Archives for category: Democracy

Jamelle Bouie, columnist for The New York Times, wrote several columns (see here) about the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to eviscerate the Voting Rights Act in its Callais decision. This one is titled “The Law They Hate Was a High Point of Our History.” The high court majority, six hard-right Republicans, decided that partisan redistricting is just fine, but redistricting that takes account of race is not. Thus, a state legislature dominated by one party can justly produce a voting map that gives every seat to its own party, but it may not permit districts created to encourage representation of racial minorities.

In the wake of the Callais decision, some states of the Confederacy quickly carved up districts to eliminate seats held by Democrats and by Blacks. Some of these states will have only white Republicans in Congress.

Bouie wrote:

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 wasn’t the top-down dictate of a rogue, liberal Supreme Court — if such a thing has ever existed.

It wasn’t the brainchild of out-of-touch bureaucrats in Washington, nor was it some kind of martial settlement imposed on the states of the former Confederacy.

It was, instead, an achievement of the most effective social movement of the postwar United States. The Voting Rights Act revitalized American democracy and stands as one of its great achievements.

This, somehow, has been lost in the discourse around the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais. The court’s clear hostility to the law, as well as the glee with which conservative Republicans have dismantled the South’s majority-minority congressional districts in its wake, makes it seem as if the V.R.A. was a handcuff placed on American politics by some outside force.

The truth is that the Voting Rights Act was conceived, crafted and passed in order to further realize American democracy. And it was, itself, the product of an explosion of democratic energy.

The V.R.A. was forced onto the national agenda by the tireless work of the grass roots activists in the Civil Rights Movement, who struggled, bled and put their lives on the line in a fierce fight to secure their fundamental rights as Americans. It was signed into law by a president who had won election in one of the largest landslides in American history. It was subsequently reauthorized by Congress, after Congress, after Congress, after Congress.

The most recent reauthorization in 2006 was nearly unanimous, and there was broad support from the public — so much that to justify the Supreme Court’s attack on the law in Shelby County v. Holder, Chief Justice John Roberts had to fabricate a constitutional doctrine about the “equal sovereignty” of states, and Justice Antonin Scalia had to characterize the reauthorization as an unfair “racial entitlement” that politicians would never remove for fear of backlash.

If there is any single law that you could plausibly say represents the general will of the American people, it might be one that was reaffirmed nearly every decade for 40 years by the people’s representatives.

This isn’t just a historical point or a piece of idle trivia. It is essential. And it gets to what is so egregious about the court’s campaign against the law.

The Voting Rights Act was an attempt by the people of the United States, affirmed across two generations of voters and lawmakers, to make good the 15th Amendment to the Constitution — itself the hard fought product of war and reconstruction. It was an attempt to wield the authority of the federal government to secure the fundamental right to vote as well as the fundamental right to representation. It stood for substantive equal protection — the chance to make democracy real.

The V.R.A. was not, contra John Roberts and the rest, an expression of colorblindness, indifferent to the social realities of the United States. It did not pretend to treat supposed neutrality as truly neutral, nor did it place racial inequality outside the remit of the Constitution. And it was not, as this court would have it, the bland expression of a bloodless commitment to anti-discrimination. In fact, it was the most significant attempt in this country’s history to realize the promise of political equality.

The Voting Rights Act has more — much more — democratic legitimacy than this Supreme Court has ever enjoyed. After all, most of this court’s conservative majority was appointed by presidents who entered office as winners of the Electoral College but not the popular vote.

It is that relative difference in democratic legitimacy that makes this court’s voting rights jurisprudence so offensive.

Those voting rights rulings, from Shelby County v. Holder in 2013 to Callais in 2026, come from a court that has placed itself above the people at large. It is a court that will, according to its whims, ignore the clear commands, directions and intent of Congress. It is a court that treats voters and legislators as errant children to be corralled and disciplined by wise jurists. It is a court that doesn’t answer hard constitutional questions as they arise as much as it imposes constitutional meaning based on its narrow interests and ideological preoccupations.

It is a court that is trying to shape the political system to its liking, despite the claims of the chief justice, with no limits other than its partisan preferences. It is a court, in other words, that is wielding a cramped and parochial vision of the Constitution against American democracy, rather than treating the Constitution as a tool for realizing our democratic aspirations.

There have been many frustrating decisions from this Supreme Court. Louisiana v. Callais may not even be its worst decision — that prize might still go to Trump v. United States, where the chief justice conjured, out of thin air, an anti-constitutional doctrine of criminal immunity for the president.

Callais, however, might be the most emblematic of this court’s decisions: a flashing warning that our democracy is being crushed underneath the imperial authority of an arrogant and reactionary juristocracy. We can either discipline that court — and put it in its place — or accept our fate as its subjects.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Civil Rights, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Injustice, Racism

Dan Froomkin: The Court’s Voting Rights Decision Was Intended to Disenfranchise Black Voters

By dianeravitch

May 20, 2026 //

Dan Froomkin writes “Press Watch,” a blog that covers the media. In this post, he criticizes the mainstream media for treating the U.S. Supreme Court’s Callais decision as a partisan issue. It is that, but it is at bottom a decision that destroys Black political power. It allows states to divvy up districts in ways that eliminates Black representation. And former Confederate states wasted no time in breaking up districts that elect Blacks to Congress.

He writes:

States across the South are redrawing election maps to eliminate majority-Black congressional districts.

Much of the major-media coverage is casting this in purely political terms – as just another part of the partisan battle for the House in November.

So for example, a May 9 Associated Press article headlined “What to know about the latest wave of changes to congressional districts,” started off this way:

The remaking of the U.S. political map accelerated this week in courts and legislatures, all of it in this round expected to boost Republicans in their attempt to keep control of Congress in November’s elections.

A May 13 New York Times article started off like this:

Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia on Wednesday called lawmakers back to the capital next month to redraw the state’s legislative districts for the 2028 election cycle, and to work on changes to the state’s voting system.

The call for a special session, which will begin on June 17, comes as Southern lawmakers have been rushing to reconfigure congressional maps to be more favorable to Republicans for this year’s midterms in response to the recent Supreme Court decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

But in the South, the significance of redistricting goes far beyond any partisan issue.

So let me rewrite that for you:

In a stunning display of racism, white Republican leaders throughout the South are stripping Black people of their franchise in order to retain political power.

The catalyst was a 6-3 Supreme Court decision on April 29 that gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965, landmark legislation that gave Black people the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.

Six right-wing justices insisted that intentional voting discrimination is a thing of the past. Southern legislators immediately responded by redrawing election boundaries to dilute the Black vote, in many cases making it virtually impossible for Black people to be elected to Congress.

What has happened in a matter of days amounts to a wrenching reversal of 60 years of racial progress — a revival of the Jim Crow era when Black people had no political power, no matter their number.

On a personal level, Black voters in the South are struggling with the repercussions of having one of their essential rights being brutally ripped away from them.

In states like Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi, where they make up more than 30 percent of the population, Black Americans will have little to no say in who is elected to Congress. And as the effects of the court decision trickle down to the local level, they may get shut out of some of those elections as well.

Meanwhile, the leaders of the white nationalist movement known as MAGA are celebrating. In some cases, their racism is expressed openly. “For too long, Tennessee politics has been dominated by cosmopolitan communists and race hustlers imposing their corrupt will on a deeply rural and conservative state,” Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee posted on social media.

For the authoritarian leaders of MAGA, the dilution and nullification of Black votes is a crucial step in their quest to remain in power — even as most voters have turned against them.

MAGA’s future depends on suppressing the votes of groups that don’t support its white-male dominated Christian nationalist ideology. Reducing minority representation, to them, is essential to destroying majority rule. Destroying Majority rule is how they win.

