Politics

By David Lawder and Tom Polansek

CHICAGO, May 11 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump is set to sign executive orders on Monday to allow increased beef imports into the U.S. and to support renewal of the U.S. cattle herd in an effort to address high beef prices, a White House official said.

The official did not provide details on the two executive orders, which come at a time when the U.S. cattle herd has shrunk to its lowest level in 75 years and beef prices continue to climb.

Earlier, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump would temporarily suspend tariff-rate quotas on beef, which would allow more of the meat to enter the U.S. at lower tariff rates. The newspaper said Trump would direct the Small Business Administration to increase lending to ranchers and to reduce protections under the Endangered Species Act for gray and Mexican wolves that prey on herds.

Expectations for increased beef imports from Brazil weighed on U.S. cattle futures after Trump met Brazilian President Inacio Lula da Silva last week. On Monday, Chicago Mercantile Exchange June live cattle futures shook off early losses to end slightly higher, while August feeder cattle dropped 0.5%.

Although prices for eggs, milk, and other grocery staples have fallen since Trump took office in January 2025, beef prices continue to climb, a symbol of persistent inflation for American consumers as the summer backyard grilling season gets underway.

Last October, Trump ordered a quadrupling of beef imports from Argentina, and a month later removed his 40% punitive tariff on Brazilian beef and coffee.

The moves did little to reverse beef prices, which were up 12.1% year-over-year in April, according to the Labor Department’s Consumer Price Index. Beef is more than 16% more expensive than when Trump returned to office in January 2025.

HAMBURGER HELPER

The U.S. cattle herd has dwindled to a 75-year low after ranchers slashed their herds because of a persistent drought that burned up grazing lands and raised feeding costs. High cattle prices have also encouraged ranchers to sell livestock to be slaughtered, instead of keeping them for breeding.

    The U.S. Department of Agriculture has projected that the country will import a record 5.8 billion pounds of beef this year, up about 6% from 2025 and 25% from 2024.

Most imports are lean beef trimmings that are mixed with U.S. supplies to make ground beef, said David Anderson, agricultural economist at Texas A&M University. He said more imports could help hamburger restaurants reduce their ingredient costs, but he did not expect prices to fall significantly for consumers.

“We were already importing a record amount. How much more does this get on top of what we were already importing?” Anderson said. “I’m hard-pressed to see this is going to be a huge effect on prices. It would be tough to have this be a huge influx of supply.”

Bill Bullard, CEO of cattle producers’ group R-CALF USA, said increased imports also could discourage American ranchers from expanding their herds. Smaller cattle feeders could even exit the industry if prices drop far enough, he said.

Consumers may not see benefits as ranchers come under pressure, Bullard said.

“We’ve had record imports for the past three years and at the same time consumers continue to pay record prices for beef,” he added.

(Reporting by David Lawder and Tom Polansek, writing by David Lawder Editing by Mark Porter and David Gregorio)

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A Montana judge has blocked the state from limiting voter registration on Election Day, concluding the move would disproportionately harm Native American and young voters.

The ruling prevents a law that was enacted last year by the Republican-controlled Legislature from being enforced that would have prevented voters from casting ballots in presidential, U.S. Senate and U.S. House races if they register after noon on Election Day. It was the second time in five years that legislators attempted to move away from Election Day registrations.

District Judge Adam Larsen’s order, issued late Friday, is to remain in effect through the trial of a lawsuit filed by the Montana Federation of Public Employees, later joined by Native American tribes, including the Blackfeet and Northern Cheyenne. However, the state’s primary elections are June 2, and the trial isn’t until late August.

Larsen, sitting in the county that’s home to the state capital of Helena, noted that registering on Election Day is “wildly popular.” Montana has allowed it since 2006, and in 2014, 57% of voters rejected a statewide ballot initiative to end it.

“The undisputed record demonstrates that a substantial number of Montana voters rely on Election Day registration, including during afternoon hours,” Larsen wrote. “The record further establishes that some voters will be unable to register prior to noon due to work schedules, travel constraints, polling place hours or unforeseen registration issues.”

