August 25th, 2025
My pessimism about the future of America continues to grow. The latest step, which I judge to be of major significance, is the decision of the Texas legislature to remap the state’s congressional districts in an extreme gerrymander that will give Republicans five more seats in Congress. They make no excuses for their action; they readily admit that it is a blatant partisan move whose sole purpose is to give them an advantage. In the 2024 election, 56% of Texans voted for Mr. Trump and 42% voted for Ms. Harris. The new gerrymandered map would give Republicans 82% of Texas' seats in Congress, and only 18% to the Democrats.
A lawsuit has already been filed requesting a temporary injunction enjoining Texas from using this map in the 2026 election. If we are very, very lucky, we might see the courts grant this injunction, but I am not optimistic about the likelihood of the courts taking this step. There’s no question in my mind or the minds of most legal scholars that gerrymandering violates the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees “equal protection under the law” to all citizens. Gerrymandering has the undeniable effect of reducing the strength of voters of the group being gerrymandered against. Their votes are not “equal” to the votes of the group being favored.
Yet the Supreme Court has refused to intervene in cases of gerrymandering. Its excuse for doing so is that gerrymandering is a political decision outside the reach of courts. That’s bull — the 14th Amendment clearly applies here. The true reason for their refusal, I suspect, is that, should they rule against gerrymandering, they’ll be buried under litigation demanding their review of every one of the district maps of the fifty states.
The only way that they can avoid such a fate is to promulgate clear legal standards specifying exactly — EXACTLY — what constitutes unconstitutional gerrymandering. Could YOU draw up a list of absolutely clear specifications that differentiate between a fair map and a gerrymandered map?
The solution lies not in evaluating the final result, but in the process used to achieve that result. For example, a number of states (mostly Democratic) have installed bipartisan commissions to draw the district maps. There are are lots of academic proposals for mathematical models that would guarantee fair results, but since these involve math, politicians refuse to consider them.
The real solution should come from Congress, but Congress has been so enervated by partisanship that it is no longer capable of functioning effectively. It should have addressed the gerrymandering issue decades ago, just as it should have addressed the abortion issue.
But now we have turned a corner; Texas has abandoned all sense of duty to democratic principles; it has declared to the world that raw power is the only thing that matters. At long last, Democrats have finally decided that they must abandon their dedication to democratic principles and fight fire with fire. California is preparing a referendum that would permit it to redraw its district maps to gain five more Democratic seats in Congress. Other states are talking about jumping on the bandwagon.
This is a decisive moment in the evolution of the American republic: we are unreservedly abandoning the principles on which the republic was founded. The founders would be appalled and horrified to learn that things have gone this far. And they would see this as the beginning of the end. Once we agree among ourselves that government is a naked struggle for power, that we no longer honor principles of fairness, we begin the irreversible downward spiral to civil war.
In past times, I would have predicted that disaster was years or even decades in the future, but now I clearly see that the election of 2026 will be the destruction of our republic. Mr. Trump knows full well that, if the Democrats gain a majority in either house of Congress (and they are likely to obtain majorities in both houses), they will begin dismantling his authoritarian actions, and will likely impeach and perhaps even convict him, at which point the full weight of justice will come crashing down on him. Mr. Trump will do everything he can get away with to prevent a free and fair election. The only hope I harbor is that Republicans realize just how precarious their electoral position is, and decide to throw Mr. Trump under the bus to save themselves. But if most Republican politicians decide to join Mr. Trump’s assault on the Constitution, we are all doomed.