Alabama Rushes to Eliminate Its Only Two Democrats in Congress

Alabama is pushing ahead with a racist redistricting scheme after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act.

Republican Governor Kay Ivey called Friday for a special session next week of the Alabama state legislature to pass new congressional and state Senate maps, and prepare legislation to hold special primary elections.

The move came one day after Alabama’s Attorney General Steve Marshall asked the Supreme Court to allow the state to implement new congressional and state Senate maps that were redrawn in 2023 before being barred by the Voting Rights Act.

In Wednesday’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais, the court’s six-justice conservative majority effectively dismantled Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race. While the decision did not eradicate it entirely, the court has raised new hurdles for those seeking to prove a racial gerrymandering claim, and gave its blessing to those who would claim partisan gerrymandering as a legal defense.

The new maps would effectively redraw Alabama’s two Black-majority districts: the 2nd district and the 7th district.

Alabama’s 2nd congressional district, led by Representative Shamari Figures, contains Mobile and Montgomery and would see its Black population shrink from 49 percent to 40 percent, according to the Alabama Reflector.

Alabama’s 7th congressional district, led by Representative Terri Sewell, is Alabama’s oldest majority-Black district and has consistently sent Black Democrats to Washington since 1993. This district includes Selma, as well as parts of Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, and Montgomery.

CJ Pearson, a right-wing influencer, wrote on X that the decision “will likely lead to a COMPLETELY REPUBLICAN DELEGATION!” Pearson, who was one of the first to report Ivey’s move, said that it had been the result of lobbying by Marshall, attorney general candidate Katherine Robertson, and Secretary of State Wes Allen.

Pope Leo XIV has named three new bishops in the United States, each of whom have been vocal critics of President Trump.

Evelio Menjivar, a formerly undocumented immigrant, will be the new bishop for the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston in West Virginia, and Gary Studniewski and Robert Boxie III will be auxiliary bishops in Washington, D.C. The appointments indicate a deliberate choice on the pope’s part to select representatives in the United States who will be similarly unafraid to raise their voices against the Trump administration.

Menjivar, who immigrated from El Salvador to the U.S. in the trunk of a car when he was a teenager, decried Trump’s immigration crackdown last year in the National Catholic Reporter. “The federal government has pursued a ‘shock and awe’ campaign of aggressive threats and highly visible operations of questionable legality that go far beyond mere immigration ‘enforcement,’” he wrote. “We must stand with those at risk … and we cannot let the dark side of anti-immigrant animus take hold.”

Father Studniewski, a former U.S. Army chaplain who serves in the Capitol Hill area, called the January 6 insurrection “very disturbing, very disheartening.”

“It was a normal day, until all that sickening unrest in the afternoon,” he told Today’s Catholic in 2021. And Father Boxie, who serves at Howard University, was deeply critical of Trump’s war on diversity, equity, and inclusion last year.

“In a lot of ways we have made great progress, but in so many ways, I feel like we’re regressing,” said Boxie. “It’s really frustrating—especially this moment that we’re living in. The attacks on ‘DEI’—I don’t even know what that means anymore. It’s a term that’s been hijacked. It means a lot of things to a lot of different people.”

President Donald Trump claimed Friday it’s unconstitutional to seek congressional approval for war.

Speaking to the press outside the White House, Trump whined that he should not have to comply with the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which requires the president to withdraw his forces from a conflict after 60 days unless Congress declares war or approves an extension.

“There’s no other country that’s ever done it, it’s never been uh, as you know—most people consider it totally unconstitutional. Also we had a ceasefire so that gives you additional time,” he falsely claimed.

“We’re on our way to another victory, a big victory. And I don’t think that it’s constitutional what they’re asking for. These are not patriotic people that are asking,” he said.

The irony is that the War Powers Resolution is the only reason Trump’s reckless military campaign in Iran could even be considered constitutional in the first place. According to Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the United States Constitution, Congress has sole power to declare war. The 60-day window is an exception to that rule.

If the War Powers Resolution were totally void, Trump’s war in Iran would be illegal. (It already is, according to international law.)

Trump has simultaneously tried to sidestep Congress’s 60-day deadline by buying into the argument that the clock stopped when a ceasefire was announced halfway through April.

