The Dictatorship
How Supreme Court rulings on redistricting have undermined voters of color
Chief Justice John Roberts famously said the U.S. Supreme Court’s role is “calling balls and strikes,” suggesting a narrow mandate of doing just enough to enforce constitutional rules. But in redistricting cases, the court’s conservative supermajority has gone further, wielding its power in ways that have entrenched decidedly partisan outcomes, largely at the expense of voters of color. This troubling pattern has been evident in recent rulings, and we may see more of it this term.
Last month, the Roberts Court upheld Texas’ redrawn maps despite evidence that the Republican legislature diluted Latino and Black voting power. And in a case to be decided this term, Louisiana v. Callais, the justices are considering whether to strike down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a critical protection against discriminatory maps. Eliminating the federal law that outlaws policies and practices whose effects discriminate against voters of color could undo four decades of civil rights enforcement.
A court that only calls balls and strikes might show restraint in a case like this.
A court that only calls balls and strikes might show restraint in a case like this. But this court’s tendency is quite different.
Perhaps the most prominent voting rights decision in the Roberts Court record is its 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder. This decision ended the practice of “preclearance,” effectively dismantling another key part of the Voting Rights Act that required federal approval for voting changes in places with a history of racial discrimination. More than half the changes blocked under this system have involved election maps.
The Shelby County ruling declared that such discrimination was no longer a pressing concern and that the review provision was no longer justifiable. Never mind that a bipartisan Congress renewed the law in 2006 based on a record with ongoing examples of the kind of discriminatory policies that preclearance had successfully blocked.
The court’s analysis has proven misguided, and its consequences for voters of color have been predictably dire. Since Shelby County, the turnout gap between white and nonwhite voters has grown the fastest where preclearance had previously been enforced. Voters of color, facing a flood of new practices and laws that make voting more difficult, cast ballots less often relative to white voters. This growing gap in racial turnout confirms Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s analysis in her dissent that dismantling preclearance was “like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”
Six years later, in Rucho v. Common Causethe Roberts Court greenlit the process of rigging election maps explicitly designed to favor a political party. In Rucho, the court announced it had no authority to stop one of the most blatant partisan gerrymanders in North Carolina’s history, even after state legislators admitted to drawing as many Republican seats as possible. Roberts’ majority opinion held that partisan gerrymandering claims were “nonjusticiable,” meaning federal courts could not consider them, in North Carolina or anywhere else.
The court qualified its ruling by noting thatracialgerrymanders remained unconstitutional. But while justices signaled disfavor toward partisan gerrymandering, Rucho opened the door to racial discrimination in maps disguised as partisanship. Because race and party affiliation are often correlated, especially in the South, the court’s retreat has made it easier for states to craft bolder gerrymanders and to insulate them from scrutiny by claiming partisan motives. A 2023 ruling in Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP has made things worse. There, the court ignored the fact that the legislature had targeted Black voters on the view that legislatures enjoyed a good-faith presumption of fairness when drawing maps.
Because race and party affiliation are often correlated, especially in the South, the court’s retreat has made it easier for states to craft bolder gerrymanders and to insulate them from scrutiny by claiming partisan motives.
While its abdication in Rucho has encouraged more brazen mapping strategies, the Roberts Court has also actively stepped into redistricting disputes that delay relief for voters of color. In Allen v. Milligan, a Voting Rights Act case in 2023, the justices placed on hold a unanimous lower court ruling in Alabama that held the state legislature had violated Section 2’s bar against unfairly dispersing voters of color.
Even after a district court ordered Alabama to adopt a lawful map, the legislature refused. Despite Alabama’s defense of a map with concrete legal harms to Black voters and its open defiance of a court order, the Supreme Court ordered — through its emergency docket —that the map remain in place for a full congressional term. The court eventually affirmed the panel’s original ruling, but Alabama voters faced a delay in getting fair representation.
Last year, amid a national spectacle of frenzied redistricting efforts, the Supreme Court intervened to leave in place Texas maps that targeted voters of color. Trial judges had concluded that the state legislature had purposefully limited Black and Latino voting strength at the specific — and, according to the district court, legally suspect — direction of the Justice Department. The facts resemble racial cases in which conservatives blocked the work of Democratic legislatures in the 1990s. The Texas district court cited many of these earlier cases in its well-footnoted opinion.
The Roberts Court not only placed the lower court’s decision on hold but, building on Rucho and Alexander,afforded greater deference to the legislature’s choices because of the good-faith presumption. By accepting the asserted partisan motives of Texas Republicans, the Supreme Court undercut significant evidence showing that racial motivations inspired their choices, according to Justice Samuel Alito’s concurrence.
This is the backdrop to Callais. Last spring, the Supreme Court considered whether Louisiana’s approach to crafting a second majority-black congressional district was constitutional. Instead of deciding that question on the merits, the justices ordered reargument focusing on the constitutionality of Section 2, now one of the last remaining weapons to address discrimination. Oral argument was heard in October, and a decision is expected this term.
If the court invalidates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the decision could unleash chaos at every level of government. Multiple statesincluding North Carolina and Louisiana, are already plotting new rounds of redistricting that could severely undermine the political representation of voters of color. These effects could spread to state and local districts as well.
Far from calling balls and strikes, the Supreme Court’s record shows a pattern of altering fundamental rules for our system of elections — and undoing the historical role of the judicial branch as a key protector of the right to vote.
Kareem Crayton, a law and political science scholar, is vice president, Washington D.C., at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law.
The Dictatorship
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President Donald Trump called the celebrations in the streets of Iran “fantastic” following the killing of the country’s supreme leaderAyatollah Ali Khamenei, during a brief phone call with MS NOW on Saturday night.
Trump told MS NOW that he’s seen the celebrations in Iran and in parts of America, after joint U.S.-Israel airstrikes killed Khamenei.
