WASHINGTON — About 100 rallygoers gathered on Capitol Hill Wednesday to hear from activists and members of Congress protesting the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to strike down federal protections for the voting power of minorities.

The justices diluted a major part of the Voting Rights Act in their 6-3 decision on April 29 that declared Louisiana’s congressional map that created a second majority Black district an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”

Kentravius Coleman, 27, of Alexandria, Louisiana, at a United for Democracy rally on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, May 20, 2026. (Video by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom) 

Speaking to the crowd Wednesday, Louisiana native and resident Kentravius Coleman said “we are not a powerless people.”

“Black people in Louisiana may feel defeated because on a random Wednesday we learned we’d have less reflective representation,” said Coleman, 27, who works as an administrative coordinator at the progressive organization United for Democracy, which hosted the rally.

“We need to demand accountability from all three branches of government. As the nation watches Louisiana, we need to focus on the aspect that there is no more business as usual,” Coleman, who lives in the state’s central city of Alexandria, added.

State legislatures across the South quickly began work to draw new congressional districts following the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais.

U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said voters are “angry.”

“When you see respected, leading Black members of Congress who win, and have enjoyed the respect of their states, redistricted out of their office by political manipulation, that gets you mad,” Whitehouse said.

U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., at a rallly on Wednesday, May 20, 2026. (Video by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

“Whatever they may gain in redistricting mischief, let’s make sure that they lose where they can’t redistrict, like in Senate races … and governor’s races,” he said.

U.S. Rep. Analilia Mejia, D-N.J., said the country is at a “crossroads” and urged rallygoers to remember Civil Rights Movement leaders.

“Let’s be good ancestors for those who will come later, who will say in a moment in which a despotic authoritarian and his cowardly lackeys attempted to revert to, frankly, pre-Civil War or Jim Crow-era level of politics, that we stood up and we stood strong and we said, ‘Oh hell no,’” said Mejia.

Louisiana is not experiencing ordinary political turbulence. We are watching democratic instability unfold in real time.

Within a matter of days, voters across this state have been forced to absorb three major disruptions at once: the dismantling of Black voting representation through the ruling in Louisiana v. Callais; the suspension of congressional primary elections already in progress; and a statewide constitutional amendment that could fundamentally reshape public education in East Baton Rouge Parish and beyond.

The timing could not be more critical. Election Day is May 16. Early voting began Saturday. Absentee ballots have already been distributed. Yet Gov. Jeff Landry’s executive order suspended Louisiana’s closed party congressional primaries after the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the state’s congressional map. 

Voters are now left in a vacuum of information, told that congressional races will still appear on their ballots, but that their votes in these contests won’t count.

That should alarm every person in this state, regardless of party affiliation.

A democracy cannot function when election rules shift after the machinery of voting has already begun moving. This creates confusion and distrust precisely when public confidence is most fragile. 

Black communities, in particular, understand the historical weight of sudden procedural changes in elections. Louisiana does not get to separate this moment from that history.

This erosion of collective representation is not limited to the ballot box. It is also manifesting in the very structure of our local institutions. 

On the May 16 ballot voters are being asked to decide on Constitutional Amendment 2, which would formally recognize the St. George Community School System with independent authority to receive state funding and raise local revenues though taxes.

When coupled with its implementing legislation, the amendment mandates the transfer of public school lands, facilities and assets from the East Baton Rouge Parish School System to the new St. George system by June 30, 2027. Reports indicate that East Baton Rouge schools could lose roughly $100 million if this separation proceeds.

This is bigger than one city, one amendment or one election cycle. This is about fragmentation: the fragmentation of voting rights, public education and, ultimately, public trust. The people most harmed by this fracturing are always the communities with the fewest resources to absorb the blow: Black families, working-class families, disabled residents and children already navigating underfunded schools.

Supporters of these measures frame them as issues of local control or administrative necessity. But language matters less than outcomes. When systems repeatedly reorganize power away from collective accountability and toward isolated control structures, inequity expands. History has shown us this repeatedly.

The most dangerous part is how normalized this chaos is becoming. Louisianans are being conditioned to accept government by disruption. Maps change overnight, elections pause midstream, public assets become bargaining chips. 

