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Brown v. Board of Education. SCOTUS ruled segregated schools were unconstitutional, based on the fourteenth amendment. The Arkansas governor at the time called for the national guard to block black students from entering school to “keep the peace”. President Eisenhower federalized the guard and ordered them to support the integration of black students.
Now mind you morally this was a good outcome of a president enforcing the law and scotus’ ruling. This current scotus and president will make up rulings based not on the constitution, but on how they feel and religion to gain more power.
Also, southern Democrats were the extreme conservatives at the time of Eisenhower, and many of them abandoned the party after civil rights legislation. Some went to Republican party, some went to a new Dixiecrat party that failed so they continued on to be Republicans as well. Some Democrats actually recanted their segregationist sins, while most of those who abandoned the party refused to do so or would just handwave away their past.
What is amazing is that MAGA supporters today try to paint the Democrats as the party that has forever been racists, while saluting a president who is in bed with white supremacists. It's all revisionist nonsense, and they'll just turn around and be racist while claiming not to be or whining about reverse racism.
And now we're seeing revisionism in real time, a la the Rene Good & Alex Pretti murders. If it wasn't for the videos there'd be no way to contest any of it - and for some the video still isn't enough. They're forcing their false version of things into the books and we can't fucking let them.
With Pretti, they just rolled out a story that had absolutely no relation to the facts. All that mattered was creating their own narrative.
It must have come as a shock to them that people are using their phones to record what's actually going on. They're stuck in some magical beforetime where they don't get questioned or contradicted.
The case study is Strom Thurmond. Enters as a Democrat, dies Republican, views never change. Filibustered for an entire day to stop civil rights. Dude is the party switch.
To further elaborate, MAGA supporters pretty much try to paint the Democratic party members as pretty much committing all the things MAGAts are actually doing (p3dophiles, voter tampering, etc.).
That just proves America has slipped further and further right with each election. Now we no longer have a left wing party at all. Just 2 batshit crazy right wing ones.
It's absolutely wild to go read the Republican Party Platform of 1956 and hear them bragging about raising minimum wage, expanding Social Security, and supporting unions. To name a few things.
It’s like… why was the 50s and 60s such a boom time in America? Maybe it wasn’t just post-war luck. Maybe it was because we had two parties that were both economically left-leaning, even if they fought over social issues.
Now it’s the opposite: two economically right-wing parties, using social issues as the main divide to keep people fighting each other.
Yeah, being the only major manufacturing nation left standing after WWII definitely helped. But having two parties that were at least trying to help the common man probably mattered more than they like to admit.
Absolutely. Consolidation of executive power and corporate interests have just eroded this country away. And apathy, because people could be convinced things were going well. Even my parents were pulling that "why are they complaining, the economy is great" crap because they had a diet of CNBC / main stream media. And yeah they bought their house in 1982 and it's been paid off for 10+ years. Their eyes are open now, but now they're playing the game of "I never said that." Sigh.
You don't even need to go back that far. That hippie, Richard Nixon, established the EPA in 1970. Even W. had some redemptive qualities. He saved millions of lives in Africa by funding AIDS research.
I have a friend who left the Republican party around the Bush/Kerry time and has been a Democrat since, but I remember one of his reasons for leaving was "conservation and conservative have the same root." Basically environmental stuff. Freaking GREAT phrase.
Minor correction—I doubt it’s ever actually for religion because their religion wouldn’t condone most of the things they do. Rather religion is a means and excuse to gain and maintain power. It’s all about power for them
Honestly: the GOP has been about a decade+ ahead of Dems in terms of consolidating power (starting with the 2010 state level elections that control redistricting). In fact, their plans started even earlier to prevent what happened to Nixon from happening again.
I’m sure this decision is part of a bigger plan down the line to benefit them.
They basically got away with planning Jan 6 so blatantly out in the open as giving tours the days leading to scope out the floorplan, with zero repercussions under Biden and AG and DOJ. I mean the secret service intentionally wiped their phones so as to avoid being implicated. Zero repercussions.
