John Roberts Fulfills Career Ambition to Kill the Voting Rights Act (#124)

In this edition: nine stories with 15 links I’ve recently found interesting about where things stand in our long, twilight struggle to defeat authoritarianism. The Supreme Court guts the Voting Rights Act—and why Democrats need to be ruthless in their response; Democrats should sue CBS for editing their Donald Trump interview; forced-birth advocates try to use water safety to ban abortion medication and birth control; AI recommends nuclear strikes; voter suppression measure qualifies for the California ballot; 536 was a bad year to be alive; and a photo demonstrates how much Trump actually supports women’s sports.

Here we go. We will win. I’m glad you’re here.

#1

• The Callais decision demonstrates the need for radical reform of the Supreme Court (Robert B. Hubbell, Today’s Edition Newsletter, Link to Article)
• The Supreme Court Has Completed Its Quest to Kill the Voting Rights Act (Elie Mystal, The Nation, Link to Article)
• Supreme Court Deals a Death Blow to the Voting Rights Act (Ari Berman, Mother Jones, Link to Article)

Robert B. Hubbell in the Today’s Edition Newsletter:

On Wednesday, the Roberts Court destroyed the last vestiges of the Voting Rights Act. For more than six decades, the VRA stood as a towering achievement in the fight to secure equal voting rights for Black Americans, who continue to suffer the effects of nearly two-and-a-half centuries of slavery in North America and 161 years of voter suppression in the United States.

The decision is an abomination. It seeks to repeal the voting protections of the 14^th and 15^th Amendments, which specifically prohibit denial of the right to vote based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Those amendments empower Congress to enact enabling legislation, long-recognized as authorizing race-based remedies to address race-based discrimination. See South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301 (1966) (“[T]he portions of the Voting Rights Act properly before us are a valid means for carrying out the commands of the Fifteenth Amendment.”)

<snip>

Of course, in his confirmation hearing, Roberts claimed that those memos were mere “juvenilia,” the musings of a young lawyer not to be taken seriously. (“It was my first job as a lawyer after my clerkships. I was not shaping administration policy.”)

Elie Mystal in The Nation:

Alito doesn’t want to say he’s killing the VRA; he just wants to turn it into a zombie. That’s a bit of a departure for Alito and for the Republican supermajority. After all, this is the same Alito who seemed almost gleeful when directly overturning Roe v. Wade and consigning women to second-class status. In this case, he clearly wants you to think, and the media to report, that the Voting Rights Act still exists. I suppose it is more comforting to white people if they are allowed to believe that they’re not living in an apartheid state again. The white folks who are against voting rights don’t all want to feel like they’re Elon Musk.

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan brings clarity to what Alito tries to hide. She writes: “I dissent. The Voting Rights Act is—or, now more accurately, was—‘one of the most consequential, efficacious, and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in our Nation’s history.’… It was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers. It ushered in awe-inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality. And it has been repeatedly, and overwhelmingly, reauthorized by the people’s representatives in Congress. Only they have the right to say it is no longer needed—not the Members of this Court. I dissent, then, from this latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.”

The phrase “now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act” is the only analysis that matters. The VRA has been demolished, as the Republicans have long intended.

Ari Berman in Mother Jones:

The hypocrisy of the Roberts Court is simply astounding. The GOP-appointed wing of the court is clearly inventing one set of rules to approve maps that favor white voters and Republicans while using another set of rules to block maps that benefit racial minorities and Democrats.

In December, the Court allowed a mid-decade redistricting plan in Texas that was designed to give Republicans five more seats on Trump’s orders to go into effect despite a lower court, with the majority opinion written by a Trump appointee, finding that there was overwhelming evidence of the use of race to draw district lines and disempower people based on the color of their skin. In Callais, by contrast, the court held that race could not be a factor in drawing district lines because it violated the 14th and 15th Amendments. But they allowed Republicans in Texas to do just that just months ago.

<snip>

Rolling back the civil rights revolution of the 1960s represents the culmination of Roberts’ legal career. As a young lawyer in Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department, he worked strenuously to weaken the VRA, claiming it would “lead to a quota system in all areas.” He lost that fight when Congress voted overwhelmingly to strengthen and reauthorize the law in 1982, but he won the larger battle decades later as chief justice, presiding over a series of cases that have crippled the crown jewel of the civil rights movement. In the early 1980s, Roberts wanted to find that violations of the VRA only applied to cases of intentional discrimination. Congress overruled him then, but now the Court has brought back that intentional discrimination standard in Callais.

