g. gordon liddy

After tearing down the White House East Wing without the legal authority to do so, President Donald Trump is now acting in a way which suggests he may have designs on the building’s iconic Ionic columns.

“President Donald Trump appeared absorbed by the White House’s columns on Monday, lingering for several minutes and running his hands along the stonework,” The Daily Beast's Erkki Forster reported on Monday night. “The row of columns framing the White House’s entrance seemed to arrest the 79-year-old president’s attention as he returned from Arlington National Cemetery after delivering a boastful Memorial Day speech.”

Noting that the video of Trump assessing the column was first posted by NewsNation’s Kellie Meyer, Forster added that the video seemed to show Trump “tracing the bottom of the column with his hands as he appeared to study its details. According to White House press pool reports, Trump spent six minutes outside the entrance before walking inside.” He also seemed to order photographers to take pictures of the column.

While some online have speculated that this is further evidence of Trump’s supposed cognitive decline, others have pointed out that Trump has previously advocated for the column to be torn down and replaced with a more luxurious alternative.

“Rodney Mims Cook Jr., the Trump appointee who chairs the Commission of Fine Arts, a federal arts commission, proposed replacing the Ionic columns with Corinthian columns, a more luxurious style preferred by Trump, The Washington Post first reported in March,” Forster wrote. In that Washington Post article, it was observed that “the Trump-appointed head of a federal arts commission is proposing to replace them with a more ornate style favored by President Donald Trump. Those more decorative columns, a style known as Corinthian, are considered the most luxurious in classical architecture and appear on buildings such as the U.S. Capitol and the Supreme Court. They have long been deployed on Trump’s properties, and the president has handpicked them for his planned White House ballroom, too.”

Defending their position to the Post, Cook claimed that the “Corinthian is the highest order [of column], and that’s what our other two branches of government have. Why the White House didn’t originally use them, at least on the north front, which is considered the front door, is beyond me.”

In fact, the White House was designed with Ionic columns precisely because they are considered to be less ostentatious. Their purpose was to reinforce the notion that the White House is the “People’s House.”

If Trump destroys the White House’s columns, that will not be his first unilateral change on the building he is legally supposed to only inhabit temporarily. Trump had previously destroyed the White House’s historic East Wing to build his ballroom, and continues to push for the $1 billion ballroom despite being told by the courts that he has no legal authority to do so and despite initially claiming it would not cost taxpayer money. He has also announced plans to rip out a fixture installed by President Thomas Jefferson, saying he would install in its place a "beautiful, black granite" installation to replace the Tennessee Flagstone pavers on the West Wing Colonnade. Trump said he would pay for the installation himself and send the Jeffersonian originals to a nursery for safekeeping.

President Donald Trump was the first reality TV star to become president, but when it comes to tabloid entertainment entering the White House, he may not be the last — at least according to one expert.

After discussing how former President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden recently appeared on Candace Owens' podcast to discuss the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, America’s relationship with Israel and the Charlie Kirk assassination, The Bulwark’s Sarah Longwell, an expert on tracking voting patterns, argued that Owens may soon run for president in her Monday post.

To illustrate her point, she quoted a number of voters, such as a Biden-to-Trump North Carolina voter named Mycal who said “I think Candace Owens is great. I would vote for her in a minute.”

Another Biden-to-Trump North Carolina voter, Daniela, wrote that “if we would’ve swapped out Candace for Kamala, they would’ve had this in the bag.”

Similarly a Trump-voting Gen Z woman, Kim from Virginia, adopted the popular far right mantra of claiming persecution for their beliefs.

“ I’m sure I’ll catch a lot of flack for this one, but I am a Candace Owens fan,” Kim told Longwell. “I think she’s a very smart lady. I would be interested to see her give it a shot for sure.”

Meanwhile Nancy from Minnesota said that “ I think Candace Owens would be an awesome president, and if she were to run, I think it would take a lot for me to not vote for her. I would love to see someone like Candace in office.”

