Samuel Alito Cited Fudged Data in His Ruling Gutting Voting Rights Act

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito relied on misleading data to support his ruling decimating the Voting Rights Act, The Guardian reported Friday.

In the court’s majority opinion, Alito claimed that the kind of racial discrimination that had prompted the creation of the Voting Rights Act no longer existed.

“Black voters now participate in elections at similar rates as the rest of the electorate, even turning out at higher rates than white voters in two of the five most recent Presidential elections nationwide and in Louisiana,” Alito wrote.

He was citing a friend-of-the-court brief submitted by the Department of Justice, which relied on a statistical methodology that is not preferred by experts in determining statewide voter turnout. The brief calculated Black and white voter turnout in Louisiana as a proportion of the total population of each racial group over the age of 18. This is generally considered a suboptimal method because it includes people who can’t vote, including noncitizens and people with felony convictions.

Experts typically prefer to consider voter turnout as a proportion of the citizen voting age population, or the eligible population. Using this methodology, The Guardian determined that Black voter turnout in Louisiana only exceeded white voter turnout in the 2012 presidential election.

Using the DOJ’s data, Alito also elided the fact that the racial voter gap is actually widening. In the three most recent presidential elections since Barack Obama was on the ballot, Black voter turnout has trailed white voter turnout, according to The Guardian’s analysis. In Louisiana, the disparity grew wider between 2016, 2020, and 2024.

Kevin Morris, a researcher at the Brennan Center for Justice, said that Alito’s claim is “simply not factual,” and that the turnout gap had “exploded” over the last three years.

Michael McDonald, a leading expert on voter turnout who teaches at the University of Florida, told The Guardian that relying on this “misleading” methodology was purposeful. “If I wanted to manipulate the numbers in a way that was favorable to the government’s interest, I would be using voting age population,” McDonald said.

“They had to fudge how they’re calculating the turnout rate to get there, and they’re not even taking into account margin of error, and all these other methodology issues about the current population survey to arrive at that number,” he said. “Someone knew what they were doing.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act has opened the door for redistricting efforts across the country, as Republicans rush to redraw Democrat-led districts, many of which have majority-Black populations.

Donald Trump either can’t or won’t face the music.

The president exploded at a Black female reporter Thursday who dared to question why he was so focused on his expensive Washington vanity projects while the rest of the country struggles to fill their gas tanks, deriding the query as “stupid” and the reporter who bothered to ask as a “horror show.”

“Mr. President, you are here against the backdrop of war in Iran. Why focus on all these projects right now when gas prices soar?” asked ABC News’s Rachel Scott.

“You know why? Because I want to keep our country beautiful and safe. Beautiful also,” the 79-year-old said.

Trump then went on to complain about the state of the nation’s capital, claiming that several iconic monuments—such as the Washington Monument and the Reflecting Pool—are “disgusting” and covered in dirt. Cleaning the landmarks, Trump said, would cost approximately $2 million.

“You probably don’t see dirt, but I do,” Trump told the reporter. “And that’s not what our country is about. Our country is about beauty, cleanliness, safety, great people. Not a filthy capital.

“Such a stupid question, if you ask me,” Trump continued. “We are fixing up the Reflecting Pond at the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, and you say, ‘Why are you fixing it up?’ Because you can understand dirt, baby, better than I can, but I don’t allow it.

“This is one of the worst reporters—she’s with ABC Fake News, and she’s a horror show. She’s saying, ‘Why would you bother fixing this up?’ Why would I bother taking 11 or 12 truckloads of filth out of the water in front of the Lincoln monument?” Trump said, turning to his entourage to mock the reporter while misstating the name of the site. “A question like that is a disgrace to our country.”

Elsewhere in Washington, Trump is building a “Triumphal Arc,” destroying some 13 historic buildings on the grounds of former psychiatric hospital St. Elizabeths in order to expand facilities for the Department of Homeland Security, and constructing a 90,000-square-foot ballroom that is likely going to cost taxpayers $1 billion (against his initial promises that it wouldn’t cost more than $200 million, and that it would be entirely funded by private donations).

Meanwhile, the cost of oil and gas is through the roof due to the ongoing war with Iran, which is costing the U.S. roughly $1 billion per day, according to initial estimates by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The average cost of gas nationwide is $4.54 per gallon, with large swaths of the country pushing $5 a gallon, according to the AAA’s price tracker. That’s about 50 percent higher than prices were before the war started. In some areas of California, such as Mono County, fuel costs are well above $7 per gallon.

Analysts have predicted that the high prices are probably here to stay, at least through the end of 2026, as the war in Iran drags on. Last month, Energy Secretary Chris Wright posited that costs could climb even steeper before midterms.

Iran war hawks are furious at the peace deal President Trump says is on the table. 

Commentators across the conservative spectrum expressed their distaste for reports of a one-page plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and enforce a temporary 30-day peace agreement until a larger deal is reached. 

“This would be a terrible deal. I hope the terms of any deal would be significantly stricter: No enrichment, ever. HEU to us stat. No more proxies. Turn on the internet,” said Hugh Hewitt, the conservative commentator who called the disastrous invasion of Iraq “one of the wisest” decisions made by former President George W. Bush. “President Trump never gives up leverage. Why would he start now with #Iran on the ropes?”

