3 Stories You Should Read 3/26/2019: Healthcare Debate, Gerrymandering, Lissa Yellowbird-Chase
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In the category of: It’s always been a given.
Donald Trump just made sure health care will decide the 2020 election
Just 24 hours removed from arguably his best day as President, Donald Trump picked a political fight he cannot win.
In the category of: Manipulating the electoral map .
North Carolina GOP Bragged About Gerrymandering. It Still May Not Be Enough To Convince SCOTUS.
The Supreme Court is set to take another look at partisan gerrymandering after avoiding doing anything about the issue for decades.
In 2016, North Carolina Republicans got caught.
It was seven months before the presidential election, and a panel of three federal judges ruled GOP lawmakers had illegally diluted the black vote by packing African American voters in two congressional districts. They told the lawmakers, who had a super-majority in the state legislature, to come up with a new map in just two weeks.
State Rep. David Lewis (R), one of the chairs of the redistricting committee, openly acknowledged at the time that Republicans were trying to use political data to maximize their partisan advantage. “I propose we draw a map to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and three Democrats because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats,” Lewis said during a legislative meeting. Republicans implemented a new map that did just that. (Lawyers representing Lewis now say the comment was meant to be a joke.)
In the category of: Missing and endangered.
The amateur sleuth who searched for a body – and found one
A car wreck found at the bottom of a lake brought the search for a missing young mother to an end. But why was it a volunteer team behind the discovery, and not the police?
On a blazing hot day in late July, Lissa Yellowbird-Chase drove her black SUV, license plate “SEARCH”, to a muddy landing on Lake Sakakawea. It was a remote entrance to the water on the northern edge of the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota – not much more than a rickety dock at the end of an uneven gravel road.
Hitched to the back of Yellowbird-Chase’s truck was a 14-foot boat with a half-broken motor and a set of fishing sonar. By her own admission, she was not a particularly skilled or experienced boater, nor an expert in sonar. But she had a plan.
Along with a couple of volunteers from her group, the Sahnish Scouts of North Dakota, they would motor along the shoreline of the bay, scanning the lakebed for anomalies, moving further and further away from the shore with each pass. They would keep going until Yellowbird-Chase satisfied the nagging feeling she’d had about this spot for months.
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