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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) warned this week that if President Trump and his GOP allies expand their gerrymandering efforts beyond Texas, Democrats will respond in kind.
Democratic legislators in California have already advanced new House maps designed to nullify the GOP’s new advantage in Texas, where Republicans, at Trump’s request, redrew their lines to help the GOP retain its slim House majority in next year’s midterm elections.
As the president presses more GOP state legislators to follow Texas’s lead — including those in Indiana, where a Republican delegation huddled with Trump and Vice President Vance on Tuesday — Jeffries said other Democratic states are ready to do the same.
“Corrupt and desperate Republicans are scheming to gerrymander the congressional map in Indiana,” Jeffries wrote Tuesday night on social platform X. “Democrats will respond forcefully, just like we did in California.
“And the MAGA extremists will gain nothing,” he added.
The redistricting battle comes as Trump and Republicans, who are facing a tough midterm cycle, are scrambling to pad their razor-thin House majority through rare, mid-decade redistricting efforts in GOP states. A power shift in the lower chamber would allow Democrats to launch countless investigations into the administration through the final two years of Trump’s second term — a scenario the president is fighting to prevent.
Texas was the first state to heed Trump’s call. Although Lone State Republicans had adopted a new House map just four years ago, they redrew the lines again this month in ways that are expected to flip as many as five seats to the GOP in the midterms.
California Democrats quickly responded, proposing new maps designed to yield five Democratic gains in the Golden State. Unlike in Texas, California rules require voters to approve the changes before they can take effect.
In Indiana, a number of state GOP lawmakers have been cold to the idea of mid-decade redistricting, voicing reservations that it would set a bad precedent. After Tuesday’s meeting with Trump and Vance in Washington, those concerns appeared to be fading.
Republicans have fewer opportunities for pick-ups in the Hoosier State: Of the nine-member delegation, only two are Democrats. But given the high stakes of the midterm outcome, Trump is pressing for every advantage he can muster.
Jeffries, in warning that Democrats are poised to counter any redistricting in Indiana, did not specify which states are ready to jump into the fray. But Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) has signaled an openness to redrawing the lines in the Prairie State, where there are currently three House Republicans.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) has also suggested he is also willing to entertain the idea, although his state has only one GOP seat available for targeting.
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