Politics
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August 5, 2025
A gerrymandering struggle reveals how far Trump will go to keep away from electoral accountability.
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Members of the Texas Division of Public Security contained in the Texas State Capitol in Austin, Texas, on Monday, August 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 Pictures)
The small-d democratic logic of an argument made by Texas state Consultant Ann Johnson—who, together with her Democratic colleagues within the state legislature, has left Texas with the intention to stop Republican legislators from finishing up President Trump’s order to radically gerrymander its congressional maps—is past debate.
“If Republicans are afraid of Texas voters, they need to regulate their insurance policies—not rig our maps,” says Johnsona high 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 stop Republican Governor Greg Abbott and Republican legislators from implementing a plan to redraw district maps with the intention to flip 5 of the 12 seats Democrats presently maintain to the GOP.
Particularly, Texas Democratic legislators are breaking quorum—a tactic that successfully denies Republican legislative leaders the flexibility to proceed with Trump’s gerrymandering scheme. “I’m asking everyone to do not forget that Quorum Break is a software that the founding fathers of Texas put in place for when a minority celebration is aware of that almost all celebration has gone off the rails and is doing one thing in opposition to the pursuits and can of the voters,” explains Johnson. “1000’s of you could have come out to say that you simply 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 foundations 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 will 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! It’s essential 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 method to override the Texas Democrats and go forward with the brand new gerrymander, they could 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 instantly nationalized struggle over gerrymandering in Texas goes to the fundamental premises of consultant democracy, which the perfect of the founders of the American mission understood as an experiment in giving energy to the folks. The experiment has by no means labored completely. However, at its finest, it has supplied a examine and a steadiness on government overreach and authoritarian abuses by DC elites.
Present Situation
Prior to now, 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 applications with the intention to fund tax cuts for billionaires, and on the similar time despatched the financial 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 strong corrective in American politics. In its mildest type, it requires presidents and members of Congress to clarify their decisions and to attempt to win the American folks over to their factors of view. In additional excessive circumstances, it has led to epic political shifts, as occurred in 1932when Individuals rejected the Wall Avenue–aligned Republicans whose insurance policies had accelerated the Nice Melancholy, and changed them with Franklin Roosevelt and the coalition of Democrats and left-wing allies who would usher within the New Deal.
Now Trump needs to upend the accountability calculus by having his allies rework the already extremely skewed maps of Texas in a method that would give Republicans an opportunity to carry on to the Home, the place they presently occupy 219 seatsonly one greater than is required to assert a transparent majority within the 435-seat chamber. However, as at all times, he additionally needs 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 taking place in Austin greater than only a Lone Star battle. “Their struggle is our struggle!” defined Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, when he welcomed lots of the Texas legislators to Chicago on Sunday. And it’s not merely a struggle over warped congressional district strains and rigged elections.
It is 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 the perfect of circumstances, have traditionally prolonged from a minimum of moderately free and honest elections. “Folks want to concentrate to what’s taking place in Texas proper now as a result of Donald Trump needs to unfold this type of ploy throughout America,” says US Consultant Greg Casar, the Texas Democrat who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “Trump is aware of he can’t win the upcoming midterm 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 try to dismantle Hispanic and African-American alternative districts. I symbolize 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 needs 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 well-liked.”
John Nichols
John Nichols is a nationwide affairs correspondent for The Nation. He has written, cowritten, or edited over a dozen books on matters starting from histories of American socialism and the Democratic Occasion to analyses of US and world media techniques. His newest, cowritten with Senator Bernie Sanders, is the New York Occasions bestseller It is OK to Be Offended About Capitalism.
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