In this week Elijah v. UNITED STATESour justice correspondent looks at the blockbuster revelations about the main plaintiff in the VRA affair. Plus, the continuing cult of Trump.
A man holds up a “Stop the Steal” sign as rioters invade the steps of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
(Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images) A explosive report of Democracy Docket revealed that Bert Callais, the lead plaintiff in Louisiana v. Callaisthe case that demolished the Voting Rights Act, was a January 6 protester. It’s unclear whether Callais also attacked the Capitol as part of Donald Trump’s failed coup, but it’s clear he is an election-denying conspiracy theorist.
I can’t say I find this information surprising. Maybe it’s because I tend to judge people by the arguments they make in court, not the color of their skin. Callais took exception to being placed in a majority-minority district, in a state that is one-third minority, and made a federal issue out of it. His main 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 isn’t really “new” information to me, just a confirmation of my previous assumptions.
What is, I guess, crazy to me is that the white lawyers and forces who organized this attack on the Voting Rights Act knew that Callais was a J-6 guy, with a long history of objecting on social media to non-white people’s right to vote, and still decided to use him as a spokesperson for their case. Just to pull back the curtain a bit, the “named plaintiff” in a case like this is rarely random. Cases built to reach the Supreme Court don’t often start because an average person files a modest lawsuit that blows up. These cases are expected. Complainants are chosen to present the problem in the best possible light.
Take Plessy v. Ferguson. In this case, the named plaintiff, Homer Plessy, was not just a random brother who decided on his own to challenge Southern railroad segregation. Plessy was an activist and he was chosen by civil rights organizers… because he look at white. Plessy could pass. To kick Plessy out of a whites-only train car, the driver had to know he was black by bloodbecause you couldn’t tell just by looking at him. Plessy’s phenotype highlighted the problem that segregation was based on blood quantity and nothing else.
The fact that white Louisianans thought a January 6th man was the perfect face to attack the Voting Rights Act should tell you everything you need to know about why these people decided to bring the case. Louisiana v. Callais it’s not about Republicans versus Democrats in the battle for control of Congress. This is about white people trying to take political power away from black people.
And the Supreme Court ruled that “white people win” – again.
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The bully and the ugly
In case the Callis This decision is not sufficient proof that the government is run based on white male grievances, see the latest lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC sues THE New York Times because a white man didn’t get a promotion – an anonymous white man who claims he was “significantly more qualified” than the “multiracial woman” who got the promotion. The complaint provides no evidence as to the qualifications of the man or woman, but I guess we’re just supposed to assume that any white man is probably more qualified than a “multiracial woman” working at the company. 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 is black and was one of the leaders of Virginia’s redistricting efforts. Once again, the government’s objective is to eliminate Black voices in politics. Trump and Sean Hannity try to convince John Fetterman to run as a republican. I don’t know why. Anyway, he’s been living as a Republican all this time. The Supreme Court temporarily on hiatus a Fifth Circuit order that would have prevented the distribution of abortion pills through the mail. Given that the Supreme Court normally allows anti-women decisions from the Fifth Circuit to be issued via the shadow docket, I view this as a good sign. The Supreme Court refused to hear a Covid-19 vaccine case brought by former NBA star John Stockton. I was a few years old today when I learned that Stockton was anti-vaccine. Inspired Takes
I focused on how Louisiana v. Callais This case affects Louisiana, but many other former Confederate states are eager to get involved in racism. For The NationJohn Nichols takes us to Tennessee, where the Republicans are trying to redistrict Memphis and make it impossible for a city that is 62% black to elect a black representative to Congress. I have read most of what Gregg Gonsalves writes. This article on the rise of the “Vichy Scientists” who are complicit in the outrages of the Trump regime could also be written about lawyers, media people and a number of professionals. That said, the Justice Department is at least having trouble recruiting new sycophants and cowards. They used very strange advertising campaigns to get people to apply to work for this once respected institution. This week, in honor of May 4, they turned to Star Wars to encourage candidates, asking lawyers to “join in the pursuit… of law.” But in Above the lawJoe Patrice underlines that they manage to miss the point of the entire series, which is most certainly not about joining the evil empire to bring its genocidal version of peace and security to the galaxy. The worst argument of the week
Sorry guys, honestly, I’m too involved in the voting rights decision to consider any more bad arguments this week.
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What I wrote
As mentioned above, and like anyone who is honest, I am 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 this decision to expedite get rid of blacks in Congress.
In news unrelated to the current chaos
Last month, Donald Trump asked an 8-year-old, “Do you think you could take me into a fight?” This asked YouGov to poll Americans on whether they think they can beat Trump in a fistfight.
I would just like to say to myself, a naive 22-year-old, who thought, “Who would you like to have a beer with, George W. Bush or Al Gore?” It was the stupidest poll question of my life – that he was so wrong.
Overall, only 55% of Americans thought they could take on Trump in a fight. I say “only” because… do you have any idea how old 79 East? We are talking about an age where falling can be life threatening. And that doesn’t even take into account Trump’s dire physical condition.
The 19th digging into the numbersand… I really don’t understand the fate that Trump has cast on this whole fucking country. In the poll, 64% of men said they could take on Trump in a fight, compared to just 47% of women. I promise you, women sell themselves short, but so do men (who are usually not the ones to underestimate themselves); Just five years ago, YouGov found that 71% of men thought they could beat up a goose (which is a ridiculously high figure; a goose would kick most people’s ass). The idea that more people think they can beat a goose than Donald Trump seems absolutely insane to me.
But the problem lies in how the numbers are distributed across parties. 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 beat the president. In total, 33% of Republicans thought they could take on Trump.
Let me repeat that: Only 33% of these gun-wielding, anti-science wannabe 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 healthy 64 year old), the number of Republicans would approach 100 percent.
My point is this: these people are part of a cult. Only a cult mentality can make you think that a scruffy 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 knock Donald Trump. Even if he hits you first. Just turn the other cheek. Not out of Christian kindness, but because if you turn the other cheek, he’ll smash his little hand across your face, and then, while he screams in pain, you can say, “Osteoporosis, motherfucker” and look like a badass.
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Elie Mystal Elie Mystal is The Nationjustice correspondent and columnist. Island is also Alfred Knobler Fellow at the Type Media Center. He is the author of two books: New York Times bestseller Let me respond: A Guide to the Constitution for Black Men And Bad Laws: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining Americaboth published by The New Press. You can subscribe to his Nation newsletter “Elie c. US » here.