Longwell noted that Owens has said that she'll run for president, possibly with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) as her running mate. Yet it is unclear if she is simply trolling or being sincere, although Longwell pointed out that regardless of her intentions, the mere plausibility of her candidacy is instructive.

“It’s become clear in these groups that she is trading some of her mainline MAGA listeners—the kind who supported Trump for his stance on low taxes and traditional gender roles—for the more generally conspiracy-brained,” Longwell wrote. “Anecdotally, there are multiple people in my office whose apolitical family members and friends tune in to Owens for her reality TV takes, and get exposed to her whack-job political analysis in the process. But one person’s whack-job is another person’s fearless truth-teller.”

She added, “The conclusion to draw from my hundreds of focus groups with Trump voters in recent years, is this: Owens has moved from a hero of the ‘MAGA establishment’ to an avatar for a more sprawling and more exotically crazy coalition. Trump’s 2024 victory was largely built on wedding establishment MAGA types who wanted tax cuts, judicial appointments, and mass deportations with the conspiracy theorists who defy neat political categories. That was the reason he allied with RFK Jr. and the MAHA movement. Owens at one point seemed like one of the few figures who could maintain that marriage. And maybe she can. While there are signs that establishment MAGA fans are moving on from her, if she ever chooses to run for office, the exigencies of an election may very well bring them home again.”

After praising Owens for being articulate, savvy in building her base and capable of demonstrating independence from “MAGA proper,” Longwell concluded that Owens’ popularity shows America may one day have Trumpism without Trump.

“We might just end up trading the MAGA movement as it’s currently constituted for an even more deranged and conspiracy-addled one,” Longwell wrote.

Longwell is not the first to note Owens’ rising star power. Salon’s Sophia Tesfaye wrote in March that Owens has capitalized on the assassination of Charlie Kirk to spread conspiracy theories about his widow, Erika Kirk.

"With Kirk's assassination at a Turning Point USA event in Utah last September, the MAGA movement faced a genuine tragedy," Tesfaye wrote. "His widow, Erika Kirk, stepped in to lead the organization. But within weeks, before the grief had even begun to settle, Owens began publicly questioning the circumstances of Kirk's killing and spinning conspiracy theories on her podcast…. What started as insinuation soon metastasized into a serialized spectacle: 'Bride of Charlie,' a multi-episode YouTube series targeting Erika Kirk personally…. In the series, which is still ongoing, Owens hints that Kirk's murder was an inside job, suggests foreign agents may have been involved and implies that Erika Kirk has 'ulterior motives' in leading TPUSA."

Tesfaye added that although "the conservative establishment has, belatedly, tried to fight back against Owens' accusations” against one of their movement’s leaders, they "have largely failed to land a blow.” She added that “the real reason right-wing media cannot stop Candace Owens is that they built her. And, more importantly, they built the engine that fuels her: the machinery of conspiratorial media, which is immune to the tools that might once have contained it.”

Tesfaye concluded, “For decades, conservative media has thrived on a business model that monetizes outrage and distrust. The more outrageous the claim, the greater the engagement. The more distrust sowed toward institutions — universities, media, elections, public health, the FBI — the more loyal the audience becomes."

President Donald Trump is accused of having a conflict of interest in a Trump Tower he plans on building the capital city of a former Soviet republic.

Planned for the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, the potential Trump Tower is slated to be constructed on land currently part-owned by the son of a leader who was sanctioned by the United States, according to a Monday report by The Guardian. Specifically it is owned by the International Charity Fund Cartu, which is solely owned by Cartu Group JSC. That group is in turn mainly owned (with a 35 percent stake) by Uta Ivanishvili, the eldest son of the oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, who is honorary chair of Georgia’s ruling party and regarded as the de facto leader of the Georgian government.

