This excellent article about THE WORST COURT SINCE TANEY is from Mother Jones.
Whites Only
The disaster the justices have unleashed has its roots in one of the darkest periods of our history.
Ari Berman and Pema Levy
September/October 2026 Issue
On May 8, hundreds of civil rights protesters, carrying signs that said, “No Jim Crow Maps” and “Hands Off Our Vote,” descended on Baton Rouge to oppose a plan by Louisiana’s Republican-controlled legislature to dismantle one or both of the state’s majority-Black congressional districts. They packed a Senate hearing, occupied three overflow rooms, and spilled into the Capitol’s halls.
Just 10 days earlier, the Supreme Court had destroyed the Voting Rights Act in its Louisiana v. Callais decision, triggering a mad rush to eliminate majority-Black districts across Southern states. The next day, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, despite 42,000 already-cast ballots, suspended Louisiana’s House primaries to give his party time to push through a new map reducing Black representation in Congress before the 2026 midterms.
Democratic Rep. Cleo Fields was on the front lines of this fight. It was his district, stretching 200 miles from Baton Rouge to Shreveport, that Callais had set the stage for invalidating, with Justice Samuel Alito calling it “an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”
The Supreme Court’s decision decimating Section 2 of the VRA—which had required that racial minorities have an equal opportunity to meaningfully participate in elections—threatens to return the country to a pre-1965 America, when white supremacy was the law of the land and Congress contained no Black members from the South. “This has sent us back, in my view, over 60 years,” Fields says.
When he appeared before the state Senate that day to testify against the new redistricting plans, he was joined by three other veteran Black politicians. Although Fields, a 63-year-old lawyer, has a reputation as an even-keeled consensus builder, he grew emotional as he spoke.
“To me, it is personal,” he told the Senate committee. “Since Reconstruction, Louisiana has elected four African Americans to Congress. And you’re looking at all of them. Four.” Even though nearly a third of Louisiana’s population is Black.
“You said something very profound,” state Sen. Gary Carter Jr., an African American Democrat from New Orleans, told Fields. “From the 1870s all the way through [the] present, just you four gentlemen—that’s it. And now this body wants to reduce that. ‘We want to cut it. That’s too many.’ How do we not be outraged?”
Before these four men, Louisiana had elected just two Black members of Congress, both during the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, America’s fleeting 12-year experiment with multiracial democracy. One, Fields told the senators, was John Willis Menard, who became the first Black person ever elected to Congress in 1868. The other, Charles Edmund Nash, served just one term, beginning in 1875. A vicious white backlash to Reconstruction made it impossible for him to get reelected amid the disputed presidential contest in 1876, which culminated in federal troops withdrawing from the South and the official end of Reconstruction. After Nash, “Louisiana went 114 years without a single African American in Congress,” Fields later explains in an interview.
During Reconstruction, racial equality was written into the Constitution through the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. As a result, from 1865 to 1877, roughly 2,000 Black officeholders were elected. That number dropped to virtually zero once Jim Crow’s racist legal regime took hold just a few years later, as the federal government—led by the Supreme Court—abandoned enforcement of the Reconstruction amendments.
Fields came to the state Capitol to warn that history was repeating itself. As his colleague Rep. Troy Carter—Gary Carter Jr.’s uncle—told the legislature: “The question before us is not merely about lines on a map. The question before us is whether we will honor the principle that every citizen deserves equal protection of the law.”
Their pleas fell on deaf ears. Three weeks later, GOP legislators approved a map designed to oust Fields, changing his district from a solidly Democratic seat whose population was 53 percent Black to an overwhelmingly white one, in which 65 percent of voters cast ballots for Donald Trump in 2024. Immediately after the new map passed, the self-described “non-African American” litigants who brought the Callais case launched a new lawsuit seeking to eliminate Louisiana’s last majority-Black district, represented by Troy Carter, thus leaving the state with no Black representation in Congress.
Amazingly, Fields has fought this battle before. He was first elected to Congress in 1992, but his district was dismantled in 1996 following the Supreme Court ruling in a racial gerrymandering lawsuit filed on behalf of a group of mostly white voters who charged they had been discriminated against. He returned to Congress nearly 30 years later, only to meet the same fate. His political career epitomizes the rise and fall of Black political power in America’s post-civil rights era—a story that darkly echoes the Supreme Court’s shameful elimination of equal rights for Black Americans in the 19th century.
