‘A day of loss for our democracy’: civil rights groups slam supreme court ruling that weakens key part of Voting Rights Act – live

Two days after Germany’s chancellor said that the US “is being humiliated” by Iran’s “very skilled” negotiators, Donald Trump suggested on Wednesday that the US could withdraw some troops from that country.

“The United States is studying and reviewing the possible reduction of Troops in Germany, with a determination to be made over the next short period of time,” the president wrote on his social media platform.

“The Americans clearly have no strategy,” Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, told students on Monday. “The problem with conflicts like this is always that you don’t just have to go in; you also have to get out again. We saw that all too painfully in Afghanistan, for 20 years. We saw it in Iraq. So this whole affair is, as I said, ill-considered, to say the least.

Merz also suggested that Trump’s self-described genius for deal-making was nowhere to be seen in talks with Iran.

“The Iranians are obviously very skilled at negotiating, or rather, very skilful at not negotiating, letting the Americans travel to Islamabad and then leave again without any result,” Merz said. “An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership”.

Trump’s first response to Merz, in a social media post on Tuesday, was to repeat the same lie about the German chancellor he told recently about Pope Leo.

“The Chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz, thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon,” Trump wrote, despite the fact that the German leader was repeatedly said Iran should never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.

A the stalemate in the strait of Hormuz drags on, a US aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford, will leave the Middle East within days, bringing about 4,500 sailors who have been deployed for 10 months home, the Washington Post reports.

Although the Ford is reportedly leaving the Red Sea, the US will still have two aircraft carriers named for Republican presidents in the region, the USS George H W Bush and the USS Abraham Lincoln, to enforce the US blockade in the Arabian Sea against vessels carrying oil or goods from Iranian ports.

This month the Ford broke a record for the longest deployment of any aircraft carrier since the Cold War, reaching 295 days on 15 April. In March, a laundry fire broke out on the ship, which has also been plagued with plumbing problems.

Photographs of scant rations and mostly empty dinner plates on the USS Abraham Lincoln, shared with USA Today this month by family members of sailors and Marines on board, prompted concerns about how long their deployment to the region can last.

The mother of one sailor on the USS Abraham Lincoln told the newspaper she was worried that her son had lost 20 pounds since his deployment began, thanks to meals like one dry meat square on a small scoop of rice and off-color burger patty with a side of liquid nacho cheese.

The Florida Legislature approved a new congressional map intended to maximize Republicans’ advantage in the state as part of the national redistricting battle that Donald Trump launched ahead of this year’s midterms, the Associated Press reports.

The vote came just two days after Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, unveiled his proposal and the same day that the US supreme court rolled back a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. That decision makes it harder for Democrats to challenge Republican efforts to redraw congressional districts in ways that limit the influence of nonwhite voters.

DeSantis’ map could increase Republicans’ advantage in Florida’s House delegation to 24 to 4, up from the current split of 20 to 8. The potential four-seat gain is the same as what Virginia Democrats expect from a recent redistricting referendum , which is being challenged in state court there.

Florida’s new districts are certain to face lawsuits as well, especially because the state constitution prohibits redistricting for explicitly partisan purposes.

Bishop William Barber, a veteran voting rights activist, lent his voice to the chorus of civil rights leaders condemning the US supreme court decision to effectively gut the Voting Rights Act of its protections for Black and Brown voters.

Barber, who helped start the Moral Mondays series of protests, was arrested at sit-ins at the offices of Democratic senators Krysten Sinema and Joe Manchin in 2021, while calling on the then Democratic majority in the Senate to create an exception to the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation.

In a statement, Barber said:

Just as June 25, 2013 – when the Supreme Court gutted Section 5 of the VRA – was a day of deep retrogression, today, April 29, 2026, will long be remembered in infamy.

Today, six Supreme Court justices closed their eyes to the continuing realities of racial discrimination, racial injustice, and inequity. In 2020, after Biden was elected President, with majorities in the House and Senate, many of us argued that COVID-19 relief to corporations shouldn’t pass without a renewal of the Voting Rights Act and a commitment to living wages. This did not happen, so here we are.

