House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) declared that the injustices of the pre-Civil War South were still haunting America while promising Democrats will do whatever they can to take back the House during a Wednesday press conference on Capitol Hill.
Jeffries Denounces Republican Gerrymandering Efforts
Jeffries denounced the wave of Republican-led gerrymandering efforts taking shape ahead of November's elections, calling the redistricting schemes an "unprecedented assault on Black political representation, the likes of which we have not seen since the Jim Crow era."
"The ghost of the Confederacy has afflicted the Supreme Court majority and is invading and haunting the nation right now," he continued, alluding to a late April decision which gutted a key section of the Voting Rights Act designed to prevent minority-dominated districts from being split up or diluted.
Democrats Launch Response to Disenfranchisement
Warning that these efforts to disenfranchise voters of color were only the beginning, Jeffries said his party was "launching a decisive and overwhelming response" to ensure fair elections in the upcoming midterms and the 2028 presidential race.
He accused Republicans of choosing "a strategy of needing to cheat to win" and vowed that Democrats would "crush their souls as it relates to the extremism they are trying to unleash on the American people."
Southern States Push New Congressional Maps
A slew of Southern states rushed to establish new GOP-friendly congressional maps after the Supreme Court ruled a Louisiana map apportioned to reflect census-backed racial demographics was unconstitutional.
- Last Thursday, Tennessee's Republican-led legislature convened a special session to approve plans carving up the state's only Democratic-held district, which represented the majority-Black city of Memphis.
- The Supreme Court eased the way for Alabama lawmakers to adopt a map that would eliminate one of the state's two majority-Black districts on Monday, when it sent legal challenges to the proposal back to a lower court.
- Similar plans in motion in Louisiana, North Carolina and Florida could erase another nine Democratic-held seats in the House, adding to the five new Republican seats conjured in a revised congressional map of Texas.
Jeffries emphasized that Democrats are committed to fighting these efforts, stating, "We're gonna win back control of the House."
