If you didn't think he was crazy... Maybe now you do....

“My Mother Had a Crush on Charles”: What in the Royal Hell Is Trump Talking About?

James West

Weird: Trump tells King Charles his mother had a crush on him during a White House ceremony, as the British monarch laughs off the compliment with a wave of his hand.Alex Brandon/AP

My first thought: Wow, the Brits are going to love this. Tabloid heaven.

The United Kingdom’s King Charles III and Queen Camilla are on a kind of diplomatic Cirque du Soleil mission to their former colony right now, trying to ease tensions between the two historic allies. Especially front-of-mind: Can the King smooth over Britain’s lack of support for Trump’s war on Iran—a stance for which Prime Minister Keir Starmer has received several bouts of Trumpian invective. The president loves the royals and all that pageantry, and there’s been no shortage of it since they touched down at Joint Base Andrews yesterday: hats, bees, bands—they’re getting the works.

Trump’s love of all this stuff is clear. So much so that he couldn’t resist musing on his family’s affection for the Royal Family during an event today on the South Lawn of the White House.

“Any time the Queen was involved at a ceremony or anything, my mother would be glued to the television,” he told his guests, referring to his mother, Mary Anne, who died in 2000. “I also remember her saying very clearly, ‘Charles, look, young Charles. He’s so cute.'”

He went on, to laughter: “My mother had a crush on Charles. Can you believe it? I wonder what she’s thinking right now.” The King gamely laughed and waved his hand in a performance of kingly modesty. The cringe, however, lingered—and the British press revved up, posting breathlessly within minutes. “King Charles smoothly plays off awkward moment with Trump during formal arrival ceremony at the White House,” read one headline in the Daily Mail.

Maybe not quite what Starmer had imagined. But perhaps just what he was looking for.

And these are the fuckers building AI....

Sam Altman’s ChatGPT Couldn’t Stop Obsessing Over Goblins

OpenAI desires less regulation, but it still doesn’t know how its chatbot works.

Alex Nguyen

OpenAI admitted it had to develop a specific instruction in the code of its latest model of ChatGPT to stop it from repeatedly referencing “goblins, gremlins, and other creatures.”

In an explanation posted Wednesday, the company said the “strange habit” came from its chatbot personality feature—specifically for users who chose the “Nerdy” personality. According to OpenAI, this personality receives the following prompt from its system: 

You are an unapologetically nerdy, playful and wise AI mentor to a human. You are passionately enthusiastic about promoting truth, knowledge, philosophy, the scientific method, and critical thinking…You must undercut pretension through playful use of language. The world is complex and strange, and its strangeness must be acknowledged, analyzed, and enjoyed. Tackle weighty subjects without falling into the trap of self-seriousness.

OpenAI said it first noticed the trend last November and some users said they found increased “goblin” references over newer model releases, even beyond the “Nerdy” personality. 

Some exact quotes that users reported:

• “sensible little goblin”
• “because ovens are filthy little goblins.”
• “Brutal little goblin of a dynamic” 
• “Tragic little digital swamp creature”

Through “reinforcement learning,” where the chatbot accounts for whichspecific responses receive high rankings from human evaluators in terms of accuracy and quality, the “playful” responses performed better.

As Wired first reported Tuesday, the latest ChatGPT model, released last week, included the instructions: “Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user’s query.” OpenAI did not immediately respond to Wired’s request for comment but the same day the report was published, Sam Altman posted a meme on X, making light of the situation by joking that the upcoming GPT-6 would have “extra goblins.”

After the company explained its troubleshooting process and how it implemented the override instruction to reduce goblin-related outputs the next day, it stated in its Wednesday post that “taking the time to understand why a model is behaving in a strange way, and building out ways to investigate those patterns quickly, is an important capability for our research team.”

The explanation may bring to mind how Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot repeatedly brought up “white genocide” in South Africa. Although xAI stated that Grok’s responses were due to an “unauthorized modification” from an employee, chatbot models should not be that easily manipulable if user safety was an actual concern. 

Despite all this, the company is pushing for less regulation of its products while simultaneously acknowledging that it is still learning how its chatbot models work. As I wrote on Monday, Sam Altman and OpenAI have publicly wiped their hands of the detrimental effects their products are costing people now and have demonstrated a blatant disregard for potential lasting impacts.

A true embrace of goblin mode.

Everyone has a right to vote? Not anymore...

“We Could See the Largest Drop in Black Representation Since the End of Reconstruction.”

The Supreme Court gutted what’s left of the Voting Rights Act. Here’s what happens now.

Garrison Hayes

"My expectations are that every southern state will redraw their districts," said voting rights correspondent Ari Berman, after this week's historic gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court dealt a death blow to the country’s most important civil rights legislation, the Voting Rights Act of 1965—the law that defeated Jim Crow.

For 100 years, from 1865 to 1965, Black people were systematically and actively excluded from participation in American democracy through racial violence, but more commonly through race-neutral tricks like poll taxes and grandfather clauses. Governments across the country also used redistricting to dilute the Black vote without ever having to talk about race explicitly.

That’s what Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, enacted federally, went after: The slippery tricks deployed to destroy the political power of Black folks and other people of color—especially in the South.

And the Supreme Court just took us right back to that time.

The majority opinion in the case, Louisiana v. Callais, struck down the creation of a second majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana. In so doing, the court rendered Section 2 of the VRA basically useless, making it nearly impossible to prove that a gerrymandered map violates the right of voters of color.

As soon as this decision dropped, I knew exactly who I wanted to talk to. My colleagues Ari Berman and Pema Levy are two of the sharpest minds reporting on voting rights and the Supreme Court in the country. And they were clear: This is bad. “Today is so heartbreaking because we’ve been writing about this for so long,” Pema told me. “And this just really feels like the final nail in the coffin.”

