Editor’s Note — 6/4/25
Today at Democracy Docket, we’re publishing a package on a story you likely haven’t heard a lot about from the national media. The Republicans who run Tarrant County, Texas, have passed a new gerrymandered district map with the aim of further increasing their power at the expense of the county’s Black and brown voters. To carry out their scheme, they turned to some powerful players in the national GOP’s anti-democracy movement.
We have two pieces on the subject. First, a deeply-reported news story by Democracy Docket reporter Jen Rice, who recently joined us to cover state voting and democracy issues. Second, a defiant and powerful op-ed by Tarrant County Commissioner Roderick Miles Jr., who represents many of the minority voters being targeted by the gerrymander.
Together, these pieces offer a fascinating window into the tactics of those looking to undermine democracy, and the impact on ordinary Americans — which will be key themes of our coverage going forward.
Read them both at the links below.
—Zachary Roth, Managing Editor, Democracy Docket
Top GOP Map-Drawer and Right-Wing Law Firm Team Up to Target Texas Minority Voters
by Jen Rice, Reporter, Democracy docket
The Republicans who run one of Texas’s biggest counties have recruited the national GOP’s top map-drawer, as well as a leading Washington D.C.-based voter suppression group, in a bid for a new gerrymander to expand their majority.
The effort has spurred furious opposition from local minority communities whose right to fair representation is at risk. And it underscores how the GOP’s sweeping national strategy to use map-drawing to boost the party’s power at the expense of non-white voters is now playing out at the local level.
We Will Not Be Drawn Out: The Fight for Fair Maps in Tarrant County, Texas
by Roderick Miles, Jr., Tarrant County Commissioner
In Fort Worth’s historic Lake Como neighborhood, a wall once stood. Not a metaphor, but a literal wall. Built to divide Black families from the rest of the city. That wall is gone, but its legacy lives on. Today, it is reinforced not by concrete, but by the lines of a redistricting map that threatens to once again isolate and disenfranchise.