After murder and violent crime rose sharply in 2020 and 2021, some of these trends may have started to reverse last year. An updated explainer by the Brennan Center shows it’s difficult to get a clear understanding of these important dynamics due to incomplete national crime data. But one thing we do know is that attempts to blame bail reform for crime spikes are misleading. “New research continues to show that bail reform, which makes it easier for people to remain in their communities while awaiting trial, was not a significant driver of post-2019 increases in crime,” Ames Grawert writes. Read more

Last month, the North Carolina Supreme Court’s new conservative majority turned back the clock on the progressive expansion of North Carolinians’ rights. It overturned a lower court ruling that had restored voting rights to 56,000 citizens with past felony convictions, arguing that the previous decision failed to presume that the state legislature acted in good faith when it adopted the felony disenfranchisement statute — even in the face of strong evidence of discriminatory intent, writes Eliza Sweren-Becker.

Robyn Sanders explains in her latest State Court Report piece that North Carolina's high court also shockingly reversed decisions it had handed down less than a year ago that struck down the state’s voter ID law as racially discriminatory under the state constitution and voided the state's congressional districts as unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders. To many observers, these exceedingly rare reversals signal intensifying partisan strife within the high court. With conservatives set to retain their majority on the court for at least the next six years, the enormity of this new jurisprudential era remains to be seen. Read more

On Thursday, Washington’s high court will hear arguments in a lawsuit claiming the state’s Voting Rights Act violates the 14th Amendment and the Washington Constitution by improperly considering race in redistricting. The case comes amid efforts to gut the federal Voting Rights Act, and its outcome could hinder minority voters from turning to state courts to challenge discriminatory election policies. In State Court Report, Yurij Rudensky and Sonali Seth write that the Washington case “demonstrates that state voting rights acts are not immune from efforts to expand principles of race-blindness under the federal Constitution and to eliminate critical voting rights safeguards.” Read more

Election denial remains a real and growing threat that could seriously undermine our democracy if left unchecked. A new Brennan Center resource provides an overview of the 14 tactics deployed by election deniers in 2022, such as spreading disinformation, attempting to win control of election administration, and refusing to concede defeat or certify results. We expect a number of these will continue to pose a significant threat in the upcoming election cycle. “Fortunately, there is still time to prepare for and prevent election denial efforts ahead of 2024,” Lauren Miller and Wendy Weiser write. Read more

The Department of Justice has long withheld information on the more than 2,000 domestic terrorism–related convictions it claims to have won over the past decade. After the Brennan Center filed a lawsuit to uncover the details of these cases, the DOJ released data showing that its reported prosecution numbers have been wildly inflated and its counterterrorism efforts have long been overstated. Given the hundreds of millions of dollars that Congress has devoted to these efforts over the years, “it is critical that policymakers and the public understand the actual extent, nature, and efficacy of these prosecutions,” Faiza Patel and Charles Kurzman write in Just Security. READ MORE

• Elizabeth Goitein on the huge scale of warrantless searches // WASHINGTON POST
• Michael Li on the “gerrymandering arms race” // NBC NEWS
• Lawrence Norden on the need to fund election security // ASSOCIATED PRESS
• Joanna Zdanys on New York’s budget for public financing of campaigns // SPECTRUM NEWS