on the right, "bravery" is when you're willing to be criticized by liberals, even if the position you're taking is fully embraced by the federal government and half the states.

The Athletic@theathletic.com · 5d ago

Speaking for the first time since ralliers began assembling in support of her stance against transgender participation in women’s sports, Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham said this was an opportunity for the WNBA to uphold its values of diversity and inclusion. nyti.ms/4fHr4Qn

“I’m definitely aware of my inability to vote and to be able to affect my community in that way,” says a formerly incarcerated man in Virginia. “My being disenfranchised keeps me a few steps away from the freedom I was hoping [for] when I was released.”

Virginia Governor Restores Voting Rights for Thousands With Past Felony Convictions - Bolts

This is the only state that was banning people convicted of any felony from voting for life. Virginians have an opportunity to end that system for good in November.

boltsmag.org

Autopsies of Black Lives Matter and George Floyd protests often conclude that movements produced tough-on-crime backlash. My new study in Work and Occupations finds a different kind of movement outcome: BLM changed how local reporters cover cops and jails. 🧵 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

“I’m definitely aware of my inability to vote and to be able to affect my community in that way,” said Quadaire Patterson, who completed his sentence in 2024. “My being disenfranchised keeps me a few steps away from the freedom I was hoping when I was released.”

Bolts@boltsmag.org · 6d ago

NEW in Bolts: Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger today announced she is restoring the voting rights of about 66,000 people with past felony convictions, reversing the course set by her predecessor, Glenn Youngkin.

Governor Spanberger’s announcement comes just four months before a ballot measure that could ensure people can vote as soon as they leave prison, ending the governors’ discretion to restrict or expand voting rights at their pleasure.

Virginia Governor Restores Voting Rights for Thousands With Past Felony Convictions - Bolts

This is the only state that was banning people convicted of any felony from voting for life. Virginians have an opportunity to end that system for good in November.

boltsmag.org

People need to start getting disbarred for this shit.

CNN@cnn.com · 5d ago

The Justice Department is admitting that a $14 million renovation on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, DC, was flawed, and is dropping the criminal case against a former Olympian that accused him of damaging the pool, according to a new court filing. https://cnn.it/3RJJnwj

Opponents of civil rights will cynically pretend the sky is falling, but here’s the truth: Virginia’s current felony disenfranchisement scheme is by far the harshest in the country. We’re currently the ONLY state to permanently ban voting based on a felony, with no automatic restoration.

Taniel@taniel.bsky.social · 6d ago

BIG DEAL on voting rights this morning: Governor Spanberger just restored the voting rights of some 60,000+ Virginians. Her move reverses Youngkin's abrupt decision in 2023 to end automatic voting rights restoration, which brought Virginia back to a system of default lifetime disenfranchisement.

So far, it appears the district judges in CA5 are operating as though this stay ruling does not bind them. Here's the latest from Judge Saldana, who acknowledges it but says the lack of analysis means there's nothing to follow. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Steve Vladeck@stevevladeck.bsky.social · 2w ago

On Tuesday, the full Fifth Circuit granted DOJ's request for a "precedential stay" of district court rulings holding that the Due Process Clause requires bond hearings for immigration detainees w/in 90 days of their arrest. Today's "One First" explains why that's a really big (and problematic) deal:

A cop in Wisconsin used Flock to search his ex’s license plate information 200 times. Months later, the officer assigned to investigate him was criminally charged for doing the same thing. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Police keep losing their jobs for using Flock cameras to stalk people

Advocates say it's too easy to abuse automated license plate reader technology.

motherjones.com

In addition to being illegal and immoral, this is also how you get increasingly radicalized and disruptive protests. If an entirely legitimate and peaceful protest gets punished anyway, no reason not to go further.

Bill Grueskin@bgrueskin.bsky.social · 4w ago

“A group of students sat in the audience while FIU President Jeanette Nuñez held an on-campus event with Alex Rodriguez. “A half hour into the program, students stood up and unveiled shirts that said ‘ICE OFF FIU’ and stood silently for a few minutes. They then left” www.wlrn.org/government-p...

Justice Jackson’s concurrence is dead on: “The distortion of historical facts—retellings that reimagine and repurpose past events to lend credence to misbegotten aims— may be an even greater threat."

And where is the left wing Hoover Institution, the left wing Heritage Foundation/AEI/Manhattan Institute, the left wing New York Post, the left wing Bohemian Club?

Larry Glickman@larryglickman.bsky.social · last mo.

To start, Rufo says, "The left is over-institutionalized, and the right is under-institutionalized." Klein chips in with, "I say this all the time, man. The left is overformed by institutions, the right is underformed." What? Where is the left wing Federalist Society, Fox News, or Turning Point?/4

Citing Harlan's dissent in Plessy to argue for killing the 14th amendment is some fucking move

Gabriel Malor@gabrielmalor.bsky.social · last mo.

Justice Thomas, also in dissent, similarly claims that it "devalues" citizenship to recognize the children of "birth tourists and illegal aliens" as citizens. Again, as if the quality of American citizenship depends on who else is a citizen.

I released the following statement after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that states can ban transgender women and girls from competing in women’s and girls’ sports: “Today’s decision is rooted in fear and exclusion, not fairness. (1/2)

They have no other way to gut the Fourteenth Amendment save an ideologically captured Court. Perhaps the Court should have less of a hold on our understanding of the Constitution. That will take a ton of work, but the Court is doing a great deal of it on its own.

