Some More News - Some More News: The Supreme Court v. Voting Rights

Episode Date: June 17, 2026

Hi. On today's episode of Some More News, we're looking at the Supreme Court's Louisiana v. Callais ruling and how it fulfills John Roberts' lifelong dream to decimate the Voting Rights Act.Hosted by Cody JohnstonExecutive Producer - Katy StollDirected by Will GordhWritten by Marco Siler-GonzalesProduced by Jonathan HarrisEdited by Gregg MellerPost-Production Supervisor / Motion Graphics & VFX - John ConwayResearcher - Marco Siler-GonzalesGraphics by Clint DeNiscoHead Writer - David Christopher BellPATREON: https://patreon.com/somemorenewsMERCH: https://shop.somemorenews.comYOUTUBE MEMBERSHIP: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvlj0IzjSnNoduQF0l3VGng/join#somemorenews #SCOTUS #votingrightsact Elevate your summer bedding. Go to https://quince.com/somemorenews for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.Stop putting off those doctors appointments and go to https://Zocdoc.com/MORENEWS to find and instantly book a doctor you love today.EVERYONE who signs up wins a FREE toy or gift card! https://www.bboutique.co/vibe/somemorenews-podcastDripDrop is offering our audience 20% off your first order. Go to https://dripdrop.com and use promo code morenews.Pluto TV. Stream Now. Pay Never.Chapters:0:00 - Introduction/We’re Black and White Now2:03 - Voting! Not For Everyone!15:38 - John Roberts Has Always Wanted To End The VRA23:57 - Gerrymandering For Trump!38:12 - The Gerrymandering Monster44:35 - Redistricting! It’s Gonna Get Worse!48:51 - Alex Jones, the worst human?1:00:12 - MAGA Doesn’t Believe In AnythingSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Good evening or whenever, who cares? Do not adjust your internet screens. We're black and white now, like that spider noir, which is cool, right? Kids love black and white. They call it pale maxing. Like and subscribe, kids. It's thematic you see. Because here's some news.

Our mighty Supreme Court justices have declared that color no longer exists, or rather the Supreme Court recently ruled that you may not draw congressional maps with consideration of race. Here's Republican Louisiana Governor, Jeff Landry celebrating and or justifying this. I think that the Supreme Court has finally taken race out of redistricting, which we've been saying all along. Listen, we're one nation under God, all created equally. You got it!

One nation under God created equally. Therefore, racism gone. Wow. Can't believe all it took was one guy saying that. We should have made him say that earlier. Why didn't we have him say that earlier? Anyway, rest in peace, racism. You had a...

Good run? Just a run. You had a run. Tarantino will have to invent a new, shocking word to stick in his movies, is my point. Everyone move on. The end. Following breaking news right now, coming out of Tennessee, that state is now redrawn its congressional maps, and no longer includes what would be considered a majority black district.

The rush to chisel out that majority black district comes as the direct result of the Supreme Court decision to severely limit the vote. Voting Rights Act. Uh-hmm, that actually still sounds pretty racist. Yet, turns out, states are just using this decision to be more racist. Despite Tennessee being almost a fifth black and one of its biggest cities being nearly two-thirds black, the state has used this Supreme Court decision to get rid of its only majority black voting district, splitting it up within majority white ones. Wow-wee! Who could have seen this coming?

It's almost as if... We really super needed the voting rights act. acts. What? You swap back to color. God damn kids these days wanting pigments. Pigment maugging us. Anyway, voting. Not for everyone anymore, it seems. To give you some background, in Louisiana v. Calais, the Supreme Court justices were deciding whether or not a recently adopted voting map by the Louisiana State Legislature qualified as a racial gerrymander. See, a few years ago, a group of black voters sued the state over a previously passed map, which only allotted one majority black voting district,

despite the state being one third black. The lower courts agreed that this violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, so the state passed a map with two majority black districts. Then, a group that described themselves as non-African American, and which I will describe as honkies, also sued the state, saying that the two majority black districts effectively amounted to a racial gerrymandering. So, even though the state still contained a majority of white voting districts, these honkies were arguing that the state was doing some sort of reverse racism. That's what started all of this.