“When we weaken the Voting Rights Act, we don’t just weaken one law,” Ari agreed, “we weaken the very fabric of American democracy.”

The two went on to explain the staggering potential costs of the decision. “Who needs poll taxes and literacy tests if you have partisan free for all?” Pema explained. “If your partisan designs trump everyone else’s rights, then you can just, under the guise of partisan gerrymandering, eliminate the voting rights of minority voters simply because they don’t vote for your party. It is absolutely a Jim Crow tool now.”

“We could see the largest drop in Black representation since the end of Reconstruction,” Ari warned. “We could lose a third of the Congressional Black Caucus.”

Our sobering conversation about the Supreme Court, the Voting Rights Act, and the future of multiracial democracy is above. I got a lot out of this, and I hope you do too.

A Disgrace.........

The Roberts Court Shows Its True Partisan Colors

A Republican power grab triumphs over minority voting rights.

Pema Levy

The Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority would have you think that its latest gerrymandering decision is a mere tweak to the legal rules governing political map drawing. No doubt hoping for mild headlines, the court’s 6–3 opinion framed its holding as hewing to “the plain text” of the Voting Rights Act and “consistent with” the 15th Amendment’s prohibition against racial discrimination in voting. In compliance with these two guideposts, Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion styles itself as a humble “update.”

Don’t be fooled. This is a counter-revolution. Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act requires that people of color have an equal opportunity to elect representatives of their choice. Wednesday’s decision effectively strikes down Section 2—at least what this Supreme Court had left of it—and takes the country back to the dark days when Black and brown voters in many states cast meaningless ballots, having been diluted and gerrymandered into powerlessness. In the decades since the Voting Rights Act, southern states have sent Black representatives to Congress, state legislatures, and local political bodies because this seminal civil rights law demanded that minority voters have an equal voice in the political process. Congress has repeatedly defended and continued these protections. On Wednesday, a court majority watered them right down to nothing.

In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan laid out the stakes of what the court had just done, and repeatedly chided the majority for downplaying the gravity of its holding. Wednesday’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais “could destroy most of the majority minority districts that in the past 40 years the Voting Rights Act created,” Kagan wrote, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The decision has “thus laid the groundwork for the largest reduction in minority representation since the era following Reconstruction. Under cover of ‘updat[ing]’ and ‘realign[ing]’ this greatest of statutes, the majority makes a nullity of Section 2 and threatens a half-century’s worth of gains in voting equality.”

This case is not the first that the Roberts court has taken to dismantle the Voting Rights Act, but it may be the last. It is likely the final nail in its coffin, and the lid is now so firmly in place that it is improbable that any plaintiff will be able to pry it open and avail themselves of the law’s protections. This court, under Chief Justice John Roberts, began its assassination of the law in 2013, striking down the requirement that jurisdictions with a history of discrimination get pre-clearance for new maps and changes in voting rules. The court went on to make it harder to win cases against discriminatory voting laws that block minority voters from casting their ballots. And in a related line of cases, the justices green lit partisan gerrymandering and made it increasingly difficult to prove racially discriminatory map drawing had occurred. The Callais decision marries these two lines of cases, destroying the Voting Rights Act while elevating permission to conductpartisan gerrymandering above minority voting rights. 

The dissent opens with a hypothetical that illustrates the import of the majority’s decision: Imagine a state with a history of virulent racial discrimination, in which Black and white voters prefer different political parties. The population is 90 percent white, save a single county, shaped like a circle, which is 90 percent Black. The Black voters elect a representative of their choice because they belong to one congressional district. Then “the state legislature decides to eliminate the circle district, slicing it into six pie pieces and allocating one each to six new, still solidly White congressional districts,” Kagan writes. “The State’s Black voters are now widely dispersed, and (unlike the State’s White voters) lack any ability to elect a representative of their choice. Election after election, Black citizens’ votes are, by every practical measure, wasted.”

Congress, under the Voting Rights Act, forbid this kind of racial vote dilution. Under Callais, the Roberts court brings it back. Indeed, if the white majority in the dissent’s hypothetical seeks to hand all their state’s congressional districts to Republicans, then the Black population cannot have a meaningful vote because they would choose a Democrat. “The majority straight-facedly holds that the Voting Rights Act must be brought low to make the world safe for partisan gerrymanders,” Kagan writes. “For how else, the majority reasons, can we preserve the authority of States to engage in this practice than by stripping minority citizens of their rights to an equal political process? And with that, the majority as much as invites States to embark on a new round of partisan gerrymanders.” Notably, the majority does not dispute this. Alito does not counter that this hypothetical district—the paradigmatic Section 2 district—would survive Wednesday’s opinion. It’s a damning silence that tacitly admits just how sweeping his decision is. 

Partisan gerrymandering, the court’s preferred tool for dismantling Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, is not a constitutionally protected practice. In fact, it’s long been viewed as a big problem. As recently as 2017, the Supreme Court appeared poised to limit extreme partisan gerrymandering and its obviously corrosive impact on democracy and individual rights. But two years later, after Justice Anthony Kennedy was replaced by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the court swung in the other direction. In Rucho v. Common Cause, Chief Justice John Roberts ruled that federal courts could not adjudicate partisan gerrymandering claims because they were ill-equipped for the task. Rucho “did not pretend that partisan gerrymanders were something in need of safeguarding,” Kagan recalled in her Callais dissent. “To the contrary, the Court conceded that they were ‘incompatible with democratic principles’ and ‘lead to results that reasonably seem unjust.’” But, seven years later, the majority has transformed partisan gerrymandering into a weapon with which to extinguish the political voice of minority voters.

Partisan gerrymandering—indeed any partisan concern that a legislature might raise—can now perform the same function that Jim Crow tactics did prior to the Voting Rights Act. There’s no need to resurrect poll taxes or literacy tests when legislatures can simply draw maps to exclude minority’s preferred candidate from winning. Against any accusations of discrimination against minority voters, legislators can simply invoke a political motive and prevail. The Voting Rights Act was “born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers,” Kagan wrote. Callais not only tramples the Voting Rights Act, it creates the scaffolding upon which to build a new discriminatory political system.