However, the U.S. is already testing the boundaries of its tenuous ceasefire with Iran by installing a military blockade on Iranian ports, an act of war according to international law, and even seizing an Iranian cargo ship. Meanwhile, Israel, America’s ally in its joint military operation, has not stopped its intense strikes in Lebanon, in violation of the ceasefire agreement.

President Trump is claiming that the war on Iran is actually over in an effort to avoid any sort of accountability.

Trump on Friday officially informed Congress that the war was “terminated,” writing, “There has been no exchange of fire between the United States and Iran since April 7, 2026.... The hostilities that began on February 28, 2026, have terminated.”

The War Powers Resolution states that a president must formally alert Congress of any new war they entered into within 48 hours of hostilities. After that, they have 60 days to end the conflict before Congress steps in and either orders them to stop or allows them to continue. Trump’s 60 days are up on Friday, and it appears that even Republicans want to hold him accountable.

“That deadline is not a suggestion; it is a requirement,” GOP Senator Susan Collins said. “Further military action against Iran must have a clear mission, achievable goals, and a defined strategy for bringing the conflict to a close.”

To avoid any of that, Trump is insisting that the war actually ended with the ceasefire announcement in early April, even as Iran continues to block the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. continues to block Iranian ships from leaving, and Israel continues to bomb Lebanon. The ceasefire seems to be holding on by a thread, and does not appear to be an end to the conflict in any way.

Trump on Friday called it “unconstitutional” for Congress to try to rein in his powers.

“We’re on our way to another victory, a big victory. And I don’t think that it’s constitutional what they’re asking for,” he said on Friday. “These are not patriotic people that are asking.... Even the losers, even the ones that say all the wrong things admit that it’s been amazing what we’ve done. The strait is totally shut down, it’s flawless.”

If this truly is the end of the war, then it’s unclear who the victor even is.

President Trump announced new tariffs against European car imports Friday, threatening to mess with the economy further.

In a Truth Social post, Trump announced that he is “pleased to announce that, based on the fact the European Union is not complying with our fully agreed to Trade Deal, next week I will be increasing Tariffs charged to the European Union for Cars and Trucks coming into the United States.”

“The Tariff will be increased to 25%. It is fully understood and agreed that, if they produce Cars and Trucks in U.S.A. Plants, there will be NO TARIFF,” Trump posted. “Many Automobile and Truck Plants are currently under construction, with over 100 Billion Dollars being invested, A RECORD in the History of Car and Truck Manufacturing. These Plants, staffed with American Workers, will be opening soon — There has never been anything like what is happening in America today! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Why Trump would be “pleased” with the move is one thing, but his claim that several auto plants are currently under construction is misleading at best. Industry experts say that most automakers are not building new plants, but are instead planning to shift their investments years from now. While some car manufacturers have pledged to spend more money in the U.S., they haven’t announced new facilities or manufacturing plants, and their plans may not even happen.

“They will be looking at models that will be coming to the end of their natural cycle, something that occurs at five or so year intervals, and getting ready to announce ‘investments’ to continue the new version of the model at those plants,” Greig Mordue, a manufacturing policy professor at McMaster University, told Al Jazeera.

On top of that, Trump’s decision to roll back much of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act killed projects to build domestic auto plants, including a $200 million hydrogen fuel cell factory in South Carolina and a $2.5 billion battery factory in Georgia.

It also forced American car companies to eat investments they made in electric vehicles. Ford canceled a $1.5 billion investment in electric vehicles while General Motors had to absorb a $6 billion hit. Meanwhile, Chinese electric vehicles are the most popular in the world, and are beginning to dominate the market.

All these tariffs will do is drive up prices in the U.S., and consumers will have to resort to buying more used cars, or hold off on purchases altogether. Fuel prices are still high thanks to the war in Iran, which Trump is trying to wish away without any real action. This move, at best, is a long-term plan, and at worst, won’t bring any relief or benefits to the average American.

This story has been updated.

The Trump administration massively restructured the FBI in order to accommodate its deportation goals.

More than 6,000 FBI agents were diverted to handling “immigration-related matters” during the first nine months of Donald Trump’s second term, reported The Intercept Friday. The seismic shift has practically redefined the agency and its work.

