Again this should inspire wall-to-wall media coverage for months. The crowning achievement of the Civil Rights Movement is dead. Black people just lost all of their remaining political power in the South. This is a monumental moment in American history that simply isn't being treated as such.

Here’s the ruling, which usurps the will of the Virginia electorate on a procedural technicality about how lawmakers approved the ballot initiative: www.vacourts.gov/static/opini...

Minute-plus finisher at 4x.

There is not enough discussion of the EEOC's lawsuit against @nytimes.com for discriminating against a white man. Here's a gift link. Let's get into it.🧵 www.nytimes.com/2026/05/05/b...

"The United States let in just 6,069 refugees for the fiscal year through the end of April, closely approaching the annual cap, according to government data released earlier this week. Three were from Afghanistan; the rest were from South Africa."

I've said this before, but a true and faithful accounting of the unitary executive theory is that it also kills people.

“Overhead, Marine One passed twice as President Donald Trump returned from his golf resort in Doral, Florida. Several patrons marked the moment by waving hello to the president with two middle fingers in the air.” www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2026/...

become ungovernable

“Not for rinsing or washing,” they said. (Seen at Union Station.)

a thought i had while talking to a friend is that a federal end to partisan gerrymandering has to be at the top of the democratic party's agenda, and may likely get there because of threat the status quo poises to black representation, and thus black political involvement altogether.

The Supreme Court denied Jack Smith what a prior, slightly wiser court granted Leon Jaworski against Richard Nixon: A lightning fast appeal. And a ruling that didn’t impede the criminal process against a sitting president. John Roberts and his majority did none of those things.

I imagine this will be John Roberts’ epitaph.

By gutting the Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court is killing the Second Reconstruction. The first Reconstruction shows how Congress should respond. Me and Daphna Renan in the NYT on the tools we have to save democracy from a hostile Court.

Frederick Douglass in 1883, after the Civil Rights Cases were handed down, cut to the chase: "O for a Supreme Court of the United States which shall be as true to the claims of humanity as the Supreme Court formerly was to the demands of slavery! omeka.coloredconventions.org/files/origin...

An “accessory.” Justice Marshall delivered it raw and real.

A banner week for Louisiana winning court rulings that hurt its own people.

Here's the new Louisiana lawsuit, seeking to stop the effort to stop the election: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Justice Thurgood Marshall, dissenting in Mobile v. Alabama, which gave us the 1982 amendments to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that the Supreme Court just nullified in Louisiana v. Callais. Every word applies to the current majority: tile.loc.gov/storage-serv...

Thrilled that this gorgeous reported essay I edited, by a fellow journalist who is currently incarcerated, won this award for best feature. True story: To fact-check direct quotes, Robert sent me copies of the notes he took while in prison. And his own case file and lawyers were helpful resources.

John Lewis had John Roberts' number from the jump: takebackthecourt.substack.com/p/john-lewis...

Some 11 years ago, at the height of the Freddie Gray protests in Baltimore, @yamiche.bsky.social shared this image on the site formerly known as Twitter. Not sure if she took it or not, but it still slaps.

NEW: Alabama is asking SCOTUS for expedited consideration of its appeal from the second Milligan ruling in light of Callais. www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25...

A Supreme Court power grab begets more power grabs.

No sugar-coating the Court’s decision today. Real talk. @allinwithchris.bsky.social

WaPo reports Louisiana’s governor will announce on Friday that he is suspending the House primaries where people have already started voting and redraw the map; I’d expect them to go for an all-Republican map and eliminate both majority-Black districts, not just one.

News organizations: You don’t need to consult legal experts for things that anyone without a law degree can see and read with their own eyes. It’s OK to call things as you see them.

The lawyer defending TPS for Hatians shut him up real quick. “Because the Fifth Amendment constrains the federal government in the same way that the 14th Amendment constrains states.” Here’s that clip, which starts at 1:40:42: www.youtube.com/live/MuqD0zU...

In other news: “Shithole countries” enters the Supreme Court record without censorship, thanks to one of the lawyers defending Temporary Protected Status for Haitians.

With very ominous language, Justice Elena Kagan says that today’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais ends the Supreme Court’s “now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.” 6-to-3 vote in favor of white voters who challenged a Black-majority district in La. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

“Among 40 new and reappointed directors, none were women.”

Supreme Court splits 6-to-3 along ideological lines on whether to fête King Charles III.

This is from September, but every word of it still applies today: The Justice Department can get away with laughably written indictments—against James Comey and others—because John Roberts gave Donald Trump a permission slip to conduct even sham prosecutions. Overrule Trump v. United States now.

The Justice Department seems to be going out of its way to avoid saying that Cole Allen didn't fire any weapons at all inside the Washington Hilton — and that the officer hit was most likely hit by friendly fire. www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/is-the-jus...

Of these six proposals, none includes court packing.

A banner day for the First Amendment at the Trump administration.

The FCC action against ABC is as pretextual as it is unconstitutional. Any self-serious broadcaster would challenge it immediately. And most definitely win. And yet: I don’t have confidence that’ll happen here. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/28/b...

This is how the United States Department of Justice writes now.

In case people didn’t know: This is the leading scholar behind the very first big legal challenge to Obamacare, and is now among the leading theorists supporting Donald Trump’s assault on birthright citizenship as spelled out in the 14th Amendment. There’s probably a throughline there.

This is basically a church. I love it. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/12/u...

That triple-paragraph lede doesn’t mention that Paramount’s chief legal officer is the Trump administration’s former antitrust chief at the Justice Department. A third Reconstruction can’t come soon enough.

It’s happening:

It’s happening:

with zero sarcasm this is good government and we should do this immediately

FedSoc types are so triggered about SCOTUS leaks they are having a whole roundtable about it this afternoon: fedsoc.org/events/from-...

Too much legal news.

The shadow docket hurts people, judges, and a functioning legal system. And I'm glad that Steve is out there, as patiently as humanly possible, reminding the public that, as much as defenders of the Supreme Court may try, there's simply no sanewashing it.

Wonderful news.

A new wholly corrupt settlement handing your money to Trump cronies. It’s notable for several reasons: /1 www.politico.com/news/2026/04...