Gerrymandering that leads to Southern states being almost entirely represented by white, right-wing elected officials dramatically improves MAGA’s political calculus. In the short run, it improves the odds of retaining Congress in November. MAGA’ strategy to keep the White House in 2028 includes yet more Black disenfranchisement, through voter intimidation, deception and disruption.

So far, MAGA’s plan is working, raising the prospect that Trump and his successors may remain in power for the foreseeable future.

But another way to characterize the current drive to disenfranchise Black voters is that it is the desperate – and maybe final — act of a white nationalist party that is being rejected by increasing number of voters.

For American journalists, this ought to be epic, tectonic stuff, worth aggressive and ongoing coverage.

And keep in mind that in the mid- to late-20th century, the struggle for civil rights was the dominant story in American politics, the subject of vast amount of journalism, some of it heroic. Ultimately it was journalism that brought the civil rights marchers into the American public’s breakfast nooks and living rooms, forcing the country to reckon with a brutal and sordid history of racism, and, eventually, try to move beyond it.

But today, as in the early days of the civil rights movement, too much of the media is averting its eyes from the experience of Black people. Too much coverage treats this extraordinary and consequential display of racism and societal regression as if it were just an ordinary political battle.

Some Reporters Get It

Some mainstream journalists have recognized the racial element of redistricting, and their work provides models of better, more appropriate coverage.

As evidence that you can address both the racial and political nature of the Republican moves in a news article, consider Emily Cochrane’s reporting in the Times about a new Tennessee map “that slices up Memphis to scatter Black voters into neighboring districts, a move intended to eliminate the state’s last Democratic House seat.” After several paragraphs of partisan framing, she wrote:

Democrats, noting that about two-thirds of Memphis voters are Black, said it was a blatant attack on hard-won gains for fair representation in a state shaped by slavery, segregation and the civil rights movement.

She described the scene in the state capitol in Nashville during the special session to pass the new map:

Black lawmakers delivered emotional speeches about family members, friends and colleagues who endured segregation or struggled with barriers to voting in the 1960s. State Senator Charlane Oliver of Nashville, a Democrat, stood on her desk right before the vote, holding a banner reading “No Jim Crow 2.”

And she quoted an attendee:

“My race is who I am and it informs my politics,” said Danyelle Norment, 30, who woke up early to drive in from Memphis. “It’s not something that’s separate or can be left behind.”

She added, “it’s really, really important to have folks who can understand our lived experience.”

In the Washington Post, Justin Jouvenal profiled Press Robinson, an 88-year-old civil rights pioneer. “That law passed in 1965 was the bedrock of improvement of life in America for people of color,” Robinson told Jouvenal.

Now, Robinson fears a wipeout of Black political power, much like the one that occurred after Reconstruction.

“History is now repeating itself,” he said.

On PBS Newshour, Liz Landers covered the story as part of the network’s “Race Matters” series, bringing us the voice of Leona Tate, a civil rights activist:

So now we move backwards with the Supreme Court decision that will go down as one of the most racist rulings in our nation’s history.

Tate was 6 years old when she became one of the first students to desegregate a New Orleans school, Landers noted. Then Tate continued:

I had no idea what racism was at that time, but I knew by third grade that it was the color of my skin that made a difference. I just can’t believe that it’s still happening 66 years later. It’s cheating, to me. That’s how I feel. It’s really cheating. And it’s really illegal.

It does bring back that feeling from a long time ago, and it’s not a good feeling.

Read the Black Press

As in the 1950s and 60s, the Black press is revealing what the white press is slow to acknowledge.

Brandon Tensley, writing for Capital B, explained “How One Supreme Court Ruling Is Rewriting 60 Years of Voting Protections.” “Most Black Americans reside in the South,” he wrote. Lawmakers in former slaveholding states dismantling majority-Black districts “could change the balance of power and the complexion of leadership in this country.”

Gerren Keith Gaynor, writing for TheGrio, headlined the fact that “Black legislators lead the resistance as Republicans rush to redraw maps after gutting of Voting Rights Act.” “It’s disturbing and disgusting to see how this administration and the white leadership here are trying to codify white supremacy and dilute Black political voting power because that’s what’s happening,” Tennessee State Rep. Justin J. Pearson told Gaynor. “I think none of us should make any mistake about what is going on. The attempt to remove Black representation and our ability to elect representatives of our choice is one of the most significant attacks on Black voter participation and Black voter representation since the end of Reconstruction.”

TheRoot published a viral video of Louisiana resident Marshan Camese delivering a powerful speech at a state Senate hearing over redistricting. “I believe the country as a whole is rebuking your party. Y’all are in a death spiral,” he said. “That’s why y’all have to redistrict. That’s why y’all have to cheat.” MAGA, he said, “is the last breath of the Confederacy.”

Civil rights leaders are headed to Alabama tomorrow for a rally they’re calling “All Roads Lead to the South.” As I wrote in my Heads Up News newsletter this week, this could be the birth of a movement that combines the battle for voting rights with the battle for democracy.

“Black folks from across the country are gonna be busing in, flying in, to show up and to really begin organizing to turn out in the November election,” Wisdom Cole, the Senior National Director of Advocacy for the NAACP, told TheRoot. “This is such an important moment to activate all of us.”

Note: the rally in Alabama was held last Saturday.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Civil Rights, Democracy, Elections, Freedom, Inequity, Injustice, Media, Racism

Georgia: Republicans’ $100 Million Primary for Governor

By dianeravitch

May 19, 2026 //

Today is primary day in Georgia. Jack Hassard offers as good an analysis of the Republican primary as you will see anywhere. Actually, better. Four men are running for the Republican nomination. They all rely on culture war issues, the red meat that gets voters excited, like immigration, crime, and low taxes. Most certainly, they are all conservative Christians. Sadly, none of them addresses the issues that matter most: the closing of hospitals, healthcare, education, the environment. They all embrace Trump, of course.

He blogs as “Citizen Jack.” He is a professor Emeritus of Science Education at Georgia State University.

Citizen Jack writes:

The Georgia primary is today, Tuesday, May 19. The three weeks of advance voting ended on Friday. Although I didn’t vote on the Republican ticket, I’ve suffered through the continuous bombardment of TV ads by four white Christian pro-Trump men running to be on the November ballot for governor.

No Limit on Spending

The Republican primary for governor in Georgia has become one of the most expensive and combative races in state history. Right now, according to AJC’s Greg Bluestein, the quad has spent over $100 million in the primary. Attorney General Chris Carr, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, and billionaire businessman Rick Jackson are flooding television screens with nearly identical messages: they are Christian conservatives, loyal to Donald Trump, committed to cutting taxes, and determined to crack down on undocumented immigrants. Here is what they’ve pored into the local TV stations.

Chris Carr: Put in $4 million, raised $400,000, 2 million on hand
Bert Jones: Put in $16 million, raised &200,000, $2.1 million on hand
Rick Jackson: Put in $80 million, raised only $200,000, $7. million on hand.
Brad Raffensperger: Put in $6 million, raised $217,000, $2.5 million on hand.

What They Avoid Saying

What is striking is not merely what these candidates say, but what they avoid discussing.

Education funding, hospital closures, rising health-care costs, retirement insecurity, environmental threats, public transportation, affordable housing, and gun violence barely appear in their ads or debate rhetoric.

Instead, the Republican field has narrowed Georgia’s future to culture-war symbolism and tax-cut promises.

That narrowing says a great deal about the current direction of Georgia Republican politics.

Chris Carr

Carr presents himself as the polished establishment conservative. As attorney general, he has aligned himself closely with national Republican priorities and emphasized law enforcement and conservative social policies. His campaign argues that lower taxes and a pro-business climate will keep Georgia economically strong. But Carr rarely discusses the deep inequalities beneath the state’s economic growth.

