Politics

By Jasper Ward

April 30 (Reuters) – Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy on Thursday vetoed a major election reform bill, citing “significant operational burdens” and unspecified legal challenges. 

The bill, at least a decade in the making, sought to allow absentee and other voters to track their ballot and see when it had been received and counted.

It also sought to expand acceptable voter identification, modify voter roll maintenance, change the absentee ballot timeline and create a rural community liaison position. Alaska is the least densely populated state in the U.S. and the largest by area.

Alaskans are set to hold elections this year for governor, lieutenant governor, the U.S. Congress and the state legislature.

The legislation had won bipartisan support in the state’s House of Representatives and Senate.

In a statement, the Republican governor expressed support for parts of the bill, but said the legislation contained legal challenges. He did not elaborate on what they were but said the bill as a whole would cause “significant operational burdens” and possibly jeopardize Alaska’s election process.

“The Division of Elections warns such changes would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to implement securely and reliably in advance of the 2026 elections,” Dunleavy wrote in a letter to the Senate’s president.

The bill was sponsored by the state’s Senate Rules Committee. The committee’s chair, Bill Wielechowski, a Democrat, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Senate Minority Leader Mike Cronk, a Republican, described the legislation as a good baseline bill that would benefit elections for Alaskans.

Under the U.S. Constitution, states are empowered to administer federal elections.

Work on the Alaska bill preceded moves by some states to address allegations raised by U.S. President Donald Trump and other high-profile Republicans who have asserted states are not doing enough to prevent voter fraud, even though state audits and academic studies have found fraud is rare.

(Reporting by Jasper Ward in Washington; Editing by Donna Bryson and Kate Mayberry)

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By Leah Douglas

WASHINGTON, April 30 (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday passed its version of a five-year farm bill after stripping a provision opposed by the “Make America Healthy Again” movement that would have blocked some lawsuits against pesticide makers. 

The House passage shows progress for the long-stalled, sweeping legislation, which funds agricultural and food aid programs, but it will still need to pass the Senate before it can advance to President Donald Trump’s desk.

Historically bipartisan, the farm bill has faced hurdles since the prior bill expired in 2023, as Republicans and Democrats in both chambers battle over its provisions, which range from farm subsidies to food stamps.

The House version passed on Thursday extends much of the framework of the prior bill with some changes, like maintaining cuts to the food stamp program included in Trump’s tax and spending bill passed last year.

The bill passed by 224 votes to 200, with Republicans picking up 14 Democratic votes. 

“It is clearer every day that farm country needs updated policy that reflects current challenges, and the 2026 farm bill fills that gap,” said House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson in a statement.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman said in a statement that he would release that chamber’s farm bill text in the coming weeks. 

FARMERS UNDER STRAIN

Farm groups largely cheered the passage of the bill, which they said could provide some stability for farmers facing the pressures of higher fuel and fertilizer costs from the U.S. war in Iran. 

“Important updates to research and conservation, as well as increased loan limits and clarity on interstate commerce, will help farmers survive today’s challenges and give them the tools to thrive in the future,” said American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall in a statement.

But some Democrats argued the bill did not go far enough for farmers. 

“The so-called farm bill that passed the House today does nothing to resolve high input costs, lost markets, surging food prices or provide a single penny in economic assistance to struggling family farmers,” said Angie Craig, the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee. 

Anti-hunger groups criticized the bill for failing to overturn $187 billion in cuts to SNAP passed in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill. 

The bill did not include a provision backed by some Republican legislators to allow year-round sales of the higher-ethanol gasoline blend E15. The House is expected to vote on a standalone E15 bill on May 13.

A MAHA VICTORY

The bill also did not include a provision that would have shielded pesticide companies from some lawsuits over the safety of their products, after MAHA activists lobbied aggressively against the provision ahead of the vote. 

Many supporters of MAHA, which backs Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., oppose pesticide use on food crops.

Hundreds of MAHA activists rallied at the Supreme Court on Monday as pesticide maker Bayer appeared for oral arguments in its effort to end thousands of lawsuits that allege its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer.

The amendment passed by 280 votes to 142, with bipartisan support. 