WHY I FIND THIS STORY INTERESTING

John Roberts has finally done it. The Voting Rights Act is neutered. His legal career mission is accomplished.

Roberts lied about this during his confirmation hearings, trying to minimize what he did in the Reagan White House as the work of a young attorney. He claimed he had no issue with the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act and that he would have an open mind about any cases that came in front of him.

In his opening statement at those hearings, Roberts promised that “I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat.”

That was clearly a lie. As chief justice, Roberts has ensured the strike zone is far different for Republican priorities than it has been for Democratic ones. The ongoing rapid implementation of this case—to allow Louisiana and other Southern states to rush to redistrict before the midterms—is the latest example of this dynamic.

Roberts used to pretend to care about precedent and the Supreme Court’s neutral role. The glowing profiles of him over the years took pains to emphasize this about him.

But he took advantage of every opportunity to gut the Voting Rights Act. He led the Supreme Court to overturn bipartisan legislation enacted to fulfill the promise of the 14th and 15th Amendments.

Roberts has led a radical conservative block of justices committed to restricting the rights of women and people of color. Roger Taney, the author of the Dred Scott decision, has a rival for the worst chief justice in history.

This wasn’t calling balls and strikes. It wasn’t focused on the original intent of the authors. It was the latest example of Roberts and his colleagues taking the Republican position.

The Roberts Supreme Court is a political actor. Thankfully, there are things that can be done to check and balance these bad actors with majority votes in Congress and a presidential signature. Democrats should start planning and making the case for those reforms today.

#2

• It Is Time for Ruthless Aggression (Jonathan V. Last, The Bulwark, Link to Article)
• Ds Must Expand The Supreme Court First (Noah Berlatsky, Everything is Horrible, Link to Article)

Jonathan V. Last writes in The Bulwark:

The Supreme Court cries out for reform. Because without reforming the court first, you cannot reform the rest of the system.

<snip>

In 2021 it was possible to look at the wreckage of America’s first authoritarian attempt, believe that the system would rebalance itself, and hope for the best.

From the vantage point of 2026 such a hope is no longer reasonable to hold. You either accept that this is the new world, or you commit to active reform.

Expanding the Supreme Court is no different than redistricting in California and Virginia. It is a proportionate response to Republican attempts to degrade liberal democracy and move America toward a post-liberal order.

Noah Berlatsky writes in Everything Is Horrible:

The need to expand the court is obvious. But politicians worry about the electoral downsides. Many Americans do not think of themselves as partisans, and they find partisan radicalism distasteful. The ins and out of Supreme Court make-up are too complicated for most voters to follow, and they will not necessarily see how or why those ins and outs are important or how they will affect them. Better to do popular things that benefit people (middle class tax cuts!), win elections, and wait the court out, right?

This was Biden’s plan. And it dead-ended in our current fascist nightmare and the ongoing (quite successful) assault on the Constitution. So maybe we should try something different.

As the horrific first couple months of Trump’s administration demonstrated, even presidents who win by very narrow margins are granted great latitude in their first months for partisan projects, no matter how utterly corrupt, evil, and ill-advised. Compared to Trump’s rabid destruction of the entire federal government, expanding the court is small bore agenda. A Democratic president with a reasonable Congressional majority who demands, as the very first thing, an elimination of the filibuster and Supreme Court expansion, will have—in the wake of the disastrous Trump presidency—a decent chance of pushing it through.

Robert B. Hubbell in the Today’s Edition Newsletter mentioned in story #1 above:

The only Supreme Court reform that can be achieved in a timeframe relevant to this generation and the next is to expand the Court by a substantial number of justices committed to overruling the following cases in short order:

> Citizens United (money in politics),

> Trump v. US (presidential immunity),

> Dobbs (overruling Roe),

> Callais (partisan gerrymandering allowed as cover for racial gerrymandering),

> West Virginia v. EPA (major questions doctrine),

> 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, (allowing discrimination against same sex couples),

> United States v. Skrmetti (ban on gender affirming care for trans youth),

> Heller (individual right to bear arms),

> NY Pistol v. Bruen (right to carry firearms in public),

> Garland v. Cargill (automatic rifles with bump stocks are not machine guns).