A group of white people complained, as they do, that an effort toward equality was actually anti-white oppression and then took it to the Supreme Court, which we all know is really unbiased and good about these sorts of cases. Flash forward to now-ish, and conservative justice, Samuel Alito, King Honky, wrote in a six to three decision that, yes, Louisiana's voting map was indeed racial gerrymandering, and that Louisiana had overcorrected when trying to come into compliance with the Voting Rights Act. Alito also added that the protection measures granted by the Voting Rights Act were simply not needed anymore, writing, at the time of the Act's passage, the nation had faced nearly a century of entrenched racial discrimination in voting, But the Voting Rights Act led to great strides in the ensuing decades.

Voting tests were abolished. Disparities in voter registration and turnout due to race were erased, and African Americans attained political office in record numbers. By 2004, the racial gap in voter registration and turnout had largely disappeared, with minorities registering and voting at levels that sometimes surpassed the majority. Oh, okay. So Alito admits that the U.S. had in terms of the U. entrenched racial discrimination and posits that because of the Voting Rights Act,

we have accomplished racial parity within our political system, therefore solving racism and making the Voting Rights Act unnecessary. It's like how if your boat has a leak and you patch it up, well, then the leak is fixed, so you can just rip that patch right off, right? Why have the patch anymore? That patch is discriminating against water after all. He went on to say that going forward, a plaintiff must prove that the states are motivated

or operating on the basis of racism when drawing their legislative maps. That is, as you might guess, pretty much impossible to do. It's not like Jim Crow segregationists were putting up poll taxes at voting booths with a sign saying, because we're racist scamps.

They just did it with the implicit reasoning of deterring black people from voting. Because that's kind of how systemic racism works. That's why it's called a dog whistle and not a regular whistle. The implications unstated, the notes unheard, it's racist jazz. Alito further justified this claim by pointing out that, quote,

Black voters now participate in elections at similar rates as the rest of the electorate, even turning out at higher rates than white voters in two of the five most recent presidential elections nationwide and in Louisiana. Wowie. Two out of five? That's almost.

large. And might I add, who cares? What does the rate of participation have to do with making sure people are fairly allowed to participate? He's acting like it's a nightclub or something. Also, Alito is cherry picking the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, where black voters did participate at virtually the same rate as whites for the first time in history.

It's almost as if there was someone running who better represented their demographic and they were excited about that. But I guess these two elections were a pretty affirming sign that the legislation passed in 1965 was working. Except oops, turns out the data Alito cited was gathered using a dubious method that isn't normally used to calculate statewide voter turnout. So this information that he's using to make a Supreme Court decision might not even be accurate.

Bad data, also known as lore for you Star Trek fans. Also, what Alito conveniently leaves out is that black voter participation started to slip after 2012 and has continued a downward trend. So, bad data cherry picked from two elections to make it seem like black people are voting more often. And again, not even sure what any of that has to do with voting rights. And also, just one year after that historic voter turnout, the conservative Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Robbins, Roberts already began to chip away at the Voting Rights Act. Almost like people got scared at how many minorities were voting. In Shelby County v. Holder, a five to four decision eliminated preclearance.

That was a clause under the Voting Rights Act that required states with a history of discriminatory voting policies to receive approval from the Justice Department when making changes to their districting and other election policies. And the fallout of that decision was immediately. In the nearly a year since the Supreme Court struck down a key portion of the Voting Rights Act, five states have tightened access to voting. From Texas to Virginia, state and local governments have taken steps to require voter identification, eliminate same-day registration, and to limit voting hours and locations. So I don't know, maybe that also contributed to this lower turnout after 2012.

In fact, a groundbreaking report by the Brennan Center for just, found that Shelby County v. Holder has directly led to a greater disparity in voter turnout between whites and people of color and that disparity is even more poignant in areas of the country that were subject to preclearance. So just to recap, black people voted in record numbers in the 2008 and 2012 elections and so they immediately eliminated a protection against racist voting policies and caused that number to drop. And now in justifying even more racist shenanigans, Alito's like, well, they voted a lot back in 2012 before we made that harder, as if that explains anything besides the gradually ballooning artery in my brain. The doc says it's the size of a quarter. I named it Vane Diesel, because he's so swole. Anyway, this is all why, you know, we very much still need voting protections for demographics that are still under attack, because they are under attack. And the most of the most of the most moment those protections are removed, these people take advantage. The moment they were unrestrained

