The Examiner

Gerrymandering is “the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries to advantage a

party, group, or socioeconomic class within the constituency.”

Texas, 8/23/2025

The Texas Senate early Saturday morning approved a new congressional map gerrymandered to maximize Republican representation, sending the plan to the governor’s desk after weeks of intense partisan clashing.

The map, demanded by President Donald Trump to fortify the GOP’s U.S. House majority in

next year’s midterm election, hands up to five additional U.S. House seats to Republicans by

dismantling Democratic bastions around Austin, Dallas and Houston, and by making two

Democrat-held seats in South Texas redder. The new lines also keep all 25 seats already held by Republicans safely red.

“The pickups are meant to help the GOP hold onto its razor-thin congressional majority in a

midterm election year that is expected to favor Democrats — potentially making the difference between a continued Republican trifecta in Washington, or a divided government with one chamber intent on investigating Trump and bottlenecking his agenda. That has put Texas lawmakers at the front lines of an issue with national stakes.”

Now, enters California, lawmakers in California and Texas - the two most populous US states that together contain more than 70 million Americans - are at the center of an intense political battle that is drawing in other state governments and is poised to have a major impact on the balance of power in Washington DC.

After Texas passed a redistricting measure that would create five more congressional seats favoring Republicans, California lawmakers hit back on by voting to re-draw the state's maps - carefully made to cancel out Texas' move.

This is all very confusing, let’s step back and consider what is actually happening.

The US House of Representatives is made up of 435 legislators who are elected every two years. They represent districts with boundaries determined in processes set by their state governments. Some states have non-partisan independent commissions which determine districts, while others leave it up to the state legislature.

. Currently, the House rests on a knife's edge, with Democrats only needing to seize three more seats to flip the chamber in their balance. Why the concern? The president's party historically loses seats in the midterm election following their victory. While this is a political issue, ideally the goal is to make sure all the people

voting have their votes count.

Gerrymandering - the redrawing of electoral boundaries to favor a political party - is practiced by both main parties and is legal unless ruled to be racially motivated. However, it is extremely unusual for the president to publicly back a state's effort to create partisan advantage. While both Democratic and Republican-dominated states have faced criticism and court battles over their US House maps, rarely do lawmakers so explicitly acknowledge the partisan intention behind their actions.

It appears that due to the actions of the current Administration, we may be thrown into a battle of gerrymandered districts, all of which may result in harming the value of each of our votes. As stated by Coretta Scott King, “Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others.”

Currently, Missouri will hold a special session starting on 3 September to redraw maps, which target a Kansas City-area district held by a Democratic representative.

Potentially, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Maryland are among the

Democratic-led states prepared to launch countermeasures to the Texas plan.

We need our elected officials to behave as leaders; “Leadership is the art and science of influencing others in a particular direction. Leading people is about getting things done and delivering value for all of us. It’s not an easy job. It’s tough. And it requires a fierce commitment to high-performance and continuous improvement.”

“We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what's in it for me, a freedom without a

commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of

our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.” Barack Obama.

More to come......

Respectfully,

Fran

Engage Women

Resources:

Washington Post

New Yok Times

BBC