A Republican-drawn map setting the boundaries of Texas’ statehouse districts violates the U.S. Constitution by intentionally discriminating against minority voters, a federal court found Thursday — the third such ruling against the state’s voting laws in roughly a month.

The latest ruling means Texas’ strict voter ID law, congressional maps and state legislative maps — all of which were enacted in 2011 — have recently been found in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act.

For Texas, the stockpiling losses carry the risk of a court punishing the state by demanding approval before changing voting laws. The process, known as “preclearance,” was formerly required of Texas and other states with a history of racial discrimination before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act. But the court kept in place the chance that states could again fall under federal oversight if intentional discrimination is found.

Minority rights groups and Democrats could press a three-judge panel in San Antonio over that possibility at a court hearing later this month in San Antonio, when they’re also expected to demand new state and congressional maps for the 2018 elections.

The latest decision concerns how districts were drawn by Republicans for the state House of Representatives, which the GOP now controls 95-55, in addition to every other branch of state government. In a 2-1 ruling, federal judges again found signs of racial gerrymandering and evidence that Republicans intentionally diluted the growing electoral power of minorities around Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and elsewhere.

“Mapmakers improperly used race with an intent to dilute Latino voting strength by wasting Latino votes,” read the lengthy opinion about two Dallas districts.

A spokesman for Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the state would ultimately prevail. The maps were redrawn in 2012 before ever being used in an election.

As Fifth Circuit Judge Jerry Smith observed in his dissent, the challenges to the old 2011 maps are not only moot but “a finding that racial considerations were dominant and controlling defies everything about this record,” Paxton spokesman Mark Rylander said.

Paxton and Republicans are now forced to keep defending major voting laws Texas signed by then-Gov. Rick Perry in 2011. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos of Corpus Christi again found intentional discrimination in Texas’ voter ID law, two years after she likened the ballot-box rules to a “poll tax” meant to suppress minority voters.

The Texas law requires voters to show one of seven forms of identification at the ballot box. That list includes concealed handgun licenses — but not college student IDs — and Texas was forced under court order last year to weaken the law for the November elections.

Before 2018, opponents now want new maps drawn that could boost Democrats, which haven’t won a statewide race in Texas in more than 23 years.

“Now that there is intentional racial discrimination finding that continues to infect the plans that we’re using right now, the only appropriate thing to do would be to fix them,” said Nina Perales, an attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which is among the groups suing the state.

Writing in dissent Thursday over the decision on the statehouse maps, Smith said the opinion defied logical explanation.

“The majority’s findings are fatally infected, from start to finish, with the misunderstanding that race, rather than partisan advantage, was the main reason for the Congressional and state house districts drawn in 2011,” Smith wrote.
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South Korean Presidential candidates debated this week how to manage relations with Seoul’s increasingly forceful U.S. ally, as tensions mount over the North Korean nuclear threat.

An early South Korean presidential election, scheduled for May 9, was precipitated by the impeachment of ex-President Park Geun-hye for her alleged involvement in a multi-million dollar corruption scandal. Park is currently under arrest and has been indicted on multiple criminal charges, including bribery for her role in the scandal.

At a presidential debate in Seoul Wednesday, the major party candidates addressed what South Korea can do to resolve the volatile stand-off between North Korea’s defiant development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and repeated warnings by the new administration of U.S. President Donald Trump that it would consider the unilateral use of military force against a provocative act by Pyongyang that threatens U.S. security.

Following the impeachment of the discredited conservative Park, the two leading presidential contenders in public opinion polls are liberal-leaning advocates for increased dialogue and engagement with North Korea. However the frontrunner, the Democratic Party’s Moon Jae-in, stressed his support for harsh sanctions against Pyongyang and the strong military alliance with the United States, and said any differences with U.S. policy could be handled through constructive diplomatic channels.

“I think we need to closely discuss and cooperate with the U.S., which is our ally. In the process, we have to express our opinion to make sure our position is fully adopted,” said Moon.

