April, 07 2016, 02:30pm EDT
Gerrymandering Shields Legislators from Thinking About All Constituents or the Common Good
North Carolina Legislators Protected from Public Backlash Over Anti-LGBT Discrimination Law
RALEIGH, N.C.
The North Carolina legislature last month held a one-day special session to pass House Bill 2, a controversial measure blocking the City of Charlotte's anti-discrimination ordinance that was designed to protect members of the LGBT community. The legislature's action has created a political firestorm, with a number of large companies condemning HB2 and PayPal announcing that it will no longer follow through on a plan to locate a global operations center in Charlotte because of the new law.
But while lawmakers face strong criticism over HB2, the reality is that the vast majority of them will likely suffer no consequences at the polls this fall over this or other legislation because of their gerrymandered districts.
Here are some facts:
- 90 percent of lawmakers that voted in favor of HB2 either face no opponent this fall or come from districts so heavily gerrymandered that they won their last election by more than 10 percentage points
- This problem is not new. Since 1992, nearly half of all North Carolina legislative races have had just one candidate on the ball.
- That trend continues in 2016, with 42 percent of all legislative candidates running unopposed this fall.
"Because of gerrymandering, millions of North Carolina voters will have no real opportunity to weigh in on the merits of HB2 or other legislation when they go to the polls this fall," said Dennis Burns, chairman of Common Cause North Carolina. "North Carolinians deserve a redistricting process that encourages competition in elections and allows citizens to hold their representatives accountable at the ballot box."
There has been a growing movement for redistricting reform in North Carolina:
- Last year, a bipartisan majority of NC House members sponsored House Bill 92, which would take redistricting authority out of the hands of partisan lawmakers and give it to nonpartisan legislative staff. However, that proposal has not been given a vote in the legislatur
- In the past year, over 240 local elected officials from 128 towns and cities across North Carolina have signed a petition calling for redistricting reform.
- A majority of North Carolina voters support independent redistricting, according to a February 2016 survey from Public Policy Polling.
- Both Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, and his challenger in this year's election, Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper, have spoken out against gerrymandering.
For more information about the national battleground North Carolina has become on a range of democracy reform issues, contact Bryan Warner, Communications Director at Common Cause North Carolina 919-836-0027.
Common Cause is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization dedicated to upholding the core values of American democracy. We work to create open, honest, and accountable government that serves the public interest; promote equal rights, opportunity, and representation for all; and empower all people to make their voices heard in the political process.
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Undeterred by Threats, Khanna Tells Musk to 'Testify, Under Oath, About What He Did' to USAID
"Someone confident he did nothing wrong shows up and clears his name," Khanna said. "Elon Musk is doing the opposite because he genuinely believes the law does not apply to him."
Jun 23, 2026
In the face of lawsuit threats from the richest man in the world, Rep. Ro Khanna on Monday renewed his call for Elon Musk to testify before Congress and defend his dramatic cuts to foreign aid against the claim that they are killing millions of children.
Earlier this week, Musk threatened to sue Khanna (D-Calif.) for defamation and said he “should be in prison” after the congressman said that the trillionaire’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had “possibly sentenced” 4.5 million children “to death” through its dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) last year at the start of the second Trump administration.
Khanna's assertion was based on the findings of a July 2025 Lancet study, which found that DOGE's cancellation of roughly 83% of the programs run by USAID—including 88% cuts to child health aid, 87% cuts to epidemic and disease surveillance, and 94% cuts to family planning assistance—could result in the deaths of 14 million people by 2030, including 4.5 million children under five.
"That number is not mine," Khanna explained in a Substack post on Monday. "It comes straight from the first comprehensive analysis of its kind into what American foreign aid actually does. Over the past two decades, The Lancet found USAID-funded programs helped prevent more than 91 million deaths, 30 million of them children."
While at the time Musk boasted that he was "feeding USAID into the wood chipper," he claimed on Tuesday that all DOGE actually did was "require... contact information of the recipients to confirm that funding was not fraudulent. No validated medical funding was stopped."
He added that "anything that appeared to be legitimate lifesaving funding continued and is now administered by the State Department."
This is broadly not true. While some funds were restored, according to an April 2025 analysis by KFF, about 80% of USAID identifiable global health awards—including ones for polio vaccination, HIV treatment, malaria, and tuberculosis prevention—were still listed as terminated after the review.
In another video posted Tuesday, Musk claimed that when organizations requested that their lifesaving aid be restored, he rebuffed them because they refused to let him personally speak with the children whom they serve. This, he claimed, was evidence of an "enormous amount of fraud and graft."
