<Albert Einstein played a key role in convincing President Franklin D. Roosevelt to launch the Manhattan Project and develop the world's first atomic bomb.

But the renowned theoretical physicist never took part in the secret project run by physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer; US officials were worried his left-leaning political views posed a security threat.

Einstein sent a letter to Roosevelt in August 1939 warning that the Nazis could develop an atomic bomb and recommended "quick action on the part of the Admininstration" — namely, launching its own nuclear program.

The letter cited the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard's work, and Szilard helped draft the letter, which Einstein signed.

However, the US Army Intelligence office had concerns about Einstein's political ideology and in July 1940 denied him the security clearance to work on the project, according to the American Museum of Natural History.

Intelligence officials also barred the scientists who were part of the program, which was organized by Oppenheimer, from consulting with Einstein.

The Manhattan Project was officially created in August 1942, months after the US entered the war. The years-long program developed the world's first nuclear weapons, which were dropped on Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

"Woe is me," Einstein said after learning of the attack, according to AMNH.

He later expressed remorse for recommending that the US start its own nuclear program, telling Newsweek, "Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic bomb, I would have done nothing."

Szilard and his fellow Hungarian-born physicist Eugene Wigner both expressed their agreement with Einstein's statements, according to The New York Times.

The Manhattan Project is the center of a new biopic from director Christopher Nolan. "Oppenheimer," which chronicles the physicist's work developing the nukes and stars Cillian Murphy, releases this week.>

<For every fantasy author out there being a transphobe, there's another one being inclusive and calling out transphobia. While JK Rowling makes it a point to punch her transphobe card every two months on the bird site, Neil Gaiman is fighting the good fight. He was one of the 1,800 writers who signed an open letter declaring their support for trans and non-binary people in the wake of one of JK Rowling's transphobic rants. This week, Gaiman handed a free English lesson to a person who thought they had hit gold to weaken the argument of people using 'they/them' pronouns, reported God.DailyDot.

Transphobes have long claimed that people shouldn't be using they/them pronouns because it is grammatically wrong. Imagine hating people over their identity and then using grammar to justify the fear and hate. The argument goes that it is wrong to use they/them as a singular pronoun and hence it shouldn't be used to refer to an individual. Gaiman pointed out to one Twitter user that their argument didn't hold water but you have to wonder, even if it did, wouldn't you grant people the basic respect of recognizing them as they prefer to identify themselves. Even if it meant being grammatically wrong, especially when you consider the harm and damage that can be caused by misgendering someone.

It all started after a Twitter user wrote, "Any English teacher who used "they/them" as a singular pronoun should lose their teaching license. Twitter account documenting 'Conservative self owns' underlined the use of "their" in the very tweet while referring to an English teacher. Gaiman, author of 'The Sandman' and 'American Gods,' quote tweeted the account and wrote, "That's beautiful." Another Twitter user tried to play 'Devil's advocate,' tweeting: "The context is different. ‘Their' in that second sense acts as a stand-in because the sex/gender of the subject is unknown. It is an abstraction as a placeholder. When the abstract becomes a concrete individual, a singular noun is appropriate." At the core of the argument remains the concept of a gender binary that invalidates non-binary people and trans people.

Gaiman pointed out that their argument was faulty, and said the use of 'their' as a pronoun could be traced back to 7 centuries ago. "‘Their' as a singular pronoun goes back to the 1300s…" replied Gaiman, before posting a link to Oxford English Dictionary backing up his statement. "The Oxford English Dictionary traces singular they back to 1375, where it appears in the medieval romance William and the Werewolf," reads the explanation by the dictionary. "Except for the old-style language of that poem, its use of singular they to refer to an unnamed person seems very modern." The poem, translated from Middle English, goes, "Each man hurried . . . till they drew near . . . where William and his darling were lying together."

The Oxford English Dictionary also explains that viewing language by rigid rules also doesn't do justice as it constantly evolves. The Oxford English Dictionary throws up an example of the same citing Quakerism founder George Fox writing a book in 1660 explaining that anyone using the singular "you" is being grammatically incorrect because he was trying to preserve the pronoun "thou." Of course, no one says "Thou" now but that's just how language evolves with time. The only thing that appears to have not evolved is transphobes clinging on to the archaic concept of gender binary because they think it somehow diminishes their own identity.

Considering JK Rowling has reared her transphobic head again, we'd just like to highlight the words from an open letter signed by more than 1,000 literary figures, including Stephen King, Margaret Atwood, and Neil Gaiman from last year. "We are writers, editors, journalists, agents, and professionals in multiple forms of publishing. We believe in the power of words. We want to do our part to help shape the curve of history toward justice and fairness," read the letter, reported Pink News. "To that end, we say: non-binary people are non-binary, trans women are women, trans men are men, trans rights are human rights. Your pronouns matter. You matter. You are loved.">

<After 16 Republicans were charged over the "false elector" conspiracy, there have been mounting calls for officials to investigate Virginia "Ginni" Thomas for allegedly attempting to rig the 2020 election result. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced on Tuesday, July 18 that the 16 individuals were each charged with eight felonies for allegedly trying to thwart the will of voters in the 2020 presidential election.

The 66-year-old wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has also been under fire for her actions in the wake of the last election. At that time, Thomas allegedly sent text messages to Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff for Donald Trump, encouraging him to work to overturn Biden's victory and keep Trump in office. Additionally, she was also accused of sending emails to several lawmakers and Arizona election officials, arguing that it was their "constitutional duty" to pick a "clean slate" of electors who would be willing to proclaim Trump the winner in the Grand Canyon State in 2020.

Was Ginni Thomas part of the 'fake electors' plot?

Thomas allegedly advised lawmakers to "stand strong in the face of political and media pressure" and made the erroneous assertion that the duty for selecting electors was "yours and yours alone." In December 2020, a group of 16 Republicans, including Arizona GOP chair Kelli Ward, gathered to sign a false declaration claiming to be the state's "duly elected and qualified electors" and that they had the power to award Arizona's 16 electoral votes for Trump, instead of the state's true winner of Biden, according to Newsweek. Those certificates were sent to the US Senate and the National Archives with the intent to overturn the election. But after the results were announced, an investigation was launched to determine the falsity of the certificates.

