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Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson. And today is Thursday, October 16th, 2025.

This is USA Today's The Excert.

Today, taking a closer look at a Supreme Court case on redistricting.

Plus, Trump says he's considering strikes on land to combat Venezuelan drug cartels and how the shutdown is leaving many military families in limbo.

In one of its biggest cases of the year, the Supreme Court yesterday debated about

whether electoral districts can be created to protect the voting rights of minorities without

discriminating against voters of other races. I spoke with USA Today Supreme Court correspondent,

Maureen Gropi, for a closer look. Thanks for joining me, Maureen.

Hey, thanks for having me on. So what is that issue in this case and how was it brought to the High Court?

This case stems from my multi-year battle over Louisiana's congressional districts.

The state had to draw new boundaries after the last census to account

for population shifts in its six house districts. The map that they drew included only one district

where a majority of the voters were black, even though blacks make up about one-third of the state's

population. So a group of black voters sued under the Voting Rights Act. That's a civil rights

statute that was passed in 1965. And one of its provisions tries to prevent dilution of the

political power of racial minorities by either packing them into as few districts as possible or

what's called cracking or spreading them out among so many districts that their votes have less impact.

The state was told by the courts that the congressional map with just one majority black

district probably violated that law. But when the state then created a new map with two majority

black districts, non-black voters sued saying it discriminated against them. The Supreme Court

...