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U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) speaks while Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, not pictured, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on oversight of the Department, in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on March 3, 2026.
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Cory Booker Should Be Ashamed of Himself
May 18, 2026
I wish “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker had asked Sen. Cory Booker if he’s qualified to represent New Jersey given that nearly 9 out of 10 of his constituents are not Black.
I should probably back up.
Last month, the Supreme Court ruled in Callais vs. Louisiana that the state’s newest congressional map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
Here’s a simplified recap. After the 2020 census, Louisiana drew a congressional map that included just one “majority-minority” district. Some Black voters sued, arguing that Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act required a second majority-minority district, because a third of Louisiana’s population is Black, and one district represented only a sixth of the state’s congressional representation. A federal judge agreed, ordering the state to redraw the map, or the court would do it for them. Louisiana tried again, producing a second majority-Black district.
This triggered a lawsuit from non-Black voters, alleging that the new map violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, because Louisiana had over-relied on race to draw it. A three-judge federal court agreed. The Supreme Court affirmed that ruling.
The legal predicament is that the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution can pull in opposite directions. Section 2 requires states to take account of race when minority voters are being unlawfully diluted, but in deference to the Constitution, it also bars over-relying on race to create majority-minority districts.
In short, race can be a factor, but not the overriding one. States must take “the totality of circumstances” into account, including whether minority districts are geographically compact and politically cohesive. States cannot simply draw sprawling districts to hit racial targets.
So, it’s complicated, with two well-intentioned goals in tension — and partisanship, race and redistricting all weighing on the process. I think the court ruled correctly, but I also think Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent made defensible points about the statutory text and about the court substituting its judgment for Congress’ intent.
That said, Booker, and many similar critics of the decision, should be ashamed of themselves.
Booker told Welker on Sunday that the Supreme Court “sent us backwards in time, back to the 1870s and ’80s, where the South and Southern legislators, through terrorism, intimidation and worse were able to stop African Americans from having representation in Congress.
“This is wrong. It’s as wrong as Plessy vs. Ferguson,” the Supreme Court decision sanctioning Jim Crow, he said. “It’s as wrong as Korematsu (which upheld the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II). And I’m telling you right now, this will go down in history as one of the most wrongheaded decisions the Supreme Court has ever made, and effectively undercut our democracy.”
First of all, Booker’s demagoguery notwithstanding, nothing — nothing— in the court’s decision makes Jim Crow more likely, legal or constitutional.
Second, the argument for majority-minority districts had great force when the goal was to dismantle the legacy of Jim Crow, but it was always supposed to be transitional, not permanent. You’re free to argue that the work isn’t done. But the reason such schemes were supposed to be temporary is inherent in the goal of the civil rights movement and the legislation it inspired: to get beyond racial classifications of Americans. That was the point of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “dream” of an America where everyone is judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
That’s why the Voting Rights Act explicitly says, “Nothing in this section establishes a right to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population.” In other words, even the text makes it clear that we don’t want to live in a country where white voters can be represented only by white representatives and Black voters by Black representatives.
One irony of the push to create majority-minority districts during the 1980s and 1990s is that while it did wonders for boosting Black congressional representation, it also boosted Republican representation. By squeezing reliably Democratic-voting Black Americans into compact districts, the remaining districts in the South became more winnable for Republicans — which is why the GOP often cynically cooperated with the process. The Congressional Black Caucus consider this a worthwhile trade-off — Lord knows Republicans did — on the theory that racial representation is more important than partisan advantage.
But do we really believe that white Democrats — in the post-Jim Crow South, or anywhere else — are unwilling or incapable of representing the political interests of Black voters? Do Black legislators ignore the interests of their white constituents?
Which brings me back to where I started.
Cory Booker is Black. Black residents make up roughly 13% of his state’s population. Are the other 87% disenfranchised or otherwise unrepresented by his election? Of course not. But I would love to have heard Booker explain why.
Cory Booker Should Be Ashamed of Himself was originally published by the Tribune Content Agency.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.
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The Election-Litigation Complex
May 17, 2026
Since Bush v. Gore in 2000, election litigation has become a routine feature of American democracy. A few months ago, the Supreme Court made our litigious habit easier to indulge.
In Bost v. Illinois State Board of Elections, the Court expanded who could sue to challenge election procedures (candidates no longer had to demonstrate individualized harm to bring a case). This ruling, likely to stoke litigation, lands in a country already losing faith in its electoral system and amid increasing pressure on the judiciary.
