SCOTUS converts midterms into a referendum on state-sponsored racial discrimination

May 12, 2026

Trump and the GOP are underwater on every major issue that helped Trump win in 2024. The wave of outrage that is building among voters should overwhelm the unfair advantage created by the racially charged gerrymandering sweeping the Old South. The issues on which Trump is underwater include: The economy. Immigration. Forever wars. Tariffs. Epstein. The economy. The economy.

Against all logic, Trump managed to make significant gains in 2024 among Black and Latino voters, especially men. But SCOTUS and the Southern state legislatures are dusting off their white hoods and resurrecting the ideology and tactics of white Christian nationalism that served as the scaffolding for the Jim Crow Era. With the enthusiastic backing of the Supreme Court, Trump and the GOP have targeted Black and Latino Americans with voter suppression, mass deportation, and racial profiling.

SCOTUS and Southern state legislatures have dropped all pretense: They are unabashedly racist and do not care who knows about their depraved intentions. They are engaged in a race against the extinction of a party that represents a shrinking minority of the American electorate. Whatever efforts can expand the event horizon are worth the risk to Republicans because they have no vision, no values, and no principles to offer the American voter.

Republicans are at war with their own future: The more they gleefully eradicate Black majority districts in the Old South, the more they alienate the Black voters whose support they desperately need to remain a national party.

By definition, racial gerrymandering distributes Black voting power into new districts. True, Black voters will comprise the minority within those new boundaries, but they can make the difference in flipping gerrymandered districts by joining with newly motivated Democrats and MAGA voters who are beginning to realize they have been betrayed.

On Monday, the corrupt, racist Supreme Court once again used the shadow docket to violate the Purcell Doctrine. The Court allowed Alabama to suspend an ongoing election and substitute new gerrymandered maps in place of maps ordered by a federal court that found Alabama had violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in drawing congressional boundaries. See Chris Geidner, Law Dork (Substack), SCOTUS majority gives Alabama GOP a chance to use a map already found to be unconstitutional.

The naked racism of the former slaveholding states reinstituting the Jim Crow Era with the imprimatur of Chief Justice John Roberts is a self-defeating strategy. See Politico, op-ed by Jonathan Martin, Trump’s Redistricting Push Could Cost Republicans More Than It Gains.

Per Martin,

In their rush to grab an extra seat or two, Southern Republicans should consider what may happen to their 2024 gains with Black voters.

Do you think GOP nominees will get 21 percent of Black men, as Trump is estimated to have received in 2024, in future elections when you’re handing Democrats perhaps the easiest racial messaging they’ve had in the post-Civil Rights era? In case you needed a primer, that would be: You can’t trust Republicans, they only want to silence your voice. [¶]

Given Trump’s unpopularity, the price at the pump and the precedent of most every modern midterm, this was already shaping up to be a forbidding election year for Republicans. To pick at the rawest of American wounds as the country marks 250 years would only turbocharge Democratic enthusiasm and turnout.

Finally, there’s a reason why the non-aggression pact between old-school Black Democrats and white Republicans endured in the South over the last few redistricting cycles. Both got safe seats.

You draw a Clyburn, for example, out of his district and his former voters could help create new, competitive seats in South Carolina in a Democratic-tilting year such as this — as Clyburn himself said out loud to CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday.

See also, The Hill, Karl Rove says GOP redistricting push may have unintended results.

Yes, we should be righteously angry and upset about the wholesale dilution of Black voting power. But we should also see a historic opportunity to reclaim districts that should rightly reflect the voting power and electoral interests of Black Americans.

And then there is the fact that former slaveholding states have not clearly thought through an official policy of disenfranchising Black voters. A nascent effort is emerging to boycott the Southeastern Conference of the NCAA. The Southeastern Conference is the most powerful and lucrative collegiate conference in many sports, including football, basketball, and baseball. Leading voices in the Black community are calling on Black athletes to boycott SEC schools in states that are dismantling Black majority districts. The movement is growing; logic tells us that it will expand far beyond sports to include travel, entertainment, and industry. See The Source, SEC Athlete Boycott Suggested After Supreme Court Redistricting Ruling, and The Grio, Black legislators lead resistance after gutting of Voting Rights Act

Trump to bring sixteen American CEOs to China.

Proving that they have no ability to “read the room,” sixteen US CEOs are accompanying Trump on his trip to China. See CNBC, Trump invites Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Larry Fink for Xi China summit.

