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Eli Jelly-Schapiro

@ejellyschapiro.bsky.social

Contemporary literature and culture in a global frame; author of Security and Terror (UC Press, 2018) and Moments of Capital (Stanford UP, 2023).

146 Posts313 Follower375 Folgt
Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani@mayor.nyc.gov · 3w ago

This morning in Biddeford, Maine, a 26-year-old man said goodbye to his wife and daughter and left for work. Moments later he was dead, shot in the head by ICE agents, the second man ICE has killed in six days. ICE is killing our neighbors. ICE cannot be reformed. Abolish ICE.

Jeff Yang@originalsp.in · last mo.

I’m a birthright citizen born to two people who were green card holders at the time, married to a naturalized immigrant, with extended family that includes refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented folks. The 4th is just a reminder to me that we’ll be American a lot longer than Donald Trump will.

Adam Serwer@adamserwer.bsky.social · last mo.

5-4 for what it explicitly says in the constitution is incredible. They were this close to undoing the civil war entirely. bsky.app/profile/mjsd...

Mark Joseph Stern@mjsdc.bsky.social · last mo.

The Supreme Court strikes down Trump's attack on birthright citizenship. By a 5–4 vote, it holds that the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to children born of unauthorized and temporary immigrants. Roberts and Barrett join the three liberals. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

Max Kennerly@maxkennerly.bsky.social · last mo.

IMHO, the Supreme Court is a *bigger* problem than Trump, and it should be the primary target for reform. Trump and Congress would both be very different under a law-abiding SCOTUS, which would have stopped government action clearly animated by racism and racially gerrymandered districts.

Adam Serwer@adamserwer.bsky.social · last mo.

The new racist double standard set up by Alito in the TPS ruling: if there’s any other motive in addition to the racism, the racism doesn’t count, but if the state wants to *prevent* discrimination against black people, that is racist and unconstitutional www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

The Roberts Court has been turning anti-discrimination law upside down for years. Its approach came into particular focus in May, with Louisiana v. Callais, in which it determined that not allowing Louisiana’s government to dilute Black votes was racist. In that case, Alito insisted that forcing the state to draw a second majority-Black congressional district would be an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander” because Republicans were entitled to discriminate against Black voters if they argued that their purpose was partisan instead of racist. The Court reaffirmed that position in a subsequent case dealing with Alabama, after a lower court had found ample evidence of deliberate racial discrimination, as opposed to the discriminatory effect of the Louisiana map. Mullin now sets up an even more impossible double standard. If the government wants to discriminate against Black people, any pretext will do. “As long as there is a plausible basis—any plausible articulable basis—for the government’s action, then the Court will look to that basis as sufficient,” Aderson Francois, a law professor at Georgetown University, told me, “even in the face of evidence that government actors were motivated by animus.” If a Black person wants to prove they’ve been discriminated against, however, no amount of evidence will suffice.
Levi Stahl@levistahl.bsky.social · 2mo ago

The violence in Belfast is a reminder of something I don’t want to take for granted: The fascists here hoped the response to the depredations of ICE would be similar, with people turning in or attacking their neighbors. That it was the very opposite is worth remembering in this season of despair

Sylvia Chi 齊思涵@sylviachi.bsky.social · 2mo ago

“This country is great because of us, despite how they have treated us. And when I think about what I’m willing to live or die for, I would not sit idly by and let someone else come in and take away what we’ve built, despite some folks not recognizing the role that we played in building it.”

Clint Smith@clintsmithiii.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I've spent months speaking to current & retired Black service members about being part of the military in this political moment. What I found were officers and soldiers despondent at the resurgence of racism, yet often insistent that they were fighting for what this country could be, not what it is.

Mark Copelovitch@mcopelov.bsky.social · 3mo ago

They're going to lose & they know it & this is going to finally lead to major institutional reform. It's going to be very ugly before we get there. But we're going to get there this time.

Nicholas Grossman@nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 3mo ago

The Roberts Court, the Trump White House, and the national GOP are acting like this is their one big shot. Either they secure the lasting end of US Constitutional democracy, or they’re in very serious trouble from the backlash. And they’ve already gone so far that there’s no other possibility.

Eli Jelly-Schapiro@ejellyschapiro.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Beyond the obvious racist intent and effect of the recent VRA decision, it strikes me that it was also designed—in its timing and general obtuseness—to sow procedural and legal chaos, which Republicans will then point to as evidence of a compromised ("stolen") election, once they lose in November.

Ahmed Baba@ahmedbaba.bsky.social · 3mo ago

There is no clearer case for the necessity of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 than how quickly southern states moved to eliminate Black-majority districts and dilute Black power after SCOTUS eroded Section 2. SCOTUS’s reasoning was immediately disproven by reality.

London Review of Books@lrb.co.uk · 3mo ago

‘The surviving population of Gaza has been reduced to a condition of bare existence, subject to unrelenting hunger and thirst under the ever present hum of killer drones and bomber jets.’ Eyal Weizman on the demolition of Gaza. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Eyal Weizman · All they will find is sand: Gaza’s Yellow Line

Most of the Gaza Strip – cities, refugee camps, schools, universities, mosques, the health infrastructure, agriculture...

lrb.co.uk