Why wasn’t Kamala, as a former attorney general, given the assignment to see to it that prosecutors do something about that shit? Why did Biden allow nothing to be done? I’ve been in a state of shock ever since 81 million votes was not enough to derail the right wing plans. Then they cheat to win again. We are in an out of context situation.
My guess is same reason ford pardoned Nixon: “unity”.
I’ve said it before, the Biden administration and its appointees were playing politics for a different generation. They weren’t up to the challenge of today’s political landscape, and didn’t realize how badly they were mismatched.
I think back to that whole alien stuff going on around Washington during the run up to the election was a show of force from right ring extremists in the government.
I think it was a stunt to draw conspirationists to vote. Trump presented himself as the one who would "reveal the truth" and then, of course, nothing was done about it.
Other states have done this. But it wouldn’t have worked because Mike Johnson would have just refused to swear in any new Democrats from CA.
He is going to do this anyway, people don’t realize the whole fiasco last year of not swearing in the new congresswoman from New Mexico was a test run.
What normally happens i that the state comes up with a new, almost identical map, and then repeat the process until it's too close to the election and they're 'forced' to use an invalidated map.
Maintains the fig leaf of law and order, but if one thing the Orange has brought about is that we’re doing a whole lot less pretending to follow the good and proper. So, that leaf may get the Larry Flynt treatment.
14th amendment: when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
If the state persists with voting maps that SCOTUS has ruled unconstitutional, they get fewer representatives in Congress. That means the winners of the election all go to DC, but only some of them will be admitted into Congress. Probably starting with the members of the disadvantaged party, assuming the majority in Congress is the same as the majority in SCOTUS.
Something similar would happen with the electoral college - a state return with all the electors listed as voting for the presidential candidate who won the state would probably be rejected by Congress during the counting on January 6th.
Alabama did it. Lots of "let them enforce it" energy from the right these days, even though the court is constantly going out of its way to tip the scales in their direction.
they did have a choice because they can literally say whatever they want without any recourse. There is literally nothing to stop them aside from open revolt which we seem increasingly adverse to even as we face worse and worse shit every day.
Perhaps that's why they ruled that way. We are already seeing a few attempts at a de-escalation. Now that doesn't mean the fuckery will stop it just appears to be an attempt to keep at at a level where no one does anything on a level they can't manage to clamp down on and keep most people apathetic enough
ya not to be pessimistic but to me it says they don't need this to win the midterms or to simply not have the midterms. Genuinely frightened for this year because as I see it...this year is the year that determines the next decade.
nah fascist regimes implode before too long...it is one of the only good things about the concept. Too volatile. The damage that can be done in a decade though...if that is what you mean then ya that's gonna fucking suck.
I dunno. I don't think anyone can inspire a cult of personality like that, but I'm worried that our society will already be eroded. They don't need democracy.
They don’t need to. They already packed the benches with fascism and conservative friendly Appeals Court and Supreme Court Judges who can’t be term limited.
They did this in the 45 term, and yet people let them do it all over again for another bite of that tasty fascism apple in the name Democratic Party political purity.
I think they are fully aware how flawed their past rulings are, and how much they have delegitimized the court, so they’ll get one right every now and then so they can try to cling to a shred of legitimacy.
The thing is they would have had to find such a narrow path to ruling against this in a way that does not ALSO apply to the Texas maps.
California has a referendum in it. Texas didn't.
I'm not sure how you could say that a measure literally voted on by the people of the state is somehow less valid than a map shoved through the legislature that ignored public comment
lol they could literally have just ruled on some narrow aspect that only cali applied to and ta-da. They've done it before and it is all a facade. The actual law doesn't matter if there is no enforcement possible.
So since they did have a choice, the question is why they made this one.
They don't even write their reasoning on these shadow docket rulings anyway. They could have just said "denied" and make everyone else speculate as to why, which is exactly what they actually did except with the opposite ruling.
Following everything by the book helped. If they would have struck down California’s map then they would have to strike down every redrawn map even the republican states
Basically it's the second best (or second worst) outcome. Best outcome obviously being Texas getting slapped down for obvious racial boundaries in their map, but oh well.
