Tag Archive for: redistricting

5 Things Republicans Have Going for Them Headed into the Midterms

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To hear the mainstream media tell it, the November elections are just a formality. Republicans, bogged down by the economy, Donald Trump’s sagging approval ratings, the Iran war, and their base’s general malaise, don’t stand a chance, they insist. But the Left’s echo chamber — while correct on the historical trends for the party in power — has one goal, and one goal only: deflate the Right at all costs. But is the GOP’s obituary already written, or is there hope of a conservative comeback? Here are five areas where the president’s party might have an unexpected edge.

1. Fundraising

One of the things that surprised House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) most about his new job in 2023 was the amount of time he was expected to devote to raising money. At one point, Punchbowl News reported, the Louisianan balked at the duty, declaring that the Founding Fathers “didn’t intend for the speaker of the House to be the primary fundraiser of the party.” But, as reporter Jake Sherman pointed out, “[T]hey also couldn’t have foreseen that the House would be a billion-dollar battleground every two years.”

Whether or not he wanted to do it, this speaker has more than excelled at it — smashing records for the GOP and building an impressive war chest heading into the bloodiest battle he’s experienced at the helm. By 2025, he’d even set a Republican high-water mark, the most ever raised by a speaker in a single year. Facing strong headwinds, the Louisianan’s shocking talent for raking in cash will be a major comfort to his vulnerable members. Between April and June of this year, he socked away another $19.1 million for a total of more than $135 million during this election cycle. A half-million of that has gone to two dozen “battleground incumbents,” and his sidekick, Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), has pumped $55 million into the chamber’s coffers.

Even The Washington Post admits that the Republican Party has “a lopsided cash advantage” down the home stretch, thanks in part to the movement’s super PACs. Right now, the GOP is sitting on a $300 million-plus advantage over their Democratic counterparts, Axios reports, “and that doesn’t include the $400 million sitting in Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC.”

Add that to Elon Musk’s latest announcement that he’s getting off the sidelines to help the GOP in the midterms, and Republicans are almost certainly striking fear into Democratic headquarters. The billionaire’s financial backing in 2024 — a whopping $260 million — was a huge reason for the party’s success. This time around, his America PAC will focus on “door-knocking, digital advertising and direct mail aimed at turning out the conservative base, including voters who typically are less inclined to cast ballots in a non-presidential election year,” Musk’s team explained. “By focusing on voter turnout,” Axios notes, “Musk’s group will allow other GOP groups to gear their efforts toward TV ads.”

2. Polling

The landscape has looked incredibly bleak for Trump’s party these last few months, but that picture is slowly changing, experts say. Despite the perfect storm of issues plaguing the GOP, Americans are gradually inching back into the conservative camp. In the generic ballot contest, which is a great indicator of midterm success, Republicans have been down as many as 10 points. They’ve cut into the Democrats’ lead by as many as five to seven points, according to both Reuters/Ipsos and Economist/YouGov.

“If the Republicans are within two, that’s a good sign,” Breitbart’s John Nolte stresses. “As we all know, pollsters tend to underestimate Republican turnout because most pollsters are leftists more interested in wishcasting and manipulating public opinion than reporting on it.”

Now, obviously, trying to make up ground in this hostile environment isn’t easy. Over at RealClearPolitics, the GOP is still trying to claw its way out of a five-point deficit, an unsurprising gap given the affordability crisis in America, Trump’s unusually low approval rating, and the drag always felt by the majority party. “The political party in power, especially the one that holds the White House, tends to go into the midterms with a big disadvantage,” Nolte warns. “The reason for this is simple: the voters who lost the White House two years earlier feel motivated to register their displeasure, while those voters who won the White House tend to be pretty satisfied with things and therefore not as motivated to vote.”

That said, the Democratic Party is wildly unpopular right now. “A staggering 63% of voters now view the Democratic Party UNFAVORABLY, while just 33% still hold a favorable view. That’s nearly two-thirds of the country.” So we’ll see.

3. The Rise of Democratic Communism

Speaking of unpopularity, the best gift Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) could give Republicans right now is his party’s lurch toward the Democratic Socialist movement gripping the deepest blue states. Everyday voters are still picking their jaws off the floor after the DSA’s radical list of goals: abolishing prisons, the presidency, U.S. Senate, the Electoral College, the Supreme Court, and ICE; public ownership of every company; single-payer medicine; a new American Constitution; and a basket of other insanely extremist demands that would burn our nation’s longtime traditions to the ground.

The president and GOP leaders have seized on the Democrats’ crazy train, warning that this latest alliance with the fringe Left will “destroy” the country. “They’re siding with the radical Left communists taking over the party,” Trump emphasized. “… [N]ormal socialists who can destroy a country too. They’re not going fast enough. Do you remember, like, in one of my State of the Union speeches, I said, we will never be a socialist country. But I was right. We’re going to be a communist country,” he continued. “That’s what they want. They skipped socialism.”

The campaign ads on the DSA’s wish list alone — which they refuse to disavow — write themselves. Speaker Johnson, in a conversation with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, was blunt about the threat. “You and I were talking off stage a little while ago, and I said, ‘You know, if somebody had told us even 10 years ago that on the 250th anniversary of the greatest nation in the history of the world, we would be in an open contest about whether we were going to maintain a constitutional republic or go down this dark, dangerous, deadly road to communism, [I would be shocked],” he shook his head. “That is what we are facing in a midterm election. And that’s why I think this midterm is unlike any other.” This isn’t “a referendum on Donald J. Trump,” Johnson insisted. “It’s a referendum on Thomas Jefferson. I mean, the foundational principles of the nation are imperiled. And you have a rising number of barbarians who are coming up through the primary system in the Democrat[ic] primaries.”

While the DSA has had a surprising amount of success in primary and mayoral elections, their appeal is only in the deepest of blue states. And the traditional Democrats know it. They’re panicked by leadership’s public indifference to the pendulum swing. “In Ohio, in Nebraska, and parts of Arizona, far-left candidates are just not going to win,” incumbent Rep. Emilia Sykes (D-Ohio) implored. Others, like Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.) echoed that concern. “We are the ones that overperform because of our ability to get moderate Republicans to support us. That’s how we win in the toughest seats.”

Johnson couldn’t help but underscore the crisis. “By my count, we’re up to, I think, 29 of these people,” he told Perkins. “And they espouse crazy, radical, un-American views. They want no borders. They want no prisons. They want to eliminate entire institutions like the U.S. Supreme Court. They want to remove the presidency. They want to pack the Supreme Court. They think the House itself should run the whole government, which, by the way, they want to assume all the power or control over production. And it’s madness,” he contended.

“There’s a bunch of them coming up through the system,” the speaker said. “I will be administering the oath to people who have open disdain for the founding principles of their country. It’s an unprecedented time. And so, I’m telling you, people who love America and common sense have to get off of their good intentions right now and get engaged. Your neighbors, your family, your friends at church. Everybody needs to understand this one’s for all the marbles. And we are not overstating that. It’s not campaign rhetoric.”

4. Redistricting

It feels like forever ago that Texas Democrats fled the state over the GOP’s congressional map that would do away with what the Supreme Court has now affirmed as unconstitutionally gerrymandered districts. Over the next 12 months, that redistricting battle would become a nationwide war that raged in states from coast to coast. Now, a year into the Republicans’ efforts to do away with the unfair race criteria of the Voting Rights Act, they’re finally reaping the rewards.

