Republicans' battle to hold on to their razor-thin majority in the House just got a huge boost from the nation's highest court. Last week's Supreme Court ruling that struck down a racially-drawn Democrat Congressional district in Louisiana could lead to multiple red states redrawing their maps. Already, Louisiana has delayed its upcoming primary election in order to draw a new map, and Mississippi and Tennessee are now moving to do their own redistricting in light of the ruling. In fact, election handicappers are now projecting the GOP could net seven new seats if the ruling is applied across other southern states.
Redistricting was already a hot issue in this year's elections, with red states like Texas and Florida countered by blue states like California and Virginia in jockeying for new seats. But the Supreme Court ruling could end up being the biggest factor in tipping the scales. Fox News anchor Brett Baier told the Will Cain Show this continues a redistricting trend that already favored Republicans long-term. "You're talking about a shift, not only in the demographics of these states with Republicans moving to Texas and Florida, but also to the numbers of these redrawn districts," says Baier. "And anybody who says that the Supreme Court ruling is not going to have reverberations...they're wrong, it's going to."
"You are already seeing states considering redrawing based on that ruling, directly," he continues. "And while the politics for Republicans don't look good right now as far as the race for the midterms, these numbers are starting to look better as far as the districts they may pick up."
That would explain why Democrats are freaking out about the ruling, calling it an "evisceration of the voting rights act" and a "return to Jim Crow" while vowing to pack the Supreme Court to address what House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries calls "the corrupt MAGA majority" on the court. "They (Democrats) see the train coming down the track," says Baier. "I mean, you can forecast that they're going to have trouble in elections, especially in certain states, for a long, long time, if they don't figure out how to fix this."
"That Supreme Court ruling, I think, is starting to get fully digested by the politics of Washington, and that's why you're hearing some of those cries."