Donald Trump has been playing offense on the map since day one of his second term.
Now he’s turning up the heat in the Deep South, and one very powerful Democrat may not survive it.
And Donald Trump just dropped one bombshell that left Democrats sweating.
Trump Calls. South Carolina Answers.
South Carolina Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey (R-SC) confirmed that President Donald Trump personally called him twice to push for new congressional maps in the Palmetto State. “In light of the Supreme Court decision, he asked me to take a look at it,” Massey said. He added that he had spoken with multiple White House officials as well, and made clear he shared his own reservations with them directly.
The Supreme Court decision in question is Louisiana v. Callais, handed down in late April. South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson called it “one of the most consequential decisions regarding voting rights in a generation.” Wilson went further: “That decision plainly provides a basis for South Carolina to review and redraw our congressional districts.” He put his support behind the push explicitly, saying he believes the General Assembly has the legal authority to redraw the maps before the June 9 primary.
Trump had already gone public on Truth Social on May 3, writing: “We cannot allow there to be an Election that is conducted unconstitutionally simply for the ‘convenience’ of State Legislatures.” He predicted Republicans would pick up more than 20 House seats in the midterms if states followed through on redistricting.
The Target: Jim Clyburn’s 6th District
Democratic U.S. Representative Jim Clyburn has held South Carolina’s 6th Congressional District since 1992, when the lines were redrawn specifically to give minority voters more electoral power. He’s now running for an 18th term.
Republicans in the state, particularly members of the House Freedom Caucus, have been pushing since the start of the 2026 legislative session to redraw those boundaries. Freedom Caucus Chairman Representative Jordan Pace led the effort inside the Statehouse. One hearing on proposed new maps has already taken place.
The goal is straightforward: Republicans currently hold six of South Carolina’s seven congressional seats. A redrawn 6th District could make it seven for seven. U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, U.S. Representative Nancy Mace, Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evette, and Representative Ralph Norman all publicly backed the effort. Graham put it bluntly after Virginia Democrats redistricted to gain seats: “After the Virginia Democrats’ efforts to redistrict in order to increase Democrat seats in the House of Representatives, South Carolina should consider fighting fire with fire.”
Every seat Republicans add in redistricting makes it that much harder for Democrats to flip the four seats they need to win back the majority in the House of Representatives.
Not Everyone on the Republican Side Is On Board
Massey, despite taking Trump’s calls, did not exactly run to the finish line. He told reporters he’s worried about the math. “I’m concerned about whether we can hold seven seats, frankly,” he said. The concern is real: Republicans have a supermajority in the General Assembly, but some of their own members fear that carving up Clyburn’s district could scatter Democratic voters into neighboring districts and make two seats competitive instead of one.
South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster (R-SC) stayed even more noncommittal. McMaster said he has no intention of calling a special session, which means the legislature would need to act on its own before the session ends May 14. “I’m not going to give you a specific answer on a specific situation because I don’t know what it’s going to be,” McMaster said. “I don’t know what the strength in the House will be, or one body may want to do it and the other might not.”
His office confirmed that he had been in contact with the White House about redistricting since the Callais ruling, but pushed back on the idea that Trump was applying pressure, calling it “ongoing coordination” and “regular communications.”
A committee in the South Carolina House passed a proposal Wednesday that would allow the General Assembly to reconvene after adjournment specifically to consider redistricting. The full chamber still needed to vote on it, and the resolution required a two-thirds majority to pass. Republicans have the supermajority to get there on paper. Whether enough of them will actually vote yes is a different question.
The Bigger Picture Republicans Can’t Ignore
South Carolina is not operating in a vacuum. Alabama and Tennessee already convened special sessions this week. Louisiana suspended its May 16 congressional primary entirely after the Callais ruling, with more than 41,000 absentee ballots already cast when Governor Mike Landry pulled the plug on the race. Since Trump first pushed Texas to redraw its maps last year, eight states have now adopted new congressional districts.
Republicans believe they could gain as many as 13 seats from those redrawn maps. Democrats think they could pick up as many as 10 from their own redistricting moves in other states. But some of the new districts could be genuinely competitive in November, meaning neither side is guaranteed to get everything it’s reaching for.
And time is the enemy for South Carolina specifically. The state’s primaries are June 9. Early voting starts in three weeks. Redrawing lines now, with candidates already in races and voters preparing to go to the polls, is the kind of thing that tends to end up in federal court before the ink dries on the new maps.
Clyburn himself warned that the Callais decision “threatens to send our country deeper into the thicket of never-ending redistricting fights,” predicting “repeated map redraws, protracted legal battles, and relentless partisan struggles.”
He’s not wrong that the legal fights will come. But the political reality is that the House majority is on the line in November, Republicans are playing every card in their hand, and Trump has made it crystal clear that he expects his allies in state capitals to do the same.
The House Freedom Caucus has been pushing this since January. The state attorney general is on board. Trump called the Senate Majority Leader twice. And yet the governor won’t call a special session, and some Republican senators are quietly nervous about the outcome.
That’s a lot of pressure building against a deadline that doesn’t move. South Carolina Republicans have about a week left in their legislative session to decide whether they’re going to take the shot or let it go. If they pass, the window closes until after the primaries, and Clyburn runs in the same district he’s held for more than three decades.
If they act, the lawsuits will fly. But Republicans across the South seem to have decided that’s a fight worth having.
Sources: Politico, May 6, 2026; WIS-TV/WISTV.com, May 6, 2026; Post and Courier, May 4, 2026; ABC Columbia/abccolumbia.com, May 6, 2026; ABC News, May 6, 2026; Washington Times, May 6, 2026; CBS News, May 1, 2026; WACH Fox Columbia, May 6, 2026; Stateline, May 4, 2026.