Jamelle Bouie [free link] reflects on the strong signal that the Supreme Court’s Republicans intend to nullify what’s remaining of the most important civil rights legislation passed since Reconstruction:

A federal appeals court sided with the plaintiffs and ordered the Louisiana State Legislature to draw a new map with a second majority-Black congressional district, which it did. But this map was challenged by a group of self-described “non-African American” voters, who charged that it was an illegal racial gerrymander. It’s this case that the Supreme Court has decided in essence to hear again, and it is for this case that the court wants the parties to address “whether the state’s intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the 14th or 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”

Under the current Supreme Court’s vision of a rigidly colorblind Constitution — indifferent to either racial inequality or the mechanisms of color caste — the answer is very likely to be yes. There is also the matter of Chief Justice John Roberts, who has led the court’s effort to curb, limit and undermine the Voting Rights Act. One assumes that having gotten the court to strike down one part of the law in 2013, he is eager to get it to strike down another, given his decades-long hostility to the law, which has been in his sights since he was a young lawyer in the Reagan administration.

We should pause to note another deeply twisted irony here, which is that Roberts — who wrote the outrageous opinion that the Court could do nothing about egregiously unconstitutional and undemocratic gerrymanders because math isn’t real — arbitrarily preserved the ability to strike down exactly one kind of gerrymander, I don’t think that Roberts isn’t a long-term thinker when it comes to destroying the statute that has been his biggest target his entire professional life.

Roberts fulfilling his goal and Donald Trump’s goals are mutually reinforcing:

Americans pride ourselves, by contrast, on our undivided history under one Constitution — a single, ongoing experiment in self-government. But look closely at American history and you’ll see that this is an illusion of continuity that belies a reality of change, and sometimes radical transformation, over time. There are several American republics and at least two Constitutions, a first and a second founding. Our first republic began with ratification in 1788 and collapsed at Fort Sumter in 1861. Our second emerged from the wreckage of the Civil War and was dismantled, as the University of Connecticut historian Manisha Sinha argues, by Jim Crow at home and imperial ambition abroad. If the third American republic took shape under the unusual circumstances of the middle decades of the 20th century — what the Vanderbilt historian Jefferson Cowie calls “the great exception” of depression, war and a political system indelibly shaped by immigration restriction and the near-total exclusion of millions of American citizens from the political system — then the fourth began with the achievements of the civil rights movement, which included a newly open door to the world.

This was an American republic built on multiracial pluralism. A nation of natives and of immigrants from around the world. Of political parties that strove to represent a diverse cross-section of society. Of a Black president and a future “majority-minority” nation. There was an ugly side — it’s no coincidence that state retrenchment from public goods and services followed the crumbling of racial barriers. But for all its harsh notes and discord, this was the closest the country ever came to the “composite nation” of Frederick Douglass’s aspirations: a United States that served as home to all who might seek the shelter of the Declaration of Independence and its “principles of justice, liberty and perfect humanity equality.”

It’s this America that Donald Trump and his movement hope to condemn to the ash heap of history. It’s this America that they’re fighting to destroy with their attacks on immigration, civil rights laws, higher education and the very notion of a pluralistic society of equals.

The Supreme Court’s war on the Voting Rights Act precedes Trump but it is simpatico with his aims. The court’s steady effort to make the law an artifact of the past is of a piece with its broad expansion of executive power for the current president. Both work to undermine the basis for this more politically equal era of American democracy and clear the path to an American autocracy.

But while the Voting Rights Act may be heading to its demise as a functional piece of legislation, it can still stand as a symbol: of our collective capacity to expand the horizons of democratic life; of our creative intelligence in the task of making a more perfect union; and of our ability to confront and overcome the worst of this nation’s past and present.

The Voting Rights Act is quite likely dead. Long live the Voting Rights Act.

This is a dark time, but 2024 was no more the End of History than 1965 was.

The post The Assassination of the Fourth Republic of the United States by the Coward John Roberts appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

I’ve always wanted a crow friend, and this summer I’ve been making an effort. Each morning I put a handful of dog kibble on a paper plate and set it out on our back-patio table. I also ball up a piece of aluminum foil to add to the plate for decoration, although whether crows and other corvids (birds of the family Corvidae) actually like shiny objects, a common belief, remains to be proven. Then, I do my best rendition of a crow call (something between a caw and a honk, to my ear) to alert them to breakfast service, watching the skies for takers.

