Mavis Amundson
@mavisja.bsky.social
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Will Bunch, gift post Inquirer
SCOTUS gutting 1965 Voting Rights Act is a wake-up call from a dream share.inquirer.com/WNSbDz
Will Bunch, gift post InquirerSCOTUS gutting 1965 Voting Rights Act is a wake-up call from a dream share.inquirer.com/WNSbDz
— Mavis Amundson (@mavisja.bsky.social) 2026-04-30T20:21:00.900Z
Will Bunch, at the Philadelphia Inquirer:
… The great Joan Didion’s most famous observation was that we tell ourselves stories in order to live. I can’t understate how central the 1965 Voting Rights Act has been to the story that my generation of boomers told ourselves about believing in the American dream.
The narrative that took someone like John Lewis out from under those police batons in Selma and into the corridors of Congress, and that peaked with Barack Obama’s once unthinkable election as America’s first Black president in 2008, seemed proof positive of another famous MLK maxim: that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
Late Wednesday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court — with three of its six-member conservative majority appointed by a racist president who routinely calls Black and brown members of Congress “low IQ” — grabbed that moral arc and twisted so hard that it broke.
Its 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais — destined to join Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Korematsu v. United States in the SCOTUS hall of shame — struck down a Louisiana congressional map that created a new Black-voter majority district. The majority opinion by conservative firebrand Samuel Alito tried to argue that they were saving the 1965 VRA by destroying it, that political maps like the ones that currently have 23 Black House members from the former Confederacy are essentially racist — because they discriminate against white people…
Legal scholars will no doubt study and debate for many years to come how the nation’s highest court came to view the legislative high point of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement as meaning the exact opposite of what Lyndon B. Johnson and that era’s lawmakers thought they were enacting. But the political and psychic fallout is already here.
Across the Deep South, news of the ruling was like a starter’s gun for a race to the bottom among GOP-dominated state legislatures to redraw majority-Black congressional districts into oblivion before the November midterm election…
The practical fallout is bad, and so is the damage to America’s psyche. The Voting Rights Act felt to our generation like an unbreakable granite monument to progress, tied to real gains for Black people and other racial or ethnic minorities, not only on Capitol Hill but everywhere from office cubicles to TV sitcoms. As recently as 2006, a GOP-led Senate reauthorized the VRA by a 98-0 vote, then signed by George W. Bush. The endless cycle of slavery and freedom, Jim Crow and civil rights, had finally been broken, and we weren’t going back.
Until we did…
It seems now that the faux granite of the Voting Rights Act wasn’t as durable as the white supremacy embedded in the red clay under Sumter County and so much of the rest of America. Every action toward a more diverse and more democratic nation — especially Obama’s election in 2008 — triggered an equal and opposite reaction.
Dreams can be beautiful, but they aren’t reality. Even though the alarm was set years ago, Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling was still a piercing wake-up call for anyone who wants the United States to ever fulfill its promise of democracy. If the Voting Rights Act didn’t save America, we need even more revolutionary action this time around.
If a corrupt and broken Supreme Court insists on playing partisan politics, then we need partisan politicians to bring them to heel. Expand the court to 13 justices, impose term limits, and investigate and impeach any justices who broke the laws about gifts or anything else.
Radical steps? You bet, but the alternative is allowing a kangaroo court to finish the job of dismantling the American Experiment, of turning a dream that became a lie into something worse. We can’t bend the arc of the moral universe until we grab it back from the people who stole it.
Jamison Foser
@jamisonfoser.bsky.social
John Lewis had John Roberts’ number from the jump: takebackthecourt.substack.com/p/john-lewis…
Micah
@rincewind.run
the voting rights act actually worked, which is why the conservative legal movement immediately went to work on dismantling itthis has been the focus of john roberts’ entire legal career
https://bsky.app/profile/rincewind.run/post/3mknjntma3s2q
Don Moynihan
@donmoyn.bsky.social
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Re the Voting Rights Act: I’ve used this graph a lot to illustrate how the VRA largely ended the historic pattern of blocking and burdening Black voters in the south.
http://www.cambridge.org/core/journal…
https://bsky.app/profile/donmoyn.bsky.social/post/3mknjjrec322w
PortiaMcGonagal
@portiamcgonagal.bsky.social
Again, this regime decreed that women and non-white people are inherently unqualified, then put the least qualified mediocre white men on display to prove what point, exactly? Racism and sexism are expensive and deadly.
http://www.rawstory.com/hegseth-iran...
https://bsky.app/profile/portiamcgonagal.bsky.social/post/3mkzwmv42o22w
They know that they are on the clock.All of them, which is why the evil is ratcheted up 1000%
The Neighborhood Publicist
@nhoodpublicist
Just would like to inform everyone that Project 2025 is only 53% complete. This is a 1% increase from where it was this time last year.
Why am I stating this as if it’s a good thing? Because it was supposed to be 100% done in Trump’s first 90 days taking office.
It might not feel like enough but we are resisting and holding the line. We can and should do more but people will only be motivated to if they know the efforts they see now are
https://x.com/nhoodpublicist/status/2051330930527056313?s=20
May the Fourth be with YOU, from the Obama Presidential Center.