If an expanded Supreme Court could overrule those ten cases in the span of four years, we would go a long way toward undoing the worst damage inflicted by John Roberts. Separately, the new majority justices must affirm to cease use of the “shadow docket” to grant relief or make decisions in a summary fashion.

WHY I FIND THIS STORY INTERESTING

The Republican justices lied during their confirmation hearings. They claimed they would be faithful to precedent when it came to issues like reproductive health and voting rights.

Former Republican Leader Mitch McConnell used Senate rules to steal two Supreme Court seats when he refused to allow even a hearing for President Obama’s choice in 2016 and rushed through Amy Coney Barrett right before the 2020 election.

The Supreme Court now uses a “shadow docket” to make clearly partisan decisions quickly and without full arguments.

It is a political entity. We must be clear about this to ourselves and to our fellow voters. Restoring balance to it is necessary and justified.

Democrats may be late to this fight. The best time to start dealing with the obvious partisan leanings of the Supreme Court was after its Bush v. Gore decision in 2000. The second-best time is now.

There won’t be time, or the Republican support required, to pass constitutional amendments to reform the court should Democrats earn a trifecta in 2028.

Increasing the size of the Supreme Court to overturn the corrupt Roberts Court decisions outlined above is now necessary. I would also add in a liberal use of “jurisdiction stripping” to keep the Supreme Court from overruling the obvious legislative intent of a new Voting Rights Act.

After these reforms are in place, we can talk about term limits, age limits, and other interesting ideas. But the political reality is that a future Democratic president will have mere months to take bold action.

#3

• The Many Rewards of Playing Hardball (Paul Waldman, The Cross Section, Link to Article)
• FAFO and Other Things We Learned in the 2025-26 Redistricting Wars (Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo, Link to Article)

Paul Waldman writes in the Cross Section:

The redistricting battle showed that when Democrats want to play hardball, not only are they capable of it, their constituents will back them up. And the more they do it, the more their opponents will come to realize that they can’t count on Democrats lying down and letting themselves be rolled over. That will then change the strategic calculations Republicans make, by increasing the cost of transgressing the rules. It’s straightforward deterrence.

The next step in establishing that deterrence is to deliver accountability to Republicans for their actions — good and hard. An iron-clad promise to support genuine Supreme Court reform — including adding justices and imposing 18-year term limits — should be a litmus test for any Democrat running for president in 2028, as should sweeping change to the structure of the federal government to undo the damage done under this administration and vigorous corruption prosecutions for all the grifters and scammers currently slithering their way through the executive branch.

Republicans need to live in fear that if they violate norms, rules, and laws in the ways they have been for the last couple of decades, there will be hell to pay and they’ll be the ones paying it. Only then, once they know Democrats are serious, will they be brought to heel.

Josh Marshall writes in Talking Points Memo:

This is a critical moment because it previews equally critical decision points in the future. There is no possibility of a civic democratic revival in the United States without abolishing the filibuster and reforming the corrupt Supreme Court. These both now exist as either substantial (in the first instance) or total (in the case of Supreme Court corruption) impediments to democratic self-government in the United States. I’ve been giving a lot of thought of late to just what kind of new social contract can be devised to succeed the ones created in the New Deal and early Cold War eras. I have only a very limited insight into what that might be. What I understand much more clearly are the structural changes required to create any rebirth of a civic democratic future in the U.S. We’ve spoken about them plenty before: abolish the filibuster and reform the corrupt Supreme Court. These are the sine qua non reforms without which small-d democratic self-government in the United States is really no longer possible.

The question now is whether Democrats can bring the same fight and clarity to these questions as they did, to the surprise of many, to redistricting.

WHY I FIND THIS STORY INTERESTING

Building coalitions and winning elections should matter to a political party. Democratic and Democratic-leaning independent voters have been screaming for years that they want their elected officials to fight back.

And, no, strongly worded letters are not nearly enough.

Republicans have been conditioned to believe that the Democrats will not take serious action when they violate norms, rules, and laws. That is one of the reasons they keep doing it.

How did Democrats react to Mitch McConnell refusing even to hold a hearing for a justice after Antonin Scalia’s death in February 2016 and then rushing through Amy Coney Barrett in September and October 2020?

