fuels

Imagine if Sunday’s World Cup final were played under rules that blatantly favored one side over the other. Let’s say Argentina was spotted four goals against Spain.

Spain could, conceivably, overcome that 4-0 deficit. But it would be awfully hard and something of a miracle if the Spanish team prevailed.

Fans the world over would be rightly outraged. Why bother holding the tournament? What’s the point if one team is saddled with near-insurmountable odds?

Increasingly, that’s what elections for the House of Representatives look like.

As recently as the late 1990s, around 4 in 10 congressional districts were considered competitive, meaning Democratic and Republican candidates each had a plausible shot at winning. Today, per the nonpartisan handicappers at the Cook Political Report, only 18 of 435 House districts are considered toss-ups.

Another 20 districts are rated as either leaning Democratic or Republican, meaning candidates from one party or the other enjoy a noteworthy advantage, but aren’t necessarily a lock to win in November.

In sum, that means fewer than a tenth of all House seats are even somewhat competitive.

That’s hardly an accident, as lawmakers have increasingly manipulated the election process to suit themselves, rejiggering congressional districts to sideline voters and boost their political parties.

It’s undemocratic, and it stinks.

Stifling competition, rewarding extremes

“Every voter has a stake in making sure that these elections are fair and that the process is transparent,” said Rep. Jeff Hurd, a Republican who represents a large, mostly rural swath of western and southern Colorado. “Gerrymandering undermines representative democracy … by preventing voters and communities from having cohesive representation.

“It unfortunately rewards political extremes,” he went on. “It reduces competition and contributes to the polarization and dysfunction that prevents Congress from effectively addressing the issues that our constituents care about.”

Hurd is a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan group of 44 House members dedicated to working through their ideological and political differences to — lordy! — try to get stuff done.

Recently, to mark Independence Day, the caucus announced a framework for legislation aimed at bringing competition back to many congressional races, in part by limiting the redrawing of political maps to once every 10 years, following the census. Among other reforms, the bipartisan group also called for establishing a uniform, national standard requiring that congressional districts be drawn “using clear, objective criteria while rejecting partisan advantage and incumbent protection as legitimate goals.”

The effort is, of course, too late for this election. The hope is Congress will enact the changes in time for the next scheduled round of redistricting, which is due to take place after the 2030 census. The rules would be in place starting in 2032.

The chances of passage are not strong. As Hurd noted: “Any reform that asks politicians to give up political leverage is going to be challenging.” But if ever there was a time for a badly needed systemic fix, it’s now.

A race to the bottom

Gerrymandering has been around for more than 200 years. The term derives from the efforts of Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry to skew state Senate races in the election of 1812. The portmanteau, which appeared in the Boston Gazette, described one politically engineered, misshapen district that resembled a salamander.

The practice reached new heights of creativity (or deviousness, depending on your perspective) in the modern age, when ever-more sophisticated computers allowed for ever-finer slicing and dicing of the electorate.

In 2019, the Supreme Court effectively greenlighted the practice in a 5-4 decision by the conservative majority, decreeing that partisan gerrymandering was beyond the purview of federal courts. In other words, have at it! And lawmakers did.

But this last year, in particular, has broken new, insidious ground.

Pressured by President Trump — who fears losing the GOP’s whisper-thin House majority — lawmakers in Texas tore up their political map mid-decade and redrew the state’s congressional districts in hopes of nabbing five additional seats this November. California responded in kind, with passage of Proposition 50, a measure that shelved the work of a nonpartisan redistricting commission in favor of a map aimed at handing Democrats five additional seats.

More than half a dozen other states — most of them Republican-run — have jumped into the fight, gerrymandering their congressional districts to gain a partisan edge. Lawmakers in several Democratic-run states are now looking at the prospect of retaliatory gerrymandering ahead of the 2028 election.

There’s not much upside to all this self-dealing — if, that is, you care about political competition and allowing the electorate a genuine say. But all that manipulation and maneuvering has, at least, made voters much more aware of the once-obscure practice of congressional line drawing. And that offers reformers a flicker of hope.

