New York Yankees pitcher Domingo German threw the 24th perfect game in major league history Wednesday night as the Yankees defeated the Oakland Athletics 11-0. 

The 30-year-old Dominican needed 99 pitches to complete the outing in which no Oakland player reached base. 

The perfect game was the first in the major leagues since 2012 when Seattle Mariners pitcher Félix Hernández completed the feat. 

Three other Yankees had thrown perfect games, the last in 1999. 

“So exciting,” German said through a translator. “When you think about something very unique in baseball, not many people have an opportunity to pitch a perfect game. To accomplish something like this in my career is something that I’m going to remember forever.” 

Before Wednesday, German had never thrown a complete game during his six seasons in the major leagues and only twice had completed more than seven innings in a start. 

German served a 10-game suspension in May for violating the league’s policy on the use of grip-enhancing substances. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters 
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PORTLAND, MAINE — The U.S. Coast Guard says it has likely recovered human remains from the wreckage of the Titan submersible and is bringing the evidence back to the United States.

The submersible imploded last week, killing all five people on board. The vessel was on a voyage to see the wreckage of the Titanic.

The Titan debris returned to port in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, on Wednesday is a key piece of the investigation into why the submersible imploded. Twisted chunks of the 22-foot submersible were unloaded at a Canadian Coast Guard pier.

The U.S. Coast Guard said late Wednesday that it had recovered debris and evidence from the sea floor, and that included what it described as presumed human remains.

“I am grateful for the coordinated international and interagency support to recover and preserve this vital evidence at extreme offshore distances and depths,” U.S. Coast Guard Chief Captain Jason Neubauer said in a statement. “The evidence will provide investigators from several international jurisdictions with critical insights into the cause of this tragedy. There is still a substantial amount of work to be done to understand the factors that led to the catastrophic loss of the Titan and help ensure a similar tragedy does not occur again.”

The Canadian ship Horizon Arctic carried a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, to search the ocean floor near the Titanic wreckage for pieces of the submersible. Pelagic Research Services, a company with offices in Massachusetts and New York that owns the ROV, said Wednesday that it had completed offshore operations.

Pelagic Research Services’ team is “still on mission” and cannot comment on the Titan investigation, which involves several government agencies in the U.S. and Canada, said Jeff Mahoney, a spokesperson for the company.

“They have been working around the clock now for 10 days, through the physical and mental challenges of this operation, and are anxious to finish the mission and return to their loved ones,” Mahoney said.

Debris from the Titan was located about 3,810 meters underwater and roughly 488 meters from the Titanic on the ocean floor, the Coast Guard said last week.

Five fatalities

Officials announced on June 22 that the submersible had imploded, and all five people on board were dead.

The victims were OceanGate CEO and pilot Stockton Rush; two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman Dawood; British adventurer Hamish Harding; and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

The Coast Guard is leading the investigation into why the submersible imploded during its June 18 descent. It has convened a Marine Board of Investigation into the implosion — the highest level of investigation conducted by the Coast Guard.

One of the experts the Coast Guard consulted with during the search said analyzing the physical material of recovered debris could reveal important clues about what happened to the Titan. And there could be electronic data, said Carl Hartsfield of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

“Certainly, all the instruments on any deep-sea vehicle, they record data. They pass up data. So, the question is, is there any data available? And I really don’t know the answer to that question,” he said Monday.

Representatives for Horizon Arctic did not respond to requests for comment.

Representatives for the National Transportation Safety Board and Transportation Safety Board of Canada, which are both involved in the investigation, also declined to comment. The National Transportation Safety Board has said the Coast Guard has declared the loss of the Titan submersible to be a “major marine casualty” and the Coast Guard will lead the investigation.

A spokesperson for the International Maritime Organization, the U.N.’s maritime agency, has said any investigative reports from the disaster would be submitted for review. Member states of the IMO can also propose changes such as stronger regulations of submersibles.

