Today's Top Stories from NBC News

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2025

In today's newsletter: The Supreme Court hears arguments in a case that could gut a key provision in the Voting Rights Act. Concern over lethal strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug boats grows in Congress. And celebrating a half-century of gay rodeo.

Here's what to know today.

▼ The Lead

Supreme Court hears case that could gut the Voting Rights Act

(Henrietta Wildsmith / Shreveport Times via USA Today Network)

The conservative-majority Supreme Court will consider whether to eviscerate a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act today in a congressional redistricting case from Louisiana.

The justices will listen to oral arguments on whether states can ever consider race in drawing new districts while seeking to comply with Section 2 of the law. The Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1965 against a backdrop of historic racial discrimination to protect minority voters.

The dispute concerns the congressional map that Louisiana was required to redraw last year after being sued to ensure that there were two majority-Black districts. The original map only had one such district in a state where a third of the population is Black.

The justices will decide whether drawing a map to ensure there are majority-Black districts violates the Constitution's 14th and 15th amendments, which were both enacted after the Civil War to ensure equal rights for formerly enslaved people, including the right to vote.

Conservatives argue that both constitutional amendments prohibit consideration of race at any time. The Supreme Court has previously embraced this "colorblind" interpretation of the Constitution, most notably in its 2023 ruling that ended the consideration of race in college admissions.

Louisiana, which initially defended its new map, has switched sides and joined a group of self-identified "non-African-American" voters who sued to block it on constitutional grounds. The Trump administration also backs the state's new position. The map is being defended by civil rights groups that challenged the original map.

Read the full story.

More politics news:

Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought two criminal cases against Donald Trump, spoke out about the president's administration in a rare interview.

Chicago teachers said federal immigration agents are disrupting their jobs, upending their communities and traumatizing their students.

At the two-week mark, Republicans and Democrats are bracing for a long government shutdown, with both parties seeing more upside in persisting with their conflicting demands.

U.S. Capitol Police officers missed their full paycheck for the first time since the government shutdown.

Five major broadcast news networks announced they will not sign the Pentagon's new press policy, joining several other media organizations that have objected to a set of rules that many journalists consider restrictive.

Members of Congress are concerned over a lack of information from the White House about the intelligence and strategy underlying its strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean, sources told NBC News.

Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill have left briefings about the strikes frustrated about the lack of information, said these people, who include five congressional sources and an additional source with knowledge of the matter. Some have asked for unedited video of the strikes, in a reflection of the kind of basic information they seek, but the administration has so far refused to provide it.

Some members of Congress — including Republicans who broadly support the attacks and the administration generally — are also concerned about the level of precision of the intelligence used to determine targets and the possibility that an American citizen could be killed in the operations.

Read the full story.

Data centers could play a key role in these two governor races

Leaders in both parties are locked in competition to encourage tech giants to put sprawling data centers in their states, looking for an economic leg up and an innovation edge in the early days of the artificial intelligence boom. Now, those same leaders are dealing with a downside that's more apparent by the month: Those electricity-hungry data centers are a major contributor to rising utility bills for cost-conscious residents.

Virginia, considered the nation's data center hub, and New Jersey, which has experienced some of the largest year-over-year electricity bill hikes, happen to be the two states with the biggest elections this fall. While the nominees for governor in both states have promised to tackle rising prices, leaders say they have yet to hear much discussion of the data center angle.

NBC News spoke with 14 elected officials and stakeholders on how states are handling the data center boom — and everything that comes with it.

Read the full story.

▼ Read All About It

A body Hamas returned to Israel as part of Trump's ceasefire deal is not that of any of the hostages, the Israel Defense Forces said, as the already-fragile truce in Gaza faced renewed pressure.

R&B and soul singer D'Angelo died yesterday, leaving behind a "legacy of extraordinarily moving music" after a "prolonged and courageous battle with cancer," his family said.

A shield statute has allowed Texas to withhold a telling piece of information: where the state is finding pentobarbital, the hard-to-get drug it exclusively uses to carry out executions.

The former NFL and college football coach accused of stealing the private, intimate images of student-athletes is fighting to have some of the charges dropped.

▼ Staff Pick

Coming home to the gay rodeo

When I was two weeks old, my dad held me up in front of a Clydesdale while visiting the Budweiser barn in New Hampshire. Years later, he would joke that the moment is what led to my obsession with horses. I started riding when I was 10 and competed in 4-H shows and rodeo until I went off to college. But then in my 20s I came out as transgender and nonbinary, and suddenly it felt like the more conservative horse world, and rodeo specifically, was a home I could never return to.

Then this summer I learned that the International Gay Rodeo Association would celebrate 50 years of gay rodeo in Reno in October. I pitched the story to my editor, and the story became a homecoming.

I met Chuck Browning, a cowboy who got into rodeo after being diagnosed with HIV in 1990 and given a prognosis of five years. At 61, he has significantly outlived what he calls his "expiration date," and now mentors younger competitors in events like steer riding. He even tried to rope (pun intended) me into getting on a bucking steer at Sunday's finals. I don't know if that will ever happen, but telling his story and the story of how the gay rodeo has endured all these years made me feel like maybe I can return to rodeo one day after all.

— Jo Yurcaba, NBC Out reporter

▼ NBC Select: Online Shopping, Simplified

The NBC Select team rounded up the best meal delivery services that feature lunch and dinner options. Plus, dozens of electrolyte powders and hot sauces that are actually worth adding to the pantry this fall.