Today, Common Cause issued a new report examining how corrections industry influence, felony disenfranchisement and prison gerrymandering fuel mass incarceration and undermine democracy. Democracy Behind Bars looks at our broken criminal justice system and how it is manipulated for the benefit and profit of the prison industry. The report goes on to examine the work going on in the states to restore voting rights to citizens who have served their time and to curb mass criminalization and incarceration.

Except for one state legislative district, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Texas congressional and state legislative districts and overturned a lower court decision that the districts were racially discriminatory. The lower court in Abbott v. Perez had previously determined that the districts violated 14th Amendment equal protection and the Voting Rights Act. Common Cause filed an amicus brief on behalf of the plaintiff-appellees in this case.

The Rucho v. Common Cause organizational plaintiffs include Common Cause and the North Carolina Democratic Party. Both organizations have members in every congressional district in North Carolina. Rucho v. Common Cause also has individual plaintiffs, including  at least one voter from each of North Carolina’s 13 congressional districts.

The U.S. Supreme Court released opinions in two partisan gerrymandering cases, remanding Gill v. Whitford and allowing Benisek v. Lamone to go to trial. The Campaign Legal Center litigated Gill and Mayer Brown litigated Benisek. The Supreme Court is now set up to review North Carolina’s partisan gerrymandering case, Rucho v. Common Cause and Rucho v. League of Women Voters of North Carolina, consolidated challenges to North Carolina’s congressional map that plaintiffs won in January.

The Inspector General’s report runs more than 500 pages but it clearly states that the investigation “found no evidence that the conclusions by Department prosecutors were affected by bias or other improper considerations; rather, we concluded that they were based on the prosecutors’ assessment of the facts, the law, and past Department practice.” The report will continue to be cherrypicked by President Trump and his defenders in an attempt to undermine Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, the FBI, and the Justice Department itself. But we must not lose sight of the fact that the Mueller investigation has already led to 23 indictments and 5 guilty pleas. This is a real investigation into real crimes and it must be allowed to run its course.

Today, a federal judge issued a ruling approving the proposed $85.4 billion merger between AT&T and Time Warner. The approval allows one of the largest internet service providers to merge with one of the largest film and television studio companies creating an entity that will control the content and distribution of some of the most popular programming in the market.