Jason McDaniel

Haynes attends the same church as Hegseth, so not looking forward to when the US government tries the civil war again, this time on the side of slavery.

Is the Supreme Court going to doom the Dems? We did the math. Gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act will make it much harder for Democrats to win the House, but not impossible.

We did the math and the net effect of the Supreme Court nerfing the Voting Rights Act, after all the other gerrymandering, is likely that the maps take a consistent, pro-Republican bias roughly matching 2018’s — breakable, but it would be tough. www.theargumentmag.com/p/is-the-sup...

Racist Young Republican Chat Leaves GOP Stumbling to Respond Split over whether to discipline the offenders or just ignore the whole affair.

“I think Vance’s “New Right” will carry the argument. The motivation is obvious: As long as you never criticize anyone on the right for smaller scandals, you don’t have to do the same when the consequences are much greater and involve someone like Trump himself.”

www.thebulwark.com/p/racist-you...

The entire Republican Party strategy for achieving what are comprehensively & wildly unpopular policy objectives now consists entirely of bypassing Article I of the Constitution through wildly illegal abuses of both Article II and Article III.

Junior or Assistant Specialist - Department of Political Science University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!

The Berkeley Center for American Democracy is hiring a predoc next year to work with @gabelenz.bsky.social @hrendleman.bsky.social Cecilia Mo & me. Deadline Jan 30.

aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05187

This was among the more frustrating aspects of the argument this morning. The justices are smart people. They understand that partisan identity is, especially in the South, downstream of racial identity. That went almost entirely unacknowledged.

The Supreme Court Case That Could Hand the House to Republicans

Aside from losing many Democratic seats, Black representation in Congress will probably drop from around 14% of seats (nationally representative) to maybe 7 or 8% (not representative)?

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/u...

The Supreme Court Case That Could Hand the House to Republicans

white reactionaries disenfranchising black voters to secure political power? that’s a jim crow. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/u...

When identity politics Trumps the Constitution The First Amendment is the latest casualty of the Republican Party's identity politics, and Trump's cult of personality. What can stop him?

my thoughts on the nazi GOP text group are roughly what i mentioned in the 1st part of this essay. identity with the GOP has become increasingly correlated w/ "ethnic antagonism" — this type of rhetoric is sadly to be expected as you make GOP identity stronger

www.gelliottmorris.com/p/how-trump-...

Has anyone noted the absurdity of the "color-blind" plaintiffs in this case identifying themselves by race?

In his interview w @jonfavs.bsky.social, @ezraklein.bsky.social asks, "why haven't the tariffs soured the public on Trump?"

An answer from my book on ACA opinions: the contemporary US economy is so diverse & complex that even sizable policy changes don't move opinions consistently.

Section 2 of the 15th Amendment explicitly delegates to Congress the right to decide how to enforce Black voting rights. That's what the text says. And that's the original intent of the framers.

The conservatives' argument boils down to this: The Constitution forbids racial discrimination but --- oops! --- any race-conscious response to race discrimination is ITSELF discriminatory

Remember we're already in a world of Kavanaugh stops based solely on ethnicity. If you are from a targeted group, this can happen to you no matter what your citizenship status is. What if you forget your wallet at home? You could end up in detention for days or worse.

I really loved this piece! Really nice explanation of how parties can distribute / check concentrated power.

A variation on Benjamin Franklin’s 1754 engraving in the Pennsylvania Gazette, published in Philadelphia, in an effort to foster cooperation among the various colonies against the tyrant king of Britain, with the American colonies replaced by the nine universities selected for special collaboration opportunities

Courtesy of colleagues at Penn

Stop. Intervening. At. All. The SCt’s longtime, pre-Roberts practice was to grant emergency relief from a lower ct order only if necessary to preserve the status quo on the ground. The lower cts are open and operating. Opt. Back. Out.

