Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Rylan Barton.

The Supreme Court appears ready to gut a key part of the Voting Rights Act that helped root out racial discrimination.

Such a ruling would boost Republicans' chances in Congress.

The court heard arguments about Louisiana's congressional map today, as NPR's Nina Totenberg reports.

When the law was passed in 1965, there were just 12 minority house members.

Today, there are 134 black, Hispanic, and Asian-American house members.

That could change, however, if the court removes the guardrails to redistricting

that it endorsed as recently as two years ago. Indeed, if the conservative

majority either nullifies the redistricting provision of the law or makes it much more difficult to

enforce, Democrats could lose as many as 19 congressional seats, putting control of the House

effectively out of reach for the foreseeable future.

Nina Tottenberg, NPR News, Washington.

White House Budget Director Russell Vote told the Charlie Kirk podcast today that more than

10,000 federal workers could be fired during the shutdown.

Meanwhile, a federal judge has, for now, blocked the administration from laying off workers. NPR's

Stephen Fowler has more. Judge Susan Ilston of California said the Trump administration's

push to fire workers during the shutdown was hastily done and illegal. During a hearing, she said

efforts to lay off more than 4,000 federal workers and the subsequent reversal of some notices

was like, quote, ready quote ready fire aim so for now

those reductions in force and any future ones are on hold it's unclear for how long the white house

has painted the firings as financially necessary and a leverage point to get democratic lawmakers to

agree to a spending plan that reopens the government.

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