I have been fighting against gerrymandering on both sides of the aisle since I started covering politics more than a decade ago. It is a cancer on our republic regardless of who is wielding the pen.
While many celebrated Trump and Texas Governor Greg Abbott's gerrymandering of the Texas maps, I was not one of them. In fact, I am on record numerous times pushing back. First, I don’t like gerrymandering because, as I will show you with Illinois, it robs Americans of proper representation. Second, I knew the move would backfire because Democrats had more seats to gain, and I was right.
What just took place in Virginia is just the latest chapter of a problem in this country that politicians today openly embrace and that our Founding Fathers would despise. It has saturated both sides of the aisle. However, while Democrats are making Virginia and California sound like reciprocity, it is the Democrat Party that has perfected the art of gerrymandering in recent years.
Most have heard this phrase many times, but I would wager that many Americans do not fully comprehend how gerrymandering works and why it is at the core of what is wrong with our political system today.
Gerrymandering revolves around the majority party in the state legislature having the power to draw district lines. If you give a party in power the ability to do this, of course, it will try to get an edge in the next election. It started small, but as the line got pushed further and further away from the middle, states like Illinois have corrupted the process to the point that its district maps look more like a glass of spilled milk.
So, what is gerrymandering? For argument's sake, let’s say a state has 100 voters, with a 55-45 split in favor of Republicans. If that state had 10 seats, the ideal split would be 5-5 or 6-4 in favor of Republicans.
That is a fair split based on registered voters. Gerrymandering is when you cram as many possible voters of one party into as few districts as possible. The other option is to spread them out so thin that they get no representation, which is what Virginia plans to do, what California just did, and what Illinois has been doing for years. This is known as “packing” or “cracking.”
In our model above, if Republicans chose to pack the districts, they could have eight or nine of the congressional seats allotted to the state. If they chose to crack it, they could draw the districts to ensure not a single Democrat won a seat in the state.
According to the most recent reports, Illinois has approximately 8 million registered voters.
Based on recent elections, we know that roughly 35-40% of the state votes Republican. The state has 17 congressional seats. By those numbers, we would expect Illinois to have at least six seats for Republicans, with as many as seven. Currently, there are three Republicans in the House representing voters, which is akin to 17.6%, or less than half of what it should be.
When you look at the Illinois map, it is a complete and utter joke. Congressional maps should look like a jigsaw puzzle, all the pieces fitting nice and neatly together. Instead, Illinois has packed all its Republicans voters into three massive districts, then it split the remaining districts into smaller pieces to ensure Democrats would win them. Just look at the map below, and tell me how this is possibly considered fair…
Now, if that map were remotely fair, Republicans could easily have their three additional seats, but that is not how things are done under Governor J.B. Pritzker.
This is not a fair representation by any standard.
On Tuesday, Virginia’s redistricting referendum passed with 51.4% of the vote, reported NBC News. The new proposed maps, according to CNN, will give Democrats as many as 10 seats in the House.
Based on the 2024 election results, the state is approximately 52-46 in favor of Democrats, with the remainder going to independents and third-party candidates, so the current 6-5 split in the House is very fair. In essence, the maps will potentially give a single representative in Congress for nearly half the population of the state. This is what Democrats are celebrating.
Barack Obama was a big part of this gerrymandering push, posting a video on X before the election, stating:
“We can’t afford two more years of unchecked power and zero accountability in Washington. Help us chart a better path forward.”
I cannot help but consider the duplicity of that statement. He is selling it as righting a wrong, but what is more unchecked than silencing nearly half the population of a state?
Last year, Trump asked GOP governors to gerrymander their maps to help win what he knew was going to be a tough midterm election. History has shown that the first midterm after a change in power is a bloodbath, and Trump was hoping to avoid that.
I never fell in line, and I called it a foolish move from the start. When Democrats fled Texas to avoid voting on the new maps, I expressed my concerns. On August 4, 2025, I posted on these pages:
“Democrats have tried this tactic in the past, and it has failed, as they eventually returned home once Abbott applied pressure. My concern here is not the Texas maps, but how Democrats will react in larger states where they can virtually eliminate all red seats (think California and New York). This is war, but I am just not sure the GOP has enough cards to get a winning hand here.”
After the maps were approved, and California pushed back by gerrymandering its maps to offset the Texas gains, I noted again that this was going to backfire. On January 19, 2026, I posted:
“I have never agreed with gerrymandering, and I never will. However, what amazes me here is that even the mainstream media is applauding Newsom’s cheating while smearing the GOP's redistricting push.”
I later added:
“I warned everyone when Trump asked Texas to redraw its maps that we were headed into a battle that was impossible to win. Democrats had far more seats to play with than the GOP did, but Trump was trying to beat history by having the maps changed. It was a foolish fight to start, and it was one that conservatives were destined to lose. You cannot accuse Democrats of gerrymandering maps, then order states to do the same in a bid to defy historical electoral trends. It’s indefensible.”
I don’t know who advised Trump on this, or if he came up with the idea on his own, but it was foolish, period. There was no long-term or repercussive thinking. Not to mention the fact that it is cheating. We are supposed to be better than that, yet to appease Trump, my governor, Greg Abbott, chose to jump in with both feet, triggering a chain reaction that has now assured Republicans of defeat in the midterm election cycle. He pacified Trump, and by doing so, he put the conservative movement right in the Democrats’ crosshairs.
