On his way back from India to the United States, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio paid a brief but significant visit to Armenia. This unexpected gesture from Washington raises a legitimate question: what is behind such keen interest in Yerevan? Zvartnots – A Platform for Signing New Agreements Information about the upcoming visit of […]

The US Supreme Court late Tuesday gave Alabama a green light to use an aggressively gerrymandered congressional map that a lower court said was “tainted by intentional race-based discrimination.”

The unsigned decision, from which the high court’s three liberal justices dissented, enables Alabama’s Republican-dominated government to replace its current congressional map, which has two majority-Black districts, with a map that the US Supreme Court struck down in 2023. That map has just one majority-Black district.

In her dissenting opinion, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that “just as Alabama doubled down on racial discrimination, the court today doubles down on chaos.”

“In addition to being wrong on the merits, the court’s decision inflicts two grave harms on the public,” wrote Sotomayor. “It debases the democratic process by upending Alabama’s entire election in the name of permitting Alabama to discriminate against Black Alabamians. It also corrodes the rule of law by rewarding Alabama’s gamesmanship and outright defiance of court orders.”

The liberal justice noted that in order to switch to the map previously struck down by the high court, Alabama election officials “will have to reassign hundreds of thousands of voters across the state to new congressional districts.”

“Three of Alabama’s counties will be particularly hard hit because they are split across two congressional districts,” Sotomayor noted. “These counties have about 600,000 registered voters between them (roughly 15% of the state’s total number of registered voters).”

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, postponed US House primary elections in the wake of the Supreme Court’s April decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which severely narrowed the 1965 Voting Rights Act’s protections against racial discrimination and paved the way for Alabama and other states to impose new maps ahead of the 2026 midterms.

“The Supreme Court’s shameful ruling allowing Alabama to move forward with a gerrymander that was drawn with the explicit intent to dilute Black voting power—as found by a panel of judges that included two Trump appointees—is an absolute affront to the founding principles of our democracy, and wipes out whatever was left of the court’s credibility,” said Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation. “This country deserves better, and we must continue to work toward federal legislation that not only bans partisan and racial gerrymandering but also ensures that our rights cannot be undermined by captured courts.”

The ruling drew condemnation from the two Democrats in Alabama’s US congressional delegation. Rep. Shomari Figures, who was elected to the US House under the independently drawn map that Alabama Republicans are working to replace, said in a statement that “the Supreme Court has now confirmed that there is no longer a Voting Rights Act in America, and states are essentially free to discriminate against minority voters with no consequences.”

“This is a dangerous ruling that sets the state and this nation back decades,” said Figures.

Rep. Terri Sewell called the ruling “just the latest in a pattern of outrageous Supreme Court decisions that help Republicans desperately cling to power ahead of the midterm elections while diluting Black voices and erasing decades of hard-fought civil rights progress.”

“No matter how hard Alabama state officials may try, they will not succeed in silencing our voices,” said Sewell. “We will not go back to the Jim Crow era. The fight for fair representation continues.”

On 13–14 May, the Republic of Korea saw the registration of candidates for the local and by-elections to the National Assembly scheduled for 3 June come to an end. These elections will be the first nationwide vote since the administration of President Lee Jae Myung came to power and are regarded by experts as an important […]

A judge in Delaware—a state with more registered business entities than people—ruled Monday in favor of a small town that allows corporations to vote in local elections.

Delaware Superior Court Judge Craig Karsnitz ruled that the town of Fenwick Island, population 400, did not violate the state Constitution by permitting business entities—which make up 12% of the town’s “population”—to vote in municipal elections, as case plaintiff the ACLU of Delaware had claimed.

“What is a ‘person?’ When one cuts to the heart of this case, that is the question,” Karsnitz wrote to open his 20-page ruling.

‼️‼️Delaware Superior Court upholds a municipal ordinance allowing individuals to cast votes on behalf of LLCs, trusts, and corporations in local elections against a challenge that the ordinance constitutes unlawful vote dilution for real persons under the state constitution. aboutblaw.com/blQg

— Anthony Michael Kreis (@anthonymkreis.bsky.social) 2026-05-27T20:46:10.133Z

“According to the law, a person is anyone or anything that can initiate and be subject to legal proceedings. By this conception, any adult, corporation, or institution is a person, but a minor is not a person, a fetus is not a person, and a humanoid robot… is not a person,” the ruling continues. “This highlights that legal personhood is dependent solely on legal recognition.”

