In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision invalidating the basis of Donald Trump’s beloved “Liberation Day” tariffs, there’s a sense that the Court’s conservative majority (or at least not all of it) may be less in thrall to this power-hungry president than is typically assumed. But as early as Wednesday (the next Supreme Court decision day), the Court could give Trump and his party a gift that will keep on giving for years: a decision gutting what’s left of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and green-lighting a whole new wave of partisan gerrymandering of congressional and state legislative districts.

Ever since SCOTUS unexpectedly ordered a reargument of a case (Louisiana v. Callais) challenging a Louisiana law creating a second majority-Black congressional district, legal beagles have been reasonably sure that the Court is on the brink of concluding that race-based criteria for ensuring minority representation under the VRA are a vestige of the distant past and may now run afoul of the 14th Amendment’s equal-protection principles. Based on the tone of oral arguments and the general drift of the Court’s voting-rights jurisprudence, a move against Section Two of the VRA (which allows private individuals to challenge election........

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