South Carolina Senate blocks Trump-pressured mid-decade gerrymander of Clyburn's district

On Tuesday, May 26, 2026, the South Carolina state Senate blocked a mid-decade congressional redistricting bill that President Donald Trump had personally pressed Republican lawmakers to pass. The map would have redrawn the state's seven U.S. House districts to break up the 6th Congressional District -- South Carolina's only majority-Black district and its only seat held by a Democrat, Rep. James "Jim" Clyburn -- positioning Republicans to win all seven seats. On a key procedural vote, twelve Republicans joined twelve Democrats to deny the 26 votes needed to invoke cloture and end debate, leaving the bill short of a final floor vote and effectively dead for the cycle.

The redraw was the South Carolina chapter of a national mid-decade Republican redistricting effort that followed the U.S. Supreme Court's 2026 decision weakening Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which Trump has urged Republican-controlled states to exploit before the 2026 midterm elections. Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, who said he had received personal calls from the president pushing the map, was among the Republicans who declined to advance it; he used a floor speech to warn against anti-democratic gerrymandering. Massey and other Republicans cited the fact that early voting in the June 9 primary had already begun and that South Carolina's existing districts -- unlike those in Alabama, Louisiana, or Tennessee -- were not directly implicated by the recent Supreme Court ruling. The chamber adjourned with a motion to reconvene June 10, one day after the scheduled primary, making any revival before the midterms highly unlikely.

The vote is a national setback for the redistricting drive Trump has championed: South Carolina is the first state where the legislative push has failed outright, and the collapse came from within a Republican-controlled chamber. The effort directly preceding this defeat -- the same map's advance to a second-reading vote on May 23 -- is recorded separately. Because the bill died rather than passing, the previously planned delay of the state's congressional primary from June 9 to August 18 did not take effect, and the June 9 primary proceeds as scheduled. The map could be revived in a future session.