South Carolina Republicans defy Trump’s demands for redistricting

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. Trump had urged them to back the redistricting proposal on Monday evening. The US president would be “watching closely”, he wrote on social media, adding: “GET IT DONE!” Speaking from the well of the state’s senate chamber, however, Massey gestured to the portraits of its hallowed lawmakers, and noted how South Carolina has influenced America and the world. …