That is not healthy governance. That is democratic erosion dressed in procedural language.

The people of Louisiana deserve clarity before elections begin, not after. They deserve stable representation and public institutions designed to serve communities rather than divide them into competing islands of power. Because once citizens begin believing their vote is conditional, their schools are negotiable, and their representation is disposable, democracy itself begins to fracture.

And fractured systems rarely fail equally.

National leaders warned the Detroit NAACP of an ongoing attack on democracy during what organizers say is the largest sitdown dinner of its kind in the world Sunday.

Speakers at the 71st annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner, including U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and New York Attorney General Letitia James, said efforts to obtain Michigan ballot data, require proof of citizenship to vote and potentially weaken the Voting Rights Act present a major threat to the rights of Americans.

James received the Ida B. Wells Freedom and Justice Award, which she said she shares with Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel after Nessel pledged to deny the federal government access to Michigan’s ballots from the 2024 presidential election.

“This award’s namesake once said, ‘The way to right wrongs is to light the truth upon them, to shine light in the darkness,’” James said. “AG Nessel is the holder of that light of liberty in Michigan, just as our ancestors grabbed the torch of freedom and used it to light the way forward for all of us.”

Jeffries said the election of President Donald Trump in 2024 “was definitively a setback,” but said that “a setback is nothing more than a setup for a comeback.”

He said 2026 will be the year of the “great American comeback.”

“We’re not here to step back,” Jeffries said. “We’re here to push back at all times and ensure that this country will have a free and fair election in November.”

The Democratic leader – who was introduced by several speakers as the next speaker of the House – said that “when the gavels change hands,” Democrats will pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act “so we can end the era of voter suppression in the United States of America once and for all.”

The theme of this year’s dinner was “Liberty or Oppression – The Choice is Ours.”

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said the “choice between liberty and oppression is really one between apathy and action.”

“They don’t want Detroit to have a voice. They can’t defend their record of failure, so they want to rig the game to win. But not on my watch, not on your watch, not on our watch,” Whitmer said. “I know it’s hard to feel energetic right now, but nothing changes if we take a back seat.”

The dinner came one day after a gunman opened fire near the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, D.C., reportedly targeting Trump.

Jeffries condemned political violence and thanked law enforcement for protecting the attendees at both events.

“Here in America, we should be able to agree to disagree without ever being disagreeable with each other,” Jeffries said. “At the same time, I can assure you that we will continue to speak truth to power at all times as we navigate our way through the trials, the turbulence and the tribulations of this moment.”

James said political violence “has no place in society,” adding that she has faced threats to her own life.

But she added that she continues to “yearn and pray for a compassionate, civil, competent and inclusive government in Washington, D.C.”

The Detroit NAACP also honored civil rights activist Ruby Bridges, who was the first Black child to attend the formerly whites-only William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana in 1960.

Jeffries said “our community has always had the ability to imagine a better future here in America and then work hard to bring it about.”

James said Bridges set an example for everyone to follow.

“If a 6-year-old Ruby Bridges can find the courage to walk through an angry, screaming mob just to get to school, so can we,” James said.

The race by each party to redraw U.S. House districts in their favor could be headed for a draw after Tuesday’s big win for Democrats in Virginia, though major shifts are still possible before crucial midterm elections in November.

Virginia voters approved a constitutional amendment that clears the path for the state’s legislature, controlled by Democrats, to redraw congressional district lines to benefit Democrats in 10 of the commonwealth’s 11 U.S. House districts. 

That could net the party four new seats in Virginia, though state court cases challenging the proposal are still to be decided.

Former U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Florida Democrat who now leads the Graduate School of Political Management at The George Washington University, said the results showed a dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump and the nation’s capital in general.

“It sends a clear message to the administration, to the White House, to Washington, D.C., that they’re not happy with the status quo, with the policies that are coming out of Washington, that they want to see a change,” she said in an interview Wednesday.

After 10 months of bitter back-and-forth that began with Trump urging Texas Republicans to revise their congressional map to help gain seats in the House, neither party has netted a significant advantage.

But the tit-for-tat may have a lasting harmful effect on U.S. democracy, experts said.

