Supreme Court Surprises Us All and Delivers Major Win for Voting Rights

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday in favor of voting rights for Black residents of Alabama, in a total shock to everyone.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the three liberal justices, ruling 5–4 that Republican-drawn congressional districts in Alabama discriminated against Black voters under the Voting Rights Act.

This means that the seven congressional districts will now be redrawn. More than a quarter of Alabama residents are Black, but only one of Alabama’s seven congressional districts is majority-Black. Black voters are scattered throughout the other districts, dramatically reducing their ability to elect their preferred candidates. As a result of the racial gerrymandering, the state only has one Black representative.

A three-judge district court ruled unanimously in January 2022 that the map violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting Black votes, and ordered a new map be drawn. The judges ruled that Alabama’s Black population was large enough, and concentrated enough in one area, that there could be two majority-Black districts.

The state appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which heard arguments in October. While the case was ongoing, the map was used during the 2022 midterm elections.

Roberts wrote the majority opinion, and repeatedly rejected Alabama’s arguments in favor of keeping the current map as “unpersuasive” or of “little merit.”

“The Court’s opinion does not diminish or disregard the concern that [the Voting Rights Act] may impermissibly elevate race in the allocation of political power within the States,” he wrote. “Instead, the Court simply holds that a faithful application of precedent and a fair reading of the record do not bear those concerns out here.”

Alabama’s new districting map could prove crucial to Democrats’ ability to retake the House of Representatives in 2024.

This post has been updated.

More than 100 million people are under air quality alerts, with numerous American cities experiencing among the worst air quality in the world, as heavy, hazardous smog from raging Canadian wildfires swallows much of the United States. And while people are putting their masks on to navigate their new reality, a Republican has come out to bravely say it’s too soon to talk about climate change.

“AOC can save her lecturing for the floor of the House,” New York Republican Marc Molinaro said on Fox. “Right now, there are countless firefighters, there are families being impacted, senior citizens, folks with respiratory issues,” he continued, listing off a laundry list of people his party has left behind by not caring about environmental protection. “There is little question that Canada obviously needs to focus on forest management, but this isn’t the moment to start lecturing people about the science of climate change. Right now it’s about putting out a fire and keeping people safe,” he finished, as if honoring the science of climate change is not intrinsically part of keeping people safe.

Note that Molinaro’s own state, New York, has among the worst air quality in the world right now. His district (one that Biden won) also includes much of the state’s most beautiful areas: the Catskill Mountains, the Hudson Valley, and parts of the Finger Lakes. And yet voicing concerns about how we are degrading these landscapes, and harming our people’s health, is “lecturing” to this New York Republican.

It’s almost comical the extent Republican politicians will go to deny reality. It’s not enough to cast doubt on the broader scientific fact about human-induced climate change—and all the subsequent effects, like wildlife and habitat loss, or the upending of our food and water systems—and how expensive that all is. While nearly a third of the country is at risk of breathing in a dark haze straight out of dystopia, Republicans are still lecturing us for having the nerve to say enough is enough.

There has been a great deal of focus on how Republicans, in their vicious agenda against education, LGBTQ people, and immigrants, are massively out of touch with most of America. It’s high time we externalize the fact that they are just as out of touch when it comes to climate and the environment. Pretty much everyone enjoys or appreciates our natural world: aesthetically, spiritually, recreationally, or simply by virtue of its being where their food and water comes from. But the conservative movement has no answer to protect it all—and wants to blame those of us who are trying to find one.

Televangelist Pat Robertson, who founded the Christian Broadcasting Network, died Thursday at age 93.

Robertson was one of the main drivers behind Christian conservatism’s entry into mainstream politics, introducing what would become some of modern Republicans’ favorite talking points, including blaming LGBTQ people and people of color for pretty much everything.

Here are nine statements Robertson made that he will probably have to explain at the pearly gates.

1. Gay people and abortion caused 9/11

Robertson hosted fellow televangelist Jerry Falwell on his show The 700 Club just days after the 9/11 attack. At one point, Falwell said, “The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’”

Robertson replied, “I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government.”

2. Haitians deserved the earthquake in 2010

Haiti was struck by a devastating earthquake in January 2010. The death toll is still uncertain, but potentially half a million people died. Robertson said that Haitians had made a “pact with the devil” and have been “cursed” ever since.

3. Feminists are evil

In a 1992 fundraising letter, Robertson wrote: “The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

4. Abortion caused Hurricane Katrina

Robertson said Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005 because God was angry about abortion. “I was reading … a book that was very interesting about what God has to say in the Old Testament about those who shed innocent blood,” he said. “Have we found we are unable somehow to defend ourselves against some of the attacks that are coming against us, either by terrorists or now by natural disaster? Could they be connected?”