Georgia continues to rank poorly in maternal mortality, rural health access, and educational equity. Thousands of Georgians live in counties with limited medical services, and many public schools remain underfunded. Carr’s campaign offers little indication that those issues are central to his agenda.

Brad Raffensperger

Raffensperger occupies a more complicated position. Nationally, he became known for refusing Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. Yet in the governor’s race, Raffensperger has attempted to reposition himself as a conventional conservative Republican emphasizing tax cuts, Christian values, and public safety. His strategy appears designed to reassure Republican primary voters who still distrust him for defying Trump. Disappointingly he claimed he blocked Joe Biden and Stacey Abrams from trying to make it legal for illegal immigrants to vote. Simply not true, Brad. And he borrowed a campaign strategy used by Governor Kemp–a shotgun.

Among the four major candidates, Raffensperger is perhaps the least inflammatory rhetorically. Yet even he has largely avoided bold proposals on expanding health care, addressing climate risks, or improving public education.

His campaign reflects the reality that Republican primaries increasingly punish policy moderation and reward ideological conformity. Rather than using his independent reputation to broaden the debate, Raffensperger has mostly adapted himself to the same narrow framework as his rivals.

Bert Jones

Jones has campaigned as the most openly Trump-aligned candidate. Backed by Trump himself, Jones emphasizes immigration enforcement, conservative cultural themes, and tax elimination. His ads frame politics as a battle between “real Georgians” and threatening outsiders. Yet Georgia’s economy depends heavily on immigrant labor in agriculture, construction, hospitality, and logistics. Harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric may energize parts of the Republican base, but it risks deepening division while ignoring practical economic realities.

Jones also promotes eliminating the state income tax, a popular Republican talking point. But candidates rarely explain what services would be reduced to compensate for the lost revenue. Georgia relies on income tax revenue to fund schools, universities, transportation, and public safety. Promising massive tax cuts without explaining the consequences may be politically effective, but it is fiscally evasive.

Rick Jackson

Jackson, the billionaire outsider, has poured enormous sums of personal wealth into the race and attempted to position himself as a businessman who can “fix” government. Like the others, he stresses deportation policies, conservative Christianity, and tax reductions.

Yet Jackson’s campaign has already been shadowed by reports that undocumented workers were employed at his property despite his hardline immigration message. The contradiction highlights a larger pattern in modern Republican politics: immigrants are politically useful as targets even while the economy quietly depends on their labor. Jackson has the most offensive immigrant ad of the four candidates. He uses one case to demonize and lie about immigrants.

More broadly, Jackson’s candidacy reflects the growing influence of billionaire self-financed campaigns. When wealthy candidates can spend tens of millions of dollars on advertising, elections risk becoming less about democratic participation and more about financial saturation. That trend distances politics from the everyday concerns of working Georgians struggling with housing costs, child care, medical debt, and stagnant wages.

“Across all four campaigns, one theme dominates: symbolic politics over practical governance.”

There Are Real Issues

Georgia faces serious long-term challenges. Rural hospitals continue to close. Teachers leave the profession because of burnout and low pay. Metro Atlanta struggles with traffic congestion and housing affordability. Climate change threatens coastal communities and increases severe weather risks. Yet these issues receive little sustained attention in the Republican primary.

Instead, voters are offered simplified narratives centered on religion, fear of immigrants, tax reduction, and loyalty to Trump. Christianity itself becomes less a moral framework than a campaign brand. Faith is invoked constantly, yet there is little discussion of poverty, health care access, or social responsibility — concerns traditionally associated with religious ethics.

The candidates’ silence on environmental issues is particularly revealing. Georgia’s coastline, water systems, and urban air quality face increasing pressure from development and climate change. Younger voters increasingly care about sustainability and clean energy, yet Republican candidates seldom mention these topics except to criticize federal regulations.

The same absence exists around retirement and aging. Georgia’s population is growing older, and many retirees face rising housing and medical costs. None of the leading Republican campaigns have made retirement security a central issue.

In the end, the Republican primary reveals a party focused more on ideological signaling than comprehensive governance. The candidates compete aggressively over who is most conservative, most pro-Trump, and toughest on immigration. But governing a complex and rapidly changing state requires more than slogans and tax pledges.

Georgia’s future will depend on schools, hospitals, infrastructure, environmental stewardship, and economic fairness as much as partisan identity. A campaign that neglects those realities risks serving political ambition more than the long-term interests of Georgians.

Categories Democracy, Economy, Elections, Environment, Georgia, Health, Immigration, Republicans, Trump

Democracy Docket Denounces Colorado Governor Polis’ Decision to Release Tina Peters

By dianeravitch

May 18, 2026 //

Governor Jared Polis stunned defenders of democracy and fair elections by commuting the prison sentence of Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk who was serving a nine-year sentence for her actions. She was sentenced in October 2024.

Peters first certified the 2020 elections as fair, then allowed fellow election deniers access to the voting machines in her county. She was tried by a jury of her peers in a Republican county by a Republican prosecutor and found guilty.

Trump pressured Polis to release Peters, even threatening to cut off federal funds to Colorado if Peters was not freed. Trump gave her a federal pardon, but it had no effect on her state conviction.

Last week, Governor Polis commuted Peters’ nine-year sentence. She will be free in a matter of days. He says he thought her sentence was too harsh.

Democracy Docket, a site established by attorney Marc Elias to monitor and report on voting rights and fair elections, denounced Polis’s decision to free Peters. His decision is a win for election deniers and Trump. It makes light of her dereliction of duty. She is likely to win a big reward from Trump’s slush fund of $1.7 billion for his allies, if that grift is approved by the Treasury Departnent and allowed to stand by the courts.

Democracy Docket released this statement:

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) announced Friday he is granting clemency to Tina Peters — the former election official convicted for her role in a voting system breach — cutting her sentence and making her eligible for parole as soon as next month.

The move marks a dramatic and controversial intervention in one of the most closely watched election interference cases to emerge after the 2020 election — and comes after months of sustained pressure from President Donald Trump and his far-right allies to secure Peters’ release.

“We condemn Governor Polis’ clemency grant. It is a gross injustice to our elections, election workers and democracy with far-reaching consequences,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D) said in a statement. “This is a dark day for democracy.”

According to local reports, Polis is reducing Peters’ nine-year prison sentence, saying her guilt was not in dispute but that the punishment itself was excessive.

“She got a sentence that was harsh. It was a 9 year sentence,” Polis said in March. “So we always look at people’s sentences. And when you have people that are elderly, and we’re looking at this across a number of many people — people in their 70s or 80s in our system — how much of a threat to society are they and how do we balance that in a way that makes sure they can spend their last year few years at home?”

The decision leaves intact Peters’ felony conviction — but significantly shortens the consequences for a case that election officials and democracy advocates have pointed to as a clear example of accountability for tampering with election systems.

“It’s unfortunate to see the Governor of Colorado succumbing to the bullying tactics of election conspiracy theorists. He has thrown state and county election officials, Republicans and Democrats, under the bus after they resisted the corruption Ms. Peters engaged in and withstood attacks for many years as a result,” David Becker, executive director of Center for Election Innovation & Research, said. “Ms. Peters continues to express no remorse about her crimes and will likely now be a featured performer on the election grift circuit. It is a sad day for the rule of law and accountability.”

Peters was convicted in 2024 after prosecutors showed she facilitated unauthorized access to Mesa County voting equipment and helped expose sensitive system data, actions driven by false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. A jury found her guilty on multiple counts, and she was sentenced to nine years in prison.

“Tina Peters’ actions have made life harder, not only for election officials here in Colorado, but make no mistake, for election officials all across the country. Her conduct became a rallying point for election conspiracy movements that fueled hostility and distrust towards the very people responsible for administering free and fair elections,” Matt Crane, a former Republican clerk and executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, said. “Rather than standing with public service servants and defending one of our nation’s most cherished rights, the right to vote, Governor Polis is bending the knee to the same political forces and conspiracy movements that are actively undermining confidence in our democratic institutions. That choice carries consequences far beyond this single case.”