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen’s office expressed disappointment in the ruling.

“Unrestricted voter registration on Election Day puts a undue burden on Montana’s election administrators who have very important jobs ensuring our elections are secure and run smoothly,” spokesperson Chase Scheuer said in an email.

But Larsen rejected the state’s argument that the law would make administering elections easier, saying local election officials would handle voting in federal races differently from state and local races.

Montana polling places for at least 400 voters must remain open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Election Day, but those for fewer voters don’t have to open until noon, something Larsen noted.

The judge said Native American voters face “unique barriers” to voting, including long travel distances and limited access to transportation. Students and other young voters face obstacles to registering because of “scheduling constraints” and because they move more frequently, he wrote.

Amanda Curtis, the Montana public employees group’s president, said its lawsuit defended “the fundamental right of every voice to be heard” from “overreaching politicians.”

The group and the tribes also challenged changes in a state law specifying which IDs students can show at the polls to register and vote, but Larsen concluded that they couldn’t show that anyone had been prevented from voting because of them. Scheuer said the changes “bolster the integrity of Montana elections.”

In 2021, the Legislature enacted a law ending voter registration on noon the day before Election Day, but the Montana Supreme Court struck it down in 2024 as a violation of an “unequivocal fundamental right” protected by the state Constitution. The justices said more than 70,000 Montana voters had taken advantage of Election Day registration since its inception.

Before legislators enacted the latest law in 2025, their staff warned in a memo that the measure could conflict with the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats on Monday filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to halt a Virginia ruling invalidating a ballot measure that would have given their party an additional four winnable U.S. House seats.

The move came after the Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down a constitutional amendment that voters narrowly passed just last month. The 4-3 state court decision found that the Democratic-controlled legislature improperly began the process of placing the amendment on the ballot after early voting had begun in the Virginia’s general election last fall.

Democrats argued unsuccessfully that the U.S. Supreme Court has held that, even if early voting is underway, an election does not happen until Election Day itself.

The appeal is the latest twist in the nation’s mid-decade redistricting competition. It was kicked off last year by President Donald Trump urging Republican-controlled states to redraw their lines and was supercharged by a recent Supreme Court ruling severely weakening the Voting Rights Act.

“The Court overrode the will of the people who ratified the amendment by ordering the Commonwealth to conduct its election with the congressional districts that the people rejected,” wrote lawyers for Virginia Democrats and the state’s Democratic Attorney General, Jay Jones. They added, “The irreparable harm resulting from the Supreme Court of Virginia’s decision is profound and immediate.”

The filing is a sign of Democratic desperation after the Virginia decision deprived them of four winnable House seats in the mid-decade redistricting race that President Donald Trump kicked off last year. Democrats are still favorites to recapture the House of Representatives, but their GOP rivals have claimed to have gained more than a dozen seats through redistricting. The voter-approved Virginia map would have partly offset that.

Democrats are taking a legal long shot in asking the justices to reverse the Virginia court’s ruling. The Supreme Court tries to avoid second-guessing state courts’ interpretations of their own constitutions. In 2023, it turned down a request by North Carolina Republicans to overrule a state Supreme Court decision that blocked the GOP’s congressional map.

Politically, the appeal could help a party struggling to compete with Republicans in the unusual mid-decade redrawing of congressional boundaries by providing fodder for election-year messaging about a partisan Supreme Court. The court recently allowed Louisiana Republicans to proceed with redistricting after the justices struck down a majority Black district as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

Democrats have been set on their heels because, days after the Virginia ballot measure passed, the Supreme Court’s conservatives reversed decades of rulings and effectively neutered the Voting Rights Act, paving the way for Southern states to eliminate some majority Black districts and further pad Republican margins in Congress.

