‘They had absolute power’: the US congressman driven out by Republican gerrymandering

Jeff Jackson made a splash in his single term but will be running for North Carolina attorney general after a newly partisan state supreme court redrew his district map

A little over nine months after he was sworn in to his first term in Congress, Jeff Jackson, a freshman US representative for North Carolina, announced he would leave the body at the end of his term.

To an outsider, that might seem like a surprising decision. In just his first few months in Congress, Jackson had become well-known for smart, short videos explaining what was going on at the Capitol. By April, he had more followers on TikTok than any other member of Congress, the Washington Post reported (as of mid-December he had 2.5 million). By all accounts, he was a rising star.