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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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Simon, who leads the Shelby County Democratic Party in Tennessee, said the court\u2019s conservative majority set a precedent that if you\u2019re \u201cnot in the in-crowd group, they can just erase us.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s more on the horizon.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s 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\u2019s been a spike in political violence and a rash of assassinations. Five years after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Trump\u2019s allies are trying to harness the same falsehoods about voter fraud to reshape elections.<\/p>\n
The rules and norms that once helped smooth over an unruly country\u2019s vast differences have given way to a race for power at all costs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never subscribed to the idea we\u2019re in a civil war, but the gerrymandering wars and the recent decision from the Supreme Court do not make the United States more united,\u201d said Matt Dallek, a political scientist at George Washington University. \u201cIt speeds up the hyperpartisan force and atmosphere that people feel on both sides.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s conservative majority issued its long-awaited decision in Louisiana v. Callais.<\/p>\n
The court weakened the last remaining national impediment to gerrymandering \u2014 the Voting Rights Act\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The ruling opened a new set of political floodgates.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should demand that State Legislatures do what the Supreme Court says must be done,\u201d Trump wrote on social media on Sunday. \u201cThat is more important than administrative convenience.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said Republicans could gain 20 seats through redistricting.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
With fewer limits \u2014 either legal or self-imposed \u2014 people expect the issue to become a perpetual race to squeeze every possible advantage out of legislative maps.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard to know where it ends,\u201d said Rick Hasen, a law professor at UCLA.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
That seems un-American, said Jonathan Cervas, a political scientist at Carnegie Mellon who\u2019s redrawn maps on behalf of judges reviewing redistricting litigation. The country\u2019s system, he said, \u201cwas founded on this idea that it\u2019s majority rule with minority rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no more rule of law in redistricting,\u201d Cervas said. \u201cThere have to be some constraints, somewhere. Otherwise we don\u2019t really have elections.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s supporters to ensure the other party cannot win that seat or the one next door, either.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers have used the trick since the country\u2019s 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\u2019s reelection two years later.<\/p>\n
However, that didn\u2019t prevent the \u201cblue wave\u201d in 2018, during Trump\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you try to get every last ounce of blood from the stone you can end up shooting yourself in the foot,\u201d said Michael Li of the liberal Brennan Center for Justice in New York.<\/p>\n
Political coalitions also change, and voters that a party thinks will be reliable can switch sides. That\u2019s what\u2019s happened in the Trump era, as Democrats have expanded their support among wealthier and suburban voters and Republicans among Blacks and Latinos.<\/p>\n
Although Republicans won\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s been hard to find neutral arbiters to rein in politicians who draw lines to benefit themselves.<\/p>\n
The coming storm, Trende said, will be more of a symptom of polarization than its root cause.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll our institutions are broken. We don\u2019t speak a common political language,\u201d Trende said. \u201cThis is what you get.\u201d<\/p>\n