Outside the Beltway

Taking Extreme Measures to ‘Win’ the Midterms

Republicans are winning the gerrymandering wars thus far.

James Joyner · Saturday, May 9, 2026 · 8 comments

The Virginia Supreme Court’s decision yesterday, striking down the radical pro-Democrat gerrymander approved earlier this month by voters, has generated substantial frustration. It was arguably the party’s best chance to counter similar moves by Republican-controlled states to preserve the party’s thin margins in both Houses of Congress despite growing voter dissatisfaction.

NYT chief political analyst Nate Cohn (“Republicans Are Building an Advantage in Redistricting. How Much?“) estimates that stand to create something like a 4-point cushion.

The redistricting wars heading into the November midterm elections had been in a stalemate, with each party’s tit-for-tat gerrymanders roughly canceling each other out.

It’s not a stalemate anymore. Over just the last two weeks, new court rulings and new congressional maps have put Republicans on track to add more than a dozen districts that voted for President Trump. It would be enough for Republicans to obtain a significant structural advantage in the House of Representatives, giving them a much better chance to at least stay competitive even if they lost the combined national vote by a wide margin in the midterms.

On procedural grounds, the Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down a Democratic-drawn congressional map that had been approved by voters. The map had been the centerpiece of the party’s effort to counter Mr. Trump’s mid-cycle redistricting campaign. The decision was entirely unrelated to the Supreme Court’s decision allowing states to dismantle majority-minority districts, which has triggered a rush of new Republican redistricting efforts across the South. For good measure, Florida Republicans redrew their state’s map, potentially adding up to four new Republican districts.

With Mr. Trump’s approval rating stuck below 40 percent and Democrats building a growing polling lead in the race for Congress, even a dozen new Trump districts might not be enough for Republicans to retain the House. But while Democrats remain favored, retaking the House is no longer a foregone conclusion. The new maps make it much easier to imagine how the midterms could be a seat-by-seat battle for House control — one which Democrats could well be favored to win, but which would not feel like the sweeping “wave” election it might have been otherwise.

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o far, only Tennessee has enacted a new map in response to the Supreme Court’s decision on the Voting Rights Act. Louisiana, South Carolina and Alabama are expected to follow, but maybe one or two will not — or maybe additional states, red or blue, will join the fight.

But if everything stays as is — and with Alabama, South Carolina and Louisiana enacting new maps — Republicans will obtain a significant structural advantage. To win the House, Democrats could need to win the House combined national popular vote by around four percentage points, according to our estimates.

The Empire State appears to be the only place left where Democrats can gerrymander significantly more seats. POLITICO’s Bill Mahoney explains “Why Democrats’ New York gerrymander won’t be as aggressive as the GOP’s efforts.”

 Republicans in states like Alabama and Tennessee are rushing to take advantage by dissolving majority Black districts. In New York — the state where Democrats have the most to gain by drawing new lines — there’s virtually no appetite to respond in kind, underscoring a looming barrier for blue states in the redistricting fight.

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In the coming weeks, New York lawmakers are expected to begin the lengthy process of approving a constitutional amendment that would let them redraw congressional lines in 2028. If successful, the measure stands to turn a state with 19 Democrats and seven Republicans into one with a 22-4 or 23-3 edge.

Such an outcome is akin to what Republicans pushed through in Texas last summer — but not as extreme as the 9-0 Republican map Tennessee lawmakers drew Thursday by eliminating a Black majority district in Memphis.

In New York, a 26-0 map isn’t plausible. But in a deep blue state where Democrats routinely receive around 60 percent of the vote in statewide races, maps that feature tendrils extending from the Bronx and Brooklyn into the furthest regions of upstate and Long Island are possible. And such a reconfiguration would give Democrats an even greater advantage compared with maps they’ve floated in the not so distant past.

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In practice, though, New York’s Democratic leaders do not appear inclined, at the moment at least, to similarly weaponize the newfound ability to disempower Black voters.

“I don’t think we want to roll back protections for minority communities in New York,” said Senate Deputy Leader Mike Gianaris, who’s led his conference’s redistricting efforts since 2012.

The fact that keeping these districts intact is a core personal political belief for leaders like Stewart-Cousins — and a political third rail for everyone in the state’s Democratic Party — will likely limit how aggressive Democrats approach redistricting.

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Drawing lines like that isn’t possible, though, without turning historically Black strongholds like those represented by Jeffries and Reps. Yvette Clark and Gregory Meeks into districts with white majorities — or eliminating the Asian plurality in Rep. Grace Meng’s district, or the Hispanic majority in Ocasio-Cortez’s seat. And doing that is almost certain to draw intense pushback from organizations whose support is needed to win approval for the planned 2027 redistricting referendum.

“It’s really, really important that we are at the table from the beginning of this process so that the parties, as they start to course correct, are not overcorrecting,” said L. Joy Williams, the NAACP New York State Conference’s president.

“Voter disenfranchisement doesn’t require malicious intent,” she continued. “In people’s pursuit of political power, if they are doing it at the expense of voters, that’s a problem, and your course correction could inadvertently disenfranchise more people.”

Michigan State law professor Quinn Yeargain has a radical proposal for “How Virginia Democrats can overturn the redistricting ruling.”

Virginia Democrats are looking for a way to overturn the state Supreme Court’s Friday decision invalidating the constitutional amendment temporarily adopting new congressional districts that a majority of voters ratified last month. They have a simple—and lawful—solution: Send the entire court into early retirement.

Article VI, Section 9, of the Virginia Constitution gives the legislature unlimited authority to set the retirement age for judges. It specifies, “The General Assembly may also provide for the mandatory retirement of justices and judges after they reach a prescribed age, beyond which they shall not serve, regardless of the term to which elected or appointed.”

Current law sets the mandatory retirement age at 73: “Any member who attains 73 years of age shall be retired 20 days after the convening of the next regular session of the General Assembly following his seventy-third birthday.”

This number is arbitrary. States around the country with similar laws mandate retirement across a wide range of ages. Virginia lawmakers can simply lower theirs. Make it 54 for Supreme Court justices—the age of the youngest justice, Stephen McCullough, who joined the majority opinion—and make it take effect immediately.

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Then, after the bill is approved, the entire court would retire. A new court would then be appointed that could re-hear the case and have the opportunity to issue a different ruling.

Democrats might prefer other solutions, but if they want to see the will of the voters respected in time for the November elections, there are virtually no other options—and none with as good a chance of success as this one.

While I’ve now lived in the Commonwealth for almost 23 years, I don’t claim any expertise in the fine points of its constitution. The provision in question does, in fact, appear to be plenary. There is, oddly, no apparent grandfather clause.

But enacting Yeargin’s proposal would be wildly illegitimate. That the legislature could summarily fire the Supreme Court any time it issued a ruling it disliked stands the entire notion of constitutional government on its head. Effectively, it would mean no future Supreme Court would dare rule any act passed by the current legislature unconstitutional—a power explicitly granted to it in the Commonwealth Constitution.

Nor are extreme measures justified in this case. While Chief Justice Powell’s dissent, joined by Justices Mann and Fulton, is well argued, so is Justice Kelsey’s majority opinion. It was always understood to be a real possibility that the timing of the referendum would lead to its result being struck down. The result may be disappointing, but it’s certainly not illegitimate.