People I care a whole lot about rely on SSRIs to make their lives work. I don’t know where I would be without SSRIs. Get your fucking hands and your crazy conspiracy theories out of our medicine cabinets.

This was exactly my thought when I heard that bullshit rationale from Alito et al. Glad to see Morris write it up.

I greatly prefer democracy rather than competitive authoritarianism. But since we're now in the latter, the smart thing is to act like it. More broadly, recognizing that we're in competitive authoritarianism and acting accordingly is our best (only?) chance of getting a full democracy again.

So weak and pathetic. For the love of God, please fight! At least pretend. GOP governors are just ramming through the map, why can't Virginia?

When was the last time a court invalidated a statewide election?

Preemptive capitulation to arbitrary and unequal application of the law is not noble, it is just surrender.

It is still likelier than not Dems will win by enough to take the House. But if they come up short by some single-digit number of seats and it was... all this... that made the difference, that's a pretty huge leap towards full-blown legitimacy crisis territory.

BREAKING: In a loss for Democrats, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled the congressional map voters approved last month to counter GOP gerrymanders cannot go into effect. The decision overturns the will of voters for technical reasons and gives Republicans a leg up for the 2026 midterms.

popular vote nullified www.nytimes.com/2026/05/08/u...

Q: After today's strikes, is the ceasefire with Iran still on? TRUMP: Yeah it is. They trifled with us today. We blew them away. If there's no ceasefire, you'll see one big glow coming out of Iran. They better sign an agreement fast.

Canvas appears to be down at UCLA now. Perhaps we shouldn't all rely on one private company.

Breaking: Tennessee Republicans pass new 9-0 gerrymander after SCOTUS destruction of Voting Rights Act eliminating state’s only majority-Black district & last Democratic seat. Splits Memphis, which is 63% Black, into 3 districts to disenfranchise Black voters. Quite literally a return to Jim Crow

No mention of race or racism in headline or post. Good choice of picture, though.

JUST NOW: Rep. Todd Warner walks into the house to strip majority Black Memphis or representation wearing a trump flag as a cape as Rep. Camper of Memphis looks on Video: www.instagram.com/reel/DYCuFmt...

Black-majority districts are being eliminated so White Republicans can control the House even as they get more unpopular. The racism and authoritarianism are two sides of the same coin here.

SCOOP: A confidential new CIA analysis delivered to policymakers this week concludes that Iran can survive the U.S. naval blockade for at least 3 to 4 months before facing more severe economic hardship, a finding that contradicts those hailing an imminent collapse 🧵

Microcosm of the horror of this post-Callais moment: the Mississippi House plans to hold its redistricting session in the Old Capitol where they seceded & instituted Jim Crow. They'll meet there aiming to erase Bennie Thompson's district — the one majority-Black district in a state that's ~40% Black

EXCLUSIVE: My latest story for @theatlantic.com : www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

"This is competitive authoritarianism." I wish more people would call out the blatant anti-democratic and racist agenda of the Trump presidency and stop pretending this stuff is just normal politics.

42,000 Louisianians voted absentee before Gov. Jeff Landry suspended primaries for the state’s six U.S. House races

I love the idea that you can just tell the chatbot to not "hallucinate" and that solves the problem. Granting the false premise that chatbots are sentient - does telling a human not to hallucinate ensure they don't hallucinate?

your software is not conscious, you absolute weirdo

Another piece of evidence that tech CEOs themselves are caught up in the collective delusion about "AI".

This is partisanship at its rawest. SCOTUS has clamped down on lower courts for rulings that could alter maps many *months* before an election—even when those maps have been judged illegal. Here, it's rushing to let the Louisiana GOP change a map *while an election is underway.*

The Supreme Court is anti-democratic and racist. They said it was too close to the midterms to challenge the Texas map back in December. Five months later they say it's perfectly fine for Republicans to change the maps now and dilute Black voters' power.

