GOP speaker claps back after Booker stumps against bid to eradicate red state's Democrat-held districts

By Fox News · Fox News

EXCLUSIVE: Alabama Republicans are moving to force through a new congressional map that could reduce Democratic representation amid a narrow national GOP House majority, while rebuking Yankee Democrats traveling to the Yellowhammer State to gin up opposition. State leaders argue the new Supreme Court ruling limiting the use of race in redistricting has changed the legal landscape, giving Alabama grounds to revisit and undo a court-imposed map that recently reshaped its congressional districts to help minority voters. As attention shifted from Louisiana to Alabama after the high bench tossed the Pelican State's map last week, Sen. Cory Booker , D-N.J., traveled south to stump in Birmingham with fellow Democrats bemoaning legislators’ attempts to force the high bench to reconsider a partially conflicting order from three years prior. "Well, I'm probably guessing that's first time Cory Booker's ever been in Alabama," Alabama House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter, R-Rainville, told Fox News Digital. BLOCKBUSTER SUPREME COURT VOTING RIGHTS RULING IGNITES REDISTRICTING WAR ACROSS SOUTHERN STATES "The thing about it is the people that we represent have lived here most of all of their lives and they're the ones that ask us to do something for them — not the Cory Bookers," Ledbetter said. "And he can nationalize it all he wants to, but it's not going to change facts." Booker joined Rep. Terri Sewell of Birmingham, the state’s lone Democrat, until the court-mandated redraw produced a Democratic flip by Rep. Shomari Figures of Mobile. "We are in a storm right now — the question is, where will you stand, will you hold up your light," Booker addressed a redistricting town hall in Birmingham, where he declared voting rights are on the ballot, according to the Alabama Reporter. The Yankee Democrat said he came south out of obligation to recognize that the Supreme Court upended decades of progress made by Alabamians, according to the city’s NBC affiliate . Late last month, the Supreme…