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MAGA Supreme Court OKs GOP Overthrow of American Democracy
Disenfranching 40% of a state’s citizens cannot be reconciled with representative democracy.
May 14, 2026
Last week the Supreme Court gave a “two-fer” to white supremacists and proponents of Republican autocracy: First, six right-wing justices completed the erasure of the crowning achievement of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, the Voting Rights Act. Second, in the same case, Louisiana v. Callais, the right-winger judges approved of states shaping legislative districts that deny the opposing party any role in government.
In essence, the Supreme Court OK'd the destruction of Congress as an instrument of American democracy.
The 15th Amendment to the Constitution was enacted and ratified five years after the Civil War. The amendment confirmed—in principle—that African-American citizens have the right to vote and to have their votes count.
So said the Constitution. But for almost a century the former Confederate states negated African Americans’ right to vote.
The GOP can achieve its desired result by calling their gerrymandering by another name. Racial gerrymandering, not okay. Partisan gerrymandering (which just happens to negate Black voting power), just fine.
The 15th Amendment also gave Congress the power to enforce its mandate. After years of struggle over civil rights—after peaceful demonstrators in Birmingham confronted snarling police dogs, mass arrests, and lethal bombing; after hundreds of nonviolent students worked for freedom in Mississippi in the face of murder, assaults, and the burning of Black churches; after peaceful marchers for voting rights returned to Selma after being clubbed by state troopers and ridden down by racist possemen—Congress tackled the white supremacist obstacles to African-American voting.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 put an end to the myriad legal schemes that Southern white politicians had used to disenfranchise Black Americans and terminated the ploys used to deny African Americans a fair opportunity to elect representatives of their choice.
The outcome: Even as the segregationist white South moved to the Republican Party, African Americans gained substantial voting power and Black legislators were elected to Congress, state legislatures, and local government offices in meaningful numbers. The promise of the 15th Amendment, that all groups are entitled to a meaningful voting opportunity in a multiracial democracy, was mightily advanced.
But white supremacists and MAGA Republicans never accepted the new reality, so their right-wing agents on the Supreme Court finally throttled the Voting Rights Act for them. When the conservative justices threw out a congressional map that upheld Black voters’ right to have their votes count, they unleashed a new wave of state gerrymandering laws, enacted with extraordinary speed, and designed to make African-American voting futile.
To make things worse, the court justified its decision by affirming the power of states to deny meaningful representation to opposing party voters through gerrymandering.
As the right-wing justices explained, carving congressional districts for the purpose of denying representation to Black people may be forbidden (and good luck proving intent to discriminate, when Republican legislators don’t say so out loud). But doing precisely the same thing is fine when the stated purpose is denying representation to an opposing party’s voters.
Get that? The right-wingers of the United States Supreme Court say that judges must stand by and look, powerless to take action, if a state dominated by Republicans decides to manipulate congressional district maps to weaken or destroy the voting power of Democrats.
In practice it amounts to the same thing. The GOP can achieve its desired result by calling their gerrymandering by another name. Racial gerrymandering, not okay. Partisan gerrymandering (which just happens to negate Black voting power), just fine.
The GOP’s ultimate goal is the same either way: a Congress under MAGA Republican control regardless of voters. A nation in which African-American political influence is crushed.
What does this look like?
After the Supreme Court’s Callais decision, Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature promptly redrew its congressional maps. They sliced up the one district held by a Black Democrat, with the intended outcome that all nine of Tennessee’s representatives will be Republican.
One-third of Tennessee citizens voted for Democrats in 2024. This year that one-third of the population—including the Black voters of Memphis—are to have zero representation in Congress.
South Carolina has begun the same process and anticipates a similar result. Republicans now hold 6 of 7 House seats, and intend to eliminate the one Democrat.
Forty percent of South Carolinians voted Democratic in 2024, and will have zero representation in Congress following redistricting. The one-quarter of South Carolina’s population that are Black will have no district in which their political voice will be heard.
US President Donald Trump has pressed for a similar outcome wherever Republicans control state government. In bright red Indiana (but 38% Democratic), Trump seeks to zero out Democratic representation in Congress.
GOP redistricting is only marginally less extreme elsewhere. In Missouri, for example, 38% of “Show me” state voters are blue, and their representation will be reduced from two to one of the state’s eight congressional seats (12%).
We have separate district elections for Congress so that the range of local communities, with their different racial and ethnic populations, different beliefs, interests, and occupations can have a fair opportunity for representatives of their choosing. Disenfranchisement by gerrymandering thwarts that purpose.
Even more disturbing, Trump’s gerrymandering offensive seeks to flout majority rule by creating a voter-proof Republican Congress.
American voters are increasingly seeing through the failures and the fakery of Donald Trump’s presidency, the broken promises, the corruption, the incompetence, the cruelty. And voters see the price they are paying for Trump’s senseless grandiosity, from inflation to healthcare costs to measles, war, and climate change.
But through it all, congressional Republicans have remained Trump’s loyal, submissive toadies.
