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May 15, 2026

SCOTUS Redistricting Decision Just Ended Affirmative Action — for House Democrats
By Selwyn Duke

Here’s a point to ponder: Despite being 31-33 percent Republican, New Hampshire has no GOP congressman. What would a Republican congressional district look like were the state forced to create one?

Then, imagine Massachusetts had to forge a district for its gun owners, who comprise just 14.7 percent of the state’s population. Would it or the New Hampshire district look anything like this?

We don’t know, and the above isn’t either one. What it is, as indicated, is the 2024 Louisiana district map highlighting two court-ordered black-majority districts. Yes, they look like tortuous areas created by tortuous people. One of them will now be history, though, after the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision on April 29.

The ruling essentially holds that under the Voting Rights Act (VRA), states may not draw districts based mainly on race. It finally ends a 60-year judicial fantasy that, in ordering such race-based outcomes, completely distorted the VRA’s intent.

Democrats’ Affirmative Action

Let’s be clear, too, on what was in essence being said by the racial bean counters. “We’re not going to create special districts for Republicans, gun owners, libertarians, fishermen, enlarged-prostate sufferers, or any other ‘underrepresented’ group. But we are going to create them for blacks and Hispanics — even if they look like a horizontal lightning strike.”

“Oh, purely coincidentally, almost all these districts will just so happen to vote Democrat.”

And, boy, do they ever. As Doug Truax, founder and CEO of Restoration of America, writes at RealClearPolitics, the racial sleight-of-hand resulted in “144 majority-minority districts, just 23 of which elected Republicans in 2024.”

“Call it what it is,” he states: “affirmative action for Democratic members of Congress.”

But those days are over. As Truax also informs:

Callais now frees red state Republicans to redraw as many as 36 majority-minority districts held by Democrats — transforming once-safe blue seats into battlegrounds. Democrats are still reeling from a gut punch delivered just days earlier, when SCOTUS reinstated Texas’ new congressional map ahead of the November midterms. They have every reason to panic.

Credit President [Donald] Trump and Texas Republicans for thinking outside the box. Last summer, Trump touched off a redistricting revolution transforming 13 Democratic seats into likely GOP gains in Texas (5), Florida (4), Ohio (2), North Carolina (1), and Missouri (1). The Callais decision is likely to lead to 5-6 more this cycle: Louisiana (2), Alabama (1-2), Tennessee (1), and South Carolina (1).

In response, Democrats spent some $200 million on gerrymandering ballot measures in California and Virginia — designed to sideline the very independent redistricting commissions they once hailed as the cure for gerrymandering. Although California reaped benefits for Democrats, it galvanized Republicans. And with the Virginia state supreme court on Friday striking down the Democrats’ tortured gerrymander, Republicans are left with a probable net gain of more than a dozen house [sic] seats.

This is, of course, what’s really upsetting Democrats. Sure, they may claim Callais represents the “swiftest disenfranchisement of black folks since Reconstruction.” They may claim it’s Jim Crow 2.0. These are, however, merely the protestations (and kabuki theater) of politicians who’ve come to take preferential treatment for granted. Consequently, a level playing field seems to them like discrimination.

And their warnings certainly aren’t anything to trouble over. After all, as late black professor Walter E. Williams emphasized in 2018, “Black political power means zilch.” His point: While black political clout surged between 1970 and 2012, black economic and social advancement didn’t.

So what’s the correct way to conceptualize the Callais effect? Courts had for 60 years partially usurped southern Republican states’ gerrymandering power. They generally used it to benefit Democrats, too. Now these states get to make their own gerrymandering decisions — just as the Democrat-run states have always done.

Democrats Are Barking ’Cause They Can’t Bite?

And gerrymander the Democrats did — in spades. Truax notes that the party can’t mirror the new GOP gerrymandering because left-wing states are maxed out. Recent gerrymandering pushes in Maryland, New York, and Colorado failed. Massachusetts and Wisconsin could perhaps at this point only gerrymander fellow Democrats from power.

