TV News LIES

A three-judge panel on Tuesday blocked Alabama Republicans’ congressional map that would’ve given the party a potential pickup opportunity in the midterms.

The judges ruled the Supreme Court’s recent blockbuster decision narrowing the Voting Rights Act does not impact their finding that the map intentionally discriminates against Black voters in violation of the Constitution.

It means Alabama cannot use its design this year unless Republican leaders appeal directly to the Supreme Court, which they have vowed to do.

“Ultimately, we cannot see our way clear to requiring Alabamians to cast their votes in the 2026 elections under a districting plan tainted by intentional race-based discrimination,” the ruling reads.

“And under the unusual circumstances of this case, we conclude that a limited order requiring the Secretary to continue using this Court’s race-blind map will not disrupt Alabama’s elections,” it continued.

Tuesday’s panel included U.S. Circuit Judge Stanley Marcus, an appointee of former President Clinton, along with U.S. District Judges Anna Manasco and Terry Moorer, who were both appointed by President Trump.

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Early this month, a single pen stroke effectively ended representative Steve Cohen’s career in Congress. The man who has represented Memphis for 19 years will turn 77 later this month, but he wasn’t planning on retiring. He hadn’t lost any primary. The reason was that his district had been erased around him.

A new electoral map, passed by the Republican-led state legislature and signed by Bill Lee, the governor, divides the ninth district three ways. “Last week Tennessee Republicans silenced the Black vote here in Memphis to make Republican victories likely,” Cohen said in his statement. That’s succinct and accurate.

The new map folds a significant portion of Cohen’s Black constituents into Williamson county, which sits south of Nashville and was, until recently, the subject of a different fight.

To this day, the Williamson county seal depicts a Confederate battle flag draped over a cannon. It was adopted in 1968, at the height of the civil rights movement. A Tennessee court ruled in 2024 that the county could remove it. The state legislature responded the following year by passing a new law specifically designed to keep the flag on the seal. The vote was 70-24 in the House and 27-6 in the Senate, with no Democrats voting in favor. Lee, who is from Williamson county, signed it.

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Democrat Chedrick Greene has won a special state Senate election in Michigan, NBC News projects, ensuring his party will keep control of the closely divided chamber.

Greene, a Marine veteran and firefighter, defeated Republican Jason Tunney, a former prosecutor, in the special election to replace Democratic U.S. Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet, who resigned from the state Senate after she was elected to Congress in 2024.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/democrats-keep-control-michigan-state-senate-special-election-win-rcna343690Greene’s victory means Democrats will hold a 20-18 majority in the Senate. Democrats also control the governorship in Michigan, a key battleground state, while Republicans have a 58-52 edge in the state House.

The result continues a special election trend during President Donald Trump’s second term of Democrats’ outperforming former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race.

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Since Donald Trump’s first term, they have been viewed comfortingly as the “adults in the room,” a last line of defense against the impulsive whims of a president with access to the nuclear codes.

Now – after an unprecedented wave of firings that has been compared by some to Stalin’s purges – the Pentagon top brass no longer seem like such a reliable bulwark.

Since Trump returned to office in January last year, Pete Hegseth, the rumbustious defense secretary who has made it his mission to remake a military ethos he denounced as “woke”, has fired or forcibly retired 24 generals and senior commanders, with no performance-related reason given.

About 60% have been Black or female, an approach seemingly driven by the administration’s proclaimed onslaught against “DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] hires”.

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A federal judge in Massachusetts on Thursday determined that President Trump’s halt on processing immigration applications for citizens of countries listed under his travel ban was unlawful, granting an injunction on a policy she determined was unfairly leaving thousands in limbo.

U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick, an appointee of former President Biden, tore into a number of Trump administration policies enacted after an Afghan man attacked two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., last year, killing one, as well as a thwarted terror attack.

Trump took a number of actions in the wake of the shooting, including new limits on seeking asylum and pausing all immigration applications, including those to gain a green card or become a citizen.

“These are thin reeds on which to rest an assertion of reasoned decisionmaking. With respect to the criminal acts planned or committed by Afghan nationals, the government makes no argument as to how two serious, but isolated, violent crimes planned by two people from one country is rationally connected with a policy stopping adjudication of benefit applications by people from 39 different countries, as well as applications for asylum by people from every country in the world,” Kobick wrote in the decision.

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A group of Senate Republicans led by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) are pushing a bill to fund the construction of a secure 90,000-square-foot ballroom at the White House and say the project is essential to national security after a gunman tried to storm the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Saturday.

Graham and his allies say the cost of the project would be offset by national park user fees and customs fees, and that the bill would authorize the construction of national security-related infrastructure below the ballroom, including an annex for the Secret Service.

“It’s very difficult to have a bunch of important people in the same place unless it’s really, really secure. The times in which we live are unusual. I’ve been up here for a while now, I’ve never felt the sense of threat that exists today,” said Graham, who was first elected to the House in 1994.

He noted that in addition to President Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who are second and third in the presidential line of succession, were at the dinner Saturday when a 31-year-old man armed with a shotgun, a handgun and multiple knives tried to break into the ballroom before being tackled by Secret Service personnel.

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