WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday put off ruling on a second Black majority congressional district in Louisiana, instead ordering new arguments in the fall.

The case is being closely watched because at arguments in March several of the court’s conservative justices suggested they could vote to throw out the map and make it harder, if not impossible, to bring redistricting lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act.

Related Articles

RFK Jr.’s made promises about vaccines. Here’s what he’s done as health secretary

Supreme Court upholds Texas law aimed at blocking kids from seeing pornography online

Supreme Court says Maryland parents can pull their kids from public school lessons using LGBTQ books

Supreme Court preserves key part of Obamacare coverage requirements

Supreme Court OKs fee that subsidizes phone, internet services in schools, libraries and rural areas

The case involves the interplay between race and politics in drawing political boundaries in front of a conservative-led court that has been skeptical of considerations of race in public life.

Justice Clarence Thomas noted in a brief dissent from Friday’s order that he would have decided the case now and imposed limits on “race-based redistricting.”

The order keeps alive a fight over political power stemming from the 2020 census halfway to the next one. Two maps were blocked by lower courts, and the Supreme Court intervened twice. Last year, the justices ordered the new map to be used in the 2024 elections, while the legal case proceeded.

The call for new arguments probably means that the district currently represented by Democratic Rep. Cleo Fields probably will remain intact for the 2026 elections because the high court has separately been reluctant to upend districts as elections draw near.

The state has changed its election process to replace its so-called jungle primary with partisan primary elections in the spring, followed by a November showdown between the party nominees.

The change means candidates can start gathering signatures in September to get on the primary ballot for 2026.

The state’s Republican-dominated legislature drew a new congressional map in 2022 to account for population shifts reflected in the 2020 census. But the changes effectively maintained the status quo of five Republican-leaning majority white districts and one Democratic-leaning majority Black district in a state in which Black people make up a third of the population.

Civil rights advocates won a lower-court ruling that the districts likely discriminated against Black voters.

The Supreme Court put the ruling on hold while it took a similar case from Alabama. The justices allowed both states to use congressional maps in the 2022 elections even though both had been ruled likely discriminatory by federal judges.

The high court eventually affirmed the ruling from Alabama, which led to a new map and a second district that could elect a Black lawmaker. The justices returned the Louisiana case to federal court, with the expectation that new maps would be in place for the 2024 elections.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave lawmakers in Louisiana a deadline of early 2024 to draw a new map or face the possibility of a court-imposed map.

The state complied and drew a new map, with two Black majority districts.

But white Louisiana voters claimed in their separate lawsuit challenging the new districts that race was the predominant factor driving the new map. A three-judge court agreed.

Louisiana appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

A 27-year-old woman stood in an Anoka County courtroom and faced Kelly Eugene Jenkins, who wanted her killed after she accused him of sexually assaulting her in 2023.

A jury last month convicted Jenkins, 34, of Anoka, of aggravated first-degree tampering with a witness. After he was arrested and charged with assaulting the woman, he concocted a plot by which she would be lured into a coffee shop to drink coffee laced with fentanyl. He tried to convince his cellmate to carry it out.

“What I experienced was not simply a traumatic event,” the woman told the courtroom at his Thursday sentencing. “It was the beginning of a prolonged nightmare that shattered every sense of safety.”

Kelly Eugene Jenkins (Courtesy of the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office)

Anoka County District Judge Dyanna Street went on to give Jenkins a 6-year, one-month prison term, which was the maximum sentence available, and in doing so added, “The justice system has failed this victim. Repeatedly.”

In December, the sexual assault charges against Jenkins were dismissed. Anoka County District Judge Michele Davis found that his constitutional right to a speedy trial was violated because of a three-month delay caused by the prosecution.

“The length of the delay is presumptively prejudicial, and the unjustifiable reason for it is attributed wholly to the State, the factor which weighs heaviest in the Court’s analysis,” Davis wrote in her Dec. 10 order to dismiss the charges.

Spiked coffee scheme

The woman reported to Anoka police on Oct. 17, 2023, that Jenkins raped her hours before at her apartment. He was less than five months into his supervised release after spending nearly nine years in prison for raping a 16-year-old girl in Oak Grove in August 2013.

She reported that Jenkins asked to come over late at night on Oct. 16 and that she said it was a bad idea because he was on intensive supervised release. He said he wasn’t worried because he had a “burner phone” and couldn’t be tracked. She tried to dissuade him, but he showed up 15 minutes later.

