Gerrymandering is reshaping who can win in the United States as the second Trump presidency unfolds amid political tensions, geoeconomic disruption and shifting demographics. Bhagyashree Garekar’s reporting ties that change to the country’s 250th anniversary in 2026 and to places where history still sits close to the surface.
At a hotel front desk in Vidor, Texas, the young receptionist put it plainly: “Well, it doesn’t have the best history for black and brown people” and “It has a reputation – I don’t know that it’s deserved.” She added, “They say it was a sundown town. But I’ve been here for two years, and it’s all fine now,” while describing a past sign with “whites only within city limits after dark.”
Vidor, Texas and the old map
Vidor was described as a sundown town, part of a system in which black people and other minorities were unwelcome or excluded after dark. A database maintained by Tougaloo College says sundown towns numbered in the thousands across the US from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, and Jews, Hispanics, Native Americans, Mormons and Asian Americans were also unwelcome in that era.
The old warning sign in Vidor was reportedly removed sometime in the 1970s or the 1980s. Even so, residents and officials say the town is vastly different now, a claim that sits alongside the memory of what came before. That gap between present-day routines and inherited reputation is the point: political maps can shift faster than local history does.
Montgomery and the long shadow
A statue and plaque in Montgomery, Alabama mark the spot where Rosa Parks boarded a public bus and refused to yield her seat for a white passenger in 1956. That refusal sparked a mass protest that forced the authorities to end segregation on Montgomery’s buses the same year.
Vidor’s own history turned again in the early 1990s, when a federal judge’s order to desegregate the city’s public housing triggered conflict. Four black families moved into Vidor and eventually left after facing sustained hostilities from the Ku Klux Klan. In 2020, a rally in Vidor drew a supportive crowd, mostly white, at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, while some counter-protesters arrived with loaded guns and confederate flags.
Politics, demography and who wins
The question hanging over this shift is practical, not abstract. As districts, coalitions and turnout patterns change, the result is not just a new look on the map but a different path to winning seats in the United States. That is why the 2026 anniversary matters here: it arrives while the ground under both race and representation keeps moving.
The Economist won a Pulitzer Prize in 2021 for a vivid account of the 2020 rally, and that same year sits inside the longer arc of these stories: old exclusions, new protests and a country where the map is still being rewritten. The open question is how those shifting lines will translate into power the next time voters decide who can win.
