Good Morning.
I hope that you are enjoying this weekend with family and friends.
How we survived should be studiedđđđ
Good Morning.
I hope that you are enjoying this weekend with family and friends.
How we survived should be studiedđđđ
From Democracy Docket:
Democrats must gerrymander to save democracy
By Marc Elias
May 2, 2026
This was an awful week.
For years, we have been watching a slow chipping away of voting rights in our country. This is not only because of a conservative Supreme Court. It is part of a well-funded plan by Republicans to change voting rules to ensure they can win and hold power even as they grow more unpopular.
Extreme gerrymandering and mid-cycle redistricting were not Trumpâs first tactic to rig the midterms, and it wonât be his last. It is, however, likely to set off a cascade of more extreme measures.
That is because redistricting is, in nearly every respect, a zero-sum game. When you remove a guardrail, the consequences are immediate and trigger others. A state can change a voting law that disproportionately affects one party or the other. But with redistricting, the effects are immediate and run entirely in one partyâs favor.
The only way to stop it is through effective deterrence or reform.
Last July, shortly after Donald Trump first pressured Texas to redraw its congressional map to add five more Republican seats, I advocated for the former. Democrats, I argued publicly, should respond by gerrymandering 15 to 20 seats in states they controlled. I later increased that number to 30.
Republicans made clear they would not be deterred by Democrats simply matching them seat for seat. The only way to stop them was to make clear that Democrats will go further than they will â and mean it.
In recent months, Democrats have done exactly that. The decision to redraw the Virginia map to flip four seats from red to blue was a game changer. For the first time, it put Republicans in the position of playing catch-up. As Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries put it, âwe are in an era of maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time.â
It has been working. Pundits started writing that Democrats might benefit from the back and forth. A handful of Republicans began discussing a national ban on gerrymandering.
Then, on Wednesday, came the Supreme Courtâs decision in Louisiana v. Callais. In an instant, everything changed.
One of my favorite sayings about politics is borrowed from economist RĂŒdiger Dornbusch: âThings take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could.â
We are clearly now in the âfaster than you thoughtâ phase. The race to gerrymander is accelerating at a dizzying pace.
Just in the last few days, more than a half-dozen states have indicated an intention to redraw their congressional lines to disempower minority voters in order to gain Republican seats. This number is sure to grow.
I have already announced that my law firm will sue any state that tries to use this decision to trample on the legal or constitutional rights of its citizens. Indeed, we have already filed lawsuits and new legal briefs in existing cases to do just that.
But here is the truth: while we will do everything possible to stave this off for 2026, that will become increasingly difficult for 2028 and 2030. By the time states are required to redraw maps after the 2030 census, I fear the entire redistricting process will be near collapse.
Continue reading
50% of Black voters in the United States live in the South.
50%
Roughly 25 million people.
And, this decision, by the Worst Court Since Taney, would leave them, possibly, without any Representation in Congress.
Mother Jones
@MotherJones
âWe could see the largest drop in Black representation since the end of Reconstruction. We could lose a third of the Congressional Black Caucus.â
https://x.com/MotherJones/status/2050606264258879555?s=20Mike Young
@micyoung75
A third of the Congressional Black Caucus.That is Ari Berman’s projection of the potential cost of the Callais ruling – and Berman has covered VRA litigation longer than most people in this conversation. His expectation: every southern state redraws its districts. The Alito ruling makes the legal path to do it without triggering a Section 2 challenge dramatically clearer.
The historical parallel Pema Levy draws is specific. From 1865 to 1965, redistricting was one of the primary tools used to eliminate Black political power without mentioning race explicitly. Section 2 was the federal answer to that century of race-neutral disenfranchisement. Callais reopened the toolbox.
The CBC currently has 58 members. A third is roughly 19 seats. Those are real people, real districts, real constituents who elected them. If Berman’s projection holds, Black voters in the South will have less congressional representation after the 2026 midterms than they had before the maps ordered under earlier VRA enforcement were drawn.
That is what this ruling costs. Attach a number to it.
https://x.com/micyoung75/status/2051021726541050363?s=20
This is why this decision can’t be anything but personal to Black people in the South.
