The U.S. Census may be the most consequential data set in America. It determines how political representation is apportioned in Washington and how trillions of dollars in federal funding are allocated. But the data contained in the Census shouldn't always be taken at face value. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, Galen Druke speaks with historian Dan Bouk about his book, "Democracy's Data: The Hidden Stories in the U.S. Census and how to Read Them."
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Activists march across Edmund Pettus Bridge on May 16, 2026 in Selma, Alabama.
Jason Davis / Getty Images
Racism & MAGA-Gerrymandering—Combating the Noxious Mix
May 28, 2026
There is an old saying: If anyone insists something definitely is not about money; it is definitely about money. The Supreme Court’s right-wing majority claims that its recent election districting rulings are not about abetting racism or siding with MAGA politics, but they are definitely about both.
The Court’s recent Louisiana v. Callais decision cynically demands that anyone challenging election districts as violating the Voting Rights Act must “disentangle race from politics” and show that intentional racial discrimination, rather than politics, was the motivator when minority communities are divided and segments are placed into majority white districts.
Race and politics have been inextricably entwined since this country was founded, and they continue to be. Disentanglement is impossible, and demonstrating intentional racial discrimination rather than discriminatory impact is almost impossible. The Court’s new requirements are like multiplying 0 times 0.001; that provides a zero chance of prevailing.
Practically speaking, now if a state - or local - legislature claims that it split up concentrations of African American, Latino, Native American, Asian or other minority residents to make election districts that maximize a party’s electoral advantage or ensure an incumbent’s reelection, that allows the abridgment of the minority population’s ability to elect representatives of their choice.
That’s a true Devil’s Cocktail: Pour political partisanship together with racial discrimination and: Presto, racism allegedly disappears. And, there is more to the mix.
The Court further decloaked its favor for MAGA political advantage by scampering to put the Callais ruling to immediate effect, rather than allowing the normal period for that. The consequence of its rush was Louisiana - under the immediate spurious “emergency” order of its governor - halted early primary voting so that the state could eliminate one of its two congressional districts held by an African American.
Several Southern states quickly started uprooting their electoral processes to eliminate so-called minority opportunity congressional districts to gain MAGA political advantage. It is estimated that one-third of Congressional Black Caucus’ members may be forced out of Congress in the wake of the Callais ruling, and it will have dramatic consequences as state and local election districts are redrawn.
Added to that, immediately after its Callais ruling the Court approved a shadow docket petition to fast track Alabama implementing a congressional district map declared discriminatory by the Court in 2023, sending the case back to the lower federal court to consider in light of the Callais ruling. On May 25, the federal district court blocked use of the 2023 map, stating that it is “tainted by intentional race-based discrimination”. Another shadow docket “emergency” appeal will likely put the map - and the question of whether racism can be demonstrated - before the Supreme Court in the weeks ahead.
It’s an understatement to say that the immediate impact of the Court’s Callais ruling is confusion, if not a chaotic primary period, for candidates, election administrators and voters. In some of the affected states filing deadlines had passed, ballots composition was set, and in one case ballots were cast.
That all defies the Supreme Court’s “rule” that courts not issue decisions so close to elections as to cause such confusion - the so-called Purcell Principle, from its 2006 case Purcell v. Gonzallez. The uneven history of applying the Purcell Principle has often disadvantaged minority voters, but the Callais ruling demolished the principle altogether.
At base, the Callais decision has to be taken together with Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, decided in 2013, and the lesser known 2021 holding in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee. In combination, those rulings knocked out the viability of the VRA. The false premise of those decisions is that VRA tests for racial discrimination became outdated due to dramatic social progress.
While the Callais decision eviscerated the protections against racial discrimination in drawing election districts, Brnovich gutted VRA challenges to discriminatory barriers against voting. The Shelby decision decimated sections of the VRA that prevented jurisdictions with flagrant histories of racial discrimination in elections from making changes to voting laws and procedures without preclearance from the US Justice Department or the federal district court in Washington, DC.
A remaining element of the not yet fully buried VRA concerns the power of private individuals and organizations to lodge cases under it. That practice, which is responsible for the majority of VRA cases, was negated by the US Eighth Circuit Court of Appeal in its 2023 Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v. Howe ruling. On May 18, the Supreme Court vacated that ruling and, rather than reversing it as Justice Jackson called for in her dissent, sent the case back to the 8th Circuit to consider in light of Callais. If the 8th Circuit’s radical view were to prevail only the US Justice Department could bring VRA cases, and that Department is now firmly under MAGA control.
