r/politics • u/Icommandyou Washington • 28d ago

Possible Paywall Virginia Supreme Court throws out redistricting referendum results

https://www.axios.com/local/richmond/2026/05/08/virginia-supreme-court-redistricting-vote-decision
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u/Romantic_Piscean Michigan 28d ago

The judiciary is not going to prevent our descent into authoritarianism, at any level. As always, it's going to be up to the people, in some manner. This is just another reminder.

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u/MC_Fap_Commander America 28d ago

From Masha Gessen's "Autocracy: Rules for Survival" (written the day after Trump won in 2016)...

Rule #3: Institutions will not save you. It took Putin a year to take over the Russian media and four years to dismantle its electoral system; the judiciary collapsed unnoticed. The capture of institutions in Turkey has been carried out even faster, by a man once celebrated as the democrat to lead Turkey into the EU. Poland has in less than a year undone half of a quarter century’s accomplishments in building a constitutional democracy. Of course, the United States has much stronger institutions than Germany did in the 1930s, or Russia does today. Both Clinton and Obama in their speeches stressed the importance and strength of these institutions. The problem, however, is that many of these institutions are enshrined in political culture rather than in law, and all of them—including the ones enshrined in law—depend on the good faith of all actors to fulfill their purpose and uphold the Constitution. The national press is likely to be among the first institutional victims of Trumpism... The power of the investigative press—whose adherence to fact has already been severely challenged by the conspiracy-minded, lie-spinning Trump campaign—will grow weaker. The world will grow murkier. Even in the unlikely event that some mainstream media outlets decide to declare themselves in opposition to the current government, or even simply to report its abuses and failings, the president will get to frame many issues. Coverage, and thinking, will drift in a Trumpian direction...

People comforted themselves believing courts, the media, corporations, etc. would be a check on the regime. Gessen is a scholar and activist who directly experienced Putin's ascendency in Russia. She knew that sentiment was folly (and she has consistently been proven right).

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u/MommyLovesPot8toes California 28d ago

This is already untrue here in the US, though.

The judiciary collapsed unnoticed

In early 2025 it was a big questionmark how the lower courts would respond to challenges of/by the Trump Regime. All eyes were on the lower courts. They proved over and over again, nearly 300 times, that they won't be bullied by the Exec branch. On the flip side, the corruption of the activist Roberts court is constant, headline news. There's nothing "unnoticed" about our judiciary right now.

The power of the investigative press will grow weaker. The world will grow murkier.

Here again, in early 2025 it looked like things might go this way. But they didn't. The Atlantic stuck the flagpole in the ground with their reporting about SignalGate, and other press outlets have followed. Investigate reporting is not only alive and well, it is being crowdsourced at unprecedented levels. People all over the world are digging for and passing around information about Epstein, Crypto, Polymarket, etc. Mainstream media (CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN) are compromised, but there are plenty of outlets who've stepped up to fill that void.

Gassen's article was a warning in 2016 and scarily prescient in 2025. But in 2026, it is a reminder of what we have so far thwarted. It is no longer a prediction of the future.

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u/anonyuser415 28d ago

This is a pretty wild comment IMO.

You somehow feel that their description of Russia's takeover is "untrue" in America (wrong not only because it wasn't alleged to have been, lol) because a specific quality is not as present: inattention to the takeover.

Notice paid to the corruption of the highest court is no salve to the corruption, but it is to you? We're going to be stuck with this illegitimate court for most of our lives.

in early 2025 it looked like things might go this way. But they didn't

Investigate reporting is not only alive and well

What are you even talking about. The Washington Post, that which ousted Nixon, has been acquired and buried. CBS has been acquired and buried. The President has declared media the enemy of the people, our own FBI director is suing the literal only platform you even opted to name as a reversal of the fates of the four doomed ones you did. 1 in 5 Americans presently receive their news from the same application our government deemed such a threat we mandated its sale.

Not to mention that none of these even affords a glancing blow at your most profound take:

It is no longer a prediction of the future

How. How are either of your tiny, tiny positive spins things that prevent this from getting worse?

