracies, and populations change very quickly. Why not do a census every five years instead of every 10 to try to compensate for that? Particularly also because remember, the census is a key to how much money states get from the federal government. There are many federal programs that are based on your population, and if you're waiting 10 years for the census to take into account your huge increase in population, you're not getting federal money you otherwise probably should be getting. Kim Strassel: I want to ask you about another element of this. Democrats are racing to attempt to redraw some of their lines, and their effort is going to be more complicated than most of the Republican efforts, and that's because, in part, because of this bad reputation gerrymandering has out there, we've seen this new phenomenon, especially in the last 15 or 20 years, where you've had these states adopt these independent redistricting commissions. The notion is that they will be fairer, and nicer, and better if we outsource this line drawing to a group of supposedly non-partisan figures. Numerous states have these now, although Democrats are threatening to sideline most of them as part of this redistricting thing. Your thoughts on these independent commissions and how they actually work in practice? Hans von Spakovsky: Actually, just a couple of years ago, I took a look at the congressional districts that the so-called independent redistricting commission of California established, because California is one of the states that did this. I compared it actually to, guess what? Texas, and it turned out that this supposedly independent redistricting commission had engaged in greater political gerrymandering than the Texas Republicans had. This idea that these independent commissions will somehow come up with these clean bills without politics, it just doesn't fit reality. There's two things about them. One, who gets appointed to it? State legislators and governors appoint the members. They're all going to be people who are politically active, and they have no accountability. Like I said, if it's a state legislature, if you don't like what they've done, you can try to vote them out of office. Yeah, that may be hard, but you can at least try to get them out of office and you may succeed. When people are appointed to these redistricting commissions, if you're voters and you don't like what they've done, there's nothing you can do about it. Kim Strassel: Right, and convenient, right, too, because Californians can say, "Oh, look, you don't like those maps. We didn't do it," even though of course, they did do it, because it's all their partisan actors engaged. It's a kind of hand washing exercise in my mind. I also wrote a great piece saying that you end up having two kinds of commissions, one that are stuffed with partisans, right? They're essentially doing the dirty work of the party, or ones that are actually equally split, which deadlock all the time, and then usually at which point, the legislature steps in and does a partisan gerrymander anyway. It doesn't seem like they're accomplishing much. Hans von Spakovsky: No, no. Actually, I'll tell you something else I found out from personal experience. Some years ago, when the California Independent Redistricting Commission was first getting set up, a lawyer I know in California called me because they needed to rely on experts, to gather the data and to draw up the proposed maps. This lawyer called me and said, "Well, here are the lawyers who they've hired to do this. What do you know about them?" Well, I knew every one of them, because every one of them were all these very liberal lawyers who were essentially allies of, guess what? The Democratic Party- Kim Strassel: Democratic Party. Hans von Spakovsky: These were the experts hired by this independent commission. Kim Strassel: Yeah, an additional problem, right? It's not even just the elected members of the commission, but all their staff, et cetera. When we come back, more on the redistricting fight. Narrator: From the Opinion Pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is All Things with Kim Strassel. Kim Strassel: Welcome back. Another phenomenon we've seen is Congress and federal courts getting in on this gerrymandering and redistricting act, and you set us up really well by mentioning one of the big laws out there that has really thrown monkey wrench after monkey wrench into this process. This was Congress getting involved. Give us a brief explanation of the provisions in the Voting Rights Act that affect gerrymandering and redistricting, and how that has left us with a bit of a mess. Hans von Spakovsky: I will tell you, this is a very confusing area of the law, and it's particularly confusing for state legislators, because they have two cliffs in between that they have to walk. I call it the Goldilocks rule of drawing political districts. Under the Voting Rights Act, you cannot discriminate on the basis of race. Now, look, that law was passed originally to stop what was going on in the south. Black Americans were being kept from registering, they were being kept from voting. That kind of misbehavior, that's all gone. What started happening in the late seventies and eighties is that folks started saying, "Well, that provision that prevents racial discrimination also prohibits diluting votes." We're not talking about anyone being kept from voting, but supposedly their vote is diluted if they can't elect their candidate of choice. What all of that boiled down to was that section two of the Voting Rights Act required states to create certain political districts called majority/minority districts, in which a racial group that is a minority in the state has a district or more than one district where they may be a