Blue State Republicans Helped Win the House Majority. The Redistricting Wars May End Their Careers.

Politico

7 hours ago

Trump's move may well work. Even if California's new map wipes out five Republicans and shores up some Democratic seats there, more than neutralizing GOP gains in Texas, the president can likely rely on additional red states such as Ohio, Missouri and Indiana to salute him and overhaul their congressional boundaries to squeeze out the few Democrats left in their delegations. And this is to say nothing of how many more majority-minority districts in red states could be wiped out should the Supreme Court effectively gut the Voting Rights Act before next year's elections.
Such an endgame will surely wind up in a series of state and federal courts, transforming the early going of the midterms into as much a legal fight as a political one. It would make for a mess.
And it wouldn't stop with 2026. New York, for example, is constrained by its voter-approved independent redistricting commission and can't undo the commission and redraw its House maps until the 2028 election.
But why would Democrats in Albany not do so if Trump effectively muscles a House majority into existence next year via a series of red states upending their own maps?
If New York Democrats do pursue such a redraw, it will likely doom the most politically vulnerable House Republicans still left there after the midterms.
Which gets to the cold reality for GOP lawmakers in California and New York: The very Republicans who helped deliver their party's congressional majority by winning in the two mega-states in 2020 and 2022 could be collateral damage to Trump's gambit.
That includes House veterans such as Reps. Darrell Issa and Ken Calvert, both of California, but also younger, promising Republican lawmakers such as Kiley, 40, and Rep. Mike Lawler (N.Y.), 38.
'This creates a situation where you're going to lose blue state members, which over the long haul are critical to keeping the majority,' Lawler told me.
It's all, Lawler said, 'mutually assured destruction once people go full throttle.'
The redistricting threat is especially cruel to Lawler, who was already eager to avoid yet another tough race in his Hudson Valley district by running for governor next year. But Trump made clear he preferred Rep. Elise Stefanik, a born-again MAGA disciple, as the standard-bearer even though running a Trump acolyte statewide may only ensure Stefanik ends next year where she started this year: hoping for a Trump cabinet appointment.