If Virginia’s proposal goes into effect, Democrats would be favored in one more House district nationwide than they had been in 2024, according to the nonpartisan election research organization Ballotpedia.

Further changes, including the Florida Legislature potentially redrawing its House map and a U.S. Supreme Court decision to gut the federal Voting Rights Act’s protection of majority-Black districts in Southern states, could tilt the advantage back to the GOP. 

Republicans narrowly control the chamber now, 217-212, with one independent and five vacancies after Georgia Democrat David Scott died Wednesday. 

The president’s party typically loses House seats in midterm elections, and Trump’s sagging poll numbers and the results of special elections do not suggest anything different this year.

Good for Democrats, bad for democracy

Elected Democrats largely framed the Virginia results as a win for free and fair elections.

“Virginia voters have spoken, and tonight they pushed back against a President who claims he is ‘entitled’ to more Republican seats in Congress,” Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, wrote on X.

But the entire cycle could deepen political polarization, leading to less compromise and policymaking in Congress and ceding power to the executive branch, Erik Nisbet, the director of the Center for Communication & Public Policy at Northwestern University, said Wednesday.

“There were some quotes today from some leading Democrats about how you can’t bring a knife to a gunfight, and this is the only way to, like, save democracy, and sort of rationalizing it,” he said. “It’s still bad for democracy long term… It means that Congress, long term, is even more polarized and ineffectual.”

Mucarsel-Powell, who represented one of the country’s few competitive House districts, also said redistricting would make legislating more difficult.

“Redistricting doesn’t necessarily help the country overall,” she said. “As we continue to become more polarized, I think that having these maps being redrawn to favor one or the other party is just going to deepen the polarization. I think it makes it more difficult for members to be able to reach consensus. I’ve seen it, right? When you represent a solid red or a solid blue district, there’s really no incentive to compromise.”

Republicans sour on Virginia result

Republicans, from Trump on down, complained Wednesday that the result was unfair because it could give Democrats 91% of the U.S. House seats in a state where the party’s most recent presidential candidate gained only 52% of the vote.

In a post to his social media site Wednesday afternoon, Trump said the result was illegitimate — repeating, without evidence, his frequent assertion in elections he has lost that mail ballots were fraudulent — and called for courts to “fix” the result.

“A RIGGED ELECTION TOOK PLACE LAST NIGHT IN THE GREAT COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA!” Trump wrote. “All day long Republicans were winning, the Spirit was unbelievable, until the very end when, of course, there was a massive ‘Mail In Ballot Drop!’ Where have I heard that before — And the Democrats eked out another Crooked Victory!”

Questionable strategy

But the proposed Virginia map would only even the playing field after Trump initiated a rare mid-decade redistricting cycle last year by asking Texas officials to redraw the state’s districts. 

Texas’ new map could net Republicans five more House seats. But its creation kicked off an arms race that included California drawing five new Democratic-leaning districts, effectively neutralizing Texas’ move. 

Legislatures in Missouri and North Carolina then voluntarily redrew their maps, while an Ohio constitutional amendment and a Utah Supreme Court decision led to new district lines in those states.

Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary under Republican President George W. Bush, bemoaned the Virginia results but called them a self-inflicted wound. States should stick to redistricting once a decade after a census, he said, blasting the GOP strategy to attempt mid-decade redistricting in some states.

“The GOP will now lose net seats across the country. If you’re going to pick a fight, at least win it. The other side will always fight back,” he wrote. “All this was foreseeable and avoidable. We should not have started this fight.” 

Fleischer linked to a post he’d written in August criticizing the GOP effort in Texas as that state geared up for a vote on the new map. “Mid-census change” was not the way to win more seats in the House, he’d said.

National Democrats celebrated.

“House Democrats have crushed Donald Trump’s national gerrymandering scheme,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York wrote on social media Tuesday night. “Maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time.”

What’s next?

Two more decisions could further alter the landscape for U.S. House races before November.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments last year in a case challenging a Voting Rights Act provision that has been interpreted to require majority-Black districts in Southern states equal to their population. Louisiana is challenging a lower court ruling that threw out a map in which only one of the state’s six districts was majority-Black, though Black people make up about one-third of the state’s population.