The Virginia amendment had been launched long before that ruling. It was intended as a response to Republican gains in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, and to blunt a new map in Florida that just became law. Once the Virginia amendment passed, it briefly turned the nationwide redistricting scramble into a draw between the two parties.

That was unraveled by the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision. The justices are appointed by the legislature, which has flipped between the two parties in recent decades, and the body is generally not seen as having a clear ideological bent.

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Riccardi reported from Denver.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday set the stage for Alabama to eliminate one of two largely Black congressional districts before this year’s midterm elections, creating an opening for Republicans to gain an additional U.S. House seat in a partisan battle for control of the closely divided chamber.

The decision follows a Supreme Court ruling in April that struck down a majority-Black U.S. House district in Louisiana as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, significantly weakening a provision of the federal Voting Rights Act.

Alabama officials had pointed to the Louisiana case as reason for the Supreme Court to end a judicial order to use a court-imposed House map until after the 2030 census. The high court on Monday overturned that order and directed a lower court to reconsider the case in light of the Louisiana decision. That could free the state to instead use a map approved in 2023 by the Republican-led legislature that includes only one district where Black residents comprise a majority.

Anticipating a court reversal, Alabama officials recently enacted a law allowing it to void the results of a May 19 primary for some congressional districts and instead hold a new primary under the revised district boundaries. Alabama had asked for an expedited decision ahead of the primary.

Alabama Republicans praised the decision.

“Today, the Supreme Court vindicated the state’s long-held position. Now, the power to draw Alabama’s maps goes back to the people’s elected representatives. That’s our Legislature,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a video statement. Marshall said his job was “to put the legislature in the best possible legal position to draw a congressional map that favors Republicans seven-to-zero.” He concluded with the statement, “Stay tuned.”

Republican House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter called the decision “a massive victory not just for Alabama, but for conservatives across the country.”

In a dissent to Monday’s brief ruling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the Louisiana case had reversed only one of the grounds upon which the Alabama case had been decided. Although the Voting Rights Act violation is gone, Sotomayor said a lower court could still find that Alabama had intentionally discriminated against Black voters in violation of the 14th Amendment.

The decision was a setback for Black residents and groups that had waged a legal fight for several years to get a second Alabama congressional district where Black voters had an opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice.

“We are witnessing a return to Jim Crow. And anybody who is alarmed by these developments — as everybody should be — better be making a plan to vote in November to put an end to this madness while we still can,” NAACP National President Derrick Johnson said in a statement.

Deuel Ross, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorney who argued the Alabama case, said, “We will consider all of our options to fight to protect the rights of these voters and keep the court ordered map in place.”

Shalela Dowdy, a plaintiff in the Alabama redistricting case, said she was disappointed in the decision.

“For me, I feel like this is a step backwards towards the Jim Crow era for congressional representation. The state is not going to stop here,” Dowdy said, predicting Alabama will eventually go after the remaining district.

The decision comes a week ahead of the May 19 primaries, setting up a potentially confusing scenario for voters. Alabama lawmakers last week approved legislation to allow special primaries in four impacted congressional districts if the state is able to switch maps. The special elections would be set by the governor.

Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen called the decision a “historic win for Alabama voters.” Allen said the May 19 primaries will proceed as scheduled and his office will remain in close contact with the governor’s office “as this situation continues developing.”

The change would give Republicans a chance to reclaim the district now represented by Rep. Shomari Figures, a Democrat. Figures was elected in 2024 under the court-ordered map. His election gave the state — where Black residents comprise more than one quarter of the population — two Black representatives in its congressional delegation for the first time in history.

Figures called the Supreme Court action an “incredibly unfortunate decision” that “sets the stage for Alabama to go back to the 1950s and ’60s in terms of Black political representation in the state.”

Alabama is one of several states trying to change their congressional district boundaries before the November elections as part of a nationwide redistricting battle being won, so far, by Republicans.

Voting districts typically are redrawn once a decade, immediately after a census, to account for population changes. But President Donald Trump urged Texas Republicans last year to redraw congressional districts to their advantage in a bid to hold onto a narrow House majority in the midterm elections.

