Trump’s Redistricting Campaign Tests His Power in the States

President Trump’s pressure campaign on Republican-led states to redraw congressional maps in his party’s favor is testing his power over governors and state legislators at a time when Republicans in Washington have largely rubber-stamped the president’s agenda and acquiesced to his demands.

As Mr. Trump and his political allies stare down the midterm elections — and the prospect of Democrats taking control of the House — they are engaged in a nationwide effort to gobble up as many Democratic-held districts as they can by changing maps typically set once a decade after the census.

The effort is the latest example of Mr. Trump and his allies trying to rewrite the rules to squeeze out every possible political advantage. Throughout his career, Mr. Trump has brushed aside norms, testing the boundaries of executive power and the law. Now, as he tries to secure more G.O.P. seats, he is challenging state leaders to defy him and risk paying the price if they do.

For Mr. Trump, the opportunity to tilt the playing field is not just to gain a political leg up. He sees the current maps as unfair and unrepresentative of his and his party’s political power.

“I won Texas,” Mr. Trump said on Tuesday on CNBC. “I got the highest vote in the history of Texas, as you probably know, and we are entitled to five more seats.”

That argument, however, is wrong — Mr. Trump’s popular-vote win in Texas does not automatically translate to more Republican seats in the state’s congressional delegation.

His strategy in the redistricting fight echoes one from the 2024 Republican primary, when Mr. Trump and his team worked behind the scenes to twist the primary and delegate rules in ways that made it easier for him to lock up the nomination.

The stakes are high for Mr. Trump. Republicans hold only a slim majority in the House, and the incumbent president’s party typically does not fare well in midterm elections. If Democrats take control of the House, Mr. Trump and his administration would likely face an onslaught of investigations, and his legislative plans would likely be stymied.

The president’s allies have been particularly frustrated by Indiana Republicans, who have so far resisted redrawing their districts. Republicans currently hold seven of the state’s nine congressional seats, and Mr. Trump’s allies are hoping their party will capture eight, if not nine, of the seats.

On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance will travel to Indianapolis to meet with Gov. Mike Braun, a Republican, and other state leaders to lobby them on the effort. In private, Republicans in the state legislature have so far expressed little interest in redrawing the maps, according to people familiar with their discussions. Mr. Vance will also attend a political fund-raiser in the state.

In Texas, at the behest of Mr. Trump, Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, called a special session in part to approve new congressional districts, which target five seats currently held by Democrats. But on Sunday, Democratic members of the Texas House left the state in an attempt to block Republicans from moving forward with the new maps.

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, a Republican, asked the F.B.I. to help locate and arrest the Democratic lawmakers, and Mr. Trump, when asked if the agency should get involved, said “they may have to.”

But as Mr. Trump and his allies expand their efforts to redraw maps beyond Texas, they may face logistical and political hurdles.

Jesse Hunt, a Republican strategist and former top aide at the Republican Governors Association, said that governors have different constituencies to tend to and laws to abide by, making it more challenging for them to quickly fall in line with Mr. Trump’s demands. Mr. Hunt noted that Republican governors and lawmakers were still keenly aware of the president’s popularity and his interest in the issue — and would likely try to appease his requests.

“Part of what Trump has brought to the table is no longer taking the proverbially moral high ground in these battles,” Mr. Hunt said. “He is taking out his brass knuckles and going to town on people who have stood in his way.”

Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign could fail to produce the results he wants. As Republicans push ahead in red states, the Democratic governors of California, Illinois, New York and New Jersey are considering their own plans to redraw their congressional maps in response.

Democratic leaders have decried the Republican push to redraw state maps outside the traditional once-in-a-decade redistricting process.

“Donald Trump is trying to steal five seats from the people, frankly, of the country, not just the people of Texas, and disenfranchise people,” Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois said Tuesday on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

“We’re talking about violating the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution,” he added.

Eric Holder, who served as attorney general in the Obama administration and has led an effort to eradicate politics from the process of drawing legislative districts, reversed course and argued that Democrats should respond with gerrymandering in blue states.

“This mid-cycle redistricting ploy in Texas, and potentially in other states, is something that has to be met in the moment,” Mr. Holder told The New York Times in an interview last week.

Republicans counter that Democrats have long drawn unfair House districts in their own states, and often point to Illinois, where some of the Texas Democrats are camping out, as an example of blatant gerrymandering.

Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, who served in Mr. Trump’s first administration and is now the national chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative, a conservative group that advocates stricter voting laws, said Mr. Trump was taking steps to catch up to what he called an aggressive effort by Democrats to gerrymander the states they lead.

“I think a lot of Republicans are happy to finally see leadership that fights as hard as the other side everywhere,” Mr. Cuccinelli said in a statement. “And the Dems are now screaming bloody murder about it.”

Nick Corasaniti and J. David Goodman contributed reporting.