minority of the entire state, but there are a majority of the voters in that particular district, so that they can, if they vote cohesively, they can elect their candidate of choice. Now, the problem is that the Supreme Court has also said, "Well, okay, race may be one of the factors you can use under the Voting Rights Act, but you can't have it be the prime main factor." If you use race as the main factor when you're drawing boundary lines, well, then you have violated the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, the Equal Protection Clause. One person, one vote. All of this came out of a case out of the Carolinas in the eighties, where in order to create a black majority district, the state legislature created a district that looked like a barbell. They took two large areas in entirely separate parts of the state, and connected them with an interstate highway. The Supreme Court said, "You can't do that. Race was clearly the main factor you used to draw that district. That's racial discrimination." All these legislators are, "Well, they're supposed to use a little bit of race, but they can't use too much race when they draw these lines." The problem is you can have two judges look at exactly the same set of facts, and come to exactly opposite conclusions on that, and that's what causes so many cases to spring up in the litigation area. Kim Strassel: Well, you just brought up the next question, which is courts increasingly are just the arbiters of all of this, and there have been some lines set. The Supreme Court did put out a ruling for a while, saying that the courts that were outlawing maps purely on the grounds that they were partisan couldn't do that, because basically, the court ruled that this is a political activity. You don't get to override the judgment of the political actors. More recently, the Supreme Court has been chipping away at some of this Voting Rights Act questions. Where do you think that heads in the next couple of years? We've got what at the moment, Louisiana's being heard again this fall over a case that's been going on for a while. There's been litigation in Georgia. This is just a constant merry-go-round for the court of these redistricting suits. Hans von Spakovsky: Yeah, in fact, Justice Alito actually complained about that. They're getting so many redistricting cases going up to Supreme Court, and it's because the area of the law is so confusing. That Louisiana case you just described actually shows the problem in this area. What happened in Louisiana was out of their congressional districts, they had one that was a majority black district, and they did redistricting, they maintained that district. Black voters came in and said, "Oh, well, you discriminated against us because you didn't create a second black majority district, and we deserve it. Why? Well, because we're about 35% of the population of the state." A judge agreed with them and said, "Louisiana, you have to drop a second district," so they did that. Well, they got sued again, but this time, they got sued by white voters who said, "When you drew up that second district, you did it entirely based on race. Therefore, you violated equal protection." They had two different courts saying two different things to them, and that's the case that's going to be reheard by the Supreme Court in the fall. Justice Thomas has said, "This is a real problem," and that race should not be allowed at all in redistricting, because that violates equal protection, the one-person, one-vote standard, and it's discriminatory. I think the fact that they said, "We're not going to make a decision this past June, we're going to rehear arguments in the fall," says that they're given that serious consideration. Kim Strassel: Well, wouldn't that make sense to you? We've now had a Supreme Court, and I think it was John Roberts who authored decision to say the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop making decisions on the basis of race. Justice Thomas is, you mentioned have noted, that in our increasingly pluralistic American society, it actually becomes very difficult to even decide who is a majority or a minority based on where you're standing in the country, right? There are plenty of places in America where whites are the minority, and if we continue to go down this road, wouldn't we assume there's going to be more litigation, not less? Wouldn't this be consistent with where the Supreme Court seems to have been headed in general on race? Hans von Spakovsky: Yeah. No, I think that's exactly right. Quite frankly, look, the best thing that could happen in states to try to prevent that kind of litigation is that when they get population data that they're going to use for redistricting, it's entirely without any racial data. That's the way to do this. Kim Strassel: I absolutely love that suggestion, and on that wonderful advice you just gave, we're going to take our leave. We want to thank you, Hans von Spakovsky, for coming on today. We want to thank our listeners for tuning in. If you like the show, you can hit the subscribe button, and if you'd like to write to us, you can at ATKim@
CNBC
2 hours ago
- CNBC
Fed board contenders Miran, Bullard say Trump's tariffs are not causing inflation