One ally, improbable though it may seem, is Paul Mitchell. He’s the Sacramento political guru who drew the gerrymandered map that California voters approved with passage of Proposition 50. (California, he said, was left no choice but to respond after Texas made its move.)

Mitchell said he has long favored a national redistricting standard that would apply to all 50 states and put the much-abused process on an even footing. “I really believe that redistricting should … serve the public, not serve the politicians,” Mitchell said.

Still looking on that bright side, he suggested perhaps the current redistricting war will prove so odious and have “done so much harm” that combatants will reach a point where they “put down [their] arms and embrace a kind of nonpartisan, non-politicized, public-oriented redistricting.”

It seems far-fetched. But miracles do happen.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Californians rallied to save the coast 50 years ago. Trump is spoiling the celebration
The deep dive: On birthright citizenship, the Supreme Court originalists split on history and Trump
The L.A. Times Special: Inside the states’ case to block the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger: ‘Each side is taking risks’

Until next time,
mzb
—
Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

As primary voters head to the polls Tuesday to determine which candidates will face off in November to become California’s governor and Los Angeles’ mayor, both races are wide open, with a new crop of candidates challenging the Democratic status quo.

For Democrats, little clear consensus has emerged so far on who should lead the city and state into the future.

In California’s crowded gubernatorial race, Democrats have struggled in recent months to settle on a candidate to succeed term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom.

After former Rep. Eric Swalwell suspended his campaign in April amid allegations of sexual misconduct, Xavier Becerra, a former Biden cabinet member, inched ahead by positioning himself as the safe, experienced Democratic candidate. Another Democrat, billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer, and Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator, trail close behind.

In L.A., experience seems to be as much a liability as an advantage.

Mayor Karen Bass finds herself in the extraordinary position, as an incumbent, of fighting to make the runoff as she is assailed from the left and the right. The latest UC Berkeley-L.A. Times poll shows Bass leading with just 26% of the vote, one point ahead of City Councilmember Nithya Raman, a wonkish Democratic socialist, and four points ahead of Republican Spencer Pratt, a former reality TV star.

“There’s a clear sense of frustration with the Democratic Party,” said Sara Sadhwani, a professor of politics at Pomona College. The reason a wave of conservative outsiders like Pratt and Hilton are doing so well in such a solidly liberal city and state, Sadhwani said, is that they’re more willing to spell out the challenges that L.A. and California face.

“Democrats tend to be very concerned about not upsetting one coalition or another, so it’s politics as usual with many of the Democratic candidates,” Sadhwani said. “Spencer Pratt has blown a hole in that by just naming the problems that everyday residents and voters are seeing and feeling on the ground.”

On homelessness, many Angelenos are frustrated Bass hasn’t significantly moved the needle.

“We can point to facts and figures that might suggest that things have changed,” Sadhwani said. “But when you walk down the streets of Los Angeles, it doesn’t feel like it, so she hasn’t passed the field test. That’s the problem.”

A growing segment of Angelenos also chafe at the city’s high cost of living. And many are angry about the Bass administration’s lack of preparation and response to the 2025 Palisades fire.

“The Democrats have to account for those challenges,” Sadhwani said. “They have been in power for all of this time.”

California, of course, remains a Democratic stronghold, and polls show state voters are overwhelmingly opposed to President Trump. His second-term agenda — including a sweeping immigration crackdown, tariffs and the war in Iran — only seems to have cemented California’s status as a resistance state.

But after so many years of Democratic dominance, in Sacramento and at Los Angeles City Hall, leaders have to answer for voter frustrations.

The top two vote-getters in California’s nonpartisan primaries will advance to theNovember runoff, unless one candidate manages to pick up more than 50% of the vote.

Republicans have turned out at higher rates than Democrats in early voting. Paul Mitchell, vice president of the Sacramento-based bipartisan firm Political Data Inc., said that older Democrats who reliably turn in their ballots were slower to vote this year, likely because two Republicans were on the gubernatorial ballot and the Democratic field was fractured.

