We’re Already Seeing the Impact of the Supreme Court’s Terrible Voting Rights Decision

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]It's just such an incredibly depressing cast around the map and see the rush in various states to say, "Look, we're off the hook post Calais. Let's make it >> [music] >> as racist as we can as fast as we can."

[00:00:15]Forcing a state to change its rules to make it not be racist anymore, that is not okay. But, helping a state change rules during an election so they can be more racist, that's all good.

[00:00:34]>> [music] >> Welcome to the Amicus Plus bonus room.

[00:00:40]We have a special edition of our plus members-only episode this week where I'm joined once again by our brilliant and generous friend Medea Danny while Mark Joseph Stern takes a breath in order to be a brand new dad while there is still deep breathing to be had.

[00:01:00]Medea is deputy editor and senior contributor at Balls and Strikes. You should read her there always, every time. She's also author of the originalism trap, how extremists stole the Constitution and how we the people can take it back. Welcome back, Medea. I hope your week was I don't even know what to say. I hope you also could take a deep breath. What I what I've been saying is, you know, the horrors persist, but so do I. There you go.

[00:01:29]There you go. And I keep saying there's a definite complicated German word for I'm okay, my family's okay, I'm like moving through the days and also everything is on fire and it sucks. I don't know that word, but like I would like to know it. That is the word. So, so listen, we talked for a long time last week about the decision in the Voting Rights Act case and we talked about the posture that the court took that it was just a slight, you know, little tweak and we're going back to the original, you know, view of how it should be, and we're just restoring blessed color blindness and justice into voting. And, you know, before we even blinked, I mean, literally before we had a chance to breathe over the weekend, uh the court was suddenly issuing an order that was going to allow Louisiana to go ahead and push new maps into existence.

[00:02:19]So, there is so much that is wrongheaded about what SCOTUS, you know, the sort of period at the end of that long tragic sentence. And I I don't even actually know where to begin to ask you about how much is wrong with it, except that I did think there was a pretty vaunted rule that said that the Supreme Court didn't generally allow huge [snorts] changes to voting procedures right before an election. So, maybe we could start there. Yeah.

[00:02:47]Uh the Supreme Court has this idea, they they call it the Purcell principle, uh saying that, you know, courts really don't have any business messing around with election rules when it's like on the eve of election. It's too close for any sort of judicial tinkering. You just got to You got to You got to take a step back, make make no changes at that time. And we've seen the court use this before to allow discriminatory maps to stay in place, like even when a lower federal court said, "This is like an unconstitutional racial gerrymander." And the state said, "You can't possibly expect me to do something about it right now. Uh it's too close. There's no There's an election in 5 months. I I can't possibly make new maps by then." And we've seen the Supreme Court invoke Purcell to say, "Yeah, that that tracks. That makes sense. Uh federal court shouldn't have been telling you to make your maps not racist.

[00:03:42]Uh you can have not racist maps next time, maybe."

[00:03:46]Uh and now, the Supreme Court is not concerned at all about the the rush and changing and changing the rules right as an election is about to happen.

[00:03:59]You could say as an election is already happening because I'm pretty sure people with mail ballots already sent those in.

[00:04:06]So now who knows where their votes are going to be counted and I think that the court would probably but by the court I mean the Republican majority on the court would probably try to explain this away by saying oh we said that we can't make changes that like courts shouldn't be messing with the rules. States are free to mess with the rules all they want and we can help them do that.

[00:04:32]So you know forcing a state to change its rules to make it not be racist anymore that is not okay. But helping a state change rules during an election so they can be more racist that's all good.

[00:04:46]And it's just such an incredibly depressing cast around the map and see the rush in various states to do the same thing to say look we're off the hook post Calay let's make it as racist as we can as fast as we can. So can we touch for just a moment on what was rolled out this past week in Tennessee because it is in some sense beyond believing Mediva and again directly responsive to the decision the non-partisan purely you know balls and strikes decision that was made in Calay.

[00:05:24]Yeah, you know because we have we have in Calay Alito says you know partisan gerrymandering that's all good and the fact that there's a ton of overlap between race and party that's irrelevant. So you can just go ahead and and and and politically gerrymander you can have partisan gerrymanders and that have the exact same effect as a as a racial gerrymander.

[00:05:52]Uh but that's fine as long as you say it's for partisan reasons and not for racial reasons. And so immediately Tennessee said, "Okay. Like awesome.

[00:06:01]Bet. Can do."

[00:06:03]Uh and like we no longer need to have uh districts that have, you know, a majority of of black uh constituents in them. We can you can get rid of these districts. We can get rid of the black representatives uh in our in our uh in our legislature and get a bright red just like a wall of red map instead.

[00:06:25]Just uh all of the districts will be for white conservatives. Uh so basically like what what Calais said and what Louisiana heard and what Tennessee heard uh and you know, a whole heap of other states that are uh just diving right in is yeah, you know, uh black voters are free to vote for any white Republican they want. Uh so and that they have they have that right.

[00:06:53]>> definition of freedom, I don't know what is.

