Court rules Alabama congressional map intentionally discriminated against Black voters
Federal judges ruled Thursday that Alabama intentionally discriminated against Black residents when the state disobeyed court orders to draw a second Black-majority congressional district.
A three-judge panel said the congressional map drawn by the 2023 Alabama Legislature violated the Voting Rights Act. The judges, which ruled against the state twice before and put a new map in place for last year's elections, have permanently blocked Alabama from using the state-drawn map.
The judges said the court does not 'diminish the substantial improvements Alabama has made in its official treatment of Black Alabamians in recent decades.
'Yet we cannot reconcile the State's intentional decision to discriminate in drawing its congressional districts with its position that Alabama has finally closed out its repugnant history of official discrimination involving voting rights,' they added.
The court will now consider whether to place Alabama under Provision 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which would require the state to get federal approval of its congressional plans.
Following the 2020 census, Alabama made six of its seven districts majority white, despite 27 percent of the state's population being Black.
Though the Supreme Court allowed the map to be used in the 2022 midterms, it also upheld the lower court's findings that the map unlawfully diluted Black votes.
Despite the rulings, the state Legislature refused to redraw the map to include a second congressional district that would allow Black voters to elect the candidate of their choice.
'This record thus leaves us in no doubt that the purpose of the design of the 2023 Plan was to crack Black voters across congressional districts in a manner that makes it impossible to create two districts in which they have an opportunity to elect candidates of their choice, and thereby intentionally perpetuate the discriminatory effects of the 2021 Plan,' the judges said Thursday.
'The Legislature knew what federal law required and purposefully refused to provide it, in a strategic attempt to checkmate the injunction that ordered it,' they wrote.
Plaintiffs in the case told The Associated Press that the ruling is 'a testament to the dedication and persistence of many generations of Black Alabamians who pursued political equality at great cost.'
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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San Francisco Chronicle
27 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
With Trump as ally, El Salvador's President ramps up crackdown on dissent
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Days before his arrest outside his daughter's house in the outskirts of San Salvador, constitutional lawyer Enrique Anaya called Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele a 'dictator' and a 'despot' on live TV. This week, lawyer Jaime Quintanilla stood outside a detention facility in El Salvador's capital with a box of food and clothes for his client, unsure if Anaya would ever be released. The Saturday arrest of Anaya, a fierce critic of Bukele, marks the latest move in what watchdogs describe as a wave of crackdown on dissent by the Central American leader. They say Bukele is emboldened by his alliance with U.S. President Donald Trump, who has not only praised him but avoided criticizing actions human rights defenders, international authorities and legal experts deem authoritarian. Authorities in El Salvador have targeted outspoken lawyers like Anaya, journalists investigating Bukele's alleged deals with gangs and human rights defenders calling for the end of a three-year state of emergency, which has suspended fundamental civil rights. Some say they have been forced to flee the country. 'They're trying to silence anyone who voices an opinion — professionals, ideologues, anyone who is critical — now they're jailed.' Quintanilla said. 'It's a vendetta.' 'I don't care if you call me a dictator' Observers see a worrisome escalation by the popular president, who enjoys extremely high approval ratings due to his crackdown on the country's gangs. By suspending fundamental rights, Bukele has severely weakened gangs but also locked up 87,000 people for alleged gang ties, often with little evidence or due process. A number of those detained were also critics. Bukele and his New Ideas party have taken control of all three branches of government, stacking the country's Supreme Court with loyalists. Last year, in a move considered unconstitutional, he ran for reelection, securing a resounding victory. 'I don't care if you call me a dictator," Bukele said earlier this month in a speech. "Better that than seeing Salvadorans killed on the streets.' In recent weeks, those who have long acted as a thorn in Bukele's side say looming threats have reached an inflection point. The crackdown comes as Bukele has garnered global attention for keeping some 200 Venezuelan deportees detained in a mega-prison built for gangs as part of an agreement with the Trump administration. 