The maps drawn for the election of the Louisiana Supreme Court are discriminatory against black voters, a civil rights group alleges in a new federal lawsuit.
The racial gerrymandering lawsuit was filed in Baton Rouge on Tuesday, the day before the release of a stark new report finding that the makeup of state supreme courts nationwide does not come close to reflecting the racial diversity of the country.
The plaintiffs in the Louisiana case, the state NAACP and two black voters, say only two African Americans have served on the state's highest court since the election of those justices began 105 years ago. One is on the bench now (there are seven seats), a time when the black population of the state is 32 percent, the second highest percentage of any state.
The suit asks the court to toss out the state judicial map as a violation of the Voting Rights Act, the 1965 law designed to ensure minorities can fully exercise their franchise, and to order the boundaries redrawn before the next election.
Wednesday's report from the Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal democracy reform advocacy group, looked at the 1,600 people who have served on state high courts since 1960. Among the findings:
- 13 states have not had a Supreme Court justice of color.
- 24 states do not now have a justice of color.
- People of color make up nearly 40 percent of the nation's population but hold only 15 percent of state Supreme Court seats.
- White men are in almost half the state Supreme Court seats but make up less than one-third of the population.
The Louisiana suit alleges that if the seven judicial districts were drawn fairly, two would be majority-black. Now just one is.
In 1992, after the districts were redrawn in the wake of an earlier suit, Revius Ortique was elected the first black justice in state history. Two years later he reached the mandatory retirement age of 70 and was replaced by Bernette Joshua Johnson, who is also black. She is now chief justice.
The suit claims the maps violate the Voting Rights Act prohibition against any practice that results in the "denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color."
One of the authors of the Brennan report, Alicia Bannon, said there is a cost when the diversity of the judiciary does not match that of the communities it serves.
"Our judicial system loses credibility with the public when the judges making the rulings don't reflect the diversity of the people affected by those rulings," she said. "Our courts can't function without the p
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.