I’m a broken record, but it’s facially insane that the SCOTUS’s position is that the interest of a political party—an entity with no special constitutional protection—in gerrymandering is more important than black people’s right to vote, which we have several constitutional amendments addressing

When Colbert is gone, I'll have no reason to watch anything on CBS.

BREAKING: Immigrants detained in the notorious Chicago apartment raid last fall have filed claims against the federal government for trauma, injuries and lost property. The 18 tenants, including children, are seeking $5 million each. www.propublica.org/article/chic...

Historian of abolition here, history tells us how we got here, to put it succinctly “John Brown was hanged for treason and Robert E. Lee was not.”

The Roberts court is, above all else, racist. They don’t like the reconstruction amendments and they don’t like the laws that enforced them. There is no legal, constitutional or separation of powers principle here. It’s just racism. joycevance.substack.com/p/heres-why-...

Without really trying Donovan: became Bob Dylan's archnemesis, helped write the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine," inspired hippies to smoke banana peels, helped form Led Zeppelin, inspired the greatest 30 minute+ jam in rock history and appeared in one of David Lynch's last films

If AOC is on one side & Cenk & Ryan Grim & Marge are on the other side it shouldn’t be difficult to figure out who’s speaking the truth & who’s a fucking Russian stooge asshole.

folks, the idea is out there. Virginia Democrats are talking about it. this could happen. gift link to the NYT: www.nytimes.com/2026/05/10/u...

www.latimes.com/california/s... This was a really well done history of the struggle for mass transit in Los Angeles I cannot be more excited that there’s a stop so close to my house

Breaking news: Indiana University plant microbiologist Roger Innes has been locked out of his laboratory by the school in response to a request by one of his federal funders. The move comes after Innes complained about the government’s prosecution of Chinese postdocs. https://scim.ag/4tsDqRr

This is similar to the advantage enjoyed by Fidesz in Hungary via their corruption of the electoral system which was large enough to make it not a democracy by every expert evaluation

“My ‘this is not a golden calf’ statement has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my statement.”

this is the closest I've ever come to actually suggesting a "one neat trick" suggestion for anything, but I'm so serious here. the Virginia Constitution gives the legislature the power to set retirement ages for judges "REGARDLESS OF THE TERM TO WHICH ELECTED OR APPOINTED." make it 54 right now.

We don't ordinarily publish posts at [checks watch] 8:51 PM on a Friday night, but state constitutional law expert Quinn @yeargain.bsky.social has an outside-the-box idea for reversing the VA Supreme Court that is very much worth taking seriously: Dems can simply lower the retirement age.

the fast food chain white castle is older than italian unification

the notion that there’s just no way to muscle actual popular mandates through these gosh darn legal details, while gop states treat their constitutions like a list of suggestions, has become a *choice* on the part of democrats at this point. it is too pathetic for words.

horrible. this country’s turn away from science based medicine in the name of “wellness” is killing children and will kill a lot more. www.propublica.org/article/more...

Louise Lucas thing geniunely pretty scary tbh. Like we’re well into competitive authoritarianism/hybrid regime territory now.

So the Feds did more to investigate VA workers who went to Alex Pretti memorial than those who killed him.

Visas revoked for journalistic outlet board members who criticized Trump allies. Very bad for First Amendment freedoms of the press & to speak truth to power. Fits alongside the attacks on Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, & tech researchers for their free speech. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/04/w...

Rachel Maddow is talking about Trump’s efforts “to get rid of the multiracial democracy that our Constitution is supposed to protect. It is a war on Black America. The fight to save it is looking like it’s going to be the fight of all of our lives.”

Alito is in every way intellectually inferior to Justice Jackson.

Roberts Court doing the judicial equivalent of “we can’t consider a Supreme Court nominee in January, it’s an election year” and “of course we’ll confirm a Supreme Court nominee in October of an election year when voting is already underway.” Deeply bad faith. Liars whose only principle is power.