by federal oversight, Republican legislators went on to shut down tens of thousands of polling places since 2013. In Georgia, for example, voter rolls have ballooned, much like Vane Diesel, by almost 2 million people. Yet the state has slashed 10% of total polling places. Because they can, because they want to do it. They can't wait to do it. It's like the main subject of their vision boards. They're the vampires and sinners, standing at the door, trying to be allowed in, using every rhetorical game they can play until someone lets their guard down. And they do this with a lot of stuff, often by ignoring decades of policy in order to pretend like a problem went away on its own. Like how they want us to think that the hole in the ozone was all a big panic now that the whole

been repaired, as if it just magically did that by itself. It's just such obvious mad hatter logic, and they know it. And they know we know it. In fact, this exact point was made by rapin' Ruth Bader Ginsburg during that Shelby County V Holder case, in which she said in her dissent, throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes

is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet. Yeah, what she said! It's almost as if there's a political party that uses flatulent word games to take advantage of people's ignorance of science and history in order to regress our society, who purposefully use the progress we've made against us

and who have successfully done this with the Voting Rights Act, something very important that we need and don't have any more and have to start all over again with. Almost as if that thing I just said. I'll let you chew on that idea for the ad break, maybe swirl it around in there. Don't swallow it, though.

Don't you dare swallow it. And then when we get back, we will take a look at Chief Justice John Roberts, a honky who is quite pleased with doing a thing he's wanted to do for a while. Ads now, though. Don't swallow it. It's almost summertime,

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That's Z, O, C, D, O, C, D, C, dot com slash more news. Zocdot. dot com slash more news. Thanks Zogtog for sponsoring this message. Okay, swallow. Voting rights. We were discussing how conservatives have a habit

of regressing the country by using our progress as proof that we no longer need that progress. And how they're doing this important detail on purpose. And in fact, their lust to take away our rights is exactly why we needed laws to. maintain those rights in the first place. It's like the country is one big MC Escher drawing, but without the fun parts where you walk on the ceiling, like that spider noir! Why not me? I've been bitten by tons of spiders. Why not Cody?

Anyway, one of these such ghouls is the mild-mannered Chief Justice John Roberts. Don't let those boyish looks fool you. Roberts has wanted to do away with the Voting Rights Act since he was a simple DOJ pleb during the Reagan administration. Then just in his mid-20s, Roberts was assigned to make the case against a recent proposed amendment by Congress that would strengthen Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Colleagues of Roberts described him as a zealot over his suspicions of the Voting Rights Act intent.

Basically, it was Roberts's job to make the administration's case against the Voting Rights Act without making Reagan look like a racist. He would take that racist bullet. You know, the one from who framed Roger Rabbit. Presumably, he'd take the bullet because he's a racist, just one of many who have wanted this for a while. Conservatives lost those battles in court early on, but it only sharpened Roberts' resolve

to dismantle a landmark piece of legislation he regarded as an abomination. By the time Bush II, the squeak will, nominated Roberts for a Supreme Court position in 2005, both Democrats and Republicans were well aware of Roberts' obsession with the voting, Rights Act. On the Voting Rights Act, whether you have any problem at all and trouble at all in terms

of the constitutionality of the existing Voting Rights Act that was extended by the Congress. Well, the existing Voting Rights Act, the constitutionality has been upheld, and I don't have any issue with that. There's a separate question that would be raised. It's the Voting Rights Act. We're extended, as I know Congress is considering. And those arguments have been raised about whether or not particular provisions should be extended or should not be extended.

And since those questions might well come before the Court, I do need to exercise caution on that. But with regards to the act that we passed, a bipartisan act, I'm going to come back to it, and about your position on the 1982 Act, I know you had concerns, and I'm going to come back to those. But you're not suggesting that there's any constitutional issue with that. I'm not aware of any constitutional issue that's been raised about it. But again, I don't want to express conclusions on hypothetical questions. Hmm, that kind of sounds like a guy who can't wait to chip away at the Voting Rights Act. And it's as if people suspected it back then, too.

