The redrawing of electoral districts, or gerrymandering, in the United States is reaching unprecedented levels. After the Supreme Court’s late-April ruling changed electoral rules and curtailed minority rights, Republicans have stepped up efforts to dismantle majority-Black districts, especially in the South, though the strategy extends to states beyond that region.
© Jay Janner (The Austin American-Statesman vía Getty Images)
Marvin Dunn moves with surprising agility among the beds of lettuce, cabbage, and potatoes on his community farm in Overtown, a historic Black neighborhood in Miami that was fractured by the construction of the interstate highway in the 1960s. The farm, squeezed between I-95 and the high-rises packed into nearby downtown, is a kind of oasis where the 85-year-old historian — one of the most recognized voices on the history of segregation in Florida — hosts talks, distributes banned books, and is now preparing a new legal battle to stop construction of Donald Trump’s presidential library a little over 1,000 meters away.
José Javier Rodríguez, the Democratic candidate for Florida attorney general, does not want the page turned on the notorious immigrant detention site Alligator Alcatraz, west of Miami, which has become a symbol of the “cruelty” of the Donald Trump administration. If he wins the November election, the 47-year-old Cuban American says he will investigate how Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’ administration established the facility as a “political theater for consumption in Washington.”
© Will Schermerhorn
The ripple effect of the Republicans’ political maneuvering to secure a congressional majority has opened a rift within the Democratic Party in Florida. The new electoral map promoted by Governor Ron DeSantis altered the electoral geography so dramatically that it erased District 25, the seat Debbie Wasserman Schultz previously held in Broward, north of Miami, leaving the congresswoman living in another district and her voters dispersed into other, more Republican-leaning districts.
© Nathan Posner (Anadolu vía Getty Images)
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