“That has caused them to dive into a lot more strategic voting,” Mitchell said, noting many seemed to be waiting to cast their ballots for the Democrat who looks to have the best chance of moving on to November.

For the GOP, getting a candidate on the November ballot for governor means more than just demonstrating Republicans are players in California. A GOP candidate would bring out more Republicans to vote in the general election, raising the party’s prospects of winning down-ballot races and passing a GOP-led ballot initiative on voter ID.

For Democrats, the midterm races offer the party its first major chance to chart a new path for the future.

As polls show Trump cratering in popularity, Democrats in California and beyond are struggling a year and a half after Kamala Harris’ bruising 2024 defeat to agree on what went wrong.

The Democratic National Committee’s long-awaited autopsy of that election — which said Harris “wrote off rural America,” wrongly assumed identity politics would win over voters of color and failed to develop “defined or consistent” strategy against Trump — has only generated more hand-wringing.

“There is not a clear vision, there is not a clear policy agenda, and the Donald Trump presidency upended the policy world as we knew it,” Sadhwani said. “It’s unclear how any Democrat, including any of the individuals in these two races, is going to navigate the waters into the future. One thing is for certain: We aren’t going back. So, which of these candidates is going to lead us into an uncertain future?”

Referendum on Bass

In L.A., the election is a referendum on Bass, who pledged in 2022 to solve homelessness, cut crime and make the city more affordable.

“How has L.A. changed in four years?” said Christian Grose, a professor of political science and public policy at USC. “The Bass campaign is saying it has changed for the better and she still needs more time. All the other candidates, from very different perspectives, are saying that it’s much worse than it was four years ago, and it’s time for new leadership.”

Bass told The Times she plans to win in November by demonstrating her administration’s progress in clearing homeless encampments and accelerating the building of affordable housing. She has also noted that data shows homicides in the city are at their lowest since 1966.

Challenging Bass from the left is Raman, who was elected in 2020 as the first DSA-backed L.A. City Council member. Pitching herself as the viable progressive in the race, Raman has accused Bass of not doing enough to make the city affordable and critiqued Bass’ spending on Inside Safe, her program to move unhoused people into stable housing. Although Raman presents herself as an outsider, she is a former Bass ally who has chaired the council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee for more than three years.

“She’s absolutely a part of the establishment,” Sadhwani said. “She’s been in City Hall longer than Karen Bass.”

As Raman tacked to the center during the campaign to appeal to more moderates and distanced herself from past calls to defund the police, she alienated some DSA members who complained they didn’t know what she stood for. Her three fellow DSA City Council members endorsed Bass.

Pratt is challenging Bass and the entire Democratic status quo.

A former star of “The Hills” who lost his home in the Palisades fire, he has surprised many political observers with his success assailing the city’s handling of the 2025 firestorms. He has called unhoused people drug-addled “zombies” and argued that L.A.’s housing crisis requires heavy-handed policing.

Pratt has raised vastly more campaign contributions than Bass and Raman. He has also generated national online buzz by waging an aggressive social media campaign and inspiring supporters to post a stream of viral AI election campaign ads.

Still, most political experts agree that Bass has the most viable path to victory, starting with a solid base of Black voters and a large share of Latino voters, plus support from powerful unions.

“Under normal circumstances, or at least under historic circumstances, that would be plenty to get her over the finish line,“ said Jim Newton, executive director of UCLA Blueprint magazine and a former political journalist for The Times. “What’s problematic for her is that there are people who are angry with her.”

A reset in California

Newsom has emerged in recent years as the national face of Democratic resistance to Trump, bolstering California’s status through a barrage of lawsuits and all-caps trolling against Trump.

Whatever candidate replaces Newsom, things are going to be different.

The emerging front-runner, Becerra, is a safe-bet career politician who has served as California attorney general and U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services. Asked recently why he had climbed in the polls, Bercerra said he thought voters wanted experience, not “glitz and sizzle.”

He has pledged to issue executive orders declaring California’s housing shortage a state of emergency and directing state agencies to maintain coverage for every Californian affected by federal or Medi-Cal cuts. He also touts his record, as the state’s attorney general, of suing Trump 122 times.