Read the rest of this excellent article at the link above.
We have only been a true representative democracy since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.
1965
61 years of being a true representative democracy.
Great comment that I found on Balloon Juice:
Anonymous At Work
September 25, 2026 at 2:37 pm
@prostratedragon: Doonesbury nailed it over a decade ago when Trudeau introduced “James Tiberius Crow, Esquire” as the modern, dressed-up, and legalistic version of Jim Crow. Openly-segregationist Justices died under FDR and Truman, but closet segregationist continued onward thanks to Nixon and Reagan and both Bushes, until they formed a present-day majority.
@jstein_sun
Jeff Stein
@jstein_sun
5h
NEWS: Trump to host “most EXCLUSIVE DINNER IN THE WORLD” for top 185 purchasers of his meme crypto
Buying $1M (or less!) worth of $TRUMP coin should get you in Nov 22
Ron Filipkowski
@RonFilipkowski
The most corrupt administration in the history of the US by far. You could add up all instances of corruption by every other admin in US history and it will not equal the amount of corruption perpetrated by this one in less than 2 years.
https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/2105714314686369874
Kyle Griffin
@kylegriffin1
BREAKING WSJ:
The Trump Justice Department is reviewing whether the special prosecutor’s office that investigated Watergate committed misconduct.
A revisionist historian went to DOJ HQ to present his case that Richard Nixon and his associates weren’t treated fairly. wsj.com/us-news/law/de…
https://x.com/kylegriffin1/status/2105719585903096302
The Best Words
@thebestwords.bsky.social
· 14m
l.smartnews.com/p-8BmdRn7W/x…. Look at Trump selling Kennedy Center treasures out of the back of a truck! What a criminal!
1/2
The Best Words
@thebestwords.bsky.social
Follow
“..they’re selling all their pianos at a heavy discount…the shop is also moving all the Steinways to offer for sale…asked why the Kennedy Center would need to sell everything, and she made it clear that it was because it was “closed.” She referred all other questions to the Kennedy Center.
2/2
3:44 PM · Oct 1, 2026
https://bsky.app/profile/thebestwords.bsky.social/post/3mwtpx3q5522w
WORST COURT SINCE TANEY AND THINKS THAT PEOPLE SHOULDN’T CALL HIM OUT ON HIS EVIL?
F-O-H
The Daily Beast
@thedailybeast
Friends of the chief justice have shared that he is increasingly isolated as it becomes harder and harder for him to ignore the backlash to his court’s rulings.
https://x.com/thedailybeast/status/2105664032359195040
Democracy Docket
@DemocracyDocket
The GOP is ramping up efforts to interfere with the midterms.
In recordings obtained by Fair Fight Action and first reported by CNN, the Republican National Committee (RNC) was exposed for training Wisconsin election observers to identify discrepancies with voting machines.
And they’re doing so to suppress YOUR vote.
The new RNC program appears to mark an escalation from typical poll watching activities and comes just months after Trump’s July primetime address, where he suggested China had compromised electronic voting machines.
This is just the start. Subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss an update: demdock.com/Pk39XwB
https://x.com/DemocracyDocket/status/2105440250428305796
Adam Klasfeld
@KlasfeldReports
A federal judge ORDERED the Trump admin to privately show him the memo purporting to justify boat strikes that have killed 234 people in the Caribbean and Pacific.
Judge Engelmayer rejected several rationales for withholding the memo from the public and will determine whether to release it.
https://x.com/KlasfeldReports/status/2105352710027440240
ProPublica
@propublica
Despite concerns, USPS leaders stayed silent as Trump pushed forward his plan for mail voting, hoping outside legal challenges would block it.
“The board was being careful how or when it took action, knowing that it might be its last action.”
https://x.com/propublica/status/2105447634190127374
@blackJournals01
Black Journals
@blackJournals01
She lost her son, and then the state told her she had killed him, and then it put her in a cell to die for it.
Her nine-month-old son stopped breathing. She ran to a neighbour, tried CPR the way she had seen it done, and drove him to the hospital.
He died. Mississippi charged her with his murder and sentenced her to death. She was eighteen.
