One might be inclined to ask who started this latest bout of mass, iterative gerrymandering. It\u2019s true that Texas, an iconic red state, drew first blood last July\u2014although the U.S. Supreme Court didn\u2019t finally permit Texas\u2019s new maps to go into effect until a summary order earlier this week. What\u2019s more, Texas\u2019s new GOP-heavy map will likely provide Republicans less of a lopsided partisan advantage in its congressional delegation than will California\u2019s own new map for the Golden State\u2019s regnant Democratic Party. Republicans also claim Democrats have been the more blatant systemic gerrymanderers for decades\u2014an assertion buttressed by even a cursory glance at bright-blue Illinois\u2019s hilariously delineated\u00a0congressional map<\/a>.<\/p>\n The reality is that both parties have gerrymandered their respective controlled states for a very long time. That is a tedious and uninteresting observation. The more interesting and pressing question, as this rare mid-decade redistricting war nears its end, is this: Looking at the aggregate nationwide redistricting efforts, which party will come out on top in advance of the midterm elections this November?<\/p>\n Democrats had a projected one-seat partisan advantage according to the website\u00a0Ballotpedia<\/a>, as of Thursday. But there are multiple reasons why this is likely to change. It appears the big victor will be the GOP.<\/p>\n First, this tally does not account for Florida\u2019s redistricted map, which just passed through a special session of the Florida Legislature on Wednesday and has not yet (as of this writing) been signed into law by DeSantis. That alone will likely net the GOP four additional seats. Second, Virginia\u2019s controversial ballot referendum redistricting measure, which was just approved by Old Dominion voters by a much narrower margin than that by which Virginians\u00a0swept Democrats back into power<\/a>\u00a0last November, is facing serious legal challenges. Most recently, on Wednesday, the Virginia Supreme Court\u00a0left in place<\/a>\u00a0a lower-court order blocking the commonwealth\u2019s certification of the referendum results. If Gov. Abigail Spanberger\u2019s new map is tossed out, Democrats will likely be out an additional four seats.<\/p>\n Finally, there is the landmark redistricting case that the U.S. Supreme Court just decided this week. In\u00a0Louisiana v. Callais<\/a>, the court held that\u00a0Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965<\/a>, which prohibits states and localities from imposing any voting \u201cqualification or prerequisite\u201d that \u201cresults in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen \u2026 to vote on account of race or color,\u201d cannot be invoked to create race-conscious congressional maps\u2014a dubious practice lawmakers had been blithely engaging in for decades. The court correctly held that such race-conscious map-making, including the devising of so-called majority-minority districts across many Southern states, runs afoul of the 14th Amendment\u2019s sweeping equal protection guarantee.<\/p>\n Bright-red Louisiana, which was party to the\u00a0Callais\u00a0case, already\u00a0suspended its upcoming primaries<\/a>\u00a0to give its legislature enough time to draw\u00a0new congressional maps<\/a>. In addition, many other safe Democratic \u201cmajority-minority\u201d seats across the broader South are now extremely vulnerable. These Southern states can either redistrict of their own accord to comply with the Supreme Court\u2019s new ruling, or they will be forced to do so through offensive litigation. Either way, the era of race-conscious map-making is now over. This is first and foremost a victory for the color-blind U.S. Constitution. But it will also benefit the GOP before November\u2019s midterms\u2014in Louisiana and likely beyond.<\/p>\n Our redistricting battles tend to rile up passions on all sides. But it\u2019s a practice as old as the republic: The \u201cgerry\u201d in \u201cgerrymandering\u201d refers to Elbridge Gerry, who served in the First Congress and eventually as James Madison\u2019s vice president. If one disapproves of how his state draws its maps, there is always the political check of the ballot box. And if that fails, he can always vote with his feet and leave. In fact, that\u2019s already happening en masse:\u00a0from blue states to red states<\/a>. And for Democrats, that\u2019s a trend not even the most aggressive gerrymandering can possibly alleviate.<\/p>\n Josh Hammer<\/a>\u00a0is\u00a0Newsweek\u00a0senior editor-at-large, host of “The Josh Hammer Show<\/a>,” a Shillman Fellow at the\u00a0David Horowitz Freedom Center,<\/a>\u00a0and author of\u00a0Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West<\/a>\u00a0(Radius Book Group). X:\u00a0@josh_hammer<\/a>.<\/p>\n The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For almost a year now, America\u2019s two parties have been engaged in a mass congressional redistricting battle royale.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[147],"tags":[544,486,96,542,13099,32077,483,1187,1076,1791,536,906,1287],"class_list":{"0":"post-52268","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-gavin-newsom","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-democrats","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-gavin-newsom","12":"tag-gerrymandering","13":"tag-greg-abbott","14":"tag-louisiana","15":"tag-redistricting","16":"tag-republicans","17":"tag-ron-desantis","18":"tag-supreme-court","19":"tag-texas","20":"tag-virginia"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116498906706663058","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/AP26119503477487.jpg\"\/)
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