Below is my column on Fox.com on House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries declaring the Supreme Court “illegitimate.” It is a statement that has dangerously moved beyond the mere hyperbolic as Democrats push to pack or even eliminate the Court.
Here is the column:
The Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais took 36 pages to explain why Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is about combating intentional racial discrimination, not allowing racial gerrymandering. However, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrapped it up in one word: “illegitimate.”
Jeffries was not speaking of the case, but the Court. The man who would become the next Speaker of the House if Democrats retake power in November has joined other radicals in denying the legitimacy of the nation’s highest court.
Just for the record, the Supreme Court did not strike down Section 2, but said that neither the law nor the Constitution allows legislators to manipulate district lines to guarantee that candidates of a particular race will be elected. It was written not to give any race an advantage, but to prevent a state from creating a disadvantage to voters based on their race. The Act prevents any State from intentionally drawing districts “to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race.”
This is a matter upon which people of good faith can disagree. Many of the justices have been long opposed to racial criteria in areas ranging from college admissions to voting districts. Chief Justice John Roberts stated it bluntly in 2006 that “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.” Like others, Roberts abhors racial discrimination but declared in another case that “way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
You will find no such distinctions in much of the press where experts declared the death of equal voting laws in America. UCLA Law Professor Richard Hasen dispenses with any nuance and simply ran a Slate column titled “The Slaying of the Voting Rights Act by the Coward Alito.”
For years, liberal law professors have been trashing conservative justices, including Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, who called them “partisan hacks.”
However, the name-calling has mutated into a movement to scrap the Court or the Constitution, or both. Chemerinsky wrote a book recently titled “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) joined Jeffries in calling for changing the Supreme Court after the decision: “we’re going to have to try to transform the way the Supreme Court has been gerrymandered itself and stacked and packed with MAGA appointees.”
There was, of course, no such movement during the decades with a liberal majority that set aside an array of long-standing cases. It was only when a stable conservative majority emerged that law professors declared the Court illegitimate or dangerous, with many calling for packing the Court with an instant liberal majority once Democrats retake power.
I discuss some of these voices as the “new Jacobins” in my book Rage and the Republic, figures echoing the radical concepts or means used in France before what became known as “The Terror.”
Law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale have called for the nation to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.” Last December, they published a column titled “It’s Time to Accept that the US Supreme Court is Illegitimate and Must be Replaced.”
They insist that citizens must be rid of this meddlesome court: “remaking institutions like the US supreme court so that Americans don’t have to suffer future decades of oligarchy-facilitating rule that makes a parody of the democracy they were promised.”
Many Democrats realize that the public is rather attached to both the Constitution and its core institutions. That is why various Democratic politicians and pundits have been pledging to pack the Court once they are back in power. Some have suggested that, if they are going to change the political system and retain power, they will have to do it with the help of a compliant Court.
Democratic strategist James Carville stated matter-of-factly, “They’re going to recommend that the number of Supreme Court justices go from nine to 13. That’s going to happen, people.” He added recently, “Don’t run on it. Don’t talk about it. Just do it.”
To do that, you must first delegitimate the Court. You must attack both the individual justices and the institution itself. You need true rage to get a people to tear apart the core institution of a Republic on its 250th anniversary.
Now you have the next possible Speaker of the United States declaring the Supreme Court illegitimate because he disagrees with its interpretation of the law.
What these figures do not mention is that the majority of opinions by the Supreme Court are unanimous or nearly unanimous. A comparably few cases break along strict ideological 6-3 lines. Indeed, just last week, it was President Donald Trump who was denouncing the conservative justices as disloyal and weak for, again, ruling against his Administration.
It is not the voting record nor the underlying interpretations that are motivating this campaign of delegitimation. It is power. Former Attorney General Eric Holder explained it most clearly recently in pushing the packing plan after the Democrats retake power: “[We’re] talking about the acquisition and the use of power, if there is a Democratic trifecta in 2028.”
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Kagan and her fellow libs were slow-walking the dissent in order to prevent red states from redrawing maps before midterm elections, according to reports from Mollie Hemingway and also Sean Spicer.
How could the libs get away with that obvious election interference, sabotage?
Does Chief John Roberts not have the power to give them a deadline and enforce it?
