We should be choosing our representatives, not vice versa
NCPR reports that North Country, Lake George still depend on J-1 visas
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Our country was founded on the people voting.
On choosing representatives to look out for our best interests.
Thanks to the Supreme Court and spineless Republican lawmakers — hey, they started this latest round — politicians are being allowed to choose their voters instead of voters choosing their representatives.
The sin of gerrymandering during redistricting has reached the ultimate heights of hypocrisy this past week and we are seeing the outrage.
Rep. Justin Jones stood outside the Tennessee Legislature on Friday and burned a paper replica of the Confederate flag because Republicans had just approved a new congressional map that eliminated Tennessee’s Black citizens from possibly having any representation in Congress.
You may not believe this is significant, that it has nothing to do with us in upstate New York, but this appears to be only the beginning of the gerrymandering wars after the Supreme Court ruled that race should not be used as a consideration when drawing the lines of congressional districts. But politics is perfectly fine. That seems backward.
Do I have your attention?
“Voting-rights advocates expected GOP-led states to use the ruling to escalate a nationwide gerrymandering race,” wrote The Atlantic. “But the speed and blunt force of the Republican response has been astonishing.”
Tennessee split the city of Memphis into three separate districts, diluting the Black vote in the city so it is likely there will no Black representation in Congress.
In an unprecedented move, Gov. Jeff Landry stopped early voting in Louisiana as its Legislature moves to reconfigure its congressional districts and eliminate two Black representatives. The emergency was not a hurricane or tornado, but the Supreme Court decision.
South Carolina legislators and the Alabama Legislature are also taking steps that could give Republicans a greater chance to maintain control of the House in the midterms.
But it was most dramatically on display in Tennessee’s state capital of Nashville.
“This is how democracy dies in our face. It’s not always with violence in the street. It is those secret meetings you have in the back of your rooms,” Sen. London Lamar was quoted as saying in the Nashville Banner after Democrats walked out in protest of the vote to change Tennessee maps. “You may have the votes to pass this map, but you don’t have the moral authority to do what’s right.”
The Banner reported that Sen. Charlane Oliver (D-Nashville) climbed on her desk and unfurled a white sheet reading “No Jim Crow 2.0 Stop the Steal.”
It was later physically torn from her hands by Senate security.
They were reliving the ‘60s in Tennessee — the 1860s.
“A storm will come today,” Sen, Lamar warned. “The repercussions of your decision will be felt for centuries. Your vote today will forever be carved in the history of this state.”
Our Founding Fathers referenced gerrymandering in the Federalist Papers where they insisted voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around. I suspect most of us still believe that.
That has been ignored all over the South.
In Alabama, the Legislature passed a measure to allow new primary elections that will favor its efforts in the midterm elections, despite a law that says that cannot be done until 2030.
The developments this week show how the Supreme Court decision last week has polarized racial and partisan politics in southern states, which could lead to another two years of a Congress that refuses to do anything while the current administration becomes more and more authoritarian.
That will effect all of us.
During the Alabama session, The Associated Press reported that state Sen. Rodger Smitherman (D) condemned his Republican colleagues for ramming through the bill and said they were playing with Black people’s lives for the sake of politics.
“You get offended when people tell you what’s really going on. You don’t want people to say anything that’s going to hurt your feelings,” he said. “But you want to destroy Black people’s whole existence.”
Hard to believe this is America anymore.
Immigration movie
The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Glens Falls will be hosting a viewing of the film “A Lien” on Monday, May 18 at 6:30 p.m. The UU Congregation is located at 21 Weeks Road in Queensbury,
The short film lays bare the injustice at the heart of the immigration enforcement effort. There will be a post film discussion on the subject.
J-1 visas
North Country Public Radio did another one of its important deep dives on immigration this past week by looking at the J-1 visas that so many tourist-oriented businesses depend on in the North Country and Lake George.
The Lake George Regional Chamber of Commerce reported that approximately 1,000 students come to the Lake George area every summer to work. They not only earn money, but spend money while supporting many local businesses.
“This workforce is very important to us economically,” Gina Mintzer said. “They come here, they make money. They spend money while they’re here. They’re paying for housing, buying groceries. And so they become part of our resident population.”
But those visas are under attack by the Trump administration. creating uncertainty about how many students will be allowed to work in the region.
