Trump Highlights National Crime Crackdown, SCOTUS Revisits Voting Rights Act: AM Update 10/16

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Good morning, everyone.

I'm Megan Kelly.

It's Thursday, October 16th, 2025, and this is your AM update.

We haven't really even gotten going yet.

Trump administration officials highlighting the widespread success of a summer FBI operation geared toward cracking down on violent crime, while Mexican cartels target law enforcement in Chicago with bounties.

That is not what the Voting Rights Act was intended to do to help one political party or not.

The U.S.

Supreme Court hears arguments in a case that could reshape congressional districts nationwide.

All that and more coming up in just a moment on your AM update.

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President Trump, FBI Director Cash Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on Wednesday highlighting the administration's success in Operation Summer Heat, a crime crackdown by the FBI conducted from June through September across all 50 states, the focus, violent criminals, and gang members suspected of breaking federal laws.

In the three-month span, Director Patel reporting 8,700 arrests of violent criminals, 2,200 illegal firearms seized, 421 kilograms of fentanyl taken off the streets, 5,400 children located, and four of the FBI's top 10 most wanted fugitives arrested.

President Trump announcing a nearly 20% decline in crime nationwide compared to the same period last year.

Director Patel comparing the FBI's arrest rate under the Trump administration to that during the Biden years.

When you look at the year for the entire seven-month period that we're talking about here, if if you look at the past four years of the Biden administration, 16,000, 17,000, 15,000, 15,000, that's the number of arrests year over year of violent felons in this country for the Biden administration.

Mr.

President, in seven months, you have

28,600 arrests of violent feminines in just seven months alone.

Over the last several months, President Trump publicly battling with state and local leaders over law enforcement efforts in Chicago, once again calling out Illinois Governor J.B.

Pritzker for refusing to request federal assistance.

We haven't really even gotten going yet.

If we didn't have to fight all of these radical left governors, we could have had Chicago taken care of, as an example.

They had, in a short period of time, 4,000 murders in Chicago, and we have to listen to this man stand up and say that we're bad people.

And the people of Chicago are walking around with MAGA hats.

You have women, beautiful black women, walking around with MAGA hats.

Please let the president in, and we don't care how he does it.

Chicago recently had one deal where they had 11 murders in one weekend, and they said, well, yeah, but it was a holiday weekend.

They actually told me that was the reason.

Like it was okay because it was a holiday.

It was Labor Day.

These people are the worst.

They really have to.

They better.

I tell you what, the people in Chicago and the people in places like that, that could be fixed.

Mr.

Trump announcing the next possible Democrat-run city targeted for federal intervention.

So I'm going to be strongly recommending, at the request of government officials, which is always nice, that you start looking at San Francisco.

I think we can make San Francisco one of our great cities 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and now it's a mess.

And we have great support in San Francisco, so I'd like to recommend that for inclusion, maybe in your next group.

You'll get great support.

Longtime Democratic donor, Salesforce founder, and CEO Mark Benioff, whose company is headquartered in San Francisco, telling the New York Times last week he supports President Trump and believes the National Guard should be deployed to his city.

Benioff, since softening his stance following widespread backlash from Democrats, now suddenly saying, What I meant when I said we need the National Guard here was collaboration works.

After all, I bring in extra law enforcement when I have my big company conference in San Francisco.

That's all.

So by bring in the National Guard, he really meant don't bring in the National Guard, but collaborate with private rent-a-cops.

Okay.

Turns out not everyone can take a beating from the left and not cave.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, is currently suing the Trump administration over deploying the National Guard to Los Angeles.

In September, a judge blocking the National Guard from engaging in domestic law enforcement activity, that decision paused following an appeal by the Trump administration.

Those legal proceedings are ongoing.

Mexican cartels are reportedly coordinating with U.S.

domestic extremist groups targeting ICE and Customs and Border Protection or CBP officials in Chicago with bounties, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

DHS announcing in a Tuesday bulletin, quote, these criminal networks have issued explicit instructions to U.S.-based sympathetics, including street gangs in Chicago, to monitor, harass, and assassinate federal agents.

DHS saying gang members affiliated with the Latin King's gang deploying spotters armed with radios and guns to rooftops, tracking and relaying locations of ICE and CBP agents.

The memo stating this activity has led to quote ambushes and disruptions during routine enforcement actions.

The cartels targeting agents with a bounty system, $2,000 for gathering intel on agents or doxing them, $5,000 to $10,000 for kidnapping or assaulting an agent, and up to $50,000 for assassinating high-ranking officials.

The bulletin also stated Antifa groups in Chicago and Portland have, quote, provided logistical support such as pre-staged protest supplies, doxing of agent identities, and on-the-ground interference to shield cartel-linked individuals from deportation.

DHS Secretary Christy Noam posting on X, quote, their campaign of terror against the brave men and women who protect our homeland will be crushed, and these cartel members will be brought to their knees.

President Trump and I have the backs of every member of law enforcement across our nation.

Last week, DHS announcing the arrest of a Latin Kings gang member in the country illegally for allegedly placing a $10,000 bounty on Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino.

Governor J.B.

Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, both Democrats, have yet to weigh in on the bounty system.

Coming up, the U.S.

Supreme Court hearing arguments in a case that could have a major effect on how congressional maps are drawn.