Currently, the IMO has voluntary safety guidelines for tourist submersibles, which include requirements they be inspected, have emergency response plans and have a certified pilot on board, among other requirements. Any safety proposals would not likely be considered by the IMO until its next Maritime Safety Committee which begins in May 2024.

OceanGate Expeditions, the company that owned and operated the Titan, is based in the U.S., but the submersible was registered in the Bahamas. The OceanGate company in Everett, Washington, closed when the Titan was found. The Titan’s mother ship, the Polar Prince, was from Canada.

The operator charged passengers $250,000 each to participate in the voyage.

The implosion of the Titan has raised questions about the safety of private undersea exploration operations. The Coast Guard also wants to use the investigation to improve the safety of submersibles.
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STATE DEPARTMENT – The United States has to find a way to “coexist peacefully” with China amid intense competition, said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday, noting that Washington is not economically “decoupling” from Beijing and that bilateral trade last year hit a record high.

“China is not going away. We are not going away,” Blinken told a New York audience during an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations. “We have to find a way to coexist and coexist peacefully.”

Days after Blinken concluded his meetings in Beijing with senior Chinese officials, he said the U.S. relationship with China is “a long-term competition” without a “clear finish line.”

As the United States is considering measures to limit the flow of U.S. money and technology to China because of national security concerns, the top U.S. diplomat said, “we want to make sure that in that competition, we’re in a position of strength” and “able to shape what comes next.”

Yellen’s China visit

Blinken’s remarks came ahead of U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s expected trip to Beijing in the coming weeks. He highlighted the fact that bilateral trade between the two countries continues to expand despite tensions over issues such as advanced semiconductors and Beijing’s persecution of Uyghurs.

“Our trade with China last year reached the highest level ever. We had more foreign direct investment going to China last year than any year since 2014,” said Blinken, adding U.S. export controls and sanctions on Chinese entities affect only a very small fraction of companies operating in China.

Yellen has warned of the economic downside of decoupling with China and called for a deepening economic relationship between the world’s two largest economies.

But U.S. officials are also facing tough questions from critics who want the Biden administration to take a harder position on China.

This week, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley a 2024 Republican presidential hopeful, called for Washington to revoke China’s permanent normal trade relations status until the Beijing government helps eradicate the flow of chemicals used to create fentanyl.

In an event hosted by the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute on Tuesday, Haley said she would push American companies to leave China.

“China is much more than just a mere competitor. Communist China is an enemy. It is the most dangerous foreign threat we’ve faced since the Second World War,” she said.

Taiwan provocations

In Beijing last week, Blinken said the U.S. is concerned with China’s military provocations in the Taiwan Strait as Taiwan, a self-ruled democracy, plans to hold a presidential election in 2024.

Blinken also reiterated to China that the U.S. remains opposed to any unilateral changes to the status quo, expects the peaceful resolution of cross-strait differences, and does not support Taiwan independence.

On Wednesday, Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, asked Blinken why Washington can’t communicate to China with greater certainty that “we are there for Taiwan if they [China] use coercion.”

“I think it’s evident not only in what we’re saying, but also in what we’re doing, that we are there for Taiwan,” Blinken responded. “Under the Taiwan Relations Act, we’ve had a long-standing policy of making sure that we could do what’s necessary to help Taiwan defend itself.”

Blinken added that China’s “deployment of forces, the exercises, the missile tests” since 2016, “economic coercion exerted against Taiwan,” and its efforts to “pry Taiwan out of the international system” are “antithetical to the preservation of the status quo.”

The People’s Republic of China claims sovereignty over Taiwan. The U.S. “acknowledges” but does not “endorse” the PRC’s position.

The State Department has said the U.S. does not take a position on Taiwan’s sovereignty under Washington’s “One China” policy.

Some information for this report came from Reuters. VOA’s Mandarin Service contributed to this report.
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that no new nuclear agreement was on the table with Iran, after quiet new diplomacy between the adversaries.

