The Supreme Court on Tuesday handed Alabama Republicans a significant victory in the state’s ongoing battle over congressional redistricting, allowing Alabama to use a map that eliminates one of its two majority-minority congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. In a 6-3 emergency order, the Court granted Alabama’s request to implement the map adopted by the Republican-controlled legislature in 2023, reversing a lower court ruling that had blocked its use. The decision clears the way for Alabama to conduct this year’s elections under a map more favorable to Republicans and puts Rep. Shomari Figures’ (D-AL) seat in jeopardy for Democrats. The ruling marks the latest development in a years-long legal fight over Alabama’s congressional boundaries and comes just months after the Supreme Court issued a separate decision involving Louisiana that narrowed the scope of challenges brought under the Voting Rights Act. The unsigned majority opinion suggested Alabama is likely to prevail in the broader litigation and criticized the lower court for intervening so close to the election calendar. “Here, the District Court interposed itself into Alabama’s ongoing efforts to conduct its imminent 2026 congressional elections under maps that its elected representatives selected,” the Court wrote. The decision drew a sharp dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was joined by fellow liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.   WATCH FROM TODAY’S EPISODE OF MORNING WIRE:      Sotomayor argued that the Court was permitting elections to proceed under a map that lower courts had determined intentionally discriminated against black voters. She accused the majority of creating election-year chaos and rewarding Alabama for repeatedly resisting court orders. The dispute traces back to Alabama’s original post-2020 Census congressional map, which contained only one majority-black district despite black residents making up roughly a quarter of the state’s population. In 2023, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision finding that the map likely violated the Voting Rights Act and required Alabama to create an additional district in which black voters could elect their preferred candidate. That court-drawn district helped elect Figures, a Democrat, in 2024. Following the Supreme Court’s Louisiana ruling in April, Alabama Republicans argued that states should receive greater deference when drawing districts based on political rather than racial considerations. State officials subsequently moved to revive the legislature’s preferred map, triggering the latest round of litigation. The ruling carries implications beyond Alabama. With Republicans holding only a narrow majority in the House of Representatives, both parties have increasingly turned to mid-decade redistricting as they prepare for the 2026 midterms. The Alabama decision gives Republicans an opportunity to reclaim a seat currently held by Democrats and may encourage similar redistricting efforts in other Southern states. The case also represents another chapter in the Supreme Court’s ongoing effort to redefine the relationship between race and redistricting. For decades, courts have grappled with competing demands from one side of the aisle that states avoid diluting minority voting power, while the other demanded avoiding unconstitutional race-based districting. Tuesday’s ruling signals that the Court’s conservative majority remains willing to give states greater latitude when pursuing political objectives through redistricting, even when those decisions affect minority representation. Alabama’s congressional primaries are scheduled for August 11.

The United States Coast Guard is returning to the Bahamas to search a new area for the body of missing Michigan mother Lynette Hooker as investigators continue probing her disappearance,  Fox News reports. The renewed search comes as Hooker’s husband, Brian, has stayed out of the spotlight since leaving the Bahamas, where he claims his wife fell off their dinghy nearly two months ago. The mysterious disappearance is now being investigated as a possible homicide, according to Fox News. The U.S. Coast Guard has described its efforts as a criminal investigation since the April 4 incident. The latest developments come as investigators continue to review evidence recovered from the couple’s sailboat, Soulmate, along with any digital evidence and location data. The U.S. Coast Guard Investigative Service (CGIS) seized the vessel roughly 40 nautical miles off the coast of Melbourne, Florida, on May 14. The seizure followed what authorities described as a complex surveillance and interdiction operation by the CGIS with help from the operational Coast Guard surface from Sector Miami and aviation assets from Air Station Miami. The Coast Guard’s latest search effort will focus on Marsh Harbour in the Bahamas. A dive team departing from Miami on Tuesday is expected to search a 25-foot-deep area in the Sea of Abaco. Brian Hooker claimed rough seas and strong currents swept his wife away before he could reach her. But members of Lynette Hooker’s family have expressed doubts about that account.   WATCH FROM TODAY’S EPISODE OF MORNING WIRE:      “There have been prior issues brought to my attention, which may be important for any thorough investigation. If this truly was an accident, I can understand and live with it,” Lynette’s daughter Karli Aylesworth told Fox News in April. “However, there needs to be an intensive review of the facts and circumstances of this tragic incident before that can be determined.” Just last week, Aylesworth told NBC News that she provided DNA to the Coast Guard to help investigators searching for her mother. Lynette Hooker’s mother, Darlene Hamlett, told NBC that authorities have not kept her up to date on the investigation. She also said she has not spoken with Brian Hooker, who previously vowed he would never stop searching for his wife of more than two decades. As the investigation continues, legal experts say the case could present challenges if Lynette Hooker’s body is never recovered. Julie Rendelman, a former federal prosecutor and current criminal defense attorney, told Fox News that so-called “no-body” homicide cases can be difficult to prosecute because investigators must prove a death occurred without recovering remains.

