Millions of voters head to the polls in little less than a month in a pivotal election that could determine the future of policies that have disproportionately harmed Black and Brown communities.
From rising Black unemployment and redistricting battles that could politically disempower lawmakers and voters of color to stepped-up ICE deportations and concerns that potential federal presence near polling stations could have a chilling impact on turnout – the 2026 midterms are a gauge of how far the needle has shifted on the balance of political rights and power.
Here are the issues The Emancipator is watching.
Black women breadwinners are bearing the biggest brunt of job loss
Black workers have been particularly hard hit by the nation’s weakened labor market is hitting Black workers particularly hard. A new jobs report shows that Black unemployment rose a full percentage point to 7% last month. This is nearly twice the 3.6% rate for White unemployment.
For Black women, the setback was even more stark, and they experienced the sharpest rise in unemployment – surging from 5.9% in August to 7.3% in September.
That precipitous jump is especially telling given the fact that Black women are among the college-educated groups in the nation, netting college degrees at disproportionately high rates even as they face racial and gender inequities in the workforce.
These types of losses have a broader impact on the Black community.
According to the Department of Labor, just over 65% of Black mothers are the primary or sole breadwinners for their families, meaning their job losses can destabilize entire households.
Further, Black women were disproportionately impacted by the DOGE-led evisceration of the federal workforce. Black women have historically found equitable opportunities and a pathway to financial stability and have been nearly twice as represented in the federal workforce compared to the civilian sector.
Such figures make economic security and racial equity a pivotal issue heading into the midterms.
Voter suppression could muffle political agency
Voters of color are staring down political disenfranchisement through a series of tactics aimed at suppressing their voting power.
President Trump has aggressively targeted mail-in voting even though he has utilized the option to cast a vote for himself in presidential elections.
While the Supreme Court has issued several decisions blocking the Trump administration from restricting mail-in voting ahead of the midterms, the president’s repeated attacks and lies about voter fraud have led to mistrust in voting by mail.
While voters are confident in the U.S. Postal Service delivering mail-in ballots on time, fewer voters trust the validity of mail-in ballots compared to the 2024 presidential election, according to a NPR/PBS News/Marist poll released last month. The poll was conducted the day the Supreme Court ruled against the Trump administration’s executive order restricting mail-in voting and the day after.
Communities of color, including Asian Americans, rely on voting by mail. People with disabilities, recently naturalized citizens who may have language barriers and the elderly are also likely to vote by mail during an election.
Voting rights groups have sent letters to governors, mayors and secretaries of state urging them to strengthen voter protections during the midterm elections.
The administration is also going after voter data to purge state voter rolls, which civil rights groups say could disproportionately impact and target voters of color. The Justice Department has also begun charging immigrants it has accused of “illegally voting,” despite a lack of evidence of widespread voter fraud.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have also fought over the SAVE America Act, a measure which would require such citizenship proof as birth certificates and passports to register to vote and government-issued ideas, such as licenses, to vote in federal elections. A cross-section of civil and social justice-focused voting rights groups have decried the effort and warn it will disenfranchise people of color who don’t have such documents.
Redistricting dilutes Black and Latino voting power
More than a dozen Black and Latino lawmakers across several states are at risk of losing their seats and the communities they serve face weakened voting power and representation in the wake of a Supreme Court decision that gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act ahead of the midterm election.
Republican lawmakers in politically conservative states–most of them in the Deep South– raced to redraw congressional maps that erased majority-Black or majority-Brown congressional districts.
In April, a 6-3 majority on the high court found Louisiana’s 2024 election map,“an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”
Alabama Rep. Shomari Figures, who represents the newly created 2nd Congressional District and is the first person elected to the seat, is now fighting to keep it.
Over the summer, the Supreme Court ruled that Alabama can use a redrawn GOP map that lower courts said was discriminatory.
Florida Rep. Darren Soto, the first Puerto Rican from Florida elected to Congress, faces a difficult race after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a GOP-favored map into law over the summer. Soto, in a statement to The Emancipator, criticized the new map and said the governor declared war on Puerto Ricans and Hispanics in the state.
“He cracked our community into four different districts. We are American citizens. Our people died serving this country. And we will fight this in court and the ballot box,” Soto said in a statement. “This is not about any one person, including me. This is about destroying representation for our community. It’s wrong.”
ICE raids and anti-DEI policies are reshaping the school experience
Students of color find themselves in a precarious moment.
Those hailing from immigrant families have faced deportations near K-12 schools and on college campuses.
The administration’s anti-DEI purge has fueled attacks against universities with diversity policies.
Simultaneously, the administration has encouraged diverting money into K-12 private schools which have more leeway in admissions and discipline policies, including a new federal tax incentive that will kick in in January.