“There is no agreement in the offing, even as we continue to be willing to explore diplomatic paths,” Blinken said at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

“We’ll see by their actions,” Blinken said of the future relationship, calling on Iran to choose to “not take actions that further escalate the tensions” with the United States and in the Middle East.

President Joe Biden took office with hopes of returning to a 2015 nuclear accord with Iran that was scrapped by his predecessor, Donald Trump. But EU-mediated talks collapsed and mass protests in Iran made Washington increasingly hesitant to strike a deal with the clerical state.

Diplomats, however, say indirect talks have quietly resumed in recent months with Oman as an intermediary, with the focus largely on the status of U.S. prisoners in Iran.

The talks on restoring the 2015 nuclear accord broke down over disputes on the extent of relief from sweeping U.S. sanctions imposed by Trump and over when Iran would return to compliance by pulling back from countermeasures taken in response to the U.S. withdrawal from the deal.  

Blinken said the Biden administration had made a “good-faith effort” with European powers as well as rivals China and Russia to return and that for a time “that looked possible.”

“Iran either couldn’t or wouldn’t do what was necessary to get back into compliance,” he said.

Elsewhere in the region, Blinken has served as a go-between for Israel and Saudi Arabia, both of which have uneasy relations with the United States, as they explore establishing relations.  

“Both Saudi Arabia and Israel of course are interested in the prospect of normalization,” said Blinken, who traveled to Saudi Arabia earlier in June.

“It is incredibly challenging, hard, not something that can happen overnight, but it’s also a real prospect and one that we’re working on,” he said.  

Israel in 2020 normalized relations with three Arab states — the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco — in what both Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu see as a crowning achievement.  

For Netanyahu, Saudi recognition would be an ultimate coup because of the country’s size and influence in the Arab world and its status as the guardian of Islam’s holiest sites. The Saudis have called for progress on the rights of the Palestinians.

Blinken on Tuesday spoke to Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen to make a new call for de-escalation in the West Bank and to voice concern over recent unrest, which has included violence against Palestinian-Americans.  

“We’ve told our friends and allies in Israel that if there’s a fire burning in their backyard, it’s going to be a lot tougher if not impossible to actually both deepen the existing agreements, as well as to expand them to include potentially Saudi Arabia,” Blinken said.
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Politicians from the Five Eyes alliance are meeting in the New Zealand capital, Wellington, where migration and security are top of the agenda. The grouping includes the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The Five Eyes alliance is an intelligence-sharing accord among five English-speaking democracies. British Home Secretary Suella Braverman is among those attending meetings in Wellington, New Zealand. 

War and China likely on agenda

The war in Ukraine and China’s growing assertiveness are expected to be discussed at the five-country ministerial talks Wednesday in Wellington. Also on the agenda in the New Zealand capital are cyber security, child sex abuse, and foreign espionage at universities. Delegates are also expected to discuss migration and labor mobility schemes between alliance countries. 

Anne-Marie Brady is a professor in the department of Political Science and International Relations at New Zealand’s University of Canterbury. 

She told VOA Wednesday that the Five Eyes alliance has an important part to play in maintaining global security. 

“Because the rules based international order is under such threat by the behavior of Russia and China and the way they misuse their positions in international organizations such as the (U.N.) Security Council, that is leading to increasing prominence of groupings of interested states,” said Brady. “That relationship of the five countries in Five Eyes is very important and relevant in a very challenging international environment.”   

Alliance formed after war

The Five Eyes alliance began between the United States and Britain in the aftermath of the Second World War. Over the next decade, it was expanded to include Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It has had a reputation for secrecy. 

Earlier this year, it blamed China for recent cyber-attacks targeting “critical infrastructure” in the U.S. Beijing responded by accusing the English-speaking alliance of spreading disinformation.   

New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has been in China this week on an official visit. Tuesday, he met Chinese President Xi Jinping. Both leaders acknowledged the importance of the bilateral relationship.  They discussed trade, international relations and the war in Ukraine.   

