The [2026 U.S. Supreme Court] case that felled the Voting Rights Act was Louisiana v. Callais…
The day after the Callais ruling, Gov. Jeff Landry took the unprecedented action of suspending the state’s U.S. House primary — in which tens of thousands of voters had already cast ballots — so legislators could redraw the election maps. Though one in three Louisiana residents is Black, Republicans intend to jettison at least one of two Black-majority districts…
Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama and Florida quickly moved ahead with their own redistricting plans. And the governor of Mississippi — which has just a single Black U.S. representative despite having the nation’s highest percentage of Black residents, at 38 percent — announced his intent to do the same…
“They are cementing absolute minority control because they do not represent a majority of this country. And when they — if they — get away with the heist, we will be locked out of multiracial democracy for at least a generation,” [ said Janai Nelson, who as president and director-counsel of the Legal Defense Fund argued the Callais case before the Supreme Court].
(Nikole Hannah Jones, “The Civil Rights Era Is Collapsing Before Our Eyes,” New York Times, 5-22-26)
(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
EthicalDative 
Rae Armantrout Appeals to My Inner Toddler
I want to say Rae Armantrout springs a cavalcade of huggable schwas on me, but rumpled or purple or bubbly would describe them, too. As long as they’re duple bumpy words.
Joints grind like
shot brakes.
Food ignites
in our stomachs.
But we’re still muffin-bunnies,
muddle-buckets,
cuddle-chunks.
(From “Apocrypha,” Poetry, June 2026)
Armantrout’s boney, yet highly legible, minimalism does me that rare favor poetry can bestow on a reader, to wit, elicit laughter. Twenty-six syllables cresting in a persnickety streak of thud-nuts provide a rambunctious chuckle-ride. The wry-serious vocables smack of kid talk with a whiff of nursery rhyme and playground marketing. (“Muffin-Bunnies” are well positioned for the sugary snack rack at a 7-Eleven checkout.)
Also, who is one who has driven with frayed brake pads, and has complaining joints, that doesn’t seize immediately on the “grinding” simile? A brusque epithet plucked from the vernacular, “shot,” suits it to a tee.
(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved