| The Supreme Court will hear a case that could potentially gut the Voting Rights Act of 1965; violence in Ethiopia's Tigray region escalates. Tonight's Sentences was written by Gabby Birenbaum. | | | | | | | SCOTUS considers voting rights | | | | | Jonathan Ernst/Getty Images | | - The Supreme Court will hear arguments today over two Arizona laws that would make voting more difficult, a landmark case that could potentially gut the remainder of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. [NPR / Nina Totenberg]
- The Arizona laws restrict provisional and early voting, and a lower court found that they disproportionately burden Black, Hispanic, and Native American voters — whom the Voting Rights Act is designed to protect. The Supreme Court's decision will therefore determine whether race-based voter discrimination is allowed or protected against. [Reuters / Andrew Chung and Lawrence Hurley]
- The laws reflect a growing push among Republican state legislators to restrict voting access based on former President Trump's false claims of fraud — specifically voting in the wrong precinct, in the case of one of these laws, which Trump has referred to as "ballot harvesting." [USA Today / John Fritze]
- The case gives the Court, which currently has a 6-3 conservative majority, another opportunity to look at the Voting Rights Act. When it was last considered in 2013, the Court decided in a 5-4 ruling that a powerful provision of the VRA, which required states with a history of racial discrimination to receive federal approval for new election rules, was unconstitutional. [HuffPost / Nick Visser]
- The Court is theoretically ruling on the legality of Arizona's laws, but the justices have wide latitude to issue an opinion on the provisions of the VRA itself. The timing of the decision will also be critical, as states and their ruling parties will soon draw up redistricting plans. [Washington Post / Robert Barnes]
- Eleven Republican senators filed a brief asking the Supreme Court to strike down Section 2 of the VRA, which prohibits voting laws that discriminate against minority groups, altogether. The Court could go so far as to do that, or it could just uphold the Arizona laws without further weakening the VRA. [Mother Jones / Ari Berman]
- The makeup of the Court gives reason for pessimism. Chief Justice John Roberts is the most moderate conservative, but he was the one who authored the 2013 decision and wrote dozens of memos in the 1980s opposing expansions of the VRA. [Vox / Ian Millhiser]
- On the bright side for voting rights advocates, Republicans' argument in court today might have gone too far for even the conservative justices, who pushed back on the lawyers' proposed standard for voting restrictions. The lawyers' standard would essentially permit any outlandish voting restriction so long as the discrimination it permits was not created by the state. [Vox / Ian Millhiser]
- The Supreme Court is expected to issue a verdict this summer. [Time / Madeleine Carlisle and Sanya Mansoor]
| | | Violence escalates in Tigray | | - The deadly conflict in Ethiopia's Tigray region has drawn international attention after the area's ousted leader said both the Ethiopian government and its Eritrean allies have committed genocide against the people of Tigray. [CNN / Barbara Arvanitidis, Nima Elbagir, and Eliza Mackintosh]
- Tigrayans have experienced brutal violence in a shadowy conflict in which media access has been limited. Thousands of people are believed to have been killed, with hundreds of thousands displaced and accounts of rapes and murders perpetrated by Eritrean soldiers. [Al Jazeera]
- Ethiopian officials and their Eritrean allies — previously rivals — are perpetrating ethnic cleansing against the people of Tigray on behalf of Ethiopian President Abiy Ahmed, per an internal US government report obtained by the New York Times. The violence comes after Abiy launched an unexpected military attack on the region in November over conflicts with the region's ruling party, which had previously ruled the country for nearly three decades. [NYT / Declan Walsh]
- The US has called the situation a "humanitarian crisis" and urged the African Union to take stronger action. Ethiopia and Eritrea, which have denied reports of their soldiers' participation in killings, said the situation is the Ethiopian government's responsibility. [Reuters / Phil Stewart]
- Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for the immediate withdrawal of Eritrean troops from the region, and said USAID will send disaster assistance to Tigray. [AP / Andrew Meldrum]
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