The systematic destruction of the VRA is an historic setback. It echoes the destruction of the political progress of post-Civil War Reconstruction, while abrogating gains of the Civil Rights Movement. Combatting the MAGA attack against civil rights and democracy requires connecting with the historic movements that fought racism and advanced American democracy.
On Saturday, May 16, thousands demonstrated in Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, standing against MAGA-Gerrymandering and the broader push against minority rights and democracy. The demonstration, attended by civil rights, religious and other leaders, kicked off the All Roads Lead to the South campaign, which among other things is targeting five southern state legislatures where current electoral maps are being shredded. And, the NAACP’s new Out of Bounds Campaign is calling on Black athletes and their supporters to boycott public universities in states that change maps to diminish African American voting rights and representation.
Dynamic and creative campaigns are needed, applying the energy and lessons of 1964’s Freedom Summer, across the South and more widely to counter the effects of voter suppression, map-rigging, and MAGA organizing. Like Freedom Summer, the effort must be multifaceted and sustained over a long run. And, a lesson of Freedom Summer and every democracy movement is that to be successful a broad coalition, converging various popular interests, is needed.
We will need civil rights, immigration rights, interfaith, labor, women’s, LGBTQ+, legal, and other organizations to raise the demand for voting rights and trustworthy elections to secure honest outcomes in 2026 and beyond. Possibilities for Supreme Court reform, renewing the VRA, passing state VRAs, and addressing other urgent issues depend on that. Groups and candidates that support democracy must reach out broadly and enlist large numbers of people in electoral defense actions if that is to happen.
May the Court’s VRA decisions cause a powerful counter reaction, stimulating an overwhelming response against racism and MAGA domination. We all have a responsibility to help make that so.
Pat Merloe provides strategic advice to groups focused on democracy and trustworthy elections in the U.S. and internationally.Keep ReadingShow less
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A pole with a sign that says polling station
Photo by Phil Hearing on Unsplash
The Bipartisan War on Independent Voters
May 28, 2026
The Washington Post editorial board penned a bold piece (Bill Cassidy and America’s Increasingly Broken Primary System) in the wake of President Trump’s successful vendetta against the Louisiana Senator. They could have taken the easy route and pointed a finger at the Republicans. Instead, they took issue with both parties and their insatiable appetite to control the rules of the game and punish anyone who steps out of line.
In a media landscape dominated by partisan propaganda, it’s refreshing to read an opinion piece that encourages readers to actually look at what’s happening.
The Democrats have gotten a pass on the issue of open primaries for years. For the most part, the media has bought in on (and propagated) the myth that when it comes to voting, the Republicans are into voter suppression while the Democrats stand solidly behind voting rights.
I wish we lived in such a simple world.
If you actually look at what’s happening in the country, both the Democrats and the Republicans are systematically attacking the right of independent voters - now 45% of the electorate - to fully participate. The Democrats are leading the charge in DC, Massachusetts, New York, Maryland, California, and Nevada, places where independent voters are surging. In Massachusetts, for example, 65% of registered voters have opted for “independent” on their voter registration form and 70% of state legislators run unopposed, but the Mass. Democratic Party strongly opposes the current effort to enact an all candidate primary system. And the Democratic Party of Maryland insists that Governor Wes Moore didn’t really mean it when he spoke out in favor of letting one million independents participate in Maryland primary elections.
Not to be outdone, the Republicans are on the warpath in Colorado, Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama and Texas, where they are advancing bills and lawsuits to force voters to join a party if they want to participate in (taxpayer funded) primary elections. In Tennessee, the GOP legislature posts these signs on every poll in the state. No wonder primary turnout is 14% while general election turnout is 64% in the Volunteer State.
Both parties work overtime to rig the rules in their favor. But for some reason, the media has bought into this myth that the Republicans are the bad guys and the Democrats are the good guys, when in fact both parties, in different states and in different ways, lock the system down through gerrymandering and closed primaries. They definitely don’t want independent voices participating, and they want to make sure that their elected officials are completely loyal to the party, that they’re not going to represent their people that put them in there, but the party apparatus that gets them elected.
The other aspect of the Post editorial worth noting is more philosophical.
America is a competitive place. Good or bad, it’s a feature of our culture. And we Americans are accustomed to competition increasing as you get closer to naming a winner. Many people tune into the NBA playoffs, March Madness or the Olympics only after the preliminary rounds are over. That’s how competition works.
