‘This is a violation of the constitution!’: Florida Rep. Angie Nixon makes voice heard as Florida GOP passes gerrymandering map in win for Trump
Nixon, who is running for Senate in her home state, called the decision by the Florida legislature a “slap in the face” to voters and said that state Republicans were only doing it to curry favor with President Trump.
With a megaphone in her hand, Florida Democratic Rep. Angie Nixon was not going to be ignored.
“This is a violation of the Constitution,” she shouted as her fellow Congressmen looked on. “I will not allow you to destroy our democracy!”
Nixon’s form of protest came as the Florida Senate voted on Wednesday to approve a gerrymandered map that could potentially add four Republican seats in Congress in the upcoming elections.
The map, which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis proposed, could be signed into law in the very near future. The moments on the Senate floor came hours after the Supreme Court ruled that a map that added a second Black Democratic lawmaker to the state’s delegation was unconstitutional, another massive blow to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
“It is out of order!” Nixon yelled. “You are violating the Constitution!”
She was greeted with a standing ovation from her fellow Democrats in the Senate chamber.
Florida, where Republicans hold supermajorities in all three branches of government, could have 24 Republican seats in Congress, compared to only 4 for Democrats. The move echoes those by other states that adhered to President Donald Trump’s call for redistricting, including Texas, North Carolina and Missouri. States like California and Virginia took their redistricting calls to the ballot box, where voters overwhelmingly approved it, likely granting Democrats in those states more seats in Congress to offset moves by Republican-led legislatures.
Nixon, who represents Jacksonville and is running for U.S. Senate against incumbent Ashley Moody, blasted the passage of the new map.
“I had to disrupt the House proceedings yet again because they were trying to push through illegally drawn maps,” Nixon said. “This is a slap in the face of voters everywhere in our state, and Republicans are only doing this so that they can look out for Donald Trump and allow him to have unfettered power.”
Other Democrat lawmakers in the state agreed.
“Let’s not pretend that this is a real process. This is about acquiescing. This is about power. This is about relinquishing our power and giving it to the president,” State Sen. LaVon Bracy Davis said. “And we should all feel some kind of way that before it was presented to the legislature, it was presented on Fox News. It was rolled out on national media, color-coded in red and blue, as if the outcome were already decided. As if our process did not matter. As if this body, and the work we are supposed to do, did not matter.”
Since 2013, several cases brought to the Supreme Court have gutted the effectiveness of the Voting Rights Act and the ability of voters of color to challenge racial gerrymandering aimed to dilute the political power of those communities. In the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, Section 5, a requirement that former Confederate states in the South seek federal approval before enacting new voting laws or maps, was ended.
Eight years later, the court’s decision in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee changed the applicability of Section 2’s general provision barring discrimination against minorities in state and local election laws.