Today is Tuesday, February 8, 2022. Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court weakened voting rights to a great extent in this country by deciding 5-4 to allow a congressional map drawn by Alabama Republicans to remain in place, thus freezing a lower court ruling that said the map likely violates the Voting Rights Act by diluting the political power of Black voters.

In an online article written by Arianne de Vogue and Tierney Sneed entitled “Supreme Court lets GOP-drawn Alabama congressional map that critics say dilutes power of Black voters stay in place,” the ramifications of this ruling on voting rights is assessed herein.

The lower court had ordered a new map to be drawn which could have led to Democrats gaining another seat in the House in the fall. But now that won’t happen because of the conservative-leaning composition of the Supreme Court left by the former president. One good thing about the disappointing ruling is that Chief Justice John Roberts joined the three liberal justices in dissent. However, that doesn’t change the outcome of the ruling which disenfranchises voters of color.

This unfair court order means that the map will be used for the state’s upcoming primary, and likely be in place for the entire election cycle, while the legal challenge plays out. The order halts an opinion by a panel of three judges that held that the Alabama map likely violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act because it only includes one district where Black voters have the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice.

Vile Justice Brett Kavanaugh writing for himself and fellow conservative Justice Samuel Alito said the court acted in order to maintain the status quo while the justices consider the issue. So does this mean there could be a future decision on the issue, as Kavanaugh implied. The Dumpf appointee further said the court’s order “does not make or signal any change” to voting rights law. No, what do you think the court just did then? It throws a wrench into the congressional map in Alabama.

In his dissent, Chief Justice Roberts said that while he agreed that the court should take up the issue for next term to “resolve the wide-ranging uncertainties” in the case, he would have allowed the district court opinion to stand while the appeals process played out. The Supreme Court will now hear the full case next fall. God forbid what might happen then!

Justice Elena Kagan, writing for her liberal colleagues Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, wrote a much more strongly worded dissent. Kagan minced no words when she said the majority had gone “badly wrong” in granting Alabama’s request to freeze the lower court opinion and the court’s decision “forces Black Alabamians to suffer what under the law is clear vote dilution.” She also said the decision will undermine a key section of the Voting Rights Act.

Kagan went on to criticize the Court for using its “shadow docket” (a term that refers to the Court’s emergency docket) without full briefing and oral argument put into the mix. She said the court’s action “does a disservice” to Black Alabamians who “have had their electoral power diminished – in violation of a law this court once knew to buttress all of American Democracy.”

Reacting to the court’s latest inequitable decision, firebrand and racist Rep. Mo Brooks complained to an Alabama website that “skin pigmentation” should not factor into the congressional redistricting process. Brooks went on to express his racism even broader, saying, “These liberal activist judges have tried to segregate us based on race, I find that abominable, in order to elect people in certain parts of the state based on race, which I also think is abominable. We’ve got to put the skin pigmentation issue behind us.” It’s all fine and good for this white Alabama representative since so many of his colleagues have introduced legislation in many states that have made voting so much more cumbersome for people of color. This action will only affect races for Democrats, primarily, since most communities of color tend to vote Democratic in elections and if they are prevented from doing so, who do you think this favors? Let’s hope this sparks Democrats in pushing for renewed passage of Biden’s refurbished voting rights legislation before it’s too late.

I’m happy to report that the White House condemned the controversial Florida bill dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill that might pass in the “DeSantis State” that would effectively ban certain discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom in an article on my CNN smartphone app by Maegan Vazquez and Steve Contorno entitled “White House says Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill is designed to target and attack ‘the kids who need support the most.'”

The criticism from the White House condemns the legislation as part of a larger trend of repugnican leaders across the country taking actions designed to treat students like political pawns.

The person taking on this ugly repugnican action is White House assistant press secretary, Kevin Munoz, who said that the legislation being considered in Florida would harm kids who need the most protection in school and are “already vulnerable to bullying and violence just for being themselves.” Munoz went on to say that this is not an isolated action. “Across the country, we’re seeing Republican leaders take actions to regulate what students can or cannot read, what they can or cannot learn, and most troubling, who they can or cannot be,” Munoz asserted. He condemned the republican incentive in Florida as “politics at its worst, cynically treating our students as pawns in a game and not people who deserve love and respect. At every step of the way, Republicans have peddled in cheap, political attacks, instead of focusing on the issues parents, students, and teachers care about.”

