Quote of the Day (Raphael Warnock, on the Supreme Court’s ‘Jim Crow in New Clothes’)

“The Supreme Court did the democracy a terrible disservice today….These efforts to effectively disenfranchise black voters have always, even during the dark days of the Jim Crow era, claimed to be race-neutral….By the time you had the Voting Rights Act, black people theoretically had a right to vote for 100 years, when the 15^th Amendment was passed. But through literacy tests, through grandfather clauses, through poll taxes, they effectively disenfranchised black voters. This is just the 21^st century version. This is Jim Crow in new clothes. This Supreme Court is an activist court. They did us a terrible disservice several years ago in the Shelby v. Holder decision.  And Justice [John] Roberts opined back then that this is not necessary. Well, what have we seen since then? Since then, the racial voter turnout gap has increased all over the country. I think it’s important for me to stress that, because I’m sitting here and people say, ‘You got the first black Senator from Georgia, you have a black President.’ Here is the reality: the racial turnout gap since Shelby v. Holder [in] 2013 has widened all over the country. And in the South, in the states that required pre-clearance [under the Voting Rights Act] because of a history of discrimination, that gap has grown twice as fast. We’re all entitled to our own opinion. We’re not entitled to our own facts, and the numbers and the facts bear it out. Today was one more assault. Shelby says you can engage in disenfranchisement practices, which has increased the gap in voter turnout. Today’s decision says that even when non-white voters show up in robust numbers, we’re giving you permission to play with the lines, because that’s all gerrymandering is. So that even as they show up, they will not have the kind of representation that their voice suggests they ought to have. And the proof is in the pudding. They are busy right now, supercharging redistricting. There are people in my state, even though early voting has already begun, some are already saying, ‘We ought to do something about that. We ought to redraw the maps.’”—U.S. Senator Rev. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), on the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais et. al. decision on voting rights, on “The Briefing With Jen Psaki,” MS-Now, original air date Apr. 29, 2026

Senator Warnock has concisely summarized the voting-rights legislative history that too many people don't know, as well as effectively rebutted Justice Samuel Alito’s contention in Louisiana v. Callais et. al. that the remedies dictated by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 are no longer needed.

In the short term, the Roberts Court has offered not guidance but disorder for the upcoming midterm elections, okaying a blatant gerrymandering attempt after previously ruling that these were "political decisions" beyond the reach of the federal judiciary.

In the long term, though, the Alito-penned decision will be regarded with the same disdain and revulsion as the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Reconstruction Era civil-rights legislation to which Senator Warnock refers.

This ruling follows a pattern in which the conservative majority has only departed, in one notable instance—tariffs—from what the Trump Administration has desired.

Ironically, by clearing a path for chaos and lawlessness by the President and his MAGA minions at the federal and state levels, the court (or what a friend of mine calls “The Extreme Court”) has only brought their own reasoning into disrepute and consigned themselves into an irrelevance that would have dismayed the great Chief Justice John Marshall two centuries ago.

(The image that accompanies this post—the Rev. Warnock’s official Senate photo—was taken on Feb. 3, 2021, by Rebecca Hammel of the U.S. Senate Photographic Studio.)

Movie Quote of the Day (‘How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,’ With a Typical Executive Disclaimer of Responsibility)

J. B. Biggley [played by Rudy Vallee, on the left with Robert Morse]: “I realize that I'm the president of this company, the man that's responsible for everything that goes on here. So, I want to state, right now, that anything that happened is not my fault.”— How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967), based on the novel by Shepherd Mead, adapted into a Pulitzer and Tony-winning musical with book by Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert, music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, movie written and directed by David Swift

For years, I’ve heard many politicians—I won’t say from which party—express their belief that government should be “run more like a business.” I wonder if the business they have in mind is J.B. Biggley’s World Wide Wicket Company?

Well, I’ll tell you: that statement of his that I’ve highlighted here is, for all intents and purposes, the continued default option for corporate executives who run into trouble, whether in the form of product or service failure, a disastrous earnings report, even fraud or misconduct. Their most common method for avoiding responsibility is to blame a predecessor.

Now that I think of it, a politician I can think of immediately has also taken this very course.