Voters will certainly make Republicans pay the price this fall. But Trump—with a big assist from MAGA Justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—hopes to keep his hold on Congress, voters be damned. If a solid majority of voters cannot shake a would-be totalitarian’s hold on power, what will be left of our constitutional democracy?
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What Dems Can Learn From the Virginia Redistricting Win
There is an important lesson to be learned here and that is that there is no advantage for Democrats in not being fully anti-Trump.
Apr 22, 2026
By roughly three percentage points, voters in Virginia voted for a redistricting plan that will heavily tilt the congressional playing field toward the Democrats. With some votes still to be counted, yes took 51.5% of the vote to 48.5% for the no campaign. The new map will give the Democrats a good chance at winning 10 out of 11 Virginia congressional districts—a big shift from the current 6 Democrats, 5 Republicans in the delegation. The measure still faces legal challenges before it can go into effect.
Turnout for the referendum was roughly 89% of those who voted in the 2025 gubernatorial election. So, the overall turnout rate for the referendum was around 49%. While this is disappointing in that less than half of eligible voters went to the polls, it is a high turnout rate for a special election.
Unfortunately, there are no exit polls for the Virginia referendum, so the best we can do is look at the voting data and see what conclusions we can draw. Among the very Hispanic-Asian election districts in Northern Virginia (Fairfax, Loudoun, and Manassas Park) the pro-referendum forces did about 16 percentage points better than Kamala Harris in 2024. A strong performance among Black voters in Richmond and Hampton Roads helped put the referendum over the top. According to The Washington Post, counties that were at least 25% Black supported the measure by a 14-point margin, after backing Gov. Abigail Spanberger last November by 24 points.
The pro-referendum forces also fared well in high-income parts of the commonwealth. Opposition to the referendum was concentrated in southwestern Virginia. In many of these counties, the no campaign was able to improve on President Donald Trump’s 2024 performance.
Tuesday’s vote in Virginia will mean more Democratic representatives in Congress.
Are there lessons that the Democrats can take away from the Virginia redistricting campaign? First of all, it is important to note that a win is a win. However, there is an important lesson to be learned here and that is that there is no advantage for Democrats in not being fully anti-Trump.
When the referendum campaign began, the yes forces were portraying the vote as part of a broad effort to level the congressional playing field. The New York Times reports that:
In the first six weeks of the campaign, the “Yes” side spent $13.5 million on advertising compared with the “No” campaign’s $640,000, according to data from AdImpact, a media tracking firm. But over that time period, “Yes” did not gain ground in private polling, according to multiple people briefed on the data.
Based on the media that I saw, in the closing days of the campaign, the yes forces retooled their messaging and presented the campaign as a way to stop Trump and the MAGA forces.
Why did the pro-redistricting forces not immediately embrace a full-on anti-Trump message? We can only make educated guesses. The first is newly elected Spanberger, who had run as a middle-of-the-road Democratic centrist. Her role in the redistricting is ambiguous. Unlike Gov. Gavin Newsom in California, Spanberger did not get out in front of the campaign. This is understandable. After all, Virginia, unlike California, is a purple state. Spanberger also needs to get her legislative agenda through in Richmond.
The best symbol of Spanberger’s attitude toward the referendum is the fact that she made an ad in support of a yes vote but the ad never showed. In her statements about the referendum, the governor was uncomfortable.
Democrats also seemed to have been unprepared for the no forces’ very clever use of statements by President Barack Obama opposing gerrymandering, which created confusion in the electorate. In response, the Democrats responded with ads featuring President Obama. In an interesting twist, Obama not Trump was the president most featured in the media outreach on the referendum.
So, in the end the redistricting referendum passed by less than Spanberger won last November. While the Republicans may be able to claim some sort of a moral victory, a win is still a win. Tuesday’s vote in Virginia will mean more Democratic representatives in Congress.
Democrats have reasons to celebrate. However, they should learn the lesson from the referendum: There is nothing to gain politically by soft-pedaling their opposition to Trump.
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Is Rural America Finally Realizing Trump Is an Elite in Populist Clothing?
The administration’s domestic policies, coupled with aggressive foreign postures, are accelerating disillusionment among Trump’s core supporters.
Jan 29, 2026
As President Donald Trump’s second term unfolds, the contradictions at the heart of his “America First” agenda are increasingly apparent. What began as a populist revolt against elite globalism appears to have morphed into policies that alienate the very rural and small-town constituencies that backed him in 2016, 2020, and 2024.
These rust-belt and rural counties were drawn to his promises of economic revival, border security, and non-interventionism. Yet, emerging signs of fracture in this MAGA base suggest a potential backlash in the upcoming midterms.
The administration’s domestic policies, coupled with aggressive foreign postures, are accelerating disillusionment among Trump’s core supporters.
Domestically, Trump’s intensified immigration enforcement has backfired. Ramped-up Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids were sold as fulfilling pledges of mass deportations targeting “criminals”. But these operations have swept up undocumented workers essential to rural economies. Small family farms and businesses in states including California, Idaho, and Pennsylvania are reliant on immigrant labor for harvesting crops, dairy operations, and meatpacking. They now face acute shortages.