Anti-billionaire fever is running high in America. Accepting a seat on Trump’s Billionaire Boondoggle is bad PR and shows disdain for the tens of millions of investors and customers of the following companies:

• Elon Musk, Tesla

• Tim Cook, Apple

• Larry Fink, BlackRock

• Kelly Ortberg, Boeing

• Stephen Schwarzman, Blackstone

• Brian Sikes, Cargill

• Jane Fraser, Citigroup

• Jim Anderson, Coherent

• H. Lawrence Culp Jr., GE Aerospace

• David Solomon, Goldman Sachs

• Jacob Thaysen, Illumina

• Michael Miebach, Mastercard

• Dina Powell McCormick, Meta Platforms

• Sanjay Mehrotra, Micron Technology

• Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm

• Ryan McInerney, Visa

The fact that Trump’s advisers are allowing him to be surrounded by billionaires as the US economy is being hammered by rising gasoline prices shows how out of touch Trump continues to be.

The ballroom has become a universal symbol of his obsession with building grand monuments to himself, a monument now priced at $1 billion. The repainting of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has ballooned in price to $13.1 million — more than seven times Trump’s original promise of $1.8 million.” See Philadelphia Inquirer, Reflecting Pool repairs to cost $13.1 million after Trump promised $1.8 million.

Many of the billionaires accompanying Trump on his junket to China have funded the ill-begotten ballroom and blue-bottomed reflecting pond. They are hopelessly conflicted and spectacularly self-unaware. Having made it to the top, they have apparently forgotten the leadership skills and intuition that got them there. Accountability and pushback are coming, and each will rue the day they decided that a free plane ride and photo-opportunity with Trump was worth cratering their reputations.

Iran war

The head of Iran’s parliament taunted the US on Monday, saying that the longer Trump refused to accept Iran’s peace proposal, “the more the US taxpayers will pay” for the war. See The Hill, Iran’s top negotiator: Accept our proposal or ‘American taxpayers will pay for it.’

Among other items, Iran is demanding compensation for damage inflicted by the US war against Iran, and permanent Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. (See above story.) Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed with no prospect for opening anytime soon. Sadly, the US economy will only get worse as the conflict drags on. See Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, What the closure of the Strait of Hormuz means for the global economy. (“[F]or every additional month it’s closed, oil prices go up $10 to $15 a barrel.”)

If the Strait stays closed for several more months and oil rises an additional $10/barrel per month on top of current prices, Americans could expect a monthly increase of 25 cents per gallon at the pump, on top of whatever elevated prices they are already paying. See Oil to Gas Price Calculator.

Since the most optimistic estimates suggest it would take four to six months to reopen the Strait, the national average gasoline price seems destined to reach $5.50 a gallon. And that is an optimistic scenario.

When combined with the virulent racist attacks on Black Americans by former slaveholding states, a dollar increase in gas prices by August will continue to drive Trump’s popularity down to unplumbed depths. Add to those debacles the AI threat to jobs while Trump pals around with the princes of Silicon Valley, the likely continued stalemate in Iran, the stonewalling in the Epstein investigation, and Trump’s insistence on re-litigating the 2020 election.

In short, Democrats have every reason to be hopeful, but no reason to be complacent.

Independent Dan Osborn’s strong showing in recent Nebraska polling

Dan Osborn is an independent candidate running against incumbent Republican US Senator Pete Ricketts in ruby-red Nebraska. Recent polling shows that independent Dan Osborn is leading incumbent Pete Ricketts by five points. (The two Democratic candidates are trailing Ricketts by 9 points and 16 points, respectively.) Read a press release about the poll here: Tavern Research: Ricketts Has an Independent Problem in Nebraska.

Supporting an electable independent in Nebraska is one way to deny Republicans a Senate majority. Indeed, electing an independent in Nebraska may be the key to reducing Republicans below the 50-vote threshold, which would deny JD Vance the opportunity to serve as a “tie breaker.”

I interviewed Dan Osborn one-on-one at my home in April in a “closed session” that was available to Today’s Edition readers only. (Appearances by US Senate candidates are traditionally closed events.) Many readers expressed interest in seeing the interview, so the campaign has released several clips to be shared in this newsletter.

Read more about Dan Osborn here (and donate, if you choose): Dan Osborn | Independent for U.S. Senate.

Video clips of Robert Hubbell's interview with Dan Osborn:

Concluding Thoughts.

I received a note from a reader who said that she was returning to reading the newsletter after a several-month break. She said she stopped reading because she found my outlook “too optimistic,” but returned to the newsletter after the Supreme Court decision in Callais and the Virginia Supreme Court decision striking down the redistricting initiative.

You would be surprised how often I hear from people that I am too optimistic. I usually hear that comment from activists and organizers who believe (in good faith) that the best way to motivate people is to focus on the downside risk of failing to stop Trump and his nefarious plans.