'Of course I'm scared' Anaya was detained by authorities on unproven accusations of money laundering. Prosecutors said he would be sent to 'relevant courts" in the coming days. Quintanilla, his lawyer, rejects the allegations, saying his arrest stems from years of vocally questioning Bukele. Quintanilla, a longtime colleague of Anaya, said he decided to represent his friend in part because many other lawyers in the country were now too afraid to show their faces. On Tuesday, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights expressed 'deep concern' over Anaya's arrest. Anaya, 61, is a respected lawyer and commentator in El Salvador with a doctorate in constitutional law. He has criticized Bukele's crackdown on the gangs and Bukele stacking of El Salvador's high court. Last year, he was among those who unsuccessfully petitioned the country's top electoral authority to reject Bukele's re-election bid, saying it violated the constitution. Days before his arrest, Anaya railed on television against the detention of human rights lawyer Ruth López, who last week shouted, 'They're not going to silence me, I want a public trial,' as police escorted her shackled to court. 'Of course I'm scared,' Anaya told the broadcast anchor. 'I think that anyone here who dares to speak out, speaks in fear.' While some of Bukele's most vocal critics, like Anaya and López, have been publicly detained, other human rights defenders have quietly slipped out of the country, hoping to seek asylum elsewhere in the region. They declined to comment or be identified out of fear that they would be targeted even outside El Salvador. Fear and an ally in Trump Last month, a protest outside of Bukele's house was violently quashed by police and some of the protesters arrested. He also ordered the arrest of the heads of local bus companies for defying his order to offer free transport while a major highway was blocked. In late May, El Salvador's Congress passed a 'foreign agents' law, championed by the populist president. It resembles legislation implemented by governments in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Russia, Belarus and China to silence and criminalize dissent by exerting pressure on organizations that rely on overseas funding. Verónica Reyna, a human rights coordinator for the Salvadoran nonprofit Servicio Social Pasionista, said police cars now regularly wait outside her group's offices as a lingering threat. 'It's been little-by-little,' Reyna said. 'Since Trump came to power, we've seen (Bukele) feel like there's no government that's going to strongly criticize him or try to stop him.' Trump's influence extends beyond his vocal backing of Bukele, with his administration pushing legal boundaries to push his agenda, Reyna, other human rights defenders and journalists said. The U.S. Embassy in El Salvador, which once regularly denounced the government's actions, has remained silent throughout the arrests and lingering threats. It did not respond to a request for comment. In its final year, the Biden administration, too, dialed back its criticism of the Bukele government as El Salvador's government helped slow migration north in the lead up to the 2024 election. On Tuesday, Quintanilla visited Anaya in detention for the first time since his arrest while being watched by police officers. Despite the detention, neither Anaya nor Quintanilla have been officially informed of the charges. Quintanilla worries that authorities will use wide ranging powers granted to Bukele by the 'state of emergency' to keep him imprisoned indefinitely. Journalists stranded Óscar Martínez, editor-in-chief of news site El Faro, and four other journalists have left the country and are unable to return safely, as they face the prospect of arrest stemming from their reporting. At a time when many other reporters have fallen silent out of fear, Martínez's news site has investigated Bukele more rigorously than perhaps any other, exposing hidden corruption and human rights abuses under his crackdown on gangs. In May, El Faro published a three-part interview with a former gang leader who claimed he negotiated with Bukele's administration. Soon after, Martínez said the organization received news that authorities were preparing an arrest order for a half-dozen of their journalists. This has kept at least five El Faro journalists, including Martínez, stranded outside their country for over a month. On Saturday, when the reporters tried to return home on a flight, a diplomatic source and a government official informed them that police had been sent to the airport to wait for them and likely arrest them. The journalists later discovered that their names, along with other civil society leaders, appeared on a list of 'priority objectives" held by airport authorities. Martínez said Anaya's name was also on the list. Now in a nearby Central American nation, Martínez said he doesn't know when he will be able to board another flight home. And if he does, he doesn't know what will happen when he steps off. 'We fear that, if we return — because some of us surely will try — we'll be imprisoned,' he said. 'I am positive that if El Faro journalists are thrown in prison, we'll be tortured and, possibly, even killed." Janetsky reported from Mexico City. ____
