WASHINGTON – The Louisiana Legislature approved a bill on Friday that turns Democratic U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields’ 6th Congressional District into one that favors White Republican candidates.
Though the U.S. Supreme Court specifically found Fields’ Black-majority district unconstitutional, Louisiana is relatively late to efforts by Southern legislators to flip minority-majority seats, usually represented by Democrats, to configurations that favor Republican candidates for the U.S. House.
Even before Friday’s 28-10 Senate vote in Baton Rouge, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Benton, was hitting conservative media, saying he was “absolutely convinced” Republicans would maintain their majority in the House that he leads. Johnson’s second in command, as long as the GOP holds 218 of the House’s 435 seats, is Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson.
Mathematically, enough Democratic seats have now been redrawn that Republicans should maintain their U.S. House majority in November’s midterm elections. But b also say Republicans shouldn’t hang that “Mission Accomplished” banner just yet.
Partially, that’s because poll after poll shows that Trump and his GOP legislative agenda are unpopular nationally among Democrats and even some moderate Republicans.
A national shows voters are increasingly pessimistic about Trump’s handling of key issues, including the economy, immigrant deportations, and military attacks on Iran.
A poll from found 63% of Republicans approved of Trump’s handling of the economy, which is down from 78% at the start of his second term.
A showed 54% of White voters without a college degree, a base for Trump, are critical of Trump’s performance — up from 32% in February 2025.
A released Wednesday charted fast-dwindling support among the Hispanic voters who backed Trump in 2024.
Trump had strong support among 72% of Republican voters in January and only 57% now, according to a Wall Street Journal poll released last week.
Republicans hold 217 seats, with one independent caucusing with them. Democrats hold 212 seats.
The counted 23 open Democratic seats, five of which are likely to change parties, and 39 open Republican seats, four of which are likely to change. Generations of gerrymandering leave the rest of the House members in relatively safe districts.
Republicans’ best-case scenario is picking up 11 of 16 seats specifically redrawn to elect GOP candidates. For Democrats, the best case is Republican candidates picking up seven seats from the new maps in Texas, Missouri, Louisiana, Tennessee and Florida and the Democrats prevailing in the six GOP seats that were redrawn in California and Utah to favor Democratic candidates,
Cook’s commentary reflects two setbacks for Trump last week.
A court in Alabama stalled that state’s effort to rid itself of a second Democratic congressperson. And in South Carolina, the state Senate refused to immediately redraw congressional districts to dump Democratic U.S. Rep. James Clyburn. That means, at least for now, Republicans won’t be able to turn two more seats now being represented by Democrats.
Trump succeeded last week in ousting Republican incumbents he opposed — U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky — showing the president still holds sway with MAGA Republicans.
And the courts also helped Trump’s effort to keep a GOP majority in the House.
In Washington, a federal judge refused to sideline Trump’s executive order making mail-in ballots more difficult. A Tennessee judge rejected appeals of congressional maps redrawn to split Black Democratic voters in Memphis into different districts that included enough suburban and rural White Republicans to ensure a GOP representative would replace the only Democratic congressperson in Tennessee. And in Florida, a judge endorsed the newly drawn congressional district maps that flipped four seats to Republicans.
Reacting to court rulings, Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson, D-Baltimore, indicated he may have changed his mind about allowing that state’s General Assembly to redistrict before 2030, when the next Census charts population shifts and growth. Maryland and possibly Illinois are making moves towards redrawing congressional lines to favor Democratic candidates.
New York and New Jersey officials are angling to put measures on their ballots that would allow those blue bastions to redraw their maps to favor more Democratic candidates.
Sabato’s Crystal Ball noted that “the tally is still a little bit in flux.”