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In the week since the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s congressional map—and sledgehammered another pillar of the Voting Rights Act—red-state legislatures have become amateur cartography departments, eagerly preparing to redraw districts across the South. House Speaker Mike Johnson has insisted that he wants no part of it. “Thankfully, it’s not up to me,” he explained this morning in his office, during a quiet recess on the Hill. “It’s in the hands of the legislature, and I’ve told them this time what I told them last time, and every time I’ve been asked: This is not my job to do.”

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That hasn’t stopped the momentum in Louisiana, his home state. The speaker told me he’d gleaned from conversations with Gov. Jeff Landry and state legislators that they could aim to produce a 5-1 or 6-0 map in favor of the G.O.P.—in other words, eliminating one or both of the districts currently held by Democrats (and likely sending one or both of the state’s Black representatives into forced retirement). He acknowledged that all the new mapmaking could further polarize his already barely governable chamber. “It’s not my preference,” he said.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, for his part, would prefer not to be in this pickle. Yet neither party is going to call a truce—not least because both see opportunities to collect new seats beyond the 2026 horizon, and neither can afford to back down first. “We will continue to proceed aggressively until there is one national standard that prohibits mid-decade gerrymandering for everyone,” Jeffries told me over the phone this week. “Until that day comes, we are not going to unilaterally disarm.”

The consequences are snowballing daily. New York Dems, inspired by their peers in California and Virginia, are looking to create a cobalt blue map of their own. Meanwhile, Indiana voters just ousted five of the seven Republican state senators who resisted a redraw at the urging of President Trump, clearing the way for the state to redistrict in time for 2028. And as much as Johnson portrays himself as hands-off, Jeffries has seized the redistricting mantle—an effort that began in earnest last year as Democratic concern grew over the Supreme Court’s imminent decision in Louisiana v. Callais. If any G.O.P. state legislatures flip blue in November, as is possible in Washington and Minnesota, then House Democrats could swell their ranks even further in 2028.

The midterms are all about contrast. Jeffries repeats on loop that his party will tackle affordability, healthcare, and corruption in order to undo the Trump administration’s two-year assault on the country’s finances. Johnson’s pitch is that Republicans already filled their signature One Big Beautiful Bill with affordability measures that Americans should be feeling by now, and teased the G.O.P. doing more to address the matter in coming weeks.

Johnson’s argument, of course, sounds a lot like that of the Biden White House in 2022—when officials were pointing to strong macroeconomic indicators even as voters felt the strain of inflation and handed House Democrats a defeat. Naturally, Johnson rejected the comparison when I brought it up. He said that had it not been for the Iran war—an “ongoing skirmish,” in his words—“the rocket would have already taken off in terms of just tremendous economic growth.” He’s not the only G.O.P. leader who has admitted to me that the U.S. involvement in Iran has muddied the economic picture. But Johnson, ever the optimist, expects the administration to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in time to ease gas prices before the election.

Democrats, meanwhile, are watching Republicans squirm as polls show Trump’s favorability cratering on a myriad of issues. But many lawmakers I’ve spoken to privately worry that the Democrats, if they do win in November, will fall into the trap of prioritizing investigating the president rather than proving to voters they can legislate cost-of-living solutions. House Democratic leaders are currently surveying the caucus to iron out those priorities, with Jeffries teasing that a majority would vote on measures that could make housing, childcare, utilities, and groceries more affordable.

Indeed, for all their contrasts, Johnson and Jeffries both need to build a governing coalition. Razor-thin majorities, exacerbated by gerrymandering, have emboldened factions to constantly test their parties’ leadership. Republican members have brought the House to a standstill half a dozen times and left Johnson and his team burning the midnight oil to break the stalemate. During our chat, he told me that he wants to keep leading his colleagues rather than litigating their divorce. Nevertheless, it may not be his call. As my colleague Leigh Ann Caldwell has written, there’s a great deal of speculation that Republicans will vote him off the leadership island if they lose the midterms.

Jeffries, for his part, has his own critics outside of Washington, many of whom object to the D.C.C.C.’s decision to back more pragmatic candidates—those with the profiles to flip Trump seats in “highly competitive general elections,” rather than lefty candidates in primary elections that may just want to grandstand. Johnson put it more bluntly: “We need less people running for Congress because they want to be famous.” I’m sure Jeffries would agree.

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