That unique arms race, as it was coined by so many reporters, did ultimately result in a congressional map that’s more favorable to Republicans heading into these midterms. Ten states have new district lines, which has radically reshaped the GOP’s odds for November, Cook Political Report notes. This week, in an updated look at 2026, the highly-respected outfit released a report with the caption, “Re-Redistricting Yields a More Republican, Less Elastic House Map.”

“The Cook Political Report has updated its Partisan Voter Index (PVI) scores for all ten states that redrew their lines for 2026. And although 80% of states didn’t redistrict, the shift is still dramatic: the median House seat now sports a Cook PVI score of R+3, two points redder than prior to this cycle’s gerrymandering arms race,” they share, “making it exceedingly difficult for Democrats to win the House in anything other than a favorable political environment. In other words, even if Democrats do take back the House majority in 2026, they will be under increased pressure to retaliate in the states they control to keep it in 2028.”

Under these new lines, they continue, “assuming both parties win all the seats where the partisan fundamentals strongly favor them (today, no House Democrat represents a seat redder than R+5 and no House Republican represents a seat bluer than D+5), Democrats would need to win 57 of the 77 seats in the D+5 to R+5 range (74%) to win the barest possible majority. Under the old lines, they would have needed to win 59 of the 87 seats in that range (68%).”

Adding to Jeffries’s woes, “More Democratic-leaning seats became GOP-leaning than vice-versa,” Cook explains. Of course, they add, “None of this is to say that Democrats are no longer favorites to take back the House in 2026; in fact, winning a chunk of seats with PVI scores of R+3, R+4 or R+5 is very realistic, even probable, in a midterm wave environment. But this cycle’s redistricting race to the bottom makes Democrats’ task considerably harder by lowering their ceiling for gains, and makes the House much less elastic and less responsive to the vicissitudes of the national mood.”

FRC Action’s Matt Carpenter put it this way to The Washington Stand, “History shows, with few exceptions, that the party out of power makes gains during midterm elections. Midterm elections almost always generate lower turnout than presidential elections, and often the base of support for the party out of power is more enthusiastic to vote than that of the majority.” He adds that in recent years, “the list of truly competitive races in the House has dwindled to between 20 and 30. The result has been House majorities built on the slimmest of majorities. The 2026 midterms are shaping up to be historic — not necessarily because of any these conditions are missing — but because of the introduction of something new: the rare mid-decade redistricting battle. Republicans were able to net more safe districts for their candidates than the Democrats and have thus narrowed the path for a Democratic majority in the House, by forcing them into the position of having to basically run the table of toss-up and leans-Democrat districts.”

That dynamic changes things, Carpenter highlights. “Given the imbalance, to the advantage of House Republicans, in campaign spending, we could see Republicans buck history and retain the Speaker’s gavel after November. To be clear, Democrats have their own advantages, their candidates are raising a lot of money, and their voters are itching to vote. But those Democratic advantages could be blunted by the party’s embrace of candidates aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America promises that hurt the party’s appeal in less urban, more moderate districts. The fact remains, with a little more than three months to go until election day, there is still plenty that can happen. Control of Congress is essentially a jump ball.”

5. Time

Three months is a lifetime in politics. A lot could happen — especially in the Iran war, which is the nexus of a lot of angst about the economy, the president’s priorities, etc. Between now and then, the GOP plans an unprecedented midterm political convention, which could make a dent in the Republican base’s enthusiasm and also help outline the clear contrasts between the two parties’ very different values.

Nolte observed, “There will be a ton of news cycles between now and Election Day, along with an equal number of surprises. So we are still in Anything Can Happen Land. My primary point here is that if you only paid attention to the media, you’d think the GOP had zero chance of holding on to the House,” he wrote. “Well, that simply is not true. That wouldn’t be true regardless of the polling because Trump is the only person in the country who has a national movement behind him, and it’s one of the largest political movements in American history. That matters. Turnout will win or lose the House, and Trump can turn them out.”

As Johnson reiterated, “It’s going to come down to a handful of votes in just a couple of districts. Cook Political Report currently says … on election night you should expect 212 Republican seats, 205 Democrat[ic] seats. It leaves less than 20 seats in the middle as the jump ball,” the speaker summarized. “So the whole balance of Congress, I think, will come down to less than 20 seats. … We have a slight fundraising advantage over Democrats right now because people believe the stakes are so high. I’m absolutely convinced God’s not done with America yet. We’re going to grow this House majority, and we’re going to keep this thing going so we can save the greatest nation in history.”

In the meantime, he asks for prayer. “My familiar refrain [is] we need wisdom, stamina, discernment. Probably in that order. So we appreciate those prayers.”

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AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Dems’ Seat-Stealing Scheme Backfires, Reviving GOP Midterm Hopes

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Politics can turn on a dime, and no one is more painfully aware of that than Democrats. After a euphoric April that saw the party pull off a stunning congressional map heist in Virginia, the party of Minority Leaders Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) and Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) has come crashing back to earth — hard. In a matter of 10 days, not only has the state supreme court struck down that referendum Democrats spent $64 million on, but the U.S. Supreme Court tossed a favorite tool of the Left — racial gerrymandering — triggering a massive race to redraw the entire red South. Suddenly, the plans for a November victory parade seem surprisingly premature.

On Friday, in a decision that several legal experts expected, the Commonwealth’s justices ruled that “the legislative process employed” to advance the referendum was unconstitutional and “incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy.” It was an outcome that former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli predicted, noting that there were at least four violations of the state constitution in the process that led to the Democrats’ narrow win at the ballot box. And to many, that win, a squeaker at 51-49%, proved why the purple state should have never been redrawn in the first place.

For Republicans, who were furious at the power grab in Governor Abigail Spanberger’s (D) state, the ruling gives voice to millions of disenfranchised voters who stood to lose four seats in the U.S. House. “This is the correct decision, and it was always going to end up this way,” Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.) agreed. “Democrats broke laws that they helped write in the first place, blew through deadlines, wrote a biased and misleading ballot question, and lied to the voters in all of their advertising to support the referendum. The voters of Virginia banned gerrymandering six years ago, and that ban remains in effect today,” he reiterated. “This is a great day for fair elections and the rule of law, and it’s a great day for the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who already has an uphill climb for the midterms, cheered the result as “a victory for democracy.” “[It] ensures Virginians have fair representation in Congress,” he said.

On the Left, Jeffries and company decried the decision as “shocking,” while Virginia House Speaker Don Scott (D) issued a statement saying, “We respect the decision of the Supreme Court of Virginia. … We respect the court. But we will keep fighting for a democracy where voters — not politicians — have the final say. Because in Virginia, power still belongs to the people,” he argued.

And while Democrats complain about the “unfairness” of the decision, Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) said it didn’t take a legal genius to see that this was a possibility. “They didn’t pay attention to the fact that they had to follow the Virginia Constitution. And they rushed it through. And they made a number of mistakes [by not following the letter of the law].” But “they’re still complaining that, ‘Well, it went to the voters in the referendum, and those people’s votes didn’t count.’ Well,” Griffith said on Friday’s “Washington Watch,” “they should have anticipated that and gotten all of the i’s dotted, and the t’s crossed. When you do something in an unconstitutional manner under the Virginia Constitution, you’ve got to expect that the court will take action against it. Whether a million people voted in the referendum or 1,000,006 voted in the referendum is not the issue. The issue is, did you follow the rules?”

