On a Friday morning in mid-October, Republican legislators in Indiana were summoned to a conference call with President Trump. Using a charm offensive rather than threats, the president implored the lawmakers to redraw their congressional maps to add two more Republican seats before the 2026 midterms.
The change was critical to retain control of Congress and continue his agenda, he said.
Roughly a week later, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, was in Illinois, making the case to Democratic lawmakers that they needed to redraw their own maps to offset the growing number of newly drawn Republican districts. The main reason to take such a partisan action, Mr. Jeffries said, was to give Democrats a fighting chance in the midterm elections as Mr. Trump tried to tilt the maps in his favor.
Redrawing congressional maps ahead of a midterm election to eke out more safe seats before any votes are cast is not part of the ordinary run-up to the midterms. At such a national scale, it is a historic break from decades of settled norms regarding when and how legislative lines are drawn.
Yet this midcycle redistricting effort is at the center of Mr. Trump’s strategy to win the midterms and prevent Democratic control of the House of Representatives, which would give Democrats the power to open investigations and thwart the president’s agenda. What began over the summer in Texas, with the drawing of five new Republican-favored seats at Mr. Trump’s behest, has spiraled into a nationwide redistricting arms race.
The president’s aides and allies are supporting — or pressuring — lawmakers in nearly a dozen states to redraw maps, while Democrats are escalating their response and finding new avenues of countering the Republican effort to preserve their House majority of just a half-dozen seats. But the debate over drawing new maps has revealed fissures within both parties, as some Republicans are acting in rare defiance of Mr. Trump while Democrats are openly criticizing each other.
The result is a high-stakes partisan brawl playing out in nearly 20 states across the country, with control of Congress hanging in the balance. Critics of the practice also fear that it could open a Pandora’s box, with parties redrawing maps on a whim at any point, undercutting democratic principles.
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