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Ben

@d1wheeler.bsky.social

134 followers 213 following 5 posts

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

trying to get jamelle in particular fired is funny because even if you succeed he's going to start a $2M/year substack

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Rachel Hallie @dazedrachel.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Literally what is with this rise of "actually the local Dem party should fulfill all my social needs" takes I am not doing movie night with Dems. I am not joining a Dem volunteer soccer league. I am not joining Democratic speed dating. Stop using politics as secular church!!!!

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Ben @d1wheeler.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Russia is planning to attack NATO very soon but the question is: Can NATO hold the line in the Baltics, support Ukraine, and stay united? benwheeler.substack.com/p/russia-is-...

benwheeler.substack.com

Russia Is Planning To Attack NATO

Putin Is About To Do Something Very Stupid In Eastern Europe

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Kim Lane Scheppele @kimlanelaw.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Worth considering. And what if he’s right? open.substack.com/pub/benwheel...

open.substack.com

Liberals Don't Understand Conservatives & It's Why They Can't Fight Back

Conservatives aren't hypocrites, you just don't understand their views.

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Reposted by Ben

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 13/06/2026

i really, truly, find this offensive

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Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

No you don’t understand, this $25 billion for the country we inexplicably attacked means we won super hard

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Ben @d1wheeler.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

It’s a nonpartisan race. Not to be abrasive, Miracle is typically considered a Black name & therefore easy to ID as a Democrat. This can be seen by Miracle having a huge lead in and around Atlanta, while trailing Jen Jordan in the rurals. It cuts both ways.

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Reposted by Ben

Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 30/04/2026

What do conservatives always say when liberals criticize a Supreme Court decision? "Get Congress to pass a law," right? That is EXACTLY what happened here. In 1982, Congress explicitly overruled a Court case that narrowly interpreted the VRA. Today, Sam Alito said, nope, we were right all along.

In 1982, when Congress passed a series of amendments strengthening the Voting Rights Act of 1965, lawmakers wanted to make one thing very clear: that minority voters seeking to prove violations of the Voting Rights Act do not have to prove that lawmakers intentionally discriminated against them based on race. Instead, under a provision of the law known as Section 2, Congress said, it is enough for voters to show that a given policy—a redistricting plan, for example—has the effect of making it more difficult for them to actually participate in democracy.

At the time, Congress had good reason to be specific. Two years earlier, the Supreme Court in City of Mobile v. Bolden had held that a facially neutral electoral map did not violate the Voting Rights Act, even though it had the practical effect of reducing Black voting strength. In the 1982 amendments, Congress explicitly overruled Bolden; in its final report on the bill, the Senate Judiciary Committee affirmed that requiring challengers to prove discriminatory intent would impose an “inordinately difficult burden,” and would make it too easy for racist lawmakers to disguise their true motivations by leaving a “false trail” of non-discriminatory justifications.

In Louisiana v. Callais, which the Supreme Court decided on Wednesday, the six conservative justices took it upon themselves to reimpose the “inordinately difficult burden” Congress lifted five decades ago. In his opinion for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito strains to present Callais as faithful to the law passed by Congress: His opinion, he says, merely “updates” the tests that courts use to evaluate Section 2 claims, and “realigns” that framework with the text of the Voting Rights Act.

In reality, what Alito and the majority have done is make it functionally impossible for voters to prove that a given map is an illegal racial gerrymander, no matter how discriminatory the map’s real-world impact. Their opinion in Callais preserves only a husk of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, leaving intact the ability of minority voters to cast ballots while simultaneously guaranteeing lawmakers’ power to ensure that those ballots are meaningless. Going forward, the same racist lawmakers whom Congress sought to bind in 1982 will be freer than ever to draw lines that gerrymander their Black and brown constituents out of electoral existence.

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Ben @d1wheeler.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

For what it’s worth, the US government is not really doing updates. Back then, they were.

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Ben @d1wheeler.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

“Prime Minister Pakistan”

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Ben @d1wheeler.bsky.social · 22/12/2024

An America uninterested in global affairs while its richest man openly supports a German Nazi party that’s openly resentful of their neighbors and the United States, but also interested in closer ties with Russia. It’s a level of Deja Vu that feels incredulous.

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