|
Hello Neighbors,
As we enter the 4th of July weekend, I am going to be thinking about all the amazing leaders, organizers, advocates, and residents who have organized, sued, fought, and worked to bend the arc of history and justice to this unfinished project of inclusive democracy in our country and our state. One of those leaders in Minneapolis, is former Representative Karen Clark, who we lost last week - one of greatest fighters for human rights for all Minnesotans.
The other thing on my mind is how our constitutional democracy is being tested by all three branches of the federal government. This week, it was the U.S. The Supreme Court’s power came into acute focus - as the Roberts’ Court continued their troubling pattern of trampling on precedent and advancing their policy preferences unmoored from the law or the plain language of the Constitution. That’s all to say, SCOTUS dropped some monumental rulings this week and as your local neighborhood voting rights lawyer, I’m going to do my best in these newsletters to give you an accessible summary on how these decisions affect your lives.
As your friendly neighborhood voting rights lawyer, I’m someone people come to when they need to understand changes in voting access and campaign finance law. If you’re reading this, you probably already understand - our democracy is being attacked every day under the current MAGA regime. The Voting Rights Act has never been weaker, and the 6-3 Supreme Court decision this week on campaign finance just overturned another important protection regulating huge money in our elections.
Like anything with the Supreme Court, the exact effects of their ruling will take years to really understand. We don’t know yet how much havoc it will wreak on Minnesota’s campaign finance laws, which we have passed laws to strengthen in recent years. But one thing is for sure, this week the Court again sided with big money and those that believe in expanding the access and power of big donors and monied interests in our democracy. This decision continues the trend that was accelerated by Citizens United -- of the rights to spend unlimited sums of money in our elections being elevated above the rights of voters in our democracy.
This case was brought by J.D. Vance and the national Republican party in order to strike down well-established campaign finance laws that had been upheld nearly twenty years ago. Their aim: allow billionaires to funnel money directly through political parties to candidates, evading the longstanding limits on what people can give to candidates. This means more big money in our elections, less transparency and more ability for candidates to hide how they’re funded. This will impact national candidates, but also the amount of money in local elections too. This means more ads, more mailers, and more big donors trying to influence our elections and our vote.
The problem of money in our politics is a bipartisan problem and there are some Democratic and Republican politicians who will stay quiet because they believe that more money in politics might help them win elections. But big money is a threat to democracy -- no matter who it's spent on behalf of. We need less billionaire control of politics, not more. Period.
The other two blockbuster decisions from the Court have had a lot of public commentary around them so I will be brief. As expected the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship as promised in the plain language of the 14th Amendment. What was unexpected was there was only a simple 5 to 4 majority to affirm the constitutional right, and one additional Justice who upheld birthright citizenship rights based on a U.S. Statute. The fact that four Supreme Court Justices -- Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Alito and Kavanaugh -- rejected the 14th Amendment's explicit guarantee of birthright citizenship is a shameful example of these Justices abandoning the job of interpreting the Constitution and the law in order to advance the their right-wing agenda and the power of Donald Trump.
The Roberts Court also upheld bans for trans people participating in sports. It is a bad decision that compounds the discrimination and hate that is at the root of these laws targeting trans youth. To be clear, this will not change our laws in Minnesota protecting equal rights. We currently have some of the strongest protections to protect our trans neighbors from discrimination. Like overturning Roe did for reproductive rights, the Supreme Court decision allows a piecemeal policy of discrimination across the county. But we will not back down from making sure Minnesota continues to be one of the safest states in the country for everyone to be who they are.
I’ll have more information about how these decisions from the Supreme Court will affect you once we know more, but I wanted to send you my first thoughts in this newsletter.
It’s become expected that when we pass laws to regulate the big, profitable, and sometimes scammy Big Tech business model, those big companies will sue to stop us. More recently, the Trump Administration has started to do these businesses work for them -- jumping in to try and stop any regulation that will cut into Big Tech’s bottom line. That’s what happened after we passed my bipartisan bill banning the predatory prediction markets in Minnesota. The minute we passed the bill, the Trump Administration, joined by Kelshi and Polymarket went to federal court to try to block our efforts to protect the public from this explosion of unregulated gambling.
Minnesota is just one of a dozen or so states -- red states and blue - that Trump and the prediction market companies have sued to try and co-opt the power of states so that it can continue to make billions of dollars off of unregulated gambling markets, of which Donald Trump Jr. has a personal financial stake. This week, the Attorney General’s office was in court to defend our law and the state’s power to regulate gambling in the public interest.
"Prediction markets also invite people to gamble on not just sports scores, but on the outcomes that shape our democracy," added Ellison. "Minnesotans deserve better than to have our civic life turned into a casino. Furthermore, it is far too easy for those with insider knowledge to wager based on that information or rig the odds by releasing misleading information. Minnesota banned prediction markets because of how predatory, addictive, and harmful they can be. Now, these wealthy and powerful tech companies, and their allies in the Trump administration, are fighting for the right to prey on Minnesotans. I will not allow that to happen on my watch."
If you would like to learn more about prediction markets and why it’s important that we took action to regulate them, check out this 30-minute deep dive on it with host Mary Harris on the What Next podcast.
After hearing from the local communities being affected by rule-breaking data center development, I wrote a bill that would address one of the most undemocratic practices we’re seeing across the state - local officials signing Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) with these huge corporations.
Elected officials should not be bullied by Big Tech into signing agreements hiding information from their constituents', no matter the corporation or how much money they have. It’s a slap in the face to the public, and I can’t believe that House Republican leadership killed this bill this year. I worked hard to get bipartisan support for this very popular bill, It sailed through committee unanimously until the corporate lobby showed up and Republican leadership leapt in to do their bidding.
A Kare 11 Poll this summer showed that most Minnesotans are not behind data centers, the rules and laws they break, the water and land they pollute, and the jobs that their AI replaces. Minnesota communities should have a real chance to weigh in and decide whether data centers are right for their community -- and right now NDAs are shutting them out of the process. We could have stopped these secret practices and had some transparency around building plans, but that was too much for House Republicans this year. If we come back in the majority this year, this will be one of the first bills I’ll work to pass.
As your representative, I truly want to know what you think about these issues and anything that affects you. I can also help you navigate state government, or answer questions about what’s been happening at the Legislature. Please always feel free to reach out to me at [email protected].
If you’d like to catch me in person, I’ll be holding an election protection event with Congresswoman Ilhan Omar from 4-5:30 pm this Wednesday.
Thank you for taking the time to read this newsletter, and have a great day!
Emma
|
