The Brennan Center has released a trove of internal LAPD documents, revealing a department of officers collecting social media account handles when conducting stops, allowing officers to create fake accounts to pursue cases, and purchasing new surveillance tools that track hashtags and harvest profile information. “Law enforcement should not have a free pass to broadly trawl the internet without accountability or oversight. Communities in Los Angeles and elsewhere must demand transparency in and limits around social media monitoring practices,” Mary Pat Dwyer writes. // Read More

Oddly shaped voting districts have become synonymous with anti-democratic and partisan gerrymandering. People are right to be wary, but that particular suspicion can prove misleading. As redistricting gets underway, Julia Boland and Yurij Rudensky present examples of congressional districts to encourage followers of redistricting not to judge a book by its cover. “Just because a district has neat and regular looking district lines doesn’t mean it isn’t a gerrymander. In fact, some of the most aggressively gerrymandered maps don’t have any odd-looking districts at all,” they write. // Read More

The Supreme Court has created a rule-of-law crisis by refusing to block Texas’s extreme new abortion restrictions while the legislation is being litigated. Madiba Dennie discusses the implications of this radical turn by the Court, which abdicated its duty to protect constitutional rights. “By accepting the state’s blueprint, the Court has instructed legislative bodies across the country that they may infringe on bodily autonomy if they craft their laws just right,” she writes. // Read More

The prison system as a whole suffers from problematic incentives and dehumanizing practices, but incarcerated people at women’s prisons often have to endure especially harsh conditions. In the latest essay in our Punitive Excess series, Brennan Center fellow and formerly incarcerated writer Asia Johnson shares her experiences and thoughts on the gender disparities in the criminal justice system. “America has a tragic obsession with vengeance and punishment. This infatuation continues to ruin the lives of both men and women all over the country,” she writes. // Read More

• VIRTUAL EVENT: The People’s Constitution
  Tuesday, September 21 // 5:30–6:30 p.m. ET
  Who wrote the Constitution? That's obvious, we think: 55 men in Philadelphia in 1787. But much of the Constitution was actually written later, in a series of 27 amendments enacted over the course of two centuries. Join the Brennan Center’s Wilfred Codrington and John Kowal as they discuss their new book, The People’s Constitution: 200 Years, 27 Amendments, and the Promise of a More Perfect Union. RSVP today.
  Produced in partnership with the National Parks of New York Harbor Conservancy at Federal Hall
• VIRTUAL EVENT: National Security, Personal Liberty, and 9/11
  Thursday, September 23 // 12–1 p.m. ET
  Twenty years after the attack, learn about what’s lost, what’s won, and what threatens us now. How have the events of 9/11 permanently altered the political landscape, the military landscape, and our right to privacy? Join moderator John Avlon, senior political analyst at CNN, as he discusses these questions and more with panelists Faiza Patel, co-director of the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program, and Spencer Ackerman, author of Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump. RSVP today.
  Produced in partnership with the National Parks of New York Harbor Conservancy at Federal Hall

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• Michael German on post-9/11 intelligence “fusion centers” // NBC NEWS
• Rachel Levinson-Waldman on police use of social media // GUARDIAN
• Lawrence Norden on Arizona’s new election laws // CNN
• Faiza Patel on NYPD abuse of post-9/11 surveillance tech // NEW YORK TIMES
• Yurij Rudensky on redistricting in Missouri // NPR
• Joanna Zdanys on reforming the NYC Board of Elections // NEW YORK DAILY NEWS