Republican Gerrymandering Schemes Target Minority Voters and Their Representatives – Mother Jones

Veteran Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) could lose his Houston-area seat after GOP redistricting.Aaron Schwartz/Sipa/AP

Donald Trump is not particularly popular. The only recent president with lower approval ratings six months into his term was Trump, in his first term. This summer, he asked Republicans in Congress to put their political lives on the line to pass a bill that would hand tax cuts to the wealthy at the expense of popular things like health care and rural hospitals.

Now, having saddled his party with unpopular initiatives and staring down the midterms, Trump has embarked on an authoritarian plan to keep the GOP in control in Washington: pass new congressional maps in states controlled by Republicans so his party can’t lose.

At Trump’s insistence, redistricting plots are hatching all across the country. But most of these plans aren’t only aimed at Democrats: Look closely and you’ll see that the targets are often Black Democratic voters and officials, and, in Texas, Hispanic ones. If these new maps take effect, not only will the Democratic Party be set back, but so will the political voice of people of color. 

“Across the country, Republicans are waging a calculated campaign to erase Black and Latino political power through extreme gerrymandering,” warns DNC senior spokesman Marcus Robinson. “This isn’t just about redrawing maps—it’s about dismantling representation and silencing communities that have fought the hardest to be heard.” 

It’s not just Republican lawmakers who have placed a target on Black and brown representatives. With the Supreme Court on track to eviscerate the Voting Rights Act’s protection of districts where minority voters have an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice in the coming months, the next election could see not only a GOP coup through partisan gerrymandering, but also a whitening of Congress as Republican legislatures delete districts that have sent minority lawmakers to Congress for decades.

The first dramatic chapter in this effort is the battle over redrawing Texas’ congressional map. A week and a half ago, Texas House Democrats fled the state to stop the Republican majority from passing a new map that would give Republicans in Texas another five seats. The proposed lines would give the GOP, with a small majority, 30 of Texas’ 38 congressional seats. It would also constitute an assault on minority communities. As my colleague Ari Berman recently explained, “though non-white voters are 60 percent of Texas’s population and fueled 95 percent of new growth in the state over the past decade, the plan increases the number of majority white districts, from 22 to 24, and dismantles the districts of two lawmakers of color, [Rep. Greg] Casar and Rep. Al Green.” 

The racial impact of the GOP’s proposed Texas map is somewhat complicated by the fact that Republicans there have gained popularity among Hispanic voters. But under the new maps, two Democratic Hispanic representatives would face a tough road to reelection, even though their districts would be majority Hispanic. Overall, the proposal would benefit the GOP by creating more majority-white districts while cramming the state’s non-white majority into fewer districts. The political power of the white minority would grow, and while the voice of the non-white majority would shrink substantially.

This attack on Democrats of color does not stop at the Texas border. In Missouri, lawmakers are under pressure from the Trump administration to eliminate one of two seats held by Democrats, both of which are Black. The likely target is the Kansas City seat held by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, who has represented his district for 20 years. 

In Ohio, Republicans are looking at eliminating up to three Democratic seats, which would give Republicans 13 of 15 seats in a state Trump won with just 55 percent of votes. One of Ohio Republicans’ top targets is Rep. Emilia Sykes, who is Black. As Trump’s effort to persuade Republicans to redistrict ramped up this month, Vice President JD Vance jetted to Indiana to enlist the help of Republicans there. Indiana only has two Democratic representatives. The easier target is Rep. Frank Mrvan, who is white, but longtime Black congressman André Carson could also see his district changed. And there is even talk of Republicans in South Carolina eliminating the state’s sole Democratic district, which is held by Rep. Jim Clyburn, an ally of former President Joe Biden and a longtime powerful Democrat. It’s not clear that Republicans in the legislature have the appetite for another legal fight over a new map, and Democrats would certainly sue if the state dismantled Clyburn’s seat, alleging an illegal racist gerrymander.

But in the coming months, the Supreme Court might make such a suit much harder, clearing the way for Republicans to limit minorities’ political power. To begin with, all this partisan gerrymandering was only made possible in 2019, when the Roberts Court held that maps drawn to benefit a political party couldn’t be challenged in federal court. It didn’t matter how egregious the maps were, or that citizens’ ability to cast a meaningful ballot would depend on how they tended to vote; the federal courts would not stand in the way. In many parts of the country, particularly in the South, it’s impossible to separate race from party affiliation, creating a situation in which partisan gain is achieved by diluting the power of Black voters. 