Steyer, a hedge-fund billionaire, calls himself “the most progressive candidate on the ballot.” He has pledged to build one million affordable homes, make the wealthy pay more taxes, and defend the environment — stances that are certain to unsettle Sacramento lobbyists and test the limits of California’s progressivism. But his past investments in coal plants and ICE prisons raise questions for some voters.

“His wealth is in one way his Achilles heel in the election,” Grose said. “Voters think of him as a billionaire more than progressive.”

Republicans seem to have rallied around Hilton — a British immigrant and former top strategist forconservative prime minister David Cameron — who has secured Trump’s backing and is campaigning on the message that California is a failed state in need of radical reform.

Hilton has pledged to cut government spending, make housing more affordable and bring gas prices down. But to achieve some of his goals he would scale back public services and environmental regulations and ramp up domestic production of oil and natural gas — strategies that many Californians might hesitate to get behind.

Whichever candidates make it to the runoff, the California Democratic Party will face questions about its strategy and vision. Less than two months ago, the party chair had urged Becerra to drop out of the race to make way for Swalwell.

“Clearly, the party itself has lost its way in California,” Sadhwani said. “I would not be surprised if the California Democratic Party looks for new leadership after this election.”

Can a Republican win?

Because the top two spots in each contest are up for grabs, elections experts warn that the vote results may not be known for days.

If Republicans make it to the runoff, they face steep odds of being elected in November in a state where Democratic registered voters outnumber Republicans by more than 20 percentage points.

Rob Stutzman, a GOP strategist, said neither Hilton nor Pratt was likely to win. But if they made the runoff they could have a huge impact on the political environment by advancing “grievance issues that really put up a spotlight on what I call the blue state incompetence.”

Of all the candidates, Mitchell said, Pratt as an outsider adept at Instagram and TikTok has the greatest opportunity to create a new surge electorate. But he’s also going after the hardest voters to get to turn out: disaffected voters who are upset at the system.

Pratt had more retweets and viral videos than any other candidate, Mitchell said. “But that doesn’t buy him the vote of the disaffected DoorDash driver who believes that the system is broken, and who hasn’t voted in the last five elections.”

If Republicans don’t make it past the primary, Mitchell said, Democrats would likely hit the reset button.

“Pratt running has kind of obfuscated the differences between Raman and Bass,” Mitchell said. “It’s like a WWE match versus a chess match. I think Raman versus Bass would be more of a strategic and nuanced election than Spencer Pratt trying to hit Karen Bass over the head with a chair.”

May 15 (UPI) — CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s visit to Havana this week opened a new political chapter inside and outside Cuba, with analysts and opposition figures interpreting the meeting as a sign of direct pressure from Washington on a regime battered by massive blackouts, fuel shortages and an increasingly deep economic crisis.

The trip marked an unusual development in bilateral relations. The Cuban government confirmed that a U.S. delegation led by Ratcliffe met with his counterpart Thursday at Cuba’s Interior Ministry.

Washington had requested the meeting, which was approved by “the leadership of the Revolution,” according to the state-run newspaper Granma.

The CIA released photos of the meeting — “the most significant milestone so far in the two months of opaque negotiations taking place between Washington and Havana,” Spanish newspaper El País reported.

In another twist, according to reports by CBS News, USA Today and NBC News, a U.S. Justice Department official said the United States is considering formally charging former Cuban President Raul Castro over a 30-year-old incident in which the Cuban government shot down two aircraft operated by Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue.

The Ratcliffe visit, which lasted a brief time, was not announced in advance. He him Air Force plane flew from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland and returned hours later.

For decades, the Cuban government systematically accused opposition figures, independent journalists and dissidents of acting as agents or collaborators of the CIA. However, it was the regime itself that officially announced the meeting with agency director.

“The Cuban government announced the CIA visit first. For Cubans, that means important things are happening or about to happen,” Sebastián Arcos, acting director of the Institute for Cuban Studies, told UPI.