Prior to January 2025, just 279 agents were assigned to immigration cases. By September, that number was above 6,500, growing the task force by a factor of 23. In total, 9,161 people at the FBI—nearly a quarter of the bureau’s 38,000 staffers—worked on immigration during Trump’s first nine months in office.

The change is larger than previously understood. In October, The Washington Post reported that some 3,000 agents had been reassigned to cover immigration, based on FBI data obtained and circulated by Senator Mark R. Warner.  

“That is a huge, huge number of people,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told The Intercept of the 6,500-plus figure. “This is just a somewhat shocking scale that we’re looking at.”

The structural shift toward immigration cases is monumental: As the nation’s premiere law enforcement agency, the FBI has historically focused the bulk of its resources on crime. The bureau expanded to include counterterrorism and national security in its purview after 9/11. It has never dedicated this much time and attention to civil matters, sparking concern that the new modus operandi could hinder its criminal investigative work.

“That’s a striking diversion of resources away from public safety,” David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian thinktank the Cato Institute, told The Intercept. “We’re talking about the FBI diverting people away from criminal investigations and ongoing criminal activity and into civil immigration enforcement. 

“This is showing the extent to which the resources of the FBI were put at the disposal of Immigration and Customs Enforcement contrary to the intent of Congress, and the abuse of the funds that Congress grants the FBI to accomplish its mission,” Bier noted.

The FBI is not the only federal agency to massively reorient itself toward immigration since Trump’s inauguration. The Justice Department dropped thousands of criminal cases last year in an attempt to funnel its efforts—almost singularly—toward convicting immigration cases. Altogether, the chief law enforcement agency closed some 23,000 criminal cases in the first six months of Trump’s term, including investigations into terrorism, white-collar crimes, and drugs, while prosecuting 32,000 new immigration cases.

The shift in priorities is an indication that “making America safe again” is not necessarily as much of a goal for the current administration as Trump has promised. At the president’s direction, federal authorities have arrested thousands of noncriminal immigrants across the country, despite repeated pledges that the deportation purge is focused on the “worst of the worst”—such as “murderers, pedophiles, rapists, gang members, and terrorists.”

The majority of U.S. military positions in the Middle East have been damaged by Iranian strikes, according to a CNN investigation released Friday.

At least 16 American installations across eight countries have been struck as part of Iran’s retaliatory strikes against the U.S. and Israeli military onslaught. A U.S. source familiar with the situation told CNN that the scale of the damage was unprecedented.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before.… These are rapid, targeted strikes, with [advanced] technology,” the source said.

The main targets appeared to be multimillion-dollar aircraft. At the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, a Boeing E-3 Sentry aircraft, which provides surveillance, command, control, and communications to the U.S. military, was destroyed. That aircraft is worth nearly half a billion dollars, and is currently out of production.

Other targets of Iranian strikes include critical communications systems. At Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, satellite photographs showed that Iran had destroyed all but one ray dome, a structure designed to protect satellite dishes.

Radar systems will also prove the most difficult to replace. “Our radar systems are our most expensive and our most limited resource in the region,” a congressional aide familiar with damage assessments told CNN.

It was previously reported that 13 U.S. bases in the Middle East had been rendered all but uninhabitable, forcing U.S. military service members to work remotely from hotels and office spaces. Within the first two weeks of the war, Iran’s attacks on U.S. military bases caused an estimated $800 million in damage, according to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a BBC analysis.

During a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday, Undersecretary of Defense Jules Hurst finally produced a price tag for Donald Trump’s military campaign: $25 billion. But that number does not include the cost of repairing the damage to bases, CNN reported Thursday.

At the same time, Trump has continued to claim that the U.S. has nearly obliterated all of Iran’s military assets—though reports indicate that’s just not true.

The Trump administration exposed the private Social Security numbers of dozens of health care providers while setting up a new Medicare portal.

The Washington Post reports that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, which is run by Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz, made the error while creating a directory last year to help senior citizens find doctors and medical providers that accept certain insurance plans. In the process, the agency ended up using a publicly accessible database that contained some of the providers’ Social Security information, linked to their names and other personal data.

The numbers were publicly exposed for weeks until the Post flagged it for the agency on Tuesday. CMS did not respond to the paper’s inquiries on whether it had notified any of the providers, or exactly how many numbers were exposed (the Post identified at least dozens).

