Uber adds hotel booking in push to become 'everything app'

(The Center Square) – An announcement from Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Tuesday about a manufacturing expansion in Lenawee County quickly drew a response from the Trump administration over who deserves credit for the growth.

Whitmer said the Michigan Strategic Fund Board approved support for Adrian Steel Co. to expand its operations in Adrian, a project totaling $43.4 million in capital investment and expected to bring 40 jobs to the Southeast Michigan community.

“Michigan is on the move and open for business, competing for and winning big projects in industries like steel manufacturing,” Whitmer said in a statement. “Today’s announcement will create 40 good-paying jobs and cement Michigan as the best place to build the future.”

The White House issued a response on Tuesday to the announcement, targeting Democrats and crediting President Donald Trump’s economic policies for manufacturing gains.

“Democrats like Gretchen Whitmer spent decades talking about fixing broken trade deals and creating manufacturing jobs here in America for American workers,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement. “President Trump is actually delivering – and he’s delivering with the same agenda of tariffs, deregulation, and tax cuts that Whitmer and Democrats have spent months criticizing.”

The project includes a 112,000-square-feet addition to the company’s existing facility, aimed at increasing production capacity and supporting operations such as welding, assembly and shipping. The expansion is expected to take the next five years.

Local leaders praised the expansion, citing its impact on the regional economy and workforce.

“The City of Adrian recognizes Adrian Steel Company as a valued and longstanding community partner,” said Lisa Hewitt-Cruz, community development director for the City of Adrian. “For generations, Adrian has invested in our community, provided quality employment opportunities for our residents, and contributed to the economic strength and stability of our city.”

The investment marks Adrian Steel’s largest in Michigan since 1953, according to the governor’s office, and adds to ongoing efforts by state officials to grow the manufacturing sector.

The project is being supported by a $320,000 performance-based, taxpayer-funded grant through the Michigan Business Development Program, along with additional tax incentives. Republican state lawmakers have voiced support for the project and its subsidies, calling it a boost for Michigan’s manufacturing base.

“This is great news for our entire state,” said State Sen. Joseph Bellino, R-Monroe. “This project will create good-paying jobs for Michigan workers and bring a huge return on investment for state taxpayers.”

(The Center Square) – An internet trade group filed a lawsuit against Minnesota on Wednesday morning, challenging a new law requiring websites to display warnings about social media use.

NetChoice argues in NetChoice v. Ellison that this law is a government attack on free speech and has asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota to declare the requirement unlawful.

Paul Taske, co-director of the NetChoice Litigation Center, spoke with The Center Square in an exclusive interview regarding the lawsuit.

“At its core, Minnesota’s law is an obvious First Amendment violation,” Taske said. “The law forces social media websites to parrot the government’s views about the alleged harms caused by social media use.”

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, targets a provision of House File 2 set to take effect July 1.

According to the lawsuit, the law would require a broad range of platforms to display a “state-authored warning” to every user “every single time they access the site,” regardless of age.

“Websites would have to adopt the message as their own and display it to all users—minors and adults—any time the user visits the site,” Taske told The Center Square.

Advocates for the legislation say these mental health warning labels are important to protect Minnesotans.

“I think the evidence is very clear that social media use is linked with depression, anxiety, loneliness, self harm, suicidal ideation, eating disorders, all sorts of terrible mental health conditions,” said Rep. Zack Stephenson, DFL-Coon Rapids and one of the sponsors of the bill, last July.

But NetChoice argues that, despite lawmakers citing mental health concerns, the U.S. Constitution limits how the state can respond to those concerns.

“The Act compels regulated websites and applications to speak the State’s message,” the lawsuit states, adding that it bars platforms from including “extraneous information” that could detract from the warning’s visibility.

Taske said that creates two major constitutional problems.

“First, it forces websites to carry the government’s message,” he said. “Second, websites have no clear guidance about what specific message—or how many of Minnesota’s many options—they must display.”

NetChoice’s lawsuit follows a similar challenge the group brought in Colorado, where, as previously reported by The Center Square, a federal court granted a preliminary injunction blocking a law requiring social media warnings for minors.

