New in The Atlantic:

All over the Deep South—in states such as Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina—the story is familiar: Gerrymandered maps have packed Black voters into a lone Voting Rights Act district, while Republicans dominate every surrounding white-majority seat. In past decades, many of those VRA districts’ Democratic representatives were loath to unravel their own safe seats. But today, Democrats’ prevailing mentality has shifted. And as the 2022 redistricting wars heat up, multiple lawsuits aiming to unpack hyper-minority seats could help determine control of the House….

Today, the pendulum has swung: Whereas in previous decades, districts’ racial makeup was a subject of acrimonious debate within the Congressional Black Caucus and the House Democratic Caucus, the party is now closer to a consensus that minority voters deserve to wield influence in more seats. Democrats, led by former Attorney General Eric Holder’s well-funded National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), are expanding their unpacking crusade to Alabama, Louisiana, and South Carolina.

Republicans intend to fight them tooth and nail. “I don’t think Section 2 of the VRA gives any justification for a district that isn’t majority-minority, based on Bartlett,” says Jason Torchinsky, a partner at Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky and a go-to GOP redistricting lawyer. “If your argument is that you need to draw a 40 percent district for some reason that’s race-based, I think that’s a Fourteenth Amendment violation.”