If you’ve ever read anything Jamelle Bouie has written you can probably predict exactly what his response to Louisiana v. Callais would be. Somewhere it was inevitable he would argue that it was too soon to get rid of majority minority districts because things haven’t really changed since 1965. Sure enough, that what he says today.
The immediate consequence of the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais is that Republican-led states in the South can destroy their majority-minority districts and, in turn, deprive their Black residents of federal representation by politicians of their choosing…
Shad White, the Mississippi state auditor, also posted on X: “We’re fighting so that Bennie Thompson” — who represents the state’s 2nd District — “and Hakeem Jeffries are not in charge. We’re fighting for a country that is safe, where our taxes don’t go up, where our border is secure.”
To watch this whole spectacle is to put the lie to the idea — seen in the court’s opinion as well as among the court’s apologists — that the South has changed so much since 1965 that a strong Voting Rights Act is no longer necessary.
And there you have it. Republicans don’t want liberal Democrats like Bennie Thompson to have seats in red states and that’s proof that not much has changed since 1965.The only thing Bouie can see happening here is that Shad White is white and Bennie Thompson is black.
It goes without saying that the whole point of Callais is that no group in America is guaranteed federal representation by politicians of their choosing. Everyone of every race gets one vote and the majority wins and the minority has to wait two years to try again.
This is, by the way, exactly how it works in California and New York and New England. If you happen to be a pro-MAGA conservative in Massachusetts, well I’m sorry to tell you that you will not have federal representation by a politician of your choosing. That’s how it works and Bouie of course has no problem with it working that way when Democrats benefit.
Maybe you’ve seen this map floating around:
Oh, the hypocrisy. Your party isn’t gerrymandering in Tenn., only because they can’t. You’re all in an uproar about “fair maps” when the New England blue states look like this:
– Massachusetts: 36% Republican → 0 seats
– Connecticut: 42% → 0 seats
– Maine: 46% → 0 seats
– New… pic.twitter.com/iHUPKVnI2F— Lip 🇺🇸 (@Lip_OnX) May 7, 2026
Democrats have gerrymandered the bejeesus out of blue states but if Republicans want to do the same in Mississippi, we’re living in 1965. And instead of taking this head on, Bouie just gives us a lecture about Republicans undermining democracy.
As we’ve seen in the South post-Callais, Republicans have done that very thing, under the theory that representation is a gift the political majority bestows on the minority, not a fundamental right of democracy…
A system in which political parties can rewrite the rules to keep themselves in power indefinitely — a system in which, barring a tsunami of opposition, they cannot lose — is not a democracy in any meaningful sense.
What is the Democrats’ theory of representation in New England? Do they treat minority representation as a fundamental right? Is New England still a democracy? He doesn’t say.
The funniest part of his screed comes at the end when Bouie presents his solution to this problem. In a story that is about the dangers of political extremism, he recommends that the moment Democrats regain power they should let their freak flag fly. [emphasis added]
Democrats must do everything they can to win power, including retaliatory gerrymandering, so that they can actually build a more equitable political system and trim the authority of institutions, like the Supreme Court, that stand in the way of greater democratization.
Fighting in the system as it exists also means that, if they manage to win majorities in the House and, especially, the Senate, Democrats must abolish both the filibuster in the Senate and any other procedural obstacle to a more majoritarian Congress.
Ultimately, political reform will take the shape of a partisan project — a specific, party-driven gambit and not a broad bipartisan compromise. This could be passage of a stronger, revitalized Voting Rights Act along with a national ban on partisan gerrymandering and mid-decade redistricting — in other words, some combination of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the stillborn For the People Act — or it could be something more radical, like expanding the size of the House (which has been capped at 435 members for nearly a century), legalizing electoral fusion or moving the country toward proportional representation.
Democrats are going to throw away all of the checks and balances and say to hell with bipartisan compromise so they can create a new system that looks more like New England, i.e. one where team blue never loses. Then and only then will it be sufficiently democratic.
Bouie’s headline for this piece is “This Is Getting Dangerous.” He is not wrong, though I don’t think he can see why.
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