Why would Roberts put up with their obvious ploy?
Why would Roberts fail to find the Dobbs leaker? That leaker could absolutely be identified.
Roberts chose to let it go.
It’s pathetic how weak John Roberts is as chief. He’s a joke.
Hakeem Jeffries is quite the pigeon. His remarks, especially about the SCOTUS keeps getting worse. I wonder if he gets paid by people like GSoros and other ilk’s.
Professor Turley has an interesting approach to columns and posts — he takes a collection of quotes from one word, a few words, a sentence, and book an article titles and tries to tie them together to makes some point or conclusion. I would rather see Professor Turley do a whole post on only one of these items with a full discussion and analysis of what the author was saying in the article, book, interview, or statement.
Jeffries is not sharp and is most likely reading from a prepared script. If he ever makes it to Speaker it will have been rigged, as were Biden and Harris being installed as top of the ticket in Pres race of 2020. They who ran the Shadow Goverment (Autopen) will be running things again. Raskin will have a hand in all of that criminality. Jeffries will do as he’s told.
There’s no one behind these criminals. It’s reason it’s the same thing over and over. Who’s paying for? Tax payers are.
What is shocking is no mention of truth. Compact is mathematics. Use it. The way to cheat will become padding the size of population with dead people, moved out, illegal visitors, legal visitors and fictitious people. That’s called bad faith.
There’s always someone who’s special and deserves what is undeserved isn’t there. As to the feds and block grants of collective tax money, same to each state.
If a state wants it spent wholly on non citizens , go ahead or vice versa. States have the right to be impoverished if they choose with robberies and murders galore. Want to live in a pig sty, be our guest. The dept of agriculture is completely ill managed and no one attends to it. Sell usa beef to Saudi Arabia and then import sick beef from the 3rd world for domestic consumption and you’ve made some gold.
Bad faith at every turn is what is and no one’s minding the store as rats eat your grain. Maybe they’ll leave the plague.
Roaming governors is an idea. Ron DeSantis might have a store front primary dwelling in California, run for governor and shape that mess up in good faith. Maybe might try Illinois or Minnesota. The squeaky states just get too much grease.
Looks like a sound opinion. As usual they want it to say what isn’t there.
Illegitimate? Because race and gender were used to nominate kbj? Yep.
Clarence 86ed the immigration question with 1 question–> how much of the 14th is about immigration. 😂
Looks like Kagan be smokin’ some weed in that dissent. Yes, Justice Kagan and I think oranges aren’t apples, hypothetically of course they should be.
For being so smart, kagan can really be stupid ..
In the 92 page opinion just go for the gold, the 2 paragraph opinion of Justice Thomas, Justice Gorsuch concurred. Bout all there is to it and with brevity. Thank you Justice Alito for the hard work.
😂
These cases are examples of past courts legislating from the bench. This court is correcting errors. Kagan wants to legislate committing the same errors as those before her time.
It takes courage to correct errors.
https://theboresite.com/uploads/monthly_2026_05/10c5448eeff574e1.jpg.3808667ddc75785390f9eea7ed992531.jpg
Noone
Really good post, anon. People seeking asylum? Insane asylum…
Jeffries, kjb should not be in those positions. It’s harmful.
Jeffries has been counting his chickens from the 2026 Midterms before they hatch, and now he sees that some of those birds might be stillborn, he is butthurt. He is saying “I want to be Speaker. It is mine, mine, mine, wah, wah, wah.”
Hakeem Jefferies “Wah, Wah, waha”.
The likelihood that Minority Leader Jeffries might become Speaker of the House is a boon for advocates of anti-incumbent voting in the upcoming midterms.
Jefferies won’t even have a seat after the supreme court ruling on racial gerrymandering. Jefferies is just Nancy’s puppet anyway and about a scary as milk soaked toast.
What interests me and what the Democrats have forgotten was that the original Court minority district effort, no matter how laudable the intent, put the Court in the odd position of mandating gerrymandered districts. This killed the chances for any non-black Democratic Congressmen in the south. The last time I looked there was one white Democrat from the south with the exception of the DC area. It also gave us a large number of Republican Representatives who had no need to appeal to black voters. All three of these results was bad. The only partly good result was more black Representatives. By doing the original gerrymandering the Court made it impossible to confront the two-party gerrmandering which now plagues the US. Is the Court clearing the deck to allow it to start confronting the Constitutional issues of in-state gerrymandering by both the Democrats and Republicans? I can only hope… (I intentionally refuse to capitalize black and white)
Two party gerrymandering always has and always will plague the US as long as we have single member districts. The fight is particularly vicious right now because the country is so evenly divided.
