Trump claims Republicans are “entitled” to five more Texas House seats.
Context: in the news
In August, the Republican-controlled Texas state legislature approved a rare “mid-decade” redistricting for U.S. House seats, with President Donald Trump’s encouragement.
Why?
Midterm elections, held two years into a presidential term, usually flip House control from the president’s party to the opposition. It happened in 2022 under Biden, in 2018 under Trump’s first term, in 2010 under Obama, and in 2006 under George W. Bush’s second term.
Facing a potentially similar result next year in 2026, Trump encouraged Texas to redraw its districts with new maps projected to net Republicans up to five additional seats. For context, Republicans currently control the U.S. House by only five seats nationally.
Texas’s move sparked an arms race to respond in kind, among both red and blue states. California, Illinois, and Maryland are now considering mid-decade redistricting on the Democratic side; Florida, Missouri, and Ohio on the Republican side.
Context: what is mid-decade redistricting?
Each U.S. House district is supposed to contain an approximately equal number of residents, currently around 761 thousand. But populations in these districts gradually change: births, deaths, people moving in, people moving out.
To keep the numbers equal over time, states usually redraw their district boundaries once per decade, after a Census. The Census occurs in years ending with 0, such as 2010 and 2020. So those new lines go into effect during years ending with 2, such as 2012 and 2022. Anything after that, such as for next year’s 2026 election, is considered “mid-decade.”
10 states actually ban mid-decade redistricting in their state constitutions, comprising red, blue, and swing states alike: Alabama, Alaska, Kansas, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee.
But it’s not banned at the federal level. Should it be?
What the bills do
Two bills in Congress would do just that. The two main proposals this summer were introduced by Texas Democrats in opposition to that state’s Republican plan, and by a California Republican in opposition to that state’s Democratic plan.
Rep. Marc Veasey (D-TX33) introduced the former, titled the Anti-Rigging Act, on July 10. Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA3) introduced the latter, numbered H.R. 4358, without an official title, on August 5.
The bills’ sponsors have not coordinated their legislation.
Both bills contain provisions making an exception for mid-decade redistricting if a state does so to comply with either the Constitution or the Voting Rights Act of 1965, if mandated by a federal court. For example, in 2023, the Supreme Court nixed Alabama’s map for violating the Voting Rights Act—a rare 2020s Supreme Court ruling considered good for Democrats.
What supporters say
Congress’s lead Democrat and lead Republican on this issue both argue that mid-decade redistricting changes the rules of the game for pure partisan gain, when it should only be done for neutral reasons.
“This move by Gov. Abbott does Trump’s bidding, not for any legitimate constitutional purpose as they claim, but to attempt to win an election before the first ballot has been cast,” lead Democrat Rep. Veasey said in a press release. “It is cynical, racist, and with clear political intent. This bill would ensure it could never happen again.”
“Gavin Newsom is trying to subvert the will of voters,” lead Republican Rep. Kiley said in a separate press release. “Fortunately, Congress has the ability to protect California voters using its authority under the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution. This will also stop a damaging redistricting war from breaking out across the country.”
(The Constitution’s Elections Clause allows Congress to set parameters for the “times” and “manner” of congressional elections in the states.)
What opponents say
The most prominent Republican and Democratic governors on this issue both argue that states are within their rights to maximize partisan political advantage—and that current times call for it.
The new congressional districts “better reflect the actual votes of Texans,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said in a press release upon passage of the state-level One Big Beautiful Map Act. “While Democrats shirked their duty, in futility, and ran away to other states, Republicans stayed the course, stayed at work, and stayed true to Texas.”
“California will not sit idle as Trump and his Republican lapdogs shred our country’s democracy before our very eyes,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said in a separate press release upon introducing the state-level Election Rigging Response Act. “This moment calls for urgency and action—that is what we are putting before voters this November, a chance to fight back against his anti-American ways.”
Odds of passage
So far, the Democratic congressional bill has attracted nine cosponsors, all Democrats from Texas. No Democrat outside of Texas has yet cosponsored it.
Two Democrats from Texas haven’t signed on, either: Reps. Joaquin Castro (D-TX20) and Henry Cuellar (D-TX28).
The Republican congressional bill has not yet attracted any cosponsors, likely because such a move would be considered too “anti-Trump” within the party. Not even any of the other eight California House Republicans have signed on.
Both bills await a potential vote in the House Judiciary Committee, unlikely under Republican control.
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY17) has publicly come out against mid-decade redistricting, in opposition to his home state New York’s Democratic plan, but has neither cosponsored the existing Republican bill nor introduced his own such bill as of this writing.
Jesse Rifkin is a freelance journalist with the Fulcrum. Don’t miss his report, Congress Bill Spotlight, on the Fulcrum. Rifkin’s writings about politics and Congress have been published in the Washington Post, Politico, Roll Call, Los Angeles Times, CNN Opinion, GovTrack, and USA Today.
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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.