“This increases expectations and anxiety inside and outside the island.”

Energy has become the central focus of Cuba’s crisis. Ratcliffe arrived on the island precisely as Cuba declared a total energy collapse, formally running out of diesel fuel because of the U.S. naval blockade, while multiple technical failures at thermoelectric plants have left millions of people without electricity for up to 22 hours a day.

According to posts shared by activists and users on Facebook, protests have spread across the Cuban capital for four consecutive nights, while reports of internet outages in areas where gatherings have taken place have increased, Diario de Cuba reported.

Professor Jorge Piñón, director of the Latin America and Caribbean Energy Program at the University of Texas’ Energy Institute, said the visit by the CIA chief to Cuban territory “puts on the table what the rules of the game are from the point of view of the United States,” amid a crisis he described as “hour zero” for Cuba’s energy system.

Piñón told UPI that Cuba has practically exhausted its fuel reserves at storage facilities, ports and refineries, while thermoelectric plants operate on the verge of technical collapse.

The consequences extend far beyond the lack of electricity.

Piñón warned that the crisis affects ground transportation, water and food distribution, agriculture and even humanitarian operations by religious organizations that lack diesel to transport aid.

The deterioration of the electrical system also stems from structural problems accumulated over decades. Cuba depends on thermoelectric plants more than 40 years old, many adapted to burn extra-heavy domestically produced oil with high levels of sulfur and contaminating metals.

According to Piñón, that fuel accelerates the deterioration of already obsolete equipment, generating a “vicious cycle” of temporary repairs and new breakdowns.

He said the island produces about 40,000 barrels a day of heavy crude, but needs about 100,000 barrels a day to cover its energy demand, leaving a critical deficit of refined fuels mainly intended for transportation.

At the same time, Professor Raúl Rodríguez, director of the Center for Hemispheric and United States Studies at the University of Havana, described a society marked by daily exhaustion, uncertainty and the progressive deterioration of living conditions.

He told UPI that prolonged blackouts affect food preservation, access to drinking water and hospital operations.

The crisis also has deep economic consequences. Tourism, one of Cuba’s main sources of foreign currency, operates at less than 50% of capacity, affecting employment and the flow of resources into the country.

Rodríguez estimated that about 300,000 workers linked to the tourism sector face direct impacts from the economic slowdown.

Additional problems include health and environmental issues stemming from the lack of fuel for fumigation, garbage collection and basic urban services. The academic warned of growing risks of mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue and chikungunya.

Despite intensifying social unrest, the experts agreed that the crisis will not necessarily lead to an immediate political change.

Rodríguez argued that protests over blackouts and shortages “do not constitute, by themselves, a trigger capable of provoking regime change,” due to the absence of an organized political alternative with social legitimacy.

Piñón, meanwhile, said that although signs of social exhaustion exist, the country currently lacks leadership capable of channeling a political transition or with enough authority to organize a possible post-crisis scenario.

According to press reports, the U.S. demands delivered directly by the CIA director focus on an ultimatum conditioned on deep and immediate structural changes.

Washington is demanding that the Cuban government carry out political reforms toward democratization, release all political prisoners and fully open the economy to the private sector.

“From the information that has emerged, the CIA director traveled to Cuba to deliver an ultimatum: either you move, or the United States will,” the Institute for Cuban Studies’ Arcos said.

The reaction of Miguel Díaz-Canel’s government has reflected pragmatism forced by extreme economic suffocation and the collapse of basic services on the island.

Although Havana agreed to receive the CIA delegation to avoid a violent social outcome, it formally maintains its rhetoric defending national sovereignty, rejecting political conditions that threaten the socialist system.

Cuban officials used the meeting to present evidence that the island does not represent a threat to U.S. security, demanding in return its removal from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and an end to the naval blockade preventing fuel shipments from reaching the island.

Describing the country’s daily deterioration, Cuban writer Leonardo Padura recently portrayed Cuba as a nation where old social protections have collapsed, while the political structure remains intact.

In an essay published on the website La Carta de las Ideas, Padura recalled that July 2021 protests represented an unprecedented social explosion on an island historically marked by strong surveillance and state control mechanisms.

