The Dictatorship

It’s now clearer than ever that Democrats must pack the Supreme Court

Published

1 month ago

May 12, 2026

May. 11, 2026, 4:41 PM EDT

In seemingly the blink of an eye, the gerrymandering wars have turned against Democrats — all because of unelected judges imposing their views over the will of voters and elected officials.

If Democrats are able to win back power despite the new electoral hurdles the courts have placed before them, there is only one path forward: judicial reform and, in particular, adding new justices to the Supreme Court. Indeed, packing the court may soon become a new litmus test for Democratic politicians — and it should be. Any hope of Democrats holding power and enacting their agenda will rely on undoing the Supreme Court’s partisan lean.

GOP-controlled Southern states quickly proved why the Voting Rights Act was so necessary.

Over the weekend, Democrats focused their ire on Virginia’s Supreme Court after four of the court’s seven justices threw out the results of a statewide redistricting referendum in which three million Virginians cast a ballot. With that ruling, the court undid Democratic efforts to flip four House seats from red to blue.

But the real culprit for the Democrats’ sudden reversal of fortune is the conservative majority sitting on the Supreme Court in Washington. It’s because of their actions that Virginia Democrats were pushed to redraw their congressional maps in the first place.

Back in 2019, the Supreme Court issued one of its most damaging decisions in recent memory. In Rucho v. Common Causethe court’s conservative justices ruled that even though “excessive partisanship in districting leads to results that reasonably seem unjust,” federal courts simply could not adjudicate partisan gerrymandering.

“For the first time ever,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent, “this Court refuses to remedy a constitutional violation because it thinks the task beyond judicial capabilities.”

Writing for the conservative majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that “the court’s decision does not condone excessive partisan gerrymandering.” But that’s precisely what has happened since — and until recently, almost exclusively to the benefit of Republicans.

Last month’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais compounded the damage. The court’s conservatives eviscerated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which was enacted to stop Jim Crow laws that limited Black political participation and had provided voters a legal path to challenge racially discriminatory election laws.

Incredibly, Justice Samuel Alito made clear in his opinion that states can now defend themselves against claims of racial gerrymandering by arguing that they are merely engaged in partisan gerrymandering — even though, in the South, limiting Democratic representation and Black political representation is in effect one and the same. But in allowing states to use partisan gerrymandering as a cover for racial gerrymandering, Alito is not merely condoning partisan gerrymandering — he’s endorsing it.

GOP-controlled Southern states quickly proved why the Voting Rights Act was so necessary.

it’s impossible to disentangle the court’s decision-making from a desire to help Republicans win elections.

Tennessee Republicans quickly to carved up Memphis to remove the state’s only Black-majority district. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry suspended House primary elections in which some 80,000 votes had already been cast so the Republican-controlled state Legislature could erase a majority-Black district. Republicans in Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina may follow suit and, in effect, gut Black representation across the South.

The Voting Rights Act, a triumph of the Civil Rights Movement, has been destroyed by partisan Republicans masquerading as Supreme Court justices. (Though President Trump remains unsatisfied. In a Sunday social media post complaining about the court’s hostility to his administration’s stance on birthright citizenship, Trump wrote, “In fact, I should be the one wanting to PACK THE COURT!”)

As Kagan wrote in her dissent in Callais, the Voting Rights Act brought America “closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality,” and the law had “repeatedly, and overwhelmingly, reauthorized by the people’s representatives in Congress.”

But none of that mattered to the court. Indeed, it’s impossible to disentangle the court’s decision-making from a desire to help Republicans win elections.

Last December, a district judge in Texas, after nine days of hearings and testimony from 23 witnesses, issued a 160-page decision throwing out Texas’s mid-decade gerrymander. The Trump-appointed judge found overwhelming evidence that Texas had created a racial gerrymander.

Without even bothering to hold a hearing, the Supreme Court breezily dismissed the lower court’s findings and criticized it for having “improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections.”

Yet in the Callais decision, the Supreme Court granted Louisiana’s request to dispense with the usual waiting period between issuing the decision and sending it to a lower court. By doing so, the justices are allowing the state to expedite rewriting its congressional maps. If this isn’t an example of the Supreme Court improperly inserting itself into “an active primary campaign” and “causing much confusion,” it’s hard to imagine what would qualify.

But of course the conservative justices are more than happy to violate past precedent and put their fingers on the scale to help Republicans.

If a law as sacrosanct as the Voting Rights Act is vulnerable from the Supreme Court’s meddling, no legislation passed by Democrats will be safe. u

To be clear, this is not just a problem in the federal courts. Last month, Florida Republicans passed their own partisan gerrymander even though the state’s constitution, thanks to a 2011 voter-passed referendum, explicitly forbids partisan gerrymandering. Nonetheless, few political observers expect Florida’s Republican-leaning state Supreme Court to overturn the new maps.

The courts’ increasingly partisan lean puts Democrats in a near-impossible situation. Even if Democrats control the House, Senate and White House come January 2029 — still a reasonable possibility — there’s every reason to believe that the court’s conservative majority will use its judicial veto to undermine Democrats’ political and legislative objectives.

