DISTRICTS OF THE HEART: No one cares about Social Security!

MONDAY, JUNE 15, 2026

Everyone cares about this: At the start of yesterday's Meet the Press, Steve Kornacki was introduced.

Kornacki is NBC's numbers man. Here's the first number he offered:    

WELKER (6/14/26): With the midterms less than five months away, our Chief Data Analyst Steve Kornacki, joins me now with the results of our latest NBC News poll. 

So we are within five months of the midterms. What are the big headlines?

KORNACKI: Yeah, Kristen. To start, just the bottom line on Trump’s standing with the voters right now. His approval rating sits at 42% in our NBC poll. Now, this is with registered voters. And that is down a tick. You can see the last time we checked in, early in the spring, he was at 44%.

WELKER: Is that a new low, Steve? 42%?

KORNACKI: That is the second term low in our poll for Donald Trump, falling to 42% right now.  

As you know, President Trump won't be on the ballot in the midterm elections. For that reason, we're often struck by our own Blue America's focus on his approval numbers.  

That said: 

As Blue Americans, we're routinely invited to marvel at how low his approval number is. At this site, we tend to have a different reaction:    

Given the persistent lunacy of the sitting president's behavior, we're amazed at how high his approval number is!    

The president won't be on the ballot this fall. Almost a thousand Republican and Democratic candidates will be.   

Will Democrats gain control of the House? Could they take control of the Senate? Kornacki moved to a second set of numbers:  

[continuing from above] 
KORNACKI: And the other thing that this dovetails with of course is the generic congressional battle with the Democrats now. As you said, inside of five months to the midterm, a five-point lead for the Democrats here.

Now obviously, that’s a strong number for them. What the Republicans would say on this is: If you think back to Trump’s first term, that blue wave of 2018, this number was more at, like, eight to ten points. So Republicans hoping to contain the damage at least looking at a number like that.  

On the screen, it was Democrats 49%, Republicans 44%! Just so you'll know, here's the question in the NBC News poll which produced those numbers:   

Q25: What is your preference for the outcome of this year’s congressional elections–(ROTATE) a Congress controlled by Republicans or a Congress controlled by Democrats?   

By a five-point margin, more people said they'd prefer a Congress controlled by Democrats. 

Does a number like that tend to have solid predictive value? Back in 2021, Larry Sabato's Center for Politics offered this assessment:   

MOSKOWITZ (2/11/21): Since 1968, the generic ballot has missed the real House popular vote by an average of 4%, and until 2008, it consistently overestimated Democratic support. Pollsters have mostly fixed both of these problems, and the generic ballot has been more accurate and balanced since the mid-aughts.

You'd rather be five points ahead on the generic ballot! But especially in the face of the mid-census redistricting war which President Trump kicked off, we'd say a five-point advantage in that arena may be less reassuring that it has recently been. 

(Also, there's no way to know what kind of election will be allowed to take place this year, given the "win at all costs" mentality of the strongman / royalist White House.)

That brings us back to our amazement—our amazement at the fact that the sitting president's approvals remain as high as they currently are.   

Given his unrelenting strange behavior, it's striking to us that President Trump can still boast something like 42 percent approval. We often find ourselves gnashing our teeth at the possibility that our own behaviors here in Blue America may help him keep his numbers that high.   

With that, we return to what we regard as the most interesting (and most painful) issue of the day. We refer to the Supreme Court's recent decisions concerning the Voting Rights Act—more precisely, concerning the kinds of congressional districting which are, and are not, permitted according to the Constitution and under terms of that Act.  

People, consider this:

According to the most recent Naep testing, America's younger public school kids may be on the way back! Here's the start of the recent report in the New York Times:   

Younger Students’ Test Scores Bounce Back After the Pandemic

The nation’s 9-year-olds, who were in preschool when the pandemic hit, have made a significant recovery in reading since 2022, and are now caught up to where 9-year-olds were immediately before the pandemic, according to a key federal exam. They are getting closer to being caught up in math.

