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Race, Rights and Power: What’s at Stake in the 2026 Midterm Elections
Millions of voters are casting ballots in a pivotal election that could determine the future of policies that have disproportionately impacted 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 a 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. Follow The Emancipator‘s live election coverage throughout the day and into the night for breaking news, results and analysis of what the 2026 midterms mean for racial justice, rights and political power.
Meet the Law Group Sued Over Breaking the ‘KKK Act’ That Wants to Reshape U.S. Elections
A law group that bolstered attempts to redraw election maps and access voter data had previously settled a lawsuit for violating the “Anti-KKK Act”.
Before the midterms, the group has been busy. Plus, they’re flush with a Supreme Court decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act.
Between 2020 and 2026, the Public Interest Legal Foundation was instrumental in lodging at least 44 lawsuits, ranging from legal battles over voter data in 18 states and the District of Columbia to filing in seven cases involving election map challenges, an Emancipator investigation found.
For more about how this intersected with voter suppression efforts ahead of the midterms, check our prior coverage.
What the Midterm Election Could Mean for Maternal Health
By Rachel Hardeman, Reproductive Justice Correspondent
The Momnibus Act tries to act on what Center for Disease Control committees probing pregnancy-related deaths keep finding as causes: housing, nutrition, the perinatal workforce, postpartum care, and the need for better data. It has been introduced in every Congress since 2020. It has never passed as a whole.
ICE’s Favorite Companies Pumped More Than $12 Million In Political Dollars to Tip the Scale of the Midterms
In the two years before the midterms, ICE-aligned companies tried to use their money to put their fingers on the scale of American politics.
An Emancipator investigation traced more than $12 million in combined political spending linked to CoreCivic, Palantir, GEO Group, NANA Regional Corp., and CSI Aviation – some of the companies that have profited most from ICE’s expanded activities since President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office.
These are the companies that built the software ICE uses to target immigrants.
They arrange the planes used to deport them to other countries.
They run the large detention facilities that hold them.
In some cases, the money flowed in states with competitive congressional and Senate races and where the companies either have detention facilities or are active.
Read The Emancipator’s coverage to see where that money went.
For Most Latino Voters, the Midterms are a Referendum on Trump, Poll Finds
A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that a majority of Latino voters are basing their midterm vote on their negative views of President Trump, which have hit an all-time low.
Roughly 55% of Latino respondents in a Pew Research poll say they view their vote in the upcoming midterm election as a vote against Trump — though he is not on the ballot. This is compared to 14% of Latinos who say their vote in the midterms is in support of Trump.
For more, see our previous coverage.
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%. 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.
Read more about how these issue are impacting Black families.
Native Americans have faced barriers in the election process, advocacy group says
Native Americans have faced significant roadblocks at each step of the voting process, including registration and voting by mail, according to an analysis of the three previous elections by the Native American Rights Fund.
Between 2020 and 2024, mail-in ballot rejections were higher in places with large Native American populations such as New Mexico and Arizona. Voter registration application rejections also rose in Montana and where Native Americans make up less than tktkt of the population, the group also said.
“For Native Americans, the right to vote has been obstructed, delayed and denied across two centuries of United States history,” Jacqueline De León, senior staff attorney for the group, said in a statement. “Closing that participation gap is not simply a technical problem. It’s a question of whether American democracy is willing to extend its guarantees to all its citizens, including the first peoples of this land.”
More than 6.7 million Native Americans were eligible to vote in 2020, but 66% of them were registered, according to the organization.
The Global Rise of Electoral Dictatorships. Is the U.S. Next? Midterms Could Decide
When Americans first elected Donald Trump president in 2016, there were nearly 4 billion people living in nations where they could vote in fair and competitive elections.
Last year, when Trump took office again, this estimate had fallen by half, to barely above 2 billion.
In the intervening years, the number of people barred from voting within conventional dictatorships (or “closed autocracies”) increased from an estimated 1.74 billion to 2.27 billion. But most of the decline in people who can vote in fair and competitive elections can be attributed to the global rise of what I call electoral dictatorships, also known as “electoral autocracies.”