The second leading contender, Ahn Cheol-soo with the People’s Party, said he would engage in shuttle diplomacy with the U.S. and China to give the Korean people a greater voice to peacefully resolve the longstanding division at the heart of this crisis.

“We have to let them know we need to avoid war and we have to be the main agent in these various situations that determine the fate of South Korea,” he said.

Different endgames

All the candidates, liberal and conservative, agreed with the Trump administration that China must increase pressure on its economically dependent ally in Pyongyang. But they differed on the purpose of the increased sanctions on the Kim Jong Un leadership.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence this week argued the Kim Jong Un government must be forced to unconditionally dismantle its nuclear and ballistic missiles programs because North Korea violated all past deals that offered economic and security incentives for compliance.

The leading South Korean candidates support sanctions as a means to convince the North to enter multilateral negotiations that would again offer increasing development aid and investment for nuclear concessions.

However, Northeast Asia analyst Daniel Pinkston with Troy University in Seoul said whatever differences may arise between a potentially left leaning government in Seoul and hardliners in Washington, their longstanding alliance will continue to be united by their shared interests and a common enemy.

“I think any difficulty will be manageable particularly since the alliance is mature and very well institutionalized at this time, in the shadow of this increasingly threatening North Korean posture,” said Pinkston.

THAAD

The conservative candidates criticized Moon for his ambiguous stance on the THAAD missile defense system. Moon said he wants to postpone deploying the U.S. advance anti-missile system until the new president takes office and can evaluate its benefits and drawbacks. But at the debate Moon said he would use the threat of THAAD deployment to pressure China to restrain North Korea.

“For China, we have to make it clear that it is unavoidable to deploy THAAD if North Korea conducts a nuclear test.” he said.

Ahn strongly supports THAAD, as do the conservative candidates. And they all object to China’s coercive tactics to try to pressure South Korea to cancel the missile defense system deployment.

Beijing opposes THAAD as an unnecessary and provocative regional military escalation and has voiced concern that the system’s powerful radar could be used to spy on them and other countries. China has reportedly imposed informal economic sanctions against South Korea by limiting tourism and imports of Korean cosmetics, canceling K-pop concerts and shutting down a number of South Korean department stores in China.

Youmi Kim contributed to this report.
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Companies from China and Iran this weekend will sign the first commercial contracts to redesign an Iranian nuclear plant as part of an international deal reached in 2015 over Iran’s nuclear program, China’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday.

The fate of the Arak reactor in central Iran was one of the toughest sticking points in the long nuclear negotiations that led to the agreement, signed by Iran with the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany.

No plutonium

In the redesign, the heavy water reactor will be reconfigured so it cannot yield fissile plutonium usable in a nuclear bomb.

Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said the contracts for the plant’s redesign would be signed Sunday in Vienna with initial agreements having been reached in Beijing, describing it as an important part of the Iran nuclear deal.

China and the United States are joint heads of the working group on the Arak project, and progress has been smooth, Lu told a daily news briefing.

“The signing of this contract will create good conditions for substantively starting the redesign project,” Lu said.

Iran has said that the 40-megawatt, heavy water plant is aimed at producing isotopes for cancer and other medical treatments, and has denied that any of its nuclear activity is geared to developing weapons.

Alarming provocations

The announcement comes as U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson accused Iran of “alarming ongoing provocations” to destabilize countries in the Middle East as the Trump administration launched a review of its policy towards Tehran.

Tillerson said the review would not only look at Iran’s compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal but also its behavior in the region, which he said undermined U.S. interests in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon.

Lu, while not directly referring to Tillerson’s comments, said China hopes all parties could ensure the nuclear deal was implemented, appropriately handle disagreements and make positive contributions to nuclear non-proliferation and peace and stability in the Middle East.
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Arkansas’ attempt to carry out its first execution in nearly 12 years wasn’t thwarted by the type of liberal activist judge Republicans regularly bemoan here, but instead by a state Supreme Court that’s been the focus of expensive campaigns by conservative groups to reshape the judiciary.

