The Supreme Court’s decision striking down a majority-black Louisiana congressional district as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander is sending Democrats into paroxysms of hyperbole, with politicians competing to use the most extreme language to denounce the decision and the court that issued it, and to offer the most catastrophically dire description about its consequences.
President Trump warned that the rhetoric was “dangerous,” perhaps having in mind the attempt on his life Saturday night and a 2022 assassination attempt against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The fact that the Supreme Court has ruled against Trump on tariffs and on deploying the National Guard to Chicago has not prevented senior Democrats from describing it as “illegitimate” and calling for retaliatory steps against the justices.
Leading the charge, ironically enough, were two politicians from minority backgrounds who managed to win election nationwide and statewide with predominantly white electorates.
Barack Obama, who was elected senator from Illinois once and president of the United States twice without needing a racially tilted district, said the decision “effectively guts a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act.” Obama said the decision “serves as just one more example of how a majority of the current Court seems intent on abandoning its vital role in ensuring equal participation in our democracy and protecting the rights of minority groups against majority overreach.”
Kamala Harris, who was elected statewide in California twice—once as attorney general, once as senator—and also was vice president of the United States, all without requiring a racially tailored district, said the decision “guts the Voting Rights Act and turns back the clock on the foundational promise of equality and fairness in our election systems.” She said “the court’s decision is motivated by politics,” calling it “part of an agenda that conservatives set in place decades ago to steal power from everyday people and then cling to that power for generations.”
Other critics were more explicit in calling for punishing or removing the judges who made the decision. “Term limits for the Supreme Court,” said Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat of Michigan. “Impeach these corrupt justices. Expand the Court.”
Rep. Yvette Clarke of New York, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said “the Supreme Court has opened the door to a coordinated attack on black voters across this country. … It’s about silencing black voices.”
“The legitimacy of this court is in crisis,” Clarke said. “We will fight for Supreme Court reform. We will pursue term limits for justices.”
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, referred to what he called an “illegitimate Supreme Court majority.” He called the decision by the “Trump Court” part of “a scheme to suppress the vote and rig the midterm elections.” Jeffries did not explain why the “Trump Court” ruled against Trump on other issues, such as tariffs.
President Trump singled out Jeffries’s statement describing the court as illegitimate as particularly troubling. “That’s a dangerous statement,” Trump said April 30. “If I made that statement, it would be the biggest story out there.” Jeffries, who might be Speaker of the House if Democrats take control, is less of a fringe figure than Tlaib, but his rhetoric was nearly as extreme and he shows no inclination to rein in his colleagues.
A California man, Nicholas John Roske, was sentenced in October 2025 to 97 months in federal prison after a guilty plea to an attempted assassination of Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh. Trump has been the subject of at least three recent assassination attempts, most recently this past Saturday night. It’s certainly possible that the extreme Democratic reaction to the court ruling will inspire additional political violence.
Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois took to X to denounce the court’s opinion as “voter suppression that will silence Black and brown voters.” He added, echoing Obama and Harris, that, “it guts the Voting Rights Act.” Pritzker is Jewish and was elected statewide in the Prairie State, where Jews are an estimated 2 percent of the population.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York mixed somatic metaphors, declaring that the decision, “eviscerates the Voting Rights Act in ways that should send shivers down the spine of American democracy.” Nadler, a senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, called on Congress to “reform the Supreme Court to bring balance back.”
Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim elected in New York City, where Muslims are a small if growing minority, said the decision “risks disenfranchising millions of Americans along racial lines and weakening the very foundation of our democracy.” Actually, disenfranchising Americans along racial lines is what the Supreme Court and the Constitution say is unconstitutional, and Mamdani is just engaging in alarmist fearmongering.
Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts said the decision “guts voting protections for Black and Brown Americans and is a devastating blow to our democracy.” Massachusetts had a black governor, Deval Patrick, and a black Republican senator, Ed Brooke, who were both elected statewide without benefits of racially drawn districts.
My own personal favorite reaction to the decision came from Rep. Burgess Owens, a Republican of Utah.
He said, “I welcome the Supreme Court’s correct decision. The left has spent decades hiding their racial obsession behind the banner of civil rights. Today, that game ends.”
Owens went on, “Racial gerrymandering is not protection. It is the left’s plantation politics repackaged with a law degree. The condescending assumption that Black Americans cannot compete without bureaucrats drawing lines around them is not compassion. It is racism with different branding. I am a Black man who has never needed the government to predetermine my outcome. Neither do the voters of this country.”
He continued, “The left claims to champion equality while demanding the government sort every American into a racial box. That is not a civil rights movement. That is a power grab dressed up as one. We cannot become a more perfect union if Democrats continue to treat race as a weapon and black voters as a captive constituency to be managed and mobilized.”
And he concluded, “Everyone who is a citizen of this great country should first and foremost be an AMERICAN. Regardless of race, religion, zip code, or income, we are all Americans and should be treated as such. The left has never believed that. Today’s ruling says they no longer get to act like it.”
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