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While the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has seen a significant uptick in membership in recent years, its leaders have expressed concern that redistricting proposals by Republican lawmakers could soon erase much of that progress.
CBC Chair Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., told NBC News on Tuesday (May 12) that as many as 19 of the caucus’s 58 members could be impacted by the Republican efforts to redraw district maps before the midterms in several states.
Although she claimed that the number is not guaranteed, the massive push by many Republican-led states to propose new congressional maps in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling eliminating a majority-Black district in Louisiana has forced her and other members to consider the worst-case scenario.
“It’s devastating,” she said. “People have sacrificed so much to make this a more perfect union. And here we are, in 2026, seeing this massive regression in all the gains that have been made. It’s painful.”
However, some House Republicans have reportedly tried to justify the ruling as a response to Democratic overreach, citing the recent Virginia redistricting referendum, which, despite being approved by voters last month, was struck down by the state Supreme Court for allegedly violating legislative procedure.
“We had a 5-1 map in Louisiana, and it was Democrats who took that map to court because they wanted to try to draw more Democratic seats, and ultimately the 4-2 map that was ruled unconstitutional,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA.) told NBC on Tuesday. “They did that in Virginia, too. Democrats have a history of going too far.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., who is being propped up by Democrats as the potential first Black Speaker of the House, will be convening with House Democrats on Thursday (May 14) to discuss plans to “forcefully push back against the Republican redistricting scheme," per NBC.
Several states have either already proposed or are pushing for new congressional maps that effectively wipe out majority-Black districts, often represented by the sole Democratic House member from the state.
In Tennessee, lawmakers successfully passed a new proposal on May 7, splitting the state’s only majority-Black district in Memphis — represented by Democrat Rep. Steve Cohen — into three separate districts that force Black voters out into the neighboring, majority-white Nashville and surrounding areas. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed the map into law the following day.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) moved to suspend the state’s May 16 primary elections for the House the day after the Supreme Court ruling, clearing the way for the legislature to remove one of the state’s two majority-Black districts represented by Troy Carter and Cleo Fields. Fields's district is the same one the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in the Louisiana case.
On Wednesday (May 13), the Louisiana Senate officially voted to advance a proposal that would eliminate Fields’ seat by stretching Carter’s district into Baton Rouge, per NBC, leaving the state with only one Democratic representative in the delegation.
The U.S. Supreme Court also voted on Monday (May 11) to lift a lower court injunction requiring Alabama to continue using its current congressional map until the 2030 census, according to Politico. The legislature attempted to change the map in 2023 to include only a single Black district, rather than two.
A bill passed by the Alabama legislature on May 8 would also reportedly require districts unaffected by the new map to be counted after the May 19 primaries, while ignoring affected districts.
“It’s Jim Crow 2.0,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) — whose seat is also threatened by an upcoming special session on redistricting in Mississippi’s Old Capitol building – said in a statement. "Look at what they’re doing in Louisiana. They’re trying to stop the election and take representation from the Black community with no remorse at all. They just want to do it.”
In South Carolina, the Senate rejected a proposal from the House to extend the state’s legislative calendar, allowing for consideration of a new congressional map proposal that potentially eliminates Democratic Rep. James Clyburn’s seat, according to The Hill.
While Clyburn’s seat is preserved for now, he reportedly told NBC that he still considers the Supreme Court’s ruling a major setback for Black lawmakers and a consequence of President Donald Trump’s efforts to eliminate nationwide diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and limit Black voting power.
“You’ve got a president that’s taken Black folks out of everything,” Clyburn said. “So I don’t want us to just look at this voting case in isolation. No, this is a comprehensive attempt on the part of this administration to redeem Jim Crow... He’s trying to turn the clock back.”
Clarke also told the outlet that she reached out to other CBC members who may be affected by the redistricting, claiming the group is “not helpless in this moment” and that the backlash against Republicans will result in the new maps yielding only “momentary gains.”
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