Frankly, he suspects, “In their heart of hearts, deep down, when they’re not playing politics, I think even the Democrats know that they were pushing the envelope and trying to get by with one quickly. They thought the referendum would basically cow the court into doing it. … And I give the court credit for having the fortitude to recognize that they’re going to irritate the legislature, which appoints them.” Yet, at the end of the day, “The court did its job. It was tough for them to do it. Some of them are likely not to be reappointed by the legislature because of it. But they did the right thing anyway. And I just have great respect for the Virginia Supreme Court for doing the right thing.”

Meanwhile, the setback on the Democratic map is a huge blow heading into November, Axios admits. While a lot of pundits have been crowing that the GOP is on the verge of a midterm bloodbath, the reality is that this is “a huge boost to Republicans’ chances of keeping the House,” the outlet notes. “Even some Democrats now concede that they basically need to run the table in November.”

It also drives home just how much work the Left has to do in agenda-setting. They can’t rely on anti-Trump sentiment carrying the day, as one anonymous House Democrat conceded. “[We] cannot take a midterm victory for granted,” the member told reporters. “Relying too much on the administration’s unpopularity and not enough of their own positive agenda could put an otherwise sure victory at risk.”

With the 10-1 edge in Virginia off the table, Democrats will struggle to make up a lot of ground in the redistricting arms race that has launched in earnest in the South after the U.S. Supreme Court’s rollback of racial gerrymandering. As Punchbowl News warns the Left, “As many as 10 seats could now swing toward Republicans in a worst-case scenario for Democrats,” while adding, “this all remains very fluid.”

Already, Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Mississippi have rocketed out of the gates to redraw their maps after the justices’ ruling in Louisiana v. Callais — some states even postponing their primary elections to make sure they get their new districts approved first.

The governors of one of those states, Louisiana’s Jeff Landry (R), agreed it was about time that the stranglehold of the Voting Rights Act was loosened. “I think that the Supreme Court has finally helped untangle Louisiana and many states, especially across the South, [from] a nasty wave of litigation that’s been going on since the 90s. … Louisiana has been engaged in 27 federal lawsuits since the 1990s, which has basically taken away the legislature’s power to draw congressional districts.” No longer, he continued, can Democrats “blame the Civil Rights Act for losing elections. That’s the bottom line.”

Finally, Landry told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, “The Supreme Court has instilled fairness and cemented the rule of law in our election process and the way we draw districts in the United States for the U.S. House of Representatives.”

Fellow Louisianan Mike Johnson echoed that sentiment, pointing to a GOP pick-up of at least eight to 10 seats. “It depends on how many states get in on this,” he stressed to Perkins. “And this trend was long overdue. I mean, for years, we argued … that the common sense reading of the Constitution says you cannot use race as a determining factor [to draw districts]. You can’t discriminate against voters of any skin color. And that’s what the previous regime, the previous kind of rules, had done. So the Supreme Court has finally set that right. And you see a number of states jumping in to correct that.”

In Tennessee, mayhem broke out on the floor of the state House when the general assembly passed a map that turned all nine of the congressional districts red. Governor Bill Lee (R) called lawmakers back into a special session after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Callais to right what many see as a long-time wrong. The state’s House speaker, Cameron Sexton, defended the move on “Washington Watch,” calling out the “aggressive, vile protestors” and Democratic caucus for creating chaos in the Capitol. “We’ve gone through that before,” he shrugged. “We powered through it. We passed it out, and now it’s law.” If the other side sues, Sexton isn’t worried. “We’re prepared. … I feel comfortable that we’re going to win it in the long term, and then the maps will be upheld at some point.”

Ultimately, the entire landscape is changing, David Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst for the Cook Political Report, underscored to “Washington Watch” guest host Jody Hice. “Keep in mind that by 2029, we could see states across the Deep South sending zero Democrats or black representatives to Congress from states that have some of the highest black populations in the country. … This is going to have the effect of eradicating Democrats from red states, and blue states eradicating Republicans from their delegations.” Places like Illinois could pass a map, he warned, with 17 Democrats and zero Republicans by drawing downstate of Chicago. “Same thing in California. Democrats could draw [a] 52-to-0 map. And so, this is further polarizing Congress.”

At the end of the day, he explained, “What it means is that the battle for control of the House is going to come down to a small group of states with neutral maps that were installed by courts or commissions. And that’s why the bulk of the toss-ups in our chart right now are in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, [and] Iowa — states where neither party dominates this process.”

And that’s just fine with most Americans, whose biggest concern is a fair and level playing field. “We [need] maps that accurately reflect the population of [our] states,” Johnson insisted to Perkins. “And this is the genius of the Founders, how they set up the three branches of the federal government for checks and balances. And you can’t allow political issues to be the main driving factor in making sure that people are fairly represented in their states,” he argued. “The court has to look at this objectively. They have to evaluate these ideas on the basis of the Constitution. I think they did the right thing here, and it was a long time coming.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Democrats Move To Remove and Replace the Virginia Supreme Court

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Trump Makes 11th Hour Push To Stop Virginia From Gerrymandering Districts

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President Donald Trump made a last minute push on Monday to intervene in Virginia’s redistricting battle, urging voters to reject the ballot measure.

Virginia voters are set to head to the polls Tuesday on a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow the state to redraw its congressional map ahead of the next census cycle. During a tele-rally with House Speaker Mike Johnson, Trump addressed supporters in Virginia and framed the upcoming referendum as a decisive national moment.

“Virginia has the chance to save our Republican majority in the House so that we can continue saving this great country of ours,” Johnson said before Trump spoke.

“Tomorrow, your Commonwealth has an incredible and really an important election in every sense of the word that will have major consequences for our entire country this November,” Trump said. “This is really a country election. The whole country is watching. So important and so unfair what they’ve done. We need every Virginia patriot to get out and vote no, no, no on the radical Democrats’ unfair ballot referendum. It is so crazy what they’re doing. So go to your polling place tomorrow and vote.”

Trump called on voters to reject what he described as Democrats’ unfair ballot referendum.

“Do not let the radical left Democrats rig this map and rig this election because they’ve done it. And that’s what, frankly, it’s the only thing they’re good at is rigging elections. They have no policy. How do you get elected with men in women’s sports and open borders for everybody?” Trump asked. “Transgender, mutualization of your children. It’s the only thing they’re good at is rigging elections. And we can’t let this happen in Virginia. We’re going to get your taxes back down.”

Trump said the referendum is a partisan effort designed to reshape Virginia’s political map to favor Democrats.

“This referendum is a blatant partisan power grab that nobody’s really ever seen anything like it. It’s the liberal extremist governor, Abigail Spanberger, too bad. And the far-left Democrats in Richmond after Spanberger promised Virginia voters that she would never do this. And if it passes, Virginia Democrats will eliminate four out of five congressional seats.”

Trump has been known to make late-stage interventions in political fights, often stepping in only when congressional deadlines are imminent or votes are hours away. In an effort to sway GOP lawmakers during the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Section 702 renewal debate, a surveillance authority that allows monitoring of foreign targets, but has drawn criticism over potential incidental collection of Americans’ communications — Trump met with skeptical Republicans at the White House just before a key vote.