Now the fake electors are facing eight felony counts each, including forgery-related charges, each punishable by up to 14 years in prison; and election law forgery charges, each punishable by up to five years in prison. There is currently no indication that Ginni Thomas is under investigation as part of the probe. However, social media users have called for conservative activists to also face charges in the wake of actions against 16 Republicans. "I've said it many times before and I'll say it again, today would be a wonderful day to investigate #GinniThomas," one user said while a second user wrote "Ginni Thomas 100% needs to be indicted for the role she played in trying to overturn the election."

'Ginni Thomas should be indicted'

"Only 5 or 6 other states to go on the fake electors. Also, Ginni Thomas should be indicted since she was heavily involved in the conspiracy" a third user remarked. "Don't forget that Clarence Thomas isn't the one in his household we're concerned about. His wife Ginni Thomas urged state lawmakers in Arizona to ignore President Biden's victory and 'choose' presidential electors to overturn the 2020 presidential election," another user asserted. These calls came after it was revealed that Thomas has contributed at least $20,000 to Republican political committees. Federal records stated that Trump has been one of the biggest recipients of her generosity, according to Forbes.>

<Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) pointed out what she thought the House Oversight Committee “should be prosecuting” as she shifted the focus of a hearing on the Biden family and called into question former President Donald Trump receiving payments from China in 2017.

The first-term Democrat, in remarks at the hearing Wednesday, called on the Republican-led committee to look at the payments as she read from an NBC News report on Trump’s tax returns that went public in December.

“We should be looking at the fact that ‘in 2017, Trump’s first year in office, he also made $6.5 million from China, his tax returns show,’” she said, adding that the source of the payments “is not clear from the returns.”

“‘The payments were a surprise since Trump is an outspoken critic of the $5.8 million Hunter Biden made in business deals with Chinese interests while his father, now-President Joe Biden, was out of office.’ The difference is, Trump was the president when he made this money from China whereas — I’m sure you would agree with me — Hunter Biden has always been a private citizen.”

Crockett’s comments arrived in a hearing that featured two IRS whistleblowers alleging that the Department of Justice pursued weaker charges than they recommended for Hunter Biden, who the pair was investigating for tax crimes.

House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.) pushed back at Crockett’s remarks and asked what Hunter Biden did “to receive the money from China.”

“I think I know what Trump’s businesses were, I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, I just know what his businesses are. I don’t know what the Bidens’ businesses are,” Comer said in response.>

<The first of July marked the day new laws, passed by Florida's legislature and signed by the governor, took effect. The majority of new legislation is a carryover from last year when Gov. Ron DeSantis unofficially started his presidential campaign by waging war with "woke" ideology.

It's a campaign that might already be one for the record books, as it took less than two months after the official start to his presidential race in late May for the the governor to announce firing roughly 10 campaign staffers. And while DeSantis may blame others for his plummeting poll numbers – especially in Florida where he trails former President Donald Trump by a large amount – maybe he should just take a look at this year's legislative session.

New laws in Florida make it tougher to get an abortion, be a drag queen, hire an undocumented immigrant or be a high school member of the LGBTQ+ community. On the other hand, the laws make it easier to carry a handgun in public and a lot easier to execute someone. In other words, as the governor has vowed, he is really taking it to the "woke nation."

Start the day smarter. Get all the news you need in your inbox each morning.

What's missing from new Florida laws? Insurance

If you talk to any one of your neighbors, though, the one thing missing from all those unneeded new laws is the word "insurance." Maybe he should have been taking it to the insurance industry, you know, the industry raising Florida homeowner insurance premiums sky high.

DeSantis losing to Trump in Florida? Time to label the former president 'woke'!

No, DeSantis and his super-majority legislature haven't ignored the insurance issue. In December, our leaders passed property insurance overhauls that were beneficial to insurance companies by cracking down on insurance fraud, but offered no relief to Florida homeowners. Farmers and AAA insurance companies have either pulled out or are limiting who they insure.

According to the latest figures, Florida homeowners pay the highest amount for insurance in the country at $6,000 annually, several times the national average.

Since DeSantis won the governor's race in 2018, Florida insurance numbers rates have gone up 206%. That's not a typo: 206%.

While Florida schools and libraries fight hard to make sure that our children don't read classics like "The Kite Runner" and "Slaughterhouse-Five," that pronoun use becomes a thing of the past or that gay kids go back in the closet, our homeowners are getting absolutely steamrolled by insurance companies.

How will Florida's new laws affect you?

What else has the governor worked on while ignoring the insurance crisis?

Well, the government can now execute its citizens with jury votes recommending death of 8-4 instead of being unanimous. This gives our state the distinction of having the lowest death penalty threshold in the United States.

DeSantis will also likely point out as a victory his assault on 12 pesky words: pronouns. Who would have guessed a politician vying for the White House would care so much about I, you, he, she, it, we, they, me, him, her, us and them?

The new law puts a policy in place in every public school that prohibits assigning "to a person a pronoun that does not correspond to such person’s sex.”

This one would give great comfort to Archie Bunker – remember the song? "And you knew who you were then, girls were girls and men were men."

The man who would be king also made it easier for the citizenry to "pack heat," as they used to say in '70s crime movies. While some in the legislature were vying for open carry (picture cowboys with six-shooters on their belts) the state's lawmakers settled on permitless carry. What does this mean? Well, it means you can now carry a concealed gun in Florida without a permit, training or background check.

There is still a background check and three-day waiting period if you buy your gun from a licensed dealer. But you can buy one from a neighbor or friend without training or a background check.

There was also the crackdown on teaching an Advanced Placement course on African American studies. (We wouldn't want anyone to feel badly about slavery, would we?) And there is the new abortion bill that would make it illegal to get an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. (This one will have to make it through a few legal challenges before becoming law).

It was a very busy session and lots, by the looks of it, got done. It's too bad none of it had to do with insurance concerns. I guess the governor doesn't have to worry about his insurance bill like the rest of us do.>

<A group of 10 House Republicans helped Democrats sink a bill that would have forced Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to report his fight records on government-owned jets.