Speeches. Letters. Fundraising appeals.

That isn’t fighting back, especially with people like McConnell who aren’t acting in good faith.

People are desperate for Democratic elected leaders who are willing to punch back. Republicans need to face consequences for their overreach and anti-constitutional actions.

The Republican Party has enabled everything Donald Trump has done. A handful of Republicans could end the Trump regime’s overreach on any day they choose by choosing to caucus with the Democrats.

So they own it. And they need to face a clear and powerful response. First at the ballot box. Then with legislation to start repairing our democracy.

#4

• Trump's CBS 60 Minutes Interview: What Aired and What Was Cut (Juliet Jeske, Decoding Fox News, Link to Article)
• Time For The DNC To Sue CBS News For $20 Billion (Brian Beutler, Off Message, Link to Article)

Juliet Jeske from Decoding Fox News:

On Sunday April 26 President Donald J. Trump sat down with Norah O’Donnell for a CBS “60 Minutes” interview the day after a shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

That evening a 13-minute edit of the interview aired on CBS. The network also published the full 40-minute version on “60 Minutes Overtime.”

I went through both and made a transcript of exactly what was included and what was cut from the shorter version that aired on network television. The final 13-minute edit that CBS broadcast on Sunday was a bit of a Frankenstein monster as the president was sometimes cut off mid-sentence while other sections were cut and moved around to give the conversation a better flow.

Throughout the longer un-edited interview the president gave disorganized rambling answers that were filled with false statements about foreign investment in the U.S., immigration, and the 2020 election. He also brought up transgender athletes more than once and trashed the Democratic Party and the members of the press.

The president also boasted that he won a $38 million settlement from CBS over his lawsuit regarding the network’s “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris. Paramount, the parent company of CBS, agreed to pay Trump $16 million, not $38 million, the funds going to his future presidential library.

By excessively editing Trump’s answers the network made the president seem far more reasonable and controlled.

Brian Beutler writes in Off Message:

Knives are out for Ken Martin as Democratic National Committee chair, and they probably should be. Fundraising has been anemic, spending has been questionable, and he broke a clear promise to release the committee’s post-2024 autopsy.

So Martin may not be long for the job. He may not even want the job anymore. But if he’s hanging on for dear life, I have an idea, offered for free, that he can put to the test relatively cheaply: He can sue CBS News for $20 billion (but be willing to settle for $16 million and not a penny less).

<snip>

The shoe’s on the other foot in an obvious way now, but it’s of little interest to anyone in power, except as a gotcha. Democrats are weak, Trump is aggressive. They play by the old rules, he plays by his. Nothing will come of this, so it’s not worth making a fuss. Outsiders like me and others can wail about the hypocrisy—of Trump, of CBS, of its new editor Bari Weiss. Her website, The Free Press, spent months pretending to believe 60 Minutes was in the wrong for editing down its Harris interview—until Trump effectively installed her to turn CBS into a pro-regime outlet, and her misgivings vanished.

We can whine, whine, whine about their shamelessness all day. And we’re obviously right to be outraged. But this kind of limp appeal to hypocrisy is a symptom of partisan asymmetry. It’s pervasive only because everyone takes for granted (with good reason) that Democrats won’t stoop to the GOP’s level. But what if they did? What if Ken Martin were to claim CBS News interfered in the 2026 election by editing down Trump’s interview, no less than it interfered in the 2024 election by editing down Harris’s? What if he filed an angry lawsuit, if only to hold up a mirror to the perversity of the status quo? What if he insisted that nominally neutral institutions treat the parties equally? Why not let CBS decide whether it wants to settle the score, or whether it wants to be known as the network that gives money to Republicans only?

WHY I FIND THIS STORY INTERESTING

Juliet Jeske does incredible work watching Fox News and putting their programs in context.

Her work to highlight what CBS edited out of its interview with President Trump is particularly important.

It is clear how CBS gave the president the best-possible edit. The network decided not to show Trump’s rambling answers and various lies.

This extensive editing is particularly noteworthy given how Trump sued CBS for editing an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris before the 2024 election.

So here is an opportunity for Democrats to push back. The Democratic National Committee should sue CBS in the same way that Trump did.

Force CBS to settle or make clear that they write checks only for Trump.