Democrats in California countered with their own redistricting. And numerous Republican-led states have followed. The high court’s Louisiana ruling provided fuel for Republicans to intensify their redistricting efforts.

So far, Republicans think they could win as many as 14 additional seats in the November elections from new districts enacted in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida and Tennessee. Democrats think they could win up to six additional seats from new districts in California and Utah. But Democrats suffered a major setback when the Virginia Supreme Cour t overturned a voter-approved redistricting amendment that could have yielded four more seats for the party.

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Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Missouri, and Chandler from Montgomery, Alabama.

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By John Kruzel

WASHINGTON, May 11 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way on Monday for Alabama Republicans to pursue a congressional voting map more favorable to their party ahead of November’s midterm elections, the latest fallout from the court’s seismic voting rights ruling.

The justices lifted a lower court’s decision that had blocked state Republicans’ preferred map as racially discriminatory and for illegally diluting the voting power of Black Alabamians.

The politically conservative Southern state is expected to seek to revert to this previous map, which would drop the number of districts where Black voters comprise a majority, or near-majority, from two to one out of the state’s seven U.S. House districts. Use of the previous map could be beneficial to Republicans.

The order was powered by the nine-member court’s conservative majority. The three liberal justices dissented and suggested that the lower court could reapply its judicial block to the Alabama Republicans’ preferred map.

President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans are fighting to maintain their control of the House, as well as the Senate, in the midterm elections.

Alabama is among a group of Republican-led states that has sought to eliminate majority-Black congressional districts and boost their party’s chances ahead of the elections following the Supreme Court’s ruling undercutting a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. Black voters tend to support Democratic candidates.

In its landmark April 29 ruling, the court, in a 6-3 decision powered by its conservative members, struck down an electoral map that had given Louisiana a second Black-majority U.S. ​congressional district. The redrawn map, the majority ruled, had relied too heavily on race in violation of the constitutional equal protection principle.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision, Alabama immediately filed emergency motions asking the justices to allow it to revert to an older map with only a single majority-Black district.

Alabama, where Black voters make up a quarter of the electorate, had been ordered by a lower court to use a map that includes two majority-Black districts out of seven. Both are held by Black Democrats.

The lower court decided that a prior map had intentionally discriminated against Black voters and unlawfully diluted their voting power.

Alabama officials had argued in Supreme Court filings that Alabama’s court-ordered map shared the same constitutional defects as Louisiana’s.

Alabama’s Republican Attorney General Steve Marshall in a social media post called Monday’s order a “major victory at the U.S. Supreme Court.”

“For too long, unelected federal judges have had more say over Alabama’s elections than Alabama’s voters,” Marshall wrote. “That ended today.”

Deuel Ross, a lawyer at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund who represents a group of plaintiffs in the case, said his clients were “deeply disappointed that the Supreme Court has temporarily cleared the way for Alabama to use an intentionally discriminatory map.”

“The court’s decision interferes with the ongoing election and puts the validity of the votes of thousands of early voters into doubt,” Ross said. “We will consider all of our options to reinstate the court-ordered map and protect the rights of voters.”

DISSENT SUGGESTS LOWER COURT CAN AGAIN BLOCK NEW MAP

In a dissent, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor emphasized that the lower court’s ruling concerning Alabama’s map was more expansive than the case involving Louisiana and included a finding of unconstitutional discrimination by intentionally diluting the votes of Black voters in Alabama.

The majority’s decision to set aside the lower court’s ruling is therefore “inappropriate and will cause only confusion as Alabamians begin to vote in the elections scheduled for next week,” Sotomayor wrote in a dissent that was joined by her two fellow liberal justices.

She said the lower court “remains free on remand to decide for itself whether Callais has any bearing on its Fourteenth Amendment analysis or if its prior reasoning is unaffected by that decision,” referring to the court’s April 29 decision, called Louisiana v. Callais.

