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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026

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SCOTUS recognizes that the equilibrium where the public and elected representatives and elected governments in many of the richest and most populous (blue) states are prevented from legislating their own domestic in-state firearms policy (which does not relate to core federal government spheres like defense, border control, foreign policy, interstate commerce or central banking) against their will is unstable and will, at some point, result in the court being packed and the US’ brief experiment in comparatively greater freedoms reverting to the current European/Canadian/Australian model, not just when it comes to gun ownership but in every other case too.

When you boil it down, the question is over where the power is kept and how one accesses it.

Your claim is that Blue States can't be bound by the Constitution if they disagree with those restrictions, because otherwise they'll overthrow the system. If this is an accurate description, then to the extent that Reds wish to have their own access to power, the key to accessing it is to present a similar threat of disastrous consequences unless their preferred carve-outs are granted.

One notes that establishing sufficient threats probably results in less stability for the system overall, not more, but human collectives have never been all that good at math.

The same motivation to accommodate local political sentiment, for example, is what struck down mandatory gerrymandering of black-majority districts in some southern states that was forced upon them, and what struck down Roe.

As has been pointed out many times before, Black-Majority districts and overturning Roe are examples of ending blue impositions on red areas. We still have never had Red constitutional impositions on Blue areas, while we've had the reverse for many decades running, and still have many active. "We'll consider gradually ramp down our abuses of your autonomy, on the understanding that you will never, ever get to abuse our autonomy in any way" is not an attractive pitch for the side that has been relentlessly abused for many decades.

Kind of off topic but in regards to Louisiana v. Callais and the redistricting wars; Is it just me or did the media drop the subjects once it started to look like Tennessee might actually gain a black congressmember as a result of thier redraw?

It was all over my feed for a week, Tennessee published their revised map, and then crickets.

never had Red constitutional impositions on Blue areas

While I broadly am inclined to agree with the overall thrust of your argument, this is not true. If you want to split hairs on "constitutional" then we'd have to agree on a definition of that to create a boundary of what counts. But off the top of my head of Court Cases, and Federal laws that Reds have imposed on Blues, there are many:

  • Janus v. AFSCME regulated public sector unions and was imposed on pro union-labor oriented states
  • Masterpiece Cake shop enforced conservative views on the freedom of speech/religion on Prog states
  • 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, same thing
  • Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard/UNC, Progs clearly want to engage in race-conscious affirmative action,
  • Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), prevented the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages and conferring the benefits of marriage
  • Don't Ask Don't Tell federal stature 10 U.S.C. § 654
  • Espinoza v. Montana and Carson v. Makin, vaguely forces Blue-tribe states to fund religious schools, by preventing the states from exempting them from school-choice or public aid programs

The Red tribe is not some innocent victim in this arena, the give as good as they get.