WaPo:

President Donald Trump’s push to redraw the congressional map has fueled a redistricting arms race, with blue and red states rushing to counter each other.

But it’s an uneven fight.

Republicans appear to hold the advantage in the nationwide scramble, according to strategists and nonpartisan analysts, with more opportunities to shift the lines in their favor ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Democrats have vowed to “fight fire with fire” since the GOP moved to add five red seats in Texas, but they face many barriers.

Republicans are eyeing ways to add a dozen or more red House districts across Texas, Florida, Missouri, Ohio and Indiana, despite some legal hurdles and reservations from local Republicans. Democrats are looking to retaliate with five more blue seats in California, and they are exploring other options, including in Maryland and Illinois. They control fewer states than Republicans, however, and they have already maximized their power in others. In some cases, they would have to work around independent commissions set up to prevent gerrymandering.

“The Republicans are pretty likely to come out ahead — it’s just a question of how much they come out ahead,” said Kyle Kondik, an elections analyst for the nonpartisan site Sabato’s Crystal Ball.

Democrats say they are determined to blunt Trump’s push for more red seats, even if they cannot stop it. As Republicans defend a 219-212 House majority with four vacancies, even small shifts in the map could tip control of Congress in 2026…

Announcement via email:

Common Cause today reaffirmed its commitment to fair, people-powered democracy, making clear that independent redistricting commissions remain the gold standard for ending partisan gerrymandering.

However, as political leaders in states like Texas are imposing mid-decade partisan maps to distort the will of the people ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, the organization announced it will closely evaluate, but not automatically condemn, countermeasures to these actions….

Common Cause’s position follows decades of advocacy against partisan gerrymandering, including taking Common Cause v. Rucho to the Supreme Court, drafting provisions in the Freedom to Vote Act to ban partisan gerrymandering, and championing independent redistricting commissions nationwide.

Common Cause’s Six Fairness Criteria for Mid-Decade Redistricting 

1. Proportionality: Any mid-decade redistricting should be a targeted response proportional to the threat posed by mid-decade gerrymanders in other states.
   
2. Public participation: Any redistricting must include meaningful public participation, whether through ballot initiatives or open public processes.
   
3. Racial equity: Redistricting must not further racial discrimination or dilute the political voice of Black, Latino, Indigenous, Asian American, and Pacific Islander, or other communities of color.
   
4. Federal reform: Leaders pursuing mid-decade redistricting must publicly endorse the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, including provisions banning mid-decade redistricting and partisan gerrymandering.
   
5. Endorsement of independent redistricting: Leaders pursuing mid-decade redistricting must publicly endorse citizen-led independent redistricting commissions as the long-term solution.
   
6. Time-limited: Any new redistricting maps must expire following the 2030 Census, which counts all people in our country, and be replaced through the regular decennial redistricting process. 

California Playbook:

Sara Sadhwani is proud of her work on California’s independent redistricting commission, but now she wants voters to tear up the maps she and her colleagues spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours crafting.

The Pomona political science professor grabbed political insiders’ attention when she backed state Democrats’ move to counter Texas Republicans’ planned gerrymander with one of their own.

Sadhwani, one of the commission’s Democratic members in 2020, believes partisan gerrymandering should be outlawed nationwide. But she argued democratic institutions have been so weakened by President Donald Trump’s administration that slanting California’s maps toward Democrats is necessary to push back on a Republican power grab — which is why she’s inviting voters to override her own work.

“These are extraordinary times,” she told Playbook. “At this moment, I’m not so worried about California’s democracy.”

You got a lot of attention for calling for the maps to be redrawn. Can you talk me through your thinking?

First of all, I’ll say that I stand by the maps that the commission drew. They are fair, they are competitive, and those are the kinds of maps that we should have for congressional districts across the nation. We expanded opportunities for Latinos, in particular, to elect their candidates of choice in ways that the Legislature never bothered to do in California. I’m incredibly proud of the work that we did in the largest state in the nation.

That being said, not all of the states are playing by the same set of rules. Certainly, we see the showdown happening in Texas. President Trump has talked about getting the FBI involved to get Democratic members back to the Texas Legislature. These are extraordinary times. At this moment, I’m not so worried about California’s democracy. We have strong democratic institutions here in the state of California, but I’m also a political scientist, and at the national level, what we’ve seen over the last 10 or even 20 years is a backsliding and a decay of our institutions that should worry all of us….

Texas Tribune:

The executive committee of the Republican Party of Texas was in Austin on Saturday to finalize its first-ever legislative review, outlining a list of censurable offenses that some within the Texas GOP want to use to block certain House Republicans from the 2026 primary ballot.

Those Republicans, made up of delegates chosen by county parties, want to use the list to hold their elected officials to the state party’s priorities. But others see it as an illegal effort to deny officials from the primary ballot if they don’t follow the most fervent conservative activists’ aims 100% of the time.

Texas GOP Chair Abraham George told The Blast that he and House Speaker Dustin Burrows, who spoke to members of the SREC at a separate meeting with Gov. Greg Abbott earlier Saturday morning, have not discussed the party’s censure effort, a new “accountability” mechanism the state party approved at its 2024 convention. Still, Burrows likely knew the SREC members would be approving a hit list that could be used to keep “RINOs” from the ballot….

Dave Daley in The Guardian.

WaPo deep dive:

Their exodus, coordinated with top Democrats outside Texas, is the latest flash point in a rapidly spreading fight over election maps — embodying Democrats’ newly combative posture on redistricting. After Texas Republicans initiated an unusual mid-decade effort to redraw their maps at President Donald Trump’s urging, state Democrats have staged a high-profile protest; liberal governors have moved to retaliate with new maps of their own; and many onetime gerrymandering critics have joined the cause. “Fight fire with fire,” as many Democrats have recently put it.

But the party is facing an uphill climb and risks of a letdown. Texas Democrats are likely to stall but not ultimately prevent Republicans from enacting a new map that would add five new U.S. House seats that voted for Trump by double-digit percentages. In several blue states, Democrats must clear legal hurdles that their red-state counterparts don’t face as both parties try to overhaul election maps beyond Texas.

“Fundamentally, this has the potential to be the gerrymandering apocalypse that may have been inevitable given that for both parties, the ends have increasingly justified the means,” said David Wasserman, senior elections analyst with the nonpartisan Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. Republicans are more likely to get their way, Wasserman said, even if Democrats are able to offset GOP gains in Texas.

The outcome could have major implications for 2026 and the final two years of Trump’s term. Republicans are defending a 219-212 House majority, with four vacancies, and even marginal shifts could be pivotal….