What happenedDemocrats were left scrambling last week after a back-to-back set of redistricting losses narrowed their odds of taking back the House in November, with the Supreme Court clearing the way for Alabama Republicans to redraw the state’s electoral map and Virginia’s high court throwing out a Democratic map designed to flip red House seats blue. The ruling by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority could allow the Alabama legislature to use a 2023 voting map that eliminates one of the state’s two majority-Black districts, both of which are currently held by Democrats. A lower court had blocked that map on the grounds that it violated Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which bars racial discrimination in voting. But the high court’s conservative justices said that decision should be reconsidered in light of last month’s Louisiana v. Callais, in which the court found the creation of majority-Black districts to be an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander.” In the Louisiana legislature, a Senate committee passed a congressional map that will eliminate one of two majority-Black districts, while in Tennessee, Gov. Bill Lee signed into law a new congressional map that carves up the state’s sole Democratic-held district, based in majority-Black Memphis. It’s “unbelievable how people seem to want to turn things backward,” said Barbara Love, a Black woman who lives outside Memphis.In a rare setback for President Trump, who has urged red-state legislatures to redraw maps, Republicans in South Carolina rejected a redistricting plan designed to eliminate the state’s sole Democratic-held House seat. State Senate Majority Leader A. Shane Massey said carving up the district, held for 34 years by influential Rep. James Clyburn, could backfire by diluting GOP support in other districts. He also warned that the current redistricting wars may anger voters. “Too many people in power,” Massey said, “just want to do whatever it takes to stay in power.”