Gerrymandering, the strategic manipulation of voting district boundaries to benefit certain political parties or candidates, has once again taken center stage as this year’s primary elections approach. Though redistricting is typically marked by the decennial census, mid-decade redistricting has become more common across the U.S. since the early 2000s.
The aim of redistricting is to ensure that representative assemblies within a state continue to accurately represent their constituents as population demographics shift over time; however, since the early 1800s, this system has been exploited by U.S. political parties seeking to manipulate voting outcomes in their favor. The same can be said about the current election cycle.
Ahead of the 2026 Midterms, five states have proposed and passed new congressional maps to date. Virginia is poised to be the next state, if the state’s Supreme Court approves its new congressional maps.
On Monday, the Virginia Supreme Court heard oral arguments about the legality of the congressional maps the state’s Democrats proposed. The maps were approved by voters last week with a slim 51.45% majority, but Republicans challenged their plan. If the new maps are approved, it could grant Democrats four additional seats in the U.S. House.
Current (top) versus new (bottom) boundaries for Virginia’s congressional districts. The new map would reflect 10 strong Democrat seats and 1 strong Republican seat, whereas the current map has 7 strong Democrat seats, 3 strong Republican seats, and 1 flip. See here for more comparisons. Image source: AP News.
This is just the latest in the national redistricting battle, with both Democrats and Republicans fighting for control of the chamber come November. Though North Carolina and Ohio were the first to pass new congressional maps in October 2025, the GOP’s bid to retain control kicked off after President Donald Trump pressed Texas Republicans to redraw their congressional maps. Texas did so, and in return, the GOP hopes to flip five seats in the House following the 2026 Texas Midterms.
Florida will be the next to participate, as Gov. Ron DeSantis (R ) called for a special session to address congressional redistricting. This is set to begin on Tuesday, April 28.
Nationwide gerrymandering has created the potential for nine extra seats Republicans are poised to win across Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio. Democrats are expecting to win six seats from redistricting efforts in California and Utah, and a grand total of 10 if the new congressional maps are approved in Virginia.
Though the legal situation is complex and ongoing, the stakes are high for both parties: the GOP, egged on by President Trump, is fighting to retain the slim majority it holds in the House, while the Democrats are doing whatever they can to flip it.
This goes to show that gerrymandering is more than the way district lines are drawn. It is the product of a power-and-control struggle that can impact everything from political priorities to the strength of the public’s vote, and for voters trying to understand why election outcomes sometimes feel inconsistent with public opinion, the answer may lie not in the ballots but in the boundaries.
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Britton Struthers-Lugo is a journalist and visual storyteller. She currently works as a Digital Content Producer across The Fulcrum and the Latino News Network.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.