In theory, that's important news—but it will, of course, produce exactly zero discussion. You'll see it mentioned nowhere else. The truth is, nobody cares.

Then too, consider the recent guest essay by Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama (2013 - 2017). Headline included, his essay started like this:  

I Worked in the White House. We Never Imagined This Problem Would Get This Bad.

The first major public policy issue I worked on in the White House, almost 30 years ago, was President Bill Clinton’s call to “save Social Security first.” Though the fund wasn’t projected to run dry for another three decades, the country seemed gripped by the issue...

This week the Social Security trustees announced that the trust fund for retirees and survivors will be exhausted in just six years. That’s six years before tens of millions of Americans could see their benefits cut by 22 percent. The crisis is closer than anyone in the Clinton or Bush years ever imagined we might let it get. 

Here's the June 9 news report in the New York Times about that announcement. Here too, you're going to see little or no discussion, whether of this matter or of the giant budget deficits the sitting president keeps expanding with his silly but high-profile tax cuts, 

(No tax on tips? Why not?)  

At present, major topics come and go, with barely a single word said. These topics get swallowed up by all The Crazy from the White House—the buildings torn down, the shrines renamed, and the UFC fights out on the lawn, with some ugly name-calling thrown in. (See this afternoon's report.)

That said, the Supreme Court's decisions involving the Voting Rights Act have produced a great deal of reaction within Blue America. That has happened for reasons which are perfectly understandable and perfectly obvious—but are those of us in Blue America possibly responding in an unhelpful way?   

Our nation's brutal racial history lies at the heart of the ongoing discussions this topic. For better or worse, so does this iconic statement by the later Wittgenstein:    

For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday.   

Wittgenstein was speaking there about the "problems" which constituted much of 20th century academic philosophy. He thought those "philosophical problems" were largely illusory—were the result of familiar locutions being air-lifted into contexts where no one knows what they mean, with the resulting incomprehension going undetected. 

The history which underlies the debate about the VRA is brutally, painfully real. There's nothing illusory about such matters at all.

That said, language has often gone on holiday in our attempts to discuss this topic, and it seems to us that some of Blue America's reactions are the sorts of reactions which help the current president stay at 42 percent.  

Professor Brabender, the great anthropologist, insightfully had it right. Famously, he described the impulses of us the humans in the manner shown:   

Where I come from, we only talk so long. After that, we start to hit.   

That tends to be true of us the humans. It can even sometimes be true of us the Blues.

Centuries of brutality underlie this Voting Rights issue. Those endless brutalities really occurred. That doesn't necessarily mean that we're currently getting it right.

Tomorrow: We agree, and we may not agree, with what Terri Sewell said

SATURDAY: Rosen (essentially) gets it right!

SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 2026

What we saw on Fox: Can a modern nation expect to survive an epistemic arrangement like that of our own flailing nation?

We can't say that the answer is yes. At long last, we see a major figure in a major publication discussing this same broken culture. The dual headline above his essay says this:

IDEAS
American Democracy Wasn’t Designed for This
Can our 18th-century institutions survive 21st-century technology?  

There you see the double headline above Jeffrey Rosen's essay. 

Rosen is very sharp and highly knowledgeable. His piece will appear in the Atlantic's July issue—the issue which will be devoted to ruminations about America 250.  

Can our stumblebum nation expect to survive the technology to which Rosen refers? We've been asking that question for a very long time here on this sprawling green campus. 

Can our stumblebum nation hope to survive? Right at the start of his essay, Rosen offers this initial description of the (dangerous) technology he himself has in mind: 

American Democracy Wasn’t Designed for This

In 1787, after the Founders signed the Constitution in Philadelphia, Alexander Hamilton wrote in “Federalist No. 1” that there was more at stake than the future of a single country. The American experiment would “decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.”

