Republicans Can’t Include Their Glee Over the Loss of life of the VRA

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I’ve spent many of the final 48 hours doomscrolling via folks’s reactions to the destruction of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court docket. The folks I observe most usually have break up into predictable camps. There are folks like me and Adam Serwer who’re making an attempt to place the court docket’s choice into the bigger context of the long-standing white hostility to Black voting rights and Black political energy. There are the parents like Ian Millhiser who’ve tried to elucidate the instant authorized results of the court docket’s unconscionable choice. The activist set is taking a while to digest what has occurred and plan for subsequent steps, with some vowing to “struggle” and in the end “win” in some style.

Predictable, too, has been the response from the appropriate. White supremacists and, to the extent there’s a distinction, Republicans have been giddy. I learn one notably risible piece of trash in Nationwide Overview crowing about how the Supreme Court docket’s choice will enable Republicans to gerrymander away Black political energy whereas stopping Democrats from restoring that energy. I feel that authorized evaluation is mistaken. However what struck me was not the stupidity of the argument however how glad they had been to make it.

That happiness, from whites, is one thing that many of the articles and analyses, together with mine, have didn’t seize sufficiently. It’s as distressing to me because the precise choice and the horrible outcomes that can outcome from it.

The Voting Rights Act was as soon as thought of a pillar of American democracy—a lot in order that it was prolonged and expanded in 1982 by President Ronald Reagan. It was reauthorized in 2006 by President George W. Bush, and that reauthorization handed the Senate 98–0. In simply 20 years, the VRA has gone from being such a mainstay of the democratic venture that even dyed-in-the-wool conservatives didn’t dare vote towards it to one thing that hardly hooded mouthbreathers at Nationwide Overview are glad to trash.

I don’t actually know learn how to course of that info. It’s not simply that we’re going again to a Jim Crow state of affairs—it’s that white individuals are glad about it. As if the 60 years of post-apartheid America that had been ushered in by the VRA had been simply an unlucky detour, and now white folks can get again to their most popular route.

Republicans at all times need you to consider that they’re not racist “of their hearts,” that they simply occur to favor a set of insurance policies that coincidentally end in inequality, oppression, and fewer alternative for non-white Individuals. However this response to the loss of life of the VRA proves they’re mendacity. They hate Black folks, they usually hate Black individuals who have political energy most of all.

And now, they’re glad to lastly have the ability to take that political energy away.

The Dangerous and the Ugly

A person named Cole Thomas Allen allegedly tried to assassinate Donald Trump on Saturday. Since Trump is just not an American elementary faculty pupil, folks appear to care.

The Supreme Court docket ruling gutting the Voting Rights Act got here proper earlier than the court docket heard oral arguments in Trump’s try to remove short-term protected standing from Haitian immigrants. The Republican supermajority appeared inclined to disregard Trump’s vile and racist statements and deal with him as a traditional president who’s allowed to do no matter he desires, which on this case appears to be to throw Haitians into the ocean.

Simply hours after the Supreme Court docket destroyed the VRA, Florida’s state legislature permitted Governor Ron DeSantis’s new congressional map, which ought to assist the GOP choose up 4 Home seats within the upcoming midterms. At this level, I’m simply ready for the Supreme Court docket to difficulty a 6–3 ruling that the South gained the Civil Struggle.

The Supreme Court docket additionally heard oral arguments on a case about whether or not police can use cell-phone knowledge to trace your location. The Republican justices appeared squeamish about giving the federal government this energy.

Minnesota handed a legislation requiring social-media firms to show a warning label concerning the psychological well being issues related to heavy social-media use. The state is now being sued, with tech teams calling the legislation a violation of their First Modification rights. I feel I’m ever so barely on the aspect of the tech-bro mafia right here. Warning labels are compelled speech and, particularly given the ruling junta on this nation, I don’t actually need the federal government compelling anyone to say something, despite the fact that I occur to agree with Minnesota’s compelled message on this explicit occasion.

Impressed Takes

I didn’t know what Flock Security cameras had been till I learn this piece in The Nation. Apparently, they’re a giant a part of the surveillance state, and apparently individuals are organizing towards them, with some cities flummoxing them by overlaying them with literal rubbish baggage. We dwell in wild instances.

For The Nation, Jeet Heer unpacks all of the lies Trump has been telling concerning the newest assassination try.

Worst Argument of the Week

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Former FBI director James Comey has been indicted for… seashells. Sure, after I first noticed this story I too thought it was made up and any person in my feed had gotten taken for a experience by The Onion. However that is, by some means, an actual factor that’s actually occurring.

On Could 25, 2025, Comey posted an image of seashells to his Instagram account. The shells had been organized to depict the numbers 8647. Or “86 47.” Or, because the FBI has now concluded, “86” (as in eliminate) “47” (as within the forty seventh president of the USA, Donald Trump).

Comey subsequently deleted the put up and apologized for the inference.