While the younger Ivanishvili is not under sanctions, Trump’s willingness to do business with them constitutes a potential conflict of interest given that he is still serving as president. By contrast the White House has insisted that “neither the president nor his family” have “ever engaged, or will ever engage, in conflicts of interest”.

In addition to the Ivanishvili family, Trump’s business is also going into partnership with other organizations that could create conflicts of interest including the Archi Group, Biograpi Living, Blox Group and Finvest Georgia, alongside the US-based Sapir Organization. Despite the potential for conflicts of interest, there are no US sanctions against any of those other businesses.

If constructed, the new Trump Tower will be built on a plot in the capital of Tbilisi on top of an old Soviet horse-racing track known as the hippodrome.

“The ownership of only a small peripheral portion of that land has been transferred so far to Central Park Avenue LLC,” The Daily Beast reported. “Completion of the sale of the majority of the plot is due to be made on receipt of payment to Cartu of the purchase price.”

This is not Trump’s only controversy in terms of his various construction projects. He is also accused of having an ethical conflict in the construction of his planned Trump presidential library in Miami. According to Dunn’s Overtown Farm, a nonprofit farm and market in Miami co-founded by historian and psychology professor Dr. Marvin Dunn, Florida gave away valuable land to Trump for the library in a way that is allegedly “corrupt.”

“The court filing immediately cited Trump's own expressed disdain for libraries and museums as proof that ‘corruption’ is afoot, the likes of which Benjamin Franklin tried to prevent by insisting on a domestic emoluments clause in the first place,” Law and Crime’s Matt Naham reported at the time. Dunn’s Overtown Farm alleged in the lawsuit that “with its waterfront views and central location in bustling Downtown Miami, the MDC Parcel would likely sell for over $300 million on the open market, according to local real estate experts. But President Trump paid nothing for it.”

The litigation added that the president does not even "believe in building libraries or museums."

President Donald Trump's $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" slush fund appears to be the straw that broke the camel's back for many Republicans in Congress, but as a Republican strategist wrote for MS NOW, this pushback might, in reality, be more self-serving than noble.

Susan Del Percio is a GOP strategist who serves as a political analyst for MS NOW, and on Monday, she published a new piece for the network digging into the pushback Trump's fund is getting from his own party. While Republicans have largely gone along with much of Trump's agenda, this latest cash grab for himself and his allies appears to have been too much for them, at last, with Senate Republicans torpedoing a key immigration funding bill over the situation and some lawmakers signing on to a plan to kill the fund altogether.

"Senate Republicans typically offer more muted criticism, but this fund’s legal and ethical problems — or at least, the perception of those problems — was too much for some lawmakers to stomach," Del Percio wrote. "And they subsequently unloaded on acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in an unusually frank closed-door meeting. According to Punchbowl News, 'GOP senators — around 25 of them, an exceptionally high number for these closed-door meetings — took turns blasting the proposal and lamenting that they were being put in this situation.'"

Del Percio argued that one thing ought to be considered amid this GOP furor over the slush fund: "Trump probably loves it," all because of how it changes the subject.

"It is no secret that Trump’s numbers have tanked," Del Percio added. "In fact, just about every week, there is a new survey pointing out just how badly voters think he is doing when it comes to the economy. Last week, a Fox News poll put his disapproval number at 61% overall. According to the same poll, among Republicans, his approval is currently a record low 80%. This suggests that he is losing some of his base — and that is reason for concern. But one thing Trump has mastered is how to change the conversation. He has no response when it comes to the economy or even the Iran war, where peace negotiations remain stalled as the cost skyrockets each day. But when it comes to rallying his base, he knows retribution and protecting the Jan. 6 rioters can be a winning strategy."

Republicans, meanwhile, have their own interests to look out for amid Trump's tanking popularity. As the president "hopes a huge pot of taxpayer money will help win" back MAGA followers, other party lawmakers have to reckon with the fact that Trump will no longer be on the ballot in future elections, and those same followers who show up for him might not show up for them again. This, Del Percio argued, means they need to make concerted efforts to court "non-MAGA Republicans and Independents, as well as Trump Republicans."