The Founders were hopeful, in part because the information environment of the late 18th century was favorable to “reflection and choice.” A flourishing newspaper industry kept Americans informed and fostered vigorous debate. But the number of publications was limited—about 100 total in the 13 states—and the authority of editors and writers meant that a free press didn’t turn into a free-for-all. And at a time when nothing traveled faster than a horse or ship, the sheer size of the new country meant that news spread slowly, an obstacle to impulsive public decisions. Given time for deliberation, passions would cool, and elected representatives could focus on the country’s long-term good rather than short-term gratification.   

Today, those advantages have disappeared, thanks to a technological revolution the Founders could never have imagined. The internet has turned everyone into a potential publisher, able to instantly spread facts or falsehoods to millions. Most people get information about politics and current events not from newspapers but from social media, which discourages engagement with human beings of different political persuasions. Now the rise of AI is discouraging engagement with any human beings at all; instead, more and more people are forming their views in conversation with a machine that lacks moral sense. As America approaches its 250th anniversary, the biggest question for our democracy is whether a system designed for the communications technologies of the 18th century can survive those of the 21st.   

That's the way he starts.

We agree with Rosen's basic presentation. Our current "information environment" surely is, without any question, an invitation for the society, for the nation, to crash and burn. 

Without any question, "reflection and choice" are hard to come by given our current arrangements. We agree with that basic presentation, a form of which we've been advancing for a very long time.

Can "our democracy" survive the pernicious effects of our various new technologies? With respect to those technologies, Rosen mentions the internet, and he mentions social media. Playing by prevailing rules, he never mentions cable news or (let's say) the Fox News Channel.  

There's a great deal more to be said about Rosen's nuanced article. We expect do so when the Fourth of July draws near.   

That said, we couldn't discuss what we saw yesterday, on our own TV screen, without mentioning Rosen's essay. Even as he disappears partisan cable, he takes a first, significant step toward the articulation of an obvious societal danger—one which has already conspired with fate to give us President Trump.   

As to what we saw yesterday, let us say this:   

Good God!

We refer to what we saw during the full hour of The Five. We also refer to the steady stream of garbage and mental and more squalor we saw a bit later on Gutfeld!   

These propaganda programs boast daily audiences which are double and triple the size of MS NOW's daily primetime programs. Can programs like these be survived? To that question, we offer this answer:

Go ahead! Take a good look around!

For a tiny example of what we saw yesterday on The Five, here's part of the way substitute co-host Kat Timpf began her meandering rumination about Hunter Biden's recent appearance on Gavin Newsom's podcast. 

Pathetically, that was the second topic under pseudo-discussion this day. On a day when the word "Iran" went unmentioned, this is part of what Timpf said:   

TIMPF (6/12/26): Honestly, I prefer Hunter Biden to Gavin Newsom. I do. Like, he's just—

 Because it is all out there. It is all out there. 

He doesn't— He's never really pretended to be anything but what exactly he is. He's like, "Yeah, I smoked a lot of crack." Like, "Yeah, that's me." ... 

And I do think that there is something really endearing about that for people. I think he does have charisma. I think you don't get to sleep with your brother's widow if you don't have charisma.  [Yes, she actually said that.]

But I think that people like Gavin Newsom—I just—

He's just icky. He just—he's icky! And he's not like, "Hey yeah, I'm icky."...   

WATTERS (serious demeanor): Are you saying that Newsom's ickier than Hunter Biden?  

TIMPF: Absolutely I'm saying that. Yes! Absolutely I'm saying—

WATTERS: Wow!   

TIMPF: ...I do think that Gavin Newsom, he's smarmy. I'll take a crackhead, recovered especially, over smarmy any day.  

WATTERS: Okay.

That's part of what we saw. That's what these corporate lunkheads were "discussing" in the second segment of the nation's most watched "cable news" program, on a day when the word "Iran" came up in exactly none of their pseudo-discussions.   

Indeed, every topic was tabloid this day. No serious topic was offered. 

In fairness to Timpf, this was a rare guest hosting spot for her on The Five. To a long-time viewer, it was obvious that she was trying to create an assertive persona which would fly on that program, as opposed to the familiar persona she employs on Gutfeld!, where she's a nightly panelist.  

