A partisan redistricting arms race is threatening to entangle more states across the country as President Donald Trump pursues new avenues of consolidating political power.
Trump’s argument that his party is “entitled” to five more congressional seats in Texas is one of his most blatant efforts to remake America’s political landscape, and Republican-led states that may be able to cough up more seats are starting to line up behind him. Democrats are seeking ways to respond in kind, which could spark a battle that lasts well beyond the 2026 midterms.
“We’re starting to see a very clear through line that he is trying to reshape the American electorate in his image,” John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, told NOTUS. “It’s, I think, increasingly showing the voters that this is an absurd reality that is totally unnecessary, and being forced on us by a very specific and small cabal of Republicans.”
“The Republicans are threatening to totally warp that reality back to a place where they’re trying to completely consolidate and lock in power,” Bisognano went on. “It’s not a reliable electoral system for us to continue to operate this way.”
His organization is temporarily suggesting that blue states gerrymander in response to Republican gains to maintain a national balance of representation, as Democrats are considering doing in states like California, Illinois and Maryland.
But fair-map advocates like Bisognano are also calling for Congress to put federal guardrails on redistricting. A handful of Republicans, whose districts could be threatened by partisan redistricting efforts in blue states, are already offering ceasefires.
Rep. Doug LaMalfa told The Hill that the escalating battle was not only unwanted by most House members but also “pretty disgusting.” His California colleague, Rep. Kevin Kiley, proposed a bill to prohibit mid-decade redistricting, and Rep. Mike Lawler of New York said he plans to propose policies to “ban” gerrymandering, too.
But to hear some of their other colleagues in Congress tell it, Republicans should go all in, as Democrats are the ones to blame for the current map madness.
“The gerrymanderers are the Democrats,” Sen. Bernie Moreno told NOTUS on Friday, pointing to New Mexico, Connecticut and Massachusetts, where he said Democrats are overrepresented in Congress, as examples. “We’re just gonna have to play even with ’em. Otherwise we’re gonna lose.”
Democrats still holding onto to power in Washington is the central argument Republicans are using to undergird the White House’s unprecedented mid-decade redistricting push. They’ve fueled the tension by calling on the FBI to help locate Democratic lawmakers from Texas, who fled the state earlier this month to prevent state Republicans from green-lighting a map they say is unfair and would leave non-white Texans underrepresented. In addition to calling for arrests, the state’s Republicans continue to battle in the courts in an attempt to vacate their opponents’ seats in the chamber.
While the saga unfolds, the White House is waging a pressure campaign on Republican state officials across the country to deliver more seats. Vice President JD Vance was dispatched to Indianapolis last week to try to convince state Republican officials to redistrict, though Republican leaders in Indiana remained noncommittal about the idea of picking up the pen mid-decade at the president’s request.
In Missouri, one state lawmaker received a call from a White House staffer a day after a local newspaper published his concerns about drawing up a new map. In Ohio, which is forced to redistrict mid-decade by state Supreme Court rulings, the White House is making appeals for Republicans there to gerrymander, too. Republicans from South Carolina and Florida have signalled they might revisit their state’s lines to help the White House’s efforts.
The White House declined to comment.
But the spiraling situation alarms Democrats and voting rights advocates.
Marcia Johnson, the chief counsel to the League of Women Voters, told NOTUS in a statement that Trump’s calls for a mid-decade census to bolster his gerrymandering campaign show that voting rights advocacy groups are having to litigate around and navigate “a constitutional crisis.”
“This is not something that can be done on a whim while ensuring that the constitutional obligations are met,” Johnson said. “The executive branch of the federal government is blatantly ignoring the Constitution’s checks and balances. We are in new territory when it comes to unconstitutional political manipulation.”
Underscoring just how far Trump is willing to stretch his power is his request for a mid-decade census that would exclude undocumented people, which is something he called for ahead of the 2020 census but failed to get.
“I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS.”
Vance argued Sunday on Fox News that red states must act to counteract the “ridiculously unfair” counting of undocumented people in other states to determine their state population numbers, which are used in funding and redistricting formulas.
The Constitution requires that “persons,” not citizens, get counted, and only once every 10 years. Such plainly stated language in the 14th Amendment offers the Trump administration little wiggle room in the redistricting and census arena — though that has so far not stopped the White House from starting protracted legal battles in its quest to upend interpretations of the Equal Protection amendment that were long considered settled, such as Trump’s fight to end birthright citizenship.
When it comes to partisan gerrymandering, however, there’s not much standing in Trump’s way if states are willing to redraw their maps, short of sufficient pushback from a Republican-controlled Congress. These state-by-state efforts could last until the next census. Then, that board would reset again in 2030, and coordinated gerrymandering frenzies could pick back up — and all of the resulting years of litigation, too.
Letting go of any previous inhibitions they may have once vocally held about engaging in partisan gerrymandering, Democrats have instead continued to promise revenge if Republicans get their way with Texas, or anywhere else. Gov. Gavin Newsom is trying to codify into state law a path to redistrict California if Texas Republicans are successful, which would temporarily subvert the state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission.
Democrats argue that gerrymandering the states where they hold power is the only way they can fight back at this point.
“There are some Republicans who realize this is not healthy for democracy,” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver told NOTUS. “There are people who could care less about damaging that democracy. They want to win an election. And they’re willing to do just about anything to make sure that that happens.”