As Frederick Douglass said after the Dred Scott decision, this overreach must serve to intensify and embolden our agitation. Today must be a catalyst for the most massive turnout of Black, Brown, and white voters who believe in justice and equal protection under the law.

And anyone seeking the votes of Black and Brown people must be clear about how, if they have power, they will use it to overturn this gross retrogression of rights. In part, that means placing justices on the Supreme Court who will pay attention to the ongoing realities of racism and who believe in equal protection under the law – not justices who will use the legal system to undo gains of the past.

The protection and expansion of voting rights is a key moral issue in this moment of authoritarianism. Our future leaders need to treat it as such.

With what might pass for restraint, for him, Donald Trump limited his response to the news that Jerome Powell will remain on the Federal Reserve board after his term as chair ends in May to just 21 insulting words.

In a brief post on his social media platform, the president said: “Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell wants to stay at the Fed because he can’t get a job anywhere else — Nobody wants him.”

Powell, whose term as a Fed governor runs until January 2028, could have retired after he is replaced as chair, but, having endured months of insults from the president for refusing to disregard the threat of inflation and lower interest rates, and a criminal investigation that appears off, for now, the central banker appears determined to deny the president the chance to replace him with a more pliant appointee.

The Department of Justice announced on Wednesday that three anti-ICE protesters have been charged with allegedly assaulting Savannah Hernandez, a rightwing video journalist who was shoved to the ground during a skirmish with three members of a family outside an immigration detention facility in St Paul, Minnesota this month.

Hernandez, a former host for the far-right, conspiracy theory outlet Infowars who now creates content for Frontlines, a Turning Point USA streaming show, claimed that she was assaulted for merely reporting on the protest.

The indictment of the Ostroushkos for allegedly assaulting Hernandez comes after a weeks-long campaign in the rightwing media to punish the protesters.

Three days after the incident, vice-president JD Vance said at a Turning Point USA event in Georgia that he had asked the FBI director, Kash Patel, what the administration was doing about it. Patel had assured him, Vance said, that multiple agents were already investigating.

“We’re going to us the video to try to go after the people who assaulted her and then try to defund the networks that fund those radicals who are going around assaulting activists,” Vance said, apparently sharing the perspective of anti-ICE protesters that Hernandez is a partisan activist rather than a nonpartisan journalist.

In a recent podcast interview, however, two of the three family members indicted by the federal grand jury, Chris and Deyanna Ostroushko blamed Hernandez for starting the violence. The melee began, they said, when Hernandez shoved her hand into the face of their daughter Paige Ostroushko, who was blowing a whistle at the influencer to disrupt her filming.

Hernandez’s viral clip of the incident does not show the start of the physical confrontation clearly, but another protester’s recording of the confrontation does.

That video, recorded by Oskar Quentin, seemed to show that Hernandez did shove Paige Ostroushko’s face twice, knocking the whistle out of her mouth, before the young woman took a swing at Hernandez and knocked her against a fence.

Quentin’s video also shows that when Hernandez got back up, she was confronted by Deyanna Ostroushko, and the two women exchanged blows. Moments later Chris Ostroushko was then filmed shoving the influencer to the ground. Hernandez then she got back up and appeared to punch Paige Ostroushko in the face before being tackled to the ground.

During an emotional interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News after the incident, Hernandez claimed that she had been confronted and assaulted “for journalism” because protesters knew that she worked for Turning Point USA, the conservative political movement founded by the late Charlie Kirk.

In Hernandez’s video of the protest in Minnesota this month, which showed her arguing with protesters before the skirmish, another demonstrator could be heard shouting that she was “a paid agitator”.

While it is impossible to excuse assaulting anyone for filming a protest, it is not hard to see why anti-ICE activists do not consider Hernandez a nonpartisan reporter. She was previously celebrated on Fox News in the summer of 2020 as a political activist who had herself filmed holding up a sign that read “Police Lives Matter” during a Black Lives Matter protest that followed the murder of George Floyd.

