Republican White Supremacy

You may have seen this, but there was an excellent illustration of this phenomenon in the news yesterday:

On Tuesday, hours after President Donald Trump refused to blame white nationalists for the violence in Charlottesville, a federal court ruled that congressional districts drawn by Texas Republicans after the 2010 election were enacted with “racially discriminatory intent” against Latino and African American voters.

This is the seventh time since 2011 that a federal court has found that Texas intentionally discriminated against minority voters, through its redistricting plans and strict voter ID law. This repeated finding of intentional discrimination means that federal courts could once again require Texas to clear any changes to voting laws or procedures with the federal government—a requirement that was in place until the Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act in 2013.

Texas added 4.3 million new residents from 2000 to 2010 and gained four new congressional seats after the 2010 census. Although nearly 90 percent of that growth came from minorities, who lean Democratic, under the congressional redistricting map passed by Texas Republicans in 2011, white Republicans won three of the four new seats that resulted. The League of Women Voters called the plan “the most extreme example of racial gerrymandering among all the redistricting proposals passed by lawmakers so far this year.”

Also, the President gave a rambling apologia white supremacists, which upset his aides because they would prefer that his well-known racism be confined to private comments.

Getting the monument to Roger Taney in Baltimore torn down was excellent. Getting Shelby Country overruled would be much better (granting that with a Republican White House the preclearance provision would be essentially null and void anyway.)