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Democrats Hope Voting Rights Decision Will Drive Black Turnout in South
Democrats Hope Voting Rights Decision Will Drive Black Turnout in South
“Black Democratic candidates in the South hope voting rights decision backlash will drive turnout. Keisha Lance Bottoms and Scott Colom campaign amid redistricting; Shomari Figures and Don Davis remain competitive. Republicans maintain confidence.
Black Democratic candidates for governor, the Senate and the House are hoping that attacks on Black representation will bring out Black voters in November.
Emily Cochrane, who covers the South, reported from Tuskegee, Ala.; Mound Bayou and Meridian, Miss.; Athens, Ga.; and Memphis, Tenn.
Across the South, from the Mississippi Delta to Georgia’s suburbs, Black Democratic candidates are imploring Black voters to rise up and secure the representation this November that they were expected to be denied with the gutting of the Voting Rights Act.
The hill is high, and Republicans remain supremely confident, but Democrats are trying to contest races typically seen as too far out of reach.
Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former Atlanta mayor, remains in a tossup contest to be the next Georgia governor, despite being outspent 9 to 1 by her deep-pocketed Republican opponent, the businessman Rick Jackson.
In Mississippi, Scott Colom, a state prosecutor running for the Senate, is seeing a rare infusion of national cash in his bid to defeat the incumbent Republican, Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith.
In Florida, Black voters helped State Representative Angie Nixon overcome a lack of establishment support and fund-raising to become the party’s nominee for the Senate.
In Alabama, Republicans tried to redistrict Representative Shomari Figures to defeat, but his seat, stripped of many but not all of its Black voters, may somehow still be within reach. And the impact could extend to states that pushed ahead with redistricting before the Supreme Court decision. In North Carolina, another Black Democrat, Representative Don Davis, remains in the running for the district the Republican legislators redrew against him.
Turnout in Democratic primaries was higher this year than in recent midterms, as many races saw competitive primaries for the first time in years and as President Trump has become increasingly unpopular.
In Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina, Black and white voters both turned out in Democratic primaries at higher rates than in 2022, according to a New York Times analysis of the makeup of the electorate in states where an individual-level accounting of primary turnout was available. The increase was not driven by a surge among any particular racial group, and Black voters made up a slightly smaller share of the Democratic electorate in 2026 than four years earlier.
But with the general election looming and Republicans as their opponents, Democrats are hoping enthusiasm among Black voters, still the backbone of the party, will crest in the South, where segregation and the civil rights movement led to the Voting Rights Act. Here, the opportunity for fair representation remains deeply personal.
“One can walk away from that and say, ‘Well, my vote’s not going to matter in this election,’” said the Rev. Jay Augustine, senior pastor at Big Bethel A.M.E. Church in Atlanta. “What I’m seeing on the ground is just the opposite. People are like, ‘No, my vote is going to matter. I’m going to stand tall.’”
There are early signs that some races are narrowing more than expected. Democratic candidates in Tennessee and Louisiana have released polls that show them within striking distance in conservative areas that Mr. Trump won by double digits. At least one nonpartisan political analyst has moved Mr. Figures’s district to leaning Republican, from safely Republican.
“Discussion around voting and access to the right to vote is energizing, period,” Ms. Bottoms said in an interview in Athens, Ga., shortly before taking the stage at a joint rally with Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat who is also counting on Black voter enthusiasm.
Republicans remain confident they can hold off Southern challengers. As they pushed new House maps after the Supreme Court’s voting rights decision, they argued their gerrymanders were based solely on a quest for party advantage, not racial discrimination.
The situation for Democrats is complicated in Florida, where Ms. Nixon leads the Democratic ticket but a Black Republican, Representative Byron Donalds, is his party’s nominee for governor. Several Black Democrats have endorsed Mr. Donalds over former Representative David Jolly, the Democratic nominee, who is white.
The fact is, Democrats in the South cannot win on Black votes alone. Even in 2008, when a record surge of Black voting helped send Barack Obama to the White House, all but two Southern states voted Republican. Mr. Obama mustered a modern high-water mark for a Democrat in Mississippi, the state with the highest percentage of Black voters, but that amounted to about 43 percent.
“Democrats will foolishly waste time and money trying to compete in solidly Republican districts where they have zero chance of winning,” said Reilly Richardson, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
After the Supreme Court decision, the Southern Republican redistricting push targeted seats in Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama where Black voters had helped elevate Democratic lawmakers to power. The push continues; Mississippi state lawmakers are holding a series of redistricting hearings, which could lead to redrawing the map to target Representative Bennie Thompson, a Black Democrat.
That may energize Black voters ahead of November’s election, potentially to the benefit of Mr. Colom, who saw his nomination to a federal judgeship blocked by Senator Hyde-Smith during the Biden administration. He has leaned into his record as a prosecutor in Mississippi, while criticizing Republicans for making deep cuts to federal health care programs and failing to address high prices in one of the nation’s poorest states.
