Gerrymandering

[phkrause]

Redistricting war accelerates winner-take-all political combat that’s straining American democracy By weakening a requirement that states draw congressional districts in a way that gives minorities an opportunity to control their own fate, the Supreme Court escalated the nationwide redistricting war that has seen Democrats and Republicans casting aside decades of tradition in hopes of gaining an edge over the competition. New sessions are scheduled to begin this week in two Republican-controlled states to eliminate U.S. House districts represented by Democrats, with more on the horizon. Read more.

Why this matters: It’s the latest example of how the American democratic experiment has been pushed to the breaking point in the decade since Donald Trump rose to power. Extreme rhetoric has become commonplace. There’s been a spike in political violence. Five years after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Trump’s allies are trying to harness the same falsehoods about voter fraud to reshape elections.   “I’ve never subscribed to the idea we’re in a civil war, but the gerrymandering wars and the recent decision from the Supreme Court do not make the United States more united,” said Matt Dallek, a political scientist at George Washington University. “It speeds up the hyperpartisan force and atmosphere that people feel on both sides.”

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ Alabama and Tennessee move to draw new congressional districts in wake of Supreme Court ruling

[phkrause]

Bench Press (Spencer Platt / Getty)

View in browser Seven years ago, midway through a multiyear demolition of the Voting Rights Act, John Roberts’s Supreme Court heard a case on a slightly different topic: partisan gerrymandering. Republican legislators from North Carolina had drawn a map of U.S. House districts that courts, including the high court, had found was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the VRA. So the North Carolina lawmakers tried again, this time going out of their way to make clear that they were trying to reduce Democratic representation, not Black representation. The gambit worked. Roberts, writing for the majority, lamented that partisan gerrymandering was pernicious and unfair. “Excessive partisanship in districting leads to results that reasonably seem unjust,” he wrote in Rucho v. Common Cause. But the majority nonetheless concluded that federal courts had no role to play in policing partisan gerrymandering, because it was a political question. Still, Roberts didn’t want that to seem like an endorsement: “Our conclusion does not condone excessive partisan gerrymandering.” That was then. The conservative majority’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais last week doesn’t just tolerate but encourages states to embrace partisan gerrymandering as a justification for squeezing out majority-Black districts. As politicians work through the impact of the decision, Republican-led governments in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Alabama have all announced plans to try to redraw maps this week, and South Carolina’s legislature may not be far behind. The mission will be drawing the most ruthless partisan gerrymanders they can, in the hopes of protecting the GOP majority in the U.S. House. This is what Justice Samuel Alito, the author of the Callais opinion, recommends. Discarding the Court’s old requirement, which said that mapmakers must consider whether minority voters were numerous and concentrated enough to constitute their own district, Alito wrote that plaintiffs must provide strong evidence that minority voters were intentionally targeted for their race. But he also offered an escape hatch, the law professor Richard L. Hasen explains: Even if a state “likely could have drawn a map favoring minority voters” but didn’t, “the state can defend itself by (wait for it … ) admitting to engaging in partisan gerrymandering.” In other words, as the scholar Joshua A. Douglas puts it, partisan gerrymandering “has become an absolute defense to any claim of racial discrimination under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.” The fundamental ideology of the Callais majority is “color-blindness.” In a 2007 case undermining affirmative action, Roberts articulated the idea plainly: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” That’s the sort of glib comment that sounds like an argument ender as long as you don’t think too much about it. But it’s no coincidence, as my colleague Adam Serwer wrote last week, that the earliest advocates for color-blindness were reinvented segregationists. In the color-blindness framework, any discussion of race is itself seen as impolite, the political scientist Julia Azari notes. Alito’s opinion hurriedly states that “vast social change has occurred throughout the country and particularly in the South, which have made great strides in ending entrenched racial discrimination.” This is true as far as it goes but also highly tendentious, writing off both existing disparities and the important role that the VRA has played in combating discrimination. (The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg likened abandoning parts of the VRA because of reduced discrimination to throwing away one’s umbrella during a storm because one isn’t yet wet.) Alito acknowledges that Black voters tend to be Democrats in the South, but his allegiance to color-blindness prevents him from thinking too deeply about why. It is not some weird coincidence but the result of Democrats taking up the cause of civil rights, and Republicans becoming consistent opponents. This makes Alito’s argument that Black Democrats are losing representation because they are Democrats, not because they are Black, incoherent. “To ‘control for partisanship’ when assessing racial gerrymandering is to erase the very mechanism through which racism travels,” the political scientist Jake Grumbach writes. The fallout from Callais stands a good chance of making the relationship between race and partisanship even stronger. Black voters have some good critiques of the Democratic Party, but watching Republican-led governments race to redraw maps to eliminate Black representation is unlikely to push them to the GOP. Then again, it may not matter: If mapmakers are empowered to draw ruthlessly partisan maps that are also racially discriminatory, the views of Black voters in some places, especially in the South, will simply not be electorally relevant. In his 2019 opinion in Rucho, Roberts portrayed his decision to allow partisan gerrymandering as rooted in humility and restraint about the proper role of the judiciary, despite his dislike of extremely partisan maps: “No one can accuse this Court of having a crabbed view of the reach of its competence. But we have no commission to allocate political power and influence in the absence of a constitutional directive or legal standards to guide us in the exercise of such authority.” It is ironic, then, that Roberts and his allies have had no compunctions about trashing the VRA, a law duly passed and renewed by Congress. Their hubris will bring about an efflorescence of the same partisan gerrymandering that Roberts claimed to detest. Related: A requiem for the Voting Rights Act Voters can be disenfranchised now.

