Hakeem Jeffries Puts New York Into Trump’s Gerrymandering Wars

New York currently has 19 Democrats and seven Republicans in the House of Representatives. This directive comes less than a week after the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 along party lines in Louisiana v. Callais to effectively dismantle Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race. The court’s conservative majority raised new hurdles for those seeking to prove a racial gerrymandering claim, and gave its blessing to those who would claim partisan gerrymandering as a legal defense. Within hours of the decision, New York Governor Kathy Hochul had already signaled that she supported a redistricting effort in her state. “The Supreme Court has been chipping away at our elections for years. It is clearly carrying out Donald Trump’s will with this decision,” she wrote on X Wednesday. “New York has always led the fight for voting rights and we’ll lead again. I’m working with the Legislature to change New York’s redistricting process so we can fight back against Washington’s attempts to rig our democracy.”Jeffries’s order was also given in response to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis implementing a map that his own office specifically drew in order to capture four more Republican seats in time for November’s midterm elections. Meanwhile, Trump has continued to threaten red states that refuse to rig their elections in his favor.