‘Crush their souls’: Democrats ditch the niceties after GOP gains upper hand on redistricting
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/14/house-democrats-redistricting-hardball-00920090
‘Crush their souls’: Democrats ditch the niceties after GOP gains upper hand on redistricting
High-minded appeals to good government are out. Ruthless partisan tactics are in.
Jeffries has mostly gotten a pass from fellow House Democrats after sinking tens of millions of dollars into the Virginia redistricting fight. | Francis Chung/POLITICO
House Democrats say they tried playing nice. Now the gloves are off.
After spending more than a decade pushing for anti-gerrymandering measures and other good-government initiatives, Democratic lawmakers said this week they are gearing up to play political hardball in the wake of stunning court losses on redistricting — potentially for years to come.
“We will beat the far-right extremists,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Wednesday. “We’re going to win in November, and then we’re going to crush their souls as it relates to the extremism that they are trying to unleash on the American people.”
It’s a marked reversal from years of high-minded Democratic rhetoric that included advocating for independent redistricting commissions, campaign finance curbs and more — even as Republicans used the courts and their control of state governments to consolidate and enhance their own party’s power.
The U-turn was already underway, but it was cemented in recent weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court reinterpreted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to allow states to eliminate majority-minority districts. Then the Virginia Supreme Court moved last week to invalidate a recent voter referendum paving the way for a Democrat-friendly map.
Several Democratic states, including New York, have been hindered by their adoption of independent redistricting commissions and other processes meant to take partisan considerations out of the drawing of congressional lines. Now Democratic leaders are openly discussing overriding those safeguards.
“All options should be on the table,” Rep. Ted Lieu (R-Calif.) told reporters Wednesday. “And other states that have redistricting commissions should be prepared to have conversations with their legislature and their voters in response to what we’re seeing in the South. And I think all of that is completely fair.”
The party’s anger also translates to a growing appetite to remake the Supreme Court, which many House Democrats say is ushering in an era of “Jim Crow 2.0.”
Rep. Johnny Olszewski (D-Md.), who has introduced legislation to term-limit the justices, said in an interview that the ruling was “a straw that broke the camel’s back.” And Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) said there are tools to “kneecap” the Supreme Court that Congress has never used, such as stripping their power to review lower court rulings.
“I think everybody from the top of our caucus to the bottom are saying we have got to push back on them,” Casten said.
What was especially gutting to Democrats about the two court decisions was that they believed they had battled Republicans to a draw after President Donald Trump kicked off the unusual mid-decade line drawing spree by pressuring Texas legislators to eliminate as many as five Democratic House seats there.
The Virginia referendum last month was seen as a capstone, with voters essentially endorsing a map that would add four Democratic seats. Jeffries won plaudits for spending heavily to get that result and took a public victory lap only to see it all reversed.
Watch: The Conversation
Despite the setback, Jeffries has mostly gotten a pass from fellow House Democrats, who say that the GOP efforts in other states had to be countered despite the risks.
“My feeling is, given what was happening around the country, there was no choice but to launch the effort in Virginia,” said Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), who is retiring after seeing his district radically redrawn.
Jeffries and fellow Democratic leaders laid out an ambitious plan this week to redistrict before the 2028 elections in states like New York, New Jersey, Colorado, Oregon and Washington where their party currently holds power but cannot immediately redraw House lines.
“This is not a war we started,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said. “But as Democrats it’s important that we also get aggressive in that fight.”
The focus on 2028 comes as opportunities to redistrict in 2026 run dry — except for a potential last-ditch pick-up in Maryland, where Democrats want the legislature to eliminate Republican Rep. Andy Harris’ district, even with the state’s primary two weeks away and mail-in ballots already issued.
In light of the court rulings, Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) said, there’s “enormous pressure to do something, and I think we should.”
Other House Democrats are calling for new investments in state-level races to support legislators who will commit to redistricting efforts ahead of 2028 and the post-2030 Census redraw.
“Democrats are going to be moving to do what Republicans did 15 years ago and that is to focus on state legislatures,” Rep. Kwesi Mfume (D-Md.) said in an interview. The “smartest thing to do,” he added, “would be to control the process.”
The appetite for even more aggressive redistricting could even mean a new push to redraw maps again in California, where voters last year approved a Democratic-drawn map that handed the party five new favorable districts. The hope is that Democrats can squeeze more blue seats out of the state ahead of 2028.
“We were meeting fire with fire. Texas did five seats, California did five seats,” Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), the Congressional Black Caucus chair, said in an interview. “Now … we’ve got to look at all options. We’re not taking anything off the table.”