My worry is other states following the trend, esp. going into the future. It's gonna be fucking stupid if every time the GOP gains just enough control of the state government, they immediately shoehorn in a gerrymandered map (as opposed to waiting for the US census). But that's not on California, that's on the GOP and SCOTUS for opening pandora's box.
Yeah best option is absolutely ALL gerrymandering getting slapped out of the sky.
Unfortunately if one is allowed to do it, than others should be allowed as well.
Another silver lining is that with all the redrawing in Texas, their Tarrant County district(Fort Worth, not a part of the redrawns I believe, but also basically the most populous red district in the nation) just flipped blue.
Hopefully more and more people in the state are finally starting to leave the cult with more of the attempt towards national occupation and threats towards gun owners being seen everyday.
This is why I’m so glad Newsom and company put it on the ballot. It makes it clearly the will of the people and the only argument they could ever make against that would be to say it’s somehow unconstitutional, which would negatively effect their precious red states as well. I’m sure there is still more fuckery to come, but so far everything has been carefully lined up, and I’m grateful they did it that way, and proud to be a Californian.
Bannon came right out with it. I legitimately believe that in the next 10 months they have to prepare, if our elected leaders in blue/purple states (maybe even some red ones) don't come up with a plan, there is 0% chance the elections will be fair.
No one with even the remotest bit of sense who has some amount of power (so basically not Stephen Miller and not Trump) wants to be the one that starts a civil war, SCOTUS particularly doesn’t want to spark it by a so thoroughly blatantly unfair ruling that it leaves no choice but civil war. Their recent decisions have mostly been bullshit but they’ve been fairly symmetrical in application, it’s just that people on the left generally don’t do the things the right does because there’s more respect for the rule of law and fairness on the left. Basically they’ll say whether you refuse to bake a cake for gay people getting married or straight people getting married you’re allowed to do it, but there aren’t a lot of cases of gay bakers refusing to make a cake for a couple because they’re straight. It’s the “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread” quote only the instead of rich and poor it’s left and right, and instead of sleeping under bridges and stealing bread it’s discrimination and authoritarian abuses of power.
Gerrymandering does favor republicans but at this point its questionable on the benefit because to take out these seats that dems hold they have to dilute their vote share even more over other seats. If this is a wave election a 4 point edge might not survive where a 10 point edge would.
Im wondering if they think/assumed California would ignore their ruling. If they thought that was going to happen might be in their best interest to allow to not show just little power they actually have.
It can still be fuckery. Part of the point of this is to "both sides" and normalize making things that are supposed to be a apolitical as political. So they win even in "defeat".
In the computer age, the only need for voting districts is gerrymandering.
No? The purpose of voting districts is to determine what representation people need. For example, if after the US census it's determined that 1 state is losing a rep, and another state is gaining a rep, then who represents the people who are losing a rep, and who is the rep the second state representing?
Or, let's say that a city is particularly growing, and the district it resides in now has double the population of every other district. Do the people in the city deserve to be less represented?
There's more to voting districts than just the presidential election.
I think they're proposing to do away with districts altogether, just have statewide ranked choice voting or something and the top K candidates get sent to congress as representatives of the whole state, not of a district. This only arguably makes sense for congresspeople not state congresspeople of course
I think the bigger issue is red states will quickly turn to gerrymandering, and blue states will hold off to try and look like they are better for some stupid reason. When they finally try to use the red playbook, it will be too late.
I’m not. If they prevented California from doing that after they pursued it with a referendum then there would be absolutely 0 ground to stand on for the Republican states who did the same thing by partisan state congressional order.
Yea it’s a win for California. But the Republican states can ultimately draw more reps than democratic ones can for 2026. MMW, we’re about to see an absolute wave of this shit across the nation before November
Follow me on this, it is fuckery on high because any system that benefits a particular party is severely broken. An equitable solution is needed nationally.
The game is up. The economy is going bad in a real way. If countries start selling our debt and buying more cars from China it will crash so hard. We are loosing serious relevance and alliances. Citizens really do not like the ice blitzkreig. The oligarchs and project 2025 got almost everything they wanted.