Taske explained that Minnesota’s law is even broader and more restrictive than that Colorado law.

“Colorado’s law applied to minors. Minnesota’s applies to everyone,” he said. “If Colorado’s narrower law was unconstitutional, Minnesota’s certainly is.”

He also argued the law selectively targets certain platforms.

“Minnesota carved out TV networks and gaming platforms, yet targets places like YouTube and X because that is where free speech thrives today,” Taske said. “This isn’t about protecting Minnesotans; it’s about silencing speech the government doesn't like.”

Supporters of warning label laws argue they are a necessary public health measure, particularly for young users.

Kids Code Coalition argues social media warning labels are “a critical step toward protecting the health and safety of young people online,” comparing them to labels on tobacco and alcohol that inform consumers of potential risks.

The group pointed to a 2023 advisory from U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy warning that social media poses a “profound risk of harm” to the mental health of children and adolescents, and his subsequent call for Congress to require warning labels on platforms.

Taske, however, rejected the comparison to traditional product warnings – often seen on tobacco or alcohol products.

“States cannot do by ‘warning label’ what they can’t do by outright ban,” he said. “If the government has a view, it must speak for itself.”

He said the stakes go beyond social media.

“The First Amendment isn’t just for the speech that everyone agrees with,” Taske said. “It’s for the unpopular speaker, publisher, and website. Otherwise, the government could label anything it dislikes as ‘harmful’ and force you to adopt its talking point.”

NetChoice is asking the court to block the law before it takes effect in July.

“For us, the ideal outcome is both to stop the law from taking effect and to develop strong case law reinforcing the core First Amendment principle that the government cannot coerce private entities into serving as its preferred mouthpieces,” Taske said. “Social media may be a popular target for regulation, but the very fact that their speech is currently disfavored makes the First Amendment issues even more important.”

(The Center Square) – Federal courts overstepped when they required the state to draw a second majority-Black congressional district, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in a high-stakes Louisiana redistricting dispute.

State Attorney General Liz Murrill called the ruling a “seismic decision,” saying it reaffirms equal protection principles and ends years of what she described as federal overreach.

“The Supreme Court has finally vindicated our original position,” Murrill said in a statement, adding that the case cost the state years of litigation and millions of dollars.

In Louisiana v. Callais, the justices rendered a 6-3 decision stating the lower courts went too far in directing Louisiana to rely on race in crafting its congressional map, emphasizing the Constitution limits when race can be used in redistricting.

The decision marks a significant clarification of how Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 can be applied. Writing for the majority, the court said race-based line drawing is permissible only in narrow circumstances, particularly where there is clear evidence of intentional discrimination that must be remedied.

After the ruling, first-term Republican Secretary of State Nancy Landry referred to the case as "active litigation."

"My lawyers are currently analyzing the opinion," she wrote on social media. "We are limited in what we can say at this time as this continues to be active litigation with the case remanded for proceeding back to the Western District."

Murrill, a Republican also in her first term, said the lengthy proceedings have been a nightmare "of federal courts coercing the state to draw a racially discriminatory map."

"That was always unconstitutional," she said, "and this is a seismic decision reaffirming equal protection under our nation’s laws.

“I vigorously defended our first map and said then that the only way to draw a second majority-minority district was to expressly take race into account. We raised our objections at that time to racial gerrymandering, but the District Court and the 5th Circuit directed us to draw the map anyway."

The dispute began after Louisiana adopted a congressional map with one majority-Black district following the 2020 census. Civil rights groups challenged the plan, saying it diluted Black voting strength in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

A federal District Court, later backed by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ordered the state to draw a second majority-Black district. State officials complied continuing to appeal, saying creation of a second such district would require unconstitutional racial gerrymandering.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court agreed that courts must apply strict scrutiny when race predominates in redistricting and cautioned against compelling states to adopt maps that prioritize race without sufficient justification. 

Murrill said, "It is gratifying that the Supreme Court has finally vindicated our original position and, in doing so, clarified that only under very narrow circumstances – where there is proof of intentional discrimination – may race be used as a remedy under Section 2. It is frustrating that this has taken five years, millions of dollars, and many lost hours to get here.