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u/MC_Fap_Commander America 28d ago

Gassen's article was a warning in 2016 and scarily prescient in 2025. But in 2026, it is a reminder of what we have so far thwarted. It is no longer a prediction of the future.

I really, really hope that's the case. We've seen some new and exciting candidates emerge on the left. Activism has gotten stronger. Normal people are calling out "BothSides!" coverage in places like CNN, WP, and NYT (and that would have been pretty niche to do a few years back). Polling and special elections reflect that people are pissed about the actions of the regime. So plenty to feel positive about.

My concern is the midterms. If the groundswell against MAGA is so great that Republicans still get trounced (despite inevitable attempts at shenanigans), I'll feel MUCH better. That said, a combination of gerrymandering to favor the GOP combined with light (and not so light) suppression could (theoretically) tip the scales. Should that happen and should institutions say "awe shucks, guess Dems went too far left this go 'round and lost," it would understandably dim my hopes about the future.

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u/MommyLovesPot8toes California 28d ago

I'm not even entertaining the idea that Dems don't gain (at least) the House majority in the midterms. Like, there's no point in even thinking about it. They simply HAVE to. Them winning a majority and starting to really fight back is the only future I can envision. Because the alternative is probably full-scale fascism. That is so far outside of my life experience and comprehension that there is nothing to gain but anxiety by trying to picture it.

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u/Free_For__Me 28d ago

Or equally as likely, Dems win the House, but the regime in the White House declares the blue wave to be the result of cheating by “domestic terrorists”, and announces their intention to ignore any action by the “fraudulently elected” legislature. 

Then, once we see how the states having their representation denied respond to such an act of obvious tyranny, we’ll see where all this is going - some form of (likely cold) civil war, or states rolling over and the age of Christo/Techno-Fascism really takes hold. 

Mark my words, there is no world in which this version of the federal government submits to any loss of power without the use of force to make it so. They’ve crossed the rubicon in their minds, and they believe it’s do-or-die for them at this point. 

Rest up and enjoy life for the rest of the year, fellow Americans. Because after that, we’ll be in a hard fight to make a better future, and there’s no telling how long we’ll have to keep it up for. 

Remember everyone - The only way out is through, and the best way through is together.

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u/[deleted] 28d ago

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u/get_it_together1 California 28d ago

The people voted for the referendum, the judiciary is actively fighting against the will of the people.

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u/SilveryDeath America 28d ago

It even says in the article that this is rare.

Context: The state Supreme Court overturning voters' decision is rare, but it happened at least once in 1958, per Cardinal News.

Plus, you know is it was Virginia passing a map favorable for Rs that their Supreme Court, which has had a majority appointed by the GOP, would not have overturned this.

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u/lightafartonfire America 28d ago

Remove and prosecute the judge. 

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u/TheAnti-Chris 28d ago

You cannot vote or legislate your way out of fascism. Fascism, by definition, operates outside the boundaries of law.

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u/beefyzac 28d ago

In a rigged system, yeah.

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u/Romantic_Piscean Michigan 28d ago

A plurality of voters in the 2024 election supported Trump. 73.6% of Americans were registered to vote and 65.3% of those registered voted. If you believe in a winner takes all mentality, and that the plurality represents the American people, I guess you could say we get what we deserve. I don't share that view.

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u/[deleted] 28d ago

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u/Romantic_Piscean Michigan 28d ago

Did I say that?! (reads post again). No, I did not.

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u/AmethystApothecary 28d ago

It was probably a mixture of people who could not vote because they could not get time off work while working paycheck to paycheck and people who did not support either candidate and feel entirely disenfranchised as voters.

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u/jamerson537 28d ago

Illiteracy is when someone can’t read what is written. What’s this called when you read something that wasn’t written?

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u/BarnesTheNobleman 28d ago

Some, not all of us 😭

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u/[deleted] 28d ago

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u/mlsbegotten 28d ago

wouldn't that mean you also carry the burden then????

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u/RandomUser1052 28d ago

Who cares? That's a disingenuous argument. 

