There’s lithium in them thar hills

The New Neo Posted on by

This certainly seems like good news:

The USGS is saying that Appalachia contains an estimated 2.3 million metric tons of undiscovered, economically recoverable lithium, enough to replace 328 years of U.S. imports at last year’s level. …

As lithium demand is projected to grow more than 48-fold by 2040, driven by electric vehicles and energy storage technologies, securing new domestic sources has become increasingly critical.

USDS Director Ned Mamula notes that the US was the dominant world producer of lithium three decades ago. The newly published lithium resource estimates are preliminary, and much more work is needed to fully realize our current mineral capacity.

The Golders Green stabber had a record

The New Neo Posted on by

This should surprise no one:

Yesterday afternoon there was an anti-semitic knife attack in a neighborhood called Golders Green in north London. A man with a knife walked through the streets and stabbed two Jewish men at random before police showed up and tased him.

The assailant has now been identified as a man born in Somalia named Essa Suleiman.

Sulieman had a criminal record: he had stabbed two policemen and a police dog back in 2008, and was sentenced to nine years. The violence occurred when the police were responding to a call about a knife attack in progress.

Guy seems to love knives.

The question is why he was not deported back then, and the answer is that he may already have been a citizen – although that’s not clear. But Nigel Farage says that, had his party (Reform) been in charge at the time, the man would have been stripped of his citizenship and deported. It seems to me that such action might have been legal:

Depriving someone of their British citizenship for the public good is generally used in the context of national security or counter-terrorism. The aim is to prevent a person who poses a threat to the United Kingdom from returning to the country, which they would otherwise have a right to do as a British citizen. There are also rare cases involving serious or organised criminals.

Will it happen even now? I tend to doubt it.

New facts about the Correspondents’ Dinner shooter, but gaps remain

The New Neo Posted on by

Charges have been filed against Cole Tomas Allen, and yet there are still some significant gaps in the record. Awaiting ballistics tests, we still don’t know whether he fired the shot that struck the agent in his protective vest, although nothing indicates he didn’t.

We also don’t know exactly how his capture occurred:

… [O]fficials have still not said whether Allen … fired the shot that wounded a Secret Service agent at the scene.

Federal authorities charged Allen, 31, with transporting firearms across state lines while traveling by train from California to Washington and with discharging a firearm during the incident at the Washington Hilton, where officials said a federal agent was shot in his ballistic vest. Assistant U.S. Atty. Jocelyn Ballantine said Allen “traveled across multiple state lines with a firearm” and “attempted to assassinate the president with a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun.”

Why the train? Not necessarily to save money, because one can often find flights cheaper than the train. Perhaps he felt the firearms would be more likely to cause him trouble on a plane; although firearms are permitted in checked luggage, they must be declared.

Then there’s this :

…[T]he defendant rushed the screening checkpoint on the Terrace Level of the Washington Hilton with a raised shotgun,” the federal prosecutors alleged. A law enforcement source told The Times that Allen fell as he ran after losing balance, and that is when officers were able to jump on top of him, pinning him down and disarmed him.

So perhaps in his haste, eagerness, and anxiety, Allen fell, giving the officers their opportunity. I know it can be difficult to hit a running target. But still, officers can’t expect all assailants to be so obliging as to fall (I also saw some newsperson saying he tripped on something, but I don’t know whether that is true).

And then there’s this:

Moments before he charged, the suspect appeared to enter a doorway near where several TSA and Secret Service agents were gathered and two magnetometers had been set up.

A law enforcement officer with a K-9 noticed Cole and followed him toward the side room.

However, the officer did not enter the room and eventually turned his back to the doorway.

Allen emerged from the doorway seconds later in a full sprint and fired at security personnel, according to authorities.

Excuse me but, WTF? This account may be in line with that of an alleged eyewitness whose story I wasn’t sure was reliable, but which I read a few days ago:

A White House Correspondents’ Dinner volunteer said the suspected gunman appeared to assemble a “long” weapon in a lightly monitored area near the terrace-level entrance before opening fire and rushing toward the ballroom.