Two foreign nationals employed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) were charged Tuesday with smuggling monkeypox into the United States and lying to federal law enforcement.  According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan, Vincent Munster, 53, a Dutch citizen and chief of the Virus Ecology Section at the NIH’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana, and Claude Kwe, 38, a Cameroonian national and NIH research fellow, were charged with conspiracy to smuggle monkeypox into the United States from the Republic of Congo and giving false statements to federal investigators. Both men face a maximum sentence of five years in prison if convicted. The two men worked at a Biosafety Level 4 laboratory, the highest level of biological containment used to study the world’s most dangerous pathogens. Federal authorities claim the pair arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Airport on January 25 after traveling from Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, where a monkeypox outbreak was ongoing. Customs and Border Protection officers reportedly questioned the men after noticing they were transporting a large black plastic case. According to investigators, Munster and Kwe told officers the case contained diagnostic and testing equipment. Authorities later determined the case allegedly contained 113 biological vials packed inside Styrofoam coolers. Federal investigators said testing on 20 of the vials found that 17 contained deactivated monkeypox virus, one contained chickenpox virus, and two contained human DNA. “These NIH experts apparently broke our laws by smuggling viral pathogens on a packed commercial airplane from an outbreak in the Republic of Congo. Let that sink in,” U.S. Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon Jr. said in a statement. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, monkeypox is a viral disease that spreads primarily through close physical contact with infected people, animals, or contaminated materials. While most infected individuals recover, children, pregnant women, and people with weakened immune systems face a greater risk of severe illness. The CDC says the virus does not spread through casual contact or through the air in places like classrooms, offices, or pools. Outbreaks of monkeypox have been ongoing in Central and Eastern Africa since late 2023. The CDC says the global clade IIb monkeypox outbreak that began in 2022 has resulted in more than 100,000 cases across 122 countries. Since November 2024, the United States has recorded more than 20 laboratory-confirmed clade I monkeypox cases, according to the CDC. Officials say those infections involved travelers returning from affected regions in Africa or Europe, or individuals linked to recent travelers. FBI Detroit Special Agent in Charge Jennifer Runyan said the allegations were “serious” and involved “dangerous and unlawful smuggling” along with attempts to mislead federal agents. “No researchers should believe their positions, credentials, or professional status place them above the law,” Runyan added. The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General also condemned the alleged conduct, warning that attempts to conceal biological materials could place the public at risk. “We have zero tolerance for anyone who attempts to exploit our research frameworks, circumvent our border enforcement processes, or deceive investigators,” said CBP Director of Field Operations Marty C. Raybon.

Even before the meltdown inside CBS News, it’s been a banner seven weeks for the most egotistical profession in America: national reporters. Prior to this Ebola-level outbreak of Main Character Syndrome, these wannabe superheroes have reminded us of their importance between White House Correspondents Dinner shooting, the Pulitzer Prizes, the News Emmys, and the Peabodys. Like Emperor Palpatine in “Revenge of the Sith,” the elite media in New York and Washington, D.C., want you to know that they alone are the First Amendment. We, the people, are an afterthought. When Americans exercise their First Amendment rights and criticize the national press as “fake news” or even misleading, these theater kids act as though we’re threatening to murder them. At Sunday’s Peabody Awards, ABC host Jimmy Kimmel kvetched, “We have the right guaranteed by the Constitution to criticize and satirize our leaders. This is a right that many of us take for granted.” Whether it’s Kimmel, CNN’s Brian Stelter, or Jim Acosta, they seem to confuse a First Amendment right to a free and fair press with a God-given right to have a show and network that fits their worldview. Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss has not turned CBS News into a competitor to the Fox News Channel or Newsmax. But like the media reporting class penning funhouse mirrors interpretations of Fox News, there’s no time to analyze what CBS newscasts cover. Someone with “wrong” opinions has entered this leftist enclave and must be embarrassed. It sounds eerily similar to the anti-Semitism Weiss reportedly faced at the New York Times when she defended the placement of that infamous Tom Cotton op-ed. At 60 Minutes, the moral of Sharyn Alfonsi’s firing last week could be slimmed down to the fact that mouthing off to your bosses with an “I-Am-Spartacus” e-mail will seldom work out for you. Longtime CBS host and reporter Scott Pelley must have seen himself as Iron Man taking on Thanos, except the latter is former New York Times tech journalist and documentary filmmaker Nick Bilton, who was recently hired to man the stern of the 58-year-old show. In other words, Bilton won’t be gracing the pages of this site. But because he lacks TV news experience, he must be cast off as the staff he now oversees demands Americans open the floodgates for mass, Third World migration. Pelley sought to do that by declaring to Bilton’s face he had “slender qualifications for this job” and was hired by Weiss, who is “murdering” the show and had “no qualifications for her job.” The CBS mainstay even attacked Bilton for having the gall to show up at “our house,” even though “you would never be welcomed here.” And that invective is without Bilton even explaining what