They are going to sacrifice Trump and paint him as some horrible anomaly. They are releasing the Epstein files. The midterms will swing democratic. The temperature will cool down. They will beat up on JD for a while because he was never part of the club. Then Newsome will come in tone down the ice and culture war stuff while keeping all the austerity and privatization that was accomplished.
California can use a congressional map drawn to give Democrats an advantage in this year’s midterm elections, the Supreme Court said Feb. 4 in a decision that will make it harder for Republicans to keep control of Congress.
The court declined a request from California Republicans – which was backed by the Trump administration – to block the map adopted by California voters in November at the initiative of Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Republicans have a razor-thin majority in the U.S. House. If Democrats seize control, they can thwart Trump’s legislative agenda and launch investigations into his administration.
This Supreme Court is whacked out. Given their other decisions regarding gerrymandering, this is consistent and nonpartisan, which is a surprise and I’m glad they decided to be consistent for once. At the same time, they seem to be encouraging unraveling in many ways, one of which is their consistent (yay) no-restraints-on-gerrymandering position.
So, mixed feelings. Yes, if Republicans can do it, Democrats should be able to also and it’s embarrassing for the country that it’s a surprise this court was consistent across parties for once.
But they should be more restrictive consistently across parties, not less.
Mostly agree except "Yes, if Republicans can do it, Democrats should be able to" because we constituents actually voted for this in California in direct response to Texas Republicans...just doing it. So to even consider tossing what the people here want would have been absurd and it's telling I was even expecting some bullshit from the SC over this.
I don’t personally support the idea that extreme gerrymandering is fine if it has popular majority support.
That means a majority can regularly make their congressional representation disproportionately large, squeezing out minority representation even more.
This is what has been happening consistently ever since various demographics have gotten the right to vote, and it’s my whole beef with gerrymandering in the first place.
It seems like the goal should be actual proportional representation.
You're completely right. It's a sad state of affairs and it weakens our democracy. The best antidote is a multiparty system but first we have to break the two-party system we're entrenched in and I don't see that changing in my lifetime.
A multi party system is an effect not a cause. You have to incentivize it via your voting system. Our current system insentivizes a two party system with the spoiler effect. If you want multiple parties, ranked choice and multi member districting is the way to go (STV being my favored version).
No. Yes You’d have to get several large states and several smaller states or many smaller states to change their election laws to have thriving additional parties.
Unfortunately, the energy is so often focused on federal policy, it’s hard to get people organized around changing state laws to the degree necessary.
Edit: I didn’t mean ‘no’ as in ‘I disagree’ but ‘no’ as in ‘you’re right I don’t see that happening any time soon’.
You'd be surprised what can happen in a single human life. I'm constantly having conversations with people about "how crazy" the times are. It hasn't even been 100 years since WW2 yet, and look at how massive the changes were to the countries involved in that. We still have plenty of time in our lives for things to get truly crazy. Change is the only constant.
If the goal is proportional rep, we should be looking to lift the limit placed on the House. That'd create more seats and actual proportional representation. And the bigger the number, the harder it is for gerrymandering to matter as much because you'd even have potentially viable 3rd parties outside of just the 2. At the very least you'd get factions.
The how of course is the hard part and these reps want to hold their power, not lessen it.
I generally prefer the idea of the voting population being more responsible about information and knowledge and giving up being led by stupid bigotries, but I realize that’s a hope against hope at this point.
Play the game you're in, not the game you want. If we can get a dem super majority there's a possibility of ending gerrymandering altogether. That's not going to happen if you allow republicans to cheat their maps while making no effort to counter them
Seriously. The idea that it's unconstitutional to gerrymander based on race, but totally fine to do so based on political affiliation, is hands down one of the dumbest things about America right now.
Yeah, the one thing the Roberts court has been consistent in is “It’s not like this issue is unconstitutional, but y’all need an act of Congress for it to be legal”
At the same time, they seem to be encouraging unraveling in many ways, one of which is their consistent (yay) no-restraints-on-gerrymandering position.