The witness, Helen Mabus, a volunteer working the event who said she is from Harrisburg, Pa., described a “makeshift room” near the entrance where bar carts were being stored and where “there was no security” at the time.

She may or may not be describing the same thing, but it’s curious.

Also:

The night of the alleged assassination attempt, Allen walked toward the security checkpoint wearing what appeared to be a black trench coat, black pants, black shirt and red tie.

However, it did not appear he was wearing the trench coat when he emerged from the side room and rushed the officers.

I assume he was wearing the trench coat to conceal the weapon, whether assembled or unassembled at that point. Then he ditched the coat for his run.

Here’s some video of Allen casing the joint the night before, and then on the night of the dinner walking down a hall wearing a trenchcoat and then running through the metal detector without the coat and while holding the shotgun:

And this appears to be the footage with the dog:

Disturbing.

Mayday!

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post.]

Today is Mayday.

As a child I was confused by the wildly differing associations the word conjures up. It’s a distress signal, for example, apparently derived from the French for “come to my aid.”

That was the first meaning of the word I ever learned, from watching the World War II movies that were so ubiquitous on TV when I was a tiny child. The pilot would yell it into the radio as the fiery plane spiraled down after being hit, or as the stalling engine coughed and sputtered. On the ship the guy in uniform would tap it out in code and repeat it (always three times in a row, as is the convention) when the torpedo hit and the ship filled with water.

But on a far more personal level, it was the time of the May Féte (boy, does that sound archaic) in my elementary school, when each class had to learn a dance and perform it in the gymnasium in front of the entire student body’s proud/bored parents. The afternoon was capped by the eighth-graders, who were assigned the only activity of the day that seemed like fun – weaving multicolored ribbons around the maypole.

Ah, the maypole. As children, who knew it was a phallic symbol? Or that maypoles were once considered so risque that they were banned in parts of England by certain Protestant groups bent on discouraging the mixed-gender dancing and drunkenness that seemed to go along with them (not in my elementary school, however; only girls were allowed to wind the maypole ribbons, and the mixed-gender dancing the rest of us had to do was decidedly devoid of frivolity)?

The other meaning of Mayday was/is the Communist festival of labor, or International Workers Day. In my youth the big bad Soviets used to have huge parades that featured their frightening weaponry. Back in the 20s and 30s the Mayday parades in New York City were fairly large. I know this because I own a curious artifact of those times – a home movie of a Mayday parade from the mid-1920s. I’m not sure who in my family had such an early and prescient interest in movies, but the film features my paternal grandparents on their way to such a celebration.

They’d come to this country from pre-revolutionary Russia in the early years of the century. Like many such immigrants, my grandfather became a Soviet supporter who thought the Communists had a chance of making things better than they’d been in the Russia he’d left behind. Since he died rather young, only a few years after the film was made in the 1920s, I don’t know whether time and further revelations of the mess the Soviet Union became would have changed his point of view. In the film, however, the family goes to view the Manhattan Mayday parade, which looks to be a very well-attended event with hopeful Communist banners held high and nary a maypole nor a Morris dancer in sight.

The footage of the parade seemed archaic even back when I saw it as a young girl, although it was fascinating to see the grandfather and grandmother I’d never known (not to mention my father as a handsome seventeen-year old). But the most puzzling sight of all was the attention paid to the Woolworth building. Whoever took the movie was fascinated by it; there were two slow pans up and down its length.

Why the Woolworth Building? Opened in 1913, it was a cool fifty-seven stories high, the tallest building in the world until 1930. It had an elaborate Gothic facade and was considered a monument to capitalism—the “Cathedral of Commerce,” although the Communist-sympathizing photographer of my Mayday movie didn’t seem to let those two offending words (cathedral, commerce) get in the way of his awe for the building.

I never noticed the Woolworth building myself until the day I visited the site of the World Trade Center a few months after 9/11. There were still huge crowds coming to pay homage, and so we had to wait in a long line that snaked around the nearby blocks.

That’s how I found myself in front of a familiar sight, the Woolworth Building, still Gothic after all these years, and still standing (although it had lost electricity and telephone service for a few weeks after 9/11, the building itself sustained no damage). No longer dwarfed by the enormous towers of its successor – that new Cathedral of Commerce, the World Trade Center – the Woolworth Building even commanded a bit of its former dominance.