All of this is unfolding as the administration has dropped desegregation orders, wiped away tools for measuring racism in schools, and shuttered civil rights divisions responsible for holding those who commit racist acts against the nation’s schoolchildren accountable.
There’s even a tax rule proposal that could strip exempt status from thousands of private schools, including many that serve communities of color.
The election will have downstream impacts on how communities of color can access education, in part having to do with whether the administration loses the power to enforce its agenda.
There are also a number of positions up for election, including governorships, state superintendents in states like Arizona and Oklahoma, and state boards of elections in places like Texas, Louisiana and Georgia, which will directly shape educational policy in those places.
Additionally, there are multiple ballot initiatives aiming to ban trans people from participating in school sports programs in Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska and Washington, and to write in student-led school prayer to Alabama’s state constitution.
Significantly, Arizona’s Proposition 142 would write a ban on diversity efforts in public education offices into the state constitution, explored below.
Federal poll policing could have a chilling impact on democracy
Voters of color are staring down disenfranchisement.
The administration is going after voter data to purge state voter rolls, and the Justice Department has begun charging immigrants it has accused of “illegally voting,” despite a lack of evidence of widespread voter fraud.
The NAACP and other voting rights advocacy groups are sounding the alarm over veiled threats of federal election monitors or immigration officials at polls and neighborhoods near those sites.
Advocates say the move is a form of voter intimidation and causes confusion. They worry that such actions could have a chilling effect on the democratic right to vote.
Federal law prohibits armed agents at polling locations. U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News on Sunday that “1,000 or more” unarmed election monitors will be sent to every state.
Trump has said that he will not unleash immigration officers at the polls, but even if that’s true, mistrust and fear — particularly near the Southern Border — will likely influence turnout.
The NAACP is asking the federal courts to force the Department of Justice to make its plans to deploy “election monitors” for the 2026 midterm elections public. The civil rights organization filed for “emergency judicial intervention” on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
“To be clear, there is no federal statute that gives the U.S. Department of Justice the right to send their so-called “election monitors” to polling sites across the country, and this administration has made clear its intent to disrupt and interfere with the way elections are run in our country NAACP General Counsel Kristen Clarke said in a statement. “Americans deserve to know whether the Justice Department is abusing its law enforcement powers to the detriment of voters and the election officials tasked with running our elections.”
The Association of State Democratic Committees and the DNC have launched “New Battlefield Project” to train more than 10,000 volunteers to guard polling places in case federal officers show up.
Election misinformation a tool to disenfranchise
President Donald Trump has long spread lies about non-citizen voting, and he and his allies have weaponized that narrative to forestall losing power. With the midterms approaching, that effort has escalated.
The administration has tried to turn misinformation about the accuracy of voting machines and mail-in ballots into justification for specious voter roll purges and challenges to voting eligibility. Some research shows this form of voting is used by communities of color to avoid voter intimidation and hate crimes.
Civil rights groups such as the NAACP have sued, arguing that presidential actions threaten to disenfranchise millions of eligible and vulnerable voters.
Groups have also warned that Trump may once again use “vote dumps,” an intricacy of when votes get counted, to cry fraud about the results.
The prevalence of generative AI has made it easier to create fake or misleading images and videos, and spread them through bot accounts, in a way that may lower voter turnout.
Social media platforms like TikTok and Facebook have been used to spread misinformation about “rigged elections” in past elections, an issue both the leaders of those companies and congress have sought to tackle. In recent years, Russia and China have also used social media to spread misinformation and influence American discussions.
Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, the Department of Justice probed and exposed multiple Russian misinformation operations. In one case, Russia covertly paid a U.S. media company which contracted influencers in an attempt to influence the 2024 presidential election. Another instance involved Russian operatives pushing misinformation about content about illegal immigration, anti-diversity and so-called racism against White people.
Voters to decide on equity policies at the ballot box
Voters across the country from Arizona to Vermont will also decide on measures aimed at further hobbling diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in every area of life from schools to government.
In Arizona, voters will decide on Proposition 142. Voting “yes” on the proposed rule would ban DEI statements and initiatives such as training in public schools, government offices and universities.
Advocacy groups, including the ACLU of Arizona, have urged citizens to vote “no” and said it threatens freedom.
“The state cannot adopt a policy or rule that punishes faculty, administrators, or students for expressing their beliefs or prohibits wide scopes of ideas from being debated at universities,” ACLU of Arizona Policy Director Darrell Hill said in a statement.
A question on whether to remove Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriage from its constitution is on the ballot in the commonwealth. Voting “yes” would remove the clause. If voters in Vermont vote “yes” on Proposal 4, it will add an equal protection clause to the state constitution. While equal rights are legally guaranteed under the 14th Amendment, Vermont is one of several states that do not have the clause in its constitution.
