1A

Last November, Calvin Duncan won an election to serve as the chief records keeper for the criminal courts of the parish that covers New Orleans.

He received 68 percent of the vote, beating out a powerful incumbent. He has some personal experience with Louisiana courts. He was incarcerated for a murder conviction for 28 years. He studied criminal law to advocate for himself, and a judge eventually found him innocent. He was freed in 2011.

But now, the Louisiana state legislature has moved to eliminate his position. State officials voted to combine his office with another in a move that state senators said was meant to save money. Duncan is taking legal action and a lawsuit over his role is now making its way through the courts. This situation is part of a larger trend across the nation where state legislatures are more and more often undoing decisions made by local officials.

“State preemption” describes steps a state government can take to tell a local city or town council it can’t do something. Legislators in states like Florida, Missouri, California, West Virginia, Michigan, and Louisiana have been using it to influence events and regulations in their communities.

What’s leading to more frequent, and public, fights between state legislatures and local governments? And what could defuse these fights?

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Power is at the center of Americans’ lives. It lets us cool our homes, keeps them lit, and charges our electronics.

But the more things we plug into our aging power grid, the more strained it becomes. And electricity use in the U.S. is rising for the first time in more than a decade.

What happens when our grid can’t keep up? We sit down with a panel of experts to find out.

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Last week, in a six-to-three ruling along ideological lines, the Supreme Court dealt a major blow to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

That’s the landmark Civil Rights era law designed to prevent racial discrimination in an election. The law was passed to unravel Jim Crow era policies that limited or blocked Black Americans’ access to the ballot.

The decision in Louisiana v. Callais struck down Louisiana’s congressional map as an “unconstitutional gerrymander.”

But the ruling goes further. It effectively rewrites the rules for how the Voting Rights Act can be used to challenge discriminatory maps, making it much harder to do so going forward. It’s the latest in a string of rulings making the last all but moot.

We tackle the race to redistrict across America and we talk about how this hugely consequential ruling changes an election season already in full swing.

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The Supreme Court this week struck down a voting map in Louisiana that created a second majority-Black district, ruling it an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. In doing so, the majority also struck an enormous blow to the landmark Voting Rights Act, and fueled GOP redistricting efforts before the midterms.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth headed to Congress, where things got testy as lawmakers grilled him over the war with Iran. Pentagon officials put a price tag on the conflict so far: $25 billion. And gas prices hit a four year high, with a national average of $4.30 a gallon.

Federal prosecutors formally charged the alleged gunman at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner with attempting to assassinate the president. He will remain in custody despite an appeal for a pre-trial release.

We cover the most important stories from around the country in the domestic hour of the News Roundup.

And, in global news, the United States and Iran extend their dueling blockades in the Strait of Hormuz as President Trump rejects the Islamic Republic’s proposal to reopen the critical waterway.

Israel ramps up attacks on southern Lebanon, while claiming it did not break a temporary U-S brokered ceasefire.

And uncertainty over the global oil supply causes markets to spike once again, the same week energy companies report massive profits.

We cover the most important stories from around the world in the News Roundup.

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American farmers are being squeezed. Tariffs are raising the cost of equipment and services. And now the war in Iran is driving up the cost of fertilizer and fuel.

And the Farm bill — the sweeping, traditionally bipartisan legislation that shapes everything from crop insurance to food aid – hasn’t been reauthorized since 2018.

Next week, the House will try again.

What’s in the bill and why the coalition that supported it for years seems to be falling apart.

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