Although it’s still dwarfed from this angle:

woolworth_wfc_s.jpg

And to bring this hodgepodge of a post round full circle, there exists a book of photos of 9/11 with the title Mayday, Mayday, Mayday!: The Day the Towers Fell, a reference to the myriad distress calls phoned in by firefighters on that terrible day.

Mamdani is there to make Hochul look moderate

The New Neo Posted on by

She’s refusing to give him more and more money to play with in his Socialist paradise-to-be:

Mayor Zohran Mamdani joined forces with City Council Speaker Julie Menin to try to squeeze more dough out of Albany — a plea that an increasingly peeved Gov. Kathy Hochul rejected Tuesday.

Hochul was forced to answer questions about forking over more money to help bail out the Big Apple shortly after the lefty Mamdani and moderate Menin called to peel back a tax credit as the city struggles to fill a projected multibillion dollar budget gap.

The governor claimed she was turning the tap off, but political insiders questioned if her stance was firm after she has already appeased the democratic socialist mayor and the “tax the rich” crowd with a new proposed levy on pricey second homes in the city.

And then we have this:

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposed tax on luxury second homes in the Big Apple will fall far short of its $500 million goal — and drive wealthy residents out of the city, according to the city comptroller’s office.

City Comptroller Mark Levine found that the proposed policy — framed as a needed revenue booster for the city and state — would likely bring in closer to $340-$380 million, over $100 million less than Hochul and Mamdani have claimed.

Controllers actually have to do math.

More:

The tax — which would apply to secondary homes priced a $5 million or more and follow a sliding scale based on assessed value — would target around 13,000 residences, but the comptroller’s audit warned that revenue estimates move were based heavily on unknown factors.

Many of the pricey pads are rented to tenants by the owners, which may exclude them from the tax, and it was unclear how the levy would treat homes owned by trusts, LLCs, or family members.

The report, released Thursday, also looked at a similar tax implemented in Vancouver, Canada in 2017 — which resulted in nearly 60% of second home owners selling off their properties to avoid the costly fee as of 2025.

The comptroller assumes the city could see a similar scramble to sell homes — estimating an around 10% revenue loss.

Ah, but maybe they’ll institute the brilliant “exit tax” solution – taxing people who sell in order to leave the state. That’ll do wonders to attract a great many new buyers, right?

Hochul really can’t complain. Although her backing came rather late in the game, she endorsed Mamdani in the election.

More:

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin are calling for a new way to tax the rich. They want the state to reduce something called the Pass-Through Equity Tax credit, aka PTET.

“The PTET is essentially a loophole that allows high-income earners to reduce their federal tax burden,” Mamdani said. …

“That’s not happening,” Hochul said. “We are not changing PTET.”

Hochul said she has already found over $4 billion in state aid for the city, and that Mamdani and Menin have a spending problem.

“And we’ve encouraged the speaker and the mayor to do what every other city has to do, [which] is look at your expenses. What is growing exponentially? They have programs that are growing not 4% a year, but 4% [in] months. And so they have to do whatever the other city is doing,” Hochul said.

Socialists don’t believe in cutting expenses, Kathy. They never run out of other people’s money.

NOTE: Mamdani made this this classy move with King Charles:

Mamdani’s eagerness to avoid Charles was clear, his team distancing themselves from the king from the moment the 9/11 ceremony, at the World Trade Center, was announced. “The mayor will not meet privately with King Charles. But the mayor will be at the wreath laying ceremony today,” Joe Calvello, the mayor’s press secretary, said in a terse statement on Wednesday morning.

Charles should count himself lucky, as even the leftist Guardian acknowledges:

It was hardly the treatment Charles is accustomed to, but as the day unfolded it seemed he may have gotten lucky by avoiding a private audience. Asked on Wednesday morning what he would say to Charles if they were to spend time together beyond the ceremony, Mamdani said: “If I was to speak to the king separately from that, I would probably encourage him to return the Koh-i-Noor diamond.”