Two economists who are figuring in prominently for vacancies at the Federal Reserve said Tuesday they don't believe tariffs cause inflation, a view that would be in line with President Donald Trump's desire for the central bank to cut interest rates. In separate CNBC interviews, Stephen Miran and James Bullard rejected the idea espoused by many non-White House economists that the duties will lead to longer-term higher prices. Trump has tapped Miran to fill out the remaining few months of the term of former Governor Adriana Kugler, who left the position Friday. Bullard's name has surfaced in reports this week as being one of at least a half dozen contenders to fill Chair Jerome Powell's seat when his term expires next May. Bullard also is a former St. Louis Fed president. Both did not commit to how they would vote on interest rates. However, they praised Trump's pro-growth agenda and also made comments in line with the president's stand that inflation is not a problem. "There just still continues to be no evidence whatsoever of any tariff-induced inflation," said Miran, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. "Lots of folks who were expecting ... doom and gloom, it just hasn't panned out, and it continues to not pan out for them." The comments came after the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that inflation as measured by the consumer price index was at 2.7% for July, still above the Fed's 2% target but a shade below Wall Street expectations. Bullard said data continues to show that Trump's aggressive tariffs have not led to inflation. He predicted the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee would begin cutting in September and likely lop off a full percentage point from its benchmark interest rate over the next 12 months, which he said would get the rate "close to" neutral. "The committee put their rate-cut program on pause when the tariff situation arose six months ago, and now you have six months of evidence," he said. "I don't really think tariffs cause inflation. Taxes don't cause inflation. So what you're seeing in the data is very muted effects that are one-time increases in the price level." Both Miran and Bullard also stressed the importance of Fed independence, an issue that has been tested during both Trump terms as he has publicly and aggressively berated policymakers for not lowering. After the CPI data, Trump again took to Truth Social to repeat his attacks on Powell and his demand for easing. The president has said the Fed should cut by 3 percentage points. "The damage [Powell] has done by always being Too Late is incalculable," Trump wrote. "Fortunately, the economy is sooo good that we've blown through Powell and the complacent Board." Bullard said Trump "is entitled to his views." "He's got long experience in real estate markets. It's all about borrowing money at the lowest rate possible," Bullard said. "Good for him. He's got views, but a lot of people have views, and you know, if you don't want to hear that, this is probably the wrong job."
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Dozens killed in attack on Sudan camp for people who had fled war
At least 40 people have been killed in an attack on a camp for displaced people in Sudan's western Darfur region, according to an aid group that works there. The Abu Shouk Emergency Response Room said Monday's assault was carried out by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The resistance committee in nearby el-Fasher city, made up of local citizens and activists, also reported this. El-Fasher, which came under intense attack as well, is the last major foothold in Darfur for the army and its allies, which have been fighting the paramilitary RSF in the two-year civil war. The conflict has triggered a humanitarian crisis with the UN warning that families trapped in the besieged city faced starvation. Sudanese media reported that the camp was caught in the crossfire of the fighting in el-Fasher. But the aid group inside Abu Shouk, where at least 200,000 people live, said some of those killed in the attack were shot in their homes while others were gunned down in public. Sudan war: A simple guide to what is happening Sudan in danger of self-destructing as conflict and famine reign Sudanese eating charcoal and leaves to survive, aid agency warns A US-based organisation that analyses satellite imagery and videos said that it identified a large grouping of 40 light vehicles in the north-west neighbourhoods of the camp, which appear to corroborate reports that the attack came from the north. The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab added that it was investigating images and videos "allegedly showing RSF shooting at people crawling away from them and berating and using ethnic slurs". The camp was created more than two decades ago by people from non-Arab communities - including the Fur and Zaghawa - who were fleeing attacks by the Janjaweed militia. The RSF has its origins in this notorious militia that was accused of carrying out a genocide. The paramilitary group has also been widely accused of ethnic cleansing in Darfur during this war, and the US has sanctioned it with allegations of genocide. The RSF has previously denied such charges, saying it is not part of what it calls tribal conflicts. Zaghawa fighters have joined the army in defending el-Fasher, so it is possible that the RSF was deliberately targeting Zaghawa civilians in the camp. The camps for displaced people near el-Fasher have frequently come under attack during the war. In April, more than 100 people died and thousands fled Zamzam camp as the RSF occupied it and took it over. Since the conflict began in April 2023, tens of thousands of people have died, 12 million have been forced from their homes and famine has been declared in parts of the country. You may also be interested in: BBC smuggles in phones to reveal hunger and fear Last surgeons standing in Sudan's siege city The mother and children trapped between two conflicts Will recapture of presidential palace change course of Sudan war? Sudan's 'invisible crisis' - where more children are fleeing war than anywhere else Go to for more news from the African continent. Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica BBC Africa podcasts Focus on Africa This Is Africa
