Voters should choose their politicians, not the other way around. The Texas gerrymander and the partisan war it has triggered signal an extraordinarily dangerous period for American democracy.

Gerrymandering leads to less choice, less representation for voters, and less accountability for politicians. It also produces more polarization, as party primary voters rather than general election voters have the loudest say. And voters of color all too often suffer the most as their communities are cynically sliced and diced to engineer partisan advantage.

The phenomenon is not new. In the very first congressional election, Patrick Henry drew a House district to try to keep James Madison from being elected to Congress. Both parties eventually participated in the practice. Over the years, technology and an increasingly partisan governing style have made things worse. In last year’s election, only 37 House seats were competitive, and those were decided by 5 percentage points or less. Just 11 of those districts flipped between parties.

But what’s going on in Texas now is particularly wrong. Gov. Greg Abbott is pursuing a gerrymander to produce five new seats for Republicans, mid-decade (long after the census), at the expense of Black and Latino voters, all on orders from a sitting president. It’s a raw power grab.

For too long, when it comes to protecting voters, to quote the poet William Butler Yeats, “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

It is part of an unprecedented White House push to tilt the electoral terrain in 2026 and beyond. Vice President JD Vance just met with state leaders in Indiana to urge redrawing of maps there. Florida, Missouri, and other states may follow suit. President Trump even called for a new census that would exclude undocumented immigrants. (That’s logistically impossible as well as unconstitutional.) Last week, the Brennan Center

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