What to know about Louisiana's effort to redraw congressional districts before the midterm elections

Republican lawmakers in Louisiana are poised to eliminate a majority-Black congressional district that elected a Democrat in response to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that its map constituted an illegal racial gerrymander.

A redistricting plan under consideration Thursday in the state House would give Republicans a chance at picking up an additional seat in this year's midterm elections. It also would protect U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson from facing a more difficult reelection.

“We drew this map in an effort to safely maximize Republican strength,” said state Rep. Beau Beaullieu, a Republican who chairs the chamber's redistricting committee.

If passed by the House, the plan would need only a final Senate vote to go to Republican Gov. Jeff Landry.

Since the Supreme Court's decision in late April, several other Southern states already have seized upon a weakened federal Voting Rights Act to try to redraw their own congressional districts. It's the latest flare-up in what's been a heated national redistricting battle heading into the November elections, spurred along by President Donald Trump.

So far, Republicans are winning the redistricting contest. But that doesn't necessarily mean they will win the U.S. House in November. Democrats need a net gain of only a few seats to flip control of the chamber. Trump faces negative approval ratings. And in midterm elections, the president's party typically loses congressional seats.

In 2022, Republicans in the Louisiana Legislature overrode the veto of Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards to enact new congressional districts based on the 2020 census. Five Republicans and one Democrat won election under those lines in 2022. But the federal courts said the map violated the Voting Rights Act by not including a second district with a majority-Black population.

The Legislature responded in 2024 by creating a second majority-Black district, stretching more than 200 miles (321 kilometers) northwest from Baton Rouge to Shreveport. That map resulted in the election of Democratic U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields. But that map also was challenged, and the Supreme Court struck it down as an illegal racial gerrymander.

Landry then postponed the state's May 16 U.S. House primary until later this summer to allow time for state lawmakers to again redraw districts before Monday's scheduled end of their session.

The latest plan scraps the snaking district represented by Fields and instead clusters it around predominantly white communities in the Baton Rouge area and southern Louisiana. It adds part of Baton Rouge to a heavily Democratic, majority-Black district based in New Orleans currently represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Troy Carter.

Beaullieu said Republicans opted against a new map aimed at winning all six of the state's U.S. House seats because it would have required adding more Democratic voters to Republican-held districts. He said that could have backfired by allowing Democrats to win two or three seats, potentially jeopardizing the reelection of Johnson or Majority Leader Steve Scalise.

Some people remained unsatisfied. The plaintiffs behind the lawsuit that prompted the Supreme Court to strike down Louisiana’s 2024 map threatened further litigation because the state’s proposed redistricting still leaves a majority-Black district in place, according to court filings this week.

Louisiana state Rep. Kyle Green, who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, also said Thursday that the proposed map could still constitute a racial gerrymander because it packs Black voters into a single congressional district.

State Sen. Jay Morris, the Republican sponsoring the redistricting bill, said he expects further litigation but is unconcerned.

“I believe this map is easily defendable under the Constitution because we did not racially gerrymander it,” Morris told The Associated Press.

Republican lawmakers said their latest redistricting considered political party affiliation but not race. Democratic lawmakers countered that race and party cannot be separated in Louisiana

In the month since the Supreme Court's ruling, several Southern states already have acted on redistricting.

Florida's Republican-led legislature passed new congressional districts just hours after the ruling, completing a redrawing that already was in the works in anticipation of the decision. A state judge this week declined to block use of those districts, which could yield Republicans as many as four additional seats in the midterm elections.

Tennessee adopted new U.S. House districts a week after the ruling, carving up a majority-Black district based in Memphis in a Republican attempt to win an additional seat.

Alabama also attempted to change its congressional districts, though a federal judicial panel this week blocked a Republican-drawn map that it determined intentionally discriminates against Black people. The state's Republican attorney general has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to let the map be used this year. Republican Gov. Kay Ivey also pushed back a deadline to certify candidates for an Aug. 11 special congressional primary from Friday to next Wednesday, in hopes the Supreme Court will issue a decision by then.