“We want to make sure that we have massive turnout,” said Sinessa Wilburn, 53, who attended a redistricting hearing in Meridian, Miss. “I want an Obama turnout, OK?”
Few Democrats campaign in the South without invoking civil rights. But the Supreme Court ruling has sharpened that message. By ensuring Black majorities in a number of Southern House districts, the Voting Rights Act increased the number of Black lawmakers in Congress and shaped policy and funding for otherwise underserved communities.
Without it, “we’re losing what so many people fought for — we would lose that one voice, one vote,” said Carolyn Rash Hampton, 78, who recounted to Mississippi legislators this month how she graduated from a segregated school northeast of Jackson, Miss.
In Mound Bayou, Miss., a Delta town built by formerly enslaved people as a mecca for Black independence and prosperity, Mr. Colom concluded his speech recently with a reference to the Supreme Court decision and the fallout in the Legislature.
“They don’t want to compete for the voters in the Delta,” Mr. Colom said to murmurs from the crowd. “They want to pick y’all’s congressman for y’all.”
“But,” he added, “thank God our ancestors gave us the one power we needed.”
Mr. Figures, speaking to a room of students and staff members at Tuskegee University this month, said the redistricting showed “an arrogantly high level of confidence that certain people in certain positions have that people are not going to go vote.”
He conceded that some voters, particularly younger ones, could feel disenchanted by new district lines designed to limit their power.
“How do we motivate younger voters to be able to go out and have a vested stake in what’s going on?” Mr. Figures asked, saying the civil rights movement felt as distant as World War I felt to him growing up.
Skyler Carrillo, 21, a college senior, pressed Mr. Figures about what could be done outside of the courts to respond to the ruling. A member of the historically Black fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi, Mr. Carrillo is planning a forum this month to encourage students to vote.
“I know it’s hitting Alabama hard,” he said. “We can’t say our vote doesn’t matter if we aren’t going out to take that vote and take that chance.”
There are also money challenges.
“All Democrats who are in more safe seats should come to the South and help fight and give money,” said State Representative Justin J. Pearson in an interview before he clinched his primary for the Ninth Congressional District in Tennessee, a Democratic stronghold that was redrawn to guarantee a Republican pickup but that Mr. Pearson is still fighting for.
Some civic education and voting rights efforts had already been in the works, like a nonpartisan education partnership run by the National Civil Rights Museum, housed at the Lorraine Motel where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, in Memphis.
But others intensified after the ruling. The Congressional Black Caucus Institute this week announced a coordinated campaign to reach Black and rural voters in the South, including in several of the districts changed by redistricting.
Efforts to encourage voter turnout include a recent canvassing day in Memphis, where paid residents knocked on doors to let voters know that their district lines had changed and to encourage them to come out. One woman gently chided a younger, reluctant voter sitting on a porch in the Memphis heat, saying, “Your ancestors fought hard for this.”
Kimberly Davis, 51, a Memphis resident, fretted over “a crisis” facing Black voters at risk of losing their influence.
“Encouraging people and letting them know that their vote has power is something that I want to make sure that we do,” she said. She added: “There’s a serious need.”
Patricia Mazzei , Luke Vrotsos and Christine Zhang contributed reporting.
Emily Cochrane is a national reporter for The Times covering the American South, based in Nashville.“
Wednesday, September 16, 2026
Fencing goes up around the main Kennedy Center building | AP News
Fencing goes up around the main Kennedy Center building after Trump-aligned board votes to close it
"WASHINGTON (AP) — Fencing went up Wednesday around the main Kennedy Center building, a day after the Trump-aligned board voted to close most of the performing arts center for repairs.
That vote came after a federal judge blocked the institution from returning President Donald Trump’s name to the building.
The Republican president had said in a social media post that the closure was needed for safety repairs. But he said the repairs, which Congress has allocated $257 million to cover, would only happen if the board was permitted to move forward with plans to add his name to the building.
Activists who have opposed the closure said there has been no vehicle or pedestrian access to the building. An Associated Press reporter who approached the main building was told by a security guard that it was closed.
Laura Bligh, who has attended protests with the advocacy group “Hands Off the Arts,” said she feared some or all of the building may be torn down before a legal case is concluded.
“The worst case scenario is a wrecking ball,” she said, adding that the Trump administration can’t be trusted because “look what they did to the East Wing.”
The administration demolished the East Wing of the White House and is replacing it with a massive ballroom. Trump also plans to build a triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery and is eyeing a golf course renovation along the Potomac River.
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The Kennedy Center board voted in August to inscribe his name on the Kennedy Center’s facade so it would read “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump.” If the Trump Kennedy Center Fund reached $100 million, another inscription would be added reading “Endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.”
The plaza in front of the Kennedy Center would also be renamed in Trump’s honor.
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All of those proposals were shot down Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, who ruled that nothing could happen “without Congress’s blessing.”
Spokespeople for the Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Maria Shriver, John F. Kennedy’s niece and former first lady of California, called the standoff over the name “a sad state of affairs” and a “tragedy.”