"I will continue to work with the governor and the Legislature to provide guidance as we move forward to adopt a constitutionally compliant map.”

The United States has still not paid off its membership fee arrears at the World Health Organization, the WHO chief said Wednesday, with Washington's intention to leave conditional on paying up.

The UN health agency's director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he hoped the United States would come up with the money they owe -- a self-imposed condition for quitting the organisation.

US President Donald Trump, on his first day back in office in January 2025, handed the WHO his country's one-year withdrawal notice.

"In terms of the arrears from the US, the US withdrawal is conditioned with two things," Tedros told a press conference with the UN correspondents' association ACANU.

"One is notification one year in advance, which is actually met. And the second is paying the arrears, so we hope they will do that but we haven't received anything yet."

The United States was the biggest contributor to the WHO budget.

Tedros said there were "no signals" indicating that Washington would come up with the cash.

But he added: "To be honest, it's not about the money.

"The issue is health security needs universality and the US, by withdrawing, makes itself unsafe and makes the rest of the world unsafe. So it's lose-lose. 

"So our focus is not on the money. The focus is on helping the US to understand and reconsider.

"Where there is a vacuum, the virus wins. It's as simple as that.

"It's global cooperation and solidarity which is the best response."

Though the US flag no longer flies outside the WHO headquarters in Geneva, the WHO's decision-making body -- the annual assembly of member states -- will decide upon the US withdrawal when it meets from May 18-23.

The WHO constitution does not include a withdrawal clause.

But the United States reserved the right to withdraw when it joined the WHO in 1948 -- on condition of giving one year's notice and meeting its financial obligations in full for that fiscal year.

The notice period has now expired but Washington has still not paid its 2024 or 2025 dues, owing around $260 million.

The United States was traditionally the biggest donor to the WHO.

In January, as the notice expired, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attacked the WHO, claiming it had "tarnished and trashed everything that America has done for it", with "the insults to America" continuing to the end.

"The reverse is true," the WHO responded.

Despite the parting shot from Kennedy, the US health secretary still speaks with Tedros on a regular basis.

"We keep in touch every now and then," the WHO chief told reporters.

rjm/ag/phz

Plumes of black smoke towered over the southern Russian town of Tuapse on Wednesday where residents wore face masks to shield themselves from polluted air after multiple Ukrainian drone strikes on a major oil refinery in the coastal town.

Ukraine, fending off Russia's full-scale offensive launched in 2022, has in the past weeks stepped up its strikes targeting Russian oil infrastructure hubs: refineries, ports and depots.

It calls the campaign fair retribution for the assault that has ravaged swaths of Ukrainian territory, killed tens of thousands of civilians and forced millions to flee their homes.

Ukrainian drones have hit Tuapse's sprawling oil facilities three times over the past two weeks -- most recently overnight from Monday to Tuesday, triggering a local state of emergency as a column of thick smoke rose from the site.

"The water in the river was on fire," Vladimir, a 63-year-old pensioner and Tuapse resident, told AFP as he looked over the grey smoky skyline.

As the wind gusted, toxic fumes and the smell of burnt oil spread through the city, perched on Russia's Black Sea coast.

Roads and pavements were covered with a sticky film.

Residents were told to stay indoors and schools closed in the town of some 60,000.

Officials said Wednesday the level of benzene -- a toxic carcinogen found in petrol -- in the air was elevated.

"Look, look at that," Yevgenia, a pensioner with a shopping bag and wearing a face mask, said, pointing at a layer of black dust and soot on a car nearby.

"It's impossible to clean it all up quickly. They bombed us three times in a month," she said. 

Vladimir and Yevgenia did not provide their full names for security reasons.

- Contaminated soil -

The burning oil terminal is located right next to the city centre, close to pedestrian areas and the road to the resort city of Sochi -- a favoured summer escape for the Russian elite, including President Vladimir Putin.

On Tuesday, Putin lashed out at Kyiv, accusing the Ukrainian authorities of resorting to "overt terrorist methods" and intensifying drone strikes "against civilian infrastructure".