In 2025, Trump made a last-minute funding push by tapping his political war chest to support GOP efforts in key off-year races. His team directed roughly $1 million each to Virginia and New Jersey for get-out-the-vote microtargeting aimed at energizing low-propensity Republican voters in the final stretch before Election Day. During his last rally in 2025, Trump used the appearance as a last-minute push to reinforce his economic message as the country headed into a midterm-election year.

AUTHOR

Mariane Angela

News Reporter

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Judge Deals Huge Blow To Democrat Attempt To Gerrymander Virginia

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A state court rejected a Democratic mid-decade redistricting effort in Virginia on Tuesday, dealing a major blow to the party’s chances of gerrymandering House seats there ahead of the midterms.

Circuit Court Judge Jack Hurley Jr. cited four procedural errors in the proposed constitutional amendment to allow the redistricting. Some of the states’ Democratic lawmakers pushed for a lopsided gerrymander with as many as 10 seats favoring the party and only one seat favoring Republicans — a stark contrast to Virginia’s current House delegation of six Democrats and five Republicans.

An Oct. 31, 2025 vote on a procedural resolution to allow the redistricting measure to come before the state legislature passed “strictly along party lines,” the court noted. Four procedural moves were found to be in error according to the order, including the proposed Constitutional Amendment being “neither published by the Clerk of the House of Delegates, nor was it posted at the front door of every Courthouse.”

The court also cited an error in the timing of the vote, “some forty-three days after voting began in the 2025 General Election for the House of Delegates, wherein more than one million votes (approximately 40% of the 2025 Vote Totals) had already been cast.”

Recently-inaugurated Gov. Abigail Spanberger did not endorse nor condemn the redistricting effort during her campaign. Multiple outlets, including Politico and The Washington Post, have reported that Democrats are expected to appeal the decision.

AUTHOR

Caden Olson

Congressional Reporter

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

SCOTUS Approves Lone Star State’s New Congressional Maps

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With the 2026 midterms looming, the U.S. Supreme Court is officially weighing in on the redistricting arms race between red and blue states. Late Thursday, the nation’s highest judicial authority disagreed with a lower court ruling and instead allowed Texas to implement new congressional district maps expected to take five seats in the U.S. House of Representatives from Democrats and hand them to the GOP.

A divided three-judge panel consisting of two federal district court judges and one appellate court judge ruled late last month that the new congressional district maps Texas planned were unlawful, charging the state legislature with remaking congressional districts on racial lines, rather than along political ones. Six of the Supreme Court’s nine justices reversed the lower court’s decision. “Texas is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that the District Court committed at least two serious errors. First, the District Court failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith by construing ambiguous direct and circumstantial evidence against the legislature,” the court’s majority wrote in a two-page order halting the lower court’s injunction. “Second, the District Court failed to draw a dispositive or near-dispositive adverse inference against respondents even though they did not produce a viable alternative map that met the State’s avowedly partisan goals.”

The Supreme Court’s progressive wing, comprised of Democrat-appointed Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, issued a 17-page dissenting opinion authored by Kagan and joined by Sotomayor and Jackson. “In enacting an electoral map slanted toward Republicans, did Texas predominantly use race to draw its new district lines? Or said otherwise, did Texas accomplish its partisan objectives by means of a racial gerrymander?” Kagan asked. “Texas largely divided its citizens along racial lines to create its new pro-Republican House map, in violation of the Constitution’s Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments,” she continued, noting the lower court’s decision. “Yet this Court reverses that judgment based on its perusal, over a holiday weekend, of a cold paper record. We are a higher court than the District Court, but we are not a better one when it comes to making such a fact-based decision.”

“That is why we are supposed to use a clear-error standard of review — why we are supposed to uphold the District Court’s decision that race-based line-drawing occurred (even if we would have ruled differently) so long as it is plausible,” she wrote. The clear-error standard of review is an appellate standard, under which “a finding is ‘clearly erroneous’ when, although there is evidence to support it, the reviewing court on the entire evidence is left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed,” according to the Supreme Court in United States v. United States Gypsum Co. “Without so much as a word about that standard, this Court today announces that Texas may run next year’s elections with a map the District Court found to have violated all our oft-repeated strictures about the use of race in districting,” Kagan continued. “Today’s order disrespects the work of a District Court that did everything one could ask to carry out its charge — that put aside every consideration except getting the issue before it right. And today’s order disserves the millions of Texans whom the District Court found were assigned to their new districts based on their race.”

Justice Thomas Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, responded to Kagan’s argument in a three-paragraph concurring opinion. “Texas needs certainty on which map will govern the 2026 midterm elections, so I will not delay the Court’s order by writing a detailed response to each of the dissent’s arguments. Instead, I offer two short points which for me are decisive,” Alito wrote. “First, the dissent does not dispute — because it is indisputable — that the impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California) was partisan advantage pure and simple.”

“Second, the clear-error standard of review does not apply here because the ‘trial court base[d] its findings upon a mistaken impression of applicable legal principles,’” Alito clarified. “Because of the correlation between race and partisan preference, litigants can easily use claims of racial gerrymandering for partisan ends. … To prevent this, our precedents place the burden on the challengers ‘to disentangle race and politics,’” he continued. “Thus, when the asserted reason for a map is political, it is critical for challengers to produce an alternative map that serves the State’s allegedly partisan aim just as well as the map the State adopted.” It is common, in such cases, for challengers to present an alternative map that achieves the stated partisan objectives without racially gerrymandering. However, Alito observed, the challengers in the Texas could not do so, “giving rise to a strong inference that the State’s map was indeed based on partisanship, not race.” He emphasized, “Neither the duration of the District Court’s hearing nor the length of its majority opinion provides an excuse for failing to apply the correct legal standards as set out clearly in our case law.”

In comments to The Washington Stand, FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter hailed the Supreme Court’s decision. “The Supreme Court handed Texas Republicans, and by extension Republicans in Congress, a huge victory in the redistricting war by restoring Texas’s congressional maps last night,” he said. “This emergency order from the highest court in the land does more than restore five new potentially red congressional districts, it signals that this court is unlikely to side with frivolous claims of racial discrimination in the gerrymandering process from leftwing lawyers like Marc Elias — whose legal group represented one of the plaintiffs in this case, and has gone to great lengths to hurt election integrity wherever it has advanced,” Carpenter continued. “This could have huge ramifications as we also expect a decision from the Supreme Court on Louisiana vs. Callais, a case with the potential to strike down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which would open up as many as 19 other congressional districts for redistricting.”

The Supreme Court only issued a stay on Thursday, halting a lower court’s injunction. However, the justices are deliberating over a similar set of circumstances, originating in Louisiana. In the dual cases of Louisiana v. Phillip Callais and Press Robinson v. Phillip Callais, since consolidated into a single case, the Supreme Court will consider Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which bars racial gerrymandering, and reconsider its own precedents on the issue. Congressional district maps drawn by Louisiana’s state legislature in 2022 only created one majority-black congressional district out of the state’s six, despite the fact that roughly one-third of the state’s population is black. In response to a lawsuit accusing them of racial gerrymandering, Louisiana legislators remade the maps, yielding two majority-black districts. Those remade maps, however, were subsequently challenged, also on racial grounds: this time, the argument was that the new maps were racial gerrymandering because they were explicitly redrawn along racial lines.

