President Donald Trump’s blatant attempt to manipulate voters to help Republicans hold onto power even after the 2026 midterms is under fire from Rupert Murdoch’s favorite news outlet.
The Wall Street Journal warned that Trump’s push to gerrymander Texas could backfire “in a big way” on Republicans looking to hold onto control of the House.
“Mr. Trump’s attempt to bludgeon GOP state legislatures to redo their districts could turn out to be a misjudgment that costs Republicans their House majority,” wrote the newspaper’s editorial board.
The president had insisted that Texas redraw its congressional map ahead of next year’s midterms in an effort to give Republicans a greater advantage. The goal was to give Republicans the ability to pick up an additional five seats in one of the country’s biggest states.
However, the push sparked a dramatic race to redraw maps in both red and blue states, which could result in the Democrats coming out ahead nationwide, the WSJ noted after the Texas GOP attempt suffered a brutal setback in court.
A federal court this week struck down the new Texas maps drawn up by Republicans as unconstitutional. The Journal’s editorial board wrote that the ruling, “suggests the GOP didn’t look before leaping into a mid-decade gerrymander free-for-all.”
On Tuesday, the federal court struck down the maps 2-1 in a ruling by Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, who wrote, “substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.” He zeroed in on the Justice Department with particularly harsh criticism as “challenging to unpack” given its “many factual, legal, and typographical errors.”
Brown wrote that while the new map was unconstitutional, the original Texas districts were fine. But the move launched a nationwide battle with deep blue California voters approving a measure to redraw its maps ahead of the midterms.
The fight in Texas is far from over, but the editorial board wrote that it “shows the risk that Republicans took by starting this mid-decade redistricting race to the bottom.”
“The Democratic reaction to Mr. Trump’s Texas power play could erase most, if not all, GOP gains,” the editorial board wrote.
It specifically noted that the GOP efforts to pick up seats in North Carolina and Ohio are not “GOP gimmies.”
It comes as Trump’s demand that Indiana redraw its maps has met pushback from some Republicans in the state. He has raged online and called out the GOP state senators who have rejected the move.
State Senator Rodric Bray, the Indiana Senate president pro tempore, announced last week that they did not have the votes and would not hold a session to redraw maps next month. He told Politico he was not backing down even after speaking directly with the president.
Bray suggested that redrawing the maps in Indiana in an effort to give Republicans more seats could backfire even in the deep red state.
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