Last Week Tonight‘s John Oliver bashed Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito for the Court’s stunning dismantling of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act.
In the court’s majority opinion striking down a Louisiana election map on the grounds of racial discrimination, the George W. Bush-nominated Justice—whom Oliver called “Segregation Sammy”—wrote that “vast social change has occurred throughout the country, and particularly the South, which has made great strides in ending entrenched racial discrimination.”
“That is obviously horses--t!” Oliver, 49, said in response, adding, “especially given, to the extent America’s made progress on racial discrimination, it’s been thanks in part to the law he just f---ing gutted.”
“Still, credit to ABC for picking that photo of Alito, which has strong ‘this school dance wasn’t supposed to be integrated’ energy,” Oliver quipped. “He looks like he’s angry about the existence of jazz.”
On Wednesday, Alito, 76, was part of the Supreme Court’s 6–3 ruling that a new Louisiana election map was an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander.” Each of the three Donald Trump-nominated Justices—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—voted against the new election map. On Truth Social, Trump called the case a “BIG WIN,” and thanked Alito for his opinion.
“Experts predict this ruling will roll back decades of progress in minority representation at both the local and national levels, with some anticipating it could set up the largest-ever decline in the number of Black representatives on Capitol Hill,” Oliver continued, “which sure feels like a few giant steps back from those giant strides forward that ‘Segregation Sammy’ here was talking about.”
Oliver noted that while some states had already held their congressional primaries—including Arkansas, Mississippi, and North Carolina—others are “scrambling to take action.”
The late-night host pointed to Louisiana, where the governor suspended its congressional primaries just two days before voting was set to begin due to the ruling, with the expected election map reducing the number of majority-Black districts to just one out of six, despite Black voters making up one-third of the state, according to ABC.
Oliver then directed his audience to Georgia, where State Senator Greg Dolezol urged Republicans to be “bold” and “aggressive” in redrawing the state’s maps.
“Republicans like radicalized Frankie Muniz here are chomping at the bit to redraw your maps,” Oliver joked.
“And all else aside, that guy’s name is Greg Dolezal. Greg Dolezol,” he said. “And he’s trying to turn Black districts white.”
“Finally, someone has managed to pull off a reverse Dolezol,” he said, joking about the infamous Rachel Dolezal, who infamously said she identified as a Black woman despite being born to white parents. “And that is not easy to do.”
“There’ll clearly be more to say about this going forward. The one thing we can say for sure right now is that this decision is yet another sign that the current Supreme Court seems to have pretty much the exact same goal as LBJ’s tailor,” Oliver said, referencing President Lyndon B. Johnson’s hilarious phone call complaining to his tailor about his pants crotches being too tight.
“That is, to make things a lot more comfortable for a bunch of very unpleasant nuts and a--holes,” he concluded.