5. God won’t bless America because of gay people and abortion

Robertson said at the start of 2010 that God wouldn’t bless America that year because there was too much abortion and homosexuality and not enough prayer.

“Fifty million babies slaughtered,” Robertson said God told him. “You can’t have legislation that is anti-God. You can’t foster in your midst things that I call an abomination.… If you do, sooner or later judgment’s going to come.”

6. Gay people are Nazis

In March 1990, Robertson referred to homosexuality as a “pathology” that needed to be treated. “Many of those people involved with Adolf Hitler were Satanists, many of them were homosexuals,” he said on The 700 Club. “Those two things seem to go together.”

7. Muslims are also Nazis

In 2011, Robertson compared Islamophobia to being anti-Nazi. “I was thinking, you know, if you oppose Muslims, what is said?” he asked on The 700 Club. “Well, you’re a bigot, right? Terrible bigotry. I wonder, what were people who opposed the Nazis? Were they bigots?”

8. God would overturn the 2020 election in favor of Donald Trump

Robertson told 700 Club viewers that the lawsuit filed by Texas’s then–Attorney General Ken Paxton challenging the results of the 2020 election was a “miracle.”

“They’re going to the Supreme Court to say, ‘This election was rigged and you’ve got to overturn it,’” Robertson said, pushing Trump-backed falsehoods. He also said God would intervene.

(At least on this point, Robertson seemed to correct himself, saying two weeks later that Trump was living in “an alternate reality.”)

9. Towels in Kenya transmit AIDS

In 2014, a 700 Club viewer asked whether an upcoming trip to Kenya was risky.

“You might get AIDS in Kenya,” Robertson warned on air. “The people have AIDS in Kenya. The towels could have AIDS.”

Lauren Boebert doesn’t have the time of day for people who survived mass shootings.

On Tuesday, as gun violence survivors visited Washington, D.C., to lobby for action, they ran up against some elected officials who wouldn’t even look them in the eye, including one Republican Representative Boebert.

“Hey, there’s a lot of survivors over there if you want to …,” one young visitor started to Boebert.

“Survivors of gun violence if you want to talk to them,” another finished. “Survivors from Uvalde, Parkland.… You don’t really care?”

“It’s alright. My son died for you to just go do that,” said Brett Cross, whose son was shot and killed at the Uvalde elementary school shooting, as Boebert walked by without even looking at him.

“I heard you’re gonna be a grandmother!” the first young individual called out as Boebert and her aides marched away toward the people’s house.

Numerous other members of Congress did take time out of their equally busy days to meet with the student and parent organizers, including Senator Bernie Sanders and Representatives Summer Lee, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Mike Thompson. Senator Jon Ossoff even came out as another co-sponsor of a bill to ban assault weapons.

Also on Tuesday, when asked about gun violence by a school shooting survivor, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene simply said she supports the Second Amendment before turning her back and walking away from a child who survived a gun killing.

Republican infighting over the recently passed debt limit law has gotten so bad that they’re undermining their own investigation into President Joe Biden to get back at each other.

Some of the most conservative House Republicans, furious that Speaker Kevin McCarthy agreed to raise the debt ceiling, blocked a bill on Tuesday that would have prevented gas stoves from being banned (another one of their fake culture wars). But now, Republican leadership may respond by blocking a vote, set for Thursday, to hold CIA director Christopher Wray in contempt for not complying with the Oversight Committee’s holey Biden investigation.

“I have been told that leadership teams are meeting right now,” Representative Matt Gaetz told Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. “And they’re thinking about punishing House conservatives and just sending everybody home this week, and canceling the committee work and the contempt work as a way to stick it to us for making demands that they keep their promises.”

Members of the Freedom Caucus, the farthest-right wing of the House, accuse McCarthy of reneging on several promises he made to them when he was elected speaker. In fact, those promises were what got him elected speaker in the first place.

McCarthy apparently also promised to slash government spending and cap the debt ceiling. Instead, McCarthy negotiated with Biden to pass a deal to raise the debt ceiling (after a GOP-manufactured crisis that brought the U.S. to the brink of default).

The Freedom Caucus has been a thorn in McCarthy’s side since the very beginning. They’re the ones who made us sit through 15 rounds of votes for the speakership. And now, they’ve dragged the Republican Party into a weird game of tit for tat that is preventing them from actually achieving any of their goals.

Considering one of those goals is an investigation based on seemingly no evidence, maybe we should let them keep going.