While they were watching a movie, Jenkins began touching and kissing her. She told him they were not going to be intimate, but he forced himself on top of her and raped her despite her repeatedly telling him to stop, the criminal complaint said.

Jenkins was arrested and told police the sex was consensual. He pleaded not guilty and was held at the Anoka County jail without bail ahead of a trial.

Sheriff’s detectives began monitoring his jail phone calls in late October 2023. In one, Jenkins told his ex-girlfriend the woman’s name and said “she needs to recant her statements,” according to the criminal complaint. In another, he told her the woman “needs to understand the severity of this and it’s not a (expletive) game … you understand where I’m coming from?”

Detectives were given screenshots of Facebook messages between the woman and Jenkins’ ex-girlfriend that showed her “attempts to impress upon the victim the severity of the accusations the victim made,” the complaint said.

Detectives were then told that Jenkins was asking inmates at the jail to kill his accuser for money.

Detectives met with his cellmate, who began keeping notes on each time Jenkins would ask him to kill the woman. He told detectives that during the night between December 31, 2023 and January 1, 2024, Jenkins asked him “how he could get this girl to disappear before trial” and believed the inmate would be released in time to carry that out, the complaint said.

Jenkins then told the cellmate the woman’s name and age, and described where she lived and the color of her apartment building. He described the vehicle she drove.

He told his cellmate she “likes to go to coffee” and that he would pay him $3,000 to lure her to a coffee shop and put the powerful synthetic opioid in her drink.

Jenkins admitted to the inmate that he violated his supervised release to go to the woman’s apartment and said that if she disappeared he would do much less prison time, the complaint said.

Escape attempt

Jenkins did not look at the woman as she read her victim impact statement Thursday. He spoke briefly before hearing his sentence, which included credit for 544 days already served in custody.

“I just wanted to say that I apologize for anything that has impacted the person involved in this situation with this case,” he said. “I just …”

“Stop there,” Giancola, his attorney, told him.

Related Articles

Minneapolis woman gets nearly 24 years for driving SUV into crowd, killing Fridley teen

Burnsville man called ‘serial fraudster’ sentenced to seven years in prison

St. Paul man’s crime spree included a carjacking, crash, shots fired, charges say

Mahmoud Khalil vows to continue protesting Israel and the war in Gaza after release from detention

N.D. man charged with threatening federal official, in wake of Minnesota violence

Earlier in the hearing, Giancola told Judge Street they may be filing an appeal in the case and that he had advised Jenkins to exercise his Fifth Amendment right and not participate in a presentence investigation.

Jenkins still must face a probation violation relating to his 2013 conviction, as well as another case he picked up while jailed on the latest sexual assault charges. In July, he damaged a concrete countertop and then used pieces of it to smash a window of his cell and damage the door and walls, according to the charges. He also fashioned a rope out of blankets that measured approximately 35 feet in length.

Jenkins was charged with attempting to escape from custody and first-degree criminal damage to property after causing more than $12,000 in damage. He’s due back in court on the charges Oct. 7.

By The Associated Press

During his Senate confirmation hearings, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested he wouldn’t undermine vaccines.

“I am not going to go into HHS and impose my preordained opinions on anybody at HHS,” he said. “I’m going to empower the scientists at HHS to do their job and make sure that we have good science that is evidence based.”

He also said he wouldn’t halt congressionally mandated funding for vaccination programs, nor impose conditions that would force local, state or global entities to limit access to vaccines or vaccine promotion.

“I’m not going to substitute my judgment for science,” he said.

Yet the Department of Health and Human Services under Kennedy has taken unprecedented steps to change how vaccines are evaluated, approved and recommended — sometimes in ways that run counter to established scientific consensus.

Here’s a look at what Kennedy has said and done since becoming the nation’s top health official on Feb. 13.

Kennedy and the childhood vaccine schedule

Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician who was unsettled about Kennedy’s antivaccine work, said Kennedy pledged to him that he wouldn’t change existing vaccine recommendations.

“I recommend that children follow the CDC schedule. And I will support the CDC schedule when I get in there,” Kennedy said at his Senate confirmation hearing.

Kennedy also said he thought the polio vaccine was safe and effective and that he wouldn’t seek to reduce its availability.