"In this context, the 'revolt' that we are seeing right now on the Hill is probably much less principled than it appears," she concluded. "Is this really the GOP coming to its senses, or is it a self-preservation tactic, as politicians try to find the balance between the leader of their party and the broader constituencies they need to win over in November?"

Amid reports that a new ceasefire deal was imminent, the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board warned President Donald Trump to avoid a deal that functions as an economic bailout for Iran.

Over the weekend, Trump claimed that the U.S. and Iran were close to reaching a deal for a 60-day ceasefire in the conflict that has ravaged the world economy and sent oil prices skyrocketing. Iranian officials confirmed that talks were progressing, but stressed that major sticking points were still holding it back, adding that a deal was nowhere near as close as the president suggested. Nevertheless, news of an impending reprieve sent oil prices tumbling slightly.

In response to these reports, the WSJ board — which is commonly viewed as a major conservative voice on economic and political issues — published a new piece, warning Trump that one aspect of the supposed plan would amount to an economic bailout for Iran, and would leave the U.S. with only the most extreme leverage to get a final deal made, calling the notion a major potential "strategic setback."

In particular, the board took issue with the proposed portion of the deal that would end the U.S. blockade of Iran's port and allow them to resume selling oil to foreign markets.

"The preliminary deal, as mooted in the press, is for both sides to end their blockades, and perhaps for the U.S. to sweeten the pot financially, while talks on nuclear issues and further sanctions relief continue for 60 days or more," the board wrote. "A U.S. official says, but Iranian officials deny, that the regime gave assurances a final deal would include 'disposal' of its enriched uranium."

The end of the blockade, they warned, would destroy a key piece of U.S. leverage over Iran before its nuclear program is properly dealt with. The only remaining leverage — threatening to renew the fighting — will ring hollow after his previous backtracks.

"The basic problem lies with ending U.S. pressure before dismantling the nuclear program," the board added. "If the blockade ends and Iran can sell its oil, all that’s left to coerce it into nuclear concessions is the threat of renewed war."

It continued: "But Trump wasn’t willing to do that after Iran reneged on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and attacked U.S. forces and Gulf allies. How credible will the threat be 60 days closer to midterms, when it would trigger a new Iranian blockade of Hormuz? A pledge not to build a nuclear weapon means nothing because the regime has always said that while doing the opposite... Iran’s regime went into this war facing domestic political and economic crises. War has made these worse. Saving such a regime now with an economic bailout would be the real betrayal—of the U.S. interest even more than the Iranian people.”

President Donald Trump’s ally in the Los Angeles mayoral race, reality TV star Spencer Pratt, was just denounced by one of pop culture’s most prominent libertarian celebrities.

“Anyone who votes for, or endorses Spencer Prattfall for Mayor of L.A. needs to get their head out of their a–,” Drew Carey, host of “Who’s Line Is It Anyway?” and “The Price Is Right,” posted on Threads on Monday. “I understand being angry/unsatisfied, but at least get behind someone competent and not some serial scammer without a soul or moral compass. F--- this guy already.”

Pratt has repeatedly sided with Trump on key issues, and while championing his candidacy last week, Trump implied that the only way Pratt could lose in his race against Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is if the election is stolen via "a really rigged vote in California."

"I'd like to see him do well,” Trump said. “He's a character. I assume he probably supports me...I heard he's a big MAGA person. He's doing well, I don't know! You have a rigged vote out there, that's the problem.”

He added, "You have all the mail-in ballots. Everything else. It's very hard to win because the elections are very dishonest. If we had Jesus Christ come down and count the votes, I would have won California because I do great with Hispanics. But it's a rigged vote. They said 38 million votes — nobody knows where they're going, of course, to Democrats ... Disproportinate, Democrats get many more votes. Some of them get eight cards and Republicans have to call in, 'where's my card?'"

