Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance
This post started out as an update on what we know about Pete Hegseth’s order to strike boats allegedly being used for drug smuggling in the Caribbean. Then, this morning, without warning, as these things happen, the Department of Defense’s Inspector General released the report on Signalgate. More bad news for Hegseth. (Although I haven’t read the full report yet, I have read parts of it, and I’ve given you some preliminary thoughts on what happened here.) It seemed like we would have a nice, neat post for tonight about developments at DoD.
Of course, that’s not how things happen these days. By the end of the day, there was also news that a Virginia grand jury had declined to indict—again after the original indictment was dismissed by a judge because Trump’s appointee Lindsey Halligan wasn’t properly in office—New York Attorney General Letitia James. Then came news the Supreme Court had ruled in the Trump administration’s favor on redistricting in Texas.
If you’re already exhausted two paragraphs into tonight’s post, don’t be too hard on yourself. It has been another one of those days. This post is long—I apologize for that—but it’s written in four parts, so you can read it in digestible chunks. But don’t skip the last one!
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Signalgate Inspector General’s Report:
The IG’s Report is out on Signalgate, the 2025 incident where a group of senior Trump administration officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President J.D. Vance, discussed sensitive U.S. military strike plans against Yemen in an unapproved Signal group chat, a conversation that was revealed to the public after the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently added to the group. The incident raised concerns about the use of commercial messaging apps for government communications and the potential for leaks of classified information.
Here’s the executive summary of sorts that’s at the top of the report:
The bottom line is that sending information about the Yemen strike through Signal put troops at risk. That should be a full stop right there. It would have been in any other administration. But this president was willing to accept that behavior and keep his Secretary of Defense in place. That Secretary shared classified information on his personal phone (it’s weak sauce to claim he has classification authority so all should be forgiven. Even if Hegseth could declassify it, sending information out in this fashion with American troops’ lives at risk is the height of bad judgment, and there was no legitimate reason to do so).
Moreover, Hegseth did not turnover his phone to the IG and wasn’t cooperative with the investigation. He provided a statement, but he didn’t sit for an interview. None of this is what Americans are entitled to expect from a public servant or what a president should demand of his appointees.
Hegseth claims the IG’s report exonerated him, sort of like Trump claimed the Mueller Report exonerated him. That didn’t happen in either case. The IG’s report says the Secretary used his personal cell phone to send classified information about a strike to people who didn’t all need to see it and, most damning, that he put service members in harm’s way when he did it. It’s clear that he was on base at the time, that he had plenty of secure means of communication. But he chose not to use them.
Let’s underscore it: Hegseth didn’t let the IG see his phone. He was never interviewed; he provided a written statement. The whole matter came to light because Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic, the journalist who was mistakenly added to the chat, alerted us after the danger to troops had passed. He was in the group chat and had the tea.
Inspectors General tend to be at least mildly restrained in their reports, and this one is no exception. But there’s plenty to read into it. An exoneration is not one of the choices. Hegseth endangered troops, violated the Federal Records Act and DoD rules, and was less than helpful and candid in how he responded to the investigation. In any other administration, he would be gone already and we wouldn’t have to consider the ongoing saga of his involvement in the attacks on boats he claims are engaged in narcoterrorism.
Admiral Bradley’s Defense of the Attack:
Admiral Frank M. Bradley was on the Hill today, trying to explain the September 2 military strike that has come into question. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday night that Bradley concluded that the survivors of the first strike on the boat were trying to continue a drug run, which made them legitimate targets.
Rep. Jim Himes, the top House Intelligence Committee Democrat said after his briefing with the Admiral that “What I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service.” He continued, “You have two individuals in clear distress, without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel, who are killed by the United States.”
Democratic Senator Jack Reed released this statement: “I am deeply disturbed by what I saw this morning. The Department of Defense has no choice but to release the complete, unedited footage of the September 2nd strike, as the President has agreed to do. This briefing confirmed my worst fears about the nature of the Trump Administration’s military activities, and demonstrates exactly why the Senate Armed Services Committee has repeatedly requested – and been denied – fundamental information, documents, and facts about this operation. This must and will be the only beginning of our investigation into this incident.”
