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“The country’s most important civil rights law no longer effectively exists, and that’s going to have ramifications on American democracy for a very long time.” Mother Jones correspondent Ari Berman reacts to the Supreme Court’s recent 6-3 decision rejecting key principles of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Since the court issued its ruling last week, Republican-controlled states have begun to redraw their voting maps in a “gerrymandering arms race” that “could lead to the largest drop in Black representation since the Jim Crow era,” explains Berman. “We’re returning to the days of literacy tests and poll taxes — not through those devices, but through specifically trying to eliminate Black office holders. And Southern legislators are very clear they are going to do this. They feel unshackled by the Supreme Court ruling. They are being pressured by President Trump to do it, and they feel like all the guardrails are off right now.”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We end today’s show with a look at voting rights right here in the United States. The Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act has led to a scramble by Southern states to gerrymander congressional districts before the November midterms. Last week’s Supreme Court ruling makes it harder for minorities to challenge electoral maps as racially discriminatory under the Voting Rights Act.

On Monday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a new gerrymandered congressional district map into law, posting on the social media platform X, quote, “signed, sealed and delivered.” And on Wednesday, the Alabama House voted to approve a plan that would change the congressional district map during an active election, even though some votes in the May 19th primary have already been cast.

Conservative SCOTUS Ruling Completely Demolishes Voting Rights Act, Kagan Says

AMY GOODMAN: But in states across the South, civil rights activists are also pushing back. In Tennessee, hundreds of protesters marched to the state Capitol in Nashville Wednesday as lawmakers unveiled a gerrymandered congressional map that could see Republicans take control of all nine of Tennessee’s U.S. House seats. The General Assembly is expected to vote on the new map as soon as today.

For more, we’re joined in New York by Ari Berman, national voting rights correspondent at Mother Jones. His latest book, Minority Rule: The Right-Wing........

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