American Courts Corrupted
Conservatism is also dishonesty
I remember the 1991 Louisiana governor’s race. I have never lived in Louisiana. It doesn’t matter, because things ripple so I pay attention to everything I can. I was preparing to join the U.S. Marine Corps.
The Republican apparatus of damage and destruction was preparing to vote for white Christian nationalism. David Duke is a crook and a Klansman. Low-income white voters chose the Klansman at 56-63% by income bracket. That’s not my number — that’s the New York Times archive. Those voters are still alive. Some of them are still voting.
The Voting Rights Act exists because Black Americans were being murdered for trying to vote. Medgar Evers. Jimmie Lee Jackson. The marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. That law was gutted this week by six unelected lawyers with lifetime appointments who were placed on that bench to gut it.
Corruption and Kleptocracy in Action
This is not a neutral institution that reached a wrong conclusion. This is a captured institution that reached the conclusion it was captured to reach. This result is because of oligarchs who hoard power. There are hundreds or thousands of bought and paid for “judges” in the USA, but the most important ones have corrupted the Supreme Court.
Clarence Thomas has accepted more than four million dollars in undisclosed gifts from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow. He has refused to recuse himself from cases involving January 6 despite his wife’s documented participation in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Corruption.
Samuel Alito has flown flags associated with the Stop the Steal movement outside his homes. Has accepted luxury travel from Republican donors. Wrote the opinion that gutted Roe v. Wade. Wrote this week’s opinion gutting the Voting Rights Act. Corruption.
Neil Gorsuch sits in a stolen seat. Mitch McConnell held it empty for eleven months rather than hold hearings on Merrick Garland. The theft was done openly. It was celebrated. Corruption.
Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed 50-48 after Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony about his conduct was dismissed and the FBI investigation was cut short before it was complete. Corruption.
Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed eight days before the 2020 election by the same senator who argued in 2016 that election-year confirmations were inappropriate. The rule applied when a Democrat held the White House. It did not apply when a Republican did. Corruption.
John Roberts argued against the Voting Rights Act as a Justice Department lawyer in the 1980s. Wrote Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, gutting the preclearance provision that required Southern states to get federal approval before changing voting laws. Has been working toward this moment for forty years. Corruption.
This is not justice. It is the elites persecuting everyone else. Funded by the Federalist Society donor network, assembled over three decades, placed on the bench through stolen seats, dismissed testimony, and procedural bad faith. It was built to reach this conclusion. The American systems of power have been seized by evil people. Remember that.
What the Opinion Actually Says
Alito’s reasoning has three forks. Each one is worth naming.
Racism is over. Things have “changed dramatically” since 1965. As evidence, Alito cites 2008 — the one election in American history when Barack Obama appeared on a presidential ballot. Using a statistical anomaly as the baseline for gutting a civil rights law is not an error. It is a choice. Bullshit.
Majority-Black districts discriminate against Republicans. Black voters vote Democratic. Therefore ensuring Black voters have representative districts advantages Democrats. Therefore the VRA’s majority-minority district requirement is unconstitutional partisan discrimination. The logic requires you to accept that the political preferences of a historically disenfranchised population constitute discrimination against the people who disenfranchised them. Bigger bullshit.
States’ rights. Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama should be free to draw their own maps. The federal government intervened in 1965 because those states were murdering voters. The Court’s position is that the problem solved itself. The biggest bullshit of all.
What Landry Did
Jeff Landry is the 57th Governor of Louisiana — Desert Storm veteran, former police officer, one of the five most conservative members of Congress during his term. In 2024 he mandated the Ten Commandments be posted in every public school classroom in the state. At the signing he said “I can’t wait to be sued.” When parents objected he told them to “just tell the child not to look.” Trump rewarded him with an appointment as Special Envoy to Greenland. This is the man who suspended an active election.
He suspended a primary election already in progress. Voters had already begun casting ballots. He suspended the election, announced the maps would be redrawn to eliminate both majority-Black districts, and restarted the process with new maps.
Gerrymandering happens before elections. This happened during one. He canceled votes already cast.
The Justice Department under Pam Bondi — who defied a congressional subpoena last month — will not intervene. The Court that just ruled majority-Black districts discriminate against Republicans will not intervene. There is no federal mechanism left to intervene.
The Doctrine of Discovery established in 1493 that certain people had no legal standing the powerful were bound to respect. The Supreme Court of the United States just updated that principle for 2026.
The Through Line
The Voting Rights Act was passed because John Lewis was beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge — named after a Confederate general and Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan — for trying to register voters. Lewis spent the rest of his life defending that law.
The Court that gutted it was built by the same project that produced David Duke. Not the robes. The project. The project of ensuring that certain people’s votes count less. The mechanism has been updated. The principle has not. Injustice is not about what is right, it is about who has power.
This is the Doctrine of Discovery wearing a robe. In 1493 it was a papal bull. In 1823 it was Johnson v. M’Intosh. In 2013 it was Shelby County v. Holder. In 2026 it is Alito citing Obama’s election as proof that racism is over.
Cui Bono
Who benefits when Black voters in Louisiana lose their majority districts?
The Republican Party wins more House seats. The donor network that funded the Federalist Society gets the regulatory environment it paid for — fewer investigations, less oversight, no accountability for the fossil fuel companies, the private equity firms, the defense contractors who need a compliant Congress to keep operating as designed.
The people who lose are the ones already losing. The voters in New Orleans whose neighborhoods were carved up to dilute their votes. The people whose grandparents were beaten on bridges for trying to register. The people who turned out at 80% in 1991 to stop a Klansman and won — and are now being told their political preferences constitute discrimination against the people who ran him.
This is America, and it has always been this way since the Europeans came and destroyed what was already here. This is not to say that Europeans are evil. Only the humans trying to hoard power are evil.
The judicial branch of power was corrupted to produce this outcome. The outcome was produced.
The record should show that someone noticed.
Penfist is a combat veteran who served with the Army National Guard in Iraq and Afghanistan, a Marine-trained combat correspondent (MOS 4341), and the author of Dispatches from a Dying Empire at dyingempire.org. He grew up in Bangladesh and Haiti, was raised by Mennonite and Amish parents, and is a naturalized U.S. citizen.
The entire thing is corrupted. It’s a transnational oligarchy
If I were feeling long term optimistic, I would envision impeachments beginning in January 2029. Roberts for ruling on issues involving companies that paid his wife. Thomas and Alito for the reasons you mentioned. And....a Democratic president signing legislation to expand the Court to at least 13 justices.
Historians will debate which of the three pillars of American government were more corrupt. SCOTUS might win the prize for lasting damage...