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.

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 Attack on the Will of the People — and the Fight to Resist It.

Can you talk about all of these developments? Start in Nashville, where we were just listening to these hundreds of protesters.

ARI BERMAN: Good morning, Amy.

So, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s effective destruction of the Voting Rights Act, we are seeing Southern states all across the South redraw their voting maps. This could lead to the largest drop in Black representation since the Jim Crow era. And it is happening with alarming speed, beginning today in Tennessee, where they are set to pass a 9-0 map that splits the city of Memphis, which is 63% Black, into three different congressional districts to dilute Black voting power. Memphis has had its own congressional district since 1923, and it’s now going to be split apart in three different districts. Nashville is going to be split into five different districts.

And this is very symbolic. This was the place where Martin Luther King was assassinated. This is where he led the Poor People’s Campaign. And it’s indicative of what’s happening across the country, which is, the ink is barely dry on the destruction of the Voting Rights Act, and all across the South, from Tennessee to Alabama to Louisiana to Mississippi, they are drawing districts to specifically eliminate seats where voters of color can elect their candidates of choice. So, this is a really five-alarm fire for American democracy.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Ari, if you could also talk about what’s happening specifically in Mississippi, which has the highest Black population of any state?

ARI BERMAN: Yeah, they’re going to hold a special legislative session very soon that could eliminate the state’s lone Black member of Congress. That means you could have a state that is 40% Black, the largest Black population in America, that has no Black representative. This is a state that, before the Voting Rights Act, only 6% of Black Americans were registered to vote. So the Voting Rights Act transformed Mississippi, just like it transformed the South. This is a place where Medgar Evers was murdered fighting for voting rights, where Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner were murdered fighting for voting rights. There is a very long and ugly history of violence, discrimination and racism in Mississippi and across the South.

And the fear is, is that Jim Crow is now coming back in a different form. 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.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And why is it happening especially in the South? And what impact do you fear this might have on the midterms?

ARI BERMAN: It’s happening in the South because that’s where the largest concentration of majority-Black districts are. That’s where the largest population of Black Americans are. And it’s also where voting is the most racially polarized — right? — that Black people in the South tend to vote for Democrats. So, if you want to get rid of Democratic districts in the South, you target Black voters. And they, unfortunately, are now collateral damage in Trump’s gerrymandering arms race.

What this could mean is that Republicans may be able to pick up four to six extra seats for the midterms just based on targeting these majority-Black districts in the South. That may not make it impossible for Democrats to take back the South, but it’s going to make it more difficult.

But I think this goes beyond just the 2026 elections. You’re talking about dismantling districts that have existed for decades, that Black voters fought so hard to get these districts, to get representation in the first place. That’s what the Voting Rights Act was all about, equal citizenship. In just a matter of days, advances of decades are being wiped out.

AMY GOODMAN: And what about Florida, where you have the Florida Governor DeSantis signing a new gerrymandered congressional district map into law, posting on social media, “signed, sealed and delivered,” in this last minute we have, Ari, and, overall, where you see this all headed?

ARI BERMAN: Well, Florida passed a map that would give Republicans four new seats. It was very aggressive. DeSantis was basically claiming that he knew what the Supreme Court was going to do, and he felt like it gave him a green light. And this is what’s happening. We are in now a perennial gerrymandering arms race that’s going to lead to more partisanship, more polarization, less competition — all the things that Americans hate the most about the political process. And it’s all being driven by the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, which is going to get more and more attention in terms of the need to ultimately reform that court going forward.

AMY GOODMAN: And the context of the Voting Rights Act finally being gutted?

ARI BERMAN: Well, what it means is that 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. This was the law that made America a multiracial democracy. If the Voting Rights Act no longer exists, multiracial democracy in America will be under threat forever.

AMY GOODMAN: Ari Berman, national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones magazine, thanks so much for joining us.

I’m in Austin, Texas’s capital, right now, but I’m headed to Minneapolis tonight and Friday morning at the Main Cinema for screenings about the new documentary about Democracy Now!, Steal This Story, Please!, then in Chicago at the Music Box Theatre on Friday night, Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening. I’ll be joined by Democracy Now!'s Juan González and the film's directors, Tia Lessin and Carl Deal. Then on to Milwaukee at the historic Oriental Theatre on Sunday, back in IFC in New York. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.