Trump Has No Clue What His Supreme Court Has Just Unleashed

With Donald Trump’s active encouragement, Republicans are already seizing on the ruling—which essentially dismantled protections against racial gerrymandering—to threaten to redraw maps in the South to eliminate numerous congressional seats with Black representatives. While it’s largely too late to do so this cycle, Republicans will likely launch mid-decade redistricting in many Southern states heading into 2028, eliminating as many as 19 more Democratic seats in hopes of locking in a near-permanent GOP majority.

In substantive and legal terms, this outcome is awful—see this overview from TNR’s Matt Ford for a full rundown—but in a purely political sense, is this Armageddon for Democrats? Not necessarily. The reason? Democrats can move to redraw maps in time for the 2028 elections in states where they control the legislatures.

Which points to one big takeaway from the court ruling: State legislative races—which already attract too little attention—just got a lot more important. Many races underway now will help determine the party’s long-term prospects in the scorched-earth conflict that’s about to unfold.

According to a new analysis by Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group, Democrats could redraw anywhere from 10 to 22 additional congressional seats for the party in time for the 2028 elections if they push hard with redistricting in seven blue and swing states. The analysis—which is circulating among Democratic leadership aides and outside groups and was obtained by TNR—concludes that being aggressive could theoretically offset Republican gains, even in a maximalist GOP redistricting scenario.

“Democrats have a clear path to neutralize this GOP power grab if they want to take it,” Max Flugrath, senior communications director of Fair Fight Action, told me. “This is the ‘break glass in case of emergency’ moment for American democracy.”

The range of potential Democratic gains is so broad because so much depends on which party controls key state legislatures after the fall elections. Strikingly, even if Democrats flip zero chambers, they can redraw up to 10 additional congressional districts for the party, the analysis finds, by maximizing gerrymanders in New York, Colorado, Oregon, and Maryland, where Democrats control governorships and state legislatures.

But even more strikingly, Democrats could redraw as many as 22 additional congressional districts for the party overall if they flip legislative chambers in other states and redraw aggressively in them, the analysis finds.

Take Wisconsin, where the governor is a Democrat and Republicans control the state legislature. Democrats think they have a good shot at flipping both legislative houses, due in part to dramatic Democratic overperformances in recent special elections.