The 106-carat diamond, which currently sits in the crown worn by the queen mother, has been the subject of an ownership dispute since it came into the possession of Queen Victoria in 1849. Critics say the diamond, which is the size of a hen’s egg, was immorally taken from Duleep Singh, a 10-year-old maharajah whose kingdom was seized by the British.

Oregon’s voter rolls have a tiny little problem

The New Neo Posted on by

Oregon is one of those mail-in ballot states where everyone registered gets mailed a ballot:

The U.S. state of Oregon established vote-by-mail as the standard mechanism for voting with 1998 Oregon Ballot Measure 60, a citizen’s initiative. The measure made Oregon the first state in the United States to conduct its elections exclusively by mail. The measure passed on November 3, 1998, by a margin of 69.4% to 30.6%. Political scientists say Oregon’s vote by mail system contributes to its highest-in-the-nation rate of voter turnout, at 61.5% of eligible voters.

However, from Judicial Watch:

Judicial Watch announced a settlement in its federal lawsuit against Oregon election officials, which confirms 800,000 ineligible voter names are slated for review and removal from voter registration lists. The settlement requires state officials to produce detailed data and enforce federal voter roll clean-up procedures under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA). …

In its complaint, Judicial Watch argued that Oregon’s voter rolls contain large numbers of old, inactive registrations; and that 29 of Oregon’s 36 counties removed few or no registrations as required by federal election law. Judicial Watch asserted that Oregon and 35 of its counties had overall registration rates exceeding 100%; and that Oregon had the highest known inactive registration rate of any state in the nation. In combination, all of these facts showed that Oregon was failing to remove inactive registrations as required by federal law.

One important point: the names being removed are already inactive, and Oregon officials say they do not receive ballots anyway. So no harm, no foul, right? But – why are they still on the rolls, then? Why did it take a lawsuit to remove them? Who polices whether a name is “inactive” or not?

Maybe it’s all fine. But I’d like to get answers to those questions. It may be the case that now we will:

The settlement requires Oregon to open its voter roll maintenance processes to unprecedented scrutiny. State officials must now regularly provide detailed, county-level data on voter registrations, removals, confirmation notices, and inactive voters—including those eligible for removal under federal law. This includes data reported to the Election Assistance Commission, as well as additional datasets that will allow ongoing monitoring of compliance. The agreement ensures that this information will not be hidden behind bureaucratic barriers, requiring timely disclosure and identification of data sources.

It’s a start.

Maine’s governor drops out of the Democrats’ Senate primary ….

The New Neo Posted on by

… leaving the Nazi tattoo guy to face incumbent Republican Susan Collins.

Mills is 78, and I think her heart wasn’t in it, but she also ran out of money. New York Magazine refers to her campaign as “lackluster,” and that’s a fitting description.

More:

Senate Democrats had touted Mills as a top recruit to take on Collins, who is the only Republican senator representing a state that President Donald Trump lost last year. Maine is practically a must-win if Democrats are to net the four seats they need to take control of the chamber in the 2026 midterm election. But Collins has proven a tough opponent in previous elections.

After launching her Senate campaign in October, Mills struggled to gain traction against Platner, who burst onto the scene as a brash political newcomer and quickly built a loyal following. Platner notched endorsements from high-profile progressive leaders including Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.

Most importantly, he built major support among Maine Democrats, leading by double digits in recent polls of the primary. Platner’s rise — and the governor’s struggles — came despite top Democrats’ preference for Mills, turning this campaign into a rare rebuke of party leaders in a top-tier race.

Mills was kind of the Jeb Bush in the race, except for the lack of money. Note the NBC piece linked and quoted there doesn’t mention Platner’s most salient characteristic, the Nazi tatoo, early on. You have to get very deep into the article – paragraph fourteen – before it’s mentioned, and then it’s described as classic “Republicans POUNCE!”:

Republicans have already begun to attack Platner, as he pulled ahead in the primary. The GOP super PAC Pine Tree Results PAC launched an ad Monday highlighting those controversial social media posts and Platner having a tattoo that resembled a Nazi symbol. Platner has said he was not aware of the Nazi connection and has since covered up the tattoo.

