Jeffries vows to fight back as GOP pushes on redistricting

WASHINGTON — Hakeem Jeffries is warning that "the ghost of the Confederacy’ has afflicted the U.S. Supreme Court majority and is "invading and haunting the nation."

The House minority leader from Brooklyn says the current wave of Republican gerrymandering in Southern states is an unprecedented assault on Black representation, "the likes of which we have not seen since the Jim Crow era."

The past two weeks have delivered a jolt for Jeffries and his fellow Democrats, with legal setbacks that look likely to tilt the election map toward Republicans.

But Jeffries, the first Black leader of a congressional party caucus, is talking tough and vowing that Democrats will take control of the U.S. House this fall — a win that would position Jeffries to become the first Black speaker of the House.

"We’re going to win in November, and then we're going to crush their soul as it relates to the extremism that they are trying to unleash on the American people," Jeffries said this week at a Capitol news conference.

Republicans are looking stronger after the Supreme Court ruled Louisiana's election map to be "an unconstitutional racial gerrymander." That set off a wave of redistricting in the South that will increase the number of Republican-favored House seats this fall — at least half a dozen of which are now held by Black Democrats.

Enough seats, perhaps, to dampen Democrats' confidence after big wins last November and amid anticipation that President Donald Trump’s falling poll numbers and other issues will enable them to ride into the House majority in November.

But longtime allies and friends say Jeffries is stepping up to the challenge. They say Jeffries has emerged noticeably more combative, attacking the moves to reshape congressional districts to benefit Republican candidates.

"No question," said Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, a potential target of Republican redistricting efforts in his state. "He’s seeing an aggressive Republican leadership, from the White House on down, take the guardrails off in terms of rules."

"So, he has to take the gloves off," Thompson said.

Among Jeffries' sharpest lines of attack is to cast Republicans — including some members of the Supreme Court — as seeking to undo voting rights victories and being willing to cheat at doing so.

"He's seen [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer lambasted for playing nice with Republicans," says Donald Nieman, a history professor at Binghamton University, Jeffries’ alma mater. "He knows that the Democratic base wants a fighter."

'Period of confrontation'

Jeffries, a lawyer, rose through the party's ranks and was elected by colleagues as the top House Democrat in 2022. Throughout, he has positioned himself as a defender of minority voting power.

But in both New York and Washington, there has always been chirping criticism of Jeffries by some in his party’s far left or progressive or socialist wings. Much of this has cast him as too mainstream, too centrist, too pragmatic, too focused on winning over moderate voters, rather than boldly pushing for transformative policy.

Some of that began to wane during last year’s record-setting government shutdown. That battle provided Jeffries with daily news conferences and a national stage on which to verbally spar with Trump and Republican leaders and more fully emerge from the shadow of his predecessor as party leader, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

"He has led a fractured minority through a period of confrontation with no compromise allowed by the opposition," veteran New York Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf said.

But a big question has remained as to whether Jeffries can lead House Democrats to the majority this November. 

Republicans control the 435-seat House by just a few seats, and a net swing of two seats could change the majority. That’s a historically narrow margin, and the political headwinds entering this year, including the shaky economy, soaring prices and an unpopular war, had continued to lean heavily toward Democrats flipping the majority.

But then came the Supreme Court’s decision last month tossing out a gerrymandered Louisiana congressional district held by a Democrat and limiting the scope of the Voting Rights Act. Then, another blow was delivered on May 8  by the Virginia Supreme Court’s rejection of a voter-approved plan to redraw the state’s congressional maps to benefit Democrats. 

Having already started in Texas and other states, Republicans in Louisiana, Tennessee and Alabama are moving to carve out new congressional districts that could favor their candidates, with South Carolina and Mississippi considering doing the same. Already, six congressional districts drawn to ensure minority representation have been wiped out, ahead of the November midterms.

"The past two weeks have seen a flurry of redistricting across the South that has upended the battle for the House, put Republicans in their strongest position in months, and could significantly reduce Black representation in Congress for years to come," said Jacob Rubashkin, deputy editor of the independent political handicapper Inside Elections. 

'Forceful response'

Even with all this, Jeffries at his news conference was depicting a Democratic takeover of the House in this fall’s elections as a given. He described that as just the first battle in a war that will extend to the 2028 presidential election year.

He went on to talk about how New York State and six other blue states will be unleashing Democratic redistricting of their own before 2028 in "a decisive and forceful response to what they are doing in the Deep South."

Speaker Mike Johnson’s office did not return a request for comment on Jeffries' attacks. But Johnson (R-La.) told reporters Friday that he expects Republicans to increase their majority in November. "Especially after the redistricting changes to the map," Johnson said, "we feel very, very bullish about that."

Independent political analysts agree with Jeffries that the GOP gains through redistricting still might not overcome the net Democratic pickups elsewhere.

Erin Covey, of the non-partisan Cook Political Report, predicts that the likeliest scenario is Republicans netting around five to seven more seats than they otherwise would have in November because of the recent court rulings. But Democrats flipping enough seats elsewhere, she said, may still leave them with an edge.

"We still think Democrats are favored to win the House, but they’re no longer the overwhelming favorites," she said.

Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) said that the focus and worry right now  are not whether Jeffries will become speaker — which Suozzi says he supports and believes will happen.

Suozzi said that right now, "hard-fought battles that were won are now being erased" in terms of Black representation in Congress. "I think that I’ve said for a while, we can’t take winning the majority for granted."