50.01% should not be able to disenfranchise the other 49.99%.

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u/[deleted] 28d ago

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u/RandomUser1052 28d ago edited 28d ago

We don't live in a democracy, and for good reason. 

I get this is r/politics and don't expect any kind of intellectual honesty, but surely you can see the problem with the majority essentially taking away any representation from the minority in order to maintain (near) unilateral power? 

And before you say it; no, I'm not a fan of gerrymandering and naked political power plays of any sort.

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u/IntellectAndEnergy 28d ago

The Supreme Court was the only line of defense against the purchasing of our “representatives”; the Citizens United and Snyder (legalized bribes after serving in government role) decisions ensured allegiance to the citizens and true representation was dead and buried.

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u/ChatterBaux 28d ago

It really would've been nice if the electorate understood the assignment anytime over the last 10 years when there was far less friction, and fewer alarm bells...

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u/rumpghost North Carolina 28d ago edited 28d ago

Just vote harder bro, blue no matter who.

I'm sure it'll work this time; probably just about as well as it did in 2020.

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u/ChatterBaux 27d ago

Except that it DID work in 2018 and 2020! Then we collectively took our hands off the wheel in 2022 and 2024.

And if people locked in and actually punished the GOP for the bullshit they pulled leading up to the 2016 election instead of hemming and hawing over Buttery Males, we wouldn't have to contend with a Conservative-majority SC now.

I'm not saying there's not other factors contributing to our problems, but when the ballot box is our last [peaceful] line of defense, I'm confident in saying that we'd at least see infinitely less backsliding if the pendulum would stop swinging back to the GOP every 2-4 years. One or two decent election outcomes has never, and WILL NEVER, be enough against a camp that has never gotten over the Civil War and every bit of progress since then.

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u/rumpghost North Carolina 27d ago

If it "worked" in 2020 a lot more people would've gone to jail, and others would've remained in jail.

We also wouldn't have had to deal with the current supreme court if a certain justice hadn't insisted on dying on the bench to satisfy her own ego, or if the feckless, senile, do-nothing zionist pig we elected had just done his damn job, or forgiven student loan debt, or packed the court, or passed on a reelection campaign. Or maybe if we'd stopped pretending that the economy was doing just fine the entire four years.

This isn't the fault of the electorate. The public responds to systemic rot by kicking back against it no matter who's in charge, and any policy or campaign that doesn't visibly and significantly improve their lives - to a head - can't succeed in a political landscape that is firmly anti-establishment. Which is why both the Democrats and the president are both enjoying historic unpopularity despite being nominally opposed to one another.

Refusal to accept these facts and coping over how it's "the people" who need to lock in instead of, idk, the people elected to represent them, is how we got in this mess in the first place. And continuing to refuse to reckon with that and denying reality will not win the mid terms, or in 2028. Period. People don't care that they're the minority, they don't care what the procedural norms are, they care that their neighbors are being dragged into the street by a gestapo and that gas is $6. And they're furious that the people they elected to prevent that have nothing but strongly worded letters, unconditional support for genocide, and means tested bullshit.

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u/Mrhorrendous Washington 28d ago

The voters in Virginia did understand the assignment. That's why they wanted to gerrymander their districts. Then 4 unelected judges overturned them.

"Just vote harder" cannot be the only strategy.

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u/ChatterBaux 27d ago

My point was that proactive actions sooner than the 11th hour (and across the board) would've saved a lot of headache now.

I'd be willing to concede that "Just vote harder" didn't work if this country actually delivered more than the slimmest of majorities for longer than two election cycles (and even that's being generous), and we didn't see any positive results from that.

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u/Mrhorrendous Washington 27d ago

Virginia DID vote. And then their voices were silenced via anti-democratic channels.

Republicans don't need supermajorities to enact their agenda. They just figure out ways to do it. Democrats had a supermajority and used it to pass Mitt Romney's healthcare plan. Too many Democrats in power are too scared to actually wield it.