That said, the inanity was endless on The Five, where every "discussion" was tabloid. And things got much worse on Gutfeld! last night, where the program's termagant turned propagandist almost seemed to chide Timpf a bit, saying this as he introduced her:   

"And today, we expect only eight references to Love Island."

That was a reference to Timpf's earlier performance during the first segment of The Five, in which she went on and on, then on and on, about that lamebrain reality show, with a comparison to The Bachelorette added in by Watters.   

That's what these flyweights were talking about, six minutes into our most-watched cable news program. Like everyone else, Rosen steered clear of any such reference, but can a nation survive the sheer inanity—and the steady stream of partisan agitprop—which form the basis of these propaganda programs?   

On last night's Gutfeld!, the ugliness of the evening's discussions overtook their sheer stupidity. As we watched Greg Gutfeld and four reliable panelists reveal the interiors of their minds, we wondered what it must be like to walk through life, all day, every day, with that much loathing, and that much squalor, banging around in your head.  

The program began where it often does—with the latest gerbil being shoved up [NAME WITHHELD]'s alleged ass while people like Timpf sit and watch. (Also, with the endless gaybaiting of Don Lemon, while Timpf provides her approval.) 

The anger and squalor continued from there, pushed along by the termagant host and his four reliable guests, including the bloated blowhard introduced as the former "wrestler."

Writing on a daily basis, it's impossible to capture the moral and intellectual squalor of these corporate propaganda programs. But can a modern nation expect to survive the effects of this endless dysfunction?  

In our view, Rosen advances an important idea in his essay for the Atlantic. But all around elite Blue America, the Timpfs and the former "wrestlers," the people like Gutfeld and Watters, are disappeared by the timorous orgs which—or at least so it seems—don't want to wrestle with Fox.

Fox is tribal propaganda too; it's tribal warfare of the dumbest, most undisguised kind. Can a modern nation survive this part of the new technologies?

For reasons only they can explain, people like Rosen won't ask.

Take the Fox News Channel Challenge: Go ahead! Force yourself to watch the full hour of each of yesterday's programs. 

One briefly thinks of Wilfred Owen, trudging behind the dying and dead in what was then called The Great War.

WHITES AND BLACKS: The GOP helped send Black members to Congress!

FRIDAY, JUNE 12, 2026

Hulse explains why the GOP did that: In yesterday's report, we floated a question about Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC):

Without the 1982 addition to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, would Rep. Clyburn ever have been elected to the House of Representatives from his home state of South Carolina?

Rep. Clyburn has been an extremely significant member of Congress. But, especially given the ways of the times, would he ever have gotten there, absent the1982 addition to the Voting Rights Act?

When we floated that question, we didn't remember the fact that Rep. Clyburn recently answered that question. Carl Hulse recorded his answer right at the start of this history lesson, which appeared on page A19 of the New York Times back on May 10 of this year:     

CONGRESSIONAL MEMO 
How Minority Districts Fueled the G.O.P.’s Southern Ascendancy in Congress

Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, formerly the No. 3 Democrat in the House, is certain he would never have been elected to Congress without changes in the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court determined last week amounted to unconstitutional racial gerrymandering.

“And about half of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus wouldn’t be there,” said Mr. Clyburn, the first African American sent to Congress from his state since Reconstruction. He was part of the historic 1992 class of Black and Hispanic lawmakers elected after new maps were drawn to comply with 1982 changes meant to strengthen the Voting Rights Act.

Plainly, Hulse was referring to the changes made to the VRA in 1982, not to the original provisions of the legislation. That said, Clyburn's answer was clear:  

Absent those additions to the VRA—changes supported by both major parties—he never would have served in the House! 

Also, “about half of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus wouldn’t be there,” Clyburn said.   

New language was added to the VRA in 1982. In the redistricting which followed the 1990 census, those somewhat murky new provisions resulted in the deliberate creation of a significant number of districts which were newly majority Black. 