I disagree with that approach at the most fundamental level. Indeed, I believe that the “frighten people” approach to motivation simply reinforces the Republican plan to flood the zone with bad news so that Democrats will give up and quit.

The way I see it, the world has more than enough sources of bad news and doomsayers. If my viewpoint counterbalances those thousands of naysayers just a tiny bit, then we haven’t even begun to correctly calibrate the scales.

I try to temper my optimism with realism. Indeed, my Substack tagline says, “Citizen. Optimist. Realist.”

We should not delude ourselves with “just so” stories. But that isn’t the real danger we face. The biggest threat to democracy is a credulous media that is willing to repeat every ludicrous threat and ridiculous trial balloon floated by Trump that is designed to spread panic and confusion. You may not recall, but during the most intense ICE operations in Minneapolis, Trump had many people believing that he was days away from invoking the Insurrection Act or declaring “martial law” (something that doesn’t really exist in the US).

I spent weeks trying to convince people that Trump’s threats of invoking the Insurrection Act were hollow. Some people accused me of being “naive.”

We are facing similar threats today. Trump says he is going to use the Postal Service to enforce eligibility for mail voting. He won’t. Steve Bannon says Trump will deploy ICE to polling stations. He won’t.

Should we take those threats seriously? Yes. But you know what else we should take seriously? We should take seriously our ability to stop those threats. We should take seriously the monumental incompetence of a man who has no filter between his overactive imagination and his mouth. Just because Trump posts something on Truth Social at 2:00 a.m. does not mean that he or his administration has the discipline, organization, and follow-through to make it happen.

Trump does not have superpowers. You know who does? Us. We have the most important superpower of all: We can vote.

So, yeah. That makes me optimistic about our long-term ability to reclaim democracy and reestablish the rule of law.

If that optimistic outlook is too much for you, please consult almost any other news source for a bracing dose of pessimism. When you have had enough, come back here. This community will be waiting for you with open arms!

Talk to you tomorrow!

Pro-Democracy Protest photos

[Send photos to rbhubbell@gmail.com. Include city and state.]

Visibility Brigade of Paramus NJ 

May 11th 2026

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Louisville/Superior CO

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I-89 N&S, Enfield, NH, Mother’s Day

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I have been standing outside the Supreme Court at least once a week since July 5, 2024, to protest John Roberts’s execrable and completely unconstitutional presidential immunity decision, and I have met so many amazing, courageous, good-hearted people. Too bad the justices never come out to see who’s on their sidewalk. Or read their own building: “Equal Justice under Law.”

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Englewood Florida

Author’s Note: I edited the above photo to remove the “u” from the F-ck. I did so to prevent spam filters from bouncing this newsletter for including obscenity

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Randolph, MA

The Randolph Indivisible Group held an overpass standout Saturday, May 9, 2026, to protest Citizens’ Bank’s funding of ICE prisons.

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Bend, OR

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Yorktown Hts., NY. Happy Mother’s Day to you!

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Brewster, NY train station protesting ICE every Saturday 2-3pm.

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Posters from Vancouver, WA

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From Borrego Springs, CA. This is what Borregans do on protest day when temps are due to reach 105 degrees.

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Latest message from Raleigh Bridge Brigade in Raleigh, NC

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May 10th 2026 - Bridge Brigades in Franconia, NH and Bethlehem, NH

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Sometimes we have to come together even if their mothers are MAGA’s

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Protest Posters from Vancouver WA

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Indivisible San Jose, San Jose CA.  A bigger crowd than expected protested on the Overpass today. We had beautiful weather, music, homemade cookies and FUN! 

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4 of us at our weekly Tesla Takedown outside of Tesla Motors on Centinela, Los Angeles 5/10/26

Yes, we are STILL doing this.

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Superior, CO Tesla dealership -- every Saturday since March 2025: “Fascism won’t go away on its own. It needs your help.”

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Boulder, CO

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Citizens Bank in Copley Square, in Boston today.  Corner of Dartmouth and Boylston Streets. 

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Kalamazoo Visibility Brigade 05.07.26 

What a dedicated group! One passerby went up on the bridge and gave everyone a thank-you hug yesterday! Every Action Matters!

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West Hartford CT Saturday rally

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Dave Webers Protest / Work in Progress ~ 1776 Revival

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From Cincinnati, OH, May 10.

Whenever J.D. Vance comes “home” to Cincinnati, to a house he lived in for a very short time before being elected to the Senate, he inevitably comes in at rush hour and screws up traffic for the entire city. Protestors are located about a block from his house.

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May 10, 2026.

Anchorage, Alaska.

Mother’s Day?  Rain?  So what.  Several of us did both protests. 

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