The bill — introduced by Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., as an amendment to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization legislation — was defeated in a narrow 219-216 vote late Wednesday. According to the roll call, 10 Republicans voted against while three Democrats voted in favor of the amendment which had language to "require a report on the Secretary of Transportation flight records."

"We are disappointed that Representative Miller’s important amendment failed," Caitlin Sutherland, the executive director for watchdog group Americans for Public Trust (APT), told Fox News Digital. "After Secretary Buttigieg was caught excessively using a taxpayer-funded private jet, his department doubled-down and is refusing to release the true cost of these flights."

"That’s why we’re suing the FAA, because it is the right of the American people to have these records and they deserve transparency," she added.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Sam Graves, R-Mo., and GOP Reps. Troy Balderson, Jack Bergman, Brian Fitzpatrick, Garret Graves, David Joyce, Jennifer Kiggans, Marcus Molinaro and Brandon Williams voted against the amendment.

Democratic Reps. Yadira Caraveo, Ted Lieu and Katie Porter voted in favor of the bill....>

<A town clerk in Michigan will be barred from running any elections after being charged earlier this week by the state attorney general for acting as a fake elector in 2020 for then-President Donald Trump.

On Thursday, the Michigan Bureau of Elections notified Stan Grot, a Republican who has served as the Shelby Township clerk since 2012, that he will be prohibited from administering elections while the charges are pending.

Grot was among the 16 Republicans charged earlier this week by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel for allegedly signing certificates that falsely stated Trump won the state, not Biden. Each of the 16 people face the same eight criminal charges, including forgery and conspiracy to commit election forgery. The most serious charges carry a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.

In a phone interview with the Associated Press, Grot declined to discuss the charges against him but pledged to adhere to the directive in the letter.

"There’s a request for me to recuse myself from elections until the issue of charges is resolved and I intend to abide by it,” Grot said.

Conducting elections is one of the primary duties of a clerk. Grot is an elected official and will continue in his other roles as township clerk, such as preparing agendas and recording meetings. Shelby Township is a suburb of Detroit and holds a population of close to 80,000.

The letter, provided by the secretary of state’s office, says that while Grot is “innocent until proven guilty,” his alleged role in the fake elector scheme “undermines voter confidence in the integrity of elections.”

Local clerks across the country have faced legal consequences for alleged crimes committed after embracing Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

A former clerk in Colorado, Tina Peters, is awaiting trial after an alleged effort to breach voting system technology that is used across the country following the 2020 election, according to an indictment.

Stephanie Scott, a small-town clerk in Michigan accused of improperly handling voting equipment after casting doubt on Biden’s election victory, was stripped of her election duties in 2021. She was ousted by voters earlier this year.

Grot and others allegedly met inside the Michigan Republican Party headquarters on December 14, 2020. They signed their names to a certificate stating they were the qualified electors for Trump and transmitted the false documents to Congress and the National Archives, according to an affidavit released by Nessel's office Tuesday.

The group includes the head of the Republican National Committee’s chapter in Michigan, Kathy Berden, as well as the former co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party, Meshawn Maddock, and Kent Vanderwood, the mayor of a west Michigan city.

The 16 charged individuals are scheduled to appear in an Ingham County district court on August 10 for an arraignment.

In the past, Grot has also served as a county commissioner, county deputy treasurer and assistant secretary of state, according to his Shelby Township biography. He sought the Republican nomination for secretary of state in 2018 before dropping out due to family obligations and “timing and the overall political atmosphere.”>

<A July 16 article by Real Raw News claims thousands of doctors were recently indicted for pandemic-related crimes.

"There are approximately one million practicing physicians in the United States, and the United States Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps is holding sealed indictments on about 19,000 of them – general physicians, specialists, surgeons, emergency room and urgent care staff," the article begins.

The article goes on to cite an unnamed source to claim the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health "incentivized the offending physicians to coerce patients to get vaxxed even if the patients remonstrated against the potentially lethal jab."

The article was shared more than 1,000 times in four days, according to CrowdTangle, a social media analytics tool.

Our rating: False

There is no evidence to support the claim that 19,000 doctors have been indicted in relation to COVID-19. The claim was made by a website that routinely publishes false claims about the pandemic and high-profile government figures.

Article published by site that frequently shares false information

There is no evidence the Navy JAG Corps, which handles the Navy's legal services, is "holding sealed indictments" against thousands of doctors, as the article claims. The supposed indictments aren't mentioned anywhere on the Navy JAG Corps' website or its social media accounts.

The article also mentions the CDC and NIH, but neither of those agencies has released any statements about such indictments, nor have they publicly acknowledged any effort to encourage doctors to "coerce" patients to get vaccinated against COVID-19, despite the article's claim.

A disclaimer on the “About Us” page for Real Raw News states it “contains humor, parody and satire.” The notice, however, is not included in individual articles on the website.

Fact check: No, the Supreme Court didn't declare vaccines 'unavoidably unsafe'

There's nothing to support the specific claims made in the article, but several health care workers have been charged with crimes related to the pandemic.

In April, the Justice Department announced criminal charges against 18 people, accusing them of participating in "various fraud schemes involving health care services that exploited the COVID-19 pandemic." The fraud allegedly resulted in more than $490 million in false billings and theft to pandemic-related programs.

Nothing on the department's website, though, is similar to the indictments described in the article. There are no reports of any such indictments from credible news organizations.

And while the article describes the COVID-19 vaccine as "potentially lethal," the CDC says the shot is "safe and effective," while the World Health Organization says it provides "strong protection against serious illness, hospitalization and death."

USA TODAY has previously debunked fabricated stories about COVID-19 by Real Raw News, including false claims that children's COVID-19 vaccines contain scopolamine and that Russia destroyed all of its COVID-19 vaccines.

USA TODAY reached out to Real Raw News for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

Lead Stories also debunked the claim.>

<In Michigan this week, 16 fake electors that signed their names to a false document proclaiming Donald Trump the 2020 winner, were indicted on forgery, conspiracy and other charges.

