Just A Mopping-up Operation

Of the 250 years since the country’s founding, less than a quarter unfolded under the aegis of universal suffrage. Color television, credit cards, and Barbie dolls arrived earlier than the VRA and will survive longer. The reign of Queen Elizabeth II lasted a decade longer than the guarantor of democracy in America. The ruling SCOTUS handed down its Callais decision this week “renders Section 2 all but a dead letter,” wrote Justice Elena Kagan in her dissent. “Like previous VRA-related decisions, Callais was “narrow,” in that it did not strike down the law itself, Newkirk writes. “But although the edifice built at great expense—by Fannie Lou Hamer, by John Lewis, by the bloodied limbs of Mississippi sharecroppers and Alabama marchers—has not been entirely bulldozed, only the facade remains.” The rest of the essay you can read at the link. Newkirk reflects on the law’s impacts over the last 60 years, Republican efforts to subvert or neuter it, and how through legal “engineering, Roberts, Alito, and their allies have created a trap for voting-rights cases” that renders them dead on arrival. The final two paragraphs carry meaning Newkirk may