No, the DNC won’t get a check. But it will get media coverage. It will demonstrate that Democrats are now willing to fight back against Trump and its media enablers.

One of the reasons so many media outlets sanewash Trump is that only his side is working the refs and complaining about bias.

The DNC making a point about Trump’s CBS interview should be a layup. And, to be clear, DNC Chair Ken Martin needs some wins.

#5

• The EPA Tells States to Test the Water for Birth Control and Abortion Pills (Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day, Link to Article)

Well, it happened. After years of anti-abortion pressure, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has recommended that states test their drinking water for abortion medication and birth control, putting the drugs on a federal list of potential “contaminants.”

The move clears the way for Republicans to restrict abortion and contraception under the guise of protecting the environment—including humiliating regulations that could force women to bag up their pregnancy tissue as medical waste. And at a moment when pregnancy-related arrests are rising and states are moving to punish abortion patients, it marks a dangerous acceleration toward a full-blown reproductive surveillance state.

Everything you need to know is below—from the history of the lie and the way it’s being weaponized in legislation, to what this EPA action means for abortion and birth control right now.

<snip>

Is there any science behind it?

Nope.

We metabolize abortion and birth control pills like any other medication, and only trace amounts leave our bodies at all. Using anti-abortion logic, every single drug people take—from antidepressants to Viagra—would be a “pollutant.”

In fact, an EPA study found that it would take “months to decades of drinking two liters of raw, untreated wastewater per day to expose a person to a single dose” of the most commonly prescribed medications. And an environmental impact report conducted by the FDA before the agency approved mifepristone found that “the projected environmental introduction concentration from use is less than 1 ppb.”

That means less than one part per billion.

WHY I FIND THIS STORY INTERESTING

Jessica Valenti has been warning us that this attack on abortion medication and birth control is coming.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has worked on water quality issues for decades. Forced-birth zealots are hoping they can use the issue to make it impossible for women to get the reproductive health care they require.

So we must understand what is going on here. This has nothing to do with science.

If the forced-birth zealots were actually worried about water quality, wouldn’t they also ask about, for example, Viagra and testosterone?

Water quality is important! But abortion medication and birth control medication are not creating any issues.

Forced-birth advocates know their position is unpopular. Instead of accepting that fact, they will keep trying to find workarounds to restrict women of their health care rights.

#6

• AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations (Chris Stokel-Walker, New Scientist, Archive Link to Article)

Advanced AI models appear willing to deploy nuclear weapons without the same reservations humans have when put into simulated geopolitical crises.

Kenneth Payne at King’s College London set three leading large language models – GPT-5.2, Claude Sonnet 4 and Gemini 3 Flash – against each other in simulated war games. The scenarios involved intense international standoffs, including border disputes, competition for scarce resources and existential threats to regime survival.

The AIs were given an escalation ladder, allowing them to choose actions ranging from diplomatic protests and complete surrender to full strategic nuclear war. The AI models played 21 games, taking 329 turns in total, and produced around 780,000 words describing the reasoning behind their decisions.

In 95 per cent of the simulated games, at least one tactical nuclear weapon was deployed by the AI models. “The nuclear taboo doesn’t seem to be as powerful for machines [as] for humans,” says Payne.

What’s more, no model ever chose to fully accommodate an opponent or surrender, regardless of how badly they were losing. At best, the models opted to temporarily reduce their level of violence. They also made mistakes in the fog of war: accidents happened in 86 per cent of the conflicts, with an action escalating higher than the AI intended to, based on its reasoning.

WHY I FIND THIS STORY INTERESTING

The responsibility to launch nuclear weapons must remain entirely in human hands. In fact, we should change it so more than one human is required to approve a launch—as Donald Trump’s nuclear threat aimed at Iran made even more urgent.

We already face challenges with the use of LLMs because of the bias humans have toward agreeing with what these programs are telling them. Now we see that LLMs are more open to escalation and mistakes as they progress up a conflict escalation ladder.

We should be worried about how we use autonomous AI-like programs to handle lesser challenges like setting targets for drones and for bombing. We do not know enough about how these programs work to hand them this kind of power.

#7

• Sweeping GOP-backed anti-voting measure qualifies for California ballot (Yunior Rivas, Democracy Docket, Link to Article)

While marketed as a voter ID initiative, the measure goes significantly further, rewriting California’s constitution to impose new rules on both in-person and mail-in voting, which is how most Californians cast ballots.

