As we head into the 2026 redistricting war between the states — beginning suitably in the Texas legislature, at Donald Trump’s behest, during a special session meant to address the recent floods — Democrats have only one option.
And that’s to fight back as if their lives, and our lives, depended on it.
Because it matters just that much.
If Democrats don’t at least win back the closely divided House in the 2026 midterms, we are doomed — and that’s not too strong a word — to a full, veto-free, four-year term of Trump’s authoritarian government. A Democratic House could turn away any and all Trump legislation, not that the president typically relies on Congress to have his will done.
If you trust history — and it’s getting harder to, as you might have seen in the Smithsonian’s decision to remove mention of Trump’s impeachment trials from a display on, well, presidential impeachments — it says incumbent presidents generally get clobbered in midterm elections. So Trump has come up with a different strategy to try to rig the 2026 midterms, using an old strategy — gerrymandering — but with a different twist.
House districts are typically drawn at the beginning of a decade after the census reveals new up-to-date population numbers. In most states, there’s no law against a midterm redraw. And Trump remembers too well the 2018 midterms, during his first term, when Democrats picked up 41 seats to win back the House.
To head off possible disaster, Trump has called on Texas to do some major-league midterm gerrymandering. And so the legislature is now preparing its fire-on-Fort-Sumter moment in the redistricting war, drawing a new map that would steal as many as five Democratic seats.
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SUBSCRIBEThe GOP currently holds 25 of Texas’ 38 districts. The new plan could give Republicans 30 districts and leave Democrats with only eight.
The Texas Tribune reports that Democrats could possibly hold on to two of the five seats if everything broke their way — meaning midterm voters turn on Trump bigly — but, in any case, even three votes could be a lot in a House where the GOP, at this point, can afford to lose only four seats to lose their majority.
The Democratic response in Texas will probably be for state representatives to run for the hills, meaning that Republicans couldn’t muster a quorum, meaning that the session could be delayed.
Texas Republicans have seen this act before and passed a law a few years ago that allows for quorum busters, who generally leave the state in order not to be arrested, to be fined $500 for each day they boycott.
U.S. House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries came to Austin to talk to Texas Dems about the strategy, which, at best, would only halt the proceedings for a time. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott can call as many sessions as he likes.
But nationally Democrats are also fighting back — not only against Texas but against their own recently-discovered anti-gerrymander principles, because what choice do they have?
And so Gavin Newsom in California and JB Pritzker in Illinois and Kathy Hochul in New York and Chris Murphy in Connecticut have threatened to engage in a little midterm madness of their own in their heavily Democratic states to counter Texas.
But in New York and California, the legislature has passed good-government rules on gerrymandering, which Democrats would have to overcome. It would not be easy, but probably doable. Certainly, Republicans would have to respect the chance of a real fight if Texas goes first.
Which brings us to Colorado, where gerrymandering is currently all but impossible. And yet, former U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo, running to reclaim the 8th CD seat she lost narrowly in 2024, wants Colorado to enter the fray by tossing out the state’s independent redistricting commission and then redrawing the lines.
But Caraveo told the Colorado Sun’s Unaffiliated newsletter in a written statement, “For the sake of the country, Democrats need to fight back. I applaud Democrats around the country who are moving to redraw their own maps to counter this MAGA power grab and urge Colorado to repeal our independent commission and do the same.”
But there are a few problems. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that the state constitution prohibits congressional districts from being redrawn in the middle of a decade. In the ruling, the court said gerrymandering must end.
Which is just what happened in 2018, when 71% of Colorado voters approved Amendment Y, which established the commission, which would later establish the 8th CD, which, according to the National Journal, is considered the second most competitive race in the country.
Caraveo, who has had some issues from her one term in the House, is one of seven candidates running in the Democratic primary to unseat Republican Rep. Gabe Evans. My guess is that Democrats in the state would rather place their moneyed bets on beating Evans, who has strongly supported Trump in an anti-Trump state, than in trying to undo the state constitution.
But Caraveo, who concedes she voted for Amendment Y, is taking a stance as a fighter, and if I’m reading the tea leaves properly, fighters will be rewarded by Democratic voters the first chance they get.
Even former DaVita CEO Kent Thiry, who fancies himself a good-government type and whose money funded Amendment Y’s passage, understands the problem.
While I’m still skeptical that one person’s money should have that much power in Colorado or anywhere else, Thiry did post on social media that “I am acutely aware of the potential for harm and unfairness when bad actors seek to capitalize on those reforms. … Lots to consider here. I am opposed to the cancer of gerrymandering, but I respect those who don’t want to bring a knife to a gunfight.”
For Democrats, it’s also a rejection of Michelle Obama’s famous advice to the party that when Republicans go low, Dems go high.
But by the 2024 Democratic convention, Obama already recognized her words have passed their use-by date. She accused Trump of going not low, but small.
And then she said. “Going small is petty, it’s unhealthy, and, quite frankly, it’s unpresidential. It’s his same old con: doubling down on ugly, misogynistic, racist lies as a substitute for real ideas and solutions that will actually make people’s lives better.”
Democrats, who have vainly struggled to find a way to counteract Trump’s worst acts, have no choice but to fight back. They must do more than accuse Trump of trying to rig the election. They must do far more.
Because if they don’t fight now, they may have already lost.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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