“Lawmakers caved to anti-science MAHA activists instead of standing with those who grow our food,” said Elizabeth Burns-Thompson, executive director of the Bayer-backed Modern Ag Alliance, in a statement.

(Reporting by Leah Douglas in Washington; Editing by Andrea Ricci )

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By AJ Vicens

April 30 (Reuters) – Congress on Thursday passed a 45-day extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, prolonging a debate about a section of the spy law that critics say enables the abusive surveillance of American citizens.

The law was set to expire at midnight on Thursday after having already been extended for 10 days on April 20.

Proponents of the law, which allows warrantless searches of data scooped up by America’s intelligence agencies, say it provides authorities with an unparalleled tool to protect U.S. national security. Critics say it gives law enforcement an end run around constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure, and they have long sought to add a warrant requirement. 

The extension comes after the House passed a bill on Wednesday that included restrictions on the Federal Reserve’s ability to issue digital currency, something Senate Republican leaders saw as a non-starter.

With time dwindling to hammer out the differences between the House and Senate, lawmakers decided to punt, passing the extension in the Senate via unanimous consent and a 261-111 vote in the House. 

The extension is likely to do little more than draw out the fight over renewal ever further.

Reformers are still pressing for a warrant requirement. The White House, the intelligence community and Congressional leadership have all lobbied furiously for the renewal of the law without one, saying past abuses had been addressed as part of 2024 reforms.

“I don’t know what they think, what’s going to change in 45 days,” said Pennsylvania Republican Representative Scott Perry, who voted against the Senate’s extension.

(Reporting by AJ Vicens in Detroit, Editing by Chris Reese)

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WASHINGTON, April 30 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a bill to fund Department of Homeland Security agencies, the White House said in a statement.

(Reporting by Ryan Patrick Jones; Writing by Daphne Psaledakis; editing by Michelle Nichols )

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By David Morgan

WASHINGTON, April 30 (Reuters) – The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives scheduled a vote for early Thursday afternoon on a Senate-passed bill to fund Department of Homeland Security agencies including the Secret Service, Transportation Security Administration and the U.S. Coast Guard.

(Reporting by David Morgan)

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By Joseph Ax

April 30 (Reuters) – Republican Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry on Thursday suspended the state’s May 16 congressional primary election just two days before early voting was set to begin, acting a day after the U.S. Supreme Court deemed the state’s voting map illegal and gutted a key part of the landmark Voting Rights Act.

Landry signed an executive order postponing the nominating contests for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives until at least July 15 or until a date set by the Republican-led state legislature, citing an “election emergency of unconstitutional maps.”

The postponement gives the legislature an opportunity to draw a new map that eliminates at least one currently Democratic-held seat, and possibly two. President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans are seeking to maintain their control of the House in November’s midterm elections, and Louisiana’s new map could give the party a boost.

The Supreme Court disallowed the map delineating the state’s six U.S. House districts. The state legislature had drawn a map with a second majority-Black district in response to a judge’s decision that an earlier map with just one majority-Black district illegally harmed Black voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act. 

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling was powered by its conservative majority. Black people make up roughly a third of Louisiana’s population.

Drawing such districts is a practice many states have followed for decades under the Voting Rights Act to protect the ability of minority voters to elect the congressional candidates of their choice. But the Supreme Court hollowed out a key provision of the law in Wednesday’s ruling.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, told reporters earlier on Thursday that Landry had “no choice” but to suspend the election given the court decision.

Suspending the election and redrawing the map will scramble the campaigns for the state’s U.S. House districts, which have been underway for months. The filing deadline for candidates was February 13, and mail-in ballots were sent to overseas voters weeks ago.

Other primaries, including a hotly contested race for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination between incumbent Bill Cassidy and Trump-endorsed U.S. Representative Julia Letlow, will proceed as planned, according to the executive order.

Louisiana’s two majority-Black districts are both represented by Black Democrats. The state’s other four incumbents are all white Republicans.

The Supreme Court’s ruling opens the door for Republican-controlled states across the South to dismantle as many as a dozen Democratic-held districts that are predominantly home to Black and Latino voters, who have historically supported Democratic candidates.