It is clear that this is not going away.
Hegseth is not apologetic for the attacks he has been sanctioning. Nor is he backing down. Tonight, Southern Command posted video of another lethal attack on a boat. Also, don’t forget Hegseth posted this after concerns about his conduct came to light:
He has brazenly embraced the illegitimate title “Secretary of War.” This is exactly why the Senate should have declined to confirm Hegseth in the first place.
And also today…
A Virginia grand jury declined to re-indict New York Attorney General Letitia James today. We don’t know many details. Grand jury proceedings are, of course, secret. But after bringing in ringers, the pros from Dover, prosecutors from Missouri who were willing to indict the case, the grand jury balked, at least for today. There are reports prosecutors may try to indict the case again.
We don’t know if the reports mean the grand jury formally voted and didn’t indict or if they asked for clarification or to hear more evidence from before they vote. What we do know is that this almost never happens. The evidentiary standard prosecutors have to meet to convince a jury to indict is a very modest one: probable cause to believe a crime was committed and the defendant was involved.
The AP characterized what happened like this, “But grand jurors rejected prosecutors’ request to bring charges,” and suggested they intended to try again. But prosecutors can’t force the grand jury to do anything, let alone indict, if they don’t choose to.
If prosecutors do succeed in reindicting James, expect a full court press on claims of selective and vindictive prosecution. In the meantime, there has been no concrete indication that there is an effort to reindict Jim Comey, whose prosecution is more than likely time-barred by an expired statute of limitations.
James’ attorney, Abbe Lowell, issued the following statement:
“The grand jury’s refusal to re-indict Attorney General James is a decisive rejection of a case that should never have existed in the first place. A federal court threw this case out after President Trump illegally installed a U.S. Attorney to file baseless charges against Attorney General James that career prosecutors refused to bring. This should be the end of this case. If they continue, undeterred by a court ruling and a grand jury’s rejection of the charges, it will be a shocking assault on the rule of law and a devastating blow to the integrity of our justice system.”
The Supreme Court Weighs In
The Supreme Court, considering a motion asking it to stay a three-judge panel’s decision that prohibited Texas from using newly drawn electoral maps in what the plaintiffs alleged was an illegal racial gerrymander, agreed to enter the stay in a win for the Trump administration. The decision will permit Texas to go ahead with its new maps. Three-judge panels are a stand in for the district courts in these cases. Appeals go directly to the Supreme Court from the panel.
We know that under Rucho v. Common Cause, the Court has already signed off on political gerrymanders. It will let states do anything they want in that area. But the plaintiffs alleged the state engaged in an illegal racial gerrymander after receiving a letter from DOJ demanding that it do so. The panel agreed and entered a stay to keep the state from using the new maps while the case proceeded through the courts. That led to the appeal of the stay (yes, this is a shadow docket order) and the Supreme Court’s decision today, siding with the state of Texas and permitting the new maps to go into effect.
The Supreme Court says Texas is likely to win. In their view, the lower court got it wrong, and Texas can show irreparable harm if it isn’t able to discriminate against voters. Go figure. The Court majority that adopted the stay even asserted in their opinion that the “equities and public interest favor” letting Texas use the new maps it drew, in a conceded effort to add as many as five new Republican seats to Congress in the midterm elections.
The majority also resorted to using the Purcell principle, which says states shouldn’t change the rules too close to an election. That doesn’t make much sense here, where it’s the state of Texas that wants to change the maps and abandon the existing ones that have been used in the last two elections and that the plaintiffs advocate for: “‘This Court has repeatedly emphasized that lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election.’ … The District Court violated that rule here. The District Court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections.” It seems like it was the legislature that did that though, not the plaintiffs, and not the three-judge panel that ruled in their favor.
Justice Alito writes a concurrence, which is joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch. “The dissent does not dispute—because it is indisputable—that the impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California) was partisan advantage pure and simple” is his opener.
Yes, I understand that this is the law under Rucho. It still doesn’t make it any less shocking to me that a Supreme Court Justice would write it so approvingly, as though it isn’t a fundamental attack on democracy to permit the sort of maneuvering that lets politicians choose their voters instead of letting voters elect their representatives, simply because this Court decided it wasn’t willing to get its hands dirty in the political process.