"The latest example is the strikes on energy facilities in Tuapse, which could potentially cause serious environmental consequences," Putin said.

Kyiv says it only targets energy and military sites -- designed to hobble Russia's war machine and cast as a legitimate response to Russia's nightly barrages of its cities.

Three people have been killed, including a 14-year-old girl, in the series of Ukrainian attacks on Tuapse in April, local officials said.

Around 600 people were working "around the clock" to mitigate the consequences of the strikes, including an environmental clean-up operation, a regional crisis task force said on Telegram.

It said that "nearly 10,000 cubic metres of oil-contaminated soil and water-oil mixture have been collected from the shore and in the Tuapse River".

For Tuapse residents, the strikes have brought the consequences of Russia's four-year offensive on Ukraine home.

"I've already lived through one war," he said, referring to Russia's wars in Chechnya, a few hundred kilometres across the Caucasus mountains, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

"Now here's another one."

bur/yad

Two Jewish men were stabbed Wednesday in north London, an attack police declared a "terrorist incident" and which follows a series of arson attacks targeting Jewish sites.

King Charles III, Prime Minister Keir Starmer and London mayor Sadiq Khan led the condemnation of the "appalling" assaults in Golders Green, which is home to a large Jewish population. 

Police said a 45-year-old man had been arrested after having also tried to stab officers. The two victims -- aged 76 and 34 -- were in a stable condition in hospital.

Speaking from the scene and facing heckles from some in the local community, Metropolitan police commissioner Mark Rowley said the suspect has "a history of serious violence and mental health issues".

"Let me be clear: this is an attack on one community (and) an attack on one community is an attack on all London's communities," Rowley added.

Starmer echoed the sentiment, saying on X that "attacks on our Jewish community are attacks on Britain" while vowing "those responsible will be brought to justice".

The UK leader will convene an emergency meeting of senior ministers and officials later Wednesday, according to the area's MP, Sarah Sackman. 

King Charles III, who is on a state visit to the United States, said he was "deeply concerned" in a statement issued by Buckhingham Palace.

The stabbings come after a spate of arson attacks on synagogues and other Jewish sites in north London in recent weeks that have heightened security fears for the community. 

- 'Horrific attack' -

Israel's foreign ministry condemned Starmer's government shortly following Wednesday's incident.

"After attacks on synagogues, Jewish institutions, community ambulances and now Jews targeted in Golders Green, the UK government can no longer claim this is under control," it said on X.

Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, Head of UK Counter Terrorism Policing, said the stabbings had "now formally been declared a terrorist incident". 

Counter-terror officers and the capital's Metropolitan police were "also working with the security services to ensure we have a full intelligence picture", he added.

"One of the lines of enquiry is whether this attack was deliberately targeting the Jewish community," Taylor noted, standing outside the Met's New Scotland Yard headquarters in central London.

The incident unfolded shortly after 11:00 am (1000 GMT), with the Shomrim Jewish neighbourhood watch group first reporting that a knife-wielding man was "attempting to stab Jewish members of the public".

Shomrim members helped detain the suspect before police arrived and subdued him using an electroshock weapon. The response of the Jewish volunteers' earned widespread praise.

The victims were also treated at the scene by Hatzola, a Jewish volunteer ambulance service.

The stabbings follow a deadly assault on a synagogue in Manchester last October on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur.

That attack killed two people and seriously injured three, prompting increased anxiety among Jewish communities.

"Why do we have to live in fear? We're doing our best to live our lives as normal as possible but everyday is a struggle," Shomrim volunteer Stephen Bak told AFP at the Golders Green scene Wednesday.

- 'Shocking' -

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan called the spate of antisemitic attacks "shocking".

"There must be absolutely no place for antisemitism in society," he added on X.

Ephraim Mirvis, Britain's chief rabbi, said the community was "strong" and "resilient" but "such attacks need to stop now".

"Zero tolerance -- that's what our community wants," he told reporters from the scene.

"Our society needs to know this is intolerable... We would like to see actions added to words."

The first London attack in late March saw four ambulances belonging to Hatzola set ablaze.

