While the national mood seems to be veering away from President Donald Trump as his popularity drops, Republicans are trying to squeeze every possible advantage out of a recent Supreme Court decision.
Multiple states are still in the process of tearing up and drawing new congressional maps, or waiting on courts to have their say, creating an unprecedented amount of flux in American democracy six months before Election Day.
Candidates don’t know where to run. Lawmakers are seeing their districts carved up. Voters don’t know which district they live in.
► On Sunday, Trump issued a directive on social media for Republican-led states to capitalize on last month’s Supreme Court decision upending the Voting Rights Act and erase multiple majority-Black districts across the South after the high court made it more difficult to challenge future maps for racial discrimination. Multiple efforts were already underway.
► Tennessee Republicans unveiled a map Wednesday to carve up the state’s only district represented by a Democrat and disperse its majority-Black voters into surrounding GOP-represented districts. While the Tennessee primary isn’t until August, candidate filing closed back in March and the new map required the legislature to repeal its own longstanding ban on mid-decade redistricting.