Last year, the Supreme Court essentially blessed the use of race for partisan gain in a case about Clyburn’s district. In order to shore up another district in the state for the GOP, the South Carolina legislature had moved 30,000 Black voters from it and into Clyburn’s district. (This was done in consultation with Clyburn, who agreed to limit Democrats’ broader prospects in order boost his own.) A lower court called the map a “stark racial gerrymander.” But the Supreme Court’s GOP-appointed majority approved the map. In his majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that courts must give state legislatures the benefit of the doubt when they claim partisanship, not race, guided district lines. Because race and party are so closely aligned, especially in states like South Carolina, all the legislature had to do was claim that party politics, not race, had animated their map. Partisan gerrymandering became a get-out-of-jail free card for racial gerrymandering.

But within a few months, the court faced a test of its new ruling: Would it apply their new rule and presume good faith about legislators partisan gerrymandering claims if the result was an extra seat for a Black Democrat? The answer was no.

A year after the South Carolina case, the Supreme Court declined to uphold a Louisiana map in which the state legislature had added a Black-majority district in compliance with the 1965 Voting Rights Act—even though the legislature argued that its map had been shaped by politics as well as racial guidance. On August 1, the court announced that it would re-hear the Louisiana case, and this time it would specifically consider whether Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the lone remaining tool forcing states to give Black voters representation in Congress—requires unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.

The court’s GOP appointees will likely decide that using race as a factor in drawing political districts is unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, hijacking a post-Civil War amendment intended to create equality to usher in a new era of racial subjugation. Once again, minority voters will be counted to give states more seats in Congress without actually letting them send many, or any, of their preferred candidates to Washington. With this attack on voters of color comes an opportunity for Republican legislatures to dismantle the few Democratic districts in their states and hand them to Republicans. 

In Louisiana, the likely result will be eliminating the seat held by Rep. Cleo Fields, who is Black. In Alabama, the state has two Black, Democratic representatives thanks to the Voting Rights Act. One of them could be eliminated if the Supreme Court takes out the law’s remaining teeth—a long project of the Roberts’ Court. More states could follow in what will, over the coming years, become a sea change in politics, as lines are redrawn to exclude people of color from Congress on down to city government.

UCLA election law expert Rick Hasen recently laid out the consequences of gutting the VRA in Slate: “It would end what has been the most successful way that Black and other minority voters have gotten fair representation in Congress, state legislatures, and local bodies. It would be an earthquake in politics and make our legislative bodies whiter and our protection for minority voters greatly diminished.” Even an ostensibly limited opinion, he predicts, “would mean the quick unraveling of most” districts created under the VRA.

Not only do the high-court’s GOP-appointees appear ready to take down the VRA, they are preparing to do it in time for red states to redraw their maps before the 2026 midterm Congressional elections. The Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments in the Louisiana case for October 15, which would give the justices enough time to release an opinion goring the VRA this winter. If that happens, perhaps South Carolina Republicans will see an opening. Regardless of any new Trump-pushed maps that happen before the ruling, expect Louisiana, Alabama, and other states to follow and rapidly redraw political lines to eliminate seats held by minority lawmakers ahead of the midterms in a second, frenzied round of gerrymandering that could take place early next year. Thanks to the Supreme Court, Republicans may be able to seize more seats under the premise that current maps, which were drawn in a way that gave a small voice to Black voters, are unconstitutional.

After Republicans passed Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, which sought to destroy Medicaid, cut back food assistance, and give that money to the wealthy and the nation’s ballooning and uncontrollable immigration and detention apparatus, some Democrats consoled themselves that at least they would hold Republicans to account in the midterms. Perhaps they hoped Trump’s constantly-changing tariff policies would be a drag on the economy and his party’s political fortunes, too.

While there are vulnerable Republicans in Democratic-controlled states who may well pay a political price, Trump never intended to sacrifice his hold on power for his agenda. Instead, he will continue to take the country in a direction few want—a hollowed out kleptocracy—then rig the electoral system so that they can’t be held accountable.

It’s not just Democrats who will pay the price. Many voters of color will be also be locked out of power—just as they were in past, shameful chapters of our history.