Mavis Amundson
âȘ@mavisja.bsky.socialâŹ
Follow
Will Bunch, gift post Inquirer
SCOTUS gutting 1965 Voting Rights Act is a wake-up call from a dream share.inquirer.com/WNSbDz
Will Bunch, gift post InquirerSCOTUS gutting 1965 Voting Rights Act is a wake-up call from a dream share.inquirer.com/WNSbDz
— Mavis Amundson (@mavisja.bsky.social) 2026-04-30T20:21:00.900Z
Will Bunch, at the Philadelphia Inquirer:
⊠The great Joan Didionâs most famous observation was that we tell ourselves stories in order to live. I canât understate how central the 1965 Voting Rights Act has been to the story that my generation of boomers told ourselves about believing in the American dream.
The narrative that took someone like John Lewis out from under those police batons in Selma and into the corridors of Congress, and that peaked with Barack Obamaâs once unthinkable election as Americaâs first Black president in 2008, seemed proof positive of another famous MLK maxim: that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
Late Wednesday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court â with three of its six-member conservative majority appointed by a racist president who routinely calls Black and brown members of Congress âlow IQâ â grabbed that moral arc and twisted so hard that it broke.
Its 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais â destined to join Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Korematsu v. United States in the SCOTUS hall of shame â struck down a Louisiana congressional map that created a new Black-voter majority district. The majority opinion by conservative firebrand Samuel Alito tried to argue that they were saving the 1965 VRA by destroying it, that political maps like the ones that currently have 23 Black House members from the former Confederacy are essentially racist â because they discriminate against white peopleâŠ
Legal scholars will no doubt study and debate for many years to come how the nationâs highest court came to view the legislative high point of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement as meaning the exact opposite of what Lyndon B. Johnson and that eraâs lawmakers thought they were enacting. But the political and psychic fallout is already here.
Across the Deep South, news of the ruling was like a starterâs gun for a race to the bottom among GOP-dominated state legislatures to redraw majority-Black congressional districts into oblivion before the November midterm electionâŠ
The practical fallout is bad, and so is the damage to Americaâs psyche. The Voting Rights Act felt to our generation like an unbreakable granite monument to progress, tied to real gains for Black people and other racial or ethnic minorities, not only on Capitol Hill but everywhere from office cubicles to TV sitcoms. As recently as 2006, a GOP-led Senate reauthorized the VRA by a 98-0 vote, then signed by George W. Bush. The endless cycle of slavery and freedom, Jim Crow and civil rights, had finally been broken, and we werenât going back.
Until we didâŠ
It seems now that the faux granite of the Voting Rights Act wasnât as durable as the white supremacy embedded in the red clay under Sumter County and so much of the rest of America. Every action toward a more diverse and more democratic nation â especially Obamaâs election in 2008 â triggered an equal and opposite reaction.
Dreams can be beautiful, but they arenât reality. Even though the alarm was set years ago, Wednesdayâs Supreme Court ruling was still a piercing wake-up call for anyone who wants the United States to ever fulfill its promise of democracy. If the Voting Rights Act didnât save America, we need even more revolutionary action this time around.
If a corrupt and broken Supreme Court insists on playing partisan politics, then we need partisan politicians to bring them to heel. Expand the court to 13 justices, impose term limits, and investigate and impeach any justices who broke the laws about gifts or anything else.
Radical steps? You bet, but the alternative is allowing a kangaroo court to finish the job of dismantling the American Experiment, of turning a dream that became a lie into something worse. We canât bend the arc of the moral universe until we grab it back from the people who stole it.
Jamison Foser
âȘ@jamisonfoser.bsky.socialâŹ
John Lewis had John Roberts’ number from the jump: takebackthecourt.substack.com/p/john-lewis…

Good morning.
Hope that you are enjoying this weekend with family and friends.
From The Establishment Bar:
Some thoughts on the SCOTUS VRA ruling
Posted by Liberal Librarian
April 30, 2026
Yesterday, our vaunted Supreme Court of these very United States gutted the Voting Rights Act even more. It seems to be a fondness that the six “conservative” justices have to dismantle this country’s greatest achievement in civil rights.