They all knew. Like that one coworker everyone calls wife killer Kyle, everyone just knew. Maybe we should have paid attention to those people. Senator Kennedy and other Democrats were grilling Roberts during the Senate confirmation hearings because Roberts had a long history of fighting against the progression of the voting rights In fact, we can trace the same shitty arguments that Roberts made back in the 1980s to what the conservative justices have said today. For example, during Reagan's first term, Congress was looking to shore up the Voting Rights Act by restoring the effects test. Which basically means that if a certain state election law has the effect of diluting minority voting power, then that law would be unconstitutional under the Voting Rights Act.

In other words, it doesn't matter what the intentions of a law is. is, if the effect suppresses votes, you can't do it. A good way to, you know, stop racist laws disguised as something else. But Reagan's Justice Department, along with a young staffer John Roberts, preferred that the Voting Rights Act had an intent test, meaning that you would need to prove that lawmakers were passing voting laws with the intent of discriminating against minorities. But as we already said before, it's not like people name their laws the Racist Voting Suppression Act of 20.

They might call it like the Crackers Act, but it stands for Caucasian racist agenda creating knowing explicit racism super. Not to give them any ideas, of course. For now though, focusing on proving intent is such an obvious way to allow racist laws to sneak through, which is probably why racists like it. And Roberts wrote dozens of internal legal memos and policy briefs for the Justice Department to argue against the effects test, saying, violations of Section 2 should not be made too easy to prove,

since they provide a basis for the most intrusive interference imaginable by federal courts into state and local processes. Because, you know, don't want the federal court to decide things that affect the country, I guess. Of course, Congress ultimately voted to restore the effects test, but Roberts gained significant clout among the conservative movement for his effort. In fact, Democrats hammered Roberts on this specific policy during his 2005 confirmation hearing.

So why, why at that point did you want to make Section 2 cases so difficult to prove? Senator, you keep referring to what I supported and what I wanted to do. I was a 26-year-old staff lawyer. It was my first job as a lawyer after my clerkships. I was not shaping administration policy. The administration policy was shaped by the Attorney General and whose staff I served. It was the policy of President Reagan. It was to extend the Voting Rights Act without change

for the longest period in history at that point. And it was my job to promote the Attorney General's view and the president's view on that issue. And that's what I was doing. Take it easy on it, Mr. Uncle, Senator. He wasn't a racist trying to make it easier for states to suppress minority votes. He was working for the racist

trying to make it easier for states to suppress minority votes. Learning from them, you see? And again, perhaps we should have listened to these people raising their concerns because 45 years after Roberts wrote those memos for Reagan's Justice Department, the intent test, is now essentially the law of the land. In his writings and legal memos, Roberts' disdain for the Voting Rights Act is often cloaked in the catch-all conservative outlook that the legislation is simply too much of an intrusion from the federal government into the business of states and

local counties. So he's concerned about government overreach, it seems. But that's not his only concern. In a 2009 ruling over the Seattle school district's decision to factor in race to school admissions, Roberts wrote, the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race, which sure explains a lot. Specifically, it explains that John Roberts is really fucking stupid, like child's stupid, stupid or even. But Like he must attack his reflection in the mirror. Or maybe he's racist and wants racist people to get to do the racist things.

Either way, it seems bad he's on the Supreme Court. It goes back to that Alito decision, where they act like America is in this vacuum where racism magically went away on its own, which is not only stupid in terms of not understanding history, but stupid in terms of not understanding how racist America still is. And in fact, a good example is the,

racist thing they are doing while claiming America isn't racist. It hurts brain, Cody brain, make brain gush. And I think that's what they want. They want hurt Cody make brain gush. And you, they want hurt you make brain gush. They know their arguments are dumb. It's either this concern about government overreach or a blatant denial of how racism works. The only conclusion you can really make is that these people are very stupid or very racist. But how how Maybe it's both. Roberts, after all, was raised in an all-white suburb that openly advertised and promoted its segregation. He then went to an all-boys Catholic boarding school and then off to Harvard. After law school, Roberts chose to clerk for Supreme Court Justice William Rankwist, a very racist guy who had a long history of not only undermining civil rights in the U.S., but of being an active participant in harassing minority voting. at the polls. In other words, Roberts is a bubble boy, specifically a racist bubble. His entire life has been cordoned off from the realities of race and what societal