Other incidents have followed, including an attack on the Kenton United Synagogue in Harrow as well as the premises of a Jewish charity.

Last week, the Finchley Reform Synagogue was targeted.

Police have arrested at least 26 people for the various attacks, launched since the start of the US-Iran war on Iran on February 28.

Many of the incidents have been claimed by a little-known group, believed to be linked to Iran, called Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya (HAYI), meaning The Islamic Movement of the People of the Right Hand.

Monitoring groups have reported an surge in antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents in Britain, particularly since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

The Community Security Trust recorded 3,700 instances of anti-Jewish hate across the UK last year, a four-percent rise on 2024, but down on 2023. 

bur-jj/jkb/jj

Uber on Wednesday unveiled a new feature allowing users to book a hotel room directly from its app, the latest step in its push to become a one-stop shop for everyday needs.

The company had already broadened its ambitions in 2014 with the launch of Uber Eats, which started as a food delivery service before expanding into wider shopping, from cosmetics to electronics.

The San Francisco-based company will now let users book hotel rooms through the app via a partnership with travel site Expedia, which lists more than 700,000 properties. The tie-up also envisions eventually adding short-term rentals from the Vrbo platform.

The hotel booking tool works much like other travel sites, with search, maps, and filters for price, amenities, and guest ratings. Users can pay with card details already saved in the app.

"We're no longer just an app for rides, or even two apps, or family of apps for both rides and eats. Uber is now an app for everything," chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi said at a presentation on Wednesday in New York.

"Together, we can reduce the number of steps, we can save people time and money," Expedia chief Ariane Gorin added.

The move reflects a broader trend toward apps that handle many aspects of daily life -- a model long established in China, where platforms like WeChat and Alipay bundle together payments, bookings, messaging, and much more.

Rival Airbnb has been on a similar path. The home-rental company introduced bookable local activities back in 2016 and last summer added on-demand personal services such as haircuts and massages, while also launching its own ride-hailing option.

Elon Musk has outlined similar ambitions for X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, and has said a banking feature is on the way.

On the AI front, Uber said users will soon be able to ask the app to plan a week of meals, generate a shopping list, and arrange delivery -- all in one go. 

A voice assistant is also in the works, letting people navigate the app through natural conversation.

tu/arp

The data invasion: How AI is changing sport from the Premier League to the local pitch

Somewhere in an NBA arena, a system noticed something. LeBron James was dipping his shoulder on left-side three-pointers. Not on the right. Not anywhere else. Only there. He hadn't known. Neither had his coaches. The AI had seen what none of them had.

It was not an isolated case.

“It’s definitely picking up. There’s the whole ‘Moneyball’ thinking about winning with data, a lot of teams are spending a lot of energy trying to use data to their advantage,” said Sander Christophersen, vice president of product at Veo, a Copenhagen-based AI sports analytics and broadcasting startup.

“We're seeing that the game is changing now. All the players obsess about their metrics.”

In an industry worth more than half a trillion dollars, the margins for error have always been small. AI is making them smaller.

Below, the Infinite Loop by Nebius explores how artificial intelligence is reshaping performance, strategy, and fan experiences across professional and amateur sports.

Leveling up the world’s best

One of the MVPs in AI sports solutions is Genius Sports, founded in 2000 and headquartered in London and New York. The company says its software is used by sports clubs around the world, including every team in the Premier League, the NBA, and the WNBA.

Matt Fleckenstein, the company’s chief product and technology officer, said coaches and players are becoming increasingly reliant on its AI performance analytics tools.

“Let’s say I want to see every time that the defense was in this particular shape, or every corner play that we ran right. [With Genius] you can quickly query all of this video,” he said.

“You can see these rich analytics about what happened on that play and what happens typically in those scenarios, so that you can strategize. Maybe Crystal Palace has an upcoming game against Bournemouth — it will help answer: ‘How should we line up? What's our best opportunity to exploit them off the corner?’”

The tools work at the individual level too. Fleckenstein said LeBron James used Genius Sports' software to identify a flaw in his shooting form that had gone undetected.