Despite pressure from Trump, South Carolina's Senate this week opted against congressional redistricting. Some senators said it was too late to make changes since in-person early voting had begun. Other Republican lawmakers had reservations that the plan could backfire by allowing Democrats to win more seats.

Associated Press writer Kim Chandler contributed to this report.

__

This story has been corrected to show that Scalise is House Majority Leader, not Senate Majority Leader.

Louisiana state Rep. Wilford Carter, Sr., D-Dist. 34, talks with Rep. Joy Walters, D-Dist. 4, during a House and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing over redistricting in Baton Rouge, La., Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Louisiana state Rep. Gerald Beaullieu, R-Dist. 48, chairman of House and Governmental Affairs Committee, listens during a hearing over redistricting in Baton Rouge, La., Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

People watch and listen from an overflow room during a Louisiana House and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing over redistricting in Baton Rouge, La., Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Louisiana Sen. John "Jay" Morris, R-Dist. 35, testifies during a House and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing over redistricting in Baton Rouge, La., Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Louisiana state Rep. Wilford Carter, Sr., D- Dist. 34, speaks during a House and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing over redistricting in Baton Rouge, La., Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

The Louisiana House and Governmental Affairs Committee holds a hearing over redistricting in Baton Rouge, La., Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — Comedian and television host Conan O’Brien entertained Harvard University graduates at their commencement Thursday, mixing offbeat humor and political jokes with more reflective commentary about empathy and humility at a time when the Ivy League school is in the crosshairs of the Trump administration.

O’Brien, who graduated from Harvard in 1985 and served as president of The Harvard Lampoon humor magazine, quipped that the university had produced “more Nobel laureates or white-collar criminals” than any other in the country. “So whether you choose good or evil, know that you are among the very best.”

While he joked about “Justice Department spies” being in attendance, he also defended international students — which the Trump administration has attempted to block Harvard from hosting — and criticized what he described as a broader erosion of compassion in American public life.

“Our current leadership in Washington believes that empathy is a weakness,” O’Brien said.

He returns to campus during one of the most fraught periods in Harvard's recent history. The school faces mounting legal and financial pressure from President Donald Trump 's administration, which sued the school in March over accusations its leadership failed to address antisemitism on campus.

Months earlier, a judge sided with Harvard in another lawsuit and ordered the administration to reverse billions of dollars in funding cuts. Harvard says it was being illegally penalized for refusing to adopt the Trump administration’s views.

O'Brien joked that he too was suing the university over everything from uncomfortable dorm furniture to his “less-than-spectacular undergraduate sex life,” claims he said had “more merit than those filed by the president of the United States.”

Reflecting on how his Harvard background shaped the way people perceived him early in his comedy career, he urged grads not to let Harvard define them.

“Maybe my wish for you is not that Harvard becomes the last thing people know about you,” O’Brien said, “but instead that Harvard become the least important thing people know about you.”

Student speaker Andrew O’Donohue, who completed a doctorate studying democratic institutions and judicial independence, described how federal funding tied to his research was wiped out by Trump administration cuts before Harvard stepped in.

“When students self-censor, when professors fear being punished, when scientists worry that research funding is allocated based on politics,” O’Donohue said, “our universities will not produce the next great artist, doctor, scientist, educator, lawyer, entrepreneur, public servant, or innovator.”

Recent Harvard commencements have grown much more political.

Last year, students cheered speakers who defended diversity and international students in the face of Trump administration attacks. The year before was marked by walkouts and chants of “Free Palestine” after weeks of campus protests over the war in Gaza.

This year, graduate workers who are on strike picketed in Harvard Yard, blaring vuvuzela horns, drums and cowbells whenever an administrator spoke. More than 4,000 grad workers want higher pay, stronger protections and an independent process for harassment and discrimination complaints, among other issues. Dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators silently held signs condemning the university's “Complicity in Palestinian Genocide.”

Associated Press writer Leah Willingham in Boston contributed to this report.

FILE - The gates of Harvard Yard at Harvard University, Sept. 30, 2025, in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)

FILE - Host Conan O'Brien speaks during the Oscars in Los Angeles on March 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)