November 18, 2025 12:45 PM UTC

Trump's Redistricting Scheme Backfires Bigly as Judges Rule Against Texas Gerrymandering

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• by: Colorado Pols

During President Trump’s first term in office, there was an oft-repeated phrase about his King Midas-esque impact on the world around him that went something like this: Everything Trump touches eventually turns to shit.

Trump’s habit of turning things into fake gold was largely forgotten in the first half of 2025 as he rampaged through Congress and the Constitution with seemingly no guardrails to stop his assault on America. But as 2025 comes to a close, whatever magic Trump might have possessed is evaporating before our eyes.

In a stunning decision announced today, federal judges have ruled that the Texas redistricting plan rammed through in August cannot be used in the 2026 election cycle. Via The Texas Tribune:

Texas cannot use its new congressional map for the 2026 election and will instead need to stick with the lines passed in 2021, a three-judge panel ruled Tuesday.

“The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics,” U.S. Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote in the ruling. “To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.” [Pols emphasis]

Brown ordered that the 2026 congressional election “shall proceed under the map that the Texas Legislature enacted in 2021.” The case will likely be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but time is short: Candidates only have until Dec. 8 to file for the upcoming election.

The decision is a major blow for Republicans, in Texas and nationally, who pushed through this unusual mid-decade redistricting at the behest of President Donald Trump. They were hoping the new map would yield control of 30 of the state’s 38 congressional districts — up from the 25 they currently hold — and help protect the narrow GOP majority in the U.S. House.

The Tribune has more on why an appeal from Republicans might not work in time for 2026:

It was not immediately clear if the state still has a legal path to restoring the new map in time for 2026. Unlike most federal lawsuits, which are heard by a single district judge and then appealed to a circuit court, voting rights lawsuits are initially heard by two district judges and one circuit judge, and their ruling can only be appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The decision comes 10 days into the monthlong period when candidates can sign up for the March primary. The filing deadline is Dec. 8.

Worried about losing control of the House of Representatives in 2027, Trump embarked on a push late in the summer to convince individual states to rejigger congressional boundaries in order to give Republicans an advantage in the 2026 election cycle. But after Republicans suffered massive losses in the 2025 election, concerns began to grow about the possibility of Trump’s redistricting war backfiring BIGLY. As NBC News reported last week:

Two other Republicans close to the White House told NBC News that there are growing concerns in the party that the political war is not going as planned — that the juice may not have been worth the squeeze and could, in a nightmare scenario, result in a net gain for Democrats. And within broader GOP circles, misgivings about the strategy heightened last week after California voters overwhelmingly approved Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to redraw the state’s congressional districts in a manner that Democrats hope will flip five House seats in their direction…[Pols emphasis]

…The range of scenarios depends not only on a surprise Democratic push to redraw Virginia, but also on outcomes in several red states. A compromise plan in Ohio and delays in Indiana and Kansas, where the White House hopes Republicans can squeeze more GOP seats out of new maps, coupled with California’s ballot initiative win, left Democrats with momentum last week — and Trump with some degree of heartburn, one of the sources said.

California will create five new Democratic seats following the passage of Proposition 50 earlier this month, a move that would have wiped out a 5-seat advantage created by the Texas redistricting plan. But between the legal ruling on Texas, California’s redistricting, and a recent change in Utah that adds another likely pickup for Democrats, Republicans are looking at starting 2026 with at least a six-seat disadvantage that probably wouldn’t have existed if Trump hadn’t picked this redistricting fight in the first place. Now that Virginia has a two-thirds majority in the House of Delegates and a Democratic governor, the Commonwealth may soon embark on its own redistricting proposal that could net Democrats another two seats.

Realizing that his big redistricting plan is backfiring, Trump has been increasing pressure on Republicans in other states to get involved — including aggressively-worded threats aimed at Republicans in Indiana who have been reluctant to get their state involved. Those efforts will likely intensify now that the big prize of Texas is moving out of reach.

It would be the very definition of poetic justice if Trump’s gerrymandering scheme turned out to benefit Democrats in the end. As of today, it seems that’s where all of this is headed.