Feb. 18: Kennedy vows to investigate the childhood vaccine schedule that prevents measles, polio and other dangerous diseases.

Early March: The National Institutes of Health cancels studies about ways to improve vaccine trust and access.

April 9: Kennedy tells CBS News that “people should get the measles vaccine, but the government should not be mandating those,” before then continuing to raise safety concerns about vaccines.

May 22: Kennedy issues a report that, among other things, questioned the necessity of mandates that require children to get vaccinated for school admission and suggested that vaccines should undergo more clinical trials, including with placebos. The report has to be reissued later because the initial version cited studies that don’t exist.

May 30: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removes COVID-19 vaccination guidance for pregnant women and says healthy children “may” get the shots.

June 25: A group of vaccine advisers picked by Kennedy announce they are establishing a work group to evaluate the “cumulative effect” of the children’s vaccine schedule.

June 25: Kennedy announces the U.S. will stop supporting the vaccines alliance Gavi. He accuses the group, along with the World Health Organization, of silencing “dissenting views” and “legitimate questions” about vaccine safety.

Kennedy on revising CDC vaccine recommendations

At the confirmation hearing, Cassidy asked Kennedy: “Do you commit that you will revise any CDC recommendations only based on peer review, consensus based, widely accepted science?”

Kennedy replied, “Absolutely,” adding he would rely on evidence-based science.

Feb. 20: HHS postpones a meeting of outside vaccine advisers.

April 16: The CDC’s vaccine advisory panel meets and recommends that people 50 to 59 with certain risk factors should be able to get vaccinated against respiratory syncytial virus, and endorses a new shot that protects against meningococcal bacteria. As of late June, the CDC and HHS haven’t acted on the recommendations.

Related Articles

Supreme Court upholds Texas law aimed at blocking kids from seeing pornography online

Supreme Court says Maryland parents can pull their kids from public school lessons using LGBTQ books

Supreme Court preserves key part of Obamacare coverage requirements

Supreme Court OKs fee that subsidizes phone, internet services in schools, libraries and rural areas

Supreme Court limits nationwide injunctions, but fate of Trump birthright citizenship order unclear

May 27: Kennedy announces that COVID-19 vaccines are no longer recommended for healthy children and pregnant women — a move immediately questioned by several public health experts. No one from the CDC, the agency that makes such recommendations, is present in the video announcing the changes.

June 9: Kennedy ousts all 17 members of the science panel that advises the CDC on how vaccines should be used.

June 11: Kennedy names new vaccine policy advisers to replace the panel that he dismissed. They include a scientist who rose to prominence by relaying conspiracy theories around the COVID-19 pandemic and the vaccines that followed, a leading critic of pandemic-era lockdowns, a business school professor, and a nurse affiliated with a group that is widely considered to be a leading source of vaccine misinformation.

June 26: Kennedy’s vaccine advisers recommend that people receive flu shots free of an ingredient that antivaccine groups have falsely tied to autism. The vote comes after a presentation from an antivaccine group’s former leader. A CDC staff analysis of past research on the topic is removed from the agency’s website because, according to a committee member, the report hadn’t been authorized by Kennedy’s office.

Kennedy on vaccine approvals and review standards

At the Senate hearing, Cassidy asked Kennedy if he would keep FDA’s historically rigorous vaccine review standards.

“Yes,” Kennedy replied.

March 29: Kennedy forces the FDA’s top vaccine official to resign. The official, Peter Marks, says he feared Kennedy’s team might manipulate or delete data from a vaccine safety database.

May 6: Kennedy names Dr. Vinay Prasad, an outspoken critic of the FDA’s handling of COVID-19 boosters, as the FDA’s vaccine chief.

May 16: After a delay, the FDA grants Novavax full approval for its COVID-19 vaccine but with unusual restrictions: The agency says it’s for use only in adults 65 and older – or those 12 to 64 who have at least one health problem that puts them at increased risk from COVID-19.

May 20: Top officials limit the approval for seasonal COVID-19 shots to seniors and others at high risk, pending more data on everyone else. The FDA urges companies to conduct large, lengthy studies before tweaked vaccines can be approved for healthier people, a stark break from the previous federal policy recommending an annual COVID-19 shot for all Americans six months and older.

May 30: FDA approves a new COVID-19 vaccine made by Moderna but with the same limits on who can get it as Novavax’s shot.

