WASHINGTON (AURN News) — Across the country, voters in Alabama, Georgia, Oregon, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Idaho are heading to the polls for primary elections. But for Black America, what is happening inside those voting booths is only half the story.
After the Supreme Court further weakened the Voting Rights Act, Republican-controlled state legislatures moved quickly.
Alabama is working to eliminate the district that sent Rep. Shomari Figures, D-Ala., to Congress, making him only the second Black representative in the state’s history.
Tennessee split Rep. Steve Cohen’s, D-Tenn., majority-Black 9th District in Memphis into three pieces, effectively dismantling it.
Florida also redrew its congressional maps following the Supreme Court ruling.
Louisiana suspended its own primary to target Rep. Cleo Fields’, D-La., majority-Black district.
Congressional Black Caucus Chair Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., says 19 of her members are now directly in the crosshairs. The NAACP is fighting back, filing emergency injunctions and lawsuits in federal courts across Alabama, Virginia, Tennessee and Louisiana.
Those legal battles are unfolding in real time, even as voters cast ballots today.
Click play to listen to the report from AURN White House Correspondent Ebony McMorris. For more news, follow @E_N_McMorris & @aurnonline.
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