-Melania Trump, on media reports about her shady fundraisers

Heads up: What A Day will be offline on Monday, in observance of Presidents' Day. See you back in the inbox on Tuesday, February 22!
 

A Trump-appointed federal judge just did his fellow Republicans a ridiculous favor in their assault on voting rights, with the apparent expectation that the far-right Supreme Court will have his back. Absent reforms, he might not be wrong.
 

• On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Lee Rudofsky dismissed a lawsuit challenging Arkansas’s new state House maps, which the plaintiffs argued were racially gerrymandered in violation of the Voting Rights Act. The suit pointed out that the redistricting plan created just 11 majority-Black districts (out of 100 total), even though Black voters make up 16 percent of the state’s population.
   
• Rudofsky wrote that while there’s “a strong merits case that at least some of the challenged districts” violate the VRA, he couldn’t possibly rule on the merits, because “this case may be brought only by the Attorney General of the United States,” not by private plaintiffs. That decision defies decades of precedent: The Supreme Court explained back in 1969 that (paraphrasing) voters of color would get fucked over big time if they all had to wait for the attorney general to enforce the VRA for them.
   
• If the Supreme Court upholds Rudofsky’s absurd conclusion that Section 2 of the VRA is not enforceable by private suits (in a reversal of its own 1996 decision), the law would be completely neutralized. An attorney general in a Republican administration could simply decline to challenge racist new state policies, and voters would have no other recourse. Given the Roberts Court’s track record of stabbing the VRA with every rusty shiv it can find, that outcome seems like a distinct possibility.

While Trump judges race to legalize racial discrimination, state-level Republicans are gleefully throwing elections into chaos.
 

• Election officials in Texas have been forced to deny thousands of mail-in ballot applications for the March primaries under the state’s new voter-suppression law, and Harris County’s ballot rejection rate was at a whopping 34 percent. Thousands more ballot applications have been delayed because Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R-TX) sent out a mass mailing that incorrectly instructed GOP voters to send them to the secretary of state’s office, a bid to sow further distrust in local election offices. 
   
• In other exciting Texas developments, “Stop the Steal” activists have been viciously threatening a (Republican) judge who had the audacity to limit GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton’s power. Scott Walker (not that one) ruled, along with seven other Republican judges, that Paxton can’t give himself the authority to prosecute election-related crimes across Texas as fodder for new voter-suppression measures. Big Lie proponents lost their minds, and a Houston prosecutor running to unseat Walker has picked up support from far-right groups across the state.

Republicans are systematically suppressing and diluting the voting power of the majority, as right-wing courts dutifully chip away at the federal protections meant to stop them. For as long as an illegitimate Supreme Court calls the shots, those efforts will only get bolder. 

In this week's X-Ray Vision, Jason and Rosie talk comics with Jason Mantzoukas! First, Jason and Rosie dive deep into the latest trailer and poster from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, discuss the rebirth of Paramount, and recap some of the Super Bowl trailers. Then, Jason Mantzoukas joins Jason and Rosie to review and recommend tons of comics, including what everyone is reading right now, and discuss the comics they happened to stumble upon and fall in love with.

New episodes of X-Ray Vision drop every Friday. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Child poverty spiked by 40 percent after the enhanced child tax credit expired, according to a new study by the Columbia Center on Poverty and Social Policy. When Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) tanked Democrats’ effort to extend the program in the Build Back Better Act, telling people that he thought parents would waste the payments on drugs, he sent the monthly child-poverty rate soaring, from 12.1 percent in December 2021 to 17 percent in January 2022. Researchers estimated that an additional 3.7 million children were living in poverty last month. All 50 Senate Republicans opposed the program, of course, but child tax credit recipients are blaming Democrats for failing to extend it, something party leaders should maybe sit with before launching into another round of Progressives Ruin Everything.

• President Biden said on Friday that he’s now convinced that Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to invade Ukraine. Russia has now amassed up to 190,000 troops in and around Ukraine, according to the U.S., and the White House announced that it blamed Russia for a wave of cyberattacks in Ukraine earlier this week.
   