While elections are banned in conventional dictatorships, elections are regularly held in electoral dictatorships. But to ensure their continuous grip on power, the electoral dictators—who identify as presidents and prime ministers—hold uncompetitive and unfair elections after aggressively suppressing political opponents.
In 2016, an estimated 1.94 billion people lived in electoral dictatorships.
In 2025, 3.77 billion people did.
If Republicans retain control of Congress in the midterms, then an electoral dictatorship is likely to emerge in the United States. Read more from Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s essay.
Record Number of Native Americans Running for Office
At least 225 Native Americans are running for office across 30 states, according to an analysis by ICT, which covers Native American communities, and Advance Native Political Leadership.
Half of the candidates are running as Democrats, 39% are running as either Independents or non-partisan candidates and 23 candidates are running as Republicans. According to the analysis, only one Native person is running as a Green Party candidate.
The majority of candidates are women, with 121 women running for office compared to 104 men.
During the midterm primary elections, there were 364 Native American candidates running for office – a nearly 400% increase compared to ICT’s 2016 database.
Race Remains a Dividing Line in Battle For Congress, Poll Finds
Black, Asian, and Hispanic voters favor Democratic candidates by substantial margins ahead of the upcoming midterm elections, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center.
While all three groups have historically favored Democrats, the latest findings draw into sharp relief the racial and ethnic divisions in the nation’s political preferences heading into elections that will determine which political party takes control and wins a majority in Congress.
Significance. In the poll, 44% of White voters supported Republican candidates by a slight majority, while 37% supported Democratic candidates.
A vast majority, 70%, of Black people who responded to the poll favored Democratic candidates.
The poll found that 56% of Asian voters supported Democratic candidates, while 16% backed Republican candidates. Of Asian voters in the poll, 27% said they were unsure or would vote for a third-party candidate.
The Pew analysis only looked at English-speaking Asian voters.
About 51% of Hispanic voters said they prefer Democratic candidates and 24% said they prefer Republican candidates. A quarter of Hispanic voters said they are either undecided or prefer a third-party candidate. Read more for Emancipator midterm election coverage.
Ashley Etienne: ‘Black voters must stop being a tool and use their power’
Black voters have long been the backbone of the Democratic Party, but remain underrepresented in the rooms where campaign money, messaging and strategy are controlled.
Ashley Etienne, a communications strategist who has been a senior advisor to several Democratic leaders, including former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, former Vice President Kamala Harris, says it’s beyond time that the party brings Black voters to the political table in an equitable way.
Etienne, who was also communications director and senior advisor to Nancy Pelosi, spoke with The Emancipator about how Black voters must recognize their leverage, make clear demands and insist on sustained investment in Black political infrastructure. She discusses how the structure of the Democratic Party has marginalized Black voters, the consequences of preserving the status quo in elections and what Democrats must do to rebuild trust before the 2026 midterm elections. Check out more from this Emancipator interview with Etienne, which was edited and condensed for clarity.
Latino Support for Trump Dropped to Record Low Ahead of Midterm Elections
A month before the midterm elections, Latino support for President Trump dropped to its lowest levels during his presidency due to aggressive immigration policies targeting their communities and the high cost of living, polls showed.
Two years ago, Latino voters, swayed by his campaign promises, helped him net a second term in the Oval Office during the 2024 elections.
A Reuters/Ispos poll, found that just 24% of Latino American voters approve of Trump’s performance during his second term in office. This is Trump’s lowest approval rating among the Latino community that he has held in his two presidential terms, according to Reuters.
A NBC/Telemundo poll ranked his approval rating as 27% among Latino voters, with 69% disapproving of his performance as president.
In the poll, 27% of the respondents said that they know someone who has been brutally arrested, detained, or deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the last two years since the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown. And 31% of respondents also said those immigration tactics have prompted them or someone close to them to start carrying legal identification out of fears of being racially profiled and wrongly abducted by ICE officers.
For more, see our previous coverage.
are working class Latino men in San Francisco. Credit: Hossam el-Hamalawy / Flickr