The only partly good result was more black Representatives.
What was “partly good” about that? Why should any particular number of black reps be better than any other number? The right number of black reps is as many as the people choose elect, without artificial manipulation; no more and no less.
Does anyone see the hair-splitting the Alito decision is making? We know that there’s still a pretty strong correlation between race and party preference in Louisiana — it’s gradually weakening, but still strong. Because of this correlation, how does a Court (or Legislature) ever separate rigging the district maps to advantage their Party from the obvious correlation-effect of rigging to favor race?
Alito is simply telling the Party in control of a State Legislature, “be sure to claim Partisan self-advantaging as the rationale for your maps, and never mention racial effects”.
And never mind that partisan gerrymandering is corrupt as hell. Alito knows that to be true, especially when it’s Democrats doing the gerrymandering. Isn’t that what was brought about in Louisiana in 2022, with a previous Court saying to create “2 black-majority seats”? Was it more important that these 2 seats be held by African-Americans, or that those A-As be Democrats and vote Democrat? We all know the answer — the VRA was gamed by Louisiana Dems to lock in 2 “black seats” using 60-year-old law.
So, Alito throws one of these seats back to Repubs. He brings us no closer to solving the stench of partisan gerrymandering and 400 “locked” seats in every House election. Though, I’m not sure he could have used this case to solve such a gnarly problem.
of rigging to favor race?
_________________________
Can we please stop using (race) There is only one in our world. Human!
Unless ET shows up to vote.
how does a Court (or Legislature) ever separate rigging the district maps to advantage their Party from the obvious correlation-effect of rigging to favor race?
There’s no need to. There is a very strong presumption that legislators don’t give a *** about race, and only care about partisan advantage. To claim that a redistribution favoring Republicans was motivated by race one would have to suppose that the Republican legislators would vote to disenfranchise black Republican voters, and to enfranchise white Democrat voters, when it’s completely obvious that they would do no such thing. Their goal is obviously to enhance the power of Republican voters regardless of race, and to decrease the power of Democrat voters regardless of race, so if anyone asserts the opposite the onus is on THEM to prove it. If they can’t, then tough luck, because they’re making an absurd assertion.
If that results in a state congressional delegation that’s entirely white, so what? That is neither a bad thing nor a good thing, it’s just a thing. And it’s unconstitutional to do anything to try to change it, in either direction.
Many of us living in America are spoiled to death. Life is so easy compared to 80 years ago. Those living at that time are almost all gone, the “Greatest Generation” according to Tom Brokaw. There is truth in there.
I dislike wok a great deal for several reasons. Their outrage over our government’s efforts to make us safe is so perverted, it is incomprehensible. Almost. The underlying motive driving this dangerous, infectious, disease is the desire to destroy America.
Laken Riley was murdered in cold blood, a violent, disgusting use of rocks and fists and muscle to annihilate a human being, a completely innocent, unsuspecting, lovely, hard working student, obliterated, twisted and smashed, utterly destroyed and left in a clump; to wok she’s a nuisance blip, an irrelevant argument pushed by maga pigs.
Your daughter?
The “Greatest Generation” fought and won World War Eleven.
They were Great Americans.
Tell that to her parents. You are the pig. Not Maga.
Let the same thing happen to the Biden or Obama family and get back to us on how to protect.
This is so typical of the left. Nothing but hate.
Turley Wrote:
“Virginia was considered the gold standard among states rejecting gerrymandering”.
*******
It was just Tuesday when Turley wrote that in his condemnation of Virginia’s redistricting plan (which favors Democrats).
But here on Friday, just 3 days later, Turley praises the Supreme Court’s far-right radicals for a ruling that will almost surely trigger an ACCELERATED race amongst the states to gerrymander.