disadvantages it might bring. He was then mentored by men who saw the advancements of civil rights as a detriment to society. As a Supreme Court justice, he has championed the legal theory of a colorblind Constitution, which promotes the idea that the Constitution, specifically the 14th Amendment, wasn't written with the intention to favor one race over another and that judges should essentially render judgment without even considering race. But that is such an academically detracted view of how the world actually works, perhaps by design. Like, yeah, the world would be awesome if everyone judged people by the content of their character and maybe also their DVD collection and not the color of their skin and perhaps we are grader moving toward that reality. But that's not where we are now. Jim Crow laws were winding down in John Roberts's lifetime. Heck, there were still racially segregated high school proms in the 20 fucking tens. Or how about the fact that the moment they dropped the Voting Rights Act a bunch of states jumped at the chance to remove

minority districts, sometimes at the White House's request. Do you have a problem with the White House giving South Carolina a map and telling this is how your state should be run? Well, they've been very public about how states can be redistricted. Ah, yes, we're finally living John Roberts' dream of vanquishing the federal government's intrusion into our state election laws. So that's current South Carolina Congresswoman and soon to be podcaster, Nancy Mace, sidestepping a question about whether or not it's a good look to be spoon-fed a congressional

map by the White House. Because that's what just happened. South Carolina Republicans are attempting to remove their only majority black district in the state using a map that was championed by the White House, the same White House that thought it was helpful to visually compare the length of a 100-year-old reflecting pool with the height of some buildings. Yes, things are silly and dumb, but to reiterate, the federal government, you know, the thing Roberts was so concerned about budding into states' elections, is telling a state how to run their elections. Huh. It's almost like they don't actually care about government overreach,

and this was more about, in the most good faith interpretation, rigging the elections to favor conservatives, which happens to coincide with removing minority districts. How about that? And they know they are doing it. They don't care that we know. Tennessee Representative Marsha Blackburn posted a picture of an all-red congressional map on social media just a few hours after the latest Supreme Court decision, saying it's essential to cement at real Donald Trump's agenda and the golden age of America.

A map, which it turns out, was also probably made in conjunction with the White House, or rather, Republican lawmakers in the state didn't answer where or when that map originated, but told reporters that it was drawn with consultation from the White House. You think? You think the map Blackburn tweeted out

and said was essential to cement Trump's agenda was, perhaps, made in consultation with Trump? So multiple redistricting maps have seemingly been created in conjunction with the president, specifically to give his party an edge in upcoming elections. Boy, that feels fucking illegal. And actually just seven years ago, a congressional lawmaker

openly bragging about passing a hyper-partisan redistricting map at the direction of the president would be considered unconstitutional. Would be. Because wouldn't you know it? Back in 2019, the Supreme Court effectively gave their stamp of approval for partisan gerrymandering. At the time, they were looking at two state gerrymanders, one that gave Democrats an edge in Maryland, and another that gave Republicans a dominant majority in North Carolina. Writing for the majority opinion on that case, John Roberts admits that the maps are highly partisan,

but the courts had no directive to address it. Quote, we have no commission to allocate political power and influence in the absence of a constitutional directive or legal standards to guide us in the exercise of such authority. Uh, what? He's basically saying that they don't, like, know how to decide if a map is too partisan. Then what's your job?

Is it just to like look sexy in those robes? If so, mission accomplished, you deserve a raise. On account of the raise you gave everyone looking at you because the robes are so sexy. But who do we talk to then? Is there another group of people we can take this to, some other office downtown? I didn't realize the people in charge of deciding things

could just shrug if something's too hard to figure out. Perhaps he simply didn't want to. In fact, in her dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan pointed out that for decades, lower courts have managed to take sober looks at partisan maps and decide whether or not they were unconstitutional. Now, all of a sudden, the conservative majority believes this to be too tall a task.

That's pretty damning when you think about it. That's like if your manager decided not to give you a raise because they couldn't figure out the payroll app. Like, learn it then, dude. That's your job. It's almost, hear me out. It's almost as if John Roberts' real job isn't to decide the constitutionality of laws,

but actually to exist as an operative for the Republican Party, a legal conduit or obstruction depending on what they need to accomplish or not accomplish. There's this thing called the Purcell principle. I know it sounds like the worst John Grisham book, and maybe it is, but it was created by the Supreme Court back in 2006, and it states that the courts can't suddenly change the rules to an election at the last minute, as in when it's too close to the election itself.