Trump, meanwhile, is perceived as profiting personally. His properties and branding deals benefit from economic nationalism, even as family farms teeter on the verge of bankruptcy.
Agricultural employment dropped by 155,000 workers between March and July 2025, reversing prior growth trends. Farmers in Ventura County, California, for example, denounced raids that targeted routes frequented by agricultural workers. Fields lie unharvested signalling financial ruin for some operations. Family-run farms struggle to find replacements. Low wages and grueling conditions simply fail to attract American-born laborers.
This labor crisis exacerbates a broader sense of betrayal. Rural voters supported Trump for his anti-elite rhetoric, expecting protection for their livelihoods. Instead, the administration’s actions have hollowed out local workforces without viable alternatives.
The H-2A visa program, meant to provide temporary foreign workers, has been streamlined—but remains insufficient amid ongoing raids, which deter even legal migrants. These disruptions ripple through small-town economies, where agriculture underpins community stability. Democrats, sensing opportunity, are investing in rural outreach, emphasizing economic populism to woo disillusioned voters who feel abandoned by Trump’s enforcement zeal.
Compounding these woes are the ongoing tariff disruptions. Trump touts his tariffs as tools to “make America great,” but in fact they have driven up costs for the same rural groups. Between January and September 2025, tariffs on imports from China, Canada, Mexico, and others have surged, collecting US$125 billion. However, the figure may be even higher according to experts.
But while the administration claims these taxes punish foreign adversaries, the burden falls squarely on American importers and consumers. Small businesses, which account for around 30% of imports, faced an average of US$151,000 in extra costs from April to September 2025, translating to $25,000 monthly hikes. Farmers, already squeezed by low grain prices, pay more for necessities, such as fertilizers (hit by 44% effective tariffs on Indian imports) and machinery parts.
Midwest producers of soybeans, corn, and pork—key US exports—suffer doubly from retaliatory tariffs abroad, which reduce demand and depress revenues. In Tennessee and Pennsylvania, builders report 2.5% rises in material costs, while food prices climb due to duties on beef, tomatoes, and coffee.
Trump, meanwhile, is perceived as profiting personally. His properties and branding deals benefit from economic nationalism, even as family farms teeter on the verge of bankruptcy. This disparity fuels resentment. Polls show Trump’s approval slipping in swing counties, with economic anxiety eroding the loyalty that once overlooked his character flaws.
Foreign Policy Compounds Domestic Fractures
These domestic fractures are mirrored in foreign policy, where Trump’s interventionism starkly contradicts his campaign pledge of “America First” restraint. Having promised no new wars, he has instead pursued aggressive postures that many Republicans view as unnecessary. The most emblematic is his renewed bid to acquire Greenland, apparently by negotiation or force, which has swiftly followed the US raid on Venezuela in the first week of January, accompanied by threats against other Latin American countries including Cuba and Colombia.
The US president has justified demands for control over the Arctic island—citing threats from Russia and China—as a strategic necessity. But NATO allies such as Denmark—of which Greenland is a constituent part—have rebuked it as an potentially alliance-shattering move. Congressional Republicans, including Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Thom Tillis (R-NC), have broken ranks, warning that force would obliterate NATO and tarnish US influence.
Such dissent highlights broader paradoxes. Trump’s populist realism prioritizes tough rhetoric for domestic consumption but yields aggressive, even reckless actions abroad. His administration is effectively dismantling post-1945 institutions while embracing 19th-century spheres-of-influence and outright colonialist thinking, including invoking an updated version of the 1823 Monroe doctrine.
The fractures signal that Trump’s “America First” policies may ultimately leave its rural and rust belt champions behind.
Rural voters, weary of endless wars, supported his non-interventionist promises. Now they see echoes of past entanglements in Trump’s suggestion that the US could intervene in Iran. This cognitive dissonance is accelerating disillusionment with his presidency.
These self-inflicted but inherent contradictions are hastening a pivotal reckoning for Trumpism. In many counties that have thrice backed him—and especially in swing counties—economic hardship and policy betrayals erode the cultural ties binding rural America to the Republican party. Democrats, through programs such as the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, are betting on this “betrayal” narrative, spotlighting farmers’ plights to flip seats in November 2026.
Polls show Latinos and independents souring on Trump, with the US president’s base turnout potentially waning as the midterm elections approach in November. If Republicans suffer larger-than-expected losses in those elections, it could mark the decline of Trumpism’s grip by exposing its elite-serving underbelly beneath populist veneer.
Yet, without a compelling alternative vision, Democrats risk squandering this opening. For now, the fractures signal that Trump’s “America First” policies may ultimately leave its rural and rust belt champions behind. Whether Trumpism proves resilient or begins a long decline may well be decided not in Washington and Mar-a-Lago, but in the county seats and small towns that once formed its unbreakable base.
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