This, the US Supreme Court has explained to us, is what it looks like to finally live in a land free of racial discrimination. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/30/u... South Carolina is 26% black. Louisiana is 33%. Mississippi is 37%.

Weekend reading: I wrote about why Reconstruction is such a key historical reference - and about the lessons from the way America’s first attempt at biracial democracy was drowned in ostensibly “race-neutral” laws and white supremacist violence. This week’s piece:

❗️Magyar has officially taken the oath as Prime Minister of Hungary.

“I, John Brown, am now quite certain the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.” ~John Brown, 1859. Brown was born on this day in 1800. Image: National Portrait Gallery.

Absolutely outrageous Virginia Supreme Court invalidated redistricting referendum approved by the voters when voters haven’t been able to weigh in on a single gerrymander passed in red states

A really tough week. I am doing everything I can to spread the word about the threats to democracy and how we can fight back. You can help me by subscribing to Democracy Docket for free and sharing its content with everyone you know. Thanks. bit.ly/4qmEiFz

Chris Hayes: “They want a new Jim Crow. They’re very explicit about it. They’re hard at work trying to make it happen, and now they have a blessing from the Supreme Court.”

“Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.” ~Attributed to Benjamin Franklin. Image: National Portrait Gallery.

😕🇺🇸

My latest for @BylineTimes in the UK is a warning for both Labour and the Tories. bylinetimes.com/2026/05/08/r...

John Roberts has been dismantling the country’s most important civil rights law for over 40 years.

I, uhhh, I dunno, I really think there's a social contract theory problem with overruling a popular referendum after it happens because of a slight technical deficiency in the process whereby it was placed before the People

Why America Can’t Vote Its Way Out of Tyranny It's a completely rigged system. There are double standards across the board. MAGA is cheating, and now the Virginia Supreme Court has invalidated the will of the people. It's time to play hardball. thelefthook.substack.com/p/why-americ...

assigned this to high school juniors today-- "But Dewey insisted that political knowledge, in a democracy, could only come about through conversation among and between citizens. The only reality that matters is the reality that citizens collectively construct." www.vox.com/2018/8/9/175...

"those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable." - JFK

it makes you think!

the reason democracy works so well is that we settle issues via the ballot box. once that avenue dries up because one party wants to entrench themselves in power forever, people start looking for alternatives

Yup. Ignore it and do it.

virginia voters should call their delegates and senators and demand that they ignore this illegitimate ruling

As @zackbeauchamp.bsky.social keeps saying, this perpetual chipping away at democratic fairness hacks the system w/ veneer of legitimacy, resulting in competitive authoritarianism. The spectacle of blue states redistricting by referendum and red states delaying elections to do so is an example.

Yes but they blame the Democrats for making them do that. Not kidding, read the ruling.

The US legal system has said Lousiana can stop a vote that is already in progress, that TN can turn its entire state red and that Florida can ignore their own state constitution but Virginia cannot enact what its own voters asked for.... because of a filing deadline issue!

What did people think he meant when he said Republicans just had to elect him this one time and then they would fix it so no one had to vote anymore? Like what other explanation was there?

Republicans stripping majority-Black Memphis, where 39-year-old Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated 58 years ago, of its majority-Black congressional district takes its place in a rancid arc of American history that seems to be bending backwards. talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo...

So, SCOTUS says Red states can ignore the will of the people and gerrymander their districts 9-0 in favor of MAGA But VA Supreme Court says Blue states cannot put the vote to the will of the people and follow through on the people's will to redistrict. Beyond Absurd. 2/2

This will make for the quite split screen for when Florida's conservative supreme court likely ignores the state's 2010 constitutional amendments and blesses DeSantis' +4 map.

Dems literally won a statewide election to pass new maps and those maps got invalidated, but Republicans in Louisiana are literally cancelling an election where people had already voted in order to pass their gerrymanders. We live in a rigged system.

Does go to show how much state courts matter though VA’s court ruled 4-3 to overturn an election result on technical process Florida’s constitution explicitly bans partisan gerrymandering, but I doubt that map will face the same scrutiny

I think a lot of people are underestimating just how politically radicalizing this stuff is, when you see what the right is getting away with, including with the blessing of the Supreme Court majority

Jim Crow has gone national. Do Americans care? Are we so full of bread and circus that we aren't capable of self-government anymore?

Insane.

When the voters approve a map to help Democrats, it's nullified. When Republican legislators approve a map to help Republicans without going to the voters, it's allowed. The system is rigged to help the fascists.

some more law majesty for everyone

You can’t have a democracy where one party gets to rig everything

I tried to warn everyone what the Roberts Court was about almost ten years ago www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

The only way you can say this with a straight face is if you are (a) willfully lying or (b) sufficiently arrogant to think that your opinions are truth handed down on tablets and those who disagree just lack your wisdom. apnews.com/article/supr...

Good analysis by the Guardian. Racism is always built on lies. Supreme court’s Voting Rights Act ruling cited misleading data from DoJ www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

It’s important to remember in these times that Black southerners fought Jim Crow from the very beginning and built a tradition of activism that eventually bore fruit. The work of democracy is critical even when victory seems far off.

A core part of the Supreme Court’s stated rationale for gutting the Voting Rights Act is that racism isn’t a problem anymore, so former Confederate states would never disenfranchise Black voters the way those states are doing right now.

Nothing can prepare you for who's singing this National Anthem (via lpaulfranklin / TT)

🔥

We're at the birth of John Crow, where Black voters in Tennessee will no longer have representation in Congress

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.

To sum up: the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act were passed to remedy a century of attempts to disenfranchise and unperson African-Americans by any possible, often through voting-related tricks and tests and barriers. They worked -- for a while. But then..../1

If you want to stay informed and updated on the Republican attack on U.S. democracy, follow @stephenwolf.bsky.social 🚨

This shit is disgusting.

trump and hegseth are presiding over one of the great Ls in american military history.

Conservatives have always wanted to undo the 1960s. But now they're taking aim at the 1860s as well. My latest at Public Notice: www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-conf...