The impact on this year’s midterms beyond Louisiana remains unclear, with many states already deep into their electoral calendars. Earlier on Thursday, Trump said he had spoken with Republican Tennessee Governor Bill Lee about drawing a new map that would take aim at the state’s only Democratic seat, a majority-Black district centered on Memphis.

Regardless, the court’s decision likely means that Republican lawmakers in several states will seek to redraw congressional maps ahead of the 2028 election.

Republicans and Democrats already 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 Joseph Ax; editing by Paul Thomasch and Will Dunham)

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By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON, April 30 (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate on Thursday unanimously approved an immediate prohibition on incumbent senators, staff and other officers from using prediction markets that provide a form of gambling on real-world events.

The change in Senate rules to impose the senators’ ban was spearheaded by Republican Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio, and an amendment by Democratic Senator Alex Padilla broadening the ban to Senate staff was included in the measure.

Senators also urged the House of Representatives and the executive and judicial branches of government to do the same.

“United States senators have no business engaging in speculative activities like prediction markets while collecting a taxpayer-funded paycheck,” Moreno said in a Senate speech in which he called for an immediate vote on the rules change.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer endorsed the effort, saying, “We must never allow Congress to turn into a casino where members representing the public can gamble on wars or economic crises.”

On Tuesday, a U.S. Army soldier pleaded not guilty to fraud charges stemming from his $400,000 in wins after allegedly using confidential information late last year for a bet that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro would soon be out of office.

The activity occurred just before the U.S. military operation on January 3 that resulted in his removal. 

For years, Congress has been debating whether to impose a ban on lawmakers’ stock trades, which proponents characterize as insider trading. Members of Congress get closed briefings on possible military matters, for example, and know in advance the timing of legislation impacting companies might advance toward enactment. 

A bipartisan stock trading ban bill had been moving ahead in the House late last year. It fell apart, however, when a committee that oversees such efforts instead advanced a partisan Republican measure that has not yet been put to a vote in the full House.

In 2012, Congress passed legislation imposing new disclosures on stock trades, which sometimes are ignored by lawmakers or filed long after deadlines.

Backers of a full ban on lawmaker stock trades estimate that 113 members of Congress made 9,261 trades involving 706 million shares during 2024 alone.

In April 2025, President Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that “This is a great time to buy!!!” hours before he announced a pause on tariffs he had imposed. The posting raised concerns that it prompted a high volume of stock market trades.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Alistair Bell)

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WASHINGTON, April 30 (Reuters) – The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives approved bipartisan legislation on Thursday to fund Department of Homeland Security agencies including the Secret Service and Transportation Security Administration, in a move to end a partial shutdown that has gripped their operations for nearly 11 weeks.

The action, in a voice vote, sends the legislation on to President Donald Trump to sign into law. 

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Chris Reese)

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Black members of Congress are bracing for a crippling shakeup of their ranks after a Supreme Court ruling gutted a key section of the Voting Rights Act that had protected minority communities in political redistricting and helped boost their representation.

Wednesday’s decision clears the way for Republican-led states to redraw U.S. House districts without regard to race, potentially creating many more GOP-friendly seats.

Rep. Yvette Clarke, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, told reporters that its members and Democrats would fight the effects of the ruling.

“The Supreme Court has opened the door to a coordinated attack on Black voters across the country,” Clarke said. “This is an outright power grab.”

Under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, voters could challenge electoral maps that appeared to dilute the ability of minority communities to elect representatives of their choosing. The expected wave of congressional redistricting by Republican-controlled states after Wednesday’s ruling, especially for the 2028 election and beyond, is likely to result in a much smaller Black Caucus.

Clarke was joined by over a dozen of the 60 Black Caucus members, including Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Their responses to the court’s decision ranged from outrage to defiance to mourning.

It’s not clear how many seats will ultimately be affected by the ruling, but redistricting experts predict that more than a dozen now held by minorities could be swept away.

Rep. Troy Carter, one of two Black Democrats from Louisiana, the state at the center of the case, called the ruling “a devastating blow to our democracy, plain and simple.”