In addition to his controversial ties to Trump, Pratt is also under fire for being (like Trump) a reality TV star seeking higher office without any previous political experience. During his time as a reality TV star, Pratt racked up his fair share of controversies.

“During the height of his fame on MTV’s The Hills, Pratt admitted to staging stories for tabloids with his wife, Heidi Montag, for cash and buzz, even paying paparazzi to follow him around," reported The Daily Beast's Eboni Boykin-Patterson. "Despite the outcry about his candidacy and the proliferation of reality TV stars taking on government roles, Pratt has seen donations to his candidacy steadily increase over the past few weeks. Campaign disclosures show Pratt gaining nearly $2.7 million between April 19 and May 15, gaining on Bass’s $2.8 million since 2024."

Pratt claims that he is running for mayor as a result of him losing his family home during the 2025 Palisades wildfire, which he blames on mismanagement by Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

"Pratt's candidacy came on the heels of his family home being destroyed in the 2025 Palisades wildfire, which killed 12 people and destroyed more than 6,000 structures last January," reported Entertainment Weekly's Shania Russell. "In the wake of the tragedy, Bass was widely criticized for her handling of the multiple fires — which also included the Eaton fire — that burned across Los Angeles."

Russell added, "Pratt quickly became a relentless and vocal critic of both Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom, accusing them of incompetence and negligence in a series of videos shared to his social media accounts since the fires."

On Sunday, CNN pundit Scott Jennings posted a lengthy tweet in which he attempted to explain that President Donald Trump's deal to end the war with Iran is 95 percent "done," saying that he'd been told that the first phase was complete, but that a second phase still needed to address issues like the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and the Iranian nuclear program. As anyone who has been following the war's events unfold knows, however, arguably no two sticking points are larger than Hormuz and the nuclear question, making Jennings' assertion appear somewhat ridiculous.

"Insider reporting from an unnamed White House official says the Iran deal is '95% done,' responded pollster Frank Luntz later that day. "The remaining 5% of negotiations are focused on Iran opening the Strait of Hormuz and turning over all nuclear material."

With this simple statement, Luntz laid bare the absurdity of Jennings' claim, and by Monday, the internet had taken that absurdity and run with it.

"My plan to marry Scarlett Johansson is 95% done," declared one retweet. "The remaining 5% will focus on me meeting Scarlett Johansson, and then persuading her to marry me."

"I am 95% done with a deal to buy a new house," said Economist Middle East correspondent Gregg Carlstrom, offering a more practical example. "The remaining 5% of negotiations are focused on the price and whether the owners are actually willing to sell."

"I’m 95% done with dinner," announced Angry Staffer. "I just have to decide what I’m eating, how I’m cooking it, and what store I want to shop at."

Or as actor Bradley Whitford, perhaps best known for his time in the series The West Wing, jested, "Thrilled to report that my deal to play the new James Bond is '95% done.'”

There were many, many more examples, and while hilarious, they speak to a trend that has become increasingly persistent over the course of the conflict: Americans do not believe that progress is being made, nor that they can believe Trump or his allies' assertions about it. Former CIA Director John Brennan said as much explicitly on Sunday, saying, "I tend to believe Iran more than I do Donald Trump, because he could not acknowledge the truth even when it is — he's slapped in the face with it repeatedly. And it's clear that he is flailing right now. He's trying to figure out how he's going to get out of this debacle that he has created."

In the meantime, another poster is 95 percent done with her housework, and just has to "dust, vacuum, wash the dishes, do 3 loads of laundry, and make the beds."

President Donald Trump has been engaged in a historic and ruthless level of corruption since his return to the White House last year, and according to numerous ethics experts who spoke with The New Yorker, it will require a level of reform amounting to "radical surgery" in order to prevent future presidents from doing the same thing.