Polis’ clemency order follows an April ruling from a Colorado appeals court that upheld Peters’ conviction but ordered her to be resentenced.

Polis said he agreed that her political beliefs — including her promotion of election conspiracy theories — should not factor into the length of her punishment.

“Clerks have been intimidated. We’ve had clerks have their lives threatened. We had a clerk who was pregnant in 2022 have her unborn child threatened. We had an office in Colorado fire bombed last year,” Crane added. “So whether it’s Tina or somebody else who’s spreading false rumors and inciting people to do violent things, unfortunately, we have to spend a lot of time preparing for that.”

After Colorado officials refused to release Peters, Trump escalated his campaign on her behalf, issuing a symbolic presidential pardon that carries no legal force over state convictions and repeatedly attacking Colorado leaders. The administration also took punitive actions against the state, including moves affecting federal funding and the relocation of key federal assets.

At the same time, far-right figures and election deniers have increasingly framed Peters as a political prisoner, with some escalating to threats of violence and calls for direct intervention to free her — rhetoric that alarmed state officials and democracy watchdogs.

Polis had previously rejected any suggestion that Peters’ case would be influenced by political pressure.

“Tina Peters was convicted by a jury of her peers, prosecuted by a Republican District Attorney and in a Republican county of Colorado and found guilty of violating Colorado state laws including criminal impersonation,” Polis said in December. “No President has jurisdiction over state law nor the power to pardon a person for state convictions. This is a matter for the courts to decide, and we will abide by court orders.”

Matt Cohen contributed to this reporting.

Categories Colorado, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Trump

Robert Reich on America’s Madman-in-Chief

By dianeravitch

May 17, 2026 //

Robert Reich, who served as Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration, posted a provocative column overnight.

Friends,

My first quote of the week comes from Trump on Air Force One, on his way back from Beijing on Friday — telling David Sanger of The New York Times:

“I had a total military victory. But the fake news, guys like you, write incorrectly. You’re a fake guy. We had a total military victory. I actually think it’s sort of treasonous what you write. You should be ashamed of yourself. I actually think it’s treason.”

Note Trump’s use of the pronoun “I.” He didn’t say “we” had a military victory. Trump’s malignant narcissism is worsening.

Also take note of his blatant lie. His war in Iran has been anything but a victory. His delusions and deceptions about the war are escalating.

Americans are far worse off today than we were before Trump started his war. We’re now paying $1.50 a gallon more for gas, on average. Paying even more, indirectly, for the diesel fuel powering trucks that transport much of what we buy. Food costs are also rising because the fertilizer used to grow much of the food we eat can’t move through the Strait of Hormuz. The soaring cost of jet fuel is also being passed on to those of us who fly.

And none of these costs will come down soon, even if the war ends tomorrow, because the price for oil is largely set in a global market, and much of the oil infrastructure of the Middle East is in ruins.

Trump has made it harder for us to switch from oil and gas to renewable sources of energy, in which China is excelling. Trump loves fossil fuels — he’s subsidizing oil and gas and has ended subsidies for renewables (remember his election deal with Big Oil?) — but the future lies with wind, solar, and biomass, and the batteries that store them.

And note the not-so-subtle threat Trump directed at Sanger — that Sanger could be accused of treason if he continued to report that Trump’s war is failing. Trump’s dangerous accusations are intensifying.

“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all. That’s the only thing that motivates me.”

Which brings me to my other quote of the week — Trump’s comment just before leaving for China that:

I believe the first part, that Trump doesn’t think about Americans’ financial situation; he never has and never will. But it can’t possibly be that the only thing motivating him is preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapon.

I say this because we were much closer to achieving this goal when Iran was still observing the nuclear deal it struck with Barack Obama — in which Iran agreed to limit its nuclear activities, including reducing its enriched uranium stockpile and modifying reactors to prevent the production of weapons-grade plutonium. (In exchange, the United States, United Nations, and European Union agreed to lift international economic and financial sanctions on Iran.)

But Trump pulled out of that deal. And Iran’s new leadership is hellbent on creating a nuclear weapon. Trump’s and Israel’s aggression apparently have proven to Iran’s new (and more extremist) leaders how much they need it. And the Trump regime has no idea where Iran is storing its near-weapons-grade plutonium.

Friends, a madman is in charge of American foreign policy — but almost no Republican member of Congress, no major CEO or university president or head of a major foundation, and certainly no member of Trump’s regime is willing to sound the alarm. They are all cowards.

I mentioned to you earlier this week that I had dinner with a group of political operatives who gave 30 percent odds that JD Vance and Marco Rubio would lead a coup within the next three to four months, invoking the 25th Amendment to get rid of the madman. Those odds may be higher now.

But you and I are not powerless. We can achieve the next best outcome — limiting Trump’s power to do more damage — by getting out the vote on or before November 3 and throwing the cowardly Republican senators and representatives out on their assets.

We have less than six months to get the largest midterm turnout in American history — a blue tsunami that will start the process of repair, reform, and return to sanity.

I know how frightening and discouraging all of this has been. I know how daunting the forces of cruelty and corruption can sometimes feel. I also know how hard you’ve been fighting, while at the same time working to keep yourself, your family, and your community on an even keel. And I thank you for it.

Despite Trump, please do not feel shame in America. Feel pride in the ideals we share. Feel honored that you are an activist warrior on the right side of history. Feel strength in our conviction. Feel power in our cause.

Have no doubt: We will prevail against the madman-in-chief and his lawless regime.

Categories Accountability, Character, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Environment, Extremism, History, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: The Fight for Democracy, from Brown to Callais

By dianeravitch

May 17, 2026 //

Heather Cox Richardson sums up the struggle for equal rights since the Brown decision of May 17, 1954. The struggle has continued in the years since then, aided especially by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The VRA enabled Black Americans to have a voice, representation, and genuine political power. The U.S. Supreme Court decided on April 29, 2026, in Louisiana v. Callais that there is no longer any need for federal protection of voting rights for Black Americans, and they made a decision that is certain to lead to the loss of meaningful representation for Blacks, who–the Court majority decided–no longer needed federal protection. The former Confederacy proceeded to enact redistricting that will wipe out many Black-held seats in Congress. Racism is alive.

Richardson writes:

Seventy-two years ago tomorrow, on May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously decided Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. That landmark decision declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional because segregated schools denied Black children “the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Three years after the Brown v. Board decision, in the face of massive resistance to desegregation in the South, President Dwight D. Eisenhower proposed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 to protect the right of Black Americans to vote, using the federal government to overrule the state laws that limited voter registration and kept Black voters from the polls. To prevent the passage of the first federal civil rights legislation since 1875, South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond launched the longest filibuster in U.S. history, speaking for 24 hours and 18 minutes.

(Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) broke Thurmond’s record on March 31 through April 1, 2025, speaking for 25 hours, 5 minutes, and 59 seconds, but his speech was not a filibuster.)

Southern Democrats known as “Dixiecrats” managed to weaken the measure, but Senate majority leader Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX) managed to wrestle the Civil Rights Act of 1957 through Congress, and Black Americans and their white allies began trying to register Black Americans to vote.

But the law proved too weak to force white registrars to allow Black voters onto the rolls, and by 1961, activists with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced “snick”) were at work in Mississippi to promote voter registration. In 1964 they launched the “Freedom Summer,” bringing college students from northern schools to work together with Black people from Mississippi to educate and register Black voters.