Well, doesn’t everybody get a Totenkopf tattoo and not know what it is? Could happen to anyone. More, from Platner’s Wiki page:

While acknowledging the resemblance, he said he had not been aware of it until reporters and political operatives from DC contacted him during his campaign. He said he had recently gotten it covered up. CNN and Jewish Insider reported that an anonymous former acquaintance of Platner’s claimed that Platner was aware of the tattoo’s meaning and had previously called it “my Totenkopf”. Maine governor Janet Mills, one of Platner’s opponents in the Democratic primary, called the tattoo “abhorrent”.

Ah, but that’s really the least of it. There’s this:

In October 2025, various news outlets reported on Reddit posts Platner made between 2013 and 2021 in which he called himself a “communist”, wrote that all cops are bastards, and agreed with a post calling rural white Americans “racist and stupid”. In an interview with CNN, Platner said of those comments, “That was very much me fucking around the internet … I don’t think any of that is indicative of who I am today”. In a 2013 Reddit discussion about anti-rape underwear, Platner wrote that people worried about assault should “take some responsibility for themselves and not get so fucked up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to”.

Platner also referenced political violence in multiple posts; in 2018, he wrote: “Fight until you get tired of fighting with words and then fight with signs, and fists, and guns if need be.” He also wrote that “an armed working class is a requirement for economic justice” and urged readers to “Get Armed, Get Organized. The Other Side Sure As Hell Is.” He has said that many of the comments do not represent his current political beliefs, and that they were the product of disillusionment after his military discharge and struggles with PTSD.

Collins called Platner’s internet history “terrible” and “offensive”. Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said that while he did not approve of Platner’s comments, he did not consider them “disqualifying”. Platner said in an interview with Semafor, “How do you expect to win young people? How do you expect to win back men when you go back through somebody’s Reddit history and just pull it all out and say: ‘Oh my God, this person has no right to ever be in politics?’ Good luck with that. Good luck winning over those demographics.”

Of course Martin doesn’t consider them “disqualifying.” Au contraire; they match the mood of the party and its up-and-coming younger candidates. Platner is 41, by the way, born in 1984. You do the math; we’re not talking about posts or comments he made in high school. He was 29 years old in 2013 and 37 in 2021, the years in which the posts were made. Hardly an impressionable child, and not that long ago.

From Platner’s Wiki page:

[Platner says in an early campaign video] “I did four infantry tours in the Marine Corps and the Army. I’m not afraid to name an enemy. And the enemy is the oligarchy. It’s the billionaires who pay for it, and the politicians who sell us out. And yeah, that means politicians like Susan Collins.”

This video received 2.5 million views in its first 24 hours, sparking national media attention. The campaign raised $1 million in its first nine days, and reported amassing over 2,700 volunteers.

Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed Platner on August 30, ahead of a Fighting Oligarchy tour appearance in Portland with Platner and Maine gubernatorial candidate Troy Jackson. The event had originally been scheduled to be held in an auditorium but had to be moved to a much larger arena due to high public interest. Platner has also been endorsed by former United States Secretary of Labor Robert Reich; Senators Ruben Gallego, Martin Heinrich, and Elizabeth Warren; and Representative Ro Khanna. He has also been endorsed by the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, Maine State Nurses Association, and United Auto Workers.

You get the picture. He also is running as a working-class Joe, but it seems to me – from his Wiki page – that he had a very comfortable family situation growing up: restaurant owner (in resort area) and lawyer parents, private high school in Connecticut, architect grandfather of some renown (grandpa designed the interior of the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center, Windows On the World).

Graham seems to be hiding the extent of his leftism, another common theme among Democrat candidates these days. From Wiki again:

Before running for office, Platner described himself on Reddit as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who was “pretty radically left” and a “vegetable growing, psychedelics taking socialist” (in 2017) and “rabidly anti-Hillary [Clinton]” (in 2016 Democratic presidential primaries). In a December 2025 interview with The New Yorker, he declined to call himself a socialist and described his political involvement before his campaign as “organizing around mostly local economic justice issues or social justice issues”.

