Now that Section 5 is gone, Alaska is free to redistrict subject to the 15th Amendment and intent prong of Section 2.  There is no chance that Alaska is compelled to draw a majority minority district. I’ve looked at the maps and Gingles One cannot be satisfied easily.

Link.

Fox News:

Cutter attempted to dismiss charges they were political meetings but
admitted she had attended meetings with Shulman at the White House. “I
was in them with him,” Cutter said. “So there was nothing nefarious
going on.”

What possible appropriate reason could there be for such a meeting?

National Review link.

For anyone other than a “social justice” demagogue, the Supreme Court’s Shelby decision, striking down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), is cause for celebration. In real life, this is a success story: A society that overcomes ingrained, systematic racial discrimination — and does it during a 40-year span while, in parts of the world the Left somehow prefers to America, discrimination endures and becomes even more lethal. But the Left does not live in a real nation; it lives in a false narrative: The United States is the villain that can never be redeemed, and racism is not just its original but its indelible sin.

 Washington Post:

“Another former Justice Department lawyer told me that what the left ‘is in hysterics about’ is that if Congress doesn’t come up with an acceptable new criteria for Section 4 under the Voting Rights Act (and thereby reactivates Section 5 of the act) plaintiffs can no longer rely on highly politicized voting rights attorneys in the Justice Department  ‘who can shake states down behind closed doors and with no Freedom of Information Act records or public accountability.’ He explained: ‘In other words, they are going to have to actually prove their cases before a federal judge.’ They have to make their case in court. The horror of it!

If you think the Justice hasn’t abused its authority under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act consider the case involving former Alabama state attorney general Bill Pryor. Section 5 lawyers in 2001 demanded Pryor stop enforcing a state law that required DNA samples from prisoners as a condition for parole and for potential restoration of voting rights thereafter.”

So much for the strategy that a bailout blitz would save Section 5 coverage.  The majority didn’t even mention it in passing, demonstrating the weight afforded the strategy. 

The headline out of Alabama lays it out:

The court pointed to voter registration numbers from 1965
and 2004 in the six original states, including Alabama, that Congress had when
it reauthorized the act in 2006. In Alabama, for instance, whites were
registered at 69.2 percent while African-Americans were at 19.3 percent,
showing a nearly 50 percent gap. By 2004, the levels were almost even with
whites at 73.8 percent and African-Americans at 72.9 percent.

From Breitbart:

Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell—a black American who
grew up before VRA was passed and dealt with voting-rights issues
regularly as Cincinnati mayor and in his other public offices—said of
today’s decision: “The Chicken Little’s of this country who claim the
sky is falling are doing us all a grave disservice.”

“All the Supreme Court did today is it held that all 50 states are
equal; it’s common sense that voters in Texas and voters in my state of
Ohio are equal,” Blackwell explained. “Congress says that there are
still areas of the country with serious voting issues. What the Court
said today is that the data proves those areas are not the same as they
were in 1972 when Congress last revised this formula.” 

“The Court is telling Congress that you can still require certain
states to get preclearance from the federal government, you just need to
develop a method that shows what those states are,” he concluded.

Why would a lawyer advise Hanover County to pay time and treasure to obtain a bailout when Shelby was about to be decided – unless that lawyer had an agenda. 

Alas, the lawyer involved is the ethically challenged Gerry Hebert.  Let’s find out if the supervisors realize that they were pawns in a bigger game and could have saved some money.

Senate Republicans lay down a marker - new Section 4 unlikely.