Truax also makes some other points:
- Conservative states are projected to gain approximately 10 House seats (and Electoral College votes) after the 2030 census. Reason: the continuing blue-to-red migration trend.
- A major Republican advantage lies ahead. The aforementioned factors could create 250- to 270-seat House majorities and lasting GOP dominance, even if Trump loses key Rust Belt states.
- Call to action — conservatives must build voter infrastructure now to seize the moment and secure long-term majorities.
(Of course, this presupposes the Democrats don’t win Congress and the presidency the next two election cycles. For they would then use such power to rig the system by hook or by crook.)

By the way, another complaint heard following Callais is that the GOP needs to “cheat” to win. In reality, though, neutral, compact, nonpartisan districting would favor Republicans, giving them a three-to-15-seat structural edge. This is because Democrats are concentrated in dense urban areas, creating “natural packing” that wastes leftist votes in landslide districts. Republicans are more evenly distributed in suburbs and rural areas.

Put simply, eliminating all gerrymandering would apparently favor Republicans. This again underlines how malevolent the courts’ 60-year Voting Rights Act judicial activism was. It wasn’t bad enough the GOP was disadvantaged, relatively speaking, by the gerrymandering norm. It also then had judges putting their thumbs on the scale and gerrymandering the party’s own Republican states to elect Democrats.

And this may help explain how the Democrats became so incompetent. After all, incompetence is exactly what affirmative action breeds.

This article was originally published at The New American.
May 11, 2026

Nuclear Debt Bomb: U.S. Debt Reaches Red Zone — 100% of GDP

By Selwyn Duke

For decades, there would be much talk among politicians about United States budget deficits (and the national debt). Yet this faded sometime after 2010, at the latest, after which our debt achieved elephant-in-the-room status. It’s perhaps just too scary or inconvenient — when you want or are promising free stuff — to discuss. Regardless, what just happened is discussion-worthy. To wit:

U.S. public debt has reached 100 percent of GDP for just the second time (first was during the Covid pandemic) since the WWII-era. We’re now in league with debtor nations such as Greece, Italy, France, and Canada.
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May 10, 2026

Cuckoo’s Nest: Mental-health Awareness Is “Backfiring” and “Manufacturing Illness”

By Selwyn Duke

My time working with kids, decades ago, left me with some interesting stories. One of them involved a boy of about 10 — I’ll call him Joe (not his real name) — who’d been diagnosed with “ADHD.” His mother told me a mental-health professional gave them a book for him to read on children thus diagnosed. She ended up taking it away from Joe, however. Why?

He began, she explained, copying the bad behavior of the archetypal ADHD child in the book.
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May 10, 2026

This Capital City Just Banned Advertising for Meat, Fossil Fuels, and…

By Selwyn Duke

In the 19th century, European immigrants might write home a letter including something such as the following. “Dear Uncle Maarten, it’s unbelievable: Here in America, I can eat meat every day!” Such a lifestyle was unheard of in the Old World. And now there may be the 21st-century version of this incredulity. It goes something like this:

“Dear Uncle Maarten, it’s unbelievable: Here in America, I see meat advertisements every day!”

This isn’t so far-fetched now that Amsterdam, Holland, has just banned the advertising of all meat products. This comes on the heels, too, of another story about the “War on Meat.” In that case, cited were two “bioethics” professors who suggested spreading ticks whose bite can cause a severe meat allergy. (Yes, really.) Insofar as drug capital Amsterdam goes, however, meat is not the only target. As The Independent reported Monday:
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May 10, 2026

“Muslim Only” Day at Taxpayer-funded Texas Waterpark, Touting “Islamic Values,” Sparks Outrage

By Selwyn Duke

The Muslim Brotherhood once outlined a plan that “involved softening America through cultural influence, political infiltration, and demographic expansion,” as one ex-Muslim observer related it. And now critics have an Exhibit A in the cultural-influence department.

To celebrate the Islamic holiday Eid, there’ll be an event originally billed as “Muslims Only” at a taxpayer-funded Texas waterpark.