Kennedy on bird flu vaccine

At his confirmation hearing, Kennedy said he would support the development of a vaccine for H5N1 bird flu.

“I’m going to continue research on every kind of vaccine,” he said.

May 28: The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, an HHS agency, cancels $766 million in awards to Moderna to develop a vaccine against potential pandemic influenza viruses, including the H5N1 bird flu.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

As federal support dries up, the lines outside New York City pantries stretch down blocks and around corners. Advocates say the city needs to ramp up funding for its emergency food assistance program to help offset cuts from Washington, D.C.

Clients waiting in the lobby of St. John’s Bread & Life food pantry in Bedford-Stuyvesant. (Photo by Adi Talwar) 

As councilmembers filed up and down the steps of City Hall last week carrying hefty lunch boxes, a coalition of local emergency food providers assembled on the stairs of the building to sound the alarm on the accelerating food insecurity crisis in New York City. 

For local food pantries, a storm is on the horizon. President Trump’s proposed “Big, Beautiful Bill” has been rolling along the U.S. Senate floor, targeting food security programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The bill would shift $2.1 billion in costs onto New York State and local county governments, according to a memo sent out by Gov. Kathy Hochul last Friday.

Programs are already struggling. After the suspension of FEMA’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program in February, food banks across the nation began wondering how they would manage to keep their shelves stocked. Now facing additional cuts—$1 billion slashed from local food banks and schools and an additional $500 million from the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP)—providers are left with full tables, but empty plates. 

New York receives around $30 million annually in supplemental funding through TEFAP to help meet the growing demand for food assistance across the state. As federal support shrinks, the lines outside New York City pantries stretch down blocks and around corners. 

“People start lining up at our food pantry at 5 a.m. We don’t open until 9 a.m. We’re seeing parents push their children in their empty grocery carts,” said Alex Hughes, the director of hunger prevention and advocacy at Project Hospitality, a non-profit on Staten Island providing food and shelter. 

Despite growing demand, funding for Community Food Connection (CFC), the city’s largest provider of emergency food assistance, has hardly changed since 2022. Mayor Eric Adams’ executive budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which starts July 1, proposes $57 million, down slightly from $60 million this current fiscal year. 

But the City Council and anti-hunger advocates are pushing for $100 million for the program, citing the impact of federal cuts. More than 700 community kitchens rely on it.

Jilly Stephens, director of City Harvest, called that amount “a modest ask with outsized importance,” noting it would account for only .08 percent of the mayor’s proposed $115.1 billion budget.  

A rally outside City Hall on June 24, 2025, pressing for more funding for emergency food providers. (Photo by Adi Talwar)

At last week’s rally, organizers from City Harvest, Food Bank for New York City and United Way said local food pantry visits are only increasing, and it’s not looking like the numbers will subside any time soon. FeedNYC data shows there’s been an 85 percent increase in the number of average monthly visits to food banks across the city since 2019. 

Pantry leaders were convinced the situation would simmer down after the pandemic, when need skyrocketed, but it’s only escalated. “In 2019, there were about 25 million visits to food pantries across the city. Last year, there were more than 46 million visits to those same organizations,” shared Stephens. 

“If the funding is cut, I’ll be in trouble. I’m afraid of wasting away,” said Kenneth Johnson, a Lower East Side resident who gets meals at the Sirovich Senior Center because his fixed income doesn’t allow him to afford groceries from supermarkets. Johnson said he has been struggling to put on weight. 

Louise Villacci, the CEO of Leading Individuals From Trauma, a nonprofit based on Long Island that provides support resources to individuals who have experienced trauma and struggle with food insecurity, said she and her business partner had to personally cover $600 of their usual food order last week due to federal cuts. 

“The money is being frozen, If we want something we have to reach into our own pockets and buy the food,” Villaci explained.  

Kenneth Johnson attended a rally in support of the city’s emergency food programs last week. “If the funding is cut, I’ll be in trouble,” he told City Limits. (Photo by Adi Talwar)

Community organizations are already dealing with the effects of the FEMA funding pause: 97 groups across the city are owed over $1.3 million for food and emergency services they’ve already delivered, according to the president of United Way of New York City, Grace Bonilla. 

Emmy Brett, the director of Greenpoint Hunger Program, criticized the mayor’s budget proposal, saying the administration’s efforts to prioritize public safety fall short of addressing the equally critical need to keep New Yorkers fed. 