An Adverse Ruling Against Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in the Callais Case Could Also Doom State Voting Rights Acts #ELB I have written about the dangers of the Court killing off or significantly weakening Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, via the surprise reargument in the Louisiana v. Callais case. If the Court rule...

An Adverse Ruling Against Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in the Callais Case Could Also Doom State Voting Rights Acts electionlawblog.org?p=152469

Gavin Newsom signs law overhauling local zoning to build more housing After weeks of waiting, California’s governor signed a bill that will allow mid-rise apartment buildings near major transit stops in California’s biggest metro areas.

Ben Metcalf @ternerhousing.bsky.social: "If costs come down and interest rates drop, you can imagine we’ve set the table for a building boom."

calmatters.org/housing/2025...

Now Trump is hoping to at least get a Daytime Nobel Peace Prize.

Memo to Future Historians: This Is Fascism, and Millions of Us See It From Chicago to Portland, James Comey to Letitia James, and so much else—this is no longer America.

Excellent piece by @mjtoma.bsky.social pulling together everything that has happened in the last week. newrepublic.com/post/201625/...

Muni Metro Capacity Study Draft recommendations

In the 70s, engineers warned that merging 5 unprotected streetcars into a single subway was a bad idea. So glad today's Muni team has plan to rationalize SF's main subway and prepare for ridership growth storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/8c45...

The N-Judah and core Market Street subway are expected to face significant capacity problems as SF grows from the beginning of its current boom cycle

Ep. 18: September to Remember October 6 • S1 E18 • 44 min Also, we proposed a idea how to do a end run on vote by mail. Concept is based on what Trump proposed. When you vote, you check everyone's citizenship as well as voter ID. In a vote by mail state, you might be able to check citizenship during voter registration. You can send copies of your passport and your birth certificate in. How in the world are you going to check our voters? Voter ID, right? Vote by mail. So that creates a problem for Oregon. But if federal government new requirement is to check both, and if Oregon can comply with the requirements, what would happen to our election result? I'm talking about the entire federal delegation. For federal elections, we're talking about only federal elections. COMMON SENSE Vascluar

Ep. 18: September to Remember October 6 • S1 E18 • 44 min So entire federal delegation, congressmen and senators could be challenged, could be unseated because you didn't follow federal requirements to elect them. So I said the trade-off is worth it. You know why? Democrats control two Senate seats out of six congressional seats. We only control one. They control five. You talk about trade-off, right? COMMON SENSE Sanctuany

Two big GOP activists from Oregon were in DC last month for meetings with Trump admin officials. On their podcast they talk about a plan they discussed to nullify the results of Oregon's 2026 federal elections. Pass federal voter ID law, then refuse to seat OR delegation because OR didn't comply.

Memo to Bari Weiss Re: CBS News: You’re doomed Bari Weiss has sold her company, The Free Press, to manage the decline of broadcast news at CBS. How many ways can it go wrong?

please read my memo www.theverge.com/business/793...

Please Destroy Me This Way: Sexy Goth IV 1997-2025

♦ NEW PLAYLIST ♦

PLEASE DESTROY ME THIS WAY: SEXY GOTH IV 1997-2025

More modern sounds of dark romance

Spotify:
open.spotify.com/playlist/2QW...

Apple Music:
music.apple.com/us/playlist/...

YouTube:
www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Yes. More broadly: There are no absolute powers in the United States Constitution of *separated institutions sharing powers.* The president is commander in chief...but Congress can and does make all sorts of laws specifying what the military will be and how it will operate.

It’s time for soft secession How blue states can use their economic clout to stand up to Trump’s agenda—starting with California.

It's all well and good that @gavinnewsom.bsky.social and @jbpritzker.bsky.social are pushing back on Trump. But blue states—led by California, the 4th largest economy in the world—need to do more to team up and fight.

By me: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Contrary to Stephen Miller, the president is not "commander-in-chief" of law enforcement within the United States. The invocation of the title "commander-in-chief" to justify anything Trump wants to do anywhere is a sign of how far down the road the administration is to Caesarism.