The Dictatorship
Elena Kagan knows why the Supreme Court majority wrongly supported Texas’ redistricting effort
It’s emblematic of the Supreme Court’s increasingly tenuous legitimacy and image of rank partisanship that no one was surprised last week when it blocked a district court order overturning Texas’ recently redrawn congressional maps.
The new maps were intended to benefit Republicans and potentially flip five House seats from Democratic to Republicans, so, of course, the court’s 6-3 conservative majority ruled in their favor. That the court’s conservative justices simply ignore the law and lower-court decisions when they hurt Republicans — and create new legal doctrines when it benefits the GOP — is no longer news.
In a clinical 16-page dissent, Justice Elena Kagan laid out in withering detail how her fellow justices ignored the law, past precedent and common sense.
Indeed, in a clinical 16-page dissent, Justice Elena Kagan laid out in withering detail how her fellow justices ignored the law, past precedent and common sense in giving Texas Republicans a political boost. The conservative majority isn’t even pretending it’s not putting its finger on the scale to help the GOP.
Texas Republicans redrew the state’s congressional maps this year in a brazen and cynical effort to flip five House seats to the GOP next year. A host of progressive groups quickly sued, claiming Texas had violated the 14th and 15th amendments in using used racial data in its gerrymandering process. A U.S. district judge appointed by President Donald Trump conducted an exhaustive nine-day hearing, heard testimony from 23 witnesses and pored over more than 3,000 pages of evidence. Then, he issued a 160-page decision that found overwhelming evidence that Texas had, indeed, created a racial gerrymander — and he blocked the maps.
Yet, Kagan wrote,“this Court reverses that judgment based on its perusal, over a holiday weekend, of a cold paper record.”
Considering how breezily they dismissed the district court judge’s ruling, it’s hard to imagine the conservative majority even bothered to read the opinion. If they did glance at it, they did so with minds already made up.
To step back a moment, in 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that while distasteful, unjust and “incompatible with democratic principles,” excessive partisan gerrymandering was “beyond the reach of the federal courts” and thus legal. And in a concurring opinion in the Texas case, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that state Republicans were motivated by “partisan advantage pure and simple.”
But the evidence uncovered by the district court suggests this simply isn’t true.
The district court found repeated instances of Texas legislators admitting the new districts were drawn along racial lines.
The evidence that emerged in trial of the GOP’s racial intent was overwhelming. For example, in direct testimony, Texas’ mapmaker argued that he was motivated by the goal of delivering Texas Republicans more House seats but then acknowledged that he had racial “data available at the press of a key on his redistricting software.”
The new maps constructed three majority Black or majority-Hispanic districts, “by the smallest amount possible” in some cases, less than half a percentage point. Kagan’s dissent notes that an expert witness testified “she had generated tens of thousands of congressional maps” that benefit Republicans and don’t use racial data and “not one of them had racial demographics that looked anything like those in the 2025 Map.”
Moreover, the district court found repeated instances of Texas legislators admitting the new districts were drawn along racial lines. For example, the Republican who introduced the bill redrawing the maps said, “[W]e created four out of five new seats” to have a ‘Hispanic majority. I would say that’s great.’”
This wasn’t even a close call, and yet, in a few paragraphs, the Supreme Court breezily dismissed the district court’s findings of fact.
Amazingly, Alito went a step further and attacked the plaintiffs for using false “claims of racial gerrymandering for partisan ends.” By this logic, the blatant partisans are not the Texas Republicans who redrew the state’s maps to give themselves a clear political advantage, but rather those who argued, correctly according to the district court, that Texas’ maps were motivated by racial intent.
What is particularly galling about the decision, as Kagan notes, is that under the court’s precedents, it is required to give “significant deference” to a lower court’s findings of fact regarding a racial gerrymander. The 6-3 conservative majority simply ignored that standard.
Kagan chastises her colleagues for acting like “we know better” than the court that actually listened to the evidence.
Compounding the court’s terrible decision is the main rationale used by the majority. “The District Court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections,” the Supreme Court’s majority wrote.
Here the court is obliquely referring to the Purcell principle, which establishes that courts should avoid making decisions too close to an election as it might cause “voter confusion.”
Those of you reading that last paragraph might be confused. It’s December 2025. As Kagan dryly notes, “Texas is not on ‘the eve of an election.’”
If SCOTUS had upheld the district court’s decision, then Texas would use the same House maps from 2022 and 2024. One might even argue that alllowing Republicans to change that map creates far greater “voter confusion.”
The Supreme Court’s reasoning is ludicrous — and also incredibly dangerous. “If Purcell prevents” changing electoral law nearly a year before the election, said Kagan, then “it gives every State the opportunity to hold an unlawful election.”
That means that Indiana and Florida, two Republican-run states that are currently considering redrawing their House maps, could create racial gerrymanders and, according to the Supreme Court, there is no legal discourse to stop them. What’s to prevent Florida from utilizing Jim Crow tactics, such as demanding voters pass a literacy test or adopting poll taxes? The court has, in effect, given Republican states carte blanche to disenfranchise minority voters and ignore the Voting Rights Act.
At the end of her dissent, Kagan chastises her colleagues for acting like “we know better” than the court that actually listened to the evidence and issued a decision. ”I cannot think of a reason why,” she said.
But Kagan is being far too kind. She knows exactly why — as do the rest of us. The conservative majority of the Supreme Court is, in effect, an arm of the Republican Party, intent on helping the GOP, the law be damned. The law is no longer the law. The law is whatever is good for Republicans.
Michael A. Cohen is a political writer and a fellow with the Eurasia Group Foundation.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is considering ending its collection of corporations’ data on the racial and gender makeup of their employees, potentially undercutting a key federal tool to track employment discrimination.
