A political maneuver in Texas that has shaken US politics seems to have started discreetly in June. That’s when President Donald Trump’s political team encouraged Republican leaders of the state to win more chairs for the Republican Party in the already unbalanced state district map. The request, according to a person near Trump, was that the leaders were “relentless.”
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Just over two months later, Texas Republicans used a special session called by Governor Greg Abbott to advance a plan that expects their party to win five chairs in the House, which is divided by a narrow margin – and to try to prevent the law from being passed.
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It is a move that can influence the outcome of next year’s middle term elections and turn the country’s redistructuring battles into a total war.
Trump is getting the hard tactics – and most likely the five most favorable districts – he wanted. However, the base for this moment was built long before June. This is how we arrive here, and why democrats who want to fight fire with fire can have their hands tied.
A crucial decision of the Supreme Court
O gerrymandering (manipulation of electoral districts) is not new. The term dates back to 1812, when Governor Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence, signed a bill that created districts for the state Senate in the Boston area so circumvented that one of them looked like a salamander.
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The party design of the maps reduced competitiveness, becoming more and more disputes into overwhelming victories for one party or another. By 2024, only 8% of Congress disputes were decided for less than 5 percentage points, according to an analysis by my colleagues this year.
A key moment occurred in 2019, when the US Supreme Court – which at the time had a narrow republican majority – decided that federal courts had no power to judge cases on gerrymandering party. Writing for the majority, the president of the court, John Roberts, acknowledged that the results of “excessive partisans” in the district design “seem reasonably unfair,” but said that, ultimately, the issue was political and not constitutional.
The decision allowed the court to exempt from the problem and leave the issue to the states, which adopt very different approaches to the redistructuring.
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The dissident judges warned that the consequences of the decision for democracy could be serious. “The practices contested in these cases endanger our government system,” wrote Judge Elena Kagan.
An unequal struggle
With the federal courts practically outside the business of reviewing the gerrymandering Party, it was up to state laws and state courts to determine what was allowed – and then republicans had an advantage, the result of years of gains that they conquered in state legislatures.
In the 2022 redistructuring cycle, Republicans controlled the design of the electoral maps in 19 states, while the Democrats did it in just seven, according to an analysis of 2022 from the Brennan Center.
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Democrats did gerrymandering Aggressive in some of these states, including Illinois, Maryland and the politically divided Nevada.
But in several states where Democrats are in power, including Arizona, California, Colorado, and Michigan, voters have established independent committees to draw fair maps, which will make it difficult for them to try to cancel Texas’ gains drawing new maps elsewhere.
In New York, an aggressive attempt by gerrymandering was rejected by a court in 2022; The party ended up drawing a map relatively contained in 2024.
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All of this led to a reflection between democrats who spent years trying to combat the gerrymanderingincluding former Attorney General Eric Holder. Last week, he said he believed that the Democrats needed to respond to gerrymandering Republican in the same coin.
“We have to take these extraordinary measures, hoping that we can then save democracy and finally heal it,” he said.
And now?
Deputy Jamie Raskin, Maryland’s Democrat, said that what comes next is a “rock race.”
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Trump and his allies are pressing for more gains. Republicans have full control of legislatures in states such as Florida, Indiana, Missouri and New Hampshire, which can become targets for trying to redo their own maps.
Democrats are trying to do the same – although some may have to find ways to circumvent reforms in their own states first.
On Monday, along with some Texas democrats who had left the state, New York governor Kathy Hochul promised to follow the example and redesign maps in New York-even if it demands it change the constitution of the state to end the independent redistructing committee.
Any effort in this regard, however, would be deeply complicated and may not come into force until after the middle elections.
“I am tired of fighting this fight with my hands tied on the back,” said Hochul. “With all due respect to good government groups, politics is a political process.”
In California, Governor Gavin Newsom proposed a public vote on new maps in this fall – although he keeps plans for the independent design of the maps in 2030.
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