Supreme Court Spends Day Pondering Racism, Never a Good Thing

From their extremely serious decision in Louisiana v. Callaiswhich gave its final evisceration to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the justices turned to the question of temporary protected status for those fleeing unrest in Haiti and Syria. Oral arguments began as soon as Justice Kagan finished reading aloud part of her dissent in Callais.

The Trump administration’s success in this case would pave the way for hundreds of thousands of immigrants to be expelled from the country, primarily immigrants belonging to a group that the MAGA movement has made a point of targeting. Vice President JD Vance and a group of MAGA-aligned influencers infamously drew on white nationalist arguments to fuel conspiracy theories about the large Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio, who, they baselessly insisted, ate pets. A lawyer for Haitian TPS holders argued Wednesday that racial animus played a clear role in the administration’s decision to end the program for that group, a claim the conservative majority was prepared to reject.