Texas Democrats have the last laugh over MAGA gerrymandering

In case anyone wonders if there’s any point in taking a stand only to be forced to capitulate down the road, I would invite you to consider an episode from last summer. 

When Republican members of the Texas legislature passed a bill to redraw the state’s congressional map — and give the GOP five additional seats in the House of Representatives — at the behest of President Donald Trump, Democratic lawmakers fled the state to deny the GOP a quorum and delay the vote. They were threatened with arrest and handed massive fines. But in the end, they returned. The GOP not only passed the legislation, but they also exacted retribution against the Democrats.

Was it worth it? They would say yes without hesitation. 

Although the Texas Democrats didn’t succeed in stopping the Republicans, their doomed strategy achieved something just as important: It brought national attention to the Machiavellian tactics the GOP was employing to maintain its congressional majority in 2026. And that has resulted in a state-by-state battle across the country that just may end up backfiring on the Republicans.

As Trump and Republicans were celebrating their great win last summer, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, was testing the ground to see how his state might do the same to offset what Texas had done. According to POLITICO, Newsom’s proposal was first conceived as a bluff to try to dissuade Texas legislators from going through with their plan. But once it was a fait accompli, Newsom’s administration immediately started looking at how California voters would receive the plan — and it wasn’t good. The first internal polling four months ago showed that only 38% supported it. 

Like the Texas Democrats, Newsom decided to go ahead and call a special election, and then set out to sell the idea. On Nov. 4, after four months of elevating the issue, Prop 50 passed with nearly 65% of California voters in favor. The risk paid off — California’s new map will effectively cancel out the five seats Texas added, and instead of being engineered in a backroom, it was done with the explicit approval of Californians.

Last weekend, Newsom traveled to Texas to give credit where it’s due. In thanking the state’s Democrats for what they did, he said, “You woke us up. You didn’t just have your back here, you had our back in the state of California.” 

Other states are now following their lead. Just before the election, Virginia Democrats signaled they are ready to redraw their congressional map, and after they decimated the GOP in the Nov. 4 election, they will soon be in a position to do it. Illinois and Maryland could soon do the same.

Republican-led states had been expected to immediately follow Texas’ lead. But it’s been a rockier road than they had hoped. Ohio drew a new map that Democrats believe could favor them instead of the GOP. After seeing the recent election results, Kansas decided not to follow through on their redistricting plan. Missouri faces a statewide referendum on a map giving one new seat to Republicans. 

Despite massive pressure from the White House, including personal visits from Vice President JD Vance, Indiana Republicans are resisting their entreaties to draw new districts. In Utah on Monday, a judge rejected the state’s all-GOP map, stating that it “unduly favors Republicans and disfavors Democrats” and ruling that the state constitution requires an alternate proposal that creates a Democratic-leaning district. North Carolina’s gerrymander has been one of the few uncomplicated successes, giving the Republicans one more seat. 

---

Want more sharp takes on politics? Sign up for our free newsletter, Standing Room Only, written by Amanda Marcotte, now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

---

According to NBC News, some Republicans are getting nervous about the administration’s redistricting strategy. But Trump, who believes it to be a magic bullet, remains fully onboard. A strategist explained, “[T]he president understands intuitively, in a way that other Republicans don’t…that Democrats are always assaulting us, always, and mostly much of the Republican Party never fights back. The redistricting fight is proof that they are not that way. So this is in his DNA in a way that is not in other Republicans’ DNA.” 

Daddy, then, knows best. But he may be in for a surprise.

Dave Wasserman, an electoral expert at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, noted on X that “[b]etween OH, KS, CA, VA and now this huge win in UT, Democrats have quietly strung together an impressive streak of victories over the past few weeks that have, surprisingly, pushed the mid-decade redistricting war closer to a draw.” 

And Wasserman’s analysis isn’t accounting for a problem Republicans have heading into the midterms: The Texas redistricting that took place in Texas was largely based on the idea that Trump’s 2024 win marked a massive, permanent shift of Latino voters to the GOP column. 

Latino voters are not a monolith; there are regional and cultural differences. But the recent elections indicated large numbers in New York, New Jersey and Virginia had returned to the Democratic camp, a swing that could very well be equally reflected in Texas and any other state with a large Latino population. Trump, after all, has pretty much declared war on the community, and his administration is racially profiling, brutalizing and harassing undocumented immigrants, green card holders and citizens alike. And as with every other part of the electorate, his empty promises to fix the economy have also helped to sour many on his presidency. 

Even more problematic, Texas Republicans were so sure of themselves that they indulged in what the political types call “dummymandering”— diluting some of their safe seats where Trump won by large margins to ones where he would have won by less, leaving themselves vulnerable, in a wave election, to losing seats instead of gaining five. We have a long way to go, but after Nov. 4, you can be sure Republicans are starting to see that a Democratic wave next fall isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

John Eakin, a Republican consultant and data scientist, told NBC News that some Republicans are regretting their overconfidence after Trump’s 2024 victory, pointing to a recent result in a special election for a state Senate seat representing Dallas, where the Democrat was the top vote-getter — and significantly over-performed the 2024 results. “Nobody wants to go against Trump in this district map because they fear him,” Eakin said. “They’ve pushed the envelope and it’s going to come back to bite them in the a*s.”

Those Texas Democrats could have the last laugh after all.