Redistricting war accelerates winner-take-all political combat that's
straining American democracy
[May 04, 2026]
By NICHOLAS RICCARDI
Willie Simon stood outside the Memphis motel where Rev. Martin Luther
King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968, now a museum dedicated to the Civil
Rights Movement.
Days after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted a key provision of the Voting
Rights Act, Simon feared what the decision would mean not just for Black
Americans like himself but an entire country where the political
guardrails seem to be coming apart.
Simon, who leads the Shelby County Democratic Party in Tennessee, said
the court's conservative majority set a precedent that if you're “not in
the in-crowd group, they can just erase us.”
By weakening a requirement that states draw congressional districts in a
way that gives minorities an opportunity to control their own fate, the
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, and there's more on the horizon.
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 and a rash of assassinations. 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.
The rules and norms that once helped smooth over an unruly country's
vast differences have given way to a race for power at all costs.
“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.”
'No more rule of law'
Trump ignited the conflict over redistricting last year by urging
Republicans to redraw congressional maps to reduce the likelihood that
his party loses the U.S. House in the November midterm elections.
It was an unusual step, since redistricting normally only takes place
after the once-a-decade census to accommodate population shifts. But in
2019 the Supreme Court ruled federal courts cannot prevent partisan
gerrymandering, and Trump saw a chance to push the limits.
Once Republican-led states like Texas started shifting district lines,
Democratic-led states like California countered. The fight was heading
for a draw until the Supreme Court's conservative majority issued its
long-awaited decision in Louisiana v. Callais.
The court weakened the last remaining national impediment to
gerrymandering — the Voting Rights Act's requirement that, in places
where white people and outnumbered racial minorities vote differently,
districts be drawn to give those minorities a chance to elect
representatives they prefer.
The ruling opened a new set of political floodgates.
Republicans in Tennessee plan to erase the only Democratic congressional
district, which is majority Black and centered in Memphis, by splitting
it up among more conservative suburban and rural white communities. More
than a dozen other majority-minority districts, mainly in the South,
could face the same fate.
Louisiana moved to postpone its congressional primaries, set for May 16,
to have a chance to redraw two majority-Black Democratic seats it was
required to maintain before the recent ruling. Alabama is trying to get
the Supreme Court to let it redraw its two majority-Black seats.
"We should demand that State Legislatures do what the Supreme Court says
must be done,” Trump wrote on social media on Sunday. “That is more
important than administrative convenience.”
He said Republicans could gain 20 seats through redistricting.
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Rep. Cleo Fields, D-La., center, who represents Louisiana's 6th
congressional district, is joined by members of the Congressional
Black Caucus as they speak to reporters in the wake of the Supreme
Court ruling to strike down his majority Black congressional
district in Louisiana, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday,
April 29, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Democrats have threatened to retaliate by splitting up conservative
bastions in states like New York and Illinois, which would
reallocate Republican voters to more liberal, urban districts.
With fewer limits — either legal or self-imposed — people expect the
issue to become a perpetual race to squeeze every possible advantage
out of legislative maps.
“It’s hard to know where it ends,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor
at UCLA.
Partisans gleefully shared color-coded maps of California with all
54 House seats drawn for Democrats, or southern states with only a
couple of blue districts. Most agreed that eventually it will be
very hard for Democrats to get elected to the House in any
Republican-run state, even if there are large swaths of blue-leaning
terrain, and vice versa for Republicans in Democratic-run states.
That seems un-American, said Jonathan Cervas, a political scientist
at Carnegie Mellon who’s redrawn maps on behalf of judges reviewing
redistricting litigation. The country's system, he said, “was
founded on this idea that it’s majority rule with minority rights.”
“There is no more rule of law in redistricting,” Cervas said. “There
have to be some constraints, somewhere. Otherwise we don’t really
have elections.”
Politicians' best tool to game elections
The arcane art of drawing legislative lines is the most powerful
tool that politicians have for gaming elections. They can make
districts an almost guaranteed win for their side by drawing lines
that scoop up a majority of their voters and just enough of the
opposition's supporters to ensure the other party cannot win that
seat or the one next door, either.
Lawmakers have used the trick since the country's founding.
Democratic gerrymanders helped the party hold onto the House through
the Reagan revolution. After the 2010 midterms, Republican
majorities in state legislatures allowed the GOP to draw districts
to lock up control of the House even during President Barack Obama's
reelection two years later.
However, that didn't prevent the “blue wave” in 2018, during Trump's
first term, when Democrats retook the House. It was a reminder that
even the most partisan gerrymanders may stifle shifts in public
opinion but eventually crack as political tides turn.
“When you try to get every last ounce of blood from the stone you
can end up shooting yourself in the foot,” said Michael Li of the
liberal Brennan Center for Justice in New York.
Political coalitions also change, and voters that a party thinks
will be reliable can switch sides. That's what's happened in the
Trump era, as Democrats have expanded their support among wealthier
and suburban voters and Republicans among Blacks and Latinos.
Although Republicans won't be able to exploit the full force of the
Supreme Court ruling until after the November midterms, it will be
challenging for Democrats to find enough seats to counter those
gains.
Sean Trende, a political analyst who has drawn maps for Republicans,
agreed that the court decision is likely to lead to partisan
gerrymandering run amok. He said it's been hard to find neutral
arbiters to rein in politicians who draw lines to benefit
themselves.
The coming storm, Trende said, will be more of a symptom of
polarization than its root cause.
“All our institutions are broken. We don't speak a common political
language,” Trende said. “This is what you get.”
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