Vance urges "decisive action" on GOP redistricting efforts

Axios

5 days ago

Vice President JD Vance said Republicans must take "very decisive action" with redistricting, arguing in an interview aired Sunday that those efforts and a new census will make "the congressional apportionment fair."
The big picture: The White House-endorsed push for red states to redraw congressional maps has prompted a fiery response from Democrats, with party leaders threatening to retaliate in kind to nullify Republicans' proposed changes.
President Trump ignited the Democrats' reaction when he urged Texas Republicans to set new lines ahead of the 2026 midterms. The Lone Star State's proposed map would make five districts, currently represented by Democrats, more favorable to Republicans.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom has called for a special election allowing voters to approve a ballot measure that could ultimately green-light Democratic efforts to redistrict in response to Texas' plan.
Driving the news: The vice president argued in a prerecorded interview aired Sunday on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures" that when blue states gerrymander, it "suppresses the will of the people in states like Indiana," where he recently talked redistricting with state Republican leaders.
As noted by the Brennan Center for Justice, both parties engaged in partisan redistricting after the 2020 census, but the bias in maps ahead of the 2024 election favored the GOP "due primarily to aggressive gerrymandering in GOP strongholds in the South and Midwest."
What he's saying: Vance said in the interview with Fox News' Maria Bartiromo that undocumented immigrants are included in population counts, saying it's "ridiculously unfair" that those tallies factor into reapportionment.
"The only real way to fight back against it is for us to redistrict in some ways as aggressively as these hard blue states have done," Vance said.
Context: The U.S. Constitution lays out the process of conducting a census each decade, with the 14th Amendment stating apportionment should be determined by the count of the "whole number of persons in each State."
The resident population counts, per the U.S. Census Bureau, include"all people (citizens and noncitizens)" living in the U.S. at the time of the census, as well as military and civilian employees of the government deployed outside the country.
Last week, Trump called for a "new and highly accurate" census that omits "People who are in our Country illegally."
Vance said the administration wants to "re-do the census," as Trump ordered, citing under- and overcounts in the 2020 count.
"What we're living with ... is the consequence of 40 years of institutional control of the Democratic Party," he argued, blaming party officials for trying to "rig the game."
Vance urged "hard work to reset the scales a little bit."
State of play: The U.S. Census Bureau's 2020 Post-Enumeration Survey (PES) found that there were undercounts in six states and overcounts in eight. But, per the bureau, the census was still "fit for the purposes of apportionment and redistricting."
PES data does not say why a state experiences under- or overcounts. Officials emphasized at the time that "no census is perfect" — and that PES findings help inform planning for future counts.
Planning for the 2030 census was already well underway when Trump announced plans for a new count.
The other side: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) slammed Republicans' redistricting efforts as "undemocratic" and "outrageous" in an interview aired Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union."
That leaves Democrats with "no choice" but to fight fire with fire, he said.
"It's pathetic, but I think you have to respond," Sanders told CNN's Dana Bash.
Zoom out: Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that Trump's redistricting push is because "he knows he's going to lose the Congress in 2026."
"That's why he's going to his allies and hoping that they can save him. And we've all got to stand up against this. This is — it's cheating. Donald Trump is a cheater. He cheats on his wives. He cheats at golf. And now he's trying to cheat the American people out of their votes," he said.