In the midst of oral arguments in October, a majority of justices appeared poised to render Section 2 toothless and dilute its own precedents on the issue. In a line of questioning that would have been almost equally applicable to the Texas case, Alito asked, “If registered, Democrats overwhelmingly vote for Democratic candidates, regardless of the candidate’s race. Is that bloc voting?” Querying the relationship between redistricting along political lines and redistricting along racial lines, he continued, “Likewise, if registered Republicans overwhelmingly vote for Republican candidates, that’s not bloc voting. … So if it happens to be that people of one race or another race overwhelmingly prefer one of the political parties, does that transform the situation into racial voting? Or is it still just partisan voting?”

Accusations of racial gerrymandering have often been used by progressive voting groups to challenge and block Republican-led redistricting efforts. The Supreme Court’s decision in the Texas case could potentially indicate which way the Justices may rule in the Louisiana matter. A decision to neuter Section 2 allows red states to move forward with partisan redistricting maps, eliminating over a dozen Democrat-held House seats.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED VIDEO: Ken Paxton Discusses the Monumental Texas Redistricting Win at the Supreme Court

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

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Florida Moves to Redistrict in Congressional Maps Arms Race

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As battles over congressional district maps rage on, the Sunshine State is officially preparing to join the fray. In an interview with The Floridian, Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) announced that the state is “going to redistrict,” anticipating a special legislative session in the first half of 2026 to draw new congressional maps. Florida House Speaker Danny Perez (R) has already assembled a select committee, comprised of eight Republicans and three Democrats, to prepare new congressional district maps.

DeSantis also noted that a pair of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court centered on the Voting Rights Act (VRA) will likely play a role in Florida’s redistricting. “The issue is that there is a Supreme Court decision that we are waiting on — the argument in October about Section 2 of the VRA that impacts Florida’s maps,” he said, adding that the Florida legislature will have to wait for the Supreme Court’s ruling before making changes to congressional maps “next Spring.”

Section 2 of the VRA stipulates, “No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color…” The provision has proven controversial over the years, as various organizations have accused state legislatures of racial gerrymandering either by breaking up areas with heavy minority populations into different congressional districts or, conversely, not grouping areas with lighter minority populations together. The two cases out of Louisiana, Louisiana v. Phillip Callais and Press Robinson v. Phillip Callais, deal with the issue.

A 2022 congressional map approved by the Bayou State’s legislature left only one majority-black congressional district out of the state’s six districts, despite roughly a third of the state’s population being black. In response to a VRA lawsuit and a federal court’s preliminary injunction, the Louisiana legislature drew new maps, creating two majority-black districts. However, another lawsuit then accused the legislature of racial gerrymandering — this time drawing congressional maps explicitly based upon race.

In comments to The Washington Stand, FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter explained, “Governor DeSantis has been clear for a while now that Florida will redraw their maps. Most of the reports I’ve seen suggest Republicans are looking at targeting three to five Democratic seats.” He continued, “The plan, at the moment, appears to be to use a special session in the spring to redraw districts, which would allow for a decision from the Supreme Court on the Voting Rights Act to potentially be decided, paving the way for new opportunities for the Republican-led government of Florida to draw new maps.”

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump urged red states to redraw congressional district maps in order to net the GOP more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 midterms, prompting a series of political and legal conflicts across the country. Different rules dominate in different states, with some state legislatures being allowed to easily redraw congressional district maps and others requiring constitutional amendments to bypass a bipartisan redistricting committee. Texas was the first state to respond to the president’s petition, drawing new maps that would hand five House seats currently held by Democrats to Republicans. However, Section 2 of the VRA was once again brought into play, with Democrats accusing the Lone Star State GOP of racial gerrymandering, and Republicans defending the new maps as purely political. That case has also been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Justice Samuel Alito granted an administrative stay, effectively allowing the new district maps to remain in effect during litigation.

Indiana’s Republican-controlled legislature has also drawn new congressional district maps, potentially giving Republicans two more seats in the U.S. House. Hoosier State House representatives recently released a draft map, according to Politico, breaking Indianapolis into four districts and fracturing Democrat control over the urban area. Despite pressure from both the president and Indiana Governor Mike Braun (R), Indiana Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray (R) has voiced opposition to redistricting, instead arguing that Republicans should campaign harder in Democrat-held districts. Indiana’s House is slated to vote on the new maps this week, while the state Senate could vote on the House-approved maps as early as next week.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

Partner with The Washington Stand to bring news from a biblical worldview to readers nationwide. From now until December 31, every gift will be doubled through our year-end Challenge Match.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Texas Takes Redistricting Battle to SCOTUS as Blue States Prepare to Ax GOP House Seats

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Ahead of next year’s midterm elections, Texas Republicans are moving to redraw their state’s congressional district maps, netting the GOP at least five more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, but federal judges have accused the Lone Star State’s legislature of racial gerrymandering.

“The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics,” wrote Judge Jeffrey Brown of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, in a decision this week barring the use of the new congressional maps. “To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.”

Most federal cases are heard first by a district court, then a court of appeals, and finally by the U.S. Supreme Court, if they make it that far in the appeals process. Voting rights cases, however, are heard by a three-judge panel consisting of two federal district court judges and one appellate judge, and are then appealed immediately to the Supreme Court. Brown, appointed by President Donald Trump, was joined in his decision to reject Texas’s new congressional maps by Judge David Guaderrama of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, who was appointed by Barack Obama. Judge Jerry Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan, was the sole dissent.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) announced immediately following the decision that he would appeal the case to the Supreme Court. “The radical left is once again trying to undermine the will of the people. The Big Beautiful Map was entirely legal and passed for partisan purposes to better represent the political affiliations of Texas,” Paxton insisted, repudiating the claims of racial gerrymandering. “For years, Democrats have engaged in partisan redistricting intended to eliminate Republican representation. Democratic states across the country, from California to Illinois to New York, have systematically reduced representation of Republican voters in their congressional delegations,” the attorney general continued. “But when Republicans respond in kind, Democrats rely on false accusations of racism to secure a partisan advantage. I will be appealing this decision to the Supreme Court of the United States, and I fully expect the Court to uphold Texas’s sovereign right to engage in partisan redistricting.”

In the court’s injunction blocking the use of the new maps, Brown alleged that Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) and the Republican-led state legislature had been hesitant to redistrict along partisan lines when Trump made the suggestion earlier this year. Instead, Brown charged, Lone Star State officials only moved on the proposal when the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) civil rights division warned that the state may face lawsuits over its current “unconstitutional” congressional maps, which the DOJ argued created illegal racial coalitions favoring Democrats over Republicans and thus diluting what would otherwise be a majority vote for a Republican candidate.

Appearing on Wednesday night’s episode of “Washington Watch,” FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter commented, “The mid-decade redistricting cycle we’re in was always going to be litigated, and it seems like we’ve arrived at that stage now where the courts are going to have to weigh in.” He also anticipated that a number of states “waiting in the wings trying to figure out which way this is headed” before redrawing congressional maps may be encouraged to do so if the Supreme Court backs Texas in its move. “I think whatever comes from the Supreme Court, if they decide to take up this case, is going to have enormous ramifications for some of the states that are making overtures that they’re going to redraw their own districts,” Carpenter suggested. “Florida is looking at redrawing their districts. Indiana is — it’s kind of stalled, but they’re looking at it as well. And you’ve got blue states like Virginia and Maryland that are also looking at redistricting, and there’s potential for even more in the future.”

