America Has Always Had a Gerrymandering Problem. This Is New.

It flipped in a few hours. Before the morning of April 29, 2026, few people doubted that the Democrats would retake the House, given President Trump’s tanking approval rating. Then that morning, the Supreme Court released its decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which diluted what remained of the Voting Rights Act.Louisiana immediately suspended its primaries to begin redrawing its maps to give Republicans an advantage and turn its two majority-Black districts into one. Tennessee advanced a map that would break up the state’s only majority-Black district, and southern states that had already held primaries declared their intentions to redraw their maps in the near future.The apparent demise of the Voting Rights Act and its immediate effects come after almost a year of extraordinary off-cycle attempts to gerrymander maps around the country. Begun last summer when the White House asked Texas to squeeze more GOP seats from its map, the redistricting tit-for-tat seemed to have been fought to a draw.With the Callais decision, Democrats were on their heels again. Then, barely a week later, the Supreme Court of Virginia struck down a map that could have added four Democratic House seats. After those twin court decisions, a Democratic House—let alone a blue wave—looks far less certain.Beyond the short-term political implications of the reshuffled political maps are also systemic, longer-term ones. Not all that long ago, Democrats were fighting to ban partisan gerrymandering, which mainstream Republicans rejected.The tradition Democrats were trying to protect was only redistricting after the decennial census, in order to ensure accurate representation rather than partisan advantage. The principle they were defending was basic, and central to an American democracy: one citizen, one vote. What changes when that is no longer the guiding ideal?This week on Radio Atlantic, our staff writer Russell Berman, wh