If you grew up in our times in America, north of the Mason-Dixon Line, chances are that when you saw guys with hoods on their heads, you saw them for what they are: people in dunce caps who should sit in the corner and stay there. But in Donald Trump's America, the guys with pointy white hoods on their heads are heroes of the white master race, whose practice of keeping their faces masked perfectly complements the terrorizing activities of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

The sacrifices of Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, and others secured the Voting

Rights Act of 1965, that sacred nationalized push-back against a miniature version of the country summed up by the hateful hooded rituals of the Klan. Predictably, Trump's Supreme Court this week rode roughshod over the Voting Rights Act when it rejected a contested congressional map in Louisiana.

Via CNN: Conservative critics argue the law infringes on the equal sovereignty of states and that the federal government shouldn’t interfere with state elections. The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once dismissed the act as a “racial entitlement.”

Well, he got "racial entitlement" right, albeit completely misapplied, for just as Benjamin Netanyahu got Trump to bomb a school of girls in Iran and never own up to it, the good ol' boys from Project 25 found a willing prop-up in the White House for their racist schemes, and Trump's ugly version of the Supremes.

"Trump's agenda is based on white power," said former state Senator Bernie Kenny.

"This is the fight that we are fighting, it's been going on since the Civil Rights Act. This is just another device to protect and preserve white power. That's the battleground of the last 60 years. Once you deviate from the rule of law..."

(And when you have Trump judicial nominees under questioning by U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CN) unable to admit the FACT that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, you begin to get a deeper understanding of how chilling a deviation that is in real time).

"...once you set up this hierarchy, it bleeds into other classifications like money and wealth that take precedence over quality," Kenny added. "Once you deviate from equal justice under the law the whole thing, the whole country, breaks down. This is Trumpism."

The former senator points out the effort by Trump and his minions' efforts to trample on the rule of law absurdly sets the table for King Charles of England, of all people, to give the President a civics lesson on America.

"The unintended consequences of Trumpism," Kenny mused.

But back to the Supreme Court decision.

"It sets us back 50 to 60 years," said state Senator Benjie Wimberly (D-35). "It's an insult to everybody who fought and died for these rights who got hoses sprayed on them and dogs set on them. That we're even having this conversation is an outrage."

Wimberly sees it the way Kenny sees it: an attempt by Trump and his allies to create white Anglo Saxon dominance.

"It even extends to these guys getting in a fight with the Pope, where they show their disdain not only for people of color but for Catholics," Wimberly noted.

The consequences for New Jersey?

For years, a bill authored by Assemblywoman Verlina Reynolds-Jackson (D-15) has languished in the halls of Trenton, relegated to the background in part because A. New Jersey already has some of the strongest voting rights protections in the country, and B. Some of the language in the bill creates worries about liability for clerks and other elections workers.

What does the bill do?

From the Legal Defense Fund:

With the federal Voting Rights Act on life support, this bill incorporates current federal voting rights protections into state law; helps prevent discriminatory voting changes in certain jurisdictions without “preclearance” from the state or a court to ensure lack of harm to voters of color; expands assistance at the polls and language access for voting and voter information; and prohibits voter discrimination and intimidation.

The second Trump presidency and Trump's threats to "nationalize elections" and concentrate elections in the hands of Republicans - his words - in part prompted Speaker Craig Coughlin to post the Act this year, where it passed through the Assembly. Senate President Nick Scutari told allies back in January that he intends to move it through the Senate before June. Now, the Supreme Court's decision this week gives him added incentive.

"Today’s decision is in direct opposition to efforts by Assembly Democrats to expand voting rights in New Jersey, as evidenced by the Assembly's recent passage of my bill, the John R. Lewis Voter Empowerment Act of New Jersey (Bill A1715)," Reynolds-Jackson said this week. "The Supreme Court's action underscores the importance of making sure my bill is signed into law."

"That needs to move immediately," said Wimberly. "Even though we're a blue state it's in the senate, and this should be a motivating factor to get it to the governor's desk. My understanding is the issues with the clerks' language had been cleaned up."

State Senator Britnee Timberlake (D-34) agreed.

"The legislature should seize the moment and even look to strengthen it [the bill], given

the Supreme Court's recent decision," the senator told InsiderNJ. "Our country is in a dark place. Constitutional protections that John R. Lewis and others got their heads beaten in for, are being challenged. It's so unfortunate."

"The Republican members of the Supreme Court allowed Louisiana to disenfranchise Black citizens with illegal redistricting, completing the Court’s decade-long evisceration of the 1965 Voting Rights Act," said Somerset County Commissioner Director Shanel Robinson. "We cannot go back to the days of Jim Crow. America is great when all voices are heard at the ballot box, and when the powerful are held to account by the voters they represent. It is

lessened when the people are silenced. ...I have family and friends in Louisiana whose votes and voices are being stolen in broad daylight by the Supreme Court. For me this is not about the lines on a map, but about the harm it does to real American families who deserve better from our government."

Whatever happens to the Act - and given the Democrats' control of the Senate and the governor's office, it appears on track for passage - the other ongoing fights here will occur in the courts, as New Jersey resists the Supreme Court decision.

From the SCOTUS decision: The conservative majority found that race predominated in the map's creation, weakening Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. This decision impacts future map-drawing by narrowing how race can be used in redistricting.

"We may well have gerrymandering litigation for the next couple of decades as a consequence of this very calculated decision by the Supreme Court," said defense attorney Joe Hayden, who marched with MLK in the 1960s for Civil Rights. "We've always had a fair nonpartisan system in New Jersey, with six members from each side and an impartial judge. The system works, however imperfect. Now, Democrats have no choice but to fight fire with fire. To refuse to do it is almost to invite defeat. We cannot go with our guns in our holsters.

"In a lot of the southern states, race accounted for how they set up a flawed [congressional district] system to begin with, and what they have done now, the Supreme Court, is invited a legal civil war over gerrymandering," Hayden added. "It's so unnecessary and egregious. It's going to provoke aggressive legislation by those who want to protect voting rights and an unnecessary civil war. What, are our courts going to become voting rights courts? This is an opening shot of a legal civil war. What a waste of energy when there is so much to be done for social justice."

Gov. Mikie Sherrill last night told CNN's Kaitlan Collins that she is willing to work with the legislature to create a check to Trump’s redistricting efforts.

"This is so typical of Trump, wrongly claiming that there is a huge problem with voting and then making a huge problem with voting," Governor Sherrill said. "He's trying to cheat the system so they can unfairly win and unfairly win these seats because he hasn't governed well and he knows a blue wave is coming.

"We'll take the measures we have to take in New Jersey," Sherrill added. "If Trump is going to attack fair voting across the country, we will create a counterbalance to whatever he's doing."

Whatever happens, Trump's justices - the justice and judges of a convicted felon, son of a man arrested at a Klan rally in Queens in the 1920s, who depicts himself as Jesus and attacks the Pope, party to people who will sit on the bench in denial of the basic facts of the events of 2020, including the desecration by a MAGA mob of the United States Capitol, the people's House  - still control the Supreme Court.

"The Supreme Court really is his legacy," Essex County Clerk Chris Durkin noted.