We'll get the four remaining #SCOTUS decisions in reverse order of seniority (of the author) starting at 10 ET. One note: the two transgender discrimination cases could come down three different ways: as one ruling; as two substantive rulings; or as one substantive ruling and one procedural ruling.

Me this morning on the biggest news out of #SCOTUS yesterday (Slaughter); how to think about the news we expect out of the Court today (including, but not limited to, birthright citizenship); and why it matters that the term doesn't actually end when the justices step of the bench later this a.m.:

236. Three Thoughts Heading into the Last Decision Day of the Term

A quick post reflecting on (some of) the news the Supreme Court made on Monday and (some of) the news we expect from the justices later today.

stevevladeck.com

NEW - emergency ep on SCOTUS ending independent agencies, except the fed, for [reasons TK here, but maybe because confederate sympathizers were right to be hostile to the Reconstruction Congress and also our stock portfolios] pod.link/1469168641/e...

SCOTUS Kills Independent Agencies, Expands Presidential Power

Listen to SCOTUS Kills Independent Agencies, Expands Presidential Power from Strict Scrutiny wherever you get your podcasts!

pod.link

No, see, "overruled 90 years of precedent in order to expand presidential power" is the way *critics* describe it. *Your* side says: resisting intrusion into core executive functions, protecting the sanctity of the separation of powers, and acknowledging that the precedent has been whittled away.

BREAKING: The Supreme Court just ruled that the Fourth Amendment applies to police use of overbroad "geofence warrants" to search for and locate unknown numbers of people in a large geographical area. This win reinforces that we don't lose our right to privacy simply because we use a cell phone.

Who you say you are, what you say you believe, your identity as a citizen of this country, are all on the table. “Are you prepared to stand and watch as Black political representation is erased? Do you not yet understand that this is also your fight if you have any hope of living in a democracy?”

Sherrilyn Ifill@sifill.bsky.social · 2mo ago

My latest: open.substack.com/pub/sherrily...

People love historical what if scenarios. What if JFK was never assassinated? What if the Nazis won in WW2? A scenario I never see discussed is what if the aids crisis didnt decimate the gay men of America in the 80s-90s? Its easy to forget 1 in 15 gay boomer men died. An estimated 300,000 deaths-

a lot (most?) people understand racism as “being a meanie” and if you aren’t a meanie then you can’t be racist, even if you believe in, say, the biological inferiority of entire groups of people based on phenotype

Nathanael 🧦 Roy@sporkredfox.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Hank Green did a video on how a lot of people have been doing this "I don't hate any race I just think they are inferior in some way, that's not racism" and, like, yes it is. And it unlocked something for me that feels really obvious about how people think about racism wrong

one of the reasons i am always on about elite persuasion is that i have seen elite persuasion operate in real time. as toby documents here, the radical anti-trans push in the uk didn't come from some "bottom-up backlash," but was orchestrated and organized primarily at the most elite levels

The End of Trans Rights in the UK Is the Start of Democratic Collapse

It's never just one minority.

liberalcurrents.com

This bill, literally called the “CHARLIE Act,” imports definitions from Trump's odious EOs on race (EO 14190) and sex (EO 14168) into the federal statute for K-12 funding. It's not savvy centrist politics, it will not get them more votes. They know; they're bad people who like these parts of MAGA.

Alejandra Caraballo@esqueer.net · 3mo ago

These 8 Democrats voted to pass a national ban on trans teachers and mention of LGBTQ topics. Rep Henry Cuellar (TX) Rep. Don Davis (NC) Rep. Cleo Fields (LA) Rep. Laura Gillen (NY) Rep. Vicente González (TX) Rep. Marcy Kaptur (OH) Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA) Rep. Eugene Vindman (VA)

DEMOCRACY IS A VERB: Courage, Community & Choosing Our Values Brynn Tannehill Author "American Fascism: How the GOP Is Subverting Democracy” @brynntannehill.bsky.social Chris Kaiser ACLU Virginia @chriskaiserva.bsky.social Women’s Summit SHOP-LIVE-VOTE Your Values Expo, Laura Richardson & Laura Mack

what i think is interesting is how this is, in some ways, a genuinely familiar definition of the rule of law... but one that has wrapped around entirely into "the rule of law ACTUALLY means these seven assholes have absolute power"

Interesting how this aligns with the fall of Orban....

Justin Baragona@justinbaragona.bsky.social · 3mo ago

A lot of attention has been paid to the collapse of traffic to The Daily Wire and Ben Shapiro's YouTube channel. But other ragebait sites are also seeing huge drops in audience. According to The Righting, Outkick, The Federalist and The Blaze are down at least 48%. therighting.com/traffic-repo...

BREAKING: Boston City Council just unanimously passed a resolution condemning dangerous age verification and censorship laws, including the proposals put forward by @massgovernor.bsky.social and the MA House. Backlash to age gating social media is growing! www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2026-05...

NEW: Boston City Council Unanimously Passes Resolution Opposing Online Censorship and Age Verification Bills, Cites Harms to LGBTQ+ Lifesaving Online Resources

BOSTON, May 13, 2026 — TODAY, Boston City Council voted unanimously to adopt a resolution condemning dangerous and misguided censorship and age verification legislation, including the controversial pr...

fightforthefuture.org