In a 6-3 pro-MAGA decision, the US Supreme Court on Wednesday nuked a Black-majority Congressional district in Louisiana but did not wholly strike down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

The consensus from the legal Twitters so far seems to be that yes, of course this advantages Republicans given the number of majority-minority districts across the South, while at the same time it does not appear to mean a clean win on the scale of how the Dobbs decision immediately ended abortion access at 10:01 AM the day of. There will be a shit ton more lawsuits filed and anyone who tells you this is 12 free seats for the GOP in November is simply working off maximal expectations.

That people even have those expectations speaks to how entrenched a revanchist, malevolent autocracy is in American federal power structures and the position is simple: Next Dem trifecta 100 percent has to (A) kill the filibuster to squash the GOP veto on meaningful changes. (B) Add seats to the Supreme Court or otherwise nullify the MAGA majority’s stranglehold (C) Pass a new Voting Rights Act ending partisan gerrymandering and expanding the number of seats in the House with a strong tilt toward more densely-populated regions. (C) Add new states to the union that are more or less guaranteed to send Democrats to the Senate. And then pad it out. Look to smaller countries in the Carribbean, even South America or Africa, that would become states willingly, voluntarily, and by the popular consent of their people the same way the Republics of California, Texas, West Florida, and a number of others joined way back when. The GOP needs decades in the wilderness to reform and become anything recognizable again as a chemically-balanced party of government.

That’s the agenda. No more fucking litmus tests about puberty blockers or microaggressions or pronouns or whatever the next unforced electoral liability is going to be. THIS is the litmus test for Dem candidates: Are you going to have the balls to do the job and quarantine the sociopaths until they get well? Or are you going to “defer to tradition” and “avoid rocking the boat” until the minute President Donald Trump Jr falsely swears to uphold the law on a crypto-sponsored Bible in 2033?