When the Republican-controlled Texas legislature, at Donald Trump’s urging, first pushed through a plan to do a highly unusual mid-decade redistricting, Democrats hoped they might overplay their hand — that in carving up Democratic-held districts on what is an already heavily gerrymandered map, they would be unable to avoid diluting Republican districts, making them more winnable for Democrats.
But the plan Texas legislators released this week, for the most part, smothered those Democratic hopes. Democrats currently control 13 of Texas’ 38 U.S. House districts — already a skewed map. Under the new map, if voters voted as they did in 2024, Democrats would win just eight.
There’s a chance, that means, that control of the House in 2026 could hinge on whether the state adopts this new map.
Democrats in Texas do have some limited ability to fight back, such as a walkout from the special legislative session where the maps will be voted on. But it’s other states that might end up more effectively blunting the impact of Texas’ actions.
In California, Democrats are looking to do their own redistricting to make districts more winnable for their party, though there’s some dispute over whether they need voters to approve their plan to do so. Democrats in New York’s legislature have launched an effort to begin redistricting in their state, as did Democratic legislators in Maryland. The Democratic governors of New Jersey and Illinois have also signaled they might encourage redistricting ahead of 2026.
Of course, 2026 won’t be entirely determined by ratfuckery. The biggest factor will remain the margin of the popular vote. A large enough wave of backlash to Trump (or, on the other hand, a particularly tepid showing for Democrats) and none of this will matter. Extrapolating from polls is hazardous, but TPM fave G. Elliot Morris (the former data guy at the Economist and the final version of FiveThirtyEight) finds Democrats 2.3 points ahead on generic ballot polls — not, at this early stage, suggesting that we’re in for a wave of the sort we saw in 2018. (If 2018 were held with Texas’ new maps, for example, Democrats would win 12 districts in Texas, according to the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.)
Even a few years ago, these gerrymandering schemes, allowing (largely Republican) politicians to draw their own districts, were the product of back-room computations by political operatives, rolled out in such a way as to attract as little attention as possible. Democratic states, over the last decade, often handed their line-drawing process over to commissions and independent experts; Republican states did not, creating a kind of one-sided disarmament that Democrats are now backing away from. In the last few weeks, at Trump’s prompting, gerrymandering is being openly embraced for what it is — a political weapon, a tool that can allow state legislators to determine control of the U.S. House regardless of the will of the voters. That honesty is perhaps refreshing, but it’s yet another sign of how far our democracy has backslid in a few short years.
— John Light
Here’s what else TPM has on tap this weekend:
A plan to create Trump-flattering kitchen appliances causes a mess.
New Census data shows how dependent America is on immigration.
Democrats get ready to experience some March 2025 déjà vu.
Let’s dig in.
The MAGA Instant Pot: An Attempt to Suck Up to Trump Crashes and Burns
Publicly flattering Donald Trump or donating to his presidential library is generally a pretty reliable way to curry favor with the administration. But as a New York-based private equity firm recently learned, there is actually a wrong way to suck up to the president.
The firm, Centre Lane Partners, announced plans for the home goods manufacturers that it owns to launch Trump-themed products, including MAGA-branded Instant Pots, bedsheets, and snow globes featuring miniature Trump figurines. Per a recent New York Times investigation, Centre Lane planned to donate all proceeds to Trump’s library fund in a bid for help with tariffs and an anti-trust inquiry. But the firm didn’t get the Trump Organization’s approval to use its trademarks, and when the Times started asking questions about the scheme, the company’s general counsel swept in to threaten legal action and scuttle the plans.
At least we have plenty of time to brainstorm alternate holiday gifts.
Check out David Fahrenthold’s video explaining the whole harebrained situation.
— Allegra Kirkland
We Need Immigration, Actually
A Census data dump that political data wonks and demographers had eagerly anticipated is in, and it tells a striking story: The entirety of the country’s population growth between July 2023 and July 2024 came from nonwhite populations, particularly Latinos and Asians.
That growth was driven by immigration, which rose again after plummeting during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, these groups are bolstering the youth population of the United States, which is declining as the white population ages.
“Over time, smaller and younger generations displace larger, older generations in the labor force, leading to slower national productivity and more difficulties in funding old age assistance programs such as Medicare and Social Security,” writes the Brookings Institute’s Bill Frey in his analysis of the data.
Quite apart from the Trump administration’s endless demonizing of immigrants, its masked abductions of them off the streets, its unlawful dumping of them in prison hellholes, the data suggests a totally amoral argument in favor of the melting pot: Without the generally younger pool of immigrants, the United States is bound for economic trouble.
— Kate Riga
Democrats Have to Make Their Biggest Decision Yet on Trump Accountability
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) took to the Senate floor this week and laid out why Democrats should be reluctant to agree to working with Republicans in the upcoming appropriations process to fund the government for the next fiscal year. Any bill will need at least some Democratic votes to pass.
Pointing to the Trump administration robbing Congress of its authority to make spending decisions — refusing to spend funds previously approved by Congress and, in some cases, forcing legislation down the throat of GOP senators to rubber-stamp that executive branch refusal — Warren argued Democrats can’t trust President Trump to uphold any bipartisan government funding agreement.
“Why should Democrats come to the table and negotiate in good faith and throw our support behind a quote-unquote bipartisan bill, only for Republicans to turn around after the deal is done and, somewhere down the line, delete any parts of the deal Trump doesn’t like?” Warren asked.
Warren’s push around the issue is foreshadowing an internal fight among Democratic senators — and possibly within the larger Democratic Party — that is on the horizon.
Democrats will soon have to make a decision on whether they will go with Warren’s logic, refuse to help the GOP pass a bill — either appropriations bills or continuing resolutions — and get blamed by Republicans for the government shutdown that will result and that may give Trump and the Office of Management and Budget even more power to choose how to distribute funds. Alternatively, they could choose to work with Republicans again, surrendering a key point of levarage to force the Trump administration to stop illegally withholding funds. Between a rock and a hard place doesn’t even begin to describe it…
— Emine Yücel
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