In the wake of that, former Georgia Republican Party chairman David Shafer made a claim to Fulton County's district attorney that he was protected by the constitution when he cast an “alternate” Electoral College ballot for then-President Donald Trump, reported the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

He told DA Fani Willis he shouldn't be criminally charged. Willis is expected to hand down indictments soon after an investigation into attempts to overthrow the 2020 election.

In a 13-page letter to Willis, Shafer argues he is protected by the First, Fifth and 14th Amendments.

“Such actions are not and cannot be criminal or criminalized, and any attempt to do so is a direct assault on these most highly protected constitutional freedoms,” the letter claims.

It uses an "expert declaration" from George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicki, who defended Shafer's role.

His actions, Zywicki wrote, were, “lawful, reasonable, proper and necessary, and any suggestion that they could be ‘criminal’ ignores legal and historical precedent, the reasoned advice of counsel received and the plain language of the Constitution, federal and Georgia law.”

Recent political expenditures show that the state GOP [sic] shelled out more than $340,000 on lawyers for fake elector cases this year so far.>

<The New York Times published an article Monday that's bone-chilling for anyone who cherishes our freedom, democracy and constitutional governance. The story recounted, with full cooperation of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, his plans to eliminate executive branch constraints on his power if he is elected president in 2024.

The obstacles to be eliminated include an independent Justice Department, independent leadership in administrative agencies and an independent civil service. Richard Neustadt, one of the country’s best known students of the American presidency, has said that in a constitutional democracy the chief executive “does not obtain results by giving orders – or not. ... He does not get action without argument. Presidential power is the power to persuade.”

Trump’s plan would substitute loyalty to him for loyalty to the Constitution. This vision is simultaneously frightening and unsurprising. In 2019, he said, “I have to the right to do whatever I want as president.” And in December, Trump called for the “termination of ... the Constitution.”

In effect, he attempted to do exactly that in the run-up to the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by pressuring state officials to reverse President Joe Biden’s electoral victory, attempting to weaponize the Justice Department and bullying Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election.

Trump now may face federal charges for his role in fomenting the riot.

And while he was president, in addition to appointing subservient heads of executive departments, he took steps to increase his control over the regulatory authority of administrative agencies. To cite one example, in 2019, Trump forced climate change researchers in the Department of Agriculture to move from Washington, D.C., to Kansas City, Missouri, producing a huge exodus from federal employment.

In 2020, he attempted to undermine the independence of the civil service by issuing an executive order adopting “Schedule F.” It purported to vastly augment a president’s power to hire and fire federal officials by expanding the number of “political appointees” throughout government employment who were outside civil service protections.

Trump's plan is to centralize power in Oval Office

The Times story outlined his 2025 road map to implement this command-and-control model of executive authority and centralization of power if he’s returned to the Oval Office. In effect, the article described how his team would replace our constitutional republic with an authoritarian state.

Such a state seeks to eliminate the independence of civil servants. Saying good things about bureaucracy may be unpopular, but federal employees' competence, expert judgment and commitment to governance by law is essential to democratic government.

One definition of an authoritarian state is that it is characterized by the consolidation of power in a single leader, "a controlling regime that justifies itself as a 'necessary evil.'" That kind of control necessarily features "strict government-imposed constraints on social freedoms such as suppression of political opponents and anti-regime activity."

Those characteristics describe the contours of the 2025 blueprint that the Trump campaign wanted the public to see via the Times' report. As the story notes, they are setting the stage, if Trump is elected, “to claim a mandate” for the goal of centralizing power in him.

The Times quoted John McEntee, Trump’s 2020 White House director of personnel, defending the rejection of checks and balances on a president: “Our current executive branch was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. ... What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.”

Founders warned about danger of too much presidential power

In fact, the executive branch, like the two other branches, was devised by the framers of our Constitution, to limit power by dividing it. Even Alexander Hamilton, who defended energy in the executive branch, suggested that the path to tyranny was marked when government officials are “obliged to take refuge in the absolute power of a single man.”...>

<....James Madison joined Hamilton in warning in The Federalist 48 that “power is of an encroaching nature.” For that reason, The Federalist 51 states, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”

It described the paradox facing the framers as this: One must “enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.”

Trump’s 2025 blueprint would end governmental control on a president so he can dominate and control the governed.

Along with divided power, the central constraint that our founding documents create is the overarching legal institution known as the rule of law. That is why Trump’s plan for a radical reorganization of the executive branch starts with ending “the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.”

Controlling the prosecutorial power allows a president to use it to favor friends, destroy enemies and intimidate ordinary citizens tempted to speak out.

That would sound the death knell of American freedom. As John Locke, the 17th century political philosopher who inspired the authors of the Declaration of Independence, wrote, “Wherever law ends, tyranny begins.” Or as Blake Smith put it in an article in Foreign Policy last year, “The bureaucratic ethos is essential to the functioning of the state and the preservation of private life as a separate, unpolitical domain of tolerated freedom.”

At the close of America’s first decade as a constitutional republic, George Washington voluntarily chose not to seek a third term as president to avoid setting the country on the road to the tyranny of lifetime rule by a president. He understood from the revolution against a king that retaining the personal power of one person is the central goal of authoritarianism.

If voters elect Trump president in 2024, he will implement the plan his campaign has purposefully leaked. The outcome is easy to foretell. A bureaucracy purged of those loyal to the Constitution rather than to Trump will send free and fair elections to history’s landfill, along with the Bill of Rights and the freedoms they were designed to protect.>

<Anonymous comments with racist, sexist and abusive messages that were posted for years on a jobs-related website for economists originated from numerous leading U.S. universities, according to research released Thursday.

Some economists have long condemned the website, Economics Job Market Rumors, for its toxic content. The site, known by its acronym EJMR, is run by an anonymous individual and is not connected to a university or other institution. That fact had fed speculation that those who posted hateful messages on it were mostly online cranks who might not be economists.

Yet the new research indicates that users of the website include individuals at top-tier colleges and universities, including Harvard, Stanford and the University of Chicago, and many others.