Except they didn't specify what close means there. Is it a week? Six months. They didn't say. Perhaps on purpose, because since that ruling, the Purcell principle has been conveniently used by the Supreme Court when it benefited the Republican Party and ignored it when it would help the Democratic Party. They cited it back in 2020 to disallow an extension for voters to send in absentee ballots in Wisconsin due to COVID. But they conveniently forgot about it when allowing Louisiana and Alabama to draw brand new maps after primaries in those elections were already underway. In Alabama, they even threw out ballots to restart the process. Really seems like that violates the Purcell principle, you know? It's a rigged game.

It's freaking three-card Monty. Ring toss at the carnival. Roberts knows it. That's his actual job. It's why his opinions seem to turn on a dime and are based on an alternate reality where racism doesn't exist and politicians are but sweet cherubs. The little baby kind, not the fucked up H.R. Geiger ones with like four faces and claw dicks or whatever they got down there.

I haven't checked and I will not check until later. And I can't stress enough, Roberts knows what he's doing. He knows that there are wolves at the door and he is opening that door for those wolves. We're gonna go take another break, the ad break, and then when we come back, we're gonna talk about one such wolf. Enjoy these ads or don't. I'm not your lord. Am I? No, I'm not your lord.

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Fleech. Summer is just, Just better on Pluto TV. Stream now? Pay never. Hello, my sweet, sweet news horse. Before the break, we were gabbing on and on about that Justice Roberts Fellow

and how he's very concerned about government overreach only when that concern happens to favor Republicans. And opened the door for partisan gerrymandering because he was apparently too overwhelmed to do his job. Basically, the moment they were faced with deciding if a map was too partisan, he was like, well, who's to say? How could we possibly know what's what?

What even is a map? This was specifically about a 2019 case concerning the gerrymandered maps in Maryland and North Carolina. As I mentioned, Justice Elena Kagan would point out in her written dissent that lower courts have no problem deciding if a map is too partisan.

So, you know, maybe ask the lower courts how to do it. And it's a special. frustrating because at the same time Roberts conveniently forgot how to do his job there were people who were actively and openly trying to skew the elections. In fact, Kagan called out one specific Republican strategist in the case of North Carolina's partisan district map. This guy. Of course redistricting is democracy at work. Redistricting is like an election in reverse. It's a great event. Usually the voters get to pick

the politicians. In redistricting, the politicians get to pick the voters. Ha ha ha ha ha, good joke. Because it's true and evil. Get it? That's the late Thomas Hoffler. He is one of the reasons that Republicans have dominated state houses across the country since 2010. Hoffler was a master at his craft. That craft, being how to surgically pick apart a state to grant as much representation to Republicans as possible. He was like the Oklahoma City Thunder general manager Sam Presti of racist gerrymandering, which is a reference to the National Basketball Association. Deep cut for all my hoop heads out there.

I'm not a hoop head, but you know, we got hoop heads, so hope you enjoyed it. In North Carolina, Hoffler managed to rearrange a House congressional map from a 7 to 6 Democratic majority into a 10 to 3 Republican majority. What a talented asshole. That map eventually sparked the lawsuit that led to to the 2019 decision I've been talking about. In that case, plaintiffs argued that Hoffler was using race as a key factor when splitting up districts.

If an area was majority black, Hoffler found ways to either split that area into Republican majority districts or pack that majority into a sequestered district to limit their influence. What made Hoffler's work even more sinister was that his defense was that he was making these maps under the guise of partisan gerrymandering.

It's not racist, you see. It's just partisan, which I guess is fine now. It's not racist, wink, wink, and he made sure his Republican counterparts would tow this line in public messaging. We want to make clear that we, to the extent are going to use political data in drawing this map, it is to gain partisan advantage on the map.

I want that criteria to be clearly stated and understood. Hoffler's strategy boiled down to the idea that as long as we don't admit that we're intentionally diluting the voting power of black voters, then we can do whatever we want. See, there's always that chicken or the egg question of whether Republicans are disenfranchising black voters because they vote Democrat or disenfranchising Democrats in their quest to be racist. I know it's vote. And Hoffler seemed to be aware that it's both and openly advised his allies on how to navigate this. During PowerPoint presentations, Hoffler would include cutsy bits of advice like, don't reveal more than necessary, and emails are the tool of the devil.

