2026-05-24T10:00:08.522Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
- 共和党掌控的南部各州正计划在2026年中期选举前，撤销目前由黑人民主党人掌控的国会选区。
- 此次重划选区行动可能会让国会黑人核心小组成员丢掉多达6个席位，成为自重建时期以来单次选举中绝对数量最多的席位损失。
- 少数族裔是这些州人口增长的主力，但其政治代表权却通过新的选区地图面临历史性下滑。
本文由AI生成摘要，并经CNN编辑审核。
共和党掌控的南部各州掀起的重划选区狂潮，有可能重现美国政治历史上最严重的种族不公。
该地区的红色州正急于将目前由黑人民主党人掌控的选区替换为大概率会选出白人共和党人的席位，而少数族裔选民正是这些州全部或几乎全部人口增长的来源。这种背离历史的做法令人不安地呼应了结构性不平等的旧例：在美国历史的大部分时间里，南方正是依靠其庞大的奴隶人口和后来的自由黑人公民，增加了国会席位和选举人团票数，同时却剥夺了这些人投票权。
这场清除黑人占多数选区的风潮，与2024年后共和党广泛宣扬的论调形成鲜明反差——当时共和党称唐纳德·特朗普总统正带领该党在少数族裔选民中取得历史性突破。
与这些口号相反，共和党人的这些行动表明，该党许多人仍将选民群体的持续多元化视为政治威胁。民主党民调专家康奈尔·贝尔彻表示：“从一开始，对他们运动最大的威胁实际上就是黑人和拉丁裔的政治与经济力量。”
与许多共和党战略家一样，CNN评论员谢迈克尔·辛格尔顿称，共和党在此次选区操纵中的动机是党派利益，而非种族问题。“在职的普通共和党人不会从种族视角看待此事，”他说，“他们只会考虑‘如何最大化我们的政治权力？’”
但批评人士认为，此次重划选区攻势只是特朗普限制美国日益壮大的少数族裔群体政治权力的更广泛议程的一部分。该议程包括试图终止出生公民权，以及在2030年国会席位重新分配时讨论惩罚移民人口众多的州。特朗普的强硬移民顾问斯蒂芬·米勒近期在社交媒体发帖，明确将人口普查变化与针对少数族裔占多数国会选区的攻击联系起来，并声称二者结合可能会让民主党目前掌控的多达40个众议院席位流失。
“正在形成的分裂界限，我认为会影响几代人，还会让众多社区的民众觉得，他们对国家发展方向没有平等的话语权，”国会黑人核心小组基金会主席兼首席执行官妮可·奥斯汀·希勒里说，“这实在是一场悲剧，尤其是在这个国家建国250周年之际。这种结果与此时此刻我们应有的意义背道而驰。”
南部各州的重划选区之争，是一场由来已久的冲突的新战场。
在美国建国后的前175年里，南方通过压制黑人选民投票权和政治代表权，实实在在地获得了利益。
内战前，奴隶当然被剥夺了投票权。战后几年里，联邦军队在南方各地驻扎，保障了前奴隶的投票权，尽管这经常面临白人南方人的暴力恐吓。但随着北方在19世纪70年代初后执行重建政策的意愿消退，南方各州重新建立了层层严密的法律壁垒，阻止了一代又一代黑人居民投票。这一局面直到1965年《选举权法案》通过才得以改变。
然而，尽管南方黑人无法投票，他们却被计入人口统计，而人口统计结果决定了国会席位和选举人团票数的分配。美国宪法南北双方之间最令人不齿的妥协之一，就是五分之三条款：尽管被排除在政治进程之外，每个奴隶仍被算作五分之三个自由白人，用于分配国会席位和选举人团票数。内战后，南方从其黑人居民身上获益更多，因为在人口分配中，他们被算作与自由白人完全等同的个体，尽管他们仍被排除在政治进程之外。
进步派政治战略家、美国劳工联合会-产业工会联合会前政治总监迈克尔·波德霍泽近期量化了南方白人从这种结构性不平等中获益的程度。他计算得出，内战前，南方各州每次选举中每张选票对应的国会席位数量，大约是南方以外各州的1.5倍。在19世纪70年代至60年代近一个世纪的南方选民压制期间，南方的这一优势——不妨称之为歧视溢价——扩大到了约2:1的比例。但《选举权法案》通过后，这一差距逐渐缩小，到2020年几乎消失。