The judge noted that in 2008, the Delaware General Assembly amended Fenwick Island’s charter “to expand its voter registration rolls to allow individuals to cast votes on behalf of trusts, limited liability companies, partnerships, and corporations that own property in Fenwick.”

“Today, the overwhelming majority of legal entity property owners in Fenwick registered to vote, and on whose behalf votes are cast, are trusts,” Karsnitz added.

“I appreciate that Plaintiff may disagree with Delaware’s policy of authorizing certain municipalities to allow voting on behalf of entity property owners,” the judge wrote.

“Visions of faceless large corporations, or even HAL, controlling a small town are frightening and the stuff of science fiction,” he continued,“ referring to the malevolent artificial intelligence-powered computer in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film version of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. ”However, Plaintiff has not demonstrated that this policy violates the principle of one person/entity/one vote.“

“Plaintiff points to no other persuasive independent authority than the Elections Clause of the Delaware Constitution itself,” Karsnitz concluded. “And matters of policy are appropriately left to legislative bodies, not the courts.”

Fenwick Island Mayor Natalie Magdeburger told Reuters earlier this year that “a property owner who pays taxes and is subject to our ordinances should have a say in who represents them on our Town Council.”

Meanwhile, the ACLU of Delaware contends that “with over 2 million business entities incorporated in Delaware–roughly double the amount of actual people living in the state–the people of Delaware risk having their voices drowned out when towns like Fenwick Island allow corporate voting.”

Karsnitz’s ruling does not mention Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the 2010 US Supreme Court decision affirming that political spending by corporations, nonprofit organizations, labor unions, and other groups is a form of free speech protected by the 1st Amendment that government cannot restrict. The decision ushered in the era of super PACs—which can raise unlimited amounts of money to spend on campaigns—and secret spending on elections with so-called “dark money.”

While Delaware’s corporate personhood laws long predate Citizens United, numerous critics of Monday’s ruling referred to the case, including the progressive legal advocacy group Demand Justice.

A Delaware state judge just ruled that corporations can vote in local elections.

Over 200 "artificial entities" (LLCs, trusts, corporations) are now registered voters in Fenwick Island. That's 12% of the electorate.

Delaware has more corporations chartered in the state than… pic.twitter.com/YJ5EZ1F1en

— Demand Justice (@WeDemandJustice) May 27, 2026

“Corporations aren’t people,” the group asserted on X. “They don’t have kids in local schools, they don’t drink the water, they can’t be jailed for crimes, and they shouldn’t get a vote.”

Some compared Hawaii, where Democratic Gov. Josh Green recently signed legislation clarifying that corporations are not people, with Delaware.

“Hawaii made a move to rein in Citizens United,” writer Van Dennis posted on X, “and Delaware responded, ”The fuck you are.“

The financialization of the American electoral process is well documented. Now two key progressive legislators are proposing a new law to do something about it. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Democratic Rep. Summer Lee (PA-12) introduced the Abolish Super PACs Act on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. It’s a measure they say will eliminate one the primary ways billionaires funnel cash into elections: super PACs. The bill would limit donations to super PACs to $5,000 for both individuals and corporations.

“Today, the average American gets one vote. Billionaires, however, through their super PACs, can spend unlimited amounts of money to elect the candidates of their choice and to defeat candidates who stand up for working families or a just foreign policy,” Sanders said. 

The measure is necessary, Lee said, to save a democratic process that is under strain from unlimited sums of money poured into elections by billionaires and corporations. 

“Our bill would ensure that millionaires, billionaires, corporations, corporate interests, special interests would no longer be able to get around the guardrails, the limitations that everyday individuals like you and I have,” Lee said. 

A super PAC, or political action committee, is an entity that can currently raise unlimited donations from individuals, corporations, and unions. It can spend that money to independently support or oppose candidates, including through advertising and other election-related expenditures. 

Candidates cannot formally coordinate with a super PAC. But that limitation is often skirted, leaving the wealthiest Americans with disproportionate influence over electoral outcomes.

