One of the most prominent talking points in the entire democracy reform movement is that curbing money's sway over elections is a prerequisite to fixing every one of the nation's biggest problems. Now critics of partisan gerrymandering are trying to piggyback on that concept.
A new study concludes that aggressive legislative mapmaking by Republican majorities is responsible for the lack of any new gun control laws in five states during a decade marked by the accelerating pace of mass shootings.
In issuing the report Tuesday, the Center for American Progress, one of Washington's most influential liberal think tanks, joined the lengthening roster of groups advocating for states to take the drawing of political boundaries away from the politicians themselves in and turn the responsibility over to independent and nonpartisan panels.
Fourteen states have already given such panels authority to draw state legislative lines starting in 2021, after the census exposes population shifts mandating new lines that confirm with the Constitution's one-person-one-vote requirement. Eight of them have also assigned the next congressional maps to commissions.
Several states with the full array of partisan power structures — reliably Democratic, solidly Republican and battleground — may soon join that list through legislation or a citizen-driven referendum, but maybe not in time for the next redistricting.
All five of the states studied by the Center for American Progress, or CAP, have been on center stage in the gerrymandering debate: North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Virginia.
"In each of these states, it is likely, in the absence of partisan gerrymandering, that the legislature would have enacted measures to strengthen gun laws — measures that could have saved lives," the report concluded.
That's because all their legislative maps were successfully drawn at the start of the 2010s to assure that Republicans — who have remained almost unanimously opposed to additional regulation of firearms or new curbs on gun ownership — retained legislative control no matter how strong the Democratic vote in subsequent elections. And in last year's midterm, CAP notes, the GOP held control in four of the legislatures even though Democratic candidates won more total votes in state House contests in all of those states and in state Senate elections in three.
While 32 states and Washington, D.C., have enacted a combined 110 gun control measures in the nearly two years since 17 people were killed in a mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., the report details, no such bills have come close to becoming law in any of those five states despite extensive campaigns in each place.
"Partisan gerrymandering is one of the reasons why a public that supports stronger gun laws can be represented by state legislators who do nothing, even in the wake of severe episodes of gun violence," CAP said. "Even when there is bipartisan support for a particular gun policy, conservative leadership in many state legislatures persistently refuse to allow such bills to have a hearing or a vote, even if the bills have bipartisan support."
The situation is particularly problematic, the authors say, because a disproportionate share of gun violence victims are young people and members of racial minorities who live in deep blue Democratic urban areas — but policies that could help them are under the control of Republican red officials with disproportionate political power.
The good news, they say, is that overt partisanship in mapmaking is in jeopardy in all five states.
North Carolina's legislative lines were redrawn this fall after a panel of judges declared the old map a violation of the state Constitution's "fair elections" clause. A very similar ruling two years ago voided a Pennsylvania congressional map and could threaten the legislative maps as well. Michigan voters a year ago voted to create a nonpolitical redistricting commission by next year. A similar proposal could be on the Virginia ballot as soon as next fall. And legislation to do the same has growing grassroots support in Wisconsin.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.