House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries says, despite Republican gains with redistricting, Democrats will win back the House of Representatives in November.
“Republicans have concluded that they need to cheat to win,” said Jeffries on Capitol Hill Wednesday.
“We’re going to continue full steam ahead, period, full stop, that’s just the reality of the situation. And Republicans have the narrowest majority of any party since 1930. They are not going to be able to rig the midterm elections, period, full stop.”
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling weakening federal Voting Rights Act protections for minorities has prompted Republicans in several Southern states to try to eliminate House districts with large minority populations that have elected Democrats.
Tennessee and Alabama have already acted to implement different House maps that could help Republicans win an additional seat. A similar effort fizzled Tuesday in the South Carolina Senate.
The redistricting efforts to undo minority districts are the latest in a 10-month-long national redistricting battle that already has involved about one-third of the states.
It gained steam when President Donald Trump urged Texas Republicans last year to redraw House districts in an attempt to win more seats in the midterm elections. Democrats in California responded with their own new districts. Numerous Republican states have redistricted since then.
Republicans think they could gain as many as 15 seats so far from new House maps in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Tennessee and Alabama. Democrats, meanwhile, think they could gain six seats from new maps in California and Utah.
The Virginia Supreme Court last week struck down a redistricting effort that could have yielded four more winnable seats for Democrats.
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