It's almost like it was all part of an a-factual ideological project!

I don't know why but the framing of this post from TNR is very funny to me

Aay fuck em up @kevintmorris.bsky.social

even the creme de la creme of the conservative intelligentsia are sleazy liars who misrepresent sources like some gamergate youtuber if a conservative cites a source you can be 100% certain its been cherry-picked, discredited, decontextualized, or embellished

It’s telling that Alabama took 14 years to implement Brown (you MUST desegregate) and < 14 days to implement Callais (you CAN eliminate Black districts if you call them Democratic, but you don’t HAVE to).

I'm back on this race v party thing after reading Alito's opinion closely. Not only is his political THEORY shoddy -- race and party are co-constitutive -- but so is his political HISTORY. The idea that INTRA-Dem Party fights from the 20th C were different from INTER-party fights today is wrong!

In his opinion gutting the Voting Rights Act, Justice Alito cited misleading data to claim the racial turnout gap has closed. In fact, it has “exploded” over the last 15 years — thanks to the Supreme Court, says @kevintmorris.bsky.social.

Watch Alito try to call Brennan using the language of the statute AND the report of the drafters' intention somehow out of step with originalism. Like bro. What could be more in line with the STATED objectives of originalism?

I am constitutionally incapable of listening to my own voice, but! If you want to hear me scream all about the VRA, how we got here, and what it means, check out my conversation with the Davids on @the-downballot.com:

Then see Roberts in Rucho, 120 years later. The saddest! "The fact that such gerrymandering is incompatible with democratic principles does not mean that the solution lies with the federal judiciary."

Good piece from @samrlevine.bsky.social and crew at @theguardian.com this morning. The more we dig into the "statistics," the more the reasoning falls apart.

I'll go one further than this excellent post: The US Supreme Court ruled in Rucho that the court could not devise a statistical measure to detect partisan gerrymandering. Why do we need a mathematical formula when politicians proudly proclaim they're gerrymandering?

A very Strength In Numbers-coded article today: It looks like Republican Supreme Court justices made a very rudimentary, but willful, statistical error in their effective invalidating of the VRA in the Callais decision. www.gelliottmorris.com/p/2026-05-08...

“HANDS OFF MEMPHIS!” Protestors & Democratic legislators leave the scene of the crime arm in arm, after Tennessee Republicans broke the law to strip Memphis of representation with a racist 9-0 map, drowning out the majority Black city with white power. @GovBillLee

This headline from Justice Roberts and the red banner of what Tennessee just did to Memphis after the SCOTUS gutted the Voting Rights Act..

It's a cousin to the kind of superficial analysis embraced in 1883 in Pace v. Alabama: as long as the penalties are the same for both Black and white individuals who engage in interracial intimacy, there's no reason to question the supremacist logic underneath the crime.

This was a great conversation!

An illuminating—and alarming—conversation with @kevintmorris.bsky.social of the @brennancenter.org about the future of the VRA on The Downballot podcast this week. Kevin chronicles SCOTUS' long project to dismantle the VRA and notes its impact will be felt most keenly further down the ballot.

It’s also similar to the court’s 2008 voter ID (don’t call it a poll tax) ruling. Sure, Indiana had no proof of voter impersonation fraud, but it’s reasonable for Republicans to impose a burden on voting if there are merely fears of potential voter fraud (that Republicans themselves whipped up)

Today’s wave of voter suppression bears striking similarities to yesteryear’s disfranchisement. The corrupt Roberts court wants to roll back the Civil Rights revolution of the 1960s.

I have no words tennesseelookout.com/2026/05/07/b...

One thing I'm thinking about this morning is how similar the court's reasoning in Callais was to how they treated, eg, literacy tests. As long as the state PRETENDS a law is for another reason (whether that's partisanship or to have "educated voters"), it's fair game.

I'm not one for biblical literalism, but when your Capitol is struck by a plague as you try to take advantage of a court decision to discriminate against Black voters, you might want to listen!

