The latest racial struggle in the United States is being fought against the maps that will decide the elections

WashingtonIn five months, the United States will hold one of the most relevant elections in recent times. Although President Donald Trump has stated that in the context of the war with Iran these elections do not matter to him, his party is fighting to stop the bleeding shown by the polls, and any method is valid to achieve it.

And in this context, the most important thing is the revision of electoral maps to try to achieve the maximum possible advantage. It is a strategy that has always had an important racial component, but which this time has much more importance after a recent Supreme Court ruling that changes the rules of the game. The decision opens the door to modifying electoral districts with the aim of weakening the vote of minorities.

For many, this is the most recent example of how American democracy is being pushed to the limit again and again since Donald Trump came to power. With one difference: if this electoral manipulation is taken to the extreme, experts warn, not only will accusations of fraud and polarization increase, but it may also cause citizens to stop believing in the system. “There is a risk that the wave of electoral district manipulation will not only annoy voters, but also undermine their confidence in the proper functioning of our system of government,” explains Harvard Kennedy School professor Ben Schneer.

How does this map redrawing strategy work? In theory, it's simple: politicians in power, aware of the street-by-street results of previous elections, change the boundaries of electoral districts by grouping a majority of their voters and a certain number of opponents within each one. Thus, since in the US districts directly elect their representative to Congress, they can practically guarantee victory, as long as the voting trends observed in previous elections are maintained.

Changes encouraged by Trump

So far, eight states have already changed their maps for the November Congressional elections, and four more have taken steps to do the same. At the same time, these changes are generating protests across the country, especially in Alabama, where the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King was born.

In the US, it is customary for states to redraw electoral districts once at the beginning of each decade, when the census is updated. The objective of this measure is to reflect demographic changes and ensure equitable representation, as established by the Constitution. However, over the last fifteen years, the so-called “gerrymandering” has become more common, and in 2025 Donald Trump encouraged Republican-governed states to modify the maps in their favor, seeking to maintain his party's control of the House of Representatives in November.

The race began in Texas, a Republican state that approved a new map last August and could help the party gain five more representatives in the House of Representatives. Civil rights organizations and a state court considered the new map to be discriminatory on racial grounds and therefore illegal, but the Supreme Court later sided with Texas. California followed, where its Democratic governor decided to use Trump's own tactics to combat him. From there, many other Republican states began to approve new maps that eliminate districts with a Black majority.

But the latest blow came in April when the Supreme Court struck down a newly created Black-majority district in Louisiana. The High Court has changed the rules, making it much more difficult to create Black-majority districts, even though the Voting Rights Act required them to be drawn in such a way that "large, compact, and cohesive" racial minorities could elect representatives of their choice.

Against minority rights

It is something that the progressive judge Elena Kagan has called “the final chapter in the demolition of the Voting Rights Act”. “The court’s decision will overturn the fundamental right of racial equality in elections”, she wrote in an opinion joined by the other two progressive justices on the Supreme Court.

In the case of this November’s elections, two factors also play a fundamental role: that the party of the president in power usually loses votes in midterm elections, and that Democrats currently only need to regain a few congressmen to regain control of the House of Representatives, which is currently Republican-held.

"There is no longer the rule of law in district redistricting," opines Jonathan Cervas, a political scientist at Carnegie Mellon, in statements to the Associated Press. "There have to be some restrictions, somewhere. Otherwise, we don't really have elections," he adds.

This is also the opinion of protesters and members of Latino and African American community organizations in the United States, alarmed by the speed at which these changes are occurring. “The decision is a devastating blow to Black and Latino communities and to the fundamental promise of American democracy”, says Maria Teresa Kumar, president of Voto Latino. "This ruling gives politicians a free hand to manipulate electoral maps, silence our voices, and reverse the progress for which entire generations fought," she laments. And she warns: "We will not stand idly by while our communities are excluded from political power."