Hipkins said in a statement that his country’s “relationship with China is one of our most significant and wide-ranging.” 

New Zealand’s exports to China are worth more than $12.8 billion, or a quarter of the country’s total export earnings, according to government data.  
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Actor Julian Sands, who starred in several Oscar-nominated films in the late 1980s and ’90s including “A Room with a View” and “Leaving Las Vegas,” was found dead on a Southern California mountain five months after he disappeared while hiking, authorities said Tuesday.

An investigation confirmed that it was Sands whose remains hikers found Saturday in wilderness near Mount Baldy, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said. The 65-year-old actor was an avid and experienced hiker who lived in Los Angeles and was reported missing January 13 after setting out on the peak that rises more than 3,048 meters east of the city. Crews aided by drones and helicopters had searched for him several times but were severely hampered by wintry conditions that lasted through spring. No sign of him was found until the civilian hikers came upon him.

The chances of Sands being discovered alive had long since diminished to nearly nothing, but the Sheriff’s Department, which conducted an official search the day before he was found, emphasized that the case remained active.

An autopsy has been conducted, but further test results are needed before the cause of death can be determined, authorities said.

Sands, who was born, raised and began acting in England, worked constantly in film and television, amassing more than 150 credits in a 40-year career. During a 10-year span from 1985 to 1995, he played major roles in a series of acclaimed films.

After studying at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, Sands embarked on a career in stage and film, playing small parts in films including “Oxford Blues” and “The Killing Fields.” He landed the starring role of George Emerson, who falls in love with Helena Bonham Carter’s Lucy Honeychurch while on holiday in Tuscany in the 1985 British romance, “A Room with a View.”

The film from director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant won the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award for best film, and was nominated for eight Oscars, winning three.

In the wake of its success, Sands moved to the United States to pursue a career in Hollywood.

He played the title role in the 1989 horror fantasy “Warlock” and its sequel. In the 1990 horror comedy “Arachnophobia,” with Jeff Daniels and John Goodman, Sands played an entomologist specializing in spiders.

The following year he appeared in director David Cronenberg’s surreal adaptation of the William Burroughs novel “Naked Lunch” in 1991. In 1993, Sands starred in the thriller “Boxing Helena.”

In 1995’s “Leaving Las Vegas,” Sands played an abusive Latvian pimp alongside Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue. The film was nominated for four Oscars, with Cage winning best actor.

Sands touted his love of the outdoors in a 2020 interview with the Guardian, saying he was happiest when “close to a mountain summit on a glorious cold morning” and that his biggest dream was scaling “a remote peak in the high Himalayas, such as Makalu.”

The actor said in the interview that in the early 1990s, he was caught in an “atrocious” storm in the Andes and was lucky to survive when three others near his party didn’t.

After “Leaving Las Vegas,” the quality of the films Sands was cast in, and the size of his roles, began declining. He worked steadily, appearing in director Wim Wenders’ “The Million Dollar Hotel” and director Dario Argento’s “The Phantom of the Opera.”

Sands was born in Yorkshire, the middle child of five brothers raised by a single mother. He had three children of his own.

He had been married since 1990 to journalist Evgenia Citkowitz, with whom he had two adult daughters, Imogen Morley Sands and Natalya Morley Sands. His eldest child was son Henry Sands, whom he had with his first wife, journalist Sarah Harvey.

A few days before he was found, Sands’ family issued a statement saying, “We continue to hold Julian in our hearts with bright memories of him as a wonderful father, husband, explorer, lover of the natural world and the arts, and as an original and collaborative performer.”
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The United States will this week announce actions to hold the Russian mercenary Wagner Group accountable, the U.S. State Department spokesperson said on Tuesday, for its activities in Africa and unrelated to its aborted mutiny in Russia.

Spokesperson Matt Miller did not detail at a daily press briefing what the planned U.S. action would be.

