The Gerrymander Battlefield— And For All Their Huffing And Puffing, Democrats Brought A White Flag

Redistricting Roulette: Congress Is Being Rigged in Real Time While We Watch

The Republican Party, led by Trump and his lackeys in state legislatures, is weaponizing mid-decade redistricting to permanently entrench minority rule in the House. It’s neither theoretical nor subtle. It’s happening now in plain sight and the Democrats are scrambling to respond with tools they themselves dulled, especially Gavin Newsom and JB Pritzker who are running for president and Kathy Hochul who’s running for reelection. Meanwhile, the real architects of this long game— Leonard Leo, Cleta Mitchell and the Federalist Society machine— are popping champagne. They’ve spent years laying the groundwork for precisely this kind of judicial and legislative manipulation

In Texas, the GOP has launched an extraordinary push to redraw congressional maps outside of the normal ten-year census cycle. As you know, their goal is to blatantly secure five more House seats, Trump claiming he’s “entitled” to them even though he only won the state with 56% last year— and against the weakest candidate the Democrats have fielded in decades. 56% is also the margin of raw voters who voted for the GOP in state House elections last year. The state Senate election last year were actually won by the Democrats, though you would never know it from the outcome in the state’s grotesquely gerrymandered districts. 2,678,166 Texans voted for Democratic candidates (55%) but they only won 12 seats. 2,196,004 Texans (45%) voted for Republican candidates but they won 19 seats.

The plan for Congress is so brazen— much like the way Republicans hang onto power in the state Senate— that Democratic legislators fled the state to prevent a quorum. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, with Trump pulling the strings, is pushing forward anyway.

And now, Indiana appears to be next. J.D. Vance is heading to Indianapolis to encourage— or browbeat— Republican leaders to do the same: carve out another House seat or even two— from an already skewed nine-district map, where the GOP holds seven. Trump is also looking towards Nebraska, Ohio and Florida—where Matt Gaetz has already floated “rebalancing” the Panhandle districts to squeeze out Democratic votes— to steal more seats and the signal is perfectly clear: red states under GOP control are preparing for a full-scale, mid-cycle gerrymandering war to hold the House at any cost and no matter how big the anti-red wave is. 

Democrats, especially in the big blue coastal states, have been watching the storm gather. In California and New York, two of the most powerful Democratic trifectas in the country, governors Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul are openly threatening retaliation. But the paths available to them are narrow, tangled with legal constraints, good-government reforms and more than a touch of irony.

Reform-minded voters in both states created independent redistricting commissions in the name of fairness. California’s was enshrined in a pair of voter-approved ballot measures. New York's process is even harder to unwind, requiring a constitutional amendment passed in two consecutive legislative sessions, then approved by voters— meaning any new lines wouldn't take effect until 2028.

In contrast, Texas, Indiana and most red states have no such obstacles. Where there are corrupt Republican governors, GOP-dominated legislatures can move swiftly. They can call special sessions, bypass opposition and ram through new maps that further dilute urban and minority votes,  often under the cover of voter ID crackdowns or anti-CRT moral panics to keep their base distracted. They don't pretend this is about fairness. It’s about power… and, as always, they’re playing to win power, not points for “works and plays well with others.”

Newsom is proposing a “triggered” ballot initiative that would only take effect if Texas finalizes its gerrymander. But even that effort, couched in defensive terms, faces political risks, time constraints, and a price tag north of $200 million. He’s trying to convince voters to temporarily shelve their support for independent redistricting to respond to a Trumpian power grab. It’s a pitch that might not land— especially if the state’s progressive base sees it as abandoning principle.

And then there’s the deeper asymmetry: the geographic distribution of voters. As The Economist noted, Democrats are increasingly clustered in dense urban centers, making them easier to “pack” into a small number of districts. Republicans, meanwhile, are spread more evenly across exurbs and rural counties, giving them a natural edge when district lines are drawn. Even in a perfectly “neutral” process, the map favors the right. It’s the electoral equivalent of stuffing the opposition into a closet while claiming the house is “fairly divided.”

This is the quiet tyranny of gerrymandering: it manipulates the rules of the game so thoroughly that voters become irrelevant. And while Democrats tried to curb this power with high-minded reforms, Republicans have turned that restraint into a tactical advantage.

Democrats could try to fight fire with fire— but they may only end up burning themselves. Their legal reforms have hemmed them in. Their moral arguments about fair maps now sound naïve to many. And even if they succeed in places like California, the payoff may be modest: a net gain of three to five seats at best, not enough to cancel out Texas, Indiana, and whatever other red states join the fray.

In short, Democrats are outgunned and outmaneuvered. They brought a butter knife to a sword fight. And unless they’re willing to abandon the systems of fairness they built, they’ll have to rely on voters— certainly not Leonard Leo’s pet Supreme Court— to break through gerrymandered walls that were designed to shut them out, walls built brick by brick through Project 2025’s roadmap for one-party rule. Please consider helping support grassroots challengers running in Texas— candidates who are fighting back on the ground, district by district. If you're as furious as we are about how this power grab is being executed in plain sight, you can chip in here to help them do it.