In 2018, Michigan voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative to create an independent redistricting commission. Previously, legislators drew some of the country’s most aggressive gerrymanders. The new commission builds on successful reforms in other states. It is comprised of members of each party and independents, with strong conflict-of-interest rules. Now the state’s Republican Party has asked a federal court to declare it unconstitutional. The rather flimsy argument: these rules violate the First Amendment.

If the Michigan Republican Party “has its way, this would greatly expand and constitutionalize the role of political parties in redistricting, transforming commissioners from government officials to mere agents of parties,” write the Brennan Center’s Michael Li and Kelly Percival. // Read More

Attorney General Barr harshly criticizes district attorneys who seek to reduce prison populations. Those reformers, he said, are “anti-law enforcement.” Yet the same day as his most recent speech on the subject, Barr found a defendant so deserving that he deserves a lighter sentence, well below federal guidelines: of course, Roger Stone. It’s enough to give hypocrisy a bad name.

Barr’s attacks on criminal justice reform place him outside the main trend in both parties. “The attorney general’s statements are dangerous,” writes Lauren-Brooke Eisen, director of the Brennan Center’s Justice Program. “We must fight for a justice system that is fair and just for all Americans, not just those in proximity to wealth and power. // Read More

Among four broad categories of domestic terrorism the FBI confronts, one is “abortion violent extremism.” But the focus isn’t only on anti-abortion terrorists who have bombed clinics or intimidated doctors — it’s on “pro-choice” terrorism, an imaginary threat. The FBI’s false equivalence is reminiscent of when it concocted the threat of “Black Identity Extremists” during the rising threat of white supremacist terrorism.

The bureau “seems to be grasping a tiny number of unrelated incidents that are not part of any organized effort to falsely imply that such a ‘domestic terrorist’ movement exists,” Brennan Center Fellow Michael German tells the Daily Beast. “This is a misleading analysis of dubious purpose, apparently to satisfy some political constituency.” // Read More

• Ángel Díaz on the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act before the New York City Council, which would bring transparency to the NYPD’s use of surveillance tools // city & state 
• Theodore R. Johnson on how Black voters hold Biden and Buttegieg’s fate in their hands // guardian
• Faiza Patel on Instagram’s removal of posts by Iranian journalists about the U.S. killing of Qassem Soleimani and what that says about Facebook’s new oversight board // Just security
• Gowri Ramachandran with Susannah Goodman of Common Cause on the lessons to take from the Iowa Caucus // just security
• Yurij Rudensky on political parties’ fundraising to take control of 2021 redistricting // open secrets
• Walter Shapiro, from the campaign trail, on how the media’s lousy election analysis is damaging discourse // New republic 
• Jennifer Weiss-Wolf urges an end to a discriminatory “tampon tax” in Washington State. // seattle times