Those newly created districts sent new members to the House—new members like Rep. Clyburn. There had long been Black members of the House—but now the number roughly doubled. The leading authority on this significant change ciphers the matter like this:

1992 United States House of Representatives elections    

The 1992 United States House of Representatives elections were held on November 3, 1992, to elect U.S. Representatives to serve in the 103rd United States Congress. They coincided with the 1992 presidential election, in which Democrat Bill Clinton was elected president, defeating Republican incumbent President George H. W. Bush.

Despite this, however, the Democrats lost a net of nine seats in the House to the Republicans, in part due to redistricting following the 1990 census. This election was the first to use districts drawn up during the 1990 United States redistricting cycle on the basis of the 1990 census. The redrawn districts were notable for the increase in majority-minority districts, drawn as mandated by the Voting Rights Act. The 1980 census resulted in 17 majority-black districts and 10 majority-Hispanic districts, but 32 and 19 such districts, respectively, were drawn after 1990.

This was the first time ever that the victorious presidential party lost seats in the House in two consecutive elections. As of 2025, this is...the last time the Democrats won the House for more than two consecutive elections.   

Oof! The Democrats still controlled the House, but that was soon going to end. As we detailed yesterday, the GOP took control of the House in 1994 for the first time in forty years.  

The GOP didn't take control of the House because of those majority minority districts. Majority Black districts were mainly being created in the South—in states like Jim Clyburn's South Carolina—but Democrats lost more seats in the state of Washington that year (6) than in any other state.  

Incredibly, Speaker Tom Foley was swept out of office in that northwestern state in the 1994 elections. Strikingly, so were Rep. Maria Cantwell, a future United States senator, and Rep. Jay Inslee, a future governor of the state. 

With five incumbents defeated and a sixth (retiring) Democratic incumbent replaced by a Republican, the congressional delegation in Washington flipped in the 1994 elections from 8-1 Democratic to 7-2 Republican. "The Republican Revolution" struck on a nationwide basis that year, even on the Canadian border.

In states like Washington, the original partisan alignment would largely be restored over time. But in many Southern states, the 1994 Republican wins, along with the ongoing party-switching, was part of the larger movement in which "the solid South" slowly but steadily moved from solidly D over to solidly R.   

This raises the question which Hulse explores in his New York Times report. That question goes like this:   

If Republicans were slowly seizing control of the Southern states, why would they agree to form majority Black districts in those states—districts which would almost surely send Democrats on to the House? 

Why did Republicans do that? In 1982, why did they overwhelmingly supports the changes to the VRA which led to the creation of those new districts? After the 1990 census, why did they support the creation of majority Black districts in the South—districts like the one which enabled Rep. Clyburn's monumental career in the Congress?   

As far as we know, Hulse's answer to those questions is the standard historical answer. If memory serves, the Republican Party's political strategy was publicly discussed at the time.   

Why did Republicans agree to create those Democratic districts? Midway through his concise report for the Times, the historian Hulse explains:   

In the late 1980s, Republicans had been deep in the House minority for nearly 40 years. But growing dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party had begun moving white Southern conservatives into the Republican ranks, as illustrated by high-profile party switches in Washington. Then the redistricting initiated under a series of court decisions aimed at fostering more minority representation provided yet another opening that might have seemed counterintuitive at first glance.

Architects of the [new congressional] maps realized that if they could maximize Black and Hispanic representation in the new districts, they would simultaneously dilute Democratic strength in surrounding jurisdictions where coalitions of white and Black voters had elected white Democrats for decades. The shift would ultimately create dozens of openings for Republican candidates in what had formerly been known as Democrats’ “Solid South.”   

Slick! If Republicans packed Black voters into heavily Democratic districts, that would help Republican candidates win in the neighboring districts which had been robbed of such voters! The creation of those new [and heavily Democratic] districts "would create dozens of openings for Republican candidates" in other nearby districts!

