In less than a quarter-mile stretch of sidewalk, chatter in 57 languages overlaps with the sound of dancehall, bachata, Thai pop, Haitian kompa, and Micronesian hip-hop. At sunset, dozens gather for iftar, breaking their Ramadan fast; the music, pulsing from boomboxes and cell phones held up to megaphones, swells into one shared hum. In this sliver [...]
The U.S. Supreme Court appears poised to upend laws allowing ballots to be counted after Election Day amid President Trump’s attacks on mail-in voting, according to the Associated Press.Members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed skeptical Monday while hearing arguments for a case from Mississippi, where an appellate court had struck down a law allowing ballots to be counted so long as they are postmarked on Election Day, and arrive within five days.Thirteen other states, including New York, California, and Texas, as well as the District of Columbia, have similar laws. An affirmative ruling could also impact states’ collection of ballots from Americans overseas.Justice Samuel Alito fretted that “a big stash of ballots” could arrive late and “radically” flip the results of an election. Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart, who was defending the law, observed that no one has been able to furnish a single case of fraud due to the delayed arrival of mail-in ballots. Justice Neil Gorsuch worried about a slippery slope in which votes could be counted up until a new Congress was sworn in.Meanwhile, the liberal justices appeared to support the law allowing for votes to be counted after Election Day. Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that prompting states to alter their vote-counting procedures just a few months before the midterm elections could cause “confusion and disenfranchisement.”“The people who should decide this issue are not the courts, but Congress, the states and Congress,” she said. Justice Elena Kagan claimed that arguments forbidding the counting of late ballots could threaten absentee ballots and early voting—which seemed to concern Chief Justice John Roberts, the court’s conservative member most likely to side with his liberal colleagues.The ruling is scheduled to be delivered in June, just a few months before the midterm elections that could see Republicans lose their grip on the House and Senate. The Trump administration is taking extensive efforts to limit voting power, including pushing for a law that would make it harder for many married women to vote. Meanwhile, anti-voting activists are circulating an unconstitutional executive order draft that could allow the president to hijack the country’s electoral systems ahead of the 2026 midterms.
The following is a speech delivered on March 13th at a community event hosted by Researchers Against War (RAW) at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). In solidarity with the peoples of Iran, Palestine, and Vietnam, the author provides a view from the grounds in the small corner of Goleta, California. World events continue to [...]