{"id":22694,"date":"2026-05-14T12:02:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T12:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-dems-plot-redistricting-revenge\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T12:02:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T12:02:14","slug":"capitol-agenda-dems-plot-redistricting-revenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-dems-plot-redistricting-revenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitol agenda: Dems plot redistricting revenge"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Democrats are ready to play hardball<\/a> after a stunning series of redistricting losses that could kneecap the party\u2019s power in Congress for years to come.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’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,\u201d House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Jeffries will hold a caucus-wide meeting Thursday morning with House Administration’s top Democrat Joe Morelle to discuss next steps on the party’s election security strategy.<\/p>\n

The mid-decade map redrawing war marks a reversal from years of high-minded Democratic rhetoric that included advocating for independent redistricting commissions, campaign finance curbs and more. Democratic leaders are now openly discussing overriding those safeguards as Republicans use the courts and their control of state governments to consolidate and enhance their own party\u2019s power.<\/p>\n

Democrats\u2019 call to action comes after the Supreme Court\u2019s April decision to slash the Voting Rights Act, kicking off a GOP mad dash to crack majority Black, safe Democratic seats in the South. The Virginia Supreme Court\u2019s rejection of a map last week that would\u2019ve given Dems four new seats this year dealt another blow.<\/p>\n

Jeffries and fellow Democratic leaders laid out an ambitious plan<\/u><\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

But opportunities to redistrict in 2026 are running dry for the party, except for a potential last-ditch pick-up in Maryland, where Democrats want to eliminate Rep. Andy Harris\u2019 district even with the state\u2019s primary two weeks away and mail-in ballots already issued.<\/p>\n

Prominent Democrats are heavily pressuring state Senate President Bill Ferguson to move for a map redraw now after preventing the party from trying to draw an 8-0 map months ago, Gregory Svirnovskiy reports<\/u><\/a>. Ferguson\u2019s spokesperson Wednesday said the leader told Maryland\u2019s governor he\u2019s \u201copen to a conversation about next steps.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt this point, the Republicans are literally doing everything in their power to create all Republican congressional delegations in the South and to squeeze out every possible seat,\u201d Rep. Jamie Raskin told Blue Light News in an interview. \u201cSo if [Ferguson\u2019s] initial position was that he didn\u2019t want to be part of continuing a downward spiral, that consideration should be gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

The party\u2019s anger also translates to a growing appetite to remake the Supreme Court, which many House Democrats say is ushering in an era of \u201cJim Crow 2.0.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rep. Johnny Olszewski, who has introduced legislation to term-limit the justices, said in an interview that the VRA ruling was \u201ca straw that broke the camel’s back.\u201d And Rep. Sean Casten said there are tools to \u201ckneecap\u201d the Supreme Court that Congress has never used, such as stripping their power to review lower court rulings.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think everybody from the top of our caucus to the bottom are saying we have got to push back on them,\u201d Casten said.<\/p>\n

\u2014 SURVEY SAYS: <\/b>Separately, new results from a Blue Light News Poll show many Democratic voters want their party leaders to fight back hard \u2014 even if it means breaking up districts designed to protect the power of Black voters and other minority communities. Read the results here<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n

What else we\u2019re watching:\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u2014 SENATE GOP COOL ON SUMMER RECONCILIATION 3.0 PLAN: <\/b>Senate Republicans aren\u2019t sold yet on their House<\/u><\/a> counterparts\u2019 plan to finish a third party-line spending package before summer recess. \u201cWe\u2019re still working on reconciliation 2.0,\u201d Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Wednesday when asked if his chamber was also planning a pre-recess timeline for a third bill.<\/p>\n

\u2014 HOUSING BILL COMES TO HOUSE FLOOR: <\/b>House GOP leadership is planning to put<\/a> an amended housing bill up for a fast-track floor vote next week, despite President Donald Trump\u2019s calls for the chamber to pass the Senate\u2019s version as-is. Senior House lawmakers late Wednesday reached a bipartisan<\/a> deal and released bill text<\/a>. The final House text would maintain restrictions on Wall Street\u2019s purchase of single-family homes \u2014 a priority for Trump \u2014 but would significantly scale back the Senate bill\u2019s limitations on so-called institutional investors in the housing market.<\/p>\n

Riley Rogerson, Andrew Howard, Erin Doherty, Jordain Carney, Kelsey Brugger, Katherine Hapgood and Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democrats are ready to play hardball after a stunning series of redistricting losses that could kneecap the party\u2019s power in Congress for years to come. \u201cWe’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,\u201d […]<\/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-22694","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\/22694","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=22694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22694\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}