A gerrymandering battle reveals how far Trump will go to keep away from electoral accountability.
Members of the Texas Division of Public Security contained in the Texas State Capitol in Austin, Texas, US, on Monday, Aug. 4, 2025. Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the arrest of Democratic lawmakers who left the state to dam a controversial vote on new congressional maps.
(Sergio Flores / Bloomberg by way of Getty Photos)
The small “d” democratic logic of an argument made by Texas state Rep. Ann Johnson—who, together with her Democratic colleagues within the state legislature, has left Texas as a way to stop Republican legislators from finishing up President Trump’s order to radically gerrymander its congressional maps—is past debate.
“If Republicans are fearful of Texas voters, they need to modify their insurance policies — not rig our maps,” says Johnson, a prime Texas lawyer and three-term legislator, who flew out of the Lone Star State on Sunday as a part of a tactical transfer supposed to forestall Republican Governor Greg Abbott and Republican legislators from implementing a plan to redraw district maps as a way to flip 5 of the 12 seats Democrats presently holdto the GOP.
Particularly, Texas Democratic legislators are breaking quorum – a tactic that successfully denies Republican legislative leaders the power to proceed with Trump’s gerrymandering scheme. “I’m asking all people to do not forget that Quorum Break is a software that the founding fathers of Texas put in place for when a minority social gathering is aware of that almost all social gathering has gone off the rails and is doing one thing towards the pursuits and can of the voters,” explains Johnson. “Hundreds of you will have come out to say that you just do need your seats stolen by Trump. The Massive Ugly Invoice handed by one vote – one vote – and he’s afraid of you going to the polls in November of 2026. He has requested Governor Abbott to interrupt the principles and get him 5 new Republican seats. You all spoke up (in opposition). They pushed it. They put it on the ground. And, so, please know that this extraordinary step of a Quorum Break is in order that your voices might be heard. If they don’t seem to be going to be heard right here in Texas, then we’re breaking quorum to go to the nation and say: ‘That is it! You have to cease Trump’s takeover!’”
Abbott is apoplectic. He has threatened to cost the Democrats with felonies and take away them from their elected positions. Savvy authorized specialists say he lacks the standing to take action. And the Democratic governors of a number of blue states have signaled that, if Abbott finds a technique to override the Texas Democrats and go forward with the brand new gerrymander, they might look to counter his strikes by redrawing maps in their very own states.
The more and more chaotic wrangling over congressional district maps illustrates simply how excessive the stakes are for Texas, and the entire of america.
The out of the blue nationalized battle over gerrymandering in Texas goes to the essential premises of consultant democracy, which one of the best of the founders of the American venture understood as an experiment in giving energy to the individuals. The experiment has by no means labored completely. However, at its finest, it has offered a verify and a steadiness on government overreach and authoritarian abuses by DC elites.
Present Problem
Previously, when American presidents and their events skilled the form of collapse in ballot numbers that Trump and the GOP have been hit with since they determined to intestine Medicaid and anti-hunger packages as a way to fund tax cuts for billionaires, and on the identical time despatched the economic system reeling with ill-conceived tariff insurance policies, these leaders adjusted their insurance policies.
Or they misplaced their positions, and their congressional majorities, on the subsequent election.
This precept of electoral accountability has tended to be a robust corrective in American politics. In its mildest type, it requires presidents and members of Congress to elucidate their decisions and to attempt to win the American individuals over to their factors of view. In additional excessive circumstances, it has led to epic political shifts, as occurred in 1932, when Individuals rejected the Wall Avenue-aligned Republicans whose insurance policies had accelerated the Nice Despair, and changed them with Franklin Roosevelt and the coalition of Democrats and left-wing allies who would usher within the New Deal.
Now, Trump desires to upend the accountability calculus by having his allies rework the already extremely skewed maps of Texas in a means that might give Republicans an opportunity to carry onto the Home, where they currently occupy 219 seats, only one greater than is required to assert a transparent majority within the 435-seat chamber. However, as at all times, he additionally desires to check how a lot authoritarianism he can get away with. If the Texas gambit goes ahead, different Republican-controlled states will certainly observe the Lone Star GOP —and if the US Supreme Courtroom permits them to take action, by gutting what stays of the Voting Rights Act—Trump and the GOP may retain full management of the federal authorities in 2026, even when voters in Texas and nationwide give a majority of their votes to Democrats.
That’s what makes what’s been occurring in Austin greater than only a Lone Star battle. “Their battle is our battle!” explained Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, when he welcomed lots of the Texas legislators to Chicago on Sunday. And it’s not merely a battle over warped congressional district strains and rigged elections.
This can be a life-and-death battle for the way forward for consultant democracy as Individuals have understood it—and for the people-centered insurance policies that, in one of the best of circumstances, have traditionally prolonged from a minimum of moderately free and honest elections. “Folks want to concentrate to what’s occurring in Texas proper now as a result of Donald Trump desires to unfold this type of ploy throughout America,” says US Rep. Greg Casar, the Texas Democrat who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “Trump is aware of he can’t win the upcoming mid-term elections, so he’s making an attempt to rig them. And the way in which he’s making an attempt to do it (Trump) is making an attempt to do it’s to dismantle the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as we all know it. He’s making an attempt, for instance to attempt to dismantle Hispanic and African-American alternative districts. I characterize a district overwhelmingly of Latinos right here within the Austin space. If Donald Trump is ready to suppress the votes of Latinos right here in Austin, quickly sufficient he desires to do this throughout America. And he may try this and, in the end, attempt to get extra complicit and corrupt Trump Republicans to defend his agenda even because it turns into much less fashionable.”
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