Analysis: Why Trump's Texas battle over the House could end up affecting every American

CNN

2 days ago

Democrats might finally have learned something about Donald Trump — if they hope to beat him, they must get down in the gutter alongside him.
Party leaders in powerhouse blue states on Monday vowed to emulate the president's methods to create new Democratic-friendly seats in the House of Representatives in response to his bid to carve out five new GOP districts in Texas.
Their promises came as they celebrated Democratic Texas state lawmakers who suddenly became the fresh faces of the anti-Trump resistance after facing arrest warrants for fleeing the state in an exodus that ground a special legislative session called by the president's allies to a halt.
This all might look like yet another twist in a generationslong struggle by both parties to gerrymander districts to get a leg up in elections. And some voters' eyes might glaze over at what seems like an internal Texas tussle.
But the fight has profound national implications.
In the short term, the House of Representatives — which Democrats hope to win back in midterm elections next year to rein in Trump's presidency — could be at stake. Democrats currently need a net gain of three seats to take the majority. If the Texas plan passes without a response by another state, they will need eight. That could dash their goal of imposing a clamp on Trump's runaway presidency.
In the medium term, the Texas redistricting fight must be seen against the backdrop of a fraught political age.
There are growing signs American democracy is fraying. Republicans will argue, correctly, that Democrats have mounted their own egregious redistricting schemes in states such as Illinois and Maryland. But the instigator of the effort to make the Texas congressional delegation even redder was a president who already has a dark record of trying to subvert the verdict of voters.
Longer term, the national political fight that has erupted over Texas looks almost certain to further erode the checks and balances of democracy, however it ends. If both parties now simply go all-out in a national gerrymandering frenzy, they will produce a House of Representatives where it will be even more difficult for incumbents to lose their seats and that will make meaningful political change even harder.
If nothing else, the furor demonstrates the imperative of winning power and forging transformational change before the opportunity is lost.
Republicans over the last decade have built an unassailable conservative Supreme Court majority that enabled GOP redistricting efforts based on race, including in Texas. And they've elected and supported a president with an expansive and constitutionally questionable thirst for imposing his own personal power that has shattered most political norms. Most presidents would not be as blatant in Trump in trying to change the electoral battlefield.
Over the same period, Democrats failed to bolster ranks of liberals on the Supreme Court — for instance, by not persuading late Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to retire when a liberal replacement could be confirmed while the party controlled the presidency and the Senate. In 2024, Democrats initially backed an aging and unpopular President Joe Biden, despite warnings that his candidacy could open the door again to Trump and his anti-democratic project.
This loss of power has been disastrous to progressive aspirations and to protecting the liberal victories of the last 50 years, including the nationwide constitutional right to abortion.
Some top Democrats see the Texas redistricting showdown as a moment for their party to show more ruthlessness.
'We are at war,' New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said Monday, alongside several exiled Texas lawmakers, warning that Democrats should forget independent redistricting panels intended to draw fairer maps that represent a complex electorate. 'The playing field has changed dramatically, and shame on us if we ignore that fact and cling tight to the vestiges of the past,' Hochul said. 'That era is over. Donald Trump eliminated that forever,' she said.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled a plan for a mid-decade redistricting in his state to match the one underway in deep-red Texas. His proposal would come before voters in November — the latest skirmish in a long-running ideological feud between the two states. But it will only be triggered if Texas moves ahead with its own plan. Newsom said he still favored a national independent districting body, but warned that Democrats needed to respond to the GOP's hardline tactics.
'Things have changed. Facts have changed. So we must change,' Newsom said. 'We have got to think anew. We have got to act anew. And we are reacting to the change — they have triggered this response, and we are not going to roll over.'
Potential 2028 Democratic primary candidates, including Newsom and Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois — who has also rushed to back the Democratic Texas lawmakers — have compelling personal interests in joining the fight. In two years, candidates will be asked on a debate stage what they did in the battle over Texas.
But they're also seeking to revive a national party pummeled by Trump, which lacks leadership and has left its supporters listless. Grassroots progressives have been pining for someone, anyone, to show some stomach for the fight — even though Democrats lack any power in Washington to meaningfully hurt the president.
The Texas uproar also coincides with multiple examples of Trump's widening authoritarianism, following his cowing of Congress, crushing of constraints within the federal government, and co-option of the Justice Department and some intelligence services into instruments of his whims. On that score, a source told CNN on Monday that Attorney General Pam Bondi has ordered prosecutors to launch a grand jury investigation into Obama administration officials over the Russia investigation.
Given all this, if the Democrats don't fight back now, when will they ever fight?
As CNN's Eric Bradner reported Monday, the proposed new GOP maps could force two prominent Democratic lawmakers, Reps. Greg Casar and Lloyd Doggett, into a primary against one another. They'd also merge two other seats and make two south Texas seats held by Democrats more Republican-leaning.
While the Democrats made a statement by leaving Texas, their chances of ultimately prevailing seem thin, given the financial pressure of $500 daily fines for non-attendance and their interrupted livelihoods when they are away. And Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a key Trump ally, could call further special sessions later in the year.
This is why some Democrats believe that if they can threaten Republican seats in their own states, they might convince House Speaker Mike Johnson to call off his allies in Austin. 'Perhaps the Republican members of Congress here in New York could say to their Republican colleagues in Texas — 'Hey, slow down on this because this could affect us,'' Carl Heastie, the speaker of the New York State Assembly, said.
This seems a long shot, however, not least because there are considerable impediments in New York to a swift redrawing of maps. Hochul admitted that that even if everything goes smoothly, redistricting that would bypass New York's current nonpartisan commission could only be in place for the 2028 election — a lifetime away in Trump-era politics. And attempts by Democratic states to rebalance electoral maps might convince more GOP bastions to do the same.
So, if an outside Texas strategy is unlikely to force the Texas Republicans to back down, why are Democrats pursuing it?
This may be one of those times in politics when a party can win something by losing.
Democrats might not only engage their demoralized partisans by taking the fight to Trump on Texas; they can use the battle to organize and focus their message as they grapple for traction after a grim political year.
Defending democracy might be a desirable project in the abstract. But in the past, especially when Biden was warning that Trump imperiled America's 'soul,' the idea felt distant from voters infuriated by high grocery prices and the cost of housing. And impassioned warnings from Democratic leadership about how Trump would threaten democracy didn't stop his reelection.
Hochul and other Democrats seemed on Monday to be reaching for a way to connect the democracy question to more immediate voter concerns through the prism of the Texas power grab. She argued that stopping such schemes was critical to charting a path back to power so Democrats could reverse Trump's policies on tariffs and deportations.
That will require a toughening of the Democratic approach, one that underscores the distance traveled since former first lady Michelle Obama warned that when Republicans like Trump go low, 'we go high.'
'With all respect to the good governance groups, politics is a political process,' Hochul said, dismissing 'purity tests' that would make electoral maps fair to everyone involved through nonpartisan commissions.
'If Republicans win the legislature, they can have at it. But until then, we are in charge, and we are sick and tired of being pushed around.'