The Voting Rights Act faces its next big Supreme Court test
Plus: The latest on Day 15 of the shutdown and what Bernie Sanders hopes you’ll take away from his CNN town hall with AOC.
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👋🏾 Hi, hey, hello! Welcome to Day 15 of the government shutdown. Congress is less than a week from the expiration date of the House-passed bill that failed for the eighth time on Monday evening. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters before the vote that the prospect of passing a new temporary funding bill was under discussion. My latest dispatch on the state of play is below, but let’s start with the Supreme Court oral argument later this morning on Louisiana v. Callais—a case concerning the state’s congressional redistricting and the role of race in drawing district lines.
The Court first heard argument in March, and later ordered reargument for its current term, signaling the case’s high stakes for the future of the racial redistricting doctrine in Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
After courts found that Louisiana’s 2022 congressional map likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by diluting Black voting strength, the state was ordered to adopt a new plan that included a second majority-Black district. Under the new configuration, the newly drawn 6th district stretches from Shreveport down toward Baton Rouge and is configured to have a Black majority voting-age population. Cleo Fields—who had previously served in Congress in the 1990s, representing a Black-majority 4th district—ran for and won this new seat in the November 2024 election, defeating a Republican field in a district newly favorable to a Black Democratic candidate.
“The Voting Rights Act was designed for states like Louisiana. And I’m just optimistic. I just don’t think that the Supreme Court is going to water down or rule aside the Voting Rights Act,” Fields told me. “Louisiana’s minority population is over 33 percent. There are six members of Congress from the state. Is the Supreme Court going to say that a Black person doesn’t have an opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice? I don’t think so.”
Rep. Troy Carter, who was previously the only Democrat in Louisiana’s delegation before Fields returned to Congress, said the civil rights community is prepared for all outcomes.
“We know that the Louisiana case is a test case. We know that the attack of the Voting Rights Act is real, and that changes the dynamic of everything. What happens in this case will change the dynamic of the rest of our discussions,” Carter told me. “What does America look like with a weakened Voting Rights Act? It doesn’t look like America at all, plain and simple. What it looks like is an illegal attack on the rights of American citizens to cast the vote for people they choose.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told me he and his members would be watching the case closely.
“I stand behind representative Cleo Fields, whose district is the subject of the litigation,” he said. “And we also, of course, stand behind the Civil Rights community’s efforts to preserve both section two of the Voting Rights Act, as well as the 14th Amendment protections against racial gerrymandering and undermining the ability of communities of color to elect the candidates of their choice.”
Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.) told me he would join Fields in solidarity at the Supreme Court for the oral argument.
“If this goes against us, it would take generations, literally, to make up for the gains we’ve had,” Jackson, who brought the case up in a closed-door House Democratic caucus meeting on Tuesday evening, added. “And so this is a seminal case for us and all Americans. The issue is should we have majority-minority districts. This is not just about lines. This is about voices. This is about representation.”
The Congressional Black Caucus will hold a press event this afternoon to address the implications of the case, which the CBC says poses a serious threat to the VRA and reflects broader Republican-led efforts to undermine voting rights and weaken protections for Black and historically disenfranchised communities.
If the Supreme Court were to gut Section 2 in this case or a future one, the ramifications would ripple far beyond Louisiana. The provision is the primary remaining tool for challenging racially discriminatory voting maps and practices after Shelby County v. Holder dismantled the preclearance system in 2013. Democrats, civil rights groups and Black political leaders warn that it would make it substantially harder for minority voters to prove vote dilution, likely reducing the number of majority-minority districts across the South and beyond.
This shift would cement the political power of white majorities in states with long histories of racial polarization in voting and could accelerate the partisan imbalance already reflected in Congress. It would also signal that the Court is retreating from the Reconstruction-era promise of protecting minority political participation, leaving redistricting disputes to the discretion of state legislatures and federal judges applying a narrower reading of equality.
“It’s just more of the usual mischief with Republicans trying to cheat to win,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said of the case.
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Dems keep spotlight on health care as Thune sets up Defense test vote
The Senate will vote this afternoon for the ninth time in 26 days to advance a House-passed temporary funding bill to reopen the government. It failed on Monday evening with no senators switching their vote since before the shutdown. Expect a similar result later on.
Leader Thune took the interesting step of setting up a procedural stand-alone vote to advance the 2026 Defense spending bill on Thursday. It’s a move that will force Democrats to vote on a bipartisan full-year funding legislation rather than endless stopgap measures.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called the annual defense policy bill the Senate passed last week an example of what happens when Republicans choose to work with Democrats in good faith.
“We passed the [National Defense Authorization Act] with a strong bipartisan vote,” Schumer said in a floor speech on Monday afternoon. “We need the same enthusiasm from Republicans that we saw in NDAA here in the health care issue.”