The bill’s many opponents warn that, if passed, it would lead to further stigmatization of gay, lesbian, and transgender children, causing more bullying and suicides within an already marginalized community. They say the bill would eliminate LGBTQ history from the curriculum and prevent teachers from having discussions in their classrooms if questions about sexual orientation and gender identity ever came up.

Supporters of the bill say the cease and desist is directed more at school districts and that it would not prevent teachers from having those conversations if they arose. Nor, they contend, would it prevent same-sex parents from participating in classroom activities or keep teachers from sponsoring gay-lesbian alliance clubs. If this is true, why even go forward with the legislation in the first place? I wonder. To me, it’s designed to shackle teachers from having frank discussions about student identity. Of course, pedagogues would generally use their discretion before tackling such subjects, say, in elementary school or middle school.

Defending the White House’s involvement in condemning a state directive, press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters today that the White House decided to take the rare step of condemning the bill in order to make a statement.

Strongly declaring the position of the Biden administration toward the proposed legislation, Psaki released this long statement: “Every parent, as one myself too, hopes that our leaders will ensure their children’s safety, protection and freedom, and today, conservative politicians in Florida rejected those basic values by advancing legislation that is designed to target and attack the kids who need support, support the most, kids from the LGBTQ!+ community, who are already vulnerable to bullying – and we’ve seen that in study after study – and violence, just for being themselves and just for being who they are.” Take that, Ron “Death” DeSantis who couldn’t even say where he stands on the absurdity of the RNC calling those involved in the January 6th insurrection as taking part in legitimate political discourse with reporters today. He hemmed and hawed and wouldn’t directly condemn the Republican National Committee or even say he still stands behind the Orange Fuhrer.

Apropos of the aforementioned article on Republicans’ disdain for children – at least those children deemed as “outliers” – an article by Justin Rosario for The Banter really hit the nail on the head with his argument that Republicans actually hate their children in “Why Do Republicans Hate Their Children?”

Rosario’s argument is this: the extreme disdain for climate change as exhibited by many on the far right, the opposition from repugnicans in passing commonsense gun control legislation designed to take the boatload of guns off our city streets, and their disdain for public education as illustrated in the far right’s banning of so-called controversial books from school curriculums such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus from a Tennessee school district, including books on Black people, the LGBTQ community, and other objectionable subjects, are all harmful to children, their children. The discharge from a gun in an elementary or high school class does not discriminate from Democrat or Republican. A bullet aimed for a middle schooler or a high school student doesn’t discern the target’s political affiliation.

In accordance with the proposed Florida bill, Rosario writes about legislation that is now being considered in Oklahoma where a Republican Oklahoma lawmaker has proposed legislation that would allow teachers to be sued if they promote contradicting religious beliefs held by a student. Is this outrageous or not? It’s bad enough that school board meetings have turned into war zones where Republican parents are targeting school officials and teachers with abuse. Teachers are being terrorized in this country over supposedly teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) or for following COVID-19 protocols concerning mask wearing and mandating vaccines for the little ones. Rosario states that because of this abuse from the far right, “Teachers are quitting and people are not taking their places.”

While Rosario had profuse praise for teachers who “go through seven levels of hell for their students,” sometimes even taking a bullet for their students, it’s Republican parents who “are working nonstop to make schools so unsafe and miserable that teachers can no longer do their jobs.” The impact of a wholesale resignation of competent teachers will have a catastrophic effect on the children of these selfish and vindictive (just as their Orange God has imbued in them) people that will last a lifetime.

That’s it for me tonight. I have to calm down after writing about these new outrages arising from one political party in this country. Will there ever be a surcease of the madness? I keep on asking. The news is depressingly the same every day, it seems.

Tomorrow is Wednesday, so I know where I’ll be.

Stay safe and be well.