🇿🇦 On this day in 1996, President Nelson Mandela signed a new constitution that completed a transition from a long, violent period of white minority Apartheid rule to full-fledged democracy in South Africa. (Is Elon Musk celebrating today? Or no?)

Good morning! Peter here, with a recommendation. Yesterday, Variety named Tony Gilroy’s award-winning, anti-fascist series ‘Andor’ as not only the single best television show of 2025 but also perhaps the top television show of the decade! All of us here at Zeteo adore Andor; you don’t need to be a Star Wars super fan, like me, to fall in love with it. Check it out – and also watch Mehdi’s interview with ‘Andor’ star Denise Gough!

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ the Supreme Court wants to know if JD Vance is already running for president, there are new updates in the Epstein files saga, a close ally of Zohran Mamdani launches a bid for Congress, and transgender troops get thrown under the bus yet again.

🪄SCOTUS MAGA Hocus Pocus

This week, the United States Supreme Court signposted its intention to expand the executive powers of our current Republican president to such an extent that the Constitution itself is moot. What’s more, it made gestures to suggest it is readily preparing to accommodate JD Vance as the heir to the MAGA movement.

All to say, things are oh-so swell in the land of the free and the home of the brave!

“If you’re going to be a good and faithful judge, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you’re not always going to like the conclusions you reach,” legendary conservative Supreme Court Justice and infamous homophobe Antonin Scalia proclaimed to students at Chapman Law School in 2005, “if you like them all the time, you’re probably doing something wrong.”

If only Scalia’s contemporaries, the six robed reactionaries seated on the bench today, observed his sage (albeit almost certainly bad-faith) advice.

A 2025 Court Accountability report on rulings from different levels of the US judiciary indicates Donald Trump has enjoyed far, far more favorable results out of the Supreme Court than from both district and circuit courts, which suggests