Our neighborhood has a resident flock of them—“murder” seems a little dramatic, though I suppose that’s the official, if antiquated, term—and they make themselves known daily. They start out calling from a distance mid-morning, moving closer via a long line of tulip poplars, before swooping down to see what’s what on the ground, chattering amicably (I think) all the while.

Two in particular have discovered my breakfast spot, and if I time it right, I’ll see them stopping by for a few bites most days. The kibble eaters fend off the grackles that have also discovered the food, and each has its fill in one go before heading off for the day. They don’t seem interested in the foil ball, although it’s possible it attracted their attention initially. Who can say. (The crows could, I suppose: They’re impressive mimics of human speech! Another reason I want to befriend one.)

Not just because they can talk, crows and their ilk, including ravens and magpies, are known to be super intelligent. From a long-term study done at the University of Washington in the 2000s, we know they recognize human faces and even remember for years the faces of those who treated them badly early on. The results were hard to dismiss: While banding birds for research, students wore a particular rubber mask that the birds learned to associate with the irritation of being caught. For years after, the banded birds would punish people in the “bad guy” mask, forming small mobs and loudly scolding, and ignore people wearing other kinds of masks. Remarkably, the offspring of those original birds learned to dislike the same masked face and would join their elders in shaming the wearer.

Back in my own yard, my (unmasked) presence on the back steps hasn’t deterred the crows from their meal. But if I try approaching their perch or if they spy me sitting closer than usual, they get outta Dodge. I keep hoping they’ll start associating my face with the platter of snacks, and that eventually I’ll be able to hang out among them, Jane Goodall style, maybe even feeding them from my hand.

It would be a special thrill if they brought me a shiny or colorful gift—there are many reports of crows leaving small items, from pebbles to hair ties to gum wrappers, where a person has fed them. For now, I just enjoy the antics of my future friends from afar, having not yet earned a seat at their table.

Photo by Jianan Li on Unsplash

bolters-and-rivets:

bogleech:

marithlizard:

Something I need to be reminded of often. Yes, I’m very lazy and also have executive problems up the wazoo (the difference? laziness is fun), but the cultural expectation of being productive every waking moment isn’t healthy either. And the business of feeding ourselves is especially fraught these days.

This is the same topic and screenshot that gave some of my chudliest chud haters such a meltdown after I posted it myself once, they raged at me for days and one by one dropped off of Tumblr forever. This subject kills idiots.

based on what we’ve found in Pompei the majority of roman citizens in the city got their food from fast food places like this

from a cultural perspective a roman’s typical daily schedual after work would look no different to a modern day worker commuting home and swinging by a fast food joint for chinese, kebab, or a pizza on the way as they unwound before bed

Human life remains the same down through the ages just as much as it changes

They went to a Las Vegas conference this month that promised pathways to an “unlimited lifespan.” But at least two attendees left in ambulances and were hospitalized in critical condition, requiring ventilators to breathe. The two women, who are recovering, fell ill after receiving peptide injections at a conference booth. The doctor who ran the booth was a Los Angeles physician specializing…

Source

woundgallery:

This is an excellent story [gift link] about a company in Nebraska that used E-Verify and had its workforce completely decimated anyway:

They gathered in a conference room for the weekly management meeting, even though there was hardly anyone left to manage. Chad Hartmann, the president of Glenn Valley Foods in Omaha, pushed a few empty chairs to the side of the room and then passed around a sheet totaling the latest production numbers. “Take a deep breath and brace yourselves,” he said.

For more than a decade, Glenn Valley’s production reports had told a story of steady ascendance — new hires, new manufacturing lines, new sales records for one of the fastest-growing meatpacking companies in the Midwest. But, in a matter of weeks, production had plummeted by almost 70 percent. Most of the work force was gone. Half of the maintenance crew was in the process of being deported, the director of human resources had stopped coming to work, and more than 50 employees were being held at a detention facility in rural Nebraska.

Hartmann, 52, folded the printed sheet into tiny squares and waited out the silence.