She said in a post on X that it appears Trump “will not rest until his name is permanently connected to the name of a great president, whose memory this building was dedicated to.”
“Imagine spending your days focused on this, while a war rages under your leadership,” she added."
Tuesday, September 15, 2026
Monday, September 14, 2026
Supreme court rejects Trump’s mail ballot restrictions for midterm elections
Supreme court rejects Trump’s mail ballot restrictions for midterm elections
“The Supreme Court rejected Trump’s mail ballot restrictions, upholding an injunction that lets states continue existing processes. Kavanaugh concurred on timing; Alito dissented. Civil rights groups and Democrats praised the decision.
Decision allows states to send ballots under process followed for years even as president tried to limit system
The supreme court on Monday rejected Donald Trump’s mail ballot restrictions for now, capping a flurry of last-minute legal action with voting in the midterm elections already underway.
The decision allows states to continue sending out mail ballots under the same processes they have used for years.
The Trump administration had asked the court, once again at the center of a roiling political controversy, to clear the way for restrictions before the pivotal November contests for control of Congress. The case has major implications because nearly one-third of the country votes by mail.
“The government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the district court’s preliminary injunction,” states the one-paragraph unsigned order. “And the equitable factors applicable for obtaining emergency relief from this court do not favor a stay.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh filed a concurrence, ruling that he believed the government had “at least a fair prospect” of success defending the plan, but that implementation so close to election day would be “arbitrary and capricious”.
Justice Samuel Alito dissented, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas. In the dissent, Alito blamed the litigating states for creating the conditions of a ruling so close to an election, and wrote that they should not benefit from a protracted process that they created with their suit.
“The plaintiff states cannot claim the timing of the rule tilts the equities in their favor when they, and courts hearing their claims, are responsible for so much of the delay,” he wrote.
Civil rights groups lauded the decision.
“It is alarming what the administration was seeking to do here,” said Kristen Clarke, NAACP general counsel and former head of the justice department’s civil rights division. “This was an 11th-hour effort by the administration to hijack the way that we vote by mail in our country.”
Civil rights groups could not have moved faster, she said. “At the earliest opportunity, civil rights organizations like the NAACP took to the court to stand up for voters. It’s important to remember that the final rule was not issued until about roughly 10 days ago. So, I find Justice Alito’s statements disingenuous … We should focus on the fact that the court is leaving in place an injunction that prevents this administration from turning our electoral system on its head. What the administration was attempting to do here would have unleashed chaos across the country.”
“The supreme court has done the right thing by protecting the American people’s right to vote,” said Robert Garcia, a Democratic representative from Long Beach, California. “Donald Trump tried to illegally interfere with our elections and undermine vote-by-mail for millions of Americans and failed. We will keep fighting to protect the right to vote of every single citizen in this country.”
The case stems from an executive order issued by Trump on 31 March requiring the post office to refrain from delivering ballots for mail-in voting to registered voters deemed ineligible when compared with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other federal records.
Voting rights groups, joined by 23 states and the District of Columbia, sued the administration to stop the proposed rule, arguing that the US constitution provides no authority for the president to issue orders governing the administration of elections.
Election officials have said there was simply no way to carry out a complete overhaul in the weeks before the midterms. Indeed, Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin began sending mail ballots to voters over the past week while the new system was still not active.
The Trump administration plan would require states to adopt a uniform envelope style and submit lists of eligible voters to an online portal. The postal service could refuse to deliver ballots to states that didn’t comply.
A whistleblower report, though, said the postal system’s requirements could lead to millions of mail ballots never being sent, because the portal wasn’t properly built and a single bar code error could result in an entire batch of ballots being tossed out.
Democratic state officials and voting rights groups challenged the restrictions in court, arguing the president has no constitutional authority to set election rules that would “virtually eliminate mail voting on the eve of a major election”.
Lower courts agreed. But an initial injunction issued by US district judge Indira Talwani was overturned on procedural grounds in July, but was reinstated after the USPS posted a final rule on ballot delivery. Monday’s ruling upholds that injunction.
The Trump administration appealed to the supreme court, arguing that federal control of the postal service allows them to set rules for mail ballot handling and that compliance was possible.
The federal government won an early procedural decision at the supreme court, but the justices pointedly did not decide the legality of the plan.
Trump has long opposed mail voting and falsely blamed it for his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, even though he often uses that method to cast his own ballot, including as recently as this year.
“The court’s ruling is a massive sigh of relief for local election officials and voters – especially for the thousands of service members abroad whose ballots are legally required to be sent by all 50 states within the next five days,” said Samantha Tarazi, co-founder and CEO of the Voting Rights Lab.
“But this isn’t over. This administration will keep testing every avenue to manipulate our elections and sow doubt in results he doesn’t like. Today is yet another example of President Trump’s extreme elections agenda losing in the courts and with the American people. The bottom line is simple: states run our elections – not the president.”
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