The usual suspectsâthe ones who have all the smoke for the Democratic Party but none for the party actually committing the malfeasanceâare wailing and gnashing their teeth, declaring this is the end of the VRA and of democracy as we know it. These people would not have survived the civil rights marches, or the Second World War, or the Great Depression. I do agree with the man-children on the right: we’ve become coddled, used to instant gratification, unwilling to put in the work required to maintain democracy. (The irony, of course, is that those rightists are even more coddled and living in privilege.) People echo John Lewis about getting into “good trouble,” but absolutely do not comprehend the sacrifices that would entail.
But I wish to return to the idea that this ruling is the “end of democracy.” First, it isn’t. But more importantly: What democracy?
I would argue that until 1965, this country was, at best, a partial democracy. Yes, there were elections. Yes, power alternated between Democrats and Republicans. But can you call a country “democratic” if in an entire region an entire population was unable to vote? Can you call a country a “democracy,” as I would guess many of us define it, if large segments of those living in the country were second-class citizens? Can you call a country a “democracy” if for a large portion of its history it enslaved a captive population, and committed genocide against its native inhabitants?
Of course you can. And that is what was so epochal about the Voting Rights Act. For the first time in law, it was stated that, ideally, this was not a republic for white people only. That all citizens had the most fundamental right of citizenship: the franchise. That it could not be withheld by law or custom. It was a watershed moment in American history.
Before 1965, America was a partial democracy. It was a democracy which subjugated people at home and abroad. It was a democracy which placed 120,000 of its citizens of Japanese descent into concentration camps. It was a democracy in which its Supreme Court declared segregation legal. The idea that we have had two hundred and fifty years of wondrous democracy is simply farcical. Even most white men weren’t able to vote until the Jackson reforms of the 1820s because they were not property owners.
But look at this history. It is a history of slow, aching progress. It is a history of the expansion of what it means to be an American. It is a history of people struggling for, and many times dying for, rights which should have been theirs from birth. It is a history of people who would not give up, who would not accept “no” as an answer.
…………………………………………
The democracy we’ve taken for granted has existed for only sixty years. Do we meekly succumb, twirl a forelock, and bow to our betters? My parents didn’t flee to this country to be anyone’s serf, or for their sons to serve anyone. It’s time for white people to realize that they are as much being pushed into serfdom as anyone. And by that point it won’t matter what your pretensions about being superior to “those people” are. You’ll be right there with them.The Voting Rights Act wasn’t “Black history.” It was a monumental achievement of American history. Its ghettoization has allowed this ruling. But rights which can be taken from some can be taken from all. The majority of this nation needs to grok this, and the sooner the better.
Decision was 6-3.
Those who didn’t vote right in 2016 – this is what you brought us.
JIM CROW 2.0
JIM CROW 2.0
VoteHub
@VoteHub
LANDMARK DECISION â The Supreme Court has narrowed Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act with their decision in Louisiana v. Callais, opening the door to sweeping redistricting changes across the South that could erase up to 10 majority-Black seats and flip them from blue to red.
9:12 AM · Apr 29, 2026
From Reuters:
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday undermined a key provision of the Voting Rights Act â raising the bar for racial minorities to challenge electoral maps as racially discriminatory under the landmark civil rights law â in a victory for Louisiana Republicans and âPresident Donald Trumpâs administration.
The justices, in a 6-3 ruling powered by the courtâs conservative members, upheld a lower courtâs decision blocking an electoral map that had given the state a second Black-majority congressional district.
The âlower court had found that the map was guided too much by racial considerations in violation of the constitutional promise of equal protection under the law.
The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority. The ruling was authored by Justice Samuel Alito and joined by his five fellow conservative justices. The three liberal justices dissented.
The Louisiana case involved a central element of the Voting Rights Act. The lawâs Section 2 was enacted by Congress to prohibit electoral maps that would result in diluting the clout of minority voters, even without direct proof of racist intent.