Blahbity blah.

Does Platner have a chance of winning? Yes, especially if you believe polls:

RealClearPolitics’ polling aggregate shows Platner with an average 7.6-point lead over Collins as of Thursday morning. Collins held a 0.2 point lead over Mills in polling average.

Maine backed former Vice President Kamala Harris by about 7 points in the 2024 presidential election and is generally viewed as Democratic-leaning but with an independent streak. Collins, a popular Republican in the state, has been able to win thanks to bipartisan credentials. Democrats believe she may be in for her toughest race yet, given President Donald Trump’s declining nationwide popularity.

I think it’s way too early to tell, and the polls aren’t especially meaningful. But Collins is definitely threatened. And no, a more conservative Republican wouldn’t have a chance in Maine. Collins has carefully positioned herself for years to be carefully calibrated to Maine’s basically blue/purple tastes.

Roundup again

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) The UAE is fed up with OPEC and pulls out. This should break some of OPEC’s power over the global oil market.

Iran is part of OPEC, by the way.

(2) Comey has been indicted again, this time for threatening to harm Trump:

“Threatening the life of the President of the United States is a grave violation of our nation’s laws,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “The grand jury returned an indictment alleging James Comey did just that, at a time when this country has witnessed violent incitement followed by deadly actions against President Trump and other elected officials. The temperature needs to be turned down, and anyone who dials it up and threatens the life of the President will be held accountable.”

“James Comey disgracefully encouraged a threat on President Trump’s life and posted it on Instagram for the world to see,” said FBI Director Kash Patel. “As the former Director of the FBI, he knew full well the attention and consequences of making such a post. This FBI and our DOJ partners pursued a rigorous investigation that followed the facts – and now Mr. Comey will be held fully accountable for his actions. Thank you to our investigators, Acting AG Todd Blanche, and the Eastern District of NC for their diligent and professional work.”

The threat was encoded in Comey’s “seashell” post, which contained the message “86 47”. I happen to agree with those who, like Jonathan Turley, think the case is iffy. But it’s one of those things Democrats would do if the shoe were on the other foot. And perhaps it’s also meant to serve notice that threatening the president on social media might not be a totally free ride.

(3) Al Gore warns of possible global cooling.

Warming, cooling, what’s the difference?

(4) Two “visibly Jewish” men in London have been stabbed and are in serious condition. “VIsibly Jewish” probably means dressed in Orthodox garb or with typically Jewish head coverings.

“Credit” was claimed:

Following the stabbings, pro-Iran regime Telegram accounts disseminated a video by Ashab al Yamin in which the group claimed credit for the stabbings.

“Zionists were targeted by our lone wolves in the Golders Green area of London. This heroic act left two Zionists critically wounded and on the brink of death,” the group stated.

Ashab al Yamin also encouraged further attacks against “Zionists,” framing them as defending humanity, the Al Aqsa Mosque, Palestine, and Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. The statement lauded Cole Allen, who attempted to assassinate US President Donald Trump at a gathering of journalists and government officials in Washington, DC, on April 25. The statement ended with Ashab al Yamin encouraging “free people” to assassinate Trump. The statement included closed-circuit television footage showing one of the stabbings in Golders Green that had been widely distributed online by sources not linked to the group.

Take that with a grain of salt, though, because it’s a group that routinely claims credit for a lot of terrorist attacks in the area.

I’ve known a few devout Jews who have worn caps over their religious head coverings on the streets of Boston, starting about twenty years ago, to avoid problems.

(5) Of course the left blames the right for the attacks on Trump – a version of “she asked for it” or “he made us do it.” Remember when Kennedy was killed by an outright Communist, and it was blamed on the “climate of hate” coming from the right in Dallas?

King Charles visits and some interesting things happen

The New Neo Posted on by

First we have the friendly bee, which Trump had eating out of the palm of his hand:

Next we have a photo that Trump playfully labeled “Two kings”:

Trump has a way of turning criticisms into humor in a clever jujutsu – although I doubt Democrats see it that way.

