‘How can this possibly be allowed?’: JD Vance asks the question as Trump orders Texas to rig its own election maps

The political situation in Texas is changing in a big way as a highly partisan new congressional map is being introduced, pushed by top Republican leaders. This effort is meant to lock in Republican dominance over the state’s representation in Congress, causing a lot of debate and involves Trump and JD Vance.

Right now, Texas’ congressional districts are already heavily skewed. Under the current map, Republicans usually win about 55% of the statewide vote, but that gives them around two-thirds of the state’s seats in the U.S. House. This gap shows that gerrymandering is already a major issue.

Still, a new order from President Donald Trump suggests he wants an even bigger advantage, per MSNBC. Trump has told the Republican-led state legislature to start redrawing district lines now, in the middle of the decade. The plan coming from Trump’s team is for Republicans to control 30 of the state’s 38 House seats, up from the current 25. That would give the party almost 80% of Texas’s congressional seats, a huge increase that would make Republican power even harder to challenge, no matter how voters actually vote.

Trump wants to have all power in states, and he’ll redraw lines to do it

Following this order, Republican lawmakers have started working on the changes. A new congressional map was just released, designed to help the GOP win five more seats in the next midterm elections. This plan specifically targets Democratic members of Congress, redrawing district lines in major cities and nearby areas like Austin, Dallas, and Houston. It also changes the boundaries for two Democratic representatives in South Texas, where Trump won last time, making it harder for them to get reelected.

While this draft map could still be adjusted as the redistricting process continues, it makes clear that Texas Republicans want to further manipulate the districts. This move, which takes gerrymandering to a new level, would make it even harder for Democrats to win back a majority in the U.S. House, even if most voters wanted that change.

Meanwhile, JD Vance, the vice president, unexpectedly spoke out against gerrymandering, though his timing was strange. Just hours before Texas Republicans revealed their controversial new map.

“The gerrymander in California is outrageous,” the vice president wrote on X, “Of their 52 congressional districts, 9 of them are Republican. That means 17 percent of their delegation is Republican when Republicans regularly win 40 percent of the vote in that state. How can this possibly be allowed?”

Looking closer at Vance’s comments and the bigger picture, a few things stand out. First, while California’s district map isn’t completely free from political influence, it’s generally not seen as one of the worst examples of gerrymandering. But compared to aggressive moves like the one in Texas, California’s map might look more lopsided. Second, if the focus is on truly extreme gerrymandering, more attention should be on maps drawn by Republicans in states like North Carolina, Wisconsin, and even Ohio, where Vance is from.

Third, while Democrats in some states have also redrawn districts to their advantage, showing that neither party is completely innocent, there’s a key difference in how they’ve handled reform. Congressional Democrats previously proposed a major bill to end partisan gerrymandering entirely. This package of democracy reforms, introduced in 2021, would have created fair rules for both parties by taking politics out of the redistricting process.

Still, Republicans rejected the bill, stopping the reforms. Vance wasn’t in office when this bill was introduced, having only been elected two and a half years ago. His question about how such unfair districts are allowed can partly be answered by his own party’s refusal to support reforms.