[phkrause]

DeSantis’ new congressional map faces first legal challenge

As predicted, a lawsuit has been filed against the Florida congressional redistricting map signed into law Monday by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

https://floridaphoenix.com/2026/05/04/desantis-new-congressional-map-faces-first-legal-challenge/?

[phkrause]

🏛️ Number of the day: 0

Democrats protest on the Tennessee House floor in Nashville yesterday after approval of a new congressional map during a special legislative session. Photo: Madison Thorn/Bloomberg via Getty That's the likely number of Democratic U.S. House members from Tennessee next year (down from one) after state legislators yesterday joined the nationwide trend of approving new gerrymandered maps. The Black-majority ninth district, representing Memphis, is now spread across three red districts, Axios Nashville's Nate Rau reports. Go deeper ...

[phkrause]

‘Killing our vote’: GOP states rush to break up Black districts after US Supreme Court case

The day after the U.S. Supreme Court crippled the federal Voting Rights Act, NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson addressed a virtual gathering for the group’s members and supporters where he ranked the landmark decision alongside the court’s most infamous cases.

https://floridaphoenix.com/2026/05/08/repub/killing-our-vote-gop-states-rush-to-break-up-black-districts-after-us-supreme-court-case/?

ps:So this is how they plan on keeping the House and Senate!!!!!

[phkrause]

Virginia Supreme Court strikes down Democrats’ redrawn US House maps, giving Republicans a win

The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down a voter-approved Democratic congressional redistricting plan, delivering another major setback to the party in a nationwide battle against Republicans for an edge in this year’s midterm elections.

https://apnews.com/article/redistricting-virginia-congress-democrats-republicans-12a31037f3c9a94d3cb9fbcaaf84d94f?

Alabama lawmakers pass plan for new US House primary if courts allow different districts

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A national redistricting battle over U.S. House seats swung toward Republicans on Friday, as a Virginia court invalidated a Democratic gerrymandering effort and Republicans in Alabama approved plans for new primary elections if courts allow GOP-drawn House districts to be used in the November midterm elections.

https://apnews.com/article/alabama-redistricting-map-congress-voting-rights-trump-81f6a232ea75a9d62efe3e40f14f8488?

