Congressman Greg Casar spoke August 1 at the “Fight the Trump Takeover” rally in the Texas Capitol rotunda. Mario Cantu/CSM/Zuma
For years, Republicans have sought to consolidate power at the state and federal level by controlling the redistricting process through which congressional boundaries are drawn. In places such as Wisconsin and Ohio, they have crafted cartoonishly distorted districts that have literally drawn Democrats out of power. But the longstanding battle between Republicans and Democrats over redistricting exploded recently when, with the encouragement of Donald Trump, Texas Republicans proposed a new congressional map—outside of the typical 10-year cycle—that could yield Republicans five congressional seats in next year’s midterm elections.
Democrats, who have historically abstained from the most glaring, self-serving forms of gerrymandering, insist they are now going to re-draw maps in states they control to help them offset their potential loss of seats from the GOP-drawn maps. “They’re not screwing around,” California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom said of Republicans’ redistricting plans, which extend beyond Texas. “We cannot afford to screw around either. We have got to fight fire with fire.”
“We have a really asymmetric pattern of unilateral disarmament, and so if Democrats want to do what Texas is doing, they would have to undo some of the reforms they put in place over the last couple of decades to fight gerrymandering.”
But in addition to the tight timeline between now and the midterm elections, Democrats may encounter another problem: their own firewalls. Through efforts to keep extreme partisan bias out of redistricting, some states—like California and New York—have self-policed themselves into instituting independent commissions that shape the districts. Critically, it may prevent them from carrying out their threat of revenge.
“We have a really asymmetric pattern of unilateral disarmament, and so if Democrats want to do what Texas is doing, they would have to undo some of the reforms they put in place over the last couple of decades to fight gerrymandering,” says Harvard Law School professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos.
In the last week, they’ve started to try.
“We’re already working on a legislative process, reviewing our legal strategies, and we’ll do everything in our power to stop this brazen assault,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said at a press conference this week. “The gloves are off, and I say ‘Bring it on.’”
The terms “redistricting” and “gerrymandering” are often used interchangeably in today’s political environment, but they aren’t supposed to be.
Redistricting is the legal process in which new congressional district boundaries are drawn to take into account changes in population since the last census. Gerrymandering is using the opportunity to redistrict to manipulate boundaries to favor one’s party over the other.
Yet, in most states, the majority party in the state legislature largely controls the redistricting process, especially when that party maintains the governor’s mansion too. Whether or not the party admits it, holding the gavel typically enables lawmakers to impose more favorable maps.
The “independent commission” model of redistricting reflects the Democratic Party’s intention to honor the democratic principle of “one person, one vote,” New York Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins tells Mother Jones.
But, she says, Republicans have left Democrats without another option but to try and change the independent commission method in New York, at least temporarily.
“Republicans have decided that whatever they want to do, they should do. Democrats really have no choice but to look at what it is we must do in order to preserve democracy,” says Stewart-Cousins, who is also chair of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), the party’s national arm for state legislative races.
The DLCC announced a more aggressive approach to redistricting as a coalition-wide objective on Monday. “The DLCC isn’t going to sit back and allow Republicans to cheat the system to keep themselves in power,” the group’s president, Heather Williams, said in a statement. “All options must be on the table—including Democratic state legislatures using their power to fight back and pursue redistricting mid-cycle in order to protect our democracy.”
The Democratic National Committee has also tacitly supported the DLCC’s move. In a statement, DNC chair Ken Martin said members of the party should be able “to combat Trump and Republicans’ craven scheme to rig the maps in their favor.”
But despite the buy-in, mid-cycle redistricting won’t be as easy as ripping up the old maps and drawing new ones over the next few months.
Democrats in the New York legislature proposed a state constitutional amendment last week that would allow state lawmakers to forgo the independent commission process and do their own re-districting in the middle of the usual 10-year cycle, but only if another state did it first. If it passes the legislature, the amendment would then go before New York citizens as a ballot measure.
Asked whether she could foresee New York Democrats successfully redistricting before the 2026 midterms, Stewart-Cousins said, “I am not aware of a way to do that… People are, I’m sure, taking a look to see what could be possible.”
There are similar challenges in the other Democratic-led states that have expressed desire to use Republicans’ own tactics against them.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has said “nothing is off the table” in terms of retaliatory redistricting. But maps in the midwestern state already disproportionately benefit Democrats. (There are only three congressional districts in the state that are not represented by Democrats.) Republicans have even pointed to the Illinois map in defense of their plans to regroup Texas.
California is another state with a willing governor and Democratic majorities in the state legislature. The state may be Democrats’ best—if only—option at picking up more than a couple of blue districts before the midterms, which is why Gov. Newsom has encouraged California Democrats to put new district maps in front of voters in a special election that would precede the midterms. This would be temporary, he says. The maps would stay in place only through 2030, at which point the independent redistricting commission would have the power again.
“Things have changed. We’re reacting to that change,” Newsom said at a recent news conference. “They’ve triggered this response, and we’re not going to roll over.”
In the short-term, Democratic lawmakers in Texas have blocked Republicans from carrying out their plan by fleeing the state to preempt the vote on the new districts. The strategy is almost inevitably temporary; the Texas legislators face $500-per-day fines for not appearing for legislative duty, and Gov. Greg Abbott has threatened to expel them from office. He’s also able to call another special session whenever he wants.
But beyond the questions of strategy and ineffectiveness, there is also the quandary about whether this is a path Democrats should even venture down.
“Now that we’re opening the door to re-redistricting, it really makes it impossible to dislodge gerrymanders,” says Stephanopoulos. “At least in the past, you could maybe hope by year six, year eight, or year 10 of a map that it’s less effective than it was in year one. But if Texas redraws the lines now, why not redraw them again in 2028? And again in 2030?”