The Return of Jim Crow

Elie v. U.S.

An explosive report from Democracy Docket revealed that Bert Callais, the lead plaintiff in Louisiana v. Callais, the case that demolished the Voting Rights Act, was a January 6 protester. It’s unclear if Callais also attacked the Capitol as part of Donald Trump’s failed coup d’état, but it is clear that he’s an election-denying conspiracy theorist.

I can’t say I find this information surprising. That may be because I tend to judge people by the arguments they make in court, not by the color of their skin. Callais took umbrage at being placed in a majority-minority district, in a state that is one-third minority, and made an entire federal case out of it. His core argument was racist: He essentially argued that white people in Louisiana have a constitutional right to be overrepresented in Congress, that they should get more than they deserve. Finding out that a man like this has modern-day Klan robes in his closet is not really “new” information to me, just confirmation of my previous assumptions.

What is, I guess, wild to me is that the lawyers and white-wing forces organizing this attack on the Voting Rights Act knew Callais was a J-6 guy, with a long social-media history of objecting to the voting rights of non-white people, and decided to use him as the poster boy for their case anyway. Just to pull back the curtain a little bit, the “named plaintiff” in a case like this is rarely random. Cases built to get to the Supreme Court do not often start because one average citizen files a humble lawsuit that blows up. These cases are planned. The plaintiffs are picked to put the issue in the best possible light.

Take Plessy v. Ferguson. In that case, the named plaintiff, Homer Plessy, was not just some random brother who decided on his own to challenge segregation on train cars in the South. Plessy was an activist, and he was picked by civil rights organizers… because he looked white. Plessy could pass. To kick Plessy off of a whites-only train car, the conductor had to know he was Black by blood, because you couldn’t tell by just looking at him. Plessy’s phenotype highlighted the issue that segregation was based on blood quantum and nothing else.

The fact that the white folks in Louisiana thought that a January 6 guy was the perfect face for their assault on the Voting Rights Act should tell you all you need to know about the reasons these folks decided to bring the case. Louisiana v. Callais is not about Republicans versus Democrats in the battle for control of Congress. It’s about white folks trying to take political power away from Black folks.

And the Supreme Court ruled “whites win”—again.

The Bad and the Ugly

• In case the Callais decision isn’t enough proof that the government is run on white male grievance, check out the latest lawsuit from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC is suing The New York Times because a white man didn’t get a promotion—an unnamed white man who claims he was “significantly more qualified” than the “multiracial female” who did get the promotion. The complaint does not provide any evidence about the man’s qualifications, or the woman’s, but I guess we’re supposed to just assume that any white man is likely more qualified than a “multiracial female” working at the Times.

• The office of Virginia State Senator L. Louise Lucas was raided by Kash Patel’s FBI. I shouldn’t even need to tell you that Lucas happens to be Black and was a leader of Virginia’s redistricting effort. Again, the government’s goal is to eliminate Black voices from politics.

• Trump and Sean Hannity are trying to convince John Fetterman to run as a Republican. I’m not sure why. He’s been living as a Republican all this time anyway.

• The Supreme Court temporarily paused a Fifth Circuit order that would have prevented abortion pills from being dispensed through the mail. Given that the Supreme Court normally allows the Fifth Circuit’s anti-woman rulings to proceed via the shadow docket, I’ll take this as a good sign.

• The Supreme Court declined to hear a Covid-19 vaccine case brought by former NBA star John Stockton. I was today-years-old when I learned that Stockton is an anti-vaxxer.

Inspired Takes

• I’ve been focusing on how the Louisiana v. Callais case affects Louisiana, but there are a bunch of other former Confederate states that are eager to get in on the racism. For The Nation, John Nichols takes us to Tennessee, where the Republicans are trying to redistrict Memphis and make it impossible for a city that is 62 percent Black to elect a Black representative to Congress.

• I read most of what Gregg Gonsalves writes. This piece about the rise of “Vichy Scientists” who are complicit in the outrages of the Trump regime could also be written about lawyers, media people, and really any number of professionals.

• That said, the Department of Justice is at least struggling to recruit new sycophants and cowards. They’ve resorted to some very weird ad campaigns to get people to apply to work for the once respected institution. This week, in honor of May the Fourth, they turned to Star Wars to encourage applicants, asking lawyers to “join the pursuit…of law.” But in Above the Law, Joe Patrice pointed out that they manage to miss the point of the entire series—which is most definitely not about joining the evil empire to bring its genocidal version of peace and security to the galaxy.

Worst Argument of the Week

Sorry, guys, I am honestly too embroiled in the Voting Rights decision to consider any other bad arguments this week.

What I Wrote

As referenced above, and like everybody else who is decent, I’m still reeling from the Supreme Court’s reinstitution of Jim Crow in last week’s voting rights case. This week, I wrote about how the Supreme Court is using that decision to fast-track getting rid of Black people in Congress.

In News Unrelated to the Current Chaos

Last month, Donald Trump asked an 8-year-old: “You think you could take me in a fight?” This prompted YouGov to poll Americans on whether they think they could beat Trump in a fistfight.

I would just like to tell 22-year-old me—the naïve young man who thought that “Whom would you like to have a beer with, George W. Bush or Al Gore?” was the dumbest polling question of my lifetime—that he was so, so very wrong.

Overall, only 55 percent of Americans thought they could take Trump in a fight. I say “only” because… do you have any idea how old 79 is? We’re talking about an age where falling down can be life-threatening. And that’s not even accounting for Trump’s shambling physical state.

The 19th dug into the numbers, and… I just really don’t understand the spell Trump has cast over this entire freaking country. In the poll, 64 percent of men said they could take Trump in a fight, while just 47 percent of women did. I promise you, women are selling themselves way short, but the men (not usually ones to underestimate themselves) are too; just five years ago, YouGov found that 71 percent of men thought they could beat up a goose (which is a ridiculously high number; a goose would kick most people’s asses). The idea that more people think they could beat up a goose than Donald Trump is absolutely insane to me.

But the rub of it all is how the numbers broke along party lines. Eighty–two percent of Democratic men and 71 percent of Democratic women said they could beat Trump—while only 46 percent of Republican men and 19 percent of Republican women said they could trounce the president. In total, 33 percent of Republicans thought they could take Trump.

Let me repeat that: Only 33 percent of these wannabe jackboot, anti-science, gun-toting racists think they can beat a 79-year-old man in a fistfight. I promise you that if they were asked if they could beat Barack Obama (a fit 64-year-old), the Republican number would approach 100 percent.

My point is: These people are in a cult. Only a cult mentality can make you think that a washed-up old man like Trump who can’t even hold a glass with one hand is somehow so “strong” that he can be an effective pugilist.

That said, don’t punch Donald Trump. Even if he hits you first. Just turn the other cheek. Not out of Christian goodness, but because if you turn the other cheek he’ll break his small hand on your face, and then, while he’s screaming out in pain you can say, “Osteoporosis, motherfucker,” and look like a badass.