Courts had deemed Republican gerrymanders illegal in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Ohio several months before the 2022 elections. The Supreme Court and other courts let the GOP use those maps anyway, and it handed them the House. Now SCOTUS is doing the opposite thing for the same goal

These people are boldface liars. How many unlawful maps have been kept in place because of legal pretenses the Court drops suddenly? Alito and the five horsemen of our time are a national embarrassment to the legal profession.

The worst case fears about what vaccines/fluoridation/video games/social media are doing to our children are nowhere near as bad as stuff like this actually is

Anyone remember the Purcell doctrine, saying courts shouldn't change electoral districts too close to the election because it might cause confusion? Remember how SCOTUS applied it six months ago to say it was already too late to invalidate the Texas districts? Funny how that didn't happen in Callais

And this is why I keep teaching it.

This is true of the very far right, but I don't think it applies to the US right wing overall. Their racism is about maintaining White political and economic control and demographic majority. But they also believe in capitalism, a system in which laborers are free, at least formally.

EXCLUSIVE: Trump told Congress that the Iran war has “terminated” — an effort to justify not seeking authorization after the conflict reached a 60-day threshold.

A humorous artifact of the courts corruption. Barely anyone even mentions how obvious it is that the new and expanded “eve of election” doctrine doesn’t apply in this case since obviously it would hurt the gop.

the broad industry misrepresentation that we're a few weeks and another billion away from sentience is such a big part of all the confusion, bullshit, and backlash they're all so butthurt over

Too many liberals* think of the Supreme Court as a rights-expanding institution, based on the landmark cases of the 1940s-1970s. But that period was not typical! Far more often the SC has been an anti-democratic, anti-liberal, and racist institution. (*I'm guilty of this as well)

Am I missing something about the whole Graham Platner controversy? I feel like "having a Nazi tattoo" should be an obvious dealbreaker. I do not understand why the Dem Party is ignoring this and acting like it won't end up being a huge liability to back him, even if he can beat Collins.

I Spoke to KCRW’s Madeline Brand: “‘A hugely terrible opinion’: UCLA’s Rick Hasen on SCOTUS voting rights decision” electionlawblog.org?p=155762

So the Democratic Party is going to run a guy with a Nazi tattoo who praised a far-right antisemitic conspiracy podcaster. That's where we are not.

How democracies die

All hail Big Brother.

What do conservatives always say when liberals criticize a Supreme Court decision? "Get Congress to pass a law," right? That is EXACTLY what happened here. In 1982, Congress explicitly overruled a Court case that narrowly interpreted the VRA. Today, Sam Alito said, nope, we were right all along.

One of the most clarifying passages I've ever read on what "polarization" actually means in the U.S."

Prof. Richard Hasen: "All six Republican-appointed justices on the court signed onto Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion gutting what remained of the Voting Rights Act protections for minority voters, while pretending they were merely making technical tweaks to the act." slate.com/news-and-pol...

This is correct. There is no future of democratic self government in the US with an unreformed Supreme Court. The Court is riddled with corruption and abuses of power and rooting out that corruption is a sine qua non of civic democracy in the United States.

The Roberts Court has been pursuing the slower, more deliberate version of democratic backsliding. You can see the Supreme Court majority's annoyance with Trump's rapid, reckless version of democratic backsliding. The Roberts version prefers fig leafs and bad faith excuses, not smashing entirely.

BREAKING: Supreme Court rules 6-3 that Louisiana's map is an unconstitutional gerrymander. Majority by Alito rules that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, "properly construed," can provide a compelling reason for race-based redistricting, but that did not happen here.

It feels like every single day now there's at least one new way the Trump Administration is pushing us down the road to dictatorship. It's just relentless.

Dictator shit.

To be clear eyed about this: It's not just that this is the most anti-science crew ever to head the federal government. It's that they view both the people who produce science & those who think it ought to guide & constrain policy as their *enemies*, so destroying US science is a blow against them

This is competitive authoritarianism