A potentially country-changing terror plot was foiled on Sunday, when a New Jersey man was arrested following a disturbance during preparations for the Red Mass. The Red Mass is a Catholic service, offered at St. Matthews Cathedral in Washington, DC, that is open to every member of the legal community regardless of religious affiliation. It’s held on the Sunday before the Supreme Court returns for the start of its new term. All of the Supreme Court justices traditionally attend this event. (For those wondering why the Red Mass doesn’t violate the separation of church and state… it does. But, as The West Wing explained, we have decided to not care about that and pretend that everybody attends in their private capacity.)

This year, a man identified as Louis Geri set up a “tent” on the steps of the church, which he claimed was full of “grenades.” Authorities said they found parts necessary to make an explosive device inside his tent.

As a condition for his peaceful surrender, Geri directed the police to read his nine-page manifesto. In it, he allegedly showed “disdain for Catholicism, Judaism, Supreme Court justices and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).” Geri was taken into custody, where he is being held without bond. While the Red Mass was allowed to proceed, none of the Supreme Court justices attended the service.

We live in a violent country, one made more so by the actions of this Supreme Court. But—and I can’t believe I even have to write this—violence is not the solution to their actions. The only way to stop the theocrats on the court is to put in the work to pass legislation expanding the court or to ratify a constitutional amendment taking away lifetime appointments—or both. People who threaten the court with violence are being, among many other ugly and obvious things, lazy.

And these lazy, violent people cannot be allowed to succeed. My position on the matter is strident: Should a Supreme Court justice get assassinated in a clear act of political violence, they must be replaced by a justice from the same party, regardless of who is president and who controls the Senate. I know that Trump and the current Republican Senate would never follow this rule should one of the liberals be the victim of violence, and I am usually the last guy to suggest that Democrats should follow a restriction that Republicans will ignore. But this is a red line to me. Supreme Court reform cannot happen via the bullet or the bomb.

The very best way to increase the safety of Supreme Court justices is not with more security. These people could drive around in tanks (which I’m sure the conservatives would like) and it wouldn’t help. Good guys with guns do not stop bad guys with guns. The best way to ensure their safety would be for leaders of both parties to lock arms and say that should any one of these people be assassinated, they will be replaced by someone who is politically just like them.

• The government is still shut down. Members of the military are about to miss their first paychecks. The already shambolic state of air traffic control is getting worse, leading to increased delays. It would be nice if the Republicans, who control the House, the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court, would do something about this.
• New York Attorney General Leitia James has been indicted by the Trump Department of Justice on… whatever, it doesn’t even matter. These people just use indictments to harass those who oppose them. “Mortgage fraud,” is what they’re saying, for a house James helped her niece buy. Someday these people need to be held accountable for malicious prosecution, but it won’t be today.
• A district court judge in Illinois issued a temporary restraining order preventing ICE from using “excessive force” to expel journalists and protesters from one of their concentration camps. Expect the Supreme Court to overturn this ruling soon, without explanation, on the shadow docket.
• A different district court judge in Illinois issued a temporary restraining order blocking Trump from deploying National Guard troops to Chicago. Expect the Supreme Court to overturn this ruling soon, without explanation, on the shadow docket.
• A district court judge in New York granted a request from The New York Times to see Elon Musk’s security clearances. Expect the Supreme Court to overturn this ruling soon, without explanation, on the shadow docket.
• A district court judge in Illinois ruled that a Republican candidate, Michael Bost, did not have standing to sue the state over its mail-in ballot laws. The Supreme Court actually decided to hear arguments in this one, which is rare for them these days. But, at those arguments on Wednesday, the Republicans made it pretty clear that they will rule for Bost and allow Republicans to take yet another stab at destroying voting rights.
• A district court judge in California ordered Google to make massive changes to its app store following a ruling that Google is in violation of antitrust laws. The Supreme Court declined to hear Google’s appeal, or overturn the ruling. This will come as small consolation to Google, but the Supreme Court’s refusal to do them a solid is a pretty good indication that Google is not a fascist junta hell-bent on destroying democracy. So they have that going for them, at least.

• Tennessee state Representative Justin Pearson is running for Congress, and I don’t think I could be more excited. The Nation’s Chris Lehmann explains why.
• This country will never, ever do right by Native Americans. As we hurtle toward Indigenous People’s Day, it’s worth re-reading this 2017 piece by Rebecca Claren explaining the crisis in Native American education, caused by the US government.
• The indispensable Radly Balko draws a straight line from the “War on Drugs” to the “War on Terror” to the Trump administration’s murder of immigrants in a boat while nobody does anything to stop it.
• I have to shout out my man Jay Willis from Balls and Strikes. Last week, I wrote about Clarence Thomas’s abandonment of stare decisis and, instead of just repeating what I said, this madman went back and listened to Thomas’s and the other conservatives’ confirmation hearings to illustrate how their current position is a direct contradiction of what they said when they were applying for the job.

It would seem obvious that people should be able to sue if the Postal Service refuses to deliver, or destroys, their mail. Considering how much shopping is done online these days, nondelivery isn’t just an inconvenience; it’s literal theft. But as a legal proposition, it’s tricky. The Postal Service enjoys an exception from the normal operation of law—“the postal exception”—which makes it impossible for people to sue the Post Office for claims “arising out of the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter.” The facial issue in front of the court is whether intentional nondelivery is mere loss, miscarriage, or “negligence”—or whether it’s something more significant. Again, I think it should be fairly obvious that intentionally refusing to deliver the mail is not like those other things, but I’m still awaiting my Supreme Court appointment.

