Barack Obama called the Supreme Court's redistricting ruling a disaster for black voters.
That was before TW Shannon got on the phone with Fox News.
Trump's endorsed candidate for Oklahoma lieutenant governor had a message for the former president, and it wasn't gentle.
TW Shannon Proved the Voting Rights Act Lie Long Before the Supreme Court Did
TW Shannon knows something about winning elections without a gerrymandered district engineered to guarantee him a seat.
He was 27 years old when he won a seat in the Oklahoma House of Representatives – in a majority-white district, as a Republican, in a state that was already turning red.
The white voters in that district didn't give him a narrow victory.
They elected him overwhelmingly.
Then his colleagues in a predominantly white legislature chose him to lead it – making him the first black speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, and the first black Republican to head a state legislative body anywhere in the country since Reconstruction.
His response to Obama's alarm: "This idea that you must have a racially drawn district in order to win and compete is just nonsense."
Louisiana v. Callais Ended the Racial Gerrymander Racket
The 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, written by Justice Samuel Alito, struck down Louisiana's 6th Congressional District – a seat redrawn in 2024 to create a black-majority electorate.
Alito's majority held that engineering a predetermined racial outcome violates the equal protection guarantee the Constitution extends to every American.
For four decades, the Voting Rights Act gave Democrat lawyers a weapon to drag red states into federal court and force them to carve out majority-black districts that reliably elected Democrats – Louisiana's own court-ordered seat delivered Cleo Fields, a Democrat, in 2024.
The Callais ruling ends that racket, now requiring plaintiffs to prove discrimination was intentional – not merely pointing to historical grievances or statistical gaps Democrats call the "lingering effects" of past discrimination.
That's a high bar, and the correct one.
Obama went to X to call it an abandonment of democracy, writing that the majority seemed "intent on abandoning its vital role in ensuring equal participation in our democracy and protecting the rights of minority groups against majority overreach."
Shannon didn't accept it.
"What the Supreme Court really did is say that you can't fix discrimination by discriminating against people," he told Fox News Digital.
"The entire country is just kind of tired and disappointed in the Obamas and their constantly whining about how awful and racist America is."
Democrats Built Majority Minority Districts for Themselves Not for Black Voters
Shannon understands something Democrats don't want black voters thinking about: race-engineered districts were always a deal that benefited the Democrat Party more than the people living inside them.
When state legislatures packed black voters into guaranteed-win Democrat seats in the 1990s, every surrounding district got whiter – and easier for Republicans to ignore.
Democrats got safe seats for their preferred candidates.
Black voters got representatives who won by design, not by persuasion.
Shannon's career is a direct rebuttal to that arrangement.
Shannon repealed affirmative action in Oklahoma, overhauled the state's welfare system, and built coalitions across racial lines in one of the reddest states in the country – without a single gerrymandered district engineered to carry him to victory.
Trump noticed.
The president endorsed Shannon for lieutenant governor in March 2026 – backing a candidate whose entire public life dismantles the Democrat argument that black political success requires government-manufactured safe zones.
Obama's real fear isn't that black voters lose representation.
It's that black voters figure out they never needed his party's redistricting machine to get it.
Shannon made that argument on camera.
Democrats don't have an answer for it.
Sources:
- Leo Briceno, "Black conservative unleashes on Obama for 'constantly whining' after SCOTUS voting rights decision," Fox News, May 1, 2026.
- Amy Howe, "In major Voting Rights Act case, Supreme Court strikes down redistricting map challenged as racially discriminatory," SCOTUSblog, April 29, 2026.
- Samuel Alito, Majority Opinion, Louisiana v. Callais, 608 U.S. ___ (2026), U.S. Supreme Court, April 29, 2026.