New wave of Southern states scramble to redraw congressional maps ahead of midterms
PBS News Hour - Segments
PBS NewsHour
4.1 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 5 May 2026
⏱️ 5 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The Supreme Court ruling against drawing congressional maps to protect black or other minority voters has sparked a new wave in the ongoing redistricting war. |
| 0:10.3 | Our congressional correspondent Lisa Desjardin joins me now. She's back at the super screen for a look at where things stand. |
| 0:16.5 | So Lisa, walk us through it. How has the map changed in the last month? |
| 0:20.1 | I mean, this is a historic moment in terms of how we draw our political lines. It could easily |
| 0:24.7 | become a blur. So let's start, first of all, with where this is happening. Let's go back, |
| 0:30.1 | oh, even a whole month ago. This is what the map looked like. You see these four states that |
| 0:34.6 | were redrawing toward Republicans' favor, two that had maps that were moving toward Democrats' favor. |
| 0:40.9 | You can notice these were all over the country. |
| 0:43.1 | Then something happened two weeks ago. |
| 0:45.2 | We saw action in Virginia. |
| 0:46.6 | Voters there passed a Democratic-leaning map. |
| 0:49.0 | And in Florida, the governor and legislature moved to put in place Republican-leaning maps. |
| 0:55.3 | That was two weeks ago. Then we had last week's Supreme Court decision. |
| 0:59.1 | Look at how this changes things. Now we have four more states interested in remapping. |
| 1:05.3 | And look at that shape. It used to be this debate was spread out all over the country, |
| 1:10.2 | but now we see a real focus on one region of the country, the south. That is the where. Now let's talk about what this means. All of this remapping is really about just changing the odds. It's not a guarantee of picking up seats, but let's talk about how those odds could play out. First of all, these are the |
| 1:28.2 | states that have new maps in place right now. This is the maximum amount of seats Republicans can |
| 1:34.0 | gain, the maximum for Democrats. Essentially, it's a wash, especially because many of these |
| 1:39.7 | Republican seats are more risky. They're going to be harder for Republicans to pick up. |
| 1:45.6 | Now, let's add in if those four states in the conversation because of the Supreme Court do redistrict, what happens? |
| 1:51.3 | Look at this. Republicans increase their odds significantly. What it means is they have more of a |
| 1:57.0 | chance of gaining on net omnot because of redistricting. You use the word if a lot. Seems like there's a lot of uncertainty still ahead, even with just months to go before those midterm elections. So what happens next? I think I can clear this up. Think of the states in play right now in two ways. First, the states that are having court battles. I want to focus on three, the state of Virginia. We're waiting |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from PBS NewsHour, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of PBS NewsHour and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

