The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled 6-3 against the Democratic National Committee, finding that the Arizona GOP’s restrictive voting law does not violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The Court ruled that a law banning so-called “ballot harvesting,” collecting of ballots by a third party, is not illegal.

The Court also ruled that an Arizona law requiring ballots cast in the wrong precinct be thrown out is not illegal.

Democrats argued these laws were written with discriminatory intent and disadvantage minority voters.

The Court disagreed, also ruling that the laws were not drafted with discriminatory intent.

The New York Times adds that the “decision, in what may be a test of the Voting Rights Act, suggested that challenges to many new measures making it harder to vote may not be successful.”

The majority ruling was written by Justice Alito, with Justice Kagan writing the dissent. Justices Breyer and Sotomayor joined Kagan’s dissent.

The case is Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee and the Court’s opinion is here.

UPDATE –
Here’s how NPR explains the ruling:

BREAKING: The Supreme Court has narrowed the only remaining section of 1965 Voting Rights Act — rendering the landmark civil rights law close to a dead letter.

The 6-3 vote was along ideological lines, with the liberals justices dissenting.https://t.co/1BbOWcfi9T

— NPR (@NPR) July 1, 2021

This is a breaking news and developing story. Details may change. This story will be updated, and NCRM will likely publish follow-up stories on this news. Stay tuned and refresh for updates.

Channel 4 in the U.K. published a startling expose on ExxonMobil’s lobbyists who revealed the top most important U.S. Senators who are the ones behind any legislation that might hurt the oil industry.

While many oil companies are diversifying with natural gas, it appears ExxonMobil is going all-in battling to keep “big oil” alive and well.

“Keith McCoy is a senior ExxonMobil lobbyist on Capitol Hill and has represented the company in its liaison with the U.S. Congress for the last eight years,” explained the report.

“Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes. Did we hide our science? Absolutely not,” said McCoy on camera. “Did we join some of these shadow groups to work against some of the early efforts? Yes, that’s true. But there’s nothing, there’s nothing illegal about that. We were looking out for our investments. We were looking out for our shareholders.”

McCoy compared his work with elected officials to fishing with ExxonMobil who supplies the “bait” before it “reels in” the official on issues like a carbon tax, electric cars, taxation and infrastructure.

“When you have an opportunity to talk to a member of Congress, I liken it to fishing, right? You know you have bait, you throw that bait out. And they say: ‘Oh, you want to talk about infrastructure, yeah,'” McCoy continued. “And then you start to reel them in and you start to have these conversations about federal leasing programs, you start to have these conversations about a carbon tax. You know, it’s all these opportunities that you use and to use the fishing analogy again just to kind of reel them in.”

“I make sure I get them the right information that they need so they look good. And then they help me out. They’re a captive audience. They know they need you. And I need them,” McCoy also said.

He went on to explain that lobbyists aim to have close relationships with officials.

“You want to be able to go to the chief… and say we need congressman so and so to be able to either introduce this bill, we need him to make a floor statement, we need him to send a letter. You name it, we’ve asked for everything,” he said.

But it was the shocking revelation that he has 11 U.S. Senators on the hook.

“Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Senator Joe Manchin, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Senator Jon Tester, Senator Maggie Hassan, Senator John Barrasso, Senator John Cornyn, Senator Steve Daines, Senator Chris Coons, Senator Mark Kelly and Senator Marco Rubio,” were all cited.

He went on to explain that the last thing they want is to appear in a public hearing before Congress where the American people can see.

“We don’t want it to be us, to have these conversations, especially in a hearing. It’s getting our associations to step in and have those conversations and answer those tough questions and be for, the lack of a better term, the whipping boy for some of these members of congress,” McCoy confessed.

“There was something we were working on earlier this week where we, where our CEO was invited to a hearing from a member of congress who we know is just going to rip him to shreds when he goes there. So, we look at it and we say: well, why us?” he asked.

See the video below and read the full story at Channel 4:

The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee is blasting South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi Noem for fulfilling the request of a wealthy GOP donor who asked her to deploy the National Guard to Texas to patrol the border, and for accepting his private donation to pay for it.

Chairman Adam Smith (D-WA) calls Noem’s decision “incredibly dangerous,” and warned he will pressure Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to ensure the National Guard is not treated like a “private militia” and “to make it stop,” Politico reports.

“This is unbelievably dangerous to think that rich people can start using the U.S. military to advance their objectives, independent of what the commander in chief and the secretary of defense think they ought to be doing,” Smith said Wednesday on “Meet the Press.”

On Tuesday many had expressed outrage that Noem had turned the National Guard into  “a mercenary force.”

Noem, widely seen as a 2024 GOP presidential hopeful, currently has the third-highest rate of coronavirus cases and the tenth-highest rate of coronavirus deaths per capita.