“Our analysis reveals that the users who post on EJMR are predominantly economists, including those working in the upper echelons of academia, government, and the private sector,” the paper concluded. It was written by Florian Ederer, a management professor at Boston University, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, a finance professor at the Yale School of Management, and Kyle Jensen, an associate dean at Yale.

A spokeswoman for Harvard declined to comment. Stanford and the University of Chicago did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“It’s not just a few bad apples,” Ederer said in a presentation Thursday at a conference sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “It’s very, very widespread. And the toxicity is widespread.”

The revelations have provoked debate on social media among economists about privacy, free speech and online abuse. Some economists, particularly women who have been attacked on the site, say they hope the revelations lead colleges and universities to investigate the postings. Others have expressed concern that the research could lead to a “witch hunt” among those who posted on the site.

Speaking in an interview with The Associated Press, Goldsmith-Pinkham sought to dispel those concerns, saying the group does not plan on “releasing anything identifying” individuals.

Nearly 2,000 people watched a livestream of the paper's presentation Thursday on YouTube. That was far more than the 100 or so who watched other NBER presentations the same day, suggesting widespread interest in the topic among academic economists.

The bigoted content on the website makes women and nonwhite economists often feel unwelcome in a profession that is already struggling to diversify, Goldsmith-Pinkham said. Black Americans, for example, are more likely to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics or other social sciences than in economics.

“The idea that in an anonymous space, people behave in this way, it reflects pretty poorly on the profession,” Goldmsith-Pinkham said....>

<....The researchers used publicly available data to determine the internet addresses for about two-thirds of the more than 7 million posts that have been made on the site since 2010. They classified about 10% of those posts as “toxic" because of their racist or sexist content. These posts included the use of racial slurs and assertions that women have smaller brains than men.

About 11% of the postings on EJMR, the researchers found, originated from among several hundred universities, including those they classified as the top 25 research universities. On average, 13% of the posts from universities were considered toxic.

“Things were WAY better when women were focused on rearing children and feeding their husbands,” said one post highlighted by the researchers.

“The biggest enemies of America are: Blks,” read another.

The site has drawn criticism since at least 2017, when Alice Wu, an undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote a paper highlighting the sexist nature of many of the postings on the site.

In response to her paper, Olivier Blanchard, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and emeritus economics professor at MIT, called the website a “cesspool.” Blanchard added that the site had “become a breeding ground for personal attacks of an abusive kind.”

Anya Samek, an economics professor who was first attacked on the site in 2009, said the site persists because there has been no way to hold it accountable. She said she hopes the universities that are being identified as sources of some of the posts will take steps to prevent future abuse.

“I would like to see universities take some action to make sure there’s no hate speech online coming from their own offices," Samek said.

Samek was a target of false accusations on the EJMR website after she was hired in 2009 by the University of Chicago's top-tier economics department. She had earned her Ph.D. from Purdue University, which she said some posters on EJMR might not have considered prestigious enough.

She was subject to threats on the site in 2022, after she presented at an economics conference.

“It was a truly horrible experience,” she said.

Samek has since started a petition urging the American Economic Association to consider legal action against threatening and defamatory posts.

The economic association has started its own job board to provide an alternative to EJMR, though so far it hasn't received much use.>

<Rep. Adam Schiff (R-CA) slammed Republicans’ decision not to cancel the testimony of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. before the Weaponization of Federal Government Subcommittee on Thursday.

Kennedy, who is running a longshot campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination claimed last week, “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

He added that he does not know if the virus was “deliberately targeted.”

Despite much outcry, Republicans moved forward with his testimony. An anti-vaccine activist, Kennedy has had multiple social media posts removed because they were misinformation.

Before the hearing, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz D-FL) unsuccessfully requested Republicans not move forward with his testimony.

Afterward, Fox Business reporter Hillary Vaughn questioned some Democratic lawmakers, including Schiff.

“Do you think that Democrats are proving RFK Jr.’s point by trying to stop him from coming today and censor him, that Democrats are unfairly censoring him?” she asked Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) as they walked through the halls of the Capitol.

“I’m not gonna respond to a loaded question like that,” he replied. “You’ve already decided on your own answer.”

Vaughn tried the same question with Wasserman Schultz.

“We were not trying to censor him,” she replied. “We were trying to make sure that he didn’t cause more harm with his outrageous testimony.”

She then asked Schiff.

“I don’t think you want to bring bigots before the Congress, but apparently that’s par for the course with this majority,” he answered.>

<Fox News contributor Byron York dinged House Republican leaders for inviting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to testify during a hearing a censorship Thursday. York, a longtime conservative pundit, argued that the GOP was taking focus away from what he sees as a crucial topic by platforming Kennedy – who he said “has a long history of pretty much crackpot statements.”

Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer asked York for his take on the hearing and to compare it to Wednesday’s hearing with two IRS whistleblowers, who alleged interference in their investigations into Hunter Biden.

“Democrats are going to make Robert F Kennedy Jr. The focus of this hearing,” York began, adding:

And I think it’s entirely possible that Republicans have really outsmarted themselves on this one. It’s about a very serious issue. The hearing is. It’s about the government censoring information, violating the First Amendment, censoring information that’s available on the Internet. There’s a very serious court case, Missouri v Biden, that is going through the courts on this.

There was a big, big ruling on July 4th. This is a serious issue. But what we will have is Democrats attacking the witness who has a long history of pretty much crackpot statements about vaccines and other things. He’s a big conspiracy theorist. Contrast this with the hearing yesterday about Hunter Biden. You had the two IRS whistleblowers who are really beyond reproach. I mean, they were career professionals at the IRS. They had very serious cases. Everything they said, they backed up with a lot of evidence. And Democrats were reduced to suggesting that maybe it was all just a misunderstanding or something.

“Today will be very, very different,” York concluded. York’s analysis appeared to be spot on as the hearing devolved into attack after attack by Democrats on Kennedy, who is running for president as a Democrat.>

<Former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) on Thursday ripped the Republican Party for what it’s become in the Donald Trump era.

McCaskill, now a political analyst for MSNBC, recalled on the “Morning Joe” show how GOP leaders in 2012 “rejected” her then-Republican challenger, the late Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.), for his comments on “legitimate rape.”