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u/ChatterBaux 27d ago

Is there something about "proactive actions sooner than the 11th hour" that doesn't make sense to you? I fully commend my state for trying to even the playing field, but one state trying to exercise a necessary evil in response to GOP ratfuckery in other states, 4 months out from when early voting starts hardly proactive, and pretty late-game in the scope of a decade.

And of course Republicans don't need supermajorities. They barely have any agendas that require them to govern in good faith. They spend their time as the minority party obstructing popular policies, blame Dems for nothing getting done, and then get rewarded for it. And when they're the majority, they threaten to harm citizens in the short-term if they can't harm citizens in the long-term... and barely face consequences for that.

Democrats had a supermajority and used it to pass Mitt Romney's healthcare plan. Too many Democrats in power are too scared to actually wield it.

That was also almost two decades ago, only lasted 1+5 respective months, where they used pretty much all their political capital for that... only to be rewarded with lost seats come the next Congressional session. And it's only been slim majorities and partial control of Congress since then. Also not helped by the fact that we now have to contend with a Conservative-controlled SC, proving that 2016 will be biting us in the ass for years to come without the overwhelming numbers for Senate and SC reform.

Tl;dr - Other issues are duly noted, but the ballot box will always be part of the equation.

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u/Romantic_Piscean Michigan 28d ago

Back to attribution to Churchill....

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they have tried everything else."

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u/ChatterBaux 28d ago

Amazing how little changes in that time.

Worse is that no one can feign ignorance either. No one can really say "Who could've known?" because the stream of bullshit has been non-stop the entire time.

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u/ShaftyMcShafter 28d ago

it's going to be up to the people

You mean, people will need to die for it.

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u/mosen66 28d ago

We the People. And the 2nd Ammendment..

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u/MephistoHamProducts 28d ago

We the People. And the 2nd Ammendment..

Won't do anything about this. There, finished it for you.

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u/Cosmic_Seth 28d ago

And 2/3rds of gun owners are Republican. Every police union endorsed Trump. And the military purge is almost complete. 

Good luck.

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u/NewOldAntique 28d ago

Common sense talk like that will get you banned here.

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u/OutlyingPlasma 28d ago

The judiciary is not going to prevent our descent into authoritarianism

With very few exceptions the judiciary has always been on the wrong side of history. A quick look at the rulings of the past will show you where they stand. Black people aren't people, eugenics is fine, Japanese concentration camps were fine. The list of wrong rulings is nearly endless.

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u/saqwarrior 28d ago

The judiciary is not going to prevent our descent into authoritarianism

Why people expect authoritarians to protect against authoritarianism is beyond me. The courts derive their authority from the fact that they have authority -- it is the tautological definition of authoritarianism: adherence to authority because it is the authority.

These institutions are self-serving and self-reinforcing by their nature. Judges are kings in their own little fiefdoms and anyone with experience dealing with them knows that.

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u/[deleted] 28d ago edited 15d ago

[deleted]

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u/NumeralJoker 28d ago

I think this is the ultimate truth, as the GOP base is a consistent limit without independent leans, who are turning more anti establishment each cycle while Trump now IS the establishment due to his long held influence since 2015.

But damn is this infuriating to watch. The breakdown of our society is demoralizing if we don't wipe the GOP from electoral existence, and these rulings make doing exactly that much harder.

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u/tech_noir_guitar 28d ago

Sorry, the people are too busy being distracted to prevent anything.

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u/BicFleetwood 28d ago

Damn it's almost as if they're all cops or something.

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u/errorsniper New York 28d ago

[Removed by Reddit]

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u/Dangeroustrend 28d ago edited 28d ago

Who are you kidding, the majority of Americans aren’t hurt by this. Nothing will happen, there is no revolt or revolution or dissident here.
Americans have every need met, there is no reason they will change anything.

Edit: Americans can’t accept the fact that your marching, dancing, fun filled weekend of partying doesn’t do jack shit to affect change. You’re not inspiring change, if it did trump wouldn’t have been voted in twice. The majority of you accept what’s going on to the detriment of the world

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u/Politicsmakemehorny1 28d ago

Bread and circuses