But the Democrats and Republicans have turned competition completely on its head. In 90% of America, competition actually decreases after the first round. The general election is an afterthought, predetermined by gerrymandering and other factors. For most of us, all the competition is in the primary - round one - and most of us are not paying attention and participating.
It’s a sorry state of affairs. And the open primaries movement has our work cut out for us.
We need to enact open and nonpartisan primaries in states that are closed. We need to defend open primaries from attacks from both major parties. And we have to educate the American people that voting in round one is how to exercise power. We can’t wait until November to make our voices heard. In most races, the game is up.
John Opdycke is the president of Open Primaries, a national election reform organization.
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How immigration policy, declining birth rates, and an aging population are pushing Social Security and Medicare toward a fiscal crisis. Explore the hidden link between immigrant labor, retirement security, and America’s demographic future.
DNY59 / Getty Images
Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Has a Hidden Cost: Social Security
May 28, 2026
The Trump administration frames the immigration debate around borders, crime, culture, and national identity. This conceals an uncomfortable reality for the administration: America’s retirement system increasingly depends on immigrant labor to survive.
That dependence is not ideological. It is demographic, rooted in the shrinking ratio between workers paying into the system and retirees drawing benefits from it.
The Demographic Squeeze
Social Security operates on a simple premise. Current workers fund current retirees through payroll taxes. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law in 1935, as a cornerstone of his New Deal, the system rested on a young and rapidly expanding workforce. There were more than 40 workers supporting each retiree, life expectancy was significantly shorter, and the ratio between contributors and beneficiaries strongly favored the system’s long-term stability.
That arrangement worked remarkably well for decades. But the underlying demographics have changed dramatically. Americans are living longer, birth rates have declined, and the massive Baby Boom generation is now moving fully into retirement. Today, fewer than three workers support each Social Security beneficiary, and that ratio is expected to fall even further in the coming decades.
To be sure, worker productivity has risen enormously since the 1930s due to technological advances, automation, and economic growth. A modern worker produces far more economic output than previous generations could have imagined. But higher productivity alone cannot fully offset the fiscal pressures created by a shrinking ratio of workers to retirees. Social Security depends not simply on productivity, but on a sufficiently large labor force paying payroll taxes into the system.
The system is already under strain. Social Security now pays out more in benefits than it collects in payroll taxes, forcing it to draw increasingly from its trust fund reserves. Those reserves are projected to be exhausted around 2033. Once depleted, the system would face automatic benefit reductions of roughly 23 percent unless Congress intervenes. At the same time, Medicare Part A, which funds hospital care for seniors, faces a similar timetable for insolvency, suggesting that the financial pressures created by an aging society extend well beyond Social Security alone.
Immigration and the Social Security Workforce
This is where immigration enters the picture in ways many Americans may not fully appreciate. Immigrants are disproportionately concentrated in working-age populations. They fill jobs, pay payroll taxes, consume goods and services, and help sustain the labor force supporting an aging society. Even undocumented immigrants contribute billions annually into Social Security through payroll deductions, often without ever qualifying to collect benefits themselves.
The Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown, therefore, carries consequences that extend well beyond the border. Reducing the number of future workers entering the labor force also reduces the number of taxpayers supporting Social Security and Medicare. The politics of immigration restriction are colliding directly with the arithmetic of an aging nation.
The Politics of Contradiction
This creates a political contradiction that neither party has been particularly eager to confront honestly.
Politicians in both parties avoid discussing the problem because nearly every available solution carries political risk. Raising payroll taxes is unpopular. Cutting benefits is politically toxic. Increasing immigration remains deeply polarizing. Even relatively modest proposals, such as gradually raising the retirement age or reducing benefits for wealthier retirees, trigger fierce backlash.
Democrats have often treated Social Security reform as politically untouchable, wary of alienating older voters and organized labor. Republicans, meanwhile, have increasingly built their coalition around older Americans while embracing policies that weaken the long-term financing of the system. Trump has repeatedly promised not to cut Social Security benefits while also proposing to eliminate taxes on Social Security income and aggressively reduce immigration.
Individually, those promises may sound politically attractive. Together, they create a fiscal trap. Taxes on Social Security benefits help finance both Social Security and Medicare, while immigration helps sustain the labor force paying payroll taxes into those systems. Removing revenue while simultaneously shrinking the future workforce places greater pressure on programs already strained by demographic imbalance.
Yet arithmetic has a way of asserting itself eventually, regardless of ideology or campaign slogans.
The Illusion of Stability
For years, the Social Security trust fund has masked the severity of the problem by allowing the government to draw down accumulated reserves. That cushion created the appearance that the system’s finances remained fundamentally stable even as the worker-to-retiree ratio steadily deteriorated underneath.