In a piece published Monday, New Yorker staff writer John Cassidy laid out the ever-expanding scope of Trump's corruption in office, including his trading of stocks for companies with business before the U.S. government and, most damningly, his new $1.8 billion DOJ slush fund that would essentially loot the U.S. Treasury of taxpayer funds to line the pockets of the president and his allies.

For the report, Cassidy spoke with Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota who also served as the chief ethics lawyer in the White House under George W. Bush, where he notably halted the hiring of a Goldman Sachs executive as Treasury Secretary, due to the conflict-of-interest laws their appointment would violate. When pressed about the current situation with Trump, Painter said that historical parallels were inadequate.

"[Former President Richard] Nixon had his issues, but I don’t think there is anything like this,” Painter said. “The President is specifically precluded from getting any financial favors from the Treasury while in office.”

Cassidy spoke with a variety of other experts in addition to Painter about what sorts of things would need to be done in order to protect the country from having to weather the corruption of a future president similar to Trump, and the answers suggested that vast, sweeping ethics reforms are in order.

"Painter told me that the first task is to make the President and Vice-President subject to the federal conflict-of-interest law, and require them to divest their conflictive assets," Cassidy detailed. "Another obvious and necessary reform is a ban on trading individual stocks, one that applies to Presidents and members of Congress alike."

Passing such a reform would require action from Congress that appears unlikely with Republicans in the majority. The alternative would be to impeach presidents who violate the rules against self-enrichment by the Executive Branch, but as Painter noted, "We already tried that twice and failed."

"Ultimately, then, it comes back to politics, where there are structural problems that run even deeper than Trump," Cassidy added. "In the post-Citizens United world, Presidents—Republican and Democrat alike—sit atop political parties and allied fund-raising entities that can gin up practically unlimited sums, which can be used to crush dissidents. (This month, in Kentucky, Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican willing to criticize Trump, was defeated in what became the most costly House primary on record.) The weight of money shifts the balance of power away from individual members of Congress, insuring that for many of them the default position is submission."

He continued: "What we’ve learned during the past decade is that when the Supreme Court puts democracy up for sale, Congress is utterly beholden to a President, and if that President is a malign actor, the U.S. Constitution is no longer fit for purpose. Trump is ruthlessly exploiting this weakness, but he didn’t create it. Assuming that the Republic does eventually get past him and his grifting, it will need radical surgery, not merely a reset."

President Donald Trump was reelected in 2024 in no small part to the support he received from so-called “manosphere” influencers like podcaster Theo Von — and now those same influencers are being put in the hot seat.

“So I have a conversation with two different types of MAGA people,” journalist Van Lathan told conservative commentator Tim Miller during a talk that was posted on The Bulwark on Monday. “One is the people that are in that 35 percent. They gotta get f——. I'm sorry. Okay. I'm with you. But I'll tell you something that happened at Equinox, the gym up here.”

Lathan proceeded to talk about how he ran into Theo Von at the gym and the two began talking about their shared Louisiana roots. Then Lathan found himself feeling like a “bitch ass n——” who was “cucking out” because he refused to tell Theo Von what he really thought of him. Von, despite claiming to be “politically homeless” and non-partisan, threw his support behind Trump in the 2024 election and attended his subsequent inauguration. He is also an integral part of the pro-Trump podcasters ecosystem that includes figures like Joe Rogan, Andrew Schulz and Tony Hinchcliffe.

“I pulled Theo to the side and I'm like, ‘Hey man, I was really, and have been really, disappointed in you and some of the stuff that you've done with your podcast. I've been pissed off at you. We've been taking some shots at you,’” Lathan told Miller. He then impersonated an uncomfortable Theo Von who reportedly responded by saying, “Man, I really didn't know he was gonna be like that." At that point, Lathan said that he wanted to “snip his nuts,” but thought instead to “push on that a little bit.”

