Vote Moat: “This is the same John Roberts who in 1982, as a young lawyer in the administration of President Ronald Reagan, fought a crucial amendment to the Voting Rights Act of 1965; whose majority opinion in 2013 gutted one-half of the Voting Rights Act and who joined an ahistoric opinion last summer that took aim at the other half.” Linda Greenhouse in the NYT: The Supreme Court Has Crossed the Rubicon. (And it will continue to do so for a long, long time.)

+ Amy Coney Island: “Andrew Lewis, a University of Cincinnati political scientist who studies faith-based advocacy, told me that religious conservatives often used to feel ‘looked down upon by some of the original Federalist Society members.’ But, he went on, ‘they have increasingly gained power, and their concerns have become more central to the project.'” Margaret Talbot in The New Yorker: Amy Coney Barrett’s Long Game.

+ Friend Zone: “The older we get, the more we need our friends—and the harder it is to keep them.” Jennifer Senior in The Atlantic: It’s Your Friends Who Break Your Heart. (I have a couple friends that I met 30 years ago. My wife refers to them as my new friends.)