Alito wrote that the âfocus of Section 2 must now be to enforce the Constitutionâs prohibition on intentional racial discrimination under the 15th Amendment.âOnly when understood this way does (Section 2) of the Voting Rights Act properly fit within Congressâs Fifteenth Amendment âenforcement power,â Alito wrote.
Interpreting Section 2 to âoutlaw a map solely because it fails to provide a sufficient number of majority-minority districts would create a right that the Amendment does â not protect,â Alito added.
Legal analysts said before the ruling was issued that a decision undercutting Section 2 could benefit Republican candidates.
How the SCOTUS VRA Decision Could Impact the Midterms and Beyond
by Khaya Himmelman
04.29.26 | 11:55 am
In a major blow to the Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision in a case known as Louisiana v. Callais, struck down Louisianaâs second Black-majority congressional district, ruling that the map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
The decision does not strike down the Voting rights Act altogether, but will limit the use of consideration of race in future maps, and, as experts explained to TPM, will impact the fate of the Trump administrationâs broader gerrymandering blitz.
âIt is hard to overstate what an earthquake this will be for American politics,â legal scholar and UCLA law professor Rick Hasen wrote in a post for Election Law Blog.
Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, called Wednesdayâs decision a âdevastating setback in the long fight for equality in political representation for all Americans.â
The case began in 2022 after a group of Black voters sued the state, arguing that a new post-2020 census map diluted the vote of the districtâs Black voters and violated Section 2 of the VRA. In response, a federal court asked the Louisiana legislature to adopt a new congressional map with two Black-majority districts.
In another federal lawsuit, a group of white voters then challenged this new 2024 map, arguing that the map was unconstitutional and a racial gerrymander in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. A panel of judges ruled in favor of the white voters, causing plaintiffs from the earlier case to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.
As explained in a report from Issue One, this decision could impact maps in several states and throw a wrench in the overall impact of Trumpâs until-now floundering redistricting war. Georgia, Missouri, and Florida, for example, might now hypothetically redraw maps, eliminating or changing majority-Black districts, and potentially flipping Democratic seats to the GOP.
Some Republicans are already jumping on this decision as an opportunity to call for new maps for the midterm elections.
âI urge our state legislature to reconvene to redistrict another Republican seat in Memphis. Itâs essential to cement @realDonaldTrumpâs agenda and the Golden Age of America,â Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), wrote in a post on X. âIâve vowed to keep Tennessee a red state, and as Governor, Iâll do everything I can to make this map a reality.â
Kyle Kondik, managing editor for the University of Virginiaâs Sabatoâs Crystal Ball, told TPM that this decision means that the redistricting battle of 2025 and 2026 will continue into the next cycle, and may force some states to redraw their maps.
philip lewis
@Phil_Lewis_
NAACP President Derrick Johnson statement on SCOTUS’s Louisiana v. Callais ruling:

KennyMack1971
âȘ@kennymack1971.bsky.socialâŹ
This is why as far as Iâm concerned leftists across the board but particularly White leftists can get fucked and stay fucked. Theyâve been treating our rights like a game for years and now here we are.This is why as far as Iâm concerned leftists across the board but particularly White leftists can get fucked and stay fucked. Theyâve been treating our rights like a game for years and now here we are.
— KennyMack1971 (@kennymack1971.bsky.social) 2026-04-29T15:33:01.668Z
MsKitty
âȘ@michelec64.bsky.socialâŹ
That’s what particularly breaks my heart. All the elders still here who fought, marched, and risked their lives, knowing that they’re gonna leave this world with all the work they did completely undone.
10:57 AM · Apr 29, 2026
https://bsky.app/profile/michelec64.bsky.social/post/3mknho4fxes2r
We told you this.
The moment that they went after Roe and struck it down, we told you that birth control was next.
So…are we ‘ hysterical’.
That’s what we’ve been called.
From Politico:
Trump Is Going After Birth Control. Hereâs Why.
By Mary Ziegler
04/25/2026 10:00 AM EDT
We are entering a startling new era in the politics of birth control, with President Donald Trump launching the most serious effort in decades to curb contraception.