[phkrause]

Tennessee redistricting plan splits Memphis neighbors and reshapes midterms as other states follow

For 21 years, Steve Fowler and Sam Wilson have performed together in a band on Memphis’ renowned Beale Street. And for the past decade, the men have been neighbors on a quiet, leafy avenue. But as of Thursday, they will no longer cast the same ballot despite living across the street from each other. “I think it’s horrible,” said Fowler, who is white. “This isn’t just going to be bad for Black folks in Memphis, but poor whites in these new districts also aren’t going to get services.” A new congressional map in Tennessee splits the majority-Black city of Memphis into three districts. The move by the Republican-controlled legislature follows a recent Supreme Court ruling that weakened parts of the landmark Voting Rights Act. And it may serve as an early example of how states may eliminate long-required majority-minority districts before the November elections. Read more.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

Virginia Supreme Court strikes down Democrats’ redrawn US House maps, giving Republicans a win Alabama lawmakers pass plan for new US House primary if courts allow different districts Demonstrators rally in Tennessee and Alabama against redistricting efforts, in photos

[phkrause]

Voter confusion and headaches for election officials follow hasty GOP push to redraw US House seats

Republicans’ rush to gerrymander congressional districts across several Southern states after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling hollowed out the Voting Rights Act is confusing voters and creating logistical headaches for local election officials. The changes are hitting while primary season is in progress. Thousands of Louisiana residents have voted early for congressional candidates in what soon could be the wrong districts. Alabama’s primaries are a week away, but the state could force a do-over for voting on U.S. House races. Read more.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

What to know about the latest wave of changes to congressional districts

[phkrause]

‘Are they going to roll over?’: Gerrymandering fights reach state high courts

JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri — Control of the U.S. House may run through a courtroom in Missouri.

https://floridaphoenix.com/2026/05/12/repub/are-they-going-to-roll-over-gerrymandering-fights-reach-state-high-courts/?

[phkrause]

🗳️ Dem redistricting reprieve

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

Republicans are slowing a feared redistricting blitz across the Deep South, giving several longtime Black lawmakers a temporary reprieve, Axios' Justin Green writes. Why it matters: Democrats had been grappling with the imminent collapse of Black political representation in the South after the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act in late April. In Louisiana, Republicans opted to eliminate one Black-majority district instead of both. In Mississippi, Gov. Tate Reeves canceled a special session scheduled for later this month. Reeves said Republicans will redraw the congressional districts ahead of the 2027 statewide elections. In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp said yesterday he was calling for a special session on maps — but for the 2028 cycle instead of 2026. Keep reading.

[phkrause]

Texas high court rejects removal of Democratic lawmakers who led quorum break over redistricting

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Texas Supreme Court on Friday refused to declare that Democratic lawmakers who briefly fled the state in 2025 to block a vote on new congressional maps pushed by President Donald Trump had vacated their office.

https://apnews.com/article/texas-congressional-redistricting-gene-wu-democrats-8e9bf10b5c80a057989fd668e3b2a74f?

Democrat Rep. Steve Cohen ending campaign after redraw of his Memphis district

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee announced Friday that he is ending his bid for reelection, his career upended by the redistricting battles that are sweeping the country after last month’s Supreme Court decision.

https://apnews.com/article/steve-cohen-e1512c0a65ba6de5d0ec0c15e3831a95?

ps:How pathetic is this maga republican party?

[phkrause]

Federal court blocks Alabama plan for new congressional districts that could help Republicans

Federal judges on Tuesday blocked Alabama’s plan to use a congressional map that could give Republicans an advantage in a key U.S. House race in the midterm elections.

https://apnews.com/article/redistricting-congress-alabama-voting-rights-trump-b67125657b36e9b915ea9bc5d587d08c?

South Carolina Senate rejects Trump’s call to redraw congressional map for midterm elections

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s push to reshape congressional districts ahead of the November elections suffered a double setback Tuesday, as South Carolina senators declined to do so and a federal court blocked a Republican-backed map in Alabama.

https://apnews.com/article/redistricting-congress-voting-rights-trump-6d2daecd387cc0ad1dd56e94f621eda5?