Defenders of the Roberts court chafe at the accusation by liberal critics that it is guided by partisan concerns rather than faithful application of the law. But on Wednesday, the Republican appointees literally elevated partisan concerns above the individual and collective rights of minority voters. They ruled that helping your preferred political party trumps the rights of Black and brown citizens. It’s hard to imagine a less justifiable decision—or a more precise representation of this court’s agenda.

Iran war justification, spending, and conduct

Congress presses Hegseth on Iran war justification, spending, and conduct

By Caitlin Babcock

When President Donald Trump initiated strikes against Iran in late February, he did so without explicit backing from Congress, which holds the constitutional authority to declare war. Since then, members have argued over whether Mr. Trump illegally bypassed them.

Now, even some Republicans are showing unease about the length and cost of the war, just as a deadline approaches that could test Mr. Trump’s control over military action – and whether Congress has the will to push back.

Under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, the president is legally required to notify Congress within 48 hours of military action and is barred from deploying armed forces for more than 60 days without Congress’s permission. On May 1, that 60-day deadline will expire.

Why We Wrote This

A U.S. law from 1973 sets a 60-day limit for military operations that haven’t been approved by Congress. The Iran conflict is hitting that deadline. It’s the latest test of how Congress – and the president – view the war and their respective powers.

On Wednesday, tensions between the White House and Congress came into sharp relief when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth answered questions from the House Armed Services Committee, which pressed him on the administration’s strategy and the war’s costs to taxpayers.

Democratic Rep. John Garamendi of California told Mr. Hegseth that the war is a “quagmire” and criticized the administration.

“You and the president have offered ever-changing reasons for this war. ... The strategy has been an astounding example of incompetence,” Mr. Garamendi said.

“You ​call it ⁠a quagmire, handing propaganda to our enemies? Shame on you for that ​statement,” Mr. Hegseth responded.

Why violence against the political right appears to be growing

Ahead of this week’s authorization deadline, Democrats have increased focus on the War Powers Resolution. They have forced weekly votes – with the help of Republicans Rand Paul of Kentucky in the Senate and Thomas Massie in the House – to require the president to withdraw armed forces absent congressional authorization. These efforts have all failed, though a recent House resolution came within two votes of passing.

Republicans in the House and Senate have broadly supported the president’s Iran strategy, though a few have expressed a desire for a faster end to the conflict. Most have not expressed urgency about the 60-day deadline.

Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana told reporters on Tuesday that the War Powers Resolution was not a priority.

“Nobody is walking around the United States Senate” – he pantomimed checking a watch – “going, ‘Oh, it’s 20 seconds till 60 days!’”

Mr. Hegseth is scheduled to appear before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, one day before the deadline’s expiration.

“More Republicans” eyeing the deadline

Under the law, a president can use a 30-day extension if there’s an “unavoidable military necessity” for extra time to withdraw forces. The president must certify the decision, in writing, to Congress.

The law also directs a president to “consult” with Congress “in every possible instance” before initiating hostilities. When the United States struck Iran on Feb. 28, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called some members to alert them immediately beforehand. Mr. Trump officially notified Congress of the strikes two days later, on March 2.

Some Republicans have since indicated that the 60-day authorization deadline matters. Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah wrote in an op-ed this month that he would not support the war beyond that timeline without congressional approval.

“A period of 60 days is a fully sufficient window for presidents to take emergency measures in response to a national threat and then remit a decision to the duly elected representatives of the people,” he wrote in the Deseret News.

A number of Republican senators – including Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – have indicated that, by May 1, they would either like to see action by Congress or more communication from the administration.

“I think there are more Republicans that are talking about, with the 60-day deadline, that they may consider invoking the War Powers Act,” Senator Paul, a rare and vocal GOP critic of the Iran war, said in an interview on Tuesday.

Many more Republicans aren’t taking a hard line. Several GOP senators told the Monitor on Tuesday that they would support a 30-day extension.

Moderate Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania told Punchbowl News on April 23 that he respects the 60-day deadline, but thinks the clock should be stopped when there are ceasefires. A ceasefire began on April 7, though the U.S. is maintaining a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

Other members refused to say whether the president needs Congress’s permission to continue military operations in Iran beyond this week.

“There are varying opinions on that,” said GOP Rep. Buddy Carter of Georgia on Wednesday.

“That’s something we’re discussing. I don’t have a yes or no answer for you on that,” said Republican Rep. Celeste Maloy of Utah.

Meanwhile, many Democrats say the War Powers Resolution has already been violated, and that Secretary Rubio’s call to members immediately before the strikes did not fulfill the administration’s responsibility to “consult” with members of Congress.

“The war’s already illegal,” said Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut in an interview. “The president doesn’t have 60 days to wage war without the consent of Congress.”

War powers then and now

In 2011, President Barack Obama allowed U.S. hostilities in Libya to extend beyond the 60-day mark despite not having authorization from Congress. When Republican Speaker John Boehner wrote to Mr. Obama warning that he was running out of time on the War Powers Resolution deadline, the White House claimed U.S. support of NATO intervention in Libya was not “sustained fighting” and thus not subject to the deadline.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers filed a lawsuit at the time, accusing the president of violating the law, but a federal judge later ruled they did not have standing.

Mr. Trump might attempt to make similar arguments now, as American troops are not deployed on the ground. Tens of thousands of troops have been deployed to the Middle East as part of the conflict, and at least 13 U.S. service members have died so far.

During Wednesday’s House committee hearing, Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton and other Democrats focused on the potential length of the war as well as its cost. After Pentagon comptroller Jules Hurst III had said that the war had so far cost $25 billion, Mr. Moulton pressed Mr. Hegseth multiple times on how much the war would cost average taxpayers.