Both Sanders and Lee pointed to the fallout from the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. FEC decision in 2010 as a key motivator to overhaul current election laws sooner rather than later. Since the controversial ruling opened the door for unlimited outside spending on elections, corporations and billionaires have turned to super PACs to unleash a barrage of spending. 

“I don’t want people to think this is just another issue. It is a more important issue,” Sanders said at the press conference announcing the bill. 

“We are the only major country on earth not to guarantee healthcare. Why is that? You think it may have something to do with the power of the pharmaceutical industry and insurance companies who spend millions of dollars making sure we don’t move to a Medicare for All system?”

“This is an issue that touches on every single issue facing working people in this country,” said Sanders.

Billionaire Elon Musk used his America PAC to pour roughly $288 million into Trump’s and other Republlicans 2024 presidential campaign. 

The Abolish Super PACs Act comes as a smaller and wealthier group of donors fund a growing proportion of campaign spending. The New York Times reported that just 300 billionaires and their families accounted for 19% of all federal campaign spending in the US in 2024, much of it funneled through Super PACs. Before the Citizens United ruling, contributions from billionaires made up only 0.3%.

“It corrupts, it discourages, I call it functionally disenfranchising the political process from every aspect, from every angle,” Lee said.

Republican state leaders are forging ahead with President Donald Trump’s campaign to rig congressional districts for the GOP, with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Wednesday signing a proclamation for a special legislative session and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster expected to make a similar announcement soon.

While GOP policymakers facing pressure from Trump have pursued mid-decade redistricting in several states ahead of the November midterm elections—in which Democrats aim to reclaim majorities in both chambers of Congress—Kemp’s proclamation explicitly states that any changes in Georgia would be for 2028, which is the next presidential cycle.

Kemp’s proclamation cites the US Supreme Court’s decision last month that a Louisiana map predating Trump’s redistricting push was “an unconstitutional racial gerrymander,” which gutted the remnants of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965.

In a statement condemning the proclamation, Common Cause Georgia director Rosario Palacios pointed to the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a key figure in the movement that led to the VRA as well as the Civil Rights Act the previous year.

“We will not sit back and watch while Gov. Kemp takes orders from a felon-in-chief to turn Dr. King’s dream into a nightmare. Too many civil rights leaders have done work in our state for us [to] take this sitting down,” Palacios declared. “Common Cause is mobilizing thousands of people to stop state lawmakers from passing any new maps before 2030 that destroy Black voters’ power for political gain. Voters should not have to rely on lawsuits to protect their right to fair representation. Congress must end this abuse once and for all so every voter can cast a ballot in free and fair elections, no matter their political party.”

US Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), who is up for reelection in 2028, similarly ripped the Georgia redistricting effort on social media Wednesday: “There is an extreme movement in this country that will stop at nothing to hold on to power, even if it means stripping representation away from millions. I will fight this with everything I have.”

Republicans in various states have moved to “shamelessly capitalize” on the April ruling from the high court’s right-wing supermajority. On Monday, as the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Alabama GOP to rescind the creation of its second Black-majority district, Memphis voters sued over a new map targeting Tennessee‘s only majority-Black congressional district.

The Congresswoman who represents Selma, Alabama, @RepTerriSewell Alabama’s AG has said he wants maps that turn all of Alabama red. https://t.co/SKtZUs0qgd

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) May 13, 2026

On Tuesday, as the Missouri Supreme Court declined to strike down a new congressional map that state voters are working to challenge with a referendum, five Republican South Carolina senators joined Democrats in blocking a GOP effort to advance Trump’s gerrymandering campaign in their state.

However, The Post and Courier’s Nick Reynolds reported Wednesday that South Carolina Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey (R-25) believes the governor “will call legislators back into a special session amid the redistricting fight.”

Also reporting on the anticipated move Wednesday, Politico’s Andrew Howard and Alec Hernandez noted that “McMaster’s plan—confirmed by four people familiar with the decision, who were granted anonymity to share private details—is a reversal of his position earlier this month and follows pressure” from the president and his allies.

A redistricting push in South Carolina is expected to target the seat held by Democratic Congressman Jim Clyburn—who last month warned that the Supreme Court ruling on Louisiana’s map and the VRA “threatens to send our country deeper into the thicket of never-ending redistricting fights, with repeated aggressive map redraws, protracted legal battles, and relentless partisan tugs-of-war, all of which are destined to result in more regressive court decisions.”