However now, the Division of Justice has indicted him for threatening the president and transmitting the risk throughout state strains.

I occur to know rather a lot about death-threat legislation (for lack of a greater time period) as a result of I get loss of life threats. A variety of them. Fewer now than after I did extra tv, however extra for the reason that assassination of Charlie Kirk. I don’t like to speak about these threats: The primary is terrifying, the second is a badge of honor, and the 397th is simply… pointless and miserable.

Each time I do deliver them as much as nonlawyers, I get certainly one of two responses: “Oh my God, go to the cops,” or “Oh my God, purchase a gun.” I’m not going to do the latter. I’m a Terminator-1,000 “knives and stabbing weapons” form of man. However I’ve additionally by no means finished the previous. That’s as a result of I’ve by no means acquired a “true” loss of life risk, simply the nebulous “I want you had been lifeless” loss of life risk, and I do know the authorized distinction.

For a loss of life risk to be criminally actionable, it needs to be a “true risk,” and that implies that it needs to be made in such a context {that a} cheap individual would take it as a critical intention to trigger hurt. Any individual who tweets “You need to be killed” isn’t displaying a critical intention to do the deed himself. Certainly, even any person who says “I’m going to kill you” is just not making a “true risk” towards me, absent further context. “I’m going to kill you on the retailer in Rockefeller Heart that you simply at all times cease by to get your children a gift once you’re on TV”—that will be a real risk, and that has, fortunately, by no means occurred to me. (However every thing I’m saying, please don’t threaten to kill me, true or not. I don’t prefer it.)

Within the Comey state of affairs, no cheap observer might take the seashells on the seashore as a real risk on Trump’s life. It’s preposterous to argue in any other case. As First Modification lawyer Ken White explains:

No minimally rational individual might presumably conclude, seeing James Comey’s beachside dad joke, that he was expressing a honest intent to hurt the President. No one might have a look at it and conclude that Comey meant to convey that message. In evaluating whether or not a risk is “true,” the trier of reality should think about the context. Right here the context is seashells. The context is the previous Director of the FBI, a lifetime member of legislation enforcement, who’s a widely known critic of the President and a goal of the President’s wrath, utilizing a campy mechanism to precise opposition to the President, utilizing slang for “ditch” or “eject” or “eliminate.” No rational individual might see that and say “the previous director of the FBI is saying he’s going to kill the President”!”

The indictment of James Comey is utter bullshit.

And I merely should level out that Trump confronted an precise true risk on his life this week. The tried shooter bought into the identical constructing along with his goal. He bought nearer than he ever ought to have. Would he have been capable of get that shut if the FBI had been specializing in the true threats to Trump as an alternative of this revenge witch hunt?

I’m positive the Trump folks hope that the true assassination try will make the general public suppose that there could be one thing to seashell-gate. However I feel public notion ought to minimize the opposite approach. Charging Comey makes it seem like the president’s safety is incompetent and looking out within the fully mistaken course.

What I Wrote

In Information Unrelated to the Present Chaos

Within the case I consult with as Particular person I’d Wish to See Punted Into the Solar v. Particular person I’d Wish to See Tied to the Backside of the Ocean (neither of these are true threats, by the best way, as I personal neither a rocket ship nor a submarine), Elon Musk took Sam Altman to court docket this week.

Their dispute is… heaven forgive me, however I don’t care. I’ll let Reuters clarify: “The world’s richest individual is suing OpenAI, its co-founder and Chief Govt Sam Altman and its President Greg Brockman, saying they betrayed him and the general public ‌by abandoning OpenAI’s mission to be a benevolent steward of AI for humanity, and reworking the nonprofit right into a profit-seeking juggernaut.”

Musk is a cofounder of OpenAI, and he’s suing Altman for fraud and breach of contract. He’s primarily making an attempt to cease OpenAI from being a for-profit enterprise and is, roughly, making an attempt to dismantle the corporate.

In fact, OpenAI is a problem to Musk’s personal AI-dream, Grok. Altman says Musk is motivated by jealousy and is simply making an attempt to eliminate a competitor.

To reply the authorized query most of you studying can have: No, there isn’t any approach for each of them to lose. The truth is, I think about the most definitely final result will contain each of them having the ability to declare “victory”: OpenAI may need to pay Musk some cash however will probably be allowed to proceed its enterprise. That will be my guess. When wealthy folks slap-fight in court docket, the same old final result is that some cash modifications arms after which enterprise proceeds as traditional.

As for the declare by some that this case will decide the “way forward for AI,” I refuse to just accept the concept that whether or not AI will probably be used for the general public good or the revenue motive will probably be resolved in a jury trial between two tech titans. No. That can’t be the story. We can’t act like we’re simply human collateral injury as Godzilla and King Kong battle for dominance.
The way forward for AI have to be resolved within the effectively of Congress, with laws and laws proposed by representatives we elect and order to rein in these beasts. These are small, petty males who occur to have some huge cash. We’re the folks. We have to be the stronger drive.

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