Just as the project was getting underway, three organizers—James Chaney, from Mississippi, and Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner from New York—disappeared outside Philadelphia, Mississippi. Lyndon Johnson, president by then, used the popular rage over the three missing voting rights workers to pressure Congress into passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, designed to try to hold back the white supremacists and to make it possible for Black Americans to register to vote. The measure passed, and on July 2, Johnson signed it into law.

On August 4, investigators found the bodies of the three missing men. Ku Klux Klan members working with local law enforcement officers had murdered them and then buried the bodies in an earthen dam that was under construction.

And still, white officials refused to accept the idea of Black voting. In Selma, Alabama, where the city’s voting rolls were 99% white even though Black Americans outnumbered white Americans among the 29,500 people who lived there, local Black organizers had launched a voter registration drive in 1963, but a judge stopped voter registration meetings by prohibiting public gatherings of more than two people.

Selma voting rights activist Amelia Boynton invited the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to the city to draw national attention to its struggle, and he and other prominent Black leaders arrived in January 1965. For seven weeks, Black residents made a new push to register to vote. County sheriff James Clark arrested almost 2,000 of them on a variety of charges, including contempt of court and parading without a permit. A federal court ordered Clark not to interfere with orderly registration, so he forced Black applicants to stand in line for hours before taking a “literacy” test. Not a single person passed.

Then, on February 18, white police officers, including local police, sheriff’s deputies, and Alabama state troopers, beat and shot an unarmed man, 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was marching for voting rights at a demonstration in his hometown of Marion, Alabama, about 25 miles northwest of Selma. Jackson died eight days later, on February 26. Black leaders in Selma decided to defuse the community’s anger by planning a long march—54 miles—from Selma to the state capitol at Montgomery to draw attention to the murder and voter suppression.

On March 7, 1965, the marchers set out. As they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, state troopers and other law enforcement officers met the unarmed marchers with billy clubs, bullwhips, and tear gas. They fractured the skull of young activist John Lewis and beat Amelia Boynton unconscious. A newspaper photograph of the 54-year-old Boynton, seemingly dead in the arms of another marcher, illustrated the depravity of those determined to stop Black voting.

On March 15, President Johnson addressed a nationally televised joint session of Congress to ask for the passage of a national voting rights act. “Their cause must be our cause too,” he said. “[A]ll of us…must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.” Two days later, he submitted to Congress proposed voting rights legislation.

Under the protection of federal troops, the Selma marchers completed their trip to Montgomery on March 25. Their ranks had grown as they walked until they numbered about 25,000 people. That night, Viola Liuzzo, a 39-year-old mother of five who had arrived from Michigan to help after Bloody Sunday, was murdered by four Ku Klux Klan members who tailed her as she ferried demonstrators out of the city.

A bipartisan majority of Congress passed the Voting Rights Act by a vote of 77–19 in the Senate and 333–85 in the House. Dr. King and Mrs. Boynton were guests of honor as President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 on August 6. Recalling “the outrage of Selma,” Johnson said: “This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies.”

And yet, on April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court gutted the protections for the Black-majority districts Congress provided for in the Voting Rights Act after years of weakening the law in other ways. In its wake, Republican-dominated southern state legislatures are rushing to redraw their district lines to dilute the votes of Black Democrats.

Today, thousands of Americans, including eighteen members of Congress, traveled to Selma and Mongomery to call Americans to action to protect voting rights. Pastor Kenneth Sharpton Glasgow told Joseph D. Bryant of Alabama news site AL, “This moment is bigger than Democrats or Republicans. This is about democracy itself. This is about whether Black communities, poor communities, rural communities, formerly incarcerated people, and marginalized voices will continue to have representation and political power in America.”

Speakers united around the theme that those trying to gerrymander their way into control of Congress in defiance of voters had reawakened a movement. “They think they can draw us out of power,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) told an audience in Montgomery.

“They do not know the sleeping giant that they just awakened. Because it is not a coincidence, and our whole country must understand, that it was not until voting rights were ratified in this country that we got the Great Society. Because when Black Americans have the right to vote and that vote is protected, our schools get funded. When voted rights are protected, healthcare gets expanded. When voted rights are protected, our country moves forward. And Montgomery, that’s what they’re actually afraid of. They’re afraid of us coming together. They’re afraid of us protecting one another.”

—

Notes:

https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/online-documents/civil-rightAs-act-1957

https://www.al.com/news/birmingham/2026/05/mass-mobilization-expected-in-selma-montgomery-this-weekend-after-supreme-court-decision.html

https://www.al.com/news/birmingham/2026/05/church-buses-and-charter-buses-are-heading-to-selma-and-montgomery-for-a-reclamation-of-power.html

https://www.booker.senate.gov/senator-bookers-marathon-speech

Bluesky:

indivisible.org/post/3mlyzqeapbs2g

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, History, Inequality, Injustice, Racism

Why Chief Justice John Roberts Should Be Removed

By dianeravitch

May 15, 2026 //

Christopher Armitage, author of “The Existentialist Republic” blog on Substack is filing a complaint against Chief Justice John Roberts for failing to disclose his family income and failing to acknowledge his very significant conflicts of interest. He wants us to do the same. We knew that Justices Thomas and Alito failed to disclose gifts and income. Add Justice Roberts to the list.

Armitage wrote:

Over sixteen years of federal financial disclosure forms, Chief Justice John Roberts mischaracterized more than twenty million dollars in household income from law firms appearing before the Supreme Court. He concealed his wife’s equity stake in her employer for three consecutive years. He failed to recuse from more than five hundred cases argued at the Supreme Court by law firms that had paid his household millions in commissions. He architected the Court’s first ethics code and designed it to be unenforceable. This is a course of conduct stretching across two decades, connected by a single through-line: the belief that the rules that apply to every other federal judge do not apply to him.

The governing standard is 28 U.S.C. § 455, which applies to every federal judge including Supreme Court justices. Three of its subsections matter here, and a judge only needs one of them to trigger the recusal obligation. Roberts triggers all three.

Subsection (a) says a judge “shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” This is the appearance standard, and it does not require actual bias. It requires only that a reasonable person knowing the facts would question the judge’s impartiality.

That’s the lowest bar, and it’s the easiest to satisfy. The next two are more specific and even more difficult to evade.

Subsection (b)(4) says a judge shall disqualify himself where “he or his spouse, or a minor child residing in his household, has a financial interest in the subject matter in controversy or in a party to the proceeding, or any other interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome.” The language is broad on purpose. Congress wanted the net to catch exactly the kind of arrangement at issue here.

Subsection (b)(5)(iii) adds that a judge shall disqualify where a spouse “is known by the judge to have an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.” That subsection covers situations where the financial interest runs through the spouse rather than through the judge directly.

Bennett Gershman, a legal ethics professor at Pace Law School, reviewed the Roberts household arrangement in 2022 at the request of a whistleblower. His analysis applies all three. A law firm that paid the judge’s household hundreds of thousands of dollars in commission has an ongoing commercial relationship with the spouse, and that spouse has an interest, whether measured as past compensation, ongoing business relationship, or future commissions, that could be substantially affected by the judge’s rulings in cases the firm argues. Even under the narrowest reading of “financial interest,” a reasonable person knowing that a law firm had paid Jane Roberts hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions would question John Roberts’s impartiality in a case the firm argued before him.

Roberts’s defenders have a single counter, and they cite it often. The Judicial Conference’s 2009 Advisory Opinion No. 107 says recusal is not automatically required merely because a spouse worked as a recruiter for a firm with business before the court. But the same opinion says recusal may be required where the relationship is “substantial and ongoing.” $10.3 million in documented commissions over seven years, with clients including multiple firms that appear before the Court multiple times per term, meets any reasonable definition of substantial and ongoing.

