A sign carried by protesters outside the North Carolina Legislature this week put it best: “We the People, Not the Maps.”
But inside the General Assembly, Republican lawmakers weren’t thinking about the people, they were thinking about the power.
As part of a broad, multistate effort by allies of President Donald Trump, the swing state’s Republicans have taken the dramatic step to try to redraw their already gerrymandered congressional districts 5 years before the normal end-of-decade cycle.
The goal is to secure one more Republican U.S. House seat in a desperate attempt to hang onto the House majority and protect Trump from political consequences.
Keep in mind, this map was already unfairly drawn up. The Princeton Gerrymandering Project gave it an “F,” with only one competitive district, 10 safe Republican seats and 3 safe Democratic seats. The new map would be even worse.
This is happening all over the country. From Texas, where lawmakers passed a new map at Trump’s behest, to Missouri, where organizers are trying to put an initiative on the ballot to overturn a recent gerrymander, to Indiana, where party leaders admitted this week they may not have the votes.
Republicans wouldn’t be trying this if they were confident they could win in 2026.
Republicans wouldn’t be trying this if they were confident they could win in 2026. But rather than trying to persuade the American people that they have better ideas, they are trying to rig it so that they can win anyway.
When people see these fights play out, the question they often ask is the right one: How is this legal? The answer lies not in what has been created, but in what has been dismantled.
For nearly 50 years, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 stood as American democracy’s great firewall. Its Section 5 “preclearance” rule required states with histories of racial discrimination, including North Carolina, to get federal approval before changing their election laws or district lines. It was not perfect, but it worked. It stopped discriminatory maps before they took effect and ensured that states could not quietly redraw the shape of democracy itself.
Then came 2013 and the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder. Chief Justice John Roberts declared that “times have changed” and gutted preclearance. Within months, states began closing polling places, purging voter rolls and redrawing maps in ways that never would have survived federal review. These days, those actions are the new normal. States now rewrite the rules of democracy at will, with no supervision and little shame.
That is how it became “legal” to gerrymander so aggressively that outcomes are fixed before the first vote is cast. In North Carolina, new maps all but guarantee Republican dominance no matter how people vote. And it’s not just congressional maps, but also the state legislative ones, too. In Wisconsin, one party can lose the popular vote and still control the Legislature. The law has not evolved toward fairness; it has been hollowed out.
But the story runs deeper. After Reconstruction, white supremacist legislatures learned that redistricting could achieve by pen what violence had once enforced by law: the silencing of Black political power. The Voting Rights Act was meant to end that. It did for half a century. Then Shelby County stripped away the guardrails, and Brnovich v. DNC in 2021 narrowed what even counts as discrimination. Once again, we are watching power police itself, with predictable results.
Yet history teaches that the people always find a way to be heard. James Madison wrote that a republic survives only when “the public voice” reflects “the public good.” Gerrymandering severs that connection. It lets representatives choose their voters instead of earning their trust.
There is still hope. Every time democracy has been threatened, after Reconstruction, in the suffrage movement and in the Civil Rights era, Americans have forced it open again. The same spirit that marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and filled the National Mall is now rising in state capitols and courthouse steps.
Indiana’s hesitation this week shows that resistance matters.
Indiana’s hesitation this week shows that resistance matters. Even in a ruby red state, Republican state lawmakers fear a backlash if they give in to Trump’s demands.
That is why those signs outside the North Carolina Capitol matter. “We the People, Not the Maps” is not just a slogan. It is a statement of civic faith. It reminds us that democracy still belongs to the governed, not the governors. The machinery of elections may still turn, but those in power are working to narrow who that machinery serves. The representative ideal is under siege, but not defeated. The people still hold the power. They always have. And the fight now is to make sure they can still exercise it freely.
As Republicans attempt to redraw the lines of power, we should listen for the echoes of our ancestors. Times have changed, but the struggle has not. The same impulse that once wrote Black citizens out of democracy is now trying to write millions of Americans out of meaningful representation. Whether self-government survives will depend on whether the people still insist on governing themselves.
The maps cannot decide that. We can.
For more thought-provoking insights from Michael Steele, Alicia Menendez and Symone Sanders-Townsend, watch “The Weeknight” every Monday-Friday at 7 p.m. ET on MSNBC.