波德霍泽认为，共和党掌控的南方各州如今迅速采取行动，撤销由黑人民主党人掌控的国会选区，正以新的形式重现这种不平等。他利用民主党定位公司Catalist维护的选民档案数据计算得出，2024年，在南部七个深州，黑人选民支持的众议院候选人获胜并最终代表他们前往华盛顿的概率为50%。即便如此，这些州的白人选民支持的候选人获胜概率更高（70%），但差距并不大。
但在最高法院“卡莱斯案”判决削弱《选举权法案》后，这种种族失衡可能会重新出现。波德霍泽预测，在新的格局下，2026年深州白人选民支持的众议院候选人获胜并代表他们前往华盛顿的概率将达到71%。但对于这些州的黑人选民来说，他们支持的众议院候选人获胜的概率将降至25%。
“这就是我们如何重新回到那种‘自由但不公平’的选举状态，而这正是五分之三条款和吉姆·克劳排斥政策的标志，”波德霍泽在上周的直播中表示，“白人从对州内黑人人口的完整统计中获得了所有代表权的价值，但他们却能阻止这种价值真正发挥作用。”
今年红色州的重划选区行动可能会让至少6名国会黑人核心小组成员丢掉席位，损失可能出现在密苏里州、得克萨斯州、阿拉巴马州、路易斯安那州、北卡罗来纳州和南卡罗来纳州，佛罗里达州的情况则略有不同。19世纪末暴力摧毁重建政策并压制黑人选民投票权期间，单次选举中失去席位的黑人众议院议员最多为4人（1876年）。从百分比来看，当时黑人代表席位的下滑速度更快（从7席降至3席），但从绝对数量来看，今年可能会造成美国历史上黑人政治代表权最大幅度的倒退。
2028年选举周期的损失可能更大。包括佐治亚州和密西西比州在内的其他南方各州，正计划在该选举前重新划分选区界限。在上周一场未受关注的参议院司法小组委员会听证会上，密苏里州共和党参议员埃里克·施密特与保守派倡导组织“第三条项目”的一名分析师辩称，根据“卡莱斯案”判决，司法部应该起诉包括加利福尼亚州和伊利诺伊州在内的蓝色州，解散少数族裔占多数的国会选区。
如今的排斥政策不像过去那样彻底。南方各州的黑人居民仍可以登记并投票，能够影响参议院、总统和全州范围选举的结果。但在众议院，正如波德霍泽和其他批评人士所指出的，黑人（和其他少数族裔）选民壮大了本州的总代表权，但随后却被剥夺了选举能够倡导其观点的议员的有意义机会，这令人不安地呼应了五分之三条款和吉姆·克劳选民压制政策。
这种呼应尤其令人警醒，因为在那些试图消除少数族裔政治代表权的南方各州，少数族裔贡献了绝大多数——在某些情况下甚至是全部——的人口增长。
根据南加州大学公平研究所对人口普查数据的分析，2010年至2023年，有色人种占得克萨斯州和阿拉巴马州总人口增长的92%；占佛罗里达州的87%；占北卡罗来纳州的81%；占田纳西州的66%；占南卡罗来纳州的52%。自2010年以来，路易斯安那州、密西西比州和佐治亚州的白人人口有所下降，所有人口增长都来自少数族裔。然而，所有这些州都已经或计划取消由少数族裔民主党人掌控的国会席位，同时增加大概率会选出白人共和党人的席位数量。
“这些州政治权力和话语权的增长，来自于它们正通过选区操纵工具试图压制其声音的人口，”南加州大学社会学教授、公平研究所主任曼努埃尔·帕斯托尔说，“我们看到的是这些州全面推行少数人统治的企图。”
在南部各州迅速消除黑人占多数的众议院选区，是特朗普及其共和党盟友压制少数族裔政治影响力最明显的举动。但这并非唯一之举。
本届政府试图终止出生公民权——目前正等待最高法院的裁决——这将阻止无证移民的子女成为公民并最终拥有投票权。特朗普和米勒都表示有意排除无证移民，或更大范围的所有非公民人口，排除将用于2030年人口普查后分配国会席位和选举人团票数的人口统计。
这种政策将减少移民人口众多州的代表权。正如公平研究所计算的那样，移民人口众多的州往往也集中了大量少数族裔美国公民。这意味着将移民排除在人口分配统计之外，也不可避免地会减少大多数种族多元化州的代表权。