Republican leaders in several Southern states already have been discussing how to apply the ruling and create new GOP-friendly congressional maps. In Florida, Republicans wasted no time approving a new U.S. House map, part of which redrew one district created to elect a Black representative.

“I would be surprised if we do not see former slave-holding states moving at lightning speed to target districts that provide Black voters and other voters of color an equal opportunity to elect candidates,” said Kristen Clarke, general counsel for the NAACP and the first Black woman to be assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice’s civil rights division.

It’s not clear whether state-level voting laws or constitutional prohibitions against racial discrimination will provide any protection, she added.

Republican officials and Black conservatives praised the decision as a victory against race-based mandates. Linda Lee Tarver, of the Project 21 Black Leadership Network, said in a statement civil rights laws were not intended “to institutionalize racial line-drawing as a default feature of our political system.”

The Congressional Black Caucus was formed in 1971 as court-ordered redistricting under the Voting Rights Act, passed just six years earlier, sent more minorities to Congress.

The number of Black representatives in Congress jumped from nine to 13. Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress, decided to expand the Democracy Select Committee created in the 1960s by Democratic Rep. Charles Diggs into the more formal Congressional Black Caucus.

The CBC raised its profile in its first year when it boycotted President Richard Nixon’s State of the Union address after he refused to meet with the group. Nixon eventually acquiesced. The group created a list of over 60 recommendations to help the Black community, including counteracting racism and building adequate housing. It earned the nickname the “conscience of the Congress.”

“That caucus has had such an important voice in American politics — the things that we’ve been able to achieve together, the creation of equity and access,” Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia said during a separate news conference Wednesday. “And I’m afraid that with this ruling, we could see that caucus shrink in a hugely significant way.”

The ruling upset Thomas Johnson when he heard about it while visiting Louisiana’s Capitol in Baton Rouge. Johnson, who is Black, is from New Orleans and represented by Carter. He fears Republicans could redraw the state’s congressional map in a way that dismantles predominately Black districts.

“I feel like this is an embarrassing attack upon the minorities, particularly the Black community,” Johnson said. “We have very little (voice) in Congress.”

Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist who advises the Black Caucus, said he expects the group will be involved in multiple legal fights for members whose districts will be targeted after the Supreme Court ruling. He also said the ruling makes voter turnout efforts even more important “if we want to change course on some of the things that are likely to happen because of this decision.”

Democratic Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama, whose state was at the center of a major Voting Rights Act case decided in favor of Black representation nearly three years ago, agreed that the party now needs to focus on getting voters motivated ahead of this year’s midterm elections.

“Now more than ever, we need communities across this nation to mobilize — in state legislatures, in the courts and at the ballot box,” Sewell said. “We need to vote like we’ve never voted before.” ___ Associated Press writers Leah Askarinam, Matt Brown and Ali Swenson in Washington and Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, contributed to this report.

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April 29 (Reuters) – Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry told Republican House candidates on Wednesday that he planned to suspend next month’s primary elections to allow state lawmakers to pass a new congressional map, the Washington Post reported, citing two people with knowledge of the calls. 

The Republican governor’s announcement to suspend the May 16 primary could come as early as Friday, a day before early voting is set to start, the Washington Post report said. 

Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Landry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Landry’s move follows a 6-3 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that blocked an electoral map that had given Louisiana a second Black-majority U.S. congressional district. Black people make up roughly a third of the population of Louisiana, which has six U.S. House districts.

The Supreme Court ruling gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act making it harder for minorities to challenge electoral maps as racially discriminatory under the landmark civil rights law.

With November congressional elections looming, the decision could encourage Republican-led states to seek to redraw electoral maps in an effort that could put at risk U.S. House of Representatives seats considered safely Democratic. Black voters tend to support Democratic candidates.

The Supreme Court issued its ruling as Republican-governed and Democratic-led states around the country battle over the redrawing of electoral maps to change the composition of U.S. House districts for partisan advantage ahead of the November elections.

U.S. President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans hope to retain the party’s razor-thin majorities in the House and Senate.

(Reporting by Chandni Shah in Bengaluru; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Kate Mayberry)

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