TODAY’S VOTING RIGHTS story

Supreme Court points to gutting Voting Rights Act

What happened
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority yesterday appeared inclined to neuter the last remaining major provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The justices heard oral arguments in Louisiana v. Callais, a challenge from a group of white voters to the state’s court-mandated creation of a second majority-Black congressional district. If the high court strikes down Section 2 of the landmark civil rights law, states would no longer be required to consider race when drawing congressional maps.

Who said what
The “increasingly conservative Supreme Court” has already “largely dismembered” the Voting Rights Act over the past 12 years, but they upheld Section 2 “just two years ago,” Nina Totenberg said at NPR. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the “decisive fifth vote” in that case, said yesterday he thought “there should be an endpoint to racial remedies like this one.” Notably, said CNN, Kavanaugh “signaled an interest” in a Trump administration solution that would “erode” the provision’s power “while not gutting it entirely.”

Even weakening the law’s protections for Black voters would “potentially trigger a political avalanche,” The Associated Press said. Without Section 2, Republicans could “eliminate upward of a dozen Democratic-held districts across the South,” The New York Times said, leaving Republicans perennially “favored to win the House even if they lost the popular vote by a wide margin.”

What next?
The Supreme Court “typically issues major rulings by late June or early July,” the Times said. But if it “acts quickly,” NPR’s Totenberg said, the court “could facilitate the elimination of Louisiana’s second majority-Black district prior to next year’s congressional election.”

TODAY’S FREE PRESS Story

Pentagon reporters turn in badges after refusing rules

What happened
Dozens of reporters covering the Pentagon cleared out their desks and turned in their access badges yesterday after refusing to sign a restrictive new press policy imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Leaving the Pentagon press area after 18 years was “sad,” said The Atlantic’s Nancy Youssef, “but I’m also really proud of the press corps that we stuck together.”

Who said what
News organizations were “nearly unanimous” in rejecting the new rules, which would “leave journalists vulnerable to expulsion if they sought to report on information — classified or otherwise — that had not been approved by Hegseth for release,” The Associated Press said. “They want to spoon-feed information to the journalist, and that would be their story,” retired U.S. Gen. Jack Keane said on Fox News, Hegseth’s former employer and one of the outlets that rejected the restrictions. “That’s not journalism.”

Hegseth’s “sweeping restrictions” on press access were “orchestrated with advice from his longtime personal lawyer” Tim Parlatore, whose “dual status as a mid-ranking military officer” and Hegseth’s civilian “legal fixer” has “troubled some defense officials,” The Washington Post said. Pentagon officials “anticipate” legal challenges to the rules.

What next?
News organizations “vowed they’d continue robust coverage of the military,” though they will be doing so “further from the seat of its power,” the AP said. Military officials tipped off reporters because “they knew the American public deserved to know what’s going on,” NPR’s Tom Bowman said in an essay. “With no reporters able to ask questions,” it appears Hegseth and his team will “rely on slick social media posts, carefully orchestrated short videos and interviews with partisan commentators and podcasters.”

It’s not all bad

Global conservation efforts to save the endangered green sea turtle are paying off, with new data showing populations are increasing around the world. By the 1980s, sea turtles had been hunted to the “brink of extinction,” with poachers seeking their eggs and shells, said the BBC. Since then, environmentalists have worked together, releasing hatchlings into the sea and patrolling beaches to protect eggs at nesting sites. These steps have “undoubtedly” made an impact, said conservation scientist Brendan Godley.

Under the radar

Can bogs protect Europe from Russia?

Water has “played a role in defensive strategy for millennia,” said the Financial Times. And as Europe ramps up defense spending in the face of the growing threat posed by Russia, states on NATO’s eastern flank are turning to a throwback defense: bogs.

Germanic tribes used peatland to defeat the Romans, while Holland mastered strategic flooding to ward off invasion by Spain and France. And the great Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz thought that bogs were among the “strongest lines of defense.”

This theory was put to devastating use in 2022 when, in a desperate bid to stop the Russian army’s advance on Kyiv, Ukrainian authorities blew up a massive Soviet-era dam to the north of the capital. The “desperate gamble” paid off, said The Telegraph. The flooding of a long-lost wetland basin turned the land into an “almighty, impassable swamp that helped shield the city as Russian tanks languished in thick, black sludge.”

By chance, “most of the European Union’s peatlands are located on NATO’s border with Russia and Belarus,” said military news site Defence24. They stretch from the Finnish Arctic through Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, across the Suwalki Gap — believed by many to be the most likely point of attack in a future Russian confrontation with NATO — and on to eastern Poland.

Finland has already begun a bog-restoration pilot project close to its border with Russia, while Poland plans to revive and expand peatland and forests as part of its $2.5 billion East Shield fortification. There are “not many things that environmental activists and defense officials agree on,” Finnish MP Pauli Aalto-Setala told The Telegraph, but “here we find great common ground.”

On this day

October 16, 1978

Karol Józef Wojtyla of Poland was elected pope, taking the name John Paul II. He was the first non-Italian to lead the Roman Catholic Church in 455 years. Since his death in 2005, no Italian has been pope; Benedict XVI was German, Francis was from Argentina and Pope Leo XIV, elected in May, is the first pontiff from the U.S.

TODAY’S newspaperS

‘No exit plan’

“Trump weighs transforming refugee policy” so “white people would be given preference,” The New York Times says on Thursday’s front page. “Justices signal weakening of the Voting Rights Act,” says the Los Angeles Times. “Trump team to overhaul IRS to probe left-leaning groups,” The Wall Street Journal says. “Order forbids warrantless arrests near courthouses,” the Chicago Tribune says. “Chilling raids could lead to rising rents,” says the Chicago Sun-Times. “Local police in the middle as ICE keeps heat on cities,” says The Boston Globe. “No exit plan is clear in shutdown,” says USA Today. “Trump ordered to pause firings,” The Washington Post says. “Judge blocks Miami Dade College from transferring land to Trump library,” says the Miami Herald.

► See the newspaper front pages

Tall tale

Space disgrace

An elderly Japanese woman was swindled out of $6,500 by a man who claimed to be an astronaut stuck in space. The con artist started chatting online with the victim in July. After a few weeks of talking to her, he said he was on a spaceship “under attack” and pressured her into sending money so he could buy oxygen, said police in Hokkaido. Local authorities are using the case to remind people not to give money to strangers they meet online.

Morning Report was written and edited by Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Rafi Schwartz, Peter Weber and Kari Wilkin, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.