Good morning,
Welcome to MS NOW’s Sunday Spotlight, where you can find a selection of the week’s most interesting and important stories.
The Supreme Court empowered racial gerrymandering with a decision that is already reverberating. Meanwhile, the president may soon regret calling himself a king: His most recent authoritarian move backfired badly, and he is due for a reality check — or three — on the war with Iran. Plus, a noted conspiracy theorist is off the air, for now.
Don’t forget to check out more top columns and videos from the week below.
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Drawing a line: The Supreme Court’s decision to gut Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act has reopened the door to the kind of racial gerrymandering common in the Jim Crow era, argues Stacey Abrams, former minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives. Section 2, which made it illegal to draw district lines in order to break up racial minority groups, was “one of the last meaningful tools marginalized communities had to challenge maps designed to erase their political existence,” Abrams writes. Already, Louisiana and Mississippi have taken steps to redraw their lines in response, and more will come ahead of the midterms. Read more.
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Heavy lies the head: For more than 200 years, the worst insult for a U.S. president was that he considered himself a king. But this week, as King Charles III visited, the White House wasted no time posting a photo of Trump and the British sovereign with the caption “Two kings.” The president may regret crowning himself, however, since when one person makes all the decisions, that person also takes all the blame, argues Hayes Brown. Trump is already paying the price for wresting power from Congress and singlehandedly levying tariffs and launching a war with Iran, two decisions that haven’t played well with the public. His royal aspirations, in the meantime, aren’t being received any better. Read more.
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Federal reservations: Trump tried everything to strong-arm Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell into reducing interest rates, with the Department of Justice even launching a bogus criminal investigation, which has since been dropped, argues Zeeshan Aleem. But Powell announced Wednesday that he would stay on the central bank’s board as a governor, breaking with a tradition for the past 75 years of chairs voluntarily leaving once their time at the helm expires. In his remarks, Powell said he was staying on because of Trump’s investigation, another example of Trump’s authoritarian tactics backfiring. Read more.
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Reality bites: There is a persistent myth among some Americans that Trump is “playing 4D chess,” strategically outmaneuvering his opponents. That myth will soon come crashing down on the subject of Iran, where the president is due for three major reality checks, argues political science professor Nicholas Grossman. First, economic disruption is locked in and growing daily. Second, there’s barely a peace process. And third, events are now mostly out of the president’s control. The crisis will only grow over the coming months, making it increasingly hard to ignore. Read more.
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Off air: After almost three decades of spreading the country’s most outlandish and harmful conspiracy theories while raking in millions of dollars, the Infowars website has gone dark. Host Alex Jones lost control of the site after a yearslong court battle with the families of children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School that left him with more than $1 billion in defamation judgments, writes Brandy Zadrozny. Satirical news site The Onion has plans to turn the brand and property into a website of comedic stories and videos that play on Jones’ conspiracy theorizing and grift. Read more.
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The Trump administration is reportedly looking to shrink supplementary Social Security Income payments for disabled adults who live with their families. The report has already raised a lot of concern about how it might play out, but “the confusion is a feature, not a bug,” argues David M. Perry, a journalist whose son is autistic and has Down syndrome. “You’re not supposed to know what you or your loved ones qualify for,” he writes. “Otherwise, you might get what you are actually owed.” The cuts are being done through changes to administrative rules, a tactic politicians have long used to shrink the safety net without admitting they are cutting benefits. Read the column here.
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This week on “The Best People,” Nicolle Wallace is joined by New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill to discuss the quiet benefits of being underestimated, how states are looking to expand their powers and what battles to choose with President Trump. Listen now, and subscribe to MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content.
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This week on “Clock It,” Symone Sanders Townsend and Eugene Daniels discuss the Voting Rights Act, James Comey’s indictment, gerrymandering and more. Plus, they unpack the chaotic moments at last weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner with their MS NOW colleagues Jen Psaki and Ali Vitali, who were also in attendance. Listen now, and subscribe to MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts for ad-free listening and bonus content.
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