[00:06:56]>> [laughter] >> So yeah, so they they got the green light to change their maps accordingly, block black people out of political power, and they immediately rushed to do so. Yeah, and and you know, the images that we are seeing are, you know, just horrifying of what that looks like uh on the ground in the legislature. I feel there's a lot of there's a lot of memory. Like people I feel like uh people recognize this. It is very grimly familiar. Uh so folks like I have seen this photo before, but last time it was in black and white. Right. No, it's it's astonishing and it is exactly the same unrepentant, unreconstructed, we win, you lose.

[00:07:41]There's no illusion here of, you know, restoring color-blind voting. It's exactly what it's always been and as you say, rendered in images that look to be exactly that. There's two just quick thoughts I wanted to add. One is our colleague Sherrilyn Ifill has an amazing interview with Professor Pam Karlan from Stanford this week on the newsletter and and it really I think in some ways answers this question of how bad is this. How bad is this going to be for democracy? How bad this is this for, you know, the arc of the moral universe? And I just want to make the point that I feel like I always have to make, which is all this in the aggregate does along with threats of sending, you know, masked officers to the polling places along with, you know, claims that, "Oh, we're about to find out that Trump really won the 2020 election. Look what we're about to unearth." All of that serves to do one thing, Medea, which is destabilize confidence in voting. So that there's two tracks on which this is happening.

[00:08:48]One is the purely functional track of they are making it harder and harder to have free and fair elections, particularly in states that used to be covered by Section 2. But more importantly, all of this screwing around with the rules of the road and the suggestion over and over again that everything is partisan and political and the fix is in. All this does is allow voters to think, "Maybe my vote doesn't matter." And that's the part that for me feels irreparable, but I'd love for you to tell me I'm wrong.

[00:09:23]No, I mean, I think that again makes a lot of unfortunate sense. Like you it's impossible to see this concerted effort to erase generations of progress, uh lock people out of political power, to yeah, take away their representation, take away their ability to, you know, participate in democratic governance.

[00:09:46]Uh it's it's you can't see that and then not think, well, I guess I guess this democracy really doesn't include me.

[00:09:53]Like I guess I really don't have a voice. I guess voting really doesn't matter. And, you know, I think I would say voting voting does matter. That's why they're working so hard to make sure you can't. Uh there's a reason why they don't want you to be able to have the vote.

[00:10:09]Um but they're they're working on that by trying to make your vote meaningless, like by trying to like take take your political power away. And it is devastating, honestly, um because the power of that vote has been so instrumental in like securing securing wins for uh not just communities of color.

[00:10:34]Everyone benefits when when uh democracy is real.

[00:10:39]Uh and almost everyone uh hurts when democracy is not. I say almost everyone because again, we have this like slim minority that's pursuing this for a reason, because they think it's advantageous for them to do so. But everyone else is worse off for it, and it's just very gross, very sad, and very illegal, um but we do not have a court that cares. It It maybe that's a good construction is to think about it as when you're pulling the way uh they are pulling, when it is amply clear that an election would decimate um this power.

[00:11:18]That kind of desperation is what has led to this race to the bottom. You know, it is a sort of substantive way of saying, like, we can't win any other way. And as you are putting it, which is nice, Medea, that means you just have to redouble your effort to say, "Oh, you can't win even this way, and here's why." I Before we leave gerrymandering, the incredibly, incredibly bleak conversation about gerrymandering, there's one more bleak turn.

[00:11:46]Uh we probably should just take a beat to reflect on the FBI's response to the Commonwealth of Virginia's successful effort to redistrict in a fair way, um or at least in a way that might give one side a fighting chance in the face of all this.

[00:12:04]Um what happened there this week?

[00:12:08]Yeah, so I think I think this really dovetails with what you were saying about there being these sort of multiple purposes and like multiple tracks uh in that, you know, we're seeing we saw the the response from the Trump administration to the successful uh redistricting effort in Virginia to sort of take some power back for for Democrats.

[00:12:31]Uh was to sic the FBI on one of the leading black uh congressmen in Virginia who was, you know, a driving force of this redistricting effort. And so I'm like, "Okay, we're seeing multiple things going on here. We're seeing continued weaponization of of what should be uh separate from separate from like the presidential president's whims." Uh like weaponization of government functions uh whether it's the FBI or the Department of Justice. We're seeing that it's all sort of been oriented around revenge uh for for Trump uh for, you know, settling scores uh going after any of his personal grievances. Like same thing with the Comey indictment, uh same same thing here. Um we're also seeing how this is being used to really go after uh black politicians in particular. Like I think it's you know the cr calling corruption on uh black politicians seems to be a sort of like favorite move now. Like, she's doing it here in Virginia. He did it to like Letitia James in New York. Uh she has throw throws this out and it again it it pairs it connects so much with this idea of oh you actually can't trust black people with political power. Uh they shouldn't have uh the right to to govern themselves.

[00:13:53]Uh it's it's so dysfunctional. It's so corrupt. Like, we got to we got to lock we got to lock their voters out. We got to lock their representatives out. It feels like it's all it's just an horrible uh amalgamation of you know government dysfunction and bigotry uh and just all of the ills of the Trump administration.

[00:14:14]Uh also not to mention projection uh cuz y'all want to talk about corruption?

[00:14:18]Really? Be serious.

[00:14:20]Right. Two words, Kash Patel.

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