https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/independence-day-friday-may-1-2026

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court didn’t just tweak Louisiana’s map; it quietly detonated the Voting Rights Act’s entire race?engineering regime, and now that shrapnel is ripping through Congress, blue?state fortresses, and the forgotten local boards, commissions, and councils that for forty years have co-opted our democratic institutions via identity politics pods.

RTWT!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Carolina%27s_congressional_districts

“As I explained more than 30 years ago, I would go further and hold that [section two] of the Voting Rights Act does not regulate districting at all,” Thomas, who was joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, wrote in a concurrence.”

Here’s the basic problem with the Voting Rights Act litigation, which I discovered very quickly while I was clerking. The idea behind the Voting Rights Act was to prevent discrimination against minority voters. But because this applies to legislative districts, many different approaches could be argued to be discrimination. Most hysterically, if the legislature “cracked” minority voters — if you spread them out across multiple districts — that was discrimination. But if you “packed” them — if you put too many in one district — that was also discrimination! In the first instance, the idea was the legislature was trying to prevent minorities from electing anyone of their choice. In the second, the idea was the legislature was trying to give minorities only one district, and thereby discriminating against them that way.

You see the problem. The Democratic/movement lawyer theory of the VRA was that the state legislatures were required to maximize minority voting power. That is, the only way to prove you didn’t discriminate, is if you created the maximum number of minority-majority districts as possible.

This was doubly wrong. It was wrong because maximizing minority voting power is clearly not the negative of discrimination. The theory was totally unconnected to actual discrimination. But it was also wrong because, today, most minorities — especially if you are dealing with the African American population — vote almost entirely for the Democratic party. Thus, the movement lawyer theory of the VRA required maximizing Democratic voting power. And of course, Republican state legislatures could not try to maximize Republican voting power because that would necessarily seem to favor white voters in a world in which black voters overwhelmingly vote for the other side.

The movement-lawyer interpretation of the VRA, in other words, was something akin to Democratic political lawfare. It meant using the legal process and laws intended for entirely different purposes to maximize their political advantage.

I find that a mind-boggling statement, after all these decades of states being forced to draw district maps with race as a primary consideration.

Taken in conjunction with Justice Thomas’s recent address on the Constitution and founding principles, and considering that he has heretofore been considerably more reserved in his speaking than other members of the Court during his tenure, I think he has finally had it with the Democrats.

And I bet he knows who the SCOTUS leakers are.

That’s my understanding as well. Maps that are overtly and explicitly racial are ruled out unless the state can express a damn good reason for it, but beyond that there’s a huge gray area and a lot of room for argument as to what makes a sufficiently “compelling reason” for drawing gerrymandered districts.