“What is the cost of Iran having a nuclear weapon that they wield over us?” shot back Mr. Hegseth.

Mr. Moulton said the average cost to taxpayers was $600. “I’m just wondering if they have an extra six hundred bucks lying around to pay for your war, [and that is] a question that we ought to ask.”

No Iran Plan

Hegseth to Congress: We Have No Iran Plan, But Give Us 1.5 Trillion Anyway.

The war has cost $25 billion so far, a Pentagon official told Congress.

Sophie Hurwitz

For the first time since the US began bombing Iran two weeks ago, our military leadership testified before a congressional committee today. The main takeaway: there is no real plan for ending this war. But there is a plan for giving the Pentagon more money. 

At today’s House Armed Services Committee hearing, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, General Dan Caine, and Comptroller of the Army Jules Hurst each explained why they believe it is critical to American security to fund the Pentagon to the tune of 1.5 trillion dollars in 2027. The military’s budget surpassed $1 trillion for the first time in 2026—but, Hegseth said, building a “lethal arsenal of freedom” requires 500 billion more dollars per year. This, he said, would both allow military “domination” and fuel the “American economic engine.” 

Representative Mike Rogers (R-AL), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, invoked the power of mathematics to justify the budget proposal. Another half-billion dollars in funding for the Pentagon—an agency which has never passed an audit—is necessary, he said, because “China announced a 7 percent increase in defense spending this year” and “as a result, they are spending more of their GDP on defense than we are.” As are “all of our adversaries,” Rogers said. 

Moreover, he added, American defense spending as a percentage of GDP has “been falling since World War II.” American defense spending as dollars, however, has consistently risen. Adjusted for inflation, current U.S. defense spending is more than $400 billion higher than in the late 1990s. Nonetheless, Rogers said, “we don’t have enough munitions, ships, aircraft, and autonomous systems” to get the country “where we need to be if we want to truly deter conflict.” 

The military wants more money: as Hegseth put it, that money will go to “where technology is evolving. And as I mentioned, the character of war fighting is changing pretty quickly, mass simultaneity autonomy undersea space, cyber information.” All these big words require “a higher end of capital investment. It’s an important down payment on the future.” 

As Representative Adam Smith (D-WA) pointed out, the Pentagon that’s asking for all that money has not yet provided Congress with an estimate of how much money they’re spending on war with Iran. Hurst, for the first time, answered on the record: about $25 billion in 60 days, or over $400 million dollars per day at war. Some independent researchers’ estimates, however, are nearly double that. And according to Iran’s ministry of health, well over 3,000 people have been killed since the US and Israel started bombing Iran in late February. When Hegseth was asked how much this war is costing American families in fuel and food costs, he said “that’s a gotcha question.” 

Pressed by several members of Congress, Hegseth—who spent yesterday on a helicopter joyride with Kid Rock—did not outline a plan for ending the war. 

“Their nuclear facilities have been obliterated. They’re buried underground,” he said. 

“So we had to start this war, you just said 60 days ago, because the nuclear weapon was an imminent threat, and now you’re saying that it was completely obliterated?” Smith asked. 

“Their facilities were bombed and obliterated, their ambitions were not,” Hegseth said. This—bombing on the basis of ‘ambitions’—is a “peace through strength” strategy. 

Representative John Garamendi (D-CA) said that from his perspective, Hegseth’s strategy has been one of “astounding incompetence.” 

“You have misled the public about why we are at war, you and the President have offered ever-changing reasons for this war,” he said. 

Hegseth, for his part, said that criticizing him is providing free propaganda for America’s enemies. “Shame on you,” he told Garamendi. “Calling this a quagmire, two months in? Handing propaganda to our enemies?”

“Don’t say you support our troops on the one hand, and then a two-month mission is a quagmire. That’s a false equivalation. It undermines the mission.” 

Deals a Death Blow

Supreme Court Deals a Death Blow to the Voting Rights Act

The “now-completed demolition” of the law could take us back to the Jim Crow era.

Ari Berman

The Supreme Court’s six-to-three Republican-appointed majority issued a staggering ruling on Wednesday essentially killing the remaining protections of the Voting Rights Act, dealing a death blow to the country’s most important civil rights law. The majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito in Louisiana v. Callais strikes down the creation of a second majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana and in so doing narrows Section 2 of the VRA to the point of irrelevance, making it nearly impossible to prove that a gerrymandered map violates the right of voters of color.

“Because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the State’s use of race in creating SB8, and that map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander,” Alito wrote. “The Constitution almost never permits a State to discriminate on the basis of race, and such discrimination triggers strict scrutiny.”

Alito’s opinion essentially overrules the 1982 reauthorization of the VRA, finding that there must be evidence of intentional racial discrimination to show that district lines discriminate against voters of color, which is extremely difficult to prove. He also adds a series of new tests to the law that will similarly make it nearly impossible for states to draw majority-minority districts. As University of Florida political scientist Michael McDonald pointed out, “my quick read of Callais decision is that the majority says if a racial community votes consistently with a party, then it is okay to deny them representation because that’s just partisan gerrymandering.”

Justice Elena Kagan forcefully dissented. “I dissent because the Court betrays its duty to faithfully implement the great statute Congress wrote,” she wrote. “I dissent because the Court’s decision will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity.”

The decision will be devastating for communities of color and the candidates they support.

She added: “Under the Court’s new view of Section 2, a State can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power. Of course, the majority does not announce today’s holding that way. Its opinion is understated, even antiseptic. The majority claims only to be ‘updat[ing]’ our Section 2 law, as though through a few technical tweaks… But in fact, those ‘updates’ eviscerate the law.”