“He was dipping his shoulder when he was shooting from the left side of the floor, and he wasn't doing that anywhere else. He was only able to get at that rich data about his form right from our performance studio tool,” he said.

The beAIutiful game?

Until recently, the benefits of AI were only available to the pro teams with the deepest pockets. Now, thanks to changing economics in AI infrastructure and some clever engineering, it’s making its way down to the little leagues too.

Copenhagen-based Veo, which develops live streaming and AI analytics products for smaller teams, was launched after its cofounder Keld Reinicke was once late to one of his 10-year-old son’s football matches and missed his big moment.

“His kid scored a goal, and he wasn’t there to see it, and he was devastated by that,” said Christophersen.

Veo's technology automatically can pull analytics from match footage — tracking passes, shots on goal, and movement patterns — while simultaneously live streaming games for friends and family of the next generation of Lionel Messis to watch from anywhere.

Part of what made that shift possible is cost. “The price of compute is definitely a big thing. It’s now possible for us to have our own cluster running with our own GPUs, and bring the cost of training our AI models down,” said Christophersen.

But Veo’s success points to something the sports world is only beginning to reckon with. While making the pro experience available to more people, AI analytics may be threatening some of sport’s high-risk, high-drama highlights, like the long-range goal in football.

“If you look at games at a high level, you will see that there are no shots outside the box anymore. It's so rare. Back in the day, people would always take shots from outside the box,” said Christophersen. “Now they know that they will get berated by their coach after the game, for trying a low-xG (expected goal) option.”

150 hours a week, 24 cameras a stadium

The broadcast experience is changing too.

During NFL games, color-coded boxes now appear around the quarterbacks, showing which direction their pass is likely to get disrupted from, based on real-time AI analysis of live footage.

“Fan experiences like this require that the AI is very fast: that it's able to process footage dynamically and then render it in time for the three-second delay for broadcast,” explained Jason Corso, cofounder and chief science officer of Voxel51, a Michigan-based startup that develops a platform to maximize the performance of vision models that use huge amounts of data.

Genius Sports, across just the NBA, WNBA, and Premier League, films around 150 hours of live sport every week during peak season, with 24 cameras installed in each stadium, adding up to 3,600 hours of footage.

Crunching this quantity of data is only part of the challenge, Corso said. Live sport is unpredictable — a more eventful game generates more inference calls — and handling that volatility means that companies like Genius need two core things from cloud providers.

“How quickly can they burst their compute based on demand at any one time? And are their compute resources up to date? Do they have H200s, or B200s (Nvidia's later generation of AI chips)? That's been hard for cloud providers because it's expensive to keep building these data centers,” he said.

Corso added that many of Voxel51’s customers need cloud resources in their own territories, both to help stay compliant with local regulations like GDPR and to bring down inference costs of shipping data from one place to another with low latency.

Looking forward, Corso said that sports teams will begin using more real-time reinforcement learning to influence strategy midgame. Fleckenstein said AI will be used to create whole new augmented reality experiences in which fans can watch live games where digital twins of players are superimposed onto virtual environments.

What happens on the pitch still matters most. But increasingly, AI is shaping the game itself — who wins, what fans see, and whether the long-range shot is still worth attempting.

This story was produced by the Infinite Loop by Nebius and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.

The US Supreme Court on Wednesday sharply limited the use of race in drawing electoral districts, in a decision that could reshape congressional maps nationwide and boost Republican prospects ahead of midterm elections.

In a 6–3 ruling split along ideological lines, the conservative-dominated court struck down a map that creates a second majority-Black district in Louisiana, finding it amounted to an unconstitutional racial gerrymander despite being drawn to comply with the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA).

The decision leaves the core of the VRA intact but narrows how it can be applied, and will be seen by civil rights activists as a blow to a landmark law that has already been weakened by previous rulings over the past decade.

Democracy Docket, a voting rights platform, said the ruling could help secure 27 extra Republican seats, cementing the party's control in the US House of Representatives "for at least a generation."

"Without racial protections, maps could be redrawn with almost no limits," the outlet reported.

