| | | | |  | | By Brakkton Booker | With help from Rishika Dugyala, Zach Montellaro and Teresa Wiltz
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The U.S. Supreme Court building on the day it was reported that Associate Justice Stephen Breyer would soon retire. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | What up Recast family! A federal judge in Georgia rejects a Justice Department plea deal for one of the men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery and federal officials continue to investigate bomb threats at several HBCUs. We kick things off with an examination of how the politics of race have overshadowed the president's upcoming Supreme Court nomination. Nothing ignites the party of a sitting president — while stoking equivalent levels of consternation for political opponents — like the pending selection of a Supreme Court nominee. But Biden's commitment to nominate a Black woman to the high court is adding another complicating layer to this courtroom drama. It's exposing not-so-veiled notions that his pick, whoever it ends up being, will be deemed less than qualified to take her seat on the bench — a bench that for most of its history was exclusively the province of white men. It's not just Republicans who are raising the alarm. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who will eventually vote on the nominee, told SuperTalk Mississippi Radio that Biden's selection is an example of "affirmative racial discrimination." "The irony is that the Supreme Court is at the very same time hearing cases about this sort of affirmative racial discrimination while adding someone who is the beneficiary of this sort of quota," Wicker said, referring to the Supreme Court's decision last month to hear arguments in a college affirmative action case.
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Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) arrives to a Senate Republican Policy Luncheon on Capitol Hill in January. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images | White House officials clapped back at this categorization, pointing out that Wicker was fine with former President Trump vowing to nominate a woman to the Supreme Court. "I have five granddaughters, the oldest one is 10. I think Justice Amy Coney Barrett will prove to be an inspiration to these five granddaughters and to my grown daughters also … " Wicker said from the Senate floor in Oct. 2020. Meanwhile, conservative legal scholar Ilya Shapiro offered an apology for his "poor choice of words" in a since-deleted tweet in which he argued Biden was selecting a "lesser Black woman." He was placed on administrative leave a day before he was to begin a position as a head of a research institute at Georgetown University. One-time Democratic presidential candidate and former congresswoman from Hawaii Tulsi Gabbard got in the mix, too.
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| Then there's the speculation gaining momentum on both social media and in Democratic circles, as my POLITICO colleague David Siders reported. The thinking, according to one Democratic consultant, would be a "two-fer jolt — Kamala [Harris] as Supreme Court justice and a new VP to bring in some excitement and change the narrative." The underlying message: Harris, the first female and first Black and Asian vice president, is at least partially to blame for the administration's stalled agenda. So why not cast her off to a lifetime appointment and get a fresh start with someone else? There's a flawed logic to this, since in that scenario, Biden would give up Harris' tie-breaking vote in the Senate and his new vice presidential nominee would have to be approved by a majority vote in the House and Senate, as outlined by the 25th Amendment. "She is certainly qualified to serve as a justice," said Deborah Archer, president of the ACLU and co-director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at NYU Law, speaking of Harris.
|  | Whoever Biden ends up nominating, it'll be the first time in the nation's history where there will be more than one Black perspective on the high court at the same time. "I think for many people it's important that the only perspective from Black people is not just that of Clarence Thomas," Archer said. Just two Black jurists have served on the Supreme Court — and never at the same time. Thomas was confirmed in 1991 after the retirement of Thurgood Marshall, who became the first Black Supreme Court justice in 1967. There's always been an unspoken notion that the nation just needs a single Black jurist on the court, said Verna L. Williams, who is dean of the University of Cincinnati College of Law. "I mean maybe that's part of the hue and cry: 'Oh, we had a Black seat and now you want to have two Black seats?'" said Williams, who is among just a handful of Black women who has argued a case before the Supreme Court, successfully arguing Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education in 1999. "Since 1991, there's never been another Black person qualified to serve on the court?" Williams said. "I doubt it very seriously."
Video: Why Biden's SCOTUS nominee may not be his biggest judicial win
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| While the ideological tilt of the court will not change with Biden's pick, adjusting to long-term change is difficult for many, according to Christina Swarns who is Black and argued Buck v. Davis before the Supreme Court in 2016. "The last 108 of 115 Supreme Court justices have looked one way," said Swarns, who is now executive director of the Innocence Project. "They have all been white men." "I think, more importantly, [what Biden's upcoming nomination] made clear to me as a lawyer as an advocate, that those opportunities are also available to me," Swarns added. "That those doors are not closed to me, that is an aspiration that I can reasonably hold [and] that my daughter can reasonably hold." As always, we'll be watching. All the best,
The Recast Team
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| Power dynamics are changing. With The Recast, you'll get a twice-weekly breakdown of how race and identity are the DNA of American politics and policy. Was this forwarded to you by a friend? Subscribe to the newsletter here.
| | | JOHN JAMES JUMPS IN
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Then-GOP Senate candidate John James speaks after dropping off his ballot in 2020. James announced Monday he will run for an open House seat in the Detroit area. | AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File | Republican John James hopes the third time will be the charm. After coming up short in successive Senate bids, James is seeking a House seat in Michigan's newly created 10th Congressional District. "I'm an open-minded, free-thinking conservative," he says in his campaign announcement video posted on Twitter Monday, while touting his credentials as an Iraq War veteran who runs his family's automotive logistics business.
