Sunday, July 23: Alabama's Redistricting
The commitment to being racist scum is almost commendable
On Friday, Alabama republicans openly defied a Supreme Court order by passing a new congressional map that includes only one majority-Black district. The (mostly white) politicians in Alabama apparently figured that giving Black people too much of a voice wasn’t in their best interest. Shocking.
The republican-controlled state legislature had called a special session to redraw an earlier map after the Supreme Court confirmed a federal court order to include two districts where Black voters make up voting-age majorities. But on Friday, state republicans approved a new map with just one majority-Black seat and a second district that is approximately 40% Black.
Of course the bill passed the state house in a 75-28 vote after the state senate voted 24 to 6 in favor of the revised map. The controversial map was completed Friday afternoon, just hours before the court-ordered deadline for the legislature to draw up new boundaries. Now a federal court will hold a hearing on the map on August 14.
“Following the U.S. Supreme Court order, I called the Alabama Legislature into a special session to readdress our congressional map. The Legislature knows our state, our people and our districts better than the federal courts or activist groups, and I am pleased that they answered the call, remained focused and produced new districts ahead of the court deadline.”
- Alabama’s (crusty, decrepit, white) governor Kay Ivey
Opponents of the newly-drawn map argue that legislators ignored a court order and that the map continued the state’s racist history of voter suppression. Just another day in Alabama, a bottom-five state with minimal redeeming qualities.
Side Items
Just for Show: Thousands of apartheid-appreciating marchers arrived in Jerusalem yesterday, the culmination of a five-day walk from Tel Aviv in a protest against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to weaken the powers of apartheid Israel’s courts. The demonstrators arrived the day before the murderous Israeli lawmakers begin debating what could become the first element of the plan to be voted into law. Organizers of the march estimated there could be as many as 30,000 people participating, but journalists on the ground said the number appeared to be closer to 5,000. Leave it to the apartheid defenders to overstate the number of followers they’ve got
Praying for a Power Outage: Speaking of the garbage scum leader of the apartheid state, Benny Netanyahu was taken to the hospital this weekend for an emergency procedure to receive a pacemaker. Even with his life on the line, the bozo remained committed to pressing ahead with his controversial judicial overhaul plan. I’m not advocating for medical malpractice, but some cardiologist in apartheid Israel has the opportunity to do the funniest thing imaginable…
Empty Gestures: Old Sloppy Joe Biden has announced he will establish a national monument honoring Emmett Till, the Black teenager from Chicago who was abducted, tortured and murdered in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. Rather than working to improve the conditions of people’s lives today, Biden has chosen to focus his efforts on building monuments to the past