The move also raises questions as to what data the administration expects to use to carry out its effort to prove anti-white discrimination is a systemic problem worthy of intervention.
According to the Washington Post:
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is considering no longer collecting demographic information including race, sex and national origin from major American companies, departing from a practice that began during the civil rights era of the 1960s and was critical to the agency’s efforts to root out workplace discrimination. The EEOC also wants to ax data reporting rules for apprenticeship programs, unions, state and local governments, and schools, as well as reporting requirements in other civil rights laws that protect workers, including those who are pregnant or have disabilities.
The Post’s report notes that race and gender employment data came under fire in Project 2025the far-right playbook Trump’s administration has been following to enact its agenda:
“Crudely categorizing employees by race or ethnicity fails to recognize the diversity of the American workforce and forces individuals into categories that do not fully reflect their racial and ethnic heritage,” wrote Project 2025 author Jonathan Berry, who is now solicitor for the Department of Labor.
The Trump administration’s gutting of federal agenciesits mass purges of employees that decimated diversity in the government and its assault on diversity in corporate America have pushed many people from marginalized groups, particularly Black womenout of the workforce.
Civil rights activist Noreen Farrell, whose work focuses on fair pay and workplace discrimination, told me last year that Trump’s changes at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and his push to end the agency’s jobs report risked making that problem worse.
“First they dismantled workplace protections. Then they gutted DEI programs. Now, as women abandon careers in record numbers, they want to stop counting,” Farrell said, adding, “This is what systematic discrimination looks like in 2025.”
So continues the Trump administration’s war on reputable government data. If the government can obscure or abandon data about who is working where, it will open the door to potential discrimination and hinder efforts to combat it.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
President Donald Trump announced Monday that he has postponed a planned U.S. military strike on Iran at the request of key Gulf allies who said negotiations with Tehran could produce a deal that “will be very acceptable” to the U.S. and other Middle Eastern countries.
Trump said in a lengthy Truth Social postthat he received requests from the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud and United Arab Emirates President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan “to hold off on our planned Military attack of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was scheduled for tomorrow, in that serious negotiations are now taking place.”
“In their opinion, as Great Leaders and Allies, a Deal will be made, which will be very acceptable to the United States of America, as well as all Countries in the Middle East, and beyond. This Deal will include, importantly, NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS FOR IRAN!” Trump said.
Trump said that, “based on [his] respect” of the three leaders, he ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth; Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and the U.S. military to stand down from a strike against Iran scheduled for Tuesday.
The president said, however, that the U.S. military had been instructed to remain ready to launch “a full, large scale assault of Iran, on a moment’s notice” if negotiations fail to produce what he described as an acceptable agreement.
The governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have increasingly positioned themselves as intermediaries while also seeking to avoid a direct military confrontation between the United States and Iran that could threaten oil markets and shipping lanes across the Middle East.
Trump told reporters on Monday the U.S. has briefed Israel and other Middle Eastern partners on the delay and cautioned that it remains unclear whether it will lead to a final agreement.
“It’s a very positive development, but we’ll see whether or not it amounts to anything,” Trump said at a healthcare affordability event. “We’ve had periods of time where we had, we thought, pretty much getting close to making a deal, and didn’t work out, but this is a little bit different now.”
The announcement comes amid escalating tensions between the U.S and Iran following months of military threats, regional instability and disputes over Iran’s nuclear program. Trump had warnedSunday that “the clock is ticking” for Iran to accept a deal as Iran has yet to accept the latest peace proposal.
As diplomatic efforts continue, the president has repeatedly threatened military action against Iran in recent weeks before ultimately delaying or pulling back strikes.
The latest postponement follows earlier pauses tied to ceasefire negotiations and talks through regional allies.
Ebony Davis is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked at BLN as a campaign reporter covering elections and politics.
The Dictatorship
At least 3 dead in shooting at Islamic Center of San Diego, police say threat ‘neutralized’
At least three people and two suspects are dead following a shooting Monday at the Islamic Center of San Diego.
San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said at a press conference Monday afternoon that officers found three dead victims outside the center after responding to reports of an active shooter in the Clairemont neighborhood of San Diego.
Wahl said the two suspected shooters — identified as teenage boys ages 17 and 19 — also died from apparent self-inflicted gunshot wounds.
The victims include a security guard and two staff members from the Islamic school on the center’s grounds, Imam Taha Hassane, the mosque’s director, told MS NOW.
One of the gunmen also fired at a landscaper, who was not injured, according to Wahl.
“Because of the Islamic Center location, we are considering this a hate crime until it’s not,” Wahl said.
Nearby Sharp Memorial Hospital said it is receiving patients.
“Our disaster procedures have been activated and we are coordinating with the County of San Diego and other resources to respond to the incident,” a hospital spokesperson told MS NOW.
“We have never experienced a tragedy like this before. And at this moment all what I can say is we are sending our prayers and standing in solidarity with all the families in our community here,” Hassane told reporters after the shooting. “The other mosques and all the places of worship in our beautiful city should always be protected.”
Hassane called the targeting of a place of worship “extremely outrageous.”
The mosque, the largest in San Diego County, also houses the Al Rashid School, which teaches Arabic language and Islamic studies. All children present at the school are safe and officials established a reunification point for families.
“No one should ever fear for their safety while attending prayers or studying at an elementary school,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group, said in a statement. “We are working to learn more about this incident and we encourage everyone to keep this community in your prayers.”
The FBI’s San Diego Field Office will assist local law enforcement with the investigation.
A White House official told MS NOW that President Donald Trump has been briefed on the shooting this afternoon.
President Donald Trump called the shooting at the mosque a “terrible situation” while speaking to reporters at a White House health care event Monday.
“I’ve been given some early updates, but we’re going to be going back and looking at it very strongly,” Trump said.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
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