Across the Capitol, House Democrats will hold a press event on the House East Front Steps focused on health care, followed by a private caucus meeting at noon. Democratic leaders will hold a hearing this afternoon on the increase in health care costs.
Members will likely continue to publicly pressure Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who won a special election to succeed her father more than three weeks ago.
The Democratic Women’s Caucus walked with Grijalva from their Monday caucus meeting to Johnson’s office to demand that he immediately swear her in.
“Do your job, so I can do mine,” Grijalva said in front of the speaker’s suite. “Let me get to work.” (Johnson wasn’t at the Capitol as the scene unfolded. He was attending a Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony for Charlie Kirk at the White House.)
Speaking of the White House, it seems content with the status quo.
The Office of Management and Budget published a post to X on Monday morning announcing it will keep funding select priorities (namely national security and law enforcement) and executing its reduction-in-force plan—all without congressional approval of new spending bills. It’s a deliberate choice to operate outside the normal appropriations process rather than negotiate within it.
“I think all of that’s illegal. So there’s legality issues with respect to the RIFs. There’s obviously legality issues with respect to the repurposing [of appropriated funds],” Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.), who serves on the House Appropriations Committee, told me. “They’re trying everything they can to duck from dealing with the health care issue, but it’s not going to go away.”
President Trump will participate in a press conference with FBI Director Kash Patel this afternoon before hosting a ballroom dinner in the evening.
He told reporters that his administration would release a list of programs it would attempt to eliminate permanently.
“So we’re being able to do things that we were unable to do before,” Trump said. “We’re closing up programs that are Democrat programs that we wanted to close up or that we never wanted to happen, and now we’’re closing them up and we’re not going to let them come back.”
We’ll see what the courts have to say about that.
In a bizarre moment during the Kirk ceremony, Trump suggested the late conservative activist would help to end the shutdown.
“I think the fight would have been over already,” Trump said of Kirk. “He would have had a march on the Capitol by people whose average age is about 21 because there’s nobody that had that relationship with young people, right?”
For what it’s worth, Thune was asked if the president had authority to redirect congressionally approved funds in the manner Trump described.
“They’re obviously going to make decisions about where to put money, where not to put money, which departments and agencies get prioritized and which don’t, which employees are essential, and those that aren’t,” he said. “Those are all decisions they’re going to be forced to make. And I’m sure they’re going to make them consistent with their priorities. The best way to end it is to vote [for the House-passed bill] today.”
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Bernie, AOC take their progressive gospel to CNN
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) will participate in a live town hall on CNN tonight as part of Democrats’ messaging strategy to amplify the stakes of the current shutdown fight. The two progressive icons are expected to discuss the mounting crises in health care, economic inequality and corporate influence and spotlight how the shutdown is affecting everyday Americans.
“I think maybe the main point is to make it clear to the American people that no member of the United States Congress should be voting for the Republican proposal, which, if implemented, will result in 15 million people losing their health insurance, and according to studies, some 50,000 Americans every year dying unnecessarily,” Sanders told me. “Now I don’t know how any member of the Congress can vote to allow 50,000 fellow Americans to die unnecessarily.”
Sanders and AOC have long been the driving forces behind the progressive movement’s campaign for universal health care, making Medicare for All a defining policy plank of the left. Sanders introduced his single-payer proposal in Congress over a decade ago, arguing that health care is a human right and that the U.S. should join other industrialized nations in guaranteeing coverage for all. Ocasio-Cortez has amplified that message for a new generation, linking health care access to economic justice and racial equity while calling out corporate insurers and pharmaceutical companies for prioritizing profits over patients. Together, the two lawmakers have kept the issue at the forefront of Democratic politics—organizing rallies, introducing legislation and pressuring party leaders to embrace more ambitious reforms even as moderates have sought incremental fixes. Their advocacy has helped make universal health care a litmus test for the progressive wing and a persistent point of tension within the broader Democratic coalition.
They’ve recently teamed up for the Fighting Oligarchy Tour to mobilize grassroots energy against corporate power. Framed as a crusade against what they describe as the growing influence of billionaires and special interests in American politics, the tour has drawn thousands in cities across the country. At each stop, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have spotlighted issues like wealth inequality, health care costs, labor rights, and climate change, urging voters to demand policies such as Medicare for All, stronger unions and campaign finance reform.
“They are great messengers for tying all of these things together, right?” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) told me. “[Republicans are] giving away their power to billionaires that get tax breaks and to Trump. And this is all tied together because at the same time, they are stripping health care. People are starting to have to pay on student loans again. Utility prices have gone up. All of these things are happening and it’s all about, in my mind, the centralization of power, and the Republicans’ plan to take things away from the American people so they can give it to Trump and his billionaire buddies.”