Trump’s Redistricting Race Is Already Going Off the Rails

With all the appalling things going on every day in Donald Trump’s America, it’s tempting to view the nationwide scramble to redraw congressional maps before the 2026 midterms as just another typical incident of partisan gamesmanship. But it’s actually quite unusual. Since at least since the beginning of the 20th century, states rarely conducted redistricting other than after the decennial Census and the subsequent reapportionment of U.S. House seats between the states. Court decisions occasionally forced a mid-decade redistricting (particularly during the sadly distant heyday of the Voting Rights Act). But when then–U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay engineered a redistricting of the Texas House delegation in 2003 to help Republicans reconquer Congress in 2004, it was a national scandal.

So when President Donald Trump ordered Texas Republicans to suddenly upturn the state’s congressional map because he knew his party was likely to lose control of the House in 2026, it was a very big deal. And when he subsequently ordered Republicans to do the same thing in every single state where they had the power to pull off such blatant, minority-disenfranchising power grabs, it touched off a wild arms race between the two parties that may not subside until candidate filing deadlines for 2026 have passed. Having flipped up to five House seats in Texas, and one in Missouri, Republicans are now looking at the possibility of rewriting maps in Ohio, Indiana, Kansas, Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina. Democrats are retaliating with a big redistricting push in California, also aimed at netting five seats, which will be approved or vetoed by voters on November 4. Democrats in Maryland, Illinois, and New York are thinking about joining the gerrymandering jamboree.

But the best sign of how out of control the redistricting craze has become is the out-of-the-blue plan now emerging from Virginia, where Democrats are considering a truly mad dash to flip two or three House seats before the midterms, as the New York Times reports:

The next front in the nation’s pitched battle over mid-decade congressional redistricting is opening in Virginia, where Democrats are planning the first step toward redrawing congressional maps, a move that could give their party two or three more seats.

The surprise development, which was announced by legislators on Thursday, would make Virginia the second state, after California, in which Democrats try to counter a wave of Republican moves demanded by President Trump to redistrict states to their advantage before the 2026 midterm elections …

Democrats now hold six of Virginia’s 11 congressional seats. Redistricting could deliver two or three additional seats for the party, depending on how aggressive cartographers choose to be in a redrawing effort.

This is happening less than two weeks before a general election in Virginia in which every statewide elected office and every seat in the lower chamber of the legislature are up for grabs. Democrats have extremely narrow margins of control in both chambers, which isn’t expected to change on November 4. But the sudden gambit seems to have taken Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger by surprise. In Virginia, the governor (until January that’s Republican Glenn Youngkin) plays no role in the passage of constitutional amendments, which is what the Democratic plan will require.

The timetable is almost madcap. Democrats will need to approve the proposed constitutional amendment next week. Then they would have to pass it again in the next legislative session that begins in January. Only then can they schedule a referendum timed to enact the measure before candidate filing for the midterms ends. No telling when the actual proposed maps will be made public. There is absolutely no margin for error at any step. But that’s how frantic people in both parties have become to get control of the chain reaction Trump began with malice aforethought.

The stakes are huge because of the literally incredible things Trump might do in the last two years of his presidency if his slavishly submissive party continues to hold a governing trifecta beyond the midterms. The longer implications are ominous too, if it becomes routine for parties to repeatedly change congressional (and ultimately, state legislative) maps in order to maintain or seize power regardless of the overall contours of public opinion. It will be quite the white-knuckle ride.