Realistically, based on the old maps, Republicans were likely to lose about 18-20 seats in the House. It would be bad, but not so bad that we could not get the majority back in 2028 or 2030. Trump’s move and the resulting countermoves have set the GOP up for a possible loss of 30 to 40 seats, if not more.
Trump can post all the angry rants he wants, but this is his fault, period. He should have taken his beating rather than trying to gerrymander states. And as I said in previous posts, you cannot whine about Democrats gerrymandering their maps when you ordered your governors to do the same thing. There is no telling how far this has set back the Republican Party in terms of being able to regain control of the House.
In his past sermon-like speeches on gerrymandering, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has called Republican gerrymandering efforts a “threat to democracy.” Well, that would stand to reason that you fight to expose the gerrymandering, not back gerrymandering by your party.
After the Virginia election, he not only celebrated the gerrymandering win, but he also threatened to do it in more states, reported Breitbart. He stated:
“If Florida Republicans proceed with this illegal scheme, they will only create more prime pick-up opportunities for Democrats, just as they did with Trump’s dummymander in Texas.”
He continued:
“We will aggressively target for defeat Mario Díaz-Balart, Maria Elvira Salazar, Carlos Giménez, Kat Cammack, Anna Paulina Luna, Laurel Lee, Cory Mills and Brian Mast. We are prepared to take them all on, and we are prepared to win. Maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time.”
He also posted a similar message to X:
“Democrats defeated Donald Trump’s gerrymandering scheme in Virginia tonight. We will crush the DeSantis Dummymander in Florida next. Maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time.”
Gerrymandering has its roots in Massachusetts in 1812, having originated in a Boston Gazette political cartoon. The cartoon was in response to Republicans drawing a contorted district to benefit their party.
Gerrymandering was challenged in the 1960s during the “redistricting revolution,” where numerous Supreme Court rulings tried to ensure equal representation. Then, in 1965, the Voting Rights Act was passed, protecting the vote of black Americans.
The computer age is when gerrymandering started to get out of control. During the 1990s, computers made it very easy for operatives to manipulate maps, allowing the party in power to take advantage of census reports when the maps were redrawn every 10 years.
Today, the most gerrymandered states are about even, with some of the worst now being California, New York, Illinois, North Carolina, Maryland, Texas, and Nevada, just to name a few. The table below gives you a better idea of where we stand today:
| State | Who Draws Maps | Total Seats | Approx. GOP Vote Share | Fair Seat Allocation | Actual GOP Seats | Seat Disparity | Benefits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Illinois | D Legislature | 17 | ~40% | 6-7 | 3 | -3 to -4 | D |
| California | "Independent" Commission | 52 | ~37% | 19-20 | 12 | -7 to -8 | D |
| New York | Courts / D Legislature | 26 | ~38% | 10 | 6 | -4 | D |
| Maryland | D Legislature | 8 | ~35% | 3 | 1 | -2 | D |
| Virginia (Post-Referendum) | D Legislature (NEW) | 11 | ~45% | 5 | 1 (projected) | -4 (projected) | D |
| Texas | R Legislature | 38 | ~55% | 21 | 25 | +4 | R |
| Ohio | R Legislature | 15 | ~54% | 8 | 10 | +2 | R |
| North Carolina | R Legislature | 14 | ~51% | 7 | 10 | +3 | R |
| Florida | R Legislature (special session Apr 28) | 28 | ~52% | 14-15 | 20 | +5 | R (Jeffries targeting 8) |
|
Blue rows: Democrat-controlled maps | Green rows: Republican-controlled maps | Gold row: Pending (Florida special session April 28) Red row: Virginia — newly gerrymandered after referendum dissolved bipartisan commission. Net disparity from Democrat-controlled maps: -20 to -22 GOP seats across 5 states Net disparity from Republican-controlled maps: +9 to +14 GOP seats across 4 states Net national impact: Democrats gain 6-13 seats through gerrymandering advantage Note: "Fair Seat Allocation" is calculated from approximate statewide vote share applied to total seats. Actual results vary by district-level demographics, turnout, and candidate quality. Seat counts reflect current or projected post-redistricting allocations. Sources: State voter registration data, Cook Political Report, election results, Axios, Breitbart, state redistricting commission records. |
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Both sides of the aisle will tell you that gerrymandering is a necessary evil, but they are wrong. It’s just evil. It’s cheating, period, and there is nothing necessary about it.
Our Founding Fathers built an amazing system to ensure that every voice in this country was heard. The Electoral College is sheer genius and ensures voters have the ability to choose their representation.
Gerrymandering does the complete opposite. It ensures that elected officials dictate who represents the voters. This is not democracy; it is engineering.
I have never supported gerrymandering, and I never will. When I called out Trump and Abbott for the Texas maps, I stood my ground against the attacks and simply said, “Just wait and see what happens.”
The wait is over, the move has backfired, and now everyone in the GOP is crying foul. Instead of gerrymandering maps, with both chambers and the White House, the wheels should have been put in motion to fix the problem, not contribute to it and make it worse.
The most infuriating aspect of this, at least to me, is that you have people like Barack Obama and Hakeem Jeffries, who seem to warn about the right being a threat to democracy every time they have a microphone in their face, now celebrating this “victory.” It’s not a victory, but it has brought us one step closer to destroying the vision our Founders had for our republic.
