@thelisagraves.bsky.social Supreme Court justices recognized, the Constitution forbids both “sophisticated, as well as simple-minded, modes of discrimination.” open.substack.com/pub/graveinj...

@ballsandstrikes.org with a great new article: ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics... I'm sure we'll see sooner rather than later how Alito, Thomas and Roberts will pretzel their logic to attempt to deny justice here. Bless all 3 of their hearts, as we say in the south.

Purcell means heads Republicans win, tails Democrats lose

Not to keep repeating myself, but regardless of the veracity of the scholarship itself, the idea that you can throw out a hundred and fifty years of black-letter constitutional law based on a reinterpretation of Medieval English common law is an absolutely fucking absurd way to run a country.

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The DNC autopsy just caught up to Ratfucked

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Heard on the radio at the end of an interview with author David Daley: Host: So, when can we finally admit that this democratic experiment is over? DD: I'm ready to call it now. I'll meet you at Applebee's. "Meet you at Applebee's" is how it all ends my friends. Epic.

The story of how we got here, in two books, topping the charts

Congress needs a gerrymandering warrior like @samwang.bsky.social -- please join us for this conversation

A delight to nerd out about John Roberts and his Illegal AF "court" with my hero @thelisagraves.bsky.social on @meidastouch.com Legal AF! www.youtube.com/watch?v=asac...

Breaking: South Carolina's GOP Senate has 𝐫𝐞𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐝 Trump's push to eliminate the state's only Black Democratic congressman. Their proposed gerrymander (right) would have divided Black Democrats in the existing 6th District (left) to make all 7 districts majority white and Republican

Republican partisans on the Supreme Court have gone from putting their thumb on the scale, as in the days of Bush v. Gore or even Citizens United, to setting their whole ass on it.

This is the outcome of a 50-year effort to overturn the Voting Rights Act, led by Justice Roberts. See David Daley's Antidemocratic.

Understandable concern about not just the midterms but what comes next, seating the House on Jan 3. It's not as simple as Johnson could refuse members. But there is real potential for mischief or worse. Callais has appreciably increased the danger. So here's what they might try, and how to fight it:

Remember those 8 anti-gerrymandering Indiana senators who were up for reelection last week? 6 lost, one won, and... ... the last race remains uncalled. The incumbent state senator is up by TWO votes, with THREE provisional ballots left to be processed: www.basedinlafayette.com/p/deerys-lea...

“Love In A Car” by House of Love is great, but really just a shoegaze version of the Thompson Twins’ “If You Were Here“

Utah Republicans are packing the high court and creating a new constitutional court to hear challenges to their laws and election districts. They also threatened to impeach a judge who enforced a voter-approved ban on gerrymandering. And VA Democrats are <checks notes> … appealing to SCOTUS?

Asking this Supreme Court to embrace the independent state legislature theory is actual fucking insanity. Like zero good comes from that. Zero.

Virginia Democrats could take a page from the GOP playbook, instead of appealing to the antidemocratic U.S. Supreme Court. The GOP has defied constitutional bans on gerrymandering and packed the courts that stopped them. slate.com/news-and-pol...

"If Roberts doesn’t want the Supreme Court to be seen as a bunch of partisan hacks, perhaps they could stop behaving as partisan hacks. That, of course, is not what he wants." — Dave Daley, whose book "Antidemocratic" is a must-read on Roberts, in @salon.com www.salon.com/2026/05/09/t...

"Maximum warfare," unless some administrator says it's too late

I don't know. Is one of them the chief justice who in Rucho said partisan gerrymandering is distasteful and he wasn't leaving complaints to echo into a void, and then in Callais signed onto an opinion that said we must protect the perfectly cool partisan gerrymanders from being racial gerrymanders?

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.

1) Fight fire with fire 2) Win so we can: 3) Ban partisan gerrymandering 4) Enact multimember districts with proportional representation (and expand the House!) 5) Pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act with a provision stripping SCOTUS of jurisdiction to review its constitutionality

John Roberts literally grew up in a town built for whites only. New with @thelisagraves.bsky.social @jamellebouie.net @mehdirhasan.bsky.social @mollyjongfast.bsky.social @marcelias.bsky.social @hcrichardson.bsky.social @briantylercohen.bsky.social slate.com/news-and-pol...

“Huck shows great disrespect for the Court’s precedent in Dred Scott when aiding the fugitive Jim, presumably due to liberal indoctrination by the Widow Douglas.” #JimCrowJohn

Add this to the statistical errors and the census misinterpretation in Shelby County and it’s starting to look like the law and stats are whatever the robed super-legislature says they are.

@thelisagraves.bsky.social @davedaley.bsky.social Two of the most insightful legal analysts on Roberts Court. slate.com/news-and-pol...

John Roberts grew up in a wealthy Indiana town that proudly advertised itself as whites-only — and built discrimination into property deeds for years. New with @thelisagraves.bsky.social in @slate.com slate.com/news-and-pol...

New on Slate with the great Lisa Graves: How John Roberts’ whites-only childhood home might have shaped Callais

Leonard Leo in West Virginia, too. mountainstatespotlight.org/2026/05/07/l...

Please. The same donors/networks/activists that vet justices & fund campaigns to put them on Court also fund cases, find litigants, pay attorneys, fund professors/FedSoc who create theories that fill amicus briefs they also pay for. The justices invite cases they want. No politics here! Just law

Partisan hack bemoans being thought of as partisan hack. Whatever might this Court have done to create this misconception! They can pretend they are doing law and not power. We don’t have to be gaslit or blind to the obvious.

Robertsmanders! www.thenation.com/article/poli...

“It is also a confession. They are returning to the scene of the crime to try and finish the job.”

If you’re furious about this Court, you’re furious about its architect, Leonard Leo. His tentacles and his billion-dollar dark money slush fund are everywhere.

A brilliant NYT piece by @dannyhakim.bsky.social on Buckley v Valeo, the case that helped create Citizens United, packed with new details, research, interviews and the best unexpected John Bolton cameo www.nytimes.com/2026/05/06/u...

The lead plaintiff in Callais v. Louisiana said on social media that he was at January 6:

I'd suggest it's not that they lacked the guts -- but that this is the partisan, political outcome they wanted and they created this nightmare intentionally.

Promises to overturn Citizens United and platitudes about people over profits mean nothing unless we have a plan for how to get it done. And that requires taking our power back from the Roberts Court. mikesacksforcongress.com

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

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

The Wizards in Robes are burning entrails & moving as fast as they can to allow the far right authoritarian party to rig the 2026 elections, not just the 2028 ones. Again, this may backfire & not work, as in Hungary, but the victory will not mean the elections were anything remotely democratic.

Not only does the Roberts Court selectively apply the Constitution, even when they determine something is unconstitutional, they selectively decide when that matters

Brutally partisan

The robed Republican wizards, of course, had no such problem allowing the 2022 elections to be held on unconstitutional maps in three Southern states when it benefited their political party Reform this hijacked fount of Republican political power now

so far, much of the analysis of Callais out there is focused on what the Court's rulings did to the Voting Rights Act, which is reasonable but now I want to talk about what the Court did to the Constitution bc the threat of Callais goes far beyond the VRA alone ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/alito...

The Yale Law School Federalist Society just gave this guy a profile in courage award this weekend.

As you might expect, but the AP'a report details the cases. The SC and the DOJ have cooperated in undermining the rule of law, and Congress has refused to act. Throw them all out.