Callais, combined with today’s court ruling in Virginia, has jolted Democrats and sent commentators into bemoaning an accelerating “race to the bottom” and, to paraphrase Jeff Zeleny on CNN this afternoon, the end to norms that have organized American politics and redistricting for generations.
I’d like to offer a significantly different view of the situation. What we have seen over recent months is that Democrats have largely abandoned the mode of the last decade plus in which with one hand they fought the partisan battles of the day and with the other assume the mantle of defending the political norms Republicans have already destroyed. In other words, it was the responsibility of Democrats both to be contestants and referees. Republicans violated norms; Democrats tried to uphold them. That of course meant no partisan battle was ever on equal terms and Republicans almost always won them.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais probably closes the book on the use of the Voting Rights Act to ensure Black voting rights in the South. The decision is being taken as a blow to Black voting rights — and even as indicative of the court’s racist leanings — but I wouldn’t jump to those conclusions. The redistricting effort that Callais ends may not have been of unequivocal benefit to the Southern Blacks it was designed to aid. And while it could damage Democratic prospects in 2026, it might help them in the longer run.
With the big news out of Virginia this morning, in addition to the fallout from the Callais decision, we decided that an insta-pod edition of the podcast was important to bring you up to date with what all this means. Kate and I recorded one about an hour ago and it should be in your podcast feeds this afternoon. So if you’re eager to unpack this barrage of news, Kate and I will be answering those questions in this emergency edition of the podcast.
Yesterday, Lauren Egan — who authors The Bulwark’s newsletter about Democrats — sent out a newsletter edition entitled “Get Ready for the Dem Court-Expansion Litmus Test.” (Egan tends to be fairly dismissive of Democrats’ intentions, with a kind of mainstream media vibe.) Today Chief Justice John Roberts is complaining that the public is misinformed thinking that the Supreme Court is made up of corrupt political actors. As I’ve written repeatedly, there are deep inertia pools of opposition to Supreme Court reform. It’s a much heavier, though just as critical, lift than contesting the gerrymandering wars or abolishing the filibuster. But these and other hints show that a movement and a coherent push are beginning to take shape.
Yesterday I wrote a post basically arguing for a broad resistance to allowing the avalanche of corrupt and criminal conduct under the second Trump administration to take on the color of normality and acceptability. The answer to that is broad criminal accountability. The post was entitled, “The Law is Coming.” This was partly a reference to a phrase I used frequently during the first Trump administration, after which the cause of accountability was at best uneven and ultimately a failure, a story we all know well and from bitter experience.
I’m hoping to bring you some news on the DOJ-in-Exile front in the not-too-distant future. It was probably simply too early in the spring and summer of 2025. It’s not too early now. But the DOJ-in-Exile idea was and is part of a more general ambition and agenda — to create a baseline record, a predicate and an expectation of future accountability for the Trump administration’s criminal conduct. Some of that effort is a kind of opposition therapy, resisting the authoritarian aim of convincing the public that the law, the ecosystem of criminal accountability has disappeared. It heartens people. It provides a framework of expectation: the law hasn’t disappeared. We’re in an interregnum. It will return, as will accountability. The battle over expectations about the future is a central battle in any authoritarian takeover.
But it’s not solely a matter of heartening, strengthening the morale of the opposition. It is also very directly and literally laying the groundwork for criminal accountability for a renegade executive and all the corrupt actors and criminals who now populate the executive branch.
And there you have it. As the White House licks its wounds after Virginia’s successful move to redistrict its House map and net Democrats as many as four new seats, the leader of that effort (and most high-profile advocate) has her office raided by the FBI in some hitherto unknown federal investigation. The fact that the Feds tipped Fox News to the raid on state Senate President Pro Tempore Louise Lucas’s office probably tells us all we need to know about this FBI action.
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