The Department of Health and Human Services recently released new guidance that outlines a major overhaul of federal family planning programs â prioritizing childbirth over contraception, and privileging ânatural family planning,â like period-tracking apps, over far more effective methods, like the birth control pill. The Trump administration is also poised to establish new regulations that would end further funding for Planned Parenthood chapters.
Millions of Americans who receive federally-backed family planning services are likely to feel the impact of such a policy shift. And there is real political risk as well. Birth control remains overwhelmingly popular in the United States: Only 8 percent of Americans say using contraception is morally wrong, according to Pew Research Center polling. (More Americans object to drinking alcohol, getting a divorce or being extremely rich).
Given widespread support for birth control, itâs no surprise that politicians have long been reluctant to zero in on it. So, whatâs changed?
The unwieldy political coalition that sent Trump back to the White House in 2024 is clamoring for action. For different reasons, an alliance of MAHA adherents, social conservatives and pronatalists are eager to go after birth control. With Trump sinking in the polls and his coalition fracturing, he may want to deliver for his core supporters. But regardless of whether he succeeds, the administrationâs move signals a major transformation in Americaâs culture war: Contraception has gone from being politically untouchable to a real target on the right.
A bit of history underscores just how significant this shift is.
In 1960, the Food and Drug Administration approved the birth control pill, and a broad consensus in support of birth control quickly took hold. Nearly a century after moral crusaders had introduced the first laws criminalizing the use, mailing or sale of birth control, millions of Americans began using the pill.
At the same time, as sexual mores changed, opposing contraception became a liability for an emerging anti-abortion movement. These activists claimed to champion the civil rights of the unborn. If they also targeted birth control, they opened themselves up to the argument that they were really trying to control women or police sex. The result: For years, opposing birth control outright was something of a political third rail, even after Congress passed Title X in 1970 to provide free or low-cost contraceptives to low-income patients.
Social conservatives did mount indirect attacks on contraception in the 1980s and 1990s. Some Republicans called for the repeal of Title X because it poured money into the coffers of groups like Planned Parenthood that also offered abortion. The Reagan administration argued that parents had rights to limit teenagersâ access to birth control.
When conservatives directly attacked the idea of contraception, though, they paid a price. That was a central lesson of Robert Borkâs failed 1987 Supreme Court nomination. A hero to the Federalist Society, Bork was widely expected to be confirmed and ultimately cast the deciding vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. But when he testified before Congress at his confirmation hearing, Bork condemned Supreme Court decisions recognizing a right to birth control. The backlash, led by a Delaware senator named Joe Biden, sank the nomination.
When the Press Becomes The Story
Posted by Proud Establishment Dem
April 27, 2026
This past Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner brought together two of the most hated entities in America: Donald Trump and the press.
Over the past decade, these two have committed themselves to the most toxic of relationships. Donald Trump treats the press like shit. The press takes it, thanks him for it, and then asks him for another. They willingly endure the abuse in the name of pageviews and clicks. They admire how “accessible” he is in that he answers questions they shout at him from across the room. They love how he “tells it as it is” and doesn’t censor himself with any sort of political correctness. His social media posts have become hourly news stories, giving the press nonstop articles to write at all hours of the day. He is the antithesis of Joe Biden and Barack Obama. He’s not afraid to call out those he feels wronged by. He frequently insults and shames the women journalists. He is the most vile and uncouth man to ever occupy the Oval Office and sees the press as undermining him at every turn. Our press knows this and yet remains committed to covering him in a way that normalizes the unprecedented criminality and corruption that his administration brings. When history books are written, the press will rightly be seen as a willing accomplice to all the death and destruction that 21st-century Republicans brought onto the world.
So what happened on Saturday evening should not have surprised anyone.
Sure, we didn’t have a “crazed gunman forcing his way into the hotel” on our bingo cards. But truth be told, we all knew *something* newsworthy would happen at the event. Most of us expected it to be in the form of Trump berating the press. After all, everything Donald Trump or his handlers do is done in a way to maximize the monopoly they have over the media in this country. Trump doesn’t decide to finally host the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (something every other president since Calvin Coolidge has done) unless he anticipates making news. In this regard, that news would have likely been a fiery speech where he tells a room of journalists to their face that they are worthless and failures at their profession. And, as we’ve seen over the past decade, the journalists being reprimanded would have taken it all in and thanked Dear Leader for his honest evaluation of their performance.