Khanna said on Monday that if Musk's actions were truly harmless as he claims, he "should sit before the House Oversight Committee," of which the congressman is a member, and "testify, under oath, about what he did."
He said Musk's belligerent response to being called to testify was damning.
"He could have shown up and made his case. He could have argued the study was wrong. Instead, he called me 'an evil liar.'" Khanna said. "When that did not work, he reached for something uglier. He announced he would sue me. He called for my arrest. He said I belong in prison."
"The richest man in human history answered a request to testify by trying to put the person who asked behind bars. Someone confident he did nothing wrong shows up and clears his name," Khanna continued. "Elon Musk is doing the opposite because he genuinely believes the law does not apply to him."
The congressman accused Musk of attempting to use his wealth, and the threat of "years of litigation, paid for by the deepest pockets on the planet," to scare him "into silence."
"It won’t," Khanna said.
"Here is my answer to Elon Musk. I have already challenged him to a televised debate on the rule of law," he said. "Come testify before the Oversight Committee and answer under oath, the way every other person who has held this kind of power has had to."
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'No Immunity for Big Oil': Dem Leaders Urged to Block GOP Gift to Fossil Fuel Industry
"If we do not also protect Americans’ right to hold bad actors accountable in court, we will be handing Big Oil a get-out-of-jail-free card," said a coalition of over 190 civil society groups.
Jun 23, 2026
Nearly 200 civil society groups on Tuesday urged congressional Democrats to reject any legislation granting fossil fuel companies immunity from climate lawsuits, warning that such protections would block communities from pursuing accountability and compensation for climate-related damages.
"As communities across the country are taking Big Oil companies to court for lying to the public about the climate harms of their products, we are alarmed by reports that the fossil fuel industry is trying to secure a legal liability waiver that would block communities from attempts to hold them accountable," the No Immunity for Big Oil coalition wrote in a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), and Democratic lawmakers in both chambers.
"The American Petroleum Institute—the largest oil and gas trade association in the country and a defendant in several climate accountability lawsuits—has announced that stopping 'abusive state climate lawsuits' against fossil fuel companies is a top priority for the industry this year," the letter continues.
"We’re urging you to protect our right to hold Big Oil accountable and reject any proposal that would shield fossil fuel companies from the legal and legislative efforts communities across the country are advancing to make polluters pay for the damage their climate lies and pollution [have] caused," added the groups, which include the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, Greenpeace USA, Union of Concerned Scientists, Center for Biological Diversity, and Amnesty International USA.
In April, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) introduced companion versions of the Stop Climate Shakedowns Act of 2026, which would “prohibit liability against those engaged in the mining, extraction, production, refinement, transportation, distribution, marketing, manufacture, or sale of energy for damages or injunctive or other relief from the use of their products, and for other purposes.”
Hageman's office explained at the time that the legislation aims “to protect American energy from leftist legal crusades punishing lawful activity."
At the state level, there has been a coordinated push by Republican-controlled legislatures to shield fossil fuel companies from climate-related lawsuits. Earlier this year, Utah became the first state to pass a law "all but shutting down communities’ ability to hold gas-emitting polluters responsible for harms caused by their bad actions," according to law professor and critic Wes Henricksen.
Numerous Republican-controlled state legislatures are following suit, with similar legislation in various stages of advancement.
An investigation published in April by ProPublica's Abrahm Lustgarten found that "most of these bills are part of a coordinated effort, orchestrated by a constellation of groups that share staff or have funding ties to the prominent conservative activist Leonard Leo, who is credited with placing conservative justices on the US Supreme Court."
"These groups have drafted state legislation, planned its dissemination, and engaged a well-connected lobbying firm to get them signed into law," Lustgarten wrote. "The effort is unfolding as courts are weighing more than 30 significant lawsuits by states, counties, and municipalities accusing fossil fuel companies of misrepresenting the risks their products posed to consumers and seeking to recoup the costs of disasters and other climate impacts like wildfire losses or coastal flooding that their products helped cause."
"A goal of the legislation is to block these cases from going forward and prevent new ones from being filed," he added.
Responding to an effort to establish a state program that could collect as much as $50 billion from fossil fuel companies responsible for climate-wrecking greenhouse gas emissions, New Jersey state Rep. Dawn Fantasia (R-24) asked Tuesday on social media, "Since when do we get to retroactively tax oil companies for decades of lawful, heavily-regulated activity?"