The decision crippling Section 2 of the VRA, which required that racial minorities have an equal opportunity to meaningfully participate in the electoral process, will be devastating for communities of color and the Democratic candidates they usually support. The only silver lining for those harmed may be that the ruling came be too late to have a major impact on the 2026 midterm elections. Candidate filing deadlines have passed in most Southern states; primary elections have been held already in North Carolina, Texas, and Mississippi; and Louisiana, Alabama, and Georgia have mailed ballots for upcoming May primaries. Nonetheless, the watchdog group Issue One estimates that the ruling could still shift two to four seats to the GOP before the midterms, “concentrated in Florida and neighboring Southern states.”

In the long run, however, the court’s decision will turbocharge the GOP’s current gerrymandering efforts for future elections in 2027 and 2028, potentially costing Democrats up to 19 House seats, according to one study. As much as 30 percent of the Congressional Black Caucus could lose their seats, according to a report by Fair Fight Action and the Black Voters Matter Fund. Nearly 200 state legislative seats held by Democrats in the South could also be wiped out. 

Republicans could ultimately eliminate a dozen Democratic congressional seats in the South as a result, leaving no Democratic representatives or majority-minority districts in states including Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Louisiana—the very places where voting discrimination has historically been most prevalent. That will take America back to the Jim Crow era, with no Black representatives in Southern states with sizable Black populations. It will be reminiscent of what happened after Reconstruction was violently overthrown, when white supremacy and one-party rule were locked in for decades across the South. Indeed, the Callais decision is likely to trigger the largest drop in Black representation since the end of Reconstruction.

The hypocrisy of the Roberts Court is simply astounding. The GOP-appointed wing of the court is clearly inventing one set of rules to approve maps that favor white voters and Republicans while using another set of rules to block maps that benefit racial minorities and Democrats.

In December, the Court allowed a mid-decade redistricting plan in Texas that was designed to give Republicans five more seats on Trump’s orders to go into effect despite a lower court, with the majority opinion written by a Trump appointee, finding that there was overwhelming evidence of the use of race to draw district lines and disempower people based on the color of their skin. In Callais, by contrast, the court held that race could not be a factor in drawing district lines because it violated the 14th and 15th Amendments. But they allowed Republicans in Texas to do just that just months ago.

An exasperated Sonia Sotomayor summed up the double standard during oral arguments in October. “What you’re saying to us [is]…‘You can use [race] to help yourself achieve goals that reduce particular groups’ electoral participation, but you can’t use it to remedy that situation,’” she said.

The Roberts Court concocted a doctrine of​​ giving legislatures accused of racial gerrymandering the “presumption of legislative good faith” in order to allow Texas and other GOP-controlled states to get away with discriminating against voters of color. But the Court’s majority has made it clear that such good faith only goes in one direction; they’ll agree to let racial gerrymandering stand when it suits GOP interests and benefits white lawmakers, but strike down any map in which legislatures try to ensure fair representation for minority groups.

Up to 30 percent of the Congressional Black Caucus members could lose their seats.

The Court’s bias is also evident in its timing. The Texas map wasn’t enacted until the end of August and the district court ruling blocking it was issued in November, a full year before the 2026 election. Nonetheless, Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a concurring opinion that the lower court had “improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections.” But in the Louisiana case, the Court has issued a sweeping ruling relatively late in an election year, when maps are already in place around the country, that has the potential to upend district lines across the South—the very thing the justices have told lower courts not to do.

The Callais ruling is even more stunning because the Louisiana map at issue in this case followed a very recent precedent set by the Court. In a rare victory for voting rights, the Court ruled in June 2023 that Alabama violated Section 2 of the VRA by failing to draw a second majority-Black district in a state whose population is more than a quarter Black. That led federal courts to order Louisiana, which has a larger Black population than Alabama, to draw a second majority-Black district as well. Despite the near-identical nature of the Alabama and Louisiana cases, the Supreme Court quickly turned its back on the VRA after white voters claimed that an increase in Black representation was an affront to their “personal dignity.”

In truth, the Callais opinion is the latest in a long line of cases attacking the VRA–which has been an obsession for Chief Justice John Roberts for more than four decades. “Today’s ruling is part of a set: For over a decade, this Court has had its sights set on the Voting Rights Act,” Kagan wrote.

In the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, Roberts ruled that states with a long history of discrimination no longer needed to approve their voting changes with the federal government. While he argued that “things [had] changed dramatically” since 1965, the ruling, not surprisingly, led to a proliferation of new voter suppression laws, with at least 31 states passing 115 restrictive voting measures over the ensuing years, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. 

Roberts performed a bait-and-switch in Shelby County, claiming that it “in no way affect[ed] the permanent, nationwide ban on racial discrimination in voting found in Section 2” of the VRA, which prohibits voting changes that discriminate against voters of color. But the Roberts Court has been steadily chipping away at that remaining part of the VRA too, limiting the ability to challenge laws that target minority voters in the 2021 Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee case and now gutting Section 2’s prohibitions on racial gerrymandering.

That same bait-and-switch applies to the Court’s redistricting jurisprudence. In the 2019 case, Rucho v. Common Cause, Roberts wrote for the majority that federal courts could not review, let alone strike down, claims of partisan gerrymandering, asserting they were “political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.” He claimed in Rucho that federal courts could still block “racial discrimination in districting” but the Supreme Court has now made that nearly impossible to do as well.

Rolling back the civil rights revolution of the 1960s represents the culmination of Roberts’ legal career. As a young lawyer in Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department, he worked strenuously to weaken the VRA, claiming it would “lead to a quota system in all areas.” He lost that fight when Congress voted overwhelmingly to strengthen and reauthorize the law in 1982, but he won the larger battle decades later as chief justice, presiding over a series of cases that have crippled the crown jewel of the civil rights movement. In the early 1980s, Roberts wanted to find that violations of the VRA only applied to cases of intentional discrimination. Congress overruled him then, but now the Court has brought back that intentional discrimination standard in Callais.