Yahoo
43 minutes ago
- Yahoo
With Trump as ally, El Salvador's President ramps up crackdown on dissent
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Days before his arrest outside his daughter's house in the outskirts of San Salvador, constitutional lawyer Enrique Anaya called Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele a 'dictator' and a 'despot' on live TV. This week, lawyer Jaime Quintanilla stood outside a detention facility in El Salvador's capital with a box of food and clothes for his client, unsure if Anaya would ever be released. The Saturday arrest of Anaya, a fierce critic of Bukele, marks the latest move in what watchdogs describe as a wave of crackdown on dissent by the Central American leader. They say Bukele is emboldened by his alliance with U.S. President Donald Trump, who has not only praised him but avoided criticizing actions human rights defenders, international authorities and legal experts deem authoritarian. Authorities in El Salvador have targeted outspoken lawyers like Anaya, journalists investigating Bukele's alleged deals with gangs and human rights defenders calling for the end of a three-year state of emergency, which has suspended fundamental civil rights. Some say they have been forced to flee the country. 'They're trying to silence anyone who voices an opinion — professionals, ideologues, anyone who is critical — now they're jailed.' Quintanilla said. 'It's a vendetta.' Bukele's office did not respond to a request for comment. 'I don't care if you call me a dictator' Observers see a worrisome escalation by the popular president, who enjoys extremely high approval ratings due to his crackdown on the country's gangs. By suspending fundamental rights, Bukele has severely weakened gangs but also locked up 87,000 people for alleged gang ties, often with little evidence or due process. A number of those detained were also critics. Bukele and his New Ideas party have taken control of all three branches of government, stacking the country's Supreme Court with loyalists. Last year, in a move considered unconstitutional, he ran for reelection, securing a resounding victory. 'I don't care if you call me a dictator," Bukele said earlier this month in a speech. "Better that than seeing Salvadorans killed on the streets.' In recent weeks, those who have long acted as a thorn in Bukele's side say looming threats have reached an inflection point. The crackdown comes as Bukele has garnered global attention for keeping some 200 Venezuelan deportees detained in a mega-prison built for gangs as part of an agreement with the Trump administration. 'Of course I'm scared' Anaya was detained by authorities on unproven accusations of money laundering. Prosecutors said he would be sent to 'relevant courts" in the coming days. Quintanilla, his lawyer, rejects the allegations, saying his arrest stems from years of vocally questioning Bukele. Quintanilla, a longtime colleague of Anaya, said he decided to represent his friend in part because many other lawyers in the country were now too afraid to show their faces. On Tuesday, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights expressed 'deep concern' over Anaya's arrest. Anaya, 61, is a respected lawyer and commentator in El Salvador with a doctorate in constitutional law. He has criticized Bukele's crackdown on the gangs and Bukele stacking of El Salvador's high court. Last year, he was among those who unsuccessfully petitioned the country's top electoral authority to reject Bukele's re-election bid, saying it violated the constitution. Days before his arrest, Anaya railed on television against the detention of human rights lawyer Ruth López, who last week shouted, 'They're not going to silence me, I want a public trial,' as police escorted her shackled to court. 'Of course I'm scared,' Anaya told the broadcast anchor. 'I think that anyone here who dares to speak out, speaks in fear.' While some of Bukele's most vocal critics, like Anaya and López, have been publicly detained, other human rights defenders have quietly slipped out of the country, hoping to seek asylum elsewhere in the region. They declined to comment or be identified out of fear that they would be targeted even outside El Salvador. Fear and an ally in Trump Last month, a protest outside of Bukele's house was violently quashed by police and some of the protesters arrested. He also ordered the arrest of the heads of local bus companies for defying his order to offer free transport while a major highway was blocked. In late May, El Salvador's Congress passed a 'foreign agents' law, championed by the populist president. It resembles legislation implemented by governments in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Russia, Belarus and China to silence and criminalize dissent by exerting pressure on organizations that rely on overseas funding. Verónica Reyna, a human rights coordinator for the Salvadoran nonprofit Servicio Social Pasionista, said police cars now regularly wait outside her group's offices as a lingering threat. 