ICE has been ratcheting up their presence in Bushwick & East NY in recent days. It is especially disturbing to see apparent coordination between NYPD & ICE. (1/2)

The conservative justices on the Supreme Court arguing that you can separate race and partisanship got me thinking about these maps. starkeycomics.com/2021/06/11/h...

A class at my kids’ school put up little statements about the good they want to do in the world and I was over the moon about this one - then I learned they meant to say “teach people in jail” which is also good!

you know they’re going to be at least 45 minutes late

I am not being hyperbolic. Our insistence on segregating our histories, in encapsulating the struggle for voting/civil rights as a Black struggle and not an American one, has helped bring us to this moment. We did not have representative democracy until 1965. W/o the VRA, it is unlikely to survive.

Very fun to imagine Elon Musk, about to take the witness stand, confidently thinking to himself “I’ll use my epic sense of humour* to win them over” *he thinks it with that spelling

One thing to understand about the shadow docket is that it's a deliberate "fuck you" to literally everything and everyone who isn't in the majority of the Supreme Court. The rule of law, the American people, and especially to the lower courts whose work is summarily reversed without explanation.

Idk man, I think the journalists who have been traumatized the most were not sitting in that room tonight. The feds gassed the shit out of us, knocked us over, sent in the local PD to harass, detain, and hurt us, shot a teenaged photographer in the face and he lost an eye, and that's just in LA

my kids have been doing active shooter drills since the second they entered school. cable news talking heads are like, from a different planet. shut the fuck up

If you like what happened in Virginia, you’re gonna love DC statehood

it's not immediately visible in the US unless you are in DC, where practically everybody is—at maximum—one degree of separation away from someone who got DOGEd

Still feel like "Musk and his crew of incels destroyed a bunch of stuff they didn't understand and thereby hastened the deaths of millions of children" did not get the public attention it warranted.

NEW: Pope Leo XIV told the world’s press today that the Catholic Church’s moral imagination has long been too narrowed to sexual ethics — and that war, migration, and human dignity are the “much greater, more important issues” of our time.

if you are "healthy" — which appears to be a function of race, class and the purity of your body, as defined by what you eat and drink — then you cannot be truly sick and you do not need modern medicine.

I ask a friend in VA why it was close and she said it was a combination of a lot of misinformation (she received three mailers this week saying Obama says to vote no) and the yes campaign had terrible messaging to combat the good messaging no had.

After many hot takes, Yes won early vote 57%-43% Basically what the modeling was showing No won Election Day, but not by enough Early vote analysis showed it would be close election and has its place At the same time, impossible to use early vote to predict exact outcome

It's impolite to call these people "Nazis" but that is Nazi talk and the President and his party stand behind this guy, they love him, they agree.

Starting a mid-decade redistricting war only to end up with -1 seats is the same fine strategic genius and subtle grasp of game theory that brough us the Strait of Hormuz.

how it feels to say "sprezzatura"

Cf. the Bezos Post, "Republicans gerrymandering in Texas is fine, actually" b/w "Democrats gerrymandering in Virginia is a threat to democracy"

Suck it you fucking clowns

I have opposed gerrymandering every single time it has come up. It’s a perversion of the political process. I voted Yes in this election without hesitation. Unilateral disarmament is unacceptable.

The implicit media consensus is that urban voters should not be able to overrule rural voters, but that rural voters should be able to overrule urban voters, an assumption so axiomatic and unquestionable that nobody even understands they're making it.

I would submit that a gerrymander by politicians saying fuck the voters and one by voters saying fuck the politicians are two wholly different animals

Congratulations, Virginia! Republicans are trying to tilt the midterm elections in their favor, but they haven’t done it yet. Thanks for showing us what it looks like to stand up for our democracy and fight back.

as it becomes clear that Yes has won in VA and gerrymandering will pass, a message to Republican voters: you brought this on yourselves you convinced the most fairness-obsessed, That Wouldn’t Be Fair-minded voters in the country to affirmatively vote to put you in the dumpster you earned this