Currently the southern states have 27 Black districts. Almost all of them will be redrawn by 2028. Redrawn, by White Republicans whose interests will certainly be LIMITING Black influence as much as possible. Because, you see, ‘Blacks are too simple-minded to be trusted with votes’. They might value social safety nets more than tax cuts for ‘job creators’.
Louisiana Can’t Wait To Gut Black Districts!
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) on Thursday suspended the May 16 primary elections for the House in his state, a day after the Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana’s addition of a second majority-Black congressional district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
Landry signed an executive order suspending the elections, for which early voting was set to start on Saturday, until July 15 or “until such time as determined” by the Louisiana state Legislature. The runoff elections, which were set for June 27, are also suspended on that timeline.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5858012-landry-suspends-louisiana-primary/
……………………………
Blacks account for 37% of Louisiana’s population. Therefore the 2 congressional districts set aside for Blacks represents their share of the population. Yet Republicans are so eager to gut those districts that the governor wants to postpone primary elections. File this under, “Whites Know Best”.
Connecticut has 5 Congressmen in the US House. All elected as Democrats. Both US Senators are Democrats.
However, 62% of CT voters are either registered Republicans or unaffiliated.
Massachusetts has 9 Congressmen in the US House. All elected as Democrats. Both US Senators are Democrats. However, 75% of MA voters are either registered Republicans or unaffiliated.
Rhode Island has 2 Congressmen in the US House. All elected as Democrats. Both US Senators are Democrats. However, about 75% of RI voters are either registered Republicans or unaffiliated.
New Hampshire has 2 Congressmen in the US House. All elected as Democrats. Both US Senators are Democrats. However, about 73% of NH voters are either registered Republicans or unaffiliated.
Vermont has 1 Congressman in the US House. He is a Democrat. One US Senator is Independent. The other is a Democrat. However, about 47% of VT voters are either registered Republicans or unaffiliated.
Bottom line: Democrats have gerrymandered five states to deny Republican voters in those states ANY representation in the House. Furthermore, Republican voters in those five states also have no representation in the US Senate.
PSS: We know how obsessed you are with skin color. I can assure you that some of the Republican voters Democrats have disenfranchised in those states are black. Please shed a tear for them.
Your excellent point is in addition to the reality that Democrats now find themselves defending the idea that the Voting “Rights” Act was intended to require racial discrimination.
“How dare you! [state the obvious]”
White Republicans simply want as many Republicans as possible to be elected. They don’t care if those Republicans are White or Black, because the small number of Black Republicans have pretty much the same interests as White ones. And the converse is true on the Dem side as well. Staying in power trumps race every time.
Anon of 9:16 and 9:18, you are a filthy liar.
As you well know, Prof Turley disapproves of partisan gerrymandering, but he acknowledges that it is constitutional.
Nothing in the constitution prevents it. However racial gerrymandering is unconstitutional. That Virgnians voted (whether legitimately or not) to retreat from their previous stand against gerrymandering is regrettable, but it’s not unconstitutional. If the state supreme court upholds it, there will be no grounds to appeal to the federal courts. But the gerrymander in Louisiana was not partisan, it was explicitly racial, and that cannot be allowed to stand.
White Republicans whose interests will certainly be LIMITING Black influence as much as possible.
That is a filthy lie. You know very well that not a single Republican legislator has any interest at all in limiting black voters’ influence — as long as they vote Republican. They want only to limit all Democrat voters’ influence equally, regardless of race. And that is 100% their right.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) on Thursday suspended the May 16 primary elections for the House in his state, a day after the Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana’s addition of a second majority-Black congressional district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
Yes, the current map is UNLAWFUL. So OF COURSE he suspended the voting. He was REQUIRED to do so.
Blacks account for 37% of Louisiana’s population. Therefore the 2 congressional districts set aside for Blacks represents their share of the population.
The whole point is that it is both unlawful and disgusting to set aside ANY districts for blacks. Their share of the population is irrelevant. The moment you set aside a district for them, you are a criminal and a disgusting racist.
What’s totally repugnant is that fewer than 30 seats out of 435 are “competitive” due to partisan gerrymandering.
I understand the Courts don’t have any authority to create maps, only legislatures. But that architecture was decided before a 2-party system set in. Do you think the Founders intended for the Constitution to enable partisan gerrymandering?
