Gov. Wes Moore vows to continue push to redraw Maryland’s voting map: ‘I’m not backing down’

EXCLUSIVE: After the fall of the Voting Rights Act and subsequent Republican maps targeting Black voters, Moore decries “the greatest assault on civil rights.”

Governor Wes Moore isn’t giving up on his push to get Maryland into the nationwide redistricting battle ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

“I’m not playing…and I’m not backing down,” Moore told theGrio during a phone interview on Monday.

For months, the Maryland governor has been fighting to have his state redistrict its congressional map in response to a nationwide gerrymandering battle launched by President Donald Trump, who demanded that Republicans in states favorable to him redraw maps in an unusual mid-decade fashion ahead of anticipated defeats for his party in November’s midterm elections. At stake is control of the United States House of Representatives and Washington’s policy direction for the final two years of Trump’s second term.

As a result, Democratic governors and legislatures in California and Virginia followed suit, drawing new maps that gave them a more competitive edge. However, after the U.S. Supreme Court’s April 29 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Republican-controlled states in the South quickly moved to eliminate majority-Black districts once protected by the 1965 law.

Since November 2025, Moore has pushed for Maryland to get into the fray, but has encountered opposition from fellow Democrats in the Maryland State Senate, led by Senate President Bill Ferguson. Moore now has more political momentum amid public outcry over the Supreme Court’s Callais ruling.

“I called it in January, and it happened,” Moore told theGrio about testifying before the Maryland House of Delegates about the redistricting effort, warning that the Voting Rights Act was “going to fall.”

On May 8, Democrats were dealt another blow when the Virginia Supreme Court struck down a ballot measure approved by voters to redraw the state’s map, a major victory for Republicans in what has become a redistricting race for a House majority and, thereby, power.

As millions of Black Americans stand to lose representation in Congress as a result of the VRA ruling and subsequent gerrymandering, diluting their voting power, Moore says the stakes couldn’t be higher.

“There is no way that we are just going to sit there and watch the world change and somehow think it’s OK for us to just stay quiet and just be the recipient and not be the ones who are helping to drive the conversation,” he told theGrio.

“We are watching a robbery happen in broad daylight,” Maryland’s first Black governor said of the VRA ruling and subsequent targeting of majority-Black districts, adding, “This is the greatest assault on civil rights.”

Moore added, “The answer can’t be do nothing…just sit on our hands because it’s too dangerous.”

The Maryland governor said he was “inspired” by the thousands of people who attended the “All Roads Lead to the South” mass demonstration in Montgomery this past weekend. Participants marched across the infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge, where voting rights protesters, marching to end racial discrimination in voting, were brutally beaten by white police officers.

Moore said he would’ve also attended; however, he was already scheduled to deliver the commencement address at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina.

“Showing that force, showing that idea that we are the ones who are in control of our democracy, not an administration, not a president, and not a White House, we are the ones in control…it was really powerful,” he told theGrio. “It reminded people of our own power, which I think we need in this moment.”

Moore said the nation is in a place of urgency. He said as much at Sunday’s commencement to JCCU graduates, “We need you all to soldier up.”

Reflecting on his addresss to the HBCU scholars, the governor told theGrio, “The world that they are walking into right now is fundamentally different than the world that they walked into when they started college. In many ways, it’s fundamentally different from the world they had just a couple years ago.”

Moore continued, “This is shifting, and it’s shifting fast, and we are at risk where their kids are going to have less freedoms, less rights, less voting responsibilities than their parents.”