More lawsuits, plus less trust in institutions, are not a reassuring trajectory for American democracy. Many election lawsuits concern ordinary administrative issues, such as questions concerning voting machines or list maintenance. In most democracies, such concerns are seen for what they are: technical complaints that can be quickly and cheaply resolved or responded to by people who understand how elections work.
There is a term for this process (though admittedly dull): administrative election dispute resolution, or AEDR, in which those with knowledge about how elections are run address legitimate concerns, dismiss frivolous ones, and create a clear record for cases that genuinely require a judicial decision. Most democracies worldwide have incorporated AEDR into their elections. U.S. states do too, but in a scattershot way and largely under the radar. While no system is perfect, comparative experience indicates that, with robust, structured AEDR mechanisms in place, fewer disputes escalate into lengthy litigation, and election administrators can demonstrate the ability to self-correct—thereby building citizen trust in the process.
The United States Congress chose to follow this path after the 2000 election debacle. The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) requires every state to establish an administrative complaint process for certain types of election disputes. Twenty years later, some states have developed detailed AEDR procedures, forms, deadlines, and hearing rules, while others simply copied HAVA’s language into law and left the rest to improvisation. Most Americans (and election attorneys) are unaware that such a process even exists.
The effects of inadequate AEDR are clear in the form of needless litigation. To provide a recent example, in Kramer v. Hoskins, a self-represented plaintiff sued the Missouri Secretary of State to request an administrative hearing regarding her concerns about voter list maintenance, a process mandated by HAVA. Missouri’s election commission dismissed her complaint, citing timing issues (Missouri‘s AEDR law imposes a 30-day deadline to use its AEDR process following an election’s certification). The court issued an injunction requiring the state to hold the hearing, highlighting the failure of Missouri’s HAVA AEDR in practice: a voter had a procedural concern; Missouri offered no effective administrative channel to address it. The federal court was the voter’s only recourse.
This might seem like a boring procedural drama. But it is more than that. It reveals a structural problem in American democracy that gets very little attention. When people have legitimate questions or concerns about an election and lack a clear, accessible, and technically-In an
informed place to ask those questions, they turn to social media and conspiracy narratives. Sometimes they go to court if they can afford it, or they give up. None of these options helps strengthen the system or increase public trust. The current setup overwhelms court dockets, perpetuates legal uncertainties, disrupts election planning, and wastes resources that could be used more productively.
International experience demonstrates it doesn't have to be this way. Democracies across legal traditions have developed administrative systems to handle large numbers of complaints about how elections are run, while courts serve as safety nets rather than first responders.
Based on decades of comparative electoral work, our recent research identifies five principles that distinguish effective AEDR systems from ineffective ones. First, not all election disputes belong in the same forum; administrative bodies can address process issues, while constitutional challenges and claims of disenfranchisement belong in court. Second, complaint processes must be simple and accessible to serve all election stakeholders. Third, impartiality should be built into institutional design, as in New Hampshire’s bipartisan Ballot Law Commission. Fourth, AEDR must be transparent to build public trust. Finally, AEDR supplements rather than replaces courts by developing factual records, narrowing disputes, and resolving routine cases so judges can focus on harder questions of law.
No constitutional change or new legislation is needed to achieve this; indeed, federal law already mandates it. What’s missing is the political will to fund AEDR, train adjudicators, ensure quick and transparent decisions, and set timelines aligned with election schedules.
American democracy currently faces a barrage of election complaints, ranging from minor issues to serious, fact-based claims. The country needs a trustworthy system to handle these complaints before they escalate into lawsuits and conspiracy theories. More lawsuits deepen divisions, erode public trust in elections, and threaten judicial independence. Other democracies have faced electoral crises and found solutions through effective AEDR.
We can too.
Chad Vickery is Founding Partner of Vickery Law LLP and Board Chair of The Concord Project.
Katherine Ellena is CEO of The Concord Project and Co-Founder of Partnerships for Integrity. Rebecca Green is Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Election Law Program at William & Mary Law School.
They are co-authors of "Comparative Administrative Election Dispute Resolution," forthcoming in the Review of Litigation
.
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President Donald Trump at the White House on Oct. 14, 2025, in Washington, D.C.
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Liquid Governance is Casting a Shadow on the American Presidency
May 17, 2026
To understand the current state of the American executive, one must look past the daily headlines and toward a deeper, more structural transformation. We are witnessing a presidency that has moved beyond the traditional "team of rivals" or even the "team of loyalists." Instead, the second Trump administration has become an exercise in "liquid governance," where the formal structures of the state are being hollowed out in favor of a highly personalized, informal power center.