But 11 years later, with the party in thrall to Trump, McCaskill explained how it’s a different story as even top Republicans continue to defend the former president amid his mounting legal woes and reported imminent indictment in the special counsel probe into the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“The main difference here is not the conduct of the candidate, it is the reaction of the leaders of his party,” McCaskill said, noting how Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) all condemned Trump in the immediate aftermath of the insurrection.

“But then they got scared,” she said. “They just became little, lily-livered cowards and were too afraid that, somehow, they couldn’t hold on to their precious office or their precious power if they stated the obvious.”

“So, it is not so much what Donald Trump has done,” McCaskill added. “It’s the rest of the Republican Party who has elevated him and kept him elevated that has brought this upon America.”>

<A new lawsuit filed in Wisconsin by a national Democratic law firm seeks to once again allow voters to return absentee ballots in drop boxes, a practice that was barred by the state Supreme Court last year following criticism by former President Donald Trump.

The lawsuit filed Thursday by the Elias Law Group comes less than two weeks before the Wisconsin Supreme Court flips from a conservative to liberal majority. Election law challenges like this one are among many issues the new liberal-controlled court is expected to rule on in the coming months.

The rules for voting in Wisconsin are of heightened interest given its place as one of a handful of battleground presidential states. Four of the past six presidential elections in Wisconsin have been decided by less than a percentage point, including the past two.

The 4-3 conservative majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in July 2022, just months before the midterm election, banned the use of absentee ballot drop boxes, which exploded in popularity in 2020 at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. Trump, who won Wisconsin in 2016 but lost it in 2020, has falsely alleged that absentee voting in the state is rife with fraud.

His defeat in Wisconsin has withstood two partial recounts, a nonpartisan audit, numerous lawsuits and a review by a conservative group.

The state Supreme Court, in its ruling last year, said that the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which oversees elections in the state, did not have the authority to tell election clerks that drop boxes could be placed throughout their communities. The court limited drop boxes only to election clerks' offices.

“By restricting Wisconsin voters’ options for returning their absentee ballots and having those ballots properly counted, the Drop Box Prohibition severely burdens the right to vote,” the lawsuit said in arguing that last year's ruling should be overturned. “Without the opportunity to drop off their absentee ballots at drop boxes, voters must instead rely on the U.S. Postal Service — and its unsecured mailboxes — to deliver their absentee ballot and simply hope that the ballot arrives by election day.”

Supporters of the drop boxes have argued that they are a better option than mailing ballots because they go directly to the clerks and can’t be lost or delayed in transit.

The lawsuit also seeks to undo a requirement that a witness sign absentee ballots and that any problems with absentee ballots be corrected by the voter no later than 8 p.m. on Election Day. It argues that absentee voting is a right and not a privilege and that state law not recognizing that violates the Wisconsin Constitution.

The lawsuit was filed against the Wisconsin Elections Commission by two liberal-leaning organizations, Priorities USA and the Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Americans, as well as a Dane County resident. It will start in Dane County circuit court, but could make its way to the state Supreme Court which will have a 4-3 liberal majority starting Aug. 1.

Spokespersons for the elections commission and the state Department of Justice, which typically represents the commission, both declined to comment on the lawsuit.>

<Sen. Lindsey Graham's (R-SC) opposition to proposed legislation that would tighten the almost non-existent rules governing how Supreme Court justices conduct themselves was flattened by one legal expert, with another MSNBC analyst outright calling the South Carolina Republican's response "bizarre."

In his column for MSNBC, Steven Benen heaped praise on Democratic Party-sponsored legislation that would make the justices subject to the same type of ethical guidelines lawmakers and government employees have to follow.

As he explained, the Senate Judiciary Committee's proposed "Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act," would compel the jurists to "set up a code of conduct, tighten financial disclosures and bolster recusal requirements for justices."

With NBC News reporting that the legislation got out of committee by a party-line 11-10 vote, with Republicans balking, Benen cited Graham's objection, where he complained the bill would impact conservative justices like Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito – who have been under fire for suspected egregious ethical conduct.

"Helping lead the charge was Sen. Lindsey Graham, who declared during the proceedings that the legislation represented “a bill to destroy a conservative court” that he and the rest of the GOP have worked hard to build," Benen wrote before adding that Graham's rational appeared "bizarre."

To hammer home his point, he cited MSNBC legal analyst Jordan Rubin who pointed out, "To state the obvious, the proposed law would apply to all Supreme Court justices, no matter which party’s president appointed them,” with Benen contrasting that with Graham's recent assertion that the court needs to "get their house in order.“

"And yet, the same South Carolinian not only rejected the Democratic reform effort, he also insisted that lawmakers — who have oversight authority over the federal judiciary — steer clear of any kind of legislation on the matter. GOP senators are comfortable with ethics limits on lower courts, but the high court, and its dominant far-right majority, must be left alone," he wrote.

Rhetorically asking, "What are Republicans so afraid of?" he suggested, "During yesterday’s process, GOP members clung to one underlying point: The justices must be allowed to police themselves without interference. Congress might have the authority to create new limits, they said, but that power must be ignored so that justices can decide on their own what, if anything, to do."

However, as he noted, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that a plan among the sitting justices to police them themselves has stalled out, meaning it is up to the Senate to step in -- which Graham should acknowledge.

"That in turn leaves senators with a choice: They can sit passively as an ineffective status quo continues to generate controversies that further undermine public confidence in the court as an institution, or they create sensible rules for the justices to follow," he wrote.>

<Attempting to illustrate what he sees as a stark difference between the Biden-led Democratic Party and the MAGA-led GOP, California Congressman Ted Lieu shared a New York Times story about a Nebraska teen who received a jail sentence for violating the state’s abortion laws — and for burning and burying the fetus she aborted. Rep. Lieu was not treated kindly in the comments.

Lieu wrote: “Democrats put #PeopleOverPolitics and passed an infrastructure law to rebuild roads, bridges and highways. What are Republicans focused on? Locking women up for having an abortion.”