“Writing is hard.” Thrilled to share that this simple idea led to a new paper in Political Analysis! Where most text methods focus on content, I test if expression is also effortful action. I find simple measures like character counts reveal attitudes and predict voting. cup.org/4cUmoXi 1/

*me, bouncing up and down* In 2028 you'll get to read a book called The New Lost Cause so let's not all spoil the thesis in the meantime

he thinks you 🫵 are stupid

Responding to @prisonculture.bsky.social since I can't quote, but: Vesla Weaver's paper on strategic frontlash is, for my money, one of the most insightful pieces of scholarship on race and politics in recent years

Have I ever been more tired than I am today?

VERY IMPORTANT NON-VRA RELATED NEWS: Bob Caro says "I have written 983 pages" of the final LBJ book. www.c-span.org/program/qa/a...

All due respect, when wasn’t it operating as such?

If you’re wondering about the impact of Callais on communities of color and their ability to influence elections, I’d recommend this conversation that Justin Levitt and recently I had with Bolts magazine. Rare chance to look back and forward w a fellow scholar/practitioner.

Multiracial Democracy is Young and Fragile A brief history of the struggle to reconstitute a nation built on racial hierarchy around the principle of equality. Part I: Lessons from the rise and fall of Reconstruction. This piece is free to read, no paywall:

It’s kind of a metaphor for American democracy in the 2020s. After Jan 6 2021, the coup appeared dead and even GOP elites were looking to oust the authoritarian wing. A few years later the same wing controls all of government and intimidated much of civil society into submission

Signs you might be a far right authoritarian party (#3356):

8 Indiana state senators who voted against mid-decade redistricting last year faced primary challenges tonight. So far, 5 have lost, and only 1 has won.

Wow. @sifill.bsky.social on Monday’s @thedailyshow.com with @jonstewartdaily.bsky.social is an absolute master class in the legal foundations of US justice and race. Just an outstanding, information-rich, accessible lesson for everyone. youtu.be/SCse1FFEKLM

I am really struggling to understand the Bert Callais news as anything other than evidence of how the Big Lie ideology has fully taken root. It is no accident that he was at J6, just like it is no accident that the justice writing the opinion flew an upside-down flag that day

ICYMI - I wrote about Callais, with an eye toward the politics of colorblindness that led to the decision, including parallels in employment law and their impact on the GOP

Alabama, Louisiana, and Georgia all held elections in 2022 using maps that federal courts had already found were likely illegal.

I'm not going to get into what Purcell is and how it's abused on here tonight but MY GOD the Supreme Court has let the mask slip. This is all about providing cover for a partisan power grab ahead of the midterms

Travel post: where should we stay in London this summer for a week with our daughter (8 year old)? We've stayed in Mayfair previously.

This is an excellent, excellent thread on the Voting Rights Act, democracy, and the disingenuousness of the Roberts Supreme Court majority. *Highly* recommend.

Jacksonville is talking about moving back to at-large elections. It is starting.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority used outdated examples to say the racial gap in voter turnout has closed, but in reality, the gap is growing — due in part to the Court’s past assaults on the Voting Rights Act. bit.ly/3QIYd5B

I'm thinking a lot about this figure from my new book project. Not that anyone who follows me needs to hear this, but: Opposition to the VRA (2020 CMPS) is not driven by general conservatism. Racial resentment (and, to a lesser extent, old fashioned racism) are doing a huge amount of lifting

By popular (?) demand, I've updated (and cleaned up) my suffrage and citizenship timeline with recent events and some additional clarifications. Feedback welcome! I will make the file available on my website (christinawolbrecht.com) by COB.

Why we get some kinds of data and not other kinds....Baker v Carr, the VRA, and data, scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/caselrev/vol...

Hivemind: Is there any publicly-available dataset that has, for each Congress back to (say) 1900, the racial characteristics of each district? I am surprised to be coming up empty

Threads like this are what Sunday mornings are for.

Alabama’s lieutenant governor, who also serves as president of the state Senate, posted a 7-0 Republican gerrymander calling for his party to eliminate both Black Democrats. Every seat on a map like this would be dark red and heavily white