volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@JaniceOCG I think you're missing the point that they aren't gutting the VRA at all. They are instead moving to implement it on its own terms, saying that the VRA has been misapplied in the past.

No gutting, no vacant shell, here's the VRA, and it's to be applied as our elected lawmakers made the law.

@marcelias

@JaniceOCG

That's not how the US government works. The VRA is still fully in effect, and in fact so many of the arguments right now are about how to properly make sure it stays in effect.

No, nobody is going to repeal the VRA.

If you want to make changes to it, well then elect better representatives to Congress that will do that. But the VRA is settled law.

@marcelias

@ZzyzxProton

You're missing the actual folks that deserve the most blame the representatives that we keep reelecting even as they fail us over and over.

All of this stuff is not supposed to be fixed by the courts, it's supposed to be mainly up to their representatives that we elect to Congress. But it seems like they spend their time pointing fingers at the other branches for things that are really up to them.

Stop reelecting bad people to Congress and a whole lot of stuff would be fixed.

@grrlscientist No, that's not how this works.

If we want federal voting rules to operate differently then we need to stop reelecting crappy representatives that don't fix Federal voting rules.

This has nothing to do with the court, this has to do with us electing crappy representatives.

Hold your representatives accountable. Stop reelecting them when they fail us. Don't let them point fingers at the court when they fail at their jobs.

@TCatInReality

Or maybe he was just a shitty politician that people didn't like?

@Nonilex

@persagen But that's not how any of this works.

Know your enemy? Okay, well trying to hang this all on Roberts is not knowing the enemy. It's buying into a reductionist story that doesn't reflect how the government actually operates.

@BohemianPeasant that gets it exactly backwards, though.

The argument is that this is what the voting rights act actually called for, so it's not undermining it, it's supporting what the act actually says.

@servelan We elected these representatives, and if we want different ones then we bring should elect different Representatives.

It's foolish to act like we didn't choose this. Apparently this is what we want to happen. A whole lot of voters explicitly say they want this to happen.

So it's not voluntarily surrendering power, it's using power exactly as voters want them to use it.

NYTimes seems to be forgetting the core feature that we voters used our votes to get this, and if we want different then we would vote different.

@DarleneRyan What in the world?

This isn't Trump's call. It's not up to him.

We elect our representatives, and they have the job of sorting out congressional districts. If we don't like how they do it, we don't re-elect them.

It has absolutely nothing to do with Trump, and it is absolutely democratic.

We elected these people to do this job. Stop promoting conspiracy theories when they might derail this democratic process.

@Tooden @dalfen there's just no easy solution to it.

They don't have the employees, and they can't make them out of thin air, so they're stuck.

@mhjohnson Well it's not so much that the special census violates the Constitution, it's more that it just doesn't constitutionally or legally count for certain purposes.

If Trump wants to waste his resources doing that, well okay. But he still doesn't get to use a special census as if it was the legal one.

@deadsuperhero keep in mind that there are huge advantages to letting people control their own experiences, even if that means the publisher doesn't get to control what people experience.

This is part of the whole distributed nature that so many people want to see.

It's the same as not wanting algorithms controlling experiences, different people want the content displayed to them differently, whether because of personal stylistic preferences or even because of things like accessibility to folks with sensory differences.

Yes, the trade-off is that the publisher doesn't get to dictate how things show up to the user. But that's not all bad.

@yukiame and that's how he ended up being a felon.

@Jimijamflimflam What? No, far from everyone agreeing, that has been roundly debunked.

@yukiame I mean, Trump signs an awful lot of executive orders that go nowhere because he doesn't know how the presidency works.

@maeve that's not an accurate description of the case here.

The ruling wouldn't gut the VRA but instead seeks to *uphold* the VRA, with a disagreement over what the VRA actually directs.

The basic disagreement is over whether the VRA creates a procedure for these plaintiffs, or if the VRA was written to protect voters from organizations like this.

@sccdp a lot of those are executive branch matters that the legislative branch doesn't have any authority over.

It's important to push representatives to actually do their jobs and not to get distracted by things that aren't their jobs. In the end that just lets them off the hook for not doing what they're supposed to do.

@jalefkowit meh, No need to reach for such a complicated explanation.

The House is simply reflecting that the representatives we have elected believe it best to align with much of what the president asks for.

It's no more complicated than that. Otherwise they would vote to change course.

@clintruin Yes, Stotomayor often does say things that are profoundly wrong, and anyone paying attention should proudly disagree with her, calling her out for getting it so wrong.

Otherwise the faulty positions that she keeps promoting will just continue to mislead the public.

Other Supreme Court justices realize how problematic it is for her to be selling this misinformation, so we should all join in to forcefully express our disagreement with the misperceptions that she promotes.