NCPR reported that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, travel restrictions drove J-1 visa numbers down by nearly 70%. Participation has since rebounded, but participation in the program fell by 5 percent last year and it may be less this year.
ICE cooperation
New York Focus is reporting that body-cam footage from the Oswego County Sheriff’s Office shows local officers calling Border Patrol at least a dozen times while holding drivers at traffic stops.
That may be in violation of state law.
One video released by the outlet shows a sheriff’s deputy laughing on the phone with an acquaintance who works at the federal agency as the two try to coordinate a way for authorities to apprehend two Spanish-speaking people he pulled over and suspected were in the country without documentation.
When Border czar Tom Homan heard about state efforts to curtail cooperation between ICE and local law enforcement, he threatened to bring more ICE agents to New York than ever before.
If you thought ICE had learned its lessons after the protests against its actions, you are wrong.
“For the people out there saying, ‘President Trump’s getting weak on mass deportation,’ you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Homan said at the Border Security Expo in Phoenix last week.
“This year will be a good year,” Homan added. “Mass deportations are coming.”
Signalgate
It was just about a year ago that “Signalgate” roiled the new Trump administration after the editor of The Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, was invited to join a national security group discussion on Signal that discussed a military operation in Yemen.
Goldberg wrote in the April edition of the magazine that, a year later, there has been no negative ramifications for those who compromised national security, despite clear-cut military guidelines they committed an offense that could merit up to two years in prison.
Canceled
Black representatives in the Louisiana Legislature met last week and decided they would not participate in an annual charity basketball game between the Senate and House because of the white Republican efforts to gerrymander the congressional map to eliminate two black majority districts.
The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported, “Black Democrats said, they didn’t feel like they could have fun on the basketball court when their Republican colleagues are planning to take such pointed moves against Democrats.”
That angered House Republicans, who are all white.
Atlantic again
On another front, The Atlantic was in the news again when one of its reporters, using dozens of unnamed sources, reported on FBI Director Kash Patel’s erratic behavior and abuse of alcohol.
Patel in turn sued the magazine for $250 million.
Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor, responded to the lawsuit this week.
“If Patel thought that he could intimidate The Atlantic by suing us, he was very, very wrong,” Goldberg wrote. “We will fight this lawsuit aggressively — we have the truth, and very capable lawyers, on our side — and we are continuing to report on his leadership of the FBI.”
Goldberg also wrote that if reports the FBI is investigating the author of the story are true, then that is “very disturbing.”
“This isn’t our first rodeo,” Goldberg continued. “We’ve faced extraordinary government pressure, and Trump-administration calumny, before. We live in a period in which some media organizations buckle under government pressure. I promise you that we will never give in. If a story is true, we will publish it.”
You might want to consider getting a subscription, like I did after “Signalgate.”
Entertaining layover
I’ve done my share of travel over the years, but I don’t every recall having a layover like the one I had in Nashville this weekend.
Known as the “The Music City” for its country music roots, at least three of the airport eateries I passed had country singers doing live gigs and, I suspect, hoping to be discovered. I don’t recall every seeing entertainment in an airport restaurant or bar before.
Trump stuff
Trump continues to make changes to the White House. Here is a quick recap:
- Trump paved over the Rose Garden’s lawn without seeking approvals.
- He installed a 13-foot statue of Christopher Columbus on White House grounds without submitting a plan to any panel.
- He tore down the historic East Wing of the White House without consulting any oversight board and is now asking for $1 billion to rebuild it.
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and his play “The Last American Newspaper” is being produced by Capital Repertory Theatre in Albany Sept. 25 to Oct. 18 . He currently lives in both Queensbury, N.Y. and New Orleans, La.
Great move, boycotting the Louisiana Legislature’s charity basketball game to protest the disgusting racist gerrymandering. *All* professional sports players should do the same. Just stop playing ball. Now. Until this gerrymandering trend is reversed.
The Downballot floated a radical move for the Virginia legislature to immediately lower the mandatory retirement age of its Supreme Court justices and re appoint a new court and revisit last months redistricting vote. Apparently this is legal. Its just whether state dems have the outrage and courage to try it and then stand strong against accusations of packing the court:https://www.the-downballot.com/p/how-virginia-democrats-can-overturn?utm_source=chatgpt.com