Week of April 30, 2026

From the publisher’s desk

Of all the shenanigans that concern me about our democracy—and, hoo boy, there are a lot of concerning shenanigans—none worry me more than the blatantly unfair and unrepresentative gerrymandering taking place, well, all over the place.

The latest development is the Louisiana v. Callais ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority, which gutted the Voting Rights Act. The New York Times reports:

The Supreme Court’s decision to upend a key provision of the Voting Rights Act has plunged the nation into a dizzying new era of partisan conflict, most likely ushering in a forever redistricting war that could produce fewer competitive seats in Congress and further polarize American politics.

Left as probable casualties are longstanding principles of fair representation — along with American voters, who are likelier now to be shunted into hyperpartisan districts drawn in each state to benefit the party in power. A great carving could effectively dilute the power of millions, especially minority voters, and make partisan primaries more important than general elections when it comes to choosing leaders.

“We lost one of the last seatbelts of our democracy,” said Alanah Odoms, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana.

The ruling by the court’s conservative majority struck down Louisiana’s congressional map, describing it as an unconstitutional gerrymander that improperly considered race to create a majority-Black district. The ruling, Democrats argued, effectively removed one of the final guardrails that kept the most ruthlessly partisan interests at bay when it came to drawing congressional and legislative maps.

As a direct result of the ruling, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry delayed House primaries in the state. And both Democrats and Republicans are taking steps to redraw maps in various states.

Politico reported:

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is eyeing at least four states for potential new congressional maps ahead of the 2028 elections to counter an expected round of new Republican gerrymanders after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act.

“All options are on the table as we get through the 2026 election and look to the future,” Jeffries told POLITICO by phone Thursday. “As many governors have already indicated, we will be prepared to respond in states like New York, Illinois and Maryland, as well as in Colorado, in advance of the 2028 election.”

His comments come as Republicans gear up to redraw congressional maps across the South to erase Black- and Hispanic-majority districts that had previously been protected by the Voting Rights Act. Already, lawmakers in Louisiana, Georgia and Tennessee are pushing for new maps, though timing is still up in the air. …

Some Democrats in the immediate aftermath of the Callais ruling raised the possibility of diluting majority-minority districts to help draw more seats favoring Democrats—even in states like California, where the party already stands to gain up to five seats after voters approved a new congressional map last fall.

Nevada is lucky, in a way, because we’re unlikely to be a mid-decade redistricting target, for two reasons: We’re small, with only four congressional seats (three currently held by Democrats, one held by Republicans); and our executive and legislative branches are controlled by different parties. But Nevadans are still being harmed by the chaos surrounding us.

As bad as things are now, things are likely to get even worse. As Jim Newell wrote for Slate: “The political effect of the decision in Callais will be to set off a new wave of extreme partisan gerrymandering that is nearly unrestricted under federal law, while decimating the ranks of the Congressional Black Caucus. It may be too late in the 2026 cycle for this next round of cutthroat redistricting to play out in full before the midterms. But the redistricting scramble ahead of the 2028 election will make the battle we’ve seen thus far look like a skirmish.”

What can be done about this? Honestly, not much. Democracy Docket reported on a number of unsuccessful proposals introduced in Congress—largely by Democrats—to curtail gerrymandering in recent years, and concluded with this:

In light of Callais, legal experts warned that passing new voting laws would likely be futile if the Supreme Court’s conservative-appointed majority strikes them down in a similar manner to how it gutted the VRA.

Jonathan Ladd, a political scientist at Georgetown University, noted in a social media post that there are several alternative approaches to ensuring districts are representative of the voters within them.

“But none will work without Supreme Court reform,” he wrote. “No law could be more clearly authorized by constitutional text than the Voting Rights Act, which is explicitly authorized by Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment. But it doesn’t matter to this Court.”

Our representative democracy is in big trouble. Big, big trouble.

—Jimmy Boegle, publisher/executive editor