As far as we know, this is fairly standard history of the era. As he continues, Hulse explains how the creation of those districts was accomplished:

[continuing from above]
Groups bankrolled by wealthy conservatives joined with liberal organizations to school minority advocacy groups in state capitals and in Washington about how to shape new districts to meet court tests and best guarantee the election of minority representatives for minority communities—an outcome that many on the left argued was long overdue. Republican groups even provided free access to expensive computer software that could craft the new districts. Democrats eagerly accepted the help.

Some civil rights figures such as Representative John Lewis, the Georgia Democrat, warned at the time that the new maps could empower Republicans by weakening the partnership of progressive white and Black voters in the South. But others said the new districts were the only way to overcome centuries of institutional discrimination against minorities in the region.  

According to Hulse, so the tradeoffs were assessed at that time.

According to Hulse, "many on the left" believed that "the [increased] election of minority representatives for minority communities...was long overdue" in the region. For their part, Republicans saw the creation of these majority minority districts as a way to continue their party's ongoing march through the South.   

In modern parlance, it was Red and Blue Together as Rs and Ds joined hands to move these changes along. Some high-end figures—congressional figures like Rep. Clyburn—were sent to Washington from these districts. As is occasionally true with white congressional reps, some of the new Black reps who were elected were perhaps occasionally perhaps a bit less impressive overall.   

At any rate, so it went as the GOP slowly accomplished its political conquest of the South. Early in his report for the Times, Hulse brings us up to date on the way Republican strategy has changed in the present day:   

Now, Republicans see the chance to cement their grip on the region—and to try to maintain their thin House majority—by eliminating the minority districts that initially worked to their advantage and to take those seats for their own.   

It is the latest chapter in an ongoing political saga that has had profound implications for the House of Representatives over the past three decades. Redistricting in minority communities could again be a major factor in deciding the November elections as Republicans try to lessen the traditional midterm advantages for the party out of power—the Democrats in this case—in a year when they face particularly strong headwinds.

Having consolidated their power throughout the South, Republicans are now emboldened to try to eliminate the majority-minority districts, believing they can carry them without risking their strength elsewhere as Democratic-leaning minority voters are dispersed into other districts.   

Within the realm of Republican strategy, it's time for those districts to go! According to Hulse, Republicans feel that they now could win every House district in some Southern states, especially if they're helped along by a bit of gerrymandering as they create those states' new districts.  

In such circumstances, it's time for those once-helpful districts to go! Or so goes current Republican strategy, at least according to Hulse.   

As far as we know, this is fairly basic political history. If memory serves this general Republican strategy was publicly discussed back in the 1990s.

None of this helps us evaluate the constitutional and legal merits of those recent Supreme Court decision. None of this tells us how various groups should react to the new legal realities concerning these endangered districts.

One such district is Alabama 7, a district which will remain largely unchanged and majority Black for this November's election. According to the leading authority, its modern history goes something like this:

Alabama's 7th congressional district   

Alabama's 7th congressional district is a United States congressional district in Alabama that elects a representative to the United States House of Representatives. ...The largest city entirely within the district is Selma.

The district has been majority nonwhite, with a majority of African-American residents, since the redistricting following the 1990 census. As such, and with a Cook Partisan Voting Index rating of D+13, it is the most Democratic district in Alabama...It is currently represented by Democrat Terri Sewell.

Back when he was still a Democrat, this was Rep. Shelby's district. In the years since its redistricting, it has sent three Black Democrats to the House—first Earl Hilliard, then Artur Davis, and now Terri Sewell.

(According to the leading authority, it was created in 1992 as "a 65 percent black-majority district." If that number is accurate, that seems like an unusually heavy degree of "packing," as these matters go.)

Rep. Sewell is highly capable. She recently spoke about the prospective dismantling of these majority Black Southern districts.

We strongly agreed with one of the things she said. Concerning a second statement she made, we may not agree quite so much.  

The issues here have always been quite complex. Much more remains to be said.

Still to come: Good grief! Will the mid-census dismantling of some majority Black districts let the GOP retain control of the House this year? 

Much, much more remains to be said about the many different aspects of this important topic.