Voting Rights Act Is 'Dead' After Supreme Court 'Betrayal' - The Thursday AM Quickie 4/30/26
Time may be running short if you want to see the descendants of Pablo Escobar's famous pet hippopotamuses: the Colombian authorities are talking about euthanizing them. Animal lovers are suggesting they be relocated instead. Justice for the narco hippos! - Corey
ON THE SHOW TODAY
4/30: Emma will be hosting solo. The guests will be Jeremy Scahill, journalist at Drop Site News, discussing the Iran negotiaions; and Eli Hager, reporter at ProPublica, discussing his piece about how "The Trump Administration Aims to Penalize Disabled Adults Who Live With Their Families."
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THE BIG NEWS
Supreme Court Conservatives Gut What's Left of the Voting Rights Act
Some are calling it a betrayal. Others a demolition. But it was just another day's work for the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court, which yesterday voted to nullify Louisiana's second majority-Black district and thereby undermine Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the legal basis for protecting minority representation in American elections.
"Very little remains" of the VRA after yesterday's ruling, NAACP general counsel Kristen Clarke, who led the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division during the Biden administration, tells Politico. "There's some small protections with respect to language access, an important prohibition on voter intimidation, but very little remains. This is a dark day in our democracy."
The decision was 6-3, with the court's conservative bloc presenting a united front. In her dissent, liberal Justice Elena Kagan says it renders the VRA a "dead letter."
What will it mean for the midterm elections? It may be too soon to say. But in the long term, Kagan writes, "the minority citizens residing [in states like Louisiana] will no longer have an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. And minority representation in government institutions will sharply decline." In Georgia, which has a primary election on May 19, Republicans are pushing for the electoral maps to be redrawn immediately, despite the tight deadline.
Meanwhile in Florida, the Republican-led legislature passed a new gerrymandered Congressional map that could help their party pick up four House seats. As we've been saying, the political factors – chiefly Donald Trump's growing unpopularit – favor Democrats in these midterms. But there's always old-fashioned Republican voter suppression to figure in.