In 2023, the court had upheld the lower court’s decision that the state’s Republican-drawn electoral map diluted Black voters’ power, violating the Voting Rights Act. That 5-4 ruling was authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, and he was joined by fellow conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the court’s three liberal justices.

In a process called redistricting, the boundaries of legislative districts across the United States are reconfigured to reflect population changes as measured by the national census conducted every 10 years. Redistricting typically has been carried out by state legislatures once per decade.

Republicans and Democrats have been waging a multistate redistricting fight ignited last year when Trump initiated an unprecedented mid-decade effort to redraw maps in Republican-led states, starting with Texas.

(Reporting by John Kruzel with additional reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Nia Williams and Stephen Coates)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Fresh off President Donald Trump’s largely successful effort to oust several Republican Indiana state senators he viewed as disloyal, the governor of West Virginia is also trying his hand at retribution politics in a state primary on Tuesday.

Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey is not on the ballot, but he’s staking his political capital to reshape his party’s massive supermajorities in the state legislature more to his liking, including targeting several Republican incumbents for defeat.

The primaries will be a key test of the governor’s political sway two years into his term.

West Virginia voters also will nominate candidates for the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House. Meanwhile, Charleston’s Democratic mayor faces a primary opponent, and two state Supreme Court justices and a state Court of Appeals judge face opposition as they look to continue on the bench.

Some of Morrisey’s state legislative endorsements put him at odds with another prominent West Virginia Republican, U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, who is seeking a third term.

In state Senate District 10, for example, Capito has endorsed incumbent Republican state Sen. Vince Deeds, while Morrisey is backing his challenger, Jonathan Comer, a pastor.

This isn’t the first election in which Capito and Morrisey find themselves rooting for opposing sides of a West Virginia primary campaign. In 2024, Morrisey narrowly defeated Capito’s son Moore Capito for the GOP gubernatorial nomination.

In the U.S. Senate primary, Capito faces five challengers, including state Sen. Tom Willis, whose candidacy has prompted some Senate Republicans to pick sides. Willis touts endorsements from six of his fellow GOP state senators, including Senate President Randy Smith. Capito has endorsements from 15 state senators. She also has a key endorsement from Trump, which may neutralize some of Willis’ attacks on her record.

In Charleston, Democratic Mayor Amy Goodwin seeks a third term but first must clear another primary challenge from Martec Washington, a community advocate who placed a distant second behind Goodwin in the 2022 mayoral primary. Republican Brian Hunt is unopposed for the Republican nomination.

State Supreme Court Justices Tom Ewing and Gerald Titus face challengers in their special elections to continue serving on the high court. Both were appointed in 2025 to fill vacancies. Intermediate Court of Appeals Chief Judge Dan Greear faces a challenge from Jim Douglas in his bid for a 10-year term.

Here are some of the key facts about the election and data points the AP Decision Team will monitor as the votes are tallied:

Polls close at 7:30 p.m. ET.

The AP will provide vote results and declare winners in contested primaries for the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House, the state Senate and House and mayor of Charleston, as well as general elections for the state Supreme Court and the state Court of Appeals. There are also three state Senate special elections.

West Virginia voters registered with a political party may vote only in their own party’s primary. In other words, Democrats can’t vote in the Republican primary or vice versa. Independent or unaffiliated voters may vote in the Democratic or Mountain Party primaries but not the Republican primary. Voter ID is required.

As of April 23, West Virginia had about 1.2 million registered voters, including about 520,000 Republicans, 327,000 Democrats and 302,000 voters unaffiliated with any party.

In 2024, the GOP primaries for president, governor and U.S. Senate each had about 225,000 total voters, which was about 19% of registered voters at the time. Turnout for the Democratic primaries ranged from about 90,000 for governor to about 102,000 for U.S. Senate.

About 30% of the vote in the 2024 primaries was cast before Election Day.