This is why an increasing number of Democratic politicians and pundits are calling on the party, if it takes back power, to pack the court with liberal judges in order to undo the conservative majority’s political stranglehold. And they are right to do so.

But what has so far been a trickle could soon become a torrent. A political environment where the nation’s highest court is the GOP’s political trump card is not one in which Democrats can engage in normal politics. They will be operating on a playing field that, because of the court’s interventions, will be tilted toward Republicans.

If a law as sacrosanct as the Voting Rights Act is vulnerable from the Supreme Court’s meddling, no legislation passed by Democrats will be safe. Adding new justices is a more-than-reasonable response to a Supreme Court that continually acts with thinly veiled partisan zeal.

Critics will argue that if Democrats take this momentous step, Republicans will respond in kind when they retake power.

Let them. For too long, the court’s decisions have been an abstraction to voters — seemingly immune from political considerations. But if tit-for-tat court packing is the future of American politics, then let voters decide if they prefer a conservative or liberal Supreme Court.

But the larger issue for Democrats is how they wield political power. Last year, when it seemed obvious that Republicans were in danger of losing their House majority, Trump pushed Republicans to engage in an unprecedented wave of mid-decade redistricting. The GOP is now poised to pick up between eight and 10 House seats — in effect insulating the party, at least in part from voter anger.

None of this would be happening if not for the Supreme Court’s partisan interventions.

This electoral advantage for Republicans doesn’t even take into account the high court’s near-constant judicial interventions on behalf of the Trump administration. Since Trump took office, the court has issued so-called shadow docket rulings in favor of the administration’s requests for relief 80% of the time — often with little or no explanation. In 2024, the justices played a delaying game with Trump’s federal indictments before the court issued what amounted to a get-out-of-jail-free card for presidential misconduct. And of course, there was the 2022 decision that undid the 50-year precedent of Roe v. Wade and led to the criminalization of abortion in dozens of states. In short, the court’s political and ideological interventions, often discarding well-established precedents, have been going on for some time and, almost exclusively, at the expense of Democrats.

Democrats have little choice but to respond to the GOP’s efforts to increase their political advantage (as they tried to do in Virginia). Adding new judges to the court is not the last step in that process, but it’s essential. To defeat Republicans, they must act as ruthlessly as Republicans.

Michael Cohen is the publisher of the newsletter Truth and Consequences and hosts the weekly podcast “That ‘70s Movie Podcast.”

The Dictatorship

Court denies request to immediately block DOJ ‘slush fund’

Published

4 hours ago

June 11, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Court denies request to immediately block DOJ ‘slush fund’

Jun. 10, 2026, 6:14 PM EDT

A federal judge in Washington has denied a bid Wednesday brought by a watchdog group to immediately block the Justice Department’s “anti-weaponization” fund, for now choosing to trust the department’s assertions that it is not moving forward with the fund.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled immediately, denying Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s request for a temporary restraining order that would have blocked the Department of Justice from taking steps to create the fund.

Throughout the 30-minute hearing, the DOJ reiterated that the administration was not moving forward with the nearly $1.8 billion fund, which seeks to compensate individuals who allege they have been politically targeted or victimized by the DOJ.

Andrew Block, the only lawyer present for the government, repeatedly cited Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s June 2 congressional testimonyin which he said the administration was “not moving forward” with plans to create the fund.

Leon indicated he agreed with the DOJ’s position that the case appeared to be moot, saying he was not persuaded there was an issue for the court to decide regarding the creation of the fund. He issued a stern warning to the DOJ, saying, “Don’t play possum with this court!” — meaning he does not want to be deceived.

The plaintiffs argued Blanche’s testimony did not amount to an official cancellation. Nikhel Sus, CREW’s attorney, said Blanche “refused to memorialize that rescission,” or in other words, put it in writing. Sus said that was “highly unusual.” Leon responded, “This whole case is highly unusual to say the least.”

Leon asked the government twice why they would not just rescind the order that established the fund. Block responded, “I don’t know,” and pointed again to Blanche’s public statements about the fund’s future.

Both Leon and Sus raised the issue of Trump’s continued public defense of the fund. “It can still be an important issue and also not moving forward,” Block said. “That isn’t a direction to move forward with the fund.”

Although Leon rejected CREW’s bid for an immediate block, he indicated he is still considering its request for a longer-term block against the fund.

A block order from a separate federal judge in Virginia remains in effect until at least Friday.

Fallon Gallagher is a legal affairs reporter for MS NOW.

The Dictatorship

Trump is accelerating our Social Security insolvency crisis

Published

4 hours ago

June 11, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Jun. 10, 2026, 5:50 PM EDT

The date when Social Security’s trust fund is expected to run out of money just got bumped up. The fund is now projected to empty in 2032according to a new report released by Social Security’s trustees.