Hernandez was invited to the White House twice last year. In February, she said she was one of a group of influencers who met there with Vance, Patel and then attorney general Pam Bondi and was handed a binder of previously released material on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

In October, her profile was further elevated when Hernandez was one of 11 rightwing influencers who describe themselves as journalists invited to the White House to brief Donald Trump and his attorney general, FBI director, homeland security secretary and deputy attorney general on the supposed threat from antifascists. Eight of the 11 conservative content creators who called for a crackdown on leftwing protesters that day were current or former employees of Turning Point USA.

Hernandez, who has appeared regularly on Fox News, told the Columbia Journalism Review in January that she identifies as a “Trump supporter, absolutely.”

The US Supreme court decision to effectively gut the Voting Rights Act has been denounced as “motivated by politics” by Kamala Harris, the former vice-president who says she is contemplating another run for the presidency in 2028.

In a statement released on social media, Harris said:

Today’s Supreme Court ruling guts the Voting Rights Act and turns back the clock on the foundational promise of equality and fairness in our election systems.

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was one of the last remaining federal protections for Black and brown voters against maps deliberately drawn to dilute their political power. That protection has been stripped away.

It is an outrage. But it is not a surprise.

It is part of an agenda that conservatives set in place decades ago to steal power from everyday people and then cling to that power for generations. The court’s decision is motivated by politics and designed to give an upper hand to Donald Trump’s Republican Party, which faces the threat of losing the upcoming midterm elections.

The losing candidate in the 2024 presidential election went on to say that the fight now returns to the states, particularly those of the old confederacy, which are expected to redraw their congressional maps to dilute the power of votes cast by Black Americans in ways that would have been illegal before the court’s ruling.

“Their politically-motivated power grab is meant to protect elected Republicans from any consequences for their failure to make groceries, gas, health care, or housing more affordable for you and your family,” Harris wrote. “They want to cheat and choose their voters, instead of the voters deciding who they choose.”

Today, the supreme court’s conservative majority struck down a major element of the Voting Rights Act which protects against racial discrimination in redistricting, in a ruling that paves the way for aggressive gerrymandering in states across the nation that could affect elections for years to come.

As my colleague Sam Levine notes, at the heart of the case, Louisiana v Callais, was a question of how much lawmakers are allowed to consider race when they redraw districts to ensure that black voters are adequately represented.

In a 6-3 decision, split along partisan lines, the court struck down a majority-black congressional district in Louisiana, rendering ineffective section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the last remaining powerful provision of the 1965 civil rights law that prevents racial discrimination in voting. Section 2 has long been used to ensure minority voters are treated fairly in redistricting.

The ruling gives lawmakers permission to draw districting plans that weaken the influence of black and other minority voters. It comes as Donald Trump has pushed for red states to redraw their congressional maps in ways that would help Republicans win more seats in this year’s elections.

“Allowing race to play any part in government decision-making represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context,” conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority opinion. “Compliance with section 2 thus could not justify the state’s use of race-based redistricting here. The state’s attempt to satisfy the middle district’s ruling, although understandable, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”

In a dissenting opinion, liberal Justice Elena Kagan wrote the court had now accomplished a “demolition of the Voting Rights Act”.

Under the court’s new view of section 2, a state can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power. The majority claims only to be ‘updat[ing]’ our section 2 law, as though through a few technical tweaks. In fact, those ‘updates’ eviscerate the law.

Today’s decision renders section 2 all but a dead letter. The decision here is about Louisiana’s district 6. But so too it is about Louisiana’s district 2. And so too it is about the many other districts, particularly in the south, that in the last half-century have given minority citizens, and particularly African Americans, a meaningful political voice. After today, those districts exist only on sufferance, and probably not for long.

Reactions have poured in from lawmakers and civil rights groups, condemning the supreme court’s decision.

• The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) called the ruling “a devastating blow to what remains of the Voting Rights Act” and “a major setback for our nation”. The ruling is “a license for corrupt politicians who want to rig the system by silencing entire communities”, president Derrick Johnson said in a statement. “The Supreme Court betrayed Black voters, they betrayed America, and they betrayed our democracy.”

