Initiative Takes ‘Maximum Warfare’ To Dems’ Racist House Maps

On the morning after Virginia Democrats won a short-lived gerrymandering victory at the polls, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was feeling fat and happy. And feisty. 

The New York Democrat was full of fight, or at least that’s the image the performative politician was attempting to affect to reporters at a press conference. He called Virginia voters’ approval of a rigged referendum allowing the state legislature to adopt a politically twisted congressional redistricting proposal a big victory for “democracy.” 

That “victory” would quickly collapse, with the Virginia State Supreme Court declaring the election unconstitutional. But Jeffries wasn’t worried about that eventuality then. He was a warrior, audaciously declaring to the American people that Democrats would “not let Donald Trump rig the midterm elections by gerrymandering maps … without a forceful Democratic Response.” They’d do the rigging themselves, thank you very much. 

“We are in an era of maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time. And we are going to keep the pressure on Republicans at every single state in the union to ensure, at the end of the day, that there is a fair, national map,” the minority leader crowed in a response to a reporter’s question. Jeffries was asked what he would do should red state Republicans respond in kind, escalating the redistricting war. 

Things haven’t gone well for Democrats on the redistricting front since. In fact, tough-talking Jeffries and his party got their maps handed to them. 

The Grand Old Party is positioned to pick up 10 or so net House seats in the midterms after waking up to the Democrats’ “maximum warfare” campaign and turning up the heat. 

Hilariously, Democrats could well lose one of their redrawn congressional districts, with an independent and a Republican grabbing the most votes thus far in this week’s California primary. Democrats, led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, drove an effort to change the Golden State’s constitution to allow the legislature to gerrymander maps that are supposed to deliver liberals an additional five congressional seats. 

‘Race-Based Discrimination’

The U.S. Supreme Court, too has delivered key victories for Republicans and the republic, particularly in an April ruling that declared unconstitutional a section of the Voting Rights Act and put an end to racially-gerrymandered districts. 

But the war is not over. It’s just entering a new phase. 

“Minority Leader Jeffries said this is a time of ‘maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time,’ and that they were going to ‘keep maximum pressure’ on Republicans. We want to be the counterbalance to that,” Marshall Yates, who heads up the Oversight Project’s new Redistricting and Election Protection for American Integrity and Representation (REPAIR) Initiative. 

It’s a long name for a powerful mission. In an interview this week with The Federalist, Yates said the initiative will be an “all-of-the-above approach” to fighting to ensure states — blue and red — are no longer drawing affirmative action maps tainted with the VRA’s stain of discrimination. 

That is exactly what the U.S. Supreme Court ordered in Louisiana v. Callais. The decision specifically dealt with Louisiana’s court-ordered creation of a second majority-black congressional district. That lower court found that Louisiana’s sole race-based district more than likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

“Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 … was designed to enforce the Constitution — not collide with it,” Associate Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the 6-3 ruling. “Unfortunately, lower courts have sometimes applied this Court’s §2 precedents in a way that forces States to engage in the very race-based discrimination that the Constitution forbids,” 

The folks over at the left-leaning Brennan Center have joined a chorus of race-based preference leftists in screaming that Callais will roll back “half a century of steady progress toward racial equality in voting practices.” In fact, the ruling rolls back a 60-year affront to equality that the Constitution has never countenanced. 

‘Not the Time for Half Measures’

States are beginning to redraw racially gerrymandered maps following the ruling. The Louisiana Legislature last week passed an update, extracting one of two majority-black districts. Alabama this week got the go-ahead from the Supreme Court to remove one of its affirmative action districts after another lower court initially blocked the move. 

But the wins are far from complete. Yates said several states, particularly in the South, are content with holding on to a single racially-gerrymandered district — clinging to the bad law in the VRA.

“This is not the time for half measures like we’ve seen in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina,” he said. 

Yates estimates there are somewhere north of 100 race-driven districts across the country. California appears to have more than a dozen alone alone, Hispanic majority-minority districts squeezed together as part of the state’s mid-decade map manipulation. 

The REPAIR initiative aims to challenge the extremely vulnerable positions of race-based districts post-Callais. Yates and his team are in the process of assembling the legal ammunition to show the constitutional defects of the political boundaries, a priority as the 2030 Census approaches. 

REPAIR’s work also will be instrumental in the mission of the Mass Deportation Coalition, of which the Oversight Project is a member. Earlier this year the group released a plan for ICE interior removals of 1 million illegal aliens this year “so that by 2027 and 2028 the Trump Administration can build off that logistical, operational, and policy framework to scale deportations to exceed the enforcement efforts of President Eisenhower, as promised.”

‘Skewing the Representation’

Illegal immigrants are counted in the decennial census, and for congressional district apportionment. States with significant foreign national populations, like California, have bolstered their share of representation in the House and in the Electoral College. While noncitizens registering and voting in U.S. elections is a growing election integrity concern, artificial apportionment has significantly influenced the balance of political power. 

“But even if not a single illegal alien casts a vote, the mere presence of illegal immigrants in the U.S. is having a profound impact on the outcome of elections, skewing the representation of Americans,” Rep. Chuck Edwards, R-N.C. said as the House passed the Equal Representation Act in late 2024. The bill, which Edwards introduced, demands that only American citizens are counted when apportioning congressional seats. Going nowhere in the stalemate Senate then, the Republican-controlled House and Senate brought the measure back this session. 

Yates, who previously served as executive director of the Election Integrity Network, said the REPAIR initiative will operate under the umbrella of redistricting and election integrity work. He said the two go hand in hand and overlap with another highly anticipated Supreme Court decision that could end the extended receipt of ballots long after Election Day. 

“People have to have confidence in the outcome of their elections,” he said. “If you’re voting in an unconstitutional district and they are allowing votes to be counted long after the election, that delay only deteriorates Americans’ confidence.” 

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.