Voting and immigration rights are under attack

Sixty years ago, President Lyndon Johnson signed two pieces of legislation that, to a remarkable degree, galvanized forces in the most turbulent aspects of the current political moment. In August 1965, Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, a crowning achievement of the civil rights movement that paved the way for the election of thousands of African Americans to political office in states where they had previously not even been allowed to vote. Two months later, he signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which repealed the Immigration Act of 1924, which sought, through eugenics, to nurture the immigrant stock of white Europeans. Together, these laws democratized the idea of ​​who could be an American, as well as who Americans could freely exercise their rights at the ballot box. The Trump administration and its Republican allies are now engaged in a concerted effort to return the United States to the scene that came before it.

Donald Trump’s Republican Party, like many reactionary nationalist movements, cares disproportionately about demographics. Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign has reached a point where masked federal troops are kidnapping people from their homes — including one that became instantly infamous Ice A raid on the South Side of Chicago involving a Black Hawk helicopter – their cars, their workplaces, their courts and public streets. Further demonstrating the exclusionary nature of the president’s vision, the administration announced Thursday that it would reduce the number of refugees accepted into the United States next year to 7,500, giving priority to white Africans. In addition, the administration insists that universities accept fewer international students, realizing that admission to such institutions is often the first step towards citizenship.

The president’s goals became clear on the first day of his second term, when he issued an executive order challenging the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This clause was written after the Civil War to affirm that free blacks born in the United States were citizens, as was almost anyone born in this country. But it was targeted as a way to ensure that children born here without a parent being a citizen or permanent resident do not automatically obtain citizenship. The courts blocked the executive order, so the Justice Department in September asked the Supreme Court to consider its legality. Attorneys general in 24 Republican-led states urged the court to act in Trump’s favor.

At the same time, the president’s desire to control Americans’ votes was evident in the battle over congressional maps. The maps are usually revised every ten years, after the census. But three states — Texas, Missouri and North Carolina — redrew their maps at Trump’s request, creating six more GOP seats, and several other states, including Louisiana, have taken steps to do the same. This is an apparent attempt to move the goals ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, when a change of three seats would give Democrats control of the House.

In response, at least five Democratic-majority states are considering redrawing their maps. To counter Texas’ move, California put redistricting on its ballot in November, which could give Democrats five additional seats, and voters appear ready to approve the measure. In a damaging reversal of a provision of the Voting Rights Act, the Justice Department is sending federal election observers to some California counties.

But the potential impact of the state’s efforts is likely to pale in comparison to the impact presented last month in oral arguments in the Supreme Court case Louisiana v. Calais. In January 2024, after court orders, Louisiana — which was reserved six seats in the House of Representatives and where African Americans make up a third of the population — passed a map that created a second, majority-black district. In March, after a legal challenge, the state’s attorney general defended the map before the Supreme Court, asserting that it was consistent with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits drawing districts in a way that reduces the ability of minority voters to elect their preferred candidates. (Strategically demarcated districts were key in preventing African Americans from gaining political power before the Civil Rights Movement.) But a group that defines itself as “Non-African American Voters” claimed that Section II’s protections are themselves discriminatory, because they offer black voters an entitlement not afforded to non-black voters. The state of Louisiana has actually changed its position, claiming that the map it championed just last year should now be repealed.