{"id":22082,"date":"2026-04-30T14:47:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T14:47:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/mike-johnson-backs-louisiana-election-delay-urges-other-states-to-redraw-maps\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T14:47:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T14:47:16","slug":"mike-johnson-backs-louisiana-election-delay-urges-other-states-to-redraw-maps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/mike-johnson-backs-louisiana-election-delay-urges-other-states-to-redraw-maps\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Johnson backs Louisiana election delay, urges other states to redraw maps"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday he supported delaying House elections in his home state of Louisiana after the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/04\/29\/supreme-court-voting-rights-act-louisiana-00898123\" target=\"_blank\">Supreme Court invalidated<\/a> the state&#8217;s congressional map Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe governor has no choice but to suspend it,&#8221; Johnson said. &#8220;The court has ruled our map unconstitutional.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He spoke as GOP <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/LAGovJeffLandry\/status\/2049847456095928434\" target=\"_blank\">Gov. Jeff Landry announced<\/a> that Louisiana could not carry out elections under the current map and would be working &#8220;to develop a path forward.&#8221; Any new map is likely to threaten the seats of Democratic Reps. Troy Carter and Cleo Fields, who are both Black.<\/p>\n<p>The Supreme Court ruling narrowed the impact of the 1965 Voting Rights Act on the longstanding practice of requiring line-drawers to protect racial minorities&#8217; voting power.<\/p>\n<p>The exact timing of the rescheduled elections is &#8220;not my decision,\u201d Johnson added, but said &#8220;the way it was typically done\u201d was to hold an all-party &#8220;jungle&#8221; primary in November, with a runoff in December, and \u201cit looks like it may be that way again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut again, my fingerprints aren&#8217;t on it,&#8221; Johnson added. &#8220;It&#8217;s a decision of the state Legislature.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He also encouraged other states with VRA-mandated minority districts to act quickly and potentially redraw their maps before November, even though many have their election processes well underway already.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll states that have unconstitutional maps should look at that very carefully, and I think they should do it before the midterms,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday he supported delaying House elections in his home state of Louisiana after the Supreme Court invalidated the state&#8217;s congressional map Wednesday. \u201cThe governor has no choice but to suspend it,&#8221; Johnson said. &#8220;The court has ruled our map unconstitutional.\u201d He spoke as GOP Gov. Jeff Landry announced that Louisiana could [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}