• The National Archives confirmed in a Friday letter to House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney that it found classified materials in the 15 boxes that Trump improperly brought back to Mar-a-Lago, and notified the Justice Department about it. 
   
• A Minnesota judge sentenced former police officer Kim Potter to two years in prison for fatally shooting Daunte Wright, far less than the standard seven year sentence for manslaughter.
   
• Canadian police have arrested 70 protesters in the Ottawa trucker blockade, and at least 21 vehicles have been towed away.
   
• A Texas grand jury has indicted 19 Austin police officers who were accused of using excessive force against Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020. 
   
• Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R-TX) has pledged to end tenure for new hires at Texas public universities and to revoke tenure for faculty members who teach “critical race theory.” Seems good! 
   
• Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) dropped an affordable housing proposal from the state’s budget after local government officials and Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY), who’s challenging her in the primary, pushed back on it. 
   
• Trump spent $375,000 in political donations to rent an office in his own building, which then went unused. In other grifts, the House oversight committee has asked the General Services Administration to hurry up and terminate Trump’s DC hotel lease before he can sell it. 
   
• Special Counsel John Durham insists it’s not his fault that Fox News spun a wild fantasy out of his fantasy-enabling court filing.
   
• A cargo ship full of Porsches and Volkswagens is on fire in the Atlantic Ocean, as fame-seeking ships around the world continue to chase the inimitable glory of the Big Stuck Boat.

The Omicron subvariant BA.2 is the hot new craze that’s sweeping the nation, and we can confidently report that it either causes more severe illness than First Edition Omicron, or does not do that at all. The jury’s still out: A Japanese lab study found that it may cause more serious illness and resist some treatments that have worked against Omicron, while a South African study suggested that it’s about as mild as the original Omicron strain, actually. “There is no evidence that the BA.2 lineage is more severe than the BA.1 lineage,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said on Friday, emphasizing that the new research is all preliminary. What we do know is that BA.2 seems to be even more contagious, though that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re doomed for another devastating wave: A recent infection from BA.1 seems to build antibody protection against BA.2, as well. 

Protect Democracy and Defend Voting Rights with the ACLU 

In 2021 alone, over 400 anti-voter measures were introduced by states and local jurisdictions across the country. Many of these bills blatantly targeted voters of color, from mass purges of voter rolls to racially gerrymandered electoral maps that systematically disenfranchise Black voters.

These measures were pushed forward in many instances by politicians using baseless and unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud around the election – but in reality, the aim is to limit who is part of the democratic process, how they get to participate, and when their participation counts.

Sign now to join the ACLU’s fight to defend voting rights.You can help the ACLU defend voting rights by urging your senators to pass the Freedom to Vote: John Lewis Voting Rights Act. This legislation includes crucial provisions to restore the protections of the Voting Rights Act that will begin to root out voting barriers that discriminate against voters of color.

The ACLU and our affiliates have been fighting back – litigating against gerrymandered maps in 5 states and counting in this redistricting cycle, challenging discriminatory and illegal voter suppression attempts, and more.

Although the Senate failed to advance the Freedom to Vote: John Lewis Voting Rights Act, Senators in support of federal voting rights legislation cannot give up. Given the attacks on our democracy in the last year and upcoming elections in November, this bill must be on President Biden’s desk. The Senate must continue the push to remove any and all obstacles preventing this bill from being signed into law.” 

Our democracy can't be taken for granted – it must be protected and fortified. And that cannot happen without fair and equal voting in this country. Take action today. Protect democracy and defend voting rights.

Thank you for taking action, 
The ACLU Team 

The Biden administration announced it will ramp up COVID-vaccine assistance to 11 African countries through the Global Vax initiative. 

The FDA has approved the first smartphone app to deliver insulin doses for diabetics.

The Oregon House has passed a bill that would expand online voter-registration eligibility. 

A California lawmaker has introduced legislation to raise the amount of “gate money” given to people released from state prisons to cover basic needs from $200 to nearly $2,600. It would be the first increase since 1973.