{"id":12148,"date":"2025-08-08T08:47:23","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T08:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/democrats-make-a-trump-inspired-u-turn-on-redistricting\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T08:47:23","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T08:47:23","slug":"democrats-make-a-trump-inspired-u-turn-on-redistricting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/democrats-make-a-trump-inspired-u-turn-on-redistricting\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats make a Trump-inspired U-turn on redistricting"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The last time House Democrats held the majority, they made a sweeping package of good-government reforms \u2014 including an attempt to end partisan gerrymandering \u2014 a centerpiece of their legislative agenda.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people should choose their politicians,\u201d then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in 2021<\/a>, moments before the House passed the bill that would later die in the Senate. \u201cPoliticians should not be choosing their voters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, as President Donald Trump pushes Republicans in red states to redraw congressional district lines to their benefit, some Democrats are abandoning their past push for reforms. Instead, they’re cheering on leaders like California Gov. Gavin Newsom who say their party must fight fire with fire.<\/p>\n

Pelosi, in a statement to Blue Light News, said she backs Newsom\u2019s effort to overrule a bipartisan California map and counter GOP attempts to \u201crig the elections in their favor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her U-turn is emblematic of the larger rethinking underway within the Democratic Party, where leaders who once embraced anti-gerrymandering initiatives and feared a race to the bottom in partisan warfare between red and blue states are now increasingly willing to set aside their lofty goals \u2014 at least temporarily.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s another facet of the dilemma that\u2019s vexed Democrats since Trump first won the presidency. They\u2019ve tried to present themselves to voters as \u201cadults in the room\u201d willing to set aside partisanship for the public good. But now that they\u2019re being confronted with a potential existential threat to regaining power in 2026 or beyond, they\u2019re entertaining bare-knuckle tactics.<\/p>\n

That includes some groups who have long advocated for high-minded changes to the political system, such as the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a group founded in 2017 by former Attorney General Eric Holder.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis organization is taking a posture that we’re not going to oppose states taking corrective and temporary measures,\u201d said its president, John Bisognano.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s happening in the House, too, where the reform agenda promoted under Pelosi has fallen by the wayside. While Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and members of his leadership team continue to advocate for voting rights advancements and other key policies, they’ve not made them central to their opposition to Trump and his Republican allies in Congress.<\/p>\n

Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the committee overseeing federal elections, called Trump an \u201canomalous figure\u201d requiring an emergency response \u2014 including when it comes to gerrymandering.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will be an advocate for continuing to try to create national standards, but until those national standards are agreed to by everyone, I think it’s going to make it increasingly difficult for states to continue to engage in a more nonpartisan system of redistricting,\u201d he said in an interview. \u201cAs with so many things, Donald Trump shatters the norms and the standards that we have lived for, and as we try to improve our democracy, he is just shattering it. We have no choice but to respond in kind.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rethinking has been prompted by Texas Republicans\u2019 decision to respond to Trump\u2019s push to launch an unusual mid-decade redrawing of congressional lines in a special legislative session called last month by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott. The effort is now on hiatus with Democratic state lawmakers having fled the state to deny Republicans a quorum in protest of what they see as a partisan power grab.<\/p>\n

Other Republican-controlled states such as Missouri, Ohio and Indiana<\/a> could follow Texas\u2019 lead and rework their own congressional maps to shore up the three-seat House GOP majority ahead of next year\u2019s midterm elections.<\/p>\n

Confronted with claims of partisan overreach, Republicans gladly point to Democratic states that have drawn their own gerrymanders. Illinois\u2019 14-3 map in a state where Trump won 44 percent of the vote has been excoriated by good-government advocates. New York\u2019s move to sidestep an independent map ended up in the courts and threw the 2022 midterms into chaos<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley, asked by a Blue Light News reporter Thursday at an event in his hometown of Chicago, said he is “aware that our maps in Illinois are gerrymandered.”<\/p>\n

“Look, in an ideal world, these maps are drawn by nonpartisan commissions, and they represent what the Constitution said we should do,” he said. “We’re not there yet. … So you can’t be a Boy Scout in a situation like this \u2014 you have to be as tough as they are.”<\/p>\n

Enter Newsom, who has triggered the effort<\/a> to expand Democrats\u2019 advantage in California by overriding the map and sifting as many as five seats away from Republicans \u2014 which could entirely offset the Texas redraw.<\/p>\n

The effort has rekindled the war over redistricting inside the Golden State, which has been done by an independent citizens commission since a successful 2010 ballot initiative. Before the vote, Pelosi and other prominent California Democrats \u2014 including then-Rep. Adam Schiff, then-state Sen. Alex Padilla, who are now both U.S. senators \u2014 opposed stripping line-drawing power<\/a> from elected officials and backed a measure to maintain state lawmakers\u2019 control.<\/p>\n

Foes of independent California redistricting, like Pelosi, tried to persuade voters it wasted tax dollars on unaccountable bureaucrats. But their opponents countered that officeholders were motivated to protect their turf.<\/p>\n

\u201cElected officials don\u2019t like to change the system that got them elected unless they can be super sure about what comes out of that and that they\u2019re going to be okay,\u201d said Eric McGhee, a Public Policy Institute of California expert who has written extensively about redistricting.<\/p>\n

Only later did California\u2019s most prominent Democrats embrace independent redistricting as a national matter. Now, they\u2019re back on familiar ground, defending their party\u2019s right to undertake its own power play in the face of GOP efforts elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we continue to support enacting legislation to create nationwide independent redistricting commissions, Democrats must respond to Republicans\u2019 blatant partisan power grab,\u201d Pelosi said in her statement. \u201cDemocrats cannot and will not unilaterally disarm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her fellow House Democrats don\u2019t have any remorse about the political capital spent trying to pass the voting rights legislation in previous Congresses, though some are wistful about their failure in light of their current predicament.<\/p>\n

Both their sweeping campaigns-and-elections package, dubbed the For the People Act, and a narrower measure aimed at restoring the 1965 Voting Rights Act, named after the late Rep. John Lewis, ran headlong into the Senate filibuster and now have zero path to passage under the GOP trifecta.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an example of why we need it,\u201d said Missouri Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, whose Kansas City\u2013area district could be redrawn by the state GOP in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

Quigley said that Democrats should continue “pushing and advocating” for national redistricting standards, “educating the public of where we can be and why it matters” \u2014 even as they pursue their own partisan lines.<\/p>\n

Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, also argued for reviving Democrats\u2019 voting bills in a future Congress and for eventually going even further by implementing multi-member congressional districts and ranked-choice voting.<\/p>\n

But he acknowledged the reality of the situation Democrats face.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would rather fight fire with water and put gerrymandering out of business,\u201d he said. \u201cBut if the Republicans are going to plunge us into a race to the bottom, then we have to fight back with every means at our disposal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shia Kapos, Nicole Markus, Jeremy White and Liz Crampton contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last time House Democrats held the majority, they made a sweeping package of good-government reforms \u2014 including an attempt to end partisan gerrymandering \u2014 a centerpiece of their legislative agenda. \u201cThe people should choose their politicians,\u201d then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in 2021, moments before the House passed the bill that would later die in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}