From New York, this is Democracy Now.

Today, the far-right Supreme Court has dealt a devastating blow to our democracy and to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

It will pave the way for the greatest reduction in representation for black and minority voters since the years following Reconstruction.

The U.S. Supreme Court guts a key part of the Voting Rights Act in a move that could help

Republicans redraw congressional maps before the midterms.

We'll speak with longtime civil rights attorney Maya Wiley, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human

Rights. Then the Iran War is another reason to quit oil. We speak to climate activist and author

Bill McKibben. The world's getting off oil, lickety split. That's the main effect of the war in Iran.

The U.S. not so much.

So we're at one of these truly crucial junctures in this climate energy story.

And we speak to the Lebanese-born academic, Gilbert Ashkar, on the wars in Iran and Lebanon,

and President Trump's embrace of gunboat diplomacy.

All that and more coming up.

Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report.

I'm Amy Goodman.

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday, Louisiana must redraw a congressional map that was designed to create a second majority black district in the state where African Americans have long faced racial segregation and barriers to voting.

The decision effectively guts Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the last remaining major provision

of the landmark 1965 law that was a crowning achievement of the civil rights movement.

In a six to three decision along partisan lines, a majority of the justices ruled Louisiana's

map relied too heavily on race and unfairly favored black voters over white voters.

In a dissent signed by justices Sonia Sotomayor and Katanji Brown Jackson, Justice Elena Kagan writes, quote,

The Voting Rights Act is, or now more accurately, was one of the most consequential, efficacious,

...