• Former president Barack Obama said the ruling “effectively gut[s] a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act” and frees “state legislatures to gerrymander legislative districts to systematically dilute and weaken the voting power of racial minorities – so long as they do it under the guise of ‘partisanship’ rather than explicit ‘racial bias’”.

• “This is a day of tremendous loss. It’s a day of loss for our democracy,” said Janai Nelson, who leads NAACP LDF and argued the case at the supreme court. “It’s a day of loss for critical protections for the right to vote that have served our multiracial democracy for over six decades. It’s a day of loss for Black voters in Louisiana who have counted on fair maps to allow them representation that they have been denied for their entire existence in that state.”

• Sophia Lin Lakin, the director of the ACLU Voting Rights Project, called the ruling “a profound betrayal of the civil rights movement”. Today’s decision in Callais renders Section 2 moot as “it will be difficult, if not impossible, to enforce in the vast majority of cases,” she said.

• Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi called the ruling a “new blow” against the “sacred right to vote”. “The consequences will be felt across the country: fewer voices heard, fewer communities represented and a democracy diminished,” she said.

• Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said, the “awful” decision represented “another step towards resurrecting the Jim Crow south”. The ruling, he said, “opens the floodgates for states across the south to redraw their Congressional districts and make voters of color essentially invisible in our democracy”. The court, he said, was “trying to give Republicans a leg up, an illegitimate leg up, in future elections”.

• His House counterpart, Hakeem Jeffries, called the decision “corrupt”. “Voter suppression is a way of life for Donald Trump and far right extremists on the Supreme Court,” he said. “Republicans know they cannot win a free and fair election in November and so they are desperate to rig it. We will never let them succeed.”

• Georgia senator Reverend Raphael Warnock said the decision “further ravaged” the Voting Rights Act and left the country “at a crossroads where politicians are picking their voters”. “Clearly, we are straying further from the core voting principles that helped create the diverse body that people see representing them today,” he said. “We must restore the Voting Rights Act and ban gerrymandering. Our democracy is on the line.”

• Representative Troy Carter, whose predominately black congressional district encompasses New Orleans, said “the consequences of the high court’s decision will be “immediate and severe” and that Louisiana’s two majority-black congressional districts are now at risk of being dismantled. “Without the protections of the Voting Rights Act, there is no evidence to suggest that Black voters in our state will be able to elect candidates of their choice,” he said.

• New Orleans mayor Helena Moreno, a Democrat who represents the largest city in Louisiana’s other predominantly black congressional district, said the supreme court’s ruling was “a step backward”. “Striking down a district that reflected diversity suppresses voices and weakens our democracy. We should be working to expand representation, not roll it back,” she said.

• Lauren Groh-Wargo, executive director of Fair Fight Action, said the supreme court’s decision “guts” voting rights protection while “pretending to uphold it”. “It allows states, counties and cities to shield their discriminatory maps by claiming they are advancing their own partisan interests, ignoring that race and party are highly correlated in places across the country, particularly the south,” she said.

For more reaction to this landmark decision, please read my colleague Fabiola Cineas’s piece here:

Asked about his decision to stay on as a Fed governor, Powell said his concern was about “the series of legal attacks on the Fed, which threaten our ability to conduct monetary policy without considering political factors”.

He said he doesn’t mind verbal criticism by elected officials, but said the administration’s legal attacks on him “are unprecedented in our 113-year history, and there are ongoing threats of additional such actions”.

I worry that these attacks are battering the institution and putting at risk the thing that really matters to the public, which is the ability to conduct monetary policy without taking into consideration political factors.

Powell also congratulated Kevin Warsh on his advancement towards being confirmed as his successor as Federal Reserve chair by the Senate.

Powell described the Senate vote as “an important step”, adding: “I wish him well as that process continues.”

More now from outgoing Fed chair Jerome Powell, who said that while he US economy is expanding, “inflation has moved up with growing global energy prices”.

“Developments in the Middle East are contributing to high levels of uncertainty,” he said.