Lieu sought to highlight the disparate legislative priorities of the two parties by bringing attention to the case of the 19-year-old Celeste Burgess who, along with her mother Jessica Burgess, was arrested last year for violating Nebraska’s abortion law when she was 17 years old and at the beginning of her third trimester.

The charges included “illegally concealing human remains” after the abortion, which was done with pills. The younger Burgess received a 90 day sentence. Her mother faces sentencing in September.

Lieu tried to use the abortion penalty meted out to Burgess in Nebraska — where a 12-week ban replaced a 20-week ban after the Supreme Court invalidated Roe v. Wade last year — as an example of misplaced MAGA priorities. Hijacking the narrative, the Congressman wholly ignored the human tragedy of the story.

Then in a startlingly obtuse political move, Lieu compared the awful Burgess case to the “rebuilding” of roads and bridges made possible by the Democrats’ infrastructure law.

Reactions to Lieu’s post — and his dubious attempt to reduce the tragic and brutal Burgess case to merely “locking women up for having an abortion” — were hotly divided, as the comments below show. Where one commenter sees a distraught Celeste Burgess and takes pity on her, another sees a murderer who “absolutely belongs in prison for a lot longer than she’s going for.”

The comments mostly excoriate Rep. Lieu , with some of his followers even expressing the hope that he didn’t actually read the article before sharing — at least that way a less than full understanding of the case might be blamed for his not having produced a more reasoned, compassionate and truthful response.

“Bruh did you read the story?” asked one astonished commenter.

[NOTE: The Burgess abortion took place before the more stringent law went into effect and before the SCOTUS decision on Roe — and that action taken by the Burgess women was against the existing law.]>

<During an appearance on MSNBC on Saturday morning a former Justice Department official and ex-U.S. attorney praised special counsel Jack Smith for deploying a statute designed to keep government officials from illegally using the color of law.

Speaking with host Ali Velshi, ex-U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade claimed the statutes that Smith's office is citing has the makings of a "brilliant move" that should lead to a conviction.

Appearing with former Deputy Attorney General Donald Ayer, McQuade noted Smith is using Section 241, a criminal statute that’s part of the Ku Klux Klan Act, that prohibits any conspiracy designed to “injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”

As she explained, "What I think is particularly interesting about the use of either of these statutes and why it might be a really brilliant move by Jack Smith is, I think they can make out this case without proving that Donald Trump knew he had lost the election and for conspiracy to defraud the United States."

"You have to show that he was acting on that lie and he was acting on that lie," she elaborated. "As long as you can show that he was trying to do an end run around the process, you can show a violation of this statute. For example, asking [Georgia Secretary of State Brad] Raffensperger to find 11,780 votes. He may have genuinely believed that he somehow earned them, some of the stolen, etc. etc., but he knew that process wasn't the way you do it."

"I think could be a really good statute because if a jury does not find that the government has proved that Donald Trump knew he had lost the election, they can still win under the statute," she added.>

<Top companies are laying off thousands of diversity-focused workers, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Major companies that have championed diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, like Netflix, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery, recently announced the exit of high-profile DEI executives, and thousands of employees working in diversity-related positions have been laid off since last year, according to the WSJ. Employee opinions about the importance of DEI and the funding for related initiatives are changing too, with many workers not seeing it as important.

Many businesses rushed to hire chief diversity officers after the death of George Floyd in May 2020, according to the WSJ. Less than half of companies in the S&P 500 had a chief diversity officer position in 2018, but the number increased to three out of four companies having the role by 2022.

Data from Live Data Technologies shows that chief diversity officers are far more likely to be laid off than similar positions in human resources, and they have a 40% higher turnover rate with longer job searches, according to the WSJ.

Employee attitudes toward DEI are changing, with only 32% of workers finding it “very important” to work at an ethnically diverse place and 38% saying it’s “not too/not at all important,” according to a Pew Research Center survey. In that same study, 26% of people found it “very important” to have an “equal mix of men and women,” while 44% said it was not important.

Republican attorney generals from 13 states sent a letter to all Fortune 100 companies on July 13 calling for the end of discriminatory hiring practices following the Supreme Court decision that ended the use of race-based admissions at universities. The attorneys general claimed that the practice violates both state and federal law.>

<A Texas woman, who is now prohibited from leaving the United Arab Emirates after a man filed a legal case against her for "screaming," may actually be the victim of an elaborate scam.

Tierra Allen, 29, was riding in a rental car as a passenger in Dubai on April 28 when the driver, a friend from Nigeria, got into a "minor fender bender," Allen's mother, Tina Baxter, told Insider.

Allen told her mother that she was briefly handcuffed when local police arrived at the scene. The car, meanwhile, was towed back to the rental car company with her personal belongings — including her phone, wallet, and passport — still inside. She was then released, and police told her to go to the car company for her belongings.

When she went to the rental company — the name of which the US consulate in Dubai advised the family not to publicize — to get her stuff, its staff demanded thousands of dollars in return. An argument followed, and Allen says the staffers goaded her into yelling.

An employee at the rental car company then opened a case against Allen for violating a broadly-defined law in the UAE that criminalizes things like swearing, rudeness, and insulting gestures.

"She didn't get arrested for the accident. She got arrested for going to the rental car company, asking for her items that were left in the car when they opened the case," Baxter told Insider. "She became the main target when they realized she was a US citizen."

Radha Stirling, a UK-based human rights advocate who runs an organization called Detained in Dubai that gives legal assistance to foreigners in the UAE, told Insider that Allen's story is something she's seen before, multiple times.

"I just had three Americans in the past couple of months who said they were in pretty much the same situation," Stirling told Insider. "They ended up paying $20,000 that they didn't owe to a rental car company just to get their passports back so they could go home."

Stirling, who is helping Allen, said that she has right now only been charged. As a result, she can't leave the country. Even if she was allowed, she doesn't have her passport, which Stirling believes is now in police custody. She is otherwise mostly holed up in her Airbnb using a replacement phone to talk to her mother and Stirling.

"If the police choose to prosecute, that can take in itself four months, six months, maybe even longer, just until she gets a court date," Stirling said. "In a worst-case scenario, if she was prosecuted and convicted, she could be looking at up to two years in prison."