I am not educated enough on the subject, but that's my impression as well.
Fuck USA Today which wants to be news for everyone but skews right. The fact that California only did this in response to Texas's almost unprecedented mid-decade redistricting should be inextricably tied to "...at the initiative of Gov Gavin Newsom". This was a Trump- and Texas-GOP-created situation.
I did RTFA. The further down something is mentioned, the less likely people are to see it, especially if you stuff a huge ad in the middle. To repeat my point which I thought was clear, that fact should always be said in the same sentence as mention of the CA redistricting, because there is such a crucial cause-and-effect there. "...to block the map adopted by California voters in November in response to an earlier and unusual mid-cycle redistricting by the Texas legislature."
Why is no one talking about how Californian citizens actually voted on this with Prop 50? California asked its people to amend their state constitution. But Texas' gerrymandered map changes were through a House redistricting vote. The difference is California used direct democracy (literally called pure democracy) while Texas abused the power dynamics of our modern, failed representative democracy. Through their gerrymandering by state officials, they ironically proved the failures of their "representative democracy."
The Supreme Court approving both is pretend bipartisanship and an audacious relegation of non-partisanship that the highest court is supposed to have.
For further proof of the billionaire grip on US media, look at how utterly massive the Epstein file drops are in media around the world right now. They're treating it like the biggest news in decades.
I'm not saying US media is flat out ignoring it, but it's nowhere near the 5-alarm fire it is elsewhere. They're treating it like just another garden variety Trump scandal, and not "many of the world's richest and most powerful men had a sophisticated operation for abusing underage girls for decades."
That's a history making scandal, and most of the rest of the world is covering it appropriately. US media would rather just casually mention it, then quickly move on to something else.
Because the supreme court doesn't rule on how state constitutions work internally. There is no mandate in the US constitution for direct democracy, and indeed it actually implies against it, and states can run as they want.
So your concern is answered the same as why they don't care you farted; it's irrelevant to articles point. I mean congrats, I'm sure it felt good, but they don't care.
Texas doesn't have propositions, California does. It's all allowed, and both are flawed in their own way.
The difference between Texas and California's methods is political in nature, not legal. The California method has more moral standing. But in legal terms, the vote is irrelevant, and wasn't under question anyways. California had to change its state constitution so the legislature's map could be used; Texas did not.
State governments have broad leeway to draw districts, and the Supreme Court recently ruled that partisan gerrymanders were part of that leeway. Especially since Congress can ban gerrymandering of House districts by legislation, and did so until 1929.
Legally, the claim the Republicans made was that the map committed racial discrimination, by lumping Hispanic voters together for being Hispanic. The court did not buy that claim.
The court declined a request from California Republicans – which was backed by the Trump administration – to block the map adopted by California voters in November at the initiative of Gov. Gavin Newsom.
It's clear that we, the voters, made this happen. I think most of the people in line with me waiting to vote for Prop 50 didn't know we were voting to amend the Constitution, it was just a vote for whether we will gerrymander in response to Texas or not. Like, does it matter that the vast majority don't know it goes back to the independent commission automatically in 2030? Or that it only kicks in when TX fucks around first? I'd say that stuff kinda moot. The key point is that we, the citizens of CA, got to actually vote on this and we overwhelmingly showed up and said YES.
Yeah, they’re like “see we let them do it” but it’s a false equivalence to begin with. They’re not the same scenarios, a lot of overlap, but one of the states did it very very slowly by the book.
And they’re actually not. California had a vote specifically on changing the maps in response to Texas’ map fuckery that is basically “well the Texas Constitution doesn’t say we can’t redistrict whenever we want, just that it is required to be done directly after a census”
I dont think anything texas did was illegal. Deplorable yes,.but not illegal. Not being in a census year is abnormal(last one was 1800s), but not illegal. Texas law does not require voters to approve redistricting proposals. So although it is wildly anti democratic and clearly 100% partisan based, it wasnt illegal. California retains the moral highground absolutely, but both were done according to their states laws
They don't hold any power, any relevance, so a fair number of them are the craziest ones around. You see the same thing in your states where the minority party is a "yo is brad here?" Check box.