所有这些努力都表明，许多共和党人对自己在多元化社区的竞争力充其量持矛盾态度。这与特朗普2024年胜选后的那段兴奋时期形成鲜明对比。当时，兴高采烈的共和党战略家们从特朗普在拉丁裔选民中创纪录的强劲表现、大多数数据来源显示的他在黑人男性中的支持率上升，以及他在所有工薪阶层有色裔选民中的整体进步中，看到了持久的跨种族工人阶级重新结盟的迹象。
如今，这些进展看起来要脆弱得多。CNN在2025年2月首次对特朗普第二任期的工作认可度进行的调查显示，36%的非大学学历非白人成年人认可特朗普处理总统事务的方式。在最近一次CNN民调中，这一数字仅为21%。即便许多民主党战略家也承认，特朗普可能已经提升了共和党在有色裔选民（尤其是拉丁裔）中的支持率底线，但共和党人希望其2024年的强劲表现为该党建立一个更高的新基线的希望，现在看来极为不成熟。
加州大学伯克利分校政治科学家埃里克·希克勒曾撰写过两党种族政策演变的相关文章，他表示，共和党如此强硬地反对黑人政治代表权，表明其掌控众议院的短期目标在2026年已经盖过了所有长期考量。“我们看到的是，为了达到众议院218个多数席位的目标，一切都得让路，”希克勒说。
希克勒怀疑，特朗普式的议程能否像一些共和党人预测的那样，大幅巩固在黑人选民中的支持基础。但他表示，无论这种潜在上限有多高，这种公然削弱黑人政治权力的举动都可能会降低这一上限。
“仅仅是这种对黑人代表权的敌意……就极难想象至少部分共和党人希望利用的黑人选民支持率提升的情况，”希克勒说。
尽管辛格尔顿辩称，共和党取消这些选区是出于党派而非种族原因，但他也同意，除非共和党加大力度在新席位上提名可行的黑人保守派候选人，否则共和党可能会在黑人选民中遭遇损失。
“如果我们不优先考虑这一点，”辛格尔顿说，“我绝对认为共和党可能会”在2028年遭遇“可争取的黑人选民，特别是黑人男性的反弹”。
辛格尔顿指出的一个早期测试案例是田纳西州共和党人在孟菲斯周边创建的新共和党倾向国会选区，黑人保守派夏洛特·伯曼在由两名白人共和党州议员领衔的拥挤初选中面临 uphill 挑战。
民主党民调专家贝尔彻表示，2026年和2028年的“百万美元问题”是，共和党人的这些举动会在黑人选民中引发多大程度的回应。贝尔彻指出，符合投票资格的黑人选民投票率在巴拉克·奥巴马两届任期内飙升至大致与白人投票率相当的水平后，再次大幅低于白人投票率。2024年，人口统计学家威廉·弗雷分析的人口普查数据显示，符合投票资格的美国黑人中仅有60%投了票，而当年白人的投票率为71%，奥巴马2012年连任时黑人选民的投票率为66%。
“从纯粹的人口结构来看，如果黑人选民投票率与白人投票率差距在4到5个百分点以内，选举就会完全不同，”贝尔彻说。
无论党派影响最终如何，在国家不可逆转地走向多元化的同时，如此迅速地减少少数族裔代表权，可能会造成巨大的公民代价。“我们真正看到的是，试图削弱这些不断增长的多元化群体的话语权，就像每个美国人都应享有的那样，”奥斯汀·希勒里说。
许多批评人士将此次选区操纵热潮描述为对“多种族民主”的威胁。但这种说法低估了消除如此多黑人代表权的潜在后果。“这关乎美国的未来，仅此而已，”新泽西州民主党参议员科里·布克在上周末阿拉巴马州蒙哥马利的投票权集会上告诉记者罗兰·马丁，“因为不可能一部分人有民主，而另一部分人没有。”
共和党掌控的南方各州正在比种族隔离结束以来的任何时候都更深刻地考验着少数族裔选民真正的民主边界。
This year could produce the largest loss of Black political representation ever. Here’s why
2026-05-24T10:00:08.522Z / CNN
- Republican-controlled Southern states are moving to eliminate congressional districts currently held by Black Democrats ahead of the 2026 midterms.