If the Postal Service is allowed to not deliver mail, on purpose, without threat of lawsuits, there could be grave consequences. The current case is about a landlord in Texas who wasn’t getting her mail. She’s alleging racial discrimination by the postal workers in Texas. That’s bad, but what will be even worse is when the Trump Postal Service refuses to deliver mail-in ballots in Texas, or anywhere else. Intentional nondelivery of mail in a world where mail-in voting is a thing is a crisis for democracy.

Justices like Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson saw the same dangers I am worried about, but Justice Sam Alito was worried about… late Christmas cards. He argued, in open court, that he was concerned about allowing people to sue over the intentional nondelivery of mail, because he didn’t want people rushing to the courthouse to sue the Post Office over trivial matters. He said: “So I don’t get my Christmas cards until three weeks after Christmas, and I can’t sue on the ground that it’s negligent. But if I say, well, the delivery person doesn’t like me for one reason or another, it was intentional, and then I’m in court.”

This freaking guy is a Supreme Court justice with a lifetime appointment, and he’s blithely analogizing a potential disruption in the process of democratic self-government (to say nothing of a Black woman being illegally denied her mail) to a late holiday greeting.

What’s particularly galling about Alito’s argument is that we know exactly why he’s making it: He hates mail-in voting. Earlier in the week, during arguments in Bost v. Illinois Board of Elections (the case I mentioned earlier about whether a Republican candidate can sue over Illinois’s mail-in ballot procedure), Alito made the wild, incorrect, and unsupported accusation that Bost has standing to sue because mail-in voting helps Democrats. This is flatly not true. But even it were, the fact that one party prefers one method of voting over another should have no bearing on the legal availability of that method of voting.

But in Alito’s pickled, uninformed mind, it’s all of a piece. Mail-in voting helps Democrats, so mail-in voting should not be a thing, and if the Post Office destroys mail-in ballots, we shouldn’t care.

I don’t want Alito to retire next June, before the midterms, and thereby give Trump an opportunity to appoint another, younger Sam Alito. But the man has lost his grip on anything approaching reality. He has reached the embarrassment stage of a lifetime appointment—the old, punch-drunk boxer stage of his career where seeing him flail around is horrifying and painful to watch. Everything out of his mouth these days is just a Mad Lib of random Fox News segments, strung together.

I hope he stays around and beclowns himself until he can be replaced by a Democrat, but this is getting ugly.

• I have the cover story in the upcoming issue of The Nation. But don’t get excited. It’s about the Supreme Court’s upcoming term and how the Democrats should have stopped them when they had the chance. Now [Yoda voice] matters are worse.
• The Supreme Court is poised to lift the ban on conversion therapy. Makes you wonder: Who are the ones who are actually trying to convert our kids these days?

In any event, video game journalist Steven Totilo (a source I absolutely trust on these matters) reports that Ubisoft’s next installment was going to be set during the Reconstruction period in America and “was to feature a Black Assassin who, among other things, fought the rise of the Klan.” Ubisoft allegedly nixed the idea citing “concerns re: US political climate, backlash to Yasuke.” I’ll get to Yasuke in a moment, but first: You know you live in a failed state when people don’t feel like they can make games about killing Klansmen. While I can only imagine how MAGA would react to a game about assassinating their ancestors, I find Ubisoft’s decision to be an enormous cop-out.

As to Yasuke, the “backlash” Totilo referred to concerns the current game, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. It’s set in feudal Japan, and features a Black Samurai warrior named Yasuke. Yasuke is a real historical person of African descent who likely became the first Black Samurai sometime in the 16th century.

Predictably, putting a Black man in a historical time period where white people feel he doesn’t belong has angered the racists, even though the racists are wrong and ignorant about the real timeline here. But the problem with Yasuke isn’t that racists hate him; the problem is that he sucks as a playable character in the game. Assassin’s Creed games generally involve graceful combat, fast parkour movement, verticality, and stealth. Yasuke possesses none of these things. He’s slow and clunky and can’t hide very well. When he performs the signature Assassin’s Creed jump from a high tower into a bale of hay, instead of looking like a gravity-defying bird of prey swooping in to make a kill, he flails about in the air like someone just pushed him off of a bridge.

He’s not fun to play. And while it’s difficult to separate the people who hate his playstyle from the people who hate his race, Ubisoft’s attempt to blame his poor public reception on racism instead of its own crappy game design is a self-serving excuse.

What’s all the more frustrating about this decision is that Ubisoft has gone here before, to great success. In 2013’s Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, players got to be a pirate in the Caribbean. An expansion to that game allowed people to play as a Black pirate whose mission was to liberate plantations. I spent hours sailing around, gleefully murdering any slaveholders who popped up on my map. It’s some of the most fun I’ve had in gaming.

Ubisoft doesn’t have an unblemished record on racial inclusion (this 2012 post from Jason Johnson details the complications with Assassin’s Creed’s first Black protagonist, a French African woman whose backstory was less like a Black woman and more like a white man’s fantasy of a Black woman). But the game studio has generally been willing to at least try.

Ubisoft wants people to think that it can’t make a game featuring a Black protagonist who kills racists in the current political climate. That just is not true. It absolutely can. What it can’t do is make a game that sucks. If it could make a good game about assassinating Klansmen, I promise you people would play it, and laugh while Stephen Miller and Chris Rufo got all up in their feelings about people killing the video game representation of their heroes.

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