Republicans Can’t Contain Their Glee Over the Death of the VRA

I’ve spent most of the last 48 hours doomscrolling through people’s reactions to the destruction of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court. The people I follow most regularly have split into predictable camps. There are people like me and Adam Serwer who are trying to put the court’s decision into the larger context of the long-standing white hostility to Black voting rights and Black political power. There are the folks like Ian Millhiser who have tried to explain the immediate legal effects of the court’s unconscionable decision. The activist set is taking some time to digest what has happened and plan for next steps, with some vowing to “fight” and ultimately “win” in some fashion.

Predictable, too, has been the reaction from the right. White supremacists and, to the extent there’s a difference, Republicans have been giddy. I read one particularly risible piece of trash in National Review crowing about how the Supreme Court’s decision will allow Republicans to gerrymander away Black political power while stopping Democrats from restoring that power. I think that legal analysis is wrong. But what struck me was not the stupidity of the argument but how happy they were to make it.

That happiness, from whites, is something that most of the articles and analyses, including mine, have failed to capture sufficiently. It is as distressing to me as the actual decision and the terrible results that will result from it.

The Voting Rights Act was once considered a pillar of American democracy—so much so that it was extended and expanded in 1982 by President Ronald Reagan. It was reauthorized in 2006 by President George W. Bush, and that reauthorization passed the Senate 98–0. In just 20 years, the VRA has gone from being such a mainstay of the democratic project that even dyed-in-the-wool conservatives didn’t dare vote against it to something that barely hooded mouthbreathers at National Review are happy to trash.

I don’t really know how to process that information. It’s not just that we’re going back to a Jim Crow state of affairs—it’s that white people are happy about it. As if the 60 years of post-apartheid America that were ushered in by the VRA were just an unfortunate detour, and now white people can get back to their preferred route.

Republicans always want you to believe that they’re not racist “in their hearts,” that they just happen to prefer a set of policies that coincidentally result in inequality, oppression, and less opportunity for non-white Americans. But this reaction to the death of the VRA proves they’re lying. They hate Black people, and they hate Black people who have political power most of all.

And now, they’re happy to finally be able to take that political power away.

The Bad and the Ugly

• A man named Cole Thomas Allen allegedly tried to assassinate Donald Trump on Saturday. Since Trump is not an American elementary school student, people seem to care.
• The Supreme Court ruling gutting the Voting Rights Act came right before the court heard oral arguments in Trump’s attempt to take away temporary protected status from Haitian immigrants. The Republican supermajority seemed inclined to ignore Trump’s vile and racist statements and treat him as a normal president who is allowed to do whatever he wants, which in this case seems to be to throw Haitians into the ocean.
• Just hours after the Supreme Court destroyed the VRA, Florida’s state legislature approved Governor Ron DeSantis’s new congressional map, which should help the GOP pick up four House seats in the upcoming midterms. At this point, I’m just waiting for the Supreme Court to issue a 6–3 ruling that the South won the Civil War.
• The Supreme Court also heard oral arguments on a case about whether police can use cell-phone data to track your location. The Republican justices seemed squeamish about giving the government this power.
• Minnesota passed a law requiring social-media companies to display a warning label about the mental health problems associated with heavy social-media use. The state is now being sued, with tech groups calling the law a violation of their First Amendment rights. I think I’m ever so slightly on the side of the tech-bro mafia here. Warning labels are compelled speech and, especially given the ruling junta in this country, I don’t really want the government compelling anybody to say anything, even though I happen to agree with Minnesota’s compelled message in this particular instance.

Inspired Takes

• I didn’t know what Flock Safety cameras were until I read this piece in The Nation. Apparently, they’re a big part of the surveillance state, and apparently people are organizing against them, with some cities flummoxing them by covering them with literal garbage bags. We live in wild times.
• For The Nation, Jeet Heer unpacks all the lies Trump has been telling about the latest assassination attempt.

Worst Argument of the Week

Former FBI director James Comey has been indicted for… seashells. Yes, when I first saw this story I too thought it was made up and somebody in my feed had gotten taken for a ride by The Onion. But this is, somehow, a real thing that is really happening.

On May 25, 2025, Comey posted a picture of seashells to his Instagram account. The shells were arranged to depict the numbers 8647. Or “86 47.” Or, as the FBI has now concluded, “86” (as in get rid of) “47” (as in the 47th president of the United States, Donald Trump).

Comey subsequently deleted the post and apologized for the inference.