But that's precisely what the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement did, forcing tobacco companies pay states more than $200 billion to compensate for past public health and medical costs caused by smoking-related harms. Like Big Tobacco before it, the fossil fuel industry has been accused of downplaying and obscuring evidence of climate and health harms from its products while working to stymie regulation and skirt legal and financial accountability.
Sixteen Republican state attorneys general are also pushing a liability shield for Big Oil modeled on the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, legislation signed by former President George W. Bush that grants gun manufacturers and dealers legal immunity from civil litigation.
As the No Immunity for Big Oil letter notes:
The mounting threat of climate change is being felt first-hand by our communities as worsening floods, storms, and other extreme weather events leave destruction in their wake, saddling everyday Americans and local governments with skyrocketing costs to recover, respond, and adapt to the growing crisis. The record-breaking extreme weather events walloping our communities with increasing frequency and intensity are a result of fossil fuel pollution enabled for decades by Big Oil companies and their coordinated campaign of climate deception. Oil and gas companies have known for decades that their products posed “potentially catastrophic” risk to the climate—but instead of disclosing this knowledge, they chose to run a historic and ongoing campaign to deceive the public, protect their profits, and delay our transition to cleaner and cheaper energy.
"There are many ongoing fights to protect justice, democracy, and fundamental rights that demand your attention—and we thank you for fighting to keep our communities’ rights intact," the letter concludes. "If we do not also protect Americans’ right to hold bad actors accountable in court, we will be handing Big Oil a get-out-of-jail-free card."
The No Immunity for Big Oil coalition's letter comes as 10 Democratic state governors are also calling on congressional leaders to "reject federal legislation that would grant sweeping legal protections to fossil fuel companies and limit the authority of states and local governments to enforce their own laws."
“No industry should receive a blanket exemption from accountability under the law,” said Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. “States have the right to protect their residents, enforce their laws, and seek justice when communities are harmed."
"This proposal before Congress would undermine those principles and set a dangerous precedent by allowing one industry to avoid legal scrutiny," Pritzker added, referring to the Stop Climate Shakedowns Act. "I urge Congress to reject this proposal and stand with states, taxpayers, and the rule of law—not special protections for powerful corporations.”
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Over 800,000 Kids Thrown Off SNAP Since Passage of GOP's Big Ugly Bill: Analysis
"Millions losing SNAP, including children, is an emergency that Congress needs to fix now, before more people are hurt."
Jun 23, 2026
An analysis updated Monday by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that millions of people, including more than 800,000 children, have lost Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits since Republicans’ 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act took effect.
In total, CBPP estimates that "SNAP participation nationwide fell by more than 4 million people (10%) between the law’s July 2025 enactment and March 2026," with declines "especially pronounced" in Arizona, which has seen enrollment fall by more than 50%.
CBPP finds that, in 13 states with available data, 808,000 children have stopped receiving SNAP assistance since July, which it notes "accounts for nearly half of the 1.7-million-person decline among people of all ages in those states."
The number of people losing access to SNAP is projected to grow in the coming months given that the budget law's biggest changes to the program won't take effect until next year, writes CBPP.
"Starting in 2027, most states will have to pay between 5 and 15% of SNAP benefit costs, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars a year in many states," explains CBPP. "And the amount a state will have to pay will be based on current error rates, factoring in errors that states are making today."
These drastic funding changes "may incentivize states to take drastic measures to reduce their payment error rates quickly and cut program costs, even if it means delaying or improperly denying benefits to eligible people," the center adds.
Katie Bergh, senior policy analyst at CBPP, commented that the latest data shows that the changes made in the GOP budget law appear "to be driving far greater harm than many anticipated," as "states have raced to minimize their exposure to these massive new costs."
"Many people who remain eligible for SNAP on paper—including kids—are losing the benefits they need," Bergh emphasized. "Millions losing SNAP, including children, is an emergency that Congress needs to fix now, before more people are hurt."
Tahra Hoops, director of economic analysis at Chamber of Progress, described the GOP's SNAP cuts as "disastrous," with "kids losing much needed food assistance thanks to policies that are cruel and ineffective."
Hoops also provided historical context to the rapid drop in SNAP enrollment.
"The last time SNAP participation fell this sharply, this fast was after the 1996 welfare reform law," Hoops explained. "That cut took 2.2 million people off food assistance over 8 months. We are already seeing almost twice the damage and the unemployment rate has remained flat."
Policy analyst Michael Linden described the impact of the GOP's budget law on the SNAP program as "the Memorial Reflecting Pool of keeping kids from going hungry," a reference to President Donald Trump's calamitous attempted renovation of the iconic pool located near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.
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