When the resettlement battle was coming to an end, the Supreme Court blew up the whole situation with a decision that all but violated the Voting Rights Act.
And since the decision last week, Republicans across the country have been scrambling to see how they can take advantage of the new resettlement laws. Republican-led states, especially in the South, can now clear large numbers of Democratic minority districts and increase the seats the GOP can hold.
- The decision of the Supreme Court in Louisiana vs. Callais It has encouraged Republicans across the country who want to redraw congressional maps to eliminate Democratic-held, majority seats, especially in the South. That’s on top of the 2026 mid-decade preventive measures they made this year.
- Democrats want to respond after the midterms with a similar overhaul to eliminate Republican seats in Democratic-led states.
- But that puts Democrats in a tough spot: They may have to draw heavily black and Latino districts to do this, and have a conversation about how to preserve racial representation.
At least six Republican governors, in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi, have already said they intend to do so — though only Louisiana and Tennessee appear likely to draw their maps in time for the 2026 midterm elections. That includes the mid-decade redistricting phase that Florida ended last week by creating four more GOP-friendly seats.
Under the new level playing field the Supreme Court has created, Republicans could gain up to 19 new seats in the next two cycles, according to analysis by Fair Fight Action circulating among the Democrats. Democrats are now under pressure to retaliate by using the same court decision to increase their gains in states like New York, California, Colorado, Maryland, and Illinois in 2028 and beyond. The same Fair Fight Action report shows ways they can squeeze 10 to 22 more friendly seats in response.
“I can’t speak for my chairman, but I would take 52 seats from California and 17 seats from Illinois,” Alabama Representative Terri Sewell, whose district may be eliminated after the Supreme Court decision, told reporters. In other words, a full Democratic map in both states.
But that kind of total war approach cannot happen without changing the structure and lines of districts held by Blacks, Hispanics and some representatives of Asian America. It would require a double sacrifice: for some non-white Democratic politicians to give up seats that the civil rights movement fought to create, and for voters of color to give up influence in the House districts they currently hold.
“Democrats by nature, as part of our platform, our values, believe in a multiracial, pluralistic democracy where we believe in empowering people of color. In many cases, up Callisyou can have your cake and eat it, where you can do it without having to sacrifice anything in the election for it,” Democratic pollster Adam Carlson told me. You have to have that compromise conversation.”
If efforts to match Trump’s redistricting plan last year were subtle, this future effort at snobbery may end up just as well. more pot and stones. It would go against the principles of racial representation that inspired the Voting Rights Act against the Republican Party’s desire to defeat the law.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries summed up this tension last week, saying Politics that the House Democratic leadership “is looking at every opportunity to ensure that communities of color will continue to have the opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice … while doing what is necessary, as happened in California, to respond seriously to the efforts of Republicans on congressional gerrymander maps.”
Illinois shows how difficult the next fight will be on the map
In Illinois, any attempt to unseat the three GOP-held state seats would require redrawing the lines to enter populous and diverse Cook County, home to Chicago.
But as Democrats considered a mid-decade measure to re-block Republicans this cycle, there was one major obstacle: opposition from Black political and civil rights groups over reducing the influence of Black voters in elections.
While the new seats may lean Democratic, they will also be less likely to consistently elect Black candidates. That sparked opposition from members of the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus, and their concerns forced Democrats to reject the redistricting.
“We cannot respond to the Republican Party’s racist efforts to steal the 2026 midterms by doing anything that furthers their long-term goals of wiping Black representation off the map,” Willie Preston, a Chicago state senator and chairman of the Illinois Senate Black Caucus, said. in October. “I expect to support any map that does not reduce the 1st, 2nd or 7th Congressional Districts.”
These tensions are likely to resurface if Democrats try to push for a tighter map in 2028 and beyond that would require spreading urban Black and Latino communities into more districts, reducing their influence in each seat while strengthening the party as a whole.
“The way you map 17-0 in Illinois is through a really bad shepherd — like pork chops from Chicago,” Zachary Donnini, head of data science at the election-tracking website VoteHub, told me. “Everybody gets a little bit of Chicago.”
