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.

This attack on voters of color is an opportunity for Republicans to dismantle Democratic districts.

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........

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