Redistricting battle set to escalate ahead of 2028 elections

For Americans fed up with partisan redistricting, there’s bad news on the horizon: The gerrymandering war is just heating up.

Even while the ink is still drying on the new House maps of the midterm cycle, the 2028 redistricting battle is already taking shape — and it threatens to eclipse the current map-drawing fever in both its geographic range and its potential to influence which party controls the House in the early years of the next administration.

GOP leaders are already moving on plans to draw new 2028 maps in red states across the South, which could include states that just adopted new lines for the midterms. Their campaign has been only fueled by the Supreme Court’s recent decision to bar race-based gerrymandering, which has created new pickup opportunities for Republicans in November — and again in 2028.

Democrats, meanwhile, are vowing to fight fire with fire. While they’re calling for an ultimate ban on partisan redistricting, Democrats are also vowing to adopt the practice tenaciously in the near term, framing the battle as an existential defense of America’s democratic experiment in the face of Republican efforts to “rig” elections and disenfranchise voters. 

While they had fewer opportunities for redistricting ahead of the midterms, Democrats in a host of blue states think they’ll have better chances in the 2028 cycle, and they’re already eyeing new maps with designs to maximize Democratic seats — a concept that has the full endorsement of party leaders in the Capitol.

“The challenge that is in front of us is ensuring that there is a decisive and overwhelming response in advance of 2028,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told reporters in Washington this month. “Because the Republican effort to gerrymander the national congressional map is not going to........

© The Hill