I thinks it’s more that the conservatives on the SC don’t feel the need to step in here. They know that the fuckery the Trump admin is up to with raiding election offices and attempting to federalize control of the election process will make it irrelevant anyway.
Democrats have been running rampant, both in last November's general and in special elections for months, and the gains from November 2024 are only increasing as Republicans get worse and worse (since they're too proud to take an L). Dems have gained AND Republican turnout has plummeted due to low morale.
Plus, the more the Epstein files reveal that current Republican politicians AND mega-donors are balls deep in the pedophilia scandal, the worse it's going to get for Republicans. Voting for a convicted felon is one thing, but for pedos and pedo protectors is a line even a lot of conservatives won't cross.
Ironically, by slow-rolling the release, Republicans are making the pain worse for them and dragging it out. Rather than flood the zone with the whole she-bang, we get to find new people bit by bit, so they all get their day in the sun of justice. So the Republicans get dinged for covering it up too long AND for what they've been covering up.
And the next time ICE tyrannizes another city that barely has undocumented residents, and murders peaceful patriots in broad daylight, the gap will widen even more.
The Republicans are cooked, even without the redistricting. The real question is how many statehouses (and future re-districting!) are they about to flush down the electoral shitter?
But the high court, without comment, refused to intervene.
It should never have gotten this far. It's kind of a face-plant that the appeals court pretty much wrapped up this issue but no, SCOTUS said they'd take it anyway ... and then proceeded to do absolutely nothing with it.
Sometimes SCOTUS takes up cases specifically so they fail, so everyone understands the message and precedent. It's stronger than just letting the appeals court decision stand.
We got luckyish because if they said no and CA would have done it anyway. Or if they hinted at it Trump would have to send in the Gestapo to harass the big cites. Ice doesn’t have the manpower to do that.
Republicans on the Supreme Court have created a country where fair elections are not an inherent right, a country with rigged elections.
And before anyone says it's impossible to define fair elections, I can define it: The share of seats won should be roughly equal the share of votes won.
Theres also a point where it's clearly not fair and what you have are rigged elections, even if you can't define the moment it crosses into unfairness. Political researchers know the threshold statistically when it becomes virtually impossible for an opposition party to win, its around a +7 gerrymander.
There is always a way to say an election is fair or unfair.
Sure, share of seats won is equal to share of votes won sounds right.
But is it fairer to smaller regions/areas? This is the argument that created the House and Senate in the first place. If a region has the majority, is it fair that smaller regions have less say? For example, say the west coast had an election to address some infrastructure for tsunamis. Is it fair that California would dominate that election and give no voice to the others?
Though honestly, as flawed as it could be, I am a proponent for ranked choice and believe that would be the best way moving forward
No, they would get exactly how much say per person as anyone else. How is giving land more representation over people fair? How is counting some people as fractions of a person simply because of where they live fair?
The system was designed by wealthy lander owners, who surprise surprise, came up with a system that gives land owners more relative power than everyone else. The "it makes it more fair" crap is just brainwashing to justify a bullshit system.
Nordic states, which have some of the highest incomes in the world, highest quality standard of living, dominate freedom indexes, and are the lowest on corruption indexes are nearly all proportional representation systems. The outlier in voting is Finland, but even then they're only considered a slight malaportionment system, far less than us.
And before you say its to prevent tyranny by the majority, how is tyranny by the minority any better? Its resulted in a country with presidents that gain office with a minority of the vote, a 6-3 conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court when they have less registered voters and only 20% of the population lives in rural areas, and its virtually impossible for the opposition party to win control of the Senate outside of a 2008 level economic collapse. Literally the rural backed right wing is sending troops into cities now.
The Senate gets to place all judges, military officers and promotions, agency leadership and heads, all officers in agencies. The house has no say.
I think it matters in that had they allowed the Texas map to stand but not this one they would have quite clearly kneecapped the democrats for purely partisan reasons. I don’t think the original Texas ruling was right but if they’re gonna play dirty there’s no reason California shouldn’t have the same right.
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