Sabrina Butler. The bruising on the baby’s body was from her attempts to resuscitate him. The prosecution presented it as a beating.
No one told her she had the right to remain silent in any way she understood. She gave a statement trying to explain what she had done, and it was used against her.
Her trial lasted a matter of days. The jury took less than an hour. She was sent to death row at nineteen, pregnant with her second child, and gave birth in custody.
The Mississippi Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 1992.
At the retrial in 1995, medical evidence showed the child had died of a kidney condition — a documented illness, not an injury. She was acquitted in about twenty minutes.
Sabrina Butler is the first woman in the United States ever exonerated from death row. Mississippi has never compensated her.
She now speaks publicly against the death penalty. She has said the hardest part was never the cell. It was that for five years nobody would let her grieve.
Sabrina Butler’s case is the kind of buried injustice that helped inspire our Ebook, 150 Crimes Against Black America They Never Answered For—because some of our stories leave questions that still deserve answers.
Support us savvypurchase.samcart.com/products/150-c…
6:05 PM ·
https://x.com/blackJournals01/status/2105433761760354758
Needs to be an ad on an endless loop
@DemocraticWins
Democratic Wins Media
@DemocraticWins
BREAKING: A shocking new investigation from the San Antonio Current just uncovered three more cases where Ken Paxton gave plea deals allowing sex offenders to avoid jail. This guy is legitimately evil.
https://x.com/DemocraticWins/status/2105412792132268542
King Roy
@RoyIsThaTruth
They didn’t start attacking education until they saw Black people getting multiple degrees and certificates. Especially Black women.
10:36 AM · Sep 30, 2026
https://x.com/RoyIsThaTruth/status/2105320929286869125
I love LarryO
Kenny BooYah! 🖖🏾
@KwikWarren
Lawrence slammed trump’s absurd strong economy claim: “That could be his lifelong pathological lying. It could be dementia—and he might believe it completely…in dementia. I leave it2you2decide which is worse pathological lying or dementia at this point in donald trump’s case.”🎯
https://x.com/KwikWarren/status/2105492426823442561
@DemocracyDocket
Democracy Docket
@DemocracyDocket
🚨 FACT: Deploying ICE agents to the polls is illegal. And a new survey says it’s deeply unpopular among voters.
However, there’s a significant partisan divide. More participating Republicans than Democrats support ICE and National Guardsmen at polling places this fall: demdock.com/4hAX89A
https://x.com/DemocracyDocket/status/2105462754387636370
Shannon Watts
@shannonrwatts
The AGs of Alabama, Arkansas and Louisiana went to SCOTUS to challenge abortion “shield laws” protecting providers in California, Massachusetts and New York who prescribe abortion pills. Federal regulations allow prescriptions for abortion pills to be made by telehealth and filled by mail, and the three GOP states want to keep the pills out and punish out-of-state providers for sending them.
apnews.com/article/gop-de…
https://x.com/shannonrwatts/status/2105491846659010902
UH HUH
UH HUH
usurp tha chef
@usurpthachef
Hasan Piker calls the police on a black man who simply tried to attend his speaking event at the UT Austin.
https://x.com/usurpthachef/status/2105475007316901920
EJ Dionne
@EJDionne
This is important from @MichaelRStrain: “Affordability” talk is mostly about prices. But the failure of incomes to keep up with price increases is a big part of the story. Current economic discontent is thus about stagnating real incomes at the middle & bottom, not just prices.
https://x.com/EJDionne/status/2105636850807246966
Brian Allen
@allenanalysis
🚨BREAKING: A federal appeals court has backed a judge’s finding that President Trump colluded with his own administration in a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS.
Trump sued the IRS and Treasury, agencies his administration controls, then reached an agreement to dismiss the case as DOJ moved to create a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund for people claiming government wrongdoing.
The lower court found the parties were never truly adversarial.
This sounds criminal!
12:42 AM · Oct 1, 2026
https://x.com/allenanalysis/status/2105533874780381435
Talking Points Memo
@TPM
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) gave the green light to Russ Vought’s latest effort to seize Congress’ power of the purse, saying that all government spending should be reduced.
https://x.com/TPM/status/2105633833177518540
@AthenaK11374912
Apple
@AthenaK11374912
6h
Replying to @sarahnferris and @PatrickSvitek
Bernie is supposedly “useless” and “accomplished nothing,” yet somehow everyone wants his endorsement, influence, and help. Funny how useless he is until they need him.
