Inside the Conservative Case for Voting Restrictions

In the run-up to this year’s midterm elections, one of the defining campaign issues is the elections themselves. Ever since President Trump first urged red states to draw up new maps to give Republican candidates an electoral edge, America has been caught in a historic redistricting fight that was supercharged this spring when the Supreme Court gutted much of the Voting Rights Act. That landmark decision led to the elimination of majority Black districts around the country. Meanwhile, the president has been pushing legislation that could restrict voting access while using the bully pulpit to falsely claim that there’s widespread voter fraud. Some even fear President Trump could use the power of the executive branch to interfere with the election itself. On this week’s Reveal, host Al Letson talks with three people at the heart of this historic fight over voting rights in America: LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter; and Ken Cuccinelli, chairman of The Heritage Foundation’s Election Transparency Initiative, and Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California.

More To The Story: Heather Cox Richardson is one of today’s unlikeliest social media stars. The Boston College historian has been teaching and writing about 19th-century America, Reconstruction, and the Civil War for decades. But it was only in 2019 that her work took off when she began writing her daily newsletter, Letters from an American, a no-nonsense analysis of the news through the lens of US history. The newsletter became one of the most popular on Substack. And today, Richardson has millions of loyal fans who rely on her to make sense of American politics and provide a little sanity and democratic reassurance, even as she herself is concerned about the direction of the country today. On this week’s More To The Story, Richardson doles out some advice for the Democrats if they take back power in the midterm elections, the decades-long failure to hold corrupt American leaders accountable, the still-resonant death of Reconstruction, and what she sees as the tragic hypocrisy of Thomas Jefferson.

2026 would have been a reelection year for Rep. Cleo Fields, who represents the majority-Black 6th Congressional District in Louisiana. But in April, the US Supreme Court handed down a decision that led to the dismantling of his district. This was the second time that a district Fields served was taken out from under him. “I’ve never served a single day in Congress without a federal lawsuit looming over my head,” Fields says. In his view, the court’s ruling was an enormous blow to Black voters across the South. “They basically gutted Section 2 and basically ended the Voting Rights Act.” The Voting Rights Act is a signature piece of legislation passed during the civil rights era of the 1960s to remove restrictions that made it difficult for African Americans to vote. But the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Louisiana v. Callais gutted the VRA by making it more difficult for people of color to challenge districts on the grounds that they are discriminatory. On this week’s Reveal, we look at how the decision will affect Black voters in Louisiana and throughout the South and examine how the Roberts court borrowed arguments from Supreme Court decisions that undermined Black civil rights more than a century ago, paving the way for the Jim Crow system of segregation.

More To The Story: One of the defining issues heading into this year’s midterms is how redistricting has rapidly reshaped electoral maps across the country. When the Supreme Court gutted much of the Voting Rights Act earlier this year, a number of states redrew maps eliminating majority-Black districts, weakening Black political power potentially for years to come. But what does this shift feel like for someone working on the ground to expand voting access for Black communities when the promise of equal representation itself is under assault? Ask LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund, a group that’s been working to increase voter participation within minority communities in the rural South, especially where turnout is low. On this week’s More To The Story, Brown talks with host Al Letson about her winding path into politics, her fight against ongoing voter suppression efforts in the South, and why it’s important to mobilize Black voters now more than ever. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Read: Whites Only (Mother Jones) Listen: Trump Says Voter Fraud Is Rampant. The Evidence Says Otherwise. (More To The Story) Read: This Is All John Roberts’ Fault (Mother Jones) Learn more: Black Voters Matter Fund

When the FBI showed up at a warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia, to seize hundreds of boxes of 2020 election records this past January, County Commissioner Dana Barrett thought it looked less like a criminal investigation and more like political theater.