The government response, he wrote, was a severe “order to fight” accompanied by exemplary judicial proceedings aimed not only at punishing, but also at discouraging future public expressions of dissent.

Padura said that precedent helps explain why, despite economic and social conditions now being even worse than in 2021, street demonstrations have been more limited than many outside Cuba expected.

Another expert thinks the United States will dominate as Cuba sinks into crisis.

“The CIA currently has the upper hand. Without the CIA, [President Donald] Trump can do nothing, and [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio knows nothing because he has never even been to Cuba,” Lillian Guerra, professor of Cuban and Caribbean history and director of the Cuba Program at the University of Florida, told UPI.

Guerra argued that the agency holds a dominant position over the Cuban state because of its understanding of the regime’s “theater and discourse of lies and subterfuge” amid the crisis.

Guerra said “nobody is buying” the government’s official explanations anymore and warned that Cuban authorities “are running out of time” as public frustration grows across the island.

She added that the meeting shows Washington is negotiating with Cuba’s “real leaders” linked to the Ministry of the Interior, a structure she described as more powerful than the Revolutionary Armed Forces and primarily focused on preserving political control.

ATLANTA — Same fight. New generation.

That’s the mantra of a multiracial group of civil rights leaders and activists organizing opposition to a mostly white conservative alliance dismantling the Voting Rights Act and political districts that allowed Black and other nonwhite voters to choose more of their elected leaders for the last half-century.

“We have to respond as quickly as possible,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in an interview. “The real question,” Johnson told the Associated Press, “is how do we as a country really address the effort to shrink us backwards into a 1950s reality?”

Johnson’s 117-year-old association, which was at the forefront of legal and legislative fights for Black political rights in the 20th century, is among scores of groups coming together Saturday in Alabama for a rally and tribute to the Civil Rights Movement that helped bring about the 1965 Voting Rights Act. They plan events in Selma, where voting rights advocates were attacked by white law enforcement officers on Bloody Sunday, and Montgomery, where a rescheduled march concluded two weeks later.

Unlike 61 years ago, the Alabama events are not the pinnacle of a protracted movement. Instead, civil rights activists hope they serve as a catalyst for a renewed crusade after the U.S. Supreme Court, two weeks ago, further weakened the VRA by no longer allowing race to be considered in how congressional and other districts are drawn.

They acknowledge difficulty in countering a white-dominated conservative network entrenched in the White House, Capitol Hill, federal courts and many state legislatures of the Old Confederacy, where a majority of Black Americans still live.

The VRA “was the foundational nucleus of the Civil Rights Movement,” said Jared Evans of the Louisiana-based Power Coalition for Equity and Justice. “They’ve taken that from us,” he said, with the recent Louisiana v. Callais decision on congressional districts and the earlier Shelby v. Holder decision in 2013 that rolled back federal oversight of election procedures in states and localities with a history of discrimination.

Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, who is senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, said from his pulpit that the result is “Jim Crow in new clothes.”

Warnock pointed to King and the last voting rights movement. “We need political power. We need economic power. We need personal power,” he said, assuring parishioners that “your adversaries know that your voice matters” because they’re “bending over backwards” to diminish it.

Evans reached further back into history to say what must happen next.

“Our response must be and will be a second Reconstruction period,” Evans said.

Some Democrats want an answer from Congress

The ultimate goal, organizers said, is to win more elections, sway policy fights and protect diverse political representation at all levels.

U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, a Black lawmaker who represents Selma, Alabama, said an immediate priority is to “reform and reintroduce” Democrats’ flagship voting bill, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act.

Sewell, whose seat ultimately could be threatened under redistricting, said Democrats want to “completely” eliminate partisan gerrymandering.

She also said the legislation would “bring back pre-clearance,” the requirement for certain federal approvals that the court struck down in Shelby.

“We need to come up with a modern-day formula for showing just how egregious the behavior of these state actors is,” Sewell said.