The numbers alone are staggering. So far, the revolving door of the Cabinet has claimed high-profile figures with a frequency that would destabilize a mid-sized corporation, let alone a global superpower. The removal of Attorney General Pam Bondi, the exit of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and the recent resignation of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer represent more than just standard political turnover. They signal a fundamental rejection of the idea that a Cabinet secretary is an institution's steward. In this White House, a Cabinet post is a temporary lease, subject to immediate termination if the occupant’s personal loyalty or public performance deviates even slightly from the president’s internal barometer.
The volatility does not end with the pink slip. The recent civil contempt resolution filed by House Oversight Democrats against Bondi for defying subpoenas related to the Epstein investigation is a vivid illustration of the "liquid" model: an official is discarded the moment their utility expires, leaving the individual to navigate the institutional wreckage alone, while the administration simply flows toward the next loyalist.
The most consequential shift is occurring within the national security apparatus. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has moved with startling speed to reorganize the military hierarchy. By removing the Army’s top officer and the head of the Navy during a period of active friction in the Middle East, Hegseth is executing a mandate to "de-bureaucratize" the Pentagon. But the cost of this purge is the systematic removal of institutional memory. When you replace seasoned commanders with those whose primary qualification is ideological alignment, you make the military more brittle.
This focus on internal purging is particularly alarming given the current geopolitical climate. As the administration continues its high-stakes involvement in the Iran conflict, the lack of stable leadership at the top of the military branches creates a vacuum. In that vacuum, strategy is replaced by impulse.
The irony of the current moment is that as the official Cabinet becomes more volatile, the real power has consolidated in a "Shadow Cabinet" of unconfirmed advisors. Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff now operate as the primary envoys for America’s most sensitive diplomatic portfolios. From negotiating nuclear red lines with Tehran to managing the complex endgame in Ukraine, these two individuals—neither of whom holds a Senate-confirmed position—are the true architects of U.S. foreign policy.
This arrangement creates a dangerous disconnect. While the official Secretary of State or Secretary of War handles the administrative affairs of their departments, the real deals are made in private by men whose primary bond to the president is personal or commercial. This is a return to a pre-modern form of governance, one in which familial ties and personal trust outweigh professional expertise and public accountability.
The standard critique is that the president simply selects incompetent people. But this misses the point. The individuals being removed—like Bondi or Noem—were not outsiders; they were loyalists. Their failure to survive suggests that the problem is not a lack of competence, but a lack of clarity in what the job actually entails. If the job of a Cabinet secretary is to act as a decorative placeholder for a policy that is actually being run out of a private suite at Mar-a-Lago, then independent judgment, by definition, is seen as a form of resistance.
The result is a talent drain. The "best people" the president frequently cites are increasingly unwilling to serve in an environment where the professional risks are high and the actual authority is low. This leaves the administration with a narrowing circle of candidates: the true believers, the opportunists, and the relatives.
The world is watching this administrative volatility with growing unease. For decades, the stability of the American executive was the "anchor tenant" of global order. Allies and adversaries alike could rely on a certain degree of continuity in the State Department or the Pentagon. That continuity is now gone.
When a government is in a state of permanent reshuffling, it loses the ability to project long-term intent. Foreign capitals are no longer calling the State Department to understand American policy; they are trying to figure out who is currently "in" or "out" of the inner circle. This unpredictability might serve a real estate developer in a tactical negotiation, but it is a disastrous way to run a global superpower.
The tragedy of the second term is not that the president is changing his team; it is that he is effectively dismantling the idea of a "team" altogether. We are left with a government of one, assisted by an informal circle of associates, presiding over a bureaucracy that is increasingly paralyzed by its own instability. In the long run, the greatest threat to American power may not be a rising China or a belligerent Iran, but the steady erosion of the very institutions that were built to project and protect that power.
Imran Khalid is a physician, geostrategic analyst, and freelance writer.
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Why We Can’t Cut Earth Science to Fund the Next Earthrise Shot
May 17, 2026
We love space, but not as an abstraction. For my twin sons, it is a tradition. Their birthday themes have evolved from “Two the Moon” for their second birthday, featured on NASA.gov, to “From Space to the Farm,” with the boys in those iconic orange astronaut suits, standing in a cornfield. In the year of Inspiration4, we went all in with a full SpaceX mission dress-up. Not long after, one of them picked up the Pioneers and Innovators: Women of Color brochure from NASA Science that I brought home from a meeting at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. He pointed at the brochure and exclaimed, “Mommy!” He truly thought I was in it. With that certainty, he told his friends that his mom had been to Mars. A reasonable conclusion for a four-year-old, considering the NASA swag at home, the launch party watching, and that brochure in his hands, it was a perfect conclusion.
