The U.S. Supreme Court announced Thursday it will hear oral arguments in a case experts warn could be one of the greatest threats to U.S. democracy since the deadly January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. In October, the court will hear Moore v. Harper — a case which seeks to reinstate gerrymandered congressional maps that were struck down by North Carolina’s highest court. A ruling in favor of North Carolina Republicans could revive a marginal right-wing legal theory known as independent state legislature doctrine, potentially stripping state courts of their power to strike down state laws, while expanding the power of GOP -controlled state legislatures to control federal elections. We speak with law professor Carolyn Shapiro, director of the Institute on the Supreme Court of the United States at Chicago-Kent College of Law. Shapiro says a ruling in favor of North Carolina Republicans would be “extremely problematic from the perspective of democracy” and “could cause enormous chaos.”

Boston officials claim they had no prior knowledge of a march through the city by about 100 members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front on Saturday. Local anti-fascist organizers contronted the marchers, who also attacked a local Black artist named Charles Murrell. We speak to Boston civil rights activist Reverend Kevin Peterson, who is an adviser to Murrell; investigative journalist Phillip Martin, who has documented the rise of the neo-Nazi movement in Massachusetts; and Michael Edison Hayden with the Southern Poverty Law Center. Peterson is calling for an internal investigation into the Boston police over its response to Saturday’s violence. His group, the New Democracy Coalition, is also calling for Boston Mayor Michelle Wu to develop a race commission to explore what would constitute reparations for Black people.

The death toll in Monday’s mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, has risen to seven after another victim died from their injuries. The suspect has been charged with seven counts of first-degree murder over the massacre that also left scores of people injured, including nine people who remain hospitalized. Police say he legally purchased five weapons, including the high-powered rifle used in the shooting, despite visiting his home in 2019 over threats of violence. Reporters also continue to unearth his online history, including videos that appeared to show an obsession with mass shootings and his support for former President Donald Trump. Investigative journalist Michael Edison Hayden, who covers internet radicalization and far-right extremism for the Southern Poverty Law Center, says that same link has been apparent in other mass shootings where disturbed people who are “programming themselves to kill … are also attracted to the nihilism of hard-right authoritarianism in the United States.”

Democracy Now! first aired on nine community radio stations on February 19, 1996, on the eve of the New Hampshire presidential primary. In the 25 years since that initial broadcast, the program has greatly expanded, airing today on more than 1,500 television and radio stations around the globe and reaching millions of people online. We celebrate 25 years of the War and Peace Report with an hour-long retrospective, including highlights from the show’s early years, some of the most controversial interviews, and groundbreaking reports from East Timor, Standing Rock, Western Sahara and more.

• Power Cuts, Freezing Temperatures Plague Millions as Texas Energy Producers Boast of Profits
• Sen. Ted Cruz Fled to Cancún as Millions of Texans Endured Blackouts and Winter Cold
• South Africa Switches to Johnson & Johnson Vaccine in Battle Against Coronavirus Variant
• Peruvian VIPs Secretly Received First Doses of COVID-19 Vaccine
• Pfizer Says its COVID-19 Vaccine Might Not Need Ultra-Cold Temperatures
• U.S. COVID Deaths Drop in February But Still on Pace to Top Half-Million by Month's End
• U.S. to Give $4 Billion to COVAX as Biden Tries to Repair International Ties
• Biden's New ICE Guidelines Continue to Target and Demonize Immigrants
• Residents Describe Harrowing November Massacre in Ethiopian Holy City
• U.S. Open to Holding Talks on Relaunching Iran Nuclear Deal
• Israel Expanding Dimona Nuclear Facility
• U.S. Capitol Police Suspends 6 Officers over Actions During Jan. 6 Insurrection
• New York Moves Closer to Releasing NYPD Disciplinary Records
• Vice President Harris Calls Women's Exodus From Workforce a National Emergency
• Protests in Guatemala Call for an End to Violence Against Indigenous Communities

As Democracy Now! prepares to mark 25 years on air, we celebrate Nermeen Shaikh’s 10th anniversary as a Democracy Now! co-host and feature a report she filed from protests at New York’s JFK Airport against the Trump administration’s Muslim ban, one of the many highlights from her time on the program.

Students, campaigners and top Democrats have been pushing President Joe Biden to use executive authority to cancel at least $50,000 in student loan debt per person. Student loan debt in the U.S. stands at $1.7 trillion, with some 45 million people owing money. Filmmaker and organizer Astra Taylor, an author, documentary director and organizer with the Debt Collective, says Biden has clear legal authority to cancel student debt. “Not doing this is a choice,” she says. We also speak with Braxton Brewington, a digital strategist with the Debt Collective, who says student debt cancellation is also politically smart. “President Biden has a unique opportunity to bring together a broad coalition of individuals who otherwise would be unlikely to come together around a policy,” he says.

While COVID -19 infection rates and hospitalizations appear to be waning, the United States has a long way to go before people can safely return to everyday life without masks. Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease physician and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, says it’s vital to stay vigilant even as vaccinations ramp up. “If we can get our transmission down as low as possible, that is actually going to make the vaccines more effective.”

Millions of people in Texas were plunged into freezing cold and darkness as a major winter storm overwhelmed the state’s power grid. More than 12 million Texans face water disruptions and have been ordered to boil tap water for safe consumption, and some parts of the state have no running water at all. The state is also running out of food as the storms disrupt key supply chains. Leading Republicans, including Texas Governor Greg Abbott, falsely blamed renewable energy sources for the state’s blackouts, warning against a shift to more green energy, but the state’s own energy department said the outages were primarily due to freezing at natural gas, coal and nuclear facilities. Despite the crisis, state leaders say they will not integrate Texas’s power grid with the rest of the country. “The impact of this storm is more than just power outages and inconveniences,” says Texas Southern University professor Robert Bullard, who warns that the additional costs associated with the crisis will hurt Black and Brown communities most. “That’s the inequity that’s piled on top of the inequity.”