There are ways we could use competing softwares to make seats maximally competitive, giving “The People” more power than the 2 parties. How you ever get the Parties to actually compete on policies ALONE, giving up the power to choose their voters?….I don’t honestly know. But it would help if the Supreme Court squirmed a bit more visibly when upholding partisan gerrymandering.
SCOTUS position is it doesn’t want to be involved in adjudicating partisan gerrymandering because if it did, it would ultimately be responsible for drawing all House districts in the US. There is no one best way to draw a district, and an infinite number of ways to gerrymander. It has decided to let the States sort it out, and if Congress doesn’t like it, Congress can impose some national rules regarding congressional districts.
“What’s totally repugnant is that fewer than 30 seats out of 435 are “competitive” due to partisan gerrymandering.”
One issue with that practice that doesn’t seem to have been mentioned yet is that, when a seat is “safe” for one party, there would appear to be little or no incentive for that party to choose the best possible nominee. I would bet that in most of those districts, that nominee is either the most accomplished @$$k1$$3r available, and/or someone who will take money from party backers for favors.
KEY: The Democrat Leader, Minority Speaker of the House Hakeem Jeffries has sent EXACT SAME MESSAGE [“MAXIMUM WARFARE, everywhere, all the time”, “We are gonna fight it legislatively. We are gonna fight it in the courts. And we’re gonna fight it in the streets.”].
Joseph Goebbels gave his “TOTAL WAR” speech at the Berlin Sportpalast to party officials, war veterans, workers, and women. While millions more Germans listened on the radio, Goebbels spoke about the “misfortune of the past weeks” and offered an “unvarnished picture of the situation” amid so-called spontaneous cheers from the audience under a big banner bearing the all-capital words “TOTALER KRIEG – KÜRZESTER KRIEG” (“total war – shortest war”) asserted the threat posed: “They want to bring chaos to the Reich and Europe, using the resulting hopelessness and desperation to establish their international, Bolshevist-concealed, capitalist tyranny.”
Yes, I’ve read (and still studying) Rage and the Republic – and it IS great. However, in this case two messenger comparison of more recent is appropriate. Jeffries’ desire to revolutionize democracy into a dual state system (divided into a normative state, which follows established laws[which will cease to exist], and a prerogative state, which operates with arbitrary power and lacks legal constraints). Clearly, only the subjugation of the legislative and executive branches to a supreme “kangaroo” court will:
1) Interpret the law (“it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is)
2) Create law (“the word ‘the’ exists in the 4th, 5th, and 14th amendments, ergo: “THE right to legislated termination of human life [e.g., Roe v Wade] will be in our delegated power which supersedes the 10th amendment “powers not delegated to the federal government nor prohibited to the states are reserved to the states or the people”)
3) Enforce Law (“Send the power of the guillotine back to local DAs, judges who were funded and elected through the organizations of the Open Society Foundation” [George Soros Propaganda Society], and thus, they can dismember and disallow the defense of the accused [or rather designated for execution].
Hmm, maybe the Republicans should really consider “Pre-Packing” the Supreme Court with another 4 Republican Justices!
After all, “Good for Goose/Good for Gander” comes to mind!
Should we not declare the Congress as Illegitimate? Racist, Antisemite, Socialist?
Borrowing from Booker T Washington: “there is a certain class of race problem solvers who do not want the patient to get well”. They manifest the soft bigotry of low expectations for the intelligence of the low information voter, and are not inclined to help this lot to become more informed and able to make decisions for themselves. To do so would eliminate the need for the doctor in that the patient has been healed. “As long as the disease holds out, they have not only a easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium for making themselves prominent before the public’. So let it be with the political class, social justice warriors, and member of the media. Fredrick Douglass observed “No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.”
Urge your representative and senators to move the Keep-9 Amendment along to passage. That’s the only innoculation against these evil power-hungry a’h0les.
It’s clear that Jeffries has gone off the deep end in his quest for Power.. his speeches are more & more Over-the-Top Hate speeches and he cannot stop using the Race Card… what’s with that?! It’s 2026. not 1956… what’s with him, Jeffries, not seeing that he, Jeffries, wouldm’t even Be where he is in Congress, etc., if things about Race for minorities were as bad as he says! Indeed, it’s quite the opposite! Jeffries has shown now he is a DANGEROUS commodity.