Middleboro Review and so on

  Democracy Docket 698K subscribers May 5, 2026 In a fast-tracked order, the Supreme Court let Louisiana move forward with a new congressional map. The move exposes a double standard: the same court that told Black voters in Alabama it was too late to fix an unconstitutional map is now moving fast for white plaintiffs in Louisiana, even as ballots are being cast. Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias and former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance break it down. Subscribe to our free newsletters or upgrade to support our work: https://bit.ly/3OK7w4A Subscribe to Joyce Vance's Substack: https://joycevance.substack.com/ — Democracy Docket is the leading digital news platform covering voting rights and elections in the courts — from an unapologetically pro-democracy and independent standpoint. Covering election and voting litigation is central to our mission. But today’s battles over democracy — access to voting, gerrymandering, executive overreach, the rule of law and more — also play o...

Bloody Sunday Joyce Vance Mar 8 Today marks the 61st anniversary of Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965. The Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, march for voting rights was halted by Alabama state troopers and sheriffs who tear-gassed and beat the marchers. A trooper beat Future Georgia Congressman John Lewis in the head with a nightstick. Given the brutality of the attacks, he was lucky to end up with a concussion. As serious as that was, it could have been far worse. The national press reported what was happening in Selma to the rest of the country. The outrage it generated across the country was a pivotal moment in the struggle for civil rights. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed later that year. It created federal protection for voters and outlawed the supposed literacy tests that kept Black people from voting if they couldn’t answer ridiculous questions meant to exclude them from participation in elections—things like how many bubbles there were on a bar of soap or how many jelly beans...

  No More Benefit Of The Doubt Joyce Vance Mar 7 Last Sunday, we discussed a number of cases pending in front of federal district judges in Minneapolis. Friday night, one of them, Judge John Tunheim, dropped a decision that is well worth your time—even on a Friday night. It involves allegations from people detained by ICE that their property was seized and not returned to them. Another word for that might be theft, although one supposes it could also be the result of extraordinary carelessness. Federal law enforcement agents routinely collect, and subsequently return, the possessions of people they detain. But that isn’t happening here. Judge Tunheim felt so much urgency about the matter than he got his ruling out on a Friday night, not a typical time for a federal judge to be finishing up at work. But he decided it was time to deliver a reckoning to the Trump administration and apparently, didn’t want to delay.  His order   starts like this: “During Operation Metro Surg...

  Another Big Loss for the Little Bully Joyce Vance Mar 3 Today, the Trump administration delivered a loss in court to itself. It abandoned its defense of Trump’s executive orders sanctioning several law firms. You likely remember these executive orders, which we discussed in March of 2025, in “ Big Law Fights Back. ” At the time, I introduced the issue like this: “Unless you’ve practiced in Big Law, they’re probably just names: Perkins Coie, Covington & Burling, Paul Weiss. They are the law firms Donald Trump has attacked, using the power of the presidency in a venal form of personal revenge, by way of Executive Orders (EOs) that are so harsh clients have left firms, and some are rumored to be in dire straits. Yesterday it was WilmerHale, targeted explicitly because they hired two lawyers—the EO called it “welcomed” them—who had worked on the Mueller Investigation , which concluded Trump had engaged in behavior that could be prosecuted, but declined to do so because of a DO...

The Law of War Joyce Vance Mar 1 I am not a law of war expert. I don’t play one on TV. But I wanted to share some basic principles and offer some suggestions for further reading as we watch the news unfold in Iran. The White House hasn’t offered the public a reason for the attack on Iran that would make it legal, and CNN is  reporting  they haven’t provided a “full accounting” to members of Congress either. This afternoon, Jake Sherman at Punchbowl News reported that “A senior Trump administration official said that U.S. intelligence ‘had indicators’ that the Iranians were going to use their missiles ‘preemptively, but if not, simultaneous’ to any American action on Iran.” But if the real reason for our attack was warding off casualties from an Iranian first strike, you would have expected to hear the White House using that explanation from the start, which they didn’t. And now that we have struck, we haven’t seen any proportional response, “simultaneous” or otherwise, from Ir...