Ever since the Supreme Court’s decision last month in Louisiana v. Callais further weakened the Voting Rights Act, national headlines have focused on a renewed Republican push to redraw congressional maps across the South and dilute the voting power of Black and Democratic voters in major cities. But another fight over urban political power has been unfolding more quietly: who gets the authority to prosecute crimes in some southern states. In Texas last week, Gov. Greg Abbott announced a package of criminal justice proposals, including a bill to create a new, unelected statewide prosecutor's office that could bring charges when local district attorneys decline or fail to do so. While the office would theoretically have jurisdiction over the entire state, Abbott’s pitch has centered heavily on one target: Travis County D.A. Jose Garza, the Austin-area Democrat whom Texas conservatives have spent years casting as “soft on crime.” Garza is often described as a progressive or reform-minded prosecutor, loose labels generally applied to district attorneys who argue that public safety does not always mean seeking the harshest possible punishment. Many have run on promises to reduce the harms of mass incarceration, limit prosecution of low-level offenses, expand diversion programs, or declining to enforce laws they view as unjust, including abortion bans. Since the first wave of reform prosecutors began winning office in the 2010s, opponents have tried to restrain their power through recalls, suspension, impeachment efforts, and various forms of state oversight. Texas Republicans have already tried one route for reining in prosecutors like Garza. In 2023, Abbott signed a law allowing D.A.s to be removed from office for refusing to prosecute certain categories of crimes. A county resident later used that law to seek Garza’s removal, but the case was ultimately dropped by the outside prosecutor assigned to the case. Abbott said at a press event that his latest push was largely based on Garza’s office having failed to file indictments by the state’s 90-day deadline in over 200 cases in 2024, leading to the releases of some people accused of violent crimes. Garza acknowledged that his office had previously missed deadlines, but in 2025 said his office was no longer failing to file indictments, and last week called the governor’s proposal a “political stunt.” Abbott may not be done trying to get Garza out of office either. Another piece of the governor’s proposed legislation would make D.A.s eligible for impeachment. That’s a bigger legislative lift, however, as it would require an amendment to the state Constitution. Abbott’s proposals represent a kind of blunt instrument: Remove local prosecutors, or create a state official who can override them. In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill on May 12 that takes a subtler approach. HB 369 changes the election rules for district attorneys and other local officials in a small group of metropolitan Atlanta counties — a move that critics say is aimed at weakening Black political power in the heart of the state’s Democratic base. The new law purports to make prosecutor elections non-partisan — meaning that all candidates would run in one primary and without party designations on the ballot — and only applies to “consolidated law enforcement counties” where the office of the county coroner has been abolished. This means it affects prosecutors in just five of Georgia’s 159 counties. If you’re wondering what the absence of a county coroner has to do with prosecutor elections, you’re not alone. Fair and Just Prosecution, an advocacy group that represents reform-minded D.A.s, said in a statement, “There is no clear connection between the absence of a county coroner’s office and whether prosecutor elections should be partisan or nonpartisan.” Critics see the move as a thinly veiled effort to boost Republican chances in Democratic stronghold districts. “This is a blatant attempt by Republicans to give their candidates an edge in Democratic counties by hiding their party affiliations from voters,” Sherry Boston and Fani Willis, two of the D.A.s in the affected counties, said in a joint statement earlier this month. The change would also have a disproportionate effect on Black Georgia residents. The five counties are home to roughly 45% of the state’s Black population. Boston and Willis have said they plan to challenge the change in court. While not all the D.A.s affected by the new Georgia law would neatly fit into the “progressive prosecutor” basket, they do share another characteristic that research suggests can make prosecutors disproportionately vulnerable to political backlash: The D.A.s in all five affected counties are currently Black women who are Democrats. Research published late last year by the Cambridge University Press found that Black women make up less than 7% of locally elected prosecutors nationwide, but represent 20% of those facing what author Allison Goldberg calls “extra-electoral” challenges to their authority. While HB 369 alters an electoral rule rather than bypassing voters entirely, critics argue it operates in a similar extra-electoral logic: changing the baseline structural rules of a public office from the state capitol because the local electorate didn’t deliver the preferred partisan outcome. Goldberg also found that, depending on how “progressive prosecutor” was defined, they were 19 to 35 percentage points more likely to face extra-electoral challenges than their non-progressive counterparts. Those challenges have historically come from Republican-led state governments, but in Virginia — where Democrats now control the legislature and the governorship — extra-electoral pressure is now coming from the feds. Earlier this month, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division announced it was launching a civil rights investigation into the office of Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano. Descano ran on a progressive platform that included promises to “take immigration consequences into account when making charging and plea decisions.” He said that certain felonies can trigger severe immigration consequences, including deportation, for undocumented people under federal law. Descano argued that those consequences can function as a kind of unequal, double punishment. In announcing the inquiry into Descano’s office, Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Civil Rights Division, flipped Descano’s logic on its head, arguing that the investigation would examine whether the office is “offering preferential treatment only to illegal alien criminal defendants.” Descano’s approach drew renewed scrutiny after several high-profile cases involving undocumented defendants accused of violent crimes, including the February killing of 41-year-old Stephanie Minter by an undocumented immigrant from Sierra Leone. During a congressional hearing last week, critics argued the cases reflected a broader pattern of leniency toward undocumented defendants. Descano defended his office, arguing that many of the charging decisions were constrained by witness cooperation and evidentiary issues common in criminal prosecutions. The federal investigation appears to make good on a Trump campaign promise to use the Civil Rights Division — which was founded to combat racial discrimination amid the early days of the Civil Rights Movement — as a tool for investigating what the president called “radical leftist prosecutor’s offices” that “refuse to charge criminals.” |
