Republicans Have a Shiny New Voter Suppression Opportunity

Jim Thompson/Albuquerque Journal via ZUMA

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The Trump administration has added a question to the 2020 census asking if you’re a US citizen. A lot of lefties think this is terrible because it might make undocumented immigrants less likely to be counted. That’s a legitimate concern, but probably not a large one—and it’s not why Trump is doing it. Ari Berman gets the story right today:

At a congressional hearing on Friday, another potential motive for the controversial census question was on full display: using the data to allocate political representation on the basis of the number of citizens in a district or state rather than the total population. Such a move would mean a fundamental shift in the way representation is determined, dating back to the country’s founding, when the framers of the Constitution decided the balance of representation would take into account populations that didn’t have the full rights of citizenship, such as slaves and women. It would also significantly diminish representation for areas with large numbers of immigrants and shift political power to whiter and more Republican areas.

As Berman points out, the Constitution requires the census to count “the whole number of persons in each State.” There’s no way of getting around that. But it doesn’t require the government to allocate congressional districts based on the raw census count. It’s just that we’ve always done it that way, and the Supreme Court has ruled that district lines have to adhere to the one-person-one-vote rule because “representatives serve all residents, not just those eligible to vote.” But do they serve non-citizens? Even those who are here illegally? There’s a possibility the court could rule that they don’t. The only way to find out is to have the data available and then give it a go. If they fail, maybe someone else will succeed later—but only if the noncitizens have been recorded separately in the first place. So that’s what they’re doing.

Republicans have displayed an impressive amount of creativity in finding ways to reduce the influence of people likely to vote for Democrats. First it was crack-and-pack; then trial lawyers; then hyper-gerrymandering; then voter ID laws; and now this. It never ends.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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