The Gerrymandering War of 2026 Hits the Home Stretch

It’s a Monday in April of 2026, and there were three major pieces of news related to gerrymandering today. There should have been zero.

However, the American political system is so broken that Republicans and Democrats feel emboldened and/or compelled to disenfranchise voters in the states they control. Even worse, partisan judges are often ignoring the letter and the spirit of laws meant to prevent this kind of thing from happening.

In the end, it looks as though the GOP, which started this redistricting battle at the behest of Donald Trump, will gain an edge in the midterm elections… unless the voters they want to sideline make them pay for their schemes.

How big of an advantage depends on the state supreme courts of Virginia and Florida. It could end up being a couple of seats, a handful, or even a net loss if Democrats prevail in the commonwealth and Republicans lose out in the Sunshine State (which seems unlikely).

First up on Monday was the Supreme Court, which upheld the GOP’s effort to carve out five additional House seats in Texas for itself. It’s a fitting start since that is where the gerrymandering war began last year after Trump demanded that Republicans engage in an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting effort to rig the midterms to their advantage.

While their appetite was limited at first, the Department of Justice gave the Texas GOP cover by cynically claiming that some of its majority-minority districts were illegal racial gerrymanders. This allowed Republicans to engage in an actual racial gerrymander by packing minority voters in fewer districts in the hopes of having a better chance of winning everywhere else.

When a district court appropriately struck down their map, it noted that the “DOJ Letter urges Texas to inject racial considerations into what Texas insists was a race-blind process.”

And, since racial gerrymanders are illegal, that decision should have stood. And it would have, if the members of the Supreme Court were impartial justices and not partisan hacks. Alas, they are not, which is why the high court on Monday reversed that well-reasoned decision so that Republicans have a better chance of winning the midterms.

Next up was Virginia, which Democrats hope to be one of their two main bulwarks against the GOP’s gerrymandering offensive. Here, voters last week approved a new map that would likely allow Democrats 10 of the commonwealth’s 11 congressional districts, which is excessive in light of them holding only a narrow edge statewide.

On Monday, the state Supreme Court heard arguments as to whether everything went by the books. A reasonable person could conclude that they probably did not cross all the Ts and dot all the Is, which makes sense since this was a rush job to respond to Texas and other red states.

There is no telling how the court will rule, but it is pretty clear that a state in which Democrats have, maybe, a 10-point edge should not have a congressional delegation that favors them 10-1.

And please spare us the arguments that it was necessary for them to fight back and that the voters approved this map rather than lawmakers cutting backroom deals. That may all be true, but we are talking about the merits here, and it is clear that some corners were cut.

Also, gerrymandering is just bad for democracy.

Which brings us to Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Monday introduced his own, blatantly unconstitutional map.

It clearly violates a citizen-approved 2010 amendment that makes it illegal to draw districts “to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent.” And that is all the DeSantis map does. However, since he appointed nearly all of the judges on the state Supreme Court, he’ll probably get away with it (if the GOP-dominated legislature approves it).

However, just as in Texas, it is possible that voters will make him pay because the four districts the map is supposed to net are not sure things, and it is possible that Florida Republicans will end up losing seats in the state overall in November.

We certainly hope so, because this gerrymandering arms race has to stop. The power to do so is in the hands of the American people, who can present Republicans with the bill for their efforts to rig the midterms in this way.

It would also be nice if this anti-democratic charade would lead to more constitutional initiatives to ban this odious practice altogether and to put the redistricting process in the hands of impartial experts.

We will certainly keep doing our part by continuing to cover any and all efforts to make this happen and highlight the most egregious offenders.