Joyce Vance was U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. I’m grateful to her for sharing her views on today’s shameful and dishonest Supreme Court decision kneecapping Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, in which Samuel Alito pretends he’s not nullifying Section 2 while doing exactly that. It’s a bad day for American democracy.
Friends,
Today, with all six Republican appointees in favor and all three Democratic appointees opposed, the Supreme Court in Louisiana v. Callais significantly weakened the Voting Rights Act.
In striking down a Louisiana voting map as a racial gerrymander, the court opened the door for other states to redraw their maps in ways that dilute the votes of minority voters.
But Justice Alito — writing for himself and the five other Republican appointees on the court — did this by sleight of hand. Rather than directly strike down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race, Alito weakened Section 2 so much he renders it almost toothless.
Until today’s decision, an assessment of whether a state violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act would begin with a simple question: Is a minority group sufficiently large and compact to form a single member district where they would have a fair chance of electing their candidate of choice?
Now, according to the test announced by Alito, plaintiffs get that chance only if a random computer model would give them that opportunity.
This is totally contrary to the history of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which Congress amended in 1982 specifically to respond to an earlier Supreme Court decision (City of Mobile v. Bolden) in which the court said plaintiffs had to prove discriminatory intent. Congress responded by saying that if a redistricting plan results in vote dilution — that is, has that effect — plaintiffs have proven their case.
Today Alito says that the court must reject that 1982 law to avoid a clash with the 14th and 15th Amendments. Rubbish. The ratifiers of those amendments engaged in race-conscious legislation to protect former slaves. Everyone understood that those amendments permitted race consciousness in order to reverse America’s horrible history of slavery — which still has repercussions today.
Rather than be faithful to Congress’s effects test, Alito revives the intentional discrimination test:
In short, §2 imposes liability only when the evidence supports a strong inference that the State intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race.
This effectively guts Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. It will end what has been the most successful way Black and other minority voters have gotten fair representation in Congress, in state legislatures, and in local bodies. It will make all our legislative bodies whiter. It will significantly diminish protection for minority voters.
A Supreme Court so fundamentally hostile to the rights of minority voters places the court at odds with democracy itself.
From now on, favoring a party is viewed as a venerable tradition in districting. And when a state favors a party in a way that significantly dilutes the votes of minorities, it’s not a Section 2 violation unless minority voters would have been hurt without a redistricting plan that favors one party.
What does this mean for the 2026 elections? In many states, primaries are over, or nearly so. But the decision could affect places still redistricting for 2026, including, most importantly, Florida. It could also affect state and local elections, from school boards and city councils to state legislatures.
Its major effect will be in 2028.
Justice Kagan’s dissent is correct. She notes that the court is now bringing back the requirement that minority voters prove discriminatory intent — while denying it is doing so.
Alito knew precisely what he was doing today — making it seem as if he’s not gutting the Voting Rights Act through legal and technical gibberish, while turning it on its head.
Alito’s mission has long been to favor the white Republicans he seems to think he represents, rather than all Americans. His five Republican-appointed colleagues on the court appear to believe the same thing.
Shame on them.
Friends,
So many of you participated in last week’s Office Hours discussion about who should be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2028 that I think it will be useful to have your views about the “second tier” of candidates (second tier only in terms of national name recognition at this point).
Last week, I listed the top four potential Democratic candidates by current name recognition: Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttigieg, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Out of the 7,174 of you who voted on these four, only 6 percent chose Kamala Harris; 12 percent were for Gavin Newsom; 26 percent of you chose Pete Buttigieg; and 6 percent were for AOC.
The rest of you — 49 percent — wanted someone else.
So today we’re going to focus on the top “someone else” options in current polls: Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, and Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear. (That still leaves a “third tier” comprising California Congressman Ro Khanna, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and former congressman and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel — all of whom we’ll get to soon.)
Here’s a summary of the current second tier’s pros and cons.
Friends,
As much as he’d love to be, Trump is not king of America. Which makes Charles III’s visit here a bit odd. It’s billed as a state visit, but Charles isn’t a head of state; his function is purely symbolic.
Most Americans disapprove of Trump, but there’s something special about the relationship between the Brits and their Royal Family. For it is in fact their Royal Family — not just an archaic symbol of what remains of the British Empire but a living, breathing, soap opera of a family that in the minds of many Brits represents modern-day Britain.
To those who say it’s bizarre for one of the world’s major democracies of the 21st century to cling to the fiction of royalty — and it is indeed a fiction, because Charles III has no tangible political power — I say this: It’s a relatively harmless fiction and one that arguably meets the needs of people to gossip about, project upon, and vicariously live the lives of a storybook family that tries to be of service to their nation.
Here in America — at least before Trump — some of us romanticized our presidents and their families. Remember Camelot?
But because our presidents also run the executive branch of our government, the two roles — the projected glamor and the political reality — have often gotten confused, leaving us disappointed on both grounds.
After Camelot came Lyndon Johnson, who pulled up dogs by their ears. And then, eventually, Donald (“Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything”) Trump. You can’t get any further from a romanticized Camelot.
Britain’s government may seem drab and boring but is at least free to do its drab and boring best.
Here, we demand that our presidents and their spouses throw formal balls (Trump is trying to build the biggest ballroom anywhere) and state dinners, decorate the White House like a castle, appear in person at every major national anniversary or memorial or funeral, and always symbolize the nation.
I’m certainly not suggesting America should have a royal family. Count me in the “No Kings” camp.
It’s just that Britain’s infatuation with its own royalty may have some social utility there that we Yanks don’t fully understand. Keeping the trappings of royalty separate from the daily slog of governing makes some sense.