- The redistricting push could erase as many as six held by Congressional Black Caucus members, marking the largest single-election loss in absolute numbers since Reconstruction.
- Minorities account for most population growth in these states, yet their political representation faces historic decline through new district maps.
AI-generated summary was reviewed by a CNN editor.
The redistricting frenzy across Republican-controlled Southern states threatens to resurrect some of the gravest racial injustices in American political history.
Red states across the region are rushing to replace districts now held by Black Democrats with seats likely to be won by White Republicans even as minority voters account for all, or nearly all, of those states’ population growth. That divergence carries uncomfortable echoes of the structural inequities that allowed the South, for most of American history, to boost its congressional representation and electoral votes with its large populations of slaves and later free Black citizens — while denying them the right to vote.
The stampede to erase Black-majority districts marks a striking reversal from the widespread GOP claims after 2024 that President Donald Trump was leading the party to historic breakthroughs among minority voters.
These actions, as opposed to those words, suggests that many in the party still view the continuing diversification of the electorate as a political threat. “From the very beginning the largest threat to their movement is in fact Black and brown political and economic power,” said Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster.
Like many GOP strategists, CNN commentator Shermichael Singleton says the party’s motivation in these gerrymanders is partisan, not racial. “The average Republican in office, they are not looking at this (through the lens) of race,” he said. “They are looking at, ‘How can we maximize our political power?’”
But critics see the redistricting offensive as just one element of a broader Trump agenda to constrain the political power of the nation’s growing minority population. That agenda includes the attempt to end birthright citizenship and ongoing discussion of penalizing states with large immigrant populations in the 2030 congressional reapportionment. In a recent social media post, Stephen Miller, Trump’s hardline immigration adviser, explicitly linked changes in the Census with attacks on majority-minority Congressional districts, and argued that together they could strip away as many as 40 House seats Democrats now hold .
“There are dividing lines that are being created that I think will have impacts for generations and will have the effect of making people in so many communities feel as though they don’t have an equal say in how this country will move forward,” said Nicole Austin-Hillery, president and CEO of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. “And that really is a tragedy, especially given that this is the 250th anniversary of the founding of this country. This outcome is antithetical to what this moment should mean for all of us.”
The redistricting battle across the South amounts to a new front in a very old conflict.
For the nation’s first 175 years, the South tangibly benefited from suppressing Black voting rights and political representation.
Until the Civil War, slaves, of course, were denied the right to vote. For a few years after the war, the presence of Union troops across the South guaranteed the vote to former slaves, albeit frequently in the face of horrific violence from White Southerners. But as the North’s willingness to enforce Reconstruction ebbed after the early 1870s, Southern states rebuilt dense layers of legal barriers that prevented generations of their Black residents from casting a ballot. That only changed with the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.
And yet while Southern Black Americans could not vote, they were counted in the population tallies that determined the apportionment of congressional seats and electoral votes. One of the Constitution’s most odious compromises between North and South was the three-fifths rule that counted each enslaved person, despite their exclusion from the political process, as three-fifths of a free White person for allocating congressional seats and electoral votes. After the Civil War, the South benefited even more from its Black residents because they were counted as the full equivalent of a free White person in apportionment — even though they remained excluded from the political process.