That's a folksy way of saying to not leave a paper trail when disenfranchising minority voters, but if you do, try not to be racist about it. Seems pretty messed up that there was a GOP gerrymandering consultant whose go-to-mottos sound like Post-it notes Tony Soprana would leave for himself. A real Gabba ghoul. Anyway, unfortunately for Hoffler, his daughter actually had a moral backbone. Shortly after he died in 2018, Hoffler's daughter released a trove of secret documents and data that Hoffler had collected over his career. Those documents proved that Hoffler was drawing these maps with the intent to dilute minority and immigrant voting

power. But despite all of that, the conservative majority still gave states carte blanche to gerrymander to their heart's desire as long as they said it was for partisan purposes. Because as long as you pretend it's only being done to benefit your party and the racism is just a side effect. Well, they'll allow it. Even if everyone knows that's not the case, they had a guy who was like, don't leave a paper trail and whose daughter exposed his explicit intent to nirf the rights of minorities, and they're still somehow allowed to keep doing it? They're not even in trouble? Vane Diesel feeds! And this is why it's so blatantly disingenuous to pretend like racism is somehow over.

They literally have written evidence that the people in charge are doing it because of race. I really can't stress enough how messed up this is. Again, the wolves are at the door screaming, we are wolves and what? want to eat you. And Roberts was basically like, well, I don't see any wolves here. No reason not to open the door. It's too hard to keep it shut. Anywho, that's more or less where we find ourselves now.

Hoffler drew up the plans. The Supreme Court okayed the permits. And now President Trump is throwing the Klan party. We're so far beyond even considering how messed up it is that the gerrymandering is openly partisan. And so, naturally, the Democrats are right. there in the mud as well. Back in February, the Supreme Court gave the thumbs up to California to use a new redistricting map that gives Democrats a significant edge to gain five more seats in the House of Representatives.

Virginia followed a similar playbook, but they were thwarted at the last minute by the state's Supreme Court over hogwash procedural grounds. Because only Republicans can ignore the rules, you see. While more Republican states have so far made mid-decade redistricting changes, we could very well see several more Democratic states make drastic redistricting changes before the 2028 election. So this is just, this is just what we do now. Forget messaging or campaigning. It's just our team versus their team and the name of the game is to use as many technicalities as you can find to skew the playing field and maybe even change the game. Thanks Supreme Court, this is definitely what the Constitution had in mind. It's only going to get worse and it's bad

for everyone. Can't stress that enough. Take, for example, California's new district map that essentially eliminates five red seats. In order to do that, the new map bunches together the massive and rural northern tip of California with parts of the liberal urban core of the Bay Area. Obviously, the concerns held by rural Northern Californians will be overshadowed by the majority liberal areas of the Bay area. Here's former California representative Doug Almalfa, who represented, who represented represented that formerly Republican stronghold. All those counties I've represented at one time or another in different iterations, and they all voted red.

They all rejected this because they know they're going to be on the line that their voice is going to be basically silence on their rural issues, on their issues of timber management and farming and ranching and water supply and the other things that come from the land. They're now going to be subject to the type of thinking that comes from, you know, Marin County and that kind of representation. Must feel bad, right? To have your voice shut out like that, perhaps this is bad for everyone. Doug actually passed away just a few months after this interview.

His successor will most likely serve a very short term, considering they will have to face this new gerrymandered map in the midterms that overwhelmingly favors Democrats. Doug's death is a bit symbolic, considering that rural concerns and policy priorities that he championed since 2013 will essentially be wiped off the map in the midterms and in the elections following. I'm sure there's a political cartoonist out there just jizzing over it, right? Just drawing like an eagle dressed as a farmer crying over their grave. They'll think of something.