“So, this gives you a pretty good sense of the work we have ahead of us,” he said.

“It’s a wipeout,” said Gary Rohwer, the owner. “We’re building back up from ground zero.”

It should be noted here that one of the ripple effects is that at least two of the detained employees were guilty of identity theft that cost inncent people access to student loans and medication. The people guilty of this actually should be deported, but it’s also the inevitable consequence of a system that relies on immigrant labor without the willingness to give enough people legal status to work. And the necessity is acute:

“I’m still furious about what happened to our people, but we have to keep the machines running,” Rohwer said. “We need more people trained and ready to go.”

“Trained by who?” another manager asked. “We lost every supervisor out there. If you ran a machine or checked temperatures or did anything important, you’re gone.”

“Then we pick up our hiring,” Rohwer said.

He looked out into the lobby and saw three women filling out applications. Glenn Valley paid well, with an average hourly wage of almost $20 and regular bonuses, but the work was repetitive and demanding. Employees who came mostly from Mexico and Central America stood on a manufacturing line for as much as 10 hours a day, six days a week, and processed hundreds of pounds of meat through dangerous machinery in a cold factory.

Ever since videos of the raid spread across social media, Rohwer had answered dozens of calls from strangers who accused him of “stealing American jobs.” But Nebraska was experiencing a work shortage, with only 66 qualified workers for every 100 positions. Almost every one of the company’s new applicants was also a Hispanic immigrant.

The Miller raids break up families:

His parents had spent the last 25 years in Omaha, building an undocumented life with such care that to Omar it started to feel “normal, even stable,” he said. His parents met in Mexico and eventually crossed the border together on foot in their teens. They married, found work in Nebraska and bought a small house on the outskirts of downtown where they could raise their four children, all U.S. citizens. A few months earlier, Omar had encouraged his mother to hire a lawyer to help her explore a path to citizenship. She had a “perfect case,” the lawyer wrote: No criminal record. Longstanding ties to the community. A steady job with good reviews.

She took on extra hours to pay legal fees and nursed sores on her feet. It wasn’t in her nature to complain, not even now, about the raid, the detention center or the lawyer she could no longer seem to reach.

“How are you?” Omar asked in Spanish, once Elizabeth came on the line. Her children crowded onto the couch and gathered around the phone.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Tell me about all of you. Are you eating? Sleeping?”

“Don’t worry,” Omar said. “Everything’s OK.”

This was how they survived these calls: each side reassuring the other even as they continued to unravel. Omar was working the graveyard shift at a local call center to help pay for groceries. His two younger sisters, 17 and 13, were trying to cook for the family from her mother’s recipes. Omar’s younger brother, 7, was waking up at night short of breath, wheezing and choking, until Omar took him to the emergency room. Doctors said he was suffering from panic attacks. He had never spent a night away from Elizabeth, and he didn’t know what it meant to be undocumented, or detained, or deported. The family had decided it was best to tell him that his mother was still at work.

“I’ll be home soon,” she told him now.

“When?” he asked.

“I don’t know yet,” she said. “I’m trying my best.”

“You have five minutes remaining on this call,” the automated voice said.

This story does, however, have one unexpected twist:

Rohwer, 84, had always used a federal online system called E-Verify to check whether his employees were eligible to work, and Glenn Valley Foods itself had not been accused of any violations. Rohwer was a registered Republican in a conservative state, but he’d voted for a Democrat for the first time in the 2024 election, in part because of Trump’s treatment of immigrants. Rohwer couldn’t square the government’s accusations of “criminal dishonesty” with the employees he’d known for decades as “salt-of-the-earth, incredible people who helped build this company,” he said. Most of them had no criminal history, aside from a handful of traffic violations. Many were working mothers, and now they were calling the office from detention and asking for legal advice. Their children, U.S. citizens, were struggling at home and in some cases subsisting on donations of the company’s frozen steak.

Voters do have agency. You’re allowed to vote for the party that opposes mass deportations of otherwise law-abiding workers even if it means that somewhere the seventh-best player on a junior high school volleyball team gets to keep playing. Really. Even if you own a business or are corporate executive! As an English poet once said, you can choose, don’t confuse, win or lose, it’s up to you.

The post The ripple effects appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.