But the size of the post-Louisiana vs. Callais Republican gains may also make it harder to oppose some changes. La Shawn Ford, a state representative and the Democratic nominee for the 7th Congressional District this year, said the failure of this year’s redistricting won’t be the end of the conversation.
“That was then,” he said. “The fact that this is moving so quickly and that there have been measures that have become law in other states — I mean, Illinois can’t just say, no.”
While Ford said he expects more transparency to exclude his colleagues, “if they see that the districts are in danger of losing black representation, you will get a big push.” Democrats will have to tread carefully and be “strategic in our map-making” to manage competing issues.
Black voters and elected officials, Ford said, see the issue through the lens of Reconstruction after the Civil War, when southern whites violently ended a brief period of black representation in Congress and instituted Jim Crow laws and restrictions. But just as Black leaders were wary of surrendering influence to the cause, seeing historic Southern seats wiped out could also trigger an emotional response that calls for action.
“It’s a shame that Black people should be front and center in this debate, but the courts threw us into the fire,” he said.
Beyond Illinois, another tough conversation is on the horizon
Regardless of how the Illinois representation debate plays out, Democrats will face many events, processes, and obstacles in trying to draw, gain popular approval, or push a new map to counter Republican gains. And in many of those states where Democrats can pick up more seats, the same kind of identity politics will be used.
In California, for example, the most extreme redrawing of the state — like another viral map showing a theoretical 52-0 by 2028 — would need to reduce the influence of Black, Asian, and Hispanic voters to draw the four remaining safely Republican districts.
Especially in California, which has been a channel for sending Hispanic and Latino politicians to Congress, attempts to increase Latino voting power may provoke opposition from local, state, and federal Latino elected officials and local communities that fear losing many Hispanic districts. Of the state’s 52 congressional districts, 16 are majority Hispanic/Latino voters and Latinos hold significant influence in six more.
“Relinquishing that influence to a party that has repeatedly failed to meet the priorities of working-class Latino voters and is now asking for more sacrifices to strengthen itself politically would be unacceptable,” Sonja Diaz, a founding member of the UCLA Latino Politics and Policy Initiative, told me.
Diaz, who helped chair the Los Angeles city council’s 2021 redistricting commission, told me he hopes future redistricting efforts balance the need to empower Latino voters with partisan goals. He noted that the state has been able to do this in the past: A mid-decade redistricting plan passed in last year’s special election gave more Democratic-friendly seats and. increased Latino representation through two heavily Latino districts, one of the main reasons Latino civil rights groups and organizations did not strongly oppose it. But pushing further could set back national democracy.
“Having the Democratic leadership of New York telling us what to do in a state like California, or even in a state like Illinois, when there are huge complaints that extend beyond the second (Trump) administration is not meaningful,” he said.
In addition to issues of racial representation, incumbents may also be unwilling to give up political security — extreme violence means making some seats more competitive, even if they still lean Democratic. One Latino member of Congress, Representative Robert Garcia, tried to serve as a model for the party by embracing the new California map that made up his district. more white and less Democratic by taking more voters from conservative strongholds.
One trend that could help: Americans’ growing willingness to vote for minority candidates. In the 21st century, Black members of Congress were rare outside of majority districts drawn in their favor, even Democratic ones. But in the Trump era, Democrats have increasingly elected Black candidates who were not only running in white congressional districts, but the battlefieldincluding Colin Allred, Lauren Underwood, Lucy McBath, and Anthony Delgado. They have promoted a few candidates in key statewide races as well.
At the same time, the post-2026 redistricting push will face less of a racial representation challenge in other states that Democrats can turn to: Washington and Colorado, for example, are primarily white states that could squeeze at least five more Democratic seats; The redistricting fight in a more diverse Maryland, meanwhile, may depend the decision of one Democratic member of parliament.
But the real mess may come after that, in 2032 – after the first-Callisafter the census, a complete redrawing of the parliament. By then, most states will have gained or lost seats to demographic changes, and the Supreme Court will have more time to explain how its VRA decision works in practice.
“That’s where you can start from scratch,” Carlson said. “That’s when you can start seeing these crazy map recommendations.”