“The Voting Rights Act is not a relic,” Louisiana’s two Black members of Congress, Reps. Troy Carter and Cleo Fields, wrote in The New York Times last October. “It is a living promise to all Americans that our democracy belongs to everyone. For nearly 200 years, Black Americans had virtually no representation in our collective governance. Section 2 was enacted to right that wrong. It remains as vital today as it was when it was first signed into law 60 years ago.”

Like so many decisions by the Roberts Court, the Callais ruling will boost Republican efforts to distort the political system in their favor, throwing a late lifeline to Trump’s efforts to rig the midterms after the gerrymandering arms race he started has suffered numerous setbacks in recent months. It comes at a particularly perilous time for American democracy, with Trump threatening to “nationalize the voting” and his administration taking unprecedented steps to interfere in the midterms, from seizing ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, to demanding sensitive voter roll information from all 50 states, to aggressively supporting new voter suppression measures.

But today’s decision is much bigger than just partisan politics. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 made America a multiracial democracy. It ended an authoritarian regime in the Jim Crow South that prevented millions of people from enjoying the fundamental promise of equal citizenship under the law. With an authoritarian president now in the White House and the Voting Rights Act a dead letter, America may become a democracy in name only once again. 

“The Voting Rights Act is—or, now more accurately, was—’one of the most consequential, efficacious, and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in our Nation’s history,'” Kagan wrote in her dissent. “It was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers. It ushered in awe-inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality. And it has been repeatedly, and overwhelmingly, reauthorized by the people’s representatives in Congress. Only they have the right to say it is no longer needed—not the Members of this Court. I dissent, then, from this latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.”

Nuclear fusion could finally power the grid

This company says nuclear fusion could finally power the grid — and soon

 Ella Nilsen

A Massachusetts-based fusion company took another step this week in its race to become the first to get the same power fueling the sun and stars onto the US electrical grid.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems is currently building a donut-shaped machine called a tokamak — a chamber where atoms are smashed together in 100-million-degree plasma. The nuclear fusion reaction, forcing two atoms to merge, creates heat energy in the same way as the sun. It’s the polar opposite of conventional nuclear energy — a fission reaction that splits atoms. And it could be the key to unlocking nearly limitless power, all without nuclear waste or greenhouse gases that warm the planet. Fuel for fusion is abundant. It’s derived from deuterium, found in seawater, and tritium, which is extracted from lithium.

The company’s demonstration tokamak in Massachusetts is 75% built and slated to be operational by late next year. If it can successfully achieve net energy — producing more energy than what gets put in to run it — Commonwealth’s next step is building a 400-megawatt fusion power plant in Virginia. That will be named the Fall Line Fusion Power Station, the company announced Tuesday.

If they are successful, it would be a monumental achievement, decades in the making. Scientists in Europe and the United States have made a series of breakthroughs on fusion over the last few years, demonstrating a net energy gain is possible.

The big challenge that remains is sustaining it long enough to power electric grids and heating systems around the world. Some experts believe that is still many years away, but Commonwealth Fusion CEO Bob Mumgaard and others think the timeline could be shorter.

Building the first full-scale fusion power plant also means Commonwealth is the first company taking steps to get that kind of generation onto the US electric grid. On Tuesday, it announced it has applied to the nation’s largest grid operator, PJM, to connect its future plant into the network of wires and other infrastructure that controls electricity as it moves from power plants to homes and businesses. That application process will take years to complete, and the company is aiming to get its power onto the grid by the 2030s.

“Even though fusion might feel like it’s far off, it’s actually not that dissimilar a timeline from any of the other energy sources that people are talking about,” Mumgaard told CNN. For instance, the current wait times to build the gas turbines that power gas-fired plants are more than five years due to insatiable demand filling manufacturers’ order books.

The CEO acknowledged it’s still not certain fusion power can become a reality and is in “active development.”

“Most technologies that are impactful actually go from impossible to inevitable very quickly,” he said. “Look at what’s happening right now; what’s in the ground, where the smartest people are going, where the money is going.”

Despite its futuristic power supply, the process of connecting a fusion power plant to the grid isn’t actually much different from connecting other types of power, whether it be conventional nuclear, coal or renewables, said Rob Gramlich, CEO of consulting firm Grid Strategies LLC. A 400-megawatt power plant is “not that big relative to other power plants on the system,” has similar capacity to a gas plant and is smaller than nuclear fission reactors and most coal plants. And the electricity itself is made similarly to existing technologies: Hot water creates steam to turn turbines that create electricity. The difference is just in how to heat the water.

“I don’t think there’ll be anything super tricky,” Gramlich said. “I don’t see any reason why the grid couldn’t handle it.”

In addition, the small amount of fuel needed for small nuclear plants — whether fission or fusion — give them the advantage of being easier to construct in more population-dense areas, closer to existing grid infrastructure, Gramlich said.

“You have the opportunity to put them close to load, put them close to the data centers, and sometimes closer to where people live,” Gramlich said. If “you don’t have the vast land expanse of, say, West Texas. You can fit a lot of power in a small area.”

Mumgaard said most of PJM’s questions so far have centered on how much fuel the power plant will need on site, how much power and lead time it will need to turn on and how intermittent the power itself will be.

The application process with PJM takes four to six years to complete. Mumgaard said his company has been engaging with PJM for two years already before formally submitting their application.

A PJM spokesperson didn’t comment directly on Commonwealth’s application but said the grid operator was “excited about the diversity of resources that have applied to connect to the grid.”

The power the Virginia fusion plant will generate already has two buyers: Google and energy company Eni. That means the construction of the power plant and infrastructure to connect it to the grid won’t impact rates of everyday businesses and consumers.