It would be nice if once in a while, his peers supported his bills!
8:02 AM · Oct 1, 2026
@ArmandoNDK
Armando
@ArmandoNDK
Dems are asking he financially support his endorsed candidates – AES, Jackson, Nixon.
No one is asking him to do anything for Roy Cooper.
https://x.com/ArmandoNDK/status/2105644494083535210
@sarahnferris
Sarah Ferris
@sarahnferris
7h
News: Bernie Sanders had a mammoth primary season. Now Dems say he must do more to help his candidates win in Nov
Schumer super PAC privately asked him to step up in Michigan & multiple House campaigns have asked for more $, per sources
https://x.com/AthenaK11374912/status/2105641192947859824
Ron Filipkowski
@RonFilipkowski
We are paying CNN and MS NOW to run ads for Donald Trump right before the midterms. You and I are paying for them. And CNN and MS NOW are taking the cash while their hosts and guests say the scheme is illegal. That is the current state of corporate media in America.
7:29 AM · Oct 1, 2026
https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/2105636186857377793
Christopher Webb
@cwebbonline
Wow! Eric Schmitt didn’t just get it wrong. His team was warned the texts were unvetted and needed to be verified. He used them anyway.
Not only that, Chuck Grassley’s Judiciary staff left the texts out of its own hearing memo. Schmitt’s team went digging for them, then used them to accuse Jack Smith of perjury.
This wasn’t a mistake. It was a choice to run with something they hadn’t bothered to verify.
https://x.com/cwebbonline/status/2105639201912004729
Bernard Taylor
@BTForFL
Byron Donalds stood in FAMU’s auditorium and told students that:
1. Many of their degrees don’t matter and just take up a trade.
2. Guns are ok on campus
3. FAMU will continue to be underfunded
4. Doubled down on his DEI position
5. Stated ICE can enter campus and grab students.
The man is showing and telling us who he is, so believe him.
8:39 PM · Sep 30, 2026
https://x.com/BTForFL/status/2105472599564099844
@propublica
ProPublica
@propublica
Experts believe Tennessee is unnecessarily placing kids incarcerated for minor offenses into its highest-security prisons, which they say are more punitive than rehabilitative.
“These institutions are not humane places,” said an advocate.
https://x.com/propublica/status/2105296709219701124
@atrupar
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
21h
Trump on giant AI companies: “They’re gonna police. They’re gonna police each other. They’re gonna self-police. They’re gonna police themselves. It’s gonna work out very well.”
scary lawyerguy
@scarylawyerguy
I’ve got a feeling you’ll be seeing this clip in lots of 2028 ads after the inevitable AI-generated stock market crash that fully tanks the economy.
https://x.com/scarylawyerguy/status/2105613623343427862
Jonathan Lemire
@JonLemire
NEW: Inside a flailing presidency
A real theme this year: Many of Trump’s actions—quite a few impetuous and ill-considered—have only hurt him and his fellow Republicans ahead of the midterms
Now the bottom may be falling out – with fears of a blue wave
https://x.com/JonLemire/status/2105611073718272325
GOŁƊ
@vidxn_
NAOMI KLIEIN to SAM ALTMAN:
“…you ingested the entire written output of human civilization without consent, without compensation and without credit to build a system whose primary commercial application is eliminating the jobs of the people whose work you consumed.
You are not ‘liberating human creativity’ — you are strip-mining it and selling it back at a markup while calling the theft ‘training data’.”
11:29 AM · Sep 30, 2026
https://x.com/vidxn_/status/2105334121329271116
Gianl1974
@Gianl1974
WHILE OUR OWN COUNTRY IS LETTING US DOWN… The Epstein files have been reclassified by the UN.
It’s no longer a “trafficking ring.”
The UN is now calling it what it is: a GLOBAL CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE.
And based on the files, they suggest it qualifies as crimes against humanity.
Our president may be immune to domestic prosecution — but he’s not above international law.
https://x.com/Gianl1974/status/2105303905592586665
No Debate.
Ms. Rachel actually CARES.
