U.S. President Donald Trump’s hold on the U.S. House of Congress is looking tremulous ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Over the past few months, issues like immigration and the economy have caused his popularity to fluctuate drastically. With some 469 (435 in the House of Representatives, approximately 34 in the Senate) seats up for grabs between the House of Representatives and the Senate, the November 3rd election may very well turn the tables for the GOP. This seems to have many Republicans scrambling to hedge their bets. Missouri, Texas, Kansas, and Nebraska in particular are all set to have their electoral district boundaries remapped in favour of Republican candidates.

Redistricting congressional maps to favour a certain outcome, also known as gerrymandering, is a favourite dirty trick of American politicians dating back to the early nineteenth century. Gerrymandering, named after former Governor of Massachusetts Elbridge Gerry, is a form of tolerated corruption whereby electoral districts are rezoned to divvy up certain voter demographics in such a way that they are either grossly over or under represented in a given district.

Gerrymandering helps candidates win seats in said district by skewing the voter base in their favour. Unlike in Canada, where electoral district zoning decisions are made by non-partisan commissions, state legislatures are responsible for making these choices in the U.S which has rendered the process of electoral district mapping highly partisan since the time of the Founding Fathers.

Stephen Nass/Washington Post

Historically, the legitimacy of this practice has been challenged by advocacy groups and lobbyists on both sides of the aisle. Common Cause, a watchdog group, raised the issue as far as the Supreme Court back in 2019 in the landmark case Rucho v. Common Cause. At the time, the 2010 rezoning of electoral districts in North Carolina had stirred controversy when it was found that the new congressional district map used racial demographics to draft districts that favoured Republican candidates. 

After a triumphant legal challenge in state court by activists, a subsequent map was drafted in 2016 with the aid of State Senator Robert Rucho, which was challenged by Common Cause for similarly using partisan gerrymandering. This challenge was ultimately struck down with five of the nine Supreme Court Justices siding with Rucho. 

The Supreme Court Justices noted in their decision that “partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts” and that while it may infringe upon democratic principles, it is a problem for legislators, not the courts. This stripped gerrymandering of much of the legal taboo that previously surrounded it.

Democracy Docket

Since Rucho v. Common Cause, gerrymandering has become a more blatantly partisan, rather than legal, problem. Democrats respond to the GOP’s attempts at gerrymandering not with lawsuits (although, threats have been made), but instead with gerrymandering of their own. California Governor Gavin Newsom, for instance, has announced a plan to gerrymander the California state map to defend against gerrymandering in Texas by the GOP. A plan he has, perhaps ironically, titled the Election Rigging Response Act. 

In other words, as the saying goes, the Democrats plan to fight fire with fire and at this point, both the Democrat and Republican Parties seem indifferent as to whether the house will burn with it. As scholar David Daley stated in a comment to NPR: “Democrats have been trying to play catch-up to REDMAP [Republican Redistricting Majority Project] and Republican gerrymandering for about 15 years now.” This tit-for-tat has thus only further incentivized gerrymandering on both sides of the aisle.

If this trend continues, many worry that this will lead to partisan gerrymandering becoming the norm in future U.S. elections. At present, states only typically redistrict at the start of each decade with the national census showing how many seats each state requires in the House of Representatives. Currently, every U.S. House Representative represents approximately 761,000 people while the number of Senators is fixed by the constitution at two per state. 

However, with the current swing in partisan gerrymandering, special orders to redistrict electoral maps may become the norm in the future for partisan politicians at the beginning of each election cycle. This would make it easier for sitting majority politicians to preserve the status quo arrangement of seats in their respective state house.

Eric Gay/AP

Trump’s wildcard politics can largely be said to blame for this dramatic uptick in gerrymandering efforts. Over the past couple of months, Trump has repeatedly pushed the state houses in Missouri and Texas to eliminate districts that favour Democrats. In Texas, this has resulted in a new electoral district map initiated by Texas Governor Greg Abbott that will give as many as five seats to the GOP. 

Likewise, in Missouri, the “Missouri First Map”, as it has been affectionately titled by its supporters, such as Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe, has divided Kansas City into three GOP-leaning districts and may cause Democratic Representative Emanuel Cleaver to lose his seat come the election. Trump has claimed these drastic moves are justified insofar as they serve only to counter gerrymandering by Democrats; an issue that, while real, is actually currently more prevalent among Republicans.

Dating back to 2010, when the Republican Party first rolled out the previously referenced Republican Redistricting Majority Project plan, the GOP has continuously made a concerted effort to skew electoral district maps in swing states through gerrymandering, such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. This has given them a substantial advantage over Democratic candidates in several districts in key elections since then, such as in the 2012 U.S. House of Representatives election and in the 2018 Senate election. 

Trump has only upped the GOP’s ante and furthered this plan in the past few months by imposing state orders on Missouri and Texas to that end. This makes him unique since he is the only sitting U.S. president to directly order state leaders in an official capacity (i.e., Governors Greg Abbott & Mike Kehoe) to gerrymander.

Elizabeth Elkind, Rémy Numa, & Sarah Rumpf-Whitten/Fox News

These ploys, while obviously strategically beneficial for Trump and the GOP, pose a serious threat to the stability of American democracy. Gerrymandering disenfranchises voters by making it so their vote is substantially less impactful in remapped districts that are skewed to favour predetermined partisan outcomes. It further negatively impacts candidates by rendering elections in gerrymandered districts uncompetitive and biased. This practice has also been shown to grossly and disproportionately impact minority communities whose votes are often easily overlooked in the United States’ first-past-the-post voting system. 

Overall, gerrymandering reduces the representativeness of American democracy by lessening the incentive for partisan politicians to concern themselves with the demands of their constituents, minority and majority alike. As summed up quite simply by Kosuke Imai, a Professor of Government at Harvard University: “If many lawmakers are in safe seats, guaranteed to win by a relatively comfortable margin, there’s less incentive to respond to what voters want.”

Keeping all of this in mind ahead of the U.S. 2026 midterm election, this is clearly an essential time for those with a vested interest in preserving the quality of American democracy to take a stand. Partisan gerrymandering in Missouri, Texas, and California is an imminent threat to the representativeness of American democracy. Whether it be Democrats or Republicans, Newsom or Trump, this sort of conduct should not be tolerated, let alone sanctioned, by legislators. 

Gerrymandering is a pervasive problem that erodes the very bedrock of American democracy: government by the people, for the people. And to crib Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, such a bedrock should never perish from the Earth.