A CMS spokesperson did tell the Post that the agency was working to fix the problem, blaming it on the providers for entering their information in the wrong fields.

The problem “stems from incorrect entries of provider or provider-representative-supplied information in the wrong places,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “The agency has taken steps to address it promptly and reinforce safeguards around data submission and validation.”

“I don’t even know how [Medicare officials] would get my Social Security number,” one doctor told the Post anonymously out of fear of identity theft.

The issue may have been created thanks to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which laid off hundreds of CMS employees last year, including those who assisted the elderly. On top of that, the directory was full of errors when it was introduced last October, displaying contradictory and incorrect information.

All of this is a recipe for disaster for the disabled and elderly Americans who rely on Medicare, not to mention those whose personal information was leaked to the public. It’s another black mark on the record of Oz, the snake-oil salesman and daytime TV host tapped by President Trump to head the agency.

Alex Jones’s final meltdown on InfoWars was a defiant rejection of the company’s new ownership.

Satirical outlet The Onion bought the far-right conspiracy network, ending what was arguably Jones’s most successful endeavor and marking the beginning of his descent into irrelevancy. But as the minutes ticked down to dead air, Jones vowed to return to the limelight—even if he doesn’t make a dime.

“They’re turning the power off at midnight,” Jones said, surrounded by people toasting the network. “Private detectives are coming in to close the doors. And they’re gonna act like they’ve got their big ass victory.”

Jones pledged that he already had a new venture in the works where he would continue to air his controversial and baseless beliefs.

“And I will sit there and live in a modest house with a modest car, which I love. And they think, ‘Oh, we’ll take your money,’ Joe, shut up. I’m ready to die for this,” Jones said. “You think taking money from me does something? It makes me want to strangle you spiritually. It’s a joke. It, like, empowers me.”

As Jones rose from his seat to exit, he declared: “The next phase starts, the real war begins now. It’s the nuclear age.”

Jones, of “they’re turning the friggin’ frogs gay” fame, was forced out of his studio as The Onion proceeded with its purchase. The parody company had hoped to obtain legal approval to license the network’s name and brand to turn it into a mockery of itself by Thursday, but instead, the legal case passed to the Texas Supreme Court in what The Onion CEO Ben Collins described as an “insane, unprecedented legal stalling.”

Proceeds from the sale of the network were intended to go to families of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, whom Jones still owes some $1.3 billion in damages after he repeatedly branded the tragedy a “hoax.”

The Onion tapped veteran Adult Swim comedian Tim Heidecker to reinvent the conspiracy network. So far, Heidecker has floated a multi-stage redesign, which would first see InfoWars become a parody of itself, mocking Jones’s various money-making schemes in which he aggressively advertised “hacky supplements” or bilked “grandparents out of their life savings.”

“Then we just think that that’s going to get old, but we’ll have built this little brand, or sort of re-established a brand and turn it into a destination for good comedy—a new streaming site, a new comedy platform,” Heidecker told Time.

It’s official: Donald Trump’s war in Iran is less popular than some of the least popular wars of all time.

Sixty-one percent of Americans said that using military force in Iran was a mistake, according to a Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll Friday, placing how Americans feel about Trump’s campaign in Iran on par with attitudes about the Iraq and Vietnam wars.

In May 2006, three years after U.S. forces invaded Iraq, a Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 59 percent of Americans said that the war was a mistake.

By that point in the war, more than 2,400 U.S. troops had died and the U.S. military was embroiled in some of the bloodiest fighting of the entire conflict. But the Iraq War was still more popular than Trump’s so-called “excursion” into Iran, which has killed an estimated 13 service members.

In January 1973, the same year that U.S. troops withdrew from Vietnam, 60 percent of Americans believed that it had been a mistake to send troops there in the first place, according to a Gallup poll.

Trump has repeatedly bragged about how quickly he would have ended the war in Vietnam—despite the fact that he dodged the military draft multiple times—because of his supposedly resounding success in Iran. But only 19 percent of Americans say that the U.S. military campaign in Iran has been successful, according to the Friday poll.

It’s not entirely clear how that 19 percent arrived at that conclusion. While Trump has repeatedly declared victory, so has Iran.