Jared J. Sexton and Nick Hausman dissect a recent Supreme Court ruling where a six-to-three majority struck down Louisiana's voting map, effectively dismantling Voting Rights Act protections. They argue this cynical reversal of 20th-century civil rights progress stems from the Shelby County v. Holder decision and post-Obama racial complacency, while criticizing Justice Alito's originalism and highlighting Justice Kagan's dissent. Ultimately, the hosts reject court-packing as a solution, asserting that the institution itself must be abolished or democratized to prevent systemic disenfranchisement and restore true democratic progress. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Why the Supreme Court Sucks00:09:38
Yeah, that was a good one.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome to a feel good, everything is going well weekender edition of the Muckrake podcast.
Jared J. Sexton here with my friend, my co conspirator, my confidant, Nick Hausman.
Nick, there's no way to even convey how good all the news is today.
Jared, I know there's an old expression you can't win them all.
You can't win them all.
You can't win any of them.
That's how this is working right now.
That's what it feels like.
Yes, we're in that mode.
I want the other timeline.
I feel like it had been fractured at some point.
I'm wrong here.
And there's another version of this life that's going very well for everybody.
Well, I, you know, before we get going, I was saying this the other day.
I was talking with Daniel Moody, and, you know, a lot of this stuff is very dire and very awful.
But the optimist in me, the revolutionary in me, I am happy that like the worst is coming to bear so that we can see what things are and then possibly move beyond the collapse.
So I am hopeful.
We're talking about some shit today, but I am hopeful.
I maintain that.
I want our audience to maintain that.
Everything we're going to talk about today, take it in, get angry about it, and use it.
That's what we're talking about today.
Yeah.
I just want you to picture law enforcement spending 10 months researching seashells or investigating seashells and think about how well that's working.
Best of luck to friend of the pod, James Comey.
Best of luck in all of your endeavors.
Do you think he should be getting a presidential medal of freedom from Donald Trump?
I mean, you're.
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Nick, we got a little segment of court watching.
You got to watch those courts, and you got to watch those courts because they do things.
The Supreme Court voted in a six to three majority.
That Louisiana's voting map, and this is great, violated the Voting Rights Act, which in essence is more or less killing.
Let me check my notes here.
I don't have my glasses on, more or less killing the Voting Rights Act.
This is one of the more devious things.
This is the new strategy of the right in dismantling the progress of the 20th century.
This one sucks, Nick.
This one sucks and it sucks bad.
I mean, let's just focus on why it sucks.
But, like, you know, there's a direct through line between Shelby versus Holder and this because.
What we already got signaled then was that they thought, oh, the country does not have racial issues anymore.
And so we can all solve peace and harmony.
And this is why, whenever you hear me say that I think John Roberts is a child, these are the reasons why.
And I kind of got a glimpse, I'd heard some punditry talking about this not too long ago, where what turned the tide was Barack Obama being elected president.
That was the signal to people who are on the conservative side that the racism that has existed in our country for so long just disappeared overnight.
Clearly, that's why.
They have a black person who is in the White House, and that was it.
We're all done.
What happened as soon as they got rid of it in 2010 with Shelby versus Holder was that states immediately started to disenfranchise people of color.
And this one, I can't find any other rebuttal to the notion that we will have less participation from people of color in our elections going forward.
You know, it's one of the more insidious things that the institutes and the think tanks have figured out.
That they can use civil rights legislation and civil rights laws to then strike down civil rights protections.
It is, it's honestly, you know, if you were detached from it, you would almost have to salute them for the evil genius of what they're doing.
The idea that this map, which makes sure that there's representation for the black voters of Louisiana and around the country, because this is going to have ramifications, of course, the idea that that is somehow or another racist against white people is, you know, I say it all the time, Nick.
I say, I don't know how these people sleep at night, but they sleep well.
Because they are lost in their own delusions and their own riches.
But this thing right here, I mean, really, I don't believe that there's a hell.
I don't think that there is a place of eternal damnation that people go to suffer in the afterlife.
But man, this one really makes me wish that there was a place where these people could go.
Oh, absolutely.
And it's not, okay, we can say that people of color will actually vote.
So it's not necessarily that they won't vote, but they will not have.
Any sort of normal influence as they should, based on the population breakout in the different states.
And so they're going to end up being able to draw these kind of congressional maps.
And the worst part about this, and we should have known this from years ago, because what the SCOTUS does now is they will stay or delay decisions to allow these illegal things to happen and take hold.
It takes so much longer and it's so much harder than to bring up a case and try and get it overturned after the fact.
So what the Voting Rights Act did was we're going to stop it before you can even implement any of this stuff.
Right, you have a certain standard to be able to institute changes to your voting, and they're just like, No, no, we are going to get rid of any kind of oversight or overwatch beforehand, and then good luck, see what happens.
Uh, after the fact, after you know, these things will take years before they get processed through the courts and get to the supreme court, that is the feature of this whole thing.
And so, not only is it a cynical, you know, um, procedural grab that they did here to do this, uh, a lot, you know, which Mitch McConnell did to even take control of the SCOTUS, but then the racial aspect of this, based on the fact that these guys are true believers, Alito truly believes.
And it makes sense.
If you're an originalist who truly believes in the original document of the Constitution, then you believe in slavery, right?
You believe that people are less than one whole person, right?
Like in theory, that's what you would be.
If you're that dedicated to the originalism, then it's hard to argue that you don't believe that there's people in this country that are only three fifths worth of a person.
I mean, when you put it like that, it sounds pretty bad.
Yeah.
And I want to say a few things for context because there's only so much that you can say Supreme Court sucks because it does.
It just does.
And I want to bring together a couple of ties.
First things first, Nick, this has been a painstaking operation that has involved billions of dollars and an incredibly put together plan to destroy the progress of the 20th century.
And we're watching the fruits of that labor.
It was happening incrementally there for a while.
Things would bubble up here and there.
You'd see corporate protections and such that would happen, and some of these voting limitations that would come down the pike.
And now they're going for it.
Like, this is the completion of the project.
And there are many more steps of it, but this represents exactly the type of thing that they've been looking for.
Second thing I want to say is that Eleanor Kagan, who took the extraordinary measure of reading her dissent from the bench, which is one of those signals that this is like a very, very contentious and important dissent.
I want to say to Kagan, and I doubt Kagan is listening to the Weekender edition of the Muckrake podcast, but any of these judges who are in the minority, you have to leave behind normality.
Go out in fucking public.
And call this what it is because people need to understand that the institutions, yes, they are acting as they were originally constructed.
That's what the Supreme Court was put there to do, to help the wealth class in moving forward and getting rid of any sort of democratic progress.
You have to go out and talk about this.
Number three, I want to restate something that I've said a couple of times, but this is as good of a time as any to restate it.
You are not going to solve this by packing the Supreme Court.
You are not going to solve this by adding, I don't know, I saw somebody saying four more justices or whatever.
What is that going to do?
It's going to lead to an arms race in the Supreme Court.
If you really want to fix this, you are either going to have to abolish the institution of the Supreme Court altogether or democratize it, lead to direct voting and representation, andor figure out something different.
Because what you have right now is a problem that is fundamentally antithetical to small d democratic progress.
That's it.
And I hope that people will understand this is not an aberration of the court.
This is what the court has always done, with the exception of a couple of liberal courts.
You have to take major action in this thing.
And just saying, I'm disappointed with this, maybe we should pack the court, that is simply not going to get the job done.
And that's a great point.
If you're a historian of the Supreme Court, you realize in the great context of how long they've been around, this is a common result.
They are who we thought they were.
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