If the measure is approved, voters would be required to present a government-issued ID when voting in person. For mail-in voting, the measure would require voters to write identifying information — such as the last four digits of a driver’s license, Social Security number or other document — on the outside of their ballot envelope. Election officials would then be required to verify that information before counting the ballot.

The initiative also mandates new statewide efforts to verify voter citizenship and requires annual reporting on how many registered voters’ citizenship has been confirmed — adding layers of bureaucracy to a system that already includes identity verification at registration and signature matching for mail ballots.

WHY I FIND THIS STORY INTERESTING

The Big Lie about elections being rigged leads to bad ideas like this one that will be on the California ballot this November.

I will be voting no.

Our elections are safe, no matter how many times Donald Trump and his regime’s minions lie otherwise. This system would put people at risk given how often driver’s license or Social Security numbers are used to secure financial and other online accounts.

Given all the misinformation that has been spread by Republicans about voting, I understand why voter ID polls relatively well. I’ve argued that Democrats may want to do this to negate the issue—but do it in a way that ensures everyone is given a no-cost identification card. That would require lots of outreach and effort, versus the effective poll tax Republicans seek to create.

This proposition goes much further. We should not give an inch to the election deniers under these circumstances.

#8

• Why 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (Ann Gibbons, Science, Link to Article)

⁠⁠Ask medieval historian Michael McCormick what year was the worst to be alive, and he's got an answer: "536." Not 1349, when the Black Death wiped out half of Europe. Not 1918, when the flu killed 50 million to 100 million people, mostly young adults. But 536. In Europe, "It was the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst year," says McCormick, a historian and archaeologist who chairs the Harvard University Initiative for the Science of the Human Past.

A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night—for 18 months. "For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year," wrote Byzantine historian Procopius. Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell 1.5°C to 2.5°C, initiating the coldest decade in the past 2300 years. Snow fell that summer in China; crops failed; people starved. The Irish chronicles record "a failure of bread from the years 536–539." Then, in 541, bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse, McCormick says.⁠⁠

WHY I FIND THIS STORY INTERESTING

I went into reading this article thinking the Black Death years were the worst, but now I agree that 536 was the beginning of a series of terrible years.

A plague is bad. A sudden change to climate is bad. Combining both is challenging to comprehend.

#9

• ‘Worth a thousand words’: Trump photo obscuring women’s tennis team sparks backlash (Guardian Sport, Link to Article)

The University of Georgia Women’s Tennis team went to the White House to celebrate its National Championship in late April.

Here’s the photo White House Communications Advisor Margo Martin posted to her official White House X/Twitter account.

WHY I FIND THIS STORY INTERESTING

Seriously?

Nothing demonstrates support for women’s sports like putting all the athletes who actually won the championship in the background behind a group of men. <</sarcasm>>

One of the athletes even had to lean to be seen behind the man in the front row blocking her. Thoughtful!

As a former college sports information director and later as a staff person to elected officials, I’ve helped to set up many photos like this one. The coaches go to the sides.

Being this disrespectful took effort or extreme thoughtlessness. I get that the president doesn’t care. But those coaches need to think about their priorities.

Useful Websites and Information Trackers

Election Data

• 2026 Election Calendar (The Downballot, Link to Article)
• Ultimate Data Guide (The Downballot, Link to Article)

Iran War Consequences

• Strait of Hormuz Shipping Trackers (hormuztracker.com | hormuzstraitmonitor.com)

Trump Regime Authoritarianism

• Trump Action Tracker (Making Sense of US Politics, Link to Article)
• Executive Watch [Trump Abuses of Power] (Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, The Unpopulist, Link to Article)
• ICE Warehouse Tracker (Project Salt Box, Link to Article)

Trump Regime Corruption

• Kleptocracy Tracker Timeline (Anne Applebaum, SNF Agora Institute, Link to Article)

Follow me on BlueSky to see the stories I’m finding and the tabs I’m opening throughout the day.

Craig Cheslog (@craigcheslog.com)

GenXer against fascism. Talking politics, women’s soccer, WNBA, Manchester United men and women, USWNT, USMNT, Green Bay Packers, Boston Celtics, Chicago Cubs, and Taylor Swift. (he/him/his) My newsletter: https://thelongtwilightstruggle.com/.

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