“That was really important; a first-of-a-kind power plant, you don’t want to have the ratepayers on the hook for that,” Mumgaard said.

Brain-fart GOP....

Inside the GOP’s barely functioning Congress

By Sarah Ferris, Annie Grayer, Lauren Fox

Republicans will control Washington for at least six more months, but they’ve already lost control of one-half of Congress.

Marred by infighting in his razor-thin majority, Speaker Mike Johnson no longer has a functional majority in the House. GOP leaders are struggling to fulfill the chamber’s most basic role on issues from government funding to authorizing critical spy powers that President Donald Trump himself has demanded, all just months before a critical midterm election.

“We can’t really agree on much of anything,” Rep. Troy Nehls, a Republican from Texas, said on Wednesday as leadership was trying to convince members to clear a procedural hurdle on the House floor to move ahead on key priorities, including the surveillance program extension. “This is our time to actually pass conservative legislation. That the American people gave us the gavel. They gave us the White House. … They gave us the Senate. And we have squandered an enormous amount of time away. We’ve squandered these opportunities.”

Johnson has tried to blame Democrats for the chaos, but frustrations are rising inside the US Capitol and at the White House – with many pointing to the House disarray for prolonging a 75-day shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security that is threatening more chaos at airports in the coming weeks.

“The fact that this has gone on, what are we at? 70-something days? It’s a stunning testament to congressional dysfunction,” Rep. Kevin Kiley of California, an independent who formally left the party this year but still largely votes with the GOP.

And scrapped bills, venting behind closed doors and stalled floor activity this week has ratcheted up tensions in the conference.

On Wednesday alone, House GOP leaders held open a contentious procedural vote for three hours. They pulled one huge priority — the farm bill — from the floor and then brought it back hours later after a revolt from members. (“This place is insane,” Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky griped on X, when he learned of the switch.)

Late Wednesday evening, the House took a step forward in a GOP effort to fund immigration enforcement amid the ongoing DHS shutdown – a vote that succeeded but only after hours of arm twisting.

Johnson’s weakening grip on his members throws into doubt whether Trump and Hill GOP leaders will be able to deliver on any other major priorities ahead, including a funding package for the Iran war that could cost as much as $100 billion.

The speaker’s ability to keep his fractious House GOP in line was never simple in the smallest majority since the Great Depression. While he has tried to give his members space to work through their concerns, the mood in the chamber has dramatically soured in recent days. Republicans are coming to terms with Trump’s poor approval ratings, an unending war in the Middle East and spiking gas prices — with no apparent strategy in Congress to fix any of it.

Then there’s the group of increasingly rogue actors within the conference who are empowered in the narrow majority and seem willing to shirk both Trump and Johnson to achieve personal priorities — on top of a seemingly perpetual struggle with absences and ethics issues.

“Look, all it takes is two to shut this whole thing down,” House budget chief Jodey Arrington told CNN of the DHS funding standoff.

Rep. Steve Womack characterized the narrow majority as “chaos, that’s what we are.” “We are good at that,” the Arkansas Republican added.

Perhaps the biggest headache for leadership are hardliners like Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida or Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who have elevated their personal profiles as they force the House to take tough votes and join groups willing to hold up procedural ones. Then there are the scores of rattled Republicans in competitive seats this fall who are anxious to take big votes.

GOP Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, who sits in one of those potentially in-play seats, has been pleading with his colleagues to simply agree to compromise for the sake of the party. If members don’t agree to a major attitude shift, he warned, voters would take notice – and potentially revolt in November.

“We’ve got to get together. We’re going to have a really hard, tough election. We’re either going to win by a little, lose by a little or lose by a lot. And we got a decision to make,” he said.

Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis, who has spent 11 years across the Capitol, offered a similar reproach.

“I think my colleagues over there need to start playing team ball. Their behavior is starting to be noticed by people. We can’t blame Democrats for the dysfunction that is going on over there right now and it’s a really bad look for people going into at-risk districts in November,” the North Carolina Republican said. “They’re gonna live to regret it”

A floor outburst and a ‘test of the wills’

Just moments after Johnson and his team successfully quelled a three-hour floor revolt on Wednesday, the speaker was thrown back into tumult.

Rep. Zach Nunn of Iowa – whose state relies on biofuel that’s at the center of a contentious farm bill – stormed onto the House floor to confront the speaker and Luna for making side deals on the sprawling package.

As Johnson ushered Nunn and Luna into a private room, Luna shouted her own defense: “We want the farm bill with no pesticide provision!” (Luna later told CNN she’d received such “nasty” messages from some of her Republican colleagues that she felt the need to get Johnson involved to stop what she characterized as threatening behavior.)

The outburst on the floor was an extraordinary display of the many competing factions in Johnson’s party. Any agreement he makes with one bloc of members risks enraging a separate – but equally powerful – group.

That was not the Republican leader’s only headache.

Conservatives and party leaders have been embroiled in a tense standoff over a powerful surveillance law that teetered on expiration. In meeting after meeting over the last few weeks, leadership repeatedly sought to force the extension of the critical spy powers bill without making the changes pushed by conservatives.

“This is a test of the wills,” GOP Rep. Keith Self, one of the conservatives pushing for changes to the bill, told CNN on Wednesday. “Are we going to protect our American citizens or are we not? It’s that simple a question.”

Even President Donald Trump’s call for a clean reauthorization and direct pressure campaigns from CIA Director John Ratcliffe and White House adviser Stephen Miller did little to move the party.

When Johnson thought he had clinched a breakthrough last week, members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus privately scoffed. That hardliner group sent around a memo calling his latest proposal “weaker sauce in a new bottle,” according to a source familiar with the document.

Ultimately, those privacy hawk Republicans forced leadership to tack on an unrelated crypto measure to the must-pass spy powers bill – effectively tanking its chances in the Senate and upending the road to final passage just a day before the midnight deadline. Senate leaders, who looked on from across the Capitol, were left scrambling and ultimately suggested another short-term extension, which will only prolong the drama.

