The fight over the Lone Star State’s congressional map heats up, but we have all been here before.
From the moment Democratic state legislators fled Texas to prevent the redrawing of congressional districts, the word of the day – on every day that it’s not Russiagate or Epstein – has been gerrymandering. What is it? Why is it called that? How can you tell if your congressional district was gerrymandered? And why, apparently, is it only Republicans who do it?
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Aug. 6 petitioned the Lone Star State’s supreme court to remove Gene Wu, who chairs the House Democratic Caucus. Wu and around 50 other Texas Democrats left the state on Aug. 3 so that Republicans couldn’t advance new district maps because they would not have a quorum, or the minimum number of members required to conduct legislative business.
In a letter to the state’s highest court, Abbott wrote, “If a small fraction of recalcitrant lawmakers choose to run out the clock today, they can do so for any, and every, Regular or Special Session, potentially bankrupting the State in an attempt to get their way.”
Democrats, however, are taking their temporary self-exile seriously, with Texas State Rep. Jolanda Jones claiming that not standing up to the so-called gerrymandering could lead to another Holocaust. “I will liken this to the Holocaust,” Jones told CNN outcast Don Lemon. “People are like, how did the Holocaust happen? How was somebody in a position to kill all them people? Well, good people remained silent.”
Gerrymandering With a Hard ‘G’
When state legislatures – or independent commissions or even judges, depending on the state – redraw their congressional districts, it is called redistricting, strangely enough. Except when Republican-controlled states do it, Democrats refer to it as gerrymandering. That word (with a hard “g,” as in GHERR-ee) traces its roots back to the year 1812, when Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry (hard “g,” of course) signed into law a bill that redrew the state’s senate districts to favor his party. As the story goes, one of the newly drawn districts, when viewed on the map, resembled a salamander – and so the gerrymander was born.
The Bay State has honored the tradition to this day, many would argue. Currently, all nine of the Massachusetts congressional districts are represented by Democrats. But which party started it? Well, they both did, since Gov. Gerry was a Democratic Republican.
Redistricting and gerrymandering are not the same. As states’ populations change – or shift within the state – congressional districts are redrawn so that each has the same (as close as possible) number of residents, or constituents. Per the 2020 census, that number is an average of about 761,169 people. Gerrymandering, going back to Gov. Gerry, is when districts are redrawn specifically to create a majority-Democrat or majority-Republican district. They often appear on the map as if there is no logic to how they have been defined. If one looks at maps of congressional districts for certain states, it’s fairly obvious if and where gerrymandering has occurred. If you live in Illinois’ 13th or 17th district, for example, you can tell you’ve been gerrymandered.
Redistricting as a Weapon
In response to redistricting plans for Texas, a few Democratic governors have threatened to do the same, with the intent of canceling out the five extra House of Representatives seats the GOP is expected to pick up. The problem for many of them, though, is that they have already gerrymandered about as much as they can.
California’s 52 congressional districts are collectively represented by 43 Democrats and nine Republicans – and if one looks at the district map, it’s not difficult to figure out how that happened. Nine of New Jersey’s 12 congressional districts sent Democratic representatives to Congress, and the Garden State’s district map holds the key. A similar story is in New York, where the state’s 26 congressional districts collectively have just 7 Republican representatives.
If some of the most populous blue states were to gerrymander – or redistrict, depending on one’s point of view – any further, they would have no Republican representatives at all, despite having thousands or hundreds of thousands of Republican voters – so much for democracy.
Texas has 38 congressional districts, just 12 of which are represented by Democrats. The district map looks odd in places. To be fair to both parties, redistricting takes other factors into consideration, rather than just X number of people. Is either side a stranger to gerrymandering, though? Almost certainly not.
Still, the hypocrisy of Democrats trying to prevent redistricting in Texas by calling it gerrymandering, despite having done it themselves in several blue states, is not lost on anyone. With President Donald Trump’s agenda on the line, the 2026 midterms battle is already at hand, and the states are fighting it.
