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Sixty years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed two landmark laws that still shape the political tensions we see today. In August 1965, the Voting Rights Act was passed, a major victory for the civil-rights movement. This law opened the door for thousands of African Americans to get elected in places where they had barely even been allowed to vote before. Just two months later, Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which replaced the discriminatory 1924 Immigration Act that was rooted in eugenics and aimed to keep America mainly white and European. Together, these laws broadened the definition of who could be American and who could actively participate in democracy.
Fast forward to the present, the Trump Administration and many of its Republican backers seem hell-bent on rolling back these gains. Their agenda is steeped in concerns about demographics, typical of nationalist movements that want to reshape society based on race and ethnicity. Trump’s approach to immigration has become notably aggressive, with federal agents conducting raids in communities, including one infamous operation in Chicago involving a Black Hawk helicopter. At the same time, the administration announced plans to drastically cut the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. next year, giving preference to white Afrikaners, and pressured universities to reduce international student admissions, a common path to citizenship.
The administration also challenged birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil. This clause was originally designed after the Civil War to ensure that newly freed Black Americans were recognized as citizens. Trump’s executive order aimed to deny automatic citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants, and though courts blocked this move, the Justice Department pressed the Supreme Court to rule on it, with support from Republican state attorneys general.
On the voting front, efforts to control which votes count have become glaringly obvious in the redistricting battles. States like Texas, Missouri, and North Carolina have redrawn maps favoring Republicans, potentially netting six additional GOP-held seats. Other states, including Louisiana, are following suit. These maneuvers aim to thwart Democrats’ chances in the 2026 midterms, where a small shift in seats could flip control of the House. Democrats are fighting back; California, for example, put redistricting reform on the ballot to possibly gain five seats, and several Democratic-led states are mulling over similar moves.
A particularly troubling development is unfolding in Louisiana, where the state created a second majority-Black congressional district in compliance with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Yet now, a group calling themselves "non-African American voters" claims this protection is unfair. Louisiana’s attorney general has switched sides, arguing the map should be struck down. If the Supreme Court sides with this view, it could trigger a nationwide gerrymandering war. This case echoes last year’s ruling that allowed partisan gerrymandering even if it weakens minority voting power, a decision that disregards the historic ties between race and party politics.
It’s important to remember that Black enfranchisement was always politically charged. Following the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, which granted Black men the right to vote, southern Democrats fought violently to suppress Black voters, fearing their shift to the Republican Party. President Johnson himself predicted that empowering Black voters would cause white southern Democrats to switch to the GOP, and that’s exactly what happened. Striking down Section 2 now threatens to roll back decades of progress, leaving minority voters, especially African Americans in the South, with far less political influence than they’ve had since 1965.
