Voting Rights Act Was NOT Gutted. King Charles Goes to NYC. Where He Meets The Jerk. Loons, Bulwarks & Busting Myths about High-Earning Women. More
Oh, ye consumers of MSM, relax.
No, yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling striking down a Louisiana congressional district did not destroy the last pillar of the historic 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Yes, dissenting Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson certainly gave that impression. Ditto the legacy media. They should all calm down. A Wall Street Journal editorial headlined “A Victory for Voting Rights at the Supreme Court” gives a less febrile interpretation of the ruling:
To hear the critics tell it, the Supreme Court on Wednesday gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act and made it harder for racial minorities to vote. It did no such thing. A 6-3 majority in Louisiana v. Callais took a large step toward ending the partisan abuse of race to carve up Congressional districts in a way that violates the Constitution.
The VRA still protects voting rights, and its Section 2 can still enforce that law against attempts to restrict black voting with poll taxes and other obstacles. The Court struck down the distortion of the VRA to use race to draw Congressional districts in ways that amount to proportional representation. It’s a much-needed ruling, even if the Court’s reasoning was more complicated than it needed to be. ….
The Voting Rights Act was a landmark of American liberty that helped to break Jim Crow. But that storied purpose has been twisted over the years by both parties to justify the use of race to gerrymander. The Justices are restoring the VRA’s original purpose.
Far from gutting the VRA, Edward Blum, president of the Project on Fair Representation and founder of Students for Fair Admissions, argues the Court provided much-needed clarification:
The justices held that Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act doesn’t require states to draw election districts to achieve racial proportionality. More important, the court reoriented voting-rights law toward its original constitutional purpose—preventing intentional racial discrimination. No longer will black and Hispanic voters be harvested out of multiracial neighborhoods and communities to create race-based districts….
For decades, voting-rights litigation drifted toward a dangerous assumption: that if election outcomes didn’t roughly mirror racial census percentages, something must be legally wrong. Courts and advocacy groups increasingly treated proportional representation as a requirement. States were pressured to sort citizens by race and draw majority-minority districts to hit demographic targets.
The majority opinion was written by Justice Sam Alito, the subject of Mollie Hemingway’s new, bestselling book. In other Supreme Court news, the Justices ruled 9-0 in favor of pro-life pregnancy centers:
Another culture war, and another unanimous Supreme Court decision, this time freeing pro-life pregnancy centers from a First Amendment purgatory. While the win in First Choice v. Davenport is about access to justice, not the merits, it’s still significant, including as evidence that the Court is doing law, not politics.
An editorial in the Washington Post (can’t get over how much the WaPo editorial pages are improved) praises the ruling as a win for privacy. Just a plug: I heard Mollie speak yesterday and was so engrossed in the book on the way home that I missed my bus stop. It’s really good.
After taking Washington by storm, King Charles III and Queen Camilla moved on to New York, where they encountered the Jerk. Who is also known as Zohrab Mamdani, and who took the opportunity to demand that the King surrender a crown jewel. Mamdani behaved like a petulant teen in front of the King and Queen:
Mayor Mamdani had just one job: don’t be a jerk.
Instead, the mayor first tried to ignore the King’s visit. Mamdani knew he couldn’t skip the 9/11 appearance — but he omitted the purpose. On his press schedule, Mamdani’s staffers noted only that the mayor would “attend the 9/11 Memorial wreath-laying ceremony” — no mention that the point of the ceremony was so that the King could offer condolences.
Then, hours beforehand, asked by a reporter what he might say to Charles, the mayor purposefully unwelcomed the King. “I’ll be attending a wreath-laying alongside a number of other elected officials,” he said. “The focus of that wreath-laying is to honor the more than 3,000 New Yorkers who were killed.”
As for New York’s baby king bringing up the Koh-i-Noor Diamond, the New York Post goes on to ask who appointed Mamdani representative of the government of India. (The 106-carat diamond came from an Indian mine. More on the diamond.) Mayor Mamdani has also been busy pushing new taxes as his budget crisis spirals out of control.
Moving right along from jerks to loons. It’s Senator John Kennedy who designates what he calls the “anti-ICE, pro-Karen” wing of the Democratic Party as loons. Kennedy says it’s this segment of the Dems that has shut down the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for 70 days. He writes:
The loon wing of the Democratic Party — the folks who think Dr. Seuss is racist, Mr. Potato Head is sexist and children can change their genders at recess — is the largest and loudest segment of the Democratic Party. They hate our immigration laws. They want criminal illegal aliens to roam free while ICE officers rot in jail. And they have made it clear to every Democrat in office that a vote to fund ICE would haunt them for the rest of their natural lives.
Senator Kennedy expresses delight that the GOP agreed to turn to reconciliation to fund ICE and Border Control, without Dem help. Indeed, after five hours of fighting, the Republicans passed a framework for funding ICE. The GOP is still looking at challenging midterms. Karl Rove advises in his politics column that Republicans go on the offensive. “Attack!” says Rove. This Just In: The U.S. economy grew by 2% in the first quarter:
The U.S. economy entered the year on a steady, albeit weaker, footing. …
Meanwhile, the U.S. is pitching a new coalition to jumpstart traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. Much of the MSM persists in peddling the line that Iran is winning. In a National Review piece on the U.S.’s destruction of Iran’s economy, Jim Geraghty has the last word on this theme:
When your country faces the prospect of hunger riots, you are not winning the war.
More bad news for Iran. The UAE’s withdrawal from OPEC rang the opening bell for the new geopolitical order that the war with Iran is ushering in across the Middle East. According to a highly recommended piece at Spiked Online, the UAE’s exit from OPEC is far bigger than the price of oil. Along with the Iran war, the OPEC withdrawal shatters any illusions about a unified “Muslim world.”
“Surprising Lessons from Talking with America’s Highest-Earning Women,” by Callum Borchers, at the Wall Street Journal, also shatters several illusions about working women. Borchers interviewed women earning $775,000 or more per year. Fascinating stuff:
It’s practically gospel that you need a thick skin to succeed in business, especially if you belong to an underrepresented group. Ditto for the notion that self-doubt holds you back.
Yet women who make at least $775,000 a year are less likely than others to describe themselves as tough or thick-skinned. They are also less likely to view themselves as unique or even unusual, according to a study by Emily Riley, a digital marketing executive and a former research director and analyst for advisory firms.
… But women who have cracked the top 1% of income show a patch of thin skin and a dose of self-doubt can be motivational assets.
From New Working Women to “The New Never Trumpers,” Rich Lowry’s excellent take on the former MAGA stalwarts such as Tucker Carlson and Sohrab Ahmari, who have gone full Bulwark. The Iran War was the turning point for several.
Depravity. Cole Allen took a selfie before entering the Washington Hilton ballroom the evening of the White House Correspondents Association dinner. Kimberley Strassel discusses the Left’s drive to ignore or obfuscate a murderous political agenda.
Amazon is discussing an “Apprentice” reboot with Don Jr. in the star role. Ms. Must has a better idea … “Live from the Oval Office—Apprentice II with Don Sr.”
I am off tomorrow, but I’ll reboot on Monday. See you then.
