Congress
House Democrats prep for years of redistricting hardball after court losses
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.
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.”
A top pollster for President Donald Trump is pushing back on recent public polling showing Republican Mike Rogers trailing progressive Abdul El-Sayed in the marquee Michigan Senate race.
Tony Fabrizio, who is conducting polling for Rogers, says the polls released this month are over-sampling Democratic-leaning voters, specifically college-educated and Black voters, according to an internal memo obtained by Blue Light News. A Susquehanna poll released this month showed El-Sayed leading by seven points and a TIPP poll showed him leading by four points.
El-Sayed’s lead in those polls is a “fake narrative,” Fabrizio wrote. His polling for AARP — conducted alongside Democratic firm Impact Research — showed the race essentially tied.
The warning follows huge polling misses in the Democratic primaries in the Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida, which he wrote were “some of the most egregious examples of public polling failures in recent memory.” It’s also a sign that Republicans are wary of the string of bad polling numbers for Rogers in the race, which is crucial for determining control of the chamber.
Jim Lee, CEO of Susquehanna Polling and Research, told Blue Light News that the firm did not oversample any demographics. “I think their head is in the sand,” Lee said, noting in part what he said was a gap in enthusiasm between Democratic and Republican voters this cycle.
TIPP didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Fabrizio, in the memo, argued on the Susquehanna poll: “50% of the sample in this survey is college-educated – making them massively overrepresented to what they should be. We took a look at 2022 and 2024 Exit Polls and VoteCast data and, as shown below, there is no indication that the Michigan electorate will be anywhere near 50% college-educated. In fact, it is unlikely they will be even 40% college-educated.”
He also noted “a huge gap” between college-educated and non-college educated voters.
“This was the driving issue of the public polling misses for President Trump in 2016 and 2024, especially in the Upper Midwest states of Michigan and Wisconsin,” Fabrizio added. “By increasing college-educated voters by 10+ points, and thus decreasing non-college educated voters by the same, we can pretty much guarantee this poll is significantly overestimating El-Sayed’s vote share.”
President Donald Trump and hemp industry lobbyists are hoping to win a final vote on Capitol Hill next week to skirt a ban on intoxicating products — with shutdown politics as leverage.
Nine months ago, Congress cleared a bill to close a loophole created in 2018 that allowed the sale of some hemp-derived products containing types of THC colloquially known as “diet weed.” That ban is supposed to take effect in mid-November, or roughly 11 weeks, to limit overall THC levels in hemp products that can get people high — including gummies, canned drinks, pills and vapes.
But Trump and industry leaders successfully lobbied Senate leaders to add language to a government funding patch earlier this month to delay the ban until mid-December, with the administration promising instead to finalize regulations cracking down on how the products are made and sold.
Now House Republican leaders are aiming to clear that bill for Trump’s signature early next week, according to three people granted anonymity to disclose private discussions. And many GOP lawmakers are not pleased at the prospect of being rolled.
Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.Va.) told reporters last week that he expected House lawmakers would “iron out” some “sticking points” with the Senate-passed funding bill, “particularly the hemp issue,” rather than pass the legislation without changes — which appears to be GOP leadership’s current plan.
Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) was more blunt: “it is morally reprehensible to threaten a shutdown over a loophole Congress agreed to close to less than a year ago,” he said in a statement Thursday.
Yet despite fierce pushback from lawmakers warning that the intoxicating products are harming Americans, hemp industry leaders are preparing for a victory, betting members of Congress ultimately care more about swiftly passing legislation to avert a Sept. 30 government shutdown before the midterms.
“Any effort to try to shut down the government — over a one-month delay on a hemp issue — I don’t think is going to fly well with most members of Congress,” Jonathan Miller, a top lawyer for the U.S. Hemp Roundtable advocacy group, said in an interview this week.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about its plans for imposing new rules on hemp products in the coming months. But the Trump administration is expected to need more time than mid-December to finalize regulations, so hemp industry representatives are discussing a “regulatory bridge” that would impose temporary rules while continuing to avoid a full ban, according to Miller.