The trust fund itself emerged from reforms enacted in the 1980s, when lawmakers recognized that the retirement of the Baby Boom generation would eventually place enormous pressure on the system. In a rare bipartisan effort led by President Ronald Reagan and Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill, Congress responded by gradually increasing payroll taxes and raising the retirement age, generating large surpluses that accumulated over several decades. Those reserves were intended to help cushion the financial shock once millions of Baby Boomers began retiring.
For a time, the strategy appeared successful. The growing trust fund helped reassure Americans that Social Security remained financially secure, even as demographic trends quietly moved in the opposite direction. Politically, the existence of the reserves also made it easier for elected officials to postpone more difficult structural reforms.
But trust funds are not magic. They help mask long-term imbalance, creating the illusion of stability even as the underlying demographic pressures continue to worsen. The reserves buy time, but they do not eliminate the underlying arithmetic. Once those reserves are exhausted, the choices become immediate and unavoidable.
When Retirement Stops Working
For millions of middle-class retirees, the consequences would be severe. Consider a retired couple living largely on Social Security, modest savings, and perhaps a small pension. A 23 percent reduction in benefits could mean the difference between stability and financial distress. Mortgage payments, prescription drug costs, utilities, property taxes, and grocery bills would not suddenly fall simply because Washington failed to act.
For wealthier retirees, such cuts would be painful but manageable. For many middle-class and lower-income seniors, however, Social Security is not supplemental income. It is the foundation holding together retirement itself.
According to the Social Security Administration, roughly 40 percent of older Americans rely on Social Security for at least half of their income, while about 12 percent depend on it for 90 percent or more. For millions of retirees, the monthly check is what keeps food on the table and prevents poverty.
Increasingly, retirement itself is becoming less permanent. A growing number of older Americans are being, in effect, “fired from retirement” as rising housing, healthcare, insurance, and food costs outpace their savings. Recent reporting in The New York Times highlighted retirees returning to the workforce not because they want to stay active, but because they can no longer afford not to work. Some have taken part-time retail jobs, others returned to consulting or gig work, and many quietly depleted retirement accounts faster than expected during the inflationary shocks of the past several years.
A major reduction in Social Security benefits would intensify those pressures dramatically. Americans who spent decades believing they had reached financial stability could suddenly find themselves re-entering the labor market in their seventies, competing for work at the very moment age and health often make employment more difficult.
Without reforms, millions of older Americans could find themselves forced to delay retirement, return to work, draw down already limited savings, or make difficult choices between healthcare, housing, and daily living expenses.
The Choices Washington Keeps Avoiding
If Social Security is to remain solvent over the long term, immigration reform cannot be separated from the conversation. The politics of the issue may focus on the border, but the economics point toward the workforce.
None of the available solutions are politically easy, which helps explain why both parties have delayed serious action for so long. One option would be to raise payroll taxes, either by increasing the overall tax rate or by lifting the cap on taxable income so that higher earners contribute more. Another would involve gradually increasing the retirement age to reflect longer life expectancy, though critics argue this unfairly burdens lower-income Americans working physically demanding jobs.
But demographics suggest that some form of meaningful immigration reform will almost certainly be necessary as well. A country with declining birth rates and a rapidly aging population needs workers to sustain both economic growth and the tax base supporting retirement programs. Immigration alone cannot solve Social Security’s long-term financing problems, but without a sufficiently large labor force, the system becomes far more difficult to sustain.
Lawmakers could also reduce benefits for wealthier retirees while protecting lower-income seniors who depend heavily on Social Security for survival. Some economists have proposed partial privatization or expanded private retirement accounts, though such proposals remain deeply controversial after decades of political backlash.
Each proposal carries trade-offs. Raising taxes risks political backlash from workers already struggling with stagnant wages and rising costs. Raising the retirement age may seem reasonable to professionals working desk jobs but it feels far less realistic to construction workers, nurses, warehouse employees, or others whose bodies wear down long before their seventies.
Immigration presents perhaps the clearest example of America’s political and economic tensions colliding head-on and may ultimately become the defining contradiction shaping the future of Social Security itself. Americans increasingly want both tighter immigration restrictions and fully protected retirement benefits, even as the demographic realities sustaining those programs make those goals progressively harder to reconcile. Many voters support tighter border enforcement and lower immigration levels while also demanding that Social Security and Medicare remain fully funded. Yet those goals increasingly work against one another. Restricting the future workforce while preserving existing benefit commitments places greater strain on programs already facing demographic pressure.