Not trying to spin a sob story for Republicans either. They made their bed, so Democrats are rightfully gonna shit on that bed. But rather, I'm pointing out that the Voting Rights Act signed in 1965 isn't just a tool to protect historically disenfranchised black and brown voters. That is why why, it was passed, but as is often the case with efforts toward equal representation, the people fighting against it are very often fighting against their own self-interest. Like even a wheelchair ramp helps everyone, right? Baby strollers, rad skateboarders, even

rad rollerbladers. In her dissenting opinion in Louisiana v. Calais, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the decision would let states systematically dilute minority citizens voting power. Keyword being minority. Right, rural voters are the minority in California, and they're going to get steamrolled for the foreseeable future, which sucks for them. But I guess if you're a Republican lawmaker, this is just a casualty in their war to silence minority votes.

Because over in Nashville, Tennessee, one of the fastest-growing cities in America is split up three ways into Republican rural districts. Thanks to a Republican redistricting effort in 2022, the state's most populous city doesn't even have a congressional office. Back in Louisiana, where this latest Supreme Court decision kicked in, lawmakers have just approved a new map that eliminates one of its two black districts. The state's governor, Jeff Landry, remember him from the beginning? Even postponed early voting while voting was taking place so the state could take full advantage of their new map.

But have you considered that this is what Martin Luther King Jr. would have wanted? I think a lot of African-American voters in this state might say they need to. that protection when it comes to the ballot box. I mean, we go back to Martin Luther King, right? Judge a person based upon the content of their character rather than their color of their skin. After all of the different cases, after all of the rectification of the sins of the past,

which certainly no one has denied, and yet we're still trying to find some sliver of discrimination in race, I think a lot of people would say you don't have to try to find it. It's there. I would say that you find that it would reside in people's hearts, not in their laws. Now, ah, see? You forgot.

Racism is over. And it's actually racist to talk about race. And that's why we had to halt voting in order to specifically eliminate a black district to show how over racism is. And you can't talk about it because then you're the racist. Also, even after Louisiana's legislature, this new gerrymandar, the original honky plaintiffs in Louisiana v. Calais filed a complaint in federal court saying that the last remaining Black district still amounts to racial gerrymandering. So they want to get rid of that district too to show how racism is over. It's just so scummy. The idea that we're in a colorblind society is such an obvious smokescreen that racists use to get away with doing racist things. In fact,

Fun history fact, the idea of a colorblind constitution was created in 1896 by Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan, a former slave owner and a vowed white supremacist who used that phrase to argue against separate but equal laws in the Jim Crow South. Harlan believed that whites naturally were and would be the superior race in the United States, and they didn't need to have constitutional laws to enforce that hierarchy, quote, The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country, and so it is in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth, and in power. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time,

if it remains true to its great heritage, and holds fast to the principles of constitutional liberty. Harlan advocated for a colorblind constitution because he ultimately believed that would be a better tool and upholding white supremacy, then legalized segregation. And here we are today, overturning civil rights legislation based on the words of a slave owner. This entire theory is from an open racist

who lived over 100 years ago. They're just racist, is my point. Who won't stop being racist? There's no point where racist will go, well, that's enough racism for today. Let's pack up all the racism, folks. Throw it in the back of the cyber truck and go home. Which is why you shouldn't give them.

them an inch. And yet, we're so far removed from even that conversation. We're like four steps behind the mere consideration that perhaps politicians shouldn't be allowed to openly gerrymander based on partisan goals. Though, incidentally, Democrats want to ban partisan gerrymandering and Republicans don't. It's a very bad sign that one of our political parties has decided that the only way they can win elections is by taking away people's voting rights, that the GOP, to be blunt, doesn't want everyone to have a say. And perhaps that says something about them. We can't talk about any of that yet,

because we're still locked in this tailspin playing rhetorical games about who is actually racist, or who can draw the squigglyest lines on a map. I hate it. Vane Diesel loves it, obviously, and feeds and grows stronger every day, but I hate it. Why couldn't I have just been a Spider-Man?

Go back to the black and white. I'm gonna go find some more spot. in the crawl space. Bight me. Bight me! For God I don't have health insurance. I think it's fine. It's...

It's... It's... I... I bandage it up and I've... That's... Oh, my blood smells weird too. It's... it's... it's fine. Just make sure like and subscribe and leave a comment about what you recommend I do now and check out...

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and I'm going to wrap my hand real tight with the Warmba shirt because I think, I do think that my imagination is just too strong. It's fine.