Fox News
@FoxNews
Ms. Rachel has become one of the biggest names in children’s entertainment. But a Moms for Liberty co-founder says parents should pay attention to the political activism now tied to her massive platform.
“She’s using her leadership role for political activism,” Tina Descovich said, pointing to Ms. Rachel’s advocacy on Gaza, immigration detention, and LGBTQ rights. Ms. Rachel has defended speaking out for Palestinian and immigrant children.
With more than 21 million YouTube followers, the debate is raising a bigger question for families: How much should a children’s entertainer’s activism matter when parents decide what their kids watch?
Read the full story and see for what sparked the latest debate: foxnews.com/media/moms-lib…
https://x.com/FoxNews/status/2105644661930873120
Joe Walsh
@WalshFreedom
I like @abbydphillip a lot. I’ve been in her show. But she has no one to blame but herself for this. She and @CNN have decided to give a platform to an actor playing a role. He lies, he says things he doesn’t believe, and he doesn’t engage in honest conversation. He’s not an honest broker, but CNN decided that’s what they wanted. @ScottJenningsKY is CNN’s fault.
https://x.com/WalshFreedom/status/2105520493432594822
They got what they voted for.
@Fly_Sistah
Fly Sistah 🪷
@Fly_Sistah
Jessica Cantu Vuittonet cast her first ballot in 2024 — for Donald Trump. Two years later, after her brother was deported, she feels angry and betrayed. Ariel Salinas, who owns a construction company in Texas can no longer find laborers for his work crews.
https://x.com/Fly_Sistah/status/2105520923461730811
@scottwongDC
Scott Wong
@scottwongDC
Scoop: Congressional staffers planned official trip with luxury stops in Italy and France 2 weeks before election
The weeklong bipartisan trip — which included visits to a Ferrari factory, luxury brands in Milan or Florence & day trips to the Champagne wine region — was to be led by a top aide to House Speaker Mike Johnson.
It was canceled TODAY after @NBCNews asked about the itinerary. nbcnews.com/politics/congr…
https://x.com/scottwongDC/status/2105430714212839815
Read it twice to make sure that I was understanding what I was reading.
THEE ENTIRE PHUCK!!
@atrupar
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
Blanche: “Today, we’re also announcing that just a few minutes ago the DOJ filed a judicial misconduct complaint with the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals against all but one district court judge in the District of Minnesota for violating various judicial canons.”
https://x.com/atrupar/status/2105321842810425464
𝓝𝓲𝓴𝓴𝓲 𝓑𝓪𝓻𝓷𝓮𝓼
@NikkiBarnes
Good morning, Twitter gang. Listen, I am SCREAMING laughing.
So @ByronDonalds went to FAMU last night for a town hall. And from what I’m hearing from people who were there and people who spoke with students afterward, a whole lot of those students didn’t really know who Byron Donalds was.
And they didn’t know who David Jolly was either.
What they DID know was that a Black man was running for governor of Florida.
So imagine being an HBCU student, sitting on a campus with a deep legacy of Black advocacy, thinking you’re about to hear from a Black candidate for governor.
And then Byron opens his mouth.
Anti DEI.
Trump talking points.
“What has the Democratic Party done for you?”
Anti immigration rhetoric, in a room that included first generation Black immigrant students.
You walked into @FAMU_1887 and introduced yourself ALL RIGHT.
If some of those students didn’t know who Byron Donalds or David Jolly were before last night, I have a feeling they left knowing exactly who both of them are and which one they’ll be looking at on November 3.
Good job, Byron. Do it again.
How about Bethune Cookman next?
I hear you’re really knocking it out of the park with the HBCUs.
6:28 AM · Sep 30, 2026
https://x.com/NikkiBarnes/status/2105258552822546786
They had all coordinated. The ONLY reason the GOP Senators agreed to the hearing in the first place was because they thought they had a GOTCHA moment with Jack Smith. And, you see how right-wing media was ready to run with it.
And, when it all fell apart, then suddenly the GOP Senators had somewhere else to go and left the hearing.
Rolling Stone
@RollingStone
Eric Schmitt humiliated himself while trying to corner Jack Smith during a Senate hearing. The right is running cover for him.
https://x.com/RollingStone/status/2105013745248563590
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