Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) on Wednesday said he will cancel a special session to consider new voting maps for the state’s three Supreme Court voting districts.
Reeves announced the cancellation while on Supertalk Radio’s “Mornings with Richard Cross.” He said the decision follows the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision on Monday to vacate U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock’s ruling in December that required the redrawing of the judicial voting districts.
That decision followed last month’s momentous U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found Louisiana’s congressional district map to be an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The ruling from the high court weakened core provisions of the federal Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting practices that discriminate based on race, color or minority-group membership.
Reeves had been watching for such a ruling from the conservative-majority court in Washington.
“Because of all of that, there is no longer any reason for the legislature to come in on next Wednesday for judicial redistricting,” he told Cross.
The governor added that lawmakers can still play with the layout of Mississippi’s judicial map, but those efforts would have to wait until the next scheduled session begins in January 2027, ahead of the next Mississippi Supreme Court elections in 2028.
Redrawing maps this month — more than two months after the state held its party primary election — could have set a precedent for other states to nullify their respective primary results, and that could have put Republican congressional seats in play, he said.
“Understand something — that maybe while it may be in the best interest of individual politicians in Mississippi to talk about congressional redistricting, what happens in Mississippi doesn’t happen in a vacuum,” he said.
Reeves added that Mississippi Republicans must come up with a strategy to eventually unseat Rep. Bennie Thompson, the state’s only Democratic representative out of its four-member delegation.
“What I will tell you is the tenure of Congressman Bennie Thompson, reigning terror on the 2nd Congressional District is over. It is not a question of if, it is a question of when,” the governor said.
Thompson said Monday that he will “fight against any effort to redraw my congressional district.”
Republicans in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina redrew their congressional district maps ahead of the Supreme Court’s Louisiana decision. Those efforts could jeopardize the elections of at least four Black Democratic members of the House of Representatives.
Redistricting efforts that have followed since the Supreme Court’s April 29 decision could place another 19 members of the Congressional Black Caucus at risk, Chair Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday. The caucus had a record 62 members in the 119th Congress, though two members died and one — Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.) — resigned last month amid a House Ethics Committee investigation into her alleged misuse of disaster relief funds.
“It’s devastating,” Clarke told NBC News. “People have sacrificed so much to make this a more perfect union. And here we are, in 2026, seeing this massive regression in all the gains that have been made. It’s painful.”
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