“These are actions that we are taking against Wagner not in relation to events that happened this weekend but for their prior activities,” Miller said, adding that those involved countries in Africa.

A clash between Moscow and Wagner was averted on Saturday after the heavily armed mercenaries withdrew from the southern Russian city of Rostov under a deal that halted their advance on the capital.

Russian President Vladimir Putin initially vowed to crush the mutiny, which was the biggest blow to his authority in 23 years, comparing it to the wartime turmoil that ushered in the revolution of 1917 and then a civil war, but hours later a deal was clinched to allow Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and some of his fighters to go to Belarus.

Prigozhin “is in Belarus today,” Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko was quoted as saying by state news agency BELTA on Tuesday.

The Wagner militia forces have played an increasingly central role in the long-running internal conflicts of Mali and Central African Republic.

It has also been fighting in Ukraine following the Russian army’s invasion of its neighbor 16 months ago.
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A new for-profit entity will oversee the commercial interests of the proposed merger between the U.S. and European men’s professional golf leagues and their Saudi-backed rival.   

The entity is part of the framework agreement between the PGA Tour and DP World Tour and LIV Golf signed on May 30 and announced on June 6.  The PGA Tour will control the entity, while Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the financial backer of LIV Golf, will invest in a subsidiary that will boost the joint venture’s financial situation “through targeted mergers and acquisitions to globalize the sport.” 

The agreement also ended all lawsuits the PGA Tour and LIV Golf filed against each other during their bitter yearlong feud.   

The agreement was signed after several months of secret negotiations between PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, DP World chief executive Keith Pelley, and PIV governor Yasir al-Rumayyan.  

Monahan was denounced as a hypocrite after criticizing several high-profile PGA Tour members who defected to the higher-paying LIV Golf. 

The deal intensified accusations that Saudi Arabia is investing in professional golf and other global sports as a means of glossing over its poor human rights record — especially the brutal 2018 murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a group of Saudi agents allegedly sent by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. 

The framework was part of several documents handed over to U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, who has convened a hearing on July 11 about the agreement.   

The proposed merger is also under scrutiny by the U.S. Justice Department into whether it violates federal antitrust laws.   

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.  
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Scorching temperatures brought on by a “heat dome” have taxed the Texas power grid and threaten to bring record highs to the state before they are expected to expand to other parts of the U.S. during the coming week, putting even more people at risk. 

“Going forward, that heat is going to expand … north to Kansas City and the entire state of Oklahoma, into the Mississippi Valley … to the far western Florida Panhandle and parts of western Alabama,” while remaining over Texas, said Bob Oravec, lead forecaster with the National Weather Service. 

Record high temperatures around 43 degrees Celsius (110 degrees Fahrenheit) were forecast in parts of western Texas on Monday, and relief is not expected before the Fourth of July holiday, Oravec said. 

Cori Iadonisi, of Dallas, summed up the weather simply: “It’s just too hot here.” 

Iadonisi, 40, said she often urges local friends to visit her native Washington state to beat the heat in the summer. 

“You can’t go outside,” Iadonisi said of the hot months in Texas. “You can’t go for a walk.” 

What is a heat dome? 

A heat dome occurs when stationary high pressure with warm air combines with warmer than usual air in the Gulf of Mexico and heat from the sun that is nearly directly overhead, Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said. 

“By the time we get into the middle of summer, it’s hard to get the hot air aloft,” said Nielsen-Gammon, a professor at Texas A&M’s College of Atmospheric Sciences. “If it’s going to happen, this is the time of year it will.” 

Nielsen-Gammon said July and August don’t have as much sunlight because the sun is retreating from the summer solstice, which was Wednesday. 

“One thing that is a little unusual about this heat wave is we had a fairly wet April and May, and usually that extra moisture serves as an air conditioner,” Nielsen-Gammon said. “But the air aloft is so hot that it wasn’t able to prevent the heat wave from occurring and, in fact, added a bit to the humidity.” 