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| His reentry was expected as POLITICO reported in December, as he was said to be a top recruit of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who would likely become speaker if Republicans reclaim the majority in the fall. James enters the race with high name recognition from his two previous statewide campaigns. James challenged Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D) in 2018. While he ran what many thought was a successful campaign for a relative newcomer, he lost by roughly 6 percentage points. He fared better two years later in his attempt to topple incumbent Sen. Gary Peters (D), but lost that bid by less than 2 percentage points. As the Detroit Free Press points out, James had the endorsement of then-President Trump for each of his Senate runs. And he took a playbook from the former president, making unsubstantiated claims about voting discrepancies as he sought to delay certification of the vote in his race. It's unclear whether Trump will endorse James in his latest race for a congressional seat.
| | | THE PREVIEW Millions of Americans have been convicted of a felony. And when they get their right to vote restored, if they ever do, is left up to a complicated patchwork of laws that varies by state and often is the source of confusion for voters and local election officials. My colleague Zach Montellaro breaks down what this means for the midterms in a piece running Wednesday in POLITICO's The Fifty. He highlights how felons-turned-activists like Justin Allen are pushing for more uniformity in laws restoring voting rights. Here's a first look:
|  | Despite state victories, federal action has been elusive. And after a January stumble in Washington, 2022 will determine whether the movement still has momentum as it faces key tests in Allen's home state of New Mexico, in Virginia — the hottest political battleground of 2021 — and elsewhere. Advocates' hopes for a sweeping federal restoration of rights were dashed when Democrats' voting rights megabill went down in the Senate in January. The bill would have been revolutionary for advocates, because it it would have presented one national standard: A person's right to vote cannot be "denied or abridged because that individual has been convicted of a criminal offense unless such individual is serving a felony sentence in a correctional institution or facility at the time of the election."
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Supporters of restoring Florida felons' voting rights march to an early voting precinct in October 2020 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. | AP Photo/Marta Lavandier | Outside of D.C., there's been more success on the state level. In 21 states, people convicted of felonies automatically regain the right to vote upon their release from prison, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures . That number has steadily ticked up in recent years, including 2021 victories in Washington, Connecticut and New York. "We're in the middle of a movement on this issue," said Henal Patel, director of the democracy and justice program at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, which helped lead her state's successful push for reenfranchisement in 2020. "We are in a wildly different place than where we were in 2005, even 2010."
| | | THE TIME CAPSULE On this day in 1865, John S. Rock became the first Black man admitted to practice law before the U.S. Supreme Court. It came about a day after the passage of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude. (Rock was born free.) Rock, an accomplished academic who was a dentist, doctor and eventually a lawyer — all before the age of 30 — was one of most sought-after abolitionists of his day.
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| After Rock was allowed to practice law before the high court, the Boston Journal wrote : "The slave power, which achieved its constitutional death-blow yesterday in Congress, writhes this morning on account of the admission of a colored lawyer, John S. Rock of Boston, as a member of the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States." Unfortunately, Rock never got to argue a case before the Supreme Court. and was unable to fulfill his great promise. Already in declining health, he died of tuberculosis the following year. | | | ICYMI @ POLITICO
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Rep. Val Demings, pictured, and Cheri Beasley have both drawn notice for managing to clear their Senate primary fields of heavyweight competition. | Mandel Ngan-Pool/Getty Images | Two Black Democratic women are defying the political odds in their closely watched Senate races this year. POLITICO's Maya King breaks down how Florida's Val Demings and North Carolina's Cheri Beasley have cleared the field of major competition — and are raking in the cash. At least six HBCUs were notified of potential bombs in and around their campuses on Monday, marking the second time in less than a month predominantly Black college and universities received such a threat, reports POLITICO's Bianca Quilantan.
| | | THE RECAST RECOMMENDS A judge overseeing the federal murder trial of the three white men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery has rejected a plea deal sought by one of the defendants. Arbery's family objected to the plea as his mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, explained to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Granting these men their preferred conditions of confinement will defeat me," Cooper-Jones told U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood, according to the paper. "It gives them one last chance to spit in my face after murdering my son." A big week for The Washington Football Team: On Wednesday, leaders will announce its new name; and on Thursday, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform will hear testimony about the alleged toxic workplace culture of the storied franchise.
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| National Geographic has a new podcas t following Black scuba divers as they hunt for slave shipwrecks around the world. At the turn of the 20th century, a constable in Downieville, Calif., made it his mission to track the Chinese residents of his town, taking their pictures and documenting their lives in grim detail. In book news, the ever-prolific Isabel Allende has a new novel, "Violeta." And Neda Toloui-Semnani, the daughter of Iranian immigrants, has a memoir about her parents' decision to leave the U.S. to help foment revolution in their homeland. As she details in "They Said They Wanted Revolution: A Memoir of My Parents," things didn't go as planned. Rauw Alejandro is having a moment.
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| We're big fans of NPR's Tiny Desk (Home) Concert series, and we're big fans of singer/songwriter Amber Mark. So we're geeked to see she's today's feature.
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| Two TikToks today, in honor of the Lunar New Year and the first day of Black History Month. First, this cute father-daughter pairing.
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| Second, some high expectations for Feb. 1.
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