As of May 5, about 36,000 ballots had already been cast in Tuesday’s election, more than 17,000 from Republicans, about 13,600 from Democrats and about 3,600 from voters unaffiliated with any party.

Roughly 60% of West Virginia’s 55 counties tend to report all or nearly all of their early and absentee vote results in the first vote report of the night.

In the 2024 Republican U.S. Senate primary, The Associated Press first reported results at 7:41 p.m. ET, or 11 minutes after polls closed. The vote count surpassed the 90% mark at about 10:06 p.m. ET, with the final vote update of the night at 12:40 a.m. ET, with more than 99% of total votes counted.

The AP does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow a trailing candidate to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

There are no automatic recounts in West Virginia, but a candidate may request and pay for one regardless of the margin of victory. The cost is refunded if the recount changes the outcome. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is subject to a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

As of Tuesday, there will be 175 days until the 2026 midterm elections.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2026 election at https://apnews.com/projects/elections-2026/.

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MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A national redistricting battle over U.S. House seats swung toward Republicans on Friday, as a Virginia court invalidated a Democratic gerrymandering effort and Republicans in Alabama approved plans for new primary elections if courts allow GOP-drawn House districts to be used in the November midterm elections.

The Alabama legislation, which was signed quickly into law by Republican Gov. Kay Ivey, is part of an effort by Republicans in Southern states to capitalize on a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that significantly weakened Voting Rights Act protections for minorities.

At the Alabama Statehouse, a chaotic scene erupted as one protester was dragged from the packed House gallery by security officers. Republican lawmakers in Louisiana and South Carolina also faced staunch opposition from civil rights activists and Democrats as they presented plans Friday to redraw their congressional districts.

The action came just a day after Tennessee enacted new congressional districts that carve up a Democratic-held, Black-majority district in Memphis. The state Democratic Party sued on Friday, seeking to prevent the districts from being used until after this year’s elections because of the tight time frame

Even before last week’s Supreme Court ruling in a Louisiana case, Republicans and Democrats already were engaged in a fierce redistricting battle, each seeking an edge in the midterm elections that will determine control of the closely divided House. That battle tilted further toward Republicans when the Virginia Supreme Court ruled Friday that Democratic lawmakers had violated constitutional requirements when placing a redistricting amendment on the ballot.

Since President Donald Trump agreed with the effort in Texas to redraw its congressional districts last summer, Republicans think they could gain as many as 14 seats from new districts in several states while Democrats think they could gain up to six seats.

The special primary would happen only if the courts agree to lift an injunction that put a court-selected map in place until after the 2030 census. That order required a second district where Black voters are the majority or close to it, resulting in the 2024 election of Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures, who is Black. If a court lifts the injunction, Republican officials want to put in place a map lawmakers drew in 2023 — which was rejected by a federal court — that could allow them to reclaim Figures’ district.

“With this special session successfully behind us, Alabama now stands ready to quickly act, should the courts issue favorable rulings in our ongoing redistricting cases,” Ivey said in a statement.

On Friday evening, however, a three-judge panel rejected Alabama’s request to lift their injunction and pave the way for changing maps. The request remains pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Democrats had hoped to gain as many as four additional U.S. House seats under new districts narrowly approved by voters in April. But the state Supreme Court invalidated the measure because it said the Democratic-led legislature violated procedural requirements.

To place a constitutional amendment before voters, the Virginia Constitution requires lawmakers to approve it in two separate legislative sessions, with a state election sandwiched in between. The legislature’s initial approval of the redistricting amendment occurred last October — while early voting was underway but before it concluded for the general election. The legislature’s second vote on the amendment occurred after a new legislative session began in January.

The state Supreme Court said the initial legislative approval came too late, noting that more than 1.3 million ballots already had been cast, about 40% of the total votes ultimately cast.

A Louisiana Senate committee considered several redistricting options Friday from Republican state Sen. John “Jay” Morris that would eliminate either both or one of the current Black-majority U.S. House districts.

