The plan, as President Donald Trump explained to reporters this summer, was simple.
The president said Republicans have a “right” to pick up five more conservative-leaning U.S. House seats in Texas and five more in other red states. The president broke more than a century of political tradition by instructing Republicans to redraw those maps in mid-century to avoid losing control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections.
Four months later, President Trump’s bold demands appear to be anything but simple. After going through a federal court panel Destroyed the new Republican map of Texas Tuesday’s entire exercise instead has the potential to give Democrats more uptakeable seats in the House.
“Trump may have let the genie out of the bottle, but he may not get his wish,” said Rick Hasen, a UCLA law professor.
President Trump’s plan is to strengthen his party’s narrow lead in the House of Representatives to prevent Republicans from losing control of the chamber in next year’s elections. Typically, the president’s party loses seats in midterm elections. But his involvement in redistricting is becoming more of an example of the limits of presidential power.
playing with fire
Mr. Trump relies on a complex political process to maintain the Republican Party’s grip on power in Washington.
Map redrawing is a decentralized task that navigates complex legal rules. It also involves difficult political calculations, as lawmakers with the power to draw maps often want to protect themselves, their business interests, and their communities rather than relentlessly help their party.
And when one party actively tries to draw boundaries in order to win an election, this is otherwise known as an “election.” gerrymandering — There is a risk of forcing rival parties to do the same.
That was President Trump’s final act, urging California voters to replace maps drawn by a bipartisan commission with maps drawn by Democrats to win five seats. If successful, the move would reverse actions taken by the Texas Republican Party. California voters approved the map earlier this month, and if Republican lawsuits fail to block it, the map, which gives Democrats more winnable seats, will remain in effect even if Texas stalls.
“Donald Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire, got burned, and democracy won,” Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom posted on X after the Texas ruling, referring to the president as well as Texas’ Republican governor.
Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley, whose Northern California district would be redrawn under the state’s new map, agreed.
“If you look at the map, honestly, it’s very likely a net loss for Republicans. At the very least, it could end up being a disaster,” Kiley said. “But it should never have happened. It was never planned from the beginning.”
A mix of wins and losses for Trump
There is no guarantee that Tuesday’s ruling on the Texas map will stand. Many lower courts have blocked President Trump’s efforts, but only the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. suspend those judgments. The Republican Party of Texas also immediately appealed Tuesday’s decision to the high court.
Republicans also want to weaken or eliminate the nation’s highest court The last major element of the Voting Rights Act That could open the door to a redraw in their favor next year.
Even before Tuesday, President Trump’s mid-decade redistricting efforts had not gone as well as hoped, despite some clear wins. North Carolina Republicans could create a new conservative-leaning seat in that battleground state, while Missouri Republicans Redrawn the parliamentary map He reacted to President Trump’s urging that the Democratic Party lose one seat. Missouri’s plan faces litigation and the possibility of a referendum to force a statewide vote.
Trump’s push has stalled elsewhere as well. kansas republican party He balked at trying to eliminate the state’s only floating seat held by Democrats. Indiana Republicans also refused to redraw the map to eliminate two Democratic-leaning seats.
After Trump attacked state Sen. Greg Good, a leading resistance figure in Indiana, on social media, he Victim of swatting calls Sheriff’s deputies were scheduled to come to his house over the weekend.
President Trump’s push could have a boomerang effect on the Republican Party
The majority of redistricting typically occurs once every 10 years, following the release of new population estimates from the U.S. Census. To do so, state legislatures would need to adjust their laws so that each district has roughly the same population. It also opens the door to gerrymandered maps that make it harder for parties out of power to win seats in Congress.
Redistricting inevitably leads to litigation, which can drag on for years and spur court-ordered changes in mid-decade.
Republicans were in a position to benefit from this after the last cycle in 2021 because they won the 2022 state Supreme Court elections in North Carolina and Ohio, but some cases did not go their way. Earlier this month, a Utah judge required the state to: One of the four seats is Democratic-leaning..
Trump broke with modern political convention and argued for a massive mid-decade reelection bid in red states.
Democrats were in a weak position to respond to President Trump’s maneuvers because many states they control are drawn by independent commissions rather than partisan lawmakers, a vestige of government reform efforts.
But Newsom’s push to force Democrats to draw California lines was so successful that the party is trying to replicate it elsewhere.
Next maybe virginiaDemocrats took back the governor’s office this month and expanded their margins in Congress. Democratic gubernatorial candidates in Colorado are pushing for similar measures there. Republicans currently hold nine of the 19 House seats in these two states.
Overall, Republicans stand to lose even more if redistricting becomes a purely partisan exercise nationwide, with voters in blue states abandoning nonpartisan commissions to maximize the benefits of their own party. In the last full redistricting cycle in 2021, the commission drew 95 House seats that would have been tied for Democrats and only 13 House seats that would have been tied for Republicans.
Unintended consequences of gerrymandering
On Tuesday, Republicans were reevaluating President Trump’s aggressive push for redistricting.
“If you look at the basis of this, not a single member of our delegation was asked our opinion,” Rep. Pete Sessions, Republican of Texas, told reporters.
Incumbent lawmakers typically don’t like the idea of radically redrawing districts. That could lead to what political experts call a “dummy mander,” with opposition voters scattered far and wide and endangering their own incumbents in a year like 2026, with negative consequences for the party in power.
Incumbents also don’t like losing voters who support them or having entirely new communities drawn into their districts, said Jonathan Servas, who teaches redistricting at Carnegie Mellon University and helped draw the court’s new maps. Democratic lawmakers in Illinois and Maryland have so far joined Republicans in Indiana and Kansas in resisting a mid-decade redraw to replace each state’s majority.
That’s why it was impressive to see President Trump pressuring Republicans to move forward with redistricting in the middle of the decade, Servas said.
“The idea that they would get along is basically crazy,” he says.
___
Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti and Kevin Freeking in Washington contributed to this report.