The recusal obligation is not discretionary under § 455. The statute uses the word “shall.” Roberts’s defense would have to argue either that his wife’s commission income doesn’t constitute a financial interest in firms paying the commissions, which is a strained reading, or that the interest isn’t substantially affected by his rulings, which is also strained because firms that win at the Court get more business and firms that lose get less.

The whistleblower is Kendal Price, a former managing director at Major, Lindsey and Africa, the legal recruiting firm where Jane Sullivan Roberts worked from 2007 to 2014. Price filed a federal complaint in December 2022 with the House and Senate Judiciary Committees and the Department of Justice. He attached internal company spreadsheets, his own sworn affidavit, Jane Roberts’s 2015 arbitration testimony, and Gershman’s supporting legal memorandum.

An important note. This information was released because of a whistleblower, and some would say that means it is possible there is considerably greater corruption that just hasn’t been brought to the public. Some might say that it’s likely the tip of the corrupt iceberg. Few people would be willing to gather evidence on their employers activities, bring those to Congress, and risk attracting the enmity of the leader of the highest court in the land. Fewer will follow in that person’s footsteps if they see zero consequences follow from the whistleblowers disclosure.

The spreadsheets showed Jane Roberts earned $10,323,842.70 in commissions over those seven years on $13,309,433 in attributed firm revenue. An MLA partner described her in sworn testimony as the highest earning recruiter in the entire company by a wide margin.

The documented placements include former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to WilmerHale, Washington attorney Robert Bennett to Hogan Lovells, former United States Attorney Neil MacBride to Davis Polk, and New York Federal Reserve general counsel Michael Held to WilmerHale. Jane Roberts testified under oath that she placed senior government lawyers at starting partner salaries up to three million dollars. Successful people, she said, have successful friends. Mark Jungers, a former MLA managing partner, told Politico the firm hired her hoping to benefit from her being the Chief Justice’s wife.

The scope of Roberts’s corruption is not measured in individual cases. It is measured across the entire docket of the Supreme Court over two decades. WilmerHale alone, one of Jane Roberts’s documented client firms, had 18 cases at the Supreme Court in the single term of 2016, and Seth Waxman of WilmerHale has argued more than 85 Supreme Court cases across his career. Hogan Lovells, another documented client firm, argued 8 Supreme Court cases in 2024 alone and has represented nearly 10 percent of the Court’s entire docket in recent terms. Across Roberts’s two decades on the Court, the law firms paying his household in commissions have argued more than five hundred cases before him. He recused from none of them on spousal income grounds.
In 2019 she moved to Macrae and opened the firm’s Washington office, and her earnings from 2015 forward have never surfaced in public reporting.

Each year the Chief Justice signs a federal financial disclosure form required of every Article III judge under the Ethics in Government Act, and each year for more than a decade, the form described his wife’s compensation as salary.

The characterization was false. Jane Roberts earns commission, paid per placement, originating with the law firms that hire her candidates, and commission income and salary income are different categories of earnings governed by different tax treatment and different disclosure rules.

Gershman’s memorandum addresses this directly. Characterizing Mrs. Roberts’s commissions as salary, he wrote, is not merely factually incorrect. It is incorrect as a matter of law. Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush and the man who prepared Roberts for his confirmation hearings, put it more bluntly. The Chief Justice “fudged the details,” Painter wrote in 2023, “misleadingly describing his wife’s earnings as salary.” Even that is generous. Painter is a Republican ethics lawyer protecting a Republican institution.

“Fudged” is what you say when you don’t want to say “lied.” Roberts has been knowingly lying on federal forms for more than a decade to profit from his position on the Supreme Court.

In 2023, after Business Insider published the whistleblower documents, Roberts quietly corrected the entry. His 2022 disclosure report, which the Administrative Office released that June, described Jane Roberts’s compensation as base salary and commission. The same report, for the first time, disclosed an equity stake in Macrae valued between $100,001 and $250,000. She had acquired it in 2019, and Roberts had omitted it from three prior annual filings and attributed the omission to inadvertence.

Title 5, Section 13106 of the United States Code requires the Judicial Conference to refer any judge it has reasonable cause to believe willfully filed false disclosures to the Attorney General. Civil penalties reach fifty thousand dollars per violation. Title 18, Section 1001 makes it a federal crime to knowingly and willfully falsify a material fact on a document submitted to the federal government, punishable by up to five years in prison. The statutes carve out no exception for the Chief Justice.

Congress impeached and removed Federal District Judge Thomas Porteous in 2010 on a record that included false disclosure forms. Congress did the work the statute imagines, and no one has ever brought a referral or prosecution against a sitting Supreme Court justice for the same conduct.

After ProPublica broke the Clarence Thomas and Harlan Crow story in April 2023, Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin wrote to Roberts inviting him to testify. Roberts declined in a one-page letter on April 25, citing separation of powers concerns. All nine justices signed an attached statement affirming that individual justices, not the Court, decide recusal questions. The self-policing rule remained in place.

In November 2023 the Court issued its first formal Code of Conduct. The document ran fourteen pages, and its preamble conceded that the absence of a written code had produced the misunderstanding that justices considered themselves unrestricted by ethics rules. The code contained no enforcement mechanism. It designated no body to receive complaints, empowered no body to investigate, and gave no body authority to impose sanctions. The Congressional Research Service confirmed the absence of enforcement in a formal report. The Brennan Center for Justice called the code designed to fail. Kathleen Clark, a legal ethics scholar at Washington University, said nothing in the statement suggested the Court even understood what the problem was.

The Dobbs investigation followed the same pattern. After the draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization leaked in May 2022, the Court’s marshal interviewed ninety-seven employees. Every employee signed an affidavit under penalty of perjury. The justices did not. The marshal’s January 2023 report said she had spoken with each justice, several on multiple occasions, but under a different standard than the one that applied to the staff.

The report concluded that she could not identify the source by a preponderance of the evidence, and the investigation closed.

Roberts is a primary architect of the ethics crisis that has broken the Court. He is a willing participant in the destruction of one of the three pillars of American checks and balances.

John Roberts is not a Trump lackey or a spineless rube. He is a builder of the world we are now living in. He is selling our future. He was appointed to the Supreme Court because of his belief that Republicans should be above the law and that the Presidency should be all-powerful so long as it’s run by a Republican. He might be an ideologue and a true believer, but not in regards to Christianity or Originalism. He is a true believer in the almighty dollar, and he sold his judicial soul to the highest bidder. May consequences someday visit him.

Five mechanisms exist to hold a federal judge accountable for the conduct documented here. Each of them is available. Each of them is being refused.

The law exists. 5 U.S.C. § 13106 makes willful false disclosure a civil violation with penalties up to $50,000. 18 U.S.C. § 1001 makes knowing false statements to the federal government a felony punishable by five years. 28 U.S.C. § 455 mandates recusal. These are laws Congress wrote. They apply to the Chief Justice.

Impeachment exists. Article II, Section 4 provides for removal of judges for high crimes and misdemeanors. Porteous in 2010. Claiborne in 1986. Hastings in 1989. Congress has the power and has used it on federal judges.

The Judicial Conference has a statutory referral obligation under § 13106. It exists. It just hasn’t been used against a justice.

The DC Bar has disciplinary jurisdiction over its members. It exists. It just carves out judicial capacity by policy.

The Supreme Court Bar has a complaint mechanism. It exists. It just answers to the Court.
The mechanisms exist. The political will of the people who control them does not. The Judicial Conference won’t refer. The DC Bar declines on intake. The Senate won’t impeach. DOJ won’t prosecute. Each institution points at another institution and says not my jurisdiction, not my moment, not my responsibility.

In the United Kingdom, a party who believes a judge should step aside can file a challenge, and a different judge decides. In Canada, the Judicial Council accepts complaints from any member of the public and can recommend a judge’s removal.