High heat continues this week after it prompted Texas’ power grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, to ask residents last week to voluntarily cut back on power usage because of anticipated record demand on the system. 

The National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS) reports more than 46 million people from west Texas and southeastern New Mexico to the western Florida Panhandle are currently under heat alerts. The NIHHIS is a joint project of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

The heat comes after Sunday storms that killed three people and left more than 100,000 customers without electricity in both Arkansas and Tennessee and tens of thousands powerless in Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana, according to poweroutage.us. 

Earlier this month, the most populous county in Oregon filed a $1.5 billion lawsuit against more than a dozen large fossil fuel companies to recover costs related to extreme weather events linked to climate change, including a deadly 2021 heat dome. 

Multnomah County, home to Portland and known for typically mild weather, alleges the combined carbon pollution the companies emitted was substantial in causing and exacerbating record-breaking temperatures in the Pacific Northwest that killed 69 people in that county. 

An attorney for Chevron Corp., Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., said in a statement that the lawsuit makes “novel, baseless claims.” 

What are the health threats? 

Extreme heat can be particularly dangerous to vulnerable populations such as children and the elderly, and outdoor workers need extra support. 

Symptoms of heat illness can include heavy sweating, nausea, dizziness and fainting. Some strategies to stay cool include drinking chilled fluids, applying a cloth soaked with cold water onto your skin, and spending time in air-conditioned environments. 

Cecilia Sorensen, a physician and associate professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University Medical Center, said heat-related conditions are becoming a growing public health concern because of the warming climate. 

“There’s huge issues going on in Texas right now around energy insecurity and the compounding climate crises we’re seeing,” Sorensen said. “This is also one of those examples where, if you are wealthy enough to be able to afford an air conditioner, you’re going to be safer, which is a huge climate health equity issue.” 

In Texas, the average daily high temperatures have increased by 2.4 degrees — 0.8 degrees per decade — since 1993, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, amid concerns over human-caused climate change resulting in rising temperatures.
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Black voters in the U.S. state of Alabama may have a bigger role in 2024 elections following a Supreme Court ruling that a Republican-drawn congressional map violated their rights to fair representation.

“The old congressional maps were undeniably unfair,” explained Collins Pettaway, a Black voter in Selma, Alabama, a city famous for its role in the fight for civil rights. 

“Every voter has a right to have their voice heard, and up until this decision by the Supreme Court, Black Alabamans didn’t have that,” he told VOA. “The old maps made us feel like our votes didn’t matter, but now we have a real chance to empower Black voters and increase our representation in the state.”

Each U.S. state is broken into congressional districts of relatively equal population size. Densely populated areas have smaller districts. Sparsely populated areas have larger districts. Based on changing demographics in census results each decade, states are required to consider redrawing districts to ensure that voters are represented fairly.

Critics of the Alabama map say the redistricting process has been unfair. For decades, only one of the state’s seven seats in the U.S. House of Representatives was in a district in which a majority of voters were Black. This even though more than 26% of Alabama’s voters are African American.

“It has made it nearly impossible for Black leaders to be elected to represent their communities, creating an even more prominent and intentional barrier to diversifying Alabama’s political leadership,” said DeJuana Thompson, president and CEO of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

“A participatory government is only possible when those making the laws, enforcing the laws, and subject to the laws have equity. We’re a little closer to that now and it’s going to ensure a more engaged and motivated electoral process. This ruling is a great thing for Alabama.” 

Surprise or expected?

For a Supreme Court with a conservative majority, the decision was largely unexpected, especially given recent rulings more aligned with priorities of the Republican Party.

“I was very surprised by the Court’s decision,” Jay Williams, a consultant for several top Republican politicians told VOA. “The Supreme Court has trended rightward on this issue, and I thought that would continue.

“Unfortunately, I think this decision is going to cause some real harm,” he continued. “It perpetuates a false notion that southern states are inherently racist in their decision making. It’s patently false and incredibly pretentious to promote this viewpoint.”