That could include restricting purchase to adults age 21 and older, blocking imports from China, mandating certain manufacturing practices, cracking down on copycat products that look like popular candy or potato chips and requiring transparency in product labeling.
While lawmakers have been back home over their summer break, hemp industry leaders have fanned out across the country to make their case for this plan. “The hemp industry does not have an August recess,” Christopher Lackner, head of the Hemp Beverage Alliance, said in an interview this month of the group’s work to facilitate passage of the Senate-passed funding bill.
Trump administration officials have also been telling reluctant lawmakers they will use the one-month delay to work on regulations. “The White House has committed to me that they’re committed to regulate the industry,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said in an interview this month.
Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), who fought in the Senate to retain the ban as originally intended, said White House officials have said “they don’t want another extension, and I agree with that.”
In a statement, Ricketts said that “manufactured high-THC products like gummies and drinks are putting our kids in the hospital” and need to be taken “off our shelves.”
Some supporters of the ban say the White House and industry are just employing delay tactics to get to December, when lawmakers will face another pressure campaign to delay the ban while they are motivated to avert a shutdown before leaving town for the holidays.
“What they’re really after is to try to jam this on some must-pass, end-of-the-year funding,” Budd told reporters earlier this month. “That’s really what this is about.”
Budd fought to block the delay in the Senate as part of the government funding measure, but his amendment to that end was shot down 61-32 before the chamberpassed the legislation, sending it on for House action.
Trump personally called Budd after the senator filed the amendment and talked about creating federal regulations for hemp products, according to a Senate aide granted anonymity to describe the private discussion.
Days later, Budd demanded a vote on the amendment anyway and continues to slam the hemp industry.
“It is clear that businesses that sell unregulated, intoxicating products will stop at nothing to protect their bottom line, even at the expense of children’s health and safety,” he said in a statement this week.
Besides lawmakers fighting to ban intoxicating hemp products, others are pushing alongside the White House and industry for federal regulations.
Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-W.Va.) has crafted legislation that would direct the Food and Drug Administration to create federal rules for intoxicating hemp products and wants to see mandates for third-party testing, as well as new THC limits per serving.
Griffith told reporters Thursday the “deadline push” in the Senate-passed government funding measure “is not long enough” to finalize necessary regulations.
Since state limits for THC vary widely throughout the country and the federal government has taken years to step in since the hemp loophole was created in 2018, Griffith argued it makes more sense to regulate the intoxicating products than to enact a federal ban.
“That horse is out of the barn,” he said. “What we need to do is corral it.”
Kelsey Brugger, Amanda Friedman and Rachel Shin contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump’s $400-million super PAC is taking its first steps into the general election: hosting a public event in battleground Michigan, headlined by Vice President JD Vance.
Battleground Republicans have been clamoring for Trump’s MAGA Inc. to spend in competitive races. The Michigan event is an early indicator of how the massive group might seek to use its funds to help the party keep control of Washington.
Vance will be joined in Sterling, Michigan, on Monday by GOP Senate nominee Mike Rogers, 10th District nominee Mike Bouchard Jr. and gubernatorial nominee John James, along with several other Michigan Republicans, according to an event advisory from MAGA Inc.
The GOP sees Michigan’s open seat as its best Senate pickup target this fall as Rogers faces former public health leader and progressive Abdul El-Sayed, who emerged from a grueling primary earlier this month.
“MAGA Inc. will be hosting events throughout the nation to ensure that Republicans retain control of Congress in order to finish cleaning up the mess the Biden-Harris-Pelosi-Schumer Democrats left,” said Alex Pfeiffer, spokesperson for MAGA Inc. “We’re not going back to their record inflation, open borders, and surging crime.”
MAGA Inc. is sitting on more funds than any other super PAC, and Republican donors and battleground candidates have been hoping it will unleash that money to help the party keep control of the House and Senate.
So far, the group has only spent only a few million dollars out of its massive fundraising haul, and its funds have largely gone to competitive Republican primaries. Most recently, it spent $827,000 on phone calls and text messages to boost Sen. Darline Graham (R-S.C.) in the state’s special primary.
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