The Voting Rights Act is all but dead. Prepare for maximum gerrymandering.
The Voting Rights Act was a signature triumph of the civil rights movement; since its passage in 1965, it has guaranteed Black and Latino voters a minimum level of political representation in states controlled by white Republicans. But now, with SCOTUS’s decision in Callais, that protection is all but gone, and each state’s power to gerrymander however the hell it wants has been turned to 11. In his analysis of the Court’s opinion, Ian Millhiser explains how the Republican justices justified their decision in legal terms and the new obstacles litigants against all gerrymanders will now face. “Callais is such an effusive love letter to the concept of partisan gerrymandering that it is likely to eliminate any remaining concerns political parties may have that the Supreme Court might push back if states draw maps too obviously rigged in their favor,” he writes. Indeed, the supercharged gerrymandering wars have already begun.
The rise of the MAHA teens
In the years since the Covid-19 pandemic, the “Make America Healthy Again” movement has grown large enough to alter the nation’s politics, healthcare, and diet cultures. That movement, at first, was largely driven by moms worried about their children’s safety. But now, some of those kids are driving the movement themselves.
In her new story, Anna North describes how MAHA is starting to forefront teenagers and very young adults. To understand how this happened, she spoke with some of the influencers themselves. Her story unpacks why these creators are amassing larger young audiences on social media and why Gen Z may be particularly susceptible to MAHA’s messaging. Parents and other concerned educators hoping to combat misinformation about food, medicine, and health will find expert advice in the story’s close, too.
The sad debate over Michael
It wasn’t so long ago that the bracing HBO documentary Leaving Neverland seemed to provide a kind of finality over the question of whether Michael Jackson sexually abused children before his death in 2009. His songs were pulled from commercials, The Simpsons stopped syndicating its episode featuring him, and the acclaimed movie received widespread media attention. But this past weekend, the new biopic Michael — which sidesteps the extensive accusations against the King of Pop — became a box office smash.
Graham Platner’s triumph, explained by a Maine reporter
After Maine Gov. Janet Mills bowed out of her campaign against Graham Platner this week, the “oysterman” now has a clear path to the Democratic nomination for US Senate. That means in November, he’ll face off against one of the party’s longtime targets: GOP Sen. Susan Collins. How did Platner triumph over Mills so quickly and handily? And what are his chances, really, against Collins?
Vox’s Andrew Prokop spoke about the race with Alex Seitz-Wald, a veteran national politics reporter who now helps to run a local newspaper in Maine, the Midcoast Villager. Seitz-Wald clarifies that it wasn’t only Mills’s advanced age that doomed her run, and that it wasn’t just Platner’s ideological bent that helped him overcome numerous scandals and catapulted him to the nomination. The Mainer also cautions Democrats not to celebrate too early — or to take the polling showing Platner ahead of Collins this November for granted. Collins has defied the polls before, and she’s won too many times to count out this early. “Discount or underestimate Susan Collins at your own risk,” he says.
The daring dog rescue that set the animal rights movement on fire
One doesn’t imagine animal rights demonstrations as drawing national media attention, attracting hundreds of participants at once, or facing the kind of police brutality Americans have become all too accustomed to witnessing in other protest contexts in recent years. But all that happened a couple weeks ago in Madison, Wisconsin, when more than 1,000 protesters attempted a daring rescue of 2,000 beagles from a research lab and faced rubber bullets and tear gas from police responders, with many protesters arrested in the process. Vox’s Marina Bolotnikova was on the scene, and her report is a gripping account and explanation of how it all happened. Set aside some time to read the whole thing, and you’ll come away with a much deeper understanding of this viral event, and of the modern animal rights movement more broadly. And a happy coda: On Thursday, news emerged that the farms (and lab) at the center of the demonstration reached a deal with two animal rescue organizations to purchase 1,500 of the dogs protesters were trying to rescue, to give them medical care, and to adopt them out in private homes. But the remaining 500 beagles still face an uncertain fate.
