The Coming Census Time Bomb

As bad as things are, they’re going to get a lot worse in 2030, thanks in part to the Supreme Court’s Callais decision. Here’s how to fight back.

In late April, Virginia voters narrowly approved an aggressive gerrymander that would have given Democrats a largely unbeatable advantage in 10 of the commonwealth’s 11 U.S. House seats, counteracting GOP power plays in Ohio, Missouri, and North Carolina. Democrats exulted. “Maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time,” a triumphant House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries declared. Data nerds proclaimed that Democrats had fought the mid-decade redistricting wars to a draw, and maybe even won. The Bluesky brigades rejoiced that their side had strapped on boxing gloves for a change.

The good feelings didn’t even last until May. Eight days after the Virginia vote, the U.S. Supreme Court completed its war on the Voting Rights Act with Louisiana v. Callais, unleashing lawmakers across the South to shatter districts that ensured Black representation across the old Confederacy and carve them into safe seats for Republicans. Florida, anticipating the court’s decision, moved first. Alabama, and Tennessee quickly followed. So did Louisiana, which canceled its congressional primaries after thousands of votes had already been cast.

Then, Virginia’s conservative-leaning state Supreme Court delivered the final insult, finding a technicality that allowed it to invalidate the referendum and the new 10–1 map.

There are lessons to be learned here, and if Democrats are serious about maximal warfare, or interested in rescuing government by and for the people, they must digest those lessons and stiffen their spines. They will need to fight back and enact big reforms, both locally and nationally, that reinvigorate and strengthen American democracy, all with the same speed and relentless determination that Southern lawmakers bring to ripping apart Black districts.

We might have one chance. It’s not now, although what we do now is important. It’s in the first 100 days of a 2029 trifecta, when for once electoral wins, electoral reforms, and political will may all align. But even if Democrats win that 2029 trifecta, they can’t lull themselves into declaring a premature victory. The project of saving American democracy will require a massive lift: redistricting, court expansion, and additional states, at once. Hard as it may be, however, we have no choice. Because if you think the redistricting power play this year is bad, just wait. The road to controlling the U.S. House and the White House after that gets decidedly more difficult.

There is a looming time bomb for Democrats hidden in the reapportionment that will follow the 2030 census. Defusing that—overcoming the census, the Supreme Court, and the filibuster with a package that ensures competitive elections and majority rule, just in the nick of time—will require the kind of coordinated, decisive action not seen since Die Hard or Speed.

Here’s the problem: Everything that the Democrats do in 2028 to level the redistricting playing field could be negated post-census. They could win or hold the House thanks to new maps in New York, California, and Illinois, then hand all those seats over to Texas and........

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