The GOP’s Gerrymandering Battle Goes National

On the menu today: Audrey Fahlberg again here, National Review’s political reporter helping fill in for Jim Geraghty while he’s out on vacation. Tomorrow, I’ll turn it over to Dominic Pino and Noah Rothman until Jim returns to your inboxes on August 13.

Republicans Could Expand Redistricting Fight Beyond Texas

Texas Republicans’ gerrymandering standoff shows no signs of slowing down in the coming days as the Lone Star State’s GOP legislators continue to threaten legal consequences for Texas Democrats who don’t return to the state for a special session vote on a new GOP-drawn map. Only time will tell how long state legislative Democrats will drag this fight out in their efforts to prevent Republicans from reaching a quorum.

Meantime, the White House is assessing other mid-decade redistricting options in Republican states like Florida and Missouri as Republicans look to expand their congressional map ahead of the 2026 midterms. There’s also Indiana, where Vice President JD Vance is flying on Thursday to headline a Republican National Committee fundraiser and meet with GOP Governor Mike Braun and other state officials “to discuss a variety of issues,” the vice president’s spokesman, William Martin, told NR. One can only imagine gerrymandering will be on the agenda.

“They’re looking at a national game of three-dimensional chess: Texas and then changes in Florida, which is in the spring; Missouri, spring; Ohio, early spring; and Indiana,” one Republican operative helping GOP redistricting efforts told NR of the White House’s political calculus here, adding that administration officials must keep in mind what Democratic officials can do in states like Illinois and New York. “And I think the belief is: Not much. They’ve already squeezed what they could squeeze. Not too many lemons left.”

The White House’s decision to pressure other Republican states on the gerrymandering front isn’t surprising given the administration’s obvious desire to preserve the GOP’s rare trifecta in Washington. Trump and his allies fear that if Democrats retake the House, they’ll impeach him a third time, stymie his legislative agenda, and subject him and his allies to congressional investigations. None of those possibilities would be welcome developments for a president looking to cement his legacy in the latter half of his second term.

Dems in a Tight Spot

Democrats face quite a few political dilemmas here. They have few redistricting opportunities ahead of 2026, given how many blue states were recently gerrymandered and how few states enjoy both Democratic governors and control of the state legislature. Complicating matters further, some blue states now limit state legislators’ power to draw maps in the first place.

California governor and likely 2028 presidential candidate Gavin Newsom, for example, has signaled an eagerness to fight Texas Republicans’ gerrymander with a retaliatory gerrymander in his own Democratic-controlled state. But given California’s new independent redistricting commission, a Newsom-approved gerrymander would first require a ballot initiative or constitutional amendment. That process would take time, invite litigation, and make Newsom vulnerable to criticism among Democrats that he’s embracing Trumpian political warfare in pushing for a retaliatory gerrymander.

“Democrats, to a certain point, are just pounding their chests,” said Ryan Girdusky, a political consultant and host of a podcast called It’s a Number’s Game.

“And who knows if they can get any of it done before 2026,” he added.

Republicans like Girdusky are chuckling over the fact that, of all the states Texas Democrats could’ve fled to, they chose Illinois, one of the most gerrymandered states in the country. Here’s the Wall Street Journal’s John McCormick with a helpful breakdown:

Just three of 17 Illinois congressional districts — about 18% — are represented by Republicans in a state where President Trump won 44% of the 2024 vote. The nonpartisan Gerrymandering Project at Princeton University awarded the congressional map approved in Illinois in 2021 with two “F” grades, one in the category of partisan fairness and another for geographic features.

We now know that spending groups backed by Democratic donor George Soros and perennial Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke are funding Texas Democrats’ exodus from the state, according to new reporting in the Texas Tribune. (The cherry on top is that most of those Democrats flew to Illinois on a 76-seat private jet, a Washington Free Beacon review of flight logs revealed.)

Texas Republicans Bet on Hispanic Vote

One has to imagine that behind closed doors, some Texas Republican representatives in safe Republican seats are displeased that their districts will become slightly more competitive in future elections if this GOP-drafted map is approved. There are also electoral uncertainties surrounding the future of the Hispanic vote in Texas, which has trended much redder in recent years under Trump. Here’s a helpful analysis from the Wall Street Journal:

The new map in Texas released last week creates five new districts, and four with majority-Hispanic voting populations. But that is a gamble for the party to assume these voters’ increased support for Trump will transfer over to the party more broadly, especially with past elections revealing that Hispanic voters will split their ticket.

“Now the bet Republicans are making is, in the South Texas districts, that the Tejano vote for Trump is going to be a Republican vote. That’s a big gamble,” said Karl Rove, a Republican strategist. “It may work in the next election, and it may work when you’ve got a candidate like Gov. Abbott and a Democrat who you can’t even remember their name, running for governor, but it may not work beyond that.”

An analysis by Cook Political Report found that while five incumbent Democrats are being pushed into new districts that Trump would have won by at least 10 points in 2024, softening of Hispanic support for Republicans could complicate GOP prospects. Cook said Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez looked to have the best shots at hanging on.

And more analysis from Pooja Salhotra in the New York Times:

In 2024, Mr. Trump made remarkable inroads in South Texas. He won 12 of the 14 counties along the border with Mexico, compared with just five of them in 2016. . . .

Democrats insist that Mr. Trump’s 2024 performance among Latinos in South Texas was a high-water mark, whether or not the redistricting succeeds. Sylvia Bruni, who chairs the Democratic Party in Webb County, which includes Laredo, said she expected discontent to grow as voters experience the impact of Republican-led cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps. About 22 percent of Laredo residents live in poverty, according to the Census Bureau.

ADDENDUM: Some blue-state House Republicans are signaling they’re not on board with mid-decade gerrymandering efforts.