The stunning new photos released after the Artemis voyage have refocused the public’s awe on our journey to the Moon. Yet, this year, I didn't watch Artemis live.
After years of leading NASA-supported work, I am rarely detached from a milestone like this. My career is built on turning satellite data into decisions, especially for agriculture and food security. Through NASA Harvest and SERVIR, the NASA-USAID partnership, I have helped build multi-award-winning Earth-observation tools for crop monitoring and early warning, work NASA has highlighted for advancing international food security. And yet, when Artemis launched, I did not tune in live.
Artemis captured the attention of space nerds and the public for good reason. A launch is the rare moment when years of planning become visible. But the public spotlight tends to stop at the flame and the roar. The less visible story is everything that must be sustained between launches, including the Earth-observation programs that turn space-based measurements into tools people can use on the ground.
To be clear, I don't believe Artemis is wrong. I resist the framing that forces a choice between the moon and the Earth. The science behind sending humans to lunar orbit, mapping Mars, and tracking a drought in the Sahel shares the same physics. Satellites, navigation systems, and water-monitoring tools often stem from the same curiosity. Space exploration has given us extraordinary things we use every day, from the materials in athletic footwear to technologies now on display in science museums around the world. These missions are not in competition.
But without a healthy Earth, none of it matters. Artemis II astronaut Victor Glover captured this beautifully in his viral message. From deep space, he said: "You are special, in all this emptiness. This is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe. You have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together."
He's right. And that is exactly why it stings that the missions dedicated to understanding and protecting that oasis are the ones on the chopping block.
The White House's fiscal year 2027 budget proposal requests $18.8 billion for NASA, a 23% reduction from the final FY2026 appropriations bill, marking the second consecutive year of steep proposed cuts. The breakdown reveals the real priorities: science programs that fund Earth-observing missions would be cut by $3.4 billion, nearly 47%. Exploration programs, meaning Artemis, would increase by nearly 10%, to $8.5 billion.
The Office of Management and Budget frames this as eliminating "over 40 low-priority missions" to make NASA "more focused and fiscally responsible." The examples include Mars Sample Return, a genuinely massive and costly undertaking. Another is SERVIR, a program that delivered Earth science data to support research, including work on food security in developing regions, at a cost of just $10 million a year. That SERVIR is treated as low priority is a clear signal: making space data useful for life on Earth is not considered important work. The proposal also targets the Earth Systems Explorers program, which develops new Earth science missions, cutting it from two recently selected missions to one. It cuts $1.1 billion from International Space Station operations. It eliminates NASA's STEM Engagement programs.
Congress pushed back with rare bipartisan force by rejecting budget cuts, and rightly so. But budgets follow attention, and most people only see NASA when a rocket lifts off. We need to widen the picture.
Earth observation missions are not “nice to have.” They are the backbone of how we track what is changing on our planet, and how fast. They help communities, including yours, and countries anticipate drought and food shortages, monitor floods and wildfire risk, track water availability, measure crop conditions, and improve disaster response and recovery. They also provide long, consistent records that make it possible to separate signal from noise, which is essential for planning, insurance, infrastructure, and public safety.
Look up where Earth-observation data touches your life. Search your county or state plus “flood map,” “drought monitor,” “wildfire smoke,” “crop conditions,” or “water levels,” and notice how often satellites sit behind the information you rely on. Second, make Earth observation visible. Share what you found with one concrete local example and name what is at stake, such as safer evacuations, smarter water planning, or more resilient farms. When more people understand that NASA is also a daily public service, not just a launch-day spectacle, it becomes much harder to cut.
But I also want them to understand that some of the most important work NASA does will never make a highlight reel, that it lives quietly in the data that helped a farmer in Kansas or Kenya plan a planting season, or in the flood model that gave a coastal city six more hours to evacuate.
What I felt watching the Artemis coverage wasn't anger or cynicism. It was a quiet grief, the gap between what we are capable of and what we choose to do with it.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Catherine Nakalembe is a professor of Translational GeoAI, which bridges Geographical Sciences with Artificial Intelligence to address real-world problems, at the University of Maryland, and a Public Voices Fellow on Technology in the Public Interest of The OpEd Project.
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