In the Mishnah, Pirkei Avot reminds us to “not only look at the vessel, but what’s inside it.”

Make no mistake: the ruling this week by a conservative majority Supreme Court is devastating. But when we look inside the vessel, we see that it also means they fear our votes.

The Voting Rights Act is celebrated not only for protecting voting rights, but as a pillar of desegregation. Attacks on that pillar are an attack on our right to vote today. This ruling is a flagrant act of resegregation.

By targeting Black voters across the South, the regime and its enablers look to favor, in every aspect of life, one type of American over every single other. And for them, that American must be right-wing, Christian, wealthy, and white.

Stripping away voting rights has a single goal: ensuring voters can’t exercise their power no matter how much money Republicans steal from our kitchen tables to distribute to billionaires or how much violence and bigotry they fuel to divide us.

It’s easy to witness acts like this and feel disempowered. That’s their aim. But this decision is also an admission that they fear our power. They fear our votes.

This Shabbat we mourn the harm this decision will create, and we commit all the more to fight for every vote, protect every election, and schlep people to the polls. We will fight so that no matter what obstruction they throw at us, the true American majority will win. Because only then can we begin to rebuild and fulfill this nation’s promise: a country that is safe for all and where everyone can thrive.

Join us.