The population of Texas has swelled in recent years because of an influx of business and labor from other states, but the majority of new residents who now call the state home have not been white people.
To that end, the Texas GOP is now using their gerrymandered political power to further solidify their gerrymandering power.
According to the Texas Tribune, new congressional maps released by the state Republican party will reduce the number of congressional districts where people of color are the majority.
The map reduces the number of districts dominated by people of color even though Texas gained two additional congressional seats and the population of Asian, Black and Hispanic Texans outpaced white Texans over the last decade.
Republicans constructed the map with incumbent protection in mind — a strategy that focused on bolstering vulnerable GOP seats rather than aggressively adding new seats that could flip from blue to red. However, the map does in fact strengthen Republican positioning overall in Texas, going from 22 to 25 districts that would have voted for Donald Trump in 2020. The number of congressional districts that voted for Joe Biden would have shrunk by one, from 14 to 13.
We're all old enough to remember when Chief Justice John Roberts said 'racism is over' in his majority opinion gutting the Voting Rights Act.
More recently, Justice Clarence Thomas opined that racist outcomes are actually fine if they weren't based on racist intent which is more difficult to prove in court even if it's obvious in practice.
With the courts reliably siding against voting rights, I'm not sure what the solution to this is other than to aggressively fight for every local district and take control of the legislature. And that's far easier said than done when facing decades of entrenched power, but I don't know what else to say.