It’s Justice Kagan’s dissent, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson, that is worth reading here. Everyone understands, going into the case, that Texas’ Republican Governor, Greg Abbott, is trying to carry out Donald Trump’s redistricting demands and deliver additional Republican seats in the House with the new maps. Justice Kagan puts the issue before the Court like this, “Did Texas accomplish its partisan objectives by means of a racial gerrymander?” She reminds us that “PresidentTrump and his political team urged Texas officials to re-draw their House map, with the goal of creating more Republican seats and protecting that party’s vulnerable majority.” Political gerrymanders may be alright according to the Court, but racial ones aren’t. They still violate the Constitution.
Justice Kagan explains that the three-judge panel, which conducted a painstaking nine-day trial and took three months to consider the issues, concluded that it was racially motivated. “Texas largely divided its citizens along racial lines to create its new pro-Republican House map, in violation of the Constitution’s Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments,” the panel wrote. Kagan explains, “this Court reverses that judgment based on its perusal, over a holiday weekend, of a cold paper record. We are a higher court than the District Court, but we are not a better one when it comes to making such a fact-based decision.” She characterizes the impact of the majority’s decision like this:
“Texas may run next year’s elections with a map the District Court found to have violated all our oft-repeated strictures about the use of race in districting.”
“Today’s order disrespects the work of a District Court that did everything one could ask to carry out its charge—that put aside every consideration except getting the issue before it right.”
“And today’s order disserves the millions of Texans whom the District Court found were assigned to their new districts based on their race.”
On the issue of whether the gerrymander was “merely” political in nature, or delved into the prohibited territory of being racial, Justice Kagan extensively reviews the evidence before concluding, “The desire for more Republican seats no doubt motivated the redistricting project: It was, as this Court has said, the officials’ ‘end goal.’ … But the district lines drawn resulted predominantly ‘from the intentional manipulation of the districts’ racial makeup.’ … Race provided the excuse for the partisan effort. And yet more critically, race provided the key means of implementing it.”
Justice Kagan’s dissent drips with disdain—in a polite, professional way, which makes it all the more compelling. Discussing the Rucho rule that permits political gerrymanders, she comments that it was handed down in what she labels “those innocent days … when partisan gerrymanders seemed undemocratic or at least unsavory, rather than a mark of political conviction or loyalty.” Now, Justice Alito writes about them with seeming approval.
Justice Kagan finishes with a discussion of the “so-called Purcell principle.” She writes, “courts deciding whether to enjoin an election rule or map in the lead-up to an election must consider, among other relevant equitable factors, potential for causing ‘voter confusion.’ … It is an important caution.” Then she points out that the three-judge panel considered it carefully. She makes the following points:
Texas is not on “the eve of an election,”—there is still a year on the clock, and the 2021 map, which the panel reinstated, is the map that was already in use. In other words, they weren’t making a change that warranted use of the Purcell principle. Using a map people are used to wouldn’t be disruptive for voters.
The plaintiffs and the panel both acted as quickly as possible here. Justice Kagan explains the conundrum elegantly, “If Purcell prevents such a ruling, it gives every State the opportunity to hold an unlawful election. The District Court, once again aptly, made the point: Were judicial re-view so broadly foreclosed, then to implement even a ‘blatantly unconstitutional map,’ the ‘Legislature would need only to pass’ it on a schedule like this one.” She concludes, “That cannot be the law—except of course that today it is.”
There is no reason for the Supreme Court to use a stay to permit unconstitutional maps to be used in the midterm elections in Texas and yet, as Justice Kagan puts it so eloquently, that’s exactly what they’ve done. And worse still, using Purcell, they’ve given other states a roadmap for doing the same thing.
The fight for voting rights, the fight to hold free and fair elections, continues to be one of the most essential issues we face. Voter turnout will be an essential component of it—turnout in numbers high enough to beat gerrymanders like the ones now approved in Texas. It will be the will of the voters that ultimately can override the will of the Court. But it will take hard work from all of us.
We’re in this together,
Joyce