Trump and Indiana Governor Mike Braun (R) have pressed the Hoosier State’s legislature to draw new district maps favoring Republicans, potentially eliminating two Democrat-held seats in the U.S. House, but Republicans in Indiana’s GOP-dominated senate split over whether or not to push the congressional maps through in a special session next month, ensuring that they would be used in the 2026 midterms, or delay until early next year and risk not redistricting in time to effect the midterms. All 10 Democrats in the state senate voted against participating in a special session, while Republican senators split evenly on the issue: 19 in favor, 19 against.

Carpenter noted that Indiana senate Republicans may not “have the votes to go through with this redistricting push” during a special session. “It looks as though they may take up redistricting when they convene for their regularly scheduled session,” he explained. “So I guess the concern was they were not able to get the votes during a special session, but we’ll see if, maybe with some additional time once they convene in January, perhaps they’ll have the votes needed to look at their maps again.”

Redistricting in Virginia, where Democrats expanded their control over the state legislature and took the governor’s mansion in off-year elections earlier this month, will likely come down to meeting deadlines, Carpenter observed. “Each state has their own sort of labyrinth of constitutional requirements and statutes around redistricting. The situation in Virginia is there’s basically no room for error,” he explained. “They have to pass a constitutional amendment this session with this governor,” Carpenter noted, referring to outgoing Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin. “He won’t have to veto it, but then they have to come back next session and pass an identical constitutional amendment, get it on the ballot before their spring primaries — which I believe are in April — and get it passed,” Carpenter detailed. “So they have a series of events that that they can’t miss any one of those deadlines in order to circumvent their constitutionally-required bipartisan redistricting commission.”

In Maryland, Carpenter anticipated, Governor Wes Moore (D) may not attempt redistricting through the usual legislative means, due to the makeup of the Old Line State’s Supreme Court. “They have a Supreme Court that’s been loaded up from former Republican Governor Larry Hogan. And so I think the political calculus from Democrat Governor Wes Moore in that state and the Democratic leadership in the legislature is that they’re not likely to get new maps past that Republican dominated state Supreme Court,” Carpenter observed. “Nevertheless, Governor Moore is pushing through with a redistricting commission, so he’s trying to circumvent the legislature.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

States Go Head-to-Head to Redraw House Seats before Next Year’s Competitive Midterms

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If there’s a breakthrough on the horizon of the government shutdown, you wouldn’t know it from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s (D-N.Y.) whereabouts. The Democratic leader left D.C. — and its partisan messaging wars — for a Monday jaunt in Illinois, where he hoped to make a dent in another nationwide clash: redistricting. The jaunt, which underscored the urgency both parties feel to redraw their congressional maps, is the latest push in a see-saw battle to shake up the House’s slim majority.

As most people watched with interest this past August, the furious arms race between red states and blue states for House seats kicked off in Texas, where the Trump Justice Department gently reminded leaders that it was in violation of a recent court order on how congressional lines were drawn. When Lone Star State leaders moved to correct the problem, introducing legislation to rewrite district lines, Democrats revolted, leaving the state in dramatic style to try to grind the debate to a stop. Ultimately, their stunt failed, and GOP officials chased the lawmakers back home, where the proposal soon passed.

What most Americans didn’t know — and the media was careful to ignore — is that Texas was responding to a Fifth Circuit Court decision months earlier that upended a controversial provision in the Voting Rights Act. In the late 1980s, legislators amended the law to mandate certain majority-minority districts. The point was to ensure that black votes weren’t diluted in majority-white areas.

Now, six decades after the Act was passed (and four since this radical modification to the law), there’s widespread concern that the legislation has actually sparked the discrimination it was designed to prevent. After all, Politico explains, “The districts created as a result of the tweak to the law are almost entirely represented by Democrats, something that Republicans have long claimed gives the party an unfair advantage.”

As the National Review editors point out, “More than a dozen congressional districts as well as many state legislative districts are drawn along openly racial lines for the explicit purpose of separating voters into racial enclaves. We do not need racial gerrymandering to target a problem that recedes ever further into our past. Nothing in the Constitution,” they argue, “requires this. To the contrary, as the Court has warned for decades, using race as the predominant factor in drawing district lines violates the 14th and 15th Amendments’ guarantees of equal protection and freedom from race discrimination in voting rights.”

The Supreme Court has a chance to radically overhaul the Voting Rights Act this term, and states across both political spectrums are scrambling to reshape their congressional maps in the hopes of swaying what will be a furiously competitive midterm election.

In Texas, North Carolina, Missouri, and Utah, conservatives got off to a fast start, revising their districts to be more competitive for Republican candidates. Some estimates put the GOP pick-up at about seven seats in the U.S. House. But that was before New York, Illinois, Virginia, and California clapped back, moving aggressively to respond and, in Golden State Governor Gavin Newsom’s (D) case, bypassing the state constitution to do so.

As Time magazine Senior Correspondent Phillip Elliot explains, “California actually has one of the better — and consistent — non-partisan systems for creating fair political maps based on the results of the U.S. Census conducted at the top of each decade.” And yet with Proposition 50, slated to come before voters on November 4, the independent system for drawing the congressional lines would be replaced by the Democrat-controlled legislature, effectively rigging the process for decades to come.

But in Democratic circles, there’s a growing pushback to the idea. In places like Illinois, Jeffries met a surprising amount of resistance to his crusade to reimagine House races from black leaders, who fear that they’ll be drawn out of their seats in the party’s quest for more power. In bright bold lines, the caucus’s chair, state Senator Willie Preston (D),“issued a public warning to Jeffries that it won’t support a map that dilutes Black voting population in historically Black districts,” Punchbowl reported. To squeeze another Democratic seat out of the Land of Lincoln, Jeffries would have to elbow out a black lawmaker.

“It’s pretty incredible that state legislators can summon the House minority leader to Chicago to extract political promises in return for diluting racially-gerrymandered seats,” Family Research Council’s Quena Gonzalez emphasized, “and Washington pretty much yawns.” He added, “When intersectional race preferences collide with mathematical reality, I guess something’s gotta give.”

In Maryland, the internal tension over redistricting is roiling local politics. The Hill described a new line drawn in the sand by state Senate President Bill Ferguson (D), who distributed a Dear Colleague letter Tuesday killing the party’s redistricting dreams because the effects would be, in his words, “catastrophic.”

“Despite deeply shared frustrations about the state of our country, mid-cycle redistricting for Maryland presents a reality where the legal risks are too high, the timeline for action is dangerous, the downside risk to Democrats is catastrophic, and the certainty of our existing map would be undermined,” he wrote. Besides, like so many blue states, the reality is there isn’t much to be gained. Democrats have already eked out as many gerrymandered areas as possible. In Maryland, there are eight congressional seats, and just one is held by a Republican.

In Virginia, the headwinds are strong for a different reason. After Speaker of the House Don Scott (D) announced a special session to consider new district lines. “In my legal opinion,” Minority Leader Terry Kilgore (R) fired back, “the election has already started, and it’s too late constitutionally to have such a vote. So we are going to use everything, legally, everything that we can do, to stop this power grab.”