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The Supreme Court on Wednesday hearing arguments in a case that could have major ramifications for congressional maps nationwide and potentially reshape the Voting Rights Act.

The case, Louisiana v.

Calais, centering on a redrawn district in Louisiana and a clash between competing court rulings over race-based boundaries.

In 2022, Louisiana adopting a congressional map with one majority black district.

Louisiana's population is about one-third black, and the state has six total seats.

A group of black voters suing in federal court, arguing the map violated section two of the Voting Rights Act, which bars election rules or maps that, quote, result in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the U.S.

to vote on account of race or color.

A federal district court agreed the map likely violated the Voting Rights Act, directing the state to create a new map, including a second majority Black district, which it did.

In 2024, that new map facing a legal challenge from a group of non-black voters who argued the map with two majority Black districts was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

A different U.S.

district court agreed, ruling that the new map violated the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.

The case was appealed up to the U.S.

Supreme Court, which heard argument on that case in March, but which then in June, in a rare move, asked the parties to re-argue the case and to focus on a larger constitutional issue.

That led to Wednesday's argument.

Louisiana initially defended its new map, but has since switched sides, joining the non-black voters who say the new map is unconstitutional.

The Trump administration also backs the non-black voters.

The state describing itself as in, quote, an endless game of ping-pong, emphasizing to the court that this redistricting saga must end.

The black voters agreeing with that latter point, but arguing the non-black voters cannot meet the high bar of proving the new map is unconstitutional.

We spoke with senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, Hans von Spakovsky, who says the Voting Rights Act has been misinterpreted and misapplied by federal courts.

The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965.

It was intended to stop the kind of outright discrimination that was going on throughout the South at that time.

That kind of discrimination has almost completely disappeared.

So, what it's been now being used for and has for several

decades is the NAACP and others come in making not a claim that their voters have been denied the ability to vote, but their vote has been diluted, diluted.

And as the

deputy solicitor general for the U.S.

Department of Justice argued before the Supreme Court, he said, look, the problem is

the judges haven't been actually figuring out whether there's an unfair effect based on race.

They've been figuring out whether there's an unfair effect based on party.

And that is not what the Voting Rights Act was intended to do to help one political party or not.

It was supposed to stop outright racial discrimination in the voting context.

Spokovsky says the group arguing for the creation of a second black majority district does not have the law on their side.

Look, the basic argument of those who first sued was that because black residents of Louisiana are about 30, 35% of the population, they deserve two.

of the six congressional seats.

They didn't really have any evidence of current discrimination being practiced by the state legislature.

And that is a, not only is that a wrong interpretation of Section 2, but Section 2 specifically has language saying that it does not guarantee proportional representation based on the ratio of minorities in a particular population.

In a particularly striking moment during yesterday's arguments, Justice Katanji Brown Jackson drawing a comparison between black voters and disabled Americans.

And my kind of paradigmatic example of this is something like the ADA.

Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act against the backdrop of a world that was generally not accessible to people with disabilities.

And so it was discriminatory in effect.

Congress said the facilities have to be made equally open to people with disabilities if readily possible.

I guess I don't understand why that's not what's happening here.

The idea in Section 2 is that we are responding to current day manifestations of past and present decisions that disadvantage minorities and make it so that they don't have equal access to the voting system.

Right?

They're disabled.

In fact, we use the word disabled in Milligan.

We say that's a way in which you see that these processes are not equally open.

Spikowski's reaction here.

That is an absurd claim that does not match reality.

All you have to do is look at the number of black elected officials throughout the country, and particularly in the South, the former Confederacy.

There are black elected officials there at the

state, local, and federal level.

That claim is a patronizingly racist attitude towards black voters and black elected officials.

The media, sensing that the high court appears likely to side with Louisiana and the Trump administration, suggesting, quote, black voting rights are under siege at the court, USA Today, describing this challenge to the Voting Rights Act as perilous, the New York Times.

From Vox, quote, it sure looks like the Voting Rights Act is doomed.

The New York Times reporting that the court could, quote, gut the remaining pillar of the act.

These predictions are overblown, says Spikovsky.

I don't think the Supreme Court's going to throw out Section 2.

I just think they're going to come out with much stronger rules saying you can't order this kind of race-based remedy unless there was real discrimination going on.

More than a decade ago, the Supreme Court threw out as unconstitutional another provision of the Voting Rights Act, Section 5.

That was a provision that required a small handful of states, mostly those in the old South, to get pre-approval of any changes in their voting rights laws.

The same people who are claiming that the sky is going to fall in in this case were apoplectic when that happened and claimed that all kinds of terrible racial discrimination would be reinstituted.

That did not happen.

And I predict exactly the same effect with the current case.

Spikowski getting to the heart of the media's outcry if the court rules as he predicts it will.

It will stop what has been happening in many federal courts where federal judges have misapplied the Voting Rights Act to not stop racial discrimination, but to stop election losses by the Democratic Party because they confuse politics with race.

It's unclear when the justices will release their decision, but Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry urging the high court to rule quickly, the state's primary is set for April 18th.

And that'll do it for your AM update.

I'm Megan Kelly.

Join me back here for the Megan Kelly Show live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111 at Noon East, on youtube.com/slash Megan Kelly, and on all podcast platforms.

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