'It's been little-by-little,' Reyna said. 'Since Trump came to power, we've seen (Bukele) feel like there's no government that's going to strongly criticize him or try to stop him.' Trump's influence extends beyond his vocal backing of Bukele, with his administration pushing legal boundaries to push his agenda, Reyna, other human rights defenders and journalists said. The U.S. Embassy in El Salvador, which once regularly denounced the government's actions, has remained silent throughout the arrests and lingering threats. It did not respond to a request for comment. In its final year, the Biden administration, too, dialed back its criticism of the Bukele government as El Salvador's government helped slow migration north in the lead up to the 2024 election. On Tuesday, Quintanilla visited Anaya in detention for the first time since his arrest while being watched by police officers. Despite the detention, neither Anaya nor Quintanilla have been officially informed of the charges. Quintanilla worries that authorities will use wide ranging powers granted to Bukele by the 'state of emergency' to keep him imprisoned indefinitely. Journalists stranded Óscar Martínez, editor-in-chief of news site El Faro, and four other journalists have left the country and are unable to return safely, as they face the prospect of arrest stemming from their reporting. At a time when many other reporters have fallen silent out of fear, Martínez's news site has investigated Bukele more rigorously than perhaps any other, exposing hidden corruption and human rights abuses under his crackdown on gangs. In May, El Faro published a three-part interview with a former gang leader who claimed he negotiated with Bukele's administration. Soon after, Martínez said the organization received news that authorities were preparing an arrest order for a half-dozen of their journalists. This has kept at least five El Faro journalists, including Martínez, stranded outside their country for over a month. On Saturday, when the reporters tried to return home on a flight, a diplomatic source and a government official informed them that police had been sent to the airport to wait for them and likely arrest them. The journalists later discovered that their names, along with other civil society leaders, appeared on a list of 'priority objectives" held by airport authorities. Martínez said Anaya's name was also on the list. Now in a nearby Central American nation, Martínez said he doesn't know when he will be able to board another flight home. And if he does, he doesn't know what will happen when he steps off. 'We fear that, if we return — because some of us surely will try — we'll be imprisoned,' he said. 'I am positive that if El Faro journalists are thrown in prison, we'll be tortured and, possibly, even killed." ____ Janetsky reported from Mexico City. ____ Follow AP's coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at
Yahoo
43 minutes ago
- Yahoo
House Republicans draft competing budget as Senate nears deal with Hobbs
Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy | Arizona Mirror Arizona lawmakers are at odds again, but this time it's the Republicans in the House of Representatives and Senate who can't agree on how to forge the state budget. Creating the state budget — deciding how much to allocate to departments, projects and initiatives or whether to fund them at all — is the most important job that legislators do each year, and the only thing they are constitutionally required to complete. Before the group of bills that will become the state budget becomes law, it must be approved by a majority in both the Arizona Senate and House — which are both controlled by Republicans — and garner a signature from Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs. In recent history, budget negotiations in Arizona have occurred behind closed doors among the governor and legislative leaders in the House and Senate. But this year is different, with Hobbs and Republican leaders in the Senate nearing a deal after weeks of negotiations. GOP leaders in the House, who haven't been involved in those talks, have responded by drafting their own budget, which was introduced late Wednesday afternoon. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX 'This is a sound, disciplined budget that delivers safe communities, strong families, and a government that lives within its means,' House Speaker Steve Montenegro said in a Wednesday evening statement. 'We're raising pay for our state law enforcement officers, reducing tuition at public universities, fully funding school choice, fixing critical infrastructure and roads, and protecting taxpayers. Our budget reins in government and puts it back to work for the people it serves.' But the spending package, which is chock-full of proposals that are unlikely to pass muster with Hobbs, will never become law. Instead, it is better viewed as a way for House Republicans to lay down a marker in order to force Hobbs and the Senate to move closer to the House's proposal. Republican political consultant Barrett Marson said House GOP leaders are hoping to demonstrate that the chamber can pass a spending plan in order to get leverage in the negotiations. 