King Charles also gave Trump an appropriate gift:

King Charles III presented President Trump with the bell from a World War II-era British submarine — dubbed the HMS Trump — at the White House state dinner Tuesday, where the two leaders bonded over highs and lows of the centuries-long US-UK relationship.

The shiny brass bell bearing Trump’s name and 1944, the year the submarine left a UK shipyard, was part of a vessel that played “a critical role during the war in the Pacific,” according to the king.

“May it stand as a testimony to our nations’ shared history and shining future,” Charles said, describing the offering as his “personal gift.”

It would certainly be nice if Britain moved closer to the US, but it certainly hasn’t been happening in recent years.

I don’t envy Charles and Camilla, having to be photographed standing next to the tall Trump and statuesque Melania:

Trump actually looks surprisingly good in formal attire. But Charles has that sash, after all.

SCOTUS rules on gerrymandering on racial grounds

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s considered a huge decision, and it’s considered to generally favor the GOP. But if you deeply understand the details of today’s SCOTUS decision on drawing districts on racial lines, my hat is off to you. I’ve read four or five articles on the subject and I must humbly say the details are still somewhat opaque to me.

Anyway:

… [T]he Supreme Court on Wednesday limited the scope of a key Voting Rights Act provision that restricts how states draw districts affecting minority voters, constraining states’ use of race as a factor when drawing congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Justices ruled 6-3 that Louisiana’s 2024 congressional map, which was redrawn to create a second majority-Black district, constituted an “illegal” racial gerrymander. The court’s decision sharply narrows states’ use of race as a factor when drawing their congressional districts, effectively watering down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in question designed to protect minority voters.

Pretty straightforward. And maybe that’s all ye need to know. But then there’s this sort of thing:

The case, Louisiana v. Callais, centered on whether Louisiana’s 2024 congressional map, which had added a second majority-Black district, amounted to an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Though the justices acknowledged that compliance with the Voting Rights Act can be considered by states as a compelling interest in redistricting, they said that it did not require Louisiana to add the creation of a second, majority Black district, siding with a lower court that had also blocked the state’s use of the map.

So obviously something changed in the interpretation of “racial gerrymander.” What was it that made Louisiana think it was in compliance, and what changed in the definition to make it non-compliant? Something narrowed down, but what?

SCOTUSblog has a lot more information, for example:

The decision was the latest, and presumably final, chapter in a long-running dispute arising from Louisiana’s efforts to adopt a new congressional map in the wake of the 2020 census. The first map that the state adopted, in 2022, had one majority-Black district out of the six allotted to the state. A group of Black voters – who comprise roughly one-third of the state’s population – went to federal court, where they alleged that the map violated Section 2 of the VRA, which prohibits discrimination in voting.

A federal judge agreed that the 2022 map likely violated Section 2, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld that ruling. It instructed Louisiana to draw a new map by January 2024 or risk having the court adopt one for it.

The map that Louisiana drew in 2024 created a second majority-Black district, leading to the election in November of that year of Cleo Fields, a former member of Congress who had represented another majority-Black district during the 1990s.

The map also prompted the lawsuit leading to Wednesday’s opinion. It was filed by a group of “non-African American” voters who contended that the 2024 map violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause by sorting voters based on race. A three-judge federal district court agreed with them and barred the state from using the 2024 map in future elections, but a divided Supreme Court temporarily paused that ruling in May 2024.

The Supreme Court took up the case and heard oral arguments for the first time in March 2025. Defending the 2022 map, Louisiana contended that once the lower courts determined that the 2022 map was likely invalid and ordered it to adopt a new map with a second majority-Black district, its focus was not on race but on creating a map that would protect the state’s powerful Republican incumbents in Congress, such as Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Rep. Julia Letlow, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee.

The “non-African American” voters challenging the 2024 map told the justices that it was “utterly implausible” that both race and politics were equally responsible for the 2024 map.

I know that SCOTUS doesn’t forbid politically partisan gerrymandering; it allows states to do that. But it is willing to step in when racial gerrymandering is involved. It seems to me that, in this case, the defenders of the new black district’s creation were arguing that the district had been drawn for mere partisan political purposes, and today the SCOTUS majority didn’t buy the argument and said the reason was race rather than politics.