“If this regime remains in place, they will do all they can to continue moving forward with their agenda, funding terrorism, developing nukes and ballistic missiles,” Zionist Organization of America head Morton Klein told The Hill. “And if they’re so desperate for a deal, as President Trump keeps saying, why are we in a position to dictate to them what the deal has to be? I really don’t understand this.”

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board felt similarly. 

“It will be essential for Mr. Trump to hold firm, knowing that Iran has no need for domestic enrichment other than for a bomb, and that he can’t count on a change in regime behavior over time, a mistake Mr. Obama made,” they wrote on Wednesday. “He also can’t trust a future President to reimpose strict limits later. Mr. Trump has been unique in his willingness to confront Iran. The task in any deal is to secure full nuclear dismantlement while Mr. Trump is still in office. If Iran won’t do it, the President will have to make good on his threats.”

“If the Axios report is close to accurate, the Iranian regime will survive, the Iranian people will face even more extensive brutality, and the Israeli government could fall in the October election.  A disastrous result,” pro-Israel neoconservative and Fox News host Mark Levin wrote on Wednesday, making no mention of the death and displacement that this U.S.-Israeli war has already brought to thousands of Iranian and Lebanese civilians. “I also know that future presidents will not take military action to enforce an agreement, based on our past history and internal opposition, which will only grow worse given the evolving nature of the Democrat Party and the influences of the Marxists-Islamists.” 

While this supposed peace deal could certainly be another bluff to settle the markets, it’s also wholly possible that Trump has realized—as prices soar, civilians die, and Iran comes no closer to surrendering—that this war was a grave mistake. Yet this cadre of conservative voices would rather see even more violence than any kind of peace. 

President Trump threatened to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran if it didn’t sign an agreement with the United States.

While speaking to the press outside of the White House on Thursday, Trump was asked if the ceasefire was still on despite the recent exchange of fire in the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. and Iran traded attacks, with Iran reportedly attacking three U.S. warships with missiles, drones, and small boats, and the U.S. bombing an Iranian oil tanker and other targets in the coastal areas of Bandar Khamir, Sirik, and Qeshm Island. Trump said the ceasefire is still in place, but then went on a disturbing tack.

“They trifled with us today, we blew ’em away. They trifled, I call that a trifle. I’ll let you when there’s no cease—you won’t have to know. If there’s no ceasefire, you’re not gonna have to know, you’re just gonna have to look at one big glow coming out of Iran. And they better sign their agreement fast,” Trump said.

Trump then said that peace talks were going “very well, but they’re going to have to understand, if it doesn’t get signed, they’re gonna have a lot of pain. They’re gonna have a lot of pain. They want to sign it, I will tell you. They want to sign it a lot more than I do.”

Does “one big glow” refer to a nuclear bomb? It would have to refer to a massive bombing campaign, at the very least. Fox News reports that the U.S. struck several empty Iranian oil tankers Friday, suggesting that Trump is hoping bombs will coerce Iran into ending its closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump could be alluding to using nukes, or just talking big to try and intimidate Iran’s leadership. So far, though, Trump has not made any visible progress on ending the war, and the world economy continues to suffer as a result, with fuel prices staying high. Nuking Iran would only make things catastrophically worse.

The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday overturned its state’s redistricting referendum, stalling Democratic efforts to gain more seats in the House.

Four justices on the seven-seat court bench voted in favor of overturning the high-stakes legislative effort, while three justices voted against doing so. The justices ruled that the Virginia legislature’s Democratic majority did not follow proper procedure in approving the referendum to redraw the commonwealth’s congressional maps before sending it to voters and, in doing so, “placed the cart before the horse.”

Voters narrowly passed the referendum last month. Roughly 50.3 percent of the state voted in favor, giving their representatives a chance to squeeze more Democratic seats in the U.S. House before midterms. The referendum passed despite a 2020 state policy that relegated redistricting to 10-year intervals aligned with the national census.

The new maps were expected to alter the state’s congressional split to overwhelmingly favor Democrats, switching from 6–5 to 10–1.

The president, in turn, was thrilled.

“Huge win for the Republican Party, and America, in Virginia,” Donald Trump posted to Truth Social shortly after the news broke. “The Virginia Supreme Court has just struck down the Democrats’ horrible gerrymander.”

The decision comes two days after FBI agents raided the business office of L. Louise Lucas of Portsmouth, a senior leader in the Virginia Senate who played a key role in the redistricting effort. Sources that spoke with The New York Times claimed that the search was related to an investigation that began under former President Joe Biden, examining potential corruption tied to Lucas’s businesses.

Friday’s ruling effectively puts an end to the most watched redistricting effort in the nation, though it’s not the only attempted redrawing that has kneecapped Democratic hopes to gain more seats in Congress. In neighboring Tennessee, lawmakers approved a new map Thursday that will give Republicans all nine seats in the House, squeezing out the state’s last Democratic district and carving up the only majority-Black congressional district in the Big Bend State.

This story has been updated.