Depending on the scope and timing of the conservative court’s ruling, several safe Democratic seats in the South could be in jeopardy.

And in Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis called the state legislature into a special session, scheduled to begin next week, to consider a redistricting effort and other issues.

‘Dummymanders’?

Florida Republicans have not fully endorsed a redistricting push, which could ultimately make some incumbents’ districts less reliably red. Gerrymandering relies on spreading a party’s voters across more districts, making some individual races more difficult, especially in a potential wave election year.

“Republicans are pushing back, saying that it’s going to actually lessen the power that they have in some of these districts,” Mucarsel-Powell said. “Because if you have (a district favoring Republicans by five points), with all the overperformance that we’ve seen, including here in the state of Florida, it’s very likely going to favor the Democrats.”

Jeffries in a Wednesday morning news conference practically dared Florida Republicans to dilute their U.S. House districts, comparing the effort to the Texas map that he said was not as Republican as they thought and calling the entire GOP effort a “dummymander” that would backfire.

“F around and find out,” Jeffries said. “If they go down the road of a DeSantis dummymander, the Florida Republicans are going to find themselves in the same situation as Texas Republicans, who are on the run right now.” 

“The Republicans are dummymandering their way into the minority before a single vote is cast,” he added. “They started this war, and we’re going to finish it.”

What are the odds the soon-to-retire Republican leaders of the state Legislature are seriously considering Gov. Tony Evers’ call to end partisan gerrymandering? 

Evers called the special session that began and ended with no action this week, asking legislators to take up a constitutional amendment to ban the practice of drawing voting maps that give a disproportionate advantage to one political party. 

Legislators didn’t exactly refuse — they’ve kicked the can down the road, adjourning temporarily until later this month. As Baylor Spears reports, Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu explained that legislators need to “gain public input in order to make an informed decision on how to proceed.” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Majority Leader Tyler August said they want to have more discussions with Evers to reach a “transparent and balanced solution that reflects the interests of all Wisconsinites.” 

Or maybe they just want to run out the clock, do nothing and then blame the governor for their failure to act. 

After all, President Donald Trump, the Republicans’ national leader, has been strong-arming GOP legislators in red states to hold extraordinary mid-decade redistricting sessions to draw him some extra seats to shore up an unpopular Republican House majority. Wisconsin Republicans would be swimming against the tide if they made their last act in office a good-government effort to lock in fair maps. 

Giving up power is not exactly on brand for Wisconsin Republicans. These are the same legislators who drew themselves into the most partisan gerrymandered districts in the country back in 2010. When it came time to draw another round of maps after the 2020 census, they gathered copious public input, holding hearings in which an overwhelming majority of voters told them that they wanted fair maps, and then ignored the public and gerrymandered the maps again. Only after the state Supreme Court declared those maps unconstitutional did they relent and accept 50/50 maps that lean slightly toward Republicans majorities.

Now they’re quitting in droves rather than work in a Legislature where they’ve lost the disproportionate power they conferred on themselves through gerrymandering.

Still, staring down the possibility of Democratic trifecta control of government, it’s possible Republicans could take the long view and try to protect their 50/50 stake before the other party has a shot at redrawing the districts. 

Then again, Republicans have shown very little appetite for that kind of sensible, good-government approach. As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported this week, Republican legislative leaders are paying private attorneys $550 per hour in taxpayer money to defend their practice of hiring private attorneys at the taxpayers’ expense.

This freewheeling expenditure of your tax dollars follows a lawsuit filed by the public interest law firm Law Forward in February challenging the use of expensive private attorneys by GOP leaders. That practice started in the lame duck session after Evers was first elected, when Republican legislative leaders began frantically grabbing powers from the new Democratic administration. 

“It’s all about an unwillingness to exist within the bounds of checks and balances,” says Jeff Mandell of Law Forward. “It smacks of a sense that the Legislature, and particularly its leadership, is beyond accountability.”

That kind of arrogance is on its way out, along with the legislative leaders who, for more than a decade, treated government as their private club, hoarding power and ignoring the will of the voters. The best way to make sure it never returns is to permanently guarantee fair maps.

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