Past decision making in southern states led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which ended many barriers to African American voters including poll taxes and literacy tests. New hurdles quickly took their place.

Cracking, then packing

“Southern states with a history of disenfranchising Black voters responded by drawing congressional districts in irregular shapes that managed to spread concentrations of urban Black voters across several different districts,” explains University of Georgia political scientist Charles Bullock.

“The result was that none of the districts were majority Black,” he added, “making it nearly impossible for voters of color to elect Black leaders.

This was known as “cracking” the Black vote.

The Supreme Court sought to stop that practice with its 1986 unanimous decision in the Thornburg v. Gingles ruling that states must add a majority-minority district if the minority population is sufficiently large and compact enough for a new district, if the minority population is sufficiently cohesive to vote as a bloc, and if the dissipated minority bloc’s political preference is frequently defeated by a bloc of majority voters.

The result was new majority-minority districts across the country, including one in Alabama.

“Now that ‘cracking’ was no longer possible, they switched to ‘packing,’” Bullock told VOA. “In other words, Republican-led legislatures would draw districts, again in irregular shapes, so that all of the Black voters were ‘packed’ into one district. That’s where we are today. They concede one district, but they make the minority vote negligible in all the others.”

Beyond Alabama

This month’s decision found cause for a second majority-minority Congressional district in Alabama to provide fair representation for Black residents there. Lawmakers in Montgomery now have until July 21 to redraw the congressional map to meet this requirement. As with many Supreme Court decisions, the impact stretches beyond any one state.

“Lawsuits have already been filed in Louisiana and Georgia, and I expect the same will soon happen in Texas, Florida, potentially New York, and maybe elsewhere,” Bullock said. “Some states, like the Carolinas, might not meet the requirements, but I think you could see enough seats change in 2024 to flip the House of Representatives to Democratic control if all else remains equal.”
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A 23-year-old was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty on Monday to murder and other crimes in a 2022 shooting that killed five people at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs.

Anderson Lee Aldrich pleaded guilty to five first-degree murder counts and 46 attempted murder counts, part of an agreement reached with prosecutors that avoids what could have been a lengthy trial. Aldrich also pleaded no contest to two counts of bias-motivated crimes.

On Nov. 19, 2022, Aldrich, wearing body armor, opened fire at Club Q, an LGBTQ nightclub. Apart from those killed, nearly two dozen others were wounded by gunfire or otherwise injured before being stopped by “heroic” patrons. Aldrich, then 22, was charged with 323 criminal counts.

During the sentencing hearing immediately following the plea, family members of the victims and survivors of the shooting spoke tearfully about their loved ones and expressed fury at Aldrich for the attack.

“I will never get the chance to marry the love of my life,” said Kassandra Fierro, whose boyfriend, Raymond Green Vance, was among the dead. “I will never get to start a family with Raymond. I will never get to see, hear or feel Raymond ever again.”

Others, noting that Club Q had long been a “safe space” for LGBTQ residents, said the shooting had shattered their tight-knit community.

The shooting at Club Q was reminiscent of a massacre in 2016 when a gunman killed 49 people at the gay Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, before he was shot dead by police.

Colorado no longer has a death-penalty statute. However, Aldrich could face a death sentence in federal court if prosecutors decide to bring charges under the U.S. code, which still has capital punishment on its books for certain crimes.

Aldrich was formally charged last Dec. 6 and did not enter a plea at the time.

Those killed in the shooting were identified as Daniel Aston, 28; Kelly Loving, 40; Derrick Rump, 38; Ashley Paugh, 34; and Vance, 22.

Aldrich was known to law enforcement, having been arrested in June 2021. Aldrich’s mother had reported that Aldrich had threatened to detonate a bomb and harm her with multiple weapons, according to a press release from the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office. Aldrich’s mother declined to testify for the prosecution, and the case was dismissed.
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