Today's politics recap
- The supreme court justice Stephen Breyer plans to announce his retirement, according to multiple reports. Breyer’s retirement would give Joe Biden his first supreme court seat to fill, and the president has promised to select a Black woman for the role, which would mark a historic first for the US.
- The White House said Biden “certainly stands by” his campaign pledge to nominate a Black woman to the supreme court. While not confirming news of Breyer’s retirement, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, “The president has stated and reiterated his commitment to nominating a Black woman to the supreme court and certainly stands by that.”
- Biden deflected questions about the potential supreme court vacancy, saying he would wait to comment until Breyer made the news official. “Every justice has the right and opportunity to decide what he or she is going to do and announce it on their own. There has been no announcement from Justice Breyer,” Biden said as he met with a group of CEOs today to discuss his economic agenda. “Let him make whatever statement he’s going to make, and I’ll be happy to talk about it later.”
- Senate Democrats are expected to move quickly to confirm Biden’s supreme court nominee if Breyer does announce his retirement. The party controls the upper chamber and should be able to advance the nomination quickly, although a confirmation would not alter conservatives’ advantage on the bench. Even with Breyer’s replacement confirmed, the six conservative supreme court justices would still outnumber their three liberal colleagues.
- Meanwhile, officials from France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine met in Paris today, in the latest effort to de-escalate tensions along Ukraine’s border. The talks came two days before French president Emmanuel Macron is scheduled to speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin, as the west seeks to avoid a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
– Joan E Greve
Updated
A masterclass in election-rigging: how Republicans ‘dismembered’ a Democratic stronghold
Andrew Witherspoon and Sam Levine in New York:
Republican lawmakers in Tennessee gave final approval on Monday to an aggressive plan to split Nashville, a Democratic bastion, in a deeply Republican state, into several congressional districts as part of an effort to tilt the state’s congressional map in their favor. The plan is now waiting for approval from Governor Bill Lee, who is likely to sign it.
Nashville currently sits in the state’s fifth congressional district, represented by Jim Cooper, a Democrat who has held the seat for nearly 20 years. It’s a solid Democratic district – Joe Biden carried it by nearly 24 points in 2020 – but on Tuesday, Cooper announced he was retiring from Congress.
“Despite my strength at the polls, I could not stop the general assembly from dismembering Nashville. No one tried harder to keep our city whole,” he said in a statement. “I explored every possible way, including lawsuits, to stop the gerrymandering and to win one of the three new congressional districts that now divide Nashville. There’s no way, at least for me in this election cycle, but there may be a path for other worthy candidates.”
The new districts crack the concentration of Democratic voters in Nashville and cram them into three districts that stretch across the state and are filled with reliable Republican voters. Donald Trump would have easily carried all three of the proposed districts in 2020. The plan is one of the clearest, and most brazen, efforts to dismantle a Democratic district to benefit Republicans.
Take a look:
