‘We are at war’: Democrats reach breaking point over Republican threats in political map arms race

Democrats have spent years issuing warnings over Republican threats to redraw the political maps that could determine the balance of power for years to come. Now, they’re prepared for “war.”

After protracted legal battles to unwind Donald Trump’s executive actions and unsuccessful attempts to derail the president’s agenda in Congress, Democrats appear to have reached a breaking point and are ready to do some map-making of their own, reluctantly preparing to fight fire with fire.

They have repeatedly stressed that the GOP’s gerrymandering imperils American democracy. But Democratic officials across the country are now embracing the idea, reasoning that years-long legal challenges and public pressure over illegal voter suppression are no longer enough to keep up with the GOP’s power trip.

“All’s fair in love and war,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said Monday as she signaled efforts to draw up new maps in her state “as soon as possible.”

“This is a war. We are at war,” she added. “And that’s why the gloves are off, and I say, ‘Bring it on.’”

Trump is looking to avoid a repeat of his first term, when Democrats flipped the House at the midpoint and largely stalled his agenda from advancing through Congress. This time around he wants Republican-led states to redraw their congressional districts to ensure the GOP remains in power in 2026.

Last month, the president commanded Texas Republicans to do a “simple redrawing” of the state’s congressional maps, the heavily-contested boundaries that establish districts for each member of the House of Representatives.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott had summoned state lawmakers to the state capitol in Austin for an emergency session to do just that. Days after Trump’s demands, Texas Republicans put together a map that gives them five more seats in the House.

On August 1, the Texas House redistricting committee held the only public hearing on the proposal. Republicans voted it out of committee the next morning on a party-line vote, setting up a quick vote in the full state House of Representatives, which Republicans control.

“I’m not beating around the bush,” Texas state Rep. Todd Hunter told the committee. “We have five new districts, and these five new districts are based on political performance.” Contra Abbott and the Justice Department, he admitted the map was being redrawn “for partisan purposes.”

Committee chair Cody Vasut also admitted the move was purely about “improving political performance.”

But by the time Texas Republicans were prepared to vote on the new maps on August 4, Texas Democrats had already left the state.

Nearly 60 Democratic members of the state House have fled elsewhere, breaking quorum to derail a vote and promising to stay away from Texas for the duration of Abbott’s 30-day session.

Texas Republicans subsequently ordered arrest warrants and directed state marshals to haul Democrats back to the capitol — a largely symbolic maneuver confined by state lines. It’s also expensive; missing members are racking up $500 in daily penalties for every day they miss work. But for Democrats, it’s a high-profile act of obstruction that puts Republicans on notice.

“This is not a decision we make lightly, but it is one we make with absolute moral clarity,” Democratic state Rep. Gene Wu said from Illinois after leaving the state with several Texas Democrats.

Wu, the state’s Democratic caucus chair, said the GOP has put forward a “racist, gerrymandered map” that “seeks to use racial lines to divide hard-working communities that have spent decades building up their power and strengthening their voices.”

Governor Abbott has done so “in submission of Donald Trump, so Donald Trump can steal these communities’ power and voice,” Wu continued. “We will not be complicit in the destruction of our own communities.”

The developing war over congressional maps follows a series of Supreme Court decisions that have gradually chipped away at the Voting Rights Act and constitutional guardrails to protect against racial gerrymandering, or carving up electoral maps to prevent racial minorities from electing their preferred candidates. Federal courts have generally blocked the creation of congressional districts that “crack” or “pack” communities of color to dilute their voting strength.

After Texas redistricted in 2021, voting rights advocates challenged the new maps in court, arguing that state lawmakers drew up racially gerrymandered districts that discriminated against minority voters.

Currently, Texas has nine districts where no one racial or ethnic group has a majority; in eight of them, Black, Hispanic and Asian voters combined create a so-called “coalition district” majority.

Trump’s Department of Justice claims that three of those districts are unconstitutional “coalition districts” — which constitutional law scholars and voting rights advocates say is a deliberately bad-faith reading of the law.

Trump’s demands to redraw maps in the middle of the decade, largely to hold on to power to avoid any political blowback in 2026, could trigger what Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin has called “a race to the bottom” nationwide.

Former attorney general Eric Holder, who chairs the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, has spent the last several years fighting off partisan gerrymanders, including Democratic-led maps.

But in the wake of Trump’s threats, Holder is now telling Democratic officials to embrace what leverage they have and be “unabashed in our desire to acquire power.”

“This midcycle redistricting ploy in Texas, and potentially in other states, is something that has to be met in the moment,” Holder told The New York Times. “Our commitment to fairness didn’t blind us to this new reality, and I think that we’ve got to take these extraordinary steps, with the hope that we can then save democracy and ultimately heal it. If you give Donald Trump unchecked power for two years beyond 2026, given what they’ve done in six months, I just wonder what kind of shape will the nation be in come Jan. 20, 2029.”

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee has also called on Democratic state legislatures to “pursue redistricting mid-cycle,” but Democrats don’t hold “enough legislative majorities to win an all-out, state-by-state battle.”

Republican state legislatures oversee 55 Democratic congressional seats. Democratic state legislative majorities, meanwhile, oversee only 35 GOP districts.

“All options must be on the table — including Democratic state legislatures using their power to fight back and pursue redistricting mid-cycle in order to protect our democracy,” committee president Heather Williams said in a statement.

Republicans are preemptively trying to stop Democratic states from joining the fight.

Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley of California wants to “stop a damaging redistricting war from breaking out across the country,” brushing up against demands from his party leaders for the by-any-means-necessary battle to preserve, and expand, the House majority next year.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, whose state holds a whopping 52 House seats, has also planned retaliatory map-making to target vulnerable Republican seats in the state. Other Democratic-led states are expected to follow, potentially blowing past the guidance from independent redistricting commissions that are designed to prevent lawmakers from crafting partisan, racist and otherwise discriminatory maps.

Hochul has considered disbanding New York’s commission altogether.

“I’m tired of fighting this fight with my hands tied behind my back,” she said this week. “When we say we cannot use that power to the fullest, we’re abdicating the responsibility we all have. Republicans take over the legislature? They can have it. Until then, we’re in charge, and we’re sick and tired of being pushed around.”

Republicans only have Trump to blame, she said.

“The playing field has changed dramatically, and shame on us if we ignore that fact and cling tight to the vestiges of the past,” she said. “That era is over. Donald Trump eliminated that forever.”