But now, the Department of Justice has indicted him for threatening the president and transmitting the threat across state lines.

I happen to know quite a lot about death-threat law (for lack of a better term) because I get death threats. A lot of them. Fewer now than when I did more television, but more since the assassination of Charlie Kirk. I don’t like to talk about these threats: The first is terrifying, the second is a badge of honor, and the 397th is just… pointless and depressing.

Whenever I do bring them up to nonlawyers, I get one of two responses: “Oh my God, go to the cops,” or “Oh my God, buy a gun.” I’m not going to do the latter. I’m a Terminator-1,000 “knives and stabbing weapons” kind of guy. But I’ve also never done the former. That’s because I’ve never received a “true” death threat, just the nebulous “I wish you were dead” death threat, and I know the legal difference.

For a death threat to be criminally actionable, it has to be a “true threat,” and that means that it has to be made in such a context that a reasonable person would take it as a serious intention to cause harm. Somebody who tweets “You should be killed” isn’t showing a serious intention to do the deed himself. Indeed, even somebody who says “I’m going to kill you” is not making a “true threat” against me, absent additional context. “I’m going to kill you at the store in Rockefeller Center that you always stop by to get your kids a present when you’re on TV”—that would be a true threat, and that has, thankfully, never happened to me. (Notwithstanding everything I’m saying, please do not threaten to kill me, true or not. I don’t like it.)

In the Comey situation, no reasonable observer could take the seashells on the beach as a true threat on Trump’s life. It is preposterous to argue otherwise. As First Amendment lawyer Ken White explains:

No minimally rational person could possibly conclude, seeing James Comey’s beachside dad joke, that he was expressing a sincere intent to harm the President. Nobody could look at it and conclude that Comey intended to convey that message. In evaluating whether a threat is “true,” the trier of fact must consider the context. Here the context is seashells. The context is the former Director of the FBI, a lifetime member of law enforcement, who is a well-known critic of the President and a target of the President’s wrath, using a campy mechanism to express opposition to the President, using slang for “ditch” or “eject” or “get rid of.” No rational person could see that and say “the former director of the FBI is saying he’s going to kill the President”!”

The indictment of James Comey is utter bullshit.

And I simply must point out that Trump faced an actual true threat on his life this week. The attempted shooter got into the same building with his target. He got closer than he ever should have. Would he have been able to get that close if the FBI were focusing on the real threats to Trump instead of this revenge witch hunt?

I’m sure the Trump people hope that the real assassination attempt will make the public think that there might be something to seashell-gate. But I think public perception should cut the other way. Charging Comey makes it look like the president’s security is incompetent and looking in the entirely wrong direction.

What I Wrote

In News Unrelated to the Current Chaos

In the case I refer to as Person I’d Like to See Punted Into the Sun v. Person I’d Like to See Tied to the Bottom of the Ocean (neither of those are true threats, by the way, as I own neither a rocket ship nor a submarine), Elon Musk took Sam Altman to court this week.

Their dispute is… heaven forgive me, but I don’t care. I’ll let Reuters explain: “The world’s richest person is suing OpenAI, its co-founder and Chief Executive Sam Altman and its President Greg Brockman, saying they betrayed him and the public ‌by abandoning OpenAI’s mission to be a benevolent steward of AI for humanity, and transforming the nonprofit into a profit-seeking juggernaut.”

Musk is a cofounder of OpenAI, and he’s suing Altman for fraud and breach of contract. He’s essentially trying to stop OpenAI from being a for-profit business and is, more or less, trying to dismantle the company.

Of course, OpenAI is a challenge to Musk’s own AI-dream, Grok. Altman says Musk is motivated by jealousy and is just trying to get rid of a competitor.

To answer the legal question most of you reading will have: No, there is no way for both of them to lose. In fact, I imagine the most likely outcome will involve both of them being able to declare “victory”: OpenAI might have to pay Musk some money but will be allowed to continue its business. That would be my guess. When rich people slap-fight in court, the usual outcome is that some money changes hands and then business proceeds as usual.

As for the claim by some that this case will determine the “future of AI,” I refuse to accept the idea that whether AI will be used for the public good or the profit motive will be resolved in a jury trial between two tech titans. No. That cannot be the story. We cannot act like we are just human collateral damage as Godzilla and King Kong battle for dominance.
The future of AI must be resolved in the well of Congress, with legislation and regulations proposed by representatives we elect and order to rein in these beasts. These are small, petty men who happen to have a lot of money. We are the people. We must be the stronger force.

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