But instead of this spectacle, we had another. A rush of Secret Service into the event. Vance and Trump (in that order) being whisked away. Armed officers onstage, peering into the distance. Those in the room realizing that this was no drill and cowering under tables, frantically using their phones to try and figure out what was going on. It may have felt longer, but the chaos quickly ended after only a few minutes. Despite Donald Trump wanting the show to go on (for want of recreating his Butler, Pennsylvania moment), cooler heads prevailed, and the event was postponed. Meanwhile, Trump refused to let the attack be about anyone other than himself and scheduled an evening address where his solution to gun violence in America was to *checks notes* build his beloved ballroom. Because even during a time when countless people were traumatized, Donald Trump simply refuses to have a single empathetic bone in his body. That’s who he has always been and will always be.
Perhaps most telling has been the aftermath of the event. Trump and his sycophants continue to push for his magical ballroom. Democrats naturally are being asked if their anti-Trump rhetoric is somehow to blame for the actions of a single deranged individual. Like all of these events in the Trump era, we have to wait to learn of the race and immigration status of the alleged shooter before seeing who or what will be blamed for this single individual’s actions. But most concerning of all is that we now have a legitimate question as to how this happened: was this a false-flag attack to gin up support for Trump, or was this a severe security lapse that should never have happened?
The MSM pretended that the Democrats who brought it up were hysterical.
They were exaggerating.
After all, Donald Trump said that he had nothing to do with Project 2025.
Even though his former staff were all over it.
Then, he got elected, and what did we get?
Project 2025.
Muthaphuckas acting like this was brand new, instead of being a 900 page manual, open for all to see.
And, THAT is why people like me don’t pay the
” I didn’t vote for this” Whiners any mind.
YES. YOU. DID. VOTE. FOR. ALL. OF. THIS.
Because, IT WAS ALL SPELLED OUT IN PROJECT 2025.
Well, they are back.
PortiaMcGonagal
âȘ@portiamcgonagal.bsky.socialâŹ
Hoo boy. The Heritage Foundation’s next #Project2025. 1/Buckle up, women.
âSaving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years,â
truthout.org/articles/her…
PortiaMcGonagal
âȘ@portiamcgonagal.bsky.socialâŹ
2/
As much as so many warned about Project2025, here we are, so let’s not let any grass grow or dismiss their seriousness about this:
PortiaMcGonagal
âȘ@portiamcgonagal.bsky.socialâŹ
3/
Silly me, because this sounds like state family planning policy, something that was once anathema to conservatives.
PortiaMcGonagal
âȘ@portiamcgonagal.bsky.socialâŹ
4/
There’s another angle in aggressive anti-immigrant policy undertaken by this regime. Deport child care workers, jobs that are filled in large part by immigrants, thus making it harder to find childcare = women stay home under their mythical math.
9:55 AM · Apr 24, 2026PortiaMcGonagal
âȘ@portiamcgonagal.bsky.socialâŹ
5/
“Immigrants comprise approximately 20 percent of the paid child care workforce as employees of day care centers, after-school programs, or as nannies in an employerâs home or home-based day care centers.”Defunding other programs like Head Start is another tactic.
9:55 AM · Apr 24, 2026PortiaMcGonagal
âȘ@portiamcgonagal.bsky.socialâŹ
6/
Of course, all of this is predicated on their narrow definition of “family” (straight and married) and ignores the reality of modern families. Emphasis on modern which they hate. They want a Ward and June Cleaver “reality” which was always only for a subset of people.
9:55 AM · Apr 24, 2026PortiaMcGonagal
âȘ@portiamcgonagal.bsky.socialâŹ
7/7
Connect the dots for the “don’t do politics” people because politics will for sure do them.
9:55 AM · Apr 24, 2026
https://bsky.app/profile/portiamcgonagal.bsky.social/post/3mkartohzsd2a