Consumer sentiment was “resilient” though, he added, and “economic activity has been expanding at a solid pace”.

Former president Barack Obama has issued this statement in reaction to the supreme court’s landmark decision today to “effectively gut a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act”.

He said the ruling frees “state legislatures to gerrymander legislative districts to systematically dilute and weaken the voting power of racial minorities – so long as they do it under the guise of ‘partisanship’ rather than explicit ‘racial bias’”.

And it serves as just one more example of how a majority of the current Court seems intent on abandoning its vital role in ensuring equal participation in our democracy and protecting the rights of minority groups against majority overreach.

The good news is that such setbacks can be overcome. But that will only happen if citizens across the country who cherish our democratic ideals continue to mobilize and vote in record numbers – not just in the upcoming midterms or in high profile races, but in every election and every level.

I asked Sophia Lin Lakin, the ACLU’s top voting rights lawyer, and Janai Nelson, the NAACP LDF lawyer who argued in defense of Louisiana’s map at the supreme court, whether or not there was any pathway for continuing to bring Section 2 claims in federal court after today’s decision.

“Theoretically, yes, there are still some possibilities there … academically speaking there are some pathways there,” Nelson said. “But I think that those require conditions that I don’t see present based on current demographics, voting patterns and what has become an increasingly hyper polarized partisan landscape.”

Lakin added that non-partisan elections are one area where plaintiffs might have some additional remaining leeway to bring Section 2 claims.

Outgoing Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said he will stay on as a central bank governor when his leadership term ends in just over two weeks.

“After my term as chair ends on May 15, I will continue to serve as a governor for a period of time to be determined,” Powell said, adding that he planned to “keep a low profile” as a governor.

Powell noted US attorney Jeanine Pirro’s announcement on Friday, ending the criminal investigation against him but also cautioning that she could reopen it.

The move cleared a hurdle for Trump’s pick Kevin Warsh to be confirmed, as GOP senator Thom Tillis had said he wouldn’t vote to confirm him until the probe into Powell was dropped. The Fed’s inspector general has instead been asked to look into potential “building cost overruns” in the central bank’s renovation of its Washington DC headquarters, Pirro said.

He said he would not be leaving the Fed’s board of governors until the DOJ’s investigation into him is “well and truly over”.

I’ve said that I will not leave the board until this investigation is well and truly over with transparency and finality, and I stand by that.

He added: “I’m encouraged by recent developments, and I’m watching the remaining steps in this process carefully. My decisions on these matters will continue to be guided entirely by what I believe is in the best interest of the institution and the people we serve.”

Trump was then asked a follow-up question about the ruling. The president asked again when the ruling came out (this morning!), before asking the reporter if it was a win for Republicans. Told that it was, he said:

I love it! I want to read it. Wow!

He was asked if he believed more Republican governors should pursue redrawing their congressional maps following the ruling, given that early voting in some places begins on Saturday.

Trump said it would depend on the state and whether they have time to do it, but generally they should do it.

Donald Trump was also asked for his reaction to today’s supreme court ruling on the Voting Rights Act – to which the president said he didn’t know about it.

“You have to tell me, when did the ruling come out?” he asked the reporter, adding he’s been meeting with the astronauts and with contractors trying to get his ballroom built.

When he was told that the ruling might help Republicans gain more congressional seats in the south, the president responded:

That’s good, that’s the kind of ruling I like.

He then asked when this happened, and was told this morning.

Just before we get to that, Donald Trump has been taking questions from reporters in the Oval Office following his meeting with the Artemis II astronauts.

The president said he had a “very good conversation” with Vladimir Putin today about Ukraine and Iran.

“I think he’d like to see a solution, and that’s good,” he said, though it wasn’t clear if he was talking about Ukraine or Iran, or both (unlikely).

Trump then said that he “suggested a little bit of a ceasefire” to Putin “and I think he might do that”. He then asked the reporter if Putin had announced it yet (spoiler: he hasn’t).

And with that, Jerome Powell is due to shortly give what will likely be his last press conference as chair of the Federal Reserve.

I’ll be watching and will bring you any key lines that come out of that.