'Sometimes there's just gotta be movement to unstick a sticky situation,' he said. 'The House has an equal voice. And unlike previous years when one or both chambers had a go-it-alone ethos, the House isn't looking to be draconian or anything. They want something more responsible.' Marson said a major point of contention between the House and Senate is what to do with the budget surplus. While the Senate and Hobbs have settled on copying the novel process from 2023, in which each lawmaker was given a pot of money from the surplus that was used to fund whatever initiatives they wanted, the House wants to negotiate all of those details and not surrender control of that money to individual legislators. During a House Rules Committee meeting earlier Wednesday afternoon, House Minority Leader Oscar De Los Santos, of Laveen, said he was disappointed in the way the budgeting process was happening this year. 'We should not be moving forward with a House Republican-only budget that is destined to fail,' he said. 'This will not get signed by the governor. I don't even think it's going to pass out of the Senate.' De Los Santos even questioned whether the proposal would get enough votes to pass through the House, where Republicans hold 33 of the chamber's 60 seats. 'What we do know is that this is not a negotiated, bipartisan deal in good faith,' he said. 'House Democrats are at the table negotiating in a bipartisan way with the executive, with our (Senate) counterparts across the courtyard. That is the way to get things done in shared government.' But Republican Rep. Neal Carter, of San Tan Valley, replied that the work of governing should be done transparently, instead of in private — and that it should allow for input from the public. 'As a Republican, I stand for full transparency and not for back-room deals or negotiated budgets with parties that are somehow outside of this public process,' Carter said. The House Republican budget, introduced by House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Livingston, proposes significant changes in how federal money allocated to the state, but not restricted to specific uses, is controlled. The billions in unrestricted federal funds, currently controlled by the governor, would shift to legislative control and could only be spent on essential government services. The House GOP's budget proposal would also place new restrictions and monitoring requirements on entitlement programs, like the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System — the state's Medicaid program — and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly called food stamps. Both programs would be monitored on at least a quarterly basis for participants who don't qualify, to be kicked off. And any participants who win $3,000 or more through gambling or playing the state lottery and don't report those winnings would become ineligible. It would also give the Arizona Department of Economic Security the authority to screen recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families for illegal drug use and would ban anyone who tests positive for drugs not prescribed to them from the cash assistance program for a year. House Republicans also intend to increase the percentage of money spent in K-12 classrooms, as opposed to on administration; to decrease tuition for students attending the state's three public universities; and to ban those universities from using public or private money to give scholarships to students without legal immigration status. Hobbs introduced her budget proposal, which includes a much different list of priorities, back in January. Shortly after that, Livingston and Rep. Matt Gress, R-Phoenix, panned her proposal for leaving out projected cost increases for programs like AHCCCS. Hobbs spokesman Christian Slater told the Arizona Mirror on Wednesday that Livingston and Gress were to blame for the House's lack of collaboration on the budget. 'This is DDD all over again,' Slater said via email, referring to a fight earlier this year over funding for the Department of Developmental Disabilities. 'It's another circus led by the Speaker, David Livingston, and Matt Gress where they have refused to participate with any caucuses, including their Republican counterparts in the Senate, in a meaningful manner and are once again just trying to score some political points even though they know their plan is going absolutely nowhere.' Livingston and Gress, a former budget director for Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, were both key players in the fight over an extra $122 million in emergency funding for DDD that put vital services for the developmentally disabled in jeopardy. 'Rather than being productive, the House Republican leadership continues to show they are in over their head and unserious about governing,' Slater said. The House Appropriations Committee is set to discuss the proposal Thursday morning. The Senate Republicans have not introduced their budget proposal. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