Opening June 19.[image or embed]
— The Obama Foundation (@obamafoundation.bsky.social) May 4, 2026 at 11:47 AM
Will Jennings📉🗳️
@drjennings.bsky.social
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These are absolutely hideous numbers for Trump in the latest ABC/WaPo/Ipsos polling. His approval is miles underwater on inflation, the cost of living, Iran, the economy, taxes, even immigration.
https://bsky.app/profile/drjennings.bsky.social/post/3mkxzqwzzmc2y
Paul Byrne
@theplanetaryguy.bsky.social
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NASA just dropped more than 12,000 photos from the Artemis II mission.
It’ll take me a few days to go through them all, but so far it’s one stunner after another.
Link:
eol.jsc.nasa.gov/SearchPhotos…
Credit: NASA/Artemis II Crew (h/t
@jonostrower.com
https://bsky.app/profile/theplanetaryguy.bsky.social/post/3mkyd4qaf5s2h
try this link:
https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-ii-multimedia/
Democracy Docket
@democracydocket.com
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NEW: A Republican U.S. Senate candidate said he’s recruiting off-duty police officers to serve as poll watchers in Detroit for the 2026 midterms — and suggested they could flash their badges at voters.
Intimidating voters is illegal. Interfering with someone’s right to vote is a federal crime.
https://bsky.app/profile/democracydocket.com/post/3mkzzikjvtj2q
Justin Baragona
@justinbaragona.bsky.social
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Trump asked Sean Hannity to serve as his intermediary in getting John Fetterman to switch parties, according to Politico.
Hannity then conveyed Trump’s offer of “more money than he ever dreamed of” to Fetterman the next day on his podcast.
http://www.politico.com/news/magazin...
https://bsky.app/profile/justinbaragona.bsky.social/post/3mkzxmnc4s224
Longtime Black Man Here
@groove_sdc
And very online leftists will be jumping for joy in the streets because they view Black participation in politics as troublesome.
That’s why they became the Children of the Corn caucus because many Democratic politicians in Congress are older Black people like Rep. Clyburn.
https://x.com/groove_sdc/status/2051281696016736572?s=20
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA AH HA
Carl Quintanilla
@carlquintanilla.bsky.social
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“.. After spending recent weeks on life support, LIV Golf has lost the funding of its Saudi backers.”
@wsj.com
http://www.wsj.com/sports/golf/...
https://bsky.app/profile/carlquintanilla.bsky.social/post/3mknw54qyus2i
Langdon Grant
@langdongrant.bsky.social
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It’s even more pernicious than that. The GOP position after Callais is “any district with a large black population and a black rep is constitutionally suspect and must be cracked,” even if it’s just a normal, compact district (not a crazy-looking gerrymander) centered on a population center…
/1
4:21 PM · May 3, 2026
Langdon Grant
@langdongrant.bsky.social
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…that happens to have a lot of black people living in it (e.g., what the TN GOP did to Nashville and will soon do to Memphis). In their twisted, Kafkaesque worldview, Callais (and by extension, the Constitution itself) *compels* the dilution of black voters, because any district that…
/2
4:23 PM · May 3, 2026
Langdon Grant
@langdongrant.bsky.social
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…has a sizable black population and a black rep is by definition an impermissible “racial gerrymander.”
At bottom, their belief is that black reps elected by black people are per se illegitimate, and the only permissible way a black person could become a rep is if a white majority allows it.
/3
Langdon Grant
@langdongrant.bsky.social
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It’s the same rationale that was used to justify the Jim Crow laws that made the VRA necessary in the first place — the notion that black people are too inferior to be trusted with political power, so we must ensure the “right people” stay in control.
A sentiment most recently displayed…
/4
4:31 PM · May 3, 2026
Langdon Grant
@langdongrant.bsky.social
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…by none other than the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives when he justified the GOP’s redistricting plans by saying it was necessary to “keep the grownups in charge.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
Just open, unapologetic, gutter racism.
/end
https://bsky.app/profile/langdongrant.bsky.social/post/3mky4tgj7xk2a
Ben Norton
@BenjaminNorton
Bombshell: Leaked audio recordings prove Argentina’s libertarian President Javier Milei is conspiring with the drug lord Juan Orlando Hernández — the drug-trafficking former dictator of Honduras, whom Trump freed from prison.
In a recording between Milei and the drug lord, Hernández proposed creating a right-wing fake news operation, with the support of the US government, in order to spread propaganda online to “eliminate the left” in Latin America, targeting Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, and the left-wing opposition in Honduras.
The self-declared “anarcho-capitalist” Milei offered to contribute $350,000 USD of Argentine government money to help fund this disinformation operation, while millions of Argentines are suffering in poverty, and they have to eat donkey meat, because they can’t afford local beef.
Link: https://jornada.com.mx/noticia/2026/05/03/mundo/milei-aporto-350-mil-dolares-a-campana-para-desprestigiar-a-sheinbaum-y-petro
https://x.com/BenjaminNorton/status/2051105834206458100?s=20
Gary Chambers
@GaryChambersJr
A federal judge just blocked Gov. Jeff Landry from stopping Calvin Duncan from taking office as Clerk of Criminal District Court.
At midnight, @calvin4clerk officially becomes Clerk.
Congratulations, Black man. The fight continues.
https://x.com/GaryChambersJr/status/2051153281213235353?s=20
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