Friends,
His aides don’t trust his judgment, so they’ve excluded him from the war room. So, who’s in charge of his war with Iran?
He’s losing his marbles, friends. For the good of the nation and the world, it’s time we faced the reality that the head of the most powerful nation in the world can’t do the job. Congress should impeach and convict him as soon as possible — and get him out of the Oval Office.
Please see the following:
Friends,
You can be Secretary of Defense (War) and cause the mightiest military in the world to be brought to its knees, and still keep your job in the Trump regime.
You can be in charge of public health and cause measles to reemerge as a major hazard to Americans, and still keep your job.
You can be illegally enriching yourself and your family as Commerce Secretary, and still keep your job.
But you’ll be fired for actively and unnecessarily getting bad press.
A few days ago, a senior White House official told Politico that FBI director Kash Patel’s bad press was “not a good look for a Cabinet secretary” and had frustrated Trump. “It’s only a matter of time,” they said, before Patel is canned.
Like Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, and Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Patel has been his own worst press agent.
He filed a $250 million defamation claim against The Atlantic magazine over its April 17 report claiming that his FBI colleagues were alarmed by his excessive drinking and unexplained absences. The report included claims that his security detail struggled to rouse him due to intoxication several times in the past year and that he drank heavily at a private club in Washington. Bureau employees expressed concerns that his behavior posed a threat to public safety.
I doubt it’s Patel’s excessive drinking and absences that are making Trump upset; it’s that they’re being reported, and that Patel has made them even bigger stories by suing The Atlantic over them.
Last week, Patel added to the drinking story when he erupted at NBC’s Ryan Reilly, who asked Patel at a press conference whether, as The Atlantic also reported, he feared he had been fired when he was unable to log into his government computer.
“The problem with you and your baseless reporting is that is an absolute lie,” Patel shot back. “It was never said. It never happened. And I will serve in this administration as long as the president and the attorney general want me to do so.” Patel added, “You are off topic,” and “the answer to your question is you are lying.”
Worse yet, from Trump’s viewpoint, is that some of Patel’s drinking has been in the public eye. One video showed him drinking a beer, banging his fist on a table, and celebrating with the U.S. men’s hockey team at this year’s Winter Olympics in Italy.
Nothing gets Trump angrier than when one of his underlings is caught doing something stupid on videotape. After the video of Patel spread on social media, Trump called Patel to convey his discontent, Politico reported.
Soon after Patel sued The Atlantic, The New York Times reported that the FBI had been investigating Elizabeth Williamson. Williamson was the Times journalist who revealed that Patel had used a SWAT team to protect his country singer girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, when she was invited to sing the national anthem at the annual convention of the National Rifle Association. And that Patel had “ripped into” the SWAT team’s commander when the team left after it became apparent there was no threat to her.
It’s not that Patel misused government funds on his girlfriend. Or that Patel exploded at the FBI SWAT team’s commander. Or even that Patel ordered an investigation of the journalist who reported this. No, it’s that all of this became a national story — twice. Such self-generated negative press infuriates Trump.
The same day that the Times reported on the FBI’s investigation of Elizabeth Williamson, NBC reported that a federal judge in Texas had tossed out a defamation case brought by Patel against former FBI assistant director-turned-MSNBC contributor Frank Figliuzzi. Patel had brought the case over Figliuzzi’s remark on “Morning Joe” that Patel had been “been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of the Hoover building.”
More self-generated negative press: not that Patel has been doing the nightclub circuit and disregarding his job, but that he invited a story about it by suing Figliuzzi.
Similarly, it’s not that Patel has repeatedly wrongly accused people of federal crimes (announcing someone had been arrested for the murder of right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk when the real murderer hadn’t yet turned himself in, and that a person of interest had been detained in the Brown University shooting, only for that individual to be released hours later).
It’s that Patel’s wrong accusations were widely reported, making Patel — and, indirectly, Trump — look dumber than dirt.
Patel simply doesn’t know how to keep a low profile. Like so many others in the Trump regime, he made his name by promoting himself. As a frequent guest on right-wing programs before Trump appointed him FBI director, he pushed conspiracy theories about the “deep state,” the 2020 presidential election, and the January 6 Capitol attack.
But the occupant of the Oval Office doesn’t want his underlings engaging in self-promotion and vindictive lawsuits. If anyone’s going to be self-promotional and vindictive, Trump wants it to be himself.
Patel has been trying to win back Trump’s favor by escalating FBI investigations into Trump enemies. But so far, the investigations haven’t yielded adequate evidence to indict, another mark against him in Trump’s book.
A week ago Sunday, Patel promised that the Justice Department would soon make arrests related to the 2020 election, stating on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that “We’ve got all the information we need, we’re working with our prosecutors at the Department of Justice under [acting] Attorney General Todd Blanche, and we are going to be making arrests, and it’s coming, and I promise you, it’s coming soon.”
Patel’s plea was obviously directed at Trump.
I doubt it will work. Patel will soon be locked out of his computer for good.
Friends,
Frankly, I couldn’t think of anything even slightly humorous to draw for today’s Sunday caption contest. As Karla Von Huben put it in her comment about my post this morning about the White House Correspondents Dinner: “I suspect that most people are going to think this is fake, just like the ‘attack’ in Butler that resulted in no scar on his ear. I also think it’s going to backfire bigly. I’m just so sick of this lunatic I could scream. Or cry. Or throw things.”
Me, too.
So let’s resume the Sunday caption contest next week.
In the meantime, be well. Be safe. Hug your loved ones.
RR
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