The rental company involved in the case did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Allen has gone to the police and returned to the rental agency multiple times to try and resolve the ordeal, even offering to pay some of the money demanded by the rental company. When she did that, however, employees only increased the amount, Stirling said. There were also fraudulent charges made on the credit cards Allen had left in the car, according to bank screenshots seen by Insider.

"I am definitely not doing well. It's been very rough," Baxter, who also lives in the Houston area, told Insider. "I'm trying to stay strong for her."

Baxter said she was working to help her daughter but was conscious that she could make things worse as she raises awareness of her daughter's case. She said she was being careful not to say anything that might offend the UAE government or the authorities in Dubai.

"People just think she's just some screaming monster when she's a very soft-spoken young lady," Baxter said of her daughter. "She was only pushed to the edge to respond back after she was afraid and being extorted for money and misled."

Baxter debated starting a fundraiser on GoFundMe, but Stirling said it could backfire.

"In a sense, doing that perpetuates this common issue, perpetuates the extortion scam that is so prevalent in the UAE," Stirling said.

Instead, the family has contacted lawmakers in Allen's home state of Texas for help, including Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and Sen. Ted Cruz.

"We're hoping that that's going to transition into ambassadorial help and diplomatic assistance in the UAE and that she should be home soon," Stirling told Insider.

The US Consulate in Dubai told Insider it does not comment on consular cases. In a statement, Cruz's office said it had made inquiries about Allen's situation.

<Standing at an Alabama Statehouse microphone before lawmakers voted on new congressional districts, state Rep. Chris England said that change in the Deep South state has often happened only through federal court order.

The Democratic lawmaker accused Republicans of repeating history and flouting a judicial mandate to create a second majority-Black district in the state or “something quite close to it.”

“Alabama does what Alabama does. Ultimately, what we are hoping for, I guess, at some point, is that the federal court does what it always does to Alabama: Forces us to the right thing. Courts always have to come in and save us from ourselves,” said England, a Black lawmaker from Tuscaloosa.

The fight over whether Alabama's congressional map complies with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 now shifts back to federal court as state Republicans submit their new plan to the same three-judge panel that struck down the previous districts.

The outcome could have consequences across the country as the case again weighs the requirements of the Voting Rights Act in redistricting. It could also impact the partisan leanings of one Alabama congressional district in the 2024 elections with control of the U.S House of Representatives at stake.

Alabama lawmakers on Friday approved new district lines six weeks after the surprise U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding a lower court ruling that the state's previous map — with one Black-majority district out of seven in a state that is 27% Black — likely violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting power of Black residents.

The state's Republican legislative supermajority boosted the percentage of Black voters in the majority-white 2nd Congressional District, now represented by Republican Rep. Barry Moore, from about 31% to almost 40%. The plan also dropped the Black voting-age population in the state's sole majority Black district, now represented by Democratic Rep. Terri Sewell, to 50.65%.

A group of voters who won the U.S. Supreme Court decision announced that they will challenge the new plan. The three-judge panel has set an Aug. 14 hearing on the new plan and could eventually order a special master to draw new lines for the state.

“The Alabama Legislature believes it is above the law. What we are dealing with is a group of lawmakers who are blatantly disregarding not just the Voting Rights Act, but a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court and a court order from the three-judge district court,” the plaintiffs said in a statement. “Even worse, they continue to ignore constituents’ pleas to ensure the map is fair and instead remain determined to rob Black voters of the representation we deserve,” the plaintiffs said.

Alabama will argue that the map complies with the court order and adheres to other redistricting principles such as keeping districts compact and not dividing communities of interest.

“The Legislature’s new plan fully and fairly applies traditional principles in a way that complies with the Voting Rights Act. Contrary to mainstream media talking points, the Supreme Court did not hold that Alabama must draw two majority-minority districts," state Attorney General Steve Marshall's office said in a statement. ”Instead, the Court made clear that the VRA never requires adoption of districts that violate traditional redistricting principles."...>

<....In a July 13 letter to the state legislative redistricting committee, Marshall said the plaintiffs in the case “now demand a plan that provides not just a ‘fair chance’ to compete, but instead a guarantee of Democratic victories in at least two districts."

Republicans, who have been reluctant to create a Democratic-leaning district, are gambling that the court will accept their proposal or that the state will prevail in a second round of appeals. In his letter, Marshall noted that Justice Brett Kavanaugh only partly joined with the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling against Alabama.

“I’m confident that we’ve done a good job. It will be up to the courts to decide whether they agree,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Greg Reed, a Republican from Jasper.

The three-judge panel that struck down Alabama's existing map in 2022 said the “appropriate remedy" is a map with a second majority-Black district or "an additional district in which Black voters otherwise have an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice.” The judges added that it should include a second majority-Black district or "something quite close to it.”

The meaning of “opportunity” dominated much of the floor debate in the Legislature as Democrats criticized the GOP proposal they said would ensure the reconfigured district stays under white Republican control.

“Your opportunity district gives you a majority-white population. ... It’s not an opportunity to win. It's an opportunity to lose,” said Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton, a Democrat from Greensboro.

Reed said the court did not give state lawmakers a definition of opportunity, but he argued that the district had been substantially altered.

“If you look at the difference at what the district was before and what the district is now, is there a greater opportunity for others to be elected there other than Republicans? I think the answer is yes,” Reed said.

An analysis by The Associated Press, using redistricting software, shows that the 2nd District map approved Friday has mostly voted for Republicans in recent statewide elections. Donald Trump won the district by nearly 10 percentage points in his 2020 reelection bid.

Alabama was the site of a court case that led to the Supreme Court decision that effectively ended the requirement in the Voting Rights Act that states with a history of racial discrimination in voting, mainly in the South, get Washington’s approval before changing the way they hold elections.

With the current fight over a congressional map, some Alabama Democrats accused Republicans of trying to provoke another challenge to the landmark civil rights law.

"I'm really disappointed in my colleagues who want to tee up the Voting Rights Act up to be gutted," Singleton said.>