 

The court voted Wednesday to halt the execution of an inmate facing lethal injection Thursday night, two days after justices stayed the executions of two other inmates. The series of 4-3 decisions blocking the start of what had been an unprecedented plan to execute eight men in 11 days were only the latest in recent years preventing this deeply Republican state from resuming capital punishment.

 

The possibility that justices could continue sparing the lives of the remaining killers scheduled to die this month has left death penalty supporters including Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson frustrated and critical of the high court.

 

“I know the families of the victims are anxious for a clear-cut explanation from the majority as to how they came to this conclusion and how there appears to be no end to the court’s review,” Hutchinson said in a statement after the Wednesday ruling.

Conservative court

 

Since the last execution in 2005, the state Supreme Court has at least twice forced Arkansas to rewrite its death penalty law. One of those cases spared Don Davis, who again received a stay Monday night. The legal setbacks at one point prompted the state’s previous attorney general, Dustin McDaniel, to declare Arkansas’ death penalty system broken.

 

But unlike the earlier decisions, this stay came from a court that had shifted to the right in recent elections. Outside groups and the candidates spent more than $1.6 million last year on a pair of high court races that were among the most fiercely fought judicial campaigns in the state’s history. Arkansas was among a number of states where conservative groups spent millions on such efforts.

 

The candidates backed by the conservative groups won both races. One of those winners voted for Monday’s night stay.

 

“I have ultimate respect for the court and I’m not going to question individual decisions but I would say there is frustration among the Legislature as to the court’s continued refusal to allow an execution to go through,” said Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and is the nephew of the governor.

Little fallout for court

The three stays, along with one granted earlier, have whittled down the execution list to four, unless the U.S. Supreme Court allows Arkansas to move ahead with Stacey Johnson’s Thursday execution. Arkansas officials are trying to carry out the executions before their supply of midazolam, one of the execution drugs used, expires at the end of April.

 

It’s unclear whether the new execution obstacles would have any political fallout for the court. Only one of the seven justices is up for election next year, and judicial rules prevent candidates from announcing their bids until next month. Polling has shown strong support for the death penalty in Arkansas.

 

The judge facing re-election, Courtney Goodson, lost her bid for chief justice last year after conservative groups blanketed the state with ads attacking her. The groups accused her of being close to trial attorneys and for the court’s decision to strike down Arkansas’ voter ID law. None of the campaign material mentioned the death penalty.

 

But while Goodson voted to stay the three executions, so did the conservative-backed candidate who beat her in the chief justice race, Dan Kemp. Goodson had touted her commitment to conservative values, while Kemp said in a campaign ad he would be guided by “prayer, not politics.”

 

The other two justices who favored stopping the executions were Robin Wynne, who was touted as tough on child predators when he was elected in 2014, and Josephine Linker Hart, who ran as a “no-nonsense judge” in 2012.

 

The court had indicated earlier this year that it might view the death penalty more favorably, ruling to allow Arkansas to keep many details of its lethal injection drugs secret. The court also barred an anti-death penalty circuit judge from participation in cases or laws involving capital punishment, and lifted his order blocking the state from using a lethal injection drug in the planned executions. That issue is headed back to the court, with the state planning to appeal an identical restraining order from another judge regarding the state’s supply of the drug.

No explanations 

 

The court hasn’t explained its reasoning in any of its one-page stay-of-execution orders for the three inmates. Attorneys for Bruce Ward and Don Davis, who had faced lethal injection Monday night, said the executions should be put off until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on a pending case involving inmates’ access to independent mental health experts. Johnson’s attorneys have sought more DNA testing that they say could exonerate him.

 

One of the three dissenting judges issued a blistering criticism of Monday’s ruling sparing the first two condemned inmates.

 

“The families are entitled to closure and finality of the law,” wrote Justice Shawn Womack, a former Republican legislator whose rival last year was also targeted by conservative groups. “It is inconceivable that this court, with the facts and the law well established, stays these executions over speculation that the (U.S.) Supreme Court might change the law.”

 

Another justice objecting to the rulings, Rhonda Wood, wrote in a dissent that Wednesday’s stay “gives uncertainty to any case ever truly being final in the Arkansas Supreme Court.”
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