President Trump’s push to carve out more Republican‑friendly congressional seats has slipped into legal limbo four months into the redistricting fight, raising the chance that Democrats could end up with the upper hand.
The scoreboard is mixed: Republicans have carved out as many as nine new seats, and Democrats have picked up six, one of them because of a surprise court ruling.
Yet the numbers aren’t set in stone.
With midterm elections looming, Mr. Trump is pressuring lawmakers in Republican-led states to capitalize on their advantage with new maps. Democrats are doing the same in blue states.
Additionally, a stack of lawsuits needs to be sorted.
Republicans took a significant hit last month when a federal court struck down the map that Texas lawmakers approved over the summer. The plan would have given Republicans five additional seats. The court ordered the state to return to its 2021 maps. Texas appealed, and Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. stepped in to freeze the ruling while the high court weighs the case.
Another question is how the Supreme Court will handle a voting rights case that could determine the extent to which states can use race to address discrimination in congressional and state legislative district maps.
Mr. Trump launched the mid-decade redistricting effort earlier in the year, hoping to block Democrats from flipping the House in an election cycle that typically favors the party out of power.
Right now, House Republicans are clinging to a razor‑thin 219-214 majority. Losing the majority would all but end Mr. Trump’s legislative agenda and likely pit him against Democratic-led investigations and probably articles of impeachment.
Democrats, fresh off big wins in Virginia and New Jersey, are looking to change the math Tuesday in Tennessee, where they hope for an upset in a special election in the 7th Congressional District.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s announcement that she will step down in January adds to Republican headaches by further eroding the party’s thin House majority.
Meanwhile, the next big showdown in the redistricting fight could be in Virginia, where Democrats hold six of the state’s 11 congressional seats.
The legislature, now under Democratic control, has initiated a process to ask voters whether they want to follow California’s lead and adopt a new congressional map that could net Democrats up to three more seats.
Republicans are banking on the courts to block the move after a bruising election cycle in which Virginia Democrats swept statewide races and tightened their grip on the General Assembly.
State Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell said Democrats hadn’t settled on a map but were ready to press forward if Republicans kept redrawing aggressively elsewhere.
“Our caucus will continue to look at what’s happening around the rest of the country,” Mr. Surovell told The Washington Times. “If we are going to do it, we also have to figure out an election calendar because there are filing deadlines that will be impacted and a primary date that will be impacted.”
The redistricting fight traces back to Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott and Republican lawmakers broke tradition by redrawing the districts mid-decade. The move could have handed Republicans five more seats.
Democrats, stuck in the minority, couldn’t stop it, but their two‑week walkout drew national attention and sparked countermoves in other states.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative Democrats pushed through a referendum that allows the legislature to replace maps drawn by an independent commission with more partisan lines, aiming to blunt Republican gains in Texas.
Elsewhere, Republicans kept an edge.
Missouri and North Carolina approved new maps that likely give Republicans an extra seat in each state. Ohio followed through on its scheduled redraw, making two Democratic seats more competitive.
Democrats, meanwhile, scored a win in Utah when a federal judge tossed out Republican‑drawn maps, opening the door for them to pick up another seat.
Mr. Trump hoped for more victories in Kansas and Indiana, but those efforts stalled as Republicans failed to unite behind the plan.
Frustrated, Mr. Trump has threatened to support primary challengers against Indiana’s Senate Republican leaders who have been unable to rally support for redistricting.
In Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, signaled little appetite for a redraw in his deep‑blue state, especially with Indiana stalled.
Whether these incremental gains and losses will matter in the fight for the House remains to be seen.
History suggests that the president’s party usually struggles in midterm elections. In 2010, Republicans flipped 63 seats under President Obama. In 2018, Democrats rode anti‑Trump sentiment to a 40‑seat gain.
J. Miles Coleman of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics said the bigger question is whether some of the newly drawn districts will perform as expected.
“Gerrymandering is so scientific these days, and mappers can generate such precise plans that the risk of ‘dummymanders’ seems to be lower today,” he said. “To me, a bigger potential for GOP disappointment would be that some seats intended to flip red might not.
“Specifically, I think some of the South Texas districts were redrawn with the idea that Trump’s strong numbers with Latinos would be a ‘new normal,’” he said. “In Virginia and New Jersey, we saw several heavily Latino areas snap back to Democrats.”
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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