“Every one of these maps reduces Black voting power in every one of the districts. And I think that’s a problem,” Democratic state Sen. Sam Jenkins told Morris.

Morris denied that the proposed redistricting maps were racially discriminatory. He said his goal was to be “respectful of the traditional boundaries” of the state’s six congressional districts.

“I don’t think we should care that much about race,” Morris said.

South Carolina lawmakers held a rare Friday meeting to discuss a proposed new congressional map intended to allow Republicans a clean sweep of the state’s seven U.S. House seats.

The House hearing was the first step in redistricting. But its future remains murky. The state Senate has yet to agree to consider new districts later this month, an action that requires a two-thirds vote.

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By John Kruzel

WASHINGTON, May 8 (Reuters) – Alabama Republicans asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to clear the way for the state to pursue a congressional voting map more favorable to their party ahead of November’s midterm elections in the latest fallout from the justices’ recent seismic voting rights ruling.

The state officials asked the justices to lift a lower court’s order requiring Alabama to use a map that includes two majority-Black districts out of seven. Both are held by Black Democrats.

Alabama is among a group of Republican-led states now seeking to eliminate majority-Black congressional districts and boost their party’s chances ahead of the elections following the Supreme Court’s April 29 decision gutting a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act.

President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans are fighting to maintain control of the House, as well as the Senate, in the midterm elections.

The court, in a 6-3 ruling powered by its conservative members, struck down an electoral map that had given Louisiana a second Black-majority U.S. ​congressional district. The redrawn map, the majority ruled, had relied too heavily on race in violation of the constitutional equal protection principle.

The decision makes it harder for minorities to challenge electoral maps as racially discriminatory under the Voting Rights Act without direct evidence of racist intent.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in Friday’s filing that the court should reach the same outcome in this case.

“Alabama’s case mirrors Louisiana’s, and they should end the same way: with this year’s elections run with districts based on lawful policy goals, not race,” Marshall wrote.

Alabama was ordered by a lower court to add a second majority-Black district — or close to it — to its congressional map after the court found that a Republican-drawn map with just one such district likely violated the Voting Rights Act.

Black voters, who make up a quarter of Alabama’s electorate, tend to support Democratic candidates.

(Reporting by John Kruzel; Additional reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Nick Zieminski, Rod Nickel)

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The remaking of the U.S. political map accelerated this week in courts and legislatures, all of it in this round expected to boost Republicans in their attempt to keep control of Congress in November’s elections.

This week’s major action came in Southern states, with a significant state court ruling in Virginia and continued fallout from a U.S. Supreme Court decision last month.

Here’s a look at where things stand.

In a 4-3 decision Friday, the Virginia Supreme Court stuck down a Democratic congressional redistricting plan that was approved by voters in April.

The new map was intended to give Democrats an inside track for 10 of the state’s 11 seats in the U.S. House — a jump from the six they currently hold. The new lines were drawn as part of a push by both parties to redistrict for their advantage in time for the 2026 midterm elections.

The court majority cited procedural reasons for rejecting the amendment to the state constitution that paved the way for new maps. To send a constitutional amendment to voters, lawmakers are supposed to approve the measure twice — once before and once after a legislative election. The court found that they didn’t comply because the initial approval came in October after early voting had begun for the general election.

The result is that the state’s previous maps will remain in place for this year’s elections.

Multiple GOP-controlled Southern states pushed this week to redraw their congressional maps in the aftermath of an April 29 U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down a Louisiana congressional district drawn to have a Black majority of constituents.

The ruling was seen as a blow to a provision of the Voting Rights Act that requires political maps to include districts where minority populations’ preferred candidates can win elections.

Louisiana quickly suspended primaries scheduled for May 16 so lawmakers could create new districts. Voting rights activists there packed the statehouse to oppose proposals for new maps that could eliminate at least one of the two current majority-Black districts.

