Donald Trump in 2020 baselessly claimed that Democrats had stolen the presidential election, even as he himself was attempting to rig the outcome. He failed then only because he ran into the resistance of Republicans who still respected the rule of law. The situation has changed: Republicans have traded conservatism and respect for the law for loyalty to Trump.
Trump is now preparing, without even the slightest pretense, to openly rig next year’s midterm congressional elections in order to preserve Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress and continue dismantling the system of checks and balances. It is already abnormal that a Republican majority in Congress automatically means the elimination of oversight.
This demonstrates exactly how the Trump Party differs from what was once the Republican Party. The party has lost its independence, its core values, and its democratic character. The difference is not only that dissent against the president is no longer tolerated, but also that they are now willing to manipulate elections and treat fraud as an acceptable tool.
Today they openly assist Trump’s demands. In Texas, Republicans redrew congressional districts in their favor — a process that, under the law, can only be done once every ten years and solely on the basis of census data. The essence of the maneuver is to carve up Democratic-majority districts and attach them to Republican-majority areas.
Following Trump’s instructions, this eliminates five Democratic seats, preventing voters from expressing their opinion of his nightmarish immigration and tariff policies, his inhumane measures, economic incompetence, culture wars, and failed foreign policy — all of which could otherwise limit his power.
But redistricting does more than damage national politics and weaken confidence in elections and democracy. It strips entire communities of their congressional representation. Since districts are supposed to be drawn as contiguous areas, the new maps deliberately disadvantage minority communities.
At a press briefing organized by American Community Media (ACoM), Texas State Representative Gene Wu, the Democratic leader in the state House, warned that Black, Latino, and Asian American voters are being intentionally diluted by being split apart and folded into neighboring white-majority districts, where their votes are drowned out.
“Black, Latino, and Asian American voters face deliberate vote dilution through partisan redistricting tactics,” Wu said. He warned that this is not likely to be temporary, but permanent — creating a precedent that normalizes election fraud.
All the more so because Democratic-majority states are being forced to abandon democratic norms themselves in order to counteract Republican election fraud and the entrenchment of authoritarian rule. The moral dilemma is whether these defensive measures ultimately absolve the other side from criticism when they, too, resort to manipulation.
“Texas now has the dubious honor of having basically the most extreme congressional gerrymander in the history of voting rights,” said Dr. Sam Wang, director of Princeton University’s Electoral Innovation Lab. “California is about to come in a close second. These two states represent a real low point.”
This moral dilemma has divided Democrats and the broader public. California’s countermove was initially meant as a threat, intended to pressure Texas into backing down. But when Texas pushed ahead, California was unable to reverse course, trapped on the path Texas had forced upon it.
The redistricting war documented by ACoM in Texas is a clear example of how the rules of democracy can be falsified. Trump personally pressured state officials to expand Republican advantages, and in Texas alone this maneuver could secure five additional congressional seats for his party.
Wu also pointed out that district maps are supposed to reflect changes in the state’s composition based on census data. But the explosive growth of Latino and Asian American communities is nowhere to be seen on the maps, nor is the Black population properly represented. Instead, districts are constantly redrawn so these groups are dissolved into white majorities.
According to Wu, the Asian American population has doubled, and the Spanish-speaking Latino community has undergone a near population explosion. Yet Republicans are erasing them through manipulation. “Republicans need to cheat because they know the policies happening right now are causing massive price increases across the board,” he said.
“Coffee, grains — the prices of these products have doubled in the last few months. People are losing their jobs. Tourism is down by 50% in many areas. Many businesses simply cannot stay open. And these policies are only now beginning to bear their fruit, with consequences just starting to unfold,” Wu said.
“We are headed straight into the worst recession we’ve seen in a long time. Republicans know they are solely to blame because it is their policies and their blind support of President Donald Trump that are causing it. So they decided that the only way they could survive is to cheat,” Wu added, urging communities to fight back against “authoritarian rule.”
Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of MALDEF, noted that the goal is to blunt the impact of minority votes. “In South Texas and in Dallas, Latino communities that had built up power over time are being dismantled. They carve out chunks and attach them to majority-white areas so that their voices will no longer matter. They can vote all they want, but they will never be able to change the outcome of an election,” he said.
Trump knows he could lose the midterm elections without fraud. That would mean the House of Representatives could block his unconstitutional and unlawful measures, and even initiate impeachment proceedings. His plan to dismantle constitutional order could face serious obstacles. But Trump is determined to eliminate oversight in the long run.
Experts interviewed by Reuters say this strategy could deliver Republicans decades of control in the House. According to analysis by the Texas Tribune, the plan specifically targets five Democratic-majority districts in Austin, Dallas, Houston, and southern Texas, with the sole purpose of engineering Republican advantage.
Democrats tried to fight back: they organized demonstrations, desperately sought to delay or challenge the redistricting in court, and at one point even fled the state to deny the legislature quorum, walking out of Austin to block the vote.
Despite these efforts, the plan passed the state Senate, was signed into law, and came into force — a legal act openly tainted by partisan fraud. The only possible response was the one proposed by California Governor Gavin Newsom: Democrats would redraw five districts in California as well, to neutralize Trump’s fraud.
The governor submitted a special ballot initiative (Proposition 50) to create a Democratic-favored map. The outcome will be decided in a November 4 referendum, which will determine whether California can balance out Texas’s Republican gerrymander. It also sets a precedent for how Democrats respond to Republican manipulation.
In Washington, analysts already see this as a continuing war. Trump has made it clear he is not relying on strong political messages but on manipulating election mechanisms. He has brazenly encouraged governors to restrict mail-in voting and eliminate ballots from citizens without ID cards — measures that disproportionately disadvantage minorities.
The forced redrawing of congressional districts strikes at the foundations of American democracy, since free elections are the very means by which citizens exercise their voice in government. Experts note that geographic polarization and gerrymandering since 2020 have reduced electoral competitiveness by 25 percent — showing this is not just a Texas or California problem.
Missouri’s governor has also called a special session to create a more favorable map. Indiana, Ohio, and Florida are considering similar steps, with each state relying on its own political machinery. This gerrymandering war demonstrates just how much the integrity of American elections is under threat.
Trump’s ultimate goal is dictatorship, where voters’ opinions no longer matter, reduced to background noise drowned out by manipulation of power. He wants to hollow out institutions, the law, and elections themselves, leaving nothing to stand in the way of his unlimited authority. Minority communities are the greatest victims, erased from statistics, punished wherever diversity is acknowledged.