But refusing to choose is itself a choice. For years, Washington has relied on the assumption that the crisis remained distant enough to postpone difficult decisions. Politicians could promise seniors that benefits would remain untouched while simultaneously assuring taxpayers that taxes would not rise. The trust fund helped sustain this illusion by masking the widening gap between political rhetoric and demographic reality.
That gap is now narrowing rapidly. The longer policymakers wait, the more abrupt and painful the eventual adjustments are likely to become.
Robert Cropf is a Professor of Political Science at Saint Louis University.
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Members of the House Judiciary Committee during the hearing on the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Credit: Olivia Ardito
Tensions were High as Representatives Debated Allegations Against the Southern Poverty Law Center
May 28, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing last Wednesday examining claims that the Southern Poverty Law Center had funded the very hate groups the center aims to dismantle. Tensions were high as Republicans and Democrats fired back at each other. Noticeably absent was a representative from the center, a non-profit that since 1971 has fought for racial justice and against white supremacy.
The hearing came after the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced last Monday that he was investigating the center. The U.S. Justice Department indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center in April for allegedly funneling money to people associated with violent extremist groups. The group has flatly rejected the accusations. While Republicans backed these claims, Democrats viewed the allegations as part of the Trump-backed efforts to hinder “DEI” and other racial justice initiatives.
Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, opened the hearing by discussing the Justice Department’s claims that the center paid members of white supremacist organizations, like the Ku Klux Klan, millions of dollars over the span of multiple years to manufacture hate and racism.
“[The Southern Poverty Law Center] said, ‘We're going to create the crisis. We're going to manufacture the crisis.’ And by so doing, they became the standard, the source for determining who’s a hate group and who isn’t. And of course, they labeled good, pro-family, conservative organizations as hate groups,” Jordan said.
Jordan’s claims also included assertions that the Southern Poverty Law Center collaborated with the Biden administration and was responsible for funding organizers of the Charlottesville white supremacist rally for the center’s own financial benefit.
The center “went from 51 million annual income to 133 million dollars. Turned out for them, creating hate was more profitable than fighting it. That’s exactly what they did. They ran a scam, they became the standard, they didn’t get prosecuted, and they made a ton of money,” Jordan said.
In a press release after the indictment, the Southern Poverty Law Center denied the allegations. “We are outraged by the false allegations levied against SPLC – an organization that for 55 years has stood as a beacon of hope fighting white supremacy and various forms of injustice to create a multi-racial democracy where we can all live and thrive,” the organization said.
In the hearing, Democrats reiterated this message. Rankin Member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., rebutted against the Republicans in his opening statement.
“For decades, the Southern Poverty Law Center shared information about racist terror plots with the FBI coming from their foreign program. The FBI was happy to receive it, and this practice frequently led to the disruption of dangerous conspiracies by the KKK and neo-Nazi groups to commit violence against synagogues, churches, African Americans, Jews, and other targeted minorities,” Raskin said.
Raskin followed his statement by expressing doubt about the indictment’s claims. His justification included that no civil lawsuits had been filed related to the charges, which Raskin said would be typical in fraud cases.
“What we’re witnessing is a Trump administration fraud on a vast and shocking scale. President Trump has coddled and cultivated the extreme right for as long as he's been in politics. After the infamous ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville in August of 2017… Trump could only bring himself to say that there were some very fine people on both sides,” Raskin said.
Tensions during the hearing reached a high point when Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., called out Raskin for this comment.
“I do need to call out the ranking member for deliberately perpetuating the Democrats’ dishonest claim that Donald Trump praised the Nazis at Charlottesville, when he said there were, quote, ‘very fine people on both sides.’ What the ranking member knows, but chose to leave out, is that Trump then said, ‘I'm not talking about the neo Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally,’ unquote,” McClintock said.
McClintock was then interrupted by Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Georgia, who asked to have these words struck from the record. After over five minutes of back and forth, they decided not to have the word taken from the record.
After passionate speeches from both sides, intense questioning sessions and heated moments, the hearing ended after four and a half hours of discussion. Investigations likely will continue in Texas and there is no set court date for the federal indictment.
The hearing ended with Raskin attempting to subpoena Blanche and other officials to testify on President Trump’s recent $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who believe they were targeted by the federal government. The motion was tabled after an 18-17 vote that, like the hearing, was divided.
Olivia Ardito is a graduate student in journalism with Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism
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Some MAGA loyalists have turned on Trump. Why the rest haven’t