Republicans in Alabama enacted a law Friday that would ignore the results of its May 19 congressional primaries and instead hold a new election — if a federal court agrees to lift an order for the state to have a second congressional district where a majority or near-majority of residents are Black. Republicans currently hold four of the state’s six seats in the House and want to instead use a map that could allow them to win an additional seat.

South Carolina’s GOP-dominated legislature met Friday to discuss a proposal to create a new map that gives the party a shot at winning all seven of the state’s House seats. But some worried that breaking up the one Democratic-controlled district could make some other districts vulnerable to Democratic election wins.

Tennessee enacted a law Thursday creating a new U.S. House map that carves up a majority-Black House district in Memphis, the only one now held by a Democrat. That would give Republicans a strong chance of winning all nine of the state’s seats.

Normally, House districts are reworked only after results from the once-a-decade U.S. Census are tallied.

This time it’s different.

President Donald Trump urged Texas officials to draw new districts to help his chance of keeping Congress in GOP control after the 2026 midterm elections. Texas officials complied with a plan designed to bring them as many as five new seats.

Democratic-dominated California responded with a map intended to bring them five new states. Other states have followed. And in the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling, the pace has picked up, though it’s been mostly in states where Republicans have nearly all the seats already and thus not much room for gains.

Without counting the pending possible map changes in Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina, the mid-decade redistricting has created 14 more House seats that Republicans believe they could win and six that could give Democrats an edge. Overall, that would mean a potential eight-seat advantage for the GOP ahead of a midterm election, when the president’s party normally loses seats.

But as changes and court challenges play out — along with voters having their say — the results aren’t certain.

Currently, Republicans have 217 seats in the House to Democrats’ 212. There’s one independent member. Five seats are vacant.

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By Ahmed Aboulenein and Jarrett Renshaw

WASHINGTON, May 8 (Reuters) – Frustrated abortion opponents met with White House officials on Friday amid growing criticism in the anti-abortion movement that President Donald Trump has not moved aggressively enough to advance key priorities, including new restrictions and stronger enforcement.

The guest list for the meeting was not disclosed but Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America said its influential president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, attended.

“Marjorie had a very constructive meeting at the White House today,” said Kelsey Pritchard, a spokesperson for the group.

Earlier this week Dannenfelser told the Wall Street Journal that abortions have risen in the United States since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, adding that “Trump is the problem.”

Tensions have grown between Trump and parts of the anti-abortion movement that were among his strongest political allies during his first presidential campaign. 

While activists credit Trump for helping overturn Roe v. Wade through his Supreme Court appointments, some groups say the administration has not followed through with aggressive federal action to curb abortion access, including tighter restrictions on the abortion pill mifepristone and enforcement against online pill distributors.

Since Roe’s overturning, Trump has repeatedly said abortion policy should be decided by individual states.

White House spokeswoman Allison Schuster defended the administration’s record.

“President Trump is the most pro-life and pro-family president in American history, and his Administration has announced a series of bold actions to safeguard life and uphold Americans’ fundamental freedoms, including ending federal funding of abortion abroad,” Schuster said in a statement. 

Data from the Guttmacher Institute, a research group, show abortions have risen since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning its decision making abortion legal nationwide, with an estimated 1,126,000 provided by clinicians in 2025, the highest since 2009, driven largely by the expanded use of abortion pills, which now account for 65% of abortions in states where the procedure is legal.

The pressure campaign has intensified in recent months as Republican lawmakers and anti-abortion groups push the Food and Drug Administration to revisit safety rules surrounding mifepristone, which is used in more than half of U.S. abortions. Senate Republicans in March launched a probe into abortion pill manufacturers and urged the Food and Drug Administration to crack down on online sales of the drug.

The White House signed off on ​a plan to fire FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday. Makary has been under growing pressure to produce a safety review of mifepristone and Dannenfelser renewed her call this week to fire him.

The debate over abortion medication has escalated following a series of court rulings over mail-order access to mifepristone. 

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily restored access to the drug through telemedicine and mail delivery while litigation continues.

(Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw and Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Cynthia Osterman)

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