Kilgore’s analysis was backed up by the state’s Republican attorney general, Jason Miyares, who issued a four-page opinion on Tuesday dashing the Democrats’ hopes of changing anything soon. “Under Virginia law, the entire membership of Virginia House of Delegates is elected every two years, in odd-numbered years, for terms beginning in the following even-numbered year,” the opinion read in part, “In accordance with law, Virginia voters are currently casting their ballots for the candidates they prefer to represent them as delegates for the term that begins in 2026 — and have been doing so for weeks.”

Regardless of the flurry of activity in the states, no one will shape America’s elections as much as the Supreme Court. If the justices strike down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act that demanded majority-minority districts, then a lot of the Democrats’ scheming will be moot. Even now, The New York Times concedes, “Despite all the gerrymandering by both political parties in recent years, neither has been able to obtain a significant structural advantage in the House so far this decade. In two very close elections, the party that won the most votes won the most seats. That’s partly because each side’s gerrymanders canceled the other’s out.” But, the Times stresses, “if Section 2 falls, and Republicans redraw districts across the South, Democrats will be at enough of a structural disadvantage that even with a five-point victory, their chances might depend on upsets in a few heavily Republican districts.”

FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter agreed. “While it looks as though we’re still early in the mid-decade redistricting fight,” he told The Washington Stand, “it is clear the GOP has the simplest path to gaining more districts. Democrat-led states typically have to devise some clever workaround for their independent redistricting commission, which, in most cases, has already just about maxed out the gerrymandering potential in their state. Republican states typically do not have these restrictions, have more room to maximize the impact of Republican voters in their states, and with the potential of the Supreme Court overturning portions of the Voting Rights Act, could free up as many as 19 additional seats for red states to go after.”

Sure, he admitted, “Blue states will do their best to cancel out as many of these new seats as possible, but it’s hard to see how they can possibly come out on top at the end, with their voters so centralized in so few locations and the hurdles they have to clear before they can even look at redrawing maps in their states.”

That said, this is definitely a battle for the ages. “It’s happened two other times in American history,” Carpenter underscored. “Normally, when you get this mid-decade redistricting, it’s because of a court order, [a law changes] … or there’s a legal challenge to an existing map, and suddenly the state legislature is coming in for a special session to redraw districts. This is the third time in American history where you’ve got a voluntary mid-decade redistricting that’s happening before a census. … So we are in sort of an unprecedented time in American history right now.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

JD Vance Lays Out How Democrats ‘Tried To Rig’ Census, Redistricting

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Vice President JD Vance said Democrats were rigging the American political system by welcoming illegal immigrants and enacting “crazy gerrymanders” during an interview that aired on “Sunday Morning Futures.”

Democrats in the Texas state legislature fled to Democrat-controlled states like New York and Illinois in order to thwart a GOP redistricting proposal that could net Republicans up to five seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, while President Donald Trump called for a new census that would not include illegal immigrants in a Thursday morning post on Truth Social. Vance told host Maria Bartiromo that the effort to redistrict in Texas and other red states is a matter of Republicans showing “some spine.”

“Thankfully, under President Trump’s leadership we finally see some spine. You finally see some backbone in the Republican Party to fight back against these very aggressive Democratic dirty tricks,” Vance said. “But the only way for us to do it is to actually go and do the hard work to reset the scales a little bit. We want to redo the census, but importantly, we want to redistrict some of these red states, and we want to make the congressional apportionment fair in this country. Again, you cannot do it unless Republicans actually take some very decisive action in the months to come.”

WATCH:

Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Friday that he has asked a court to declare the seats of the fleeing Democrats vacant, accusing them of carrying out an “out-of-state rebellion.” A political action committee founded by former Democratic Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, Powered by People, has helped fund the Texas Democrats who fled to blue states, as has a different organization backed by left-wing activist George Soros.

Vance outlined some of the reasons that Republicans were seeking to redraw congressional districts in red states.

“I didn’t realize this until a couple of years ago, you know for apportioning representatives, you actually count illegal aliens. Even though they’re not… supposed to vote, they still sometimes do,” Vance told Bartiromo. “California has way more House seats than it should because they have such a high population of illegal aliens, so they get rewarded for welcoming illegal aliens into their state, actually asking the taxpayers of states like Ohio to subsidize them.”

“And then those same taxpayers in Ohio, Indiana and elsewhere, they have fewer congressional representatives because of what California has allowed to happen,” Vance continued. “That’s ridiculously unfair, and the only real way to fight back against us is for us to redistrict in some ways as aggressively as these hard blue states have done.”

New York re-drew its congressional districts after the 2022 midterm elections, creating a map that endangered as many as six out of the 11 Republicans elected to the House of Representatives. Illinois Democrats re-drew their congressional districts to take out two Republicans, including then-Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a prominent outspoken critic of President Donald Trump, prior to the 2022 midterm elections.

AUTHOR

Harold Hutchison

Media Reporter

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FBI Agrees To Hunt Fugitive Dems Fleeing Texas Redistricting Vote

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agreed to help locate Texas Democratic lawmakers who left the state to block a vote on a redistricting plan, Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn announced Thursday.

Cornyn said the FBI agreed to his request to help track down dozens of lawmakers who fled Texas in an attempt to block the vote, according to a New York Times (NYT) report.

Cornyn requested the FBI’s assistance in a letter Tuesday, claiming the Democratic lawmakers may have broken state bribery laws in backing efforts to block a vote on Texas’ redistricting plan by allegedly accepting funds from outside groups.

Groups connected to billionaire donor George Soros and failed Texas candidate Beto O’Rourke are allegedly covering expenses for Democrats who fled the state to oppose the Republican redistricting effort, The Texas Tribune reported.

“I am proud to announce that Director Kash Patel has approved my request for the FBI to assist state and local law enforcement in locating runaway Texas House Democrats,” Cornyn said in a statement.

“I thank President Trump and Director Patel for supporting and swiftly acting on my call for the federal government to hold these supposed lawmakers accountable for fleeing Texas.”

The deployment of federal agents could spark a conflict between the Trump administration and Illinois officials, where many of the missing Democrats are staying.

The Texas lawmakers have been staying at a hotel in St. Charles, Illinois, outside Chicago, the NYT reported.

While their location is no secret, the Democrats apparently believed they were safe from arrest since they were outside the reach of Texas law enforcement.

As of publication, it is uncertain whether federal agents will take any action, or what role they might ultimately play in locating the lawmakers, the NYT noted. 

Democrat Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker responded to the idea that federal agents could be deployed against the Texas lawmakers present in his state.

“There literally is no federal law applicable to this situation, none they can say that they’re sending FBI,” Pritzker said Wednesday, according to the NYT.

He implied that federal law enforcement might be deployed to pressure or intimidate the lawmakers, even without grounds for arrest, the outlet reported.

“The FBI agents might show up just to, I don’t know, again, to put a show on,” he said.

Cornyn stated Thursday the FBI will help state law enforcement find the individuals who defied the law by crossing state lines.

“The FBI has tools to aid state law enforcement when parties cross state lines, including to avoid testifying or fleeing a scene of a crime,” he wrote in his letter to Patel. “Specifically, I am concerned that legislators who solicited or accepted funds to aid in their efforts to avoid their legislative duties may be guilty of bribery or other public corruption offenses.”

A total of 51 Texas lawmakers traveled to Illinois to prevent the state House from reaching a quorum, aiming to block a vote on the proposed redistricting map.

Since Sunday, many Democrats have remained in Illinois to keep Republicans from securing the necessary votes for the congressional map.