The new depletion date isn’t an earth-shaking change — it’s only a quarter earlier than the estimate in last year’s report. But it illustrates how President Donald Trump’s policies are degrading a program he promised to never jeopardize — and accelerating an approaching crisis in how our government will assist the elderly and disabled.

The report names three factors that contributed to the earlier insolvency date. One is a declining fertility rate, but the other two drivers can be traced back to Trump: a drop in immigration into the country, and the “substantial effect” of the tax policies in the One Big Beautiful Bill he signed last summer.

Trump’s acceleration of the program’s insolvency comes atop his assaults on the program’s administrative capacities.

Reduced immigration during Trump’s second term — especially when coupled with a declining fertility rate — strains Social Security because the program is funded through payroll taxes. Those come out of people’s paychecks, and fewer workers supporting an aging population means the program receives less revenue. Indeed, Social Security already has been tapping its trust fund for the better part of the past two decades because the program’s costs have exceeded its cash income. And as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities pointed out last yearlast year’s tax cuts were a boon to the rich but a bust for the solvency of the Social Security trust fund.

To be clear, if the fund is depleted, Social Security won’t go belly up. Benefits will continue to be paid out, but there will be a large drop in the amount. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that the “average monthly cut would total $500, which is more than what the average retired household spends on groceries each month.”

That would be a huge blow to the budgets of many older Americans. Social Security is a major source of income for most retirees, and roughly 40% of beneficiaries over the age of 65 rely on it for most of their income. And it would mark the destabilization of the sole source of retirement security for most Americans that is supposed to be insulated from ups and downs — unlike 401K plans. As the CBPP has pointed outSocial Security is “most workers’ only source of guaranteed retirement income that is not subject to investment risk or financial market fluctuations.”

Trump’s acceleration of the program’s insolvency comes atop his assaults on the program’s administrative capacities. His cuts to the Social Security Administration have left offices understaffedincreased wait timesand reduced quality of customer service.

Ultimately, Trump is exacerbating a colossal social safety net problem that predates him, and the trust fund will hit dire straits after he has left office. Democrats need to have clear plans for shoring up the program and making it robust for the future — which will require not being sheepish about taxes as a tool for renewing the social contract. And when Republicans try to claim that they, too, are champions of Social Security, all Democrats need to do is point to the truth.

Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy.

The Dictatorship

Wednesday’s Mini-Report, 6.10.26

Published

4 hours ago

June 11, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* The latest from Northern Ireland: “The family of a man who lost an eye in a knife attack appealed for calm on Wednesday after the incident triggered a wave of anti-immigrant violence in Belfast overnight, with masked men burning families out of their homes and torching vehicles. The appeal ‌came as a Sudanese man appeared in court charged with attempted murder and as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and politicians in Northern Ireland condemned the violence by ‘masked thugs’ that had targeted ethnic minorities.”

* In related news: “The British government hit out at X owner Elon Musk Wednesday, accusing him of whipping up tensions online ahead of disorder in Belfast.”

* The tenuous state of a dubious ceasefire: “Trump said the U.S. is going to hit Iran ‘hard’ today when pressed by reporters in the Oval Office about his statement earlier that Tehran will ‘pay the price’ for taking ‘too long’ to reach a peace agreement. ‘Well, we’re going to be attacking them and attacking them very hard, resuming bombing,’ he said.”

* The latest casualty figures from Lebanon: “Israel’s military offensive in Lebanon has killed at least 3,666 people, including 131 healthcare workers, and injured more than 11,300 since the U.S. and Israel began their war with Iran in late February, the Lebanese health ministry reported yesterday.”

* The changing nature of modern warfare: “Ukraine is wreaking havoc on unarmored trucks and trains in the battlefield’s rear, using drones with upgraded engines and batteries, integrated Starlink communication systems and new artificial-intelligence capabilities. The ramped-up attacks are causing fuel shortages, complicating troop rotations and reducing Russian military activity on the front.”

* This seems like a reasonable request: “Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee demanded Wednesday that Bill Pulte, President Donald Trump’s controversial pick for acting director of national intelligence, submit to a full security check before assuming the post, including an examination of his financial holdings and foreign contacts.”

* Some market trends can’t be stopped despite the White House’s best efforts: “Even as President Donald Trump boosts coal over clean energy, solar power is hitting new milestones in the U.S. and remains the leading source of new power. Data released Wednesday by global energy think tank Ember, along with a report by the Solar Energy Industries Association and analytics firm Wood Mackenzie, show the continued growth of solar and decline of coal in the United States despite federal policy. In May, for the first time, solar supplied more of the nation’s electricity than coal, or 12.8%, Ember said.”

* A bizarre schedule for a nonemergency vanity project: “Federal officials are laying more groundwork to begin construction on President Donald Trump’s planned 250-foot-tall triumphal arch, sharing additional documents that detail the project’s scope and an aggressive timetable for potentially completing work before Trump’s term ends. According to National Park Service documents posted this month, the administration envisions 20 hours per day of construction on the arch, year-round, in hopes of completing the project within two to three years.”

See you tomorrow.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”