“I think it’s fantastic,” the president said of the celebrations. “I’ve seen them in Los Angeles, also — celebrations.”
“I’ve seen them in Los Angeles, celebrations, celebrations,” Trump said, accentuating the point.
The interview took place roughly 11 hours before the Pentagon announced the first U.S.military casualties of the war. U.S. Central Command said three American service members were killed in action, and five others had been seriously wounded.
Revelry broke out in Iran, the United States and across the globe on Saturday, with Iranians cheering the death of Khamenei, who led Iran with an iron fist for more than 30 years, cracking down on dissent at home and maintaining a hostile posture with the U.S. and Israel.
Asked how he was feeling after the strike on Khamenei, whose death was confirmed just a few hours earlier, Trump said it was a positive development for the United States.
“I think it was a great thing for our country,” he said.
The call — which lasted less than a minute — came after a marathon day, which began in the wee hours of the morning with strikes on Iran and continued with retaliatory ballistic missiles from Tehran targeting Israel and countries in the Middle East region that host U.S. military bases.
The day ended with few answers from the White House to increasing questions about the long-term future of Iran, how long the U.S. will continue operations there, and the metastasizing ramifications it could have on the world stage. In fact, the president has done little to convince the public to back his Iran operation, nor to explain why the country is at war without the authorization of Congress.
On perhaps the most consequential day of his second term, Trump did not give a formal address to the public, nor did he hold a press conference. Instead, he stayed out of public view at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Palm Beach, Florida, where he attended a $1 million-per-plate fundraising dinner on Saturday evening.
But throughout the day, Trump took calls from reporters at various new outlets, including from MS NOW at around 11 p.m. ET.
The strikes, known formally as “Operation Epic Fury,” came after months of talks over Iran’s nuclear program, and warnings from Trump that he would strike Tehran if they did not agree to his often shifting conditions.
At 2:30 a.m. ET on Saturday, Trump posted a video to social media announcing the operation, which he said was designed to “defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.”
“The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties. That often happens in war,” Trump said when he announced the strikes on Iran.
Mychael Schnell is a reporter for MS NOW.
Laura Barrón-López covers the White House for MS NOW.
Three U.S. service members were killed and five seriously wounded as the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran, U.S. Central Command said Sunday morning.
The three service members — the first Americans to die in the conflict — were killed in Kuwait, a U.S. official said.
Several others sustained minor injuries from shrapnel and concussions but will return to duty, the Pentagon said. The identities of the dead and wounded have not been made public.
“The situation is fluid, so out of respect for the families, we will withhold additional information, including the identities of our fallen warriors, until 24 hours after next of kin have been notified,” Central Command said in a statement.
The U.S. and Israel launched sweeping airstrikes on Iranon Saturday, killing Ayatollah Ali Khameneithe country’s supreme leader for nearly four decades. Iran has vowed retaliation and hit several U.S. military bases across the region.
According to U.S. Central Command, Iran has also attacked more than a dozen locations, including airports in Dubai, Kuwait and Iraq, and residential neighborhoods in Israel, Bahrain and Qatar.
Israel Defence Forces said Sunday that Iran fired missiles toward the neighborhood of Beit Shemesh, killing civilians. The missile hit a synagogue, killing at least nine people, according to the Associated Press.
AP reported that authorities said at least 22 people were killed and 120 others wounded when demonstrators tried to attack the U.S. Consulate in Karachi in Pakistan.
The violence came after the United States and Israel attacked Irankilling its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Police and officials at a hospital in Karachi said that at least 50 people were also wounded in the clashes and some of them were in critical condition.
On Sunday, Israel Defence Forces said on X, “It’s official: All senior terrorist leaders of Iran’s Axis of Terror have been eliminated.”
President Donald Trump told CNBC’s Joe Kernen on Sunday that the operation in Iran is “moving along very well, very well — ahead of schedule.”
In a phone call with MS NOW late Saturday, Trump called the celebrations in the streets of Iran “fantastic” following the killing of Khamenei.
Confirming Khamenei’s death, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday: “We have eliminated the tyrant Khamenei and dozens of senior figures of the oppressive regime. Our forces are now striking at the heart of Tehran with increasing intensity, set to escalate further in the coming days.”
The exchange of hostilities comes after weeks of fragile negotiations between the U.S. and Iran over Iran’s nuclear operations.
Esmail Baghaei, a spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry, called the joint U.S-Israeli attack an “unprovoked, unwarranted act of aggression” in an interview with MS NOW’s Ali Velshi on Sunday. He said Iran’s nuclear program has been used a pretext for the attack.
“We have every right to defend our people because we have come under this egregious act of aggression,” Baghaei said.
Trump announced the attack early Saturday during a short video posted on his Truth Social account. He called for an end to the Iranian regime and urged Iranians to “take back the country.”
Negotiators and mediators from Oman were supposed to meet in Vienna on Monday to discuss the technical aspect of a potential nuclear deal.
Rep. Eric Swawell, D-Calif., told MS NOW’s Alex Witt on Sunday afternoon that the president’s military operation in Iran was illegal, echoing what many lawmakers have said in citing that under the U.S. Constitution only Congress can declare war.
“This is a values argument. We don’t just lob missiles into other countries when we are not provoked, attacked and have no plan for what comes next,” he said.
“We have been shown zero evidence that anything changed in Iran from last year when the president did not come to Congress and took a strike on Iran,” Swalwell said.
In June the U.S. struck three Iranian nuclear sites. Trump said the facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated.” But experts and U.S. officials said the sites were damaged but not destroyed.
Erum Salam is breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian and is a graduate of Texas A&M University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Follow her on X, Bluesky and Instagram.
Akayla Gardner is a White House correspondent for MS NOW.
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