The Supreme Court ruled in Callais that states do not have to draw majority nonwhite districts under the Voting Rights Act and, in fact, should not consider race at all when drawing boundaries. By arguing that the law’s remedies to combat discrimination had themselves become racist, the decision allows states to redraw heavily Black districts that have historically elected Democrats while arguing that the designs are based on party interests, not race.

President Trump praised the decision as “a BIG WIN for Equal Protection under the Law, as it returns the Voting Rights Act to its Original Intent, which was to protect against intentional Racial Discrimination.”

Groups mobilized for redistricting sessions

Many of the same groups who’ll be in Alabama on Saturday have already gone to Southern statehouses, where white Republican lawmakers moved swiftly to redraw congressional districts after Callais.

Alabama and Louisiana lawmakers reverted to a single majority-Black district, each scrapping a second district that had been ordered by lower federal courts under now-reversed VRA interpretations. Tennessee lawmakers gutted a majority Black district by splitting greater Memphis into three different sprawling districts — itself an obvious racial gerrymander the court had previously forbidden, Evans said.

Anticipating the Callais outcome, Florida and Texas proceeded with redistricting before it came down. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a term-limited Republican, has called a June session to redraw congressional lines for the 2028 cycle. Mississippi and South Carolina have delayed the matter for now.

South Carolina state Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey was among the few white Republicans who pushed back against GOP redistricting plans. He said that not even pressure from Trump could sell him on disenfranchising Black South Carolinians instead of doing what’s best for his state.

Other white conservatives are still talking openly about ousting Reps. Jim Clyburn and Bennie Thompson, the only Black U.S. House members from South Carolina and Mississippi, respectively.

Evans, the Louisiana activist, predicted the fight ahead won’t just be about congressional representation.

“Look for them to go after state house and state senate seats — and then it will be the local level,” he said, adding that “it’s going to be an entire erasure of Black representation.”

The issue is more than a partisan Washington fight

Heavily minority districts drawn under the VRA before Callais nearly always elect Democrats. Black Americans have overwhelmingly aligned with the party since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, sparking a decades-long migration of most white Southern politicians to the Republicans. Latino and Hispanic voters still lean Democratic in most places as well.

The immediate fight shapes the midterm campaign scramble for control of the U.S. House during the final years of Trump’s presidency. Trump initially pushed Republican-run states to redistrict to protect the party’s fragile House majority.

But Johnson, the NAACP leader, said all voters should see more than partisan warfare or a regional battle over race.

Beyond party allegiance, Johnson argued, white conservatives want to curtail a range of rights “depending on how you pray, depending on who you love,” while also pushing economic policies that punish workers across racial and ethnic lines. From legislation to the confirmation of federal judges who decide constitutional questions, those policy outcomes start with election results.

“It’s not a Black problem,” Johnson said. “That’s an American problem.”

There is no singular movement or leader yet

Evans, Johnson and others acknowledged the complexity in harnessing disparate organizations and galvanizing voters on issues like redistricting and gerrymandering. But they insist the brazen nature of Republicans’ course has spurred engagement.

Johnson said he was on an organizing call in Mississippi this week that had 8,000 participants. Evans pointed to packed hallways in the state Capitols in Baton Rouge and Nashville, respectively.

The NAACP and allies have challenged new maps in multiple states, despite Callais. Many groups want to spur midterm turnout among Black voters, and others are disenchanted with white conservatives’ maneuvers in racially diverse places.

Johnson stressed the need for perseverance.

The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was seismic, with a unanimous court declaring segregated public schools unconstitutional and reversing 19th-century precedents denying Black Americans’ fundamental rights.

But it took 17 years — and many more court battles — for it to be implemented in most Southern school districts. Fights over mandated student busing continued beyond the South. It was a decade after Brown before Congress and Johnson enacted the movement’s seminal laws.

There’s no clear leader of a modern movement.

Johnson said it’s worth remembering that even with King at the helm before his assassination, “there was tension around strategy” in the 1950s and 1960s.

But even “through that tension, through many episodes, we were able to get directly in the right place.”

Barrow and Brown write for the Associated Press.