“The mayor is demanding that food justice organizations like the ones behind me tighten our belts. But what he does not understand is that we have been tightening our belts,” she said. 

“A hungry city is not a safe city—a hungry city is a place where we have to lock up baby formula in cages in our grocery stores as people grow desperate for ways to feed their families,” Brett said. “That’s not New York.”

St. John’s Bread of Life

At 6:30 a.m., there was already a line at St. John’s Bread of Life, a food bank tucked between Malcolm X Boulevard and Patchen Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant. 

On Tuesday, as record-breaking heat scorched New York City, pantry visitors endured the sweltering conditions to receive a hot meal and a warm “hello” from Sister Caroline Tweedy, the program’s executive director. 

Sister Caroline Tweedy, left, executive director of St. John’s Bread & Life, and Sister Marie Sorenson, right, associate executive director. (Photo by Adi Talwar)

“This is a safety net for folks—a place where they can find people to walk alongside them as they begin their journey to stability,” said Tweedy. With over 35 years of social work experience, she said wanted to cultivate an organization that offered sustenance to struggling individuals, as well as an array of social services.

St. John’s Bread of Life is a spacious brick building with two floors. On the first floor, visitors cross a waiting lobby and enter a room in the back equipped with self-ordering machines, where they scan their membership cards to order their weekly supply of groceries. 

They can choose from a range of options, from basic necessities like oil, rice, beans, and milk to more substantial proteins such as ground beef, canned tuna, and chicken. After placing their order, families sit in the lobby and patiently wait for their name to be called. 

Contents of a single microwavable food bag prepared for clients experiencing homelessness at St. John’s Bread & Life. (Photo by Adi Talwar)

Upstairs, pantry guests have access to case management services, including legal assistance, medical support, and even a mail office for those who can’t receive correspondence at their place of residence.

“We have a relationship with Urban Justice, and our clinic is run by Care for the Homeless,” said Tweedy, adding that the pantry welcomes 9,000 guests a week in search of food and oftentimes social services. 

Before the pandemic, St. John’s Bread of Life would distribute less than a million meals a year. Now Tweedy and her colleague Sister Marie Sorenson hand out 5 million plates of food annually.

“We anticipated that it would go back to normal after COVID,” Sorenson said. “But there is no normal anymore. And our funding has gone down this year. So it’s very unpredictable. We’re facing a lot of uncertainty.”

Still, they say they’ve never had to turn anyone away, thanks to heavy fundraising and extra help from organizations like United Way, which stepped in when the state’s Hunger Prevention and Nutrition Assistance Program denied them a grant in 2023. 

Tweedy doesn’t enjoy having to put limits on the number of food options for clients or the amount of times they can shop, but she says it’s a “necessary evil” at this point in order for their program to survive. 

“People are just going to plunge further and further into poverty,” Sorenson said in response to proposed cuts. “We were founded to be that gap between running out of SNAP money or waiting for that next check, and now we’re people’s sole support. And that’s very scary.”  

Microwavable food bags prepared for clients experiencing homelessness at St. John’s Bread & Life. (Photo by Adi Talwar)

The Trump administration’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” would not only halt funding to the federal program responsible for funding food pantries across the city, but also proposes the largest cut to SNAP benefits in history—eliminating $300 billion over the next 10 years. 

The bill also imposes stricter eligibility requirements. Some recipients will need to prove they work 80 hours per month, and those who are unable to meet this demand after 90 days won’t be eligible for SNAP for three years. The change would disproportionately affect people with unpredictable work situations, chronic illness, or caregiving responsibilities, advocates say. 

If passed, more than 300,000 households in New York would lose access to food assistance, warned Gov. Kathy Hochul. This additional rollback in federal support would put significant pressure on local food pantries that will not be equipped to handle a surge in visits. 

“These are our brothers and sisters waiting in line down there, we need to treat them with dignity,” said Sorenson. “Why is our gaze always looking down at people who are struggling when we’re looking at a financial crisis? Why doesn’t it ever look up at the system?”

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Marianad@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

Want to republish this story? Find City Limits’ reprint policy here.

The post ‘I’m Afraid of Wasting Away’: City Food Pantries Struggle As Funding Shrinks & Demand Grows appeared first on City Limits.