By Joan Biskupic, CNN Chief Supreme Court Analyst

(CNN) — Alabama has repeatedly come to the US Supreme Court to defend a racially discriminatory congressional map, asserting dubious claims and employing questionable tactics.

In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled against Alabama. Late Tuesday night, the emboldened conservative majority did the opposite, endorsing a state plan that eliminates a seat held by a Black Democrat that a special US district court has declared intentionally discriminatory.

The high court’s action demonstrated the truth that the nation’s protections for voting rights have not merely been “updated,” as Justice Samuel Alito insisted in late April.

They have been jettisoned.

The message in the Supreme Court’s unsigned opinion, posted after 9 pm ET, is that states now have vast latitude to draw maps that dilute the voting power of Blacks, Latinos and other racial minorities. Even if all indications are otherwise, judges must assume legislators acted in good faith when they devised their voting maps.

Tuesday’s decision, hastily made without full briefing or oral arguments, culminates decades of retrenchment on voting rights by the contemporary court.

The majority reversed the three-judge lower court’s detailed, 78-page opinion from May 26 that reinforced earlier trial findings of Alabama’s racial discrimination in redistricting. The state has continued to defend a map with only one district among the state’s seven in which Blacks would have a fair chance to elect a candidate of choice.

The state is about 27% Black. The special federal court had ordered a second Black district drawn. Over years of litigation, including in 2023 when the lower court panel’s determination was affirmed by the Supreme Court, the Alabama legislature went to lengths to dodge the mandate for a second Black district.

Yet, on Tuesday night, the Supreme Court majority faulted the US district court panel for failing to presume the state was acting with “legislative good faith.”

The lower court, in fact, said it had tried to give legislators the benefit of the doubt before finding Alabama had engaged in racially discriminatory vote dilution. Such dilution can occur when legislators draw maps concentrating Black voters in a single district, or alternatively dispersing them, to weaken their overall voting power.

“We reach this conclusion with great reluctance and dismay and even greater restraint — only after another exhaustive analysis of an extensive record, as the Supreme Court’s remand order and its precedent instructs us,” the panel wrote.

“The Legislature well knew that a plan without an additional Black-opportunity district would dilute Black Alabamians’ opportunity to participate in the political process, and it intentionally enacted that very plan,” the panel added.

On the panel was two judges appointed by President Donald Trump and one appointed by former President Bill Clinton.

Ruling in the middle of election season

Tuesday night’s Supreme Court decision was equally jarring in its assertion that the lower court was attempting to “alter the election rules on the eve of an election.”

Por Gonzalo Jiménez, CNN en Español

“La Casita” en los conciertos de Bad Bunny se ha convertido en un imán para famosos, tanto en los shows de su residencia en Puerto Rico como en el espectáculo de medio tiempo en el Super Bowl LX, y ahora durante su serie de 10 conciertos en Madrid, España.

Los shows comenzaron el 30 de mayo en el estadio Riyadh Air Metropolitano de la capital española y está previsto que finalicen este 15 de junio. “La Casita” es un área del escenario que reproduce una vivienda típica de concreto en Puerto Rico. Como reseñó CNN en Español en febrero pasado, “La Casita” “evoca esas charlas en el balcón y las fiestas en el patio, espacios donde el reguetón comenzó a formarse, dentro de comunidades trabajadoras”

En el espectáculo del sábado en Madrid pudo verse a las actrices Ester Expósito (“Élite”), Ana de Armas, María León (“La casa de las flores”), Clara Galle (“Olympo”) y Hiba Abouk (“El príncipe”); el actor Noah Schnapp (“Stranger Things”), las influencers Chiarra Ferragni y Lola Lolita; Javier Ambrossi y Javier Calvo, quienes recientemente ganaron el premio de mejor dirección en el Festival de Cine de Cannes; la cantante Judeline y los futbolistas Marcelo, Hector Bellerín y Achraf Hakimi.

Mención especial recibió la presencia en “La Casita” de la empresaria Marta Ortega, presidenta no ejecutiva del grupo Inditex (recordemos que una de sus empresas, Zara, vistió al elenco que participó en el espectáculo de medio tiempo de Bad Bunny en el Super Bowl LX).

El desfile de famosos por “La Casita” de Bad Bunny provocó un aluvión de críticas, señalando que nada conserva de su filosofía original de hogar de clase trabajadora para convertirse en un espacio VIP reservado para gente poderosa y mujeres con cuerpo normativo (“Queremos gordas”, tituló un diario en un reportaje sobre la falta de diversidad en las mujeres que invitan a aparecer en “La Casita”).

El debate fue motivo de editoriales en los programas de radio de más audiencia en la mañana, sesudos hilos en redes sociales y artículos de opinión en diarios de circulación nacional que hablan de “La Casita del terror” de Bad Bunny.

La propia Ester Expósito se defendió de las críticas por su aparición en “La Casita” del concierto de Bad Bunny. El lunes, Expósito Read more

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By Sarah Ferris, CNN

(CNN) — Senate Republicans have formally removed funding for President Donald Trump’s ballroom security as part of their sprawling immigration funding package, according to revised legislative text released Wednesday.

The decision to drop the ballroom funding, which had sparked significant debate among lawmakers, is not a complete surprise, though it is likely to frustrate Trump. Senate GOP leaders had already acknowledged that the language would have derailed the entire immigration package, both politically and procedurally, after the chamber’s official rule-keeper determined that it violated the highly specific budgetary rules governing the legislation.

If the language remained in, it would have required 60 votes to move forward, meaning Democrats would have been able to filibuster the bill — preventing the White House from receiving $70 billion for ICE and border patrol.

Some GOP senators also had political concerns, worried that funding the ballroom as Americans wrestle with cost-of-living issues ahead of the midterms would portray them as out-of-touch.

In a statement, the White House downplayed the funding’s removal from the package, suggesting it was the result of parliamentary rules and not political pressure on Republicans. Trump has previously urged the Senate GOP to fire the parliamentarian and expressed frustration they would not do so.

“The parliamentarians decision was reported weeks ago. This framing is false as it implies that republicans removed it deliberately rather than under parliamentary pressure,” the White House said Wednesday.

Construction on the ballroom is already underway, and it is unclear how Congress not appropriating money might affect that. Before discussions in Congress kicked up over security funding, Trump had said the ballroom would be funded by private donations, including from himself. The project is of keen interest to the president, who recently invited reporters to come tour the construction site as he highlighted some of the security benefits.

The Senate GOP’s initial text included nearly $1 billion for “security adjustments and upgrades” to the White House ballroom project, as well as other pots of security money after the assassination attempt against Trump this spring. Administration officials had sought to clarify that only about $200 million would go toward the East Wing project, with the rest going toward other security efforts.

The debate had become a major flashpoint among Senate Republicans as they tried to muscle through a roughly $70 billion immigration funding package. White House officials fought hard to convince GOP senators to keep the money, dispatching Secret Service director Sean Curran to join lawmakers to a Senate GOP lunch, while Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin spoke to other groups of Republicans on the Hill.

But ultimately, Senate GOP leaders were unable to find a workaround after the chamber’s parliamentarian formally declared it against the budgetary rules necessary to bypass the filibuster.

This developing story has been updated.

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CNN’s Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.

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