After a backlash, the organizer changed the messaging to, “modest dress only” and added “all are welcome” to celebrate Eid. But here’s the kicker:

However the event is framed, it appears legal.
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May 6, 2026

An “Ancient Killer” Returns to California — Courtesy of Illegal Aliens?

By Selwyn Duke

If your three children all got sick the day after a new kid came over to play, you’d have a decent clue about who the vector of disease was. This comes to mind with the reintroduction in California of an ancient killer: tuberculosis (TB).

The world’s deadliest infectious disease, TB caused an estimated 1.23 million deaths worldwide in 2024. In fact, approximately 10.7 million people were sickened by it that year. And the disease ranks among the top 10 overall causes of global mortality.
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May 5, 2026

Recently Asked: “Why Do Democrats Hate America?”

By Selwyn Duke

It raised eyebrows when Michelle Obama said at a 2008 campaign rally, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.” (And all it took was her husband becoming a probable presidential nominee.) But she’s not alone in lacking pride. In fact, a 2025 Gallup poll found that only 36 percent of Democrats are very proud to be American. (This doesn’t likely result from a spiritual quest to develop humility, either.)

Critics may point out that much of this hinges on who controls government. Surveyed Democrats do, after all, register lower pride numbers now that President Donald Trump is in office.

Yet this gets at a reality: When speaking of loving America, which “America” is at issue? Is it the republic of our Founding Fathers’ dreams — or of Karl Marx’s? Is it the one we once were heading toward or the one we’re now heading toward? Is it America or Amerika? Leftists very well may like the latter, in theory. (The experience of it would be quite different. See the Kronstadt sailors, et al.) But speaking of what these United States are meant to be, a commentator recently asked a question:

“Why Do Democrats Hate America?”
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May 5, 2026

Anti-Christian Hate: Biden Attorneys Aimed to Target Nuns — Loathed Their Head Coverings

^{Image created with Grok AI.}

By Selwyn Duke

In 2018-2019, Democrats lifted a ban on head coverings in the House so that newly-sworn-in Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) could wear her hijab. Democrats have also generally defended the “right” to sport Muslim headwear in schools, workplaces, and in interactions with government. But Democrats in former President Joe Biden’s Justice Department (DOJ) apparently showed no such affinity for Catholic nuns’ head coverings.

In fact, it has emerged that senior DOJ prosecutors spoke of them with contempt. This was, too, all while salivating over the prospect of prosecuting some nuns who exercised their First Amendment rights.
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May 2, 2026

An Anti-“Hate Crime” Scheme Fails — Again

By Selwyn Duke

Since committing a “hate crime” brings more prison time, we could wonder:

Does committing a “love crime” reduce one’s sentence?

This may sound silly, a bit like countering feminism with “masculinism” or Islamophobia with “Islamophilia.” Yet it also may put in perspective how silly the accepted terms are.

Whatever the case, I’m old enough to remember when “hate crime,” per se, was not a thing. There’s a good case, too, for eliminating the category from the books. For not only does it allow for bias — that of the government in prosecution — but these laws appear otherwise counterproductive, too.
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May 1, 2026

Is Our “Equality” Obsession Destroying Our Nation?

By Selwyn Duke

“Equality tells us nothing about quality.” This is a simple truth — hiding in plain sight. Would we, after all, rather have equality in poverty or inequality in abundance? Would we prefer the equality of all being deathly ill or the inequality of varying levels of health? Would we choose equality in abject stupidity or the inequality of differing degrees of brilliance?

Brilliance isn’t required to know the answers, but, still, man so often kneecaps himself with equality efforts. Affirmative action — which metastasized into diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) — seeks outcome equality at competence’s expense. And if a few more helicopters and planes crash, and more criminals escape miniature cops, well, eggs for omelets, ya know?

This all raises a question: Is a “bad take on equality,” as a commentator recently put it, destroying our country? But then there’s a more fundamental question:

Is the focus on equality itself, no matter how it’s conceived, tragically misguided?
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