Progressive political strategist Michael Podhorzer, the former political director of the AFL-CIO, recently quantified how much White Southerners benefited from this structural inequity. He’s calculated that before the Civil War, Southern states received about 1.5 times as many congressional seats per vote cast in their elections as states outside the South. During the near century of Southern voter suppression from the 1870s to the 1960s, that advantage for the South — what might be called the discrimination premium — grew to a ratio of around 2:1. But after the VRA’s passage, that gap gradually narrowed, before virtually disappearing by 2020.
The rapid moves now by Republican-controlled Southern states to eliminate congressional districts held by Black Democrats is resurfacing this inequity in a new form, Podhorzer argued. Using data from the voter files maintained by Catalist, a Democratic targeting firm, he’s calculated that in 2024, a Black voter in one of the seven Deep South states had a 50% chance that the House candidate they supported would win and ultimately represent them in Washington. Even then, White voters in those states had a better chance (70%) that the candidate they supported would win, but the balance was close.
After the Supreme Court’s Callais decision gutting the VRA, though, the racial mismatch may reopen. On this new landscape, Podhorzer projects that a Deep South White voter in 2026 will have a 71% chance that the candidate they support for the House will win and represent them in Washington. But for Black voters in those states, the chance that their preferred House candidate will win falls to 25%.
“This is how we headed right back to the kind of free but not fair elections that were the hallmark of the three-fifths rule and the Jim Crow exclusions,” Podhorzer said on a livestream last week. “Whites get all the value of the full count (of their states’ Black population) for their representation, but they are able to prevent that from actually meaning anything.”
This year’s red-state redistricting moves could eliminate at least six members of the Congressional Black Caucus, with losses possible in Missouri, Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina and South Carolina, and, in a slightly different situation, Florida.During the violent dismantling of Reconstruction and suppression of Black voting rights in the late 19th century, the highest number of Black House Members who lost their seats in any single election was four (in 1876. In percentage terms, Black representation fell faster then (from seven seats to three), but in absolute numbers, this year could produce the largest retrogression of Black political representation in American history.
Even more losses are likely for the 2028 cycle. Other Southern states, including Georgia and Mississippi, are planning to redraw their lines before that election. And at a little-noticed Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing last week, Missouri Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt, along with an analyst from The Article III Project, a conservative advocacy group, argued that, under the Callais decision, the Justice Department should sue blue states, including California and Illinois, to dissolve congressional districts where minorities constitute most of the population.
Today’s exclusion isn’t as total as in those earlier eras. Black residents in Southern states can still register and cast ballots, and can affect the outcomes of elections for Senate, the presidency and statewide offices. But in the House, the prospect that Black (and other minority) voters will swell their state’s total representation but then be denied meaningful opportunities to elect representatives who will advocate for their views, uncomfortably echoes the three-fifths rule and Jim Crow voter suppression, as Podhorzer and other critics note.
That echo is especially powerful because minorities are providing the vast majority — and in some instances the entirety — of population growth in the Southern states that are moving to erase minority political representation.
From 2010 to 2023, people of color accounted for 92% of the total population growth in Texas and Alabama; 87% in Florida; 81% in North Carolina; 66% in Tennessee and 52% in South Carolina, according to an analysis of Census data by the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California. Since 2010, the White population has declined in Louisiana, Mississippi and Georgia, while all their population growth has come from minorities. And yet all these states have already moved or are planning to eliminate congressional seats held by minority Democrats, while increasing the number likely to be won by White Republicans.
“The gain in political power and political voice for these states comes from a population whose voices they are seeking to suppress through these tools of gerrymandering,” said Manuel Pastor, a USC professor of sociology and director of the Equity Research Institute. “What we are seeing is a full-fledged push for minoritarian rule within these states.”
The rapid elimination of Black-majority House districts across the South is the most visible move by Trump and his GOP allies to suppress the political influence of racial minorities. But it’s not alone.
