Transcript
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Live from NPR News, I'm Dale Willman. The Supreme Court this week ruled that Louisiana's voting map is unconstitutional, and that ruling is weak in protections for minority voting power. Leslie Burl McLemore is an emeritus professor at Jackson University and was a student civil rights leader in the early 1960s. He says the country wasn't a real democracy until 1965, and now it seems to be moving in the wrong direction again.
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Of course, progress has been made throughout the country, but racism is still very alive and well. As one of my college roommates used to say in the American south, now white some whites will smile at your face and stab you in the back. So it is not as blatant as it was when I was growing up in Mississippi. But clearly we have a problem in this country.
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Louisiana officials suspended congressional races this week after that Supreme Court ruling. As Aubrey Juhas of member station WWNO reports, candidates and voters are now challenging that decision.
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Multiple lawsuits have been filed in federal and state courts. Plaintiffs argue Louisiana's governor doesn't have the authority to cancel elections and challenge the move on procedural grounds. Absentee ballots have already been distributed and in some cases returned. In a statement, Louisiana's attorney general said the state had to suspend House races after the Supreme Court ruled its current map an unconstitutional gerrymander. And a lower court told the state this week it can't use the map for any election. The governor's executive order asks the legislature to approve a new map quickly so House primaries can be held in time for the November election. Early voting starts Saturday. For NPR News, I'm Aubrey Yuhas in New Orleans.
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More than 2,600 people from 150 countries were supposed to travel to Zambia this week for RightsCon to talk about human rights and technology. But now that's been canceled. And as NPR's Emily Fang reports, conference organizers say it's because of pressure from Chinese officials.
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Last week, China and Zambia signed a new economic development agreement. And two days later, even though conference organizers say that they'd received a public endorsement from the Zambian government, things changed. A Zambian government official told organizers that Chinese diplomats were objecting to the attendance of people from Taiwan, the island China one day wants to control. And this week, Zambia canceled the event. China's Embassy in Washington, D.C. did not respond to a request for comment. Earlier last month, Taiwan's president canceled travel to Africa after several countries he needed to fly through revoked Taiwan's use of their airspace and a decision Taiwan blamed on Chinese pressure. Emily Fang, NPR News.