It was not immediately clear how much the ruling will affect November's elections, with primaries already underway and legal challenges likely to delay any changes.

Republicans are nonetheless expected to push for new maps in states where time and the law permit.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said that compliance with the VRA "could not justify" the use of race in this case, arguing that Section 2 of the act does not require states to draw districts primarily on racial lines.

"That map is an unconstitutional gerrymander, and its use would violate the plaintiffs' constitutional rights," he said, referring to the group of non-Black voters who brought the case.

The ruling marks a significant shift in how courts interpret the balance between preventing racial discrimination and adhering to constitutional guarantees of equal protection, raising the bar for when race can be considered in redistricting.

Both the majority ruling and the dissent were read from the bench, a rare move in the high court.

- Sweeping consequences -

Justice Elena Kagan warned that the decision would have sweeping consequences, saying it risked letting states "systematically dilute minority citizens' voting power" without legal redress.

The case centered on an electoral map redrawn after the 2020 Census to add a second district in which Black voters formed a majority, following court challenges that the previous map diluted minority voting strength.

That revised map was then challenged by a group of non-Black voters who argued it relied too heavily on race, setting up a clash between efforts to enforce voting rights protections and constitutional limits on race-based decision-making.

The Supreme Court ultimately sided with those challengers, concluding that the map crossed the line into unconstitutional racial sorting.

The implications could extend far beyond a single state. Legal analysts say the ruling may make it harder to create or maintain majority-minority districts -- a key tool used for decades to ensure representation for Black and other minority voters.

Such districts have often favored Democratic candidates, meaning the decision could give Republicans an advantage in closely contested House races in November.

"(It) is about the many other districts, particularly in the South, that in the last half-century have given minority citizens, and particularly African Americans, a meaningful political voice," Kagan said.

"After today, those districts exist only on sufferance, and probably not for long."

The case comes amid an intensifying national battle over redistricting, with both Republican- and Democratic-led states seeking to redraw boundaries in ways that could shift the balance of power in Congress.

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act -- the provision at the center of the case -- was designed to prevent voting practices that dilute minority influence, even without explicit evidence of discrimination.

But the court's conservative majority has increasingly signaled discomfort with race-conscious remedies, suggesting they must have limits under what conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, who is Black, described as a "color-blind" Constitution.

The ruling follows a series of decisions that have chipped away at the Voting Rights Act, including a 2013 judgment that struck down a key provision requiring federal oversight of election law changes in states with histories of discrimination.

ft/des

A centuries-old element of Britain's parliament came to an end on Wednesday as hereditary peers took their seats in the House of Lords for the final time.

The Labour government has axed the 92 spots in the unelected upper chamber reserved for peers who inherit their position as a member of an aristocratic family.

They held titles such as dukes, viscounts, and earls, and their presence in the Lords stretches back to the 15th century.

Lawmakers approved their departure last month and it took effect on Wednesday when the current parliamentary session ended ahead of local elections next week.

The speaker of the Lords, Michael Forsyth, paid tribute to those losing their seats.

"At the conclusion of this session, those noble lords who sit by virtue of hereditary peerages will cease to be members of this house," he said.

"On behalf of the house, I pay tribute to their distinguished service and offer them our sincere thanks."

Lesotho in southern Africa was the only other country in the world with a hereditary element in its legislature, according to the UK government.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer's administration has called the reform "one of the biggest... in a generation".

The Lords comprises around 800 members, most of whom are appointed for life.

They include former MPs, typically appointed by departing prime ministers, along with people nominated after serving in prominent public- or private-sector roles. Senior Church of England clerics, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, also sit in the chamber.

Several existing hereditary peers were made life peers recently to allow them to continue to sit.

Former prime minister Tony Blair removed 600 hereditary peers in the late 1990s, but 92 were retained in what was supposed to be a temporary compromise.

The primary role of the upper chamber is to scrutinise the government.

It cannot override legislation sent from the elected House of Commons, but it can amend and delay bills and initiate new draft laws.

MPs and peers will return to parliament on May 13 for the King's Speech, when the government will lay out its legislative plans for the next year.

pdh/jkb/jj