Republican leader acknowledges ‘likely consequences’ for resisting US president’s demands to redraw map
South Carolina state senators on Tuesday defied pressure from Donald Trump to approve plans to redraw the state’s congressional map after the US supreme court effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act.
As Republicans scramble to redraw key districts after the US supreme court rendered ineffective a major section of the civil rights law that prevented racial discrimination, Shane Massey, the Republican majority leader in South Carolina’s senate, argued in an extraordinary address that doing so would be against the interest of his state.
Tennessee’s Republican-dominated legislature moved last week to eliminate the state’s one Democratic, Black-majority congressional district. Louisiana has postponed its state primaries, with its Republican governor and attorney general arguing it could no longer use its current districts.
But on Tuesday afternoon, legislators in South Carolina rejected plans to follow suit, with the state’s senate voting 29-17 – two votes short of the two-thirds needed – on the proposal. Five Republicans joined all Democrats in the chamber to reject the proposal.
