By Amar Mukunda
President Trump spent the last year pressuring Republican states to redraw their congressional maps because he knows that in a fair fight the American people will reject his agenda. It is an attempt to lock in a congressional majority through cartography rather than democracy. Texas did it. Missouri did it. North Carolina did it. And last week, the Supreme Court handed Trump’s allies the weapon they needed to go further.
In a 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, the Court gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, telling Republican-controlled states: the guardrails are gone. Go ahead and crack apart minority-heavy districts.
Florida didn’t wait for the ink to dry. Within hours, the Florida Legislature passed — and Governor Ron DeSantis signed — a new congressional map designed to flip the state from a 20-8 Republican advantage to a 24-4 stranglehold. It eliminates Black political representation in North Florida. It packs Hispanic voters into powerless corners. It is democracy at gunpoint.
Maryland can fight back. The Governor should call a special session of the General Assembly to redraw our congressional maps. Senate President Bill Ferguson and Majority Leader Nancy King were vocally against redistricting during the regular session — so much so that they refused to allow a vote to come to the floor. They must at the very least give their caucus the opportunity to vote their conscience.
Let me address the objections, because they deserve serious answers.
The filing deadline has passed. Isn’t it too late?
Maryland’s congressional candidate filing deadline was February 24. But deadlines are administrative facts, not constitutional barriers. Florida moved its qualifying deadline. Louisiana postponed its primary outright after the Supreme Court ruling. A special session in Annapolis could reset Maryland’s filing window and if necessary push the June 23 primary back. It would require coordination and will — precisely the kind of leadership the moment demands.
Won’t any new map get struck down in court?
This was Senate President Ferguson’s central argument, and it was wrong then. It is more wrong now. The Supreme Court has made it vastly harder to challenge racially discriminatory maps, which means Republican states can break apart minority-heavy districts with impunity. The risk calculus has inverted: the greater danger is not drawing new maps while states like Florida systematically dismantle minority representation. Maryland’s courts have their own constraints around compactness and county lines, and the House-passed map from February was drawn with those lessons in mind. The argument for doing nothing was never that a good map couldn’t be drawn. It was that powerful Democrats in the Senate didn’t want to try.
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Republicans did not redistrict out of love for democracy. They did it because Trump ordered it. But there is a difference between redistricting to pursue partisan advantage and redistricting to offset the disenfranchisement of minority voters across the South. If Republicans are serious about ending partisan gerrymandering, they can sign onto the Redistricting Reform Act to end gerrymandering nationwide. It was introduced in Congress by Rep. Zoe Lofgren and Sen. Alex Padilla. It has 50 Democratic co-sponsors and zero Republicans.
What about candidates already filed?
Any reset must include a fair new filing window — enough time for candidates to evaluate whether new district lines change their plans. This is doable. Other states have done it. It requires acknowledging the inconvenience and minimizing it, not using it as an excuse for inaction.
A word about the Senate’s inaction
The House passed a redistricting bill 99-37. The Governor’s commission had conducted months of public hearings and produced a legally defensible map. There was a path forward. Senate leadership chose to close it.
Fewer than a dozen Senate Democrats publicly declared their opposition and used their positions to ensure the rest of the caucus never had to vote. Senators who spoke up in favor faced real consequences — one lost a committee leadership post for saying publicly what many colleagues believed privately. Leadership made sure that nineteen Democratic senators never told their constituents where they stood.
Should a handful of senators get to make this decision for all of Maryland? The House has answered. The Governor has answered. The Supreme Court has shown us exactly what the cost of inaction looks like in real districts, real communities, and real votes that will no longer count the way they should.
Governor Moore: call the session. Senate Democrats: show up.