Eliminating Rep. Thompson’s district could also threaten safe GOP districts. Is that why Republicans halted their redistricting plans?
Mississippi has one of the South’s few remaining majority-Black congressional districts, and state Republicans—from Gov. Tate Reeves and State Auditor Shad White to the state party itself—have spent months saying they want it redrawn.
As Republican-led legislatures in Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama and South Carolina move to eliminate their majority-Back districts after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais, Mississippi has not acted.
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One clue could lie in the fact that making U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson’s 2nd Congressional District less Black requires making the three currently safe Republican districts around it more Black, and Mississippi’s three Republican incumbents do not have the margins to absorb the voters and stay safe.
Reeves has called Thompson’s tenure a “reign of terror” and said its end is not a question of if but when. After Callais was decided o…