Sunday shows preview: VRA ruling fuels redistricting battle; Iran war crosses 60 days

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling on the Voting Rights Act has triggered a fast-moving redistricting fight across the South, with lawmakers in several states pushing for new congressional and legislative maps even amid uncertainty over whether changes can be made in time for the November midterm elections.

The Supreme Court declared Louisiana’s second majority-Black congressional district as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander in a 6-3 decision split along ideological lines on Wednesday.

The ruling effectively weakened Section 2 of the landmark Voting Rights Act — which prohibits any voting practice or procedure that discriminates based on race, color, or language — by narrowing how the provision can be used to challenge maps.  

Advocacy groups, such as the NAACP, had long used the provision to push for majority-minority districts that protect the voting power of historically disenfranchised groups, including Black and Latino voters.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court held that plaintiffs must meet a higher standard when bringing Section 2 claims, requiring them to prove that the state intentionally discriminated based on race when drawing its map rather than pursuing a political advantage.  

Civil rights leader and president of the National Action Network, Rev. Al Sharpton, called the high court’s decision a “bullet in the heart of the voting rights movement,” echoing Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent in which she wrote it leaves Section 2 “all but a dead letter.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was in the majority, is expected to make an exclusive appearance on “Fox News Sunday.”

Republicans widely praised the ruling, while Democrats panned it as an attack on voting rights reminiscent of the Jim Crow era of the 1950s and 60s, when southern states implemented poll taxes and literacy tests that prevented many Black Americans from voting.

“What now is going to happen is it’s going to be more difficult to challenge those laws that get passed that we know are intended to make it more difficult for you to have the representatives that you want at a local level, state level and congressional level,” former Vice President Kamala Harris (D) said in a social media video on Friday.

Some Democrats also raised concerns that the decision could lead to more pickup opportunities for Republicans in the midterms, as lawmakers in states such as Alabama, Louisiana and Tennessee scramble to revisit their maps.

Timing has already proven a complicating factor in GOP efforts to craft new legislative boundaries, with primary elections nearing in several states.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) on Thursday suspended the state’s May 16 House primaries, a day after the Supreme Court handed down its ruling. Democratic congressional candidate Lindsay Garcia promptly sued to block Landry’s executive order.

In Alabama, lawmakers are set to convene in Montgomery starting Monday to discuss also potentially moving its upcoming primaries, as the state awaits a decision from the Supreme Court on whether it can revert to a congressional map previously struck down by the Supreme Court.

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