The new Texas redistricting map would reshape five Democratic-held districts to favor Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections.

The FBI declined to comment to the Daily Caller.

AUTHOR

Ashley Brasfield

Author

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

ROOKE: Democrats Roll Out Sneaky Playbook Year After Year. Now They’ve Met Their Match As Governor Lays Out Threat

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As the 2026 midterms quickly approach, Democrats and Republicans are searching for ways to increase their chances of winning control of Congress, making the addition of House seats through redistricting a top priority.

The Texas state legislature announced that it will introduce a bill to redistrict its U.S. Congressional districts, adding six House seats that would seemingly benefit Republican candidates.

Democrats across the country, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, criticized the move, claiming that Republicans were canceling Democratic voters by gerrymandering their district map. Democrat Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett claimed that Republicans were harming minority voters with the move.

Despite criticism and threats from blue states to redistrict their congressional districts, Texas state Republicans plan to move forward with their redistricting bill. That’s when all the drama started. News spread Saturday that state Democrats had once again fled the state to avoid giving the Texas state House a quorum to vote on the bill.

This is not new from Texas Democrats. Since 2020, state Democrats have made the same move three times. On May 30, 2021, Democrats walked out of the House at midnight to break the quorum and avoid voting on Texas SB 7, which focused on election integrity and security.

In response, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called a special session to force Democrats back into the chamber. However, when the bill came up for another House floor vote, state Democrats broke quorum again by jumping on a chartered flight to Washington, D.C., on July 12, 2021. It took over a month before Democrats were forced to give Republicans a quorum in the Texas House.

Democrats are trying to do this again. On Aug. 3, at least 51 Democrats flew to Illinois to prevent the Texas House from reaching a quorum to vote on the new redistricting bill.

But this time is different. Abbott doesn’t seem willing to allow state Democrats the month-long publicity stunt before requiring them to come back to work. Instead, on Sunday, the Texas governor released a fiery statement notifying delinquent Democrats of the consequences should they refuse to attend the House vote at 3:00 p.m. Monday.

“This truancy ends now. The derelict Democrat House members must return to Texas and be in attendance when the House reconvenes at 3:00 PM on Monday, August 4, 2025. For any member who fails to do so, I will invoke Texas Attorney General Opinion No. KP-0382 to remove the missing Democrats from membership in the Texas House,” Abbott warned, adding that he has the power to “swiftly fill” their empty seats.

“In addition to abandoning their offices, these legislators may also have committed felonies. Many absentee Democrats are soliciting funds to evade the fines they will incur under House rules. Any Democrat who ‘solicits, accepts, or agrees to accept’ such funds to assist in the violation of legislative duties or for purposes of skipping a vote may have violated bribery laws. See TEX. PENAL CODE § 36.02,” Abbott stated.

The Texas governor didn’t end with threatening state Democrats with felonies and removal from office. He added that any person who funds this charade will also be subjected to felony charges and promises to use his “full extradition authority to demand the return to Texas of any potential out-of-state felons.”

There is no reported claim that Abbott received a call from the White House or U.S. House Republican leadership to end this Democrat power play immediately. Last time, it took over a month for Abbott and Texas Republicans to get their Democrat counterparts back to work.

Whatever the cause, Republicans seem to have found their backbone and have no issue using the power given to them by the voters to get important legislative work done.

AUTHOR

Mary Rooke

Commentary and Analysis Writer. Follow Mary Rooke on X: @MaryRooke. Sign up for Mary Rooke’s weekly newsletter here!

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Texas GOP Hopes That Latinos Flocking To Trump Could Get Them 5 Seats In Redistricting

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Texas Republicans are banking on the GOP’s gains among Hispanic and Latino voters in recent elections, seeking to create four Republican-leaning, majority-Hispanic districts in the state in their mid-decade redistricting proposal.

State Republicans on Wednesday unveiled plans for a new congressional map that, if enacted, would likely flip five Democratic seats in the 2026 midterm elections — four of them being majority-Hispanic congressional districts. President Donald Trump has been urging Texas Republicans to redraw the state’s congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterms in an attempt to widen the GOP’s narrow majority in the House of Representatives.

“Republicans have been steadily increasing their support with Hispanic voters in Texas, so they no doubt are confident that redistricting could help them gain seats,” Hans A. von Spakovsky, manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “President Trump’s share of their vote in Texas rose from 34% in 2016 to 41% in 2020 to 55% in 2024. He went from getting a minority of the Hispanic vote to [getting] a majority of the vote in just eight years.”

Trump’s 2024 performance among Hispanic voters in Texas, according to exit polls, was several percentage points better than his performance among Hispanic and Latino voters nationwide. Additionally, Trump’s vote share among Texas Hispanics was only one point lower than his vote share among all 2024 voters in the Lone Star State.

In the 2024 election, 48% of Hispanics nationwide voted for Trump — the highest ever recorded percentage for a Republican presidential nominee — up from 36% in the 2020 presidential election, according to a Pew Research report released in June. Trump notched 56.3% of the overall 2024 vote in Texas to former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 42.4%.

“Everything we know about Latino voters tells us that they are highly persuadable and have in the last few election cycles made decisions based on who they believe will address their economic concerns and priorities,” Melissa Morales, president of Somos Votantes, a Democratic-aligned group that focuses on Latino voters, told Politico on Thursday.

Republicans currently hold 25 of Texas’ 38 House seats, with Trump notably carrying 27 of those districts in the 2024 presidential election, the Texas Tribune reported on Wednesday.

Two Democrats — both of them Hispanic moderates representing border districts — won their 2024 reelection bids in seats Trump carried that cycle. Democratic Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar won reelection by six points despite Trump carrying his district by seven and Democratic Texas Rep. Vicente Gonzalez won by under three points despite Trump winning his district by five.

“Republican gains with Hispanic voters in Texas are not just a single-cycle phenomenon,” Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, the University of Virginia Center for Politics’ nonpartisan newsletter on American campaigns and elections, told the DCNF. “Back in 2020, Trump made significant gains, for instance, in heavily Latino South Texas even while losing overall to [former President] Joe Biden. Four years later, those gains continued. I think there is definitely the possibility of a swing back to Democrats to some extent in the context of the 2026 midterm — the non-presidential party often does well in such elections — but in the longer term there probably are reasonable signs of optimism for Republicans with these voters.”

“In terms of the new map draft, I don’t really think Republicans even need further gains with Latinos to realize their maximal gain — it has 30 seats that voted for Trump by 10 points or more, so it’s designed to elect 5 more Republicans than the current map,” Kondik added. “Now, the 2024 presidential result in these districts is probably more of a high water mark than a durable, every-election phenomenon, and Democrats do better, for instance, in the South Texas seats than Harris did in the presidential race. But I don’t think there’s much risk that Republicans spread themselves too thin on this map — maybe they don’t win all 30 seats in 2026, but I also don’t see them doing worse than the 25 seats they already hold.”

National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) Spokesman Christian Martinez said Thursday in a statement provided to the DCNF that “Hispanic communities are sick and tired of radical Democrats turning their backs on them time and again.”

“They are forcefully rejecting the far-left agenda that resulted in years of open borders, skyrocketing prices, and woke insanity like men in girls’ sports,” Martinez added. “Republicans are the party of common sense, and Hispanic voters know it.”

AUTHOR

Ireland Owens

Reporter

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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