Elections

For sixty years, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act has been the main legal tool minority voters have to challenge maps that dilute their political power — the thing that forces states to draw a second majority-Black district when residential segregation and racially polarized voting mean one district isn’t enough to give Black voters a real chance to elect anyone. On April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court redefined what it takes to win that kind of claim, in a way that Justice Kagan says renders Section 2 “all but a dead letter.” ...

Federal law caps how much an individual donor can give directly to a candidate at $7,000. That limit exists for an obvious reason: a candidate who owes their campaign to one wealthy check is a candidate who answers to that donor first. On June 30, 2026, the Supreme Court opened a door around that limit large enough to drive a truck through — by ruling that political parties can spend essentially unlimited amounts in direct coordination with the candidates they’re backing. ...