Reposted by Thomas Frampton
My team at the NVA Lab has produced a new dashboard for exploring our data on US protests from Jan 2025-May 2026. This snapshot shows the 61k+ protest events (>14.6M+ recorded participants) active in the US since Trump's second inauguration. Link to dashboard in thread.
![Alito's dissenting opinion in Ramos v. Louisiana - "Too much public discourse today is sullied by ad hominem rhetoric, that is, attempts to discredit an argument not by proving that it is unsound but by attacking the character or motives of the argument's proponents. The majority regrettably succumbs to this trend. At the start of its opinion, the majority asks this rhetorical question: "Why do Louisiana and Oregon allow nonunanimous convictions?" Ante, at 1394. And the answer it suggests? Racism, white supremacy, the Ku Klux Klan. Ante, at 1393-1394. Non-unanimous verdicts, the Court implies, are of a piece with Jim Crow laws, the poll tax, and other devices once used to disfranchise African-Americans. Ibid.
If Louisiana and Oregon originally adopted their laws allowing non-unanimous verdicts for these reasons,[2] that is deplorable, but what does that have to do with the broad constitutional question before us? The answer is: nothing."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:jnc4iz4srwikm6b4ca4jtg4t/bafkreigfpilwywci6qg6ihthke6rcauhegzamnrknirxjp5hdqzk4ntq3u)
![Alito in Wolford v. Lopez - "/We could stop there, but there is another reason for rejecting Hawaii's reliance on this statute. It was adopted by the Louisiana Legislature between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of Reconstruction. When the war ended, the legislatures in defeated Confederate States quickly enacted so-called Black Codes that aimed to perpetuate the subjugation of blacks.[17] The statute Hawaii cites was part of Louisiana's Black Code, and it provided a tool for disarming blacks and thus leaving them defenseless against attacks. See 125 F. 4th, at 1239 (VanDyke, J., dissenting from denial of reh'g en banc).
As we laid out in McDonald, the right to keep and bear arms was crucially important for vulnerable blacks during this period. See 561 U. S., at 757, 771, 776-779; id., at 843-846 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). And this was well-understood by the Republicans in Congress who were responsible for drafting, approving, and securing the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Republican Party Platforms of 1856 and 1860 called for protection of the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. Unless we put history entirely out of our minds, Hawaii's claim that this tainted artifact illuminates the original understanding of the right to keep and bear arms cannot be taken seriously."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:jnc4iz4srwikm6b4ca4jtg4t/bafkreif6z4uklxwuiiakoiv42ow7slmt5jxz7iuldjupkwosvi5yfgdhzm)