“This has been a game of chicken where neither side has wanted to blink,” a source familiar with the negotiations told CNN.

The two episodes underscore how Johnson has taken hits from all sides this week as he’s tried to maneuver bills in one of Congress’ most intense weeks of legislating so far before the midterms. He aimed to convince his members to reauthorize the critical government spying program, to back a farm bill measure and support a procedural vote that would eventually allow Republicans to end the DHS budget standoff.

But on all of those issues, Johnson was repeatedly forced to recalibrate his plans in real time. On the farm bill – which was expected to be the least controversial vote of the week – Republican leaders were forced to scrap plans to consider the bill altogether, with a slew of members still disgruntled over key provisions over biofuels and pesticides. But hours later, they were forced to reverse course.

“There’s a lot on our plates. It’s a lot of high stakes, and it’s one of the most controversial matters in public policy,” Johnson said of this week’s agenda as he entered the Capitol Wednesday.

Later in the day, he expressed optimism, despite having to forfeit agenda items this week. “You have very different opinions about all of these things across the conference from different regions of the country who see these issues differently. Sometimes it goes quicker than others, but we will get there,” he said.

Johnson’s momentum

Since he took the gavel in fall 2023, Johnson has navigated his slim margins and still pulled out at-times shocking wins, including a massive border and tax bill that earned him the reputation “Magic Johnson” in some circles.

“I don’t think it’s a leadership problem over here. Mike Johnson has won like the medal of honor legislatively three times,” Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada said.

But that momentum has been blunted as the midterms approach and as Trump is engulfed in managing challenges at home and conflict abroad.

A record number of Republicans have announced they’re retiring. And many of those who are staying have been rattled by Trump’s coast-to-coast redistricting war.

Florida lawmakers, for instance, were so anxious about their state’s map redraw that a small gang of lawmakers recently forced GOP leaders to pull an endangered species bill from the floor out of concern it could hurt them politically in new seats, according to a person familiar.

Johnson’s job has only been made more complicated by Democrats’ eagerness to cause further pain for Republicans wherever possible. This week, Democrats were so furious at the Republicans’ struggle to set the weekly agenda – calling late-night meetings of the House Rules Committee only to postpone them at the last minute – that they pushed dozens of politically difficult amendment votes in that same hearing after a sarcastic comment from one of their GOP members.

“Bare margins make things more difficult. The family has a divergent set of views. Our friends in the majority obviously realize the more chaos they can contribute to, the better off – they think – for them in the fall. I see all those pieces coming together,” Republican Rep. Frank Lucas of Oklahoma, who’s spent 32 years in the House, told CNN.

On the other side of the building, GOP senators has been left scratching their heads.

Twice, the Senate unanimously passed a bill that would fund every part of DHS besides US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and US Customs and Border Protection, which were separately funded through the president’s signature policy bill last summer. But Johnson has sat on the legislation to reopen large swaths of the department for nearly a month as conservatives in his conference balked at putting anything on the floor that zeroed out immigration funding even as they understood the department would soon be covered by a GOP-only bill.

“I don’t think the phone lines go from the north to the south end of the building,” Amodei quipped of the lack of clear communication over how the funding would ever be passed in both chambers.

Disney stands firm

Trump says ABC had ‘better’ fire Kimmel as Disney stands firm

By Brian Stelter

President Donald Trump says ABC had “better” fire Jimmy Kimmel soon, in his latest broadside against the network and its popular late-night comedian.

Trump posted to Truth Social on Thursday morning, “When is ABC Fake News Network firing seriously unfunny Jimmy Kimmel, who incompetently presides over one of the Lowest Rated shows on Television? People are angry. It better be soon!!!”

Trump is wrong about Kimmel’s ratings, but he is right that MAGA media influencers remain angry about the comedian and ABC’s support for him.

ABC’s parent company Disney has shown no sign of wavering despite Trump’s pressure and the FCC’s almost unprecedented challenge to ABC’s station licenses.

Disney has declined to comment on the calls to fire Kimmel, who is under contract through next year. But the company has kept his late-night show on the air and has not done anything to distance itself from him.

Trump has railed against Kimmel for years, but this latest controversy began last week when Kimmel made a joke about First Lady Melania Trump looking like an “expectant widow.”

Pro-Trump media outlets condemned the comment, especially in the wake of Saturday night’s shooting outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

On Monday morning, the first lady called on ABC to “take a stand,” and the president followed up that afternoon by saying ABC “should” fire Kimmel immediately.

Then, on Tuesday, the Trump-aligned FCC ordered Disney into an early renewal process for its eight ABC station licenses — a move widely seen as a form of government punishment.

While the regulatory agency asserted that the license challenge was related to an ongoing probe of Disney’s DEI initiatives, most outside observers have viewed it as retaliation for ABC’s refusal to fire Kimmel.

Disney said on Tuesday that its ABC stations are in compliance with FCC rules and that it will defend the stations through the “appropriate legal channels.”

Thursday’s follow-up post from Trump suggests he wants to keep up the pressure against Kimmel and ABC.

Legal experts say Disney will almost certainly prevail in any legal battle over its station licenses.

Kimmel has not referenced the FCC battle in his monologues this week, but he has continued the anti-Trump commentary that his audience expects.

On Wednesday night’s episode, he quipped that “Donald and Melania lately have seemed closer than ever, and I like to think I played a part in that.”

The Trump administration’s rhetoric and the FCC action against ABC have been widely condemned by free expression groups and First Amendment advocates.

“Melania Trump has every right to say Jimmy Kimmel’s joke was vile,” Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said Thursday. “The First Amendment problem starts when the White House pressures ABC to punish a comedian for protected speech. That’s jawboning. And we’ve unfortunately seen this many times before.”