In Redistricting Battles, Here’s How Trump, Republicans and Democrats Are Faring

On a Friday morning in mid-October, Republican legislators in Indiana were summoned to a conference call with President Trump. Using a charm offensive rather than threats, the president implored the lawmakers to redraw their congressional maps to add two more Republican seats before the 2026 midterms.

The change was critical to retain control of Congress and continue his agenda, he said.

Roughly a week later, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, was in Illinois, making the case to Democratic lawmakers that they needed to redraw their own maps to offset the growing number of newly drawn Republican districts. The main reason to take such a partisan action, Mr. Jeffries said, was to give Democrats a fighting chance in the midterm elections as Mr. Trump tried to tilt the maps in his favor.

Redrawing congressional maps ahead of a midterm election to eke out more safe seats before any votes are cast is not part of the ordinary run-up to the midterms. At such a national scale, it is a historic break from decades of settled norms regarding when and how legislative lines are drawn.

Yet this midcycle redistricting effort is at the center of Mr. Trump’s strategy to win the midterms and prevent Democratic control of the House of Representatives, which would give Democrats the power to open investigations and thwart the president’s agenda. What began over the summer in Texas, with the drawing of five new Republican-favored seats at Mr. Trump’s behest, has spiraled into a nationwide redistricting arms race.

The president’s aides and allies are supporting — or pressuring — lawmakers in nearly a dozen states to redraw maps, while Democrats are escalating their response and finding new avenues of countering the Republican effort to preserve their House majority of just a half-dozen seats. But the debate over drawing new maps has revealed fissures within both parties, as some Republicans are acting in rare defiance of Mr. Trump while Democrats are openly criticizing each other.

The result is a high-stakes partisan brawl playing out in nearly 20 states across the country, with control of Congress hanging in the balance. Critics of the practice also fear that it could open a Pandora’s box, with parties redrawing maps on a whim at any point, undercutting democratic principles.

“Everybody sees the current moment as something of an existential threat,” said Kareem Crayton, the vice president of the Washington, D.C., office of the Brennan Center, a think tank focused on democracy and voting rights. “Usually, the president of the United States is looking around the country to try to kind of come up with a way to keep things calm and predictable. And it is pretty clear on the facts that this president has been one of the instigators of all of this.”

The redrawing of legislative lines is typically done at the beginning of each decade, following the census, for the official purpose of adjusting to population changes. Both parties have used that cover to draw districts that benefit them politically, known as gerrymandering. But this year, Republicans have started that process in the middle of the decade, with the express purpose of helping them hold the House.

In making their pitch to Republican lawmakers, the president’s allies have argued their party has to act because Democrats have been aggressive in using litigation to change maps.

“Republicans had a choice: keep playing defense as Democrats tried to sue away the Republican House majority or go on offense,” Adam Kincaid, the executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, wrote in a text message. “Republicans chose to go on offense and proactively redraw in response to Democrats’ lawfare.”

The White House declined to comment.

Though Republicans will have more opportunities to draw more seats, it is difficult to predict which side will come out ahead in the current redistricting battle. Even if seats are drawn to give one party a clear advantage, voting patterns can be unpredictable. And each state is working on its own timeline, with some adding a single seat in a matter of days with little notice, others struggling over a single seat for weeks, and some states looking for as many as five newly safe partisan seats.

Initially, the White House saw the possibility of drawing as many as 16 new Republican seats.

So far, they have passed maps that could give them seven or more new Republican districts: five from Texas, one from Missouri, one from North Carolina and one to two from Ohio (though the Texas and Missouri maps are currently facing legal challenges). Florida, which could add two to four new seats, has formed a redistricting committee in the State Legislature, though it has not yet introduced any maps. Republicans could stand to gain additional seats with the Supreme Court poised to weaken the Voting Rights Act, though those seats might not be reapportioned until after the midterm elections.

But so far, Republicans’ other state efforts have not gone according to plan.

The G.O.P. leader of the State Senate in Indiana, a state where Trump officials had hoped to add two seats, has repeatedly said that he does not have the votes in the upper chamber, even as the Republican governor called for a redistricting session. Republican leadership in Kansas and Nebraska, states where the White House believed they could pick up a single district in each, have also said that they do not have enough Republican legislators on board to draw maps ahead of the midterms.

And in New Hampshire, where the White House believed they could at least make one of the state’s two districts competitive, the Republican governor, Kelly Ayotte, remains opposed, even as Corey Lewandowski, a longtime adviser to Mr. Trump, threatened a primary.

Overcoming the Republican reticence in New Hampshire and the Midwestern states is critical for the White House. Vice President JD Vance has traveled twice to Indiana to lobby state leaders to support the new maps. Allies of Mr. Trump, including Chris LaCivita, his former campaign manager, have created an outside group called Fair Maps Indiana to “strongly support” redrawing maps in Indiana.

“Now the real fun begins,” Mr. LaCivita wrote on social media, in a taunting response to the Indiana Senate leader’s statement that they did not have enough votes to redistrict.

In Missouri, Republicans pushed through a new congressional map, but opponents of the plan are trying to force a referendum that would delay putting it in place until after the midterm elections. Republicans are trying to block the referendum, and the Republican National Committee has sent staff to the state to assist in that effort, according to people familiar with the effort.

Amid the Republican infighting, Democrats have found new opportunities.

At first, the only concrete plan appeared to be an effort led by California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, to change the State Constitution and draw five new Democratic seats, seeking to offset Texas’s redistricting. A referendum on the plan goes before voters on Tuesday.

But in late October, Democrats in Virginia made a surprise announcement that they planned to redistrict the state, which could net the party two or three seats. In New York, where the State Constitution inhibits Democrats in seeking to redraw maps before the 2026 elections, a leading liberal law firm filed a lawsuit challenging a Republican district in Staten Island as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, setting the stage for another potential pickup.

And a judge in Utah found that the state’s congressional map with four G.O.P. seats and no Democratic ones was unconstitutional. While the newly drawn map creates a competitive seat instead of a likely Democratic flip, Democrats are counting the new map as a victory and a seat they believe they can flip in a midterm with a president currently underwater in polling.

Yet much like Republicans, resistance among the ranks of Democrats has stalled their efforts.

In Maryland, a state under full Democratic control where Democrats could potentially draw a map to eliminate the last remaining Republican district, Bill Ferguson, the State Senate president, sent a letter to his colleagues last week, saying his chamber would not take up redistricting, citing legal concerns, a difficult timeline and a belief that “the downside risk to Democrats is catastrophic.”

“The certainty of our existing map,” he explained, “would be undermined.”

A day later, Maryland’s Democratic governor, Wes Moore, pushed back, telling reporters that “one person cannot stop a process” and that “a special session is not off the table, regardless of what anyone else says.”

While the White House has been orchestrating much of the redistricting offensive for Republicans, the Democratic response has been more diffuse. Mr. Newsom has perhaps been the loudest voice — both in rhetoric and in action — while Mr. Jeffries has worked to use the power of his caucus to help persuade reluctant Democrats.

The day after Mr. Jeffries met with state legislators in Illinois, every Democratic member of Congress from the state released a joint statement endorsing drawing new maps in the state.

And the Democratic National Committee has been working with states and outside groups to respond both through new maps and new litigation.

“They wanted a showdown, we’re going to give them a showdown,” Ken Martin, the chairman of the D.N.C., said in an interview. “Every state that they decide they’re going to try to redistrict in, we’re going to respond in kind.”