The administration’s attempt to end birthright citizenship — which is now awaiting a ruling from the Supreme Court — would prevent the children of undocumented immigrants from becoming citizens and eventually voters. And both Trump and Miller have signaled interest in excluding either undocumented immigrants or the larger population of all non-citizens from the population counts that will be used to divvy up Congressional seats and electoral votes after the 2030 Census.
Such a policy would reduce representation for states with large immigrant populations. As the Equity Research Institute has calculated, states with large immigration populations also tend to have large concentrations of minority US citizens. That means removing immigrants from the apportionment counts also would inevitably reduce representation for most racially diverse states as well.
All these efforts suggest at best ambivalence among many Republicans about their ability to compete in diverse communities. That’s a stark contrast from the heady days immediately after Trump’s 2024 victory. At that point, exuberant Republican strategists saw signs of a lasting trans-racial working class realignment in Trump’s historically strong performance among Latinos, the gains most data sources recorded for him among Black men, and his overall advance among all working-class voters of color.
Those inroads look much shakier today. In CNN’s first measure of Trump’s second-term job approval in February of 2025, 36% of non-college, nonwhite adults approved of the way Trump was handling the presidency. In the most recent CNN poll, that same figure stood at just 21%. Even many Democratic strategists acknowledge Trump has likely raised the floor for the GOP with voters of color (especially Latinos), but the Republican hope that his strong 2024 performance established an elevated new baseline for the party now seems wildly premature.
Eric Schickler, a University of California at Berkeley political scientist who has written on the evolution of each party’s policies on race, said the GOP’s willingness to move so forcefully against Black political representation demonstrates how thoroughly the short-term goal of maintaining control of the House in 2026 is eclipsing any long-term considerations. “What we’re seeing is the desperation to get to 218 in the House trumps everything else,” Schickler said.
Schickler is skeptical that a Trump-style agenda could ever consolidate inroads into the Black community as large as some Republicans predicted. But, he said, whatever that potential ceiling was, this overt turn to dilute Black political power is likely to lower it.
“Just layering in this hostility to Black representation … makes it extremely hard to imagine the kind of gains among Black voters that at least some Republicans were hoping to leverage,” Schickler said.
Though Singleton argued that Republicans are erasing these districts for partisan rather than racial reasons, he agreed that the GOP could face losses among Black voters unless it makes greater efforts to nominate viable Black conservatives in the new seats.
“If we don’t prioritize that,” Singleton said, “then I absolutely think the party could” face a backlash by 2028 among “gettable Black voters, specifically Black men.”
One early test case Singleton pointed to is the new Republican-leaning congressional district Tennessee Republicans created around Memphis, where Black conservative Charlotte Bergmann faces an uphill challenge in a crowded field headlined by two White GOP state legislators.
Belcher, the Democratic pollster, said “the million-dollar question” for 2026 and 2028 is how much of a response these GOP moves will trigger in the Black community. Turnout among eligible Black voters, after soaring to roughly equal White participation during Barack Obama’s two elections, has again fallen significantly below White participation, Belcher noted. In 2024, Census figures analyzed by demographer William Frey showed that just 60% of eligible Black Americans voted, compared with 71% of White Americans that year and 66% of Black Americans during Obama’s 2012 reelection.
“Because of sheer demographics, if Black turnout is within 4 or 5 points of White turnout, it’s a completely different kind of election,” Belcher said.
However the partisan implications shake out, the civic cost could be substantial for reducing minority representation so rapidly even as the country irreversibly diversifies. “What we are really seeing is an effort underway to diminish the power of these increased and diverse populations to have their voices heard just like every American,” said Austin-Hillery.
Many critics have described the gerrymandering surge as a threat to “multiracial democracy.” But that framing understates the potential consequence of erasing so much Black representation. “This is about the future of America, period,” Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey told journalist Roland Martin at last weekend’s voting rights rally in Montgomery, Alabama. “Because there is no democracy for some and not for others.”
Republican-controlled Southern states are testing the boundaries of what qualifies as genuine democracy for minority voters more profoundly than at any time since the fall of segregation.