Race and politics are intertwined, of course, for example in the sense that black Americans overwhelmingly vote Democrat. So it’s not always easy to tease out the relative balance between the two in terms of the motive for the creation of districts. I assume that often it’s both reasons.

The SCOTUSblog article goes into a lengthy and complex discussion of how something called the Gingles test is applied. This is the conclusion:

If the three preconditions are met, courts move to the final step of the Gingles analysis to consider whether, when all of the circumstances are considered, the political process is not equally open to minority voters. Alito emphasized that this inquiry should “focus on evidence that has more than a remote bearing on what the Fifteenth Amendment prohibits: present-day intentional racial discrimination regarding voting.” Quoting the Supreme Court’s 2013 opinion in Shelby County v. Holder, which struck down a provision of the Voting Rights Act used to determine which state and local governments were required to obtain approval from the Department of Justice before making changes to their voting laws and practices, Alito wrote that “‘things have changed dramatically’” in the South “in the decades since the passage of the Voting Rights Act.” When the law was enacted, he noted, “the Nation had faced nearly a century of ‘entrenched racial discrimination in voting,’” but “Black voters now participate in elections at similar rates as the rest of the electorate.”

In this case, Alito said, Louisiana’s goal in adopting the 2024 map “was racial”: the state enacted it in the wake of the lower court’s finding that the 2022 map likely violated Section 2, and sought to avoid having the court impose a different map that would have created a second majority-Black district but which would also “have imperiled one of the influential incumbents the legislature sought to protect.”

The state did not have the kind of compelling interest that would have justified considering race in drawing the 2024 map, Alito wrote, because “the State did not need to create a new majority-minority district to comply with the Act. That is because,” he explained, “at every step of the Gingles framework,” the Black voters challenging the 2022 map “failed to prove their §2 case.”

Among other things, Alito said, the Black voters “did not provide an illustrative map that” protected the state’s Republican incumbents. Alito acknowledged that the Black voters had “offered evidence that black and white voters consistently supported different candidates, but their analysis did not control for partisan preference.” “And none of the historical evidence presented by plaintiffs came close to showing an objective likelihood that the State’s challenged map was the result of intentional racial discrimination.”

“In sum,” Alito concluded, “because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the State’s use of race in creating SB8. That map is an unconstitutional gerrymander, and its use would violate the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.”

That last paragraph is the most important one, but somewhere along the way my eyes glassed over. The bottom line seems to be that, in order to have gerrymandered majority black districts, states need to present more strongly compelling reasons than before for why it’s necessary.

More here:

[Justice] Thomas suggested that the Supreme Court “should never have interpreted §2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to effectively give racial groups ‘an entitlement to roughly proportional representation.’” Wednesday’s decision, Thomas wrote, “should largely put an end to this ‘disastrous misadventure’ in voting-rights jurisprudence.” Thomas would have held, he added, that Section 2 “does not regulate districting at all.”

This decision will be followed by a host of redistricting effects, in particular that of Florida, which just passed a new law:

State lawmakers on Wednesday passed redrawn congressional lines that create an additional four GOP-leaning seats in Florida, making it the eighth state to complete mid-decade redistricting in the 2026 election cycle — and likely setting up a historic legal challenge in the state. …

DeSantis and Republicans have essentially acknowledged his map is out of line with the current state constitution, but they believe the state and U.S. Supreme Court rulings will eventually make the proposal constitutional. …

DeSantis’ argument rests on the idea that the Fair Districts provisions protecting minority-performing districts are unconstitutional …

“Properly understood, the Fourteenth Amendment forbids the government from divvying up the citizenry based in whole or in part upon race,” read a memo penned by DeSantis general counsel David Axelman.

During a Tuesday committee hearing, DeSantis administration map drawer Jason Parada acknowledged he used political performance data when creating his proposal, something Democrats argue is at odds with Fair Districts. But Parada said he did not consider at all racial data, which is in line with the governor’s direction.

It’s not just Florida, either. More states will be attempting something of the sort. It may not be possible for it to happen before the midterms, however.