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Republicans in the South are trying to reinstate Jim Crow.

It's been just three weeks since the Supreme Court effectively gutted what was left to the Voting Rights Act,

and Republican lawmakers in numerous states are already working to eliminate black congressional districts.

The VRA is a landmark 1965 bill that banned racial discrimination in voting and protected minorities from practices aimed at diluting their votes.

And one of the single most important provisions in the law was Section 2, which prohibits gerrymandering that undermines the power of minority voters. So for decades, Section 2 has been used to four states, mostly in the South, to redraw congressional maps that diluted minority voting power in one of two ways. Either splitting them up so they don't have a majority in a single district, them together so they only have the majority in one district when it should be two or more. So for example, Louisiana was forced to redraw its maps a few years back to include a second majority black congressional district because they'd initially just drawn one despite the fact that black people make up a third of the population. But in the ruling last month on the case, Louisiana v. Calais, the Supreme Court argued that by considering race to ensure black voters were equally represented, Louisiana's maps itself amounted to a racial gerrymandering. And they issued a sweeping, ruling that dramatically limited protections that ensure minority voters can actually have their votes count. So as a result, Republican-controlled legislatures across the south now have the power to eliminate majority black districts that they were previously forced to draw under Section 2, and oh my God, have they seized that opportunity? Right over in Louisiana, which was the center of this whole dispute, the state senate's already passed a map that would get rid of the second majority black district and the bills advancing through the House ahead of a June 1st deadline. Also just days after the Supreme Court decision, Florida Governor Ronda Santas enacted a new map that's already facing a lawsuit from challengers who alleged that it erased both black and Latino majority minority districts. And just a few days after that, Republicans in Tennessee dismantled the only black majority district in the state. Republicans in the South Carolina House have also passed a plan that would eliminate the only majority black seat in a state where roughly a quarter of the population is black. Mississippi is also especially egregious, right? They have more black residents than any other state in America. We're talking nearly 40% of the population. And their governor has vowed to dismantle the one single black majority district by next year. Also, earlier this month, the Supreme Court allowed Alabama to use a map. They would get rid of one of its two majority black seats. And then here in my home state of Georgia, Governor Brian Kemp also recently announced that he would be convening a special session of the state legislature to redo electoral maps for 2028 that have the potential to wipe out multiple majority black districts. But you've got to understand two things. One, this is just the beginning and two, the impacts here will be absolutely catastrophic. The Congressional Black Caucus estimates that its ranks are going to be reduced by as much as one-third due to the ongoing redistricting efforts. And you've got experts saying that we could see the largest ever decline in black representation since the post-Civil War reconstruction error. For a century after the Civil War, black majority districts were in the single digits or at zero. But after the VRA was passed in 1965, the number has grown to 63 districts are around 14% of the House. And of course, beyond that, these efforts are also going to reduce gains made by non-white Congress members more broadly, while also giving Republicans a major upper hand in future elections. I mean, one analysis found that gutting Section 2 could effectively give the Republicans as many as 19 more seats in the House. And in addition to expanding Republican majorities, these efforts will have dramatic impacts on black voters, not just in the South, but nationwide. And while, of course, the direct result of all this is diluting the power of black voters in southern states, dismantling black majority seats, it also means fewer black representatives in office to push for broader policies that impact black Americans. Black lawmakers, they've historically led the charge

in a number of policies, things like voting rights expansion and criminal justice reform. They've also fought to secure resources to fund infrastructure, health care, and other forms of economic development and underserved non-white neighborhoods. So we're talking about deeply rooted structural issues of inequality. They go far beyond the ballot box. So it becomes obvious what's happening here. Republicans are trying to take black people's right to vote away.

Right? I mean, our memory of Jim Crow has faded into segregated water fountains and people say in the N-word, and I think it's very important and it's worth reviewing what Jim Crow actually was and the Southern autocracy it built. A lot of it is basically indistinguishable from what Republicans are trying to do right at this moment. Jim Crow was a character that was invented in 1828 by a white minstrel who blackened his face with burnt cork, exaggerated a limp that he saw in a black stable hand in Louisville and shuffled around stages across the country singing a song called Jump Jim Crow. So the point of name in the laws after Jim Crow, a racist caricature was to make clear to black people where they stood. To make clear that they were bound by the law but not protected by it and to make clear that the white people who wished to

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