In July of 2025, I wrote a column in the Fulcrum entitled Worst Gerrymandered States Face Redistricting Showdown As Trump Pressures Texas. At the time, President Donald Trump was actively urging Texas lawmakers to redraw congressional districts, escalating what has become a national showdown over electoral fairness.
Texas already ranked among the worst offenders in the country, as The Fulcrum reported in December 2024, with two of its congressional maps serving as textbook examples of manipulated representation.
Today, with the 2026 midterm elections less than a year away, we revisit this critically important battle—one that may determine who controls Congress for the final two years of Trump’s presidency.
Our review highlights six states currently at the center of redistricting fights:
Indiana
- December 11th brought a dramatic turn in Indiana, where Senate Republicans rejected President Trump’s push for mid‑decade redistricting. The GOP‑controlled chamber voted 31–19 against a Trump‑backed map that would have dismantled the state’s two Democratic districts and added two safe Republican seats.
- The defeat marks the first major rebuke of Trump’s national redistricting campaign by his own party. Despite weeks of intense lobbying from Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, Indiana Republicans broke ranks. Several lawmakers cited conservative principles against mid‑cycle gerrymandering, warning that such moves erode public trust and invite federal overreach.
- The vote followed weeks of turmoil: at least a dozen Indiana Republicans reported violent threats, swatting attempts, and bomb scares tied to the redistricting debate. Trump responded by vowing to back primary challengers against dissenters, singling out Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray.
- This rejection not only halts GOP hopes of gaining two additional seats in Indiana but also underscores fractures within the party over Trump’s aggressive redistricting strategy.
Ohio
- Ohio continues to operate under maps repeatedly ruled unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court in 2021–22.
- More than 535,000 signatures were submitted this summer to place Issue 1 on the November ballot, which would replace the politician-controlled redistricting commission with a citizens’ commission.
- In October, the Ohio Redistricting Commission began debating new maps, but partisan gridlock persists. Republicans may seek to expand their current 10–5 advantage in U.S. House seats, though details remain uncertain.
Florida
- In December, the Florida House opened hearings to redraw congressional maps, despite Gov. Ron DeSantis suggesting a delay until spring 2026.
- The Florida Supreme Court upheld the current GOP-favored map (20–8 split) this past summer, weakening voter-approved anti-gerrymandering protections.
- Republicans hope to gain 3–5 additional seats before the midterms, but Florida’s constitutional ban on partisan gerrymandering casts doubt on the outcome.
Utah
- In August, a judge reinstated Proposition 4, the voter-approved anti-gerrymandering initiative, and imposed a new map that could create a Democratic-leaning district in Salt Lake County.
- The ruling sparked significant legislative backlash. In December, GOP lawmakers delayed candidate filing deadlines, condemned the judiciary, and prepared appeals to the Utah Supreme Court.
- Grassroots petition drives to repeal Prop 4 have fueled controversy, with reports of out-of-state petitioners stranded and unpaid.
Wisconsin
- In late 2025, the liberal-majority Wisconsin Supreme Court appointed three-judge panels to hear lawsuits challenging the current congressional map.
- Republicans currently hold a 6–2 advantage in U.S. House seats, but this balance could shift dramatically depending on the court’s rulings.
- GOP lawmakers are fighting to dismiss the lawsuits, arguing the maps are constitutional, while Democrats hope for new maps before the 2026 elections.
The Larger Danger
The dangers of gerrymandering remain profound. This is not merely a turf war between parties—it is an erosion of public trust. When only 10–15% of congressional districts are competitive, as in the 119th Congress, the result is a landscape where 370 to 390 seats are virtual locks for one party. That’s roughly 85–90% of the House.
In noncompetitive districts, general elections become perfunctory. Real contests occur in primaries, often shaped by low turnout and ideological extremism. Voters outside the dominant party feel powerless, their ballots reduced to symbolic gestures.
At its core, gerrymandering is about control. When both parties manipulate district lines to preserve power, voters lose their voice. If our democracy is to endure, we must confront the consequences of a system where representation is predetermined and competition is the exception.
David Nevins is the publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
President Donald Trump speaks with the media after signing a funding bill to end a partial government shutdown in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., Feb. 3, 2026.
Will Trump’s moves ever awaken conservatives?
Donald Trump has rewritten the rules of the presidency in ways that could change America forever, and not for the better.
His naked self-dealing, weaponizing the Justice Department against his political foes, turning on our allies, the casino-fication of the White House — none of it bodes well for the future of our democracy, setting precedents that other presidents on both sides of the aisle could very well continue.
But one of the most obvious things Trump has changed in politics is its concern with ideology and principle. The long-held philosophy that used to bind the Republican Party together is gone, because he simply didn’t have a use for it.
For conservatives, that’s been especially disorienting and troubling. It began with Trump’s disregard for the debt and deficit, and carried through to this term’s embrace of tariffs, or protectionism. His personal disinterest in what the Christian right used to call “family values” dismantled the evangelical base of the party. And his courting of white nationalists and antisemites changed the face of the party.
None of that has been enough, however, to move conservative lawmakers to significantly break with Trump or even call him out. They happily co-signed his tariffs, watched as he exploded the debt and the deficit, turned the other way at his criminality and immorality, and defended police-attacking insurrectionists at the Capitol. He even managed to tick off the Second Amendment crowd with his crackdown on guns at protests and in Washington.
None of this is conservative. But so long as they kept winning, cowardly Republicans not named Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger didn’t seem to care.
But now, with a new idea hatched, will Republicans finally remember their conservative roots?
On Monday, Trump called on Republicans to “nationalize the voting.” It was a startling suggestion for a party that’s always concerned itself with state’s rights and federalism.
“The Republicans should say, we want to take over, we should take over the voting, the voting in at least many, 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” he said.
The call is in service of his election lie, of course, an answer to the non-existent scourge of voter fraud that rigged just the 2020 election and somehow not the 2016 or 2024 elections.
Except Trump is the one attempting the rigging. He’s tried to end mail ballots and voting machines, sued two dozen blue states for their voter rolls, embarked on a rare mid-decade redistricting campaign, dismantled the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, and pardoned dozens of people who signed false election certifications for him in 2020.
It’s tempting to dismiss the idea as merely a self-soothing ramble, the nonsensical blurting of an old man still fixated on an imaginary injustice. But it should offend and worry everyone, not least of all Republicans.
Elections are held locally for good reason — it’s harder to rig them that way. The Constitution says states shall determine the times, places and manner of elections, for the explicit purpose of decentralizing and protecting their integrity. It’s the backbone of federalism.
But for House Speaker Mike Johnson it’s nothing to get worked up about. “What you’re hearing from the president is his frustration about the lack of some blue states, frankly, of enforcing these things and making sure that they are free and fair elections.”
But Democrats are rightly concerned, and preparing for potential “federal government intrusion” in the midterms. “This is now a legitimate planning category,” said Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon. “It’s extraordinarily sad, but it would be irresponsible for us to disregard the possibility.”
Extraordinarily sad, indeed. But will it revive the dormant conservatism in the Republican Party? Will lawmakers remember their principles and patriotism? Or will they continue to sleep through Trump’s total remaking of America’s political system?
Maybe this will be the thing that finally wakes them up.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.