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The state-by-state gerrymandering wars aren’t going anywhere—and on Monday, the Supreme Court gave the greenlight to Texas’ gerrymandered electoral maps for the 2026 midterms. The lower court opinion—written by a Trump appointee—had found that Texas unconstitutionally diluted the voting power of racial minorities in its newly shaped districts. But the Supreme Court overturned that ruling on the shadow docket, issuing a vague decision that not only has significant stakes for these midterms but reminds us just how much of a mess the high court has made in this area of the law. Unless the court or Congress changes course, gerrymandering seems destined to distort American elections for years to come.

To back up: State legislatures oversee the drawing of their electoral maps into districts. This typically happens every 10 years along with each decade’s census. But in 2025, President Donald Trump became nervous that his deep unpopularity would lead to Republican losses in the midterms. So Trump asked Texas to take the unusual step of rewriting their maps “midcycle” to try to win more safe seats for the GOP. When Trump’s initial threats went unanswered, his administration threatened legal action, sending a letter to Texas arguing that the state had unconstitutionally used race in its initial 2021 maps and had to redistrict to correct for that. But the legal arguments in this letter were so weak that no one pursued them seriously, and the Department of Justice later had to backtrack the arguments in court.

Even though Texas said it was ignoring Trump, the state began a midcycle redistricting effort after the letter. The 2025 map was eventually challenged in federal court. Under federal........

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