“What do you mean?” Lathan said, describing the conversations that anti-Trump Americans can have with pro-Trump Americans like Theo Von. “Talk to him for a little bit, and he starts telling me stuff. And it's clear that that is somebody who you could probably move, right? You could probably get somebody like that, with that type of platform, with that type of reach, to come over. And if you can do it to that person, then you have to do it.”

He added, “My job is to tell Theo, ‘I'm gonna f—— over you every chance I get.’” Yet he urged conservatives like Miller to try to reach out to anti-Trumpers whenever possible, characterizing the effort to change minds beyond his hard-core base as being painstaking but still worthwhile.

Theo Von has attempted to put some distance between himself and the Trump administration. He has criticized the Iran war and Trump’s alliance with Israel, called out the administration’s cover up of the president’s friendship and alleged shared pedophilic predilections with the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and even demanded that the White House not use him to promote its anti-immigrant policies.

In September, when Trump’s White House used a clip of Theo Von to push its agenda to deport immigrants, the podcaster replied that "didn’t approve to be used in [the video].”

"I know you know my address so send a check,” Von wrote. “And please take this down and please keep me out of your ‘banger’ deportation videos."

He added, "When it comes to immigration my thoughts and heart are a lot more nuanced than this video allows. Bye!"

The Supreme Court, mired in accusations of "corruption" and "bias," has dealt what one Fox News analyst writing for The Hill called the "most destructive blow against Black political power in my lifetime."

Juan Williams is a political analyst for Fox News who is regularly one of the conservative network's most vocal critics of President Donald Trump and the GOP's acquiescence to his political machinations. In a piece published on Memorial Day, he called out the Supreme Court's continued trend of ruling in ways that run afoul of legal principles in order to benefit Trump, while reserving particular scorn for its gutting of the Voting Rights Act.

"Here’s the biggest mystery in Washington," Williams wrote. "Was it a six-sided conspiracy? Or are there only one or two Supreme Court justices behind the chaos caused by the recent ruling allowing new congressional districts to be drawn even after midterm primary voting has started?"

He added: "Among Democrats, there is no mystery. There is talk of outright corruption. The only question is the extent of the corruption among Supreme Court justices. How many have abandoned judicial impartiality to help President Trump hold his Republican majority in the House?"

Williams further highlighted Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's recent comments during a meeting of the American Law Institute, where she chastised her conservative colleagues on the court for straying from their duty to be "neutral" and "nonpartisan," arguing that, instead, they are now getting "into the [political] fray," with their rulings. This was particularly true of the 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which effectively gutted key provisions of the Voting Rights Act and spurred a whirlwind of red-state gerrymandering in order to create new districts that disperse the influence of black voters.

Justice Samuel Alito, one of the most conservative members of the court with a history of antipathy towards the VRA, dismissed Jackson's claims as "groundless and utterly irresponsible," but in his piece for The Hill, Williams noted that, "it is hard to ignore the political fact that Republicans in Louisiana as well as Alabama halted primary elections to draw new maps that are more favorable to Republican congressional candidates."

"In Tennessee, the congressional map is similarly being redrawn before Election Day," Williams added. "And in South Carolina, the Republican governor asked for a special legislative session to review redistricting and possibly squeeze out the one Black-majority district. It is the only congressional district that favors Democrats. By some estimates, the wave of districting now spreading through the South, with approval of the Supreme Court, will reward Republicans with about seven to 10 more seats."

This, he noted, follows on from prior efforts by red states to use redistricting to pad the GOP's House margins, hopefully helping them to keep their thin majority in the chamber after the coming midterms. In exchange for this potential advantage politically, Williams warned that the court has created the possibility of "real racial division and pain," that could undo the vital gains of the Civil Rights Movement.

"With recent rulings, the Supreme Court has cleared the way for 21st-century white, southern politicians to silence the voices of Black voters while raising the volume of voices belonging to white voters with a history of voting for Republicans," Williams continued. "The high court’s recent ruling amounts to the most destructive blow against Black political power in my lifetime."