he’d do at the show. Unsurprisingly, Pelley’s lobs were reportedly met with numerous instances of applause. The insubordination is stunning. There’s one set of rules the news media impose on the country, and another set of rules for themselves, including how we speak to our superiors. Bill Owens — Pelley’s former longtime boss at 60 Minutes — accepted a highfalutin award called the Gabe Pressman Truth to Power Award from the New York Press Club last night and spoke of his former colleague as though he were the infamous man standing in front of the tanks at Tiananmen Square. Owens professed his admiration for Pelley, taking on Bilton and Weiss, “an opinion writer best known for being an ideologue.” “Scott can smell a fraud from a mile away. He stood up the way I did a year ago and I couldn’t be prouder of him,” he boasted. He added that shows like “60 Minutes” are “institutions, not places where partisans and ideologues should be employed.” That’s laughable. It’d be interesting to see whether Owens finds stories such as celebrating cops visiting homes in Germany over social media posts or asking Israelis held hostage by Hamas if their captors were suffering from starvation alongside them. And whether it was Steve Kroft’s years of pillow-talks with Barack Obama or Lesley Stahl decreeing the Hunter Biden laptop “can’t be verified,” the country’s leading newsmagazine has been a doormat for liberal narratives. The arrogance and belligerence of these D-List Captain Americas and Black Widows are not to be believed. Pelley and his fellow petulant children aren’t the only ones screaming for attention. Karen Attiah also wants you to feel bad for her. On Monday, she announced that her September 2025 firing from The Washington Post for justifying Charlie Kirk’s assassination would be going to arbitration on Thursday. Posting on — where else? — Substack, she said her message that day was merely “comment[ing] on America’s racial double standards in public discourse when it comes to political violence.” For that, she insisted, she “was fired…without so much as a conversation” and would be carrying into her hearing the “principle” of “newsroom diversity.” Fact-check: False. Her definition of “newsroom diversity” means being Joy Reid with a pen and a right to cockamamie claims, such as Queen Elizabeth II being the personification of “white Christian supremacy” or Trump’s 2016 defeat of Hillary Clinton being akin to “men stalking us on the street.” “I am fighting for journalists’ rights to do their jobs, to comment on matters of public concern without fear of censorship, retaliation, or political pressure. And this is a battle well worth having,” she beamed, later concluding with “the stakes are high, but I’m ready” and then “let’s go” in bold. Attiah even went as far as to pose outside The Washington Post’s K Street headquarters at night, illuminated in a blue dress while holding a rolled-up print edition and a fake red rose in her mouth. Joan of Arc, she is not. Never let elite, national reporters ever tell you they don’t want to or like being “the story.” It’s one of the biggest lies in America. They are the heroes of their own tall tales and the captains of their own souls. *** Curtis Houck is the managing editor of NewsBusters.

There will be thousands of guys and gals in cowboy hats across Nashville this week, but one man in particular will be on stage with a twang you can hear all the way from his hometown in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Legit bluegrass roots inspire his “real country music” sound — and lucky for the fans who haven’t heard him yet, Spencer Hatcher is just getting started. The 29-year-old first stepped on stage as a teenager in his family’s bluegrass band, playing what he calls the “rawest” form of music for anyone who would listen. WATCH FROM TODAY’S EPISODE OF MORNING WIRE: “The very first couple of shows, we were doing it for nothing … it was for probably 40 or 50 people at the retirement home not too far from my home,” Hatcher told The Daily Wire. It was no Broadway in Nashville — but for a guy from Broadway, Virginia, it was a way to get him in front of a crowd. “I remember just being mortified, like terrified up there. We were all sweating and forgetting the words,” he said. The retirement home didn’t care about the teen’s musical mishaps, but the small-town grind prepared Hatcher for his eventual solo career in Nashville — where he’s inked his first music deal and is now opening for big names including Zach Top, Hank Williams Jr., and Diamond Rio. Credit: Riker Bros He has two shows this week in Nashville as part of CMA Fest, the Music City’s premiere week-long celebration of country music, where the fans get to experience their favorite artists in intimate settings. It’s Hatcher’s second year being part of CMA Fest, and he’ll kick things off on Tuesday night at Riley Green’s Duck Blind. On Thursday night, he’ll take the stage at Chief’s on Broadway. “Last year was my first year, and it was incredible, but before that, I had not even attended CMA Fest,” Hatcher said. “I’m wildly excited. I believe it is the biggest week in all of Nashville as far as people coming, the attendance … it’s absurd for CMA Fest.” While people from all over come to Nashville to make music, Hatcher takes pride in keeping the old-fashioned country sound… and lifestyle. “Anybody can be ‘country,’ but you gotta go live ‘country,'” Hatcher said. In between managing his ever-growing tour schedule and follower count — he’s approaching 1 million social media followers and has already produced more than a million streams of his songs, including his latest hit “When She Calls Me Cowboy” — he still finds time to get outside where he feels most at ease. “Working out in a field or doing something productive that’s not necessarily like your business work is where I get a lot of peace,” Hatcher said. “If you’re like bush hogging a field or making hay or something in the evening — that to me is really peaceful.” The lifestyle he leads is clearly reflected in the songs he sings — and Hatcher says he’ll keep writing songs that bring back what he describes as “traditional country music” as he continues introducing music fans to his name, one concert at a time.