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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026

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In one of the more anticipated decisions of this term, the Supreme Court (6-3 on ideological lines) has struck down the second Louisiana majority-black district. They did not rule categorically that race may not be used as a factor in redistricting decisions, but they did rule that if a redistricting decision could be explained by a partisan gerrymander rather than a racial one, there was no case.

To satisfy the second and third preconditions—politically cohesive voting by the minority and racial-bloc voting by the majority—the plaintiffs must provide an analysis that controls for party affiliation, showing that voters engage in racial-bloc voting that cannot be explained by partisan affiliation.

In practice, if taken seriously by lower courts, this pretty much destroys nearly all Section 2 Voting Rights Act cases, because of the strong affiliation between blacks and the Democratic Party.

Why are Southern black voters so uniformly aligned with the Democratic Party? Did something happen? I was led to understand that race relations in the South were actually great and reports of interracial discord were Yankee propaganda.

Are southern blacks more dem than blacks nationally? Everything I've seen is that they're about the same and this is machine politics all the way down.