In Germany, the other members of a Federal Constitutional Court panel vote on whether a colleague must recuse, and the judge in question does not vote on their own case. In Australia, a statutory code requires federal judges to disclose spousal income in full rather than by category label. At the European Court of Human Rights, the plenary court has authority to remove a judge who fails to recuse where the law requires it.

What every one of these systems shares, and what the American system lacks, is an external body with the authority to receive a complaint, investigate it, and impose consequences. The self-policing rule is the American anomaly.

This is not recent drift. In December 2000, Roberts flew to Tallahassee at his own expense and met privately with Governor Jeb Bush to advise on the governor’s role in assigning Florida’s electors to George W. Bush. Nobody disclosed the meeting during his 2005 confirmation hearings. A December 2000 email from Bush to Roberts, which surfaced a decade later through the governor’s gubernatorial correspondence, thanked him for his input in this unique and historic situation. The advice concerned scenarios in which the Republican-controlled legislature could assign electors directly, bypassing the popular vote and the ongoing recount.

The Reagan-era paper trail at the National Archives contains memos in which Roberts argued against heightened constitutional scrutiny for sex discrimination, recommended that Reagan distance himself from the Centers for Disease Control’s conclusion that AIDS could not be transmitted by casual contact, described comparable-worth pay equity as staggeringly pernicious, and wrote that an effects test in the Voting Rights Act would amount to a quota system for electoral politics. Twenty-seven years later he wrote the majority opinion in Shelby County v. Holder gutting the same statute.

For twenty years the ethics conversation around the Supreme Court has run on a curve composed entirely of Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Roberts has played the institutional grown-up, the last one who cared about the Court as an institution, the one trying to hold the line. The line he held was the one that protected his own household. Thomas took gifts from Harlan Crow. Alito took flights from Paul Singer. Roberts took law firm money through his wife’s commission checks and mislabeled it on a federal form.

The DC Bar accepts disciplinary complaints from any member of the public against any of its admitted attorneys. John G. Roberts Jr. is admitted to the DC Bar, and I am filing a complaint against him today, after this article goes live. The complaint alleges that Roberts violated DC Rule of Professional Conduct 8.4(c) across sixteen annual federal financial disclosure filings from 2007 through 2022, by mischaracterizing at least $10,323,842.70 in documented commission income from law firms appearing before the Court as salary, with unreported commission income across an additional eight annual filings from 2015 through 2022 estimated at a floor of $11.8 million based on the documented seven-year mean, and with the actual figure likely substantially higher given Macrae’s reported revenue growth during that period. The complaint further alleges that Roberts omitted a material equity interest in his wife’s employer from three consecutive annual filings between 2019 and 2021. The complaint cites 5 U.S.C. § 13106 and 18 U.S.C. § 1001 as the underlying statutory predicates.

The men and women running this system built their careers on the assumption that nobody was paying attention. That the forms would go unread. That the recusals would go uncounted. That the statutes would sit on the shelf. That the institutions would cover for each other and no one outside would notice the arrangement.
We noticed.

We see the ten million dollars documented and the eleven million more estimated. The millions more likely unseen. We see the sixteen years of false characterizations. We see the hidden equity stake. We see the stock trades and the missed recusals and the Code of Conduct written to fail and the justices who signed affidavits for no one. We see the Judicial Conference that won’t refer and the Senate that won’t impeach and the Attorney General who won’t prosecute. We see every institution pointing at every other institution and shrugging.

Here is what you can do.

One. Share this article. Every person who reads it is one more person who knows, and the thing they built their careers on is the assumption that nobody knows. Post it. Send it. Forward it. Break the quiet.

Two. Send a letter to the DC Bar Office of Disciplinary Counsel at 515 Fifth Street NW, Building A, Room 117, Washington DC 20001. Write it in your own words. The facts to include are that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. mischaracterized his wife’s commission income as salary on sixteen years of federal financial disclosure forms, omitted a material equity interest for three consecutive years, and did not recuse from more than five hundred cases argued by law firms paying his household in commissions. The relevant statutes are 28 U.S.C. § 455, 5 U.S.C. § 13106, and 18 U.S.C. § 1001, and the rule to cite is DC Rule of Professional Conduct 8.4(c). It takes about ten minutes.

All of this movement creates pressure. Pressure creates heat. Enough heat and things will change. Be the heat, be the pressure, and the system will bend. That’s how we take our damn country back.

We need 10 subscribers per article. Yesterday, despite hundreds of thousands of daily readers, we fell short of that number for the first time in nearly a month. If you want this all to continue, for everyone, then we need you!

Don’t let this be the reason you miss rent or skip a meal. For everyone else, you can be one of the ten today and make sure the articles, books, legislation, and training keep coming for everyone.

Categories Democracy, Ethics, Failure, Fraud, Justice

Jennifer Rubin: Reasons for Optimism about U.S. Politics!

By dianeravitch

May 13, 2026 //

This a great article that will uplift your spirits!

Jennifer Rubin is a journalist and lawyer who was hired by The Washington Post to be its conservative columnist. But Trump radicalized her, and she became a leading voice for liberal policies. After Jeff Bezos decided to placate and woo Trump, she resigned her job and started a new and wildly popular blog called “The Contrarian,” where she and other brilliant writers gathered to critique the madness of MAGA.

She recently posted an optimistic analysis of American politics. Despite the gerrymandering, despite horrible court decisions, Democrats are in a great position to wash the MAGA stain out of the nation’s government.

It’s the most optimistic piece I’ve read in a long while, and I think you will enjoy it too.

Rubin writes:

In a span of less than two weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court (contravening the text and intent of the post-Civil War amendments and decades of court precedent) and the Virginia State Supreme Court (overturning the will of Virginia voters and inventing a new definition of “election”) have bulldozed through the electoral landscape to slant the 2026 midterm playing field in Republicans’ favor.

In Louisiana v. Callais, the U.S. Supreme Court demolished 60 years of progress in voting rights, robbed Black and Hispanic communities of the power to elect representatives of their own choosing, and aimed to decimate the ranks of non-white U.S. House members, state legislators, and local officials. This is nothing short of an attempt to reimpose white supremacy.

Voting rights legal guru Rick Hasen wrote:

This decision will bleach the halls of Congress, state legislatures, and local bodies like city councils, by ending the protections of Section 2 of the act, which had provided a pathway to assure that voters of color would have some rudimentary fair representation. It’s the culmination of the life’s work of Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito, who have shown persistent resistance to the idea of the United States as a multiracial democracy, and a brazen willingness to reject Congress’ judgment that fair representation for minority voters sometimes requires race-conscious legislation…. It protects Alito’s core constituency: aggrieved white Republican voters.

As infuriating, partisan, and legally unsound as these rulings are, they are not the final word on either the midterms or the future of our multi-racial democracy.

The Midterms

Even with the loss in Virginia, Democrats’ five-seat pick up in California should more than counteract the original Texas re-redistricting (where two of the five seats Republicans sought to steal may well go to Democrats). And despite the Virginia decision, Democrats may still pick up one to two more seats under Virginia’s old map. The net pickup for Republicans currently is less than ten before Democrats pursue their own redistricting in New York, Illinois, Colorado, and Maryland.

However, even with the advantage of, say, a dozen rigged seats, Republicans are unlikely to keep the House majority. Since 2024, Democrats have swung the electorate substantially in their direction, over-performing in comparison to Kamala Harris in 193 of 226 state legislative races, by 20 points in some cases. On average, Democrats are doing more than 10 points better than they did in 2024. (Brookings’ William A. Galston wrote: “In the six special elections for the House conducted in 2025-2026, the swing toward Democratic candidates averaged about 15 points, while the swing toward Democratic gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia averaged 14 points.”)

More than 20 Republican House seats were won by less than 10 points in 2024; 43 Republicans won by less than 15%. Given the electoral shift, Democrats’ list of targeted seats expands each week.

The New York Times reported that gerrymandering “tells only part of the story” about the midterms. While “Democrats could end up losing at least half a dozen safe seats, and possibly more,” depending on new maps drawn in Southern states, Republicans face gale-force “headwinds” thanks to Donald Trump’s atrocious approval numbers, his reviled Iran war, soaring gas and other consumer prices, snatching away healthcare coverage from millions, disaffection of Hispanic voters, and rampant corruption.

In short, gerrymandering, however outrageous, will not be enough to save Republicans if Democrats generate huge turnout, especially among those voters enraged that they have been stripped of voting power. (As Hungary demonstrated, a determined opposition can overcome a raft of unfair impediments imposed by a corrupt, unpopular regime.)

Democrats, independents, and disaffected Republicans know that the MAGA cult has no message — which is why MAGA lawmakers and courts must rig the election to cement white supremacy. That’s all they’ve got.

Democrats have their targets

The enormity of reversing 60 years of progress on voting rights necessitates a new era of intense organizing and public education — a new civil right movement to counter MAGA’s court-imposed Jim Crow. That effort kicks off with a grassroots National Day of Action on Saturday, May 16, in Alabama. Organizers declared, “The dismantling of the Voting Rights Act is a reminder that we have unfinished business. The fight is ours and we are going to finish it.” Scores of democracy groups, faith-based organizations, and civil rights organizations will rally to oppose Jim Crow redistricting and to support multi-racial democracy.

The goal: Democrats must win, and win big, in 2026 and 2028. Senate seats, governorships, and other statewide offices cannot be gerrymandered. A massive registration and turnout-the-vote operation must expand deep into Republican areas, appealing to disgruntled independents and Republicans while firing up the base. Democrats will need a broad, inclusive electoral coalition to pursue bold reform. As former attorney general Eric Holder likes to say, progressives “need to be comfortable with acquiring power and using power.”

What then? If Democrats come out of the 2028 election with House and Senate majorities, and the presidency, they will have all the motivation and tools required to reverse the slide into Jim Crow, beginning with substantial reform of the discredited Supreme Court. The MAGA justices’ willful misreading of the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution to concoct a “color blind” interpretation of voting rights (coupled with their monstrous expansion of executive power and abuse of the emergency docket) should unify democracy defenders on the urgency of Supreme Court reform through court expansion, term limits, revised appellate jurisdiction, and ethics reform.

Election law guru Rick Hasen argued:

The Supreme Court itself has shown itself to be the enemy of democracy. If and when Democrats retake control of the political branches, it will be incumbent on them not only to write new voting legislation protecting minority voters and all voters in the ability to participate fairly in elections that reflect the will of all the people. They will also have to consider reform of the Supreme Court itself.

With the election of aggressive Senate Democrats running in 2026 and 2028, Democrats should have little trouble carving out a filibuster exception, especially if they win by large margins that affirm voters’ rejection of MAGA assault on pluralistic democracy.

In addition to reforming the MAGA Supreme Court, a myriad of solid proposals for undoing the damage wrought by Callais include: state voting rights’ protections, a federal statute that requires nonpartisan redistricting, proportional representation, and a constitutional amendmentguaranteeing the right to vote. Democrats should pursue an “all of the above” approach, not merely to regain but to expand diverse voters’ participation and power.

Though the tools to sustain multi-racial democracy may be different from those employed in the 1960s, Madeleine Greenberg of the Campaign Legal Center reminded us: “Every generation has faced attempts to restrict access to the ballot box, and every generation has pushed back.” If Democrats win elections decisively and fully exercise the power they obtain, they can fix what MAGA white supremacists have broken. Only then can we fulfill the promise of pluralistic democracy.

The midterm elections of 2026 are approaching. Start working now to reclaim our democracy! Our time is now.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Health, History, Justice, Trump

Sweden Cuts Back on Digital Learning, Emphasizes Books and Writing on Paper

By dianeravitch

May 4, 2026 //

The BBC reports that that Sweden has joined Norway in ousting electronics from its classrooms and reviving the use of books. The Swedish government, like Norway’s, concluded that electronic tools were causing a decline in literacy rates.

Sweden’s government is championing a renewed focus on physical books, paper and pens in classrooms, designed to reverse falling literacy levels.

Another publication, Undark, reports that the government is investing in textbooks, nonfiction books, and fiction books.

And again in the BBC:

Schools in Sweden are returning to more traditional learning methods – such as reading from physical books – after seeing their reading standards drop while ipads and laptops were used.

There is now a focus on using more printed textbooks, handwriting and less screen time in early education. Experts say reading levels are getting better because of this.

Some teachers have said students are asking for more books and paper based learning in schools, saying they learn more quickly and retain information better than using a laptop.

This isn’t a total ban on technology in the classroom and digital devices are still used, but the government is spending millions buying physical textbooks, and library books.

During the 2000s and 2010s, books were sidelined in Swedish classrooms and replaced with laptops and ipads.

The idea was to prepare students for life in a digital world.

But it seems to have backfired.

Sweden’s reading standards, which were among the best in Europe in 2000, began to fall.

In 2012, after years of getting worse, its Pisa scores — a worldwide test that measures reading, maths and science literacy among 15-year-olds — hit their lowest point.

Now, by popular demand, the books are back in the classroom and things are improving again.

The state has launched a national reading challenge for ten-year-olds and the classes that read the most books win prizes.

Sweden had intended to be a leader in the field of digital learning, but eventually concluded that the heavy use of Ed-tech was harming student learning. Increased screen time was leading to distraction, inability to concentrate, and lessened ability to do deep reading. “Studies have linked heavy digital use to reduced comprehension and memory retention as well as eye strain.”

The U.S. spends billions every year for Ed-tech. But the pushback is growing.

Jonathan Haidt of NYU, a critic of Ed-tech and social media for children, has kept a running tab on his Twitter account of cities and school districts in the U.S. that ban social media for children. where students spend less time on cell phones and social media, libraries report an increase in books checked out.

To those who are not on the payroll of Big Tech are likely to recognize that the frenzied spending of billions of dollars on Ed-tech had more to do with profits than with student learning.

Categories Curriculum, Democracy, International, Technology

U.S. Supreme Court Eviscerates Voting Rights Act

By dianeravitch

April 30, 2026 //

The six conservative-right wing justices on the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965, by striking down Section 2, which requires that minorities have districts in which their voting preferences may be heard. This section led to the creation of districts that elected Black representatives.

We can now expect redistricting of Congressional districts and state legislative districts to sharply reduce the number of Black elected officials.

Richard L. Hasen of Slate wrote that the decision “will go down in history as one of the most pernicious and damaging Supreme Court decisions of the last century. All six Republican-appointed justices on the court signed onto Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion gutting what remained of the Voting Rights Act protections for minority voters, while pretending they were merely making technical tweaks to the act.

This decision will bleach the halls of Congress, state legislatures, and local bodies like city councils, by ending the protections of Section 2 of the act, which had provided a pathway to assure that voters of color would have some rudimentary fair representation. It’s the culmination of the life’s work of Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito, who have shown persistent resistance to the idea of the United States as a multiracial democracy, and a brazen willingness to reject Congress’ judgment that fair representation for minority voters sometimes requires race-conscious legislation. It gives the green light to further partisan gerrymandering. It protects Alito’s core constituency: aggrieved white Republican voters. It’s a disaster for American democracy.

Future generations of legal scholars will review the Republicans’ retreat from civil rights protections enacted in the 1960s. Perhaps psychologists will figure out why Justice Clarence Thomas consistently opposes laws intended to protect people like him.

Categories Civil Rights, Democracy, Injustice, Bigotry, History, Elections

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U.S. Supreme Court Eviscerates Voting Rights Act

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