South Carolina Senate adjourns without new map, defying Trump
May 26 (UPI) — South Carolina’s state Senate adjourned Tuesday without acting on a new congressional map that would have redrawn voting districts in favor of Republicans.
President Donald Trump has called on states to redraw their voting maps to favor Republicans, especially after a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that badly weakened a part of the landmark federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 that helped protect minority voting power.
However, as voters started heading to the polls Tuesday for the first in-person voting in primaries, state senators said it was just too late. If the state Senate pushed the map through Tuesday, the state would have had to throw out tens of thousands of ballots that had already been cast that day and schedule a new primary.
“Neither my conscience nor my common sense would allow me to stop an election that is already underway,” Republican state Sen. Richard Cash said during the vote, The BBC reported.
The new congressional map pitched for South Carolina would do away with the state’s only majority Black district, which is represented by Rep. James Clyburn, a Democrat. Clyburn is seeking his 18th term in office this year.
Republicans have a narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, and Trump and other conservatives are calling for district changes to hold on to that majority during the midterm elections in November. Other states, including Tennessee, have already redrawn and approved new maps eliminating majority Black districts.
CNN reported that Trump called Republican state Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey at least twice about the plan, and the president has posted regularly on social media about the matter as well.
“South Carolina Republicans: BE BOLD AND COURAGEOUS, just like the Republicans of the Great State of Tennessee were last week!” the president wrote in a post earlier this month.
South Carolina state senators will likely pick up the matter again after the primary voting ends June 9. State Sen. Brad Hutto, a Democrat, said his party members worked all weekend to make voters headed out to the polls today, The New York Times reported.
“The people in South Carolina were sending us a message that their vote mattered,” he said. “It was important, and they didn’t want us to cancel their vote.”
Democrats had another win in the redistricting wars on Tuesday, with a federal court temporarily blocking Alabama from using its newly redrawn congressional map, which includes only one Black majority district out of seven. The population of Alabama is about 27% Black.
The South Carolina map in question, meanwhile, would have resulted in no Black majority districts out of the state’s seven. The state is about 26% Black, based on 2025 U.S. Census numbers.